Cheyenne Winter (32 page)

Raffin laughed shortly.

White Wolf turned to Raffin. “You know these men?”

“Ah,
oui,”
Raffin said, lapsing into French. “In the mountains.”

The chief said nothing for a moment, as was the way of the Tsistsista. Then he addressed Little Whirlwind. “Monsieur Raffin has heard that you and Badleg were coming to winter with us. He came this very day to tell me that those he is with, American Fur, will bring a trading outfit of their own to our village. He tells me they will offer us twice as much for a robe as Badleg. No matter what Badleg offers — they will double it. And the price of their trade goods will be exactly Badleg’s price. This he told me before Sun vanished. And I told him, yes, that is tempting and my People would benefit — for a winter. But it would but Badleg out of the trading business. And then American Fur would have no rivals and would make its prices high again. I told him that, and I also said that Badleg is an adopted son of this village, one of our People by ceremony.”

Raffin followed all that, the gleam never leaving his restless eyes. “I Know when I am defeated,” he said, but the way he said it made her wonder. A foreboding filled her. Would Brokenleg trade all winter only to lose his robes and horses again — to that scheming treacherous Raffin?

“You took our robes and horses from us before,” she said. White Wolf raised his hand. “We will not hear such things,” he said sharply.

“The Arapaho dogs. He set the Arapaho on us.”

“Little Whirlwind. You have not lost your contempt of other Peoples,” said White Wolf. “Go now to visit your own lodge. I hear the People stirring anyway.”

Dismissed. She pulled her capote back on and crawled into the winter night just as her man and the long string of laden pack animals wended through the village, illumined by the amber glow of the warm lodges. Something joyous welled up in her. All her dreams had become real. Here she was in her own village, and here was her man bringing treasures to the People — fine rifles, blankets, axes, kettles, awls  . . . everything the People could want for their comfort and safety. She looked for her sisters and didn’t see them. They’d gone to the lodge of her parents.

Brokenleg steered the great procession of horses straight toward the chief ’s lodge for the welcoming, even as blanket-clad Tsistsista People poured from the warm lodges to see this great even. “Hyar, Dust Devil,” he called, cheerily as he reined up. Breath plumed from his mouth and the horse’s nostrils in the deepening cold. She gathered her own pony and held its reins, postponing the moment when she would greet her parents because everything she was witnessing was so grand, and she was the sits-beside-him woman of this great trader. She felt the envious gaze of all the women in the village upon her.

She turned and discovered White Wolf emerging from the lodge, grasping a thick blanket tightly about him. And Raffin followed. They, too, would not miss such a sight.

Brokenleg staggered to the ground. He could never dismount the way others could because that stiffened leg prevented it. But he landed and stomped as he always did while Spoon and Constable herded the neighing pack animals into the open area before the chief ’s lodge. She caught the sour scent of cottonwood smoke on the air, and the scent of cooking — the meat of
Pte,
the sacred buffalo. The People hand found many this winter.

“Har, Chief White Wolf. I come. I got me an outfit.” He stopped suddenly, staring at the bearded white man standing beside the chief. “Unless you got other plans,” he added, tersely.

Her man had forgotten to speak in the tongue of the People, but White Wolf didn’t seem to mind.

“Son of the People, you are welcome. We will trade when Sun returns. We all welcome you to our fires. Our daughter of the village tells us that a lodge would be welcome and I have arranged it. If you need another I will arrange it. Winter Man bites at our cheeks and fingers and yours also. Let the People welcome you. Let the sons of the village help you unload your ponies, and the daughters of the village gather firewood and bring you buffalo tongue. Then, when you are settled, and before the horned moon rises, come smoke the sacred pipe and we will talk of things in council, with my headmen.”

“I got me a whole load, chief. Rifles and ball and powder; kettles and axes and knives and blankets  . . . ”

“In the morning we will begin,” White Wolf said. He turned to Little Whirlwind. “My daughter, take your man to the lodge of Makes the Doe Come, and bring the widow here.”

She did as she was bid, leading her man down village streets through the concentric circles of glowing lodges, feeling the magic and goodness of this place of the People. The last of the daylight purpled the sky, silhouetting the forest of black lodge-poles above her. Her village was more beautiful in dusk than even the streets of St. Louis, where lanterns cast their amber glow from glassed windows.

