Best take some wind out of the lad’s sails. “What, pray tell, is a mon like ye doin’ oot here? Ye do’na fit John Tylor. Yer no engage.”
Tylor started, shifted uncomfortably. The brown eyes, always careful, were now veiled and defensive. To McKeever’s satisfaction, Tylor casually replied, “Circumstance, I guess.”
“Aye,” McKeever agreed. “Circumstance.”
To give Tylor time to relax, McKeever told the story of his youth in Scotland. As he did he could see Tylor’s fear receding, turning instead to irritation. Time for pressure again.
“Now, if Manuel Lisa wanted to build an empire oot here, he could just aboot do it. Think o’ the wealth on this river, mon. Think o’ the money to be made by the mon who controlled it.”
McKeever let his eyes go thoughtful. “ ’Tisn’t a new idea, laddie. Better brains than mine ha’ considered it. Louisiana may b’long to the Americans, but there’s no one here to claim it. The Spanish are weak, and way far away. What’s to stop a mon from makin’ his own country oot here? Become his own king?” A pause. “He’d be far away and beyond the laws of the United States, eh?”
Tylor froze like a deer before a cougar. McKeever bit off a smile and pulled out his long knife to clean his fingernails. Polished as it was, he made sure the blade flashed in the moonlight.
“Aye, a mon plotted the same not so long ago. Wanted to make himself an empire. Wanted t’ carve it oot of Texas and Mexico. Even put together the makings o’ an army to seize the land. Figured that no one was going t’ stop him way out there. Not with the United States so young and weak, or the Spanish preoccuplied wi’ Napoleon in Europe.”
McKeever’s gaze strayed to Tylor’s stiff face. “Now, a mon who had the brass balls to attempt such a thing, as—”
“This is all news to me. I guess I’ve been in the wilderness too long.” Tylor kept his voice level, idly conversational, which indicated that not all of his nerve had fled.
“Oh, t’ be sure, laddie, t’was back in 1807 that it all come oot.” McKeever allowed himself a yawn. “Now, let me see . . . t’went all the way up to the vice president. I knew a mon who told me all aboot it. He was captured on an island in the Ohio River with some others and a lot of supplies and powder and such to outfit the army Aaron Burr was building. The plan was they would float down the Ohio, then the Mississippi. From there he would strike out on the old Camino Real to Nagadoches, and establish a fort.”
The moon had risen to the point McKeever could see Tylor’s ghost-white face. The man’s fingers were clenched about his pipestem, the grip so tight the blood pressed out from under the nails.
“T’was quite the operation. Burr had his agents working in the west. All the way to Santa Fe, I’m told. And in Europe. Dealing with Napoleon and the British, hoping to lay the foundations fer the day when they declared their new nation in Spanish lands.”
“I was west that year.” Tylor’s voice now sounded a little strained. “Business trip to the Pawnee. Didn’t work out. I guess I’m just not suited to the Indian trade.”
“That so?” McKeever more grunted than said.
Time to follow it up, roll Tylor back. “Dinna I hear aboot a Tylor involved in that? Seems to me he was a wealthy planter from Virginia. Any relation, laddie?”
Tylor shook his head stiffly. “Not to my knowledge. There are a lot of Tylors, the name being derived as it is from an occupation. It’s sort of like Smith or Cooper or—”
“Ah, I’d like t’ know a mon like that Tylor was. Might have me a proposition fer him. It takes a mon of unusal skill t’ do the things he did. Why, dinna I hear he be Burr’s right-hand man? In this day an’ age a mon could go far.”
Would Tylor take the bait?
Or would he do something foolish?
McKeever had his knife poised. He need only thrust sideways, quickly puncture a lung so Tylor couldn’t cry out.
“Hope you find him,” Tylor mumbled. He stood nervously, smiling uneasily. “Fenway, this pipe of mine’s gone clean out. Reckon I’ll mosey over and get a light. I’ll roll in then. Never can tell when that cocky Lisa’ll call us in the morning.”
