So Wild a Dream

by Win Blevins

  All of a sudden things weren’t boring. A woman made a grand entrance. Except for Abby and the dance hostesses, she was the only woman in the room, and boldly unescorted. Begowned and bejeweled, she drew the eyes of every man in the house. Grumble stopped playing the dance tune. Everyone got quiet. Slowly, grandly, she paraded toward the billiards tables. Grumble launched into a siren song from a Rossini opera. When she arrived, she wrapped her arms around M. Chouteau, kissed him on the cheek, and threw her head back. She sent out a squeal of phony laughing.

  Abruptly, Grumble started ripping out a lively, polka-like dance tune, a schottische.

  Mr. Jim materialized at Sam’s side. “Madame Hélène,” he said quietly. “A local widow. She was M. Chouteau’s mistress until Abby came to town.”

  Though the widow looked a little older than M. Chouteau, she was splendidly preserved—a huge abundance of blonde hair, a long, elegant neck, beautifully shaped shoulders revealed by her off-the-shoulder gown.

  “Isn’t she a little out of bounds?”

  Jim grinned. “Right where she means to be.”

  Madame Hélène was all over M. Chouteau, arm around him, the other hand stroking his. He turned his back on her, bent over the table for a shot, and nearly poked her with the butt end of the cue.

  His shot missed everything.

  She did not take the hint, but draped herself on him again.

  M. Chouteau’s opponent, M. Bernard Pratte, scored twice in a row. With an ironic eyebrow cocked, he said to Chouteau, “Two in one.”

  “Ought we do something?” Sam asked.

  “Wouldn’t want to be rude to a lady, would we?” Mr. Jim was not quite chuckling out loud.

  M. Chouteau detached himself from the lady, said something to her quietly, and took a step away.

  “But, chéri,” Hélène said theatrically, followed by something fast in French.

  Chouteau stepped to the table to shoot. As he began, she touched the elbow of his shooting arm.

  Chouteau whirled, his face furious.

  She stepped forward, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him full and long on the mouth.

  At that moment Abby came up. “What is it you want, Madame?”

  She turned her head to Abby but kept Chouteau in her arms. He looked frozen there. “I think I already have it. Cadet, aren’t you going to introduce me to your new … friend?”

  Abby spoke up. “Abigail McKenna, owner of this establishment. Are you looking for work? I do have positions for women.”

  “My, my, I think the lady’s calling me a whore. Cadet, will you not defend my honor?”

  Chouteau bristled but held his tongue.

  “Madame,” said Abby, dead level serious now, “for your own sake you’d best go.”

  One of the billiards players walked up to Hélène and grasped her elbow lightly. “That’s M. Labbadie, her late husband’s brother,” said Mr. Jim to Sam.

  Hélène responded by turning more fully into Chouteau. She touched her necklace and then held her wrists, heavy with bracelets. “Look at these fabulous jewels Cadet gave me. Pauvre petite, you have none.”

  Abby looked up at the stairway landing and gave Mr. Jim a tiny, come-here jerk of her head.

  “Hélène,” said Labbadie softly.

  But she just tossed off another cartload of French.

  Abby answered back in French somewhat hesitantly, but the warning in her tone was clear.

  “Oh, chéri, that gutter accent, how do you stand it, especially in amour?”

  The crowd laughed. Sam realized Grumble had stopped playing, and everyone was watching the two women.

  Mr. Jim arrived, and Abby whispered into his ear.

  Mr. Jim marched straight to Madame Hélène and grabbed one arm firmly. “Madame, you’re leaving.”

  “Cadet!” cried Hélène.

  “Take your hands off her,” said her brother-in-law, stepping up close.

  Mr. Jim calmly took his hand off her arm, reached into her mass of blonde hair, and snatched her wig off.

  Abby hooted.

  Underneath Hélène was half bald. The sparse, thin, scraggly hair she did have was a drab brown.

  She slapped Mr. Jim.

  With an open hand he knocked her to the floor.

  The place erupted.

  M. Labbadie hit Mr. Jim with a fist that reflected gold cuff links.

  Jim punched him in the stomach and doubled him over.

