Centennial
Page 34
On the sixth day after McKeag’s arrival there was great excitement at the rendezvous. A teamster arrived from Saint Louis. He had come up the Missouri by boat, had disembarked at the Platte, and had brought his cargo over the pass and now to Bear Lake. It was an amazing cargo, so rich and varied as to allure the white man as much as the Indian.
There were penknives and jars of preserved peaches and new pistols and better knives and cloth and beads galore. There were shoes and smoked dried beef and cured pork and bottles of French wine and English brandy and Kentucky whiskey. There were little barrels of candy which the men grabbed for as if they were children, and hard sweet cookies, and forks and hammers and screwdrivers and dried chickens.
Whoever in Saint Louis had packed these twenty-two horses had exercised imagination of the highest quality, for when the goods were unloaded, there was something for every man, something calculated to stir the heart of any woman. When the horses set out, they carried stock worth four thousand dollars in Saint Louis. At the rendezvous they would sell for fifty thousand.
McKeag bought nothing, would not even look seriously at anything. He had so simplified his life that he had all he required; his lead and powder he bought at regular intervals from whoever was passing his lonely camp. To indulge in something like sweetened peaches was beyond his imagination. And yet at this rendezvous he savored something so enticing that he would ever thereafter be its slave.
In the late afternoon he was standing by a tent run by a trapper-merchant from Oregon, an Englishman named Haversham, the only man at the rendezvous in European dress, and Haversham asked “Care for a cup of tea?” It had been a long time since McKeag had drunk tea and he said, “Don’t mind if I do.”
The Englishman had two china cups and a small porcelain pot. Washing the cups with steaming water, he took down a square brown tin, opened the top carefully and placed a small portion of leaves in the pot. To McKeag they bore no visible difference from the tea leaves his mother had used, but when Haversham poured him a cup and he took his first sip, an aroma unlike any he had ever known greeted him. He sniffed it several times, then took a deep taste of the hot tea. It was better than anything he had previously tasted, better even than whiskey.
What did it taste like? Well, at first is was tarry, as if the person making the tea had infused by mistake some stray ends of well-tarred rope. But it was penetrating too, and a wee bit salty, and very rich and lingering. McKeag noticed that its taste dwelled in the mouth long after that of an ordinary tea. It was a man’s tea, deep and subtle and blended in some rugged place.
“What is it?” he asked. Haversham pointed to the brown canister, and McKeag said, “I can’t read.”
Haversham indicated the lettering and the scene of tea-pickers in India. “Lapsang souchong,” he said. “Best tea in the world.”
Impulsively McKeag asked, “You have some for sale?”
“Of course. We’re the agents.” It was a tea, Haversham explained, blended in India especially for men who had known the sea. It was cured in a unique way which the makers kept secret. “But smoke and tar must obviously play a part,” he said. It came normally from India to London, but the English traders in Oregon imported theirs from China.
“How long would a can like that last?” McKeag asked, cautiously again.
“It’ll keep forever ... with the top on.”
“I mean, how many cups?”
“I use it sparingly. It would last me a year.”
“I’ll take two cans,” McKeag said, without asking the price. It was expensive, and as he tucked his small supply of coins back into his belt, Haversham explained, “The secret in making good lapsang souchong lies in heating the cup first. Heat it well. Then the flavor expands.” McKeag hid the canisters at the bottom of his gear, for he knew they were precious.
The incident in this rendezvous which the mountain men would refer to in their camps for years to come started when Pasquinel got drunk and went among the tents shouting, “The Hawken is the best goddamned rifle in the world.”
This naturally brought wagers from the Oregonians, who used European guns, which in years past had proved superior to any American product. Recently, however, Jacob Hawken in Saint Louis had begun perfecting a rifle which was to command the plains, and men like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson had performed some commendable feats with it. The Hawken partisans felt that this was the year to pick up some English money, and a contest was proposed.
Negotiations led to so many arguments about rules and scoring that Pasquinel, drunk and impatient, halted the bickering with an announcement: “I show you how good the Hawken is.”
He had acquired, on his last selling trip to Saint Louis, a splendid example of Hawken’s work; he had been steered to the German gunsmith by Hermann Bockweiss, who had bought him the gun as a present. It had a thirty-six-inch barrel, which the English thought too short, and fired a .33-caliber ball, which they thought too small. Its metal parts were beautifully machined but the woodwork was Only average. It was a better gun than it looked.
Pasquinel paraded his rifle for anyone to see, and the crowd expected him to try to perform some difficult feat. Not so. He called for his son Jacques and for an empty whiskey bottle; Placing the boy in a favorable spot, he handed him the gun and walked unsteadily about forty yards away, planted his feet firmly and put the bottle on his head.
It was William Tell in reverse, and men started taking bets as to the four possible outcomes: the boy would miss altogether, would hit the bottle, would wound his father, would kill him outright. The scar-faced lad raised the rifle, took careful aim and knocked off the top of the bottle.
