Into the Savage Country

by Shannon Burke

  Several days later, at daybreak, on a particularly frigid morning, all of us rose on stiff legs, shivering from cold as the fire had died in the night. It had been Layton’s task to gather the fuel, and he had done it inadequately. Branch, who was the most adept at getting a flame going, had arranged some pine shavings that had pitch on them. He struck his flint. The tinder began to glow. Layton hovered, as desirous of warmth as the rest of us, and just as the flames began to rise Layton reached in and moved the tinder. The abrupt movements doused the flames. Branch made a displeased, grunting sound. He said nothing, but his meaning was clear. Layton had put out the fire.

  Slowly Branch arranged the tinder again and again struck the flint and again nursed the ember into a timid flame and again Layton reached in and doused the fire.

  Without looking up, Branch said, “Next time you’ll lose a finger, Captain.”

  “If you’d constructed the fire correctly it would not be necessary to come to your aid,” Layton said.

  “Your aid has twice put out the fire,” Branch said.

  “The problem was with the arrangement of the fuel, not my aid,” Layton said.

  The custom of respecting the owner of the brigade ran deeply in all the men, and Branch said nothing, but Ferris could not contain himself.

  “We are all of us shaking from cold because you did not gather enough fuel last night. Now you impede Branch’s progress.”

  “Impede his progress?” Layton said in that airy way of his.

  “Twice you have impeded it,” Ferris said. “If our work was to debauch on Market Street we would ask your advice, which I am sure you would supply with admirable detail. But Branch needs to start a fire with a flint, which he is an expert at, and which you know nothing of, so leave him to his labor.”

  “Starting a fire is hardly labor,” Layton said, and Ferris, under his breath, but audibly, said, “What would you know of that, Layton?”

  Layton turned and looked at Ferris, who looked straight back at him. The men began to scatter and Layton’s hand was already on his Collier when Smith, who had been following all this, exploded out of the deerskin flap of his lodging.

  “Walter Ferris! Hivernant and Man of the Mountains!”

  “At your service,” Ferris said, turning to Smith as he approached.

  “You are so eager to offer advice, perhaps you’d care to trap that little snowbound stream beyond the forks of this drainage. I noticed it has begun to run on the lower portion.”

  Ferris was shaking from the cold as we all were. He had not eaten that day. This drainage was very far and would keep him away until nightfall.

  Ferris turned without a word and departed.

  We had all seen what happened. Layton had kept Branch from starting a fire, and when Ferris pointed out the situation, he was punished for it.

  This began a pattern that repeated itself several times over the next weeks. Layton’s carelessness impeded the brigade. The men covered for Layton with hardly a protest. And only Ferris, the mildest in the brigade, pointed out the injustice. Each time Ferris was punished for resisting Layton’s “managing,” and the discord in the brigade heightened, as all the men sided with Ferris, except Grignon, who whispered to Layton about Ferris’s discontent, further fueling Layton’s suspicion that Ferris rallied the men against him. Layton rewarded Grignon’s wheedling by sending him to the richest drainages, which annoyed the men even further, as Grignon was notoriously lazy and the worst trapper on the brigade, and these fertile creeks and streams were wasted on him.

  And so, very quickly, the brigade, which had been well ordered and content up to that point, began to simmer with resentment. At the time I thought that Layton’s distemper blinded him to the discord he was sowing. Now I believe that Layton riled the men purposefully, out of boredom and perverseness. He was one of those men who work excessively to prepare for success and worthwhile ventures and then sabotage their own creations in a self-destructive impulse. I have seen this a few times in other men, though never as strongly as I saw it in Layton that spring season. I cannot say I know the source of this impulse—perhaps it was due to a coddled upbringing or a contentious relationship with his father or an inbred sense of utter superiority to all men and labor—but I can say for certain that Layton overtly and insanely courted disaster that spring. And it was not only his father’s fortune that he risked, but both Ferris’s and my own.

