Guy waited for Roscoe to ask the next question, but Roscoe was honking phlegm into his slimy handkerchief. Slowly, Guy eased into the hardwood bench.
“Somebody’s not telling the truth!” thundered Gillian from his spectator bench.
“Mr. Gillian — please. This may not be a courtroom but we shall have decorum,” said Roscoe.
“The reverend is suggesting I’m not telling the truth,” said Captain Sire. “I will stand on my statement. The casks in question were loaded at Westport.” The captain sat patiently in his chair, his natural authority speaking for him.
“Why there? If they’d only be discovered by the army at Leavenworth?” asked Mitchell.
Sire smiled. “I cannot guess at intentions, commissioner.”
Roscoe said, “The contraband was on board at Bellevue. There’s no dispute there, is there Captain Sire?”
“I saw the reverend pour clear fluid into the river, sir. It could have been water. I can say only that the casks were aboard, but I have no knowledge that they contained spirits. They didn’t contain whiskey, I’m sure of that.”
“Do you segregate cargo by owner?”
“As far as possible, sir. It makes unloading easier.”
“These casks were with other Rocky Mountain Company dunnage?”
“I have no idea.”
“Does cargo get mixed up?”
“Once in a while — when we shift it to get over a sandbar.”
“Have you encountered any sandbars below Bellevue?”
“None.”
“Then the cargo didn’t get mixed up.”
“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t enter the hold.”
“I’m trying to make the point, captain, that in all likelihood the contraband didn’t arrive there — In the Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus goods — accidentally.”
The hangman, Guy thought. Making a case.
“It’s unlikely, sir,” said Sire.
Hiliodore rose. “That is our contention, sir. No accident at all. The casks were planted in my client’s goods during the loading at Westport for nefarious and sinister reasons. To cost my clients their license.”
Philander P. Roscoe smiled slightly, a faint twitch in his cadaverous face that vanished instantly. “Come now, Mr. Billedeaux. We need more than theory and scapegoats. You must prove it.”
“Nay, sirs. It’s the opposite. We needn’t prove it. You need to prove that the contraband belonged to my clients. If you have the slightest doubts about it, you may not withdraw the license. The Constitution provides that the accused must be considered innocent until — ”
“We are quite familiar with it, counsel,” said Eastwood.
“Then you know the burden of proof’s on you. Have you heard a thing today tying the contraband to my client? Not a word! Have you found the link? Nothing! Can any of you say, within your esteemed selves, that you know for sure? Of course not! Would you deny a large and valued trading company its license on the most circumstantial and vague sort of evidence? Isn’t some competition against the Chouteau interests a good thing — for the tribes?”
“This is an Indian Bureau administrative hearing, counsel,” droned Roscoe. “Not a court. We adjudge the evidence before us on its merits. It’s within our power to weigh probabilities.”
Guy had heartened at Hiliodore’s sally, only to lose hope with Roscoe’s retort. Hiliodore’s main argument — that nothing the commissioners had heard tied the contraband to the company — had died in Roscoe’s reply.
That white-maned bulldog Billedeaux turned to new things. “Sirs, my client, Mr. Straus, believes the casks were planted by a certain Chouteau employee named Raul Raffin. This Raffin had nursed an ancient grudge against one of the partners, Robert Fitzhugh, over, ah, an affair of the heart. Mr. Straus went upriver at great expense last fall to get to the bottom of these matters, and learned that this Raffin had been on The Trapper and got off at Fort Pierre — deserted the company, rather. He was to continue on to Fort Union where he was engaged by Major Culbertson for a new three-year term with the company. My client tells me that this man now resides in a Cheyenne village and makes it his business to ruin the trade of Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus.”
“Theories again, counsel.” Eastwood said it and began reaming his nostril. He sounded skeptical and bored. The hearing had consumed a day, and had slid into tedium and triviality.
“Ah! Not theories. The finger points! We know a few things about him. He can read and write. He has kept ledgers at the posts. We are endeavoring to obtain a sample of his hand and believe that Major Culbertson will supply it. Now, sirs, what about this hand? Will it match the mysterious hand found at the bottom of Captain Sire’s cargo manifest? We believe it will. And we respectfully request that your decision be postponed until this vital piece of evidence is available to you. Only then will you be able to act with assurance.”
