Skye hurt. Instead of sitting his horse and absorbing the area that would be his home, he slid painfully off and eased to the stony turf, knowing that the minute he alighted sharp pain would shoot up his legs. He had ridden horses all his life, but now it was all he could manage to sit a horse for an hour. The hurt would drive upward from his knees to his loins to his hip and back, and then he would have to dismount and walk awhile until the pain lessened.
Now he eased to the grass and felt his moccasins touch earth. He was used to pain. He had bullet wounds, knife wounds, a nose pulped by brawling early in his life, giant scars and scratches, and more recently the pain of all his years, lancing his bones and settling in every joint.
This would be the place of his old age, and he wondered why. Of all the ranges and prairies and hills and deserts he had roamed over a lifetime in the American West, why had he come to this place? He couldn’t say. It was beautiful, but there were many vistas across this country that were more so.
It was not a lush land, and would not afford much of a living. He stood on a brushy and uneven flat that had once been riverbed. One would not plow here because the blade would strike the river cobbles that lay just below.
Off to the south was a steep notch in the slopes, where the Yellowstone had washed through the mountains, and beyond that a broad valley flanked by snowy ranges. The trappers and men of the mountains had often camped here, and that was how he first became acquainted with it. Sometimes they had wintered here, built their miserable huts against the wind, harvested game, cut firewood, and then gambled and storied away the cold days and nights. Skye had been among them. He knew this place and it was just as real to him as the pain lacing his bones.
The wind here was incessant and cold, and now it slipped through his leathers and chilled him. He would need a good stout house to turn the wind, and a good stove to heat it enough to ease the pain in his joints. He wondered why he would build a home in a place notorious for its bitter winds, and had no answer. There were winter days here when the wind was so cruel that no man would venture out.
He eyed the sky, finding scattered frying-pan clouds with black bottoms skidding low over the ridges. They might snow on him. The setting sun silvered the edges of these galloping clouds, turning the sky into a kaleidoscope. He put a hand on the withers of his horse and felt it tremble.
The silent wilderness absorbed his gaze. The brooding mountains caught the last light, and now the river flat settled into obscure shadow. This place was incalculably old. For as long as the stars rose and fell, this place had nurtured life and welcomed death. These mountains rose and fell. This river had scooped away rock and cut a gorge. This was a place of
mystery, the sort of place that made Europeans huddle closer to their hearth fires and listen for the unknown and unknowable just beyond the pale light.
He headed for the thick riverside brush, knowing he could find shelter there, and soon found a good gravelly flat surrounded by willows and cottonwoods, a place hidden from prying eyes, where he could light a fire that would never be seen. Why did he still keep his guard up? It was ancient habit. From silent places came silent arrows.
He unsaddled, and turned the horse and mule loose on brown and matted grass. They would gnaw a few twigs as well as last summer’s grass and do well enough to sustain life. He chose a gravelly ridge, once a sandbar in the river, that would shed snow or rain. Falling water here would not pool, but would filter into the thick gravel beds beneath him.
He collected an abundant supply of deadwood and heaped it nearby. The more he moved, the better he felt. Just doing chores drove the pain away. It never left him entirely, but he could drive it back until it lurked beyond the fires, with yellow wolf eyes, waiting to pounce on him again when he pulled his robes over him.
He checked his Sharps rifle and set it next to his bedroll.
He heard an animal stirring. At dusk deer came to water, but it might be something else, so he waited. But nothing loomed out of the quietness, so he turned to his supper, a pemmican broth that would warm and comfort him.
The sole noise was that of his own making. Nearby, a latticework of naked limbs raked the stars, and little air stirred. The limbs looked like jail bars, keeping his spirit pinned to earth and preventing him from knowing all things. Earth was home, but also prison. He used lucifers now; strikers and flints were too much work and too chancy. He shaved a dry
stick, built a tiny fire, added twigs, and soon had a hot little blaze, just right for his cook pot. He had learned to feed himself with only a copper cook pot, his knife, and an iron spoon, and that was all he had with him. He dipped the pot into the Yellowstone River, and set the cold water to heating, along with some jerky and pemmican and some rose hips he had harvested along the way. He wouldn’t need much. His appetite had faded over the years, and now he was indifferent to food.
