The High Missouri (29 page)

He rose from the table, his feet wanting out of there. “What on my mind, actually,” he said, “is to invite you to Lara’s baptism.” He smiled his best. “Half an hour before the evening angelus today.”

Claude and Amalie got up too. Amalie looked so relieved it was comical. Claude hadn’t quite recovered from his embarrassment. But they weren’t going to urge him to change his mind and stay.

She said, “Thank you, we wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

Dylan wondered nastily, during the christening, what will you do with the very wealthy and important American McLeods?

Amalie pressed his hand fervently.

The cathedral once more. For Dylan it was always emotional. This was the home of his life of the spirit for twenty-two years.

From the rear of the nave he walked down the center aisle toward the crossing. There, where the transept intersected the nave, was the place of magic. There, coming to receive the host, laymen crossed from the world to the altar, from the mundane to the heavenly. Appropriately, the nave was half dark, the crossing flooded with brilliant light from the stained-glass windows, and the altar and the apse half visible beyond.

He stood at the edge of the crossing. He came here a pilgrim, as always. His goal was to confess his sins, and by confessing, set his heart right with God. But he was not the same pilgrim as before his venture into the wilderness. Now he was a man who knew something of life, and death. Of the greatest joy and the deepest sorrow. Of the earth, the sky, and of men.

He was not ready yet to go to the confessional box and speak the words of confession and hear the words of absolution,
“Ego te absolvo, in nomine patri, et filii, et spiritus sancti.”
For once he felt the need to do what the priests and nuns had always advised him to do, prepare for his confession by reviewing his life since his last one. He knelt in front of the foremost pew, at the edge of the crossing.

He did not regret running away from home, but instead was proud of the spirit of sallying forth on a great adventure.

He regretted the spite that led him to strike back at his father, and the carelessness—literally carelessness—which permitted him to cause his father and sister worry.

He regretted the hardness of his heart, which had kept him from writing home for two years.

He regretted his liaison with Fore—not the fornication itself, which was merely a human act, so much as the fury, the hatred for Fore and self and for sex itself, in short, the spirit of the act. It was degrading.

He regretted his casual forkings, the ones he had bought from drunken Indian women. These acts now seemed to him pitiful for both partners.

He regretted drawing Saga’s blood, and regretted more the ugly feelings that led him to throw that knife.

He did not regret making love with Caro, not a moment of it. It still seemed to him wondrous, if not quite complete, not quite transforming. In fact—he smiled in realization—it seemed to him
almost
redeeming. Yes, something had been wrong in it, thus the ugliness. But it was not the love he felt, he would not repent of that, nor the physical expression he gave it.

What he regretted most was his acts toward Caro and Captain Chick. Spying on them—not the deed itself, though it was low, but the abhorrence and self-loathing he felt during it. (They committed the acts—why loathe himself instead of them?) The panic and self-abasement of the next six weeks. The awful pretense of those weeks—the pretense that ugliness would somehow become beautiful, that these scenes out of Hieronymus Bosch could be redeemed. He did not understand, even now, how he got lost in these afflictions.

He regretted the feelings of misery and helplessness that made him raise his hands with knives against Captain Chick. He thanked God for the impulse of self-love that made him miss. He smiled at the thought that it was this impulse Captain Chick despised him for.

He regretted the foolishness, the lack of foresight, that led to the death of Lemieux, of the guard Lemieux killed, and of Mad Jack.

He regretted not that he fooled the Lords and Ladies, or knocked down their palisade, but his resort to deception and force.

He regretted his uncertainty, his quavering, his pitiful insecurity when Caro returned, and his self-deception.

He regretted his wallowing in self-pity after her death.

He thanked God for Lara, and for his brief time with Harold.

And for the grand earth, the forests, the rivers, the plains, the mountains, the world of creation he had discovered, ever regenerating itself, ever growing, ever living. While human beings walked in uncertainty and trepidation, the earth showed the way, joyfully re-creating itself, showing the abundance, the creative vigor of life.