  And yet—and this is strange—I still believed Layton meant well. I believe he was proud of having arranged the brigade and the fortune we were gathering. He was not like Grignon, who was simply a blackguard. Layton had many fine and noble qualities, but these qualities were at times completely swamped by impatience, suspicion, and irritability.

  The essence of the situation was that Layton had done a fine job arranging for us to trap in fertile land, but he needed to hold his tongue and let the men do the job for which they had been hired. But holding his tongue seemed the thing Layton was least capable of doing.

  This was the situation in that spring of 1828. Layton and Ferris feuded daily. The men sided with Ferris, and discontent in the brigade grew. I looked for a time to speak to Layton privately, to advise him to moderate his tongue, but he was so constantly nervous and short-tempered and irritable that it was a full month before I found a moment to speak with him.

  • • •

  A windy day of low gray clouds, and Layton and I were scouting a steep-walled valley when we came across a path of shattered, crisscrossed tree trunks that went all the way up to the tree line. At the base of the cleared path we found a fifteen-foot pile of rock- and wood-filled snow, the remains from an avalanche. Protruding from the snow we saw the head of a wolf with a hare clamped in its jaws. The wolf and hare were partially uncovered from the ice by the spring thaw. Layton examined this oddity, imagining the wolf had been chasing the hare and set off the avalanche and they had both been caught by it. Diverted by this peculiarity, Layton’s bristling imperiousness lowered for a moment, and I said, “Layton, I must speak to you.”

  “Then do it clearly, without mewling around it,” he said.

  “You need to be more careful in how you treat the men.”

  “I was careful in choosing them so I do not have to be careful how I speak to them. Do they demand I uphold proper etiquette?”

  “They demand you treat them as men and not as servants,” I said.

  “They are employees of this company of which I am majority owner. It is their job to accept the treatment I choose to give them. These are the richest drainages in the mountains, just as I said they would be. And it is me who has secured them for the good of all. The men ought to be grateful for what I’ve done, not complain of it.”

  I had to bite my tongue before I spoke.

  “We are all pleased with the richness of these slopes,” I said. “But despite the fertility of the land the men won’t accept unwarranted submission.”

  “Who is it complaining? Tell me. Is it Ferris?”

  “I know of no complaint, and particularly not from Ferris, who would never complain overtly about any hardship. If you think that he complains of hardship you do not know him. He does speak openly of injustices and you punish him for it. If you continue in this manner, particularly in punishing those who speak up when it is warranted, we will lose our investment and all our labor will come to nothing.”

  He was quiet for a moment. In the silence I could hear the roar from a distant waterfall in that vast, snow-rimmed valley.

  “In what way will we lose our investment?” he asked.

  “By someone putting a ball in your back and the entire brigade scattering into the mountains with the pelts.”

  “A ball in my back?” he said in that imperious manner. “It would be the height of ingratitude and stupidity. I am their captain and we stand to make a fortune.”

  “The men care for riches, as we all do, but not at the cost of servitude. They are not footmen and carriage drivers, Layton. If you continue to treat th
em in the present manner they will forgo riches for the satisfaction of dumping your body in some drainage and taking the furs they have gathered to market themselves. You must hold your tongue.”

  By Layton’s reaction I could tell the possibility of them putting a ball in his back had never occurred to him. I think it most likely that Layton was so filled with his own mental turmoil that the men in the brigade did not register to him at all as actual living, breathing creatures. I had noted this dismissive quality in other men of the upper class, both British and American, though never so baldly or unashamedly as I saw it in Layton that month.

  He paused, and after a moment he recovered himself and said, “If the men mean to mutiny I will sniff out their intentions and blast them before they blast me. My suspicions begin with Ferris. Thank you for warning me.”

  “I warned you to prevent confrontation, not promote it. Ferris is an owner, and is as unlikely to mutiny as you or I. It is injustice he cannot tolerate.”

