Rendezvous (20 page)

Ashley gazed sourly at Skye. “I can always use men. I have twenty-five, and three times that many packhorses, and there's always the threat of Indians or stampedes or trouble. I never have enough horses and men. But Skye, I expect honorable conduct from men in my service. If trouble comes, will you desert?”

“I fought the bloody Kaffirs side by side with the rest, sir.”

Ashley stared coldly at him. “I'll think about it, Skye. I'll be leaving within the week.”

“It's Mister Skye, sir.”

“
Mister
Skye, is it?”

“In England, it's a courtesy not given ordinary men. This is a new world. As long as we're meeting as equals and freemen, you may call me mister, and I'll call you the same, or by your title.”

Ashley smiled slightly. “And what would you do in St. Louis? Patronize the grog shops?”

“I'll work my way east, sir. I wish to go to Boston.”

“Ah, and become a merchant seaman. New Orleans would be easier.”

“No, sir, go to college.”

“College? College?” Ashley was taken aback.

“You have a good one near Boston, and I'll find a way to get in and start my life again. Before the press-gang snatched me, I was headed for Cambridge, Jesus College, like my father before me, and his father before him. He's a London merchant, sir.”

Ashley snickered nasally, apparently too astonished to offer a rejoinder. Skye waited for an answer. If he should go with Ashley, it would be a long, brutal trip, not much different from his imprisonment in a royal man o' war. But it would take him east.

“Smith tells me you're a not a mountaineer,” Ashley said.

“I made my way from Fort Vancouver, sir. I improved my lot the entire time, starting with little more than the clothes on my back, a flint and striker, and a few small items.”

“Every bit of it Royal Navy property.”

“Mostly mine. The rest back pay for seven years, sir.”

“Theft.”

“I never received a pence in the navy, sir.”

“I don't believe you. You're a thief as well as a deserter.”

“I was fined my entire pay and more, sir.”

“For what?”

“Trying to secure my freedom.”

“Diah says he's advanced you credit. I suppose you're going to run out on him.”

“No, sir. Pay him out of service—to you, or to him, or however I can.”

Ashley laughed, baring yellow teeth. “You're a rogue, Skye. You're planning to stick Smith with the debt.”

“It's Mister Skye, sir. And unless you know a man's lying, you ought not to accuse. And unless you know a man's planning to steal from his benefactor, you shouldn't make that accusation either.”

Ashley reddened. “I'm done with you, Skye. If I decide to take you—and I may be forced to because I'm shorthanded—believe me, you'll be watched day and night.”

“It's Mister Skye, sir. I'll report to you daily until you decide.”

Skye left Ashley's tent in a bilious mood. He hadn't expected that sort of treatment. He had heard the man was affable, a natural politician with an eye for a profit and plenty of daring when it came to taking a risk.

He stormed over to the headquarters lodge of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, and barged in, finding Smith and Sublette.

“How much do I owe, and what can I do to pay it?” he barked.

“Well, it's Mister Skye.”

Jedediah Smith retreated into silence a moment, and then showed those qualities that made him a leader of men. “Bill and I were just mapping out our brigades. We'll have three this year. How may I help you, Mister Skye?”

Skye felt the heat slide out of him and rotated his topper in his hands a moment while he collected himself. “I've come from an interview with General Ashley, sir. He's not inclined to employ me for—reasons of character. Very well. I have my own standards. You've fed me for several days and advanced me seventeen dollars of goods. What is the value of my horse, sir? Would that pay my debt?”

Smith eyed Skye contemplatively. “A good horse's worth a hundred to a hundred fifty in the mountains. They're so scarce it's a bargain. But I'm not inclined to put you on foot.”

“I'm starting east in the morning and I'm going with a clear slate. I'll trade the horse for my debt and a good kit, including a rifle.”

“You'll need your horse.” He eyed Skye mildly. “I'll talk to Ashley. In the mountains these things have to be dealt with. Half his pack crew he recruited out of the grog shops of St. Louis. I don't know what's in his craw.”

“Thank you, sir. I'd rather not travel with him.”

