"Buffalo Chase in Winter, Indians on Snowshoes" by George Caitlin
(From the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.)
CHAPTER 13
Several snow showers had fallen in the last few weeks but the sugary flakes had dissolved as
they alighted the ground. Jim watched a moving cloud of dust approach at a steady rate from the
top of a hickory tree. He thought that it looked like a dust storm but it was the wrong season for
that. What was it?
“Buffalo, silly,” Ashley later teased Jim. “And you killed one. Good shot, Jim. What a prize it
is!”
“I’ve never seen one,” said Jim,” amazed by its massiveness. It was twice his size.
“This is an all-purpose animal, Jim,” Ashley instructed. “Kill one of them and you’ve got
enough meat to last a month, a handsome robe and blood to drink if you have no water.”
I’ll never get that thirsty, Jim thought. But he had been out there long enough to know that
anything can happen in the wild. They had almost killed a horse to eat back when they were
eating flour gruel. Then last week, a mount died of its own accord and found its way into the
grateful stomachs of the trappers.
Jim’s mind wandered as he accomplished the tedious task of dressing the dead buffalo. His
eldest sister, Matilda, would want to hear every detail about Jim’s first buffalo. She would want
to know its size, its weight and whether it charged or not. She wanted to write an adventure
novel like Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe or Francois-Rene de Chauteaubriand’s Atala. The
Frenchman’s well received book was the story of a beautiful native American maiden who
poisons herself rather than break a vow of lifelong celibacy with the man she saved from a
burning death.
Jim thought that Matilda was commanding, a female version of their father. Yet, she also had
inherited their mother’s grace, intuition and drive. Educating herself on the sly was a challenge
she had met and won. She enjoyed history, contemporary literature, Latin and French. Mattie
carried the responsibility well of managing the manor of forty-five people although her stately
comportment did not mesh with her dreamy nature. She loved the poems she had read by an
Englishman her age named John Keats.
Matilda wanted to write. Very much. She had written many poems as a child. After their
mother died, she had less time to herself and more people constantly around her. It was
impossible for her to write. Matilda bided her time. Her moment would come. Meanwhile, she
gathered material and weaved stories inside her head. She would be thrilled to read about Jim’s
first buffalo.
Two hours passed before Jim finished dressing his kill and he washed his hands smeared with
blood and entrails. The cold temperature of the water shocked him. The inside of the buffalo’s
body had been so warm.
Trapping stopped for the freezing weather. It was January, Moon of Strong Cold. The men had
followed the North Platte River until they reached the fork fifty miles slightly southwest of
Grand Island. Their fingers and toes ached before they lost feeling in them several times. Jim’s
skin became ashy and dry in the cold. He kept his mouth closed to keep the misty gray out of his
blood. Freezing to death would be a horrendous way to die, he and his colleagues thought, as
death was on all their minds. Winter stripped them of their smiles. They bonded together in a
cheerless fight to live. Snow stopped them in their tracks. They waited out the impossible
weather in a series of sheltered caves. They managed to keep dry by keeping fires going. Jim
reminisced about sleeping with Aria under a diaphanous canopy. He wondered when he would
visit New Orleans again. The way life could be, he might very well never see her again. Jim
sighed over the disappointments of life.
When the party moved again, it would trap on the way to Pierre’s Hole in the mountains for a
rendezvous that summer. This annual trappers’ fair was a new ritual initiated by Ashley. It
broke the monotony of work and promised a good time of drinking, storytelling and making love
with strangers. But for now in the caves, the men waited out the blizzards and impassable trails.
“I like it here,” Baptiste told Jim. “It feels so safe.”
“You are a strange boy,” Jim said. “It’s boring here.”
“I’d rather be bored than in danger,” said the young man.
“Men weren’t meant to hibernate,” Jim said. “I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t sleep
through this.”
“No, but these caves are a blessing. Camping in the open would have been perilous.”
Such a storm swirled outside that all they could see was white.
“I can’t see a thing,” Jim grumbled.
“I know,” said Baptiste, enjoying the invisibility outside.
Everyone took turns watching for friends and enemies and keeping the snow from piling up
outside the entrance to the caves. Their captivity fed the longevity of a poker game that lasted all
day and deep into the night. When a player abandoned his place, there was someone ready to
take it. They bet money which was not any good to any of them out there. Zachary and Moses
played energetically. They won repeatedly. Ashley and Appleton played bitterly in a frustrating
arena that would not allow either to win. Frequently, they accused each other of cheating. The
other would deny it and challenge his adversary to a fight. Their men would hold them back.
They would spit and kick and swear that they would get to the other’s throat. Their contained
living quarters exacerbated the tension. Everyone wondered how long they could keep the two
leaders from mauling each other. Their worry kept them from snowballing their own petty
disagreements into major arguments.
Ashley would not admit it but he carried a load of guilt about the assault on Maria. Over and
over, he thought that it would not have happened if those men had not gone out looking for the
settlement which he believed existed. Appleton also blamed him. Ashley questioned how
careful he had been when examining the character of the men he had hired. He did not expect
nor want saints but he hoped he had employed men of integrity who knew when to break the
rules. Ashley suspected that one of his men had murdered Ernesto. He was glad. Neither
Ernesto nor Mephisto deserved life. They had committed an unspeakable crime. Ashley felt
sorry for Maria, a young, beautiful, ruined woman. Who would want her now? She should have
had a man living with her. Hell, even if she had a man the same thing might have happened.
Ashley vowed that if he ever caught up with Mephisto, he would shoot him dead on the spot. It
would be his pleasure, his duty and his redemption.
Ashley also missed his wife in St. Louis. He longed to outline the shape of her soft face with his
hand again. He hoped she was all right. Her maiden name was Christy but she shared the same
first name, Eliza, with Jim’s betrothed. Jim thought about Eliza. She was safe. He was sure
about that. Eliza and her mother could take care of themselves. But what if Eliza were to forget
about him? Already this time out, he had been away eight months. Eliza was a pretty girl and
smart. One man, the right man, was all it would take for Jim to lose his sweetheart. Jim was
afraid of losing Eliza who had been in his life four years. Sweet, sweet, sweet Eliza! What
would he do if he were to lose her to time? He pulled out a pen and paper and began writing a
testament to his love for her.
The snow fell quietly. The wind had died. Nature was taking its course. Contrary to Jim’s
observation that hibernation was not meant for men, many of his fellow trappers lost themselves
in sleep.
Several weeks later, seven men of the Pawnee Loup band discovered the party’s refuge. They
invited the trappers to their village four miles distant. They were as happy to see the trappers as
the trappers were to meet settled people. The Pawnee Loup men brought the travelers horses to
replace the dead ones.
