I was injured in June. By late August I was completely recovered. I could have returned to the brigade but I did not, and at the time I said I was still too weak to travel, but it was lassitude and not weakness that kept me in the settlement. Every morning I’d set a few traps, and then wander down to the river and wash myself, spending hours in the roiling, sandy water. I’d clamber out stiffly afterward, hopping from foot to foot in the soft mud, letting myself dry in the sunlight, then stepping up steep bluffs through tall grass and wild onions to view the tan-colored grasslands spread out in all directions.
I am recovering, I told myself. That is why I cannot return. I’m still too weak.
It was only gradually that I understood it was not a physical injury I was recovering from but, to my shame, a mental one. For weeks after my physical recovery, in the hot, dry days of late summer, I reconstructed the moments leading up to my injury. I was pursuing the young buffalo up the steep hill. I was waiting to shoot and then I saw the blanket wad come out of Bridger’s gun. I hit the clay and was jolted. The event repeated itself endlessly in my mind, as if I was trying to discover a flaw in the memory, until in the end I understood that I was grappling with the realization that I had almost died and someday I would be dead. That was it. That was the length and breadth of my great realization. I was not immortal. I would die someday. My youthful mind could not quite comprehend it.
It took me about six weeks to understand and to overcome this sapping lassitude, and by then it was too late in the year to join the brigades for the fall season. Regardless, by that time I had found something else to divert my interest, and that was probably the best remedy of all. I have found that questions about death are never really satisfied with the intellect, but they can be neatly conquered by distraction.
I had been in the settlement for six weeks and was making my first visit to the infirmary. Smitts and Plochman would not even allow natives in their stores, yet the young soldiers were constantly visiting the infirmary, as all had heard this unlikely structure held the settlement’s only real attractions. There were the nuns and the nuns’ Italian and French helpers and a woman called the Widow Bailey who excited much speculation among the young soldiers.
The native infirmary was half a mile south of the town, in a long, low structure built into a hill with a rock chimney at either end. The shutters were kept open during the summer, and the two wings of the infirmary were connected by high walls, making a rectangular courtyard between them. The walls of the courtyard had doors embedded into them that allowed children to enter and exit without being exposed to the illness.
On this day, August 1827, I walked south along the top of the bluff, crossed the high point where the road dwindled to not much more than a path, and walked down toward the double-winged building where the sick natives were cared for.
I heard moans and murmured native dialects and the clink of cupping glasses inside the infirmary. I entered a long, low room with makeshift cradles made from straw baskets. On the east side there were pallets with impossibly skinny natives, some of them asleep, others hacking into tubs of murky water. Scalpels were tossed into porcelain basins. There was the smell of chemicals and death. I tipped my hat to Dr. Meeks, who said, “You shouldn’t be here, Wyeth,” and I agreed with him as I furtively surveyed the room’s attractions.
I ducked through another low door into a courtyard where native children sat in rows in a sort of classroom. A woman in European clothes scratched at the dust with a wooden stick. She was drawing the letter C with the stick and the children were drawing with their fingers or small twigs in the dust.
“C is the third letter … C,” the teacher intoned.
She had a French accent, and dark hair cut short and pulled back with a wooden clamshell that gave me a strange feeling. Then there was a flip in my mind, a kind of vertigo. I realized the teacher was Alene Chevalier, the Canadian tanner whom I’d conversed with before I left St. Louis. She was dressed in black and wore work boots that were too big for her small feet and her skin was so dark from the sun that I had mistaken her for a full-blood native.
She saw me in the doorway, let out a brief shout, but recovered almost immediately. “William Wyeth. Upright and interrupting my classroom,” she said.
“My apologies,” I said, and stood there grinning foolishly, not able to contain my happiness at finding her there.
She motioned for me to go, which I did, but only after she assured me she’d follow in a moment. She went on with the stick, scratching in the dirt. “C … the third letter is C …” I walked back through the infirmary and out over the hard-packed dirt and waited near the path.
I was grinning and pacing back and forth with all manner of hopes and fancies surging inside. We were hundreds of miles from St. Louis and I’d been in that settlement more than six weeks and somehow I had not seen Alene or known of her existence there. I realized she was the woman they called the Widow Bailey and was in black because she was in mourning.
My mind went back to the last time I’d seen her and how she’d stood in front of her cottage with Henry Layton and Horace Bailey.
Blast the dandies, I thought. She must have married that pork-eater Bailey.
I stood there, piecing this together, while a few natives slumped in the shade and watched me. Five minutes passed. Children straggled from the courtyard and started for the Indian camp. Then Alene came out, wiping her hands of dust.
“So, you’re here,” I said jovially. “The Widow Bailey.”
“Yes. And I knew you were here. I came to see you during your fever. You don’t remember. They weren’t sure you’d live.”
“And now you’re disappointed that I have lived,” I said.
“I was pleased to hear you’d recovered,” she said in a measured tone. “I apologize. I meant to visit.”
