“Like Richard Hamilton and his kind?”
“Hamilton? You heard of him? He never thought much of me. ’Course it looks like I ended up more of a mess than that bastard Travis Hartman he used to travel with.” Paw indicated his stump.
For a moment, Paw’s smile was filled with irony. “Fool that I was, I thought if I came back to the mountains, I’d be a big man. Last time I was little more than a kid. This time I could be a booshway, a boss. Respected like William Drummond Stewart was. Spent the first year after Shiloh out here with the Crow.”
He made a face. “One of them bastards finally remembered who I was. Rather than lose my scalp, I hurried on over to the Fort Hall country, but the Shoshones over there was going to war with the whites. Then, after that shit, Patrick Conner, killed all them women and children at Bear Creek, I thought the country around Fort Bridger might be a bit more healthy. Somehow I ended up with Bazil’s band of Shoshoni. They’re mostly half-breeds. Horse Shoshoni, buffalo hunters. Wintered with them, helped with the trading down at the fort. With whites moving into the Green River country, I followed Chief Norkok here to the basin and wintered with Dirty Face in Red Canyon.”
He shook his head. “One instant I was on the trail hunting sheep, the next I’m face-to-face with that sow.”
“So, did you find what you were looking for?”
Paw shook his head. “All I found is ruination.”
“People coming,” Mountain Flicker noted, standing and shading her eyes. “It’s my father, Hard Hand! And look. Beside him is Antelope Fire.”
Butler stood, suddenly feeling panicked.
“Easy, Cap’n,” Kershaw said. “Reckon we’re behind you. C’est bon?”
“My wife’s father,” Butler said, as if in explanation.
Hard Hand was a medium-sized man, dressed in a finely tailored hunting shirt that hung open to expose his muscular chest. Long black hair had been combed up in a high wave in the front and pinned to fall down behind his left shoulder. Travel-stained moccasins shod his feet. A thick sinew-backed horn bow hung from his left hand.
Hard Hand smiled, ran forward, and wrapped his youngest daughter in his arms, a smile breaking his wide lips, his angular-planed face alight with joy.
The second man, Antelope Fire, was older, his pomped hair mostly gray. A heavy-barreled, half-stock Plains rifle hung from his hand. The man’s face reminded Butler of a storm: tortured, lined, and threatening with its leathery and wrinkled skin. A deep scar ran from the corner of the man’s nose just under the cheekbone and back to the ear. His eyes, like black stones, fixed on Butler—the impact almost physical.
The moment he turned them on Paw, it was as if psychic lightning had struck. For an instant, the air literally tingled between the two, and then a slow, deadly smile curled Antelope Fire’s hard lips.
“Butler!” Mountain Flicker took his hand, distracting him from the interplay between his father and Antelope Fire. She led him forward, face beaming. “Here is my apo. His name is Getande’mo. Hard Hand.” To her father she said in Dukurika, “Apo, this man is my husband. His white name is Butler Hancock, but he is known among us as Man-Who-Talks-to-No-One. We are naatea.”
Hard Hand’s face had gone from beaming love to implacable stone, betraying no expression. The man’s dark eyes, however, seemed to burn into Butler’s, as though demanding to know the worth of his soul. Or souls, as the Dukurika figured it.
Butler offered his hand. “I have heard a great deal about you, sir. I am honored.”
Hard Hand glanced down at the hand, then back into Butler’s eyes. In Shoshoni he asked, “Is he a good man?”
Mountain Flicker replied, “He is a very good man, Father. Everything a man should be, more so since he’s a taipo. One who has puha and does not abuse it.”
“Why are you keeping the one who calls himself Silver Eagle? Why is he in Puhagan’s camp?”
Butler was having trouble following the rapid Shoshoni as Mountain Flicker responded, “Silver Eagle is Butler’s father.”
“Dog shit!” Antelope Fire said through gritted teeth. “That’s what he is!”
Butler stepped back at the violence in the man’s voice, seeing Mountain Flicker’s surprise and disbelief. For a stunned moment, she could only gape, then weakly asked, “You know him?”
Antelope Fire hissed through his teeth, a distasteful gesture among his people. He kept his angry gaze locked on Paw’s, who stared back uneasily, his blue eyes wavering, face a mask of guilt.
His muscles trembling, Antelope Fire asked in broken English, “Why you return?”
Paw chuckled dryly to himself. “Thought you were dead.”
“Dead.” Antelope Fire seemed to swell with hate. “You walking shit, bastard fucker.”
“Wait!” Butler cried, stepping forward, arms raised. “What is this?” He stepped in front of Antelope Fire, crossing his arms. Meeting the man’s fiery stare, he asked, “What did Paw do to you? Gwee, help me with the words I don’t understand.”
Antelope Fire struggled, as if to keep from spitting. “That man came as a youth. Wild, full of himself. And where he went, he left suffering. He was a taipo, and rich. With his smile and his trade, he lured my sister into his lodge. She worked for him, and he decorated her with beads and bells, and when the winter was over, he went to trade at Fort William. He went with Ainka Pakan, Red Arrow and his two wives. And at the fort he drank whiskey and went insane. He gambled my sister off to a taipo whiskey trader. He sold her to men for money. Within a moon, she had cut her own throat because she couldn’t stand it.
“Back at camp, the Two Footed Shit found Red Arrow’s youngest wife alone, and though she fought, he took her there in the dirt.
“Red Arrow came back then, caught the Two Footed Shit raping his wife. When Red Arrow cried out, the taipo stuck a knife in his friend’s belly. The Two Footed Shit looked around.
