He could delight Victoria with a solid log home and garden and safety; vest her mother and father and brothers with great status among the Crow people; give Victoria a richer life as various visitors came by; and maybe even provide a place for children, if she could only conceive. All of that and security, and maybe down the line, a better position, more responsibility, more salary, and someday even a share in the company. That was how Chouteau did it. His best traders received a share in the profits, something that inspired them to diligence and enterprise.
He had come a vast distance, over hundreds of miles of land, and over a thousand miles of river, for this. He had endured insult, and then life-threatening wounds, for this. He had endangered himself and Victoria for this. And after this, he would still need to take her safely home, up the Platte and North Platte in autumnal weather, past her tribal enemies, two vulnerable people in a harsh world … for this.
Chouteau was waiting, some small amusement building in his face, as usual.
Skye shook his head. “Sorry, mate. I’m not your man,” he said, a slight roughness in his tone.
An eyebrow arched. “Not our man?”
Skye shook his head. He didn’t know just where or how he had come to that decision, but he had, and now he was sacrificing every advantage being offered him, the one and only time in his hard life, because of … something.
He knew, painfully, what it was. Honor.
“Not right for me.”
An eyebrow arched. “We never ask twice, Skye.”
“It’s Mister Skye, mate.”
“May we inquire?”
“It needn’t be spoken,” Skye said. “I owe you my thanks for considering me. And bearing the expense of bringing me here. I trust horses will be waiting for me at Sarpy’s Post, as agreed upon, in trade for those I left at Fort Union.”
“Certainment. We will write a draft, just in case the matter is in question when you arrive.”
“And I trust you’ll provide river passage that far? The Otter’s going that far, water levels permitting?”
Chouteau nodded, and seemed to resign himself. “It would have been awkward,” he said. “Your citizenship, General Clark …” A gallic wave of the hand dismissed that line of thought.
Skye let it go at that. There was honor and dishonor in the fur trade, and all parties had sullied themselves at times, especially with illegal spirits. Skye did not consider himself any loftier or better than the rest. He had drunk illegal spirits at the rendezvous. He had given spirits to his Indian wife—also illegally. And yet, there were others he knew, among the mountain men, who hewed to honor. Jedediah Smith was one, killed by Comanches in ’31, but a man to remember. Skye knew he could never be a man of Smith’s caliber, but in a smaller way, he could try. He could do what was right.
He stood reflectively in Chouteau’s chambers, upbraiding himself for playing the fool, throwing away all that had been offered. Chouteau sat, reached for his quill, dipped it, and began drafting a requisition for four horses, the quill scratching noisily on the soft paper. The brass pendulum of a cherrywood grandfather clock swung metronomically, reminding Skye of the passage of his life, time gone irretrievably, and the passage of once-in-a-life opportunity from the one powerful personage who cared enough about him to offer him a chance.
“Please make it passage for me and my party. I want to take MacLees’s wife and baby back to her people,” he said. “And please direct Marsh to accept us.”
Chouteau nodded.
Skye hadn’t the faintest idea what he would do or how he would support himself. He might be able to keep himself in galena and DuPont by shooting buffalo and skinning off the hides. Beyond that, his life was a blank. Had he been the ultimate fool? He knew most of his mountain friends would think so; most of the world would think so.
It seemed amazingly quiet for a midday encounter in the busiest quarter of St. Louis, and yet he could not even hear the clop and rattle of a dray outside those tall windows.
Chouteau finished with two drafts, and handed them to Skye. The first granted him and his party passage upriver. The second gave him his choice of four of Peter Sarpy’s saddle or packhorses, and tack.
“There, Monsieur, there. A petite surprise, all this. We are mystified. And curious. What will you make—ah, what will you do?”
“Turn into a savage, I imagine,” Skye said, a faint amusement building in his face.
“Sacre Bleu! A sauvage!”
