Buffalo Palace

12

“Ever you see anything like this before?” Tuttle asked.

All Bass could do was shake his head.

In his youth he had floated down two of America’s greatest rivers, shoulder to shoulder with a crew of hard-bitten, double-dyed Kentucky boatmen. He had even reveled in the rum-sodden fleshpots of Natchez-Under-the-Hill and “The Swamp” farther down in the port of New Orleans. But none of that had prepared him for the sheer joy of camaraderie expressed by those men gathered on the grassy, willow-veined floor of what would one day very soon come to be known among the mountain trappers as Cache Valley.*

True enough, he had seen the hustle and bustle of those Ohio River port cities: Cincinnati and Louisville. And he had soaked in the heady, noisy air of raucous New Orleans, where more than a dozen languages were spoken around him. But never had Titus expected he would find anything quite like this out here in the middle of all this wilderness.

They had rolled in that afternoon with Fitzpatrick’s brigade, Cooper’s outfit joining all the rest whooping and bellering back at those who were screeching and shouting to welcome every group of new arrivals.

More than a hundred of them had already gathered in Willow Valley, at least half the faces pretty near scraped clean of whiskers. Out they came from beneath blanket and brush bowers to fire their rifles into the air, whoop like wild, red-eyed warriors, and greet these last to pull in. Lunging through the dottings of the large creamy flowers that towered along the tall stalks of the Spanish bayonet, they jumped and cavorted—slapping and jabbing at the horsemen they knew, offering their hands to those they did not. Horse hooves and moccasins trampled the bold sunflower-yellow of the arrowleaf balsamroot as every last one of these men celebrated this midsummer homecoming of old friends and new, drawn here from distant parts.

In addition to all those trappers Ashley was responsible for bringing to the mountains in the past few seasons, Etienne Provost led his own band of partisans, who had worked their way north out of Mexican territory far to the southeast, down below the international boundary of the Arkansas River. This redoubtable figure had first grown concerned, eventually desperate, in recent weeks when his own partner, Francois Leclerc, had failed to show up with supplies from Santa Fe at the appointed place and time for their own rendezvous. No telling what ad happened—but the unspoken belief was there among Provost’s men that Leclerc’s outfit could well have been wiped out on its way north toward the Wasatch and Uintah country.

Along the banks of a stream stood more than a dozen small wickiups belonging to the wives of some twenty-five Iroquois trappers who, until a year ago, had been employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company working out of English posts far to the north and west on the Columbia River. But in the summer of 1825 the Iroquois had encountered the shrewd William Ashley, who sweet-talked them into turning their backs on the English and trading their furs to him instead. That Ashley-instigated betrayal would be the beginning of some bad blood between the HBC’s Snake-country outfits operating under the hard-bitten Scotsman John Work and those upstart and most undisciplined Americans probing ever deeper into the beaver country of the inner basin. A land the English had had all to themselves … until now.

Besides the lion’s share in attendance—those who owed some sort of allegiance to one company or another—here gathered a generous sprinkling of free trappers already making their presence known in these fledgling years, plying the waters of the great continental spine on their own hook. Men who, like Provost, had originally plunged into the mountains from the north along the Upper Missouri River drainage, besides those many and more who had first come overland to the tiny villages of Taos and Santa Fe at the far northern reaches of Mexican Territory.

This summer at least two dozen such men were in attendance—men who, like Silas Cooper’s bunch, owed allegiance to no man.

Yet one thing was as clear as those streams flowing down from the Bear River Range this midsummer of 1826: if a man didn’t hanker to march all the way south to Taos country, or east over yonder to the posts on the Lower Missouri, then General William H. Ashley was offering them the only game in these parts. If a trapper wanted to deal himself in for the coming year, he damn well had to sit down at the general’s table and be willing to play with the general’s deck.

Not that Ashley hadn’t had a tough time of it getting there himself. The overland journey, hauling his supplies and twenty-six men up the Platte to the Sweetwater then down to Ham’s Fork, had turned out to be such a test of endurance that nearly half of his men had eventually deserted the general. But there on Ham’s Fork that warm day back in late May, Ashley had been greeted with nearly sixty-five of his own trappers brought in by his partner, Jedediah Strong Smith, and the iron-legged Moses Harris. Their reunion was not to last long, for Ashley pushed the whole brigade on west to the Bear River, where they followed its meandering bend to the south, ultimately reaching the site he had designated last summer for this rendezvous—Willow Valley.

Near the site where the competitors under Danish sea captain John Weber and the mountain veteran Johnson Gardner had passed the previous winter, that late June day Ashley must surely have gazed about at plenty of tall, ripening grass gently waving in the breezes to fill the bellies of their stock, the many streams gurgling down from the circuit of sheltering hills, the thick vegetation choking every creekbank, branches and vines heavy with ripening fruit, as well as the beauty of the nearby peaks still mantled with snow at this early season … and decided it was good.

