The Shirt On His Back (16 page)
Read The Shirt On His Back Online
Authors: Barbara Hambly
Night would
bring complications of its own.
'I'd say we
gotta. Though I would like to keep him around as long as we can today, as
there's folk we ain't heard from yet. None of you's seen Manitou Wildman, have
you?'
Hannibal shook
his head. 'Nor the Beauty and Groot, though they'll be halfway to their secret
. . . Ah.' He stopped, as if recalling Jed Blankenship's initial accusation,
and why it would have been the first thing anyone in the camp thought of. 'Hem.
Yes.'
'You boys see
what you can put together, of who went out playin' Leatherstocking in the woods
last night, an' of them, who's back in camp now. Get Prideaux an'
Veinte-y-Cinco to help. They knows everybody in the camp.'
Shaw slouched
his hands in his pockets, spit into the thickets of huckleberry that the
camp-setters had hacked back in order to set up the fly. Liquor wasn't the only
white man's vice too dangerous to indulge away from the protection of the camp;
January smiled a little to himself, at the quickness with which Shaw had sought
out 'Missouri manufactured' - as it was called - on his return. 'I don't think
it was our friend Boden that did for the old boy - since he didn't try to blame
it on the Indians. But hanged if I can see how one feller headin' for the
rendezvous alive an' disappearing, an' another feller appearin' at the
rendezvous dead out of nowhere, can't have somethin' to do with each other
somehow. I better go ask that pusillanimous skunk Titus if'fn one of his AFC
boys don't know how to put together a coffin. If Grey shows up again . . .'
'Madre de Dios,'
cried a young man's voice from the front of the fly, hoarse with shock.
January, Shaw,
and Hannibal all swung around, just as Blankenship pushed his way through the
crowd to seize the arm of the youth who had gasped the words - one of his
camp-setters, January saw . . . What was his name? Poco. A half-breed boy from
Santa Fe, small and wiry—
'He has come
after me,' whispered Poco, and crossed himself. 'I never thought that it was
true, that if you rob the dead they would come to you, demanding their own
back.'
—small and wiry
and wearing a handsome pair of black wool trousers that would have fit the dead
man perfectly.
That's
horseshit,' said Blankenship. 'I robbed more dead men than I got friends
livin'—'
'We few, we
happy few
,' quoted Hannibal irreverently.
'—an' not a one
of 'em ever come around askin' for his plunder back.'
But Poco was
already unbuttoning the trousers. He stepped out of them and held them out to
Shaw: 'I am truly sorry. It is not that I wished to rob the dead, but they were
so much better than my own.'
'Hannibal,' said
Shaw, 'you go mind the store.'
Poco's story was
a simple one. He had waited until his master left the camp the previous night -
shortly before the onset of the rain - and made his way across Horse Creek
alone, aided by a dark-lantern for which he'd traded what remained of his
tobacco ration, for the moon, on those rare occasions when the clouds parted,
was but two days past new. 'My cousin works for Señor Groot,' he explained. 'He
told me that day, that if I wanted work with his party I should meet them at
Rotten Draw, that runs into Horse Creek from the hills, when it was fully
dark—'
'An' you didn't
think to tell me this?' Blankenship, who had refused to be turned out of the
fly, smote the boy with his wolfskin hat. 'I ought to—'
'I feared it
might be a trick, Señor,' explained the young man ingenuously. 'Ramon is
clever, and it would be like him, to tell me this, hoping that I would then
tell you and draw you from the true trail.'
Blankenship's
eyes narrowed with suspicion at this tale, but he let the matter pass.
The brush along
Rotten Draw - 'If it was Rotten Draw where I found myself, Señor, for it was
dark and raining like the Great Flood' - was thick, and Poco became thoroughly
lost. 'When the rain stopped I heard shots - not in the camp, but closer, in
the woods above the creek it sounded like.'
'How many
shots?'
'Two, Señor
Shaw. Also, for a time I thought that I was being followed. But it began again
to rain, and with the darkness of the clouds, I could not be sure. It might
only have been some other, to whom Ramon let "slip out" this story
about Rotten Draw, but it might also have been the Blackfoot. I dared not call
out. I slipped and rolled down the draw, and tore my trousers. So I went to
ground, like a fox, under some bushes, and waited until there was enough light
to see.'
At daybreak -
for the young man had drifted off to sleep once the rain had ceased for good -
Poco had climbed back out of the draw and made his way to the top of the ridge
and back toward the camp. 'I was cold and very hungry, and frightened too,
because of the Blackfeet. When I smelled smoke I thought that it was the camp
of Oso Loco - Señor Manitou - which I knew to be somewhere along the creek. But
I found instead a shelter made of boughs, with a dead fire before it, and a
dead man lying on the ground.'
