Charbonneau

by Win Blevins

  “What in hell are you doing,” MacKenzie asked, not meaning to be unpleasant, “getting worked up to attack the fort?”

  “Noting down Assiniboine songs for my book,” Baptiste laughed. He explained a little about the project; MacKenzie didn’t seem particularly sympathetic.

  “Your Herr Beethoven may be a discovery of worth,” MacKenzie judged, “but I doubt that the compositions of Watery Eyes will get a following.” That was MacKenzie’s nickname for Sky-Blue-Eyes, the young warrior-leader.

  “But they have more of a place in my book.”

  “Here’s a letter for you,” MacKenzie smiled. It was from Harper & Bros, in New York. “Courtesy,” MacKenzie elaborated, “of the U.S. Postal Service by steamboat to St. Louis, the U.S. Army by steamboat to Fort Atkinson, and the American Fur courier by horseback and snowshoe from there.” He waited for effect. “You’re lucky. I get papers from Chouteau once a winter.”

  New York, October 2, 1819

  M. Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau

  In the care of General William Clark, Superintendent

  Bureau of Indian Affairs

  St. Louis

  State of Missouri

  Dear Sir:

  We are in receipt of your letter of September 3 and of your partial manuscript.

  I fear that in our opinion the completed section does not augur well for the book in its entirety. In this section you deal both with the policy of our government in regard to the proper treatment of Indians and with public sentiment about their conversion to Christianity. It seems to us that your own attitudes in these matters are perhaps more radical than would be acceptable to the American public, and your expression perhaps gives not enough judicious consideration to the views of others. In brief, it seems to us that you hold attitudes which the majority of your readers would find unacceptable. Harper & Brothers could not at this time consider a manuscript which flies in the face of the very public on which Harper & Brothers is dependent for its support.

  We are aware, of course, that a partial manuscript may misrepresent the whole, and remain open to consideration of your efforts.

  Sincerely yours,

  A.J. Gurney

  Editor

  “Efforts without balls,” Baptiste said.

  Two trappers wandered in during late January with horseback loads of furs and settled down to wait for spring. One, a bent fellow who called himself Old Bill Williams, didn’t have much to say except that he’d got tired of freezing through the winter with the miserable bunch of Crows down on Powder River, and he reckoned he’d have a look at what MacKenzie would give him for his plews. Williams worked alone, apparently, which astonished Baptiste. MacKenzie gave him a handsome price. The King admitted to Baptiste that it was mostly a ploy to get Williams’ business—American fur would take a loss on these plews—but the money went a long way toward keeping Old Bill’s thirst quenched and his tongue loosened.

  Bill was called by other names, he confessed, Parson Bill and Old Solitaire and some others as were discomplimentary. He was an educated man, for a fact, and he had been a Baptist preacher when he was nigh seventeen. Next he’d carried the Word to the Osages. He’d taught them to worship the white critturs’ God, sure enough, but they’d taught him to worship their gods too. He’d ended by chucking the whole thing, layin’ in some powder an’ lead an’baccy and pointin’ his old mule toward the mountains.

  Bill was gray, but he could have been almost any age. His face was tanned to the roughness of buckskin from years in the sun and wind. His eyes were slits from squinting into strong light, and crow’s feet forked out from their corners like the branches of a tree. His nose bent like a hawk’s beak and threatened to play footsie with his chin. His back humped about halfway up, thrusting his head forward, and he walked in a slouch. With an old Hawken rifle, .55 calibre, that he shot with an odd wobble, he let fly at some chunks of firewood in competition with Paul, an expert shot; Bill could shoot with the prince.

  The traders had heard stories about him. He was supposed to be a loner, working the small creeks in high mountains by himself while the other trappers marched about in brigades. He had had a string of squaws to keep his blankets warm and his lodge tidy, but he turned them back as often as he got them. He was said to be ornery and mean. The word was that in starving times it wasn’t a good idea to ride a trail in front of Bill Williams.

  He didn’t really talk about himself, but he told stories. One night, late, when they had both drunk too much, Baptiste asked him what kind of wives squaws made.

