Into the Savage Country (27 page)

Layton held up his Hawken.

“I give this now as a sign of goodwill. Ten more weapons will follow. Ten long guns and all the powder we possess, and all the guns you can take from the British after you help us retrieve our furs.”

Red Elk said nothing. He filled the pipe again and smoked from it and handed it to Layton who smoked and gave it to Branch who smoked and passed it to me. Red Elk’s manner had not changed but I thought that if the proposition did not at least interest him we would have all been dead by then.

When I returned the pipe, Red Elk turned it over and said, “The last time I saw you, you stole my horse and had just participated in the massacre of my friends.”

“We were impelled to be present at the battle against your friends,” Layton said. “We did not actively participate in it and I argued to save the captives.”

Red Elk looked at him silently. I had the feeling he knew this to be true.

“But we did aid Chief Long Hair with long guns because he was a friend to us. We will be good to you if you become our friend. And if you kill us here, which you could certainly do, your men will only get the guns we do not manage to destroy before you kill us. And you will also lose your life.”

Layton motioned to Ferris out in the snowy waste.

“My man has four loaded weapons with him and you are in his sights. He will kill you at the first hostility.”

Red Elk turned and looked out at Ferris—a small dot in the vast, snow-swept expanse. Red Elk laughed.

“That man?”

“Yes,” Layton said.

“He is too far away to hit a horse. I could kill you and take your weapons and then kill him and take his weapons.”

“You and at least three of your men would be dead before you got to him.”

“Your man cannot hit me from there,” Red Elk said.

“He could choose which eye to put a bullet through,” Layton said.

Red Elk said something to his counselors and they murmured and looked at Ferris far out in the plain and shook their heads and laughed among themselves.

Layton walked over to one of Red Elk’s counselors and reached up slowly and took an arrow from a quiver. He held the arrow up to show it to them, then walked some distance away and pushed the arrow into the frozen ground. It had a red shaft and three yellow feathers and stood out against the frozen prairie. Layton pointed at the arrow and then pointed out at Ferris.

“Wyeth, go tell Ferris to split this arrow.”

“He can’t make that shot,” I said.

“Don’t argue about it. Just go tell him.” Then to Branch,
“Tell the chief here that if Ferris splits this arrow from where he is right now, he joins us to fight Pike and enrich himself. If Ferris misses, he can do what he wants with us.”

I began to protest but Layton waved for me to be silent. Branch translated. Red Elk motioned noncommittally, and Layton waved for me to ride out to Ferris.

I got on my horse and rode out and told Ferris what was required of him. Ferris had been lying there beneath a buffalo robe for half an hour in the frozen flats.

“He wants me to do what?” Ferris said.

“Can you see the red arrow with the yellow feathers against the white snow?”

Ferris looked up at me. “I can’t make that shot.”

“He already told them you could. He wants to show what can be done with a long gun. He said you’d split it in half.”

“Well, of all the idiotic things Layton has done this is the stupidest. I can’t make that shot. What’s going to happen when I miss?”

“Massacre, probably,” I said. “If we are overtaken, don’t waste time defending us. Ride north in Pike’s path. Perhaps you’ll escape with your life.”

Ferris lay there beneath his robes sighting the tiny red dot in the distance.

“Has he really rested our hopes on this?”

“He has,” I said. “Good luck, Ferris.”

“It is you who will need luck when I miss this impossible shot,” he said.

I rode back and said that Ferris would fire presently and we waited. It was me and Layton and Branch and Red Elk and his counselors out on the snowy, windswept plain. The entire population of his village stood to the side watching, anticipating the
massacre they were sure would follow. Far out in the wastes Ferris stood and shook his arms out and stepped about to warm himself. Then he lay back down and aimed for a long time. A minute passed with just the high whistling of the wind and the distant barking of dogs in the native encampment. Then there was a puff of smoke and the delayed sound of a gunshot seared across the icy wastes. I turned to see the shaft of the arrow was half as long as it had been and the top piece had tumbled off ten feet away into bits of stubbled grass sticking out of the snow.

