Y
ards of cream and brown calico, scarlet ribbons, mother-of-pearl combs, needles and thread, an awl, two paring knives, a one-gallon copper kettle, a four-point tan and blue blanket, brass tacks, a string of jingle bells, cake sugar, molasses, two balls of lavender soap. The women were aglow. Skye added a red can of Dupont powder and a bar of silvery galena, caps, patches, a ramrod to replace his damaged one, a ball mold, a half pound of coffee beans, Earl Grey tea, a sack of oats, and a gray crockery quart of Tennessee sour mash, hardly enough for a whistle-wetting.
It added a hundred and seven dollars to his debt and barely covered his needs.
“Just sign here, my friend,” Bullock said. Skye dipped the nib into the inkwell and scrawled his signature on the ledger page, an acknowledgment of more indentured servitude. He was worried. And yet every spring, about this time, he negotiated with westbound travelers and came out on top. He ought not to worry, but this time he did. There were rivals sitting out there on that veranda.
These treasures he loaded into the panniers on his slack-jawed pack mule under the observant gaze of those gents on the porch. No word was spoken, but he sensed his every act was being studied, and probably found wanting. The Yanks had horse-loading rituals and conventions he barely grasped. They swore by the diamond hitch to load up a pack animal. He preferred the reliable canvas compartments, and now he carefully balanced the load on each animal so the packs would ride easily.
“Mister Skye, I reckon you might be heading up the Laramie crick, but you'll be disappointed,” said Manville. “My herders are camped there and subsisting thirty-some mules over several square miles. Not much feed, I'm afraid. We have mules, a team of ox, and horses all feeding west of Fort Laramie. And we have a dozen more men coming, all with their own stock.”
“And you're on the Platte also?”
“I'm afraid we are, sir. Truth to tell, we've spread over every inch of pasture anywhere close to the post. In fact, I have a crew upriver cutting whatever native hay they can manage. They wouldn't take kindly to a latecomer trying to horn in. I'm afraid it wouldn't be pleasant for you.”
Skye absorbed that bleakly.
Manville was smiling. When did this cheerful man not smile? At a funeral? No, Skye thought, Manville would smile at his own motherâ²s funeral.
“I'd like you to meet my wives, Millard. This is Mary, and the child in the cradleboard is my son, North Star. And this is Victoria, my mate of many years.”
The smiling Manville offered a freckled hand to each. “Lovely, lovely, dusky princesses,” he murmured.
“Well, sonofabitch,” said Victoria.
“Ah! You have a choice assortment, Mister Skye!”
Mary smiled, these niceties sailing past her.
“I should like to meet these gentlemen,” Skye said, nodding toward the sprawled Yanks lounging on benches.
“Why, it would be my privilege.”
Manville circled widely around Jawbone, who clacked his yellow teeth, and Skye followed.
They were all assessing him. And they all looked hard and fit and able. Skye met, in turn, Willard Maple, Joshua Barns, Jimbo Trimble, a man known simply as The Cork, who looked a little like he'd thrown the cork away, and another wiry fellow, younger than the others, who announced himself as Jed, no last name.
“We've more floating around, Mister Skye, all veterans of the trails,” Manville said.
Oddly, Skye had heard of The Cork. A year or two earlier the man had driven off, with gunfire, a group of Omaha Indians seeking a toll for crossing their lands, wounding two and stirring up some trouble that required army intervention and a goodwill payment to the Omahas. The others were unknown to him. They were neither friendly nor unpleasant, and their gazes settled on his wives in ways Skye didn't like. No one ventured any conversation; nods sufficed. This outfit was keeping to itself.
“Pleased to meet you, gents. Maybe we'll cross paths on the trail,” Skye said, trusting in civility.
They nodded.
Skye knew something intuitively. His intuition about men like these rarely failed him. The reason they were here, and not in Independence, was that they had sour reputations as wagon train captains. Reputations floated around Independence like commodities. Captains of good reputation won a
good wage. Most of these gents, Skye suspected, had been voted out of office en route for various weaknesses, ranging from recklessness, to lax discipline, to excessive discipline, to endangering the party, to malice. Some were drunks. Others got into trouble with irate husbands or fathers.
