Rendezvous (37 page)

Chapter 47

One memorable afternoon Daniel Ferguson and Peter Ranne walked into the village leading their burdened packhorses. Word raced through the lodges, drawing trappers and the Crows.

Skye heard the news and ran toward the newcomers, not believing it. But there they were, in good flesh, showing no sign of unusual hardship. Even their horses looked pretty decent, though their thick hair could be deceptive.

The trappers whooped and hollered and carried on in a way that Skye, with his British reserve, would never quite get used to. A crowd of Crows gathered, just as curious as the brigade. They had heard the story of Ferguson and Ranne's disappearance and probable death during the bitterest days of December.

“Knew we'd find ye hyar,” Daniel Ferguson said. “Only the pass kept us from coming over. Fifty-foot drifts or ye can call me a liar.”

“Maybe ten-foot drifts, ol' coon,” said Sublette quietly, cheer radiating from him.

“No, fifty footers. No child could get through, so me and Peter, we made snowshoes.”

“How'd ye get the horses over?”

“I made snowshoes for mine. Peter made skis for his hosses, and they were some, except his nags couldn't stop on a downslope.”

Beckwourth guffawed. Bridger grinned. Skye could see that Bridger was thinking up something equally outlandish, but for the moment Ferguson had him buffaloed.

“What happened, Daniel?” Sublette asked, an edge sharpening his voice. “We went looking. It went hard. We near froze before we gave up.”

Daniel Ferguson peered innocently about him, enjoying the crowd. He lifted his beaver cap and took his time, knowing he was the cynosure of their attention.

“You got some tobacco? I could use a smoke,” he said.

“Not until rendezvous.”

Ferguson looked disappointed. “That was all this child lacked, was a good smoke. We plum had everything else any ol' coon would ever want. We was having fat times, excepting that we lacked a pipeful. That sure was a sore point.”

Skye listened skeptically, amused and impatient. This old trapper was going to drag out his story for an hour.

“I had every trapper out looking for you,” Sublette said, pointedly. The booshway wasn't going to stand for this much longer.

Ferguson leaned upon his mountain rifle, surveyed his audience again, and apparently judged that it wasn't going to get any larger. “Well, sir, it be like this. Me and Peter, we seen that old storm a-brewing and black-bellied clouds a-comin', so Peter, he says to me, ‘Let's git.' So we lit out because that was a mean storm and we were a piece from camp. We didn't git far before it was snowing and blowing, but we pushed along, slipping and sliding, leading our nags and hauling beaver. We got down out of the drainage all right, and got out to the flat country all right, but the snow was coming and I was feeling testy. So I said to Peter, I says, ‘I know a place to go. I saw her once when I come through hyar a few winters ago by my lonesome, dodging Bug's Boys.'”

He paused, letting it be understood that he knew the Three Forks country better than the rest of them.

“Instead of comin' back to camp, we just hightailed on down the Gallatin until I see what I'm lookin' for, a big billow of steam right in the middle of all that falling snow, snow coming down in buckets so we can hardly see a trail.

“So I says to Peter, ‘Ol' coon, we've arrived in the middle of summer.' He looks at me like I've gone beaver, but he leads his nags, following me, and pretty soon the steam gets so thick a man can't hardly see, and I says, ‘Peter, we're at the gates of July.'”

All this took translating. Skye had never quite fathomed the argot of the trappers, but as near as he could tell, Daniel Ferguson was saying the pair had not only abandoned the area they were trapping, but had hiked far down the Gallatin River instead of heading for camp.

“Hot springs!” bellowed Ranne. “He taken me to hot springs, biling up outa the ground, letting off steam so thick a man couldn't see his own hand. This child stood on the banks of a pool with green grass growing around it, and the horses soon took to it. Snow falling all over, steam rising, snow vanishing into the steam, and heat coming at me.

“Well, old Daniel and me, we unloaded them hoss, unloaded our gear, unloaded our plews, stripped buck naked, and tippytoed into that thar pool until we was plumb up to our noses in hot water. That water, she felt so good it was better'n rendezvous. Pretty soon I'm so warm I've gotta go down to the cooler end of this hyar pool. It's snowing, and a few flakes land on my hair, but no matter. It's like walking through the pearly gates. I had me a soak, and old Daniel had him a soak, and pretty soon we got to thinkin' we should head back to camp—but we can't. We can't get out. It's too cold out. The snow, she quits, and a breeze comes up so sharp and cold that I'da freezed up solid if I stepped out.

