The Whistling Season Page 12

  Father had his nose down in his list. Damon was investigating the flour bin and other kitchen nooks, Toby assisting. I am sure I was the only one who caught the look that passed between Rose and Morrie after he said that. Sisterless as I was, I had nothing to compare it to. But there was a surprising amount of give-and-take in the lift of his brow as he gazed at her and the considering tilt of her head as she returned the gaze for quite an extended moment. Enough to tell me two sexes, even related as closely as possible, must be drastically more to deal with than the male cast of our family. Watching, I could not have foretold whether Rose was going to answer Morrie with bouquet or shrapnel.

  "Surely you don't think I would abandon you," came her eventual response. "I'll tend to everything, per usual."

  Over his shoulder Father called out, "Damon, quit that, you're going to wear out every drawer in the place." With a quick glance apiece he rounded up Toby and me. "Get your coats on, the lot of you, it's time to break ground for home. The thrill of suppertime awaits as usual. Rose, weren't you going to ride back with us?"

  She didn't seem to have heard. Then she roused herself and sent another freighted look Morrie's direction. "I'll stay."

  Morrie gauged that response for a moment, then snapped to as if he had just thought of something. "Everyone stay. For supper. I insist."

  The Milliron family in its entirety halted in its tracks.

  Father was the first to find power of speech.

  "You can cook?"

  "Certainly." Morrie had shed his jacket and was rolling up his shirt-sleeves. "In bachelor fashion, but an acquaintance of mine was chef for the Harrimans for a time. Rose, you remember Pierre. No? Well, no matter, he showed me a few things about putting together a meal. Now then, I believe that is a haunch of deer out in the coolbox." By now he was rummaging through the sparsely stocked cupboard. "Here we have dried noodles—actually macaroni, but close enough. And onions—a bit desiccated, but they will serve. Venison stroganoff, how does that sound to everybody? I'll just start some water to going and Rose can set the table and—Oliver, why are you putting on your hat? Did I say something amiss?"

  "I need some air."

  8

  "SEE?" ONLY DAMON'S REAR END WAS VISIBLE AS HE PAWED among the bison bones at the boulder-strewn base of the cliff. He and Houdini were our best diggers, that next Sunday afternoon. "See, the black ones are chipped different on the sides."

  Hard to imagine, something that innocent as the starting point toward one of my worst dreams. But the mind goes its own way at night.

  "Beveled, Damon, that angle of edge is called," Morrie told him. "Very discerning of you, though, to notice the difference." Kneeling there, big brown hat pulled low against the wind that followed the river through the Marias bottomland, he looked nearly prayerful as he turned over and over in his cupped palm the dark arrowhead Damon had handed up to him. In the next breath Toby came charging over and, proud as a kitten with its first mouse, presented him the intact bison horn he had just found. Carefully Morrie laid it and Damon's find alongside the lance point I had pried out of the nearby claybank. "They could have used the three of you on digging up Troy," he commended. "Superb specimens, all around."

  Our audience clucked a storm of disapproval down at us. I had to laugh. "She doesn't necessarily agree." We had scared up a sage hen when we clambered to the bottom of the buffalo jump, and it strutted nervously on a ledge of rock above us, steadily scolding our presence.

  "Didn't know Aunt Eunice was along with us." Damon's wisecrack drifted from where he still was head-down in the boneyard.

  "I did not hear that," Morrie maintained, lips twitching. Toby had rambled off again, whistling for Houdini to come help him dig. As if suddenly remembering another dog duty, however, Houdini pointed his nose toward the sage hen, lifted one paw as if ready to advance, and growled way down in his throat. Dimwitted as it was, the plump bird took the hint and whirred off to the top of the precipice above us. I watched the flight in some admiration. It always took hard scrabbling for us to climb back up the tiered cliff face of the buffalo jump, and agile though Morrie could be in a number of ways, he no longer possessed the billy-goat surety of a boy. One more time I wondered if this was such a hot idea of Damon's.

