Rocky Mountain Company (9 page)

“He’s been with me for years, on half a dozen packets, and I’ve never seen disloyalty in him. He’s doing some piloting, and knows he’ll be piloting for me soon. Pilots are lords of the river, Mr. Fitzhugh. Clowes is not a man to throw away a chance to earn a thousand a month.”

“They earn that?” It astonished Fitzhugh. His engagés earned about a hundred fifty a year.

“Some earn more. Roux earns twelve hundred. Often he nets more than I from a trip up this river.”

Far below, the main deck looked deserted in the mid-day sun although Maxim huddled on the railing at the prow, looking stricken and staring at the murky water. It would take time for Clowes to inspect an entire packet, open every locker and bunker and cabin and poke around. While he waited, Brokenleg tried to force his mind to deal with this; figure out how to draw tribesmen to a post without blankets to trade; how to root out the thieves from among his engagés; how to report this mess to Guy; how to lift the weight from Maxim, down there. And the more he wrestled with it, the gloomier he became.

“Fitzhugh, you’ll fry if you stand here on this deck. Come up to the pilothouse. We can talk freely there. Roux’s at the helm this afternoon.”

The pilothouse was particularly hard for him to get to, but Brokenleg didn’t argue, and lifted himself up the narrow stairwell with crowhops and the power of his burly arms. He loved the lofty shaded commandpost of the packet, high above the shimmering river. A white summer haze veiled the brown bluffs from his eyes, and blurred the infinitudes beyond. A free land here, rolling and rising endlessly to the horizons, toward the unseen mountains to the west, lifeless from a distance but teeming with humans and animals on closer inspection.

LaBarge interrupted his reverie. “Whoever did it’s on board,” he said gently. “Have you made any plans?”

“Not yet,” Fitzhugh replied curtly.

“We might start with a rollcall,” LaBarge said.

“We might, and if someone’s missing I’m getting off this boat and kill him.”

“Chances are, whoever did it’s on board.”

“If he is, I’ll get him. I’ll string him up by the thumbs and flog him.” Captain LaBarge smiled faintly and said nothing. “If he’s one of my engagés, I’ll tear him apart. And if he lives, I’ll see to it he don’t ever work up the river again.”

“With that leg of yours, I don’t think you should — “

“Let them try me. It hasn’t stopped me yet.”

“I have Clowes if you need him. A human battering ram. He always has to settle a few challenges, each trip.”

“I won’t need him.”

“Deal with your engagés first, Mister Fitzhugh. And if it comes to nothing it’ll be my turn to tackle my crew — and the last of the passengers. If I were to make a stab at it, I’d say one or two of the passengers. Men bought and paid for by American Fur, just biding their time until the right moment — which was last night.”

A line of snags arced off the west shore like sharkfins, and LaBarge and Roux turned back to sparring the river. Brokenleg stared dourly, not seeing a thing, hot-tempered and ready to explode, the way he’d spent his months in St. Louis. He peered down from the hurricane deck, glaring red-eyed at deck passengers below. One of them would feel his fists and boots before long.

No blankets. The tribes would catch on in a hurry, and take their robes to Fort Union. The more he pondered the future, the more his spirits sagged. American Fur — he never doubted what lay behind this — had dealt him a killer blow. And soon he’d receive another offer from them, this time for less than the cost of the remaining tradegoods. But enough to salvage the company, especially if Jamie Dance did well in the south. Maybe the thing to do was deal as soon as the
Platte
reached Fort Union. Sell the rest of his outfit to Alec Culbertson or David Mitchell for a decent price — if he didn’t strangle one or the other first. He thought he might even break even — and let the engagés go. If not that, hire LaBarge to take it all back down the river. Brokenleg supposed he’d never go to St. Louis again and the Buffalo Company’s northern operations died aborning.

An hour or so later, Roux exclaimed, and pointed at a distant column of smoke miles up the river valley, its source obscured by cottonwood-choked bends. They closed on the smoke with a speed that puzzled Fitzhugh, and then the single column of smoke became two, and the twin chimneys of the
Trapper,
heading down to St. Louis with the annual returns from the American Fur posts, appeared first, followed by the white packet itself. It was steaming fat and arrogant, its belly laden with packs of buffalo robes, riches beyond imagining wrested from a wild land. The glistening vessel, which looked much like the
Platte
, awakened both curiosity and loathing in Brokenleg.

