Jim stood by the horses, feeling troubled.
Young Bear came soft-footed through the starshine. He stood beside Jim. “Talks-all-the-time has brought bad news.”
“No,” said Jim. Not unless I listen to him, he thought. Not unless I believe him. And who made Dave Richards the only man who knows the truth? About everything?
“He wants you to go back with him,” Young Bear said, with the uncanny perception he had for Jim’s moods.
“No,” Jim said again, startled. Here was another one too smart for comfort, and the wrong guess had been too nearly right. But with Young Bear there was none of the feeling he had with Rich. Rich poked for the sake of poking, and it was hard to tell where friendship ended and malice began. Young Bear simply and honestly loved him as a brother.
“He told me there is going to be trouble,” Jim said, “and perhaps I must fight against some white men who were my friends. Perhaps even against him.”
“Well,” said Young Bear cheerfully, “there’s little trouble that you and I can’t take care of together.”
They stood for a moment longer, shoulder to shoulder in the still night. Jim smiled. “That’s true, brother,” he said. “Sleep well.” He returned to the lodge.
Rich was snoring. Jim looked down at him and shook his head. Then he slid under the warm robes and took Cherry in his arms and she curled against him like a child, burying her head against his shoulder. Close by them in his nest of furs Little Jim made comfortable breathings and stirrings. “Truth!” Jim thought. “The truth is, these are mine.”
He slept, holding Cherry close to him. But in spite of that his dreams were sad and wandering.
A year later there was a new fort on the Missouri. The RMF had moved in, almost within shouting distance of Fort Union. And in the Leaf Falling time the trouble came.
FIFTEEN
The dust cloud was long and bow-shaped, blown sideways by the wind.
“Broken Hand is not traveling alone,” said Young Bear.
“No,” said Jim. Broken Hand, otherwise Tom Fitzpatrick, was traveling anything but alone. Jim’s eyes narrowed against the clear, glittering light through which the dust cloud moved. It was so far away that it hardly seemed to move at all, but Jim knew that it was moving, steadily, across the brown-dappled plain, riders slouched in their saddles, tireless, timeless, patient men all dust-colored on dust-colored horses, and pack animals with hung heads and busy hoofs, all dust-colored too except where the sweat had made dark cakings around the straps and cinches. About twenty men, Jim thought—no, more than that. Twenty-five, maybe, and about four times that many pack horses. Beyond them was a wall of mountains, the dark pines on their flanks looking at this distance like moss on old shattered boulders.
“They will reach the village in good time,” said Young Bear.
Jim nodded. His face, always aquiline, had become sterner and more hawklike. His eyes, always proud, were assured now rather than defiant, and they were as fierce and wild as Young Bear’s or any Indian’s, but more slyly humorous. He thought of Tom Fitzpatrick. Fitz arrogant and ignoring him, Fitz curtly passing on Ashley’s orders, Fitz clipping his hair with a bullet and then later on soaping him with charm as though he was too childminded to see through it. Jim smiled. Sitting his pony on the hilltop, with the wind blowing the feathers in his scalp lock, he whistled—an un-Indian trick that always startled Young Bear. Then he turned and rode whistling down the hill.
It was midafternoon when Muskrat came to Jim’s lodge, bright-eyed and nigh to bursting with excitement.
“The trappers have camped,” he said. “Talks-all-the-time is not with them, nor the Blanket Chief. But they have a big barrel of whisky and many horseloads of trade goods. Now Broken Hand is coming.”
Jim was relieved that neither Rich nor Bridger was in the party. Apparently Rich had heeded his warning. He nodded to Young Bear. “It’s time to go. Remind the others of what I told them. No killing.” He turned to Muskrat. “You remember it too, younger brother.”
“What if they shoot?” asked Muskrat.
“If you do as I’ve told you they will not be able to shoot. And throw away the whisky. My medicine tells me that this is poison to the Crow, and if they drink it their arms will become weak and their enemies will slay them and take away their women and children. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, elder brother,” Muskrat said sadly. “No killing, not even one small scalp, and do not drink the whisky.” He made the polite greeting to his sister Cherry that was all etiquette allowed him and went out with Young Bear.