The crowd applauded, but Pasquinel senior was not through. Returning to where men were congratulating Jacques, he took the Hawken and handed it to his younger son, Marcel. Holding the bottom part of the whiskey bottle on his head, he started to walk back to the target position, but now some sensible Englishmen protested that this was insane.
“He’s got to learn sometime,” Pasquinel called over his shoulder. Taking his position, he stared at his younger son. Marcel raised the heavy gun, steadied it, aimed carefully and pulled the trigger. The glass shattered, and Pasquinel told the crowd, “I said it was a good rifle.”
In the closing days of the rendezvous something happened which had a profound effect upon McKeag. One afternoon one of the Santa Fe men was wearing the yellow apron and numerous trappers had taken turns waltzing with him and doing improvised square dances they remembered from Kentucky. After a while he tired, held up his hands and said he had had enough, so the yellow apron was passed to an Englishman from Oregon, and he drew loud applause for his steps in English style. Half a dozen Americans volunteered to dance with him, and he displayed considerable grace as he tried to match their robust movements. It was agreed that he was excellent, but in time he tired, too, and passed the apron on to the first man he saw.
It happened to be McKeag, who was both embarrassed and confused. He knew little about dancing and certainly nothing about women’s steps. He fumbled with the apron, allowed it to fall, then picked it up and tried to fob it off onto someone else.
“Dance! Dance!” the trappers shouted, and someone tied the apron around his middle. Hands forced him into the dancing area and he stood there, looking quite foolish. A Canadian with a fiddle, knowing that McKeag was Scottish, struck up a Highland tune, and from his remote boyhood in the Highlands, McKeag remembered a rude dance.
He began awkwardly. Then his feet caught the rhythm and hesitantly started to respond. His body swayed. His head cocked saucily to one side and he began to recall how the steps went. Slowly and with an almost audible creaking of time’s joints, he began to dance, and the terrible isolation of recent years dropped away. In dancing he became whole again.
While he remained preoccupied with doing the right steps he became aware that another person had moved into the area and he was afraid lest he make a fool of himself with a partner. Then he looked up—it was Pasquinel, drunk
and ready for yet another exhibition. McKeag looked at him and perhaps his fear communicated itself, for Pasquinel saw that he was frightened and forgot whatever foolishness he had planned. Slowly his feet began to move in accordance with McKeag’s, and gradually the two men evolved a kind of harmony. What resulted could scarcely be termed a dance, for it had little grace and less rhythm, but it was the related movement of two human beings and those who watched treated it with respect.
As the dance reached its climax, with Pasquinel breathing heavily and holding his left shoulder conspicuously low, McKeag closed his eyes and allowed the music to command him, and for the first time in many years felt actually happy. “I was so lonely,” he muttered to himself, and he had barely said these words when he heard trappers shouting, “Give him air!” and he looked down to see that his partner had fainted.
When they got Pasquinel stretched out, with McKeag at his head still wearing the yellow apron, he opened his eyes and whispered, “The arrow ...”
They called for some Arapaho women to tend him, and McKeag supervised them as they lugged him to a tipi, where they laid him face down on buffalo robes. Gently they massaged his back, feeling the sunken arrow and manipulating it into a position where it hurt less.
During the night Haversham heard of the incident and said airily, “Simple. Cut the damned thing out.” He was the ebullient type of Englishman who refused to admit that anything was impossible. “I’ve cut out many a bullet in me day,” he said enthusiastically. “Let’s have a look.”
He went to the Arapaho tipi and asked a squaw to hold a lantern over Pasquinel’s back while he inspected the ancient wound. “Don’t leave it in there a day longer, old fellow,” he said professionally. “I’ll cut it out as soon as we get sunlight.” With that advice he returned to his tent-store and honed a butcher knife to razor sharpness. Then he drank off a bottle of whiskey and fell into a stupor.
He was up at four, building a small fire in which he sterilized the knife. Placing a chair where the sun would strike it, he shouted, “Bring him over here.”
McKeag, the two Pasquinel boys and three Arapaho women carried the sick man to the operating chair. He was placed on it so that his arms hung over the wooden back. “Lash ’em down,” Haversham directed, and thongs were tied around his arms, securing them to the chair. “Legs too,” Haversham cried. When Pasquinel was properly trussed, the surgeon took his knife and neatly slit the back of his shirt, exposing the scar.
McKeag thought, He could of taken it off before he tied him down.
But the surgeon had moved to other problems. Washing his knife in whiskey, he waved it menacingly in the air to dry it. He then gave Pasquinel a large swig of the whiskey and took one himself. Patting the trussed man on the head, he assured him, “I’ve done this many times.” With that he stepped behind Pasquinel, studied his muscles, and with deep confident cuts, laid open his back.
Pasquinel made no sound. “Give him a pistol to bite on,” the surgeon cried belatedly, but this proved unnecessary, for Pasquinel had prepared himself, and the pain could grow many times more excruciating before he would react.
The back was now open and the arrowhead exposed. With the point of the butcher knife Haversham tried to dislodge it, but cartilage had grown about it and held it fast to the backbone and rib. “A little whiskey,” Haversham called, and some was poured over the fingers of his right hand.
