Crack in the Sky

16

He had forgotten just how good an Injun gal could smell, all earthy and fragrant with her own body heat, skin smeared with some bear oil, maybe some crushed sage or flower petals rubbed in her hair.

Quite different from them Mexican gals, who stank of cheap aguardiente and corn-husk cigarillos just like their menfolk. But the Taos whores sure did know how to raise hell and put a chunk under it to entertain a mountain man wintering down their way!

Still, he was glad to be back in the mountains, back to Injun gals what didn’t chatter that much at all like them Mexican whores while they serviced their customers. These Injun women knew what they were about when it came to earning that handful of beads, that cup of Mexican sugar, or that yard of calico he held out to finally entice one of them to follow him back toward a spot he had prepared in the middle of a patch of willow.

She grasped his rigid flesh in the moonlight as he centered himself over her and began to lunge forward hungrily as she half closed her eyes.

Starved as he was, Scratch did his best to go at it slow. Knowing that after having gone so long without, this was bound to be over with all too soon anyway. Best savor it while he could.

Squirming, the woman adjusted herself on the buffalo robe he had spread beneath the wide strip of oiled sheeting Titus had tied up in the event the sky decided to cloud up and rain on them that night. Right at dusk a few clouds had begun to clot at the western rim of the valley, there against the mountains, ominously backlit by the falling sun.

Titus thought he could smell her excitement. Its strong pungency rose to his nostrils on the warm night air. And that stirred him to jab himself into her with all the more urgency.

How long had it been … too damned long to calculate, to wonder about, now. The drought was over. He had bought himself a woman for the night. At least he hoped it was for the night, praying suddenly that she would not get up and leave once he was done in her. Because he realized he would be done all too soon.

It was always that way when he went so long without—

Then he was exploding inside her in great rushing waves of relief, flinging himself against her, almost whimpering that it hadn’t lasted longer.

Slowly, slowly he sank atop her, filled both with regret and immense satisfaction, savoring these few minutes while his breathing slowed and his heart quieted itself, listening to her breathing and the night sounds so close around their crude shelter. When he grew soft, the woman slid out from under him, then scooted back against his body, nestling her head on his shoulder as she reached out for her dress and that blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders when she’d followed him there.

He unfurled her blanket over them both and closed his eyes.

How warm was the night air, despite that hint of a chilling cloudburst carried in from the horizon on an occasional breeze.

After completing his purchases and carrying his supplies back to camp, Scratch and the others had carved up the remains of an elk cow shot two days before and put the steaks over the fire. As the meat sizzled at the end of sharpened appolaz, they eagerly dipped their tin cups into the three kettles, sipping at the amber-colored grain alcohol that burned a man’s goozle raw.

Scratch near choked with that first great gulp.

Sputtering, he found the others guffawed and knee-slapped at his fit of coughing.

“Ain’t smooth as lightning, is it?” Hatcher asked, grinning so widely one could see all of that rotted tooth.

No, it sure wasn’t smooth. Nor had Bass chosen to sweeten the liquor’s raw bite with Mexican brown sugar as he had learned to do with the Taos aguardiente. But soon enough his tongue and gullet grew accustomed to this particular recipe. So with supper out of the way and his head feeling light and easy, Bass cut free enough beads to fill a pint tin cup half the way to the top, sliced himself off an arm’s length of striped cotton cloth with his belt knife, then bid the others farewell for what he hoped would be the rest of the evening.

“Ye be back afore morning?” Hatcher cried.

But before Bass himself could answer, Elbridge yelled, “Shit, Jack! His blankets and robes is gone!”

“Eegod! Ye got yerself a little hidey place picked out, don’t ye?” Jack asked before Scratch could utter a word.

He was really beginning to feel the numbing tingle radiating across his forehead now that he was standing, doing all he could to remain standing. “My night to let the wolf loose, boys!”

“See you tomorry,” Caleb replied with a slur and a wave.

He weaved past their merry fire as some of the rest grabbed their crotches and hooted profanely. An exuberant Hatcher blew him a kiss before Bass turned toward the banks of the Popo Agie.

That’s when he heard the loud voices of men mixing with the lighter giggles from women. Instead of wading on into the creek, Scratch decided to stay with the east bank. After crossing less than fifty yards he came upon an open piece of ground within the willow and cottonwood, where more than two dozen people milled about in the light of the rising half-moon. Trappers sauntered among the warriors and squaws who had come across the Popo Agie with one thought in mind: no two ways about it, there were treasures to be bartered from those white men hungry to lay with their dark-skinned women. Cloth and coffee, beads and bells, knives and awls, vermilion and ribbons.

And all these beaver men wanted was a few minutes’ time to rut with a woman!

Were there no females back in the land of these white men?

For a few minutes Scratch stood shuffle-footed on the fringe of that merry gathering, watching the company men and a handful of free trappers mosey in and out through the group. They circled, appraising, then circled again, stopping now and then to have themselves a close inspection of this or that woman beneath the moonlight. He ought to have himself a look, Titus decided, just so the others wouldn’t pick over all the best there was before he got around to choosing.

