Quaternity Page 22

  “Where you headed with this bundle?” he asked.

  “The Territory of Montana.”

  The clerk stared in admiration. “You that new deputy marshal Judge Creighton done hired, ain’t you?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Good luck,” the clerk said. “Last man the judge hired was skun by rustlers. Goddamn if he don’t chew through men faster than a javelina eats pecans.”

  Marwood was ready to pull out by the tail end of the next day. Judge Creighton met him on the street in the rain. They shook hands.

  “I will see you in Fort Benton,” Creighton said.

  “Yes, sir,” Marwood replied. “I guess you will.”

  Marwood left Pueblo on his new bay gelding. That night he camped on top of a caprock somewhere between Pueblo and Auraria. He ate a pan of cornbread and greasy side meat. Beneath the stars he watched snow-capped crowns glimmer in the northwest—the eastern reaches of the Rockies.

  In Camp Collins he was told about a little-known pass that would cut 150 miles off his journey if he hit it before it froze up. He went through, riding well above the timberline. At night he huddled under his horse, blowing on his freezing hands and cursing Creighton and the world. He was cold, tired, and hungry, but also happy.

  It took him seven days to climb through snow and rock ledges encrusted with thick shale ice. At one point he had to chop his way through five yards of ice wall with a hand axe. He came down the other side and the air warmed, and he rode through forests of dead pine for two days and two nights running.

  He glanced up and saw the dead trees converge at a centre point in the sky. The only other living things were ravens gliding between the trees, and chipmunks chattering at him from mossy stones.

  He rode past breaks and ledges of limestone and quartz, and passed a shelf unearthed by some ancient upheaval. Preserved in the rock were tracks of antediluvian monsters that had roamed the earth before man. Marwood ran his fingers along the depressions, trying to read the size and structure of these animals. Later, he entered an aspen forest and rode through white pillars and green canopies. He came into the wide-open territory of Wyoming on Thanksgiving Day. In Billings an official telegram was waiting for him. He replied, and when he went to bed that night he thought of the men he would kill in Tomah.

  He rode ’tween the Gallatin and Bridger mountain ranges. Upon emerging from the Bozeman Pass, after being snowed in for four scary days, he saw Cibola.

  He got off his horse and held the reins, waiting for the mirage to disappear.

  But it did not vanish. It was Cibola. Gold ramparts and spires of sparkling onyx. It lifted from the ground like a translucent bubble. He looked up. The stars were different, and he did not recognize them until they changed back and Cibola was gone, and he was back in the world again.

  On Christmas morning, 1869, he tied up outside a taproom in Tomah. A thin snow mixed with light rain was falling. He got off his horse and checked the loads in his gun. He pinned the badge to his vest. He pushed through the batwing doors and stood in the smoky red barroom light.

  “I am looking for Henry Pickett and the Ketchum brothers.”

  Three men standing by the bar turned around. One of them carried a Spencer rifle with a fresh Indian scalp hanging from its brass butt plate.

  Marwood came out of the saloon five minutes later and walked across Last Chance Gulch, a mud street that meandered between tapped-out gold claims. There was a large mud-spattered U.S. Army surplus tent with sod cloth in the back of Reeder’s Alley. Marwood went inside, sat down, and ordered biscuits and black coffee.

  Gold miners and Chinese labourers crowded the tent opening. Marwood looked up from his breakfast—the canvas storm flap dropped back down and they were gone.

  A waiter came by to refill his coffee cup. “They are carrying those men out of the saloon now,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “You centre-cut every one of them. They’ll wait until it stops raining before they bury them.”

  “That so.”

  “You looking for a place to stay?”

  “I’m going to need a room. I don’t know if Judge Creighton has made arrangements.”

  “There’s a hotel off Reeder’s Alley. My brother-in-law works there. He can set you up nice.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “You need anything else, you only have to ask, Marshal.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” Marwood took out his wallet.

