Free Rocky Mountain Company by Richard S. Wheeler Page A

conquer.
    The next morning he lowered himself into the dark hold and began his inventory by the pitiful light of the coal oil lamp. That’s when he discovered the shortage. Trembling, he began a hunt, pushing cargo, peering down the two aisles, fear clutching at him, wondering how long he’d let this terrible loss escape his attention. Twice he toured the hold, stem to stern, but the bales were not there. He stooped down to the bilge, wondering if the missing goods lay in the rocking water, and saw nothing in the oily light. The blankets! Good Witney blankets, brought all the way from southern England to New York, and then shipped to New Orleans and up to St. Louis. Witney trade blankets, used by Hudson’s Bay and all traders, made in one-point, two-point, and three-point sizes, with bars on them to tell tribesmen the approximate weight — and cost. A three-point blanket weighed about four pounds, and ran six feet long. They’d been baled into twenty-blanket lots and carefully set high above the rest of the cargo to keep them from the bilge. Gone! Fifteen bales of blankets, three hundred of them, the entire year’s supply for trading — gone. Terror cramped Maxim. He wept, feeling too young, too much a boy, as he probed the hold once again, half afraid some vicious man would jump out from a dark corner with a knife. But no. The blankets had vanished. Each one had cost around two dollars, higher or lower depending on weight, imported from the Early Company in Witney, west of London. By the time they reached the new post on the Big Horn they’d cost the Buffalo Company over four dollars, most of it for shipping. More than twelve hundred dollars gone. They’d fetch from one to five robes apiece, depending on weights and qualities.
    He paused, the lantern clutched in his sweating palms, engulfed in misery. The missing blankets would have traded for around a thousand robes, each worth about four dollars back east. Over four thousand dollars. Tears welled up and streaked his cheeks, and he wished desperately he’d never come up the great Missouri.

Six
     
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    The boy looked like he wanted to die. “I’ve let you down,” he cried.
    Grimly, Brokenleg followed him down to the main deck, and into the hold, and they began a systematic search. An hour later Fitzhugh knew for certain that the boy had it right: fifteen bales of blankets, each weighing about fifty pounds, had vanished overnight.
    They’d anchored at a wooded island, a half day’s travel from Fort Clark and the Mandan villages. There’d been a new moon, which meant the night had been as black as nights get. Most of the deck passengers had debarked, leaving only a handful bound for Fort Union or the post at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri.
    That meant that fewer people were sleeping on the deck these days. Most of the remaining deck passengers were the Buffalo Company’s own engagés, sleeping under the Pittsburgh wagons. The others usually slept along the boiler, well back of the hatch and foredeck. The blankets had been a perfect choice, he thought. The loss of one of the most important trade items would paralyze their operation and drive tribesmen to the American Fur Company posts, which were well supplied with them. And they’d been the quietest item to steal, soft so that they didn’t scrape and bang while being hauled away, or splash much if they were eased into the river. And nicely bundled in bales a man could handle easily — or two men, one below in the hold and the other receiving the bales and dumping them gently into the black current, all but invisible in the night.
    But were they dumped, or would they show up on AFC shelves somewhere? Ditched, he thought. The Platte had anchored at an island small enough to make a cache of them risky, especially with engagés gathering livestock in the morning. On the other hand, these Witney blankets were identical to those used by AFC and Hudson’s Bay, and could be put into AFC