“Heyoka?”
“No, not Heyoka,” Hugh said. “Esau.” Then Hugh added, “Reed, put on the pot. Tomorrow I catch me a boat for Fort Atkinson. I’ve been saved special again.”
7
“GEN’RAL, MY MIND’S made up. You’re not going to talk me out of gettin’ Fitz next time I see him.” Hugh banged a big hairy fist on a buckskin knee. “That’s my right.”
“‘Right’? ‘Rights’?” General Ashley exclaimed, mild blue eyes suddenly snapping blue sparks. “The only rights you have are those I allowed you when I hired you.”
The two were sitting alone in the officers’ brick quarters in the center of Ft. Atkinson. It was almost noon, and the sun coming in through the oiled paper which did for glass panes gave both their wrinkled brows a lardlike texture. It was also very hot and sultry out, and both men were sweating profusely. The general’s blue Missouri state militia uniform was blotched with black rings, especially under the armpits, while Hugh’s yellowbrown leathers were spotted with acid-edged dark brown rings. Ashley sat on the forward edge of a four-legged handhewn chair, facing Hugh, who also sat on the forward edge of a chair. Beside them on a table was a half-empty bottle of whisky and two tin cups still partly filled.
Hugh raised his white head as if he were a predator grizzly about to jump Ashley. “Then I quit your consarn. Here and now. So I can take that right.”
“But why?”
“Because I’ve a right to it.”
Outside a mule brayed on the parade ground.
“But why? Are you God or something?”
“No, not quite God. But I’ve had sign He saved me special to get Fitz.”
“Oh that’s nonsense. Preacher’s rubbish.”
Again Hugh lifted his bushy white head as if he were about to tear into Ashley. “Gen’ral, out here in the middle of nowhere, full of red devils and varmints, mountain-man code says I’ve got that right.”
“Wait, wait, Hugh!” Ashley held up a slim soft hand, blond face an anxious red and kind mild blue eyes crinkled with worry. Ashley moved forward to the very edge of his teetery chair. “Hugh, I know just how you feel—”
“Gen’ral, you’re a liar. You don’t know how I feel. Because if you did you’d take my part.” Hugh picked up his tin cup from the log table, and angrily swilled the brown liquor in it around a few times, and finished it off in a single throw.
Ashley jerked upright, sat back in his chair. “I’m a what?” A quick shrewd look passed over his blond face. “So you’ve quit my concern, eh? All right. If you’ve quit, then I’m turning you over to General Leavenworth of the U.S. Army.”
Hugh sat risen with whisky and hate. He hadn’t wanted to talk to Ashley, knowing what Ashley would say. But Ashley had insisted, promising Hugh good whisky as well as some back pay due him, and so Hugh had consented. Hugh knew that Ashley would use every means in his power to block his vengeance.
A mule brayed outside on the parade ground.
Hugh set his empty tin cup on the table. He sat twisting his wolfskin cap around and around on his buckskin-covered knee. The white whiskers around his mouth moved as he ground his teeth together. His restless old gray eyes glowered stubborn at Ashley. Hugh knew what he was up against. Either a man belonged to a fur-trading firm or the U.S. Army had control of his movements. No unattached white man could hang around or travel in Indian territory unless he had a permit. If he killed Fitz as a member of Ashley’s firm, Ashley would punish him. If he killed Fitz as a ward of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army would punish him. Hugh cursed inwardly. He boiled at the thought of Ashley sitting in his way. Inwardly he railed at the whole business of interference by the settlements of the East and their laws. Until the big fur companies and the Army had moved in, he and his companyeros, the free trappers, had been free to render right as they saw fit, according to horse sense and the code of the free wild. Hugh wished now he hadn’t shown up at Ft. Atkinson. Fitz hadn’t been there when he arrived, and ever since everything and everybody had worked to forestall his and the Lord’s vengeance. And rumor even had it that Fitz wouldn’t be around until late in the summer, when he was expected to come in with the spring catch of beaver from both Captain Diah Smith and Major Henry. It meant a whole hot summer of lying around doing nothing. And yet, where else was he sure of catching up with Fitz but at Ft. Atkinson? He was trapped, blocked, crossed all around.
