Colter's Winter Read online

  Colter came up and gave Shannon a friendly clap on the back, though his eyes were locked on the two new arrivals.

  “John Colter, these men here are Joseph Dixon and Forest Hancock, two fur trapping men heading upriver.”

  “And looking for a guide that can show us the way,” Forest said, giving Colter a good once over while he did so. The mountain man looked to be in his early-30s, though it was hard to tell with the unkempt hair growing long and wild, the full beard with parts already going to grey. He looked like something right out of the wild, or at least an Indian show – a threadbare red shirt faded to a pinkish-white, tan workmen’s pants that didn’t have an inch not resewn, and moccasins that probably weren’t as rough as the feet wearing them. It took Forest only a few seconds to know he was looking on a real mountain man, someone that knew the wilds of this country like the back of his hand. At least that’s what he hoped.

  “A guide, huh?” Colter said, all thoughts of St. Louis suddenly gone from his mind as visions of the wilderness began dancing in his memory.

  “We mean to talk with your Captains Lewis and Clark–”

  “Just as soon as we finish unloading this canoe,” Joe began and Forest finished.

  Colter narrowed his eyes just as George and John rushed up, finally catching up with the faster Colter.

  “Do the captains know?” Colter asked Shannon before the other two men could get a word in.

  Shannon shook his head. “I’m not sure, but Captain Clark was here when these two rowed up, and he told ‘em to get secured while he took care of the rest.”

  Colter smiled. “Well, you heard him – let’s get these men secured and then get ‘em to the captains!”

  4 – The Captains

  Captain Meriwether Lewis scrunched up his face and braced himself before lowering down onto the chair. Despite his efforts, a pain shot up from the bullet wound in his backside, causing him to flinch and grimace further. In the corner, Captain William Clark chuckled under his breath, though not quietly enough.

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “What!”

  “It damn well could have been you that Pierre shot in the ass just as it was me.”

  Clark shrugged. “I suppose that’s possible, though I’d never have put myself into such a compromising position to begin with.”

  Lewis frowned and was about to offer a rejoinder, a really good one too, when the tent flap opened and John Colter appeared.

  “Oh, beg pardon, captains,” he said, then closed it and shouted out, “Captains, Private John Colter here, permission to enter.”

  Lewis looked over at Clark, who only shook his head, so he turned back and called out. “Permission granted, Private Colter.”

  John Colter entered the tent this time, a large smile on his face.

  “Sirs,” he began, rubbing at his beard and stepping from one foot to the other, “there are two trappers heading upriver.”

  “Yes,” Clark said from his spot at the desk, “I met them on the Knife myself, the first of the party to do so. It seems they’re heading up to the headwaters of the Missouri, or at least think they are.”

  He scoffed and looked over at Lewis, who only offered a slight smile.

  “They’ll have a helluva time of it, captain,” Colter said, his face firm and without humor.

  “That they will,” Clark agreed, “but I don’t see what concern it is of ours.”

  “The thing of it is, sir,” Colter began with a fair amount of hesitation, for he was always a bit reticent of questioning the two captains, especially after the leniency they’d shown him in Pittsburgh when he’d threatened to shoot Sergeant Ordway. Clark seemed to sense this.

  “Go on.”

  Colter nodded. “The thing of it is, sirs…I’d like to guide those men upriver.”

  Lewis and Clark both stared at Colter, neither surprised at what they were hearing.

  “I feel that I know both the Upper-Missouri route and the Yellowstone route,” Colter said quickly when he felt his previous words had been hanging in the air too long.

  “Oh, and how do you figure that, Private?” Lewis asked with a slight smile.

  “Because you had George with you on your team of four,” Colter replied evenly. “Since you got back on the 12th, we’ve been discussing the route.”

  “Can’t be discussing much,” Lewis laughed when he thought of the small party he’d led to the Marias River a few weeks before, “we damn-well got run out of there!”

  “Nonetheless, sir, George is pretty convincing on the route.”

