Downriver

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Marsh and Trenholm and Bonfils stared at the distant Cheyenne woman, registering her grief, and the dead child in her lap for the first time.

  “Accident of war, couldn’t be helped,” Marsh said. “Just an incident. I’m sorry about it. Sorry about Ballard, there.”

  “An incident?” Skye struggled to sit up, wrath driving him, struggled to stand. It was foolishness. Pain and nausea engulfed him. Dizzily, he tumbled back to the gravelly ground, gasping for air, willing his lungs to pump.

  Boatmen from the Otter had gathered around, though a few patrolled the area, rifles in hand.

  “Start loading those bales,” Marsh snapped. “We’ll sail as soon as we have our cargo stored.” He turned to several of them. “Gather driftwood. There’s plenty here.”

  “Give me my flatboat. back,” Gill said.

  Marsh laughed shortly. “You’re a smuggler and you’d just better get used to what we’ll do to you.”

  Gill cussed helplessly.

  “At least, bury Ballard,” Skye said.

  “You can manage. We don’t have time,” Marsh said.

  Skye struggled against the blackness engulfing him, and when he opened his eyes again he peered up at the confident-looking Bonfils, Marsh’s hero of the day. “Look for me,” Skye said, swallowing back his vomit.

  Bonfils smiled broadly and tipped his hat.

  The rest of that morning passed in a haze of pain and confusion, but he knew the boatmen were ferrying bales of furs back to the steamboat and loading them, using Gill’s flatboat. He knew they were confiscating Gill’s bales because Gill was raging at them, and they were holding him at gunpoint.

  He knew that poor Ballard lay in the sun, unburied and unmourned, and that the bereaved Cheyenne woman had retreated into the willow brush with her dead boy, to be alone with her grief and out of sight of the authors of her sorrows. He heard her singing; a low, monotonous, strident wail unlike the sweetness he had heard earlier.

  He knew that Victoria hovered over him, slid water into him, put compresses and plasters on him to cool the mounting fevers. He felt her tears fall wetly on his cheeks, and felt the gentle touch of her fingers, sending love, willing him to heal, comforting him. He felt himself being rolled onto a softer robe so the gravel would not stab his back.

  He smelled woodsmoke, and knew the firemen were building up steam. That meant that the paddles had been repaired and the steamboat was being readied to travel. He knew that Bonfils was parading about, the company-certified hero of the hour, the man who had saved the Otter and all its precious cargo, not to mention the entire crew.

  He knew that three of those balls in the cannister shot by Bonfils hit him; others had butchered a child, murdered a St. Louis frontiersman, and wounded or killed several Sans Arcs.

  Marsh pulled out mid-morning. Skye heard the snap of steam exiting the escapement, and heard the rumble of the wheels and the splash of the paddles as they thrashed the river. Then they were gone.

  He saw a blue heaven above him, and magpies flicking over him, and crows sailing the breezes. He heard the soft lap of the river. He moved and felt his ribs scrape against cartilage, and felt Victoria’s tight bandage. He coughed, shooting wild pain through his torso, and then sucked air desperately. The poultice comforted him.

  It was very quiet, save for the angry muttering of Red Gill. Skye turned, and could see Gill poking around in the flatboat. At least Marsh had returned it, raped and empty, to its owner. It rested just off the gravel spit, moored fore and after by hempen hawsers to the willows.

  Gill approached him after a while, squatting down.

  “How you doing?” he asked.

  “I’ll live.”

  “I can’t hardly navigate without another man. You up to it?”

  “Victoria can help you.”

  Gill looked about to say something, but held his peace. “You ain’t up to it.”

  “Soon,” Skye said.

  “I got to bury Shorty.”

  “You might offer to help Lame Deer first.”

  “Bury a redskin?”

  “She will wrap the child in a robe, put it in a tree, and offer it to the sun.”

  Gill pondered that. “Maybe I should do that with Shorty. I don’t hardly know how to bury him around here, on gravel, a foot above the river.”

