Into the Savage Country (13 page)

In early January there was a celebration at Smitts’s lodging house. It was considered the formal engagement party for Alene and me, and it was also a New Year’s celebration for the entire settlement and its surroundings.

Alene wore a black cambric dress with a white ruffle and I wore a borrowed suit and tie and black boots. General Burnham gave a speech celebrating our great nation and Smitts toasted to the newly engaged couple. Then the tables were carried behind the lodging house and stacked among the heaps of snow thrown from the roof and the entire population of the settlement gathered inside for a dance, and for a few hours we were not a loose collection of ragged settlers and trappers stranded on the endless prairie but a bright hive of human activity, all dancing and whirling and stomping, a many faceted, candlelit blur. For most of the settlement it was a bright spot in the hardship and monotony of the long winter, and it ought to have been doubly so for me, as that was our engagement celebration, but I remember feeling only half involved in that dance, feeling as if I was stranded there on the edge of the wilderness but had not really entered into it.

At one point that night I walked away from the dance into the frigid darkness. It was a windless night, very cold, the white sparks of stars spread silently overhead. Natives had crept up and crouched in the snowy scrubland, watching, and I stood there watching with them, hearing the distant calling and clapping of the men and the faint stomping of feet and the
thump thump
of the drum, looking at that square of light in the open doorway. And it perhaps says something about me, and what I yearned for at the time, and perhaps what I have become, that it is not the celebration itself that I remember most but those minutes outside it, seeing this small white flame of life blazing up in the midst of that vast, savage darkness.

That was January. Three months later the spring trapping brigades began passing through the settlement, and despite my promises to return with Alene to St. Louis in the spring, I yearned to join them.

It was mid-March 1828, and from the top of a windswept hill I saw a party of riders to the south moving along the winding blue thread of the river. Later that day I walked into Smitts’s lodging house to find Branch, Glass, Grignon, and Bridger sprawled on the rough-plank benches placed along the wall. As I moved to greet them two meaty arms encircled me from behind. I was thrashed about as if I were a child and thrown against the plank-wood walls so the whole structure of the lodging house shook.

“Glad to see you on your hooves again, old friend.” It was Pegleg. That was the way he greeted me. “Grab yourself a horn.”

I picked myself up from the floor. Ferris toasted me from the bar.

“I see you’ve survived Pegleg’s greeting.”

“Barely.”

“And I hear you’ve made advancements in your conquest.”

“I am engaged to be married,” I said.

I told Ferris of our intention to return to St. Louis on the first keelboat and he congratulated me, but then said, “You will need to break that pledge and join us for a last season. We have all broken our ties to the RMC and are bound to Layton’s brigade.”

“Layton’s!” I said.

“Captain Layton,” he said wryly. “And he wants you to join.”

“He is joining,” I heard someone say behind me and turned to see Layton himself. I had not seen him for more than three
months. He was sunburned and windburned and even more emaciated. He held his hand out, grinning.

“I hear you’ve successfully occupied the fortress of the Widow Bailey,” he said. “Or should I say the Bride Wyeth?”

“You can say that when we return to St. Louis.”

“Congratulations, Wyeth. This calls for a drink.” All this was said in an even, not particularly jovial tone. He poured for me and said, “Ferris tell you where we’re off to?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Wonderfully closed-lipped of you,” he said to Ferris, then to me, “I’ve told others we’re going north of the Tetons. As you know, those slopes have been trapped out three times in five years.”

“And there’s the Blackfoot,” I said.

“And there’s the Blackfoot,” he agreed. “But we aren’t going to the Tetons. We’re going to the Wind River Mountains. The northern half. From the base all the way to the upper reaches.”

“That’s Crow land,” I said.

“It’s fertile, though.”

“It’s fertile because it’s Crow land, controlled by Long Hair, and unlike a lot of the Crow, Long Hair hasn’t let trappers into those hills. And when trappers have tried to go in they end up dead or running across the prairie naked with the natives firing arrows like they did to Sam Williams.”

