Hugh smiled. “Can’t Father or no, my little squaw is still young and gentle and in first-rate order, I see.” Hugh nodded. “Yessiree, ye suit me longways and sideways both.”
Bending Reed laughed and rolled shy blackcherry eyes at him.
But their contentment was short-lived.
There was an etching sound behind them. She heard it after a while and sat up.
It came again, etch-itch, etch-itch.
“Mouse!” she exclaimed and in a bound was up and after it with a broom. She was once again at war with the furtive pest of the prairies.
3
GENERAL ASHLEY left word there would be a meeting before sundown. It would be held outside the fort on the banks of the Missouri out of earshot of the opposition’s commander and under a huge cottonwood to which two keelboats were moored. The general and his mountain men had to decide whether to go on into the northwest or to go back to St. Louis.
Hugh had his afternoon nap and then got up from his warm buffalo robe and slipped on his moccasins and hobbled out through the flap of his tepee.
He stood stretching in the hot August sun. Shadows were tight and black along the foot of the south stockade wall. The dazzling summer sun on the bare white cottonwood boles in the north wall made them hard to look at. Even the gray beaten ground underfoot was hard on the eyes.
Hugh stood blinking. Out of the corner of his eye he could see buckskin-clad sentinels armed with Hawken rifles slowly pacing back and forth on the riflewalk along the top and inside the stockade wall. The riflewalk was some fifteen feet off the ground, just high enough to permit the sentinels to shoot over the twenty-foot wall. The cross-braced cottonwood palings shone like old dull teeth in a weathered jawbone. Behind him in the carpenter’s shop someone was nailing together a wooden coffin, another in the meathouse was sawing up buffalo bones, and still another in the blacksmith shop was pounding out some crude horseshoes. The boss’s house was silent, but from the men’s quarters came the sound of trappers playing cards, with now and then a loud coarse voice saying, “By the eternal, this is one hand I’ll put my pile on.” In the entrance to the warehouse Sioux squaws from tepees outside the fort were protesting shrilly to frail Clerk Bonner that he’d cheated them out of some fofurraw.
Hugh noticed that both blockhouses, the one on the northwest corner as well as the one on the southwest corner, rumbled as if men were rolling cannon balls in them. The blockhouses had been built at opposite corners of the stockade so that in case of sudden Indian attack the cannon in them could sweep all four walls of the fort with deadly grapeshot at the same time.
Hugh limped out through the wicket in the main gate, waving a gruff hello to bent Old Childress the gatekeeper. Outside the fort two drunken Sioux braves lay asleep in the shadow of the wall, mouths open and slack and crawling with flies. A few Sioux tepees, with skin pennants and bushy animal tails dangling in a slow breeze, stood well back west of the fort. The cone tepees made a sawtooth pattern against the horizon. Beyond the smoke-tipped tepees lifted lofty tan bluffs, rising up like massive shouldering waves of earth held back as if by the command of some Moses. A few stunted plum trees clung to the crests of the bluffs. Far to the north two hunters picked their way warily up a ravine, intent on a half-dozen white-tailed antelope. The land was dry on the tumbled bluffs, and the dead bunch grass glowed like mounds of rusted iron.
The footpath from Ft. Kiowa to the landing site at the base of the huge cottonwood was worn and deep. Gray dust in it ran like barley flour. Hugh walked to one side of it, but even on the untrodden ground his moccasins raised quick puffs of gray. Hugh coughed a couple of times.
The single cottonwood towered over them like a great dreamland mushroom. Below, the two gray keelboats rode easy and free in the wide rolling tan Missouri. The far east cutbank knifed up sharp and gray from the waterline. A small grove of oak and ash and cottonwood crested the cutbank. Behind it some wild rose and gooseberry and wolfberry brush spread all the way back to where the land sloped up onto the plateau of far prairies.
The meeting had already begun by the time Hugh got to the rendezvous. General Ashley, still wearing the blue uniform of the Missouri state militia, was haranguing the men from behind a storebox while Major Andrew Henry sat on a stump behind another box.
The sight of Major Henry made Hugh haul up short. Ae, then Prayin’ Diah Smith had made it safe, after all, across wild Indian land to bring Major Henry down on the run from his post on the mouth of the Yellowstone. Good boy, Jedediah. Brave lad. Hugh swept the crowd of seated mountain men with a quick narrowed look and immediately recognized Diah. Prayin’ Diah sat alone off to one side. He sat calm and reserved. Not a face muscle moved. Only Diah’s grave gray eyes showed that he was holding himself in.