“And when would that be?” asked Roscoe.
“We don’t know. Before the end of this trading season surely.”
“We don’t know either — and we can’t postpone that long, especially for an ephemeral bit of handwriting that may or may not have anything to do with this case. No, counsel. I’m sure I speak for my colleagues when I say we can’t delay for anything like that.”
“Well now, whoa up, sir,” said David Mitchell. “If they can prove this Raffin planted those casks and added a line to the manifest in his own hand, I think that’s important. Let’s leave it this way: we’ll reopen it and reconsider if such evidence materializes. And make our present decision conditional.”
“It’s been a long day, Superintendent Mitchell,” Roscoe said.
Guy couldn’t make anything out of a reply like that.
Roscoe stood. “This concludes the hearing. My colleagues and I will weigh the material before us in the morning and make our decision known before noon tomorrow.”
Guy bundled into his buffalo greatcoat and pushed toward the double doors at the rear. Hiliodore caught up with him as they pierced into the wintry dusk of the riverfront.
“I don’t have a good feeling about it, Guy. Not when they ignore customary burden of proof. It’s up to them, not us.”
“You did what you could,” said Guy.
He slept soundly that night, much to his surprise. There was no suspense dogging him. At noon the next day he stood before the ravens once again.
“The Indian Bureau hereby withdraws the trading license of Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus effective at the end of the present trading season, July 1. The aforesaid shall abandon all trading with all tribes on or before that date. The superintendents find that the aforesaid company attempted to smuggle contraband spirits to its Yellowstone post, against U.S. codes prohibiting it.” Philander P. Roscoe droned on, reviewing the evidence or lack of it, dismissing the entire Raffin question as unsubstantiated, and reminding other fur companies that a similar fate awaited them if they debauched the tribes.
Hiliodore slumped.
Guy sighed. Old Cadet Chouteau had whipped him. Even now, Chouteau’s minions raced out of the hearing room with the news that would warm Cadet’s heart. . . . The commissioners had been right — but on the wrong evidence. The peculiarity of his position didn’t elude Guy. Perhaps he could return the favor to Cadet — one way or another.
Guy guessed he’d walk up the hill and tell Yvonne. She would start talking about selling the house.
Twenty-Seven
* * *
Raffin sipped steadily and stared into the guttering flame. He sighed as if the world were weighting his shoulders. Fitzhugh watched and waited.
“I’ll let you live a while,” Raffin said. “You want some?”
Brokenleg shook his head. Raffin poured more from the jug and added a splash of water.
“In ancient days I come here to winter — I was a free trapper den. Like you, mon ami. And Chief White Wolf, he is my old ami. I help him sometimes. Powder and lead; I get it for him. I get a lodge, me and another Creole. And one day I see t
his jeune fille — this girl, and dere’s no one in this village like her. She’s almost skinny. She’s got shiny hair in braids and bright eyes and pouty lips. She’s maybe fourteen and stuck up. She don’t even look at me. Well, she looks at me but I’m just a white man. She’s a Suhtai, and looks down her petite nose at everyone, the rest of them Cheyenne included.
“Da next winter I go back and she’s still not taken but the boys, dey are playing the love flute outside her lodge. I think, I’ll make the bride offer to her pa, One Leg Eagle. But I’ll give her some foofaraw first so she likes me and says to her pa, take the fits. I do dat. I give her the red ribbons and the yeller ribbons, and she smiles and her eyes glow. I get her name this time: it’s Little Whirlwind, and dat’s a good name for her all right, only the whirlwind’s not so little. She’s a tempest. I am thinking, I give any bride-gift he wants and then the old medicine man give me the girl. I got a couple spare horses and a spare rifle for him, a Hawken with a flintlock.
“Den you ride in, you and Dance. And you see her, too, dis Cheyenne girl with sun streaming outa her eyes, dis little snot dat’s above everyone. Like some Indian princess. You ride in and I see her peeking at dat red hair of yours, peeking and pretending she don’t see it none and it don’t interest her.”
Raffin sighed and sipped a long draught. He wheezed. He hadn’t watered it much. “Whew!” he gasped. “Dis stuff. I drink dis stuff maybe one time a year.”
Fitzhugh listened and fought sleep. He’d had plenty of it himself. It had loosened Raffin’s tongue and more. Raffin’s face had turned melancholy.
