Buffalo Palace

13

“There t’weren’t a bit of blamed sense in argeein’ about it,” Bridger declared, back to being solemn-faced now that he was warming to his tale. “But these here other yahoos good for that.”

Many of the rest pounded their knees and back-slapped one another in unbridled mirth, guffawing lustily as the liquor and the camaraderie warmed them all that summer night as stars shown like diamonds and the moon hung like a slice of translucent mother-of-pearl right over their heads.

“What they don’t got in good sense,” Fitzpatrick declared, “these fellers make up for with big grins!”

“Last year it were!” one of the laughers roared out, anxious to get on with the tale. “G’won, Jim—tell ’em!”

“I will,” Bridger snorted, and turned back to Bass and Tuttle with a wink, “just as soon as you yabberin’ yahoos shut your fly-traps!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” commanded one of the laughers, who stood, weaving a bit in his drunkenness, waving his arms at the others for quiet. When they all fell silent behind hands, he declared, “Go right on ahead, young Jim. We’s a’waiting on your windy story.”

Just then another unruly trapper cried out, “Best tell us only the true of it, boy!”

That sent the entire bunch into fits of laughter that did not end until Bridger had gone to the kettle with his tin cup, dipped some of the heady grain liquor from it, and resettled back on the trunk of a downed Cottonwood. Casually he took himself a swig and looked round at those gathered there as things quieted once again.

He asked them, “You ’bout done with your pokin’ fun at me?”

“G’won head, Jim,” Fitzpatrick said gravely as he bent forward to select a stout cottonwood limb from the stack of wood near the fire. “I’ll damn well thrash the next son of a bitch what interrupts young Bridger’s story with his silly gaping!”

“Thankee, Fitz,” Bridger replied, and took himself another sip of the liquor before he set the cup on the ground between his worn moccasins. “Like that big-nosed yahoo over there told you, it were some two winters back.”

“A year and a half ago?” Tuttle asked.

Nodding his head, Bridger replied, “Near ’bouts. Late fall it were.”

“Hell, it could’ve been early winter too, Jim,” declared Fitzpatrick. “Nobody was keeping track nohow.”

“Leastwise—the first snows had come to this here country,” Bridger continued. “Most of us was settling in for the winter not far on down this here same valley, it were.” He pointed south with a wag of his arm. “Seemed that not all the trapping outfits was in yet—but most was already here.”

Ashley’s men were settling in real good, too, Jim explained. They had cut down strong saplings and lashed them together into eastern-style wickiups over which they interlaced branches to turn the dry snows of that high prairieland. Here in what they had come to call Willow Valley the previous year, the trappers had a good source of water, plenty of grass to last their animals for the winter, and plenty of protection from the harshest of the season’s winds. Firewood lay within easy reach along the creeks and streams that tumbled out of the surrounding hills. Day by day they shot buffalo, laying in more and more of the hides they fleshed and draped over the wickiups for insulation, slicing and drying thin strips of the lean red meat over smoky fires … knowing the hard days of bitter cold and deep snows were not long in coming.

Just beyond that range of hills to the west of them lay the valley of the Bear—a river that would soon become the irritating source of contention between the Ashley men.

Earlier that July of 1824 more than fifty of them had followed Jedediah Smith and John Weber across the deceivingly low South Pass and on to the country of the Green River. By late August that year they had reached the crest of an unexplored mountain range and peered off to the west, down into the valley of a new river they would soon find had already been visited and named by the John Bull trappers for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

From the heights Smith’s men could see how the Bear flowed north out of a lake they would come to name for the sweet taste of its water. But upon following this new river the trappers discovered the river precipitously reversed itself in some forbidding lava beds. Steadfastly following the Bear upstream, the trappers continued their march south. Eventually that autumn they reached the Willow Valley, and there they decided to winter. Just to the southwest of their encampment the trappers could climb to high bluffs and stare down at the Bear River as it appeared to twist back to the north in the distance once more—but this time it flowed through a narrow canyon filled with thunderous white water.

Just as it is the way with any men who find too much time on their hands, the trappers turned their discussions of that unpredictable Bear River into an argument—with nearly every soul taking a side—and then that argument boiled into a matter of wagers: did that river continue north, or curl itself back south still another time? Hell, just what did happen to that fitful, fickle river after it disappeared in that high-walled gorge?

“Until Fitz here reminded ever’ last nigger of us there weren’t no way to know who’d win them wagers,” Jim continued his story in the hush of that starry night, “because no man knowed for sure where that river went.”

Fitzpatrick said, “Hell—I didn’t figger there’d be a man among ’em what’d go to find out for his own self!”

“Didn’t count on young Jim here!” Daniel Potts cried out.

“He’s a struttin’ cock if ever there was one!” another man shouted as others added their admiration.

“Wasn’t like I jumped at the chance,” Bridger admitted. “But some of these here yahoos come to me with such straight, no-account faces and told me I was the coon they could trust to take on that there canyon—which’d put their argeement to rest, once’t and for all.”

One of the group crowed, “We figgered you was the only one we could talk into it!”

“See what I mean, fellers?” Bridger asked Tuttle and Bass. “Well, now—I didn’t know no better than to be proud they asked me.”

