Authors: Win Blevins
Chapter 16
August, 1844, Time when the cherries are ripe
Something about logs felt good to Mac—he saw in his head stout cylinders of cottonwood, shaped by Blue’s adze, dovetail joined, well chinked. A stalwart trading post. Blue had taken one look at the old Fort Cass and proclaimed, “Forget that one. We build a new one.”
True, to the south they built with adobe—Laramie, Fort Platte, Bent’s, all of adobe. Strong, sure, and proof against fire. But Mac was a northman. He liked a wooded country, and the feel of building with wood. No matter what you could say about adobe, it was mud.
But the post was only in his head. The men were just now trimming off the trunks. Mac was back standing on the yellow sandstone bluff above the site of the fort, clay pipe burning, watching the work. He took a shift up here every day as lookout.
From here he had a fine prospect. To the south, the vast plains that stretched from the Big Horn Mountains to the plowed furrows marking civilization. The high plains, land of the Sioux and the Cheyenne. On the western edge of the plains, the mountain barrier itself, the crest of the continent, topped by the strange geyser land John Colter first wandered through. To the north, in the near distance the river, wide, deep, swift, and cold, thrumming its way toward the Missouri. The fine cottonwoods in the bottoms, giving shade. The bench above the cottonwoods, where the old fort once was, and where the new one now would be, within the wide, rock-walled canyon but on high ground. Beyond all that, more high plains, the country of the tribes known as the Blackfoot confederation—Blood, Piegan, Blackfoot proper, and Gros Ventre—receding into Canada.
Blue’s building was going slowly and it had to go better. Mac was staking everything on this single chance.
In late June, Skinhead headed for St. Louis with Lord Stewart’s animals, now bound for a lifetime sinecure as walking-around trophies. Three weeks later Mac brought his little band north, in front of the mountains, to this spot below the mouth of the Big Horn River, burnished and gleaming in Mac’s mind.
The band was small and weak—himself, Annemarie and Felice, Blue, and Lisette, who had had a blowup with Genet and left with her best friend, Annemarie. And the two were best friends. Plus three hands kept on wages: Ferry, Dreyfuss, and Valdez. And sixty-two horses, with not enough men to guard them against theft. He would have exchanged some horses for trade goods, but Reshaw was temporarily in charge of Fort Platte, and out of meanness he wouldn’t barter.
Mac needed men, but he didn’t have the money: twenty-five dollars a month even for a green hand. Or he wouldn’t know if he did until Skinhead got back from St. Louis. What if Skinhead got robbed by the damned Pawnees? Or the boat down from Council Bluffs sank? Or the fat bastard gambled it all away in St. Louis—no, Uncle Hugh would prevent that. Or something went wrong on the way back upriver? Plenty could, and often did.
Or if, after all that, the Cheyennes wouldn’t come in to trade because Mac ran off with Annemarie.
If the venture soured, the salaries of Ferry, Dreyfuss, and Valdez would go up in smoke. They thought they were wage earners, Mac reflected, but they were river-boat gamblers. Without an edge.
Mac snorted, blowing smoke out his nostrils. He didn’t like that. If he got through the season, he’d have to arrange them a bonus.
Those three men were hard workers. With Mac and Blue they’d been getting logs ready. Blue and Dreyfuss felled them with double-bitted axes or a two-man crosscut saw, the only felling tools they had until Skinhead arrived. Mac, Ferry, and Valdez trimmed them and flattened them on two sides, and the whole crew hauled them to the site and got the foundation started. Blue was a craftsman with that ax, twice as fast as anyone else. Wagh! he had a back, and he drove that ax head beautifully, biting deep. Mac could see that Dreyfuss loved watching Blue wield that weapon. Though he didn’t look like a handy fellow, Dreyfuss was getting the hang of the ax himself.
Mac liked Dreyfuss, a round man in his forties with an accent of buzzy sounds, bespectacled, fair with his hands and good with his head, inclined to speak seldom. The other two, Ferry and Valdez, did fine as long as you told them just what to do.
On the long trip, sensing something unusual about Dreyfuss, Mac had drawn him out. He was Viennese and had actually been a college professor, a teacher of philosophy. (How Mac would have liked to introduce him to Hugh.) Something had gone wrong—Mac never found out what—his wife died, and he lost his job. He was a nurse in some war, which was a life-changing experience. And he came to the United States. Dreyfuss told this story reluctantly, and cryptically.
