A pirogue could be handled by a single man but two or three were better: one on the rudder, the others paddling or setting the square-rigged sail. They could carry tons of cargo, such as beaver packs or baled buffalo robes, along with all the gear necessary to survive on the two-thousand-mile trip down the rivers.
Brokenleg knew he’d never see this one again. Building it had occupied his engages for several weeks. He had intended to use it to carry trade goods up the Bighorn for the rendezvous with the Cheyenne. But that had changed with Julius Hervey’s theft of Guy’s horse and saddle. The post had no spare horses for Guy, and no saddle either. Hervey and American Fur managed to make off with everything the post had, Brokenleg thought angrily. The pirogue would take Guy and Ambrose Chatillon safely down the river along with the found hundred baled robes the post had traded for so far. Guy had no other means of getting home other than hoofing it — with proper boots — the whole distance.
It irked Brokenleg. He could hardly get through a week without losing horses or mules or oxen — and now a needed pirogue. At least he got to keep Chatillon’s saddle horse and a pair of pack horses, Brokenleg thought. Now he would have nothing to carry his outfit to White Wolf’s village except for what could be carried on two pack animals.
But that’s how it had always been in the mountains. There never was enough of anything, and resourceful mountain men learned to make do or do without. He had manpower, round adzes and axes — the entire makings of another pirogue. After his men built the mackinaw.
Brokenleg hated goodbyes and was ready to bolt. Around him stood every soul connected with the post; his men, his wives, and Maxim. A small crowd of Salish, out from their western valleys to hang buffalo and to trade, watched with avid curiosity.
“Well, Brokenleg,” said Guy, kindly. “It’s up to you now. The hearing is in January. We’ll lose our license after this season or not. The key is Raffin, I think. Raul Raffin. That’s the only clue I got from talking to every trader on the river. I don’t know what you can do about it — we need a confession or a witness.” He sighed. “Do what you can. This may be our last year. Unless a miracle happens, Mitchell will stop us. Stop us down on the Arkansas, too.”
“I’ll find Raffin,” Brokenleg muttered. “Some way, I’ll shake it out o’ him.”
“Frankly, I don’t know how.”
“I got my ways.”
Guy smiled faintly. “I know you do. Everything’s riding on you. We survive or go under. We profit, or we . . . don’t.”
“I’ll see you in June,” Brokenleg said, cutting it off. He hated this.
Out in the pirogue Chatillon was checking cargo, lashing down the tarpaulin over the mound on the deck. The square-rigged sail flapped and fluttered over him, ready to fill its belly with wind.
“Maxim,” Guy said, his voice brimming with a sudden tenderness. “Au revoir. I’m proud of you . . . Be sure to — ” Guy cut himself off. No admonitions this time. Guy was talking to an adult, not a boy.
“Papa — ” Maxim left the rest unsaid. Brokenleg sensed that father and son had not only come to some profound reconciliation, but had bared their souls to each other in their long walks. There wasn’t anything that needed saying now. “Shalom,” Maxim added.
Guy, wearing his newly washed black frock coat and britches, shook hands with each of the engages, pausing to pat Samson Trudeau on the shoulder. Then — his face frozen peculiarly — he shook hands with Little Whirlwind, Hide Skinning Woman, Sweet Smoke, and Elk Tail, and finally with Brokenleg. Then, quietly, he clambered aboard, picked up a paddle from the near hull, and settled himself in its forward compartment.
From the riverbank engages tossed the loosened line into Chatillon’s hands, and the swift current tugged the pirogue out and away. It drifted into the main channel and picked up speed and then swept around a broad bend and out of sight. The world seemed emptier suddenly. Brokenleg hadn’t expected to feel loss; all the while Guy was present in the post Brokenleg had felt Guy’s authority and power looming over him, judging, weighing, impending him. He’d expected relief when the senior man in the company left — but instead, he felt a hollowness. He sighed, staring at the silent mob on the shore. Maxim looked stricken.
“We got work to do,” he growled. He glared irritably at Maxim, neither liking nor trusting the young man.
