Rendezvous

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Pombert smiled and nodded. The Creoles drifted into their huts and emerged better dressed against the cold. They had all moved camp many times and hardly needed instruction.

  “What do we do with the trappers’ outfits?” asked Bouleau.

  “Move them. We’re each tending camp for certain trappers. Their outfits are your responsibility.”

  “I’m staying,” said Scott.

  Skye turned to the man. “Then stay,” he said.

  The rest started to dismantle the huts, pack gear, gather the miserable horses. Moving camp was a formidable business, especially on a day with a bitter wind to add to the misery. It would take hours to build new huts and throw the buffalo hides over them and start fires again.

  Scott stared sullenly as the others began to work. But when Estevan and Lapointe began dismantling Scott’s lodge, he howled. “Leave that there,” he bawled. Scott loomed a foot over Estevan.

  Skye’s patience was running thin. Life in a wilderness camp in weather well below zero on Fahrenheit’s scale was precarious. It was impossible to stay, but moving would be hard, cruel work. Scott stood six inches higher than Skye, and didn’t lack brute strength, but if the matter had to be forced, Skye decided to force it.

  “All right, Scott,” Skye said, waiting.

  “Think you can whip me, Skye?”

  “It’s Mister Skye, mate.”

  “Think you know what to do? You’ve been in the mountains a long time and know what to do?”

  Skye didn’t reply. He stepped closer. He would hurt Scott, but he didn’t want to. He had learned a few things in the Royal Navy.

  “Well, aren’t you the tough one, throwing weight around,” Scott said.

  That was good. Scott was using words rather than fists. Skye stepped closer. “Get to work, or try me if you want.”

  “I never take orders from a stinking Englishman.”

  Skye stepped closer until he was almost chest to chest. “Show me,” said Skye softly. His breath plumed the air. He stood ready, waiting for Scott’s move.

  “I quit,” said Scott, whirling away. “Tell Sublette.”

  Skye watched the man retreat. Scott had nowhere to go and would be back in an hour. Skye nodded at the rest and they began the miserable exodus. They toiled through the brief day, dragging gear, driving horses, cleaning snow away from the sites of the new huts, trying to start fires when the sparks off their flints died before they nested in tinder. Skye finally sent Pombert back for some live coals because none of them could start a fire with flint and steel.

  Scott packed his horse, pulled his thick robe around him, and smiled.

  “I’m going to the Shoshones,” he said. “Tell Sublette he owes me and I’ll collect at rendezvous.”

  “If you make it.”

  Scott glowered. “You think I can’t.”

  “It’s a long way.”

  They all watched his back until he vanished. Skye didn’t like it. Sublette would blame him for provoking the trouble and losing a man. But the camp had to be moved, and Skye thought he had waited a day too long at that.

  They still weren’t settled when the early dusk overtook them. Skye grimly chopped firewood first—that was the critical need and the key to surviving the next fierce night. They picketed the horses on the cleared grass, worked at building buffalo-robe huts with numb fingers and frozen ears, and finally crawled into their new huts, frozen, exhausted, and hungry.

  Scott didn’t return. Skye wished he would, not because the man would help out but because the man would kill himself through his own misjudgment.

  The next day dawned clear and breathtakingly cold. None of them dared venture beyond their three-sided huts, built to trap the heat of the fires before them. Skye had never seen a winter’s day like this; blinding bright, cruel, and murderous. Sublette didn’t show up all day. In an odd way that comforted Skye. The booshway wouldn’t quit until he had given Ferguson and Ranne every chance.

  Then, at dusk, the trappers quietly rode in, frost-rimed men on silver-patched horses, hunched deep in saddles, buffalo robes over their laps and legs. Skye watched anxiously as they drifted in one by one. Sublette studied the new camp, nodded, and tried to dismount, falling into the snow because his limbs didn’t work.

  The other trappers tumbled off, unable to stand or function. Skye helped them down and to the fires. Pombert and the Creoles rushed into the cold to help. Sublette warmed himself at the nearest blaze without saying anything. The result of the search was obvious to all.

  Skye dreaded the questioning he would receive once the trappers were settled. But what happened couldn’t be helped.

