Cheyenne Winter (4 page)

Little Whirlwind stood on the hurricane deck and thought about slaves. She had always wanted them. From the time she was a girl she knew she’d marry a powerful warrior who would capture enemies of the Tsistsista and give them to her. As a child she’d practiced being mean. She’d found a stick and beat ponies with it, pretending they were old Absaroka squaws she could bully. Or young Assiniboin girls. Or some stupid Gros Ventre boy she could whip. She’d always known exactly how to deal with slaves and she supposed it was part of her heritage as a Suhtai, a daughter of a medicine man.

She would make her slaves scrape hides and gather firewood, and if they weren’t quick about it she would hit them with a stick and tell them they were dogs. Sometimes the warriors of her village made wives of the slaves, which was good. Then the oldest wife had lots of help. When her father had given her to the rich white man who laid blankets and a rifle and an axe before her lodge, she thought she’d have more slaves than any girl in the village!

But she hadn’t known he hated slaves and wouldn’t give her any. How strange he was. Didn’t he know that the more slaves he had, the happier he made his wife? No, he didn’t. She supposed it was because he had a bad leg and couldn’t capture slaves in war. She scorned him for not making war. All he wanted to do was make love. Often, in the night, she’d scolded him: “Make war, nor love!” But he’d just laughed.

He didn’t know how much he had hurt her. He was rich now, a trader, and he still didn’t give her captives and swore he never would. Didn’t he know that other peoples were just like dogs? What else was there to do with a Piegan woman? Or a Shoshone? Inferior people, fit for nothing!

She desperately wanted slaves now. She was the only woman in Fitzhugh’s Post and she needed help. The white men expected her to do everything — cook, clean up, build fires, make them moccasins, tan hides, heat water, mend their clothing. But that was only part of it: she’d grown lonely without any female company. Slaves were always good for that. In her village the rich wives chattered through the days with their slaves, enjoying the gossip. But her man wouldn’t give her any. It was like a slap in the face; like telling her she wasn’t worth anything and didn’t deserve help, not even one slave.

But Fitzhugh wouldn’t yield. She had to reconcile herself to that. He might be rich but he’d kept her poor. She’d badgered him about it, and it got to be a sore point between them. He didn’t understand her — and she certainly didn’t understand his strange aversion to slaves. Other white men had slaves. Guy Straus and his wife had five or six.

Still, if she couldn’t have slaves  . . . he might accept wives. She’d tried that idea on him, too, but he’d scoffed and joked and asked her what he’d do with another wife. So she didn’t tell him she and her family had some ideas about that, and that she wanted him to marry not just one other wife but three more.

The empty prairies released something in Little Whirlwind. The emptiness itself did it. The farther upriver
The Trapper
toiled, the less there was to see, and that is what appealed to her most. Except for occasional timbered flats, they traveled through a land of silence and grass with only the wind and clouds giving life to the universe. Not far west, beyond the distant green bluffs of the river, was the country of her people; a broken grassland that was still her spiritual home. Just now the fireboat traversed the land of the Lakotah, her people’s ancient allies. But the fireboat would crawl up the river, taking her to the lands of her people’s enemies, the Crow, the Blackfeet, the Assiniboin and Cree. She did not like living on the Yellowstone surrounded by her enemies the Crow. She had begged Fitzhugh to build his trading post farther south near her own people, but he’d said the new post needed a water route so the fireboat could bring the trade goods and take the robes down the river. That had ended the discussion in his mind, but not in hers. Each day a bitterness had grown in her.

She lived on the hurricane deck because she could see the wide world from there. When it was chilly she drew about her a Witney trade blanket, blue stripes on a cream ground. But mostly the days were hot and sun glinted off the water like knife-stabs, making her squint. From her high vantage she could lord over all the white men on the main deck. She could see Maxim at the prow, staring into the water, moody and unhappy. She could see deck passengers, smelly mountaineers mostly, who had bought only the passage and not a cabin. They argued and spat over the side, and waved their rifles or shot at deer on the banks.