Cherry came and arranged the folds of Jim’s blanket, his best one. He caught her hand and she looked at him proudly and smiled. Then she went back to her preparations for feeding a distinguished visitor. Little Jim had been sent to stay with Big Bowl and Captures-white-horses, where he spent half his time anyway, so that Jim’s lodge had the quiet and dignity befitting his station.
He heard the stir and excitement outside, and the thumping of hoofs. Presently the flap was lifted and Fitz came in.
He was older than Jim remembered him, tougher, deeper lined around the mouth and eyes, and a good bit harder—not that Fitz had ever been soft, but ten years ago he could seek the distant mountain at least partly for the simple sake of finding it. Now the adventurer had become the man of business. It was a wild business in a wild land and a merchant had to be part Indian and part wildcat to conduct it. But there was a difference.
Fitz raised his hand and opened his mouth to speak, then paused and peered closer at Jim in the firelight. Jim said, “Hello, Fitz. Come on in.”
Fitz let his hand fall. “No point wasting what little Crow I have on you.” He smiled. “Hello, Jim. Rich told me he saw you last year.”
Jim motioned to the place of honor on his left. “Sit down.”
“Thanks—but later. I have business with the chief. I guess they didn’t understand me—or I mistook the lodge they pointed out.” He reached for the flap. “I’ll see you—”
“Fitz,” Jim said. “I am the chief here.”
Fitz looked at him. “Where’s Long Hair?”
“On Clark’s Fork.”
“Where’s Arepoesh, then? Or Has-red-plume-on-the-side-of-his-head?”
“On Owl Creek and Wind River, or heading for there.”
It was the time of year when the Crow band split into small groups and moved to their wintering grounds. Jim’s village was a little one, mostly composed of his relatives, but such as it was it was his.
“You might as well sit down, Fitz,” he said, playing the Indian and not smiling, though he wanted very much to smile.
Fitz sat down.
Cherry brought food. They ate, and Jim listened to the quiet beyond the skin walls. Fitz was thinking.
When he spoke he had put on his charm again, a little rusty and flawed, Jim thought, as though from disuse.
“You’re a lucky man, Jim. You’ve done well.” He looked around the lodge, admiring the wealth it reflected, and he looked at Cherry. “Very well.”
“Thanks.”
“Been keeping up with what’s going on in the world?”
“Some of it,” said Jim carelessly. “I know the General’s in Congress now, and still backing Sublette. I know Bob Campbell came in with Sublette a while back and they’ve built a fort up on the Missouri, close by the Yellowstone. That’s about all. Except I guess things are getting a little tight in the trade?”
Fitz shook his head. “Things have changed, Jim. When you and I were starving and freezing our way out here with Ashley nobody would buy the Rocky Mountains for a plug of tobacco. Now they’re trampling each other down to get out here. Every season there’s a whole fresh batch of ’em running up and down the rivers, building forts, killing out the beaver, and cutting in on our trade every way they can.” Fitz was honestly bitter, honestly angry. “Maybe you wouldn’t believe this, Jim, but beaver’s getting scarce.”
“I can believe it,” Jim said. And for a moment he
felt a kinship and sympathy with Fitz. “We broke the trail while they sat safe at home. Now when they see we’ve got a good thing they want to take it away from us.” He added, with an abrupt quirk of logic, “There’s getting to be too damned many white men out here.” And he was thinking of Fitz’s twenty-five or thirty trappers camped on his doorstep.
“That’s what I came to talk about,” Fitz said. “Maybe we didn’t always see eye to eye, Jim, but we’re both Ashley men. So are a lot of us in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Like Rich and Bridger, old friends. I know you’re working for the AMF, but what I’m asking won’t do them any harm—”
“Just what are you asking, Fitz?”
“Permission to conduct my fall hunt in Absaroka.”
“Is that all?”
