Rendezvous (17 page)

“How'd you arrive here? What did you eat?”

“I had some fishhooks and line. Salmon, sir. I have a belaying pin and two knives, and awl, thong, and shoe leather. Also a flint and striker. I traded along the Columbia for other things. And also got help from the Nez Percés. The Royal Navy came after me, guided by some Hudson Bay men. I watched them from the cliffs. This is a big place, this America.”

“You found the Shoshones.”

“They found me, mate. I thought I was done for, but they were friendly.”

“They're the one tribe in the whole area not beholden to HBC, Mister Skye. You were lucky. And your timing was lucky. They were on their way here for our rendezvous. This is the second.”

“That's what Mr. Ogden said. He advised me to look for the Snakes.”

“He told you that?”

Skye smiled for the first time. “He allowed that he doesn't care for you Yanks, sir. Now, what's a rendezvous?”

“Our free trappers trade their beaver pelts for supplies brought out from Missouri. That lets them stay here in the mountains.”

“Missouri?”

“On the western edge of the United States, sir. The gateway to Indian Country. A thousand miles from here with nothing but empty plains, buffalo, and dangerous Indians in between.”

Skye seemed awed. “No place a man can work for his keep along the way?”

Smith smiled. “By sheer luck, you came upon the only place.” Smith wondered whether to tell Skye that he could easily sign on with Ashley and work his way to St. Louis. He could use another trapper, but he opted for honesty as was his wont. “Actually, General Ashley's returning to St. Louis in a few weeks with a hundred twenty-three packs of beaver. He could use any help he can get, and you'd be ensured of fairly safe travel. You'd never make it alone, especially a pork-eater like you.”

“A what?”

“A pilgrim. A novice. An inexperienced man. It's a French-Canadian term,
mangeur du lard.
Actually, if you dodged the Royal Navy and some HBC guides, you're no pilgrim. You've got some mountain seasoning. Men are scarce here, and I'm willing to take you on. You've no trapping experience but I need camp tenders and would pay you well.”

“I want only one thing: to start my life after I was robbed of it, sir. This General Ashley … would I be forced to enlist?”

Smith saw the drift. “He's an officer of the Missouri militia, not regular army, and this is his private business venture. No, you'd work for him by mutual agreement.”

“He'll learn I'm a deserter soon enough.”

“That's a risk. He'll be more inclined to wonder whether you'll be a loyal employee.”

“Let me tell you something, Mr. Smith. All the while I was the King's prisoner, I never despised England or my people. I fought the King's wars against the Kaffirs in Africa—the only time I set foot on land in seven years—and on the Irrawaddy River in Burma, wars of Empire, sir, never doubting where my English loyalties lay, even if my private circumstance was unbearable. I'll want to see Ashley, and I'll tell him the whole story and let him decide.”

“I'd advise waiting a while before talking to him. You may like the free life here—especially after all those years in a ship's bilge.”

“All right. I'll wait. Now, while I wait, how can I earn my keep? How can I get an outfit?”

“An outfit would cost you far more than you could earn here, Mister Skye.”

The young man looked crestfallen. Then he smiled. “Guess I'll be off, mate. Long road ahead.”

“No, no, that'd be fatal. You stay and enjoy the frolic. Eat at my stewpot. Meet the crowd. Give as good as you get from 'em, and they'll respect you. If you need anything from company stores, see me. Your credit's good.”

“I could buy blankets?”

“That and more.”

“May I ask why?”

“I could tell you that I need every man I can get, and that would be true. But you impress me, Mister Skye. You've the makings of a mountaineer.”

“A mountaineer, sir?”

“It takes a breed, Mister Skye. It takes men with uncommon courage and loyalty and common sense. The mountains kill the foolish. They freeze or starve or die of thirst or get snakebit or run into Injuns and don't know how to deal with 'em. The good men survive by sticking together through thick and thin. Life depends on it, working in pairs and groups. The loners die, far from help. You wander out now and meet these gents. They aren't ordinary. They're all graduates of what we call the Rocky Mountain College—it's a school where you graduate or die.”

“Graduate or die!”