How strange white men were: they toiled at women’s work. No Cheyenne man would stoop to gathering wood or throwing logs into the fire of the fireboat. Women made fires and gathered wood and kept the fires burning. Women put up lodges and gathered food. No Cheyenne boy would think of bringing tea to her the way the cabin boy did. No proper Cheyenne man would dream of wrestling cargo or cooking or dragging up the anchor. That was women’s work. Cheyenne men hunted and made war and gambled and gossiped, and that was how Maheo made them and how Sweet Medicine wished them to behave: with utmost virtue. She detested all white men.

Which reminded her of something that had been building up inside of her for many moons. She would not live this way anymore. And now was the time to talk about it, now while Brokenleg didn’t have much to do except watch the banks for buffalo. She would not put it off or let Fitzhugh put it off.

She trotted down the companionways, feelings the fringes of her doeskin skirt dance over her calves. She found him aft, in shade, watching the prairie parade by. He knew what was coming; she could tell that from the look in his eye when he saw her.

“Now see hyar — ” he began.

“We talk about it,” she said.

He started to limp forward but she kept up. “I going to leave you,” she said. “I going to my people. You treat me bad.”

That stopped him. He whirled, his blue eyes afire. “You what?”

“You heard me. And you know why.”

He hawked and spat overboard. The green river whirled it away. “I don’t treat you bad, Dust Devil.”

“I’m Little Whirlwind.”

“Yer my wife.”

“You’re rich! You can have anything you want. You can buy lots of slaves.”

“I’m agin slaving. You know that.”

She couldn’t understand him. Rich white men like the Strauses had lots of slaves. She wanted some. “Then I go away. I have no one to help me. A strong Tsistsista warrior would have lots of them. And wives, too. You no good. No good white man.”

“Dust Devil — I want you.”

“I all alone. I have no one to talk to. No sisters. All winter I do not see another Tsistsista woman to talk to. Only white men, speaking French or English. I hate French and English is worse. I ask you many times, twenty times, a hundred times, for slaves and you just say later, not now. Well now is later.”

“Well, you hang on. We’ll git the trade goods shelves and git the season started and maybe I’ll hire a Crow girl or two.”

“Hire! Ha! I won’t talk to any Absaroka woman. Unless she’s a slave. I talk to a slave. No good, Fitzhugh. I leaving.”

“But Dust Devil — maybe you’d like some red cloth for a new dress.”

She glared at him. “That isn’t what I want. I want slaves. I like to have slaves. It makes me feel good. Slaves or wives. You won’t take either so I’m leaving you.”

“But you can’t! I paid your pap the bride price — ”

“I going back to him. He’ll have me. I tell him everything, how you treat me bad. I got three sisters, three Suhtai women. I stay with you if you marry them.”

Fitzhugh stared. “Whoa up. Marry your sisters?”

“Yes. All. My father, he’s waiting for you to bring him the gifts. He says no to all the Tsistsista boys that play the flute outside the lodge because I tell him you’re coming for them.”

“You told him that?”

“Yes. And they are waiting!”

“But one ain’t ready yet. I mean, Sweet Smoke.”

“It makes no difference. She marry you now.”

“But Hide Skinning Woman, she don’t think much o’ me.”

“It is for my father to decide.”

“And — Elk Tail, she has eyes for a young feller — He’s playin’ the love flute for her last I heard.”

“My father says you are for her.”

“How’m I supposed to keep four wives happy?”

She giggled. “We take turns. We decide. You make one happy each night. We have a hundred children. Three sisters wear the rope, and all of them want to untie the rope for you. Are you a Blanket Chief or not?”

“I’m a fur man.”

“I be happy again, Fitzhugh. With my sisters. We help you. Help the post. You need the help. We get wood and cook and tan hides and make moccasins and weave reeds and dig roots and plant corn and cut greens. I can’t ever get enough greens and roots for so many men.”

“I didn’t say I’d git married — ”

“Yes you will. Or I go away. I’ll not even stay on this fireboat. I’ll leave you at Fort Pierre and walk to my people.” She glared at him, daring him to make a prisoner of her.

“You soundin’ serious.”

“After we get off the fireboat we take the trade goods and put them on the shelf. Then we take a wagon, you and me, and go south to my people with lots of trading things — and gifts for my father. We trade everything for robes. And you will give the bride-gifts to my father, and he is pleased and have a smoke with you. And we bring my sisters back. And you enjoy them.”

“Sweet Smokes, he’s too young,” he muttered. “She’s younger than Maxim even.”

