Into the Savage Country

by Shannon Burke

  “Misfire. Damnable,” he said in a self-conscious way that was not natural for him. “Wonderfully accurate, Wyeth. Didn’t know you were up to it. I misfired.”

  Layton moved past us and down to the great bear, slowing as he got close to make sure it was dead. I stepped over to Ferris.

  “Are you alive?”

  “I believe I am,” he said. Then, glancing at Layton, “Did he fire?”

  “A misfire,” Layton said again, hearing the question. But his voice shook when he said it. His skin was pale, glistening.

  We all joined in the task of dressing the great beast and hanging the meat we could not carry in the trees. During the whole procedure Layton was diligent, agreeable, and reserved, which was not at all his normal manner. Whether due to a misfire or nerves, his gun had not discharged. At first Ferris and I thought we’d keep the story from the rest of the brigade, knowing how it would be perceived and understanding it would only cause trouble, but Pegleg, who was also hunting at the time, had been high above us on a ridge and seen everything. By that evening everyone had heard about our encounter with the great bear, had heard that Layton did not fire his weapon, and put the worst interpretation on it.

  • • •

  Ferris, Pegleg, Grignon, Branch, Bridger, Glass, and I were sprawled out against our packs in a small enclosure of shrubs. Glass, a silent, taciturn man, the oldest in the brigade, gestured with the nub end of his fleshing bone, and said, “Thinking you want to face Old Ephraim and doing it—ain’t the same thing.”

  “He was afraid,” Ferris said.

  “Wasn’t fear that made him hold his shot,” Grignon said. “The two of you battle daily. So of course he didn’t fire. He set the whole thing up and thought the beast would do his work for him. Anyone else would do the same.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Ferris said.

  “Perhaps not,” Grignon said, looking at the others and grinning. “But I’d hardly take Layton to be such a psalm singer.”

  “He could not have known the beast would charge me,” Ferris said. “Layton is a dandy and an irritating man, but he is not fainthearted. And he would not allow a bear to do his work when a pistol would suffice. He was frightened by the beast into inaction and afterward his vanity would not allow him to admit he’d been afraid.”

  “Aye,” Pegleg said, who, though hard on greenhorns, was slow to believe anything ill of a member of the brigade. “Layton may have been flattened—as we all have been at times—but he did not purposefully withhold fire.”

  “And it may have been a misfire,” Ferris said.

  “You saw the flash?” Glass asked Ferris.

  “The beast’s jaws were six inches from my nose,” Ferris said.

  “Wyeth?”

  “I was firing myself. Layton was behind me. I saw nothing.”

  “You smelled powder?” Pegleg asked.

  Ferris and I were both quiet.

  “We were upwind. I smelled my own powder,” I said.

  “Whether he fired his rifle or not he still had the Collier,” Branch pointed out. “He could have put eight balls into the beast. We’d do better to toss him and take our furs to Flathead Post. At least the Brits are men and not dandies.”

  Flathead Post was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort north and west of the Tetons.

  “Wouldn’t have to go that far,” Grignon said. “HB’s got a brigade on the Snake River. Would be glad to take any American furs.”

  “And aid in the transference of this land to the Brits?” Ferris said. “I’d rather dump my furs in some drainage.”

  “Didn’t know you were such a patriot,” Grignon said. “The rest of us will trade with the highest bidder.”

  Pegleg was stitching a skin into a willow hoop. He motioned with his bone needle.

  “If it was a question of no return or return from the Brits, I’d take the Brits.”

  “Anyone would,” Grignon said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Ferris said again.

  “I wouldn’t either,” Glass said.

  “If we must trade with the Brits, which none of us do willingly, we do it at the season’s end, not at the beginning,” Pegleg said.

  There were nods and murmurs from all except Bridger. He was the youngest in the brigade, the most docile, and gave little thought to disputes in camp. He would go along with the other men.

  “Even if we all decided to scatter, Captain Smith wouldn’t go along,” Ferris said. “We’d have to fight him as well.”

