She shrugged. It was nothing. This Raffin was nothing to her. Nothing. She eyed her sisters, who stood about shyly, strangers to the man they’d been wed to. Now that was a triumph, she thought. At last she wouldn’t be alone in that post with only white men around, slaving. Her sisters would slave, too, she thought acidly. But at least she’d have company: Suhtai company, speaking the tongue of the People all day. It was good.
By agreement, they played a good Tsistsista joke on him that second night. They all settled into their pallets in the darkness, and none came to him; none took off her rope. He hardly knew what to do, all four wives there in the close dark, and he on his pallet, tossing and turning and muttering and not knowing what to do, or perhaps too embarrassed to do it. When Sun returned at last, and brown light filtered through the cowhide, they rose from their separate pallets, smiled at him, and vanished form the lodge.
She grinned. “See what a great blanket chief you are,” she taunted. He stared at her, dark hollows under his eyes, teeth gritted. “Way I want it,” he said, unconvincingly. “I hitched up with you.”
Maybe, she thought. But that would change when Sweet Smoke or Elk Tail pulled her dress over her shoulders some time soon. She giggled again. It would be fun to torment the white man. Four young, beautiful Suhtai women were more than a match for him. And they’d be merciless.
They rolled north that morning, and the parting filled her with sighs and foreboding, a certain melancholy she always felt when she left the People. Her parents watched them go, a large part of their family leaving with the white man. One Leg Eagle had daubed his face with white clay, a mourning face, but Antelope smiled. The Dog Soldiers gave them honorary escort for several miles down the river and then turned away with a parting shout. Some of them brandished fine new Leman trade rifles, which pleased her. She wanted all the trade rifles to go to her People, to use against their enemies, the Absaroka especially. She hated it when Fitzhugh traded one to the Absarokas. It was like betraying her.
They traveled under a rare summer overcast, unseasonable skies that troubled her. No one else seemed to notice. Her sisters walked beside the wagon or rode shyly and silently beside Fitzhugh, making no talk. It didn’t occur to him to teach them English as the wagon creaked and rattled over trackless land. He was acting strange. Instead of being her lion, with hair the color of autumn leaves, he had pulled into himself. She exulted. Four Suhtai wives were too much for any man! Especially three at once!
They made good time because the horses were friskier under the heavy sky, and by dusk they’d gone a long way from her village. Fitzhugh chose a good spot, a tallgrass meadow beside the river with plenty of cottonwoods and brush nearby. While he wrestled collars and hames, bellybands and breeching from six unruly horses, Hide Skinning Woman gathered dry wood, Elk Tail prepared a haunch of cow meat they brought from the village, and Sweet Smoke took a digging stick and walked the riverbank for breadroot, wild onions, and greens. She felt a chill breeze lift in the twilight. The days weren’t as long as before, and at night a good soft robe was welcome.
They ate buffalo tongue and root stew, and swiftly cleaned up. They had no lodge but they could crowd into the covered wagon if it rained. Her man looked tired and a little petulant but they would tease him again tonight. Let him wait! Let him lie there, thinking about all four of them! It would be fun. They poured water on the fire until its orange eye dimmed and died and the deep darkness engulfed them. Darkness was good; the hiding time. In darkness lay safety.
But she didn’t like the night, a black one because of the overcast. She thought of going to him and climbing into his robe and pressing her loins to his, but she didn’t. That would spoil everything. Let him suffer. It was such a good joke that she’d even make a Tsistsista husband suffer. But it was not a good night, and she realized, crossly, that she suffered, too. The night spirits and dead spirits kept her eyes open. She could see them everywhere. She didn’t really want to share Brokenleg, not even with her sisters. She thought angrily that Brokenleg should have slaves.
She awoke with a start at dawn and saw at once that it was too late. Hovering in the murky light, hardly visible, were many warriors, twice times the fingers of both hands. She could not imagine who they were or what they might do. Her heart raced; her stomach knotted. Her man sat upright knowing he’d been caught. Her sisters were rousing themselves. She peered hard, trying to see, trying to know who these dogs were. Enemies of the People. So many. Some with drawn bows, others with rifles. They wore little: loincloths, moccasins, medicine bundles at their breast. She did not see war paint. No great chevrons of white or ochre on cheeks.