“Absolutely all,” said Fitz, and sat waiting, candidly innocent of any knowledge of whisky barrels and many horse loads of goods for the Indian trade.
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I’m trying to teach my Crow to trap more. If they spent their time trapping instead of going on war parties they’d be rich and comfortable, instead of getting themselves killed off.” He was trying. He’d been trying for years. And as well try to teach so many eagles to scratch the ground like chickens. “I don’t know if there’d be room for all of us.” And he looked at Fitz, candidly unaware of certain instructions that had reached him from McKenzie. From far away he thought he heard a distant, confused shouting.
“Room!” said Fitz. “Crow country’s big enough for half the world to trap in. But if you tell me where you plan to hunt I’ll guarantee to stay someplace else.”
Jim thought, “I’ll bet you will.” Aloud he said, “I’ll have to think it over.”
“I could make it worth your while,” Fitz said with a disarming smile, making the signs for Much and On-the-prairie. He glanced at Cherry. “I have a blanket beautiful enough for a chiefs wife. How long will it take you to think about it, Jim?”
With an Indian you called it presents. With a white man you called it a bribe. Jim wondered exactly where that left him. “Come back tomorrow, when the sun is there.” He pointed to an hour before noon.
“Good.” Fitz rose. He was still the tough, able, courageous, hawk-eyed mountain man that Jim had envied and admired but not liked ten years before. He did not have to envy him now. He still admired him. And he still did not like him.
The lack of love was mutual, he could tell from the overhearty quickness of Fitz’s handshake. “Tomorrow,” Fitz said, and left.
Jim turned. “Cherry,” he said, “did you hear any firing of guns?”
“I did not.”
Jim sighed. He sat still and waited, whistling softly, passing the time by calculating how long it would take an angry man to walk part way to the trapper’s camp, a mile or so away, and then all the way back again. At intervals he heard the sounds of men coming quickly back into the village, singly or by twos and threes. The patch of light from the smoke hole moved as the sun got lower.
Fitz made it a little faster than Jim had figured, and he was not alone. A tall, black-haired, beak-nosed man with a commanding air and fire in his eye came shouldering through the entrance behind him.
Fitz stood with his feet spread wide and his fists clenched. He said, “God damn it, Jim!”
Jim got up. He looked at Fitz as though astonished. “What’s happened?” Fitz was bareheaded and stripped to his shirt. “What is it?”
“What is it!” Fitz snarled. “What is it! Look, you—” He stopped and choked down something he had been about to say, and then started again. “You’re chief here, I’m addressing you as chief. Your people have robbed my party of every horse, trap, gun, and personal possession they own, and I want them back. Some of your warriors stopped me and took my horse, my watch, even my hat and capote. And I want them back.”
Jim made calming motions. “Sit down. Get your breath and your temper and then tell me what happened.” He looked at the stranger, including him in the invitation. “I haven’t had the pleasure—”
The stranger said, “I’m Stewart of Grandtully, and I’ll not sit in the house of a scoundrel.”
Jim had already guessed it. He had heard about Stewart at the fort, the dashing and adventurous British officer who wanted to learn all about life in the mountains. Stewart seemed to be respected and well-liked, but Jim had an idea that he and the Captain were not going to be good friends.
“A damned black scoundrel,” Stewart added, and then Jim was certain of it.
“Now that wasn’t very smart, was it?” Jim asked, smiling just a little. “Supposing I walked into Grandtully Castle and talked like that to you? Especially if I wanted something.”
Fitz said, “I don’t have to tell you what happened, Jim. You or the American Fur Company.” He was so angry he was trembling. “Get rid of the competition and it don’t matter how.”
“You know Indians,” Jim said. “Stewart here hasn’t learned about ’em yet—”
“I’ve had a salutary lesson,” Stewart snapped. “Beggars came into camp smiling and friendly and I thought nothing of it—”
“You thought?” asked Jim.
“He was in charge of the camp,” Fitz said.
“Oh,” said Jim. “I see.”
