“I made it,” he muttered into her silky hair. “All the way. Maxim is well.”
“Oh, Guy.”
She sounded so distraught that Guy gently pried himself free to look at her, noting the black. “Has something happened?” he asked, dread geysering up in him.
“Why — why do you ask?”
“You are in mourning.”
“But — ” She laughed hysterically. “For you. I just knew I’d never see you again. I had Madame make me . . . mourning dresses.”
Guy roared. He couldn’t help himself. Yvonne had always been the pessimist, seeing the worst possible conclusion to everything. Seeing doom before doom came visiting.
“My little Cassandra,” he said, between wheezes.
“But Guy — I just knew . . . ” Tears welled up in her bright eyes and she clung to him desperately. “I just knew,” she muttered into his shoulder. “I’d never see you again. It’s so far and so — so terrible . . . ”
“It’s not my ghost you’re hugging,” he said. From the corner of his eye he spotted his servants peering into the conservatory.
“Gregoire! Fresh coffee!”
They fled.
“And Clothilde is well?” he asked.
“Of course. But she won’t listen to me. She wears summer frocks in this . . . this . . . ”
“You are beautiful in black. You are beautiful in anything — or nothing.”
“Oh, Guy!”
He had much to tell her and some things to conceal because she couldn’t bear them. He had decided not to say anything about his imprisonment by Hervey, his lonely vigil in that cubicle in which he came face to face with his own mortality and understood death and life for the first time. And he wondered, too, what to say about Maxim and Maxim’s scruples. He’d tell her that, he thought, but not just yet. In the dark, during their communion of souls and bodies, when they lay beside each other. Then he would talk about Maxim’s anguish of soul and the bitter compromises that life imposed on all mortals, including himself. Actually, Guy was proud of his son, proud of Maxim’s stringent scruples, proud that the young man’s restless soul sought those things that were right, and tried to make the world right.
For now it was enough to assure his dear Yvonne that all was well — and not well. Fitzhugh had traded for only a few robes and had lost several hundred he’d traded from the Cheyenne, along with two freight wagons and all his stock. He’d been checked and defeated by American Fur at every hand. But that wasn’t the worst of it either. It occurred to him that his gargantuan effort had failed. They’d lose their license; they might have to pay a fine or see their robe returns confiscated, depending on what the Indian Bureau chose to do.
“There is this sadness,” he said to her later as they sat on the settee and sipped the chicoried coffee. “I stopped at all the posts and talked to the traders. I did find out some things. I have a name and even a motive. One named Raul Raffin — an engage of Pierre le cadet for many years. Everything points to him. None among the bourgeois at the posts thinks the company did such a thing. Putting those casks aboard among our dunnage. But Raffin, ah, madame. He was a rival of Brokenleg long ago for the affections of Little Whirlwind.”
“I wish they’d both failed,” she replied tartly.
He nodded. “And I can’t prove a thing. I have the name, the man — and nothing to present to David Mitchell. I will tell him what I know — and he will shake his head and remind me that rumors and scapegoats won’t rescue the Rocky Mountain Company. I fear we’ll lose our license after all.”
“I knew it would fail,” she said. “I wear my mourning clothes for Straus et Fils.”
Twenty-Three
* * *
Nothing in Pierre Chouteau Jr.’s riverfront office spoke of power except the man himself. He welcomed Guy with a small Gallic pucker of the lip and then settled himself behind his battered desk among his dusty Indian artifacts and fossils. But Guy knew that this dark-haired man with the sardonic smile was the lord of half a continent. No one, not the United States Government and its agents and armies, exerted as much dominion over a territory that extended from the Mississippi River westward to the Mexican possessions and the disputed Oregon country.
“Ah, my friend Straus, you’re safely back in St. Louis. I trust your business goes well?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Guy responded.
They both chuckled. Like God, Pierre Chouteau knew the flight of every sparrow.
“That’s good and bad. Too many robes. The market can’t absorb them all. Why, Ramsey Crooks and I have just agreed to hold some back to keep the prices up.”
