Victoria heard the cattle first, a great lowing and bawling just around a bend, and didn’t know what to make of it. Then riders appeared, white men with broad felt hats, dressed in a fashion she had never seen, with leather chaps and neck scarves. She stopped at once. These men were well armed, and she wished to be careful. Skye pulled up and watched as the herd, which numbered many hundreds of long-horned cattle, bawled and bleated its way west, guided by numerous riders who walked quietly ahead, behind, and on the flanks of the herd.
Two of them rode toward the Skyes, who waited quietly in the broad valley of the Yellowstone. The riders were wary, with carbines across their knees, but the Skyes gave them no reason to be alarmed.
Eventually the pair, both bearded young men in broad-brimmed hats with creased crowns, reined up before the Skyes. Victoria didn’t like the looks of them.
“Howdy,” said one.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Skye.
“You injuns?”
“I’m Barnaby Skye, sir, and this is my wife Victoria.”
“Injuns, then. What tribe?”
Victoria wondered how these white men could mistake Skye for one of the native people. He was weathered to a chestnut color but hadn’t the face or bones of her people.
“I am Mister Skye, sir, from London, and this is my wife of many years, of the Absaroka People.” There was an edge in his voice.
“Just checking. We like to know who we’re dealin’ with.”
“So it appears. And who are you?”
“Harbinger’s the last name, Slocum’s the first. Texas born and bred.”
“Your men, they’re Texans?”
“What else?”
“You’re running true to form,” Skye said. “And where are you headed with all those animals?”
“The big bend of the Yellowstone, Skye. That’s good country. This heah’s the second herd; I ramrod for Nelson Story. He brought the first bunch up in ‘sixty-six, right through the injun wars, and pastured it in the Gallatin Valley.”
“It’s Mister Skye, sir. I prefer to be addressed in that fashion.”
“It don’t make no never mind to me, Mister Skye. I’ll call you whatever you want. We’ll have you just sit heah until them cattle trail by, so you don’t booger them.”
The herd was drawing close now, with a slobbering wide-horned multicolored bull leading the whole parade. Other of these Texans were drawing close as well.
“In fact, Mrs. Skye and I were thinking of settling on the bend of the Yellowstone, sir. Maybe we’ll be neighbors.”
“No, Mister Skye, we ain’t gonna be neighbors. Nelson Story’s done took it, all that country.”
“By what right?”
“By the law of armed force is how. Any questions?”
“By land-office claim?”
“I don’t suppose it matters none to a Londoner. But no, we’ll take the land and keep it. We got there fust. There ain’t no land office within hundreds of miles, but we don’t need one. There’s land, lots of land. There’s twenty-four of us, all Texas men, and that’s all we need to hold it. That was enough to get us past the goddamn Sioux. They didn’t want no fight with Texans with repeater carbines. The redskins ain’t so strong, anyway. Degenerates, ain’t gonna be around much longer.”
“The army found them invincible, sir.”
“Yank army. Rebs would’ve walked through them savages. We drove these here animals a thousand miles, and we’re going to sell beef to the mining towns.”
“On the Bozeman Trail? The closed trail?”
“The same. Not one sonofabitching white man on it. Good grass all the way.”
“And no Sioux?”
“None as wanted to test our repeaters.”
“You came without army protection, then?”
“Now, Skye, why would Texicans want protection from a Yank army? Know what we saw? Lot of ash, where them Yankee forts got burned down by Red Cloud.”
“You are brave men,” Skye said.
The herd flowed by them now, and several more Texans drifted by, curious about the Skyes but staying close to the skinny red, brindle, black, gray, and multicolored cattle that seemed to be all rib and no meat.
“And what’s your business, Skye?”
Skye stared long and hard. “Just passing through,” he said softly.
“It figgers. I knew it when I saw you. A squaw man, looks like. Well, we got some ambition heah. We got white-man plans, and we’re going to make our way.”
Victoria listened with growing irritation. “Sonsofbitches,” she said.
Harbinger grinned, revealing gapped teeth. “This heah squaw talks my language,” he said.
The cattle flowed by endlessly, strangely disturbing Victoria. These were white men’s meat animal and intended to replace the buffalo that had fed and clothed and sheltered her people for as long as her people could remember. Hundreds of cattle, more than she could count, slobbering, skinny, wild of eye, mean-spirited. She found herself hating these animals, which had none of the courage and dignity of her brothers the buffalo.
More riders passed, eyeing them curiously but continuing to flank the herd. Men in red shirts, gray shirts, tan shirts. Men without women, young and bearded and bristling with weapons, six-guns at their waists, carbines in sheaths or on hand, looking ready to shoot anything that moved.
And now they were simply taking away the land, claiming it for themselves, and holding it by force. She marveled. She marveled that they could tell Skye to settle elsewhere, to go away, because they would not let him settle there, in the place he had dreamed of for many years.
Long ago, Skye would have put up a fight. But now, he sat his pony, his lame leg dangling out of the stirrup, his eyes sunken and his hair gray, and she knew there was no fight in him, at least not that kind of fight.
“We’ll be seeing you, Mister Harbinger,” Skye said.
“I don’t suppose so,” the man replied, and turned toward his herd. “Nice to pass the time with you all.”
Skye and Victoria watched the last of the riders, the drag, trot by. The air and the ground quieted. But no bird flew or sang.
“There was enough land for everyone once,” Skye said.
Victoria slid into a crabby mood. She didn’t know what to say. These things unsettled her. Everything was changing, and too damn fast. Nothing but a faint dust in the air remained of the herd, that and a few green cow flops that sat moistly in the peaceful light. She hated the sight of the cow pies, hated them for what they meant. Cow pies instead of buffalo chips. Great herds of stupid animals, surrounded by men with guns, taking away land for their own use.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.