  “No, sir,” the waiter said. “This one is on the house.” He turned and left.

  Marwood drank his coffee. There wasn’t a lot of light here; tin candleholders were fixed to the wooden frame. A striking young woman sat beside a dripping tallow candle on the far side of the tent. She wore a crisp white blouse with a dark green jacket and a long heavy skirt. Her auburn hair was caught up at the back of her head with a tortoiseshell comb. She saw him looking at her and rose from her table and walked across the packed mud floor. She sat down opposite Marwood and arched her dark eyebrows at him.

  “You’re the new marshal we’ve been expecting,” she said.

  “Yes, I guess I am he.”

  She spooned sugar into his coffee cup and stirred it slowly. “You and me will be good friends.” She smiled.

  CHAPTER 25

  It had started to snow heavily. Marwood watched it pile up outside the hotel window. It was a year to the day he’d been suffering in Rex Brookstone’s mud pit.

  The woman he’d met in the tent stood in front of the window in his room wearing a white cotton linen chemise with pin tucks and French lace. Her name was Carlene Minker. She had green eyes and long, dark lashes. She said she thought she had a husband somewhere, but he was out killing buffalo or being killed by Lakota Indians—she didn’t care which.

  “I haven’t seen him in eighteen months,” she said. “Last I heard he was trapping for skins up around the Bitterroot Range and had himself a squaw wife. I never did use his name when we got married anyway.”

  Carlene stood at the foot of the four-poster bed. She bunched the linen of her chemise and wiped between her legs. When she let the material fall back into place there was a wet spot where her slim fingers had probed herself. She reached up to pin her loose hair. Her breasts lifted under the dirty chemise.

  “I don’t mind being your woman,” she said. “But if Clete comes back you’ll have to kill him. He ain’t going to like what we did.”

  “I thought you said you haven’t seen your husband in eighteen months.”

  “He might come back.” She finished fussing with her hair and faced him. “He will come back.”

  Marwood grabbed her wrist and pulled her to bed. She sat on the edge of the mattress, pale-limbed, loose red hair smelling of stale perfume and sweat. It was cold in the room and she had goose bumps on her arms.

  “We can live here in this room if that is what you want,” she said.

  “That is what I want.”

  She looked at her hand in his, and his strong fingers. “I guess that’s the way I want things, too,” she said quietly.

  Lawing in Montana Territory kept Marwood busy, with little time for self-reflection. The years passed quickly enough, and his knowledge and talent for the job grew alongside his reputation. Judge Creighton handed him warrants, and Marwood went out after the men and brought them back. Most days Carlene was waiting for him when he got back, even when he sometimes didn’t want her around. But for the most part he accepted his fluid relationship with her; she asked very little of him and he was not the kind of man who gave a lot. The only thing hanging over them was the ever-present danger of her husband returning.

  It was 1873 and he was down around the Three Forks when two Mandan Indians rode into his camp. One was the old man from Piedras Negras but dressed this time in heavy buffalo skins. The other, at his side, was his interpreter, a rail-t
hin boy of nine wearing white cotton duck pants and a shirt that hung below his waist.

  “My grandfather says it is time to come to the village,” the boy said. They squatted beside Marwood’s campfire without invitation. “You must come when the trees leaf out.”

  Marwood studied the old man. He asked the boy, “Who is your grandfather? I have seen him before.”

  The boy spoke to his grandfather briefly. The man replied at length.

  “His name is White Sky Heart, the last son of Mato-tope,” said the boy. “He is a man of great medicine power. He knows the sun, the wind, the sky, and how to use their medicine. He says we will take you to the great Medicine Lodge. You will fast for four days and you will be lifted into the arms of the sun. There you will find the path you have lost. We do this because it is our path, too. That’s what he says, mister.”

  The boy listened to his grandfather speak again. He turned back to Marwood. “My grandfather wants you to know this is a journey which will change you for all time. It changes all men. Some die, but those who live through it are forever changed.”

