Rocky Mountain Company (22 page)

But the night-bawling of oxen usually meant little more than a whiff of wolf, or maybe a black bear, and Fitzhugh hadn’t awakened to the sound. At least not until the sound changed to something darker, a bellow that whispered of pain. Then he awoke, listening, and thought he’d better jack on his boots and a capote and hustle out into the meadow, just to check. He was doing that, lacing up boots in the gloom of the tent, when the rest of it hit him: the clatter of hooves and the shriek of panicked horses. Then he knew. He sprang up, fumbling around for his Hawken, and stumbled into a blast of cold just in time to see moon-streaked, ghostly horsemen sweep his horses and mules down the river bottoms. He lumbered toward the half-built building, knowing what the gray light would tell him, and found not a shadow of an animal within, and the pole barricade that had sealed the far door pulled apart.

In a rage, he stomped out upon the meadow, generally toward the bluffs, where the closest good grass remained, dreading what he’d find out there. Trudeau joined him, wearing red underwear and hefting a rifle. Others caught up, making them a well-armed party. He saw no oxen, and heard none. He couldn’t imagine they’d run off oxen too — tribesmen scorned the “soft” flesh of whitemen’s cattle. The night lacked wind, but still the cold bit at his ears and his balding brow. At last, half a mile distant, on the other edge of the gilded night, he spotted them sleeping, dark hulks on the ground. But it made no sense, oxen bellowing and oxen asleep. And then he knew.

“I think we’ve bought the store, Trudeau.”

“Eh? This idiom I do not know.”

“Hyar’s damp powder and no way to dry it.”

“A man can worry too much,
n’est-ce pas?”

“Or not enough.”

A few minutes later they stood over the bodies of several oxen, which sprawled hot and bloody, steaming on the frosted grass, arrows projecting from them. He knew what the arrows would say to him. Each tribe made arrows its own way; indeed, each warrior marked his own arrows. These would be Crow. He tugged at one, buried up to its fletching just behind the shoulder of the gaunt animal. The arrow didn’t yield easily. But it didn’t matter. Even in moonlight he could see the fletching was Crow. And whoever had nocked it and drawn the bow had probably been paid by Hervey with tradegoods brought up the river by Dance, Fitzhugh, and Straus.

Fitzhugh and his men didn’t have a four-footed animal left.

When the sun rose like a bloody buffalo heart ripped from the dark carcass of the sky, Dust Devil greeted it solemnly. She petitioned Sun each morning, asking for its warmth and a sweet day, and thanking Sun for all things. But this day Sun would see dark things beneath him, she knew.

Her man hadn’t waited for Sun, but finished dressing in the night by the light of a new-built fire, and then hung his powder horn over his shoulder, his sheathed knife and possibles bag from his belt, and checked his Hawken, which gleamed orangely in the flickering flames. He had not said a word, nor did she need to ask him anything. She knew. She’d seen him crazed once before: he became graceful as a cat, silent as a stalking lion, until she swore the mad-spirits let him bend his knee and walk without a limp. Now he walked like that, with the mad-spirit in his eye, his feelings naked before the orange fire. From the back of the tent Maxim watched too, silent and solemn. When the mad-spirit entered her man he became a puma, and now she saw the cat, back arched, tail lashing, silent as rock, claws extended.

He stared briefly at both of them, recognition returning to his eyes for one seeing moment, and then he turned mad again, springing into the blackness. He glided north, without a limp, she thought, and she knew. He was going to walk to Fort Cass and kill Julius Hervey. She wondered if she’d ever see her man again because he was on his way to kill the most dangerous whiteman in all of the country. She knew Hervey would be waiting for him, expecting him, and would probably shoot him down even before a word was spoken between them. And then what? Hervey would come with his men and kill them here, kill the engagés, and carry her off to Fort Cass, a captive woman, a slave. Maybe he’d kill Maxim too, but she doubted it. He would send Maxim down the river.

She did not know what to do. Her medicine wasn’t good when she stayed among these whitemen. And she a Suhtai, too, her father a keeper of the sacred mysteries of the Cheyenne. She stared at the roofless building, wanting to despise it but actually sensing its impressiveness. It looked strong and enduring, its eastern flank aflame with the dawn sunlight. She would not cook meat this morning: let the whitemen cook their own. She couldn’t fathom her own complex feelings about them, nor about her man, Fitzhugh, either. These were toilers, slaving like animals, and she despised them for it, but admired them too, because they built things her people could not build. She’d been in St. Louis and had seen with her own eyes what these toilers could build.

