Wind Walker

TWENTY-SIX

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, Meldrum!” Scratch shouted above the noisy hubbub of those war chiefs and headmen pressing up behind them. “I’ll be et for the devil’s tater if’n that don’t look ever’ bit like ronnyvoo camps down there!”

“Can’t claim as I ever saw that many Injuns in one place myself!” Robert Meldrum hollered. “Look at all them lodges and pony herds too.”

Both of those white men could understand the Crow tongue being growled back and forth among the thirty-eight warriors, chiefs, and old headmen who had accepted Tom Fitzpatrick’s invitation to join the other tribes of the High Plains and Rocky Mountains at this momentous gathering near Fort Laramie. These men of the north had every right to be more than a little anxious as they started down the long, low slope into the broad, yawning valley of the North Platte, where more than ten thousand of their most inveterate enemies awaited their arrival. Because they had the shortest distance to travel, the Cheyenne, along with bands of the Oglalla and Brulé Sioux, had been camping here for close to a month, since the end of August. In addition, a large camp of Titus Bass’s most implacable foes—the Arapaho—had come in to join the talks.

Two days back, when the Crow delegation had been nearing Fort Laramie, Meldrum sent Fitzpatrick’s couriers on ahead to learn where they were to camp. No chance for a big council to be taking place anywhere near the post—they found the entire countryside deserted. As the small party from the northern mountains drew closer, two of the half-bloods came galloping out from the adobe walls.

“They move the camp,” one of the men shouted as he reined up in front of Meldrum and Bass. He pointed to the east. “Over to Horse Creek.”^*

“How far are they?” Meldrum growled testily. He was fighting some raw saddle galls on his rump, a trader unused to spending so many weeks nonstop in the saddle.

The half-breed squinted his eyes as he calculated it. “Less than two days.”

“Maybeso we ought’n stay the night right here,” Bass had suggested. “Close to the walls.”

Rising slightly in the stirrups, Meldrum agreed, “Let’s get down out of these saddles soon as we can, Scratch. Let the others make camp while we go have us a look around the fort.”

Throwing up a hand in protest, Titus said, “Naw, I left enough bad blood here years ago. I’ll just hang back with the family and these chiefs. You go have yourself a look an’ tell me ’bout it when you get back to camp.”

“Where you suggest we throw down our bedrolls?” Meldrum had asked.

Titus tugged down on the wide brim of his hat to make a little more shade for his eyes and peered across the 180 degrees of the compass. “If we’re headed east at sunrise to-morry—I’d say we might as well camp yonder in them trees, far side of the stockade. We’ll have water and a little grass for the animals.”

“Good idee,” Meldrum said as he started to rein aside. “You tell the chiefs that we still got a two-day ride.”

“Just you ’member you don’t tell any of them bastards Titus Bass is in shootin’ distance,” Scratch said with a grin.

Meldrum tipped his hat, saying, “I’ll meet you in camp soon as I get my how-do’s said to them booshways over at the fort.”

Later that evening after supper, when the trader arrived back at the Crow camp, Meldrum brought with him some of the company’s headmen and a young soldier. Since that spring of 1825, when he had run into three dragoons at the oft-abandoned Fort Osage, Scratch had seen only one other bunch of soldiers in all his travels—some of General Kearney’s men spotted along the road outside Taos back in the early winter of 1846. First to come had been preachers with their Bibles and whiny cant, then their white wives reminding a man of all the thou-shalt-nots he had tried to escape … and eventually came those wagons loaded with plows and milkers.

“With so many of our citizens emigrating to Oregon along this central road,” explained the fresh-faced officer, “the government determined it was best to bring all the warrior groups to a peace council. That way we could not only assure safe passage along the Oregon Trail, but do our level best to see the tribes made peace with one another too.”

“You figger the Sioux and Cheyennes gonna treat these Crow or the Snake any better just because you had your peace meetin’ with ’em?” Titus asked at the fire, where most of the delegation from the Yellowstone country stood with grave interest, waiting for translation of the white men’s words.

“Yes,” said the officer. “Like Superintendent Mitchell and the others who came west to make this conference a success, I believe the lion can lay down with the lamb.”

