Boone's Lick

Of course, there would have been no advantage to giving up. We were so far out in the middle of nowhere that we would have been lucky to make it home, even if we turned back.

"How much farther to a house?" Ma asked, looking around her at the empty plain. "I've about forgotten what a house looks like."

It was a bright, clear day, but a chilly wind was howling out of the north.

"I guess you'd call Fort Laramie a house, of sorts," Uncle Seth said.

"It's about a hundred miles away.

"I doubt you'll approve it, though," he added.

"Seth, nobody made you the judge of what I approve of," Ma said. "Or what I don't approve of, either."

"Maybe not, but I have spent several months of my life at Fort Laramie and it's a disorderly place, filled with cowards and drunkards and whores and coffee coolers, none of which you normally approve of," he said.

"Don't you talk of harlots around my boys," Ma said. "What's a coffee cooler?"

"It's an Indian who's too lazy to hunt," Uncle Seth said. "By now I imagine those Pawnees have cooled that coffee we gave them." "Oh, you mean beggars," Ma said. Just then Charlie Seven Days touched Uncle Seth's arm. Charlie had been afoot since the day the bear killed his horse, but he seemed just as happy to be walking. One day he killed a big porcupine-

-the meat tasted rank, but Charlie helped Neva pull out the quills, which he said could be used to ornament a shawl.

Charlie pointed to a ridge to the northwest--all I could see were some moving dots, but the dots soon turned out to be Indians, and they were moving our way fast. In fact they seemed to be charging right at us--Ma thought the same.

"Seth, they're charging," she said. "We better get ready to fight."

"It's the Bad Faces," Charlie said. "I see that paint horse that that Red Cloud likes."

"You may be right," Father Villy said. He was as cool as if Charlie had just quoted a verse of scripture or something.

"Seth, did you hear me?" Ma asked. The fact that the horses were racing toward us at breakneck speed made more of an impression on Ma than the grizzly bear had.

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"They're Sioux, Mary Margaret," Uncle Seth said. "They ain't attacking, they're just showing off their horsemanship. The Sioux ain't been cowed yet--they still think they have the right to run their horses, if they want to."

I wasn't as easy in my mind about the Indians as Uncle Seth was, but I had to admit it was a noble sight to see them come flashing over the prairies at reckless speed. I had never seen horses ridden so fast--when they came to a creek or small gully they soared over it like birds, the horses kicking up dust on the other side.

"I've heard the Comanches can outride the Sioux but I don't trust the report," Father Villy said. "Look at them come!"

For a moment I felt a lump in my throat, just from the beauty of the race--but I was scared, too. What if they all pulled tomahawks at the last minute and knocked us all dead? They were riding so low on their mounts that even if we had shot I doubt we'd have hit more than one or two of them, which wouldn't have been enough.

Then, when they were no more than fifteen or twenty wagon lengths from us, they stopped. A few of the horses were so caught up in the run that they pawed the air, anxious to keep going.

"Red Cloud is behind," Charlie said. "So is Old Man Afraid."

We saw that two of the Sioux riders hadn't been quite so swift. They were a half mile back, coming at a slow, easy lope.

"These here's just the youngsters," Uncle Seth said. "They will race their nags."

"Who's going to palaver?" Father Villy asked. We all looked at Charlie, but he declined the position. He just stood close to the wagon, watching the Sioux.

Then the two older men eased to the front of the crowd, waiting for someone from our bunch to go talk to them.

"Seth, go on--talk to them," Ma said. The two older Indians who were waiting to talk to us didn't seem impatient. The one on the paint horse had a narrow face and carried a brand-new rifle--a repeater of some kind.

The other Indian was older--his face was wrinkled, like a melon gets when the sun has dried it up.

Uncle Seth and Father Villy walked out together and began to sign to the Indians. The signing went on for a while, and then the thin-faced man on the paint horse began to talk--and did he talk! He sat right there on his horse and made a long speech--I didn't get a word of it, and I doubt anyone else did, either, unless it was Father Villy.

The speech went on for so long that I expected Ma to get impatient--she didn't enjoy listening to anyone for much of a length of time--but for once she behaved herself and waited for the discussion to be nvpr The minute it was over the young Sioux warriors came crowding around the wagon, just as the Pawnees had done. Uncle Seth gave them a lot of 88

tobacco and plenty of coffee too--Ma didn't complain. Uncle Seth even gave the two leaders hunting knives, like the ones G.T. and I had.

"Why do they call them Bad Faces?" Neva wanted to know, when the Sioux left. They were in sight for a long time, riding north.

"I'd like to know that too," Ma said. "They were the best-looking Indians I've seen--except for Charlie."

I expect she just said that to be polite, since Charlie just looked like an ordinary man.

"It's just a name for Red Cloud's bunch," Father Villy said.

"That doesn't explain a thing," Ma said.

In fact, though Uncle Seth and Father Villy had made a show of being cordial, neither of them looked very happy once the Sioux had gone.

"I hope Dick Cecil's at Fort Laramie," Uncle Seth said. "That would be the lucky thing."

"Why?" Ma asked.

"It's those forts the army's putting up along the Bozeman Trail," Father Villy said. "It's foolish-foolish."

"If it's so foolish why are they putting them up?" Ma asked.

"If you knew anything about the army, Mary Margaret, you'd know that they do foolish things every day," Uncle Seth said. "I doubt myself that the army ever does anything that isn't foolish--and

I was a soldier in that same army for four years."

"There's another point," Father Villy said, "which is that the farther west they go, the less brains the army uses. There's been a gold strike in Montana, which means miners will be hurrying up the Bozeman Trail--

only it ain't their trail! You've heard of the Holy Land, I expect, haven't you, ma'am?" "I have," Neva said. "It's where Cain slew Abel."

"Well, we think of it for other things besides murder," Father Villy said. "But you're right--it's where Cain slew Abel."

"I don't see the application," Ma said. "It's that the army's built these new forts in the Sioux Holy Land," Father Villy said. "That's what Red Cloud was telling us in that long speech he made. What he said was that the Sioux won't stand for it--or the Cheye

"They're going to go for the new forts--ain't that what you think, Charlie?" Uncle Seth said. Charlie Seven Days just nodded. "A white man in a fever to get to the diggings will always try to go by the quickest way, even when the quickest way means going right through the Sioux,"

Uncle Seth said.

"Yes, even if quick travel means his scalp," Father Villy said.

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"I guess I finally understand you," Ma said. "If Dick happens to be hauling to one of these new forts, then he's in plenty of danger--is that correct?"