Rocky Mountain Company

by Wheeler, Richard S.

  All the day she walked toward her people, drawn as surely as the magical compass needle Fitzhugh had shown her pointed north. What medicine white men had a needle that always pointed north? When Sun began fleeing, she paused, seeking a little shelter, a place she might strike a hidden fire and make a tiny cup of broth from her jerky and berries. She eyed the sky anxiously: the one thing she dreaded was a storm, but she saw only transparent air, fading from blue to indigo as Sun slipped into the earth. Shelter didn’t worry her much. With a fire and her poncho over her capote, she’d be warm and dry. She wasn’t as soft as whitemen, and didn’t need the things they did. She’d walked all day and scarcely felt it, and didn’t need much to eat, either. If she found a camping place soon, she’d dig roots and add them to the jerky, and be filled.

  The whinny of a pony ahead arrested her. Swiftly she ducked toward the cottonwoods and slid behind a barrier of red-barked brush, and there she unrolled her white poncho and slid it over her scarlet capote, making herself a spirit-person. She would have to find out who these ones were, creep close. The thought that they might be her own Tsistsistas swelled in her, and she dreamed of swift chatter in her own tongue, naming names and hearing names she knew. But it might not be: she was still farther north and west than they came, except to steal ponies from the Crow or Blackfeet.

  But it might be dogs. She would have to see without being seen. Her pulse rose with the undertaking. If they were seasoned warriors, they might have keener eyes and ears and noses than she. They might read the sudden lift of a pony’s nose, or the rotation of its ears. Sometimes warriors knew without knowing why they knew, their medicine whispering to them, that something lurked beyond the camp, and even what would be found there. And if they were a war party, they might have a sentry posted upon some bluff, who might have long since spotted her in her scarlet capote, walking southward up the Bighorn.

  But this was probably not a horse-stealing party, because those walked on foot and rode stolen ponies home if they were successful. They could be anything. She made swift plans: she would need to see them. If they were enemy dogs, she would slip toward the bluffs to the east for safety. Danger would lurk anywhere on the river bottoms. Up on the bluffs she would circle around them, and camp up there, and as far away as she could get with nightwalking. If they caught her, they might use her, or torture her to death as slowly as possible and count it good. She understood these things without thinking about them.

  It was not yet twilight but color had bled from the world, and the scene about her had turned gray and blue. She saw no fire burning through the naked latticework of cottonwoods and brush, though she studied everything ahead with care. She slid along the edge of a meadow in her gray poncho, easing toward the single sound that had alerted her, the whicker. The valley bent sharply around a headland ahead, and just there she saw horses picketed on the meadow, dark restless shapes, all of them swinging to stare at her. She froze. They would be closely guarded. She counted only four of them, and felt safer at once.

  She walked forward while the ponies watched, and was rewarded by the sight of a small fire that had been hidden by the long shoulder running down from the bluffs. She froze, not wanting her motion to betray her. Several packs lay on the earth below the sheltering mudstone outcrop, and she recognized some of them as baled up beaver plews. A sheet of canvas had been rigged up into a half-shelter in the lee of the bluff and out of the wind. And sitting crosslegged before it was a bearded whiteman. It paralyzed her. Not whitemen. The few that had come in the days of the beaver trapping had left. She would not stop here, then. She never knew how whitemen would behave. But she always knew how tribesmen would conduct themselves. This one terrified her: he wore his brown hair loose over his shoulders, like her own man; and had a great, curly beard streaked with gray. He wore a flappy widebrimmed felt hat, ancient and dirty. She didn’t like his eyes, which peered this way and that, like an evil feather dusting everything in sight. No. She would pass this one, and began to sidle back, so she could head for the bluffs and walk a great circle around this one.

  That’s when an iron hand clamped around her neck from behind, and the other steely arm patted swiftly for weapons and then clamped around her waist.

  “What kinda Injun lady we got here?” the man behind her asked. “Hey, Abner, I catched us a redskin maiden.”

