The Shirt On His Back

Chapter 27



The Omaha Dark Antlers and two Crow warriors came into the tipi a few minutes later, to fetch Veinte-y-Cinco. The woman rose, kissed Hannibal and Shaw ('Don't I get one for luck?' inquired Goodpastor, and with a quick flicker of a grin she gave him one that would have been grounds for divorce in most states of the Union), and slipped out into the night.

' 'quoted January softly. 'Now it lies upon the knees of the gods.'

Hannibal sighed. 'And we all know how trustworthy they are.'

Shortly after that, a couple of Crow women came in with food - chunks of roasted mountain-sheep, and a tin kettle of stew - and with them, Goodpastor's engages, two young border-ruffians named Laurent and Tonio. They brought the news that the remaining Omaha warriors were setting up lodges of dead wood and sagebrush for the night, as if in a war camp, just beyond the tipis of the Crow, and that the Crow were keeping guard on them. 'That Mexican trader was with them,' added Tonio, the younger of the two - brothers, January guessed, by their looks, and by the way Tonio kept close to the elder as if for protection.

'As a guest, would you say?' Goodpastor poured out water from the skin hanging from one of the tent poles, into the pewter cup that the young men shared. 'Or a prisoner?'

'A guest, looked like. He sits with Iron Heart at his fire.'

'Well,' sighed Goodpastor, 'consarn.'

'And are you a guest here, sir?' inquired January as the two boys settled down with bowls of wild mutton and stew. 'Or a prisoner?'

'And did you drop out of the sky?' added Hannibal.

'Wish I had,' retorted the Indian Agent. 'I am entirely too old for that ride up the Platte in a wagon-train. No, I set out from Fort Laramie like a respectable representative of the United States Congress, with ten engages, a secretary and a half-breed guide who couldn't find his way back from the outhouse. When we got to the Popo Agie we heard from a couple of Shoshone hunters that there was a band of Crow - eighty lodges - skulking around the mountains near the rendezvous without comin' into it, which sounded downright fishy to me. I had the boys make camp, took those two scoundrels with me, did some scouting on my own and here I am.'

'Here you are,' agreed January. 'But could you leave if you wanted to?'

'I could, yes. Or at least I think I'll be able to, once Walks Before has figured out what he wants to do with you and with Iron Heart. I'm on his territory. I'm no more than an envoy from the Congress to the Crow. And I wouldn't care to bet on it that he'd let me leave the camp tonight - or that Iron Heart's boys wouldn't find a way of making sure I didn't get to the rendezvous if I did leave, sort of quiet like in the woods. We're a long ways from anywhere, here, and if they plan on killin' any white men they're not going to leave an Indian Agent to go tellin' the tale.'

'Ah,' said January. 'Then all we've done is make your position here worse.'

'Hell, I been in worse places. Though things could get damn sticky if that woman tries to make a break when she gets near the rendezvous, and there's an attack made on this camp. I ain't sayin' Titus wouldn't keep a lid on it if he could—'

'Titus?'

'That sourpuss Controller the AFC's got with their factory there this year. He's the one paid Walks Before thirty rifles and three barrels of gunpowder to come down here and not let a soul see 'em. There's talk all over this camp of them attackin' the smaller trains as they leave the rendezvous - an' of stagin' an attack on the AFC train, for show, so word can be took back to Congress that it was the Hudson's Bay Flatheads, an' that the military's needed to keep them pesky British an' their Indian allies in line, just like back in 1812. I been workin' on convincin' Walks Before that it ain't such a good plan.'

He pitched a clean-picked sheep-rib into the fire, wiped his fingers on his bandanna. 'Another reason I'm not tryin' to leave this camp just yet. So I would appreciate it,' he went on, 'if you boys would give me some idea of what's been happenin' at the rendezvous.'