  The old man spoke again. The boy listened carefully, nodded, and translated the words.

  “There are two worlds,” he said. “There is this world of rock, water, and sun. When a man dies he crosses into the Spirit World. When this happens, sometimes a spirit will cross back the other way, into this world, where he does not belong. This has happened. There can only be one Numank Maxana. One must die so the other can find peace.”

  The old man had finished speaking. The boy looked at Marwood and shook his head.

  “I do not understand everything my grandfather says, mister. But this is something he has waited for his entire life. He believes it is the reason he was born, and when his work is done, it will be the reason he dies. I do not want my grandfather to die. I love him. But this is a stone in his heart he must dislodge. He has asked me to help him. So I will help him.”

  “What is your name, boy?”

  “I am William Red Corn.” He pulled his canvas shirt aside to reveal a wooden cross attached to a leather thong. He smiled broadly. “I am made Christian.”

  “Son,” Marwood said, “I can’t ride clear across country because some old Indian spirit man says so. I am a U.S. Deputy Marshal. I have to have a pretty good reason before I do something like that.”

  The boy thought this over. “A reason of the law?”

  “That would help.”

  “There are hunters in our country. They kill many buffalo. One day they will be gone, and so will the People.”

  “I’m sorry, William, but that’s not good enough for the U.S. government. In fact, it’s what they want.”

  William Red Corn thought another long while. He scratched his head and poked at the fire with a curved stick. Finally he made up his mind. He was young, but his face was solemn.

  “There is a very cruel buffalo hunter,” he began. “He is a white man from Illinois. He poaches on herds hunted by the People, and shoots other white buffalo hunters for their hides. He shot one buffalo hunter in the head, but the gun misfired. The ball hung in the barrel and the powder scorched the man’s scalp, knocking him cold. The man he shot was my cousin, Jumping Elk Smith. But he thought my cousin was dead, so he stole the hides and sold them to a field agent.”

  “What is this white man’s name?”

  “I do not know him,” William Red Corn said. “But he is called Clete Stride by those who do.”

  Marwood told Carlene over breakfast what he was planning to do. “Judge Creighton signed the warrant last night. I have to go get him,” he said.

  She watched him across the table. “Clete is not the kind of man who’s easy to get,” she said.

  “Carlene, do you still love him?”

  She looked down at her plate of food. “I told you I was your woman now,” she answered. “If you have to bring him in then I guess that’s the way it has to be.” She looked up. “I will be here when you get back, John. I will always be here.”

  A month later, as the trees were beginning to leaf, Marwood and the old man and his grandson rode into the Mandan village. There were many round earthen lodges, with two-room log cabins and sun-bleached tipis on a high bluff overlooking a gunmetal river. The large earthen lodges were placed in a circle around a central plaza. In the middle of the square stood a solitary cedar post.

  White Sky Heart pointed at the sacred post. “Numank Maxana,” he said. Marwood felt a hollow pit start to form in his stomach.

  They rode past old women pounding corn in stone bowls. Others used bone scapulas as gardening hoes, and deer antlers to rake and till the rich earth.

  They dismounted outside a buffalo-hide tent. William Red Corn brought the horses to a corral with a snubbing post. When he returned he said his grandfather wanted Marwood to undress.

  “Where is Clete Stride? He’s who I came for.”

  “He is not here right now,” William said. “He is out on the plains killing buffalo.”

  “Look, boy, I am not here to play games with this old man. I don’t want to be incapacitated and have that killer come back on me.”

  “No white man will enter our village during the celebration,” William Red Corn assured him. “He would be stopped, or most likely killed. Would that not also suit your purpose?”

  Marwood stared at the old man. During the long ride here he had spent many an hour in conversation with the grandfather, with William acting as translator. He wasn’t sure the man’s motives were entirely above board, but standing here, with the sun in the sky and the people crowding around him, a sense of calm infused his soul that he had never before experienced.