At the village, the trappers traded their manufactured goods for beans, pumpkins, corn, cured
meat and beaver skins. They prepared to leave when Chief Two Axe said that their departure
would scare off the buffalo four days before the Pawnee’s winter surround. He insisted that they
stay for it. The trappers accepted the honor with Ashley’s assent.
From the time Jim had seen and killed his first buffalo, he had been intrigued by them. He found
it hard to wait for the ritual hunt. Most of his colleagues accepted the invitation to join the
surround. The Pawnee Loups had planned this special event for months. They staged two grand
buffalo hunts each year, one in the winter and another in the summer. The outcome determined
the importance and stature of each man to the tribe. Jim wished that he could have participated
in the Sac summer hunt with Blue Corn Harvest and Spotted Calf. He did not know any of the
Pawnee Loups. The man who, on this hunt received the vision of leading the tribe on the
summer hunt as Fire Starter had, would be a stranger. The meaning of many gestures would be
lost on Jim. He would not even know what to look for. There would be no friend like Blue Corn
Harvest to explain. He missed the intimacy he had shared with the Sac chief’s son. He did not
share the same closeness of equality with Zachary, Moses or Baptiste. These men strived to take
care of him – Moses as his father, Zachary as an uncle and Baptiste as his boy.
Baptiste needed shelter from the barbs of the insensitive. The gentle boy recoiled from the
opportunity to engage in the hunt. Jim deflected the anticipated jeers by assuring Baptiste in a
very loud voice that his decision to stay would serve the trappers well. He could guard their
belongings.
On the day of the hunt, the number of buffalo lolling about eating a sparse spread of grass
stupefied Jim. Sixteen hundred of them, at least! Jim’s heart skipped beats. He was awed. The
game stretched out in a pastoral scene that Jim could not see the end of. The warriors encircled
the animals in a ten-mile boundary. Many wore buffalo skins; all wore resplendent paints. The
chief tugged at his festooned headdress so that it rested on the back of his head. It was the signal
to attack. Everyone charged to the center. The buffalo barely noticed the army of men until they
got within smelling range. Then the frenzy began.
For three hours, the men sank lances into the buffalo who ran madly in every direction from their
slaughter. A shroud of dust hanged over the bloody landscape. The buffalo bellowed in pain.
The smell of their sweat and that of the hunters stank but the thrill of conquering perfumed the
odor. Out of nowhere, vultures greedily circled above the spectacle of lust. Buffalo dropped
dead with a regularity that ensured the men of a successful surround. Most of the carcasses filled
the center of the circle. Not many animals covered much ground before being plunged with a
lance, fatally pierced with arrows or gunpowder, or trampled by another frightened buffalo. The
hunter staved off a full-scale stampede by taking steady stabs at the underbellies of the dun
bodies because the tender heart section was the buffalo’s most vulnerable. An attack anywhere
else meant danger to the hunter whom the buffalo would charge in anger. Skillfully, all of the
Pawnee Loup men survived the surround. The trappers, expert at saving their own skins, had
paid close attention to the chief’s instructions and also escaped alive.
The carnage that the accomplished men left on the field monopolized their vision. They left the
field heroes. The village women visited the aftermath so that they could dress the buffalo. Their
job consumed several days of basic work on the field followed by several weeks of sophisticated
drying and preserving at home.
Ashley’s impatience waxed at the surround’s end. Winter’s most serious snowstorms were done
for the season, he concluded. Why, the ground was absolutely dry! The fur company president
wanted to get on with the expedition. His men could traverse the trail on the way to Pierre’s
Hole and trap, too. Appleton did not share Ashley’s enthusiasm for resuming their journey so
soon. However, the head man was firm.
“I’ve got seventy-five thousand dollars in debt, Appleton. This expedition can either ruin me or
make me a fortune. I’m going to do everything in my power to make it make me rich. I can’t
afford to sit around and learn Pawnee Loup ceremonial customs. We’ve spent enough time
being gracious. We stayed for the surround. That’s all Chief Two Axe asked. Now, it’s time to
go.”
“The men could use more time being around other people and eating well,” Appleton argued.
“They’ve been deprived for some time.”
“We’ve all been deprived,” Ashley said. “But it’s almost done now. A few more months and
we’ll be in the mountains celebrating a good year of hard work. We can’t waste time. We can’t
wait out the whole winter.”
They reached a compromise unsatisfactory to them both. The party waited until the women
returned. Then the trappers moved out with a lighter step than the one they had come in on.
Appleton hoped that the bad snows truly had ended. Otherwise, they risked their lives for some
beaver skins.
They made their way back to the Platte River two miles away and travelled west again. Jim,
somehow, felt solace at the river’s side. When they reached the river fork again, they headed
south. Some time after they started out again, Ashley rode with Jim.
“The expedition’s going well, don’t you think,” its leader asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Jim answered, in an excited voice. After all, the general wanted his opinion.
“I want things to continue to go well,” Ashley said.
“I hope they do too, sir,” Jim said.
“You know, your father is very proud of you. He thinks that you’re a good, honourable man. I
trust that you are and that you will act as such on this journey.”
“Why, yes sir. Of course I will. I have,” Jim said agitatedly, in his defense.
“More or less,” Ashley said. “We may experience more occasions of scarce food. If and when
we do, we’ve got to work together as a team. Do you know what I mean, Jim?”
“Yes sir,” he said. Was he sorry that he had confessed his teal duck meal! Ashley would never
forget it. He rode off leaving Jim deflated.
“The general doesn’t like me,” Jim later told Moses.
“Jim, I don’t want to insult you, but what makes you think that he’s singled you out?”
“What do you mean, Moses? He’s noticed me. My father and he are friends. They drink
together and talk about the good old days in Old Dominion. I’ve known Mr. Ashley more than
ten years.”
“But not as an employer, Jim. You haven’t known him as your leader into the wild environs of
the Rocky Mountains. I really think that you are oversensitive about him.”
“I don’t think so, Moses. I think that he watches me closely. He’s just waiting for me to do
something wrong.”
Then Jim related the conversation with Ashley which he construed as a warning.
“Maybe you’re right, Jim. I don’t know. But we’ve got several months left on this expedition,
and the last person you want to have friction with is the leader of it. We’ve all been out a long
time and we’ve been working real hard. We’ve had some rough times. After going through all
we’ve gone through, things often get blown out of proportion. I’m not saying that’s what
happened between you and the general ‘cause I don’t know. But I suggest you give him the
benefit of the doubt.”