Titus asked, “How many dragoons come out here to watch over things at this peace parley?”

“Just under two hundred, sir,” the soldier replied. “Officers and enlisted both.”

Meldrum gave Bass a knowing look before Scratch said, “Your army thinks that’s enough guns to keep all them Injuns off the Crow an’ Shoshone when them Sioux an’ Cheyenne take a notion to cut through their old enemies?”

“Mitchell has already made it clear that there will be no bloodshed between the tribes,” declared the officer with certainty.

“If you soldiers aren’t right, an’ you can’t keep a lid on the Cheyenne an’ Sioux,” Scratch responded, “there’ll be more blood shed at this here peace parley than you ever thought to see in your life.”

Even though Meldrum told Titus that the hated Bordeau had been relieved of control at Fort Laramie when the army bought the post back in ’49, Scratch never had been one to take unnecessary chances. Might well be some old friends of those employees Bass and Sweete had killed were still hangers-on, living a half-blood, squaw-man existence. Someone might just recognize that old gray-headed trapper who wore a distinctive bandanna, not to mention that long scar that traced itself down from the outside corner of his left eye. ^* That night, and the next as they made their way east for the broad valley said to lie at the mouth of Horse Creek, Titus slept loose, restless, half aware of every noise in the night—whether the snort of a pony, the howl of a prairie wolf, or the booming rattle of Meldrum’s snore. That second morning east of the fort, the Crow had acted more nervous than they had since the day they put Fort Alexander and the Yellowstone country at their backs.

“They know there is great danger waiting for them in that camp of their enemies,” Waits-by-the-Water quietly explained as she rolled up the last of their bedding after breakfast.

“The Crow been outnumbered before,” he responded. “But never nothing like this.”

“Maybe you should tell them the thoughts in your heart, Ti-tuzz,” she suggested.

For a long time he had regarded the thirty-eight warriors and chiefs, who went about their special toilet, painting their faces and brushing their hair, tying on feathers, stuffed birds, and spiritual amulets, dressing in their very finest—then removed the covers from their shields and weapons with great ceremony. Although they had been riding through the heart of their enemy’s land for many, many days, by this afternoon these delegates would be entering what they believed might well prove to be the valley of their death. Surrounded by enemies many times stronger than their few numbers, the Crow began to sing their brave-heart songs as they tied up their ponies’ tails, rubbed their animals with dust, and made ready for one last fight.

“My friends and fellow fighting men,” Scratch had addressed them in their native tongue, then waited as they fell silent and stepped close to hear his words.

“No man here can doubt that I have fought the enemies of Apsaluuke. I have been a brother warrior to the great chief with the sore belly, and my father-in-law too. I held my wife’s brother in my arms as he died after we had pursued those Blackfoot into the mountains. So measure my words carefully, friends. They come from a fellow warrior.”

Flea came up to stand beside his father. Scratch put his arm around the taller fourteen-year-old’s shoulder and continued. “Pull the old loads from the barrels of your weapons and charge them with fresh powder. While there are not many of us, nowhere near as many as there will be of our enemies as we ride down into their gaping jaws, remember that we have far, far more medicine irons than do the Sioux, the Cheyenne, or the Arapaho. Your trade with the white man, with trusted men like Round Iron, who has married into your tribe like me, has assured that your men have always had more firearms, powder, and lead to protect your people and the land of Absaroka too.”

The first of the younger chiefs growled with agreement, a few of them yipping in excitement as his words worked up their martial feelings.

“We have more guns, my friends,” he reminded them again. “So do not be afraid. But—even more than the guns we can use to fight these enemies, who we will soon see face-to-face—know that the Apsaluuke have stronger hearts than these enemies, who will tremble when they finally see, for the first time, you warriors and fighting men who carry the scars of many battles against the mighty Blackfoot!”

Beside him Flea shouted with the older men, all of whom raised their muskets and flintlock rifles, shook their powerful war totems, and pounded on their shields, invoking their magic and the mystery of the spirits who watched over those who rode into battle, those men who put their bodies between those of their people and the weapons of their enemies. Gooseflesh rose along Bass’s arms, and the hair stood at the back of his neck as the three dozen surged forward as one, sharing this brotherhood one last moment before they rode on down this trail into the unknown.