Mac used the Dolland to glass all the plains across the river, methodically, dividing it into areas and searching each one. Big clouds of dust would be meaningless. They were buffalo, or villages of Blackfeet on the move, easy to spot and not out for mischief. On the other hand, the outfits you wouldn’t want about, parties hunting scalps, or buffalo, or other people’s horses, would be relatively tiny, moving subtly, and hard to spot. Mac didn’t see anything suspicious. He doubted the Blackfeet knew about the new fort yet.
He checked the picket pin on his horse and moved up the few steps to the crest, where he could get a view to the south. He hadn’t sent word to the Crow, Sioux, or Cheyennes either. He wasn’t ready for them. Or anybody. Had nothing to trade. There was no sign to the south.
He damn well needed to keep a lookout. Sixty-two good horses, some heavy with foal. The Crows would steal your horses and then come in for coffee and brag about how they tricked you. If he lost those horses, Mac would be ruined.
He had saved the hopeful part of his search for last. He turned the telescope to the east, along the river, where Skinhead would be bringing in the pack train. The Sioux and Cheyenne used this trail to Powder River and then north to Fort Union or south to Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. Mac held where he knew the trail went, parallel to the south bank of the river, across the rippling sagebrush plains.
Dust. Sure enough. A lot of it.
Too far to make out any figures at all, man or beast. Could be Skinhead. Could be Cheyennes or Sioux in a bunch, coming to trade. Coming openly.
Mac trotted to the edge of the sandstone. He took off his gray, wide-brimmed hat and waved it in half circles over his head. He got the attention of a particular young woman with a cradleboard on her back. Like a good Cheyenne, she took responsibility for keeping an eye on the lookout.
Mac held the hat low over the ground and waggled it back and forth. Friends, it meant. He put it back on his head, then repeated the entire sequence once more.
Annemarie had already turned around and called to Blue. Now Blue was looking up. Do the beaver good to learn the signals. Blue raised an arm in acknowledgment.
Mac looked downriver again. With the naked eye he couldn’t pick out the dust. He located it once more through the Dolland. Five or six miles out, probably.
Annemarie was now turned toward someone, and all Mac could see of her was the white beadwork of the cradleboard on her back, catching the sun. Lifting the telescope, Mac focused it on something dark at the top. He couldn’t really make it out. Felice’s face, though, and her thatch of dark hair.
Lord, Mac Maclean loved that child.
Skinhead stood up ceremoniously and glared around the circle. He raised his cup. “This prophet prophesies”—he interrupted his roar with a dramatic pause—“profits!”
Everybody laughed too hard, especially Lisette, perched on the log between Skinhead and Blue. People did laugh too much when they were feeling tired and good and optimistic. And when the boss tapped the kegs.
Mac watched in relief. Whiskey didn’t appeal to him so much anymore. Certainly there was something to be said for a carefree inebriation on pure alcohol mixed one to four with river water and corrupted with whatever spices were handy. But more to be said for an attentive eye on your wife, your child, your help, your horses, and your trade goods.
Dreyfuss started up a tune on his mouth organ, a boatman’s ditty. Blue joined in with a twanging Jew’s harp. Voices chimed in one by one, Skinhead’s the most vigorous.
O my love she are handsome, she’s not ver-ry tall;
But her modest demeniour does far surpass all;
She’s slim round the middle, her hair it hangs down;
She’s a bright morning star, oh, she lives in this town.
Lisette got up and stuck her arms out to Annemarie, and the two of them swung to the music. Quickly big Skinhead was up grabbing for Little One, and Blue stopped strumming his Jew’s harp to dance with Annemarie. Then a pair of men joined in as partners, and the others began to take turns with the women. It was a song Mac knew from the levee in St. Louis, when he was a kid, and loved to kick up his heels to.
Pretty Pol-ly, pretty Pol-ly, your daddy are rich,
But I ain’t no fortin what troubles me much—
Would you leave your old dad-dy and mam-my, also,
And all through the wide world with yer darling boy go?
This sort of thing could get out of hand—two women in a camp with sixteen men—but Mac let it go and started dancing with his wife. Blue was dancing with his double-bitted ax as if it were a seductive woman. Annemarie was cutting up like a young girl—hell, she was a young girl—and everyone was having a hell of a good time. They were mumbling the words of the next verse, so Mac belted it out himself.
