Charbonneau - Winfred Blevins

by Winfred Blevins

  "Where’s Brother Jeremiah?" a big fellow asked.

  "Left dying of thirst by the pass," she said, crying only a little now.

  The greenhorns found him halfway to camp. By the time the missionary got to camp, having guzzled Big Sandy refreshment, he was prepared to give Jim and Baptiste a proper chastising, and to turn them over to the local authorities. But they were gone on, having little tolerance for the company in the neighborhood. If the Reverend Jeremiah Jones saw hellfire in their eyes, they saw prissiness in his.

  JUNE, 1843: Baptiste pulled Pilgrim up short. Pilgrim snorted impatiently, eager to move. Old Bill, Jim, and Joe Meek rode up alongside him and saw why he stopped. Their mules bore thick packs of plews; their swing through Pierre’s Hole, Jackson Hole, and the Absaroka Range had made a fine spring hunt. Idling their way toward Laramie for a good pay-off, they thought that trappin’ was shinin’ again. But there, reaching in front of them from above Independence Rock down past Devil’s Gate, spread a huge litter of white tops. The wagons were winding up the Sweetwater in a long, slow, sinuous crawl like the vertebrae of a snake.

  "This child reckons it’s a thousand emigrators," Bill wheezed. They just looked for a long time--at the river, at the mountains that rose, aloof to nine or ten thousand feet to the south, at the cleft where the Sweetwater suddenly plunged down into the turbulent hell of Devil’s Gate for a quarter-mile, at the land that changed through the seasons without ever changing, and at the wagon train inching up the valley. Baptiste figured there were more white men in that single train than had ever come into the mountains before. He kicked Pilgrim forward.

  Baptiste saw Dr. Whitman riding in front of the lead wagon, and pulled up. "Where to?" he asked, sweeping his hand over the length of the train.

  "Oregon, Baptiste, mostly the Willamette Valley. Hello, Joe, Bill."

  Bill grunted. "This ain’t fitten, Doctor."

  "You’re a reactionary, Bill, an amiable reactionary. And a sinner. Come to Walla Walla and be reborn."

  "Wagh! I’ll be reborn, sure." He made antlers with his fingers. Whitman laughed.

  "What’s the weather ahead?" Whitman asked.

  "Quiet," Baptiste said. "Shoshones to Black’s Fork. Old Gabe’s built a fort there. You can do some trading and smithing. Crows are mostly away up north. Utes were up awhile back, and were raiding Shoshones, but they’re chased back south. Should be peaceable to the fort."

  "Thanks," said Whitman. He looked at Jim as though to introduce himself, but apparently thought better of it.

  "Preachin’ bastard," Jim said as they rode off.

  "Mark my words, boys," cried Bill, "these fools is thumbin’ thar noses at nature. The mountains ain’t fitten for women and children. One day Colter’s hell ull open and swallow ’em up. Let ’em stay on God’s side of the Missouri River."

  "Welcome," Baptiste called down from his horse, "back to Atlantis.”

  Robert Campbell strode across and shook his hand warmly.

  "What be Atlantis?”’ Jim asked, shaking likewise.

  "The one-time home of the gods," said Campbell. "I believe Baptiste is suggesting that the mountains will soon be the one-time home of you one-time gods. May I offer the gods a drink?"

  They swung off. "Whew," said Joe, "mighty fancy."

  "I want you to meet someone," Campbell smiled, and led them toward the main tent.

  "Captain William Drummond Stewart of Her Majesty’s Army," Campbell announced. He was a friendly looking man of military erectness, with a splendidly bristling mustache and a beard of more recent cultivation. He wore riding breeches and high leather boots, but had shed his coat. After the formalities Campbell explained: "Captain Stewart is a Scottish baronet, proprietor of Murthly Castle. He’s here to shoot some mountain critturs and take back some trophies."

  Baptiste laughed out loud. "I hope you're not planning to take any Indians to the Sahara Desert."

  Stewart looked dumbfounded. "Would you care to explain that over a glass of wine?" he smiled.