Below them now at the bottom of that wide, verdant valley where Horse Creek flowed from the south into the North Platte, camp sentinels—both red and white—spotted the newcomers drawing up at the top of the low rise and looking down upon the treaty grounds, where tens of thousands of horses and more than two thousand lodges dotted the grassy bottomland. The horns of every camp crescent pointed east, one lodge circle after another of those browned buffalo-hide cones teeming with horsemen, women, and children at play in the summer sun of that late afternoon. ^* From the very tips of the lodgepoles fluttered long cloth streamers of varied colors, along with a few black scalp locks. As the Crow delegation watched from the knoll, activity began in the soldier camp—easy to spot by its orderly corral of wagons, fancy Dearborn carriages, and dirty canvas A tents, each with its single upright pole arranged in company row after company row, squared to their sense of worldly order while the world of the Indians was lived inside a hoop.

Titus thought on that as their horses blew atop the hill and Waits-by-the-Water brought her horse to a halt beside his. Brooding how the Indian lived his life in a circle, while most everything in the white man’s world was made with straight lines, angles, corners, and squares—whether it was the long rows a farmer like Roman Burwell was likely scratching out of the earth of Oregon Territory, or the angularity of the log house Row and Amanda would have raised for their children that first autumn in the valley of the Willamette, south of the Columbia River. There were no corners in a lodge. Besides those hours spent working at Bridge’s forge, or standing inside a trade room at Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas, or back at Fort John on the North Platte, even down south to Taos at Josiah’s store, or in the Paddock home, Scratch could not remember feeling all that comfortable inside a squared-off building with its walls, corners, and no-nonsense roof too. To his way of thinking, the best home had neither walls to support a roof, nor a roof to rest upon its walls.

“See how they’re sending out a proper escort for us!” Meldrum announced in English above the hubbub of chatter, then turned and told the chiefs that they were about to be welcomed by that small squad of a dozen soldiers splashing across the knee-high Platte and lurching onto the north bank, where they set off at a lope toward the newcomers.

“What are these men?” Pretty On Top asked as he reined his horse around the front of the group so he could stop and await the escort detail between the two white men.

“They are fighters like your men, warriors for the white man’s people back east,” Scratch explained.

The chief measured him with his eyes, then asked, “These white warriors, they do not fight for you and Round Iron?”

“Not for me,” Titus said. “Maybe they help out the fur traders, but I don’t think they’re here to fight against the Crow.”

“How is it they all wear the same coats?” asked Stiff Arm.

“Maybe it’s easier to see one another when they are in a battle,” Scratch advised.

“Our fighting men dress the way their medicine tells them,” Three Irons said with disdain for the approaching soldiers. “They do not wear another man’s medicine.”

“These fighting men do not have their own medicine,” Bass explained. “They take their orders from their leader, and they do what he tells them.”

Stiff Arm wagged his head and said, “How can a man fight like that, following the will of another man?”

“Maybe that is why the soldiers will always have a hard time if they ever have to fight a band of warriors!” Titus cheered. “These soldiers will stand around waiting for their leader to tell them what to do while warriors ride right through them!”

“Are you white men?” called out one of the soldiers as they slowed, drawing near.

Meldrum looked Bass up and down, then regarded himself, dressed in canvas drop-front britches, a calico drop-shoulder shirt, and some moccasins beaded by his Crow wife. The trader sang out, “I’m a white man, for certain … but, I don’t rightly know that this nigger with me is a white man anymore!”

The soldiers came near enough that the leader with a lot of gold braid looped on his upper arms signaled the rest to stop. Then the leader glared at Bass and stated, “You look to be a white man to me.”

“Shit, son—I been working a lot of seasons so I don’t look like a white man no more.”

Rather than responding to the old trapper, the soldier quickly looked over the group and asked Meldrum, “Are you more Shoshone come in for the peace talks?”

“These here ain’t Shoshone,” the trader snapped. “You got Snakes down there in that camp too?”

“Yes.” The soldier wiped some sweat off his bare chin. “A band of them came in a few days back, under an old fur trapper, Colonel Bridger.”

