Centennial (55 page)

At dusk one day Sam Purchas caught sight of a war party to the north and he signaled Captain Mercy to proceed with caution, but very soon the Indians disappeared from sight. Nevertheless, that night Purchas insisted that the wagons draw close together and he posted watches. Levi Zendt drew the hours from two till dawn, and as he sat in the total darkness, not even a star showing, he occupied himself with trying to identify the night sounds: far in the distance a coyote’s two low notes and a high, over there an owl, to the north a night bird, the soft scuffling of some animal, then a spell of quietness so deep Levi could hear the sound of his own pulse.

Toward morning he heard three birds awaken, and as he listened more closely to their call, he suddenly discovered that they were moving closer to the wagons and on the spur of the moment decided that these were Indian calls. Discharging his rifle into the air, he bellowed, “Indians coming,” and he was right. Sixteen or seventeen Oglala Sioux came thundering in, a white flag held aloft and barely visible in the pale light of dawn.

I wonder if they’d have showed that flag if I hadn’t fired, Levi asked himself as they reined in, throwing dust over the wagons as sleepy men clambered down, each with a rifle at the ready.

“Hello!” the leader of the Indians cried. “Bacon?”

“Christ!” Purchas whispered. “That’s Jake Pasquinel. Look at the scar down his right cheek.”

When Captain Mercy heard this name he caught his breath, then moved quickly to the fore, calling in a loud voice, “Jake Pasquinel! Come in! We do have bacon.”

The Sioux were surprised that the white man should have known their leader, and they spoke among themselves in obvious agitation, but before they could react more positively, Mercy called, “You too, Mike Pasquinel. Come on in.”

This further identification caused the Indians to laugh, and some pushed others forward and there was considerable horseplay before two men in their mid-thirties dismounted and came hesitantly toward the wagons. They were good-looking, tough men, dressed Indian style. They carried themselves with an air of confidence, their hands close to their knives in case of trouble.

Captain Mercy, ostentatiously handing his rifle to Oliver Seccombe, moved forward to greet the two men. They halted, looked uneasily at each other, then resumed walking until they stood facing the captain. Mercy extended his hand, saying, “Jake Pasquinel, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

The Indian refused the hand, asking cautiously, “How did you know my name?” Mercy grabbed suddenly for the man’s right hand, bringing it to eye level. “This finger,” he said, pointing to a missing joint. “They told me I’d know you by this finger,” and now he ran his forefinger down the scar on the man’s right cheek, “and this scar.” He laughed easily and asked, “How are you, Jake?”

“Who are you?”

“Captain Maxwell Mercy, United States Army.”

“You come to fight?”

“No, I’ve come to establish a fort. Permanent fort.”

“Where?” Jake asked suspiciously.

“Call your braves in. We’ll smoke.”

So a council took place, there on the open prairie, with Captain Mercy, Oliver Seccombe and Sam Purchas sitting on one side of the ring and the Pasquinel brothers accompanied by two Oglala chiefs on the other. In a long and carefully phrased speech Captain Mercy outlined his mission, assuring the Indians that all the United States government wanted was guaranteed safe passage for emigrants to Oregon.

“You take our land?” Jake asked.

“Never!” Mercy assured him. “This land is yours for as long as the grass grows and the eagle flies. All we want is one road west.”

Here one of the Oglala broke into wild speech, which everyone allowed to run its course. Then Jake Pasquinel interpreted: “Wild Horse says that this one, Cut Nose,” and Jake pointed to Sam Purchas, “cannot be trusted. Evil man. Kills Indians.”

Purchas listened impassively, and then the other Oglala continued the diatribe against him, and after this had been translated, Purchas said, “You tell the chiefs you Pasquinels have killed a damn sight more white men than I ever killed Indians. You tell them that.” Now Jake remained silent, so Purchas broke into sign language and scattered Indian phrases; the chiefs understood.

The parley continued for several hours, during which pipes were smoked and flitches of bacon were given, and at the end Jake Pasquinel asked, “So what land will you take for your fort?”

“That is not known,” Mercy explained. “That’s why I’m here.” There was a long silence, broken by Mercy when he said, “And I was wondering, Jake, if you and Mike would act as my guides for the next three months?”

