The Shirt On His Back

Chapter 21



January dove instead for the fire, dragging Frye out by the arm, and even as he did it he knew it would cost him his escape. At the same moment Hannibal snatched up one of the buffalo-hide apishamores, flung it over the man's burning clothes, and January saw the young trapper's eyes roll back and the blood stream out of his mouth. By that time Indians were coming out of the darkness on the west side of the island from the camp, as well as the side toward the mountains. January swatted the first one with the burning buffalo-hide. A rifle crashed - Veinte-y-Cinco? - and in the instant that the attackers hesitated, Hannibal flung another saddle blanket over the fire and, in the sudden darkness, grabbed January's wrist, dragged him the length of the island and plunged into the river.

The skies let loose with rain.

Boaz Frye hadn't been wrong. The river was coming up like Noah's Flood. January fought to keep his head above water, felt the current grab him, snags of dead wood and broken trees ramming like live things stampeding. Hannibal's hand was still on his wrist, and January reversed the grip, catching the fiddler's thin arm and throwing his other arm over the first thing that felt like a substantial log that slammed into him in the dark.

And it was dark, pitch-black, even when his head broke the surface. Rain hammered his face, and he could see nothing of either mountains or sky. He could feel the log he'd caught hold of was good-sized, and he half-hauled himself clear of the water, pulling Hannibal up beside him. The log promptly turned turtle, ducking him under and smiting him on the head with a branch. January clung, scrambled, gasping; he felt Hannibal drag himself up on to the thrashing mass of wood and then, still holding tight to January's arm, drop over the other side. January hauled himself up higher as something cracked at his legs underwater, grasping sinuously like sea serpents - tree branches? Then something that was definitely a rock gouged his calf.

He pressed his face to the wood, and tried not to feel the broken branch-stump that dug into his chest. There better not be any snakes in this log.

At least there aren 't gators in the river.

Rose, he thought. Rose, don't worry. I'll be home. He saw her - brief and complete, as if he stood next to her wicker chair on the gallery, with a lamp beside her and mosquito- veiling hanging off her wide-brimmed hat - and folded the memory, with its thought and peace, down into a tiny fragment, and concentrated everything he had into hanging on.

Cold hammering water, and blindness. Chill gnawed his flesh, spread toward the core of his bones - he'd been in the Mississippi, and even the inexorable strength of its currents hadn't been like this awful cold. It's July, how can it be this cold? He couldn't breathe, wondered if Hannibal was dead, there on the end of the arm to which he clung, but there was nothing he could do about it one way or the other except hang on. A wall of water hit him over the head like falling bricks, throwing the whole log under - he clung desperately until another wave threw them up, choking, vomiting up half the river and still hanging on.

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, get me home safe.

Submerged snags tore his legs and feet, river-demon hands tried to drag him off. Two nearly succeeded, his own grip slithering and weak. The rain was like the sky mocking him. Another trough, tons of water pouring over his head like a building falling, no way to tell how long before they'd slam up again like a bucking horse into the air. The broken branch on the log itself seemed filled with a living malice, like the spirit of the tree trying to skewer him. Another current flung them sideways - blackness and water within blackness and water, and the only things real were the wet wood, the jabbing pain, the numb shock of the cold and the arm he held with so violent a desperation that he was surprised he didn't break the fiddler's bones.

Time lost meaning. Each breath was a battle, an event lasting years.

He wasn't even aware of it when the buffeting grew less.

Just the gradual thought intruding: it's not as bad as it was . . . His hands were nearly insensible in the cold, but rain no longer hammered his face. He tried to remember when the rain had stopped, and couldn't, but at least he could breathe. Gleams of silver streaked the black water, though the river still carried them along like a runaway horse; the narrow moon broke the clouds. More snags tore his feet, sea serpents that rolled away when he kicked. Another kick struck gravel. January lowered his body as much as he dared, kicked again downward and felt his moccasin dig in sand, then cracked his knee on a rock. For a long time he struggled to push the log gradually in toward the eastern shore. The current thrust the log back into the main stream like a sullen stupid monster out to drown him.

