Rendezvous (31 page)

Fitzpatrick grunted, patted Skye on the shoulder, and wandered off.

Skye healed swiftly. Even the next day, when Sublette moved camp twelve miles to the Gallatin River, Skye managed to load his gear and ride. But no one would let him work. The camp tenders refused to let him build a fire, collect wood, cook, or butcher the buffalo that Bridger shot along the way.

Things changed subtly. They didn't forget to call him mister anymore. They were deferential, which bothered him. He had done nothing more than fight for his life in a tight corner, but now they were acting as if he'd won a war. And now they simply ignored the surly Scott, plunging the youth into deep isolation. Scott wasn't much, but a trapping outfit needed every man, and this outfit needed Scott to help keep camp. The young man exuded anger, envy, and a lot of other things Skye could only guess at, and spent a lot of time out of camp by himself. No one said a word about him, but every man in camp was monitoring Scott.

Beaver were plentiful, and for a few days the trappers brought back all they could carry. Then the weather changed. The wind rotated north, bringing gloomy overcast with it, and the temperature plummeted. Gray ice formed along the banks of the creeks. Skye dreaded and hated mountain winter. He could barely sleep at night, with every breath freezing in his beard and his body numb even under blankets and buffalo robes. As soon as he was able, he began building a real shelter, walling off an undercut rock cliff and laying up a rock fireplace that would resist the wind and throw heat into his refuge. Some of the veterans laughed at him and said they'd be moving about the time he finished—but they were the first to settle against the fire-warmed rock of the cliff when their daily toil was over.

At least it didn't snow much, though an inch or two fell now and then, and the horses had to paw down to grass more and more. No Blackfeet showed up but Sublette never let down his guard. This was their prized hunting ground; they would be back in force to revenge themselves for their wounds and deaths and dishonor. Bug's Boys never gave up. The free trappers went out in fours each day, armed and ready, but the deceptive quiet continued deep into the short days of December when the wan sun came late and fled in the middle of the afternoon, plunging the river canyon into a cold blue gloom.

Skye ate more beaver tail in those weeks than he wanted, and wished for some good buffalo hump. But the free trappers had turned industrious. This was the prime season, and from well before dawn to deep into the long nights they devoted themselves to trapping. They baited their traps with castoreum, the musk that drew beavers to the jaws of the traps, staked them in the icy water of half-frozen creeks, ran their trap lines, pulled beaver after beaver out of their ponds, and staggered back to camp with a heavy load of dead animals, too tired to say a word. Skye tried to keep up, to flesh each day's take and dry the pelts on willow hoops, but the hides froze and never did clean properly. He sensed that when the next warm spell and sunlight came, he would have to dress a lot of pelts over again.

All this was hard, dull, numbing work that lowered spirits and set men to dreaming of a hearth and comfort. Tom Fitzpatrick spent a week jabbering about bread. All he wanted was a taste of fresh, hot, yeasty bread. The Creoles dreamed of cognac or beer or women. Arthur Black wept for a lost love in St. Louis. Skye didn't dream of anything. He toiled through the wintry days, fought cold, suffered every time the wind blew or snow fell, and kept quiet. Somehow, next summer, he would go to the eastern seaboard. No sane man would stay in these empty, lonely, miserable mountains if he could escape.

One day Scott disappeared. Sublette and a strong party followed his tracks for several miles and found him near the pass, heading for the Crow villages, carrying a pack with some company sugar and the last of the coffee in it. Sublette brought him back and confiscated the sugar and coffee, which they were saving for Christmas. They would not have another sip of coffee until rendezvous—if then.

“I should have let him go,” Sublette said to Skye. “He wasn't pulling his weight here, and we don't need him.”

But Skye sensed that Sublette's anger cut much deeper, and that Josiah Scott's future in the brigade would not be pleasant.

In the middle of December, the gloomiest time in the mountains, Beckwourth began to talk about the famously available Crow women. He didn't boast. He simply raised the topic, mornings and evenings.

