Rendezvous (32 page)

Bridger nodded and led them to a good spot, largely free of snow, where a fire could be built against a cliff that would throw the heat back at them. They cooked frozen beaver tail, fed the horses some cottonwood, warmed themselves, and then started out, knowing they could go only two more hours until darkness settled again. But the moon was already up, so they could continue deep into the night.

About dusk Bridger consulted with Fitzpatrick, and reported to Sublette. “This hyar's our creek. Ferguson and Ranne're over in the next drainage. But beyond hyar, I don't know.”

“We're close, then. They'll be holed up around here.”

They broke trail through unknown country that rose steadily. The horses had to be pulled and tugged now. Sublette's face ached, and he knew his fingers, cheeks, nose, and toes would be frostbitten a second time. Around him men cursed, slapped the offended flesh to drive life into it, and continued. They came to a large creek tending west, and decided that was the turnoff.

Sublette pulled his Hawken from its soft leather sheath, checked the priming, and fired into the quiet night. The roar shocked his ears. He reloaded, having trouble making his fingers work. They waited. No answering shot drifted to them. He tried again, and only silence replied.

“We'll go up this creek and fire every little while,” Sublette said. The creek ran through woods, and the party stumbled over hidden logs and fought spidery branches the moonlight didn't reveal to them.

Then they heard the wolves, howling mournfully into the night, back and forth, one bunch to the south, another to the north. Sublette had the itch to murder the first one he spotted. They were nature's killing machines. Half of his men wore wolfhide hoods or hats because of the warm fur, and that was the only use for a wolf as far as he was concerned.

They fought their way up the drainage another two miles before the moon quit them, and made camp in an elk yard cleaned of snow. That night they built a bonfire and warmed themselves half at a time, frontside and backside. But no one slept. No one had answered their periodic shots, and in that fire-breached darkness each was wondering how Ferguson and Ranne went under.

Chapter 41

The rescue party did not return. Two bitter days rose and fell without news. The sun barely crawled above the nearby mountains and then plummeted into another endless December night.

Skye scanned the trails restlessly, his eyes watering and hurting from the blinding light of the snow, but saw nothing. A vast silence permeated the mountains. He longed for the call of a bird.

All the firewood and green cottonwood was exhausted, and the camp itself was in peril. Meat was running low; they needed a couple of buffalo and fast. Skye studied the country farther down the tributary creek they were on, tiring himself as he pushed through thick ridges of snow. He came to a like place with plenty of cottonwood, a little grass swept clean by wind, and open water. He would move there even if it was windier than the present camp.

When he came back he gathered the reluctant camp tenders, who hated being exposed to bitter cold, and told them they would move camp that day.

“Four or five hundred yards downriver. Not too hard, mates. Horses'll tramp a path for us. There's plenty of wood and feed, and we'll be that much closer to some buffalo.”

“What gives you the right to boss us around?” asked Scott.

The man had been sour toward Skye ever since the battle with the Blackfeet, and now he sounded truculent. Every camp tender knew the answer; Sublette had put Skye in charge.

“Let's get moving,” said Skye, not answering. “We've a lot to do.”

“I said what gives you the right?”

“Mr. Scott, I'd like you to pick out six or seven horses, drive them ahead of us, make a trail. Follow my prints along the creek.”

“I don't feel like it. That's too much work for this kind of cold. We should wait for Sublette.”

Skye stared at Scott a moment, wondering whether to confront him, and then turned to Pombert and the Creoles. “We can be set up and warm before dark.”

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.