From up on the hurricane deck Brokenleg eyed the fat cleric in his black clawhammer frock coat and silk top hat. The man was teetotal. And worse, he’d been imposing his morals on tribesmen until they brimmed with resentments, turning a happy, fruitful trading post into a seething mass of hatreds. Still, this would take all of twenty minutes and they’d be on their way upriver. Below, on the main deck, a motley mob of deck passengers, ruffians and mountain men mostly, swarmed to the rail. Brokenleg hardly knew any of them — the old beaver men, his rendezvous pals, had mostly vanished into some void. Oh, where had all them coons gone? Men he drank with, trapped icy streams with, told tall tales with through a wintry night? The Stony Mountains had become as silent as a trapped-out creek.
Deck hands lowered the stage and a welter of men boiled off the packet to stretch their legs and explore the loveliest of all the Missouri River fur posts. After that exodus the reverend proceeded forth, as stately as a whale, accompanied by a horde of factotums, mostly breeds. Brokenleg decided he’d better head down to the main deck even though descending the companionways was torture for a man with a leg welded straight at the knee by an old injury.
But Captain Sire was down there to greet the agent, and young Maxim as well; the boat and the company were represented, so he didn’t hurry. At length, after some babble, the deckhands opened the hatch and the Reverend Foster Gillian lowered his portly self down the ladder, a glassed candle-lantern in hand. Maxim accompanied him; no one else bothered. By the time Brokenleg limped up, the hold had swallowed the reverend.
Down there, Brokenleg knew, Maxim would steer the man along the two aisles through inky blackness, warning him not to bring the lantern close to casks of gunpowder, occasionally shifting crates and bales of trade goods to let the inspector examine what lay beneath. That had been young Maxim’s duty from the start; he kept the books, did the clerking, checked the cargo against theft each day.
Nearby, Mrs. Gillian awaited under a white parasol, respectably isolated on the deck by cowed passengers. Brokenleg did not introduce himself. Something about Mrs. Gillian’s manner forbade it. He wondered how she treated the red men in her husband’s charge. He heard the scuff and scrape of shifting cargo below and knew Maxim was being put through a workout. And then he detected rising voices.
Maxim’s head bobbed up at the hatch, looking worried. “We need two deck hands,” he said, shooting an unhappy look at Brokenleg.
The mate sent down two deckhands, and in short order three rundlets were hoisted to the main deck looking like fat felons, followed by the lumbering bulk of the minister, who was helped out upon the planking, and stood puffing after his exertion up the ladder.
He had a bung starter in hand and proceeded to twist it into wood until he was able to extract the plug, which taxed his muscles to their limit. Then he bent his portly frame until his nose probed the hole, and sniffed.
“Vinegar indeed,” he wheezed. “I smell foul spirits.”
Two
* * *
Brokenleg was amazed. The company had no spirits aboard. He limped forward, plunged a finger into the bung, and sniffed. It wasn’t vinegar.
“And who are you?” asked Foster Gillian, drawing himself up to peer down his aquiline nose.
“Fitzhugh. Partner in the company.”
“Your full name?”
“Brokenleg Fitzhugh.”
“Brokenleg? Have you no other?”
“Not as I remember.”
“I must have a name.”
“Robert, it was.”
“You’ve violated the laws of the Republic.”
“I don’t reckon so. This ain’t our spirits.”
“Oh, fiddlededee!” The Reverend Mister Gillian wheezed out his scorn. “I suppose you’ll tell me it was not on your cargo manifests.” He waved the papers as if they were holy scripture. “Here! Three thirty-gallon casks of vinegar. A little legerdemain. A little chicane.”
“What’s that?”
“Fraud. Foul fraud. A base effort to debauch and demoralize the savages in our charge.”
“I know nothing about it,” said Brokenleg. He wheeled toward Maxim. “You know anything about this?”
The youth looked frightened. “Yes. I — the barrels weren’t on the manifests,” he stammered. “I thought a mistake had been made so I added them to it.”
“Ah!” cried Foster Gillian. “A mere youth corrupting the savages! And toying with the law of the United States. What sort of company is this?”
