Rendezvous (33 page)

Chapter 42

The brigade fought its way over the pass to the Yellowstone country, and it was like arriving in the promised land. The chinook winds were even warmer on the east slope and had eaten away most of the snow.

But man and beast needed a rest after wrestling with soggy six-foot drifts, so they camped on the great bend of the Yellowstone again. They were in dire need of meat, so Sublette sent every hunter out while the rest made camp. One by one they drifted back around twilight, all of them emptyhanded. The game had vanished. Deer and antelope would be herded up for the winter—somewhere. Buffalo would also herd into groups—somewhere. Anything else that might make meat was hibernating or had fled south.

They ate the last of their emergency pemmican, scarcely two mouthfuls apiece for the twenty-seven men left in the brigade, and settled down for the night with empty bellies and a sense of foreboding. The horses fared better on brown bunchgrass that grew abundantly north of the river.

Skye knew from bitter experience what life was going to be like without food, and set out in the twilight to remedy the situation. He hiked along the riverbank until he found what he wanted, an inlet covered with dead, brown cattails, their stalks decaying on the ground. He cut through the frosty soil and examined the roots. Yes, they were edible—smaller and harder than when they pumped life to the fronds above, but they would make a food of sorts. He dug several pounds of the roots, washed them in the bitter-cold river, and got back to camp just before dark.

He lacked the means to turn roots into flour, the way the Indians did, but he found some smooth river rocks and a flat rock surface, and began mashing the roots into pulp. Then he boiled them in the company cookpot, drained off the water, and ended up with a tan mush that tasted bad but was thick and starchy. Some of the others watched him disconsolately, scarcely aware that he was producing food. They were meat eaters.

When the mush had cooled he ate some of it, enough to satisfy his hungers, and set some aside for breakfast and lunch. The only man among them to pay attention was Tom Fitzpatrick, who watched, tasted, and smiled.

“I'm always looking for ways to get along,” he said. “This is one I didn't know about, ol' coon.”

“They kept me alive when I had nothing. I mashed them when I couldn't boil them. I had no fire for weeks.”

“All the better to learn about,” Fitzpatrick said. “We could feed this camp if we had to.”

“Don't know that most of 'em'll touch it,” Skye replied. “Not my favorite taste.”

Fitzpatrick smiled. “We call it the Rocky Mountain College. Some learn their lessons—and the rest go under.”

Fitzpatrick helped himself to another finger-load, and settled down beside Skye for some serious eating.

“What do you think happened to Scott?” Skye asked.

“He would've headed for the Shoshones. Probably made it because of the chinook.”

“What do you think happened to Ranne and Ferguson?”

“I'd guess they're denned up with a b'ar.”

“Alive?”

“I think so. B'ar would be warm. They couldn't hear our shots from in there.”

“What if the bear woke up?”

“They do all winter. But they're not full of fight. Couple ol' coons could go in there for a snooze, long as they were quiet about it.”

“Are you whistling in the dark, mate, or do you put stock in it?”

Fitzpatrick grinned and shrugged. “The wild world isn't what we think. I've gone alone from the mountains to Saint Louis. A man who's resourceful can make it.”

“Why're you here, mate?”

“It's a calling. Maybe I'd have been a priest. This is religion.”

“Religion?”

“This is holy, Skye. Don't you feel it?”

“No. It's mostly boredom, fear, pain, discomfort—and starvation. What's wrong with a roof over your head? Pretty women?”

“Rules, Skye, rules.”

“It's Mister Skye, mate.”

Fitzpatrick laughed and helped himself to more mush. “That's a rule I could do without. But as long as it's rooted in a sentiment that would please any son of Ireland, I'll accept it.”

“I'm going east next summer. What advice have you?”

“Don't count Indians friends when they're friendly, and don't count them enemies when they threaten you. Avoid them unless you can't help a meeting. Every encounter means trouble. The friendly ones want every item in your kit, the rifle especially, but they'll settle for your horses or a kettle or all your knives. Take some twists of tobacca with you. Tobacca's a peace offering, and it binds them if they accept it. But don't count on it. Don't count on anything. This evening I was counting on an empty belly and now I'm full. I'm indebted.”