  Skye nodded, feeling delirium wash through him. He hoped it would be a long time before he was carried to the flatboat. He hoped the gentle rocking of the flatboat wouldn’t make him any more nauseous than he was.

  Victoria had vanished and he knew she was consoling the Cheyenne woman, the pair of them just as far from white men as they could get on that gravelly island.

  He wondered what MacLees would think upon hearing the news that Bonfils had killed his boy. Maybe MacLees wouldn’t care. Maybe Marsh and Bonfils wouldn’t say anything. Maybe the log of the Otter would show nothing, nothing at all … Maybe Marsh and minions would spread their own carefully wrought version among the powerful. At any rate, the steamer would reach St. Louis weeks before the flatboat did—if Gill managed to reach St. Louis at all.

  Skye pondered that, and amended it: if he and Victoria and Gill and Lame Deer and Singing Rain ever reached St. Louis at all, and were allowed to see the general, or were welcomed into the offices of Pierre Chouteau. There were too many ifs and ors.

  twenty-three

  The river glistened; nothing stirred. The sun beat mercilessly upon that place where so recently the horrors of war had carmined the gravel with blood.

  Victoria’s heart lay heavily within her, but she pushed aside her desolation to help those in need; her man, Skye, gasping and nauseous; and Lame Deer, the stoic mother, staring helplessly at the body of her son, killed by a thoughtless act of fear by that Creole sonofabitch.

  She brought cold water to Skye, who sipped it gratefully. He didn’t want much; only to be left alone. But he was lying in full sun.

  “We got to get you into the cabin,” she said.

  “Leave me.”

  She ignored him, and found Red angrily putting the flatboat in order, his own cursing a match for Shorty’s. He had dragged Shorty aboard and wrapped him in an old blanket.

  “Thieves! Killers! Wait ’til I tell Chouteau!”

  “Ah, Mister Gill, I need your help.”

  He stared at her and then nodded.

  “I got to get Skye into the cabin. Out of the sun or he maybe die.”

  “He’s too shot to move.”

  “We carry him together in a robe.”

  “You?” He eyed her slim frame doubtfully.

  She didn’t reply but dug around in the cabin for a blanket, and waited for him.

  Together they rolled Skye into it and half-dragged, half-carried him up the wobbling plank and into the flatboat. Skye groaned. She settled him on the bunk, checked his bloody bandages to see whether this passage had reopened the wounds, and then went back for his rifle and top hat. Tenderly, she settled his possessions beside him, his rifle within easy reach, just as it always was.

  He reached up and clasped her hand in his. She saw tears in his eyes. His cold hand, weak as his grip was, spoke to her of profound love. She fought back the roar of anguish in her, and smiled. She would not let him see her own tears.

  The shade of the cabin would protect him from Father Sun. She pressed her palm to his brow and found it fevered. Soon she would give him herb tea if she could find what she needed.

  She found Red Gill slumped on the deck. “Now you got to help me with Lame Deer.”

  Red nodded morosely. She plucked up the small robe the boy had slept in and brought it, along with some thong.

  Lame Deer sat silently in a private bower she had found, screened by red willow brush, a place to be alone with her grief. She stroked Singing Rain absently, calming the fretful child, but her spirit was far away, and Victoria thought her mind’s eye was gazing upon her homeland, her Cheyenne people, the lodges of her kin.

  “We send Sound Comes Back After Sho
uting to the place of the spirits now,” she said gruffly.

  Lame Deer stared, saying nothing.

  Victoria motioned to Red. The child lay on the gravel, flies collecting around the fatal wound, a thin layer of browning blood covering the boy’s neck.

  She spread the small robe on the gravel, lifted the child onto it, and pulled the robe over the boy. She lashed the bundle with thong, driving away the swarming flies, and nodded to Red.

  She found some box elders flourishing on a slight rise, and place where one might anchor some crosspieces to a low fork one of the trees. It took her and Red Gill a while to complete he little scaffold, but at last she was satisfied. Here the Cheyenne boy would lie, under the rustling leaves, while his soul climbed the long trail.

