Downriver

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Red grinned. “You going to see old Chouteau, like I am?”

  “Yes, but we need to find a place to camp.”

  “Nearest camp, I suppose, is four or five miles up that cliff and out on the grand prairie. All privately owned, but you could get permission. And it’s gonna be wet.”

  “We’ll find a spot,” Skye said. He was worried. They had too much gear in their kit to tote on their backs for more than a few hundred yards. Those vultures lounging across the mucky street would pounce on anything lying loose in that open sailboat the moment the boat was not guarded.

  “Come with me,” Gill said.

  Skye divided the load, giving Victoria the lighter things, including the blankets, while he loaded the sacks of staples and tools on his shoulders. The weight strained his wounds, and he felt flashes of the old pain course through him, making him want to drop every burden. But eventually he and Victoria and Gill shouldered their gear and wobbled northward, past the frenzy of the levee and up a slope to a dirt street hemmed by tawdry tenements. Gill grinned, led them around a mucky path to the rear of a grimy building, and dug an iron key out of a flowerpot. Moments later he ushered them into a dank room, with one small window admitting light. A narrow iron bed occupied one wall; a commode and dresser the other. That was it.

  “Home sweet home,” Gill said. “Leave your duffel here. It’s safe enough, long as I lock up. I ain’t got anything to eat, but we can boil up some cornmeal. There’s a little kitchen down below.”

  A sorry home for a man who risked life and limb to smuggle whiskey for the Chouteaus, Skye thought.

  Skye wasn’t hungry. His fate was about to play out, and he didn’t want an ounce of food or drink to deaden his senses. This was it. His fate would become clear right here in this grubby city.

  Victoria shook her head. He watched her touch the rough plaster walls, examine the iron bedstead and try the cotton-filled tick, study the commode, with its vitreous porcelain pitcher and basin atop it, and then swing the cabinet door back and forth, admiring the brass hinges that held it up.

  She stared at everything, probably repelled by this dreary little hovel, but she had slipped into deep silence and he knew enough not to disturb her. They heaped their outfit in a corner, apart from Gill’s, and Skye headed outside to a washstand and outhouse he saw in the tiny rear yard, there to freshen himself as best he could before heading toward the mansion of the man who would decide his fate. But he put that thought at a distance, not wanting to deal with it. Not yet.

  “You ready to meet the man?” Gill asked, combing his matted hair with his fingers, and shaking the grime from his pants.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll ever be ready,” Skye said. “But we have business to do.”

  forty–one

  The vaccinations went better than Alexandre Bonfils thought possible. When he learned at the Fort Leavenworth levee why he had been compelled to stop, he envisioned nothing but trouble with Lame Deer. But instead, she had assented at once, and submitted herself and her daughter to the surgeon.

  “My man had this thing done,” she explained. “He showed me the little place on his arm, and told me he was safe from this pox disease. We will have it done too.”

  And so they continued down the Missouri in the flatboat with minimal delay; the whole business had taken scarcely half an hour. The assorted enlisted men and officers had scarcely bothered to examine the empty flatboat.

  He exulted. For days he had sought out islands as night camps, fearing that his doe would flee if he chose to camp on one bank or another. The only bad thing about steering a flatboat alone was that there was no relief when rain or night fell, and he had to be at the tiller most of the time. Lame Deer and Singing Rain wandered the vessel, or settled in the cabin during the heat of the day. The Cheyenne voiced not the slightest protest at any of Bonfils’s conduct and didn’t even seem aware that she was a virtual prisoner. And yet … her conduct made him uneasy.

  Skye and his squaw were stranded back at Sarpy’s Post and out of contention, while the squaw would guarantee that Simon MacLees would not be selected. So it would be that the toast of St. Louis, Alexandre Bonfils, would win the trader position, and he would soon head west with the comfort of Fort Cass ahead of him.