Here they would hold their second mountain rendezvous—now at the very dawn of that most glorious era of western exploration. Lewis and Clark had cracked open the portal, laying out the lure and the bait. Manuel Lisa and Alexander Henry had together been the first to throw their shoulders against the sturdy door to that imposing wilderness. And now it was these very men gathered in Willow Valley that hot summer of 1826—those trappers bound to Ashley as well as those bound to no other—who would in the seasons to come shove wide-open the gate, thrusting themselves against a barrier that would never, could never, be closed again.

Let there be no doubt, even in those earliest days of the mountain fur trade, these hardy hundred were ready for a celebration after all they had accomplished in the last season.

When the Ashley men had broken up into brigades for their spring hunt, Fitzpatrick’s band had marched north to trap the Portneuf River all the way to the Snake—where they dodged Blackfoot war parties more times than they’d care to recount. A second brigade moved far afield that spring, pushing past the Great Salt Lake not only in search of beaver but in search of that wondrous new country off somewhere in the interior basin. Still another band pushed all the way north to Flathead country, plunging into the mountains that would soon become known as the Bitterroots, where they found sign of and bumped up against their competitors trapping for John Bull’s Hudson’s Bay Company.

Ashley’s men had worked hard and repeatedly put their lives on the line to earn this rendezvous. A good thine it was Ashley had thought to bring liquor along for the first time this trip out. Even better-that a large band of the western Shoshone had been curious enough at this growing gathering of the white men to wander in and join the celebration. Trouble was—no one knew at first if those horse-mounted warriors who suddenly appeared in the distance were friend or foe.

“Dammit all anyway,” Bud Tuttle grumbled that second day after reaching the rendezvous site, “just when I was getting my dry gullet ready for some of Ashley’s whiskey—those damned red niggers go an’ show up and wanna fight!”

Every man had turned out that late morning as the alarm spread and weapons were taken up. The men were grumbling, for it was to have been that day Ashley tapped his kegs of raw, clear corn liquor … and now, by bloody damn, a few hundred Injuns showed up on the nearby hills to make trouble. But Bridger, Fraeb, and two others quickly mounted up bareback and started off loaded for bear—counting on determining if these strangers be the friendly sort, or a fighting breed.

“Where the blue blazes you think you’re bound?” Cooper demanded the moment he realized Bass was pulling his horse free of its picket pin.

“Going with them yonder to have a look-see at the Injuns.”

Silas snorted, wagging his head with a grin. “If’n that don’t take the circle, boys! We got us a greenhorn what goes riding off to make hisself trouble with red niggers … like them red-bellies ain’t trouble enough all by themselves!”

“This h’aint none of your ’ffair,” the old German-born Fraeb grumbled as Bass joined the quartet loping toward the low hills.

“My skelp too—so I figgered to see for my own self,” Titus replied as he reined his horse in alongside the others strung out in a broad front—their smooth faces bright in the summer sunshine of that morning, their long hair fluttering like battle flags behind these rough-edged knights-errant.

Bridger’s eyes quickly dashed over the newcomer’s outfit, spotting the pair of pistols stuffed down in his belt and the long, heavy, and serviceable mountain rifle clutched atop Bass’s thighs. “Might’n be some of the same goddamned Blackfoots we fit not far north of here,” he declared by way of warning to the older man riding on his left. “Maybeso they follered our sign, figgering to have themselves another go at us.”

Fraeb asked, “Ever you fit Injuns?”

“Last spring it were,” Titus answered as they watched the horsemen on the crest of the hill begin to spread themselves out in a wide front. “’Rapahos, they was.”

“That ain’t a good bunch neither, ’Rapahos ain’t,” Bridger said to Fraeb with no small measure of approval.

“Wagh! ’Rapaho h’ain’t never be no Blackfoot,” the old German howled disparagingly. Then his eyes mocked Bass as he said, “An’ one fide don’ make you no fider.”

“Leave ’im be, ol’ man,” Bridger scolded. “Sounds to me like this feller’s got him a few wrinkles on his horns already.”

As Fraeb glared at Bass a moment longer but ventured not one word more, it became immediately apparent to Titus how Fitzpatrick’s men had come to respect that youngster from Missouri—no matter his age or theirs.

“Lookee thar!” hollered the man on the off side of Fraeb.

Scalplocks and feathers fluttered in the breeze as the warriors arrayed themselves on the crest of the hill in a battle front.

“How many you make it, Frapp?” Bridger demanded as they slowed their lope to a walk.

Just then a half-dozen of the brown-skinned horsemen punched ahead of the others from the center of that phalanx arrayed on the hill.

“Coot be more’n a hunnert,” the old man roared. “H’ain’t allays good at ciphers come times like dis!”

“We gonna have our hands full,” commented one of the others. “Be no doubt of that.”

“Gloree!” Bass cried. “Bridger! Don’t count on a fight this day. Look yonder!”

The young partisan and the rest looked off where Bass was pointing, to the near side of the hill, where just then appeared more than a hundred women, children, and old ones among their packhorsescbegin to make out the beginnings of their pony herd.

“Believe this feller’s right, Frapp!” Bridger hollered into the dry, hot wind. “Man don’t bring him his squaws an’ pups along when he’s out for skelps and coup.”