  Running Stream and White Pebble--Jim had lodgepoled Yellow Leaf up at Pryor’s Gap and sent her home--took the pots to the Sweetwater, and set about making camp while the men drank. Captain Stewart, it turned out, had brought along in his wagon a generous selection of wines, brandies, whiskies, cigars, and various delicacies. He offered a Rhine wine cooled in the river and some smoked oysters. While Jim muttered about the sissy wine and Spat out the oysters, Baptiste told Stewart about William Clark and St. Louis, Prince Paul, Stuttgart and King William, Württemberg University, France, England and North Africa.

  "Hamlet’s university, eh? It is a good joke. My own lands include the Wood of Dunsinane. Wrong play, right author." He considered. "It’s quite fantastic. The course of your entire life has been altered, incredibly altered, by chance encounters with two famous men."

  "Perhaps," Baptiste answered. "But when all is said and done, I am still here, in the mountains, trapping--just where anyone would have predicted the son of a squaw and a fur trader would end his days. And that is not chance, but choice."

  "You have a somewhat richer perspective, I suspect, than your fellow trappers."

  Jim set down his empty wine glass impatiently. "Got any whisky?" he said in a mock--growl.

  "My friend’s palate is less than refined," Baptiste smiled. "But what can you expect of a rude, uncouth trapper?" Stewart reached for a bottle. Baptiste stalled the pouring until he could pick some mint for juleps.

  "Where to, gentlemen?" Campbell asked.

  "Black’s Fork," Baptiste said.

  "Old Gabe’s built hisself a fort thar," Jim elaborated. " ’Pears he’s a mind to set up at storekeepin’."

  "Gabe?" Campbell was amazed. "The king of the mountains tending a store?"

  "It’s bad times, Bob," Baptiste said. "Half the boys are leaving the mountains. "

  "Yes, I saw Fitz and Kit guiding a Lieutenant Fremont above Ash Hollow."

  "And some of them are nursemaiding the emigrants across to Oregon and Californy, meaning to set up as farmers when they get there,” Baptiste said. "The rest are just caching their traps. Tempis fugit."

  "He talks funny and he wears lace panties," Jim said.

  "Meet your squaws’ people at Bridger, and then what?" asked Stewart.

  "Hunt for the Snakes awhile," said Baptiste. "Our squaws are Snakes. And then this child’ll trap, I guess."

  "Boys, there’ll be a rendezvous this summer. I know the rendezvous has gone under, but for old time’s sake. We’ve brought kegs of whisky, and there’ll be prizes for riding and shooting. Whole thing’s on Captain Stewart. He wants to see one.”

  "Wagh!" grunted Jim. "A rendezvous on the peraira? You be flinging the dollars about."

  "Somewhere in the Wind Rivers," added Campbell, "I’ll send a man to Fort Bridger to leave word where."

  "Tell all the trappers you see," said Stewart. "And come yourselves. We’ll have some fun."

  "One last bust-out," Baptiste said reflectively.

  A young man walked up to them, but before Campbell could make the introduction, Baptiste recognized the red hair.

  "Jefferson Clark," he smiled, and struck out his hand. They hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. 'Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.”

  Baptiste shook his head in embarrassment. "I am delinquent in writing your father--he's damn near our father. Will you carry a letter to him?"

  "He died, Baptiste. Three years ago."

  Baptiste examined the young Clark for a long moment. "He lived an honest man." Jeff nodded.

  "Paump," Running Stream began as she lay down beside him the next night, "I may not go to the Wind Rivers, and I don’t want to go on a fall hunt. I want to stay with my people. My time will be before winter."

  "You want to be near Crippled Hand?" Crippled Hand was the principal midwife of the tribe.

  "Yes, and my father. He does not have many moons left."

  He held her for a moment. He was glad that she was with child again; he’d bee
n afraid that the first child, born dead, had somehow damaged her insides.

  "Sure," he whispered, "we’ll travel with the Shoshones this fall and make winter camp with them." He smiled at her. "And since it’s free, maybe we can get the tribe and half the Shoshone nation to come to rendezvous."

  She was convinced that their son had died because she had not stayed with her people; the old women of the tribe, who knew about such things, had not been there to isolate her from the men and sing their sacred songs and help with the delivery. This time she would get what she wanted.

  "Everything will be okay," he said, and rolled onto his back.

  "Maybe not," she said. She put a hand on his shoulder. "The trapping will end soon. There are no more dollars in it. Is that not so?" He nodded.

  "You must make a choice. You must go back to the settlements, or go to California or Oregon, or live with the Shoshones, must you not?"

