Charbonneau (24 page)

“I do believe I druther play euchre tonight,” Bill squeaked, and wandered off. Baptiste had scarcely seen him since they got to rendezvous, as Bill had kept to himself.

“Lookee thar,” Joe observed. “That un’s flirtin’ with ye.” It was a Crow girl, no more than fourteen, and not bad looking. The Crow women were not particularly beautiful, being tall, broad-shouldered, and flat-faced, like the men. But this girl wasn’t grown.

“See how she gapes.” The girl was glancing up, shyly, it seemed, at Baptiste from time to time while her father was bargaining with another trapper. “If they don’t keep their eyes to the ground, they’re practically invitin’ ye,” Joe explained. “Their manners don’t allow women to look men in the eye.”

Baptiste watched while the other trapper shook his shoulders, started to walk away, acted reluctant, and, in general, whittled the price down. When he walked away with an older squaw, maybe the girl’s mother, Baptiste stepped in. He knew better than to talk to the girl directly, but it was easy to reach an agreement with her father. Trappers liked the Crows because they were always friendly to whites; their way of being free with their women was part of being friendly.

Baptiste felt a hand on his shoulder, and was instantly awake. “Easy,” someone said. “I heard you was here.” The big black face grinned. Under the eagle-feather headdress and behind the gaudy red sash Baptiste could still recognize Jim Beckwourth. “Long time, John,” Beckwourth said, and shook his hand. The girl stirred uneasily on the blanket beside him. They walked aways from her to talk.

“Damn, are you a Crow?”

“Been living ’mongst the Crows for two years. I’m a sort of chief.”

“Chief? Shit.”

“Wall, a kinda war chief.” He said he was a made-to-die in the Fox society.

Jim had a long story to tell. He had gone to the mountains the year Baptiste went to Europe—Baptiste knew that. He’d been an Ashley-Henry man, and then had trapped for Smith, Jackson & Sublette. He’d done some fearsome things—set fire to a thicket once where eighty Blackfeet was holed up and burned ’em out, killed nearly all of ’em. Niggurs’d killed and sculped some Shoshone women. Lived up with the Blackfeet once, like no other mountain man had ever done. Jim Bridger—did Baptiste remember Jim, that shy, skinny little kid?—was up there with him. Beckwourth had married—wall, not really married, naturally—the daughter of the chief, and had axed her for disobedience. Then the chief give him the other daughter for his bed. Meanwhile, the first girl rose from the dead and come back to his blankets, so he had two. He was full of other stories, too.

How come he’d turned Crow? Baptiste wanted to know.

Crows liked him, mainly. When he’d first come out, they was excited about his black skin, though they’d seen another of what they called the black white men. Still, it made him popular, particularly with the squaws. Which was a change from the settlements. And then old Ezekiel told them a story, at the rendezvous of ’28, about how many Blackfeet Jim had killed, and it was true he’d killed a many. But Ezekiel concocted a tale about Jim being born part Crow and getting kidnapped by the Blackfeet, so the Crows welcomed him as a long-lost son. And Jim, wall, he just went along with it. He had a good thing with the Crows. Soon American Fur would be stepping up their Crow trade, and Jim was in a position to deliver it to MacKenzie and make himself a lot of money working for American Fur among the Crows.

He didn’t have no special love for this Smith, Jackson & Sublette anyhow.

The race thing? Baptiste asked.

Naw, that didn’t figure too much out here. Once you fought Injuns with a beaver and shot the meat he et and stood watch while he slept, he didn’t give much of a damn what color you were. The trappers hated Britishers more than they hated blacks or breeds. Every color and nation of man amongst the trappers anyway. Naw, it was just that Jim and the other trappers didn’t always get on too good. He didn’t toe the line with them trappers who’d just do whatever the company said, and buy trade goods at whatever price the company wanted to charge, which was gettin’ more every year. Them hosses couldn’t think for theirselves. Jim was setting up to outdo all of ’em, and keep his independence while he was at it.

Baptiste discovered during the next few days that Jim had a reputation as something of a daredevil, as something of a rascal and double-dealer, and as the biggest liar in the mountains.

Jim showed him around the Crow camp that afternoon—the Crows Jim had come with the day before were by far the largest tribe at the rendezvous—and he explained something of the Fox society he belonged to. They elected officers every spring for the hunting and fighting season. Some braves were named leaders, two men hooked-staff bearers, two more straight-staff bearers, two rear men, and one or two named the bravest of all. Jim was one of these. With the title he got privileges like getting to choose his meat first at a feast and getting to eat before anyone else started. Plus the privilege, of course, of catching the most hell in any kind of skirmish.