The warrior warily watched the white man approach, saying something quietly to his woman from the corner of his mouth. She nodded as she looked Bass up and down. Then smiled faintly. He set down the cup of brown Mexican sugar at his feet and asked How much? in sign, ending with that simple gesture of male readiness: a stiffened index finger on one hand sliding back and forth between the wide-spread Y of the first two fingers on the other hand.

“A knife and some powder too?” he asked when the warrior gave his answer.

He showed the man the calico, but it was the woman who fingered it with approval.

“Listen—you go and offer ’em too much,” one of the company men growled as he lunged up to Bass’s elbow, “gonna make it miserable on the rest of us here on out!”

“This free man giving these red whores too much?” grumbled another who lumbered up to stand at the other elbow.

In the meantime the squaw knelt and retrieved the cup from the ground. Sniffing it first, she plunged a finger into the sugar.

“Lookee thar’. He offers her a bunch of that smooth cloth, and see? She’s took her a shine to that cup of his,” the first man snorted. “What’s in that damn cup?”

“Sugar.”

“Shit—you’re giving ’em sugar!” the second trapper shrieked, and turned away, throwing his hands up in disgust. “Better get your whore quick now, boys. That free man’s riding up the price of a man’s poke but good!”

The first warrior had snatched the cup from his wife and stiffly handed it back to Bass, wagging his head and pulling the woman away toward the other side of the clearing. Pursing his lips in frustration, Scratch began to circle again, feeling the glares of the company men hot between his shoulder blades. A second time around the glen he stopped before another warrior who had a woman stationed at either arm.

“You have two wives?” he asked as he watched the plain-faced woman bend to retrieve the cup.

But the warrior signed that he had one wife. The other—and he gestured to the woman who licked the brown sugar from the finger she had plunged into the tin cup—was the sister of his wife.

“How much you want for her?” Scratch asked aloud as he signed, then indicated the warrior’s wife. She was clearly the better-looking of the two.

The Shoshone put his arm on his wife’s shoulder and shook his head. Next he laid his arm on his sister-in-law’s shoulder and pointed to the cloth on Bass’s shoulder. And the tin cup. And then he used a finger to tap against the butt of the new pistol Titus had stuffed in his sash.

“No,” Scratch said emphatically.

The warrior glowered, turning both the women away so quickly, Titus had to lunge to snatch his tin cup back. But he promptly stepped in front of the warrior and stood his ground, forcing the trio to stop.

“Here.”

He handed the cup to the sister-in-law and freed the antelope-skin bag stuffed beneath his belt. From it he pulled a handful of the big pony beads. First he pointed to the beads, then to the cup the squaw held, and finally to the calico.

“That’s too goddamned much to pay for a quick hump in the brush!” a voice snarled somewhere close behind him.

Ignoring the grumblings of those around him, Bass inched his hand closer to the wife, holding the beads right under her chin, then slowly moved the hand so he could hold them right under the nose of her sister.

“It ain’t too much for a goddamned woman,” Titus said, flinging his words over his shoulder at those behind him, the men he knew were watching his negotiations.

The Indian shook his head again, tightening his arms around the shoulders of the two women and saying something to his wife’s sister. She handed the cup of sugar back to Titus.

“You ain’t getting my pistol,” Bass snapped at the warrior. “Now, here’s a fair trade.”

But the Indian pulled the women away again. This time he let them go, standing right there watching their backs, his hands filled with beads and sugar, his heart despairing.

“Serves you right, nigger!”

He turned on a group of them sniggering at him.

“That’s right,” another bawled. “Serves you right for stacking up the price of a hump that’a way.”

From the corner of his eye Bass saw them moving his way: an older warrior, leading four women. Halting in front of the white trapper, the wrinkled Shoshone with an expressive face stepped aside and gestured in turn to each of the four. Scratch quickly appraised them in the silver light.

“No men,” the man signed.

Maybeso he means they ain’t got no husbands.

Setting down the cup and dumping the colorful beads back into the small skin pouch, he asked, “No men?”

“Killed,” the warrior replied with his hands. “Rubbed out by Blackfeet.”

“Your daughters?”

He nodded, then spoke in Shoshone. “Show me your beads.”

Handing the old man the pouch, Bass watched the Shoshone pour out some of the beads and inspect them in his palm. Then he held them out so his four daughters could appraise them.

His deep, dark eyes gazed into the white man’s. “The cup?”

Bass picked up the tin and waited while the man licked the tip of his finger, dipped it in the Mexican sugar, then licked the fingertip once more.

“I got the cloth too,” Scratch said in English, taking the strip of calico from his shoulder as the grumbling from the white men around him grew louder.

One of the women stepped forward, and immediately a second, both of them fingering the cloth. But the old man motioned them back suddenly, then nodded. Moving aside, he gestured again to his four daughters in turn, moving his arm from the trapper to each woman as if asking that a decision be made before a price was negotiated.

The oldest looked a lot like Fawn, and the youngest, a mere slip of a girl, looked very similar to Slays in the Night’s daughter. That one couldn’t be any older than fourteen, maybe fifteen, summers. But the warrior had said they all had been married. An immediate tug at his heart made him feel sorry for the girl, for the old man too. He hoped she would not be chosen this night … but realized that was muddle-headed thinking. She’d likely be the first to go to one of the others, a man who might not treat her near as kindly as he would.

