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Yellowstone, and swung into the smaller river. Sire had contracted to deposit the Rocky Mountain cargo just below Wolf Rapids if the river was navigable — as far as Joe LaBarge had gone the year before. There, if things went right, Brokenleg would rendezvous with half a dozen engages from the post along with their big Pittsburgh wagons, and he, Dust Devil, Maxim, and the three new engages, Paul Lebrun, Pierre Grevy, and Jean Poinsett, would travel upriver to the Bighorn — and Fitzhugh’s Post.
    They passed a vast herd of buffalo lazing in the cool of cottonwoods. The cumbersome beasts clambered to their feet and fled as the riverboat closed on them, vanishing into timber and then trickling up a coulee in the far bluff. Fitzhugh thought it was a good omen, a sure sign of a good trading year, and rejoiced. They steamed past a small village of Hidatsa, cousins of the Crows, exciting them to frenzy. The villagers raced along the banks screaming insults. Sire didn’t trust them and pushed into a moonlit night that taxed Black Dave Desiree’s skills to their utmost as he fathomed and fought the narrow channel.
    They reached Wolf Rapids the next day while Sire muttered that there wasn’t even enough flow to turn the packet around. As they approached Maxim appeared to be more and more agitated and sullen, until Brokenleg finally made his way to the bow and collared the young man.
    “You got some kind of itch?” he asked roughly.
    Maxim wouldn’t look at him.
    “You got something in your craw, boy. You git it out right now.”
    Maxim peered into the swirling green water looking miserable. When at last he forced himself to meet Brokenleg’s gaze his eyes seemed haunted.
    “I’m not going,” he mumbled.
    “You ain’t goin? What do you mean, boy?”
    “I’m going back with boat.”
    “Back with the boat! I need you! You signed on — you can’t jist ditch the company. Your pa, he’d kill you.”
    “I’m going back.”
    The boy swung his gaze back to the water, and he peered into it so studiously that Fitzhugh sensed he was hiding tears. Tears or not he’d pull that smart aleck plumb off the packet if he had to.
    “Lissen here, boy. You’re comin’ even if I got to hog-tie you and carry you off. You hear? You ain’t a quitter. I ain’t a quitter. Last year we didn’t quit and we come out of it in one piece. Now you git to your bunk and put your kit together.”
    “You’ll have to make me,” Maxim muttered, gripping the rail with white knuckles. “Make me your slave.”
    Brokenleg’s temper flared but he held himself in check. This was Guy Straus’s little boy he was barking at. “We’ll be hyar half a day unloadin’. You better damn well change your mind before we pull out!”
    But Maxim huddled over the rail as if expecting Fitzhugh to smack him.
    Brokenleg didn’t have time for one spoiled brat’s rebellion. As The Trapper slid close to the rendezvous island, a cottonwooded acre connected to the bank by gravelly shallows, he discovered only silence. He saw none of his engages, not even Samson Trudeau who was as reliable as a good Hawken rifle. And no wagons, either. They hadn’t met him. And that meant trouble.

Four
     
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    No one. Brokenleg studied the timbered island, hunting for the Pittsburgh wagons, for his engages. No one. They’d missed the rendezvous. He realized suddenly he was in a bad fix. Around him deckmen gathered at the rail, ready to lower a long stage and tie the packet fast as soon as the drifting boat, its giant wheels stilled, slid toward shore.
    This was near where they’d unloaded the year before; a secret place well screened by timber from the river trace; a place well known to all his engages except Abner Spoon and Zach Constable, who’d joined him later. He reviewed what he’d told Trudeau: have wagons and men there by mid-July and wait.
    The packet skidded into mud and lurched to a halt a dozen feet from the bank. Deckmen lowered the stage. It didn’t reach