The old German snorted, his eyes nicking at Bass with something bordering contempt. “Mebbe we just run up again’ a bunch on the move, Jim. Blackfoots move camp ever’ now and den.”

“These here ain’t Blackfoot,” Bridger declared as the six horsemen came to a halt at a point halfway between the broad front of warriors and the five white men.

“Why, them’s Snakes!” one of the others stated.

“Damn right they are,” Bridger agreed, getting close enough to recognize faces.

“Same bunch wintered up with us?” one of the others asked.

Bridger whooped, “By God, if they ain’t!”

Following the young man’s lead, the rest again urged their horses into a lope, reining up only when they came nose to nose with the Shoshone ponies.

“By damn, these are a handsome people, ain’t they?” Bridger asked, turning aside to Bass. Then his hands grew busy, dropping rein and resting the rifle across his thighs as he commenced talking sign.

In the quiet of that brief conversation, disturbed only by the snorting and blowing of the horses and the shrill cry of a golden eagle that circled overhead, Bass watched the far slope as the ground behind the cordon of warriors filled with those the horsemen had been ready to defend: the old men, women, children, all those on foot and urging along the pack animals, travois, and pony herd.

One of those handsome, smiling warriors who had been using his flying hands to talk with Bridger now turned atop the bare back of his pony and signaled with the long feathered lance he held aloft and waved, scalps and birds’ wings fluttering on the summer wind along the shaft.

Instantly a universal cry went up from the far hillside as the mounted warriors bellowed their happy approval and burst into motion—their ponies moving this way and that along the side of the hill, everyone waving, singing, shouting at those behind to hurry on into the valley.

“This feller’s name is Washakie,” Bridger explained, putting the emphasis on the last syllable. “One of the leaders of this here bunch what wintered up near one of our other brigades in these parts. Down yonder in that very valley.”

“You don’t say,” Fraeb grumbled with disgust.

Bridger would not let the old German’s sourness nettle him a bit. With a wry grin Jim said, “Washakie says he remembers him a feller named Sobett—”

“Don’t he mean Sublette?” one of the others interrupted.

“One and the same,” Bridger replied, his eyes twinkling. “An’ he recalls a man what’s so tanned by the sun Washakie says he has the face of a feller been burned with powder!”

“Only one coon like that,” Fraeb roared. “Black Harris!”

By that time the front of the Shoshone procession had all but enveloped them. Titus reached out and grabbed young Bridger’s arm. “This feller, Harris—he a Negra like Beckwith?”

Flopping his head back and laughing, Bridger ended up slapping a knee as he answered, “Not near as none of us know! Oh, he might have him some Negra blood back on one side of his family or t’other … but his skin ain’t brown like no Negra’s skin. No, his hide is like nothing I ain’t never see’d afore—Washakie got it right: just like Harris gone and got his face burned with powder. There be a blue-blackish sheen to it, see? Ain’t the color of his hands—not his skin nowhere else on him. Just on the man’s face.”

As the procession swept up to them, the Shoshone leaders nudged their ponies into motion. Reining their horses about in the midst of the Shoshone, the four white men began that short ride back to Ashley’s camp, leading the noisy Shoshone cavalcade in grand order. As they drew closer to the streamside bowers and shelters the trappers had erected at the edge of a large meadow, brown-skinned singers suddenly began to raise their voices in half a hundred different songs of welcome, homecoming, or in the spirit of good hunting. At least that many or more beat on small handheld drums or shook rattles made of gourd, some constructed of dried animal bladders or animal scrotums filled with stream-washed pebbles, then tied to short peeled sticks. Children chattered, their high voices tremulous above all the others, and women occasionally shrieked at unruly ponies, flailing switches at those yapping, playful dogs darting in and out among the legs of people and ponies alike.

“What you think, Bass?”

Titus turned, finding the young Bridger had reined his horse into a walk beside him just before they entered the top of the trappers’ camp. “About what?”

“Don’t you figger these Snake women to be just about the purtiest a man can find him in these here mountains?”

“S-snake women?”

“Snake, Shoshone,” Bridger repeated. “I s’pose they’s called Snakes on account for the way they sign their tribe.” Shifting his rifle to his rein hand, Jim raised the other and made a wriggling motion, in the manner a reptile would slither along the ground. “Snake.”

Bass nodded, turning now to steal himself a look at some of the black-eyed women who were threading their way in among the warriors as the men of Ashley and Provost formed a long corridor for the Shoshone to pass through on their way to selecting a campsite farther south in Willow Valley. While he figured he would wait until he had himself a chance at a right-close inspection to offer his judgment on the pouting-lipped beauty of the squaws, he nonetheless could readily see that they were, by and large, a lighter-skinned people than the Ute he had come to know over the past winter.

Down, down through a wide gauntlet of grinning, gaping, brown-toothed white men the Shoshone paraded like royalty come to visit. While the trappers occasionally fired off a rifle into the air, perhaps a smoothbore musket or their belt, pistols, the Snakes waved and sang, shouted and shrieked, pounding their drums and shaking their rattles even louder. A few warriors held eight-inch lengths of wing bone in their lips, small and delicate fluffs tied at the end of these whistles to dance on the wind while the men blew that eerie, high-pitched screech of a golden or bald-headed eagle. How easily its call rose above the noisy clamor of all the rest.

