Cheyenne Winter (39 page)

An awesome blow bludgeoned Maxim’s left arm and he felt something snap, felt his fingers numb and his hands spasm helplessly. Heard laughter high and mad and mean. “No arm. Little Straus lost an arm!”

And still the blows showered over him, rocking his head, convulsing his body. But they seemed fainter and fainter, even though his body tossed and bobbed, fainter and fainter until the blows disappeared behind a great black curtain of velvet laughter.

Some eternity later he awoke to pain, which inhabited his whole body, overflowing like bile. He awakened to nausea, too, and the throbbing of a headache beyond fathoming. Someone was sliding him onto something but his eyes wouldn’t open and he didn’t care. The only reality was pain. Voices drifted into the tiny corner of his mind that knew life, voices in a strange tongue. He felt himself being carried, each movement lancing pain through a helpless arm, carried, swaying, rocking, hurting. He knew somehow he was being carried to Fort Cass, and his rescuers were Crows.

Brokenleg waited restlessly. His Cheyenne winter had ended. He was out of trade goods. He’d acquired over two thousand robes which were nestled in three lodges, one of them Raffin’s, and two tents. These had come not only from White Wolf’s village, but three other Cheyenne bands wintering along the Powder. He itched to return to the post, but winter pinioned him there. He worried about his post and its fate, remembering Raffin’s words. He itched to go there and find out but great ridges of snow and brutal cold foiled him. He desperately wanted to take his precious papers down the river. He’d do it personally as soon as he could. But not until winter eased its grip. The papers were everything: wealth, profit, a future.

Other things plagued him also. His horses were gaunted and winter-weak, and yet he would be asking them to shoulder enormous loads. He needed more, and intended to trade his three lodges for them. He and Abner and Zach spent the better days building travois, one after another, to carry the mountain of robes. They constructed twenty and then devoted their free days to peeling cottonwood bark from green limbs and feeding it to their ribby horses. Village people watched curiously, amazed at the industry of the traders. This time of year most Cheyennes huddled around their hearth fires, visiting, gossiping, spinning the tribal legends, hunting, and making love. Among the Cheyenne, along with all the northern plains tribes, every autumn was the great birthing time.

In the lodge of One Leg Eagle and Antelope life continued placidly, undamaged by Little Whirlwind’s departure. If anything, Hide Skinning Woman, Elk Tail, and Sweet Smoke outdid themselves to please him, making quilled and beaded winter moccasins lined with rabbit fur, cooking succulent buffalo hump rib or tongue, and pleasuring him with bright-eyed joy as if to tell him that they understood everything. The loss of one-quarter of his wives had caused scarcely a ripple.

He wondered if he missed her. Sometimes he did; other times he barely noticed. He didn’t miss her vitriolic tongue or her contempt of others, but he missed her mockery and merriment. But she was gone and even the memory of her faded as the sun returned to the land of the Cheyenne, and nibbled holes in the snow.

Upon the arrival of
Po o tan e ishi,
the Buffalo-and-Horses-Begin-to-Fill-Out-Moon, Brokenleg decided to go even though great ridges of crusted snow barred his way. He gathered his numerous ponies, traded his lodges for more, loaded his travois with mountains of robes, smoked the pipe with his friends throughout the village, gave White Wolf a parting gift of tobacco, feasted with his family, smoked quietly with One Leg Antelope to renew the family bond, and departed on a bright March morning, deceptively warm. He hoped he wasn’t too late. If the river ice broke he could be trapped.

His women, gorgeously attired in blanket captoes made from blue and green and cream Witney blankets he’d given them, boarded their ponies along with Zach and Abner, and they took off, escorted for a while by the Dog Soldiers, many of them happily hefting good Leman rifles they’d bought from him.

They clung to the windward side of ridges where the snow was lightest and brown grass poked through to support the horses, but now and then they hit terrible pockets of crusted snow that bloodied pasterns and tipped the travois. They slogged through an empty world, devoid of bird song. Not much game was evident, though they spotted tracks.

They reached the Tongue and found the ice creaking and rubbery, so they crossed one animal at a time while the gray ice growled and complained. But it held. That was the last great water barrier. Fitzhugh rejoiced although he worried the horizons with constant glances, awaiting the late blizzard that could trap or destroy them. They lost a horse on the Little Bighorn. It died in the night from unknown causes. They lost another on the east bank of the Bighorn, this one gaunted and winter-sickened. In each case they had to adjust the loads, burdening the others all the more.

