Cheyenne Winter (36 page)

Fitzhugh listened and fought sleep. He’d had plenty of it himself. It had loosened Raffin’s tongue and more. Raffin’s face had turned melancholy.

“Den you are dere, sniffing around the lodge of One Leg Eagle, and I see her looking sideways at you, watching you but not showing it, and I know I’ve lost her. You get her. I go back to my little lodge. One Creole heart busted up. All busted up. Dere goes my dream. I was gonna maybe trade robes somewhere at a little post, me and Little Whirlwind, the two of us at some place near her village. Maybe for American Fur. She made me dream, dis Little Whirlwind. Den you come along.”

Raffin stared into the flame and slid sticks into it. Tears oozed from his dark eyes, startling Brokenleg. “She likes red hair,” he muttered. “I don’t have a busted leg, no limp. I’m no cripple. I am strong as a bull. But it don’t count. You come along and I see the disdain. The more she disdains you, the more she likes you. And dis Creole, he thinks dis world is too damn cold.”

“I never knew that — how you felt, Raul.”

“You took the only ding I ever want away, and my life isn’t so good. After the beaver quit I work day after day and month after month for Cadet Chouteau. I have a few Indian girls but dey aren’t Little Whirlwind. Creoles got soft hearts. Creoles, if love goes bad we weep.”

“These country marriages, they don’t last. Mosta of the trappers I know dat take an Injun wife, they lodgepole her after a year or two. Git tired o’ her. Sometimes they run off, git tired o’ him.”

Raffin nodded and sipped. “You damn Enklish, you don’ know about love. You’re a northern race — cold and mean. Love, it got wasted on you. Little Whirlwind, she’s wasted on you. Brokenleg, you don’t know what you got. You got — a princess. You got a beauty. You got sunshine, like light pourin’ from da Virgin. You don’t know that.”

He wept again, sipping spirits and leaking tears from his brown eyes. They stained his cheeks and vanished into his bushy beard.

Brokenleg felt a bilious humor swell in him like stomach gas. A maudlin drunken Creole. It’d soured a good night. “So you got your revenge,” he said harshly.

Raffin stared. Shrugged. “I do everything Cadet wants. I wreck you good. I got a whole year pay for it. Maybe two. But it don’t do me no good. It don’t make me happy.” He stared moodily into the embers. “You know what I am? I’m Cadet Chouteau’s wolf. I’m on the rolls at Fort Union but I don’t spend no time there. I’m a gray wolf prowling around, makin’ trouble when he wants me to. I go stir up villages — I know most of the tongues. I go around, fix the opposition. Fix you good. He don’t like me around St. Louis none but he sends me messages. In French. He never signs them. They come up on the expresses, addressed to me, sealed. He writes careful, not sayin’ much, but I always figure it out. Dat way he talks to his wolf. I can read and write — dat makes me different from the rest. And I don’t need friends and comforts. My Creole heart’s broken, so I am the gray wolf slinking along the ridges. You see me now and then — mostly you don’t see me at all. But I’m dere. I’m everywhere.”

He sipped again, and then sat up straight. “Now you know everything about Raul Raffin. But you don’t come here with a jug for making talk, eh? You got business. All night I wait for you to tell me your business. I already know, but you got to tell me.”

Raffin was right. Business hung over all this like a snow mass waiting to avalanche. “You tired o’ being’ Chouteau’s gray wolf?”

Raffin laughed.
“Merde!
You ask dumb questions.”

“You could get out, you know. Do something else. Beats me how a man can enjoy skulking around out hyar all alone.”

Raffin’s face darkened. “It suits me fine. I lose the one thing I care about so I do dis. You got something I want; I got something you want. Are we gonna do business or not?”

“I ain’t followin’ you.”

“You’re followin’ plenty good. You just aren’t admitting it yet.
Là-bas,
behind you. That parfleche you’re leaning on. Give it to me.”

Brokenleg lifted himself and turned warily, wondering if he’d be knifed. Carefully, he edged the heavy parfleche out from behind him and shoved it across the lodge, past the fire. Raffin yanked it the rest of the way and untied the flap. He rummaged within and then pulled out something flat, carefully wrapped in oilcloth, and undid the cloth. Within was a soft leather pouch, from which he extracted papers.

“Dis one here, I write it a few days ago. I get out the quill and the ink. I think maybe I am leaving here soon. But I still got some business with you maybe. So I wait.” He handed the sheet to Brokenleg. “It’s what you want, eh?”

