Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 17 - At Least It's Only Six Months This Time

The very first sentence of this chapter at least answers a question I had from the previous one.

See, we were told all about the legend that sprung up around Yellow Hair, which inflated his farcical shootout in Fort Chesterfield into a demonic campaign of slaughter and savagery.  But there's a problem with that - this is all taking place before radios, zeppelins, or even roads linked the settlements of the North American frontier.  The way Chapter 16 was written, it sounded like as soon as Yellow Hair showed up at York Factory, everyone recognized him as the blood-painted psycho on the giant horse who eats babies, except that would imply that tales about Yellow Hair somehow outpaced Yellow Hair himself, even when he was being shipped north at the same speed that word of mouth would be traveling by.

But like I said, the first sentence of this chapter addresses that issue: "Father Marc Lettau remained on Hudson's Bay until early fall trying in vain to bring about a fair trial for Yellow Hair."  Yes, the author has decided to pull another timeskip, jumping from the very earliest part of spring to the start of autumn.  So it's conceivable that when Yellow Hair was delivered to York Factory, the initial response was "Who?"  And then Motley told him all about the ambush and shootout, and then all the other stuff came in along the grapevine, as promised in the title of Chapter 16.

We're not told this, of course.  There's no description of the authorities' difficulty sifting through truth and rumor to determine what crimes their prisoner actually committed, or even a scene where the evil white men eagerly accept whatever vicious slander they hear about the accused.  We're not told a lot of things, in fact.

We are told that York Factory is smaller than you might think, and mainly consists of a big red building with five cannons mounted on it, surrounded by four bastions for the barracks and trading posts and whatnot, all ringed by a wooden palisade and trench.  The author notes that "Just why this place was so opposingly built will forever remain a mystery" because the outpost gained a reputation for surrendering during raids or wars with the French, opening "its arms to any attacker like a true soldier's sweetheart."  And I must say that these islets of good writing just make the sea of badness surrounding them all the more depressing to paddle through.

We're told that York Factory is eight hundred miles from Fort Chesterfield on the South Saskatchewan, and a thousand miles from Fort William on Lake Superior.  The main waterways linking it to the rest of the world are the Nelson River to the west, and of course Hudson's Straight and the Bay itself through which ships sail to and from England.  This makes the place pretty isolated from the rest of the world, which is why, we're told, Father Marc feels pretty lonely.

We're just not told much of anything about what happened between Marc and Yellow Hair arriving at the outpost and now, when Father Marc is having one last interview with its governor before leaving it.  We aren't even told the governor's name.  But that's the bulk of this measly little chapter, the Mighty Monk's conversation with the Nameless Governor.

Father Marc greets the chap with some Latin he knows the other man doesn't understand, then asks (again?  or for the very first time, after half a year?) how long they intend to hold Yellow Hair without trial - the latest ships just set sail for England without him aboard, and I guess that's the only place you can hold a trial.  The governor counters that it's bold of a priest, especially a Nor'Wester priest, to criticize "our" justice like that.  Father Marc counters that it's the nameless governor who is bold, for claiming to rule a domain three times the size of Europe based on a charter written up by a century-dead monarch... oy, what few things the author is telling us are things he already told us in Chapter 8.

Anyway, Marc drops his trump card: "this youth you have penned up is, by rights, a subject of the United States of America, a member of a powerful and warlike tribe and a gentlemen in his own right by birth which---begging Your Excellency's pardon---can hardly be matched by any member of the Nor'Westers or Hudson's Bay Company either."  Or I guess Father Marc dropped a couple of cards that had gotten stuck together, because this statement contains several different thoughts.

The first one, that Yellow Hair is a US citizen, might finally answer the question of why he needs to be a white guy - so Marc can use the possibility of legal conflict with the United States to get the British-Canadian government to at the very least hand him over to a different justice system.  Now, I'm not sure whether this idea is legally sound, because I'm not sure whether Yellow Hair was born among the Pikuni or out east in the Untied States proper.  I could start flipping through the book to try to answer the question, but why bother?  Because the governor completely ignores this part of the argument.

The second of Marc's assertions is that Yellow Hair is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy, a mighty tribal group feared throughout the northern Great Plains and beyond.  This at least is hard to argue with, and it carries the threat of real consequences for a trading company that relies so heavily on the indigenous population to supply the furs it covets.  If word gets out about Yellow Hair's long incarceration, people could die; at the same time, reaching out to the natives and trying to find a mutually-satisfying sentence for this murderer could build some valuable goodwill.  Again, the governor ignores this.

Instead Nameless Governor focuses on Marc daring to suggest that this savage is a "gentleman" - even though Marc has tried to explain what really happened, the governor puts his trust in those scalps and the signed affidavit from Motley.  So it serves the murderer right if he suffers in a cell for month after month.  "There will be no trial, priest."  Yellow Hair will languish in legal limbo, jailed for crimes that will never be examined by a court of law, in colonial Canada's equivalent to Guantanamo Bay.

As for Marc, Nameless Governor says he's just received word that there is an Indian canoe on the river, and that a supply officer will provide the priest with some provisions, and that Father Marc could make it to Fort William in about two or three months.  I'm not sure how these facts fit together.  Marc works for the Nor'Westers, right?  So can Nameless Governor, who is in charge of what must be a Hudson's Bay Company outpost, even order him to leave?  And why would Marc be going to Fort William if he wasn't being ordered by this guy he doesn't work for?  I get that he would be in danger if he returned to Fort Chesterfield, but looking at the map at the front of the book, it seems that he has plenty of other options - Edmonton, Big Falls Post, Pembina, and so on.

But the Mighty Monk sees the order in those sentences that I don't, though he won't walk out without getting in the last word.

"Worthy of the English," said Father Marc with an amused grin.  "You fear my testimony will make your vengeance less complete and you ship me off to get me out of the way and to hope that alternate freezes and thaws will prevent my ever arriving at Fort William.

Didn't we just establish that there was never going to be a trial?

Ah, well, Your Excellency, it is most revealing.  I never would have thought it of you.  'Lords of the Outer Marches,' eh?  Let's hope you know a trick or two about walking on coals in the hereafter."

And then he departs the room with a "roar of laughter," leaving the shaken governor, "sitting fatly in his chair," worrying about his immortal soul for the first time in a while.  The next day Father Marc takes his baggage, which includes Yellow Hair's stuff since he's convinced that he'll never see his friend again and doesn't want his clothes and war kit confiscated by the HBC, gets in a boat, and starts paddling up the Nelson River on his long journey to Fort William.  The journey that Father Marc thinks is an attempt to kill him.

Huh.  Well, I'm sure he has his reasons for this, but - say it with me now - we're never told them.


