Rocky Mountain Company (16 page)

“You aren’t drunk enough.”

Hervey chuckled.

“That warehouse. It’s got a good watertight shake roof. I’m thinking I might rent her to store my goods until the first of the year whiles we build us a post around the bend.”

Hervey’s grin grew. “It ain’t rentable.”

“Five months, from now — August the sixth — to January the sixth, for ten percent of my tradegoods across the board. Give you some trading goods. I got four more wagonloads coming. You’d be liable for damages and loss — usual agreement.”

“I’d steal them all. Bury the witnesses.”

Fitzhugh glared. “A deal?”

“You’d never see them again. You’d all die trying to fetch them. And I’ll trade your entire outfit anyway.”

“It’s a deal, then,” said Fitzhugh. “Shake on her. I’ll have the boy — Guy Straus’s son — fetch the inventory and we’ll divvy up. Git the wagons hyar in an hour or two.”

Julius Hervey smiled, and shook. But Fitzhugh didn’t like the feel of his hand.

Maxim Straus was beset by layer upon layer of alarm. The news that Fitzhugh had ridden to Fort Cass filled him with foreboding. He didn’t expect to see Brokenleg alive again, and he wondered what would happen to all those goods, brought here at such great cost. Then Brokenleg had come back, looking cheerful, and began issuing incredible instructions: the engagés were to unpack the furnishings and tools for the fort, and then take the tradegoods back to Fort Cass, where they would be warehoused. Back there into the jaws of American Fur Company! Back there, into the hands of the most frightening and menacing man Maxim had ever encountered!

He studied Fitzhugh as the man sipped coffee and breakfasted, and felt the worm of suspicion crawl through him, and despair knot his insides until he couldn’t eat or think. Maybe the man was betraying his father. If not that, then certainly his business judgment was sorely wanting. Maxim noticed he wasn’t alone, either. The engagés were straining and muttering, unloading tools and yoking oxen, all the while glancing darkly at Fitzhugh. And Dust Devil was snapping and glaring at her husband. Maxim knew he was not yet a man, and maybe he didn’t understand all things, but the longer he sat at the breakfast fire, the more he was eaten up with worry.

But Brokenleg merely grinned, and looked for all the world as if he’d just conquered the world.

Maxim felt a hard knot in his throat, and didn’t even know if he could talk, but he was driven to try. Maybe Fitzhugh would swat at him as if he were a horsefly, but he had to try.

“Mister Fitzhugh,” he said, his voice a creaking soprano, “why are you — “

“Why, Maxim, it’s the best I could get. We’re in a hard place.”

“You’ve sold out!”

“Whoa up, boy. I haven’t sold out. We got us a roof for a few months whiles we build us a post.”

“A roof?”

“Yep. Shakes nailed over tarred canvas, nailed onto sawn plank. Keeps rain and snow off good robes, and it’ll do the same for our tradegoods. Bolts of tradecloth, gingham, calico, iron stuff, kegs of powder — it needs a roof.”

“We’ll never see it again!”

“Oh, I think we’ll see it, leastwise what we’re keeping.”

“You’re giving them some?”

“Ten percent, Maxim. We don’t have to get it outa there until after the first of the year.”

“Ten percent! Ten percent of everything my
papa
spent, and got together and shipped, ten percent of that, and the blankets gone, and — “

“Lucky to get a roof for that. You know of any other roofs around? Nearest one is Fort Union, maybe two hundred fifty miles down the Yellowstone. And that isn’t no more friendly than Cass. After that, I’m plumb outa roofs. Unless we go another few hundred miles to some Hudson’s Bay outfit. There’s Wyeth’s old place down on the Snake. Hudson’s Bay now. Will and Milt Sublette’s place down on the Platte, where the Laramie runs in.”

“We could find a cave!”

“Try again.”

“We could make a roof in a day or two.”

“Oh, we could make a roof, but not in a day or two. Easy to talk about, but the making is harder. I could put every man here, including you, to work with an ax and an adze and a saw, and we wouldn’t have much of a hut even in a week. And it’d leak.”

“But we could use the wagonsheets! For a big tent!”

“Reckon we could, but I won’t.”

“But why? They’d protect the tradegoods from rain.”

Brokenleg tried to explain: “Well — boy — we didn’t figure so good. Maybe I didn’t figure so good. I figured we’d just waltz into Fort Cass. It’s not just a roof we need, but walls. A fort. We could rig up a tent, but what if a couple hundred Blackfeet came along? Just the few of us against all of ’em? They’d help themselves to everything we got; everything your pa bought for an outfit. Wagonsheeting don’t stop bullets and arrows and hatchets none, and it’s nothing a man can hide behind, neither.

