by Win Blevins
Hannibal smiled at him a little.
“I was thinking, those last days coming down the river, I ought to go home for a little.”
“Because?”
Sam shrugged. “Something … I don’t know.” He wiggled his shoulders, like trying to get something off his back. “Unfinished.”
“What else are you thinking of?”
“Going to St. Louis and working for Abby until spring, then go back upriver.”
“Any other choices?”
“I can’t work for Ashley when I can’t find the brigade. Don’t know what to do.”
At that moment they saw a soldier come walking to them. When he got close, he averted his eyes, as though embarrassed by the sight of male skin. “They sent me to tell you, Morgan, your friends just arrived.”
“What?”
“From upriver. Fitzpatrick and the others just got here. They came walking down the river, just like you.”
Sam jumped up and skinnied into his pants.
“Sounds like you just got another choice,” said Hannibal.
Gideon gave him a king-sized bear hug, Fitzpatrick and Clyman formal handshakes. Branch and Stone were with the army surgeon, getting patched up.
Sam looked at his friends while he introduced Hannibal. “You look maybe even worse than Sam when he got here,” the Delaware said. “That must be a bad walk.”
Sam hoped to hell he didn’t look that bad, skin about to peel off and poking through. The biggest, Gideon, who was also the biggest around, actually looked the most haggard.
That night was all stories. Diah Smith had gone downstream to look for Sam, found the sign where he camped, found all the Indian tracks, and concluded he was gone under. He went back upriver while Fitzpatrick and the others built bull boats to float the furs downstream. But they capsized in the swift, whitewater canyon and lost all but one of their rifles and all their balls. They cached the furs and started downstream for help. On the way they got stopped and robbed by the Pawnees, same ones who got Sam.
Now Sam didn’t wonder at how they looked.
They had pried the brass mountings off the remaining rifle—they showed Sam and Hannibal—and bent these into balls. So they were able to kill a few buffalo on the way. Also, they had each other for company.
Sam told his stories, too. The stories were as different as each man, they saw, and in a longer view the same. Men did hard things and lived to tell about it. Every man jack of them was thrilled.
The evening ended, though, with Fitzpatrick back to business. “We got to raise the cache. You want to go back?”
That gave Sam something to think over.
It took him two days to decide. He didn’t consult with Hannibal at all, which felt a little strange, but that’s the way he wanted it.
“I’m going home for a while,” he told Fitzpatrick. “Don’t know how long. I think I’ll be coming back as quick as I can.”
“Your decision,” said the Irishman. “I’ll give you a letter to take to the general.”
Fitzpatrick also used Ashley’s credit to get Sam a pirogue. By God, Sam thought, using a river to help me go. It’s been a while, feels good.
Gideon, a boat man, helped him pick out the pirogue and paddle. They tried it out, and Sam was impressed by how well a hollowed-out log moved on the water. “Travel at night until you get to Fort Osage,” Gideon reminded him. “Maybe ten days. Mind your hair.”
“I hope I’ll see you soon.” The French-Canadian bear-hugged him again.
It occurred to Sam that not long ago a lone journey of a week and a half or two weeks in Indian country would have felt like a real challenge. But not if he didn’t have to walk.
At sunset Sam and Hannibal walked down to the river. The pirogue was ready to go. No baggage except for Coy, a deer hide wrapped around two weeks’ worth of jerked meat, and the letter, tucked into a leather wallet inside his shirt.
“First time we met,” said Sam, “you told me to follow my wild hair. Any advice this time?”
“One small bit,” said Hannibal. “That dream, the buffalo. If you come back to Indian country, tell a medicine man. Do a sweat lodge with him, and tell him your dream.”
Sam gave Hannibal an odd look. “Sweat lodge?”
“Yes.”
Sam looked at friend. “I will. If I make it back.”
“You will.”
Sam clapped Hannibal on both shoulders. “How about another prediction? Will I see you again?”
Hannibal flashed him a big, easy grin. “For sure,” he said. “When you’re not looking for me.”