The white-haired Indian Agent listened with interest to January's account of the trade in liquor with the Indians ('Lord, Bill Grey made it sound like Sodom and Gomorrah,') and the attempted scalping on the way back from the banquet ('That sounds like Titus, all right . . .'). He grinned at the effort to convince Congress that the dead man was himself, but his eyes narrowed sharply when January spoke of Bodenschatz's plan to give away poisoned liquor.

'That's no Indian plan,' he rumbled, and he stroked the milk- white stubble of his trail beard. 'Mission Indians, maybe - that have learned how civilized folks go about their business.'

'My brother stumbled on a half-wrote letter from Bodenschatz to Iron Heart.' Shaw spoke up from his side of the fire. 'I thought, myself, it mighta had somethin' to do with the AFC tryin' to push Congress into sendin' troops to take Oregon ... an' like the young fool he was, I think Johnny just up an' asked Bodenschatz about it, an' he was found dead not long later. Only when the Beauty up an' died, after drinkin' the last of the liquor they'd found in the old man's coat, did we start to put together that there was different game afoot. Worse game.'

'You still have those letters from Boden to his father?'

'They were in my hand when the Omahas attacked us on the quarantine island,' said Hannibal. 'Even had I had the chance to get my hand to my coat before running for our lives, they wouldn't have survived the river. And if they had survived, I'd have eaten them the following day.'

'An' you had no idea Frank Boden - or Franz Bodenschatz - would be posin' as a Mexican trader here?'

'We knew he'd be here,' said January. 'The only man who could have recognized him for sure - er - died the first day we were in camp . . .'

'And I'm not entirely certain,' added Hannibal, 'that I'd recognize Jim Bridger or Robbie Prideaux, if you scrubbed and clipped them. For that matter, Mr Goodpastor - and I hope you'll forgive my making the inevitable inferences - it sounds as if there are men at the rendezvous who should have known the body we found wasn't you.'

'Make all the inevitable inferences you please.' Goodpastor plucked another rib from the fire, tore the meat from it with strong white teeth. 'They'd have known quick enough the old man you found wasn't Medicine Lynx - which was the name I went by when I was living with the Mandans in '09. When I was trapping down around Taos later on, I still went by El Lince. Carson and Bridger and a dozen of those boys would have known me, if they'd seen me face to face. I only started using my right name again when I went back to Missouri and met Mrs Goodpastor - Miss Milliken that was - and got into politics. But Grey sure as hell knows me. How bad was the old man tore up when he was found?'

'Bad enough,' said January, and Manitou - silent on the other side of the fire - looked away.

'But obviously Bodenschatz knew you.' Hannibal turned to the trapper.

'I'm hard to miss.'

Particularly, reflected January, surveying that bear-like hulk, if a man of such massive size had a reputation for ungovernable, murderous rage. Once Franz Bodenschatz had reached the frontier, rumor of his quarry would not have been hard to find.

Manitou frowned into the fire. 'And he'd seen me in the court. 1 musta seen him when he spoke to the judges against me, but them weeks gets confused in my mind. An' he was bearded at Fort Ivy. Nobody ever called him nuthin' but Frank in my hearin' - an' now I think on it, I'm not sure I ever saw him in full daylight.'

His heavy eyebrows drew down, trying to call back recollections of chance meetings, years ago, in that dark little store. 'Give me a hell of a turn, to see old Herr Bodenschatz's face in the lantern light. Near to cost me my life, too, for I slacked my grip on him and he got his second pistol out. I figured he'd come up with Franz, but it wasn't 'til you told me, Frank at Fort Ivy's name was Boden, that I knew how they'd found me.'

Outside, the camp had grown quiet. Somewhere, a woman sang to her children; elsewhere, a dog barked, the irritable yip of confrontation with some insignificant beast. January wondered if he'd be able to call all of this back to mind, to write it down for Rose - smiled at the thought of her envious lamentations: you actually stayed in an Indian encampment. . . !

And thought of Veinte-y-Cinco, close enough to the rendezvous to deceive herself that she could escape from her guards, swim the river, find her daughter . . .

And who could blame her? January closed his eyes: Mary, Mother of God, watch over her, who is trying to be the best mother she can be . . .