“Shall we flag it?” Roux asked.

“Downriver mail,” LaBarge said.

A series of short blasts of the whistle followed, and a sudden softening of the vibration rising from the bowels of the packet, and the
Platte
slid to the extreme edge of the narrow channel, waiting for the American Fur vessel. The
Trapper
slowed, less able to govern its trajectory going downstream, and then drifted alongside LaBarge’s packet, paddlewheels halted. Down on the main deck, Hugh Clowes hefted a canvas bag, while deckhands on the closing boat hefted grappling hooks. The mate heaved, and the duck bag sailed safely into the arms of a crewman on the St. Louisbound vessel, and with ear-splitting blasts of their whistles, the two ships parted company.

“There,” said LaBarge. “Maxim’s got a letter to his father in the bag. Guy’ll have the news.”

“If they deliver it,” Fitzhugh said dourly.

The ship’s master laughed. “There’s honor among rivermen,” he said, but Fitzhugh didn’t feel like believing him.

LaBarge left him to his brooding while the rest of the afternoon sagged by. Sometime later — Fitzhugh noted suddenly that the sun had swung north of west and dropped some — Crowes appeared in the pilothouse.

“Not a bale of blankets on the boat,” he said quietly. “I didn’t miss a thing. They’re either on the bottom, or cached somewhere. I’m sorry, sir.”

Brokenleg felt like a cinnamon bear with a foot in a trap, alternately helpless and in a rage. He had to talk to the engagés, and couldn’t put it off. He gathered them on the foredeck at dusk, after they’d completed their livestock chores, noting sharply that all ten stood before him. He couldn’t discern the slightest alarm or sullenness in them, and that somehow relieved him a bit. He’d try his own harsh upriver English on them this time, and let Samson Trudeau translate.

He ticked them off: Larue, Lemaitre, Bercier, Brasseau, Courvet, Dauphin, Guerette, Provost, Gallard, and Trudeau. Every one of them built like an ox and capable of incredible toil. He’d pound every one of them into the deck if he had to.

“Now listen,” he began roughly, “last night sometime the trade blankets were taken from the hold and either pitched into the river or cached on the island. Or perhaps carried off in a canoe or yawl. Who’s to say?”

His men turned solemn suddenly, their gaiety vanishing with the news. And they began peering at each other, suspicion flaring among them.

“Fifteen bales, three hundred blankets gone. Some son of a bitch has tried to ruin the company. If I find him, I’ll kill him, but not until I hurt him bad. If you saw or heard anything, you’ll tell me because I’m going to find it out. If it wasn’t one of you, then it was the crew or the passengers. No one’s left this boat and no one will until I find out. We’ve now searched above and below decks; I’ve examined the hold; Hugh Clowes the rest. The blankets are gone. I hope it wasn’t you, but if it was, by God, watch your back.”

They stared sternly at him now, wondering about their own fates, as well they might.

“I don’t like threats,” said Gallard. “If you want to make the fight, I’ll fight.”

“All right, Gallard, step forward.”

“No, no, Monsieur Fitzhugh,” Trudeau interceded. “A fight gains you nothing. I know these men; I hired them. I trust them. If you blame one, blame us all.”

“Maybe I damn well do.”

“Monsieur, that’s unjust.” Trudeau’s level unwavering gaze bored into Brokenleg.

He felt the heat drain out of him, the fuse on his powderkeg pinch out. He met their flinty glares with his own, not yielding anything but not accusing either. It occurred to him that maybe he’d lost the respect and solidarity of his own men.

“I don’t figure we can bring in much trade without blankets in our inventory. They’re woven in England and can’t be replaced in time for this season. I don’t know what we’ll do. We may not trade. I’ll know better after I talk with Culbertson, or whoever’s running Fort Union. The Buffalo Company may have to let you go there, buy out your contracts.”

“Leave us there, monsieur?”

“Likely you can engagé with American Fur, and I’ll try to make arrangements with Monsieur LaBarge to carry you back down. I don’t know at this point.”

“But monsieur — “ it was Trudeau speaking — “we have other things to trade,
n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes. And where will the chiefs take their villages when some of the warriors and squaws want blankets — which will be every time they want to trade?” He left the question unanswered. “We’d be lucky to get a thousand robes.”