“Uh-huh, sleep well, laddie. See ye in the mornin.” Fenway cooed softly as Tylor nodded and dropped lightly from the cargo box. McKeever smiled behind his beard. Tylor passed the test—he lived for now. The man wasn’t broken to the point of being useless. He could still keep his wits, but it wasn’t with an iron control.
Nor had he taken the bait. That showed sense.
Fenway slipped the knife back into the scabbard and spit into the night-black water. He had his leverage. Tylor could be manipulated. All he had to do was determine the time and place to use him. Should he do it now, against Lisa, or wait and use him against Gregg or Astor? Maybe, with the right handling, Tylor could be used again and again.
And if he grew troublesome, well, his head was still worth two thousand dollars to the Americans.
Lisa, however, was going to take some thought. Tylor was correct when he said the booshway was the best on the river. He and his crew had reacted very well to the cut cordelle lines, to the various impediments that McKeever had managed to put in the way. Oddly, each time disaster threatened, Lisa survived somehow. After engineering the debacle in the narrow channel, he’d thought the little boat would have smashed Polly that day between the islands, but Lisa’s crew had pulled it out. That had been a crafty bit of work to trip so many cordellers without them knowing.
The higher upriver they traveled the more Fenway McKeever learned. The more he learned, the more able he would be when Lisa was dead. Gratiot was an old man—not even to be worried about. Crooks, McClellan, and Hunt were on the Pacific. Only Manuel Lisa remained between Fenway McKeever and the Missouri.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
* * *
Fenway knows! And it was all Tylor could do to keep his expression under control.
As Tylor walked anxiously through the camp, the boatmen had struck up another of their singing rounds and were busy raising their voices to the heavens. He walked to the fire and picked up an ember with two sticks. His hands were shaking as he lit the tobacco and pulled wearily at the pipe.
Once he had a cheery glow in the bowl, he settled back on his haunches, trembling, and looked about the camp. Latoulipe and LaChappelle were both asleep where they leaned against the trunk of a tree, exhausted from their pig chasing.
Tylor fought to still the frantic pounding of his heart. He felt himself on the verge of screaming. Slowly he looked around, feeling as if every eye in camp were on him. To his relief, no one seemed to notice where he squatted next to the fire.
Stop. Think. What did the man actually say?
Did McKeever really know who he was, or rather, who he had been? Or had the man just been fishing?
And if he knew, then how? What were the chances that McKeever had just stumbled on the information? That it was just happenstance that McKeever would put the pieces together?
Not likely.
Which meant that McKeever was someone’s agent?
“But whose?” Tylor whispered to himself. Surely not Jackson’s or Gregg’s? Were that the case, McKeever would have acted clear back at Saint Charles where it would have been easy to haul Tylor back to Jackson for the reward.
He tried to still the frantic beat of his heart. The question came back again, crying in his mind: What should he do?
Tylor fought the instant urge to run. But did he dare stay? He considered the men around their fires, most of whom would turn on him in an instant if they learned he was a traitor. Safety lay just beyond, in the dark shadows of the trees. He could slip aboard Polly, find his rifle and possibles, and vanish into the dark. They’d never find him, but it would mean crossing hundreds of miles of hostile land in order to reach the distant mountains.
Seeing that McKeever had left the Polly, Tylor stood, figuring to go find his rifle and possibles. He had taken several steps when another thought crowded into his mind: What if Mc
Keever really didn’t know? What if this was a trap, an attempt to flush him out? Make him run?
Come on, think. Like it or not, you’re back in the game.
Tylor shook his head slowly. The smart way was to play this out and bluff McKeever—even if he made allegations. Besides, the river and the wilderness were uncertain masters. They had ways of eliminating the unwary. Satisfied with his solution, but still worried, he rolled out his blankets and tried to sleep.
His dreams were troubled. First he dreamed his wedding day: Hallie radiant as she walked down the aisle in the Burnt Oaks chapel.
Then Tylor was in Aaron Burr’s parlor, drinking brandy, staring at a map of Texas and New Mexico.
And at that moment with remarkable clarity, Tylor fell into a swirling mist. Lost, he groped his way forward, calling for Hallie, hearing Andrew Jackson’s distant voice demanding his death.