Once in a while a good man got busted by bad or slack people in a wagon train; more often there was plenty of reason to pitch out someone while en route, and elect a substitute. Here, far from the rumor mills of Independence, they had a good chance of employment. Back there, their reputations would defeat them. Manville had simply rounded up the rejects and brought them here, his guide-shop opening for business just ahead of the rush. Skye took one last look. He swiftly absorbed whatever there was to know, and for a man as aware as Skye, there was plenty to know in the cut of a man's clothes, the condition of his hands, the armaments at his waist, and the look in his eye. Most would make decent enough wagon captains. A few might well be serious troublemakers. One, Trimble, was probably trouble waiting to happen.
“Well, good day, gents. I believe I'll have word with Colonel Bullock,” he said. He left his women to look after his animals and slipped into the shadowed interior of the post store. He wanted to learn a few things more.
“I suspected you might want an additional word with me, Mistah Skye, now that you've looked over the litter,” the colonel said.
“It appears they've locked up every possible campsite near the post,” Skye said. “And feed is short.”
“They have. Transients are allowed one night here. You may as well pitch your lodge and let me look into it.”
“I thought of heading downriver.”
“That would get you nowhere. The post is subsisting its
stock downriver at the moment, in essence snatching the grass before the wagon trains roll in. But let me talk to Colonel Brewerton. I have in mind, Mister Skye, a few army maneuvers.”
“Such as?”
“Hiring on, sir. Stable man, laundress, cook, you name it. It'll depend on the post budget.”
“Shall I wait?”
“Come with me.”
They were swiftly ushered into the commanding officerâ²s offices, where Skye found himself shaking hands with a natty, dark-haired colonel with great bags under his eyes and a waxed mustache.
“I'll get right to the chase, Colonel,” said the post sutler. “Forgive me for consuming your valued time. Our old and esteemed friend, Mistah Skye, is a bit inconvenienced this year by those locusts and lizards swarming all over my porch. They've pretty well commandeered the river bottoms and every blade of grass westward, and mean to keep others off it. It occurred to me, Colonel, that the post might have a few coins in its cash box for, oh, a stable man, or a laundress or two, or a cook, or, let me see, a bar man in the officers club room, or maybe even a haycutter, or maybe a translator or vocalist or mandolin player or master of the harmonica. Employment that would let this great scout and guide erect his lodge and see his five horses subsisted until he finds employment with the migrants.”
“Mandolin? Harmonica?” Skye started to object, but Bullock's bland smile silenced him.
Brewerton shook his head. “The army, Colonel, is on low rations, and there's not a cent in the budget for any of it.”
“Ah, a pity. I don't suppose the officers want a mixologist
for the club house, a man with dandy stories to tell, stories of war and peace, wild men and civilized, volcanoes and glaciers and Hottentots and two-headed wolves. He can pour a little amber liquid as well as the next fellow, and only sample every other drink. It would all come out of the officers' own little pot of gold, of course.”
Brewerton sighed, stared out a real glass window at a company of troops doing a carbine drill on the parade, and then turned toward the sutler.
“It's the horses,” he said. “I can't give a mouthful of army feed to Mister Skye's horses. And from what I've heard of Jawbone, I'm not sure he should be on the grounds.”
Skye's hopes sank.
“But let me think on it, Colonel.”
The sutler saluted out of ancient habit, and he and Skye retreated.
“Camp downriver, Mistah Skye, and come back tomorrow. I'll wager that Brewerton, a legend in the army for squeezing the regulations until they bend, might conjure up something. And besides, he owes me a few favors.”
This season would surely be different, Skye thought. But with a client or two, he'd be far and away.
He collected Jawbone and the ladies untied the lead lines of the rest of the ponies, and he led them downriver.
“Where the hell are we going?” Victoria asked.
“We're pretty much shut out of our usual camp this year. So we'll head this way for the time being.”
“It'll be eaten down to nothing when the wagons come.”
“Yes, but the colonel's working on it.”
Mary looked worried. “I did not like those men,” she said.
“It's almost impossible to like a Yank,” Skye replied. “But now and then there's a civilized one.”
“My people think they are savages, Mister Skye,” Mary said.
Victoria cackled.
They drifted downriver, past the ferry across the North Platte, past the ruins of an old trading post, along worn paths that had seen a heavy traffic and would see more in a few days. At least there was tender green grass for the moment.
He paused in a valley where ridges offered jack pine firewood and protection from the wind. And there would be grass enough for the nags.
