No moon illumined the fourth night but it didn’t matter. He’d found a good campsite well off the trace and close to the river, a few grassy bankside hectares screened from the world by a thick growth of willow and hackberry. They arrived at dusk, dusty from the long trek. The spring monsoons had vanished and now the country sweltered under a ruthless sun with only a rare thundershower to mitigate the heat.
His men patiently hobbled half the oxen and picketed the mules on long lines, and settled down to roast the antelope that Brasseau had shot earlier. They had enormous appetites, and the pronghorn would scarcely fill their bellies. But it was enough, and they settled swiftly into sleep under scattered stars dimmed by heat haze.
That’s when trouble came; when the bawling of oxen and bleating of mules brought them up from the earth clutching their percussion pieces. The supper fire had long since died, the night offered no light, and they could scarcely tell what was happening. But their ears told them something, anyway: the livestock was being driven off. The braying and bleating of the mules diminished into the void. Oxen bawled in pain, and the sound of splashing reached the Creoles. There was nothing to shot at. Not a single one of the raiders had been visible to them although they knew it was a horse-mounted party. The whicker and snort of horses had accompanied the whole uproar, occasioning a few helpless shots from some of the men.
They had no lantern but spread out upon the meadows where the stock had been left to grace, knowing they’d find nothing. But they did stumble upon a few things — carcasses of oxen sprawled like black mounds, radiating heat. And poking from them, several arrows. Bercier tugged two arrows loose, losing their points in the carcasses of the oxen, and wearily the engages returned to their campsite and built a fire so that they might examine the shafts. Trudeau himself could often tell the arrow of one tribe from another. They all used different ways to fletch the arrows and dye them. Different materials, too. Feathers from different birds. Silently, when at last the fire careened high enough into the blackness to give them vision, they studied the arrows. He examined these, nothing the long gray feathers, and decided he didn’t know.
“Pieds Noirs,” muttered LaRue.
“How is it that you know, Gaspard?”
“I know.”
“Sacrebleu!” It was more than Trudeau knew, or the rest for that matter, but they accepted it.
“Mais, pourquoi?”
They couldn’t answer that. These raiders had stolen the mules, which plains Indians coveted, and had shot arrows into at least some of the oxen — which they didn’t really care about. They all despised the soft meat of white men’s buffalo. Why, indeed? And one more thing chafed at Trudeau. Horse stealing parties traveled on foot, intending to ride off with their booty. But this party had been mounted. What did it signify?
They extinguished the fire, not wishing to make targets of themselves, and sat up, their backs to the wagon wheels or the heavy wooden yokes for the oxen. They smoked the tabac and waited for dawn, which would shed light on their dilemma. There was nothing to say; not among these old friends who knew each other’s innermost thoughts without a word being uttered.
When at last dawn grayed the northeastern firmament and they could distinguish earth from sky, tree from prairie, they spread out silently, seeing the carnage that had been curtained from their eyes in the night. Of the twelve oxen, seven lay dead or wounded, pierced by arrows. The others had vanished. Of the six mules not a one remained. And back at the campsite sat three giant freight wagons, as useless as a canoe without paddles.
“This was the work of Pierre le Cadet, oui?” said Bercier.
No one replied. Trudeau thought they probably all agreed. It had been an odd raid, well timed, four days from Fort Cass and Fitzhugh’s Post,and six or seven from the Wolf Rapids rendezvous. Well planned by observers who had seen the wagons turn off the trace to this hidden bankside meadow. Pierre Chouteau’s work indeed, or that of one of his underlings at Cass or Fort Union. And right in the tradition of American Fur, the ruthless monopoly begun by John Jacob Astor and later sold in pieces to the Chouteaus and others. Trade war, with Indians doing the dirty work.
“We will walk, alors,” he said.
They loosened the sheeting from the three wagons and cached it nearby in the woods. The wagon sheets would be a prize for any tribesman. The wagons were a prize, too. Their wheels could be burnt to get at the iron tires, which could be fashioned into lance points and arrowheads. He would hide them if he could. Sweating and cursing, three men on the tongue and three behind, pulled and pushed each wagon off the meadow and into the timber. There in the shadowy forest floor they heaped brush against the Pittsburghs. It would not fool anyone for long but it might conceal them from the casual observer.
