Going Home
Page 28
“But I feel bad, and I’ve lost a friend.”
Drips stopped, peered into the crystal river as if to discern the future in its waters.
“Mister Skye, you are well known as a veteran, resourceful, and gifted mountaineer. I’ve been watching for years, but never more so than this rendezvous. You’ve survived circumstances that would put other men under. You’re a natural leader. We need you. We’ve lost our best brigade leader, Vanderburgh, and I’ve settled on you to replace him. Would you consider an offer?”
“I would, sir.”
“You would be our brigade leader, second only to me. I’m in charge of all the mountain operations. We’ll pay you five hundred a year, deposited in St. Louis, plus your outfit. You’ll avoid trouble as much as possible, gather peltries, and see to getting them either to McKenzie at Fort Union, or here, where we can pack them back. I’ll be with you much of the time but at the post in the winter.”
“We accept, sir.”
“We?”
“Victoria, this dog of mine, and me.”
“Good, good. We’ve good relations with the Crows. We even have good relations with dogs.”
He laughed. Skye knew he was going to like this graying man. He knew that Drips had been born in Pennsylvania in 1789, worked in the fur trade since 1820, and was much admired. At age forty-four, he was a decade older than most of the three hundred white men gathered across the bleak prairie cut by the Green River.
Five hundred was good money.
They drifted back to the American Fur Company store, where mountaineers traded peltries for jugs of whiskey, if that is what pure grain spirits, mixed with water and flavored with a plug of tobacco and a little pepper could be called. Here, spread over the grass or on makeshift tables, were bright bolts of flannel, iron traps, bits and bridles, packframes, thick blankets bearing two to four stripes that indicated their weight; here were shining mountain rifles, powder, awls, knives, canvas, gaudy calicos, powder horns, spare flintlocks, percussion caps, vermillion, beads, bells, mirrors, and all the foofaraw with which to trade with the tribes.
“Mister Skye, let me introduce you around—Pete Fontenelle especially, my right-hand man—and then you just take what you need on account. Outfitting items we’ll provide; drink and other items, such as gifts for your wife, we’ll post against your earnings. Later, we’ll make some plans for the next campaign, and you’ll let us know what you have in mind. We’ve forty trappers, more or less, plus more men at Fort Union.”
Just like that. It was as if all this had been destined by some hand of Fate. As if Andrew Drips had decided on Skye long before Skye arrived at rendezvous. As if a man without a country had been given a home once again, and esteemed not for his connections or ties, but solely for his abilities in the mountains and among men.
Skye accepted the trust and esteem accorded to him.
Drips left him there. Skye ducked under the canvas shelter of the store, watching rain slide off the edges of the canvas. What riches lay at hand! All this meant warmth, dry feet, sugar for his sweet tooth, coffee and tea to hearten a man in icy weather, a caplock rifle to replace his flintlock, which usually didn’t fire in rain; powder, lead pigs and balls, woolen long underwear, skeins of beads for Victoria and anything else to delight her heart. Oh, good times were coming!
The rain lifted and he beheld a sinking sun gilding the grassy flats, poking under the pancake clouds and silvering their edges. To the west the clear blue sky promised a great day, a sky warm and transparent and infinite. A sky as wild as the land, without ceilings or the cramping of clouds.
He patrolled the Crow lodges where smiling Absaroka people nodded to him, watched fresh-killed elk roast over fires. An evening breeze swept away the moisture. He found Victoria with some Crow women sitting in a circle and gossiping.
She rose at once, and he led her back to the American Fur Company store.
“I’m a brigade leader with AMC,” he said. “Quite a talk with Drips. We’ll have everything we could ever want. Tomorrow, I’ll get a good caplock rifle, and you’ll get my flintlock.”
She eyed him, a faint expectant smile twisting up the corners of her mouth. “And tonight, Mister Skye?”
“Well, I was getting to that,” he said.
He stopped at the rude bench, a plank atop two stumps, where a clerk was doling out trade whiskey.
“One gallon, Mr. Privet,” he said. “Put it on account. Also, two tin cups and a jug if you have one.”
“No jugs, sir, too heavy, but I could lend you a kettle.”
“That would be just fine, Mr. Privet. One measured gallon, one kettle, and two tin cups. Put the gallon on my account and we’ll return the kettle and cups.”
“Very well, Skye.”
“It’s Mister Skye, mate.”
“Sonofabitch,” said Victoria. “Tonight, the rendezvous begins.”
No Name laid back on its haunches and howled.
By Richard S. Wheeler from Tom Doherty Associates
SKYE’S WEST
Sun River
Bannack
The Far Tribes
Yellowstone
Bitterroot
Sundance
Wind River
Santa Fe
Rendezvous
Dark Passage
Going Home
Downriver
The Deliverance
The Fire Arrow
The Canyon of Bones
Virgin River
North Star
The Owl Hunt
Aftershocks
Badlands
The Buffalo Commons
Cashbox
Eclipse
The Fields of Eden
Fool’s Coach
Goldfield
Masterson
Montana Hitch
An Obituary for Major Reno
Second Lives
Sierra
Snowbound
Sun Mountain: A Comstock Novel
Where the River Runs
SAM FLINT
Flint’s Gift
Flint’s Truth
Flint’s Honor
PRAISE FOR RICHARD S.WHEELER
“Wheeler has a gift for creating believable, convincing characters, and Skye and Victoria are two of his best frontier portrayals. It is their devoted relationship and shared trepidation about the white man’s world that endear the reader to this enduring series. The next installment will be much anticipated.”
—Publishers Weekly on Going Home
“All of the details and characters ring true … . The pacing of the novel is impeccable. He blends the various white and Indian cultures together into a believable world with never a false beat. Dark Passage is well worth reading.”
—The Missoulian
“More than just an entertaining frontier adventure … . A love story told in terms as ruggedly beautiful as the mountain country in which it is set … . A Western Writers of America Spur Award winner. Wheeler has a sharp eye for detail and writes prose worth savoring.”
—Booklist on Dark Passage
“An exciting story of a young man coming of age and growing into a reality greater than his dreams.”
—Roundup Magazine on Rendezvous
“[Skye] has enough adventures to satisfy the most discerning Western fan, and they ring surprisingly true.”
—The Lincoln Journal Star on Rendezvous
“Wheeler is a genius of structure and form.”
—El Paso Herald-Post
“Wheeler is among the two or three top living writers of western historicals—if not the best.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Wheeler continues to be one of the best of the western novelist/historians.”
—Salt Lake City Observer
Author’s Note
Most of the fur trade characters in this story were real people. All the Californios are fictional. Dr. John McLoughlin was a formidable force in the Hudson’s Bay Company at the time of this story, and he a
nd his wife and James Douglas are portrayed accurately.
Nat Wyeth, the inventive Boston ice merchant, met defeat time after time, and yet remains a major figure of the era, and perhaps the most important reason that the Oregon country is now under the American flag.
Peter Skene Ogden was the most formidable of the HBC men, and I have portrayed him as he was. He did not, however, attend the rendezvous where I have placed him. He was at that time far to the north, dealing with the Russians.
Professor Nutmeg is loosely based on the British naturalist Thomas Nuttall, whose trips west, one of them with Wyeth, contributed greatly to North American botany. He was as careless about his safety as his fictional counterpart, but survived.
—RICHARD S. WHEELER
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
GOING HOME
Copyright © 2000 by Richard S. Wheeler
All rights reserved.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781466820609
First eBook Edition : April 2012
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-031525
First Edition: Decenber 2000
First Mass Market Edition: November 2001