“You were hoping to pilfer my buffalo robe and moccasins,” I said.
“Yes. They were such high quality.” That stung a bit. “Not properly fleshed,” she said. “You did it?”
“I traded with the Crow.”
“You traded with the wrong Crow. Not properly fleshed,” she said again.
Though her composure was in keeping with her black dress, I could not contain my happiness.
“Well, this is good luck,” I said. “Not the circumstances, of course, but I’m pleased to find an acquaintance in this godforsaken place. And you … you’re in mourning. For … Horace Bailey? Am I right?”
She nodded. “We were married two months after you departed.”
“Congratulations.”
She bowed her head. “He died four months after that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She kept her head lowered. There was a long silence. I waited for her to explain her present situation. She did not.
“But—how did you end up in the settlements?” I asked.
“Horace joined the regiment.”
I could hardly imagine that fat dandy Bailey as a soldier. I started to say about three things, then merely said, “I’m sorry to hear of his demise.”
“Yes,” she said. “He was forced out of St. Louis by his creditors and his father. He participated in some underhanded dealings arranged by Henry Layton. You remember him?”
“He was with Bailey the last time I saw you.”
“Horace lost his considerable fortune, or at least the part that he was allowed to access, all because of that blackguard Layton. Despite his circumstances, we agreed to be married. His father arranged for Horace to become an officer, and he came out here to separate himself from St. Louis and its low occupants and to recover what was left of his good name. Now it’s killed him.”
She said all this bitterly.
“Was it the natives?”
“A fall from a horse. He was hunting.”
I was trying to be as grave as possible and was putting on a horrible show of solemnity. Blast the lazy man, I thought. Gambling in some business venture with Layton,
then having his father arrange an officership and falling off a horse and stranding Alene out in the settlements with patched clothes and dusty hair.
“And now you have chosen to stay?”
“I have no means of leaving,” she said evenly. “He had only debts. The doctor has offered me an occupation. And the children need me.”
“His family was wealthy.”
“His family had cut their ties with us before he died.”
“Because of his debts?”
“Because of me,” she said matter-of-factly.
She had a quarter native blood.
“I knew his father slightly,” I said. “My initial impression was of an arrogant, heartless man. Now I have another reason to dislike him. I’m sorry to hear of all this. I offer what assistance I can.”
“I ask for no assistance. I will be glad for your friendship.”
I could think of nothing more to say and she did not offer any word of familiarity. Slowly the position she was in settled inside me. She had taken on Bailey’s rich-man’s debts without the rich family to buffer her. The cuffs of her pants were frayed. She was wearing a patched winter jacket though it was summer.
“I must return to the children,” she said after a moment, though I’d seen the children straggling away to the native encampment. “I will call on you in town. Do not come here again. Because of the illness.” She added, “I’m glad you’ve recovered.”
“I had until about five minutes ago,” I said, holding my hands over my heart. That made her laugh, though briefly.
“I will see you in town, William. Don’t be such a fool as to come again.”
I waited until she’d entered the courtyard, then walked back to the settlement.
So, Alene Chevalier had gotten married to a dandy from St. Louis who’d lowered himself to take her on after losing everything else, then had gotten himself killed while hunting. I remembered how she’d cut me when Layton and Bailey were with her, and now I understood why. She was angling for Bailey and had not wanted me to interfere. She had succeeded in her venture. She’d married the gentleman, which was a wonderful match for her and ought to have secured her future, but Bailey had managed to get himself killed at the worst moment and left her without his fortune but with his debts. Now she was stranded in the settlement.
It was a comedown for her, to be sure, but it left the door open for me. I think a more compassionate man than me would have noted the possibilities of the situation, particularly as I was flush after the half season.
Back in the settlement I heard the whole story from the blacksmith Higgenbottem, a stringy mulatto who worked bare-chested and made wonderful beaver traps for a dollar less than they cost in St. Louis.
“From what I heard his friend Layton killed some ship’s captain in a duel in St. Louis and Bailey acted as his second. In return Layton invited him into a land deal. Bailey signed the deal and funded it, and when it was found to be fraudulent, Layton battled in court, and Bailey, blasted by his father, did the brave thing and made a dash for the territories. The first day in he tossed two gold coins in the dirt. Didn’t even get off his horse. ‘Make me twelve traps.’ Twelve. As if he could even keep track of half that number. On the second week some barefoot urchin from Frankfurt, Kentucky, stole a silver shaving kit. Fancy thing with his initials. Bailey demanded satisfaction. The kid could not have been more than sixteen years old. I’m not even sure he knew what he was agreeing to. The next morning they met out on the mud flats. The boy, being from Kentucky, knew how to handle a weapon. He fired and grazed Bailey’s neck. Bailey fired in the air. An honorable gesture, given that he’d just been shot. Afterward, Bailey shook the kid’s hand and gave the shaving kit as a token. Don’t know what to make of the dandy. Throwing the money in the dust like some blackguard. Then firing in the air like an honorable man. And then giving the shaving kit. I suppose he would have turned out all right if given half a chance. In three months he had lost his gut and was learning to use his weapon. Said he was having a wonderful time. He’d gone out hunting with only a native scout and one other soldier. Had a skirmish with the Sioux. Then came across an elk and while getting after it his horse stepped in a badger hole. That was it for the horse and Bailey. The widow’s a half-breed they say but she seems like a Frenchy if I ever saw one. Can read and write like any professor. She said she’d teach me.”