The ground beneath his feet began to slope upwards, and Tylor climbed, his limbs feeling leaden. As he did the mist began to thin. A man’s form appeared, ghostly, details obscure in the haze. He stood on a hidden hilltop. As Tylor climbed closer, the features refined into the round, lined face of an Indian. He was a heavily boned man, his body thick with muscle. The Indian stepped forward and handed Tylor a large bird—a red-tailed hawk that looked at him with fierce eyes and a cocked head, the feathers gleaming in a sudden shaft of bright light.
The Indian looked expectantly at Tylor, eyes dark and gleaming. The hand that had held the hawk reached out, imploring.
The hawk tensed, ready to strike at his hands where they gripped the taloned legs.
The Indian looked back over his shoulder, and Tylor followed his gaze to see mounted warriors as they raced ghostly horses through the churning mist. Women and children fled before the horses, and gunshots echoed in the distance.
When the Indian turned back, tears were streaking down the mahogany of his weathered face. Again the Indian reached out, calling something in a language Tylor had never heard before.
A curious nagging sensation prodded the bottom of his troubled mind, bringing him awake, leaving the dream incomplete.
Tylor, irritated by his full bladder, struggled to his feet with resignation and walked to the edge of camp.
As he urinated, he listened to the sounds of the night: the crickets singing, the distant hoot of an owl. Then, looking to the northwest, he could imagine the Indian’s face. As if the man were looking up at the same moon, somehow sharing the vision.
It shouldn’t have happened. They had been so careful, hiding trails, splitting up into small groups, even packing the travois poles by tying them together in bundles and hanging them between two packhorses like a litter.
They had made camp on a clear, tumbling, creek just beyond the hogbacks along the eastern side of the Black Hills. Hunting had been good. The trick to hunting the young, pumpkin-colored calves was to get the cows to run. Two riders would push them, guiding their buffalo horses with their knees while they shot arrows into the young calves.
Behind came six riders, who, as the buffalo calves dropped, would leap from their mounts, slit the calves’ throats, and toss them up to be carried away before the mother cows realized what had happened.
Staked out on the grass on a sunny, south-facing slope, some fifty-two buffalo calf hides were in various stages of being tanned by the women under Aspen Branch’s direction. Some were staked to be fleshed, others rolled in a concoction of ashes to make the hair slip, and others rolled to cure in a mixture of brains mixed with urine.
They hadn’t even seen a sign of other humans. Everything was working to their benefit. Until the sounds of battle carried on the warm summer air: the distant popping of the guns, the faint screams of raging warriors and terrified women and children.
Gray Bear had been scouting a small herd of bison—fifteen or so cows with calves—as they drifted toward a creek thick with burr oak less than a half-hand of time ride from camp. But for the gunshots, he might even have missed the screams, giving the variables of the breeze. That far-off popping, however . . .
“We’re under attack! Back to the camp!”
Gray Bear, Turns His Back, and Red Moon Man had leaped to their horses, slapping heels to their speedy mounts. They charged back east, racing toward the creek camp, choosing their path based upon the camp’s location below the pine-clad slopes.
The first person Gray Bear saw was Twin Sun Woman, followed by her two boys, as she burst from the willows along the creek and waved him down. Her feet and the hem of her antelope-hide dress were wet from running down the stream.
“Pa’kiani! Five of them!” she screamed. “They came flying out of the burr oaks, shooting. Go! See if you can save any of the others!”
Five! Gray Bear and his two friends had a chance. If they could surprise the Blackfeet, shoot arrows into them on the first pass, then wheel and drive through them again before they could bring the aitta up and shoot, they might be able to save what was left of the camp and horses.
More women and children broke from the brush and fled eastward away from the camp. Gray Bear waved desperately at them to keep them going. Then he tucked behind Moon Walker’s flying mane to speed his horse forward.
At the head of the others, he broke through the stands of chokecherry bushes that surrounded the camp, their blossoms sweet and refreshing on the warm air. The fires still smoked; tools, packs, and personal items were strewn about. There, too, lay the bodies, sprawled and bloody.
