by Win Blevins
“I admire you volunteers,” Sam said.
Clyman gave an odd smile. “You’re young and still see heroes around you.”
“Maybe I should.”
“Heroes are usually involuntary,” said Clyman. He looked around his companions with some amusement. “We’re quite a crew, recruited from the grog shops of St. Louis, and other sinks of degradation.”
“I came out of those myself,” said Sam.
“As I recall, you came out sober. You didn’t put in enough time to get ruined. Most of these men don’t think much of being sober. Those that can remember it.”
Sam was starting to feel testy. “I look up to these men.”
Gently, Clyman got out a knife. “Some you should. Diah Smith, Tom Fitzpatrick, Tom Eddie, Bill Sublette, maybe old Glass.” He started whittling on a piece of driftwood. “Jack Larrisson, Jim Davis, Reed Gibson are not bad men.”
“That’s half the men on this beach.”
Clyman chuckled. “The rest, I’d say, well, Falstaff’s battalion was genteel in comparison.”
Tom Eddie and Hugh Glass came up. Glass was a dour fellow, had never even spoken to Sam, and paid little attention to what anyone said to him, leaders included.
“What you going on about, Clyman,” said Eddie, “using my name? Who the hell is Falstaff? Where you off at when you oughta be right here?”
“A story by William Shakespeare,” said Clyman, unruffled. He followed with a short account of who Falstaff was, what his drinking companions were like, and how they nearly spoilt Prince Hal.
“Sounds to me like they were having the fun.” Eddie was a man who liked fun and would take any dare, like diving off the boat’s cabin or swimming through a wild rapid.
“Who was this Shakespeare?” asked Sam.
“Wrote plays, stories for actors on the stage. Want to hear one?”
“Sure,” said Sam.
“If it ain’t too foofuraw,” said Glass.
“Romeo and Juliet,” began Clyman, “were young lovers.”
“Too foofuraw already,” put in Glass, “them names. Was one of them a man?”
“We’ll call him Eddie,” said Clyman, “and the girl will be Velva Mae.”
“Better.”
“They were important families there in Italy, and I’m a gone beaver if those families didn’t hate each other. Eddie and Velva Mae, though, one look and they were goners, you know how that feels. Just teenagers, but they were bit bad by love.
“Romeo—”
“Eddie,” corrected Eddie.
“One night, even knowing her folks couldn’t stand him, Eddie climbed up to the balcony outside Velva Mae’s bedroom—”
“Balcony?” objected Glass. “More foofuraw.”
This time Clyman quelled him with a glance. “And they made big eyes at each other. Velva Mae gave a big speech—”
Glass groaned—
“Eddie, Eddie, wherefore art thou Eddie? What’s in a name? A rose, if we called it something else, it would smell just as sweet.”
“Did Eddie mount her?” Glass wanted to know.
Clyman nodded gravely. “They loved each other good. Then they asked the priest to help them get married and escape together.”
“I don’t hold with no priests,” put in Glass.
“The priest done his best. He got a sleep potion would make Velva Mae seem just like dead. Then, after they put her in the crypt, she could run off with Eddie, and no one the wiser.”
“That’s clever,” said Eddie.
“It went bad, though. Eddie didn’t get the message, so he didn’t know what way the stick floated. When he saw Velva Mae looking dead, he got all sad and put his knife into his own lights. ’Fore long Velva Mae, she wakes up, sees Eddie all bloody and gone from this world, so she runs the knife into her own heart. Fell right across his body, like they was together forever.”
“Like they was doing the deed,” said Glass.
“It’s a good story,” said Eddie, “but the ending’s dumb. Why you want to tell them kind of stories?” With that he and Glass stalked off.
“I liked it,” said Sam. “You glad you can read and write?”
“Yes. When it comes to writing, though, I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way.”
Sam wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. “I wish I could read and write.”
Ashley came back from Bear’s lodge cussing. He snapped at Smith to sit down with him a minute. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Bear showed us every courtesy, acted like we were friends. The conversation got maybe a little too friendly. This other chief, Little Soldier, told us right out that the Rees are going to attack us. Or, if they don’t attack before the boats leave, they’ll hit the land party after.”