Much later in the night, he was waked from a light sleep by the sound of scuffling and whispering, close to the wall of the tipi. He thrust up the lower edge of the lodge skins and in the starlight he saw, a few yards away, Franz Bodenschatz struggling silently in the grip of two warriors, a knife in his hand. 'Is this how you treat your brother,' the German whispered furiously, 'who did all he could to help you avenge your people?'

The Indian - a young Omaha warrior whom January did not recognize - replied, 'My people are not avenged, and a man who seeks to do that which will cause the Crow to kill us all is not my brother. Come back and sleep. If the lies of the white men trap them tomorrow, the Crow will kill them, and you will be avenged.'

'Their lies will poison the minds of the Crow, as they have begun to poison your mind, Kills With A Rock. Else you would let me do what I have sought now for ten years to do. And as for sleeping, there is no sleep, when my goal lies so near to my hand.'



Not long after noon on the following day January heard the camp-dogs barking, and he emerged from the lodge to see everyone hurrying toward the ford. He and his fellow prisoners followed the Crow to the river's edge, in time to see the five horses come down to the opposite bank, with the sharp sun dappling them through the pine boughs as they crossed. With Dark Antlers and the two Crow rode Veinte-y-Cinco, in her torn and ragged red-and-green finery, and beside her, in matronly calico and a sunbonnet, Moccasin Woman, with a battered leather camp-chest lashed to the back of her saddle.

January whispered a prayer of thanks, and another one requesting that he'd be able to convince Walks Before - and Iron Heart - that what he suspected was true.

Warriors, women, children surrounded the five horses, so closely that none of the prisoners could push their way close, but over the dark heads of the crowd, January saw Veinte-y- Cinco's eyes seek him, then Hannibal, then Shaw. He smiled at her and raised his hand.

Walks Before Sunrise and his son, the warrior Lost, were sitting on a blanket before the old shaman's lodge when the little cavalcade approached. He got to his feet, and the Indians made way for him to approach the horses. In the crowd January picked out Iron Heart, and Bodenschatz, in the center of the Omaha warriors. Bodenschatz saw him, and for a moment their eyes met, a look of such hatred and spite in the other man's that January was taken aback.

I'm only here as Shaw's henchman . . .

To Bodenschatz, he realized, it was all the same. He who is not for me is against me...

He saw the German's face when Bodenschatz saw the luggage tied on Moccasin Woman's saddle and felt his own twinge of spite at Bodenschatz's horror. Spite and triumph.

It's in there . . .

He suddenly felt much better.

Walks Before held out his hands. 'You are Moccasin Woman?'

'I am.' She kicked her feet free of the stirrups, slid to the ground and shook out her faded skirts.

'And have you brought the clothing of the old white man whom you found dead in the woods, two nights after the new moon?'

'I have.' She touched the quillwork bag that hung at her side. Her broad, brown face was sad but peaceful. 'I asked his forgiveness of him, for taking it away, and did what I could to honor him. Yet I am a poor woman, and even the smallest pieces of cloth can be turned to good account, in repairing clothing.'

Walks Before Sunrise turned to January, motioned for him to step forward and speak.

Bridger and Prideaux, and every trapper to whom January had spoken, had said the same thing of the peoples of the plains and the mountains: that they valued speech-making as a form of honor and would follow explanations and tales with avid interest, the length of them and the shape of them a compliment to the listeners. He took a deep breath, and turned to Iron Heart.

'When your warriors surprised Tall Chief and the Beauty, at the place where they were burying the dead in Dry Grass Coulee, did one of them take the black coat that lay in that place?' He knew the answer was yes because he'd already seen the coat on one of the Omaha warriors, a bizarre sartorial effect in combination with the young man's leggings and breech cloth. Iron Heart signed the warrior forward, and January motioned for him to turn around before the Crow shaman, to show the knife hole in the back of the coat.

