“You can thank me by eating it. We thought you’d perished.”
“You were probably praying for my demise, hoping to take over the tanning trade.”
“That was the first thing that went through my mind,” she said, a little shaky in her voice because my hand was still resting on hers. I waited for her to push my hand away, but she did not. Instead, she turned her hand upright so my palm was on hers. I thought if she pulled her hand away I’d just say, “I don’t blame you, shape I’m in,” and make a joke of it. But she didn’t pull her hand away and after a moment her fingers grasped mine. A few minutes passed in silence, without either of us moving, and in those minutes a great change was taking place within me and I believe within her, too. It was as if something that had seemed massive and immovable, an impossibly tangled problem, had suddenly shifted quite easily into a new and pleasing shape. After perhaps a minute, though it seemed much longer, I reached up and pulled her to me and kissed her. She withdrew afterward, flustered, and said faintly, “Don’t do that, William.”
“I’ve already done it,” I said. “And you did, too.”
“My mourning ends in three weeks.”
“I think it ended right now,” I said.
She tried to stand. I was still holding her hand and she was holding mine back. She looked as if she’d go but she did not go, and she did not let go of my hand. She sat back down. She started to get up again but didn’t. Then she turned to me and bent and her mouth met mine.
“I’m going,” she murmured. “In a minute.”
But it was much, much longer than that before she left.
• • •
I was in bed for a week. Ferris visited for the first three days, speaking of the prospects for the new season, of the possibility for fertile drainages farther west, and showing me the progress he’d made in his sketchbook. He had much improved in his ability to capture the men in action, and there were wonderful studies of the pack train on the move and of men wading through streams with traps in one hand and guns in the other. There were many quick sketches of the native villages with accurate details. Even with my limited knowledge of art I could see he had progressed in his ability to capture the life and spirit of that country.
Near the end of the week, when it was clear I was out of all danger, Ferris, Smith, and Bridger reluctantly continued on to St. Louis, where they were securing supplies for the following season. Glass and Pegleg moved into the barracks, and the mulatto Branch, who could not associate with the men of the brigade freely in the city or the settlement, rode off with a party of Mandan. After that I was free to spend every waking moment with Alene, which is what I wanted. She brought me books and fed me and read to me and pretended to tend to me, but as soon as we were alone she was holding my hand and kissing me in my bed and letting me brush her hair and draw her down to me and every day it was like some new and wonderful country was opening up a little more for both of us.
Three weeks later Alene’s mourning period ended and we were officially engaged. By the way the town congratulated us, with a hint of fatigue, I could tell they were surprised it had taken so long and thought me a particularly slow fellow.
It was a “western engagement,” which meant I could hold her hand, steal a kiss without reproach, and be in private with her with the door open. No one, except a few of the religious women at the infirmary, even thought to disapprove. All this was wonderful for both of us. I think some couples are meant for courtship and others are more comfortable once the initial courtship is over. Alene and I had a rough, uneasy beginning but were content with each other as soon as we were formally linked. This is not primarily the story of our love for each other, but if it were, and I were concentrating all my meager powers of description on this great event in my life, I would not be capable of capturing how magnificent and wonderful I felt at that time, or what a monumental change it had on every aspect of my outlook and being. All who knew us thought we were a finely matched pair and saw me, in particular, as being fortunate. Alene was a strong, steady, reliable woman who would most likely receive a fortune. I had not wished for that fortune and if anything had resented it, as it meant I was the weak link in the match, though I knew if she received it I would benefit greatly. If there was any disturbance in our bliss it was not her past connection to Bailey but the unspoken prospect of the upcoming trapping season.
Alene and I had made plans to take the first keelboat out in the spring and to get married that summer in St. Louis, but she also knew that I had told Ferris I would join a brigade the next season, and in my heart, I yearned for that final season in the trapping country. I had come west to satisfy some restless craving, to sound the depths inside myself, and if I did not do the thing properly I feared I would never be content. I had pledged myself to Alene and I would have died for her, but if I did not make that final voyage there would always be a piece of me that felt I had not done the thing. Not really. Not the way I ought to have. I knew I was lucky to have joined myself to Alene, and yet I yearned for the western mountains.
In early January there was a celebration at Smitts’s lodging house. It was considered the formal engagement party for Alene and me, and it was also a New Year’s celebration for the entire settlement and its surroundings.
Alene wore a black cambric dress with a white ruffle and I wore a borrowed suit and tie and black boots. General Burnham gave a speech celebrating our great nation and Smitts toasted to the newly engaged couple. Then the tables were carried behind the lodging house and stacked among the heaps of snow thrown from the roof and the entire population of the settlement gathered inside for a dance, and for a few hours we were not a loose collection of ragged settlers and trappers stranded on the endless prairie but a bright hive of human activity, all dancing and whirling and stomping, a many faceted, candlelit blur. For most of the settlement it was a bright spot in the hardship and monotony of the long winter, and it ought to have been doubly so for me, as that was our engagement celebration, but I remember feeling only half involved in that dance, feeling as if I was stranded there on the edge of the wilderness but had not really entered into it.
