In a few days, the trail was going to get leaner and meaner and in many spots, the going would be slowed.
Preacher sat his saddle for several minutes, just content to look at the land that rose and fell all around him. A feeling, sort of a sadness, came over him that after this journey, it would never be the same. Oh, the land would be here for thousands of years after his bones had turned to dust, he knew that. But…in a strange way, it would not. With the coming of the white man, it would all change. Already it was changing. Although Preacher did not know it, he was already fast becoming an anachronism. As were Steals Pony, Snake, and Blackjack. Their time had come, and it had gone.
Preacher took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick shock of hair. He wondered what this country would be like fifty years down the trail. Houses, farms, fences, probably. The buffalo would be gone, and so would the free-roaming Indians. Back east, they’d already been put in reservations and left to rot.
“Wait ’til the Army tries to do that with the Plains’ Injuns,” he muttered. “They’ll find that’s easier to say than do.”
He turned his horse and headed back to the wagons, reaching them just as they had finished circling for the night’s camp and were seeing to the mules, horses, and oxen.
Blackjack and the other mountain men, Rupert included, had them a little fire going off to one side and the coffee was near to boilin’. Steals Pony had killed a buffalo that afternoon and they would have fresh steaks and the tongue for their evening meal. Since the kill had been made close to the wagons, he had been able to salvage all parts of the buffalo and had even given the hide to a lady to scrape.
She had promptly given it right back.
“Behaved as though it insulted her,” Steals Pony groused. “It’s a fine skin and would make a wonderful robe. I thought I was doing her a favor. I have discovered that white women are very strange.”
“Where’s the skin?” Preacher asked, a twinkle in his eyes.
“Right over there,” Steals Pony pointed.
Blackjack looked at him. “What are you gonna do, Preacher? You got a funny twink in your eyes.”
“Have me some fun.”
Preacher got the dullest knife he had out of his pack and then shouldered the heavy skin and located Faith, sitting with Eudora and Wallis. He plopped the skin down beside her and she immediately wrinkled her pretty little nose.
“Get that disgusting thing away from me!”
“Scrape it,” Preacher told her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said scrape it for me. Make me a fine robe. It’ll be cold time we get to the mountains. You might want to snuggle up in there with me.”
“What!” she shrieked.
“You heard me.” He tossed the knife on the ground beside her. “Use that an’ be careful. Don’t punch through the hide.”
Eudora had to turn her head away to hide her laughter. She knew there was something building between Faith and Preacher. She’d seen that way back in Missouri.
“Scrape all the scraps of meat and fat offen that and then I’ll be back and show you what to do next. It’ll take you about a week, I ’magine.”
“This thing still has fleas on it!” Faith yelled, kicking at the robe.
“They’ll leave. They just ain’t realized their home is dead. Get to work, woman.”
“I most certainly will not! Scrape your own damn buffalo hide.”
“I thought you liked me.” Preacher did his best to look hurt.
Faith picked up the knife and slowly rose to her feet. She advanced menacingly toward Preacher. He beat a hasty retreat, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll be back for my robe in about a week, dear.”
“Dear!” Faith shrieked. She threw the knife at him and just missed a laughing Steals Pony. Faith took a step backward and her foot snagged on the buffalo hide. She sat down right in the middle of the hide and did a fairly respectable job of cussing.
Back at their fire, Steals Pony speared himself a hunk of buffalo steak and said, “I say again, white women are very, very strange.”
“Somebody help me drag this stinking damn thing off and burn it!” The voice of Faith could be clearly heard throughout the circled wagons.
The wagons rolled on, now taking a northwesterly route, and still following the Platte. Indians were spotted several times, but they made no hostile moves and the westward movers did the same.
“Dakota,” Blackjack said to the women driving the wagon beside which he was riding. “Sioux to you. All kinds of Sioux.”
“I’ve read they are fierce,” Maude said.
“You read right. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Blackfoot, the Arapaho…they can be right hostile if they take a mind to it.”
“Why don’t they attack?”
“That’s a question that only an Injun could answer. They’s been times when I rid right past an Injun village and they didn’t do nothin’ ’cept look at me. Other times they’ve chased me for miles, hollerin’ and yellin’ and shootin’ arrows at me. They’s a notional bunch for a fact. Them over yonder might be lookin’ for Crow. They don’t like each other much.”
“Why?”
“Damned if I know. Probably goes back five hundred years. I’ve heared a dozen different reasons for the feud.
“If the white man would treat them with respect, they could reason with and live with these Plains Injuns. But the white man won’t treat an Injun as equal. White man is arrogant. To a white man, if it’s different, it’s wrong. And that’s why all the trouble. It’s got to be the white man’s way, or no way.”
Blackjack rode on ahead and Steals Pony rode up. “Is it difficult being a part of two cultures, Steals Pony?” Agnes asked the Delaware.
“Not for me,” the Indian replied. “I just take the best of both worlds and reject what’s left.”
“But you’re educated. That makes a difference.”
“True. In many cases. But you would be surprised at the number of whites who don’t even know me, but resent, fear, and reject me just because I am Indian.”
“Well, you will have to admit, there aren’t that many Indians living in Boston or New York.”
Steals Pony smiled and cut his eyes to her. “You would be surprised how many are there, lady. They just cut their hair and adopt the language, dress, and customs of the white man. It is a white man’s world. It doesn’t make a bit of difference if, as in this situation, where you are few and the Indian is many, it is still a white man’s world and it always will be. Whether you be a red man or a black man or a yellow man, if you wish to get along, you must adopt the white man’s ways, or there will always be trouble. That is something the Indian must accept, or the whites will destroy him.”
“You don’t sound at all bitter about that.”
“Oh, I’m not. Often amused, but never bitter. One changes with the whims of the white man. That is the way it shall be. Resist that, and one becomes an outsider and is shunned.”
“Will the savages ever learn that?” Maude asked.
The Delaware smiled at the term “savages,” but knew she meant no disrespect toward him. “No.” He frowned. “Well, doubtful, at best. And in an ever-changing climate, to cling to old ways that are suspicious, out-of-step, or seemingly hostile to those in power is a very stupid thing to do. One must constantly adapt. There will be much blood spilled before the white man settles the west.”
“The blood of both the Indians and the whites,” Agnes said.
“Yes. But much more red blood than white blood. One of the reasons so many tribes hate the Crow is because the Crow learned very quickly that to fight the white man was foolish. The Crow decided to work with the white man. A very smart move on their part. But you wait and see. The white man will still stick the Crow on reservations. They will not allow them to become a part of their society. My words will be truth. You wait and see.”