  At that moment, though, Morrie seemed as invincibly juvenile as any of us, overjoyed with the treasures we kept unearthing and handing him. This particular rock fall beneath a thrust of the cliff, with its scatter of bones so old they were turning stone color, was our mother lode of arrowheads. How many times over how many centuries had the Blackfoot tribe harvested meat here? What a thing, I thought then and still do, to have the hunting skills to aim a herd of skittish buffalo off the cliff above our heads.

  But now the buffalo were a piece of the past and the Blackfeet nearly so, a remnant people cooped up on the reservation on the other side of the river, and this old killing site was fair game for boys with a streak of badger. I was happily spitting on a nice light-colored arrowhead I had just discovered, to rub off the dirt, when Morrie held up the coal-black one toward me.

  "Paul? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't noticed stone of this sort anywhere in the vicinity."

  I paused in the spitbath I was giving to my own arrowhead. At times like this, I savvied Father's mixed emotions about Morrie and his ready erudition. Morrie always was stimulating to have around, but always gets to be a lot.

  Still, I had weathered the woodpile sessions with him and come out a bit better for it, hadn't I. "Me neither," I contributed on the origin of the stone, and knowing school was now in session even though it was Sunday, duly looked inquisitive.

  "It's obsidian, I swear," he mused. "Which is volcanic." That did make me blink. Our part of Montana had more than enough geography, but I definitely did not know of any local volcanoes. "How does this come to be here?" He bounced the arrowhead gently in his palm as if weighing it. "Care to take an educated guess?"

  I gave it some thought. Those contrary warriors that I was an inadvertent honorary member of must have roamed around, to pick fights with enemies. "Some other tribe? In a scrap with the Blackfeet here?"

  "Close. I'd say it was trade." Morrie's eyes had that deep light of the past in them. "The Missouri surely was a main route." He gestured off in the direction where the Marias and the countryside's other tributaries met the big river. "And tribes would have come from all points of the plains in pursuit of buffalo. They couldn't fight one another constantly. Every so often they would have had to mount up and resort to commerce." He made even that sound heroic, a foray across the prairie to swap a mysterious dark rock for, what, a buffalo-hide robe? I could feel the hair on the back of my neck come up a little. All points of the plains: without my ever having said a word to him about it, Morrie was conjuring paths beneath the paths that had arrived to my eyes back there at the schoolhouse pump.

  Cupping the black arrowhead in his hand again, he looked off appraisingly at the prairie bluffs around us. "With all the crisscrosses possible, this may have been a Mediterranean of a kind." As if Father had invisibly put in his two cents' worth, he gave a slight smile of concession. "Dryland, of course."

  "Morrie? On that. They're going to be getting home."

  This was the day the latest in deep plowing was being demonstrated at the agricultural experiment station, possibly on the premise that it would give the dryland farmers something to dream about during the long winter, and Father and George had talked Rae into going with them to socialize afterward. Rose, to Toby's temporary dismay, chose to keep Rae company rather than wallow in buffalo bones with us.

  Morrie yanked out his watch, then jumped to his feet. "Toby!" he called. "Kindly put back those big bones, please. I am instructed by your father, with Rose concurring, that any part of the buffalo coming home with you has to arrive in your pocket. Damon, good job done."

  Damon hated to be called off from digging. On the other hand, archeological triumph was his this day. When Morrie had wanted to borrow a handful of our
arrowheads to use in the classroom—heaven only knew what arsenal of lore he had in mind next, after the fletching performance—Damon saw no reason why the school should not have its own collection.

  Now my excavation-inclined brother whipped out of his back pocket a flour sack and with the aplomb of a gem dealer scooped our specimens in. Swag bag in hand, Damon looked elated enough to reach the top of the buffalo jump in two bounds. But he remembered his manners enough to say to Morrie, "Ready?"

  "Or not, as the case may be," Morrie acquiesced in a kind of sigh, stepping over the bones of a bison that had plummeted from where we were going.

  I worried, but Morrie managed to stay in one piece as we scrambled back atop the cliff to where our horses were tied. Even as he stood there blowing and inhaling, he studied the surroundings. "Extravagant scenery," he declared, and from there on the high river bluffs it truly was. Farthest west, the tips of the Rockies were white with first snow, an iceberg flotilla that seemed to go on forever under the dark blue sky of late afternoon. All the hills in the world were stacked in shades of tan between there and where we stood. Almost at our feet, juniper patches pintoed down the breaks in the rimrock of the bluff, and lower still, wild roses blew gently in the wind. It added to the pleasure of the day, Damon's and Toby's and mine, that our site was showing off for our guest.