  Lewis leaned back on his stool and crossed his arms, staring at Colter for a moment before looking to Clark. He shrugged, as if to say ‘what do you want me to do?’ Clark took in a breath and let it out slowly, then turned his attention back to Colter.

  “This is what you want then, are you sure?”

  Colter nodded. “Aye, sir, it is.”

  “Very well,” Clark said with a smile before nodding toward the tent flap, “now why not let those other two gentlemen in.”

  Colter turned and opened the tent flap, stuck his head out, and saw Joe and Forest over near the fire pit a short distance away. They locked onto him a moment later and were scurrying over even before the mountain man waved to them.

  “Well?” Forest said while he was still a good ten paces away. Colter just motioned for them to come once again, and in a moment the three men were inside the tent and staring at the two captains of the Corps of Discovery.

  “So you men came up from St. Louis, then?” Clark said in that jovial tone that Colter knew so well, the one he used when he was going to get his way with you, no…already had, but you just didn’t know it yet. Colter did his best to suppress the smile that was trying to edge onto his face.

  “Well, sir…” Joe began, a bit apprehensive and looking to Forest for support. The other trapper gamely stared at his feet or pretended something on the other side of the tent had gotten his attention.

  “Well, sir…” Joe began again, to the tune of Lewis’s fingers beginning to tap on the desk, “we left St. Louis in August of 1804 and wintered near Floyd’s Bluff. Come spring we headed further on up until we reached the bend in the Missouri by the Niobrara around summer. We spent all that year trapping with Charles Courtin’s group and wintered near the Teton Sioux. This spring we set out alone, eager to get into these upper reaches where we heard the trapping was plum.”

  “Any Indian encounters along the way?” Clark asked.

  Joe nodded. “We ran into–”

  “Nothing,” Forest butted-in real quick, “we ran into nothing, all throughout the early Dakotas.”

  “Is that right,” Lewis said more than asked, looking from Joe to Forest and back again.

  Joe nodded vigorously. “Aye, that it is, sirs, that it is – we didn’t run into any trouble.”

  “On account of the fact that we kept to ourselves and made good time,” Forest added.

  “Getting past the Niobrara River and into the Dakotas is easy enough,” Lewis said, “it’s getting up past the Grand River that’s tricky. How did you get past the Arikaras…just the two of you?”

  Joe swallowed and looked to Forest, who frowned. “Very carefully,” he said, “and by cover of night.”

  Lewis and Forest stared at one another for several moments, their eyes locked for so long that the other three men in the tent began to grow uneasy. Finally Lewis nodded and rose up, his face grimacing a bit from the pain still clearly in his backside.

  “Well, all I can say is that you’ll be in the best of hands, whatever you may find out there on the Missouri or the Yellowstone or any of the other, smaller tributaries you may take…or whatever finds you.” Lewis came up and clapped Colter on the shoulder. “I have to admit, I hate the idea of losing my best shot with nearly 1,500 miles still to go to St. Louis and civilization, but if that’s the way you want it, Private, then it’s in my power to give.” Lewis glanced over quickly at the two trappers before giving Colter a hard lo
ok in the eye. “You do want this…you’re sure?”

  Colter firmed his shoulders and stuck out his chest. “Aye, sir.”

  “Then by the power invested in me by the President of the United States of America and as his military representative this far west into the hinterland of the country, I declare that your service to the government of the United States, Private John Colter, is now complete. You’re hereby honorably discharged from the United States Army with the rank of Private, and the promise that your pay will be awaiting you in St. Louis, all…” he glanced back at Clark who was still seated at the table, and the co-captain of the expedition began flipping through a ledger there.

  “$179.331/3,” he said after finding the appropriate entry, “you’ll have $179.331/3 waiting for you for your service.”

  “And I sincerely hope you don’t spend it all in one place, or on one woman,” Lewis said with a laugh, and even Colter broke out into a smile at that.

