Rocky Mountain Company (8 page)

Each morning he checked diligently, checking off his cargo manifest; and each day he found things exactly as before, except once or twice when they’d hit sandbars and cargo had to be shifted. After those episodes, he’d checked all the more carefully, not wanting to let his
papa
down, or M. Fitzhugh either, by some foolish lapse.

He imagined what it would be like to miss something, to have something vanish for days on end before it was discovered — by someone else. He dreaded that. He dreaded being called just a boy, not old enough to clerk for the Buffalo Company. He dreaded the day when he might have to run to M. Fitzhugh and tell him that something or other was missing. And then they’s search together and probably find it, because Maxim had been young and hasty and eager to bolt up to the main deck and the sunlight and the comic banter of the engagés. Indeed, they teased him, and called him a mole, but they did it kindly. They liked the grave boy who talked French, and knew he was doing what all fur company clerks do.

“Where’s the spirits, eh?” they had asked, half humorously.

“Coming, coming,
messieurs,”
he had replied. “Soon you will carry it on your backs into the hold.”

A fib. It bothered him to do it.

They arrived one lusty summer day at Fort Clark, high in Dakota. Like Pierre, it was an American Fur Company bastion, but somehow different, perhaps because it stood hundreds of miles farther up the endless river from St. Louis. Nearby were the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, tragic ghosts now because smallpox had destroyed their populations, and reduced these quiet, stable, crop-gathering tribes to handfuls. And along with them, Fort Clark had declined in importance, but still traded for robes. A few years earlier the Mandans had been a proud and happy people, living in great earthen lodges that housed several families and supplied warmth and shelter, cultivating vast fields of corn.

Just a few passengers, mostly metis and their squaws, debarked there, carrying their few belongings. Even so, they were AFC people and Maxim watched them sharply from his post beside the gangway, his eyes studying every bag and parfleche leaving the boat. Then Brokenleg took him to meet James Kipp, the partisan there, who bantered a bit, as Chardonne had done many leagues downstream. Maxim liked Kipp, and saw a clear eye and a face unburdened by craft. Was the famous skulduggery of AFC unknown to this amiable man? It puzzled Maxim, this meeting a man he expected to loathe, and finding instead a commanding trader who enjoyed guests, enjoyed the Opposition, and wished Brokenleg and Maxim success.

But even as they talked, the boat’s whistle blew, erupting steam into the light transparent air of the upper plains. Captain LaBarge would not waste a minute. Maxim hastened toward the riverboat, having trouble keeping up with Fitzhugh who limped like a charging bull. He paused on the levee, peering about suspiciously at a few crates and the motley crowd, mostly metis and a few young Hidatsa dressed brightly in tradecloth blouses and skin leggins. He spotted nothing amiss. Fort Clark had been resupplied a few weeks earlier by the fur company steamer
Trapper
, the very one that had brought the whitemen’s plague with it a few years earlier.

A few hours later Fitzhugh summoned him to the railing and pointed. Far off on a golden bluff lay the village of earthen mounds that once thrived as the home of the Mandans. It looked forlorn, even in the golden warmth of summer, and indeed, the cornfields down on the bottoms looked untended and going to weeds and cottonwood saplings. He wished Captain LaBarge would stop and let him explore the dark village, let him find souvenirs, if any remained — surely arrowheads, bows, pots, fired clay bowls. The farther he traveled from St. Louis, the stranger everything had become. He wanted bits and pieces of it. He yearned to draw and paint, so he could send folios down to
papa
and
maman,
with the barren grassy hills showing, the broad flood of water that lay blue in the bright daylight but turned green and gray in shadowed times, the powerful tall native people he’d seen — he couldn’t tell one tribe from another, but M. Fitzhugh had rattled off names. How could the man tell? For the life of him, Maxim couldn’t see how the
bourgeois
could separate one tribesman from another.

The air had changed. They’d climbed steadily from St. Louis, though never visibly. This land lay about sixteen hundred feet above sea level, which made the skies a more intense blue than he’d experienced in St. Louis. The river occasionally narrowed now, and the bluffs rose closer. He marveled at the flow of water, the steady flood that boiled out of the distant fabled mountains in a volume beyond fathoming. And yet, he’d never seen the mountains, and M. Fitzhugh told him he wouldn’t. There was still a vast wilderness to conquer.