'And when you attacked us on the island near the camp,' January went on, 'and killed the young trapper who was with us, did you also take his clothing?' This question also was rhetorical. No Indian in creation would pass up a black silk waistcoat, and in fact he'd seen Boaz Frye's yellow calico shirt on one of the warriors, and thought he'd glimpsed the black satin vest on someone else . . . Which indeed proved to be the case.

But the question was asked in the proper form, and there was a murmur of approval from the assembled tribe.

'Listen, now.' He turned again to Walks Before Sunrise and raised his voice to carry, his gestures taking in all the tribe gathered around, as if he were telling a story to Olympe's children. 'And I will tell you all that took place beside Horse Creek, on the night of the rain just after the moon was new.'

'He lies!' shouted Bodenschatz. 'He is lying to save his own skin, and that of his murdering friend!'

Iron Heart glanced sidelong at him, expressionless. 'Let the black white man speak.'

'Is it true what you told me, Iron Heart,' said January, 'that the old medicine-man, Boden's father, left the lodges of the Omaha on the day that I fought with Manitou, with a bottle of poisoned liquor in his pocket? That he sought to poison Manitou the Spirit Bear in his own camp, because he had decided he did not wish to kill all the men at the rendezvous?'

'It was because he saw the child,' replied Iron Heart. 'The little Mexican girl who played cards at the liquor tent. She was out in the meadows near our camp that day, looking for feathers in the long grass. The old man said that he accepted that the women would die, who were harlots and had come here of their own accord to lie with men for money. But the child was innocent, he said.'

January reflected that Klaus Bodenschatz had obviously never seen Pia dealing faro, but let that pass. Across the open ground, he saw Veinte-y-Cinco silently take Hannibal's hand.

'He and I quarreled over this,' Iron Heart went on. 'It had been agreed that Boden would poison the liquor and give it away after the fight, but there was no victory. Men came back to the camp and told the old man of this, and also that Manitou had returned in anger to his own camp. When I came back to the tents of my people, the old man was already gone.'

'And you, Manitou.' January turned to the trapper, standing huge and silent among the warriors of the Crow. 'Did you meet the old man in the woods near your camp?'

'I saw the light of his lantern.' Manitou, also, had learned what the nations of the plains considered the honorable way of speaking. 'I had not known the man Boden in the camp, but his father I knew. The old man was the father of a woman that I loved, a woman I killed in a fit of madness, many years ago. He fired a pistol at me from hiding. I had my rifle, but I did not want to kill him. He had a second pistol, and in the struggle to get it from him I hurt him - broke his ribs, and broke his leg. I was angry already from fighting Winter Moon -' he nodded toward January - 'and I could see the fire of my madness beginning to flicker at the sides of my eyes. Still I remained long enough to tie up the old man's wounds. I tore up the shirt he wore, to brace his ribs and to bandage my own arm where his first bullet had struck me. I used his neck cloth, and strips torn from my own shirt, to put a splint on his broken leg. Then I made a shelter for him, knowing it would rain again, and built a fire to keep him safe from animals. I knew his son must be nearby and would search for him before long. I put my own shirt on him to keep him warm, and over it his waistcoat and coat again. Then I went to the camp of the Blackfeet. My brother Silent Wolf knows the ways to take the thunder spirit out of my brain, before I harm those around me. I was in their camp—' He frowned, trying to remember.

'Two nights. Then Tall Chief and Winter Moon came - Bo Frye, too, and the Beauty. They told me that old Bodenschatz had been found dead. I returned to my own camp and left the rendezvous.'

'So when you left the old man,' reiterated January, 'he was wearing your shirt - was this the shirt you had bought from Ivy and Wallach the day before?'

'It was. Black and yellow checks, cotton. Of good quality.'

'And his own shirt was torn up for bandages around his ribs?'

Manitou nodded.

'What was that shirt made of? What color was it?'

'White,' said the trapper immediately. 'Linen—'

'Like the one his son now wears?'

