Gil Wallach said kindly, ‘Here, Poco—’ and tossed him a pair of new wool pants. ‘I’ll put these on our dead friend’s tab.’
It was near dark when the liquor ran out. By that time, everyone in the camp had been through the fly at least twice, the exceptions being Manitou Wildman, everyone connected with Goshen Clarke and Clemantius Groot’s party, and the young New England trapper Boaz Frye. Bridger and Fitzpatrick of the AFC volunteered to comb through the rough country south of Horse Creek for any others who, like Poco and Blankenship, had thought to follow the two independents to their secret beaver valley, while Kit Carson returned to Wildman’s camp. Through the tail end of the long afternoon, a fair-sized troop of would-be Beauty-trackers made their way back to the rendezvous, cursing their elusive quarry and agog to hear what had happened in their vicinity, unbeknownst.
Most of these claimed to have heard two shots, shortly after the rain had ceased for the first time, at which point the moon, what there was of it, was coming to zenith. Some had assumed these shots to be Blackfoot. Others thought they were Clarke and Groot trying to discourage followers. Most agreed that the shots had been slightly less than a minute apart.
During these testimonies, conducted alternately by Shaw and January at the rear of the fly, Hannibal assisted Mick Seaholly and Charro Morales in pouring drinks. Thus, by the time even the Mexican trader’s more expensive barrel was exhausted, and the AFC publican took his empty kegs and his customers back down to their regular venue, Hannibal had a list of about a hundred theories as to who might have committed the murder, propounded to him across the bar.
‘I like the one that claims it was Generalissimo Santa Anna,’ he mused, studying his notes by the light of the campfire that had been built in front of the fly. ‘Is he in Washington these days?’
‘They let him go home.’ January shook his head, bemused. ‘Considering the Americans he massacred at the Alamo, I’m still astonished that Sam Houston’s soldiers didn’t kill him on the spot when they caught him . . .’
‘I’d have held their coats for them.’ During Hannibal’s visit to Mexico two winters ago, the dictator’s negligence had very nearly gotten him hanged.
January adjusted a trade blanket over the side of the fly, knotted it into place with strips of rawhide – the ubiquitous fasteners of everything beyond the frontier – and held the corner of another blanket for Morning Star and Veinte-y-Cinco to do the same. ‘How many were with Blankenship, that it was Groot or Clarke or both?’
‘About a dozen.’ Hannibal edged aside on the flat rock on which he sat, to let Pia arrange supper over the fire: green sticks laden with skewered meat. ‘There’s the usual accusations that it was either the Blackfeet, that band of Crows – only, Tom Fitzpatrick said he’d heard it was Flatheads that are lurking – in the hills to the north, or Iron Heart’s Omahas—’
‘In spite of the fact that our friend there still got his hair on.’ Shaw came into the circle of the firelight, from closing up the store.
Hannibal tapped the side of his nose and looked crafty. ‘They’re sly. One vote apiece for the Sioux, Red Arm’s Crows here in the camp, the Hudson’s Bay Flatheads – this isn’t counting those who believe that the group lurking in the north are Flatheads, working for Hudson’s Bay. Votes also for the Company’s Delaware scouts, the Snakes, the Crees, the Assiniboin, and the Nez Perces, with no more argument for motive other than that they are Indians.’
‘Cabrons.’ Veinte-y-Cinco knelt to set a Dutch oven of cornbread on the coals. ‘Like any Indian’s gonna kill a man and leave that much vermillion in his pocket.’ She settled on the rock next to Hannibal, took a comb from her skirt pocket and proceeded to comb out her long hair.
‘Homini praeposuit veritatem.’ Hannibal turned the pages over, thin hands a little shaky in the firelight. Other than occasional bouts with the symptoms of withdrawal from long-term opiate consumption, the fiddler had held up surprisingly well. But the journey, January was well aware, had been hard on him: his friend was not one of those specimens of American hardihood so beloved of temperance-tract writers, who had only to be thrown on his own into the company of red-blooded mountaineers in the embrace of Nature, to abandon all thought of evil habits and be restored to complete health. Though his consumption had gone into abeyance, January could still hear it whisper in the rasping of Hannibal’s breath; could see it sometimes, when the fiddler put his hand to his side in pain when he didn’t think anyone was looking.