“Shit, it made sense!” someone called out. “You was the youngest, boy!”

“So we figgered you was the best’un to try that hellhole river run,” another added.

A new voice bellowed, “If’n you didn’t come back—weren’t no sad loss, you being the sprout of the brigade!”

With a shrug at all the abuse he was taking, Bridger continued, “Don’t make me no never-mind now that I didn’t know they figgered it to be a damn lark they was putting me up to … that trip sounded like it’d be just the chance to pull the tiger’s tail.”

One of the older, grizzle-bearded trappers declared, “Young’uns like Bridger allays wanna be first to pull on a tiger’s tail!”

“Better’n sitting in winter camp all day, ever’ day,” Jim continued. “So I told ’em I’d settle their li’l argeement.”

“Not one of these here gaping fools figgered Jim were serious,” Fitzpatrick added. “Till next morning when they rolled outta their bed-shucks and found Bridger building hisself a boat.”

“A b-boat?” Tuttle asked in surprise.

“T’weren’t no big shakes—nothing more’n some stout willow branches I chopped down, just the way I’d watched the Injun squaws do it.”

An apt and eager student, Bridger had relished this opportunity to try his own hand at building a bullboat. Driving the butt-ends of the willow into the ground around a four-to-five-foot circle, he bent the limbs over and tied all their narrow ends together to form something on the order of an upside-down basket.

“I tried to talk the fool out of it,” Fitzpatrick explained.

“And some of the rest of us too,” another claimed, “when we saw he’d got hisself serious ’bout going into that devil’s canyon.”

“You get that, boys? That morning while’st I was working on my boat, a handful of the ones what talked me into going come up to try talking me into not going,” Bridger explained. “ ‘What, you’re crazy as a March hare, young’un!’ said one of ’em to me. ‘Why, you don’t even know if’n you can find your way back here to us!’ said ’nother. ‘How ’bout waterfalls—likely you’ll drown like a rat!’ Then ’nother of ’em warned me, ‘How ’bout the Injuns? By God, you don’t know a damned thing about what Injuns is in that country!’ ”

Fitzpatrick added, “And I told Jim it didn’t matter a twit about which way the river goes anyhow.”

“Didn’t make me no never-mind,” Bridger said. “I kept my hands busy. Far better, I figgered, to be going somewhere. Not like the rest of them what were having their fun with me—all they was doing was sitting on their arses in camp.”

As the others laughed in agreement, Jim continued his story, telling how he had woven smaller willow limbs among the thicker ones, lashing each loop to make the framework as strong as he possibly could before he took a green buffalo hide and laid it over his small dome—hide to the inside. Then the detailed work began: sewing the buffalo skin to that willow framework, binding it all around the edge of that circular opening.

“By that next night I was ready to make her seaworthy,” Jim boasted proudly.

At a cookfire he heated up a large kettle of tallow rendered from a bear recently shot while he built himself a small fire over which he set the upside-down boat. When the hide grew hot to the touch, Bridger took a small wooden spoon and began to smear the melted tallow over every seam and stitch and hole in that buffalo hide. That done, it was time to let his craftsmanship cool and harden.

“At sunup the following morning, I cut me as long a pole as I could find,” Jim told the group. “Something to push along again’ the bottom with, or shove me away from the rocks in the canyon, if that need be.”

“I give him one last chance to stay back,” Fitzpatrick stated with a shrug. “But he was bound to go, no matter what. I figgered I’d seen the last of the lad.”

Bridger continued, “Got my rifle an’ pouch, strapped on tomahawk and knife, then throwed in a big sack of some dried buffler meat—an I pulled that boat on over to the river.”

Potts shook his head, saying, “We all thought we was seein’ the last of Jim Bridger.”

Finally in the river, he slipped away slowly at first. Jim waved to the men on the bank and settled into his boat, gripping his pole, pushing his way into the main current. The men on the bank waved and shouted their farewells, many taking off their hats and raising them into the air in salute to his courage. Then all too soon Bridger couldn’t see them any longer. And beyond the second bend in the narrowing canyon, the river seemed to crash in upon itself, the current picking up speed.

Breathlessly, Bridger told the silent group, “It were like nothing I ever done afore.”

The Bear picked up that tiny bullboat with its lone passenger and hurtled them along faster and faster between the rising walls of the river’s canyon as the serene water transformed into a frothing, crashing, boiling cauldron that whirled Bridger round and round, bouncing the boat first against one wall, then against the rocks on the other side of the narrow chute. Eventually the sound of water crashing against rock began to thunder about him, pounding on his ears so brutally that it drowned out his own thoughts.

“I been drunk an’ wild-headed afore,” Jim explained. “But my head ain’t never been that twisted round and round!”

It was a cold ride too. He had begun to shake—not just out of fear—but there in the early winter the river spray soaked him, the canyon wind chilled him … and before long he was shaking uncontrollably, frozen to the marrow. Yet somehow he maintained his death-grip on that long pole, struggling to push his boat this way, then that, doing his best to pitch through the center of the narrow gorge. And through it all he kept his rifle locked between his knees in the event he was pitched out by one of the many dizzying whirlpools, or by the series of frothy rapids he was flung over like driftwood, or hurled up against the boulders raising their heads in the middle of the channel—threatening to smash him and his tiny bullboat to splinters.