Then Pierre Chouteau was laughing, this time with big, boisterous gusts. “We make plans, and Fate makes other plans! We will give you some counsel. Don’t go into Opposition.”
“Don’t plan to.”
“Ah, they all say that to me, and then they secretly put together a small outfit and head west, thinking that we will never know. But we know. The company has a thousand ears, and ten thousand special ways of triumphing …”
Skye lifted his battered top hat, settled it, and grinned.
Chouteau nodded, a sudden dismissal, and Skye found himself alone, unemployed, unprotected by powerful interests, caught in a strange and gloomy city, and with several Indian women to shelter in a cruel and sordid town.
He stepped outside, and discovered that the storm clouds had at last slid by, and a golden sun painted the world, glinted off the puddles, and warmed the breezes. The world was a good place. Even St. Louis was a good place. He sucked fresh air into his lungs, surveyed the awesome river that drained much of North America, which ran most of a mile wide there, and felt at peace.
He decided to make one small call before breaking the news to Victoria. The plain, utilitarian one-story redbrick United States government house stood just a few yards distant, and he had in mind a visit to a man revered by all the world for his exploration of this continent early in the century; a man who held the fate of so many in his hand.
He crossed the stone-paved street, passed a staff with a red, white and blue flag dangling from it, and entered. General William Clark’s chambers were located at the end of a short hall. He was actually not a general in the United States Army, but of the Missouri Militia, but the title, as so often was the case in this republican country, seemed interchangeable. He and Meriwether Lewis had both been called captains at the time they led the Corps of Discovery. Skye opened a plain, varnished door, entered, and found two clerks slouching at battered desks situated by the tall windows to catch the sun.
“General Clark, please,” Skye said, removing his topper.
“And who is calling?”
“Mister Skye, sir. Barnaby Skye.”
The clerk made Skye’s presence known. Clark himself opened his inner office door. The old, weary, redheaded man with a military bearing beckoned. The legendary American wore an ordinary suit of clothes, not a uniform, and wore them carelessly as well. He looked unwell.
“Ah, you are Barnaby Skye. Your reputation precedes you, sir,” Clark said, offering a big, solid, meaty hand, which Skye took in his own. A tremor spasmed Clark’s hand.
“I can’t imagine it,” Skye said. “A man like you paying attention to a man like me—”
“Come in and visit with me.”
Skye was heartened by this unsteady old American with a hospitable instinct, and settled uneasily in a chair opposite the general.
“I am surprised to see you in St. Louis, sir. You are one of the legends of the mountains.”
“How would you know that, sir?”
“Through these chambers, my British friend, come the masters of the fur trade. Both Sublettes, Campbell, Drips, Mitchell, most of the upper echelon of the Chouteau company … shall I name a dozen more?
“No, sir. You probably know more about me than I know about myself.”
Clark laughed easily. “It is quite possible.”
“I came here at Mr. Chouteau’s request. He thought to offer me a trading position.”
“I see.” Clark’s affability had suddenly vanished.
“I turned it down.”
Clark took some while regist
ering that. “You turned it down? I knew you were coming, and I expected you to inquire about United States law governing the Indian country. Citizenship, especially. You are not an American, I take it.”
“No, sir.”
“Then I am puzzled.”
Skye sought the words he needed. “I am married to a Crow woman, and have been many years. I want to know two or three things. One is whether I am legally entitled to be in your territory. The other is what nature of business I might engage in, if I am lawfully present.”
“Simple. A squaw man’s entitled to live with his spouse, as part of a tribe, no matter what his nationality. And you can engage in any business you wish, but only within that tribe and to others in the tribe. Save, of course, the purveying of ardent spirits, which are totally prohibited in the Indian territory now.”
“I could actually do some limited trading?”
“Within the Crow tribe, yes. It would be no different than if a Crow himself were engaged in business with his tribesmen.”
Skye brightened. “That’s what I need to know.”
“Ah, Mister Skye, I take it that you will not become an American citizen?”
