Cheyenne Winter (28 page)

His men dismounted in the tender light and stomped life back into their limbs. The horses snatched at brown grass. The engages pulled their saddlehorses back into the juniper — and waited. The cold bit at them all. Brokenleg pulled off his mitten and stuffed a numb hand into his coat and finally under his armpit where the cold fingers enraged his flesh but absorbed its warmth. He wished they could have a fire. Men with numb fingers could scarcely load and shoot. Of course the Cass herders would be just as numb by the time they arrived here.

Trudeau said nothing and Brokenleg knew he didn’t approve of this, especially since he would be lowering his cold rifle against fellow Creoles. But Samson Trudeau was loyal; his soul was given to his company. Abner and Zach would enjoy it; they had a wild, joyous streak that pointed them toward any convenient brawl. They’d all wrestled and roared through the rendezvous in the beaver days, and those who had been formed by the mountains carried those things with them out of the mountains.

When the sun was making a serious show of lighting the world, Abner signaled from his lookout up on a ridge. The men pulled their frosted rifles from their saddle sheaths, wincing at the cold of the steel in their hands. They checked caps and loads, shook their powder horns, and fumbled in their possibles for balls and greased patches. Men muttered. No one wanted to shoot, but shooting was a part of it. Brokenleg knew that these men would try to wound, not kill, if they were forced to fire at all.

The Creoles, Abner and Zach hid themselves in the juniper, each finding a bench rest for his rifle. Samson joined Brokenleg, and both of them mounted their cold animals and held them there, standing in plain sight of anyone coming up the coulee. They heard the herd and huntsmen before they saw them, the soft sounds carrying on the hard winter air. The Fort Cass herd appeared first — and stopped uncertainly at the sight of Trudeau and Fitzhugh. Brokenleg steered his horse to one side to let the Cass herd pass.

“I make it nineteen,” he muttered.

“I counted twenty.”

“Enough anyhow.”

The mounted herdsmen spotted them, studied them a moment, saw two opposition men sitting harmlessly on their horses, and proceeded. Behind the herders came the Cass hunters on horseback, except for one driving a cart drawn by two dray horses.

Good. Together. Fitzhugh felt his pulse lift. These things could go bad in an instant.

“Bien, bien,”
said a herder. And then, seeing Brokenleg, switched to English. “The opposition. You are seeing where we make the buffalo,
oui?”

“You see any buffler?”

The herdsman grinned broadly. He turned to the hunters. “They want to know where the buffalo hide themselves.” He shrugged. “We cannot keep you from following us,
oui?
It’s a cold day.”

The hunters pulled up. Three this morning, and two herdsmen. The hunters’ rifles lay in the cart wrapped in robes, along with a few supplies.

The hunters and Samson exchanged things in French that Brokenleg couldn’t get a handle on, but it didn’t matter. They were all jabbering and smiling and having a fine time that cold morning, their breaths pluming with every word.

Until Larue, Dauphin, Spoon, and Constable emerged from the juniper thickets, their four rifles lowered.

Recognition pierced through the Cass contingent. “Ah!” cried the herdsman who seemed to be in charge.
“Sacrebleu!”

A hunter eased toward the cart.

“Non,”
snapped Larue.

The man stopped.

Brokenleg, grinning, slid his rifle from its sheath. That made five rifles against five engages.

“Tell him these hyar horses and mules, they belong to us.”

Samson did. The hunters and herdsmen responded, and Fitzhugh waited for a translation.

Trudeau shrugged. “They say the cart horses don’t belong to us, and the saddlers they’re riding. But they admit the rest do.”

“Tell ’em we’re takin’ ’em all and not arguin’ about it. Old Hervey, he killed a dozen of our oxen and stole a bunch of Cheyenne ponies — you know. And then let’s get this palaverin’ over with.”

Trudeau addressed the prisoners and in a moment all of them slid down from their mounts. The cart man clambered down with a longing glance at the rifles and robes.

“Tell ’em they got a long cold wait.”

But that was already obvious to the Cass engages who were being herded back to the juniper thickets at gunpoint. Spoon unhitched the two drays from the cart shaft and collected the Cass saddlers.

“Leave them saddles on?” he asked.

Fitzhugh sighed. “Yes. And keep the harness on them drays, too. Hervey and them, they got Guy’s saddle. And Raffin’s bunch of Arapaho got all our harness and robes.” He eyed the horse herd, which was drifting apart. “Let’s git.”

