Mary wondered whether it had been a mistake, hiding her English from them. Now they wanted to take her somewhere, make a prisoner of her.
She chose to speak in Shoshone, telling them that she was Blue Dawn, of the Eastern Shoshone people of Washakie, and she was going to Fort Laramie now.
“I think that’s Shoshone,” said a three-stripe sergeant tanned to the color of cedar bark.
He eyed her, and made the wavy line in sign language that signified her people.
She nodded slightly.
“Squaw’s a Shoshone, all right, but that ain’t what they usually wear,” the sergeant said.
“Can you talk it?” the one-bar-on-the-shoulder asked.
“Not enough to say anything to her. I can listen it a little.”
“Try telling her she can’t leave the reservation. Washakie’s got himself a home over on the Wind River, and now they got to stay there.”
Mary bridled at that. What was this? Making her people stay on the river?
The seamed old sergeant tried a little sign language, a few Shoshone words, and a few English just to salt the talk a little.
“See here, little lady,” he said, his hands making signs. “You got to go back now. You got a nice place, and you got to get a paper from the agent to leave.”
She refused to acknowledge what she was hearing and seeing, but sat sternly on her pony. How could this be? Were the People prisoners now?
She didn’t want to know any more. She would ask Skye about it.
“I don’t see she’s doing any harm here,” the sergeant said.
“Search the panniers,” the one-bar said.
Mary slumped deep into her saddle, pushing back an anger that boiled through her.
A one-stripe got off his pony and opened the pannier, poking around at her kettle and flint and steel and bag of pemmican. Then he lifted up the packet of letters, the ones from North Star that came to Fort Laramie, the ones Skye patiently read to her, over and over.
“She’s got some letters, looks like,” the one-stripe said, and handed them to the one-bar-on-the-shoulder.
“Sent to a Barnaby Skye, care of the post sutler, Fort Laramie. Never heard of him.”
“I have,” the sergeant said. “Old squaw man. Thought he was dead long ago. He was a mountain man before he settled in with the Crows.”
“Still alive, looks like,” the one-bar said. “Postmarked this March.”
“She’s just checking the fort for Skye’s mail,” the three-stripe sergeant said. “Probably some slut of Skye’s, sent down to get the news.”
Mary reddened.
The one-bar turned to her. “Fort Laramie?” he asked, slowly enunciating La-ra-me.
She nodded.
“Well, no harm in it. Now if you were a buck, we’d march you back to your reservation.”
He returned the packet to the one-stripe, who put it back in her pannier and closed it.
“Free to go,” he said to her. “I imagine you understood some of this, if you’re tied up with the squaw man.”
Mary didn’t acknowledge it.
The patrol formed into twos and headed toward the Big Horn Basin. She suppressed a tremor and urged her ponies south. She needed to think about this insult. And about this penning of the People.
The whole world looked different now, as if the sun had decided to travel from west to east, or as if Father Winter decided to be warm and Brother Summer decided to freeze the toes of the People. How could this be? The Absarokas had talked of it, but she hadn’t paid much attention. Skye didn’t talk of it at all, which told her much.
Whose land did she now walk upon? She walked over the breast of the earth, and it was the privilege of all to walk upon all the earth. What were the soldiers doing? Looking for hunters or war parties, to send them back to their new prisons? And how was all this arranged? Who agreed to it?
She remembered that two summers earlier there had been a great gathering at Fort Laramie, in which the white fathers had proposed homes for the several tribes. And her
chief, Washakie, had agreed to it. He was their friend. But did this now mean that the People were prisoners, unlike white people, who could go anywhere they chose?
Was this what her son, North Star, was learning in this school in St. Louis? What of him, half of one blood and half of another? If they looked at him as Mister Skye’s son, he could go anywhere and live anywhere. If they looked at him as her boy, they would make him stay on the Wind River Reservation, and not leave without permission. He would have to stay inside of some invisible lines, best known by the white men who drew them. Was this right? Was that why Skye had sent him to the school, so that he would be free?
The encounter with the bluecoats had changed everything, but she didn’t quite know how. She would sort it out as she traveled. She hurried along the road—the white man’s road—that would take her over the mountains. Whose mountains now? Did these white men own the sun and stars and moon too? Did they claim the rivers and lakes? Was all the fish and game theirs now? Were the blessed buffalo and elk and deer and coyotes theirs now, except when they crossed a homeland of a tribe?
The land looked just the same as she had remembered it. The rushing creek, just beginning to swell with snowmelt, raced beside her. The cliffs that hemmed the creek and its valley were ancient beyond measure, gray rock that no man could ever own. The pines that scattered themselves in the watercourses of this dry land belonged to no one. As she gained altitude the cold grew intense, and soon she was in rotting snow, which wearied the ponies. She wrapped the bright cream blanket with red stripes—a white man’s blanket—tight about her as her pony slopped through slush.
