Flight of the Hawk: The River Page 6

  Men sprang to the lines that held them to the shore, talking with excitement as they cast off. Looking around, Tylor saw nothing that needed to be done. The cargo would enable them to exist for months upriver. He had helped to load and secure powder, lead, cloth, trade goods, beads, mirrors, a family of cats, and even two pigs; the latter to hopefully provide breeding stock for posts upriver.

  Not since he’d returned from England had he so looked forward to a voyage.

  England? Such a long, long time ago, he mused to himself as he sat against the off side of the cargo box and tamped tobacco into his pipe bowl. A wealthy planter’s son from southern Virginia, he had attended Oxford at his patriot father’s urging. William Tylor had been a firebrand during the war for independence. Nevertheless, he had made no bones about his son attending Oxford in spite of his feelings for the crown.

  So much to see. To do. The optimisim of youth had burst his very body with dreams of glory. There were libraries, cathedrals, people. He’d talked with travelers of all seven seas and marveled at the stories they told.

  Europe was lost to him now.

  Gone, along with so many hopes and dreams.

  John Tylor, Esquire, was a dead man. Now there was only the wilderness, the wild land, a place from which he could never return.

  A year ago his jailors had shown him a letter from Aaron, who was then living in England. It had been a letter full of hope and ambition. But Tylor had read between the lines, only to see it had all been fantasy. For Tylor, even fantasy—a false prophet—was dead.

  Europe had called to him again. But what lay there?

  Culture, music, books, study, art, fine drink and wonderfully prepared food?

  He had no money, and his name would have been known there, too. In an age of intrigue, with Napoleon unleashing chaos, any European country would have checked on his status. Aaron had at least been a vice president. What would have become of a simple American gentleman? One with a price on his head.

  “The free wind has lanced my soul,” he whispered. The call of the prairie wolf, the whistle of the bull elk, the rustle of the breeze through the grass was in his blood—the memories pounding from when he’d crossed the plains for Aaron.

  As surely as he had been fated for his past deeds, so must he follow this new path. No other option remained outside of public disgrace and the scratchy hemp of the hangman’s noose. His private humiliation had been sufficient. The year in prison. The loss of his home. The look of disgust and hatred in the eyes of his wife . . .

  An image of beautiful Hallie flickered through his memory; quickly, he squinted his eyelids shut and forced her bitter voice from his mind.

  “Leve!” called Mayette as he strode over the deck. “We go! Secure yourselves! To the poles, my friends! The river awaits, eh? Let us not disappoint her!”

  The men scurried about and pulled the long poles from the rack. No wind blew this day so the boat would be pushed against the current with long ashwood poles. Tylor pulled his from the rack and moved forward, dragging the tip in the water. He found a purchase on the cleated walkway called the passé avant and set the oversized wooden knob at the end into the socket in his shoulder.

  “Avant!” Mayette boomed, white teeth stark against his black beard. Tylor pitched his weight into the pole, leaning against it as he walked toward the aft of the boat on the passé avant. As each man reached the end he twisted the pole free of the mud and ran forward for another bite.

  A loud huzzaw rose from the shore as the assembled people cheered them. The boatmen called back gleefully and joked with friends, wives, and the sweethearts they were leaving behind. The other boats were pulling out now, swinging into the current as had Polly.

  The leaving had a festival air given the cheering men and women, all in colorful clothing, waving, lining the shore. With one hand, Tylor smacked the dottle from his pipe and slipped it into his pouch before leaning into the pole again. The sun burned brightly as Tylor revelled in the sensations of the boat moving under him; he noted the rich grain of the oak planks beneath his feet, and felt the first fingers of warmth penetrate his ragged shirt.

  His joy froze when he looked up to see Lisa pointing at him, the black eyes pinning him as William Clark singled him out.

  Tylor’s heart stopped.

  He jumped as Pierre Detalier jabbed him in the back. “Eh! We all must work. If I can do it with my head splitting, so can you, Jean Tylor.”

  He threw himself into his pole, looking furtively up to see Clark shaking his head in strong negation. Tylor began to breathe again as the Indian agent laughed, unconcerned, at something Morrison said.

