“We stopped at every post. Not a factor among them, from Culbertson to Sarpy. Thought the company had caused it. I suppose it’s so. It was Raffin. Acting on his own. I . . . hear he had some differences with you.”
Differences. How them damned easterners put it. Raffin’d been in Gray Wolf’s village and was eyeing Little Whirlwind for himself — but he lost her, Brokenleg thought. She never cared a hoot or a holler for him. “I reckon there’s that, only it don’t make sense what he’s doin’ now. If he’s doin’ it. It don’t make no sense to me at all.”
“I didn’t come all this way to worry about motives. If he did it we’ve got to prove it — or lose our license. You know what that means. Shut down. Sell off the trade goods at a loss — cheaper than hauling them down the river. Pay off our men.”
“We’ll maybe go beaver anyway, Guy. Raffin, Hervey, and them, they fixed us good. No oxen. One wagon. Lost more horses and mules than I can count. I’m building pirogues. We’ll put us a mackinaw together to git down the river with. But we’re being cut to pieces. Them Crows are being bribed and bought by Hervey; Raffin — if he’s the one — he’s keepin’ us from reaching the Cheyenne.”
Straus nodded. He studied the ledger again under the buttery light of the oil lamp. “We’ve lost a quarter of our trade goods and have three hundred seventeen robes.” He pushed the books away. “You’ve hardly touched the ardent spirits, thought,” he added. “Five and a half casks out of the six. Made into trade whiskey, worth what — three, four thousand robes?”
Maxim, who lingered at the door, scowled.
“Before we git our license lifted for bringin’ spirits up the river,” Brokenleg muttered. He found himself guffawing harshly. “Some joke,” he muttered. “Spirits all we got goin’, whiles down there they’re nailing us for it.”
Guy stared into the glassed flame. “Why is this Raffin in the Cheyenne village? You know him; I don’t.”
“Well, one thing he’s not doin’ is stirrin’ em up agin me, least not the headmen. Not with me married in, and my pa a medicine chief. Naw. He’s in thar to spoil, it, is all. Like he fixed it to steal our horses and robes after the trading. ’Rapaho bunch.”
“That’s not what a rival for a Cheyenne girl would do — is it?”
“No. It’s comp’ny work.”
“Every factor on the river told me the company had nothing to do with it. They were sincere, Brokenleg.”
Fitzhugh grunted. “Guess we got to ask Raffin.”
Guy laughed shortly. “They told me he’s ambitious — and he’s been thwarted by the company. No one quite trusts him, at least the factors don’t. He’s away a lot, running errands it seems.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He wants to get rich — at our expense. Get us into licensing trouble, destroy our livestock and wagons, pick up the pieces.”
“He’s taken orders too long. Someone’s telling him do this, do that, paying him.”
“You’ll have to find that out, Brokenleg. Our license depends on it. I can’t stay here. It’s all up to you.”
“You come a long way to find out. Chatillon, he’s some guide.”
“The only factor I haven’t talked to is Julius Hervey. I’m riding over there and do it.”
“No you ain’t. He’d as soon cut yer throat as look at ye.”
“I’m going.”
“You ain’t. You might be some senior man, but it don’t matter to him. All blood’s red and he likes to spill it. He’s meaner’n ever since I whacked my knife acrost his hands last winter. He’s a hater and he’d like nothin’ better than to git ahold of the top men in the Rocky Mountain Company and work a little surgery. You ain’t going.”
“Brokenleg — I’m going. And I want a translator. I plan to talk to the Crows there.”
Brokenleg glowered into silence. A senior partner would do whatever he felt like doing. “All right go,” he snarled.
Guy smiled wryly. “When a man yells, he’s sincere,” Guy said.
“Now I got to go and protect you,” Brokenleg grumbled.
“I’ll go alone, thank you.”
The meeting had degenerated. Brokenleg lifted himself out of his wooden chair, favoring his bum leg. “Let’s git outa hyar,” he muttered.
