JOHN FITZGERALD WALKED to his sentry post, just down the river from Fort Union. Pig stood there, his heaving chest sending great clouds of his breath into the frigid night air. “My watch,” said Fitzgerald, practically friendly in his tone.
“Since when are you so cheery about standing watch?” asked Pig, then ambled toward camp, looking forward to the four hours of sleep before breakfast.
Fitzgerald cut a thick plug of tobacco. The rich flavor filled his mouth and calmed his nerves. He waited a long time before he spit. The night air bit at his lungs when he breathed, but Fitzgerald didn’t mind the cold. The cold was a function of a perfectly clear sky—and Fitzgerald needed a clear sky. A three-quarter moon cast bright light on the river. Enough light, he hoped, to steer a clear channel.
Half an hour after the change of guard, Fitzgerald walked to the thick willows where he had cached his plunder: a pack of beaver pelts to trade downstream, twenty pounds of jerky in a jute sack, three horns of powder, a hundred lead balls, a small cooking pot, two wool blankets, and, of course, the Anstadt. He piled the supplies next to the water’s edge, then turned upstream to get the canoe.
As he crept along the riverbank he wondered if Captain Henry would bother sending anyone after him. Stupid bastard. Fitzgerald had never met a man more likely to catch the tail end of a lightning bolt. Under Henry’s star-crossed leadership, the men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company never stood more than a short step from calamity. It’s a wonder we’re not all dead. They were down to three horses, which limited the reach of their trapping parties to a few local waters, long since played out. Henry’s numerous efforts to trade with the local tribes for new mounts (or, in many cases, to buy back their own stolen mounts) met with uniform failure. Finding food each day for thirty men had become a problem. The hunting parties had not seen buffalo for weeks, and their primary subsistence now consisted of stringy antelope.
The final straw came the week before, when Fitzgerald heard a whispered rumor from Stubby Bill. “Captain’s thinking about moving us up the Yellowstone—occupy what’s left of Lisa’s old fort on the Big Horn.” In 1807, a cagey trader named Manuel Lisa established a trading post at the junction of the Yellowstone and Big Horn rivers. Lisa named the structure Fort Manuel, and used it as a base for trade and exploration of both rivers. Lisa maintained particularly good relations with the Crow and the Flathead, who used the guns they bought from Lisa to wage war on the Blackfeet. The Blackfeet, in turn, became bitter enemies of the whites.
Encouraged by his modest commercial success, in 1809 Lisa founded the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company. One of the new venture’s investors was Andrew Henry. Henry led a party of a hundred trappers on his ill-fated venture to the Three Forks. On his way up the Yellowstone, Henry had stopped at Fort Manuel. He remembered the strategic location, ample game, and timber. Henry knew that Fort Manuel had been abandoned for more than a dozen years, but he hoped to salvage the beginnings of a new post.
Fitzgerald did not know the distance to the Big Horn, but he knew it lay in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go. While frontier life had been more agreeable than he expected when he fled St. Louis, he had long since grown weary of the bad food, the cold, and the general discomfort of forting up with thirty smelly men. Not to mention the considerable chance of getting killed. He missed the taste of cheap whiskey and the smell of cheap perfume. And, with seventy dollars in gold coins—the bounty for tending Glass—he thought constantly about gambling. After a year and a half, things should have quieted down for him in St. Louis—perhaps even farther south. He intended to find out.
Two dugout canoes lay upside down on the long beach below the fort.
Fitzgerald had examined them thoroughly a few days before, determined that the smaller of the two was better made. Besides, though the downstream current would carry him, he needed a vessel small enough to manage on his own. He quietly flipped the canoe, set its two paddles inside, and pulled it across the sandbar to the water’s edge.
Now the other. In planning his desertion, Fitzgerald had worried about how to immobilize the second canoe. He considered boring a hole through the log skin before arriving at a more straightforward solution. He returned to the second canoe, reaching underneath to grab its paddles. Canoe’s no good without a paddle.
Fitzgerald pushed his canoe into the water, jumped aboard, and paddled twice to set the boat in the current. The water grabbed the canoe and propelled it downstream. He stopped after a few minutes to pick up his stolen provisions, then put the boat in the current again. In a matter of minutes Fort Union disappeared behind him.
* * *
Captain Henry sat alone in the musty confines of his quarters, the only private room at Fort Union. Beyond privacy, a rare commodity at the fort, there was little to commend the space. The only heat and light came from an open doorway to the adjoining room. Henry sat in the cold and dark, wondering what to do.
Fitzgerald himself was no great loss. Henry had distrusted the man since the first day in St. Louis. They could do without the canoe—it wasn’t as if he’d stolen their remaining horses. The loss of a fur pack was maddening, but hardly fatal.
The loss was not the man who was gone, but rather its effect on the men who stayed. Fitzgerald’s desertion was a statement—a statement loud and clear—of the other men’s unspoken thoughts: The Rocky Mountain Fur Company was a failure. He was a failure. Now what?
Henry heard the latch open on the bunkhouse door. Short, heavy footsteps scuffed across the dirt floor toward his quarters, then Stubby Bill stood in the doorway.
“Murphy and the trapping party’s coming in,” reported Stubby.
“They got any plews?”
“No, Captain.”
“None at all?”
“No, Captain. Well, you see, Captain—it’s a little worse than just that.”
“Well?”
“They ain’t got no horses, either.”
Captain Henry took a moment to absorb the news.
“Anything else?”
Stubby thought a minute and then said, “Yes, Captain. Anderson is dead.”
The captain said nothing further. Stubby waited until the silence made him uncomfortable, then he left.
Captain Henry sat there for a few more minutes in the cold darkness before making his decision. They would abandon Fort Union.
TWENTY
DECEMBER 15, 1823
THE HOLLOW FORMED a near perfect bowl on the floor of the plains. On three sides, low hills rose to shelter the depression from the relentless winds of more open ground. The hollow funneled moisture toward its center, where a stand of hawthorn trees stood vigil. The combination of the hills and the trees created considerable shelter.