Cheyenne Winter (11 page)

Fat Belly was smoking before his lodge, enjoying the morning sun on his naked chest. He looked up at Brokenleg with recognition forming in his bronzed face.

“Ah! It is my bad leg son!”

The chief scrambled to his feet, beaming. He stood like a barrel on stilts, his hair pinned by a red headband and hanging in two braids, his coup feathers perched jauntily on his head.

“Fat Belly! You’re lookin’ fit as a fiddle.” Brokenleg howdied his old friend, dropped an aromatic twist of dark tobacco in his hands, and settled to the ground, easing his bad leg out.

Brokenleg inquired after wives and children, especially Fat Belly’s three sons, each a fine warrior and headman in Fat Belly’s band.

“Ah! Bear Medicine — the very boy you used to wrestle with long ago — Bear Medicine, he has two wives and three slaves, a Tsistsista woman, a Siksika girl, and a Siksika boy. He’s very rich! He has counted three coups including one of great honor. My other boys, they are fine. Sweet Grass Dreams has a wife but he ignores her and hunts. He loves the hunt. Little Fox is ever the warrior and a master of the stick game. Too much a gambler, I fear. And as for my wives  . . . ”

Fitzhugh listened, enjoying, remembering them all. Often he’d been a guest in this lodge. A while later — it never did to rush things — Brokenleg got down to the purpose of his visit.

“You up to a little tradin’, Fat Belly?”

The chief frowned and sucked on his clay pipe a long while. “You will understand the difficulties, Brokenleg. American Fur is here for all the winters to come. Your company — they come and go. If we go to you — the trading window is shut to us here. They make many threats and give many gifts and tell us how bad you are. I laugh at that but I take the gifts and ask for more.”

Fitzhugh knew or surmised all that. American Fur would think nothing of operating Fort Cass as a heavy loss for as long as it took to drive Rocky Mountain Company under. “Well,” he said softly, “I come to dicker for horses. Like robes if you got ’em, but I’m a-pecking for some horse flesh.”

Fat Belly smiled gently. “So I hear. Siksika. It makes me wonder about the ones in there.” He nodded at Fort Cass. “Siksika!”

“I need seven, eight horses. Young stuff. Saddle-broke. Steady ones, calm ones. I got to break them to harness.”

Fat Belly puffed, said nothing, peered into the azure heavens, watched his wives mash berries and melt tallow. They were making pemmican. Fitzhugh knew the chief had over a hundred horses including some buffalo runners, several war horses, and a couple of race horses. All the Crow loved a horserace, and gambled wildly on their choices.

“I should consult the medicine-givers,” Fat Belly hedged.

“I reckon you can trade hosses if you want.”

“It affects the welfare of the village.”

“Back at the post I got me a whole rack o’ new Leman rifles, fifty-two caliber, good rifled barrels that put a ball plumb center — flint or percussion, whichever you want. A real rifle, a lot finer than them old Nor’wester fusils. I reckon I could spare one for a good pony — I mean a real good hoss, steady, quiet-eyed, halfway friendly, easy to teach drivin’.”

The Lemans cost the company twelve-fifty each back in Pennsylvania where they were built. Out here they were worth eighteen or twenty prime robes — a lot of robes.

“A Leman rifle for a good horse,” Fat Belly said. He puffed steadily. “Eight rifles for eight horses?”

“I reckon. Help keep them Siksika off your backs.”

“I have lots of horses.”

“I reckon ye do, and ye might show me a few that got some drivin’ instincts in ’em. You up ter taking a hike?”

“There is no need,” said Fat Belly. “I will gather my sons and we will meet you at the horse herds. I promised the traders — the one called Hervey — that I would take no robes to you. But a horse is not a robe. The sun must travel a hand’s width first. We will show you horses and you will show us Leman rifles, old friend. And we will add another horse for powder, lead, and all the rest.”

Before the afternoon faded Brokenleg had traded eight rifles, powder, lead, and bullet molds worth about a hundred fifty robes for nine gentle-eyed mustangs, a mixture of seasoned saddlers and young stuff. He ran them into the fort pen and set to work at once, along with Abner Spoon and Zachary Constable, both of them good with horses. Teaching them to drive would take weeks. They worked into the moonlit night, putting on collars, accustoming them to iron bits in their mouths instead of Indian hackamores, and rubbing them gently. He didn’t want a bunch of wild ones, prone to run away with a wagon full of trade goods. They quit deep in the night, scarcely nothing that not a lodge had come to trade, not a robe had crossed their counter their opening day.