Her man said nothing, keeping his hands carefully away from the rusted Hawken near his robe. One of the warriors spoke to another, and she knew instantly. Arapaho! Friends of the Tsistsistas! They could understand each other; her tongue and theirs weren’t so far apart.
“Friends, we are Tsistsistas,” she said.
But none replied. Instead, several sprang into the blackness of the wagon and began pitching out robes. Others trotted away and returned with the picketed drays and the saddler. Two pulled out knives and cut loose the wagon sheet and began hacking at it.
Even as light thickened and color seeped into the world, the Araphoes loaded prime robes into the wagon sheeting, making packs which they anchored on the horses by using pieces of harness, the bellyband and breeching in particular.
“You reckon on takin’ them robes?” Fitzhugh asked in English.
They didn’t reply but hastened at their task until they had the robes bundled and spread over the seven horses, burdening them until they could barely stand.
Then a powerfully built warrior, with war scars puckering his side and arm, stalked toward Brokenleg, picked up the Hawken, pulled the cap off it, and set it down a few yards distant.
“You workin’ for the Company?”
The headman’s expression didn’t change.
“You be working for the Company,” Fitzhugh concluded. “I got me a picture of your face in my mind, and I ain’t gonna forget it. Someday — maybe tomorrer — I’m coming, I’m coming. I’ll bring ye to medicine.”
The headman smiled faintly. His rifle never wavered.
Then the Araphoes trotted off, vanishing in the morning shadows as silently as they came, leading seven burdened horses with them.
“Raffin,” he growled. “I shoulda known.”
* * *
Rage built in Brokenleg. He knew he was in a fix. He couldn’t walk clear to the post on the Yellowstone, over two hundred miles on a bum leg. At least not without taking a month. He couldn’t buy and train another set of draft horses either — not with the harness pillaged. And he’d have to abandon this wagon, too. The company was whipping him every way he turned. Raffin! Probably hired by old Chouteau hisself back there in St. Louey, to wreck it all. Wreck the Crow trade and see to it that Fitzhugh’s Post didn’t get any Cheyenne trade either. A smart one, that Raffin. Fitzhugh thought about the Creole. Bile flooded him, and he knew what he’d do if he ever saw Raffin again: he’d kill him. Which was something Raffin would be prepared for.
His women stared at him solemnly in the quiet of the dawn. At last Dust Devil stirred. They’d eat and think on it. The wagon hulked uselessly, as helpless as a beached whale, its naked bows poking the sky. But it still held their chow, their possessions, the bridal gifts of three Suhtai sisters.
“I will go,” said Sweet Smoke.
Her sisters nodded. The girl simply began jogging westward at a relaxed pace. It dawned on him that she was running clear back to her village twelve or fifteen miles upriver. She would get help. At that pace she’d be there by noon. By evening . . . he wondered what would happen. Something tickled at the back of his mind: having four Suhtai Cheyenne wives might just be a blessing in ways he hadn’t figured.
He watched her go and worried about her. A lone woman, far from her village, would be easy pickings. He scowled, wishing he could protect her, knowing he co
uldn’t. She was rescuing him, and it grated at him.
Three hundred seventeen prime robes, worth five to six dollars in New York if there wasn’t a glut, which there often was. Fifteen hundred dollars anyways. At least if them easterners snapped them up for carriage robes, greatcoats, belts for machinery. Buffler wasn’t much good for shoe leather; at least no one could make it work well. Fifteen hundred. Part of the reason Chouteau and Company hated opposition so much was that the opposition produced gluts, which dropped the prices for all fur companies. Alone, Chouteau’s giant released or withheld bales of robes to control prices. Fitzhugh knew damned well that Raffin was worth any price they paid him; that Raffin’s price was nothing compared to the losses American Fur would fetch when Fitzhugh’s company horned in. Old Chouteau had probably promised Raffin a thousand — and figured he’d save a hundred thousand by putting the Rocky Mountain Company out of business.
