They rode through increasingly rough country as the North Platte sliced through pine-darkened slopes, and finally raised Fort Laramie in the middle of a cloudy spring afternoon. It lay sleepily in a vise of piney hills, not yet disturbed by the deluge of settlers heading west. Smoke drifted from a few chimneys. Outbuildings spread from the original fortified adobe post. Skye and his family paused. This was the only presence of Yank power for hundreds of miles, and manned by only a handful of troops, many of them raw recruits, some of them straight off immigrant ships.
Victoria had never liked being there, and now she gazed stonily, her lips compressed. But Mary, filled with wonder, studied the fort eagerly.
He steered his family toward the sutler’s store, operated by his old friend Colonel Bullock. There, Skye outfitted each year, and there, the retired Colonel Bullock, the Virginian who operated the store, acted as Skye’s agent, steering travelers who needed guiding or protection to Skye. There, Bullock kept accounts for Skye, advanced him goods when he couldn’t afford them, kept Skye afloat in an uncertain and perilous world.
Skye loved the place, not only because of the colonel’s warmth and hospitality, but because it contained everything a border man might need. There were unbleached cotton sacks of sugar and flour, cases and crates of hardtack and sweets, well-greased rifles and revolvers, shelves groaning with bullets, lead, molds, powder, caps, flints, knives, blankets, kettles, beads, awls, dyes, molasses, and of course crockery jugs of Kentucky’s finest.
Victoria loved the store if not the rest of the post, and would soon be digging through fragrant bolts of calico or gingham or flannel, looking for a few yards of this or that, along with needles and thread, buttons and bows. This year, with Mary along, Skye knew he would be buying whole bolts of cloth—if he could.
He slid off Jawbone at the hitch rail but did not tie him. The horse could not abide being tied to anything and would tear everything apart. The women slipped off their mares and tied them, along with the pack animals. On the sutler’s broad veranda were hewn-log chairs, and on these sprawled several strangers, hawkish Yanks with a squint etched permanently in their weathered flesh.
“Good afternoon, gents,” Skye said.
They nodded but did not reply. He felt their gaze on him and his wives as he plunged into the cool and shadowed store, with its burlap sacks and crammed shelves and casks and barrels. He made his way to the office cubicle at the rear, lit by a real-glass window, and there found the trim graying Virginian at his ledgers.
“Mistah Skye!” Bullock roared, bounding to his feet.
The handshake was as firm and warm as any on earth.
“Colonel, this is my new wife, Mary, of Chief Washakie’s people … and here …” Skye gently lifted the cradleboard from Mary’s shoulders.
“A pleasure, madam. You’ve made a noble match. And greetings to you, Victoria. Yoah family’s expanding by leaps and bounds. My land, Mistah Skye, you’ve whelped a child!”
“We have a boy. Among Mary’s people he is North Star, or the Star That Never Moves. And among the English, he’s Dirk.”
“Dirk? As in dagger?”
“As in my father′s name.”
“And what will he be to a displaced Virginian late in federal service, suh?”
“He will be the inspiration that will fatten your accounts, Colonel. For I mean to give him a schooling. And schools cost money, and money is what I will be grubbing from now on.”
“A fine fat child,” Bullock said. “Those are your eyes, and your unmistakable beak. That beak will stamp any child of yours, Mistah Skye. It’s the envy of every man who’s ever met you. I don’t own the half of that beak. That and your two gorgeous ladies. And those bold cheekbones and the child’s warm flesh are those of your lovely lady. And I imagine the hair will be too, dark and silky, unlike your unruly mop!”
Mary smiled shyly.
Skye laughed, a giant ripple of pleasure bellying up from his middle.
“A family, Skye! Now I’ll have you in debt the rest of your miserable life! A family costs pounds and shillings, dollars and cents! You’ll have to work for a living. Work and grub like a farmer. And how’s that offensive colt you’ve brought along?”
“Jawbone’s nigh onto an adult now, and getting more and more ornery. If you’ll observe, he’s not capable of being tied. He also kicks anyone but us, and will let no other mortal approach him.”
