Ride the Moon Down

29

“You hear tell Bridger’s quit the company?”

For a moment there Titus Bass studied Shadrach Sweete’s face for any betrayal that the man was pulling his leg. “Gabe?” he asked in disbelief. “Not Bridger!”

The overly tall man bobbed his head as some others stepped up to listen in. “Can’t believe it my own self. I just come from Drips’s tent yonder. Last night Bridger said he might just do it—but I didn’t figger he ever would.”

“Quit the company?” asked an older, lanky man striding up in greasy buckskins.

“Told Drips he’d have to get someone else to guide the brigade this year,” Sweete explained as he turned to address the man nearly twice his age. “Bridger’s heading back to St. Louis with the fur caravan when it pulls out.”

If that report didn’t just about beat all the other bad news there was at this quiet little shindig beside the mouth of Horse Creek. First off, Bass had reached this rendezvous site on the Green River to find no more than one hundred twenty company trappers and fewer than thirty freemen waiting the arrival of the supply train. And from the looks of what few camps dotted the valley, one thing was certain as sun: no one had packed much in the way of beaver fur to this rendezvous of 1839.

Really didn’t matter, as things turned out, because when a rider hailed the camps a few days back, announcing that the trader’s caravan was approaching—Bass, like the rest, eagerly scanned that bench to the east, expecting to watch a long mule train or string of carts snake their way into the bottoms, bringing with them more recruits for the autumn brigades, perhaps joined by another large party of missionaries bound for Oregon country with their damned wagons, carriages, and milk cows.

But what caravan pilot Black Harris led into the valley was instead four small two-wheeled carts, each pulled by a pair of mules and carrying no more than eight hundred pounds of the company’s trade goods. On either side of each noisy, squeaking cart trudged a dust-coated, parched pair of St. Louis hired hands—no more than eight employees to assist in the exchange of furs across those few days it would take to trade furs for staples before Harris would turn his outfit around for the settlements. Besides those eight clerks, another half-dozen mule tenders were along to care for the cantankerous stock.

And there in the sheets of dust stirred up by them all, bringing up the rear of that pitifully small caravan, came two small carts and some missionaries, after all. In addition to those bound for the fertile fields of the heathens, Black Harris was accompanied by a German physician and his small party from St. Louis who had come to the mountains for a summer of recreation and adventure.

“Damn poor doin’s,” Scratch had grumbled. From what he could see, he didn’t figure he had missed a damned thing on the Popo Agie the summer before.

And now Gabe was headed east.

Maybeso if a man did have him some family back in Missouri country, Titus rationalized his old friend’s intentions, there might be reason for him to throw it all in and head back now that the business was no more than a ghost of its former glory. But he figured it had to be something mighty powerful to pull a man like Jim Bridger back to the States—quitting the beaver streams, abandoning his Flathead wife and children, forsaking these mountains for the runty hills of the east.

“You figger Gabe ain’t never coming back?” the tall bone rack of a stranger asked of Sweete.

Shad could only shrug. “Bridger ain’t said what he ’tends to do. But I don’t figger him for staying long back there. Most ever’thing he’s ever knowed is out here.”

“Damn straight,” the older man grumped, giving Bass a close, squint-eyed appraisal of a sudden. “If there ain’t beaver to skin and red niggers to skulp in the Big Stonies … by God there’s allays horses to steal from the greasers out to Californy!” And with that next breath he poked his face right into Scratch’s and asked, “I know you, pilgrim?”

“Maybeso,” Titus replied with a chortle, raising his arms into the air, one on either side of his head, fingers spread like antlers. “—If’n you’re that crazy nigger what’s gonna turn into a bull elk when you’re gone under!”

“I thort it was you,” the homely man declared with a grin, holding out a bony paw to shake. “The nigger what’s called Scratch. Last saw you down to Taos.”

Nodding, Bass shook the strong, lean hand and said, “Shad, this here’s Bill Williams.”

“Ol’ Bill Williams?” Sweete asked. “Ever’body knows of Ol’ Solitaire. Man, if I ain’t heard a passel of tales ’bout you!”

“Ain’t none of ’em the truth,” Williams snapped. As suddenly he smiled hugely. “Then again, maybeso ever’ last one of ’em be the truth too!”