  When Morrie's breathing was back in the vicinity of normal, we moved off to our horses. Before we could mount up, Houdini started to whine. Usually that bargained some petting from Toby, but this time the dog bounced away from him. Nose down, it raced toward the buffalo jump.

  "Houdini!" Toby tried to call him back. "Crazy pooch." The agitated dog was searching for something, back and forth along the edge of the drop-off, whining louder all the while. "Houdini," Toby's indignation was growing, "do you want a spanking?"

  "Houdini, here, boy," I took my turn, "that sage chicken is long gone."

  Damon tried a more direct approach, whistling sharply through his teeth. Houdini lifted an ear, but kept on snuffling along the top rock ledge of the cliff.

  One look at Morrie told me his command of subjects did not extend to canines. We had to do something, though. Toby would fret all the way home if we left Houdini. "I'll get him," I said, and started toward the recalcitrant dog. "No, Tobe, you stay back."

  Seeing me coming, Houdini wagged his tail guiltily but stood his ground. Heights didn't bother me, but Houdini was a sizable mutt and I most decidedly did not want to have to wage a tug-of-war with him that close to the lip of the buffalo jump. I knelt a few feet away, patting a coaxing rhythm on my knee. "Come on, Houdini, get away from there."

  The dog whined, wagged, whimpered, and refused to budge.

  "What's got into you? Houdini, now I mean it, come here or—"

  Bwhoom! The sound of a rifle and the instant echo of the shot rang in all our ears.

  I shall always owe Damon. He leaped toward the pair of us at the brink and latched onto me by the tail of my coat as I swooped and grabbed Houdini around the neck. The load of a struggling dog, my blind exertion and Damon's, the thunder roll of the rifle shot yet in our ears, the gape of the cliff so near, everything mixed in some oldest instinctive wrestle to exist. Fate's heart is hard; ours were temporarily harder. In some common will beyond fear, the clump of us lurched back onto safe ground. Morrie had hold of Toby. We all had our footing, and my hand somehow still was over Houdini's muzzle, keeping him quiet except for the whimpering. It took a considerable moment for the fact to soak in that each of us up there had life left in us. Together we stared down off the cliff at what Houdini alone had sensed was happening.

  My throat suddenly had as many kinks in it as the winding river below. There in the broad bottomland, around the nearest bend of the river, came the steel-gray horse I had run the race against, galloping as hard as ever, but this time with its rider hunched forward in the saddle as he jacked another shell into his rifle. A smaller gray creature fled ahead in a struggling lope. When it tried to veer toward one of the breaks in the bluffs, the rifle spoke again and a small geyser of dirt exploded just in front of the animal, making it turn back toward the flat ground of the bottomland, in front of the relentless gray horse.

  Morrie exclaimed as though something hot had been spilled on him: "What on earth—?"

  By the time the words were out of him, the pursued animal had started to labor across an open stretch of meadow, dodging desperately. Now the man on horseback had plenty of time to rein up and shoot again, but did not, keeping the chase going.

  I found enough voice to tell Morrie what he was seeing.

  "Brose Turley. He's wolfing."

  As we watched the zigzag marathon—Damon was open-mouthed and Toby had crept down to hold on to Houdini with me—Morrie sounded more confounded than ever. "But—he runs them to death? Isn't the man licensed to trap?"

  "It pulled loose. There, see everything it's dragging?" By now the chase had drawn near enough below us that the instrument of destruction on one hind leg was visible. Somehow the wolf had fought the trap stake loose, digging, lunging, the jaws of the trap surely cutting bone deep. As the wolf scrambled along crookedly on three good legs the clamped trap skittered beneath the crippled foot, and the iron stake traded it like a flattened-out ball and chain.

  Toby whispered across, "Paul, I'm goose-bumply. If that was Houdini, I'd feel so awful." He looked at me to see if that was all right, and I nodded that it certainly was. Anyone who grows up around farm animals cannot side with a wolf in the long clash of things. But you can be against tormenting any creature.