The next morning he lowered himself into the dark hold and began his inventory by the pitiful light of the coal oil lamp. That’s when he discovered the shortage. Trembling, he began a hunt, pushing cargo, peering down the two aisles, fear clutching at him, wondering how long he’d let this terrible loss escape his attention. Twice he toured the hold, stem to stern, but the bales were not there. He stooped down to the bilge, wondering if the missing goods lay in the rocking water, and saw nothing in the oily light. The blankets! Good Witney blankets, brought all the way from southern England to New York, and then shipped to New Orleans and up to St. Louis. Witney trade blankets, used by Hudson’s Bay and all traders, made in one-point, two-point, and three-point sizes, with bars on them to tell tribesmen the approximate weight — and cost. A three-point blanket weighed about four pounds, and ran six feet long. They’d been baled into twenty-blanket lots and carefully set high above the rest of the cargo to keep them from the bilge. Gone! Fifteen bales of blankets, three hundred of them, the entire year’s supply for trading — gone. Terror cramped Maxim. He wept, feeling too young, too much a boy, as he probed the hold once again, half afraid some vicious man would jump out from a dark corner with a knife. But no. The blankets had vanished. Each one had cost around two dollars, higher or lower depending on weight, imported from the Early Company in Witney, west of London. By the time they reached the new post on the Big Horn they’d cost the Buffalo Company over four dollars, most of it for shipping. More than twelve hundred dollars gone. They’d fetch from one to five robes apiece, depending on weights and qualities.

He paused, the lantern clutched in his sweating palms, engulfed in misery. The missing blankets would have traded for around a thousand robes, each worth about four dollars back east. Over four thousand dollars. Tears welled up and streaked his cheeks, and he wished desperately he’d never come up the great Missouri.

The boy looked like he wanted to die. “I’ve let you down,” he cried.

Grimly, Brokenleg followed him down to the main deck, and into the hold, and they began a systematic search. An hour later Fitzhugh knew for certain that the boy had it right: fifteen bales of blankets, each weighing about fifty pounds, had vanished overnight.

They’d anchored at a wooded island, a half day’s travel from Fort Clark and the Mandan villages. There’d been a new moon, which meant the night had been as black as nights get. Most of the deck passengers had debarked, leaving only a handful bound for Fort Union or the post at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri.

That meant that fewer people were sleeping on the deck these days. Most of the remaining deck passengers were the Buffalo Company’s own engagés, sleeping under the Pittsburgh wagons. The others usually slept along the boiler, well back of the hatch and foredeck. The blankets had been a perfect choice, he thought. The loss of one of the most important trade items would paralyze their operation and drive tribesmen to the American Fur Company posts, which were well supplied with them. And they’d been the quietest item to steal, soft so that they didn’t scrape and bang while being hauled away, or splash much if they were eased into the river. And nicely bundled in bales a man could handle easily — or two men, one below in the hold and the other receiving the bales and dumping them gently into the black current, all but invisible in the night.

But were they dumped, or would they show up on AFC shelves somewhere? Ditched, he thought. The
Platte
had anchored at an island small enough to make a cache of them risky, especially with engagés gathering livestock in the morning. On the other hand, these Witney blankets were identical to those used by AFC and Hudson’s Bay, and could be put into AFC trading inventories without being noticed. But he doubted it. AFC didn’t operate like that, selling stolen goods. It had other, more pernicious ways of dealing with opposition — such as this.

“I should have checked sooner,” Maxim said, miserably. “I should have caught them.”

Brokenleg sighed, not knowing how to ease the guilt that flooded the youth. “You’re sounding like it’s your doing,” he grumbled. “Like you snatched them blankets. Like you weren’t watching. Fact is, you didn’t snitch them; thieves working for Chouteau did. Fact is, you checked exactly as you should — and I wanted — and because you checked, we found out fast. Whoever done it’s on this boat. And I’m going to get him.”

“Maybe they’ve been taken back to Fort Clark,” Maxim said.

“Maybe. But I doubt it. The company don’t work like that. They’re all choir boys in white robes. More likely there’s three hundred blankets bumping along the bottom of the river scarin’ fish, below that island somewhere.”

“We’re ruined,” Maxim said. “I let you and
papa
down.”

