Cheyenne Winter

by Wheeler, Richard S.

  Only months ago Hervey had nearly stolen everything the Rocky Mountain Company brought up the river; nearly killed Brokenleg; and did steal Little Whirlwind, using her and abandoning her to a wintry doom. And now with the new year and new trading season, Hervey had been stirring up the tribes again, destroying the Rocky Mountain Company’s livestock.

  The man had to be dealt with. Guy had a few weapons of his own, he thought grimly. The kind of weapons that could bring Julius Hervey to justice. Guy touched heels to his saddler and threaded his way through the vast Crow encampment surrounding Fort Cass. Whatever else Hervey had done, he’d succeeded in bringing almost the whole Crow nation to his trading window. One band after another came in to exchange beautifully tanned robes — none other were as fine as Crow robes — for all the foofaraw, whiskey and trade goods Pierre Chouteau and his cohorts had shipped upriver to entice red men.

  The day was not peaceful. Black-bellied clouds scudded low, bringing sudden chill and stirring up blasts of wintry air, only to yield to sunlit moments when the fading summer sun warmed flesh and soul. The winds flapped the American Fur Company ensign above the gates. It fit Guy’s mood. He passed numerous women fleshing fresh hides staked to the earth, their labor patient and familiar so they could gossip with each other as they created the wealth that brought them ribbons or a good drunk.

  He paused at the maw of the post feeling the heaviness of the silvery cottonwood logs that imprisoned all that lay within. The outer gates were open; the inner ones closed. But mysteriously they swung open as he rode close and he felt himself riding through a gullet and into the belly of the whale. Engages closed the giant gates behind him. Standing before him in the cluttered yard was a muscular, dark-haired man with a mocking look, and Guy knew at once he was seeing Hervey.

  “You came to sell out,” Hervey said, without greeting or welcome.

  Guy sighed and dismounted. He tied the saddler to a post. Then, as quietly as his roaring soul permitted, he turned to Hervey. “I am Guy Straus of St. Louis. I’m the senior partner in the new Rocky Mountain Company.”

  “You were,” said Hervey, his eyes dancing. “Now you’re here.”

  “You are the factor, Julius Hervey. We have business.”

  “None that I know of.” Hervey nodded at an engage. The man untied Guy’s horse and led it toward a stock pen at the rear of the crowded yard.

  “I’d just as soon you leave the saddler here,” Guy said.

  “You won’t need it,” Hervey said. “You just sold it to us.”

  Hervey’s taunt worried Guy. He peered about the small fort. Log rooms surrounded the yard. Beyond, the palisade towered over them. A brown mountain of graded and baled buffalo robes stood in an open warehouse. Several engages were grading and baling more at a press in the yard. The smell of manure, cooking meat, and human sweat lingered in the close confines. Cass was a rough place with none of the amenities of Union, or Clark, or Pierre.

  “If you won’t invite me to your offices, I’ll invite myself,” Guy said. He’d spotted them next to the factor’s log quarters. He walked that direction until Hervey’s powerful hand caught Guy’s arm. Guy looked at that hand. It bore deep scars across its back where bone and muscle had been severed. But it seemed functional enough.

  “Very well,” said Guy. “We’ll do our business here.”

  Hervey laughed easily, his eyes mocking. “We have no business.” Hervey’s massive hand whirled Guy around as if he were a doll.

  Guy was beginning to think Hervey was right: they had no business. “Then I will leave,” he said. “But not before cautioning you about certain conduct.”

  Something wild, like twin blue flames, danced in Hervey’s eyes. Hervey’s wounded hands formed into giant fists which he lifted and clenched before Straus. “Fitzhugh should have killed me. See? My hands work.” Slowly he flexed his fingers, clamped and unclamped his fists, the hands Fitzhugh had slashed to bits while Hervey was strangling him last winter. “I can choke an animal better than ever.”

  Guy felt a dread tighten in his chest but he pushed it aside. “You have caused us great loss. You set the Blackfeet on us — killed our oxen and stole our mules. I’ll bill Pierre Chouteau for it and for the wagon as well.”

  Hervey smiled.

  “Mister Hervey, there are limits. Even in the fur trade, there are limits. Even for you, there are limits. You are a long way from a court and a judge but that doesn’t mean you are exempt.”