‘We also have accusations against Sir William Stewart – you can’t trust these aristocrats, you know; ten for Edwin Titus, assuming that the victim actually is the missing Asa Goodpastor – although I think Warren Wynne would accuse Titus of anything at this point, since the AFC has pretty much bankrupted him this summer. Three for the Reverend Grey, also assuming that the victim is Goodpastor, who knew some terrible secret about the Reverend; one for John McLeod; one for the secret long-lost husband of Irish Mary –’ he named the youngest and prettiest of the Taos girls, who was in fact no more Irish than the rest of them – ‘and, of course, twenty-five votes for Manitou Wildman. Gordy Dalrain swears the dead man is actually Aaron Burr—’
‘Aaron Burr?’ January – who had settled on the opposite side of the blaze to count out the stranger’s banknotes – almost dropped them into the fire.
‘—who faked his death last year in New York with the express purpose of returning to the West for another try at setting up his Empire. According to Gordy, Burr was pursued by government agents who ran him to earth here and killed him—’
‘And then erected a comfortable shelter out of the rain and left a fire to warm his corpse?’
The fiddler shrugged. . . . I don’t suppose we could prove it isn’t Burr.’ He poured himself tea from the tin camp-kettle that Morning Star had hung on a green-stick tripod above the fire, grimaced at the taste. Among his young wife’s many accomplishments, tea-making was signally lacking. ‘The fire, of course, was to destroy all record of Burr’s nefarious plots, plus any proof of his identity. And how much money did our third Vice President have there in his pocket when he was killed?’
‘Five thousand dollars, always supposing the Bank of New York, the Bank of Pennsylvania, the Germantown and Lancaster Citizens’ Bank, Wesley’s Private Bank of Manhattan, the Ohio and Albany Commercial Bank, and about ten other such establishments are still in business. We can discount the two thousand here from the Bank of Louisiana—’
‘Proving conclusively that it was Burr.’ Hannibal shook his head. ‘So many secret papers in his pockets, they didn’t need the banknotes to start the fire. It explains why they stripped him, too, of course. There’s coffee here, too, amicus meus—’
Veinte-y-Cinco rose, and Shaw set aside the saddle-worn black trousers, the plain German silver watch that he’d been studying, and walked her down the path to Seaholly’s, with the matter-of-fact obligingness of a man walking any woman to her work after dark. When he returned he was accompanied by Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, who accepted the invitation to stay and dine.
‘I think I got ’em all,’ said Bridger, tearing – with perfect politeness – the elk meat from the rib he held. ‘All but that child Frye – he come in? No? An’ not even a footprint at Wildman’s camp.’
‘No sign of any other camp?’
‘Plenty sign.’ Carson tugged a corner of his light-brown mustache, vexed. ‘Hell, we had half the rendezvous stampedin’ across those hills lookin’ for Beauty and the Dutchman. The rain washed out pretty much everythin’ but droppings. Didn’t see nothing clustered together, like you’d have if anyone had put down for any length of time.’
‘How far’d you go?’
‘Maybe four miles back along the creek, ’bout two miles over the ridge.’
‘Cross the river?’
Carson shook his head. ‘I was huntin’ for Wildman, not our friend’s camp.’ He nodded toward the gaily-striped blanket walls of the makeshift morgue. ‘Damnedest thing I ever saw,’ he added
– which, January reflected, coming from Carson, was saying a great deal. ‘Old buffer’s got to have a camp someplace, and folks looking for him – ’less they’re all of ’em croaked. They would be, if they were across the river and ran into the Blackfeet. You folks need help keepin’ our friend from havin’ dinner guests tonight?’
‘It’d be a help, yes, thank you,’ said Shaw. ‘I ’preciate it.’
Curious, January reflected, that Senex Incognito, as Stewart had dubbed him, was almost universally referred to as ‘our friend,’ though in life he might easily have been plotting trouble – killin’ bad – serious enough, perhaps, to endanger every man in the camp. Death – and the savage manner of his death – had brought out the ready friendliness of the trappers, the willingness to speak of him as a friend and to sit up all night to keep vermin from eating his corpse.
Already, January could hear furtive rustlings in the brush of the bottomlands below the camp. He hoped the only things drawn to the smell of the corpse would be foxes and coyote.
If it’s a bear, he thought, he can have him . . .
