Winter Rain

It could not be true: that Brid-ger would give up on this land and go back to the places where the white man clustered together in great groupings that reeked of his offal and the air hung gray in the sky. Out here the wind blew free enough that the land cleansed itself when a Shoshone village packed up and moved on.

But stories had Brid-ger gone from the high plains and snowy mountains for good. A grand era had come to an end.

This, Two Sleep had decided, he must see for himself.

So he took this journey to Brid-ger’s fort where the soldiers came to roost from time to time. That way Two Sleep would find out if the rumor was true.

For many days Two Sleep traveled without seeing another human being. Only the sweep of the red-tailed hawks circumscribing lazy loops against the sky. Only white-rumped antelope bounding off from the path Two Sleep had chosen, then stopping to look back at the solitary rider. No others ventured into this shimmering heat rising off the parched land—until the Shoshone spotted the two horses weaving like black water striders a’dance among the rising waves of heat along the far horizon.

It had proved to be this white man traveling alone along this road. A brave thing, Two Sleep decided. If he met the wrong Indians …

But at this time of the year, this far west—why, the Lakota and the Shahiyena were far to the north, hunting. Still, the Arapaho were a different matter. They were a fickle, funny people.

They were almost as amusing as the white men Two Sleep had learned to gamble with, learned to drink with. Whiskey and cards—the white man’s two most potent gifts to the Shoshone. He thoughtfully considered those gifts as he watched the solitary white man drag his saddles from the weary, rain-soaked horses down in the willow.

Two Sleep was compelled to draw closer to the stranger than he had wanted, mostly because of the thick, sluicing rain that seriously hampered his visibility. But as well, the Shoshone knew the rain cut down a man’s ability to smell danger, as well as softening the ground and everything on it so that the warrior would not betray himself in this stalk.

Yes, he loved the card games: monte and euchre. And with much practice at them in the shadow of Brid-ger’s fort, Two Sleep had become better than most of the white men he played. Better than them all, except that sour-faced Sweete. Never could read the man’s cards in that face. Sweete kept his hand too much a secret behind that impassive face.

Two Sleep wanted to get close enough to read this stranger’s face, to see if the white man packed along any whiskey in his spare packs. Two Sleep would show himself if there was a chance to drink some of the man’s whiskey. He would walk boldly in and announce his presence without fear, use some of his white-man words learned at the game table in Brid-ger’s fort.

Words like goddamn: the wagon the cursing white teamsters pulled behind his lagging oxen and mules as he yelled out, “Goddamn!”

Two Sleep guessed it meant something else too, for the white man used the word a lot at the card table.

Sumbitch, too. What the white man called himself, or some of his bad cards, or a balky mule. Or one another.

Two Sleep liked the way that Brid-ger and Sweete eloquently strung those flavorful words together when they talked among themselves, especially when excited or under the spell of whiskey. How Sweete especially put a lot of them together as he signed and spoke what little Shoshone he had learned from Two Sleep. Sweete knew Shahiyena; the white man’s wife was born to that tribe. Nonetheless, he tried to learn Shoshone at the card table.

Among white men there were a confusing number of words for one thing, Two Sleep thought as he saw the white man stop at the edge of the willow, unbutton his fly, and water the rain-soaked ground.

Especially that—all the words the white man had for his manhood. The warrior had learned from the best to call it many things: his cock, his dick, his peeder, his prick, and the funniest to his tongue, his love-stinger.

Why the white man did that, Two Sleep had decided he would never find out. Maybeso it was only to make his language seem all the harder to learn.

By now the lone white man was getting smarter, looking for dry wood beneath a tree thick with foliage. He started a small fire as Two Sleep watched, then stood long enough to take off all his clothing and drape his garments over low branches. The leaves of the tree suspended over his fire, and the heavy, wet air of the passing storm, muted the rising smoke.

With water on to boil, the white man rummaged through his packs until he found what he was looking for. He settled back against his saddle to drink, naked.

From the looks of the way the man drank, Two Sleep guessed the white man had some whiskey along. A bottle of it, perhaps more than one bottle—but at least the one the white man was sucking at with no small degree of satisfaction.