“That's exactly right. But, Mister Skye, even the best go under. Friends of mine have disappeared, or died alone, not through any fault of their own. Not all their mountain skills can save them from an enraged grizzly sow, or a party of Bug's Boys—the Blackfeet—looking for white men to scalp. Let me tell you something: not in all human history has there been a breed like this, surviving in a wilderness like this. They're resourceful. You could take away all their possessions and even their clothes in a cold night, and they'd survive. I've thought about it some: there's no general rule. Some survive by their wits, others by sheer willpower or determination. Others are uncommonly resourceful and inventive. You're one of those, I reckon. You got here; other men would be nothing but white bones by now. If you want, I'll ask General Ashley to take you to Saint Louis, but I won't do it for a few days. You have things to think about and things to see here.”

The young man stood, uncommonly silent, his face full of emotions that Smith couldn't read.

“You go to Ashley's tent store now. Look over the merchandise. Get what you need and tell the clerk to put it on my account. Better yet, I'll tell him.”

Skye seemed at a loss for words, and finally clamped Smith's hand in his own, blinked, and retreated into the July afternoon.

What was it about that man? What a terrible story, if it was true. Smith's intuition told him that Skye had the makings. A few items out of the company store would be worth the gamble to Smith, Jackson, and Sublette. But even if Skye elected not to stay in the mountains, Smith was ready to bet his last dollar that Skye would eventually repay the debt.

Chapter 22

Throngs of wild Indians and trappers mobbed the tent store. Skye decided to wait and observe, see what could be bought, what things cost, and whether he could buy the things he needed most: blankets, a good knife, a cooking pot, and an ax. The ax he would put to immediate use. Each remaining day of this wilderness fair, Mr. Jedediah Smith would find a pile of split firewood and kindling before his lodge, courtesy of Barnaby Skye.

The proprietors had arranged the store so that all the business was transacted over a rough counter on hogsheads at the front. Clerks examined peltries, set a price, and then traded for the goods lying in barrels and boxes and shelves and packs behind them. The Shoshones in their festival dress waited patiently, many of them laden with tanned pelts of all descriptions and buffalo robes. He liked these people who had invited him to journey with them. He had come along, and they had led him to this miraculous place that made his spirits soar.

Among the crowd were scruffy-looking trappers trading pelts for odd things—hand mirrors, gaudy ribbon, brass buttons, jingle bells, yards of bright cotton calico or flannel, strings of glass beads, knives, awls, hatchets, hide-fleshing tools, cups of sugar, molasses, beans, Chinese vermilion in waxed paper cubes, even needles and thread. Women's things, mostly. The trappers were going to have a time of it tonight.

Shoshone warriors traded for bricks of du Pont powder wrapped in waxed paper, small bars of galena, as lead was called here, or a pound of precast balls, bullet moulds, flints, flintlock rifles, strikers, knives, blankets, tomahawks, lance points, traps, and awesome quantities of murky amber fluid that looked like something left by a dog on a tree, no doubt spirits, sold by the tin cup. The revels had already begun, with man and woman alike swilling the stuff, gasping, and returning to the store for more.

At last Skye took his turn. A balding young man at the counter surveyed him.

“You must be the Englishman, Skye. I'm Osgood. Diah Smith told me to put your order on account.”

“It's Mister Skye, sir. I'd like a pair of those blankets, a small cooking pot, and a good ax. Also a knife—one of those big ones over there.”

“Arkansas toothpick. What else?”

“That's all, sir.”

“Sheetmetal pot or cast iron?”

“Whatever's cheapest.”

“Sheetmetal, half-gallon.” Osgood shrugged and wheeled into the storage area, dodging other clerks. He dropped thick gray blankets and an ax on the plank counter, and then added a tin pot and knife. “That do?”

“Yes.”

“They come to seventeen and four bits. I'll put it on your account.”

Skye had no idea how much that was, but it seemed a lot. “I'll find a way to pay it, sir.”

“A dollar a plew, seventeen beaver.”

