The Big Sky (21 page)

"Sooner in the season," said Summers between puffs on his pipe, "the wild roses are right purty. They pink up nigh the whole shore hereabouts."

The sun was just starting down from overhead when the
Mandan
reached the Yellowstone, which came in wide and easy, like a man slowing down after his race was won. It looked to be as big as the Missouri. Around its mouth tall cottonwoods grew, their leaves turning, making a rustling sound in the wind above the willow thickets that buffalo had crowded paths through. It made the Missouri look naked, for here the river flowed through a prairie that rolled on and on, one hill leveling off and climbing to another, as far as the eye could reach.

Jourdonnais put to on the point of land between the rivers. He was singing a song under his breath, and when his glance caught Boone's he smiled, sending the points of his mustache up. "We make 'er, the Roche Jaune."

They stepped to shore and climbed to an easy plain that ran back for two miles or more. "Gin'ral Ashley had his fort on this here tongue between the rivers," said Summers. "Don't reckon there's aught of it left." Jourdonnais gave everyone a drink.
They ate buffalo tongue and marrowbone while a flock of crows quarreled in the woods, and after a while pushed on again, taking it easy, since Jourdonnais for once seemed to have lost his hurry. Boone wished he would hump it. Just ahead was Uncle Zeb, who had led him out here, even if unknowing -Uncle Zeb, who didn't like Pap and talked of Injun country like a man under a spell. He could see him in his mind's eye: the eyes looking out from under their heavy brows and the mouth working under the long nose and the face smiling now and then at him and Dan as they begged him to tell some more. It was a long time since he had seen Uncle Zeb. Still, a growed man didn't change much. He hoped Uncle Zeb would be glad to see him.

Against Fort Union the other posts that Boone had seen along the river seemed like hunters' wigwams. Big square pickets, evened off at the top and shining bright and new, marched around it, fencing in a piece of land a man could set a cornfield in. At the southwest and northwest corners blockhouses stood, broad as a barn, rising high to pointed four-way roofs. Low down on them Boone could see loopholes for cannon. A flagstaff rose from inside the pickets, its tip moving to a flag that rolled and snapped with the wind.

The fort was on the north side of the river, maybe fifty feet from the bank, on a prairie that looked to go back for a mile before it came to a ridge of hills. There were a dozen or so Indian lodges pitched back of the fort and beyond them a little bunch of horses grazed. Standing in the stern, Boone heard a noise behind him, apd turned to see Teal Eye, her head barely raised over the cargo box, the mouth a little open and the eyes looking. Jourdonnais had moved some boxes around her so's to shut her from sight while the
Mandan
was tied up at the fort. Another keelboat lay at the landing place -a bigger, fancier one than the
Mandan
, with a cabin in her and long sweep oars that men would work by walking. While Boone watched, the big gate in the front of the post began to fold open, smoke puffed from the loopholes and swept up in the wind, and the boom of the cannons sounded. The swivel answered, and the crew shipped oars and got up and took the rifles Jourdonnais had let them have, and fired a ragged volley. Rifle shots were sounding from the fort, and people were coming from the gate.

Jourdonnais was shouting, "All right. Back to the oars.
Mon Dieu
, you think the
Mandan
get there by herselfl" He crooked a finger at Boone. "You watch the little one," he said. "See she stay among the boxes, with the robe thrown over. No one must see. Summers try to tell her, these Rocks, they maybe kill her. And McKenzie, no. He must not find out. You see?"

Boone stepped back and put his hand on the head that peeped above the cargo box. She went down willingly, her gaze lingering on him, and he fixed the robe so's to leave her some air. Afterward, seeing Painter lying stretched in the sun, he put him in with her and heard him go to purring as her hand stroked him.

Indians and whites lined the shore-what they called Assiniboine, or Rock, Indians, mostly naked from the belly up except for their buffalo robes, and workmen in jeans and cotton shirts and moccasins, and here and there a man in a city suit such as a body would see in St. Louis. Boone's gaze ran among them, looking for Uncle Zeb. There weren't more than two or three Indians had leggings on; the rest were barelegged, and most of them barefooted, too. Red and white, they were laughing and talking, ready to give a hand as the Mandan pulled in. Some of the Indians waded out in the water.