'On the ground?'
repeated January.
'Sí,
Señor. The shelter was at one side of a clearing, and the man lay on his face.
His feet were pointing toward the shelter - perhaps three feet distant - and
his arms lay at his sides like this.' Poco demonstrated, holding his arms
curved away from his sides so that his hands were about a foot from each hip.
'He had been stabbed in the back. His shirt was all soaked with blood, and when
I turned him over I saw that his throat had been cut, and the breast of his
shirt was also red with blood—'
The youth looked
aside, suddenly white around the mouth.
'So he's wearin'
a shirt?'
'Sí,
Señor Shaw. A new shirt. . .' Poco's eyes narrowed as he tried to call back the
scene. 'Just an ordinary checkered shirt, like Señor Enero's he nodded toward
January - 'or Señor Prideaux's . . .'
The men gathered
before the fly, standing or hunkered, or sitting on chunks of firewood on the
still-wet ground, looked at each other. Checkered shirts from Lowell,
Massachusetts were among the most common in the camp. Prideaux's, which he'd
loyally bought from Ivy and Wallach a few days previously, was - like January's
- yellow-and-black, brand new and stiff with starch. Others represented had
been worn hard and faded colorless with weather and wind.
'Big shirt or
small shirt?' asked January, and Poco frowned again.
'To tell the
truth, Señor, I cannot remember. Only the blood.' He shivered, drawing his
long, thin, bare brown legs together under his own dangling shirt tails.
'Boots?'
'No, Señor.
Nothing. His leg had been broken, and someone had tied two straight sticks on
it. I— May the Mother of God forgive me, I untied them and threw them away. I
could see that the poor old man had no need of his trousers anymore, and . . .
and they are very fine trousers, Señor. And my own had never been very good,
even when they were whole. And I thought, perhaps the old man had a son, to
whom he would willingly have given his trousers, if he had found him cold and
naked in the wilderness. By the Mother of God -' Poco crossed himself once more
- 'truly I meant no harm.'
'You leave him
where he laid?' asked Shaw, and Poco nodded miserably.
'I had no means
to bury him, Señor. And, in truth, I could not rid my mind of the Blackfeet,
and what they do to those they capture. I told myself, the dead are the dead;
he has no more use even of his poor body, much less of the garments which
clothed it.' Guilt and wretchedness filled the young man's brown eyes. 'Had he
been still living, I would have—'
"Course you
would.' Rising, Shaw laid a hand on Poco's shoulder. 'Any man here would.'
Looking across
at Blankenship, January did not feel prepared to lay money on that assertion.
And Pia, who had
slipped into the fly between the men, piped up, 'Was there anything in his
pockets?'
'What there was,
I have left there.' Poco gestured toward the black trousers, which Shaw still
held in one hand. 'All of it. For in truth, no good can come of taking from the
dead.'
Shaw dug in the
trouser pockets and brought out a sizeable chunk of vermillion - the
flame-colored dyestuff from China, which all the traders dealt in, still
wrapped in its paper - a thick packet of banknotes and a very handsome silver
watch.
Gil Wallach said
kindly, 'Here, Poco—' and tossed him a pair of new wool pants. 'I'll put these
on our dead friend's tab.'
It was near dark
when the liquor ran out. By that time, everyone in the camp had been through
the fly at least twice, the exceptions being Manitou Wildman, everyone
connected with Goshen Clarke and Clemantius Groot's party, and the young New
England trapper Boaz Frye. Bridger and Fitzpatrick of the AFC volunteered to
comb through the rough country south of Horse Creek for any others who, like
Poco and Blankenship, had thought to follow the two independents to their
secret beaver valley, while Kit Carson returned to Wildman's camp. Through the
tail end of the long afternoon, a fair-sized troop of would-be Beauty-trackers
made their way back to the rendezvous, cursing their elusive quarry and agog to
hear what had happened in their vicinity, unbeknownst.
Most of these
claimed to have heard two shots, shortly after the rain had ceased for the first
time, at which point the moon, what there was of it, was coming to zenith. Some
had assumed these shots to be Blackfoot. Others thought they were Clarke and
Groot trying to discourage followers. Most agreed that the shots had been
slightly less than a minute apart.
During these
testimonies, conducted alternately by Shaw and January at the rear of the fly,
Hannibal assisted Mick Seaholly and Charro Morales in pouring drinks. Thus, by
the time even the Mexican trader's more expensive barrel was exhausted, and the
AFC publican took his empty kegs and his customers back down to their regular
venue, Hannibal had a list of about a hundred theories as to who might have
committed the murder, propounded to him across the bar.