  She didn’t struggle, and didn’t respond. Let them think she didn’t know their tongue. A terrible despair pierced through her as she felt the hard-muscled arms of the one behind her steal her freedom. He walked her firmly, but not violently, into the circle of firelight that oranged a lavender gloom. He loosed her near the fire, but lounged easily, prepared to leap at her if she tried to flee. White dogs, she thought, but wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of talking in their tongue. She wouldn’t be tortured to death, but she might be used and thrown aside by these slinking curs.

  “You fetched us some comp’ny, Zach,” said the one at the fire, slowly eyeing her. “I can’t rightly make out what tribe she is. Can you?”

  The one that had caught her like an eagle snatching a minnow had black hair he’d plaited into two braids, like those of her own people. But he wasn’t one. He was a square-faced white, with a wide mashed nose that had seen many a brawl, and curious brown eyes that peered intently at her.

  Trappers. She saw it now. A pair of them, not unlike her man, and Jamie Dance, with a load of stretched beaverskins and ponies to carry themselves, their catch, and their supplies.

  “Maybe she’s one of Bug’s Boys,” Abner said thoughtfully, his gaze feathering over and around every naked cottonwood in sight. “But I don’t reckon it. They’d have our poor old scalps danglin’ from their lances if they was.”

  Zach tugged aside the poncho, revealing her scarlet capote. “She’s got her a nice outfit, seems like. I don’t reckon she’s alone, though. I guess mebbe we should douse that fire and be a leetle keerful.”

  The one called Abner made sign talk: Who are you? he asked her, and waited easily. She didn’t know whether to answer. But then she made the sign for her people. With her right forefinger she drew three sharp diagonal slashes across her extended left forefinger, and waited proudly. The sign said Cut Arms, the term that all the plain tribes used to describe the Tsistsistas.

  “Why, I reckon we catched us a Cheyenne lady,” said Abner. “And plumb alone. Do you think she’s friendly?”

  * * *

  Robert Campbell drained his coffee cup and peered vacantly through the rain-dashed window of the Planters dining room. Guy knew he was seeing things, remembering rendezvous fifteen hundred miles away in the Rocky Mountains, conjuring up trips down the great rivers in mackinaws, with bales of beaver in the bellies of the boats. Campbell had been there, and had turned that intimate knowledge into a fortune. He’d become the great financier of the opposition, including Dance, Fitzhugh, and Straus.

  “Don’t,” he said at last, his piercing eyes turning at last to Guy Straus, across the white-linened table. “They need you here.”

  Guy sighed. He’d been torn between the need to race up the river and the demands placed upon him by Straus et Fils. He needed also to be on hand to send urgently needed goods out the Santa Fe trail. The Yellowstone operation was only a third of his business. “But they’ll have to build a post. And I want to bring Maxim back down — “

  Campbell smiled bleakly. “The waiting’s terrible, isn’t it? But Guy — don’t go yourself. It’d take four months at least — four months of hardship, danger, and the possibility of illness. You’re a city-bred man. You’d make it up there in good enough weather, but coming down, Guy — what if the river froze? Can Fitzhugh spare the men to build a mackinaw for you, and man it?”

  “But Chouteau’s got Hervey at Cass, and heaven knows — “

  “We in St. Louis wait. And wait,” Campbell said. “It’s part of the fur business. No, Guy. You, too, will learn to wait.”

  Guy grew aware of his own helplessness. He’d done all he could,
selecting men he knew would act wisely. But now doubts caught him: would Brokenleg Fitzhugh be a good man out there? Would he care for Maxim? Would the entire effort collapse and ruin the family wealth?

  “He’s got to build a post somewhere,” Campbell said, intuiting some of what was in Guy’s mind. “That’ll mean delay and difficulty. He can’t possibly be trading. Not with only ten engagés.”

  “There aren’t any other posts they can occupy?”

  Campbell shrugged. “Lisa’s has disappeared. Others burnt.”

  “He wasn’t well equipped for building. He doesn’t even have hardware. Hinges for the gates and doors. Nails. Tools. A drawknife, hammers. A serious omission on our part.”

  “Send them.”

  “An express?”

  “You want information. You also have a unique trade item to send up the river. And if worse comes to worse, you want an experienced man to bring Maxim down the river. But it won’t be cheap.”