He lowered himself quietly to the dry gravel, a good place to be during the muddy season when sometimes there was no dry bed ground to be found.
Was this home? Had he come all the way over here only to find that home is not a place, but a collection of memories and loved ones? He could not answer it. Did anyone on earth possess a real home, a sanctuary that put all the clawing pain in one’s bosom at ease? Was the only true home death itself?
He lay on his back, watching for meteors in a sky patched with clouds, but he absorbed only the silence. He could not sleep, and even the usual drowsiness that signaled sleep did not approach him. Had he come here for nothing? He had imagined a home right about where the Shields River tumbled into the Yellowstone, and now that he was here and this was real, he couldn’t imagine why he had come. It was naught but a foolish fancy.
The fire reduced itself to orange coals. The night was cold but he had often endured worse. His kit departed from Indian ways in one respect: he slept inside a blanket that was inside of a good duck-cloth bag that turned water and dew and wind, and captured heat, and opened easily along one side. His wives preferred the old ways, a buffalo robe or a trade blanket.
Restlessly he arose, impatient with himself, and stretched. A chill penetrated his leathers and reached his soft woolen shirt. There was only a sliver moon, and this night was very black. But he could see even so. He knew this place so well that everything was stamped upon his mind, every skyline and peak. Starlight glinted in the mysterious river purling by twenty yards distant. He was not afraid.
Moving about spared him pain. He hurt most after deep sleep, when his whole body ached and his muscles refused to obey. It was only by working his muscles in the morning that he drove the pain out of them. It was as if the pain were like some poison that needed constant flushing.
His horse and mule stared at him, aware of something different in the shifting quiet of the night. He began walking along the river until he found himself on open rolling meadow devoid of river rock. The going was easier, but still he walked deliberately, a pace at a time, because his only lantern was the stars and a sliver of moon behind him. Across the river a snowy pyramid of a peak caught an odd glint out of the heavens. South of the river the meadows quickly gave way to black forests and foothills, and finally the vaulting mountains of the Absaroka Range.
He was standing on home.
He saw this place better in the void of night than by day, and the contours of the land were ingrained in his soul. A few miles to the east the view was just as handsome, but there were rattlesnakes. Here they were rare. Here were smooth grassy meadows and the majesty of nature from every prospect.
The land was very old, but not virgin. Trails came through this very country, followed by barefoot and moccasined people, and those with shoes and boots. There were the prints of shod and unshod horses and mules, the split hooves of the
bovines, the ruts of wagons and carts, the furrows of travois, the prints of dogs. From here a road led over the western mountains to the distant mining towns. Trails ran north to the Missouri, and south to the headwaters of the Yellowstone, at a place Victoria’s people called the roof of the world. In this land one could find flint arrowheads, and some made from obsidian collected from cliffs to the south. One could find old arrows, and great stone spear points, knife blades and buttons, horseshoes, bits of worn harness.
Skye liked that. He was a sociable man who enjoyed people and welcomed them to his hearth. He would not build a home in some remote place never visited by mortals. A night zephyr caught him, and drove cold into his clothing, so he retreated in the depths of night to his camp, flawlessly heading to the right shadow and the right gravel bar where his gear lay undisturbed.
This time he fell asleep swiftly, and didn’t awake until sunlight pried his eyes open. Someone was staring at him. He quietly surveyed the empty gravel bar and the surrounding meadow, and discovered a bullock there, watching him. It was an ugly beast, splotchy brown and white, all skin and bones except for a huge set of horns that spanned six feet or more and arced forward into murderous weapons.
But not a bullock. Probably an abandoned ox. Worn-out oxen were scattered all along the old Bozeman Trail, cut loose when they were too weak to drag wagons anymore. Some died, some survived. The Indians left them alone, preferring buffalo to the stringy meat of the oxen. Still, it was odd to see a domestic animal here. Skye contemplated the animal as he lay in his bedroll. The ox neither approached nor ran, but stood there, guarding the ground.
Skye wondered whether to shoot and eat the beast, and
decided against it. A rested ox in good flesh was worth a lot of money. He rose slowly, fighting back the usual pain, while the ox watched, and then the ox trotted into the brush and hid. There was something tantalizing in all this, and Skye forgot how much he hurt.