The Shirt On His Back (8 page)

'Orleans
Ballroom,' said January, interpreting his glance.

The
tall man's face broke into a smile. 'Good heavens, the piano player! What on
earth are you doing up here?'

'Trying
to keep my house,' said January, and Stewart grimaced.

'It
is bleak down there, isn't it? I thought to make a go of it as a cotton broker,
but it's hardly the year to try to start any business, is it?' Camp rumor had
it that the tall, commanding Scotsman was the heir to a title, a castle and
considerable property in his homeland, but despite his blood horses, private
loaders and pack-train of civilized amenities like brandied peaches and foie gras,
Stewart was an unpretentious man who had won the respect of the trappers by his
businesslike attitude and his willingness to do his share of the work on the
trail.

'See
here - January, isn't it?'

'You
can make it Ben - Your Lordship.'

'Not
"My Lordship" just yet, thank God; Bill will do. The Company's
holding a feast in Jim Bridger's honor tomorrow night, and I meant to ask
Sefton if he'd favor us - do you play anything besides piano? You must—'

'You
didn't bring one?'

Stewart
smote his forehead theatrically, making all the long fringes of his white
buckskin jacket flutter. 'Dash it, I
knew
I was forgetting something!'

'I'm
sure if you ask around the camp, someone will have one,' said January
comfortingly. 'Or, if that isn't the case, I'm fair on the guitar.'

'Excellent!
One of the Taos traders usually has one. Or perhaps that fellow Wynne from
Philadelphia . . . Heaven knows he has every other sort of useless thing for
sale. Could I induce you and Sefton to come down and play for us? Bring the
lovely Mrs Sefton as well. I know the chief of her village has been asked, and
- damn it!' he added and, turning, strode across the path to where Jed
Blankenship, far from approaching La Princessa or Irish Mary (Veinte-y-Cinco
having disappeared with another customer), had gone over to Pia,
Veinte-y-Cinco's thirteen-year-old daughter, who ran errands for Seaholly's and
worked behind the bar. The yellow-bearded trapper had the girl by the arm, and
Pia was pulling back, not fear in her face but a child's disgust at adult
stupidity.

'For
God's sake, Blankenship—' Seaholly came around the bar as January, Stewart and
several other men crossed the path. Blankenship - who'd had several drinks
already - turned to Seaholly, thrust toward him a handful of credit-plews of
various companies at the rendezvous and snarled, 'Waugh! You want a cut of
every
piece of commodity in this camp?'

The
Reverend William Grey - at his usual stand next to the liquor tent - waved his
Bible and thundered, 'Generation of serpents! You are as fed horses in the
morning, neighing after whoredoms and strong drink! Woe unto you!'

More
expeditiously, the trapper Kit Carson seized Blankenship by one shoulder,
whirled him around and knocked him sprawling. As he lay on the ground, Moccasin
Woman - the gentle, gray-haired woman of the small tribe of the Company's
Delaware scouts - stepped out of the crowd and kicked him.

'As
I said,' declared Stewart contentedly, 'the Laws of Nature will take their
course. It's what I love about this land, January. The very lack of human law
brings out what is essential in Man - what each man is in his heart. And it's
comforting to find that so much of it is good.'

January
opened his mouth to ask whether the Good lay in the fact that men would object
to injury to a child - the girl Blankenship had tried to rape two days ago on
the river bank had been barely two years older than Pia, and no one besides
himself and Manitou had interfered - or injury to a girl who was more or less
white. But his job, he reminded himself, was to befriend as many potential
informants as possible - and to put himself in a position to receive whatever
gossip was going - not to have any opinions of his own.

So
he only shook his head, sighed and asked, 'Where's Blezy Picard when we need
him?'

