Dance on the Wind

22

“There’s some got ’em a name for that hull kentry out there,” Isaac Washburn declared the next day as he chattered on and on, having found him some eager ears. “I heerd some call it the buffler palace.”

Favoring the bruised ribs, Titus turned slowly to the trapper, who always lumbered close at one elbow or the other. “P-palace?”

Swaying in his drunkenness, Washburn shrugged, absently scratching at his long beard. “I s’pose at first it strikes a man as a mite queersome name—but that’s what many of the boys call that prerra land out yonder. Whar’ buffler’s the king. Land whar’ the buffler rule.”

Pumping on the bellows handle with the arm that did not pain him as badly as the other, Titus let that sink in slowly over the next few moments. From what Washburn had been telling him right from last night, that country must surely be what he had dreamed it would be: the land where the buffalo had retreated toward the setting sun—seizing dominion over everything as far as a man’s eye could see, a land from horizon to horizon to horizon ruled by those great, humped, mythical beasts.

“Ye mean fer true what ye said last night?” Washburn asked as he wiped some of the amber droplets from his droopy mustache.

“Said ’bout what?”

“’Bout throwin’ in with me.”

“You told me a man needs him a partner to cross country like that—the Injuns an’ all.”

“Ye figure ye got the makin’s?”

Titus turned, peering at the older man for a long time through his swollen, bloodshot eyes. “Look at me, half-beat to death … and you’re asking me if I got the makings?”

“Damnation—ye sure as hell got enough ha’r in ye, Titus. Enough bottom to make it clear through to the moun-tanes. Yer the sort figgers something out to do, so ye put yer head down and yest go at it. That’s a good thing in a man what wants to step off into the middle of the wilderness. Ain’t no one else’t gonna care for ye then—maybeso a partner if yer lucky enough to have one.”

“You had a partner afore, Isaac?”

“Sure. Had me lots of ’em.”

Bass had the fire punched now, so laid in the long piece of strap iron he was going to start forming into a spring for the first of those beaver traps he would fashion for Isaac Washburn, once more using the old square-jawed one of Hysham Troost’s he kept hanging from a nearby peg as his pattern. Not that he really needed to take it down and study it, measure it, see how things fit. In the last few years Titus had hammered together the springs and jaws, pans and triggers, to make some two hundred such traps. So despite how ragged his head treated him, this morning Bass eagerly went at the sooty work over the forge with a renewed relish, well before Hysham Troost strode through the door.

Titus asked the old trapper, “Tell me how come that partner of your’n didn’t come here to St. Louie to have a spree with you?”

Washburn straddled an anvil atop a huge stump that squatted on the far side of the forge and settled his rump, his eyes watching the red glow begin to bleed up long strips of iron Bass would soon begin hammering into the tempered trap springs. “Had him t’other affairs to see to.”

“And miss out on a spree with his partner?”

“Like I said—other ’fairs.”

“I s’pose he’s got him a gal stuck away someplace, likely,” Bass said, slipping on a pair of blackened leather gloves with short gauntlets.

“Ain’t got a thing to do with a woman,” Isaac said sourly.

“What sort of man miss out on good whiskey and white women when he finds himself this close to St. Louie?”

“Never did claim he got close to St. Louie at all.”

“Did I prick you in a sore spot, Isaac?” Titus asked, shoving the iron farther down into the glowing coals, then heaving on the bellows all the more. “Sounds to me like you don’t wanna talk ’bout him.”

“Ain’t him, rightly,” Washburn finally admitted. “It’s all that hurt an’ p’isen he’s been carrying round inside him for too long—gonna get hisself kill’t from it one day soon. Shit, he yest may well gone under by now.”

“Your partner?”

Isaac nodded. “I ain’t been partnered up with him long, just last few months, really. But ever since’t I knowed him, Glass been laughin’ danger square in the face for nigh onto a y’ar now.”

“Glass?”

“That’s his name. Claims he’s pertected by God, so he can do God’s work in taking him some revenge on them what left him for dead.”

“He was left for dead?”

“That’s him. The one I tromped through the last winter with, gettin’ to Fort Atkinson, floatin’ back down the Missouri to get here with what little I got left to my outfit.”

“How long you been in the mountains, in that upcountry, Isaac?”

Washburn visibly relaxed as his eyes stared out the half-open livery door where a cold, spring rain drizzled in gray sheets.

“Been over fifteen winters, Titus. Damn but that do feel like a long, long time. I fust come out of Albermarle County, Virginia, in 1805. Moseyed west into the Cumberland country. Didn’t come to St. Louie till the next y’ar, and by oh-seven I was hired on as engagée to Man-well Leeza. Was a big fur trader in these parts.”

“I heard tell of him a lot here’bouts.”

“He died not long back,” Washburn continued. “Fella named Pilcher took over the company now. Howsoever, I ain’t had a thing to do with it for some time.”

“You went upriver to trap beaver in oh-seven?”

With a bob of his head Washburn answered, reaching beneath his long beard to take out his pipe and some tobacco. “That black-ha’red Spanyard led us north that y’ar—the winter Antoine Bisonette deserted an’ Leeza sent George Drouillard to bring him back in, dead or alive.”

“Did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Bring him in?”

He looked at Titus as if he were talking to a stump. “Dammit to hell—he sure did. Bisonette was wounded so bad, he weren’t bound to live all that long. Leeza put him in a pirogue with two other fellers, sent ’em south back to St. Louie while’st we pushed on. Later we heerd Bisonette died. Didn’t matter—wasn’t many of us liked him or Drouillard neither one.”

“How far you make it up the Missouri?”

“Me and others—like that friend I come to know named Henry—we went and built Leeza’s post on the Yallerstone, mouth of the Bighorn. He called it Fort Raymond. Then some of us tramped on over to the Three Forks kentry.”

“Three Forks?”

“Three rivers what all tangle up and make the Missouri River, see? That’s Blackfeet kentry—mess of them devil’s whelps.”

With his tongs Titus pointed at Washburn’s greasy, blackened buckskins. “That where you come onto them there? Your outfit?”