Mike Pasquinel interpreted this to the sitting chiefs and then to those standing, and the offer caused much consternation, during which Mercy handed the calumet to Jake, as a tender of his sincerity. Jake considered the offer for some minutes, then countered with an act of statesmanship: “I’m a half-breed. If I serve you, the Indians will say, ‘Pasquinel, he’s a traitor.’ I won’t work for you. But Red Feather here,” and he took the hand of one of the standing braves, “knows a little English. He will guide you.” Red Feather, a tall young man in his twenties, joined the circle.

Purchas did not like the offer. “That leaves you free to continue your killin’, eh, Pasquinel?”

“The day must come,” Jake said evenly, “when the killing stops. If you stop, I stop.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to stop killin’ rabbits,” Purchas snarled.

Jake stared at the trapper, then drew his right thumb across his throat. “We will kill you yet, Squaw-Killer,” he said.

The nickname Cut Nose had not disturbed Purchas, but when the Indian used this appellation, earned and hated, he leaped to his feet. Mercy pulled him back down. “We’ll take Red Feather,” he said, “and when we decide on a location, we’ll do nothing before meeting with you and Mike and the Oglala chiefs.” Jake nodded without committing himself, whereupon Mercy proposed, “And at that time we will want you to bring in the Cheyenne and the Arapaho.” Jake said he couldn’t speak for those tribes, and Mercy said, “But you’re an Arapaho.” Jake Pasquinel seemed embarrassed at this disclosure of information he supposed the white man did not have. “How do you know I’m an Arapaho?” he asked.

Captain Mercy pointed to the missing finger, then at the scar. “That finger you lost in a Kiowa fight. That scar you got at Fort Osage. Jake, in St. Louis everyone knows you. They think you will be the man to bring peace to the prairie.” He told Purchas to translate this, so that all the Oglala would know what he said, and once more Jake Pasquinel looked uncomfortable.

Then Captain Mercy asked, “This morning, when you were creeping in? If our watchman here hadn’t heard you? Would you have shot us all?”

Jake sat impassive, his broad face betraying no line of response. Then he looked up at Levi Zendt and said, “You have good guards,” and Mercy said, “We shall keep them posted.”

The Oglala Sioux mounted and drove off. Their backs were to the wagons when they heard a wild shout, “No! No!” followed by the explosion of a gun. They turned in their saddles to see Captain Mercy knocking into the air the rifle with which Sam Purchas had intended to shoot Jake Pasquinel in the back. Only by a fraction of a second was this prevented, and now Mercy swung his right arm and knocked Purchas into the dust.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” the captain barked. “We work so hard ...”

He was interrupted by Jake Pasquinel, who rode back into the crowd of emigrants. Looking down from his horse, he spat at Purchas and said, “Squaw-Killer, he didn’t need to interfere. Shooting at a man, you’d have missed.”

“Nobody spits at me,” the fallen man said, reaching swiftly for one of his knives, but before he could grab it, Jake Pasquinel was well away, laughing at Purchas and deriding him again with the hated name: “Squaw-Killer!”

On July 29 the column approached that quiet and restful spot where the Laramie joins the Platte, and there in the distance across the river they saw the fort, a major focus of white man’s civilization between the Missouri and the Pacific, Fort John, a trading post with three towers, castellated ramparts and adobe walls. It contained a sutler’s and a blacksmith shop inside, a score of Indian tipis outside, and everywhere a last reminder of home.

When those inside the fort detected the approach of the column, with Captain Mercy and his mules in the lead, they fired a salute from one of the cannon located in the towers, and Indians clustering below whispered, “Big noise, he come awake!” They did not like the cannon, having seen at first hand the desolation it could wreak; they preferred that it stay asleep.

For the Zendts the arrival was timely. They required the services of a blacksmith, not only to repair the broken wheel but also to reset the three other iron tires lest they grow loose and rattle off. They also wanted to purchase what dried meat they could to supplement the bacon, and they needed flour badly. Therefore, after driving their Conestoga inside the palisades and delivering it to the blacksmith, they went to the general store, where they found a tall, thin man in his late sixties supervising sales, aided by an attractive Indian woman.

“Levi Zendt, from Lancaster. I’m gonna need a lot of your stuff.”

“Alexander McKeag, Scotland. It’s waitin’.”