Then two steps in succession; then three. The bed of the river shallowed underfoot, the log - branches or roots further back, for in the darkness January could see only a long unwieldy bulk behind him - snagged on the bottom. He called over the log, 'Can you make it to shore?' but was a little surprised to hear a reply.

'The wills above be done! - but I'd fain die a dry death.'

Only Hannibal would recall enough of The Tempest to quote it after being dragged through watery hell.

'Hold on. I'll come around for you.' January released his hold on the log, dragged himself around the front end on legs that shook so violently he feared he'd fall and be swept away. He'd meant to go back to help Hannibal ashore if he needed it, but found the fiddler had worked his way along to the front of the log as well, breast deep in the surging water. January had to drag him to shore by the back of his coat.

Then they just lay on the bank among rocks and gravel, the river streaming over their feet, cold to the marrow and more exhausted than January could remember ever being in his life.

'I was distinctly led to believe,' complained Hannibal in a faint voice at last, 'we'd be carried across the Styx in a boat.'

'Charon's had to cut back on expenses because of the bank crash.'

Hannibal started to make some answer, then just lay on the bank and laughed 'til he cried.

'Come on,' said January after a time. 'Let's make a fire before we freeze to death.'

Another break in the cloud showed him the hills looming above them - God knew where they were - and the cottonwoods of the bottomlands rising straight up out of the floodwater like a pitch-dark wall. January pulled Hannibal upright and limped through the belt of trees, the water retreating down his shins until the ground was solid underfoot.

'Was Frye dead?'

January nodded.

'You're sure?'

'I'm sure.' Would I have stayed by him if he'd been still alive, unable to flee, unable to fight? With the Indians coming out of the darkness—? January hoped he would have had the courage to do so, but didn't know. 'Did the ladies get away?'

'I don't know. I saw Pia run for the water . . . Was that the Omahas?'

'Has to have been. Which means,' January added, 'I'm guessing that Frank Boden alias Franz Bodenschatz is Charro Morales. He asked Frye about Irish Mary - he has to have known we wanted that hat. Then suddenly he's asking us to put up with him in his tent? What they don't know won't hurt them? After he was the one who demanded a quarantine? My guess is he was going to tell the camp a touching story about us being swept away when the river rose.'

Hannibal swore, thoughtfully, in classical Greek for a time, and collapsed on to a flat rock. 'So what do we do?' In the moonlight January could see he was shivering in his soaked clothing.

'Build a fire.'

'Shall you recite the magic spells to do that, or shall I?'

'You recite the magic spells to chase the bears away,' said January. 'I'll scrape bark.' He held out his hand, knowing they'd have better luck finding dry wood on higher ground. It was clear, even in the faint moonlight, that the flood had extended all throughout the bottomlands, leaving torn-up branches everywhere and everything soaked. He hauled Hannibal to his feet again.

'How far did we come down, do you think?'

'I'd say we were in the water for close to an hour.' January flexed his hands, felt his way from tree to tree toward the glimmers of light on the higher ground beyond. 'The moon was just past zenith when the clouds covered it over, and I don't think it was much more than an hour after that, that we were hit. Feel the grass,' he added as they came clear of the trees. 'It didn't rain down this far.'

'Thank God for small favors.' For a time there was silence as the two men collected the driest branches they could find, carried them to the edge of the trees. There was a clump of sagebrush large enough to make a sort of windbreak, and behind it, January scratched the wet layer of bark from a piece of dead wood with his knife and scraped a powder of the drier under-bark on to a split bough. Though he could barely walk, Hannibal brought handfuls of dry grass, his breath rasping like a rusty saw. Fingers made clumsy by cold, January struck the fire flint from his belt pouch with the steel. It took him seven or eight tries - laboriously re-scraping bark from time to time - while the night grew colder, but he told himself that if Jim Bridger could make a fire under these conditions, he, Benjamin January, certainly could . . .

'There,' he said at last as the whisper of smoke curled up. 'I owe God my first-born son.' Even as he made the jest he felt a strange shiver: Rose will be close to her time, when I come home.

