The Yellowstone (8 page)

Chapter 10

November, 1843, Hard-face moon

Mac Maclean rolled over in his blankets and smelled something and waited to open his eyes. It was sagebrush—he pulled the smell in deep. Sagebrush made piquant by the dew. He had come home.

He lay there for a moment and enjoyed the feeling. He expected to see Chimney Rock today, and for him that marked the real beginning of the West. Where the land changed. Where the rocks make wild, romantic shapes. Where it got dry, and high. Where the grass was buffalo grass. Where the blue haze on the horizon was mountains. Where he belonged.

Opening his eyes, he saw that the eastern sky wasn’t quite black. Time to get up. No wake-up cry yet. Had the entire watch fallen asleep? Who was on watch? Skinhead, Fitzgerald, and Ringman, damn them.

Just then Mac saw movement among the horses.

Indians among the horses. What had happened to the watch?

Mac had been careful. The horses, mules, and oxen were hobbled and picketed, and ringed by tents and charettes and bales of goods and sleeping men. The Indians would have to cut some hobbles and pull at least some picket stakes to stampede the horses.

Mac lifted his new rifle, made by Sam Hawken, and checked the percussion cap. No movement, no sound.

The boom of a gunshot.

“Indians!” Mac hollered.

He saw blue-gray movement on the back of a horse. Men were jumping up all around. Mac fired at the movement. The horse bolted. Mac ran after it barefooted. He heard Skinhead roar at something across the way, and a yip from someone.

Now it was bedlam. The horses pawed the air, reared, whinnied, and neighed. Some pulled their picket pins, some broke their hobbles—some did both, and milled and kicked and clattered off.

A flood of cussing and bellering. Ringman’s voice. The big man had hold of a horse’s picket rope and was trying to get some footing. But the horse jerked Ringman to the ground and ran after the others. The men were working the animals still in the ring, turning their milling into circling.

Where in hell were the Indians? Run off? At least it was too dark for any redskin to see clearly to shoot. Mac slipped to the center of the ring and picked up the blanket. Blue, with a wide stripe of dark blue at each end. Made by Witney. Expensive blanket—what kind of Indian would wear a blanket such as this on a horse-stealing raid? It had a hole near the center where Mac’s ball had passed through—four holes in fact, through folds. Mac checked in the faint predawn light for bloodstains, but didn’t see any. Probably he missed.

“Cap, I got both the sons of bitches,” crowed Skinhead.

Since Campbell and Sir William named them captain and lieutenant of the expedition, Skinhead had taken to calling Mac “Cap.” Not even “Cap’n.” Mac didn’t think it did anything for discipline.

Mac walked over to Skinhead’s rotund silhouette to see what tribe the raiders were from.

One Indian, a young Sioux, was dead. Lights shot out. So it was Skinhead who’d fired. The other, small and frail, looked clubbed behind the ear. Skinhead was cleaning the blood off the butt of his hawk.

“This child seed ’em creeping up, two of ’em,” he said. “They come past Fitzgerald—he was asleep on watch. One stayed outside there, and this one sneaked in. Got ’em both.”

“Next time don’t play hero. Wake everybody up.”

“Ah, Cap, don’t spoil the fun.”

“Fitzgerald, you’re fined ten dollars, and you walk to Laramie,” Mac hollered. Ten bucks was a week’s pay.

Fitzgerald scowled and looked as if he meant to mope. John Fitzgerald was a bad apple—he even had a poor army record down at Atkinson. Mac intended to sort him out.

Skinhead took out his knife and knelt over the shot Indians. He took a turn of hair around his left hand and popped the scalp deftly. He grabbed the hair of the other downed red man the same way. Mac saw something odd.

“Hold on a minute.” Skinhead looked up annoyed, but waited.

Mac checked the hair. It was tied back in a ponytail. He had never seen that on a brave before. He looked at the face. A teenage boy, light-complexioned, and small even for a teenager. The clothes were an odd assortment—Pawnee moccasins, a cloth white-man shirt with a quilled four-winds wheel on the breast that looked Sioux.