  “Figgering I’ll break!” Tylor snorted to relieve his fear. Skinny and ragged as he was, that had to be it. As good a lie as any to delude himself with, given Lisa’s curiosity about him.

  Tylor glanced back to where Baptiste Latoulipe leaned into a pole. The man had been a poor spy, though dog-loyal to Lisa in his efforts to discover Tylor’s business.

  The sun glared off flat water, playing on the side of the cargo box. Tylor took a deep breath. The danger had passed. Lisa, Clark, and discovery lay behind him, vanishing in Polly’s wake. Lisa would join the boats at Saint Charles on the Missouri in a few days. After that, any pursuit would be too late. Tylor—unknown in Saint Louis—would be beyond the reach of the United States. Beyond the law. Beyond even the grasping and long-reaching talons of Joshua Gregg.

  He stiffened at the thought of his old enemy. As if it were yesterday, he could recall Gregg’s smoldering blue eyes as they stared in gloating victory. Tylor’s throat went dry. Would he ever outrun Gregg? Would the man ever forget?

  Joshua Gregg had everything now. Best of all, he had his revenge. He had his family’s North Carolina plantation and slaves back—and had gobbled up the Tylor plantation as well, located as it was just across the state line in Virginia. Gregg had seen Hallie spurn the man who’d won her hand, seen her ultimately divorce him. Couldn’t Joshua be satisfied with that?

  Some hatreds run too deeply to ever be mollified.

  The Mississippi was a delightful river to travel. Looking ahead, Tylor could see no hint of danger in the wide swirling water. The voyageurs had a saying about the two rivers: The Mississippi—so they claimed—was a lady, while her sister, the Missouri, was a whore.

  They made the mouth of the Missouri the next day at noon, good time—or so the patroon declared. Word was that Lisa would check in on their progress at Bellefontaine where he was engaged in business of some sort.

  Meanwhile, Tylor fought his own battle with sore muscles, aching joints, and the sort of fatigue that left him stumbling along the passé avant. The end of each day found him with tears streaking down his face, his shoulder raw, and every inch of his body screaming. Hunger carved a hole in his gut, and he couldn’t gobble down enough at the meals.

  Despite that, he struggled on, torturing himself, forcing his body beyond its endurance.

  “They do not tease you, Tylor,” Latoulipe told him one night as Tylor scooped corn and pork gruel from his tin bowl. “Some think you torture yourself like Christ on the cross.”

  Tylor had smiled wearily. “Penance. Perhaps in ways you cannot conceive.”

  Yes, indeed, he had plenty of sin to atone for.

  On Friday, the eighth of May, a pirogue hailed them from out of the dark. Latoulipe talked with one of the men as they unloaded and threw packs onto Polly’s deck. Then, one by one, they were pulled over the gunwale and escorted to the back of the boat.

  “Who are they?” Tylor asked suspiciously as Latoulipe walked past.

  The engage squatted on his heels, his brown eyes reserved. “The little one is John Luttig. He is to be clerk for the expedition. He is a good man, fun, with a little too much love of the bottle. The other I do not know. He is called Fenway McKeever. Manuel hired him at Bellefontaine. Look at those shoulders! Perhaps he will pull the boats upriver by himself, eh? The rest of us can ride in comfort and sing songs as we rela
x on deck.”

  Latoulipe threw him a quick smile and moved off to his blankets.

  Luttig began penning in a ledger before he retired—a fact that left Tylor uneasy. What could the man be writing? Did any of it mention John Tylor?

  Uneasy over the new additions to the crew, he slept poorly. At midnight he threw his blanket off, stood, and walked to the river’s edge.

  “Worry monger!” he grunted to the dark and whistled a sigh.

  Latoulipe’s soft voice startled him. “You are feeling unwell?”

  “Just my stomach,” Tylor half-lied. “Needed a drink.”

  He bent to the river and filled his mouth with the muddy water. Latoulipe smiled easily as he nodded and returned to his blankets. Did the man always watch him?

  The following morning he met the muscular Scot. A strapping man with a lusty smile, Fenway McKeever gave Tylor a firm handshake, his bright-red hair glistening in the sun. McKeever’s bluff, freckle-spattered features might not have been classified as handsome, but he bore a rugged constitution, and would have been attractive were it not for the feral iciness behind those green eyes.

