“At least I didn’t get myself caught by a Blackfoot war party like someone I could mention,” Nate interjected.
“Who?” Zach asked.
Shakespeare coughed and quickly went on. “That’s not important. What matters is that you don’t let a little accident now and then get you down in the doldrums.” He rested a hand on the boy’s arm. “This is in thee a nature but infected, a poor unmanly melancholy sprung from change of fortune.”
“What?”
Sadly shaking his head, Nate squatted and picked up a tin cup. “I do wish you’d use common English with him, Shakespeare. He never understands when you warble like the bard.”
“Warbling, is it now?” the mountain man responded a bit testily. He quoted from another play. “When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.”
Nate shrugged. “I never was one much for rhyme and all that. Give me a Cooper novel any day and I’m content.”
“James Fenimore Cooper,” Shakespeare spat, and reverted to the trapper vernacular. “That long-winded varmint! He’s more in love with words than he is with life. Old William S., on the other hand, was a man who knew people. Knew the way they think, knew the way they act. He saw right through them and wrote the truth. Cooper? He’s a literary flash in the pan compared to William S.”
“I’ve read all of Cooper’s books and I don’t recollect coming across a lie in any of them,” Nate countered. As with many of the free trappers, reading was one of his favorite pastimes, especially during the long winter months when the cold and the snow drove everyone indoors. A good book helped pass the hours pleasurably. Naturally, every trapper had an author he liked more than other writers, and heated arguments over the merits of each often arose. Some, like McNair, were partial to Shakespeare, although none had gone to the trouble he had to memorize all of a dozen plays. Some preferred Byron, some Scott. A few would read the Bible and nothing else. Nate often thought that many of the good citizens back in the States, who tended to view trappers as illiterate savages little better than the Indians those citizens despised so much, would have been shocked to learn the truth.
Leaning back against his saddle, he sipped his coffee and contentedly watched Winona and Zach talking in low tones. The boy was happier, and under Winona’s influence he would soon be his old indomitable self. Children were like that. They bounced back from hard times faster than adults, maybe because they weren’t so set in their ways and could take things more in stride. Children were like saplings, bending whichever way the wind blew but seldom breaking. Adults were like trees in their prime, able to bend, but more likely to snap if the wind blew too strong.
He thought about the events of the day—the run-in with the old buffalo, the incident at the fissure, and lastly the encounter with the roving skunk—and grinned. Life in the wilderness was rarely dull. Seldom did a day go by when something unusual didn’t occur. It was just one of many fascinating aspects about the wilderness that had so appealed to him when he first ventured west. Unlike city life, where a person suffocated under the drudgery of a daily routine, where each day was almost an exact duplicate of the one before, life in the Rockies was an unending series of adventures big and small. A person felt alive in the wild.
Shakespeare, who had been gazing to the south while drinking coffee, now stood and came around to Nate and knelt.
“Come to declare a truce?” Nate asked, and grinned.
“No,” McNair said, shaking his head. He stared into the fire and spoke so quietly his lips barely moved. “Didn’t it strike you as strange that our horses got so worked up over a skunk?”
“Not really,” Nate said, wondering what his friend was getting at. “The critter must have wandered around the camp for a while before we got back. They didn’t like its scent, is all.”
“I thought so too until a minute ago,” Shakespeare said. “Then I saw our other visitor.”
“What other visitor?” Nate asked, sitting up so abruptly he spilled some coffee onto his lap.
“Take a gander at the trees south of us. Be casual about it so you don’t spook him.”
Placing the cup down, Nate stretched and shifted so he could scan the forest. He half expected to see a Ute lying in ambush, but for half a minute he saw no one. Then, as his brain sifted the random patterns of lengthening shadows and dying patches of sunlight, he saw a vague shape lying on the thick low limb of a spruce tree. It took a moment for the outline to become clear, and he whistled softly. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
“It must have been sneaking up on the horses when they picked up its scent,” Shakespeare guessed. “It was the cause of the ruckus we heard when we were up on the hill. That skunk just happened to show up when we did.”
