The High Missouri (23 page)

“One person falling into difficulty does not discredit the quest,” said Dru. “Even for her.”

Dylan told Dru about Caro’s praise of the dark side of man, and of men unafraid to indulge it.

Dru shrugged and said, “The gods have many energies, yes, some of them wildly carnal, like Dionysus, others contemplative, exalted in spirit, like Apollo. All these energies run deep and strong in human beings.”

But, Dylan wanted to ask, what about sin? What is sin, and how does it get its hold on us?

He was tired, though, and sleepy. Besides, he feared he wouldn’t like the answer.

Dylan brooded. At bedtime he finally spoke up.

“I have to get out of here.”

Dru grinned at him. “You don’t mean to go back to living in a cave?”

“No, back to Augustus. Or on to the High Missouri, to become a pagan Piegan.”

“It’s not time,” Dru said seriously. Dru slipped between his robes and thought. At last he said, “Well, we could get to Augustus. Bit risky in midwinter.”

Dru seemed to wait for Dylan to comment or explain. Dylan just let it go.

“I’ll tell Saga tomorrow, then. Maybe Bleu will want to come too. There’s nothing to keep us. It’s time, actually.” He looked at Dylan in the firelight. “It’s my last winter here.” Now Dylan could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ll be confined to one gender from now on.”

Dylan took the first deep breath he’d had since Wolf led him here. He rolled over. He breathed deep again and again. He refused to think of traveling with Saga.

Well, at least that was one bastard who wouldn’t be plugging Caro.

Not that he gave the slightest damn who did plug her, he told himself.

He thought of Dru’s Piegans and Bloods, who were always having revelations in dreams. Dylan didn’t want to be someone who guided his life by dreams. He himself had a big dream. He remembered that dawn on the hill after he read Byron for the first time, and his great mystical experience. He remembered the extraordinary feeling of his bond with Caro.

Such were his dreams. Where had they got him?

Dreams were the unpredictable, the ungovernable. They were the wild hairs of life. If you lived by them, you were out of control. Indulging the energies of the gods of both good and evil, whatever that meant.

Hell, he thought, grinning to himself and glancing over at Dru in his buffalo robes, you might even end up in a skirt.

He would get the hell out of here, Dylan decided. No, he would not see Caro before he left, Caro the minion of Captain Chick. No, he wouldn’t be able to stand that.

He would go back to Augustus. He would work for Mad Jack and learn the fur trade. Sometime, he would get to go to Dru’s mythical High Missouri. Insanity enough in that, surely. And after a while, after Mr. Stewart’s four years, he would consider whether he wanted to stay in this country and become a barbarian or go back to Montreal—where a fellow could buy Byron’s books—and face his father and act like a civilized man. Whatever that was.

The knights of the round table entered the forest each at a place of his own choosing, Dylan remembered, the darkest place of the woods, where there was no path.

Good way to get lost, he thought. Smiling, he closed his eyes.

The trip might have been a terror.

Dylan wrote in his journal on February 8,

I know that now. We came down from the mountains fast, covering at least twice the distance every day that we made with M. Troyes on the way up, arriving on February 6. If a big storm had come along, we’d have to had hole up, maybe for days. Dru is a splendid woodsman (all right, Saga and Bleu are too) or such a winter journey might be worth your life.

Mad Jack seemed glad to see me, I think because he intends to pile all his clerical work onto me and make me get his annual report ready for rendezvous. He said he was glad to have Bleu back to annoy him.

Dru and Saga stayed a few days and headed for Fort William. Dru said he wants to spend the time with Anastasie. (One advantage of being a man again.) He bore messages from Mad Jack to the powers at Fort William. Messages from Captain Chick too, he admitted.

I am lonely. I pore over figures, and the Druid flits over the plains and mountains as he pleases, like a water bug. (He says like an eagle. I tease, like a vulture.) I labor, he adventures.

I will not ask Caro for Mother’s opal ring back. In truth, I don’t want to see Caro at all. I regret the loss of the only memento I had from Mother. I often reach to my neck to touch it, and am always surprised to find it gone.

There is some justice in all this, surely. I gave Caro my heart, my soul, and Mother’s ring. She gave me the clap.

He had a thought and smiled wryly to himself. Should he add to his journal that he now knew, truly, what his father had warned him about? In the first place the fur trade was mostly boredom. In the second place it was dangerous. And in the last place, if you didn’t lose your life, you lost your soul.

