Colters hell, p.7
Colter's Hell, page 7
“Thinks he’s gonna be fine with just his Northwest Trade Gun, here,” George said, now making some ‘clucking’ sounds with his tongue.
Colter frowned as Manuel looked over at him, for now he too was shaking his head. That lasted for a second before he reached into his voluminous buffalo robe and pulled out a pistol.
“That’s my Harper’s Ferry 1805,” he said of the gun, handing it over to the mountain man. Colter set down his musket and took the pistol, turned it over in his hands a few times. It was a flintlock, with silver fittings and a shiny golden butt plate. The trigger guard was also golden in color though the barrel was silver, with a small wooden ramrod fitting snugly under it. It was a fine pistol, and Colter raised it up and admired it from every angle while Manuel smiled. The mountain man quickly realized he had a much better weapon than the Captain’s McCormick pistol from last year.
“I’ll take good care of it and have it back to you in spring,” Colter said, looking up to Manuel with a smile.
“You’d better,” the Spaniard said with a scoff as he turned and started to walk back toward the fort, “or you’ll be paying me what it cost, $5.”
“$5!” Colter said, eyes going wide, and beside him George whistled.
Neither man heard what Manuel said to that, for by that time he was muttering in Creole under his breath and shaking his head all the while. The two smiled, and started out.
12 – The Shoshone River
Colter spent the days moving through a set of mountains that rose up high on his left, to the east of him. He’d been thinking of Nathaniel Pryor when he’d first spotted them and had thought of them as the Pryor Mountains ever since. Who knows, maybe the name would stick.
Colter had moved south along the Yellowstone after leaving George a few weeks before, the scout heading east the mountain man heading west. He’d followed the river for more than a day before striking south overland. Two days of walking showed that there were some distant mountains on the horizon, and it’d taken Colter another day to reach them. The early morning mist clung to them and produced a haze that lingered, creating a melancholy sense in the man. He pressed on despite it or because of it, and was rewarded two days later when he reached a river.
It was two rivers, actually, the larger Big Horn and then a smaller branching off of it. He knew one was coming up, and what it’d be like, but nothing could have prepared him for the second, or how bad it was. The smell was God-awful and he nearly retched when he’d first inhaled a chestful. He called it the Stink Water and kept his distance from it, something that helped somewhat. He knew that some tribes called it the Shoshone River, probably on account of how much they thought that tribe stunk, but he thought his name better. The stretch of water was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, what with the mountains rising up and giving over to another, larger range that headed south by southeast, but God did it smell bad. Must be some sulphur up there, he figured.
He turned his thoughts away from that and focused on his main dilemma, and that was meeting the Crow. Manuel had been convinced that it wouldn’t be a problem, but he was already several weeks out from the fort now, in their territory, and he hadn’t seen one sign of them. Colter knew that he’d be running into them soon, however, and so he kept his eyes peeled. Anything could be out in these wilds, he knew...anything.
13 – The Frenchman
Francois-Antoine Larocque sat on the bank of the river chewing his lip and trying to look as mean as he could. If he looked mean, he knew, the Cree would leave him alone. For the most part, that is – there were always a few young boys that were ready to push and prod him and generally make him feel like the hostage he was. The Frenchman frowned, let out a sigh, and kept right on chewing.
He was tall when not stooped over, which he was more than often as of late, being pulled or dragged somewhere it seemed. The latter had turned his clothes to rags, with more holes than he could count. They hung off him, his tattered trousers and shirt from Montreal, though his moccasins and fur coat were holding up. His hair was black and his eyes brown, and those eyes darted about constantly, always wary, always looking for trouble. He rubbed at his bristly face, for even out here in the wilds as an Indian captive he did his best to shave.
He hadn’t always been an Indian captive, far from it. When he’d left Fort Montagne La Bosse on the Assiniboine River in the spring of 1805 he’d been one of the leading trappers of the North West Company. The Company still called the area the Upper Red River Department, and the surrounding Assiniboine, Souris, and Qu’Appelle Rivers were all dominated by them. Even Lake Manitoba and Like Winnipeg further north had their fingerprints all over them, and all trappers knew, the northlands belonged to the French still to this day.