Maxim reddened. “My task is to look for theft. Each day I check the hold for theft. There’s often miscounts — differences between what’s on the manifests and what’s in the hold. I — it’s nothing unusual.”
“Stammering! A sure sign of a guilty conscience. Truth will out!”
“That isn’t it — that isn’t it. Someone put them there!”
The reverend wheezed, setting his whole torso to rocking. “I may be a minister, young man, but I’m not naive. I know that your foul trade is fueled by spirits. You fur and robe men think nothing of debahing whole tribes — corrupting helpless innocents, mere children, with your vile poisons.”
Maxim stiffened and pressed his lips shut. He was plainly through talking.
Fitzhugh felt like hollering but didn’t. No matter what he said he’d only dig their grave deeper. As far as he was concerned tribesmen were adults. They could choose to trade a robe for some firewater or not, same as any white man.
“I’ve caught you red-handed! That’s plain. Enough spirits to send whole villages into the pits of hell!”
“Maxim, come hyar — I want to talk.” Fitzhugh dragged Maxim out of earshot.
“Stop!”
“We’re havin’ us a company meeting.”
“Fiddlededee! Fiddlededee!” The reverend scowled but there was nothing he could do. Fitzhugh halted at the roaring firebox. “Maxim — what do you know about this hyar?”
“Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” he screamed. “They’ve been on board for a long time, Brokenleg,” he mumbled. “I noticed them the first day. There’s two manifests — one for the captain and my own. The vinegar was listed on the ship manifests but not on mine. I just thought — ”
Fitzhugh growled. “You jist thought! You jist thought!”
Maxim looked so miserable that Fitzhugh wanted to calm down, but couldn’t. “Maybe you cost us the license! Maybe you busted your pa and the rest!”
That was too much for Maxim. He wept.
“You coulda told me!” Fitzhugh roared. “You coulda said we got three casks of vinegar. Vinegar! Who the hell uses three casks a vinegar? I shoulda done it myself.”
He knew he was cutting the boy to ribbons and he didn’t care. Out in the wild lands anyone that made mistakes — them coons went under. The wilds, the Injuns, didn’t give a second chance. This robe trade, with all its cutthroats, didn’t give a second chance! He left the boy weeping spastically while firemen pretended not to stare, and stomped back to the Indian agent.
“I’m sayin’ it and you can believe it or not. Suit yerself. I’m sayin’ it for the record. We didn’t put them casks in thar and we didn’t know what they had in ’em. Someone else done it.”
The Reverend Mister Foster Gillian looked amused. “I’ll make note of your fiddle-faddle in my report to the Indian Bureau.”
“Make plumb sure you do!”
“Oh, this heinous traffic in spirits will cost you your license. Don’t you doubt it.” He turned to Captain Sire. “I am confiscating this contraband. Have your blackamoors pour it into the river, sir. But leave a little for evidence.”
Sire said nothing. At his nod two deckhands lifted the first cask and mournfully poured the pure grain spirits overboard. They gurgled out while men stared as if watching a fatal wound bleed their life away. And then the next. And the next. Indians, breeds, ruffians, mountaineers, boatmen, watched in agony. Mrs. Gillian, a tent under a parasol, pursed her lips. All three new engages who’d signed on with the Rocky M
ountain Company studied the spirits as they departed the living.
That done, the reverend turned to Brokenleg. “I ought to seize your entire cargo and this ship as well. Believe me, this vessel’s navigation license is in jeopardy. Oh, I’ll put a stop to this traffic one way or another. Not a drop, not a drop of these poisons will touch the lips of these savage children of the West. One way or another I’ll halt this nefarious traffic.”
Bluster. Brokenleg stopped listening and turned to the business ahead: informing Guy; defending the trading license; trying to prove somehow that things were less damning than they seemed. That was a task made all the more difficult because all fur companies winked at the law and circumvented the inspections. Everyone knew it, from David Mitchell, in charge of the Indian Bureau back in St. Louis, on down — and up.
“You’re not even paying attention! I’ll report your insolence as well.”
