Dark Passage

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by Richard S. Wheeler


  Victoria was home. She laughed and cried, and urged Skye to hurry, hurry, that last mile along the river flats, across grassland and around mottes of cottonwood, past a multicolored herd of Crow ponies, until at last a village guard, a young member of one of the warrior societies, halted them, his gaze first on Skye and then on her.

  “I am Many Quill Woman,” she cried. “And you were just a boy when I went away.”

  Skye was able to follow that with his rude knowledge of her tongue.

  “Yes, Grandmother, I am the younger son of Beaver Tail, and my mother is Iron Awl. And this is the man you went away with.” His gaze, which raked Skye’s bedraggled attire, said all too much.

  “We have been insulted and robbed by the lying Pawnee,” she retorted acidly. “Come, and I will tell the story to the elders and our great chief, Rotten Belly.”

  The youth nodded, turned his spotted pony, and accompanied the two visitors through the village, past smoke-stained lodges, tripods bearing medicine bundles, strips of buffalo and other meat drying upon racks, women fleshing buffalo hides staked to the earth, old men sunning, groups of younger men watching the hawks and passing a lit clay pipe from one to another, and women grinding up berries to put into pemmican, the trail food and winter emergency ration.

  And with every step a crowd gathered behind them, some examining Skye’s tattered buckskins with ill-concealed malice or horror. Was this the fate of the proud daughter of Walks Alone? The one who married the mah-ish-ta-schee-da, the yellow eyes, as these people called white men? Skye could do nothing to change their impression of him, so he ignored them all, anger brimming in him at his fate, and proceeded toward his ritual welcome into the village. His feelings were not far, just then, from the hard, isolated, savage feelings that had filled him during his endless captivity in the Royal Navy. He wouldn’t let them bother him. He would live and fight and pay no attention to the contempt swirling around him.

  Victoria’s family engulfed her. Walks Alone, Digs the Roots, Arrow, Makes the Robe. She jabbered with them, their words tumbling so fast Skye couldn’t make them out. But except for an occasional glance in his direction, they ignored him.

  “Ah, Mister Skye, you fixing to pay your respects to Arapooish?”

  Skye turned and found himself facing Jim Beckwourth, who smiled easily at him from coal oil eyes. The veteran mountaineer, known to these people as Antelope, certainly looked as though he owned the place, the ease and grace and status apparent in his finely wrought buckskins, which he wore with a certain flair, and his elaborate manners. Beckwourth had become a war leader, perhaps even a chief.

  “I do know the tongue,” Beckwourth said. “And even a smattering of your limey one. I’m delighted to see you here in this corner of paradise.”

  Skye followed Beckwourth toward the great lodge of the chief, located closer to the riverbank and surrounded by a half-moon of lodges that formed a park, or public square, around Arapooish’s majestic twenty-one-pole lodge. Antelope walked with an easy grace, wearing his soft-tanned buckskins and Indian ornaments, including war honors, as if he had been born to these people.

  Skye was tempted to explain his desperate circumstances to the mulatto—if that’s what he was, which Skye doubted because the man showed no sign of mixed blood other than a somewhat swarthy complexion—but decided to narrate the story to the chief, if the chief wanted it. One thing Skye didn’t want was sympathy, and neither did he want to make excuses. He had been outwitted by the Pawnees, was paying for his stupidity, and that was all there was to it.

  “Well, Mister Skye, you’ve come a piece, I gather,” Beckwourth said, probing.

  “A piece.”

  “One’s fortune reverses in the mountains. One moment, one is an emperor of the wilds, the next, one is a pauper. I have a certain small influence here, and perhaps I can be at your service.”

  “Perhaps you can, mate. We had a bit of misfortune.”

  Skye liked the Missourian, whose grace and choice of words bespoke education and breeding. Among the mountaineers, Beckwourth had won a reputation for courage, loyalty, and mountain skills. They said around the campfires that he was the son of a Virginia aristocrat, although he had grown up in frontier Missouri, where his father had brought the family.

  “Pawnee lifted everything I possessed, except for my rifle, which was at hand.”