Silently they started walking, each man carrying a heavy pack over his back laden with the food and robes and camp supplies from the wagons. No man complained. No Creole engage ever complained; it was not in the gallic blood to do such a thing. Trudeau was grateful for that. The walking slowed them down at once. They needed to rest their aching shoulders every little while. They had to send a hunter ahead and stop to butcher and eat whenever he shot game because there was no way to carry meat. They were used to walking; indeed, they had walked beside the oxen, driving them along with curses and whips. But this was different, now that each man was a beast of burden carrying his necessaries on his back.
Fur wars. Trudeau thought that this was just another small episode in the brutal battles of the trading companies. Still . . . an idea blossomed in his mind. If this was war, he thought he knew a way to fight back.
“We will stay close to the river,” he announced the second day. The five engages eyed him curiously. It would make their work even harder and the trip longer but Samson Trudeau had his reasons. He laughed malevolently, enjoying his thoughts.
Five
* * *
Guy Straus read and reread Maxim’s letter, absorbing the bad news. The master of The Trapper had hand-delivered it, and sat across from Guy.
“Captain Sire, this is about an inspection at Bellevue. Were you present?”
“Oui. I saw it all. Maxim took the Indian Agent, a Reverend Foster Gillian, into the hold. A bit later the agent demanded — in a most strident tone, I must say — that some deckmen lift three casks to the main deck — casks labeled vinegar. The reverend pulled the bungs, sniffed, poked his finger in and licked it, and proclaimed them contraband spirits. He was most indignant, mon ami. A volcano of righteous wrath.”
Guy nodded, his heart sinking. The news was cramping his belly and he felt the dull pain of the ulcer jab at him again. “What did he say, Captain?”
“Why, that your company’d lose its license, of course. That he’d move heaven and earth to make sure of it.”
That’s what Guy feared most. Tens of thousands of dollars hung in the balance. “What did he do with the spirits?”
“Why, he instructed the deckmen to pour them overboard — a most mournful occasion, I might add.”
“He destroyed the evidence?”
“Oh, not entirely. He saved back a little. He has all he needs for evidence. And of course he had his indictment penned and ready for me to deliver on the return run. Which I did. To the superintendent at the Indian Bureau.”
“Do you know how those casks got there? Maxim says he had no idea.”
“Not the foggiest idea. The casks are on the ship’s manifest but in a different hand.”
“Let me see, if you please.”
Sire handed him the shipping lists. There indeed were the inscriptions, on page three — and not in Maxim’s awkward hand. “My son says the company, ah, cargo, was loaded as planned some miles upstream from Bellevue at the wooding lot near Sergeant Bluff. Is it so?”
“Indeed. Your gentlemen were waiting there with six casks — which were swiftly loaded.” Sire looked as if he was keeping himself solemn with some effort.
“My son says here that he spotted the casks almost immediate
ly upon leaving Westport. He noted they weren’t on his own copy of the manifest. He thought it was simply a shipping discrepancy — poor bookkeeping. A fatal supposition it seems. Have you any thoughts about it?”
“None, Monsieur Straus.”
“Could one of your crew have been paid to smuggle the casks aboard — and doctor your own cargo list?”
Sire laughed shortly. “Who of them can write? Only the mate, Bazile Bissonet. He reads and writes. But that is not his hand. I know his hand. He often keeps the log.”
“Have you a passenger list — especially from here to Westport?”
Sire shrugged. “Non. The cabin passengers, oui. The deck passengers — none.”
“With your permission, Captain, I’d like to have my clerks copy the cabin passenger list while we talk.”
“Of course.”
Guy rang a small silver bell and a clerk materialized instantly, heard his instructions, accepted the passenger list, and vanished. “They are very fast,” Guy muttered. “Tell me the rest. You delivered our cargo?”
