Cheyenne Winter (26 page)

Brokenleg pushed into the room and stared at them both, his gaze raking Maxim cruelly and then settling gently on his partner. “Guy, Guy,” he muttered. “You’re hyar and in one piece I reckon.”

Guy smiled wanly.

Maxim spotted Ambrose Chatillon pushing through the crowd of giant Creoles surrounding Guy. Chatillon surveyed Guy and smiled gently. “Monsieur, you have survived a fate worse than the wilderness.”

Maxim discovered a vast, silent esteem flowing between the guide and his father, a bond forged from weeks on the long upriver trail. More than esteem, he realized. Mutual respect. The wiry guide plainly admired his father. The realization renewed Maxim’s shame.

“Robert Fitzhugh,” said Guy, and Maxim held his breath. It was the first time he’d heard his father address Brokenleg by his given name. “Is it true that you told Hervey you’d never cave in — no matter what Hervey did to Maxim and me?”

Fitzhugh nodded, scowling.

“You told him you wouldn’t heed my instructions?”

“Sorta. I told him I wasn’t doin’ nothing’ until you were both free.” Fitzhugh met Guy’s direct stare with a bright glare of his own.

“You went so far as to him you you’d seek out new partners, new financing, if Hervey destroyed my son and me?”

Maxim dreaded what was coming. He recognized the muted thunder in his father’s voice, and knew its lash. But then his father’s voice softened. “I was tempted to cave in — anything, anything to escape that hellhole. But I overcame that. I refused to eat.”

That puzzled everyone there except Maxim. Guy peered about at all of them, smiling gently. “When I accepted death he no longer had any power over me. When I refused to touch food he raged at me, poured a pot of stew over me — and walked out helplessly. He could not terrorize a man ready to die and starving himself day by day. I knew I’d won — until Maxim came. Then he had a new way of terrorizing me  . . . but we survived that, my son and I.” Maxim caught the proud glance of his father’s eye.

“But we were still prisoners, Mr. Fitzhugh. And then you freed us.”

Something released in Brokenleg’s taut features. “I thought as how it might,” he muttered. “I thought as how that devil might give up seein’ as how it’d do no good to be poundin’ and starvin’ and holdin’ you — and might git him into a heap o’ trouble with Culbertson and Chouteau and them.”

Guy sighed. “You’d never quit. Strauses might come and go; partners might live or die — but you’d never quit. That’s why I went into business with you and Jamie Dance, Brokenleg — that’s what I saw.”

Brokenleg scowled. He didn’t like being assessed, being weighed, not by Guy Straus, not by any mortal. Maxim could see that. “I’ll handle the post; you can handle the rest of ’er back in St. Louis,” he muttered. It was a rebuke to Guy for coming up the river, for ignoring Fitzhugh’s cautions, for being a
mangeur du lard,
the Creoles’ word for tenderfoot.

But Guy was laughing easily. It made Maxim wonder: his father enjoyed this bristling porcupine of a man.

“Haw!” roared Fitzhugh.

The whole exchange bewildered Maxim.

Little Whirlwind pushed her way through the Creoles carrying a platter of sliced, cold buffalo tongue.

“Buffler!” roared Fitzhugh. “It’s a strong meat — puts strength in a man.”

Maxim and his father ate. Maxim wolfed down meat as fast as he could swallow but Guy took his time, telling the story of their ordeal to the assemblage in between bites. Or part of the story. Guy slid past the beating he’d received. And said almost nothing about the spiritual struggle that had led him to accept death. Or the discovery that not even Julius Hervey could break the will of a man ready to die. But even though he said little, the engages seemed to grasp the things Guy hinted at as Guy toyed with his meat. His father didn’t eat a lot, and it worried Maxim.

“I’ve been the cause of some difficulties and worry here, gentlemen,” Guy concluded. “I certainly apologize. In the morning Monsieur Chatillon and I will be leaving you. And leaving you with admiration. I think I know what sort of man it takes to run a fur post. I esteem you all.”

“But papa — you’ve hardly been here — ”

“Our business awaits me, Maxim. I’ve been away too long. You’ll join us, I trust?”

Suddenly Maxim found himself the cynosure of all eyes. He did not see a friendly face among the engages. Brokenleg paused, glaring. Maxim knew Brokenleg wanted him to go. A few hours ago Maxim had wanted nothing more badly. But that was before he’d allowed Julius Hervey to herd him to Fort Cass. Everything had changed. Maxim glanced at Guy, who waited patiently for a response. He saw a man of steel and principle and felt a sudden rush of pride well through him.