  She returned to Lame Deer’s bower and tugged at the woman’s hand while Red gathered the bundled body of the boy. That was the funeral procession: Red, carrying the bundle, Lame Deer and her daughter, and Victoria, her sharp quick gaze checking distant ridges for trouble even as she grieved.

  Red lifted the bundle onto the scaffold, as if the boy weighed no more than a feather.

  Lame Deer stood before the scaffold, her countenance solemn but composed.

  She was plainly seeking English words, and then did speak.

  “This was good child. MacLees, him and me, we make him one winter night, very cold, and then I see the owl float by, and so this is the owl prophesy. This I know long ago, that this good boy would not be alive for long. But I put that in my heart and kept it until now. It make me sad now.

  “MacLees, he love this boy, want to make him a trader like himself. Now MacLees will be sad. This boy, he was going to be in white man’s religion; big medicine, bigger than maybe Cheyenne medicine. This child, the one whose name is known, he walked with big steps, a little man so soon. He comes into the earth lodge and now he goes, and leaves an empty place inside of me. Where he goes, he will be a great one, with many honors.”

  She wept then, tears leaking from her warm brown eyes.

  “MacLees, now he must be told. I go to Many Houses to tell him. He will do what he will do when he learns this.”

  What was Lame Deer saying?

  Red was listening impatiently, some innate courtesy keeping him from returning to the flatboat. Victoria watched him read him well. Hard man, good man, wild and reckless, not man to live in Many Houses place but out where no elders and chiefs curbed him.

  Lame Deer reached upward and placed something on the bundle.

  “Turtle stone,” she said to Victoria. “It says who he is to the spirits.”

  An amulet.

  She led the way out of the grove, and into the blinding sunlight, with the subdued girl, Singing Rain, beside her, hobbling across the rough gravel.

  Red and Victoria followed.

  “Got to wait until Skye’s up,” Red said. “I can’t handle a flatboat alone. Need a strong man up front with a pole, among other things.”

  “I will steer,” Victoria said.

  He considered it and shook his head.

  “You steer, the Cheyenne and me, we pole or row or whatever you want, dammit,” she said.

  “You’re too small.”

  “All right, sit here and starve!”

  She had touched the sore point. The cornmeal wouldn’ last long.

  He grinned suddenly. “Can’t get into a worse jackpot thar I’m in now,” he said. “But we got to hold a little service for Shorty first.”

  He headed for shore and began collecting the larger stones from the gravel banks, and these he carried aboard and placed next to Shorty’s wrapped body. She fathomed his intent, and collected stones herself, but Lame Deer retreated to the front of the bobbing boat and settled on the planks.

  When Red had collected enough stones, he opened the blanket and placed them alongside Shorty, who lay there open-mouthed and sightless, and then tied the blanket tight, using up all the thong.

  Then, grunting under the heavy load, he lifted Shorty and slid his partner into the river, and stood, panting. The soft splash radiated outward and vanished in the flow. Somewhere, not far below, a mortal lay, perhaps tumbling slowly downstream. Victoria didn’t like it; giving the body to the water demons, which were the worst spirits of all, as any Absaroka knew. But maybe white men were demonized by other things, from the sky.

  Red stood at the side, panting, somber, upset.

  “Don’t know what to say, Shorty, so I’ll say good-bye, and good luck wherever you are. I’m proud to know you, proud to ride the river with you, Shorty Ballard. I guess, well, I’m not good at prayers, so I’ll just say, like the Spanish, vaya con Dios.”

  Skye’s muffled voice rose from the cabin. “I can lead you,” he said.

  “I’d be obliged.”

  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …”

  Victoria listened to these familiar words, so different from the medicine of her people, but a great comfort to white men. Even to a smuggler like Red Gill, if that’s what he was. She wasn’t quite sure what Red Gill did and why it was considered so bad, or what else was wrong with him that the big chief of the riverboat would treat him with such contempt, and without even a moment’s regret.

  Skye finished reciting, his voice soft and gentle and barely audible in the afternoon quiet, and then Red thanked him and untied the front hawser from the bankside brush. He loosened the rear rope and scurried aboard as the current caught the flatboat and nudged it away. He yanked the plank into the boat and headed for the tiller. The flatboat, unburdened by cargo, floated high and skimmed into the river.

