Rocky Mountain Company (34 page)

A rifleshot away a regiment of wolves gathered on their haunches and watched, awaiting their turn. They always got their turn, Fitzhugh thought, and sometimes made their turn. The engagés collected axes and hefted frostbit rifles and tugged at halters, while the wolves edged closer with innocent craft. The post’s hunters attacked their own trail, facing into a stiff northwind that slid through Fitzhugh’s beard and froze the blood on his jaw. Behind him the canvas bundle slid and jerked, and the rope abraded his hand.

Chatillon drew beside him, letting the weary horse pick his way at his own pace.

“Monsieur Straus is very anxious about many things, and I am to report in full what I see with my eyes and hear with my ears.”

“I reckon he’s got a right to be. You plannin’ to skedaddle?”

“In a day or two. I must rest the beasts. You will write letters, yes?”

Brokenleg nodded. His bum leg ached.

“He is worried about Maxim. I am to take him back if he wishes to go — or if I think he should.”

“And what’s your verdict?”

Chatillon shrugged. “He looks weak and pinched. But some meat — buffalo is a strong meat, and it heals a body fast. Maybe we don’t need to decide now. I don’t want to ride through winter nights with a lung-fevered boy.”

“He’s been through the worst. Growed a heap. Serious young feller, worries a lot about right and wrong. But he’s learnin’ it don’t mean nothing hyar.”

“Ah, Fitzhugh. What am I going to tell Guy Straus about the outfit that lies in the belly of the whale?”

“Tell him that’s where she lies. We aren’t quite ready for it — got to put up shelves and all. Get the innards built. But we got a few more days for that. I told Hervey we’d fetch it come the new year. Can you spare us them mules? That’d give us a wagon maybe, or at least pack animals.”

“Three. I’ll need a horse and a packmule. If Maxim comes, another mule.”

“He’s not comin’.”

“I will ask him,” Chatillon said. “What’ll you do if Hervey keeps your outfit?”

“I don’t rightly know, Ambrose. You got any notions?”

Chatillon said nothing.

“This hyar post didn’t open up like we planned, with Cass back in business, and us havin’ to build. Horses got stole and ox killed. I haven’t took in one robe yet. But it’s not all bad, Ambrose. I got the outfit safe under roof yonder, and now we got a post, and I haven’t lost a man, and maybe with these mules we can get a wagon out to the villages for trading. Not bad.”

“But not good,
ami,”
Chatillon said. “You may have to kill Julius Hervey before you can touch your own outfit.”

Fitzhugh’s Post on the Bighorn
December 21, 1841
Cher Papa,

M. Chatillon arrived here bearing things more precious than gold, sent by you. How glad we were to see him and hear his news! But nothing made us happier than his horse and mules, which enabled us to reach a buffalo herd in the next drainage. We were in a hard way, and his arrival was a Godsend.

We spent the days after he arrived hunting, making many trips to the herd, and carrying back quarters on travois we rigged up. Now we have most of five buffalo hanging frozen from limbs, and we all eat madly, never getting enough even when our stomachs ache. He will leave us some mules so we can hunt some more. But we have no safe place to keep them and little feed for them. M. Fitzhugh has been bringing them right into our new post each night to keep them from being stolen. And by day, my task will be to herd them and shave green cottonwood bark with the new drawknife for them to chew on.

Papa, we have had a hard time, but M. Fitzhugh and M. Chatillon will tell you about that. We built a rectangular post of rock and mud and poles, and got it sealed just when the winter grew bitter. It has wide fireplaces at either end that eat wood, but they don’t keep us very warm. There is still so much to do. The engagés are sawing wood into planks for shelving in the trading room; building partitions of squared poles. Soon there will be a dormitory for the engagés, with a kitchen at one end; a separate room for M. Fitzhugh and — I was about to say Mme. Fitzhugh, but she is gone and we have no news of her. And on the other end of the building, there will be a warehouse for the robes at the rear, and the trading room at the front.

