He didn't look up or say anything. His hands were brown and old, with large veins, and his nails were cut flat across. He wore a knife and there was a Winchester alongside of him.
Poking some sticks into the coals, I edged the coffeepot a mite closer and got some biscuits we'd bought in the store a few hours earlier.
He had his own cup and I filled it, then filled mine. The wind juttered the fire a little and I added more fuel. The wind down that canyon could be right chill on occasion.
His eyes were old, but their gaze was sharp and level when he looked at me. 'I am Tell Sackett,' I said. 'You are Powder-Face?'
'You look for your papa?'
The word sounded strange on his lips, and I said, 'It has been twenty years. He is dead, I believe.'
He tasted his coffee. 'Good!' he said. 'Good!'
'I want to know what happened to him, and to find where he lies, if that is possible.'
'He was a good man--two times. I knew him two times. The first time we shot at him ourselves.'
'Did you kill him?'
He looked up. 'No! He was good man--good! The first time, long ago, I did not know him, or him me, We shot--we missed.
'I thought he dead. I waited long time. I went for his hair--he was gone.
'I went back--my horse was gone. Tied where my horse had been was a tomahawk and some red cloth. This is strange man--we shoot, we miss, he goes poof! Then my horse goes poof. But if he can take my horse, it is his. If I can get it back, it is mine.
'He takes it. The tomahawk is good, sharp edge. The cloth is good for squaw--maybe he needs horse.
'Seven suns. Day comes, the sun rises on my horse, tied near my head. How? I do not know. Why is horse quiet? I do not know. It is magic? Perhaps.'
'My father brought him back?'
'It is so. Many suns, and one day when the people of our village are hungry, I see an elk. I stalk. I am lifting the bow and arrow ready to fly when from close under the bush where I am, another elk leaps up--all run. I miss.
'Suddenly there is a shot, the elk falls. I wait, nobody comes. I wait--nobody comes. I go to the elk. Then he stands up, this man who is your father. He lifts his hand to me, and then he turns his back and walks away. He has given us meat.
It is a good thing he has done, and my people are no longer hungry.
'At night I tell them of this man, and we wonder about him. Who has sent him?
What does he do here?
'His tracks are near our village. I think sometimes he watches us. We are not many braves, and there are too many young ones, too many women. I must hunt always, but the bow does not shoot far--hunting is hard.
'One morning when I leave my lodge there is a rifle there, lying upon a skin.
Beside it are powder and ball. Only he could have left it. Only he could come into our village and leave without being seen. But then we see him no more.'
'No more?'
'Many moons, the snows come and they go--more than two times. Three? Four? We do not know. After a long time we are in village on back side of Beaver Mountain.
'In the night the dogs bark, we see nothing. In the morning we find a haunch of elk meat hanging from a tree. Our friend is back.
'We owe him much, for when the hunting was bad the rifle he left us kept our lodges with meat. This time we do not need the meat he has left us and he knows this. He has left it to tell us he is back.
'Often we see him then, but we do not like all we see, and he faces toward us one time and makes the signs not to come near, and the sign for bad heart.'
We drank our coffee slowly. The old man was tired.
'Now we have young braves. They know of the white man who gave us meat. They are like small deer--very curious. They watch. They come back to village to tell what they have seen.'
The firelight played upon the seamed brown face, and the old man lifted his cup in two hands and emptied it. Once more I filled the cup. This man had known my father. This man had watched him upon his last trail, had known how he thought, at least about some things. The white man of the mountains often fought the Indian, but there was understanding between them--rarely hatred. They fought as strong men fight, for the love of battle and because fighting is a part of the life they live.
The Indian lived a life that demanded courage, demanded strength, stamina, and the will to survive; and the white men who came first to the mountains had such qualities--or they would not have come in the first place, and they could not have lasted in the second.
Most mountain men were affiliated with one tribe or another, all had respect for Indians. Some found the only life they loved among the Indians. My father was a man of two worlds. Whether he walked among savages or among the civilized he was equally at home.
'I must know where my father died. I would like to know how he died, but to know where is enough. My mother grows old. She worries that the bones of her husband lie exposed to the wind and have been picked by coyotes. They must be buried, as is our custom.'
He sat a long time. 'I do not know where he died. I know he went away. He went to walk upon the mountains and he did not return. I can show you the trail he took.'
'He went alone?'
'Alone--but others followed.'
There was a knot lying near, and I added it to the fire, for the night was cold.
Wind stirred the leaves, ruffled the flames. I gathered sticks and broke them with my hands and built more warmth for the old man, then I filled his cup with coffee and sat beside the fire again, waiting for whatever else he would say.
'A trail lies there, high upon the mountain, some call it the Ute Trail, but the trail was old before the Utes came to these mountains. I do not know where the trail leads, nor does any man, but there are harsh, cold winds and sudden, terrible storms. There are days with blue skies and tufts of cloud--but these days are few among the high peaks.'
'Do you know the trail?'
'It lies there.' He pointed toward the mountains. 'I know where it is, not where it leads. I am an old man. I have no strength to follow such a trail, and when I was a young man, I was afraid.'
'If my father went there, then I must go.'
'He died there.'
'We shall see.' Again I added a chunk of wood to the fire. 'Be warm, Old One.
There is fuel. Now I shall sleep. In the morning I will take the way you show me.'
'I will go with you.'
'No. I shall go alone. Rest here, Old One. My cousins have given your people a place. Stay with them, guide them.'
'I think soon the Indian will walk no more upon the land. When I look into the fire, I think this.'
'Some will,' I said, 'some will not. Civilization is a trap for some men, a place of glory for others. The mountains change with years, so must the Indian change. The old way is finished, for my father as well as for you, for the man of the wilderness whether he be Indian or white.
'I think it will come again. All things change. But if the Indian would live he must go the white man's way. There are too many white men and they will not be denied.'
Powder-Face shrugged. 'I know,' he said simply. 'We killed them and killed them and killed them, and still they came. It was not the horse soldiers that whipped us, it was not the death of the buffalo, nor the white man's cows. It was the people. It was the families.
'The rest we might conquer, but the people kept coming and they built their lodges where no Indian could live. They brought children and women, they brought the knife that cuts the earth. They built their lodges of trees, of sod cut from the earth, of boards, of whatever they could find.
'We burned them out, we killed them, we drove off their horses, and we rode away. When we came back