Scratch looked the old veteran in the eye and asked, “How you read the sign, Bill? Fat cow or poor bull? You figger the mountain trade ’bout to go under with Bridger heading east and all these here niggers running off with horses and traps they stole’t?”

Williams snorted. “Maybeso fur is done for a while. But beaver’s bound to rise, I allays say. If’n a man needs to, he can find hisself something to do till the plews are prime again.”

“What else is a child s’posed to do if’n he don’t trap?” Sweete demanded testily.

Regarding the tall man warily, Williams said, “You are a big chunk of it, now, ain’cha?” He put a finger to his temple. “Think on it—and maybeso you’ll come up with something to do till beaver comes back.”

“What you fixing to do, Bill?” Scratch asked.

“Me and few others been kicking round the idee of riding west for Californy—steal some Mex’can horses like I tol’t you.”

Sweete wagged his head. “Why horses?”

“Out here a nigger can buy ’em for a rich man’s ransom … or he can ride back east to get horses for hisself. So there might just be some real good money in it for a child who steals some horses in Californy what he can sell to the forts.”

“Mayhaps them greasers shoot your head off too,” Bass snorted, “you try riding off with their horses.”

“Them pepper beans?” Williams asked with sour laughter.

“Any man gets shot at enough,” Titus replied, “I figger the odds gotta mean he’s gonna get hit with a lead ball one day.”

“Ain’t a greaser gun made can hit me,” Williams boasted.

Turning to Sweete, Bass asked, “If you ain’t gonna steal Mex’can horses like Bill here—you gonna stay on with Drips’s brigade now that Bridger ain’t along?”

With a shrug Shadrach said, “Been thinking I might just head west a mite—work out of Fort Hall. Hear the British promise to treat Americans right on their prices for goods, on what they’ll offer for beaver.”

“Some ol’ partners of mine said they heard the same thing.”

“Goddamn them English!” Williams grumbled. “I’d steal ever’thing out from under ’em and burn down their posts a’fore I’d deal with John Bull!”

“Maybeso I figure to have me somewhere to sell my beaver when the Americans pull outta the mountains, ol’ man,” Sweete advised.

“There’s other posts,” Williams argued. “Don’t have to deal with them Englishers.”

“Fort Lucien?” Bass inquired. “St. Louis parley-voos own that’un.”

Williams shook his head emphatically, saying, “But the company don’t own that Vaskiss post on the South Platte. And they don’t run them others down in that country neither.”

“What others?” Titus asked.

“Some soldier named Lupton left the army to jump in the beaver trade year or two back,” Williams said. “’Side his, there’s two more on the Platte: Fort Jackson and Fort Savary—all of ’em trading with the Cheyenne and ’Rapaho.”

Titus asked, “Robes?”

“Beaver from white men, robes from redbellies,” Williams answered. “And now the Bents are offering top dollar for all the horses we can bring ’em. Californy or Injun—makes ’em no differ’nce.”

Sweete said, “All of them places over on the east side of the mountains.”

“And that can be a ride for a man what wants to have somewhere handy to trade his furs,” Bass observed. “Only reason I ever traded up to Tullock’s post at the mouth of the Tongue was I found myself up in that Crow country.”

Nodding, the old trapper said, “Ain’t whistling in the dark there, Scratch—but ary man what wants to stay in this here country can allays do his business on this side of the mountains.”

Sweete growled. “You just said you wasn’t giving none of your business to them English over at Fort Hall—”

“I ain’t talking ’bout Fort Hall, you idjit!” Bill snapped. “Ain’t either of you heard ’bout them two posts on south of here?”

Bass and Sweete glanced at one another before looking back at Williams.

“No doubt you two ignernt coons been spending too much of your time up in Blackfoot and Crow country!” the old man snorted. “Down near the mouth of the Winty is Robidoux’s post … and just northeast of there a leetle is Fort Davy Crockett.”

“Northeast, where?”

“Brown’s Hole. East side of the Green. Fort’s been there more’n a year … maybeso two year now this summer.”

“They in the beaver business?” Titus asked. “Got trade goods?”

“Them fellers all been trappers,” Williams declared. “So I figger they know how to treat a man fair. Better’n this goddamned company got this hull country by the balls—squeezing down so hard they’re choking the life right out of the beaver trade.”

Bass looked at Sweete. “I been there.”

“Brown’s Hole?”

