Authors: Richard S. Wheeler
They steamed past the mouth of the Yellowstone in the morning of July sixteenth, surrounded by reddish and yellow bluffs almost naked of grass. An hour later, steaming up the greatly diminished Missouri, they raised Fort Union, the palatial Chouteau and Company seat of empire. It stood on the north bank at about forty-eight degrees north latitude, close to the British possessions. From behind its sixteen-foot stockades Major Alexander Culbertson ran Pierre Chouteau’s Upper Missouri Outfit, a string of subsidiary posts that drew in the trade of Blackfeet, Crows, Assiniboin, Cree, some northern Sioux, Sarsi, an occasional Bannock and Flathead party, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Gros Ventres.
The post’s six-pounder boomed its welcome and Sire shrilled the boat whistle. Surrounding the post was a sea of tawny cowhide lodges, evidence that the trading season was at its peak. Crowds of Indians swept to the levee, urchins and women arriving ahead of the men to gape at this intruder from the magical world of white men. And along with them a swarm of Fort Union’s engages, ready to haul cargo into the post and baled robes into the hold.
It was the end of the line for Missouri River travelers and as swiftly as deckmen lowered the stage, thirty-seven mountaineers and a dozen of their Indian wives, most of them deck passengers, debarked for the hinterlands. At Sire’s shouted orders sweating deckmen began hoisting cargo up and swinging it out to the levee while Maxim watched hawkishly to prevent errors and protect Rocky Mountain Company cargo. Brokenleg, standing on the hurricane deck, spotted Major Culbertson and waved at his rival, but didn’t descend. Sire intended to pull out, not waste a minute, and there’d be no time for palaver.
An hour and a half later
The Trapper,
ten tons lighter and riding three inches higher, pulled free of the levee, wheeled around, descended the Missouri to the Yellowstone, and swung into the smaller river. Sire had contracted to deposit the Rocky Mountain cargo just below Wolf Rapids if the river was navigable — as far as Joe LaBarge had gone the year before. There, if things went right, Brokenleg would rendezvous with half a dozen engages from the post along with their big Pittsburgh wagons, and he, Dust Devil, Maxim, and the three new engages, Paul Lebrun, Pierre Grevy, and Jean Poinsett, would travel upriver to the Bighorn — and Fitzhugh’s Post.
They passed a vast herd of buffalo lazing in the cool of cottonwoods. The cumbersome beasts clambered to their feet and fled as the riverboat closed on them, vanishing into timber and then trickling up a coulee in the far bluff. Fitzhugh thought it was a good omen, a sure sign of a good trading year, and rejoiced. They steamed past a small village of Hidatsa, cousins of the Crows, exciting them to frenzy. The villagers raced along the banks screaming insults. Sire didn’t trust them and pushed into a moonlit night that taxed Black Dave Desiree’s skills to their utmost as he fathomed and fought the narrow channel.
They reached Wolf Rapids the next day while Sire muttered that there wasn’t even enough flow to turn the packet around. As they approached Maxim appeared to be more and more agitated and sullen, until Brokenleg finally made his way to the bow and collared the young man.
“You got some kind of itch?” he asked roughly.
Maxim wouldn’t look at him.
“You got something in your craw, boy. You git it out right now.”
Maxim peered into the swirling green water looking miserable. When at last he forced himself to meet Brokenleg’s gaze his eyes seemed haunted.
“I’m not going,” he mumbled.
“You ain’t goin? What do you mean, boy?”
“I’m going back with boat.”
“Back with the boat! I need you! You signed on — you can’t jist ditch the company. Your pa, he’d kill you.”
“I’m going back.”
The boy swung his gaze back to the water, and he peered into it so studiously that Fitzhugh sensed he was hiding tears. Tears or not he’d pull that smart aleck plumb off the packet if he had to.
“Lissen here, boy. You’re comin’ even if I got to hog-tie you and carry you off. You hear? You ain’t a quitter. I ain’t a quitter. Last year we didn’t quit and we come out of it in one piece. Now you git to your bunk and put your kit together.”
“You’ll have to make me,” Maxim muttered, gripping the rail with white knuckles. “Make me your slave.”
Brokenleg’s temper flared but he held himself in check. This was Guy Straus’s little boy he was barking at. “We’ll be hyar half a day unloadin’. You better damn well change your mind before we pull out!”
But Maxim huddled over the rail as if expecting Fitzhugh to smack him.
