Wind Walker tb-9

by Terry C. Johnston

Turning to peer over at his wife, Sweete ruminated a moment, then said, “I can’t callate as I’ve ever had a drop o’ whiskey since I’ve knowed her.”

  “Nary a cup down to that mud fort on the Arkansas?”

  He wagged his head. “Nope. Not a drop since I been around Shell Woman an’ her people.”

  Titus chuckled softly and said, “Then she ain’t see’d you drunk the way I see’d Shadrach Sweete get in the cups!”

  “Nope. Them days belong to another man now, Scratch.”

  “You was a wild critter, Shadrach,” Bass commented with fond remembrance. “Good damn thing you never got so drunk we’d had to rope you to a tree till your head dried out. Would’ve took a bunch of us to get you wrassled down and tied up.”

  “Can’t say as I’ve ever see’d you get bad in the cups neither,” Sweete admitted. “So you figger to tear off the top of your head and howl at the moon tonight?”

  “Nope.” And he shook his head dolefully. “Them times is over for me too, lad. I hurt too damn much for days after. Can’t swaller likker like I used to and stay on my feet.”

  “We’re just getting old.”

  “The hell you say! Speak for your own self!” And he shuddered with a chill that was penetrating him to the bone. “I’m getting damned cold sitting out in this rain, water dripping down my ass what’s gone sore on this here soggy saddle—listening to you spoutin’ off ’bout whiskey,” Titus grumbled. “A few swallers’d sure ’nough warm my belly right about now.”

  The fifteen-foot-tall double gate was still much the same as it had been on his last visit to Fort William, but now the arch that extended overhead bore the figure of a horse galloping at full speed, painted red in a primitive design that reminded Scratch of how a horse might be rendered on the side of a Crow or Shoshone lodge. A little distance out, he whistled the dogs close and they all angled away from the mud walls, aiming instead for that flat just below the fort, where the La Ramee Fork dumped itself into the North Platte. Here they would camp close enough to the post to conduct some business, but far enough away that there was little chance of their families being disturbed. After Titus sent Magpie and Flea off through the brush to scratch up what they could of kindling dry enough to hold a flame, he turned to help Shell Woman and Waits-by-the-Water with that small Cheyenne lodge the two women erected only when the weather turned as inhospitable as it had this day.

  “Here, I’ll lend a hand,” Shadrach offered as he grabbed an edge of the buffalo-hide lodge cover.

  “Not with that arm of yours still mending,” Bass scolded.

  “A’most good as new awready.”

  Titus shook his head. “G’won and tend to the stock. Three of us raise the lodge while you get our goods off them horses.”

  The early spring rain finally let up late in the afternoon, not long after the women and Magpie got Shell Woman’s lodge staked down and the smoke flaps directed against the breezy drizzle. Inside the women unfurled buffalo robes and blankets around the small fire pit, then got the little ones out of their wet clothing. To the left of the door Flea piled the driest wood he could find down in the brushy creek bottom, while the women stacked bundles of their belongings dragged inside, out of the weather. Again tonight the two families would gather beneath one roof, crowded hip to elbow, sharing their warmth and their laughter rather than erecting Waits-by-the-Water’s lodge nearby.

  “Go with you?” Flea’s English caught his father as he and Shadrach ducked from the lodge right after a supper of some boiled venison.

  “He asked that real good, didn’t he?” Sweete remarked.

  Bass nodded proudly, then told the boy, “Go tie up the dogs to a tree, close by, like we allays do, son.”

  Magpie’s head poked from the lodge door as she asked, “Me too, Popo? Go with you to fort?”

  “What’s your mother say?”

  The young girl stood just outside the doorway, speaking to her mother, then turned back to Titus and said, “We go, yes. Stay with Popo all the time.”

  “You both unnerstand what stay with me all the time means?”

  Magpie moved up two steps and took Flea’s hand in hers. They nodded their heads in unison as she said, “Where you go, we go.”

  “If’n your manners stay as good as your American talk, then there won’t be no reason for me to scold you two,” Titus replied. “Your mother’s been here afore, you too, Magpie.”

