Chapter Twenty-Five

There was no discernible sunset that night. The light just faded and darkness closed in. With the exception of Quesnelle’s brother-in-law, Henri Duprée, the last of the hunters had returned at dusk, their expressions exhibiting the same incredulous shock Gabriel had witnessed on Big John’s face when he’d learned of Celine’s abduction.

After slipping through the gap in the circled carts, most of the Métis had hurried off to their own lodges, needing to be with their own families for a while. Later, Gabriel knew, they would congregate at someone’s fire, their emotions oscillating between remorse and anger.

The wounded, eight men and nearly twice that many women and children, were sheltered in teepees around the cordon. Three of the women and one of the men were injured seriously, but only Old Dan Keller’s youngest son William wasn’t expected to survive. William had taken an arrow in his lungs, and was slowly bleeding to death on the inside.

The Sioux had exacted their toll for the stolen buffalo. For the bois brûles, the price had been tremendous.

It had been Breland’s idea to move camp a few miles closer to the herds, and, although several of the party had objected on the grounds that not everyone was in, the vote had gone to Joseph. The Sioux had struck while they were packing their carts and harnessing the stock, appearing soundlessly out of the swirling storm.

“Alec and I were in your lodge,” Gabriel had related to Big John that afternoon, after his return. “We did not think it wise to leave, but we knew we couldn’t stay if the others went.”

“We did not even know the Sioux were nearby until we heard several shots,” Alec had added.

* * * * *

At first Gabriel had thought it was a hunter’s shot that cracked flatly across the camp, maybe taken at a wolf that had gotten too close to an ox. But when he heard Gavin McGillis’s panicky warning shout, he knew there was trouble. He grabbed his musket and ducked outside just as the Sioux breached the northern wall of carts.

In the confusion of the next several minutes, it was difficult to tell just what was going on. Fusils roared in every direction, and the sharp ring of metal on metal—tomahawk against lance, sword against gun barrel—filled the air. Gabriel saw LaBarge’s woman, Elaine, empty a pistol at a Sioux. When the Sioux kicked his horse after her, Gabriel shouldered the Bess, tumbling the Indian from his pony’s back with a lucky shot. The Sioux immediately jumped up and leaped behind another warrior, and the two of them raced off.

A quirt lashed the top of Gabriel’s shoulder—a coup struck—and he spun with the musket raised like a club, but the Sioux had already flown past.

That was when Gabriel saw Celine, stumbling from between a pair of lodges like a lost child. He shouted for her to go back, but she didn’t hear him. He started toward her, reloading on the run.

He saw the three Sioux at the same instant they spotted Celine, and in his heart he knew there wasn’t any way in the world he could stop all of them.

Sprinting across the churned snow, he rammed the big .75-caliber musket ball home without taking his eyes off the trio of warriors racing their ponies toward Celine. He cried out in frustration, his legs pumping furiously, but he was too far away. The Sioux swept past the girl without even slowing down, and, when they passed, she was gone.

Skidding to a halt, Gabriel threw the musket to his shoulder, but the big flint snapped down on an empty pan—a single, sterile click, just before the three Indians and their captive vanished into the falling snow…

* * * * *

“When I reloaded, there was another Indian firing his bow at Antoine Toussaint, so I shot him, too,” Alec was telling Big John proudly. “This was not Black Fish’s war party,” he’d added authoritatively, voicing what he’d already heard others claim. “There were not as many warriors, nor did they try to overwhelm the camp. They wanted only ponies and prisoners. One pass through, then they were gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof.”

Gabriel had been staring at the southern section of carts where he’d last seen Celine. When Alec finished, he’d said: “We will go after them. We will get her back.”

Big John had nodded stonily. “Aye, lad, we’ll go after ’em. By the Lord, we’ll follow ’em to hell and back if that’s what it takes.”