  “Then we put a ball in him along with Layton,” Grignon said, but this was met with scowls from Pegleg and Branch.

  “We will put a ball in your back before we put one in Captain Smith’s,” Glass said. “We will do nothing to Captain Smith. And you won’t, either.”

  “Aye,” Pegleg said.

  “Smith won’t buck once it’s done,” Branch said. “If the man is disposed of and the pelts remain, Smith will arrange matters to sell the pelts. Not happily, but he will do it. And I can assure you he has no love for Layton. But no one will touch Smith unless he wants to face me.”

  “And me,” Glass said.

  “That’s settled,” Pegleg said. “Quiet. Here he comes.”

  Below us we could see Layton riding up the grassy drainage. “We do nothing for now,” Branch said. “We gather the pelts. We wait. Maybe the elements do our work for us.”

  And then Layton was riding into camp.

  Through the entire negotiations I had not spoken. As a part owner of the brigade I was against any mutiny. It would be disastrous financially for me. But if it came to the thing actually happening, I’d be damned if I’d toss my fortune into a river. Ferris could do that. He had a rich father. I’d take my furs to the Brits or attempt to transport them back to St. Louis.

  As Layton arrived at the north end of the encampment, Ferris and I left to saddle our horses on the south end. When we were out of earshot of the others, I said, “Would you really toss your pelts?”

  “What I told them is true,” Ferris said. “I’d not trade with the Brits. Though more likely I’d try to get them back to St. Louis.”

  “As would I,” I said.

  Ferris wrapped his picket in a dirty cloth and stored it in his saddlebag.

  “But blast it, Wyeth. All my fortune is in this company. We must stay together. And Layton must hold his tongue.”

  “He isn’t capable of it, even to save his life.”

  “Well his life is what is at stake,” Ferris said.

  We were silent as Layton was walking near.

  “Hello, Ferris,” Layton called. “You are looking unusually diligent.”

  “Wonderfully pleasant to see you,” Ferris said back.

  Layton strode into camp in a boisterous manner, knowing we’d all been talking about him. Seven men and stony silence greeted him. A moment later we all rode out to check our traps. No one wanted to linger in camp if Layton was there.

  Several weeks passed and there was little change in Layton’s unpleasant manner, but there was a change in the brigade’s organization which improved relations. Noting our extreme discontent, Smith, being a shrewd and able leader, began to send Layton out to set traps like the rest of us. Layton complained at first, saying he did not fund an entire brigade to be a common laborer, but Smith insisted that it was necessary to increase productivity. This change in organization had the effect of connecting Layton to the men in industry and in fatigue as well as in profit, and after a day on the march Layton was, if not more agreeable, at least less able to express his disagreeable qualities as he was half silenced by excessive fatigue, as we all were after fourteen or sixteen hours of wading through icy water and riding from creek to creek.

  A month passed in this way, with Layton learning the art of trapping. Then, in late June, we were riding together as a brigade in the rolling foothills north of the Crow village when we came across three Snake natives stranded on a grassy hilltop. There were two dead horses nearby with packs of pelts still cinched to their bac
ks. The dead horses had halters with the iron rings welded together and unornamented leather like the British used. By the prints there had been many other horses, at least fifteen, some of them shoed. There were no live horses. Up the slope a dead native lay in the tall grass, a piece of his scalp missing and hatcheted below the knee. Smith motioned for Glass and Ferris to scout the area. The rest of us took up defensive positions on the hilltop. Branch walked down the grassy slope and Pegleg followed at some distance with his musket and long gun, though there was little need for this, as the natives seemed utterly defeated.

  Branch knelt next to the closest native, who had an arrow wound in his bicep, and the two conversed for at least a quarter of an hour. Then Branch walked back to where we had secured ourselves on the hilltop and said, “There’s a Hudson’s Bay brigade half a day’s ride to the north. These Snake are employees of that brigade and were sent to trap these mountains.”