“Skye, he’s very like you, then. But I imagine Jawbone kicks with greater accuracy.”
They laughed.
“So, then. You’re looking for business again, when the rush begins, eh?”
“Not just one this time. I’ll take employment until the parade quits for the year, Colonel. A newborn son does that.”
Bullock sighed. “It won’t be so easy anymore, Mistah Skye. This year, you face competition. A lot of competition. This year seems to be different in ways I intend to discuss with you as soon as the opportunity arises.”
three
Colonel Bullock was a man who measured everything he said, and now he was plainly selecting his words carefully. Mister Skye knew that the sutler was also being tactful.
“Some outstanding trailsmen have shown up here, Mistah Skye. They mean to take over the guide business hereabouts. They believe it’ll be a lucrative enterprise. I would expect, sah, that they’ll be very competitive.” The colonel dabbed at his gray Vandyke, as if he didn’t like to own the words that had filtered through it.
“Who are they?” Skye asked.
“Their head man is Millard Manville. A most pleasant gentleman. I always think highly of anyone with freckles. He’s been twice to southern California, and once to Oregon, and says he made all three trips without significant loss to the wagon company and complete satisfaction all around. He was twice a captain clear from Independence, and once was elected midway along, when one wagon train rejected the man leading them.”
“And the others?”
“They all claim to be experienced men, Mistah Skye. Eight in all, I hear, and they’ve been over the trails and are ready to take others. One’s been twice to Sutter’s Fort, once over the Sierras in winter. A miraculous trip, I’m told.”
“I see. And why are they here looking for work? Independence is the place where guides hire out.”
“I don’t rightly know. It’s a riddle. Perhaps it’s something you can discover. Sometimes calamity afflicts a wagon train, and its members elect someone else …”
The colonel was delicately posing something that Skye would look into. Just who were these guides and how successful had they been? The leader of a wagon train not only had to know wagons and teams, the land, the watering holes, the natives, the safe places and dangerous ones; he had to get along with people and help them through trouble. He needed to win the trust of his company. He needed to solve dilemmas and smooth crises. A successful captain was hard to find and his services brought him a fine wage.
“I think we’ll manage,” Skye said. “For a quarter of a century I’ve roamed the American West, and that will serve me well, I imagine.”
Bullock slowly shook his head. “Normally it would, Mistah Skye.”
That set off some alarms in Skye’s head. He would introduce himself to these rivals and form his own judgment. The discreet sutler would reveal little more.
“Well, Colonel, let’s see about my credit.”
“It’s credit you’re depending on, my friend, for at the moment you are, let’s see, a bit in arrears.”
That was bad. Much of Skye’s next employment would be consumed paying off debt. And that debt would increase this day because he was in need of powder, lead, tea, sugar, needles, thread, an awl, and sundry other items.
“Ladies,” said the colonel to Skye’s women, “you just select what’s needed, and I’ll put it on the books.”
“I’ll clean out your whole damned store,” Victoria said.
The sutler laughed. He always enjoyed Victoria’s salty language, which she had picked up from the tra
ppers. The women drifted down dusky aisles filled with treasures brought a vast distance by ox power. For Skye’s family, the sutler’s store was a magical place.
“Now you’ve got two and a half to support,” the colonel said. “Which means your expenses will rise by five.” His bright eyes burned cheerfully. It was as close as Colonel Bullock ever got to a joke.
“Colonel, these guides. They’re going to be trouble for me?”
“I’d say they’ll give you a hard time, sah. But count on me. There’s always people rolling through here who want something more than a wagon captain. They want someone who can take’em where no one’s walked before. Someone who’s been over the western horizon and come back to tell about it. That’s you, sah. I’ll send you word of any prospects, but you’d be smart to hang around my front porch when the wagons roll in, because that’s where this gaggle of guides is going to be.”
“I may have to do it.”