Smith asked Rose, “What do you make of it?”
Rose shrugged. “I can’t tell. My guess is, Little Soldier doesn’t want trouble, for whatever reason. He’s warning us honestly, maybe. Maybe he thinks that if we know, we’ll take precautions so trouble never gets off the ground.”
Smith held Rose’s eyes for a moment. A lot of the men didn’t trust Rose, who was colored himself—hadn’t he even lived with these red niggers? Smith raised an eyebrow at Ashley.
“I don’t trust Little Soldier, or any Ree,” Ashley grumped. “Likely as not he wants us to move the horses across the river to get them further away from the boats. Then they can fight the shore party without having to fight all of us. It would probably be over before we got there.”
Smith said softly, “It’s your call, General.”
Ashley looked at Rose, at Smith, even at Sam. He was not a man, Sam guessed, to overanalyze beforehand or second-guess himself afterward. “We’ll hold them here. Our chance is better patching things up with the Rees than running from them.”
Smith just nodded.
That chance stayed good, maybe, until the wee hours of the morning.
Rose came tearing down the bank yelling. “Aaron Stephens is killed! Aaron Stephens is killed!”
Jedediah was up and alert immediately.
Ninety feet away on the Packet, the general bounded out of bed.
Sam rolled out of his blankets.
In a couple of minutes five dozen men on the boats were at arms, and the beach party was too.
Sam went after Rose in the small skiff.
The interpreter didn’t have much to say. Like some other men, and Rose himself, Stephens had gone to the village looking for a woman.
“Hot blood and no sense,” said Ashley, not caring if Rose was offended.
Rose went on evenly. He didn’t know how the trouble started, just that Stephens ended up dead. Rose wasn’t a man to add words where none was needed.
“We’ve got to talk to Smith,” said Ashley.
When Sam, Rose, and the general landed, the beach party was already in a raging debate. One said, “We’ve got to move the horses right now.”
“Not in this dark,” judged another.
“I’m staying here.”
“We’re safer where we are.”
“They can shoot right down on us! From behind the pickets!”
“We’ll fort the horses.”
“I ain’t gonna give them the satisfaction of tucking tail and running.”
There were as many opinions as there were men.
Clyman and Fitzpatrick walked up to Smith, Ashley, Rose, and Sam at the big fire. Clyman eyed the general questioningly.
“What do you think, Mr. Clyman?”
“Don’t matter what I think, General. This outfit doesn’t have military discipline.”
“Or any other kind,” added Fitzpatrick. He was a banty Irishman. Though the Irish were known for blarney, Fitzpatrick was realistic and sensible as could be.
“General,” said Smith, “Every man’s gonna do what he wants to do. I’m afraid there’s no sense giving them orders.”
Jack Larrisson walked up to the fire. “General, the men want Aaron’s body. W
e got to have it. Decent burial.”
Somehow “decent burial” rang hollow, coming from this crew.
Ashley said, “I’ll attend to it, Mr. Larrisson.” Larrisson waited for something more but finally stalked off.
“Mr. Rose, are you willing to carry the message to the Ree?”
Without a word, the interpreter walked up the bank and toward the pickets.
“Mr. Smith,” said Ashley, “do whatever you think is best. Tell all the men—do what you think is best. If that means coming back to the boats, do it. I mean that. To hell with the horses.”
In the distance came Rose’s voice, calling to the Rees behind the pickets. Ashley, Smith, Fitz, Clyman, Sam—they all stood and looked at each other. There was nothing to say or do. They looked bleakly into the darkness. Sam wondered if every man’s scalp prickled, like his did.
Finally Rose came back. The general looked questioningly at him. “We’ll see,” Rose said. “I’ll stay here.”
“Let’s go.”
On the black river Sam couldn’t see the general’s face. Finally the man blew breath out and said to no one in particular, “Doesn’t matter what Stephens did or didn’t do. All skirt-chasing stories end the same.”