Which didn’t help him none. His women had sliced up the rest of the buffler tongue. That’s how they ate: buffler for breakfast, and supper. None o’ them nooned much. He wolfed down meat angrily, ignoring their piercing glares, and then limped around his prison. He still had his special saddle with one stirrup elongated. Harness — he had collars and hames and bridles and lines. Enough to salvage if he could git it all back to the post and put men to work fashioning bellybands and britching and the like outa buffler. But he didn’t know how he’d get that heavy mass of harness up there. That and a heal o’ wife-things stuck in parfleches, and a few camp items.
A quiet rage percolated through him. They’d lose all this stuff too, unless she showed up with a dozen ponies and some packsaddles. Behind him he heard the quiet babble of the sisters. Leastwise they had someone to talk to. He didn’t. He felt alone. No one on earth, in the whole universe, to talk to. That Maxim sulking up there, not talkin’. Maybe Abner and Zach, ol’ coons from the beaver days. But mostly he talked to himself because no one else on earth understood, except maybe Jamie Dance, down hell and gone on the Arkansas River.
He thought he’d better look to their defenses. About all they could do was skedaddle and hide if some outfit showed up. Without muttering a word to the women, he plucked up his battered Hawken and limped to the south bluff, aiming toward a knob there maybe a thousand yards distant. He’d sit up there and roast and keep a mean eye on the horizons.
And that’s how the day played out. He sat on his nob sulking and spending his bile on Raffin, thinking on a dozen ways to skewer the Creole. Maybe by God he’d git on down to St. Louey again and skewer old Chouteau hisself in his office on the levee. Cadet spun his webs like a black widder spider down there, hardly caring who got killed out here or why, so long as it prospered his monopoly.
Thus he spent the day. Late in the afternoon he spotted a commotion of dust off the west, and reckoned some Cheyenne were coming. What it would amount to, he didn’t know. He glared narrowly at the distant party. Wind whipped up the dust it made and blew it ahead, putting the horsemen at the rear. It had to be his village friends.
He rose, stomped the stiffness out of his leg, and limped down the knoll, arriving at the camp about the time the riders rode in. Cheyenne all right. About twenty Dog Society warriors, the village police; old One Leg Eagle, Sweet Smoke, and four ponies, three with squaw saddles on them.
He let Dust Devil do the talkin’ and she was saying a mouthful and a half. He caught words now and then, Arapaho, robes, ponies stolen, and the rest. He didn’t hear Raffin none. And didn’t see him, for that matter.
At last the shaman turned to Fitzhugh and spoke slow Cheyenne. “We will talk to our friends the Arapaho about this.”
“You might start with that Creole Raffin, there in your village.”
“He does us no harm. He has honored us with gifts and kindness.”
“He would. You better start with him anyway. He’s got some answering to do.”
One Leg Eagle didn’t seem to like Fitzhugh’s implications, but let it pass. “I have brought ponies for you and my daughters. I will trade for them when we meet again. A pony will bring good things.”
“All right. If we’re in business. Losing three hundred robes, horses and a wagon — it puts me at the edge of the cliff.”
“If you cannot trade, then bring the ponies back when you can.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I have woman-saddles for them. We will stay with you tonight.”
“You mind taking things to the village? Like the rest of the harness? And the things we can’t carry?”
“I will. But they will burden Antelope whenever we move.”
“If I can’t fetch them soon — moon or two — do what you want with it.”
His father-in-law nodded.
That’s how the long mean day ended. Except that those Dog Society warriors, tough veterans all, didn’t take kindly to him having so much beautiful Cheyenne womanhood doting on him, and stared at him quietly with unfriendly eyes. He could fathom what was percolating in their heads. Their friends and allies the Arapaho had stolen the horses and robes — but that didn’t cut ice with them. He was a white man. Still, he’d married into their outfit, and they’d do him no harm, maybe even help a little.
