Into the Savage Country (28 page)

“Damn you, Layton,” Smith said.

“Pleasure before business,” Layton said, and gripped a bloody bit of gore—a piece of red hair with scalp on the end—tucked under the loop of his watch guard.

An hour later we passed through a notch in the gray rock walls at the ridgetop just east of the spring where we had battled with the British. This notch was the only passage over that ridge for many miles in any direction, and as soon as the laden ponies passed through the rock channel, natives began filling the gap with wood and charcoal, then covering it with hot coals that had been
prepared beforehand. In a matter of minutes a large fire blazed, blocking the passageway.

Meanwhile, the laden ponies continued down the east side of the slope and approached a rocky stream where sixty native horses loaded with twig and rock–filled packs awaited their arrival. The waiting ponies were connected from their lead ropes to a cinch ring on the pack saddle, in groups of four, so as to resemble the Hudson’s Bay horses. Ferris, Glass, Branch, and I were at the head of the real pack train, with native handlers to aid us. As we guided our horses into the creek we turned them upstream, to the right. At the same time the diversionary pack animals were led out of the creek and downstream by native riders, accompanied by Smith and Bridger. This was the decisive moment. We needed to lead the animals with the actual pelts into the stream for five hundred yards and then send them up over a shrubby rise in the opposite direction from the false pack train, which would be led in the direction of Fort Ashley. If the ruse were successful, and the animals with the pelts managed to get over the rise and out of sight before the Brits passed through the rock passage, then it was unlikely that the British would realize their mistake for at least a day, if not much longer. But we needed an hour to cross the barren slope. Pike and his men were no more than fifteen minutes behind us.

The last of the real pack animals turned up the streambed and were hidden by the bank and foliage just as the British began arriving at the flaming logs in the rock passage. Through the streamside foliage I could see the Brits dashing back and forth, battling the flames. Twice I stopped to glass the passage. I saw that the British had placed wet robes on themselves and were running up to the blaze and using bent pickets as hooks to drag the logs away. Natives were shooting arrows attached to thin ropes into the logs and pulling burning logs from the fire.

Once they passed through the rock passage they could hardly fail to see the ruse.

Glass, Branch, Ferris, and I, along with natives from Red Elk’s band, drove the horses as fast as we could up the barren slope. Far below us Layton straggled behind. He was not aiding with the pack train, as he was supposed to, but simply riding slowly, trying to keep up, wobbling in his saddle. I motioned to Ferris, then turned back and when I neared I saw that the bullet that had caused the gash in Layton’s right arm had also entered his chest. I had not seen that before. With each breath pink bubbles frothed from the hole in his chest. His skin was gray and glistening and his saddle blanket was wet with blood.

“Give me your musket,” he said weakly. “I cannot handle the ponies, but I can help the brigade by delaying our enemies.” I looked him up and down silently for a moment. Ferris had turned and ridden down to join us. He only had to glance at Layton to understand the situation.

“You will die if you are not treated,” Ferris said. “Ride to the foliage along the streambed. We will hide ourselves in shrubbery and I will treat your wounds. Wyeth will drive the horses.”

Layton began to protest but Ferris cut him off.

“Without care you will be dead within the hour.”

“Then let me die battling,” Layton said.

He reached to take Ferris’s rifle from his saddle harness. He missed and fell from his horse and lay panting in the dust. He tried to rise and could not.

“Damn you,” Layton said weakly. “Help me on my horse. I can be the means of saving the brigade if I can get on my horse.” Layton clung to the edge of his stirrup and tried to stand again and fell back. “Damn you. Help me.”

Ferris motioned for me to leave him but Layton was too pitiful
a sight, groping at his stirrup. I jumped down and lifted him into his saddle. As I did Layton took the firearm from my holster. It was a musket as Ferris had my long gun.

“Give me my weapon, you scoundrel,” I said.

“Do you think I care for your curses? I will delay the British and save the brigade.”

“What you’re doing is impeding our progress,” Ferris said. “Dismount. And I will attempt to save your life. You can hardly affect the outcome in your state.”

