Rocky Mountain Company (28 page)

“Get off the ponies and have some ox — that’s all we’ve got, and it’s getting boiled up. Too tough for steaks, but just right for crowbait like you.”

He watched them slide off their gaunted ponies, his heart gladdened by the sight of them. It would take his mind off Dust Devil. The pair of them had seen better days, he thought, and both had aged and weathered terribly, harried to an early death by the hardships of the wilds. Abner’s hair had been a lustrous brown once, but now was streaked with gray, and receding back, like his own. He’d always been lean, but now that hard leanness had sunken into creases that whispered of starvin’ times. Zach wasn’t much better, he thought. But one thing hadn’t changed: like most men of the mountains, they wore fringed leather britches and elkskin coats, with gaudy flannel shirts underneath, and wide-brimmed beaver hats, sweatstained and filthy, and rabbit-lined winter moccasins. They both carried Sam Hawken’s product, Abner’s a flintlock, and Zach’s a percussion lock, along with powderhorns, possibles bags, and sheathed Green River knives. “It ain’t like the beaver days, is it,” Abner said sadly. “They’s gone forever. We go wanderin’ through the parks and around the creeks and we don’t see none of ’em anymore. Like summer birds, come and gone, and nothing’s left around but winter all the time. Where’d they all go? It’s plumb lonesome. Last rennyvous, in forty, wasn’t even a real one, just old Lord Stewart back from England and spendin’ a pretty penny to revive the past. Hardly nobody I ever swallowed Taos lighting with was there anyways, just them porkeaters he brought, and a few artists paintin’ us all for posterity.”

Brokenleg felt their sadness. He felt it too, the passing of the high wild times, when a man was not beholden to anything or anyone or any idea, but was his own master in a natural world beyond law and churches and wives. Especially wives. It’d stamped him, and it’d stamped a few others like these, and now they could never return to the States and the dull march of days clerking in some town or plowing up some farm. “Well, get the ponies fixed up and unloaded and come dip into the stewpot,” he said.

In a few minutes Spoon and Constable had picketed their horses and dropped their packs beside Fitzhugh’s campfire, while the engagés folded up the day’s labor and clambered down from the naked beams of the roof.

“This hyar’s Maxim Straus,” he said. “He’s the son of my partner Guy Straus, and he’ll be clerkin’ when we get this outfit perking. And this hyar’s Samson Trudeau, my number-two, and he’ll take you yonder and you can meet up with my engagés.”

Fitzhugh watched them thoughtfully as they made their way among the men, some of whom they knew from the old beaver days. Many a Creole had trapped the plews and drunk away the profits at the rendezvous. But it was their horses that started him thinking; horses he desperately needed, along with their labor. Horses for hunting. He’d been able to salvage some meat from the slaughtered oxen, and keep it cold enough these frosty days, but that would come to an end — and he didn’t have a pony to hunt on. If they’d stay, sign on for the winter, he’d have men and horses he needed so badly he’d offer them anything.

But that kind of dickering would wait until later. Maxim had dug up a spare bowl and spoon for each, and they’d ladled out the ox stew, and wolfed it down heartily, along with the engagés, until the entire fire-blackened kettle had been emptied.

“I forgot how ox tastes,” said Zach. “Sorta glad I forgot. Not up to buffler, but plumb tasty.”

They’d all settled around the fire, huddling close because of a sharp malevolent wind from the northwest that tormented their dark sides while the firelit ones warmed.

“That’s some place going up thar,” Abner said, eyeing the building, which ghosted amber in the firelight. “You gonna get her sealed up before the bad stuff hits?”

“We’d hope to move into Cass,” Brokenleg said.

“Culbertson beat ya. That’s where we’re a-going. Hervey’s there trading. Some Crows told us last summer sometime. We reckoned to fetch us some galena and DuPont, and a few doodads and a jug, and maybe winter there. Beaver don’t bring nothing but grief no more, but we’ll trade the grief.”

“Abner, Zach — “ Brokenleg began, urgently. “If you’d stick around some, I’ll trade for those plews and winter you. And pay you right proper for some work.”

Zach studied the half-built fort rising in the gloom beyond the fire, and glanced at Abner. “I don’t see no tradegoods on no shelves, Brokenleg.”

“At Cass. I’m renting roof. We’ll be in business first of the year.”

“Cass? You parked your outfit with Hervey?”