Beside them the Bighorn River groaned and sighed, and finally broke its icy cap and sent the shards whirling north, with a great clamor. At one point the giant slabs formed a thundering dam, driving water out of the riverbed and forcing them to detour.

And then they were nearly home. Worry clawed at Brokenleg. Would he find — nothing? His post an abandoned ruin? Or find a siege? He was tempted to reconnoiter lest he walk into grave trouble, but some urgency crabbed at him and he drove his party harder than ever into the icy night, taking advantage of a frosty half-moon. They’d arrive well after dark, which would be good if there was trouble at hand.

They broke out of the naked cottonwoods and beheld the silent flat, washed with pale light. No lodges clustered around the post but it stood darkly, intact.

“She’s there,” muttered Abner.

“Looks dead,” added Zach.

Brokenleg studied the gray hulk and then slid his Hawken from its sheath and fired it. The boom startled the peace. He kicked his horse and tugged at his picket line, and his weary parade coiled out of the latticework of branches and into the nakedness of the flats. Brokenleg reloaded as they walked, wondering if he’d shortly see the cold glint of rifle barrels poking from unshuttered windows.

Instead, he heard a shout. “Is that you? Brokenleg?” Samson’s voice. Rejoicing, he hollered back, and moments later the yard gate creaked open and the post swallowed thirty laden horses.

Fitzhugh’s Post lived. Its engages lived.

“You be here, old coon,” bawled Fitzhugh.

“Sacrebleu!
So it seems!”

Fitzhugh clambered off his weary horse. His leg collapsed but he caught the saddle fender and righted himself. Then he caught Samson in a mountain hug while around him men bawled greetings and barked at the moon.

“You all right?” he asked anxiously.

“Ah, mostly.”

“You traded any?”

“Three thousand almost.”

The number dizzied Fitzhugh. “So many?”

“Got some Crow trade. I see you got the Cheyenne.”

“Twenty-one hundred, and some pelts.”

“Ah  . . . And is there other news? The company — does it live?”

“It lives, I reckon. Tell you about it later. Got me some papers from Raul Raffin — he done it. He done it and confessed it.”

“Raffin? Him it was?” Samson looked troubled. “Did you beat him to a pulp? Why would he admit to such a thing?”

“Cost me some,” Fitzhugh said.

Around him, half-dressed engages unhooked travois and dragged the heavy loads into the warehouse. Others led the weary horses to a pen and bucketed water from a well Fitzhugh had never seen before. “Ye got some talkin’ to do,” he muttered.

“So do you,
mon ami.”

He headed toward the warmth of the post, his three wives ahead of him, Trudeau uncomfortable at his side. “Where’s Maxim? He sulkin’ again, Samson?”

Samson stopped, looking miserable. “He’s — dead.”

“Dead? Dead?” The enormity of it rushed through him. “Maxim?”

“It’s a long story. But I will tell the ending. Julius Hervey caught him alone near the river and beat him. He lingered for four days and died. Something inside of him all torn up. He’s buried over there.” Samson waved at some place outside the post.

“Hervey murdered him!”

Trudeau nodded.

Brokenleg’s gorge rose but he choked it back. Maxim, Maxim  . . . He limped across the yard and through the gates into the snowy wilderness. He rounded a corner of the post, heading in the direction Trudeau had pointed. The grave lay there, scarcely twenty yards from the stockade, cold stone heaped over it abundantly, an act of love from those who’d clawed away the frozen clay and laid him there. “Boy, boy,” he muttered. “Hope ye be with God.” He tarried there until the cold bit him.

He limped back, his leg torturing him, his thoughts torturing him, and found Trudeau in the warm trading room beside a radiant stove.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

Trudeau nodded. “I will, but answer a question first, eh? Where’s Little Whirlwind?”

“I gave her to Raffin.”

Trudeau sucked breath and then exhaled slowly. “I ask one question and get answers to the others. Ah,
mon ami,
the boy, Maxim, he saved us. And I will tell you how, eh?”