At one point that night I walked away from the dance into the frigid darkness. It was a windless night, very cold, the white sparks of stars spread silently overhead. Natives had crept up and crouched in the snowy scrubland, watching, and I stood there watching with them, hearing the distant calling and clapping of the men and the faint stomping of feet and the thump thump of the drum, looking at that square of light in the open doorway. And it perhaps says something about me, and what I yearned for at the time, and perhaps what I have become, that it is not the celebration itself that I remember most but those minutes outside it, seeing this small white flame of life blazing up in the midst of that vast, savage darkness.
That was January. Three months later the spring trapping brigades began passing through the settlement, and despite my promises to return with Alene to St. Louis in the spring, I yearned to join them.
It was mid-March 1828, and from the top of a windswept hill I saw a party of riders to the south moving along the winding blue thread of the river. Later that day I walked into Smitts’s lodging house to find Branch, Glass, Grignon, and Bridger sprawled on the rough-plank benches placed along the wall. As I moved to greet them two meaty arms encircled me from behind. I was thrashed about as if I were a child and thrown against the plank-wood walls so the whole structure of the lodging house shook.
“Glad to see you on your hooves again, old friend.” It was Pegleg. That was the way he greeted me. “Grab yourself a horn.”
I picked myself up from the floor. Ferris toasted me from the bar.
“I see you’ve survived Pegleg’s greeting.”
“Barely.”
“And I hear you’ve made advancements in your conquest.”
“I am engaged to be married,” I said.
I told Ferris of our intention to return to St. Louis on the first keelboat and he congratulated me, but the
n said, “You will need to break that pledge and join us for a last season. We have all broken our ties to the RMC and are bound to Layton’s brigade.”
“Layton’s!” I said.
“Captain Layton,” he said wryly. “And he wants you to join.”
“He is joining,” I heard someone say behind me and turned to see Layton himself. I had not seen him for more than three months. He was sunburned and windburned and even more emaciated. He held his hand out, grinning.
“I hear you’ve successfully occupied the fortress of the Widow Bailey,” he said. “Or should I say the Bride Wyeth?”
“You can say that when we return to St. Louis.”
“Congratulations, Wyeth. This calls for a drink.” All this was said in an even, not particularly jovial tone. He poured for me and said, “Ferris tell you where we’re off to?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Wonderfully closed-lipped of you,” he said to Ferris, then to me, “I’ve told others we’re going north of the Tetons. As you know, those slopes have been trapped out three times in five years.”
“And there’s the Blackfoot,” I said.
“And there’s the Blackfoot,” he agreed. “But we aren’t going to the Tetons. We’re going to the Wind River Mountains. The northern half. From the base all the way to the upper reaches.”
“That’s Crow land,” I said.
“It’s fertile, though.”
“It’s fertile because it’s Crow land, controlled by Long Hair, and unlike a lot of the Crow, Long Hair hasn’t let trappers into those hills. And when trappers have tried to go in they end up dead or running across the prairie naked with the natives firing arrows like they did to Sam Williams.”
“We will not be creeping around and hiding in willows like Sam Williams. Wouldn’t be possible. And I wouldn’t be foolish enough to try. We’ll walk in like men. I have made a treaty that will give us access to those mountains.”
“A treaty with who?”
“Chief Long Hair, of course. I’ve just come from meeting him. The natives are in need of our aid. And we are in need of pelts. We struck a mutually beneficial agreement. There is a Blackfoot chief named Red Elk. Have you heard of him?”
“I am aware of the existence of Red Elk as are all who have been to the west. I saw him at the surround nine months ago. I can’t speak for his character, but I can say he was a sullen, arrogant-looking man and an excellent rider.”
“Well, to our benefit the Crow fear him like no other. Red Elk has made an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay Company who have armed him, and now Long Hair wants an agreement with us. I supply the necessary warfaring instruments that they need to fight Red Elk and in return Long Hair allows us to trap his land.”
“Which drainages?”
“All of the Wind River Mountains.”
“He doesn’t control the entire range. Not even close.”
“He controls enough of it and is in contact with those who control the rest and will bribe them with what I give him. Come see.”
Layton glanced at Ferris, then walked from the bar and I followed him into a low-ceilinged hallway. Layton stood outside the door to a storeroom.
“You got the chief’s daughter back there, bound up, ready to deliver?”
“I got something better than that,” Layton said.
Layton opened the door to reveal shelves stacked with hempen sacks, glass jars that held honey, vinegar, and various crates. In the center of the small room sat a barrel of Taos Whiskey. Alongside the barrel were four long wooden crates. I walked to the barrel and thumped it. It was full. I eyed the rectangular crates set one on top of the other. One of the crates was pried half open and I saw brass plating inside.
“Pennsylvania long rifles. Twelve total,” Layton said.
I let out a low whistle. Pennsylvania long rifles were hard to get even in St. Louis, and they were dearly expensive. I pried one end of the lid up and pulled one of the rifles out. Forty inches long with the wooden ramrod beneath the barrel. Beautifully crafted and perfectly balanced. I felt the rifle’s heft and sighted with it, felt how the weapon rested neatly against the shoulder. I lowered the rifle, slid it back in the crate, and hammered the nails back in with a stone that stood behind the door.