  He would abandon Amalie, of course. He had grown weary of her. The Crow women were said by the mountain fraternity to be the most wanton of all, and he thought one or two, or even three, such savage ladies would make his winters fly fast. What did they want but a bit of ribbon or a few beads for their devotion? Ah, he could see himself as the dauphin of the Yellowstone, living in wild luxury for a few years, until he wearied of it and uncle called him back to St. Louis and a full partnership in the firm.

  The land had changed. Walls of majestic trees hemmed the Missouri: sycamore, locust, shagbark hickory, elm, oak, osage, and many more. The air had turned soft and velvety with moisture, and in his estimation more pleasant than the harsh dryness of the West. It showered almost daily; by afternoon, clouds built up into towers, their bottoms blackened, and a lightning-charged storm crashed through. In those moments, he tied up and waited out the deluge in the cabin with the savage woman.

  There was about her a certain dignity that sometimes annoyed him. She spent those rainy moments asking him questions: how do white men raise their children? Do white men have more than one wife? Who is chief among the white men? What do women wear in this place of many lodges?

  He responded sullenly. He was aware that she was preparing herself for her sojourn among a strange people, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to present her as a wild savage—and MacLees’s squaw—and make her a laughing stock and MacLees the cynosure of a thousand tongues.

  They arrived one day in Independence, and Lame Deer insisted upon examining the village.

  “Why? What is there to see?” he asked.

  “I will see the people.”

  Reluctantly, he stepped aside and let her clamber onto the evee. She helped her child step to land. He intended to shadow her, ever fearful that his hen would escape the coop. She walked slowly among the citizens, drawing some stares even from a frontier population used to wild Indians. It was her ghastly sawed-off hair that drew attention. Lame Deer no-iced, and gazed reproachfully at Bonfils, who had taunted her into a display of grief more familiar to her people than to these white people.

  “Hurry up; we must be off now,” he said. But she chose to ake her time, quietly examining the brick buildings, the lovely town square, the glass-fronted mercantiles with all their goods displayed. But above all the people. She paused frequently, absorbing every aspect of men’s and women’s dress; the fullness of the skirts, the whiteness of the men’s shirts, their boots and slippers, their hairdos, the wicker baskets the women carried while shopping, the clothing worn by children.

  “We must be off!” he announced, but she simply turned to him and smiled.

  “I like this place,” she said. “I am seeing things that my man old me of; things I could not imagine. The people are like cranes md herons whose feet never touch the earth. They are all chiefs; his is many-chiefs land. Even the little ones and the women are chiefs. Strong and good are the chiefs. Even like MacLees, these chiefs know all things, and their wisdom is before my eyes, and now I am joyous because I have seen the mystery of MacLees.”

  They paused at a church, red brick like so much of Independence of the 1830s, with a white spire.

  “Is this a store?”

  “No, this is a church.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A place where people come to the Creator.”

  He was getting testy. The last thing he wanted was to discuss white men’s religion with her, or dwell on the difference of the churches.

  “I wish to see.”

  “We should be off to St. Louis. There are better churches St. Louis.”

  She ignored him, climbed some steps, and opened the door and found herself in a sanctuary, dark and empty.

  “I have
seen this sign before,” she said, pointing to wooden cross above the altar. “Sometimes there is a ma upon it.”

  “He is a man like Sweet Medicine,” he said, invoking the Christ-figure of the Cheyennes.

  “Ah! So this is a teacher. Sweet Medicine taught us all the virtues, and how to live in beauty. This is the One that Simo MacLees told me of?”

  “I will tell you when we start down the river,” he said.

  “It is something for me to learn of, so my man can I happy with me and share his life with me.”

  Bonfils smirked.

  It took three hours before Lame Deer was ready to set fo in the flatboat, and when she did, she rummaged about in h parfleches in the cabin, showing sudden signs of industry.

  Alexandre Bonfils cast loose the lines, clambered aboar joked with several rivermen on the levee, and poled the heavy boat away from the bank and into the gentle current.

  Lame Deer stayed largely within the cabin, even though t day turned out to be a glorious one. Once she headed forward and strangely enough, dipped her head into the river, lathere it, and washed her hair. Then she vanished into the cabin agai Later that afternoon he discovered that she was sewing.