These officers had definite duties: The leaders spearheaded the society into battle, the staff-bearers planted the staves and were obliged to stand by them and refuse to retreat, the rear men had the job of facing off the enemy in case of a retreat. The bravest-of-alls did everything. All these officers were made-to-dies which was as high an honor as a Crow could aspire to. Still, some years no one seemed to want to be an officer, especially if they were expecting trouble with the Blackfeet.

Most Indians were pretty chicken-shit about fighting, Jim said. When he’d come to the Crows, they were just doin’ the usual Indian crap, an occasional ambush of the Blackfeet or sneak-thievin’ Blackfoot ponies. Never a head-on confrontation of parties matched in size. Injuns figured that they’d lost the battle if one man got killed, no matter how many of the other side went under, so they wouldn’t fight on equal terms. But Jim had got ’em shaped up some. His Fox society was some mean band of fighters now, and had given the Blackfoot what for more than once.

Wall, Jim was glad to see Baptiste in the mountains. Shinin’ times out here. Man didn’t have to obey no laws nor listen to no preachers nor kowtow to no sheriffs nor get penned in by no rules. He was good as the next beaver if he had the savvy to stay aboveground, his color no matter. And Jim had a good set-up. Why didn’t Baptiste throw in with him? The Crows would take Baptiste on Jim’s say-so.

Baptiste said he’d think on it.

Bill fetched Baptiste out of a game of Old Sledge that afternoon. Said he wanted Baptiste to meet the boss man standin’ next to him, Jed Smith. “John hyar’s more’n a no good
vide poche
,” Bill said. “That’s how come he figures to go back down to St. Louy with ye. He’s a’scribblin’ at a book.” Bill cackled as he creaked off.

Baptiste knew about Jed Smith. With Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick, he was one of the trappers that all the men agreed had the ha’r of the b’ar in ’em. Smith was probably the most yarn-spun of all. He located South Pass and led the trappers to the western slopes of the mountains and the desert beyond. He found the way to Californy and all the way up to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia and back. He was a fierce fighter and a savvy brigade leader who’d brought his men through some lean times. But he was a strange figure in the mountains, not only an educated man who was making maps of the whole country, but a Bible-reading man. More than once he said prayers over a trapper who’d gone under. No one else in the mountains done anything like that.

“A book about the mountains?” Captain Smith asked.

“No, about my own life,” Baptiste answered. They sat cross-legged on the ground, Baptiste lit a pipe (which Smith declined), and Baptiste told his story. Captain Smith was a good listener: He offered only an occasional word of response, but he looked at Baptiste directly, in a way that made Baptiste feel that he was absorbing each word. “But I don’t know that I’ll write the book, or go to St. Louis.”

Smith raised his eyebrows.

“The publisher I wrote indicated that there’s no room for a breed’s perspective if it runs contrary to what the whites already think.”

“You fight that,” Smith said.

“And the settlement don’t take to folks what have Injun blood,” Baptiste added ironically.

“You fight that, too.”

“I’d rather fight the Blackfeet. It’s cleaner.”

“I’ve been in the mountains for eight years,” Smith declared, “and I’ve done well. I’ve loved the mountains—loved them maybe too much, like a pagan, forgetting my Christian duty. I’ve seen things—seen too many men killed, led too many men into getting killed. Seen too much drunkenness and lewdness. The mountains turn something loose in a man that’s wild, like a beast.” He thought for a moment. “In me too.

“So I’ve made some money now and have some capital. I’ll start a business in the settlements and take care of my family and make a contribution, and serve my God.” Baptiste had the sense of something private, and sad, that Captain Smith wouldn’t talk about.

“I don’t put much faith in the white man’s God.”

Smith put it simply, and with an air of finality. “I’ll give you a job. I don’t know what business I’ll go into, but it doesn’t matter. You’re intelligent, and you’ll fit somewhere. Think on it.” He raised his long frame and walked away.

“I’ll stay in the mountains,” Baptiste called after him. Smith smiled a little, not happily. “Then come with me. You’d better meet Old Gabe.”

Old Gabe was Jim Bridger. He was only twenty-six, but one of the most respected men in the mountains. Smith had given him the nickname because Jim always looked as solemn as the archangel Gabriel.

