Rendezvous (7 page)

In the past he had occasionally fallen into bouts of despair, especially when he was locked in ships' brigs for weeks on end. He knew that there was only one cure for it: he had to drive the demon out of himself. He must never surrender to despair. He might now be in grave trouble, but he was not defeated. He reminded himself that he was alive and free. He had to help himself because no one else would. It was bootless to question the meaning of his existence, or why his had been a hard lot, or whether there was justice in the world. Such speculations never solved anything. He would keep on. He would suffer and starve if he must, but he would not quit and he would not surrender the liberty he had won at such terrible cost. With that resolve, and with a half-muttered prayer to the mysterious God who let him suffer so much, he started east once again.

The next day he shot an antelope. He could not explain it. The handsome animal stood on a slight rise, watching him approach, probably a sentinel for the nearby herd. It should have fled, but it didn't. Itchily, he nocked an arrow and eased closer, to perhaps thirty yards. A long shot for a novice with a bow. The antelope didn't present much target, facing him almost squarely. But he drew, aimed, and loosed his fingers. The arrow whipped true and buried itself in the animal's chest. The antelope took a few steps and collapsed.

Exultantly, Skye raced to it and found it was dying. He retrieved his arrow, pulling gently until it came free. He was a long way from the river a longer way to firewood. In fact, he didn't see a tree anywhere, but he knew a few grew near the water, often hidden from the prairies. The antelope was too heavy to carry and cumbersome to drag. Skye decided to lighten the load by gutting it, which took a while in hot sun. He didn't really know what he was doing, and doubted that his kitchen knife was the ideal tool. The carcass was still too heavy, so Skye slowly cut off its head, having trouble with bone and cartilage. Now at last he felt he could hoist the carcass to one shoulder, his warbag over the other, and stagger back to the river.

The half-mile trek exhausted him, but he reached the stony bank, washed the carcass and himself, and hunted for wood. He saw none. He stumbled a mile more along the river before he came to a crease in the land full of stumpy trees and brush, enough of it dead to give him what he needed. He exulted, and set to work at once, building a hot fire, butchering meat, and preparing for a feast.

He ate a bellyful of the tender meat, and toiled relentlessly at butchering the rest of the animal. He meant to cut it into thin strips and dry it if he could. The sheer toil amazed him. He lacked so much as a hatchet and had to break dry limbs off trees with brute strength to keep the fire going. He had to saw the meat patiently, being careful not to cut himself. And then he had to rig a grid of green sticks upon which to dry and smoke the meat.

Dusk arrived but he was scarcely aware of it because this bonanza of meat inspired unceasing labor. When he did look up at last, he discovered he wasn't alone. Half a dozen white men in buckskins stared down at him, and even as he reacted, he saw dozens more, including Indian women, join them. They multiplied, more and more of them crowding the hilltop along with pack horses and mules.

He had run into a fur brigade, but knew not whether it was British or Yank.

He paused, wiped the sweat from his brow, lifted his top hat, and waited.

Chapter 9

Peter Skene Ogden saw at once that this was the fugitive sailor, Skye, although the man was wearing a fringed buckskin shirt and a battered topper. McLoughlin's express, which Le Duc had delivered a few days before, warned that the Royal Navy considered this man a dangerous and incorrigible criminal.

Ogden had kept the information to himself. He had a cynical streak, and nothing aroused his amused skepticism more than the posturing of the servants of the Crown, especially the dread lords of the Admiralty. Ogden also had his own designs, and perhaps Skye would fit into them. Nonetheless, the man bore watching.

He hurried his trapping brigade down the long slope while Skye waited in the dusk, wary and silent. The man certainly fit McLoughlin's sketchy description. The nose—my God, what a nose—identified him.

“Ogden here. I don't believe we've met,” he said.

Skye paused, his gaze searching, and then seemed to come to some conclusion. “I'm Barnaby Skye, sir. Call me Mister Skye.”

“Mister Skye it is, then.”

The brigade swarmed around Skye, eyeing him curiously. Ogden had taken these thirty trappers and camp tenders, plus their Indian wives, out last fall, and now was returning to Fort Vancouver with the winter's harvest of beaver pelts. They had trapped the Snake River country, garnering somewhat fewer than the three thousand pelts Hudson's Bay needed to turn a profit.

