Mountain Man

Sam Minard never drank. In such frontier towns as St. Louis and Independence, and at trading posts, he had seen men full of rum and slow on the draw go staggering off with blood  gushing from their wounds. Now, with every amenity and duty fulfilled, he traded ammunition for a tough fleet pony and a buckskin bridle, handed its reins to his black-eyed child-wife, hung a revolver and a knife from her slender waist, and rode off into the south. She had no saddle but she had a robe under her. "Squawhorse," he had said, slapping the beast she sat on. He would teach her English, for he wanted his children to speak English. "Squaw hitch." He touched a packer’s knot on the packhorse. "Saddletree—stirrup—horn—latigo." He had decided that blood from a Lewis and Clark man was ru

"Lotus," he said, tapping her gently. "Mrs. Lotus Minard."

Her open lips said, "Lo—"

"—tus. Lo-tus. My golden-brown biscuit."

"Bis-kit?"

"Biscuit. My Injun filly. My wife."

Around them had stood hundreds of Indians, their black eyes staring. Cocking her head at her sisters in the ma

"Chief Long Talons and Princess Samson Minard. It’ll be a hell of a day for both of us if you turn out to be Delilah. Delilah Lotus, that’s you."

"Sam," she said. She knew his white name."Tall." Her people on his first visit had asked him what he was; he had held his hand about six feet four inches above the earth and had said. "Tall."

As he rode south from the village, with Lotus trailing him, he was thinking that for a few days they would be safe in Flathead land. These Indians not only had never killed a whiteman, or robbed or deceived one, so far as whitemen knew; they were noted for their courage, prudence, candor, and piety. Their children were taught never to fight, except in self-defense—or, as the Indians put it, never to go hunting for their own graves. A tenet of their faith forbade them to seek vengeance.

How, Sam wondered, riding along the eastern flanks of the Bitterroots, would Lotus want to train their children? Most Indian fathers were sentimental fellows who doted on their sons, crooning to them and telling them tales of valor; but they had little patience with one who showed cowardice or rebelled against tribal disciplines. Sam had seen a six-year-old Crow son in a screaming tantrum, in midwinter, and had looked on with amazement as the father poured pail after pail of ice water over the shrieking and shivering lad. He had seen mothers set naked babes only a few months old outside in the snow, and leave them for ten or fifteen minutes; when the infants were brought into the warmth of the lodge they had waved their arms and howled with delight. Hank Cady had once said, in one of the rare evenings when he uttered more than ten words, that he could forsee the time when white children wouldn’t be worth knocking on the head. Well, Sam Minard’s would be wonderful, a boy and a girl, and he would love them like the old dickens.

He gave his Lotus the first of many surprises when he dismounted, took a Don Giova

"I see you’l1 make a good wife," he said; and again astonished her when, bending low, he turned her face up and kissed her berry-stained lips.

Blessed Eros, it was good to have a bride in your arms and be riding away over the world. It was good to be for a few days in friendly country where a man could sleep. He was more than two hundred miles from the Blackfeet, four hundred from the Crows, six hundred from the Eutaws. After they had eaten she stared at him, fascinated, as he washed the dishes in a cool mountain stream. For most Indians the only dishcloth was a dog’s tongue. He hobbled the beasts, piled bedding against a tree, leaned against the bedding, filled and fired his pipe; and then, looking over at Lotus, said gently, "Come to your man." She must have understood his eyes, if not his words, for she moved over until he could take her arm and draw her down at his side. He snuggled her comfortably against the robes, put his strong left arm around her, and looking up at the sky, said, "Look down, Almighty One, and see your Adam and Eve here in the garden. She fed me the berry-apples but I don’t kallate we will sin till she gets used to me." Looking round at her face, he said softly, "Poor little Lotus—Lilah, left all your people to go with me. I’ll be a good husband." That was not what he wanted to say; he guessed he was not much of a gallant. She would look up to meet his eyes but he could read nothing in the black depths. His left arm drew her a little closer, his left cheek sank to the lustrous warmth of her hair. His temple moved down till it touched her temple. Then he held his breath, for he could feel her pulse beating against him, at a hundred throbs a minute. Putting his pipe aside, he sat up straight, and taking her hands, laid them, backs down, across his big left palm'. He then studied the lines. As a youngster he had known what some of the lines were supposed to mean. It looked to him as if the lifeline had been chopped off at the shoulders, but in another line there were two children, and that was good. He brought her hands to his bearded mouth and kissed both palms. Then he turned toward her, and framing her face, tried to look deep into her black eyes but it was like looking into a bottle of black ink with a light under it. He patted her knees, again put his left arm round her, and taking up his pipe, filled it from a deerskin pouch. It was while he was tamping the tobacco that she moved swiftly away from him and returned with a glowing ember.

A few minutes later he again put his pipe aside and took his mouth harp. In turn he played and sang. "Au clair de la lune," a French chanson of the eighteenth century; "The Toubadour’s Song"; "Green Grows the Laurel" but in the middle of this he broke off to tell her that far south, in Kit Carson land, they were calling it lilacs. He would play a phrase, sing it, and play it again; and all the while she intently watched him, like a child determined to understand.