A great crowd of the People followed, chattering and whispering and eyeing the packs on the horses, wondering what magic and medicine lay within each. And among them she spotted Raffin, striding wolfishly along, his brown eyes missing nothing. Fitzhugh spotted him, too, and watched coldly, the coldness in his eye something she had rarely seen in him.

They arrived at the lodge of Makes the Doe Come, and the young woman awaited them joyously. Her man had died a great death stealing horses from the Blackfeet dogs, and left her an eighteen-skin lodge and many good things. Soon she would be married, but she chose to grieve for a few moons more.

“I am honored to offer my lodge to the Son of our People,” she murmured shyly.

Fitzhugh thanked her and immediately presented her with some gifts — an awl and a knife and some red ribbon he’d stuck in his elk-skin coat. Then the widow, carrying a small bundle, hastened off to the comfort of the lodge of her chief.

Magically, many hands slid the heavy packs off horses and mules and led them off to the village herd where they’d make a good living gnawing at cottonwood brush and pawing up grass from under the thin shell of snow. Smiling women brought cooked tongue, the smell of it dizzy on the frosty air. Others carried whole bundles of good dry squaw wood. Pretty girls wrapped in blankets smiled at Spoon and Constable, and Little Whirlwind wished she could flirt, too. Maybe she would. Maybe she’d flirt with Raffin a little, just to make Brokenleg more ardent in the robes. She laughed softly.

“Hyar now, it beats Fitzhugh’s Post,” said Abner Spoon.

“I ain’t used to gittin’ waited on hand and foot,” said Zach.

A mountain of loaded packs rose before the lodge but she didn’t worry about their safety. Not the smallest thing belonging to a guest of the village was ever taken  . . . But she saw Raffin studying that heap; the brightness of his eyes, and she worried.

She tugged at her man’s sleeve. “I think you should put the packs inside — if they’ll fit,” she said. He paused, seeing the solemnity of her face and the reason for it standing nearby, grinning.

He pulled loose of her and limped on over to Raffin until he stood before the Creole. The excited crowd quieted. “Raffin,” Brokenleg said in English. “This time, we’re going to settle some business.”

“No!” cried Little Whirlwind.

Her man turned to her, puzzled by her sharpness, and then she saw understanding in his eyes. He had not yet smoked the pipe with Chief White Wolf. He could not get into a murderous fight, or even some shouting, without disturbing the peace of this village. It would scandalize the Tsistsista and they might not trade with him.

Not now. Some other time.

He turned to Raffin. “We’ll settle it. You and me, we’re going to settle some scores. You’re workin’ for Chouteau, tryin’ to bust up my business. You put them ’Rapaho on me last summer. You came up on
The Trapper
a ways. Long enough to slide them kegs into our goods and food with Sire’s manifest. Lots o’ passengers then, lower river. Easy to keep outa my sight. You’re workin’ direct for Cadet, maybe Hervey, and the rest of them out at the posts don’t know nothin’. But I’m tellin’ you, Raffin. You ain’t workin’ any more. You touch this outfit and I’ll come after you. And so will these folk that want to trade. You touch our robes and I’ll come after you. You touch Little Whirlwind and you won’t live to tell it in the grog shops at St. Louis. I can’t make you leave this hyar village — it ain’t mine to make you. But I’ll be watchin’ and waitin’.”

“Ah, sad things happen, do they not, Stiffleg? You get caught with spirits and blame me! The Arapaho strike, and you blame me! Sad things. Maybe you’ll lose your whole outfit here — and blame me! Or your wife — and blame me!” Raffin laughed suddenly, a raucous, defiant laughter that announced that it was all a grand joke.

The people of the village could not follow the English but Little Whirlwind knew they understood most of it anyway, and she worried about the scandal. And Raffin’s threats. She wondered whether her man, or Raffin, would leave her village alive.

Raul Raffin floated around the trading lodge like a gray owl, missing nothing. Brokenleg wondered how the man could endure the cold. He had the feeling Raffin recorded each transaction, as if his brain was the company ledger. But Brokenleg didn’t have time to worry it. The trade went better than he had imagined and he didn’t have a spare moment. The Cheyenne had an endless supply of robes and were hauling away everything he’d brought.

Patiently they queued to enter the trading lodge, bringing soft-tanned buffalo robes with them and leaving with Leman rifles, powder and shot, fine Witney blankets, knives, kettles, hatchets, or yards of trade cloth.

