Winter on the Belle Fourche

Now there was only one shadow. The other had disappeared while he circled past the grove. He didn't like that, but there was not much for it. He sat and waited. Part of the dark and the windblown striations of the snow. Part of the patch of gray light that swept the earth. He knew what the Crow was doing now. He was waiting to get brave. Waiting to get his juices ready for a fight.

When it happened, the Indian moved so quickly even Johnston was surprised. The Crow stood and made for the cabin door, a blur against the white and frozen ground. Johnston rose up out of nowhere at all, one single motion taking him where he had to be. He lifted the Crow clearly off the ground, the bowie cutting cold as ice. It was over fast and done and he knew in that instant, knew before the Crow went limp and fell away, where the other one had gone. Saw him from the corner of his eye as he came off the roof straight for him, and knew the man had buried himself clean beneath the snow, burrowed like a mole and simply waited out his time. Johnston took the burden on his shoulder, bent his legs and shook the Indian to the ground. The Crow came up fighting, brought his hatchet up fast and felt Johnston's big foot glance off his chest. He staggered back, looked fearfully at Johnston as if he knew a solid blow would have stopped his heart at once, as if he saw in that moment the widows in the Absaroka camp whose men had met this terrible sight before. Turning on his heels, he ran fast across the snow, plowing through drifts for the safety of the trees. Johnston tugged the Walker Colt from his belt, took his aim and fired. The Crow yelled but didn't stop.

Johnston cussed aloud; the red coon was bloodied but still alive. He didn't miss much, and this sure was a poor time to do it. He'd counted on horses. Now the Crow would take them off. He maybe should have gotten the horses first. The Crow would go and lick his wound and come back and that was pure aggravation.

He dragged the dead body well back behind the cabin. He sat beside the corpse, cut the heavy robes away. He saw a picture in his head. He saw his woman. He saw his unborn child within her womb. The child sprang to life. It played among the aspens on the Little Snake River and came to him when he called. The picture went away. He drew the knife cleanly and swiftly across the Indian's flesh below the ribs and thrust his hand inside the warmth.

With no windows at all, with the cold outside and no difference she could see between dismal day and night, the hours seemed confused. She was often too weak to stay awake. When she slept, the rest seemed to do her little good.

She felt relieved to wake and find him gone. Relief and some alarm. His size, his presence, overwhelmed her. Yet these very qualities, the nature of the man, were all that stood between her and some greater menace still. He cannot help being what he is, she told herself. God surely made him this way for some reason, for some purpose, though she could scarcely imagine what that purpose might be.

The soup tasted good. That morning he had made some kind of bread out of corn, and there was still a little left. The fire was getting low and she added a little wood. The wood caught and snapped, for an instant lighting every dark corner of the room. He had set his belongings along the wall. A buffalo robe and a saddle. Leather satchels and a pack. His things seemed a part of the man. Fur and hide greased and worn, heavy with the raw and sour smells of the wild.

She had never ventured quite this close to his things. It seemed like a miniature camp, everything set the way he liked. Her eyes fell upon a thick leather packet. She looked away and then quickly looked back. The corner of a paper peeked out, and there was writing on the edge. How very strange, she thought. Literacy was wholly unexpected. She knew this wasn't fair, and chastised herself at once.

Certainly, she did not intend to pry. She would never touch Mr. Johnston's things. Still, what one could plainly see was surely no intrusion. I should not be here at all, she decided. I must turn away at once. Should dizziness occur, I might very well collapse, and this is not the place for that. Indeed, as she turned, this very thing happened. Her foot brushed against the leather packet, and slipped the paper free.

"Now look what I have done," she said, and bent to retrieve the paper at once. In spite of her good intention, the words leaped up to meet her eyes:

It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.

And then, from the packet, another scrap of paper after that:

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A traveling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

"Oh. Oh, dear," Emily said aloud. "That last one's quite nice. Or at least I think it is." She read the lines again, frowning over this and that, and decided it was slightly overdone.

Still, she wondered, what was verse doing here? Where had this unlettered man of the wilds come across a poem? Perhaps he found it, she reasoned. Came across it in a cabin such as this where some poor traveler had met his fate.

The sound of the shot nearly paralyzed her with fear. "Oh blessed Jesus!" she cried. The papers fluttered from her hand. She fled to a corner of the cabin, crouched there and stared at the door.

An Indian would enter quite soon. Possibly more than one. They would not slay her, though they would take her to their camp. She would tell them about Christ. They would renounce their savage ways. They would certainly not touch her in any way.

It seemed forever before the door opened again and Johnston appeared. "Oh, thank the Lord you're all right," Emily sighed. "That shot. I thought--I thought you had surely been killed!"

"Took a shot at a deer," Johnston said. "Wasn't nothin' more n that." He shook his coat. His beard seemed thick with ice.

"God be praised," Emily said.

Johnston set his Hawken aside. Stomped his feet and ran his hand through a bushy nest of hair. He looked down then and saw the papers on the floor and picked them up. He looked right at Emily and didn't say a thing.

Emily's heart began to pound. "I... I'm very sorry," she said. "I certainly had no right."

"Don't matter none," Johnston said. He stood with his backside to the fire.

"Yes, now yes it does," Emily said firmly. "It is I who have transgressed. I am clearly in the wrong. I do not deny my sin."

"I ain't never hear'd so much about sin," Johnston said.

Emily felt her face color. "Well, there certainly is sin abroad, Mr. Johnston. Satan has his eye upon us all."

"I reckon," Johnston said. He scratched and sat down. Leaned against the wall in his customary manner.

Emily wondered if she dare break the silence. He didn't seem angry at all, but how on earth would one know? And they could not simply sit there and look at one another.

"Mr. Johnston, I do not excuse my actions," she said, "but perhaps you'll understand when I say I have an interest in poetry myself. As a fact, one small effort has seen the light of publication. Three years ago. February 20, 1852, to be exact. In the Springfield Daily Republican." She smiled and touched her hair. "I recall the date clearly, of course, There are dates in one's life one remembers very well. One's birthday, certainly--" Emily blushed, aware she was chattering away. "Well, yes, at any rate..."

Johnston said nothing at all.

"You must be quite chilled," Emily said. "There is still a little soup."

"I ain't real hungry," Johnston said.