Trudeau talked swiftly, punctuating his narrative with Creole gestures, and bit by bit Brokenleg learned of the siege, the desperation, the starvation, the brink of doom  . . . and of Maxim’s remedy — two casks of the spirits he hated so much. And of the toll it took on the youth, who’d wept the next day and was wandering alone along the river when the angel of death visited him.

“Boy, boy,” Brokenleg muttered. “You growed up and died the same day.” He sighed. “Hervey. Forty-year-old giant in his prime, mountain-strong, kickin’ a boy to death.” He sighed. “You got witnesses? We got anything?”

“I have made a record, Brokenleg. The whole story — what I learned, what the Crows said, and some of Maxim’s rambling thoughts as he died. Take it to St. Louis, take it.”

“Where’s St. Louis? Don’t know where it is,” Brokenleg muttered. “There’s only hyar.”

But the next day he left for St. Louis.

Yvonne clung to Guy through the service, and Guy knew that behind her veil she wept. Her priest, Father Desmoulins, droned on, trying to comfort them as best he could as they sat in the chapel of the cathedral church. It wasn’t easy for the priest, who was comforting a Catholic mother and Jewish father grieving over the loss of a son who hadn’t made any choices in his brief life. Still, the promises and hopes of the psalms lifted some of the darkness out of Guy. On one side of them sat their beautiful Clothilde. On the other, Robert Fitzhugh, his stiff leg poking under the pew ahead, looking bizarre in a hastily tailored black suit. Beyond Brokenleg sat Hiliodore Billedeaux, Guy’s counselor. Guy didn’t know who sat behind other than his friend and lender Robert Campbell, but there were several.

The priest concluded a prayer and a benediction, and this part of it was done. The service did little to mend the ache over a life snuffed out at seventeen on the twenty-seventh day of January, eighteen forty-two, two thousand river miles away. But it was something to mark the event, make it dark and sacred in their thoughts. When Yvonne had received the news she’d sighed and wept, and remarkably, had refrained from telling him she had known it would happen all along. He escorted his silent wife and daughter to a waiting black chaise driven by his slave Gregoire and saw them off, the chaise rattling through spring sunlight to their home. He had other things to do that could not wait.

So much more to do. Grimly, he and Brokenleg followed Hiliodore to his carriage and were transported through balmy air to Hiliodore’s chambers. There the attorney collected a sheaf of papers, some of them brought a great distance, and added to them an affidavit of Robert Fitzhugh describing a confession made to him by one Raul Raffin. Not a word had been spoken. Nothing was worth saying. Billedeaux drove them down the steep grade to the levee and the federal offices where David D. Mitchell, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Central Division, ran the vast western territories. Mitchell was expecting them, and wore black.

“Gentlemen, be seated,” he said.

Billedeaux extracted the papers and laid them before the superintendent who perused them carefully, reading them twice while his visitors waited silently. He rose, withdrew a folder, and extracted from it a cargo manifest, and turned to its last entry, nodding.

“The same hand as far as I can tell,” he said. “And these are Cadet’s notes. I know that hand better than my own. And Trudeau’s account of the murder. Mr. Fitzhugh, do you vouch to me that the events described in your affidavit are correct?”

“I swore it, didn’t I?” Brokenleg snapped.

Mitchell let it pass. He drummed thick fingers on the oak top of his desk and then reached for his quill and ink bottle. He scratched something on paper, blotted, and handed it to Hiliodore. “That’s a conditional permit to trade as you had been. Conditional because it must be approved by my colleagues in Washington City. I’ll forward these as soon as I have copies made. This should suffice. I think you can complete your plans to resupply your posts.”

Guy nodded.

“Monsieur Mitchell, we thank you,” said Hiliodore. “Is there anything else you desire of us?”

“A word with Guy, please,” Mitchell said.

The attorney and Brokenleg filed out, leaving Guy with Davey Mitchell.

“Guy, Guy, I’m sorry. You know American Fur.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“They stop at nothing. Old Cadet tolerates it. Are you doing something about Hervey?”

“Hiliodore has obtained a warrant. For murdering Maxim. For imprisoning me. And we are suing Cadet.”

Mitchell nodded. “You on your way there?”

Guy nodded.

“I’m so sorry Guy. You know their motto:
ecrasez tout opposition.
You knew that when you formed your company. Only no one imagined the monopoly would murder your son.”