Nodding, Scratch said, “Trapping might be fair in that country. Chances are a man won’t bump into too many Injuns. Maybeso we’d make a pair of it if’n you ain’t give up on the mountains—”

“I ain’t give up on the mountains!” Shad roared.

“Then you cogitate ’bout heading south with me to trap that Uinty country, go sniff out just how fair a man gets treated down to this Fort Davy Crockett.”

“I’ll think on it some,” Shad replied, screwing up his lips thoughtfully.

“You lemme know next day or so,” Bass said. “It ain’t like we got a whole lot of choices no more, Shad. There ain’t many ways for niggers like us to make our living. We don’t trap beaver—we can always turn to horse stealing like Ol’ Solitaire here … or turn back for the settlements.”

“I ain’t above stealing horses,” Shadrach Sweete admitted two days later when he walked over to Bass’s camp of a purpose. “But I don’t figger I’ll ever turn back for the settlements neither.”

“What’s that leave you, Shad?”

His merry eyes twinkled. “You fixing to keep chasing beaver?”

Titus nodded with a grin, knowing that Sweete had come to his decision. “For many a year now I always hankered to have me a look over the next hill. Time’s come to

When the Crow returned with the clean swaddling, Titus did the best he could to clean the boy for the first time in the better part of a day and a long winter night. After tossing the dirty scrap of blanket into the nearby brush, he swathed a clean strip over Flea’s genitals, rewrapped the blanket around the child’s body, securing the rawhide ties.

After pissing on the bushes and resaddling the three animals, they hung Flea’s crude cradle from Bass’s pommel and set off.

More than an hour later, when the sun rose briefly at the edge of a crimson earth, the whole basin was momentarily tinted with a pinkish hue. Within moments that dramatic dawn exhausted itself as the sun climbed into the low, snow-laden clouds. Once more the broad valley and the surrounding slopes were bathed in a cold pewter light.

He hoped the Blackfoot had made camp earlier than he had the evening before. And he prayed the enemy were slow in moving out this morning. But most of all he asked that the sky hold back that day—just one more day. What wind there was gusted out of the north with the sharp metallic tang of a hard snow on its way. Give them one more day to follow the tracks before the storm blew in and obliterated the war party’s trail. If the snow was held in abeyance, Bass vowed he would use this day to narrow the distance, getting close enough to the Blackfoot to come up with some scheme to free their prisoners.

For some time during that ride he brooded on that first fight he had taken Waits-by-the-Water into, slipping in on the Arapaho who had come to avenge the deaths of some fellow warriors. He and Josiah had chosen to risk it all by striking first, not waiting to be hit by the Indians. But to do that required that their own wives had to take part in the killing alongside them. From slipping in to take down the horse guard, to shooting the enemy as they slept around their fire …

Bass asked that the woman be every bit as strong in the coming hours as she had been that long-ago autumn in the Bayou Salade.

Near midday, with the sun behind their shoulders no more than a pewter glob behind the immobile clouds, it became even more plain that the Blackfoot were intent on penetrating the high country rather than taking the long way around the foot of the mountains. While it would be a much easier journey for the horsemen, to take that circuitous trail to the east would place the whittled-down war party in the heart of territory claimed by the Mountain Crow. The enemy was taking the quicker, more direct and dangerous, route home.

By late afternoon they were well into the foothills, each gust of wind stirring the fragrance of cedar, the perfumes of the sage that dotted the open slopes crossed by the Blackfoot trail. Hour after hour Scratch squinted up the hillside, studying those mountainsides carpeted with thick timber, the snow-crusted granite escarpments that poked their heads from the last reaches of alpine tundra where trees no longer grew.

Once again he kicked his heels into the pony’s ribs, anxious for a bit more speed from the weary animal.

There was little choice but to narrow the gap before they reached that timberline. If the Blackfoot got to those rugged slopes of scree before sundown, they would cross on over. Which meant that he and the Crow could not follow them into the waning hour of twilight. The animals would simply find the footing too tough in the deepening of dusk. And moving across the shifting talus and loose shale would create the sort of noise that would alert the Blackfoot they had company.

Up till now the sight of two lone pursuers would not have caused the war party any concern. But here as the timber thinned, where the cedar and juniper were battered, twisted, and stunted by constant winds, forced to grow closer to the ground, the Blackfoot might well decide to turn around and smack the two strangers the way a man might finally slap at a troublesome deerfly.