Fitzhugh studied the sheet. Dense, thick script covered half of it, blotted several times. It carried a January 1843 date. Raffin’s signature had been scrawled below the text, which was in English. He read with amazement a brief account of Raffin’s private work for Chouteau. And a detailed account of Raffin’s successful effort to plant three casks of contraband spirits in the Rocky Mountain Company cargo. He said he had acted on Chouteau’s private instructions.

Fitzhugh stared at the document, scarcely believing his eyes. Scarcely believing it was in his hands. He could probably plunge out the door flap with it.

Raffin laughed. “It don’t do you no good. You take dat down to St. Louis and them Indian superintendents, dey look at it and laugh. Dey say, dis here is a forgery. Oh, dey compare it with the handwriting on the cargo manifest, what I wrote dere, and it’s the same, but dey say no, Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus, dey just hire a forger. You need dese too.”

He handed five sheets to Brokenleg. Each contained a brief message in French. They were dated — the years ran from 1837 to 1842 — but not signed. Something commanding and elegant lay in the script. There were no blots.

“I can’t read French.”

Raffin wheezed happily. “Dat’s why he wrote dem like dat. He send dem to me. He don’t want Culbertson or Denig or Kipp to know. And dose Creoles, dey can’t read anyway.”

“These are from Cadet Chouteau? Instructions to you?”

Raffin nodded. “Dey tell me what to do, what he wants. One dere tells me to erase the opposition — dat’s you — by any means. Dat’s his way of saying, kill you if I have to.”

Brokenleg stared at these documents dumfounded. “How do I know? I can’t read French.”

Raffin laughed. “I can read dem. But see — I take good care of dem. Oilcloth to keep the water out. Leather pouch, and den inside a good waterproof parfleche too. My petite letter and dese here, dey go together. You need everyt’ing.”

“I could duck out with these.”

Raffin laughed again. “Try it, eh?”

He held a throwing knife in his hand.

Business. “Raffin, what do you want for these? My robes hyar?”

“Robes?” Raffin didn’t say any more, but mirth played over his sallow features. “Robes? What’re you gonna do with dese robes? I get word dat your post — it don’t exist no more. Dem Creoles, dey are either dead or walking down the river. Your robes, what’ll you do with dem? You and Spoon and Constable, eh? Naw, Brokenleg, you don’t want to think about what I want for dem letters.”

His post gone? A whirl of dread whipped through Brokenleg. His men killed by Hervey — or Hervey’s Crows? Trudeau? Maxim? All the rest? Some sort of brutal assault?

“How do I know that?” he asked, half-choked.

“You don’t. You can go look. You got time. Middle of
l’hiver,
eh? I get word from Hervey. Him and me, we get word. He know where you are always. Few days ago I get the word.”

Fitzhugh had the bad feeling that it was all true. And he knew what Raffin’s bargain was.

“You want Little Whirlwind.”

Raffin’s eyes lip up. “Ah,
mon ami,
now you get around to it. You gimme Little Whirlwind, and I give you dose papers.”

Little Whirlwind. A Devil’s bargain if ever there was one. Not so hard to do, either. Trappers unloaded their squaws all the time; traded them off. Just moved their truck out of the lodge — that was all it took. They got the idea. Sometimes the squaws did it to the trapper — moved his truck out. Then he got the idea. It wouldn’t bother the Cheyenne none. The warriors struck deals like that all the time. “You want Little Whirlwind,” he muttered.

Raffin chuckled pleasantly. “I’ll quit old Chouteau. I get Little Whirlwind and I don’t care what he thinks. I’ll lose a year’s salary, one hundred fifty — but it don’t come to so much for a poor engage. I got more; I got gold in my parfleches. I’ll never go back to St. Louis again. Maybe down to Bent’s Fort — dey got lots of Southern Cheyenne dere, make Little Whirlwind happy. She obeys,
oui.
Good squaw does. She looks down her nose at me, disdains me, tells me she’s a Suhtai and don’t forget it,
oui?
I take here dere — or maybe Fort Hall. Hudson’s Bay. Maybe Oregon. Who knows?” He shrugged. “She’ll be happy. Dey get used to it and dat’s it. She don’t act good, maybe I’ll lodgepole. Day are used to dat, too.
Oui?”

A Devil’s bargain. Brokenleg stared into the flame, dizzy. A confession and some supporting documents. Enough to rescue the company — maybe. If the post on the Yellowstone remained. And his men were alive and trading.

“I oughta go on up there and have a look,” he muttered.

