Dark Passage

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Tell me the way.”

  “The way is to recover your mortal soul, recapture your mind, become master of whatever lies within ye. That is the way.”

  “I’ll be all right once I’m on my horse. I go down the Yellowstone to Fort Union, eh?”

  “Fort Union’s not so easy as that. It’s on the left bank of the Missouri. A lot of water between you and it. A mon goes east in a keelboat or maybe a pirogue or even a raft or bullboat—if he’s willing to brave the Rees—the Arikara—who pump arrows into passing white men. If I were going east, I’d wait at Fort Union for the spring and go down with the crew on the keelboat that supplies the place each year. Hire on to take the peltries back to St. Louis. Ye could find employment and succor there. Kenneth McKenzie needs all the hands he can get.”

  “I’m obliged not to, mate. I’m bound by debt and contract to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.”

  “A good outfit, with sterling men. I count Bridger and Fitzpatrick and Sublette among the best in the mountains. But these things can be dealt with, Skye.”

  “Mister Skye, sir.”

  “Yes, so I remember. Mister Skye. Fortunes change. These things are understood. We could buy out your debt and outfit you and you’d work for us. Your name precedes you.”

  “I don’t want to stay in the mountains.”

  “What happened there with Arapooish, may I ask?”

  “A private matter.”

  Skye said it with such finality that Tullock didn’t probe further.

  The next morning Skye thanked his hosts and left. They had described a ford just below the post that would take him to the north bank of the Yellowstone, and they described another ford on the Missouri that would take him to Fort Union—if he was lucky enough to locate the ford. This time of year, even the mighty Missouri offered crossings. If he couldn’t find the ford, he was to proceed to the bank opposite the post and fire his rifle. They would come for him with a barge.

  He plunged into a bright day under a brittle blue sky, the hint of spring enough to make travel bearable. He was glad to be alone again. He didn’t want the company of anyone. The silence engulfed him. He was passing over an empty land. The river hurled its way to the Missouri, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico, usually running in a broad valley between sandstone bluffs. The country was anonymous and dull, without notable landmarks, without soul-lifting beauty, colorless, oppressive. It suited his mood. Usually he followed the river road, but on one occasion he had to detour widely around a vast ice jam that had dammed the river and sent it over its banks.

  For food he sawed at the frozen buffalo meat, wrapped in duck cloth, he carried on his packhorse. He saw only ravens to remind him that life existed, and was glad. He didn’t want to see life. This country was as empty as the seven seas, which would be his destiny. This river would take him to New Orleans, and New Orleans would take him to sea, either in a merchant vessel or in the United States Navy. That is how it would all play out: a lone man, walking the hard decks in an empty world until he died. For a living he would do what he knew how to do, live under sailcloth, be driven by the wind, and surrender his stunted will and ignore his fractured dreams.

  Somehow he would pay back Rocky Mountain Fur. For a while, they would receive small deposits from him out of his seaman’s wage, and when that had been settled, he would be a lone man, without obligation or tie or family or friend. And that is how he would remain until they put him ashore, or wrapped him in sailcloth, added some ballast lifted from the bilge, and slid him into the lapping waves. He knew the sea. All his life he would be at sea.

  He rode quietly through March and then found himself one day at the confluence, a small sea of currents where two great rivers married. Tullock had told him to ride west, past Union, a stockaded fort with opposing bastions erected close to the river, to a place a mile upstream where the river widened and rilled over submerged rock, visible only this time of year. But he could not find the spot, and when he bullied his reluctant black horse into the river at likely points, he plummeted deep into a channel and could barely get himself out. The river and its banks had a relentless sameness that defied a newcomer to locate the place of passage.

  So he retreated to the post, which brooded darkly across a ripple of sun-dotted water. He was pulling his Hawken from its leather sheath to alert them when he heard a faint shout on the wind. Someone on the far bank had noticed. Skye waved his rifle and waited. Presently Creole boatmen poled a scow across and boarded his horses and himself. No one said much; they eyed him curiously as they worked their poles. One’s gaze halted at the bear claw necklace.

