30
The Spark
Ten miles upriver, Jack saw a keelboat anchored in some slack water beside an island on the north bank of the river. The keelboat was about forty feet long, which was smaller than either of Ashley's, and Jack pondered why he hadn't spotted it on the drift down from the Arikara village. He could see a couple of men at the rear of the boat with rifles, and he knew they saw him because they held their guns at the ready.
"Hallo the keelboat," Jack said, releasing an oar and waving his hand over his head.
"Who're you with?"
"Ashley's brigade," Jack said. "Who're you?"
"Missouri Fur Company," one of the men said. "Come aboard."
Jack took the oars again and guided the pirogue to the side of the keelboat, then tossed a rope up. One of the men caught it and made it fast to a cleat. Jack grabbed his possibles bag and powder horn and slung them over his shoulder, grabbed his rifle, and took a hand to help him into the boat.
"You boys took some fire yesterday," the man said.
"Thirteen dead," Jack said. "More wounded. I was on the boat that was cut free and drifted down yesterday. I didn't see this boat on the river."
"We were hiding over yonder, beneath the trees," the man said, nodded toward the bank. "We've been trying to divine the best time to slip upriver past the Ree villages."
"How many of you on board?" Jack asked.
"Eight," the man said. "Not enough to put up much of a fight, so we reckon we'll try to slip by in the dark, before the moon rises, if we can pole it. But it'll be tricky. The river's always tricky. Say, are we swapping names or are we going to be all mysterious? Mysterious suits me if you have a need for it."
"Jack Picaro."
"Joshua Pilcher."
"Mountain Jack Picaro," Pilcher said, slapping him on the back. "I'll be skinned. I've heard a lot about you, son."
"Some of it's true, I reckon," Jack said. "You own this outfit, I hear."
"Times like these I wished I didn't," Pilcher said. "We're headed far up the Yellowstone to resupply one of our trading posts. You're welcome to hop aboard, for as long as you want some company."
"We're competitors," Jack said.
"Hell, there's no competition here," Pilcher said. "We're just trying to get upriver without losing our hair. You know these parts as well as I do. The Rees are on the warpath here, and the Blackfoots are making trouble in the mountains. We need to watch each other's backs. Just leave the pirogue tethered behind. It will help keep our bow pointed upriver while we pole."
Jack nodded.
"Hey, Fontanelle," Pilcher called to a man forward. "Get the boys ready to pole. I'll take the steering oar. We start now, and it'll be dark by the time we reach the Ree village."
"I'll help pole," Jack said. "Otherwise, you have an uneven number of men on one side."
"Suits me," Pilcher said. "There's a rack just inside the cabin to store that fine-looking smoke pole. Take the port side, if you would, and keep a lookout for hostiles. And after it gets dark, we'll have to move quiet and be careful of the snags and swayers."
Jack walked the tread around the side of the cabin and went to the bow, where he ducked into the fore doorway and placed his rifle in a rack with a half-dozen others. He kept the powder horn and his possibles bag over his shoulder, because if there was to be shooting, he didn't want to have extra items to grab. Then he said quick hellos to the other men and took one of the stout ash poles and waited for Pilcher's order. When it came, he fell in with the other three men on his side, walking the tread back and forth. As the boat moved forward, Pilcher lifted the anchor, and then scrambled on top to man the steering oar.
As the sun set, they were still poling, and as the dusk became night they slowed and kept a sharper lookout for hazards in the river. One of the crew, a man named Doherty, was smoking a clay pipe as he poled, a bobbing cherry-red coal going back and forth in the dark.
"Doherty," Fontanelle called. "Douse that pipe. That's like waving a torch to tell 'em we're here."
Doherty cussed and knocked the pipe out against the side of the cabin. The embers of the full bowl rolled down the wood and fell into the cracks in the wood.
"Want to throw some water on that?" Jack asked.
"This boat is so old and tough she won't burn," Doherty said.
Jack was about to object when Pilcher made a low whistle.
"Look sharp, boys," Pilcher whispered. "The biggest village is on the other bank. See anything moving?"
Jack peered across the dark water. He recognized the outline of the bank and the mound that was the village beyond. He saw no fires or smoke, and there was no movement. It was also quiet. He couldn't even hear a child cry or a dog bark.
"I don't think anybody's at home," Fontanelle said.
"You can't tell," Jack said. "The whole village may be lined up on the bank, watching us pass, and we'd never know it."
"Keep it steady," Pilcher said. "We need more miles behind us before we'll be safe enough to anchor for the night. Say, is something burning down there?"
"Nope," Doherty said.
"Check, would you?" Pilcher asked. "I get a whiff of something every now and then."
