He told himself a thousand times that she would be all right while he was away. Indian women, unlike the white, did not have to have doctors and nurses and a ton of medicines. The child would not be born before his return. She would be all right. He would come riding in from the mountains with both packhorses loaded with pelts from their manes to their tails. The cabin had no windows; he had fixed the door so that she could bar it; and he told her over and over, a dozen times, always to carry the knife in her belt, a revolver at her waist, and keep her rifle within reach. He had told her what the woman on the Musselshell had done with an axe. Lotus had a good axe and she must keep it always just inside her door. He thought it would be safe for her to fire her gun any time the wind was from the north; but she had plenty of jerked meat, and flour, dried fruits, roots, coffee, sugar; she had plenty of wood, plenty of bedding, and more than enough skins to keep her busy. The nearest Indian was two hundred miles away. She would be all right.
Nevertheless, during his last days and nights with her he did not act like a husband who thought his wife would be all right. Her courage had deeply touched him: hardly more than a child, and a long way from her people, she had given him no sign at all that she was afraid. He had also been moved when, seeing her at last for the remarkable person she was, he understood what an ordeal it must have been for her to go with him. He would then take her to his lap and hold her, and debate with himself whether she should go with him or stay here. But then he would see her seven or eight months pregnant in the high cold mountains, and riding a horse out not long before her child would come; he would see her with no roof over her, alone all day while he walked miles and miles on his traplines; and he would convince himself again that it would be best for her to remain here. Trying to follow him from trap to trap, she would wear herself out. It would be bad for the child. She might become sick .... He was still debating the matter back and forth when the November morning came that he had set for his departure. It was snowing, a deep quiet storm, in which nothing was visible but the millions of swirling flakes as big as dollars. He saddled his stud and the packhorses and hitched them to the corral. He then went to his wife, who had been standing in the doorway, looking at him and at the storm into which he would disappear. There was no sign of mountains and river now.
He shook snow off his leather coat, slapped across his belly and thighs, and said the Almighty had more ways of making the earth lovely than mortal man could have thought of. He was trying to be cheerful but he felt the loneliest he had ever felt since saying good-bye to his people. He stood by her and together they looked up at the marvelous dusk of flakes. Then he took her in his arms and kissed over her hair and face; bent to kiss the leather over her belly; and held her close for a full five minutes.
Then suddenly in an instant he took his farewell, as he had taken it from his people, and was gone. He was on his stallion, with the packline in hand, riding away into the snows. Lotus stood looking after him as long as he was in sight, and long after he was gone. For more than an hour she stood there, looking into the gloom. Was she thinking that he had abandoned her, in this strange lonely land almost a thousand miles from her people—that she ought to leap on her pony and head north, to the Bitterroots and home? Whatever she was thinking or feeling, there was little sign of it in her lovely face. A white girl of her age might have broken down and run crying after her man; this girl, after looking for an hour at the gloom into which her husband had vanished, went to the corral to hear the breathing of her pony. She glanced down at the knife in her belt, the revolver at her waist; and then with a start thought of her rifle and hastened into the cabin to get it. She carefully examined the priming. She looked up the river, the direction from which her enemies would come, if they came. She then crawled between two poles and went over to her horse, and leaning the rifle against her with the stock between her feet, she looked at the pony’s quiet eyes. She put her right hand under its jaw and to its right cheek, and her right cheek to its left cheek, and stood there while the storm turned her and the pony and the cabin and everything a pure mountain-winter white.
PART TWO
KATE
11
IT WAS LATE April in 1847 when Sam Minard came down from the mountains. Peltwise, he had had a full winter; he had found more top-quality beaver in one group of streams than he had ever found before. From the first week of his arrival he had trapped but his finest pelts had been taken in February and March. He had trapped all day long, every day of the month, and even in nighttime when the moon was full. Of first-class pelts, called a plus. and pronounced by the mountain men plew, he had two and a half packs; of inferior pelts he had almost three packs: and be had about fifty otter.
A typical day for him had run like this. At daylight he had stirred in his blankets and robes. back under the low branches of a pine, and had crawled out until he could stand. He came out of bed fully clothed. He had had no such feasts as he had had on the journey with his wife; his meat was jerked venison, lean elk, beaver tail. muskrat together with flour and coffee. Sometimes a whole week passed with no fire. He was simply too busy. Working over the graining blocks and stretching frames took a lot of time. Every day he had to move his horses to spots where they could find forage—either along streams or in mountain meadows, where they could paw down through three or four feet of snow to old grasses. He spent hundreds of hours at the tiresome and painstaking task of dubbing—that is, of removing with pieces. of sharpened elkhorn or obsidian the fat, flesh, and blood from the pelts. He walked hundreds of miles back and forth on the streams. setting his traps and bringing the pelts in. Once in a while he made a fire and roasted a couple of beaver tails and made a pot of coffee. He took time to fill his pipe now and then. He had thought a great deal about his wife and had worried about her: he had had dreams about her that troubled him. As spring drew near his worry became so chronic that he almost burst from the mountains to learn if she was all right.
When at last he fought his way out, along streams, over elk snowpaths, or over paths which he had to break for his beasts, he tried to think of something at the posts which he could buy for her. If she was like most Indian women she would want brightly colored cloths, beads, ornaments, and ribbons for her hair; he hoped she would prefer a handsome saddle, with bridle and trimmings to match. He had a picture of her dressed like a Crow warrior in the finest embroidered buckskin, with long tassels and fringes, and a gorgeous headdress, with its mass of feathers floating behind her in the wind. Their son would be in a saddle on her back, standing up, his bright fearless eyes fixed with astonishment on everything he passed. By the time he was four or five he would have his own pony and would learn to ride like a Crow; and he would have his own saddle, the finest, and his own buckskin clothing, with the prettiest beadwork the squaws could make. Sam liked to think of his son riding like a Crow not only because the Crows were the best horsemen in the world; they made excellent weapons and were the most formidable fighters on the plains. At leatherwork and embroidery there were no women to match the Absaroka—that is what the stupid French called them, the gens des corbeaux, the Absaroka, the Sparrowhawk people. The Crow warriors were so brave that they went boldly against any people who invaded their lands, including their ancient enemies, the Blackfeet; and they seemed to feel friendly toward the whitemen because the whitemen also loved to slaughter the ferocious Bloods and Piegans. The Crow nation boasted that it had never killed a white person or a friend of the white people; Sam was thinking of this boast as he followed the windbreaks down the canyons.