Then he wondered if he was feeling sorry for her, or if he was trying to talk himself into picking her instead of the others.

“How many summers?” he asked.

“Seventeen.”

Titus peered closer at the girl. She had to be younger than that. Why, Amy Whistler was that same age when she and he …

So Bass repeated the number. “Seventeen.”

With a nod the old man reached over and inched the young woman forward as if about to consummate the deal.

Jehoshaphat! That’s half my age!

Still clutching the skin pouch, the old man upended the bag and poured out all the beads into the hands of another woman standing behind the youngest, who kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Then the warrior gave the pouch back to the trapper at the same time he took the tin cup from Bass’s hand. His final gesture was to take the folded strip of cloth from where it hung over the white man’s arm—leaving Scratch with nothing more to hold.

In a whisper the young woman turned slightly and said something to the man. Instead, it was the oldest of her sisters who answered curtly. Chastised, the young woman turned back, glanced up at Bass for a brief moment, nodding her head at him before her eyes returned to the ground at her feet.

Shooing the trapper away, the old warrior turned on his heel, pulling a soft pouch from his belt. Spreading its top and holding it out as he shuffled away, he had the oldest of the sisters pour the beads into it while the other two women took turns licking sugar from the fingers they repeatedly plunged into the cup. With his bag poked back under his belt, the old Shoshone unfurled the long strip of cloth and draped it around his own shoulders, swirling this way, then that, admiring it on himself in the moonlight.

“Gonna make himself a shirt, I’d reckon,” Scratch said to no one at all.

“Damn you, free trapper!”

Turning slightly, he found that group of company men glaring at him anew.

“That’s right—we oughtta cut your goddamned oysters off right here and now!” a second one bellowed menacingly. “Then you’d never go daubing no Injun gals again!”

For a moment he measured them in the moonlight limned through puffy clouds embroidered with silvery borders. If they meant him real harm, they wouldn’t be blustering—he figured as his heart began to beat faster with this challenge, uncertain if it did so out of anticipation for the woman, or from the danger the four company men presented with their swagger.

That’s likely what it was, he decided. Nothing more than strut and swagger. Nonetheless, he laid his left hand on the handle of his knife for a moment while he wrapped his right hand around the curved butt of the new pistol. Squaring his shoulders as the four continued their hooting and catcalls, Bass turned and grabbed the woman by an elbow. She let him guide her through the rest of the Indians and trappers crowding the glen.

And she did not protest as he led her back along that east bank of the Popo Agie until they reached the bower he had constructed over his sleeping robes. He prayed she understood what was expected of her when he came to a halt and let go of her arm. For a moment she watched him as he freed the knot in the wide, colorful sash, then laid the pistol on it near his blankets, just within reach.

The minute he sank to the ground and began to untie his moccasins, she flung her own blanket aside, then seized hold of the fringed bottom of her hide dress with both hands—pulling it up over her thighs, her bare hips, the flat of her belly as he stared transfixed at that dark wedge of hair there at the crown of her legs … on up she dragged the dress, pulling it inside out over her shoulders as her small breasts bounced free and he swallowed hard, suddenly so dry-mouthed he could barely swallow—watching every shimmy of her flesh as the woman slipped the dress down one arm, then another, and finally tugged it off over her head.

Sweeping both hands down the length of her long, loose black hair before she tossed it over her shoulder, the woman knelt onto the rumple of blankets he had prepared, folding her own neatly at the side of the bed, then laid her skin dress upon it. At last she sank onto her back, and gazed over at the white man staring mule-eyed and slack-jawed at her provocative, bare-skinned beauty.

Scratch sensed the urgency suddenly seize hold of him, realizing any self-control was no longer possible. More quickly than she had, he wrenched up the bottom of his leather shirt and ripped it from his arms, yanking it over his head, flinging it into the brush. Where the shirt landed, it mattered not.

Reaching beneath the front flap of his breechclout, Titus’s fingers flew at the knot tied in the wide rawhide whang that secured the wide strip of wool around his waist. That whang came whipping off in one hand at the same time the other hand ripped the breechclout from between his legs. He heaved both of them into the surrounding brush.

Still wearing his leggings, Scratch knelt at her knees. She spread her legs and held her arms up to him, grasping one of his wrists and pulling him toward her gently as she reached out with a hand, fingers searching for his manhood.

He nearly choked on readiness when she wrapped her hand around him, guiding him down, down, then forward, ever so gently as the woman sought to place him against her just so.

Lying here now with the woman as his heart continued to slow, Titus remembered how she had half closed her eyes while he had driven himself into her. Not sure if that had been pleasure for her, or merely pain with his fury to plant himself fully, completely within her moist warmth.

Barely opening his eyes from time to time as they lay together, Scratch became aware that time was passing only because of the journey taken by that half-moon limned behind the silver-framed cotton puffs in its climb from there to there across the cloudy sky. He wasn’t really aware he had been sleeping until he felt her rustle beside him, bringing him fully awake.