“I've some meat here,” Skye said. “Just cooking it up. Help yourself.”

“That's mighty kind. Fact is, we haven't seen a four-footed beast in two days. We're subsisting ourselves on salmon. All right, gents, divide it up.”

An antelope wouldn't go far among thirty-seven men and women, but the whole brigade would get a serving. Ogden examined Skye's gear, finding only a bow and arrows. Offering that meat had meant sacrifice, which only heightened Ogden's curiosity about this notorious man.

“A man grows weary of salmon,” Skye said.

“You heading somewhere, Skye? Any way I can help?”

“It's Mister Skye, sir. That title gives a common man dignity here in the New World. Any man can claim it, and I do. I've been known only by my last name since I was a lad of fourteen. I heard not even Barnaby, my Christian name, sir. Only Skye, as if a freeborn Englishman deserved nothing more.”

“I share the sentiment. Call me Mr. Ogden,” the brigade leader said, enjoying himself and Skye. “You're an Englishman. I'm a Canadian. We're bound by the Crown, then.”

Skye said nothing, his face hiding some interior world from Ogden. It wouldn't do to push the man, Ogden thought. “We'll make camp here, if you don't mind. You've found the only firewood in miles, and there's plenty of grass for these half-starved mounts. I'm taking a lot of beaver back to Fort Vancouver. We've been in the Snake River country. You heading that way or heading west?”

“East, sir. Perhaps you can give me directions.”

“Ah, directions to where?”

“Boston, Mr. Ogden.”

“Boston?”

“It has a college I wish to attend, sir. Harvard. In a place called Cambridge. My schooling was interrupted long ago, and I wish to continue with it.”

“But Boston's on the Atlantic coast.”

“It's where I'm headed.”

“Do you have any idea—no, obviously you don't. We have some tea I've been hoarding. I'll break it out. We'll have a cup and talk, eh?”

Skye smiled for the first time. “Tea. It's been a long time since I've sipped it.”

Ogden could hardly believe his ears. In the space of a minute or two, Skye had demolished the reputation that preceded him. College. Boston. Sharing the antelope. Politeness and courtesy. Insistence on a dignified title. Either Skye wasn't the man the navy represented to McLoughlin, or else Skye was a master dissembler, capable of impressing people with the appearance of transparent honesty.

The man wandered the camp, looking itchy and uneasy while Ogden's brigade settled down for the night. He seemed a loner, unwilling to make friends with the voyageurs. But maybe that should be ascribed to his fugitive status.

Ogden let Skye wander while he set some tea to brewing in a fire-blackened pot. His Creole free trappers required constant attention. If he wasn't on hand to make sure the horses were hobbled and put out to graze, they might not be. If he wasn't around to set a guard, no guard would be posted. He had learned to command his trapping brigade with good humor, some jawboning, and an occasional show of strength. He wasn't a large man but he could mete out more than he took from any of them. HBC had entrusted him with its most important trapping brigade precisely because he was good with the men.

The embarrassment of last season still aggrieved him. That was when the Americans had set up their rendezvous system and lured away twenty-three of Ogden's trappers by offering much higher prices—eight times the HBC price—for beaver pelts, while selling them supplies at moderate cost right in the mountains, so that the trappers didn't have to head back to a Hudson's Bay post for equipment. It had been an ugly season that had come close to bloodshed. Ogden despised his deserters, abominated the shifty Americans, coldly refused to leave the territory the Yanks were calling their own, and met threat with threat. At the same time, he had swiftly informed his superiors that many more of HBC's trappers would desert unless they were paid decent prices for their plews, as beaver pelts were called. The Creoles rightly protested that HBC had deliberately kept its trappers in bondage, working to pay off trading post debts that could never be repaid.

The company had reformed itself, more or less, and now Ogden led a brigade that had remained loyal and reasonably content—in a tentative sort of way. His mission had been to sweep the entire Snake country of its beaver, to keep the Americans out. He had done just that, ruthlessly cleaning beaver out of the country south of the Snake. But he was still shorthanded, and reliable men were a rare commodity in the wilderness. Maybe there'd be a place for Skye—if McLoughlin and HBC's governor, George Simpson, agreed. Which was a big if.