“We will not be creeping around and hiding in willows like Sam Williams. Wouldn’t be possible. And I wouldn’t be foolish enough to try. We’ll walk in like men. I have made a treaty that will give us access to those mountains.”

“A treaty with who?”

“Chief Long Hair, of course. I’ve just come from meeting him. The natives are in need of our aid. And we are in need
of pelts. We struck a mutually beneficial agreement. There is a Blackfoot chief named Red Elk. Have you heard of him?”

“I am aware of the existence of Red Elk as are all who have been to the west. I saw him at the surround nine months ago. I can’t speak for his character, but I can say he was a sullen, arrogant-looking man and an excellent rider.”

“Well, to our benefit the Crow fear him like no other. Red Elk has made an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay Company who have armed him, and now Long Hair wants an agreement with us. I supply the necessary warfaring instruments that they need to fight Red Elk and in return Long Hair allows us to trap his land.”

“Which drainages?”

“All of the Wind River Mountains.”

“He doesn’t control the entire range. Not even close.”

“He controls enough of it and is in contact with those who control the rest and will bribe them with what I give him. Come see.”

Layton glanced at Ferris, then walked from the bar and I followed him into a low-ceilinged hallway. Layton stood outside the door to a storeroom.

“You got the chief’s daughter back there, bound up, ready to deliver?”

“I got something better than that,” Layton said.

Layton opened the door to reveal shelves stacked with hempen sacks, glass jars that held honey, vinegar, and various crates. In the center of the small room sat a barrel of Taos Whiskey. Alongside the barrel were four long wooden crates. I walked to the barrel and thumped it. It was full. I eyed the rectangular crates set one on top of the other. One of the crates was pried half open and I saw brass plating inside.

“Pennsylvania long rifles. Twelve total,” Layton said.

I let out a low whistle. Pennsylvania long rifles were hard to get even in St. Louis, and they were dearly expensive. I pried one end of the lid up and pulled one of the rifles out. Forty inches long with the wooden ramrod beneath the barrel. Beautifully crafted and perfectly balanced. I felt the rifle’s heft and sighted with it, felt how the weapon rested neatly against the shoulder. I lowered the rifle, slid it back in the crate, and hammered the nails back in with a stone that stood behind the door.

“The whiskey. The rifles. Powder. Twelve bullet molds and lead. A few other gewgaws like mirrors and vermillion. My whole fortune right here,” Layton said. “The Market Street Fur Company. This is your chance, Wyeth. If you enter right now as an investor I’ll give you a percentage of the returns.”

“How much of an investment?”

“Three hundred dollars. For that you’ll get six dollars from your cut of the pelts and we split the cut of everyone else’s and you get fifteen percent of the profits. Ferris did it. You could do it, too. Then you come back not with eight hundred or a thousand dollars but three to five thousand. Plus your stake in the company.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Those are entirely unrealistic calculations, Layton. Not that it matters. Alene and I are returning to St. Louis.”

“Those are your plans,” he said. “Alter them. Send her back where she belongs. Take the last boat out in the fall.”

“I wouldn’t make the last boat out in the fall.”

Layton gave me a skeptical look.

“Then tell Alene you’ll be back in the spring. Extract a promise from her to wait for you, then send her off to St. Louis and meet her when you can. We have a chance to profit from the last
untouched drainages in the west. A chance that will never come again. You can make your fortune and return like a man and not some pauper hoping to profit off Bailey’s death.”

“I am hardly hoping to profit off his death. You are speaking of your own intentions, not mine,” I said.

Layton’s eyes grew dark, but he mastered his anger. When he spoke again it was in an even tone, and offhandedly.

“I’m not talking about your motives, Wyeth. I am stating how it will be perceived by others. I am offering you a chance to blast that perception with six months of labor.”

“It’s eight and not six months. And at least three months of travel.”

“Nevertheless, Wyeth, this chance won’t come again. You know that as well as I.”

I was quiet. My eyes strayed to the crates.

“What’ll keep the natives from turning those guns on us?”