Boone wondered if he ought to holler if he saw Uncle Zeb, or wait quiet and make himself known when the time came. Uncle Zeb was bound to be about; Long Face had said he worked for the fort. The Indians looked like Sioux, though a good many of them had their hair cropped shorter so it just hit the shoulders. One buck had it fixed over his forehead and ears like a mane. His eyes looked through it like a rabbit through a bush. He wore a little white leather cap. Their faces were red with vermilion and looked greasy in the bright sun, except for one that was painted as black as any nigger's. Uncle Zeb would know what the black was for. With their straggly hair and bare feet and such, they looked like a poor bunch. Boone saw two bear-claw necklaces but no beads or shells like the Indians down river decorated their heads with. A few of them had guns and every last one of them carried a bow. The guns had bright yellow nails driven into the stocks and small pieces of red cloth tied on the fixings that held the ramrods. Most of the men carried bird-wing fans and some of them had little decorated sticks in their hair. As Boone's eyes hunted among them, one buck pulled out the stick and began worrying at his pipe with it. The Frenchmen on the
Mandan
were eying the squaws, who stood back a little, smiling. They had on storebought clothes, and Boone imagined they were the women that belonged to the white men at the fort. Uncle Zeb wasn't in the crowd; Boone had looked at every face.

The Indians who had waded out in the water were trying to climb aboard, and Jourdonnais was shouting, "
Non! Non!
Push off them! Push!"

As the
Mandan
eased in, a man came out of the gate and walked through the crowd, stepping like God. He wore a dark suit, fresh-ironed, that must have cost a sight of money, and a shirt with ruffles down the front that gleamed white in the sun.

"So," he said, "the
Mandan
made it." He had a broad forehead and broad cheeks and a broad chin, Boone saw between spells of shoving Indians from the side, and the hair that showed under his city hat looked soft and black as a crow's wing.

"We aim to talk to you, McKenzie," Summers said, grunting, "if we can keep the Rocks off."

The broad-faced man turned about and shouted, "Pierre! Baptiste!" as if he was used to having people jump when he spoke. McKenzie's head jerked toward the
Mandan
. "Keep everybody off." The two dark-faced men who had come forward trotted up the river bank to a willow clump and came back with long switches in their hands.

Jourdonnais said, "Your two men, who 'ave welcome us on the Little Missouri, they be along. Maybe here now. So?"

The men with the switches were laying about with them, driving the Indians back up the shore.

The cold eye of McKenzie rested on Jourdonnais without a flicker. "I don't know what you mean. Come on to the house."

"We thought you wouldn't be expectin' us," Summers put in.

Boone stood still in the stern, watching them and watching the robe that covered Teal Eye and sending his gaze among the people on shore on the chance that he might have missed Uncle Zeb after all.

Jourdonnais turned back. "No one leave the boat. We be a minute only, and then go on. You hear? Romaine?"

McKenzie said, "Come on," and he and Summers and Jourdonnais walked to the gate and disappeared inside.

Jourdonnais' eyes were busy as they walked through the grounds to the back where the house of the bourgeois stood. The flagstaff rose from the middle of the quadrangle, and near it was a cannon, trained on the gate. A half-dozen tepees were pitched near by, which Jourdonnais supposed belonged to the half-breeds employed by the fort. Along the wall of pickets were houses for clerks and interpreters and engages, and storerooms and workshops and other buildings whose uses he could only guess. Some of them weren't yet completed. Carpenters moved about them, pounding and sawing. Above the beat of the hammers and the clang of a blacksmith's sledge he heard the cackle of hens and the lowing of a cow.

Everything was new, from the high cottonwood fence and the cottonwood rifle walk that ran near its top to the cottonwood home of the bourgeois which looked at them from four real-glass windows. And everything was big and built with care, indicating money and organization and fine plans.

For a moment, as he entered the door of the large house, Jourdonnais' spirits sank. How could he, a
Vide Poche
, succeed against so much, against gentlemen like Monsieur McKenzie, who wore a ruffled shirt and had an air that made men stand back? His whole venture seemed suddenly mad and hopeless, the picture of himself in St. Louis smoking good cigars and wearing expensive clothes, saying, "Bonjour, Monsieur Chouteau," and hearing "Bonjour, Monsieur Jourdonnais.
Comment allez-vous
?" Jourdonnais shook himself as he went through the door, making himself think again of the rich trade of the Blackfeet and the
Mandan
loaded with liquor.