  “This is a good place,” Sublette said. “Where’s Scott?”

  “He quit. Headed for the Shoshones.”

  “Why?”

  Skye sighed, wondering what to say. “Wouldn’t move.”

  “Did he test you?”

  “Yes.”

  Sublette nodded. Skye waited for more, but there wasn’t any. He supposed it was a rebuke. A better man could have talked sense to Scott. Now the company had lost a man.

  Chastened, Skye returned to his camp tending. The trappers looked half-frozen, too tired to eat, and miserable. They had brought a frozen elk haunch with them, so the camp tenders set to work roasting it. Later, when they all had feasted and warmed before the roaring fires, Sublette told his story.

  “We checked three drainages and never saw sign of those ol’ coons,” he said. “We plumb froze to death, fought drifts, weathered hard nights, but we kept looking. Covered a lot of land. None of us was keen on giving up. They’re dead or alive—we don’t know. Probably gone under. We’re feeling lower’n a snake’s belly. They were good men. I’d trade a thousand Scotts for each of ’em,” Sublette said. “They made the beaver come.”

  “Your men look bad,” Skye said.

  “Frostbite mostly. I got some flesh going black. I hope it doesn’t mortify. Every one of us has some frostbit flesh.”

  “It don’t spile in the mountains,” said Bridger. “If our flesh falls offen us, we’ll freeze it and keep it for poor doin’s and eat it when we need it.”

  No one laughed.

  Skye found himself wanting some encouragement. He had moved the camp and now man and animal were better off. He didn’t hear it from Sublette or the trappers. But neither did they complain. Maybe they expected him to do it. Maybe that was why Sublette put him in charge. Skye pondered that in the orange firelight, wondering why the esteem of these men meant so much to him. He would abandon them next summer, but here he was, nursing every sign of approval. Maybe it was just that no one had ever approved of him. Maybe it was because these mountaineers were taciturn, especially in weather like this that put a man on edge. Or maybe their minds were simply occupied with Ranne and Ferguson, each of them wondering what had become of their veteran friends. If death could overwhelm two of the wiliest men in the brigade, it could overwhelm any of them.

  The next days were among the worst in Skye’s young life. If anything, the cold was worse. It didn’t matter how many fires a man surrounded himself with; he was always on the brink of freezing solid. Nothing in a fo’c’sle, or high in the rigging on a bitter day at sea matched this cold and misery. Ranne and Ferguson didn’t come in, but no one expected them to. Man or horse couldn’t travel without frostbiting their lungs. They couldn’t hunt, either, and Sublette put them on short rations. If they couldn’t make meat soon, they would be eating one of the horses. Beyond the physical misery, gloom overtook them. The sun scarcely appeared. Men were too cold to talk, and sunk into their icy robes.

  Skye kept himself occupied just by dreaming of his return to civilization. Wilderness had nothing to offer him, except a few seductive weeks in early summer when the sheer joy of the warm season lifted him. But all he really had gotten out of this was boredom, toil, fear, and anger.

  Christmas came and went, but no one celebrated it, and half of those in camp weren’t aware of it. Then one day, in the space of
an hour, it warmed. Skye marveled. One minute he had lain in his robes, waiting for life to begin, a while later he threw off his robes, felt delicious warm air eddy through his buckskins, felt a wild liberty build in him, the freedom of a man emerging from prison, and stepped into a mild afternoon.

  “Chinook,” said Bridger. “I mind the time we were plumb froze to death, and down to stewing shoe leather for soup, when the Divil comes up outa them geysers on the Yellerstone and heats up the country almost to biling. So hot in January we was drenched in sweat. I had me a bath and went courtin’ Injun wimmen.”

  “How long do these chinooks last?” Skye asked.

  “Maybe long enough to get us to a Crow village,” said Sublette. “Let’s go.”

  “You mind if I leave some shelter and fixings behind for Ferguson and Ranne?” Skye asked.

  Sublette shook his head. “They’ve gone under, Mister Skye.”

  “I’d like to leave a shelter up, and hang some pemmican from a limb. I’d like to leave some kindling, and I’ll leave my flint and steel.”