Back to Chapter 16

Forward to Chapter 18, part 1

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 16 - Intermission

This chapter is mostly just tiresome - not boring, but annoying to read.  The weird thing is that there isn't much to it, because "Grapevine" is more or less a recap of the story thus far.  So props, Hubbard, for making the dull painful.

The author spends roughly five pages in dry, wry historian mode, having picked up an affection for it after experimenting with that voice in Chapter 14.  He pauses in the process of "cutting, trimming, drying, smoking and stacking the chronicle of Yellow Hair for posterity's digestion" to recount what led our hero to Fort Chesterfield in the first place, without really explaining why it's necessary.  Maybe he worried that by page 131 we'd have forgotten what happened on page 16.

So the author reminds us that this whole thing started when Captain Lewis killed two Pikuni "(in self defense, of course)," but Yellow Hair, "with naive reasoning that must be greatly regretted, he supposed that whites, like Indians, had their good people and bad people and were, after all, human with natural human frailties."  Alas, contact with the Nor'Westers proved how wrong he was when they took advantage of him, even attacking his good name by accusing him of murder!  Yellow Hair merely wanted to kill Lewis or the enemy Tushepaws, he hadn't actually gotten a chance to yet, thank you very much.

Hubbard (again) compares the "gallant rider of the plains" to a knight, someone with "honor, cleanliness and a strict code" whose skin tone was in truth "only a sixteenth of a shade deeper than the faces of the frontier interlopers," and I'm wondering how you measure that.  Well, not enough to actually look it up, I assume paint makers have a way to-- anyway, just as "King Arthur was too good himself to see the vice in the knights around him," so did the Native Americans initially assume that the invaders meant their words about brotherhood and peaceful coexistence.

Just as a reminder, this whole story started with Hubbard taking a historical incident and insisting that the Blackfoot had no choice but to try and steal Lewis' guns, because a tribe that his expedition visited earlier who believed his message of peace was attacked by other Indians.

Next our author attacks other authors, specifically Alexander Henry and his scornful yet popular account of the natives he encountered.  Unfortunately Hubbard is careless in this - Alexander Henry the younger was a Nor'Wester who did indeed travel across the Canadian frontier to sneer at the savagery of the Native Americans he encountered, and yes, he was enough of a dickwad to complain that their women weren't properly ashamed when he stood around to watch them bathe in the river, "yet so close did they keep their thighs together that nothing could be seen.”  But though he called the Blackfoot and their offshoots "Slave Indians" due to their propensity for taking captives, he described them as fearsome warriors obsessed with conflict, which doesn't exactly clash with how Hubbard has presented them so far.  You can read some extracts from Henry the younger's Ethnography of Fort Vermillion on this badly-formatted page.

Now Alexander Henry the elder, on the other hand, was a Nor'Wester who was adopted by one of those savage tribes, and had the diplomatic skills to get along with them.  He also wrote about his experiences, and in his 1809 book Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the years 1760 and 1776, which you can read online here, he assures us that he isn't trying to encapsulate the American Indians' history or explain their morals - "All comment, therefore, in almost all instances, is studiously avoided."  I've just skimmed it in places, and it seems pretty dry but not nearly as judgmental as its author's nephew.

But isn't that an important oversight?  Hubbard condemns one Henry as being responsible for painting the Indians in the worst light, but conveniently forgets to mention the other Henry who got along with them and wasn't so fiercely critical.  I guess he believes his own words about Yellow Hair being naive for assuming that there must be a decent white guy somewhere out there.

And then there's a shining moment of unintentional hilarity.

A bestial drunkard, a sot without decency or compunction, Henry passed enduring judgment upon the late American Indian. A trick of writing too well known for much enlargement here is to make most of your characters so dull your comedian appears uproariously funny.  By contrast murder can be made noble.  Henry was an unclean, lustful brute, but to make himself a hero in the Indian country, he carefully painted the Indian worse than himself.

I'm impressed that Hubbard could type this without a flash of awareness and shame compelling him to crumble up that page of the draft and start over.  Because let's take another look at our "hero" - see any redeeming qualities?  Anything that would make us like him?  Maybe I need a new glasses prescription, but all I can spot in Yellow Hair is a craving for violence and glory, seasoned with a disrespect for his elders and a tendency for his impulsiveness to get him in over his head - even the author admits that he possessed a "restless and impatient temperament" that might be beaten out of him in the unlikely event that he was defeated in battle.  But to make up for the hero's shortcomings, Hubbard has painted all the white men Yellow Hair encounters as drunkards or murderers or betrayers, allowing him to pass judgment on the entire race, even though doing so overlooks people like Father Marc who are more neutral than evil.

Or in other words, Hubbard is doing exactly what he's accusing Henry the younger of doing.

The good news is that we know that Hubbard will eventually get better about this.  I mean, he'll still paint an entire species or planetary population as irredeemably evil and/or corrupt (regardless of how many exceptions appear in the story), but he won't rely upon that alone making his protagonist heroic by comparison - instead he'll beat us over the head with how virtuous and exceptional the story's main character is while making everyone else as evil as possible.

Anyway.  The narrator says that given his experiences, it's small wonder that Yellow Hair, "while he was shipped like so much worthless rabbit fur to York Factory" underfed and denied medical treatment from Father Marc, developed "a deep and enduring hatred of his own race."  This isn't supposed to excuse or whitewash what he'll do in the rest of the story, the author assures us, we should simply try and keep things in perspective when we judge him.  Be a fair and unbiased audience, in this tale that demonizes everyone who opposes our hero.

The rest of the chapter describes how the legend of Yellow Hair spread across the continent - "From the Rockies to Quebec, from Hudson's Bay to St. Louis, men related the story, added their bit to it with wide, serious eyes, believed everything they heard about it, and importantly saw to it that the story rolled onward."  Soon one white Indian in dirty buckskins who killed five men in a siege has grown into a savage halfbreed who went about naked, with scarlet paint on his face and lit matches woven into his hair like Blackbeard.  They say he survives off wolf's blood, has eight to fourteen wives, killed as many as 231 people over his career, rides a giant stallion, roasts his foes' flesh in their burning forts before consuming them, savagely tears apart women and especially babies, and it took the British an eight-day-long battle to subdue him.

Small surprise then that when Yellow Hair arrived at York Factory, he was dumped in an outhouse - I'm assuming that's a house out from the rest of a complex, not the toilet - without clothes or blankets, kept under armed guard while the governor and his staff tried to figure out how to "get their money's worth out of 'that inhuman fiend.'"  ...Wait, what?

Now, you might think that with such a vicious killer on their hands, the authorities would be eager to get him tried and executed as quickly as possible, maybe even rushing through the former to get to the latter.  But luckily for our hero, the colonial governor is willing to spend time and resources keeping Yellow Hair alive, if in miserable condition, while postponing his trial for as long as possible, so that he'll have an opportunity to escape.  In, say, exactly thirteen pages.