“Hugh,” General Ashley said, softening his voice and putting a soft small hand in friendly fashion on Hugh’s leather-covered knee, “Hugh, like I’ve said before, why don’t you go back up to Fort Kiowa? You’ll be happier up there with Reed and hunting for the fort. And along with that you’ve got my proposition.”
“What proposition?” Hugh snapped, brushing the general’s white hand aside. “That I spy on Astor’s boys for you? Not this child. I wasn’t meant for such skunk’s work.”
General Ashley flushed. “I’ll make it worth your while, Hugh.”
A great snort exploded from Hugh. “Hire Fitz for such work, why don’t you? He’s the kind of sneak who’d do a good job for you.”
General Ashley flushed very red and fresh beads of sweat broke out all over his fairskinned face. “Hugh, you’ve got Fitz all wrong. I don’t know just what did happen on the forks of the Grand, but I’m sure Fitz must have his side of the story too.”
“Gen’ral, are you callin’ this child a liar?”
“No, no. Not that at all. Just that I can’t conceive of Fitz doing such a thing. Not my Fitz. Why Fitz’s been like a rock to me. Without him and a couple of others I can name, like Diah and the major and Tom Fitzpatrick and the lad Jim Bridger, I don’t know what I would have done. The whole concern would have flopped long ago without them. Fitz all alone brought in an important message from the major at Henry’s Post on the Yellowstone and Missouri. Then last winter Fitz brought another message from Diah, south of the Big Horn, to the major, north of the Big Horns. And still later he brought me still another very important message from the major, all the way from the Big Horns there to me here on the Missouri. And then, mind you, and then he turned right around and offered to lead a pack train back to the Wind River Mountains for the rendezvous which the boys are probably holding right now this very minute.” General Ashley shook his head slowly, tollingly. His blond hair slid forward out of its smooth combing. “And then, there’s all that book work Fitz does for me. Untangling accounts I just can’t make head nor tail of. And that makes Fitz doubly valuable to me. He’s a first-rate mountain man plus being a first-rate bookkeeper.” General Ashley took out a big white linen handkerchief and mopped his brow. “No, Hugh, Fitz’s been a rock to me. Simply a rock. And all I can say is, he must’ve had his reasons for doing what he did on the Grand. And I’m standing by him.”
Hugh sat stubborn, swollen. Hugh hated the mention of Fitz’s proficiency as a bookkeeper. He begrudged Fitz his education. “Why did he lie to the major then, Gen’ral, if he was so smart and had such a good reason to leave me die alone?”
“Oh, now, Hugh, be the bigger man in this. Maybe Fitz did make a slight mistake there on the Grand, but—”
“‘Slight mistake’? Fitz left me to die alone, and you call that a slight mistake?” Hugh exploded, white brows lifted, eyes wild.
“I mean,” General Ashley hastily added, “I mean, a man’s allowed—”
“He deserted me, Gen’ral, and this child ain’t forgettin’ it. I’m killin’ him on sight.”
General Ashley sat very still in his chair. “After all, Hugh,” he began slowly, “after all, Hugh, you left the party against orders when you went hunting lone. It was really your own neck after that. Everybody knew that. And certainly Fitz did. It was more or less your own fault when you got mauled by the grizzly.”
Hugh burned. The mahogany color of the skin over his cheeks turned black. “Suppose I did disobey orders, Gen’ral? Does that excuse a man for desertin’ a companyero? When the night before the same companyero covered up for him when he and Jim slep
t on watch?”
General Ashley’s mild blue eyes opened very wide. “He and Jim slept on guard?”
“Yes they did. And I covered for ‘em. There was no harm done, not much anyway, and so I did it. You know what the major would have done had he caught ‘em.”
General Ashley gave Hugh a long searching look. Slowly he shook his head. “Then maybe you’re doubly to fault.”
“How so?”
“You should have turned them in. Another mistake like that and it might have cost you all your lives.” Ashley shuddered at the thought of it.
“But it didn’t, Gen’ral. And Fitz and Jim owed me that much at least.”
Ashley sighed. He picked up the bottle of whisky and refilled their tin cups. “Hugh, have another on me.”
“Thanks. I will.”
They both drank up.
A mule brayed lonesomely out on the fort’s parade ground.