“And there’s the other thing. You’ve a name for yourself. Wherever seasoned border men gather, they talk about Mister Skye. When a man’s name’s spoken with respect, you can count on business. When travelers in St. Louis or Independence or St. Joseph ask for a man to get them through, your name comes up. You’re right there, with the Sublettes and Jim Bridger and Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, right there with men whose name is carved on the farthest tree of the farthest wild, sir, and that alone ought to bring you all the business a man could want.”
Skye never knew how to handle comments like that, talk about his reputation, as if he had one, as if he were some sort of legend rather than a lost man struggling to stay afloat in a wild land. He lifted his battered silk top hat and smiled and settled it again on those unruly graying locks.
“Never heard of him,” Skye said.
“Ah, and Mistah Skye, this year they’re not allowing grazing on the military reservation. Grass and hay are short. You’ll have to subsist your stock somewhere upstream. Anything downstream will be chewed down to the roots by the wagon trains.”
“Up the Platte?”
The colonel paused. “I hear that’s where these new fellows are camping. It’s on the trail, and that gives’em a better chance at doing business.”
That’s where Skye himself had camped in previous seasons.
“The Laramie River, then,” he said. “I don’t know that I want my wives and my boy camped next to those gents.”
“A wise choice, sah.”
“How many trains are coming? Any word?”
“More than ever, I hear. This is getting to be a mighty business. Americans are always pulling up their roots and heading west. Next thing you know, the republic will have states on the Atlantic and Pacific, and territories in the middle. That is, if there’s not a war between North and South, which is what I think will befall us one of these times.” The Virginian stared out the window. “It’s not something I look forward to.”
Skye left the shopping to his women and drifted to the spacious veranda, where a variety of rough-looking men sat placidly on benches, under a roof, and watched troopers drill on the nearby parade ground.
Skye stood at the door, absorbing these gents. They were tough customers, all right. Some wore Colt Navy revolvers, the current sidearm of choice, at their hips. Most were bearded, and gazed at the world from beneath grimy broad-brimmed slouch hats, well bleached by sun and banded with sweat stain. The odd thought struck him that they didn’t look much like captains of wagon trains, though he couldn’t say what a captain should look like.
They noticed him now, and some smiled. He sensed no hostility among them, but rather a lively curiosity that matched his own.
“I reckon you’re the squaw man we’ve been hearing about,” said one, rising. He was a big fellow with an open, cheerful face, freckles, and good humor exuding from him. He extended a big, freckled paw. “Millard Manville here.”
“Barnaby Skye, sir.”
“Ah! so it’s you. All we hear is Skye, Skye, Skye. You’ve a reputation that humbles us, Skye.”
“Ah, it’s Mister Skye, sir. It’s a preference of mine.”
“Mister Skye, is it? Very well, if you claim Mister, then you’re Mister.”
“And you, Mister Manville?”
“Mister′s the last way to address me. Call me Millard, call me Old Soak, call me Old Goat, call me Sonofabitch. But if you call me Mister, I’ll reckon you’re jabbering at someone else.”
“Well, I’ll call people what they prefer.”
“By God, Skye, you nail a man down fast. Now, we’ve been sitting here admiring that horse. We none of us have ever seen a horse like that.”
“That’s Jawbone, and he’s not known for being handsome.”
“Not known for handsome! Mister Skye, that horse is a grand champion of ugly.”
“I wouldn’t dispute it, Mister Manville.”
“Mister is it? We’ve got to retrain you, that’s all there is to it. Now that horse. It stand there untied, and when a body approaches, it clacks its teeth and gets fit to take a piece out of the nearest hide.”
“He won’t tie, Millard. And you’d be well advised to stand clear, always.”
“He kicks, does he?”
“No, sir, he kills.”
“Kills! Maybe he’s a candidate for a bullet, then. An outlaw like that.”
“No, he’s been trained to do what I ask of him.”
“Dangerous horses should be shot.”
“Anyone who harms him will be paid in kind,” Skye said so slowly and distinctly that the words carried across that porch.
Manville stared sharply at Skye, but said nothing. The moment’s fun had drained away.
