The High Missouri (30 page)

Dru pointed carefully to the map, on the Missouri River, where Clark had labeled it “Mandans.” Then he traced the river upstream to the west, past the mouth of the river marked “Yellowstone,” which Dylan knew the Nor’West maps called the Roche Jaune, past the mouths of the “Muscle Shell” and the “Marias” to Clark’s big label
“FALLS,”
where the river came from the south, an area Clark had cluttered with big, clumpy lines that looked like caterpillars, his representation of mountains. This was what the
hivernants
called the High Missouri, the home of the tribes of the Blackfoot confederation, especially the Piegans, the biggest piece of country of the Rocky Mountains that white men didn’t take beaver from.
“BLACK FOOT INDIANS,”
said Clark’s label.

Though the Piegans wouldn’t permit any forts in their country, Dru said you could build one on the east edge of it, among the friendly Assiniboines, get the Piegan trade, and have easy access to Red River.

“This,” said Dru, “may be El Dorado.”

His plan was more subtle and more ambitious. He said the owners and
voyageurs
of the Welsh Indian Company should not depend on the Indians to get the beaver. The Indian way was slow, to break into the lodge during the winter and kill what you could find. Few Indians were dependable—they did not work steadily—and the Piegans would not do it at all. Traders looking to make their fortunes needed something more reliable. It was Dru’s idea that they would run trap lines themselves, get their own beaver. Off and on fur men had done this, but only as a little something on the side, not a true commercial effort. The Welsh Indian Company, a fledgling outfit, would not just trade, it would trap.

Suddenly Dru stood up. “Welcome,” he cried into the half darkness. An old man with a quizzical expression stepped from the shadows into camp. “It’s just time to eat. Sit.”

Dru gestured to his partners in introduction. “Dylan, Saga.” Saga materialized from the shadows. “This is our sage of El Dorado, Toussaint Chabono.” They offered their hands, and Chabono took them. “Chabono—Dylan Davies, a Welshman; and Saga, a Metis. Gentlemen, you’ve heard of Sacajawea, the Snake woman who interpreted for Lewis and Clark. This is the expedition’s other interpreter, her husband.”

Dylan was fascinated, but Chabono was vague. Yes, he knew the Mandans, he’d lived among them. Among the Minnetarees longer.
Bien sur
, he knew the Piegans, and spoke somewhat their language. Hard people to deal with. Yes, you might do well trading among them, if you could keep your scalp. He said to Anastasie and Lady Sarah, deflecting the conversation, “Very good this dinner.”

Yes, Chabono tell how to get to High Missouri. No, he not go there again, he have job Fort Minnetaree, interpret there for Père Noël. Dru gave Dylan a sideways glance. Who and what were Père Noël and Fort Minnetaree? Since Lisa died, Chabono went on, no Americans on Upper Missouri until this year, no job for Chabono. No, he concluded, Piegans too far, too much trouble.

Dylan wondered if the old man was drunk. After a while he decided Chabono was not exactly drunk. Maybe he drank a little all day, every day, so that a certain vagueness, uncertainty, and tremulousness were his constant companions. But he wasn’t exactly drunk.

No, said Chabono, he would not travel with them to Mandan villages. Is easy—up the Assiniboine River and the Mouse River, then a short portage over to the Missouri, said Chabono, just a mile, then down to the Mandans. No, Chabono had business with the clerk of Fort Douglas, something to trade,
tres
big business. He had to wait until the clerk came back from the big annual buffalo hunt—he had to. He showed a lascivious smile. “You go Piegans,” he said, “get rich, ver’ rich.”

He gave Anastasie his dish of stew, barely touched. Dru handed him a cup of rum, which he slurped eagerly. Dylan wondered how old he was. From appearance, seventy and more, but part of that might be dissipation.

“Here’s to El Dorado,” said Dru, hoisting a cup.

Chabono raised his own cup in the toast and drank. He looked lewdly at Dylan. “Many plews among Piegans,” he said unsteadily, “but Chabono got something especial.” He leered. “Two women, yes, maybe too spirit’ for slave. Not obey!” He snapped his fingers commandingly.

“Chabono maybe trade clerk woman. Today slave, tomorrow white-man wife.” He grinned cunningly. “Got two sisters. Piegan, sure. You wan’ buy woman?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Dylan couldn’t keep his mind on El Dorado. No, he didn’t want to buy a wife, even though he’d been celibate for over a year. But he couldn’t help thinking about the women Chabono was offering. Slave women? Stolen women? It aroused his disapproval. Against his will, it also aroused his lust.

Yes, said Dru. Stolen. Maybe by Chabono, more likely by someone who traded them to him. The question, Dru said, was what information about other traders hid here? For instance, what traders had been among the Piegans? That was why they’d accepted the old man’s invitation to dinner tonight, he said, to find out. Meanwhile Dylan was to help Dru patch the canoes. That would help him keep his mind off
la chatte
and on El Dorado.