Brokenleg didn’t have time for one spoiled brat’s rebellion. As
The Trapper
slid close to the rendezvous island, a cottonwooded acre connected to the bank by gravelly shallows, he discovered only silence. He saw none of his engages, not even Samson Trudeau who was as reliable as a good Hawken rifle. And no wagons, either. They hadn’t met him. And that meant trouble.
No one. Brokenleg studied the timbered island, hunting for the Pittsburgh wagons, for his engages. No one. They’d missed the rendezvous. He realized suddenly he was in a bad fix. Around him deckmen gathered at the rail, ready to lower a long stage and tie the packet fast as soon as the drifting boat, its giant wheels stilled, slid toward shore.
This was near where they’d unloaded the year before; a secret place well screened by timber from the river trace; a place well known to all his engages except Abner Spoon and Zach Constable, who’d joined him later. He reviewed what he’d told Trudeau: have wagons and men there by mid-July and wait.
The packet skidded into mud and lurched to a halt a dozen feet from the bank. Deckmen lowered the stage. It didn’t reach the bank; it splashed into water two or three feet out but it didn’t matter. Captain Sire barked an order from above and the crew sprang to work, hoisting cargo from the hold and swinging it on a spar over land and reeling it to earth.
Brokenleg hastened up the companionways, ignoring the vicious pain in his bad leg, until he reached the texas. “Cap’n,” he muttered, out of breath. “Can you hold her a while? We got nobody hyar. Jist hold her up a day or two.”
Sire shook his head. “Alas, Monsieur Fitzhugh. The river, she drops by the hour. We can’t wait. Even now the risk is impossible — impossible. We may be forced to abandon her as it is. No — we’ll unload and start back the instant — the very second we have fulfilled our contract.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say. I got me three men and a boy to defend fifteen thousand dollars of trade goods. And that village o’ Hidatsa only a dozen miles away. And that isn’t all, neither. I haven’t got a bit o’ sheeting to protect it. We were gonna put ’er into the wagons — under the wagon sheets. Keep rain off them blankets and cloth and all.”
“Monsieur Fitzhugh, I wish I could help you.”
“Maybe you can. You got any sheeting in ship’s stores to spare?”
Sire didn’t respond. Instead he bellowed something in French to the mate, who trotted off toward the storage bins aft of the boiler. Meanwhile, on the grassy bank the cargo grew into a small mountain. The crew worked feverishly, not wasting a second.
Then the mate appeared below and yelled up to the captain.
“We’ve none to spare, Monsieur. And the whole of it wouldn’t begin to cover your cargo.”
The news couldn’t have been worse. Fitzhugh sighed and plunged down the companionways, leapfrogging steps to spare his tortured leg. The morning sky looked blue enough but it meant nothing. Thousands of dollars worth of cargo would be in peril, exposed to the elements there on the island.
He found his three new engages, Lebrun, Grevy, and Poinsett, on the deck, pulling their kits together. “Look hyar,” he said. “We got us a pile o’ trouble. No one hyar from the post. We got to protect them things. You git on down to the bank fast, and git busy. We’ve got to dig us a dray cache somewhere, which ain’t gonna be easy hyar. Maybe back in them bluffs. We got to make her big and dry and then haul every blanket and bolt of cloth and what else gets hurt by rain into it, and do her before it rains.”
They nodded. Caching was something every man of the mountains knew about. It was the time-honored way of storing beaver plews, weapons, and even food, safe from weather and Injun eyes. It was an art in its own right. A poorly built or misplaced cache would leak water and ruin whatever lay within. A poorly concealed cache would swiftly be discovered and robbed by any passing tribesmen — or wolf or bear.
Lebrun understood English best and spoke it. “We’ll dig like badgers and haul like mules,” he said.
They hauled their kits down the gangway, splashing the last few feet to land. Each carried a heavy pack of personal things and a good mountain rifle. On the bank they stood helplessly, waiting for spades and axes to show up from the hold.
Fitzhugh plunged into the hold, dodging swinging nets of cargo, and hunted down the spades, a dozen of them simply corded together. He grabbed the whole lot, struggled up the ladder to the main deck, and hauled them ashore, sweating fiercely. The engages swiftly grabbed them and headed toward the southern bluffs half a mile off. It’d be a staggering business to build a cache and carry the most vulnerable things on their backs to it, but Fitzhugh didn’t let himself think about it. He’d been in tighter corners.