“I can hardly do otherwise,” Layton said, not with his usual self-aggrandizing bluster but in a matter-of-fact tone. “You can see the situation as well as I. But I can still be the means of helping the brigade.”

Below us, the British were on the verge of crossing the stone passage. Ferris turned and saw this, and then turned back and studied Layton. He could barely sit on his horse.

“We will go back together. If we live through the hour, you will let me treat you.”

“Gladly,” Layton said.

Ferris motioned up the hill.

“Someone needs to drive the horses. No time to argue, Wyeth. You’ve had your heroics. Let us have ours.”

Layton turned his horse and took my hand. “If I do not survive tell Alene I fought bravely.”

“You will tell her of your escapades yourself,” I said.

“Live well, old friend,” he said, and bolted downhill.

Ferris held his rifle up. “Do not wait for us. We will find you,” he said.

There was a sort of dropping inside as they rode off, but there was no time to consider it. I watched Ferris and Layton moving toward the burning embers in the stone gates, then turned to
drive the pack animals, which were straggling. I stopped several times in the next half hour to scope the stone gates. I saw that Layton had positioned himself in some rocky crevice and was shooting into the opening, scattering the British. Ferris—with Layton covering him—dragged a large tree branch and toppled it into the opening. In a minute the fire had blazed up again and this branch, wedged between rocks, could not be dragged away so easily. The Brits came swinging their hooks and again Layton blasted the opening with his musket. The fire was blazing now, a bright eye in the gray rock that, if left burning, would hold them for hours.

I drove the beasts until they had crossed the ridgetop and dropped out of sight, then turned and glassed the stone gates one more time. British gunmen had set up at various angles beyond the flames, but Layton was in a natural fortification and was well protected, firing into the gap whenever the Brits exposed themselves.

From the top of the ridge I glassed Layton. He was sitting with his back to a flat rock, loading his musket, and I thought at first he was talking to himself, but then understood that he was singing. I could hear it faintly through the sound of shouting and gunshots. It was that wonderful aria he’d sung the last night of our wander. Layton, that reckless, aggravating, honorable man, was holding off the entire British brigade single-handedly and singing while he did it. I left him there and followed the pack train.

Branch, Glass, and I, and a dozen natives, drove the animals all night and into the next day, half expecting the Brits to show up on our trail at any moment, but they did not, and by the afternoon of the following day we began to hope the ruse had worked.

We slept for several hours that afternoon, then rode all night and the next morning a horse was sighted to the north. Half an
hour later Ferris arrived in the encampment. He didn’t bother getting off his horse, but simply lay down on top of it.

“Our enemies were delayed for hours by Layton, who perished in the night.” There were cries of grief but Ferris, exhausted, barked at us in a horrible way. “Onward, or his sacrifice is meaningless.”

From that moment on, in Captain Smith’s absence, Ferris became our brigade leader.

Seven days later, after nearly constant travel, we crossed a ridge in the Bighorn Mountains and wound our way down to a small encampment of Crow and Arapahoe natives, French trappers, and mixed-blood children. This hidden, protected spot in a game-filled valley was a perfect winter encampment. In those first days we slept with our guns and expected to be overtaken at any moment, but Pike and his brigade did not arrive, and then the real winter storms began, which would have prevented their crossing, even if they had been on our trail.

We settled into that valley for the winter and Ferris passed the time by sketching the children and the natives, and these studies were the basis for his famous painting
Winter Encampment
, which now hangs in a gallery in Washington. I spent my time completing the notes and details that make up the bulk of this narrative. And as we all grieved for Layton, we honored him by perfecting the stories of his bravery that would be trumpeted about Market Street for the next decade. In these stories Layton’s demons were completely forgotten, his arrogant pride was forgiven, and his glorious last act of courage blazed up and outshone all else. He had been a vain man—brash, overconfident, reckless, lucky for a long while, and in the end, when his luck ran out, he sacrificed
himself for the rest of us, which surprised many, though not those who knew him. I like to think it reflects well on our brigade that even our most self-regarding member had sacrificed himself, that our most foppish had also become the most brave, but I do not mean to misrepresent the man, either. He was always an irritable, thorny presence, as incapable of acting in a cowardly manner as he was of taking a small slight or inconvenience silently. Both his valiant and petty acts are remembered, though it is the good and the noble that shines brightest now. He had wanted to overcome his demons and I believe he did overcome them. What remains in memory is his vibrancy, his love of life, and his final act of self-sacrifice—and that is how it should be. In death, at least for our friends, we become what was best in us.

