They toiled by firelight again deep into the ominous night, until the earth resisted their spades and exhaustion slowed the work. When at last they surrendered, the final hewn pole had been lashed place, but a third of the roof lacked its sod topping. He didn’t sleep much; worry haunted him, along with some deep mountaineers’s instinct that the chinook had run its course. A different air had begun to eddy in, sharper and moister.
He reckoned it was only four or five when he rousted them out. The silent engagés had barely rested, but none complained. The air had definitely changed.
“Maxim,” he said, “build a bunch of small fires around the sod. That clay isn’t froze up too bad.”
He labored alongside the rest, feeling his muscles complain, measuring his weariness against the haggard faces he saw around him. The frosted earth yielded swiftly to the fires, even while a northwind eddied icy air into their valley. Two men sickled sedges, having to go farther and farther upriver for each load, while the rest greeted dawn with brutal labor, dragging half-frozen earth to the roof, and stamping it down. Dawn broke under an ominous overcast, the sun gold and bright for half an hour, painting the world with its last gasp only to vanish as King Winter ruled again. By noon of that raw, gray day, they jammed the last of the sod into place on the eave overhanging the far wall. Without stopping, they sawed and adzed frames for the small windows and the two doors. While the light faded, that bleak December day, they were hanging two crude doors held together with whittled pegs, on leather hinges anchored with horseshoe nails, and hanging thick shutters on the windowframes.
Inside, twin fires roaring in the wide fireplaces at either end warmed the long, weather-sealed room a little, but the long cold rectangle sucked up the heat. Engagés gathered around the merry fires, warming hands and backsides, grinning and joking, and pretending they weren’t starved when Maxim poured sugared coffee into their tin cups.
It was mid-December, not far from Christmas.
“Hyar now,” he cried. “We got something to celebrate.”
Twenty-Two
* * *
When dawn came Little Whirlwind walked along the Crazy Woman in her dazzling red capote, wanting to be seen. She feared the Absaroka, who might catch her here and torture or enslave her. But this land was shared by her people, the Tsistsistas, and the Lakota, their allies. Her people sometimes wintered here, on the northern edge of the world they made their home, because game was abundant, and buffalo often wintered in the bottoms of the prairie streams.
If she met Lakota, they would take her to their village and make her welcome, and some would speak her tongue and tell her where her own band had wintered. And if she met Tsistsistas, she would learn at once. So she walked down the cupped valley of the Crazy Woman, en route to its confluence with the Powder, and hoped to meet someone. She knew her strength had ebbed dangerously, and maybe the lung sickness would consume her. But she gained nothing staying still, so she put one moccasin ahead of the other, and pushed into arctic wind that quartered into her from her left.
For half a cloudy day she walked alone. But some time after she had rested her cold legs, she discovered two horsemen ahead of her, coming at a trot. She stood calmly, awaiting her fate, her scarlet coat a banner on a gray day. Two young men with broad faces and prominent cheeks, lightly dressed considering the weather, pulled up on shaggy ponies. They’d been hunting, and had a doe slung over the back of one uneasy pony. She studied them even as they examined her, and the knowing came from the style of their moccasins, the dye marks just below the fletching of the arrows poking from their quivers, and the quillwork designs. Her people. But they were slower to react, and she knew it was because she wore costly trader’s things.
“I am Little Whirlwind of the Suhtai,” she said in her own tongue, and they exclaimed. Who among all the Cheyenne people had not heard of this daughter of One Leg Eagle and Antelope who had married the white trapper?
“Ah, we did not know for sure. You aren’t dressed the way the People do.”
“I wish to be taken to my village, and the lodge of my mother and father.”
“It’s half a day’s ride. Our own is back where we were heading. You didn’t see it? This is a good thing. I am Lame Buffalo Calf and this is Laughing Coyote.”
The one who’d greeted her slid from his pony and helped her up, ahead of the slain doe. She had to hike her skirts to sit on the pad saddle, but her capote kept her legs warm. He trotted ahead tirelessly as they rode toward the village of White Wolf. She bounced along, feeling no hurt, because her spirits sang, and crow-bird had led her truly.
Near dusk the village wolf-police discovered them, and let the threesome pass, sharp interest in their faces. Moments later, the village crier swept ahead of them, announcing the arrival of Little Whirlwind and young men from Blue Heron’s band up the creek.
Oh, the joy of it! Here stood the lodges of her people, their cowhide sides golden with the fires burning within, their tops blackened and bleeding blue smoke, which drifted southward. They formed a crescent in a park on a wooden flat beside the creek, well shielded from the winds. Heads poked out of lodge doors, and the People watched as she rode by, eyes beaming, recognizing her in her scarlet capote. Some she knew, and she cried out to them as her shaggy pony clopped past. She would see them later, but before that she would greet Chief White Wolf, as custom required.