“We can’t let it sit there until dark,” Nate said. “First chance it gets, it’ll try for our stock.”
“Do you want to do the honors or should I?”
“My rifle is handy,” Nate said, picking up his Hawken. The women and Zach were watching him, puzzled. He cocked the hammer, then rose into a crouch. “Too bad we can’t use any more meat,” he mentioned.
“I know,” Shakespeare said. “Panther meat is the best there is.”
Nate pivoted on his heels, pressed the stock to his right shoulder, and aimed at the limb on which the powerful predator crouched. Steadying the barrel, he lightly touched the trigger, took a breath, and squeezed.
At the loud retort a tawny panther leaped clear of the limb and alighted on all fours in a crouch, its tail waving wildly, its ears flattened in anger. A feral snarl rumbled from its throat. For a moment it seemed about to attack, but the moment passed and the big cat spun and bounded into the forest, blending into the shadows with a skill not even the most seasoned Indian warrior could hope to match.
It all happened so rapidly that none of them got more than a glimpse of the magnificent animal. Nate slowly lowered his rifle and listened in vain for sounds of the creature’s passage through the underbrush.
At length Zach laughed and said, “We sure are seeing a lot of critters on this trip. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see a grizzly soon.”
“Bite your tongue, son,” Nate said. “We’re supposed to have fun on this trip, not fight for our lives every step of the way. I’ll be happy if we don’t tangle with anything else from here on out.”
Little did he know what lay in store for them.
Chapter Four
Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River was actually a gigantic mud castle. There was nothing like it anywhere west of the Mississippi. Fort Union, situated where the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers met, and Fort Pierre, on the northern Plains, were two of the bigger centers of the fur trade, but they could hardly hold a candle to the fort built by the Bent brothers and their good friend Ceran St. Vrain.
The front wall alone was fourteen feet high, a hundred and thirty seven feet long, and nearly four feet thick. The side walls ran for a hundred and seventy eight feet. Huge towers had been constructed at the northwest and southeast corners, and each was constantly manned by alert guards who could effectively use the field pieces that had been brought in at much expense and with considerable hard labor to duly impress any and all hostiles.
Bent’s Fort was an impregnable fortress. The whites knew it and could sleep soundly within its sheltering walls at night. The Indians also knew it, both the friendly tribes and the hostiles, so the latter didn’t bother to waste the lives of their braves in trying to overrun it. The Comanches and Kiowas and others accepted its presence as inevitable, but many resented it all the same.
The fort almost qualified as a thriving colony. Up to two hundred men could be comfortably garrisoned there at one time, not to mention upwards of four hundred animals. Just inside the north and west walls were large corrals to accommodate the animals.
Nate had heard much about Ben
t’s Fort, and was eagerly awaiting his first sight of the post. From a low rise he got his wish, and on spying the high adobe walls he broke into a smile. All of them did. He lifted his reins and started forward, but a word from Winona stopped him and he turned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, husband. Blue Water Woman and I must get ready.”
“Get ready for what?”
“We must make ourselves presentable.”
“You look fine to me,” Nate said, and heard Shakespeare cackle as the two women rode off to be by themselves.
“For a married man, you sure have a lot to learn about womenfolk,” the mountain man declared. “They’re not about to wear their everyday dresses into the fort. It’s fanfaron time, and there ain’t a thing we can do but sit here and twiddle our thumbs until they’re ready.”
“What’s fanfaron, Uncle Shakespeare?” Zach inquired.
“A French word, little one. Showing off, you might call it.”
“What does Ma want to show off?”
“Ask me that question again in fifteen years and I’ll tell you.”
“Pa’s right. You always talk in riddles.”
“I try, boy. I try.”
