Rocky Mountain Company (38 page)

She didn’t follow all that. “If you don’t want me I will go,” she said, too weary to care.

She turned to leave, but he caught her again, pinned her easily with arms the size of buffalo hocks. “I got the rest of Fitzhugh’s stuff; might as well have his woman too.” His voice had turned thick and urgent.

“I’m not his woman. He put me away.”

Hervey released her. “Booted you out?”

“I am not Fitzhugh’s woman now. I am nobody.”

He laughed suddenly, a hard, raucous laugh with no humor in it. “Stiffleg finally got me. He finally got me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stole all the fun of taking it from him — go away. I’m tired.”

She undid her capote, instead, letting the radiance from the coals warm her frozen flesh.

“I don’t want Fitzhugh’s discards. Get your dusky little carcass out of here. Have your fun in the barracks. I’m going to bed.”

She stood, paralyzed and empty. Was Fitzhugh’s rival humbling her, too?

He was: he bounded at her like a lion, and catapulted her through his door into the snowy yard, where she tumbled into glazed whiteness. Cold smacked her. Above, the door banged shut.

Across the yard, the barracks hulked dark and sinister. It would be warm but she would not go there to be used by many whitemen. She did not know where to go or where she could sleep. She edged fearfully toward the trading room door, and found it unlocked. A faint heat reached her in the blackness, and when her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, she discovered the glowing remains of a fire in the wide fireplace. She located a log and laid it on the coals, blowing softly until a small blue flame licked the wood.

The room felt icy, but it would warm. And stacked neatly on shelves were Witney blankets, dozens of them. She liked the smell of the room, with its wools and leathers and iron and cloth, like some incense in her nostrils. She spread several on the puncheon floor, and made a warm nest of them. Slowly they warmed her shivering body, but not anything else.

The door burst open, and a gust of icy air swept the floor. She discovered Hervey there, a mirthless mock in his face. He closed the door behind him and approached, while she peered up fearfully. He wore nothing but the thin blanket.

“I changed my mind. Anything that was Fitzhugh’s, I’ll use.

She felt cold. “I’ve changed my mind also,” she said. “You didn’t want me. You wanted Fitzhugh’s woman.”

He grinned, and approached, until he loomed above her, an evil giant in the flickering yellow light.

“I will leave here now,” she said. “I will go into the night. I do not want this.”

He ripped the blankets from her and peered down, while she withered under his bright gaze. He sank to his knees and yanked her skirts upward. She whirled to the side, kicking him as she did, but his powerful hand clamped her, yanked her back. He was grinning.

“My people don’t — “

His massive hand clubbed her, jamming her teeth into her tongue. She felt salty blood. She bit his wrist. He yanked it bank and clobbered her again, making her ears ring.

“Feisty little savage,” he said serenely, his burly arms plowing her legs open.

“I am Suhtai,” she whispered, unbidden tears welling in her eyes. “Daughter of medicine — “

She gasped.

It didn’t take long, and then he lifted himself to his feet, the mirthless amusement still in his face. “I thought you’d be a dust devil,” he said, and left.

She had no name. It had never been Dust Devil, but once was Little Whirlwind. And once she’d been a Suhtai. She pulled the blankets over her again, and settled into them, only to have the door burst open. Another bearded man stood there, one she knew well. And when she saw him, she remembered that some had left Fitzhugh, abandoning him when he needed them most. Like herself. Emile Gallard peered at her, his brown eyes alive with amusement. By now she didn’t bother to smooth her doeskin skirts or hide the stickiness of her loins.

“Madam Fitzhugh,” he said. “Your man likes to share his wealth,
n’est-ce pas?”

“I have no name,” she cried hoarsely.

He turned out to be the last. She curled up in her blankets, letting her tears flow, knowing what she must do. It would take strength. She took hold of herself, and stopped the tremors wracking her body. She mopped her face and dried her tears. She let the quiet of the night catch her up in it. Then she cast the blankets aside and sat cross legged, facing away from the embers in the fireplace, and staring into the darkness. There she sang, her voice low and mournful, her mind focused sharply on Sweet Medicine. She crooned the song of her life, sang the song of her girlhood, and her marriage to Fitzhugh, and the end of the marriage.

