Centennial (34 page)

The Virginian, flushed by his victory over the husband, did not intend sharing the table with his squaw, so he said firmly, “This is for Americans. We don’t allow Indians here,” and Clay Basket moved dutifully away. McKeag, who was watching mutely from his own place, grew apprehensive, but still Pasquinel did nothing.

Jacques, however, did not intend coming so close to food without getting any and he pushed his way to the table. The Virginian shoved him off, snapping at him, “No breeds here. Out! Out!”

In a flash, Pasquinel’s knife was loosed and with one terrifying backhand sweep he gave the Virginian a near-mortal gash across the neck. The sight of blood inflamed the others, and they leaped at Pasquinel. In so doing, Clay Basket was knocked down. McKeag, when he saw her fall, reacted automatically, leaping into the brawl with his knife. Someone from the fort fired a pistol and soldiers rushed in to halt the riot. Pasquinel and McKeag retreated methodically, forming a bastion behind which Clay Basket and the boys gathered. In this way they left the mess hall.

Pasquinel had a slight cut across his chest. McKeag had a hand wound, which was easily stanched, and Clay Basket was unhurt, but in spite of this she gave a scream of pain, for she saw that Jacques had suffered a bleeding gash across the right side of his face. Some flashing knife, intended for his mother had caught him. One inch lower and his throat would have been severed.

The child made no outcry. Putting his hand to the cut, he saw the blood and pressed his fingers against the wound to halt it. His eyes kept moving, imprinting the scene indelibly upon his angry brain: the lights outside the room; the soldiers running about; the cut across his father’s chest; and especially his mother’s anxiety. He was seven years old that night, and he would remember everything.

In the morning the agent visited the lodge where Pasquinel was staying and said, “You’d better head north.”

“The others started it,” Pasquinel said.

“I’m sure of that,” Major Sibley said. “But it’s too risky ... having you here now.”

Pasquinel felt no necessity to thank McKeag for his assistance in the brawl. It was taken for granted that each would support the other, and that kind of partnership required no periodic review. McKeag was distressed, however, when Pasquinel casually announced, “You take Clay Basket and the boys back to the buttes. I’ll take the pelts down to Saint Louis.” McKeag argued that now was not the time to desert the Indian family, since they were already disturbed by affairs at the fort, but Pasquinel brushed such objections aside: “I’d like to see Lise and the boy.” And it was that summer, after an absence of several years, that he fathered his daughter Lisette.

During Pasquinel’s happy stay in Saint Louis, his other family and McKeag paddled west in a canoe burdened with contention. Clay Basket enjoyed being with McKeag and loved anew this quiet, gentle man, but he was mortally afraid of her, proscribed as she was by being the wife of his partner. Young Jacques was abominable, despising each moment of a trip from which his father was missing; he sensed the constraint that existed between his mother and McKeag, and suspected that something was wrong between McKeag and his father. He moved in a world of insecurity and hate, and tried to punish his younger brother for it, but chubby-cheeked Marcel simply laughed at his tormenting.

By the time the little party left the Pawnee village on their journey home, a kind of truce had been arranged between McKeag and Jacques. The travelers would probably have reached Beaver Creek without incident, except that a band of Kiowa, invading from a remote area to the south where guns were not yet common, came to trade with the Pawnee for rifles. In the village was an agent for an English fur company, and he saw the Kiowa as a means to rid himself of troublesome competition, so he offered them two badly worn rifles and a bottle of cheap whiskey if they would pursue McKeag’s unprotected group and destroy it. The Kiowa, seeing a chance to obtain two children for their tribe, set out in eager pursuit.

They overtook the canoe at a barren spot in the river. McKeag and Clay Basket were already in trouble, for there was not enough water for paddling, and they looked with misgiving as the strangers approached. Prudently McKeag laid out his armament as Pasquinel had taught, hauled the canoe against a bank and reminded Clay Basket how to load the two guns.

