"Don’t reckon I ever heard of him," Sam said.

Wall now, if you put a few rattlesnakes, a wolverine, a bitch wolf, a falcon hawk, and a nest of hornets in a pot and stirred them well and then pulled out an Injun, it would be the one who had sworn to cut off Sam’s ears and scalp, and cut out his liver, before the first currants were ripe. Charley said Eagle Beak had slain two Blackfeet before he was old enough to know what a woman was for.

"The first currants are ripe about July," Sam said.

There, was a long silence. Zeke puffed his old smelly pipe and stared at Sam under two brows that looked as tough as bedstraw. Bill was also studying the Minard countenance.

Where was he headed for? Bill asked at last.

The Musselshell, Sam said.

In Bill’s mind was a map of the route Sam probably would take—the path up Dog Creek and then over to Buffalo Fork; from there over to the Du Noir and up it to the South Fork and down it all the way to the Bighorn. He would then be south of the Musselshell at its big bend. Still, Bill reflected, sucking into his lungs a man-killing mixture of strong old tobacco and kinnikinic, Sam might not take the well-worn way, knowing that killers were on his trail. As likely as not he would go over to the Badlands and ride right through Wind River Valley.

"Wonder if she lived through the winter," Sam said.

Bill said he had taken a fresh head and put it on one of the stakes, for he figgered that fresh sign of the whiteman’s hatchet might be good medicine. She had acted awful disarted and skeared but she allus had. When he rode up early one morning she was gathering wild-flower seeds. He had talked to her but she had paid no heed and she hadn’t tried to pint her gun at him or anything. Did Sam kallate ever to figger her out?

"I don’t kallate l’ll ever figger any woman out."

How woman, made of man’s rib, could be so different was a riddle; old Bill Williams, he said a woman’s breast was like the hardest rock and there was no trail on it that he could find. This crazy woman’s breast seemed to be all butter. Any woman’s was, Sam said, for her children.

"And fer nuthin else, I guess. And white gals, they’re too much like pictures."

"I reckon," Sam said, quietly smoking.

"Ever heerd hide or hair uv her husbun?"

"Heard he was alive but I doubt it."

That was Abner Back, Bill said. Abner said the husband had escaped and was on the warpath; Crazy Bode, that was what they were calling him, a terror as bald as Lost-Skelp, hiding somewhere by the Great Falls. Sam had taken from a leather pouch a note pad and a pencil; he said he wanted Bill to write a letter for him to the Crows.

"Doggone it, Sam, I can’t write. You knowed that. But what’s on your mind anyhow?"

Sam said he wanted the rest of the braves to come on, so they could get it over with. He would send them a few choice insults. With note pad and poised pencil Sam waited. Wall now, Bill said, he might think of one or two he had learned. Bill spoke the syllables and Sam wrote them down. The first one said: Ba wara pee-x-ee buy-em. As nearly as he had been able to tell, Bill said, that one meant, "Once in a while I’ll cut your balls off."

If that was what it meant, Sam said, it was almost enough in itself; most men seemed to be horribly sensitive to an attack on that part of them. Did he have another one as good'?

Bill searched a mind that since he came west had paled under the snows of many winters. Why didn’t Sam say, simply, that he intended to wipe them out one by one, or in litters and batches, and send their topknots to the Blackfeet? That was fine, Sam said; how did he spell it out?

After Bill had pronounced the words over and over Sam had this on his note pad: Dee wappa weema sicky hay keeokoh. He said there seemed to be a lot of pa and ma in that one, and gave the paper to Bill, who could give it to Charley when he saw him, and ask him to read it to the hull nation.

Bill said it all reminded him of a Mormon. This fool from a wagon train of greenhorns had taken his holy book and a man to interpret, and had gone to the Cheyennes to make Mormons of them. Seems the Mormons believed the red people were one of the lost tribes of Jews, or something like that, and this preacher went over to tell them the good news. A fool of uncommon size, he stood on a tree stump facing three hundred warriors, their hair glistening with buffler fat, his face boyish and simple and rosy-red; and he told these red devils that they were lost Jews whose ancestors millions of moons ago had somehow crossed to South America. He told them they would all go down to hell and fry in hump fat eternally if they didn’t wash off their war paint and come every Sunday to hear Brigham Young preach the gospel. What then happened to that pore greenhorn was enough to make white women give up having babies. He was tuk away and spitted and roasted like a goose, and his holy book’s leaves made some of the brightest flames in the fire.

The Indians didn’t look like Jews, Sam said.

"They shorely don’t," Bill said.

"I thought their chief belief was a lot of wives."

Wall now, Jim Bridger he had talked to Brigham; he said Mormons were a special people, like the Jews once were. Sam said he reckoned all people thought they were special people.

After trapping with Bill and Zeke for two weeks Sam said he guessed he would be gone, to see if Eagle Beak wanted a hugging match. He would leave his packhorses and pelts with   them, and if his topknot was lifted out yonder, Zeke and Bill could have the pelts and horses. When Sam turned to leave, the emotion in Bill was running deep. He managed to say at last, "I figger ya jist hafta git it over with.”

"For them," said Sam dryly. He mounted the bay and turned for a moment to say good-bye. Zeke and Bill stood side by side, looking at him.

"Watch your topknots," Sam said, and raised his right hand in a good-bye salute.

"Watch yourn," Bill said. He felt like crying a little.

Zeke was silent.

20

SAM HAD so abandoned himself to a delightful winter of hot baths, hot meals, mountain climbing, music, and deep sleeps that his wariness was not what it had been. He made a conscious effort to shake himself out of his notion that all was well, and to realize, after entering the Wind River desolation, that he was in Crow country and was a hunted man in the lands of five nations and ten thousand enemies. In Crow villages the squaws were still gouging themselves with sharp flints and wailing at the heavens, because of the dead braves The Terror had slain. What a day it would be for Sam Minard if he ever fell (wounded perhaps) into the clutch of the Crow women! How they would spit their mucus in his face and empty their bladders and bowels over him! There was nothing the inflamed and shrieking lunatics would not do; they would hack testicles off, tiny piece by piece; dig eyes out with sharpened hawthorn sticks; skewer the end of a tongue and pull it out and slice it off in thin slices; run knife points along gums where they met the teeth, and slice the gums down and back—the frightfulness of their cruelties and obscenities, said those who had been captured and had escaped, could be known only to those who had suffered them. Sam was telling himself these things. Were these human females and mothers? It made a man look back to his own mother and wonder if he had ever really known her. He did not intend to he taken alive. He had told Bill that, and Bill had filled his pipe and said that a lot of men said they would never be taken alive but had been taken. If they took a man by surprise and he found a ride barrel against his back, or if he looked up from his supper or his skinning to see a dozen warriors with drawn bows or knives, hope would rape his mind and paralyze his will, and he would surrender and begin to pray for escape.