Engages drifted toward the chantier to continue work on the mackinaw. Abner and Zach and Maxim headed back to the trading room to dicker some more with the visiting Salish people. His wives vanished in four directions to hunt roots and berries, gather wood, soft-tan some elkhide they were working on. He had to admit the four Cheyenne women had transformed the post, freed up his engages, improved their meals. Dust Devil had even kept her tongue quiet about the visiting Salish — who weren’t ancient enemies of the Cheyenne.
He stared at his post without joy, feeling the brutal hand of the Chouteau company on it. In its yard lurked a wagon and ox yokes he couldn’t use. Nearly every horse he’d brought or bartered for had vanished, along with a wagonload of good robes. It maddened him. Back in his free trapping days, he’d have picked up his Hawken and started hunting down his tormentors. But now — he was wrestling with the business of doing business. Everything he did these days had repercussions. He glared about him, thinking he’d never been cut out to be a storekeeper. He’d been the son of a New York State innkeeper and had fled that settled life — only to be some sort of storekeeper anyway. He’d never stop chafing, no matter how well he did.
Still . . . maybe he’d just quit being a storekeeper a while — long enough to git him what he needed, and maybe take the war back to Chouteau. He’d been toying with a notion for a day or two — nothing he’d try with Guy Straus lookin’ over his shoulder. Or Maxim, he thought dourly. But ol’ Guy was drifting past Fort Cass about now and out of Brokenleg’s life.
He limped back to the post and into yard looking for a horse. He didn’t know what he had left. He recognized the small dun mustang Chatillon had ridden clear from Bellevue and decided that one would do. He poked a heavy iron bit into the gelding’s mouth and buckled the bridle. Then he found his special saddle and an old blanket, and threw them over the dun and drew up the cinch.
Moments later he steered the surefooted little mustang up the trace toward Cass, intending to have him a little look-see. A mile below the confluence of the rivers he swung away from the river trace and poked through cottonwood timber toward the bluffs of the Yellowstone, and steered the dun up a grassy coulee toward the broken prairies above. Juniper and jack pine dotted the grassy slopes, giving him cover as he rode cautiously eastward. He kicked the dun up a hogback and peered cautiously over the top, discovering what he was looking for. The Fort Cass horse and mule herd grazed peacefully, under the watchful eye of two well-armed, mounted engages. Seventeen horses and mules, including the bay stolen from Guy. Brokenleg suspected most of the mules were his own though he couldn’t prove it.
Each morning the fort’s herdsmen drove the livestock out to pasture; each twilight the herdsmen brought the herd back and penned it inside of Fort Cass for the night, safe from Crow or Blackfeet pillagers.
He knew this wasn’t the whole herd. The four or five post hunters would have saddler and a cart or two for hauling in the buffalo carcasses. For Cass probably had twenty-five horses and mules. Brokenleg stared at the grazing animals, wanting them all. He wanted every animal Fort Cass possessed.
“I’ll git ye,” he muttered. “Ye owe me. I’ve lost a dozen oxen to your arrers — them Injuns ye hired. Ye owe me six mules, a few saddlers, and the Cheyenne ones that got stole. Ye owe every critter ye’ve got and then some. Plus some wagons. Plus a few hundred robes.”
But that was only part of it. He wanted to put Hervey’s hunters afoot just as Hervey had starved Fitzhugh’s Post by stealing or killing livestock. Let them starve for a change! Let them go hunting on their own two feet. By gar, it wouldn’t even up the score none, but it’d help a little!
A co
uple of the horses had picked up his scent on the westwinds and stared at the ridge. Brokenleg backed away and headed downslope fast. A few horses staring in his direction would be all the sign a herdsman needed to investigate. He kicked his dun toward a thick grove of juniper, raced around the back, and clambered awkwardly out of the saddle. Then he poked through the brittle dark limbs until he could observe the ridge. No one appeared. He waited a while more, waiting for a herdsman to show up, but none did. It pleased him. They weren’t suspecting trouble. Few men, red or white, ever dreamed of bringing American Fur Company’s own type of warfare to an American Fur post. But Brokenleg had just such a thing in mind. He wanted a dozen or so horses and mules and knew where to find them. The only difficulty was the broad daylight. There’d be no cover, and the act would be naked, made swiftly known to Hervey, to Culbertson, and down the river to old Pierre Chouteau himself.