Moses certainly was. He still saw Jim as a spoiled, rich boy who kicked and screamed when life
was not going the way he wanted. Moses did not know how accurately Jim had recounted
Ashley’s chiding, if that is what it was. Anyway, even if it was accurate, his advice still held.
They were seven hundred miles from St. Louis and one thousand miles from Pierre’s Hole. Add
onto that the return distance and it made good sense to get along. But Jim felt slighted by
Ashley. He felt he was being put to a tougher test than the rest perhaps because Ashley was his
father’s friend, perhaps because he was black. He did not know why. He had given his all to the
expedition. He had been a tremendous hunter. When they needed him most, he had come
through with game for the starving party. The duck was a mistake. Heavens, what could he do
to live it down! Maybe some mistakes are never lived down. In every look from Ashley, Jim
saw a scowl. Jim ignored it at first. Then he could not restrain himself. He initiated several
glowers at Ashley. However, the tension did not mount between them. It stewed.
Men and horses trudged along the South Platte five miles a day, most of the time through snow,
weighted down with provisions. For several weeks after leaving the village, they shot and ate
buffalo of which there were herds. The snow fell dispassionately; eventually, the party moved
accordingly. Then, the buffalo disappeared. Ashley appeared pleased with his men’s progress;
Appleton predicted a momentous snowstorm. The snow was already knee-high on the ground.
For days, they did not see so much as a rabbit to eat. Ashley ordered daily rations of one-quarter
of a pint of beans and about as much corn for each man. Their horses ate the bark of cottonwood
the trees. They were deep in February and one hundred miles southwest of the Pawnee Loup
village.
They were surviving, even trapping well, but some of them were getting tired of just surviving.
When would winter and hardship end? Even Jim found it impossible to reap the heroic element
from their recent travails.
They had camped several days in a cleared spot because the snow had deepened to waist level.
Ashley and a few other men approached Jim to have their horses shod. Jim gladly agreed. It
would help pass the time though he thought that he might as well be in St. Louis at Casner’s. He
was bored with the expedition. And he could not stand the sight of Ashley.
Reluctantly, he promised to do the general’s horse, Cimarron, first. The animal kicked and
brayed. Jim exercised enormous restraint while shodding three hooves. He figured any horse of
Ashley’s would be ill-tempered and soured by his master. Cimarron kept on fussing. Finally,
Jim slapped his hammer once against the belly of the uncooperative animal, a common
measure practiced by blacksmiths. Cimarron backed away. Jim struck him again with the mind
that the horse was its owner. And then he freely delivered a soliloquy in the isolated area,
rapping his hammer for emphasis.
“You stupid animal! You don’t know what’s good for you. I’m helping you. I’m not going to
hurt you. I’m helping you. You’re no different than the others. Damn Ashley! I wish I could
knock some sense into your ignorant head!”
“You do, do you,” bellowed a voice from behind.
It was Ashley! He had heard everything. Well, no matter. It was about time they had it out.
“Yes, that’s right,” Jim said, indignantly.
“Why you bastard! I’m the head of this expedition. I hired you. Don’t you have any respect for
that,” Ashley yelled.
“I have respect for those who respect me. And you don’t, General,” Jim sneered, “Respect me.
So to hell with you!”
“You watch your mouth, young Mr. Beckwourth. You’re acting like you were reared without
any manners. Your father would be embarrassed by you.”
“You leave my father out of this,” Jim shouted.
“Your father is a friend of mine. I can mention his name without your permission.”
“I thought you were my father’s friend, but I don’t think so anymore. Otherwise, why would you
treat me so badly.”
“Treat you so badly! What are you talking about, Jim?”
“You know what I’m saying. You’ve been hounding me for the last few months. You’ve been
scrutinizing my movements. And I tell you, sir,” he sarcastically slurred the term of address, “I
am sick of it.”
“Hold on, Jim,” Ashley ordered. “Hold your tongue!”
“I will not. You owe me an apology for your harsh words moments ago and your unfair attitude
toward me.”
“I owe you no such thing. Listen, young man. I’m the boss here. And if you don’t like it, you
can gather your belongings and leave.”
“Fine. That’s what I’ll do. Here, you finish shoeing your damn horse,” said Jim, throwing the
hammer at Ashley’s feet.
Jim felt purged; he had told Ashley off and was free to do what he wanted. Whatever he
decided, he would not be in Ashley’s accusatory eyes. He could either continue to the Rockies
alone or retrace his steps back to St. Louis. The expedition was dull anyway. He kicked the
snow on his way back to the camp.
Ashley, in the meantime, spat fire. Jennings was a good man and he had asked him to keep an
eye out for Jim. Ashley thought Jim impetuous and cocky, qualities characteristic of youth. Jim
should be grateful for his opportunities, he thought. He was being treated like a white man and
he took it for granted. That galled Ashley. Who did this young mulatto think he was? What had
Jennings created? One thing was for sure, if Jim did not come to terms with who he was, he was
headed for nothing but trouble in his life. The only blacks Ashley knew either worked for him or
his friends as slaves. Jennings’s family was a strange anomaly. His children were his slaves, but
not really. Heck, they acted like free men and women with money, property and their noses
stuck up in the air. How could you know how to treat them?
Ashley thought that Jennings was raising very unhappy people if he let them believe that they
could be afforded the same privileges as whites. But Jennings seemed so resistant to talking
about his children. Hadn’t anyone let the Beckwourths in on the way things were? Blacks were
inferior to whites, especially morally. The Beckwourth children could be expected to inherit
some attributes of their white father but because they were half breeds, their mother’s blood
coursing through their veins would show itself in delinquent actions like Jim sneaking that duck
meal in the bushes. Ashley thought that he was obligated to scrutinize Jim because Jennings’s
son could not overcome himself. Actually, it was Ashley who could not overcome himself.
Jim knew that his father would not accept his friend’s racist posture toward his son. Jennings
would say that Jim’s sensitivity about being his mother’s son caused him to miss a chance to
explore the Rockies. Yet, Jim knew that if he were unduly sensitive, he would probably be
working and living at Beckwourth’s Settlement insulated with familial love and trained servants,
afraid to leave home.
Jim wished more than anything that his father would listen to his ordeals of living in a society
crippled by prejudice. He sugarcoated painful incidents because Jennings refused to believe that
people wielded racism against his family. Or more frequently, the young man did not tell him
anything. Jennings’s denial scared Jim. Its meaning scared him. He knew that deep down in his
heart, his father had not accepted him. But father and son did not talk about it.
If Jim were to go home, his father would not understand.