“Jim Bridger?” Bass squealed in delight.

“If I remember correctly, that’s his name, yes. If you aren’t more Shoshone, who are you two and what tribe are these men representing?”

“These here the finest fighters in the northern mountains, my good man,” Scratch announced. “They’re Crow.”

“C-Crow?”

“That’s what he said,” Meldrum reiterated.

Turning to the trader, the soldier said, “We didn’t think any Crow were coming. No representatives had shown up when we opened the councils—”

Meldrum grumped, “Any of you folks know just how far it is from Fort Laramie up to Crow country on the goddamned Yellowstone?”

Blinking in embarrassment as he absorbed the strident words, the soldier said, “Mr. Fitzpatrick had all but given up hope that a Crow delegation would make the journey.”

“Where’s Broken Hand?” Scratch asked. “I wanna see that ol’ whitehead for myself.”

“Y-you know Mr. Fitzpatrick?”

He looked at the soldier. “We both do. Fitz was a friend of ours from the beaver days. A glory time. Now we hear Tom’s the Injun agent for these here western tribes. That really be the certain of it, son?”

“It is, sir. He sent out the invitations to the bands to join us at Laramie,” the soldier said, “but the feeding grounds near Fort Laramie were soon depleted and the whole council was moved here to Horse Creek five days ago.”

Bass inquired, “That when you start palaverin’ with the tribes?”

“No—not until two days ago,” he explained, his bare upper lip glistening with sweat. “This is the third day of the ceremonial talks.”

Rocking back in his saddle with a sigh, Titus said, “Good thing we ain’t too late, Robert.”

“No,” the soldier answered, “not too late at all.”

“Maybeso we ought’n ride on down there to find ol’ Fitz hisself an’ ask him where’s a spot we can camp these here Crow,” Bass suggested.

Clearing his throat, the soldier asked with a nervous rise to his voice, “These Crow you’re with—they friendly with the Sioux or Cheyenne?”

“Hell no, they ain’t!” Meldrum roared.

“There’s plenty of bad blood atween the Crow and them tribes down there,” Titus added.

Wiping the sweat from his upper lip, the soldier said, “Then I suggest you wait here until I can ride down to find out from Mr. Fitzpatrick where he and Superintendent Mitchell want to camp your delegation—”

“I’m comin’ with you, son.”

The soldier was opening his mouth in protest when Bass turned aside and spoke in Crow to his wife. “I won’t be long. Going with these riders to see an old friend from the trapper days—he’s the one called this meeting … and he’s the one who will tell us where he thinks we should camp, here in the lap of such a strong enemy.”

The instant Bass finished talking to his wife, the soldier said, “I’d prefer you wait here with the rest of your delegation while I—”

He harrumphed, “I ain’t a Crow, which means none of them Sioux or Cheyenne gonna try to take what I got left of my hair.”

“But, mister,” the young officer said, then cleared his throat before continuing, “you don’t understand everything going—”

“Unnerstand what?”

“Understand that the situation here is a bit tense,” the soldier explained. “On their way to Fort Laramie, Colonel Bridger’s Shoshone delegation was attacked by the Cheyenne and two of the Shoshone delegates were killed.”

“Thankee for spellin’ that out for me—but I ain’t an Injun gonna be run off by no Sioux or Cheyenne,” he said with a firm set to his jaw. “Besides, I got friends down there in that camp: Agent Fitzpatrick and Colonel Bridger both. I’m fixin’ to go see where these fellers lay that my Crow friends should set up our camp.”

Tapping his heels into his pony’s flanks, Titus set off on down the long, grassy slope, moving past the soldier detail. In a handful of seconds he heard the soldier growl the order for his men to about-face and follow him after the old man. It wasn’t long before he heard the officer set his horse into a lope. He caught up to the old trapper, coming alongside as Scratch approached the outskirts of the largest and most extensive village.

“I suggest that you cross the Platte here, mister. This is the Sioux village, here on the north side of the river. Just past the end of the Sioux camp stands the Cheyenne, then the Arapaho villages, on this north bank too.”

“Whose tents are those?” he asked, pointing across to the south side of the Platte, where more than a dozen wall tents stood in the V formed by the river and its junction with Horse Creek flowing in from the south.

