But Brokenleg had grown weary of the interrogation, and was drifting off, eyeing wagons, checking the pile of axes, saws, shovels, kitchen utensils, sacks of beans, coffee, sugar, and all the rest.
“Leave a wagonsheet here,” he said to Trudeau. “That’ll be our camp tent. We’ll unload at Cass, and then send six men back for the rest. That’ll make a strong party, hooked up with the others on the Yellerstone. You take the stuff down to Cass and then come on back here, Trudeau. We got us a post to build before we get so cold we can’t do nothin’.”
“Monsieur, I’d rather face the devil than Hervey. Are you sure — “
“We got this hyar devil by his tail, Trudeau. I’m sure.”
Maxim wasn’t sure at all. He’d lost. He’d been the sixteen-year-old in Fitzhugh’s eyes. He stood sullenly beside the heap of goods on the meadow, watching Trudeau ride off, and the engagés whip the bawling oxen into a lumbering walk back down the Bighorn to its confluence, and then down the Yellowstone.
“Well, Maxim, let’s go pick us a spot to build a post.”
Maxim followed sullenly. As soon as he could he would write a letter to his father, and entrust it to Trudeau. He was the Straus family’s eyes and ears. He couldn’t imagine why his father ever trusted Brokenleg Fitzhugh with so much. They could save some of it by going down the river, now, before it got cold. They could save a lot of it, and maybe get some robes, too, trading as they went. But no . . .
“Now let’s see here, Maxim. A post has got ta be right where lots of Injuns come, sorta convenient to them. It’s got to be up enough from the river so’s it don’t flood, like when icejams bust loose upstream and send a mile-wide sheet boiling down, tearing out cottonwoods and all. Now this hyar plain looks pretty good, don’t you reckon? Lots of meadow for them to pitch lodges. Pony grass. Yonder on the river, lots of cottonwoods and some willow too. Wood for the post. Wood for cookin’ and keepin’ our bones from freezin’ solid. Lots of loose sandstone yonder, easy to pry out.”
“Sandstone?”
“We got to build a fireplace outa somethin’. We didn’t bring no stoves along. Sandstone and mud mortar, makes us a decent fireplace or two, and some chimneys.
“We should go home.”
“Reckon we should? You’re plumb right. We should. We haven’t got the men or the stuff to make forts. But we’ll do her.”
As fast as Fitzhugh talked, he limped along even faster, and Maxim was amazed at the man’s speed. Every little while he stopped, eyed bluffs, studied grass, peered at the nearby woods. At last, he paused on a slight rise, a gentle lift of the meadow perhaps a hundred yards east of the Bighorn River.
“Got her,” he muttered. “What do you think we should name her?”
“Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus,” Maxim said sourly.
“Nah. Too much of a mouthful. Down on the Arkansas, it’s not Bent, St. Vrain and Company Fort, it’s Bent’s Fort. And up there on the Missouri, it isn’t Pratte and Chouteau, or Chouteau and Company, or American Fur Company — she’s Fort Union.”
“Whatever you want. We won’t have anything to trade anyway, since you gave it all to Hervey.”
“Aren’t you a worrywort. I don’t much like calling a trading place a fort. Sounds like some battle. Let’s call her a post. Or house. I always liked that. Hudson’s Bay, they got Rocky Mountain House up younder on the Saskatchewan, and it sorta tickles me. Maybe like Bighorn House. Or Bighorn Post.”
“Whatever you want.”
Fitzhugh laughed. “Go fetch you a sharp ax. And me, too. I got to get it staked out. We don’t have no time for a palisade, knocking down a few hundred trees and skinning them flat on two sides and planting them. No, with all the men we got, we got to build us a big house, you know, for tradin’ and storin’ robes and the like, and then a couple of little houses, and maybe a polefence to keep the livestock in.”
“We should go home.”
Fitzhugh laughed. “You’re going to raise some blisters, boy.”
The thought of cutting down even a single tree, limbing it, dragging it to this site, seemed utterly daunting, once Maxim thought about it. How could they possibly build a whole post with so few men, and most of them gone for another few weeks?
“Mister Fitzhugh,” he said miserably. “We thought there’d be a fort. All we’ll do now is destroy everything my father and grandfather built, with a lot of suffering — more than I can explain to you; you wouldn’t know — over many years.”