Brokenleg focused on the man and listened to the rest of his sermon, or appeared to. The man irked him. Preachers had wrecked everything in Indian Country. The Indian Bureau’s noble experiment had been worse for red men than the corrupt agents the preachers had replaced. The preachers, including this bubbling tub, had withheld food and treaty annuities from any Indians who failed to abandon their old ways and become Christians. The result had been seething hatred on the reserves.
After some interminable time, after Sire’s impatient coughing, after deckhands had wandered off and spectators had wilted, the Reverend Mister Gillian concluded, swept the mountainous Mrs. Gillian down the stage, and marched furnerally up the slope.
Brokenleg turned to Captain Sire. “I reckon we’ve got to git word down to Guy Straus. Next time we pass a mackinaw or a keelboat give me a holler.”
Sire nodded. “Monsieur, truly, those weren’t your spirits, were they?”
“Nope. Some skunk put ’er there. This hyar was old Chouteau cadet’s doin’, sure as I’m standin’ hyar.”
“It is a different handwriting, oui?”
Sire handed him the ship’s copies of the cargo manifest. The three casks of vinegar had been entered in a cruder hand than the rest.
“We must delay no more,” Sire said. He waved to Black Dave Desiree high above in the pilot house. Deckmen hauled in the hawsers. The twin chimneys belched black smoke that lowered down upon them all. The escapement pipe shrilled off steam. The packet drifted backward a moment. Then the eighteen-foot side-wheels bit water and the riverboat wrestled the violent current of the river.
He found Maxim still standing near the firebox at the boiler and hauled him out into the sunlight; to the duckbilled prow. On either side the river swirled by, a murky green color this far upstream.
“Now Maxim. You write your pa about this and we’ll hail the next keelboat and send the letter down. He’s got to know right fast. It’s that or send an express. You write him good. You can say ’er a lot better than I can. Give him all the facts. Give him everything — every little thing. He’s got to deal with Mitchell, keep the IB from pullin’ our license. You up to it or do I haveta do it?”
“Oh I’ll do it. It’s all my fault anyway.”
“I reckon it’s not your fault that them spirits got put in there. That was old Chouteau Cadet.”
“It’s all over. The company’s over.”
“Naw. Maybe not. We’re standin’ in this hyar prow, cuttin’ water. We’re goin’ up to trade robes. We’re goin’ to make us a profit. American Fur, they weasled out of it more’n once. Cost a fine or two but they kept on. We’ll keep on. And we both learnt a piece.”
“The fine could sink us.”
“It’ll hurt. Maybe we can lasso Senator Benton, like Chouteau did that time when ol’ Wyeth visited Kenneth McKenzie at Fort Union in the beaver days, and peached on him — told the Indian Bureau they had a corn whiskey still runnin’ juice up thar. They got out of it. We’ll git out of it.”
But he wasn’t very sure of that. The next afternoon they closed on a mackinaw carrying five men and sent Maxim’s letter down river in the hands of a buffalo-tongue outfit. It’d get to Guy ahead of the reverend’s report to Davy Mitchell. But what might happen after that was anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, he reckoned he’d have a little palaver with the company’s three new engages.
* * *
At each wooding stop along the river Captain Sire put every man on board to work, deckhands and passengers alike, and urged them to be quick about it. Woodyards were famous for sudden death. At this yard, a little above Sergeant Bluff, something unusual would happen. Maxim Straus stood at the duckbilled prow as the packet slid toward the riverbank. He felt moody and rebellious. He would not answer the clanging of the ship’s bell summoning able-bodied men to work. Especially here.
Farther downstream woodcutters operated the wood yards, piling up cordwood along the riverbanks. At those stops the crew and passengers trotted the three- or four-foot lengths aboard while the mate or the captain settled with the wood hawks. But not here. Not out in Indian country where no wood hawk would survive long. Here and the rest of the way up the Missouri, the crews were on their own. They had to girdle living trees for future use and hack them down and into pieces as swiftly as possible. Some captains had a small sawmill aboard and cut the logs while they traveled. Captain Sire had no such equipment. An upriver wooding stop meant that the bankside cottonwoods and willows had to be felled and cut to length several times a day.
