warm, but I flapped my arms around in an attempt to gain a little mobility anyway, then reached down and fumbled with the zipper.
When I looked up again, Virgil was still watching me. Patiently, he stepped forward and zipped the jacket, and I felt like I was being dressed for school.
His voice echoed as it resounded through me, and once again his words were the last thing I could hear. “Leaden cloaks.”
The forest is never silent, no matter the season; there are always sounds, and the trick is simply slowing yourself to the point where you can hear them. My situation was different, though. I can’t explain it, but it was almost as if I was laboring under a selective deafness; I couldn’t hear the wind or the sound of my own footfalls, but I could hear voices-at least I had been able to hear Joe’s, Henry’s, and now Virgil’s.
“My grandfather told me the story of how, before I was born, his mother, my great-grandmother, died. Our village was on the Little Big Horn. He said that one day when he was very young the sun was very hot and the lodge skins were propped open so that any breeze might pass through, but even these winds were hot.”
I tried to concentrate on his words and glean the warmth from them as I stumbled forward through the deepening snow.
“A large party of my people was moving camp into the mountains, and my great-grandfather told my great- grandmother to water his horse while they were gone. My great-grandmother forgot this until the afternoon when she went to the horse that had been staked out near the lodge, but when she approached, he was startled and pulled the stake from the ground and ran away toward the pony-band.”
I stumbled but caught my footing and continued on after the giant.
“My great-grandmother ran after the horse, but she tripped and fell. When she got up, there was a man there with the horse’s lead, and he handed it to her. She took the rope, but when she did, she saw that it was not one man, but two. She thanked them and then watered my great-grandfather’s horse and returned to the lodge.”
His strides were longer than mine and, even with him carrying the pack, I was having trouble keeping up. My mind was wandering, but I kept being brought back to the trail by his voice.
“When they returned, my grandfather said she told them that she would be going to the Beyond-Country, that two of her sons, my grandfather’s two brothers who had died in the wars, had come to take her there.”
Virgil stopped at the top of the ridge, and I ran into him, knocking my hat over my face. When I pulled it away, he had turned and was looking down at the half-filled tracks that led west around Mistymoon, across the meadow and into the freezing fog.
“They wrapped my great-grandmother in a buffalo robe, and she went away in her sleep. I tell you these things even though we Crows are forbidden to speak of the dead-you know this?”
I was breathing hard, trying to catch what was left of my breath. “I’ve heard it said.”
He nodded and knelt down to give closer inspection to the tracks, even going so far as to blow in them to clear away the drifting snow, his breath like a bellows. “The experiences you had before, the one on the mountain that you have chosen not to share with me-have you told anyone else about them?”
I knelt down with him, curling my arms around my knees. “No, not really. I discussed it briefly with Henry, but that’s all.”
His eyes rose after the grizzly’s as he looked north and west into the strands of mist. “The ones you call the Old Cheyenne.”
I shivered and not just because of the cold. “Yep.”
“They are not only Cheyenne.”
I looked through the binoculars, tracing the edge of the cornice with the power of the Zeiss lenses; the tracks continued across a sloping meadow and around the overhang to our left. “Where does he think he’s going?”
His shoulders rose. “Up.”
The satellite phone had no clock feature that I could find, and I was afraid to see what the water might’ve done to my pocket watch, so I glanced west to try to figure out the time; there was a vague glow within the clouds. “Late in the afternoon-they’re going to have to settle down for the night somewhere.”
“Yes.” He stood and stared down at me. “What did the Cheyenne say?”
I glanced up at him. “What?”
“The Cheyenne, Henry, what did he say about the Old Ones?”
I tried to realign my thoughts, but my mind remained off topic. “The Cheyenne, Henry, said…” I forced myself to concentrate. “He said that he wasn’t singing.”
“Singing? ”
I stood and was a little uneasy, feeling confused and angry. “When I carried Henry and this kid off the mountain, I was dehydrated, hypothermic, concussed…”
“Like now?”
I bit my lip but could hardly feel it, remembered the balaclava and pulled it up over my nose. “Worse; a lot worse.”
He laughed. “Well, the evening is young.”
I was fully annoyed now. “I thought I heard singing, and when I finally… when I got him back to the trailhead and the emergency people, the EMTs… I asked him if he thought-if singing with the kinds of injuries that he’d sustained was a good idea.”
The giant grunted and repositioned the base of his lance. “What did he say?”
I forced the next part out with my breath. “He said what singing?”
“Hmm.”
I stepped around him and looked up at his chin. “Hey, Virgil?”
It took a while, but he finally looked down at me and it seemed like I’d gotten the attention of Mount Rushmore. “Yes?”
“To be honest, I don’t care about any of that stuff right now. I’ve got two innocent people who are being led off to God-only-knows-where by a schizophrenic sociopath and no backup besides a seven-foot Indian who wants to stand here and discuss paranormal phenomena.” I breathed deeply after my little tirade, watching the clouds of vapor fly from my face and thinking about what exactly I was going to do if Virgil, my only volunteer, dropped my pack in front of me and went back to the comforts of his cozy cave.
He didn’t say anything for a moment but then smiled. “Just curious.” The indentation in his forehead deepened as he turned a little toward me. “Would you be upset if we continued the conversation while we walked?”
Now I was feeling stupid, and my head was starting to pound again. “Of course not; I just want to focus on what’s important.”
He smiled some more, then turned and continued over the top of the tracks on a course of north by northwest, his words tossed over his shoulder. “Me too.”
I was feeling bad about my little outburst. “I’m sorry, Virgil.”
The snout of the bear cloak swung around, but I still couldn’t see his face. “It’s all right; I suppose I have become talkative in my isolation.”
“Self-imposed isolation. You know there are no charges against you. You’re a free man and can go wherever you’d like.”
I suppose it was the sheer bulk of the man and the deepness of his voice, but even though he was a good two paces ahead on the trail, his voice sounded as close as if he were talking into my ear, the sore one. “Where would I go, back to the VA hospital?”
I wanted to be sure that Virgil understood that there were no official reasons prohibiting his return to civilization. “Back to the Rez? I don’t know… You’ve got a son who lives over in Hot Springs.”
“He wouldn’t want me there, and I have none of my people left on the reservation.”
“Last of your kind?”
“Yes, in a way. Something like you.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got a daughter in Philadelphia.”
“A daughter, yes. When she has her daughter, she will not carry your name.”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of our conversation as we were slogging our way toward the crown of the Bighorn Mountains.