Smith grinned. “Mister Skye, you've all the makings of a good free trapper, including the temperament.”

“All I want, sir, is to resume my life. And I'll find the way, and do it honorably, no matter how long it takes. If that means paying you back when I get to where I'm going and find a means to survive, then I'll do it. But one way or another, sir, you'll be paid.”

“You're not enjoying it here.”

Skye shrugged. “There's nothing for me here. But yes, I'm enjoying it. I've never seen such sights. I have ambition, Mr. Smith, and this isn't the place for it. A university might be.”

“I'll talk to Ashley. He's not being reasonable. He's leaving in a few days, mostly hanging around for any last pelts. Some trappers are still drifting in.”

“He'll find me a faithful and hard-working man, sir.”

“Mister Skye, you're a lot more than that, I'd wager. You think about staying in the mountains with my company. We need men. One can be a free trapper, or a camp tender, or a clerk. Camp tenders and clerks are salaried; free trappers sell us what they catch. They're independent businessmen. Davey Jackson's leading a brigade into the Snake country. Bill here's going over the Stony Mountains to the Crow and Blackfoot country, the Three Forks area—dangerous but untrapped. Virgin beaver country, but full of Bug's Boys.

“I'm fitting out a party to find a way to Mexican California. There's a river, the Buenaventura. No one's found it, but we know it's out there, other side of the Salt Lake. I mean to find it and take it west to the California mountains. The Sierra's full of beaver. I'm a man with big ideas, Mister Skye. If Ashley won't have you, we'd be more than glad to take you on.”

It was opportunity—if Skye wanted to abandon a dream.

Chapter 26

The rendezvous was drawing to a close, but Skye hadn't an inkling about his fate. General Ashley put him off each day. If worse came to worse, he intended simply to start east on his own, hazarding whatever fate had in store for a solitary traveler walking across the continent. By all accounts, he could reach St. Louis, on the western edge of the United States, before cold weather set in. After that he could work his way east.

He found himself an outsider at the rendezvous. He didn't play euchre or Spanish monte because he had nothing to wager. His one encounter with the fiery trade whiskey made him chary of sipping any more of it. Sometimes he sat quietly among the trappers, listening to that awesome braggart Beckwourth spin his tales in a patois Skye could barely fathom, or Bridger tell comic yarns that usually ended up in raucous laughter.

But Skye didn't fit in. He had an innate reserve, bred into him from childhood, unlike these wild, exuberant, cocky Yanks. His was the lexicon of the sea, and theirs the lexicon of frontiersmen cut loose from all their moorings. He came to enjoy the hairy breed who combed the mountains, but he could never imitate them. He admired their vast confidence, their fierce loyalties—but he didn't admire their inflammatory ways, with emotions seething uncontrolled just below the surface. Twice during the rendevous he had seen knife fights, men threatening each other with death.

He made friends with them all, but knew he would be leaving soon for the states and would never see them again. As the rendezvous wore on, they welcomed him to their campfires, and he put names to a hundred faces, and found them a varied lot from all over the continent, bonded only by a ferocity and courage he had rarely seen in others.

He didn't participate in the endless contests because he couldn't begin to match the skills of these mountaineers. How could he compete against men who could throw a heavy knife squarely into a knot on a distant tree trunk, or fire their heavy rifles so accurately they could split the ball on the cutting edge of a distant ax set up as a target? How could he toss a tomahawk so well that it would bury itself in a stump fifty feet away? He marveled at these things, watched endlessly, learned a lot—and quietly practiced with his knife and bow and arrows.

But then one afternoon a pair of tomahawk throwers, Jeandrois Rariet and Tom Virgin, politely invited him to try. Skye decided to grasp the nettle, and they handed him a 'hawk. He'd been watching, and tossed the hawk in a fine true arc—but it landed wrong and didn't bite the tree trunk.

“You gents have great skills,” he said.

“You have to, out here,” Virgin said. “Try 'er again, Mister Skye.”

Skye did, as haplessly as the first time.