“Ah, Marse Sublette, think on it. Warm bufflerhide lodges, thick buffler robes, soft sleeping pads, hot little fires with hot little ladies, stewpots fulla buffler, full bellies, jokes you wouldn't hear no tight-lipped white woman tell. Ah, Marse William, it be time to make it over the pass before we're snowed in hyar. What a pity it'd be if the pass got snowed up and all your faithful old coons, excepting myself of course, took to blamin' you for their dire misfortunes.”

Sublette smiled. “We're making the beaver come,” he said.

And then it stormed.

Chapter 40

William Sublette knew he had tarried too long in the Three Forks country and would probably pay a price. The beaver pelts were piling up and he had stayed on, hoping to beat the weather. But now the weather was beating him.

Dan Ferguson and Peter Ranne hadn't returned. Their traplines were the farthest away, and the blizzard caught them. They were probably holed up safely enough, but Sublette didn't know, and when you don't know, you find out. But right now, the snow was deluging down, so furious and thick a man couldn't see much or walk a hundred yards without getting lost. He had no choice except to wait.

Sublette tried to remember what Ferguson and Ranne took with them, whether they had enough gear to hole up safely, build a shelter, climb into their buffalo robes, and wait it out. At least it wasn't brutally cold. That would come when the clouds cleared away. The trappers would have beaver tail for food—if they could build and keep a fire in such a swirl of snow. Both men were veterans of the mountains, and he shouldn't worry.

But he did. He was responsible for them, and every man in the brigade knew that he would employ the entire resources of the brigade to help any of them in trouble. From time to time they eyed him, waiting to see how far Smith, Jackson, and Sublette would go for its free trappers. He would show them, not to prove something but because every mountaineer owed that to every other mountaineer. That was the unwritten law of survival.

He stared irritably at the swirling snow. A foot and a half lay on the ground, enough to make travel hard work for man and horse. He was angry with himself. He knew he should have crossed the pass and holed up with the Crows long since. But the beaver harvest had been incredible, riches piling up each day, plew after plew out of streams that had never been trapped. He had thirty-two packs, and each pack was worth about three hundred when delivered to General Ashley at the rendezvous. Almost ten thousand dollars against the company's sixteen thousand debt.

He should have pulled out. They could be snug and happy in a Crow village by now, whiling away the days when the rivers and creeks were frozen over and the beavers were snug in their lodges. This storm would seal the pass over to the Yellowstone country, and it was unlikely they could get to the Crow villages until spring. The brigade faced a grim, cold stretch trying to survive in huts.

He heard the sound of an ax, and knew Skye was out cutting green cottonwood limbs for the horses to gnaw on. They could no longer paw through to grass, and the soft underbark was the alternative. Cottonwoods were the trappers' hay. But it took constant effort to feed fifty horses with cottonwood.

Skye worked at it constantly without being asked. He took care of his mare and horse colt, but he didn't stop cutting until the whole herd could gnaw at the lifesaving bark. Some sort of demon drove him. When the rest of the brigade was hunched around the fires, gabbing, playing euchre with ancient decks, that ol' coon Skye was out doing the work of three. He'd make a finer mountaineer—if he stayed in the mountains. Sublette squinted through the swirl at the distant man, doubting that the Englishman would. They would see the last of him at rendezvous.

He turned to Bouleau and Scott. “Go help Skye,” he said.

“It won't do any good,” said Scott. “We should wait until after the storm when we can work easier.”

“You heard me.”

Sullenly, Scott gathered an ax and followed the Creole out to the cottonwood groves. Sublette watched him go, his belly roiling. His brigade would never again include Scott. He had dealt with all sorts of men, including escaped criminals and loners and men ditching wives, and they had mostly turned themselves into mountaineers and trappers. But Scott was a shoddier sort of man, evading work, dodging responsibility—and a coward. He had heard all about Scott's conduct during the set-to with the Blackfeet. Skye hadn't said a word, but the rest of the camp tenders did.

