Rocky Mountain Company (36 page)

But the sun was fleeting, and he broached the topic at last. “Julius, I got to fetch my outfit before our agreement expires. We’re ready. I come with the wagon to fetch the loads.”

“What’s left of it, Stiffleg. I’ve traded it away.”

“I think you’re provokin’ me, is all. They’d be hell to pay with Chouteau and Culbertson.”

“It’s a Christmas gift,” Hervey replied. Troubled, Fitzhugh clambered up and stamped life into his game leg. Men dozed in the warmth, joked, sipped the last of the fiery spirits. He limped out into the yard, intending to check the warehouse. Maxim, worried as always, followed. The sun had plunged so low that the yard lay blue in winter-shadow. He didn’t notice a difference until he got to his big Pittsburgh wagon, and then stopped abruptly. The mules had vanished, along with their harness. The wagon hulked naked beside the warehouse, a helpless giant, its doubletree sagging into frozen earth. Choking, he peered into the wagonbed looking for something else: his rifle and those of his engagés had vanished as well, along with the robe that contained them.

“Ah, Stiffleg,” said Hervey from across the yard. “Merry Christmas.”

Brokenleg waited impatiently for the weather to moderate. For days brief boiling blizzards had swept over the post, interspersed with sunny interludes rimmed by mountainous clouds. A wicked wind howled out of the north. He intended to send an express to Culbertson notifying him of events on the Yellowstone, and demanding relief. But with three mules in captivity, the man would have to go on foot, two hundred miles through drifts in the bowels of winter. He wished he could go himself, but his bum leg prevented it.

He kept the engagés busy, barking at them sometimes because of their lassitude. Things cried to be done: the trading window needed a counter and shutters. His own apartment and office had yet to be partitioned or furnished. The matter of dry firewood loomed large always, with two wide fireplaces eating their daily meals. The post armaments had been reduced to Maxim’s old rifle, Bercier’s rifle and one fowling piece, and these he assigned to his best hunters and sent them into the cold each dark day. They returned with what they could carry — a rabbit, a duck, once a quarter of a doe brought from a great distance. And all the while the reserves of hanging frozen buffalo diminished rapidly. Without the mules they lacked the means to reach the distant herd and pack more meat to the post.

Something had drained away, and the men eyed him with long dark stares, and idled through their tasks. Trudeau looked worried, and did not press them when they gathered for a pipe, or just collected around a fireplace to stare into moody flames.

Maxim sulked and avoided his duties, and no matter how much Fitzhugh railed at the boy, it yielded no improvement. Accusation filled Maxim’s eyes, but he said nothing, and confined his thoughts to his notebook.

Hervey had escorted them all to the gates of Fort Cass on Christmas day, thoroughly enjoying himself. He’d been backed by all of his engagés, though they obviously despised the evil he did to guests on a sacred day. But none resisted, beyond a dark stare at their
bourgeois,
because to do so was to court death at his hands. Fitzhugh had itched to brawl, to pound them, but he’d gotten hold of himself, and with a nod to his own engagés, signaled them to leave peacefully.

Nonetheless, at the gates of Fort Cass, he’d turned to Hervey with an accusation. “You’re a thief,” he said, his glare upon the amused man. And he’d waited taut for the blow, because Hervey had slid knives into men for lesser offenses.

But Hervey had only chortled easily. “Stiffleg, dummy, you don’t understand. We’ll buy your entire outfit at cost — for the goods and for your transportation. At cost.”

“You’re a thief,” Brokenleg had repeated.

Hervey’d shrugged. “We’re just holding it for you. We’ll ship the whole outfit down the river on mackinaws in the spring if you want. That’ll cost you plenty for transportation, though. You’d be better off selling.”

“This ain’t done yet, Hervey.”

“I’ll remember that, Stiffleg. I never forget a threat. You and your men can pick up your rifles and the rest of your truck any time you quit the country. Or come work for me. I’m just storing them safely for you. A little Christmas service.” He’d smirked at that.

Fitzhugh’s engagés had listened somberly. They understood English well enough, even if they didn’t speak it. After that, they’d trudged home in violet light, never speaking a word the entire four miles. And they’d hardly spoken in the six days since.

This night would witness the passage of 1841, and the birth of 1842, but no one cared. He thought he’d offer them a gill anyway, even if it cut into one of the two trade items he possessed. It didn’t matter much. Or did it? He reminded himself that times changed, and half the battle was to endure the worst, take a loss this year and go onto the next. Maybe Jamie would reap a bonanza in robes down south.