  “You lost.”

  The response mystified Guy. “Mister Hervey. There are boundaries. Undercut us on prices if you will. Bribe chiefs and headmen. Race to get your resupply in first. Manipulate prices in the wholesale markets — in New York. Glut the market with robes to hurt us if you must. Pressure your suppliers if you please. I expect all that from a combine the size of American Fur. But there are lines, sir. I will draw lines and you will heed them: I will draw them at murder, theft, willful destruction, mayhem, inciting the tribes to violence. Those things will not be tolerated.”

  “You forgot some. Getting you into license trouble by planting spirits. Getting some friendly ’Rapaho to steal robes and horses from Stiffleg. Capture. I favor capture myself. I capture everything I can lay my butchered hands on.” That blue flame danced in his eyes again. “It is profit.”

  “Is Raul Raffin your man?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Every American Fur factor up the river said the company wasn’t involved. Only Raffin. Perhaps you and Raffin?”

  Hervey nodded. “Me and Raffin.”

  Guy decided it was time to go. And leave a gentle warning behind him: “I’ve drawn a line, Mr. Hervey. I am not without resources.” Hervey froze, looking amused. It was as if he was waiting for whatever would happen next. “I’ll be leaving now. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Hervey.”

  Guy left the factor standing there in the windy yard, and hunted for his saddler. It’d vanished. He had the sinking feeling that the horse and saddle had been stolen, too. He found a gate leading to a pen and found a pair of burly Creoles guarding it. He tried to slide by only to have a muscular arm block his path.

  “This too, then,” he muttered. The saddler had brought him clear from Bellevue. He turned toward that mocking figure standing in the yard. “I’ll be talking to Pierre Chouteau,” he said, heading for the towering plank gates. Two huge engages stood at them barring the way, their gaze upon Hervey. Neither Creole looked comfortable. He knew, suddenly, that his liberty had been taken from him and perhaps that would be only the beginning.

  He spotted the door to the trading room and found another giant lounging before it. He pushed in anyway, only to find himself thrown back. He staggered and tumbled into the grime of the yard. He picked himself up and dusted off his black broadcloth coat and britches under Hervey’s amused gaze. His frock coat showed manure stains along the right sleeve.

  “Come,” said Hervey. Guy paused, wondering, and then followed him toward a room with a door opening on the yard. An office? Hervey paused beside the open door. Beyond lay a naked log-walled cubicle with a clay floor and not a stick of furniture. It stank of urine. “I just bought you out,” said Hervey.

  “No, that is not what you’ve done.”

  The windowless room looked like a rat’s hole to Guy. He suddenly wondered what other mortals had been penned there, desperate and hungry or cold, awaiting the fate Hervey fashioned for them. A swift shove careened Guy into it, and the door slammed. Something metallic clicked. Small pricks of light worked through the planks of the door along with the glow of liberty at the transom and the threshold. He heard Hervey humming to himself outside. “Yankee Doodle.”

  “Sign it over, Straus,” Hervey said. “Or don’t if you don’t want to. It makes no difference.” Nothing more.

  * * *

  Agony gripped Guy Straus. He peered about him in the dim light that leaked like quicksilver from the doorway. Massive log walls, uneven clay floor that reeked acrid odors. A ceiling of handsawed pl
ank so low he could touch it, so oppressive it seemed to crush him. A storage room that had stored living mortals before.

  Perhaps it was a joke. Guy set his shoulder into the door and pushed. It rattled slightly and held. No joke. Julius Hervey had imprisoned him. Guy felt his pulse rising, some terror too deep to fathom shrieking through his body. He didn’t know what he was afraid of; only that the walls and ceiling and floor threatened him. He discovered cold sweat on his brow and felt it collect on his chest.

  He paced. The cubicle was scarcely ten feet square but it permitted him to walk a tight circle while he tried to bring his crazed body under control. Calm had vanished; his body acted as if it were about to be pushed off a cliff. He couldn’t think; his mind had ceased to function and thought had been replaced by a white hum, pure animal instinct. He paused at the door, pressed an ear to it, and heard little. Scraps of French from the Creoles out in the yard. He wanted to shout and roar.