  He debarked on a well-trampled levee and pierced Union through tall gates, finding a yard and buildings under construction within. The Creoles were not far behind. The place rivaled Fort Vancouver, and Skye had an uneasy stirring of fear. Would he be clapped in irons here and shipped away?

  But no such thing happened. Two clerks, each in a black broadcloth suit, materialized. The attire astonished Skye. He had not seen a gentleman in a suit since his days in the navy. Not only that, but their boiled shirts were snowy, their hair and bodies were groomed, and even their boots bore fresh blacking. What sort of place was this?

  They, in turn, surveyed a young man in worn buckskins, unkempt and haggard and grim. “Sir? Welcome to Fort Union. Do we know you?” asked one.

  “No. Mister Skye,” he said.

  “Ah. We do know you. I’m Largent, chief clerk, and this is Bonhommais, second clerk. Please, sir, let me fetch Mr. McKenzie.”

  Skye permitted himself to be led back in. Engagés instantly led his weary horses to a hayrick and unburdened them, while Skye watched uneasily. The imperial designs of Americans were as plain here as the imperial designs of Britons out at Vancouver. And betwixt the millstones fell unlucky mortals like himself.

  Still, he was not without weapons; his sheathed Hawken in hand, a hatchet and Green River knife at his waist, and the will to be free—or dead. They led him to some apartments, humble enough at first, but then into a dining hall with accouterments that stunned him. A long table, covered with a snowy linen cloth and thick linen napkins, had been set with Limoges china, crystal goblets, silverware, pewter platters, and bottles of French wine. And standing at the head of this astonishing wilderness apparition was a powerfully built man Skye thought might well be a duke but knew at once was the Scots-born lord of this wilderness empire, Kenneth McKenzie.

  twenty—three

  Skye had not seen such a man as Kenneth McKenzie since his youth in London, when he occasionally glimpsed the peers of England. But here, improbably, stood a man radiating power, with a pugilist’s face, a body beefy and imperial, and a gaze that owned the entire universe within the man’s vision. He wore a fawn-colored waistcoat under a green cutaway, and pinstriped trousers over gleaming boots. His hands were the size of sledgehammers, and Skye didn’t doubt that the lord of this corner of the universe could employ them with martial intent. But all that was prelude to something larger, a palpable force of will that brooked no resistance. He was a dread and absolute sovereign of this wilderness empire.

  “You arrived during our dinner hour, which was impudent,” he said. “What is your name?”

  “Mister Skye, sir.”

  “Oh, yes, the opposition. Well, Skye, be off now. We’ll put you up if that’s your intent.”

  “It’s Mister Skye, sir.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve heard about you. We’ll humor you. But a gentleman’s title is reserved for gentlemen, namely my senior men here.” He waved at a raft of human penguins in black worsted even now gathering at their ornate chairs in military rank.

  Skye had already had enough of this place. He would make his way down the river to New Orleans without the help of these popinjays. He turned to leave.

  “Just a minute, Skye, I haven’t dismissed you.”

  Skye ignored him and headed toward the double doors.

  “Skye! Where are you going?”

  Skye didn’t stop
. Two beefy clerks detained him, clasping hands upon his arms. Skye didn’t wrestle free.

  “When you address a man civilly, with ordinary courtesy, you will receive your answer.”

  McKenzie laughed. “Mister Skye, where are you going? Why did you come here? Why are you not plotting and scheming to steal our Crow trade from us?”

  “Mr. McKenzie, if you will kindly let me go now, I’ll be off. If you are a gentleman, then conduct yourself as one.”

  The rebuke astonished McKenzie. “Mister Skye,” he said, “I’m going to eat now. I’ll instruct my staff to feed you in the mess, and put you up. You may leave if you choose, but I would like an interview with you after dinner. I’ll summon you in a while.”

  The tone had changed. Skye nodded. He was hungry. He departed as the clerks gathered about their dining chairs, waiting for the signal to be seated.