Samson Trudeau caught him outside, where he was pacing out the dimensions of a yard behind the trading post where someday they could keep horses inside of a palisade. Another snow squall blotted the timid sun while he calculated.

Trudeau looked worried. “Monsieur Fitzhugh?” he asked, hesitantly. “I think — “

Brokenleg waited impatiently as flakes melted on his neck.

“I think some of the engagés — we are going to lose them.”

Fitzhugh absorbed that, angering. “They signed on for a year,” he snapped.

Trudeau sighed. “It is so. But I think some, they will leave tonight.”

“How many?”

“Six. They go to Fort Cass. They will work for Hervey. He’ll give them their rifles back,
n’est-ce pas?”

“Six! That leaves — “ He sighed, angrily. “Who?”

Trudeau evaded the question. “They would like their wages. It is the end of the month, yes?”

“They’re gonna break their agreement and want wages too?”

Trudeau nodded, looking miserable.

“They think we’re doomed, eh? Quitting? Well, we might be whipped this year but what about the next? And how’s Jamie Dance doing down south? I need them here. I got a post to build.”

“They say you can’t feed them now.”

“I’ve got casks of spirits in there, and three hundred osage orange sticks for bows. Do they think those won’t trade for ponies — lots of ponies of all sorts? Or buffalo meat?”

“But you have to get to the villages — “

“That’s right, we do. And I was going to send runners to bring them in as soon as we had a chinook or a break in this.” He waved at the heavy sky.

“Some of us want to stay, Monsieur Fitzhugh.”

“Who?”

“To stay with you? Myself. I am a faithful man. Larue. Provost. Dauphin.”

“Good men.” But one of the departing was Gallard, the one they’d suspected of ditching the Witney blankets; the one the engagés themselves didn’t trust. “Gallard going?” he asked.

“Especially Gallard. He was itching to go.”

“What do you think about him?”

“I have no thoughts about Emile Gallard.”

“I think you do. Bring them in when it gets dark. I want my chance to say my piece.”

When early dusk sawed off the day’s toil the men gathered uneasily before the great fire in the barracks while Fitzhugh watched angrily. They avoided his glare.

“You contracted for a year,” he accused, harshly. “You’re deserting when I need you most.”

Some of them peered back sullenly. He knew he had no control over them. They had only to walk out the door and trudge four miles to escape him.

“I can’t stop you from going. But things won’t go easy for you. Julius Hervey’s toying with you. He wants to break me down, make me abandon this post. Do you think American Fur’ll employ engagés who break their contracts? No. He’ll welcome you with that little mocking grin, and put you to work and pay you a wage — until the day we fold up here. And then he’ll discharge you and tell you American Fur doesn’t employ engagés who bust an agreement.”

“You can’t feed us, monsieur.” It was Brasseau. “No horse. No rifle, eh?”

That made sense to them, he knew. “See that?” He jabbed his finger at the casks. “You think that won’t trade for more ponies we can ever use? I figgered to send you out to the villages to drum up some trade, soon as the weather lets up.”

“Always, the desperation, Monsieur Fitzhugh.” Brasseau had somehow made himself into a spokesman for the rest, and oddly, Brokenleg honored him for it. It took courage to get crosswise of the
bourgeois.

“Brasseau,” he said gently. “Hervey won’t keep you. Oh, you’ll git your pieces back, maybe. You walk into Cass and he’ll give ’em to you. And that’ll feel good. A man feels naked here without a firearm. Plumb naked. But he don’t need you none. He’s got all the men he needs right there, and a bunch of winter loafers to help out too. He don’t need none of you.”

“We’d like our wages,” Brasseau said, determinedly.

“You’re busting your agreement and want wages! I ought to just pitch you out.”

“Sacre bleu!
We have work hard.”

Fitzhugh felt cornered. It wouldn’t do to mistreat them, not if he hoped to get enough back to keep his post open. Men were plumb scarce. And they’d worked; God knows, they’d worked themselves down to nothing. “All right. Usually we’d keep accounts and settle at the end of the season, wages on one hand, purchases in the trading room on the other. I’ll have to give you drafts payable in St. Louis on Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus. Hervey’ll honor them. So will Culbertson. If they don’t double their prices on you.”