We stayed in that hidden spot all winter and one afternoon in early April, four months after we’d arrived, Smith and Bridger, who had ridden with Red Elk and the diversionary pack animals, arrived with twelve handlers, telling us how they’d been pursued by the British right up to the palisades of the fort. Pike had only relented at the threat of eighty American long guns, never understanding that he chased animals that carried sticks and rocks. Red Elk and his men settled at the fort for the winter, and after a month of rest, Smith and Bridger had turned around with extra handlers and started back for the Bighorn. After many hardships they had arrived at the winter encampment, inordinately pleased to see our fortune intact, though grieved to hear of Layton’s demise.

The day after Smith’s arrival there was a storm that made travel impossible and it was not until the end of April that we started back with our horses and pelts. It was the springtime of 1829 now and the prairies were sodden and the rivers high and traveling was slow, but because of the deep snow in the mountains
and the difficulty in moving we felt certain that if the Brits had wintered on the other side of the mountains, which we were sure they had, they could not cross so early in the season.

All that spring we passed trapping parties heading west, and they always gave a cheer when they understood we were the great Market Street Fur Company. The French, the British, and the Spanish had thirsted after our returns, as had other American companies, but now the men from these same American companies applauded us in a lusty way that was bewildering until we understood that exaggerated stories of our adventures had moved eastward since Smith arrived at Fort Ashley, and those stories had reached the States, where our battle with Pike and the Hudson’s Bay Company had been published in the most romantic and gloriously patriotic terms that had little resemblance to truth, and would have satisfied even Layton’s nearly bottomless desire for praise. Washington had taken our little skirmish and bent it for its own use. Our striving for pelts and fortune was painted as a patriotic endeavor. Layton had become a national hero. Every time we passed a brigade we were cheered by our countrymen for heroic acts that had no basis in fact, and Layton’s bravery was compared to that of the Greeks at Thermopylae. All joined in the revelry, and it was a glorious time for everyone except me, as I had promised Alene I would be back by midwinter, and instead would be returning in late spring, by which time she had sworn she would be back in St. Louis.

So though I was pleased with the fortune we carried and the fame we’d won, I realized too late that all that was of little consequence in comparison to what I’d lost. Sadness and dread weighed heavily inside me. I questioned every brigade we passed if they had gone through Fort Burnham, and if so, had they seen or heard of a woman named Alene Bailey. No one seemed to have
seen her and I was doubly sure she had returned to St. Louis. It seemed it was my ill fate to finally be ready to settle at the exact moment when the opportunity was taken away.

On the night before we arrived at Fort Ashley we met up with Red Elk and his men, who had ridden out to meet us. I do not know how they knew we were coming, but they did, and that night, a day’s ride from the fort, Red Elk stepped into our encampment and demanded payment for his participation in the raid, which we complied with gladly, passing on our long guns and a small barrel of powder, and afterward, the remaining men of the Market Street Fur Company—me, Ferris, Glass, Branch, Smith, and Bridger—built a bonfire, and savages and trappers alike celebrated our success by drinking a jack of Taos Whiskey that Smith, of all people, had secreted in that spot for just that occasion.

Oh, how the fire flamed that night. Oh, how the drums boomed. The whiskey was passed around and the lot of us stomped and leaped and whooped and in general acted like wild beasts. Even the captain joined in, cavorting in a way I would not have thought possible of him. It was the last night of the brigade, the last night of the existence of the Market Street Fur Company, and we were all filled with affection for one another, and mourning for Layton and Pegleg, and were half wild with relief and sadness and the thrill of our riches.