“All that stuff — it’s safe at Cass. We got Hervey to deal with, but he’s got men above him he’s responsible to. Like Culbertson. You know any other way to keep our outfit safe? We got a fort to build — that or curl our tail betwixt and ’tween our legs, and git us down the river. We got us only ten, eleven men to build us a fort. American Fur, when they build a fort they use fifty men and some hunters to feed ’em.”

But Maxim wasn’t a bit mollified. “We are housed in Independence for fifty-seven dollars a month! Not ten percent of everything!”

“Well, I’ll just set you to findin’ us a fifty-seven warehouse.”

Brokenleg was toying with him, and he hated it.

Dust Devil joined in: “We could put everything in my people’s lodges,” she said.

“We could,” he agreed. “We could. But we won’t. And them cowskin lodges aren’t all that dry, comes a blue norther. Nope. We’re storing at Cass. I got Hervey over a pretty good barrel. He sold out faster than he figured, account no one’s traded with the Crows much for years. And he don’t expect no resupply soon, if ever. But he has to stay put. If he pulls out and burns Cass, he’d leave the Crow trade to us. I got that figured, anyway.”

“But my people — they’d trade for everything — “

“Hush now. You know how it is. How the trading’s going to be.”

None of it made any sense to Maxim. “Hervey’s going to steal everything and kill you. Kill everyone. I don’t want to die. We’ll never see any of it again.”

But Brokenleg had grown weary of the interrogation, and was drifting off, eyeing wagons, checking the pile of axes, saws, shovels, kitchen utensils, sacks of beans, coffee, sugar, and all the rest.

“Leave a wagonsheet here,” he said to Trudeau. “That’ll be our camp tent. We’ll unload at Cass, and then send six men back for the rest. That’ll make a strong party, hooked up with the others on the Yellerstone. You take the stuff down to Cass and then come on back here, Trudeau. We got us a post to build before we get so cold we can’t do nothin’.”

“Monsieur, I’d rather face the devil than Hervey. Are you sure — “

“We got this hyar devil by his tail, Trudeau. I’m sure.”

Maxim wasn’t sure at all. He’d lost. He’d been the sixteen-year-old in Fitzhugh’s eyes. He stood sullenly beside the heap of goods on the meadow, watching Trudeau ride off, and the engagés whip the bawling oxen into a lumbering walk back down the Bighorn to its confluence, and then down the Yellowstone.

“Well, Maxim, let’s go pick us a spot to build a post.”

Maxim followed sullenly. As soon as he could he would write a letter to his father, and entrust it to Trudeau. He was the Straus family’s eyes and ears. He couldn’t imagine why his father ever trusted Brokenleg Fitzhugh with so much. They could save some of it by going down the river, now, before it got cold. They could save a lot of it, and maybe get some robes, too, trading as they went. But no  . . . 

“Now let’s see here, Maxim. A post has got ta be right where lots of Injuns come, sorta convenient to them. It’s got to be up enough from the river so’s it don’t flood, like when icejams bust loose upstream and send a mile-wide sheet boiling down, tearing out cottonwoods and all. Now this hyar plain looks pretty good, don’t you reckon? Lots of meadow for them to pitch lodges. Pony grass. Yonder on the river, lots of cottonwoods and some willow too. Wood for the post. Wood for cookin’ and keepin’ our bones from freezin’ solid. Lots of loose sandstone yonder, easy to pry out.”

“Sandstone?”

“We got to build a fireplace outa somethin’. We didn’t bring no stoves along. Sandstone and mud mortar, makes us a decent fireplace or two, and some chimneys.

“We should go home.”

“Reckon we should? You’re plumb right. We should. We haven’t got the men or the stuff to make forts. But we’ll do her.”

As fast as Fitzhugh talked, he limped along even faster, and Maxim was amazed at the man’s speed. Every little while he stopped, eyed bluffs, studied grass, peered at the nearby woods. At last, he paused on a slight rise, a gentle lift of the meadow perhaps a hundred yards east of the Bighorn River.

“Got her,” he muttered. “What do you think we should name her?”

“Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus,” Maxim said sourly.

“Nah. Too much of a mouthful. Down on the Arkansas, it’s not Bent, St. Vrain and Company Fort, it’s Bent’s Fort. And up there on the Missouri, it isn’t Pratte and Chouteau, or Chouteau and Company, or American Fur Company — she’s Fort Union.”

“Whatever you want. We won’t have anything to trade anyway, since you gave it all to Hervey.”

