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By Root 776 0

of the tools that Bull, Emil Buckendorf, and Joseph Coutts would need to garden and live out a year. The other men were to be fetched back as soon as the prairie dried out in the spring, and at the same time those who stayed would be reprovisioned. Within two days, the road disappeared and Joseph, Henri, and Lafayette broke the trail with snowshoes before the oxen, who either foundered in the deep snow or cut their fetlocks on the burnt-over prairie where the wind had swept a vicious crust. By placing one step before another, they progressed about eight miles a day. At night, they raised their tent, built a good blaze, cut slough grass for bedding, piled it on the snow, then spread their buffalo coats and oilcloths over the grass and got into their huge communal bed fully clothed. The two guides took turns sleeping with their most important possession, a fiddle, which they kept in a velvet-lined case and kissed like a woman. Once they lowered the great woolen comforter over themselves, the men began to steam up under the batting, and they slept, though every time one rolled over so did the rest. The nights were lively that way, but not, at first, unbearable, thought Joseph. But this was only January and there wouldn’t be a chance for any of them to bathe before spring. He had never been an overly fastidious person, but the food that English Bill prepared sat heavy on the gut and one night the men grew so flatulent they almost blew the quilt off. Halfway through the concert, Henri Peace began to laugh and cried out in the dark, praising the men for playing so loudly on their own French fiddles. Joseph started laughing too, but Emil Buckendorf took offense.

“Gawiin ojidaa, ma frère,” said Henri, who spoke the French-Chippewa patois as well as either English or pure Chippewa, or Cree, “I am sorry to have insulted you. For you were playing the German bugle, were you not?”

Emil went silent and ground his teeth. Joseph could hear his molars and jaws working. But it was too cold to fight. No one wanted to get out from under the quilt.

When Joseph rose the next morning and looked out over the great white bowl of the universe, he saw the sun had two dogs at either side and was crowned by a burning crescent. It was a sight so immediate, so gorgeous, so grim, that tears started into his eyes as he stood transfixed.

“Oui, frère Joseph, weep now while you have the strength,” Henri said, handing him a tin cup of boiling hot tea, “we shall be hit hard by afternoon.” As with everything Henri said, this proved true.

They ran into heavy drifts on the unburned prairie and had to shovel all the way. Foot by foot, they made five miles. Henri and Lafayette found elk sign and went after the creatures, hoping to supplement English Bill’s cured hog. No sooner were they gone than the blizzard swept down and the men set about making camp, hauling wood, trying to raise the tent. But the wind drove the snow in horizontal sheets, slapped out their fire, sucked the tent into its nothingness, confused and battered them until they stumbled uncertainly this way and that. Henri returned and shouted for them to make the bed where they stood and get in quick. As they spread the buffalo coats and oilcloths the snow drifted into the fur but the men got in, Lafayette on one end and English Bill on the other end, as he always was on account of sleeping with his terrier. For a long time the men shook so hard that Henri called something out to Lafayette in Chippewa that Joseph was to recognize, later, when he understood them better, as a reference to a sacred method of divination in which spirits entered a special tent and caused it to tremble. The shaking ceased gradually. The men relaxed against one another and Joseph, held fast between two Buckendorfs, drifted off wondering if he might not waken but too tired to really care.

A little before dawn, Joseph did wake to the sound of men singing. Edging his face from the bed, he realized that the blanket was covered entirely by a great and glowing white drift. Steam rose from the cracked snow at the edges. The