Rocky Mountain Company (37 page)

White Wolf, who wore his black hair in two braids caught in otterskin sheaths, listened politely. When Fitzhugh had finished his welcome, the chief stood and waited solemnly for the attention of the rest.

Little Whirlwind knew she would translate for Maxim and the others, but Fitzhugh knew enough of the tongue of the People.

“Our friend Bad Leg Whiteman comes back to us as a trader, and we welcome him,” White Wolf began. “He builds a post where the Absaroka are, but we understand that: he needs the rivers nearby to take our robes away and bring his tradegoods to us.”

Dust Devil translated to English quietly. The engagés would understand.

“Our own Little Whirlwind returns to us with the bad news that the Absaroka have stolen your horses and killed your whitemen’s buffalo that pull the wagons. And worse, that the ones who occupy Fort Cass keep your trading goods from you, and maybe trade them to our enemies. We cannot permit this. At last we have a place to trade. Fort William is far away. Fort Union is far away. Fort Cass is closer but the Absaroka are everywhere around it. But now, Fitzhugh, we have a trading post.”

She wondered if Brokenleg would object and tell him that the post would trade with all tribes, not just Cheyenne. He’d told her that often enough, and it pained her. But he only nodded, his blue eyes bright.

“We have come a long way, from our village on Crazy Woman Creek, with ponies to trade, and robes. These ponies are ones that have drawn the travois, and they will pull wagons. They are good ponies. And we have others that are only for riders, good fleet ones. You will see them when Sun comes back, and we will trade. You have the orange wood of the bow, and my warriors will want many and we will be a stronger village if we have them, and many guns. We’ll take more scalps, especially Absaroka and Assiniboin. We will trade a pony for twenty sticks; maybe a small pony for fifteen. And a robe for ten sticks. Maybe eight for a summer robe, or a split. I see many orange sticks; enough for a bow for every warrior in our village.”

She knew he’d object to that strenuously, but he said nothing, just nodding his head and licking his lips with his pink tongue. Maxim’s face darkened, and she knew he was containing his thoughts. He wanted the osage orange to bring the company a robe for one stick, and not be squandered on horses.

“I reckon we got a little fire-in-in-the-throat to trade, if ye be lookin’ for it,” Fitzhugh said. “The usual — cup a robe.”

“I do not think the fire-water is good, but that is up to my warriors. The ponies and the robes are theirs. I will trade my own ponies and robes for the bow wood, not the water that makes men crazy.”

“That’s all I got — the bow wood and some spirits. The rest I got stored at Cass. It’ll be a while, anyway.”

“In truth, Bad Leg Whiteman, you can’t get your trading things.”

“Not for a while. I need to talk with Culbertson up at Fort Union. Hervey isn’t keeping his agreement with me.”

“You have only these men? Little Whirlwind said you had as many as the fingers are.”

“They quit me. Just now, before you come in. At Cass by now, I reckon. I think maybe they’ll come back. It’s just vittles they wanted. With some ponies and our goods — we got rifles up there, including mine — we’ll hunt the buffler and be in business.”

White Wolf considered, silently. “We are many,” he said. “We will think about these things.”

That ended the night’s parleying. In the morning, they’d get down to some trading. Around her, the Tsistsistas and the engagés alike expected her to start cooking a feast, but she scorned them. Let them hack the frozen haunch apart and roast it. She’d be no slave to any whiteman, anyway. She discovered Maxim peering at her shyly, the way a boy does when he spies a beautiful woman, and it pleased her. “Cook the meat,” she said imperiously, lording over him with her new power, and watched him turn to do it, a haunted look in his face. For the first time, the white boy had seen her as a man sees a woman.

Fitzhugh caught her by the arm and drew her into the empty warehouse behind the trading room, almost black with night.

“You brought them here,” he said. “Is that why you run off?”

“No. They brought me. I was leaving you.”

“Whiteskin ain’t good enough for a little Suhtai Miss,” he muttered.

“I longed to be with my people.”

“That’s about right.”

“But I missed you, Fitzhugh. When I got to my people, I wanted you with me. I wanted you there, trading with them, a great man among them.”

“I was getting to it. Going to wagon down there with an outfit, and trade. But you ditched me.”

“White Wolf says our marriage is important to the People.”