  “I thought it was something like that. Well, that’s not unusual here. You have friends among the Crows, and I can no doubt supply you with some necessaries, including some DuPont and galena. I trade it, you know. I have some connections.”

  They found the Crow chief standing before his lodge wrapped in a red blanket. Once again Skye marveled at the headman, who was huge, lean, rawboned, formidable, and whose gaze took in everything, not missing Sky’s tatters. Around the chief the elders gathered, gray-haired men, patient, curious, and in no hurry.

  The chief raised a palm in welcome, while Beckwourth translated. Skye wondered if the wily Missourian could be trusted not to embroider the story. Or invent one altogether. Beckwourth was a famous embroiderer, but no more so than half the men in the mountains. In the end, Skye decided he did trust the man. Antelope Jim actually was well known for fair dealing and honesty, and his wild yarns were well understood to be a form of entertainment not intended to be taken seriously.

  “It is the husband of my brother’s daughter, returning to us. You are welcome here. Come, you will tell us your story,” Arapooish said. “But first, we will smoke.”

  It took the better part of an hour. They listened to Skye recount his story, his decision to come live with Victoria’s people, the encounter with the Pawnees. In simple terms, he described his and Victoria’s determined pursuit of the Pawnees, entering their camp, his effort to shame them into surrendering their booty—and his failure. Skye noticed that Victoria and her family had come and were among the auditors. That was good, he thought; it would keep Beckwourth’s translation from meandering.

  He glanced at the passive Crow faces around him, unable to fathom whether he was in disgrace or merely contemptible in their eyes. Every face was a mask, not least the chief’s.

  Then, the story done, Skye sought to retire from this august company. But the chief stayed him with a wave of the hand. Quietness settled over the throng. Children, grandmothers, sharp-eyed youths, old men, and impassive warriors stared at him.

  “Now hear me,” Arapooish said. “Mister Skye, you have done a brave thing. The People will gladly help you. I will give you a new name. You will be known by it among us. You are now Man Not Afraid of the Pawnees.”

  Skye saw Victoria clap a hand to her mouth, and it dawned on him that the name was an honor. He might be dressed in tat ters, but his name was gold.

  six

  James Beckwourth—also known as Medicine Calf, Antelope, Bull’s Robe, Enemy of Horses, Red Fish, and Bobtail Horse—contemplated the fate of his old friend Skye and decided to help. The presence of Mister Skye in Rotten Belly’s village would be a joy; a pair of white men whiling away the winter, lavishly entertained by adoring Crows.

  Whatever the world said about Beckwourth’s blood, he knew himself as a white. His father, Jennings Beckwith, came from Virginia aristocracy, while his mother was a quadroon, one-quarter black, and the intimate companion of his father for many years. It had been a marriage, though not one ever recorded or solemnized. Beckwith had raised his son as a white, teaching him his letters and making the youth a full member of the large family living on the harsh and dangerous Missouri frontier. Technically, even that bit of black blood made the boy a slave, but his father had, on three occasions, filed manumissions, making sure that Jim would be a free man.

  Jim had come up the Missouri River and into the Rocky Mountains with the second of General William Ashley’s fur-trapping expeditions, in the fall of 1824, served with Ashley and his successors, was a courageous and imposing trapper, fighter, and enterpreneur, well admired by all his mountain friends. He had come to the Rockies two y
ears ahead of Skye but had made more of his sojourn, becoming by degrees one of the elite of the mountains, with all the prowess of Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Black Harris, or any of the other veterans of the wild whose very names struck awe in the greenhorns who occasionally drifted west.

  Beckwourth had been familiar with the Crows from the beginning of his mountain life, and in 1828 he joined them. They thought of him as one of their own, having heard a wild tale from the veteran Caleb Greenwood that Beckwourth was a lost Crow child, found and raised by whites. His swart appearance did nothing to discredit the whimsical story that had started as a joke, and when Beckwourth did arrive in Arapooish’s village he was greeted by his supposed father, Big Bowl, as a long-lost son and showered with robes, buckskins, furs—and women.

  Since then, life had been a lark. Black Lodge, one of the most honored warriors in the village, gave his daughter Stillwater to Beckwourth for wife, but the Crows being Crows, Beckwourth soon acquired six or seven other women including his remarkable friend Pine Leaf, a lithe woman warrior. How could any mortal be so fortunate?

