Read Online Cheyenne Winter by Richard S. Wheeler - Free Book Online

crime, you know. A serious one in the eyes of some.”
    “I have to find who did it and wring a confession?”
    Mitchell scowled. “A believable confession, Guy. Not one that can be bought on the levee. And that might not get you off either. When the hounds start baying after witnesses, they’ll find witnesses.”
    “You were Chouteau’s man for years, David.”
    The superintendent stared back. “I can’t say as I appreciate your implication.”
    Guy sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re a man I trust totally. It’s that — everything I posses is at stake.”
    “For the record, Guy — I play no favorites. I’m charged with governing a vast territory  . . . and every enterprise in it. I do it as fairly as I know how. I worked for Pratte, Chouteau and Company for years, yes. I poured many a cup of diluted spirits upriver for my employers, yes. If that’s what you want me to say, I’ll say it.”
    “I misspoke, David. All right. I ask one thing. Could you delay this a while? I’m going upriver.”
    “You? What’ll that do?”
    “Maybe nothing. But I’m going to try.” Guy astonished even himself because he hadn’t intended to go upriver at all.
    “Oh, I can sit on it a few weeks, Guy. Good luck.”
     
    * * *
     
    Three days Samson Trudeau and his men trudged down the Yellowstone staying close to the river. And then luck floated by. Just as Trudeau had hoped, the keelboat wending its way from Fort Cass to Fort Union drifted around a bend. One man operated the tiller; six others lounged amiably on the deck fore and aft of the low cabin, watching the banks roll by.
    Trudeau hailed the low vessel and it veered toward shore. Within moments, the engages had tied it and were pouring the tabac into their pipes and gossiping about their respective employers, Chouteau and Company, and Rocky Mountain. It was the amiable way of engages everywhere in that unhurried world. Trudeau hated what he and his men had to do but the fur wars were rough. He hated it also because he knew most of the other side’s engages: he’d spent many a trapping day with Duchouquette, Labone, Dorion, Barada, Croteau, and Dubruille. The other two, Fecteau and Labusier, he hadn’t met.
    “Ah, messieurs, we have had misfortune indeed,” he said, a signal to his own men, who drifted amiably toward their packs. “The Indians — Pieds Noirs, we think — stole our oxen and mules. A fortune lost! A thousand dollars lost!”
    “Oxen? What Indian ever wanted oxen?” asked Duchouquette, who was the man in charge.
    “Ah, Emile, it was a sad thing. They put arrows into them. The mules they drove off in the night but our oxen they slaughtered. It is not the way of horse-stealers.”
    Duchouquette smoked silently in the late afternoon quiet. Trudeau knew exactly what all the American Fur engages were thinking, and they were right to think it.
    “At any rate, mes amis, we wish to be transported down the river to Wolf Rapids. It would save us many a blister and spare our boots.”
    Emile Duchouquette considered that, puffing fragrant tabac as if decisions depended on smoke.
    “We will have a party,” Trudeau said. “At Wolf Rapids are several casks of spirits.”
    Barada and Croteau laughed happily, and knocked the dottle from their pipes.
    “Maybe for a small consideration,” said Duchouquette. “The Company would disapprove but there are ways, oui?”
    Ways indeed. Samson sighed and rose casually. His men stood near their packs. He wandered towards his. When he lifted his rifle, his men would too.
    “Oh, we’ll make a little offering,” Samson said. He lifted his piece swiftly, and his men did, too. They didn’t like it much, and neither did he. But necessity ruled.
    Duchouquette stared from man to man. The rest of the boatmen did too. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “And you are Creoles like ourselves. You would shoot Creoles?”
    “But yes,” Samson replied. “And then make sure you are properly buried and wept over and