Rendezvous (21 page)

“Tom's a veteran of the mountains, Skye.”

“It's Mister Skye, sir.”

Ashley looked impatient. “How about selling me your horse? I'll pay fifty for it.”

“The word is that a horse is worth a hundred and fifty here in the mountains, sir.”

“We don't seem to come to any agreement, Skye. You won't ever again have the opportunity I'm offering.”

“I've been talking to these men, sir. It seems that I can work my way south to Mexican Santa Fe and hire on with any of the traders on the trail between there and St. Louis, and still go east this year. If you want to hire me at the wage you pay your other men, I'll sign on. If you wish to buy my horse for the going price here, we can talk about terms.” He turned to leave.

“I'll think about it,” Ashley said, still dour.

Skye left Ashley, convinced the general of the Missouri militia wasn't going to give him a fair shake. He really didn't want to head south to Mexico, either. He might just as easily end up in a Mexican dungeon as in a trader's caravan, or so he had heard from these mountaineers. No, the best course would be to go east alone.

He found Broken Hand Fitzpatrick at his usual spot near the Ashley tent store, and approached the genial Irishman for some advice.

“Sorry to trouble you, mate, but I'd like to learn a bit about getting across the plains. You seem to manage it regularly, and keep your hair.”

“Why, bless me, Mister Skye, ye have a way of complimenting that's music to me ears. I have a little luck and a little skill and a little caution, and it's gotten me through, but with a few scrapes. Like this hand, now…” He held up his crippled left hand. “The things you don't expect, that's what do ye in. A rifle burst, that's what did this. Expect the unexpected.”

“Could you tell me what to expect—and all the rest?”

“Ye be wantin' to go back by your lonesome, eh?”

“General Ashley doesn't look kindly on me, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

Fitzpatrick laughed. “Any bloke that stiffs the Royal Navy is a friend of the Irish,” he said. “Sure, I'll tell ye what I can. The Sioux are friendly, except when they catch a man alone. The Pawnee are tribulation and death.”

“I wouldn't know one from another.”

“In that case, ye'll need more than luck, Mister Skye. Ye'll need a cavalry company and a few cannon. Do ye have a weapon?”

“Nez Percé bow and seven arrows left.”

“De ye know the sign language?”

“I've a few words a Crow lass taught me.”

“Do ye have skill as a hunter?”

“No, but each night on the trail I set a trap and often catch small things. Not good to taste but it fills the belly.”

“Agh, you've the makings of a mountaineer, Mister Skye. Do ye know the geography? Would ye know when ye reach Missoura? Do ye know how the rivers run, how the Platte runs into the Missoura near Council Bluffs? And how to find the trail that cuts that corner and gets ye to Westport, and from there to St. Louis? De ye know the tribes thataway, the Omaha, the Kansa…”

“You're telling me not to do it.”

“Aye, I'm telling ye that, knowin' it won't do a bit o' good because ye'll do what ye have to. I never met a man so determined to get out of the mountains. You got anything against these mountains?”

“Yes, sir. They're barriers to a good life, and so are the vast plains I must cross.”

“And, me English friend, what's a good life now?”

“A life of perfect freedom,” said Skye without hesitation.

“And ye don't see it here?”

“No, these mountains are a prison, and the wilderness is a cage. No one here admits to the boredom, but I see it. These men have little to do. What do they achieve? Give me a great and proud city to grow in and educate myself and start a business, and the liberty to shape my life, and I'll be content.”

“And all ye have to do is cross a continent,” Fitzpatrick said.

Chapter 27

The rendezvous died two days later. At dawn, Ashley's men loaded one hundred twenty-three packs of beaver plus some bales of other pelts onto their horses, burdening each of them with two hundred fifty to three hundred pounds of dead weight. Everyone watched: the free trappers, the engagés of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, the Creoles and Iroquois, the Shoshones and Crows, and Mister Skye.