  “I trust you’ll not leave us until morning, is that right, Private?” Clark said, coming up and around from the table.

  “I couldn’t rightly leave without saying goodbye to the men first,” Colter said.

  Clark smiled. “No, John, no you couldn’t.”

  5 – Friends

  Colter left the tent and saw George and John over by a stand of trees on the riverbank. They perked up when they saw him leave the captains’ tent, and he quickly started over to them.

  “Well, what’d they say?” John asked as he drew near.

  “They said my commission’s up, I’m a free man,” Colter said with a smile.

  “Well I’ll be,” George said, taking a straw from his mouth that he’d been chewing on. It would have fallen otherwise, so large was the scout’s smile.

  “So when do you ship out?” John asked, the German’s accent clear.

  “In the morning,” Colter said. “Those men are eager to get a move on, eager to make their fortune.”

  “Ha!” a laugh came from behind the trees, and the men turned to see Sergeant John Ordway approaching. George and John frowned, but Colter just kept that stoic look on his face, the one he’d been wearing ever since he’d been put on trial for mutiny after threatening Ordway back in St. Louis. It’d been more than two years ago now, but everyone always figured there was tension between the two men. There wasn’t, and the two nodded at one another.

  “Headin’ out with two trappers, eh, Colter?”

  Colter nodded as he sat down on a fallen log. “Can’t keep proppin’ you boys up forever, you know?”

  That got a laugh from Ordway, and eased the tension a bit for the others. Ordway was a few years younger than Colter, but he had a lot more discipline. Being in the regular army would do that to a fellow, Colter supposed, something he wouldn’t know since he’d only been on the government’s payroll since signing up for the expedition. For Ordway it just seemed to have firmed up his face and made his way of talking more clipped. He was a good fellow, though, and the men respected his command.

  “What do you know about them, Ord?” Colter asked next, eager to hear the man’s opinion of the first whites the group had seen since setting out in 1804.

  “The one named Dixon got a slight wound in the leg after getting away from Sioux near Floyd’s Bluff, at least that’s what he reported to Captain Lewis,” Ordway said.

  “Joe was his name,” George pointed out, “and he and his partner Forest were low on ammunition by the time they reached us.”

  “It’s lucky they reached us when they did, what with the Blackfeet out there,” Ordway said.

  Colter nodded to that. He remembered well the encounter with the small band of young braves at the end of July. They’d tried to steal the men’s rifles and two had been killed. It was the worst thing that could have happened, and they’d hurried out of that area real quick. Colter knew that area well now, and he knew that he’d be avoiding it. It was the trapping that he was most interested in at this point. The mountain man had quite a bag of beaver pelts built up, as did most of the men. George took the prize in that department, however, and it was clear he had machinations about taking up the trade once his enlistment was up. Oh how Colter getting out earlier must have rubbed him the wrong way! Once again the mountain man gave a slight smile and thanked his good fortune that the men had grown into such good friends on the expedition. He also thanked his good fortune that the captains were such good men. The three of them would have twenty traps when they went upriver, a sight more than the he’d had to work with while on the expedition. It hadn’t come cheaply, that was for sure. At $5 a month he’d earned $179.331/3 for the thirty-five months and twenty-six days he’d put in, though that paled in comparison to what he’d made in secret, or at least off the army rolls.