“They are for Superintendent Mitchell and his peace commissioners.”

Titus reined his pony to the right and entered the shallow river. “Then what’s all them tents over there?”

“Across Horse Creek?” the soldier asked, pointing ahead. “That’s the army’s camp.”

“An’ them lodges near ’em?”

“The Shoshone—Colonel Bridger was asked to camp them near us for their protection.”

As his pony carried him onto the south bank of the Platte, Scratch reined to the left. “That be where I wanna go. I figger I’ll find Bridger with his Snakes.”

The soldier didn’t utter another word until their horses were crossing Horse Creek. “But you do realize the treaty grounds are across the stream too? The Sioux and Cheyenne, they’re holding talks with Fitzpatrick and the commissioners at this moment.”

“Then Fitzpatrick’s campin’ here with the soldiers too?”

“No, he and his interpreters have their shelters pitched farther upstream,” the soldier explained, pointing off to their right, up Horse Creek.

“I’ll g’won over to these here talks with you an’ see if I can spot Fitzpatrick or Bridger.”

Leaving the escort detail behind at the edge of the wagon corral with Meldrum and the Crow delegates, the old trapper and the young soldier ended up being momentarily stopped by the first row of pickets, dragoons who were posted at an outer ring around the treaty grounds, then halted a second time by an inner ring of guards too, as the horsemen neared the huge canvas awnings erected for shade. Despite the glaring intensity of the late-summer sun, the Indian delegates sat outside in the heat during the long speeches and wrangling. Only the white men sat beneath the awnings, stewing in their heavy wool uniforms, continually fanning themselves with their hats or folded papers.

Bass and the soldier dismounted several yards back from the massive crowd of Indians, then handed their horses’ reins to a hairy-faced guard before they walked around the throng, finally spotting Fitzpatrick’s long white mane. The agent sat in the midst of a mass of pale-skinned easterners. At his knee two dark-skinned interpreters squatted on a buffalo robe, speaking from time to time, their hands flying in the broad gestures of sign language.

“He looks a mite busy right now, don’t he?” Titus remarked. “Can you tell me where them Shoshone are in this bunch?”

“I can’t say I recognize one Indian from another, mister,” the soldier apologized.

“There he is! I see ’im!” Titus yipped with excitement, stepping away to his right around the throng toward the large band of warriors and chiefs who sat off by themselves, nearest the commissioners’ awning.

Once he got up behind the Snake delegates, Scratch whispered, “Gabe!”

Bridger turned, bringing a flat hand under his hat brim to shade his eyes while he studied the caller. His face immediately lit up and he scrambled to his feet, waving Titus to come his way. The instant Bass had threaded his way through the Shoshone, the trader looped his arms around him and exclaimed, “Scratch, you ol’ buzzard! It’s been three winters already! Damn me if I didn’t think you’d gone under for sure up in Crow country!”

“But here I walk, Gabe!”

“Sit,” Bridger said as they both settled on the robe and leaned their faces close to whisper. “Hell, if it ain’t four years this very month since you took off north.”

“You see’d any sign o’ Shadrach?” Titus asked. “He ever come back from Oregon?”

Wagging his head, sadly Bridger said, “No. He ain’t.”

“You hear anything from him?” he asked with disappointment. “Figger he made it there with that emigrant train?”

Bridger snorted, “Oh, that tall boy made it, all right. I heard it from Joe Meek’s tongue hisself.”

“When you see Joe?”

“He an’ Squire Ebbert come through, late that winter,” Bridger confided. “They was on snowshoes they’d made themselves: willow an’ rawhide. Had to put down their horses and eat ’em back up the trail. Starvin’ times.”

“What the hell they show up at Fort Bridger in the winter for?”

Jim explained, “Joe was hurtin’ something bad. He an’ Squire was the last of a bunch headin’ east for the States. Figgered to rally up some soldiers to come help out in Oregon.”

“The Britishers makin’ trouble?” Titus asked, bristling.

Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Injuns. Cayuse. They murdered Doc and Mrs. Whitman.”

“The sawbones what dug that arrowhead out’n your hump meat back at ronnyvoo?”