He rubbed a hand down a thigh, fingers brushing the strip of porcupine quillwork in colors dulled over time by many dunkings in high-country streams and bleached beneath a merciless sun. “Got this off’n a Mandan woman, truth of it, Titus. She kept me warm one winter, while’st I kept her an’ her young’uns fed. These’r leggin’s lasted me some seasons, they have. Only had to patch ’em up from time to time, down at the bottom mostly, where I soak ’em in the criks and eventual’ the skin dries up an’ cracks.”

“Got them from that Mandan gal when you was up at the Three Forks?”

“Hell, no, I didn’t, ye consarned idjit!” he roared, rocking forward off his anvil and pulling his skinning knife out of the scabbard behind his hip. “Hyar, now—lemme show ye yest how stupid a nigger yer making yerself out to be.”

As Washburn went to his knees and began smoothing out sortie of the pounded clay floor, Titus stuffed the strip of iron back into the coals and gave the bellows another half-dozen hard heaves before he too went to his knees to hunker as close as he could while Washburn began drawing landmarks with the tip of his knife.

“These’r all along hyar—they the Rocky Moun-tanes. Hyar’s whar’ them three rivers tangle up to make the Missouri. All the way over hyar on the Missouri, them Mandans live in great wigwams made of earth. But back hyar is whar’ the Yallerstone comes in. Sometime later on my friend Henry was to put him a post right thar’. An’ on down hyar off the Yallerstone comes in the Bighorn. That’s whar’ Leeza had Henry build him a post to trade with them Crow.”

“The Injuns you told me ’bout last night.”

Washburn grinned. “Maybeso yer head weren’t all so comboobled up as I thort she was!” Using his knife, he pointed back down at his crude map. “Cain’t ye see how far Mandan kentry is from Blackfeet kentry?”

“Where’s Blackfeet land?”

He dragged the knife tip in a great, long oval that encompassed a good portion of the land he had just described.

Bass swallowed, shifting slightly onto another knee. “All that?”

“Don’t ye ever go an’ doubt it, Titus. Blackfeet hold them northern moun-tanes like they was their own. An’ them goddamned Rees hold the river like they owned it an’ ever’thing upriver from ’em too!”

“So you been up there, in all that country, since you went up with this Manuel Lisa back to 1807?”

“No, I ain’t been up there ever since, ye mule-headed id jit! Didn’t take long for them Blackfeet an’ Assiniboin to start whittling away at the first of us into that kentry. Some durn good men left their bones to bleach in the sun up that way. Rest of us turned tail an’ come easin’ back downriver in 1811. Already them British bastards was making it mighty hard for Americans to work the beaver kentry up north. They was a sneaky lot—still are, for my money. Come down from Canaydee—sellin’ them blood-suckin’ Injuns guns an’ powder, siccin’ ’em on Americans. That war we fought agin ’em didn’t help, didn’t help a tinker’s damn up thar’ in that north kentry.”

Washburn spoke the truth of it. By the time the War of 1812 had worn itself out and America had negotiated a border, along with some agreements regarding exploration and control of the fur trade in the far Northwest—the Hudson’s Bay Company already had consolidated everything west of the Rocky Mountains while the Northwest Company Nor’Westers had a firm hold on the entire upper Missouri country east of the continental divide. With the hostile Blackfoot confederation driving Manuel Lisa and Andrew Henry out of that prime beaver country, the whole of the upper Missouri drainage was again cleared of American interests for many years.

Nevertheless, they did leave behind one man in abandoning their Bighorn post in 1811.

“Onliest trapper we left up thar’ was one of the mulatto fellers,” Isaac related.

Bass turned from his anvil, beads of sweat standing out on his brow like glittering diamonds, his thick brown eyebrows soaked. “A Negra?”

“He t’weren’t as dark as most Negras I see’d afore. Name o’ Edward Rose—the one we left behind when we put the Bighorn post at our backs.”

Bass drove the hammer down on the glowing spring metal, spacing his words between each resounding ring of hammer on steel. “Why’d he … stay on … up there … seeing how … things were … mighty hot … in that country?”

“Wanted to live on with them Crow.”

The hammer came to a stop, and he stuffed the half-finished spring back into the coals, heaving down on the bellows handle to excite the fire. “Gone off to live with Injuns … just like a Injun?”

Washburn nodded. “Them Crow have mighty handsome wimmens, Titus.” He licked his lips visibly. “Mighty, mighty handsome wimmens.”

“What become of you when Manuel Lisa pulled out of that country?” Bass inquired, leaning over the red cedar piggin and bringing the ladle to his lips, drinking long and slow.

“I stayed on with Henry. He been my friend right from that first winter in that up-country. I throwed in with him whar’ he was going.”

With their desertion of the upper Missouri, Andrew Henry initially dropped downriver with Manuel Lisa. But while the Spaniard established a new base of operations at a new Fort Lisa raised near Council Bluffs, Andrew Henry figured he’d had himself enough of the Indian trade. He tromped on back home, while Lisa carried on a lively trade up the river as far as the Mandan villages, eastward to the Sac and Fox, from time to time bartering with bands of the westward-migrating Sioux. But due to the well-financed encroachments of the British companies coupled with the economic hardships brought the infant nation by the War of 1812, after more than a dozen years on the upper rivers, the American fur trade was no bigger when hostilities ended with the English, no stronger among the tribes in 1815 than the trade had been in 1804.

By 1819 the aggressive Lisa had nudged out many of his stodgy, conservative partners, the sort of financiers he’d believed were holding him back—replacing them with men the likes of Joshua Pilcher.

“I went with Henry when he walked away from Lisa,” Washburn explained. “Henry had him a plan, an’ a good’un too. We went up to the lead mines, up north.”

“Galena?”

“That’s them.”

“You was mining lead?”

“Same as ye buy for yer rifle, Titus. Bar lead—from St. Louis Tower. Yessir. Me an’ Andrew, ’long with some others, all throwed in the muscles of their backs too. It were good, honest work—not like the Injun trade. But no matter, Henry said: thar’ll always be fellers like Leeza to push open the doors to the frontier, fellers to keep them god-damned doors open.”

The country Manuel Lisa wanted most to exploit was as close to virgin territory as any that then existed. The Canadians hadn’t trapped it to any degree at all. What few furs had come from that country were nothing more than those the Blackfoot stole from other tribes and turned around to sell to the Canadian companies. A rich harvest, Lisa kept evangelizing among his men and financiers, an unbelievable treasure of furs lay waiting those who would take the gamble. That territory was, after all, a land where an American’s scalp wasn’t worth much at all, attached to a head, or hanging from some warrior’s belt.