When the moon rose, two hours later, Pilcher declared they would stop. They anchored in the middle of the river, with a high bluff on the south side, and watched as the three-quarter moon climbed higher and bathed the water and the banks in silver light. Jack was sitting in the stern with Pilcher, and they were talking about the best places to build a cabin on the Yellowstone and Powder Rivers.
"I'd stay close to one of the outposts," Pilcher said. "My company or yours, it doesn't matter. You don't want to be so far away that you can't call for help."
Jack shook his head.
"I want to get as far away from everybody as possible," he said.
"Have you heard of Colter's Hell?"
"Heard, but never been there."
"It's on the Stinking Water River," Pilcher said. "About a hundred miles from where it joins the Bighorn. There're hot springs there where you can bathe comfortable in winter. When John Colter came back in 1808 and told folks about it, they thought he was lying."
"Then, you've been there?"
"No," Pilcher said. "But I've talked to enough who have. It might be a hazardous area for a white man. It's Shoshone country, and the Crows are close by."
"Might be worth the trouble to take a look," Jack said.
Pilcher sniffed the air.
"Fontanelle," he called. "Sure there's nothing burning? I still smell—"
An explosion ruptured the side of the keelboat below where Doherty had tapped out his pipe. The embers had been smoldering for hours and had finally burned their way through to the boat's store of black powder, where two hundred pounds of the stuff was stored in fifty small wooden kegs packed in straw. Water flooded the side of the boat, causing it immediately to list to port, while flaming pieces of the hull floated past. While only two of the kegs had exploded, the rest were now ignited and were belching flame like Roman candles, filling the cabin with flame and smoke.
"My rifle," Jack said.
He sprang to the aft doorway and opened it, but was driven back by a torrent of flame.
"She's going down fast," Fontanelle called.
"Anybody hurt?" Pilcher called.
"Two dead."
"Is one of them Doherty?"
"Nope," Fonantelle said.
Jack could feel the deck of the keelboat tip at a steeper angle. Water boiled up from the steps leading down into the cabin and lapped at his moccasins.
"Everybody ashore!" Pilcher called. "North bank! On the bar."
"My rifle is still on board," Jack said and started making his way to the bow. Pilcher grabbed his upper arm and pulled him back.
"You're going to either roast or drown if you go after it," Pilcher said. "I hear it's called the ghost rifle, and it'll make you a ghost unless you give it up now."
Pilcher released his arm.
"This keelboat is gone in about thirty seconds," Pilcher said he as walked over and released the knot that held the pirogue tethered to the stern. He threw the rope at Jack, who caught it in his left hand.
"You'd best get in your boat and start rowing," Pilcher said.
"What about you and your men?"
"We'll have to hoof it from here," Pilcher said, holding his rifle in one hand and climbing over the rail. "Take care of yourself, Mountain Jack. I hope we meet again under better circumstances. May you find a luckier rifle."
Pilcher jumped into the water, and he and his five surviving men made for the sandbar along the north bank.
Still holding the rope, Jack slipped off the stern and swam to the pirogue. The current was carrying him downriver of the anchored keelboat, amid some of the flaming debris. He pulled himself along the rope to the pirogue, then grasped the side and pulled himself flopping into the boat. Then he found the oars, put them in the locks, and began rowing back upriver, taking glances over his shoulder as the flaming keelboat disappeared into the river.
By the time he had rowed to where the boat had been anchored, there was nothing to see there except the reflection of the three-quarter moon rippling on the dark water.
31
Medicine Owl Woman
The day after the Missouri Fur Company keelboat burned and sank, a Lakota woman named Medicine Owl stood on a rock at the foot of the bluff on the south side of the river and carefully slipped out of her beaded elkskin dress. She folded the dress and placed it on the rock beside the black and red ribbons she had already taken from her hair. She had watched the night before as the keelboat had caught fire and sank, and she marked the location in her mind by remembering the location of a cottonwood tree on the opposite bank.
Medicine Owl was twenty winters old and had journeyed far from home on the advice of her village's medicine man. She had caused nothing but trouble in the village for the past year, bickering with her parents and refusing to take a husband in spite of her beauty. It was rumored that she would be happier being a winoxtca, a member of the women's soldier society, but Medicine Owl was unsure. Her mission, the medicine man said, was to look for a sign to heal her life, some vision or gift from Wakan Tanka.
As she sat on the bluff and watched the pillar of fire that rose from the keelboat, and then saw it extinguished in the muddy water, she felt the presence of the unspeakable power. She knew the boat would be loaded with all manner of weapons and goods, and she determined that in the morning she would swim out to where the boat sank and see if she could recover anything of value that the fire or the water had not ruined.
Medicine Owl dove into the water and swam easily out to where the boat lay beneath her. She looked around for a moment, her dark hair trailing behind her in the water, making sure there was no one watching her. She took several deep breaths, then held the last one.