  “Glad t’ make yer ’quaintance, John Tylor.” McKeever’s keen smile seemed to reflect a predatory intensity.

  “Yours, too, I’m sure,” Tylor said easily, stifling the odd reaction in his guts. He felt like a plucked chicken as those green eyes searched his.

  “McKeever!” Mayette boomed in his bass voice. “You work the little boat. Report to the patroon.”

  Something eased inside Tylor as the big man grinned familiarly, grabbed up his outfit, and walked over to where the little boat was loading.

  Several other men were to join them at Saint Charles. The town that took so many days of travel to arrive at by boat, could be reached in little over four hours by horse or coach from Saint Louis. There, too, they would be joined by the small herd of horses that would parallel their route. For the most part, the animals would be used by the hunters to pack the game they shot for the expedition. Once they reached the plains, this would be of even greater importance as the hunters shot elk and buffalo. The hunters, men like Michael Immel, would eventually rely on the horses to provide the mobility necessary to locate bands of Indians who might be camped in the uplands farther back from the river with its humidity and bugs.

  On the 9th, they were met by Michael Immel and some of his men who had come downriver by boat. Immel was rapidly becoming known as a legend on the upper river. Tylor helped them shift bundles of fur from their mackinaw onto the Polly’s deck.

  Lisa—his boy Charlo in tow—ultimately joined the expedition the night of the 9th as they camped at the coal bank at Charbonnier on the right side of the river. From here on, he would accompany his boats until either fortune or failure were his.

  “I notice you never sing with the others,” Latoulipe noted on the morning of the 10th.

  If engages had one trait that set them apart from others on the frontier, it had to be their singing. They had songs for work, songs for drinking, songs for sex, songs of lost loves, and songs of redemption. Some of the songs had no meaning at all that Tylor could discern.

  “Maybe it’s my voice.” Tylor grinned.

  “After Detalier’s, anything would be an improvement.” Latoulipe looked confused. “We sing to make the work easier. Maybe it would help you pass the time. I notice your face in the mornings. It hurts you to move.”

  “Singing about whiskey, whores, and fistfights would help my aching muscles?” Tylor gave the man a reproving look. “No, Baptiste, only hard work, concentration, and willpower will make this any easier.” A pause. “Did you hear that Morrison thought I’d break? I won’t.”

  Latoulipe’s eyes took on a veiled look as he shrugged and walked off to take his place on the cordelle. After that, mysteriously, none of the boatmen mentioned his nonparticipation in the bawdy songs.

  Only Fenway McKeever sat beyond the fire watching him through half-lidded eyes.

  No one could miss that the man was of Scotch origin. Tylor cataloged the freckles speckling his skin in splotches and wondered at the hunger behind McKeever’s eyes when the man wasn’t aware that Tylor was watching.

  “You a Scot still?” Tylor asked casually one night as he and McKeever stood relieving themselves outside of camp.

  The big man grinned. “Nay, laddie. I’m American by the articles of the Jay treaty. Worked fer the Nor’west Company as a trader. Had me a wee problem wi’ Crooks and McClellan and left their employ. I was lookin’ fer work when I met Mr. Lisa. Hired me on the spot.”

  One hand on his pizzle, McKeever was fingering his knife with the other; the green eyes were thoughtful. Deadly. Tylor felt his hair stand on end. Glancing over his shoulder, he figured they were more than a hundred yards from camp, nearly invisible in the dusk.

  Just as quickly, the Scot smiled—eyes lighting. He nodded to himself, some sort of satisfaction in his expression. “I’m hoping ye’ll be an asset, laddie. I do hope ye do’na let me down.”

  “Excuse me? Let you down?”

  Without replying, McKeever turned on his heel and walked off, leaving Tylor shaken and nervous, his throat dry, his penis forgotten in his hand.

  “Scared of shadows,” Tylor mumbled. “That man don’t know me from Adam’s off ox.” He shook himself, buttoned his fly, and headed back for camp.