Ashley licked his lips. He looked at Hugh soberly for a while; finally said, “Hugh, when are you going to shave off those whiskers?”
“When my beard turns black again.”
“Hugh. Hugh. What a stubborn mule you are. With that bush of white grampa bristle should also go the wisdom of a grampa. Hugh, act the forgiving granpappy to the boys. You came out of it alive. So what do you care?”
“And forget how I woke up lookin’ at buzzards? Forget what it felt like looking at my own open grave? Forget how I burned and suffered crawlin’ back to Fort Kiowa? Forget that Fitz stole my gun and flint and steel and knife from me? Forget how he deserted me and left me to die the hard way? Forget all that?” Hugh leaped to his feet. The little arteries down either side of his nose ran deep red. He towered massive and grizzly over gentle, mild General Ashley. “Gen’ral, what in tarnation are you askin’ this child to do? Give up everythin’ he is?” Hugh slapped his huge chest. “Gen’ral, this hoss has feelin’s here!”
General Ashley’s mild blue eyes held up to Hugh. “Hugh, those feelings you say you have, are they nothing but hate?”
“What?”
“Don’t you have any feelings of kindness to go along with those feelings of hate? You have no forgiveness in you at all? You’ve never made a mistake you couldn’t help?”
Hugh’s eyes opened very wide. Hugh remembered a mistake he couldn’t help all right. There was that time when he’d been a one-bite cannibal with companyero Clint. But Hugh pushed the memory down. And instead he said, “Gen’ral the trouble with you is, you didn’t crawl from the forks of the Grand to Fort Kiowa like I did.”
“Hugh, it’s too bad you never had boys of your own. Then you might have been more tolerant. Like a good father should be. Who’d know his boys were bound to get into some kind of trouble sooner or later.”
Then Hugh also abruptly remembered the two sons he’d deserted back in Lancaster—and, trembling, shut up.
General Ashley stood up slowly. He pulled down the coat of his blue uniform. The gold braid on his shoulders gleamed dully. “Hugh, I saw men die. My men. And what did they die for? For me. For me and my money. Just money, just me. I’ll never forget that. Not till my dying day. My conscience is heavy with it. That’s why I’m trying to save all the life I can. Fitz’s life. Your life. The lives of all my men.”
Hugh swelled with an involuntary deep breath. The tremendous breath made him dizzy and he almost fell over. A pain like a heart attack exploded in his chest again.
Hugh righted himself by gripping the back of his handhewn chair. He checked a terrible impulse to pick up the chair and hit the general with it.
Suddenly he turned and clapped on his wolfskin and picked up his rifle standing at the door and went out.
Again a mule brayed out on the fort’s parade ground.
Fort Atkinson was the largest military outpost on the Missouri north of St. Louis. It had been built on a high flat bench on the west side of the river. The north end of the high flat bench squared off into a cliff known as Council Bluff. The whole bench afforded a commanding view of the river.
The location was strategic both commercially and militarily. It was at Council Bluff where the Omaha and the Pawnee and the Dakota tribes already in old times met in council to settle their differences or to declare war, and where Lewis and Clark conferred with various Indian tribes early in the century. It was at the fort that General Leavenworth got the news of Ashley’s defeat at the hands of the Rees on the Missouri just above the Grand. It was at the fort that trappers and hunters got their last provisions before striking out into the unknown, either north up the river or west to where the Platte came in from the Rockies.
The flat bench fell off sharply into cliffs on three sides: on the east directly into the sudsing tan waters of the Missouri, and on the south and the west into a draw called Hook’s Hollow. The steep cliffs, along with a stockade across the north end, made the fort impregnable to all Indian attack.
A wagon way led up from the dock on the rushing Missouri, climbing up toward the southeast corner of the flat bench, going past a blacksmith shop and lime kiln on the right and a brickyard and the mouth of Hook’s Hollow on the left. The wagon way headed directly for the gate between a commission house and a long soldiers’ barracks, and once up on level ground, curved past a well, a flagstaff, the brick officers’ quarters, crossed the parade ground, and ended in front of the cookhouse on the west side. The cookhouse and more soldiers’ barracks formed a fine defensive angle on the northwest corner of the parade ground, and the artillery barracks and a hospital formed another excellent defensive angle on the northeast. Beyond to the north were the stables, and then came the stockade. The fort even boasted a school for the officers’ children, and a library for the studious, and a confectionery for the sweettooths.
