blacks if doing so eased their own inner demons. January had met those, too.
And if Rose was here, where she and he both longed for her to be, he knew he'd be insane with worry for her safety.
He knew this world of tribes and beaver and silence and birds would enthrall her. She wouldn't rest, he thought, until she'd talked Jim Bridger into taking her north to the valley of the Yellowstone - Blackfeet or no Blackfeet - to see the hidden mysteries at the heart of the continent of which the trapper had spoken to him last night. Strange geothermal vents, smoking mud-pits, geysers spouting steaming water thirty feet into the air. Waterfalls like walls of lace, hot springs and a mountain of glass and yellow rock, seen only by the Blackfeet, the grizzlies, the wolves.
The coulee dropped away before them, filled with shadow. He smelled water below, but no scent of smoke. The Dutchman would be making a cold camp. Frye and Morning Star moved off in opposite directions along the crest, leaving January just far enough down the slope himself that he wouldn't be sky lined, to hold the horses and watch for Blackfeet. He saw no dust in the air, but that didn't mean they weren't ahead of them, somewhere in the creek bed among the thin trees and shadows. No sound.
As the last light faded the young mountaineer climbed back up to him: 'Don't see a damn thing.' And, when Morning Star melted out of the darkness a few moments later, he asked - combining English with the signs universal to the tribes of the Plains: 'What you think about us cuttin' straight down to the creek, so we'll at least have it ourselves if they ain't there?'
Morning Star answered, small brown hands seeming to pluck ideas from the thin moonlight. 'They'll be upstream or down, not opposite where they entered the coulee. They must go up it tomorrow, to meet the Beauty, but there will be more water further down.'
It would be pitch dark in the woods, and having left camp when they had, January hadn't thought to bring a lantern. Not that he'd be fool enough to use one on this side of the river. They descended, cautiously, keeping as close to the edge of the trees - and the flicker of moonlight - as they could.
The wind eased. In its wake, the stillness gritted with the sudden, faint taste of smoke.
And with knife-gash suddenness, a man's scream of agony ripped the night.
Chapter 15
Frye gasped, 'Fuck me . . .'
The second scream was worse, like the bellowing of an animal trapped in burning barn.
The Blackfeet.
Shaw.
For a few moments January felt as if he couldn't breathe.
'Downstream.' Morning Star's voice was barely more than the siffle of the wind. Her small hand touched January's elbow in the darkness, guiding him up the coulee and away.
January pulled his arm free. 'We have to get him.'
'You think he will be in any state to run, should you do so?'
You'll hear me hollerin' . . .
'I won't leave him.'
Her face was no more than a blur in the shadow as she tilted her head. 'Will you die then, and tell his ghost all about your friendship?'
She was absolutely right, and January felt sick with shock. Dear God, silence him! Dear God, let him die.
He knew damn well that Abishag Shaw was too tough to die anytime soon. And the Blackfeet too skilled.
'The least I can do is shoot him from cover.'
'Hell, pilgrim,' said Frye, when January told the young trapper in English what he planned to do, 'I seen you shoot.' He puffed his chest a little in an attempt to sound like Jim Bridger. It would have been laughable if January hadn't heard in his voice how terrified he was. 'No man's gonna say Bo Frye left a feller to be gutted an' minced by the Blackfeet. Waugh! Damn it,' he added, looking around sharply, and when January followed his gaze he saw that Morning Star was gone. 'Where'd that squaw get to? You don't think she guided us here a-purpose—?'
'She's a Sioux.' January didn't feel at all certain, now that she was gone, of his own words. 'And she's my partner's wife. Her uncle was killed by the Blackfeet.'
Frye made a little noise in his throat - 'Huh . . .' - but it was impossible now to see his face. Only a pallid dapple of moonlight leaked through the boughs overhead; the gulch below was