Downriver

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “If I had irons I’d put you in them. As it is, you’ll be confined to your cabin the rest of this trip.”

  “Confined!”

  “You will learn, Bonfils, that dangerous passengers are confined.”

  “Dangerous!”

  “From now on, every trip I make up this river will be frought with danger from the Sans Arcs and maybe other Sioux. And from now on, every robe and pelt from that band will go to the Opposition.”

  “But I saved your life!”

  Marsh barely whispered. “This is not the mountains; you are not leading a trapping brigade and fending off Blackfeet. Those you shot are our trading partners. They were not about to pillage this ship; far from it. I have confirmed that indeed, they were looking to cross the river, as Skye said. One of the Fort Pierre engages who knows the tongue listened to several of the Sans Arcs who were collecting their wounded, and got the story. Skye had no business offering them this vessel, but at least he didn’t mow them down with grapeshot. Nor did he murder a white man in the process.”

  “It was an accident of war!”

  Marsh peered into the sunlit waters ahead. “There are things you don’t know,” he said.

  The helmsman and pilot cast furtive glances at Bonfils, and Trenholm stared away from them.

  “Maybe this should be dropped. It is a mere incident.”

  “Dropped? It is already in my logbook. An unauthorized discharge of my cannon, twice, into trading partners standing peacefully yards from this boat. And I have named you. This will scarcely go unnoticed. I plan to discuss it with Pierre Chouteau. I’m sure that when that flatboat reaches St. Louis, Skye and Gill are going to say a few words, not only to Chouteau, but General Clark. And there may be a warrant issued against you.”

  Bonfils’s mind raced. This could hurt him with his family, with his petition, his life, his career.

  “I see it differently,” Bonfils said. “I will not sit in confinement the rest of this journey, a punishment I don’t deserve. Put me ashore.”

  Marsh laughed meanly, and nodded to Trenholm. The burly mate laid a hand on Bonfils, who violently threw it off. Then Marsh himself grabbed a fistful of shirt.

  “Bonfils, you may be connected, you may be your family’s choice, but here on my ship you’re a piece of manure. Get your revenge in St. Louis. Whine all you want.”

  He nodded to Trenholm, who led Bonfils out of the pilothouse and down the companionway.

  “Do I post a guard, or do you give me your parole you’ll stay in?” Trenholm asked when they reached the cabin.

  Bonfils hated the moment, hated the indignity. How had his life come to this? He wouldn’t let some river rat tell him what to do.

  “Say it.”

  Bonfils stood rigidly.

  “All right, if you won’t give me your word, you’re confined. I’ll post a deckman outside your door,” Trenholm said.

  Bonfils slammed the door behind him. He peered through a small porthole at the passing shore, and suddenly realized he had lost not only his freedom but also his reputation. And for what? Rescuing the ship from those idiots.

  The Otter was two weeks from St. Louis. Two weeks confined to this miserable cubicle! Told when to eat, when to relieve himself! He paced; he flopped onto his bunk. He peered out the porthole at a free and serene world. He raged at the master, the mate, and everyone else aboard. He plucked up his Hawken Brothers .53-caliber rifle, a finely wrought octagon-barreled weapon that could drill a ball through a buffalo.

  This was madness! He would draft a report and deliver it to his uncles and cousins. He would take this matter straight to the powerful families who ran St. Louis. He would have Marsh’s scalp. He would ruin the man. He would see to it that neither he nor Trenholm ever served on another American Fur Company ship.

  His rage, his fevered visions of revenge, lasted twenty minutes. Then he stood wearily, paced his compartment. Three paces door to wall. Two paces across. He peered out the window again. The scenery was exactly the same as before: nameless bluffs, empty skies, every blade of grass free to live as it could.

  He flopped onto his bunk again, and tried closing his eyes. Mon Dieu! How could any mortal submit to such confinement? And all because he rescued the ship and cargo and crew from a pack of savages!

  He tried thinking of women, ah, Emilie, ah, Marguerite, ah, Bridget, ah, sweet Cherise, ah …

  And what of the future? Was he disgraced? No, never, not after he had had a chance to explain himself, tell people what had happened. But would he lose his chance? Would Skye now have the inside track? Ah, there was a new pain on top of all the rest.