Jennings would say that Jim imagined Ashley’s rotten behaviour. He would say that Ashley
liked him, that he had always liked him. What could Jim say to that? It was not a question of
Ashley liking him. It was a matter of Ashley treating him as though he were different from the
other men because he was black. Sometimes Jim grew very tired of struggling for acceptance
from people like Ashley. The boys at Mr. Niel’s Academy were different. Once they realized
that he was not going to disappear, they made room for him in their minds by designing their
own prejudiced frame of acceptance which was that Jim was different from other blacks. They
thought that they were incredibly open-minded. Sometimes even Jim thought the way they
thought. Jennings thought that his children were different from the others. They were, after all,
his children. They were Beckwourths.
James Pierson Beckwourth, the third eldest, walked back to camp mad at Ashley, mad at his
father, mad at the country for thrusting him into this frustrating mess. Damn it! Why wouldn’t
his father at least legally emancipate him? Appleton sensed something was wrong when he
spotted Jim coming toward him.
“I need to collect my things. I’m leaving this party,” Jim told him.
“Leaving! Why,” Appleton asked.
“I don’t want to go into it. I’ve notified Ashley. I’m no longer working for him.”
“Where are you going, Jim?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking that I might be going back.”
“Alone, Jim? You’ll either freeze or starve to death.”
“I’ll be going back the way we came. I know the way. It might be safer than continuing with
you.”
“But Jim, you’ll miss seeing the Rockies in the spring. The mountains are sublime then. The
flowers are blooming; the grass is bright green in patches. The snow is melting and the streams
are gushing full. The skies are the bluest you’ve ever seen anywhere. The mountains rise
majestically and almost touch them. Jim, it’s a wonderful sight! Don’t deny yourself. We’re so
close. A few weeks and we’ll be there. Believe me, your first look at all that and all these hard
times will be forgotten. I know that General Ashley can be difficult. Why, he gets my craw too.
But I’m not going to let him stop me from finishing this expedition and reaping its rewards.”
Appleton lowered his voice as if to imply that he was about to impart a confidence.
“Ashley has some definite ideas about what people should be, think and how they should act.
Take me, for example. Because I’m not willing to take foolish risks for the sake of some extra
skins, he thinks I’m less of a man. But I want to keep my men alive and healthy so that they can
enjoy their profit from trapping. So what if Ashley doesn’t approve of my ways? We have it out
when we disagree, and then we get on our way again. I’m not going to turn my back and walk
out because he opposes me sometimes. And Ashley’s not a dumb man. He knows he needs my
cautiousness to balance his ofttimes rash decisions, and he needs my experience out here. Same
with you, Jim. He knows that you’re a fine hunter and scout. Your skills helped save us all from
starvation. Ashley remembers that.
“Look, we all want to get home. And we can get there, richer and happier, if we stick together.
Jim, if you set out alone, you’ve got less than a fifty-fifty chance of making it. But it’s your
decision to make. Your belongings are tied up and hard to get to. Tell you what. If you still
want to leave tomorrow, I’ll get them for you.”
Appleton had talked long enough to give Jim time to think.
“What! Still here. Why, I thought you’d be ten miles gone by now. Decided to stay,” Ashley
asked, on returning to camp.
“I haven’t decided anything,” Jim answered stoically.
“I can’t get to his things until tomorrow. They’re packed away,” Appleton interjected.
“Oh, I see,” Ashley said. He had hoped that Jim had decided to stay. He did not think Jim had a
chance of making it alive. Mad as he was, he did not wish death on the boy. And he did not
want Jim’s blood stained on his conscience.
Jim left his father’s friend standing there with Appleton. He poured himself a mug of black
coffee. He had to make his plans. Appleton seemed a fair man. He had not lived in the States
for some years. Jim wanted Appleton to lead the expedition but there was no sense in wishing
that. Those odds of fifty-fifty sounded better than what he thought he had. What would he do
when he got back to St. Louis? Ashley had enemies. He could hire out on their expeditions.
When he arrived in Missouri, he would be praised for being alive. Then people would ask about
the mountains and he would have no answer for them. He would have to say that he turned
around a few weeks before reaching the Rockies. Well. Maybe the Pawnee Loups would let
him stay with them until the weather warmed up. The mountaineer’s life was not the way he had
envisioned it. Jim did not feel free; he felt restrained as though Ashley held the end of a rope
tied around his neck. Apparently, Ashley was not willing to let go so easily. Throughout the
evening, as Jim sipped coffee and mulled over his situation, he received several visitations from
his colleagues. It was obvious that a few had been sent by Ashley. They were men with whom
Jim rarely spoke. Jim’s friends, however, came on their own. Moses and Zachary tried to
convince Jim to stay by describing all the terrible, fatal incidents that had struck down lonesome
travelers.
Baptiste presented the most touching case with his heartbroken carriage and expression. He
loved Jim and he had seen Ashley’s distrust of him. He had felt his friend’s pain and
empathized. Jim’s pride had been handled carelessly but Baptiste pleaded sensibly with Jim to
see the folly of a solo journey.
“You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. The only thing that matters is that you know who
you are. That’s what my mother used to tell me. But if you still want to go, you will not leave
alone,” said the well-meaning boy. “We will be stronger if we stay together.”
“Baptiste,” Jim said, “I don’t want you to risk your life for me.”
“Then why do you think about risking your own,” he asked.
“I was fed up, Baptiste. I could think of nothing but getting away from Ashley and his
monotonous caravan. I can’t tell you how much I despise him!”
“I know, Jim.”
“But I will think about what you said. Why should I risk death to flee from an ignorant fool?”
Jim decided to stay.
Alfred Jacob Miller's "Cavalcade" (1858-1860) Entrance of Shosone warriors to the rendezvous
(From the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland)
CHAPTER 14
Jim’s winter missive of love to Eliza became a succinct travel journal. He dedicated himself to it
on slow days. He wrote about the foliage, the sky, the good hunts and the progress of their
beaver trapping. The boredom dissipated as Jim retold events in his imaginative rendition. And
when nothing seemed worth mentioning, he wrote of his love for her. “Undying love,” he called
it. “Forever,” he termed it. “In his heart of hearts,” he placed it. Eliza’s beauty infused him
with the strength and resilience to pursue his calling and the power to resist hers. Again, Eliza’s
love fortified him.
The pall of winter slowly lifted. In the mornings, the birds began to sing in concert and the sun
shined brighter. A tingle rippled through Jim’s supple body. The newness of spring and the
prospect of the glorious Rocky Mountains excited him. The days grew warmer faster as time
flowed by. The beaver skins were more lush than during the winter and game was easier to hunt.