'I like the one
that claims it was Generalissimo Santa Anna,' he mused, studying his notes by
the light of the campfire that had been built in front of the fly. 'Is he in
Washington these days?'
'They let him go
home.' January shook his head, bemused. 'Considering the Americans he massacred
at the Alamo, I'm still astonished that Sam Houston's soldiers didn't kill him
on the spot when they caught him . . .'
'I'd have held
their coats for them.' During Hannibal's visit to Mexico two winters ago, the
dictator's negligence had very nearly gotten him hanged.
January adjusted
a trade blanket over the side of the fly, knotted it into place with strips of
rawhide - the ubiquitous fasteners of everything beyond the frontier - and held
the corner of another blanket for Morning Star and Veinte-y-Cinco to do the
same. 'How many were with Blankenship, that it was Groot or Clarke or both?'
'About a dozen.'
Hannibal edged aside on the flat rock on which he sat, to let Pia arrange
supper over the fire: green sticks laden with skewered meat. 'There's the usual
accusations that it was either the Blackfeet, that band of Crows - only, Tom
Fitzpatrick said he'd heard it was Flatheads that are lurking - in the hills to
the north, or Iron Heart's Omahas—'
'In spite of the
fact that our friend there still got his hair on.' Shaw came into the circle of
the firelight, from closing up the store.
Hannibal tapped
the side of his nose and looked crafty. 'They're sly. One vote apiece for the
Sioux, Red Arm's Crows here in the camp, the Hudson's Bay Flatheads - this
isn't counting those who believe that the group lurking in the north
are
Flatheads,
working for Hudson's Bay. Votes also for the Company's Delaware scouts, the
Snakes, the Crees, the Assiniboin, and the Nez Perces, with no more argument
for motive other than that they are Indians.'
'Cabrons
.'
Veinte-y-Cinco knelt to set a Dutch oven of cornbread on the coals. 'Like any
Indian's gonna kill a man and leave that much vermillion in his pocket.' She
settled on the rock next to Hannibal, took a comb from her skirt pocket and
proceeded to comb out her long hair.
'Homini
praeposuit veritatem.'
Hannibal turned
the pages over, thin hands a little shaky in the firelight. Other than
occasional bouts with the symptoms of withdrawal from long- term opiate
consumption, the fiddler had held up surprisingly well. But the journey,
January was well aware, had been hard on him: his friend was not one of those
specimens of American hardihood so beloved of temperance-tract writers, who had
only to be thrown on his own into the company of red-blooded mountaineers in
the embrace of Nature, to abandon all thought of evil habits and be restored to
complete health. Though his consumption had gone into abeyance, January could
still hear it whisper in the rasping of Hannibal's breath; could see it
sometimes, when the fiddler put his hand to his side in pain when he didn't
think anyone was looking.
'We also have
accusations against Sir William Stewart - you can't trust these aristocrats,
you know; ten for Edwin Titus, assuming that the victim actually
is
the missing Asa
Goodpastor - although I think Warren Wynne would accuse Titus of anything at
this point, since the AFC has pretty much bankrupted him this summer. Three
for the Reverend Grey, also assuming that the victim is Goodpastor, who knew
some terrible secret about the Reverend; one for John McLeod; one for the
secret long-lost husband of Irish Mary -' he named the youngest and prettiest
of the Taos girls, who was in fact no more Irish than the rest of them - 'and,
of course, twenty- five votes for Manitou Wildman. Gordy Dalrain swears the
dead man is actually Aaron Burr—'
'Aaron Burr
?'
January - who had settled on the opposite side of the blaze to count out the
stranger's banknotes - almost dropped them into the fire.
'—who faked his
death last year in New York with the express purpose of returning to the West
for another try at setting up his Empire. According to Gordy, Burr was pursued
by government agents who ran him to earth here and killed him—'
'And then
erected a comfortable shelter out of the rain and left a fire to warm his
corpse?'
The fiddler
shrugged.’
...
I don't suppose
we could prove it
isn't
Burr.' He poured himself tea from the tin camp-kettle that Morning Star had
hung on a green-stick tripod above the fire, grimaced at the taste. Among his
young wife's many accomplishments, tea-making was signally lacking. 'The fire,
of course, was to destroy all record of Burr's nefarious plots, plus any proof
of his identity. And how much money did our third Vice President have there in
his pocket when he was killed?'
