Rendezvous (16 page)

Buffalo stew bubbled in an iron pot, and he helped himself with a thick iron ladle. There had never been many of the shaggy beasts on this side of the mountains, and this rendezvous had doomed the last of them. But the Cache Valley abounded in deer and elk and antelope, and the mountaineers would wallow in fat meat.

So far, the rendezvous had been a quiet affair. When Ashley's pack train trotted in two days earlier, the trappers lined up at Ashley's tent store and bought jugs and cups of trade whiskey to allay a year-long thirst. The next days were devoted to serious drinking and gambling, usually euchre or monte, using greasy old cards that had survived for years in someone's kit. But they were really waiting for the Shoshones and Crows to arrive so they could begin the contests, the games, the wrestling, shooting, brawling, and other revels, such as the debauchery and whoring that took place largely at night. This was Snake country, and these were friendly Injuns who cheerfully lent or sold their comely daughters and wives to any trapper with a bit of foofaraw. That's when the midsummer's saturnalia would really begin.

Almost as if to answer his thoughts, Smith saw a stirring among the trappers. Someone came whooping in with news, and in minutes the word was bruited through the disorderly camp: the Snakes would be arriving in an hour or two. Bearded, buckskinned men, with visions of fair and dusky maidens dancing in their heads, laughed and howled and bayed at the sun. Tonight the party would begin.

But in his starchy way, Smith turned his thoughts elsewhere. The Shoshones would have furs to trade at Ashley's big store-tent, and Ashley would return to St. Louis with prime peltries—buffalo, elk, deer, otter, fox, as well as beaver—all handsomely tanned and valuable in the East. Next year, Ashley's store would be the Smith, Jackson, and Sublette store, and his own company would be dealing with tribesmen for those pelts, all for a fat profit. Smith reminded himself to invite the Crows and Bannacks and other tribes to come next summer and bring all the pelts they could produce. They all had furs to trade, and he intended to buy them. The Indian trade was especially profitable because they wanted so little for their furs—a little trade whiskey, a small hand mirror, a cup of sugar, a few lead balls, a few ounces of powder, some fishhooks, some calico, ribbons, and blankets.

By common consent the negotiations were adjourned that afternoon. The arrival of the Snakes was not a sight to be missed. They would be wearing their festival finery; their nubile honey-tinted maidens would be gauded out and painted; their bronze young men would be wearing their war honors, carrying their shields and lances, riding prized horses. Their ponies, many of them the spotted Appaloosa gotten from the Nez Perce, would be ribboned and painted.

Smith guessed there would be a few white men among them, probably Hudson's Bay booshways. The powerful HBC had fought the invasion of their turf by free trappers and now kept a baleful eye on the fiesty Yanks. Worse, the HBC had lost many of its trappers to the Ashley interests, and might be looking for ways to cause trouble. The Yanks paid a trapper good money for pelts instead of giving him a skimpy salary. An industrious trapper could earn several times more as a free entrepreneur than as an engagé, as the French-Canadians called them, and stay out of debt if he chose to.

“Well, Diah, now we'll see how the stick floats,” said Bill Sublette.

“We'll make them welcome. Give their headmen some powder and galena. I want them to know that the partnership will be running the store next summer,” Smith replied, his mind never far from business.

“I'll pass out some vermilion to cement relations,” Sublette said. “I know most of their headmen.”

“It'll pay off,” said Davey Jackson. “I reckon we'll do better than Ashley and Henry, if only because we've got the experience under our belts. We've a notion what to do and not to do.”

That was how they all reckoned it, Smith thought. He himself had gotten five thousand dollars out of his brief junior partnership with Ashley, and was plowing it all back into the new company. Where else in the United States could a man make so much in a year? A few years like that and he could return to Ohio, marry, and live in comfort the rest of his life.

The thought made him itchy. Maybe he would not enjoy life in Ohio's Western Reserve, where the westering New England Smiths had finally settled after stops in upstate New York and Pennsylvania. Return? Not after he had heard the call of the wild. The wilderness was a temptation, not only to his flesh but also his soul and his pride. It was something to pray about, this demon in him. He knew he should return to civilization and settle down and become a deacon in his church.