Did the slush belong to white men? Did the grass her
ponies ate belong to white men? Did white men have the right to graze their ponies on the homelands of the tribes? Did the white men own all things in the earth and water and high above?
Late that day she reached the summit, and walked her ponies through soggy snow, dirtied by dust and the passage of animals. Now she could see the prints of the shod hooves of the soldiers, caught in cold shadow where they would remain until Father Sun caught them.
Dusk caught her well down the southerly flanks, on a grassy flat that had warmed all day in the tender spring sun. She scouted for a place to make a camp; the whole world was wet and there was nowhere to lie down without an icy soaking. She turned toward distant cliffs, knowing those would be her sole comfort. She easily found a hollow under an overhang, and knew it would do as well as anything. She was well off the trail, but that was good. She had no protection at all except for a few knives, one sheathed at her waist, the others in her kitchen gear.
The hollow had lion scat in it, and not at all ancient, either. A mother had nursed her cubs here. Mary didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. Women found safe places and made homes of them.
She turned the ponies out on the grass. They were docile, and would graze deep into the night, unless a wolf or a lion prowled. She would forgo a fire this night, and instead settled in the back of the hollow, wrapped tightly in her blanket. She felt comfortable in this woman’s place.
She had rarely seen a white woman. The men had pushed into these lands, gangs and pairs and columns of them, leaving their women behind. Even Skye had come alone, without a woman, long ago. Now it was men, not women, who were
drawing an invisible line upon the breast of the earth, and making her people stay on one side of it. Would a woman do anything like that? Men were mysterious, and the cause of all change. She knew it was not her office to do those things, draw boundaries, make war, make the earth different. Her office was to gather food and feed the men, and to bring her boy to manhood.
Maybe when she got to this place called St. Louis, she would see lots of white women, and not just the handful who westered with their men. She could talk to women. She could share knowledge. She knew the best ways to gather roots and seeds and cook them. She knew the best ways to make elk-skin clothing for Mister Skye. She made the best moccasins, better than Victoria’s moccasins, and they lasted longer too.
She knew it would be easier for her to go to this faraway place because she was a woman. A Shoshone man might find trouble with every step. White people didn’t like Indian men and were suspicious of them, and thought they would steal or kill. So it was good to be a woman going to the place Skye called St. Louis.
The night passed peacefully. She had dozed eventually, and had seen many night-visitors who had stopped at the hollow to see who was there. She sensed the mother lion had come and gone while she slept, and had left her alone.
In the dawn she discerned her three ponies grazing peacefully. Patches of fog hid the world. She felt good, had enjoyed a bone-dry night, and now it was time to ghost through the mist, ever downhill to the river the white men called the North Platte.
When she reached the Big Road days later she found it empty, and the reason was plain. It was so wet that wagons could not roll over it without miring. She saw awful ruts dug
by iron wheels, and ox-prints deep in the muck, where weary animals had struggled to drag the gumbo-bound wagons. It was too early for the great migration of white people, and those who had tried it this time of year were undoubtedly regretting it.
The muck was hard even on her ponies, but she was not bound to the road, and found easier passage off to the side, away from the mire. She was in no hurry, either, and let her ponies fatten on the tender grasses joyously reaching for the sun.
When she did come across white men, they were usually with pack animals rather than wagons. They always looked her over with curiosity, but she never let on that she understood what they were saying. Sometimes their comments about savages or filthy squaws made her burn. Whenever they stopped to converse with her, she spoke only Shoshone and smiled quietly. It was good. One cheerful company of bearded prospectors even gave her a sack of flour as a gift, just because they felt like it.
“Lifts the heart to see a right pretty lady,” one said.
She nodded, and acknowledged the gift with a bright smile.
By the time she reached Fort Laramie she had resolved not to stop there. Skye’s friend Colonel Bullock was no longer operating the store. She didn’t know a soul, and had no money or credit to buy anything. And she didn’t need anything anyway, but some bright ribbons would have given her joy.
She was observed. All who passed the post were carefully observed and counted by the army. But she was a woman, after all, and what did it matter? So she walked her ponies past the flapping red, white, and blue flag, and the blue regimental flag, and the blue-bellies who were lounging on the
shaded veranda of the store, and the others working at the stables or chopping firewood. There was scarcely an immigrant wagon parked there, but in this month of May, as they called it, who could travel? It was chilly, and she smelled the pine smoke from all the fort’s fires drifting through the narrows that contained the post.
And then she was free, advancing eastward toward the great quiet prairies, where only the wind made a sound.