For a moment she peered over a shoulder at him, her narrow, naked back only inches from his face; then she reached out to drag her dress into her lap. As she began to pull the hide garment right side out, Bass propped himself up on an elbow and studied what he could see of her, finding himself stirred once more. Just as the woman was about to stab her arms into the sleeves of the dress, he seized her, twisting her down onto the blankets.

In her first words to him, these spoken in a low, husky voice, she began to give him hell, shaking her head emphatically as he flung the blanket off himself and rolled over to position himself between her legs. With one arm shoving upward against his chest, the woman clamped her other hand over herself so he could not enter.

“Now what you doing that for?” he groaned, rocking back on his knees in distress, his hardened flesh wagging forlornly.

Pushing herself backward, the woman slid far enough away from him that she could sit up and reach for the blanket, which she yanked into her lap.

“You was all for me crawling on you afore,” he groaned, dejection thick in his voice. “Why not now when I can make it last a little longer for us both?”

After a pause she shook her head, then motioned that she intended to head over to her village across the creek.

He tried to inch forward, eager to grab one or the other of those small breasts. “Lemme crawl on you one more time … then you get on back to your camp.”

Curling her legs up defensively, she put out an arm to hold him at bay. Then she made the sign for no trade.

“No … no trade?”

For a moment he was confused; then it struck him. “What I give your father was for just the first time, that it?”

She continued to stare at him. At least she wasn’t moving to get away.

Good enough for the first time—all right, he thought. If he was going to convince her to spread her legs for him a second time, Bass figured he was going to have to come up with something to give her that she would not have to share with her older sisters. Something for her and her alone.

Turning to stare at the free trappers’ camp some sixty yards away in an attempt to divine what he could offer her, Bass heard her moving of a sudden. When he whirled back, he found her dragging her dress over her head and arms.

“No, stay,” he begged in desperation, his hardened flesh still insistent, his heart in despair of finding something to offer her.

But then he lunged to the side, flinging back the flap on his shooting pouch to dig around inside until his fingers found one of the awls he had traded for that afternoon. Scratch scooted back on his knees to present it to her in his flat palm.

After a moment of consideration she took it from his hand, tapped a finger pad against its sharp tip, and considered his offer a moment longer … before she laid it back in his hand and went back to pulling the dress down over her breasts.

Jehoshaphat! What did he have that would make her eyes shine enough to lay back down for him!

Glory!

He dived back at his shooting pouch, stuffed a hand into the pocket at the back, and swept out a long length of the wool ribbon generally used to bind an edge on blankets. This he held out in his hand for her to inspect.

By that time she wasn’t watching him—rising to her knees so she could tug the dress down over her hips when she suddenly spotted the selvage ribbon and froze. Despairing that it was not enough, he moved that open hand closer to her, bringing it up beneath her chin so she could see just what it was that he offered her. The woman lifted the narrow strip of wool from his palm, inspecting it in the moonlight. Then shook her head and dropped it back across his hand.

“Please, don’t … don’t go,” he implored with that urgency of the flesh.

Then, with her two hands, she pantomimed poking the index finger of one hand into an invisible something she held in the other. For a moment he imagined she was making the sign for copulation…. Then he understood.

“The awl!” he whispered. “You want the awl too!”

He retrieved it from his pouch and laid it in one hand, grabbing the ribbon in the other, and presented them both to her.

For a painful moment the woman stared down at the awl and ribbon. Just stared.

And finally she removed the two objects from his palms, placing them to the side atop her blanket, then rose on her knees to grasp the bottom of her dress once more, shimmying out beneath it as he suddenly went desert-tongued at the sight of her quivering breasts freed again for his touch … sensing his own renewed hardness, his own feral heat about to overwhelm him.

As savage as he attacked her that first time, now he discovered he was able to savor this delicious anticipation of delay rather than feeling himself hopelessly swept up and helplessly hurtled forth by a mysterious force he could in no way control.

Again she reached out to wrap her fingers around his swollen readiness, easing him forward to rub against that moistening cleft in her flesh for a time while she gently gyrated her hips, gradually driving him mad with desire. With one volcanic lunge he was finally inside her, feeling his groin locked against hers as the woman clamped both of her hands on his buttocks, arching her back as she began to gyrate more violently beneath him. He was certain he would explode if she continued flinging herself up at him—

Instead, Bass locked his hands on her hips and rocked back, lifting her completely off the blanket as he sank backward until the woman straddled him. For a sudden, frightening moment she did not move, gazing down at him in shock. But when he ground his hips up against her, raising her off the blankets, he got the notion across to her. The Shoshone woman apparently liked the sensation of their position so much that she herself began to buck and dance there atop his upright flesh, clamped tightly about him as she moved forward and back, side to side, and even tried slowly to grind herself round and round in small, and very insistent, circles.

Of a sudden she was recklessly bouncing on top of his hardness, rocking up so far on her knees that she stroked the entire length of him, so far, in fact, that he feared she would pull him out … yet each time she slammed herself back down onto his hips. Up and down she pumped him, her eyes compressing into half slits, her breathing become ragged as he felt himself rising toward a furied crescendo.