  Layton ignored my words. He mounted his horse.

  “If Ferris means to cause disruption he will feel my lash.”

  Layton dashed off and in the days afterward he was, if anything, more high-toned, irritable, and impatient, particularly with Ferris, which irked the men like nothing else.

  The fortunes of the company seemed to depend on Layton considering the sentiments of the men who were employed by him, but as far as I could tell considering the sentiments of the men was the thing Layton was least likely to do.

  It was a week later and Layton, Ferris, and I were on some high, slaty slopes when we came in sight of a large bear just as it slipped behind a tiny green shrub. We stopped at fifty yards, aimed our weapons at the shrub, and waited. We had run low on provisions other than beaver and that bear represented the first real meal in days. Minutes passed, and the bear did not appear again, though the shrub was hardly larger than the bear itself.

  We were on a wide-open, treeless slope completely covered with black rocks with pinkish-colored lichen on the flat sides. The rocks were mostly plate-size and very loose, so every step, no matter how gentle, was accompanied by the clattering and sliding and skidding and tumbling of these rocks. Far below there were trees and the silent white froth of a distant torrent. Overhead, at the top of the slope, there were pine trees growing straight out of crags in the rock. But on the slope directly in front of us there were only a few scraggly thornbushes growing up here or there, and that vast plain of loose, flattened, plate-size rocks. It was an absolutely barren landscape. There was no possible chance the bear could have escaped from behind that lone shrub without our notice. We waited. The bear did not come out from behind the shrub. After ten minutes Layton motioned impatiently and took a step forward.

  “Will we waste the day idling? Which of you is not afraid to join me?”

  “We are both afraid to join you,” Ferris said. “That is one of the great bears. What the men call white bears. Do you know what the natives do when they see a white bear?”

  “I am sure you are going to educate me,” Layton said.

  “They go the other way.”

  “Well, I am not a native,” Layton said. “I am an American from St. Louis and we are three men armed with long guns.”

  “Which will do little if the bear comes at us,” Ferris said. “There is no way to stop the white bears once they are enraged.”

  “A well-placed blast will stop them.”

  “Perfectly placed,” Ferris said.

  “I was under the impression you had a fine shot,” Layton said.

  Ferris began replacing the powder in his pan. “It is adequate,” he said.

  “He has the finest shot in the brigade, if not in the mountains,” I said.

  “Then his mettle is not so great as his aim,” Layton said triumphantly. “Perhaps if it were a contest to sketch the beast you would win that.”

  Ferris finished with his horn and capped it.

  “If we must approach the shrub we should spread out and keep a distance. And if the bear charges, fire at the nose. If you aim higher the bullet will deflect off the skull. If you have a view of the flank fire at the shoulder to incapacitate it.”

  “Wyeth?” Layton said.

  “It is foolish to get much closer,” I said. “But I will move with the rest.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Layton stepped straight toward the shrub. There was a sharp clattering of rocks, as it was impossible to move furtively across that broken-up landscape. At each moment we expected the bear to burst from the shrub, but it did not, and as we neared we saw that at the back end of the ledge on which the shrub grew there was the opening to a cave. At first I thought it was only a grotto, but as I neared I felt the cool exhalation of moist, musty air. I saw the green plants all around the cave mouth. Layton stepped closer and peered into the darkness.

  “We could fire into it,” Layton said.

  “And if we managed to kill the beast, then what?” Ferris said. “Who’ll go in after it? You? Why don’t we just drop you in on a rope?”

  “You can mock,” Layton said. “But I do not give up so easily as you. Perhaps we can dislodge the beast.”

  “It is not a shallow cave,” I said.

  “You don’t know that,” Layton said.

  “I do know it,” I said. “I can hear the distant grumbling of the beast and feel the exhalation of air. See the liverworts.”

  “The what?”

  “The plants around the mouth. That is a large cavern that breathes.”