There wasn’t room in the lodge for the three tons of trade goods brought from Fitzhugh’s Post plus the growing pile of traded robes, plus a small display area, and room for Spoon and Constable to live, and room for one Cheyenne at a time to squat near the door and bargain. Brokenleg pitched his little tents and stored traded robes in them. He left the parfleches full of trade goods outside. But when a snowstorm dumped a foot and a half of soft powder on the village and the following chinook turned everything around his lodge into a mire, he knew he would need more shelter.

He traded a Leman rifle and sixty loads to a young widower for a good lodge, seventeen hides, and pitched it beside his trading lodge. After that he had room not only for the parfleches and panniers he’d packed, but for some robes which he stowed in a great circle inside, back from the smoke hole above. The new lodge had cost plenty — the rifle and loads had been worth twenty-five robes or so — but he had the warehouse he needed and room to trade and display goods in the other lodge.

December slid by, and with it Christmas. But he’d plumb forgotten about Christmas, and all that seemed strange to him anyway, like some distant echo from a forgotten past. They entered what these people called
Ok sey e shi his,
Hoop and Stick Game Moon, or January. They called February the Big Hoop and Stick Game Moon, and he didn’t know why. But he knew it’d turned bitter cold. Arctic aid eddied out of the north, biting the cheeks and fingers of anyone who dared step outside. Trading slowed. It was better to huddle around the lodge fires.

Still, the mountain of pungent robes grew in his warehouse lodge, and his trading outfit dwindled. He eyed the dark piles of robes and wondered whether his pack animals could carry them all back, or whether he’d have to rig travois. And he worried about Raffin. The man hung around the trading lodge, boldly watching, counting, poking his head into the warehouse lodge, and laughing every time Fitzhugh caught him. Raffin was waiting for something; waiting for trading to end. Waiting to pounce when Fitzhugh left the village with all his robes.

The village elders and dog soldiers watched Raffin, too, aware that this man from the other company might try to disturb the trade which benefited them so much. The whole village sported new blankets, new trade-cloth shirts, gleaming rifles, and shining knives. But Raffin did nothing — at least as far as Fitzhugh could tell. Each day, Brokenleg and Abner or Zach went out to check the packhorses and cut cottonwood limbs for them to gnaw on. The coats on all the village stock as well as his had grown so shaggy he could scarcely tell one from another except for his mules and a few that he could recognize other ways. It worried him. Raffin would know that, and might be pilfering the pack animals one by one.

“You reckon we got ’em all?” he asked Abner one day.

“Damned if I know. I don’t even know how all them Cheyenne can tell one from another, wearin’ coats like that.”

“The village boys are watchin’. Leastwise by daylight. I don’t see much night-herdin’ this kind o’ weather.”

“Them injuns, they don’t raid none in January unless one or another’s got a big mad goin’. They sit around keepin’ warm and playin’ the stick game and makin’ little Cheyennes all night and gossipin’ and tellin’ tall tales.”

Brokenleg sighed. “That’s why I don’t like it. Raffin, he could walk off with horses now — nothing but a boy or two keepin’ an eye on them.”

“He’s jist bidin’ his time, Brokenleg. He ain’t gonna touch us hyar in the village. Git him into trouble with the headmen so bad he’d never git out of it. Them Cheyenne, they’re mean when they wanta be. You ever seen one of them dried-up finger necklaces they wear, or dried-up ear necklaces?”

“Yup. It could be my ears if they took a notion.” During the long bitter stretches when village life died, Fitzhugh worried a lot of things around in his mind. Like those license hearings down to St. Louis. By now, he might be a partner in a dead outfit. Brokenleg had busted his brain trying to find some way to prove Raffin planted those casks, but he knew in his gut that getting a confession out of Raffin that would save the Rocky Mountain Company was impossible. Brokenleg had brought a small ceramic jug of pure ardent spirits along, and it lay in the bottom of a parfleche like gold. He’d thought to use it on Raffin to loosen his tongue, but gave up on that. Brokenleg knew his own tongue would loosen first. A drunken admission wouldn’t help. And anyway, that little jug, meager enough for a long winter, was hoarded treasure that Brokenleg didn’t intend to share with anyone, not even Abner and Zach. Which reminded him, he was getting plumb dry.