When the wives returned they had on their very finest ankle-length dresses made of the softest buckskin and gaily decorated with beads, fringe, and even a few tiny bells that jingled as they moved. They had plaited their hair and each wore a brightly colored ribbon; Winona’s was red, Blue Water Woman’s blue.
“My, oh, my!” Shakespeare exclaimed, doffing his beaver hat to them. “You beautiful ladies look fit for a Washington banquet. You’ll be the talk of the fort.”
“We would be pleased if it was so,” Blue Water Woman said coyly.
Zach fidgeted in his saddle. “Can we go now? We’ve been waiting here for hours.”
“It only seems that way,” Nate mumbled, and assumed the lead. They had to swing around to the south side of the fort since the main entrance was located there. Along the way he saw a middling encampment of Indians close to the Arkansas River, twenty lodges arranged in a half circle. “Arapahos?” he wondered aloud, knowing that tribe did extensive trading at the post.
“Cheyennes,” Shakespeare answered.
Nate recalled hearing that it had been Cheyennes who had helped the Bents pick the site after William Bent had saved the lives of a pair of their warriors. Strategically placed at a crossroads of Indian travel, the fort now did a booming business with all of the tribes in the region. The Indians received guns, knives, tools, and trade trinkets in exchange for buffalo hides and other pelts. The Bent brothers and St. Vrain, all scrupulously honest, had acquired an unparalleled reputation for fairness so that even tribes who normally shunned the whites, such as the Gros Ventres and the Utes, routinely traveled to Bent’s Fort to barter.
It had been several years since Nate last saw any Cheyennes. He had been meaning to seek out one of them for quite some time, a prominent warrior called White Eagle, the man who had bestowed the name Grizzly Killer on him after he slew his first monster bear by a sheer fluke. That name had stuck, and now Nate was known far and wide as the white who had slain more grizzlies than any man alive. Not that he’d planned it that way. Somehow, he seemed to attract grizzles the way a magnet attracted iron. The truth be known, he would much rather attract rabbits or squirrels.
The main gate was wide open, and both whites and Indians were freely coming and going. Perched on the wall above the gate was a belfry where a lookout sat. At the first sign of hostiles he would sound the alarm and rouse the entire garrison. This worthy now leaned forward to study their party. “Are my eyes playin’ tricks on me, or is that none other than Shakespeare McNair I see?” he called out happily.
“Kendall?” the mountain man responded.
“None other,” said the lookout, a strapping fellow in a red cap. “I’m workin’ for the Bents now, and finer booshways you can’t find anywhere.”
“It’s been a while,” Shakespeare said. “How’s the family?”
“Lisa is as feisty as ever. And Vail is the apple of her dear mother’s eye. I’ll introduce you later after my stint here is done.”
“I’ll look for you.”
They were about to pass through the gate when Nate realized the nearest whites and Indians were looking his way and some of the whites were scowling. He faced straight ahead, acting as if he had no idea why they were perturbed. Samson was certainly oblivious to their dirty looks. He felt sorry for the mongrel because it still smelled like day-old garbage after a dozen baths or better.
Once past the iron-sheathed gate, Nate gazed at a spacious inner court ringed by small whitewashed guest rooms. Over to one side stood a well. There were also offices, meeting rooms, warehouses, wagon sheds, rooms for the staff, and more, just as Shakespeare had detailed there would be. Although Nate had never set foot inside the fort before, he felt as if he knew it as well as he did the interior of his own cabin.
There were Indians in abundance; Cheyennes and Arapahos and Osage and even a few Kiowas. Mingled among them were free trappers, Frenchmen from St. Louis, and voyageurs from far-off Canada. Altogether, it was as motley and colorful a gathering of humanity as anyone was likely to see anywhere west of the last Missouri settlement.
Nate made for a hitching post, running a gauntlet of frank stares. He began to dismount, then stopped in surprise on seeing a black woman emerge from a nearby doorway and scour the court for a moment before disappearing back inside.
