* * *
“Peter Sarpy!”
“Guy Straus!”
The giant trader embraced Guy with a mountain hug which faintly embarrassed the financier. Guy looked the man over, discovering a wilderness dandy dressed in rainbow colors.
“I can imagine why you’re here,” Sarpy said, glancing at the portly frockcoat-clad presence nearby. “Let’s walk up to the post. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a trading room.”
Guy eyed the steep path doubtfully but followed the giant Creole upslope toward some privacy.
“That mangeur du lard, that vide-poches had been making life miserable hereabouts. Damned Indian Bureau thought they’d cure corruption and help the tribes by making Indian Agents of ministers. Another stupid idea. These ministers are so busy imposing their white-man morals on the tribes that there’s going to be a bloody uprising some day. Know what they do? They tell the Indians they can’t have their annuity goods — the stuff the government promised them if they came in to the reservations — can’t have their stuff unless they converted, went to church, showed up for lectures and school and what have you. So now we got the biggest bunch of phony Christians you ever did see. And it didn’t stop the stealing none. Half those divines get rich selling the government annuities to all and sundry just like all the other crooked agents.”
Sarpy led him into a low log building up on a flat above the river and Guy beheld a trading room for the first time. He stood there in the amber light, catching his breath, surveying the orderly shelves of bright blankets, kettles, knives, ribbons, bolts of wool and cotton, and all the rest. Familiar things but somehow magical and mysterious here.
“I see no spirits,” Guy said, wryly.
Peter Sarpy laughed, his pleasure booming through the magical room. “You’d like to know what happened. I wasn’t there but I heard about it. He found some rundlets down there whiles your boy was showing him around, and had them toted out to the levee. They weren’t what they were labeled.” He grimaced. “Pretty crude, I’d say. Any old coon would know it was a plant but not this fat divine. No fur company in its right mind would stick casks like that right there, top o’ the heap, itching to be discovered. But that didn’t stop him none. He got the wrath o’ creation built up in him, and thundered and lightninged all over that levee like a good hailstorm, his mind plumb made up.”
Guy nodded. “You have any idea how it happened, Peter?”
“No, but I have some notions about how it didn’t happen. Look, Guy, this wasn’t the work of anyone high up in American Fur. You know why. Company’s been burnt a couple of times. It’s too vulnerable. You can bet that Pierre le Cadet had nothing to do with it and none of us top men either. You’d better be fishing for smaller fry. Maybe not even a Chouteau man. Someone’s got a grudge — against you, or Fitzhugh — whatever.”
“How sure are you?”
“Totally, Guy. Here’s what can happen. If there’s an uproar back east and the reformers take the bit and run, there’d be Indian Bureau and Army swarming every post in the West. And they’d find what they’re lookin’ for. believe me, Cadet Chouteau doesn’t want a catastrophe like that. Me, I’d be outa work. Same for all the other company men — Malcolm Clarke, Major Culbertson, Edwin Denig, the Cabannes, the Gratiots — all his cousins, including me. Mon Dieu! We’re not that lunatic!”
“Who, then?”
Sarpy shrugged. “Who could slip three rundlets aboard and alter the ship’s records?”
“A boatman on The Trapper. An officer. Maybe a passenger.” The widening possibilities seemed grim to Guy. He pulled a folded sheaf of foolscap from his portfolio. He had with him two important documents copied from Captain Sire’s records: a list of cabin passengers and a list of the ship’s crew. The deck passengers were unknown except for a handful whose passage had been paid by Chouteau and Company. He unfolded them carefully and handed them to sarpy without a word.
Sarpy dug around for his spectacles and read slowly, his lips forming the names. “There are so many,” he muttered.
“Who got off here?” Can you name them?”
“Three company men: La Liberté, Germain, Lemoir. All three good men with families. Not very likely . . . ”
Guy nodded. “What of the other Chouteau men listed here? Poudrier, Raffin, Dorion, Labaone, Dufond?”
Sarpy shrugged. “Didn’t get off here — as far as I know. I was tied up with a trade; didn’t get down there. But there’s this: they’re fur men, engages. They’d know how to hurt an outfit if they wanted to. They’d know exactly what to do.”
