Ride the Moon Down

21

They ended up pinning the Bannock down on that island for another two days and nights. Through those hours of darkness when they could not see their enemies, the trappers smoked their pipes and talked about their chances of wiping out that band of lying thieves.

“Why they ain’t getting hungry?” George Ebbert growled with dismay. “We had ’em trapped in there for better’n three days!”

“They’re killing their ponies,” Bass explained matter-of-factly.

Shad Sweete agreed. “They got enough horses in there to last ’em a long, long time.”

“Water ain’t no problem neither,” Joe Meek observed resentfully. “Bastards can hole up in there just as long as we can hold out up here.”

“I always knowed the Bannawks was about the stealingest red niggers,” Scratch observed, “but I never knowed ’em to be near so stupid that they’d sashay right on into a white man’s camp just as bold as you could be and try to steal some horses!”

“Only way to write a treaty with their kind is in blood,” Jim Bridger grumbled.

“That’s right,” Osborne Russell declared, patting his half-stock percussion rifle. “Best way to write a treaty with them Bannock is with this here rifle. It’s the only pen what will write a treaty the bastards will keep.”

Sometime after the moon had set that third night and men were snoring around him, Bass sat in the brush remembering a summer night long ago when he had remained behind with Josiah and a few others who were maintaining their vigil around those Blackfoot they had surrounded in Pierre’s Hole. But unlike that band of thieves and murderers, these Bannock hadn’t all slipped away the first night.

“Scratch!” came the sharp whisper from that chunk of shadow crawling his way out of the gloom.

“Who’s that?”

Sweete’s big grin took form in the starshine. “Something I wanted to tell you ever since this little fight got rolling—but Joe’s always been close by.”

“He sleeping?”

Sweete nodded and settled in beside Titus with a sigh as one of the trappers fired a shot at the island. “Think it’s the first time he’s shut his eyes in the last three nights.”

“That man’s taking this real hard,” Scratch commented in a whisper. “Can’t blame him none.”

“That’s why I figgered I wouldn’t tell you the story ’bout Joe and his Mountain Lamb till he wasn’t around,” Shad declared.

“She was the woman these Bannock killed?”

“Yep. And late last winter he killed a Crow nigger on count of her too.”

“Crow?”

“Thought you might’n heard tell of it—what with you being up there, married to a Crow gal and all.”

Titus shrugged. “Didn’t hear a peep of it. There’s two bands of them Crow. Since I didn’t hear tell of the trouble, I figger it was Long Hair’s bunch.”

“Yep—one of Long Hair’s band. Happened up the Bighorn a ways. Some time after you turned off from us, we run onto their village. They had that trader from Fort Van Buren with ’em—”

“Tullock?”

“That’s him. He’d come out from the Tongue and hooked up with ’em late that winter. Was doing some trading,” Sweete explained. “But that big war party what come along with Tullock to visit us weren’t good Crow.”

“Trouble?”

“Sonsabitches brung the devil right into our camp. While Tullock had his blankets out and most of them young bucks was trading with him or with Bridger, one of ’em takes a shine to Mountain Lamb of a sudden.”

“That’s bad,” Scratch clucked softly. “Don’t ever wanna get wrong-ways with Joe Meek.”

“That crazy buck walked over to Mountain Lamb’s shelter, strutting his best to get her attention,” Sweete declared. “When she wouldn’t look up from the moccasins she was sewing up for Joe, that Crow bastard took to walking back and forth in front of her—sure he’d get her to look at just how purty he was.”

“So Joe got jealous when she looked at that Crow buck?”

“No,” and Sweete wagged his head. “Mountain Lamb never did give that son of a bitch a look-see. Fact was, Joe was sitting right inside their shelter, watching it all—and getting a real tickle from it too, what with the way that bastard kept trying harder and harder to get Mountain Lamb’s eye.”

“So what caused the trouble?”

“When the gal kept on refusing to look up at that buck, it burned his powder so bad that he walked back on over to her and slapped her ’cross the face with his rawhide quirt.”

“Damn!” Bass moaned. “Sure as rain, that red nigger picked the wrong woman to play Injun with.”

“Yep—Joe pulled up his fifty-eight and shot the bastard where he stood right over Mountain Lamb holding that quirt in his hand,” Shad said. “I don’t figger he ever knowed what hit him at that range.”

“But I reckon all hell broke loose then.”