  The next day the crew were allowed to rest while Lisa picked up more men at Saint Charles. The bourgeois—as Lisa was called by his engages and some of the others—oversaw loading the boat, and Chouteau himself came aboard the next morning to inspect the expedition.

  From there, the headwind and current were so fierce they made little progress.

  At night—his muscles aching from the pole—his feet cramped from the wooden cleats of the passé avant, Tylor would lean against the cargo box and stare out over the river. Lost in his thoughts, eyes introspective and sad, he watched the current swirl past the boat.

  Life was like the river, he mused. As a current, it carried men along, changing, moving, shoving a man this way and that. Never did it leave a man at rest. On those rare occasions when he got lined out, there would be a whirlpool or eddy that would dash him madly in another direction, changing his path and sending him off on a different endeavor. Still in the current, a man found himself so completely out of sorts from the direction he had originally thought to follow.

  The notion amused him, and the corners of his lips curled slightly.

  He pulled again at his pipe, noting the cheery red glow of the bowl under his palm. To smoke thus, gave him one of the few pleasures that remained. He heard the first, whining mosquito and blew smoke its direction. When his pipe was done, he knocked out the dottle and sought his blankets in the camp on shore. Images of water—the symbol of renewal—filled his mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  The following morning, perhaps as a sign that Tylor had passed some test, Mayette ordered him to the cordelle—the long rope the engages used to physically pull the boat upstream against the current. He took a position just ahead of Latoulipe. Pulling the cordelle was brutal work, and he revelled in it. Through physical exertion, he could avoid remembering. Pushing his body kept his thoughts on the matters at hand; not once did he find his mind drifting to Hallie—to that other life, which now seemed so long vanished in a distant, almost mythic, past.

  More than once, Tylor caught Lisa’s eyes on him as he struggled through the marshes, crawled through fallen timber, and sweated in the sun. Speculation filled the Spaniard’s keen eyes. Tylor’s nerves began tingling deep down inside. Could he suspect?

  No! Tylor violently shook the sweat from his head, causing Latoulipe, behind him, to bark sourly. No one could know out here. Manuel Lisa couldn’t have put it together.

  Tylor threw himself furiously against the cordelle; all the while, Lisa’s eyes kept searing a hole into his back.

  The ticks were out, as were the chiggers, mosquitos, and rattlesnakes. T
hey made life a constant misery for the cursing, singing, sweating engages who towed, poled, and muscled Polly and the little boat against the Missouri’s endless flow. They all stank now with the common odor of dirt, mud, sweat, and mildewed clothing, as they pushed, pulled, and dragged their way into the wilderness.

  Bathing was frequent with the river close at hand, but the hours were long—sunup to dark—as Lisa had promised. Were Tylor not drowning in his need for penance, he would have found amusement in that. Most Americans would indeed hate this sort of existence. They would want some sort of compensation, but it was fine for him. When he pulled at the cordelle he was suffering for his wrongs, beating his way into a new life.

  As evening fell one night, Tylor was washing his clothes on the riverbank when McKeever came to scrub his dirty hands.

  “And what do ye think, laddie? Are ye ready to quit this wretched work?” The green eyes were evaluating, seeking . . . What?

  “Not at all, Fenway.” Tylor tensed. What gut reaction stirred him when McKeever was around?

  McKeever suddenly loomed above him. Tylor felt a sharp sting in the middle of his back—like a knife point in his quivering flesh. “What are you—”

  “There! Reckon ye didn’t need him along fer the ride.” McKeever held a bloating tick between thumb and forefinger. The green eyes, however, were steady, measuring.

  “I guess . . . Thanks,” Tylor grunted, feeling even more uncomfortable.

  “Any time, laddie.” McKeever’s voice didn’t reflect the reservation in his eyes. The man’s thick fingers popped the tick—heedless of the blood it sprayed—before he walked off.

  Tylor’s dreams that night were troubled. He sank into the nightmare of his past . . .

  Blackness wrapped him in stygian folds. He lay there, listening for the guard to pass the door of his cell. Something scurried across his legs. Tylor whimpered, kicking out at the rustling in the pitch dark. The rats were back! His guts turned, the sick feeling loosening his bowels.