'Five thousand
dollars, always supposing the Bank of New York, the Bank of Pennsylvania, the
Germantown and Lancaster Citizens' Bank, Wesley's Private Bank of Manhattan,
the Ohio and Albany Commercial Bank, and about ten other such establishments
are still in business. We can discount the two thousand here from the Bank of
Louisiana—'
'Proving
conclusively that it was Burr.' Hannibal shook his head. 'So many secret papers
in his pockets, they didn't need the banknotes to start the fire. It explains
why they stripped him, too, of course. There's coffee here, too,
amicus meus—'
Veinte-y-Cinco
rose, and Shaw set aside the saddle-worn black trousers, the plain German
silver watch that he'd been studying, and walked her down the path to
Seaholly's, with the matter-of-fact obligingness of a man walking any woman to
her work after dark. When he returned he was accompanied by Kit Carson and Jim
Bridger, who accepted the invitation to stay and dine.
'I think I got
'em all,' said Bridger, tearing - with perfect politeness - the elk meat from
the rib he held. 'All but that child Frye - he come in? No? An' not even a
footprint at Wildman's camp.'
'No sign of any
other camp?'
'Plenty sign.'
Carson tugged a corner of his light-brown mustache, vexed. 'Hell, we had half
the rendezvous stampedin' across those hills lookin' for Beauty and the
Dutchman. The rain washed out pretty much everythin' but droppings. Didn't see
nothing clustered together, like you'd have if anyone had put down for any
length of time.'
'How far'd you
go?'
'Maybe four
miles back along the creek, 'bout two miles over the ridge.'
'Cross the
river?'
Carson shook his
head. 'I was huntin' for Wildman, not our friend's camp.' He nodded toward the
gaily-striped blanket walls of the makeshift morgue. 'Damnedest thing I ever
saw,' he added - which, January reflected, coming from Carson, was saying a
great deal. 'Old buffer's got to have a camp someplace, and folks looking for
him - 'less they're all of 'em croaked. They would be, if they were across the
river and ran into the Blackfeet. You folks need help keepin' our friend from
havin' dinner guests tonight?'
'It'd be a help,
yes, thank you,' said Shaw. 'I 'predate it.'
Curious, January
reflected, that Senex Incognito, as Stewart had dubbed him, was almost
universally referred to as 'our friend,' though in life he might easily have
been plotting trouble
- killin' bad
- serious enough, perhaps, to endanger every man in the camp. Death - and the
savage manner of his death - had brought out the ready friendliness of the
trappers, the willingness to speak of him as a friend and to sit up all night
to keep vermin from eating his corpse.
Already, January
could hear furtive rustlings in the brush of the bottomlands below the camp. He
hoped the only things drawn to the smell of the corpse would be foxes and
coyote.
If
it's a bear,
he thought,
he can have him
. . .
'That boy Poco
was right, though,' went on Shaw after a time. 'The old man got no more need of
his body now than he has of those britches Poco borrowed. Still, it's a
lonesome business, watchin' alone.'
So they split
the watches, two and two, through the night in the time-honored way: Shaw and
Prideaux, January and Jim Bridger, Hannibal and Kit Carson, LeBel and Clopard.
At one point on January's vigil something quite large snuffled at the other
side of the blanket wall, but evidently the scents of men and fire were enough
to convince it - or them - to stay away. Certainly, the conversation with Jim
Bridger - about beaver and bears and navigation in the wilderness, about white
and Indian medicine, about slavery and Andrew Jackson and the kind of men who
chose to leave the United States and live in the mountains in solitude and
constant danger - was worth every foot of the long journey up the Platte, an
attempted scalping and longing for Rose . . .
The old man -
dressed in his own black trousers and a new calico shirt that Gil Wallach had
donated from the company's store, and moccasins that Morning Star had spent the
night embroidering - was laid to rest in the morning, in a coffin gouged from a
hollowed log and with a makeshift cross set up above his grave at the foot of
the hills west of the main camp. Aside from a near murder occasioned by the
Reverend Grey's sudden assertion that the deceased was, in fact, the Indian
Agent Asa Goodpastor after all - and his sworn oath that he was going to write
immediately to Congress accusing Edwin Titus of the crime - the obsequies went
well. Over a hundred men escorted the old man to his grave, and January saw in
more than one bearded face genuine sympathy and pity for this aged man -
whoever he was - who'd met his death alone and by violence, as any of them
might meet theirs tomorrow ... or even later on today . . .
As
Veinte-y-Cinco had put it, as she'd made coffee in front of the lodge early
that morning, 'Poor old
abuelo.
What would bring him all the way out here to die?'