Cheyenne Winter (24 page)

“When they hear of this in St. Louis — ”

“Where’s St. Louis did you say?”

Hervey was right. Where indeed was St. Louis. By the time the story got whispered down the river there would be a hundred versions, many of them favorable to Julius Hervey. And Pierre Chouteau would reward Hervey for breaking up the opposition on the Yellowstone.

Guy peered angrily at Maxim. The boy had cost him his victory. Maxim had curled up into a ball on the slimy clay and lay groaning. As long as Guy had only himself to worry about he would have outlasted Hervey. Not even Julius Hervey could twist the arm of a man resigned to death. But now  . . . an unfamiliar bitterness welled in Guy as he examined his moralizing son. But Guy knew he had no choice at all; he could let his own boy be tortured to death, or he could surrender.

“Monsieur Hervey, I wish to talk privately to my son for a few minutes.”

Hervey shrugged. A shrug of triumph, Guy thought. A moment later Hervey vanished from the doorframe. The light from the yard still blinded Guy after almost two days of blackness. Across the yard engages stared and whispered as they slowly folded robes and placed them in the robe press for baling.

Guy wanted to accuse but knew he never would. No father could accuse his own son of something so terrible. The boy didn’t gasp any more, but Guy waited anyway, watching blue-bellied flies buzz and hum. The summer had ended and the flies of summer were doomed even if they didn’t know it.

Maxim stirred and looked up at Guy, pain radiating from his begrimed face.

“You won, Maxim. I will do what you wish. We’ll be closing the post on the Yellowstone. We will lose a lot.” That was as close as Guy would come to an accusation.

Maxim swallowed hard and listened.

“Mr. Hervey has his ways, doesn’t he? You knew that, though.”

Maxim nodded, rubbing the tears away from his eyes. “I don’t like this business. It’s illegal. We shouldn’t have expanded.”

Guy cut him off sharply. “Maxim! I’m going back to Fitzhugh’s Post to tell our partner. You’ll be kept here.”

“Brokenleg won’t like that.”

“No, he won’t. I don’t like it either. I must do it because — ” he stopped short. Because if he didn’t Hervey would begin torturing Maxim.

“Because of me.”

Guy nodded. “Because of you.”

“You can tell Brokenleg but he won’t do it.”

“He has only a sixth of the company, Maxim — ”

“Papa! You came all the way up the river on the
bateau,
and on horseback, and you don’t know how it is here.
There is not St. Louis.”

Guy sighed. Brokenleg wouldn’t do it. Long ago he’d formed the company with Fitzhugh and Dance because he knew they never caved in. Maxim was right. “Maxim — son — our time together may be short. I want you to know I’m proud of you. I’m especially proud of your  . . . moral courage. I want to tell you also  . . . that I love you. Whatever happens now — and it may be terrible for us both — I want you to know that.”

His son’s tears welled up again.

“What would you like me to do, Maxim?”

“Don’t go, papa.”

“Hervey will hurt you. That’s his way of coercing me. And Brokenleg.”

Maxim groaned, hating it. “I shouldn’t have come. I knew what he’s like. I was so angry with Brokenleg — with you  . . . ”

“That’s the past.”

Maxim stared into the bright light of the yard, his face a mask. Guy watched his son change, as if the finger of God were touching him. Maxim turned at last. “I’m not as strong as Brokenleg. I wanted to be but I never will be. Maybe we owe him something. Owe ourselves something. Let’s tell Hervey no. You won’t go. You won’t tell Brokenleg anything.”

Guy clambered to his feet and clasped his son by the shoulder. “You might be hurt, Maxim.”

“I know.”

Guy found himself staring out upon the brightness of the day. “Evil is weak even if it roars and threatens. Evil things are done in darkness — not in light, light like this. Brokenleg has his own ways of fighting  . . . and we have our own, Maxim. Do you follow me?”

Maxim nodded.

“All right then. Hervey may carry me bodily back there but he can’t make me say what he wants me to say to Fitzhugh. In fact I’ll say just the opposite. I’ll tell him to hang on — no matter what. Evil’s weak, I believe. I was praying when the door opened and I saw you. If I am taken away, never cease  . . . and if I never see you again  . . . ”

Guy couldn’t finished the thought. Maxim smiled. Smiled for the first time since Guy had arrived at Fitzhugh’s Post. The young man settled down against the wall. Guy, dizzy with hunger, poked his head out into the blinding light and summoned Hervey, who stood near the robe press.