Occasionally Indians themselves prepared a load of wood and charged for it, often with a great deal of haggling because they were never in a hurry. Their presence in a wooding yard slowed things down so much that some captains preferred to avoid them if they had alternative sites — which enraged the tribesmen. As a result, a captain never knew when a volley from bankside rifles would rip into his boat, killing passengers and crew.
But Maxim wasn’t looking for Indians here. He was looking for something else — three men and a string of mules bearing thirty-gallon wooden casks. He half-hoped he wouldn’t see them. He’d come to hate the whole business of smuggling spirits past the federal inspectors. But there they were, waiting quietly in the shade of the dense cottonwood forest that spread east from the bank. The company’s whiskey-runners. Delivering one hundred eighty gallons of two-hundred proof ardent spirits. Enough pure grain alcohol to make nine hundred gallons of firewater after it had been diluted. Nine hundred gallons of trade whiskey, consisting of spirits, river water, tea for color, pepper or ginger for taste, a few plugs of tobacco for bite, and anything else a trader felt like dumping into the pot to make the beverage entertaining. Enough to demoralize whole tribes. Enough to bring in thousands of robes, untold wealth.
Maxim hated it.
The ship’s bell clanged and everywhere deckmen and mountaineers crowded to the stage, grabbing axes and saws from a box there. Even while the crew made fast the packet, wrapping hawsers around stumps on shore, the mob trotted toward the trees and began butchering them. High up on the texas, ship’s officers watched for Indians, glassing the surrounding bluffs diligently.
Maxim didn’t budge. He glared sourly as the whiskey-runners led their mules up the stage onto the main deck and began unloading the casks. Brokenleg was there to meet them and examine the bung of each cask, looking for signs of tampering, watering down, light weight, and joking with them all the while. In short order the six casks had vanished into the shallow hold, the whiskeymen had been paid off and had vanished into the timber with their mules. An illegal transaction.
No one cared. No one among the mountaineers or deckmen even stared. Nothing was hidden. Any observer might have reported it to the Indian Bureau but no one ever would. No engage of the rival American Fur Company would peach because spirits were essential to the trade, not only to bring in robes and pelts, but to provide an occasional drunk, a Christmas or New Year’s bacchanal for bored and hard-bitten men.
But Maxim seethed. He’d been wounded at Bellevue not only by the minister but by Fitzhugh. He dreaded the future; dreaded that
his name would be entered in federal records. Dreaded that he might be arrested upon his return to St. Louis; tried, imprisoned, shamed. That was his handwriting adding those vinegar casks to the company’s manifests. It’d been a terrible mistake. He felt he was always making mistakes and Brokenleg was always rebuking him in his savage way. He could never go home. He knew he’d get a letter eventually from papa, telling him to stay away, live in the wild lands for a few years. It broke his heart even to think about it.
But that wasn’t what had turned him sullen as he leaned over the rail at the prow and stared moodily at the eddying water. The whole thing offended his sense of decency. His family was engaged in a corrupt enterprise. His own father! His brother, too. And himself. There was no subterfuge in banking and finance, and Straus et Fils had borne no shame. But this! Pouring out watered spirits to Indians, getting them drunk, enticing them to trade anything, anything, all the robes in their lodges for just one more cup of diluted firewater. Whole villages impoverished themselves in one big drunk, peddling every last robe and pelt to greedy traders for another drink. And the traders made each batch progressively weaker; the drunker the Indians, the more they were cheated, until at the last the firewater had scarcely any spirits at all in it.
Fitzhugh didn’t seem to mind. Neither did Jamie Dance. And not even his father minded! It filled Maxim with disgust that the people he was with would not see what they were doing, ruining villages, turning proud, strong native people into sots. He’d done it himself last year through the whole trading season. He’d seen it with his own eyes, dipped the cups into the pot and poured out a robe’s measure. A rogue’s measure, he corrected himself. He’d seen them outside the post, staggering, bellowing, brawling like animals, the last restraint loosed in them all. And other things. The squaws drank, too. And when they did — he blushed to think about it. He’d seen it all and it had sickened him. And he had done it. He himself.
Cheyenne Winter Page 2