“Monsieur Fitzhugh. We signed for a year, and we will stay with you. And you will employ us.
Sacre bleu,
are we going to wait for the chiefs to come in to our fort, or are we going to go out with these grand wagons and trade in the villages, eh?”

Trudeau’s stout courage pierced Brokenleg. He suddenly knew he’d lost his temper and maybe their loyalty and he’d better pull himself together fast. He’d spent more winters in the mountains than he could count, and now, on his first attempt at being a
bourgeois
, he’d let his anger conquer him. It jolted him.

“Reckon you’re right, Trudeau,” he said wearily. “I’d better find a way.”

“We’ll find this
batard.
We have our ways, Monsieur. Let us prove ourselves to you. I will strangle the
batard
and throw him to the fish if I find him. And so will the rest of us.”

Fitzhugh nodded. “Do it, then,” he said.

“Tonight, we will spread our bedrolls on the hatch. Nothing goes in or out,
oui?”

That struck Fitzhugh as a sensible idea, and he smiled grimly.

“We’ll go to the villages,
oui?
The ones the traders never go to. The ones too far south — Cheyenne, Sioux, Crow. We’ll take these big Pittsburghs, these
bateaux
of the prairies, full of goods, and come back with robes. These
hommes,
monsieur — are
hommes
to make the robes.”

“That’s winter travel you’re talking about.”

Trudeau’s face eased.

Something in his engagés buoyed him. Still feeling shamed by their loyalty, he left them and clambered painfully up the long stairways to the hurricane deck. Dust Devil always watched the sunset from there and he wanted to share it. LaBarge was pushing hard these days, and the
Platte
still furrowed the channel, heading toward some anchorage the captain knew of ahead. The day had been hell, but the indigo twilight brought a peace of its own.

He found her with a shawl drawn over her shoulders, her lovely face set toward the west, a new patience upon it. She watched him limp toward her as she clung to the rail, a gentleness upon her he hadn’t seen except when she stayed in her own village.

“Sweet Medicine,” she said.

“Still a piece to go.”

“You talked to the engagés?”

“Yes. I told them I’d find the thief and kill him with my bare hands. I was ready to, but Trudeau stopped it. He said they’d do their own hunting. The Creoles like to deal with their own. They’re like a pack of catamounts. They won’t quit and they won’t let me quit.”

“You were quitting?” Amazement laced her question.

“I figured I’ve got to sell out at Fort Union.”

“What did they say?”

“They said they’d drive the wagons out to the villages and trade, blankets or no blankets, all winter. That’s cold work fit for a slave.”

“All you do is roar like a bear,” she said. “You should let Samson Trudeau run the post. He knows how and you don’t.”

She was right, he thought. His explosive temper could get him into deep trouble.

The crown jewel of the American Fur Company, Fort Union, lay about two miles above the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone. From there, Pierre Chouteau ran his Upper Missouri Outfit, operating several sub-posts farther up the great river to entice the trade of the Blackfeet away from Hudson’s Bay in Canada. Brokenleg had not seen it in a decade and wondered whether it retained any of the glory of Kenneth McKenzie’s day, when the fort did a massive trade in beaver plews, and McKenzie was called the king of the Upper Missouri.

But the beaver days were long gone, along with McKenzie, and only a modest trade in buffalo robes kept the fort profitable. When Brokenleg had seen it in the mid-thirties, it had been a startling island of civilization in a vast wilderness; a place where French wines graced the table, along with fresh greens from its gardens, milk and eggs from its flocks, and dainties shipped from St. Louis. The
bourgeois
himself and his top men had dined in black frock coats, attended by a bevy of gorgeous Assiniboin women in bright cottons sewn into the latest Parisian fashion.

That July afternoon the
Platte
pushed its way past the braided confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, between looming reddish bluffs, while everyone aboard watched the various colored waters, the aqua of the Missouri and green of the Yellowstone, mix and streak. But Fitzhugh was watching something else, the ruin of old Fort William just there at the confluence. No one occupied it now, though once it had been the pride of Rocky Mountain Fur, the only major opposition American Fur ever had. But the beaver days were gone, and now the decaying fort belonged to Pierre Chouteau, Jr., who bought it to keep it out of the hands of opponents.