“Yep.”

“An’ that purty yellow-haired wife of his too?”

“Cayuse killed some young’uns what was at their mission school,” Bridger said gravely. “Joe lost him his daughter to them red buggers. Found her body dug up by wolves.”

“Murderin’ sonsabitches!” Titus grumbled, grinding a fist into his left palm. “Killin’ women an’ young’uns. Damn ’em to hell anyway. So w-what become of it? Them Oregoners make war on them Cayuse what started killin’ white folks?”

“Wasn’t a war on white people. Joe told me them red-bellies had it in for the Whitmans—so they killed ’em all at the school. Medicine men got ’em stirred up, to Joe’s way of thinking. Medicine men what didn’t like the Whitmans teachin’ their people ’bout the white God.”

“Joe go back to Oregon?”

“He’s back there, much as I know,” Jim replied. “But I ain’t see’d Shadrach.”

“Heard you come over here with the Snakes.”

Bridger nodded. “Where away was you bound, when you happed on Fitzpatrick’s big peace council?”

“We was invited,” Titus announced.

“In-invited?”

“Not a lonely ol’ badger like me! But Meldrum, trader up to Fort Alexander on the Yellowstone. Fitz asked him an’ the Crow to come.”

Bridger’s face lit up. “So you rode down with the Crow chiefs?”

“I did. Meldrum asked me. Brung the wife an’ young’uns too.”

“Let’s see now,” and Bridger scratched at his cheek with a widening grin, “I’ll bet you’re havin’ to use a big stick to knock them young Crow bucks away from that oldest girl of your’n. She was a purty thing.”

“Magpie? Why, we got the girl married off just afore we set off for these here peace talks.”

“Married! I’ll be dogged—I wouldn’t thought you were a coon old enough to marry off a daughter—”

“Mr. Bridger!”

They both turned to peer into the shade of the council tent, finding all the faces looking their way.

Scratch whispered from the side of his mouth, “Who’s that?”

“Mitchell—big white Injun father from back east,” Bridger hissed.

The big-bellied man gestured toward the open ground in front of the council awning and proclaimed, “Mr. Bridger, time has come for the Shoshone to give their speeches—”

“Who the hell’s that sittin’ with you, Gabe?” Fitzpatrick roared in interruption, lunging to his feet and starting their way.

“Been a long time since I laid eyes on yer white-haired carcass, Fitz,” Titus said as he got to his feet too and started toward the agent.

“Wasn’t sure that was really you, Titus Bass!” the agent’s voice boomed as they met near the Shoshone delegation and pounded one another on the back. “Heard stories every now and then. Lots of stories ’bout you. Most of ’em got to do with some new way they said you gone under!” When they backed apart, Fitzpatrick said, “Wasn’t all that sure when you come through the crowd an’ sat down with Bridger there. Neither of us look much the same as we did years back when beaver was high an’ we was young.”

Reaching out to stroke the side of Fitzpatrick’s long hair, Scratch said, “You ain’t changed much, you ol’ whitehead. Shit, I ’member when them Injun trappers brung you into Pierre’s Hole back to thirty-two. Lookin’ at you was like we’d all see’d a ghost our own selves. Your ha’r used to be sleek an’ black as a otter’s … an’ after what you come through, gettin’ chased down by them Blackfoot, it’d turn’t white as snow.”

“Can you figger it’s been almost twenty year now?” Fitzpatrick asked.

“Agent Fitzpatrick?” Mitchell intruded with a scolding tone. “Can you and your old crony wait until tonight after we’ve concluded the day’s negotiations to reminisce?”

Fitzpatrick grinned and shrugged as he whispered, “Back to business, Scratch. We’ll talk later. I’ll come look up you an’ Jim at the Snake camp after supper—”

“I didn’t ride in with Gabe’s Shoshone.”

“Just come to see these here doin’s on your own?”

“Hell, Fitz,” he said with a growing smile, “we got your invite clear up to the Yallerstone country. Meldrum talked me into coming down with—”

“Meldrum?” he wheezed. “The trader up there in Crow country?”