All this consumes the energies of us all,
papa.
You can’t imagine it. Just sawing plank with the two-man saw is a task that wears the engagés out, but now at least they renew themselves with the buffalo, which is a strong meat and makes them well again. The ironware you sent is magnificent, and you picked it perfectly. M. LaBarge must have told you we would need it. The doors swing on hinges. The nails and bolts are useful to furnish the trading room. We have yet to build a robe press for baling the robes — but then, we have no robes to press anyway. One of the engagés, Dauphin, scraped the rawhide of two does very thin, and then stretched the wet hides on the frames of two windows, one in the trading room and one in the dormitory. Now we can open shutters and get some faint amber light. Enough to see our way around without a fire or lantern. But oh, for glass!

Papa,
M. Chatillon came to me privately and inquired about my health and happiness. He said I could go back with him if I wished; that you would approve, and welcome me. He said the trip would be hard and cold, but he could get me safely back, even in winter. I thought about it and said no. I’m well now, though I was very sick in October, and lonely. I wanted to go home then,
papa.
I miss you and
maman,
and the warmth of our house, and my friends, and all the comforts of St. Louis. But I will stay. I am needed. M. Fitzhugh is desperately short of hands. And the whole enterprise is so perilous and close to disaster that perhaps I can be of service. I have learned to cook whatever they bring us, and take care of things that Mme. Fitzhugh took care of before she went to visit her Cheyenne people. We know nothing of that,
papa,
and M. Fitzhugh says nothing.

Neither do we know anything about the theft of the blankets on the riverboat. It is much in my mind, finding who did this thing to hurt Dance, Fitzhugh, and Straus — but nothing is said, and M. Fitzhugh seems to have forgotten it. Thank heaven you sent the osage orange bow wood. M. Fitzhugh and M. Trudeau looked at those dried orange wands exclaiming and smiling. They say, though, they don’t know what the bow wood will bring. They hope for a robe apiece, but maybe they will have to give two of the sticks for a robe.

I meant to write a journal, but I have become lazy, and most nights I crawl into my blankets without doing what I intended. I also intended to copy down useful information into my notebook. I got the parts of the buffalo into it, and their utility. And I am making a list of roots and berries and seeds one can eat, with a drawing of each plant. But I wanted to do more. I wanted to list the words I have learned. I have a few under the Cheyenne heading, but I don’t have many Crow words, and hardly any Sioux. They called the buffalo
Pte.
I’ve collected flowers and moths and dried them in the pages, too. I’m trying to learn the trades practiced by the engagés. I can fix my boots if the uppers pull from the soles, and I can square a log with an adze. Some day I will know more than all these men do because I have my schooling, too. I am reading the Psalms, one each night when I can.

Soon they will celebrate Christmas. M. Fitzhugh says there will be a buffalo hump feast, and he will give each engagé a gill of spirits. M. Chatillon promised to stay that long, but he will leave directly after that. There’s too much to do, and they will not make a sabbath of the day, except for the feast the evening before. There is much cheer among them, now that we have warmth and food and the mules to hunt more.

After Christmas, we must get our outfit from Fort Cass, and that is something I fear most of all, because its
bourgeois,
M. Hervey, is not inclined to give our things to us, and made a great show of keeping M. Fitzhugh away from our company goods. I remonstrated with him, telling him — through the window of the Cass trading room — how we paid rent; how he must protect our property by contract and by honor, and how he must not do us a wrong. But he only laughed, and I fear M. Fitzhugh made a terrible mistake storing the outfit there, in the possession of our rivals.

He says he had no roof for his tradecloth and ginghams and bed ticking and all the rest, and it was safest there. But,
papa,
I question that. We could have kept the perishable things under wagonsheet with us, and let the rest of it — things like axes — be exposed. But he said it would all be stolen. I don’t see much difference between it being stolen by American Fur and stolen by Crows or Blackfeet.