But still, the trappers experienced hunger spells when chance of nature deprived them of prey. It
was during one of those times that General Ashley fell ill. His complexion yellowed; his
appetite shrank; and his voice shrivelled to the strained whisper of a dying man. The general’s
manner softened. He no longer cowed people with his authority. Sickness brought out the best
in the man. His undiagnosed illness engendered a harmony that the group had never known
before. He still commanded but he channelled orders through Appleton who wielded more
power than before. The two leaders stopped bickering. Instead, they complimented each other
on how they had handled various situations. Appleton worried about Ashley. Ashley’s men
looked out for the unfortunate man. They helped him on his horse, visited when they camped
and told him stories about other mountaineers.
Everyone was hungry. But caring for a sick man lightened the burden of their own suffering.
They thanked God for their health and continued to hunt. As for Jim, Ashley barely glanced at
him anymore. In response, Jim did not preoccupy himself with Ashley. However, he did
wonder whether the man would live.
The trail was becoming steeper and rockier. It was more difficult to travel. They abandoned the
South Platte when it started flowing south toward New Mexico. They marched west. The waters
they trapped in were creeks and streams.
One morning as the men collected beavers from their traps, they saw a beautiful, wild white
mustang that looked a ghostly, pale blue in the dawn. He was a rare animal. The stallion
splashed in the shallow water, sometimes submerging his regal body and then, with a flourish,
shaking himself dry. Jim wanted him. He reached for the coiled rope that he carried.
“No,” Moses said. There were echoes of agreement and mutters of disagreement. “Let him be.”
The mustang frolicked undisturbed, the only creature, it seemed, out there. The men watched in
admiration. They buried their covetous natures in deference to the beauty’s freedom. And Jim
was confused by his acquiescence to Moses in keeping his rope by his side. The mustang kept
them spellbound as he galloped along the creek’s edge away from them. They gasped in unison
at his exit.
“What a fantastic sight,” said Zachary, in a soft, reverential voice.
“Oh, yes,” Baptiste whispered, released from the charm.
“I could have had him,” Jim moaned.
“But it would not have been the same,” Moses said.
“I don’t know about that,” Jim said.
“I do,” said the older man, who started walking back to camp. The others followed. They
named the stream after their shared vision. They called it Horse Creek.
Ashley’s health continued to deteriorate; his men continued to trap at Horse Creek. They hunted,
killed and ate rabbits for the most part. Two weeks passed. Nothing had changed. They craved
larger meals.
The men started moving again and reached a large body of water. Jim climbed a tree to see what
he could see. To his delight, a herd of buffalo roamed on the other side. They would cross,
Appleton decided. But Ashley could not ride any longer. He was too weak. The general told his
men to leave him and return for him when they had restored their own strength. His men looked
at each other in uncertainty.
“Yes. I know that there might be a corpse waiting for you,” muttered the sick man. “But
gentlemen, one dead man is preferable to an army of them. Now go.”
Sad murmurs filled the emptiness. One voice dared raise itself in disobedience.
“No, General,” Jim said. “You must come with us. You can’t protect yourself here. We’ll make
a litter and carry you across. I’ll carry you.”
The men shouted happily. They were glad that someone else had volunteered. Baptiste said that
he would help Jim. Ashley thanked Jim in a barely audible voice.
Jim and Baptiste wattled twigs and branches and tied the ends of the stretcher with leather. They
undertook their task with the utmost care. When they helped Ashley into the chair and lifted the
litter onto their shoulders, they got goose bumps. They were saving this man’s life and they
were proud of it. Ashley handed himself over to them. As he sat propped up in his patient’s
throne, he fell forward in an unconscious state when they walked halfway across the breadth of
the stream. Baptiste reached up and braced him. He called out to Jim to slow down. They
moved carefully, lovingly. The hate that Jim had bottled up toward Ashley poured itself into the
brownish green of the river. Ashley needed him now. That changed everything. In Jim’s mind,
he had traded strategic places with his bigoted superior. He could extend more compassion
because now he held the position of stature.
Baptiste presented his pliant nature, already unveiled, to the world. He surrendered himself to
the needs of Ashley. When they reached the other side of the river, Baptiste reshaped his days to
accommodate Ashley’s necessities and his whims. He was such a giving man: domination of
Ashley did not occur to him. He acquired a reputation for nursing. Ashley recovered slowly but
steadily. The aroma of roasting buffalo stimulated his appetite. Baptiste was devoted to
Ashley’s recuperation. Jim guarded them both.
The days brought consistently milder weather. The sun sparked life. It was April, Moon When
the Geese Lay Eggs, when Ashley walked again. Jim spent his twenty-fourth birthday happily
and uneventfully.
“I am glad that I stayed on and didn’t go back to St. Louis,” Jim told Baptiste early one morning
as they gathered the beaver traps.
“Yes, Jim. God knows where we would be now,” said the green-eyed man.
“Probably dead and unburied, our remains exposed and rotting in the open air. That’s no way for
a man to die. He should have a decent burial. People should pay their respects.”
“Does it matter, Jim, how a man dies?”
“Yes. Yes, I think it does. I don’t want to die in the wilderness alone with no one to cry over
me. I don’t want to die a forgotten man. To depart from this world as an obscurity would be a
travesty. A wasted effort.”
“If there is any way you can be at your own funeral, Jim, you will be. You’ll mourn yourself.”
“If I could, I would. But let’s stop talking about this. It’s morbid and not anything that’s going
to happen any time soon.”
They tossed about the two-sided coin of obscurity and fame to mask their fear of mortality.
Death was, after all, everyone’s last earthly visitor. Every man and woman would encounter that
stalker. And Baptiste and Jim had smelled the intruder hovering near Ashley’s lips for weeks
until very recently.
Jim wrote to Eliza about forever. Her love comforted him. As for physical reaffirmation, the
mountains crept up around him with wonder. Waterfalls tumbled down hundreds of feet over
huge boulders. Smoke issued from the pools below like fog obscuring the rush of cascading
falls. It painted a dreamy picture of perfect and always. For thousands of years, the waters had
flowed in the same direction over the same rocks. It was easy for Jim to convince himself of
permanence in this ancient setting.
When Ashley took a shot at a buffalo that merely wounded and angered the animal, it tore at the
general in a rage. So when Jim dropped him dead in his mad run, it was easy for him to believe
in permanence.
When the men built boats of buffalo hides to carry them down the river, the boat that Ashley
tested overturned. The general, who could not swim, panicked and screamed for help. Jim
shouted to him, threw off his leggings and dove in swimming underwater until he reached the
drowning man. He instructed Ashley to grab onto his shoulders and kick. Ashley did as he was
told and Jim saved both their lives. Again, the thought of permanence sealed his efforts. He
wrote the following letter:
Dearest Eliza,
Yesterday, I saved Ashley’s skin for the third time. He says that he is eternally grateful.