Bridger slapped Titus on the arm and motioned Bass to follow him away from the hubbub grown so noisy it was useless trying to talk. They joined Fraeb and the other two trappers angling off to the side of the procession, where they reined up to watch the parade pass them on by. The Shoshone streamed right on through the trappers’ camp, down the valley a good half mile where their pony herd would not have a chance to mingle with the white man’s horses and mules grazing across the creek on the benches farther up the valley.

More than a dozen men jogged up to stop among the five horsemen.

“Them’s your Snakes, ain’t they, Bridger?”

“They are that, Jedediah,” Jim replied with a filial pride. “Prettiest people in these mountains, to my way of thinking.”

“Appears Bridger’s gone and got himself partial already,” Harrison Rogers commented.

As brigade clerk, Rogers was never far from the side of the taller, square-jawed man who stood as erect as a hickory ramrod at the center of that group of men on foot. A devoutly Christian man, a New Englander who had carried his Bible into what many back east considered to be a godless heathens’ wilderness, one of the handful who refrained from the burn of whiskey on his tongue or the heat of a naked squaw wrapped up with him in a blanket—this fire-eyed partisan was no less than Jedediah Strong Smith himself.

“If any of you men are going to partake in the sins of the flesh before we set off,” Smith began, hurling his booming, fire-and-brimstone voice over those who had followed in his wake, “the next few days might well be your last for a long, long time to come.”

One of the eleven called out, “You mean you’re ’Mowing us to have a spree with them Injun womens, Jed?”

Smith turned to John Reubasco. “Until I tell you it’s time to pack up and move out, what sinning you do will be between you and your God.”

“But I don’t have me no God, Jed,” cried Abraham LaPlant, another of Jed’s brigade and one of Smith’s closest friends, a man who could get away with joshing their devout leader.

Smith wagged his head, his grin widening. “Then all I can do is to warn you and your kind, Abe: best see that none of you go swilling down Ashley’s liquor like it was baptismal water!”

They all laughed heartily at that, then Rogers inquired, “How long you figger till we’re packing oft to the southwest, Jed?”

In turn, Smith looked up at Bridger. “You got any news on the general’s plans, Jim?”

Bridger shrugged. “I figger ronnyvoo’s over when he gets him all the fur bought up.”

Smith added, “Sure to snatch up what furs Provost and the others brung in too.”

“Likely the general will light out for St. Louie soon as he has all of his packs filled with them geegaw goods traded out,” Bridger continued. “Then there ain’t no more reason for ary a man to hang on here at ronnyvoo, an’ Ashley will pack up to move out.”

“Talk is he’s give up on the mountains,” Fraeb announced, dour as ever, looking at Smith, Ashley’s partner. His words appeared to stun all the rest into silence.

“That’s likely just talk,” Rogers declared testily as he turned to Jedediah for confirmation.

With a wag of his head Smith announced, “Maybe not, Harrison.”

Bridger replied, “The general’s made him his fortune awready in just more’n four years, ain’t he?”

“And I hear tell he’s got a purty gal back in St. Lou ready to marry ’im,” Jed explained. “No man could blame Ashley for cashing in his plews and kicking up his boots now.”

“What I heerd this morning is that we’re due to be working for new booshways right soon,” John Gaither, one of the horsemen beside Fraeb, suddenly disclosed.

“Who you figger’s gonna booshway this new outfit?” Bridger demanded, eyes widening with interest.

“Could be that I’ll stay on when the general quits the trade,” Smith answered calmly.

Close to twenty sets of eyes immediately turned on him in surprise at the revelation.

“You h’ain’t the only one to run these here mountains,” Fraeb declared, making it sound as if he weren’t sure it wasn’t a joke.

But as surprising as was the news that Ashley was giving up the fur trade, it really came as no shock that Jedediah Strong Smith would be staying on. He was as driven, directed, and no-nonsense as they came out here in the far west. Some might even say he was, in his own Puritan way, consumed by his quest.

“So this here palaver ain’t no bald-face, is it, Jed?” Bridger asked.

Smith shook his head. “Ashley come to me this morning,” he explained, looking from face to face as he spoke to that breathless crowd. “But—it ain’t just me gonna lead the new company, fellas. Understand that. General said he wanted to talk things over with a few of us.”

“A few,” Fraeb grumbled as if his belly was soured on green apples. “Who be the other’ns gonna talk things over?”

“Two of ’em,” Smith answered. “Billy Sublette—”

Bridger interrupted, youthfully assertive, “Billy’s a good man.”

“… and the third be Davy Jackson,” Jed concluded.

“J-jackson!” Fraeb sputtered. “Why, that no-account sprout ain’t got the right—”

“Davy’s a damned workhorse, Frapp,” Bridger interrupted before Smith got his mouth open. “He’s allays worked harder’n any man I knows of out here.”

Now Jed spoke up, “And that’s why I’ll partner with the man any season, Frapp. Ain’t a trapper here what don’t already know that Davy’s brigades always brings in their furs. From only God knows where! But Jackson brings in the plews for to make the general a handsome profit.”