Dru inspected the canoes and sewed tears with an awl and slender, crooked spruce roots. Dylan smeared spruce gum on as caulking.

Yes, El Dorado, he could manage to think about that. It was good to live in Indian country, but damned if he would live there poor.

He ventured, “Maybe the Piegans will drive us out.” He wondered, Why do I feel a need to say what can go wrong?

Dru shrugged. He was like the
voyageurs
in many ways, willing to wait and see what life brought, and to be amused by whatever it was.

But Dru argued it this time. “We know their ways. We know the Piegans. We speak the language. And we’re Britons, subjects of His Majesty George the Fourth, or whichever bloody George it is, not sodding Yanks.” Dru looked at Dylan with a sideways smile. “You know why they trade with us and kick the Americans in the arse?”

Dylan shook his head.

Dru looked Dylan in the eye. “We’ve told them straight along that we want just to trade, and that the Americans want to come and take their land.” He laughed. “The first commandment of commerce. Thou shalt tell lies about thy rivals.”

Dylan shook his head, half dizzy. He wondered what, if anything, depended on old Chabono.

As a host, Chabono was a show-off. He gave commands to his main wife, called the sits-beside-him wife, Turtle, with a imperious glance. This fat, middle-aged woman ordered the two slave girls about like a squawking jay. Dylan thought she was making a point of mastery to the visitors.

Chabono, though, was making a point of their appeal. They were sisters, he said, from the Piegans, ver’ unusual, not many Piegan slaves. And sisters make the best wives,
bien sur
. Peace in the home.

“See how fine their shapes are,” he said. He reached out and held the arm of the one called Cree Medicine. She stopped and allowed herself to be turned, even pirouetted a little on her own. Dylan thought Chabono treated her with affection. She was about twenty or twenty-one, appropriately modest, eyes cast down, and very comely, with a soft, round body. Dylan flushed with the thought of the fantasies she would inspire in him.

The other one, Red Sky at Morning, kept her distance from Chabono without making it obvious. She was fifteen or sixteen, Dylan guessed, and as much teenage angular as Cree Medicine was womanly soft. Red Sky seemed to be keeping some expression carefully off her face—no doubt she feared a beating. Dylan thought the expression was sullenness. Well, maybe it was fiery anger. He’d have to see it flare to know.

Chabono was showing them off to the three male guests, for sure. At first his salesmanship seemed mostly directed at Dru. After a while, rebuffed by Dru’s disinterest, he turned it to Dylan. Dylan didn’t want to buy a pair of sisters as wives. True, he had a yen to rent them. But he wouldn’t permit himself that. He wouldn’t rent any woman unless he lost his resolve, and not any slave woman under any circumstances.

He’d had a talk with Dru this afternoon about slave women, and no longer had any doubt what their relationship with Chabono was in the buffalo robes. He hated the idea of slavery, and he hated being around Chabono and his damned slaves. Especially because it made his cod ache.

Dru made a case that Indian slavery was not like black slavery. An Indian took a slave, Dru said, because he wanted to replace a loved one he’d lost. A wife, or just as likely a treasured small son or daughter. You didn’t think of it as persecution, ultimately, but as a gift. After all, the slave once had to live among whatever tribe she was born to, and now got to live with your tribe, the Real People. Also the slave would want to submit as a woman to the more powerful man, the one with the courage to steal her from her weakling father or husband.

Of course, you made them earn their way a little. At first, especially, they would have to show obedience to the man and the sits-beside-him wife, a matter of respect. They would have to do some onerous jobs. They would have to show their willingness by being eager to please the mother and father, or the man and the sits-beside-him wife. Which would include pleasing the man in the robes. But he, being wise, would treat the slave wife with gentleness and tenderness. He wanted not unhappy acquiescence, but obedient love. He wanted not a slave, but a loving family member.

Dylan could imagine getting obedient love from Cree Medicine, but not from Red Sky at Morning.

After dinner the women retired to the tipi, the buffalo-hide lodge of the plains, not the birchbark affair of the woodlands. Dylan caught glimpses of them sewing or beading or making small objects. He had the damnedest impression about Red Sky—she seemed to be napping flint, or maybe obsidian, the stone was so dark. But a woman wouldn’t do that. Well, maybe she was making a knife for her husband-master. But a Plains Indian woman wouldn’t do that either.

Well, bloody hell, until today he hadn’t known sod all about Indian slavery.

Dru broached the delicate subject to Chabono. “How did you come by
Piegan
slaves?” Of all the people of the plains, the Piegans were probably the most arrogant, the most chauvinistic, the least likely to tolerate someone taking their women as slaves, the most likely to avenge such encroachment.