“Let's put up the lodge, ladies, picket the horses, and celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“If you don't want any, I'll finish it off myself.”
“You damn well better share,” she said. “I've been waiting a whole year.”
They laughed, and their joy was caught up on the spring breezes.
E
verything would be just fine.
“Mistah Skye,” said Bullock the next morning. “Our friend Brewerton has worked his usual wonders. You're on as a stableman and your ladies are on as laundresses. The only thing is, no cash wage. They'll subsist your horses and feed you. Set up your lodge near the stables, my friend, and make a show of shoveling manure, and see to corralling some wagon trade for yourself.”
“That's bloody kind of the colonel,” Skye said.
“Don't thank him; he'd rather not have you hovering about headquarters. He says he's honored to do a favor for a man like you, and perhaps he'll call on you when the need arises.”
“Well, then, send him my regards.”
Skye lifted his venerable top hat and settled it again. Out of sheer age it fit his head perfectly. The ladies were again wandering through the store, conjuring ways to empty Bullock's shelves.
The usual loungers were out on the veranda, enjoying the fine spring day.
He found Victoria examining fowling pieces, lifting one and another up and dry-firing them.
“We're on,” he said. “The post commanderâ²s anointed me a stable man, which means I get to fork a lot of manure, and you're laundresses, rub-a-dub-dub. We and our mounts will be subsisted.”
“Talk English, dammit.”
“They'll feed us. We can camp on the post. Maybe I'll pitch some hay or scrape up some horse apples now and then. Maybe you'll scrub a blue shirt or two. Meanwhile, we're right here, and we can look for clients.”
“Me scrub a shirt? Blue-bellies are dirty and they smell.”
“Then you can improve their grooming.”
She squinted. “There's nothing any woman can do to improve savages,” she said, her brown eyes bright with wicked joy. “All right, I'll wash shirts, then, but not long johns. I don't do long johns.”
Skye laughed. “I'll shovel whatever I have to shovel,” he said.
Out at the hitch rail, their rivals had gathered around Skye's menagerie, and in particular Jawbone.
“Skye, old boy, if that's a horse, then I'm a kangaroo,” said the one called Jimbo.
Skye detected the edge. This was not just joshing, which was fine with him. They were itching for an incident.
“He's my medicine horse,” Skye said.
“Medicine, ho, ho,” Jimbo retorted.
Skye plucked up Jawbone's single braided rein, which was connected to a woven hackamore, and led his party into the yard, the packhorses and the travois pony carrying the small lodge ambling along past scruffy barracks, headquarters, a guardroom, a mess hall and kitchen, latrines, a warehouse, and
out to a stable area. Skye selected a slight rise that would drain away rain, and nodded. In very little time their lodge rose almost in the shadow of the post, and the women settled in. Mary beamed, released the infant from the cradleboard, and let him lie on a soft robe within the lodge.
Skye led the unburdened horses to the stable sergeant.
“Expecting you,” the sergeant said. “The colonel said to leave that one alone, but stable the rest.”
“That's Jawbone, and yes, he's dangerous. He's also the best friend a man could want out in country where a man needs a friend.”
“Wish I had a few nags like that,” the sergeant said. “We'll feed'em up, Mister Skye, and welcome to the post.”
“My ladies will wash a shirt or some britches, but no union suits,” Skye said. “It's part of the deal.”
“Smart women,” the sergeant replied. “I might give my duds a rinse.”
This was a fine spring day, with playful zephyrs, moist and redolent of upland snow, sliding across the parade ground, tickling the grass, and delighting all living things. Any day now the first of the migrants would arrive, probably sorry they started west so early and got themselves mired in mud.
They just wouldn't learn. The early migrants exhausted their stock trying to drag wagons through gum and clay, but at least their oxen got all the grass they could eat. The first ones were the foolhardy ones, and Skye hoped they would not end up as his clients.
That lasted about an hour. Skye spotted Millard Manville, flanked by his flunkies, striding toward the lodge at the stables. There was still a smile pasted on the man's handsome freckled face, but it probably would vanish at the first opportunity
“Skye, why are you here?”
Skye chose his words carefully. “Employment, sir.”
“Employment! You aren't even a citizen. What sort of employment?”
“Perhaps you'd like to talk to the stable sergeant, Mister Manville.”
“Employment! A Brit who's a deserter from the Royal Navy and a pair of red sluts!”