Back to Chapter 15

Forward to Chapter 17

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 15 - Motley Pays Dearly, And I Guess He Lost Some Men Too

The book assures us that the Hudson's Bay Company is used to writing off losses, since after all it was "founded in the dim but glorious past to discover a Northwest Passage to the Orient."  This clashes with at the very least Wikipedia's article on the HBC, which seems to suggest that the group was more about trading beaver pelts around Hudson's Bay than Arctic naval expeditions - true, an HBC employee named John Rae led an expedition into the northwest in 1849, but this was an attempt to figure out what happened to a previous expedition.  And then he got spat on for daring to suggest that a Royal Navy officer's voyage could end in disaster and cannibalism, poor guy.

Maybe Hubbard's getting confused, and thinks that Henry Hudson, the 17th century explorer who was searching for the Northwest Passage, and whom Hudson's Bay is named for, had something to do with the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company?  Which for the record happened in 1670, 59 years after Hudson's death.  And good grief, I just spent half an hour researching things online because of the first three sentences in this chapter.

Anyway, it's a good thing that the HBC is so used to writing in red ink, because they're about to take another huge hit this chapter.  Just when Motley's about to leave Fort Chesterfield...

It has already been noticed that Major Alexander McGlincy's worthy if somewhat sodden brain ran foggily inside a lining of beaver fur.  It may well be added here that the valuable cogs of this wonderful machine looked very much like shillings.  This is on the authority of a doctor who examined them after they were rather messily spilled and it is only necessary to recall the dealings with Motley to confirm the fact.

Wow, so in the space of one paragraph, we go from smirking slightly at the author's description of a character's thought process, to incredulity that a doctor would testify that there were indeed coins in someone's brain, to irritation that the author just spoiled a villain's fate.  I mean sure, there's little doubt given how the book's gone so far that Yellow Hair is going to kill McGlincy at some point, but now we know that the bad guy's skull is due to be asploded.  At least allow us the dramatic tension of wondering how the villain will die, Hubbard.

The result of Yellow Hair's siege is one shot-up and burned trading room that will have to be torn down and rebuilt before the natives came by to trade, "two thousand dollars" of lost trade goods (according to Luberly, who isn't using pounds or shillings for some reason), and I guess five dead men and three wounded fellows from Motley's expedition.  Because these are all greedy fur traders who barely value human life, etc.

McGlincy blocks Motley's now-ragged group from leaving the fort, thus reminding the HBC guys that they are now badly outnumbered and outgunned in a rival camp.  And to summarize three pages in four words: it's an outrageous shakedown.  For damages to the trading post sustained during Motley's apprehension of Yellow Hair, damage to the goods inside said trading post, a ten-pound-to-a-man bonus to McGlincy's crew for their assistance, cannon rental, beach docking fees, and compensation for catching the criminal who attacked Motley's crew in the first place, McGlincy has the clerk hand over a bill for £2,755 - though he's nice enough not to add a five-hundred-pound charge for his work "directing" the attack on Yellow Hair.  With a fort full of armed Nor'Westers around him, Motley has no choice but to sign.

All this takes up five pages or so, and then we're told that oh yeah, one of the surviving Orkneymen found out that Yellow Hair wasn't dead.  You might think that this would be worth spending some words on compared to the humor(?) of McGlincy being greedy, but the whole event is summarized in a short paragraph with the author telling us that Yellow Hair's unconscious body was "double tied" and dumped in a boat.

Oh, and Father Marc materializes with no word on where he's been or what he was doing during the previous chapter, though the author is nice enough to acknowledge that he disappeared after the battle.  I can only conclude that he was temporarily exiled to the Phantom Zone.  Now wrestling ability aside, Father Marc is not a man of war, but he "belonged to a church in which diplomacy and tactical efficiency were shaped into fine arts."  I would argue that this is less significant than Father Marc being one of the few people around these parts who is neither drunk nor stupid.

However he does it, the padre concludes he's in a bit of a spot now - he's not loyal to the trading company, can't be bribed, and one word from him to the wrong people could make this whole scheme to use Yellow Hair as a scapegoat fall apart.  McGlincy hasn't realized this yet... despite coming up with this scheme nine months ago, and having Yellow Hair in custody for the past three weeks... but when/if he does, Marc's life will be in danger.  Plus, the padre is kind of fond of Yellow Hair.

So Marc quickly packs his stuff and leaves with the HBC men, explaining when McGlincy notices that "I'll remember your orders, major.  I'll see that they hang him, all right."  And McGlincy briefly considers trying to order the priest to say, but that would only arouse Motley's interest.  And then he briefly considers ordering his men to open fire...

Well, that's not a bad idea, I mean if you have to be a bloodthirsty capitalist out to kill your competition.  McGlincy already missed his chance to completely wipe out Motley's party, scalp the corpses, and blame the whole affair on the Indians, but now he has an opportunity to finish the job, then send Yellow Hair to any authorities who ask about it as the perpetrator of the atrocity.  Yep, real shame, Motley brought all those men to the fort to apprehend our prisoner, but then that wild half-breed went and killed them all.  We just barely managed to subdue him again, honest.

But McGlincy demurs - "he had already seen Motley escape unscathed from a melting volley and he could not risk it again as Motley's boat was ready to depart."  Now I could criticize McGlincy for being timid here, but I find it quite refreshing that a Hubbard villain isn't assuming that doing nearly the same thing that failed to kill his enemy last time will certainly work this time.  So he gets a pass.

Instead, McGlincy offers to give Motley all the evidence of Yellow Hair's atrocities, four scalps "found" in Yellow Hair's room and a signed affidavit from Major McGlincy that the renegade had disappeared from his fort several days before the murders and then returned drunk and travel-worn and waving those incriminating hunks of hair around.  Motley declares that this will "swing the fiend" and the five deaths and three injuries were all worth it.

So all in all, a good day.  Motley got his "renegade," while between extorting his rival and stealing that boatload of furs, McGlincy has made out with a cool £10,555," or something like fifty thousand dollars" for us Americans - and all profit, to boot.  For reference, the contemporary Louisiana Purchase cost eleven-and-a-quarter million dollars, so... I dunno, McGlincy could afford a good chunk of the "nose" of the "Indian" in the state of Iowa?

Yellow Hair was the only man who would pay more than he could afford as no man can rightly stand to lose his life no matter the stakes, the honor, the reputation or the more common pay in coin.

Weren't you just going on about how glorious Yellow Hair's mission to risk his life by hanging around a trading post was?  So now you're staying he should have stayed home, because his personal honor or reputation wasn't worth the danger?

Yes, everybody was pleased except Father Marc and the "renegade."

And shouldn't McGlincy be nervous that Father Marc is accompanying Yellow Hair, presumably to his trial?  Might the words of a priest mean something even if they go against a sworn affidavit?  What if he spills the beans to Motley about how McGlincy has pulled one over on him twice now?  Maybe it'd be a good idea for another band of "Indians" to run ahead and ambush them as they sail along the river.