Then she was whimpering, and for a moment he became afraid he had hurt the young woman with the vigor of their coupling. He stopped and seized hold of her shoulders, worried—when she opened her eyes and stared down at him. Shaking her head, she smiled as she hadn’t ever smiled at him before … and immediately went right back to bouncing atop his rigid manhood.

This time they rose together, climbing toward a fiery release. The initial whimper that had begun low in her throat was now a keening, breathless, raspy cry. And that grunt of his beast on the verge of achieving its primal satisfaction became like shrill hammer strikes on an anvil.

Slamming herself down onto his penis, the woman instantly began to shudder and quake, little high-pitched wails squeaking past her lips…. Then he was thrusting himself against her every bit as forcefully, clawing at her breasts, seizing her upper arms and pulling her close as he roared into her like a ferocious torrent dammed for far too long.

She collapsed against him, sinking weak and drained, at just the instant he felt that last explosion rocking him to his core.

Bass cradled the woman atop him until their flesh cooled and the air chilled with the coming of morning there beside the Popo Agie. He pulled her blanket over them both and let her sleep atop him. Surrendering to complete and utter exhaustion, Scratch sighed and closed his eyes, feeling the weariness washing over him, sensing sleep flooding every part of his body.

A woman like this was clearly a poison for a man: exactly the sort of creature who confounded, confused, and ailed a simple man with simple needs, just those very needs that made him crave a woman like her in the worst way … yet at the very same time, she was just the sort of cure for that very poison she inflicted—a soothing balm for all that ailed him. A poultice drawing out all the months of pent-up hunger and despair with such satisfaction that Scratch knew he would never again find such complete and utter relief.

Bass went to sleep as the sky far to the east began to gray, realizing that if he ever again found a woman who could bring him the sort of satisfaction he had just experienced, he wouldn’t hesitate a moment to trade his pistol for her.

Almost two weeks later, William Sublette and Robert Campbell parted company on the Popo Agie. The Irishman was intent on returning to his native soil—much disturbed at a number of letters that had reached him in the mail his good friend had packed overland to rendezvous. Instead of accompanying the mule train bound for the States himself that July, Sublette installed Campbell as booshway over those he assigned to see those forty-five paltry packs of beaver all the way to St. Louis.

By any measure, a miserable take for a whole year in the mountains.

Of the three company owners, it appeared only Sublette had secured any profit for their joint efforts—and all of that through the dogged efforts of Campbell’s Powder River brigade. It was hoped that David Jackson was still somewhere north in that Flathead country where the Blackfeet were wont to go, but after two years no one expected ever again to lay eyes on Jedediah Smith and his outfit … not this side of the great by-and-by.

At the same time Campbell was to backtrack east toward the Sweetwater and the Platte, Sublette dispatched his younger brother, Milton, along with German-born Henry Fraeb and Frenchman Jean Baptiste Gervais, north—leading a forty-man brigade to hunt the Bighorn basin in three smaller outfits that fall. Now William could himself lead the rest of his hardened veterans and a crew of green recruits to search for some sign of what had become of his long-overdue partner—reported to be somewhere in the country of the upper Snake River.

The Blackfeet hadn’t rubbed out the industrious Jackson!

After more than a week of revelry beside the Popo Agie, word had come that the ever-enterprising brigade leader would be waiting on the Snake instead of coming to the prearranged valley of the Prairie Chicken—news of that change in plans arriving with Tom Fitzpatrick, who weeks before, as Jackson’s brigade had begun to work its way south from Flathead country, was dispatched as a lone express rider sent to reach Sublette east of the Wind River Mountains.

“Tell Billy I’ll meet him on the Snake below the Pilot Knobs.”

With that electrifying report Sublette had promptly hurried to wrap up the last of his trading with what free men wandered in to rendezvous so he could turn west himself. This was great news! Not only was Davy Jackson still alive and kicking—but their company would now have more to show for their efforts than those puny forty-five packs of beaver.

Why—with what furs Jackson was likely to have with him, the two partners might even have enough left over after paying off General William H. Ashley that they could show a profit for the year! Things were looking up.

Jack Hatcher and his outfit of a half-dozen free trappers had decided they would mosey along behind the booshway’s brigade, with the idea in mind that they could divide off from the company men after reaching the Snake, laying plans to trap into the autumn season there on the eastern fringe of Hudson’s Bay territory.

“That Snake sure is purty country,” Mad Jack had boasted the morning Sublette and more than fifty company men were to start into the high country for the headwaters of the Wind River. “Eegod—them three bee-you-tee-full breasties just pointing up there agin’ the sky like tits on a squaw ye’re thumping! My, but that’s country the likes I ain’t seen none of anywhere else!”

As the twenty-eight-year-old Milton struck out down the Popo Agie, which would take his outfit north for the Bighorn and Yellowstone country, Campbell whipped the balky mules south by east for the States* that same morning.

An hour later Bill Sublette himself turned his nose north by west, ascending the Wind River with some free trappers in tow until he crossed over the mountains and dropped down the Buffalo Fork to strike the Snake River in the northern part of what was already widely known as Davy Jackson’s Hole. On the shores of Jackson’s Lake, the booshway allowed his outfit to recruit and recuperate for a few days before he would set off again in his search.

Where was Davy? He sent word that he would meet Sublette on the Snake below the Pilot Knobs!

