Cheyenne Winter Read Free Page B

my report to the Indian Bureau.”
    “Make plumb sure you do!”
    “Oh, this heinous traffic in spirits will cost you your license. Don’t you doubt it.” He turned to Captain Sire. “I am confiscating this contraband. Have your blackamoors pour it into the river, sir. But leave a little for evidence.”
    Sire said nothing. At his nod two deckhands lifted the first cask and mournfully poured the pure grain spirits overboard. They gurgled out while men stared as if watching a fatal wound bleed their life away. And then the next. And the next. Indians, breeds, ruffians, mountaineers, boatmen, watched in agony. Mrs. Gillian, a tent under a parasol, pursed her lips. All three new engages who’d signed on with the Rocky Mountain Company studied the spirits as they departed the living.
    That done, the reverend turned to Brokenleg. “I ought to seize your entire cargo and this ship as well. Believe me, this vessel’s navigation license is in jeopardy. Oh, I’ll put a stop to this traffic one way or another. Not a drop, not a drop of these poisons will touch the lips of these savage children of the West. One way or another I’ll halt this nefarious traffic.”
    Bluster. Brokenleg stopped listening and turned to the business ahead: informing Guy; defending the trading license; trying to prove somehow that things were less damning than they seemed. That was a task made all the more difficult because all fur companies winked at the law and circumvented the inspections. Everyone knew it, from David Mitchell, in charge of the Indian Bureau back in St. Louis, on down — and up.
    “You’re not even paying attention! I’ll report your insolence as well.”
    Brokenleg focused on the man and listened to the rest of his sermon, or appeared to. The man irked him. Preachers had wrecked everything in Indian Country. The Indian Bureau’s noble experiment had been worse for red men than the corrupt agents the preachers had replaced. The preachers, including this bubbling tub, had withheld food and treaty annuities from any Indians who failed to abandon their old ways and become Christians. The result had been seething hatred on the reserves.
    After some interminable time, after Sire’s impatient coughing, after deckhands had wandered off and spectators had wilted, the Reverend Mister Gillian concluded, swept the mountainous Mrs. Gillian down the stage, and marched furnerally up the slope.
    Brokenleg turned to Captain Sire. “I reckon we’ve got to git word down to Guy Straus. Next time we pass a mackinaw or a keelboat give me a holler.”
    Sire nodded. “Monsieur, truly, those weren’t your spirits, were they?”
    “Nope. Some skunk put ’er there. This hyar was old Chouteau cadet’s doin’, sure as I’m standin’ hyar.”
    “It is a different handwriting, oui?”
    Sire handed him the ship’s copies of the cargo manifest. The three casks of vinegar had been entered in a cruder hand than the rest.
    “We must delay no more,” Sire said. He waved to Black Dave Desiree high above in the pilot house. Deckmen hauled in the hawsers. The twin chimneys belched black smoke that lowered down upon them all. The escapement pipe shrilled off steam. The packet drifted backward a moment. Then the eighteen-foot side-wheels bit water and the riverboat wrestled the violent current of the river.
    He found Maxim still standing near the firebox at the boiler and hauled him out into the sunlight; to the duckbilled prow. On either side the river swirled by, a murky green color this far upstream.
    “Now Maxim. You write your pa about this and we’ll hail the next keelboat and send the letter down. He’s got to know right fast. It’s that or send an express. You write him good. You can say ’er a lot better than I can. Give him all the facts. Give him everything — every little thing. He’s got to deal with Mitchell, keep the IB from pullin’ our license. You up to it or do I haveta do it?”
    “Oh I’ll do it. It’s all my fault