She folded her red capote and set it aside. Piece by piece, she undid her disheveled clothing, the woolen blouse, the doeskin skirts, her rabbit-topped moccasins, until she had rid herself of everything. She stood, stared into the dying embers, and gathered her courage. The she opened the door, feeling the shock of air chill her, and walked naked over glazed snow to the great gates. She didn’t know how to work the latch, but it turned out to be nothing: lift an iron bar and slide the bolt sideways. Fearfully, lest noise betray her, she pulled the creaking gate open until she could slide through, into the night. Across the starlit flat she saw the naked arms of a cottonwood praying starkly to the nightspirits. She walked there, feeling the icy air cleanse her, like sand scouring her skin when she bathed in a river. At the foot of the cottonwood she settled quietly into the snow, feeling it torture her buttocks, and waited.

The cold eye of self-reproach kept Fitzhugh awake and tossing in his blankets. He hadn’t intended to put her away. His ungovernable temper had bested him. His red-haired temper, if there was any truth to it. Not that she hadn’t provoked him, he thought fiercely. She and her arrogant ways, lording over him, scorning him, undermining his purposes. And not just him, either: she’d been haughty toward everyone, like some duchess.

But he’d always accepted that, and it’d even been a joke between them sometimes. He’d catch her at it, and bellyache, and she’d pout, and they’d laugh like children, and he’d hug her, feeling his world turn incandescent with the strange joy she kindled in him. He hadn’t meant to say those fatal words, even though they’d boiled and bubbled in him all the while she was gone, just waiting to erupt when she returned.

He had some notion she’d slid out into the night, but he wasn’t sure of it. He’d unrolled his blankets in the barracks, and looked after his Cheyenne guests spreading out in the trading room, and then crawled into his hard bunk. She’d be somewhere. She’d go on back to her village with White Wolf and find her some suitable man. No doubt Suhtai, since she wouldn’t marry beneath her again. The idea left him sour and unhappy. He’d come to — what? He’d come to love the slim little devil, in spite of her endless taunting. Sometimes, some nights, they’d laughed and played and caressed, and whispered, and carried on. Sometimes, after a hard day, they’d clung together desperately, as if they’d be torn asunder the next moment by some war hatchet or iron-tipped lance, while she muttered and crooned in her own tongue, so quiet and blurred on the ears he had no notion of what was issuing from her. He might as well be hitched up to a Chinee, or a hottentot, or a Peruvian, for all he understood of her.

He cussed his tensions that robbed him of a rest, and swung out of the bunk, onto his stiff leg. The fire had died to embers, so he slid a long log onto it, taking care not to awaken the rest. Not that many slept in the barracks, now. Just Maxim, Trudeau, Provost, Dauphin, and Larue. Plus Chief White Wolf and a stout headman whose name he hadn’t caught. She’d be over in the other room, then. Probably in some corner near her brother. Or maybe out in the warehouse. He eased toward the trading room and found it well lit by the wavering fire in its fireplace. Several of the Cheyenne peered back at him from their robes, wide awake. He studied the forms one by one, looking for the red capote, the braided hair, the familiar form, and saw only slumbering males. Two of them he wasn’t sure about, so he edged closer until he knew, and then left, feeling eyes on his back. He tried the cold warehouse where they’d spat at each other, and then he knew. She’d left.

He limped back to his bunk and eased himself down on it, wondering what to do. He’d said the fatal words and he couldn’t retract them. He’d put her out, the way a lot of squawmen had put away a lot of dusky brides. She didn’t have many choices, though: not with White Wolf dragging her back here and telling her to stay hitched to the trader for the sake of the People. Sighing, he found his heavy woolen shirt in his kit and slid it on, and laced his boots, and clawed into his cold elkskin coat. He clamped a stocking cap over his balding head and then limped out into the night, which smacked him with its granite cold. He sucked in a breath, feeling the air stab at his lungs, and then trod past the picketlines of ponies toward the Pittsburgh wagons, on the off chance that the crazy woman might be huddled in one. She wasn’t.

Cass then. Cass or a deadly walk south to another Cheyenne village. He studied the Dipper, spilling down from the North Star, and knew dawn wasn’t far ahead. The thought of her walking into Cass, and curling up with Julius Hervey, curdled in him, until he couldn’t stand to think it. But he knew he’d done it to himself, pulled the temple down on him like an angry Samson. He started that direction, hearing the snow squeak under his heavy boots, wishing he could hasten his foot-dragging pace. He’d bygod bang on that gate until they let him in.

