Into the Savage Country (8 page)

This was not an exaggeration and she knew it. I could see her making various mental calculations.

“And the willows?” she said, half unconsciously.

I had not thought of that.

“I can cut willows in the marshes and be back by evening.”

“At what price?”

I thought of saying at no price and then saw her ragged clothes and the buffalo robe flapping at the door and her proud manner.

“Five percent discount.”

She nodded and said, “Yes. I’ll try. If I can acquire the paste.” And then, after a moment. “Thank you.”

“I will thank you if the quality is as before,” I said, and heaved the pack and walked it through the low door and into a dirt-floored lodge where I saw bits of straw on the floor and a few chickens pecking about. There was a straw mattress in the corner and a rough-hewn table and a single candle with the drippings hardened on the round, ridged lid of a tin. I dropped the pelts near a broken wagon wheel that leaned against the wall and met her outside.

“A soldier named Gadaira will bring the materials tomorrow.”

“I will start as soon as he arrives,” she said faintly.

I rode straight from her lodgings down to the river to cut the willows. I made a drag like the natives did with two poles and buffalo hide strung between them and the willow saplings thrown on top bound with deerskin. I hauled the willows up from the river and dumped them in front of her cottage and did not go in to say hello and did not stop by for all that week other than to accompany Gadaira when he delivered a capped barrel that had held powder, heavy now with buffalo-brain mash gathered by one of the wives of a Sioux employed as a scout by the
general. Alene wanted the barrel not at her lodging but at the infirmary, as she would do much of the work there.

I rolled the barrel through the front room and into the sunny courtyard as she’d directed and saw the willow hoops were already stretched with pelts, and the children, eager to help her, were setting the furs in the sun to dry after the soaking.

Two weeks later I came back and the pelts were stacked and wrapped and somehow compressed. The pelts, which had been stiff and rigid, were now pliable and scraped thin and smoked so they would not return to rawhide after they got wet. I paid her what she asked and no more and with no swaggering, though I admit, this was more by calculation than by lack of feeling. When I held the coins out she snatched them up and stashed them in a deerskin pouch around her neck.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you for doubling the worth of my pelts,” I said.

Over the next week I brought her more skins and there was the usual conversation of commerce: payments, numbers of pelts, and supplies.

The next week I ventured to loan her a book. I offered
The Scottish Chiefs
, but she did not seem to think much of Porter.

“Do you have any Richardson? Radcliffe?” she asked.

“The general’s wife has a copy of
Clarissa
and all of Radcliffe. I’ll get them for you, if you like.”

Alene tried to hide her eagerness, but said, “That would be kind, William.”

Two days later I brought her a copy of
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne
and
The Italian
, with promises to bring others later.

She devoured these books eagerly. She was a great reader and despite her long hours of labor kept each volume for less than a week.

This exchange of books and of pelts went on all that fall, and then one day in early November she told me to stop by the infirmary. I waited several hours, then rode by when I thought the classroom had let out. It had not. She only had a moment, and came hurrying out to meet me so I hardly had time to get off my horse.

“Bend down,” she said.

“What?”

“Oh, you ignorant savage. Bend your head.”

I bent my head so it was near hers and she slipped a hat over my ears. It was a round hat made from a processed beaver pelt, simple but expertly made and very warm. She must have gotten the pelt from Gadaira because it was not one of mine.

“That should keep your big head warm this winter,” she said.

I did my best not to smile foolishly, at least not until I was out of sight of the infirmary.

I suppose everyone knew I courted Alene with this commerce. I’m sure she knew it herself. Yet I thought little of my chances. I told myself that she was in mourning for a very rich man and that she was the heir to one of the largest fortunes in St. Louis. Despite her present conditions, I thought there was little reason for her to consider me. I imagined she found me diverting and harmless, and yet, with every interaction my feeling for her grew and my disdain for my own faint heart increased. At the time I thought another man would have at least attempted to penetrate her defenses and it was only my shrinking nature that made me delay, though I think now that this is not true. There are men who are persuasive with women, but I think these men make love to women who are ready to have that effect put on them. Alene
was not ready to be courted, so my shyness was fortunate and maybe even persuasive in its own way. But just because I did not woo her does not mean I did not want to. All that time I was awash in a mixed haze of self-deception and longing, terrified that I would show my heart too openly but equally terrified that another might sweep in and conquer her while I stood back being cordial. I suppose there may have been some basis in that second fear.

