Frontier America

The eyes that gazed back at Preacher from Butterfly’s beautiful face were startlingly blue. She said, “It has been many moons since anyone has called me by my white name, Preacher. You are the only one who does.”

“I can stop doin’ that if you want,” he told her.

She shook her head and said, “No, it is good for me to remember that once I was white. My life is here, with Hawk That Soars and my children and the Crow, and it always will be, but that is part of who I am as well.”

When Preacher and Hawk had first met Butterfly, having rescued her from the fur thieves who had taken her prisoner, they had had no reason to believe she was anything other than the young Crow maiden she appeared to be. However, it hadn’t been long before Preacher noticed her blue eyes and realized that she wasn’t what she seemed.

Gradually, he had dug enough old, painful memories out of her brain to establish that she was the daughter of a minister and his wife who had come to the frontier, only to be attacked and killed by a war party from some unknown tribe.

The girl named Caroline, a small child at the time, had wandered away from the scene of the massacre and been found by a band of Crow Indians. They had taken her in and raised her as one of them, until the day they were attacked by the Blackfeet and the young woman now known as Butterfly was taken away as a slave.

Fate, in the persons of Preacher, Hawk, the old Absaroka called White Buffalo, and two young trappers, Aaron Buckley and Charlie Todd, eventually had freed her and brought her to this satisfying life with Hawk and a different band of Crow. But as she said, everything she had been in the past had gone into making her the person she was now, and she didn’t want to turn her back on any of it.

Preacher leaned to the side to look around Butterfly and grinned at his grandson and granddaughter.

“How are these two young’uns doin’?” he asked. “They’re growin’ like weeds, ain’t they?”

“Eagle Feather, Bright Moon, say hello to your grandfather,” Butterfly told the children.

“Hello, Grandfather,” Eagle Feather greeted Preacher. The boy stood up straighter, still maybe a little bit nervous about talking to the old mountain man but determined not to show it. His little sister remained shy, though, and clutched at Butterfly’s buckskin dress as she peeked around her mother’s hip.

“Does Hawk That Soars ever take you huntin’ with him?” Preacher asked his grandson.

“Sometimes. But only close to the village. He said he might have to go far today.”

Worry lurked in Butterfly’s eyes as she said, “Our hunters must go farther and farther away to find enough game.”

“Big Thunder told me about that, and so did Broken Pine,” Preacher said with a nod. “They blamed it on the white wagon trains.” He rubbed his chin. “I ain’t so sure about that, though. Huntin’ grounds get played out from time to time. That’s just the nature of things.”

“Broken Pine says the village may have to move.” Butterfly shook her head. “I would not like that. I have been here longer than anywhere else in my life. But what is best for our people is what we must do.”

Preacher couldn’t argue with that. He let Butterfly get back to preparing her family’s supper while he talked with his grandson Eagle Feather. Bright Moon stayed close to her mother, but as Eagle Feather relaxed, he began to chatter more and eagerly showed Preacher the bow Hawk had made for him.

“Are you a good shot with it?” Preacher asked.

“Very good,” Eagle Feather boasted. “Would you like to see?”

“Sure.”

“Come with me,” the boy said. He led Preacher to a meadow at the edge of the village. It was bordered by trees, and Eagle Feather pointed at one of them and went on, “See the knot on that tree trunk? I will put an arrow right below it.”

“Are you sure? That’s a pretty good ways.”

“I can do it,” the youngster said confidently. He had slung a quiver of arrows on his back before he and Preacher walked out here. Made to use with the smaller bow, they were shorter and lighter than the arrows a full-grown warrior would use. Eagle Feather reached up and back to select one of them and nocked it to the bow.

Preacher nodded in approval of the craftsmanship that had gone into the arrow. He asked, “Did you make those yourself?”

“My father and I made them. He showed me how, and I did most of the work.”

“Good. That’s how you learn.”

Eagle Feather raised the bow and pulled back the string. He aimed for a moment, then let the arrow fly. It zipped across the distance between him and the tree and smacked solidly in the trunk about six inches below the knot he had pointed out.

Preacher whistled in admiration and said, “That’s some pretty good shootin’.”

“I can do better,” Eagle Feather said eagerly. “Let me try again.”

Before the boy could draw another arrow from the quiver, though, someone called Preacher’s name. When he turned, he saw Hawk That Soars striding toward him. Hawk was trying to look serious and dignified, as he always did, but Preacher could tell that his son was glad to see him.

They embraced and slapped each other on the back. Hawk asked, “What are you doing here, Preacher?”

“Can’t a fella come and visit his family? I was driftin’ in this direction anyway, and then when I ran into Big Thunder, I decided not to wait any longer.”

“Did you and Big Thunder fight?”

Preacher grinned and said, “Shoot, of course we did. That boy wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Eagle Feather looked up at his father and asked, “Did you find any game?”