“Such is Père Noël,” said Chabono, shaking his head and smiling. “Père Noël thinks he conquer world. This summer he make post at Minnetaree. Know Lisa dead, know
Americains
not on upper river, want to make the
gran
start. Trade Minnetaree, Mandan, Assiniboine.”

Dylan could see Dru was irked. Someone else, evidently some other Frenchman, maybe some other Nor’Wester, had the idea of stepping into the country of the High Missouri since the Americans had fallen back. Dylan wondered how much trouble it would cause. What sort of man would give himself such an absurd name as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, or the new American name, Santa Claus? Well, at least the fellow wasn’t going to the Piegans. Now that he’d stolen their women, he bloody well couldn’t.

“Minnetarees long time go Lemhi Snakes, take women slaves.” He shrugged. His own wife, Sacajawea, had been stolen by the Minnetarees, Dylan knew. “This summer Père Noël want make some money, go to them himself. Maybe want wife for himself.” He made an expressive gesture with outstretched arms.

“But One Horn, leader, his medicine turn bad. Party go back. Père Noël, him jump forward, say his medicine good, say take women from Piegans.” Chabono looked most amused.

“All but two ignore Père Noël, come back to Minnetaree. Zem two, young, stay, go Piegans.” Chabono made a dramatic pause. “Zey steal ’em.” He shrugged as if to say, It makes no sense, but… “Four!” He shook his head in amazement.

“Two he take to Fort Snelling, trade. Two he give me, take to Red River, trade, cache half plews to him.” He pursed his lips and cocked an eyebrow.

Dylan thought he was living in a twilight world, complete with demons run by Père Noël.

Many cups later, toward midnight, Chabono waxed enthusiastic. “
Bien sur
, you shall grow rich. The Piegans won’t have to walk and ride all the way to Fort Augustus just to trade.” The old man wagged his head, whether from drunkenness or decrepitude, Dylan didn’t know. “You smart, you go to Lemhi Snakes, bring some women back,” he added.

Never this side of hell, thought Dylan.

More head-wagging. “Chabono, he has Snake woman wife once, bought her from Minnetaree, good wife.” He eyed them, not with lust, as Dylan expected, but with what looked like greed in his eyes. “Slave,” he said. “Cheap.” He said it like they hadn’t heard of Sacajawea, the slave and wife. Dylan thought he looked like he wanted to say more but he didn’t.

Dru asked Chabono about the Mandans being the Welsh Indians. Dylan thought moodily that he himself wasn’t interested in the sodding Welsh Indians, he was interested in beaver plews. He hoped the Mandans had boatloads of them, if that’s where they were going.

Chabono assured Dru the Mandans were not light-skinned and bearded, which he already knew. “Do they have a greatly advanced civilization?”

The old man shook his head no. Dylan thought he didn’t understand the question.

Dru turned to Dylan. “The tribe most often reported to be the Welsh Indians,” he said, “is the Mandans. Some say their name is a corruption of ‘Madog.’” Dylan remembered the name of the legendary Welsh discoverer and colonist of the Americas.

He turned back to Chabono. “Is it true that they bury their dead in mounds?”

Chabono nodded somberly. Or perhaps it was just head-wagging in the other direction.

“That’s a Celtic practice, truly,” said Dru. He grinned broadly at Dylan. “We shall raise the ghost of Madog on these shores.”

“First,” said Dylan, helping the old man up, “we’d better get Chabono off to bed.” Tomorrow or the next day the canoes would be in good repair, and it was getting late in the season.

Chabono refused help and trundled off toward his lodge. The three partners of the Welsh Indian Company started walking back to camp.

It was settled. Saga would stay among the Metis. Dylan and Dru would go to the Mandans this winter and build a post on the edge of Piegan country next summer. Every summer thereafter they would bring the furs as far as Red River. All was well. Maybe El Dorado was on the horizon.

Dylan was leery of lusting for riches. He remembered the legend of El Dorado, which meant in Spanish “the golden man.”

According to the tale, the Spanish had heard of a tribe so rich in gold that the chief went about gilded, covered with powdered gold. Dylan wondered if there might be some truth to it—if you oiled a man at a special ceremony once a year and sprinkled him with gold dust, would he not in a sense be gilded? But the point was something else: conquistador after conquistador had spent fortunes, had broken horses and men, had stained the earth with the blood of Spaniard and Indian, looking for El Dorado. Meanwhile ignoring their true discovery, a new land, a good place to live, to walk the earth, drink the water, breathe the air, and raise children. The lust for El Dorado blinded men.

Even trying to provide for your daughter could be dangerous.

Dylan thought of Lara asleep in her new open-sided crib in Montreal, and nodded to himself, and thought, I hope all is well.

But all was not well with Dylan Davies. His spirit was sour. Something was curdling his milk.

He thought of Chabono’s lodge. He twisted his mouth. He felt a beginning of a rebellion in his belly.