“Oui. Here is a release signed by Monsieur Fitzhugh. We discharged the cargo on the bank below Wolf Rapids as he required and made haste back. Even riding light we fought sandbars all the way to the Platte. An ordeal. One shouldn’t ascend the Missouri in a low-water year. Mon Dieu!”
“The cargo was not damaged?”
“Ah, not by my company. We unloaded everything intact. But it was vulnerable there. The engages from your post hadn’t arrived and everything was exposed to the elements. I wish we could have stayed . . . ” He shrugged.
Another worry. A fortune on a streambank, poorly guarded and vulnerable to weather and any passing village. Guy knew he’d have to endure that clawing worry for months. It’d be a long time before news filtered down two thousand miles of rivers. It was as bad as owning a clipper ship out upon the terrible seas. “Is there anything else I should know?” he asked dryly.
Sire looked apologetic. “There is a small matter. A cabin door was damaged. The lock broken, wood splintered. I have a small claim here — ”
“One of our men? But only Maxim and Fitzhugh had cabins — ”
“Maxim’s, monsieur. It was his cabin door.”
“Ridiculous! He’s a gentle boy — I won’t pay this!”
“I was afraid of that. Monsieur Straus, a cabin boy saw Monsieur Fitzhugh smash it open and drag your son — drag him out. At Wolf Rapids.”
Fitzhugh! A vicious anger stabbed through Guy, setting off his ulcer again. “I’ll delve into this. And after I have answers, you may be paid or not . . . Did the cabin boy say what this was about?”
Sire shrugged. “Nothing. He merely saw it. Now as for the claim, it’s not a lot. But my word is my bond — ”
“I’ll pay,” Guy growled. He stabbed the quill into the ink pot and scratched his initials. “They’ll honor it. I’ll deduct it from Fitzhugh’s share — if there is any share.”
The clerk returned with the passenger list, and Sire made a hasty exit. Guy rubbed his eyes, scarcely believing the bad news, knowing that the company hung by a thread — and much of his investment as well. Sabotage. He’d march over to that grubby office of Pierre le Cadet and wring his slippery neck. Chouteau’d hired some thug to slip those incriminating kegs on board and doctor the cargo manifest. Chouteau or one of his suave, bland relatives, which he had by the score.
And Maxim. Witless child. For a moment the full force of his fury landed on his seventeen-year-old son, but Guy curbed it. He’d yank the boy down the river and put him to work here. Too young. Much too young. Not an ounce of judgment . . .
He swept out of his offices, grabbed his gold-headed walking stick, and pierced into the steaming heat outside. He marched straight down Chestnut Street, bringing up a sweat under his arms with every step. It didn’t matter. He found the ornate federal building near the riverfront, the place where the fate of the Rocky Mountain Company would be decided. He pushed through the chipped brown double doors and turned right, steering toward the Indian Bureau — once the lair of General William Clark, who’d governed the Indian territories ever since he’d returned from his great expedition to the Pacific with Merriwether Lewis, except for a few years as governor of Missouri Territory. But the present superintendent, David Mitchell, was another type altogether.
Guy pushed in, swept past a clerk in shirtsleeves, and waited at the open door. Mitchell was reading something — and Guy knew exactly what. The man looked as weathered as any mountaineer — which Mitchell was. He’d tromped the whole west, befriended the bribes, worked for Chouteau for years — and knew the fur trade. There’d be no pretending here.
“Expecting you,” Mitchell said, waving Guy to a straight-backed wooden chair. “The Reverend Mister Gillian writes a remarkable report. Ninety-nine percent fulmination, one percent fact. But the one percent is bad news for you.”
“May I see it?”
“It’s your privilege. It don’t say nothing you don’t already know.”
“I don’t know anything for sure.”
Mitchell grinned skeptically. “I can’t stop this, you know. If it happened, you lose your trading license.”
“We know nothing about those casks.”
Mitchell scratched his brow with a pencil. “You’re in an odd position, Guy.”
“We didn’t buy or load those casks. You might ask le Cadet who put them there.”
Mitchell laughed. “I appreciate your indignation,” he said slowly. “But you know how it’ll go.”