The previous winter Laroque had travelled south to the Mandan Villages with fellow a trapper. There he’d met with the American explorers, Lewis and Clark. They’d been a bit gruff and not interested in him, more concerned that the Frenchman would share their secrets with the competing foreign interests in the area, so he’d cut his time there short. When the Company got wind of what the Americans were up to, however, Laroque was sent back. His boss, Charles J.B. Chaboillez, was adamant that he get down there and cement trading relations with the friendly tribes before the Americans did.
He reached the Mandan villages for the second time in Mid-June and declared his intention to trade with the neighboring Crow tribe. The Mandans were adamant that he not travel to Crow lands, for the Mandan would lose out their middle-man between the whites and the Crow. The Mandans pretended to be afraid of the other tribes – Assiniboine, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Pawnees – because they didn’t want the whites selling them guns.
The Crow didn’t mind, however, and things didn’t work out for the Mandan chiefs when more than 600 Crow Indians arrived at the Mandan villages at the end of June. Laroque spoke with them and then at the end of the month he travelled with them to their villages. They passed the Knife, Little Missouri, and Powder Rivers further to the southwest. By mid-August they’d reached the Tongue River and then turned north to move through the Wolf Mountains. By the end of August they’d reached the Big Horn River and camped on Lime Kiln Creek.
While the Mandan were worried that the Crow and other tribes like them were only interested in guns, the truth of the matter was that they were interested in just about everything under the sun. The best items, Laroque and other trappers like him had discovered, were simple things like cock feathers, rings, beads, colored glasses, papers, and the pigment vermillion. They were also interested in items that had a bit more use, and the Frenchman always made it a point to carry quite a few small knives, large knives, awls, and ball and powder. For while he might not trade that many guns with the Indians – he didn’t have that many to trade, and carrying more than a couple was quite burdensome – that didn’t mean many of the Indians didn’t already have guns, weapons that just needed ammunition. Laroque was happy to trade it with them, so long as he got the furs he was looking for. While the man knew how to bait and set a trap just as well as the next trapper, he tried to keep his hands clean as much as possible. Trading was the way to do that, and although all the items previously mentioned were fine and dandy, nothing could excite the Indians like tobacco (alcohol of course excited them much more, but Laroque had learned early on, after a particularly bad night in fact, that trading it to them did little to excite him). Tobacco was another matter entirely, for it didn’t lead to violence, and the Frenchman doled it out generously wherever he went...in return for payment, of course.
He’d been doling it out quit liberally that September of 1806, so much so that he quickly became overburdened with trade goods of his own, furs and pelts mainly, though a few other Indian knick-knacks as well, for there was a growing market for such, no matter how useless the things might be. All of that had caused Laroque to head back up the Big Horn near the beginning of October. Mid-month saw him at the Mandan Villages for more trading, and then he went overland to the Souris River, was happy to see the boat he’d left was still there, undisturbed by the Chippewa Indians, and then went onward to Fort Rouge at the southern end of Lake Winnipeg. The place was pretty empty that time of year, and had been that way since the 1750s when it’d largely been abandoned. Alexander Henry “The Younger” had built it back up in 1803, however, and that meant that Larocque could winter there in relative comfort, as much as you could get out in the wilds, 1,100 miles from the nearest Canadian city of any size, Montreal. It was late-November by that point, however, and it wasn’t likely that the Frenchman could make the overland journey to the city that late in the year. It would have to be overland, for the rivers were already freezing solid.
And so Larocque had waited out the winter, his sights set on heading east to Montreal come the first thaw, but those plans had been interrupted come March when two fellow Frenchmen came along one day, fresh from their winter out on the Saskatchewan and Qu’Appelle Rivers. Larocque had never seen two men so weighed down with furs, and all thoughts of heading back to civilization left him when they began calculating how much money those men had coming. A deal was struck right then and there that the two would take Larocque’s haul back to Montreal, for a small cut of course, depositing it into his Bank of Montreal account there. It was a small gamble trusting the men, but the Frenchman knew that the frontier was a small place when it came to whites, and that they’d likely cross paths again. If there’d been any past improprieties, it wouldn’t be a friendly shout that met the trappers, but a rifle shot, hopefully one that killed.