“This is my wife, Elly. Let her have whatever she needs.”

“This is my wife, Clay Basket. She’ll get it.”

They conducted an interesting conversation, two men not given to useless chatter. Zendt spoke of the bad crossing at the South Platte and McKeag said, “It’s always bad.” Zendt told of how Purchas had killed the Pawnee and how the Pawnee had slain the emigrant couple, leaving behind two children. “Usually they take the young ’uns,” McKeag said.

Then for some reason he could not have explained, for he was not a curious man, Zendt asked a question that was not routine: “How did you come to settle here?” and McKeag said, “I wouldn’t have if there was trading posts farther south,” and he told them of the good land he had known at the Buttes and the chalk cliff.

“You say you got a lot of beaver there?” Zendt asked.

“All gone now.”

“Then what’s it good for?”

“Farming, I reckon. There’s good water, there’s good land.”

“Captain Mercy says it’s desert.”

“Encourage him to go on sayin’ it. That’ll keep the bad ones out.”

“Why don’t you have your post down there?”

“Nobody comes along down there, that’s the beauty of it.”

When Elly had finished her purchases she was surprised to find at her elbow a young Negro boy who said, “Master, he wants for you all to have dinner with him.” He led her and Levi to the headquarters building, where men were drinking whiskey, and as she entered they rose formally and bowed. A tall man with a heavy beard said, “Madame Zendt, you do us great honor,” and after a long spell of storytelling, during which the man with the beard said, “I’d never have that swine Sam Purchas in my compound, let alone at my table. He’s a squaw-killer, by God, and that’s all he is.”

“He served us well at the river crossing,” Captain Mercy said. “Knows his job.”

“I’m appalled that the army would hire him as a scout.”

“We didn’t,” Mercy said. “He’s Seccombe’s idea.”

Finally the food was served, and Elly said, “I was surprised that you had so much good food for sale here,” and Levi said, “I was surprised at the prices, too,” and Elly said, “But Mr. McKeag was very helpful.”

“Who?” Mercy asked.

“Alexander McKeag,” Levi said.

At the mention of this name Mercy laid down his knife, looked down at the table for some moments, then rose and excused himself. He left the headquarters and asked the little black boy, “Where’s the store?”

“Yonder,” the boy said, pointing, and with slow, almost painful steps the captain headed in that direction. Stepping inside the store, he saw that the tall man and his Indian wife were preparing to close down for the day.

“Alexander McKeag?” he asked. The thin Scotsman nodded, and Mercy turned to his wife. “Clay Basket?” She looked up at him, puzzled, and he took her hands and kissed them.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Maxwell Mercy, of New Hampshire.”

“Why do you kiss my hands?” she asked gravely.

“I am married to Pasquinel’s St. Louis daughter, Lisette Bockweiss.”

No one said anything. McKeag moved to the door and closed it, turning the key. He pulled down the window shade, then sat on a pile of beaver skins. “How is Lise Bockweiss?” he asked.

“The grand woman of St. Louis,” Mercy said warmly, and with this opening he spoke of all that had happened in the city: Cyprian Pasquinel a state senator; old Hermann Bockweiss dead, with choice properties left behind; his daughter Grete and her husband, with many shops in New Orleans; Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel still giving parties in the big red-brick house on Fourth Street.

“Did Lisette grow into a pretty girl?” McKeag asked.

“Ravishing!” Captain Mercy took from his pocket a miniature of his wife, and she was wearing the same kind of French princesse gown as on the first night McKeag had seen her.

Clay Basket said, “You met my sons on the prairie?”

“Yes,” Captain Mercy said quietly. “Jacques and Marcel.”

“Are they in trouble again?”

“I think so.” As he said this she drew her hands down her face, and for the first time Mercy saw what a fine-looking woman she was, still slim in her mid-fifties, with streaks of gray in her hair and the handsome high cheekbones that had characterized her father, Lame Beaver. She was a woman of considerable dignity, as notable in her way as Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel was in hers. Captain Mercy took her by the hands and said, “That Pasquinel, he married beautiful women.” Clay Basket did not smile, for she was thinking of her sons, but whatever thoughts she entertained were broken by a sharp knocking on the door and the petulant cry, “Yoo, inside! Open the door!”