Then, despite his dulled reactions, Bridger realized the immense cold he was feeling was actually water. Looking down, he found his boat slowly filling with the dark, icy river. But try as he might in the next frantic minutes, Jim realized he wasn’t going to shove the boat to either shore: there simply was no bank—only canyon wails. On and on he hurtled, slowly taking on more water with every mile.

“I figgered I was damn well going under,” Bridger exclaimed calmly as he raised his face to the sky dramatically. “Began to think back to my time as a young’un in Missoura—I’d heard me many a story of the ol’ salts who talked about rivers out here what disappear right underground on a man.”

“Under … underground?” Titus asked with a gulp. Just like the rest of them, he was caught up in the young man’s story now.

“Yup—that’s what some of them ol’ fellers tolt me. Them rivers go right down a hole in the ground. So I figgered it was just ’bout any time I’d be sucked right into some hole with that mighty river—an’ I’d never see daylight, or the Rocky Mountains, or my friends ever again.”

It was no wonder Bridger felt such dire fate awaited him.

By that time the late-autumn sky was beginning to cloud over and the sun was all but blotted out as he careened on down the canyon, its walls growing steadily steeper—the sky became nothing but a narrow and darkening strip far overhead. Now there were times when his bullboat was suddenly thrust against an outcropping of rocks, where it was suddenly wedged—with the full force of the water thundering against it—until Jim could free himself, using every last reserve in his young body … only to shove his boat back into the swirling madness of the gorge.

By then the boat was taking on more and more water, losing its natural buoyancy in the process as it slowly sank lower and lower in the freezing river. Then the strain of holding so much liquid began to tell on the bullboat’s crude, handcrafted framework. Creaking and groaning, the limbs began to shift with the weight of the water, and then some of Bridger’s sinew stitching began to unravel and loosen—the long strands of animal tendon becoming soaked to their limit.

“I figgered I was a goner an’ if I didn’t get sucked down under the ground with that river—then that river was bound to thrash me against the rocks,” Bridger told the group grown quiet as they were drawn further and further into the desperate story.

“Only thing for me to do was try to save myself,” Jim said. “So I reached down and felt in the water at the bottom of my boat to find my sack of meat. I stuffed it down inside my coat an’ made ready to jump out and try for some rocks where I could least get outta the water. Maybeso I could get my strength back and climb up the side, get back to the prerra—anything before that river sucked me right under the ground with it.”

But by some miraculous hand, right as he was preparing to cast his fate upon the water, the bullboat twisted around ungainly and Bridger caught a glimpse of what lay downriver.

“I’ll be damned if it didn’t look like smooth water!” Jim told the hushed crowd, many of whom had heard his story time and again—but found themselves caught up in its drama nonetheless.

Something told him to hang on, told him not to jump—giving him faint hope of riding it out a few moments longer. But he was sinking all the faster now, the river’s surface inching closer and closer to the top of his unwieldy craft. Then as he listened and shook uncontrollably with cold, Bridger realized the thundering roar of the rapids had begun to fade behind him. After so many terrifying minutes that had seemed more like endless days— Jim finally thought he could hear the pounding of his own blood at his temples.

“I don’t know how I done it, but I got that boatful of water poled over to the first stretch of sandy bank I come across. Just in time, too—for my boat was ’bout ready to go under for good.”

Slogging out of the widening river, Bridger set his rifle and pouch in the limbs of a nearby tree, then returned to the bank, where he struggled to tip the bullboat over, completely filled with water as it was. Finally he was able to drag the heavy boat with its green waterlogged buffalo hide a few feet up the bank, where he turned it upside down to drain. Then he shivered as the cold wind came up, and decided he’d best build himself a fire.

“Later that afternoon when my buckskins was dried and I had pulled the wet load in my rifle, I figgered it was time to climb on up the rocks and see for myself just where that devil of a river did go off to.”

High in those rocks as the late-autumn light started to fade, Bridger finally discovered just how the wagers would be won or lost. He could see that the river continued south. Meandering though it was, it seemed to continue angling off to a little west of due south.

“But that wasn’t the pure marvel of it,” he admitted now, just as he had told the tale many times before.

As he stared off into the distance, his eyes following the river toward the far horizon, “Of a sudden—way out yonder—I happed to see more water’n I ever see’d since the day I was born.”

For a moment he turned and gazed back to the north, thinking about his original plans to return overland once he had determined just where the river flowed. But now, as he stared off into the distance, he felt again that unmistakable itch to search and discover, an itch that he knew he could not deny.

“Come sunup the next morning I put that bullboat back in the water and I was on my way. It weren’t long afore the world around me went so quiet, it was like everything was dead. By the time I come to where the river opened up into a peaceful stretch of water, I dipped my hand over the side and brung it to my lips. Salt! Sweat of the Almighty—that’s what I tasted, fellas. Salt! Good Lord, I thought—had that river floated me all the way to the far salt ocean?”

