Wind Walker

SEVEN

A long and muddy spring greened the prairie, short and hardy shoots uplifting beneath the aching blue of a sky that went on and on across those days while their tiny group plodded west through the stark and barren Red Desert so briefly aflower with a palette of heady color. The water in the streams and creeklets was poor for many days, laced with bitter salts, forcing them to search out hidden, bubbling springs or even fields of boulders where rain might be trapped in tiny pools. Most mornings the women found a thin crust of ice coating what water they had managed to collect in their brass kettles—the only sign they had begun their climb over the Continental Divide in crossing this austere and desolate stretch of country.

Eventually they reached the banks of the fabled Green River, lying by for two days while the horses ate their fill of the new short-grass and everyone soaked in those cold, legendary waters. After crossing the river, they struck west-northwest, following Black’s Fork as it meandered through a country of red and yellow bluffs, and spent the next night where Ham’s Fork poured in, camping in that verdant V of meadow formed by those two tributaries of the Green, here where the free men and fur brigades had gathered to celebrate the height of summer, eighteen and thirty-four.

While supper bubbled in the kettles that twilight at the fire, Titus called his long-legged daughter to come sit upon his knee.

“I grow so tall now, Popo,” she protested in English, standing before him. “Magpie not fit so good now.”

“You’ll always fit on your father’s knee,” he scolded as he patted his thigh again. “Come sit, girl.”

Waits-by-the-Water got to her feet at the far side of the fire, shifted her new shawl about her shoulders, and said, “Sit, because your father wants to tell you a story.”

“I listen too?” Flea asked, scratching Digger’s head. The dog had his muzzle laid on the boy’s leg.

He nodded at the youngster. “I think it’s good you listen to my story about Magpie.”

She leaned back a little against her father’s arm so she could gaze at her father’s wrinkled face. “A story about me?”

“Yes, daughter. You got your name right here at this place.”

Quickly peering down at the ground Magpie asked, “This spot?”

“Yonder, just across the river,” he explained and pointed. “Your mother and me, we were camped on upstream some. This here is named Black’s Fork.”

“Color of war, Popo?” Flea inquired.

“Black is the color of war—but I figger it was given a man’s name, son. Not for war.”

As Ghost followed her, Waits stepped around the edge of the fire pit, one hand on a hip and the other clutching a brass ladle. “This place, long ago, your father promise he teach you and me speak his white man talk, teach us together.”

For a moment, Titus gazed up at Shadrach, who stood nearby. “Near as I recollect, ronnyvoo of thirty-four was the last doin’s where I got likkered on John Barleycorn something bad. Paid heavy for it too. But it were a time I drunk my fill with a old friend I wasn’t ever to see again.”

“He a free man, or skin trapper like me?” Sweete asked.

“Neither. English. Jarrell Thornbrugh—a real John Bull of a Englisher.”

“Hudson’s Bay man?”

“By damn if he wasn’t” Titus replied, growing wistful. “Last time I laid eyes on him was right here in this valley. That’s back to a time when them Britishers was dispatchin’ a small brigade out to our ronnyvoo, for to keep a eye on us Americans. But, I never see’d Jarrell after thirty-four.”

Flea asked, “He not come back? Not to mountains?”

His eyes landed on his son sitting nearby. “No. Jarrell died two years arter I last saw him. Others said he was took by some croup-sick or the ague. That’s a wet and muggy country out there. I went, once. Long ago it was. This air, dry the way it is, keeps a man safe from the ague.” He lowered his eyes and wagged his head. “Jarrell was a better man than to die in bed. Such is for cowards and sick ol’ men—to die in bed. A good man like him, a brave warrior never lives forever. Only the rocks and sky live long, children. Only the rocks and sky.”

“Tell story of Magpie’s name,” Flea asked as he sashayed up beside his father’s vacant knee and plopped on the ground at Bass’s feet.

“Well, now—that’s where I was headin’ in the first place.” Scratch cleared his throat, remembering a precious and bygone heartbeat of time. “That summer night it seemed like the whole of the world held its breath, just for my baby girl.”

