Flight of the Hawk: The River

  “There is some sort of evil in his character,” Lisa said as he nodded and turned his head to watch a flock of ducks landing on the river.

  “What do you make of him?” He drained the last of his now-cold coffee and spit out the few grounds that caught in his teeth.

  “I don’t really know. Every time I talk to him I don’t get anything useful out of the man. We all have secrets. I don’t mind men who wish to be left alone, and make it clear they have secrets they don’t want tampered with.” Lisa shrugged. “But when a man would like everyone to think he has nothing to hide, yet reveals nothing about his nature or past, I begin to wonder.”

  “How’d he get hired anyway?”

  “The same way you did. I needed men.” Lisa lifted his hands in supplication. “Hiring men to go so far beyond the frontier is not always an easy thing. Look at the trouble I have had with desertion and the court cases to get my money back. When a man says he will go upriver, he is hired. Among the good men there are always those like Baptist Alar or Jean Bouche. You missed the delights of Bouche’s company. He cost me more than three thousand dollars in lost wages, laziness, incompetence, insubordination, and ferment within my company. The thought of him makes my blood boil!” Lisa clenched a fist and shook it at the sky.

  Taking a deep breath, the trader looked sheepishly at Tylor. “But that answers your question. There are always men who wish to go upriver. You must take the Alars and Bouches to get the Immels, the Bijous, and” he smiled, “perhaps even the Tylors.”

  Lisa hesitated for an instant. “I know that you do not trust McKeever. What has he done to you? What has he said?”

  Tylor frowned and pursed his lips. Careful, John. “He’s trying to recruit me for something. I can’t put my finger on what, though.”

  “There are many men who would like to stop me on the river.” Lisa’s lips curled into a wry smile. “The British have a lot to lose if I maintain control of the tribes and the trade for the United States. The Spanish, too, are a threat. Yes, they are old and corrupt, but their agents are active throughout the southern plains. Then, too, I have my illustrious partners in Saint Louis. We are like a spider court. One must watch his step lest he stick in someone else’s web. Each of us has a bite like poison and fears making the other mad. Ah, and you must never forget John Jacob Astor. Outside of international politics, I fear him the most.”

  “Thought Astor was going to limit himself to the Pacific Northwest?”

  Lisa chuckled. “In a pig’s eye. You heard about the boat race last summer with Wilson Price Hunt? What was that if not a reconnaissance to familiarize Astor’s people with the river?”

  Tylor pulled tobacco out of his possibles and shaved a chew off the carrot. His brows were knit as he worked the quid until it began to juice. “I see.”

  “And I thought everyone in the west had their noses in the middle of my business! It is disconcerting—but refreshing—to discover that one person, you, John Tylor, did not.” Lisa lifted his hands. “To wrest the Pacific Northwest from the Canadians, Astor has established a base at the mouth of the Columbia River, one which he conceitedly calls Astoria. From there, he wishes to expand a string of forts along the path used by Lewis and Clark until he can choke out any competition in between.”

  Tylor smiled at Lisa’s jab at Astor’s conceit. How many Fort Lisas and Fort Manuels had been built in the last ten years?

  “Pretty ambitious.” Tylor sucked the last of his smoke and knocked the dottle out.

  “But he’s lost the Missouri, by God!” A clenched fist emphasized the words, and Lisa’s eyes flashed. “He has no one who knows the river better than me. There is no other trader in the interior who is smarter. His hope lies in Crooks and McClellan and I have broken them more than once.”

  “And you think McKeever might be working for Astor?”

  “He could be working for anybody. He is Scotch. Astor is very close to the Nor’west Company. He buys many of their furs. You said McKeever might have been on the Canadian frontier? Then again, the man might be an old Nor’wester without any interest in Astor, or he may be something else—a British spy perhaps?”

  “McKeever aside, what is your proposition?”

  “My proposition?”

  Tylor grinned maliciously. “Of course, Bourgeois,” he said in his cultured voice. “I have watched you running this expedition for months now. Always checking on equipment, looking for frayed rope, talking with Lewis and Luttig about which goods would sell best where. You spend all your time overseeing every aspect of travel and camp.”