  He, in turn, swiftly gathered that the way to progress from nonentity to honored member of the tribe was through war honors. So he organized raids against Crow enemies, especially the Blackfeet, stole horses, killed an occasional enemy warrior, counted coup, and performed deeds of derring-do that would be told and retold around tribal campfires and during councils. That was how he acquired all those names—honors, really, bestowed by a grateful chief upon an unusually gifted warrior who had come to live with the People. Beckwourth’s leadership had enhanced the security and prowess of the Absarokas and made them a terror to their enemies.

  From this pinnacle of success, Beckwourth eyed the newcomer, seeing a friend—and potential ally. Beckwourth had drifted far from his old friends who had come west with General Ashley to gather beaver pelts. He had joined the rival outfit, finding lucrative work with the Upper Missouri Outfit, that portion of the American Fur Company that had been purchased from John Jacob Astor by powerful entrepreneurs including the St. Louis Chouteaus and their French relations. They were mounting a ruthless assault on the Rocky Mountain Fur Company by building trading posts along the Missouri River and using them to penetrate the mountains and monopolize the lucrative beaver trade, which could yield a fortune to anyone with the nerve to take the terrible risk.

  And they were paying Beckwourth handsome wages to steer Crows to American Fur’s trading posts. His four hundred a year bought him every imaginable luxury among the supplies brought upriver by keelboat, including quantities of various fine liquors, all illegal in the Indian territories but a staple of American Fur Company’s provisioning.

  Beckwourth knew his man; Skye’s affection for a jug of corn whiskey had become a byword of the rendezvous. And now a little of that elixir would, he figured, purchase a valuable ally. Thus did Skye appear one evening shortly after arriving in the village at Beckwourth’s lodge, where Stillwater greeted him with a shy smile and then vanished.

  “Ah, Mister Skye, I see your fortunes have improved. Here you are in fresh buckskins, with some meat on your ribs, and the world looking rather more amiable,” Beckwourth said.

  “It’s that, mate,” Skye agreed. “And thanks to some powder and lead from you, I’ve been able to help provision Victoria’s family.”

  “But you’re far from where you were.”

  “I’m a poor man, Jim. But I’ve been a poor man before.”

  “You lack a horse.”

  “I lack everything. I’m dependent on Victoria’s people.”

  “That might be remedied.”

  “I intend to remedy it. I’ll not be a beggar. I’m in debt to the new outfit, and I’ll pay them.”

  “A worthy sentiment. We’ll drink to it.” Beckwourth rummaged among his possessions and extracted a jug. Smiling, he uncorked it and handed it to Skye. “Elixir, Mister Skye. A rare thing in the mountains except at rendezvous. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, which is now.”

  Skye eyed the jug eagerly, and then guzzled and coughed.

  “Bloody stuff,” he muttered, wheezing. “It seems, ah, rather young.”

  “Very young. In fact, concocted this afternoon of grain spirits, a plug of tobacco, and assorted flavors.”

  “Trade whiskey.”

  “It brings in the beaver.”

  Skye wheezed. His eyes leaked. Beckwourth sipped lightly and returned the jug to Skye’s eager grasp. Skye sucked hard, gasped, roared, wept, and coughed. “It’ll be smooth sailing soon,” he said. “But it takes a bit to put wind in the sails.”

  Beckwourth got down to business. “Mister Skye, what brought you to our fair metropolis?”

  “Victoria. She was plumb lonesome for her people.”

  “Your loyalty’s admirable. You gave up life with your friends, your boon companions, from the moment you walked into that rendezvous of eighteen and twenty-six. That’s a moment I won’t forget, you and the Shoshones. You excited some curiosity, my friend.”

  Skye took a swizzle, coughed, blinked, and smiled. “That juice is panther piss. Grizzly sow juice. It’s a limey’s paradise.”

  “Actually, it’s castorum.”

  Skye coughed and laughed. Castorum was what mountaineers used to bait the beaver traps. “Mr. Beckwourth, what are we negotiating here?”

  The man was not a lummox, Beckwourth thought.