“Sorry to bring them down again.”
Chouteau shrugged. “Four hundred robes.”
Fencing. One never talked with Pierre Chouteau forthrightly, cards on the table, Guy thought. It was always a tradeoff — a peek at something in exchange for a peek at something else. And Chouteau played his games as well. Like telling Guy how many robes Guy had brought down the river in his double pirogue. This banter was the only kind of business negotiation that Chouteau understood. And it took a quick mind to understand it and counter it. Anyone who didn’t understand Pierre le Cadet would suppose it was banter over steaming tea.
“You have an engage named Raul Raffin.”
Chouteau looked puzzled and pursed his lips. His eyes gleamed. “Why, the name is unfamiliar. What post is he at?”
“Wherever you assign him, Cadet.”
“Ah, my poor tired brain. Oui, I recollect. We have such a man. They come and go, the Creoles.”
Guy smiled. Raffin had been with American Fur for years. “He interests me. Do you know his whereabouts?”
“I suppose you wish to steal him from us. Ah, the opposition. We put up with many trials from the opposition.”
More banter, Guy thought. “He failed to show up at his post last summer.”
“Ah, I hadn’t heard. And which post was that?”
“You’d know better than I, Cadet. I suppose you’ve removed him from your rolls. A deserter.”
“We don’t like deserters, Guy. Let a man abandon his contract with us for no reason, and he never works for Chouteau and Company again. I’ll check.” He rang a small silver bell and a ruddy clerk in a shabby black suit materialized.
“Have we a Raffin on our roster, Hieronyme? Be swift, if you please.”
The clerk back away and Guy swore he left dust floating in the sunbeams.
“Now we will know for sure. I trust this man has behaved himself?”
Fishing, Guy thought. Chouteau revealed nothing and sought everything. “No, he has not. He probably damaged my company.”
Chouteau arched an eyebrow. “Men have their foibles. Perhaps it was a love rivalry. I always ascribe rash conduct to love, to rejection by a beautiful woman. Ah, women! How they govern the affairs of the world!”
Chouteau knew a lot, Guy thought. He probably knew everything his own factors and traders had told Guy upriver. He obviously knew that Brokenleg and this Raffin had once competed for Little Whirlwind. Maybe it was true. Maybe raffin had some longstanding grudge against Brokenleg. It made a good story. The sort of story that could conceal darker purposes.
Guy smiled gently. “An engage would have to spend more thana year’s salary to buy three casks of spirits. How could he live, eh? An engage spends his annual salary and more at the posts. No, Cadet. There’s more.”
The faint smirk returned to Chouteau’s face again. “Ah, logic,” he said. “The downfall of accountants. Men with passions act — no matter the costs! Especially the French!”
Hieronyme returned bearing a battered ledger and set it before Chouteau.
“Why, he’s engaged — this year and the next two. But if he’s abandoned his contract, why, we’ll scratch him off. We’ve hired our share of loafers and scoundrels — and discharged them. We want good men up the river. I must look into this Raffin.” He handed the ledger to the clerk. “Hieronyme, find out what you can about this Ra
ffin. Monsieur Straus believes we have an unruly engage who has fled his post.”
“Bien,” said the clerk, dusting his way out of the office.
It was a charade, Guy knew. Something about Cadet Chouteau led Guy to believe that none of this was news. Every conversation Guy had had with the American Fur factors and traders up the river had been duly reported, in minute detail, to this man across from him. In a way, though, the whole interview had helped. Cadet Chouteau would not be fencing so much if he had nothing to conceal. He might even be helpful. Neither of them had broached the subject of the three planted casks of spirits in the cargo of The Trapper — and Cadet’s lack of curiosity said a lot.
Guy stood abruptly and gathered his walking stick and cape. “I must be off, Pierre. You’ve been most gracious, as always.”
“But you’ve barely arrived — ”
“I found out what I needed to know,” Guy said roughly.
For a second, Cadet’s gaze froze, only to melt again into his purse-lipped mockery. “A bientíôt!”