Looking at the wheel, Mac noticed something else. And on the other side too. He checked the wound. If the skull wasn’t cracked, the wound only looked bad.

The eyes flickered and opened on Mac—large, dark eyes in a tiny face.

Mac couldn’t believe it. “Lieutenant Gant,” said Mac, “those are breasts. What you tomahawked is a girl. And a half-breed.”

“Only the two of us,” Lisette repeated, sounding desperate now. Her face was tearstained, her hair bloody, she had been grilled hard, and her head felt as if it were busted. She was too used up to lie.

Mac thought it unlikely that one boy and one girl, especially a Sioux and a breed girl, would go out horse stealing. But Skinhead saw only the two and the signs said two, so Mac supposed he believed her.

“It was only a prank,” she said defiantly.

“Some prank, girl. A man is dead.”

Now she was really pissed off at him, for emphasizing the obvious. She said she was the daughter of Genet, up at Fort Platte, which was just a mile and a half from the big post, Laramie. Maybe Genet had a wayward daughter on his hands and would be grateful to Mac for bringing her back. Unscalped.

But Mac didn’t have time to ponder on it now. They were just three weeks out from Westport and a few days from Laramie—Mac and Skinhead had been pushing right along, driving men and animals hard.

“Skinhead, you and Antoine scout. Paul the Blue, ride with us.” Paul Ringman had had his shoulder knocked out of place when the horse jerked him down. “Fitzgerald, walk behind.” Where the dust will get up your nose and in your teeth, damn you. “Let’s move it out.”

The men looked a little grumbly. Well, Mac had been hard. For his stake, he could be hard. For his trading post. For Annemarie.

“I lost four good American horses. I got back two Indian ponies. I expect to be paid.”

Mac had been severe with the girl as they rode, but she acted indifferent. She just rode, listlessly, rocking in the saddle. It was a cool November day, and she had the Witney blanket wrapped tight up to her neck. The four holes Mac’s ball had left made an odd decoration on her nice blanket. Why didn’t she take a ratty, cheap blanket to steal horses?

She had a beautiful face in a way, thought Mac. Onyx hair and striking dark eyes. But her face was spoiled by scarring, probably smallpox, which had hit the mountains in ’37. She was petite, not just short, but tiny all over, and beautifully molded. Unfortunately she had a face that said she could be used hard and might like it.

The way Ringman looked at her, he thought she was beautiful, too. Poor Paul the Blue hurt when he jostled that arm. He was a big lummox, over six feet, strongly built, with a sweet, placid disposition, like an ox. The men liked him and called him Paul the Blue for Bunyan’s ox.

Mac wondered if she was thinking about the Sioux youth who lay back at camp dead. Maybe she loved him. Certainly they were lovers. Mac had seen these soured half-breed women before—wild, angry, promiscuous, abused. Their fathers couldn’t get anybody to marry them.

Mac’s complaints about his horses meant nothing to her. Of the seven of his that ran off, the men found only three. He confiscated Lisette and her friend’s ponies as partial payment.

She didn’t care. She also seemed singularly unimpressed with the fact that Mac saved her life. And with everything, including herself.

Mac could use Genet’s goodwill. His little post was handy, being close to Laramie, and Mac had merchandise to sell. Campbell and Uncle Hugh had cooked up the idea.

Didn’t those thousand emigrants travel last spring along the Oregon Trail, as it was being called? Up the Blue, over to the Platte, upstream past Laramie to the Sweetwater, through South Pass, across the Siskadee, past Fort Bridger, along the Snake, down the Columbia to Oregon. It was the route Mac first took to the mountains, and the one he was on now. Campbell thought the emigration would grow.

Campbell had a superb system of intelligence—most old mountain men stopped to see him when they were in St. Louis. He had a nose for the main chance, and right now it lay in being able to provide fresh, healthy, sound-footed animals along the trail. Horses, mules, and oxen.