In actuality Bridger had drifted on out of the mouth of the Bear into a great bay some twenty miles wide,* where he could barely see land far off to the right and left of him—but where the bay opened up to the south, there was nothing but water … for as far as he could see.

“I ain’t ashamed to tell you I was scairt,” Bridger confided. “Figgering I’d made the ocean, I wasn’t a stupid pilgrim about to go floating off to the other side of the world in that leaky ol’ bullboat. So this child poled hisself over to the shore quick as he could. Stepped my moker-sons out on a layer of salt that crunched under my feet, and I pulled that boat out behind me.”

With the sun rising toward midsky, young Jim set out on foot instead, moving south along the shoreline. He had put miles behind him before he finally made out the first sign of distant land. The farther south he walked, the more it became clear what he was seeing was a huge island** rising far out in that lifeless, salty expanse of endless water. Far, far to the southeast, it appeared the shore he was walking went on forever.

“And I never did see the other side of it neither!” Jim exclaimed, handing his cup to one of his compatriots for refilling. “Still scairt pretty bad, I took off on the backtrack. Made it back to my bullboat just afore dark. Gathered in some wood, started me a fire, and rocked that boat up on its side to hold off the cold winter wind. Next morning I started walking north, back the way I come.”

As he came up to those gathered around the fire and stopped, Jedediah Smith asked, “You know what Jim told us when he showed back up a few days later?”

Potts called out, “Bridger said, ’Hell, boys! I been clear to the Pay-cific Sea!”

“Would’ve been nice, fellas,” Smith said, gazing wistfully down at the fire, “if what Bridger did find two winters back was in fact a big bay of the Pacific Ocean.”

“You figger some way Jim run onto the Buenaventura, Jed?” Harrison Rogers asked.

“It would be by the hand of God, if it were,” Smith answered reverently, gazing off toward the west, where the legend of that fabled river dictated its waters would carry a man all the way from the spine of the Rockies clear down to the Pacific.

Fitzpatrick said, “Why, if it were the Buenaventury, Jed—we’d have only to pack our plews down to the shore, where the big ships would tie up and take on our beaver.”

Rogers added, “Then and there they’d off-load our supplies and likker, fellas!”

Smith grinned in the yellow sheen of that fire. “Just think of it, men: Jim Bridger here could well be the feller what found it for us.”

“That’s what we’re heading off tomorrow to find out, ain’t we, Jed?” Rogers prodded.

With a nod Smith replied, “That’s why we’re marching south by west. Yes—to find out just where the Pacific is. To discover just how close … or how far we are, from the sea.”

“I’ll be damned,” Tuttle exclaimed with a gush. He slapped a hand on Bass’s knee. “Ain’t that something, Scratch? Think on it, man! Just out there, maybeso not all that far off—the great salt ocean lays watting for us to go see it!”

“That is something,” Titus agreed quietly, the immensity of the thought almost overwhelming him.

Down at New Orleans he had looked out on that harbor and tried to fathom the immensity of those great rolling oceans where tall triple-masted schooners rocked atop frothy waves as tall as houses, moving to and from faraway ports where folks of many colors spoke all those foreign tongues he had heard fall upon his ears on that youthful trip to New Orleans with Hames Kingsbury’s boatmen. How so many of the sounds and sights and smells of the world were brought into that one place rolled up beside the ocean.

And now another such ocean might not be all that far away to the west, after all.

“Let’s drink to young Jim Bridger!” Beckwith roared suddenly, standing with his cup held high. “And to Bridget’s Hole!”*

Immediately they all shot to their feet. But Bridger was the last, looking young and sheepish among their lined faces scraped clean of beard these past few days. The fire danced in their eyes, flickered on the dull sheen of their tin cups, as together they roared, celebrating one of their own.

“Hear, hear! To young Jim Bridger!” Bass shouted with the others.

Taken altogether, those men gathered in Willow Valley that night were a pitifully small lot indeed.

“Hear, hear! To the far salt ocean!”

But few in numbers though they be, each man of them stood tall, head and shoulders above any who had chosen to stay behind, those who cowered east of the Missouri … this breed here and forever after to stand taller still than any of those who would come in their wake.

“To the beaver, by God!”

Here they were of a breed just newly born, yet already beginning to die … so short was their glorious era.

“To the Rocky Mountains, by damn!”

“Hear, hear!” Scratch shouted with them, tears coming to his eyes, so emotional was it to stand among these men strong enough to match those high and terrible places.

“To the very heart of the world!”

“To the Rocky Mountains!”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Titus cried as he bolted to his feet with the first shots up the valley. “What you make of that?”

Cooper barely budged, his eyes fluttering open slightly. He squatted with his back resting against a pile of their bedding: buffalo robes and blankets. “Target shooting. Feller wins, he get hisself a drink of likker.”

But those shots were coming too close together, Bass thought. And they damn well came from the wrong direction. From the Shoshone camp!

“What you think, Billy?” Bass inquired, nervously scratching at his bearded cheek.

Hooks kept on whittling the bark off another short section of willow. He had a pile of pale sticks on one side of him, and a rumpled pile of curled slivers of bark on the ground between his legs. “I figger them red niggers’ business is their own business. Leave it be.”

“But—the shootin’!”