  In an abstract sort of way, he was sorry Skye got shot, though in fact it amused him. His rival, the London lout, just happened to be in the path of the cannister! Still, it was another thing to explain to his uncles. The fog! Yes, of course, the fog! How could any man tell what lay in the fog?

  And if he could not tell what he was shooting at, then why did he fire that six-pounder?

  Ah, mon pere, it was necessary to save the ship, save lives, save the cargo by which we all grow rich!

  He endured an hour more, then opened the door a crack. A deck man stared at him.

  “I am going to the closet,” he said. The man didn’t stop him. He walked forward, entered the cabinet that hung over the river, just ahead of the wheelhouses. There was a bench within, with three holes in it. The river skirled below. The blades of the wheel slashed into the river, spraying water about.

  He lingered there, just because he hated to return to his cabin, but finally he stepped out into sunlight, relishing it, relishing liberty. But the burly deckman was waiting, lounging against the rail, his bare foot on the coaming.

  Bonfils returned to his room, his eyes hungrily raking the boiler deck, the firemen, the sunny prow, the broad river glinting in the bright sun. He entered his cabin and shut the door behind him, knowing what he had to do: escape. No innocent mortal could endure two weeks cooped up like an animal!

  A cabin boy brought him some slop in a bowl. Marsh wouldn’t even give him proper food! He caught the boy.

  “Marcel, bring me food, eh? Much food, wrapped up in a bag. I will slip you a few pieces of eight.”

  The boy looked frightened, but finally nodded.

  The chance came at dusk, when Marsh stopped for wood. All hands reported to Trenholm, who handed the crew and passengers axes and saws. Bonfils discovered that his guard had vanished to shore with the rest. Even Trenholm had gone ashore.

  Bonfils gathered his rifle, his powderhorn, his kit. He pushed his straw hat over his long locks and stepped out. No one stopped him as he walked down the gangway and into a grove of willows, past the work party and up a game trail leading to the top of the bluff.

  He turned at last to look down at the Otter, only to discover the master’s spyglass upon him. Marsh waved casually, an exaggerated flap of his arm. So the master had foreseen it all, and let Bonfils walk.

  twenty-five

  The fever and nausea departed abruptly, and Skye grew aware of the world once again. His shoulder and thigh ached numbly, but the wound that still tormented him was the one that shattered his ribs. That one hurt so much his body refused to breathe, and he gulped air in pain.

  He heard the lap of water against the plank hull, and the gurgle of the river. Somewhere forward, the Cheyenne woman crooned softly. She had been crooning all day, a low, melancholic song that tugged at the roots of his heart. He wondered what it would be like to lose a son, and was overcome with a sadness that he and Victoria had never conceived one.

  The woman sang her sadness, and her melancholia suited him. She had lost a boy; he had lost a dog. He had loved that dog like a son. He had tried to put the dog out of mind; what was No Name but a miserable cur that had attached himself to the Skyes and kept its distance? And yet he could not. No Name was a magnificent dog, fierce and loyal, great-hearted, mysterious, independent, and sometimes tender. Now he was gone.

  When Victoria ha
d stepped aboard carrying that limp yellow bundle of fur, her lips pressed tight and her face etched with sorrow, Skye’s own spirits had plummeted to that netherworld where the Dark Prince guarded the gates of hell. No Name dead. For that little while, Skye didn’t care whether he lived or died. He had loved the dog. Even now, days later, the numbing loneliness he felt when he thought of his faithful animal was more than he could endure. They had wept, buried the dog in the river with songs and prayers, and set out upon their journey. For days afterward, Skye had the eerie sensation that the dog was running along the riverbank, beside the flatboat.

  From his bunk he could see Gill at the tiller, looking dark and vacant-eyed, his thoughts upon his partner and not the currents that shouldered them ever southward. The boat carried no load, drew only a few inches of water, and scarcely needed steering. Skye grew aware of Victoria beside him, and reached out to her. His hand caught hers and squeezed it.

  “You better,” she said.

  He nodded.

  She began to change his poultices, which hurt. But when she had pulled loose her dressings, he could see that the hard red inflammation had subsided. Somewhere along the way, she had gathered her own medicinals from alongside the river, and had packed the wounds with them. He did not know what herbs and leaves she had used, but the presence of green moss over the wounds surprised him.