  Tylor paused. “The one thing you do not do is sit down with a boatman and idly pass the time in conversation simply because it relaxes you.”

  Lisa slapped his knee vigorously as he laughed. “I appreciate you, John Tylor. I envy you your sharp mind.”

  “And the proposition?”

  Lisa’s dark eyes took on a shadowed appearance. “Since this McKeever seems so interested in you, why don’t you cultivate him? Perhaps you will gain his confidence, and we can learn what he is up to.”

  “You wish me to be a spy,” Tylor said, expression going flat.

  “Let us call it a security assignment. The word spy conjures images of scouts sneaking through underbrush to assess troop movements, skullduggery—”

  “It also conjures images of subversion and observation,” Tylor pointed out dryly.

  “I leave it up to you, Tylor. Watch the man. As long as he is what he says, or if he is harmless, I don’t need to lose sleep over him. Instead, you can.” Lisa lightly punched Tylor’s shoulder and stood up.

  “What makes you think I’m trustworthy?” Tylor asked. “I thought you had reservations about me?”

  “I did,” Lisa assured him. “Baptiste Latoulipe put those fears to rest.”

  “He died the next day,” Tylor declared with a frown. “He . . .”

  Then, realizing what he’d said, he stopped, feeling his face flush. What kind of stupid, careless . . . He glanced up at the smug look on Lisa’s face.

  “He told you,” Tylor hissed.

  “He told me nothing, Tylor. That is why I trusted Baptiste so well. He didn’t need to say so much as a word. Of course I knew he had learned your secret. You see, I valued Baptiste so highly precisely because I could read him like you read those books of yours.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “Baptiste discovered your secret. He considered you to be a friend of his, for he wouldn’t tell me what you said. Instead he fed me some story about a wronged woman. He lied with all of his heart, convincingly. Which was fine. If he cared so much to protect you, your past is harmless. If you were truly dangerous? He would have told me.”

  Tylor felt his gut go tight.

  “It rather bothers me that you would use him in such a manner. He was your friend, loyal, and you—”

  “Your feelings were never considered. Even so, can you honestly tell me that in a similar circumstance, you would not have done the very same? Consider what is at risk for me, for the country. Consider the knife edge on which I balance two boats and the lives of these men. Then give thought to all of those who would destroy me. Do that, and look me in the eye and tell me you would do differently.”

  Lisa, true to form, read the answer in Tylor’s eyes. “I think we understand each other. Still, you might think of this: Was knowing your secret the reason Baptiste Latoulipe was killed?”

  “Tell me what you suspect, Mr. Lisa.”

  “Of McKeever, I am not certain. But Baptiste lived on the river for a long time. He was a very good swimmer. True, even the best boatman drowns on occasion, but there is no reason why Baptiste couldn’t have worked loose from the roots and branches of the sawyer we passed that day. I have seen him do exactly that many times. For some reason, Baptiste was unable to make his way free from a simple obstacle. Further, when the boat was stopped, many men probed the sawyer with poles; none of them stuck firmly enough to have dragged Baptiste from the boat.
” Lisa’s eyes had turned dark and hard. “Keep in mind that McKeever was the man who dove overboard, and time after time, he went down to search? To search? Really? Or to ensure that no one else dove in who might have found Baptiste’s body?”

  The trader stood, nodding with reservation. “So think, Tylor. What did Baptiste know that was worth murdering him for?”

  Surely it couldn’t be over what I confessed to Baptiste.

  “I’ll think on that,” Tylor promised. “I swear I will.”

  He watched Lisa walk into the growing gloom.

  Then, feeling suddenly miserable, he looked at the backs of his hands. “Why do I have to live like this?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  * * *

  Gray Bear dug an elbow in between the clumps of low bunch grass and pushed forward with his toes. His other arm was held before him, holding a previously pulled-up sprig of buffaloberry bush to break his profile on the horizon. Cautiously, Gray Bear raised his head, feeling the sting of the tiny prickly pear spines that burned and itched in his chest, thighs, arms, and stomach. He’d had no choice but to crawl through them as he followed a low rivulet channel down the slope.

