Spirit Wolf, page 6
When they reached the coulee, Uriah climbed down off his roan. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out five twelve-gauge shells. Then, very carefully, so the sound would not alert any animals in the area, he broke open the gun’s action, dropped two cartridges into the breech, and closed it.
He leaned over and whispered in Nash’s ear, “You be damn careful. If a storm moves in, you climb back up the side of the coulee. I’ll come down and pick you up. I’ll come to you. Don’t you try to find me. Take it easy. Go slow.”
Nash stood in the snow listening as the sounds of the horses’ hooves disappeared in the dull light. He had never felt so alone, so utterly alone. He stood there for some time, attuning his senses to the space around him. He knew he should sit down so he wouldn’t stand out against the skyline when the sun rose, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stood there listening, poised as though for flight. He was still standing there motionless as the sun cracked the sky to the east. There was no warmth in its rays, but Nash’s soul soared with the light. The wolf was a creature of the night, of bad dreams. His time was past, and Nash’s beginning.
Nash slipped over the edge of the coulee and made his way down the steep hill. The coulee bottom was still in shadow, but he could easily see the other side. There were broken rims on each side carved from the sandstone slab that underlay most of the region. The slopes on both sides were steep, punctuated by pine and juniper mixed with the more common sagebrush and yucca. A sharp break at the bottom marked the course of the spring snowmelt. In some places that cut was ten feet deep or more, and it wound back and forth across the floor of the coulee like a snake. Occasionally, the coulee opened into wide meadows of five to ten acres. Elsewhere precipitous walls plunged into the cut at the bottom.
Nash knew he would have to stay close to the bottom—a den could easily be hidden in the walls—yet far enough up the slope to view what lay ahead and behind.
The fear that had fled ahead of the morning light was waiting in the shadows ahead. Nash could feel it there, a palpable presence undeterred by the weight of the twelve-gauge in his arms. As he stepped ahead, Nash could feel his heartbeat, hear the whisper of blood coursing through his arteries. He wondered if the wolf could hear it too. He wondered if the wolf were waiting, lying under one of the juniper bushes ahead, listening to the heartbeat of his approaching prey, savoring the prospect of stilling that heart and leaving the prairie quiet again.
Nash stalked on. Hunting deer with his father, he spent much of his time watching the ground, taking care that he didn’t snap a twig or dislodge a stone and send a deer rattling out of sight to safety. But it was different now. Nash felt an even greater need for quiet. Maybe if he could slip through that coulee in near perfect silence, with no more sound than that of the stretching of his sinews, the wolf wouldn’t hear him. Maybe the wolf would sleep on, oblivious of the boy gliding past on soundless feet.
Nash had never seen a coulee as he saw this—not as a hunter, but as prey. Each bush, each rock, tree, and cut might have hidden the wolf. Nash’s eyes scoured the landscape looking for the slightest clue; a trail through the snow leading into a bush and not continuing out the other side, the hint of a predator’s hot breath against the frosty air. Anything and everything that might give him the split-second warning it would take to swing the shotgun’s muzzle on line, to cock the ornate curved hammers that rode along each side of the Damascus barrel.
He had walked along less than a quarter of a mile, step by hesitating step, when he came to it. The coulee had narrowed, and he had been forced to scramble along the sidehill. That slowed his pace even more. He kicked the soles of his boots into the hillside for purchase, sacrificing silence for safety. Still each step threatened to send him plunging to the bottom. The coulee took a sharp bend to the east, and as he edged around the bill, he saw it.
It was just as Uriah had said. The coulee opened into a little park, but it was wall-to-wall juniper and pine. The brush was so thick there was no hope of seeing into it or walking quietly through it.
Nash paused for a moment, looking below. A whole pack of bloodthirsty wolves could lie in ambush there, waiting for an unwary deer—or man—to stumble into the brush. Nash stood there, and the fear grew in him, gnawing at his gut like a live animal.
Then he realized the pain wasn’t imaginary but real. Oh, hell, he thought, gas.