It had been a typical session with Cadet, Guy thought as he pushed into a biting wind toward that other place on the waterfront he wished to visit. Not a candid word; everything buried in veils of wit and deception. Not lies, really. He’d never discover Cadet in a naked lie. But simply layers of innuendo and deceit that concealed truth.
He found the Indian Bureau’s superintendent, David Mitchell, shoveling sticks of wood into his potbellied office stove. No polite minions guarded his door even though this complex of offices in a waterfront building was a bureaucratic empire rather than a commercial one.
“Guy!” cried the commissioner. “I’d heard you got back yesterday with forty bales. Back your tail up to the seat and tell me.”
Word of his return seemed to have whipped through St. Louis, Guy thought, remembering their lonely docking on a silent levee.
With Davey Mitchell there’d be no pussyfooting around the thing that interested them both. And even the upriver gossip would wait. “I have the name of a man,” Guy began without preliminaries. “An engage named Raul Raffin. He’d been with AFC for a decade or so.”
“I remember him. Big dark Creole.”
“That’s what they told me. He went up on The Trapper with several other engages — beginning his new term. And abandoned the company at Fort Pierre, striking west. He’s living with the Cheyenne in White Wolf ’s village.”
“What does this have to do with — anything?”
“He’s the one.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but he’s the one.”
“That’s not going to help you a bit.”
Guy sighed. “That’s the trouble. I don’t have a thing to tell you.”
“How do you know? I mean, Guy — you have a name. What else?”
“Every American Fun trader and factor along the river — Sarpy, Chardonne, Kipp, even Culbertson, thought it was the act of a lone man, not a company thing. I’m not so sure, Davey. How would an engage without a centime afford three rundlets of pure ardent spirits? Why would he? They all suggested he had a grudge against Brokenleg, but . . . that’s not the way a man with a grudge acts. No. Raffin had a silent partner or two, and this was directed at my company.”
A wry smile lit David Mitchell’s face. “If it was your company’s spirits that Gillian poured into the Missouri then you must be dry up there on the Yellowstone. But if you’ve spirits up there, then those rundlets were planted. All you have to do, Guy, is swear you have your own spirits on hand, the casks you probably loaded at Sergeant Bluff or somewhere near there . . . But now you’ll tell me you haven’t a drop of contraband at Fitzhugh’s Post.”
Guy didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer.
Mitchell laughed raucously. He hawked and spat at the stove, and the gob popped into steam. “Let’s go back to Raffin. How d’you know?”
“He’s there with the Cheyenne. Brokenleg traded for a lot of robes and some horses while Raffin hung around — and when Brokenleg started back, he was robbed of everything, including the horses.”
“By?”
“Arapaho.”
Mitchell shook his head. “What does that prove?”
“Why — that Raffin is destroying our Cheyenne trade. His marriage is the one advantage we have over American Fur. Someone — maybe even Cadet — pulled him off his regular duties, bought the rundlets of spirits, had Raffin plant them and alter the cargo manifest — and then head out to the Cheyenne to keep on making trouble with us.”
“Guy, can Raffin read and write?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“If, as you say, someone added those casks to Captain Sire’s cargo manifests — that someone had to read and write. Maybe you’d better find something written in Raffin’s hand. I’ve got Sire’s cargo manifests right here — they’re evidence. Get a sample of Raffin’s hand and you might have a case, eh?”
Guy felt dumfounded. He’d missed the obvious.
“Cadet might have something written by Raffin — if you can get it,” Mitchell said. “Which you won’t. He’s not dumb. But you haven’t much time, Guy. I postponed the hearings until January second to give you a chance up the river. I have half the reformers in the East on my back — saying I’m kowtowing to the corrupt fur lobbies. Maybe they’re right. I can’t hang on, Guy. You’ll have to be here — or your counsel — on the second.”
“What will happen?” Guy asked.