  Layton tilted his head and looked at the fernlike plants around the mouth of the cave. He felt the cool, steady stream of moist air. He set his rifle on top of a flat rock and found a stone the size of a teacup, lifted it, walked to the opening, and carelessly tossed the rock inside. We heard the rock rattling and clattering inside, the sound echoing out of the black mouth, growing fainter and fainter and then … Thump! It hit something. A loud huffing and growling drifted out.

  It was indeed a deep cavern.

  Ferris skipped some distance away, holding his rifle pointed toward the cave’s mouth. Layton stood right near the darkness, peering in. We all waited. The growling faded.

  “Wonderfully idiotic,” Ferris said, after a long while.

  “I am attempting to gather sustenance for the entire brigade,” Layton said. “If we dislodge the beast we can each put a ball in it. That will undoubtedly stop it. Are you afraid?”

  “Yes,” Ferris said.

  “I am not so timid as you,” Layton said.

  “You are magnificently more foolish,” Ferris muttered.

  Layton turned to me. “Are we trappers or are we sitting at the kiddie table at the cotillion? My God.”

  Ferris checked his rifle again and took a few more steps away from the mouth of the cave and positioned himself so he had a clear shot. I had backed up and positioned myself on the uphill side some distance from Ferris. Layton glanced back at Ferris derisively, as he had positioned himself farther than the rest of us.

  “I see you have found a suitable position for yourself,” Layton said to Ferris.

  “He need not be so close as his shot is more accurate,” I said.

  “So he says,” Layton jeered.

  Ferris said nothing to Layton’s taunts, but I could see he trembled with barely contained irritation. He lay his pistol on a rock and aimed his rifle at the cave. Layton stayed at the mouth of the cave. He picked up his rifle and checked it. Then set it back on a flat rock and looked around the slaty landscape until he found a boulder larger than his head. He lifted it.

  “You boys ready?”

  “You know this is a bad idea,” I said to Layton.

  “I know we need sustenance. And I am not weak-kneed like some of the men in this brigade. I do what is necessary.”

  Layton duckwalked with the boulder to the mouth of the cave. He set the rock down in a mincing, self-righteous manner that anyone would have found irritating. He brought his rifle closer to him. He chec
ked the powder one more time. Then he gripped the stone and checked to make sure we were in position and stepped to the mouth of the cave. He heaved.

  The rock tumbled and rattled inside the mountain and then … Thump! It hit something. A guttural roar arose from the cave mouth. A mad thrashing of rocks. Layton had hardly reached his rifle when the bear exploded outward and tore straight through the small shrub. It was a very large bear and in its fury it passed right by Layton, spinning him to the ground. The great beast lumbered toward Ferris, who fired. The bullet struck the beast’s right shoulder and knocked it back, but it was up in a moment. Ferris fired his pistol. The beast was struck in the other shoulder but hardly paused. I fired and struck the beast in the neck. It reared and turned on me, but after an instant turned back on Ferris who was reaching for his knife, but too late. The bear swatted at Ferris who was knocked back as if he’d been made of straw. In an instant the bear was on top of Ferris and opened it’s great jaws and—BANG—I fired with my pistol.

  I had not braced myself and both of my hands struck my forehead. I stumbled backward. When I recovered I saw the beast still straddling Ferris. It raised one great paw. The claws were as thick as my finger and curled downward toward Ferris’s face. It lowered the paw gently so the tips of the claws tapped faintly on the rock. A drop of blood fell from its mouth onto Ferris’s cheek and then the thing tumbled sideways and rolled a few times down the slope and came to a rest with a clattering of rocks. Ferris leaped up, wild-eyed. Layton was standing near the cave mouth holding his rifle. I do not think he had ever seen a great bear up close. He had not understood that they are not at all the same creatures as the black bears. Ferris had fired twice and I had fired twice. Layton had his rifle and the repeating Collier but he had not fired at all. After a moment, Layton examined his rifle in a sheepish manner.