  Abby grabbed Chouteau before he could get into the fray and pulled him back.

  All the billiards players leapt at Jim, cues raised as clubs.

  The nearby Kentucks laid into the billiards players.

  Hélène snatched her blonde wig off the ground and ran up the stairs past Sam, bawling. He watched her open the door on one of the whore bedrooms and then notice the door to the outside exit. She dived into the night.

  Watching her go, Abby and Mr. Jim took a moment to wink at each other.

  In a far corner one poker player, a loser, hit the table’s big winner.

  A rodent-like man attacked his faro dealer.

  Men in every corner jumped into the brawl. “Is this a private fight,” yelled one, “or can anyone join in?”

  The dance girls quailed against the walls.

  Tables were overturned, chairs broken when they crashed onto someone’s back or when someone crashed into them.

  It was a fine old time.

  Abby gave Sam the signal.

  He lifted the side by side and discharged one barrel into the plank wall opposite.

  The room dropped into a hush. Men froze like they were carved into the side of a building.

  “There’s another barrel,” hollered Sam, swinging the shotgun over their heads.

  “Enough!” cried Abby. “The drinks are on the house!”

  Grumble struck up a dance as loud as he could.

  Men rushed to the bar.

  Mr. Jim got back behind it and started serving customers. A cut in one eyebrow was bleeding down his face, but his grin was natty.

  Abby smiled up at Sam. He reloaded, just in case.

  Sam felt bereft.

  He also felt very tired. He was leaning against a brick wall of Market House looking down onto the waterfront. His comrades were loading the Yellow Stone Packet and the Rocky Mountains. He didn’t want to stir.

  Last night, after Abby’s opening, they’d stayed up most of the way to dawn, partying. First himself, Grumble, Abby, and Chouteau. Then just Sam and Grumble. He had said good-bye to his friends. He was going into Indian country, which was twice as big and twice as lonely as the frontier he was leaving behind. The only friends he had, he was leaving behind.

  “Follow your wild hair,” he whispered to himself. He pushed himself off the brick and wandered toward the boat.

  “Morgan,” snapped Daniel Patterson, “you’re late.”

  Just then a smallish, slender man walked up, bearing an air of authority. “Captain Patterson, we have three leaking whiskey kegs. Get the cooper.”

  “General Ashley,” said Patterson, “this is one of our hunters, Sam Morgan of Pennsylvania.”

  General Ashley? Sam had expected something more.

  “Sam, this is General William Ashley.”

  Ashley offered his hand. “Glad you’re signed on with us. Good luck. Captain Patterson, have you….”

  They turned and hurried off to bark instructions here and there. Sam watched them go and felt a pang. He’d met Hannibal MacKye, Sly Stuart, Grumble, and Abby, and he was going to follow these men?

  For two hours he helped load trade goods for the Indians. Ten thousand dollars’ worth, Patterson had emphasized. Sam was tired, and his back hurt. Ashley, though, was bustling, bustling, bustling, preparing the Packet and Rocky Mountains to sail.

  Ashley wasn’t going. “Captain” Daniel Patterson would be in charge. Sam wondered why men in private businesses got called by military titles, and he didn’t quite understand how the general got other men to do the
work and make money for him. Did his soldiers do his fighting too? “Morgan, look sharp there.” It was Patterson barking again.

  This wasn’t what Sam was looking for.

  A friendly hand touched his shoulder. Grumble. He turned to Patterson and addressed him respectfully, asking for a moment to take leave. Patterson gave a grudging nod.

  Grumble put an arm around Sam’s shoulder and led him aside. “I know you don’t have much time, and we said our good-byes well last night. But I have something more for you. You could call it brotherly advice. Note! Brother, not fatherly.”

  Sam looked into his eyes.

  “Sam, you’ve got a hunger. For what I don’t know. But I do know this. No one else can guide you. Not your father, not your brother, not Hannibal MacKye, not me. My one bit of advice is, Do your own hunting.”

  He reached out and hugged Sam. “May fortune smile on you.”

  “Good luck to you too.”

  The cherub spun gracefully on a heel and walked away.

  “I’ll be back,” Sam called after him. “I’ll be back.”