“You didn’t let nobody down. Get that through your haid.”

The boy looked unconvinced, and Fitzhugh knew he couldn’t help the young man further. He’d have to wrestle with it in his own mind now.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m thinking on it. Could be, those Witneys weren’t dumped over the side, but stuck in a cabin somewheres. I’m thinking I’ve got to talk private with Captain LaBarge, and we’ll do a quiet search abovedecks, including the crew cabins and all the staterooms, as well as storage, and all that.”

“It’ll attract attention.”

“I’m thinking on that. If we do it right, hardly anyone’ll notice. Except the one or two who done it. Say — I guess I’d better check to see who’s on board and who isn’t. Could be we got shut of someone back there.”

“It’s no use.”

“I’ve been in darker holes, Maxim, and with six feet of sod over me, too. You get yourself together and be thinking how we’ll earn a profit and whip American Fur so good they don’t know what hit ’em.”

“We hired traitors,” the youth said bitterly.

“Could be. But there’s other passengers and crew on board, too. I’ll see to them first, before I’ll start suspecting our own men — good Creoles, I think.”

They walked glumly toward the patch of light where the forward hatches lay open. “Now, Maxim, plaster a smile on that mug. And don’t talk to anyone for now. Not to Samson Trudeau, not to the engagés. I’m going up to palaver with LaBarge. We’ve got to have a quiet look into every corner of this packet first, before we get down to cases.”

He hated to leave Maxim just when the lad wallowed in grief, but he had to. He hurried the boy ahead of him up the ladder to the deck, and nudged him. “Smile, boy,” he said, and limped up companionways, not smiling a bit himself. He found LaBarge up in the pilothouse and beckoned to him. The captain nodded, and trotted down to the hurricane deck, which was already roasting in the morning sun.

“Lost some goods,” Brokenleg began, peering about sharply. They stood alone up on that burning deck.

LaBarge waited, intently.

“The blankets. All fifteen bales of Witneys. Between the time Maxim checked the hold yesterday, after we’d got loose from Fort Clark, and this morning. They were missing this morning.”

“Are you sure?”

“I went down there myself and tore the place apart. They’re gone.”

LaBarge sighed. “I’m not surprised.”

“Last night was perfect. Dark. Not so many deck passengers. Bales easy to lift and ease into the river. And by gawd, Joe, it near ruins us. I thought to send an express down to Straus for more, but he’s got to order from England. We’ll have none this year. Not even to wrap our cold carcasses this winter. Not until next year.”

“ — Unless they’re on the boat. That’s what you’re wanting to find out next.”

“Had it in my haid, yes. Lots of places — crew cabins, lockers, engine room, pantries, on the main deck; a lot of cabins and staterooms on the boiler deck.”

“I’ll start a search. Do it myself.”

“That’d be too obvious. I’d just as soon keep her quiet for a while so I don’t burn my hand on this hyar skillet. I’d hate to start accusing engagés I hired and still trust — at least until I got some more facts.”

“The mate, then. Hugh Clowes. He can wander anywhere; he’s got keys to everything, and he won’t draw any attention because that’s what he does anyway.”

“That’s a start, Captain.” Brokenleg ran a bony hand over his bald crown and into the thinning carrot hair behind, perplexed. “I don’t figure we’ll find one wooly blanket, but we need to know.”

“You still planning to open trade?”

“You bet. And I’ll be sending down the returns on this boat next spring.”

LaBarge smiled wryly. “They knew what to take,” he muttered. “Knew how to hurt you. How to hurt us both. I think I’ll start taking some precautions of my own.” He peered up at the pilot-house atop the texas. “Monsieur Roux, please call the mate,” he yelled. A head peered over the half-wall and nodded. Fitzhugh heard a voice swallowed up in the speaking tube to the engine room, and waited.

Hugh Clowes showed up on the hurricane deck a minute later, panting and sweating from his fast vault up the companionways. LaBarge outlined what was wanted and what had happened, and the mate nodded gravely.

“I won’t miss a trick,” he said, and vanished down the innumerable stairs to the main deck. It would take a while.

“Can he be trusted?” Fitzhugh asked dourly. He had visions of a conspiracy, with someone like Clowes at its center. At the moment he didn’t trust anyone, including LaBarge.