  A servant took Skye across the yard and into a mess hall next to the kitchen. The fur company’s employees—engagés, they were called—had long since eaten, not observing gentlemen’s hours. But, upon direction from the old servant, the cook dished up leftovers, including a substantial buffalo stew—and bread. Skye had not had bread in his hands for many years, and the yeasty loaf was indescribably delicious.

  He ate quietly, reflecting on recent events. McKenzie was a legend, and Skye had heard much about the man around the campfires of the brigades. He was a well-born Scot who had come to the New World as a youth and entered the fur trade, first with the old North West Company, and then in partnership with some Americans, and finally as the most important man in the Upper Missouri Outfit, mistakenly known as the American Fur Company. He was related to Alexander McKenzie, the first white man to cross the North American continent.

  Kenneth McKenzie was ruthless, brutal to the opposition as well as his own men, and got things done without scrupling much about how he did them. He operated his satrapy with absolute authority, down to fining, imprisoning, flogging, or banishing anyone he chose without the slightest pretense of a trial. He had justified this on the ground that he operated in a dangerous and lawless wilderness far from the reach of courts and sheriffs and prisons. His stated goal was to rub out the opposition and reign supreme on the upper Missouri.

  Skye wondered whether the man would even let him out of Fort Union. Skye had been a prisoner before, incarcerated by men who had designs on his labor, or who simply loathed him, or who enjoyed the power to toy with the liberty of another mortal. He suspected that all three motivations threaded through the skull of his host, especially because Skye alone had questioned McKenzie’s manners, if not his civility. Skye sighed.

  After his bountiful dinner, the ubiquitous servants took Skye to a small guest room—not the barracks, as Skye had expected. That pleased him. He was in no mood to be sociable. He found himself in a room with a bunk, washstand, and wooden chair brought a thousand miles up the river. Even this crude quarter offered more civilization than he had seen in North America.

  Deep in the evening McKenzie summoned him, and he followed a servant who threaded across a corner of the yard and deposited Skye in an apartment under the stockaded wall of Fort Union. Another lackey steered Skye into a large private room heated by a cheerful fire. Here, too, luxury abounded. A blue Brussels carpet decorated the plank floor; oil portraits graced whitewashed walls. A desk, stuffed chairs, footstools, sconces for oil lamps, a shelf with gilt-stamped leather books upon it, all contributed to a certain patrician aura. The man in the center of this wildly incongruent life stood quietly, awaiting his guest. He offered a hand and Skye shook it.

  “Mister Skye, have a seat there. I am about to have a snifter of brandy, as is my wont. May I pour you the same libation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McKenzie handed a snifter to Skye, who sipped and marveled.

  “Now, then, why are you here?”

  “I am leaving the mountains. I intend to go to sea, which is my trade. I came to ask whether I could go down the river with your keelboat this summer, working my way for passage. Until then I propose to work here for nothing but room and board. That’s why I wanted to see you.”

  “Abandoning your post, are you?”

  “No, sir. Chief Arapooish forbade me the village.”

  “He did, did he? Did you do murder?”

  “It’s a private matter, sir.”

  McKenzie stared. “Well, I’ll get the story from Beckwourth. But you’ve let down your masters.”

  “I’ve disappointed them, yes.”

  “And you’ll not repay them.”

  Skye rose, irritated. “I’ll leave in the morning.”

  “Sit down, blast you. What sort of crime did you do? I could put you in prison, you know. We’ve a gaol here, or I could send you down under indictment.”

  “You could imprison my body, sir—for a short while.”

  “That’s a strange reply. If you go down the river by yourself this time of year, you’ll die.”

  “That may be the better of my options, sir.”

  “Death? You’re a desperate man.”

  Skye turned. “I’ll be out of here as soon as you swing open the gates.”

  “Oh no you don’t. You don’t escape the clutches of Kenneth McKenzie so easily, Skye.”

  “I have nothing more to say.”

  “Stubborn cuss. Very well. You failed Sublette and Fitzpatrick. You were sent to the Crows to worm business away from us. Why should I employ such a man?”