‘That boy Poco was right, though,’ went on Shaw after a time. ‘The old man got no more need of his body now than he has of those britches Poco borrowed. Still, it’s a lonesome business, watchin’ alone.’
So they split the watches, two and two, through the night in the time-honored way: Shaw and Prideaux, January and Jim Bridger, Hannibal and Kit Carson, LeBel and Clopard. At one point on January’s vigil something quite large snuffled at the other side of the blanket wall, but evidently the scents of men and fire were enough to convince it – or them – to stay away. Certainly, the conversation with Jim Bridger – about beaver and bears and navigation in the wilderness, about white and Indian medicine, about slavery and Andrew Jackson and the kind of men who chose to leave the United States and live in the mountains in solitude and constant danger – was worth every foot of the long journey up the Platte, an attempted scalping and longing for Rose . . .
The old man – dressed in his own black trousers and a new calico shirt that Gil Wallach had donated from the company’s store, and moccasins that Morning Star had spent the night embroidering – was laid to rest in the morning, in a coffin gouged from a hollowed log and with a makeshift cross set up above his grave at the foot of the hills west of the main camp. Aside from a near murder occasioned by the Reverend Grey’s sudden assertion that the deceased was, in fact, the Indian Agent Asa Goodpastor after all – and his sworn oath that he was going to write immediately to Congress accusing Edwin Titus of the crime – the obsequies went well. Over a hundred men escorted the old man to his grave, and January saw in more than one bearded face genuine sympathy and pity for this aged man – whoever he was – who’d met his death alone and by violence, as any of them might meet theirs tomorrow . . . or even later on today . . .
As Veinte-y-Cinco had put it, as she’d made coffee in front of the lodge early that morning, ‘Poor old abuelo. What would bring him all the way out here to die?’
TWELVE
Even before the procession left camp, Edwin Titus dispatched Tom Fitzpatrick with ten men, to ride post-haste down the river and meet and escort the missing Indian Agent to the rendezvous if he was delayed, or to find him if he was lost. Bets were taken at Seaholly’s – according to Pia they ran five to two in favor of the deceased actually being Goodpastor – and Hannibal played a Mozart requiem, after which every man in the camp, with the exception of January and Shaw, repaired to Seaholly’s for the wake.
‘Bridger tell you last night ’bout the winter of . . . musta been ’31 or ’32?’ said Shaw, in response to January’s question as to his opinion on the matter. They crossed Horse Creek at the same spot they had the previous morning – deadfall pine athwart the stream bed marked the best ford – and climbed the ridge beyond; the stream was much lower than it had been yesterday, but just as cold.
‘Was that the winter Bridger was working for Rocky Mountain Fur?’
‘It was – ’fore the AFC strangled ’em out of business.’ Shaw leaned forward in the saddle as the horses scrambled up the trail. He kept one rifle in hand and the other scabbarded on the saddle, and had added a US Army pistol to his armory and a second bowie-knife stuck in his moccasin top – an uncomfortable reminder of the fact that whoever had murdered either Johnny Shaw, or poor old Senex Incognito or both, they weren’t the only killers abroad in these high, empty-seeming lands.
‘RMF brigades would go into a territory, and AFC had orders to follow ’em in an’ trap the streams bare ’fore Bridger an’ his men – Tom Fitzpatrick was one of ’em, then, too – could get enough plews to make back what their company was payin’ ’em,’ went on Shaw. ‘They did this for a month or two, then Bridger got fed up with it – an’ fedder up of the AFC tellin’ the local tribes that if they did business with the RMF, they could forget AFC goods forever. Finally, Bridger turns around an’ heads straight into Blackfoot country, knowin’ the AFC boys would have to follow an’ knowin’ what’d happen to ’em when they did. Bridger an’ his boys was in danger too, but they was in smaller groups, they was the first ones in, an’ Bridger figured they had a better chance. An’ he was right. Bridger an’ his men got through pretty clear. AFC lost some men, some of who died pretty badly. Bridger knowed that would happen. That’s the kind of fightin’ we’re lookin’ at. The men we’re dealin’ with.’
January was silent. He now had a pretty good idea of what the pelts stacked in the AFC storage tents would bring when Titus got them to St Louis, and what the Company paid the trappers for them, even before the trappers were docked Company prices for liquor and powder and salt. Britain and the US were fighting over profits well equivalent to a silver lode.