He went on to tell Magpie how it was that ever since they had arrived at that long-ago rendezvous of the white traders and fur trappers, the infant had taken to chattering more with every day—a happy, cheerful babble. “And for your mother, it was not an easy day to wait.”

“Wait?” Magpie asked.

“To learn your name,” he answered, winking at his wife. “She’s never been a patient sort, young’uns.”

“I was patient to wait for you,” she protested from across the fire.

“Damn glad you did.” Then he looked back into his daughter’s eyes, close as they were to his, and magnetically intent upon his every word now. “I sat by a fire, just like this’un, Magpie. Had you on my lap, just like I got you sitting right now. With the Apsaluuke, you know that menfolk are to name their young’uns, right?”

She nodded eagerly. “A name is a special gift, yes.”

“Your mother’d been after me for some time to give our first child a name.”

Magpie nodded. “Long time ago I was born in Mateo’s lodge in Ta-house.”

“So that evening I tol’t your mother you’d allays had a name.”

“Magpie was always mine?”

“Only took me a while to figure it out, daughter,” he admitted with a shrug. “The Creator—the Grandfather Above your mother’s people call First Maker—He was waiting for us to find out what name He’d already give you.”

Confusion crossed her face. “So my Popo did not name me?”

“I s’pose I did, but I had some help from First Maker too, because I got it wrong three times.”

“Three names you tried to give her?” Flea inquired as Shell Woman handed her young son to an enthralled Shadrach, who sat spellbound, listening to the story with the youngster.

“First I thought your name was Little Red Calf,” Titus explained. “You was just like a li’l buffler calf when they’re first born—all red and wrinkled up. But, wasn’t long an’ you changed—wasn’t red no more. So my mind come up with Spring Calf Woman, since you was born in the spring.”

Magpie’s eyes squinted up a bit. “But in the spring, calves turn yellow.”

“That’s right—because your hair ain’t rightly black like your mother’s.”

She lifted a handful of her own to inspect it.

“I have a sister got yellow hair,” Titus continued. “Yellow as the bright sun. One of my brothers too. You won’t never have yellow hair like them, but I did once’t—an’ I give you a little of that color afore you was born.”

“But Magpie never had no yellow hair,” Shad pressed, “so, what’d you name her for a third go at it?”

“Cricket,” he said in English. “For all them happy sounds she made as a baby … but by the time we got here to ronnyvoo, I had me a strong feeling that wasn’t the name either. I was starting to get worrisome: three tries an’ I’d got it wrong all those times.”

“Then Grandfather Above told you?” Magpie said, tugging gently on the front of his faded calico shirt.

“Said to name you Magpie. ’Cause you loved to talk, even before we could understand your talk. ’Nother thing He tol’t me was your mother could smoke with me that night we called you Magpie for the first time.”

“Women never smoke,” Flea argued, his young face gray with seriousness.

“Your mother belonged to our lodge, son. I am leader of that lodge—the coyote band. I told her she could smoke to pray for our first young’un.”

“You smoke and pray for me too?” the boy asked, turning to his mother.

“We have done the same for you and Jackrabbit,” she answered in Crow. “Go get your little brother before he gets too close to the riverbank.”

Scrambling up as he grumbled in complaint, Flea took after the fleet-footed Jackrabbit. That’s when Scratch took an opportunity to whisper to his daughter.

“You wanted to smoke my pipe the night we named you.”

She grinned at that. “So you let me smoke soon, like my mother?”

“No,” he shook his head. “Not for women like it is for men. That smoke your mother had for each of her young’uns was real holy.”

“I do not know this word, holy.”

In Crow Bass explained, “Do you understand sacred?”

“Yes, now I see the meaning.”

“You was all arms and legs that night, wriggling and squealing, when we took off all your clothes—so you was naked as the day you was born. Then I held you up to the sky, so First Maker could get Him a real good look at the beautiful creature He’d made through your mother an’ me.”

“Will this be my name for all time?”

He hugged her a little more tightly. “Your mother an’ me have you with us for only a short time. One day, you’ll belong to another—”

“But I don’t wanna leave you!” she sobbed in Crow against his chest.

Rubbing the first spill of tears from a cheek, Scratch said, “One day soon you will be ready to leave us, and go with a man. The two of you gonna make a family of your own. You won’t be with our family no more.”