Nash knew he couldn’t wait. Not long anyway. He and his large intestine had worked out a bargain long ago. The large intestine wouldn’t bother him until it was absolutely necessary. Sometimes two or three days stretched between those times. But when the call came, Nash was expected to answer with very little hesitation.
The bargain had been necessary, the result of the gap-sided, splinter-ridden, one-holer out back behind the Brue cabin. It was a miserable place. In winter the thought of sitting down on that seat with a wind whipping a miniblizzard through the walls was enough to give anyone pause. And still winter was better than summer. In summer the stench was unbearable. Lime dumped down the hole occasionally would help, but only for a while. Sometimes at night the reek of putrification would drift down toward the house and send everyone outside to evening chores. Nobody lingered at the outhouse, even if the Sears Roebuck catalogue was there for reading—and other purposes, too. Flies buzzed around the building in a cloud, and sometimes Nash thought he would inhale one of the creatures. Knowing as he did what drew the flies to the outhouse, the thought of one of them touching him was enough to make him gag. It was because of that one-holer that the bargain had been struck. And now he had no time to waste.
Nash searched the hillside frantically for a ledge or rock, any place level enough he could squat there without sliding or tumbling down the hill. There was none. Nash had no choice. His need overcame his fear. He would go into the brush. There was a smooth log there. He would make his way to that.
Nash slipped, scrambled, and slid down the hill. He didn’t care about noise then. He hoped that the sound would frighten anything hidden below out of the brush before he got there. But if it didn’t, that was all right too. If the wolf, that awesome, fear-inspiring beast, had stepped out of the brush to greet him fang and claw, Nash wouldn’t have given him so much as a fare-thee-well. Nash had more important things on his mind.
Branches tugged at Nash’s clothes, as he headed into the brush at a run. He had to reach that log. He did, just in time. He jerked down his pants, and fumbled for a minute at the flap buttons on his long Johns. Then he sat down.
Oh, blessed relief—but not for long.
The wolf popped into his mind again, and the image was worse than ever. Nash was about as vulnerable as anyone could be. The wolf could take Nash now before he could even raise the shotgun leaning beside him on the log. Wouldn’t that be something? It was one thing to be killed by a wolf like the one they were hunting. There was more than a little romance in that. He’d be like ol’ Charley Spencer, and when men gathered at night around campfires, stories would be told about him and the killer wolf.
But what if the wolf got him while he was sitting bare-bottomed over a log, taking a crap? There wasn’t much romance in that. The vision was clear in his mind’s eye, and it wasn’t pleasant. His father riding stern-faced into the homestead, leading old Nell burdened with an empty saddle. His mother frantic for word of her son. Uriah climbing down from the roan: “I’m sorry, Mary. But I’ve got bad news. Nash didn’t make it. The wolf got him. He was sitting there on a log, defecating (he would use the word defecating so as not to offend Mary), and the wolf sneaked up behind him and grabbed him. There was nothing he could do, what with his pants down around his knees. He tried to get up, but the pants dumped him right there in the snow.”
And then his father would laugh. He wouldn’t be able to help it, any more than August in Montana could help being hot or January cold. He would be truly sorry about Nash going and all, but he would laugh just the same. And Nash bet his mother would laugh too. He’d be dead, and they’d be sitting around laughing at the predicament he’d been in. And what about Ettie? She would tell everybody at school. Probably when she was married and had kids of her own, she would think of Nash Brue and the way he died and laugh up a storm.
It just wasn’t fair, the way he was going to be treated if the wolf jumped him now. Nash was getting a little mad. He was beginning to hope that wolf would come. Nash would show him a thing or two.
Then it occurred to Nash how ridiculous the situation was, and he began to laugh at himself, his chuckles trickling into a flood of guffaws. He laughed till tears came to his eyes. He wasn’t as afraid of the wolf anymore. Somehow the laughter had eased the fear. He wiped himself with the wad of paper he had carried in his pocket and stood, hitching up his pants. Bring on the wolf. Nash was ready.
