Cheyenne Winter (27 page)

“I’ll git ye,” he muttered. “Ye owe me. I’ve lost a dozen oxen to your arrers — them Injuns ye hired. Ye owe me six mules, a few saddlers, and the Cheyenne ones that got stole. Ye owe every critter ye’ve got and then some. Plus some wagons. Plus a few hundred robes.”

But that was only part of it. He wanted to put Hervey’s hunters afoot just as Hervey had starved Fitzhugh’s Post by stealing or killing livestock. Let them starve for a change! Let them go hunting on their own two feet. By gar, it wouldn’t even up the score none, but it’d help a little!

A couple of the horses had picked up his scent on the westwinds and stared at the ridge. Brokenleg backed away and headed downslope fast. A few horses staring in his direction would be all the sign a herdsman needed to investigate. He kicked his dun toward a thick grove of juniper, raced around the back, and clambered awkwardly out of the saddle. Then he poked through the brittle dark limbs until he could observe the ridge. No one appeared. He waited a while more, waiting for a herdsman to show up, but none did. It pleased him. They weren’t suspecting trouble. Few men, red or white, ever dreamed of bringing American Fur Company’s own type of warfare to an American Fur post. But Brokenleg had just such a thing in mind. He wanted a dozen or so horses and mules and knew where to find them. The only difficulty was the broad daylight. There’d be no cover, and the act would be naked, made swiftly known to Hervey, to Culbertson, and down the river to old Pierre Chouteau himself.

But maybe that was good, not bad. Brokenleg’s old trapper instincts rose within him. If they wanted a fight he’d give ’em a fight. If they snatched his horses he’d snatch their horses, and he wouldn’t use bought Injuns to do it either. He’d been too cautious, or maybe bein’ a partner in a big fur operation had put a crimp in him. This hyar struggle had been one-sided too long.

Feeling good, Brokenleg steered his dun back to Fitzhugh’s Post and began running his hand over his balding head and red mane, something he never knew he did when he puzzled things out.

It wasn’t something to rush into. Hervey had twenty-five or thirty men at his disposal; Brokenleg could scarcely muster a dozen. And Brokenleg had an ordinary log house with a stockaded pen attached to it — not a regular fur company fort with bastions. If he snatched their livestock they’d come running, and they’d find ways to break into the yard and take the animals back. Neither could Brokenleg graze his new herd without putting up a bloody fight day after day. Worse, Hervey could probably put his Crows to work, harrying Fitzhugh’s Post, killing men and stock. If Fitzhugh started a war it’d be one with long odds.

He couldn’t hide the horses either. The odd thing about wilderness was there it didn’t conceal anything. He could spirit the livestock off to some prairie drainage and Hervey’s Crows would discover it within hours. Livestock had to water at least once a day. Neither could Fitzhugh spirit that many horses out of the country without leaving plenty of sign. Still, it was that prospect that excited him. If he had twenty or thirty pack animals with packsaddles and panniers, he could haul a whole trading outfit to the Cheyenne villages, trade through the winter, and return with robes packed on the stock. And Hervey could do nothing but stew and rage.

One slow autumnal afternoon when only he and Zach Constable and Abner Spoon manned the trading room, he brought it up. He trusted their judgment. They’d waded the creeks and skinned plews and fought Bug’s Boys as free trappers like himself.

“I’m thinkin’ ol’ Hervey’s got a mess of horses and mules, and we hardly got enough to do our huntin’. What Hervey’s got is mostly ours and I’m fixin’ to do somethin’ about it.”

Abner’s face lit up, but Zach peered warily at him.

“You be diggin’ us some graves. And yerself,” Zach muttered. “Next day there’ll be about five hunnert Crows firin’ their pieces through every chink and diggin’ through the stockade to git the horses back. And ol’ Hervey and his outfit’ll be right hyar helpin’ out. And then they’ll burn us or starve us for good measure.”

“How you gonna do it, Brokenleg?” Abner asked.

“Git clear out,” Brokenleg said.”Throw packsaddles over their back, load up an outfit, and git on down to the Cheyenne for a winter of trading. All before they even hear about it over to Fort Cass.”

“They’d come after ye anyway,” Constable said.

“I aim to git their hunting stock, too. The whole herd.”

“They’d git more fast enough — trade with the Crows.”

“By that time I reckon I’ll be clean out, headin’ for Powder River.”

Zach looked skeptical if not worried, but Abner listened intently.