* * * * *

Now, with the snow stopped and full darkness upon them, Gabriel and Big John mounted their horses and rode to the center of camp. Although most of the men were already there, only a few were mounted. Charlo sat his white runner at the far edge of the crowd, but, when Big John rode up, he guided it around without comment to rein in beside his old friend. Pike also waited just outside the main body of bois brûles, holding the reins to the seal brown runner Michel Quesnelle had given him.

Gabriel had viewed Michel’s body only briefly that afternoon, just before his parents wrapped him in a robe for burial. Michel had been shot in the chest, then crudely scalped. Seeing him like that, his face waxen, cheeks already sunken in, it had been as if a giant hand had reached inside Gabriel and squeezed out all of the air. Fogged in emotion, he’d mumbled his condolences to a numbed Nicolas and Rosanna, then stumbled away.

It was at Joseph Breland’s fire that the hunters gathered. Stepping close to the flames, Breland tentatively opened the debate. “I think this thing must be said first, that the blame for what happened here today has to be placed at my feet, and mine alone. I took it upon myself to call for a vote to move camp. It was my…”

“There’s no time for that,” Big John interrupted. “We’ve the women to think of now.”

“Big John echoes my own thoughts,” Turcotte said. “Blame must wait for another time. Tonight we must finish burying our dead, then we should fortify the camp against further attacks. But I do not think a rescue party should go out until first light.”

“First light be damned,” Big John growled. “We’ll be leavin’ within the hour, and trackin’ the bloody bastards through the night. We’ve lost enough time as it is.”

Turcotte hesitated. “We cannot follow them after dark, Big John. In the morning, when the sun is full…”

“No.” Charles Hallet pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “It’s true that there are clouds yet, but they are breaking up even as we speak. There will be a hunter’s moon tonight. When it rises, there will be enough light that we can track them. I intend to ride with Big John. Others may follow as they wish.”

Noel Pouliot stepped forward, looking more haggard than even the Quesnelles. His voice quavered when he spoke. “We have to get my little girl back. Her…” He held up his arm, the same side as the one Emmaline had broken when she’d slipped on the ice. “It is not yet healed. She cannot…” His voice broke. “A slave works so hard.”

“We will go after her,” Gabriel promised. “We will find her and bring her back. We will bring them all back.”

“She cannot work until her arm is healed,” Pouliot insisted. “It will cripple her for life if she does.” He stopped, and Monique laid her hand gently upon her husband’s shoulder.

“Then I will lead the party that goes after them,” Breland said.

“No, ye won’t, Joseph,” Big John replied. “Nor will I sit here listenin’ to any more of ye talk.” His voice turned harsh, lifting toward the handful of stars just beginning to appear through the broken clouds. “I do not care to hear what Joseph Breland has to say on the matter, nor what any of the rest of ye think, for ’tis not ye families that’s been taken. I’ll be goin’ after ’em tonight, me and Gabriel and Charlo here, and Charles and Noel, if they wish. And any of the rest of ye that be of a mind to help. But no more talkin’.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Do ye hear me, now? We’ll not be puttin’ this one to a vote.”

Big John pulled his roan away from the crowd. Gabriel and Charlo followed, and Pike fell in behind them. A deathly silence dropped over those still standing at the fire. Then Hallet found his voice. Pushing through the crowd, he shouted: “Hold up, Big John, Gabriel! I have to saddle my horse.”

* * * * *

There were eighteen hunters assembled at the southern rim of the camp when the moon finally pulled free of the horizon and began its slow journey over the clouds. Big John felt a grudging satisfaction in the numbers. He had feared that most of them would be too chary of the Sioux returning to want to leave their families. He was embarrassed by his doubt, and by his earlier outburst at Breland’s fire. He should have known the Métis would not let down one of their own, no matter his blood.

It was as Hallet had promised, a hunter’s moon glowing through the clouds, filling the eastern sky with a strange, filtered light. But it didn’t penetrate the clouds the way Big John had hoped it would. Instead, the prairie stretched away to the south, dim and indistinct, a grim, frozen landscape that seemed suddenly inhospitable.