  Campbell was alluding to several hundred osage orange sticks, each carefully selected and prime bow wood, a prized item among the northern tribes.

  “The bow wood,” Guy said. “What about blankets?”

  Campbell shook his head. “It’s an odd thing the Lowell companies don’t make them for the trade. The Indians want the point bars, the stripes at either end, and the thick weight. It’d be a waste of space.”

  “But the osage orange bow wood would be worth it?”

  “Who can say? We don’t even know what it’ll fetch. Maybe a stick a robe, maybe two or three. But you’ve almost nothing in them. What’d you figure it — ten cents?”

  “About that. I found a French-Osage to cut them for thirty dollars. That plus some warehousing at Westport.”

  “An express then, Guy. I know a man. Several men. A dollar a day for four months. And more. You’ll need about four packmules. He’ll have his own horse. He can take hardware, tools, and maybe three hundred of the osage orange. Plus his own outfit. Let’s call it five hundred dollars.”

  “That’d raise the price of the bow wood.”

  “Good robe’s worth four in New York.”

  Guy Straus leaned back, wondering if he could stand another five hundred dollar cost on top of everything else. “Robert,” he said. “How sure are you about the bow wood?”

  Campbell shrugged. “You can never tell with the Indians. They prize the wood. They prize the bows. But there’s medicine. If they think it’s bad medicine to buy bow wood from a white man, you’ve hauled those sticks up there for nothing.”

  “They buy trade rifles from us.”

  “No choice. But bows are their own weapons. That’s different.”

  “It might save us. The blankets gone, and all.”

  “For one year, Guy. Until Chouteau catches on.”

  Guy smiles. “Then this is the year. Send me your man, Robert.”

  That very afternoon, one Ambrose Chatillon arrived at the offices of Straus et Fils. The man was wiry and short, and swarthy; so small that doubts flooded Guy.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” he asked.

  “I am twenty years in the mountains.”

  “Who did you work for?”

  “I am a free trapper. I work for Rocky Mountain Fur, some. Sublette brothers. Monsieur Campbell much. I do many things — mostly come and go, like a ghost across the grass.”

  “You’ve run expresses?”

  “Many times out the Platte road. Some times up the Missouri.”

  “How do you deal with Indians — alone out there?”

  “Deal? Deal? They almost never see me. I am a creature of the night, Monsieur Straus. I even like night, eh?”

  “But you’ve had encounters.”

  Chatillon shrugged. “Who has not? I make the gifts. I pour spirits. I show fangs.”

  “What do you think of American Fur — of Chouteau’s outfit?”

  Chatillon’s dark face turned bleak and hard, his liquid brown eyes froze over. “I do not think,” he said quietly. “You are not trusting. If you ask me of this again, you must find another man.”

  “Campbell recommended you,” Guy muttered, chastened. He made up his mind. “I have an express for you. I’m not even sure where it’s going. It’s for Brokenleg Fitzhugh and my company near old Fort Cass, but they’re not at Cass. You’ll have to find them.”

  “Ah, Brokenleg! We made beaver together.”

  It took a while for Guy to explain what he wanted. The last packet of the season would be leaving in a week, as far as Bellevue. Beyond that, water ran too low. Chatillon was to be on board with his own outfit, plus four packmules, plus some selected hardware and tools, and the osage orange, which was to be picked up at Westport, en route.

  “Osage orange sticks, monsieur?”

  “Bow wood. The northern tribes covet it. They haven’t a very good bow wood. We’ll try some trading.”

  Guy was rewarded with a vast smile.

  “Now there’s something else, Monsieur. I need information. I wish to know what is happening, every bit. And not just from letters. I want you to be my eyes and ears. Tell me how many robes they’ve traded. What they are doing for a fort. How far along they are. What they lack. How they’re getting along with the tribes — and which ones. And my Maxim. Everything. His health. Spirits. Worries. You may need to bring him back, Monsieur. And if so — that is something you and Brokenleg must decide — my son is in your hands.”

  The wiry man proved to be a bright listener, grasping his task, asking questions, mastering his mission. Campbell had sent a seasoned, intelligent man.