The warmth that went through him had little to do with the new-flickering blaze.

I will have a first-born son. Or a beautiful daughter . . .

'Well,' remarked Hannibal a bit later, 'I understand now why the ancients worshipped fire.'

Longer silence. They arranged damp wood to dry, dragged the larger boughs to extend the crude shelter. The fire was small - a squaw fire, they'd call it in the camp. January gave thought to who might see it.

'There must have been a bottle of poisoned liquor in old Bodenschatz's coat pocket,' said Hannibal, when he'd warmed up a little. 'They'd all have drunk it - the Dutchman, Fingers Woman, the engages. I expect Clarke found it among the bodies ... I can see him toasting their departing souls with the last gulp left. It's what I'd have done. If Frye thought it was the cholera,' he added quietly, 'castor bean - African coffee - must be bad, mustn't it?'

'It's bad,' January answered. 'It looks a great deal like cholera. Poison wouldn't bring on a fever, but if there were irritation or burning, that would account for their wanting water. You've heard how hard the smallpox struck the Indian villages south of the Platte,' he added. 'And, of course, when we were in Mexico City a few years ago, they all said - the Indios - that it wasn't so much the Spanish that destroyed the old kings and the old gods, as the smallpox. That there were not even enough of the living left to bury the dead . . .'

'Et nous, les os, devenons cendre et pouldre . . . And Bodenschatz would need Indian allies, if he was planning on tracking a man through these mountains.' In the flickering orange light, his thin fingers seemed nearly translucent. 'Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses . . . If you wrong us, shall we not revenge? D'you think they'll be coming after us?'

'They have to be.' January huddled close to the flames, wishing he dared strip off his clothing to let it dry, for the clammy fabric chilled his flesh worse than the cold air would have. 'Right now, all anyone knows in the camp is what Veinte- y-Cinco and Pia have to tell: that we were set on by Indians. But if we come back - if even a whisper goes around the camp that Morales is Boden, and is in league with the Omahas to poison the camp . . .'

Hannibal sighed. 'I was afraid you were going to say that.'



Considering that not only the Omahas would be hunting them, but also that there were Blackfeet somewhere on the east side of the river, January half expected that he would be unable to sleep for as much as a minute between caution and cold. He was dead wrong about that and through the rest of the night, turn and turn about with Hannibal, had to fight not to drop off on guard duty, digging the sharpened end of a stick into the heel of his hand or the calf of his leg to remain awake. Even the gnawing hunger that swept him wasn't sufficient to keep him alert. Morning found him cramped, aching and weak from weariness. Even during the season of sugar harvest, old Michie Simon had fed his cane hands to keep them prime for work. He would have sold Hannibal to the Arabs for a bowl of rice and beans and thrown in Morning Star for lagniappe.

'Shall we cross the river?' asked the fiddler, when the first stains of dawn whitened the freezing air. By the roar of the current on the rocks it hadn't gone down much. 'What are you doing?' Hannibal protested a moment later as January scattered the fire, used the remainder of the dampish wood as a makeshift shovel to bury the coals.

'Trying to avoid sending up a smoke signal,' January returned regretfully, since his clothes were still damp and the morning chill cut like a razor. 'It's light enough to see one now.'

Hannibal made a face and coughed. His body was racked with shivers, and he looked like a dying man. 'I suppose the next thing you're going to tell me is that you forgot to put a haunch of buffalo in your pocket before we fled.'

'Sorry.'

They made their way through the trees to the river, but as January had suspected, it had risen higher in the night.

'We were in that?' Hannibal stared, aghast, at the churning brown torrent, the white teeth of foam and the leaping snags of uprooted trees.

'He'll be hanged yet; Though every drop of water swear against it.' January considered the flood, then the foothills behind them. 'It may be for the best,' he added. 'If the Omaha do come after us, they'll look along the river. There's less cover on that side. From here, we're not far from the foothills, where we can stay in the timber. All we need to do is follow the river north—'

'And not meet the Blackfeet. Or starve.'

'We're going to starve either way,' said January firmly. 'Let's do it on the move.'