“Ain’t no one shootin’ at us,” Cooper snapped. “Just let it be and lemme sleep.”

Then Bass whirled on Tuttle, “You think we ought’n go see what’s the ruckus, Bud?” He watched Tuttle glance at Cooper, as if asking permission.

“Nawww,” Bud finally answered, “like Silas said: ain’t none of our affair—”

Hooves pounded up on the valley floor—three horses skidding to a halt as their riders leaned over to throw their news at the quartet of free trappers.

“A bunch of bad Injuns just jumped the Shoshone camp, boys!” a rider announced, pointing. “Come riding down off the hills. Cutting up the Snakes’ camp something fierce. I s’pose they didn’t know we was here—or didn’t care.”

Cooper stirred only enough to push his hat back from his face and ask, “What tribe?”

“Blackfeets.”

“Blackfeet,” Titus repeated almost at a whisper, his heart beginning to slam in his chest so hard, he thought it would squeeze right out between his ribs.

“That’s right,” a second horseman said. “Bug’s Boys!”

“Grab your gun and c’mon!” the third Ashley man ordered as more hooves pounded close.

A half-dozen riders shot by, whooping and yelping, knees like pistons in the stirrups as the wind whipped back the brims on their hats, fluttered their long hair out behind them just the way it did the horses’ manes and tails. In their wake came a rider who peeled himself off and brought his mount crow-hopping to a jarring halt before Titus and Tuttle as the other trio of riders kicked their horses into motion and tore out after the six.

“You comin’, Scratch?” Jim Beckwith asked breathlessly.

“Fight them Blackfeets?”

He nodded, swallowing. “Ain’t none of us ever gonna have a better chance to get in our licks.”

Cooper snorted in derision, then said, “Sounds like pretty big words comin’ from a black-assed Negra.”

Beckwith glared for a moment at the giant, then snarled, “I sure as hell don’t see you grabbin’ up your gun to show us all just how brave you are.”

“You come down off’n that horse, Negra-boy … I’ll show you who’s brave an’ who I can pound into mule-squat!”

Beckwith turned from Cooper as if to ignore him the best he could. “I’m going, Scratch. You can come with me … or you can stay with these here.”

“He’ll stay with us,” Silas snapped, “’cause he knows better. That ain’t his fight.”

Hooks echoed, “Yup—not your fight, Scratch.”

Then Titus watched another dozen or so riders race past in a flurry of hooves and hair, weapons, whooping, and dust a’flying.

“Maybeso it oughtta stay atween just them Shoshone against the Blackfoot,” Tuttle apologized for his reluctance.

Wagging his head, Bass replied, “Looks to be it ain’t just the Snakes’ business. No, I gotta go.”

As he whirled about to race over to unlash his horse from its picket pin, Cooper bellowed, “You go get yourself hurt in this foolishness—don’t y’ come whimperin’ to me.”

“I won’t,” Bass promised, his heart rising to his throat as he yanked his horse back toward the spot where his blankets lay.

Silas continued, “We got us plans for the fall hunt. If y’ go off an’ get yourself hurt—don’t figger on trapping with us none. I ain’t dragging along no bunged-up, strapped-down whimper boy!”

“Awright,” Bass agreed as he swept up his rifle and dropped his pouch over one shoulder, “that’s a bargain: I get myself hurt by them Blackfoots, you three just go on off to hunt ’thout me this year.”

Cooper was beginning to rise, his face growing more crimson as he found his warnings were going unheeded. “You ’member that scuffle we had us with the Arapaho, don’t y’?”

“I do,” Titus replied, leaping atop the horse, bareback.

“You was cut up good, y’ dumb nigger,” Silas reminded. “You was damned lucky it were winter time so we had us the time to wait on y’ to heal up—or we’d damn well left y’ to rot on your lonesome right there with them Utes!”

“C’mon, Beckwith,” Bass said bravely as he reined around, turning his back on Cooper. “There’s Blackfeet to fight.”

He gave the horse his heels in its ribs and flanks, setting the animal into a run. Although Bass could not make out the loud, angry words Silas flung at his back, he hoped Cooper’s anger would cool by the time he returned. It just might be an even wager: fighting the worst Indians in the northern Rockies, or suffering another one of Silas Cooper’s beatings.

After no more than a quarter of a mile’s run they spotted the first of the buffalo-hide lodges in the distance. And gathered just this side of them were a swirling knot of trappers dismounting and handing off their horses to others on foot. At their center stood three men: Fitzpatrick, Fraeb, and one man Bass did not know.

Leaping to the ground near the group, Titus asked Beckwith, “Who’s that younger fella with Fitz and Ol’ Man Frapp?”

“Sublette.”

Scratch joined Beckwith at the fringe of the group, whispering to the mulatto, “Billy Sublette?”

Beckwith nodded as a small party of Shoshone raced up through the village on horseback. The trappers backed away slightly as the warrior leader sought out the chief of the trappers.

“Gut Face!” the Shoshone called in English when he recognized Sublette.

“I am Cut Face, yes!” the partisan replied, stepping forward.

In troubled English the chief explained to Sublette, “Three of my warriors and two of our women—out gathering roots on the other side of camp—they are killed by the Blackfeet!”

