The Fire Arrow Read online

  Now she was burning up. A wind rattled the lodge cover, and he felt cold tendrils pry up the leather and slide inside the black interior. He continued his vigil, applying cold compresses on her forehead one after another, hour after hour.

  She muttered, and he understood. He helped her sit up, and pawed around in the darkness for the canteen, found it, opened it, and helped her drink. She drank, and again, and again, and he regretted not giving her water earlier. Then she settled back and was quiet again.

  Her breathing was better but she was lost to him, deep in her own world. The stars had vanished from the smoke hole, and he wondered whether it would snow. Maybe that would be good. It would bury this desperate camp in a white blanket, and hide it from danger.

  A howl lifted him to his feet. It was an eerie wail followed by short barks. A wolf was close, only yards away, summoning the pack, for the smell of meat hung in the night air here. Skye listened closely and heard an answering howl, a lonely call from some distant hill. He had heard wolves often in his long and lonely life in the wilds, but rarely so close. He settled down again beside Victoria, felt about for his belaying pin. It was a strange weapon in the wilds of North America, but a familiar one to him. A belaying pin was used to anchor ship’s rigging but was a handy weapon well known to any seaman. The pin was shaped to drop partway through the fife rail on the main deck, making an anchor for the running rigging.

  Now the polished pin, a relic of his days as a pressed seaman serving the king and then the young queen, Victoria, felt good in his hand.

  The wolves were in camp now, just outside the thin leather walls of his lodge, talking in soft yips and growls to one another. He felt one probe the lodge, but it went away. There was meat enough for them if they dug it up: guts from buffalo, hide scrapings, offal.

  “The wolves are our brothers,” Victoria said suddenly.

  He slipped his big stubby hand over her forehead, and found it raging hot, and felt the deepest dread he had ever known.

  five

  A numbing cold drifted out of the north, chilling the lodge. The small fire had long since glowed out. Victoria lay inert, and only an occasional ragged breath told Skye she lived. Once she began to shiver, and Skye tucked the robes tighter about her. But fever still gripped her body.

  For a while, he heard the wolves outside, pawing up buried offal, driven by the lingering smell of meat. Sometime in the night he heard a loud thud, and another, and wondered what had caused it.

  But for most of the night, time barely moved, and he fought sleep. It had been a long time since he slept, and would be a long time before he slept again. If he surrendered and stretched into that pile of warm robes, he would be dead to the world. And he could not permit that. He would watch over her, guard her, protect her with his every breath.

  And so by iron will he kept himself awake, alive to the smallest change in her rhythms. She awoke once and asked for water. He held a canteen to her lips. She sipped only a little and fell back.

  Dawn came late so far north. At first light he shook off his weariness, settled his black stovepipe hat on his long locks, and stepped outside into bitter air. He would soon start a fire, warm his own numb limbs and bring his lodge to life. He would saw frozen meat from his hanging cache, and roast it over a small flame. A quick meal, but one full of nourishment.

  But now he consecrated himself to the day. This would be a difficult and dangerous one. He was glad to be alive, glad to have a home in this wild interior of North America, glad to call the Crow people his own. But his gladness this morning was mixed with darkness too, a loneliness that never left him, something that would never heal because he was the outsider. He had no country but he would make of his life as much as he could.

  He studied the murky ridges, knowing this was always the most dangerous time, the moment when enemies struck, when their quarry lay in their lodges at peace and unaware of trouble. But he could see nothing. He headed for the hanging forequarters, and found both haunches lying on the frostwhitened ground. The wolves had gnawed hard at frozen flesh and given up; the effort wasn’t worth the meal. He lifted the end of the braided leather rope and found that it had been gnawed in two.

  The meat would have to stay on the ground. One man could not lift a quarter of buffalo. It had taken several, and maybe some horsepower too, to lift that meat out of harm’s way. But Skye had no horse to help him. He set down his belaying pin and sawed at the thick haunch. It was slow going, cutting through the icy meat bit by bit, but at last he had a small pile of it, enough to feed them both—if Victoria wanted any, which he doubted.

  He built a tiny fire in the lodge, waited for it to burn bright and bed the ground with coals, and then began to roast the stiff and icy meat over open flame, a green willow skewer holding it off the fire. For the first time in half a day, he felt warm. The buffalo meat sizzled and burned, but it was soon cooked, and its savory aroma filled the lodge.

  She was watching him. She seemed the same, except a great darkness filled her face.

  “Meat?” he asked.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  She stared, not replying. It was not in her to complain.

  He pulled his buffalo meat away from the fire and let it cool.

  “You go to the People. Leave me. It is the way of the People,” she said.

  She was referring to a thing the Crows and other tribes did when they were forced to: abandonment. The ill and ailing were left to die if they jeopardized the safety of the young and healthy. And now she was telling him to leave her; she would die.

  He shook his head.

  “Dammit, Skye, go.”

  He grinned at her. “It’s Mister Skye, mate.”

  He hoped she would laugh. He had always insisted on being called Mister Skye. Here in the New World he was as good as any mister in Europe, and Mister Skye he would be. He had bloodied a few trapper noses making it stick.