And well he should be. He would lay in a watery grave now if it weren’t for me.
He overturned in his boat. No one else moved. They stood frozen watching Ashley turn
ashen white and listening to him scream. I don’t know why I jumped in after him except that
Baptiste and I had been caring for him when he was sick. I suppose I still felt responsible. It’s
odd. We haven’t talked about our past differences. But I know that I’ve gained his respect. He
may still think of me as Jim, The Mulatto, The Flawed One, but maybe his thinking will change.
Maybe he will begin to see me as a man. Maybe the mountains will crumble.
I miss you terribly. I’m more in love with you now than I ever have been.
Yours,
Jim
Eliza winced while she read about Jim’s attempt to gain Ashley’s recognition. When would Jim
grow up, she thought? However, his loving closing chased her concerns out of her mind. Jim’s
love for her would make everything all right. She heard what she wanted to hear.
“Eliza, what are you reading,” said her mother, Portia. She shadowed her daughter in the young
woman’s bedroom.
“A letter from Jim,” Eliza answered. She swirled around and smiled a smile of exquisite,
unearthly happiness.
“A man named Fernando came by with it. He said that he met up with Jim’s party in the
mountains. Jim is fine. He sent me a bundle of letters that tell me so. Portia, he’s thinking of
me.”
“So where is he then?”
“On the Green River,” she answered, as nonchalantly as if she had said that he was shodding
horses at Beckwourth’s Settlement.
“I’m not even sure I know where that is. Do you know, Eliza?”
“Jim told me. It’s in the Rockies.”
Well, that tells me everything,” Portia said, sarcastically.
“What do you mean,” said Eliza, defensively.
“Darling, be careful. Please. I don’t want you to get hurt,” Portia pleaded.
“I’m not. I don’t understand why you keep harping on that. Why don’t you trust Jim?”
“It’s not that I’m singling Jim out. It’s just that I’m older than you. I believe that Jim is sincere
but time and circumstances change situations, Eliza. Anything could happen. Especially with
Jim away from you for so long.”
“He’s far from likely to find a woman in the wilderness, Portia.”
“It’s more than that, love. He may find that he’s left you behind. He may decide that he doesn’t
need you.”
The words cut.
“Portia,” Eliza shrieked.
But the woman continued.
“If you were married, I’d feel surer for you. But this way? I don’t know, child. An engagement
can always be broken.”
Portia kept talking about the reasons Jim would leave Eliza. The young woman stopped
listening. She stood there and let her mind wander in the mountains. Her mother’s voice
sounded like a dream away. Eliza embraced Jim’s world.
At the Green River Suck, white frothy water shot through the caverns. Ashley’s traveling
community splintered into several groups. They could survive without the backup of large
numbers and they could profit from working many streams and lakes. Everyone planned to meet
at Pierre’s Hole nearby for rendezvous by the first of July. They buried caches of dried food
provisions and preserved buffalo for their return. Ashley said goodby to Jim.
“I am sorry for doubting you,” Ashley told the mountain man in an uncharacteristic apology as
he shook his hand. “You are a good man.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m happy that we part on friendly terms.”
“So am I,” Ashley said. “I treated you unfairly before I got sick. You’ve got to understand that
I’ve never worked with colored people before. I know that, of course, you are your father’s son
but still, I didn’t know what to expect. I looked for the worse.”
Ashley now believed that Jim was unlike the rest of the blacks. Somehow he was better.
“I understand, sir.”
Jim realized that he still was not being accorded respect for his humanity, good and bad, as is a
white man. But he knew that the moon could not become the morning star. Things were the
way they were. Damn them!
Ashley left Jim for his group of men. He felt cleansed. Baptiste, Jim, Moses and Zachary stuck
together. Two other men named Auguste Clemente and Jacques La Brache joined them.
Auguste was a ruddy complexioned man with a stocky body and a broad smile. Jacques was a
tall, gangly fellow with kind eyes and a new wife and child in St. Louis.
Beavers abounded in the tributary where they trapped. Within days, they had taken one hundred
beavers among themselves. Sixty dry skins equaled a pack of one hundred pounds which would
get one thousand dollars in St. Louis. One day, between trapping activities, the six men puttered
about camp when Jim yelled, “Indians! Indians! To your guns, man!”
“Don’t shoot,” Auguste screamed. “They speak Spanish. They mean no harm.”
Apparently, they had come peacefully. Jim lowered his Hawken, Fancy Free. The visitors
smoked and sprawled around the camp. They fiddled with the trappers’ guns. They seemed
quite relaxed. Too much so, the trappers thought more and more. They did not entirely trust
these strangers. But they did not want to appear that way because the Indians, who turned out to
be Blackfeet, were more than double the trappers in number.
Three days passed. Jacques was on night watch when he let out a chilling scream. The others
rushed to him. What a grisly scene awaited them!
Jacques lay on the ground doubled over. His head was a mass of blood and hair. Jim sank his
right hand into the gap in his colleague’s head, the hatchet hole was that big. Jim tied a
tourniquet around Jacques’s head as a natural response but a wasted effort. Jacques’s wife and
baby would wait for him in vain. He would never come home. Baptiste sobbed quietly. Jim’s
eyes hardened like glass. He scolded himself for not running those strangers out of camp when
he found them toying with the guns. Moses’s stomach turned. Zachary’s face twisted into the
image of a gargoyle. Auguste sputtered curses.
“Let’s get ‘em,” Jim growled, in an inhuman voice.
“No,” shouted Moses, breaking the momentum of building rage. “There are sixteen of them and
six of us. Five of us. And they’re armed with some of our guns. We’re heading south to New
Mexico.”
“But, Moses, those killers shouldn’t get away with this!”
“Jim, if we go after them, we’ll all end up like Jacques with our lives trickling out of us.”
“But –“
“No, Jim, no.”
Jim seethed. He wanted revenge regardless of the consequences. They saddled their horses and
started riding in the direction opposite the murderers. We are running, Jim thought, running
from danger. As he and Baptiste spread fallen tree branches over Jacques’s body, Jim had
shuddered. It rankled him that they had to leave this good man in an undignified way. He
promised himself that he would return to bury him. Jim rode through the night and the next day
with a scowl on his face. Finally, they slowed down and found a place to camp.
“Ho,” a voice shouted. The five survivors grabbed their guns, cocked them and placed their
fingers on the triggers. “Can it be? Jim Beckwourth, is it you?”
