Somewhere
in Nebraska
June 1846
They have been following the sandy borders
of the Platte through level country that changes little from
day to day, an undulating sea of grasses broken here and there
by clumps of trees along the river. Jim Reed likes it best
in late afternoon, the low sun giving texture to the land,
giving each hump and ripple its shadow and its shape, while
the river turns to gold, a broad molten corridor.
He likes being alone at this time of day,
with the mare under him. He wears a wide-brim hat, a loose
shirt of brown muslin, a kerchief knotted around his neck.
His trousers are stuffed into high leather boots, and his
rifle lies across the saddle. He has been scouting ahead,
in search of game, and now, as he takes his time returning,
his reverie is interrupted by the sight of another rider heading
toward the wagons. As the man and horse draw nearer, Reed
recognizes him and calls out.
"Mr. Keseberg!"
The German is not going to stop, so Jim overtakes
him.
"Keseberg, hold on! What are you carrying
there?"
"Something for my wife, to help her sleep
a little easier."
Jim rides in closer. Two shaggy hides are
heaped across the pommel. "Looks like buffalo."
"Indeed it is."
Jim has not seen a buffalo for several days.
Keseberg isn't much of a shot, in any event, nor could he
have skinned a creature for its hide, even had he somehow
brought one down.
"May I ask where it comes from?"
"This was a gift."
"A gift?"
"From a dead Indian. The best Indian is a
dead Indian. Isn't that what you Americans say?"
Keseberg seems to think this is funny. His
mouth spreads in a boastful grin.
"Some say that. I do not."
"But surely you will agree that these are
fine specimens."
Keseberg is a handsome fellow, with penetrating
blue eyes and a full head of blond hair that hangs to his
collar. Knowing that he crossed the ocean less than two years
ago, Jim is willing to make allowances. He wants to get along
with this man, though he does not like him much. They will
all need one another sooner or later.
"Have you had much experience with Indians,
Keseberg?"
"As little as possible."
"If these robes come from a funeral scaffold,
you'd better put them back."
His smile turns insolent. "So you can ride
out later and take them for yourself?"
"When I want a buffalo robe I will trade for
it, not steal it."
"And in the meantime you would leave these
out here to rot in the sun and in the rain."
This remark seems to please Keseberg. His
face is set, as if all his honor is at stake and he has just
made a telling point. Clearly he has no idea what he has done,
nor does he care.
Jim looks off toward the circle of wagons,
which are drawn up for the night about a quarter mile away.
He does not see himself as a superstitious man. He sees himself
as a practical man. Stealing robes from a funeral scaffold
is simply foolish for anyone to try, given all they've heard
about the Sioux. It nettles him; it riles him. He does not
like being snared in another man's foolishness.
Near the wagons he sees animals grazing, children
running loose, burning off the day's stored restlessness.
Women hunker at the cooking fires. His wife will soon be laying
out a tablecloth wherever she can find a patch of grass. "We're
going to stay civilized," she will say to someone, once or
twice a day, "no matter how far into the wilderness we may
wander."
Such a poignant scene it is, and all endangered
now by the thoughtless greed of this fellow who pulled up
to the rear of the party on just such an evening and asked
if he could travel with them. George Donner had met the man
briefly in St. Louis before they crossed the Mississippi.
At the time Jim had no reason to protest. Keseberg is young
and fit, somewhere in his early thirties, and he is not a
drifter or a desperado as some of the younger, single riders
have turned out to be. He looks prosperous enough. He has
two full wagons, one driven by a hired man. He has six yoke
of oxen, two children, a pretty wife. She can barely speak
English, but Keseberg speaks quite well for one so recently
arrived. He is something of a scholar, too, knows four languages
in all, or so he claims. The other German travelers have welcomed
him, and so has Donner, whose parents come from Germany. Jim
has never had any trouble with Germans. But he sees now that
he is going to have trouble being civil to Keseberg. Rumors
have been circulating that he beats his wife. This is why
she wears so many scarves and bonnets, Margaret whispers,
even on the warmest days. Jim shrugged this off at first.
Now he wonders. Into Keseberg's eyes has come a look that
seems to say he is capable of such things. Defiant. Selfish.
"Mr. Keseberg, these robes are not yours to
keep."
"Nonsense," he says.
Jim's color rises. "They have to be returned!"
With sudden gaiety that could be a form of
mockery, Keseberg says, "My God, man! The sun is going down!
The day is done! My dinner will be waiting!"
He gallops away toward the wagons, sitting
tall, as if he is a show rider in a circus troupe.
By the time Jim catches up to him, Keseberg
has dismounted and is holding high one of the long robes for
his wife to see, speaking endearments in German as he presents
her with this gift, for his sweet one, the companion of his
heart, for his dearest Phillipine. In front of her he has
turned boyish, a schoolboy bringing something home for his
mother, and she is smoothing down her skirt with nervous hands,
as if preparing to throw this robe around her shoulders. She
wears a bonnet, though the sun has nearly set, and she wears
a scarf wrapped around her neck, while above the scarf her
cheeks are flushed with happiness.
Half a dozen emigrants from other wagons have
stopped whatever they were doing to watch, and you might think
a fiddler has just touched bow to string and these two are
about to dance the prairie jig wrapped together in a buffalo
robe. She is like a girl at a dance. He is laughing a wild,
high, adolescent laugh, as Reed climbs off the mare.
"Keseberg, you idiot!"
Turning to the small circle of observers,
with his hands thrown wide, Keseberg says, "Why is this man
calling me a criminal?"
"You are a criminal! Dammit, man. If the Sioux
come after us, you and I will be killed, our wives will be
taken, our children too!"