“I look around, and it's plain this place is known to somebody; there's a few shelters around, an old lodge standing, some buffler hides over frames—things like that. A Blackfeet resort, that's what I'm thinking, and I'm glad it's January and all them Bug's Boys are hiding in their lodges. So I says to old Daniel, ‘Old boy, it's getting too late and too dark and too cold. I guess we'd just better suffer all this misery and go back to camp in the morning. Them horses is fine—they got all the green grass they can swaller, growing along the banks where it stays warm.'”

Ferguson nodded. “I reckoned we'd fetch pneumonia if we climbed out and tried to go through all that snow back to camp. So we stayed the night. Next morning, it was clear and so cold a man'd freeze just trying to put his duds on, so we just hunkered in that hot water. I was getting a little wrinkled, like a raisin, but it didn't matter. I was getting so hongry my belly was a-howling, but we couldn't get out. I thought, old boy, this hyar's how ye'll go under, starvin' to death in a hot pool ye can't get outa.”

Ranne broke in. “Them elk is what kept us a-going. They come for the heat. They see us and don't care. They come just to stand in that pool up to their bellies, and stay warm on the coldest day of the year. Steam's billowing up, but we see elk all over, keeping their toes warm. So, Daniel, he swims over to the bank to get old Jezebel, his rifle, and he kills us a cow elk. We got eats—if only we can get out and gut it and carve on it and build us a fire—but we're plumb stuck in the water. It's so cold we can't even think about cooking elk over a fire, and we're thinking maybe we could bile some elk in our pool, but it's not that hot. So we just stay up to our noses, and feel our skin wrinkle and cook, and starve.”

The booshway interrupted. “We were looking for you. It frostbit every man,” he said, tautly. “We searched every drainage, fired shots and got no answer, looked for a message—and finally left, every man among us thinking you'd gone under.”

“I know, I know. But we couldn't get out of that pool,” Ferguson said.

“And besides,” said Ranne, “we got us some company.”

Skye could see the few Crows who knew some English try to explain all this to the crowd of Kicked-in-the-Bellies solemnly taking in the palaver.

“Company?” asked Beckwourth. “Probably Bug's Boys.”

“Bug's Girls,” said Peter Ranne.

That sure got attention.

“Twelve of 'em,” said Daniel Ferguson.

“Beeeuties,” said Ranne. “All about seventeen, eighteen, and fairer specimens of the Wilderness Tribes no coon ever set sight upon.”

Some of the Crows growled.

“Ahhh, got to the meat of the story,” said Beckwourth.

“They didn't see us old boys at first on account of the steam, so they set up their two lodges, all the time jabbering and carrying on, and pretty soon they doff their blankets and capotes. And then they doff all the rest, and stand there plumb beauteous in the mist, the fairest damsels we ever did see…”

“And then this old coon sneezed,” Ferguson said.

“And they seen us,” Ranne said. “They squeal, and then look us over, and then they decide we ain't takin' scalps and come on in. Well … it be some party. I don't reckon I ever been to a nicer party. Men and wimmin get along better in hot spas.”

“We got to know 'em all. They's Piegans, they say, off for a lark. They was sociable, and they invited us to share our elk in their lodges after the plunge, and so Daniel, he gets one lodge and six beauties, and me, I get the other lodge and six beauties, and that's how come we never did get back to camp.”

Skye listened, rapt, and couldn't quite imagine why the trappers were laughing and hooting and making light of the story. Unless it wasn't true … was this a mountaineer joke? The part about the hot springs seemed true enough—but what about the Blackfeet women? Had they arrived in a blizzard? Had they invited the trappers into their lodges after a plunge?

Skye watched Beckwourth and Bridger slap the missing trappers on the back and make sly jokes. Those Yank mountaineers had their odd ways. Skye could not say why bawdiness made him uneasy. Maybe it was simply that he had spent so much of his young life in a ship's brig that he never learned much about women. All he knew was that for him, these things were serious and sacred, and he hoped Victoria would feel the same way. Maybe he alone in the world thought that a man and a woman should form a union of hearts before they formed a union of bodies. Maybe the world would laugh at him. He knew the Crow people would. Maybe Victoria would, too. Wasn't she born to them?