Laroque doubted it would come to that, and he didn’t much care – thoughts of riches were going through his head as he started overland once again, heading back south to the Mandan Villages. He reached them in the spring of 1807 but so hungry for profits was he that he didn’t even stop at them, in fact, kept quite a distance, picking up the Missouri further on. By May he was on the Yellowstone and then a short time later he was heading back down the Big Horn. He hadn’t run into any Crows along the way, but he was hoping he would, both to trade with and to learn the best beaver spots that year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the Crow that he ran into, but the Cree.
It’d occurred around the Wind River, and was as simple as the Frenchman tearing through a small copse of trees just as a band of Cree braves was tearing through another. They’d come face to face, and for a moment both the white and the Indians paused, unsure of what to do. The Frenchman had ended that quickly when he turned and ran, hoping against hope that he could outrun the braves, perhaps lose them somewhere on the river. He was thinking just that when he glanced back over his shoulder to see how close they were on his tail, then turned back to see a large and low-hanging tree branch before him. He’d hit it, and everything had went black. When he’d come to, his hands and feet were tied and he was sitting on the edge of a fire near a river, the band of Cree carousing and enjoying his supplies, especially the small bottle of Whiskey he’d had, not to mention all of his tobacco.
Laroque frowned and let out a sigh as he thought back to the events that had brought him to his current predicament, chewing his lip all the while. It’d been six months now that he’d been a captive, and winter was setting in once again. That meant he’d be marched back to the main Cree village, a place he’d only been brought to twice before. It seemed the Indians liked having him out in the wilds with them, doing much of the hard trapping work for them. The Frenchman obliged, for he knew the alternative was death. Now that the rivers were freezing, however, the beaver toughening up for the winter, their furs becoming oilier and less sought after, Larocque knew that his value was nearing its end. In the summer he could work for his food; in the winter he’d likely be cutoff as stores ran low. And when the Cree cut someone off, that usually meant they’d killed ‘em.
The Frenchman knew his tenuous time was nearly up. He’d have to do something about that, and soon.
14 – Colter’s Hell
The days continued, though they grew shorter and colder. It was the dead of winter and Colter was in the thick of it. Snow crunched under every step and the wind howled constantly. Food was scarce, for game was hiding or wintering and all that grew had long since ceased. The rivers were of course teaming with fish, most under the frozen ice, but the mountain man had as much of a dislike for them as Captains Lewis and Clark had. Even when they’d been bordering on starvation while crossing the Rockies they hadn’t stooped to eating fish, and Colter wasn’t about to now. Not that he needed to – his supplies were sound and his health good. It’d been an enjoyable solo trek through the wilderness so far, with amazing sights, wonderful sounds, and one of the greatest senses of tranquility that he’d ever experienced.
Colter had passed by Bighorn Lake a week before, as he’d called it, for it’d come off the Big Horn River, it’s towering canyons rising up on either side as the water snaked its way through the mountains there. He kept on the dreaded stink water of the Shoshone River, for that was the only route west. Well, it was the only route west that he knew of...so far. After moving overland from the Yellowstone he’d followed the mountains south until he’d met up with the Big Horn. He knew he didn’t want to go past it, as that would take him too far east, into the territory that George was to explore. So he’d shot out westward from there, following the Shoshone, and regretting it all the while as he covered his nose, the better to avoid the water’s terrible smells.
He continued on, unmolested save for the weather. No Indians at all were around him, it seemed, and he wasn’t really surprised – it was the dead of winter, after all. Any smart Indian would be back at his village, in his tepee with the fire blazing, and most likely with a squaw or two to keep him company. Colter smiled at that, thinking of Forest and their trip to the A’anninen the winter before. In the end the man’s desire had been the death of him. Still, Colter thought, shaking his head, who could have expected an ambush that day on the river?