Looking around further Hugh spotted other newcomers: cautious book-learned John S. Fitzgerald, gaunt Allen, proud George Yount, and even the boy, slim redhaired Jim Bridger. Ho-ah. The major had taken along some of his best shots to help fight the Rees. No wonder everybody was mad that General Leavenworth had funked his attack on the villages. Hugh shook his head. Ae, a lot had happened since he’d taken to bed in Bending Reed’s tepee.
Hugh sat on the grass well to the rear. Like all mountain men he sat crosslegged, knees out, feet folded inward. Sitting at the rear of the crowd he could watch the men to see what their mind might be before he himself made up his mind.
Some of the mountain men were smoking their pipes. Others sat with averted eyes. Still others, like Diah, sat with backbone erect and eyes flashing. Some of the boatmen were present too, and they lolled easy on their sides. There were some fifty men present, and all were armed with rifles and knives, and almost all, except the boatmen, wore skin suits. Some of the skin suits were so greased and weathered brown it took a close look to see what they were made of.
General Ashley was speaking. He had a high pleasant voice when aroused, and his little mouth worked furiously and eloquently. He sweat as he talked and sometimes he stopped to wipe his redblond brow and occasionally he swapped a light hand around at a passing fly. The general’s light tenor voice was in sharp contrast to the rousting Missouri awash below the bank.
General Ashley said, yes, it was true that General Leavenworth had failed them all when he refused to press home his advantage after having successfully surrounded the Ree villages above the Grand River and after having killed Chief Grey Eyes on the very first cannon shot. Yes, it was true that the Rees had escaped in the night and that they now were all over the prairies like angry wild bees chased out of their hives and ready to sting anything that moved. Yes, it was true that the Rees’ escape had encouraged even the friendly Mandans to go on the warpath against the whites. Yes, it was true that until the Rees had been taught a lesson the savages all up and down the Missouri would be twice, perhaps a hundred times, as treacherous as before.
But, General Ashley said, but, he was still of a mind to go on with the trapping expedition into the Rocky Mountains.
General Ashley pounded the storebox with a small hard fist, hit it so hard he made even the surly grumblers shut up.
General Ashley had a new plan. He was asking for two sets of volunteers. One set would return with Major Henry to the post on the Yellowstone and the Missouri, the other set under Diah would start directly west for the Black Hills and beyond, with the two companies trapping beaver all through the fall and eventually meeting somewhere near the Big Horn Mountains by the time the winter snows set in.
“Where’ll we get the ponies, Gen’ral?” Jack Larrison called out. Jack Larrison could hardly be blamed for being cautious. During the slaughter on the sand bar before the Ree villages he had somehow become wedged between two dead mustangs and thus had been overlooked by the Rees when they came down to count coup on the dead after the battle. Despite a bad wound Jack didn’t dare move until after dark. A ball had passed through one thigh and had lodged in the other. He bled badly. When darkness at last set in, Jack pried himself out from between the dead mus
tangs. He found the boats gone. They’d retreated far down the river. Jack saw no other chance of escape but to swim the river. He stripped himself of his clothes in the dark and bound up his wounds and took to water. Some Ree women spotted him just as he entered the river and they called out an alarm. Quickly some Ree warriors came out and fired at his bobbing head. But Jack got away. Four days later Jack appeared at the fort as naked as the day he was born. His skin was peeling off him in black strips.
“What was that?” General Ashley said, inclining his head in friendly manner.
“Where do we get the ponies?” Jack Larrison repeated. Jack’s face was still haggard from the experience.
“From our friends the Sioux. They’ve agreed to bring me forty mounts. The horses’ll be here by tomorrow morning. Fresh and frisky.”
“Indian promises,” crippled Joseph Monso grumbled. Ned-hearted Joe sat at Jack Larrison’s left. Both were dead-set against any further adventures into the wild.
“They’ll be here,” General Ashley said, “if I have to get them myself. That’s the least of my worries.”
“What if some of us don’t want to go nohow?” another voice called out from the other side of the crowd.
“I’m not holding any man here against his will. We’re starting from scratch right here and now. What’s happened so far is gone and done. You’re free to return to St. Lou if that’s your mind. One of the keelboats leaves tomorrow with some of Leavenworth’s men, and you can ride down with them. And in another month I myself will take the second keelboat down to Fort Atkinson, and you can come along with me then if you can’t make up your mind today.”