Gabe was glad to have Baptiste. He and Broken Hand Tom Fitzpatrick had just gone together and bought out Smith, Jackson & Sublette, who were quitting the mountains. Old Frapp and Baptiste Gervais and Milton Sublette had gone in with Gabe and Broken Hand too. They could use a man what could read and write to keep records with the brigades. Hell, three of the new partners, countin’ Gabe himself, couldn’t read or write. They’d give Baptiste three hundred dollars a year plus pay him for half his plews at three dollars a pound.

Baptiste accepted. He gave his notebooks to Jed Smith to carry to General Clark. The man who had tried to avoid the fur trade was a fur trapper.

Chapter Six

1831, August: Nat Turner led a Negro insurrection in Virginia.

1831: Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical reaper.

1831, APRIL 25: James K. Paulding’s
The Lion of the West
introduced the frontier man as a comic type in American literature.

1832: The Illinois militia effectively ended the Black Hawk War with the massacre of Black Hawk’s tribe, including women, children, and old men.

1832, FEBRUARY 6: The first printed call for a transcontinental railroad appeared in a weekly newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1833: Noah Webster brought out his bowdlerized edition of the Bible.

1834: Thomas Davenport constructed the first electric motor.

1835: Samuel F.B. Morse invented the telegraph.

1836: Texas declared itself an independent republic.

JANUARY, 1831: It was a rough winter on Powder River. On the high plains there was almost nothing to break the gales, so they battered the camp night and day. Baptiste learned to be grateful for the days it snowed, for the wind eased and the temperature rose. The clear days were cold and wind-blistered. The men kept to their lodges—large tipis made from buffalo hides—and always had a pot simmering. The pots were full of meat for most of the winter because Powder River country seemed to be thick with buffalo that season. The men couldn’t get around well in the snow, and were half-blinded by the glare, but the buffalo had the same handicaps, and, being buffler-witted besides, fell regularly to their Hawkens.

Winter camp was mostly lazing and yarn-spinning and card-playing, for no one cared to stir. The lucky trappers now were the ones who were squaw men. Their women kept the lodges warm, tidy, and dry, mended their clothes, made their buffalo robes cozy and told the tales of their people, those little mixtures of legend and fantasy that the Indians handed down from generation to generation as philosophy and history.

Baptiste heard for the first time that winter of ’31 the Osage story of the origin of death. A squaw had twin daughters, mere infants. She would leave them in the tipi sleeping, unwatched. But when she came back she sometimes found signs that they had been walking around and maybe even fighting. So one day she sneaked up on the tipi and listened to hear what they were doing. They were arguing. One was saying that mankind was nasty, corrupt, plague-ridden, weak, vain, and altogether unworthy of life. The other was answering that mankind was noble and fair and strong and good and should be entitled to live forever. The squaw listened to this quarrel for a few minutes, one child arguing for obliterating the human race and the other for granting it immortality. Then the squaw walked into the tent and scolded the twin sisters for squabbling. And that was how death started, because if the squaw had let them finish the argument, either there would be no men, or men would live forever.

Baptiste shared a lodge with Joe Meek and Joe’s friend Doc Newell. When Baptiste had told Old Bill his decision, Bill reckoned that this old bull druther be away from the herd, so he’d go down along the Front Range (in modern Colorado) and amble on down to Taos. Beckwourth had shaken his head at Baptiste’s throwing in with Rocky Mountain Fur when he could have gone with Jim, and went back with the Crows. Baptiste had joined up with Bridger’s brigade, a big one, run like an army because it invaded Blackfoot country. That many trappers in a bunch intimidated even the Blackfeet, though, so Gabe was able to lead a good hunt from the Three Forks east to the Powder.

Joe and Doc were free spirits. Both had been in the mountains only a year, and both were younger than Baptiste, but they took to the mountains naturally and got into trouble only from having too much fun. Gabe, who was always solemn and understood the rascality of the Blackfeet, chafed at them for thinking that trapping was a game.

The three were hunting one day with a trapper named Doughty, when they came on grizzly tracks in front of a cave.

“Scratch my ass,” yelled Doughty, “lookee thar for b’ar meat. This child’ll climb up above thar”—pointing to the cave—“and shoot the niggur. Which of you boys’ll go in and run him out?”

Doughty was a little chagrined when all three of them volunteered.

The cave was plenty big to stand in. They eased off to one side, out of the stream of light from the entrance. When their eyes adjusted to the dark, they saw that the cave was about six yards square. They also saw not one but three grizzlies, all looking at the trappers. The bears were growling, not loudly, and they weren’t moving. Baptiste guessed they were half asleep and didn’t know what was happening. The three crept forward.

