Rocky Mountain Company (4 page)

Over at his camp, Jamie had been too busy even to attend to this parting. He’d said his goodbyes to his old trapping partner the previous night, when the last of the Mexico outfit had been offloaded. Guy had sighed, hollowly, and led Yvonne back to the Republic House, dodging pigs and chickens, long ox-trains in the rutted streets, and sinister scarecrows of men who looked like they belonged behind bars rather than free on the streets. No matter how he had tried, the vision of profit, of returns, of comfort, the thing that had sustained him in all this, wouldn’t return to his mind, and he had chastened himself for getting snared into this mad enterprise.

The departure of the wagon train had gone a little easier two days later. Santa Fe and Bent’s Fort and Mexico were known locales beyond the far horizon, and this outfit would roll to a place on earth he could fathom, unlike Fitzhugh’s outfit, which would drop off the rim of the world. And David had reached eighteen and manhood, ready to begin his life, unlike Maxim. Still, when he watched the other half of his fortune, and his other son, rattle off into the west that morning — all alone, because Yvonne decided not to venture out to the camp — he’d felt shaken. Too much could happen. For any Comanche warrior, David’s scalp would be as much a trophy as any other.

Now they waited at Republic House for the next eastbound packet.

“Are you satisfied?” Yvonne asked, accusingly, over breakfast.

“Our sons will come home men,” he replied.

“Will they?”

“With a fortune in hides, if I can sell them well.”

“But we didn’t need a fortune. We’ve been perfectly comfortable.”

“The west is there, waiting. A continent, wrapped in beauty. It sings its song to every man in this village, and our city down the river, Yvonne. I could not resist, and neither could our sons and neither will Clothilde when she’s a little older. Men climb mountains simply to say they did, and I — and our new partners — wrest wealth from the unknown world just because we must. I’ll go see it next year. Not just now,
bien-aimée.
I’ve so much to do. But soon. It lures me. I listen to Campbell or Pratte or young Chouteau himself sing the songs of the shining mountains, or our own Brokenleg talk of his in-law Cheyennes in all their savage strength, and I’m lost.”

Yvonne smiled bitterly.

Well before dawn, gray light skidded along the hurricane deck, slid over the humped form of Brokenleg, and into his face, prying his eyes open. He awakened instantly. Years in the mountains had taught him to sleep lightly, and respond to the subtlest change in the rhythms of the night. Twice he’d awakened last night, reacting to something, but it had been the night-noises of the deck passengers far below, men relieving themselves over the coaming.

The buffalo robe wrapped around him failed to protect him from the dawn chill, but he was used to sleeping cold. Dew whitened the hurricane deck, and even the robe, which he wore skin-out for protection again the sudden night breezes, felt cold and damp to his hand. He studied the misted shore, knowing how tribesmen loved to pounce at this hour when their victims lay sleep-drugged and quiet in their robes. But he saw nothing across the shallow waters. Below, out of sight beneath him, men stirred, and the clang and thump of a day began. The cook would be starting his fire in the galley stove. Deckhands would be scraping mud out of the boiler, if they hadn’t the night before, and screwing the manhole cover back in place. The river carried so much silt that the boiler had to be opened each day and the mud scraped out, lest the pipes clog and the boat blow itself to smithereens. A solid clank below told Brokenleg that the cover had been slammed shut and was being wrenched down. He’d smell the cold smoke of half-burned wood soon.

Men and animals stirred. The Rocky Mountain Company’s oxen, milch cows, mules and horses stomped restlessly, waiting for water and hay, unhappy at their close confinement. A mule kicked, and all the beasts in the pen milled, threatening to burst through the fragile lashup that held them to the foredeck, just back of the capstan behind the duckbilled bow.

Time to get up. His bad leg hurt as it always did after the night had stiffened it. He could never figure which was worse — the pain of morning, or the pain of evening, after he’d spent a day worrying and abusing the torn muscle and cartilage and badly mended bones. He clambered to his feet and rolled up his robe, a good thick winter-hair one that had served him for years. Dust Devil had given it to him, tanned and softened by her own hard hand. Nothing she touched remained in its original form, including himself. She’d tanned him about as well as the robe, he thought, pounding his brains and liver into his unrepentant hide and then working his rawhide soul into something more tender and useful. He picked up his heavy octagon-barreled Hawken and wiped dew from it, checking to make sure a cap embraced the nipple. Pinpricks of rust pitted the old mountain weapon, just as they pitted him, he thought. If his lock had been flint and frizzen, he’d have changed the priming powder in the pan on a morning like this.