With a wag of his head Sweete said, “The wolf was let out to howl—right there in our camp. By the time Bridger and Tullock got the shooting stopped, we had one man dead, and there was two more Crow rubbed out. The trader finally got them red niggers out of our camp when Gabe passed out a bunch of presents to pay for them dead Injuns.”

“When it was a goddamned Crow buck what started it?”

“That were their country, Scratch,” Shad replied. “We was on the Bighorn, right in the heart of Crow country.”

“Ain’t never a call for bad manners,” Scratch said softly. “No matter they be a cocky Crow or not.”

“Time was a white feller could count on folks in that tribe,” Sweete said, regret heavy in his voice. “Past winter or two, I ain’t so sure no more.”

“Time was we all counted on the beaver staying seal fat and sleek,” Titus whispered with some of that same regret. “We counted on the price of plews staying high. But the years has changed things, Shad. The years gone and changed us too.”

For the most part they sat in silence the rest of that night, taking turns curling up to catch some sleep while the other kept watch. All along that riverbank some slept while the rest stared at the island, a few even firing an occasional shot at the brushy sandbar just to let the Bannock know the white man hadn’t cashed in his chips and pulled out.

Bass shivered slightly in the gray light of dawn-coming and rubbed both of his gritty eyes. How he wished for some coffee, some whiskey, something that would cut the awful taste in his mouth. He hacked up some of the night-gather clogging his throat and turned toward the island to spit into the willow. That’s when he spotted the movement.

“Shad!” he said sharply. “Shad!”

Others had seen it too as Sweete came awake, rolling onto his hands and knees, blinking his bleary eyes.

“Lookee there,” Bass instructed.

Up and down the riverbank in the dim light other trappers were peering closely at the sandbar, trying their best to make out what the shift in shadows and the rustle of willow meant. A mourning cry grew louder and louder. That wailing was like a gritty mouthful of cold sand lying in his belly—something he knew he was bound to bring up sooner or later.

A rustle came from the brush near his end of the island, and an old woman parted the bushes to step into the open as dawn’s light swelled around them that summer morning. The front of her dress smeared with blood, the ancient one clutched a long pipe in both frail hands. Raising it to the river bank above her where the white men huddled in the brush holding siege on her people, the old woman called out in a reedy voice.

“What she saying?” a man yelled.

“That’s Snake,” Scratch answered. “I catch some of it.”

“But she ain’t a Snake,” Ebbert grunted.

“I s’pose she Aggers some of us’ll know some Snake,” Bass said.

“All of you!” Meek hollered. “Keep quiet so us what knows Snake can figger out what that ol’ woman’s saying!”

“You heard him!” Bridger ordered. “Hush!”

Moments later Joe explained, “She’s telling us we’ve killed all their warriors. But the bullets keep killing.”

“We ain’t killed all their men!” Rube Herring snorted. “Some of ’em must’ve run off!”

Waiting a moment while she repeated the next part to be certain what she said, Meek continued. “Now she’s asking if we wanna kill the women too.”

“Maybe we oughtta kill ’em all,” Robert Newell suggested.

But his best friend, Joe Meek, grabbed Newell’s arm and snarled, “Don’t you see? That’d make us no better’n them nigger dogs to kill a woman the way they done!”

“Hold on, Joe!” Bass ordered. “Listen: the ol’ woman’s saying if we wanna smoke with women to make peace, she has a pipe and some tobaccy too.”

Meek stood, disappointment graying his face. “If’n there ain’t a man left in there—I s’pose I done all I come to do, boys. Time for this child to mosey on back to camp.”

Up and down that west bank close to a hundred trappers slowly emerged from the brush, starting for their horses they had tied here and there within the deserted Bannock camp they had plundered during the days of siege.

Scratch walked over and grabbed hold of Meek’s elbow. “I figger it’s time to think ’bout putting your woman to rest, Joe. You need any help—count on me.”

Not uttering another word, Meek laid a hand on Scratch’s shoulder for a moment, then turned away, climbed atop his horse, and rode off alone.

“Every man finds his own way to heal a broke heart,” Scratch declared several days later when he overheard a few men at the trader’s tent talking about the way Meek had chosen to mourn the loss of Umentucken, his Mountain Lamb. “Ain’t for me to say he shouldn’t climb right back in the saddle again. Ain’t for none of us to say he ain’t grieving in his own way.”