The Kiowa halted a short distance away and launched an arch of arrows, which accomplished nothing. McKeag waited for them to draw closer, and saw that there were six in the party. His first rifle shot would be crucial. Taking careful aim, he held his breath as the warriors crept closer, then fired almost point-blank at the leader, killing him with much display of blood. As the others drew back, McKeag took from Clay Basket his second gun and killed a horse. Its rider fell and became tangled in the reins, and with his first gun reloaded, McKeag could have killed him, but he wisely contented himself with hitting the man in the legs. There was much shouting and confusion, and after a while the Kiowa withdrew. They had the beads and the whiskey; they had tried to kill the trader but that could wait till another day. Placing their wounded comrade on the horse of the dead warrior, they rode south.

It was not until they were out of sight that Jacques displayed the only casualty. A Kiowa arrow, launched at random, had come down in a sweeping arc to strike him in the hand, severing the tip of his little finger. Clay Basket found the arrowhead, sharper than a knife, and McKeag bored a small hole through the shank so that Jacques could wear it about his neck.

A half-breed child only seven years old, he had already been scarred twice, once by the knife of a white man, once by the flint of an Indian.

Pasquinel had such a good time in Saint Louis that he prolonged his visit. Lise surprised him with the information that she had sold the stone house on Rue des Granges in order to build a substantial brick house atop the hill, and when Pasquinel protested that no one would want to climb so high for a family visit, she assured him, “Soon all the interesting families will live up here. The Presbyterians are even building their church on this level.”

Life with Lise was more enjoyable than he had remembered, and sometimes he wondered why he ever deserted so pleasant a place to endure privation on the prairie. Hermann Bockweiss was doing well with his silver, but Pasquinel noticed that the prudent German was still using his profits to acquire pieces of real estate whose value would grow if the town expanded. It was this possibility that Bockweiss had in mind when he took his son-in-law aside and said, “Why not stay here permanently? You’re getting older. Your son needs you.”

Pasquinel replied that his job was in the mountains trading for pelts. “No,” Bockweiss reasoned, “you have a partner for that. Leave the trapping for him.”

Pasquinel gave this idea serious consideration, because it had logic behind it. McKeag with his languages was now the expert trader, and soon young Jacques would be old enough to help. Clay Basket? It didn’t matter much about her. Any Indian squaw who had learned to live with one white trader could easily catch hold of another, and as a matter of fact, one of these days McKeag would be needing a wife.

He had every reason to stay in Saint Louis. But in the end he decided against it. In December he was back in his canoe heading west, and when he reached Rattlesnake Buttes the customary emotional reconciliation took place and even little Jacques was happy again.

McKeag marveled at the ease with which Pasquinel switched from one of his families to the other and his lack of compunction about doing so. But when McKeag compared Pasquinel with other traders who also kept Indian wives, he had to admit that Pasquinel handled this problem with far more grace than any of them. The others always deprived one of their families, but not Pasquinel; he treated both equally. He loved Lise and was proud of the way she ran his house, and after his initial disappointment over the gold, he had come to accept Clay Basket as the superior woman she was. He strove to be a good father, and showed equal affection for his half-breed children and his white.

It was during a visit to his Saint Louis family in the autumn of 1817 that he made a crucial decision. Observing that Bockweiss had developed a large and profitable market in New Orleans and the smaller settlements along the Mississippi for his major silver pieces, he told his father-in-law, “It’s a waste of your time to keep on making trinkets for the Indians.”

“True,” the German agreed. “But where else would you get them?”

“I don’t need them any more. I’m through with trading. Going to trap my own beaver.”

Bockweiss frowned, for he had followed the history of other coureurs who had tried to by-pass the Indians and trap directly. They all ended with arrows through their hearts. “The Indians will fight you,” he warned.

Pasquinel shrugged. “Traders also get killed,” he said, recalling his own narrow escapes.

Bockweiss started to argue this point, but when he saw Pasquinel’s obstinate determination, he halted. “How many traps will you need?” he asked.

“For daily use in the rivers, fourteen. For spares, six.”

“I’ll buy them,” Bockweiss said, and with the traps taking the place of trade goods, Pasquinel set forth upon the adventure that would lure him and his Indian family deep into the Rockies. When he reached McKeag and Clay Basket he told them, “No more trade goods. No more trapping. We’ll get our own beaver.”