“Then Leeza died that very y’ar,” Washburn explained. “Eighteen-nineteen. An’ Joshua Pilcher takes over the comp’ny. Carried on all the ol’ Spanyard’s dreams too. Took him two winters to do it, but Pilcher finally got him a big outfit put together, setting off for the upper river.”

Some dozen miles above the mouth of the Knife River, Joshua Pilcher rebuilt an old Lisa post and named the new fort after one of his three lieutenants, William Henry Vanderburgh. Then Pilcher pushed ahead with the two others: Robert Jones and Michael Immel. Later that year at the mouth of the Bighorn, near the spot where Lisa had raised a post in 1807, Pilcher’s men built Fort Benton, christened for Missouri’s newly elected senator.

By 1822 Pilcher had three hundred men trading on the upper Missouri and Yellowstone, Jones and Immel in charge of day-to-day operations. So with the Yellowstone trade secure, Pilcher next set his eye on the rich headwaters of the Missouri.

“But by that y’ar I was done with breaking my back in a galena mine.”

“What become of you?” Titus asked, drawing the crimson spring from the coals.

“That once-a-time army gen’ral named Ashley come to see Andrew up to the mines—come to talk him back into the fur business. Said he needed Henry to be his field captain for a new fur company he was puttin’ together. Ashley claimed he was going back to that fur kentry—said he was headed for the land o’ the beaver on the upper Missouri!”

Washburn grinned endearingly, his upper lip pulling back, taut above that snaggletooth like a hawser rope looped halfway around a wharfside post. “Spring of twenty-two it were: the two of ’em hired on some fellers what answered the notice they put in the St. Louie paper—askin’ for fellers to go to the mountains an’ trap beaver.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing that notice,” Bass said quietly, slamming the hammer down onto the spring iron angrily. Watching the fireflies spew forth, the slake fly off the steel band with every blow. “Don’t read much no more anyways. Ain’t read much of anything in a long, long time, you know.”

“My, but thar’ was a bunch of ’em what did sign on for the upriver,” Isaac replied, his eyes squeezed into squints as he brooded on the roll call of their names, likely recalling each face too. “That Negra Rose was back from the Crows by then, ready an’ snortin’ to trap again. He went, along with a greenhorn Negra named Beck with. Then thar’ was the preacher, Jedediah Smith—he carried him his Bible ’long in his possibles. Young Jim Bridger t’weren’t more’n a green-broke kid, an’ Davy Jackson couldn’t been much older. ’Nother Span-yard, Louie Vasquez, was along too, with Tom Fitzpatrick, an’ a ornery ol’ hunter said he lived with the Pawnee of a time.”

“That one you told me ’bout—Glass?”

“Yep.” Washburn nodded. “Our bunch with Henry was the first to push off from St. Louie. The gen’ral an’ his boys weren’t gonna get away for the better part of a month behin’t us. Whew! My ol’ body gets tired yest thinking about what work it be pushin’ a boat upriver. Mean work—’bout as mean as work comes: pullin’ that boat of Henry’s with ropes up through the brush and bramble, fightin’ skeeters an’ mud, warpin’ them boats around trees to pull with all the gut we got—”

With a wag of his head Titus suddenly interrupted, “If I don’t see another flat or keel and them big hawsers for the rest of my life—it’ll be soon enough.” He drew his bare, sinewy forearm across his forehead, then swiped at the large pendant of sweat hanging at the end of his nose.

Struggling upriver, the Henry brigade pushed past the town of Franklin, Missouri, and nearby Boone’s Lick. Next came Fort Osage at the mouth of the Kansas River, and finally the mouth of the Platte.

“That’s the place I’d leave the Missouri an’ strike out for the moun-tanes on my own the next time.”

Bass slowly laid his hammer down on the cooling steel and swallowed before asking, “The river you said what takes you into the mountains?”

“Runs smack into the heart of the Rockies.”

“So you did see where it goes?”

“Not rightly—but I been on it. Ye can count plew on that.”

“Plew?”

“Frenchie word for beaver pelt.”

“You say you already was on that river—the Platte we can take to the mountains?”

“That comes later on, Titus,” he replied gruffly, waving off that interruption to the flow of his story. “By an’ by we pull Ashley’s trade goods, ’long with our own possibles an’ plunder, all the way north to them Mandan villages. It were thar’ we bartered fer ponies. Ye see, the gen’ral was to rendezvous with us by then—but word reached us that his boat hit a snag and sunk clean to the bottom of the river. Not a feller to give up, Ashley turned right around to head back to St. Louie fer more trade goods. Meanin’ Henry’s brigade, we was on our own. Andrew looked over our bunch an’ said he’d lead out the rest of us overland—makin’ for the Yallerstone.”

“Where you an’ Rose been before.”

“Yessir—we two knew some about that kentry. First night out Henry set up his run of guards—but, damn! If the Assiniboin didn’t come in an’ hit us a few nights later. Skedaddled off with more’n thirty of our ponies. That put Henry in a real blue funk, so bad that t’weren’t long afore he decided agin tryin’ to make it all the way to Three Forks that season.”

“Can’t see why Henry’d wanna go back there anyways,” Bass said as he mopped his face there beside the glowing forge.

“Arter we was the ones went an’ jabbed a stick in that Blackfoot wasps’ nest more’n ten y’ar afore?” Washburn asked, then chuckled. “’Thout all the ponies we needed so we could make a faster march of it upriver, Henry said we’d go no farther’n the mouth of the Yallerstone, wait till spring to tramp on over.”

About a mile above the confluence of the two rivers, Andrew Henry’s men built themselves crude log shelters chinked with riverbank mud and began laying in wood to get them through the coming season, more hints of an early and cold winter becoming apparent every day.

“’Bout the time the leaves was really turnin’,” Isaac continued, “word come upriver that Missouri Fur was coming our way. Had plans of their own to raise up a post at the Three Forks afore winter set in hard. That’s when Henry changed his mind—figured to take him some men on up the Missouri. Thought it might not be a better place for us to winter in, a wee bit closer to the Forks come green-up.”

“The rest of Henry’s men stayed on at the Yellowstone?”