Just that morning, only one day after Tom Fitzpatrick brought in the caravan that had embarked for rendezvous from Westport, Joe had loaded up a horse with finery and ridden right over to the Nez Perce camp where he had taken a shine to a pretty young woman. Not long after her father had approved of the marriage, Meek was back in the company camp with his new wife, celebrating his good fortune that he wouldn’t remain lonely for long at all.

After weeks of horse racing, gambling at cards or a game of hand, not to mention endless hours of yarning while they waited beneath the shady trees for the long-overdue trader, it damn near brought tears to Bass’s eyes to see how small Fitzpatrick’s pack train was as it descended off the bluffs and made its way down to the junction of Horse Creek and the Green. No more than twenty small two-wheeled carts pulled by mules, tended by some forty-five men trudging along on both sides of the procession.

“Poor doin’s,” Titus muttered as Fitzpatrick escorted Sir William Drummond Stewart west for another rendezvous. “Poor damned digger doin’s.”

Maybe the trade would hold for another year or so. If only long enough that the fur business could get itself straightened out back east and folks found out that those new silk hats couldn’t hold a candle to prime beaver felt. Beaver was bound to rise. All the old hivernants were saying it. Sure as hell, beaver was bound to rise.

Just like the goddamned prices the company was charging for what little they sent west with Fitzpatrick.

“Two dollar a pint for sugar!” Scratch roared at the red-faced clerk. “How much your coffee?”

“Same—two dollars.”

“Damn,” he grumbled in disgust.

Blankets were going for twenty dollars while a common cotton shirt cost a man five. Tobacco was damned pricey at two dollars a pound, but the toll on whiskey hadn’t gone up over the last few summers: holding at four dollars the pint. He figured those parley-voo traders were pretty savvy about that: hold down the cost of liquor and most men simply wouldn’t mind all that much if the price of everything else climbed sky-high.

What kept Scratch from throwing up his hands at those mountain-high prices and refusing to trade for anything at all was the fact that the company offered five dollars a pound for prime pelts, four dollars for poorer plews. That meant his Musselshell beaver brought him top dollar at the trading tent that afternoon when he brought his family along to look over the beads and rings, ribbon and hawksbells.

While Waits-by-the-Water picked through the merchandise to find herself a new brass kettle, Scratch stood at the other end of the long counter with Magpie as the girl chose several hanks of new ribbon to wrap up her brown braids, along with a new handkerchief of black silk to tie around her head the way her father tied a faded blue bandanna around his.

Then she spotted the tray of shiny, multicolored beads.

“Popo! Look!”

With the way she gushed and stuck out her hands to touch the beads in each compartment, Bass knew he was already in trouble.

“Purty, ain’t they?” he asked.

She gazed up at him a moment, imitating the word, “Pur-r-r-ty.”

“That’s right. I s’pose you want some too.”

“Yes,” and she nodded emphatically. But when she dug her fingers in and pulled out a handful of the deep cobalt-blue beads, along with some of the oxblood variety with their narrow white centers, Magpie surprised him by saying in Crow, “For you, popo—these so pretty on your ears.”

“On my ears?” he repeated, confused a moment.

Reaching up to tug on the tail of his shirt, Magpie pulled him down far enough that she tapped the small hoops of brass wire he wore through both earlobes. “Beads hang there.”

He straightened, smiling. “Damn fine idee, little’un. Put some purties on my hangy-downs.”

Turning back to the tray, Scratch scooped up a big handful of the Russian blues and the white-hearts, laying them atop several yards of calico he was buying for Waits-by-the-Water. Next he picked out several dozen brass tacks for decoration and some tiny brass nails to make repairs to saddles, packs, and other equipment. Then he took Magpie over to stand before the tray containing the tiny hawksbells and large coils of brass wire.

Picking up one of the bells, he shook it in front of her. “Want some?”

Grinning hugely, Magpie snatched the bell from him, holding it forth to shake it herself. “Two?”

“I said you could have some. How many?”

For a long moment she stared down at her tiny hands, then handed him the bell and held both hands before her, all the chubby fingers extended.

“Ten?”

“Ten,” she repeated that English word with certainty. “If that don’t beat all,” Shad Sweete chirped as he came up and stopped at Bass’s elbow. “This li’l gal is already learning what a woman does best.”

“And what’s that, Shadrach?”

The tall man spit a stream of brown juice into the dirt behind them and dragged a dirty sleeve across the dribble on his lower lip. “Them womens learn early to hold a man right in their hands, don’t they, Scratch?”