“What marriage. You took off. I think, once you git, you git. You better figger on goin’ back with them.”

“You don’t want me any more.”

“Want you! I wanted you too bad to say it. But I was never good enough. Your pa married you off when you were makin’ eyes at two, three Suhtai boys, seems like, and you never did like it none, and I never stopped hearin’ about it.”

“Twice I heard the love flute before you came.”

She wanted him to touch her, but he didn’t. He stood well apart in the cold dark. She stepped toward him, filled with a sudden yearning, but he didn’t move. She stepped again, so close she could feel his presence looming above her, feel the warmth of his body.

“You run out on me once and now you want to fix it, and it isn’t fixed,” he muttered.

She heard a coldness in him, running deep, from down in his belly, and beyond the repair of an embrace. She stood close, with a frozen ocean between them.

“I am not wanted.” An unexpected sadness grew in her.

“You git it turned upside down. You never wanted me.”

“It is true and not true.”

“I don’t cotton to talk like that. You never wanted me. You had your big eyes peerin’ at one o’ the other Suhtai. And you never let me forgit it after your pa made the marriage.”

“I am not one person inside. I have lost my medicine, in spite of what they tell me. What I said is true: I didn’t want you, but I did, and I loved you, Brokenleg.”

“You quit me when things was lookin’ bad. When it got cold and we had no place, no horses, nothing. Like leavin’ a man when he’s goin’ under. Well, things weren’t so bad hyar. Chatillon, he’s an express up from Saint Louie, he brings mules and bow wood, and we got back on our feet, at least until a few days ago. But you weren’t around to help. I’m going to pry my outfit outa Cass. The first time Hervey steps outa Cass, I’m going to nail him and git what’s mine. He can’t hide in there forever. And I’ll do some good tradin’ with lots of tribes, but you won’t have the pleasure of it or me because you’re goin’ back to your precious people. You aren’t my wife any more.”

Those words shot an unexpected pain through her. She stared, numbly, absorbing it. The pain welling through her astonished her. Divorced, then. She did not know what to do. Had she cared about him much more than she supposed? Slowly she grasped that she wouldn’t see him again, or lie in his arms, or receive his abundant gifts, or share his laughter, or present him proudly to her people. Put away by the white trader! And she a Suhtai! It’d be a scandal, a shame, in her village. A strange, unaccustomed sadness filled her.

“That is what you wish?” she asked, hiding her sorrow.

For an answer he swung loose and stalked back into the heated portion of the post, leaving her utterly alone. She stood paralyzed in the unfriendly dark, unable to think. Then she remembered crow-bird, and turned inward to the landscape of her heart, and her people’s heart.

“I am put aside by the whiteman,” she said to crow-bird, but nothing formed in her mind. She waited for her medicine-helper, but crow-bird didn’t come. The coldness of the dark room bit at her. Alone. Tears welled and slid down her cheeks. She loved him wildly, and hadn’t even known it until now, too late. He would never touch her again. She’d never feel his iron-hard arms holding her gently, or feel the scrape of his wavy beard on her cheek. She wept quietly, still surprised at what she’d discovered in herself. She wept until she couldn’t, and then dried her tears.

She walked resolutely into the warm trading room, where her Tsistsista brothers, including her older brother Waiting Dog, were spreading their robes and blankets for the night. She continued on to the barracks where the engagés and Fitzhugh were slipping into their wooden bunks, and White Wolf as well. She found her scarlet capote and gloves, and her small sack of medicine things, and slid out the door into the dead night. She paused in the quiet, until her eyes focused on the picketed horses. She saw no guard. And she would need her horse. The cold numbed her. Beyond the darkness she saw a night-mirage, her own village glowing on the black horizon, beckoning her to follow up the river, but her heart failed her at the thought of another long winter journey, and she walked downriver, toward the Yellowstsone, unable to explain her conduct to herself.

The massive gates of Fort Cass loomed above her like a giant deadfall, ready to crush her with the slightest knock. In the faint light she made out several Absaroka lodges nearby, wisps of smoke from wood-starved fires drifting from their gathered lodges.