“The whiskey. The rifles. Powder. Twelve bullet molds and lead. A few other gewgaws like mirrors and vermillion. My whole fortune right here,” Layton said. “The Market Street Fur Company. This is your chance, Wyeth. If you enter right now as an investor I’ll give you a percentage of the returns.”
“How much of an investment?”
“Three hundred dollars. For that you’ll get six dollars from your cut of the pelts and we split the cut of everyone else’s and you get fifteen percent of the profits. Ferris did it. You could do it, too. Then you come back not with eight hundred or a thousand dollars but three to five thousand. Plus your stake in the company.”
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Those are entirely unrealistic calculations, Layton. Not that it matters. Alene and I are returning to St. Louis.”
“Those are your plans,” he said. “Alter them. Send her back where she belongs. Take the last boat out in the fall.”
“I wouldn’t make the last boat out in the fall.”
Layton gave me a skeptical look.
“Then tell Alene you’ll be back in the spring. Extract a promise from her to wait for you, then send her off to St. Louis and meet her when you can. We have a chance to profit from the last untouched drainages in the west. A chance that will never come again. You can make your fortune and return like a man and not some pauper hoping to profit off Bailey’s death.”
“I am hardly hoping to profit off his death. You are speaking of your own intentions, not mine,” I said.
Layton’s eyes grew dark, but he mastered his anger. When he spoke again it was in an even tone, and offhandedly.
“I’m not talking about your motives, Wyeth. I am stating how it will be perceived by others. I am offering you a chance to blast that perception with six months of labor.”
“It’s eight and not six months. And at least three months of travel.”
“Nevertheless, Wyeth, this chance won’t come again. You know that as well as I.”
I was quiet. My eyes strayed to the crates.
“What’ll keep the natives from turning those guns on us?”
“Nothing except we know how to use our weapons and they will just be beginning to learn how to use theirs. And Long Hair has some sense,” Layton said. “He knows the Americans and the Brits are going to keep coming. The one card in his deck is those untrapped lands. He’s kept them fertile. He’s now willing to part with the furs to protect the villages. We all stand to make a fortune from this decision, you more than any of us. I have debts that need to be paid. For a three-hundred-dollar investment you can increase your take ten or fifteen times. I could get anyone to join us, but I know you won’t run like some flatlander, and Bailey’s family is treating Alene roughly. I meant to do well by both of you by offering a partnership. If you return to St. Louis now, what will Bailey’s family say to this linkage? Bailey was a gentleman.”
“And what am I?”
Layton smiled. “A dirty trapper.”
Fire came into my eyes, and Layton laughed, and said, “Easy Wyeth. I am only saying how they perceive you. If you invest your money now you stand to profit greatly. Think about it. You get the entire profit on your take. You won’t get that anywhere else. And if you sign on as an owner you get fifteen percent of the other three dollars’ profit per pelt, minus expenses, and divided with the other owners.”
“What other owners?”
“You, me, and … Ferris will be an owner, too.”
“So Ferris has put in his money?”
“He will,” Layton said.
I understood that Ferris had not invested yet.
“I have taken on debt at a foolishly high rate. If I can raise six hundred dollars right now, before I leave for
the fur country, I can pay the worst of the loans. It will be worth the thirty percent reduction. You two will make more than I will on the season, though I will own the majority stake in the company.”
“Must have been damned high rates.”
“They were. But that is my problem. After we take in thirteen hundred pelts, we start to get paid back a percentage. All profit.”
“And how many pelts do you think we could gather in a season?”
“We have eight men. Plus me. Three thousand pelts.”
I laughed loudly. We had walked back to the bar. Ferris was slouched with his feet stretched out on a chair. He looked up at us.
“Layton said he expects our returns to be three thousand pelts for eight men,” I said.
“Nine men,” Layton corrected.
“The average brigade is taking between a hundred and a hundred and twenty pelts a man per season,” I said. “In a good year. Even in those southern drainages in the best conditions, Smith’s brigade took in less than a hundred a man.”
“They lost many due to hardships. That will not happen to us.”
“You have no way of ensuring it doesn’t,” I said. “And it doesn’t change the fact that the average is close to a hundred. If that.”
“The country we are going into is the most fertile imaginable and we will have the most experienced and energetic trappers harvesting the furs and the most experienced captain to guide them.”
“I’d hardly call you experienced, Layton.”
“I am not speaking of myself. I have hired Jedediah Smith to lead us.”
“Captain Smith is part owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company,” I said.
“Smith has taken a leave from his company to guide our brigade,” he said in a steely tone. “He is in a room above us as we speak.”
I glanced at Ferris who nodded that it was true. Smith had signed on as the scout and captain of Layton’s brigade for the season.
“You seem not to understand, Wyeth. We have complete access without harassment to the richest drainages in the west. I have forgone using camp hands, which will make the year arduous for those who sign on but will increase our profits. There are nine of us. I calculate we’ll take in around three thousand pelts. Without our own profits, the remaining men will split around nineteen hundred pelts. So, around three hundred pelts each.”
Into the Savage Country Page 10