“That Maxim! He’s unhappy. Maybe he needs Sweet Smoke. Maybe Sweet Smoke needs Maxim. We’ll bring Sweet Smoke. If he don’t want her, you marry her.”

“How’d I git into this, dammit?”

“Because I tell you I leave you, you treat me bad, I’m lonely. Wives or slaves. You get one or the other and I stay. Maybe both. I want some slaves.”

He grinned. “We’ll git on up there and you’ll be too busy to think on it.”

“Wait and see!”

“How about I send for your sisters and we marry ’em to the engages? Then you can talk Cheyenne all you want with them.”

“No. You’re a big chief, a headman of the whites, and rich. My father waits for you to marry them. He wants rifles and powder and balls and blankets and hatchets and knives for them. My brother, maybe he come kill you if you don’t, because he don’t want his sisters to be never-married ones.”

“I ain’t makin’ no promises, Dust Devil.”

“Then I leave you now. At the next wood stop.” She turned angrily toward the companionway and their cabin to gather up her things.

“Whoa up! I’ll do it — soon as I can.” He looked sulky.

She was exultant. “I have your word, Fitzhugh. You better not lie to me.”

The June rise was ebbing and Captain Sire drove
The Trapper
relentlessly, beginning before dawn each day and not stopping until the last of the midsummer light vanished and Black Dave Desiree could see no more. They reached Fort Pierre at dusk, tarried only a few minutes to discharge several Chouteau engages and a few kegs. They pushed on for another two hours in the last light while Desiree piloted more by instinct than by vision.

Little Whirlwind did not get off, much to Brokenleg’s relief. If she intended to walk to her people, Fort Pierre was the most likely starting point. She loved him in her own way — he knew that. And even though they’d had rough scrapes, Injun and white not knitting together very well, he loved her, too. And apparently was about to love her sisters. The thought started him squirming. He’d find a way out. He’d bring ’em to the post if he had to — an asset, really, free labor, companionship for Dust Devil. Bring ’em but not in unholy wedlock.

Sire drove the packet north again between arid bluffs with browning grass, past small herds of buffalo, some of them sun-bleached to chestnut and umber. Sire no longer stopped to pick up the buffalo the ship’s hunters and passengers shot as they passed, except when the meat supply ran low. In spite of Desiree’s gifted piloting they ran aground a bar that hadn’t been there only a month before, a bar that had grown when the treacherous Missouri cut through an oxbow and rechanneled itself.

They lost a whole day grasshoppering over the bar, in trouble because of a sharp flow that quartered in from starboard and threw the vessel off its spars. Up above, on the texas or in the pilot house, Sire paced, and Black Dave stood, waiting for the crew to free the vessel again. A harsh thundershower caught them just when the crew was lowering the spars into the sandbar for the third time. Lightning crackled and spat over the ship, an angry augury. On the fourth try Sire reversed the paddle wheels, pushing water forward and lifting the hull two or three inches. As any old riverman knew, the reversed force of the paddle wheels was no match for the forward motion of the packet as crewmen winched the boat upward and ahead. That time
The Trapper
slid off the spars planted into the sandbar, teetered on the bar, and then slowly eased forward and floated free, as emancipated as Black Dave himself. Men cheered. Within seconds the packet was churning its way ever north and west again.

They unloaded more American Fur engages, a few free trappers and some mountaineers, at Fort Clark along with five tons of Chouteau freight and then pushed on past the pox-killed Mandan villages. The lightened boat lost two precious inches of draft, which helped the pilot a bit. Each day the July sun blistered in, drying up the river, making Black Dave’s work harder and more perilous by the hour as channels shrank and underwater obstacles, sunken root-systems called sawyers, rippled the glinting surfaces. Game disappeared by day, hiding from the brutal sun, grazing and watering only when dusk settled along the riverbanks deep into the night.

The land had changed. Trees and timbered wooding lots grew scarce. Bluffs showed their rocky bones. Prickly pear covered whole slopes. Nature’s luxury had been scraped away leaving a spare landscape. Fitzhugh loved the change — loved anything that swept him away from the crowds of men thriving on fertile, watered soils. Here life was hard; the Indians who populated this country were mean, and it appealed to something at his center.