The Crow, still translating, all broke into broad smiles, for this was a story tailored to delight these bawdy people. Skye realized that it didn't matter whether the tale was true; there was so much fun in the telling and the imagining.

Only William Sublette didn't laugh, and then he finally surrendered, too, the torment of the search forgotten in the joy of seeing two boon companions alive and well after several brutal months of winter.

It turned out that the wayward trappers spent those months at the hot springs, minus their fantasy women, feasting on the animals that came there to escape the bitter cold, trapping beaver in nearby flowages, and generally having a grand time until they could make it over the winter-bound pass to the Crow country.

Skye searched the crowd for Victoria, wanting to know what she thought of all this. But he didn't see her. He wandered back through the village to the lodge of her parents, his thoughts far from the two returned trappers and their alleged bacchanal. The yearling was gone; it had been accepted by her father and mother.

Chapter 48

In one dazzling moment Skye knew his life had forever changed. He peered at the lodge, somnolent in the winter sun, and at the place where his colt had been tied, and wondered. No one came to greet him. Perhaps no one was within.

He thought of Victoria, his promised one. He ached to sweep her into his arms and crush her to him. He ached to talk with her, feel her sharp voice in his ears, rejoice in her wild humor. Now he wanted to hear her whispers in the night.

“Victoria!” he cried, but the lodge did not reply.

“I love you!” he cried, but the busy Crow village ignored him.

What did it all mean? What would happen? He looked about, seeing the ordinary life of a winter-bound village. Smoke drifting from lodges. Curs meandering from lodge to lodge, sniffing cookfires, looking for bits to eat. He saw old men wrapped in blankets shuffling from one place to another. Was this the life he had committed himself to? Had he made a desperate mistake?

A worm of regret crawled through his belly. What had he done? Had he tossed aside a life of achievement just because some hot desire boiled in his loins?

He sighed. The bowl had been broken and no longer held his life within it. Whatever he had been—English youth, seaman, prisoner, merchant's son—all that was gone. There was only the present and the future. Only Victoria. Only the mountains. Only the trapping, the rendezvous, the life of a wilderness vagabond.

A grandmother shuffled by, paused, grinned toothlessly, and touched his bearclaw necklace. Then she patted him on the arm. The necklace meant something to them all. Or rather, Red Turkey Comb's perception of his power and destiny meant something to these people. Surely it had meant something to Victoria's father, who had accepted his single colt. A beautiful maid like Victoria might have won a bride price of many horses and a stack of other gifts from an eager suitor.

He had bear medicine, but what was that? Did it mean only that he was strong? He couldn't answer that, but maybe in time he would know. The grizzly was king of beasts. Skye knew he was no king of beasts, and no match even for the warriors of this village, or the hard mountaineers in his brigade.

He drifted through the village, looking for Beckwourth, who would know what all this meant. No one among them knew the Crows better. Beckwourth would probably be in the small lodge inhabited by Pine Leaf, the warrior woman of the Absaroka, who had been Beckwourth's lover for years. According to the legend, Pine Leaf had vowed never to marry and to become a warrior for the Crow nation until she had revenged the tribe for past losses. She wasn't large but she was nimble, a fine archer and horsewoman and lancer, and had fought brilliantly beside the male warriors, often rallying them when all seemed lost, and becoming a famous woman among all the plains tribes. A maiden she might be, but no virgin, and she had welcomed the rogue Beckwourth into her arms, something that Beckwourth bragged about amidst all his other bragging. Skye wondered if a tenth of what Beckwourth said about himself was true.

Skye found the lodge next to a grove of giant cottonwoods, and scratched gently on the door flap, as was the custom. Beckwourth himself pulled the flap aside.

“Mister Skye,” he said. “Come in.”

Skye entered and waited while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He beheld Pine Leaf sitting crosslegged, wearing a simple doeskin shift. She motioned Skye to sit at her right, the traditional place of honor. Beckwourth, lean, mottled brown, and mocking, settled down on the other side of her.