“I brought us a deer,” Hawk replied with a solemn nod. “It was a good day, and for that we must thank the spirits of our ancestors.”

Eagle Feather pointed at Preacher and said, “He is our ancestor.”

“But I ain’t a spirit just yet.” Preacher grinned. “So I can’t take no credit for your pa’s good luck.”

“Come,” Hawk said as he put one hand on his father’s shoulder and the other on his son’s shoulder. “Let us return to the lodge and talk of many things.”

“Hunting?” Eagle Feather asked.

“That,” said Hawk, “and more.”

* * *

The children were asleep in their buffalo robes. The cooking fire outside had been put out, but a small fire burned inside a ring of rocks in the center of the lodge and beneath the smoke opening at the top. Preacher and Hawk sat next to the flames while Butterfly was beside the children but still attentive to what the men were saying.

“Some of our scouts were in the foothills last week and were able to look far out onto the plains,” Hawk said, gesturing fluidly to illustrate what he was telling Preacher. “They saw wagons to the south and east.”

“The pass that most of the immigrants use is a ways farther south of here,” said Preacher. “I ain’t sure what a wagon train would be doin’ this far north unless the fellas guidin’ it were searchin’ for a new route.”

“A path that would get them to their destination faster than the others traveling west would be a good thing for them, would it not?”

Preacher considered that and nodded.

“Folks are just naturally competitive, especially ones who are bold enough to set out across hundreds of miles of untamed land in hopes of makin’ a new start somewhere else.”

Hawk grunted and repeated, “Untamed land. White men are strange. I do not see how land can be tamed or untamed. It just is.” He paused, then added, “I do not mean to insult you by calling white men strange, Preacher.”

The mountain man chuckled and said, “Don’t worry about that. I reckon you could say that most folks are strange, though, in one way or another. But you’re right: if a wagon train guide could promise to get the folks who hired him to Oregon sooner than some other guide would, that’d be a mighty valuable thing for him. The settlers would be fine with gettin’ there ahead of the others, too. They’d feel like they had a better chance of claimin’ the best land and water.”

“And along the way they will kill the game and foul the streams and attack our people out of fear or the sheer viciousness they feel toward us,” Hawk stated with more than a trace of bitterness in his voice.

“Maybe not,” Preacher said, but in truth, he knew that more than likely Hawk was right. The history of the Indians’ encounters with the white men as they pushed the frontier farther and farther west was filled with hard feelings at best—and bloody violence at worst.

Hawk knew that, too. He said, “We could fight them. Try to make them go a different way through the mountains.”

“You could,” Preacher said, nodding slowly and solemnly. “You might be able to turn back a couple of wagon trains, too. But then word would get around about what happened and the pilgrims who come along later would just hire more men with more guns to escort them . . . and some of them would start yellin’ to Washington for help from the army, too.” He paused, then added heavily, “You don’t want that.”

Hawk sighed and said, “The Crow have always gotten along with the white men. They are more inclined to work with the whites rather than to fight them.”

“That’s a good thing, ain’t it?”

“It is . . . until the children begin to cry in the night because their bellies are empty.”

“It hasn’t come to that, has it?”

“Not yet,” said Hawk. “But if the hunting continues to get worse, it may, and not very far in the future, at that.”

Preacher seemed to be staring into the fire, but actually his eyes were directed elsewhere in the lodge. One of the first things he had learned after coming to the mountains all those years ago was not to impair his vision by looking directly into flames. That was a good way to be taken by surprise . . . and being taken by surprise on the frontier usually meant winding up dead.

“So if you don’t want to have a fight on your hands . . . a fight you’d have a hard time winnin’, in the long run . . . the best thing to do is move.”

“Indians never stay in one place for too long,” Hawk pointed out. “This band of Crow has been here in this village for more years than most remain without moving.”

Butterfly spoke up, saying, “It is a good place for a village, the best I have ever seen. The river protects us and gives us good water that never runs out. The mountains to the north and west shelter us from the worst of the wind and storms during the winter. The buffalo herds graze near to the foothills in the east so our men can ride out and hunt them, and many elk and antelope roam the high country.”

“They do,” said Hawk, “but for how long?”

“How long?” repeated Butterfly as she impatiently flung out a hand. “How long will anything last in this world? We do not know. We cannot know such things. All we can do is have faith in the spirits of those who came before us, and faith in those we love in this world.”

“You can’t argue with that,” Preacher said.

“A wise man does not argue with his wife,” Hawk said with a hint of a smile. “Now that you know the problems we are facing, will you think on them and talk with me and Broken Pine and the elders tomorrow?”

“You reckon they’ll put any stock in what a white man has to say?”

“I believe you are the only white man they will truly listen to, Preacher,” Hawk said.