After all his furious and futile effort Charley was so possessed by insane rage that he turned his eyes, bloodshot and filled with l sweat, on his rifle. Seizing it, he ran cursing to the beast, thrust the muzzle against the skull, and pulled the trigger. The forelegs collapsed; the mule then rested on its belly, with its big bony head laid out on the earth.
About noon Sam slipped into Charley’s hideout. Charley, like all mountain men who spent a part of their time hiding and watching for the enemy, had heard Sam coming and was waiting for him, concealed, left elbow on left knee, rifle cocked and aimed at the sound. Sam was only fifty feet from him when Charley stepped forth. Then in his awkward loose-limbed shuffling gait he came forward, his eyes bugged out with suspicion and welcome, his tongue saying, "Wall now, if it ain’t you. I thought mebbe you was one of them Whigs and danged if I can stand a Whig. I heerd you got rubbed out down on Santy Fe."
The words revealed to Sam a part of what he wanted to know. He had never been down on the Santa Fe and Charley had no reason to believe that he had. According to Sam’s reasoning, the words said that Charley knew that Sam had been far south and that this past winter he had possibly been killed. Who could have told him that, except the Crows?
"Who said I was on the Santy Fe?"
"I don’t rightly recollect," Charley said. "Wa1l, doggone your buckskin, git down, git down, and smoke a peace pipe."
A woman had come forward from her hiding place in the trees, a Crow, with narrow forehead, high cheekbones, eyes too close together, heavy lips and chin. She looked young but overfat, unclean, and stupid.
"Where ya off to?" asked Charley, looking up at Sam, who still sat on his horse. "And cuss my forked tongue, ain’t this Mick Boone’s bay?"
"You might be right," Sam said.
"I heerd Mick loves this horse moren himself."
"Just borrowed it," Sam said. He thought it best to force Charley to do most of the talking. Dismounting, he put his rifle in its buckskin harness, led the bay and packhorses over to trees and hitched them, and turned, his pipe and tobacco in his hands. "All right, let’s have the pipe of peace."
Charley was no fool. His intuitions were quick and sharp; Sensing the double meaning in Sam’s words, he must have decided to lay his cards on the table, for he now said: "Heerd ya had a woman. Where is she?"
Sam was tamping his pipe. He now met Charley’s pale-blue gaze and the two men looked into the eyes of one another a long moment. "Who told you?" Sam said.
"Don’t recollect that neither. Mighta been Bill, mighta been Hank."
Sam looked up at the squaw, who was ready with a live ember. Both men sucked flame into their pipes and smoke into their lungs; blew streams of smoke out through nostrils and between lips; looked again into one another’s eyes; and pressed the burning tobacco down in the bowls. Deciding that it was useless to fence with this sly treacherous man and not much caring whether he learned a lot or a little, Sam said: "Dead. The Crows killed her. " In that moment Sam looked at Charley’s eyes but Charley was suddenly busy with his pipe.
Then for an instant he met Sam’s gaze and said, "Crows? Ya mean the Sparrowhawks? I find that onreasonable, Sam." After half a minute while both men smoked, Charley said: "Who tole you?"
"Moccasins."
During the five minutes they had been sitting by the fire, smoking and sparring, Sam had observed the position of Charley’s weapons and of his squaw. At his waist Charley had a revolver and a knife; his rifle was about eight feet behind him, leaning against camp trappings; and a wood hatchet lay within reach of his right hand. On sitting, Sam had not loosened his knife in its sheath: if he had to fight he did not intend to use a knife. He had been aware from the first that he might have to fight, for it was well-known over the whole Crow country that Charley was a friend of the Crows and an unpredictable man. He could blow hot and turn murderous in an instant.
The squaw stood at Charley’s right and a little back. Her right foot was only eighteen inches from the hatchet.
"It wasn’t only my wife," Sam said. "My unborn son too."
Charley again tinkered with his pipe. It was all his sense of the proper could bear to hear a whiteman call a red Injun his wife. But the son! Half-breed children were, for him, a species of animal only slightly above the greaser. With a thin smile in his beard that was close to a smirk Charley said, "Jist how on earth could ya tell it was a son?”
"The pelvic bones," Sam said. He had been keeping his eye on the squaw. He knew that she had never taken her black gaze off him, and he wondered if she had a knife hidden in her leather clothing. Charley was pulling at his pipe and looking at Sam. Sam decided that he might as well say what he had come to say.
"I figgered you might know who it was," he said.
"Wall now,” said Charley, taking the pipe from his yellow teeth. "Doggone it, Sam, how would I know? It was the Rapahoes, if ya ask me."
"It was the Sparrowhawks," Sam said, using that word instead of Crows so that Charley would not boil over. "I expect I’l1 take my vengeance and I thought they just as well know it. I thought mebbe you’d like to tell them. You can tell them this, if you want to, that if the ones who did it will come out and face me, three at a time, all of us with no weapons, I’ll leave the others alone. If the chief won’t send the murderers out I intend to make war on the whole nation."
Charley took the pipe away from his teeth and left his mouth open. "The whole nation. Jist you?"
"Jist me," Sam said.
"So that’s why ya have Mick’s bay."
"Mebbe." Sam rose to his feet. "I figger the sooner you let the chief know the better it will be. I don’t intend to give him much time for medicine and powwows."
Charley stood up. "Wall now, Sam, ain’t ya a little onreasonable? The Sparrowhawks are good fighters. Ya know that. I figger ya will be gone beaver almost before ya git to the
Yellerstone."
"I might be gone beaver before the next Canada geese come over but there will be some bones for the wolves to pick; And don’t forget to tell the chief that I’ll leave my mark. I don’t want anyone blamed for what I do."
"A mark," said Charley, looking at Sam. He seemed fascinated. "And what," he asked softly, "will the mark be?"
"I’ll take the right ear."
"The right ear," said Charley, staring.
"Besides the skelp," Sam said.
"Wall, I’ll bc doggone," said Charley.
13
IT WAS FOUR redmen that he saw sitting by a camphre after dark, three days after he had left Charley. Sam had sensed the presence of Indians an hour earlier and had hidden his beasts in a thicket and gone forward as the wolf goes—among whitemen of the West the scout was known as the wolf. On each foot he had three moccasins of different sizes. He thought a small war party was there by the fire, on its way to another tribe to steal horses and take scalps; or that it was returning, with a scalp or two at its belt. The warriors would be smoking their pipes and thinking of themselves as very brave men. Perhaps they had feasted on buffalo loin. If their bellies were full they might be a little sleepy ....