All eyes went to Boden, who snapped, 'This is all lies!' He turned to Iron Heart, caught him by the arm. 'This man talks nonsense, about what color our shirts are and who wears what. What does it matter? He will say anything—'

'And I will listen to anything,' replied the Omaha chief, his voice deadly quiet. 'The truth leaves its tracks, like a fox in the snow, for a wise man to follow. Be silent.'

Boden started to reply, then looked around him, at the warriors who had moved in closer.

'Moccasin Woman?'

Still with her air of serene sadness, the matriarch opened her quillwork pouch and brought out a bundle of cloth. The garments had been washed of their bloodstains, leaving only pale brown ghosts, and the hole in the back of the checked shirt had been neatly mended. Its torn-off hems had been sewn back as well - she must have found those in the bushes around the camp, where Poco had thrown them and the black silk cravat when he'd untied the splints. There wasn't a man among the warriors - hunters and trackers from birth - who hadn't been brought up making inferences from such details, putting together evidence in order to survive.

January summoned back the two Omaha warriors who wore the old-fashioned black coat and the satin vest with its outdated collar, and he held the black-and-yellow shirt up first to one, and then the other. Walks Before rose from his blanket and studied the holes, which matched one another exactly. Then January handed him the last garment, the torn-up sections of the white linen shirt.

The seams had been ripped apart, and one sleeve was missing—

'I got that here.' Manitou slipped his left arm free of his deer-hide hunting-shirt, to show the filthy, bloodied white linen that bound the bullet wound in his own arm. 'You can see the cloth's the same.'

The back of old Klaus Bodenschatz's white linen shirt was intact.

'He was stabbed, then, after Manitou's black-and-yellow shirt was put on him,' said Walks Before Sunrise, holding the two garments in his hands. 'There was a great bleeding here, more than he would have bled had his throat been cut earlier . . . And indeed, if his throat had been cut first, what need to stab him in the back? What have you to say to this, Boden?'

'That he's lying,' argued Boden frantically. 'That that lying monster came back and stabbed him later—'

'Why would he have done that?' asked Walks Before reasonably. 'The old man's leg was broken. He was no danger to Manitou then. Why not kill him the first time, rather than build a shelter for him and bind his wounds?'

January folded his arms, looked steadily at Bodenschatz where he stood among the Omahas. 'But that broken leg meant that your father was now a liability to you,' he said softly. 'You knew where your enemy was - and you knew that, having seen your father, he would flee. Yet you couldn't pursue him as long as you had to care for the old man. You'd have to take your father back to the settlements. Certainly, your Omaha brothers weren't going to do it—'

'I—I knew nothing of it,' Bodenschatz stammered. 'I didn't know he was dead until they brought him into the camp—'

'But it was your hat that one of the camp whores found beside the body later that morning,' said January. 'With your hair in it, dyed black except for the brown at the roots—'

Sharply, the young Omaha Kills With A Rock put in, 'He renewed the false color on his hair the day he left our lodges, to ride into the white men's camp as a trader! It was, as you say, brown as a raccoon's fur where it grew from his head, to the length of a child's knuckle.'

'And the old man's pistols were in your pockets yesterday. None were found on the body by the men who took his coat. Yet he'd shot Manitou with one of them, and the other had fired, putting a bullet into a tree, so he had them that night. And as well as all that, Boden,' added January grimly, 'no one else had any reason to kill him. He was harmless, he was crippled, he was in a foreign land. He needed help, that only his son could give him—'

'He would never have asked me to give up my revenge!' shouted Boden. 'He was as vowed to it as I!'

'Maybe he mighta changed his mind,' put in Shaw softly, 'whilst lyin' there listenin' to the rain? Let's see what's in that camp chest, Maestro—'

Boden moved like a snake striking, snatched the knife from the warrior nearest him and slashed the man, plunged for the momentary gap in the group around him. There was a vicious struggle that ended with the trader being thrust back into the open space before the lodges, two Omaha warriors now holding grimly on to his arms. Boden gasped for breath, his face terrible to see as January unbuckled the straps on the luggage, took out the trapper's spare shirts and trousers, socks and drawers - and from beneath them, folded into a tight bundle, a short jacket of cinnabar-colored rawhide, like a vaquero's, of the sort that many of the Mexican traders wore for rough work on the trail. Then another shirt - like all of them, white linen and much worn. Jacket and shirt, front and sleeves, were stained and crusted with dried blood.