“What will the Indians do?” McKeag asked cautiously.

“They’ll fight us,” Pasquinel said. “They’ll probably kill us. But we might as well die rich.”

“Do you know how to trap?” McKeag asked.

“I know this,” and he showed McKeag and his sons a small bottle of castoreum. Early next morning he gave a demonstration of the trapping process.

“Set your traps about four inches under the surface of the water. Fasten one end of the chain to the trap, the other to a stick of dead wood. It must be dead or the beaver will stop there to eat. Then jab another dead stick into the bank so that its end hangs over the hidden trap. And on the end of this stick is where you put your castoreum. Like this. No beaver can come down this stream and smell that without coming over here to investigate. To reach it, he has to plant his feet right in your trap. Slam! He dives for deep water and the weight of the chain drowns him. You come by next day, one beaver.”

In January, February and March, when trapping was impossible, Pasquinel spent his time studying dams, calculating where the hibernating animals would appear when thaws came. While he was so occupied, McKeag took responsibility for feeding the camp, and with his thrifty approach, reckoned a day lost if he fired bullets without bringing down game. Turkey, antelope, buffalo calf, young deer—they ate well. It was also his job to cure hides; he made two good buffalo robes for their beds. To be prepared when Pasquinel started bringing in beaver, he spent much time in winter looking for aspen saplings, which he cut and bent into circles about four feet across, lashing the ends with elk sinew so as to form rigid frames.

McKeag became an expert in skinning beaver: a swift cut from neck to anus plus four quick cuts about the feet, and he had the skin off. With deer sinews attached to a long bone needle, he sewed the moist skin to the frame, using big looping stitches. At times their camp would have thirty skins hung to dry at one time.

McKeag also built the press, a most essential item, since the transport of two hundred pelts in loose form would have been impossible; they had to be compacted. Using stout logs, he constructed a rectangular box with vertical slits at each end. Into this box the sun-cured beaver skins were placed, and when the pile had risen, a long, heavy pole was dropped into the slits so that it rested on the pelts. McKeag now chained the thick end of the pole to stakes sunk in the ground; then he and Pasquinel, with loud exhortations and grunting, swung themselves upon the upraised free end, dragging it slowly down to earth. This compressed the skins into a tight and manageable bundle, but the contraption was more than utilitarian. It was great fun, McKeag thought, to be swinging aloft in the air with his partner, straining together in their joint enterprise and hearing him call, “Goddamnit, you skinny Scotchman! Pull your weight!” And both of them sweating and shouting and straining to make the free end of the pole touch ground. It was the best part of trapping.

The press could accommodate about eighty pelts, and when these were hammered into a bale, McKeag enclosed them in moist deerskin while Pasquinel sewed the seams. Such a bale was worth more than six hundred dollars and weighed about a hundred pounds, hard as rock and watertight.

They were good trappers, and with the help of the two boys they put together six bales that first year. They experienced no trouble with the Sioux; in fact, the only difficulty they encountered was with the Arapaho, and not because they were hostile, but because they were too friendly.

In the winter of 1818 Pasquinel decided to hole up at Beaver Creek, and using such logs as he could find along the Platte, build a snug sod hut, with logs at each corner and framing the door. He judged correctly that this would be a cold winter, so he directed his sons to bring in branches to line one whole side of the hut. Things looked good until the Arapaho arrived.

On a cold day in January, Chief Large Goose appeared at the door and said, “Cold. Cold. I stay here.”

“Wait!” McKeag protested, trying to bar the door.

“Warm. I stay here.”

“You can’t do this!” McKeag bellowed. He sent Marcel to fetch his mother.

“I stay,” Large Goose said, muscling his way inside. “I am her uncle.” Nothing McKeag could do dislodged this large Arapaho. The hut belonged to Clay Basket; but he was her uncle, so it belonged to him, too.

When the other Arapaho saw how comfortable Large Goose was finding his niece’s hut, another uncle decided to join them: “I am Red Buffalo. Her uncle.” And he pitched his robes on the floor beside Marcel’s bed.