  She watched the place of death and darkness fall behind.

  “Where’s No Name?” asked Skye from within the cabin.

  Fear lanced her. She hastened around the flatboat.

  “Stop. The dog is not here,” she said to Red.

  Red immediately pulled the tiller and the flatboat drifted toward shore. Even before it bumped the riverbank, she leapt out and began trotting back toward the place of death, swallowing back her fears.

  She reached the flat and saw nothing.

  “No Name,” she cried. “Spirit Dog, where are you?”

  She discovered only silence.

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad. No Name lived his own life. If he felt like it, he would keep up with the flatboat while hunting along the shore. But the more she tried to persuade herself of all this, the worse she felt.

  She began a thorough examination of that brushy flat, visiting the places where Skye had fallen, Shorty had died, the little Cheyenne boy had breathed his last, and several Sans Arcs had either died or been gravely wounded. She saw nothing but blood on gravel.

  Then, some distance back from the river, she spotted the familiar yellow, and pushed through thick canebrake to reach the dog.

  No Name lay under brush, in a small hollow. He was very still.

  “Aiee!” she whispered.

  She crawled under the brush to the dog. It lay unmoving. A bloodless hole pierced its chest. She reached, frightened, to touch the dog, find breath, find life. But there was no life.

  Bonfils’s cannister had snuffed out yet another life.

  She gathered the dog in her arms, and staggered to her feet, carrying a heavier load than she had ever known.

  twenty-four

  Alexandre Bonfils stood in the prow of the Otter, congratulating himself. Had he not rescued this ship and all its crew? Had he not saved the entire cargo, half the company’s annual returns, from the theft of savages? Had he not acted with speed and decisiveness? As a result of all this, had the company not halted smugglers and confiscated nineteen bales of pelts? And while it was unfortunate that some ruffians and savages got shot, he could scarcely have hoped for a better result.

  The riverboat gathered its muscles and plowed downstream, leaving the savage squaws, Skye, and the smuggler to mend themselves, and maybe mend their ways if they had any sense. Bonfils doubted that Skye or any of the others would reach St. Louis now; in any case,
if they did show up in a few weeks, Pierre Chouteau and General Pratte would have long since awarded the trading post position to him; how could they not? And once he showed some skill there, dealing with the Crows, some sharp improvements in the profits, he would swiftly advance to greater things.

  Trenholm appeared at his side.

  “Marsh wants you,” the mate said.

  Bonfils smiled and nodded. The commendation from the captain would be music to his ears. A kind word from the powerful captain in St. Louis would assure success.

  He hastened up the companionway to the hurricane deck, and forward to the pilothouse, where he found Marsh dourly writing at a small desk. The captain peered up, and the look in his red face was not pleasant.

  “Let’s get something straight, Bonfils. You will never again touch that cannon or fire any sort of shot from this vessel without my permission.”

  Bonfils was taken aback. “But there was no time … we were on the brink of disaster.”

  “Disaster!”

  “Mais oui, the savages were about to overrun us.”

  Marsh sprang to his feet, his face reddening.

  “You endangered my ship. You acted without permission. You started a war! You ruined the company’s trading with the whole Sioux nation! And all because you didn’t wake me, ask me!”

  Bonfils resented the outburst. “Monsieur le capitaine, I beg to remind you the savages were gathering on the riverbank, only ten yards away; scores of them, ready to plunge into the water and overwhelm us and strangle us in our sleep! I beg to remind you that on that gravel beach, just a few yards distant, lay half the wealth of Pratte, Chouteau and Company! And that is where the savages collected, right there, ready to commandeer that flatboat, ready to pitch the bales into the river if the spirit moved them! I saved the day; I drove them off! I collected two of your crew and we defeated them. We are safe here, we have more pelts than when we started! We—”

  Marsh waved a hand so forcefully that Bonfils abruptly stopped.

  When the master spoke, the tone was low and deadly.