  Grumble waved without turning.

  Sam looked at the keelboats and his rough companions and the charging river, and pictured tens of thousands of Indians in a country unimaginably vast and thought, ‘Maybe I won’t.’

  Part Two

  INDIAN COUNTRY

  Chapter Ten

  Sam thought he heard a sound. Maybe. Sort of. He didn’t know.

  All his nerves strained. He heard nothing. Sounds of the river, but that was always so. The Missouri was forever lapping-swishing-gurgling its way to the Mississippi. And after some time on watch—by the Big Dipper it was nearing midnight—his nerves got jumpy.

  Did he hear a paddle?

  He was on lookout, and desperate not to foul up. They were only a few miles below the Ree villages. The old hands of the fur trade agreed that the Rees were bad Injuns. You could never tell whether they were going to be friendly or hostile. Everyone was edgy—which would it be?

  Lookout was more listening than watching. Ashley usually anchored the two keelboats, The Yellow Stone Packet and the smaller Rocky Mountains, in the middle of the deepest channel and strongest current, so enemies would have to use boats to come at them. Lookouts were always posted. But what could you see in the darkness? The nearest town was maybe five hundred miles back, the nearest trading post a couple of hundred. Where was light to see by? Moonlight? Starlight? Not much on a night like this, though the moon lit the clouds from behind.

  Sam saw shapes in the blackness, but didn’t know whether they were real or phantasmagoric. He peered into the darkness from the bow of The Rocky Mountains and imagined he saw the silhouettes of tens of thousands of Indians out there in the darkness.

  If the Rees came, they would use dugout canoes. They would float silently. They would put a man or two on board as quietly as possible and try to find the lookout before he could holler out, and kill him.

  Sam would see their shadowy shapes, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?

  He sharpened his ears. He sorted out every sound and decided none was a paddle dipping, or being lifted from the water. Hoped none was.

  General Ashley said Indians were not to be treated as enemies. How could ninety men on two keelboats fight hordes of angry Indians? Without the U.S. Army closer than Fort Atkinson, hundreds of miles downriver and getting further every day? Without a white man between the Missouri and California? Most of these ninety men had grown up on the frontier. If they hadn’t fought Indians, their fathers had, or grandfathers. And their blood told them Indians were the enemy. So did jiggers in their skin when they approached a village. Besides, that’s what Sam was posted for, to listen for Indians, because they might attack.

  Klip-PINK!

  His toenails curled. That was the sound of a paddle—he was sure of it. He padded softly to larboard, where the sound seemed to originate, and peered into the darkness. Something moved.

  No, it was a trick of his eyes. He saw lots of shapes in the blackness, figments of his imagination, of his fear.

  He walked amidships along the cleated deck, where the crewmen planted their poles, staring into the darkness.

  Nothing. Pointless. Hopeless.

  KLUNK!

  He ran to starboard, where this sound came from.

  S-S-SCRAPE!

  No doubt about it now. That was the sound of wood banging the hull.

  He opened his mouth to bellow, but his voice got caught.

  “Help me!”

  Someone speaking English?

  “Help me!”

  An American voice in the darkness. He hurried forward and saw a shadow against the hull.

  “Give me a hand up!”

  Sam ran to the sound.

  His eyes read a human shape, reaching for the deck.

  “Who are you?” Sam cried.

  “A man who needs a hand,” the voice came back calmly.

  Sam ran forward. As he got there, a bag of gear flopped onto the deck, and two hands reached up. Sam took the hands, but one was full of rope and the other full of rifle. Sam grabbed the stranger’s wrists and heaved him onto the deck, rope, rifle, and all.

  Someone came forward with a lantern. A dozen men were stirring from their blankets on the deck.

  The pull of the rope banged a dugout canoe against the hull.

  “Thanks.”

  The man who spoke was a tall, slender white fellow with a serious face. He stuck out a hand to Sam. “Jedediah Smith.”

  “Sam Morgan.”

  “I might be James Clyman,” said the man with the lantern, “if I knew why the hell you’re mucking about in the middle of the night a thousand miles from anywhere.”