“Den you are dere, sniffing around the lodge of One Leg Eagle, and I see her looking sideways at you, watching you but not showing it, and I know I’ve lost her. You get her. I go back to my little lodge. One Creole heart busted up. All busted up. Dere goes my dream. I was gonna maybe trade robes somewhere at a little post, me and Little Whirlwind, the two of us at some place near her village. Maybe for American Fur. She made me dream, dis Little Whirlwind. Den you come along.”
Raffin stared into the flame and slid sticks into it. Tears oozed from his dark eyes, startling Brokenleg. “She likes red hair,” he muttered. “I don’t have a busted leg, no limp. I’m no cripple. I am strong as a bull. But it don’t count. You come along and I see the disdain. The more she disdains you, the more she likes you. And dis Creole, he thinks dis world is too damn cold.”
“I never knew that — how you felt, Raul.”
“You took the only ding I ever want away, and my life isn’t so good. After the beaver quit I work day after day and month after month for Cadet Chouteau. I have a few Indian girls but dey aren’t Little Whirlwind. Creoles got soft hearts. Creoles, if love goes bad we weep.”
“These country marriages, they don’t last. Mosta of the trappers I know dat take an Injun wife, they lodgepole her after a year or two. Git tired o’ her. Sometimes they run off, git tired o’ him.”
Raffin nodded and sipped. “You damn Enklish, you don’ know about love. You’re a northern race — cold and mean. Love, it got wasted on you. Little Whirlwind, she’s wasted on you. Brokenleg, you don’t know what you got. You got — a princess. You got a beauty. You got sunshine, like light pourin’ from da Virgin. You don’t know that.”
He wept again, sipping spirits and leaking tears from his brown eyes. They stained his cheeks and vanished into his bushy beard.
Brokenleg felt a bilious humor swell in him like stomach gas. A maudlin drunken Creole. It’d soured a good night. “So you got your revenge,” he said harshly.
Raffin stared. Shrugged. “I do everything Cadet wants. I wreck you good. I got a whole year pay for it. Maybe two. But it don’t do me no good. It don’t make me happy.” He stared moodily into the embers. “You know what I am? I’m Cadet Chouteau’s wolf. I’m on the rolls at Fort Union but I don’t spend no time there. I’m a gray wolf prowling around, makin’ trouble when he wants me to. I go stir up villages — I know most of the tongues. I go around, fix the opposition. Fix you good. He don’t like me around St. Louis none but he sends me messages. In French. He never signs them. They come up on the expresses, addressed to me, sealed. He writes careful, not sayin’ much, but I always figure it out. Dat way he talks to his wolf. I can read and write — dat makes me different from the rest. And I don’t need friends and comforts. My Creole heart’s broken, so I am the gray wolf slinking along the ridges. You see me now and then — mostly you don’t see me at all. But I’m dere. I’m everywhere.”
He sipped again, and then sat up straight. “Now you know everything about Raul Raffin. But you don’t come here with a jug for making talk, eh? You got business. All night I wait for you to tell me your business. I already know, but you got to tell me.”
Raffin was right. Business hung over all this like a snow mass waiting to avalanche. “You tired o’ being’ Chouteau’s gray wolf?”
Raffin laughed. “Merde! You ask dumb questions.”
“You could get out, you know. Do something else. Beats me how a man can enjoy skulking around out hyar all alone.”
Raffin’s face darkened. “It suits me fine. I lose the one thing I care about so I do dis. You got something I want; I got something you want. Are we gonna do business or not?”
“I ain’t followin’ you.”
“You’re followin’ plenty good. You just aren’t admitting it yet. Là-bas, behind you. That parfleche you’re leaning on. Give it to me.”
Brokenleg lifted himself and turned warily, wondering if he’d be knifed. Carefully, he edged the heavy parfleche out from behind him and shoved it across the lodge, past the fire. Raffin yanked it the rest of the way and untied the flap. He rummaged within and then pulled out something flat, carefully wrapped in oilcloth, and undid the cloth. Within was a soft leather pouch, from which he extracted papers.
“Dis one here, I write it a few days ago. I get out the quill and the ink. I think maybe I am leaving here soon. But I still got some business with you maybe. So I wait.” He handed the sheet to Brokenleg. “It’s what you want, eh?”