That night the wolves howled. Skye had never heard such wild yelps, eerie screams, yapping sounds. Maybe he could shoot one in the morning. He didn't relish eating dog but he relished an empty belly less.

Sublette and the hunters saddled up before dawn, intending to ride straight toward the northeast where the wolf chorus had erupted and kept on all night.

Skye wished he could go. His duties locked him to the camp.

“Start the cookfires, Mister Skye,” said Sublette. “That yapping last night was buffalo talk.”

“How would you know that?”

“You'll learn it if you stay in the mountains.”

Skye watched every free trapper and hunter in the outfit throw saddles over shaggy horses, which looked fat inside their hairy coats. Skye knew better. His mare was ribby under that matted hair, and his colt was worse. The horses wouldn't have much energy in them this time of year.

That afternoon they rode in—without meat, looking dour. Seventeen had left, but ten returned. The others were still out prowling, and might stay out overnight.

Skye waited patiently for Sublette to unsaddle and picket his horse.

“The wolves downed an old bull so poor there wasn't much to begin with. Naught but a skeleton and half-eaten hide now. Loner bulls like that, they leave the herd to die. Or the young bulls drive 'em out. Fitzpatrick says you made some paste out of roots. Got some?”

Skye dug into his pot and handed Sublette some of the mush.

“Gawdawfulest stuff I ever put between lips,” the booshway said. “You damn Brits don't know what food's supposed to taste like. Line up the camp tenders and go harvest a pile of it.”

Skye laughed.

He dragooned the camp tenders and set them to work along the banks of the Yellowstone, digging up roots out of half-frozen bog areas. They didn't get much, and grumbled the whole time, but ere long they had reason to be grateful. The hunters returned with nothing, mad and cussing and ready to chew out anyone who complained.

That night the whole brigade dined on a few mouthfuls of cattail root, duly pulverized and boiled and seasoned with a little salt. They didn't say much, and the ridicule that Skye was expecting never erupted.

“Poor doin's.” That was all anyone said. But Skye sensed respect. He had conjured up a meal of sorts, and the English pork-eater had shown the mountaineers a thing or two.

The next day the wind shifted north and they knew they had better hurry to the Crow villages before the next blast of arctic air. They packed without breakfast. They were plumb out of everything now, and full of self-pity, gnawing hunger, and rage. The hunters set off; they would rejoin the brigade down the Yellowstone a day's journey.

They rode with the wind, the slivers of icy air on their backs, numbing their necks, bullying the weary horses. At the nooning Skye boiled water and served it. The brigade groused but drank the hot water.

“I always knowed that when it comes to cooking, Skye, you're some,” said Bridger. “This hyar's the best concoction ye ever did serve us.”

An hour later the mountain veterans taught Skye a thing or two. A ravine choked with buffaloberry had survived the predations of birds, and the company set to work collecting the remaining silvery fruit. But it came to mouthful apiece. Skye was growing faint.

They halted at a place where the river plunged through a narrows hemmed by grassy slopes. The hunters and trappers found them there, and had nothing to offer.

“The trouble with winter is that the game herds up, and you got to know where they yard,” Beckwourth said.

That observation didn't feed anyone. Skye had one more idea. He borrowed a fishhook and line from Tom Fitzpatrick and wondered how to manufacture a fly. The Yellowstone was running low and transparent, and he thought it would yield some trout. He found a bit of frayed leather, odd threads dangling off it, and worked his hook through it. It didn't look like an insect. It didn't look like anything.

Behind him the camp tenders built fires close to the limestone cliff and put up half-shelters because it looked like the weather would turn in the night. Mare's tails had corrugated the heavens all day. The brigade was in a surly mood, and demanding that Sublette send an express rider to the Crows. Food for some foofaraws, powder, and lead.

Skye hardly knew one freshwater fish from another and no one had ever described their habits to him. But he thought a mouthful of trout would help, so he rigged a pole, dropped his bizarre thing into the Yellowstone, wiggled it gently while there was daylight enough to attract the denizens of the deeps.