“Ain’t no better reason for me to spend my money,” he replied with a wink. “Don’t matter if it be a little woman like Magpie here, or her mama.”

Rubbing his hand across the top of Magpie’s head as she grinned up at him, Sweete said, “Maybe one day I’ll take me a squaw, have me young’uns too.”

“Man like you don’t deserve to be alone, Shad.”

With a shrug the big trapper explained, “I run off to the brush with a few gals ever’ ronnyvoo. Sometimes I take a shine to a squaw when we hunker down for winter camp too. But I ain’t ever found one I wanna pack along with me.”

“One of these days,” Bass declared, “you’ll be ready to pack a squaw with you, raise some pups too.”

“Maybe so.” Sweete brushed his hand down Magpie’s cheek, then looked into Scratch’s eyes. “Where you figger to mosey come time to light out for the fall hunt?”

“Been thinking I’d wander on down to the South Platte again.”

“Gonna see if you can run onto more trouble with them ’Rapaho, eh?”

“That weren’t no big ruckus, Shad,” he protested. “’Sides, I always do my best to stay outta their way.”

For a moment Sweete’s eyes flicked to the back of Bass’s head. “I s’pose any man what’s lost his hair to them red niggers is gonna be extra careful he don’t lose the rest of his hair to ’em.”

“Come on over to our camp for supper?” Scratch offered. “That is, less’n you got plans to drag some gal back into the bushes with you this evening.”

“No plans particular’ now,” he answered. “Was gonna be a trial on one of the fellas.”

“Trial?”

“Yep—one of Drips’s men got hisself drunk last night and kill’t a Frenchman. But there ain’t gonna be no trial now.”

“Drips figgered to let the nigger go free?”

Wagging his head, Sweete explained, “The murderer run off. I s’pose he figgered he stood a better chance out there on his lonesome than he did standing for a murder charge with the rest of us as his jury.”

“Some men might figger him for a coward,” Bass reflected. “But I figger he’s run off to find his own way to die.”

“Maybeso that’s what he’s done. Sure saved us the trouble of stretching some rope off a tall tree.”

“Whyn’t you come look up our camp later,” Bass suggested. “We’ll have some meat on the spit ’long about sundown.”

“I’ll bring a little whiskey along,” Sweete offered with a grin.

“Ain’t no better way for friends to wash down some fat cow.”

Sweete scooped Magpie off the ground, hugged her, then whirled once around with the child before he set her back on her feet. He winked at Bass. “This here’s the purtiest gal I got my eye on, Scratch.”

“Hell with you, Shadrach,” he growled. “Ain’t no way I’m gonna marry off my daughter to someone the likes of you.”

“Here I thought you liked me,” he whined with mock wounding. “Thought I was your friend!”

“You are, you mangy, flea-bit, wuthless bag of polecat droppings,” Bass roared with a grin. “But that don’t mean I’d ever want you for a son-in-law!”

“So you’re gonna raise up your daughter to have a proper husband, are you?”

Bass pulled Magpie against his leg as she jingled a pair of tiny bells, oblivious to the English conversation above her. “Only thing I’m sure of is I want her to grow up safe and happy, just as happy as her mama’s made me.”

Shad knelt before the girl and gently pinched her cheek. “Your camp up Horse Crik a ways?”

“No more’n a mile from here.”

Standing, Sweete brushed off the knee of his legging and said, “See you come sundown.”

“You’re not one of Monsieur Fontenelle’s company men, are you?” asked the young man as he stood, shoving the long pad of paper beneath his arm. He poked a narrow wand of artist’s charcoal behind his ear and held out his hand.

“Name’s Bass,” Scratch announced, craning his neck around and bending to take a closer look at the pad where the man had been sketching when he finally realized Titus had crept up behind him, mesmerized at how that hand clutching a simple stick of charcoal was creating such magic. “And no, I ain’t one of Fontenelle’s outfit.”

“I’m Alfred Miller.”

He gestured to the sketchpad. “Lemme take a close look there, Alfred.”

“This?” and Miller took the pad from beneath his arm and held it before him.

It was nothing short of purely amazing. For a moment Titus stared at the thousands of tiny charcoal scratches on that long sheet of paper, at how they all came together in patterns that gave such reality to the sketch. Then his eyes lifted from the page to that scene occurring right over Miller’s shoulder. Back to the paper once more, then again to the scene out on the prairie where Indian and white riders were conducting horse races.