So they kept their eyes constantly moving along that portion of the trail cut in the crusty snow, hoofprints threading through the waist-high boulders and knee-high scrub brush—wary of unexpected sounds emerging from the frozen silence as much as they were watchful of any see some new country. Brown’s Hole might be the place for us to winter.”

“You don’t mind me riding along?”

With a smile Scratch declared, “I been ’thout a partner for many a winter now—back to thirty-four. I’d like to hook up for a spell and catch us some beaver to boot.”

Sweete stuck out his hand. “When you fixing to pull out?”

“Two days set with you?”

“All right by me.”

“Dawn.”

“First light it is.”

As events turned out, others were setting out that same morning—men who had taken themselves off the company’s books. But Doc Newell, Kit Carson, and a few others weren’t riding south for the Uintah. They were instead heading northwest for Fort Hall. Carson had his young Arapaho wife along, while Newell was escorting his own family as well as Virginia, Joe Meek’s Indian wife, to the British post while Meek set off to the southwest intending to work the Salt River. If the American traders were withdrawing from the mountains, Meek, Newell, and Carson declared, then it made sense for a man to polish his relationship with those English booshways of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

“Maybe we’ll see you two down to Brown’s Hole late of the fall,” Carson declared as he swung into the saddle after shaking hands with Bass and Sweete.

“We’re gonna see what the English offer us for peltries,” Newell explained as he climbed atop his horse. “If’n they give a man a fair swap, we’ll trap the Snake country.”

“But if the Britishers don’t treat us right,” Carson stated, “figure to see us at Fort Davy Crockett a’fore it snows hard.”

“That’s still good beaver country, Scratch,” Newell said as he nudged his horse away, giving a farewell wave. “Bunch of us laid in over to Brown’s Hole last winter.”

In twos and threes small groups of men peeled themselves away from the once-great monolith of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, like ripping back an onion, layer by layer.

Only a year before on the Popo Agie, the Pierre Chouteau Company had employed some one hundred twenty trappers in the field. But by the time this rendezvous on the Green was over, no more than one week after the caravan had arrived, company partisan Andrew Drips discovered he would be leading fewer than eighty men north to the Three Forks country for the fall hunt. And no more than two thousand pelts would be leaving rendezvous for St. Louis.

Never again would skin trappers be able to turn in their furs for credit, then go in debt for whiskey and trifles for the coming year. This summer on the Green no one could be sure there would be another summer, another rendezvous, or if there would be a mountain fur trade. Little surprise, then, that more than two dozen men simply slipped away from rendezvous with what they could lay their hands on. No longer was there such a thing as company credit.

And damn soon there simply would be no way for most of these men to make a living.

Trying to compete with the British had begun to drive Pierre Chouteau, Jr., out of the business. With the high cost of trade goods back east, the Americans had to offer top dollar for beaver—or lose those pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company securely ensconced at Fort Hall. And to continue offering five dollars per pound when those plews weren’t bringing enough of a profit in the eastern markets was nothing less than financial suicide. If American trappers could not only wrangle a better price for their fur from the British, but pay less for their possibles in the bargain, then Scratch figured only an idiot would continue to do business with the St. Louis monopoly.

All around him the Rocky Mountain beaver trade had become no more than a pale reflection of those glory days of old.

Following the course of the Green River, Bass and Sweete had slowly marked the miles that took them through that familiar country. Behind the two of them rode Waits-by-the-Water and Magpie on their painted ponies. Little Flea sat in front of his father, tiny hands gripping the reins the way his sister once had done, assured he was master of all that he surveyed each day.

Over the last two weeks a relentless August sun had tortured this high desert country. With every step the hooves scraped the parched earth, sending up clouds of fine yellow dust that hung suspended in the breathless heat. But every night they camped in the shade of cottonwoods lining the riverbank, cooling not only their aching throats but soaking up to their necks in the revitalizing current as twilight overtook the land.

Eventually they neared the mouth of Vermillion Creek,^* where the Green made one of its two great bends in passing through Brown’s Hole. In the middistance they discovered a small herd of horses grazing beneath the tall old cottonwoods. Just beyond, through the massive trunks of that stately grove, Bass spotted the stockade of upright logs. As they moved closer, a white man pushed open one side of the narrow gate and stopped just outside the walls, watching the party’s approach.