Trouble was, by the time he reached Jackson’s Hole, the booshway realized there were two sides to that narrow mountain range. And to top off the dilemma—the Snake River tumbled through a valley on both sides of the Tetons.

So when William Sublette struck that river and failed to find any sign of Jackson as he doggedly continued on down the Snake, the booshway came to the conclusion that his only hope lay in crossing the mountains to continue his search on the western slope.

There in what the mountain trappers were just beginning to call Pierre’s Hole … the dead were about to be resurrected.

“Who is that up yonder?”

Those company men at the head of the caravan with Sublette ignited a buzz that shot back the length of their pack train eventually to reach the half-dozen free trappers led by Jack Hatcher.

Bass squinted into the morning light, anxious with alarm—suddenly spying the distant horsemen. “Didn’t bump into a Injun war party, did we?”

A half a mile ahead along the foot of those peaks still snowcapped here late in summer, a force of more than half a hundred was spotted riding their way out of the north, several leaders immediately spurring away from the rest as they put their horses into an easy lope. At two hundred yards Sublette’s men could see that the oncoming riders had hairy faces.

At a hundred yards out, those buckskinned strangers raised their rifles and fired a joyous salute into the air.

Now the company men were roaring in delight up and down the caravan—recognizing old friends of the trail.

“Tom Fitzpatrick says it looks to be Davy Jackson hisself!” came word from one of the excited brigade men as the caravan was whipped into a lope.

Immediately a curious Hatcher and the rest gave heels to their mounts, spurring toward the action.

Caleb Wood roared, “Fitz oughtta know if it’s them—he wintered with Jackson’s men!”

“Davy Jackson’s brigade, by God!” Elbridge cheered as they hammered toward the reunion.

Then, just about the time Sublette, Bridger, and Fitzpatrick all fired their rifles and reined to a halt to greet the overdue Jackson … they had themselves another shock that rattled each man jack of them all right down to the soles of his moccasins.

There beside Davy rode none other than Jedediah Strong Smith his own self! Come back from the land of the dead!

Why, there was more back pounding and hooting, hurrahing, and bear hugging that late morning in the shadow of the Tetons to last any man a lifetime!

Then and there the three reunited partners decided they’d camp and hold themselves a second rendezvous. Even if Billy Sublette didn’t have but a third of his supplies left, there would never be a better reason to hold a celebration in the mountains than when one of your own was come back from the dead!

“Hatcher? Is that you, Jack Hatcher?”

Bass got to his feet as the impressive stranger came to a halt on his horse some five yards away from where the seven were occupied unlashing packs and preparing to make camp themselves.

Hatcher stood, shading his eyes to stare up at the man who had the high sun at his back, his snowy mane radiant in the summer light as it spilled from beneath the wide, rolled-up brim of a crumpled felt hat.

Caleb Wood was the first to utter a sound as he came up on the far side of the stranger. “McAfferty?”

Then Hatcher bellowed, “Th-that really you, Asa?”

As the stranger slid from his saddle, Elbridge turned quickly to Titus and declared, “That’s the preacher fella we tol’t you of—one what kill’t that Ree medicine man.”

Scratch watched alone while the others knotted around McAfferty like acorns around an oak, shaking hands and pounding one another on the shoulder, all laughing and talking and jabbing at the same time in their joyful surprise.

“Didn’t ever figger to see you again!” Rufus confessed.

McAfferty asked, “What? Me rubbed out, Mr. Graham?”

“Nawww!” Jack roared. “I figgered ye give up on the mountains and run back east with yer tail tucked up atween yer legs!”

“Oooch! Mr. Hatcher, you sting me to the quick!” McAfferty shrieked, then started to laugh with an easy, contagious mirth that got the rest of them laughing with him.

Scratch had to admit that this McAfferty did have him an elegant, booming voice the likes of which would have enthralled and captivated far-flung frontier congregations and revival-camp meetings, without a doubt.

“Where in these hills ye been hiding yerself lately?” Jack inquired.

“Been up to Flathead country. Where I run onto Jackson’s men when they was riding south to find Sublette.”

Solomon slapped McAfferty on the back. “From the looks of it you still got all your purty white hair, Asa! And here I thort Flathead land was up there where them Blackfeets get a chance to lift that hair from you!”

Asa nodded, his dark eyes merry in that face starkly tanned against the radiant white beard. Then those eyes landed momentarily on the stranger who stood back from the others, observing the reunion of old friends.

“Up there near troubled land was I, that be God’s truth! ’And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.’” McAfferty said, quoting Biblical scripture. Then he looked at Hatcher, saying, “Who this be, Jack?”

They all turned and found Bass standing back, waiting alone.

Hatcher vigorously wagged his arm. “C’mon over here, Scratch. Want ye meet this nigger what use to ride with this bunch.”

“Scratch, he called you?” McAfferty asked as he held out his strong hand.

“Titus Bass,” he explained. “Scratch just the name what got hung on me not long after I come to the mountains.”

Asa winked at Caleb. “I’ll bet there’s a story there to tell, eh, Mr. Bass?”

Titus grinned. “Nothing more’n a bad case of the gray backs I had to get rid of.”