Thus his proposition. Mac had to take Sir William’s offer. As long as he was going, he should drive livestock west—now, in the fall, with a chance to winter over. By June, when the wagons crossing the continent got to Laramie, half-crippled because of poor draft animals, Mac’s horses, mules, and oxen would be fat. And ready to trade, one for several who were sore of hoof or back. It would be a seller’s market.

At the end of the season, a healthy profit—in addition to the money from Sir William. Said profit to be split evenly between the man with the backing, Campbell, and the man in the field, Mac. Plus another bonus to Skinhead.

And then Uncle Hugh quietly offered to supply a couple of thousand dollars worth of goods to be traded to the Indians for furs. “You need something to keep you occupied during the winter,” Hugh said wryly. Again the profit to be split.

So Mac and Skinhead had steamed up to Westport about the first of October and spent ten days investing in the best livestock they could find. And putting together a crew. And buying some wagons to transport Stewart’s show animals back. And buying gear, and seed. On October 21st they set out for Laramie.

Mac had hopes. He could get a good stake out of this—if he could avoid getting robbed, did some good trading, kept his animals healthy, kept the redskins away from them, and if and if and if.

Making a home base of Fort Platte, where this girl’s daddy was boss, would be a good start.

He wondered if he’d have time this winter to journey north to visit with Annemarie. Strikes Foot said they’d winter on Clear Creek—a couple of hundred miles. He doubted it, not in the snow.

Mac Maclean looked forward and saw Skinhead on a hill a couple of miles ahead. He didn’t reach for his Dolland—a fine telescope, gift of Sir William. No need to look. If Skinhead was willing to skyline himself, everything was fine.

Chapter 11

Hard-face moon

“Oh, that Little One,” Genet would say, indicating Lisette, rolling his eyes. And that would be all. “Little One and that One-Dollar,” he’d say with an air of exasperation, “they just rutted.” Little One was Lisette’s nickname, from the Sioux.

One-Dollar was the young Sioux Skinhead had killed. Genet Frenchified his name to “Dollaire.” Fortunately for Mac, he was a hang-around-the-forts Sioux and a drinker, not prized by his people.

Genet fascinated Paul the Blue.

The French partisan went around the fort with a long face. It was his conviction that the French explored North America, they created the fur trade, the English did nothing but colonize a little strip along the seacoast, and the whole should belong to France. “Damme,” he’d say, making it sound like the French
femme
. “Even the Indian word for white man is ‘Frenchman.’”

All this he proclaimed at breakfast, dinner, and supper, and mumbled in between. Aside from that, the trade was going to hell anyway, the Indians were bestial, the whites were worse because they should have known better, his wife was unfaithful and now she was dead, the weather would turn rotten tomorrow, and his daughter was ungrateful, meaning promiscuous.

To Mac and Skinhead the Frenchman was simply a sad sack. To Paul the Blue, an unlettered carpenter, he was a sensitive man, a man of melancholy, in tune with the sad music that was human life.

It was John Baptiste Reshaw that Blue couldn’t stand. He was a young French-Canadian trader, sharp, tough, cynical, and the firewater connection. Every summer he went to Mexico and smuggled back Taos lightning. Reshaw was also the brains of the fort, and the reason it gave Laramie good competition.

Blue’s problem with him was that he thought Genet contemptible, Lisette beddable, and everything amusing.

Sometimes at supper Genet would tell tales of the beautiful, heartbreaking music his mother used to make on the clavichord back in Montreal. His mother died young, Genet said—the best die young—and she made music like an angel. And after this mournful table conversation he would retire to his quarters and fiddle the evening away, scratching out the sentimental songs of the
voyageurs
, the French boatmen who first explored the forests of North America, in canoes. He never played for other people.

Blue liked to prop his huge frame against an adobe wall outside and listen rapt—the music was soulful, he said. Even Skinhead could be drawn to this solitary music-making. Lisette mocked the fiddling, as she mocked everything about her father.