He’d lost them, he knew that. Angrily he dug into his possibles for the nib and some foolscap. Silently, Maxim handed him some ink in a little flask. Seven months wages. Times twelve dollars. Minus — what? He couldn’t remember what had been supplied them from stores. He began scratching angrily, eighty-four dollars for Gallard, eighty-four for Lemaitre, for Brasseau, for Bercier, for the rest  . . . He signed them all. The signature was a valid assessment on company funds.

They took their chits with averted eyes.

“Now go ahead,” he snapped.

They gathered their outfits and edged out silently into a black night, while the rest watched, mute. One of the post’s remaining rifles went with them. Maxim looked stricken. A hush settled in the room, save for the snap of cottonwood logs in the fireplace.

“Happy new year,” Fitzhugh said dourly. “There’s a gill for any that want it.”

But no one moved. They peered uneasily at each other: Fitzhugh, Maxim Straus, Samson Trudeau, Gaspard Larue, Jannot Provost, Corneille Dauphin, each lost in his own world.

Until the odd, shuffling noises of an army outside alarmed them.

In the occasional light, she saw that Fitzhugh had completed his post more or less. It looked like one of the buildings she’d seen in St. Louis, but cruder. Heavy shutters sealed the small windows, but here and there light seeped from them anyway. The northwind whipped sour cottonwood smoke from the two chimneys down upon them as they gathered silently before this surprising post raised up on the bank of the Bighorn.

She felt an odd joy in her return, and an eagerness to nestle in the circle of his strong arms, even if he was a whiteman and not worth her caring. She had been virtually a prisoner of White Wolf this long trip, the only woman among thirty warriors. They had prepared carefully for several days, because the Cold Maker roared and the journey from Crazy Woman Creek would be long and difficult. But her marriage to Fitzhugh, it seemed, had become a matter of tribal well-being, and they had taken her choices from her. Nothing like that had ever happened, and they all knew how unusual it was. She had a duty. They’d brought twenty ponies to trade, and burdening these were many robes prepared by the women over the two winters her village had not come to a whiteman’s post. Many more fine robes remained in her village, too.

The front door creaked open a sliver, spilling yellow light across the snow. Someone peered out cautiously. Then the door swung open like sunrise, and she saw Fitzhugh peering out at them, his great red beard and long red hair glowing orange in the doorframe.

“Dust Devil?” he said, spotting her in her red capote, on her brother’s buckskin pony. “I reckon you brought your people.”

“I have come,” she said.

He motioned them all in to the bright room within, but White Wolf intervened, posting two of the younger Cheyenne boys to herd the fifty-one horses gathered there, and keep watch. The rest of her people slid stiffly off ponies, gathered their blankets or robes, and entered. The tribesmen seemed to fill the whole barracks, crowding around the fire while Maxim and the four engagés stared uneasily. She wondered where the others had gone. Could they have left him? The acrid odors of smoke-cured skins and wet wool filled the barracks.

Fitzhugh did not touch her and she did not rush to him. But she had become intensely aware of him, as his eyes raked her and met her own at last, sending a small shock of pleasure through her. Whatever she and her man felt, they would not express it before all of these. The swelling of anticipation surprised her. Oh! Her man! Her Brokenleg! How commanding he looked, here in a post he’d built! He scowled at her but she didn’t mind. Later he would clamp her ruthlessly, his loving wild and joyous, like a sky-mating of eagles.

It took her people no time at all to discover that nothing burdened the shelves of the trading room, and no robes had accumulated in the warehouse room behind it, and that whatever this post possessed lay heaped along the barracks wall. They eyed the bundles of sticks with some curiosity, and the wooden casks as well, but said nothing. Gradually her people settled themselves on their blankets and robes around the fire, unable to say much to the engagés already there. She sat just behind the circle of men, feeling the chill of a cold stone wall at her back. These whiteman buildings lacked the comfort of a lodge, she thought.

Her man knew the way of the People, and welcomed them with a twist of tobacco. White Wolf solemnly tamped it into the sacred pipe he’d extracted from its pouch of unborn buffalo hide, and every Cheyenne present smoked it, along with Fitzhugh and the fur company employees. Fitzhugh welcomed them leisurely, in his broken Cheyenne. They would begin trading soon, he said. Even now, he had something that might interest them, the orange wood of the Osage People, the wood the French called
bois d’arc,
the wood that made powerful bows that shot arrows farther than any bow made of the woods here. He had three hundred of these, all perfect, cut in the summer and now well dried. Her Tsistsista people listened intently. This talk was of power in war, of arrows finding their mark while enemy arrows fell short, of power in hunting, too.