Rocky Mountain Company (13 page)

“Here’s to your successful return, Joe!” Guy lifted his own glass, and the captain did also, sipping slowly for a moment.

“The trip was very successful for the LaBarge Brothers,” the master said, amiably. “We made Fort Union in good time, in spite of low water; delivered a few of Chouteau’s goods along the way — things that failed to make the
Trapper
. After that,
mon ami,
we probed up the Yellowstone — a lot less water, and narrow channels, you know. But we pushed ahead. As far as Wolf Rapids, maybe seventy or eighty miles up. That’s what the old beaver men called the place when they drifted down the river in their bullboats or mackinaws, carrying bales of plews. That was it, Guy. Boulders there, and a narrow channel. Wide enough, actually — close to eighty yards, but with that current we’d have had to run lines and winch it through from the banks. I decided no; that was it, with the river dropping an inch or so every day.

“I put Fitzhugh off on a wooded bank, along with the goods and wagons. And Maxim, of course. A rare lad, Guy. Earnest. Serious. Conscientious. Too much so, but that’s not a fault. He wants to do well, as a sixteen-year-old lad must. We left at once, the Yellowstone shrinking like that — say, this is some bourbon, Guy — and fought sandbars all the way to the Platte River. I picked up a little downriver dunnage — mostly robes for Chouteau. Some of the posts took advantage of the chance, even though the new season’d hardly begun.”

“My company — all is well, then? They are off to Cass?”

Joe LaBarge hesitated. “Off to Cass, yes. The livestock, the wagons, the engagés in good shape. About the tradegoods, Guy — “

“What, Joe? Some difficulty?” LaBarge nodded, looking stern. “Theft. Or sabotage. No one knows which. But the fine hand of your rival down on the levee.”

Guy felt his spirit grow small and still. He set his tumbler down on the beeswaxed desk, and settled into his armchair, preparing for the worst. “What, then?”

“The Witney blankets. All fifteen bales. Vanished. The night after we’d stopped at Fort Clark and the Mandan villages. We’d anchored at an island, as usual. Maxim discovered it the next morning. He did the daily tally, you know. Toiled away by the hour down there, every morning, counting everything.”

Guy sat, stunned, sorting things, absorbing loss. “The blankets. I’d sent three hundred up the Missouri, and two hundred out with Dance. I suppose it’ll affect Fitzhugh’s trade badly. A key item. And a profitable one — three to five robes a blanket, Joe.”

LaBarge said nothing. Guy sipped, letting the implications seep through him, his alert mind asking questions.

“What measures were — “

“Everything. My mate conducted an aboveboard search. Both my first and second mate asked a few of my trusted crew — ones that’ve been with me for years — to watch and listen. Fitzhugh  . . . well, he dealt with it — his own way.”

“Which was?”

“Roared at his men. Left the accusation over them all. Promised to butcher the guilty party or parties.”

Guy didn’t like the sound of it, and it was plain from LaBarge’s compressed lips that the master shared his view. Guy sighed. “He’s not experienced with men.”

“No,” LaBarge agreed, “he’s not. It took Trudeau — he’s made Trudeau his second — it took Samson Trudeau to keep it from blowing up. Trudeau told him the engagés would handle it their own way.”

“How did Maxim handle himself, Joe?”

“A boy’s guilt. Undeserved, I assure you. But he tortured himself for not watching closer.”

Straus nodded. “What do you make of it, Joe?”

LaBarge shrugged, “Not fatal. Trudeau — always Trudeau — simply told Fitzhugh they’d need to get out to the villages more, with those wagons, and trade that way. If it got down to trading at forts, the bands would go to American Fur posts where they could get blankets, rather than your post — where they couldn’t.”

“That was Trudeau’s idea?”

“It was, Guy.”

Guy stared out upon Chestnut Street, watching a carriage rattle by. “Is there more, Joe?” If there was, he scarcely wanted to hear it. “Did Fitzhugh want more blankets expressed up there?”

“No. Not American ones. The tribesmen won’t trade for them. He didn’t write a report for you, either. I suppose he thought I would tell you. And — Guy, yes. There’s more. He  . . . obviously has trouble — dealing with spirits. But that’s not as bad as Mrs. Fitzhugh’s passionate allegiances. At Fort Union, our Cheyenne lady managed to insult Assiniboin and Crow headmen, and would have kept at it if I hadn’t taken measures. She’s hurt the trade of Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus worse than I can tell you. I’ve dreaded bringing you this news. I debated with myself all the way down the river about it. To say something or nothing. For your sake, I’m saying something. I’m sorry, Guy. I’m going to give you a candid opinion you may not relish. Brokenleg Fitzhugh — despite all his admirable skills — isn’t the right man, and I foresee grave losses and difficulties.”