“No time, no time. Dose papers, you don’t get dem later. You come to do business tonight. I been waiting for weeks for dat. You do business tonight, or no business never.”

“Al right, Raffin. You git Dust Devil,” he said.

The one who spoke English smiled faintly at the sight of the engages sipping spirits. He surveyed the shelves of the trading room, finding them stacked with untraded merchandise. He wandered into the warehouse, discovering crates and barrels containing more trade goods along with a pile of robes, most of them baled. His two colleagues trailed along, plus Maxim. He walked into the yard and studied that, his gaze halting at the half-destroyed shed being used for firewood; at the gaunt, desperate horses with their heads hanging; at the well-pit with round cobbles rather than water at its bottom.

He turned to Maxim. “The men are having a final drink.”

“Yes. Some will leave. But I’m not surrendering. All this belongs to my family and our partners.”

The headman laughed softly. “Then you will die.”

“Maybe not. If your friend Julius Hervey wanted you to take the post by force and kill us, you would have done it long ago. But that would anger the grandfathers.”

The headman shrugged. “Maybe you will die of thirst or cold first.”

“Maybe. Maybe Brokenleg Fitzhugh will return with the Cheyenne first and drive you away.”

The headman shook his head. “No. Your men would stay and wait. But they are leaving. Only you will stay.”

They wandered back into the trading room where the engages sipped silently. Maxim turned to his guests. “I don’t know your names,” he said.

“I am in your tongue, Big Robber, chief of the Absarokas.”

It startled Maxim. Big Robber was a great chief of the Crows. The man before him looked formidable, a giant built of slabs of muscular flesh. He was a legendary chief who knew numerous white men. He had been friendly to them all, and a steady, thoughtful leader. It heartened Maxim slightly.

“This is Whistling Deer, head man of the Kit Fox Society, and Badger, a sacred man of our people.”

“I am Maxim Straus.”

“We know that.”

“Would you care for some spirits?”

“Surrender first, young one, and then we will have spirits.”

“Where’s Hervey?”

“He awaits word.”

He’s not here then, Maxim thought. “Samson, a gill for these friends if you please.”

“No, we will wait,” said Big Robber. “When you go away we will have a party.”

“I am not going — and I have a whole cask for your village.” He nodded to Trudeau, who vanished into the storeroom and returned hefting a heavy cask. Without being bidden to, Trudeau screwed a brass bung faucet into it while Big Robber watched, frowning.

“Not now,” said Big Robber peremptorily.

Samson Trudeau glanced at Maxim, who nodded slightly. The chief trader hefted the cask again and carried it past the three Crows and out the door. Big Robber watched Trudeau walk across the brilliant white flat, a thundercloud building in his face, but he did not prevent it. The other headmen watched sharply, saying nothing. Out at the edge of the village blanketed people flooded out to Trudeau. He set the cask into the snow, made some sign talk, and then walked slowly back, unmolested. At the village, people scattered toward the lodges to grab cups or drinking horns.

“It’s not cut. The little cask will make a grand party for your village, said Maxim, the Devil prompting him again.

Courvet handed each of the headmen a tin cup brimming with slightly cut spirits. They accepted. Big Robber grimaced slightly, a man tempted against his better judgment. Crow chiefs had always resisted the white man’s vice.

“It makes no difference,” he said at last. “You will surrender anyway.”

Out at the village a mob collected around the keg and some warrior splashed the spirits into cups. Women elbowed their way ahead of the men, and many got to the spirits first. One warrior guzzled, cried, and spat, dancing around, clutching at his throat. Whoops and howls echoed across the flats.

Swiftly the afternoon mellowed. The three Crow leaders sat down beside the engages and sipped. Big Robber told bawdy stories — the Crow were famous for them — translated, and enjoyed himself. Outside, Crows gathered into knots to talk and joke. Wintry air didn’t prevent them from having a party.

Maxim eyed them all soberly, pushing aside thoughts he didn’t want to think. At last he nodded to Trudeau, who had stopped sipping, and they gathered buckets and headed for the river. No one stopped them but many eyes watched. They replenished the water casks in the post, led the two desperate horses out to water and then let them graze on picket lines. They grabbed axes and cut firewood and hauled armloads of it into the post.

The pair labored steadily for two hours gathering water and firewood and then cottonwood bark as fodder for the starved horses. Several times grinning warriors approached, cup in hand, their faces friendly. But Maxim never slowed down; he was driven by some terrible force within himself to do what he could before the siege lowered over the post again.