  He could see at least one of the Dog Eaters. The Arapaho man was laughing as he and his companions butchered a fat buffalo cow.

  Gray Bear couldn’t see where the others labored; their location and the bison they butchered remained hidden by the crest of the low ridge. The man straightened from where he had broken the ribs. With a metal trade knife he cut loose the muscle and ligament. Then he lifted the heavy slab of ribs out of the dead animal’s side. The sight of that wondrous meat sent a pang through Gray Bear’s empty stomach.

  The incomprehensible Arapaho chatter continued, and the man laughed as he sliced long strips of soft liver from the cow. Then came another of the Arapaho, an older man, his face a weathered dark brown. And then a third; all stopped to slice off strips of liver, swallowing them whole in their hunger, blood dripping down the sides of their faces.

  Gray Bear’s stomach growled and turned. His mouth began to water, and he could almost taste the succulent cow’s flesh. He closed his eyes and scourged the image from his mind, clearing it by force of will.

  This is what the Shoshoni had left behind. They had been driven back into the mountains, to the rugged high country where the Blackfeet, the Minetarees, and the Arapaho didn’t know the trails.

  He hated to think they were a dying people, chased and harried—only their courage and their rawhide-tough bodies making the difference against the Pa’kiani and Minetaree with their thunder weapons. Now the Crow, too, were increasingly hostile just up to the north. Once they had been allies, but the loss of Shoshoni military power and the endless defeats were taking a toll on the ever more fragile alliance. When a people’s prowess was a sign of spirit power, who wanted to back a loser?

  Word was that the Arapaho had Taipo traders. Previously, as the Arapaho moved westward into the Shoshoni lands, the Newe at least had an even chance. But now, if thunder weapons came to this enemy, too? Gray Bear bit his lip to still his frustration until he could taste blood. A poor supplement for spring-fat buffalo cow.

  Cautiously, he eased back, pulling his wispy buffaloberry bush with him. This wide-open grassland scared him. True it was rich in resources, and the lush bluestem grasses hardly took a track, but at the same time, Gray Bear felt vulnerable, insecure with the endless vistas. While there were always small drainages, and cut banks where they could hide, so many eyes could see him and his small band. He looked up into the stark blue sky; then he studied the surrounding country as he trotted toward the horses where they were hidden in a narrow-walled gully.

  “So?” young Eagle’s Whistle asked as Gray Bear dropped to the sandy bottom and approached the small party.

  So few of his people remained. In addition to Gray Bear, there were only fifteen others, mostly women and youths; among those remaining were his widowed sister, Twin Sun Woman; young Singing Lark; and Gray Bear’s four good friends: Turns His Back, Red Moon Man, Kestrel Wing, and Five Strikes. All those who had been persuaded to follow Aspen Branch’s vision.

  “They are butchering,” Gray Bear told them. “They will not move from their camp this day. Tomorrow, they will pack meat back to their village on the White River.”

  “What do you want to do?” Eagle’s Whistle gestured his unease.

  Gray Bear’s face furrowed with thought. “We go north, around those bluffs over there. They will go south toward the White River. None should find our tracks.”

  He could see the fear in their eyes. Word was the Arapaho had been called south by the Spanish, but here they were. This was the second Arapaho village they had sneaked past. The haunted, scared faces in Gray Bear’s little band unnerved him. Their frightened eyes kept straying to the hilltops and darting to the drainages—always expecting Arapaho or Pa’kiani death to come galloping out, announced by booming thunder sticks and death. But, in this country, where would they run? Where would they hide? How could they escape? Gray Bear’s heart shivered in his chest.

  Despite the dishonor they did him, three young men and two women had already crept away in the night. Gray Bear ground his teeth against tears of rage and desperation. To desert a leader in such a fashion was as demeaning as a slap to the face. The others knew and looked at him with blank eyes that hid their thoughts—irresistible fear seeping through their polite defenses.

  All but Aspen Branch. The old woman just rolled her toothless jaws, her eyes like hard obsidian pebbles in the age-lined wreckage of her sun-blackened face. Something about that look kept him going, fired some internal resistance to the notion of giving up and heading back for home and the safety of the mountains.