  When Bill got started, Baptiste knew better than to interrupt:

  “From Red River, away up north among the Britishers, to Heely in the Spanish country—-from the old Missoura here to the sea of Californy, I’ve trapped and hunted. I knows the Injuns and thar sign, and they knows me, I’m thinkin’. Twenty winters has snowed on me in these hyar mountains, and a niggur or a Spaniard would lam some in that time. This old tool,” he tapped his Hawken, “shoots center, she does. And if thar’s game afoot, this child knows bull from cow and ought to could. That deer is deer and goats is goats is plain as paint to any but a greenhorn. Beaver’s a cunning crittur, but I’ve trapped a heap. And at killing meat when meat’s running, I’ll shine in the biggest kind of crowd.

  “For fifteen year I packed a squaw along—not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot—the damnedest slut as ever cried for foofuraw. I lodgepoled her on Colter’s Crick and made her quit. My buffler hoss, and as good as four packs of beaver I gave for old Bull-tail’s daughter. He was head chief of the Ricaree, and came nicely round me. Thar wasn’t enough scarlet cloth nor beads nor vermilion in Ashley’s packs for her. Traps wouldn’t buy her all the foofuraw she wanted. And in two years I’d sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of Jake Hawken’s guns—this very one I hold in my hands. Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian, and a Digger from the other side, who made the best mokker-son I ever wore. She was best of all, and was rubbed out by the Yutas at Brown’s Hole. Bad was best, and after she was gone under, I tried no more.

  “Red blood won’t shine anyways you fix it. And though I’m hell for sign, a woman’s breast is the hardest kind of rock to me, and leaves no trail that I can see of.”

  MARCH, 1830: It was a bitter winter. After a few days of sun in late February which made them think the thaw was coming, it turned cold and snowy for another month. Baptiste walked out with Bill on some days to relieve the boredom. It was high plains country, rolling, for the most part, and covered with flat white to each horizon. Walking in the primitive snowshoes Bill had made—willow sticks lashed with thongs—was awkward and laborious. Baptiste sweated in his heavy capote, and his brain swam sometimes with fatigue. After a while he saw colors on reflecting white surface.

  Bill showed him the broken cottonwood trees, where the cold had got so sharp that it split the trunks. He showed him the carcasses of buffalo stuck solid in the ice of the Missouri. The damned Indians, Assiniboine or Blackfeet one, had got them running and herded them off some bluffs above into the river and they’d drowned. Damned Injuns slaughtered them that way and didn’t even take all the meat—did it for fun. Bill showed him how to survive a subzero night on the plains: Up under the boughs of a tree that didn’t shed, if you could find one, and in a deep hole in the show to keep the wind off if you couldn’t.

  One afternoon, when the sun was so bright off the snow that Baptiste could barely see, Bill cut buffler track. The crittur couldn’t be far, Bill opined, as they didn’t move much in the deep snow. The two waddled along the tracks and found them in half an hour—a bull, a cow, and a yearling cow pawing at the snow for what little they could get.

  Baptiste was not over being awed by buffalo. This bull stood about six feet at the hump, went ten feet long, and might have weighed out at a ton. He was yellow-haired about the hump and shoulders, darkening to brown at the rump. He could have tramped Bill and Baptiste with scarcely an effort. But he didn’t, mainly because he didn’t see, hear, or smell them. Buffalo wer
e stupid; mountain talk for “dimwitted” was “buffler-witted.”

  They crawled to within easy range. Bill always carried his Hawken, but Baptiste didn’t have his. A buffalo was a hard shot. In all that mass only a ball placed just behind the shoulders and barely above the brisket would bring one down, and even when hit there, it might run half a mile. Bill picked the yearling as the most tender, waited patiently, and hit her true. She took a couple of steps, dazed, then braced her legs well apart for the onslaught. The other two looked around, seemed to notice nothing, and went on grazing. The young cow began to sway and stamp as though she had delirium tremens. She rolled her head, and blood gushed out of her mouth and nostrils. After she shook a little more, she crumpled to her knees and rolled onto her side.

  Bill yelled and waved at the others to shoo them away. He reckoned he wasn’t interested in supplying meat for the whole damn fort.

  Bill turned the cow onto her belly, made the two long slits that form the sign of the cross, pulled back the skin to use as a tablecloth, and went to work at the butchering. When he got to the liver, he cut off raw slices, dipped them in bile for a sauce, and shared them with Baptiste. Baptiste heard that the Indians ate it raw, but he had never seen it or tried it. His mind wrenched at the thought of what he was doing, but his tongue put a tentative OK on it.