  They passed other vessels; mostly rowboats, but once keelboat with a large crew poling their way upriver close to the far bank. All that while, she remained within the little cabin, and this cloistering of herself piqued his curiosity. From his position at the tiller, he could see in, and knew she was sewing, but he knew nothing else of her busy day.

  At dusk he found a fine island and steered the flatboat toward it. The boat scraped over a snag, and then another, and he thanked his luck that it was not loaded. He anchored at the island, which showed no signs of habitation, apparently because river men had feared the snags.

  He tied up to some sycamores growing at the bank, and stepped ashore, grateful for a respite from the navigation of the great river.

  Then she stepped out of the flatboat cabin, tugging her child with her. The sight astonished him. She had trimmed her hair until it lay almost evenly around her neck. One side was still short, but even that had been carefully cut and shaped, and now her glossy black hair framed her strong features with balance and regularity. And her dress! She had modified one of her crudely sewn squaw dresses into something closely resembling a white woman’s afternoon gown of teal cotton, with much tighter sleeves and an even hemline.

  “Will Simon MacLees like this?” she asked.

  “Madam, it is a great mistake. You must wear just what your people wear, and on the occasion of your meeting, you must be gotten up with paint.”

  She looked puzzled. “I do not think so. I have seen white women, and that is how I will be. I will be his wife in this place of many lodges, and I want to make him very happy with me, and our girl.”

  “Madam, he did not marry you because you were like the girls back home, but for your fine savage beauty.”

  “What is this word, savage?”

  “Ah, different from us.”

  “Yes, we are different. But he is my man, and over many winters we have come to be more alike. I am happy. I have seen how the women dress, and I will make my clothes like that. And when the sun comes in the east, I will make clothing for Singing Rain too, so that he will be pleased with her where he sees her in this place of the white people.”

  He felt himself growing petulant, and masked it with a smile. “Ah, madam, just this one time, wear your finest ceremonial clothing. Heap big medicine! Wear the elk’s tooth blouse! Wear the quilled doeskin! Wear the elk moccasins Wear your paint! Wear feathers! Vermillion! Ochre! Let him and all of St. Louis know you are a woman of the Cheyenne!”

  “Why do you want this?”

  “Because … because it will be a great moment.”

  She smiled. “I think you have other reasons.”

  He made camp sullenly, realizing that his cheerful fantasy of scandalizing and shocking St. Louis had quietly filtered away with the breeze. All that paint; the vermillion he had purchased, the jingle bells he had expected her to wear, the earbobs, the silver rings, the foxtails, the blue garters, the red and green cock feathers, the blue and white barleycorn beads the pigeon egg beads, the white and purple wampum, the hawk bell, the hairpipe beads, along with the fine brutal mess of her hair, the unfashionable squaw dress, the clay pipe and plug tobacco, all gone a-glimmering.

  He discovered within himself an odd and unexpected emotion. Envy. This squaw cared so much about her man that she was transforming herself into a white woman, believing that her runaway lover would welcome her all the more Amalie would never have done that; nor any other woman of the tribes he had encountered. Not for Alexandre Bonfils.

  His thoughts amused him. In St. Louis he would seduce one or another Creole beauty, maybe several, and none of them would ever hear a word about Amalie.

  Lame Deer was gazing on him, and the serene and accepting look in her face was unsettling.

  forty-two

  Red Gill led the way, and Skye was grateful because he hadn’t the faintest idea where in St. Louis he would find Pierre Chouteau, Jr. The man had an office, of course, in his warehouse down near the river, but no lamplight shone in the arched window at that hour.

  “We’ll hike up to his house,” Gill said. “It’s a piece. Will you be up to it?”

  “I don’t know,” Skye said. “Leg still hurts and I can’t pump my bellows much.”

  Gill nodded. He led Skye and Victoria through dusky streets with brick buildings crowded cheek by jowl, with only pools of light from windows to guide them.

  “I guess you figured out Shorty and me by now,” Gill said.