Papa,
I have confided some things to M. Chatillon that he is to discuss with you. They concern M. Fitzhugh. Our partner in this enterprise is a violent man who will not stop at murder and seems to know little of the laws of God, of right and wrong, good and evil. He says they don’t apply here, and it’s every man for himself. But of course they apply everywhere the Eye of God sees mortals. He engaged in certain conduct toward our rival, M. Hervey, that I won’t describe here except to say it was lethal. That does not seem the way to engage in peaceful trading, or get along with rivals in a sea of wilderness where civilized men must help each other on occasion and forget their divisions. No,
papa,
I fear we have the wrong man as a principal in this business. You wished me to be the Straus family eyes and ears, and I am that, and its conscience too. I fear if we are allied with M. Fitzhugh we might find blood on our hands. Indirectly, of course, but still there, staining us. From what I’ve heard, he is no match for Julius Hervey in that department, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and I wish he could find other means. The trouble really began when he stored all the outfit there. It was bad judgment. Now, on the eve of trading, we have nothing to trade with except the osage orange. The Crow are hostile to us, whipped up by Hervey.

I have tried to explain this to M. Fitzhugh, and have urged him to do what is proper, and enter into peaceful congress with Julius Hervey, but he only resists and lets me know with a dismissing smile that I’m not yet a man in his eyes.

So — everything depends on what happens next. The Buffalo Company will get its outfit and begin trade, or it will collapse. It will take in many robes from many tribes at an advantage, or it will lose everything you invested. It is something that awakens me in the night.

I miss you and
maman
terribly, and David and Clothilde too, and our Gregoire, and St. Louis. I am a long way from home. I pray this letter, and our news, and M. Chatillon, reach you safely.

Your son,

Maxim

Westwinds robbed the twenty-fourth day of December of its cold, freeing imprisoned men to pleasure themselves in the cottonwoods, cutting fire logs or lumber for the interior of the post. Fitzhugh knew he had a letter to write to Straus, and it could no longer be put off. Ambrose Chatillon wanted to leave at once, Christmas eve, to take advantage of the mild. An express was just that; it could never wait, though Brokenleg desperately wanted Chatillon to hang on until after the first of the year.

He settled himself before the wide fireplace and dipped his steel nib into some thick ink Maxim had concocted from carbon black, water, and some spirits. The task seemed worse than a whipping but had to be performed. He’d written little since his youth as an innkeeper’s son, and the nib pen felt awkward in his fingers. But not half so awkward as telling his partner, the company’s financier, that he hadn’t traded for a single robe, and that the whole trading outfit lay in the bowels of Fort Cass, hostage to the whims of Julius Hervey. And yet — that very information, gotten to Straus, could be valuable. A word to Chouteau might help matters.

He scribbled it out, then, in harsh angry strokes, wasting no words, concealing nothing, not even Dust Devil’s desertion, which was mostly his own business. He explained without apology his reason for storing the outfit at Cass. That was his judgment. If Straus didn’t like it, too bad. Somehow the drafting evoked a fury in him, so that he glared imperiously about the barracks, daring anyone to say a word. Most were outside, but Ambrose Chatillon had busied himself with his preparations. He’d have his Christmas gill, and slip out into the night to begin a two-month journey downriver in the heart of the winter.

Beside the fire, Chatillon was drying thin slabs of buffalo flesh on a rack, and shredding cooked meat into small chunks, which he mixed with melted tallow and spooned into tied off boudins, making crude sausages rich with fat that would not only last for weeks, cold or warm, but would nourish a man better than plain meat on a winter’s day. A growing mountain of the gray sausages rose at his side.

“I wish you’d stay, Ambrose. I got needs. If we can’t get the outfit from Hervey, I’d take it kindly if you’d go on up to Fort Union and talk to Culbertson. He’ll bring Hervey to heel, I reckon.”

“An express is an express. And it’s out of my way, Brokenleg.”

Irritation flooded Fitzhugh. “If you’d stay long enough to see about this business, you could tell Straus how the stick floats.”

Ambrose shrugged, and spooned meat and tallow into a boudin.

Fitzhugh knew he was getting nowhere with his old trapping friend. “Well, at least stop at Cass. I got two friends wintering there. Worse come to worse; I’m counting on them opening the gates for us some night and letting us fetch our outfit.”

Chatillon stared. “Who?”

“Abner Spoon and Zachary Constable.”

“Ah, names from the rosters of the dead. The beaver days are over, Brokenleg. Gone under. Those two, they winter with American Fur every year now, and trade a few plews with the company.” Chatillon said nothing more, but something in his tone left matters hanging.

“You sayin’ something to me?”