Within an hour, the tribe members had stretched out in a long single-file line, the leader nearly a half-mile ahead of White Elk, clustered with several others at the end of the string. The elder would not think of speed, only of slow, deliberate and steady progress. Perseverance had served him well all his days. He had not been the biggest, swiftest or strongest of the males among the Blackfoot, but he would stay on task as no other, see things through to their conclusions and then act decisively.
Several hours from the village, the Blackfoot came to the northern extent of the vast blowdown swath that the Yellowstone eruption had left in its wake. Abruptly, in a distinct line of division, the thin forests shifted from horizontal to vertical. To the southeast, most of the trees were toppled and were completely buried in ash, save for the occasional branch or leaning trunk. To the northwest, stands of evergreens and aspen towered.
Calm weather prevailed through the morning hours, but by noon rising winds along the summit began to sweep ash off the heights, sending long, smoky horizontal streamers out over the prairie. The atmosphere slowly filled with billions of minute particles sent tumbling with each new gust. White Elk stopped to tie his cloth mask as tight as he could over his mouth and nose. Bundled against the chill, and walled off behind the filter, only his eyes and forehead peeked out on the world.
High above them, Chief Mountain seemed to shrug its shoulders to free itself from its mantle of ash. The falling debris growled and roared, its tumultuous noise racing into the flats and through the evergreens. The ash burden slowed quickly on the sloping outrun of the mountain, but its cargo of fine dust continued to forge ahead and billowed into the path of the Blackfoot. The dust arrived with a forward pressure wave, inundating them with clouds of volcanic detritus.
The pace of the trek slowed dramatically. Huddled in the ash void, White Elk scanned the area, picking out ghosts, as Blackfoot trekkers appeared when the dust veil parted momentarily. People were formless, each laden with a colorless crust. The early exuberance had evaporated. The band was silent to a person. All stood, heads drooped to their chests, facing north. As visibility deteriorated, the only landmark to show the way was the thinning edge of the forest, riding the flank of the mountain.
The ashen air snuffed out the light of a truant sun. Darkness rushed into the thicket. The Blackfoot were short of their goal, but there could be no progress in the dying light. White Elk motioned everyone to free themselves from their travois and to pull the few tents under the boughs of the trees. The people worked feverishly to erect the tents so they could escape, in some small measure, the foul air. The clan felled several dead trees with axes, stripped the branches, chopped them into manageable pieces, and piled the wood at the center of the little tent cluster. A fire was lit and licks of flame caught in the tinder.
The boughs, brimming with dried resin, snapped and sparked as the fire roared to life. The yellow dancing flames and sudden heat were greeted as deliverance from the shock of the last dreadful hours caught in the maelstrom of blowing ash. Wails of relief and spontaneous shouts of joy escaped from parched and raw throats. As darkness descended fully under the tree limbs, the band of Blackfoot huddled as closely to the fire as they dared. Each let the heat of the blaze saturate the skin.
White Elk, outside the tight circle of people around the fire, sat on the ground rocking in pain. The joints in his knees ground together as if entombed in shards of glass rather than padded by soft cartilage.
The heat from the noisy fire was an effective sleep agent. The exhausted troops, without the prospect of food and with little desire to converse, melted away into the tents to sleep tightly packed together, under a few wool blankets to conserve body heat. White Elk curled up by the fire, scooped a mound of ash into a makeshift pillow with his hands, and settled down to try to sleep, despite the pain in his legs.
Exhaustion pulled him below the surface of consciousness for short intervals, but, like a new mother listening for a peep from a snoozing newborn in a nursery, he could not slumber long. Through the bituminous evening, cries from the smothered land stole through the evergreens to wake him. In the rock rigging of the mountain, the wind sang, its thousand voices bounding and lofting, ebbing and then dying away, only to catch a breath and soar through the octaves once more.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Probing the innards of the cabinets above her kitchen counter, Winnie Deschaines pulled down a box of Raisin Bran for which she had paid nearly nine dollars, almost three times what she might have spent for the pound of wheat and fruit four months earlier. She glared at it. It was empty like much of her cupboard. She retrieved her car keys, reached for a light parka, and vaulted out the door. Light rain was falling, enough to knock down the omnipresent volcanic dust that wreaked havoc with auto electrical systems and clogged air filters.
Piloting her Jeep Liberty in the rain, slithering in four-wheel drive in bumper deep ash muck, she crawled to nearby Platte Forest to a Harvest Bounty natural foods supermarket. Under weak emergency lighting, the lot was half full with other 4x4s that had somehow managed to get to the store. Two-wheel-drive cars couldn’t navigate in the slick. Suburbanites were streaming in and out of the market.
Usually a quiet, almost sedate shopping experience, the Harvest Bounty was throbbing with noise and chaotic activity. Suburban Platte Forest’s upper middle-class shoppers pawed at the threadbare shelves and stuffed carts with whatever staples they could find, grabbing at boxes and cans, shoving and shouting. Winnie slinked about the store with the lone shopping cart she could find, watching the melee in the aisles as employees tried to dampen flare-ups that broke out every few minutes.
Winnie collared a young store employee she knew who had been physically pushing his way between agitated customers to create a human barrier. His efforts were an ineffective deterrent to the escalating mayhem. “What do you want from me, Ms. Deschaines?” the young man gasped.
“Nothing, nothing, Jared. I just want to know what’s happening.”
The young man scanned down the aisle and put a hand to his forehead. “This is insanity.”
“What brought this on?”
“I think it was the news, because of what happened in South Carolina. Did you hear about it?”
“Hear what?”
“I heard it. People got gunned down in a Piggly Wiggly. Shook me up. It must have scared everybody. They started pouring in here this afternoon. Something touched them off. The news must have done it. I’ve never seen anything like this,” the store employee marveled. “It’s a panic is what it is.”
Shouts sailed across the aisles. The man waved off Winnie and ran toward the commotion, leaving the woman to drift in the breakfast cereal aisle. It was nearly empty of boxes, and shoppers were scrambling for the few remaining items.
Without a conscious thought, Winnie entered the fray, squeezed between several jostling women, and grabbed at several bulk rounds of instant rolled Quaker Oats on the bottom shelf. She pulled up two packages when something, a pocketbook, whacked her squarely in the face. The impact tipped her; she lost balance and stumbled, as sharp words boxed her ears: “Get away from it, bitch!”
As she righted herself, the form of a middle-aged woman in a tailored business suit filled Winnie’ line of sight, the female pulling an oats pack from her grip. With venomous intent, Winnie lashed out and slammed a hand down on her attacker’s shoulder. Employing a self-defense training technique, she dug fingers into the pressure point at the base of the skull. The woman’s knees buckled and she spilled onto the floor, sprawling prone.