By this moment Mitchell had come right to the edge of the shade, growing irritated at this rude delay. “Agent Fitzpatrick, will you and Colonel Bridger bring the Shoshone over for their speech—”

But Fitzpatrick wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the stuffy official from the East. “Robert Meldrum? From Fort Alexander?”

“That’s him!”

“You mean you two brung the Crow down?”

“A old friend like you asks us,” Titus said, “how you figger we’re gonna let you down?”

Fitzpatrick wheeled on the official, bubbling with joy, “The Crow are here!” Then he suddenly whirled on Bass again. “Wh-where are they?”

Turning Fitzpatrick away from the side of the awning, Scratch led the agent a half dozen steps so they had a clear eye-shot at the long, low slope. “There they be, Fitz—waiting for you an’ this impatient hotheaded son of a bitch to tell us where to camp—”

The superintendent’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “Agent Fitzpatrick—there’s important business at hand to conduct!”

Wheeling about, Fitzpatrick flapped his arms at the superintendent. “And we’ll get to that business, Mr. Mitchell … but for now I’ve got to tell my friend here where he can camp with the delegation he and Robert Meldrum just brought in from the north country.”

“D-delegation?” Mitchell echoed, his crimson face marked with lines of irritation as he took three steps forward to stand bathed in the bright afternoon light.

“The Crow!” Fitzpatrick bellowed. “By jigs, if the Crow ain’t here for your peace talks!”

Mitchell demanded, “Where?”

Scratch pointed, saying, “On the hill, waitin’ for me to tell ’em where to camp.”

“You brought their delegation down from the Yellowstone country?” Mitchell inquired as he quickly started toward the three former trappers.

“Robert Meldrum did,” Scratch admitted to the superintendent. “I just come along ’cause he asked me to.”

“Who are you?”

But the white-haired Indian agent answered before Scratch could. “This here’s Titus Bass. There ain’t nowhere you go in these here mountains what you won’t hear ghosty stories told about this nigger, Mr. Mitchell. Titus Bass been about as far north as you can get afore a man gets chewed up by Blackfoot war parties, and as far south as Taos and the Apache country too. Hell, I even heard a tale you went out to California with Bill Williams sometime back!”

That’s when Bridger joined in, “This man an’ the fellers he was with stole more Mexican horses than ever come outta California!”

“So what do you have to do with the Crow?” Mitchell asked.

“My wife’s people,” he replied. “Live with ’em, hunt an’ fight with ’em too.”

“Mr. Bass,” and Mitchell suddenly held out his hand. “May I say I truly appreciate your efforts in bringing the Crow chiefs down to make a most momentous peace.”

As they were shaking, Titus said, “They got the wrong man. Wasn’t me. Robert Meldrum’s the man you an’ Fitz here invited to come with the Apsaluukes.”

“Still the same, I personally appreciate your efforts,” and Mitchell tipped his hat.

“I was in the mood for a trip,” Titus replied. “Brung my family down this way for to visit some ol’ friends, Mr. Mitchell.”

After sundown that evening Bridger and Fitzpatrick came to eat supper in the Crow camp with those two companions from the beaver days. The Indian agent explained that he had come by himself rather than bringing his Arapaho wife and infant son from his camp, worrying over the reception that might be given her by the Crow. But Scratch sent him right back for the woman and the boy.

“Way I see it, we’ve had us a long ride down from the Yellowstone, so my woman’s got a hankerin’ for woman talk, Fitz,” Titus said. “Much as there’s real bad blood atween me an’ the ’Rapaho, I figger that’s atween me an’ their menfolk. Not atween my wife an’ yours.”

Soon as the agent returned with his family, the women eventually got to communicating about children and the never-ending work of a woman, using their hands in sign language at the cooking fire, where they roasted the haunch of a tender young pony Fitzpatrick and his interpreters had butchered earlier that morning. After Jim related the grim story of how the Cheyenne had ambushed the Shoshone delegation far west of Laramie, he and Fitzpatrick went to work explaining all that had gone on since the first of the warrior bands began gathering at the fort.

“We stopped at the post,” Titus explained, “an’ Meldrum found out the place been sold to the army couple years back.”

Fitzpatrick wagged his head. “Everything would’ve been run better if the fur company still saw to things ’stead of the army.”