“Mister Skye, the tea's steeped,” he said.

He handed the fugitive a cup. Skye settled on the ground, near Ogden's own small fire. They sipped contentedly, while Ogden wondered how to broach the various topics that came to mind. The trappers were all busy making camp, so they were more or less alone.

“I wonder if you know how far Boston is, sir. And what lies between.”

“It doesn't matter, Mr. Ogden.”

That answer, too, astonished the brigade's bourgeois, as the Creoles called him. Ogden tried another tack. “You're ill-equipped to cross the continent. It's nearly two thousand miles to the Mississippi River, and another thousand to Boston. Cold, heat, starvation, savages, disease, clothing falling off your body. Don't try it. If you'll hire on with HBC, you'll soon have enough to go east in safety and a chance of keeping yourself fed. I'll supply you right now, and you can work off the debt.”

“That's a kind offer, Mr. Ogden. But I will go my way with what I have.”

“It's suicide.”

“Death, sir, can be the lesser of two evils.”

“I see you're serious,” Ogden said, impressed. It was mountain etiquette not to inquire too closely into a man's past. His brigades had been populated by wanted men, scoundrels, dodgers of all sorts. But by some sort of unspoken agreement, they all had a chance to redeem themselves here. What counted was what a man could do, the contribution he could make, and not what he had been. In any case, the harsh and dangerous life weeded out the malcontents and worthless men. Weak men didn't last long. They died or fled.

“This life can be so terrible that one is forced to put his hope on the next one. The lowest and darkest corner of paradise, Mr. Ogden, is the dream of a man whose every hope has been crushed.” Skye stared at Ogden somberly. “I am a free man. This wilderness is paradise itself. Every hour of my journey, my heart leaps and my soul rejoices and I sing my own hymns to our Creator.”

Ogden, for once in his life, was speechless.

“I believe you already know much about me, and all this dissembling evades the issue,” Skye continued.

“Why—”

“I am called a deserter by the Royal Navy and the company is offering five pounds to anyone who'll deliver me to Fort Vancouver alive. My capture will please the Admiralty.”

Ogden laughed. “Somehow, you've met and impressed Le Duc, our express runner. The rogue never confessed to meeting you, but I know he did. He acted oddly. I met him ten days ago on the Snake River. He was on his way to Flathead Post, bearing the same express he gave me.”

“No one will collect the five pounds, Mr. Ogden. Because I won't be taken alive. Try it and you'll find out soon enough.”

Ogden shook his head, intrigued with this man. “I have no designs, Mister Skye. The fact is, I was hoping to make a trapper of you. I need every man I can get.”

“That won't be possible, sir. I won't work for Hudson's Bay or any of the Crown's men, and I won't stay in British territory.”

Skye's assertion certainly had a finality about it, Ogden thought.

“Well, sir, would you honor me with your story? If you want my opinion, the official version of events is usually concocted by men protecting their backsides. In your case, by a titled fool who commands His Majesty's ships more by politics and connections than merit. They all get along all right—except in war, and then they serve the kingdom badly.”

Skye ladled more tea from the pot and sipped it. “I'm the son of a London merchant,” he began, “intending to join my family's import-export firm after a good schooling at Cambridge, Jesus College, my father's alma mater. It never happened…”

For the next half hour Ogden listened to a story of desperation, obstinate courage, official malfeasance, despair, and sheer determination. This unfortunate might have won his freedom in time had he smoothed things over and done a lengthy stint as a seaman without further blemish, but he had stubbornly resisted until he could escape. Maybe that had been poor judgment on Skye's part, but he had been a fourteen-, fifteen-, seventeen-year-old boy through the worst of it. Ogden wasn't sure but he would have fought just as hard, had he been that boy.

Skye finished his story and stood up, gazing into a cloudless night. “There's the north star and dipper, sir. For the rest of my life, no man will ever keep these eyes from seeing those stars. If I cannot leave my house or shelter and see those stars at will, I will cast my life away as a useless thing.”