“No, Popo! I don’t want to leave!”

“Daughter,” he said, his throat clogged with emotion, “it is the way of the Creator. You’re with us for just a short while, riding the trails we take. Then comes a season an’ you’ll go off on your own trail. A time when we both will cry for your leavin’.”

“I don’t want that for a long, long time,” the girl sobbed, pressing her face into the hollow of his neck.

“An’ one day, a long, long time from now—the First Maker will call you back to be with Him again, Magpie. He’ll lift your spirit back up there with all the rest of them stars so you can be with Him again—just like you was afore you come to live with us for a little while.”

As Magpie turned her damp face upward to look at the sky, Titus glanced at his wife, finding her smiling at him, just as she had that night thirteen summers before, her cheeks glistening with moisture that spilled from her radiant black-cherry eyes. Just the way she had cried when they had given their daughter her name here beneath these same stars, beside these same waters. He was reminded how much had happened to him, happened to them all, in those intervening seasons. Then he was struck with how this place had remained unchanged—these bluffs and the rising half-moon, the rocks and the water. It all was timeless, perhaps infinite, while he himself was a mere mortal who came, and lived, then passed on in the mere blink of an eye compared to the everlasting earth and sky.

“Magpie.” The girl whispered her own name, gazing again at her father’s teary eyes.

He turned to his daughter, seeing how Magpie’s cheeks were completely streaked with riyulets of tears, her eyes pooling like her mother’s. “Yes, Magpie,” he repeated. “The li’l talking one who came to stay with her mother an’ me for a while.”

She flung her arms tightly around his neck and whispered in his ear, “I will stay with you and Mother forever.”

Titus felt his own eyes filling to overflowing as his tears began to spill atop his daughter’s head. “Yes, you will stay in our hearts for all time, Magpie. Forever, and for all time.”

The sun was nearing midsky two days later when Bass was surprised to spot a small log hut topped with a sod-and-timber roof. A thin spiral of smoke whispered from the top of a crude rock chimney. At the opposite corner of the cabin stood a small corral constructed of lodgepole pine.

He whistled up the dogs. Both Digger and Ghost came bounding up. He gave them a quick signal with his hand and they immediately heeled on his horse, tongues lolling, tails wagging … waiting.

Whoever it was raised this cabin, he thought as he emerged from the cottonwood, they had invested a lot of time and sweat to drag lodgepole all the way here from the Wind Rivers.

“Halloo, the house!” he sang.

A shadowy figure moved across the open doorway, just touched by the edge of sunlight. At the same moment a brown-skinned face appeared very briefly at the lone, tiny window, open and without benefit of glass. Poor doin’s, Titus ruminated.

“Titus? Titus Bass?” a voice cried out in English as the horseman warily approached. “Is that your ol’ gray head I’m seein’ after all these years?”

Scratch reined up, curious as to who might possibly know him here in the middle of the overland trail. From the appearance of the hut and that tiny corral penning up but three bone-rack horses, this damn well couldn’t be Bridger’s post. This was no more than a poor man’s shanty.

He squinted into the darkened doorway. “That’s me, Titus Bass,” he responded, leaning over his big pommel the size of a Mexican orange. “Say, friend, step on out here where I can see you too.”

The figure took but a moment to prop his rifle inside the doorway before he ventured two steps into the spring light, shading his eyes as he gazed up at Bass, when he suddenly caught sight of the others some sixty yards back.

“Uncle Jack? That really you, coon?”

Jack Robinson^* tore his eyes off the others and held his hand up to the horseman. “Damn, Titus Bass. I ain’t see’d you since afore beaver went belly-up!” He gazed a moment at their joined hands. “It really you—not no ghost of your own self?”

Releasing his hand from the younger man’s grip, Bass slipped to the ground. “Flesh an’ blood, Uncle Jack. Damn, but I could say the same for you. Thort you’d gone belly-up yourself, or run off to Oregon country.”

The skinny Robinson shook his head, the loose wattles of his fleshy neck shaking like a turkey gobbler’s. “Here’s as pretty a piece of country as I’d ever wanna lay tracks in, Titus Bass. Think I’ll for sure stay in these parts till it’s time for my bones to lay in the wind.”