“I know,” Sublette hurried to say above the crackle of gunfire on the far side of the village. “We are here to help you fight those Blackfeet!”

For a moment the Shoshone leader’s eyes roamed over the crowd. “You say that your warriors can fight, Cut Face? You say that they are great braves?”

“They are brave fighters.”

“Now let me see them fight—so that I may know your words are true.”

Clutching his rifle to his breast with one hand, Sublette swept the other arm in a wide arc to indicate the white trappers. “You shall see them fight, and then you will know that they are all brave men.”

“They are ready to die today?”

Nodding, Sublette answered for them all, “I have no cowards among my men. Yes, we are ready to die for our Snake friends!”

The chief turned briefly as the gunfire seemed to rumble all the closer, accompanied by the yells of men in battle. “Then bring your warriors to join mine.”

Sublette turned from the war chief and shouted above the battle’s din to the trappers, “Now, men—I want every brave man to go and fight these Blackfeet. We must whip them—so the Snakes can see that we can fight. By damn, we’ll do our best in front of the Snakes and the Blackfeet as a warning to all tribes that would cause an American trouble!”

“Let us at ’em!” a voice cried out.

“That’s right!” Sublette replied. “I want no man following me who is not brave. Let the cowards remain in camp!”

“No cowards here!” another shouted.

With a wave of his war club, the Shoshone war chief ordered, “Bring your ponies!”

“Follow me, men!” Sublette echoed as he leaped back onto his horse and reined away after the Shoshone warriors.

At the far edge of the village the trappers suddenly confronted a wide crescent of the Blackfeet pressing against the lodge circle. But there was surprise, even shock, in the eyes of the enemy as they saw the numbers arrayed against them: white men and Shoshone alike, streaming through the lodges like water through a broken beaver dam.

The painted, blood-eyed enemy began to inch back toward the willow and cottonwood. Farther and farther they retreated, foot by foot, yard by yard, darting among the shadows and behind what cover they could use skillfully. After those first few minutes Bass finally saw his first real target—something more than a flitting shadow.

Dropping to his knee, Titus yanked the hammer back, set the trigger, and squeezed off his shot in one fluid motion. He thought he saw the enemy warrior spin about, clutching his side as the gunsmoke billowed up from the muzzle. Then Titus lunged forward, eyes intently watching that spot where he had seen the enemy. There, yes—the warrior was lurching off, hand plastered against his side—joining others in retreat.

Guns roared and men yelled in three tongues. At times the air was filled with arrows hissing past his ear and over his head, fired from the short bows of one side or the other. The work was agonizingly slow and dirty for the first hour until the Blackfeet backed themselves right out of the brushy cover and began a full-scale retreat.

In crazed confusion they led the trappers and Shoshone across more than four miles of rolling countryside at the upper extent of Willow Valley that afternoon. For the most part it was a game of chase, with little shooting … until the enemy reached the shore of a small lake. There beneath the trees and undergrowth at the lakebank they took cover, turned, and prepared for the coming assault.

As the trappers and their allies closed on the lake, it was easy to see the Blackfeet were going to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Behind the scrub brush they hid, down behind the carved, earthen banks they took this final refuge—and from there began to harass their tormentors. The battle heated up like never before.

Squatting behind a small boulder and clump of sage, Bass took a few moments to watch others crawling in on their bellies as the Blackfeet arched arrows into the air, sailing up, then falling down upon their intended targets. All the time the Shoshone cried out their grief at the five scalps taken within sight of their village—and the Blackfeet boasted that there would be more deaths before the sun set on that day.

“There’s no way we can get close!” Daniel Potts shouted his frustration nearby.

Others grumbled, fired at the brushy cover, or just shouted back at the eerie war cries and chants floating up from both sides of the battlefield. For the better part of an hour it went poorly, an individual here or there making his own brave attempt to worm his way toward the brush and the lakeshore bulwarks. All were driven back by the defenders … until the Blackfeet themselves suddenly emerged from their shadowy cover and hurled themselves against a weak place in the trappers’ line.

“Get us some help!” came one man’s frantic wail.

Bass crabbed to his feet, running all bent over toward the sound of the gunfire and loudest shouting. Across the sagebrush dotting the open ground came another ten or a dozen trappers—all hurrying to the cries for help. Some of them stopped for a heartbeat, thrust their rifles against their shoulders, and fired into the wild, screaming, ghoulish charge of the Blackfeet.

Those cries of enemy warriors raised the hair on the back of Scratch’s neck. Something so primitive, primordial, something that reminded him of the Arapaho warrior who, though already dying, had flung his war club at Titus …

Bass dropped to his belly, yanking the buttstock under his arm, into the crook at his shoulder as the handful of warriors came screaming toward three or four trappers—one of them swinging over his head what appeared to be a long-handled war club with sharp iron spikes driven through its round head like an ancient ball of mace.

Pulling the trigger, Bass watched the bullet catch the warrior high in the chest, shoving his upper body back with its velocity as the soft lead flattened out … the Blackfoot’s legs continuing to pump forward nonetheless—until he landed flat on his back, squirmed and kicked convulsively a few moments as Bass brought the muzzle to his mouth and blew.