Fitzhugh shrugged. “Not much choice.”

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

“I need hunters. I need horses. I’ll keep you fat all winter.”

“We heerd your horses and ox was stole,” Abner continued nervously. “We met up with your little Cheyenne up the river a piece and she tole us.”

“She’s off to visit her people,” Fitzhugh said uncomfortably. “She say anything else?”

“Truth is, she didn’t say much of anything, let us think she’s only a Cheyenne speaker. But we cottoned on to all her duds. Too fancy to be a lone Cheyenne girl wandering round and about. We thought mebbe a trapper’s lady from Cass — “

“Well she wasn’t, and she was just goin’ on a little visit, and I think she can take care o’ herself pretty fine.”

“Don’t git your bowels in a roar, Fitzhugh. We caught her snoopin’ around and brung her in, and fed her some meat, and she took off before dawn. She told us you’d be here, and about losing the ponies and oxen, and all.”

“I’ll fetch her later, after we get settled in,” Brokenleg said tartly. “Now I need me some men. Are you agreed?”

The pair of them glanced at each other, and then out into the night, and looked uncomfortable.

“Well, you old coon, we ain’t exactly wage men. It comes hard to be takin’ orders from a boss. Hell, you know what it’s like out here — “

“Well, just hunt. Go off and hunt and I’ll pay — ’

“We ain’t taken orders from no one for years, old coon. Not from a
bourgeois
at some fort, not anyone. Not God even.”

“But you’ve worked harder and starved worse as trappers — up before dawn, seeing how the stick floats, pullin’ up beaver and skinning ’em, fleshing the hides, stretching, and — “

“Sure, and there wasn’t no one telling us we had to.”

“How could you pay us anyway? Hervey’s got your outfit locked up tight,” Zach added.

“We’ll pick it up.”

“Wagons? Without oxen?”

“I was hoping you’d hire on — “

“Brokenleg,” Abner said gently. “For ole time’s sake we’ll do anything we can. We won’t be far away. But Hervey’s got him a warm place and a mess of goods we want for these hyar plews. We’ll come visit and tip a jug if ye got any juice.”

Brokenleg knew he’d failed. They hadn’t quite said what was on their minds, but he’d read it plain enough: this was a bellyup outfit, and they’d take their chances on a winter with Julius Hervey and American Fur. It was common enough for trappers to winter at the posts, where they were welcome because men and talk and high times were scarce in all that wilderness. And so it would be.

The next morning he watched them ride out toward Fort Cass. Those two weren’t close now, the way they’d been years earlier, back in the grand, wild days of the beaver men. They were half-starved coons lookin’ to hole up safe. He ached, not only because he hadn’t been able to snare them and their horses, but because the old days were gone and buried, and hardly even a memory in the heads of the ones who’d lived in those times. Abner and Zach were like him: a mess of driftwood, he thought. River-worn and all the bark off.

They could camp in tents and covered wagons no longer. A brutal blast of arctic air, heavy and penetrating, caught them in late November, bringing work to a halt. The men’s hands were too numbed to hold axes and saws. The ground froze into a steel plate which mocked spades and shovels, and radiated a cold that pierced upward through robes and blankets, robbing everyone of sleep and making the long nights even more miserable than the short days. Brokenleg had no mercury thermometer, but he knew the temperatures were sinking well below zero at night, and not much above by day. At least, he thought, the skies remained blue. A storm could kill them.

The roof was well underway. The carefully shaped ridgepole stretched across the building, and so did a lower stringer on either side of it, and adze-squared logs lying atop the sandstone walls, all of them forming the framework for the innumerable small poles, lying side by side, that would support the sod — if they could dig sod now. Each of those poles had to be squared carefully so that it would snug into the one beside it, and that labor consumed the energies of all his engagés. By mid-afternoon the sun was fleeing, robbing them of the light they needed. Fitzhugh kept them toiling until the last lavender twilight faded into wintry blackness, and sometimes they continued with the light of a fire built in one of the fireplaces at either end. But the light was so fickle it helped not at all, nor did the fire warm them.

The lack of horses and oxen slowed the labor. Each pole had to be carted out of the woods by two or three engagés, and lugged across the broad meadow to the trading post. Worse, now that Fitzhugh lacked a horse to hunt from, they all had to stop periodically and track down game on foot, sometimes dragging it back for miles — when they were lucky enough to find and kill any. Some days they starved, and turned sullen.