“Hrrrumph,” Fraeb snorted. “So it’s to be Sublette, Smit’, und Jackson, is it, now?”

With a shrug Jedediah Smith replied, “Don’t know for sure, till we talk with the general: hear what he’s got to offer about selling out. Don’t know any of the rest, fellas—but I’ve already told my outfit that no matter me being booshway of a new company or not, we’re setting out for a long ride to explore us that country to the southwest.”

Daniel Potts came up to stop beside Bass, asking of Bridger, “Jim—if Smith’s outfit heads off south, where you figger we’ll be bound?”

With a smile young Bridger replied, “Fitz told me we’re going back north.”

“To Blackfeet country?” hollered a man from the crowd.

“Where the furs are sleek and the plews are prime, boys,” Bridger replied.

Potts slapped an arm on Bass’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t wanna come north with Fitzpatrick’s bunch?”

“What?” Titus responded in mock horror. “And leave my skelp to hang in some red nigger’s lodge up there in Blackfeet country?”

“So, better that you leave it off to some mangy, flea-bit ’Rapaho buck, eh?” Beckwith prodded with a wide, toothy grin, coming up to the group as Smith and Bridger were dispersing the gathering.

“I sure as hell know my hair ain’t near as purty as yours be, Jim Beckwith,” Titus replied with a grin. “But I figger if’n I stay outta Blackfeet country, I’ll stand a damn good chance of keeping my hair locked on right where it is!”

Back and forth for the better part of an hour a pair of Etienne Provost’s free trappers gambled with the two older Shoshone warriors, all four of them squatting on the dusty buffalo robe so well used it had places where the hair had been rubbed off right down to the smooth hide.

Titus had watched men gamble with painted pasteboards before, sometimes throwing down their wagers on the strength of a particular hand, or no more than the fate held in a single card. From up the Ohio clear on down the Mississippi, he himself had watched the fever take hold of those who put their lives and fortunes into their varied games of chance. At times he had witnessed the sly work of those who dared not leave things to chance, but instead preferred offering sham games of skill and sleight of hand.

As much as he had tried, not once in all those years had Bass been able to guess which shell the pea was hiding under. And those games of bones proved no better a tempt of Dame Fortune for Titus. He had no earthly clue to the mysteries of how those dice rolled this combination or that—and why some men came out winners while most walked away with pockets much, much emptier than when they had stepped forward to take their chance at bucking the tiger.

But this here game was like nothing he had ever seen before.

The white men sat across from their brown-skinned counterparts, about two feet of bare buffalo fur between them where they tossed the short pieces of carved bone. Each one of the half-dozen bones was different in shape, marked with altogether different drawings, slashes, lightning bolts, and the like, each of the symbols first carved into the bone’s surface, then filled with some dark, inky substance so that the scratchings stood out in bold relief against the yellowed surface of the old bone. Over the years of use each of the half-dozen had taken on a rich patina from much handling.

First one side, then the other was awarded possession of the bones. When the two Shoshone held three bones apiece, it was up to the trappers to place their wager on the blanket between them. It might be as little as a few glass beads, or a single flint big enough for a man to clamp in the huge lock on his tradegun or even in starting a fire with a good steel. But as the hour wore on, the betting grew richer—as it ofttimes does when the gambler no longer plays with his head, but begins to wager what lays dear to his heart.

Down came the skinning knife, its wood handle well oiled to a deeply burnished glow by the hand of the trapper now offering it.

All around Bass white men and Shoshone alike muttered their comments that no longer was this to be a game of beads and powder, vermilion and shiny girlews. Now, with the wager of that knife, it had become a game of some worth.

The two Shoshone looked at one another a long moment; then one shrugged and removed a strand of buffalo bones from around his neck. He laid it atop the knife and gazed at the white men to await their approval. Both nodded, accepting the wager, and the first warrior rubbed and clacked the magical bones within the hollow of his two hands, closing his eyes, raising his face to the sunny sky overhead, and chanting. His partner, the one who had offered his necklace, also chanted, but a different and discordant, off-key dirge that grew louder and louder until both Indians were nearly shouting their disparate songs.

All the time the two trappers kept their eyes locked on the jumping, flashing, clacking hands with such intensity, trying their best to shut out the disquieting noise of the two gamesters.

Then suddenly the hands flew open over the buffalo robe and the singing abruptly stopped as the bones tumbled across the fur. And four heads bent low to study the markings.

“Goddammit!” cried one of the trappers in great disgust.

The other just wagged his head dolefully in silence.

The gleeful warrior picked up the knife and the necklace, glanced quickly at his companion, then flung the necklace back onto the buffalo robe.

Asked one of the trappers, “Jamus, you got anything what you can lay down?”

Into his shooting pouch Jamus stuffed his hand and came out with a long strip of blood-red trade ribbon, a woven cotton strip about an inch wide used to selvage the edge of garments to keep them from unraveling. This much-favored item of trade in the Indian country brought approving nods from the warriors, grunts from others gathered behind the players, and a squeal from at least one of the older women gathered nearby.