A terrible silence pervaded the Cache Valley. Skye had expected the departure to be as exuberant as the arrivals, with whoops, gunfire, cheers, and catcalls. Instead, a certain gloom pervaded the great flat along the Weber River, abetted by an overcast sky that made the dawn somber. Another hard year would pass before they saw the next rendezvous, or guzzled trade whiskey, or bought the essentials and a few luxuries that would make wilderness life bearable again. By fall the coffee, tea, flour, sugar, molasses, salt, and beans would run out, and the mountain trappers would subsist once again on whatever nature provided. Friendships were being sundered, too; Ashley's contingent included a number of trappers leaving the mountains.

Skye was not among them. Ashley didn't want him. Skye had never been able to puzzle it out, but there was no point in worrying about it. Ashley had his own way of looking at things. Skye watched the general, mounted on a gaunt but well-bred charger, wave the long caravan into action, and the burdened horses walked down the Weber River, the teamsters beside them. At its confluence with the Bear, they would turn north, and then east, cross the Continental Divide at South Pass, descend the Sweetwater to the North Platte, and then east across a thousand miles of unsettled and dangerous prairie.

Skye could feel the loss and unease around him. As much as these mountaineers loved the wild life, they loved the replenishments from civilization, too, along with the news of the world. This was a moment when the men of the mountains weighed their options. They could catch up and go east if they chose. Or they could stay. It was up to each free trapper.

Skye didn't have that option. He found Smith in a pensive mood as they watched the long pack train, carrying a fortune in pelts, vanish around a river bend.

“If the general gets back safely, he'll be about seventy thousand dollars richer,” Smith said. “If he doesn't, then we're in trouble, too. We'll have no resupply next summer. This business is all gamble.”

“He has a strong force, well armed,” said Skye.

“It's not just the Indians. Those horses might not last. They could be stolen. He doesn't have enough spares. Disease, cold weather, rain and mud—there's more things to go wrong than you can imagine, Skye.”

“Ah, sir, I prefer to be addressed—”

“Yes, yes. I know.”

“Sir, why was he so hostile?”

“The deserter business. He takes his generalship seriously, even if it's the militia.”

“It didn't matter that I was pressed in?”

“Not with him.”

“Mr. Smith, I'm told that half of Ashley's crew are thieves and murderers recruited out of the grog shops of St. Louis. He hired them willingly enough. Does he really think I'm worse than that lot?”

“It's in him to feel that way.”

“Because he's a general of the militia?”

Smith shrugged. “Apparently so.”

“I come from a nation where we're subjects of the Crown. Subjects—human fodder to be employed as the Crown chooses, with few rights and no heed paid to a man's dreams and hopes. I thought your Constitution and Declaration of Independence proposed a different—”

Smith laughed suddenly. “You don't need to make your case with me. I don't share Ashley's views.” He surveyed Skye expectantly. “Well, Mister Skye, have you come to a decision?”

“Yes, sir. I'll be heading east on my own in a day or two. I'll get there somehow.”

“Without a rifle, without knowing sign language, without hard experience. It's suicide.”

“That's what Tom Fitzpatrick said. If I die, I die. I intend to get on with my life. If that means risks, then I'll take risks. I've taken risks from the moment I slid into the Columbia at Fort Vancouver. I'll take more.”

“If I can't employ you, then I'd suggest you work your way south to the Mexican settlements. Taos, especially, and go with the next trading company. That's not safe, either: you'll run into Utes, Cheyenne, Comanches, and maybe some Lipan Apache. But it's probably better than going alone down the Platte.”

“What'll happen here, now?”

“Most of us'll be moving out in a week or two. Shoshones and Crows'll drift off. Their trading's over.”

“But you have trade goods, don't you?”

“Lots of them. We use them all year to barter for pelts or keep the peace or resupply ourselves. But by next summer, we'll be out of everything again.”

“What are you going to do next, Mr. Smith?”

Jedediah Smith gazed westward, and Skye sensed the man was seeing virgin land, untracked wastes, surprise water holes, hidden trails. He smiled. “There's a river that runs across that desert somewhere, an arrow pointed at California. Ogden's been looking for it. I tried last year. It's not north of the Salt Lake, so it must be south. That's where I'm going.”

“But what about trapping? Not many beaver in the desert.”

“The Sierra Nevada, Mister Skye, the mightiest range of all, lies out there—somewhere.”