  “You can handle four packmules?”

  “It is nothing.”

  Guy felt a pang of fear. “Very well, then. Very well.” He couldn’t think of anything to say, and fumbled his words.

  “Ah, Monsieur Straus. Trust Ambrose Chatillon, yes? I will return maybe in January, maybe later.”

  “And if the river’s frozen?”

  “I am a walker, monsieur. And light on a horse.”

  Guy paid him half, gave him papers empowering him to pick up warehoused items at Westport, and gave him carte blanche to pick up hardware that would be needed at a post.

  “Oh, Monsieur Chatillon — there might be a bonus for you.”

  The French Canadian smiled and was shown out by Gregoire. Guy watched him go, half afraid that he had thrown more money away. But he had to trust. He had to trust Robert Campbell’s judgment, and this man.

  Risk, he thought. For years, his firm had operated with minimal risk, exchanging coin and notes. Then with more risk, brokering money and goods. And now with terrible risk, investing in a ruinous business that either broke men or won them a fortune. But he liked it, even though the risk loomed like an evil monster just beyond his vision. Risk. If Fitzhugh could get a dressed robe for a stick of wood, they’d recover most of the loss of the blankets — and profit on the rest. He stared out his window, aching to know the future. Risk added some pepper to his bland life. He knew his father would have been horrified by such a thought.

  Nineteen

  * * *

  Gone. It hurt. Brokenleg glared at the empty camp, finding it smaller and meaner. Something intangible had left it. Life had shrunk down. Dust Devil had brought something he couldn’t quite name, something female to the place, making life good.

  He limped toward the river, mauling his leg on brush and logs, but heedless of the pain. He’d brutalized his leg this day, and had ceased to register it. He crashed through brush that sealed him from the others, from Maxim, from his engagés, and headed for a barren bankside place he knew where eagles fished. Behind him the cottonwoods sealed off the others, and he was alone.

  The hurrying river, burly here, helped him think. Life was like a river, unstoppable, cutting through the canyons of tribulation, flowing leisurely through broad meadows. It gave him an handle on life, seeing all that restless water, coming from somewhere and going somewhere. This strange river drained a vast area, the Wind Rivers and Absaroka
s to the west, and the Big Horns to the east, and changed its name along the way. Far to the south, it had sawed and hammered its way through the very bedrock of the earth, purple and red, in a place where Jim Bridger swore the water ran uphill. He and the other mountain men called it Wind River above that point, and they had rendezvoused near its banks, on the Popo Agie. And before it arrived here, at the confluence, it punched it way through a solemn yellow canyon that could frighten a man witless for no reason at all.

  He watched a yellow leaf ride the current, and knew he could no more stop it than stop her. She’d fetch herself back to her people, purge and sweat herself, consult the shamans, take a new name, and anathematize whitemen forever. He thought she’d loved him, but maybe the Cheyennes didn’t cotton to feelings like that.

  St. Louis had done it, he thought. All that stuff she’d never seen and hadn’t even imagined. She had been like a frightened sparrow there, beating a cage with feathered wings, wanting to fly free. It’d plumb changed her, darkening her mood, cooling her ardor. She’d eyed him narrowly, discovering him among his own kind, scarcely realizing he’d been feeling half caged up too, and itching to escape. It’d damaged something in her, something to do with her pride, her Suhtai heritage, her being at the center of all the secrets and wisdom of the world she had known. She’d become subdued and angry, but he’d reckoned she’d get shut of it once they got up the river again.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen her. She was sixteen winters then, and living in her pa and ma’s lodge, living the chaste life of a Cheyenne maiden waiting to be married. That was up the Tongue a piece, on a creek near the Big Horn Mountains. He and Jamie Dance had come for a visit, a bit of yarning over a fire, and maybe some trading. Dance never went anywheres but he got busy laying out some tobacco or tin looking glasses or ribbons for some pelt or other. And there she was, standing there beside the lodge, taller than the rest, and solemn. It struck him that she was a right pretty child, that one, but she wasn’t laughing and giggling like the other dainty girls, wanting to fetch themselves a ribbon or a glance from the white trappers.