He regretted the moments—the eternities—he had fallen into desolation of spirit. On an earth such as this, desolation should be impossible.

He stood up. He looked around the cathedral. Yes, he would speak these thoughts to the anonymous priest in the confessional box—why not? And receive the priest’s blessing—why not? Speak thoughts of confession, which were welcome here. Not speak thoughts of happiness, satisfaction, glorious discovery, which somehow were not. These he would keep for himself, and for his journal.

The small group hovered around the baptismal font, Dylan holding Lara, the priest setting out on his function. Dru and Anastasie, Claude and Amalie, Father Quesnel watching, joining in the celebration.

“Ego te baptismo, in nomine patri, et filii, et spiritus sancti.”

The priest sprinkled a drop or two of holy water onto her forehead. Dylan remembered that holy water is God’s grace, given to Lara as a boon, a miracle.

“I christen thee Lara Caroline,” said the priest.

Dylan recalled that
christen
meant to make Christian. He smiled to himself. Lots of these Christians would never accept his daughter as Christian.

Dylan looked happily across at Amalie. He was glad surnames were not used at christenings, and she did not have to hear Davies instead of Campbell.

Father Quesnel spoke briefly with the Druid and Anastasie, and they answered—the baptismal promises, Dylan knew. Amalie gave Lara a white baptismal gown. The priest put a pinch of salt on the child’s tongue for health, first anointed her forehead with an oil he had blessed, then a second oil of olive and balsam, which had a lovely, sweet fragrance.

Dylan liked the ceremony. He liked the moment of honoring formally. He liked the acknowledgment of something wondrous. He liked the accoutrements and gestures that went with it—the black robes, white collars, crucifixes, rosaries, the baptismal font holding the life energy of water, the white gown, and especially the sweet-smelling oils. He felt blessed by the ritual, and thanked the priest sincerely at its end. Father Quesnel embraced him by the shoulders and walked with him to the table where Dylan lighted a baptismal candle.

The family made its way through the shadows of the side aisle of the nave and through the great front doors to the outside world. As they came onto the church steps, the bells began to ring the angelus.

The great humped beasts of bells. Dylan and Dru looked at each other, remembering, smiling.

Suddenly, in the tolling of the bells, Dylan heard sounds, dozens of sounds. It was odd, bizarre, incredible. He was hearing without hearing, with the dreaming ear. It was bedlam and sense, a cacophony and a harmony at once, nonsense, yet he knew what it was about. Some of the sounds were voices, rough voices of men, in… snatches of bawdy
voyageur
songs. Some were shouts of men and women gambling the hand game, and the drum beneath. Some were the cries of loons on lonely, moon-shadowed lakes. Some were the thump of hoofbeats and the roars of men fighting, some the pulsing of rivers, some the squawking of crows, some the tenor ululating of Indian songs, the drum beating beneath. Some the moans of men and women in the act of love. Some of this bedlam fabric of sound was ancient, some recent, some his own future, some the future of his grandchildren. Beneath it all throbbed the drum.

Standing there on the cathedral steps in the opulent midsummer sunlight, he understood without understanding, and knew without knowing. He felt the blood and breath of his life.

He said softly and happily to Dru, “Let’s go to the High Missouri.”

Dru said, “It’s time.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“We’ll figure it out when we get to Red River,” said Dru over and over. “When we get to Red River.”

That was his answer. The question was: When are we going to the High Missouri? To Dylan it was only a fairytale place, unreal, an adolescent dream. And yet this land of his imagination, remote, untouched, stirred him.

Not that he felt dissatisfied. He had company he liked, he had this seemingly endless string of days traveling through fine lake and river country, he had good physical exertion and plenty to eat, and he had a new volume of Byron bought in Montreal for the hour before sleep—he was reading “Lara.”