There was a movement in the room as they entered and then the slow closing of a door, shutting from sight the face of a young Indian woman. McKenzie motioned them to chairs that were stuffed to rest the butt and back. Summers sat forward, as if he were laying an egg. He had been on the ground too much, sitting cross-legged, to be comfortable in a chair. McKenzie got a bottle and glasses out of a cabinet. It was fine French brandy, so high in spirit that it seemed to evaporate in the mouth.

"Now, what was it?" McKenzie asked. There was a faint clipped quality in his speech, such as Jourdonnais had noted in other Scotsmen.

Jourdonnais looked at Summers, wanting him to do the talking.

"You know," answered Summers, his gray eyes unyielding before McKenzie's stare. "We catched 'em, the freeman leastwise, he was free once- that the Indians call Long Face, and a hoss with a snoot like a weasel. I never seen him afore."

McKenzie passed Spanish segars while his eyes studied Summers and his strong face kept as blank as a rock. He refilled their glasses.

"They'll show up, maybe, if the gnats don't bleed 'em to death, or the Injuns raise their h'ar. We turned 'em loose like they was borned."

McKenzie said, "I know them. Damned nuisances. Traded in a pack and stayed around." He turned to Jourdonnais. "You understand, being a bourgeois, what a problem men like that are, hanging around after their business is done. Nuisances, and a danger, too."

"Yes, monsieur."

Summers said, "Bein' on your payroll maybe had somethin' to do with their stayin' around."

"They weren't on the payroll."

"Like hell!"

McKenzie studied Summers for a long moment. When he spoke, though, it was just to ask them to have another drink. Jourdonnais felt the brandy strengthening him. Feeling it, and seeing Summers sitting there, hard and unimpressed, he straightened, while there edged up in him the stubborn ambition that had brought him this far.

"They thought to cut the boat loose, or fire it," he said, making himself look straight into McKenzie's face.

"How do you know?"

Summers answered, "Plain as paint."

McKenzie drank and set down his glass and leaned over toward Jourdonnais. "Look. We know what you plan to do. Naturally, no opposition can come up the Missouri without the American Fur Company knowing about it. We know the Blackfoot country better than you do. It's our country. We have plans for it. But the time isn't ripe, even for us. And if it isn't ripe for an outfit like ours, how close to ripe do you think it is for you?"

Jourdonnais said, "We pick it green, then."

"You'll get rubbed out, every one of you -killed and scalped and left to rot. You don't know the Blackfeet."

"We know some things," Jourdonnais said, thinking of Teal Eye, the chief's daughter, hidden now between the boxes, under the buffalo robe. "We go on."

"Go on, and you'll go under."

Jourdonnais spread his hands.

McKenzie let his voice drop. "You are reasonable men. You know the odds are against you. As reasonable men you're going to be interested in our proposition."

"What?" asked Summers.

"We'll buy your cargo, lock, stock, and barrel, and pay you double first cost for it."

"So?"

"And that's not all. We'll pay you to take a cargo down, a full cargo -packs and buffalo tongues- and pay whatever you ask -within reason, of course."

Summers glanced at Jourdonnais, as if waiting for him to speak.

"I think we go on," Jourdonnais said slowly.

"Goddam it, man, you can't do better."

"I think we go on."

"What more do you want?"

"It ain't for sale, McKenzie," Summers said. "You might as well understand."

"For two to one, and a load back? What do you expect?"

Jourdonnais spoke slowly. "Four or five to one, maybe more like the American Fur Company."

"We won't average two to one. Four or five to one on one deal, a total loss on another." He poured brandy into their glasses again.

"Still, we go on."

McKenzie drank and sat back while his lips savored the brandy. His gaze went from Jourdonnais to Summers and back to Jourdonnais, but it was as if, instead of them, he looked at thoughts. Jourdonnais was reminded, somehow, of a hunter putting a fresh load in his gun.

"You won't be fighting the Blackfeet alone," he said, measuring his words. "The British at Edmonton House will see that they have plenty of guns, and powder and ball to match. They'll egg the Indians on and maybe offer a secret bounty for your scalps."
Jourdonnais said, "We go on."