Big John would glance occasionally to the west, but the sky there had grown darker as the night progressed and more clouds rolled in. There was no hint of a break anywhere, nor even the faint light of a star any more, and the worry was that it would start snowing again before daybreak.

“’Tis time we moved out,” Big John announced. He hadn’t bothered to dismount, and his impatience—with the light, the weather, the mixed-bloods, even with the roan—had been eating steadily at him ever since he’d ridden away from the council.

“It will not be difficult to follow their trail,” Charlo promised him. “But we must not hurry, either. It would be even more disastrous to follow a hunter’s tracks to the buffalo than it would be to wait until morning to find the right trail.”

Big John didn’t argue. Haste was important, but so was keeping their wits about them. Their task would be formidable enough as it was.

“Ye’ll be doin’ the trackin’ for us, won’t ye?” Big John asked Charlo. Although he knew just about any of them could have followed the Indians’ trail, Big John wanted someone up front who could pick out the little nuances that might give them an edge when they caught up with the Sioux.

“I will do my best,” Charlo replied. He looked at Gabriel. “You will ride with me, and hold my runner’s reins if the need arises for me to dismount.” When Gabriel nodded, the old Indian turned to the others. “You must all stay well behind Gabriel and myself, in case I have to backtrack. Is that understood?”

“It’s understood,” Hallet said curtly. “Get on with it, man. We’ve talked too much already.”

Charlo’s response was to guide silently his white runner through the carts. Free of the caravan, he kicked the horse into a lope. The others fell in about fifty yards behind.

Charlo set a swift pace, paying little attention to the trail until they were several miles out. Coming to the top of a low rise, he called a halt, then leaned from the saddle to lift a bison’s severed head from the snow. Big John already knew that Charlo had followed the fleeing Sioux as far as he’d dared that afternoon, then marked the spot where he’d turned back with a cow’s head. He didn’t question how Charlo had led them here in the dark so unerringly. It was just part of the mystique that surrounded the old Indian.

Although they were forced to slow down after that, they still made good time. A few miles farther on, Charlo again signaled a halt. Dismounting, he handed his reins to Gabriel, then ventured forward on foot. No one spoke as he knelt at various spots to examine the trail, occasionally stroking the snow’s surface or poking at it with his fingers. After several minutes, he returned to the white and motioned the others up. As they gathered around him, he said: “At this place another party has joined with the one we are following, and the trail grows much larger. Maybe seventy-five horses altogether, although not that many are ridden.”

“The stolen horses, do ye think?” Big John asked.

In addition to the captives, the Sioux had managed to get away with nearly fifty head of Métis horses, mostly cart ponies.

“Yes. My old mare is with them, but it is too dark to find her prints,” Charlo said.

They rode on across the frozen landscape. The moon shrank as it climbed higher into the sky, its light weakening through the clouds. When Charlo finally dismounted to forge ahead on foot, Big John knew they wouldn’t be able to continue much farther. Still, they had come a good ways, and by the time Charlo called a halt a couple of hours before dawn, Big John estimated they’d covered at least twenty miles. It had been a taxing night, but worth the effort, he decided.

They waited out the remaining hours of darkness in a shallow depression where there was at least the illusion of protection from the wind, should it rise before morning. They hobbled and picketed their horses nearby, then huddled in tightly packed groups for warmth. Several sat side-by-side with old friends in order to double up their robes but, despite their weariness, few slept. Most of them passed the night in muted conversations or long, catatonic-like silences.

They breakfasted on the trail, cheeks bulging like squirrels around frozen chunks of pemmican. As the sun came up, the tracks of the Sioux became easier to follow. With better light, Charlo set a pace that rarely dropped below a jog. Toward midmorning the sky finally began to clear off, and although the breeze picked up again, it was gentle and didn’t drift the snow. By noon it appeared as if they might actually be catching up. Hindered by so many stolen horses, the Sioux were making poor time.