The
clouds gathering over the Gros Ventre mountains to the north swept down the
valley that night, unleashing a torrent of wind and a succession of short-lived
cloudbursts that rattled on the skins of Morning Star's lodge like the
hoof-beats of a passing stampede. The bags of pemmican, the bullet pouches and
powder horns that hung from the lodge poles swayed gently in the glow of the
embers, and the poles themselves creaked as they rocked, as if the lodge itself
were a living thing, dreaming of flight. January was twice wakened by
lightning, huge blue-white explosions that shone through the semi-translucent
skins: when he went outside, wind flowed down around him, and he could hear the
river roaring in spate, all the cottonwoods stirred to a rushing tumult nearly
as loud. Another bolt flashed almost overhead, and by it he had a startling
vision of a river of cloud pouring past above him, close enough, it seemed,
that he could reach up and put his hands in it, before purple-black darkness
slammed down again.

Rose
would love this,
he thought as he groped his way back into the tent again, found his blankets by
the tiny whisper of the fire. Rose reveled in lightning and storms.
How can I note this in that
little book? Why can't I fold up the night, the air, the lightning and the soft
creak of the lodge poles into a little packet to store in my pocket, to unfold
for her when I come home
?

If
I come home.

If
she's alive when I get there
. . .

From
beneath the bundled jacket under his head he drew his blue-beaded rosary with
its cheap steel cross, counted the beads with grim concentration.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .

Let
her be there when I return. Don't let me lose everything twice
. . .

In
the morning Robbie Prideaux and his dog Tuck joined them at their breakfast
fire in front of the lodge, with the news that, on the strength of a rumor that
Clem Groot and Goshen 'Beauty' Clarke were going to sneak out of the camp under
cover of the storm, half the trappers and camp-setters in the valley had
stationed themselves in the woods and the hills on both sides of the river,
with the result that at least twenty men were now stranded on the far side of
the Green, waiting for the torrent to go down.

Morning
Star cried in triumph,
"Bien,
alors
!
We
will make a fortune, Sun Mouse!' - for she, Clopard, and one of her sisters had
spent the previous day fashioning a canoe. 'Nevertheless,' she added, scooping
into her wooden mortar another handful of dried elk meat to pound up, 'they are
lucky, those across the river, to survive the night. The Blackfeet are camped
up the draws there -' she nodded across the green- brown flood, toward the
hills that loomed beyond - 'and they watch for those who are so foolish as to
hunt alone.'

All
the way across the plains January had heard about the Blackfeet, a powerful
tribe engaged in permanent war with almost every other Indian nation west of
the frontier. In general the Blackfeet refused to have dealings with either the
American trading companies or the British, acquiring guns and powder through
raiding and theft more than by trade, feared by all and watching the slow
encroachment upon their territory with angry eyes.

'My
mother's brother Owl was killed by Blackfeet,' added Morning Star quietly.
'They chopped through his back on both sides of his spine and pulled his ribs
out, so that his lungs collapsed. This was after they drove splinters of
fatwood - resin pine - under his skin all over his body, then threw him on the
fire. It took him two days to die.' Her small hands stilled on the stone
pestle, and her brows pulled together over her aquiline nose. 'Owl was a strong
man. They still sing songs about him. I'm glad they keep to their own side of
the river, mostly—'

'Mostly
?
'
Hannibal's eyebrows raised a whole ladder of startled little wrinkles up to his
hairline. 'Did I hear you utter the fatal word
mostly,
o dove of the rocky places?'

She
made a gesture at him, as if shooing flies, but January saw her smile.

'Chased
By Bears, and Faces The Wind - my other brother - tell me they've seen signs of
Blackfeet on this side of the river, but those aren't the ones they're worried
about.' She shrugged. 'In the villages they say that there is another band in
the mountains north of here, and no one knows who they are. Faces The Wind says
there are at least twice as many of them as there are of the Blackfeet; eighty
lodges, he thinks. Chased By Bears thinks they may be Crow, who have quarreled
with the Company's Crow and won't come into the camp on account of it. But
Moccasin Woman says no, they are Flatheads . . . But if they are Flatheads, why
are they not camped with the traders of Hudson's Bay? But there are a lot of
them,' she concluded and resumed her steady pounding. 'And they take great care
not to be seen.'