But whatever, that's it for Fort Chesterfield for now.  Try to work up some suspense over whether our hero is really going to be executed, or if this Hubbard Action Hero who can fend off a whole fort of enemies might be able to escape, possibly with the help of an ally.


Back to Chapter 14

Forward to Chapter 16

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 14 - Yellow Hair vs. the World

We now return to our fight scene, already in progress.

Like the Olympic torch-lighting event, the battle is kicked off by Motley, "with some ceremony," lighting the fuse to the cannon his grunts rolled up.  The hunk of lead rips clean through the door in a hail of splinters and out through the back wall, shredding Yellow Hair and everything else in the trading room, thus ending the battle in a single-

Well, no.  Instead the trading room's door "was like a thick man hit in the middle with a war club" - the center "shot in" instead of breaking, it rips off its hinges and skids halfway across the room to rest against the counter our hero is using as a barricade, but the door stops the cannonball from going further.  Either that's a very good door or a very poor cannon.

If you're wondering why McGlincy isn't strenuously objecting to Motley's use of heavy artillery on his trading post, just wait until next chapter.

Yellow Hair's still a bit dazed from the impact and the sudden burst of sunlight, but he can see human shapes in the smoke and, one by one, takes up and fires the row of muskets he has aimed at the entrance.  The trading room entrance is only big enough for two men to squeeze through at a time, so six shots later there's a pile of Orkneymen on the threshold and the rest retreat.  Yellow Hair immediately goes about reloading his row of muskets, while Motley bellows orders to reload the cannon.

There is no indication that any of the attackers actually fired their weapons.  Obviously they wouldn't be able to hit our hero if they had, but there's no mention of Yellow Hair ducking bullets with his superhuman reflexes, or even standing unflinching as lead pellets zinged past his ears.  The poor Orkneymen have rifles and pistols, we're told, but I guess they're more concerned about using the truncheons and knives they're carrying too.

The narration then pulls back a bit, taking on the quality of a dry historian viewing events with the benefit of hindsight.

It is very difficult for a casual observer to understand the theory of battle.  Where war is concerned society has denied all men the right to casualness and has demanded instant and interested participation.

Translation: the author is about to spend a page or two going over what all the principal characters are doing in this action scene.  Which counts as a "war."

The narrator makes the utterly nonsensical suggestion that had Yellow Hair been fighting for the HBC, Motley would have showered him with rewards.  This is very stupid - Motley is under the impression that Yellow Hair is the one who butchered his men, and the savage is currently killing even more of them.  The narrator should instead be wryly observing that Yellow Hair is doing such a good job killing HBC mooks that McGlincy would be tempted to hire him if his evil plan didn't depend on handing him over as a captured fugitive.

But, unfortunately for Yellow Hair, he was only fighting in his own interests through a misconceived idea that every man has a perfect right to stay alive.

I'll provide the sarcasm, thank you.

To do this he had to counteract the employment of a cannon by using all the rifles at his command.

Nonsense.  I mean, this makes no sense.  Yellow Hair can't see the cannon, and all he's used the rifles for is holding off the men that come at him while the cannon is being reloaded.  If the HBC flunkies were patient and waited, they could bombard their enemy with impunity.  If you're fighting a siege, let your siege engines do their job.

He had no lust for killing whatever and indeed no interest in it.

Oh realllly?  Let's think back to Chapter 2...

"Ah, but what I'll do to those Tushepaws," said Yellow Hair.  "Hyai, how I'll wade through them!  They will think a prairie fire has hit them.  And I'll take their horses---"

No interest at all.

He wanted very much to live to fight again and he had no retreat except in the face of twoscore white men.

Our hero can already move faster than the rest of these saps can react, and even when under guard in Chapter 8 reckoned he could swim the river to safety.  I'm pretty sure that if he really wanted to, Yellow Hair could slip out of this mess.  But he'll stay and fight so the plot can move in a certain direction, and he'll be "forced" to do this so he can be properly victimized by the evil white men.

Motley, who two paragraphs ago the narration assured us would want to hire Yellow Hair in different circumstances, is furious at Yellow Hair because those Orkneymen cost an eight-pound bounty apiece, and screams enough insults at the white Indian that the survivng HBC men become convinced that "it was a matter of world-wide importance on which hung the fate of the H.B.C. to capture Yellow Hair."

Yes, capture.  They're under the impression that Yellow Hair already led a war party that ambushed and scalped five of their own, and now who knows how many more have been killed during this mismanaged siege, but they're still set on taking him alive so there's something left to kill.  Doesn't matter that he's resisting arrest with gusto, and it doesn't matter how many they lose in the process, they're gonna subdue this savage and show him what civilized justice looks like.

You know, in between shooting at him with a cannon.

Violence acts upon men as variously as whiskey.  It makes them happy, sad, brave or craven.  Violence is, in fact, a much greater stimulus than spirits because it usually quickens reaction while whiskey deadens it.

So if someone drunk off his ass gets in a shootout, he winds up somewhere around normal?

That can't be right, because the narration assures us that "Violence made Major Alexander McGlincy more imperial than ever," which is to say that he sits out of Yellow Hair's firing arc, shouting orders that no one can hear and pointing out things with the bottom of his whiskey bottle.  Luberly meanwhile is darting about with a pistol, very visibly playing a part in the battle without actually doing anything or approaching the trade room door.  The rest of the Nor'Westers are AWOL, the only people actually fighting are Motley's Orkneymen.

Poor Orkneymen.  The narration observes that since their only part to play in the battle was actually fighting it, "their reaction needs no further illumination."  I guess Hubbard is satirizing history's tendency to focus on glorious generals and warlords rather than the common grunts who actually bled and died in mankind's wars, by focusing on the glorious major and named characters rather than the common grunts who are actually getting killed by the book's hero.

Said hero is having, more or less, a pretty good time.  "While not exactly happy about it, Yellow Hair was exultant," and fearlessly faces death by shouting insults and taunts.

Yellow Hair would fire at a fleeting smoke shadow and yip, "Stand still!  How can I hit you when you move?  Come on, you bullies, line up for another attack.  You can take me this time!  I'm waiting, my heroes!  Come on, come in, you're welcome to my lead!  Have a slug!  You there, stand still?"

Remember, "no lust for killing, and indeed no interest in it."

The narration gets downright sardonic, assuring us that "the odds against him were not so great as they initially appeared."  After all, there's only forty-one men outside Yellow Hair's room, with a mere two cannons (not counting the barge's howitzer), sixteen cutlasses, and an undisclosed number of muskets and pistols.  The trading room was constructed to withstand a siege like a castle keep, and apart from the door, a window, the rear wall, part of the counter, and a third of the roof, it's in pretty good condition.  The only fires are at the entrance and the wall near the powder kegs, and though Yellow Hair is blackened with soot, slightly deafened by cannonfire, and can't see out of his right eye due to the bloody gash over it, his trigger-hand is only slightly scorched from that musket that misfired, so he's still putting up a fight.