Washburn shook his head. “Henry sent ’em off too, south by west torst the high moun-tanes we could see off a ways.”

The Missouri Fur Company didn’t get as far as the Three Forks country that autumn, settling instead for erecting their post at the mouth of the Bighorn River on the Yellowstone. Henry himself didn’t get all that close to the Forks either. By the time the first hard snow had squeezed down on the high plains, he and his men were scampering to get their four log shelters built, all of them enclosed by a crude stockade, there at the mouth of the Musselshell beside the Missouri River. Which placed his base about the same distance from the fabled beaver country of the Three Forks as was the Missouri Fur brigade wintering in at the mouth of the Bighorn.

“Now that his post was up an’ the snow was flying,” Isaac explained, “Henry was dead set on sendin’ out parties to explore that kentry torst the Forks.”

“They ever get over to that Blackfeet country that winter?”

“Close to it, Titus,” he answered. “An’ for Henry’s troubles, the men found more beaver’n any man thort possible. Ever’ man’s spirits was higher’n those clouds along them stony peaks above us—every last man jack of us makin’ plans to get rich come spring trappin’, thar’ was so much prime plew to pull outta the streams in that kentry.”

Washburn nodded as if savoring that memory, swilling back some water from Titus’s piggin before wiping off his chin whiskers with the back of a buckskin-covered arm. “When that winter broke, them fellers Henry sent off skedaddled back from Crow kentry. Fitzpatrick, Clyman, an’ that Bible-toter, Jed Smith. Them an’ the rest’d moseyed far south of Crow land, an’ come back to tell of a pass they said would take a man right on over the moun-tanes.

“The wonder of it, Titus,” Isaac exclaimed. “They tol’t us it was so easy a man don’t know he’s crossed over the moun-tanes till he sees all the water flowing off to the west. A pure marvel, that pass!”

When spring came, so did the Blackfoot.

“April, it were, when they fust showed their devil faces,” Washburn continued. “By May, four of Henry’s twenty was kill’t—running off some of them ponies we still had. I watched it all damn near take all the starch right out of Henry’s backbone, it did. The man swore he was through with Blackfoot kentry, prime beaver or no. ‘Missouri Fur can have it,’ he vowed. ‘Lock, the stock, an’ the barrel too!’”

Andrew Henry retreated downriver a ways, with the intent of waiting for Ashley’s main group bringing up more supplies and horses.

“Henry wasn’t able to do damn much ’thout those horses,” Washburn said as he stuffed his cheek full of tobacco he tore loose from a dark brown carrot of the cured leaf, then stuffed back in the pouch at his hip. “Henry said the gen’ral was headed our way with them horses, plunder, an’ ’nother batch of likely young’uns wantin’ to make their fortune in the moun-tanes. So he sent Jed Smith down on the best pony we had us, with word for Ashley to hurry on up. It was weeks later afore we saw Jed again—but he t’weren’t leading the gen’ral our way. No, sir. The preacher come back in a lather, bellering that by the time he got to the river an’ run onto Ashley, the gen’ral run hisself into a mess of trouble at them goddamned Ree villages.”

“Them’s the Injuns you hate just as bad as the Blackfoots,” Titus observed.

“Damn right. One evenin’ it seems Ashley stopped his new keelboat at them villages to trade for horses so he could carry his trade goods an’ supplies overland to Henry. Most all the men with him was sleeping on the riverbank, wrapped up tight in their blankets, when them Rees started firing on ’em at the peep o’ day! Must’ve been some fight, Titus.”

Even though they were heavily outnumbered, Ashley’s men held on the best they could, pinned down on that sandy beach below the bluffs where the Arikara villages stood, giving the warriors a wide field of fire. The general ordered his French keelboat crew to raise anchor and pole their way closer to shore to pick up his men—but for the longest time the boatmen refused. At last Ashley and some Americans steered the keelboat toward the men left on the bank. By the time the retreat was made, fourteen of the general’s men lay dead at the edge of the Missouri. Another ten were seriously wounded. Ashley cut the anchor rope and allowed the keelboat to float downriver, far beyond the villages and fear of a second attack.

“As soon as Jed Smith told us how the gen’ral been chewed up by them Rees, Henry an’ the rest of us come down on the double. A long march that was. We skirted round the village an’ found Ashley’s boys camped on the west bank of the river, lickin’ their wounds. They buried the dead an’ sat thar’ waitin’ fer the chance to get in some knocks. Forted up, they was, with some other traders what were headed upriver behind them. Them an’ a hull mess of Colonel Leavenworth’s regulars—more’n two hunnert of ’em come to punish the Rees an’ get the fur traders past the villages.”

But though the white soldier chief now possessed numerical superiority over the Arikara, he still did not press his advantage.

“Arter shootin’ up Ashley’s bunch so bad, them Rees got off scot-free!” Washburn grumped. “Goddamned army, anyways! All it done is show them Rees our backsides an’ make ’em wanna thumb their noses at the white man.”

“That bunch of soldiers didn’t go off and attack the village?”

“Hell, no! An’ that show of yaller was bound to make them red niggers harder to deal with come the next time we run into one t’other. So whar’ we laid to way below the villages, on down to Fort Kioway—what some folks on the river call Fort Lookout—Henry and Ashley had themselves a real rip-snorting confab, arguing on what best be done ’bout their trapping business. All that money, all them supplies lost in that fust boat sunk to the bottom of the river, then all them trappers kill’t with Henry an’ down at the Ree villages too—with nothin’ yet to show for it!”

“Had to be a pretty sad time of it for all of you,” Bass said as he stabbed the spring into cold water with a steamy hiss.

“Well, now—it truly were some sad doin’s. But the two of ’em finally decided Henry should point his nose for the Yallerstone once’t again. Summer was almost gone by then. Already August—so Henry tol’t us—when we pulled away from Ashley’s bunch again.”

“Headed back to the up-country to trap beaver?”

“That’s the true of it, Titus,” Isaac replied. “Johnson Gardner, Black Harris, Milt Sublette, Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, some eight or so more of us. A small party, most every man still afoot, using what horses we had to pack the goods we took off Ashley’s boat, the one the gen’ral called The Rocky Mountain. We pulled away from Kioway, making for the Yallerstone—three hunnert fifty miles off on the skyline, counting on doing our best to make it in ten, maybeso twelve days at most.”