  Another gunshot. This one steered the wolf away from our side of the river bluffs, toward some rocky broken country that looked across to the buffalo jump.

  "He's herding it someplace," I figured out. "Don't you think, Damon?"

  "Box canyon. Up over there."

  Through it all, Brose Turley never looked up. Knee, rein, whole body, he aimed the big gray horse after the wolf as if jockeying in a derby.

  The wolf struggled harder as the ground began to climb. Whenever it tried to head for the shelter of a rock formation, a bullet zinged in its way. Turley hazed it like that past the wings of the box canyon. Before long the wolf could find no more room to run, straight-up stone penning it in on three sides. We saw it make a staggering loop along the base of the inmost cliff, the trap in and out of sight in the harsh rock spill. Then the wolf leaped at the cliff face, paws scrambling, vaulting its full length up the steep canyon wall. And fell back.

  Turley was there on the grizzled horse at once, forcing the wolf to its feet with another shot that shattered rock near its head. The animal clambered off into the rock spill, dragging its shackle.

  As the brutal chase went on, Morrie had sunk to a squat beside Toby and me and our quivering dog. His voice still held incredulity as he asked, of us or the universe:

  "Why doesn't he just shoot it and put it out of its misery?"

  Damon, ever our expert on things gory, knew.

  "Fur dealer won't give him as much if there's a hole in the pelt."

  That was one answer. Another came in the night, in the cruel clarity of my dream. I was outside a corral of bones and rock—femurs and rib cages stacked on boulders, some combination of the buffalo jump and an arena. The Turleys, father and son, shapeless hats on the back of their heads, circled the middle of the corral looking over their catch of wolves. I followed around on the outside trying to see in as Eddie advised me not unkindly, "You stay on out, Milliron. Leave this to us." He flapped his hat at the wolves to tease them and said as if making a schoolyard boast, "We know how to deal with these woofs." Brose Turley said, "Quit wasting time. Let's pelt 'em up." He had a knife out. The wolves huddled like sheep. One after another, they were dragged by a hind leg to the center of the corral and skinned alive, Brose kneeing down on the neck, Eddie holding on to the tail. As I watched the wolves being slaughtered and the pelts thrown into a pile, someone showed up beside me. "They are getting blood on everything." I
heard the disapproval in Rose's voice. Rose? All along I had been expecting Morrie—dreams have that odd element of illogical anticipation. It was unmistakably Rose at my elbow, though, on saying over and over, "But why do they do that?" I seemed to be tongue-tied, for I had no answer then. Each gutting slash by Brose Turley drew a whimper from a wolf. The pelt pile Dead or alive or somewhere between, the wolves lay there in skinned sinew and gut piles. "But that's terrible. Don't you think that's terrible?" Rose kept saying indignantly as we peered through the bone corral. Of course it Was I would be able to tell her now mankind at its most remorseless always is.

  That night sweat was hours ahead yet, and Brose Turley held front and center in the long shadows of the box canyon as the four of us and Houdini watched now. The horseman kept the wolf on the move, its tether dragging, until finally the stake tangled in the rocks. The exhausted wolf fell over, the caught hind leg angled behind. Satisfied at last, Turley pulled out a stout forked stick about as long as a shovel from alongside his rifle scabbard and swung down from his saddle. He obviously had done this many times before.

  Approaching the wolf, he feinted with the stick, the creature snapping at it with what ferocity it had left. Quick as anything, Turley slid the fork of the stick just behind the wolf's ears and onto its neck, putting his full weight into pinning the animal down. Carefully maintaining his balance, he lifted his booted foot nearest the animal. He stomped on the wolf's chest, crushing its heart.

  "Beastly," Morrie spat out. We knew he did not mean the wolf.

  9

  THE HOUSE WAS COLD WHEN I FUMBLED MY WAY OUT OF BED and the wolf-butcher dream. Dancing unhappily on the bare floor as I struggled into my clothes, I checked on Damon in the dimness. He had rolled to the wall, as far away from me and my dream tumult as it was possible to get and still be in bed. I supposed I had to sympathize, although it was his proclivity for the sharp edges of things that had led us to the buffalo jump the day before.