“Their company sent them upriver somewhere?”
“I imagine, Guy.”
“Would you question your engages closely for me?”
“I’ll do it. Maybe have something for you when you return — you are going upriver, I take it? That’s what Chatillon was doing down there?”
“Yes. It’s a futile gesture but I’m going.”
“Guy, maybe that trouble wasn’t aimed at you. Meant for someone else.”
That surprised Guy. “Fitzhugh?”
“He’s a rough cob, Guy. He’s got about as many enemies as friends. And that Little Whirlwind don’t help none.”
The thought that the blow might have been aimed at Brokenleg rather than the company was a novelty. Guy mulled it over and decided it was worth pursuing.
They exchanged thoughts for another hour and then Sarpy escorted Guy down the hill to the now-empty levee, where Ambrose Chatillon and his horses waited patiently. The St. Peter was preparing to return downriver, riding high in the water, its deckmen loading firewood.
Guy clambered aboard the good saddler, feeling his generous buttocks sag into the hard saddle. He knew that in a couple of hours he’d be hurting. But he hoped that by the time they reached his next stop, Fort Pierre, three hundred fifty miles up the river, he’d be hardened to the pain and in much better shape. He’d always wanted to go up the river to the far-flung places where no white men of his sort had ever been.
They rode quietly up the valley of the Missouri through a breezy afternoon. Behind them Bellevue fell away. Ahead lay grassy bottoms with fewer and fewer trees. He felt his horse move under him, its rhythms swaying him gently. Behind, the packhorses followed on a picket line, snorting now and then, snatching grass when Chatillon relaxed his hold on the line.
Guy saw no one. He knew he was unlikely to see anyone for days at a time — and it’d be a blessing. The sunbaked river valley lay in mysterious silence, hiding secrets, shrouding menace. Guy Straus had never penetrated wilderness before and he suddenly felt vulnerable. He eyed Ambrose gratefully, knowing the wiry man could rescue him from most trouble — but not all. A part of him yearned to flee back to Bellevue, back to security and comfort. But not all of him, for Guy Straus was a bold man, relishing this silent valley and new vistas around every bight of the river just as he relished a good and profitable deal.
Late that day they heard a fait roaring upon the breeze, a strange rumble that whispered of demons and rage, pain and blood. It frightened him. But Chatillon merely smiled. “Soon, Monsieur,” he said softly.
They rode straight toward the roar, which seemed to rise from some place a mile or two forward and around a bluff. The sound arrived coyly, sometimes loud and frightening, sometimes barely evident, depending on the whim of the west winds. It worried the horses. They peered about wildly, ears rotating, steps nimble. Guy felt his saddler gather itself to flee. He couldn’t fathom what it might be but gripped his reins with sweaty hands.
Then Chatillon turned toward the grassy bluffs and scaled them, taking his entourage toward a promontory just ahead. Guy felt relief now that they weren’t riding toward that ominous growl and clatter. Then, just ahead, the guide reined his horse and waited. Guy rode up cautiously, feeling the wind whip into his shirt and cool him.
Below was a buffalo herd, perhaps a hundred or so, blackening the bottoms. And at its center, several giant black beasts locked horns, snorted, bawled,
roared, and gouged at one another viciously, pawing earth, throwing up dust that hazed the area.
“It is the running season, Monsieur. The bulls, they are fighting for the cows. They are mad, the bulls. See the blood! They gore each other. They attack anything on sight. If we rode close they would charge into us. It is nature’s way, oui? The strongest bulls win the cows!”
Guy stared, entranced, seeing a spectacle beyond anything that had been conveyed to him with words spoken over coffee at the Planters House. He understood at once that he was peeking at nature’s raw, fierce force as bull crashed into bull with shocks that vibrated the earth under his horse, and thunderous cracks of horn and skull. He marveled that any of them lived through it; that skulls and bones survived; that they had energy left to breed the cows. One bull went to earth, pawing air, half-dazed, while its antagonist gored him relentlessly. Blood and madness. On those sunlit grasslands a savagery boiled that Guy had never grasped before. The wilderness bristled with forces more violent than a thunderstorm. They sat on their horses quietly downwind of the herd while Guy saw at last the sources of his wealth, the animals whose hides would enrich his company. The frightened packhorses pranced about him but Chatillon checked them. For a long while they watched the ragged battle below; watched the quitters, the weak and wounded, driven from the excited cows.