  Gill shadowed the door, and then he entered.

  “Heard you talking. You some better?” he asked.

  “Who’s at the tiller?” Skye asked.

  “It’ll take care of itself a while.”

  “Better,” Skye said.

  “Anyway, you made it; Shorty didn’t.”

  Skye didn’t respond to that. He knew what was on Red Gill’s mind: if Skye hadn’t wrestled Shorty down and steered the flatboat over to the beached steamboat, none of it would have happened. Maybe he was right. But maybe the next cannister shot from that six-pounder would have cut Shorty to pieces; maybe the next shots after that, fired from the looming riverboat, would have raked them all. In any case, the iron law of the seas and rivers was to stop and render assistance. Red was bitter. He’d lost his partner and his cargo, which was to be his profit, and had unwanted passengers as well, and nothing but debt back in St. Louis.

  “I’m sorry about Shorty, mate.”

  Red glared, watched Victoria work on the wounds, and then retreated to his post at the tiller.

  The dolorous song continued. Lame Deer was singing away her sorrows.

  They drifted through a quiet and partly cloudy day, sun bright one moment, and obscured the next. He saw Red turn over the tiller to Victoria and heard him pacing the boat. The singing stopped.

  By afternoon he felt well enough to sit up a few minutes, and he pulled himself upright in the bunk, resting his head on the forward wall of the cabin, which was the rear wall of the cargo box. The Missouri had grown into a majestic flowage, drawing waters to it from a vast basin. He felt he was traversing a lake rather than a river.

  A rifle crack shattered the peace, and as his body jerked in response, his wounds stung him.

  Gill yelled, and Skye saw him peering over the water, trying to locate the source of the distant shot.

  Victoria stood beside Gill at the back of the flatboat, and finally she pointed to the left bank.

  “Some sonofabitch standing there,” she said.

  Skye strained forward until he could see out of the small porthole sawn into the side of the cabin. Indeed, a man stood on a high prominence forty or fifty feet above the river. He was waving his hat and beckoning the craft to him.

  Skye watched Gill pull the tiller, and watched the shadows and sunlight move across the floor of the cabin, and knew that Gill was heading for shore. Even as the flatboat veered toward the riverbank, the man scurried downslope to the water’s edge and waited, rifle cradled in his arms, with a sack in his hand. He looked vaguely familiar.

  Skye sank back on his bunk, unable to stand the pain of sitting, and waited restlessly for news.

  Then Gill began cursing, a low monotone cussing that his partner Shorty had employed to voice all manner of opinion from hatred to joy.

  “Who?” asked Skye.

  “Bonfils.”

  “Bonfils!” The author of his wounds. The man who killed No Name. The author of the death of Shorty. The author of the death of Lame Deer’s boy. “You going to stop?”

  Red grunted.

  Skye lifted himself from the bunk for a look, and discovered Bonfils thirty yards across water, his rifle at the ready across his chest.

  Skye fell back weakly. Victoria swept into the grimy cabin and worked feverishly, loading Skye’s rifle from the powderhorn that hung over the corner of Skye’s bunk.

  “Bonfils got that rifle pointing at Gill, almost. I’ll kill that sonofabitch,” she muttered.

  Skye held up a hand and she subsided.

  He waited patiently, listening to the water lap and gurgle. Then he felt a jar, and the flatboat. bumped shore.

  “How about a ride?” yelled Bonfils.

  “What are you doing here?” Gill asked.

  “I left the riverboat.”

  “Why?”

  “Felt like it.”

  “I said, Why?”

  “Had a little trouble with Marsh.”

  “About shooting us with the goddamned cannon.”

  “I want a ride to St. Louis.”

  “You killed Shorty.”

  “How was I to know he was in there with all those redskins?”

  “I think you can walk,” Gill said.

  “Is Skye in there?”

  “You’re going to walk, Bonfils.”

  “I think you are going to take me and be glad of it. In fact, my friend, this rifle says so.”

  “The hell with you.”

  Skye heard Gill pick up a pole to push the flatboat farther away from the riverbank.