“I ain’t never seen anything like this,” Scratch whispered with abject admiration. “That there … with only your hand and that piece of charcoal … it’s just like what I’m seeing right out there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bass,” Miller replied as he turned back to gaze at the scene he had been sketching. “I’ll take that as a real compliment.”

Scratch inched up to the young man’s elbow again. He tapped the paper lightly with a lone finger, saying, “Them lodges there, you drawed ’em just like they are over there. And those fellas down there running footraces too. All them Injuns over there—all of it damn near like it is right here a’fore my own eyes.”

“So you’ve never seen a painting before?”

“Not that I can rightly say,” he admitted as Miller resumed his scratching at the paper with his charcoal. “And what I have seen, it only be sticks and such to stand for folks.”

His head still bent in concentration at his work, Miller asked, “If you don’t work for the fur company, then you must be what they call a free man?”

“That’s right,” he answered. “How you come to be out here to the Rocky Mountains, making your pictures on paper? You come out with the trader’s caravan to see ronnyvoo, then gonna turn around for the settlements?”

Miller shook his head. “I’ve been engaged by a Scottish nobleman who wants me to—”

“Stewart?”

The artist looked up at Bass in amazement. “You know of Sir William Drummond Stewart?”

“He knows me too,” he boasted. “We et together a time or two.”

With a smile Miller nodded, then went back to his sketch. “Perhaps I should draw you sometime.”

“Me? Naw. Naw—what you do is far too fancy for you to go and draw me,” he replied, then touched the edges of some sketchpad pages that had been stuffed in behind the one Miller was drawing on at that moment. “What’s these? Other’ns you already done?”

“Yes,” the artist replied, dragging out some of the crude sketches.

The first showed a mounted trapper, behind him a squaw on her pony.

“Who’s that?” Bass asked. “Looks like someone I know.”

“I think his name’s Walker. I sketched him yesterday.”

“Joe Walker, good man,” he commented.

As the next sheet came up, Titus stared at a drawing of two young Indian women playing in the shade of a tree, neither wearing anything more than a skirt, both bare-breasted as one of the two swung from a tree limb by her arms, carefree as could be.

“This the first you ever see’d any Injun gals?” Bass inquired.

Miller smiled, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment a little as he answered, “First time ever beyond the Mississippi. Come up from New Orleans with Sir William.”

Miller shuffled another sketch to the top, this one a scene where a seated trapper held out his hand to a young Indian woman who appeared shy, even coy, as she peered back at him from behind her eyelashes.

“What’s this’un about?”

Clearing his throat, the artist explained, “This trapper’s taking a bride. Buying her from her father. That’s the father standing beside his daughter as the white man offers presents for her hand in marriage.”

“You seen this happen too?”

With a nod of his head Miller said, “I’ve seen all of these.” He shuffled through the stack of thick paper and brought out another page. “In fact, Mr. Bass—I’ve seen all manner of things out here in the West I never saw anywhere back east.”

“You must’ve see’d lots of griz,” Titus commented, looking at the scene of trappers flushing a huge silver-tip from some brush. “I lost some of my own hide to a griz, fingers too.”

“Miller!”

Together they turned at the call, finding the half-breed Antoine Clement jogging up on horseback.

“Miller! Sir William sent me to find you.”

“Something wrong?” the artist asked, his face grave.

“Nothing wrong,” Clement said. “But he wants you to come back to camp so you can draw something for him.”

Turning to stuff the large pad of paper into a narrow leather valise, Miller asked, “What is it this time?”

“He’s getting ready to make a present to Bridger.”

“Stewart’s gonna give Gabe a present?” Titus asked.

The handsome half-breed nodded, leaning on the flat pommel of his Santa Fe saddle. “Sir William had something shipped all the way from Scotland just for Bridger.”

Swinging into the saddle, Miller gazed down at Bass. “You feel like coming to see for yourself what this gift is?”

“Go most anywhere, long as I can watch you draw some more,” Bass pleaded.

With a broad smile young Miller said, “Grab your horse, Mr. Bass. Let’s go see what Stewart had shipped all the way from his native land to present to Jim Bridger.”

In a matter of minutes they had reached the company camp where a crowd was gathering.

“Let Miller through!” Stewart yelled as soon as he spotted his artist returning. “Let the man through, dammit!”