Gray Bear got but a glance as he drove Moon Walker through the camp. His practiced eye picked up the trail, and he drove ahead, speeding toward where the horses had been pastured north and slightly west of camp. Young Tidy Frog—no more than twelve—lay facedown in the green spring grass and bobbing flowers. The colors clashed with the bright red blood on the back of his scalped skull.
And there, in the distance, just disappearing into the gap in the hogback, Gray Bear could see the last of the horses, driven from behind by a distant rider. Other riders on the flanks kept the captured horses pointed and running.
Gray Bear pulled Moon Walker to a walk, staring around at the trampled grass. “That wasn’t the entire herd,” he called as Turns His Back arrived on his hard-blowing black stallion. Then came Red Moon Man on his roan mare, the horses lathered and blowing from the hard run.
“Scout for sign,” Red Moon Man called, wheeling his mare around, promptly picking up another set of tracks. “Someone took five or ten head this way.”
“And here”—Turns His Back pointed off to the south—“another ten or fifteen.”
Even as the hunter exclaimed, several of the packhorses appeared from a drainage, nostrils flared, heads and tails high as they cantered to join Gray Bear’s group. Animals that had been lost in the sweep and fleeing groups.
“See how many we have left.” A hard, cold stone might have been dropped into Gray Bear’s chest as he took in the scope of the damage.
“What of the Pa’kiani?” young Turns His Back demanded.
“They have fresh scalps and horses,” Gray Bear growled through gritted teeth. “With that much coup, they’ll be riding hard and fast. Afraid what’s left of us might try and steal some of our horses back.”
He trotted Moon Walker back down the slope to the camp. Just beyond the chokecherry bushes, he slipped from the horse’s side. A sick premonition hammered with each beat of his heart as he walked into the camp. From the scuffed ground, his people had fought well. The tragedy of it was that Pa’kiani thunder sticks outmatched Shoshoni courage. Gray Bear walked over to the closest corpse and knelt over the body.
From the clothing, he knew he looked upon Three Feathers, though the scalp had been taken, and his friend’s face was a mass of blood. The nose had been crushed, and the eyes had been gouged out of his head.
Gray Bear looked up at the clear blue skies; white thunderheads loomed over the peaks to the west, pregnant with the possibility of spring rain. His voice cracked with passion. “Why is this ha
ppening to us? Tam Apo, Our Father, what have we done wrong?”
Fists knotted at his side. Gray Bear’s dark eyes probed the distant puffs of white cloud.
From out of the chokecherries came Kestrel Wing, his face awash in tears. Blood caked on his hands. A gust of wind whipped the already short-shorn hair that marked a Shoshoni warrior in mourning for the dead. No man’s hair grew very long these days.
“Soft Dawn is dead. The big warrior rode her down as she ran. He was whooping, singing . . . and he shot her in the middle of the back.” He swallowed hard. “I shot him. Drove an arrow into his right shoulder. He wheeled his horse and fled, calling the others to leave, I guess. They all stopped what they were doing and rode for the horse herd.”
Gray Bear nodded, glancing around. Willow Stem, Yampa Root, Blue Petal, and New Wood, women who’d been working on the hides in camp, were either shot through the body, or clubbed to death. Not all had been scalped or cut up, which meant the raid had been interrupted. Probably cut short by the wounded warrior Kestrel Wing had shot in the shoulder.
“You may have saved us from total disaster,” Gray Bear told him, looking down again at Three Feathers’s butchered body. Unable to help himself, he pulled back the breechcloth to see where a sharp knife had severed his friend’s penis, testicles, and scrotum. Of course they took a man’s parts; it was among the greatest of indignities to heap upon the dead. As was the urine that still pooled in the torn-out sockets where Three Feathers’s eyes used to be.
“Perhaps we need more than the blessings of puha.” The rusty, cracked voice startled Gray Bear. He lowered his head and turned slowly to see the old shaman woman, Aspen Branch. She came limping out of the buffaloberry bushes above camp; red with coagulated blood, her leg barely held her as she hobbled down the grassy slope.
The old woman hitched her way closer, her lined face staring half-crazed, her progress halting as she leaned on a rickety crutch she’d improvised from a chokecherry branch. As she identified each body, her expression flickered in pain.
Flight of the Hawk: The River Page 11