They resumed their ride downstream, but somehow the world seemed violated. It wasn’t just the cow flops lying moist everywhere. It was something else, more subtle, as if nature had retreated and now this was simply ranching country. Victoria couldn’t quite fathom why the very land had changed, but it had.
They camped at one of the favorite places of her people, where the Stillwater River tumbled out of the mountains and emptied into the Yellowstone. Now the river was flush with snowmelt, and it proved difficult for the horses to negotiate, with water hammering at their bellies. But in time they reached the east bank, picketed their ponies, built a fire, and cooked antelope steaks. June rains threatened, but the Skyes had no lodge and the best they could do, if showers started, would be to burrow into the woods.
That’s when three large ox-drawn wagons arrived, each
the property of a westering family. In minutes the area was chock-full of people, including women and children. They didn’t see the Skyes at first, and began the many twilight tasks that occupied any wagon company. They unyoked the oxen, picketed horses, collected wood, started water boiling, spread bedrolls, all before they discovered the Skyes, off a quarter of a mile.
Then the men of the company descended on them, most of them armed with rifles or scatter guns.
“Good evening, gents,” said Skye.
The men collected around the Skyes, studying them, eyeing Victoria, noting her Indian features.
“I’m a goddamn Absaroka,” she said.
“Barnaby Skye here, and you?”
“Oliver Skaggs,” said one. “She safe to be around?”
“No, I’ll cut your heart out in the middle of the night,” Victoria said.
No one laughed.
“I’m Mister Skye’s sits-beside-him wife. He got another, Mary, she’s a Snake. She’s a lot prettier than me, and keeps him happy.”
This wrought a deeper silence.
“She’s off ahead of us. Otherwise you’d get to meet the whole family.”
Skye’s eyes glinted at Victoria, telling her to shut up, but she wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Where’s your tent?” asked one of the scowling men.
“Who the hell needs one?” Victoria said.
“How do you protect yourself from prying eyes?” asked Skaggs.
“Nighttime, that’s all we need. We pull off our stuff and howl at the moon and dance around nakkid.”
Skye sighed. Victoria was on a tear, and she wasn’t going to slow down for him.
“We have some antelope we’d be pleased to share. Shot it this morning. Would you join us?” Skye asked.
“Any more of you hidden around here?”
“Just us.”
Victoria could see women and children boiling toward them, and then an odd thing happened. Several of the men swiftly corralled them and kept them perhaps fifty yards distant. She saw much gesticulating and waving of arms.
“We’ll stay with our own mess,” one said.
“You people heading west?” Skye asked.
“Gallatin Valley.”
“You came over the Bozeman Road?”
“Oh, no, not with the Sioux there. It’s closed. We came up Jim Bridger’s road, and a poor road it was too. A wagon near tipped over,” said Skaggs. “But there were no redskins, thank the Good Lord.”
“The Gallatin Valley’s a good place,” Skye said. “You going to farm?”
“We’re merchants and farmers. We’ve got seed potatoes. Got orchard stock. We’ve got a lumber man with a small mill. But we hear there’s Indian trouble.”
“Goddamn Blackfeet,” said Victoria. “Scaring the hell out of everyone. Bloodthirsty bastards.”
They stood about silently, absorbing that. Behind them, where the bonneted women and a dozen children of all descriptions were halted, there was a great deal of talking, and then one of the bearded men approached.
“Skye, would you mind camping somewhere else? You and your squaw’s upsetting our folk. Scaring the children.”
“I guess a man and wife can camp where they choose.
Free country,” Skye said. “You’re free to move somewhere yourself.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have put it as a question, Skye. We’re not asking you, we’re telling you.”
“And if we choose to stay here?”
“Someone might get hurt, and it ain’t gonna be us.”
Victoria wondered if her old man would do what he might have done long ago, but he didn’t. He arose slowly, balancing on his game leg, using his Sharps as a crutch.
“Did you bring some spades?” Skye asked. “Start digging our grave. We’re not moving an inch. The only direction you’ll move us is six feet down.”
Victoria listened to the bark in his voice, and thrilled to it.
“We’ll haul you off on a wagon, then,” one said.
Skye ignored him and lumbered painfully toward the children clinging to their mothers a few yards distant.
“Hey, where you going?” Skaggs yelled.
“I thought to get me a little girl and boil her up.”
The women shrieked.
Skye continued to limp toward the children.
Then Skaggs laughed. The other men laughed, uneasily. Some mothers looked flustered, ready to bolt.
Skye reached a woman whose son had buried his face in her skirts.
Slowly he leaned over, even as the men of the company hastened to surround him.
“Hello, young man,” Skye said. “I’m Barnaby Skye. Who are you?”
The boy eyed him suspiciously.
“Your folks heading west? There’s good farm land there.”
The little boy tugged himself tighter to his mother.
“I was here before there were a hundred white men in the
whole western mountains. Now I live the way the Indians do, and I have an Indian wife. That’s her, over there. She’s a Crow, and very pretty, and I love her just the way your mother and father love each other.”
“Is she a witch?” the boy asked.
“She’s a medicine woman of her people. She has great powers. She’s also a warrior woman, very good with a bow and arrow. Would you like to meet her?”
The question occasioned a flurry of worried glances among the adults, but then the boy nodded.
“Come along now, all of you,” Skye said.
They hesitantly followed Skye as he limped back to Victoria, and let them gather around her.
“This is Many Quill Woman of the Absaroka People. I didn’t know her tongue at first, so I called her Victoria, after the Queen. And she is a queen. You might call her a princess. That’s a good word for her, because she was given great powers to help and heal people.”
They stared at Victoria, seeing an Indian for the first time.
“Is she a real princess?” one woman asked.
“I would say so,” Skye said.
Victoria felt the glint of wetness forming in her eyes.