“Wait—” McAfferty said suddenly, his eyes flicking this way and that, the merry smile disappearing. “Where’s … ah, hell—they ain’t gone under, have they? Not Matthew and Johnny Rowland?”

Isaac spoke up, “Them two still kicking!”

Asa cranked his head around the others. “Where have they gone? Off on some errand?”

“Ain’t with us no more,” Hatcher explained.

McAfferty’s eyes narrowed. “Not rubbed out?”

“No,” Caleb remarked. “Both of ’em stayed down to Taos.”

McAfferty asked, “Women?”

“Yeah, women,” Rufus answered with that knowing nod to his head.

His own eyes half-closed, McAfferty pronounced, “This gentler sex: what a curse they be to a man … and what a balm those sweet creatures are to all that ails us! ’For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil.’”

“Asa—we had us some Snake women!” Rufus began. “Back at ronnyvoo in Snake country.”

“There’ll be more fornication here next day or so,” McAfferty declared.

Hatcher grinned. “Injuns coming?”

Asa nodded. “Flatheads was follering Jackson south. Likely make it a day or so behind us.”

“How many’s the lodge?” Solomon inquired.

“Enough to keep this bunch of hydrophobic wolves busy for some time!” McAfferty roared. “Least sixty … seventy lodges.”

“Whoooeee! Flathead girls!” Isaac sang.

McAfferty continued, “Jackson got word there was a big village of Snakes coming here to the valley too.”

“Gonna be some shinin’ times now!” Caleb cried.

“‘Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness,’” McAfferty snarled.

“Weren’t but a few gals on the Popo Agie,” Hatcher explained.

“That where Sublette opened up his likker kegs?” Asa inquired.

“Ain’t all that good on your tongue,” Rufus said. “But it can sure ’nough kick you in the head!”

“Sublette have any likker left him?”

“Near as I know,” Hatcher said, “he’s got him least half of what he brung out from St. Louie.”

McAfferty wiped some fingers across his lips. “I got me a hankering to end this longtime dry, boys. Sublette’s up to trading, is he?”

“Damn right he is,” Caleb said. “You got plews?”

“I got plenty of plews, Mr. Wood. ‘The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: He bringest low, and lifteth up.’”

Hatcher turned to Bass and gestured a thumb at McAfferty. “’Sides allays spouting his Bible talk, Asa here allays was one of the best for bringing flat-tails to bait. Why, hell—I’ll bet he’s almost good as you, Scratch!”

Asa asked, “This here new man that good, is he?”

“Notch or two better’n you ever was, Asa,” Caleb bragged.

“That so?”

“McAfferty allays was the best at finding prime beaver country too,” Jack continued. “Shame when ye up and decided ye was leaving us to ride out on yer own hook, Asa.”

Slowly tearing his measuring eyes from Bass, McAfferty stated, “Man goes where a man is called to go. And if the Lord calls him to come alone … a man must listen to the commandment of the Lord his God.”

“Damn—but you still preachify as purty as you ever did!” Elbridge cried in glee.

Hatcher laid an arm over Bass’s shoulder and asked him, “Don’t that oily tongue of his’n just make ye wanna ask Preacher McAfferty to bring hisself on out to yer place for dinner on church meeting day?”

“Dear Lord, ’Preserve me from those who would trouble met!’” Asa roared.

“So you camping with Jackson’s bunch?” Caleb asked.

“I go only where the breath of God leads,” McAfferty answered. “Usual’, that keeps me off on my lonesome.”

“Throw in with us for a few days,” Isaac suggested.

For a moment Asa looked them over; then his eyes landed on Bass. “Mr. Hatcher—you say this nigger’s better trapper than me?”

“That’s gospel in my book, McAfferty.”

The others muttered their agreement, and Caleb echoed, “The only man I ever knowed better’n you, white hair.”

“Awright then,” McAfferty confirmed. “I’ll camp with you boys for a few days … and see just what I can learn that makes this here Titus Bass the finest trapper any of you devil’s whelps ever see’d.”

In two more days it came to pass that the Flathead camp and a large village of Shoshone reached the pastoral valley where some 175 company men and free trappers had thrown up tents, lean-tos, and blanket shelters at the western foot of the Tetons. The Indians arrived right about the time that the renewed celebration was working itself into a genuine lather.

For better than a day now Sublette had had his kegs opened for trade beneath his canopies. Jackson’s Flathead brigade were as eager as any men could be to have themselves a real blow, and the company owners themselves rejoiced in this unexpected reunion.

Like so many others, both skin and free trappers, Titus Bass joined those who gathered in the shady grove where Jedediah Smith captivated his audience with tales of crossing the Mojave desert, the terrible blow of losing ten men to the treachery of those Mojave Indians, and dealing with the capricious Spanish who ruled that land from their Californio settlements and ranchos. Hour after hour he described his confrontations with the haughty and suspicious Monterey officials who kept his men under custody until ultimately releasing them upon Smith’s promise never to return to California. From there he described how they had hurried north, selling some of his furs to an American captain who anchored his ship in the Bay of San Francisco before Smith’s brigade continued its search for the mythical but famed Buenaventura River that was rumored to carry a man from the west slope of the mountains all the way to the great Pacific Ocean.