Oh, some call me rak-ish, and some call me wild,
And some say that I pretty maids have beguiled;
But they are all liars by the powers er-bove,
For I’m guil-ty of nothing but innercent love!
Skinhead was bundling Lisette a bit too enthusiastically there, so Mac moved over and cut in. Skinhead gave way graciously and started dancing around Dreyfuss on his own. Lisette had been an angel since the day they left the Platte, but whiskey and unattached women were a volatile combination, and Skinhead remembered Lisette in her more impulsive days. But Mac was damned glad to have her along. She helped Annemarie with Felice and with all the domestic chores and hadn’t flirted or done anything else outrageous. She slept in the lodge with Mac, Annemarie, and Felice, while Blue, Ferry, Dreyfuss, and Valdez kept their own tent. Blue paid court to Lisette in his sweet, awkward way, and she seemed to enjoy it. But she held herself aloof from him and everyone else.
Now Blue was spinning that ax on the palm of his hand, even switching hands and keeping it spinning. He was a wizard with that ax.
Annemarie tapped Mac on the shoulder to dance again. As Lisette spun off, she brushed his cheek with her lips in sisterly way—well, with maybe a hint of tease.
She had teased Mac one night in the lodge. “When ou have one Woman in this tipi,” she said, “the two of ou have a good time. But when you have two, no one as a good time.” She capped it off, “You white men are rudish.”
Mac paid her no mind. He told himself that a single woman in camp wouldn’t necessarily cause trouble. Even a wild single woman.
Tonight he simply watched the drinking. He wondered if he would ever feel like cutting loose again. Certainly not now. And that was fine. He eyed the lookout on the bluff in the last light. The man would be coming down soon and joining the party. Mac would keep just a horse guard.
Skinhead had come in two hours before dark, hollering for vittles. Annemarie and Lisette had several kettles of stew ready, buffalo meat with red turnips and wild onions, plus chokecherry soup—but it wasn’t enough for the crowd. Skinhead had hired ten men, eleven counting himself.
Mac was damned glad to see Skinhead, but eleven more salaries! What if things went bad? He made up his mind to pay half of them off and send them back, right away.
Skinhead brought a letter from Uncle Hugh, folded around ledger sheets, and Mac couldn’t wait to get into his lodge in private and read it.
The story was in the ledgers—Gant’s bonus paid, Mac’s profit on the animals, over thirteen hundred dollars, sales on the trade goods less expenses, the split of the take on the horses…Mac’s brain swam, looking for the bottom line: He had about five thousand dollars worth of goods and cash, free and clear.
He got up and went outside, feeling weak. He walked toward where the horses were grazing. They were his profit on the horse deal, on the hoof, and in need of being grazed, watered, bred, and guarded.
He leaned against a cottonwood and looked at the herd. Damn, he had gotten away with it. He’d taken an awful chance—now he could admit it to himself—but he’d been lucky.
He read the letter. Good wishes, politenesses, and there it was—Uncle Hugh and Campbell were each venturing another thousand on the same terms, in the form of credit with the Company. With that he could pay salaries and buy more trade goods and—damn! Wagh! Everything had gone right! If he made a good trading season and could get the furs downriver safely, and the peltry market didn’t go to hell, and he was able to bring next year’s trade goods upriver uneventfully, he should have two or three times that many goods this time next year. If.
It nearly made him dizzy.
Mac tapped out his pipe on the sole of a moccasin. This trading was for men with strong stomachs. Mac didn’t necessarily want to be head trader of all the Yellowstone country. He wanted to roam, eat wild asparagus in the spring, hunt buffalo in the fall, and tell stories in the lodge all winter. But he owed his children, present and to come.
He could see a new world for them. Half-breeds, yes—that’s why it had to be different for them. Prosperous half-breeds, he hoped. Educated, if he had his way. Savvy of the country and the customs. More equipped, then, than white or red to show the way.
It would be different here in the West. This was not farming country—never would be. Country for the Indians and the buffalo, both roamers. Country to stay unfenced. Country like the vast steppes of Asia, for nomads and herdsmen. It would never change. And so it would give birth to a new kind of civilization, peculiarly its own creature. A civilization built on men like his sons to come, and women like Felice.