Fitzhugh studied the sheet. Dense, thick script covered half of it, blotted several times. It carried a January 1843 date. Raffin’s signature had been scrawled below the text, which was in English. He read with amazement a brief account of Raffin’s private work for Chouteau. And a detailed account of Raffin’s successful effort to plant three casks of contraband spirits in the Rocky Mountain Company cargo. He said he had acted on Chouteau’s private instructions.
Fitzhugh stared at the document, scarcely believing his eyes. Scarcely believing it was in his hands. He could probably plunge out the door flap with it.
Raffin laughed. “It don’t do you no good. You take dat down to St. Louis and them Indian superintendents, dey look at it and laugh. Dey say, dis here is a forgery. Oh, dey compare it with the handwriting on the cargo manifest, what I wrote dere, and it’s the same, but dey say no, Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus, dey just hire a forger. You need dese too.”
He handed five sheets to Brokenleg. Each contained a brief message in French. They were dated — the years ran from 1837 to 1842 — but not signed. Something commanding and elegant lay in the script. There were no blots.
“I can’t read French.”
Raffin wheezed happily. “Dat’s why he wrote dem like dat. He send dem to me. He don’t want Culbertson or Denig or Kipp to know. And dose Creoles, dey can’t read anyway.”
“These are from Cadet Chouteau? Instructions to you?”
Raffin nodded. “Dey tell me what to do, what he wants. One dere tells me to erase the opposition — dat’s you — by any means. Dat’s his way of saying, kill you if I have to.”
Brokenleg stared at these documents dumfounded. “How do I know? I can’t read French.”
Raffin laughed. “I can read dem. But see — I take good care of dem. Oilcloth to keep the water out. Leather pouch, and den inside a good waterproof parfleche too. My petite letter and dese here, dey go together. You need everyt’ing.�
��
“I could duck out with these.”
Raffin laughed again. “Try it, eh?”
He held a throwing knife in his hand.
Business. “Raffin, what do you want for these? My robes hyar?”
“Robes?” Raffin didn’t say any more, but mirth played over his sallow features. “Robes? What’re you gonna do with dese robes? I get word dat your post — it don’t exist no more. Dem Creoles, dey are either dead or walking down the river. Your robes, what’ll you do with dem? You and Spoon and Constable, eh? Naw, Brokenleg, you don’t want to think about what I want for dem letters.”
His post gone? A whirl of dread whipped through Brokenleg. His men killed by Hervey — or Hervey’s Crows? Trudeau? Maxim? All the rest? Some sort of brutal assault?
“How do I know that?” he asked, half-choked.
“You don’t. You can go look. You got time. Middle of l’hiver, eh? I get word from Hervey. Him and me, we get word. He know where you are always. Few days ago I get the word.”
Fitzhugh had the bad feeling that it was all true. And he knew what Raffin’s bargain was.
“You want Little Whirlwind.”
Raffin’s eyes lip up. “Ah, mon ami, now you get around to it. You gimme Little Whirlwind, and I give you dose papers.”
Little Whirlwind. A Devil’s bargain if ever there was one. Not so hard to do, either. Trappers unloaded their squaws all the time; traded them off. Just moved their truck out of the lodge — that was all it took. They got the idea. Sometimes the squaws did it to the trapper — moved his truck out. Then he got the idea. It wouldn’t bother the Cheyenne none. The warriors struck deals like that all the time. “You want Little Whirlwind,” he muttered.
Raffin chuckled pleasantly. “I’ll quit old Chouteau. I get Little Whirlwind and I don’t care what he thinks. I’ll lose a year’s salary, one hundred fifty — but it don’t come to so much for a poor engage. I got more; I got gold in my parfleches. I’ll never go back to St. Louis again. Maybe down to Bent’s Fort — dey got lots of Southern Cheyenne dere, make Little Whirlwind happy. She obeys, oui. Good squaw does. She looks down her nose at me, disdains me, tells me she’s a Suhtai and don’t forget it, oui? I take here dere — or maybe Fort Hall. Hudson’s Bay. Maybe Oregon. Who knows?” He shrugged. “She’ll be happy. Dey get used to it and dat’s it. She don’t act good, maybe I’ll lodgepole. Day are used to dat, too. Oui?”
Cheyenne Winter Page 28