Henry planned to push back up along the Missouri River to that country just south of the Arikara villages, from there to strike out overland to reach the Grand.

“Damn, but we wasn’t gone far when the Mandans jumped us.”

“Mandans? Thought they was friends to the white man!”

“Not right then, Titus. That far upriver they’d heard tell of what the Rees got away with—how the yellow-backed army let them bastards off. So even them Mandans was willing to jump white men now that them Rees gone scot-free for what they done to Ashley’s outfit. Damn, but that sours my milk!”

“Them Mandans skip off with what you had left for horses?”

“Shit! Them Mandans didn’t have much the stomach to make a real fight of it—so we run them warriors off pretty quick, arter givin’ ’em a good thrashin’. Ye see, Henry was bound that the word go out: don’t none of them tribes dare poke a stick in his hive or they’d get stung. An’ stung bad.”

Bass stuffed a second length of spring steel into the fire to heat. “So you kept on heading along the Grand?”

“That’s the way of it. Puttin’ out hunters an’ keepin’ a eye on the skyline fer more red niggers wanna jump our leetle bunch. Now, that Glass feller what was along, he’d spent him some time with the Pawnee—so was no green-horn like some of them boys. I could see that, first off.”

“This the same Glass you told me of?”

“One an’ the same—Hugh Glass. Me an’ him struck it up—like I said: he had him some bark on him, that one. Not the sort to cow down an’ do all what Henry ordered him to.” Washburn spit a long brown stream into a small mound of hay mucked off to the side, wagging his head.

“Shame of it is, Titus—that Glass bein’ such a ornery one likely got him in the biggest fix of his hull life, way I lays my sights to it. He had him a’purpose to be off huntin’ that day—wasn’t his duty that mornin’. But thar’ he went, off to work the kentry way out ahead of us. Son of a bitch was nothin’ if he weren’t ornery, that he was, for sure an’ for certain.”

“What trouble he get hisself into?”

“I be comin’ to that now, Titus. You yest tend to makin’ your beaver traps, an’ I’ll tend to makin’ my story.” He cleared his throat dramatically before continuing. “We wasn’t far up the Grand—maybe no more’n a week or so. That mornin’ that ol’ hunter’s off by his lonesome when he gets hisself chewed up something fierce by a grizz. Shit, Titus—Glass was just healin’ up from the arrer wound he took in the Ree fight. He’d come down to take a drink of water at the riverbank, an’ looks up to find hisself right smack a’tween a sow grizz an’ her two cubs. Nothin’ makes a mama grizz madder’n that, I’ll tell you.”

“She kill him, kill ol’ Glass, I mean?”

“She liked to—believe me! Clawin’ him up, ripping chunks o’ meat outta his shoulder an’ his backside afore some of the other hunters heard the shouts an’ come runnin’. We all put a shitload of lead in that grizz afore she fell dead: right on top of ol’ Glass. Man, when we gone an’ rolled that b’ar off’n him, wasn’t a one of us didn’t figger the ol’ man for nothin’ but dead. Henry put his head down on Glass’s chest—listened real keerful—then tol’t us he was still alive! Can you beat that for stink? Glass was still alive arter that turrible maulin’!”

“I can’t figure he lasted for long, did he?”

“No man don’t last long arter wrasslin’ with a grizz, Titus,” Isaac explained. “But then—I was to find out that Hugh Glass wasn’t yer usual feller either. The major ordered us all to make camp right there by the river, an’ we all had bear steaks that night for supper. Next morning Henry was fixin’ to bury Glass—they had his grave all ready for the man, cut down in the sand right aside Hugh. But that ornery cuss was still breathin’!”

“Now you’re pulling my leg, you son of a bitch!” Bass roared. “He damned well couldn’t still be alive!”

Washburn held a right hand up as if taking a solemn oath. “May I be struck dead with a bolt of the Lord’s terrible thunder if I’m stretchin’ the truth.”

Bass cocked his head to the side, his eyes rolling heavenward, wary—expecting a sudden flash of lightning to come streaking through the roof over their heads.

“With the ol’ man still breathin’—that give the hull bunch of us fits. Thar’ we was in kentry the Rees loved to roam, an’ we all knew them red niggers was still worked up and feeling like big cocks arter drivin’ Americans back down the river. ’Sides, we needed to push on quick before the first snow flied. An’ that was bound to be slow going if’n we hauled a dyin’ man along with us.”

“You didn’t just leave him, did you?”

“Didn’t figger on it at fust.” Then with a wag of his head, Isaac replied, “We all waited ’nother day—when Henry growed tired of lollygagging. So he asked fer volunteers to stay with ol’ Glass till the dyin’ man breathed his last, then bury him and hurry on to catch up with the rest of us so Henry could get on fer the beaver kentry. Offered good money to them that stayed.”

“Did you?”

“Naw. Wasn’t one to wanna leave my ha’r in that kentry. Two did say they would stay behin’t: fella named Fitzgerald, an’ that young’un Jim Bridger. Next morning the rest of us pulled out, walkin’ away from that camp—them two, an’ Ol’ Hugh Glass.”

“He was still breathin’?”

“Damn if he weren’t!” Then Washburn shuddered. “The way them flies smelled blood, Titus—it were a awful sight to behol’t: seein’ how the flies blackened ever’ one of the ol’ man’s wounds like a swarm of crawlin’ peppercorns.”

Titus shuddered too. “What become of him, he up an’ die on them two?”

Scratching his chin whiskers, Washburn continued. “Henry led us on to the beaver kentry, an’ we made ready for the winter. Fitzgerald and that Bridger lad come in with the ol’ man’s plunder an’ fixin’s. Said they’d buried him proper whar’ he was. But as that snake-eyed Fitz tol’t the tale of it, I watched the boy. Bridger never looked much at any of us. Couldn’t hol’t a man’s eye. Somethin’ ’bout it yest never sat right in my craw. I s’pose I guessed the wrong of it right then an’ thar’. Man cain’t look you in the eye, Titus—he’s got him something to hide from you. That’s the sort you cain’t count on watching yer backside neither. Still, something in my gut tol’t me that flim-flam Fitz was the big gator in that shit-hole. I had me a feelin’ he cowed the boy someway, slick-talked Bridger into doin’ the wrong they done. Right then I had me no idea what they done—but I was damned certain some such smelled bad. We yest all of us went on with the fall hunt. Bridger didn’t talk all that much into the fall neither. Keepin’ off to hisself. Then winter finally come down on us, hard—like the slap of a man’s hand right across’t your cheek—”

It surprised Bass when Washburn slapped himself on the face, the sharp crack like the snap of a hickory wiping stick in that warm livery.