  But she didn’t smile, and he understood that her thoughts hovered upon the end of life, and walking the spirit path.

  “We will walk together,” he said.

  She swallowed hard. “Sonofabitch,” she muttered, and closed her eyes.

  He stared sadly at her. There were many things he could deal with, dangers he was ready to face if he must, but illness simply left him helpless. He could think of nothing that might heal her, not a chant or a prayer or a shout or a medicine or a magical remedy. Not an herb or a potent tea.

  Then, oddly, she took the thoughts from his mind, something she often did.

  “Willow bark tea,” she said.

  “Yes!”

  He jammed his hat down and headed out, barely remembering to carry his Hawken with him, and discovered enough light to make out the trees; the majestic naked limbs of cottonwoods, irregular and rough, and the orderly, drooping limbs of creek-side willows. There were so many varieties, and he didn’t know one from another, but with his skinning knife he peeled tender green bark from small branches, working savagely, as if this act alone, done swiftly, might work the miracle he ached for.

  He rushed back to the lodge, built up the dying fire, splashed water into his cook pot, and while it heated he stripped the bark into small lengths until he was sure the boiling water would extract whatever powers lay within the bark. It took a long time for the water to boil, for the bark to steep, for color to appear in the water, and then for it to cool enough for her to sip.

  She watched, saying nothing, and he saw the fever burning in her and thought that time was short. He finally fed her a little with his horn spoon. She swallowed, and again, and finally shook her head. It had been so little, not more than half a cup. She lay back upon her robes and closed her eyes. He could see the pain and exhaustion etching her face.

  He waited awhile and then stepped out again, feeling an icy breeze threaten to topple his beaver top hat from his head. But it stayed put. All these years it had miraculously stayed put in anything short of a gale. It was ti
me to hike to the ridge to the east and survey the countryside. This land was alive with hunters; this was the prime season for prime hides and prime meat from fall-fattened buffalo.

  It was time to check the nearby world for trouble. He didn’t want to think about the odds if trouble came. He wrapped a robe tight about him to ward off the icy blast, and struggled up a steep grade that ended abruptly on a plain. The empty land greeted him, its grasses brown and sere, the mountains on the horizons in all directions thick with white. A gloomy gray overcast stole the sun from the world. He let his eyes adjust, began his careful focus on distant prospects, alert to movement, but this dark October day he saw nothing but an empty world. The buffalo were elsewhere and so were the hunters. It was a blessing, but also a curse because he smelled snow in the air and knew what would be whirling out of the north soon.

  There would be time enough to gather wood, bring some meat inside the lodge, and then hunker down. Wearily he retreated to the creek bottom, filled with foreboding, for his enemies were not just humans, but cold and drifts and starvation. It would be weeks before she could walk, and walking was the only way they might escape to the land of her people, far south. And if they had to toil through snow, or wade icy streams, her fragile strength would desert her.

  He slid down to the bottoms, energized by fear, and hurried to the lodge. He headed for the heap of abandoned lodgepoles and began dragging them close to his own shelter, working at it until he had collected every pole in the camp. They were dry and straight and would burn well and make heat He filled his canteens with water from Louse Creek. He heaped brush about his lodge to slow the wind. He collected more abandoned robes, which he would turn into an inner liner hanging from the lodgepoles within. He dragged the frozen forequarter to a place close to the shelter, worried about leaving it there, realized he had little choice, and then dragged the second one to the same place. The meat was close enough so he might scare off wolves.

  He remembered one more thing: at the willow tree he peeled more of the soft green bark from twigs, and peeled bark from a chokecherry growing beside the creek, and bark from several other shrubs. If there was medicine to be found in this trench across the prairie, he would have it in his grasp, no matter how heavily it might snow.

  He turned at last to his forlorn lodge as the brooding overcast seemed to lower itself to the very floor of the plain. And there on a limb beside the lodge, watching him carefully, was a single magpie, her spirit animal, her own totem and fount of wisdom and hope and help.

  He slipped through the door flap, settled his black top hat in its place next to the exit, and found her staring upward.

  “The magpie is outside,” he said.

  “Tell the magpie you will bring it meat every day of the storm,” she said.

  He did. Outside, in the cutting wind, he addressed the bird:

  “Magpie, Many Quill Woman promises meat to you each day.”

  The bird leaped into the sullen air and vanished.

  Skye wondered, as he always did and always would, if there was anything at all to the Indian mysteries.

  six

  The wind ebbed, and no sound rose from the blackness outside. But then the snow came, dollar-sized flakes at first, then smaller ones, a white wall of them. Skye could see nothing when he pulled aside his door flap. If he went out, he would have to be very careful or he would lose his way and perish. He did make one last trip while he could, dragging a dozen of the abandoned lodgepoles to his very doorway. Just in case.

  Victoria lay inert, in the land somewhere between the quick and the dead. The tiny flame, which he nursed carefully now, kept the cold at bay, but he would have to feed it day and night. Smoke curled lazily upward but an occasional downdraft drove it into the lodge, tickling Skye’s throat and nostrils. Tricks of the air sometimes shot snow through the hole, past the wind flaps, and these showered on him, and on Victoria’s robe.

