Boone's Lick

While we were paddling along Father Villy came swimming back from the far shore. He swam beside the canoe for a while, flopping around in the water like a big hairy water animal.

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"This water is nearly as muddy as mud," he said, as he swam away.

Charlie Seven Days began to teach me how to spot snags--it meant staying alert to little patterns of water.

"See that ripple?" Charlie said, pointing at a patch of water just upstream.

At first I didn't see the ripple. The surface of the river was never steady for long: there would always be little waves, or a fish would jump and go back down with a splash, or a waterbird would skim the surface and disturb the water. We had already seen several muskrats, but it didn't take a critter the size of a muskrat to disturb the water. Even a water bug could do it, skipping along. But, by looking close, I finally did see the ripple Charlie was talking about, just a little V where the water edged around something hidden just underneath it. Sure enough, when Charlie probed underneath it with his paddle, he struck a snag. I soon got so I could spot the ripples myself--I wasn't as expert at it as Charlie, of course, but I was sharp-eyed enough that I could save the boat from getting stuck, most times.

Sandbars were harder to spot, because the river just surged right over them, with no change the eye could spot.

"I keep a watch for cranes and herons," Charlie said. "They like to set down where the water is shallow."

On the west side of the river there would now and then be a good break in the trees--I could see stretches of brown prairie and was hoping any minute to spot my first buffalo, but when I asked Charlie about buffalo he shook his head.

"We will be lucky if we see buffalo," he said.

I was shocked. Pa and Uncle Seth had always talked about the great herds of buffalo that covered the prairies. They claimed a hunter could just stand at the edge of the herd and shoot as many as he wanted, and they bragged about how good buffalo liver tasted, and buffalo tongue. Uncle Seth even explained how he liked to sprinkle a little bile out of the spleen, to give the meat more flavor.

"But I thought there were millions of them," I said.

"Not along the Holy Road--not now," Charlie said. "Animals won't stay in places where too many people shoot at them."

When we got back to the boat I took the matter up with Uncle Seth, who looked a little hangdog.

"Charlie's right--they're scarce now--too many immigrants," he said. "I expect we'll scare up a few when we get to Wyoming, if that's where we're going."

Ma was washing clothes. One day on the river and she already felt the need of a big wash. The wet clothes were spread out on the roof of the little shed, drying. The boatmen, though they lived on the water, could not be described as clean and tidy. They looked at Ma as if she were 67

crazy. Aunt Rosie was dozing in a little spot of shade, and Neva and G.T.

were playing a dice game with the priest, using borrowed dice.

When Uncle Seth raised the question of where we were going, Ma sort of cocked her head.

"Where else would we be going, if not Wyoming?" she asked. "That's where they're building the new forts--where would Dick be, if not in Wyoming?"

Uncle Seth shrugged. "This west is a big place," he said. "Ideal for a wandering man. It's a long sail up to Fort Union--Dick could be anyplace."

"Fort Union, that's too north," Granpa said. "You're apt to need snowshoes, when you're that far north."

For some reason Ma wasn't satisfied with Uncle Seth's answer, though it seemed reasonable to me. Pa went where he wanted to--he had no fondness for carpentry and might shy away from fort building if he got the chance.

Uncle Seth was right about one thing: the west was big. Already the sky looked bigger than the sky over Boone's Lick--and we hadn't even been going upriver a whole day.

Ma had a different reasoning process than most people. Answers that sounded fine to me or G.T. or even Neva didn't satisfy Ma.

"You know more than you're telling, don't you, Seth?" Ma said, staring at him. "You're Dick's partner--I expect you know where he is."

"Why would I? It's been fourteen months since I set eyes on Dick Cecil,"

Uncle Seth said. The red vein popped out on his nose, a sign that he was nervous, or might be getting mad.

Ma didn't press him--not in words--but it was plain that she had a suspicion. Uncle Seth stood up, had a stretch, and went over and began a conversation with Charlie Seven Days.

That was the end of the talk about Wyoming for

2 THE boatmen were afraid to travel on the river after dark. Even Charlie Seven Days couldn't spot snags in the dark. So when evening came the boatmen tied up on the bank. We stopped about an hour before dark, to give our hunters--Uncle Seth and Charlie--a chance to rustle up some game. Uncle Seth saddled Sally and headed due west, while Charlie strolled off toward a little grove of trees a mile or two from the riverbank. G.T. was a

"Fish, if you want to do something useful," Ma told him.

"Why? I'm a poor fisherman and you know it," G.T. said, in a sassy tone.

Two minutes later he landed a twenty-pound catfish.

man," Ma said. "If you were a good fisherman you might have caught one so big it would tip the boat."

G.T. just stared at the fish, as if he could hardly believe he'd caught it.

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It turned out to be a lucky day for hunters and fishermen. Uncle Seth came back in half an hour with a fat little doe across his Sally's rump, and Charlie walked in a few minutes later with two wild turkeys.

Father Villy turned out to be a big help with the cooking. Ma wouldn't usually allow anyone to interfere with her when she was cooking, but she made an exception for Father Villy and he concocted a kind of sweetbreads stew which we all thought was tasty.

"I cooked for the garrison up at Fort Pierre," he said. "The real cook died of jaundice. I have never seen a human being turn so yellow."

"He must have overdone the rum--it'll turn a person yellow," Uncle Seth volunteered.

"No, I'm afraid it was witchcraft," the priest said. "There was an Arapaho medicine man who took against him and made a spell that turned him yellow."

"I know that medicine man," Charlie said. "He calls himself the Man of the Morning." "That's him, the rascal," Father Villy said. "Why, I believe I've seen him too," Uncle Seth said. "He was around Fort Laramie for a while-- Dick and I even gave him a ride once or twice. I've heard he poisons people with cactus buds."

Uncle Seth and Father Villy went on talking about the bad medicine man who turned people yellow, but Charlie took his plate and went over to the edge of the boat to eat. He was a man who seemed to live in his own space--sometimes he would invite you into it, but sometimes not. When he finished his sweetbreads he washed his plate in the river.

Ma was sitting outside the little shed, nursing Marcy and thinking her own thoughts, the way she did. It was not smart to barge into Ma's space, either, when she was thinking her own thoughts-- she was like Charlie in that way.

What got me was how the priest and Uncle Seth and Charlie Seven Days seemed to know just about everybody there was to know, up and down the plains. From what I had heard, the west was such a huge place that you'd be lucky to meet ten people a month, but Uncle Seth and the priest and Charlie soon discovered that they had several acquaintances in common--