  He was surprised that she spoke up like this. But then she had surprised him before. "I might keep trappin’. The dollars don’t matter."

  "It is finished, Paump. I do not want to go to live with the Frenchmen. I want to stay with my people on our land. I want for us to raise our son among the Shoshones and teach him as he should be taught."

  "I’ll think on it," he said.

  She knew the sign to quit. As he lay there, agitated now, and unable to sleep, he figured that she was probably right, all the way around. Still, he’d butt up against all that when the time came.

  JULY, 1843: Paump did persuade a few Snakes to come to rendezvous--Bazel and his squaw and three teen-age children, Sacajawea, Mountain Ram and his older daughter Spotted Deer and her man, Big Belly, and two other lodges--a dozen and a half in all. He might have gotten more, but he had to tell them that not many trading goods would be there.

  He was disappointed that the young chief of the entire Shoshone nation, Washakie, refused. Washakie seemed to Baptiste to have an inner calm and wisdom that set him apart, and he was a remarkable orator. The Shoshones had a well-eaened reputation for unbroken peace with the white man--which was handy for the whites, since the Snakes controlled the area of the Oregon Trail from South Pass west far beyond Fort Hall. Washakie, who had become chief about the time the first emigrants started coming through, was a determined advocate of strong bonds of friendship with the white man.

  Baptiste and Jim led the small band from Fort Bridger up the Siskadee to the mouth of the Big Sandy, a way up the creek and then due north for East Fork. Old Pierre, back at the fort had said rendezvous would be up at East Fork Lake.

  Just above the mouth of Big Sandy, Baptiste saw a huge congregation of wagons a quarter mile ahead; the emigrants were making no preparations to move on. He wondered how far the stragglers were strung out behind them--clear to South Pass, probably.

  Little Bear, Bazel's teen-age son who fancied himself a warrior, gave his horse a kick and came past Jim and Baptiste; Mountain Ram was right behind him, the silver-haired old man waving his lance and shouting. It was the old trick of riding up on a party fast, as though you were going to attack, and stopping dead at the last minute to shake hands, clap backs, and laugh. All right, why not a little fun? Everyone except the two horses dragging travois galloped toward the wagons. Baptiste and Jim fired their Hawkens into the air.

  A couple of men did reach toward their rifles, but there was no real chance of being misunderstood--there must have been four or five hundred whites to a band of less than twenty Indians, counting women and children.

  "Mornin’,” the old fellow who walked out said to Jim. Baptiste laughed: He himself must look so Indian that the fellow took a black as the one who spoke English.

  "Whar to?" asked Jim.

  "Fort Bridger, Fort Hall, and then some to Oregon and some to Californy."

  "Zat is zee first fitting place," Baptiste spoke up, "Oregon or Californy."

  "This country is God-forsaken, " said the old man, looking around edgily.

  "It’s quiet ahead," Jim said, "no trouble nowhar. That Oregon does shine.”

  "We air just passing by," said Baptiste, and nudged his horse. No sense in palavering all day.

  The next noon, just before they started up the West Fork of Big Sandy, Baptiste and Jim saw a half-dozen dark dots against a hill a mile off to the right: Buffalo.

  "Damned emigrators is ridin’ right by ’em," Jim said, "didn’t know what they was."

  "Let’s go," Baptiste grinned. Some more robes and meat would be fine for rendezvous. "Mountain Ram," he called, "we’ll catch up."

  "I said what would happen if you went foolin’ after them darn buffalo," Eliza whined, "I surely said it. " Five-year-old Julie, on her lap, wailed louder. Rube Applegate, ignoring his wife, clucked at the oxen pointlessly.

  Ike Reed flicked his roan a few yards ahead. He had sworn yesterday that if she started in again, he’d stuff her mouth with dust and cactus needles. His brother Frank eased up alongside him. "Well?" He meant what about moving on, leaving these bickering blunderers to muddle through, or not muddle through, on their own?

  "Not yit. The train’ll wait up afore long." Ike and Frank were eating the Applegate and the Olafssons’ grub in return for helping drag and push the wagons through the bad places. Ike figured they ought to stick with the job. Frank figured his brother just liked being picked on.