No matter how fast the crew worked, it wasn’t fast enough for Sire, who paced the hurricane deck and scowled. Hours passed, and the lightened vessel pulled free of the mud and rocked at the end of its mooring hawsers. And on shore the heap of Rocky Mountain Company trade goods and post furnishings grew haphazardly. Sire put every man to work except the pilot. Black Dave was exempt. Sire collected the last scourings off his ship, the cook and cook’s helper, the cabin boy, five firemen, the first and second engineers, the steersmen, and the sleeping second mate, and started them on firewood detail.
Brokenleg watched irritably, trying to keep the frenzied crewmen from smashing his crates and kegs. He couldn’t help much — not with a leg that barely functioned. He glared at the crewmen lowering the six casks of illegal spirits to earth, daring them to swipe a drop, hoping they hadn’t. Dust Devil appeared on the boiler deck, carrying her own things in a parfleche. He had to get his — and he had to deal with that brat Maxim. The very thought of the youth sulking in his cabin infuriated Brokenleg. He should be here checking off items against his cargo manifest as they were lowered to the grass. But Brokenleg couldn’t be everywhere. He couldn’t be watching the trade goods, couldn’t be helping Little Whirlwind, couldn’t be deciding on a place to dig a cache, couldn’t be collaring Maxim, couldn’t be down in the hold making sure every last item was being shoved over to the cargo hatch and dumped into the cargo nets. He couldn’t be guarding the casks from pilferage by the boatmen.
Nonetheless he could deal with Maxim. He shoved his way up the stage like a salmon climbing a rapids, fighting past crewmen hauling firewood aboard or returning to the timber for more. He clambered up the companionways, ignoring the lancing pain he felt, and thundered to the boy’s room. He jammed the door hard and found it locked.
“Maxim, you open up now!” he roared.
That produced only silence.
“I’ll bust it down,” he warned.
“You would,” Maxim replied. “That’s how you think. Just force.”
“You’re coming off this boat. Now git packed and git out.”
“You can’t order me around.”
Brokenleg had had enough. He was running on a short fuse anyway with so much going wrong. He reared back and slammed into the door. The flimsy lock gave easily, tearing loose from wood, and Brokenleg staggered in.
Maxim careened backward into his bunk, wild fright in his face. Brokenleg pounced, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him up.
“I knew you would. I’m not your slave,” the boy said.
“You ain’t of age yet,” Brokenleg roared. “And you’re in my charge.”
Maxim sighed, his face twisted into contempt. “If you think you can keep me imprisoned at the post you’re wrong. I’ll slip away the first time I’m not guarded night and day.”
“Git your kit packed.”
Maxim did nothing. “I’m not going to participate in my own abduction,” he said.
“Then do without,” Brokenleg roared, collaring the youth again and marching him into the darkened salon.
“I’ll — get my things.”
“Be quick about it. And don’t forget the cargo manifest. You can git busy checking off the lists.”
“I won’t. I won’t.”
“I haven’t time to listen to yer reasons. You git, git it done, and then tell me.”
“You wouldn’t understand anyway. You know nothing about right and wrong.”
Brokenleg felt like boxing the boy but instead helped him stuff his duds and books into a valise. That done, he marched the youth through the salon, down the steps to the main deck, and down the stage to land, Maxim sulky and slow before him.
“Now — check cargo!”
Instead, Maxim sat down on a keg and did nothing. Brokenleg had no time to argue. He grabbed the manifest and began checking off whatever he could find in the chaos on the bank, a task he knew was hopeless. But he did it anyway.
The spar swung the final load to shore and the sweat-blacked crew dumped it unceremoniously.
“Monsieur, that is the last,
n’est-ce pas?”
Brokenleg didn’t know. He scrambled back aboard and lowered himself into the low hold, his every step echoing hollowly in the dank dark. He lacked a lantern but with the light from the hatch as a guide he felt his way aft and then forward, seeing nothing but emptiness, hearing the slap of water on the hull.
He emerged into blinding light, waved at the captain, and debarked. Above him, steam shrilled from the escapement signaling the crew to free the hawsers and board. The vessel floated free, swung around, and thundered downriver with indecent haste, riding on a flow that shrank by the hour.
Brokenleg peered about him in the silence. The new engages were off somewhere. Maxim sat sullenly. Dust Devil smirked. And there on the bank sat a fortune unguarded.