Going Home and Downriver by Richard S. Wheeler

Author:Richard S. Wheeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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Many Quill Woman heard that her man, Mister Skye, was looking for her, but she was in no hurry to respond. He probably wanted someone to roast some meat. He could easily cook his own, but men liked to make women do it, and it didn’t matter whether they were men of the People, or white men. Usually, she didn’t mind, for that was what had been ordained from the beginning of the world, but at rendezvous things were different. Skye could cook his own damned meat. She was occupied.

She usually spent rendezvous apart from him. All year she toiled at his side, making camp, dressing hides, sharing his hard life and dangers, along with the brigade of trappers. But by the time rendezvous rolled around, she was weary of white men, and yearned for time among her many friends who always came to the great trappers’ fair.

So she did not hurry. She had visited old friends in several Absaroka lodges this day, as well as fat grandmothers in a Shoshone lodge and some chunky Nez Perce women, and even visited with some treacherous and thieving Bannocks, who usually were at arrow’s point with the Crows. That had been an act of great charity and munificence on her part; normally, an Absaroka woman never conversed with such trash. But an iron law of peace prevailed at the white men’s fairs, and so it was that hostile tribes camped side by side, and even visited with one another, so she had deigned to talk briefly with a squat, ugly Bannock woman who was missing half her teeth.

She would talk to anyone at rendezvous. All except the Blackfeet. If Blackfeet had ridden to the banks of the Popo Agie at this time, much red blood would be lying on the green grasses.

Skye called her Victoria, after the princess, now queen, of his people across the sea. She did not know what that was all about, but being named for a great woman was surely an honor, and she loved her man for it. The more names one had, the more honor. They had an uneasy relationship, divided by all the things they didn’t grasp about each other, and the lives they came from. And yet, she counted herself the happiest and most fortunate of women, the envy of all her sisters among the Kicked-in-the-Belly band of the Crows.

Who else had such a man? Had not Barnaby Skye the biggest, most mountainous nose in the world? Was he not a mighty warrior, a prodigious eater, a man big across the chest and belly, though not very tall? Was he not a leader of his people? Did he not survive perils that would sink lesser men? Was he not more tender and kind and caring than any Crow man she knew? Did he not consult her and imbibe her wisdom?

Yes, she was fortunate, and she would eventually go to him and cook some meat … but not for a while, dammit. He deserved to wait.

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