“Aren’t you a worrywort. I don’t much like calling a trading place a fort. Sounds like some battle. Let’s call her a post. Or house. I always liked that. Hudson’s Bay, they got Rocky Mountain House up younder on the Saskatchewan, and it sorta tickles me. Maybe like Bighorn House. Or Bighorn Post.”

“Whatever you want.”

Fitzhugh laughed. “Go fetch you a sharp ax. And me, too. I got to get it staked out. We don’t have no time for a palisade, knocking down a few hundred trees and skinning them flat on two sides and planting them. No, with all the men we got, we got to build us a big house, you know, for tradin’ and storin’ robes and the like, and then a couple of little houses, and maybe a polefence to keep the livestock in.”

“We should go home.”

Fitzhugh laughed. “You’re going to raise some blisters, boy.”

The thought of cutting down even a single tree, limbing it, dragging it to this site, seemed utterly daunting, once Maxim thought about it. How could they possibly build a whole post with so few men, and most of them gone for another few weeks?

“Mister Fitzhugh,” he said miserably. “We thought there’d be a fort. All we’ll do now is destroy everything my father and grandfather built, with a lot of suffering — more than I can explain to you;
you
wouldn’t know — over many years.”

Brokenleg paused, obviously aware of Maxim’s misery. “Son,” he said quietly. “It’s lost for sure if we go back. We haven’t got a way to take seven wagonloads back in three wagons; haven’t got replacement livestock when the oxen and mules wear out. If we make us a flatboat to float down the river, we abandon the wagons and livestock. And those mackinaws got a way of crackin’ up and leakin’. Maxim — son — we got us into a hard place, and I’m doin’ all I can to get us out. And besides, son. We’re just gettin’ going. We’re gonna make us a heap, for your pap and mam, and for me and my lady. Your pa’s a rare and fine man. I think the world o’ him. Last thing I’d want to do is give him a hurt. Now fetch the tools, son, and we’ll see what we can do betwixt now and cold weather.”

That warm August morning Brokenleg Fitzhugh was more worried than he let on to Maxim. He hadn’t counted on building a fort. That had been dumb, and he cussed himself, but here he stood, two thousand miles from anywhere, and he had no choice. All he had by way of tools was what he’d brought for maintenance at Fort Cass. A couple of axes for firewood; a maul and wedges; a bit and auger, a good two-man saw, a carpenter’s saw, a crowbar, a chisel and an adze. He didn’t have a nail or a hinge or anything for a roof. He had more axes and hatchets coming in the next load, trade items actually, but he could sell them used as well as new.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. He needed forty or fifty men to build a regular fort, and he had only ten — ten plus a boy and a cripple. And of those, eight would be gone for several weeks, bringing in the next load. He’d sent back enough to make a strong party, well armed, guarding the valuable tradegoods. He’d asked them to bring everything in one trip, even if the wagons groaned under a mountain of goods and the ox and mule teams were abused. And come back slow, sparing the livestock as much as possible. But he wouldn’t see them until September some time. And meanwhile he’d have only himself, Maxim, Trudeau and whichever engagé Trudeau brought with him, and Dust Devil. That plus a few stray horses that would need constant herding.

He expected Trudeau back soon; Hervey would make it easy for them, no doubt. He didn’t trust Hervey, but he’d deal with that later. He’d get over to Cass and keep an eye on his merchandise. But if there was going to be trouble, it’d come at the beginning of January, when they went to fetch their tradegoods. If Hervey shut him out then, there’d be a war. And some repercussions back in St. Louis. But he didn’t figure it that way: out here in a wild land, traders followed certain semi-honorable codes, and Fitzhugh was counting on them.

He was going to have to make himself the post hunter, and the engagés might resent it. But with his bad leg he wouldn’t be much good at building, and he knew more about bringing home meat than most of them. Keeping ten hardworking men well fed when they were toiling from dawn to after dark would be a task in itself, and by the time he sawed up buffalo or elk into quarters and packed or dragged it back each day, he’d be as weary as the rest.

He limped across the open meadows, feeling the sun warm him and zephyrs toy with his red hair, enjoying the fine summer day. He wanted to inspect the cottonwood groves close to the river, see where to start cutting. He was juggling so many ideas in his head that it ached. He didn’t even know what sort of place to build, but he knew he lacked the men to put up a regular stockaded fort with bastions and buildings within. It’d have to be something simple, where they could store tradegoods and robes; a base they’d need, even if they did their trading out in the villages, hauling wagons out to the winter camps. By God, he wouldn’t even be trading for the first robe until after the beginning of the year! But maybe that wasn’t so bad; he’d start trading just about when Chouteau’s outfit would start running low on tradegoods. The forts were usually cleaned out by March or April, right down to the bedsheets. No, maybe it wasn’t so bad to start trading late.