“Well, goddammit?” the first trapper demanded caustically of his opponents. “What you boys gonna lay down for that?”

Acting as if he did not know what to do about such a wager, one of the warriors turned to look over his shoulder at a woman nearby. Something unspoken passed between them. He turned back to look at his partner, then bent his head and pulled his shirt off, laying it neatly atop the pile.

“Awright,” Jamus replied. “Now we got us a real game!”

The second Shoshone began to rub and clack his three bones, singing the furthest thing from harmony with his partner as they shook and rubbed, clacked and waved the bones around and around until a man was driven nearly insane with the waiting.

When they spilled onto the buffalo robe, four heads again dipped to inspect them. The silence of that breathless crowd was punctuated only by the firing of weapons nearby as men shot at a mark with their rifles—winning swallows of whiskey as the afternoon wore on.

“By damn! We won, Jamus!” he hollered, slapping his partner on the back as they swept their winnings back toward their knees.

“What you wanna bet now?”

He didn’t have a ready answer for Jamus, not one near quick enough for the two warriors either.

The older of the two Shoshone immediately snatched his tomahawk from his belt and laid it upon the bare hide between the players. Most of the crowd were stunned: many of the Shoshone clamped hands over their mouths while white trappers muttered their approval of such a fine wager. There the tomahawk lay for a long, breathless moment, its fancy oiled wood gleaming in the sun, the forged iron head inlaid with pewter rings, a pair of deer dewclaws suspended from a latigo strip knotted at the bottom of the handle.

The anxious Shoshone grew impatient and soon made it plain the white men must wager or leave the game to others.

“Jamus?”

“I ain’t got nothing near that fine, Spivey.”

Then the Shoshone shut off their conversation and pointed.

“He wants our whiskey,” Spivey declared.

“You figger he wants all of it?” Jamus demanded in a whisper, as if the Shoshone might understand their English.

“Dip your cup in our kettle there and see if that’ll do for a wager.”

Jamus did as was suggested, dipping his pint tin cup into the small kettle of throat-burning alcohol Ashley had brought to rendezvous, as promised the year before. Setting the dripping cup on the robe, they looked up to see the smiles crawl across the faces of the two Shoshone and knew they had themselves a wager.

“Let’s play, boys!” Spivey whooped, scooping up three of the carved bones from the hide, beginning to rub and click them together inside his hands.

The white men won that go-round, then sat there taking the time to swill that cup of whiskey in front of their opponents as if to rub in the spoils of victory. The shirtless Shoshone flung down another tomahawk. And this time he won. The pair of warriors savored the liquor from the cup, passing it back and forth as each man took small sips until the potent brew had disappeared and both had themselves a go at licking the inside of the tin.

Again that second tomahawk was wagered, and again another cup of whiskey. More clacking, singing, chanting, and cursing to disconcert the other side before the bones were hurled down. One side always groaned in dismay, the other side celebrated by toasting to their success. On it went as the sun began to sink until suddenly the tides turned against the warriors and it seemed the Shoshone could not win a single play. Repeatedly the white men scooped up shirts and leggings, belts and moccasins, until there was little left but breechclouts for the warriors to wager.

While the two trappers laughed at their own good fortune, the two Shoshone became more and more sullen, forced to listen to the muttered oaths from their kinsmen standing behind them as another cup of whiskey was set between the gamblers and the white trappers began to jostle and shake, weaving from side to side, laughing lustily in the face of the dour-eyed warriors with a new wager.

Like a blur one of the warriors leaped up, lunging for his knife that now lay beside the trappers. It flashed in the afternoon light as the Shoshone pressed the blade suddenly against Spivey’s neck. All sound was sucked from the clamoring crowd, as if shut off by some magic.

Eyes like saucers, Spivey peered cross-eyed down at the hand clutching the knife, squeaking, “J-jamus! Do something!”

“An’ get your goddamned throat cut?”

While he held the knife against the white man’s throat with one hand, the warrior peeled open Spivey’s fingers with the other, yanking from it the three bones. The other Shoshone retrieved the other bones from Jamus—then he reached down and took up the tin cup, bringing it to his lips to drink long and noisily—emptying the cup of every last drop.

The warrior handed it to Jamus, motioning that he wanted more.

“G-get it for him, goddammit!” Spivey squeaked. “Somebody, d-do something!”

“Red son of a bitch’ll open your throat up,” another trapper said with resignation. “Ain’t a thing we can do for you then.”

That second full cup of liquor was passed over to the warrior holding the knife on Spivey. While he pressed the blade into the taut, tanned flesh, he drank slow, his eyes widening as the burn began to turn his throat to fire. Just as he was finished, a loud voice bellowed.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

They all turned, trapper and Shoshone, to find Fitzpatrick and Bridger lurching to a stop.

The warrior’s eyes went down to his cup, then to the knife, and back to his cup. He upended the cup at his lips, quickly licking at what ne knew would be those last few drops.

“You boys gambling, are you?” Bridger demanded of the pair.

“Things got real ugly, Fitz,” someone called out from the crowd.

“I can see that plain as sun,” Fitzpatrick replied as he knelt near Spivey’s shoulder. “Jim—how ’bout you telling these here bucks to pull in their horns.”