Blue didn’t care what she said. He was in love with her.

All this mattered little to Mac. Genet was cooperative, even ingratiating about practical matters. Mac was welcome to trade livestock here next summer—that would surely draw customers to Genet’s humble post. Yes, certainly, Genet was glad for Mac to build corrals. Since the corrals would remain, Genet would be in his debt—might he loan men to help with construction? Since Mac’s men would be out collecting animals for Sir William, whom Genet was honored to have met last summer, they could bring in meat for the fort as well. That way they would earn their keep—more than earn it, certainly, and Genet was again obliged. Would Mac like corn for his livestock?

Mac feared Genet would be fired at any time. Fortunately, Reshaw also wanted Mac and his men as winterers. He was tired of Genet’s lugubrious company, and seemed to like the Americans, and the money the Americans might lose at cards.

Mac thought Fort Platte might be able to give the older and more established Fort Laramie a run for its money. It was big, important-looking—adobe walls eleven feet high and roughly two hundred paces around—and had plenty of whiskey. If only Genet didn’t mess everything up.

Mac divided his forces. Since Skinhead was full of talk about the big bonus he would earn from Cap’n Stewart, he was in charge of the hunting. The Black Hills to the west were a home to every kind of beast, especially mountain lions, bighorn sheep, and the silver-tip bears, the grizzlies. Mac told him, truthfully, that capturing them live would be hard, a job for an old hand like Skinhead. Some would have to be snared, others stunned with neck shots. Skinhead intended to work the rest of the autumn and all winter on this project—bears might be less tricky to catch when they were hibernating. The buffalo and antelope he’d gather up last—they were so easy. And he’d surely be ready to head for Westport early in the spring. Skinhead was all braggadocio.

Mac took on the building projects. Horses, mules, and oxen first—they’d be too vulnerable until he got them penned at night. Sheds to store feed in—Genet wanted these, too. Other corrals for the beasts Skinhead would bring in. Plus cages. Mac had brought Blue and a bunch of log-working tools—double-bitted ax, adze, bow saw, two-man crosscut saw—just for this purpose. Blue was an expert cabin builder.

Mac also set a man to repairing the wagons hauled west, and even making new ones. He thought about making a short trip out to some nearby Sioux to trade the goods he’d brought out. And he teased himself with a bigger idea: Why not do the trading with the Cheyennes, up in front of the Big Horn Mountains, and see Annemarie?

Blue’s mooning after Lisette was the joke of the post. Such a big fellow, so mild, so nice. He’d never abuse her. Lisette acted as if she couldn’t stand him. She flirted openly with several of the post staff, most provocatively with Reshaw, a small, dark, muscular, and rather dashing fellow. She acted as if she didn’t give a damn that he was supposed to marry some Arapahoe woman soon.

One night early in December, Mac, Blue, Skinhead, and Genet were playing whist in the dining room. Genet generally didn’t like cards—they were a sign of this degraded prairie life, which he despised—but he acquiesced to whist, which was more civilized.

Tonight’s game was not much of a contest. Blue didn’t understand it, and impulsive Skinhead was bored because he couldn’t win or lose a pile on the single, dramatic turn of a card.

A clatter from next door—Genet’s quarters. A body crashing into the common wall, it sounded like. A woman’s voice shouting, and a man’s.

Poor Genet jumped for the common door. The other three hurried outside.

Reshaw ran out Genet’s front door into the courtyard, hauling up his pants. Lisette threw something at him, a candlestick, skittering across the frozen earth. She cursed him. She said something about his manhood. Reshaw scurried off. Little One stepped out into the courtyard and maligned him again. She was entirely naked. She looked across at Blue, Mac, and Skinhead saucily, and cocked her hips. Her father’s arm pulled her roughly back inside.

They closed the door and sat back down at the table. Blue looked to Mac sorrowful, not angry.