  “On Crow land?” Smith asked.

  “On our land,” Branch said. “The Crow have tongues like everyone else. The Brits heard of our bargain and sent the Snake to poach. They were returning when a party of eight Gros Ventre came across them. They have lost their horses and one man is dead. They want transport back to the HBC brigade.”

  “And who leads the brigade?” Smith asked.

  “Captain Pike.”

  Smith held still for a moment, considering this. Sebastian Pike was the most powerful man in the trapping regions, second in the hierarchy of the western arm of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the world’s largest corporation at the time. He was a feared man in all the west, known for his iron will and ill humor.

  “The natives say they’ll pay twenty pelts for the use of horses and an escort,” Branch said. “And we’ll receive Pike’s goodwill for the favor.”

  Smith began to agree to the arrangement, but Layton said, “The British are here on American territory and were too cowardly to try to trap on this land themselves, but sent the Snake natives to do it for them. And now we’ll reward them for their attempted theft by returning their furs to the brigade? No. We will not take twenty pelts. We will take all the furs the Snake gathered. But will spare their lives.”

  “Pike will be displeased,” Smith said.

  “I am not concerned with his state of mind,” Layton said.

  Branch and Pegleg grinned at each other. They had writhed under Layton’s tongue and peevishness enough that it pleased them to think that same quality would be turned on one of their enemies.

  Smith motioned disapprovingly, as there was an unspoken rule of accommodation to anyone in distress no matter which company they worked for. Two years earlier Smith and his entire brigade had been sheltered for a whole winter at Fort Vancouver after trying to poach on the HBC’s territory on the west coast.

  Smith said, “The Brits are weary of giving us sustenance so we can survive to compete with them. They were generous with me two years past. We must be generous in return.”

  “They are on our territory and are poaching on our drainages,” Layton said.

  “As I was on theirs when given hospitality,” Smith said. “I cannot return their hospitality by stealing their furs.”

  “Which they have already stolen from us,” Layton said. “I absolve you from all responsibility. It is not your decision. I am the majority owner of the company. They are on the wrong side of the mountains and they know it. It is true we have had little chance to be generous but also little chance to show our displeasure. They move arrogantly in large brigades and cross into our territory because we can do nothing about it. They squash our livelihood and leave a fur desert behind and then boast that this land will be theirs. I am not so much a gentleman that I am not offended by this policy. We’ll take the British furs but aid the natives by returning them to safety.”

  Smith looked off toward the north and said, “Pike won’t be happy.”

  “I am not in the habit of asking the British permission to make my decisions. Who will accompany me to return the natives to the British encampment?”

  All of us volunteered. No one wanted to miss a confrontation between the St. Louis dandy and the hot-tempered British brigade leader.

  “Good,” Layton said. “Tell the natives the terms. We leave instantly.”

  Branch broke off a piece of pemmican from a sack of provisions, and then another, and then a third. He walked back down the slope and handed each of the three natives a piece of the sustenance, and while they were eating Branch sat near them and made them understand what he offered. They seemed indifferent to the terms as long as they were returned to the brigade. After ten minutes Branch waved for three horses.

  “Ask them what they want to do with the body,” Layton said.

  “I don’t need to ask,” Branch said. “They’re Snake. They leave the body where it fell and don’t touch it.”

  Glass and Bridger stayed with the supplies and the rest of the horses and furs and Layton, Smith, Branch, Ferris, Pegleg, Grignon, and I started north. As we passed the dead native I saw where his body had begun to bloat and decompose with flies buzzing over him, and the leg hatcheted and the bone protruding. We left this body in the grass and rode over rolling hills and through rocky lowlands, heading north.

  The Hudson’s Bay encampment was on the southern bank of a creek we called Big Rock. This was on the plains just north of the Wind River Mountains and it was debatable whether this was American or British territory, as the borders described by the Treaty of 1818 were vague at best and were based on inaccurate maps.