Smoke belched from the twin chimneys just forward, and lowered malevolently upon him, slowly turning the packet into a living thing. Tribesmen thought the fireboats were alive, were giant beasts that could fight the current and the wind; and not a few infants along the great river had been named Steamboat. He limped toward the forward companionway, facing the ordeal of a one-footed descent to the boiler deck and then the main deck so that he could relieve his bladder in one of the privy closets that hung out from the coaming just aft of the eighteen-foot paddlewheels.

“Well, Mister Fitzhugh, we escaped the attentions of the Yanktonais after all,” said Captain LaBarge, from his open door at the texas. “Now all we have to do is find wood.”

“If they’re around, they’re chasing buffler.”

“Let’s hope they do. I’ve wood enough for six or eight miles, depending on the wind and current. Woodyard’s about five. If they’re around the yard, we’ve got problems.”

“Woodcutters there?”

“No. Too dangerous. We’ll cut our own. It’s a good bottom full of cottonwood and willow.”

“Deadwood?”

“We’ve girdled a lot of trees over the years. I should say, American Fur captains have. We’re getting the advantage.”

“I’ll put my men on it.”

LaBarge smiled. “I was going to put them on it. Every man, crew and passenger.”

“I’ll get Dust Devil up here with a carbine. She’s some shot, and she’s got Injun eyes.”

“Obliged. But with her I’m never sure which way she’ll point the barrel.”

Brokenleg grinned.

A muffled voice erupted from the speaking tube in the pilot house, above. “Steam’s almost up, sir. Two minutes.”

An erratic chuff of it popped from the escapement pipe behind them. LaBarge nodded to the pilot, who peered down at him from over the wainscoting of the pilothouse. On the main deck, the mate organized crews, one at the forward capstan to raise the wrought-iron anchor chain, the other at the rear to muscle up the smaller stream anchor. Somewhere below, two muffled bells rang and a shudder vibrated through the boat. Deckhands weighed anchor, winding chain around the capstan. The freed boat suddenly swung loose and began drifting. Then the paddles cranked over, bit water with a powerful splash, and the
Platte
exerted its own living will against the seductions of the river.

“You’re off before breakfast, Captain.”

“We can eat any time. On the river, time’s of the essence, Mister Fitzhugh. I prefer to be off well before this, as soon as we can see ahead. Now — if you’ll permit me — “

Brokenleg watched him swing up the narrow stairwell to the lofty pilothouse atop the texas. He felt a new rhythm, more disciplined and violent, as the packet eased into the main channel, a vicious aquamarine flood that meandered from bank to bank, as icy as the mountain snows that formed it. He limped forward and braved the first companionway, preferring to clamber down facing the stairs and hanging onto both oak rails. He had to do it one-footed, a series of small leaps to lower steps. Whenever he landed on his bad leg, pain shot ruthlessly up it and exploded in his brain. It was easier to climb the stairs.

On the boiler deck he changed his mind, and limped instead through the glassed doors into the gloomy men’s saloon where a youth wearing a white apron was unfolding tables for breakfast. The place was redolent with the residue of a thousand cigars, the scummy swamps of unemptied spittoons, and the more acrid odor of spilled spirits. Now it lay dead and dank, but each night the saloon blossomed under bright lamplight shattered by cut glass chimneys, and the usual poker and monte games drew the crowds.

He tried the door marked eleven, knowing it would not be locked because Dust Devil never locked it. If it was locked, then the underwater spirits could not escape. On land, she never closed doors or fastened the lodge flap tightly because under-the-earth spirits might be trapped, and evil come upon them. He was less worried about escaping spirits than about invading mortals.

