Rocky Mountain Company (5 page)

“No. You’ll be carrying saws and axes we can’t afford to lose.”

Trudeau grunted, gesturing toward the hold. Among the Rocky Mountain Company’s tradegoods were hundreds of axes and hatchets.

“The engagés, they won’t like having no rifles.”

Fitzhugh peered at the other passengers milling on deck, trappers and traders of one sort or another, he thought. Two squaws, both wives of traders at American Fur Company posts. Half the bearded motley crowd carried rifles and not a few had Arkansas toothpicks or Green River knives as well. A rough and murderous lot who shot before they asked who they were shooting at. Fitzhugh felt a certain empathy. It was live or die in the mountains, and the difference between the two could be split seconds, or who saw whom first. Still — these buckskinned, greasy, hirsute, gaptoothed ruffians could get them into trouble fast.

He felt the throb of the two steam pistons change, and heard a new rhythm as the pitman rods cranked the paddlewheels slower. Deckhands gathered at the starboard gangway, ready to lower a stage to the muddy bank. At the bow, a man with a marked pole stabbed at the water, shouting depths up to the pilot. The
Platte
, loaded, drew four feet. As the packet slid out of the main channel into turbid backwaters, a great peace settled over it, as if it enjoyed a moment of leisure in the slackwater.

At about three hundred yards, LaBarge, up in the pilothouse, scanned the shore with his spy glass, and then stiffened. Fitzhugh heard him yelling down the tube to the engineers, and caught the clanging of bells as the paddlewheels ground to a tentative halt. The boat settled low, barely moving. Fitzhugh squinted toward shore, wondering what had stalled the boat, but the glare of the river under a June sun dazzled his eyes to tears.

“Mister Fitzhugh,” yelled LaBarge from high above. “Please come up.”

He did, swinging his bad leg up the companionway furiously, using his powerful arms to avoid steps altogether. He stopped at the hurricane deck, his lungs burning. La-Barge had descended that far, spyglass in hand. Wordlessly he handed it to Brokenleg.

“Yanktonai,” the master announced dourly.

Fitzhugh adjusted the focus to his leaking eyes and peered through the bobbing circle, unable to hold the glass steady because of his violent exertion. He saw thirty or so bronzed men, most of them wearing only a breechclout and coup feathers. None painted. All armed; mostly with bows, but three or four with fusils or muskets of some sort. Hard to tell.

“For all practical purposes, we’re out of wood. We can make the opposite bank anywhere in the next mile or two,” LaBarge said darkly. “After that we hunt driftwood.”

“They’re not concealing themselves and not painted, captain. I think we both know what they’ll say.”

“I do,” LaBarge replied crisply. “And I don’t have much choice. We’re out of wood, and they can beat us to the next woodlot — and the next. And I don’t know of any beached driftwood or islands along here.”

“Why’d you summon me?”

LaBarge smiled quickly. “You’re a known man, Brokenleg. You’ve a hold full of tradegoods — and I need some gewgaws  . . . at reasonable cost. You’re in command of ten good Creoles — seasoned Indian traders. And you’ll avoid war — which is the only thought burning in the heads of those mountain cretins on deck. And that’s not all. You can speak Siouan dialect, and know sign language. We’ll negotiate. I need your help. My mate will keep an eye on those ruffians brandishing their rifles on the foredeck. And I’d like your sensible engagés to keep watch as well. I want no shooting.”

Fitzhugh grinned, a vast amiable understanding growing between himself and Captain LaBarge. But the captain didn’t wait. He barked commands, and as Fitzhugh sprang painfully down the companionways, he felt the wheels bite into the river and guide the packet toward the fated bank.

On the main deck the mob had spotted the Yanktonais now, and men crowded the starboard rail brandishing rifles. On the closing shore, knots of tribesmen stood alertly, bows in hand but not drawn. Thirty or forty, Brokenleg thought, with more — boys probably — holding horses back among the cottonwoods.

“I’m going to get me that red nigger chief,” bragged a graying man in grease-blackened buckskins. He eased his mountain rifle down to the rail, and squatted behind it.

“Gentlemen!” bawled a voice from above. Fitzhugh turned to see the master, LaBarge, leaning out of the pilothouse, a megaphone at his lips. “Put your weapons up. We’re going to parley for some wood. These are Sioux — Yanktonais — and they’ll want a few trinkets for the wood from their land.”

