I allowed my breath to slowly drift out with the faint breeze and it blended with the rounded river stones, the rustling of the dying buffalo grass, and with the faint wisps of high-altitude clouds. I could hear the song I had heard before on the mountain, the one that had shaken the trees and resonated through rock. The Old Cheyenne were there now with me, and I could hear their voices ascending as I held their rifle. I pulled the trigger of the big Sharps, and they whistled across the Powder River and beyond with a deadly accuracy that begged forgiveness as they went. They imparted death as a release and an involuntary shudder in the ongoing action of things. I hardly felt the kick and lowered the rifle in acceptance of a forgone conclusion. The figure dropped, and I listened as his wayward shot passed just above our heads. It screamed like misplaced vengeance and slapped through both sides of the Bullet’s double-sided bed.
George continued to sob, and I was glad that he was alive. After a few moments, I became vaguely aware of Henry as he took the rifle away from me and leaned it against the bank. He stood there for a moment, and I think he touched my arm. He continued on into the river. The voices of the Powder would continue to tell the stories they had told before I was born and would tell long after I was gone. Henry carefully picked his way on the large, flat rocks that George had had no time to look for. I watched him for a moment and then looked back in the direction of the shot. My jaw set, and sadness overwhelmed me.
I knew who it was.
16
The bullet had shattered the clavicle, passed through the muscle and tendons of the shoulder, and had exited through the blade, taking most of it as it went. The tissue damage was tremendous, and it was unlikely that George’s arm would ever operate properly again. His pulse was weak and rapid, his breathing was shallow, and it seemed as if he was doing everything possible to lower my odds below fifty-fifty.
We had wrapped him in the wool blanket that I kept behind the seat of my truck and had carried him back to the tailgate. He lay there, trembling from the cold of the water and the loss of blood. Shock had dulled his eyes, and the pupils were dilated as he stared into the late afternoon sky. He had lost a lot of blood in the river and continued to ooze his life out onto the scratchy surface of the gray blanket. I folded my fleece jacket around his shoulder in an attempt to compress the wound and quell the blood flow. I leaned over him and smiled with my mouth, even though my eyes refused to join in. “You’re going to be okay, George.”
Along with the difficulty in thinking clearly that accompanies shock, his jaw was still wired shut, and his lips shuddered along with the rest of him, so that it was doubly difficult to understand what he was saying. “Shoshmeee…”
“Yep, somebody shot you, but I shot them. You just relax, everything’s going to be okay.” I pressed on the jacket at his shoulder and calculated the miles back to Durant. If you continued down the Powder River Road to Tipperary, you could cut back up 201 and get to town faster than doubling back to 16 and the paved roads. I couldn’t help but think that time was more important than macadam. Henry returned from the front of the truck where he had gone to raise Vic on the radio. “Henry’s here. He was with me in the truck when we were trying to find you.”
“Ya te he, George.” He put his hand down on the dying boy’s chest and smiled with his whole face. “You really had us scared there for a moment.” George was bleeding and would continue to bleed until he got to an emergency room. The important thing now was to keep his mind working in a positive direction, to speak calmly, and to reassure him, so that he could counter the effects of the shock. We had to get him thinking about other things, and I truly believe I could have searched the world over and never found someone better at diversion than the man who now stood beside me. George’s life hung on Henry’s every word, and I watched as the dark eyes peered into the dilated pupils and scooped up a subject that would carry the young man to safety. “George, I need to talk to you about being an Indian…” He glanced toward me and whispered, “She will be here any minute.” He looked back down. “George, if you are going to live on the reservation with us I have to teach you some things…” We transferred hands, and he held the makeshift bandage against George’s crushed shoulder. He continued to talk to him in a hypnotic rumble. “We need to talk about finding a harmony and a wholeness within yourself that you can share with all your relations, but I need you to listen carefully because the things I am going to say to you are very important. You need to hear every word, yes?” The trembling subsided, and George actually nodded his head. “Good.” Henry continued to smile. “You are going to make a good Indian.”
I tried not to think of the rest of that old statement and pulled away to look back up the road in time to see Vic’s unit come over the hill. She barely made it through the curve where George had gone off the road, cut her truck through the opening, and pulled up alongside the Bullet. With her sunglasses, she looked like a fighter pilot; she drove like one, too. “You shoot him?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“I’ll tell you later. We need to get him into Durant. Now.” She followed me around her truck and opened the passenger-side door, and we laid George across the backseat and trussed him up carefully with the seat belts. I looked at Henry as she rounded the truck and got in. I noticed he was holding something out to me. It was another. 45–70. I stared at it for a moment, then back up to his face. His eyes were grim. We both knew the ending, and it was a bad one. “This land used to belong to the Espers…”
He didn’t move. “Yes.”
“You know who it is.”
He nodded and then looked off into the distance of the shot. “Yes.”
I took the bullet and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. “Get him in there alive, would you?”
“Do not worry about him.” He climbed in and sat on the floor beside George. He continued to apply pressure to the wound. I closed the door as he turned back to me and looked through the open window. His eyes were a warning. “Be careful.”
Vic looked at me questioningly, but I only nodded to her and slapped the side of the door in dismissal. I turned and walked back to the river and the rifle as she backed around the corner of my truck and rushed away to Durant. She took a left and continued down Powder River Road without my even telling her. I watched as the dust receded into the distance, and then the only sound was the water and a wandering band of Canada geese staging a late season getaway south. I watched them for a moment as they made their way along the water, keeping a steady pace between the darker hills on both sides of the storied river. The hills were contusion purple, and there were lengthy wounds of burnt-red scoria. It seemed like the whole valley was bleeding.
I picked up the Sharps at the cut bank and noticed a slight discoloration around the breech as I held it. It was still warm. I looked into the distance of the shot but could see nothing but rough terrain. I pulled the lever down, plucked the spent shell from the receiver, and replaced it with the live round Henry had given me. I tossed the empty into the river so that it would never be reloaded again. I crouched over the three inches of rushing water, cradled the rifle on my legs, and took a moment to wash George’s blood from my hands. The blood mixed quickly with the clear, cold water and disappeared north toward Montana.