Furry gray dogs circled the procession, bolting around lodges, overturning medicine tripods thick with black-haired scalps, barking a welcome and begging scraps. But few people stirred because of the bitter cold of the Hard Face Moon, and the endless night. Only the village women braved weather like this, in their perpetual quest for firewood they cut with whitemen’s steel hatchets. She saw red and white quarters of frozen buffalo hanging from heavy tripods, and knew her village was fat this winter, and the sacred buffalo, Pte, had given their spirits to the People. The cottonwoods nearby were alive with ponies, making a living from bark and twigs.
The young chief did not keep her waiting in the cold, but beckoned her inside his lodge. Little Whirlwind enjoyed the smack of warmth within the cone, produced by a tiny fire at its center. In this relatively permanent winter encampment, the lodgefloor was covered with old buffalo robes, and sleeping pallets and mats lay well above the earth and its grinding cold. But she realized her people could not walk about their lodges in light clothing, as the white people in St. Louis did in the middle of winter.
He motioned her to the place in the lodge where women sat, and she settled herself beside the chief’s wife. He eyed her a while, saying nothing, studying her bright capote. “You have come to visit us, Little Whirlwind. And what of your man?”
“He is building a trading post on the Yellowstone,” she replied.
White Wolf nodded, saying nothing. “He has sent you,” the chief said at last.
“I have come to visit my mother and father.”
“Your man did not send you.”
It was her turn to say nothing. The sudden warmth was making her sleepy.
“Why does he make a post there, in the land of the Absaroka? It is far from us.”
“I asked him to come here to trade.”
“He will trade with the Crow, then. Will he trade rifles and powder and knives for robes?”
“Yes. He was going to make Fort Cass his trading post. But American Fur came back, and he is building one nearby.”
“It is where the Crows trade,” White Wolf said solemnly. “Does Brokenleg Fitzhugh no longer care about the people of his wife?”
“He said he would come with wagons to trade,” she said.
“Have you left him?”
“I don’t know. My medicine was no good there, with him.”
He nodded. “You’ll see your Suhtai relatives and learn about your medicine. Are you staying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me everything about this new post and what we may get for our robes, and what he has to trade, and who is with him. And eve
rything about Fort Cass as well.”
She wished to leave. She wished to find the lodge of her parents and eat a large bowl of buffalo stew and make herself strong. She wished to be among her Suhtai, not with this Omissis chief. But she could not leave, and he would hear all the news, and ask questions, because it would be a matter for the headmen and shamans. For only ten winters had the Suhtai shared camp with the Tsistsistas, and she didn’t forget that. She eyed this chief with a certain hauteur.
She told him everything. She told him about St. Louis, knowing he wouldn’t believe any of it. None of her people would believe what she had seen with her own eyes. She told him about the Buffalo Company, and coming up the great river on the steam boat, with a mountain of tradegoods, wagons, horses, oxen, and those whitemen called French. She told him how the blankets had vanished, and about the long trip in wagons to Fort Cass, and what they found there. And how her man had been defeated at every hand, and ignored her wishes to bring everything here, to the People.
“I think he needs the river to bring those things,” White Wolf said. “You did wrong, nagging him. We can go to the Yellowstone to trade.”
She felt rebuked. A chief ’s rebuke weighed heavily, even if he was Omissis. She ached to escape and join her people but strict duty required that she continue. She told him of the Crow horse theft, and Fitzhugh’s suspicions about it.
“They have no horses or oxen to draw the wagons? How will they get their things from their enemies at Fort Cass?”
She remained silent.
“This is a serious thing. They have taken or killed the horses for his wagons. Maybe the Crow will get those rifles. We have many robes here. Many buffalo. More than can be counted. But the posts are a long way away. Laramie, far to the south, Fort Union far to the north where we would be in danger from the Cree and Assiniboin and Blackfeet. I will think about these things. We will have a council.”
She said nothing. He eyed her sharply. “Are you leaving your man or are you going back? I must know that.”
“I will consult with the medicine man,” she said, her voice combative.
He did not dismiss her. “Fitzhugh is no longer a trapper; he is a rich trader, willing to take our robes and give us things we need. What you do concerns the People. You will think long and hard about the good of the People,” he said.
It was a command. With a nod, he dismissed her.
She whirled out, no smile on her face, into snow. It surprised her. The young hunters who had escorted her had vanished, no doubt into the lodges of friends in this village. The people who had followed her to the chief ’s lodge had vanished in the whirl of white.
Home! Everything she saw lifted her heart. About her lodges glowed, the fires radiating amber light through the lodgecovers, sweet against the lavender sky. The whirl of wet air captured the smell of cooking buffalo meat, tongue and hump, or white backfat, a prized delicacy, flavoring a stew. And in the midst of these happy smells lay the acrid one of cottonwood smoke, not as aromatic as pine or juniper.
She knew where her parents’ lodge would be: winter villages were established in a certain order. She walked swiftly that way, knowing they had heard and would be waiting. White Wolf’s village would have about sixty lodges, six times the fingers on her hands, and each would house five or six of the People. Her band was strong, with many great warriors, the best of all.
She wove between the cones along Cheyenne streets better lit than the ones of St. Louis, each lodge a gentle amber lantern in the dark. She found the one her parents owned, its white and ochre horse designs faintly visible on its snow-crusted sides. She scratched the lodgedoor softly, joy building within her. Here she would find her mother and father; her grandfather the medicine man; a sister, Sweet Smoke, and perhaps one of her unmarried brothers, Night Runner, or both. A married brother, Badger Nose, lived with his wife’s people.