A few days before Thanksgiving I noticed an expensive black thoroughbred in Smitts’s stables. I dismounted and walked past the stables and on up the boardwalk and into what we called the tavern but was really just an open area with rough-hewn tables and high stools at a plank-wood bar and a few bottles on a shelf below the rafters. A man with riding boots, muddied to his knees, sat with his feet spread, and a heavy glass on the table next to a bottle of Taos Whiskey. A pistol rested on the table and a shotgun on a chair nearby. The traveler had long, dark hair and a black riding jacket of an expensive cut. I noticed he had not bothered to wipe his feet before he entered and there were chunks of drying mud around his expensive boots. The traveler turned as I entered and held a hand up and said, “William Wyeth, western adventurer, I heard you graced this lovely settlement. How kind of you to call.”

By his voice and not by his rough appearance I realized it was Henry Layton, the St. Louis dandy, now somehow transported to Fort Burnham.

Layton had changed greatly in the sixteen months since I’d last seen him. He’d lost a fifth of his weight, and his smooth cheeks were now covered with a dark beard. He sat laconically, exuding a casual arrogance.

“I hear you’ve been keeping Bailey’s widow company. Damned honorable to respect her mourning, Wyeth.”

“I’ve respected it much more than I’d like,” I said, and he laughed loudly.

“Alene will make gentlemen of us all despite our protestations. She had only started her work on Bailey. Damn the poor whapper.”

“I was sorry to hear of his death,” I said. “You were friends.”

“Hardly,” Layton said dryly. “We shared the same bottle, nothing more. We had some unfortunate business dealings that he blamed me for. Unjustly. All of the money and none of the grit. But he’s dead now. No reason to speak of his shortcomings. Alene resented me for judging him honestly. I am sure you know that already.”

“I do not know her thoughts,” I said. “She is in mourning. We are not intimate.”

“You can’t blame that on her mourning,” he said. “Mourning is a time for rich widows to weigh their options.”

“She’s hardly a rich widow.”

“She will be, though not without a fight. I have brought her correspondence from Bailey’s family in which they refer to her as ‘the Squaw.’ ”

“That was generous of you to read it.”

“It
was
generous of me to bring it. Damned generous. I diverted five hundred miles to come here. And damn the misplaced morality, Wyeth. How is she?”

“She’s surviving.”

“I have heard that surviving is the only word for what she’s doing. She is tending to sick natives, exposing herself to infection, and has gone back to tanning pelts while Bailey’s sisters eat off Imari plates, bickering among themselves about which
barouche to buy. She is the rightful heir to Bailey’s fortune, which was considerable. There will be a scandal when my letter arrives.”

“Does she know this?”

“Of course she knows it. She’d rather wallow in some obscure dust pit than fight for what is hers. I have no such reservations. Sit,” he said again. He waved to Smitts. “Bring Wyeth a glass. I haven’t had a conversation worth a nickel since St. Louis. I don’t know what Wyeth will rate, but in this settlement he’ll have to do.”

I hesitated, and he added impatiently, “I was insufferable in St. Louis. I know that. Against my nature I have been forced to reform. My presence in the settlements is proof of that. I hear you have traveled the western mountains. Talk to me, Wyeth. I’m dying for conversation.”

He kicked a chair out and after a moment I did sit.

“You were injured. Tell me the story. I imagine some heart pounding and gallant act. You were wounded while dashing across a desert waste and battling hostile savages.”

“I was shot by another trapper while hunting buffalo. And I missed the beast before I was shot.”

“Bravo, Wyeth. A truthful trapping story. We will need to amend that.”

Smitts arrived with a glass and Layton poured me a drink.

“Where were you? In the Tetons?” he asked as he poured.