The mountain man shook the thoughts away and kept on trekking. He reached Heart Mountain, the name he gave to a solitary peak jutting up out of one low range, one with a slight indentation on the top that resembled a heart. Perhaps it was just that his own heart was feeling lonely, Colter thought as he walked past the mountain for a day or more before turning south. It was a good a spot as any, he figured, and a noticeable one, should he need to come back this way for whatever reason. He doubted he would, however, for this winter expedition was about as dull as they came.
~~~
The dullness continued all along the stinking river, though Colter kept well enough away from it to escape the worst of it, except when the wind picked up from that direction. Other than that, it was much the same as last winter, after he’d gone it alone – walking, thinking, and looking. There wasn’t much else you could do in the middle of nowhere and with no one else around. He wasn’t much of a talker with other people, and the idea of talking to himself wasn’t an appealing one. So the days passed by in silence for the most part, the world going on its merry way despite him.
That all changed one day as he neared the strangest of sights. In the far distance he could see what looked to be campfires, for nothing but smoke could create that. Colter knelt down, looked around, and tightened his grip on his gun. There must be a village around here, he figured, and most likely that would be the Crow. He hoped it was, for he was trying to run into some of them.
The mountain man set out, nearing the smoke but staying in the trees while doing so. He needn’t have bothered, he soon realized, for what he was seeing wasn’t the smoke from campfires but some kind of smoke belching up right there from the earth. His eyes narrowed and his hand moved up to rub at his jaw. This was unlike anything Colter had seen before, and he was getting a bad feeling about the whole area. It wasn’t natural, that was for sure, more like some kind of wasteland on the landscape, the devil’s dance hall or some other hell on earth.
He pressed on, his earlier wariness and apprehension turning to curiosity and intrigue. The area was pure wonder. Bubbling pools of water, most clear but quite a few milky or grey, were spread all across the landscape. With care and ease the mountain man walked up to one of the pools, one of the clear ones. It was hot, steam rising up off of it, but he still bent down to see how hot it was.
“Yow!” he yelled, stumbling back to land on his bottom in the snow.
He quickly stuck his finger down in that snow, for he’d burned it something fierce in the scalding water. If a man were to fall into a pool like that he’d be dead in moments. That opinion was confirmed a short time later as the mountain man trudged on, passing by the various pools, for one held the carcass of an elk, a good-sized one too, with six points on each antler. It was big and healthy and Colter could only figure that it’d gotten into a fight with another six-point buck only to come out on the losing end. It was but halfway submerged in the steaming pool after all, just the head and shoulders and mighty antlers. He shook his head as he passed by, for it was quite the waste of a fine creature.
There were no more dead animals in any of the pools that Colter passed by that day, nor the mighty fountains of steam and water that shot up into the air. Those seemed to be clustered in one area, and as he moved evermore south, they faded from view, the same as the pools. By the next day he was out of the hellish area and back to regular-looking land. He was thankful for it too, for that particular spot of wilderness had no earthly right to be there.
15 – Skirting the Mountains
Colter continued moving south, skirting the Absaroka Range. Days passed in the company of the mountains, the towering peaks shooting up on his right side. Jagged teeth was more like it, the mountain man thought, for the mountains had the tendency to shoot up every few hundred yards in a towering pinnacle that stood high over the surrounding range. Those peaks were hundreds of feet above him, maybe thousands, covered with snow and about as forbidding as could be. Colter couldn’t imagine having to pass over them, wasn’t sure if you could. No, it was skirting beside them, moving south, hoping a break would come, a pass of some sort that would allow travel to the west, and eventually back north on their other side. Colter had decided that he’d make the turn west once he reached that pass, for it’d inevitably turn up. Already the mountain man had gone more than 150 miles south, probably more, and if he hoped to make it back to Manuel and his fort by spring, he’d better be making that turn quick.