A mile to the west the land lifted into a considerable ridge, from which reared a flagpole above a lookout. From the lookout tower a sentinel could see many miles in any direction: west out to the endless flat tableland prairies along the banks of the Platte, north out to where the rushing tan Missouri came doubling and redoubling out of bluff-ruffled gray loess terrain, east out to where rolling loess lay cut by raveling streams, and south out to where the Missouri pushed relentlessly through more bluff-rimpled valleys.
The late June sun struck straight down into the fort. There were no shadows along the north sides of the whitewashed brick buildings. Grass had long ago dried to wisps. A faint haze of dust hung in the heat-simmering air. A company of blue-clad riflemen drilled on the center parade ground, the silver shako plates on their high bell-crowned leather caps glittering in the sun. Near the cookhouse, carters were busy hollering and hawing at stubborn ringtail mules. Near the stables, fox-eyed traders were swopping for both the joy of it and for a living. Between the soldiers’ barracks and the cookhouse on the southwest corner, hunters came in through the open gate carrying limp carcasses of elk and deer and wild fowl. Trappers in greasy leathers and pulldown hats argued over traps and pelts. Solemn Indians watched everything that moved, with sun-narrowed glittering dark eyes. The fort was a perfumery of various hide smells, beaver and elk and deer and buffalo and bear; and a color fair of buckskin browns and yellows and warpaint greens and vermilions and soldier blues and silvers and flannel reds and jean blues and boot browns; and a soundfest of men bragging and swearing and mules braying and hinnying and horses blowing and stamping and dogs barking and roaring.
Outside the fort, below the southeast corner of the drop-off, like ants busily scratching in and out of mounds, men scurried back and forth from lime kiln to brickyard to lime kiln again. Still others hurried like ants in and out of sawmills and rock quarries and grist mills, intent on doing yesterday’s and tomorrow’s work today.
It was into this lively hurlyburly that Hugh stepped when he left General Ashley in the officers’ quarters. The sight and the smell of it made him feel both savage and weary.
He stopped on the bottom step, a halved log, and inwardly growled at it. What was the good of it, the bustle and the doings, as l
ong as he hadn’t gotten his rights? The general had given him some back pay, had outfitted him with a second-hand rifle and an old mule, and had fixed him up with a job hunting for the fort; but such things were trifles as long as he hadn’t squared accounts with Fitz, and the lad Jim who still had his life on loan to him.
It made Hugh burn all the more to learn that Fitz had taken over his friend and favorite, Old Bullthrower his rifle, and his companyero of the trails, Old Blue. The nerve of the skunk almost made Hugh jump for rage. Ae, Fitz would get his all right, all right, come time he showed his face in the fort.
Hugh let out a great blast of breath. “If that snake Fitz was standing here in front of me right now, I’d centershoot him on the spot, and then go to my bunk and have myself a long restful sleep. I would.”
Hugh let out another breath, and then headed for his old mule. He walked past a group of keelboatmen just in from St. Louis playing euchre and seven-up, around a quintet of bareskinned Omaha bucks playing a game of hand on the bare parade ground, and at last came to the hitching posts near the southwest gate beside the soldiers’ barracks where his old mousegray mule, Heyoka, drooped sleeping on her feet.
“Hep-a! Heyoka, ol’ girl!” Hugh said, slapping the contrary old bag of bones on the rump, “hep-a! We’d best mosey on, ol’ skate, and get us some more meat, or the gen’ral’ll pasture us both out to the wolves.” At the clap on her rump, the old mule woke up and automatically lashed out with a flicking, surprisingly swift rear hoof. The hoof missed Hugh because, like always, he allowed for it. “Still up to your old tricks, eh?” Hugh gave the old skeleton another clap, hit her mangy mousegray fur so hard he raised skin dust and dandruff. Old Heyoka’s deer head came up, her huge jack-rabbit ears lay back as if set to run, and her roached mane shivered and rippled nervously. This time, instead of lashing out with a hoof again, she suddenly reared up, snapped her hitching strap, and was free.
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