My problem with this section is that it, while competently-written and appealing to my sense of humor, falls apart when compared with the rest of the story.  It's hard to take this tongue-in-cheek examination of the odds against Yellow Hair seriously when there is absolutely no dramatic tension that he's going to be killed this chapter.  And by pointing out the absurdities of this situation here, I have to wonder why the author didn't call our attention to all the other absurd things that happen in his story.  As it is, it's like Hubbard is going "I'm not saying my main character is awesome - but here's how awesome he is."

Oh, and he also works in more "evil white men victimizing the Indians" stuff.  The trading room is easily-defensible in case any visiting natives "treacherously objected to the theft of furs or the murder of a chief or some other foolish incidental," and there's a space on the roof for a cannon that can be aimed down to fire grapeshot "straight into a crowd of warriors, women and children who had, in foolish faith, come to trade."  At this point I'm wondering whether the whole fur trading nonsense was just an excuse for evil white guys to go out west and kill some Indians.  They're certainly not being good businessmen, antagonizing and going to such lengths to murder their customers, suppliers, and neighbors who outnumber them by a considerable margin.

But all fight scenes must eventually come to an end.  Yellow Hair taunts for McGlincy or Luberly to show themselves, calls out some of the other Nor'Westers by name (not that we hear them, so they remain nameless extras), thanks his hosts for setting a fire to keep him warm, and talks about how impressed their women will be once they bring home his scalp.  But eventually the smoke gets to him, blinding him and choking his lungs, and he can't reload his muskets anymore due to his hand injury, so he grabs his pistol and approaches the door, hoping to bring down McGlincy with his last shot.  At that moment, Motley's cannon fires, the roof collapses, and a falling beam knocks our hero out.  "To all appearances he was dead and to this he owed his life."

So... after spending the whole chapter not firing their weapons - seriously, I can't find a single case of an ordinary musket or pistol being fired at Yellow Hair - and trying to capture this enemy, if Yellow Hair had walked out of there on his own, they would have killed him?

Meh.  Makes as much sense as shooting all those cannonballs at him.

Satisfaction flooded Motley.

Because the guy he was trying to capture alive by shooting a cannon at is apparently dead, right.

He belted his own pistol and strode ahead to turn Yellow Hair over with his foot.  When the boot toe had finished its prodding, Yellow Hair was on his back with outflung arms, blackened locks damply lying in the dust.

So, if we read too much into these words, Yellow Hair only became a proper Indian - darker skin, blackened hair - by engaging in desperate violence against white men.  Or maybe this symbolizes how their cruel betrayal of his trust has driven him firmly into the Blackfoot's camp?  No, that one doesn't work, he already considered himself a Pikuni and never actually liked these people.

Motley hauled him aside by one foot and, belatedly, began to sort out the wounded from the dead.

And that's "Under Fire," in which our hero holds out against unbelievable odds thanks to his opponents being nice enough to forgo shooting at him with small arms in their efforts to capture him alive, until he succumbs because those opponents aren't nice enough to forgo shooting at him with a cannon in their efforts to capture him.  It's an action scene that unfolds thanks to some questionable decisions intended to bring about a specific outcome that the plot requires, much like the non-action-y parts of the story.

Hey, where was Father Marc during all this?


Back to Chapter 13 

Forward to Chapter 15

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 13 - Let's Retcon the First Four Chapters

This chapter really starts out on the wrong foot.

Throughout the winter, the girl Bright Star

Yellow Hair is usually referred to as Yellow Hair by the narration, but he's never called "boy," he's either a man or a young man.  Saddling his love interest with a diminutive feminine pronoun is at best insulting, or at worst an indication that he's courting someone a few years younger than he should be.

had been suffering from the growing conviction that it was her action that had driven Yellow Hair to accept the mad plan of the Grand Council.

My first response is to change Bright Star's name to States-the-Obvious, because after all she did wind up Yellow Hair before the meeting in Chapter 4.  But what's this about accepting the "mad plan" of the Grand Council?  They just voted to continue trading their furs with the men to the north for guns they could use to resist the invaders from the east, and to kill "Fork-Tongue" on sight.  It was Yellow Hair who suggested sending someone (him) to learn the ways of the Kitchi-Mokan.  Could States-the-Obvious' guilt be causing her to misremember things?

Time after time she had spoken of it to canny old White Fox and even though he assured her that Yellow Hair had been wholly under orders and had neither advanced nor seconded the scheme except to obey it, Bright Star, each time, uneasily remembered the fury into which she had goaded Yellow Hair.

No, everyone is remembering Chapter 4 wrong.  It was Yellow Hair who advanced the scheme, and enough of the others seconded it to send him, alone, on this badly thought out mission.  And while they were discussing this, they mentioned that Bright Star was probably listening to the whole thing from the lodge door - White Fox even addressed her during a speech.  So what the hell?

Guess it wouldn't do for the protagonist's girlfriend to not be worried and guilty while he was gone.  Hopefully Remembers-Things-Wrong won't get the idea to go looking for Yellow Hair with her six-year-old sister in tow.

We get more about what happened between Yellow Hair accepting the mission and actually leaving on it, which the author wasted no time on in Chapter 5 but for whatever reason has decided to cover now, in the middle of Yellow Hair's big action scene.  After the Grand Council, Yellow Hair avoided Bright Star, which led her to believe that he had "forgotten her completely, taking it for granted that Long Bow would become her husband."  I have looked and looked, and can find no mention of this Long Bow before this chapter.

The narration unnecessarily explains that she is wrong and "This was in no wise [sic] the case," and Yellow Hair still had every intention of claiming Bright Star as his sits-beside-him woman.

But a man

Not a boy.

of Yellow Hair's active temperament does not long brood over the problems of love.  Instead of thinking, he acts.

Yeah, we noticed.

His whole strategy of life is built around the basic belief that furious motion will overcome the most weighty intrigues.

Which is why Yellow Hair is currently pinned down in a trading room, trying to fend off two forts' worth of men all by his lonesome.

It was action to go away to the fort of the Nor'Westers.  It was galling inaction to stay still and argue with a youth of considerable wealth.

Wait, who?  Bright Star?  Or is his rival Long Bow rich by Pikuni measures, making this a classic tale of a poor boy from the fringe of society competing with the proper rich kid for a girl's affections?

Yellow Hair's departure and the spectacular nature of his mission, encompassing as it did the welfare of the entire Pikuni people, gave him an opportunity for which all men of courage pray. He was sacrificing his own interests and perhaps even his life for the good of all---and there is nothing more glorious than that.