“One cold night not long arter the snow got serious—thar comes a poundin’ at the gate,” Isaac continued. “An’ who you s’pose comes walkin’ into our post, draggin’ a bunged leg, lamed-up-like, got him a ol’t buffler robe snagged round his shoulder, snow froze to his ha’r an’ beard—Lordee! Lookin’ ever’ bit like a ghost, he was!”

“G-glass?” Bass swallowed, letting the hammer slide from his fingers onto the anvil with a resounding clunk.

“The ol’ man hisself!”

Titus gulped. “H-he come back from the dead?”

“Nawww!” Washburn growled. “I yest said it was the ol’ man hisself! Not no ghost!”

Shaking his head in confusion, Bass started to mumble, but Isaac leaped right in to explain.

“He never died. Them two yest left him fer dead.”

“An’ he come lookin’ for ’em, didn’t he?” Titus roared, snapping his fingers with certainty.

“He surely did—come for them that run off with his gun, his knife, an’ possibles. Leavin’ him lie beside his own shaller grave. Bad part of it, only one of them two was still thar’, Major Henry tol’t Glass. Over to the corner huddled up young Bridger—his face gone white as the sheet on a good folks’ bed. Knowin’ what he done in leavin’ the man fer dead—’thout nary a one of his possibles.”

“Isaac—you figger he had the right to kill them two what left him in a fix like that?”

“Aye, I do, Titus. The rest of us figgered it that way too. That were mountain justice. Well, now—the place fell quiet as Ol’ Glass’s grave was to be, while’st outside the blizzard was howlin’. Glass pulled out his pistol, walked over to young Bridger in the corner, an’ put the gun to the boy’s head. He stayed it there for a long time, starin’ down at Bridger’s face while the boy owned up to what he done afore all of us. Bridger didn’t blink—’stead he yest kept his own eyes right there lookin’ at that ol’ grizz-bait, now that he was shet of what he’d done wrong. Henry an’ me tol’t Glass it were Fitz carried most of the blame, that he talked Bridger into it. But right is right, an’ Glass had him the right to blow out the boy’s candle then an’ there—if he was of a mind to.”

“Just put that ball through the young’un’s brain?”

Washburn spit, swiped the back of his hands across his stained chin whiskers, and waited a dramatic moment as he slowly formed his hand into the shape of a pistol. Gradually he lowered his thumb. “Arter a while, Glass eased down that hammer.”

“He didn’t shoot Bridger?” Bass asked anxiously.

“Nope. He yest turned to the rest of us an’ said, ‘The boy was yest a pup. Didn’t know no better. Fitzgerald’s the scalp I want.’ That’s when Bridger started shakin’, tremblin’ yest like a wet pup, tears come to his eyes, him swearin’ he’d never let a man down ever again.”

“I’ll be damned,” Titus exclaimed almost under his breath, then poked more of the steel into the coals to heat.

“Glass tol’t us all how he was givin’ life fer life. Yest the way the Almighty Above give him his life back or somethin’ such. He wasn’t gonna take Bridger’s life—but he was gonna run down Fitz. Claimed the Almighty Above told him vengeance would be his.”

“How’d he come to get from the Grand River all the way to where you was winterin’ with Henry?”

“He crawled.”

“C-crawled?”

“Man gets chewed up bad as he was by a grizz … he’s bound to have ter crawl. Tol’t us all the story of it that winter night arter he’d stuffed his meatbag full of venison. Said he started out on his belly, Glass did. Some weeks later got up on his hands an’ one leg, dragging the other leg what the sow chewed up so bad. Maggots wrigglin’ down in his wounds—crawlin’ in an’ out, eatin’ all the p’isen out—flies buzzin’ round him something awful as he crawled on down our backtrail, foot by foot.”

“Hang on there—you said he took your backtrail? Here I thought you said he come up to Henry’s fort that winter.”

“He did get up to that post, but—savvy as he was—first off Glass pointed his nose for Fort Kioway. Knowed it were closer. Still some three hunnert miles or so,” Washburn answered, undisguised wonder a’shine in his eyes. “When ol’ Hugh made it to Kioway, said he talked hisself into a new outfit an’ fetched him a ride on a traders’ boat going north.”

“Past them troublemaking Rees?”

“Ain’t you the smart one now, Titus?” Isaac exclaimed. “That’s right: already Glass knowed better’n to try to poke his way on by such river niggers—so yest downriver from them villages, Glass had them traders put over and he went ashore, making overland. Kept to the brush and the timber, and what you know? It weren’t long afore he heard the fight boomin’ behin’t him as them Rees jumped those traders. He found a hidey-hole and laid low. An’ when the dust settled down, Glass turned back—found all those fellers on the boat was wiped out.”

Titus dragged the steel from the fire, laying the glowing red strap over the horn on his anvil, fixing to begin hammering a bend into the spring steel. “Glass found hisself alone again?”

“Damn sure was. But that ornery hivernant run right onto some Mandans what knew better’n to jump ary a white man this time. L’arn’t their lesson from us’ns with Henry. Them Mandans took Glass’s ol’ bones on upriver to their villages. An’ from thar’ he pushed on alone, walkin’ up the Missouri to reach our winter digs on foot. Hate’s a meal what can sure keep a man warm, no matter how cold the storm is, Titus.”

Bass shuddered involuntarily as something slipped down the length of his spine—little matter how he sweated with his exertions there beside the glowing forge. He asked, “Now that he forgive Bridger, Glass was still dead set on finding this Fitzgerald?”

“Come mornin’, he told us—he was leavin’ off again. Wild-eyed, the ol’ man was. Said he’d nursed himself back to bein’ strong, hearin’ the voice of the Almighty inside his head ever’ foot of the way—that voice sayin’ vengeance would be his. Fitz would be delivered up to his hand. Glass knowed he had God’s word on it an’ it was meant to be.”

“So he up an’ took off the very next morning?”