“Shady spot you picked for yourselves,” Bass commented as he brought his horse to a halt and the stranger dropped the butt of his rifle to the ground.

“This here place is better’n most to winter,” the man said as he came up to Bass’s horse, holding up his hand. “Name’s Sinclair. Prewett Sinclair.”

Shad introduced himself, then asked, “You the only feller here?”

“My partners is gone for ’nother few weeks,” the man with the dark, angular face explained.

“Partners? How many of you there be?” Scratch inquired.

“Three. Thompson headed east to the Missoura settlements for supplies last spring, just as soon as he could get north around the mountains. Three weeks back, my other partner named Craig headed over to meet Thompson—planning to meet up at Vaskiss’s fort.”

“Been there more three winters back,” Bass declared.

“So it’s only me for while,” Sinclair advised. “Me, ’long with what Injuns show up.”

“Ever had you any trouble with Injuns hereabouts?” Scratch asked, peering round the narrow valley.

“Naw,” Sinclair said. “Snakes and Bannacks come by of a time, and even a few poor Diggers show their faces on the side of them hills yonder.”

Bass peered momentarily at the high bluffs across the river. “Up to ronnyvoo we heard you boys raised yourselves a fort fixing to do some trading down here.”

“That’s right,” Sinclair replied.

Sweete asked, “You trade beaver for possibles?”

Dragging a bare forearm beneath his nose, Sinclair said, “We’ll take robes too, if’n you wanna trade off your buffler hides.”

“We sleep in what we got,” Bass declared. “You mind us pitching camp over yonder for the night?”

“Not’all,” Sinclair replied. “You figger to stick around long?”

Sweete shook his head. “Planning to head on down to the Little Bear, maybeso find some beaver over on the Little Snake.”

“Good luck fellers,” Sinclair said, wiping some sweat off his brow. “Not the Little Bear. Likely you’ll have to work higher up the Little Snake to find beaver anymore.”

“Little Bear used to be good beaver country,” Bass observed.

“Been trapped out last two year,” Sinclair said.

“That’s a shame,” Bass told them, with an amused grin. “Had some of my hair took on the Little Bear, many a summer ago.”

“That where it was?” Sweete asked.

“Yup. Maybeso we’ll go see that spot for ourselves.”

“Lost hair, did you?” the trader asked, glancing at the graying curls on Bass’s shoulder.

“Just enough to sour my milk,” Titus answered, the grin becoming a smile. “After supper, we’ll mosey on over and jaw a bit.”

That evening Titus and Shad did pay a social call on Fort Davy Crockett, if not to share some stories with that new pair of ears, then to take a look at what the three proprietors had to offer in the way of goods and wares in trade for beaver pelts. Damn, if what few possibles sat on those shelves weren’t all English, shipped to Fort Vancouver near the mouth of the Columbia River, then packed overland to the Hudson’s Bay post at Fort Hall where they were purchased by the American partners to stock the skimpy shelves of this log-and-mud post erected on the east bank of the Green River.

Little wonder Philip Thompson had traipsed off to buy up what he could back in the States.

No more than two years old, the small fort boasted only three sides, each one no more than sixty feet in length, the high riverbank serving as a barrier on the fourth. Instead of separate pickets, the backs of three low buildings served as the stockade itself, interrupted by a narrow gate that faced the open ground stretching to the east. In that fertile bottom ground formed by its junction with Vermillion Creek, an array of native grasses flourished, thick, if not tall, throughout the short growing season, providing adequate grazing for the post’s stock. Nearby along the west bank of the creek lay a profusion of tepee rings where visiting Shoshone and Ute raised their lodges when they showed up to trade.

“You fellers keep a sharp eye for Sioux,” Sinclair warned the next morning as the small party saddled for the foothills.

“There ain’t no goddamned Sioux over this side of the mountains,” Sweete chortled. “Now, over in that country on—”

“Don’t be so sure,” the trader interrupted grimly. “Last bunch of Snakes through here told me they seen sign of Sioux on their way in here to trade.”

“Maybeso they was just having some fun with you,” Shad argued.

“I’ll lay them Snakes figgered to scare you into giving ’em a good trade!” Bass agreed as he waved and started away. “Sioux country’s a long, long ways off, Sinclair. Can’t for the life of me reckon why they’d roam all the way over here.”