“I imagine I’d better see how my women are doing, before they buy out the store,” Skye said.
“Now, hold on a moment,” Manville said. “I’ve organized a guide outfit here, and there’s no reason for us to compete. You’re the man I’ve heard about for years, the man whose name crosses lips everywhere.”
Skye thought he would at least listen.
“I’ve got eight men now, and more on their way, and before the season’s high, we’ll have twenty men offering guide services. Good seasoned men. Lots of those wagon people, they figure they can get to Laramie all right, but then it gets tricky. They know it and they want help. So this year, we’ll have some help to offer.”
“And you want to include me?”
“Why, Skye, you’d be our star attraction. Fifty percent of the proceeds of your guiding, all yours, and we get you the clients.”
“That’s it? That’s the deal?”
“Oh, there’d be a few conditions, sir. You’d have to leave your squaws behind. We don’t want the dusky princesses with us, and most white people would take offense, you with a pair of native ladies. Some white women, they’d take alarm. Some white men, well, for the good of your ladies, sir, you’d want them in some safe place where you can squirrel them away until you return.”
“Sorry, my wives and I are together, and together we move people through dangerous country. When you hire Mister Skye, you get me, my Crow wife Victoria, and my Shoshone wife Mary, and our new boy. I’m afraid not, Mister Manville.”
“I don’t suppose it’d help if I asked you to think it over, Mister Skye.”
“No, sir. There are some things I take for sacred, and you’ve touched one.”
four
Yards of cream and brown calico, scarlet ribbons, mother-of-pearl combs, needles and thread, an awl, two paring knives, a one-gallon copper kettle, a four-point tan and blue blanket, brass tacks, a string of jingle bells, cake sugar, molasses, two balls of lavender soap. The women were aglow. Skye added a red can of Dupont powder and a bar of silvery galena, caps, patches, a ramrod to replace his damaged one, a ball mold, a half pound of coffee beans, Earl Grey tea, a sack of oats, and a gray crockery quart of Tennessee sour mash, hardly enough for a whistle-wetting.
It added a hundred and seven dollars to his debt and barely covered his needs.
“Just sign here, my friend,” Bullock said. Skye dipped the nib into the inkwell and scrawled his signature on the ledger page, an acknowledgment of more indentured servitude. He was worried. And yet every spring, about this time, he negotiated with westbound travelers and came out on top. He ought not to worry, but this time he did. There were rivals sitting out there on that veranda.
These treasures he loaded into the panniers on his slack-jawed pack mule under the observant gaze of those gents on the porch. No word was spoken, but he sensed his every act was being studied, and probably found wanting. The Yanks had horse-loading rituals and conventions he barely grasped. They swore by the diamond hitch to load up a pack animal. He preferred the reliable canvas compartments, and now he carefully balanced the load on each animal so the packs would ride easily.
“Mister Skye, I reckon you might be heading up the Laramie crick, but you’ll be disappointed,” said Manville. “My herders are camped there and subsisting thirty-some mules over several square miles. Not much feed, I’m afraid. We have mules, a team of ox, and horses all feeding west of Fort Laramie. And we have a dozen more men coming, all with their own stock.”
“And you’re on the Platte also?”
“I’m afraid we are, sir. Truth to tell, we’ve spread over every inch of pasture anywhere close to the post. In fact, I have a crew upriver cutting whatever native hay they can manage. They wouldn’t take kindly to a latecomer trying to horn in. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be pleasant for you.”
Skye absorbed that bleakly.
Manville was smiling. When did this cheerful man not smile? At a funeral? No, Skye thought, Manville would smile at his own mother′s funeral.
“I’d like you to meet my wives, Millard. This is Mary, and the child in the cradleboard is my son, North Star. And this is Victoria, my mate of many years.”
The smiling Manville offered a freckled hand to each. “Lovely, lovely, dusky princesses,” he murmured.
“Well, sonofabitch,” said Victoria.
“Ah! You have a choice assortment, Mister Skye!”
Mary smiled, these niceties sailing past her.
Virgin River Page 2
