Butler snapped to attention, saluting. “Captain Butler Hancock, Company A, Second and Fifteenth Arkansas Volunteers. You have the advantage of me, sir. I cannot see your rank or martial affiliation.”
The Indian cocked his head slightly, looking perplexed. “That ain’t palaver this coon’s ever heard. Ain’t even heard it amongst the missionaries, and they talk plumb odd of an occasion.”
Butler blinked, hearing Paw at the supper table when he fell into the vernacular of the mountains. “Y’all are common folk, then?”
“We’re what ye’d be calling Sheep Eaters. Can ye ken that, pilgrim?”
“Sheep Eaters.” Butler laughed and slapped his thighs. “Reckon this coon can. My pap larn’ed me when I was a young ’un. He spoke highly of the Sheep Eaters. Said they were brave and men of honor. Said he lived with the Dukurika Sheep Eaters for a couple of years. Said they were some of the best days of his life.”
“Who you talk to?” The Indian gestured around at the sagebrush.
“I am an officer. I am responsible for these men.”
Again the Shoshoni looked confused. He spoke rapidly to the others in his own tongue. One, an older man—streaks of white lining his temples and deep lines in his face—kept studying Butler intently. A thick necklace of animal bones, claws, and beads hung down his chest. He asked something of the young warrior.
The young man shrugged, then stated, “We don’t see no men but you, coon.”
“My men are soldiers, Second Arkansas. They’re standing right there.” Butler pointed. “I see them plain and clear as I see you.”
Again the Dukurika conversed.
“You see them, but others do not?”
“Some call me crazy,” Butler told him with a smile. “But tell me this? Who’s got the right of it? Me? Who can see them? Or you that can’t?”
Butler reached out with his left hand, grabbing his right to keep it from shaking.
The old man watched him as he did. Meanwhile the speaker translated.
Then the older man stepped around the elk’s gut pile and stopped a pace away, staring into Butler’s eyes. The effect was eerie, as if those stone-black eyes were looking down into Butler’s trembling soul.
“Who’re you?” Butler asked.
“He is Puhagan,” the speaker told him. “What you would call medicine man. He has asked to see you.”
“To see me? How did he know I was coming?”
“We been watchin’ fer days, Man Who Speaks to No One.” The young man gestured with his hands. “We watched you. The ravens watched. The elk and wind have watched. We all talked about you. You fed the ravens, reckon now you c’n feed us.”
Butler was still looking into the old man’s eyes. It was as if he were falling into a deep and dark hole. A place where dreams and the real world mixed and flowed together.
Puhagan said something.
The speaker translated, “Puhagan says that you are to come with us, Butler Hancock. He says he knows what you are. A party of the Injuns you call Crow is a half day’s ride over east. He would rather that they don’t carry your carcass off ter their land.”
“He knows who I am?”
The speaker shrugged his young shoulders. “A puhagan palavers with the spirits, maybe like you do, Butler Hancock.”
“Where’d you learn to talk English?”
“From the traders, coon. My mother lived in a mountaineer’s lodge fer nigh on ten years afore he went under. She brung me home, remarried.”
“Hold!” Butler called as Billy Templeton tried to shift out of line. “At ease. Form the men, Sergeant. Prepare to move out.”
The puhagan had watched him, eyes gleaming and thoughtful.
At the old man’s orders, the elk was easily lifted onto the horses and tied down with lengths of braided leather rope the Sheep Eaters provided. As quickly and expertly as the warriors tied on the load, they might have done it a thousand times. The heart, liver, kidney, and tongue vanished into sacks and bags.
The men who’d cut off retreat downhill were approaching now, the dogs called to heel. They were big beasts, splotched with color, panting from mouths where most of the teeth were filed flat. They watched Butler and the elk with alert and interested eyes.
Then, at an order, the dogs literally leaped on the gut pile, devouring the lungs, paunch, and long strings of intestines.
“How are you called?” Butler asked the speaker.
He rattled off something in Shoshoni. “Means Cracked Bone Thrower, after the man who done taken the last bone from the feast, cracks it open and sucks out the marrow. Then, when there is nothing left, he throws it out beyond the camp circle. My white name is Dick Hamilton. After my grandfather Richard. That ol’ coon trapped beaver and traded all through these parts.”
Puhagan asked something, and as he did Cracked Bone Thrower translated, “We do not want to walk on your spirit men. Can you show us how to avoid them?”
“Tell your elder that the men appreciate his concern, but they’ll do fine on their own. They’re used to staying out of the way.”
When this was translated, the puhagan gave Butler the most unsettling stare, as if the man were passing judgment on Butler’s suddenly nervous soul.
“Cap’n?” Kershaw whispered behind Butler’s ear. “I reckon we be in a heap of trouble.”
“Why is that, Sergeant?”
“’Cause my mam done tol’ me about the evil eye, and I reckon that old man’s done fixed it on you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means you and him’s gonna have to do battle afore this is over, Cap’n.”
94
September 2, 1867
In Billy’s eyes, Helena was high, wide, and handsome. The placer claims were pretty well played out, but talk was that a wealth of gold and silver lode deposits lay waiting for the miners’ pick and drill. That several of the newfangled smelters were going to be built, and the moment they were, all of those stubborn lode deposits were going to place Helena at “the top of the heap.”
He and Danny had rented rooms in a