“No. South of there.”

“Do you have a map?”

“No.”

“Could you make a copy from memory?” he asked casually.

If I had not understood it by his presence there, I understood then without a doubt that he had joined the fur trade in some capacity.

“I could not draw a map with an accuracy that would make it useful,” I said.

“Can you describe the land?”

“It was rolling hills. Sparse in the lowlands. Lush farther up. Snowy on top in midsummer. Three days’ ride from the southern border of the Mountain Crow.”

“And there was much game?”

“In the mountains, yes. But we almost starved several times in the lowlands.”

“There was beaver?”

“In the high drainages but not before. It was very sparse on the way up. And it would all be much less fertile now that we have been there.”

“They were great mountains?”

“Higher than any we’d seen before. Passes closed far into June.”

“West of the Great Lake.”

“Not so far as that.”

He opened a notebook and wrote for several minutes.

“You’re on your way out west now?” I said when he’d finished scribbling.

“I am.”

“The season will be over before you arrive.”

“I make preparations for the spring season,” he said. “I have been financed by my father and he wants a return on his money. I’ll give him a return or I won’t return. That’s my motto. Tell me, you lodged with the natives?”

“We traded with the Crow. We did not lodge with them.”

“Are they openly hostile?”

“The Crow are not. Nor are the Sioux. Though you cannot leave your weapon uncharged with any of them. The Blackfoot
are aligned with the British and will attack any brigade that is vulnerable and even some that aren’t. The rest are opportunistic. But I traveled at the edge of Crow land for nine months and we had no battles. When our guard was kept up, we felt relatively safe.”

“And what precautions did you take?”

“Never being unarmed. Two sentries at night. Picketed the horses and cached the furs when necessary. We trapped in groups of four and always showed openly that we were prepared for attack. Always assume you’re being watched.”

Layton made a few more notes, and at the same time, with his left hand, fingered a chunky looking pistol with a cylinder above the trigger. I had never seen anything like it. I searched for the firing pan and did not see it. Layton grinned, pleased with my interest, and slid the weapon over.

“Collier,” he said. “Automatic.”

He drew the pin out. The cylinder was on a spring mechanism and it popped open and fell to the side. I could see many chambers. Each contained a cap and ball.

“It’s self-priming. Powder is automatically released from the chamber into the firing pan when the hammer is cocked. It can fire eight times without reloading.”

“Does it work?”

“That was my question,” Smitts asked. He’d wandered over and was pouring for us as he inspected the pistol.

“You think I’d have carried it out here if it didn’t?” Layton said.

He pushed his chair back and slid a full glass to me. I took the glass and Layton took his and the three of us walked out back. Behind the inn were rolling, snow-covered hills with bits of tan grass sticking up and a single cottonwood thirty yards away. Layton
held the gun up and fired three times—one, two, three—in rapid succession, each shot within several inches of the other. Layton handed the Collier to Smitts, who touched the barrel, then shook his hand out. Smitts aimed and fired twice and held the gun out to me. I took it. I could feel the heat coming off the cylinder. I aimed at the tree and as I put pressure on the trigger the cylinder began to turn. I released the pressure. The cylinder slid back. I put pressure on it again and again it began to turn. I pulled the trigger hard and the cylinder fired. I pulled again. It fired again. All of this without reloading. I handed the pistol back to Layton.

“Three hundred dollars,” Layton said proudly.

“That much?” Smitts said with mock admiration, and caught my eye at Layton’s boasting. Layton understood that he was being mocked by Smitts, and was instantly furious. Smitts stepped away slowly, seeing that it could be dangerous to tarry.

“I’ll have your supper prepared when you’re ready,” Smitts said.

“I’m awaiting the delicacies,” Layton said unpleasantly. Then to me, as Smitts entered the inn, “I have forgotten about the lovely companionship of settlement clerks.”

Layton reloaded his weapon and as he did, slowly his anger receded. I had started back for the inn, but Layton called, “Are you up for a ride, Wyeth? My time is short. Show me the sights of your vast metropolis.”