That was all. She always seemed to know where he was, what he was thinking, and what he needed. The still night air, the stars, had schooled him in nothing, and he would await the day.
The next morning he found Ogden touring the great encampment. HBC men usually showed up at the Yank rendezvous and were welcomed heartily, with much joking and raffish humor, for they were all white men in wilderness, even if they all competed ruthlessly. That Ogden was collecting information, counting trappers, counting bales of plews, examining prices in the canvas-sheltered RMFC store, and perhaps trying to entice a few free trappers to take their trade elsewhere, didn’t really matter. Bourgeois and trapper alike gabbed with the Englishmen or their Creole employees, and made friends. In the wilds, a friend could be the most precious of all assets.
Ogden, it turned out, had made his own camp with two French Canadians, settling rather closer to the American Fur Company outfit than to the Rocky Mountain partners and their brigades. Now, with the sun lapping up the slopes, breezes danced the breakfast smoke up and away, and filled the camp with that heady scent of pine forest, wilderness, meat, and coffee. It was a fine, hearty smell that stirred something in Barnaby Skye.
Ogden turned to him. “How are you faring this fine morning, Mister Skye?”
Skye grunted a noncommital response.
“Is there anything you wish to know, or which I can do?”
Ogden lifted a blue-enameled pot and poured tea into a tin cup and handed it to Skye, who sipped it gingerly. Skye had rarely had tea since his abduction from England. He wasn’t sure he liked it after years of coffee.
“Mr. Ogden, there’s a heap of things to think about.”
Ogden nodded, but remained silent. Ogden was a realist who knew how easily he could drive Skye away.
“Suppose I go to London, get my name cleared, see my family, and ship back to York Factory, and out here. How long would HBC require me to stay in its employ?”
“Some considerable while, Mister Skye. The company would go to great expense to clear you, and would expect a quid pro quo.”
“Suppose I don’t go to England.”
“We would be pleased to employ you in any case, but as a trapper at one of our outposts.”
“Is there danger in that?”
“Considerable. Governor George Simpson, for one, sits on his throne, wondering how to clap you in irons and turn you over to the next royal frigate that makes port. And we are visited frequently, both in Hudson’s Bay and at Vancouver, by the Royal Navy. And there probably would be those in the company eager to betray you. The navy’s ten-pound reward for your capture still stands.”
That was forthright. Peter Skene Ogden didn’t waffle or conceal.
“I am a married man, Mr. Ogden. Victoria isn’t merely a mountain wife, but my chosen mate.”
“John McLoughlin feels exactly as you do, Mister Skye. Marguerite, his part-Indian wife, is his mate and helpmeet, and she’s devoted herself to his comforts. She’s not particularly distinguishable from white women after many years as the mistress of his hearth.”
“Victoria does not wish to be a white woman. She thinks white women are hopeless. Far from trying to become a white woman, she teaches me Absaroka ways and expects me to become her own white Crow.”
Ogden smiled. “The company respects such arrangements. Or, again, McLoughlin does. I can’t say the same for George Simpson, or for the Anglican clerics they ship out here to enlighten us. That is something you’d have to deal with.”
“Would the company finance Victoria’s passage to and from England?”
Ogden paused. “Yes, I imagine, if there is genuine commitment on your part. Hudson’s Bay is not a charitable society, and wishes to make a profit from its arrangements.”
“Five years?”
“Seven. Five is not enough for the investment in you.”
“And if matters don’t work out, then what?”
“You would be bound for your indentured term.”
“With no possibility of buying myself out?”
“I won’t ask where you’d find the means.”
“Victoria, mate. She works furiously and produces the finest tanned skins and trapper clothes anyone could ask for.”
Ogden studied Skye’s rabbit-trimmed shirt, leggings, and moccasins. “It’s often said that Skye is the best-turned-out man in the mountains. Well, talk to McLoughlin. I imagine he would permit a buyout provision in your contract.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Skye muttered.