“I’ll give it a push, Fitz,” Bridger replied, then went on to speak what he could of the Shoshone tongue.

But the warriors interrupted him, growing excited, and most of their spectators with them, chattering all at once until Bridger waved both arms and quieted them.

Jim said, “These here bucks tell me you boys ain’t been all the fair with ’em—”

“We’re gambling, for God’s sake, Bridger!” Jamus squawked.

“There’s gambling,” Bridger said, scratching his chin, “and then there’s stealin’.”

“We wasn’t stealing!” Spivey roared, red-faced, his eyes looking down at the knife held against his windpipe.

“You so proud you wanna keep your liquor,” Bridger replied, “or you don’t mind getting your throat cut?”

“J-just give ’im the likker, Bridger,” Spivey whined. “The likker … none of it’s wuth it.”

Jim knelt at the shoulder of one of the Shoshone. “So what you two gonna do for these bucks you cheated?”

Jamus’s eyes flashed up at young Bridgets. “I’ll give ’em what’s left of my likker.”

“And?”

Now Jamus’s face turned red. “Ain’t given ’em nothing else!”

“Give ’em what they want, Jamus!” Spivey said, his eyes cross on the twitching hand that held the knife.

“All of it, goddammit,” Jamus said grudgingly, his eyes filling with hate for Bridger as well as the Shoshone. “They can have all of it—that what you want, Spivey?”

“Right! Just give it all to ’em and get this red nigger off me!”

Rocking up on his knees slowly, Jamus shoved the Shoshone shirts and leggings, moccasins and tomahawks, knives and necklaces, back across the buffalo hide to the warriors.

As he did, Bridger said something understood only by the Shoshone gathered in a hush at the buffalo robe. With a sigh the warrior with the knife leaned back, taking his weapon from the trapper’s neck. After stuffing his tomahawk back into his belt and rising, the warrior suddenly held out the knife, handle first, to Spivey, who continued to rub his throat, then check his fingers for sign of blood.

“What the hell’s this for?” the trapper asked, his eyes going to Bridger’s face.

“Says he’s giving you his knife,” Jim replied. “He riggers at least you won that fair and square.”

Spivey wrenched it from the warrior before the two Shoshone gathered up their clothing from the buffalo robe and looked longingly at the small kettle of amber liquor—then turned away into the crowd of their own people.

“Maybe next time you fellas won’t be so all-fired ready to get no Injuns drunk,” Bridger snorted as he stood, then with Fitzpatrick started away from the crowd.

“C’mon,” Potts said to Bass.

“Where’d you come from?” Titus asked of the man coming up to his elbow out of the milling group.

“Been looking high and low for you,” Daniel explained. “Wan’cha have dinner over at our fire since’t we’ll be pulling away day after tomorrow.”

“Ronnyvoo over?” They started away through the grove of cottonwood.

“Ashley’s got him all the fur from his brigades, ’long with what he traded from Provost’s bunch.”

“He’s got near all ours too,” Titus replied.

“Best you get your outfit to be trading off any furs what you got left by tomorry morning, or the general likely won’t have no more goods for you. Then what will them plews be wuth?”

Bass nodded. “Not much—when there ain’t no one else out here what wants beaver fur in trade.”

“Ever you et painter, Scratch?”

“P-painter?” Titus asked as they neared the fire where Fitzpatrick and Bridger’s brigade had been bedding down.

“Sure. Painter,” Potts repeated. “Mountain cat. Some calls it a lion. But most of the fellas I know calls that mountain cat a painter.”

“And you eat that lion?”

Potts smacked his lips. “Some fine eatin’. C’mon—we’ll get some on the fire. One of the boys shot a pair this morning up torst the hills yonder.”

That mountain lion was a treat to the pallet and a tongue grown used to elk and venison. Bass eagerly went back for more, eventually slicing himself a third helping of the roast and loin steaks. Later on Bud Tuttle showed up in time to squeeze himself down by Bass and Potts as one of Fitzpatrick’s men brought out his small concertina to the cheers and claps of all those Ashley men gathered at the fire.

Pulling two short leather latches from the tiny pegs that held the instrument closed, the player was then able to slip his hands into leather straps on either side and began to wheeze some air in and out of the squeezebox until he suddenly began to stomp one leg lustily, his foot pounding the ground as he whirled round and round, wailing out the words to the rollicking song accompanied by his concertina’s wild strains.

Many of the others noisily clapped in rhythm as a few leaped to their feet, bowed low to one another, then began to circle round this way and round that, arms locked and head thrown back, wailing and caterwauling worse than any wharfside alley filled with tomcats.

“Man could grow used to this ever’ night, couldn’t he, Scratch?” Tuttle asked, jabbing an elbow into Bass’s ribs. “Music, likker, and the womens!”

Scratch had almost forgotten about such seductive lures, doing his best to stay as far away as he could from the temptations of those young women and their flint-eyed menfolk downstream in the Shoshone village.

Titus looked off in the direction of the quartet’s camp. “Cooper and Hooks didn’t come with you?”