But maybe that was good, not bad. Brokenleg’s old trapper instincts rose within him. If they wanted a fight he’d give ’em a fight. If they snatched his horses he’d snatch their horses, and he wouldn’t use bought Injuns to do it either. He’d been too cautious, or maybe bein’ a partner in a big fur operation had put a crimp in him. This hyar struggle had been one-sided too long.
Feeling good, Brokenleg steered his dun back to Fitzhugh’s Post and began running his hand over his balding head and red mane, something he never knew he did when he puzzled things out.
* * *
It wasn’t something to rush into. Hervey had twenty-five or thirty men at his disposal; Brokenleg could scarcely muster a dozen. And Brokenleg had an ordinary log house with a stockaded pen attached to it — not a regular fur company fort with bastions. If he snatched their livestock they’d come running, and they’d find ways to break into the yard and take the animals back. Neither could Brokenleg graze his new herd without putting up a bloody fight day after day. Worse, Hervey could probably put his Crows to work, harrying Fitzhugh’s Post, killing men and stock. If Fitzhugh started a war it’d be one with long odds.
He couldn’t hide the horses either. The odd thing about wilderness was there it didn’t conceal anything. He could spirit the livestock off to some prairie drainage and Hervey’s Crows would discover it within hours. Livestock had to water at least once a day. Neither could Fitzhugh spirit that many horses out of the country without leaving plenty of sign. Still, it was that prospect that excited him. If he had twenty or thirty pack animals with packsaddles and panniers, he could haul a whole trading outfit to the Cheyenne villages, trade through the winter, and return with robes packed on the stock. And Hervey could do nothing but stew and rage.
One slow autumnal afternoon when only he and Zach Constable and Abner Spoon manned the trading room, he brought it up. He trusted their judgment. They’d waded the creeks and skinned plews and fought Bug’s Boys as free trappers like himself.
“I’m thinkin’ ol’ Hervey’s got a mess of horses and mules, and we hardly got enough to do our huntin’. What Hervey’s got is mostly ours and I’m fixin’ to do somethin’ about it.”
Abner’s face lit up, but Zach peered warily at him.
“You be diggin’ us some graves. And yerself,” Zach muttered. “Next day there’ll be about five hunnert Crows firin’ their pieces through every chink and diggin’ through the stockade to git the horses back. And ol’ Hervey and his outfit’ll be right hyar helpin’ out. And then they’ll burn us or starve us for good measure.”
“How you gonna do it, Brokenleg?” Abner asked.
“Git clear out,” Brokenleg said.”Throw packsaddles over their back, load up an outfit, and git on down to the Cheyenne for a winter of trading. All before they even hear about it over to Fort Cass.”
“They’d come after ye anyway,” Constable said.
“I aim to git their hunting stock, too. The whole herd.”
“They’d git more fast enough — trade with the Crows.”
“By that time I reckon I’ll be clean out, headin’ for Powder River.”
Zach looked skeptical if not worried, but Abner listened intently.
“First thing Hervey’ll do is git him some huntin’ horses. That’s how he hurt us last winter — keepin’ us from making meat. After that maybe he’ll be fixin’ to make trouble. Send some of his Crows hyar to worry us a bit.”
“Kill us and burn it down.”
“There’s that. And they got the men to do it.”
“Fire, it burns where the wind takes it,” Abner said. “Fire burns Fort Cass wood faster than our wood — it’s older. I guess ol’ Hervey knows that.”
“Hervey don’t care,” Fitzhugh said. “He’ll burn us if he’s a mind for it. Kill us, too.”
“I don’t want any part of it,” muttered Zach.
“You figure it’s always one way? We take it and take it from Hervey and never deal out a little thunder? Is that it, Zach?”
Zach stared into the crackling fire, saying nothing.
“Remember old Sublette and Jim Bridger and them — the Rocky Mountain Fur Company? They pretty near whupped Astor jist by buildin’ posts and keepin’ American Fur busy in its own back yard. Like buildin’ Fort Williams right thar beside Fort Union.”
“Pretty near,” Zach agreed. “But they didn’t have no one like Julius Hervey callin’ the shots then.”