Scratch waved the others on. “I see’d a brown face in the window there. You got yourself a woman for company?”

Robinson glanced at the hut, putting his fingers between his teeth, and whistled. “My second. This’un’s a Snake. One of Washakie’s nieces. A real black-skinned bitch, but she’s got her a good heart. Warm place to keep my pecker in the winter too.”

“Can’t beat a robe-warmer in this high country,” Titus agreed.

Shading his face again, Robinson squinted at the pair of bounding dogs, then peered at those oncoming riders. “Looks like you got you a new squaw, Titus Bass.”

“Naw, that’s Shad Sweete’s woman. Cheyenne, she be, from down near Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas.”

“Sweete’s his name?”

Titus nodded as the others got closer and started halting to dismount while Flea circled up their extra horses.

Robinson took a step closer to Bass. “That’un serve with Bridger any?”

“Him an’ Gabe was real tight of a time,” Bass explained as he led his horse over to the corral and tied off the reins to the top rail. “How far’s Bridger’s post from you?”

Uncle Jack pointed off to the southwest. “Should be there afore supper.” He watched Sweete start toward them. “I was the nigger told Bridger he ought’n build his post here on the Black’s Fork.” He turned to face Shadrach, announcing, “C’mon over. Any friend of Bridger’s is a friend o’ mine.”

“When you come to the mountains, Uncle Jack?” Sweete asked after they shook hands.

“Thirty-one. Rode west with Fitzpatrick. Mizzable trip: Jed Smith was kill’t by Comanches on the Cimarron water scrape. After we took on supplies in Taos from Davey Jackson, I stayed on with Fitz and we come north. Next summer when we fought the Blackfoot in Pierre’s Hole, I was wounded.”

Titus asked, “Ronnyvoo of thirty-two?”

“Weren’t nothing bad, really,” Robinson explained. “I was off my feed for the fall hunt, but stayed on my feet through till winter.” He turned and whistled again. “Madame Jack! Godblessit—get out here, now!”

He turned back to the two trappers and shrugged, saying, “She’s a bit shy when there’s other wimmens about. Just menfolk show up, why—she’s there, lickety on the spot. But when squaws come about, she’s a shy one.”

From the doorway emerged a stocky woman with an amiable face, carrying a large gourd trussed up in a leather cradle complete with a wooden handle. From the fingers of her other hand were suspended four tin cups, two of which she passed out to the trappers, then poured each of them a splash of cool water from the gourd.

“You mind we noon with you, rest the horses?” Titus inquired.

Robinson smiled warmly. “I’d like that, like that a lot, boys. Gimme a chance to talk to new ears. Haven’t yet had much travel on the road this year.”

“Road?” Sweete echoed.

“Oregon Road,” Robinson declared to the tall man. “Wasn’t you coming over the Southern Pass from the east?”

“No, we come south, through that Red Desert country,” Scratch explained. “That what they call that way over the pass now? The Oregon Road?”

“Ever since last summer,” Robinson said. “Some say it’s the Emigrant Road, for it’s carried a few on to California.”

“Some claim American soldiers took Californy. But I’ll wager it’s Mexican country, still,” Bass said as he handed his cup to Waits-by-the-Water.

“Most of ’em we see’d come through last year are makin’ for Oregon,” Jack went on. “I managed to trade off some good stock for what animals they wored out getting this far west.”

Quickly glancing about, Scratch said, “Not them skinny horses. What good stock you got, Uncle Jack?”

“Have ’em grazing over yonder, a mile or more, on some good grass aways up the Black’s—trail you’ll foller to get to Bridger’s big post.”

Sweete asked, “Injuns don’t raid?”

“Hell,” Jack snorted, “this here’s Snake country. They take good care of us fellers. Both Gabe and me got hitched into the tribe, you see. Utes don’t dare come north, and them Bannocks is afraid to make Washakie angry. Naw, we don’t worry none ’bout Injuns runnin’ off our stock. Maybeso you fellers ought’n think ’bout settlin’ down on Black’s Fork like me an’ Gabe done.”