  “Perhaps a partnership.”

  “I’m partnered with Rocky Mountain Fur.”

  “I thought so. Are we rivals?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “You were outfitted by Fitzpatrick, and in return you’ll steer Crow trade toward RMFC. How much do you owe them?”

  “Three hundred. Plus the trade goods I lost.”

  “And you’ve nothing for it, thanks to the Pawnees. A bit of a mess. Maybe something can be arranged.”

  “I’m already into you for powder and lead, Jim. There’s a robe or two right there. No, nothing can be arranged.”

  “Why not? American Fur’ll pay off your debt and outfit you; it’ll be entirely honorable. You will meet your every obligation. And we’ll simply steer peltries and trade to Fort Floyd. Kenneth McKenzie’s going to be well stocked when he’s done outfitting the post.”

  “Every obligation but one, mate. My word. Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Milt Sublette, Gervais, and Fraeb have my word.”

  Beckwourth smiled lightly. Skye was not a man who would tamper with his word. It was an asset in the man, and had been noticed in the mountains. “Then we’ll be rivals. But I doubt that you’ll deliver one pelt to your colleagues.”

  Skye shrugged, remained silent, and swallowed one last gulp. Then Beckwourth corked the jug and slipped it into a parfleche.

  “Mr. Beckwourth, you set a fine table.”

  They laughed.

  “My friend Barnaby, how are you going to deliver? You’ve an obligation you can’t possibly meet. You’ve not a trap or a horse. You have no influence. You’ve no reputation among these warriors. You walked off with one of the prettiest girls in the village and made enemies. But now you’re going to persuade the whole Crow nation to trade with your fur company, which doesn’t even have a trading post.”

  “I fled the Royal Navy with much less than I have now.”

  “I’ll give you some advice. The way a young man advances among the Absaroka is by war honors, counting coup, proving himself an effective warrior and defender of the People. Now, rivals we may be, but I’m always looking for good fighting men to go with me on raids. Maybe you’ll make some progress. I’m a war leader. I’ll invite you next time I go out. You want horses? The Blackfeet and Sioux have a-plenty. Yours for the stealing—if you don’t get killed. You want influence? Count coup, take a few scalps, beat an enemy. You want power? Shoot buffalo and give the meat away. You want plenty of women—the women here’ll throw themselves at you, the fairest maidens, all yours—”

  “I have Victoria, mate.”

  “But surel
y—Skye, there’s not a virtuous woman in the Crow nation. They don’t believe in it. They expect you to dally with them. Pretty soon Victoria’ll find her pleasures, and you’ll find yours.”

  Skye stood suddenly, his face dark with something, and he plunged into the twilight.

  Beckwourth smiled. There were white men like that. A few months in Absaroka, and they were all transformed. The Crows played an amusing mating game, serial adventures, one after another. What else was there to do all winter? By his own reckoning, Beckwourth had shared his robes with seven such beauteous and available ladies—and could have enjoyed a dozen more were it not for his fascination with that lithe cat of a woman, Pine Leaf. She was the storied woman warrior of the Crows, the slim terror at his side in battle who had twice saved his life. And the only Absaroka woman who held herself aloof from his formidable charms. At least, so far.

  Well, Skye would soon learn how life was lived among the Crows. And then he would forget about steering beaver to the opposition. War and women; Beckwourth had plenty of both and intended to have even more.

  seven

  Skye felt the rough bark of the cottonwood against his back and the sharp September air eddy around his beard as he watched twilight thicken over the Crow village just below. This brow of a hill had become a favorite resort of his, a place to think and plan and hope. Sometimes Victoria joined him there, but not often. He saw little of her; it was as if she had returned to her life as a Crow maiden, almost as if he didn’t exist.

  Perhaps he didn’t. He wondered whether their union had been a mistake. Things had been difficult ever since he and she arrived in Rotten Belly’s village with little more than the clothes on their backs. Her parents had provided them with a home, but even that was awkward. According to custom, he could not address his mother-in-law, and his marriage was suffering. He could not bring himself to make love to Victoria while her parents and a sister slept a few feet away, not even though that was perfectly acceptable and expected among them.

 

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