“Peter Sarpy!”

“Guy Straus!”

The giant trader embraced Guy with a mountain hug which faintly embarrassed the financier. Guy looked the man over, discovering a wilderness dandy dressed in rainbow colors.

“I can imagine why you’re here,” Sarpy said, glancing at the portly frockcoat-clad presence nearby. “Let’s walk up to the post. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a trading room.”

Guy eyed the steep path doubtfully but followed the giant Creole upslope toward some privacy.

“That
mangeur du lard,
that
vide-poches
had been making life miserable hereabouts. Damned Indian Bureau thought they’d cure corruption and help the tribes by making Indian Agents of ministers. Another stupid idea. These ministers are so busy imposing their white-man morals on the tribes that there’s going to be a bloody uprising some day. Know what they do? They tell the Indians they can’t have their annuity goods — the stuff the government promised them if they came in to the reservations — can’t have their stuff unless they converted, went to church, showed up for lectures and school and what have you. So now we got the biggest bunch of phony Christians you ever did see. And it didn’t stop the stealing none. Half those divines get rich selling the government annuities to all and sundry just like all the other crooked agents.”

Sarpy led him into a low log building up on a flat above the river and Guy beheld a trading room for the first time. He stood there in the amber light, catching his breath, surveying the orderly shelves of bright blankets, kettles, knives, ribbons, bolts of wool and cotton, and all the rest. Familiar things but somehow magical and mysterious here.

“I see no spirits,” Guy said, wryly.

Peter Sarpy laughed, his pleasure booming through the magical room. “You’d like to know what happened. I wasn’t there but I heard about it. He found some rundlets down there whiles your boy was showing him around, and had them toted out to the levee. They weren’t what they were labeled.” He grimaced. “Pretty crude, I’d say. Any old coon would know it was a plant but not this fat divine. No fur company in its right mind would stick casks like that right there, top o’ the heap, itching to be discovered. But that didn’t stop him none. He got the wrath o’ creation built up in him, and thundered and lightninged all over that levee like a good hailstorm, his mind plumb made up.”

Guy nodded. “You have any idea how it happened, Peter?”

“No, but I have some notions about how it didn’t happen. Look, Guy, this wasn’t the work of anyone high up in American Fur. You know why. Company’s been burnt a couple of times. It’s too vulnerable. You can bet that Pierre le Cadet had nothing to do with it and none of us top men either. You’d better be fishing for smaller fry. Maybe not even a Chouteau man. Someone’s got a grudge — against you, or Fitzhugh — whatever.”

“How sure are you?”

“Totally, Guy. Here’s what can happen. If there’s an uproar back east and the reformers take the bit and run, there’d be Indian Bureau and Army swarming every post in the West. And they’d find what they’re lookin’ for. believe me, Cadet Chouteau doesn’t want a catastrophe like that. Me, I’d be outa work. Same for all the other company men — Malcolm Clarke, Major Culbertson, Edwin Denig, the Cabannes, the Gratiots — all his cousins, including me.
Mon Dieu!
We’re not that lunatic!”

“Who, then?”

Sarpy shrugged. “Who could slip three rundlets aboard and alter the ship’s records?”

“A boatman on
The Trapper
. An officer. Maybe a passenger.” The widening possibilities seemed grim to Guy. He pulled a folded sheaf of foolscap from his portfolio. He had with him two important documents copied from Captain Sire’s records: a list of cabin passengers and a list of the ship’s crew. The deck passengers were unknown except for a handful whose passage had been paid by Chouteau and Company. He unfolded them carefully and handed them to sarpy without a word.

Sarpy dug around for his spectacles and read slowly, his lips forming the names. “There are so many,” he muttered.

“Who got off here?” Can you name them?”

“Three company men: La Liberté, Germain, Lemoir. All three good men with families. Not very likely  . . . ”

Guy nodded. “What of the other Chouteau men listed here? Poudrier, Raffin, Dorion, Labaone, Dufond?”

Sarpy shrugged. “Didn’t get off here — as far as I know. I was tied up with a trade; didn’t get down there. But there’s this: they’re fur men, engages. They’d know how to hurt an outfit if they wanted to. They’d know exactly what to do.”

“Their company sent them upriver somewhere?”