Red Elk walked to the arrow and retrieved the feathered end and examined it. He looked out at the puff of smoke drifting away. Ferris was already reloading his weapon. Red Elk said something to the three counselors, who stood dumbfounded. After a moment one of them mounted and started back toward the encampment. The two others followed, leading the thoroughbred. Red Elk said some words to Branch, then mounted his horse and rode off slowly. When he was out of hearing Branch said, “He’ll join us with thirty men. They will keep whatever spoils they gather from the Brits other than the pelts. And they will take our guns and powder as payment. He says the trappers with Pike are not warriors and the natives are mostly Flathead and are worthless in battle. He says we should not have given up our weapons when we were surrounded as even seven men could have repulsed them. He says the large brigades move slowly and we will overtake them tomorrow. He says in two days he will have our furs back. The only question is if any of us will live to carry them.”

We overtook Pike’s brigade the following evening, just as Red Elk had said, and the morning after that Layton and I were hidden
in shrubbery in a wide, sloping valley with a burbling spring running up the middle. Four HBC trappers were positioned near the spring listening to the distant gunshots of a diversionary assault that had been launched by Red Elk and his men against the main body of the HBC. The horses had been secured in a natural corral of dense shrubbery half a mile from the battle, and only these four drivers were left to watch over the horses, as the British knew that even if the horses were somehow diverted, it would be impossible for the thieves, so encumbered, to get very far without being overtaken. Pike had more than a hundred men in his brigade, plus at least that many natives. He could overwhelm any force in the west.

The sound of gunfire rose and Layton and I crept to the edge of the shrubbery in which we were hidden. Ferris was separate from us, up on the slope somewhere in the trees with the long guns. Smith, Branch, Bridger, and Glass were with the diversionary assault, but said they would return in time to come to our aid.

Layton and I studied the drivers, knowing that we must disarm them, take control of our pelts, and make a dash east with the pack train before the bulk of the brigade was alerted. There were four men we had to overcome: a large, knobby-nosed captain whom I knew from St. Louis, an old-timer with gray hair who looked like he’d spent his life on the march, and two French trappers, one with a thick blond beard and the other clean-shaven.

These four men were all turned downhill toward the forest as another volley of fire sent a large cloud of smoke drifting over the trees. At this same moment a rider appeared out of the forest and moved up the slope and when he neared I saw it was Grignon. He spoke to the knobby-nosed captain, who motioned to the loaded pack horses wedged into the narrow enclosure made by the dense shrubbery. I understood Grignon was asking about the furs and
the security of the horses. By the captain’s careless gesture it was clear that he felt the furs were perfectly safe.

Grignon examined the natural corral and spring and then his eyes moved up and down the clearing and rested on the shrubbery where Layton and I were hidden. I knew he could not see us but his eyes stayed on the shrubbery for a long while.

The bearded Frenchman stood laconically and stretched and took two gourds hanging from a saddlebag on his horse and turned to the spring. The captain, the old-timer, and the clean-shaven Frenchman watched the smoke rise above the trees to the west. The bearded Frenchman moved for the spring and Grignon held his flask out but the Frenchman pretended not to notice.

“They know he’s worthless,” Layton whispered.

“They know he betrayed his friends,” I said.

The bearded Frenchman knelt at the spring and filled the gourds and then corked them by striking them with his palm. He handed one of the gourds to the captain who struggled with the cork stopper. It had been wedged deeply and the captain could not dislodge it. Grignon, meanwhile, had taken his own gourd and knelt at the edge of the spring. Layton nodded to me. There could be no better moment than that.

Layton and I eased our way out of the shrubbery, Layton holding his pistol in his left hand and a hatchet in the right. I was holding a pistol in each hand.

“Bet you wish you had that Collier now,” I whispered.

“If I had the Collier I would not have the satisfaction of cleaving Grignon’s skull with my blade,” Layton said.

We crept side by side, Layton and I, shoulder to shoulder, moving slowly along the outside of the shrubbery, which ended twenty-five yards from the spring. I could hear the pop of gunfire now and now and now. Grignon sat back and listened to the
fighting, then bent again to the spring, reaching his gourd far underwater. Layton and I stepped out into the open and Layton raised his hatchet and began to run. I followed.

