High Country

The third man had stopped and was raising his rifle when Sinopa leapt on his back, pulled his head back, and slashed her new knife across his throat. The man gurgled as blood spewed from the wound and then fell down with Sinopa on top of him. She jumped up and ran to Daniel.

Daniel was standing there with his rifle and watching the trees. He handed her the Hawken while he reloaded the Harper's. Sinopa asked if he thought there were more. Daniel shook his head.

"I don't think so. I only saw him talk to these two, but it's better to be safe than sorry. We'll spend the night in that aspen thicket and then move on in the morning. You sleep and I'll watch."

"What did they want?"

Daniel turned to Sinopa and frowned.

"They wanted you."

The rising sun was just lightening the from the dark gray of the waning moonlight when Daniel and Sinopa mounted their horses and rode north toward their cabin. Daniel led the black mare, and strung out behind her was a chestnut gelding with a saddle, bridle, and rifle scabbard. In that scabbard was a Hawken rifle of.54 caliber, the same as the Harper's Ferry in his left saddle scabbard.

Sinopa led a bay mare and another paint mare, both with saddles and scabbards. In the scabbard on the bay mare was another Hawken very nearly identical to Daniel's. Sanopa carried the third man's rifle, a.36 caliber Kentucky style rifle but with a half-stock and a shorter barrel. On the paint mare's saddle was tied the deerskin bag that had held their marten and fisher skins. In that bag were the skinning knives the three men had carried, two hatchets and one axe, and the gunpowder and balls for the three rifles.

Before they left the niche in the cliff, Sinopa asked if Daniel was going to bury the men.

"White men put dead in the ground. Will you do?"

Daniel had frowned.

"We bury people. We leave animals like these three for the wolves."

Daniel and Sinopa rode until nearly dark that night. He wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and the Cache Valley. He didn't think the three men would be missed. Trappers floated in and out of the Rendezvous without saying anything to anybody. He just wanted to be sure. They reached their cabin in late afternoon the following day.

That night, Sinopa filled one of her new cooking pots with venison and the other with new shoots of plants she'd gathered in the forest. While they ate, Sinopa asked Daniel about the three men again.

"They want me, you say? Why want me?"

"They were going to make you do what we do."

"Like man do with wife?"

"Yes. Like that."

Sinopa smiled.

"I happy you say no."

Daniel grinned.

"So am I."

Sinopa touched his hand.

"You husband Sinopa now."

Daniel chuckled.

"How did I get to be your husband?"

"Piegan man show father he good hunter and he brave before ask marry daughter. Sinopa no father now. Sinopa talk to Grandmother Moon last night. She tell me you good husband and protect me. You husband Sinopa now. Sinopa have many sons for you."

I heard this story from an old Piegan man while covering the Pow Wow for the local newspaper. There had been dancers wearing fancy costumes who competed against each other, several stands that featured authentic Indian foods, and other stands that sold everything from recipe books to the materials needed to make those fancy costumes. It was a glimpse into a life long gone, a life of hardship, but a life in harmony with the world around them. You could almost hear that life in the beat of the drum and the voices of the singers.

The old man who stepped up beside me looked at least eighty if not older. The hair he wore in a single, long braid down his back was more white than black, and his body was stooped. His eyes glowed with the flames of life though. He smiled.

"The young people today are trying, but they need to listen to us old men more and to the television less. They're good dancers, but the spirit isn't in most of them like it used to be. The women are not like they used to be either. They used to tell men what to do but they took care of their houses. Now, the young girls just want to look at their cell phones."

I asked him what he meant by that. He said, "come over to my tent and I'll tell you a story about a Piegan woman. Then you'll understand how the women used to be. Maybe you'll believe me. No one else does".

Over a cup of coffee sweetened with a little bourbon against the chill of the October night, he told me the story I've just related. When he finished, the old man sitting across the fire from me sighed.

"Now you see why no one believes my tale. They cannot believe a Piegan woman of that time would marry a white man. The old man, Kitchi, who told me the story swore it was true though. He was only eighteen years old when he went out to hunt mountain sheep. He intended to show a certain girl's father he was a good hunter and brave enough to scale the mountain. Instead, Kitchi slipped and fell.

"Kitchi woke up in a cabin high in the mountains. A woman was washing the cut on his head. When he spoke to her, she answered in Piegan that he was hurt but that the medicine would heal him, then turned to the young girl who was holding the pot of medicine and said, 'Kanti, go bring father'.

"Kitchi said he was surprised the woman spoke both English and Piegan, so he asked her about that. She told him part of this story. When the father came to the bed where Kitchi laid, Kitchi saw he wore the deerskin shirt and trousers of a Piegan man, but he was white. His hair had many different places where a grizzly had clawed at his head. The man asked the woman if the man would live and she said he would.

"The woman fed him and cared for his cuts until he was well enough to leave. While he stayed with them, the woman, she called herself Sinopa, and the man called Daniel told him the rest of the story.

"When it was time for Kitchi to leave, the man called Daniel tied a strip of deerskin over Kitchi's eyes so he could not see, and then led him down the mountain. They went several different directions so Kitchi would be confused, and though he later tried, Kitchi could never find that cabin again.

"At a meeting of the Piegan villages, Kitchi asked around about a woman named Sinopa, and was told she'd wandered off when she was a young girl and hadn't been seen since. Her mother, now an old woman, said she was in the Sweet Grass Hills. That's a sacred place where no one goes because it's where the spirits of good people live after they die.

"Kitchi was very old when he told me the story, just as I am very old now. People don't believe old men when they tell stories. They think part of our spirit is already gone and in its place are dreams we've had. I know this story is true though. When I was a young boy living on the reservation, I met a man who said he came down from the mountains when his last sister died.

"He spoke both English and Piegan, and he looked like a Piegan except he was very tall and his hair was brown instead of black. His name was Daniel, and he said he was the last of four brothers and two sisters. The others had all died. He had with him a very old copper coin, so old all the letters were mostly worn away. Daniel said his mother had given it to him just before she died, and had said he should give it to his wife when he found one.

"He got a job taking hunters into the mountains so I didn't see him very much. He decided to go back to the mountains a couple years later and that was the last I saw of him. I suppose he's dead now since he was older than I was then. He did leave me this because he said he wouldn't be needing it."

The old man handed me a coin made of copper. In the firelight, I could just make out the outline of a woman, two stars, and the faint numbers "1811".

The old man pointed to the coin in my hand.

"See, this is the coin Daniel's mother gave him, and the same coin Daniel gave Sinopa. She gave it to her youngest son, also named Daniel. That proves the story is true."

I thanked the old man for telling me the story and then went to my car and drove home. On the way the thought that the story was true teased at my mind. Like the old man had said, when people get old, sometimes younger people think they're not quite normal anymore and tell about things they dream. Sometimes, that's true.

I still don't know if the story is true or not, and there's really no way to prove one way or the other. I like to believe it's true though. It just seems right that a man who loved the mountains would find a woman who loved that life too. It's hard, these days, for two people like that to find each other. You can't believe most of what people write about themselves on social media sites, and the dating sites are worse yet.

It's just comforting to think that before all the technology invaded our lives two people from entirely different backgrounds found each other and decided they were meant to live together. I don't know if they loved each other like we think of love today, but Sinopa found a man she wanted to stay with and Daniel found the woman he was sure he'd never find. A story like that kind of gives you hope, you know. In this day and time, a little hope means a lot.