But along the southern coast of Oregon country,* Jedediah’s company clerk and men let down their guard and allowed a band of seemingly peaceful and childishly curious Kelawatset Indians into their camp one morning—only to be savagely set upon and brutally butchered as the warriors pulled knives, axes, and clubs from beneath their blankets. A lone man, Arthur Black, managed to escape into the forest with his wounds. In addition, due to the fact that they had been out of camp on some duty or another at the time, Smith and two others survived the attack. At first Black believed himself to be the only one alive as he stumbled north to Fort Vancouver. Smith as well believed his little party to be the sole survivors, pushing north themselves with only what they had on their backs, knowing too John McLaughlin’s Hudson’s Bay post lay on the Columbia River.

Horses, mules, weapons, traps, blankets, buffalo robes—everything was gone in that senseless massacre.

By early August the four reunited within the bosom of McLaughlin’s generous bounty. Through the autumn and into the winter, Smith explained to his awestruck listeners now, the gracious post factor sheltered the Americans, treated them with every courtesy, and even dispatched a sizable brigade to punish the Kelawatsets. What his employees were not able to recover from the severely chastised tribe, McLaughlin promised to do everything he could to repay.

After one of the survivors elected to stay on at Vancouver, and another journeyed east with an English brigade, Smith and Black finally set off for the Rocky Mountains once more in early March, beginning their epic and solitary journey of more than a thousand miles that took them across the entire extent of the great northwest. Passing Fort Colville at Kettle Falls and on past Flathead Post on the Clark’s Fork, the pair finally stumbled onto their old friends in the Kootenai country. Familiar faces! At last—back in the arms of their own countrymen!

So here in Pierre’s Hole, Smith stood before that gaggle of Americans and reached inside his well-soiled, smoke-smudged shirt to pull forth a leather envelope, from which he took a folded parchment. As one of the few in that assembly who could read, Jedediah clipped off the words scrawled by the hand of no less than Chief Factor John McLaughlin—a draft on the great and powerful Hudson’s Bay Company itself!

“I didn’t have an idea one you had such a paper on you!” Davy Jackson exclaimed as he and Sublette pounded Smith on the back. He turned to Sublette and explained, “When ’Diah come upon me, we was camped by the shore of the Flatheads’ lake, all he and Black was carrying on their skinny, crow-bait horses was a few otter skins they brung all the way from the western ocean! Them, and the hide from a moose he shot last winter up near the Englishes’ fort. Now, don’t you know ’Diah here looked like one poor digger Injun, that’s for sure!”

Because of McLaughlin’s kindnesses and his even-handedness in making those reparations to the destitute Americans, Smith now told the hushed gathering that, although the Snake River country was by treaty jointly held by the U.S. and Britain, he had taken it upon himself to promise on behalf of his company that no American trapping brigade would trouble any waters on the west side of the Rockies.

“But—damn! This here’s prime beaver country!” Jackson shrieked in protest.

“Trap over on the other side,” Smith suggested in that polite, preacher’s-son tone of his. “In Jackson’s hole!”

Round and round that afternoon the partners argued the question, but in the end the resurrected Smith’s Christian charities prevailed upon the other two.

“Maybeso it’s a hard country, after all,” Sublette relented. “We’re liable to lose good men, horses, and traps up there to the goddamned Blackfeet anyway.”

“There isn’t anything to be gained south and west of the Great Salt Lake either,” Smith informed the crowd. “No beaver of any worth down there.”

So Sublette prodded, “What you say of California, Jed?”

“Nary any sign there, and the Spanish soldiers are near as bad as Blackfeet.”

And in the last few seasons the valleys of the southern Rockies were being trapped by various brigades based out of Taos and Santa Fe: the Uinta and Wasatch front were trapped out by the likes of Etienne Provost and Ewing Young.

Compelled to decide just where they should concentrate their efforts now, the partners determined they would claim that country east of the mountains, on the southern fringe of Blackfoot country, in the land of the Madison and Gallatin, even crossing over to the Yellowstone to trap the rivers west of where Milt Sublette’s brigade was at work.

Jedediah Smith’s crossings to the Pacific coast had cost the company thousands of dollars in animals and equipment. Accounting for both desertions and massacre, only two of the original expedition who had bid farewell to friends as they departed Sweet Lake back in 1826 were returned to this land of the shining mountains.

While some might eventually say that these expeditions were nothing less than catastrophes, at that moment in the late summer of 1829, there beneath the shadow of the Tetons in Pierre’s Hole—let no Englishman doubt that the Americans had come, once again stretching their arms from sea to shining sea.

Call it “manifest destiny,” call it what you will—the Americans had come to tramp and map, lay their traps and eventually conquer all of what lay between the Atlantic and the far Pacific.

By that summer of 1829 it was plain the Americans had come to stay.

* In St. Louis those furs he had traded $9,500.00 in supplies for would garner the company a return of $22,476.00. Campbell would not return to America and his beloved mountain west until the famous Rendezvous of 1832 in Pierre’s Hole.

* At their camp on the Umpqua River in the present-day Oregon, near the site of old Fort McKay—July 14, 1828.