They all wanted him to leave. He glanced furtively at the engages, reading the contempt in their faces; the scorn in the eyes of Little Whirlwind; the flat antagonism in Brokenleg’s glare. He felt small inside. He’d judged them ruthlessly for months, scorning the business, presuming it was corrupt and its participants were barbaric. They itched for him to say
au revoir
and head south.

He didn’t know what to say at first. Or even whom to address. He chose his father. “I owe you and your confreres and apology. I owe Monsieur Fitzhugh an apology.” He turned to look into Fitzhugh’s glare, which struck him with the force of anvils. “I have learned that I was wrong; that you do the best you can in a world that — that you didn’t create.”

Brokenleg’s glare didn’t soften a bit.

“I am sorry, Brokenleg.”

Nothing changed, except that Maxim wanted to crawl away from there. He’d lost the respect of these men.

“I want to stay and work hard and do my duties — if you’ll have me.”

He desperately wanted Brokenleg to say yes, stay, it’ll be fine, all’s forgotten and forgiven. Instead Brokenleg glared, his gaze boring in Maxim until Maxim wished the earth would swallow him up.

“I’ll go with my father,” he muttered miserably.

“Reckon there’s no need. I need me a clerk.”

“I’ll make the best clerk I know how!” Maxim cried.

The new pirogue bounced on its tether at the riverbank in front of Fitzhugh’s Post. Like countless other pirogues built by traders and trappers to get themselves and their furs back to St. Louis, this one had been made from two giant cottonwood logs hewn into the shape of long canoes. These had square sterns and were carefully hollowed out until about two inches of wood remained, along with watertight bulkheads every few feet. Connecting the two canoes was a deck of hand-sawed plank which would store cargo. A mast projected upward from the front of the deck; a tiller from the rear. Two hand-hewn paddles,
avirons
the Creoles called them, awaited strong arms.

A pirogue could be handled by a single man but two or three were better: one on the rudder, the others paddling or setting the square-rigged sail. They could carry tons of cargo, such as beaver packs or baled buffalo robes, along with all the gear necessary to survive on the two-thousand-mile trip down the rivers.

Brokenleg knew he’d never see this one again. Building it had occupied his engages for several weeks. He had intended to use it to carry trade goods up the Bighorn for the rendezvous with the Cheyenne. But that had changed with Julius Hervey’s theft of Guy’s horse and saddle. The post had no spare horses for Guy, and no saddle either. Hervey and American Fur managed to make off with everything the post had, Brokenleg thought angrily. The pirogue would take Guy and Ambrose Chatillon safely down the river along with the found hundred baled robes the post had traded for so far. Guy had no other means of getting home other than hoofing it — with proper boots — the whole distance.

It irked Brokenleg. He could hardly get through a week without losing horses or mules or oxen — and now a needed pirogue. At least he got to keep Chatillon’s saddle horse and a pair of pack horses, Brokenleg thought. Now he would have nothing to carry his outfit to White Wolf’s village except for what could be carried on two pack animals.

But that’s how it had always been in the mountains. There never was enough of anything, and resourceful mountain men learned to make do or do without. He had manpower, round adzes and axes — the entire makings of another pirogue. After his men built the mackinaw.

Brokenleg hated goodbyes and was ready to bolt. Around him stood every soul connected with the post; his men, his wives, and Maxim. A small crowd of Salish, out from their western valleys to hang buffalo and to trade, watched with avid curiosity.

“Well, Brokenleg,” said Guy, kindly. “It’s up to you now. The hearing is in January. We’ll lose our license after this season or not. The key is Raffin, I think. Raul Raffin. That’s the only clue I got from talking to every trader on the river. I don’t know what you can do about it — we need a confession or a witness.” He sighed. “Do what you can. This may be our last year. Unless a miracle happens, Mitchell will stop us. Stop us down on the Arkansas, too.”

“I’ll find Raffin,” Brokenleg muttered. “Some way, I’ll shake it out o’ him.”

“Frankly, I don’t know how.”

“I got my ways.”

Guy smiled faintly. “I know you do. Everything’s riding on you. We survive or go under. We profit, or we  . . . don’t.”

“I’ll see you in June,” Brokenleg said, cutting it off. He hated this.

Out in the pirogue Chatillon was checking cargo, lashing down the tarpaulin over the mound on the deck. The square-rigged sail flapped and fluttered over him, ready to fill its belly with wind.