Brokenleg paused, obviously aware of Maxim’s misery. “Son,” he said quietly. “It’s lost for sure if we go back. We haven’t got a way to take seven wagonloads back in three wagons; haven’t got replacement livestock when the oxen and mules wear out. If we make us a flatboat to float down the river, we abandon the wagons and livestock. And those mackinaws got a way of crackin’ up and leakin’. Maxim — son — we got us into a hard place, and I’m doin’ all I can to get us out. And besides, son. We’re just gettin’ going. We’re gonna make us a heap, for your pap and mam, and for me and my lady. Your pa’s a rare and fine man. I think the world o’ him. Last thing I’d want to do is give him a hurt. Now fetch the tools, son, and we’ll see what we can do betwixt now and cold weather.”
Twelve
* * *
That warm August morning Brokenleg Fitzhugh was more worried than he let on to Maxim. He hadn’t counted on building a fort. That had been dumb, and he cussed himself, but here he stood, two thousand miles from anywhere, and he had no choice. All he had by way of tools was what he’d brought for maintenance at Fort Cass. A couple of axes for firewood; a maul and wedges; a bit and auger, a good two-man saw, a carpenter’s saw, a crowbar, a chisel and an adze. He didn’t have a nail or a hinge or anything for a roof. He had more axes and hatchets coming in the next load, trade items actually, but he could sell them used as well as new.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. He needed forty or fifty men to build a regular fort, and he had only ten — ten plus a boy and a cripple. And of those, eight would be gone for several weeks, bringing in the next load. He’d sent back enough to make a strong party, well armed, guarding the valuable tradegoods. He’d asked them to bring everything in one trip, even if the wagons groaned under a mountain of goods and the ox and mule teams were abused. And come back slow, sparing the livestock as much as possible. But he wouldn’t see them until September some time. And meanwhile he’d have only himself, Maxim, Trudeau and whichever engagé Trudeau brought with him, and Dust Devil. That plus a few stray horses that would need constant herding.
He expected Trudeau back soon; Hervey would make it easy for them, no doubt. He didn’t trust Hervey, but he’d deal with that later. He’d get over to Cass and keep an eye on his merchandise. But if there was going to be trouble, it’d come at the beginning of January, when they went to fetch their tradegoods. If Hervey shut him out then, there’d be a war. And some repercussions back in St. Louis. But he didn’t figure it that way: out here in a wild land, traders followed certain semi-honorable codes, and Fitzhugh was counting on them.
He was going to have to make himself the post hunter, and the engagés might resent it. But with his bad leg he wouldn’t be much good at building, and he knew more about bringing home meat than most of them. Keeping ten hardworking men well fed when they were toiling from dawn to after dark would be a task in itself, and by the time he sawed up buffalo or elk into quarters and packed or dragged it back each day, he’d be as weary as the rest.
He limped across the open meadows, feeling the sun warm him and zephyrs toy with his red hair, enjoying the fine summer day. He wanted to inspect the cottonwood groves close to the river, see where to start cutting. He was juggling so many ideas in his head that it ached. He didn’t even know what sort of place to build, but he knew he lacked the men to put up a regular stockaded fort with bastions and buildings within. It’d have to be something simple, where they could store tradegoods and robes; a base they’d need, even if they did their trading out in the villages,
hauling wagons out to the winter camps. By God, he wouldn’t even be trading for the first robe until after the beginning of the year! But maybe that wasn’t so bad; he’d start trading just about when Chouteau’s outfit would start running low on tradegoods. The forts were usually cleaned out by March or April, right down to the bedsheets. No, maybe it wasn’t so bad to start trading late.
Everywhere he trudged along the river, the cottonwoods towered majestically, with trunks three feet in diameter, dividing crookedly into thick limbs that erupted outward toward a giant crown of leaves. The sight dismayed him. It’d take several men with several axes a whole day to fell one of these lords, and then the logs would be too big to drag to the site, hoist, and fit into a wall. Some willows nearby looked better, but they were too few. Dourly he stared at the unpromising groves, wondering if he’d have to move upstream, to a different meadow.
Maxim showed up carrying two axes, and looking solemnly at the noble trees.
“This hyar’s not good for building a post, boy,” Brokenleg said. “Too big and too crooked. We may be needing to move a piece.”
Maxim looked relieved.
