For three days Nate saw no one other than Adeline, Doctor Mangel, and an elderly woman who brought all of his meals, a maid in the employ of Monsieur Jacques Debussy. The maid spoke French fluently but knew little English, which limited their conversations to an exchange of greetings and nothing more.
During those three days Nate saw nothing of the man whose hospitality made his convalescence possible. From Adeline he learned the Debussy family had settled in the St. Louis area back in 1774, ten years after two French fur traders set up a trading post on the site that would later grow to become the city itself. The family prospered, acquired a large estate, and weathered the change in government when St. Louis was acquired by the United States as part of the
Louisiana Purchase in 1804. In succinct response to questions from Nate, Adeline disclosed the Debussy family had widespread business interests, with investments in everything from the fur trade to raising grain and cattle.
On the evening of the third day, feeling much stronger and impatient to be up and about, Nate slid out of bed and padded on naked feet to an open closet. Inside hung his torn buckskins, while in the corner leaned his Hawken. On the floor were his pistols, his butcher knife and tomahawk, and his ammo pouch and powder horn. Everything else had been taken by the Cheyennes. Pegasus, the other mounts, all of the pack animals and all the supplies were gone. He had been surprised to learn the Cheyennes had failed to take his weapons and commented on it to Adeline. She had promptly answered that the trappers came on the scene as the Indians were gathering their booty and the Cheyennes had fled rather than confront six armed whites. In their haste the Cheyennes had neglected to strip his weapons.
Now he donned his britches, grimacing at a series of painful twinges, then shuffled to the window and stood in the warm sunlight. The bedroom fronted to the west and he could see the rosy sun sinking toward the distant horizon. He spotted the gardener digging to the south, and when the man idly glanced in his direction, he waved. Oddly, the gardener put down his shovel and hastened off, disappearing behind a hedge. What was that all about? he wondered.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
He replied without turning around. “I wasn’t expecting you until later.”
“Obviously,” Adeline said, and came over to stand next to him. “Keep this up and you’ll have a relapse. Then you’ll be in bed for much longer. Do you want that to happen?”
“I’m recovering nicely,” Nate said, smiling at her. He couldn’t get over how beautiful she was, even more so than he had recollected, although her face had changed in subtle ways. Thin lines radiated outward from each eye, crow’s-feet they were called, and she habitually held her mouth pressed tight, her jaw muscles tense, as if she were under some sort of strain. Her eyes, when not fixed on him, seemed strangely colder than he remembered. But her body was as full and lovely as ever and her voice as smooth as silk.
“Do you still intend to place markers on the graves of your family?”
“I do.”
Adeline shook her head reproachfully. “I wish you would reconsider. You said yourself there are no landmarks out on the prairie and you might not be able to find the spot where the panther jumped you. Why risk your life needlessly?”
“It’s something I have to do,” Nate said.
“You were never this stubborn back in New York.”
Nate watched the setting sun.
“You’ve changed in more ways than I would have imagined,” Adeline went on. “You’re not the same man who would do whatever I wanted without objecting, who always agreed that I knew best.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Not at all,” Adeline said quickly. “But it has come as a bit of a shock.” She paused. “When I first arrived out here and heard the stories being told, I couldn’t believe them. Jacques has many friends who trap for a living, and from them he had learned a lot about you. About how the Indians had taken to calling you Grizzly Killer, and how you were one of the most famous fur men, as well known as Jim Bridger, Joe Meek, or Shakespeare McNair.”
The mention of his mentor caused Nate immense grief.
“I’m sorry,” Adeline said on seeing his expression. “I shouldn’t have brought up his name.”
“It will take a while for me to accept the fact Shakespeare is gone. Had you known him you would understand. He possessed a zest for life unmatched by anyone else I know.”
They stood in silence for several minutes. A cardinal flitted from bush to bush until with a frantic flapping of wings it darted into the sky. A moment later the reason for its flight became apparent when a man appeared with a pair of large brown dogs on separate long leashes. The man was short and squat, built like the trunk of a tree, wore dirty clothes. He crossed the garden from south to north and vanished around a shed.
Nate’s eyes narrowed. There was something about that fellow he hadn’t liked, although he couldn’t identify what it might have been. “Who was he?” he inquired.
“That was Yancy. He works for Jacques.”
“Doing what?”
“Oh, whatever needs doing. He’s the foreman of the estate. A more loyal man you couldn’t ask for.”
“And those dogs?”
“Jacques owns a dozen or so. He uses them to patrol the estate and keep things calm.”
Nate looked at her. “How do you mean?”
“The estate encompasses over two thousand acres. As you must know, there are a lot of thieves and other brigands in St. Louis and along the Mississippi River. They give Jacques trouble from time to time by trying to steal some of his cattle and horses. The guards and the dogs usually prevent them from succeeding.”
“I see,” Nate said’ bothered by a vague feeling she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. Which was ridiculous. Why would Adeline deceive him? He rubbed his brow and attributed his unwarranted suspicion to being excessively tired and still tremendously upset over the deaths of his family. His mind wasn’t functioning as it should. “When will I get to meet Monsieur Debussy?”
“In a few days,” Adeline replied. “He’s off on a business trip and I expect him back soon.”
Nate walked to the bed and sank down in relief. His legs were weaker than he thought and he would have to be careful not to overextend himself for the time being. “You say he was an old friend of your father’s?”
“Yes,” Adeline said, stepping to a chair. “My father, as you surely remember, oversaw a vast business empire. He was one of the wealthiest men in New York City. In the country, for that matter.” She smoothed her dress. “He met
Jacques eight or nine years ago when he visited St. Louis to arrange for grain shipments to points in the East.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Nate began, then hesitated, not wanting to upset her by bringing up the subject of her parents.