'You couldn't throw them away,' went on January, 'because they'd be found. Nor could you wash them without causing comment - not in the middle of the rendezvous camp. Nor have them washed, because someone would talk. You killed him, and you left him—'

'What's the matter with you?' Boden's voice was almost a scream. 'Don't you understand what that monster did? Are you actually going to let him go? We vowed, my father and I, that neither of us would rest until that man was dead. Before ever we started, he said that I must not permit anything to stop me—'

'Then why did you need to stab him in the back,' asked January quietly, 'before you cut his throat?'

Iron Heart stepped from among his warriors, stood before Boden in the open ground before the tipis. 'You disgust me,' he said in a level voice, and his pockmarked face was as cold as his words. 'At Fort Ivy you said that you were one of us in your heart, that you were our brother. In my own hunger for vengeance I listened. Yet I see that you are a white man after all, who will let nothing stand in the way of what he craves. To avenge yourself is the act of a man. To bring your father far from his home to help you - and he came, willingly, because it was his son who called, leaving all that he knew - and then to kill him rather than burden yourself with his care . . . This is dishonor. Such a person is not my brother.'

He turned to Shaw, and taking his scalping knife from his belt, held it out to him. 'And for this dishonor, twenty of my friends have died, killed by the Crow, or by you, Tall Chief. They thought they were fighting for a brother, whose honor equaled theirs. He has shamed them and dirtied even their deaths. He is yours.'

With an incoherent shriek, Bodenschatz flung himself against the grip of his captors, kicking and thrashing like a horse at the breaker's. Iron Heart stood aside as the men dragged Bodenschatz to Shaw and pushed him to his knees.

'You have won.' The Omaha chief stood facing Shaw, with the prisoner between them. 'Even our vengeance is denied to us, that this man and his father promised us on the banks of the Rawhide Creek. We will have our vengeance,' he went on, 'those of us that are left. Yet we will have it without the help of those against whom we would take it. My friends died, because I believed a white man would help me against white enemies. You do not keep warm at night by sharing your blanket with a wolf. Take your vengeance on him, Tall Chief. He is not my brother.'

Shaw stood for a time, like an Indian himself, the scalping knife in his hand. Seeing his brother? January wondered. Seeing the twelve-year-old boy, wild to go downriver on a flatboat and see New Orleans . . . ? Seeing the child who had learned, with horror and shock, that he had no home to go back to? That the only people he could rely on in the world were his brothers?

Seeing Tom in the firelight of Fort Ivy, long fingers stroking the pale silky scalp that he held in his hand?

Or seeing the hills that had been his home, where you had to bar the doors of your cabin at night, because your cousins had killed the son of the clan in the next holler, and if they couldn't catch your cousins they might just come after you or your wife? The world he didn't want to bring up his children in?

I walked away . . .

With a sigh, the Kentuckian flung the knife down, so that its blade stuck in the dirt between Bodenschatz's knees. To Asa Goodpastor he said, 'You stay in' in the mountains when the rendezvous breaks? Or headin' back to the settlements? Can you notarize affidavits, so's Boden here can be tried for what he done, an' hanged in form of law for murder by poison an' by knife? I'd say we got evidence enough.'

'That you do,' agreed Goodpastor, and he stroked his white mustache. 'An' yes, I'm ridin' back to Missouri. An' I'll make your case for you, if you manage to get this weasel back there. But you'll have your work cut out for you, keepin' guard over him—'

'He'll come,' rumbled Manitou. 'For I'll ride with you and stand my trial as well. That's what you want, isn't it, Franz? You won't pass up the chance to take the witness stand against me a second time, will you?'

'For that pleasure, monster,' whispered Boden, 'I will happily face the gallows myself.'