“Imagine that,” I said.
“I got no mind for it.”
The mulatto doused a glowing horseshoe, sizzling, in a barrel of water.
“Four soldiers have proposed. She turned them all down. ‘In mourning,’ she says. Some say she’s trolling the waters. I say these waters aren’t deep enough for her. You have a mind to try your hand at it, I see.”
“Why not?” I laughed.
“Yes. Why not? All the same …”
The next morning I was outside the infirmary again, ignoring Alene’s advice not to visit. After some minutes of idling Alene came to the door and waved me off. She did not walk out to greet me but started sweeping up and a moment after that a mustached nun who put beaver traps around the fruit trees in the garden to keep the children from taking the apples, a nasty creature with a small, pinched mouth and a dry-looking tongue, writhed her way out to the road where I stood.
“The general warned the soldiers from coming.”
“I’m not a soldier.”
“Then even worse. You’re a beastly trapper. She’s in mourning for Sir Bailey.”
“I know her from St. Louis.”
“I don’t care if you’ve known her from the cradle. There is sickness here. You think you’re the first to come? Not the first. And not the most promising. And one would-be suitor already dead from the illness. I’ll talk to the general. Go away. Go!”
She shooed at me and behind her Alene half seemed to protest, but not loudly. She was showing sense in keeping me away from the illness.
“I’ll see you in town,” I yelled.
“Good day, Mr. Wyeth,” she called faintly.
A few wasted-looking natives sat along the wall in the sunlight watching her dodge my advances. They cackled among themselves and it was irritating, to say the least, but I had little choice other than to retreat. I went back to my lodgings and mulled it over. Alene was there, penniless and desperate, and for the first time in my life I had some money, yet it seemed she would not even speak with me. Given the exaggerated tales of my fortune, many women would have made up to me out of desperation, but Alene was the exact opposite. She did not want to appear to beg, and that made me all the more determined to offer assistance.
One of my father’s main complaints of me was that I had no ballast, always looking off to the horizon, dashing here or there without forethought or consideration, as ill prepared as I was enthusiastic. If he had seen me that fall he would have felt that flawed impulse had borne full fruit. I went from being flattened and deflated over memories of my injury to puffing myself up in a blissful daze, drunk with dreams of my imagined future with the Widow Bailey. Gauzy schemes filled my idle mind.
Late summer now: Dry grass, and the drone of insects, and I was near the high point of the ridge, stepping up the steep drainage to the white stone bluff that overlooked the Missouri, when I saw that Alene already occupied the space. She was clearly annoyed to be caught there by herself and began moving away before I arrived.
“I’ll leave you to the view,” she said.
“I’d rather you stayed and admired it with me,” I said in an awkward way that was meant to be gallant.
“I have my work with the children,” she said.
“It is not work that sends you away. You know that,” I said. “I see you struggling, Alene. There are those who’d come to your aid if you’d let them.”
“At what cost?”
“At no cost.”
“It is not my experience that aid comes from men without a price.”
“You have grown bitter from your experience.”
“I’ve g
rown practical,” she said. “I appreciate your commiseration.”
There was a savagery in the commiseration. She started to go, but I held a hand out as if I’d detain her. She moved to walk past me. I tried to take her hand and she slapped me, hard, so there was a white light in my head and a tree on the horizon passed across my view twice. She was hurrying away through dry grass. All around there was the metallic droning of insects.
“Well that’s blasted,” I said. “All because of fat Bailey.”
I laughed to myself, falsely jovial.
“A woman of principle,” I said out loud.
I walked back to town with my cheek burning and a dull resignation simmering. Up to that point I’d seen her physical attractions and understood her to be a western lady with an able tongue and fine manners. A catch for any young trapper. But that slap drove appreciation into me like a spike. I understood that her husband’s death was not a mere inconvenience for her. She was attempting to mourn him and was enduring hardship honorably. My attentions were only increasing her hardship.
Three days later I saw her exiting the dry goods store carrying a tiny quantity of flour. She put a hand to her cheek with some of her past jauntiness.
“You’ve recovered, Mr. Wyeth.”
“Barely,” I said.
“I am pleased to see you’re not slain,” she said.
“But I am,” I murmured, so low I’m not sure she heard. She paused to see if I’d tarry, but I did not. I hurried on with my heart pounding and my hands shaking and that was the model for our future relations. I began to address Alene as Miss Bailey and did not try to stop her in the road and did not idle near the infirmary.
Into the Savage Country Page 5