Or at least your cod fell off.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Lords and Ladies struck on a Sunday morning. Dylan kept track of the days of the week and the dates and the months. He wrote every day in his journal, a ledger book Mad Jack gave him. Jack said it would do him good to write down what he learned. Dylan did, but not exactly what Jack meant. He recorded his astronomical observations, as Jack insisted. He wrote down Piegan words frequently, their customs constantly, but never details or techniques of trading. Occasionally he wrote prayers or meditations, thoughts he believed Father Quesnel would want him to have in such a place. Mostly he wrote verses, very crabbed and awkward compared to Byron’s, but songful with his loneliness.

He tried to finish a poem every Sunday. It was the civilized way to have days mean something, to lead toward or away from the Sabbath, not merely to be a seamless drift of sunrises and sunsets. As the Indians experienced days. As the beasts did. As even the plants did.

Besides, maybe if you acted honorably, your cod wouldn’t fall off.

So he knew it was a Sunday morning. Dylan’s custom was to walk down by the river, to sit, to stroll, to work on his poem. It did not matter how cold it was, or that he felt his rhymes forced and his meter thumping childishly. On Sundays he wrote his song of loneliness, unheard.

Courtney found him down on the riverbank, dangling his feet over the edge, staring at the ever-moving water. Ice hung along the edges of the river. It was March, the moon of sore eyes, and cold.

Dylan knew Courtney, the factor of the HBC post, from one call he and Mad Jack had paid, a visit to introduce Dylan properly. Courtney had laid out for them an exterior of welcome and an interior Dylan didn’t trust for a moment. He thought Courtney’s heart was cold as a hailstone.

Their host served them rum and some kind of cakes made from ground seeds. He told them how successful his autumn had been, how many plews he’d traded for, mentioning particular bands and their leaders with apparent affection. Later Jack said it was all lies, a way to make them think he’d won the loyalty of Indians he’d barely even met. The Indians would never go over to the Lords and Ladies, said Jack, because the Lords and Ladies knew them not and cared nothing for them.

Now Courtney sat horseback above Dylan, not bothering to dismount. He looked down with a bitter smile. “I’ve taken Jack,” he said. “He shouldn’t have gone to the same lodge every Saturday night for the same woman. Made it easy.”

“Taken him?” snapped Dylan. He stood up and faced Courtney.

“Arrested him. You don’t know it, Mr. Davies, but you’ve thrown your lot in with a bunch of murderers. Jack O’Malley killed one of our men last August, and I mean to see him dragged to Montreal in chains and made to pay for it.”

Dylan’s mind was bursting with questions. Who got killed? How? Did Jack really do it? Was he drunk? Why didn’t Courtney act until now? How serious was he? Dylan supposed he meant to gain advantage by acting just before the spring trading season. Dylan would be in charge, with no hope of replacement until summer. Mr. Courtney means to steal my trade, Dylan told himself. That’s what it’s all about, trade, and men’s lives to the devil. The bastard actually feels proud of himself.

He said to Courtney, “I’m confident Jack is no murderer. But I see I’m standing in front of a kidnapper.”

He wheeled and stalked off toward the fort. He felt cold trickles run down each side of his spine. Courtney had made him sweat on a freezing day. He listened for the clops of hooves. Maybe Courtney would try to grab him now. He wondered whether he should turn around and try to take Courtney hostage. He had his knives, as always, and Courtney was no Captain Chick—Dylan could take this arse. He paused. Looked back. Courtney was simply sitting his mount, watching him. What was on the bastard’s mind?

No, Dylan decided, he didn’t want a confrontation that would lead to killing. He wasn’t Mr. Stewart.

He would hold a war council with Bleu. Dylan strode on toward the fort. Feeling Courtney’s eyes on him, he hoped his gait looked like a swagger.

Dylan felt Bleu’s eyes on him like leeches, sucking at his confidence.

“Oui,”
said Bleu, “Jack, he kill Aubrey Morris. Kill him with fists. Very angry.”

“Why?”

A Gallic raising of eyebrows. “Just as you say.” A smug look of eye.

Dylan was frustrated with the interpreter, but he supposed it meant, Some things you can’t explain. “Was he drunk?”

“
Oui
, sure, drunk. Both drunk.”

Bleu regarded Dylan. The man’s mind was not on answering questions, it was on him, on the character of his new boss. Dylan wondered what the old interpreter was thinking.

“A woman.”

Bleu shrugged as if to say, Naturally a woman.