Yes, yes, let's all bow down and worship the fearless, heroic Yellow Hair.  Let's not reflect how his "selfless" mission is largely an attempt to win Bright Star's esteem (just like Yellow Hair's enthusiasm for killing Tushepaws back in Chapter 1), or wonder once again why this vital task is being entrusted not only to one warrior, but a hot-headed rookie at that.  Or question how much praise Yellow Hair deserves if he's already given up on the "understand the honkies" part of his mission.

Anyway, Bright Star passes the winter convinced that she's sent Yellow Hair to his death, and when the chinook sweeps the snow from the plains, geese return north, and the buffalo start drowning trying to cross the thinning ice so that their brown corpses dot the riverbanks for miles(!), Bright Star worries that Yellow Hair should've returned home by now.  Because how long could it take to learn everything about an alien people, anyway?

So one morning she grabs Magpie the hostage-slave and tells him to get two of Yellow Hair's horses and one of his saddles, promising him some new moccasins if he's a good boy.

"If you mean to help Yellow Hair, I need no reward except to accompany you."

"You're very brave, Magpie."

"Anyone is brave when you smile."

Adorable.  Magpie lies to the horse herd guards so they fetch the steeds, then lies to White Fox about needing Yellow Hair's gun and saddle so he can bag an antelope, then takes them all to the village outskirts.

Presently Bright Star came to him. She had substituted leggings and shirt for her beaded elkskin dress and, at a hasty glance, appeared to be an extraordinarily handsome Pikuni warrior. She was slender and supple and the cool dignity of her face made her appear far wiser than her twenty summers.

A twenty-year-old girl.  No, I'm not dropping that, I'm still annoyed.

It's only at this point that she explains why they're gearing up for a trip - Bright Star had a dream last night of Yellow Hair ill on a square bed with a serpent coiled on his chest, preparing to strike.  Problem is, women aren't supposed to have prophetic visions, so Bear Claws dismissed it, Long Bow said it must've been something she ate, White Fox insisted Yellow Hair could take care of himself, and Lost-in-Mountains admitted he was also worried but said that the weather wasn't right for traveling north.

As a side note, that everyculture website says that Blackfoot medicine men or women received visions that helped them heal their kin, which suggests that sacred dreams are not exclusive to folks with Y-chromosomes.

So Bright Star and Magpie ride north to check on their friend, planning to watch the fort from hiding and signaling him "somehow" to see if they can't convince him to come home.  Though Bright Star worries that may be difficult since he's surely mad with him, Magpie isn't convinced.

"He loves you."

"After I let Long Bow fight with him?

You did?  Um, was that something I missed?  Maybe my copy is missing some pages or something.

Magpie, if you ever love a girl, remember that there is never such a thing as choosing between two.  A maiden may madden you with another man but if she thinks she loves both, she loves neither.

So... Bright Star doesn't love Yellow Hair?

Come, Magpie, before somebody finds out that I have taken pemmican and clothing from my brother's lodge."

As Magpie was no older than fourteen,

Oh good, he's a teenager, so this isn't as miserably stupid as the Chrissie-Bittie situation in Battlefield Earth.

and he felt untold responsibilities to his knight's lady, he would have allowed his tongue to be cut out before he would have communicated her plan to anyone.

I'm choosing to believe that Hubbard is using the knight-squire relationship to describe Yellow Hair and Magpie because it's a familiar metaphor for his audience, and not as a sign of his latent Anglophilic tendencies.

So the two ride north, carefully watching for hostile Cree or whites, and sleeping in turns with one always standing guard over the other.  They make the six-day trek in five days, half a day longer than it took Yellow Hair and White Fox, but still not too shabby.  Unfortunately, their navigation is a bit off - Magpie has never been to Fort Chesterfield, and Bright Star only went once that day the guys placed Yellow Hair under armed guard.  So they end up coming across the site of McGlincy's ambush of Motley's barge.

And also unfortunately, Bright Star is... well... see, the Pikuni, like all Native Americans, are a dark-haired people.  Yellow Hair is the only blond guy she's known (what a happy coincidence there weren't any blond traders at the fort that day she visited).  So she's under the impression that Yellow Hair is the only blond guy in the world.  It's kind of logical.

And triply unfortunately, on his way to demand justice, good old' Motley stopped to bury the dead, but he didn't have time to do a good job of it.  The wolves have dug up the shallow graves near the riverbank, scattering bones and more importantly a "ghost-head," or skull with jawbone still attached (cue chapter title).  And though the owner of the ghost-head was scalped as per McGlincy's ruse, there's still a couple of yellow hairs stuck to it.

Conclusion: Yellow Hair has been killed for some reason, taken to a river a ways from the fort, and scalped!  Bright Star slumps over in shock, Magpie objects that "He---he can't be dead!  He can't be!"  And they go right home.

Yeah.  No effort to spy on the fort in the desperate hope that this is some different yellow-haired skull, no suicidal attempt at vengeance, Bright Star, "Alive in body only," just turns her horse south and goes home with Magpie, expecting that soon she'll have no choice but to marry Long Bow, even though the sources I've consulted suggest that Blackfoot women were allowed to accept or decline marriage proposals.  There's even sympathetic rumbles of thunder to underline their despair.  End chapter.

That was... well.  The main thing is that this chapter interrupts an action scene so that other characters can be put under the mistaken assumption that our hero is dead, but there's no dramatic tension for us or anything.  We're not quite halfway through the book yet, and it's highly unlikely that our beloved hero would be killed off-screen, assuming the author intends to kill him at all.  Even if I'm wrong and Hubbard is willing to kill Yellow Hair without showing us his dramatic death, and even if this chapter is taking place after Yellow Hair's hypothetical defeat at the fort, it seems unlikely that he would be dragged all the way to the river, scalped, and buried.  Maybe we're meant to be worried whether Yellow Hair will ever make it home to win Bright Star's hand, now that she's given up on him?  But why couldn't that wait until, say, after next chapter?

The other thing about this chapter is its confusing relationship with previous chapters.  There's all these allusions to things we just haven't seen - some sort of fight with Broken Bow, Yellow Hair's behavior before leaving for the fort - and what we have seen is suddenly presented in a different way.  It's awfully perplexing, and I know these characters don't have the benefit of being able to flip back to the start of the story to check the facts, but it feels like even in his first novel, Hubbard couldn't be bothered to go back and revise his work.  Like he had an idea for a rivalry between Yellow Hair and Long Bow mid-way through writing the book, and stuck some words describing it in this chapter instead of adding a chapter in the story's beginning that actually contained said conflict, or even a earlier mention of Long Bow for that matter. 

But maybe I'm wrong and that was in no wise the case.