  “Bringing an express to General Ashley,” Smith said.

  Everyone absorbed what that meant as Smith confirmed. “I’ve come down from Fort Henry.”

  All the way from the junction of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, evidently alone. Sam was speechless.

  “The General is on the other boat,” said Clyman.

  “It will keep until daylight. I could use some food and some sleep.” He picked up his bag of belongings and saw Sam looking at it oddly.

  “Possible sack, we call it,” said Smith. “Everything I own in there.”

  “I’ll hitch your canoe at the stern,” said Sam.

  Didn’t matter to Sam whether the physical miles from St. Louis were a thousand miles or not, and they damn near were. He knew he was further than that from the world he knew. Two months into Indian country, a world into alien territory.

  First, it had been far, far harder work than he’d imagined keelboating could be. The hands moved the boats upstream against the spring current mostly by poling. The edges of the decks were cleated; the men planted their long poles in the bottom and walked downstream, pushing the boat the other way. Get to the stern and pull your pole and walk back to the bow and start again. It was muscle-popping work.

  Much of the time, though, poling wasn’t enough. Then the men went ashore with a long rope called a cordel and heaved the boat upriver by main might. Or they tied the cordel to a tree, stood on the deck, and hauled that rope on board.

  Poling or cordeling, they heaved a lot of weight up the river—goods to trade to the Indians for safe passage, for horses, and for furs. They carried a sort of mercantile store west—blankets, pots and pans, kettles, needles, awls, calico cloth, wool strouding in red and in blue, guns, powder, lead, tomahawks, knives, coffee, sugar, lots more, and most of all tobacco, the so-called sacred plant needed to start any discussion with Indians. You couldn’t do business with Indians unless you had this merchandise. But the men griped about the weight.

  Fortunately, Sam was spared most of this brute labor. Signed on as a hunter, he spent his days walking the shore with his rifle, The Celt, in search of deer, turkey, or whatever else was available. He had a partner in this work, the lank, slow-spoken Virginian named Clyman. As Sam was maybe the youngest crewman, Clyman was the olde
st, in his thirties. Well, maybe that crusty old Hugh Glass was the oldest. Anyway, Sam liked Clyman, liked the country, and loved the hunting.

  But it wasn’t the glories of the landscape in spring that enchanted Sam, not exactly. It was the sense of himself as a man with feet on the earth and eyes on the horizon. He couldn’t have said what this meant to him, nor did he try for the words. But he felt small changes within himself. He was going somewhere inside.

  In three weeks they passed Fort Osage, an outpost of Missouri Fur Company, with its tame Indians, not much different from what Sam saw back in the settlements. In another three they came to Fort Atkinson, the last outpost, military or otherwise, of the United States. Beyond this point adventurers were on their own, for life or death. White men had pushed beyond. But some people didn’t think they came back as white men.

  Beyond this point they were also in a world Sam didn’t know. They visited a Sioux village above Atkinson, to give gifts, trade for furs, and get the news. Sam wanted to eat what he saw with his eyes. Here were human beings living in a way he had never imagined, and somehow it worked for them. Yes, somehow it did. His curiosity was frustrated, for the hands weren’t allowed to roam the village on their own, and their visit was short.

  Three more weeks, with short stops and a couple of fur trade posts, brought them where they were now, just below the Ree villages. Which according to all report meant their lives were at stake.

  Smith had to answer a lot of questions when he woke up, but they were friendly, even admiring. How did you do it? Travel all the way from the Yellowstone, maybe three hundred miles away, alone? How did you avoid the Indians? Every man jack of them knew that, no matter how they might declare friendship, warriors would be tempted by a white man traveling alone. How did you find us in the dark? What’s your message for the General?

  Smith didn’t mention doing it alone. He said he traveled at night in his canoe and cached in brush cover by day. The hard part, he said, was not the Indians but avoiding the whole trees sweeping down the river in high water—they careened downstream, popping up anywhere. Find you? Luck. He saw the keelboats from several miles above. Before starting out each night, he used the twilight to climb to a high point and look downstream as far as he could. This past night he’d seen where the boats were, and then saw them as rectangles blacker than the darkness.