“Just gonna visit for a spell is all,” Sweete answered for them both. “My woman’s country is back on the other side of the mountains.”

“An’ my family’s home is in Crow country,” Bass stated. “We only come to visit Gabe. Thankee for the offer but it ain’t likely we’ll be putting down no roots.”

“Not in no country where there’s settlers passing through on their way to Oregon country,” Shad said as he took a cup of water to his young son.

Robinson explained, “Man does what he can, now that there ain’t no furs the traders want—’ceptin’ buffler hides.”

“Much as I can,” Titus offered, “I’ll stay off this here road you said them corncrackers and sodbusters ride west.”

“Same road Billy Sublette, Pilcher, an’ Drips come west to ronnyvoo with their goods,” Robinson explained after he shuffled his wife back into the hut to fetch some dried meat to offer their midday guests.

“That means these overlanders using the same trail?” Scratch inquired.

Robinson nodded. “From Fort Bridger, they’ll break north to Fort Hall.”

“An’ where they go from Hallee?” Titus asked.

“Striking out through that Snake country.”

Wagging his head, Sweete said, “That’s ’bout the roughest piece of ground I ever put a horse through.”

Scratch turned to Shad and asked, “You been west of Hallee?”

“More’n once. Was a time the booshways didn’t want the English to have that country all to their own.”

“Can’t be fit for wagons,” Scratch grumbled.

“Ain’t,” Robinson agreed. “Some’ll try to get their wagons on from Fort Hall, take ’em clear to the Willamette. Other’ns gonna sell off their wagons to them English at Fort Hall—trade for mules and horses to get ’em on to the Columbia.”

“Bet you ain’t ever floated down that Columbia River, Shadrach!” Bass needled his tall friend.

“I s’pose you’re claimin’ you did?”

“How the hell other way a man gonna get to meet Doctor John at Fort Vancouver?” Titus sneered. “An’ I sure as the devil didn’t float around the horn in no sea ship to get there neither!”

“I forgot—you told me ’bout that trip,” Sweete admitted.

In a quieter voice, Titus confided, “That float o’ mine down the Columbia with Jarrell Thornbrugh was fearsome enough to make my ass stay puckered for a month of Sundays!”^*

Soon enough there was dried meat for them all to chew on while the horses cropped at the new grass growing taller and thicker in the meadows surrounding Robinson’s poor hut.

“I enjoyed myself, Uncle Jack,” Titus declared later, as he had stood and held his hand out to their host. “I truly did.”

“You come on back an’ visit any time. Both of you.”

“We’ll be close,” Shad advised. “A fella can ride over for a visit ’most any time.”

Robinson and Madame Jack, his Shoshone wife, stood outside their hut, arm in arm as they waved the others on their way.

The sun was warm on his face and the back of his hands as he gave his last salute and plodded on up Black’s Fork. A spring breeze rustled through the sage, stirring a strong scent of turpentine through the air, just before a couple of dozen sage grouse whirred away from the path of their horses, the birds chucking as they settled back to earth and sorted themselves out again for their timeless dance on this patch of mating ground. It was a good day, here in a country where no emigrants plowed fields, no Frenchmen stole plews or a man’s daughter, no Indians came to trouble a man and his hard-won peace. Maybe Bridger and Robinson did have things figured right … at least for themselves. Trouble was, Titus doubted he could stay planted in one spot for long enough to raise up log walls or sink down some roots. Yet walls and roots were what it took for a man to survive in this part of the world rapidly changing around him.

For men like him and Shad, they had to keep on searching out that shrinking corner of the world where it wouldn’t matter if they refused to build walls and overlay them with roofs, refused to plant crops or tend a store. And if he was lucky, Scratch brooded, that shrinking sliver of the old life and the old world would last just long enough till Titus Bass could no longer load his gun, mount his horse, and ride away from what was closing in around him. Maybeso what he had come to call his used-to-be country would last long enough to see a used-to-be man clear through till the end of his days.

“See that smoke yonder?” Titus asked his son as the two of them reined up with Shad Sweete, at the breast of a low ridge.

“Top of the trees?”

“Yep. What smoke you make it out to be?”

The youngster was thoughtful a moment. “Not grass, Popo. Fire smoke.”