Back to Chapter 12

Forward to Chapter 14

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 12 - Everything Proceeds as Planned

Robert Motley is mad as hell, and he's not gonna take it anymore.  He's been raided, he's lost packs of furs, and while the narration doesn't explicitly mention that he's furious that good men have died over beaver pelts, I'm sure he's been deeply affected by the loss of the people under his command.  I mean, he doesn't mention them, but that's probably covered by the raiding, right?

At any rate, he and his fifteen fur-trapping footsoldiers make their way to Fort Chesterfield, Motley standing behind the cannon in the barge's bow "as black and hunched as a carrion crow, his eyes sunk into his head like smoldering coal pits."  They beach the boat, the Orkneymen leap out and take up firing positions, and Motley marches forward "as though his knees had no joints.  A pistol was gripped in his spidery hand."  He comes a hundred paces from the gate and shouts for McGlincy's surrender.  "Open the gates, you pork eaters!"

I'm assuming this is an insult that made more sense in the 17th Century.

Now Fort Chesterfield is not at all battle-ready - it'd take half an hour to prep the cannons over the gate, and no armed men are standing guard.  So someone waves the white flag and out comes McGlincy, acting all surprised at the English's visit.

"Well, it is Motley," said McGlincy. "Good old Motley. Getting many furs downriver this spring?"

"You know how many," snapped Motley.

"Ah, now, I wouldn't say that.  Of course, our spies do return with information, but---"

"I'm talking about the murder of my barge crew."

Oh, good, he did bring that up eventually.

McGlincy is like 'ohhh, that's what the dead Orkneyman was about.'  Yeah, McGlincy was just taking a walk on the riverbank, not murdering Motley's guys or anything, when he saw this scalped fellow with an arrow in his back floating facedown in the river.  Those Indians sure are savages, am I right?

Motley accuses the Nor'Westers of the attack, and McGlincy is shocked, shocked at the very idea.

"Ah me, but you're a man of stubborn convictions.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  Ain't we all honorable white men in a savage land?  Hadn't we ought to protect ourselves?  That's my policy, Motley, and that's why I picked him up for you.  A young renegade head of a war party, he was.  Tall, with a quiver across his back.  He tried to run off our horses but I was too quick for him.  I went galloping out and he drawed his knife and I--"

"Renegade?  You mean a fellow in buckskin?  Where is he?"

Yeah, so, shortly after a corpse floated down the river, McGlincy got raided by an Indian band, and he just so happened to take the leader prisoner, and when he saw the quiver on the guy's back he knew that he was the one who attacked the Orkneyman - I mean, the guy was shot with an arrow, wasn't he?  And that's what quivers hold!  And he knew that this "renegade" was the culprit even before Motley mentioned the buckskin clothes.  McGlincy is a hell of a detective, see.

Motley immediately accepts McGlincy's story and is positively quivering with anticipation, eager to get this renegade hanged.  So the HBC guys are invited into the fort, McGlincy orders Luberly to bring out the prisoner, and Luberly orders two nameless extras to bring out the prisoner.

Now, our dear friend Yellow Hair has only heard the shouting in the fort, and is actually excited when two armed guards let him out of the butter tub since he thinks that he's needed for a fight against the English.  This lasts until he's actually led out into the fort's yard, and in a mere glance - again, he's super smart, guys - Yellow Hair puts everything together.  The HBC guys in the fort means that there's no attack, Father Marc looks dismayed so Yellow Hair is in trouble, and everyone's looking at him for some reason beyond the fact that he probably hasn't bathed in like two weeks.

The dead Orkneyman, Luberly's lies, Marc's questions, his illness and his late confinement, fitted like the metal parts of a cannon---which weapon was turned squarely upon him.

And only the metal parts.  Nothing that's happened can be compared to the wooden carriage or the wheels, that would just be silly.

Now, Yellow Hair's been in a cell for... let's see, ten days between now and Father Marc's visit, four days sick and feverish, and then locked up for over a week before that.  Wow, nearly a month in captivity with lousy food and no exercise, not to mention getting poisoned.  But dammit, he's a Hubbard Hero, meaning that Yellow Hair is capable of pulling a Hubbard Action Sequence at the drop of the hat, no matter what condition he's in.  So he does.

His reflexes were like steel springs.

He stopped abruptly one pace outside.

The slower-witted guards made one more step.

Yellow Hair stabbed out with his arms, swept them in front of him and banged their skulls together. With the same movement he hurtled backwards and inside the trading room, slamming the thick doors shut.

The sound of its closing was echoed instantly with the bang of a rifle and the slap of a shot into timber.

Ah, see, if Yellow Hair hadn't been sick, he'd have been able to get the doors shut a whole three seconds before the first reaction shot was fired.

Even so, "before the men outside had understood his intention" Yellow Hair manages to lock all three entrances to the trading room, yanks all those well-maintained guns off the shelves, readies a bag of musket balls and pops a powder keg.  He then... uh, looks like he fires a flintlock right through the door to wound an Orkneyman outside.  Guess there's no handy windows or firing slits to shoot through, which begs the question of how he aimed.  Must've used the Force or something.

And the whole time he hollers like an idiot.

Slapping another load home with a ramrod, Yellow Hair shouted, "Hyai!  Yeeow!  You fools come and get me!  Open the door, McGlincy!  Open it up!  Batter it down!  Come on, you bullies, here's your chance for glory!  Come and get me, I can be got!  Come on, you English, if you like to stomach lead!  Hyai!  Yeeow!  My scalp is yellow!  A fine scalp!  Rip it off and wave it on your sticks!  Take it and tell your women you've killed a Pikuni but don't tell them how many of you died!  Come on, you whites, you brave bullies, you heroes!  Break it in and get me!  Knock it down!  Hyai!  Yeeow!  Come on!  I'm waiting!"

So there's the "blood-curdling war cries," as promised on the back cover.  Meanwhile some Orkneymen are rolling a cannon into position outside.  I'd love to say that this means the book will be ending next chapter in a hail of lead pellets, splinters and chunks of Yellow Hair, but no such luck.

But that's "Yellow Hair Declares War."  Couple of thoughts:

First, Father Marc didn't do squat.  He didn't speak up to try and tell the truth, and he evidently couldn't work up the courage to voice any objections over the ten days between this chapter and the previous one.  I've skimmed ahead in search of any evidence that he might have done so off-screen, but can't find anything.  Maybe I just missed it and the padre did try really hard to stop this injustice before it happened.

Second, why did Yellow Hair feel the need to fight not just the entirety of the Nor'Wester crew of Fort Chesterfield, but some visiting Hudson's Bay Company men as well?  The book has been suggesting that he's just the sort of headstrong idiot who would try to fight fifty men at once, but surely he could've at least spared a thought for making a run for it?  Going out a side door and going up and over the wall?  At least explain why he didn't think that was an option instead of having him not even consider it.  And why not try words?  That language you just learned?  Maybe protest your innocence in front of everyone, with Father Marc backing you up?  Why incriminate yourself by resisting arrest with a one-man siege?