During the day he thought constantly of his Lara. Amalie had insisted on keeping the girl until at least next summer, when she thought Dylan would come out of the wilderness with his furs. She seemed genuinely glad to have the child, talking about buying her one of the new open-sided cribs, and a standing stool to help her learn to walk. Dylan told himself it was the right thing. But he missed his daughter painfully, except when he read at night or slept. Two years, he supposed, until he would see her—he was a young man with places to go, challenges to face. But it was hard, and he wondered what their plans were, if Dru had plans. What about the High Missouri?

Now the outfit was beyond Lake Superior and Fort William, and Rainy Lake Fort and even Lake of the Woods, and yesterday they came to the Red River settlement. Or rather to their camp near the Metis settlements of Red River.

It turned out there was not one Red River settlement, but at least two, separate colonies of Metis and Scottish crofters, and neither one would have anything to do with the other. The Scots were centered around Fort Douglas, an HBC post down at the mouth of the Assiniboine River. The Metis were on the east side of Red River, around St. Boniface, a mission run by one Father Provencher. They rode down to see St. Boniface Mission and Fort Douglas and the surrounding farms. Dylan looked at the mission building, run by one lone priest in this vast wilderness, and thought, That could be me. When Dru suggested they stop in to pay their respects, he declined.

Dylan, Dru, and Saga had put up camp yesterday, and spent today riding borrowed mounts to Fort Douglas and back. But they didn’t go in. The Metis, longtime Nor’Westers, refused to set foot in any establishment run by the Lords and Ladies. So did Dru and Saga. And Dylan.

Whatever his plans were, Dylan thought maybe the Druid intended to give these Metis some trade. If they could get rid of their trade goods, paying their obeisance to the god of commerce, maybe they could go a-wayfaring.

Dylan looked around camp contentedly. The crew was eating
sagamité
down by the canoes. Anastasie and Lady Sarah were making a stew of deer meat, wild onions, and wild rice in front of the bark wigwam that was their new home. It was good.

It was already the twelfth day of September, by Dylan’s journal. Dru teased him about keeping the journal, saying it was his one ineradicable white-man habit, to try to control time by knowing the name of this day out of a billion seamless and indistinguishable turns of light and dark the earth made revolving around the sun, and perhaps trying to control the future by knowing the past.

Dylan answered that at least it allowed him to know when winter was coming.

Dru said it was easier to tell, and far more accurate, by the changes you saw around you every day—the grasses drying up, the mosquitoes disappearing, the leaf-bearing trees starting to change color, ice at the edges of the lakes and rivers at dawn, then ducks and geese migrating south in their big vees, honking out the news that the next snow would stay the winter. Also easy to tell time by looking at the sun, he said—Dylan should get rid of that pocket watch.

In any case it was well into September already, and they would have to choose a winter camp within a few weeks. Somewhere Dru was being secretive about. Here? You floated canoes, you didn’t skid them on ice. They could trade everything they’d brought right here. Even if it was a thousand miles from where he wanted to be.

The
canots du nord
. Dylan looked down toward the bank of the creek at the canoes and men with satisfaction. It had all come together smoothly, and advantageously. Not one, but two canoes of the north, with five engagés, men hired to help. He chuckled, remembering. He supposed he had worked a sort of blackmail.

Once Dylan decided to go to the interior to trade, brother-in-law Claude had helped him all too willingly. They would go on shares, Claude said, Campbell Trading Company putting up the goods to trade to the Indians and a year’s wages for the hired men. The Welsh Indian Company, which was the name Dylan and Dru and Saga gave themselves, would run the outfit in the field, make the decisions, and do the actual trading. The two companies would share the risks and the rewards equally. Dru said they were called the Welsh Indian Company not because two of them were Welsh and one Indian, but because one day they would find the lost tribe.

So they were partners with Saga now. Dylan guessed it no longer made him edgy. Every day Saga squinted through the sunlight reflected off the waters they paddled, regarding him from beneath that twisted eyebrow where the handle of the knife hit him, maybe thinking one day they would brawl with blood in their eyes. You never knew how long a man’s memory was.