He settled into an easy hunting rhythm, slipping through the coulee, moving quietly from cover to cover, pausing and watching for some moments before padding along. He had noticed the tracks some time ago, rambling across the hillside on the opposite side. He didn’t know for sure what had left that sign in the snow. The trail meandered like a deer searching here and there for browse. But it could just as well have been a wolf. Nash really didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to walk across the coulee to look. He just wanted to keep the tracks on the far side. The coulee was narrowing, and Nash was forced to walk higher and higher on the hillside to keep his footing on the precipitous walls. He was walking along just below the crest when his father called to him from only a few feet away.
“Glad to see the wolf didn’t eat you, boy. Would have had a hard time explaining that to your mother. Get a bite to eat out of the saddle bag, then come over and help me load up a deer. She was moving ahead of you. We’ll eat well this trip.”
Nash took a loaf of bread from the saddlebags, cut two slices, and slipped a slab of roast venison between them and sat down to eat. Meanwhile, Uriah opened a can of peaches and squatted down next to Nash. Each took turns stabbing the peach halves with his knife. When the fruit was gone, they split the juice, drinking from the can. Canned peaches were a treat, and Nash savored his. When they were done, Uriah tossed the can down into the coulee.
“Give me a hand with the doe, Nash.”
The deer was fat and in fine shape. She had not yet lost her reserve from summer, and a thick layer of white suet lay heavy along her spine.
Uriah and Nash quartered the animal, taking only the hindquarters and the tender steaks that lay along the back. The heart and the liver were dropped into a sack and tied, together with the meat, on Nell behind Nash’s saddle. Had they been nearer home, they would have taken all the deer, loading her into a wagon and carrying her home to hang until she aged. Then they would have processed the meat. But they weren’t home. When they were done, both scrubbed the blood off their hands in the snow.
“Time to go, boy. It’ll be near dark by the time we get to camp.”
Uriah and Nash mounted and nudged their horses into a walk. On the way, Nash told his father about the coulee, about the tracks he had seen. He did not tell his father about the incident in the brush.
Uriah had spent most of the day carving himself into the landscape, trying to disappear into the bush where he was hiding. Only his eyes moved as they searched the landscape for some sign of the wolf. When he breathed, he let the air go so slowly the vapor was not visible. He had been sitting for more than an hour, wriggling his toes to keep the blood flowing through them.
He watched only the upwind course of the coulee. Nothing would be wandering across the plateau to his back. It was too open, too exposed, too dangerous. Besides, any animal downwind would catch his scent and avoid the ambush.
He had been watching the deer for some time. She was meandering slowly, stopping to browse on sage and buck brush poking through the snow. He might not have shot her, but she continued to walk ingenuously toward the bush where he was hidden. It was inevitable that she would catch his scent on the breezes playing through the coulee, and when she did, she would spook. And that would spook any other animals in the vicinity. So he shot her. The slug broke her shoulder, coursed through her lungs and lodged under the rib cage on the other side. She fell immediately, struggling quietly in the snow while the life leaked out of her. Uriah didn’t watch. Instead his eyes searched the walls of the coulee, looking for animals that might have been frightened into flight by the crack of the rifle. But there were none, so Uriah walked over to the stricken doe. She kicked just a little as he cut her throat.
“It was a good thing it took you so long to come up that coulee, Nash,” Uriah said.
Nash looked quizzically at his father.
“Well, I was thinking, Uriah said.” I was eating a piece of jerky and thinking about how cold it is today, and all at once it came to me. The only thing wrong with our plans so far is that I get cold. You do a great job of stumbling around in the brush and chasing the game up to me. That doe was so interested in the racket you were making that she didn’t even notice me, but I was a little uncomfortable sitting up here waiting for you.
“I know your daddy’s comfort is of the utmost importance to you, so I sat here trying to figure out how we could best take advantage of your brush-bucking ability and my penchant for sitting.
“I think I’ve got it worked out. Maybe tomorrow I’ll just stay in camp by the fire and send you out to chase the wolf back to me. That way I won’t get cold. What do you think of that?”
Nash worked hard to nip the grin that was trying to take root in his face. “Well, Dad, I think that’s a good idea,” he said. “But I hate the idea of you sitting out in the cold with just a fire to keep you warm. Maybe you should just stay in bed and leave the flap to the lean-to untied. I could drive the wolf in to you, and you could run your socks under his nose until he passed out.”