Trudeau gazed anxiously at Brokenleg, who nodded.

Most of the rough assemblage lowered their rifle butts to the deck. But not the old braggart, who peered down his barrel from heavy-lidded eyes.

“Mate!” yelled LaBarge, and pointed.

Catlike, the mate yanked the rifle upward and out of the old mountaineer’s hands. The gray giant leapt up, yellow murder in his eye and an Arkansas toothpick in his hand faster than Fitzhugh was able to see. But he found himself surrounded by deckmen and engagés, and slowly slid his glinting weapon into its belt sheath, his expression lethal.

“Look to your duties,” LaBarge yelled from above. Ship’s hands gathered at the companionway to lower a stage, and readied manila lines to anchor the boat to stumps along the bank.

Brokenleg didn’t like it. He was about to walk down that gangplank and parley with the chiefs, and if any of that undisciplined mob on the main deck so much as lifted a rifle, the first arrow would pierce his own guts.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the chief now, as the boat slid into shore, riding stilled paddles. The headman wore three coup feathers, carried a new rifle, and sported a grizzly claw necklace, formidable medicine. He stood almost six feet, and all of his honey-colored flesh stretched thinly over a massive bone frame. The headman’s gaze sought him out and their eyes locked in a testing of wills.

The headman wasted no time on preliminaries. Even as the boat nestled into the shore, he addressed Fitzhugh, who stood at the opened gangway. “You cannot have our wood. It is ours. You have killed our trees,” he said in his Siouan tongue.

“What do you want for it?” Fitzhugh replied.

“You cannot have it.”

“We will find some across the river, then.”

“I will come onto the fireboat and talk.”

Fitzhugh nodded. “Lower the stage,” he said to the hands. “The chief will parley.” And then to the headman: “Just you. No others. You will be safe; I declare it.”

The chief held up two fingers.

“Two, then.”

Forward, a deckhand tossed a manila hawser to a warrior, who wound it around a stump, anchoring the boat. Fitzhugh didn’t like it until he spotted the slipknot around a kevel. The stage thumped into grass, and the chief, followed by a powerful subchief with battle scars puckered across his left arm and ribs, walked fearlessly onto the main deck.

“I am Crow Beak,” he said, not introducing his colleague.

“Robert Fitzhugh.”

“Brokenleg,” the chief said.

That was no surprise. His bad leg seemed to travel before him from one campfire and village to the next. “We’ve stopped for wood.”

“It is ours. You must not kill our trees.”

“We will pay for it. A mirror and vermilion for each man. And some powder for you.”

“One rifle for each of us. And two handfuls of balls. And much powder. And a keg of the spirit-water-that-makes-men-crazy.”

“No. Too much. We will go to another place for wood.”

Crow Beak studied the diminished pile, down to a dozen long sticks, near the firebox, and smiled. “It is as I said. These things you will give us for our wood.”

From above, LaBarge called down. “We’re running out of time, Mister Fitzhugh. If I’m to make the far shore and safety, we must be off. Offer them a cask of spirits.”

Fitzhugh grinned. “Make the ship fast, Captain. Forget the steam. Me and Crow Beak here, we’re going to have us a party.”

11 juin, 1841
Cher papa,

It will be a long time before this reaches you. I will give it to Captain LaBarge to take downriver with him, and I suppose you will read it when you pour coffee for him in our salon and get his news. But perhaps it will arrive sooner, if we meet the American Fur Company packet going downriver, and I can give this to its master.

Until today, we had an uneventful trip. I am trying hard to learn all that there is to know about the trading business. Monsieur Fitzhugh patiently answers all my questions, even though I ask him many. Do you know what a split robe is? That is one that is composed of two halves, sewn together, and it is not as valuable as a whole robe. A buffalo is a heavy animal, and sometimes it is hard for the squaws to peel the hide off in one piece, so they slice down the backbone as well as the gut, and take two pieces.

Even though you bought me cabin passage, I like to sleep on the main deck like the other engagés. M. Fitzhugh has made Samson Trudeau second in command, and I think that is good. M. Trudeau has
savoir-faire
and is good with the engagés. M. Fitzhugh knows French, but his accent is atrocious, so he mostly gives his instructions to M. Trudeau, who passes the word to the engagés. There is only one engagé I don’t much like, Emile Gallard, and he seems always insolent and crafty. There is work to do each day, such as feeding and watering the livestock, and taking them to shore to graze whenever we can, especially evenings. There’s no time for it when we stop for wood, which is often.

