Cheyenne Winter (6 page)

On the first day of July, Samson Trudeau set out for the rendezvous site, about a hundred ninety miles downriver as close as anyone could reckon. He and his five engages would meet
The Trapper
near the place where
The Platte
had discharged its cargo the year before. He was due in mid-July and reckoned he’d have three or four days to spare even if the going was hard. In any case
The Trapper
was not likely to be early; not on a second trip up the Missouri scraping its keel most of the way.

He left Fitzhugh’s Post in the competent hands of Abner Spoon and Zach Constable and a few others. He took with him the rough, hard Creoles who’d been with the company from the beginning: Larue, Bercier, Brasseau, Courvet, and Dauphin. He enjoyed them all, these seasoned mountaineers who knew the wilds better than they knew the alleys of St. Louis. They were all two-legged oxen, hardened to brutal labor and cheerful in nature, needing nothing but a pipe of
tabac
at the end of a rough day. The going would be good; the empty wagons easy on the oxen and mules.

That morning, none too early because nothing ever happened very early at a fur post, they yoked twelve oxen and hitched three yokes to a wagon. And they harnessed three span of mules and hitched them to the remaining wagon. These were Pittsburghs, designed for heavy freight, with a watertight box and well-oiled sheeting over the bows to keep the contents dry. An hour or so later they passed Fort Cass, the American Fur Company post just eat of the confluence of the Bighorn, and discovered a large collection of Crow lodges there and a lively robe trade in progress. The opposing company had already been resupplied with trade goods brought from Fort Union by a Chouteau keelboat poled and cordelled upriver by a dozen rivermen. In fact the keelboat was still there, anchored close to the fort. Soon it would float the summer’s returns, a few hundred bales of buffalo robes, back to the sprawling warehouse at Fort Union.

Someone up in the wooden bastion at Cass shot a salute and Trudeau’s men fired a piece or two in response. Scores of Crows paused, watching the wagons wend their way east. Samson wished the Rocky Mountain Company had a keelboat. It would be far easier to haul the trade goods from Wolf Rapids in one than it was to freight it with these cumbersome wagons over a nonexistent road with poor fords. He himself had come upriver as a boatman like most of the other French here. That was in the days before the steamboats; the days when sweating Creoles, rippling with muscle, poled the sixty-foot boats against the current; and when they couldn’t pole they tied the thousand-foot cordelle to the mast and dragged the boat forward, stumbling along muddy banks, fighting mosquitos, scaring up bear, ending each day soaked and exhausted — and proud. Only the French could drag a heavy keelboat laden with tons of trade goods over two thousand miles up the Missouri. On rare occasions when the wind was right they could hoist a sail and push up the river on the breath of God, but that rarely happened. The pole and cordelle were things he and his colleagues knew; they didn’t know the oxen and wagons as well.

They progressed peacefully down the Yellowstone, never far from its cold waters even though the bluffs were often a mile away. They scared up mule deer that lurked by day in the cottonwood and willow thickets along the river, dodging the fierce sun. Trudeau halted his party midday, let them sleep through the worst of the heat while the oxen and mules grazed and rested. They made good time, conquering fifteen or eighteen miles a day without gaunting the livestock.

Still, the peace was deceptive and did not fool Samson Trudeau a bit.

“Hobble the oxen, picket the mules,” he told his men each dusk. “Who knows when the trouble, she comes in the night?” And the men did. They didn’t need to be told; he said it because words were pleasant on the French tongue.

“Soon we will have a gill of spirits,
oui?”
he added. Men laughed. The trip had been fueled by their long dry run, and the promise of a rousing good time soon.

No moon illumined the fourth night but it didn’t matter. He’d found a good campsite well off the trace and close to the river, a few grassy bankside hectares screened from the world by a thick growth of willow and hackberry. They arrived at dusk, dusty from the long trek. The spring monsoons had vanished and now the country sweltered under a ruthless sun with only a rare thundershower to mitigate the heat.

His men patiently hobbled half the oxen and picketed the mules on long lines, and settled down to roast the antelope that Brasseau had shot earlier. They had enormous appetites, and the pronghorn would scarcely fill their bellies. But it was enough, and they settled swiftly into sleep under scattered stars dimmed by heat haze.