When she’d been given to Fitzhugh by her father, she thought her man would become one of her people, and live in the villages, and make war and count coup and be a great man among them because of his fierce red hair. She wanted him to be a great warrior of her people, taking scalps of Crows and Cree, capturing more ponies than she could count, and bringing her whiteman things, copper kettles, thick blankets, ribbons and hawk bells. At first it seemed he’d be like that. He had learned her tongue and made friends with her mother’s clan and her father’s too. But his leg was bad and he didn’t make war, and she was ashamed because he counted no coup and had no Blackfoot or Crow scalps dangling from a tripod before their lodge.

But after a winter he’d taken her from her village and joined his trapper friend Jamie Dance, and the three of them had lived alone, far from her people, pulling beaver from the streams. Her life had darkened then because she was not among her people. She kept hoping he would come to live with them, but not until she saw St. Louis did she know it would never happen. He was a whiteman, even if he lived like one of her people most of the time. And if she stayed with him, she’d be like a white woman.

She listened to Trudeau tell his men what they would do. She didn’t understand French, really, but still she knew what he was saying: first they’d hunt for the horses and mules, just in case the Crow had not driven them far or had lost some. Then they’d work again, felling the trees to make the roof beams. She marveled that these men would still go on, even without a four-foot in camp. Not even these ten men could lift one end of the massive cottonwood beams they would set upon the walls. This very thing maddened her about whitemen. They would continue on, in their plodding way, and build buildings, plant gardens, make corrals, make
things.
What dogs they were compared to any clean-limbed, muscular, daring, fierce Cheyenne warrior! Whitemen should make war, not love, she thought, thinking of her man’s appetites and weaknesses.

The thought of Fitzhugh filled her with joy. As much as she disdained him, she found happiness in him too. What woman of her people was so lucky? Who of her people had been to St. Louis? Who of the Cheyenne women had a rich trapper to bring her silks and wools and skirts and blouses and mirrors and necklaces with shining stones, and tease her and call her Dust Devil even when her name was Little Whirlwind. That was an insult, Dust Devil, his name for the whiteman’s underearth-demon. But his bright blue eyes danced when he’d called her that, and he’d hoorawed her and taken her into his arms and made her sing inside. Whitemen were mostly bad, but not Fitzhugh. He made it fun for her to be with badness. He shocked her Suhtai heart, and made her medicine weak, but still she liked him sometimes.

Now she waited for him to kill or be killed. He wasn’t a warrior, even though he could be fierce sometimes, so he’d be killed. Julius Hervey was a fine killer, a Cheyenneheart. The dawn had a nip to it, and she wrapped her blanket about her, wondering what to do. Maxim had left his blankets and disappeared into the river brush. She despised him, a weak white boy without a bit of warrior in him, solemn and blink-eyed. And she wished he wouldn’t live in their tent, because Fitzhugh never touched her while the boy lay there, and she didn’t want to be touched with that boy there, even in the dark. She found herself alone in the camp, and that was the only good thing about the morning.

She felt the sun gather its muscle and warm her black hair and soothe her amber cheek, and rejoiced. Soon Winter Man would stay, but not yet. She sucked air into her lungs carefully, sampling its texture. She knew air, knew good and bad air. This air tasted good, sweet and dry. For confirmation, she scanned the heavens and saw not a cloud. A good sky. She sucked in another lungful and exhaled slowly, sampling its smell. She did not smell snow on it. She wasn’t sure she would do the right thing, and that was the trouble with living among whitemen. Her medicine had died. She needed medicine now, the sure knowing given to the Suhtai. She peered about this camp, cleaved once again by her confusion: despising and admiring, loving and hating, willful and afraid. This could not be, all these voices and feelings.