  “Don’t ever be without flint and steel. If they’re alive and have their rifles, they won’t need flint and steel. Any man with a rifle has both.”

  Skye considered it a revelation. He had never thought of a flintlock and some gunpowder as a means of starting a fire. He still had much to learn.

  “Sure, ol’ coon, you leave a camp for them,” Sublette said. “Half shelter, dry firewood, some beaver meat hung high up. If they’re alive, they’ll know where to find us—with the Crows. And if they aren’t alive, we’ll donate the camp to the Blackfeet.”

  “I just have a feeling,” said Skye, wondering why he thought they were alive and holed up in a place he could almost envision.

  “You’re a mountaineer, Mister Skye,” Sublette said. It was the compliment that Skye had craved for days.

  Chapter 42

  The brigade fought its way over the pass to the Yellowstone country, and it was like arriving in the promised land. The chinook winds were even warmer on the east slope and had eaten away most of the snow.

  But man and beast needed a rest after wrestling with soggy six-foot drifts, so they camped on the great bend of the Yellowstone again. They were in dire need of meat, so Sublette sent every hunter out while the rest made camp. One by one they drifted back around twilight, all of them emptyhanded. The game had vanished. Deer and antelope would be herded up for the winter—somewhere. Buffalo would also herd into groups—somewhere. Anything else that might make meat was hibernating or had fled south.

  They ate the last of their emergency pemmican, scarcely two mouthfuls apiece for the twenty-seven men left in the brigade, and settled down for the night with empty bellies and a sense of foreboding. The horses fared better on brown bunchgrass that grew abundantly north of the river.

  Skye knew from bitter experience what life was going to be like without food, and set out in the twilight to remedy the situation. He hiked along the riverbank until he found what he wanted, an inlet covered with dead, brown cattails, their stalks decaying on the ground. He cut through the frosty soil and examined the roots. Yes, they were edible—smaller and harder than when they pumped life to the fronds above, but they would make a food of sorts. He dug several pounds of the roots, washed them in the bitter-cold river, and got back to camp just before dark.

  He lacked the means to turn roots into flour, the way the Indians did, but he found some smooth river rocks and a flat rock surface, and began mashing the roots into pulp. Then he boiled them in the company cookpot, drained off the water, and ended up with a tan mush that tasted bad but was thick and starchy. Some of the others watched him disconsolately, scarcely aware that he was producing food. They were meat eaters.

  When the mush had cooled he ate some of it, enough to satisfy his hungers, and set some aside for breakfast and lunch. The only man among them to pay attention was Tom Fitzpatrick, who watched, tasted, and smiled.

  “I’m always looking for ways to get along,” he said. “This is one I didn’t know about, ol’ coon.”

  “They kept me alive when I had nothing. I mashed them when I couldn’t boil them. I had no fire for weeks.”

  “All the better to learn about,” Fitzpatrick said. “We could feed this camp if we had to.”

  “Don’t know that most of ’em’ll touch it,” Skye replied. “Not my favorite taste.”

  Fitzpatrick smiled. “We call it the Rocky Mountain College. Some learn their lessons—and the rest go under.”

  Fitzpatrick helped himself to another finger-load, and settled down beside Skye for some serious eating.

  “What do you think happened to Scott?” Skye asked.

  “He would’ve headed for the Shoshones. Probably made it because of the chinook.”

  “What do you think happened to Ranne and Ferguson?”

  “I’d guess they’re denned up with a b’ar.”

  “Alive?”

  “I think so. B’ar would be warm. They couldn’t hear our shots from in there.”

  “What if the bear woke up?”

  “They do all winter. But they’re not full of fight. Couple ol’ coons could go in there for a snooze, long as they were quiet about it.”

  “Are you whistling in the dark, mate, or do you put stock in it?”

  Fitzpatrick grinned and shrugged. “The wild world isn’t what we think. I’ve gone alone from the mountains to Saint Louis. A man who’s resourceful can make it.”

  “Why’re you here, mate?”

  “It’s a calling. Maybe I’d have been a priest. This is religion.”