That was true. Brokenleg knew it made all the difference. Julius Hervey didn’t care what got wrecked and who got killed. He didn’t even care if old Chouteau took a loss for a few years if that’s what it took to erase the opposition. Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that the thing he proposed could result in the death of his engages, the burning of his post, the theft of his trade goods and robes . . . and big trouble for Maxim.
“Who you gonna take with you down to the villages — if you do this hyar?”
“Me and my ladies.”
“With twenty, thirty packhorses to pack and unpack and picket and water and guard?”
“Well, I was sorta seein’ how the stick floated. You want to come? I thought to leave the post to Samson Trudeau and Maxim. I ain’t sharin’ wives, but maybe they’ll introduce ye to some likely Cheyenne girls if’n you got the itch needs scratching.”
That met with silence. He didn’t expect a response, really. He was pleased that neither one argued that it couldn’t be done. That alone made up his mind for him: these two coons not laughin’ at him or sayin’ it was impossible.
“I got to corral them Creoles and start buildin’ packsaddles and halters and bridles, I guess,” he said. “That’s a heap of crosstrees and rawhide and all. And we got to make up a mess of panniers too if we got hides around. Should be some.”
He knew they’d go. It’d take a few days for them to come around to it, though. He knew his good, solid chief trader, Samson Trudeau, would object and see only doom in it — doom for the post and its men; murder and mayhem and fire and war. He worried about Maxim, too. The lad had dug in, said little, done more than a day’s work each day, wanting to recover what he’d lost. Brokenleg wanted to leave Maxim here as clerk and trader. The young man had picked up a lot of Crow and some Gros Ventre and some other tongues. But — he was the first thing Hervey’d go after. A hostage. Brokenleg wondered what he’d do if Hervey snatched the boy and threatened to kill him. Brokenleg though about that and answered the question in his own mind.
Through a chill, overcast fall, well-built packsaddles multiplied in the warehouse, along with braided rawhide halters and bridles, picket lines and cowhide panniers. Brokenleg would have preferred lighter duck cloth, sewn and riveted into panniers, but they had none. His ladies filled ink turning each buffalo hide the hunters brought in into parfleches. They converted the worst of the trade robes into apishamores to keep the pack animals from galling. By the time the cottonwoods turned golden and the aspen yellow, Fitzhugh’s Post had a pack outfit for thirty animals — but not the animals.
With the arrival of Hikomini, Freezing Moon, a young Cheyenne slid quietly into the post
one evening, all but invisible to the nearby Crows.
“Aaiee!” cried Little Whirlwind, who jabbered Cheyenne with the young man and then remembered to introduce him to Brokenleg. “It is my cousin Bear Claws. Chief White Wolf has sent him to you.”
The chief wanted to know whether Brokenleg planned to trade at the Greasy Grass during the Freezing Moon as planned. They’d heard in the Cheyenne villages that Fitzhugh had no horses for his wagons.
“Bear Claws, you’ve come a long way,” Brokenleg muttered in his poor Cheyenne. “You need a rest. I’m glad you came. I can’t make it to the Greasy Grass to trade but you tell White Wolf that I’m coming with a whole outfit to the Powder to trade with his village all winter. I’ll be there soon, in the Big Freezing Moon, Makhikomini.”
“You are coming with the daughters of One Leg Eagle?”
“Yes, the daughters of One Leg Eagle, and two others to help with the packhorses. I’ll have a whole trading outfit — enough to trade all winter. Trade rifles, blankets, knives, powder and lead, axes — everything.”
“White Wolf is eager to trade. The Tsistsista need many things and have many robes. It was a good fall; we killed many buffalo and our parfleches burst with pemmican. And now the women have fine robes. He said to bring all the rifles and not to trade a one to the dogs.”
“We’ll do it.”
Bear Claws peered about the post seeing only a few horses in the yard. “I do not see this string of packhorses, Brokenleg.”
“I’m getting it. I’m about ready for it. A week maybe.”
The youth waited for more, skeptically.
“Don’t you worry. We had a lot of stock taken from us and I am going to take it back.”
Cheyenne Winter Page 21