  Then Bill cut out the boudins—the guts—and offered Baptiste one end. Baptiste declined, so Bill started sucking the boudins down, apparently without chewing, and pushing the contents out with his hands as he went. Baptiste went queasy, then upchucked the fresh liver on the snow.

  Bill grinned without stopping. When he had finished, he said “You act like a mangeur de lard, boy.” Literally, it meant “pork-eater,” and figuratively a man who was not used to mountain diet, a man who was green.

  Bill told Baptiste to cut the tongue out while he took the boss, the hump, and the hump ribs. They carried the meat back to the fort in the buffler skin—Bill wanted the hide for a blanket.

  That night they invited Paul to an open-fire feast—hump ribs roasted on a spit, hump roast, and, at the very end, the tongue baked slowly under the coals. Baptiste had recovered his stomach and told Bill it was a superb meal. “It does shine, don’t it?” Bill agreed. Even Paul seemed to think it a treat of a sort.

  Mostly though, that March, Bill used his time to drink and play cards. Baptiste became a first-rate euchre player during all-day sessions with Bill. They amused themselves from time to time by trading a few beads for the services of a squaw—always briefly, though sometimes it was a lot of fun. Baptiste listened to Bill’s bottomless well of stories, some of them fantastic but probably true, others entertainments that strung the believer along until the last line that was outlandish and made him feel foolish for having listened seriously.

  Baptiste spent his time watching spring come to the plains, the snow sagging first into tiny rivulets of melt, then backing up to show clumps of dead grass here and there, then melting into the ground and coming back in the pale yellow of early grass and the lively colors of wild-flowers.

  APRIL, 1830: MacKenzie struck the match, put it to the cigar, and blew out the smoke in quick little puffs. “You’ve not been doing much on the book,” he said to Baptiste.

  Baptiste waited a moment while the Assiniboine girl reached around him for the dishes. “Not much,” he admitted.

  “Giving it up?”

  “Just letting it slow down.”

  “Would Your Highness object,” MacKenzie asked, “if I made your retainer an offer?”

  “Not at all, he’s a free man.”

  “We can escort you back to St. Louis bv boat with an experienced and well-armed crew. You wouldn’t be stranded if you lost him.” He turned to Baptiste. “You’ve said the normal avenues weren’t open to you in St. Louis commerce. No such prejudice exists at Fort Union.” He drew deeply on the cigar. “Stay here with me. You can be extraordinarily valuable. You not only have the languages and the understanding of the Indians, you are yourself an Indian. Indians will trust you, and through you will trust us. You can make a great contribution to American Fur, and you can benefit the Indians as well through our trade.” He paused to see what effect he was having on Baptiste. “I will make you my righthand man.”

  “No,” Baptiste said.

  “It’s a handsome offer. The Company will take care of all your needs—food, lodging, horses, clothing, everything—and will pay you three thousand dollars a year.”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Do you want more money?”

  “The money’s generous. I don’t want to do it.”

  “Do you mind telling me why?”

  “I don’t like what you’re doing here. I think it’s ruthless.”

  MacKenzie eyed him for a moment. “Well, my boy, it’s meant to be,” the King smiled broadly. He had just dismissed Baptiste from his mind as a valuable employee, and as a possibly successful man. He rose, announcing the end of dinner. Prince Paul and Baptiste started toward the door.

  “By the way,” MacKenzie called after him, “what do you intend to do?”

  “Go to the trappers’ rendezvous with Bill Williams. It’ll be fun. Then we’ll see.”

  Baptiste had not mentioned this plan to Prince Paul; the more serious problem was that he hadn’t mentioned it to Old Bill.

  “Take ye?” Bill crackled in his squeaky voice. “Does this child look like he’s narsin’?” He stalked off, his legs moving like boards linked by rusty nails.