Third, let's take another look at McGlincy's plan.  He puts a white Indian in jail for causing a ruckus, then decides to keep him around for nearly a year to be the fall guy in a false flag operation.  When it's go time, he attacks the rival company's shipment using both firearms and a bow and arrow, taking care that the one guy visible during the attack has a quiver on the back that he can then ascribe to his captive.  But is this the most efficient plan?  Why not kill all of the guys on the boat, scalp the bodies, and feign ignorance when someone investigates weeks later?  Why is producing this highly specific prisoner so important?  And why the false flag op in the first place if none of the other forts have been punished for all the raiding?

At least Yellow Hair isn't moping in a room for a month, hoping for inspiration on how to get the plot moving again.  Next time we'll check on his love interest and see if we can develop her character or something.


Back to Chapter 11

Forward to Chapter 13

Buckskin Brigades - Chapter 11 - A Waste of Good Bison Meat

Meanwhile, Yellow Hair has a tummy ache.

Well, that's how the chapter starts - "Shortly after the river ice broke, Yellow Hair was taken ill" - only to immediately say that a week before that he was locked up in a room for reasons that were unclear to him.  And then we have a summary of what Yellow Hair saw over the winter before that, and then we see how Yellow Hair got his tummy ache.

But all of this confusion is surely worth it if it means we can start the chapter with a dramatic line like "Yellow Hair was taken ill."

So let's go back to when Yellow Hair in his cell, irate about it instead of sick.  He doesn't understand why he's being locked up inside these intolerable wooden walls after so many months of good behavior, and even when the door is unbolted he senses trouble afoot.

His hate for the Nor'Westers had been with him so long that it had become almost passive.  He had adopted an attitude which did not too much disturb his peace of mind, regarding the factor and McGlincy with the same tolerance he would have used toward a pair of unclean animals.

So why is he still at the fort?  Seriously, we know from the chapter before last that Yellow Hair has mastered English, so what's he still doing there?

The voyageurs were quite evidently slaves and as such they deserved neither thought nor attention.  True, he had been very puzzled by this queer circumstance.  It seemed the height of idiocy that thirty or more men, apparently sane and able-bodied, should submit so servilely to a drunken beast.

Oh, so now you wanna have the character start critiquing white society.  And you want to do it with a flashback in a chapter that ought to focus on the critical event that's about to happen, and not the chapter where you summarize Yellow Hair's nine months at the trading post.

Hubbard, if you want to become a successful novelist, you may want to learn how to revise and edit your... wait.

He realized there was probably more to this than he could see on the surface.  There must be another angle which lay in the country of the whites.

See, Yellow Hair witnessed two floggings over the winter, one done by McGlincy himself which left a voyageur badly injured and in that "butter tub" for a month, but despite Yellow Hair's expectations this wasn't followed by a revolt.  Father Marc had to explain that these voyageurs had offended the Great White Father back east, and rather than face a jail or noose there, they'd come to the frontier for freedom and pay, and the latter is enough to make them loyal.  Yellow Hair still hasn't figured out money yet, and can't make any sense of this.

So is he or isn't he still trying to study the white man?  Two chapters ago the author told us that Yellow Hair was just focusing on learning English, but now it turns out that he did at least ask a question about something he saw, except he can't wrap his head around the answer and doesn't seem all that interested in it.  Once again, I have to ask why Yellow Hair is still at the fort.  Beyond "the story requires it," I mean.

So one day "the Pays d'en Haut who brought his food looked more sly than ever."  The glossary defines this phrase as "From the French, meaning, literally, 'country of the above.'  In the Canadian fur trade, this was the country wast of Lake Superior."  So evidently the country west of Lake Superior is the geographic region that brings the prisoner his meals.

Now, Yellow Hair has a brilliant mind capable of scanning an unfamiliar room and putting everything in its place.  But he doesn't see any connection between McGlincy offering him some whiskey the night before (Yellow Hair poured it out the window in disgust), this sly-looking country west of Lake Superior, and a plate of buffalo steak.  He knows whites put something called salt on their food to give it a "sweetish taste"... huh... but the concept of poisoning food is quite foreign to him, since the narration tells us "that was limited to the South Americans."  Frickin' Inca, man.

So our hero eats the steak, which hits his stomach like a meal from your least favorite restaurant, sets his vision spinning, and knocks him out before he can stagger to the door and gasp for the Mighty Monk.  Unfortunately, Father Marc never mentioned the British habit of dispensing opium or laudanum across their imperial holdings, and even the narration mentions what an odd oversight this is for someone who otherwise carefully notes all the hilariously sinister things his people do.  I'm wondering why the author chose to single out this little contrivance over all the huge contrivances required for his story to function, but whatevs.

After two days in feverish agony and without food or water, that sly-looking country west of Lake Superior comes by with a bit of sustenance to get Yellow Hair through another two days of sickness.  Then Father Marc shows up, asks about his health, but also asks an odd question: "When did you get back?"

Yellow Hair explains he hasn't been anywhere, and the padre shares the disturbing things he's heard - an Orkneyman found dead with a Blackfoot arrow in his back (how can they tell? these traders don't even speak Pikuni, but they differentiate the tribes' arrows?) and his scalp missing, and a man in buckskin sighted with a quiver on his back.  Luberly claims that Yellow Hair just got back from some outing, but the white Indian's calm refusal to argue with such an obvious lie reassures Father Marc - guilty men are more energetic in their denials.  You know, if they're dumb about it.

This calm lasts until Father Marc explains that Luberly said Yellow Hair had broken his parole, and this false accusation from the fort's factor is what gets Yellow Hair up and ranting.  Because if he'd ranted before, then Father Marc might have doubted his innocence, see?  But thanks to Yellow Hair's weakened state, the Mighty Monk is able to hold him down and stop him from attempting a "one man raid."  Because Pikuni justice means that if someone accuses you of being some kind of murderer, the only recourse is to murder them.

Father Marc explains that Luberly and McClincy want Yellow Hair to go wild, which suggests that he knows the fort's leadership is trying to set him up to take a fall, but then he also says that he'll make sure that the voyageurs know where Yellow Hair is and what's wrong with him, which suggests that Father Marc thinks the rest of the men won't be going along with McGlincy's plot out of the goodness of their hearts or something.  At any rate, we're set for a confrontation between the good shepherd and the greedy traders over an innocent, if violent, Indian.

A confrontation that, if it happened at all, does so off-screen.  Because then we fast-forward ten days until someone shouts "The English!  A barge coming upstream!"  Well, I'm sure Father Marc tried his best.

Your homework tonight is to figure out how laudanum, a tincture of opium with side effects similar to morphine, was able to give Yellow Hair a fever and stomach cramps.


Back to Chapter 10

Forward to Chapter 12