They are not so different from men, he thought darkly.
Nine
* * *
Fitzhugh’s post did a desultory trade through high summer, mostly with Crows who slid away from Fort Cass to sample the wares and prices of the rival post. The village chiefs didn’t stop them from coming but neither did any headman bring his village to the post to trade. The threats, bribes, and cajolery issuing from Fort Cass kept the Crow trade from spreading. Even so, through the heat of August the post took in almost four hundred robes which were graded and baled, eleven prime robes and one summer robe to each bale. But the stock of trade goods on the shelves of the trading room scarcely diminished and the post was not paying for itself. It was slowly dying.
Maxim continued to sulk and avoid duty, and Fitzhugh decided simply to let the youth’s anger and guilt wear itself out. At least the lad didn’t vanish down the river on some reckless lone journey two thousand miles to civilization. Brokenleg knew he had no skills to cope with sulky boys, so he ignored him. He had better things to do. The training of the harness horses occupied every second he could spare. He and Abner and Zach worked the mustangs long hours, driving, harnessing and unharnessing them, deciding which ones were the most reliable. One hot afternoon they hooked a span to one of the wagons and let the pair drag the wagon around the flats. Then they hooked a second span to the empty wagon and let the horses grow accustomed to working in concert. The next day they tried three span, enough horsepower to yank the empty Pittsburgh around with ease, and drove them far up the Bighorn River. A few days later they pronounced the team ready for work. Seven of the nine horses became reliable drays; the other two made decent saddles although one tended to startle at every imagined danger. He preferred oxen for hauling trade goods but he had no choices. In the wilderness, one made do.
Dust Devil waited impatiently, never failing to remind Brokenleg that he had promises to keep. The thought of them made him faint. But at least part of her notions made a heap of sense: they weren’t getting much Crow trade and had better reach out to her Cheyenne or the post would perish.
“All right, all right!” he exclaimed, feeling testy. “Git yourself packed up, and tomorrah we’ll go.”
“You’ll see!” she cried. “Four wives are good. Make you a blanket chief! Big man! And lots of help here!”
“It ain’t my goal in life to be a blanket chief, dammit.”
“You got to be a blanket chief to be a big-man chief!”
“Who says?”
“I say. Tsistsista say.”
It puzzled him. The Cheyenne were the most puritanical of all tribes. Girls kept their maidenhood. Adultery was rare, though divorce was common enough. And yet . . . no tribe was as puritan as white puritans.
“We can use the help,” he grumbled. “That’s all I want of it. Now what’s a proper gift for your pa?”
“A rifle, balls, powder, and blanket for each daughter. Plus lots of tobacco and a bolt of trade cloth for my mother.”
“It’ll bust the company,” he muttered. But he began toting the stuff out of the trading room, not telling Zach or Samson what he was up to. They’d laugh him clear to the Platte River if he confessed. In fact, he intended to tell them he hired some help when he returned with his harem.
He hoisted a load of trade goods into the big freighter, the only one of the three wagons equipped with a seat at the front. He took care to have a good sampling of all his wares, especially the trade rifles, powder, and ball. His men didn’t volunteer, and stood grinning at him until he wondered if they knew what sort of trip this would be.
“Git your lazy butts to work,” he growled, knowing there was no work. Hardly a dozen Crows showed up on any day and most often that was just before the traders closed the shutters.
They rolled out at dawn, Dust Devil beside him looking smug, a spare saddler tied to the rear of the wagon. He itched to lecture them about running the post, getting work done, getting next winter’s firewood cut, building a new shed, scything fields for hay, and all the rest. But he checked himself. Under Samson Trudeau’s hand the work would get done, even if slower than he liked. He wanted to sermonize about the trading; about luring tribesmen; about keeping a hawk’s eye on the opposition; about getting over to those villages camped at Fort Cass and talking with head men; about dealing with other tribes that might wander in, Shoshone, Flathead, Sioux . . .