“Talk with John McLoughlin. It’s a long trip, but well worth it. You don’t need to commit. From the looks of things here, everything is unstable. More Yank outfits, free trappers, Bonneville, Wyeth, American Fur Company. This might be your moment to go for the highest bidder. HBC’s going to bid high, Mister Skye, not only with a good salary but with your freedom, your honor, your good name, and a future in England. You’re an Englishman. You’re an Anglican.”
“I’m a drunk.”
Ogden laughed. “So are we all, at rendezvous, until the jugs run dry.”
“I’ll think on it, mate,” said Skye.
Skye left the brigade leader and wandered through the vast encampment, feeling at home on these grassy flats beneath the Tetons. This was his ground, his people, his weather. This was near the land of his wife.
He discovered that the American Fur packtrain had arrived from the Missouri River, and that AFC men were swiftly setting up shop. He wandered through Nat Wyeth’s camp, set up on a military model, everything as rectangular and right-angled as the orderly New England mind could make it. Its contrast to the anarchy of the rest of the camp amused him. Wyeth’s bivouac had been the talk of the tribes.
He headed back to his lodge, where Victoria was patiently mending Gabe Bridger’s moccasins while he squatted beside her and told crazy stories.
It was morning, but Skye was wandering through the dark.
five
Skye had never felt so torn. Through the mists he saw his father beckoning him urgently, and his sister reaching out. Not since he had been a pressed seaman had the urge to go home risen so strong in him. Something stirred within: he was an Englishman, born to the Island Kingdom, his soul a part of the bone and sinew and soul of his people. He could clear his name, reunite with his family, rejoice to be among his proud people.
But his friends were here, and this land beneath his boots was his, and his woman belonged on this soil, not across the salt sea. He could take her there, but her tears would flood their union.
He knew himself to be one of the most daring breed of men ever born. These mountaineers about him were masters of the wilds, and he admired each of them. They included him among them but he felt like a poor imitation of the likes of Bridger and Meek and Fitzpatrick and the Sublettes. There was, in these awesome fastnesses, a brotherhood forged from danger and joy.
These men were so isolated that most of the world’s news never reached their ears. They could survive, even if the fragile supply lines back to civilization were snapped in two. They could endure, even when all the furies of nature were unloosed on them. And they had made him one of them, given him his diploma, magna cum laude. He lived in a small male society where greenhorns approached him with respect and begged advice from him, where veterans slapped him on the back and welcomed him to their campfires. They had saved his life more times than he could remember, and he had rescued so many of them that the bonds they had forged would last as long as they lived.
It hadn’t all been pleasant. This extreme life had drawn the misfits and scoundrels, the ones who could not endure ordinary society, the mad, and angry, the desolate, the wounded.
He’d had his fill of trappers who ragged him about the condition of the camps, challenged him to absurd contests, mocked his Englishness, hated him just because he existed, or because he didn’t cuss, or because he spoke the true tongue of the English. The mountain men were a vicious breed, and he hoped no one back in the States would eve
r romanticize them or their squalid, desperate lives.
But on a summer’s eve, when the woodsmoke tinted the air with joy, and the tall tales began, and a generous jug found its way around the circle, he knew these men were his brothers, and he was their brother, and this hardy band was his one and only nation.
Thus did he pass a morning in anguish, his glance occasionally falling upon the great men gathered under that brush arbor beneath the wilting cottonwood leaves that shadowed them. This rendezvous was different. Three companies in the field, plus a large and organized band of independent trappers. And they were talking to one another. Who would Wyeth ally himself with? How would they carve up the mountains? What would Hudson’s Bay do? What would happen with the muscular American Fur Company in the field, competing for every beaver pelt? It had been hard enough for one Yank company and one British company to survive; how would things go now?
The answer came that very afternoon, when the powwows in the arbor broke up. Skye watched Tom Fitzpatrick, still frail after a harrowing ordeal just before the rendezvous, hobble toward him, leaning heavily on his staff.
“Afternoon, Mister Skye,” he said. “Mind if I light a moment?”