“Was it murder?”

Another shrug, a purse of mouth and a lift of eyebrow. “Who knows? Jack hate him. Aubrey handsome, ze women like him, Jack mad for zis woman… Everybody drunk.” He paused, studying Dylan. “Jack say he hit, Aubrey go over backward, head on stone.” Bleu tapped the back of his own head with his hand.

He regarded Dylan. “Wish the Druid was here,” Bleu said. “Help.”

“Was it murder?” Dylan insisted. He wondered all the while why he cared. This game was power, not morality.

“Tallyho,” said Bleu.

The Balmat, Dylan decided, he would make the Balmat his second-in-command. That was what everyone called him, the Balmat. Dylan thought Yves Balmat a bright and likable fellow, not at all a typical smith—young, quick-minded, fair-haired and fair-skinned, his head always covered with a gay bandanna, amiable, full of fun, self-assured. Only the size of his arms told his trade.

Yet Dylan had a need to feel Balmat out. He wasn’t sure of… something.

At the smithy Balmat was hammering on some piece of iron, as always. He stuck it in a barrel of water and steam hissed up. Dylan had heard Balmat beat an animated marching rhythm on his anvil, just for fun.

He watched without speaking while Balmat inspected his work. Balmat looked at him curiously and stuck another piece of iron in the fire.

What’s holding me back? Why don’t I speak?

“Monsieur Davies?”

He couldn’t tell where the call was coming from.

“Monsieur Davies?”

The gallery, up by the pickets that faced the river. One of the Lemieux brothers was pointing at something between the fort and the river. Now the Balmat was looking at him very curiously. “Let’s go!” Dylan yipped at him, and jerked his head at the wall facing the river. They ran toward Lemieux.

“Where is Bleu going, Mr. Davies?” whined Lemieux.

Up the ladder to the gallery.

First Dylan saw Bleu’s wives with the family belongings. They led two horses, heavily laden. Who would have thought Bleu owned so much? He rode magisterially in front. About a mile in that direction stood the Lords and Ladies’ post. Courtney.

Dylan squeezed down to keep his stomach from roiling. He spoke calmly. “Are those kegs of rum his?”

“Certainement non,”
said Lemieux. “No, he is not rich.”

Dylan looked hard at the Balmat. “Come on,” he snapped.

Bleu was nearly in the shadow of the HBC fort before they caught him. He didn’t bestir himself to get there first. Dylan imagined that he rode with a taunting deliberation.

Dylan and the Balmat galloped around in front of Bleu and reined up. The Balmat was nearly close enough to bump him, and the smith’s horse was antsy. The Balmat looked avid, ready to do something, anything. While they threw the saddles on, Dylan had told him about the kidnapping of Mad Jack.

“Where are you going?” Dylan demanded.

Bleu moved his hands expressively. “Many times Monsieur Courtney offer me job. I take.” He looked mockingly at Dylan. “No man can say me no.”

“You don’t think I can run the fort,” Dylan challenged him.

A shrug. “Excuse me.”

Dylan looked at the packhorses. Both of them wore company brands. “How much of our goods are you trying to steal?”

“Thank you,” said Bleu.

“How much?” demanded Dylan.

“Is not steal. Company owe me wage.”

It was more or less true. Dylan kept the books. The company owed Bleu wages for several months. But Dylan couldn’t remember how many goods Bleu had charged against those wages. More than Bleu had earned, he would bet.

The squaws led the packhorses up and sat their horses quietly, watching. Dylan guided his mount to where he could see the goods. The keg on one horse had NWC stamped on it. He would bet the other one did too. Dylan met Bleu’s eyes.

Then it rose in him.

He lifted his hand to his right-hand knife and glared at Bleu. The interpreter’s hand twitched toward his belt pistol and stopped. He had no chance to be quicker, and he’d watched Dylan practice. “Keep an eye on the bastard,” Dylan said to the Balmat.

Dylan rode forward, leaned out, and cut the squaw hitch that held the load on one horse. All the goods crashed to the ground. Then he did the same to the other horse.

He faced Bleu. “Get the kegs off the ground,” he said to Balmat without taking his eyes off Bleu. Balmat did. Dylan kept his right hand on the knife.

“Good-bye,” he said to Bleu. “If I find you owe more, I will take it in pelt—Bleu hide.” He could see Bleu wanted to grab his pistol and didn’t dare.

“Tallyho,” said Bleu. His wives got off their horses to pick their belongings up off the prairie and repack.

