Centennial

by James A. Michener

  His face grew blank. How many years had he been on the plains? Thirty years, or was it thirty-one? A long time, a long, long time. He would not want to shame these lively men, so he did not answer.

  “I asked ya, Red Beard, you a tenderfoot?”

  “In the mountains?” McKeag asked.

  “What else? The mountains.”

  “I’ve never been in the mountains,” he said. He looked so weather-wise and his clothes so Indian that they couldn’t believe this. One of the younger men, well drunk on summer whiskey, grabbed him by the shirt and said, “Don’t you make fun of us, Scotty. We’ll break your back. How long you been in the mountains?”

  “Never been there.”

  “Then how long on the prairies?” the man shouted. “How long chasin’ beaver?”

  “Thirty years,” McKeag said.

  “Thirty years!” one of them cried in open admiration. “You musta known Pasquinel.”

  McKeag caught his breath. Something in the way the man spoke seemed to indicate that Pasquinel was dead, and in the pain of that moment, McKeag acknowledged to himself that the only reason he was heading for the rendezvous was to meet Pasquinel. “Is he all right?” he asked in a whisper.

  “All right?” One of the men bared his left arm to display a long knife gash, dating back but still lurid beneath the scar tissue.

  McKeag fingered the scar, laughed thinly and said, “He was always good with a knife.”

  They traveled together some days till they reached the Green River, and at night they told McKeag of their journey along the Arkansas, of Santa Fe and the western slopes and the high plateau. They seemed to have fought everyone: Comanche, Apache, Mexicans, Ute. “Of all the Indians we met,” one said, “the Ute know how to handle their horses in a fight.” They had a high opinion of that tribe and asked McKeag which he preferred. “Arapaho,” he said, volunteering no reason.

  As they swung north toward Bear Lake, where the rendezvous was to be held—the word having been flashed across the whole west, from Oregon to Saint Louis, from Canada to Chihuahua—they came upon six different tribes of Indians heading for the month-long celebration: Ute, Shoshone, Gros Ventre, Snake, Nez Percé, Flathead. The newcomers were showing off their mastery of sign language, a few symbols covering the most meager ideas, when McKeag was greeted by a Ute from the eastern slope, with whom he fell into conversation. A Gros Ventre came up, and McKeag spoke to him in Arapaho. The mountain men were impressed.

  “You a squaw man?” they asked.

  “Trapper,” McKeag said.

  They now mounted a small hill, and from its brow they looked down upon the shimmering lake and the extensive meadows which would house the rendezvous. Already two thousand Indians were camped there and more were drifting in from north and west. “Last year we didn’t have enough grass for the horses,” one of the trappers said.

  “You been here before?” McKeag asked.

  “Third year. This is better’n goin’ to Saint Louis,” the man said enthusiastically, his excitement heightened by actual sight of the locale. “Scotty, you’re goin’ to see more hellfire ... And let me tell you one thing, if that little bastard Pasquinel tries to cut me up again ...”

  “Will he come?” McKeag asked.

  “They invented this for him. He won’t be sober ten minutes in ten days.”

  Another trapper broke in. “First year he came alone. Drunk all the time. Last year he brought his squaw. Labe here tried to fussy her up. That’s when he got his arm cut. Pasquinel had to fight eight different men during rendezvous.”

  As they descended the hill, mountain men from various parts of the west recognized the four from Santa Fe and moved in to deliver messages from absent friends. McKeag stood apart, surveying the lake and marveling that so many white men had lain hidden in the hills, that so many warring tribes could convene in peace. He was about to rejoin his group when the air was shattered by a tremendous blast, so powerful that some trappers had their caps blown off.

  McKeag looked about to see what had caused it. The men with the cannon had fired a blank to welcome the Santa Fe contingent, one of whom asked, “What’s the cannon for?”

  “To scare Indians. Look!” His men had erected a tipi on an opposite hill and around it had piled a formidable collection of logs, on top of which stood a trapper waving a red flag attached to a pole. All the white men stared at the tipi, and scouts moved through the Indian section to be sure they were watching.