“Well, let’s see what we got for rock,” he muttered, limping away from the river toward the tan sandstone bluffs a quarter of a mile distant. His leg bothered him. It always did, but he swore it hurt more when he was puzzling things out, as if his brains were in his bad knee. They passed the supplies lying nakedly in the grass, while Dust Devil watched them skeptically, and trudged slowly up a soft grassy grade toward the rock. “Watch out for rattlers. This here’s what they roost in when they’re in rattler heaven.”
Maxim walked warily.
Fitzhugh liked what he saw. At every hand he found stratified rock, weathered and rotted loose by frost and water and wind, lying in slabs that were there for the taking. More tan treasure than he could ever use. Enough, laid up with mud mortar, for good strong wind-tight walls; enough for a flagstone floor some day. And best of all, something that could be laid up almost without tools. “I think we’re going to build us the Bighorn House outa rock. I think we can lay up more good wall in a day than if we wrestle them giants down.”
“There’s nothing here!” cried Maxim. “How can we build a house out of nothing? Where’s the windows?”
“Oh, we won’t have real glass windows, at least not this year, boy. We’re gonna have them someday, though. But we’ll have windows, and they’ll let light in; light enough, anyway.”
Fitzhugh was getting notional the longer he stared at the loose rock. A building grew in his mind, a long rectangle with yellow rock walls and wide fireplaces at either end, a peaked roof with a good layer of sod over the poles since he lacked nails and anything else to build a nice shake roof. Maybe the following year they could strip the sod off and make a better roof. But this year, his choices ran from bad to desperate.
Maxim grasped a slab of sandstone and tried to lift it, but couldn’t. He wobbled it but couldn’t even raise it an inch. He turned to Brokenleg, a question in his eyes.
“Oh, you’re goin’ to be the mud boy. The mortar man. We’ll have some strong men here to pry these loose; haul them on a stoneboat — gotta build a couple of stoneboats — and you’ll be there at the post, mixin’ mud faster than they can lay it up.”
“Will mud work?”
“Well, we don’t have lime for mortar. When settlers chink up a log cabin, they throw in some horse manure, and maybe grass, to make it stronger. But this clay’s all we got, and that’s what we’ll use with the stone.”
“I could do that.”
“You’ll be plumb sick o’ running mud, but yes, Maxim, you could do that. We got to build a few tools today. A couple of stoneboats, and dig a pit near the river where you can mix up mud, real nice, accordin’ to yur fanciest Frenchie recipe, and haul buckets. I got to make some wooden trowels, too, to spread the stuff.”
“Have we got buckets?”
“One here, and a couple comin’ in with the load.”
For the first time, Fitzhugh thought, Maxim didn’t look completely overwhelmed. “I reckon we can have the walls up by the end of October, and we can hang some wagonsheets for a roof over part of it whiles we roof the other. There’s lots of yeller jackpine up yonder, and that’ll make good roofpoles — not straight like lodgepole, but good enough.”
“What’ll the inside be like, Brokenleg?”
“Why, I reckon we’ll have the tradin’ room over on one side, and storage for robes behind it; and the other side, we’ll all squeeze in for bunking and cooking. That’s why we’ll have a fireplace each end, one for the business area, one for the livin’. Then we’ll have to build us some pens out back for the stock — and lots of stuff. Sheds and all. And that don’t cover half of it. We got to cut hay off these flats and get in firewood afore we get snowed under.”
Off to the north, he spotted two horsemen approaching slowly and he realized he didn’t have his Hawken in hand, and thus had violated the most basic rule of survival.
“Let’s git,” he said sharply, limping toward Dust Devil’s little camp.
“That’s the first rule,” he muttered to Maxim. “And I plumb forgot it, my head’s so full. You don’t go anywhere without you got yur rifle. Mostly this hyar is friendly country — Crow people. But it just could be Bug’s Boys, and they could just take a fancy to your topknot.”
“Bug’s Boys?”
“The Devil’s Boys. Blackfeet. Sorta everyone’s enemy around hyar. Including us, unless maybe we can try some tradin’. But they dicker mostly with Hudson’s Bay up in British country, and some with American Fur, and use all that lead and powder they git on the rest of us.”
“How’ll I know?”
“I can’t rightly explain now, but you’ll learn soon enough, or leave your scalp on a medicine tripod.”