He discerned a great stirring on the northern horizon. Trappers whooped and ran for their mountain rifles, anticipating what would come. Gabe Bridger grinned. Tom Fitzpatrick and the rascal Jim Beckwourth slid caps onto the nipples of their rifles while Black Harris and Louis Vasquez waited patiently, a faint smile on their weathered chestnut faces.

The Shoshones raced in, their warriors kicking lathered horses straight toward the camp, lances lowered, bows drawn, the whole lot howling like wolves. It was enough to terrify a pork-eater, as pilgrims were called. But Smith watched laconically, enjoying the fun as much as anyone else. On they came, screeching blood-freezing taunts, like an army from hell. Rifles popped, the balls puncturing the sky, as the Snakes swept into the encampment.

“It's a sight,” Ashley said, standing beside Smith. “Makes a man want to reach for his piece and throw up a breastwork.”

Smith nodded. The Snake warriors were curvetting their ponies, counting mock coup, and showing off like military cadets on a lark. Right behind them the main body of Shoshones walked in, chiefs and shamans, squaws overseeing the ponies that dragged the lodges, all gauded in bright trade cloth, blue and red and green, with horn bonnets and fringed leggins. What a sight!

But what caught Smith's eye was the lone white man, no doubt an HBC agent spying on the opposition. Ermatinger maybe, or the legendary Peter Skene Ogden, a man as shrewd and forceful as any Yank trapper, and then some. But this one didn't seem familiar. He was an odd duck, thick as a plow horse, wearing a beaver topper and a buckskin shirt, and riding a brown palouse. The young man examined Smith and the other trappers with a gaze that had palpable force behind it, a gaze that drilled meaning out of everything he saw.

What struck Smith the most was the man's somberness. Unlike the Shoshones, he was all business. The more Smith watched, the more curious he became about the stranger. Whoever the fellow was, he had made his mark simply with his raking examination of the whole rendezvous. Well, Smith thought, he would know the man's name soon enough, and probably his business as well.

The Shoshones chose a river site east of the rendezvous for their own, and the squaws set to work raising lodges and unloading the innumerable travois. Trappers crowded about them, eyeing the maidens with hungry gazes, eager for the great July debauch to begin. This night many a trapper would squander much of his year's income, the product of long, lonely hours wading icy streams and skinning beaver and sleeping on cold ground.

Smith hiked toward the new man, who was watching silently, his gaze piercing and cautious, as if he were fleeing a past or had perceived trouble here. The man was stocky and powerful, his face dominated by an enormous nose that had probably been broken more than once. The new man squinted at this strange world from blue eyes that revealed nothing of his mood or motive. He seemed ill-equipped, and had only a bow and quiver for weapons. But it wasn't his ragged exterior that intrigued Smith. This man radiated determination and will.

The man seemed to come to some decision, dismounted, and headed for Smith and Ashley in a strange, rolling gait, leading his brown horse. “Are you Yanks?” he asked in booming voice.

“Americans, yes, and you?”

“I'm a man without a country. I've been looking for you to get some information. How far is it to Boston?”

“Boston? Boston?” Smith stared.

“Boston, mate. I'm on my way to Boston.”

“Why, she's just over them hills hyar,” said Bridger. “Maybe a two-day hike. Just foller the turnpike.”

“I was told it was a lot farther. I'll rest my horse for a few days and then head east. Hope you can tell me a little about it. It's Boston I'm heading for, and I need to make my way. If I can be of service for a bit of food, I'd welcome it.”

Trappers crowded around the man. “What's your handle, friend?” asked Black Harris.

The man hesitated. Smith knew the signs. This man was a fugitive. “Handle? Ah, a name, yes. Skye, sir. Mister Skye. Call me that. Barnaby's the Christian name.”

“You from England?”

The man nodded.

“This pilgrim's looking for Boston,” said Bridger to the rest. “I told him straight, it'd be two, three days if the pikes ain't muddy.”

“Yes, that'd do it,” said Broken Hand Fitzpatrick.

The rest nodded solemnly.

“You have to be careful of buffler in Boston,” Beckwourth said. “There's a city law against making meat on the streets. Other than that, Boston's just the place.”