“Soon as that storm broke, that ol’ man disappeared. But he didn’t go alone: three others told Henry they figured to go with him on that hunt for Fitz. Bound and determined to find the man truly at fault for Glass being left to die in the wilderness ’thout no possibles nor truck.”

After a long silence from the old trapper, Bass looked up from his work with the hammer. Washburn was staring at him.

“Titus, I was one of them three.”

“You went with Glass to hunt the man down?”

With a nod Isaac continued. “We marched west on foot—nary a one of us had a animal to ride, only one ribby horse Henry let us have for packing our blankets and plunder. We tramped up the Yallerstone to the mouth of the Powder, then turned south up the Powder. Far ’nough up toward the headwaters of the Powder we struck out south, making for the Platte. Leastways, that’s what river Glass figgered it had to be when we finally run onto it. Wasn’t long afore the ol’ man said if we kept on trampin’ east, the closer we’d come to Pawnee country.”

“Same Injuns Glass’d spent him some time with, right?”

“An’ run off from—so he sure didn’t wanna run into those folks again,” Washburn answered. “But look an’ behol’t! We run smack-dab into a big war party of Arikara instead! Likely they was wanderin’ south, out looking for to steal some horses from the ’Rapaho or Siouxs, any band them river niggers hoped to find down there in that kentry. Wasn’t s’posed to run onto them the way we was going, Glass said. But there them red niggers was.”

Bass leaned close, enthralled and captivated with every new twist in the story. “What became of you and them Rees you bumped into?”

“A fight of it—that’s what. They kill’t two of us, right off. Shot me up a li’l”—Isaac pointed to his left arm—“an’ kill’t our only horse. Me an’ Glass, we jumped down into a small stream slick with ice, wading on down hugging the bank and hangin’ back in them bare willers real close—yest like they was a woman’s soft breast. Weren’t long before we found us a hole in that bank to hide in, yest big enough for our ol’ bones to scrunch up in—it bein’ close to low-water time and the beaver bein’ moved on, leaving that hole behin’t for us the way they done. Down in that stream them Rees damn well couldn’t find ’em no tracks of the two white men got away. We pulled in some wilier behin’t us, to cover up the mouth of that hidey-hole, an’ laid thar’, holdin’ our wind. Up an’ down the crik above us Injuns hooted an’ hollered fer the better part of that arternoon afore we heard ’em pull off an’ leave. ’Long torst the sun goin’ down we heard ’em screeching in glee off upriver. Likely they was workin’ over them two other fellers started out with us from Henry’s post.”

“Who was they?”

“Never knowed their Christian names—damn me,” Washburn admitted, wagging his head dolefully. “Likely them boys had ’em families, Glass said that night when it was gettin’ dark. That was the very fust thing he said ever’ since’t we crawled into that hole too. An’ it were the last thing he ever said about them two, from thar’ on out. Arter slap-dark we finally dared stick our heads out an’ started walking.”

“Where the hell you head to then?” Titus asked, driving the hammer down hard, sending fireflies of sparks from the heated metal as it bent around the anvil’s horn.

“Ol’ Hugh claimed he felt right pert. Claimed this time he had him his gun and his fixin’s. Not like the last time he’d been left to push through Injun kentry after Fitz run off with ever’thing Glass owned. It gave me the willers ’cause he kept saying, over an’ over: ‘’Sides, us keepin’ our ha’r in that fix is yest ’nother sign God’s watching over me—making sure I track down Fitz, the one what left me fer dead.’”

“Bet you fellas covered some ground that night,” Bass said eagerly. “Sleep all day?”

Isaac nodded. “Found us some cover come sunup. Laid low till the night come round again. Went on like that, night arter night—making ourselves a hidey-hole ever’ day. That ol’ man was some walker, he was. Had him a big chest he could fill up with that cold winter air, strong legs he kept a’movin. He was one coon downright made for walking. Me? I was a man made for riding. I come to figger that out follerin’ Hugh Glass cross’t that Platte River kentry. Never been more certain of anythin’ in my life: Isaac Washburn ain’t cut out fer walkin’.”

“So where’d you two light out for?”

“Eventual we left the Platte, struck out overland, making for Fort Kioway again. I turned to Ol’ Glass. ‘How far you make it from here?’ asks I. ‘More’n two hunnert miles,’ says he. ‘Closer to three hunnert likely.’ I scratched my head, looked off into that night sky, darker’n the belly of your own grave, I s’pose. So I up an’ asks him, ‘Ain’t Atkinson closer? Maybe by half?’ He yest looked at me, no smile, no nothin’. ‘Shore is,’ Glass said. ‘We’ll go thar’ … if’n you got balls big enough to walk with me through Pawnee kentry. Them niggers be wintered up all ’long the Platte this time of year. Best you recollect I runned off from the Pawnee fer a damn good reason, Isaac.’”

When Washburn paused in moving his story along, Bass grew impatient and inquired, “Which way you decide to go?”

“I tol’t Hugh we’d head for Kioway.”

“To stay away from them Pawnee he hated,” Titus observed.

“We struck the headwaters of the Niobrara. Crossed over the divide thar’ an’ come on the headwaters of the White. Movin’ north by east ever’ night—watchin’ for sign in the sky, them stars. Laying out o’ sight ever’ day. Comin’ right through the heart of them badlands the Pawnee steer clear of. Glass said he knowed the White River take us right on to the Missouri. When we get there, we’d turn north a short piece and find ourselves at Kioway.”

“He go and tell you all about that bear and him while the two of you was on your way there?”

“Times it were downright spooky bein’ with Ol’ Glass. Fer the longest while he’d go heap of a time ’thout talkin’, then of a sudden he’d up an’ growl like a dog, sayin’: ‘Fitz, ye g’won have yer spree while’st you can, ’cause this’r ol’ child’s comin’ to get ye.’”

“How long did you go afore you got across that Injun country?”

“Better’n sixteen suns it took us afore I spotted that flagpole at Fort Lookout, I mean Kioway. Both of us wore down, skinnier’n hell. Been eatin’ prerra dogs when we couldn’t find us no game. My mocs was wored clear through—by then I was walkin’ on prerra-dog skins I had tied round my feet.”

“Damn,” Bass said with quiet admiration, “I had me no idea, Isaac. No idea what you come through.”