“How did my father and mother die?” Adeline finished for him.
“If you care to tell me.”
Adeline folded her hands on her lap and took a deep breath, her bosom expanding as if inflated. “My father’s health started to fail him about three years ago. Somehow I always thought he would live forever, but he never did know how to slow down or how to eat properly or how not to worry over his many financial ventures. Eventually it all caught up with him. One morning my mother found him in his study, slumped over his desk. She contacted his physician right away, but by the time the doctor arrived at our mansion my father had passed on.”
“I’m very sorry,” Nate said, and meant it. Adeline and her father had been very close and he knew they had both sincerely loved one another. Personally, he had always rated her father as too stern and dictatorial to suit him. But he had to admit Stanley Van Buren had been a devoted parent and always had Adeline’s best interests at heart.
“My mother took Father’s death extremely hard,” Adeline continued in a low, reserved, almost timid voice.
For a few seconds Nate had the illusion that it wasn’t a full-grown woman sitting there but a little girl who had been cruelly thrust into the dark by a capricious fate.
“She stopped eating regularly and shut herself in her room for days at a time,” Adeline said. “I tried my best to change her attitude. I tried to convince her that she had so much to live for, but she would have none of it. She couldn’t bear going on without father. Within a year of his death she took ill and died despite the efforts of two doctors to save her.” She stopped and touched a hand to the corner of one eye. “They told me she simply gave up the ghost. She lost the will to live.”
Nate was reminded of the story Shakespeare had told about his mother and remorse seized him. He was profoundly sorry he had brought up the subject, undoubtedly disturbing Adeline by stirring memories better left alone. To take her mind off the tragedy he said the first thing that came into his head. “I wonder if Monsieur Debussy would see fit to extend me a loan.”
“What?” Adeline said, perplexed by the sudden change in their topic of conversation.
“I sold a great many furs at the Rendezvous this year and kept the money in a pouch in my saddlebags. Since my horse was stolen, I’m penniless. And I’ll need money to buy the provisions I’ll need for my trip out onto the plains.”
“You need not concern yourself about money. What is mine is yours. I will give you whatever you need.”
A realization struck Nate and he snapped his fingers. “That’s right. You must be wealthy now. As your father’s sole surviving heir you stood to
inherit the family fortune.”
“I inherited every penny he had,” Adeline said.
“Then perhaps you would lend me a couple of hundred dollars until next summer. By then I’ll have trapped enough beaver to be able to pay you back and pocket a tidy profit besides.”
Adeline stared at him as if stunned. “You plan to continue living as a free trapper?”
“Of course. Why?”
“After what happened to your family I had assumed you would be willing to give up living as a savage in the mountains and return to your roots, where you belong.”
“I belong in the Rockies. Trapping is all I know. It’s in my blood.”
“You can’t be serious,” Adeline said. “You were a fine accountant once, remember? You had a head for figures and complicated calculations. You stood to do well in the business world.”
Nate leaned on an elbow and sighed. “Adeline, everything you say is true up to a point. I worked as an accountant at P. Tuttle and Sons, but mainly at the insistence of my father, who convinced old man Tuttle to take me on. And it was your father, with a lot of prompting from you, who offered to launch me on a career in the merchant trade.”
“And what did you do?” Adeline said, resentment in her tone. “You ran off without a word to anyone to join your uncle in the wilderness.” She cocked her head, studying him. “I will never, ever understand how you could throw away a promising future to live as a grubby trapper.”
“I like being free.”
“Free?” Adeline said, and laughed. “You were just as free in New York City as you are in your precious mountains. Name me one thing you can’t do in New York that you can do in the Rockies.”
Before Nate could elaborate there arose a shriek of terror from outside. He jumped up and saw a man racing across the twilight-shrouded garden, a lone black man in tattered clothing. Around the shed appeared a pair of bounding brown dogs, perhaps the same pair he seen earlier. They were no longer on their leashes and they bore down on the hapless black in snarling fury. “What is going on?” he demanded.
“I—” Adeline began, and froze as the tableau beyond the window reached its inevitable conclusion.
The dogs rapidly overtook the fleeing black. He spun to confront them, holding his arms up to protect his face, and the superbly trained animals took him low down, each dog tearing into a leg. The man screamed and toppled and there was a swirl of legs and arms and snapping jaws as he fought the dogs.
Nate took a step toward the closet, planning to grab his rifle, throw open the window, and enter the fray, but Yancy and two men raced into view. The men held clubs. They closed on the thrashing figures in the grass, and while Yancy pulled the dogs off to one side the two men beat the bloody black senseless. Then they each grasped an ankle and dragged the man to the north. Yancy and the leashed dogs trailed them.
It had all happened so fast, Nate was flabbergasted. He looked at Adeline and saw her features were flushed. “Do you know what that was all about?”
“No,” she responded, shaking her head. “But I assure you I’ll get to the bottom of this and let you know.” Lifting her hem off the floor she swept out of the room.
Nate had to sit down on the bed again. The excitement had caused minor dizziness and he needed to rest. No one had lit the lamps in his room yet, so he sat there in the gathering darkness and reviewed what he had witnessed. The cruelty of the men with the clubs had greatly impressed him. If they were employed by Jacques Debussy, then there was more to Debussy than Adeline had let on. He gazed through the window at the benighted estate and wondered what in the world he had blundered into.
One way or the other he was going to find out.