  “Me?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”

  With a grin he explained, “You was little. No more’n a year an’ a half old back then.”

  She stepped over and squeezed his hand lovingly. “That was so long ago, this will be a brand-new visit for me.”

  “Like our visit to Bents’ lodge on the Arkansas,” Titus said, hugging her quickly, “this might just be your last an’ only chance to see this here Fort William on the Platte.”

  “Platte?” Flea repeated.

  “The river,” Shad explained. “That’s parley-voo for flat.”

  This time Magpie echoed, “Parley-voo?”

  “Frenchie talk,” Scratch said. “Lots of Frenchies out here. Not so many up to Crow country, but they’re all over the Arkansas country.”

  “Frenchies—is this a tribe?” she inquired in her native tongue as the four of them climbed onto the flat and started crossing the soggy pasture toward the fort itself.

  Both of the men laughed and Bass explained, “They’re part of the white tribe. Like there are River Crow, and there are Mountain Crow. The Frenchies are part of the white tribe, but they come from a land far, far from here—and they talk with a whole different tongue of their own.”

  “But, the two bands of Crow speak the same tongue,” Flea protested. “Why do these Frenchies talk a different tongue than the rest of the white tribe?”

  Baffled, Titus shrugged as he came to a halt near the gates, the light growing dim.

  Shadrach chuckled as he held up two fingertips barely spaced apart and exclaimed, “Because them Frenchies got a wee small brain—so they don’t know no better than to squawk an’ whine in that idjit talk of theirs!”

  “They got the inner gate closed, Shad,” Titus announced with a little worry. “C’mon.”

  Passing under the arch over the double gates, the four entered a passageway at the end of which stood the set of closed gates. Midway down the adobe wall to their left was a narrow window covered by wooden shutters that had been bolted shut on the inside of the wall.

  Scratch pushed on them gently. “Throwed an’ locked.” Then he pounded on them with his fist. “Ho! The fort! Open up! Open up out here!”

  Muted voices and the scrambling of feet on soggy ground drifted to them from inside the gates; then the scrape of iron was heard, and one side of the shutters was pulled back a few inches. A nose poked itself out. After the nose’s owner made a cursory inspection of the newcomers, the shutter opened all the way and there stood a round-faced white man, his chin and cheeks clothed in a neatly trimmed beard, his upper lip naked of a mustache.

  “What’s your business?”

  “We’re thirsty,” Bass declared.

  “Them too?” the man asked, his eyes flicking to the children with their heads poked between the two trappers.

  “Jehoshaphat!” Titus roared. “These here my young’uns! They ain’t near old enough to drink.”

  “They’re Indian?”

  Scratch looked down at their faces as they peered up at him. “Yes, sir. These here pups o’ mine be ’bout as Injun as you is white.” He looked at the fort employee. “Now, let us in for to trade on some whiskey.”

  “Almost time for the store to close,” he said, his eyes shifty. “Sunset, you see—”

  Scratch wagged his head and clucked, “Never thought a trader would turn away a buy in’ customer.”

  The man exhaled with that sort of sigh one used when they have been interrupted at what they regard as a most important task. “L-let me inquire of the factor.”

  His face was gone
and the shutter closed and locked before either Scratch or Shad could ask just who currently ruled Fort William on the Platte.

  “You bring something to trade, Shadrach?”

  “I ain’t wagering nothing Shell Woman made for me, if that’s what you’re asking,” he grumbled. “You’ll have to get your own self drunk tonight.”

  That prompted Flea to look up at his father and ask, “You drink the spirit water tonight?”

  “I pray I can afford a little of the spirit water tonight, you damn bet, son.”

  “So what you bring to trade?” Sweete asked, looking Bass up and down.

  He patted the front of his coat just above the spot where he had buckled the old belt decorated with what was left of its tarnished brass tacks. “Got me a little sack of some Mexican coins.”

  “You been holding on to that money since you was down to Taos a while back?”

  “Got me some coins in Taos,” he replied, “but most of ’em I got out to Californy.”

  “When you rode off with some Mex horses?”

  “Some of them greasers come after us had a few coins in their pockets,” Bass stated as the sound of iron sliding against iron echoed on the other side of the interior gate. “We took ever’thing we figgered we’d ever use off them dead bodies afore we kept on running for the desert.”