Guy sat quietly, thinking of Yvonne’s steady drone of pessimism, and sighed. “Joe,” he said. “Tell it to me again, all of it — every nuance. I need to know everything. And plan to stay for dinner,
cher ami.
I’ll send word to Yvonne. And I’ll snare Campbell if I still can. And — forgive me, Joe — I quite forgot that you’ll want time with Pelagie  . . . We must have her also. And tell us about the river, Joe. The river that goes two thousand miles to nowhere, eh?”

Guy blamed it on the cloying night air that left his nightshirt soaked, or perhaps it was the dinner wine, or the keen excitement evoked in him by Joe LaBarge’s anecdotes. Or maybe it was the other matter, the incompetence of Brokenleg Fitzhugh  . . . Whatever it was, he tossed and fought the coverlets, and rocked the fourposter.

“You’re not sleeping, Guy,” Yvonne said wearily, peering at him in the comfortable darkness.

“I’m troubling your sleep, Yvonne,” he replied guiltily. She reached out a hand to him and caught his, squeezing it. “It’s the Buffalo Company.”

Guy squeezed back, finding pleasure in the touch of her hand clasped in his. It had been like that from the beginning, gentle and affectionate love, especially in their private moments. She was innately a pessimist, and seemed astonished and delighted when she listened to his love-talk; as if such a good thing couldn’t possibly be happening.

“It could be the river, Yvonne. Joe comes to dinner and talks of the river, and I hear magic and music. I see the boat skimming upstream, its wheels doing what wind and muscle can barely do, up into a land I’ve never seen, a land I must visit some day — “

“It’s the Buffalo Company,” she said.

He laughed softly, but his laughter perched on the honed edge of truth. She twisted under the light blanket until she nestled close to him. They rarely made love any more but something sweeter in its own way had replaced it, this nestling and touching and talking of two mortals long accustomed to each other, and well versed in each other’s follies. French men and women knew how to be friends, he thought. The Yankees and English had never learned how, and each sex peered at the other across a chasm. Ah, but the French  . . . In truth, she clarified his thinking and her pessimism had always been a valuable check on his occasional enthusiasms. And his sunny faith in the goodness of life had a way of lifting her when she needed a boost, he knew. They’d learned not to spar, but to be plain, even blunt. He considered that a phenomenon in a Frenchwoman.

“I suppose it’s the blankets,” he said. “It’s not just the loss, bad as that is. Three hundred of them, worth — with the shipping — over a thousand. It’s the rest. It’s what Chouteau’s done; what’ll be the next thing; whether they can get some robe trade without — “

“It’s more than that, Guy.” She was staring at him, he knew, though he could barely see her. “I always knew it wasn’t right.”

She alluded to the Buffalo Company itself, which she had opposed on the ground that the other partners, Dance and Fitzhugh, weren’t the slightest bit capable. And now he had some confirmation of her view in Joe LaBarge’s careful, dour assessment of Brokenleg and his Dust Devil, an opinion that Guy had not divulged to Yvonne even though she seemed to sense it. He debated telling her the rest of La-Barge’s news, but thought it’d lead only into one of her bouts of pessimism.

“If it was only blankets, you’d be snoring. It’s that Robert Fitzhugh and that savage he’s bedded with, and poor Maxim, in danger out there. You can’t do a thing about the man. He’s your partner and not your engagé. As you said, it’s a little bit like marriage.”

She had an uncanny way of getting to the center of things she knew nothing about, he thought. She’d always done that. She’d been born a Diderot, in the family of the great encyclopedist, and like his own family, hers was neither Louisiana nor French Canadian, but a transplant from Europe. Like all the Diderots before her, she came equipped with a dazzling mind and an incisive way of probing into things and drawing conclusions.

“I don’t know who’s the worse savage,” she continued. “Fitzhugh or Little Whirlwind — it’s loathsome that he calls her Dust Devil. He has no respect for a woman. You didn’t see him, Guy. You didn’t observe. But I observed. Every time I saw him, I observed. I saw the wild light of his eyes. His eyes are like the bore of a cannon full of grapeshot. His receding hairline is the mark of an imbecile. His stiff leg maddens him. His brow is the brow of an ape. He has taken a savage squaw who turns upside down the theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau, yes? I formed an opinion. And it’s grounded in scientific observation and rational study.”