The bourgeois trotted across the sunny yard, a malign joy upon his face. “I’ll get horses saddled, Straus.”

“There’s no need. I’m not going.”

Hervey looked startled. “Not going?” He chortled. “You’re going.”

“I will not say to my partner what you want me to say. And he will not heed me in any case.”

Hervey grinned, something feral and dangerous in his muscular form. His big fist sailed out of nowhere. Guy felt something like a steel bar slam into his nose. He felt blood gush from his nostrils even as a shock of pain exploded in his skull. He felt himself toppling to earth, gasping for air through red-hot nostrils. He felt himself being lifted easily and dragged out of the sunlight and into the blackness. He heard Maxim shout and the door slam shut. He saw only darkness, heard only weeping, and tasted blood in his mouth.

One by one, Brokenleg considered and discarded plans. Each seemed dumber than the last. He gave up on the idea of sneaking into Fort Cass somehow and rescuing Guy. He didn’t think much of sending an express rider up to Fort Union nearly three hundred river miles away to get help from Alec Culbertson — who might or might not tame his mad dog Hervey. He loathed the idea of knavery — pretending to agree to Hervey’s terms as a way to spring Guy and Maxim, and then welshing. He saw no gain from stirring up the Indians; that was always a double-edged sword. The more he reached for answers, the more will-o’-the-wisp they all seemed.

He ran a calloused hand across his balding head and into the fiery red hair sprouting from its rear. He had come up with nothing. He cussed Straus for coming up into country he didn’t know, with people who didn’t act the way people do in places like St. Louis. Why didn’t Straus stay put and leave the running of a wilderness post to someone who knew something? He sighed. It didn’t do any good to cuss Straus. Junior or Senior Straus. He wished by God they’d stayed downriver where they belonged.

The cussing and wishing didn’t help him either. He gimped about his quarters so angrily that none of his ladies dared say a word to him — not even Dust Devil. There was no telling what Hervey might do. The one sure thing about Julius Hervey was that he’d do what he wanted and no other soul on earth could predict what that might be, or even supply a reason for it.

He got tired of scheming — he wasn’t good at it anyway. It was Straus’s mess, not his. Straus had been warned not to ride over to Fort Cass — but he’d ignored the warning. Young Straus — he’d made his own choices, too. Brokenleg felt like leaving them to the fate they’d arranged for themselves — but couldn’t. Guy was his partner. And unless Guy sold out, turned over the fort and trade goods — everything Brokenleg had struggled to build — Brokenleg figured it was his problem.

He stalked out of his rooms glaring at three Cheyenne wives, and stomped into his trading room where he found Zach Constable and Abner Spoon dealing with a stray Crow woman who’d slid away from Cass with a robe or two, looking for a better price.

“I’m goin’ over to Cass for a parley. If I don’t come back, don’t you cave in — you understand? If Hervey comes around hyar and says we caved in don’t you believe it. Shoot him if ye can, and shoot anyone trying to take over. You tell it to Samson, too. By gawd I’m not quttin’. Even if them Strauses go under I’m not quitin’. We built this post outa nothing but our own raw need to git it built; we stocked it; we come out even last season. I’m not cavin’. If Guy Straus wants to git out I’ll find a new partner — Robert Campbell maybe. He loves to git in his licks against Chouteau. You understandin’ me?”

Abner said, “We ought to go with ye.”

“That’d jist start some killin’. No. This coon’s goin’ to talk to Hervey or kill him, one or the other or both.”

Zach said, “He don’t have a bum leg, and his hands are good again. We oughter come along.”

But Fitzhugh wouldn’t listen. “You send an express if I don’t come back. One to Campbell — he’s got some money in this hyar outfit — and one to Jamie Dance.” He glared at them for emphasis. “You quit on me and I’ll come outa my grave and strangle you.”

Zach grinned.

Fitzhugh stomped out, found Ambrose Chatillon in the barracks, and repeated the whole thing. Chatillon would be the express rider. Then he hunted down Trudeau, found him at the forge holding a horse being shod by Bercier, and hauled him off to a private corner. The chief trader listened behind a masked expression, and shook his head sadly.

“All three of you caught by Hervey — all the owners.
Non,
it is madness.”