Suddenly Joe bolted out and cracked the biggest bear on the head with his wiping stick. Joe whooped—he’d counted coup. The bear turned and ran out the cave. They heard Doughty shoot, but the bear only wheeled around again and charged back into the cave. All three of them let fly with their Hawkens at once. The bear dropped.

Damn, Baptiste thought, none of us has a ball in. The three of them, disarmed, turned slowly to face the other bears. The bears didn’t seem to be moving, just standing there looking at the trappers. Baptiste caught the eyes of Joe and Doc, and they all grinned. “Damn,” said Joe, “we are three Daniels in the lions’ den and no mistake.”

As soon as he had reloaded, Baptiste calmly walked up to one of the other bears and whacked him on the head with the wiping stick. Doc and Joe cheered. Baptiste had to hit the crittur again before he ran out. This time Doughty threw him cold.

“Go at ’im, Dan’l,” Joe said to Doc. So Doc ran up to the third bear and began to thrash him on top of the head. Evidently mystified, the bear made to run out of the cave. At the entrance he was dropped by three simultaneous shots.

They whooped and whooped. “Daniel was a humbug,” Joe shouted. “Of course it was winter and the lions were sucking their paws! Tell me of no more Daniels. We be as good Daniels as he had the gumption to be! Hurrah for us Daniels!” When they got back to camp with all the bear meat, even Old Gabe seemed to smile at their prank, at least with his eyes.

OCTOBER, 1831: Baptiste had not eaten for a day and a half. Last night he had watched while Joe and Doc held their hands in an anthill until they were covered with ants and then licked the critturs off. Baptiste had not been able to eat the ants. He still felt sick from the night before.

The three had joined up with Milton Sublette in that autumn of 1831 to trap out toward the Humboldt River and then go north toward the Snake. Partly, Milton had in mind to see just what was out there.

He found the poorest land any child of them had seen, a barren waste of sand, sagebrush, creosote bushes, occasional junipers, and scarcely a plew. The land even served up the poorest Indians they’d seen, miserable, naked rascals called Diggers who lived in holes in the ground and ate mostly insects. Baptiste judged that if ever man was an unaccommodated, poor, bare, forked animal, the Diggers were. The mountain men laughed at the Diggers until the trappers found themselves eating ants for dinner. Two days ago they had finally trapped some beaver and had roasted what flesh there was. But it was poisonous—the damned country didn’t give the beaver anything to eat but wild parsnips—and half the men got sick, including Baptiste. That was when Milton picked up and headed for Snake country.

But it was a long, dry drive northward, with almost nothing to eat or drink. Baptiste just held himself in the saddle that first day, aching, half blinded by the sun off the dust and sand when he opened his eyes, mostly keeping his eyes closed and unable to get his mind beyond his hurting anyway. He ignored his pack mule completely. That day he did nothing but hold on and let his horse follow the brigade.

The second day he was in agony. His tongue swelled in his mouth, cracked, and threatened to split down the middle. His stomach raged for food, twisting angrily inside him. That night the men feasted on crickets pounded with rocks into a kind of mush. Baptiste got about three bites. It only made the hunger ache more. On the third and fourth days he felt weak and sinking, barely able to go on, and constantly nauseated. He lived in a dream world of floating memories and fantasies colored red on the insides of his eyelids by the sun. That night Joe bled Doc’s mule, taking about a pint from a cut in his ear, and the three shared the blood.

The next day Baptiste felt wild, jumpy, feverish with energy, cannibalish. He thought of nothing but what he might eat that night, beast or man. He was passed out on the sand that evening when he smelled roasting meat.
Saunt-den-tickup, hintz,
Joe said in Shoshone—“Good meat, friend.” Milton had cut the throat of a mule which was dying, and the brigade stuffed its stomachs.

They killed another mule the next evening, and Baptiste began to feel almost human. But he wanted a decent drink—not blood, and not the brackish stuff that seeped up from holes in the sand—clear water.

Late the next afternoon the horses and mules, more famished and thirsted than the men, started trotting forward and then broke into a gallop. The trappers hung on. Gear was strewn all over the plain. The animals had smelled water and were going for it.

They plunged in without stopping. The men were glad to get soaked, and didn’t give a damn about the equipment. They lolled around in the Snake, dipping their heads to drink and letting their pores absorb the water. That night two horses died from drinking too much.