“Jordan Amaranth, what the devil,” Jim cried. They hugged each other hard. They had worked
together Jim’s first time out on the Illinois River. When they broke away, Jim recognized faces
of other men behind Jordan. Then Jordan and Moses clasped each other. They had met years
before either knew Jim. For five minutes, names of men in stunned voices flew through the air.
What a pleasure it was to see familiar faces so far from home and so near a fatal tragedy. The
story of Jacques La Brache’s death began to be told. Some of Amaranth’s men had known the
man. They had not met up with the Blackfeet who had committed the act. Everyone was
saddened by the news of a senseless loss of life. At least if he had died in a war, it would have
been for a cause. This is how they talked.
The next morning Jim and several others returned to bury Jacques. Only God could have
protected the man’s stinking, decomposing body from the appetites of scavengers. After sinking
his body into the ground, they prayed over it silently for a few minutes. Then they backtracked
and rejoined the two parties.
The Amaranth party had been out more than two years. These men had not seen one white or
black man during that time. They were headed to Taos, New Mexico and then to St. Louis,
Missouri. There was a man named Fernando who was anxious to get back to St. Louis. When
the two parties bid farewell a few days later, Jim entrusted the beefy man with his letters to Eliza.
Fernando promised to deliver them as soon as he rode into town. Then he would ride to
Jacqueline La Brache’s home. He would admire her housekeeping, he would congratulate her on
the birth of the baby, Suzanne, and then, he would tell her that Jacques talked of her often. Her
black eyes would widen in fear but she would hope that her feelings were wrong. Then
Fernando would place his large hand on her slender shoulder and start to speak but her sobs
would drown out his words. She would already know. Intuitively, she would know before
Fernando arrived in town and at her front door.
Jacques’s spirit shadowed his colleagues. He was the only one in Ashley’s original party to die.
He was still one of them. The feeling of his loss penetrated their souls and so he stayed with
them until they, one by one, let him go.
Trapping southward proved to be profitable as well as safe. When the five changed direction and
arrived at Pierre’s Hole in the Rockies in view of the Three Tetons, their pack mules bore several
thousand dollars’ worth of beaver skins. The five men showed off toughened bodies, minds and
spirits in a scant crowd of a few small parties that grew within hours to fifty. They created their
own town in celebration of a year of hard work and triumph over danger and death. Campsites
were set up; tepees were raised. Indians and trappers lifted their cups, filled with whiskey, to
their exciting and successful adventures. Everyone took in the bright fields of yellow flax
through glazed eyes and relaxed senses. Baptiste stared transfixed at the crystalline stream much
of the time. The sight of Jacques’s butchered head kept appearing and then disappearing on the
water’s surface.
Ashley rolled in after Jim. He praised Pierre’s Hole as heaven and sanctified it as the site of the
annual trappers’ rendezvous. The once placid scene spun wilder and wilder as time passed by.
The trappers slept off their drunks wherever they happened to drop for long day-lit hours.
That night, they made music for hours. The harmonica players’ spittle sprayed from their
mouths. The clappers’ hands stung and burned and everyone soon lost sensation in their feet
from stomping. But they played on. They could not stop. When the feeling came, they danced
mountain style mazurkas. Faster, faster, faster they whirled. Faster, faster, faster they played.
Their ecstasy held time still. It expanded the moment.
The dancers dropped from exhaustion. The musicians slowed the pace. Some would break for
short intervals and catch their breath or cool their hands and feet bottoms. Then a singer would
perform a ballad as he composed it to the accompaniment of one blue’s harp, maybe two.
Baptiste created Jacques’s song at a time like this, spontaneously at daybreak after a long night
of cavorting. The drunken audience sprawled around camp barely moving. But when Baptiste’s
shrill, silver notes sounded with the birds’ morning call, some of the men heard it and listened.
The words could have burst with sadness. The melody could have melted from the tears. He
sang his ballad several times lulling men to sleep. Sorrow comforted them.
Then Baptiste walked to the stream several hundred yards away. He sat with his legs folded
under him and watched Jacques’s gouged head bobbing on the water. This time, it did not
disappear. His blood dyed the pure lake crimson. Jacques’s frightful image sealed Baptiste from
the others. He sang his last words to the party; he did not speak another. His eyes focused on
what others could not see. He did not need nor want food. He did not sleep. Baptiste scrubbed
himself with a coarse weed that the trappers used to wash themselves but he used no water. His
skin turned red and raw. The trappers watched him closely after that. They tied his hands when
he tried to resume cleaning himself. They had to restrain him otherwise Baptiste would have
bled himself to death.
All the men, especially Appleton, worried about him. The party leader felt maternal toward the
sensitive Baptiste. Jim was scared. He had never seen anything like this. He felt abandoned and
alone. How bizarrely lonely it was to sit beside someone who was not there anymore, someone
he once knew so well. Jim would stay with him and talk in vain. No shared memory could bring
Baptiste back. His lack of response frustrated Jim who eventually stopped trying. He began
screaming at him. He cursed at him for being weak. Jim scorned Baptiste’s madness. He
damned him as a coward. Then Jim’s emotions changed again and he softened. During the day,
he went down to the water and imagined he was with Baptiste. He put his arm around his young
companion’s thin waist and said nothing for hours.
Jim would do anything for his loyal friend, Baptiste. Anything. If there were a way to give his
strong mind over to his brother, he would have. But there was no such way. All Jim could do
was sit by and watch his friend and suffer. Everyone hoped that Baptiste would come back
before the days of revelry ended.
The second night, Jim caroused with the others. A camp of twenty Absaroka men and women
joined the rendezvous to trade skins for whiskey and gunpowder. Crows, the Americans called
them but Absaroka in their language translated nearer to Sparrowhawks in English. They struck
Jim as proud and good looking people. They held their backs straight but their noses and breasts
tilted slightly skyward. They impressed Jim as being refined and aristocratic. The trappers
welcomed the presence of more women. Months had passed since any of them had savoured the
pleasure of watching a woman walk by, smelling her scent and perhaps, accidentally brushing
the soft skin of her arm as she glides by.
Deprived of intimacy with a woman, they yearned to pound themselves into these women. Any
woman. They badly needed to thrust themselves into physical satisfaction. The Sparrowhawk
women excited them but to no avail. These protective people kept to themselves. The men
celebrated at night but exercised self-control; the women did not join in the evening festivities.
They sensed a threatened chaos that would swallow them so they stayed away. They safely
cloistered themselves from the men.
“I’d like to get to know one of these women,” Jim said to Moses as they drank together one
night.
The harmonica music lingered, inspiring feelings of warmth, softness and being loved.
“How well,” Moses asked. “Do you mean that you would like to know them for one night?”