'Any
chance they'll attack the camp?' asked January, after a moment's mental
computation of how many warriors generally slept in one lodge - anywhere from
five to nine, as a general rule. He did not much like the number he came up
with.

Gil
Wallach, sopping up cornbread and stew on the other side of the fire, shook his
head. 'Indians may have rifles, but they've seldom got the powder and ball to
sustain an attack,' he said. 'It's why they fight the way they do. They need
that ammunition for hunting. And, even if the Crow wanted to come down on us
for some reason, there's enough other tribes that want to preserve us - as a
source of powder, ball, Vermillion, steel knives, an' what-have-you - that
they'd be mightily pissed at the Crows for upsettin' the apple cart.'

'There's
the Law of Nature for Captain Stewart,' mused Hannibal. 'Either simple
acquisitiveness for the fruits of decadent Civilization ... or the fact that
the neighbors may be watching.'

'Which
don't say anythin',' put in Shaw softly, 'about smaller groups - either them or
the Blackfeet - comin' into the camp, when they think nobody's lookin', an'
pickin' off a few here an' there.'

'And
on the subject of the fruits of decadent Civilization . . .' Hannibal nodded
toward the footpath that led toward the main trail as Edwin Titus, Controller
of the AFC camp, appeared around the screen of scrubby rabbitbrush that
bordered the Ivy and Wallach pitch.

Titus
was a big man, bland-faced, frock-coated, and despite a tidy Quaker beard and
the pomade he wore on his hair there was nothing in him of the weakness that
trappers usually saw in citified Easterners. The trappers loved to boast of how
their farts and sneezes could send lesser mortals like Mexicans and niggers
('Present company excepted, Ben . . .') fleeing in terror, but they walked
quietly around Titus. There was a deadly quality even to his geniality - he'd
lost no time in offering January a job with the Company the previous afternoon,
the moment Gil Wallach was out of hearing: a hundred and twenty dollars a year,
to clerk at their St Louis offices - and at the AFC store tent, effective
immediately. 'You know Ivy and Wallach aren't going to last the year,' he'd
said with his wide, impersonal smile. January guessed this to be true - the AFC
was mercilessly undercutting the prices of every independent trader in the
camp. 'They're losing money in that little fort of theirs—'

'I
didn't know that, sir.'
And YOU wouldn't know it either, unless you had someone IN that fort sending
you reports
. .
.

Unless,
of course, you 're simply making that up
.

Titus
had shrugged. 'It's not something they'd tell a man they'd just hired. But if
you think your loyalty now is going to mean there'll be work for you when you
get back to the settlements, you may find yourself left standing.'

Later
January had learned that Shaw, too, had been approached - 'Only, he offered me
a fifty-dollar bonus if I'd bring some skins with me when I come. An' he sort
of implied that he took my refusin' in bad part.'

Bad
part or not, Titus was all smiles today. Possibly - January learned later -
because he'd just hired the small trader Pete Sharpless's clerk away from him,
leaving the Missourian to do all his camp-work himself. Titus complimented
Hannibal on his marriage, said he much looked forward to hearing the two musicians
play at the banquet in Bridger's honor that evening (just as if Jim 'Gabe'
Bridger, now a Company employee, had not come very close to being scalped by
Indian allies of the AFC while he was still leading brigades for the
now-defunct Rocky Mountain outfit), and invited Gil Wallach and Abishag Shaw to
the festivities as well.

'He
planning to poison you?' asked Hannibal interestedly, when the Controller had
taken his leave, and Wallach laughed.

'He'd
do it if he could figure out a way not to kill half his allies in the process,'
the little ex-trapper said. 'No, I rode with Old Gabe in '32, up in the
Beaverhead Mountains. I'm guessing he's asked all his old compadres to this
fandango tonight. And I'm guessing, too, Titus invited every trader in the camp,
up to and includin' John McLeod of Hudson's Bay - though it'll choke him on
Captain Stewart's foie gras, to look down on us all sittin' there drinkin' his
liquor.' And he grinned to himself at the thought as he got to his feet and
headed up the path to open the store.