“First thing Hervey’ll do is git him some huntin’ horses. That’s how he hurt us last winter — keepin’ us from making meat. After that maybe he’ll be fixin’ to make trouble. Send some of his Crows hyar to worry us a bit.”

“Kill us and burn it down.”

“There’s that. And they got the men to do it.”

“Fire, it burns where the wind takes it,” Abner said. “Fire burns Fort Cass wood faster than our wood — it’s older. I guess ol’ Hervey knows that.”

“Hervey don’t care,” Fitzhugh said. “He’ll burn us if he’s a mind for it. Kill us, too.”

“I don’t want any part of it,” muttered Zach.

“You figure it’s always one way? We take it and take it from Hervey and never deal out a little thunder? Is that it, Zach?”

Zach stared into the crackling fire, saying nothing.

“Remember old Sublette and Jim Bridger and them — the Rocky Mountain Fur Company? They pretty near whupped Astor jist by buildin’ posts and keepin’ American Fur busy in its own back yard. Like buildin’ Fort Williams right thar beside Fort Union.”

“Pretty near,” Zach agreed. “But they didn’t have no one like Julius Hervey callin’ the shots then.”

That was true. Brokenleg knew it made all the difference. Julius Hervey didn’t care what got wrecked and who got killed. He didn’t even care if old Chouteau took a loss for a few years if that’s what it took to erase the opposition. Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that the thing he proposed could result in the death of his engages, the burning of his post, the theft of his trade goods and robes  . . . and big trouble for Maxim.

“Who you gonna take with you down to the villages — if you do this hyar?”

“Me and my ladies.”

“With twenty, thirty packhorses to pack and unpack and picket and water and guard?”

“Well, I was sorta seein’ how the stick floated. You want to come? I thought to leave the post to Samson Trudeau and Maxim. I ain’t sharin’ wives, but maybe they’ll introduce ye to some likely Cheyenne girls if’n you got the itch needs scratching.”

That met with silence. He didn’t expect a response, really. He was pleased that neither one argued that it couldn’t be done. That alone made up his mind for him: these two coons not laughin’ at him or sayin’ it was impossible.

“I got to corral them Creoles and start buildin’ packsaddles and halters and bridles, I guess,” he said. “That’s a heap of crosstrees and rawhide and all. And we got to make up a mess of panniers too if we got hides around. Should be some.”

He knew they’d go. It’d take a few days for them to come around to it, though. He knew his good, solid chief trader, Samson Trudeau, would object and see only doom in it — doom for the post and its men; murder and mayhem and fire and war. He worried about Maxim, too. The lad had dug in, said little, done more than a day’s work each day, wanting to recover what he’d lost. Brokenleg wanted to leave Maxim here as clerk and trader. The young man had picked up a lot of Crow and some Gros Ventre and some other tongues. But — he was the first thing Hervey’d go after. A hostage. Brokenleg wondered what he’d do if Hervey snatched the boy and threatened to kill him. Brokenleg though about that and answered the question in his own mind.

Through a chill, overcast fall, well-built packsaddles multiplied in the warehouse, along with braided rawhide halters and bridles, picket lines and cowhide panniers. Brokenleg would have preferred lighter duck cloth, sewn and riveted into panniers, but they had none. His ladies filled ink turning each buffalo hide the hunters brought in into parfleches. They converted the worst of the trade robes into apishamores to keep the pack animals from galling. By the time the cottonwoods turned golden and the aspen yellow, Fitzhugh’s Post had a pack outfit for thirty animals — but not the animals.

With the arrival of
Hikomini,
Freezing Moon, a young Cheyenne slid quietly into the post one evening, all but invisible to the nearby Crows.

“Aaiee!” cried Little Whirlwind, who jabbered Cheyenne with the young man and then remembered to introduce him to Brokenleg. “It is my cousin Bear Claws. Chief White Wolf has sent him to you.”

The chief wanted to know whether Brokenleg planned to trade at the Greasy Grass during the Freezing Moon as planned. They’d heard in the Cheyenne villages that Fitzhugh had no horses for his wagons.

“Bear Claws, you’ve come a long way,” Brokenleg muttered in his poor Cheyenne. “You need a rest. I’m glad you came. I can’t make it to the Greasy Grass to trade but you tell White Wolf that I’m coming with a whole outfit to the Powder to trade with his village all winter. I’ll be there soon, in the Big Freezing Moon,
Makhikomini.”

“You are coming with the daughters of One Leg Eagle?”