“Moses, I’ve been without a woman for more than a year,” Jim nearly shouted. “What is wrong
about wanting to be with one?”
“Nothing is wrong with wanting it,” Moses said. “But would your desires be so bold if they
were St. Louis women?”
“Yes. They would be the same. Damn it, Moses! You always try and make me into an ogre
when it comes to women. I’m only a man, Moses, that’s all. I’m in a remote place and these
women happen to be sharing it with me.”
“We’re all just men, Jim.”
“No, Moses. You’re not just a man. You have appointed yourself God. Who do you think you
are passing judgement?”
“I’m not judging, just observing,” Moses answered.
“Don’t deny it,” Jim said.
“Jim, calm down. You’re one of the easiest persons to rile. All I’m asking is that you think
about what you do.”
The campfires blazed in the black night. Shadows leapt where there was nothing. Jim resented
Moses’s accusatory style of jolting him into self-reflection. So he defied him by not thinking
about it. He ended his conversation with Moses in a lighter fashion. Then he lay back and
clapped his hands over his head to the Indians’ rattles and drums whose tempo had picked up to a
mind-blurring one. Several hundred yards away, they danced in the orange light of the fire.
The next day there were horse races, arm wrestling, arrow shooting and ball playing.
Alfred Jacob Miller's "Indian Race" (ca. 1837)
(From the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming)
“Jim, are you racing today,” Ashley asked.
“I’m not sure. Could be.”
“Reason I ask is I’d like to put some money down on it that you’ll win no matter who races
against you. Hope I can get Appleton to go in on it against me. It’ll be sure money for me.
What do you say?”
“Since you put it that way, General, I won’t let you down.”
“Thank you, Jim.”
The two looked out at the morning scene that had swelled to a few hundred trappers and native
Americans, mostly men. Some of the trappers had finagled a warm time cuddled in the arms of
women. They were the lucky ones, Jim thought. At night, he lay alone with his memories of
Estelle and lovemaking.
In the early afternoon, the riders lined up on their horses. Nine of them. The men’s thighs
gripped their mounts’ red, brown and black warm flesh. The man and the horse became as one
animal breathing the same breath. Jim was sure of his sienna colored stallion, Prairie Fire. Like
his name, they had flown on the wind as swiftly as long, dry grass catching fire on a hot day on
the open plains. Prairie Fire had proved himself a mountain horse by climbing rocks and fording
streams but this task would be far simpler. His master wanted them to gallop faster than the
others down a straight one-mile flat and clear course. It was not a contest of skill or fancy riding;
it was a test of speed.
“Ride the wind, Prairie Fire. Ride the wind,” Jim whispered in his ear, before the race.
A cheering crowd of one hundred gathered to watch the race. The skies overhead were a soft
blue, not one cloud in sight beyond the mountain peaks. The starter stood away from the people,
lifted his handgun into the air and started counting down from ten. The crowd quieted.
“Four, three, two, one,” he called.
“Bang,” the pistol fired.
“The horses are off,” the starter shouted.
The men began yelling for their favorites. The race seemed to pass through several stages
though it lasted only a few minutes. At first, the horses galloped neck in neck. No horse held a
clear lead. Then Prairie Fire and the sandy brown stallion riding on his right shot out like
fusillades. All nine horses kicked up dirt enough to obscure their hooves but it didn’t matter
because Prairie Fire and the sandy brown horse were several lengths ahead. Then the race
changed again when Prairie Fire seemed to lengthen his stride and broke the tie he had sustained
for so long. Jim could feel his horse’s heart beat with his. The horses neared the finish line
marked with a delicate string tied to two poles at either end, a red triangular pennant attached to
the top of each.
Prairie Fire burst through the finish line first. The crowd went wild. Ashley went crazy
whooping and screaming and already sniffing Appleton’s twenty dollars that he had won. The
eight other horses followed Prairie Fire, the brown one came in second. Jim broke his horse
down to a canter and held both hands cupped over his head. He had won! He had won!
“That was tremendous, Jim,” Ashley said, after running over to Prairie Fire.
“Yes, Jim. If only you could have been as fast on a horse of my choice,” Appleton said, in
feigned disappointment. Since Ashley’s recovery, their competition was of a lighthearted nature.
“My twenty,” Ashley reminded his colleague.
Appleton pulled out a slip of paper and marked it as a promissory note.
“Tomorrow I’ll pay you when I get paid by you,” Appleton said.
“Oh yes, tomorrow,” Ashley said. “I expect we’ll do quite well. We got a good turnout
considering this is only the second time I’ve organized a rendezvous. We’ve had our fun.
Tomorrow, it’s strictly business.”
“Do you think the trading will spill into the following day,” Jim asked. He had dismounted and
was leading Prairie Fire by his rein.
“I hope so,” Ashley said. “The longer the better. We’ve got to work to keep the trading inside
the company tent. That way affairs won’t get out of hand. We’ll make that twenty quick as a
flash though it’ll be in buffalo robes, not money. We’ve got to wait to get back to St. Louis for
that. Good race again, Jim.”
“Yes, Jim. Good race,” Appleton said. “Listen, I don’t want to bring you down but how is
Baptiste?”
“He’s the same,” Jim said. “He just sits and stares. I did get him to eat something yesterday. I
hope he’ll eat today.”
“Any idea what happened to him,” Appleton asked.
“No, I don’t know. I heard some Arapahoes say that one of his enemies put him under a spell.
Baptiste doesn’t have any enemies. He’s the sweetest man I’ve ever known.”
“That’s for sure,” Appleton said.
“I hope he comes back,” Jim said. “I miss him.”
Jim thought that even if Baptiste were well, he would not have taken part in any of the games.
He did not enjoy pitting himself against others. Maybe life in an uncompetitive culture would
have spared him the horror of insanity where one has no control over the thoughts that flit
through the mind. Perhaps if Baptiste had been raised in a country or religion in which killing
beavers, buffalo and people were scorned or forbidden or sinful, he would have escaped the
aloneness of a mind spinning its own web of reality. Maybe…perhaps…who knows?
At the end of five days of rendezvous, Ashley was satisfied with his profit. Baptiste still uttered
not a word. Jim said goodby to him. He was going back to St. Louis with Moses and Zachary
and half of Ashley’s party. Baptiste was leaving with several fellow French Canadians for his
home and family outside Montreal.
Jim left his first rendezvous feeling sad for his friend, Baptiste, mourning Jacques’s untimely
death and carrying a tinge of resentment toward Ashley. He felt that his achievements on the
expedition were tainted and heightened by the failures and triumphs of others. Therefore, his
success was bittersweet.
Besides, Jim was still unsettled inside. He ached for more but more of what, he did not know.