“Right again, boy. Bet we’ll spot horses, maybe some lodges by the time we cover ’nother hour or so.”

“How long you figger it from here?” Shad squinted into the late spring sunlight.

“I callate we’ll be drinking from Bridger’s jug afore the sun goes down.”

From the mouth of Ham’s Fork a day ago they had followed Black’s Fork as it looped around and made for the southwest. Now they had entered a broad valley where this tributary of the Green River was splintered into numerous small creeks with springtime’s mountain runoff, all of which relentlessly cut itself through the fertile, verdant meadows to form a series of narrow islands carpeted with tall grass. Tall, old cottonwoods stood stately on the banks of every rivulet, heads and shoulders above younger saplings. Willow, alder, and prairie ash cloaked the streams.

“Gabe picked him a sure ’nough good spot,” Sweete marveled as they continued toward the smoke. “How you figger the winters in this country?”

“You forgot, Shadrach?” Titus snorted. “The whole blamed valley of the Green damned well gotta be about the coldest place in the mountains. Chills my bones just thinking ’bout it.”

“Then why’d Gabe an’ Vaskiss raise their post here?”

With a shrug, Scratch turned in the saddle and pointed to the northeast. “The Southern Pass—it’s off that way, back to Fort John and the road from the settlements. An’ Fort Hall, it’s off yonder in that direction.”

Sweete asked impatiently, “Which means?”

“Which means Bridger’s post is right on this here road what takes folks on to Oregon.”

“Lookit all the grass there is for stock, right close,” Sweete added.

“Allays good to have plenty of grass—you never know who’s gonna be droppin’ in to pay their respects,” Titus said with a grin and a wink. “Lookee there through the trees.”

“More smoke. You figger that for Gabe’s post?”

Bass nodded. “Hell if it don’t look like peeled timbers to me!”

Quickly turning in their saddles, both men tore their hats from their heads and signaled back to their wives. Then Scratch said to Flea, “We set off an’ your horses get to running, just let ’em go an’ stay with them. Only thing to watch for: Don’t let ’em find no prairie-dog town, or stumble getting down to a crik bottom, son.”

The boy’s face flushed with excitement. “Flea go with you?”

He considered it a brief moment, then grinned hugely. “Sure as shootin’ you can come along, boy! Stay hard on my tail an’ you’ll see how free men like Shad an’ your pa rode into ronnyvoo long summers ago—once upon a glory time! Whoooo-eee!”

Both Sweete and Flea were caught unawares with the sudden explosiveness of the old man’s untamed yelp and his burst into motion. But those two rangy dogs were ready. In an instant they were lunging along beside the old trapper’s horse. No more than a heartbeat behind him came his son and an old friend, hammering heels into their horses, a long and shrill cry freeing itself from their throats as they followed Titus through the last fringe of cottonwoods, clattered across another narrow rivulet of Black’s Fork, then exploded up the last low riverbank that swept them in a gentle arc toward that corner of the stockade they could spy through the last intervening stand of trees.

Suddenly in full view were a half dozen small herds of horses, and even a few horned cattle too.

Damn! Titus hadn’t seen beeves since trader Sublette brought a milk cow to ronnyvoo long summers gone now.

And far beyond the timbered walls stood more than thirty buffalo-hide lodges, where brown-skinned women worked over outdoor fires and naked children chased one another in their games. Bridger had him an outright settlement of his own!

In moments it became clear there were actually two stockades, one a bit larger than the other, but sharing a length of one timbered wall in common. The gates of both were visible to the riders as they came tearing in from the north, finally slowing their heaving horses to a lope on that broad flat … when a lone figure stepped into sight from one of the open gates, the lowering sun at his back. He tore the flat-brimmed, low-crowned hat from his head and O’ed up his mouth for a greeting.

“What’s your lather for, boys? Can’t be no redskins lickin’ it after you—”

The instant his voice melted away in midsentence, the man slowly lowered his hat to his side and began to wag his head, a huge smile growing on his face. “As I live an’ breathe … if’n you ain’t a pair for these sore eyes!”

“Gabe!” Shad shrieked as he bounded off his horse and hit the ground at a trot to seize the shorter man in his big arms while Ghost and Digger bounded around the two like pups.