JULY, 1832: The rendezvous in Pierre’s Hole, on the west side of the Grand Tetons, looked to be as fat as last year’s rendezvous had been lean. Last year Tom Fitzpatrick hadn’t shown up with the supply train for rendezvous at all. The free trappers and the hired hands like Joe and Doc and Baptiste had had to ride back into the mountains without having any whisky to wet their dry, without foofuraw, with damned little DuPont powder and Galena lead, and without enough traps. They’d gone cussing, and the Indians had ridden away muttering too. This year they were getting two supply trains—Bill Sublette was bringing one for Rocky Mountain Fur, which was Gabe and Broken Hand and the boys, and Lucien Fontenelle was bringing one out for American Fur.

Joe and Doc just grinned about that. Another company in the mountains should mean shinin’ times for them. Instead of trapping for RMF and paying monopoly prices for their outfits, they could work as free trappers, sell their furs to the high bidder, and buy their goods from the low seller. The tale was that American Fur meant to get the trade by buying high and selling low. Well, Baptiste thought, MacKenzie is an ornery man.

American Fur had gotten into the mountain trade in a big way during the last year. Its brigades were inexperienced and had green leaders, but they’d hit on a shrewd plan. Vanderburgh and Drips, the partisans, had lit out on the trails of the RMF brigades. Since they didn’t know the mountains or mountain ways, they intended to learn them from the beavers that did know. Old Gabe, Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Frapp, and Gervais had become unwilling guides for American Fur during the last fall and spring hunts. Naturally, those partisans hadn’t liked taking American Fur through Rocky Mountain College, and as canny a coon as Bridger had shaken his followers for a while. But Vanderburgh and Drips were dogged; they kept cutting Gabe’s trail and catching up with him. RMF had most of the plews—they got to every crick ahead of the Company—but they were riled just the same. They were afraid that if Fontenelle won the race to rendezvous, the Company would get all the trade of the free trappers and most of the plews. And Fontenelle, coming from Fort Union instead of St. Louis, had a headstart.

Bill Sublette was too wily to be outdone by a newcomer like Fontenelle, of course. He got up the Missouri, up the Platte and Sweetwater, through South Pass, across the Siskadee River (later called the Green) and the Snake River in record time. At mid-morning on July 8 a hundred rifles volleying from the south of the Hole told everyone that Sublette had outstripped the Company and that RMF’s mountain wisdom still counted for more than John Jacob Astor’s money.

And so the carouse was on—brawling, drinking, fornicating, gambling, lying, gypping, and the other favorite mountain pastimes. This year Baptiste got to chuckle at some greenhorns, greener than he had been two years before, trying to get the hang of mountain life. One Nathaniel Wyeth, a Boston ice merchant, had come to make his fortune in the fur trade. Wyeth was a clever man, hard-headed, quick to catch on; he’d already figured out, riding with Bill Sublette on the way out and paying for the privilege, that his ideas about the trade were naive, and he’d already begun to adjust them to realities. He’d brought nineteen fresh hands for the job.

“D’ye eye them
mangeurs de lard
, boy? D’ye eye ’em now? Wagh! But ain’t they some? One of them could make a buffler look right smart.”

Baptiste handed Bill a twist as greeting after not seeing him for two years. In fact, Baptiste had heard the Arapahoes had lifted his hair down at Bayou Salade.

“Ye see these greenhorns to the mountain country? Apackin’ their bacon and flour, I swan. You mind, they’ll be splittin’ rail and puttin’ up fences out here mighty quick. An’ then they’ll be totin’ women out here. Great Jeehosephat.”

“Missionaries, Bill. Missionaries’ll come before women. You used to be one of those yourself, as I remember.”

“Wagh! This child did, too, but he growed up.”

“We’re as independent as hogs on ice for now,” Baptiste said. “You think it’ll change?”

“Change?
It
won’t change, it’ll change them greenhorns. They’s a rattlesnake coiled around every sagebrush out here, and passes in them mountains ain’t nothing but a marmot crossed since the mountains riz up—nothing but a marmot and this child here. And they’s the wind to dry their faces and the sun to split their lips. They ain’t gonna preach no sermons in this country. They ain’t gonna be able to talk none.

“Aside, this child knows cricks and valleys and basins ain’t no beaver seen. Ain’t nobody gonna find this child with no sermons and skirts.”

The boys constructed a special amusement or two for the Bostoner’s greenhorns. Ike Davies screwed a Shoshone squaw within five yards of a bunch of them, and invited them to follow, which they declined. Some of the boys started playing Seven-Up using a dead trapper for a table. That turned the newcomers a bit greener around the gills. Black Harris doused a red-headed trapper, a lanky fellow, with pure alcohol. Someone put a burning stick to him, and he lit. Joe and Baptiste pounded out the flames, but the poor fellow damn near died anyway.