Tuttle grinned as he clapped along with the wheezing squeezebox. “They daubin’ their stingers again.”

“Hell, I should’a knowed,” Titus replied. “Likely them two’ll be daubin’ their stingers when Gabriel blows his goddamned horn!”

“Maybe that, or Gabriel can find ’em laid out under a trader’s likker kegs!”

A cloud quickly passed over Scratch’s face as the firelight flickered on the dancers all. “Silas didn’t go and drink up all our earnin’s, did he?”

Tuttle bravely tried to maintain the smile, then admitted, “Ah, shit—Scratch. Him and Hooks been having themselves such a spree, they ain’t give a damn thought one to seeing that we’re outfitted for the coming winter.”

“Where’s the plews?”

Tuttle hemmed and hawed a moment, then answered.

Bass demanded, “How many packs you figger we got left?”

“Not near enough—”

“All gone in likker?” he squeaked in disbelief.

Dropping his head to look at his hands suddenly stilled even though the music, laughter, and merriment continued around them, Tuttle replied, “An’ foofaraw for the squaws.”

“Damn him,” Bass muttered between clenched teeth. “Sort of a bitch beat me near to death an’ said I owed him my hides … so now he don’t even use them hides he stole from me to trade for what it is we really need!”

“Trouble?” Jim Beckwith asked, curious when Bass’s voice grew louder in the midst of the revelry.

Finally shaking his head, Titus answered, “No. No trouble, Jim.”

As Beckwith turned back to clapping and stomping with the music, Titus grabbed Tuttle by his shirt. “Listen, Bud—we gotta be sure no more of them hides go to pay for geegaws and girlews so them two sonsabitches can stick some Injun gals with their peckers.”

Turtle’s head bobbed, almost in time with his Adam’s apple.

“You figger we can hide them plews somewhere’s till morning?” Titus inquired. “When we can get ’em traded off to Ashley?”

“I s’pose—”

“Ain’t no s’posin’ about it, Bud,” Titus interrupted. “We gotta do it first thing come morning—or Ashley ain’t gonna have him no more powder and lead, no coffee and blankets left to trade.”

“And we need flints bad.”

“See? Just like I told you. Now, I want you get back to camp while them two is off knocking the dew off their lilies and drag the last of them packs off into the bushes somewhere outta camp where they can’t find ’em—drunk or sober.”

“M-me? Ain’t you—”

“Awright, I’ll damn well come and help you.”

Turtle seemed much relieved to have an accomplice in their crime.

“Hell, don’t worry none, Bud,” Titus explained. “If them two ever come back to camp tonight, I don’t figger they’ll be thinking none about plews till long after sunup anyways.”

Bud chuckled. “I do believe you’re likely right, Scratch. They’ll have daubin’ on their minds.”

“C’mon.”

By the time they had dragged what they had left in the way of those heavy packs out of their camp, away from their blanket and canvas bowers and into the nearby bushes, the half-moon was on its rise. It, along with the glittery stars overhead, was enough to cast some faint shadows as Bass and Tuttle made their way back through the raucous camp toward Fitzpatrick’s fire, where the concertina player was taking himself a rest and many of the others were settling back, their cups filled with Ashley’s liquor, jawing and swapping exaggerated tales of their experiences and exploits.

“How ’bout them two, Bridger?” someone called out as Tuttle and Bass came into the fire’s light. “They hear your tale of the Salt Sea?”

As some of the bunch chuckled and jabbed elbows into one another’s ribs, the young Bridger turned to gaze over his shoulder at the two free trappers. “Don’t believe they have.”

“Then tell ’em!”

Nonplussed, Jim turned around on his stump and asked the returning pair, “Since we run onto your outfit north of here, I ever tell you fellas about the time I floated down to the Great Salt Sea?”

“Y-you been all the way out there to the west?” Tuttle asked, turning slowly in disbelief to look at Bass.

Bud’s question brought howls of laughter from a few of that bunch gathered round the fire.

“Don’t pay these dunderheads no mind,” Bridger confided.

“What they laughing at us for?” Titus asked, feeling sheepish—as if some joke were about to be played on them.

Bridger offered up a cup of liquor, handing it to Bass as he said, “Don’t fret none, now: some of these here coons ain’t got the brains God give a buffler gnat.”

One of the scoffers cried out, “Just ’cause we don’t believe you floated where you said you floated, don’t mean we got us gnat-brains!”

“Sit yourselves down, fellas,” young Bridger said, “an’ I’ll tell you ’bout that leetle trip I had me through hell’s canyon in a bull boat—”

“All the way to the Salt Sea!” bellowed one of the doubters, accompanied by roars of laughter from the rest.

Wagging his head as if he was used to the good-natured ribbing, Jim exclaimed with mock seriousness, “I’ll swear. There be times a mountain man is a most consarned critter, boys. Now, you go take a look at them niggers laughin’ their bellies sore over there on their logs, and you’ll see just what I mean. Some of these here beaver trappers are the most uncertainest fellers ever—cuz they’ll argeefie about near anything. And that even includes argeein’ about argeein’!”

*On the Cub River near present-day Cove, Utah