Brokenleg growled at him, limped out to the pen, threw his saddle over a gaunt Cheyenne pony, and rode out, his rusty Hawken a rod of iron across his lap. He reached Cass in an hour, noting the lively trade it was doing with several sprawling villages of Crows. He threaded through the lodges, past staring old women and curious children, until he reached the opened gates. There he tied his horse to a hitch rail, daring any Crow in sight to swipe it. Hawken in hand, he stomped to the trading window, which opened on the passage between the inner and outer gates, the common place for it in fur posts.

A seamed old crone barely tall enough to see over the counter was trading there, her worn split robe lying before her while the clerks examined it. Sandoval, in fact. Good, he thought. Isodor Sandoval was second in command behind Hervey and actually one of the few in the company Fitzhugh liked.

“I want to see Hervey,” he snapped over the head of the old woman.

“Take your turn,” Sandoval retorted. He deliberately slowed down the trading, listening intently to the old woman’s wishes — red ribbons, a fire steel, and a cup of sugar. Sandoval leisurely scratched the transaction into the ledger while a clerk gathered the items from the shelves and poured a cup of sugar, ritually keeping his thumb in the measure.

The little woman, frightened by the brooding presence behind her, gathered her things and fled.

“Get me Hervey,” he rasped before Sandoval said a word.

“He said to tell you he’s not talking unless you’re ready to deal.”

“Where’s Guy Straus?”

Sandoval shrugged uneasily. The man’s gaze darted away.

“I said where’s Straus?”

“Brokenleg — ”

“Where’s the boy?”

Sandoval sighed. “Hervey has them.”

“Are they hurt?”

Sandoval clammed up. Brokenleg took it for a yes.

“What does Hervey want?”

Sandoval shrugged. “He always wants whatever there is to want, Brokenleg.”

“He isn’t goin’ to git it. Go fetch him.”

“Not while you have that Hawken pointing through the window, Fitzhugh.”

“That’s where she’s going to point.”

“You set it down and I’ll send for him.”

But he didn’t have to. Behind Fitzhugh, one of the inner gates creaked open and Hervey emerged, his fist swallowing a little pepperbox with six barrels and the hammer on full cock. Brokenleg’s thumb snicked back the hammer of his Hawken.

“Stiffleg! How good of you to come!”

Hervey slid around Fitzhugh heading toward the outer gates.

“I guess if you feel like shuttin’ them gates on me, Hervey, we’ll both be dyin’ in a minute.”

Hervey’s black eyes danced fire but he halted. “I have Straus. Do you want him?” he asked.

“I’m not hyar to dicker, Hervey. I’m hyar to tell ye a thing.”

Hervey shrugged. “Stiffleg, I thought you’d want to know about big and little Straus.”

“Nope. They made their own medicine. I come to give ye the word, and the word is, no deal. That post o’ mine is goin’ to keep on a-goin’, and nothing that happens hyar is goin’ to change that. I’m gittin’ robes and I’m gittin’ goods up the river, and if I don’t have them Strauses for partners I’ll have a few others. So you may as well spring ’em loose ’cause you can’t make medicine.”

“Spring ’em loose! How you carry on, Stiffleg. They’re guests, quite comfortable, dickering about the final details of the sale. Quite profitable for all. You ought to set down that old piece and jine us.”

“This old piece’ll put a ball through yer heart before it gits set down, Hervey. My finger’s itchin’ and my throat’s remembering them hands o’ yours.”

Julius Hervey laughed easily. “Almost, Stiffleg. Almost. Next time maybe.”

“That’s all I got to say to you, Hervey.”

“Straus, he won’t like that none. He’s got two-thirds and the say, Stiffleg.”

“I got the post and the goods. Tell him that.”

“Sounds like a little rift in Dance, Fitzhugh and Straus, Stiffleg.”

“You call it how you want. I got my message to you. Now — am I gonna git past you and ride away or do we have us a tussle?”

Hervey eyed the fifty-three caliber bore of the Hawken pointing just to his left, and glanced swiftly at the thirty-two caliber bores of his pepperbox, and nodded. “A nice social visit, Stiffleg. I’ll tell old Straus. You come visit anytime.”

But Brokenleg wasn’t listening to banter. He backed his way through the outer gates, his cocked Hawken never wavering. Hervey vanished from sight as Brokenleg rounded the corner. Brokenleg waited there for Hervey to peer around the corner and start firing that little popgun, but Hervey was too wily for that.

Brokenleg clambered up, having the usual bad time getting aboard a pony, and then squinted around murderously, ready to shoot. But Hervey let him go.

“I lost me a partner maybe,” he muttered, actually believing the opposite.