Back in the junipers Trudeau and his Creoles were tying legs and wrists with rawhide thong even as they joked with their opposites from Fort Cass. It’d be a cold wait but not a bad one, Fitzhugh thought.

He and Abner and Zach didn’t waste another moment. They turned the livestock toward Fitzhugh’s Post and drove the horses and mules slowly, not wanting them to get heated up and unmanageable. A half hour later they rumbled down the long grade into the Bighorn valley, threaded through naked cottonwood timber, and out upon the flat. A few of his engages whistled. The stock trotted easily into the stockaded yard and the gates closed behind them all.

“Let’s git loaded and git going,” he muttered. But he didn’t need to instruct them. Engages caught animals, haltered them, slapped packsaddles over them, and hoisted the heavy panniers. His wives scurried about loading ponies with their truck.

“Anyone hurt?” Maxim asked. He looked troubled. Fitzhugh shook his head. Maxim grinned and saddled mules.

“They gonna have them an all-day visit, them Creoles. Have them a little fire to keep warm and do a little frenchie talkin’ until the sun sets. Then ol’ Trudeau and Larue and Dauphin’ll ride on in.”

“And Hervey’s men’ll have a three or four mile walk.”

“Keep ’em warm.”

Maxim sighed, wrestling with all of this.

Late in the morning a large pack outfit trotted out of the gates of Fitzhugh’s Post with seven riders guiding it. Four Cheyenne women and three men. The remaining engages watched and cheered. By sundown that evening — when Trudeau released the Fort Cass herders and hunters — they were twenty-three miles up the Bighorn, and not stopping for nightfall.

Maxim watched the lone horseman with dread. Even from where he stood in the open door of Fitzhugh’s Post he knew he was seeing Julius Hervey riding toward him on a chestnut. So Cass had a few horses after all. Most posts kept a horse or two in their pens at all times.

Maxim held the company’s two-barreled fowling piece in the crook of his arm. It was charged with buckshot but it gave him no comfort. Julius Hervey could walk straight through two blasts of buckshot, grinning, murder in his eye. Julius Hervey could paralyze a man with his mocking stare; paralyze Maxim so badly he couldn’t lift his piece, aim it, pull the hammers back, and squeeze the trigger. Hervey was like that.

Maxim peered about him. Samson Trudeau stood behind him in the post, also armed. Other engages crowded about, staring at the bourgeois of Fort Cass as he rode steadily, a horseman of the apocalypse. The doorway was the only place anyone could see out: the glassless windows had well-scraped rawhide over them, affording an amber light within. Maxim felt his own fear crawl through his gut and knew the rest felt the same terror clawing at them. Hervey rode alone and that somehow made it worse, as if this sole rider was more than a match for all the post’s defenses.

On came Julius Hervey, his gaze taking in everything — Maxim and his piece, the engages standing behind watching his every move. Hervey smiled slightly and kept on. He reined at last before the doors, surveying the quiet post, the half-dozen Salish lodges nearby, the trampled clay and fresh horse sign around the high gates through the stockade. Then, with an invisible instruction to his horse, he turned it and rode slowly along the perimeter of the post, pausing on horseback at one point to peer through cracks in the wall of logs. Maxim knew he’d see no horses within. Brokenleg had most of them; the remaining three, two saddlers and a pack mule, were out with the post hunters.

Then Hervey vanished around the corner. Behind Maxim the engages ran through the post and out into the yard to keep track of the lone horseman, fearing fire or mayhem or murder.

“Perhaps he means no harm,” said Samson Trudeau, obviously not believing a word. “He’s alone.”

Maxim shook his head. He didn’t feel like saying anything. They waited at the door beside the trading window wondering if Hervey would return. A few moments later Hervey rounded the other corner and walked his chestnut straight toward them. Maxim’s pulse catapulted. Hervey seemed unalarmed save for a sheathed rifle, but Maxim knew better. Hervey always had a little six-barreled pepperbox and a vicious Arkansas toothpick. Maxim felt his terror rise as Hervey approached. He hated his own fear.

At last Hervey reined up before them, not twenty feet away.

“Stiffleg — he’s gone.”

It wasn’t really a question. Maxim nodded. Hervey laughed easily. “You’re in charge, little Straus.”

Maxim shook his head and mustered some words which rushed out in a squeak. “Samson Trudeau is — our chief trader.”