The Ree villages were aflame with noise. More than one man on the beach said, “Indians are working themselves up.”
First light came as a murky gray behind clouds. The men on the beach fidgeted. Some muttered about getting off this beach. Others agreed—they sure as hell didn’t want to wait around.
Just then a voice came from the pickets. Suddenly the fifty yards to those pickets seemed way too little.
On the second or third try Rose understood what was being said. A Ree wanted to return the body of Stephens. Without hesitating, Rose walked up the bank.
Diah Smith blew his breath out. He guessed the interpreter was counting on his friendships among the Rees to spare his hide.
From the pickets Rose called back that Stephens’s eyes had been put out, his head cut off, and his body otherwise mutilated.
As though the word “mutilated” was a signal, a fusillade came from the Rees.
The horses fell, whinnying and spouting blood. The men on the beach dived behind their carcasses.
Jedediah Smith put his face in the sand behind a slain animal and said a silent prayer for the soul of Edward Rose, a brave man.
Horses screamed. The ones still on their feet, not already flat and bleeding into the sand, sprinted around wildly, their eyes crazy with fear and pain.
Sand gouted up everywhere, flying from horses’ hoofs and from lead balls tearing up the beach.
Jedediah Smith peeked his head up far enough to take stock. The hardest part was getting the mind clear enough to look and see what was happening. In just seconds most of his horses were dead or wounded. About half his men were the same. The living crouched behind dying horseflesh. Lead flew through the air like leaves in a high wind. Diah thought grimly that Ashley had traded the Rees this lead just two days ago.
The men near Diah, those left alive, bellowed for rescue by the boats.
Smith rested his rifle on his horse’s neck, waited for a head to appear above the picket, and squeezed off a shot. Shooting up at assailants hidden behind pickets was pointless. Maybe any action was pointless. He began the slow, awkward business of reloading.
The situation was simple. Either Ashley would take them off this beach with one of the boats, or no man would get off alive.
On the Packet William Ashley was screaming at his voyageurs. “Weigh anchor! Put in to the beach! Weigh anchor! Put in to the beach!” He stared at them and tried it again, even louder. “Weigh anchor! Put in to the beach!”
His two pilots, the men who did the poling, every man Jacques of them looked back glumly. Some of them shrugged. None of them moved.
The occasional shot thwacked into the hold of the boat, or chipped the wood of a cleat. The voyageurs gathered behind the hold.
Before he was hoarse, Ashley caught on. His Frenchmen simply were not going to go onto that beach, into fire. End of story.
“Sam! Row me to the other boat!”
Sam did. A few pieces of lead gurgled into the water around the skiff. But Sam was thinking of the French-Canadians. They were a disgrace.
Ashley hollered the same words for longer at the voyageurs of the other keelboat. The result was the same. Except these boatmen wore expressions that said, ‘Our commander has gone insane. No reason we should act the same way.’
Finally the general relented. “I want volunteers to take the skiffs to the beach and bring those men back,” he cried in a level tone.
Sam and Gideon stepped forward at the same time.
“Sam, take the small skiff.” Sam darted for the boat.
“I need one more volunteer.” The big skiff took two oarsmen, and would hold up to twenty passengers.
Another Frenchman stepped out.
Sam was halfway to the beach when he saw the second skiff get started. Kah-LUP! Kah-LUP! The sounds of lead balls plunking into the water got way too regular. He kept his back to the beach and pulled.
As he brought the boat onto the sand, Sam started yelling, “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here!”
A ball thunked into the gunwale next to him. He jumped out of the boat and crouched in the water behind it. “Come on! Let’s get out!”
Not a man on the beach moved. Some lay tight behind dead horses. Some sprawled in the open, their bodies spattered with blood.
“Let’s get out of here! Now!”
“Go to hell!” someone answered. A couple of other voices echoed viler profanities and blasphemies. “The goddamn rowboat ain’t no help!”
Sam couldn’t tell if they were angry because the big keelboats hadn’t come or frozen with fear to their corners of shelter.