Shakespeare grinned. “That’s Charlotte, the cook. Stay on her good side, Nate, and you’ll eat pumpkin pie and flapjacks as tasty as any offered in the fanciest home in New York City.”
The ringing of a heavy hammer on an anvil drew Nate’s attention to a blacksmith shop at the southeast corner of the fort, and when he turned back to the hitching post there stood a man with a receding hairline and aquiline features who was dressed in a fine black suit.
“As I live and breathe!” the man exclaimed, coming around the post and advancing on McNair with his hand extended. “Shakespeare, you old coon! What brings you to our neck of the woods?”
“Howdy, Bill,” the mountain man said, swinging down and shaking heartily. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
The man nodded. “I figured by now some Blackfoot would have your hair hanging in his lodge.”
“I’m too ornery to let them get me,” Shakespeare said. He proceeded to introduce Blue Water Woman, Winona, Zach, and finally Nate to the stranger. “This here is William Bent,” he concluded.
“I’m delighted to make your acquaintance,” Bent said. “Make yourselves at home here. If you’re staying overnight, I’ll arrange guest rooms for you.”
“We’d be in your debt,” Shakespeare said.
“Not at all. What, are old friends for?” Bent responded, and moved off with a cheery wave.
“You didn’t tell me that you knew one of the Bent brothers,” Nate remarked.
“I know all three of them.”
“Is there anyone you don’t know?”
McNair, grinning, tied his horse to the post. “You have to remember that there aren’t all that many white men in these parts. Sooner or later you’ll meet most of them if you get around enough.” He paused. “Bill and I go back to the time he was trading up in the Northwest. He was having a hard time making ends meet because of competition from the Hudson’s Bay Company. There was many a time we’d sit around sharing whiskey and I’d listen to him describe his woes.”
“Well, he doesn’t have many woes now,” Nate said, surveying the whirls of activity all around them. Here and there clusters of Indians were engaged in trade talks with members of the fort’s crew. That the talks were effective was testified to by the enormous piles of prime pelts being prepared for transport by caravan to St. Louis, pelts easily worth several thousand dollars on the open market. The Bents and St. Vrain, he deduced, must be making money hand over fist. They’d soon be incredibly wealthy if they weren’t already.
After Nate and Shakespeare assisted their wives down and secured all the animals, they all strolled around to see the sights. Over Zach’s protest Nate left Samson tied with their horses. The dog whined and pawed at the rope, but Nate refused to take the mongrel along and upset everyone within sniffing distance.
They saw lusty free trappers drinking and laughing. They saw proud Indians strutting about wearing new blankets draped over their shoulders or adorned with new trinkets. Toward the north end of the square, as they completed their circuit, a peculiar series of subdued cracking sounds could be heard. It gave Nate pause and he scoured the square for the cause.
Shakespeare, who never missed a thing, pointed at the roof of a building visible beyond the trader’s room right in front of them. “Billiards,” he disclosed.
“Here?”
“Bill and his brothers have spared no expense in providing all the comforts. Do you play?”
“Of course. Every boy in New York City can play by the time he’s twelve. At one time I was rather good.”
“Is that a fact? Then we’ll have a match later. Our wives should find it interesting.”
“Say, Pa,” Zach said, tugging on Nate’s sleeve. “What’s that man doing to Samson?”
Turning, Nate beheld a trio of stern voyageurs ringing the hitching post. A hefty specimen in buckskins and a blue cap was angrily addressing Samson while jabbing a thick finger within inches of the dog’s face. Nate hurried over, fearing trouble. Voyageurs were a hardy, independent lot, as befitted men who made their living trapping the most remote regions of Canada. Occasionally some drifted south into the Rockies, but it was unusual for any to be as far south as Bent’s Fort.
“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” he politely inquired, stopping close to the post.
Wilderness: Northwest Passage/Apache Blood (A Wilderness Double Western #6) Page 19