Guy stayed him. “Where’s Little Whirlwind? I wish to pay my respects. And meet — her sisters is it?”
“Her sisters. Sweet Smoke — she’s the youngest. Hide Skinning Woman — she’s the oldest. And Elk Tail. She’s the, ah, best looking. Sweet Smoke, she’s not much older’n Maxim.”
“And they’ve come to help. Are they on the rolls of the company?”
“Ah, naw. Dust Devil, she wanted some one to talk to. Gets herslef all lonely around hyar. She’s after me to buy some slaves — good Crow women she wants. Pay some trade goods, git some slaves she can boss around. Me, I’m again’ slavery.” Too late, he remembered that Guy owned five or six blacks back in St. Louis. “Anyway, we went down to her village to trade and git her some sisters to talk with. They’re handy — helpin’ around the post a heap and don’t cost the company none. They even git us greens and roots against the scurvy.”
That wasn’t the whole of it but maybe it’d do. He steered Straus back to his quarters and found the ladies there.
“Ah, Little Whirlwind!” exclaimed Guy.
She abandoned her moccasin-making and stood. “You come long way,” she said. “We see you ride in. These are my sisters.”
She introduced them while Brokenleg stared daggers at her.
“Lotsa wives, hey? Suhtai wives. Like a big chief.”
Guy looked nonplussed. “Wives?”
“Him. My father, he give us all to him.”
Guy Straus looked stricken. He peered at the beaming Cheyenne women and at Brokenleg, who felt his cheeks flush and hated it. He’d never blushed in his life. Not even as a little snot had he ever blushed. But now he felt blood in his face, itching his flesh.
“He married them all,” said Maxim wearily. “He is not a temperate man.”
“You shut up,” growled Brokenleg.
“You see?” Maxim smirked.
“Wives? You have four wives?”
“Like a chief. Like that trapper one, Jim Bridger. Blanket Chief. Fitzhugh’s a Blanket Chief.”
“I see.”
“He can do it. He makes us all happy.” Dust Devil beamed maliciously. She knew white men. She’d been to St. Louis and understood things. And she was enjoying every second of all this. “We take turns,” she said. “Me, I’m the sits-beside-him wife. I tell my sisters what to do.”
Fitzhugh blushed.
“The red is becoming, Brokenleg. I’d be red, too,” said Guy. “This changes my opinion of you. I never dreamed I’d have a partner with four Cheyenne princesses for wives.”
“It’s some better’n slaves!”
“Oh, I don’t know. With slaves things are — simple.”
“It wasn’t my idea!”
Sweet Smoke giggled. She’d been picking up English fast. Danged if she didn’t look pert when she giggled. Hide Skinning Woman stood, stocky and dignified and expressionless. Elk Tail rose from the floor, her face showing curiosity.
“It is Elk Tail’s turn tonight,” said Dust Devil. “But Brokenleg doesn’t deserve her. She’s Suhtai. She should have been given to a great warrior — not a stiff leg.”
Guy sighed. “This affects the company, Brokenleg. We can’t afford to transport all these lovely ladies back to St. Louis each year — ”
“I ain’t bringing no one. I quit. Take your company. I’m out. I ain’t no partner. You find someone else. I’m takin’ me away from hyar.”
But Guy wasn’t deterred. “St. Louis is a long way, you know. A man and four beautiful Cheyenne girls. We’ll see, we’ll see. You might bring them to the licensing hearings.”
“It’s not funny, father.” Maxim stared dourly at them all.
Guy Straus turned, his gaze boring into his s
on. “Take me to a private place, Maxim. We’re going to talk.” He turned to the rest. “We have family matters to discuss; excuse us.”
Brokenleg watched them retreat, bile building in him. Let that little snot complain, he thought. Let him talk high and mighty about licenses and spirits and wives and getting yanked off the packet by mean ol’ Brokenleg. If Guy didn’t like it none, he could run this hyar post by himself.