Some of the Creoles materialized out of the white whirl, dragging firewood. He had put all the Creole camp tenders on that task, and warned them not to get out of sight. The whirling snow veiled the camp even at fifty yards, and filled footprints in minutes. There were plenty of things to worry about, such as running out of meat. Buffalo were plentiful around Three Forks, but getting to them in deep snows or blizzard conditions was another matter. It fell upon his shoulders to feed thirty men. Usually beaver tail sufficed. The trappers brought back the meaty, muscular tail of every beaver they trapped. But when they couldn't trap—such as now—starvin' times crept up fast.

“You worryin' again?” asked Beckwourth. “No good in it. After this blow is over, I'll just wade over and rescue them pork-eaters.”

It was braggadocio. Jim Beckwourth knew perfectly well what it would take to reach the missing men.

“All right. I'll send you alone,” Sublette retorted. “Your prowess is all you need. You have eyes that see through whiteouts, legs that never falter in drifts—”

“And a way with women that never fails,” Beckwourth said.

“What's that got to do—”

But Beckwourth was laughing softly.

The cloud cover cleared off about dusk, revealing a fat moon that lit the snow-bleached land. The temperature was dropping fast and the horses' muzzles were rimed with frost. Sublette made his decision right then.

He found his veteran trappers crowded into one of the shelters.

“Let's go,” he said.

They nodded. No one needed an explanation. They began bundling up, pulling on spare gloves, donning thick leggins they tied over their moccasins, pushing homemade beaver hats down over their long hair. Fitzpatrick cut kindling with his hatchet, until he had a bundle of it—enough for a brief fire, enough to start over if snow should douse a blaze.

His trappers and mountaineers would go with Sublette, twenty in all. And each would lead two horses. If that veteran outfit didn't find Ranne and Ferguson, the pair couldn't be found. The trappers loaded packs onto some hairy horses; other horses carried nothing for the time being and would be used to break trail through soft, treacherous, hock-high snow and even higher drifts. Skye dragged a fresh cottonwood limb to the herd and paused, watching the veterans load up.

“Mister Skye, I'm putting you in charge here. We're going after 'em. Don't know how long.”

“Yes, sir. I hope you bring back good news.”

The night glowed white. Overhead, stars pricked a jet sky, cold and distant. Sublette judged that they had five hours of moonlight and then would have to hole up until dawn, which would come late this time of year, days from the winter solstice.

He turned to Gabe. “You know what creeks?”

“Not exactly, but them coons were beyond us, and we were beyond the rest—up the Gallatin.”

“All right. We'll rotate the lead. About a hundred yards for each man and horse, and then go to the rear.”

They stumbled resolutely through the snow for hours, breaking trail, resting briefly, plunging through drifts, dropping into hollows unknown and unseen beneath the thick blanket. The moon quit them at a place without shelter, so they huddled in their robes, numb with cold and surrounded by blackness. Sublette knew his cheeks and ears and nose would be frostbitten, but there was no help for it. The night was thick and black and bitter, bad enough to make a man wonder why he had come to the mountains. But after a moment he knew why: not to get rich, but to test himself. He had seen something evolve in all his mountaineer friends—those who survived. It wasn't just confidence or resourcefulness, but something else. It was—how could he phrase it?—a fullness of manhood. The mountains spawned a race of giants.

The horses crowded close to each other for warmth, disconsolate under their loads, occasionally coughing. They were in good shape, largely because Skye had wanted them to be. Now and then a man stood, stretched, made his limbs work, cursed softly, groaned, and slouched into his robes again, pummeled by bone-chilling cold so bad that every slight eddy of air was a torment.

Long before dawn, they were off again, using the smallest hint of the coming day to navigate through the Gallatin River flats. When the sun did burst over the mountain ridges, the snow blinded them, and they squinted against the murderous brightness and pulled their hats low. In minutes his eyelids hurt, and every muscle around his eyes ached. The frost-covered horses walked wearily now, having gone long without food and water. Horses drank more water in the winter than in the summer, and wouldn't eat snow to allay their thirst. The Gallatin River had largely frozen over in the night.

The mountaineers let their horses drink at an open tributary creek and then dismounted and broke trail again.

“Are we close?” Sublette asked Bridger.

“This child don't think so. We got a piece to go.”

“I've a mind to make camp, rest the horses for an hour, try to get something hot in us.”