“Nothing except we know how to use our weapons and they will just be beginning to learn how to use theirs. And Long Hair has some sense,” Layton said. “He knows the Americans and the Brits are going to keep coming. The one card in his deck is those untrapped lands. He’s kept them fertile. He’s now willing to part with the furs to protect the villages. We all stand to make a fortune from this decision, you more than any of us. I have debts that need to be paid. For a three-hundred-dollar investment you can increase your take ten or fifteen times. I could get anyone to join us, but I know you won’t run like some flatlander, and Bailey’s family is treating Alene roughly. I meant to do well by both of you by offering a partnership. If you return to St. Louis now, what will Bailey’s family say to this linkage? Bailey was a gentleman.”

“And what am I?”

Layton smiled. “A dirty trapper.”

Fire came into my eyes, and Layton laughed, and said, “Easy Wyeth. I am only saying how they perceive you. If you invest your money now you stand to profit greatly. Think about it. You get the entire profit on your take. You won’t get that anywhere else. And if you sign on as an owner you get fifteen percent of the other three dollars’ profit per pelt, minus expenses, and divided with the other owners.”

“What other owners?”

“You, me, and … Ferris will be an owner, too.”

“So Ferris has put in his money?”

“He will,” Layton said.

I understood that Ferris had not invested yet.

“I have taken on debt at a foolishly high rate. If I can raise six hundred dollars right now, before I leave for the fur country, I can pay the worst of the loans. It will be worth the thirty percent reduction. You two will make more than I will on the season, though I will own the majority stake in the company.”

“Must have been damned high rates.”

“They were. But that is my problem. After we take in thirteen hundred pelts, we start to get paid back a percentage. All profit.”

“And how many pelts do you think we could gather in a season?”

“We have eight men. Plus me. Three thousand pelts.”

I laughed loudly. We had walked back to the bar. Ferris was slouched with his feet stretched out on a chair. He looked up at us.

“Layton said he expects our returns to be three thousand pelts for eight men,” I said.

“Nine men,” Layton corrected.

“The average brigade is taking between a hundred and a hundred and twenty pelts a man per season,” I said. “In a good year. Even in those southern drainages in the best conditions, Smith’s brigade took in less than a hundred a man.”

“They lost many due to hardships. That will not happen to us.”

“You have no way of ensuring it doesn’t,” I said. “And it doesn’t change the fact that the average is close to a hundred. If that.”

“The country we are going into is the most fertile imaginable and we will have the most experienced and energetic trappers harvesting the furs and the most experienced captain to guide them.”

“I’d hardly call you experienced, Layton.”

“I am not speaking of myself. I have hired Jedediah Smith to lead us.”

“Captain Smith is part owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company,” I said.

“Smith has taken a leave from his company to guide our brigade,” he said in a steely tone. “He is in a room above us as we speak.”

I glanced at Ferris who nodded that it was true. Smith had signed on as the scout and captain of Layton’s brigade for the season.

“You seem not to understand, Wyeth. We have complete access without harassment to the richest drainages in the west. I have forgone using camp hands, which will make the year arduous for those who sign on but will increase our profits. There are nine of us. I calculate we’ll take in around three thousand pelts.
Without our own profits, the remaining men will split around nineteen hundred pelts. So, around three hundred pelts each.”

“They’ll be splitting almost two thousand pelts. About three hundred and thirty each,” Ferris corrected.

“Each paid about nine hundred—”

“A thousand,” Ferris said.

Among his other accomplishments Ferris had a knack for figures. Layton had a habit of always overestimating his profits.

“Fine, Ferris. By your calculations, a thousand dollars each. The profit on those two thousand pelts is around six thousand dollars. Minus the twenty-five hundred expenses we’re left with—”

“Thirty-five hundred,” Ferris said.

“Exactly. You get fifteen percent of that.”

“About five hundred extra,” Ferris said.

“And then all the profits from your own pelts, including free transport,” Layton said. “That’s three hundred and thirty times six. Around—”

“Two thousand,” Ferris said.

“Plus what you invested originally. So you walk out with—”

“About twenty-eight hundred dollars,” I said.

“That’s the least of it,” Layton said. “It could be higher. Could be double that.”