From the corner of his eye he watched the warrior quit twitching as Bass dropped powder down the barrel and drove a ball home.

“Beckwith!”

Titus turned to find the one called Sublette calling. Off to his left, the mulatto fired a shot from behind some willow, then turned to shout in reply.

“Over here, Billy!”

“I see you,” Sublette shouted, then pointed off toward another of the enemy dead. “See that dead nigger?”

“Yup! I do.”

“What say the two of us go get that red nigger’s scalp afore them friends of his drag him off!”

Beckwith’s coffee-colored face creased with a wide smile, his head bobbing. “Fine notion, Billy! A real fine notion!”

The two laid aside their rifles, then crabbed onto their hands and knees. Crawling from one bit of scrub brush to the next, Sublette and Beckwith took separate paths to reach the last bit of cover closest to the warrior’s body. It was there that Sublette bellied down flat on the ground and began crawling into the open.

“C’mon, Beckwith,” he growled. “I cain’t haul ’im in on my own!”

Plopping to his belly, Beckwith joined Sublette by crawling into view. An arrow flew over the white man’s head just as he reached out for the warrior’s ankle.

“Goddamn, that was close!”

Beckwith seized the other ankle and frantically began dragging the body back some two feet at a time. From the far brush at the lakeshore, the Blackfeet realized what was taking place and set up a horrible roar: howling in dismay as their comrade slowly disappeared toward the brush where the Shoshone and their white allies lay hidden.

But while Titus watched, it became clear that warrior wasn’t dead. The Blackfoot began shaking his head groggily.

“Jim!” Bass shouted in alarm.

It was as if the Indian came to in the space of a heartbeat and immediately realized what was to be his fate. Twisting his torso as he was being dragged, the Blackfoot reached for tall tufts of grass, strained for a hold on the low branches on the brush—anything he could seize that would slow him down.

“Sonuvabitch ain’t dead!” Sublette huffed in surprise. “Kill ’im, Beckwith!”

“With what?” the mulatto demanded as the warrior kicked out with his legs. “I left my gun back there like your’n.”

“Where’s your pistol?”

The warrior began to thrash even harder now. “Ain’t got it!”

“Stab ’im!” Sublette ordered. “Cut his throat!”

Like a blur a Blackfoot warrior leaped from behind some nearby cover to snap off a shot from his trade musket, the ball slapping through the brush near Beckwith—then the warrior kept on racing right for the two trappers.

Sublette growled, “Jesus and Mary!” as he began to rise to his knees, his hand slapping for knife and tomahawk at his belt.

At that moment the warrior leaped over some more low brush, balls whistling past him. As he landed flat-footed, the Blackfoot gripped his musket’s barrel in both hands and swung it high over his head, bringing it down on Beckwith’s back with a loud crack before the mulatto could scoot out of the way.

With a grunt of pain Beckwith fell back, losing his grip on the wounded warrior’s ankle. His face drawn up in shock, the mulatto rolled and rolled again to get away, crabbing up onto his knees, then lunging forward painfully, onto his feet to retreat even more.

“Come back here, Beckwith!”

Sublette was on his knees too, pushing against the warrior, both of them with a lock on the enemy’s empty trade musket. Slowly the white man rose to his feet, straining to pull the Blackfoot off balance.

“C’mere, you yellow coward!” he shrieked. “Beckwith!”

Twisting this way, then twisting another, the two struggled muscle against muscle.

“I swear, Beckwith—I’ll kill you myself for this!”

Then the warrior smashed his heel down hard on top of Sublette’s moccasin, causing the trapper to yelp, hop, and yank one hand off the musket. With a great wrenching the Blackfoot tore the rifle away from Sublette, then shoved, sending the trapper sprawling onto his back.

Just as the warrior raised the weapon over his head, preparing to savagely bring it down on Sublette, Beckwith flung himself back into the struggle. Flying over the low brush, the mulatto drove his head and shoulder into the warrior, sending the enemy hurtling, his musket sailing in another direction. Without delaying to find his weapon, the Blackfoot scrambled to his feet and retreated at a dead run.

Three balls nicked the bushes around the two trappers as they redoubled their efforts to drag the wounded warrior back to cover.

Crabbing over to where the pair had disappeared in the brush, Bass found Sublette and Beckwith whispering loudly with another trapper.

“You want the scalp or don’cha?” Sublette demanded.

The wounded trapper could barely lift his head up, much less argue. “You kill ’im your own self,” he said weakly, clearly in a great deal of pain.

Beckwith prodded, “This is the black-hearted son of a bitch what shot you. Ain’t you gonna kill him?”

“Can’t you both see the man ain’t got the strength to kill nothing?” Titus demanded.

For a moment Sublette and Beckwith stared down at their seriously wounded companion—but only for a moment—when the wounded Blackfoot came to again and flopped over to crawl away with only one good leg left him.

“Awright,” Sublette growled harshly. “I’ll kill the sumbitch for you!”

Leaping onto the Blackfoot’s back, Sublette shoved his knee down on the back of the warrior’s shoulder, grabbed a handful of the Indian’s hair with his left hand so he could pull the neck up taut, then with the flash of his skinning knife sliced once—long and deep—across the enemy’s throat. Frothy crimson spurted as much as three feet onto the grass as the Indian struggled for a few quick heartbeats; then his body went limp.