“Maxim,” Guy said, his voice brimming with a sudden tenderness.
“Au revoir.
I’m proud of you  . . . Be sure to — ” Guy cut himself off. No admonitions this time. Guy was talking to an adult, not a boy.

“Papa — ” Maxim left the rest unsaid. Brokenleg sensed that father and son had not only come to some profound reconciliation, but had bared their souls to each other in their long walks. There wasn’t anything that needed saying now. “Shalom,” Maxim added.

Guy, wearing his newly washed black frock coat and britches, shook hands with each of the engages, pausing to pat Samson Trudeau on the shoulder. Then — his face frozen peculiarly — he shook hands with Little Whirlwind, Hide Skinning Woman, Sweet Smoke, and Elk Tail, and finally with Brokenleg. Then, quietly, he clambered aboard, picked up a paddle from the near hull, and settled himself in its forward compartment.

From the riverbank engages tossed the loosened line into Chatillon’s hands, and the swift current tugged the pirogue out and away. It drifted into the main channel and picked up speed and then swept around a broad bend and out of sight. The world seemed emptier suddenly. Brokenleg hadn’t expected to feel loss; all the while Guy was present in the post Brokenleg had felt Guy’s authority and power looming over him, judging, weighing, impending him. He’d expected relief when the senior man in the company left — but instead, he felt a hollowness. He sighed, staring at the silent mob on the shore. Maxim looked stricken.

“We got work to do,” he growled. He glared irritably at Maxim, neither liking nor trusting the young man.

Engages drifted toward the
chantier
to continue work on the mackinaw. Abner and Zach and Maxim headed back to the trading room to dicker some more with the visiting Salish people. His wives vanished in four directions to hunt roots and berries, gather wood, soft-tan some elkhide they were working on. He had to admit the four Cheyenne women had transformed the post, freed up his engages, improved their meals. Dust Devil had even kept her tongue quiet about the visiting Salish — who weren’t ancient enemies of the Cheyenne.

He stared at his post without joy, feeling the brutal hand of the Chouteau company on it. In its yard lurked a wagon and ox yokes he couldn’t use. Nearly every horse he’d brought or bartered for had vanished, along with a wagonload of good robes. It maddened him. Back in his free trapping days, he’d have picked up his Hawken and started hunting down his tormentors. But now — he was wrestling with the business of doing business. Everything he did these days had repercussions. He glared about him, thinking he’d never been cut out to be a storekeeper. He’d been the son of a New York State innkeeper and had fled that settled life — only to be some sort of storekeeper anyway. He’d never stop chafing, no matter how well he did.

Still  . . . maybe he’d just quit being a storekeeper a while — long enough to git him what he needed, and maybe take the war back to Chouteau. He’d been toying with a notion for a day or two — nothing he’d try with Guy Straus lookin’ over his shoulder. Or Maxim, he thought dourly. But ol’ Guy was drifting past Fort Cass about now and out of Brokenleg’s life.

He limped back to the post and into yard looking for a horse. He didn’t know what he had left. He recognized the small dun mustang Chatillon had ridden clear from Bellevue and decided that one would do. He poked a heavy iron bit into the gelding’s mouth and buckled the bridle. Then he found his special saddle and an old blanket, and threw them over the dun and drew up the cinch.

Moments later he steered the surefooted little mustang up the trace toward Cass, intending to have him a little look-see. A mile below the confluence of the rivers he swung away from the river trace and poked through cottonwood timber toward the bluffs of the Yellowstone, and steered the dun up a grassy coulee toward the broken prairies above. Juniper and jack pine dotted the grassy slopes, giving him cover as he rode cautiously eastward. He kicked the dun up a hogback and peered cautiously over the top, discovering what he was looking for. The Fort Cass horse and mule herd grazed peacefully, under the watchful eye of two well-armed, mounted engages. Seventeen horses and mules, including the bay stolen from Guy. Brokenleg suspected most of the mules were his own though he couldn’t prove it.

Each morning the fort’s herdsmen drove the livestock out to pasture; each twilight the herdsmen brought the herd back and penned it inside of Fort Cass for the night, safe from Crow or Blackfeet pillagers.

He knew this wasn’t the whole herd. The four or five post hunters would have saddler and a cart or two for hauling in the buffalo carcasses. For Cass probably had twenty-five horses and mules. Brokenleg stared at the grazing animals, wanting them all. He wanted every animal Fort Cass possessed.