He laughed, but uneasily. “Your rational study and scientific observation are famous,
cher
Yvonne. And they always lead to one conclusion — nothing works!”

“But it is so, yes?”

“No.”

“What is it that Joseph told you about him, Guy?”

“Told me?”

“Yes, told you. You are no good at secrets, Guy. When you are silent about something, it is because you are keeping a secret. All night at dinner you and Joe LaBarge talked about everything but your partner Fitzhugh and his squaw. And so I knew.”

He chuckled, though he didn’t want to. “I have more hopes for our Mexican post than I do for the Yellowstone one,” he said softly.

“So! Even our Maxim could run it better than that drunken madman and his bitchy little squaw, Guy.”

“We’ll see, Yvonne,” he said. “All we can do is wait. If I misjudged, we’ll be hurt.”

“And Maxim might be killed.”

“That’s not very likely.”

“I worry about it.”

“The Fitzhugh you saw here is not the Fitzhugh that will run the post in the wilderness,
cher amie.
He was a caged tiger in St. Louis.”

“And an uncaged tiger on the Yellowstone, yes?”

He sighed. He didn’t have half her acuity and wit when it came to these bouts. “My little Diderot,” he muttered, “you have a mind fit for an encyclopedia, but not for the Yellowstone.”

She laughed. That had always been the fun of it. From the day he’d met her in his youth, that cheerful laughter had galvanized him, even though his strict parents had done their best to head off the liaison.

“Go to sleep now,” she whispered, and kissed him squarely on the stubble of his cheek.

“I’m going to prowl,” he replied. “Tonight I’m the uncaged lion.”

He slid out into the damp cool dark, feeling his cotton nightshirt cling, and wandered out of their bedroom, feeling her bright, curious brown eyes watching his departure.

He did not go downstairs, but instead shuffled toward the empty bedroom on the east side of the house that had housed his boys, passing Clothilde’s quiet room on the way. The boys’ window opened out across rooftops to the Mississippi river, as wide as a sea, and to the levee and wharves along the bank, where white packets lay ghostly in the night. A little to the north, the vast flood of the Missouri debouched into the Mississippi, staining the waters chocolate all the way to the sea. The river lay inky, perceived as a vast streak of nothingness.

He wanted to go up the river. He wanted to see for himself how Maxim fared, how Fitzhugh had repaired old Fort Cass, how many good robes lay in the warehouse, and whether they were properly protected from water and bugs and wild creatures. He wanted to see what goods lay on the shelves of the trading room, and see Fitzhugh’s records, a line for each transaction: three robes for one brass kettle; six robes for a pound of powder and a bar of galena and five sheffield knives  . . . 

He admitted, as he thought about it, that he didn’t wholly trust Robert Fitzhugh now. He wanted to see for himself. He wanted to make corrections if such were necessary. He wanted to find out whether Dust Devil had truly driven away the trade of other tribes, especially the Crow, because Fort Cass lay in Crow country, and Crow robes were prime, better tanned and softer than most others. He needed to know. He needed to bring Maxim home, if all had failed. He needed to measure Fitzhugh, before he ordered more blankets from Witney, before he mailed letters to the east, committing to a mountain of tradegoods, and another mountain of debt.

And, he admitted, another reason lay in his heart: the wild lands drew him like a magnet, just as they’d drawn a host of men before him. He wanted to go up the river just to see it; to see Sioux and Crow and buffalo and mustangs and a sea of grass. If only he could know  . . . 

But going over two thousand miles up the river without the help of steam engines was almost beyond his imagining. He could indeed catch a river packet to St. Joseph. And perhaps a rare packet would go even higher this late in the year — maybe even to Bellevue, though he doubted it. the rest would have to be by horseback. The thought encouraged him. With a few packhorses, he could take some blankets for trading. American blankets, to be sure, but at least something. He could visit his post on the Yellowstone and come down in a mackinaw, one of the flatbottomed boats carpentered upriver to float furs and men downstream. Maybe be back before the worst cold set in, before December.

He stood at the window, watching the inky river, yearning, aching, needing, and knowing it could not be. He could not abandon his business, Straus et Fils, for so long a time. No. He would have to trust. Trust his own judgment, trust his partner and his partner’s wife, trust his sixteen-year-old Maxim, trust the engagés they’d employed. He had no other choice. What happened up there, so far from his control, would rock his family or it would prosper them all.