‘So, would Titus egg on a pack of Crows to kill an Indian Agent that was like to get questions asked in Congress about sellin’ liquor?’ Shaw shrugged and swung down from his horse as they neared the clearing where the old man had lain. ‘Beats hell outta me. Would Congress believe it’s the kind of thing the AFC would do an’ start an investigation? I would. Well, consarn,’ he added, scanning the ground around the clearing and its shelter. ‘I knew this would happen whilst we was keepin’ an eye on the viewin’ of the corpse.’
‘Every man in the camp hiked up here to have a look at the shelter?’
The Kentuckian straightened up and surveyed the clearing around him. Even so inexpert a tracker as January could tell that the place had been well and truly visited. ‘If I’d been the Blackfeet,’ sighed Shaw, ‘I’d’a just put up an ambush here by the trail. Coulda picked off every man in the camp that way.’
‘Except you and me and our deceased friend, now in his honored grave.’ January took the reins of Shaw’s horse as Shaw began slowly circling the clearing afoot, more often crouched than straight, examining the ground, the trees, the scrubby thickets of huckleberry around the bases of the pines. January glanced at him every few seconds, but his attention remained on the woods around them: on the chittering of squirrels and the hidden rustle of foxes in the juniper thickets; on the voices of larks, the squabbling of jaybirds. Sounds that would cease, he knew, if someone were coming behind them.
In just such a fashion, he reflected, were Hannibal, and Veinte-y-Cinco, and Pia, pursuing their own investigations at Seaholly’s, listening for gossip, words, chance remarks . . . Anything out of place.
Out of place like an old man’s naked body – like a pair of expensive black kid gloves.
Shaw said, with a note of satisfaction in his voice, ‘An’ here we are.’
January followed his gaze and saw the bright orangey-yellow scar of a fresh bullet-mark high on a scraggy-barked fir.
Branches didn’t even start on the trunk until some twenty-five feet from the ground. January set his own rifle and one of Shaw’s where he could grasp them in seconds, leaned on the tree and gave his hand for his companion’s moccasined foot.
‘Looks to have been a wild shot.’ Shaw prized the bullet loose with his knife,
dropped lightly off January’s shoulders with the deformed wad of lead in his hand. ‘Pistol,’ he added, and held it up for January to see. ‘Fifty caliber. Johnny’s was a fifty, an’ it wasn’t on his body.’
He pocketed the bullet, resumed his search of the trees while January went back to watching for danger. After a time he asked, ‘Was there a reason Johnny didn’t stay with you in New Orleans, and came west with Tom? Other than wanting to be kidnapped by the Indians like Uncle Naboth?’
‘He hated bugs,’ replied Shaw simply – as good a reason as January had ever heard for staying out of New Orleans. ‘An’ he missed the mountains. He was only twelve,’ the Kentuckian went on quietly, ‘when the three of us come to New Orleans. I’d been down the river twice before. But it was Tom’s first trip, an’ Johnny’s, an’ him wild to come an’ see the elephant an’ hear the lion roar. Probably saved his life, an’ Tom’s too, when the fever come through at home. I don’t think Tom ever got over it.’ His hand brushed the bark of another tree, and he added, ‘No second ball, far as I can see. Since Mr Incognito didn’t have it in his hide, there’s a chance Wildman took it, which might account for him not bein’ at his camp.’
‘Wouldn’t account for his horses being gone.’ January nudged his own mount along after Shaw as Shaw made his way from the clearing upslope to the top of the ridge. ‘And I didn’t see any birds circling when we were coming up toward the hills.’
Our mama an’ OUR wives, Shaw had said, when he’d spoken of his brother: it was the first time January had ever heard his friend mention that he might have once been married. When the fever came through at home . . .
Tom wasn’t the only one, who never got over it.
‘Don’t smell any smoke,’ remarked Shaw. ‘You?’
January shook his head. ‘Did Tom meet Gil Wallach in New Orleans?’
‘Gil Wallach was still trappin’ back in ’29. But the Chouteau Brothers, that just about runs the fur business outta St Louis, come down to New Orleans pretty regular, an’ Tom hooked up with them on the business side – Tom was always the businessman, of the three of us.’ He knelt, probing at a tangle of hemlock. ‘He clerked a spell at Laramie, but it wasn’t long ’fore he was the bourgeois of a post. Johnny went with him.’
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