Instead of leaving Brown’s Hole through the narrow pass carved over the aeons by Vermillion Creek, Bass and Sweete had decided to continue on down the Green River until they struck the Little Bear.^* From there they headed east, closely inspecting the smaller feeder streams for sign of beaver activity. Mile after mile, day by day, they marched upstream, following that river to the mouth of the Little Snake. After stabbing up that winding valley for two frustrating days without finding any evidence of beaver, the two of them turned back for the Little Bear, following it east into the foothills and those timbered slopes still crowned with some of last winter’s snow.

Funny, Titus thought more than once, how this country down here got two, three times the snow that fell in Absaroka farther north. No two ways about it—that Crow country sure as hell got colder when it did get cold, but damn if winter didn’t batter these central mountains with that much more snow. Maybe that was the reason he had been able to continue trapping off and on through the last of that long winter while his wife had finished healing. On through the spring, a summer, and fall, then another long, full winter he and Waits-by-the-Water had remained with her people: migrating only when the Crow moved camp.

Once during a warm, dry spell late in the summer of thirty-eight, Bass had loaded two small packs of beaver on Samantha’s back and moseyed east to the mouth of the Tongue. He had somehow made his wife understand that he was half-froze for white-man talk, half-froze for white joking and white faces, half-froze for someone who could grasp how it was to be a half-wild white man living among his wife’s native people.

Looking back now, Titus knew those few days he languished with Tullock had done him a world of good. He had grown lonely across the months, seeing only that one white man in more than a year and a half. Damn well near the same feeling he had back in the spring of thirty-two after all that time in Crow country, fighting off Blackfoot like vicious, blood-drawing deerflies … then ran onto Josiah Paddock, recent of the settlements.

Man gets so lonely, he’s more than half-froze for a white voice, his own American language, another soul who might just understand when he admits he’s grown scared.

“Scared?” Sweete asked at the campfire that late-autumn night after they had been driven to the foothills by a first, heavy snow.

Titus nodded. “Ain’t you growed scared of what’s to become of all of us, Shadrach?”

The big man stared thoughtfully at the fire. “When there ain’t no more ronnyvooz, then I s’pose a nigger can take his plews to a post, like that Davy Crockett, or over to Hallee.”

“Don’t you see?” he asked the younger man. “When the fur company don’t figger it’s gonna send any more supply trains, then that means the company don’t figger the beaver business is worth the trouble. And when that happens, the price of beaver sinks in the mud for ever’body.”

“Trader’ll be back,” Sweete said hopefully. “Come next summer, they’ll come back to ronnyvoo.”

“I don’t reckon they will, Shad,” Bass whispered, gazing at the red embers of their fire as Waits-by-the-Water and the children slept. “The way things was … it’s all but done now.”

“You care to wager on that?” Sweete said, trying to sound as cheerful as he could.

“Sure. I’ll buy you a new shirt, a horn of powder, and get you good and drunk to boot,” Bass sighed. “If’n there’s ’nother ronnyvoo come summer.”

Shad was quiet a while before he asked, “How long you figger till the beaver’s done?”

“My boy ain’t gonna be very old,” he declared, peering across the fire at the two small heads of his children poking from their blanket and robe. “Once there was no forts. Then there was a few. Now they’re like ticks on a bull’s hump. The time’s changed, Shad. And it don’t appear there’s any going back. Good God in His heaven … but I pray this land don’t change too. Leastways, till I’m gone.”

A few days later they struck a buffalo trail as it angled across the rolling, broken country, meandering toward the headwaters of Vermillion Creek, taking them in the direction of Fort Davy Crockett.

“Shadrach,” Bass called out a few hours later, motioning the tall man over as their horses carried them west along that buffalo road. With Sweete come up beside him, he whispered, “Don’t make no show, but I want you to look down in the buffler tracks. Tell me what you see.”

The younger man casually peered off the left side of his horse, then the right. Eventually he looked at Bass. “Injuns.”

“How many you figger?”

“More’n two of us can handle.”

“We got a bunch of guns—”

“But there’s only two of us to fire ’em,” Shadrach interrupted.

“Easy now,” he soothed. “We don’t even know what they be. Maybeso they’re just some Snakes—following that buffler herd to make meat.”