That’s when trouble came; when the bawling of oxen and bleating of mules brought them up from the earth clutching their percussion pieces. The supper fire had long since died, the night offered no light, and they could scarcely tell what was happening. But their ears told them something, anyway: the livestock was being driven off. The braying and bleating of the mules diminished into the void. Oxen bawled in pain, and the sound of splashing reached the Creoles. There was nothing to shot at. Not a single one of the raiders had been visible to them although they knew it was a horse-mounted party. The whicker and snort of horses had accompanied the whole uproar, occasioning a few helpless shots from some of the men.

They had no lantern but spread out upon the meadows where the stock had been left to grace, knowing they’d find nothing. But they did stumble upon a few things — carcasses of oxen sprawled like black mounds, radiating heat. And poking from them, several arrows. Bercier tugged two arrows loose, losing their points in the carcasses of the oxen, and wearily the engages returned to their campsite and built a fire so that they might examine the shafts. Trudeau himself could often tell the arrow of one tribe from another. They all used different ways to fletch the arrows and dye them. Different materials, too. Feathers from different birds. Silently, when at last the fire careened high enough into the blackness to give them vision, they studied the arrows. He examined these, nothing the long gray feathers, and decided he didn’t know.

“Pieds Noirs,” muttered LaRue.

“How is it that you know, Gaspard?”

“I know.”

“Sacrebleu!”
It was more than Trudeau knew, or the rest for that matter, but they accepted it.

“Mais, pourquoi?”

They couldn’t answer that. These raiders had stolen the mules, which plains Indians coveted, and had shot arrows into at least some of the oxen — which they didn’t really care about. They all despised the soft meat of white men’s buffalo. Why, indeed? And one more thing chafed at Trudeau. Horse stealing parties traveled on foot, intending to ride off with their booty. But this party had been mounted. What did it signify?

They extinguished the fire, not wishing to make targets of themselves, and sat up, their backs to the wagon wheels or the heavy wooden yokes for the oxen. They smoked the tabac and waited for dawn, which would shed light on their dilemma. There was nothing to say; not among these old friends who knew each other’s innermost thoughts without a word being uttered.

When at last dawn grayed the northeastern firmament and they could distinguish earth from sky, tree from prairie, they spread out silently, seeing the carnage that had been curtained from their eyes in the night. Of the twelve oxen, seven lay dead or wounded, pierced by arrows. The others had vanished. Of the six mules not a one remained. And back at the campsite sat three giant freight wagons, as useless as a canoe without paddles.

“This was the work of Pierre le Cadet,
oui?”
said Bercier.

No one replied. Trudeau thought they probably all agreed. It had been an odd raid, well timed, four days from Fort Cass and Fitzhugh’s Post,and six or seven from the Wolf Rapids rendezvous. Well planned by observers who had seen the wagons turn off the trace to this hidden bankside meadow. Pierre Chouteau’s work indeed, or that of one of his underlings at Cass or Fort Union. And right in the tradition of American Fur, the ruthless monopoly begun by John Jacob Astor and later sold in pieces to the Chouteaus and others. Trade war, with Indians doing the dirty work.

“We will walk,
alors,”
he said.

They loosened the sheeting from the three wagons and cached it nearby in the woods. The wagon sheets would be a prize for any tribesman. The wagons were a prize, too. Their wheels could be burnt to get at the iron tires, which could be fashioned into lance points and arrowheads. He would hide them if he could. Sweating and cursing, three men on the tongue and three behind, pulled and pushed each wagon off the meadow and into the timber. There in the shadowy forest floor they heaped brush against the Pittsburghs. It would not fool anyone for long but it might conceal them from the casual observer.

Silently they started walking, each man carrying a heavy pack over his back laden with the food and robes and camp supplies from the wagons. No man complained. No Creole engage ever complained; it was not in the gallic blood to do such a thing. Trudeau was grateful for that. The walking slowed them down at once. They needed to rest their aching shoulders every little while. They had to send a hunter ahead and stop to butcher and eat whenever he shot game because there was no way to carry meat. They were used to walking; indeed, they had walked beside the oxen, driving them along with curses and whips. But this was different, now that each man was a beast of burden carrying his necessaries on his back.