Skinhead started dealing euchre. “She’s a cat, that one,” he observed.

Mac watched Blue restrain himself. Skinhead’s life and limb were momentarily in jeopardy. He didn’t notice.

“She just needs someone,” Blue choked out. His face was mottled.

Skinhead shrugged. “Little One has had everyone. She needs a lodgepoling. Ante.”

Mac put a hand on Blue’s wrist.

Genet’s voice came loud through the wall. “Right in my own home,” he yelled. The names he hollered included “slut.”

Mac took Blue by the arm and led him outside. Skinhead changed to solitaire.

“You can’t change a leopard’s spots,” Mac said softly.

For a moment Blue said nothing. They were walking toward the outfit’s wall tents. “She needs me,” Paul answered.

Mac regularly moved the livestock to better grass, fattening them for the long winter on the Laramie plains. Genet’s corn would get him through the bad months comfortably. At night Mac kept a close guard on the animals. He headed timber trips up the Laramie River. He oversaw Blue’s building of the corrals, cages for the captured animals, and more wagons.

And still he had too much time, time to think about his stake, his post on the Yellowstone. He got broody. He started thinking about those bales of trading goods sitting there not turned into furs. Mac was a good brooder—he had a knack for it and could make himself miserable. To recover his spirits, he would fantasize about Annemarie.

One morning he got up, sleepless, and told Blue to get ready—they were going traveling. A long way—to the Cheyennes.

Lisette insisted on making Mac a capote, a heavy, woolen coat. He couldn’t go on a winter journey with just blankets, could he? Like a poor Indian? This was December. She would have it ready before dinner, and they’d start out on full stomachs, wouldn’t they? Mac saved Little One’s life, and she wanted to do something for him.

Mac found it easier to give in than say no. And it was true that since Magpie robbed him, he was a poor man. Even now he didn’t have proper winter moccasins. He would have preferred showing up to see Annemarie looking rich.

He spent the morning getting ready. He would take four horses loaded with goods to trade. Blue was going along—Mac wanted to get the fellow away from Lisette. And Reshaw was going with them. The Fort Platte trader wanted to make contact with the Cheyennes, too, to invite them in to trade this spring.

Mac couldn’t very well refuse. He went out to look at the horse herd. He had told no one about Annemarie. They wondered why he was going all the way to Powder River country to visit some Cheyennes instead of trading with nearby Sioux. He kept his own counsel.

He eyed the horses thoughtfully. He could take ten extras now, make them a gift to Strikes Foot, and bring Annemarie back as his wife. He wanted to. He wanted to achingly.

But to Mac Maclean it didn’t make sense. By midsummer those ten horses would become twenty-five or thirty. And he had no appropriate quarters for her now—he didn’t want to start his married life in a tent outside the fort, or in a borrowed room in it. He wanted the master quarters in his own fort.

Mac went back into the fort. He would do what was sensible, and what required self-discipline.

They ate heartily. There was no denying, when starting out on a winter journey, a spirit of eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die. Yet the young winter was mild—there were just thin patches of snow in spots. Only the incessant wind made men uncomfortable.

Little One stayed in Genet’s quarters during the meal, evidently finishing work on Mac’s capote.

Finally they were ready. “Lisette,” Mac called, holding the reins of his horse. The wind chilled him through his cloth shirt.

She came running with the capote. It was made from a blue Witney blanket, just like the one…

It was the one he shot.

Little One held it up, spread for him to see, smiling mischievously. It was sinew sewn, and tightly, a good job. Instead of patching the four holes, she had left them open and actually circled them boldly with vermilion.

“Four’s a lucky number, you know,” she said. “A
wakan
number.” The Sioux word for “sacred.”

“Now instead of Dancer, they’ll call you Red Shot.”

Mac grabbed the capote, put it on, and stepped into the saddle.

“Or maybe Four-Holer,” she added.

Reshaw snickered.

Mac applied his spurs.