  “There’s just the two of you?” asked a stout, broad-shouldered man in a thick French accent that reminded Titus of the back alleys and tippling houses of old St. Louis.

  “An’ my two young’uns here,” Titus declared, then smiled as he said, “but, they don’t drink much whiskey no more.”

  The Frenchman’s eyes wrinkled and his lips curled up in a smile. At least this one, Scratch thought, he appeared to have some remnants of a sense of humor.

  “So, tell me—if the four of you have come to drink my whiskey, just where are your furs?”

  Scratch immediately wheeled on Sweete. “Furs? Didn’t you remember to bring the damn furs?”

  “Me?” Shad bellowed as if he had been insulted. “You was the one s’posed to remember to bring in them buffler robes with you to trade.”

  “Damn your hide anyway!” Bass said, then turned back to the Frenchman. “Looks like we didn’t bring along any of our furs to trade tonight … so if you wouldn’t mind figgering out how much some gold coin is worth, we’ll know how much we can drink up afore moonset.”

  “G-gold?” The Frenchman’s voice rose in pitch as he pushed the gate open a bit farther and stepped through the portal.

  Titus nodded. “Mexican.”

  “Real gold?”

  “Californy gold,” Scratch replied. “I s’pose their gold is real out there. I only been to Californy once, but I don’t care to go back to them parts for to fetch me any more of it.”

  The Frenchman started to hold out his hand, palm up as he asked, “You’ve got it with you?”

  “I got enough for a li’l drinking, maybeso some geegaws and earbobs for our wives what stayed back to camp.”

  “My name’s Bordeau,” he announced with transparent eagerness. “And yours?”

  “Sweete,” the tall one answered. “An’ my ugly friend here is named Bass.”

  Bordeau turned and started toward the tall, heavy gate being held open by another man. “Come in—and bring your children.”

  “You’re booshway here?” Titus asked as they followed.

  “No,” Bordeau answered as the group stepped inside the inner courtyard. “Monsieur Papin is chief factor, but he is gone east. Gone downriver with a load of furs for St. Louis.”

  “Papin,” Titus repeated the name. “That’s a French name, just like yours.”

  “Oui.” He turned them slightly on the path for the trading room.

  Scratch looked at Shad. “American Fur ain’t very American no more, Shadrach. All these Frenchies leavin’ St. Louie behind an’ makin’ for the High Stonies. From the sounds o’ things, there likely ain’t a Frenchie left on the Mississippi River by now.”

  Bordeau stopped at the wooden door and, with his hand on the iron latch, quickly appraised the two Americans again, then asked, “Did you, or you, trap the beaver for our company before the beaver was good no more?”

  “I worked for Jim Bridger,” Sweete explained. “When he hired on to run a brigade for American Fur.”

  “And you, monsieur?” Bordeau asked, his eyes falling on Bass.

  “Never,” he snorted. “It stuck in my craw when I was made to trade my plews* over to American Fur at ronnyvoo after Billy Sublette was bought out of the mountains. I dunno who done the worst to kill off my way of life—you niggers with American Fur or them John Bull niggers with Hudson’s Bay.”

  Bordeau unlocked the bolt and shoved open the door, promptly stepping behind a nearby counter where he turned up the wick on a lamp. “But American Fur is the American company holding the English out.”

  “From the looks of you and that parley-voo booshway Papin, and all them other Frenchies working down at Bents’ mud lodge down on the Arkansas—I don’t know if there’s much of what you’d call American in the fur trade no more. Them fat, rich Frenchmen back to St. Louie, they near bought up ever’thing. Their kind’s been doin’ business outta these posts where they don’t need no American trappers like me an’ him.”

  “This is my business, the furs that come to this place,” Bordeau said as he stepped behind the counter and turned the wicks up on two more lamps that slowly pushed back the twilight’s growing darkness. “The furs, are they your business still, monsieur?”

  Sweete shook his head. “No, can’t say as they are.”

  The trader asked Titus, “You do the fur business still, like me?”