“Suppose we did quit now?” Jack Larrison asked. “Do we still get paid?”
General Ashley’s mild blue eyes flashed. His face shone red in the mellow shade of the cottonwood. “Well . . . yes, I guess so. Though you actually agreed otherwise.”
Silence. Below the bank the Missouri washed rough and rolling. The lone cottonwood’s glossy green leaves cliddered overhead. A single oriole darted silent and golden through the high branches. The sun shone dazzling and white on the dead yellow grass outside the cottonwood’s wide round shadow. The cottonwood and the single bird in it and the men under it held against the sizzing vast wilderness.
Hugh sized up the men. Of the hundred or so who had started out from St. Louis earlier in the year, only fifty were left. The other fifty were either dead, or wounded, or had deserted. Luckily Major Henry’s brigade of fifteen tough hand-picked men with their bark still on were around to buck up what was left.
Hugh saw Jim Clyman near him and his eyes lighted. Hugh was glad to see Clyman had got through alive.
Hugh slid along the dry grass over to Clyman’s side. “Well, lad, I see ye made it to the Packet after all.”
“I did.” Clyman gave a short snort and tossed his dark big head. “But not the way you think.”
“Ae? How’s that?”
“I made it to the Packet the long way home, you might say. I missed the boat. And worse yet, got Gibson killed for tryin’ to save me.”
“No! Tough, that is.”
Clyman told a little about it, small mouth grim, dark blue eyes looking right through Old Hugh. “Gibson jumped in to help me climb aboard a skiff the men had let go. I was still havin’ trouble with my possibles and couldn’t keep afloat. Gibson got me into the skiff all right but got shot doin’ it. We got across the river, too, only to find four Ree braves swimmin’ after us. So I had to leave him wounded in the skiff.”
“What happened then?”
“I started runnin’ with three of the four Rees after me, one t’either side and one behind. Pretty soon I seen I wasn’t goin’ to make it, so when I spotted a little washout in some tall grass just as I come over the top of a hill, I rolled in it. They ran by. I hid out all that night. The next day I went back to the river, and some men aboard the Packet spotted me in the brush.”
“And Gibson?”
“Skulped by the other Ree.”
Hugh shook his head. “Another gone under.”
Clyman said, “Ye goin’ to join up again, Hugh?”
“I might. I’m thinkin’ on it.”
Clyman looked at the dark disgruntled faces around him, at the pork-eating boatmen and the grumbling river roughnecks, and then growled in Hugh’s ear, “The gen’ral ought a take a club to ‘em. They’d soon come to their milk then.”
Old Hugh said slowly, “Wal, Jim, I’ll allow to bein’ a little offish myself since that fix.”
Clyman gave Hugh a disbelieving look.
“Oh, I’ll join the lads all right when the lads need joinin’,” Hugh said quietly. “But I allow myself the right to set on it a night or so.”
General Ashley finished his spieling, and then it was Major Henry’s turn. General Ashley was glad to rest a few minutes. He sat down on his storebox and wiped his sweating face carefully and thoroughly. There were black patches of sweat under the armpits of his blue uniform.
Major Henry was tall, slender, slightly bent in the shoulders. He had a slow calm manner and a commanding presence. His hair was dark and his light eyes were inclined to blue. When he talked, his slightly buckset upper teeth flashed white. Except for his blue army cap, he wore buckskins like the rest of his men. Major Henry was a man of exceeding honesty. Some years back, some of his friends in St. Louis, for whom he had become surety, defaulted on their debts, and he lost a great sum of money. Advised beforehand to put his property in his wife’s name, Major Henry angrily refused; said he preferred living like a poor man if it meant he couldn’t live honest as a rich man. All the mountain men had heard the story and they respected him for it. Some of the men told too how they’d once heard Major Henry play the violin. He hadn’t played it like a fiddle at a shindig either, but like it might be a voice. They told how it sang clear like a mourning dove.
Major Henry said, “While we’re at it, I suppose I should tell you the latest news I’ve just got by runner from the post. All right, General?”
General Ashley nodded.