She filled a doeskin pouch with strips of buffalo she had jerked, as much as it would hold, and added small waxed-paper packets of whiteman’s sugar. And a sack of coffee beans. To this she added a steel striker and flint, and a tin cup. She packed her calf-high winter moccasins because she would need them soon. She remembered to take a little spare hide to repair soles. Swiftly she plaited her long blue-tinted jet hair into two braids, and tied her yellow ribbons around each end. She wore a long, soft doeskin skirt, fringed at the bottom, and a blue flannel hip-length blouse which she cinched at the waist with a beaded belt, which also carried a sheathed Green River knife. She rolled a small canvas groundcloth-poncho Fitzhugh liked to have under him because it turned moisture, and then tied the cylinder with thong. She didn’t want to take much; just enough to spare her life if she were caught in the clutches of Cold Maker. Then she slid into her new blanket capote, Fitzhugh’s gift to her when they’d left St. Louis. This one was scarlet as blood, with black bands at the top and bottom, and had been sewn into a slim coat with a hood on it. At the last moment she remembered mittens, ones she had lined with rabbit fur.

Then she walked east, toward the amber bluffs, never looking back but not really knowing why she was going. It confused her. Was she abandoning her man? She couldn’t say. Maybe she was. Did she plan to find her village? Yes, surely that was what led her footsteps lightly through dead, frosted grass toward the east or maybe the south. Did she plan to go on a vision-quest, climb a mountain sacred to her people and fast until she received a new spirit-helper, now that the one she’d always known, crow-bird, had abandoned her? Perhaps she would if the spirits said she must. But other things churned and crowded the edge of her thoughts, too. Sweet Medicine. Among her own people, she could remember Sweet Medicine again. And pray to Maheo, the over-everything spirit. And see the lodge of the sacred hat, brought to the Cheyenne by her Suhtai. She wished to see the four sacred arrows again, but the Southern Cheyenne had them now. She wished to be renamed, after receiving new medicine. Let her not be Little Whirlwind any more, but something else, something that Fitzhugh would not turn into a joke. Visions of her parents and sisters danced in her mind, and lovers too. Would the ones who played the love flute for her, before Fitzhugh came, still play it?

She turned to look back. The roofless post stood solemnly not far from the river and its naked laced cottonwoods. Nearby the wagons hulked, their white sheets glaring in the early sun, the way her tent did. She didn’t see a soul at the camp, and everything stood unguarded, but she supposed Maxim would be there. The rest had scattered, some south and some north, looking for tracks and stock. She smiled contemptuously at that. They would waste the morning. The Crow dogs were expert horse thieves, and would herd the animals far away, across the wide river, and close to the foothills of the great mountains, where they lived.

She climbed the steep bluff, up a long coulee dotted with jackpine, feeling winded by the effort, and at last topped the rim and peered out upon a great rough plains, under a blinding sky. Somewhere far away, she didn’t know where, would be the village of Chief White Wolf and her people.

Guy Straus decided to walk. The offices of Chouteau and Company weren’t far; down near the levee. The air felt languid, and he’d need nothing except his light cape. He’d waited until tea time, the social hour, not wanting this sally to appear to be business. He and Pierre Chouteau, Jr., had done business many times, and Guy’s father had done business with Pierre’s father, Jean Pierre, almost since arriving in St. Louis. Straus arbitrage and brokering had been an important factor in the success of the Chouteau interests for many years.

But this call would be a little different. Guy slid his black cloak over his solemn suit, and left his house, hearing the door softly shut behind him. Gregoire always seemed to know where he was and what he’d do next. Guy felt a certain tension this time, not because the Chouteaus, along with the Lecledes, Prattes, and Gratiots, comprised the most powerful clan in St. Louis, but because he faced the possibility of unpleasantness. He did not particularly like Pierre; the man seemed a bit cynical and overbearing. But he admired the man who’d brilliantly built the family fortune, and towered at the apex of the fur trade. Pierre and his brothers were not content to mastermind their empire from St. Louis, but travelled frequently to their farflung posts to see things firsthand. Guy was going, actually, to listen: Pierre was a gentle boaster, so subtle that unsophisticated mortals often missed it. Guy had a good ear, and that would be more important than a wily tongue.

One of Chouteau’s numerous clerks escorted Guy to Cadet’s battered office, and disappeared within. A few moments later Guy was summoned into Chouteau’s rough lair, a menage of curiosities from the wilds, scalps, lances, medicine bonnets, albino robes, along with portraits of his father, uncles, and cousins.