Skye waved him to the robe.
Fitzpatrick eased himself slowly to the ground, still sick and weak, pain around his eyes. Just before the rendezvous, the partners sent him out to look for Sublette’s packtrain with the resupply, to tell him to hurry up because of the competition from American Fur. Tom Fitzpatrick delivered the message and was hurrying back to Pierre’s Hole when he ran into Blackfeet, not once but twice, narrowly escaping both times. He lost everything, including his rifle, and survived only because of his magnificent skills as a mountaineer. By the time he was discovered by two friendly Iroquois hunters he was in rags, his moccasins were used up, and he was starved down to nothing.
But here he was, and a hundred hardy men like him.
“Mister Skye,” he said without preamble, “the long and short of it is, we’re facing stiff competition and we’re cutting back. The only salaries we’ll be paying is to the partners and a few top men. We’ll not be able to afford camp tenders. The trappers will do that themselves. We’re counting on you to stay on as a free trapper. You join one of our brigades, but it’ll be mostly the same.”
The news stung Skye.
“A trapper’s plews, even in a good campaign, won’t come close to what I made as a camp tender, will they, Tom?”
“No, I reckon they won’t. But we’ve no choice. We’re not alone any more.”
“What’s Wyeth going to do?”
“He’s going west. Wants to talk to HBC, start a fishery on the Columbia, ship preserved salmon east, and trade for a few furs as a sideline. He’s going to trade directly with the tribes if he can. His New Englanders don’t know the nose of a beaver from the tail, but they can run a store.” Fitzpatrick paused. “And he might succeed, and if he does, that’s all the more plews we’ll never see.”
“And Vanderburgh and Drips?”
“Eyeball to eyeball with us at every beaver ground in the Rockies, Mister Skye. And they’ve got support. The Chouteaus of St. Louis and all their Frenchy cousins are in. And experience. Those people were in the fur business before we were tadpoles.”
“It’s bad, then.”
“We’ll give ’em a run for it. It’s not the end, but we’re going to stay lean. We’re going deep in hock just to pay for next year’s outfit.”
“Who are you keeping on salary?”
“Black Harris, two or three others.”
“All Yanks.”
“That wasn’t considered. You’re as good a man as any in the mountains.”
“And not a Yank. You’re sticking with your own. I’m as good as any, but not one of your countrymen.”
“You’ll be a free trapper.”
“Maybe I won’t.” Skye’s temper boiled upward. “Maybe I’ll start my own opposition. I could take ten men with me.”
Fitzpatrick stared. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“I don’t like being cashiered. I was a loyal man.”
The RMC man’s affability vanished. “Cool down, Mister Skye. We’ll talk some more about this. Forget going into opposition. We’ll crush all opposition. We have the means and the skills. Don’t be dumb.”
Tom Fitzpatrick stood slowly, recovered his staff, and hobbled into the sun. Skye watched him go, his mind roiling with bitterness.
Skye felt something hard and cold and ruthless down in his gut. Suddenly he knew he had no flag to follow, and no allegiance to offer. Just when life seemed good, Fate knocked him two rungs down the ladder.
Well, change was in the wind.
He stood and stretched, feeling the power in his limbs, feeling their constancy and obedience to his will. The somnolent camp seemed changed. He could not fathom it. He wandered willy-nilly, going nowhere. He visited with Wyeth’s men, clearly more educated and cultivated than the rest of those in the mountains, and yet not one he wanted to befriend. He meandered through the AFC digs, good men, many of them Creoles from St. Louis, brilliant in the mountains, wild in drink, crazy among women, and the best travelers on earth.
He hunted for Peter Skene Ogden and finally found him in earnest conversation with the Sublettes. They waved him off. Company business.
The earth under his feet was no longer his. He no longer owned the sun, or possessed this warm flat nested in the mountain shadows. He could not put a name to this change that had slid quietly into the place. He thought it was something like leaving an inn, where he had visited with friends and had a grand time, and enjoyed fine feasts, and then stepping into a world that no one owned.
