The Temptations of Big Bear by Rudy Wiebe

Author:Rudy Wiebe [Wiebe, Rudy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36622-1
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 1973-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

II

“That brown with the blaze there you gave Red Bone,” said Big Bear, “he always winters good.”

Kingbird stopped, leaned on his rifle butted in the snow. The gelding pawed steadily at the opening it had worked around on the marsh grass, head down; other shaggy shapes were scattered beyond, near the grey willows at the edge of the still blank-white lake.

“That first raid,” Kingbird said, “was the best. Later at Cypress Hills when we kept after the Bloods it wasn’t much good.”

“He’s so strong in spring it’s too bad there’s always the limp he got when Bad Arrow borrowed him to run buffalo,” said Big Bear. “It was a badger hole, I think.”

“The stupid Bloods just kept running to the agent and he kept running to the police,” said Kingbird.

“Though he could have slipped running by that small water hole.”

“Bone only rode him four days.”

“Well the buffalo came then and Bad Arrow borrowed him to run and after that he always needed him. It’s too bad,” said Big Bear, watching the brown move, starting to lift his own foot again in its soaked rag wrapping, “all those years Arrow had to ride that limping horse and Bone could never lend him a better one.”

Momentarily they forgot about sinking through the thin clean snow into the sodden layer sinking beneath; they thought of the old man now dead as they slogged up the slope from the marsh. The air pressed moist and warm down under the leaden clouds.

“After a few times like that,” Big Bear said, “those Bloods came to the Hills. Piapot hacked up their tobacco and threw it in the fire, before Big Buffalobull Irvine came too.”

“Their horses were all wind-broken and saddle sores anyway,” said Kingbird. “From running pork!”

Snow was gone over the rounded hill and down its southwest exposure to the frozen lake. Directly across west were the lodges of Ohnee-pahao and his Wood People, and below the point of the lake smoke from the Whiteskin chimneys stood in the grey sky. Out of the tall wooden houses where they slept high under the roofs as if they couldn’t stand to sleep where they lived. The marshy line of the creek, black from water, disappeared into the dark trees beyond that, southwest, where the lodges of the River People must be though their smoke was not visible. Water ran everywhere, living in the soil it softened on the slope, from under the greyish banks rotting against hillsides, near the furry blue flowers unbending against the ground from roots the horses had not pawed out. Son and father said nothing more, nor did any of the men following them as they trudged along the high ground and floundered through hollows; their dogs too exhausted to bark when the camp dogs charged them, howling. Not even that drew children from the tied-up lodges.

“A few rabbits, enough for us to eat sometimes every day,” said Big Bear. He was rubbing his feet, watching Running Second fry bannock; the smell of bacon fat churned his stomach a little.

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