The lead horseman was Trudeau. He had Emile Gallard with him. Gallard always evoked thoughts as elusive and fragile as the dust on butterfly wings, something he could never pin down in his head. He wondered at Trudeau’s choice — whether there had been design in it.
He found his Hawken back at the camp, propped up against the cask labeled vinegar, just where he’d left it. He lifted it anyway, just to get rid of the naked feeling that beset him when his fingers had nothing but air to grasp.
Trudeau pulled up, and slid off the gaunt pony. “Ah, Monsieur, it is done. We unloaded the wagons, and I have sent them on their way, as you instructed.”
“Hervey cause you trouble?”
“Non, Monsieur. He just stand and smile like a cat, and peek at everything we pull out of the wagons. We haul it all into the warehouse, into the rear corner, and then we do the division. We count the bolts of tradecloth, and he takes a tenth. Sacre bleu! He takes the best colors! Red! We count the kettles, and he takes a tenth. I stand and grieve, watching his engagés take away the tenth into the trading room. He asks where the trade blankets are, and I say we lost them, and he says, is that so, and I nod, and he smiles like a man making love to a virgin. But after we are all done, I make him sign the paper, that he is storing the rest — the inventory list here — and he takes away the tenth. It is what you wished?”
Fitzhugh examined the inventory list, and Julius Hervey’s signature on the receipt, and the separate list of Hervey’s share. Brokenleg sighed. American Fur was now back in business, and using Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus trade items. It irked him, and filled him with a helplessness against the ironies of fate. He nodded curtly.
“The wagons are off? The men well armed and provisioned? The wagons and stock in proper condition?”
“Oui, Monsieur. And I bring Gallard here because he is strong and can help make the fort.”
“But he’s our best teamster — has a way with the oxen, Trudeau.”
Trudeau shrugged. “Ah, indeed. But I think to myself, here is a man to build a post, n’est-ce pas?”
Something lay unsaid in all this, but whatever it was, Fitzhugh couldn’t fathom it.
“All right then. Hyar’s what we’re going to do,” he said.
* * *
They toiled through the hot August days making pitiful progress. Everything had gone harder than Brokenleg had visualized. Just making the stoneboats turned into an ordeal because they lacked bolts or nails to anchor any sort of platform or crosspieces to the runners. But they had rawhide, and a bit and auger to drive in pegs, and gradually the two cumbersome sleds took shape.
He put Trudeau and Gallard to work at the bluff, prying rock loose and knocking the larger pieces into smaller ones with the maul so they could be handled. Maxim learned to drive the horse dragging the stoneboat. And Fitzhugh, along with Maxim, tumbled the rock off the stoneboat at the building site, chafing their hands in the process. The result seemed pitiful. A stoneboat worked well in the winter, on frozen ground, snow or ice, but not on dry meadow. So the dray couldn’t pull as much, and the pile of rock pried loose by the engagés grew faster than the rock at the building site.
Each time Fitzhugh helped Maxim drag the rock off the stoneboat, his bum leg tortured him. The mid-day August heat sucked water out of them all, and hung oppressively in the valley, but Dust Devil didn’t come bearing cold river water. In fact, she disdained the whole business, and tended camp silently, glaring at the sweating, slaving whitemen around her as if they were mad. There were times, too, when Fitzhugh had to saddle up and make meat, and when the hunting went badly he disappeared all day, further slowing the progress. And yet, in spite of their difficulties, the heaps of dun slab rock piled along the site of future walls grew bit by bit. Brokenleg wanted a mountain of it ready, within easy reach, for the time when they all laid up the walls.
And so they labored, from before dawn until darkness choked off their progress. But even then work didn’t cease. Maxim learned to wipe down his weary horse and balm the flesh with tallow where the harness had chafed it. And each morning, the boy had to unhobble the horse, brush it carefully, and begin the long business of harnessing, easing on the collar, the surcingle, the tugs, the bridle and reins. Maxim worked silently, his skinny frame growing even thinner under the terrible duress of brute labor. Fitzhugh watched, worried, because the lad’s spirit had sunk back inside somewhere, and no one had the faintest idea what Maxim was thinking. Fitzhugh’s days didn’t end with the darkness and cool either. Often after his evening meal, he stood on his aching legs, got an ax, and trudged down to the wood areas along the river to girdle trees. They’d need dry wood later.
Rocky Mountain Company Page 13