Chapter Twenty
“Oh, brother, have I been waiting for you. Do I ever have an idea for us.”
This was Grumble. Sam could hardly believe he was with Grumble and Abby in the Green Tree Tavern. Seemed like another planet.
His trip had gone easy as sliding on goose dung. At Fort Osage they offered him a ride downstream with two other men in a good canoe. He took it. They were bearing letters to Cadet Chouteau, he to General Ashley—messengers of rival firms.
Now it was ale, wine if he wanted it. These didn’t feel as alien as the chair they expected him to sit on, or the table, or the silverware. He had to resist saying, “Fancy doin’s fur a mountain man.”
Right on the table in front of him were fluffy white bread, sweet butter, grapes, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, sliced melon, fricasseed chicken, turtle soup, Sam didn’t know what all—even fresh oysters, brought up alive in barrels filled with seawater on the steamboats from New Orleans. A long, long way from prairie oysters, which was what mountain men called the nuts of the buffalo, and even further from an unbroken diet of jerked meat. Still, Sam wasn’t ready to try fresh oysters with Abby.
She was treating him to the best luncheon in St. Louis, she said, and chuckled when he hitched Coy outside. When she asked if he wanted Cadet to join them, he said no thanks.
At first he couldn’t get past the bread spread thick with butter. Then he got caught up in the grapes. He didn’t know what might come next.
“Oh, Grumble,” said Abby, “don’t be concocting schemes until we get to enjoy him a bit. I want to know everything that happened every day since you left.”
Sam wondered what she thought had happened, considering the condition of his face and his body. But no one could see, from the outside, what had taken place in his mind and spirit.
He told. And told and told. Abby and Grumble finished the first bottle of wine, and a second, and started a third. Sam drank ale until he was woozy.
He couldn’t think how it sounded to them. Like old-time stories of wondrous places where there were monsters, and giants, and miracles, he imagined. He realized for the first time that he had been living a life of monstrous grizzly bears and buffalo, Indians and white men of giant wants and appetites, and miracles of life and death. He even realized, partly, that he abided in that kind of world, and was himself one of these storied men.
He felt glad beyond glad.
Abby, naturally, was most interested in the Indian women. He only knew the Crows. She bristled at how they gave their favors away cheaply, but reveled in his description of their dress. Sam went so far as to sketch a beaded bodice on the tavern’s white tablecloth, bringing a very stern look from the waiter. Abby waved the fellow off.
Meadowlark was fascinating to Abby. She wanted every detail, and seemed stumped only by the idea of keeping virginity until after a certain ceremony was performed. “Their priests are as bad as our ours,” she said, and was happy to know that few Crow women participated in that practice.
“Take off the gage d’amour de votre amour,” she said.
“What?”
She looked at him in amusement. “Amour means love. Hand me the token of love given you by your love.”
She fingered it like she could sense the sweetness of Meadowlark’s feeling in the delicately tanned hide and beautiful beads.
Their merriment and reminiscing were interrupted, in the end, by a you
ng man who came calling on General Ashley’s behalf. Sam had stopped by Ashley’s office first thing after they docked the canoe, but the General was out. “He would like to see you as soon as possible,” said the emissary.
“Come to the Pirates’ Cove tonight,” said Abby, “we’ll feed you supper.”
“And stay with me in my rooms afterwards,” said Grumble. “I’m sitting on this idea like one very restless hen.”
“Young Morgan, you’ve done very well. Thank you.”
At Ashley’s nod Sam sat down across the big desk from the general. He studied the polished wood of the desk and the nameplate, GEN. WM. H. ASHLEY. Seemed like the whole was meant to make him feel like an underling. He smiled to himself. A man who walked seven hundred miles alone, escaped from Pawnees, an underling? …
He missed the beginning of Ashley’s conversation but soon caught on to what was wanted. This wasn’t conversation. The general was pumping him for information.
So he told his story again, this time angled to what would concern Ashley—beaver plews, how many they’d found and where, where they were now, relations with the Indians, the discovery of the Southern Pass across the Rocky Mountains, country where they were welcome and weren’t, all that sort of thing.