After that, he found himself participating gamely in all the sports. He was at his worst with the mountain rifles. The heavy weapons bucked in his grasp, ruining his aim, and he never hit a target. These men awed him, firing at the edge of playing cards, putting five shots into a fist-sized circle as far away as the eye could see, casually tossing knives or tomahawks with equal accuracy. He tried his hand, bumbled them all, took the joshing amiably, and ignored the taunts. They even bested him in the only area where he had acquired some skill—with his bow and arrows. Not a few mountaineers were splendid archers and could even compete with the Crows and Shoshones.

“I've never seen marksmen like you,” Skye said to Tom Virgin.

“It's this way, old coon. Once that supply outfit pulls outa here, we got all the powder and lead we're gonna see until next year, savin' we go to some Hudson's Bay post and let 'em plunder us. So's there's none to spare. Some coons, they prefer flintlocks because there's always flint around, while other coons like caplocks because they fire when she rains. But them as has caplocks, they'd better have enough caps to last a year, or here's damp powder and no way to dry it. What it comes to is, we can't waste a shot. Naught a one.”

“Why do you stay in the mountains and endure the hardship?”

Virgin spat. “'Cause it's fat times.”

“You mean you make money?”

“Naw, I mean it don't get any better. You know what it's like to ride into some mountain park no white man's ever laid eyes on? What woodsmoke smells like early in a November mornin' when you're up and stretching and thinkin' breakfast? What it's like to cut into a juicy buffler hump and eat the best meat ever tasted by mortal man? What she's like to be free of everyone, everything? What it's like to have to wrestle the world every day to stay alive? To have some old coons you can count on no matter what? Naw, you wouldn't know, but you oughter think on it. A mountaineer is a king in his own kingdom.”

“I haven't even seen a buffalo, but I'd sure like to sample that humpmeat.”

“Buffler's shot out around here. Never was much. But over yonder, other side of the Stonies, them buffler run in bunches so thick they turn the prairie black. You'll never see the like—herds so big you can't count. Hundred thousand maybe, maybe ten times that. No man can say. Meat on the hoof. Boudins—”

“Boudins?”

“Buffler gut stuffed like sausage and cooked up real good, or just eaten up. You run dry, some time, out on the prairies, you shoot a buffler and drink what's in the boudins, and it'll get ye out alive.”

Skye nodded. Another survival item to file away, something to help him cross the prairies to civilization. “Thanks for the tip, Tom. Maybe it'll help when I go east.”

Virgin scratched his enormous beard and squinted. “You plumb center sartin you're going east, eh?”

“Yes.”

“You've the makin's of a mountaineer, but I guess we'll never know.” He smiled. “Each to his own. Me, I'd croak if I had ta live back east again. I can't even stand being around St. Louis. Get to swilling grog and makin' trouble and pretty soon, the constable's got me. Out here, you don't have to make trouble because it's always makin' itself. I'm a free trapper, and that's the only life there is.”

Skye smiled. There was indeed something seductive about the mountains, and at times they tempted him. But he could hardly imagine fashioning a life out of this sort of existence. What would he achieve? If he didn't die an awful death under a scalping knife, what would he have to show for a lifetime in the mountains? He had already lost seven years.

He headed, as he usually did, to General Ashley's tent but didn't find him there. He hunted for the man and found him out among the horses, looking dour. He and his packers were studying each of the general's horses, and not liking their condition.

“Not enough rest,” said Ashley's top man.

“I hoped to buy some, but all I got was half a dozen miserable beasts from the Crows. They'll have to do,” Ashley said.

Skye intervened. “Have you come to a decision, sir?”

The general turned to Skye, contemplatively. “We're leaving in two days. If you want to come along, I'll not say nay. We could use your horse. I'll trade the horse for your mess.”

“I owe Smith, Jackson, and Sublette about seventeen dollars, sir. Perhaps you'd employ me for that and credit their account. I'll sell the horse for the going price.”

“No, I won't do that. It's enough that I'm taking you safely east.”

“Very well, sir. I'll probably strike out on my own soon.”

“It's certain death.”

“I've been talking to gentlemen here, sir. Tom Fitzpatrick has made the journey safely more than once. Once only a short time ago.”