  Whatever was going to happen to him in this village, he knew it was the right thing. He had his whole life to study on this question and had yet to see any light in the dark. It was time to find answers to the questions that plagued him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now that he was here, he could not under any circumstance imagine walking out of the village and returning to Tomah.

  “Show me what you have,” he told the old man.

  Inside the buffalo-hide tent was a large wicker basket shaped like a washing tub. William Red Corn built a roaring fire outside the tent. He used the fire to heat heavy round stones.

  Marwood undressed. Under the grandfather’s direction he stepped inside the wicker basket and sat down. His heart was beating hard. White Sky Heart crushed handfuls of sage and medicinal leaves, and tossed them into the basket with Marwood.

  When the stones were hot and splintering, William Red Corn used a forked stick to roll them inside the sweat tent. His grandfather threw more crushed sage on the rocks and doused them with water. The rocks splintered. Roiling, fragrant steam filled the tent.

  Marwood’s pores opened. He bent his head and gasped for air. Balls of sweat dripped off his chin onto his naked chest. He thought of his life—the parts he could remember—and wondered what more he could learn.

  He was honest enough to admit he was afraid what the answers might be.

  Once the steam bath was complete, the old grandfather brought him outside and sluiced him with gourds full of ice-cold water. Marwood shivered like he had ague. William Red Corn handed him a wool blanket to chafe his limbs and shoulders and get his blood running through his veins.

  Marwood’s head spun from the extraordinary bath. Something in those leaves had stolen his senses. It was like he was drunk. He let himself be pulled through the raucous village, heard music and singing all around him. People danced. They came up to him and danced and moved away in wild gyrations that had meaning to everyone but him. There were so many things going on around him, bright colours and brighter sounds, he could not keep track of it all.

  His head swimming, they brought him to a big Medicine Lodge on the north side of the village plaza. It had a square smoke hole at the top. There stood other
men waiting patiently for his arrival. These were the village leaders and elders from disparate clans, here to bear witness.

  Marwood was led across an extended porch into the middle of the lodge hall. Willow boughs and ceremonial bundles of crushed sage were scattered here and there on the earthen floor. Intermingled with these were buffalo skulls, horse skulls, and not a few human skulls, with their dark, empty eye sockets and bony grins. In the centre of the ring, arranged on a tree stump like the instruments of an amateur surgeon, lay bone skewers, thin wooden splints, and a sharp scalping knife.

  A thick wooden beam went across the roof; it was supported by four massive wooden columns with packed earth and heavy square stones at their base. Long cords of buffalo hide hung from the central beam like the crinkled skins of dead snakes.

  They were not alone in this place. Other men were waiting for them in the smoky chamber. These strangers sat around the circumference of the lodge puffing long wooden pipes, watching Marwood and talking quietly among themselves. Marwood was led to the place of honour in the ring. There he sat alone.

  Outside the lodge, the Mandan people sang and danced and feasted. Sometimes Marwood heard loud shrieks and screams and people running, followed by more dancing, and more energetic music.

  He did not eat or sleep for four days. He was allowed to lie on a buffalo skin when he became too weak to sit up, but never to sleep. His eyes burned in his face like embers. His mind was aflame. His tongue was so swollen with thirst he could not swallow.

  He started off counting the number of times he saw the sun appear in the square smoke hole of the lodge. By the third day he lost interest in this activity. Things like sun and light and smoke didn’t mean anything in this world. He knew that now. He laughed at one point because he recognized their absurdity. All that mattered was the bone and heart and blood of man living. Everything else was lies and shadow.

  Several attendants entered the lodge. They were ceremonially dressed in skins and bright feathers, their bodies painted in mingled colours and mystic signs and portents. Someone stood up and called Marwood’s name. But it was not the name of John Marwood, but that of another, in a tongue he did not recognize yet understood, as if from some ancient particle of memory that had floated to the top of his consciousness.