“Skye,” said Smith, “why are you going to Boston?”

“It's Mister Skye, sir. That's how I want it.”

“Well, then, Mister Skye, you might enlighten us.”

“There's a university in Cambridge, near Boston, and I'm going there to finish my schooling, sir. I didn't catch your name, but I take it you're in charge here.”

“No one's in charge, Mister Skye. These are free trappers, not employees. But yes, I'm a partner in the fur company.”

“This fellow's going to Boston,” yelled Black Harris.

“You don't say,” said Louis Vasquez. “Boston, is it?”

Skye nodded. “Boston, sir. It seems to be less far than I thought.”

“Just head east, and before you know it, you'll be matriculating,” said Davey Jackson.

“I'm much obliged to you, sir,” the Englishman said. “Is there a way a man could trade some labor for some food?”

“Nope, there plumb ain't,” Sublette said.

Skye looked crestfallen. “Will labor buy me a rifle, or anything at all?”

“Go eat, man,” Smith urged. “They're really telling you no man starves here, and no American trapper ever turns away a hungry man in the mountains.”

“I have much to learn,” said Skye. “Thank you.”

“You just take your fill from that kettle, and then I want to talk with you, Mister Skye.”

“Show 'im how to raise Boston,” Bridger said.

Chapter 21

Smith watched while the Englishman downed a helping of buffalo stew, and another. The man was hungry, and that hunger ran deep. After that, Smith nodded Skye into the cool lodge and waited for the man to settle comfortably on the ground.

An Englishman asking his way to Harvard College certainly aroused Smith's curiosity. Especially one who probably was a fugitive.

“Mister Skye, those gents were funning you. It's their way. Boston is most of a continent away. I hardly know the distance, but it must be nearly three thousand miles. You'd hike over several ranges of mountains, cross the Continental Divide, head into dry plains that run six or eight hundred miles, reach the green basin of the Mississippi, climb eastern mountains, and arrive eventually on the Atlantic Coast.”

Skye nodded. “That's what Mr. Ogden told me. I'm a seaman, and don't know the land, especially here. I started from Fort Vancouver and walked for three months. I thought I'd come a long way.”

“The Hudson's Bay post,” Smith said, carefully.

Skye stared out upon the sunny grasslands. “Are you connected with HBC, Mr. Smith?”

“No, we're all Americans here. They're our rivals. We've lured some free trappers away from them and they don't like it. Free trappers can earn a lot more from us than salaried trappers with HBC.”

Skye didn't answer for a while. “You must be wondering about me, mate,” he said at last.

“We gauge a man out here by what he is, and how he fits in, and not by any other standard.”

“I'll tell you my story. It's no secret.”

Smith nodded. He badly wanted to hear it.

Skye squinted uneasily, choosing his words. “Seven years ago I was pressed into the Royal Navy off the streets of London. I was fourteen, on my way to my father's warehouse—he's an import-export merchant—on the banks of the Thames. I never saw my family again…”

Smith listened for ten minutes and nodded. He thought it might be something like that. A deserter in the eyes of the Royal Navy and HBC. If the man was telling the truth, he deserved his liberty. But men had a way of justifying their bad behavior. Perhaps there was more. “And Harvard? What about Harvard?”

“I had set my cap on a university education before I was pressed, sir. Cambridge, like my father before me. He was a disciple of Adam Smith and the Manchester school, and wanted me to take up political economy. I leaned toward literature and teaching. Well, I'm free at last. I want to start school now. Pass my entrance exam. Work my way through, somehow, some way.”

“Without means?”

“A man does what he has to. I'll find a way. For all those years I plotted and schemed and waited my chance. It was hard growing up. I fought for my gruel. I faced bullies. It was harder still learning guile, but guile is what freed me. It wasn't until I stopped making trouble that they gave me a bit of liberty on deck. And that's what I needed.” He gazed out upon the roistering crowd. “Am I in danger of being caught here? Will they take me back?”

“Sometimes HBC men come to rendezvous.”

“They won't take me. Not alive, anyway. The earth feels good under my feet, sir. For seven years I never had earth under my feet for long.”