She would not be welcome in them. She had no welcome anywhere, except maybe here. She had been Fitzhugh’s wife, the woman of a great trader with a St. Louis company. She had been a Suhtai, proud people of the Cheyenne nation. But her people had not welcomed her either, and brought her back to Fitzhugh. Always, she’d measured her worth by association: she’d been the daughter and granddaughter of great medicine men, and of the clan of medicine-givers. She’d been the wife of an important white trapper and trader. Nothing remained within her but hollowness, and that filled with the cold of the night. She knew she had no name. No longer was she Little Whirlwind to her people, or Dust Devil to Fitzhugh. No longer did she possess medicine. She had become a no-spirit person, worse than the dead and doomed forever. Even now, as she stared at this wall of wood, she could not account for her behavior. No one ruled within.

The night-cold had penetrated clear through her capote and her woolen blouse and doeskin shirts, numbing her limbs and hurting her face. Her lungs ached from breathing air so cold. She yearned for warmth, for Fitzhugh’s warmth beside her under the robes, but he had sent her away. This air seemed colder than any, even though she hadn’t walked for long. Nothing she wore kept it from stinging and hurting her whole body, even her breasts and her belly. She thought wildly of running from this palisade of silvery cottonwood logs, back, back to Fitzhugh’s Post. Ask him to keep her. Do anything. Say anything. Be a slave if not a wife. But she wouldn’t. She had seen the look in his eyes.

She knocked hard, but the coldness ate up the noise of her pounding and made a whisper of it. She feared suddenly that no one would hear and come. She hammered again, bruising the bottom of her fist, but the sound magically vanished. No one would hear. She hunted for a stick to pound with, but miraculously someone on the other side of the great wall of planks lifted a bar, and the door squealed open on iced metal. A bearded whiteman she’d never seen before peered out at her, his eye sweeping from her winter moccasins upward along the dim-lit scarlet capote, to its hood.

“Oui?
Yes?”

“I want to come in,” she said in English.

“We are shut now. Tomorrow,” the man replied also in English.

“I am cold.”

He said nothing, staring at her. Then, “Who be you?”

“Little Whirlwind of the Tsistsistas — Cheyenne.”

“Alone,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Are you going to let me in?”

“Don’t know what I’d do with ye. You come vistin’ at funny times. You sure you got some business heah?”

“I will go,” she said, turning away. Behind her the door creaked, and a massive hand caught her capote, halting her abruptly.

“Dust Devil,” a voice said, and she knew the
bourgeois,
Julius Hervey, had caught her. She knew she’d made a terrible mistake coming here, and struggled to free herself, but he laughed and hauled her around. He wore only a blanket, she thought, and his white calves and feet were bare, even in the bitter cold. “Madam Stiffleg,” he mocked. Then he dragged her into the fort, a force beyond resisting, and she tripped after him, a prisoner.

Behind her she heard the gate squeak shut and the clank of an iron bar. He tumbled her through a dark door into a heated room, faintly lit by a mass of orange coals in a fireplace. And then he lit a taper, and she saw him grinning widely behind his beard. A giant. She’d never been so close to him, and realized he stood taller than Fitzhugh, two or three heads taller than herself. His blanket turned out to be a poncho, and it became plain from white flesh bared by the open sides that he wore nothing else.

He eyed her wildly, possessing her with a gaze she couldn’t return.

She had pushed the thought of this aside all the way over here, but suddenly she could not put it aside. She drew herself up disdainfully. “I have seen what is in your eyes. I will be your woman if you want.”

He smirked. “It took you long enough. You’ve ditched poor old Stiffleg. He’s got nothing but woes and a few gallons of spirits and some sticks. Hardly even a man in the place. Nothing for a fancy little filly like you. You’ve come to enjoy a man for a change.”

She didn’t like him much, and shrugged.

“I knew I’d lure you in, sooner or later. That Fitzhugh — he’s a case.” His eyes studied her, his gaze sliding over her face, her blue-black hair, the capote that hid her figure. It bore into the capote where her breasts pressed it, and then her slender thighs. Something feral and dangerous formed around his mouth, building into a smile that seemed cruel.

“Fitzhugh picked a beauty. And lost it.”

She waited for him to come to her, but he seemed to be enjoying something that lay in his own thoughts. “You’re a bonus. I mean, coming here before I destroyed him  . . . This’ll just make it easier. He’ll be crazy.”