“You will want to apologize to my wives, sir.”
“Apologize? What for?”
“You will apologize to my wives at once.”
The blow caught Skye entirely off guard. The fist to his gut rocked him, stole air from him, and toppled him, sending his hat flying in the breeze. He hit the ground hard.
Skye couldn't breathe. He sucked air but his lungs wouldn't work. Above him, Manville laughed. Skye saw Victoria dodge into their lodge and emerge with her bow strung and an arrow nocked.
“So much for English pansies,” the handsome Yank said, enjoying himself. “I'll have a word with Brewerton. What was he thinking, hiring a British deserter and a pair of savage sluts?”
Skye finally recovered his breath, stood slowly, and studied this group: Manville, their leader, and five of his “guides,” who seemed more and more like simple toughs, a species of highwaymen planning to exploit the traffic flowing through Fort Laramie some day soon, charge them a fat guiding fee or else â¦
Jimbo nodded toward Victoria. Manville turned, finding the arrow aimed at his chest.
“Put it down, little lady.”
“Get out or you die,” she said.
“Put it down!”
“Try me.”
She stood her ground. Two of the guides started after her.
“One more step and you die,” she said. The arrow never wavered.
Manville snapped an order. His men halted. “We'll talk to Brewerton. We'll talk to the whole damned United States Army. You'd better pack up your tent, Skye. You're on your way out, as fast as you can run. Get off this United States post. Let me tell you something: you hang around here, that outlaw horse dies. You keep on hanging around here, you'll hang from the nearest tree, and that brat will have his brains bashed out. And as for the squaws ⦔
Skye saw how this would play out. The Yanks hung together. He smiled suddenly. “It's Mister Skye, sir.”
He clamped his top hat on his head and watched the Yanks troop toward the post headquarters. His gut hurt and he wondered how long it would be until he would be breathing without pain. Defeated this time. He hadn't seen it coming. That was something to remember. That's how he was: he needed only one lesson to learn what needed learning.
The women didn't wait. They dropped the lodge and loaded it. Skye collected his ponies and headed for the sutlerâ²s store.
He found Bullock shelving a new load of gingham.
“It appears, sir, that I will be moving on.”
Bullock listened, squinting and angry.
“Not much a sutler can do, sah, but I have my ways. Let me know where you'll be. I'll fetch a client to you; count on it. There's no point in you hanging around here, getting Jawbone executed and maybe you and your ladies as well. You're not a citizen. The army won't help you, no sah, not at all.”
“That hollow, two miles north of here,” Skye said.
“A good choice. When I've found a client, I'll send word.”
The hollow was a hidden valley in the black hills, usually watered with a seep during the spring but dry most of the year. It would do for a place to stay out of sight of the Yank cartel. If Manville's men knew Skye was still around they would come hunting. Skye knew he could count on it.
He didn't like it, but neither did it bother him. He had survived a quarter of a century in utter wilderness by staying out of harm's way. It was a law of the wild: one didn't confront a hostile war party. One didn't confront a giant grizzly. In the face of overwhelming force, you dodged, you hid, you survived to live another day. It did not offend his manhood to make himself invisible now. He didn't need to be brave, and he didn't need to have others think of him as a brave man. He knew who he was, and what he could do if he had to.
He hadn't waited for Brewerton to retract the invitation. Even if the commandant had thrown all the resources of the post into protecting Skye, it wouldn't have lessened the danger to Jawbone and Skye's family. Skye mused on how an infant son changed things. Now he had an heir to protect and nurture, along with two wives.
He took his family away from Fort Laramie while Manville smiled at them. The Platte was swollen with spring runoff and flooding the marshy areas along its banks. They took the post ferry to the north bank and rode into the hills, in deep quiet. Soon they were following a game trail through jack pine forest. In half an hour or so they would top a ridge and drop into a grassy valley, and there make camp. It was only a short ride from Fort Laramie and the hubbub that would soon engulf the post. They would be close, but invisible.
“How are we gonna pay Bullock if we've got no one to guide?” Victoria asked, out of the blue.
“We'll get someone. Bullock will send word.”
“A squaw man and two Indian women,” Victoria said tartly.
“That's the way they think,” Skye said.
“Maybe we should start on some buffalo robes,” she said.
Scraping and tanning buffalo robes to trade was the only other option. But it would take over a hundred hides to pay their debt. It really was no option at all.