Skye wondered how he could trap and skin that many beaver in a whole winter. They were making a debtor of him. Angrily, he whirled away, determined to escape these designing Yanks while he could. But the thick, heavy blankets felt good in his hand. So did the steel ax, with its keen edge, and the cooking pot and sharp knife. Now he had a way to cook food, and several weapons: the bow and arrows, the hatchet, a throwing and fighting knife, the ax, and his belaying pin, which he could use in ways these landlubbers never dreamed of. He had fought Kaffirs and pirates with no more than a belaying pin, and had fended off knives and swords with it, his hand protected behind the flare of the hickory. Let them try him now: he'd show them what a man could do with an ax and a hickory stick. He eyed his treasures and calmed down. They hadn't singled him out and weren't trying to ensnare him.

He wanted to see everything, meet everyone, explore every corner of this summer saturnalia, but he put first things first. He headed for the thick cottonwood groves in the river bottoms, looking for dead limbs. He had found a friend and protector in Jedediah Smith, and he would repay the loan as swiftly as possible. He located a fallen cottonwood limb and swiftly chopped and split an armload of wood. This he carried to Smith's lodge, and then another load.

“That's kind of you, Mister Skye,” Smith said.

“It's the beginning of a repayment,” Skye replied.

“You'll make friends here.”

“That's my intention. Is it safe to leave my kit with your trappers? It's not much, Mr. Smith, but it's everything I have. I'm with the Shoshones now, but I'd like to meet your people.”

“Bring it over and camp here. They'll leave your kit alone, 'least the trappers will. The Injuns probably will, too, but lifting a few things is a sport for them, friendly or not. Especially horses. You set up your camp here, and I'll keep an eye on it. See those brush arbors? Those frameworks covered with boughs? Build yourself one, get out of the sun, put your loot in it. It's a home, of sorts.”

Skye nodded, and chose a smooth level spot. In his months of flight, he had become an expert, learning the hard way just what a small pebble or stick or a slight slope could do to a night's sleep.

He cut still another armload of wood and carried it to one of the cookfires where any hungry man could dip a bowl and fill his belly. Within an hour he had supplied wood to all four cookfires of the mountain men, a gesture that did not go unnoticed, though the men barely acknowledged it.

Satisfied at last, he wandered aimlessly through the rendezvous, noting that these wildmen didn't wait for nightfall to imbibe spirits. Most of them had a tin cup of spirits that they attacked now and then. A few were drunk and staggering about. Two had passed into oblivion, and lay like corpses in the midst of all the revelry. People simply stepped over them.

Skye had none, and could afford none, and had rarely tasted spirits in his life, having been a stripling when he was pressed, and a prisoner ever since. But he intended to guzzle some when he had the chance.

One thing he learned in his meandering: the white men and Indians alike used this summer fair to compete with each other. He watched, fascinated, as skilled marksmen, hefting octagon-barreled mountain rifles, put balls into tiny targets—as small as a knot on a tree—at awesome distances. Elsewhere he watched men throw their hatchets—called tomahawks by some—forty or fifty feet and hit their targets. Others threw knives with just as much dexterity and deadly effect, often betting beaver pelts or a cup of spirits on the outcomes. The Shoshones enthusiastically participated in what clearly were contests of martial skills, and he learned that a few Crows were also competing.

In the course of that afternoon, Skye discovered that behind these contests was the deadly serious business of survival. Each of these mountain men and their Indian rivals could call upon these skills and often did against two- and four-footed enemies. Skye knew he would master these amazing skills, and vowed he would make himself the equal of all these trappers.

Other trappers perched on logs or stumps gambled with grubby cards, playing games called monte and euchre, their wagering done with round beaver pelts, which he gathered were worth about a dollar. Others of this bearded and buckskinned gentry simply drank and bragged. The young fellow Bridger was one of these. He lounged against a stump, sipped whiskey steadily, and told the most outlandish stories Skye had ever heard.

“I mind the time I saw this hyar bull elk, and I thought to make meat, so I lifted old Thunderbolt and let fly. But durned if the ball didn't hit glass. It just tinkled down on the ground like a busted window. That elk, he was clear t'other side of a glass mountain and I couldn't drop him nohow,” Bridger said. “What was worse, that thar mountain magnified him, so I was thinking that elk was a hundred yards away when actually he was fifteen miles. Now that war nothing compared to the river I came across once that ran uphill. It came barreling through a canyon and then run uphill a mile or two, so I made me a raft and it took me clear up a mountain.”