Читать книгу Mine Inheritance - Frederick Niven - Страница 23

Table of Contents

The Indians who had been looking on flicked their moccasined heels against the flanks of their horses and rode away, the incident evidently closed for them. The two half-breeds who remained were young. By reason of their youth and of Court Nez’s superior years as well as his colour they awaited his instructions. From a swift dissatisfied examination of them he turned to me.

“These things have to be attended to,” said he. “Are the people you are with far back?”

“They cannot be. We saw the herd crossing just ahead of us.”

“Well, they will not want to bury him here. You will have to help me to lift him.” He took the reins out of my hand and knotted them to the tail of his own horse, the long lines of which he had slipped over his shoulder. “Come along. Lend a hand before he stiffens.”

As we lifted the body the head rolled back and the eyes opened. For a moment I thought Jules was alive, but his eyes were glassy, the spirit had gone out of them. We laid him across Court Nez’s saddle.

“Do you steady him,” cautioned Court Nez, “while I walk in front.”

At my momentary hesitancy he gave me a backward frown of disapproval, then ahead he trudged, leading his horse, with uneven steps over the uneven ground. He went towards a ridge where some rocks showed, while I walked behind with one hand on the body to steady it.

“I can hear the squeal of their carts pretty near,” he said over his shoulder to me, and then: “Here they come!”

Over a rise of the prairie came the Red River carts with the women.

“Are any of the corpse’s family with them?” asked Court Nez.

“His mother,” I replied.

“Well, you go and tell her.”

“What have I to say?” I inquired, at a loss.

Court Nez frowned and tossed his head to one side as a man might do when evading the sudden lunge of a wasp.

“Tell her. That is all. Tell her. These things happen. That is life. Tell her. For God’s sake, what can you tell her but that her son is dead?”

I left him and hurried on to meet the carts. In one of the first the mother sat, driving. She may not have been as old as she looked: to me she seemed then as old as a mummy. The dry air of the prairies perhaps had withered and creased her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, then with puckering eyes looked beyond me.

With tensity of expression she considered what she saw: a big white man trudging beside a horse over the back of which a body lay, and a led-horse behind. Her eyes narrowed.

“That Jules?” she inquired.

I could only nod my head at first. Then, “Yes,” I said with difficulty.

“He dead?” she asked.

I inclined my head again.

Slowly she climbed over the cart’s rail to the hub and came to the ground and with a tottering in her gait hurried to meet Court Nez. I followed her. She stood beside the horse, put one hand up, felt the body. She stroked the face. Tears coursed down her cheeks and made runnels in the dust on them.

“Plenty stone here,” she muttered. “The wolves will not get him here.”

By that time some of the young men who had been far in pursuit of the buffalo, unaware of what had happened, were returning. Several of them came riding at the gallop in a race to see which would be back first at the carts, emitting sharp yells as they rode. But others, the two who had been with the body when I found it among these, called to them warningly. They reined in. They looked left and right, questioning. Then they saw that group: the horse with the body lying over the saddle, the led-horse, the massive Court Nez, the old woman very small beside him. I heard them talking quietly together.

“Who is it?”

“Jules.”

“I thought Jules.”

“What does he say?”

“Jules—Jules Main-Gauche.”

That was the first time I had heard him called by his name in full.

“So! That is his mother, then, as I thought when we rode up.”

“What happened?”

“Fell.”

“How?”

“I do not know.”

“Who is it?”

“Jules—Jules Main-Gauche.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

Court Nez turned to them, spoke for the woman, called to them: “She says there are a lot of stones here to keep the wolves away. You could make a grave.”

They looked one to another. They had the manner of each wishing that the other would do the work, though no arduous work it was, as I was to see. They scraped away a hollow, or rather they enlarged a hollow—a natural hollow—already there on the crest of the ridge. They slit the turf with their knives in the same manner as when gathering sods for the roofs of their houses; then with their hands they dug like badgers and made that hollow a little deeper. Their ancestors, upon one side, did not believe in putting the dead in the earth, wrapped them in deerskins and raised them up in the branches of trees or elevated them on scaffoldings over the prairie in lonely places. Most of them probably shared the doubt of full-blood Indians regarding interment, a doubt if the spirit would escape. To assist in that escape a shallow grave was desirable.

The body was placed in that shallow grave, the earth was kicked over it. Divots were dropped on the top and then they moved to and fro gathering stones and without exchange of a word piled them over that shallow grave. Click, click, click, went the stones against each other, click, click, while the mother stood apart, sobbing. They seemed to be more embarrassed than grieving. Here was something that humanly had to be attended to on her behalf. At last they whispered among each other. Some said, “Enough.” Others said, “Put some more.” The first stones had been laid more or less circumspectly on the covering sods but the final ones were tossed there. They turned away. The sun had set. Immediately that it was hid below the horizon a thin wind that was blowing set me shaking with cold.

“You’d better come over with me,” suggested Court Nez, “and I’ll give you something to stop these tremors. My people are making camp close by, I see.” He loosened the reins of my horse from the tail of his, handed them to me, swung to the saddle. “Come along, then.”

I had the inclination to reply that I would remain with those from Pembina. But Court Nez read the refusal on my face.

“Our camp is already almost made,” said he. “Better come with me.”

So I mounted and we rode side by side over the rolling land. The sky still reflected the light of the sun. Westward were flecks of cloud from north to south, poised in space, their undersides as though molten. In the air was a suffusion of radiance. The horses’ hoofs, as they passed through any slight indentation, trampled through twilight in the grass, and I had the feeling of sitting very high in the sunset glory. It was the exquisite hour, the melancholy hour, with its obvious hint of passing time. And on that wind was more than a suggestion of winter.