  The man waved his flag for some minutes. Then a pistol shot was fired and he dropped the flag and ran as fast as he could down into a gully. At the cannon an artilleryman touched a flame to the fuse and jumped back. There was a loud blast, and a four-inch iron ball shot across the intervening land, took one dusty bounce and crashed into the logs, carrying the tipi some distance away, collapsing it.

  A trapper from the north, excited by the noise and the good hit, let out a yell, jumped in the air and flung his arms wide in sheer exuberance. “Alllleeezzzz!” this Canadian shouted “Anyone want the apron?”

  He whipped out from underneath his Indian blouse a yellow apron. It was about twenty inches wide where the strings attached, twenty-four from top to bottom, very colorful, very yellow. He swung the apron by one string, bringing it under McKeag’s nose. The Scot did not know what it signified, but one of the Santa Fe men did, and he grabbed the other flying string, ripped the apron out of the Canadian’s hands and tied it deftly about his own waist. Men in the area stopped to cheer, and one struck up a song, “Old Joe with a Wart on His Nose.” Soon everyone was singing and clapping hands, whereupon the man wearing the yellow apron danced a few pretty steps and pirouetted like a girl.

  This delighted the Canadian, who swooped down upon the dancer, took his two hands and began a jig. Then he slipped his arm around the man’s waist and ran forward and backward in long, awkward steps. At the end of this maneuver the man in the yellow apron pushed his partner away, danced lightly about the circle and indicated another man.

  This pair danced with some grace, the man in the apron still playing the role of the woman, and after some minutes they tried an intricate waltz, which went so well that the crowd cheered. The man of the partnership bowed and retired, whereupon the man in the apron minced up to McKeag, offering to dance with him, but the Scotsman flushed.

  “I can’t dance!” he protested, and the aproned man slid gracefully to the next in line, who cut a good figure with jig steps, ending by swinging the “girl” high into the air, then around in a circle parallel to the crowd, lifting him one moment and dropping him nearly to the earth the next. It was a fine dance, and the Indians stood gape-mouthed, like McKeag.

  The clapping had obscured a more somber noise which came from a brawl a short distance away. When it became obvious that a substantial fight was under way, the crowd moved there, and McKeag, pushed along against his will, saw with a mixture of delight and disgust that Jacques Pasquinel, now a husky lad of eighteen, was fist-fighting with a man much older and heavier. It was a hard-breathing affair, with each contestant trying to damage the other, and after a series of blows which seemed to be about even, the older man struck one that gave him an advantage which he was eager to follow up.

  Drawing back his right arm and cocking it for a major blow, he was about to finish young Pasquinel off when one of the watching trappers shouted, “Watch out, Emil. The knife.”

  Feeling himself about to lose, Jacques had whipped out a long-bladed knife and was ready to close in on his opponent, but a friend of the fighter’s had anticipated such a move and had taken out a pistol, which he pointed at the young man’s head, shouting as he did, “Pasquinel Drop the knife!”

  Jacques turned to see who had called his name, saw the pistol leveled at him, and without a moment’s hesitation, dropped his knife and broke into a smile. Kicking the needle-pointed knife, he laughed, “Only play.”

  “I know,” the man with the pistol said.

  There might have been more words had not a wi
ld shout arisen, whereupon a group of Arapaho on horseback came thundering in. They rode with crazy abandon through the encampment, throwing dust over all the campfires, then doubled back and crossed in the opposite direction. To his dismay, McKeag saw that the two chiefs, Large Goose and Red Buffalo, who had once eaten up his supplies, were in the lead, and he swore that this time they would get none of his gear ... none. But he suspected that this might be an easier promise to make than to keep, for now Large Goose spotted him and reined his horse.

  “Red Beard!” he shouted, running over and embracing his long-absent friend. “You got tobacco?”

  “I have no tobacco,” McKeag said firmly in Arapaho.