  With his knife he fashioned some thong by peeling it away from the edge of a robe, and then began tying robes around the perimeter of the lodge, hanging them from the lodgepoles, until he had an inner liner and the small lodge was more comfortable. The Crows often used liners in bitter weather, but this was still October, and he doubted it would grow so cold that trees would pop and crack.

  That occupied him through the evening. When he noticed she was watching him, he slipped to her side, examined that cauterized wound and the angry flesh around it, found no bleeding, and felt her forehead. In the chill of the lodge it was hard to say how fevered she was.

  “I brought in some bark while I could. I have chokecherry, willow, and hackberry. I can make some tea.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Tea, Victoria? What kind?”

  He could not catch her attention.

  “I’ll try the willow,” he muttered.

  He shredded the soft inner bark of a willow and set it to steeping in hot water. Time ticked slowly. He impulsively added some hackberry bark. He would try anything, everything, carefully and in small amounts, and he would leave nothing undone that might be done.

  He waited impatiently. He had never mastered the Indian way of surrendering to circumstance, and now he felt caged and restless in that small space. A gust of snow billowed down onto the robes, and slowly turned into shining droplets.

  At last, the steeping herbal tea in his cook pot acquired a greenish or tan cast, and he judged that the decoction might have some value to her. But it was only a guess. He poured some into a tin cup, let it cool, and then awakened her with a gentle shake.

  “I want you to drink this.”

  She stirred, managed to rise to her elbows, and then sat. He handed her the cup.

  “Willow and hackberry,” he said.

  She sipped, and again, slowly, and finally drained half the contents and slipped down again.

  He ached. She had no strength at all, no life force, no vitality.

  But there was another tack to try, so he began some buffalo broth, steeping small pieces of the forequarter in the water until he had a thin but nourishing soup. He awakened her, lifted her head, and gradually doled the broth, sliding it into her mouth with a horn spoon. It took a long while, and his arm ached from holding her head up. Then she slid back into the stupor that enveloped her.

  Maybe she would die, slide away from him despite his every effort. He thought of burning the Blackfoot arrow that might still take her life. Burn it to ash, destroy it, but something stayed him.

  Time stopped. He tried to doze one-eyed, keeping up the flame while getting rest, but soon gave it up. He thought of those occasional people he met, people who had ventured into the wilderness, stuffed with romantic notions about the sweetness of the life far from civilization. In fact life in the wilds was little more than want and hardship, food uncertain, cold, heat, insects, rain, constant discomfort.

  Maybe this night, when he could for a change lie on several thick robes, he might sleep a true sleep. But he would not do that, not while she was in peril.

  Let them sit in their armchairs with their coal stoves snapping and cracking, a lap robe or sweater adding to their comfort, and a good two-burner oil lamp lighting the pages; let them think this life where there were no houses or stores or stoves was an easy life, full of adventure, without law. Let them think it. They all turned tail, even the Yank trappers, who stayed a few seasons if they didn’t die, and headed back to the East, and the comforts of a farm.

  He eyed the inert woman he loved, and knew somehow that a crisis was looming. If she saw dawn, it would be after the crisis had come and gone.

  He checked the snow; it fell steadily, eight inches, ten inches on the level, and no sign of letting up. The snow was imprisoning him, and could make it impossible to move anywhere for days, maybe weeks.

  Her people had a way of making time pass, of dealing with the slow dark minutes. They told stories. The Crows were great storytellers, and many of their stories were bawdy and funny. Often he had sat in a large lodge jammed with Absa
roka people, and listened to them exchange stories. The old women told the best ones of all, and made everyone laugh, and soon enough a night had passed, and no one had even noticed the passage of the hours.

  “I don’t know how to tell stories,” he said, “but I guess I will. Maybe you can hear me. Maybe I’ll only be talking to myself.”

  She did not respond and for a moment he wondered whether she lived. But then she saw the faint lift of the robe as breath filled her lungs, and he knew she was still with him.

  “I’ve been thinking about that magpie hanging about here,” he said, “the one who’s your friend and helper. I wonder where she came from and why she’s here. Let’s say she’s here looking after you. She’s the one you saw in your vision, maybe not this very bird. But a sort of idealized bird. I suppose she’s up in a branch somewhere, her head tucked under a limb, the snow sliding off of her. I wonder when she was born, and when she learned she was your friend. I wonder how your people know that they can find helpers in the animal kingdom.”

  It wasn’t much of a story. Skye was just speculating, wishing he could know more about the mysterious world known to the tribes, but not grasped by white trappers.

  “I think this magpie, the one who’s sitting on a twig out there in the dark, must have been told by her mama that she was to take care of you; that a certain Many Quill Woman of the Otter Clan of the Absaroka people was going to need the wisdom of the magpies, and if Many Quill Woman’s plea for a spirit guide was just and good, then that little magpie out there would decide to look after you and share the magpie wisdom with you.