  Instead, he paced, hoping this rude jest would end but knowing Hervey didn’t jest. He discovered a terrible thirst in him and then a vicious hunger, and knew he had lost the freedom to feed himself or find water to slake his thirst. They became urgent to him: he needed water at once, at once! The very necessaries of life, water and food, lay beyond his means. Air! He needed air! He’d suffocate! Indeed, the air was rank. He gulped it in, exhaled it slowly, and wondered how long it’d last.

  A terrible helplessness slid into him. He had never been familiar with helplessness. He’d never experienced confinement. He’d never had to wait on the whim of another — a madman at that — for sustenance. Never in the quiet comfort of his life in St. Louis had he known anything even remotely like this. The only time he’d ever thought about confinement and helplessness was when his father had had the stroke, a few months before his father died. Guy remembered how his father had lain helpless and desperate, a prisoner in his own body, his will thwarted and humbled, his eyes wild with an anguish he couldn’t voice.

  Guy stretched his hands, pumped his arms and legs. His body worked. Soon Hervey would free him! If Hervey didn’t the Creoles in the post would help, even if in the middle of the night. The thought comforted Guy. An end would come to this. That thought calmed him a little. He peered about, looking for weakness and seeing none. He’d worn his black suit as he always did on banking and business occasions when formality was required. His finely tailored business clothing carried its own messages to the beholder. Now he regretted it. If he’d worn his trail clothing he would have his penknife which he’d used so often to shave bits of tinder to start the campfires, along with flint and steel and charcloth. With a penknife he could begin to cut his way free from his wooden cage — to whittle away the planking around the door latch.

  But that was idle yearning. He had nothing. He was here, caged by a madman after traversing two thousand river miles of open country with scarcely a building upon it, much less a jail. It struck him as odd and paradoxical to be confined here. Here! His throat felt parched; his stomach rumbled, though he’d felt no need only minutes before. He ignored the howling of body and soul, or tried to.

  Time stopped. He imagined he’d been confined scarcely fifteen minutes. How could he endure an hour, a day, a month? He knew he had to stop his fevered mind from raceing, and stop his fevered body from straining at his bonds, or he couldn’t endure. Calm, sleep, naps. These might help. He settled himself down upon the filthy clay, repelled by the sinister odors that lifted to him. He closed his eyes, shutting out even the vagrant light from the door. But all he felt was helplessness. He no longer possessed the simplest things. He could not control whether he lived or died, whether he was cold or hot, hungry or full, thirsty or satiated.

  He let his vision slide past log walls and dark plank ceilings, out, out upon a sunnier landscape not of the world and its finite horizons but beyond, where love shone like a hundred suns, and the scent of goodness was an incense. He summoned up psalms, which came to him in rusted fragments, drawn from some deep well of sweetest water.

  “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law;

  “That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked.”

  Thus he occupied himself, dredging up bits and pieces of a lost Talmudic education. There had been no iother Hebrews in frontier St. Louis, no temple. When he was twelve his parents had sent him down the river to New Orleans for a season to learn at the hand of a rabbi. But there’d been nothing since. Even his wife was a gentle and his children were not actually Hebrews, though David and Maxim both sought knowledge of their heritage from him. Clothilde had followed her mother and become a Catholic. He chided himself for his neglect of the sacred things.

  And he prayed, feeling the weight of his own iniquities and worldliness at first. But as he stumbled through his supplication he felt his spirits soar and his sense of unworthiness depart like a heavy weight off his shoulders. And he marveled. White light shone sweetly in the midst of this dark dungeon. He had been lax but had never abandoned his faith, and now it flooded through him.

  A calm permeated him at last. It had come with surrender, and the acceptance of his straitened world. He would not rattle the door in anguish or lament the lost minutes or cry out against oppression, but would spend his time here renewing his peace day by day.

  He forgot himself at last. His own misery no longer occupied his mind or drove him into despair. Instead, his mind turned to his captor, Julius Hervey — a man such as Guy had never encountered before. Nothing, utterly nothing, stayed Hervey’s will. His sojourn in these wilds had stripped him of every vestige of restraint and honor. A man devoid of civilizing impulse could only be mad, or nearly so. He remembered the wild flame in Hervey’s eyes, and saw in it the dance of darkness.