He is shouting. His eyes are wide and fierce.
Someone calls out, "Hey Jim, what's got into
you?"
"These are burial robes! But Keseberg thinks
they belong to him!"
"Better him than the Indians," one fellow
says.
"Haw haw," laughs another.
"I don't know," says a third. "Wouldn't mess
with them Sioux."
"Me neither," says someone else. "Ain't worth
no buffalo skins."
"I wouldn't mind pickin' off a brave or two,"
the first fellow says. "Whatta we got rifles for?"
"I think Jim is right. Maybe you'd pick off
a few, but you wouldn't live to tell the story. Any way you
look at it, we'd be outnumbered a hundred to one, and don't
you think otherwise. It ain't worth it. I'd get rid a them
hides right now."
A dozen more have joined the circle, and the
commentary spreads into a noisy debate. Some envy Keseberg's
trophies and are content to stand feasting their eyes on his
handsome wife, imagining how she will look inside the wagon
relaxing on these soft, seductive robes. Others grasp the
full weight of this predicament, among them George Donner,
an elder in the party, with the look of a patriarch, his face
wide, his jaw firm, his hair silver. Though often regarded
as a leader, he lacks Jim's eagerness to take command.
Donner listens a while, then looks at Keseberg.
Quietly he says, "Jim is right. You ought to do what he says,
Lewis, and the sooner the better."
Now Keseberg cannot look at his wife, who
has been mystified by all the turmoil, her eyes darting wildly
from voice to voice. She understands enough to fear that her
new possession will soon be taken from her, and she clutches
the robe to her chest. For the German this is very hard medicine,
but he respects George Donner. "All right," he says. "All
right. I will do it first thing in the morning."
Jim says, "We'd better do it now."
Keseberg puffs out his chest and begins to
prance back and forth, slamming a fist into his palm, pop
pop pop, as if he has been condemned to the firing squad and
has now been denied his final request.
"And I'll go with you."
"I said I'd do it!" Keseberg cries. "My word
is good!"
Jim says, "You'll need someone to hold your
horse."
On the ride out, Keseberg refuses to speak.
The sun is setting as they come upon the scaffold, about a
mile from the wagons and near the bank of a small creek winding
toward the Platte. There are other signs of recent encampment,
ashes, close-cropped grass. The scaffold is made of four slender
poles stuck into the earth, supporting a platform of woven
branches lashed with thong. Laid out upon the platform are
the remains of a chief. Feathers fall against his black hair.
His shield and lance are with him. On the bare soil beneath
the scaffold, bleached buffalo skulls are arranged in a circle.
As the two men sit on horseback regarding
the corpse, the wind around them gradually falls off. Across
the prairie Jim can see wind moving, but right here the nearest
grass is still. The surface of the creek is slick and motionless.
The sky is suddenly sprayed with crimson, while underneath
its gaudy panorama, the space in front of them seems lit by
some separate and brighter column of afterglow. On his arms
the hairs rise. Under him he feels the mare tremble.
He instructs Keseberg to wrap the robes across
the corpse exactly as he found them, to duplicate the look
as closely as he can. As he watches, holding both sets of
reins, the horses begin to twitch and rear, as if another
animal is nearby. Jim squints toward a grove downstream, sees
nothing.
All four are eager to get away from there,
the men and the horses. As they lope toward the wagons, Keseberg
still won't speak. At last Jim says, "Before we set out tomorrow
I'll call a meeting of the council. I'm going to propose that
you be expelled from the party."
He waits. When he hears no reply he turns
and sees the blue eyes inspecting him with scorn.
"You have put the lives of everyone at risk.
But we may be less at risk if you fall back. Do you understand
my meaning?"
Keseberg's voice is low and harsh. "I have
never been spoken to like this."
"Well, I am speaking to you like this. I know
George Donner will support me. You can resist, if you choose,
but I assure you that others on the council will agree. In
this wagon party you are no longer welcome."
"You are going too far," says Keseberg.
"Maybe you'd rather leave tonight and avoid
an embarrassment. It's your choice."
"I believe in discipline, Mr. Reed. But you
have gone too far."
In a dramatic burst of horsemanship, Keseberg
spurs ahead, kicking up a long plume of dust. Jim gives him
plenty of room, lingering in the twilight, to let the dust
plume settle, and let his own blood cool down.
a few more minutes pass. From the deep grass
beyond the clearing, a Sioux brave sits up on his haunches
and watches them ride away. He wears a buckskin tunic, arrows
in a quiver. He creeps close enough to touch the robes and
sniff around the edges. There is a faint white smell. Nothing
has been cut or marked. He has never seen such a thing. If
the Pawnee had stolen these robes, they would never bring
them back. They steal for the insult. They scatter the skulls
and throw the body down and defile it.
Who are these men? He could have killed them
both and taken their scalps, first the one who held the horses,
then the bright-haired one whose scalp would be highly prized.
He could have gone back with the scalps and reported that
he had found the thieves. But now they have returned the robes.
Why? It is very strange. What kind of people would do this,
take away the buffalo skins, then bring them back?
When he can no longer see the men, he stands
for a long time listening. Voices come toward him on the wind,
distant sounds of women and children. In the near-dark their
fires light the sky. It is a village. A village of tents that
move. All day he watched them passing along in their white
tents. Between one rising and setting of the sun he has seen
four villages of white tents, and many horses and many animals
like the buffalo, with sharp horns, and men who drive the
animals but do not shoot them, though some carry rifles. Are
they warriors? They do not have the look of warriors.
Where do they come from? Where are they going?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from Snow Mountain Passage
by James D. Houston Copyright 3/27/01 by James D. Houston.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House,
Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced
or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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