Wood chips from the gunwales flew into Sam’s eyes. He ducked his head in the water and washed off.
The big skiff beached next to him. “Allons-nous-en! Allons-nous-en!” bellowed Gideon. They wouldn’t have paid him any attention had he spoken English. Which he promptly did. “Let’s get the sheet out of here!”
Several men crept to their feet and staggered toward the skiffs, all bleeding. Some fell, shot again. Four made it to the boats. Gideon herded them into the big skiff and immediately set out for the keelboats.
Sam peered over the gunwale. No other Americans were coming. A big gang of Rees were, though. They’d reached the upriver end of the beach and were advancing steadily.
“Let’s get out of here!” Sam screamed. “They’re coming on foot.”
He saw Diah Smith and Jim Clyman, each behind a prone horse, turn their rifles upstream. Not a single man came to Sam’s rowboat.
His heart somersaulted into his mouth.
Sam jumped into the empty skiff and rowed like hell. With his back where he was headed, he had to face the beach, face the enemies who were shooting at him, face his companions who were about to die, and he didn’t want to witness one damn bit of it.
The big skiff got to the Packet and unloaded wounded men. Immediately, Gideon started for the beach again. A bullet hit the other oarsman, and he toppled into the water. Gideon snatched his own oar out of its lock and tried to use it as a paddle. When he saw that wouldn’t work, he dived into the river. The skiff floated downstream, empty.
Sam pulled into the shadow of the Packet, tied off, and watched. Before the Rees got too close, men began to jump up like birds flushed from cover and run for the water. First one, then another, then two, and at last three at once. Some ran strongly, some clutched wounds, some hobbled. By miracle every man got to the water and started swimming for the keelboats. Within ten yards, though, two or three sank and never came up.
Sam held on tight, but pointlessly, to the rope that anchored him to the deck.
The keelboat began to float downriver—the voyageurs had weighed anchor. Sam saw a crewman on the other keelboat cut the cable to its anchor. Even as the Kentucks were swim
ming out, the keelboats were sliding away.
Two men ran headlong for the river. Sam recognized one of them as Clyman.
Jedediah Smith was the last man left on the beach. Sam saw his muzzleloader belch black smoke.
He would need close to a minute to reload. Knowing, the Rees stood up and ran toward him.
Diah Smith sprinted downstream and made a flat dive into the water, rifle in one hand.
The keelboats floated downstream, but Clyman got swept even faster than the crafts. Sam saw him go below even the lower boat, The Rocky Mountains. Tom Eddie grabbed a pole and stuck it out. The Ree fire, though, was now hitting the keelboats, and Eddie had to stay behind a box, so the pole didn’t reach Clyman.
Sam went after him.
Clyman knew he had to swim across the river. He thought his chances were poor, and the way he was weighted down, next to zero.
He jerked at the rifle in his belt. The damned lock caught in his belt.
He went under.
After a long while, he came back up, sputtering for breath. The lock was still caught, and the rifle felt more awkward than before. He twisted it hard, the lock cleared the belt, and he dropped the rifle.
A couple of strokes let him know he was still heavy. He unbuckled the belt and let it sink, with his pistols.
He worked his shooting pouch off his shoulder and dropped it.
When he felt how heavy his buckskin shirt had gotten with water, he slipped out of one sleeve.
He sank.
When he flailed back to the surface, Clyman heard Sam Morgan crying, “Hold on, I’ll help you.”
With a few strokes the rowboat was close.
Clyman was so exhausted he couldn’t pull himself on board. Sam had to heave him up. Clyman flopped into the bottom of the boat and breathed.
Sam pivoted the rowboat to see the situation.
Fire bit his left shin, and he screamed.
Both men lay in the bottom of the rowboat, which went adrift in the swift current.
Clyman saw the blood on Sam’s pant leg and understood. He slipped his shirt back on, took the oars and rowed for the far shore.
When he beached the boat, Clyman said, “I’m going up the bank to see if they’re after us.”