“I am thinking on it.”
“I regret that you find it necessary to weigh it, but I understand the case.”
Skye nodded, not wanting to pursue that any further. He was still, in some lingering way, an Englishman at heart, and maybe he would end up somewhere in the Empire, such as Canada. And besides, he wasn’t so sure about these Americans.
“How else may I serve you?”
“Those are the things I wanted to know, sir.”
Clark stood at once, and Skye realized that this official was not one to lounge about. “If you are in St. Louis for a while, come visit me. We will share stories of the mountains, and grizzlies, and Indians over some brandy. And do bring your native wife.”
“Victoria, sir. Many Quill Woman to her people.”
“Ah! Bring her, then.”
“I will consider it an honor.”
Skye left, feeling heartened by this old man, but also wary of him. He headed back to the Chouteau warehouse, knowing Victoria would be waiting, and would want his portentous news.
He felt sublimely happy, but he wasn’t sure she would.
forty–nine
Victoria listened intently. “You said no?”
“Yes. I just couldn’t accept it, and I may regret it, but I had to.”
She nodded. “That which guides you inside of yourself, it is always true to you, and that is all there is to say. I am content.”
“I would have hurt your people.”
“Some other trader will come, and he will hurt them.”
“Let it be someone else, then.”
“We have come a long way.”
“Not for nothing. All this had to happen.”
“Aiee, it is so. I have seen this land and this many-lodges, and now I am wiser than I was before.”
“We’ll get a ride part way back on the steamboat.”
She processed that a moment. “With the captain, Benton Marsh?”
“Yes.”
“He is a bad man. Maybe I walk.”
“Chouteau gave me passage for me and my party. We can put up with him for a week or ten days.”
She laughed. “He will put up with us! I will make it hard for that sonofabitch.”
Skye laughed too. “We got a long trip ahead. You up to it?”
“My People call me. My country, the mountains, in the foothills, with the prairies rolling away, call me.”
“I arranged passage for Lame Deer and her girl. Take ‘em with us.”
“If she wants to go. Maybe she stays here.”
“I suppose we should ask,” he said.
The rejected Cheyenne woman was sitting quietly in the cool gloom of the warehouse, watching Red Gill grade his hides and prepare to sell them.
Gill looked up as they approached. “You got the Fort Cass trader position?”
“It was offered. I turned it down, Red.”
“Turned it down you say? Ain’t that the craziest thing I ever heard. What’d you do that for?”
Skye just shook his head.
“Well, I wouldn’t work for the company, neither. That’s a rough outfit, and a man can’t call his soul his own.”
“Something like that,” Skye said.
“What’re you going to do?” Gill asked.
“Start a little trading store. Long as I’m married to a Crow woman, it’s all right,” Skye said. “That’s straight from the general himself. After I got loose of Chouteau, I hiked over there and talked to him.”
“How you going to stock it?”
“I’ve got two outfits now. I’ll sell one for horses and a few trade items.”
“You figure that’s a living?”
“No,” said Skye.
Gill dropped the robe he was examining. “You want to partner?”
“Doing what?”
“Santa Fe trading.”
Skye shook his head. There were twenty other outfits in the business, and more coming in each year, and all of them better financed. But it would not suit Victoria, and that was reason enough. And he wasn’t sure about lining up with a smuggler.
“I guess not, Red, but thanks for the offer.”
Red grinned. “I figured it’d be that. You’re a man of honor; me, I’m an opportunist. Tell you what. I’ll lend you some startup if you want.”
It was tempting. A few hundred dollars of trade goods would go far. But after a moment’s reflection, he declined. He was a man without a country; also, a man who had to go it alone. He couldn’t say why.
“I think I’ll just weather the bad times,” he said.
“Luck,” said Red.
Skye and Victoria braced Lame Deer, who was sitting contemplatively, cradling her girl.