We sleep mostly under the three Pittsburgh wagons on deck, and when the weather is bad we put up the wagonsheets and have a perfect tent that suits our needs. When we are cold, we can stand next to the firebox or boiler and warm up fast. I am taking care not to catch a cold, so don’t worry. Sometimes violent thunder showers pepper the river and the packet, so we all take cover somewhere under the boiler deck. The rain and hail are so thick at those times I wonder how the pilot can even see. But M. LaBarge never stops, except at night when no one can see the river.

I have learned that the Missouri is a treacherous, changing beast, and never the same month to month and year to year. It is full of logs and driftwood M. LaBarge calls sawyers, and if one strikes the hull it can poke a hole in it. Then we must head for the nearest bank and make repairs. So far, the water has been high, but soon we will be hitting sandbars, and then we must work past them with spars. I can hardly wait to see that.

I am proud that I am living on deck, as an engagé, rather than living in the cabin. All the engagés have been employed up the river, and they tell me lots of things about the Indians there, and the weather, and all the tricks used by American Fur Company to drive out the opposition. And here I thought I liked M. Chouteau. He’s always been so kind and neighborly.

I don’t think Mme. Fitzhugh likes me much. She is such a beautiful woman that I always tremble when I see her. But she looks at me as if I don’t exist, and she doesn’t know how much I admire her diamond-shaped coppery face, and long black hair with tints of blue, and her perfect white teeth. The engagés tell me that her people, the Cheyenne, are proud and fearless and make beautiful art with quills and beads and paints. But she is haughty, and I know she scorns all people except her Cheyenne, and thinks we are all nothing more than maggots. I think she even has that opinion of M. Fitzhugh, though I shouldn’t say it, and you will scold me for thinking it. But when she talks of the Cheyenne, her face lights up, and that look in her eyes, the disdain, goes away. Oh, I could fall in love with an Indian woman as proud as that! Perhaps I will come home with a beautiful mountain bride. That would shock you,
papa,
and especially
maman.
But I like her better than the silly girls of St. Louis because she is dignified and doesn’t giggle. You would approve of a wife like that.

And now I will tell you what happened today. We were almost out of firewood. M. LaBarge tells me the
Platte
burns eighteen cords a day — think of it! And there is so little wood here, where nothing but grass grows in the river valley. But now and then are flats full of cottonwoods, and the crews of the packets stop and load up. Everyone must help cut and haul wood, all passengers, or else it takes forever before the packet can go again. Well,
papa,
this is a dangerous country because a Sioux tribe called the Yanktonai are making trouble for the
bateaux,
demanding things and sometimes even shooting. They don’t have many rifles — mostly smoothbore fusils — but they can send a hail of arrows if they want.

Well,
papa,
today the woodyard was full of Yanktonai, more wild Indians than I’ve ever seen before, and all armed. I was afraid, and so was everyone else. All the passengers rushed to get their rifles and pistols, and it looked like a bad situation. We had to stop for wood; it was a dilemma for M. LaBarge. One old fool in greasy buckskins even lowered his Hawken to the rail and crouched down, about to shoot, but the mate knocked his rifle up. The man was very angry and had a knife, but our engagés and the deckhands stopped the trouble. I think if he’d shot — he was aiming right at the headman as the boat slid toward the bank — it would have started a battle, and maybe I wouldn’t be here to write you about it. I wanted to be brave, and be a man, but all I really wanted was to hide from those bows and arrows.

M. LaBarge asked M. Fitzhugh to negotiate, because he’s a seasoned trader and experienced here on the upper river, and knows the minds of the wild tribesmen. It was in Sioux, and I could not follow, but he stood before all the Yanktonai, unarmed, talking easily and showing no fear through the
rencontre,
and then suddenly he grinned and said to M. LaBarge to tie up because they were going to have a party. And that made things better almost at once. He sent M. Trudeau for some of the pure grain spirits — ship’s stores, of course,
papa
— and a kettle. And then he made trade whiskey. Do you know what that is? Ugh! It is one-fifth pure spirits, the rest Missouri river water, a pound of rank black tobacco for flavor, black molasses, and a few red peppers just to burn the tongue a little.