The only things that hadn’t changed were the buffalohide lodges of the Shoshones and Flatheads. But even those portable lodges would be dismantled in a few days and carried away on travois. The various tribes were always at home and had no perception of wilderness.
He thought about going into opposition with a dozen free trappers, cleaning out beaver before the Yank company even got to the trapping grounds. But he didn’t want to devote his life to a small, mean ambition like that. No man worthy of respect could devote himself to revenge.
Skye let his anger drain away. There was no point in nursing it along.
Then at last a decision did gel in him: he would go to Fort Vancouver, discover what the White Eagle really thought and wanted, and make his decision about Hudson’s Bay, a trip over the seas to England, and a new life as an HBC brigade leader.
He would read the correspondence about his family, understand what was wanted, assess the man who had set HBC’s blood-hounds after him six years before, decide if this legendary prince of the company would be a good man to work for, a man he could trust. He had come to trust and admire his Yank friends—Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Jackson, Smith, the Sublettes—men who now were rejecting him. He would need to be more careful in the future, and take a hard, cold look at the chief factor.
Thus was his decision made, but he was uneasy with it. What would it mean to Victoria, and indeed, to his marriage? She was off among the Shoshones again, so he wandered in that direction until he came upon the gaudily dyed buffalohide lodges of that tribe, and paced among them, enjoying the smiles of the old men and women, the parade of pretty girls flaunting their newly won jingle bells, ribbons, combs, beads, and calico, and their bold flirtations.
It was not hard to find Victoria: she lounged under a majestic cottonwood tree, along with three other matrons, each doing beadwork as they gossiped.
She rose at once upon seeing him. He never came here or interrupted her day, and he beheld worry in her thin, sharp face.
“Yes, what?” she asked.
He touched her arm. “I’m wanting to go to Fort Vancouver and talk with the White Eagle, and I’m wanting you to come with me. If not, I’m wanting you to wait for me because I’ll be back, sometime, some way, even if a winter or two winters pass.”
“From this place across the sea?�
�
“Maybe.”
“Would you like me to come to this place of your birth?”
“I’m thinking it, if it doesn’t scare you. Maybe there’s a way.”
She laughed. “I’ll go. I will see with my own eyes what place this is and what strange people live there, and then we will be closer, eh? Goddam, Skye, do you think an Absaroka woman is afraid? What a big place the world is!”
He squeezed her and rejoiced.
six
Skye found Peter Skene Ogden at dusk enjoying something he poured from a silver flask, along with half a dozen HBC men, all French Canadians.
“Ah, Mister Skye, have a drink. What I have here is single-malt scotch, the likes of which you’ll never see again at a Yank rendezvous.”
“Can’t say as I’ve ever sampled it.”
“Let me pour you one. It’s all the smoke and heather of the Highlands in one distilled essence. Have you come to a decision?”
Skye settled himself on the ground and took the proffered tin cup. “A sort of one, Mr. Ogden, a sort of one. We’ll go to Vancouver and talk with Dr. McLoughlin, and see.”
“Good! See how he stands.”
“I’m not entirely persuaded, Mr. Ogden. If I come over to HBC, you’ll get a gifted woman, too. She’s my mate, and she’ll go wherever I go. Will you pay her?”
“Ah, Skye, when I heard you’d named her Victoria, after the royal princess, I knew you belonged with us and I urged it upon McLoughlin. I think, within reason, you can propose terms of employment we’d accept, eh?”
“I have little love of the royal family, mate. Her family’s among the finest of the Crows. She’s a Crow princess.”
Skye sipped the Scottish whiskey, intrigued by its smoky flavor and silkiness. But what did he know? The only whiskey he’d ever sampled in his constricted life had been the outlaw variety manufactured for wild Indians and wilder trappers.
“If you’re choosing this course, then it’s necessary for you to be off at once, at dawn, so you can sail on the Cadboro. You’ll be going alone. I can’t go with you.”
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