“I like your thinking, boy, but maybe I should carry a stick, just in case the socks don’t work.”
“I’ve been in the lean-to at night,” Nash retorted. “The socks will do just fine.”
Uriah whooped, and the two rode away from the coulee with the sound of their laughter surrounding them. It was still light when they dropped off the ridge into the campsite on Dry Creek, but for a moment Nash thought they had come to the wrong place.
The night before the camp had been full. This afternoon it looked like a gold camp after the color ran out. Bullsnake and Maxwell were still there with Flynn and three or four others, but fully half the camp had gone. Then, as though to fill the vacuum left by the others, there was a newcomer. He was sitting on a log at the edge of the camp, huddled in a dark blanket.
Flynn walked up as the two reined in their horses near their lean-to. “Glad to see you back. Getting a little lonesome. I was beginning to think I’d only have Maxwell and old Hiss and Vinegar for company.”
“What happened to the crowd?” Uriah asked.
“Oh, that was a sad thing,” Flynn replied. “Some of them had a bad feeling during the night that something was wrong on the old homestead. Some of them thought their horses were looking a little sickly. Some of them said they didn’t like the idea of killing the wolf anyway. But I figure that most of them were just a little scared.” Flynn stopped for a moment, eyeing the meat tied behind Nash’s saddle. “I’ve got about half a bottle of whiskey left. I’d be happy to sacrifice some of that nectar for a couple of those loin steaks.”
“No need for the whiskey,” Uriah said. “I was going to spread the steaks around a little anyway. You’re welcome to what you can eat. Come on back in an hour or so, and we’ll fry some up.”
Flynn grinned his thanks and walked off toward his tent.
Nash and Uriah busied themselves, unloading the meat. They put the haunches in a double burlap sack and hung it from a nearby tree. The sack would keep magpies out of the meat, and it hung high enough to discourage whatever scavengers might come into camp.
“I’ll bed the horses,” Uriah said. “You might go down and get some water. Ask the newcomer if he wants some meat. Maxwell and Bullsnake can come over here and ask if they want some.”
Nash grabbed some kindling and a page from the Sears Roebuck catalogue and started a fire on last night’s ashes. The wood was dry and burst into flame. Nash added larger and larger sticks, building a bed of coals for cooking later. Then he picked up the big blue enameled coffeepot by the bail and began walking toward the creek. He had taken only a few steps when he hesitated and changed directions, moving toward the man wrapped and invisible in the dark blanket.
Nash approached the figure with more than a little trepidation. He was at that awkward age between childhood and adulthood. He didn’t yet feel easy in the company of strangers, and given the chance, he would have preferred hanging back and letting his father do the talking. That hesitancy increased as he neared the stranger. The blanket was not a blanket but a buffalo robe. Nash had seen enough of them draped over furniture at the Jeffries home to recognize that. The robe hung over the man’s head like a hood, only the tips of his feet were showing, and those feet were clad not in boots but in moccasins. Indian! The man, if it did indeed prove to be a man, was an Indian.
5
It wasn’t that Nash had not seen Indians before. He had, most of them scattered like debris around the rowdier saloons in Billings. In daylight they hid in their trade blankets and at night in alcohol. They were always there, blanket recriminations, ashes of a people.
And there was that time at the homestead. It was summer, and Nash was too young yet to work in the fields. He had done his morning chores and was spending his free time until evening chores “underfoot,” as his mother said. Bored with the events unfolding in the kitchen, Nash had stepped out onto the porch—and there they were. Two families wrapped in rags, borne by a wagon. They sat there silently, the patience of ages on their faces, and then Mary was standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Nobody moved. Each was waiting for a cue from the other. Finally, the oldest Indian stood in the wagon and pointed to his belly. “Food,” he said, his hand moving in an arc encircling those quiet staring faces behind him. Nash was fascinated. A wagonload of people, men, women, and children, and not a flicker of life or hope. Only stoicism. Nash’s attention was so focused on those faces that he didn’t hear the horse’s hooves at first. It wasn’t until the faces on the wagon turned toward the sound that Nash really heard the clatter of hooves.