“Do you consider the Southern Pass passable to wagons?” asked Ashley. In fact, he asked a couple of times.
“Sure. Pretty easy for wagons. Not steep at all.”
Ashley nodded with satisfaction. “That confirms Mr. Fitzpatrick’s opinion.” Ashley gestured toward the letter from Fitzpatrick. Sam didn’t know what it said, and wasn’t about to announce that he couldn’t read.
Then Ashley found out about Sam’s long, lone walk. He was duly impressed in an official sort of way, though he didn’t dwell on it much, as though mountain men were a different species, something like Sam’s coyote, with certain remarkable talents.
Next Ashley asked about the activities of Captain Smith. He was appalled by the tale of the clawing by the griz, and at the same time impressed. Did Sam think Captain Smith a good leader?
“First-rate.”
“Enterprising?”
“For sure.”
“Energetic?”
“Too damned energetic.” Sam mentioned the maps Diah was always making but not the month-early start to look for a pass to the Siskadee.
“Resourceful?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did the men respect him?”
“Tremendously.”
He noticed that Ashley didn’t ask if they liked him, or if he might be too hard-driven.
Ashley also inquired carefully about Fitzpatrick, who’d apparently been appointed second in command, and gave nods of approval at each answer.
After nearly an hour of this Sam was damn near exhausted by words. He wouldn’t have thought that could happen, not when he was back on the Platte and wanting to walk into an Indian camp.
“Young Morgan,” said Ashley at last, “we need to settle accounts. First, I thank you for work excellently well done. I hope you want to remain in my employ. Now, what were your expenses? What did you purchase from Captain Smith?”
Sam told him what he could remember buying, and Ashley noted each item in a ledger, with a price written opposite.
“Very well. Number of plews?”
Sam told him, and he made some marks.
“Altogether you’ve worked one year, seven months of a two-year contract. Are you prepared to return to the mountains now?”
“I want to go home for a few days, sir.”
“Home to Pittsburgh?”
“Morgantown, nearby.”
“That will require a couple of weeks, I should imagine, even if your visit is short. I will be heading for the mountains as soon as I can get affairs in order. Two to three weeks. Are you confident that you want to return with me?”
“Can’t say for sure, sir.”
“All right, then, I shall muster you out.” After various calculations, which he read aloud, he concluded that Ashley-Henry owed Sam Morgan nearly two hundred dollars. He got the exact amount out of an office safe and handed it over, plus a ten-dollar bonus for bringing the letter downstream alone. Sam had to smile at that. Ashley said that if these figures were different from Captain Smith’s, they would settle up later. “I know you’re honest.”
“Mind you, Morgan, if you want to go to the mountains with me this season, you must come back promptly.”
Sam left dizzy. He’d never touched so much money in his life.
Grumble’s rooms were down-at-the-heels in a shabby boardinghouse. Seeing Sam’s look, he said, “Yes, I could afford better, but I belong to the shadow world, and I don’t want to feel respectable.”
“At least there won’t be rules against coyotes here.”
Grumble gave a cursory smile and launched into his idea. It was elaborate. It was imaginative. It was clever. It was altogether a humdinger, and potentially very profitable.
On the other hand, Sam didn’t feel like running con games. “It will take two days,” he protested. “I probably won’t get back in time to go west with the general.”
Grumble gave him a look, and Sam realized he couldn’t deny his comrade a bit of fun. Also, it revolved around another big acting job … And to hell with General Ashley.
They boarded the steamboat separately, as class distinctions required. Grumble was the gentleman, perhaps a capitalist, or a man of leisure. Sam was the frontiersman of the lowest type, a man to be avoided by the better sort, or looked at with amusement from a distance.
Grumble set to his job right away. He headed for the bar, spotted a man of mature years, full side whiskers, and excellent clothes, and struck up a conversation. In short order, though, Grumble realized that he couldn’t smell money, which he had an infallible nose for. He passed on.