“I imagine, Guy.”

“Would you question your engages closely for me?”

“I’ll do it. Maybe have something for you when you return — you are going upriver, I take it? That’s what Chatillon was doing down there?”

“Yes. It’s a futile gesture but I’m going.”

“Guy, maybe that trouble wasn’t aimed at you. Meant for someone else.”

That surprised Guy. “Fitzhugh?”

“He’s a rough cob, Guy. He’s got about as many enemies as friends. And that Little Whirlwind don’t help none.”

The thought that the blow might have been aimed at Brokenleg rather than the company was a novelty. Guy mulled it over and decided it was worth pursuing.

They exchanged thoughts for another hour and then Sarpy escorted Guy down the hill to the now-empty levee, where Ambrose Chatillon and his horses waited patiently. The
St. Peter
was preparing to return downriver, riding high in the water, its deckmen loading firewood.

Guy clambered aboard the good saddler, feeling his generous buttocks sag into the hard saddle. He knew that in a couple of hours he’d be hurting. But he hoped that by the time they reached his next stop, Fort Pierre, three hundred fifty miles up the river, he’d be hardened to the pain and in much better shape. He’d always wanted to go up the river to the far-flung places where no white men of his sort had ever been.

They rode quietly up the valley of the Missouri through a breezy afternoon. Behind them Bellevue fell away. Ahead lay grassy bottoms with fewer and fewer trees. He felt his horse move under him, its rhythms swaying him gently. Behind, the packhorses followed on a picket line, snorting now and then, snatching grass when Chatillon relaxed his hold on the line.

Guy saw no one. He knew he was unlikely to see anyone for days at a time — and it’d be a blessing. The sunbaked river valley lay in mysterious silence, hiding secrets, shrouding menace. Guy Straus had never penetrated wilderness before and he suddenly felt vulnerable. He eyed Ambrose gratefully, knowing the wiry man could rescue him from most trouble — but not all. A part of him yearned to flee back to Bellevue, back to security and comfort. But not all of him, for Guy Straus was a bold man, relishing this silent valley and new vistas around every bight of the river just as he relished a good and profitable deal.

Late that day they heard a fait roaring upon the breeze, a strange rumble that whispered of demons and rage, pain and blood. It frightened him. But Chatillon merely smiled. “Soon,
Monsieur,”
he said softly.

They rode straight toward the roar, which seemed to rise from some place a mile or two forward and around a bluff. The sound arrived coyly, sometimes loud and frightening, sometimes barely evident, depending on the whim of the west winds. It worried the horses. They peered about wildly, ears rotating, steps nimble. Guy felt his saddler gather itself to flee. He couldn’t fathom what it might be but gripped his reins with sweaty hands.

Then Chatillon turned toward the grassy bluffs and scaled them, taking his entourage toward a promontory just ahead. Guy felt relief now that they weren’t riding toward that ominous growl and clatter. Then, just ahead, the guide reined his horse and waited. Guy rode up cautiously, feeling the wind whip into his shirt and cool him.

Below was a buffalo herd, perhaps a hundred or so, blackening the bottoms. And at its center, several giant black beasts locked horns, snorted, bawled, roared, and gouged at one another viciously, pawing earth, throwing up dust that hazed the area.

“It is the running season,
Monsieur.
The bulls, they are fighting for the cows. They are mad, the bulls. See the blood! They gore each other. They attack anything on sight. If we rode close they would charge into us. It is nature’s way,
oui?
The strongest bulls win the cows!”

Guy stared, entranced, seeing a spectacle beyond anything that had been conveyed to him with words spoken over coffee at the Planters House. He understood at once that he was peeking at nature’s raw, fierce force as bull crashed into bull with shocks that vibrated the earth under his horse, and thunderous cracks of horn and skull. He marveled that any of them lived through it; that skulls and bones survived; that they had energy left to breed the cows. One bull went to earth, pawing air, half-dazed, while its antagonist gored him relentlessly. Blood and madness. On those sunlit grasslands a savagery boiled that Guy had never grasped before. The wilderness bristled with forces more violent than a thunderstorm. They sat on their horses quietly downwind of the herd while Guy saw at last the sources of his wealth, the animals whose hides would enrich his company. The frightened packhorses pranced about him but Chatillon checked them. For a long while they watched the ragged battle below; watched the quitters, the weak and wounded, driven from the excited cows.