“Lordy!” Bridger gasped after several moments. “C-come peel this here b’ar off me, Scratch!”

Reluctantly Shad released the trader and lowered Bridger to the ground once more as Titus legged out of his saddle and strode over to the pair.

“Just look at you!” Bridger exclaimed to Sweete. Then he turned to Bass to ask, “He’s growed some since I last saw him. Don’cha think he’s growed some?”

“I’ll allow I was still a pup when we first throwed in with the general,^* Gabe,” Sweete said as he threw an arm back over Bridger’s shoulder, “but I ain’t growed outta a pair o’ mokersons in many a winter!”

When Bridger stepped toward him with his arms opened, Bass gave the trader a fond embrace. “Damn, but it shines to see you, Gabe!”

“How come you never rode down from Crow country to see me afore now?”

“Ain’t been anywhere close to the Green in more summers than I care to count,” Scratch explained. “Last time it was … I think I rode through here with Ol’ Solitaire on our way south.”

“South? Makin’ to Robidoux’s post?”

“Gone farther, we did—all the way to Californy for some Mexican horses.”

Bridger snorted, slapped his knee with his hat before he repositioned it on his head. “Was you in that bunch that throwed Peg-Leg out in the desert?”^*

“Yep. I figger Solitaire gave him better’n a oily-tongued backstabber deserved,” Scratch replied. “You ever hear what ever come of him?”

“Last I heard tell, he’s still raising hell and putting a chunk under it too!” Bridger declared. “Someone said he aims to make California his own. From what folks has told me recent, American soldiers gone down an’ took Santa Fe from the Mexicans afore they marched out to do the same in California. So, Peg-Leg figgers to make something outta himself out there.”

“Just the place for his kind, out there,” Bass grumbled sourly. “Keep Peg-Leg busy so’s he won’t come back to these here mountains to make trouble for the rest of us.”

Bridger wheeled on Sweete. “How long you coons fixin’ to stay?”

Shad looked at Titus with a shrug. “We ain’t never thought ’bout it.”

But Bass scratched at his chin reflectively and said, “Lemme see now. Ain’t long afore it turns summer, when plews ain’t worth the sweat off your ass. An’ since there ain’t gonna be no ronnyvoo to ride off to this year, so … I figger next best place for the season is Bridger’s post.”

“You mean that?” the trader asked. “The two of you stay through the summer?”

“Don’t see a reason why we can’t—do you, Shadrach?”

Sweete threw a big arm over Bridger’s shoulder. “We’re movin’ in, Gabe!”

For a moment there, the trader’s tongue was tied, until he blinked his eyes and finally confessed, “Gotta tell you both, that’s some good news to this here child. Past winter was hard on me. I l-lost my Cora.”

Bass took a step forward and laid his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Your wife?”

“She died givin’ birth to our li’l Josephine last autumn,” he explained. “Josie’s our third.”

“That mean you’re raising all three of ’em by yourself?” Sweete asked with concern.

“Sometime back I sent Mary Ann off to Doc Whitman’s mission up in Cayuse country!” Bridger declared proudly. “She’s goin’ to school with Joe Meek’s girl. But my boy, Felix, he’s been here with me, an’ the baby too. So it’ll be some punkins to have your women around to help out. Lately I’ve found there’s a lot a man ain’t really the best at.”

Smiling with admiration for his old friend, Titus said, “I know a couple o’ gals gonna be real happy to get their hands on that baby girl of yours, Gabe!”

Bridger looped an arm around both of them as his attention was held by the young boy leading his horse toward them. “Times’ll shine, boys. Days gonna get real busy, here on out. I can use a hand from you both when them emigrants show their faces on the horizon.”

“Man just as soon stay busy as loaf in the shade, Jim,” Titus said.

“Every train bound for Oregon gonna come by here,” Bridger explained. “They’ll need fixin’s, trade off horses or a team of mules, maybeso dicker off some of their oxen too afore they push on for Hallee up on the Snake. Likely, most’ll need some repair work on their wagons—”

“Blacksmithin’?” Titus asked, the first twinge of excitement squirting through him.