Skye had the sense that Smith was more explorer than businessman, and wondered about it. A fur outfit needed pelts, not adventurers.

Smith returned from whatever uplands of the mind he had been visiting. “Davey Jackson's taking a brigade into the Snake country. He wants to push Hudson's Bay out. Bill Sublette's taking a brigade into the headwaters of the Missouri, Three Forks, Crow, and Blackfoot country. Much the most dangerous of the brigades, but it's virgin country—never trapped. All he has to do is keep Bug's Boys at bay.”

Skye knew the term. Blackfeet. “Tell me about them.”

“The Blackfeet are proud, brilliant, numerous, and brutal. They'll torture you slowly—or rather, their squaws will—just to hear you scream. They've plenty of horses, skills at war, and rich country full of game. They're never hungry, never poor. They're well armed with trade fusils—smoothbore flintlocks they got from the old North West Company. But Mister Skye, a man can get rich there. Really rich. That's prime beaver country. That's a land that'll yield a young fortune to the trapper who gets there first. That's our ace. If Davey's outfit finds the British have gotten there ahead of him, and I run into trouble with the Mexicans, Sublette's our hole card. He's taking the toughest, bravest men he can find, men with mountain savvy, and they'll need their wits if they intend to keep their hair.”

Smith was grinning at Skye, a question in his face.

“What could a man earn in good beaver country?”

“Enough to take him east and put him through a year, two years, of college. Maybe more. Of course, you'll need some items, especially a mountain rifle that fires plumb center, some caps, powder, lead, a horn, and several other things, including at least half a dozen traps. About a hundred dollars of goods, advanced against your harvest. It's a rich land for a man with the heart and soul to take what's there for him. Set a man up for years, maybe. A few free trappers are getting rich, depositing money in St. Louis.”

Skye didn't take the bait. He smiled at Smith—the offer acknowledged with that smile—and drifted away. The morning was still young. He would have a few days to think about it. He wandered across the forlorn flat, over trampled grass and abandoned bowers, their leaves dry and brittle. The place had changed. A certain spirit, a breath of life and excitement, had flown away on the wings of Ashley's pack train.

The mountaineers didn't compete or gamble that morning, but sat about talking quietly, the boast gone from their voices, their thoughts on the fall hunt. There'd be little drinking tonight. Those who had a jug of precious whiskey would save it for some future time, maybe a winter bacchanal, guarding it jealously because it could not be replaced. But he knew most of the free trappers had squandered everything, saved back nothing, and were poorer than when they arrived two or three weeks earlier, even in debt to the company. It wasn't in them to hold back.

He found old Perrault and his women packing up.

“Ah! Skye, damn good rendezvous,
oui?
I got plenty drunk. Eleven times I get drunk, and don' spend a pence.”

“It was good.”

“You get drunk?”

“Once.”

“Ah! You stay, you learn. You staying, eh?”

“No, I'm going east in a day or two.”

Perrault made a motion that looked like a scalping knife rotating around his head, and leered. “
Au revoir,
Royal Navy,” he said. “Dis ain't the sea, dis is de wilds, and you gonna find out how wild soon.”

The women looked prosperous and grinned at him. They were festooned with bold ribbons, combs, bracelets, beads, necklaces, rings, and bright clothing swiftly crafted from tradecloth. They were packing new knives, tin cups, jugs of molasses, jingle bobs, arrow points, and a lot more things they had wrested from the trappers during their rowdy sojourn. The younger sister had smeared vermilion over her cheeks. Her eyes still shone, and Skye smiled back at her, remembering his nights with her, his exploration of all the mysteries of love that she and her sister had provided just for the pleasure of it.

“What'd you get?” Perrault asked. “Everybody get something at rendezvous. Shoshone all got stuff. Lots powder and ball, guns to fight Blackfeet.”

“I have a cook pot, ax, knife, and a pair of blankets,” Skye said. “And a debt to pay.”

“Ah, forget it. Dey don' expect repay.”

“I expect to repay. It's how I am.”

“Well, we go now. Maybe not see you again. Damn, never see you again. You go get yo'sel' kill.”