She lay bare-shouldered under her rare, cream-colored buffalo robe on the bunk, watching him disdainfully, her straight hair loose and silky about her face. There was always disdain in her eye for whites and for any tribesmen other than her People. She’d never gotten accustomed to sheets and pillows and blankets, but she welcomed the cotton lint mattress joyously. She didn’t disdain that, at least, even if those who invented it were beneath contempt. He grunted, set his Hawken in a corner, threw his robe beside it, and pulled the white-enameled metal chamberpot from its nest under the bunk, and turned his back to her — why, he didn’t know. A white man’s modesty. Cheyenne modesty. No northern tribe was more puritanical. He rather preferred it: Dust Devil would be disdainfully faithful all her days. In a few moments he felt relieved, and ready to cope with the day.

Beneath them, under the deck, the boiler thundered and groaned and snapped hydrophobically, straining at its thick rivets. That was half the reason he couldn’t sleep in here — all that pent-up violent power just below, like a buffler stampede.

“I will make the coffee come,” Dust Devil said, rolling out of her robe. She wore nothing, and the sight of her slim, lithe body and velvet belly, as bright as apricots, caught his eye and flooded his loins with need. She knew exactly what she was doing to him — the mischief in her disdainful black eyes betrayed it — but she ignored him and reached for her whited doeskin dress, lifting it over the jet hair which hung loosely over her naked shoulders. Her raised arms lifted her wide breasts, and drew her belly taut.

He caught her just as her mocking face vanished behind her skirts, and the fringes of the hem slid over her breasts. He clamped her to him, like a kicking fawn in a sack, sliding his hard hands over her smooth back, feeling the corrugations of her backbone under his eager fingers.

She snorted. “I will make them bring coffee,” she said from somewhere inside of a writhing mass of velvety doeskin. “You sleep up there in the sky instead of here, while I wait all night. Maybe I should go up there on the hurricane deck.”

He laughed, and pressed her closer, his hands rounding over her hard small buttocks.

“I must greet Sun and pray, or — the underwater spirits — “ He tugged at her dress, reconquering lost ground. “I’m Suhtai,” she reminded him earnestly.

“I ain’t anything except male,” he retorted, tugging the dress back over her blue-black hair, leaving wisps of it on her face and under his searching lips.

“Is this any way to greet Sun?” she whispered, her hands tugging at his elkskin shirt, lifting it higher. “It is better in a warm lodge in the winter. Not a cold cabin in a fireboat. You wait.”

He laughed, feeling the change in her.

“You need more wives. When we get back to the good land of Sweet Medicine, I will find you more wives from my clan. Or slaves. We need slaves. Assiniboin women. I will make them tan robes,” she whispered. “And come to you at night. I get tired of this. Why can’t you be Cheyenne?”

“What do Cheyenne do?”

“Make war, not love,” she breathed in his ear. “Bring me some Crow scalps.”

He laughed. “This is how I count coup.”

But she had ceased struggling. He felt the packet quarter around a bight or an oxbow, sliding sideways with the current in a strange, uncontrolled motion that paralleled his own. Now her swift fingers loosened his fringed buckskin britches and pulled at him eagerly, tugging him not toward the narrow lower bunk but the floor. She’d lived with his bad leg for years, and knew the ways to cope with it, and practiced them on the hard planking of the cabin.

“Oh, you longknifes,” she muttered. “What a way to greet Sun.”

The woodyard lay ahead on the right, an enameled green streak of forest half a mile distant. Brokenleg squinted at it through eyes tortured by summer sunlight lancing off the reckless waters, marveling at the astonishing sight of woods in the grassy trench they’d navigated for a hundred miles. The high-plains light affected everything, burning the sky azure, almost black; careening off the white-enameled packet, magnifying the mountain people crowding the foredeck.

He turned to Trudeau, the competent engagé who would probably be second in command at the trading post. “Samson, the captain wants every able-bodied man aboard to cut wood. Fast. His deckmen will hand out axes and bucksaws when we land. The Yanktonais have been stirring up trouble for two years.”

“I’ll tell our men. We cut wood so fast we don’t get any arrows in us,
n’est-ce pas?”

“Cut long lengths. Just get the wood aboard and they’ll cut it to length. That firebox eats wood — eighteen cords a day, LaBarge tells me.”

“What about the Indians?”

“The pilot’ll be watching from the pilothouse. You come running if you hear a shot, or the ship’s bell. I’ll have Mrs. Fitzhugh watching from the hurricane deck. She’s got eyes I wish I had.”

“Maybe we should be armed,
oui?”