  Baptiste had to get an outfit. With his own horse and equipment, plus the $700 he had coming in wages from Paul, he traded for a buffalo horse, a packhorse, another set of buckskins, some buffalo robes as blankets, horns for powder and for beaver medicine, a pouch for bullets, a skin sack for possibles, several more pairs of moccasins, and some pemmican. From MacKenzie he bought six traps at $20 apiece, tobacco, some whisky, cooking gear, a pistol, a Green River (the preferred mountain man’s knife), powder, and balls. He was surprised that in the mountains everything cost five to ten times and more what it cost in St. Louis. But he didn’t care.

  Bill pretended to pay no mind to what Baptiste was doing. He took to saying once in a while that he was a loner, and to telling stories about when the damned Shian had got Lew Marcus, or the Blackfeet had cut Old Pierre into a lot of little pieces, or Jed Smith had lost two dozen men in two massacrees on the way to Californy and back. He recalled how the Pawnees tortured men by tying them to poles, jamming sticks into their skin, and setting fire to the sticks. He remembered Baptiste the imagination the Blackfeet brought to torture, and the vehemence the women showed in chopping up the bodies afterward. Baptiste just listened. He had a feeling Bill was watching him.

  APRIL, 1830: On a fine morning without a cloud from far horizon to far horizon, Bill started grumbling about how lazy he was, how late he was, how the beaver could swim to St. Louis before he did anything about getting them there. By mid-morning he was packed and ready to ride. Baptiste’s one horse was packed and the other saddled next to Bill’s. Bill said nary a word as he mounted. “I’ll track you if I have to,” Baptiste said. Bill eyed the pack on Baptiste’s horse for a moment, said nothing, and set out.

  Living came first, he found out, and trapping second. He learned to poke in the driftwood along the west bank of the Yellowstone for Jerusalem artichokes the gophers had stored there. He learned to pick hips off the wild roses regularly, because they alone would keep away scurvy. He learned to find chokecherries and serviceberries to spice a stew with, and maybe some wild onions. Bill brewed up an aromatic tea from pine needles, which Baptiste thought at least the equal of India tea; when Baptiste brewed it, though, he steeped it and ended up with something that tasted like oil. Bill also taught him to eat pine nuts, and how to make kinnikkinnik from soft, shredding bark to replace tobacco. When Bill got tired of jerky and pemmican, he killed a deer. They ate the heart, tenderloin, and liver immediately just a turn over the fire away from being raw, and shared the ribs a
nd large roasts that night. Bill gave Baptiste a lesson by putting away what looked like ten pounds of fresh meat—said he made a habit of eating high for a couple of days and then going nearly hungry for a few days. Since the next morning was sunny, they spent the whole day jerking deer meat in the smoke, sun, and wind. They were having so much fun living that they didn’t get around to trapping for quite a while.

  Trapping turned out to be an arcane skill. Bill didn’t let Baptiste trap—said he would only mess things up for Old Solitaire—but set Baptiste’s traps along with his own. After they started up Powder River, Bill began to work the cricks coming out of the mountains to the southwest. He would ride up a crick watching for slack water, beaver dams, and other beaver sign. When he found it, he set a string of traps in likely spots. He would walk downstream from the spot and wade back up, to kill the man smell. Then he would drive a heavy float stick deep through one end of the trap chain and into the bottom in deep water. The trap he snapped open and set in shallow water. Then the seductive touch. Bill kept a horn full of secretion called castoreum that he took from the scrotums of beaver he’d trapped. He didn’t know why, but he knew that beaver were intrigued by its smell. He dipped a little stick into the castoreum, and planted the stick next to the trap. The point, he said, was to get the beaver to come to the medicine, stand up to sniff it, and put his foot where he shouldn’t. Once he did that, the float stick would keep him from dragging the trap into the bank and gnawing his own paw off to get free. So he would head for deeper water, and would end up drowning.

  The days’ routine was relaxed. Bill and Baptiste checked the traps at daylight and dusk. Bill crabbed every morning that he was stiff from wading up to his thighs in the damned cricks; getting bad joints from the cold water, he was. In the morning Bill supervised, puffing on his pipe, while Baptiste skinned the beaver and scraped and stretched the skins—even a Frenchy had to do something to pay his way, Bill judged. In the afternoons they loafed and gathered some greens for the night’s meal—growing all around ya, all ya got to do is stick your hand out to eat, Bill said. Just before dark they ran the trapline again. And then they’d have boiled beaver tail for dinner, finest eatin’s Bill knowed of anywheres, he said.