  Hunger continued to growl in Gray Bear’s stomach. They had not dared to hunt more than the occasional buffalo calf, antelope, or deer, an animal small enough they could butcher it on the run. The bones they dropped one by one as they went. It was a measure of their fear that they dared not leave the butchered carcass of an adult bison where Arapaho scouts might find it. Instead, food had consisted of birds’ eggs looted from nests in the grass. The occasional grouse that could be brought down with an arrow, throwing stick, or stone. Rabbits, prairie dogs, ground squirrels, roots, and edible flowers—especially yucca blossoms—had contributed to their fare.

  No sign of their passage except the dung and tracks of their horses was allowed. No enemy must know them to be close. Discovery meant immediate death for Gray Bear, for he had promised to trade his life in the attempt to buy time for his band to escape. His followers, if they were caught, would die more slowly.

  Stoically, he wished he could pull the last slab of jerky from the pack hanging from his saddle. His hunger was a muted pain. The jerky he would save for anyone who became too weak to travel.

  Yesterday, the vision had come unexpectedly. Gray Bear had been resting on the hill behind their small, fireless camp when Bear, his spirit power, had come to him. Bear had danced around him four times, singing an odd chant in words that belonged to no tongue Gray Bear knew. Bear had showed him a man—a strange Taipo with hair and beard the color of sweat-stained wood.

  The hair-faced man had stood on a hill, a red hawk clutched in his fingers. As Gray Bear watched the shimmering image, the man shouted words that sounded similar to the ones Bear had sung. And in a grand motion, he cast the hawk into the air. The bird tumbled up, wings in disarray, before it recovered, flapping furiously. Circling the man, it flew ever wider until it circled the sky world four times.

  Then the man had walked down from the hilltop and smiled at Gray Bear, offering one hand in friendship and a thunder stick in the other.

  Of course, Gray Bear had seen Taipo before. They came through in ones and twos, and he had even talked to the one who called himself John Coulter. In the vision, this man was different, a stronger presence. As if he was being sent directly to Gray Bear.

  Gray Bear had awakened to find no thunder stick. Nothing but the
cool summer evening in his groping fingers. For him, however, it was enough—enough to prove the truth of Aspen Branch’s vision.

  “How far do you take us?” Eagle’s Whistle asked. He couldn’t hide the distrust that had grown in his voice. But then, what could Gray Bear expect from a thirteen-year-old boy who had barely become a hunter? Gray Bear noted the young man’s eyes as they strayed back in the direction of the mountains they’d left so far behind.

  “There will be a sign,” Gray Bear told him softly. “I saw it last night. It is the power of Hawk which guides us now. Hawk will tell us.”

  “Ha’a,” Aspen Branch declared from where she rested in a shaded overhang in the drainage bottom where flood waters had long ago undercut the pale bank.

  Eagle’s Whistle swallowed uneasily; his flat, round face betrayed mixed emotions. He wanted so badly to believe and feared so much at the same time.

  “What has happened to us?” Gray Bear asked as his desperation mounted. “Cornered, we fight desperately. Here—following spirit power—we are afraid. Five have left our party, dishonoring me and the vision. Is this the way of the people? These lands were ours once, we fought and took them. We fought with courage. Now, look at the fear in everyone’s eyes. Why is that?”

  “Look for the fear in the eyes of others, Taikwahni,” Singing Lark called from where she had taken a position at the top of the drainage. “I have no fear. When I turn my steps back toward the Newe, I am going with my own thunder stick.”

  Several of the others laughed, and a few smiled nervously.

  Turns His Back pursed his lips and looked uncomfortably at Gray Bear. Reluctantly he mounted his horse, patting the animal. Taking a deep breath, he said, “We are becoming something different, Gray Bear. I have not thought about it before, but you are right. We have been living in fear for so long we now think it is the only way to live. That change didn’t happen in one day, it happened slowly, over the last twenty summers.”

  Gray Bear could see heads nodding among the adults. Sometimes just stating the simplest of truths could unlock understanding. Set free what should have been obvious. Up and down the drainage the others mounted their horses. Gray Bear took Moon Walker’s reins from Eagle’s Whistle where the youth had been holding the animal.