Stewart turned even more crimson along the cheekbones. “I had understood the Crow were friendly and we had nothing to fear. I was not then acquainted with you, sir. When they started to plunder the camp they were so well situated that there was nothing I could do to stop them. They had us completely covered.” He stepped up close to Jim and said in a low, hard voice, “I have a gray horse. I am very fond of that horse. I shall have him back, and I want no lies or excuses.”
“Fitz,” said Jim, looking at Stewart, “your friend may be famous for his good manners in Scotland, but they won’t win him any prizes here.” He turned again to Fitz. “As I started to say, you know Indians. Horses tempt them. Guns tempt them. All kinds of things tempt them. And you know how hard it is to control the young men. No chief can do it, not even Long Hair or Arepoesh.”
He went to the entrance flap and held it for them. “I’ll give you horses. Go to your camp, and I’ll see what I can do about getting your belongings back.”
Fitz seemed to have recovered his control, for his voice was as cold and steady as his eyes when he spoke.
“I seem to remember Rich saying something once about a sense of power. All right, Jim. Enjoy yourself. But this won’t be forgotten.”
He went out. Stewart did not. He faced Jim and said distinctly, “I will have my horse back, and be damned to you.” Jim laughed. “If he’s not halfway to Wind River by now, you’ll get him. In the meantime—”
He gestured, and Stewart stalked out. Jim followed him. Muskrat and two or three other young braves were lounging about nearby. Muskrat’s face was solemn but his eyes sparkled with the sheer delight of doing what he had just helped to do. Mules, horses, guns, flints and lead and powder, cloth and knives and beads, tobacco and blankets, wealth in heaps and sweetened with the excitement of outwitting a potentially formidable victim—a day like this did not come often. Jim told him in Crow to bring horses for the honored guests, at the same time giving him a stem glare of warning. Muskrat went. Fitz and Stewart stood stiff as ramrods while they waited. Jim knew they were both busy trying to see some sign of the plunder in the village, but nothing had been brought here. Muskrat returned with two ponies, not the best, trailed by a gang of barking dogs. Without a word Fitz and Stewart mounted and rode away.
Jim went back inside and threw himself down on the buffalo robes. Muskrat came in and sat down, and in a few moments Young Bear joined them. Jim was still looking at the smoke hole and smiling, to himself.
Cherry spoke. “Broken Hand and the other white man were very angry.”
“Very angry,” Jim said.
“They will continue to be angry,” said Cherry. “Perhaps formerly they were your friends, but now they will set ambushes for you.”
She said it in a matter-of-fact way, quite without concern.
“They were never my friends,” he told her. “Now they are enemies. But they have many things to do besides setting ambushes.” Things like trying to carry on their business in spite of not being able to make a fall hunt this year, things like working hard for money. Things an Indian couldn’t understand, any more than he could understand a man avenging an injury by writing to his Congressman, which Jim was sure that Fitz would do since the Congressman was General Ashley. The Congress, fortunately, was a long way off.
“Young Bear,” he said. “Muskrat. This was well done today. Now we must give back part of what we took, enough guns and horses and powder to get them on their way. And the round silver thing that belongs to Broken Hand. And above all, the English captain’s gray horse. Do you know the one I mean?”
“I know it,” said Muskrat dolefully. “Elder brother—”
“No,” said Jim.
“Well,” said Muskrat, “it is nothing. I shall find another horse like him, when the pine leaves turn yellow.”
Jim laughed. “I’ll give you a horse like him,” he said. He felt good. After Muskrat and Young Bear left he said aloud in English, “That’s what’s nice about this country. It’s so big. If you look hard enough you can find a place in it where a damned black scoundrel can tell even a Stewart of Grandtully to go to hell.”
Cherry did not understand the words, but she smiled.
Minus trade goods and whisky, greatly reduced in horses and other belongings but able to travel, Fitz and his party left before midday of the next day, headed out of Absaroka by the shortest road. Fitz was curt and cold, but Jim knew that he had been doing some thinking and had realized that all the Crow would be against him, not Jim’s band alone, and that without Jim around he might be handled more roughly.
Follow the Free Wind Page 13