Major Henry went on. He had a baritone voice that went well with the rushing basso of the Missouri. His upper teeth flashed clean in the shadow of the cottonwood. “First off, I suppose I’d best give you men some of the worst news first. We’ve just got word that Jones and Immel and a small company of men from the opposition, the Missouri Fur Company, were caught in a ravine by Blackfeet. Twenty-nine whites against some four hundred red devils. Jones and Immel and all but five men were killed. The Blackfeet captured twenty-five packs of beaver, got all the horses and mules and all the traps. Bill Gordon and four others managed to get away and they made it through open country, some six hundred miles, back to the forks of the Yellowstone and Missouri.”
At the mention of the Blackfeet, an involuntary sigh rose from the men. Here and there a mouth hung open a second; then snapped shut. Heads rode forward on the neck a little.
“I told ee,” Jack Larrison said, “fightin’ them red devils and gettin’ out alive is unpossible.”
Major Henry went on, baritone voice clear, slow, emphatic. “We think the British are behind it. They’ve had it all their own way up to now. They’ve made many a fortune out of the Blackfoot country, up there high on the Missouri, and of course they don’t want us to cut in on it.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Joseph Monso said, and he got up and stepped quickly to the edge of the Missouri and climbed down out of sight.
All eyes watched Joe go. A few trappers stirred. But the hard eyes of Diah Smith and Jim Clyman and General Ashley and Major Henry stared them down.
“Yes,” Major Henry continued, upper teeth flashing in a neat white row, “yes, the British don’t want us to cut in. And I’ll tell you why. Bill Gordon said he never saw such beaver in all his life. Around the Big Horns and up the far Missouri. Why! Gordon said the beaver was thicker’n lice on a fat dog. There were so many beaver, Gordon said, it was like in a dream. They were there for the taking. Fat and tame. Th
e fur thick and the tail sweet. A man could catch as many as he could set traps for. A hundred a day if he wanted to. A power of beaver.”
John S. Fitzgerald’s eyes half-closed.
“Men, you know the country above the post on the Missouri and Yellowstone. Clean air. So clean meat never spoils. And grass as green as paint. And pines as high as heaven. Wonderful country.”
Young Jim Bridger’s eyes gleamed.
“And the Crow and Shoshone squaws the cleanest gentlest God ever made.”
The baritone voice of the major rose a little above the roushing basso of the wild Missouri. “In the wintertime, trapping done, you can bed down in a draw behind the mountains. There’ll be plenty of sweet cottonwood bark for the ponies there, and squaw to dress your beaver and keep you warm at night, and target shootin’ on the sunny side of the cliffs. And no laws around but your own.”
Again the crew stirred uneasily.
“And talking about law reminds me. Mike Fink is dead.”
Hugh jerked erect. Mike had been an old enemy of Hugh’s. They’d once fought to a bloody draw in a no-holds-barred brawl in a St. Louis tavern. Mike had shot the heel of a Negro for the fun of it and Hugh had come to the Negro’s defense. “Mike dead?” Hugh exclaimed. “No!”
“Yes, Mike is dead,” Major Henry said, nodding. Major Henry told a little about it. Mike had put in a bad winter at the post and in January had gone to live with a lad named Carpenter in a cave along the Missouri River banks. They stayed off by themselves the rest of the winter, emerging finally when spring was well underway. During their hibernation some bad blood had arisen between Mike and the boy Carpenter. Shortly after they came back to the fort, the boy Carpenter became the bosom chum of a man named Talbot. This hurt Mike grievously, since Mike and Talbot never got along. Two weeks ago, Major Henry said, two weeks ago Mike and Carpenter got drunk together, and to prove there was no hard feeling between them, they agreed to an old stunt of theirs, shoot a can of whisky off each other’s head at forty paces. Carpenter had the first shot and knocked the can of whisky off Mike’s head well and good, but he also knocked off Mike’s beavertail cap and grazed his scalp a little. This threw Mike into a sad fit. It was now Mike’s turn to shoot. Carpenter set the can of whisky on his head like Mike had done and shouted for Mike to hurry and take his turn. Carpenter was anxious to get back to the drinking. “I will,” Mike said. “And look ye, Carpenter, my boy. That last shot ye took, that ain’t the way I taught ye to shoot. You missed once, but you won’t miss again.” And with that, Mike fired; the ball cracking through Carpenter’s forehead. Talbot, Carpenter’s new comrade, witnessing the act, immediately raised a cry of “Murder!” and a few days later killed Mike with a horse pistol.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 7