And then the cold came, sneaking silently into them like an icy knife. They rose quietly that morning, into a world that had turned brittle and evil, a world utterly silent because life had fled south or into hibernation. Fitzhugh’s leg ached and wouldn’t stop aching. He had the feeling, that morning, that he’d lost the race. He found a spade and banged it into the earth. It bounced like a hammer off an anvil. Maxim watched him, wrapped in a blanket, hollow-eyed and shivering. Not even a roaring fire helped them warm, because this sort of northern cold penetrated down to bones and into marrow and left fingers hurting and ears stinging no matter what layers of cloth and leather encased them. Making things worse was a steady arctic wind straight out of the north, not a gale but a ruthless invasion of polar air probing southward in triumph, murdering life before it.

At least they could get out of that flow, he thought.

“We’ll move in,” he told Trudeau. “Next to the fireplaces.”

About half the roof had been poled, and they moved themselves and goods under the scant protection it offered. It contained no heat because of the open cracks between the poles, but it and the walls would baffle the wind, and the fireplace would radiate heat better than an open campfire. They had firewood enough, the detritus of their building, but it wouldn’t last long. He scarcely knew what to do next: gather firewood, continue building, try to make some sort of shelter before the winter butchered them.

He had to think about a roof. There’d be mud on the banks of the river, at least for a while, warmed by the passing water. Maybe they could shovel that slop out and drag it somehow to the post. He pulled his spare capote tight, and clamped its hood down and limped toward the river to see what he could see. He found unfrozen mud, at least a bit of it, in a few spots, but what caught his eye was the acres of sedges, brown and sere, along the riverbanks. He wondered if sedges could be cut and thatched. A foot or two of thatching above them would hold heat, and turn water too, if anyone knew enough about thatching to do it right. He didn’t.

He didn’t like the idea much. One fire-arrow from one angry Indian who didn’t like the way a trade had gone could burn the roof down, turning the whole post into an inferno. One needed a fort here, not a thatched cottage. But he didn’t have much choice at the moment, not with the ground as hard as a frying pan and he and his engagés on the edge of frostbite, lung sickness, and ague.

For two days they huddled around the fireplace while the wind mauled the walls and eddied through the windows and doors. Not even a roaring blaze kept them comfortable. At night they posted a watch whose sole task was to feed the fire. Their meat dwindled alarmingly, and men turned surly with hunger and boredom and discomfort, and some engagés talked of walking the four miles to Fort Cass, and its warmth and food. Brokenleg knew he was a poor one to lead men, cheer them on, rally spirits, but at least he could set some kind of example, so he braved the wind as long as he could each day to chop firewood, and even worked an adze over a roofpole or two before the numbing cold drove him back.

Then the wind stopped. The third day bloomed bright and cold. Men could work short shifts before warming. He set half to cutting poles, and took the other half hunting through the bottoms to the south. They found no game. It was as if the cold had driven every four-footed creature south before it, but Fitzhugh knew it was not true. In the winter, deer and antelope gathered into huge herds, emptying the country of solitary animals. They would have to find one of the herds and somehow stalk it, evading its numerous sentinels. But between the brutal cold, and the lack of horses, they couldn’t walk far enough.

They came back emptyhanded, and into the accusing eyes of the others, who’d added twenty more roofpoles to the total, and advanced the roofcover several more feet. They were down to coffee, sugar, and tea, and resorted to steaming cups of well-sugared coffee to keep them going. It helped not at all, and Fitzhugh knew his ravenous belly felt no different from that of every man there. Some of the engagés eyed the barrel labeled vinegar longingly, but Fitzhugh resisted. Not now. He would need that for the trade in any case.

They spent another miserable night feeling the cold claw through their blankets and robes and clothing and skin, claw toward their vital centers, where they made the heat that kept them mortal. In the morning, after more sugared coffee, Fitzhugh divided them into three parties of three, with the remaining men to stay at the post and cut firewood and tend the fire. He chose to stay himself, knowing that his bum leg would badly slow one of the parties. He detailed one of the hunting parties to head south, up the bottoms again, but sent the others toward the eastern bluffs to hunt for an antelope band. They bundled into capotes, stuffed their feet into layered moccasins or added stockings if they had them, and walked off into a blinding morning, while magpies heckled and crows mocked.