Her mother slid the flap aside and bid her in. In the soft glow of a tiny fire she found them all, waiting, their faces alive with welcome. They would listen to her describe her journey, and learn of honor or dishonor, divorce or marriage, and the omens good and bad, before all else, such as rejoicing. She took her place, the daughter’s place, and stared back proudly at them, letting the snow on her scarlet capote melt into beads. She forgot her need for food and rest; the esteem of her people and her grandfather would have to be won.
* * *
No food again. Brokenleg stared helplessly at his engagés, who were awaiting the day’s instructions. Feeding twelve people had become impossible. They’d had only coffee that morning. Even the sugar was gone.
“Trudeau,” he said. “I’m going to Cass and palaver with Hervey. We’ve got plenty of staples in their warehouse, but no way to bring them here — but maybe I can hire it done.”
“Some of us should hunt, monsieur.”
“Yes. Send as many out as you see fit. Put others on firewood. And the rest to making a comfortable post out of this cave.”
He waved his hand at a cavernous rectangle, ill-lit by fires because no window shutters were open. They were far from done: a trading room with shelves had to be carved out of one side, and behind it a warehouse for robes. And on the other side of the building, an engagés’ barracks and kitchen, with bunks, plus private quarters for himself and Dust Devil — if he ever saw her again — along with an office. Another month of work, even without the brutal labor of cutting and chopping enough firewood to keep two huge fireplaces roaring.
“It is exactly as I would do it, monsieur.” Trudeau turned to the unhappy engagés and began issuing directions in voluble French. Their stomachs pinched as empty as his own, and some of the Creoles looked gaunt.
“Any kind of food — not just meat, Trudeau. Fish. Any roots they can pry out of the river. Birds. You know.”
Trudeau nodded. Men began clambering into capotes and hats and gloves.
“Maxim — you want to come with me to Cass?”
The boy was obviously suffering even more than the men, but he had contained everything tightly inside, determined not even to whimper. Brokenleg liked that in him.
“I’ll come,” he said tautly.
“I may need help. Four miles on my bum leg is a lot. And if we have to carry some vittles back, I need you for a mule.”
Fitzhugh and Maxim headed out into a vicious cold that lacerated their lungs and made breathing hard. Two or three inches of squeaky snow dimpled the ground, enough so maybe they could skid something back from Cass. Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus stored large quantities of staples there, beans, flour, sugar, intended for both trade and the fort’s commissary. He glanced longingly at the wagons, hulking useless at the side of the post, and set off. With a little luck he’d have some horses.
The more he limped, the less he noticed his pain, but the air bit his face and frosted his beard, turning it white. The boy looked miserable, gasping cold air that wouldn’t go down his gullet, each breath steaming.
“We’ll get us warmed up in a bit, Maxim. And we got the blow pushing on our tails comin’ back.”
“I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about Julius Hervey.”
“Oh, he’s a devil. But I got this hyar devil-chaser,” he said, waggling his Hawken.
“He won’t let us have anything.”
“He might say it, but I got ways of persuadin’.”
“What?”
“I got a couple of friends in there. Slicker than Injuns with knives and ’hawks. And besides, Hervey’s not so bad. Just when he’s drinking he’s bad. And he’s got bosses, y’know. He can get hisself booted out of the comp’ny. Your pa, back there in St. Louis, he’s got a few levers to pull with old Chouteau. And I got me a few levers to pull, too. Old Alec Culbertson up yonder knows how the stick floats.”
“What does that mean?”
“Beaver talk. If there’s a beaver down in the trap, the stick’s floatin’.”
“Hervey won’t let you in.”
“Haw. He’ll clap a hand around
my shoulders like I was some long-lost brother. That’s winter, boy. That’s how fur men git themselves through the long dark.”
The river had frozen over, maybe enough to walk on. But he stuck to the trail that ran nearby, through a latticework of black branches meshed into a gray heaven. He stopped periodically, more to let the boy rest than to pamper his game leg. In fact, the cold just stiffened his hip worse when he wasn’t swinging that ungainly leg ahead of him constantly.
The trail swung east, paralleling the Yellowstone, and then Fort Cass loomed before them, silvery in the dull light, bleeding smoke from all its pores like some dragon. Only half a dozen tawny Crow lodges clustered there, all of them belching pillars of smoke, their flaps fastened tight. There’d be no trading at all on a day like this one, he thought.
The trading window was shuttered and the gates closed, but they’d come running, he knew. Anything for a robe or two. He banged heavily on the gate, the noise magnified by the heavy air. Maxim looked upset. Brokenleg banged again, imperiously, announcing his presence upon this bitter day.
The trading window shutters creaked open and Hervey himself peered out.
“You,” he said, a sudden grin widening his lips.
“I come to fetch us some of our goods, Julius.”
Hervey laughed. “I told you you’d never see them again.”
Rocky Mountain Company Page 24