And felt a hard yank.

A minute later he beached a fat trout.

“You damn Brits don't know what good food is,” said Sublette, eyeing the three-pound silvery fish. Skye grunted, freed his hook, thrust the flopping fish at Sublette, who held it as if it were a hot potato, and dropped his line into the river again.

In the space of an hour he caught four more, and then the light faded. That came to only a few mouthfuls per man, but they all were fed after a fashion. And the Yanks weren't making fun of him this time, although they cussed the fishbones and opined that there were good reasons most tribes hated fish.

“Thank you, Mister Skye,” said William Sublette. “This is the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Royal Navy style. I am coming to admire the British pallet. But you forgot the sauce.”

“Get out the traps,” said Skye, “and put the fishheads in them, well away from camp. It was something I learned to do on the Columbia.”

Sublette stared, nodded, and gave the command. Skye thought they might catch breakfast.

Chapter 43

The fish-baited traps yielded an otter, raccoon, and fox. William Sublette watched the camp tenders swiftly gut and clean the animals and salvage the meat. There wasn't enough to feed twenty-seven starving men much, but each man would have a few mouthfuls of gray meat—if he could overcome his queasiness about eating it.

The cold had returned, but it wasn't as severe as the spell they had endured in the Three Forks country. A nippy northwind probed at Sublette's clothing, finding ways to chill his neck and ears and ankles. He ached for summertime, when the mountains glowed and a man had few worries. The hot fires in each of the four messes warmed frontsides but not backsides, and the men were in a foul mood.

The camp tenders set the meat to roasting over the fierce fires after carefully setting aside the offal, which would be used tonight to bait traps again—if the hunters failed once more. Sublette sometimes thought this brigade was cursed with grief. It had lost too many men, endured too much hardship. And it would have been much worse off without Skye. The Englishman had found ways to feed them more than once. Miserable food, things the free trappers despised—but things that kept them alive. Skye was showing every sign of being a natural mountaineer and a leader.

Beckwourth was having his usual good time. “I don't think I'll eat otter,” he said to Skye. “I prefer roasted camp tender.”

The men had been bantering with Skye these past weeks, a sure sign that the Englishman had become one of them. Sublette watched Skye work, admiring the man's industry and resourcefulness.

Every man got a few bites of meat that morning. Some whined about it but no one refused it. The mean wind sliced into them all—this upper Yellowstone country was famous for its winter winds—and Sublette was eager to get going, put the wind to their backs, and hasten to the Crow villages.

Once again the brigade packed and loaded their horses. The hunters fanned out, more determined than ever to make meat and lots of it. Their senses and instincts, always keen, had been sharpened this morning by deep hunger that verged on starvation. Sublette thought they would succeed this hard day.

He waited for Skye to load his gear on his mare and start east once again under a weak winter sun that promised more heat than it gave. He fell in beside Skye, choosing to walk rather than ride, so he could talk with the Englishman.

“Mister Skye, what are your plans?”

“The same as always.”

“You know, you'd have a future with the company if you would stay in the mountains.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Sublette.”

“You're a natural. You found food when a brigade full of veteran mountaineers couldn't find any. You wisely moved camp when you had to, in spite of the serious grousing of a misfit.”

“I did what I had to. We were out of firewood and feed.”

“They tell me you dealt with Scott very well—patiently at first, giving him a chance to cool down, and then firmly. Faced with a fight, he caved in.”

“I lost a man.”

“No, good riddance. You did what you had to. A good leader does just that. Scott resented you ever since he proved himself a coward in the fight. They all saw it, and they all saw you. After that he was just looking for ways to cause you grief. I was expecting something like that when I put you in charge.”

“It seems a man's every act is watched and reported to you.”

“A brigade is a close-knit outfit, Mister Skye. Reported isn't quite the word. I have never asked or expected men to report about the conduct of other men in the company. But because this is wilderness, and we're never far from trouble—starvation, sickness, Indians, thirst, thunderstorms, hail, freezing to death, drowning—these things are chewed over, and rehashed, and chewed over again. It can't be helped.”