The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Inside, the stockade was meetings, ledgers, fur presses, and warehouses. Outside, the voyageurs who’d lugged their loads across the portage began what was the greatest revelry of the year, a two-week bacchanal of feasting, drinking, dancing, and tupping whichever Indian maidens they could woo, buy, or marry. I left the partners to their serious business and wandered back out through the gates, Magnus in tow, to find Pierre and experience the fun of Rendezvous.

The French voyageur had made a temporary castle under his overturned canoe, stretching a tarpaulin from one rim. He was smoking a clay pipe, sleeves rolled and shirt unbuttoned, pleased as a prince. There was a fine summer breeze to keep the mosquitoes down, and a dazzling high-summer sun to give everything a polish. Within a fortnight he would be on his way into the wilderness for the long winter, but for now he could focus on eating, boasting, drinking, and song.

‘Lord Pierre!’ I greeted. ‘You look more at ease than the bourgeois in the Great Hall, with all their china and servants and dogs.’

‘That’s because they have too much.’ He pointed at the fort with the stem of his pipe. ‘The more that’s acquired, the more you want. The more you have, the more care you must take of it. The more you possess, the more you can lose. That is the secret of life, my friend! A sensible man like me is rich with nothing.’ He waggled his pipe at us. ‘Do not chase treasure. It will only bring you grief.’

‘McTavish said even the Indians need guns and blankets now.’

‘Oui! A generation ago, they answered to no man. Now they’ve forgotten, most of them, how to hunt with the bow and arrow. They live for trade, not for life. Instead of us learning all the right lessons from them, they are learning all the wrong ones from us.’

‘Yet surely we are superior if we are the conquerors.’

‘Who at this Rendezvous is slave, and who is free? The bourgeois in their stuffy meeting room, or me with my pipe?’

We sat to debate the point, I saying it was the company partners who gave the orders and would go home to snug houses in the winter, and Magnus opining that they spent so much time worrying about profit that they were blind to the glory around them.

Pierre compared ambition to rum. ‘A swallow warms you up, and a pint makes you happy. But a keg will kill you. Men like McTavish are never content.’

I wondered what restless Napoleon would say to that. ‘Red Jacket is with the partners,’ I said to change the subject. ‘He watches in one corner, arms folded.’

‘He and his renegades enforce their will,’ Pierre said. ‘He’s estranged from both the Ojibway and Dakota, a man of two nations who belongs fully to neither and who obeys no law or custom. Let Indian kill Indian, the traders say. It’s been frontier policy for three hundred years.’

‘It makes him a grumpy-looking bastard.’

‘Simon McTavish keeps his friends close and his enemies closer. Red Jacket’s lodge flies the blond hair of the man whose coat he wears, and rumour has it that he dined on the man’s flesh. Yet the Somersets count him an ally.’

‘British aristocrats are friends with a red cannibal?’

‘Those two aren’t the dandies they seem, my friend. Both have been in this country before, and know more of it than they let on. There was some kind of trouble in England, some money disappeared, and a scandal that involved them both.’

‘What scandal?’

He shrugged. ‘One hears stories, and I only believe what I see. Cecil is a dangerous man with a sword – I hear he killed an officer in a duel – and Aurora, as you know, is a crack shot. So stay away from Namida. It isn’t good to be mixed up with anything to do with Red Jacket or any woman at all if the English lady has an eye on you. Find an ugly squaw so Aurora won’t care. They’re all the same down where it counts, and the homely ones are far more appreciative.’

Crude and sensible advice that I hadn’t the slightest intention of following. ‘If that girl is really Mandan, she deserves to be back with her people.’

‘I know your kind, Ethan Gage. You are not ambitious, but you want to save everyone. Don’t. You’ll only bring trouble on yourself.’

‘And I know your kind, Pierre. Man of the moment, going nowhere, with a thousand rationalisations of why to do nothing. You’ll die penniless.’

‘Living for today is not nothing, my friend.’

‘But Magnus and I have more than the day: we have a quest.’ It was odd to hear myself defending our odd mission and my odder comrade, so much more fanatical and driven than me. ‘If it succeeds, we’re beholden to no one.’

‘And if it doesn’t, you risk death for nothing.’

I strolled the camp. There were lots of women, many pretty, but Namida still stood out; her heritage made her exotic. She and Little Frog were taking smoked meat and fresh corn from the main supply tents to Red Jacket’s camp at the far southern end of Rendezvous. My tactic to talk to her would be a loaf of bread. I scooped one up, trotted ahead out of sight, and then intercepted them.

‘Have you developed a taste for the baguette?’

They stopped shyly, Little Frog looking uncertain but Namida eyeing me with sly hope. Yes, she was looking for an alternative to her gruff cannibal of a captor, and I was just the man to provide it.

‘What is that?’ she said, looking at the loaf.

‘Bread, baked from flour. You haven’t tried white man’s food? Some bites of this, and shavings from a sugar loaf, and you’ll want to go with me to Paris.’

‘What is Paris?’

I laughed. ‘The direction we should be going. But you live where the trees end?’

‘Our families are there. Where the rock with words is.’ She nodded encouragement.

‘Did you see anything else peculiar in your travels?’

‘I do not know that word.’

‘Strange?’

She shrugged. ‘Earth and sky.’

Which might or might not include hammers. ‘Here, try a bite of this. Go ahead, put your bundles down.’ I broke off a piece of the baguette. ‘Best bread in the world when it’s fresh, and the voyageurs appear to have taught even the Scots how to make it. Yes, try the white part …’

Suddenly something hit my backside and I bucked forward, sprawling on the muddy ground with my broken baguette under me. The women gave a little squeak of alarm and snatched their load back up, hopping over my body and hurrying on their way. I rolled over to peals of laughter from voyageurs who were watching.

Red Jacket loomed over me, his torso muscled into beaten bronze, his black eyes like pistol bores. He sneered. ‘You talk to slaves?’

I bounded up, surprised and shaken, my clothes muddy. ‘Damned right I do.’

He kicked again without warning, square in my stomach so I doubled over, and then shoved so I sat abruptly, windless and shocked. His violence was almost casual but quick as a snake and powerful as a mule. I wanted to get up but couldn’t breathe.

His finger stabbed like a spear. ‘Red Jacket women.’ He spat.

I struggled up again, hunched, flushed with rage, but ready for a fight with this bastard even if he was two sizes too big. It was his arrogance that maddened me. Then hands clamped my arms. It was Pierre.

‘Careful, donkey, you have no right in this matter. They are not your women.’

‘I was offering a bite of bread, for God’s sake.’

‘Do you want to lose your hair over slaves you don’t own? Even if you win, and you won’t, his companions will kill you.’

I was seething, but had no weapon. Red Jacket waited, hoping I’d come for him. Finally I shook off the hands holding me and spat myself. ‘Take your women.’

Red Jacket gave a thin smile of contempt. ‘Do not make me take another coat.’ Then he stalked off.

I was shaking with rage and frustration.

Never have I seen a man so quick to seek out trouble,’ Pierre whispered. ‘Come. Have a drink of shrub.’