“What is it like, in England? At night, I mean?”
We had been talking much and her English had gotten better. She had discarded the few French words she used and much of the Cherokee, but sometimes she still reverted to Indian talk, which I had to translate in my mind.
“People are in their homes at night. They talk, they read books, sometimes they play cards. If they are in taverns they do the same, but they drink more in taverns, I think. I only know from what I have heard.”
“It is a good thing? To read?”
“We all read at home. I more than any of the others, I think. There are books about everything, and my father and mother both read, so we grew up with books about. If it were not for their books we would know nothing of the Greeks, the Romans, and many others. Nothing but some ruins. The people of England thought the Roman ruins had been built by giants, until their books were translated and brought to England.”
“I would like to read!”
“I will teach you.” I said it and then swore under my breath. Why was I such a fool? I wanted to get away when the grass grew green again, I wanted to walk the lonely buffalo trails and seek out the high places and lonely valleys. And here I was, promising to teach Itchakomi to read! What a double-dyed fool!
But she would forget about it. Spring was still a long time away. Or was it? I had lost count of the days. Anyway, it was probably just a notion. But I had better watch my tongue.
Crouching over our tiny fire in a cave far from anything in the world, I wondered about myself and those to come after. This was what I wanted, to come west, to seek, to find, to understand. Yet I was uneasy with my old feelings, the eerie sense that I walked in a world where others had walked, that I lived where others had lived. I did not believe in ghosts. I did not believe the dead lived beyond the grave. I did believe there was much we did not understand, but there had been a man in Virginia who had claimed he could communicate with the dead. The only messages from the dead that I’d heard had sounded as if they came from creatures that had lost their minds.
The uneasy sense of other beings having lived where I lived stayed with me. I did not know what to call the feelings I had. Second sight, some called it, but this went beyond that.
Itchakomi was watching me. “Of what you think?”
I shrugged. “I think others have been where we are. I think others have walked the trails, lived in the caves. And I do not speak of Indians.”
“Your people?”
“No—not really. Just people from somewhere. I wished to come west to be the first but I am not the first.”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose not, only I would like to know who they were and how they got here and if they left behind any marks of their passing.”
“You are not content to be. You ask who and why.”
“And when.”
“You are a strange one. And when you know, what then?”
“Perhaps I shall write a book. Or even a letter. Knowledge was meant to be shared. Do you not feel the same?”
“Knowledge is useful. Why share it? Use it for yourself. Why share it with others who will use it to defeat you?”
Sakim had shared his knowledge with me. So had my father’s friends Jeremy Ring and Kane O’Hara. So had others. With whom would I share mine?
The night was icy cold. Several times I awakened to add fuel to our fire, and with dawn I was ready to move. If Itchakomi’s people were coming to carry meat, it was meat we must have. I dragged some broken tree limbs to the cave and then took up my weapons. Itchakomi was awake, and when she started to rise I said, “Rest, if you like. I shall go where the game is.”
Without saying more I started off, moving swiftly. I saw nothing on the wide expanse of snow but the tracks of yesterday. As I moved I thought of yesterday. Itchakomi had probably saved me from a fight by moving in the brush behind me. The Indians, of course, thought I was merely bait for a trap and they had backed off, not from any fear of me but of what might await them in the trees.
The buffalo were feeding further west and south near the mouth of the canyon I had seen where a stream came in from the west. I moved swiftly, keeping to low ground, and when I was within sight, I paused to select my target.
Glancing back I saw a dot upon the snow. Itchakomi was following me. I did not know whether to be irritated or pleased, and decided I was irritated.
It needed five arrows to kill two buffalo, but I recovered four of the arrows, the other was broken when the cow fell. By the time I had skinned out the first Itchakomi was working on the second. This had been the work of Indian women forever, I suspect, and certainly she was as adept as I, perhaps more so. Being a Sun she had probably done little skinning, however. I glanced over at her from time to time, but she was paying no attention to anything but the task at hand.
By midday we had both animals skinned and the cuts of meat wrapped in the hides. By that time the other buffalo had ranged out of sight. There was nothing in the wide snowfield below and around us. The meat we had was too heavy to carry, and trying to cache it with wolves about would have wasted time. They would have smelled it and dug it out before we were out of sight.
Suddenly, Itchakomi spoke. Glancing around I followed her pointing finger. Several men were walking toward us from the upper valley.
It was probably the Natchee, but I was taking no chances. We retreated into the woods and waited behind some fallen trees.
It needed an hour for them to reach us. Four warriors and two Natchee women. Within minutes they had shouldered the meat and we were walking back to our cave, where we took up the meat from the day before.
The valley below was empty when we started for home, but I looked back often and prayed for snow to cover our tracks. Itchakomi was telling her people of the meeting with the Conejeros.
The snow crunched under our snowshoes and we paused from time to time, careful not to work up a sweat. Each time we looked back the valley was empty. Would they guess where we were?
We were crossing a small stream when Itchakomi broke through the ice, going ankle deep in the icy water. Often the warmer water of a spring in the stream bed will cause the ice to be thin. Now it was necessary to move swiftly. Picking her up bodily I set her down in deep snow. Then I began rubbing snow over her moccasins. She struggled with me but I spoke sharply. “Be still! It must be done!”
She subsided and I rubbed more dry snow on her moccasins. “It will blot up the water,” I said, “but always you must act quickly. Very quickly.”
After a moment we started on and she was very quiet. When she spoke she said, “We do not know the cold. We have much to learn.”
“It is the same with me. I know only a little, but the dry snow soaks up the water very quickly before it can soak through to your feet. My father taught me that. He learned it in New Found Land, far to the north.”
We trudged on, climbing higher and higher, and then turning east into our valley. It was good to be back, but I knew how short a time our meat would last. Much had already been eaten in feeding those who had come to pack it back. In fact, the two meals eaten on the way home had seriously depleted the result of our hunt.
Had we longer to prepare we might have laid up a sufficient store of meat to last through the winter, although most Indians faced a starving time before spring came. Few had sufficient corn or meat stored to last through the season.
The wood supply was down, so I went to the forest and gathered more, and then still more. Survival was a continual struggle, with no time for loafing by the fire.
Itchakomi’s Natchee went often to the hills for game. The cold was new to them, but they learned swiftly, and often they found deer, ptarmigan, or rabbits. Buffalo did not range so high in the cold months. Bears, if there were any about, were hibernating.