Yes, you never knew. Time was, he would have added the words: especially a half-breed’s memory. Once he had indulged in such thoughts—half-breeds are sullen, half-breeds are treacherous, half-breeds combine the worst features of both races. Now that he had Lara, he didn’t permit himself that kind of talk.

Dylan had smiled to Dru about Claude’s eagerness to help capitalize the Welsh Indian Company, claiming he knew Ian Campbell would approve. Blankets, strouding, trade axes, tobacco, whiskey, knives, kettles, beads, bells, powder, lead—they asked for the usual. Claude marked it down, keeping the quantities conservative, and ordered it packed into pièces and hauled to the river.

Truth was, Dru said, the risk was negligible, for the Welsh Indian Company was as small as Indian trading outfits got. Besides, it was a deal where Claude couldn’t lose. For less than a hundred Halifax pounds the bugger got his embarrassing brother-in-law out of Montreal. He also made things look good for Ian Campbell. If the investment paid off, Claude and Mr. Campbell profited. If it didn’t, Claude would be one up on Dylan in Mr. Campbell’s eyes.

Dru flicked an amused eyebrow upward. “Altogether a charm.” When Dru did that, it was the brow over his bright eye that rose, exaggerating its gleam, an effect that always nonplussed Dylan.

Yes, he thought, Claude got us out of Montreal, where we were an embarrassment.

Of course, Claude thought they were heading out for somewhere nearby, a close-to-the-vest trip for the first venture, probably in his father’s old country up toward James Bay, with the thought of coming back in the spring with a modest profit. Perhaps even the possibility of meeting Ian Campbell and joining forces.

They did not disabuse him. For thirty years’ work for the Nor’Westers, Dru had a credit of almost sixty pounds. They took the credit in merchandise, for a two-year trip into remote country, not one year. They had no intention of playing it cautious. If they did as well as report said they could, they would make enough in the two years to outfit themselves and go forward without partners. Dylan did not want to walk in his father’s steps, or somehow join forces. Somewhere in that two-year circle would be the High Missouri.

Ah, yes, his yearning for that place of his imagination was probably childish.

Before dinner Dru called a war council around the fire. Saga sat on the ground cross-legged, in his easy way. Dru held a book and rubbed it with his hands. Dylan thought how marked the three of them were on the face, Dru with a strange eye, Saga a scarred brow, himself the bright slashes of violence on his cheeks. Anastasie moved in and out, cooking, with an air that said it didn’t matter what the men did, the women made life work.

Dru opened the book to a map. He pointed to Red River. Well off the route they’d taken before, to and from the North Saskatchewan River, which was far to the north.

“You need to get filled in,” began Dru, looking at Dylan. “The Metis.” Meaning these Cree who were partly French. “Ten years ago, Lord Selkirk’s damn crofters came and started bloody farming. What you have to understand, what you’ve seen today, the Metis are not an Indian race.” Yes, he’d seen they were unusual. They lived in permanent villages here, did not migrate, spoke their own variety of French. “Lots of them have some education. They’re Catholics, yes, of their own sort. They even have a national flag, blue with a figure eight on its side.” Dru snorted.

“Now ten years’ bloody trouble. The sodding Lords and Ladies gave all the Metis country to Selkirk, a realm as big as England, twelve degrees of longitude and nigh as high.

“There is sure the Metis didn’t accept the crofters or any other Scots colonizing their land. Red River valley may be fertile, but it’s also the best buffalo country in the world. The Metis made a living getting pemmican for the Nor’Westers, late and lamented.

“Then the troubles. HBC burned down the Nor’Westers’ Fort Gibraltar—this was six years ago. Some Metis cornered a big bunch of the bastards after that and killed them.” He looked at Saga. “A bad business, that. Saga was there.” Dru looked gravely at his friend, but Saga’s face was expressionless. “Since that day, that lot of Metis have had bad luck, men dropping dead in peculiar ways. That’s part of the reason Saga has stayed away, been with me.” He eyed Dylan soberly. “The rest is that some bloody-minded Highlanders might be looking for him. So keep your eyes open and speak up sharp.”