“Three affidavits from Bellevue. Foster Gillian’s, his wife’s, and one from his factotum, a young divinity student with fire in his eye named Marshall Landreth. They can’t leave Bellevue — not with river ice, in winter. But Captain Sire is here and’ll testify. And several others who saw it.”
“It’s a trial?”
“Nope. Indian Bureau hearing. All we need to pull a license. But we follow ordinary rules of evidence. By several acts of Congress spirits aren’t allowed in the Indian Territory, except for boatmen’s rations. The law’s been broken — by someone. We — I mean myself and whoever they send out from Washington City — if we find it against you, we’ll pull your trading license end of this robe season.”
“The southern post, too?”
“Both. Same company. I’m sorry, Guy.”
“But Dance’s in Mexico.”
“Trading with our tribes. Sendin’ robes back over our territory.”
“And what do I need for a defense, David?”
Mitchell shrugged. “Not for me to say, really. None of this is for me to say. But you need to prove someone else did it — it wasn’t your stuff. Maybe you could prove it by swearing you’ve got your own stuff up there.” A quirky grin slid onto Mitchell’s face and stuck there. Guy wanted to laugh with him, but it hurt too much.
* * *
Fitzhugh’s Post was dying. A great Crow encampment clamped the post like an eagle’s talon, letting nothing in and nothing out. It formed a great arc, pinning the post from all sides except the river.
Maxim knew the end was near. But he didn’t know what end or what to do. They’d run out of firewood, and now they huddled under robes against the brutal December air. They’d run out of meat; the hunters couldn’t leave. When they tried, they’d been driven back by volleys of arrows. In the yard, the two remaining saddlehorses and the pack mule starved. The woodcutters couldn’t get out to cut cottonwoods and strip the logs of good green bark, which made a winter feed for livestock.
They were running out of water. Brokenleg had meant to dig a well but it hadn’t been done. Instead, he had filled several kegs with river water and stored them against emergencies. Most of that foul-tasting water was gone and the remaining keg was frozen solid. The stock hadn’t been watered but the engages had chipped ice from one keg and melted it over kindling made from butchering a bunk — and quenched their raging thirst.
“We can slaughter the mule,” Trudeau said. He and Maxim stood in the yard, staring disconsolately at the animals.
Maxim nodded. Th
ey could do that. “We could try to dig a well. We’re only fifteen feet above the river,” he said.
Trudeau laughed. “Starving men digging a well?”
“There’d be mule meat.”
“Ah, young Maxim, where would it lead us?”
“Brokenleg never gave up. He said in the mountains you never give up.”
Samson slid into silence, staring at the cottonwood palisade around the yard. “They haven’t fought us. They could overwhelm us easily. A few engages against so many. Maybe we could try the white flag again — try to parley again.”
Maxim thought they might try, but he knew they’d be driven back. This village and its headmen were under the thumb of Julius Hervey and would do nothing that was not Hervey’s design. “What’ll we offer them?” he asked.
Trudeau shrugged. “It’s for them to say — if they’ll parley.”
“I think they’d let us go — if we left everything behind. Walk out,” Maxim said. “That’s what Hervey wants. For us to walk out and leave the spoils.”
“We could fight,” Samson said.
They’d considered that a hundred times, with every growl of their hungry bellies. The Crows had pitched their lodges out of effective rifleshot. A naked plain, whited with packed snow, surrounded the post. For six days and nights the engages had peered over the stockade and counted the lodges and debated war. This Crow village could field somewhere between a hundred fifty and two hundred warriors, most of them armed with trade rifles.
“I don’t want to if I can help it,” Maxim muttered.
Samson Trudeau became very gentle. “Ah, young Maxim. All the ones who’ve been in the mountains, the beaver men, they’ve been in corners as tight as this. Against the Pieds Noirs mostly. Fate — Fate sometimes decrees a victory if brave men seize it.”
Maxim blinked. “We can escape with our lives — if we walk out. That’s what Hervey wants.” A wave of anger engulfed him. “And that’s what he’ll get tomorrow. Time’s running out.”
Cheyenne Winter Page 24