He didn’t know what he’d say to her, especially if she’d found a welcome in Julius Hervey’s bed. Which she would. He had taunted Fitzhugh with it; told him he’d have her, too. Hervey didn’t care for her any more than he cared for a hundred other squaws he’d bedded. But he wanted her for darker reasons, and Fitzhugh understood them perfectly. He pleasured himself with theft, and absolute power. For years, Hervey had stolen the wives of his engagés and dared them to do anything about it. The few who tried had vanished from the earth.

Tell her he didn’t mean it? Tell her he wanted to reel his words back in? Tell her — tell her he’d been angry. He didn’t know. He’d eat crow aplenty, he knew that. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her back, the haughty little Suhtai lady who’d been born too high and mighty for a trapper or a trader. But he wanted her back, worse even than he wanted to settle accounts with Hervey. He’d beg. He’d beg like a dog if he had to.

A gibbous moon lit his way across a snowy waste, its cold light mocking the heat of his passions. He scarcely noticed the cold, but knew it could murder life swiftly. The ghostly palisades of Fort Cass startled him. Smoke drifted from several Crow lodges to the west, and from the several chimneys of the darkened post. Knock on the gates. Knock one down. Kick that gate into firewood.

He stumbled toward the post, clearing the last cottonwood — which exploded. Above him, the hard flap of wings. A roosting tree. Black crows thrummed into the stygian night, invisible to him except for the faintest glint of moonlight on ebony. He gaped, recovering his wits, his heart pounding at the commotion of the dead. That’s when he saw the small body between the great roots of the tree, its dusky nakedness almost invisible in the decocted light. Her. He knew that, even before his eyes fully grasped the form of her. He vaulted toward her, crashing over his bad leg and down upon her. She lay deathly quiet. Too late.

“Dust Devil!” he cried. She didn’t move. He slapped her hard across the face. Her head flopped. He pulled off his glove and felt her flesh. It felt dead, icy, clammy. “Dust Devil,” he cried, lifting her cold limp body to him, feeling the death in her. He slapped again, a slap that would sting breath into her. She didn’t recoil. His hand smacked clammy flesh.

“Dust Devil!” He fumbled the bone buttons loose on his coat, wrestled it off, and wrapped her in it, feeling her flop and sag as he tugged it around her and pinioned her in it with his arms.

Dead. But the stiffness hadn’t taken yet. He lurched to his feet, feeling his bad leg howl, lifting her in his arms, and staring at the gray ghost of the fort before him. Go there? Go to the Crow lodges a quarter of a mile farther? He lumbered toward the gate, his leg skidding under him, capsizing him and threatening his limp burden. He’d hammer that gate down, he’d kick it in.

She flopped in his arms, a corpse, and he raced harder, catapulting crazily off his stiff leg and staggering forward on his good one. He reached the gate, and balled a fist —

Open. Ajar. He understood. She’d left it that way. He slid into the yard, peering sharply at the moonsplashed buildings, the engagés’ barracks at the far right, the quarters of the
bourgeois
at the far left, the nearer warehouses and storage rooms imprisoning his own outfit.

He turned left, toward the trading room, and shoved the door open. A wall of heat met him. A long log fed a wavering yellow flame in the fireplace, making the room bob and dance. Heat. He carried his inert burden tenderly to the fireplace, and found fire-warmed blankets heaped there, and laid her gently on them.

He rubbed her limp legs and arms, feeling the terrible cold in the lifeless flesh. He pressed her belly just below the soft vee of her breastbone, feeling the cold skin yield beneath his frightened hand.

“Why’d you do this, Dust Devil?” he muttered, knowing why, and feeling the noose of accusation around his own stiff neck. He rubbed her hopelessly, rubbed and manipulated, and despaired, feeling only the cold nakedness under his rough hands. She lay as inert as when he’d discovered her, her small breasts taut and cold, her slender torso heatless.

“Aw, godalmighty, Dust Devil,” he cried, a sob building in him. “I did it to you, I did it to you.”

Her mouth sagged open. He stared at it, seeing the seizure of a corpse. He lifted himself painfully and lumbered across the trading room, past tables loaded with gewgaws, trays of beads, boxes of awls and knives, hunting for a thing that all trading posts offered, because the tribesmen loved them. He found the looking glasses they treasured, the little mirrors that let them see their beauty, their lordly manner, without having to peer into a quiet pond to know themselves.