The young artist dismounted and handed his reins up to Clement. Stepping aside, the trappers allowed Miller to pass through the ring they had formed around an open patch of ground where company operators Fontenelle and Drips stood, joined by partisans Fitzpatrick and Bridger. The Scottish nobleman called forth two of his servants, bearing a large round-topped leather trunk.

“Jim—Jim Bridger!” Stewart called, waving the trapper to his side. “Join me here, would you?”

From his perch atop his horse at the outskirts of the crowd jostling and shouldering to get themselves the best view, Scratch watched an embarrassed, self-conscious Bridger step up to Stewart’s elbow.

“Jim, the first time I returned to your eastern cities after meeting you, I posted a message to my home in Scotland,” the nobleman explained. “I dispatched my request that they send me what I’m now going to present to you.”

“This come all … all the way from Scotland?”

“Aye,” Stewart replied, his burr crisp above the murmuring throng. He turned, stepped to the trunk, and threw back the domed lid.

More than a hundred heads craned forward as the nobleman drew forth the odd-looking apparel. Stewart turned to hold the metal plate to Bridger’s shoulders.

“Wh-what’s this?”

“Cuirass,” he answered.

“Kwee-rass,” Bridger repeated, his face flushing with embarrassment again. “What’s it for?”

“It’s part of an ancient suit of armor, Jim. Here, help me. I’ll show you how to put it on.”

Red-faced, Bridger began to mutter as Stewart removed the trapper’s broad-brimmed hat and handed it to one of the servants. Instructing Jim to raise his arms in the air, the nobleman lowered the armored breastplate and back protector over Bridger’s head and down his arms until it settled on Jim’s shoulders.

Bridger shifted it slightly. “Damn, if that ain’t heavy.”

“Meant to turn a pike or protect you from a claymore.”

“What’re them?”

“A pike is very similar to an Indian’s lance,” Stewart explained as he turned to bend over the trunk once more, accompanied by the sound of clinking metal. “And a claymore—why, it’s a very long, double-edged broadsword my Scottish tribesmen have used in battle for untold centuries.”

At that moment the nobleman straightened and wheeled back to stand before Bridger. Between his two outstretched hands he held a shiny helmet that glittered in the summer sun. From its top sprouted a broad decorative plume crafted from the tail of a horse and dyed a brilliant crimson.

“Here, Jim—I’ll help you with this.”

“That? It goes on my head?”

Stewart had it started down on Bridger’s head before he answered. “Noble knights of old needed such protection when they rode into battles of honor.”

Once the helmet had settled on Bridger’s shoulders, Stewart raised the slotted mask. Inside, the trapper’s eyes were wide with wonder.

“I’ll bet this’ll turn any damned Injun arrow,” Jim remarked, slapping his palm against the breastplate.

Shadrach Sweete cried out from the crowd, “You dang well could’ve used all that truck back when you took that Blackfoot arrer in yer shoulder, Gabe!”

Stewart had already turned to Miller, saying, “Alfred—are you getting all of this?”

“Some of it, sir,” Miller admitted. “I think a better composition would be to have Mr. Bridger mounted on horseback.”

“Splendid!” Stewart cried with an enthusiastic clap of his hands. He instructed his servant, “Go quickly to the wagon and fetch up the pike. Mr. Bridger must wear the whole outfit now!”

“P-pike?” Jim echoed. “The spear we was just talking about?”

The nobleman dragged his hat from his head and bowed at the waist before the brigade leader. “Indeed, my dear friend. Once we’ve finished dressing you in the entire suit of armor, I want you to carry that pike I brought for you to carry on horseback.”

From inside the helmet Bridger’s words had a dull ring of doubt. “You … want me to get on a horse with all this on?”

“By Jove I do!” the Scotsman cheered. “This suit of armor was worn by generations of ancient warriors in my family—a gift from me to a present-day warrior. I have fought against Napoleon’s finest soldiers in battles on the Continent of Europe, yet never have I found any braver breed than you and men like you, Jim Bridger. My hat’s off to your kind, noble sir!”

Suddenly Joe Meek leaped to the center of the open circle, pounding Bridger on the back, waving for the crowd to join him in their congratulations. “Sing out with me, boys—sing out for these Shining Mountains and our noble few!”

The throng answered the call, “Huzzah!”

And Joe cried again, “Huzzah for the Rockies!”

“Huzzah!” the voices echoed all the stronger.

Then a third time Meek exhorted them. “For the mountain man!”

When came the deafening roar that rocked this valley of the Green River: “HUZZAH!”