According to everyone in the camp, from the youngest engages on up to Jim Bridger, nobody - even set afoot without weapons would starve in the mountains in summer. Any number of the mountaineers could tell of surviving such situations even if they were being chased by Indians. By noon, January had come to the conclusion that these men were either lying, or had arrived at some more favorable deal with God than he had despite years of going to confession. 'I think the trick is, that you have to not mind eating bugs and carrion,' offered Hannibal as they made a careful - and rather fruitless - search around the feet of every lodgepole pine at the timberline, when they reached it, and found no cone that had not been thoroughly looted of its minuscule nourishment by squirrels.

'As long as we don't end up carrion ourselves,' said January, 'I'll be happy.'

Where the trees began, high up the tumbled land around the feet of the true mountains, the river was visible for miles upstream. January could see no sign of habitation. A few miles to the north of them the river bent eastward around a knee of hills; water spread by last night's rise glistened in a wide bottomland where a multitude of streams came together.

'If the Omaha are following us down the river,' he said after a time, 'we've got a head start on them today, anyway. We should be able to get some fish, there where the river's spread.'

'At the moment,' sighed Hannibal as he climbed stiffly to his feet, 'bugs and carrion sound very good.'

During the course of the afternoon, January had cause to be grateful for his own interest in how other men made their livings, and for the loquacity of the mountaineers in sharing the tales of their survival. As they came down to the pools left by the flood, he recognized both cattails and camas, which had edible - if not particularly appetizing - roots, and, though it was early in the year, several varieties of berry. He cut a sapling and sharpened it to a spear, but when they reached the first of the shallow river-branches, he and Hannibal took the precaution of damming the moving water with rocks before going after the fish. They caught four, mostly by hitting them with sticks or simply scooping them up on to the bank, before a couple of bears ambled down out of the woods to investigate the new fishing-spot.

'Aren't you going to go after one of them with your bowie? Kit Carson would.'

'You go to hell.'

They bore their catch back up to the treeline. In the last of the daylight, January set as many snares as he could manufacture from the string in his pockets.

'Will this help?' Hannibal drew from his coat pocket a long, crumpled strip of black silk.

'What is it?'

'Pia was wearing it as a sash,' said the fiddler. 'She said Moccasin Woman gave it to her. After reading Bodenschatz pere's letter to you - during which we were so rudely interrupted - I intended to visit the Delaware camp and ask her where she came by it, but I suspect it belonged to the old man. That it was one of the bindings used to tie the splint on to his leg.'

'That being the case,' said January, 'it must have been Moccasin Woman who got his shirt off him. Nice rolled hem,' he added, examining the silk. 'Tiny and strong.' With his knife he slit the narrow roll of the hem free of the rest of the cravat, fashioned three snares out of it - the delicate cord it yielded was about ten feet long, all around both sides of the cravat and tried to recall everything Robbie Prideaux had said about where to set snares and how to make sure their intended victims rabbits and ground squirrels - didn't catch human scent.

Only when the sun went behind the mountains did January light a fire, trusting the trees to disperse what smoke might be visible. He spitted the fish, emptied his pockets of the remaining cama bulbs and buried them in the coals.

On the higher hills, not far away, wolves howled.

Closer to, in the darkness among the thin-growing trees, gold eyes flashed - something small, a fox or a marten - then abruptly bolted away.

January realized that the night-chirping of the birds had silenced.

The thin woods were utterly still.

The fire was tiny - they couldn't have seen it ...

Everything in him was shouting: but they did . . .

Don't we even get to eat our fish? But even as his soul cried out in protest, cold readiness jolted in his veins. He nudged Hannibal's foot with his own, touched his finger to his lips - saw the other man's eyes widen with an unspoken: oh, Jesus . . .

Too soon to be the Omaha, unless they'd ridden like the wind and known exactly where to search for them. Which meant the Blackfeet.

His hand slipped down to his spear, and he tried to determine from which direction the attack would come.

'Best you douse that fire, Maestro,' said a soft voice from the darkness. 'Iron Heart an' his braves is less'n three miles away.