Guy knew. The evasions of all the fur companies were common knowledge. Everyone knew the companies shipped spirits upriver, contrary to several laws of Congress. William Clark had winked at it if it wasn’t too blatant. Chouteau’s American Fur had been caught at it more than once and the great man had bought and politicked his way out, with the powerful Senator Benton bullying the administration and the Senate as well. If Pierre Chouteau had barely escaped, then Guy had no chance at all.
Guy sighed. “The reformers will love the whole spectacle,” he muttered. “And I’ll be ruined. And Pierre will go on, just as he has.”
Mitchell shrugged. “You’re in an odd bind. You can’t claim innocence. Whether or not those casks are yours, I’m sure you’d made arrangements of some sort.”
Mitchell stared directly at Guy. Guy refused to respond.
“Sergeant Bluff, I’d wager, old coon.”
David Mitchell knew the robe trade, Guy thought. “What do I do to escape the licensing hearings?”
Mitchell shrugged. “You can’t escape them. At least not unless someone confesses to the crime. It is a crime, you know. A serious one in the eyes of some.”
“I have to find who did it and wring a confession?”
Mitchell scowled. “A believable confession, Guy. Not one that can be bought on the levee. And that might not get you off either. When the hounds start baying after witnesses, they’ll find witnesses.”
“You were Chouteau’s man for years, David.”
The superintendent stared back. “I can’t say as I appreciate your implication.”
Guy sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re a man I trust totally. It’s that — everything I posses is at stake.”
“For the record, Guy — I play no favorites. I’m charged with governing a vast territory . . . and every enterprise in it. I do it as fairly as I know how. I worked for Pratte, Chouteau and Company for years, yes. I poured many a cup of diluted spirits upriver for my employers, yes. If that’s what you want me to say, I’ll say it.”
“I misspoke, David. All right. I ask one thing. Could you delay this a while? I’m going upriver.”
“You? What’ll that do?”
“Maybe nothing. But I’m going to try.” Guy astonished even himself because he hadn’t intended to go upriver at all.
“Oh, I can sit on it a few weeks, Guy. Good luck.”
* * *
Three days Samson Trudeau and his men trudged down the Yellowstone staying close
to the river. And then luck floated by. Just as Trudeau had hoped, the keelboat wending its way from Fort Cass to Fort Union drifted around a bend. One man operated the tiller; six others lounged amiably on the deck fore and aft of the low cabin, watching the banks roll by.
Trudeau hailed the low vessel and it veered toward shore. Within moments, the engages had tied it and were pouring the tabac into their pipes and gossiping about their respective employers, Chouteau and Company, and Rocky Mountain. It was the amiable way of engages everywhere in that unhurried world. Trudeau hated what he and his men had to do but the fur wars were rough. He hated it also because he knew most of the other side’s engages: he’d spent many a trapping day with Duchouquette, Labone, Dorion, Barada, Croteau, and Dubruille. The other two, Fecteau and Labusier, he hadn’t met.
“Ah, messieurs, we have had misfortune indeed,” he said, a signal to his own men, who drifted amiably toward their packs. “The Indians — Pieds Noirs, we think — stole our oxen and mules. A fortune lost! A thousand dollars lost!”
“Oxen? What Indian ever wanted oxen?” asked Duchouquette, who was the man in charge.
“Ah, Emile, it was a sad thing. They put arrows into them. The mules they drove off in the night but our oxen they slaughtered. It is not the way of horse-stealers.”
Duchouquette smoked silently in the late afternoon quiet. Trudeau knew exactly what all the American Fur engages were thinking, and they were right to think it.
“At any rate, mes amis, we wish to be transported down the river to Wolf Rapids. It would save us many a blister and spare our boots.”
Emile Duchouquette considered that, puffing fragrant tabac as if decisions depended on smoke.
“We will have a party,” Trudeau said. “At Wolf Rapids are several casks of spirits.”
Barada and Croteau laughed happily, and knocked the dottle from their pipes.
Cheyenne Winter Page 5