  Ole Olafsson was dreaming on the seat of the front wagon. He had opted out of the quarrels among the Applegates and the nastiness between the Applegate and the Reed boys ever since the two wagons lost the train a week ago. His own wife, who had dysentery, spent most of the day lying in back with the children. He just tried to keep the oxen moving. He noticed more and more, though, that his mind floated away from this land of dust, buffalo grass, cactus, and dry washes to his childhood--to his sister’s wedding, to the first months of his marriage--to anywhere but where he was. He refused to quarrel. But he kept letting the oxen wander into the worst places, getting the wagon stuck, and then the Reed boys would curse him disgracefully. His only defense was staying eight thousand miles away.

  "What the hail?” Ike yelled.

  Ole snapped to. Goddamn: Injuns riding down on them hard--an old man waving a lance in front and two more right behind, all of them screeching. Ole looked quick at Ike and Frank, who were doing nothing on their skittish horses but looking edgy. That sight struck sheer panic through Ole. He had to do something. He lifted his cap-and-ball rifle off the seat, pointed it toward the old man, and jerked the trigger. The old man’s horse stumbled, and he pitched to the ground.

  Oh shit, Ike thought, now it’s a fight. Two of the Injuns pulled up, but another came around them yelling and waving one hand. Ike leveled on the redskin, and noticed only as he pulled that it was a girl. She jerked backward. Ike could shoot and hunt with anybody.

  Bazel lifted Mountain Ram to his horse; the old man’s leg was bent funny. Spotted Deer helped Little Bear get Running Stream onto his pony; she was shot in the stomach. Big Belly fired once at the whites to cover the rescues--it was the only rifle the party hard. He heard a ball whiz by him, and whooped when he realized it had missed. They turned their backs to ride away, pulling the travois, which slowed them down, but the whites didn’t shoot any more.

  "Goddamn it, you bastard," Frank yelled at Ole, "that warn’t no war party. Your wanna get us all killed?"

  "Ware was he wen he had to shoot?" Ole yelled back, pointing at Rube.

  With Eliza screaming and clinging to him, Rube hadn’t even managed to get his gun from behind him.

  A few minutes later Ole heard gunfire somewhere off to the north. He was already driving the oxen in a cold fury; he drove them harder.

  Baptiste and Jim made a long cut across where the trail should have been, but they didn’t find it. They had angled north to catch up with the band. Finally, they started backtracking toward where they had last seen the others. The horses were loaded with skins full of fresh meat.

  The sounds of wails came to Baptiste’s ears across the
scorched plains, faint and mournful, like the cries of doves. He sucked in his breath deeply as he let himself know what they were, and then gave Pilgrim a kick. Jim was already several strides ahead of him.

  All he got from Little Bear’s babble was Mountain Ram and Running Stream, Mountain Ram and Running Stream. She was stretched out on a deerskin in the shade of one bank of the wash. Her knees were up and her legs spread wide. Blood had been scraped away from the dust between her legs, and scraps of human tissue were here and there. A long shudder started and convulsed his body. He cut it off. The bone-chill stayed.

  He slipped one hand behind her head, and she opened her eyes. They were glazed, and he was not sure whether she recognized him. She looked old, incredibly old and haggard.

  Sacajawea pointed, and he saw the wound. It was on the right side just below her ribs. No digging for it, her head still cradled in his hand. She looked like she might be asleep.

  "John, let’s go. They got to be the stupidest niggurs in the mountains, and murderin’ bastards asides."

  Baptiste cut him off with one hand. "Maybe later," he said. Jim looked at him hard, then strode off toward his horse. Baptiste guessed that later the revenge would be over.

  "You must not," declared Bazel. "You must not. It was our mistake. A misunderstanding. Stupidity."

  "That kind of stupidity can get a man killed," Jim said. "It damn well oughta get a man killed." Big Belly, who had already promised to get the man who did it, was mounting up.

  "Face-Always-Black," called Little Bear, "let me go with you."

  "No,” Bazel said. "You may not go."

  "He’s old enough to larn," Jim told Bazel.

  "My son stays here. Mountain Ram would say you all stay here. Washakie would say the same."

  "Mountain Ram is a fevered old man with a broken leg. Washakie is a fool. So long, Bazel."

  They walked their horses slowly, since they would wait until dark to do the job.

  Hy-ee-ah!

  Hy-ee-ah! ,

  I am a made-to-die.