After another restless night, he and his women saddled up the four little ponies, two paints, two coyote duns. His women clambered into the high-backed, high-pommeled rawhide squaw saddles and adjusted their full skirts. He handed them each a parfleche and tied their rolled robes behind their cantles. He salvaged a little kitchen gear, a pot and skillet anyway, tying them onto the saddle of Sweet Smoke, who was the lightest. Then he fixed up his own pony, a mean-eyed dun, and said his goodbyes to his father-in-law, and the five of them walked north, while the Dog Soldiers watched silently.
Fitzhugh cursed. He was a poor man, owing debts even out here. He knew his in-laws had been kind, but it didn’t lift his spirits any. They rode north, making good time through a windy dry day, seeing no one. He didn’t want to see a soul — not with four vulnerable women and one rust-pitted Hawken. That evening they arrived at a branch of Crazy Woman Creek and camped in a sheltered meadow beside sweet water. He was oblivious of the black-forested mountains vaulting up the western skies, or the game trails through the sweet grasses, or the acrid scent of full-leafed sagebrush, or the gentle labor of his wives, who understood his misery and quietly produced a tasty meal of breadroot, wild onion, jerky, and greens. Neither did he see the brightness of their eyes, the kindness in their wide Cheyenne faces, their eagerness to heal his wounds and balm his spirits by doing everything for him from caring for the ponies to handing him his pipe and tobacco.
That night they made their pallets as usual, and he didn’t notice that the women gave him some distance, choosing places many yards away. In the fullness of night, just when he was drifting into oblivion, one of them awakened him. She stood over him in the whiteness of a gibbous moon and slid her full calico skirts down, and pulled the baggy white blouse over her shoulders. Elk Tail. He caught his breath. The moonlight revealed the lovely form of a woman, full-breasted and full-hipped. She untied the sacred cord. It encompassed her waist and was knotted at the front. The two long ends descended down and back to her buttocks, and then each end coiled around a thigh and was tied above her knee. She undid it all in the white light, and slid down beside him, tugging at his shirt.
He forgot his miseries that night, and life became easier and more promising and even joyous all the way back to the post.
Thirteen
* * *
Guy had a choice. He could follow the river up to Fort Union and then down the Yellowstone to his own post. Or he could save a hundred miles by cutting overland toward his post on the Yellowstone. The shortcut was tempting but his business was to talk to American Fur Company factors, and those at Fort Union, the company’s northern headquarters, were the most important of all. He set aside his yearning to see his son and his post and directed Chatillon to continue upriver.
The late August sun grew s
ullen and the land parched but at least the evenings were cool. They made steady progress through a land strange to Guy’s eye, a desert bristling with cactus and sparse browned bunchgrass, with the yellow bones of the earth poking up everywhere. Some white men would have called it a wasteland but he knew better. It supported some of the greatest buffalo herds on the continent — and those who preyed on them. One day they hid on a wooded river island while a vast Sioux village dusted by. Hunkpapa, Chatillon thought. Guy was too busy holding horses and keeping them from whinnying to notice.
The next day they encountered a buffalo herd crossing the river. On the far shore the herd snaked into the river, following some ancient trace and some ingrained wisdom, and proceeded to walk out upon a long hard-bottomed shallows in forty or fifty columns. He’d never seen so many buffalo, and not all the descriptions of the vast herds allayed his astonishment at the black river of animals, most of them larger than cattle, many of them bellowing and bawling until the crossing raised a low thunder that he found frightening. Chatillon held the packhorses nervously. Guy was aware that a herd like this sucked up horses as cleverly as a night raid by warriors. The herd snaking down the far shore never ceased, and eventually Chatillon gave up.
“It will cross for days, Monsieur Straus,” he said. He backtracked downriver to an island that would hold the horses and keep them out of the way of the herd, and made camp there in the middle of the day. Above them, the herd continued to thunder its way across the Missouri. Gray wolves gathered on the eastern bank, and some few swam the river as well, staying with the herd. Several dead buffalo drifted by the island, drowning victims, dark and slick in the roiling current. Chatillon waited for a young cow to slide by, and then waded into the river and snared it with a rawhide line. They would have delicious humproast and tongue that evening without firing a shot.
Cheyenne Winter Page 13