  “Not since fellas like you squeezed beaver to death and killed the way I made a life for myself and my own,” Scratch replied sourly.

  Bordeau grinned. “So you see? I am the American in American Fur now. You two and all the rest of your kind—you are no longer around. But I am still here. I work hard, work my way up. Learn the business. You two, like the rest, you nevair want to learn to work for the company—so the company does not need men like you no more.”

  “A damn shame,” Bass grumbled. “Badger-eyed li’l weasels like you come in and took over this business from men who stood tall and bold of a time not so long ago. None of you Frenchies ever gonna be half o’ the men I knowed back in the glory days!”

  Shad latched his hand around Scratch’s arm and held him tight at the very instant Titus leaned toward the counter where Bordeau’s face was darkening with crimson.

  Bass glanced down at Sweete’s hand, then at his friend’s face. “Don’t you worry, Shadrach. I ain’t about to pop this parley-voo in the jaw.”

  Shad slowly released his grip. “It’d be hard as hell to trade with this booshway after you busted his nose an’ made him bleed all over his purty shirt.”

  With a snort, Titus said, “Mon-sur Bordeau ain’t gonna throw me out, Shadrach. No matter how low he thinks of me.”

  “Because I am a gentleman … and you are not.”

  Shaking his head, Scratch said, “Wrong, mon-sur.”

  Bordeau said, “Because you do not fight with blood in front of your half-breed children?”

  “That’s wrong too, pork-eater.” Titus stuffed his hand inside the flaps of his coat. “No matter how bad you wanna throw me outta your fort, you won’t do it because I got some Mexican gold you want pretty bad.”

  Between Bordeau’s lips appeared the pink tip of his tongue. He licked the lips, then rolled them inward over his teeth with anticipation. Glee twinkled in his eyes as Titus brought out the small skin satchel and clanked it on the counter.

  “Let me see these coins of yours.” Bordeau rubbed his hands together.

  “I’ll show you one,” he advised as he unknotted the leather string wrapped around the top of the pouch. From it he pulled a coin, which he loudly thumbed onto the counter and pushed toward the trader.

  As Bordeau raised it into th
e light for an inspection, the gold shimmered.

  “You held on to that Mex money a long time,” Sweete commented.

  “Most times, I got some furs, something to trade off. Not no more. So it seems like this is as good a place as any to dicker on some goods for these here coins,” Titus said as he watched the factor slip the coin between his teeth and clamp down with zeal. “Appears to me Mon-sur Bordeau here knows good gold when he sees it.”

  “Is real,” the trader attested.

  “’Course it is,” Scratch replied.

  He watched Bordeau turn away, still clutching the coin, moving aside some objects on a shelf behind him before he pulled out a small set of scales and weights. Placing the coin on one side of the scale, Bordeau selected one of the smallest weights. After he had it balanced, Bordeau looked up at the American again.

  “How many of these you have, Monsieur American?”

  “What’s that’un worth to you?”

  “How many you want to spend?”

  “Only one,” he said stiffly. “I figger it’s more’n enough to buy some earbobs and hangy-downs for our womenfolk. A play-pretty or two for each o’ the young’uns.”

  Removing the coin from the scale, Bordeau leaned back against the shelves and held the gold piece before his eyes, turning it this way and that in the lamplight. “Pick out what you want for your women and the children too.”

  How excited the youngsters became as Bordeau pulled wooden trays from the shelves behind him and laid them side by side on the counter, each one filled with hanks of sewing beads, or large multicolored glass beads from faraway Venice and the continent of Africa too, along with many styles of finger rings, an assortment of tin bracelets, and small rolls of brass wire. Magpie went right to work touching every single item to her satisfaction. Next, Bordeau set a small wooden pail on the counter; inside were nestled a bevy of tin whistles and string toys that snared the eyes of young Flea and Shadrach.

  Scratch was bending over the trays with his daughter when the trader spoke.

  “What do you think of this?”

  Magpie and her father both looked up together, finding Bordeau holding a colorful shawl, delicately sewn with a tassel fringe at the hem around the bottom V of the broad triangle. Scratch noticed how his daughter clamped her hand over her mouth, eyes going wide as muleprints.