With the trail so clear, there was no need for the others to hang back, and Pouliot gradually let his horse ease ahead until he was riding at Charlo’s side. It was he who first spotted the fork in the trail, nearly half a mile ahead. By the time they reached it, their spirits had plummeted.

Once again, Charlo scouted the site on foot. It took nearly thirty minutes.

“The captives are with the trail that goes to the right,” he reported when he returned. “I think.”

“You are not sure?” a Métis asked in surprise.

Charlo shook his head. “No, I am not sure.”

“Then we must also split up,” Pierre Campbell said. He glanced around as if for support, but most of the bois brûles refused to meet his eyes.

“I’ll be goin’ to the right,” Big John said softly, fixing Campbell with a steady look. “’Tis not the stolen stock I’m worried about, ye see?”

“You think that is why I say we should split up?” Campbell replied defensively.

“The trail’s plain to read,” Hallet said. “The stolen stock was driven straight south, but this smaller party”—he indicated the broken path with his chin—“goes to the southwest. If that’s the direction Lizette has been taken in, that’s where I’ll go.”

“As it should be, Charles,” LaBarge said tentatively. “But maybe Pierre is not so wrong, either.” He nodded toward the left-hand branch. “What if Lizette or one of the others were taken in that direction? Just one. What of that?”

Hallet stubbornly shook his head. “I’ve known Charlo a long time, Baptiste. I’ve never known him to make a mistake about something like this. Not even when he says he isn’t sure.”

“But what about this one time?” LaBarge persisted. “This is what I ask.”

“Go!” Big John thundered. He jerked the roan around to face LaBarge. “Go get ye stock if that’s what ye want, and take the others with ye.”

LaBarge reared back in his saddle. Then his gaze hardened. “That is not what I meant, Big John. You know that.”

Coolly Big John said: “Don’t be tellin’ me what ye meant, Baptiste, and don’t try to explain ye reasonin’ for followin’ the left-hand fork. And by the Lord, man, don’t ye follow me, because I’ll kill ye sure if ye do. Do ye hear me? If ye follow now, I’ll break ye neck.”

With his pulse roaring in his ears, Big John whipped the roan around and took off at a fast gallop. He heard others coming after him, but only a few. When he finally allowed himself a backward glance, he saw Gabriel and Charlo riding side-by-side, then Hallet, Pouliot, and Pike bringing up the rear. There was no one else.

* * * * *

It was late in the day when they reached the breaks of the Missouri River. The snow was melting rapidly in the unexpected warmth of the afternoon sun, the trail disintegrating almost before their eyes. Big John rode in a near stupor, his every muscle screaming for a rest, a chance to stretch and relax. His eyes felt dry and gritty, seared by the harsh glare of sunlight reflected off the glistening snow, and the top of his spine hammered at the back of his skull with the roan’s every jolting step.

He knew the others felt as bone-weary as he did. He could see it in the drawn cast of their faces, the sluggish way they handled their reins. The cold and the long hours were sapping the strength of every man there.

It was still a little more than an hour before sunset when they came to a gap in the hills and spotted the wide, flat valley of the Missouri a couple of miles ahead. Charlo, riding in the lead, halted his white runner in the middle of the buffalo trace the Sioux had followed through the breaks. He waited for the others to come up beside him. Although it was too far away to tell for sure if the tracks of the Sioux horses continued across the valley, there was no mistaking the narrow ribbon of smoke that curled above the line of trees along the river.

Scowling, Big John said: “Why would they stop here?”

Charlo shook his head in puzzlement. “It does not make sense unless they thought we would not follow them through the night. If that is their thinking, then they must also believe that we are still very far behind.”

“If that’s it, they’ll probably think we’re a full day behind,” Hallet said, his red-rimmed eyes brightening with hope.