  “No.”

  “We pack wet goods for Pierre Chouteau. Not the company. Just him.”

  Skye sensed he was about to hear secrets. Gill was a smuggler; that much he knew.

  “It’s the inspection at Leavenworth causes the trouble,” Gill said. “The company can’t get a drop of whiskey to the posts. Congress even tightened the law. Used to be there’d be a boatman’s ration, one gill a day allowed, but no longer. Them puritans in Congress, they don’t want nary a drop going up to the posts, or down the gullet of a redskin.”

  They walked a while more, through narrow streets, and Skye got the impression their direction was southerly, where the land was flatter.

  “I shouldn’t be saying a word. Get myself into trouble, only I’m gonna quit. I’m done for good. Shorty getting killed, that did it for me. I don’t want no part of this anymore.”

  Skye nodded, saying nothing. But he was certainly listening closely.

  “It takes a mess of spirits to fuel the fur trade,” he said.

  “Damn right,” said Victoria.

  “We had to get it to the posts. Every factor at every posi knew us and waited for us to show up.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Different way each time. This last time, we got us a good pack string, good Missoura mules, and had big tin casks soldered up, and we took it out to the posts that way, never even getting near the Missouri until way up near Council Bluffs. Until then, we just headed north, bunch of mules, through barely settled country. Well, we dole it out as we go, cask here, cask there, and then a flatboat’s waiting for us at Fort Union, and it’s got our payment in hides in it; just hides, all off the ledgers, and Shorty and me come on down to this here town, sell the hides to wholesalers and cash it out for our profit. It’s a trade. They get some good mules up at the posts; we got a flatboat to sell too, so old Pierre, he likes it, we liked it, and them traders liked it. And the flatboat, it brings us extry cash. Someone always buys it to haul stuff down to New Orleans.”

  “I thought it was something like that, mate.”

  “Pretty risky. We never done it twice the same way. Some times we headed out like we were going to Santy Fe, and then swung north. The patrols out of Fort Leavenworth cover a heap of country, so that was a bit troublesome. If we get caught, we lose everything. But we always done it.”

/>   “Never got caught?”

  “Never. People knew we was smugglers, so we let it be known we was hauling for the Opposition.” He glanced sharply at Skye. “I’m getting out, so it won’t do you no good to go spill it all to Gen’ral Clark.”

  “Not even on my mind,” Skye said.

  “The company got into trouble once, you know. When Kenneth MacKenzie had himself a little old still shipped upriver and brewed his own likker, buying maize from the Mandans. Nat Wyeth tattled on him, and they durned near pulled the company trading license, and it was all old Chouteau could do, yanking strings in Congress, to stay in business. But he’s got to have spirits. All them others got spirits, and with spirits you just walk off with the business.”

  Victoria laughed.

  Skye didn’t laugh. He really hadn’t known much about the politics of the fur trade, never having been in the States before or getting some notion of its laws. He thought of all those times when he and Victoria enjoyed a good jug, scarcely aware that every drop of it had been brought illegally into Indian Country.

  “That going to continue?” Skye asked, thinking that as a trader at Fort Cass he might himself be doling out illegal spirits, and hiding his stock of it from an occasional traveler or Indian Bureau agent.

  “You ask old Pierre that. He shore don’t say nothing to no one. Me and Shorty, we smuggled his spirits out there for six years, and no one ever caught on. Only ones that knew for sure was Chouteau and the traders at the posts. Everything was hidden. Buying spirits was off the ledgers. Getting the mules and the tin casks was off the ledgers. Paying us, that was off the ledgers, and in hides, not cash.”

  “What are you going to say to Mister Chouteau?”

  “Well, we’ll just see. I got a few levers, including a big mouth, specially since I’m getting out, Shorty dead and gone, my old friend wiped out by that sonofabitch Bonfils. Makes a man plumb bitter, and I ain’t walking in there feeling any too kindly toward that Creole and his six thousand relatives that run the whole damned fur business in the country, save for a few independents.”