  “Yes, yes! Where’s your tipi?”

  “I have no tipi,” McKeag protested.

  “You sleep my tipi,” Large Goose cried, embracing McKeag doubly hard.

  “You been drinkin’?” McKeag asked.

  “Yes, yes! Everybody drinking.” He pointed to the east, where one of the Santa Fe trappers was peddling bottles of Taos Lightning. The world’s crudest alcohol was mixed with caramel, a couple of camphor balls, copious amounts of water, pepper and a shredded plug of tobacco. For twenty cents a man could make a gallon of the stuff and trade it for a hundred dollars’ worth of furs. The Indian who drank it did not die, but often wished he had.

  The Hudson’s Bay Company, a Canadian outfit long experienced in the fur trade, did not allow its representatives to sell liquor to Indians, but there was nothing in its rules to keep the Canadians from robbing the Indians in other ways. It sponsored a custom that required an Indian, when purchasing a rifle, to pile beaver pelts as high as the top of the barrel; the Canadians produced a rifle with a barrel twelve inches longer than ordinary, then spread the rumor that it was this extra length that made it deadly.

  A Canadian with the strong Scottish name of McClintock had opened a tent by the southern tip of Bear Lake and was buying in beaver pelts as fast as the Indians could unload them, and McKeag gravitated toward this area, wondering vaguely if there might be news from Scotland. After he had waited some minutes for the Indians around the tent to thin out, he edged his way to where a large bearded man in filthy Indian dress and matted hair was speaking rapidly in some north Indian tongue. McKeag caught his eye, and the Canadian stopped his harangue, pushed the Indians to one side and strode over.

  “Name’s McClintock. You got beaver to sell?”

  “Name’s McKeag. I sell in Saint Louis.”

  “You’ll do better with me. Where you from?”

  “Wester Ross,” McKeag said, giving the name of a remote and little-known part of Scotland. McClintock had never heard of it. “Are you from Scotland?” McKeag asked nervously.

  “Never saw it. My grandfather, mebbe. Lived in Nova Scotia.”

  McKeag was about to leave when the Canadian grabbed him by the arm. “Did you say McKeag? You the man who used to partner Pasquinel?” McKeag nodded.

  “Pasquinel!” the Canadian bellowed, and from inside the tent the familiar, stocky figure of the Frenchman appeared. He was now fifty-seven, heavier, his hair grayed, a couple of front teeth missing. He had a new scar along his chin, but his clothes were the same: Indian dress that Clay Basket had made him, but with more decoration than before, red wool cap. He stood in the sunlight, holding a flap of the tent in his left hand, and stared at the figure before him. At first he did not recognize McKeag, for he was drunk and the lean Scotsman felt a pang of sorrow. He was about to retreat, from natural shyness, when McClintock bellowed, “Pasquinel! It’s your old partner McKeag.”

  The shroud of drunkenness dropped away from Pasquinel. His eyes cleared and he saw, swimming in space before him, his partner of long ago. “McKeag,” he whispered softly, “you come to a strange tent to find me.” He extended his two hands and stepped forward uncertainly. He stumbled and McKeag grabbed him. “Merci,” the Frenchman said gravely. “Il y a longtemps.”

  Before McKeag could respond to this deeply felt welcome, the area was disturbed by two figures running at great speed toward the tent. “Father!” the lead figure yelled. It was Marcel Pasquinel, now sixteen, followed by Jacques. They rushed up to their father, and before he could protest, had stripped him of his two knives, each boy taking one and jabbing it inside his belt.

  “It’s Emil Borcher!” Marcel shouted back over his shoulder. “If he starts again, we’re goin’ to kill him.” In a cloud of dust they disappeared, but within a moment they were back again, and Marcel was grabbing McKeag by the arm and swinging him around.

  “It’s McKeag!” he shouted with real delight. Throwing his arms about the Scotsman, he embraced him warmly, then shoved him along to Jacques, who greeted him with less enthusiasm.