“We’re going back west. We’d like you to join us,” Skye said. “Take you to your people.”
“We will walk?”
“Riverboat up to Sarpy’s Post, and then horses and pack mules out the Platte River. Long trip, and the weather will turn.”
“The same fireboat?”
Skye nodded.
She seemed to harden before his eyes. “I will go. This is a place like a cloudy night. I see no stars. The stars are like friends, and I see no friends. I come to give myself to my man; give my child to him. He sees me and then I am a stranger to him, and they close the door and I am standing with his little girl, and the door is closed.”
She shuddered, and then focused on some distant place beyond all horizons.
“He will walk in darkness. He will pass meadows blooming with flowers and not see them. He will stumble when there is no rock to stumble on. He will look behind him to see who is following, even when no one follows. He will smile, but his spirit is sad. He will have friends, but will not be a friend of himself. He will be with many, but he will be alone. I cannot help him. This path he choose for himself; me, I am not welcome in his lodge. His medicine is bad and mine is good and I will walk along soft trails covered with pine needles and my feet will not hurt.”
Skye marveled again at this woman’s images. Where did they come from? What artesian well, of what sweet water, rose within her? Was this a curse or a prophecy?
“We’ll be your traveling companions, and you can call on us,” Skye said.
She seemed to come out of some trance, and stood. “We go now?”
“I’ll find out,” Skye said. “I hope we have some time. I’ve got some trading to do.”
Two days later they boarded the Otter under Marsh’s baleful eye, and settled in their staterooms.
First Mate Trenholm appeared. “Captain wants you,” he said.
Skye followed the mate up the companionway, wondering what more trouble the captain could inflict on his party.
Marsh stood in the pilothouse, massive and choleric as ever.
“You lost, Skye,” the captain said, enjoying himself
.
“I was offered the position and turned it down.”
Marsh wheezed. “You make a poor excuse for a liar,” he said.
“It’s Mister Skye, sir.”
Marsh laughed. “I knew you’d lose. I told Chouteau you weren’t fit. You were better than Bonfils, but that’s not saying much.”
Marsh had called him a liar. Skye wondered whether to make an issue of it. He knew it was bait. Marsh was looking for an excuse to toss Skye and his women off the steamboat, and a brawl would do nicely.
“That it?” Skye asked.
“Behave yourself. The moment this boat casts off lines, I’m God. I’m the master of this boat and all upon it. You can leave now if you don’t like it, or I’ll put you ashore at the first woodlot on any excuse I can find, or no excuse at all if I feel like it. And don’t go whining to Pierre Chouteau. He’ll laugh.”
Skye didn’t move a muscle.
“I hear you tried to blackmail MacLees,” Marsh said. “I got the whole story firsthand, over some good brandy. It’s the source of much humor in that household. You and your slut and that squaw on their doorstep. The wedding, by the way, was splendid.”
Skye grinned.
Marsh waited, poised like a cat, his huge red fists ready to hammer Skye. The helmsman was ready too, with a club. Trenholm hovered just outside the door, on the hurricane deck, a thick club in his hand. They were ready to kill him, hoping for it, and were looking for the slightest excuse.
Skye kept his mouth shut and his hands at his sides.
“I’m calling you a liar and a blackmailer, Skye,” Marsh said. “I hear no objection. I guess you must agree.”
Skye smiled.
“Very well, I get no argument from you about your character. You’ll be deck passengers. I’ll have a cabin boy get your gear out, and unload it on the deck. Then I’ll have him delouse the rooms.”
Now at last Skye spoke, softly and resonantly. “Tell the helmsman and Trenholm to back off and put down their clubs. Then I’ll answer you, man to man,” Skye said. “You want a reply? I’ll give you one.”
Marsh eyed the helmsman and the mate, and Skye could see him calculating. He waited calmly, on the balls of his feet His gaze bore into Marsh. Then he edged forward until the length of a pencil separated him from the master.
Downriver Page 28