Even now Saga kept his habitual look of impassivity.

“You may be sure of this: never will the Metis sit still for some Lords and Ladies in a boardroom in London giving their country to Scottish colonists. Never.

“So you see, here’s the main chance. There’s only Lords and Ladies at the Red River settlement now, no Nor’Westers under the sun, saving us, who are under a different name. The Métis won’t take to trading with the Lords and Ladies. Better to do business with Nor’Westers calling themselves the Welsh Indian Company.” Dru eyed Dylan sharply. “We’ll build up near St. Boniface, laddo. Mission’s half a day’s ride east of the Lords and Ladies’ fort, right where the Metis center. Saga will run things, and he’s related to everyone. If he doesn’t give too many presents to all his aunts and uncles, we’ll eat the competition alive.”

Saga didn’t even smile. “What do you say?”

Dylan felt disappointed. “It sounds profitable,” he made himself answer.

With a sidelong look and a quirky smile, Dru handed Dylan the book and showed him the cover. “The Red River trading post will be the sober part of our business. The business part. For you and me, laddo, I fancy a little more questing.”

Dylan’s heart rose into his throat.

It was called
History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis And Clark
, by Nicholas Biddle. Dylan had heard of the book, the tale of a military expedition mounted by the U.S. government to cross the continent to the Pacific. He hadn’t been so enamored of the idea that they struck out across a virgin continent—his father said the Nor’Westers had already been across it years before, and knew most of the places the Americans traveled to. Like everyone, he’d been intrigued by the story of a young Snake woman named Sacajawea, who carried her newborn son across the continent and back. And he’d been taken with how receptive all the Indians were to the whites. At the time, he thought it showed how ready they were for civilization, for Christianity.

That thought embarrassed him now. St. Boniface Mission embarrassed him, though he couldn’t have said why. The Metis reach for civilization embarrassed him.

Dru brought his attention back to the book, to the map, identified as the cartography of Captain William Clark, one of the two expedition leaders. It showed the Indian country as Clark knew it, mostly on the American side of the border, from St. Louis north to Lake Superior, west to the Pacific, and south to what Dylan supposed to be New Spain. Dylan threw some wood on the fire in front of the wigwam so they could see better.

The northern edges of this country the Nor’Westers had explored and knew it well enough. They had a post at the mouth of the Columbia River, taken from the Americans, and tribes from as far south as the Missouri River came into NWC posts to trade.

There was a fine stretch of buffalo and beaver country between the South Saskatchewan River and the Yellowstone, east of the mountains, and the High Missouri was its main artery. The Nor’Westers had avoided going into it. They had their own fur lands farther north, because of the long winters the best on the continent. Too, since the treaty of 1818, it was American territory, and they could be treated as smugglers. And the damned Piegans and Bloods and Blackfeet, kings of the whole region, refused to hunt beaver themselves, refused to let anyone else do it, and refused to let the fur men build a post in their country. Instead they brought their trade all the way to Rocky Mountain House or even to Augustus House, now late and lamented, on the Old North Trail.

Now that the Nor’Westers had become Lords and Ladies, it was even less likely that Canadian fur men would be going into these American lands. The American Manuel Lisa had made some attempts on the High Missouri, but he recently died. All of which opened the door to the Welsh Indian Company.

Dylan studied William Clark’s meandering rivers and mountain barriers with a mapmaker’s eye. It was a strange trick, always, to look at flat paper with latitudes and longitudes drawn on it, rivers and mountains sketched in, and translate that into a reality, something your foot would feel, your eyes would see, your nose would know. He had some novice skill at it.

Dru pointed to the labels Clark had written in, other than geographic labels. Indications of where tribes of Indians lived. “Ricaras.” “Teton, band of Sioux 1500 souls.” “A band of the Assiniboins 1000.” Elsewhere bands of Assiniboines listed at twelve hundred and two thousand people.