  “Last time we were fightin’,” Jacques said.

  “You’re bigger,” McKeag said uneasily. Then grasping for something to say, he asked, “Is your mother here?”

  The brothers laughed at this, and Jacques said, “Here last year. Too many fights.”

  “We’re lookin’ for a fight right now,” Marcel said. “Emil Borcher. He started it ... had one of his friends come at Jacques with a gun.” McKeag thought it best not to say that he had seen Jacques attack Emil with the knife. They ran off, seeking more trouble, and that night when the brothers could not have known that McKeag was listening, he overheard Jacques telling a crowd of young bullies, “McKeag. He used to trap with my father. I had to drive him out of camp ... cut him up bad with my knife ... caught him in bed with my mother.”

  McKeag felt so unclean, so humiliated that he wished the ground might envelop him right then to get him out of this evil place. I should have killed him years ago, he thought, and during the rest of the rendezvous he avoided the brothers.

  For Pasquinel the turbulent meeting was heaven-sent. He was drunk most of the time, bought enormous quantities of good alcohol from the Canadians, who were allowed to sell it to whites, and danced and fought and chased Indian girls and sought out other Frenchmen to sing the traditional song of the voyageurs, “A La Claire Fontaine,” that haunting melody with words that caught the full meaning of youth and the start of life:

  “Sing, nightingale, sing!

  You have the singing heart.

  You have the heart that laughs ...

  Mine is the heart that weeps.

  Chante, rossignol, chante.

  How long, how long have I loved you.

  Never, never will I forget.

  “Now I have lost my sweetheart,

  Without any reason at all.

  It was just a bouquet of roses

  That I forgot to give her.

  Chante, rossignol, chante

  How long, how long I have loved you.”

  Pasquinel bought the singers drinks. He was a generous man, respected for his ability to survive; old-timers knew how often he had stood alone against assailants. He was also the champion singer of love songs, the patron of the rendezvous.

  But he was a difficult man, for he attracted trouble. He fought as often as the meanest-minded man at the rendezvous, and when McClintock, his proved friend, remonstrated with him about the behavior of the two boys, claiming that Jacques had raped the daughter of an Arapaho chief without paying, Pasquinel grew furious.

  “Lie! Pasquinel always pays.”

  “You do,” McClintock assured him, “but not your son.”

  Pasquinel pulled back his right arm, launching a hard blow, which McClintock parried. Immobilizing the stocky Frenchman, he lectured him: “You warn Jacques to keep his fingers out of my ball and powder. He’s a thief.”

  “By God!” Pasquinel roared, trying to strike his friend again.

  “Tell him, McKeag,” McClintock said, thrusting the pugnacious Frenchman from him.

  “How’s trappin’?” Pasquinel asked his old partner, forgetting his fight with McClintock as easily as he had begun it.

  “The streams are beginning to lose their beaver.”

  “Jamais,” Pasquinel roared. “You just ha
ve to go higher in the mountains.”

  This started a long discussion, in which several mountain men participated. Those who trapped in the high Rockies agreed with Pasquinel that beaver could never diminish. “They hide in those lodges all winter making babies,” a newcomer said.

  But the Oregon trappers, who had been working the rivers for a longer time, knew that McKeag was right. The beaver were thinning out. “Always farther up the river,” an Englishman from Astoria said. “Pretty soon you won’t make a bale a year.”

  “Ah!” Pasquinel replied. “Last winter ... Blue Valley ... I make six bales ... no work.”

  “I don’t know Blue Valley,” the Englishman said. “I suppose it’s fairly high.”

  “You climb ... you climb,” Pasquinel said.

  “That’s what I mean,” the Englishman said. “I’ll wager there are no streams above it.”

  “Well,” Pasquinel began. He stopped, and across his face came a look of bewilderment which all could see, the confession that above Blue Valley there were no more streams. There was a moment of painful silence, broken by his hearty cry “Ah! So long as men wear beaver hats, so long we have beaver.”