“You picked a good time of the year for this peace council,” Bridger said. “No emigrants on the trail. So there’s no problems with the Sioux and them Cheyenne for white wagon folks.”

“’Cept that we started runnin’ outta grass a mite soon,” the agent declared. “That’s when we moseyed on downriver, here to this valley.”

“You had to see this confabulation, Scratch!” Bridger said, his face animated. “How that bunch of soft-brained pork-eaters got all them supplies loaded up in wagons and hauled over here, I’ll never know!”

“Beads an’ blankets, knives an’ coffee for the chiefs, eh?” Titus asked.

That’s when Fitzpatrick wagged his head dolefully. “No. We still don’t have any presents for these Injuns.”

“N-no presents?” Meldrum squawked with indignation. Then he lowered his voice, saying, “What the hell you think I promised these here Crow you’d give ’em—”

“Hold on,” Fitzpatrick argued. “The presents is comin’. Just ain’t got here yet.”

“Better be any day now,” Bridger groaned. “That’s all I gotta say.”

“You mean you convinced all these Injuns to come talk peace with you an’ each other,” Titus said, “but you didn’t bring no goddamned presents for ’em?”

“I said the wagons are comin’,” the agent snapped. “Ah hell, Scratch—it ain’t you I’m angry at. It’s these damned officials from back east, and their soldiers. This summer they used my good name to invite all these warrior bands here My name! And now I’m the one gonna be huggin’ two handfuls of bare ass if those trade goods don’t get here by the time these talks are all over and the chiefs put their marks on Mitchell’s treaty.”

Bass clucked in sympathy, “You’re in a bad way if them goods don’t reach us soon. What with old enemies camped closer’n you an’ me could spit tobaccy at each other. They don’t get their blankets and kettles, beads and paint for their women … what do you think this many warriors gonna start doin’?”

“Hell if I don’t already know what they’ll start doin’,” Fitzpatrick complained. “And, to tell the truth, I hope they start with Mitchell and his bunch!”

“I’ll drink to that!” Bridger cheered. “Where’s some whiskey, Tom?”

“We ain’t got any of that either,” the agent groaned. “Mitchell didn’t want any likker in camp—seein’ how it’s contraband out here in Injun country.”

Bass made a sour face and looked over at Bridger. “You got any whiskey wuth drinkin’ over to your post on Black’s Fork, Gabe?”

“That’s a mighty long way to ride for a drink, Scratch.”

For a moment he thought about his loneliness for Magpie, then realized how safe she was up there in Crow country. She now belonged to another man. Reassured, Titus burst out laughing. “I wasn’t talkin’ ’bout tonight, you idjit! I just figgered I could foller you back to your post when these important folk got their peace talks all wrapped up here.”

“C-come to visit?”

With a shrug, Scratch said, “You an’ me got four years of catchin’ up to do, Gabe. An’ we can do a lot o’ palaver with some whiskey to wet our gullets.”

Bridger slapped Titus on the knee exuberantly. “My new wife gonna be tickled as a hen what’s just laid her first egg!”

“You got a new wife?” he asked.

“She’s my third,” Bridger confessed to his old friends.

Titus grinned. “I didn’t even know ’bout what happed to your second wife.”

“Ute gal,” he said, staring into the fire. “Married back in forty-eight. But she died givin’ birth to my li’l Virginia Rosalie, that next summer of forty-nine.”

“A Flathead gal, an’ a Utah gal too,” Titus recounted. “If you ain’t the marryin’ fool! So who’s your third wife?”

“Li’l Fawn. She’s a Snake, daughter of Washakie his own self. But I call her Mary,” Bridger boasted a little behind a big smile. “Still, there’s time she gets hungry for woman talk so she takes off to see her kin over at some camp. But if your wife comes over for a visit to the fort, she’s gonna be just the poultice to put on Mary’s case of the lonelies! Tell me true now, you’ll really come visit for the fall when we turn back for the Green?”

“I damn well couldn’t think of a better place to be than visitin’ with ol’ friends till our tongues get tired!”

^* Thirty-six miles down the North Platte.

^*Carry the Wind

^* September 10, 1851.