Quickly Sublette hacked off the scalp in a crude manner of one not accustomed to removing the hair of his enemies, then stood with the dripping trophy to show it to his wounded companion. His knife, hand, and forearm all dripped with bright blood, resplendent in the summer sunshine.

“Now, you—get over here,” he hollered at the far line of brush. “I need some of you to drag Hinkle off and get him back to the village.”

As soon as the wounded man was taken away, Sublette and the rest returned to the task at hand. Arrows sailed overhead. Lead balls smacked through the leaves and limbs. Shoshone taunted Blackfoot, and the Blackfoot cursed at their ancient enemies. The white trappers screeched above it all, knowing neither tongue but clearly understanding the age-old language of war. Hour after hour the stalemate dragged on until the sun eventually slid far beyond midsky.

Bass figured they had been fighting for the better part of six hours when one man after another began to grumble of his hunger. It took only that first one to remind the rest that they hadn’t eaten since breakfast—and only those who had been up early enough to eat before the firing began, those who weren’t suffering a throbbing hangover in this afternoon heat.

One after another added his voice to the complaints until Sublette agreed that his trappers could reward themselves with a temporary retreat. After telling the Shoshone warriors that they would return shortly, Sublette told the Snake that they should rub out as many of the Blackfeet as possible before the trappers would come back—because when the white men returned, there would soon be no Blackfeet to kill and count coup upon.

It wasn’t a short ride back to Shoshone camp where Sublette’s men began to scrounge about for something to eat. About the time the trappers found some slivers of dried meat to chew on and were gulping down water to quench their terrible thirst, the first of the Shoshone warriors appeared back in the village.

“What the hell are they doing here?” Sublette demanded.

Bass watched a group of the warriors ride up and dismount, their bronze bodies glistening. One in particular was most handsome, his carefully combed hair greased to perfection; over the crown of his head he had tied the stuffed body of a redwing hawk, the thongs knotted under his chin. He had the classic profile not seen in many of the others, with the hook high on the nose, the prominent cheekbones, and those oriental eyes filled with obsidian flints that glinted haughtily as he strode up to the white men.

Gazing after the group come to take their own refreshment, Titus said, “I s’pose we wasn’t the only ones hungry, was we, Sublette?”

“Damn them,” Sublette grumbled. “Now them Blackfoot gonna get away.”

“You fixin’ to have us go back now?” Fraeb asked, dragging a hand over his mouth, his beard dripping with the water he had been guzzling.

“Damn right,” Sublette answered. “Let’s go! All of you—now! Saddle up—we’re going back to finish what we started!”

By the time the first of the trappers returned to the battleground, they found only a dozen or so Shoshone stationed among the brush to watch over their dead companions so they would not be scalped. But as the white men dismounted and began tearing through the willow and trees at the lake’s edge, they were surprised to find more than thirty Blackfeet bodies had been abandoned.

“They damn well left in a hurry, didn’t they?” Beckwith asked as he came up to stand with Bass and some others.

“You ever see’d Injuns leave any of their own like this afore?” asked one of the group.

“Never,” another answered, incredulous.

“No, not me, never,” Beckwith agreed.

“What made ’em take off so fast that they left their dead behind?” Titus asked.

With a shrug one of the trappers answered, “Yellow-bellied niggers is what Blackfoot is. Bad mother’s sons when they got the jump on you. But they’re yellow-bellied in a stand-up even fight of it.”

In the end that night the Shoshone village was alive with celebration, wailing, and mourning. While they had killed far more of the enemy, they nonetheless had lost the scalps of the first five victims, along with the death of eleven more warriors killed in the battle. Yet those bodies and their hair had not fallen into the hands of the enemy. The drumming and singing, the keening and chanting, continued till daybreak as the Snake conducted their wake over their dead and celebrated the spoils taken from the bodies of their enemies.

Meanwhile, downstream in the trapper camps lay seven wounded men expected to survive their wounds if they were allowed to get their rest. Still, the Smith, Jackson, and Sublette men, along with Provost’s outfit and the many free trappers still in the valley—all were anxious to celebrate their victory, right down to the last cup of liquor the general had hauled out from St. Louis.

For better than a day and another night the white men reveled in their defeat of the Blackfeet. Tales were told and retold of how that hated tribe first deceived the men with Lewis and Clark, then went on to take their revenge on Andrew Henry’s men trapping out of their fort in the Three Forks area.

For the better part of two decades now, the specter of a monstrous enemy had steadily grown all the bigger with every Blackfoot skirmish, fight, and pony raid. But now American trappers had fought their first concerted battle with a large force of Blackfeet warriors.

Already a new crop of legends were beginning to take shape around those glowing campfires that midsummer of 1826 in the Willow Valley.

Yet the story of Blackfeet against American trapper would be a tale long, harrowing, and most bloody before it reached its conclusion.

*Bear River Bay on the Great Salt Lake

** Present-day Antelope Island

*What some of the early Ashley men called the valley of the Great Salt Lake