He switched to a sporty young man in the outfit of a Louisiana plantation owner. Had he brought up blacks for sale? Bales of cotton to go by ship to the Northeast textile manufacturers? … It didn’t matter. This fellow had the air of a gay blade, and Grumble did smell money.
He seated himself at the young man’s table and asked if he could buy him a drink, always a good opener. These steamboat voyages were tedious, they agreed, so little to do, only women and preachers could spend all this time gawking at scenery, good job the ship afforded a wide choice of libations, a man could have a cigar, a sensible conversation, and indulge in a variety of inebriates … “Jameson is my name.” The fellow extended his hand. Grumble shook it vigorously, a custom he didn’t care for, and murmured, “Smithson, Able Smithson.”
Jameson was a self-possessed, virile kind of fellow of the merchant class, it turned out, a dealer in sorghum who traveled to secure new customers. Grumble had more fellow feeling, actually, for the corrupt, patrician planters. Grumble himself was an owner of newspapers, he said, looking for a likely site for a new enterprise. He saw Jameson take in the exquisite cut of his English tweed suit, dove gray pin-striped charcoal waistcoat, and wonder how newspaper owners made quite so much money. Grumble loved dressing up—it showed off the fuller range of his talents.
As the second drink arrived, Grumble found himself wondering, Where the devil is Sam? Grumble hated male small talk.
Here came Sam now. Grumble put on a face of amusement at the rube. Actually, he was very pleased with Sam’s appearance. The gauntness was genuine. The deerskin clothing was new, just what a very back backwoodsman would choose. The shirt front was already streaked with tobacco stains, which he and Sam had applied the night before. The boots were ripe with horse apples, carefully stepped into on the way to the levee. Altogether very artful. Grumble was proud of himself—both the conception and details were his.
As Sam passed their table, he lurched sideways but regained his balance with alcoholic agility. Passing on, he lurched again, and used his rifle butt on the floor to regain balance. Then he gave up and collapsed into the chair. He threw a rueful grin at the gentlemen whose privacy he was violat
ing. One gent to another, we understand indulging in whiskey, don’t we?
“To set it right for buttin’ in like this, let me buy you both a drink,” Sam said expansively. He affected not the speech of a drunken man, but of a man carefully trying to sound sober. The lad really had a talent.
“Waiter,” Sam called. Now he got out a purse swollen with Spanish coins, enough to corrupt the most honest of men. Oh, how Grumble would have liked to be corrupted for the first time again.
He leapt in with his line. “Young man, you ought to be cautious about showing so much cash in public.”
“’S fine,” said Sam. “I been in St. Louis, I’m used to every kind of thief, and I’d like to see one as can stand up to a mountain man.” He put the purse into the hunting pouch slung over his shoulder. After the game was over, Sam would have to be careful. At least half a dozen men had noted where he kept the coins.
The waiter accepted excessive payment for three whiskeys and was off. Grumble reminded himself to sip the whiskey slowly. He liked it a little too well.
“What is it you did in St. Louis?” he asked Sam. “Mr., ah …”
“Name’s Two Hawks,” said Sam. “I sold my furs, yessiree. To that Chouteau. Two years’ furs, yessirree, and prices is good. And I seen all the fast tricks the crooks in that city got to offer, sartain this child did. You know the best one?”
Grumble gave Jameson a sideways glance that said, This is going to be fun. “I don’t suppose I do.”
“Wagh! I was in one where a man had three cards, an old man, an old woman, and a little boy with a hoop. He slipped them cards around so fast you couldn’t tell. You had to find the little boy with the hoop.
“Right truth, I thought I could find it, and was willing to bet fifty dollars. But when that hoss picked the card up, it was the old man. I put out fifty dollars more. He done the same again. But this child never keered. This beaver told that hoss, ‘If you’ll show me how to do it, I’ll give you fifty dollars for the cards.”
He ran a look back and forth between the two of them, a potent brew of childish self-congratulation and hick shrewdness. “I been practicin’ it. Now I do it so fast I can’t tell whar that little boy is my own self. I got the ol’ cards right here.”