“Yepper. Size down tires with this dry air out here, repair yokes and tongues and even boxes too,” Jim said. “You know anythin’ ’bout smithing, Titus Bass?”

“Hell, I worked Hysham Troost’s forge in St. Louie for a number o’ years afore I come west in twenty-five,” he announced proudly.

Bridger blinked in disbelief. “Hysham Troost teached you smithing?”

Bass nodded.

“Glorreee! That’s good enough for any man!” Bridger exclaimed. “You’ll sure as hell do, Scratch! My forge needs fixin’ up—some corncracker burnt half of it down late last summer afore we could put out the fire … but we’ll work out some pay for what you do to help around here an’ what business you scare up, both of you niggers.”

Fumble-footed, Sweete asked, “What you rigger I can do, Gabe?”

“No shortage of work to be done ’round here, Shadrach. But”—and he paused reflectively—“what I need most is someone smart to oversee my ferry on the Green.”

“Your ferry?”

“You didn’t see my ferry up there on the Green River when you come over the pass an’ down the Sandy?”

“Nope. We rode south of there.”

“Where from?”

“Bad doin’s at Fort John on the Platte,” Titus declared. “Them Frenchies tried to make off with my daughter.”

“Shit,” Bridger grumbled sympathetically. “They can all go to hell, them parley-voos! Glad I’m shet of American Fur and all o’ Chouteau’s Frenchies for good! So, tell me how you two come over from Fort John.”

Titus scratched the back of his neck and said, “We come south of the Black Hills, where the weather’d blowed the land clear.”

“You come through the Red Desert?”

“Yep,” Shad said. “It was tough doin’s, but we finally hit the headwaters of Bitter Creek, and follered it down to the Green. Come across the Seedskeedee near the mouth of Black’s.”

“I’ll be gone to hell,” Bridger exclaimed. “I ain’t been through that country since back to Ashley’s day—when we come north through that country to strike the Green. Damn, but I’ll bet that way’d cut a passel o’ few days off a trip between here an’ the North Platte.”

“Some of it’s rough,” Titus said, “but the winds keep the snow blowed out most of the time, I’d reckon.”

“Who’s this boy you got along?” Bridger asked as the lean, copper-skinned youngster came up to a stop near the three men, leading his horse by a single rein. “He yours, Shadrach?”

“Nawww, he’s Scratch’s boy.”

Bass said, “Flea, shake hands with the man. He’s a ol’t friend of your pa’s. A good, ol’t friend.”

“Flea is my name,” the youngster said a bit nervously, holding out his hand to the trader.

“Jim Bridger is mine, Flea.”

“Bri-ger,” he repeated thoughtfully.

“Call me Jim,” Gabe replied. “How old’s the lad?”

“He’ll be eleven come winter.”

Jim turned back to the boy. “Didn’t I see you wrangling them horses your pa brung in?”

Flea nodded without speaking a word.

“He’s got some strong medicine, Gabe,” Titus declared, bursting with pride. “The boy’s damn good with the four-leggeds.”

Bridger laid a hand on Flea’s shoulder. “If your pa don’t mind, I’m sure we can find some work for you to do around here this summer too.”

“Wor-work?” and his big eyes flicked back and forth between his father and Bridger.

Titus chuckled. “I don’t think he knows what that word means, Jim.”

“I figger you for a lad who’d like to tend to our horses,” Bridger explained. “Ride ’em, brush ’em, see to the mares when they drop their foals?”

Flea glanced quickly at his father, then nodded to the trader. “I try do good for you, Jim.”

Squinting into the bright sunlight, Bridger gazed over his friends’ shoulders and asked, “So any of them women and young’uns comin’ our way really yours, Shad? Or they all belong to that ol’ bull named Titus Bass?”

^* John Robertson was better known throughout the fur trade period and beyond as “Uncle Jack” Robinson.

^* Borderlords

^* General William H. Ashley, founder of the rendezvous system, wherein every summer a trader brought his trade goods out from St. Louis to a predetermined spot of “rendezvous” in the central Rocky Mountains, taking in the mountain man’s beaver pelts in trade for powder and lead, blankets and beads, coffee and whiskey too.

^* Death Rattle