Dylan backed his mount away.

Like a king Bleu walked his horse away, leaving his wives to pack up.

Dylan kept his mount turned toward the HBC post. There, on the gallery, he could see someone watching. The man waved jauntily. Dylan would bet it was Courtney.

Dylan and the Balmat held war council in the office. Balmat immediately agreed that they would handle things themselves. No need for Captain Chick, the Balmat said nonchalantly. Dylan looked at his face hard. It was carefully composed innocence. So the Balmat had heard about the disaster with the Chickadee, and knew that Dylan would never ask him for help.

Well, hell, as long as the Balmat wanted to go it alone, Dylan didn’t care what else he thought. They would show sodding Courtney.

So Dylan and the Balmat got out the sketch of the plan of the HBC fort and studied it. They would bloody well rescue Mad Jack. Dylan felt elated, full of boyish enthusiasm. He was hardly bothered by not having any ideas yet.

Rap-rap.

The young men looked at each other across the sketch, skittish.

Rap-rap on the door.

“Who’s there?”

“Lemieux,” said a quaking voice. “Please, Monsieur Davies, may I… may I come in?”

Dylan opened the door uncertainly. Lemieux slouched there in front of him. He was an odd duck, always hunched, seeming to look at the world out of the corners of his eyes, somehow aslant and obliquely, with an obsequious smile that looked fearful and insincere. In all this he was the same as his brother, an identical twin. No one ever knew which was which, so everyone just called them Lemieux and didn’t worry about it. Dylan wondered if their wives cared which was which.

This was Ceran, though. Easy to tell. His twin Charles spoke no English.

Ceran Lemieux had three wives, Charles two, and Dylan wondered how such timorous men ever got any wives, much less took care of them. Dylan’s fantasy was that the women took the Lemieuxes’ larder and gave them back other men’s children.

“Please, monsieur, are you…?” He annoyed Dylan by peering around him into the room. When he saw the Balmat and the desk, he gave a reassured smile. “Oh, monsieur, I believe I can help. You have ze problem wiz Mad Jack… he is kidnapped, no? Bleu, he is gone over to the other side, no? Crazy problems, big… nuisance, no?” He squiggled his knees irksomely, and nodded in a way that looked like bowing.

“Pardon, monsieur,” he said, and slick as an eel slipped by. Before Dylan could move, the man had the sketch in his hands. “This plan, I draw it. You see—C.L.,
c’est moi
, Ceran Lemieux, it is me.” He pointed to initials in the bottom right-hand corner.

True enough, saw Dylan, the drawing was signed C.L.

“I have the remember for the buildings, windows, doors, ways between, all such.” He tapped his head with a forefinger. “Monsieur Stewart, he ask me draw, give two Witney blankets.”

It looked like a good sketch. If two blankets was all the payment, Lemieux had been taken advantage of. He looked like a man who lived to be taken advantage of.

Dylan looked at the Balmat questioningly. “Let him help,” said the Balmat. “He’s a shrewd fellow.” Which only made Dylan wonder what he was not mentioning.

Dylan looked at Lemieux. When you had a man like this for a partner, you never knew what you had. “All right,” he said, “where will they keep Jack?”

Well, Lemieux asserted in his sidewise manner, the Lords and Ladies had Jack in one of two places. In the stink hole, or in the building
rouge
, where they lodged gentleman visitors. It was called
rouge
because the pickets along the adjoining palisade were painted red, before they ran out of paint.

Lemieux had gone over the other structures with them one by one with elaborate explanations of what was there and why there was no place for Jack, or it would be an insult to a man such as Jack or… In Gallic fashion he ran out of words and used his shoulders and eyebrows. He didn’t explain why certain rooms would be an insult to Jack and the stink hole would not. It was the fort privy. In a small partition against a side wall, they shackled men who misbehaved. They used a padlocked door to give them food and water. Most days.

Before Dylan could ask why Courtney wouldn’t want to insult Jack, Lemieux said in a definitive way, “I send my wife find out.”

Dylan looked at the Balmat. He was wondering, So why doesn’t the fellow say “one of my three wives”?

“He always says wife, like there was one,” Balmat put in, speaking normally.

Pretending Balmat spoke in a whisper he didn’t hear, Lemieux gave a triumphant smile. “My wife, the gentlemen of Hudson’s Bay not know her from more Indun, think she come trade. I ask her buy…
needle
,” he said, as though the thought of a needle was a major break-through.