Fur wars. Trudeau thought that this was just another small episode in the brutal battles of the trading companies. Still  . . . an idea blossomed in his mind. If this was war, he thought he knew a way to fight back.

“We will stay close to the river,” he announced the second day. The five engages eyed him curiously. It would make their work even harder and the trip longer but Samson Trudeau had his reasons. He laughed malevolently, enjoying his thoughts.

Guy Straus read and reread Maxim’s letter, absorbing the bad news. The master of
The Trapper
had hand-delivered it, and sat across from Guy.

“Captain Sire, this is about an inspection at Bellevue. Were you present?”

“Oui.
I saw it all. Maxim took the Indian Agent, a Reverend Foster Gillian, into the hold. A bit later the agent demanded — in a most strident tone, I must say — that some deckmen lift three casks to the main deck — casks labeled vinegar. The reverend pulled the bungs, sniffed, poked his finger in and licked it, and proclaimed them contraband spirits. He was most indignant,
mon ami.
A volcano of righteous wrath.”

Guy nodded, his heart sinking. The news was cramping his belly and he felt the dull pain of the ulcer jab at him again. “What did he say, Captain?”

“Why, that your company’d lose its license, of course. That he’d move heaven and earth to make sure of it.”

That’s what Guy feared most. Tens of thousands of dollars hung in the balance. “What did he do with the spirits?”

“Why, he instructed the deckmen to pour them overboard — a most mournful occasion, I might add.”

“He destroyed the evidence?”

“Oh, not entirely. He saved back a little. He has all he needs for evidence. And of course he had his indictment penned and ready for me to deliver on the return run. Which I did. To the superintendent at the Indian Bureau.”

“Do you know how those casks got there? Maxim says he had no idea.”

“Not the foggiest idea. The casks are on the ship’s manifest but in a different hand.”

“Let me see, if you please.”

Sire handed him the shipping lists. There indeed were the inscriptions, on page three — and not in Maxim’s awkward hand. “My son says the company, ah, cargo, was loaded as planned some miles upstream from Bellevue at the wooding lot near Sergeant Bluff. Is it so?”

“Indeed. Your gentlemen were waiting there with six casks — which were swiftly loaded.” Sire looked as if he was keeping himself solemn with some effort.

“My son says here that he spotted the casks almost immediately upon leaving Westport. He noted they weren’t on his own copy of the manifest. He thought it was simply a shipping discrepancy — poor bookkeeping. A fatal supposition it seems. Have you any thoughts about it?”

“None, Monsieur Straus.”

“Could one of your crew have been paid to smuggle the casks aboard — and doctor your own cargo list?”

Sire laughed shortly. “Who of them can write? Only the mate, Bazile Bissonet. He reads and writes. But that is not his hand. I know his hand. He often keeps the log.”

“Have you a passenger list — especially from here to Westport?”

Sire shrugged.
“Non.
The cabin passengers,
oui.
The deck passengers — none.”

“With your permission, Captain, I’d like to have my clerks copy the cabin passenger list while we talk.”

“Of course.”

Guy rang a small silver bell and a clerk materialized instantly, heard his instructions, accepted the passenger list, and vanished. “They are very fast,” Guy muttered. “Tell me the rest. You delivered our cargo?”

“Oui.
Here is a release signed by Monsieur Fitzhugh. We discharged the cargo on the bank below Wolf Rapids as he required and made haste back. Even riding light we fought sandbars all the way to the Platte. An ordeal. One shouldn’t ascend the Missouri in a low-water year.
Mon Dieu!”

“The cargo was not damaged?”

“Ah, not by my company. We unloaded everything intact. But it was vulnerable there. The engages from your post hadn’t arrived and everything was exposed to the elements. I wish we could have stayed  . . . ” He shrugged.

Another worry. A fortune on a streambank, poorly guarded and vulnerable to weather and any passing village. Guy knew he’d have to endure that clawing worry for months. It’d be a long time before news filtered down two thousand miles of rivers. It was as bad as owning a clipper ship out upon the terrible seas. “Is there anything else I should know?” he asked dryly.