Without hesitation, and with rude force, he jabbed his fingers into the bloody mess, caught the arrowhead by one side and worked it back and forth three times. “Hold your breath,” he shouted, and Pasquinel, sweat pouring from his face, fixed his eyes stolidly on the horizon.
With wrenching force Haversham pushed the flint deeper into the flesh, twisted it, broke the cartilage and tore it loose from its ancient prison. He thrust it before Pasquinel’s nose, and the Frenchman, seeing the mass of blood on Haversham’s hand, came close to fainting.
It was five-thirty in the morning and Haversham stayed drunk all that day, refusing to see anyone. Pasquinel, fortified by shots of Taos Lightning, recovered quickly and was stumbling around by nightfall. He was so grateful to the Arapaho women for helping him that he arranged a party and spent much money on drink and presents, but Haversham, the hero of the affair, did not attend. He stayed in his tent, appalled by the realization of what he had done. He had never cut a human being before: there was so much more blood than he had anticipated ... the arrow had been lodged so tightly. In the end he had wedged his fingers under the man’s backbone. He could still feel the bone, and felt nauseated.
As the party grew rowdier, McKeag was approached by one of the Hudson’s Bay men, a voyageur from Montreal, who drew him away from the merriment. “Is Pasquinel your partner?” he asked. Since the honest reply would have to be “Yes and no,” McKeag equivocated, and the Canadian asked, “Is it true that he has a wife in Saint Louis?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t mean his Indian wife. Every man with good sense has an Indian wife—at least one.” He laughed nervously at his joke. “What I mean,” the Canadian said hesitantly, “is that in Montreal he has a real wife.”
“I doubt it,” McKeag said evenly.
The Canadian moved so that they were facing. “She is my cousin,” he said.
McKeag did not care to hear such news and tried to leave, but the Canadian held on to him. “He left her with two children. We have to pay the money.”
McKeag stared over the man’s head, but the Canadian continued: “You’ve been in Saint Louis with him. I know it. Does he have a wife there?”
“I know nothing of any wives,” McKeag said stubbornly. He left the man in shadows, and in that way the rendezvous ended.
During the next year, 1828, a series of events occurred, apparently unrelated, which had a lasting effect upon life on the plains. After this climactic year the beaver men would continue to move up and down the rivers for a time, but their disappearance was ordained. The boisterous rendezvous would convene each year for more than a decade, but its doom, too, was sealed, and even Alexander McKeag, so perceptive about beaver, would be involved in these changes without being aware of them.
It started during the winter at Beaver Creek. For some years now the beaver along this stream had been doing poorly. They had no aspen to feed on, and such cottonwood as persisted was poor. Good trees did not exist, for men had cut them down for winter refuges, and even puny trees were difficult to find, for the same men cut them for kindling.
Once there had been a hundred beaver lodges on this creek, each with its own dam, each with its yearly replenishment of kits and two-year-olds. There had been in those days so many beaver that a hungry Indian or a lone trapper could take what he needed without depleting the stock, and all had prospered.
Now the lodges were cleaned out, trapped dry. Year after year the avaricious trappers had raided the dams, drowning the parent beavers, killing the two-year-olds with clubs, leaving the kits without protection or food. The inexhaustible supply was exhausted.
The second event which determined the development of the plains occurred in London, where on a spring morning the young and fashionable David, Earl Venneford of Wye, found that his prized beaver hat had been badly soiled the night before when it toppled out of his landau while he was fondling the left thigh of the Marchioness of Bradbury. He stopped by his hatter to see what repairs were possible, for this was a hat he treasured. It fit him well and had been his favorite since his Oxford days. But now, apparently, its usefulness was ended.
“I could, of course, brush it well and get the sand out,” his hatter said. “But it’s badly worn here, my lord, and if I tried to repair it, you’d never like it. I’m afraid it’s gone, my lord, and that’s the sum of it.”
“You couldn’t replace that worn spot? With new fur?”
“I could, if all you wanted the hat for was shooting in the country, but not for London wear, my lord.”
“Then what’s to do? A new beaver?”
“This isn’t beaver,” the earl protested. “I’d not want this.”
“It’s a new style, sir. I assure you, it’s what all London will be wearing next year.”
“What is it?”
“Silk, my lord. French silk. Stiffer than beaver and easier to maintain.”
Venneford twirled the hat on his right forefinger. He liked the shimmering play of light. Tapping it with his left thumb, he liked the crispness. “This could be very attractive,” he said. “I could grow to like a hat of this nature.”
At lunch that day he showed his new acquisition to the ladies. “It’s silk. French silk. Very ... what shall I say?”
“Fashionable,” the Marchioness of Bradbury suggested. “It’s very fashionable, David, and a heavenly blue.”
When word passed through London that David Venneford was wearing one of the new silk things from Paris—only the silk was from Paris, mind you, the workmanship was by Messrs. Wickham—there was a flurry in the world of fashion. Later when Venneford was married wearing one of the silk hats, of a shimmering silver-gray, a style was set, the fate of the monotonous brown beaver hat was sealed. A whole way of life on the distant plains of America was doomed.