  What did Hervey want? Why had Hervey thrown him into this hole? What did he hope to gain from it? The more Guy pondered these questions the more they mystified him. Hervey was not without restraints, even here in a sea of lawless land. Alec Culbertson was set over him. And Hervey was responsible to Pierre Chouteau as well. In fact Chouteau doted on him, called him his mad dog, resorted to him when he needed something done that wouldn’t look good in daylight, and boasted of him among fur men in St. Louis — in part to scare off opposition companies. Julius Hervey had never failed to make a large profit even when other factors failed. Hervey was American Fur’s mad dog.

  What did Hervey want? An agreement to shut down Fitzhugh’s Post and get out of the business? Some piece of paper to that effect? A forced sale of Rocky Mountain Company property for a pittance? No. All these things Guy would swiftly repudiate back in St. Louis. The whole world would know of the duress. No. Hervey wasn’t that naive or dumb. The captivity of the principal partner of the Rocky Mountain Company would only cause scandal that would reverberate clear back to John Tyler in the White House. What then?

  Nothing that Guy could think of — until he realized that reasons didn’t have to be rational. Madness had its own reasons. Guy felt the stirring of anguish again. A madman could discover pleasures in humiliating — or torturing — a man in Guy’s position, a financier, a power to be reckoned with in the city called the gateway to the West. A madman might delight in starving or dehydrating a man like Guy . . . The helplessness flooded through Guy again. His sojourn in the darkened room might be paradise compared to what Julius Hervey might do to him, bound hand and foot to the robe press out in the yard.

  But that didn’t make sense. Hervey didn’t make sense.

  The light changed and Guy guessed the day was fading. He had no way of knowing except to tell day from night. No one came. Hunger and thirst goaded him now. And that is what Hervey wanted. To let Guy experience the crying of his own body and to beg, to surrender himself to Hervey’s will, do anything for a scrap of food, a sip of water. Power. Hervey was mad for power.

  Guy knew then he had a weapon after all, a weapon that would have its effect even upon a half-mad man. He had
a weapon that would drive Hervey to some sort of defeat — if Guy could endure it — and he wasn’t sure he could. Guy knew what he would do: he would refuse all food. From now until his release he would not swallow a bite. Hervey might demand, might torture, might command, but Guy would swallow nothing . . . if he could find the courage and subdue the madness of his own body. He might die of hunger. But that would be the last thing that Julius Hervey wanted, the one thing that would ruin the man forever. Guy felt the torture of his empty belly and prepared himself to endure.

  Seventeen

  * * *

  Guy Straus had thought about death a great deal, as many middle-aged men do. And the contemplation of his end had helped him understand the living of his life. He had hoped for a good death; all men do. But he had never imagined, back there in St. Louis, that it might pounce upon him at a northern fur post, in a reeking little dungeon, at the hands of a man without scruple.

  Night poured through his soul like a vat of India ink, his mood perfectly matching the blackness of his cell. He was denied even the hope of stars, the pinpricks of light that promised a tomorrow. His body tormented him, revealing hurts and discomforts as he slouched against a hard log wall. Thirst was the worst: he’d been confined since yesterday morning without a drop of water. A hundred yards away a great torrent of it raced by en route to the Gulf of Mexico.

  He dreaded a death from thirst. Of the agonizing way to die it was one of the worst. Hervey knew that and was using it. Guy wished he could subdue his tortured body the way some men did, transporting their souls to some distant shore until they scarcely noticed their own mortality. But he couldn’t. The ache of his empty stomach intruded upon his thoughts; his desperation for water became simply an obsession burning in his mind like a forge.

  He could not think but his will collected and hardened, and when the whirl of time brought a faint light to the threshold he had prepared himself. He would use his sole as weapon, if given the chance: he would use his death. Oddly, he had not spent the night mourning, or yearning for Yvonne or his children, or the comforts of his brick home. Instead, he had honed down his will into a sharp blade that would cut even Julius Hervey. Through some mysterious process he’d gotten to know Hervey through the endless dark; almost as if Hervey had sat down across from him and bared the working of his soul. Almost as if Julius Hervey’s spirit had confessed and Guy was his confessor.