  “Gill, you don’t listen. This rifle is pointing at you. Your fate is in your hands. What a pity. The two smugglers go upriver and never return! Now listen: Would you like to get your :argo back?”

  Gill paused.

  “Monsieur, I know things. All day, many days, I talked with Marsh in the pilothouse, and from his lips come many things. I will tell you something I know. The one who employs you is not the Opposition, but Pierre Chouteau, is that not so?”

  Skye heard only dead silence. He wished he could take a good look at Gill. The assertion was so astonishing that Skye :ould barely fathom it. Chouteau? Why would the company employ Gill and Ballard?

  “What else?” Gill asked neutrally.

  Bonfils laughed. “There is much. I can help you. A word in the right ears in St. Louis will return your cargo, yes? I will tell you as soon as I step on board; as soon as we are heading for St. Louis. This I promise you.”

  Gill must have changed his mind, because Skye felt the boat bump bottom, heard the brigade leader step aboard, and felt a faint rocking of the flatboat. Moments later the boat was riding the current again.

  Bonfils slipped into the cabin, laid his rifle on the other punk, and smiled. “Ah! So you are alive and in good flesh!”

  Skye was too worn to resist the man, so he kept quiet.

  “I will tell you something, Skye—”

  “It’s Mister Skye, mate.”

  Bonfils laughed. “The homme with the best chance for the trading post, he is in St. Louis now preparing to marry a nied of General Pratte, the stepdaughter of Capitaine Marsh. He name is Sarah Lansing, and her beau is Simon MacLees, an he is a great favorite of the capitaine.”

  “MacLees?”

  Skye lay on his back, contemplating that. “If he’s the choice, why did they want us to come to St. Louis?”

  Bonfils shrugged. “I do not read minds, Skye. But whe we arrive with MacLees’s mountain wife, and there is a fine fa scandal, the unexpected may happen, oui?”

  Bonfils abandoned the cabin and headed aft to talk to Gil They palavered in such low tones that Skye could
not catch all, but he knew Victoria was hovering about. She had a wa of being invisible to white men. He needed only patience an he would know.

  A while later she slipped into the cabin.

  “They going to St. Louis day and night. No stop. The gonna pass the riverboat. It ties up at night. It can’t see nothin in the dark, so this boat pass them up some night soon, and get there first.”

  “Why, Victoria?”

  “Get to Chouteau ahead of Marsh.”

  “But why?”

  “So Chouteau gives the robes back to Gill. I got that mud anyway. Gill and the one who is dead”—she avoided namin the name of the dead, as always—“they take whiskey uprive by pack train, many mules, make big circle around Fort Lea enworth where the bluecoats watch the river.

  “They get pay in robes, bales of robes and a flatboat t bring them down the river. No record is ever made. Gill an the other, they talk about working for the Opposition, but the is not so. Bonfils says he get the bales back for Gill.”

  Skye pondered that and thought it might be true. But he didn’t doubt that Bonfils had private designs that would affect him and Victoria, and Lame Deer too. But he could only wait and see.

  twenty-six

  Alexandre Bonfils held the aces. He knew things. And the few things he wasn’t sure of, he could guess at with all the shrewdness of a wealthy young Creole reared in St. Louis society. Odd, how the affairs of St. Louis threaded westward into an utter wilderness. He had discovered secrets! And now this flatboat was drifting toward St. Louis, brimming with them! Oh, ho, the ways he knew to embarrass Pierre Chouteau!

  The capitaine, Benton Marsh, had not said a word to him about the Cheyenne squaw, or why Marsh had abruptly ejected the woman and her children from his steamboat. But Bonfils knew! Ah! It was delicious to think about it. Scandal! The Beaujolais and brie of St. Louis society!

  The Cheyenne woman was a threat to Marsh’s future son-in-law, and an embarrassment. Children, too! Ah, proof of dalliance far away from prying eyes. Her arrival in St. Louis would trigger a splendid scandal that would embarrass Marsh’s stepdaughter, Sarah Lansing, and wreck Simon MacLees’s chances in Pratte, Chouteau and Company, and probably wreck the nuptials. Ah! What fun it would be to arrive in St. Louis ahead of the steamboat, and make sure that the Cheyenne woman and her brat were properly introduced! Especially the little breed girl, whose papa everyone in St. Louis knew!