  The Missouri had been good to the men of the expedition, and they stood to profit handsomely. Colter imagined what it’d be like when this trade really got going. Right now it was just Hudson’s Bay and Northwest Company men primarily, but in a few years there’d be many more. It’d be rough, that’s for sure, and things would be scarce. Colter tried to think back on some of the things he’d bought when last in civilization, and their prices. Coffee was $1.50 a pound and sugar to put in it ran $1.50 a pound as well. If you wanted a smoke to go along with it the tobacco would put you back $3 a pound. But then there were the other items, the ones few thought of except when they needed ‘em. Those were things like scissors at $2 a pair or buttons at $1.50 a dozen. All of those things were secondary to the furs, however. George knew most what the market for furs was like, and he was adamant that the men could get $2 a fur. It was an unheard of sum, considering a good man could bag two to three of the animals a day if he was lucky, and ensured he’d have his month’s earnings in but a few hours. But that supposed each man would have room to stow and carry his many furs, to the coast and back in some cases. The captains made it clear right from the get-go that that would not be the case. Each beaver fur weighed on average 1.64 pounds, and since there were half a dozen men trapping regularly, that’d be an extra 137 pounds on the boats each week. It simply wasn’t doable, so the men improvised. After they’d gotten into the plum trapping area of the Missouri, further on up and past the Mandan villages – and the exact area Colter was going to now – they’d quickly realized they’d have to change their strategy. No longer would the typical 1.64-pound beaver fur be accurate. In actuality they were dealing with a 25- to 50-pound beaver, if you added everything under the fur. That often meant they’d be carting out 3- and 4-pound furs. And it didn’t take too long to realize that they didn’t even really have to try to catch the things. The Rocky Mountain beaver were plentiful and hadn’t been trapped before. By the time the expedition had gotten back to the Mandan Villages from the coast, the men had 400 pounds of fur, 104 pounds belonging to Colter. If George’s rough estimates held true, that’d put the total haul at $800, with Colter’s share being $208 of that.

  Of course it took work to get all that money, and quite a bit of it. It was work that couldn’t be done from riverboats that were constantly moving either, not with the traps that had to be set and then checked and rechecked again more often than not. It’s not like you just set the trap down anywhere you wanted, walked away, and came back to find it full. No, it was a lot more work than that. It started with the previous catch, or at least what was left of it. The trap had to be cleaned and any stray fur or hair removed. That went doubly for blood, for there was nothing worse than coming back to find a wolf or coyote had eaten your catch. Of course cleaning was the easy part. After that was done the trap had to be set again, but that meant it had to be either moved or repositioned. Both were a pain, though the first more so. Fur traps were heavy, cumbersome and noisy. They weighed a good five pounds or more and even one or two could quickly weigh a man down. And forget hunting when you were carrying the things – any animal with one working ear would hear you a mile off, at least. It was a helluva life, in other words, and Colter couldn’t believe a man would just let
it all go.

  “You know damn well that there’s money out there, Ord,” Colter said.

  Ordway took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not sayin’ there ain’t, John, I’m just sayin’ that you’re getting into a tight spot here, one that’s much tighter than you’re in now.”

  “I’m doing alright,” Colter said.

  “Only because the captains have been so good to us.” Ordway sighed again and came over to sit next to Colter on the log. “They skirted rules, allowing us to take our pick like that. Oh, you might argue they didn’t have a choice, what with us making only $5 a month and all that river currency just floatin’ right on by us, or even built up under dams as we floated past.” He quieted down for a moment. “Hell, why you think George only ever focused on beaver when all that other, easier game was ripe for the pickings? It’s because that other game’s only good for eatin’ and not selling to those dandies in Europe!”

  “You ever eat a beaver, Ord?”

  “Hell no!” Ordway shot back, and both men laughed, a needed respite after their curt words. They stared out at the Missouri for a few moments, watching it eddy and roll its way south, toward St. Louis and eventually home…whatever that meant.

  “You’re so close, John…why do you want to give it up?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, about this,” Colter said, gesturing at the land around them.

  “It’s been more than two years now since we’ve been back in civilization, or even on the frontiers of it…don’t you miss that?”

  “Ain’t much to miss, if you ask me,” Colter said sullenly, and Ordway looked over at him. Here was a hunter, the best in a bunch of hunters, all fraught with anxiety and fear and apprehension, though about the wrong things. He was a mountain man, had been one ever since his earliest days in Virginia and then Kentucky, and the things that scared most mortals were the very things he sought out, found solace in, and excelled at. It was the people part that he wasn’t good at.