Washburn shrugged it off. “Could’ve been leaner times. As it was, all grass and gopher the hull way. Stopping only long enough ever’ day to lay low an’ blow arter trotting up a good pace right on through moon-time.”

Bass sensed some shame rising in his gorge as he looked at the trapper there in his worn and greasy buckskins. “Isaac—I’m sorry I made such a row over you eatin’ my vittles t’other night.”

“Think you nothin’ of it, now, Titus.”

“Had I knowed you hadn’t et in … how long it been since’t you reached Fort Kiowa?”

“Not that many suns,” Washburn replied. “It were there we catched us a early-spring boat headed south to Atkinson. That’s a big post where the law says a man has to have him a permit to move beyond thar’ into Injun kentry. Ye see: either a man is with a fur company, or he’s in the army. I wasn’t damn fool enough to join the army … and arter two trips to the upper Missouri, I’d had my fill of fur-company doin’s. Fort Atkinson t’weren’t the place for the likes of me.”

“What come of Glass?”

“That ol’ bear-bait stayed on to argue with that post commander ’bout getting his hands on Fitzgerald—since we l’arn’t that snake-eyed son of a bitch had gone and join’t the army. That meant if Glass kill’t the bastard—the army’d turn around an’ hang Glass. Last thing Hugh said to me afore we parted was, ‘Of a sudden, Isaac—thar’ be some big stones throwed down in the way of the Lord’s own vengeance.’”

Titus asked, “After all Glass’d been through, you know if he ever got his hands on the fella left him for dead?”

Washburn screwed up his lips a bit around that snag of a fang, admitting, “I didn’t wait to see what come of it, Glass’s work an’ the Lord’s vengeance. Likely I’ll never forget what that child said over an’ over again to me from the time we tramped south from Henry’s post: tellin’ me how it was to wake up looking at buzzards flyin’ overhead, roostin’ on branches nigh within reach—to find his own grave scooped out aside him. Naw, Titus Bass—first chance I had I come on down hyar to St. Louie. Set on having me a real spree arter all that Injun trouble an’ starvin’ times I had me on up that goddamned river. Man what has him Injun trouble deserves a spree, don’t he?”

“I had me some,” Bass declared, “not near as bad as you had. Chickasaw it were.”

“Chickasaw?”

“They ended up killing a friend of mine. Nearly got the rest of us too. On the Messessap.”

“That yer kentry down thar’?”

“It was then, I s’pose.” No, he thought better of that answer. “That ain’t no white man’s country, Isaac. I been through there on foot—like you coming down from the Yellowstone. Walked back through that Choctaw and Chickasaw country on foot, following the Natchez Trace.”

Washburn stood, stretched some kinks out of his back as if he were the one who had been pounding on trap springs that cold spring morning. “Sounds to me you put some kentry under you, Titus Bass.”

His hammer came to a halt, the last ring fading in the damp air. “I have, I s’pose, at that.”

Scratching his nose, Isaac spit into the pile of hay again, then looked Titus squarely in the eye to ask, “Like ye said t’other night—ye still hanker to put some more miles under ye?”

For a long moment Bass could not answer, his throat seized up with what import he sensed in those words. When he finally found his tongue, Titus asked, “Serious?”

“Isaac Washburn never been one to waste his wind, son.”

His heart was pounding as he replied, “What you got in mind?”

The trapper toed the dusty floor below him with a worn and patched moccasin, saying, “Head west with me. I figger to see me them moun-tanes out thar’ west on that Platte kentry. That’s land I only got a wee peek of, comin’ down the Powder with Glass. Maybe the two of us throw in together—if’n yer of a mind to—we can turn right at them Stonies—head up north to meet up with Major Henry, maybe some of them others, out thar’ on the Yallerstone. What say ye?”

Bass realized he was gripping that heavy hammer tight enough to squeeze the hickory handle in two as he formed the words. “You … you saying you want me to throw in with you?”

“Yer a likely sort, Titus. Ain’t a young lad no more—but I figger that runs in yer favor. Yessir, way I see it—ye got the makin’s of a partner. Allays better to travel with ’nother, ’cept when that ’nother man ain’t the sort can be trusted.”

Lord, how his head was pounding, his eyes almost ready to swim with such tears of happiness. “Isaac, you just told me you barely lived to make it to that Kiowa post. But here you are, saying you’ll head out again. Maybeso to lose your fixings and eat prairie dog again.”

Washburn slapped his thigh with a snort and a grin. “Ain’t it the truth? So—what d’ye say, Titus Bass? Aye? Ye got the makings to come to them moun-tanes with me?”

“I … I got a old horse,” he stammered. “I mean—I’ll get me ’nother horse. Like your’n.”

“That’un?” Washburn asked, thumbing back to the animal tied outside a far stall. “He ain’t no horse, Titus. No more’n a rabbit-eared, jug-headed Injun pony.”

“Where you come by him?”

“Happed onto a band of Omaha north of Fort Osage—maybeso ’nother tribe,” he snorted in glee. “Be fittin’ if it were a Pawnee pony, don’t ye figger?”

“You just took him?”

With a devilish grin and twinkle to his eye, Washburn shrugged and said, “Needed me one, Titus. So I took him. I ain’t got a pot to piss in an’ no window to throw it out of, so how ye figger I’m gonna buy myself a horse an’ outfit now that I come to St. Louie?”

“I … I dunno—”

“With what, Titus? What I got to buy a horse? I lost near all my fixin’s too. Takes a man money to make a new outfit.”

“I got money, Isaac.”

His tired old eyes lost their devilish twinkle and took on a serious light. He leaned close to the younger man. “Ye … said ye got money … money ye let me have to buy me fixings?”

“To buy us fixings,” Bass corrected.

Straightening, Washburn appraised the younger man once again, this time more carefully than ever, and eventually shook his head. “If that hoss don’t take the circle.”

“Take the circle?”

“You gonna throw in with me, are ye? Puttin’ up yer plews to buy our outfit?”

Bass glowed with a fire inside—few things had ever felt so right. “I got the money—you got the country. Right?”

“That’s right. I got the kentry, fer damned sure,” Washburn answered, tapping his forehead with one finger. “Fer the both of us, Titus Bass—I got the hull consarned Rocky Moun-tane kentry, right up here.”