Mountain Man

He pulled his bronzed forehead down in thought. A fruit, he said. It was the fruit the lotus people ate that made them drunk. He turned to the berries. "Lotus. What? This."

"Ohhh," she said, sucking the meaning into her. She thought the lotus was the wild strawberry. She stood looking at the berries; he supposed she was telling herself he had named her for this delicious fruit. She seemed deeply pleased.

Knowing that he could not always be present to protect her, he spent many hours teaching her to shoot and throw the knife. Most Indians did not have rifles, and the few who had rifles never allowed their women to touch them. The recoil and the sound of the explosion frightened her at first but she was determined and apt; after fifty rounds she could hit an object the size of a man’s head at fifty yards. The heavy revolver she could never master, but she practiced daily with the knife. It was James Black who began making the knives—who hardened and tempered the steel with a method he never divulged to any man. After James Bowie with a knife made by Black ripped open three assassins who had been hired to kill him the knife became known as the Bowie; and it became so well-known and widely used that schools sprang up in which fighting with the Bowie was taught. Sam on his way west had spent time in one of these schools. The real Bowie had a guard, and a razor edge on top of the blade from the point back about two and a half inches. For throwing, a knife was machined and balanced to turn over once, twice, or three times in a certain distance. Sam had had his knife balanced to turn twice in thirty feet; at that distance he could drive it through a man’s heart. He taught his wife to throw it, because in his opinion it was the best weapon in close fighting; you could throw it faster than you could get your rifle up, and you could rip open three men while trying to shoot one. He said he would get her a Bowie at Bridger’s post and a lot of other things. They would be in debt but the next winter he hoped to get four, perhaps five, packs of beaver. Did she know how many pelts were in a pack?

A pack, he tried tell her, in words and signs, had ten buffalo robes, fourteen bear, sixty otter pelts, eighty beaver, a hundred and twenty fox, or six hundred muskrat. Four packs of beaver would be three hundred and twenty and that should be seven hundred dollars at a post or rendezvous. She knew the word, "rendezvous" and she asked if it would be six moons.

"More than that." He pulled all her fingers and thumbs out straight, and starting with a thumb, said, "This thumb is October; forefinger November, big one December—except it isn’t very big,” he said, and kissed it. "This is January; the little one is February, as it should be. This other thumb is March and the forefinger is April. About seven and a half moons." He turned his thumbs in and held up his eight fingers.

From the Bitterroots they had gone southeast to the continental divide and had crossed it just north of Henry’s Lake. From there they went to Pierre’s Hole and climbed the backbone of the Teton range and looked east across what would be known as Jackson Hole country. On the eastern Banks of this range, high against the spine, were more wild flowers than Sam had ever seen in one spot-whole acres, whole hillsides, with such a wealth of color and scents that he could only stand and stare. He knew only a few of them—the asters, paintbrushes, pentstemons, gilias, mallows; none of them for him was as lovely as the marsh marigold, which he called alpine lily, or the alp-lily, with their yellow centers and six creamy white petals; and the columbine. But he loved them all and marveled at the beauty of this mountainside. Among the flowers, as if to set them off, were the ferns, the leathery leaves of myrtle, the mountain laurel, and various berry plants, including the huckleberry. And the huckleberries were ripe.

Sam gathered a few of the loveliest flowers and intertwined the stems in her black hair. Someday, he said, he would make her a mantle of the mariposa lily, white, lilac, yellow, and red. While she gathered berries he went down the mountain to a spring, to fill the coffeepot, for they would have their supper on the summit, with the A1mighty’s magnificent sculpturing all around them. This, he said, was the greatest elk country in the world, and yonder only a hundred miles the buffalo were so thick they turned the prairies black. He stood a few moments looking into the northeast; up there a long way was a sad and lonely woman and he guessed they ought to go see her.

It was dark by the time he came in with the loin, liver, and a hindquarter of an elk. In a natural room, high and fragrant, formed by dense evergreen tangles, he made a fire and set on the coffee and steaks. Lotus had gathered two quarts of berries. The huckleberry, Hank Cady said, was the finest in the world; every autumn he gathered gallons and decocted his delicious jam, using wild honey and a little sugar to help inspissate the fruit. Remembering how Hank used berry juice and hot marrow, Sam now fed his wife as though she were a bird: he opened a hot biscuit, poured melted marrow over it, sopped it then in huckleberry juice, and presented it at her lips. He would then take one, and shutting his eyes tight so that he would have no sensation but that of taste and smell, he made murmuring sounds of pure joy. The warmth brought out the full marvelous scent and flavor of the berry. Other delicacies Sam prepared for her, in the warm scented room under the fir boughs. Over a morsel of raw liver, well-heated, he sprinkled a very little pepper, then poured hot marrow over it and plopped  it into her mouth. Imitating him, she would close her eyes when she chewed. He would kiss her lips when they were moist with marrow fat or berry juice.

They spent two nights and a day here, feasting on wild game and wild fruits, and then descended to a beautiful lake and went past the majestic blue-gray granite towers of the Tetons. Two days later they were at the southern edge of what would be known as Yellowstone Park. That was the area of John Colter’s hellhole and hot bilins, steaming vents and spoutings and mudpots. In a geyser basin they could be safe all fall and winter; the red people seldom ventured close to the huge vomitings of hot water or to that part of the lake where hot springs boiled in the cold depths. The journey north to see if the woman was still there would be an extra eight hundred miles but a mountain man thought little of that. There wasn’t much to do before the snows of winter. Besides, he thought the woman might come to her senses if she were to see another woman. As they entered Crow lands they both steeped themselves and their garments in the smoke of woods with a strong incense, such as cedar, sage, and buffalo bush; and Sam put his music and his songs away and no longer talked above a whisper. As his ma

After they had gone north past the Bighorns and come close to Blackfeet country, Sam put away his pipe and built no more fires. They would now eat jerked elk, roots, and dried berries. Lotus’s people, like the Shoshonis, had long been preyed on by the Blackfeet and lived in chronic fear of them. Sam had told himself a thousand times that he must never fall into their hands. The Crows, the Cheye

Smell of the Blackfeet always made Sam think of John Colter. Had there ever been another such race with death as his? Surprised with a companion by five hundred warriors in the Three Forks area, when trapping, John had not resisted. The fool companion had been shot full of arrows. John was given a chance. It was a mighty slim chance but it was a chance of a kind, and Sam could imagine with what eagerness the man had seized it. There he was, stripped naked, defenseless, five hundred howling savages around him, his companion lying dead in his blood. Even his moccasins were taken off. He was told that he could run for his life, with the five hundred at his heels. Colter had not only to run barefooted; he had to cross a wide area that was densely studded with cactus, whose thorns were as sharp and stout as needles. Sam had crossed the area over which John ran, and had examined the thorns. He supposed that a man ru