“We should get out of this gap,” Gabriel said. “If they are watching, they would spot us easily, even up here.”

Charlo nodded and drummed his heels against the white’s ribs. He led them into a narrow depression, then drew up once more. Sliding from his saddle, he silently handed his reins to Gabriel, then made his way over the shoulder of a nearby hill.

As exhausted as they were, no one else dismounted. Not even to stretch their legs. Big John had been carrying his double rifle slung across his back in a quilled leather case. He unsheathed it now and placed it across the saddle in front of him, prying the old caps off with a cracked thumbnail and replacing them with fresh ones. Everyone else reprimed or checked their flints. In the silence of the little hollow, Big John could hear the slow trickle of melting snow, the soft whisper of its settling. Already the gnarled fingers of tawny buffalo grass were visible on the south-facing slopes, and the ridge tops had been swept almost clear.

Big John kept glancing at the broken trace of the Sioux’ passage where it cut through the hollow on its way to the valley. Charlo thought they were following at least fifteen riders. If all three Métis women were with them, that meant no fewer than twelve warriors waiting in the valley below. Two to one odds, at best. His gaze shifted to Hallet, then Pouliot, Gabriel, and Pike, and he wondered what he’d gotten them into. He had lost control back where the trail forked, had once again allowed his temper to override reason. And in the process, he had gambled not only with their lives, but with the lives of the captives, as well.

By the Lord, what have I done? he thought miserably. What terrible calamity have I set into motion with my stubbornness and pride?

Charlo’s return saved him from forcing an answer. Sliding down the slope of the hollow, the old Indian said: “The trail leads straight across the valley, into the trees near the fire.” He looked at Pouliot and nodded. “It is them, my friend.”

“Did you see Emmaline?” Pouliot asked almost fearfully.

Charlo shook his head. “The valley cannot be crossed within three leagues in either direction. I could not identify individuals from where I was, but I did see horses and men and some women. The women were making a bullboat to cross the river.” He glanced at Big John. “I could go downriver and find a place to cross. Maybe that way I could get close enough to be sure.”

Big John shook his head. “’Tis the Sioux’ trail we’ve followed this far,” he reasoned. “I don’t see how it could be anyone else.”

“Besides, it would be dark before you returned,” Gabriel said. “If they finished the boat before then, we wouldn’t be able to stop them, and I haven’t seen a buffalo all afternoon that we could use to make a boat of our own.”

“Where’d they get a hide for a boat?” Pike asked.

“Maybe they stole it from us,” Charlo said. “A fresh hide makes the best boat, but a flint would also work.”

“Not without soaking it first, and it’d still have to dry,” Pike replied.

“That is why they have the fire,” Pouliot hazarded. “To shrink the hide.”

“’Tis of no matter where they got it,” Big John said. “Green or soaked, ’twill still have to be fitted, and that takes dryin’.”

A bullboat was a generally flat-bottomed, kettle-shaped craft of hide, with the hair left on and to the inside, then shrunken over a willow framework. It was awkward to paddle and easy to tip, prone to leaks and ruptures from hidden snags and, if not greased or treated properly, it would soon become water-logged and sink to the bottom. But on the open plains where buffalo and elk were plentiful and wood was as scarce as bathtubs, it made a quick, serviceable vessel. A bullboat could be constructed in a few hours. Saddle, rifle, gear, and clothing would then be tossed inside. A horseman could swim his mount across a river while towing the boat behind him.

Of all the people of the plains, only the Métis—who removed the wheels from their carts and lashed them beneath the beds for added buoyancy—shunned the fragile rawhide crafts.

“What do we do now?” Hallet asked, his gaze shifting from Charlo to Big John.

“We’ll have to go downstream until we can cross the valley without bein’ seen, then come up on ’em slow-like,” Big John said.

“What if they cross the river before we get there?” Pouliot asked.

“Then, old friend,” Big John answered gently, “I fear we’ll have lost ’em for good.”