“You’re in charge, little Straus. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll get you down the river to your old pap safely.”

Was Hervey going to capture him — again? Maxim felt an odd tug, the call of obedience. His wobbling legs wanted to walk out toward Hervey of their own volition, as if the man had a magical stranglehold on Maxim’s will. “No!” he cried. He lifted the fowling piece and felt the tremble in his arms. He snugged it in his shoulder and thumbed back the two hammers. They made loud clicks in the morning quiet. Beyond Hervey, Salish people scattered.

Hervey laughed softly and the laughter reduced Maxim to nothingness. He lowered the piece, not knowing why he lowered it. It was almost as if the buckshot would turn around and pierce him if he pulled the triggers.

Behind Maxim, Trudeau spoke up. “Go now. You have seen what you wanted to see.”

“I saw what I wanted to see,” said Julius Hervey.

“Fitzhugh evened it up, Monsieur Hervey. But it is not enough yet. You owe more still.”

“It’s all mine,” said Hervey. He dismounted lithely, his eyes alert, and walked straight toward them. Maxim watched him looming up, terrified.

“I’ll shoot!” he cried.

Hervey laughed and kept on coming. “I am going to see,” he said. He walked straight by Maxim and Maxim swore his fingers had been paralyzed on the triggers. Engages toppled back to let him pass. Hervey walked easily into the trading room while engages fumbled in behind him, gaping. Hervey wandered along the shelves, examining goods, poking and probing, eyeing the shafts of Osage orange bow wood brought up the Missouri — a trade item American Fur didn’t have.

“Stiffleg took most of it,” Hervey said to no one in particular. Maxim sensed that Hervey knew the count on every item, knew what Brokenleg had taken, what he’d left behind.

Casually Hervey wandered from the trading room into the adjoining warehouse and eyed the heaped robes and bales. There weren’t many. Most had gone down the river with Guy Straus and Ambrose Chatillon. Engages tumbled along behind him like the crowds that gathered for a guillotining. No one had the will to oppose this demonic man.

At last Hervey stepped outside and clambered onto his chestnut again, the mockery still upon him. “Better come along, little Straus.”

Maxim lifted his scattergun again for an answer. He was taking heart now that Hervey was leaving. And then Hervey trotted off toward Fort Cass, leaving an odd vacuum behind him.

That was all. Maxim’s dread eased through the rest of the quiet December day. The Salish traded a few more robes and lounged about, enjoying the visit. But the feeling never left Maxim that Hervey wasn’t done; that he would strike back in his own way at his own time. He’d said as much.

That twilight the post’s hunters returned carrying a doe and an antelope. No one had molested them. They unloaded the horses, fed them cottonwood bark, and hung the meat in the cold yard where it would freeze and keep.

Next morning, after the tardy sun began its low arc across the December sky, the hunters rode out for more meat. A few minutes later the Crows arrived. Maxim stood at the door of the post once again, seeing a whole village ride majestically onto the flat before the post, countless ponies dragging travois with lodges packed on them; men and women wrapped in creamy blankets, their breath pluming the air; starved curs slinking along. And warriors, too, flanking the village on their ponies, all of them wearing their coup feathers, their bonnets, and carrying their gleaming rifles and strong bows.

They were painted. Maxim stared at one and another, discovering white or black chevrons on their cheeks, vermilion on their brows, handprints on their medicine horses. On they came, a large village, several hundred men, women, and children.

Painted. A sudden chill swept through Maxim.

“You see that?” he cried to Trudeau.

The chief trader nodded and turned to his engages. “Prepare to fight,” he said. Terrified engages dashed for their rifles, and stationed themselves at the windows. Fitzhugh’s Post was no fortress with bastions at the corners. It was an oblong log building set in the corner of a stockaded yard.

But nothing much happened. The headmen approached the Salish, their hereditary friends and allies, and palavered there for a while. Then the Salish women began dismantling the Salish lodges and packing while the Salish warriors gathered their ponies. In a little while the Salish pulled out, even as the Crows were raising their own village well away from Fitzhugh’s Post — a rifleshot away, Maxim thought.

By noon a great Crow village arced around Fitzhugh’s post, guarding its front flanks and the post gates. The warriors did not remove their paint, and even though cold winds drove most of them into their lodges, a few remained, watching, riding back and forth around Fitzhugh’s Post.