“Yes, the daughters of One Leg Eagle, and two others to help with the packhorses. I’ll have a whole trading outfit — enough to trade all winter. Trade rifles, blankets, knives, powder and lead, axes — everything.”

“White Wolf is eager to trade. The Tsistsista need many things and have many robes. It was a good fall; we killed many buffalo and our parfleches burst with pemmican. And now the women have fine robes. He said to bring all the rifles and not to trade a one to the dogs.”

“We’ll do it.”

Bear Claws peered about the post seeing only a few horses in the yard. “I do not see this string of packhorses, Brokenleg.”

“I’m getting it. I’m about ready for it. A week maybe.”

The youth waited for more, skeptically.

“Don’t you worry. We had a lot of stock taken from us and I am going to take it back.”

Bear Claws smiled. “I wish I could be along. I love to capture horses.”

“I think maybe you’d better get our news back to Chief White Wolf. Where’ll you be on the Powder?”

“Where Crazy Woman Creek joins it. It is the perfect place for a winter village. Before
Hikomini
has passed.”

“One more thing, Bear Claws. Is the white man Raul Raffin still in your village?”

“He is.”

“What’s he doing?”

Bear Claws hesitated. “He likes to sit in the councils of the headmen. He listens much. He has taken a widow and cares for her. He knows White Wolf sent me to you.”

Fitzhugh nodded. “Bear Claws. This is important. Whatever you do, don’t let Raffin know we’re coming. He’s no friend of the Tsistsistas. He’s there to keep me from trading. Tell all that to Chief White Wolf. Ask the chief not to say a word — not to any headman, not to any medicine man, not to his wives.”

“I will tell him.”

The runner ate and rested, and trotted away from the post within the hour. Fitzhugh watched him go, wondering what Raffin would do.

Everything was as ready as Brokenleg could make it. In the yard lay twenty-five packsaddles and all the necessary tack. A whole trading outfit had been snugged into panniers, along with whatever household things his wives would need. His wives’ high-cantled squaw saddles were ready along with the hackamors the Cheyenne women used. If all went well the whole outfit would be loaded onto pack animals in the space of an hour. If all went well.

He and his men had saddled by the light of a torch. There were only six animals at the post including Spoon’s and Constable’s personal mounts. Brokenleg had commandeered them all. They had to pierce through the black vaults of night and be in place before dawn. Brokenleg nodded and the six horsemen steered their mounts through the gate, rode past a few dark lodges and up the eastern bluff. The night lay frosty over them but not bitter. No inky cloud hid the crystalline winter stars. This would be a cold business in every way.

Brokenleg pulled his beaver-fur cap tighter over his balding head to armor himself and ignored the cold fingering up his sleeves and around his neck, and along his calves. He’d spent his life in the mountains and had learned to endure discomfort. As they heeled the reluctant horses eastward he reviewed everything: the outfit was ready, his wives were ready. He knew where the Fort Cass hunters and herdsmen would go this early December day. For several days the hunters had ridden out to a small buffalo herd ten miles east. And the herders had been taking the Fort Cass livestock in the same general direction, enjoying the company of the hunters for part of the day.

This morning was going to be one the Fort Cass herders and hunters remembered a long time. Fitzhugh worried the possibility of resistance around in his mind. The last thing he wanted was war, injury, death — to his men or the Cass engages. He had no quarrel with the Creoles working for American Fur; only with the mad dog Hervey, who’d stolen or slaughtered Fitzhugh’s stock as fast as it could be replaced. Now it was in the hands of Fate. One reckless move by some engage and someone would die. Fitzhugh wondered whether Guy would approve and decided Guy might. Guy would be far down the river now, maybe back in St. Louis — if he and Chatillon had escaped the endless perils of the river.

They rode into a graying dawn. The fugitive sun rose grudgingly in the southeast in this winter solstice time, shed no warmth, and hastened into exile after a brief appearance. It had been an open winter so far and they were leaving no tracks across an earth frozen as hard as an anvil. He could see the steam of the horses’ breath as they carried the nightriders toward their rendezvous. At a certain broad coulee southeast of Fort Cass they halted. There’d be a long wait here. The Cass herdsmen rarely left the post until midmorning. This coulee, which ascended to the high plains from the Yellowstone bottoms, had been the makeshift road of the Cass engages for weeks. No juniper or jack pine dotted its grassy slopes — except at one place near the top, which thick juniper carpeted a side drainage. Brokenleg had considered that lone concealment with delight.