But he clamped his upper molars to his lower and rode off, ashamed of the impulse. Nothing a free mountaineer hated more than a lecture from a boss. Instead, he fumed at Little Whirlwind, letting his sulfurous mood corrode her happiness.
He had a long way to go, at least two hundred miles to get to Little Whirlwind’s village, which probably was east of the Bighorn Mountains this time of year. Two hundred trackless miles where no wagon had ever been. He worried plenty about that; about the cutbanks of Crazy Woman Creek and the broken prairie off to the south, with all its dead-ends, low escarpments, and mud-bottomed crossings. And that was only part of it: one could never know what sort of trouble a lone trader and his wife could run into among unfriendly Indians. Or what temptations the wagonload of trade goods were, even to friendly ones. Or which of them would take a notion to steal his three span of horses and the saddler.
Still, the ones he had to watch out for were the Blackfeet, who’d kill and Dust Devil on sight. And they were rolling steadily away from Blackfeet country as he drove gradually up the bighorn River valley, between low arid hills. Traders were held in high esteem: traders were the source of the things they coveted most, especially rifles. And what’s more, rival traders stood together when it came to trouble. If they troubled Brokenleg, they’d find themselves unwelcome at Cass or Union, or even at Fort William down on the Platte. And they knew it. It was an odd contradiction of the fur business that an unprovoked attack on a trader would shut trading windows everywhere, but at the same time outfits used Indians to raid or harass their opponents.
They rattled through the sweet silence of the prairies, enjoying the soft breezes of morning and evening, while hunkering down during the midday heat. The grass had browned with the passage of the monsoon season, and the clay lay hard under the iron tires making travel easy. The horses settled into their new task, except for one troublemaker named Hail that spooked at everything and itched to run. Brokenleg moved him from leader to swing position so he wouldn’t take notions. At swing, he had steadier horses ahead and behind him and was locked in by their quieter conduct.
He showed her how to drive, how to hold six pairs of lines in her small brown hands; how to gauge the land far ahead, looking for flat, unobstructed passage; how to avoid boulders or soft groun
d or thickets of sagebrush. He wanted her to learn so he could climb aboard his saddler and scout ahead, choose a road, look out for trouble, and hunt. But she didn’t take to it, preferring to gawk, or yanking to hard on the lines until she shored the mouths of the drays. So he drove most of the time, and when he wanted to scout ahead he stopped the wagon and rode his saddler to the next ridge for a look.
She abandoned the driving altogether — that was white men’s stuff — and returned to being herself and reminding him of it. It was demeaning for a Shutai Tsistsista to do the work of slaves, she said. Capture a slave and let him do it.
They rolled through a summer idyll, following the Bighorn River until they reached the Little Bighorn, and then swinging up the tributary to avoid the huge canyon of the Bighorn ahead. They rolled through the country of the greasy grass, a place where verdant valley stayed green from moisture in the soil long after the nearby hills browned. They crossed a low divide and dropped into the drainage of the Tongue River, heading ever southward. The Bighorn Mountains closed in from the west, a blue wall with snow still capping the higher peaks some unfathomable distance upward.
Brokenleg calmed a bit though he was a worrier by nature, and worrying had kept him alive in a land where the most idyllic moment might harbor death. With each passing mile Dust Devil grew cheerier. She was going to see her people. She was going to see her family and acquire three sisters for companions! She deigned to smile at him now and then, and the smile lacked the usual mock in her face. He thought he might yet, someday, lie softly in the robes with her and talk about things he’d never said to her, the hopes and dreams and foolishness locked in his soul, the things that had met only her scorn whenever he’d edged toward them before in the tender moments.
Near the Tongue River they topped a long north-south ridge that ran parallel to the mountains like a wave radiating from a great splash, and spotted a small herd of buffalo half a mile off. They halted the wagon atop the windy bluff and peered into the mass of black animals — brown, actually, but they always appeared black against the sunlit grasses. His mouth watered. Tongue, boudins, humpmeat, boss rib! When he killed a buffalo he ate Indian-style, gorging five or six pounds of meat until he couldn’t swallow another bite.
Cheyenne Winter Page 9