  As we rode, Smith, who was normally the most stolid of riders, was nervy and impatient, barking out orders when it was not necessary to do so. There had been skirmishes between British and American brigades in the past, and the jockeying for position among the brigades had escalated as the land became trapped out and as the stakes for the continuing renegotiation of the Treaty of 1818 became clearly connected to returns from the trapping brigades. We were just about to confiscate half a season’s worth of pelts from three natives commissioned to a brigade run by the second-in-command of the most powerful company in the world. Smith knew that Pike would not be pleased and that John McLoughlin, the administrator for all of North America who had shown him hospitality at Fort Vancouver two years earlier, would hear of his ingratitude. It rankled.

  Layton, on the other hand, was particularly jovial. He detested drudgery and monotony but enjoyed confrontation and battles of any sort. Furthermore, he reveled in any situation that gave vent to his able tongue. We had been on the trail for three months and now there was something to do other than wade through icy water and scrape the pelts. The men responded to Layton’s mood, taking many jibes at the Brits.

  The ride took four hours.

  As we neared the rolling, scrubby grasslands where the British were encamped we saw a hundred sailcloth and native lodges and three hundred horses in a makeshift corral. Layton motioned for the Snake to get off their horses and they did. They did not wait for Layton’s signal but simply walked down the slope toward the native encampment. Smith motioned for Ferris and Pegleg to stay back. They got off their horses and tied them off to a scrubby tree and tied off the three horses the Snake had been riding and positioned themselves in a natural fortification to make a stand if necessary. Layton, Smith, Grignon, Branch, and I rode down to the encampment of clean-shaven Brits and bearded French trappers, and as we neared the encampment Pike emerged from his lodging and spoke briefly with the three natives.

  Sebastian Pike was a brisk, efficient man in his mid-thirties. He had been on the march since he was sixteen and knew the western lands and the life of a trapper like few others. Above all else, he hated American trapping companies. He knew, as we all did, that the struggle over the fur-bearing creatures would likely decide whether that land became American or British, and he knew that in many respects the British had the upper hand. They had superior forts, superior supply lines, and superior support from their government. I am sure he felt they had superior men a
s well. The British were ordered and hierarchical, and the Americans were impulsive and scattered. But America was closer to the trapping lands, and the waves of Americans willing to risk their lives for profit must have seemed endless.

  Still, it was undoubtedly true that the large Hudson’s Bay expeditions led by Pike were the most powerful force in the mountains. It was rare that a trapper defied him openly, as Pike’s word was law beyond the Missouri.

  When Pike heard the terms of the native’s rescue he stood in place for a moment, then turned briskly and strode toward us.

  “Smith! Jedediah Smith! You have stolen two packs of high-quality beaver and muskrat that belong to the Hudson’s Bay Company and the British Crown.”

  Smith blanched and Layton moved his bay forward.

  “They belonged to those three Snake Indians,” Layton said. “Our agreement was with them. If they broke their agreement with you, then that is not our worry.”

  “Whoever you are, you have stolen British property, you have had the gall to come into my camp and do it, and you have trespassed on British territory.”

  “You’re east of the mountains.”

  “I’m east of these mountains. But west of others.” Pike turned on Smith. “Smith, speak. You wintered with us two years past and were given every convenience, including the generous offer to lead a brigade. You foolishly refused and were released in the spring to return to your country. Now you have chosen to repay our generosity by stealing from these natives who are our employees.”

  Smith would have given much, I think, to say he had argued against taking all the furs.

  “I have taken a leave from the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and am here only as a scout and captain for the Market Street Fur Company.”

  “The what?”

  “The Market Street Fur Company.”

  “It’s my company,” Layton said. “I am captain and owner of the brigade.”

  “Well that at least explains your impertinence, if not your audacity. What is the name of the company again?”

  “The Market Street Fur Company. Based on Market Street in St. Louis. And it is owned by me and several others in the brigade. Smith is our captain and scout.”