Sweete sighed in relief. “You’re right. I just let that Sinclair get me jumping at shadows. I reckon that’s it: only Snakes, trailing them buffler down to the fort.”

“We ain’t got no reason to think them are Sioux tracks,” Bass warned.

Those recent seasons in Crow country had made for a lot of work for little beaver. Times past, he would have had more than twice the plews to show for his efforts, what with all the miles put behind him. Even after replacing those traps the Blackfoot had discarded, Bass still found he was forced to push higher to find the dammed-up meadows and lodges, forced to plunge farther and farther into the recesses of the mountains to find what beaver remained after years of relentless extermination of the creatures. More than once Titus had cursed others, then cursed his luck, and eventually cursed himself for stripping the creeks and streams and rivers of the flat-tails during those golden glory days.

But how was a man ever going to replace those belongings stolen and destroyed by the Blackfoot if he couldn’t find enough beaver to trade for the blankets and traps, kettles and beads, finger rings and hawksbells he had possessed before the Blackfoot had raided Absaroka?

Tullock had treated him more than square in their dealings at Fort Van Buren, but there was only so much the trader could do when the price of beaver was on the slide and the cost of goods was rising with every season supplies came north on the Missouri. No matter the pinch they both found themselves in, the company tobacco was good and Tullock’s private stock of rum was the best Titus had tasted since he had learned to drink Monangahela on that flatboat ride down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans.

“I heard Beckwith’s back in the mountains,” Samuel Tullock had declared that summer evening when Bass rode over to Van Buren for some white company.

“Jim Beckwith? You was the one told me he’d give up on the mountains and gone back to St. Louis.”

“He did. But the story is he growed tired of it. Beckwith’s come back to the mountains.”

“He come back to hook up with that band of Mountain Crow?”

Tullock shook his head as he swallowed some rum. “No. Word has it when he come west last summer, he went out the Platte Road. They say he’s down at Fort Vasquez with them fellers—trading to the Arapaho and shining on some Cheyenne gals, I reckon.”

“Hard to figger, ’cuz ever’thing I ever knowed of him—he was real tight with them Crow.”

“Damn tight. Had him a handful of wives, and the Crow made him a war chief, some such,” Tullock agreed.

“Why the hell didn’t Beckwith come on back north, where he had him a good life?”

“Only thing I been able to figger since I heard he come back is that Beckwith don’t wanna have nothing to do with this country up here where the smallpox was.”

“Ain’t the pox all done, Sam’l?”

Nodding, Tullock replied, “The pox is done, Scratch … but now there’s talk around the tribes that it was Beckwith brung the pox to the Injuns up here.”

“Beckwith?” Bass squeaked in disbelief. “He weren’t even in this country back then. You and Levi told me one of the company boats brung the pox up the river a year ago.”

Grudgingly Tullock agreed. “I know. Cain’t be Beckwith brung the pox.”

“But the truth don’t matter none to the company, does it?”

The trader shook his head. “No it don’t, Scratch. Truth is, the company done everything it can to pin this terrible thing on Beckwith.”

“So now your booshways come out smelling sweet,” Bass grumbled at the weighty injustice of it all, “seeing how they made damned sure the tribes believe it were Beckwith brought ’em the spotted death.”

Jim Beckwith. Purty Jim Beckwith. Had him a sweet, sweet life with the Crow before he gave it up to try things back in St. Louis—

“Scratch!”

Blinking, Bass jerked at the sound of Sweete’s cry, torn out of his reverie. Turning slightly, he found the big man pointing with the muzzle of his huge rifle.

Across the winding bed of Vermillion Creek the narrow valley rose sharply. Atop those low bluffs on the far side at least a dozen horsemen were coming to a halt.

Feathers hung from hair and shields and lances. Scalp locks waved beneath ponies’ jaws, tormented by the gusts of icy wind. And every last goddamned one of those warriors sat there in the cold with frost streaming from his mouth as they all began to yell in exultation … suddenly jabbing heels into their ponies as they raced down the dull, reddish ocher of that hillside—coming on, coming on—close enough that Titus could see they were wearing paint.

Lots of damned paint. Those red niggers were decked out like no Injuns he had ever seen before.

One thing for certain—those sure as hell weren’t Snakes riding down off the hills to make a white man feel welcome!

* In the extreme northwestern corner of present-day Colorado

* What the fur trappers called present-day Yampa River.