  “Religion?”

  “This is holy, Skye. Don’t you feel it?”

  “No. It’s mostly boredom, fear, pain, discomfort—and starvation. What’s wrong with a roof over your head? Pretty women?”

  “Rules, Skye, rules.”

  “It’s Mister Skye, mate.”

  Fitzpatrick laughed and helped himself to more mush. “That’s a rule I could do without. But as long as it’s rooted in a sentiment that would please any son of Ireland, I’ll accept it.”

  “I’m going east next summer. What advice have you?”

  “Don’t count Indians friends when they’re friendly, and don’t count them enemies when they threaten you. Avoid them unless you can’t help a meeting. Every encounter means trouble. The friendly ones want every item in your kit, the rifle especially, but they’ll settle for your horses or a kettle or all your knives. Take some twists of tobacca with you. Tobacca’s a peace offering, and it binds them if they accept it. But don’t count on it. Don’t count on anything. This evening I was counting on an empty belly and now I’m full. I’m indebted.”

  That night the wolves howled. Skye had never heard such wild yelps, eerie screams, yapping sounds. Maybe he could shoot one in the morning. He didn’t relish eating dog but he relished an empty belly less.

  Sublette and the hunters saddled up before dawn, intending to ride straight toward the northeast where the wolf chorus had erupted and kept on all night.

  Skye wished he could go. His duties locked him to the camp.

  “Start the cookfires, Mister Skye,” said Sublette. “That yapping last night was buffalo talk.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “You’ll learn it if you stay in the mountains.”

  Skye watched every free trapper and hunter in the outfit throw saddles over shaggy horses, which looked fat inside their hairy coats. Skye knew better. His mare was ribby under that matted hair, and his colt was worse. The horses wouldn’t have much energy in them this time of year.

  That afternoon they rode in—without meat, looking dour. Seventeen had left, but ten returned. The others were still out prowling, and might stay out overnight.

  Skye waited patiently for Sublette to unsaddle and picket his horse.

  “The wolves downed an old bull so poor there wasn’t much to begin with. Naught but a skeleton and half-eaten hide now. Loner bulls like that, they leave the herd t
o die. Or the young bulls drive ’em out. Fitzpatrick says you made some paste out of roots. Got some?”

  Skye dug into his pot and handed Sublette some of the mush.

  “Gawdawfulest stuff I ever put between lips,” the booshway said. “You damn Brits don’t know what food’s supposed to taste like. Line up the camp tenders and go harvest a pile of it.”

  Skye laughed.

  He dragooned the camp tenders and set them to work along the banks of the Yellowstone, digging up roots out of half-frozen bog areas. They didn’t get much, and grumbled the whole time, but ere long they had reason to be grateful. The hunters returned with nothing, mad and cussing and ready to chew out anyone who complained.

  That night the whole brigade dined on a few mouthfuls of cattail root, duly pulverized and boiled and seasoned with a little salt. They didn’t say much, and the ridicule that Skye was expecting never erupted.

  “Poor doin’s.” That was all anyone said. But Skye sensed respect. He had conjured up a meal of sorts, and the English pork-eater had shown the mountaineers a thing or two.

  The next day the wind shifted north and they knew they had better hurry to the Crow villages before the next blast of arctic air. They packed without breakfast. They were plumb out of everything now, and full of self-pity, gnawing hunger, and rage. The hunters set off; they would rejoin the brigade down the Yellowstone a day’s journey.

  They rode with the wind, the slivers of icy air on their backs, numbing their necks, bullying the weary horses. At the nooning Skye boiled water and served it. The brigade groused but drank the hot water.

  “I always knowed that when it comes to cooking, Skye, you’re some,” said Bridger. “This hyar’s the best concoction ye ever did serve us.”

  An hour later the mountain veterans taught Skye a thing or two. A ravine choked with buffaloberry had survived the predations of birds, and the company set to work collecting the remaining silvery fruit. But it came to mouthful apiece. Skye was growing faint.

  They halted at a place where the river plunged through a narrows hemmed by grassy slopes. The hunters and trappers found them there, and had nothing to offer.