In front of us Grignon held the gourd deep beneath the water. The stream trickled and the sun flared on the glistening snow. The captain had given up trying to unstopper his gourd and held it out to the clean-shaven Frenchman, who was pleased to help him, wanting to show his strength. We were fifteen steps away, close enough to see the white strands in Grignon’s hair as he bent to the pool. I could see the straining muscles in his shoulder. Layton raised the hatchet high. When he was four steps from the spring Grignon looked up and Layton ran the last steps and swung with the hatchet. Grignon rolled and the blade hit not the top of his head, but severed his ear and grazed the scalp. The blade rung as it split a stone two inches thick.

The captain whirled and I fired and he fired at the same time. Both our bullets went wide. The bearded Frenchman was reaching for his rifle when the gourd was blown from his hand. Two thin streams of blood sprung forth where his fingers had been. That was Ferris in the trees with his long guns. The other Frenchman had fallen and was reaching for his pistol, but Layton kicked it away. The man looked up at Layton and said, “
Je suis un booshway comme toi
,” and ran for the shrubbery. Layton did not fire on him but turned to look for Grignon, who had dashed off toward the far slope. Meanwhile, the captain had tossed his pistol and was reaching for his rifle when I fired with my other weapon. The captain fell back to the edge of the spring. I moved to leap on him but saw with surprise that there was no need. He was dead. I had killed him.

I turned about the clearing, but Layton and I were now alone at the spring. The captain was dead and the others had fled. The
camp hands did not get a percentage of the returns of the profit of the brigade and were not going to die for the furs. In a matter of ten seconds it was only Layton and I at the edge of that burbling spring. I glanced at the dead captain again. The bullet had passed through his mouth and come out the back of his skull. His head lay to the side, his brown hair floating weightlessly in the clear water. A thread of blood trickled crosswise over his forehead and dripped off his nose into the water. I could see individual drops clouding the water. Years later, as all else fades, those drips of blood in the spring stay with me.

There was movement down the slope. Grignon had crossed the stream and was slipping across a snowfield. I retrieved the captain’s rifle and sighted Grignon and fired and he fell. He got up and stumbled into some shrubbery. He was still alive, running down the slope.

“The horses,” Layton said, and I turned to the makeshift corral where a hundred and twenty fully laden pack horses and mules were gathered, jostling one another. Some of the animals held equipage, but about sixty of them held pelts. Not just our furs but the British profits from the entire season. As I went for the lead horse and began to separate the animals carrying furs from those that carried equipage, I realized that Layton was not behind me but had mounted one of the Frenchmen’s horses and was riding down the slope.

“The pelts,” I yelled but he was already gone in the direction Grignon had fled, holding his hatchet.

I turned back to the horses, found the lead pony, and led the beast out slowly. I tied the lead horse to a tree and led out another string. I tied that horse off to another tree. I had led out a quarter of the animals when something whooshed past my ear. I looked up to see that three rearguard soldiers had spotted me and were
dashing back toward the spring. Suddenly, the three veered to the north, one of them lurching in his mount. Branch, Glass, Bridger, and Smith were coming down the far slope with eight natives. A moment after that Smith arrived and saw our pelts and the British pelts still bound to the horses. He had been afraid that the furs would be unpacked during the battle. He gave a wolfish grin.

“Where’s that flatlander Layton?”

“After Grignon,” I said.

“Damn him. Pike would thank him for slaying the blackguard. It’s the pelts that cut him. The pelts!”

Smith turned back to the first string of ponies. He began urging them up the slope. Branch took another string. Glass a third. Ferris was still covering us from somewhere in the trees. More natives arrived and began driving the remaining horses onward. Within two minutes all sixty horses carrying pelts were cut from the rest and were being driven up the valley. As we reached the protection of a dense patch of trees, I was just about to turn back for Layton when he rode past me, blood up and down his deerskin shirt, his left bicep gouged.