* * *
Guy steered his sullen son down to the river and along a trace there, no doubt an ancient Indian trail. He didn’t press the boy. He’d learned the value of walking, of silent presence, of communion without words. The summer heat had vanished and the day was idyllic. They scared up some magpies but nothing else traduced the sunny peace.
He guessed what was seething inside of Maxim’s head; it wasn’t hard to fathom. Actually, he was proud of the boy’s moral and spiritual sense: it resided in himself as well as his father and grandfathers, and he considered it a mark of his people. Maxim had discovered his soul and there was nothing wrong with that, even if the lad overreacted and made life miserable for every mortal about him. Seventeen was a hard age even for someone without Maxim’s sensitivities.
Guy discovered a place where meadow swept out to the water’s edge forming a sort of grassy point, and steered the boy there.
“It’s good to see you again, son. You’re strong and healthy, and I rejoice.”
Maxim said nothing although his gaze darted furiously from one thing to another.
“You’d like to express your disapproval, I imagine. Of the company. Of my partner. Of me, no doubt.”
Maxim stared bleakly at Guy. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Of course you don’t. But you ought to. Do you want to go home? Go back with me?”
“Not with you.”
“You do not like to see the Straus family in this business and you blame me for it.”
The boy remained mute but he was listening.
“It is a hard business and I’ve had many regrets. Many more regrets than just our troubles with licensing and spirits. There is something in me that was not in my father.”
Maxim started to say something and checked himself. Guy knew it would have been accusatory, maybe even brutal. Maxim looked miserable, holding in all those accusations seething inside of him.
“I’d prefer to do the robe business without resorting to ardent spirits.”
“Then why don’t you?” Maxim shouted. Then, more quietly, “It’s too late.”
“There’d be no business. No robes. No profits. None of the tribesmen would show up — few, anyway.”
“So you sold out!”
Guy paused, forming his thoughts. “I confess I hadn’t thought about it much. Not until that bad news came. Not until our trading license was threatened. It was simply a part of the business. And universal. Every post peddled spirits. Every trader used spirits as a gift and a lure. And you know something? General Clark knew it and tolerated it. His unspoken attitude was, just don’t get caught. That had been mine too — until this summer.”
“We’re breaking the law.”
Guy had no answer to that.
“You’re — ” The lad swallowed back his accusations.
“You’d like me to get out of this. You think it’s too late. You think you’re dishonored; we’re all dishonored. You think I’ve betrayed our people.”
“That’s not all.”
“You think we’re harming the Indians.”
“We are!”
Guy mulled a response to that. No question about the fur trade was more vexing. “Suppose we didn’t offer spirits, but the other things they want: blankets, trade rifles, powder, axes, knives, kettles . . . Would they come to our post?”
This time Maxim didn’t reply immediately. A kingfisher slapped into the water and rose again with a silvery minnow. “If none of the other companies offered spirits — we’d have trade.”
“But that’s not the real world. That’s the ideal world, isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t excuse it!”
“No . . . it doesn’t. But we live in an imperfect world.” Guy knew that young idealists never accepted that tack. There was only good and evil, right and wrong.”
“Don’t tell me it’s their own choice. They can’t deal with spirits. They’ve never had spirits. Not until traders came.”
“Well, son, what do you propose.”
“Nothing! Leave me along!”
“Do you want to go home?”
“Not with you!”
“If you stay here I trust you’ll earn your keep. A post can’t afford — ” Guy was going to say a parasite and troublemaker, but checked himself.
“I was hauled off the boat,” Maxim returned, a withering sound in his voice. “Dragged off. What choice had I? Like some prisoner.”
Guy was prepared for that one. “It might have been a mistake. Brokenleg has rough ways. On the other hand you haven’t reached your majority. He had a — a parental right.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I want nothing to do with the robe trade. I’ll go to St. Louis with you, but not home. It’s not my home anymore. Never!”
Tears laked from Maxim’s tortured face.
“Very well, son. We’ll go back together and — ”
“Don’t call me son!”
That hurt. Guy peered into the swift flow of the Bighorn, rushing by like the river of life. “Would you prefer to go down with the returns in the spring?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you feel the same way if Brokenleg and I found who put those casks on The Trapper and freed the company of blame?”