  “I’m withdrawing my offer of service. I’ll go alone.”

  McKenzie guzzled a long, fiery bolt of brandy, and wheezed. He set down the snifter and glared. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “Then don’t do anything. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You intrigue me. What’s all the story I don’t know and you’re not telling, eh? All right. I know who you are. I know the name of every man in the mountains, or nearly all. You were offered the chance to be a brigade leader last summer. Ah, don’t look so startled. Kenneth McKenzie has ears everywhere. Do you suppose Beckwourth has never talked of you? You chose to come to the village of your wife. Where’s she?”

  “She’s not my wife, sir.”

  “Well, squaw. Harlot.”

  “She is neither of those.”

  “Marital discord. That’s it. Woman trouble.”

  Skye stood, poised to leave, mute. A few minutes with McKenzie had persuaded him that he would be better off taking his chances with the Indians and winter on his own.

  “How much do you owe your masters?”

  “I was indebted nearly three hundred, employed at two hundred for the winter with the Crows. I intended to pay the rest with robes tanned by my wife. Also, five hundred in trade goods were stolen by the Pawnee. I am liable for it.”

  “That’s a lot.” He surveyed his guest thoughtfully. “Men are scarce here, and you made a name for yourself out in the field. I could put you in Vanderburgh’s brigade.”

  “Thank you, but that would not be honorable. I am obligated by debt and contract and my own word.”

  McKenzie laughed.

  Skye began to boil. If this didn’t stop, he would land on McKenzie and give better than he took, even if he ultimately went down the river in irons. He stepped forward, bristling. “I’m as good as my word. And I’ll back my word with these.” He lifted his fists and edged toward the man. They were of a height, both blocky, both hardened by mountain life. McKenzie was a little older, but showing a paunch that suggested too many brandies and too much time at table.

  Stunned, McKenzie set down his snifter but didn’t lift his fists to defend himself. Instead, he lifted a silver bell and rang it.

  An engagé, a big Frenchman, ambled in.

  “Escort this man to his quarters.”

  Skye wheeled away, leaving both men behind him, stepped into a sharp night, found his way to his quarters, rebuilt the dying fire with a cottonwood stick, and settled in his robes, wondering how a man in the mountains could becom
e a seaman.

  twenty—four

  In the morning they took him to the mess, where he encountered about twenty men, mostly Creoles, and served him a steaming bowl of gruel and tea. The oats tasted just fine, and the tea was a treasure. The others sitting on the bench seemed to know all about him and greeted him amiably. Word obviously flew around a fur post. These men bore the wounds of a hard life. One lacked two fingers. Another had been scalped and wore a skullcap. Yet another had a peg leg strapped to the stump of his right leg, while another wore a black eye patch. They were served by an Assiniboine woman—wife of one or another of the men—who lacked an ear and an eye and bore a slash across her brown face. Despite all that, she was pretty, and she smiled at him, her face bright with curiosity.

  Some of these laborers would tend horses and cattle, others would hunt buffalo, still others would continue to build the post—two buildings were being constructed in the yard. One or two others would salt or season the pelts and press them into packs for transport down the river, while one or two others would cut firewood and distribute it to the various stoves or fireplaces within.

  Skye thought he could do some of those things—if he stayed. He would prefer to risk his life traveling to St. Louis in late winter than to face the hauteur and contempt of McKenzie. After the hearty but simple breakfast, they took him to McKenzie’s lair. This time the man wore a black cutaway instead of the festive green one, but otherwise looked much the same, beefy, florid, and Scots to the bone.

  “I can use a man,” McKenzie said without preamble. “I’ll hire you.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, sir.”

  “I set the terms; you don’t.”

  “My terms are these: twenty dollars a month until I go down the river with the keelboat. After that, crewing on the keelboat in exchange for passage. The accrued wage will be sent to General Ashley, agent for my employers, as payment on my debt. I will not compete with my employers. That is, I will not deal with the Crows or trap in Vanderburgh’s brigade.”

  McKenzie stared so long at him he thought the man hadn’t heard.