“Yes.”
“Do you blame yourself? For not being alert when you checked inventory in the hold?”
“Yes.”
“Nobody blames you but yourself.”
“And the Indian Bureau! And the commissioner! They’ll put me in jail!”
“No. They might lift our license to trade with these tribes. Look, Maxim. I’m sorry as can be about this. I wish I’d given it more thought before we formed the buffalo robe company. We can’t get out easily. I have contracts with partners to honor. Shall I break my word?”
Maxim looked miserable again and studied the river sullenly, avoiding Guy’s eyes.
“Do you think your grandfather, father and I should not have capitalized the fur trade? Capitalized the Chouteaus? Did we stain ourselves by lending?”
“Yes!”
The violence of Maxim’s response told Guy a lot. He knew suddenly that reason and compromise would not do here; that his son would be estranged for as long as he failed to view the world with any charity or love or — sense of reality.
“All right.” Guy turned to walk back to the post. Maxim hung on there, preferring his own company. Guy knew he had lost a son. This business, this company, had cost him his own flesh and blood. The realization lay heavier in him with each step back to Fitzhugh’s Post. What would he tell Yvonne? She’d opposed it from the beginning, a cassandra who’d warned and begged. Guy felt a weariness in his bones, his soul. The company seemed doomed; his enormous investment lost; his youngest child harsh and unforgiving, believing his father to be . . . not honorable. Guy twisted his bleak thoughts away and choked back his own pent-up love for the fine young man he’d sired and raised. He wondered if he’d ever see Maxim again.
He had to make some decisions and not least was whether to fold things up. This post had acquired few robes and was bleeding away his investment each day. American Fun had whipped him badly — he had to acknowledge it. He stared at the empty flats, devoid now even of the few Gros Ventre lodges that had been there the previous day. From a boatyard to the south came the ring of axes and mallets.
He found Brokenleg in the shadowed trading room. “I’m going to Fort Cass. I’d like you to accompany me.”
“It ain’t wise.”
“I wish to go anyway. Will you come? I’d like it, but I won’t press you.”
/>
Fitzhugh muttered, his eyes blazing, his gaze piercing and retreating.
“I’ll make your decision for you. In the light of what happened last winter — when Hervey almost killed you — I’ll go alone.”
“It ain’t — ” Fitzhugh flopped an arm helplessly.
“It’s a risk I’ll bear, Brokenleg. I’m the managing partner. I wish to discuss their conduct with them. Hervey especially.”
“Your funeral,” Brokenleg retorted. “I’ll git your saddler for you. If you ain’t back by this evening I’m going after you — and all them in there.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Guy said.
Sixteen
* * *
Guy Straus sat his horse before Fort Cass wrestling with fear. The log palisade rose before him like a feudal castle possessed by a lord who knew no law but his own. Back in St. Louis they spoke of Julius Hervey with a certain quietness that suggested dread. The man who ran Fort Cass was a favorite of Pierre Chouteau even though he’d hurt American Fur badly at times. Some called Hervey mad but that wasn’t accurate at all. He’d simply turned wild, as wild as the sea of wilderness he lived in. Every restraint had vanished from his head.
When they spoke of Hervey back there at the Planters House, they spoke of horror, in whispered conversation. Odd how the very mention of the man had always changed the tone, how fur and robe men turned solemn, sipped hard at their bourbons, and wondered — but never out loud — why a man so murderous enjoyed Pierre le cadet’s patronage. Hadn’t he murdered more red men that one could count? Ruined trade with whole villages? Stolen the wives of engages and free trappers and dared them to take the women back? Those few who did try ended up feeding fish in the river, lying in shallow graves, or as cripples, deaf and blind. Hadn’t Hervey ruined every rival outfit by any means, ranging from theft and murder to bribery and stirring up tribal passions. Hervey sober was bad enough; Hervey drunk was a creature from Hell.
Cheyenne Winter Page 16
