Wind Walker

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Father!”

Titus Bass had already turned at the rapid hammer of the pony’s hoofbeats, Jim Bridger at his elbow, both of them tying off their horses to branches before setting off into the thick brush of the river bottom in search of mule deer … when he heard the boy’s warning call.

“Father!” Flea cried out again.

This was the youngster’s seventeenth summer, eighteen and fifty-three. For the briefest flicker of a moment, Scratch felt an immense pride in his son, how the young man sat a horse at a full gallop, the pony’s tail held high, mane fluttering in the hot August breeze, and Flea’s long, unbound hair trailing freely behind him. But that pride swelled in his breast but an instant until the rider got close enough for Titus to recognize the pinch of fear on his son’s face.

He stepped away from the horses, more toward the opening formed by the willow and cottonwood that rustled with the hot, late-summer breezes.

Bridger started to say, “Damn, but that boy’s gonna scare off all the—”

He broke off his friend’s complaint. “Somethin’ ain’t right, Gabe.” And as his son approached, he called out in American, “Is there trouble at the fort?”

Yanking back on the single rein that was knotted around the pony’s lower jaw, Flea shuddered to a halt atop the animal, then flew off its back and landed barefoot in the dry, brown grass, his breechclout flapping.

“Visitors,” he growled in his father’s American tongue. Then shook his head as he thought of better, perhaps more descriptive, words. “Riders. Many … riders!”

All the boy’s life, his American talk had been getting better, but especially in these seasons just shy of two years, while they had remained at Fort Bridger following the Fort Laramie treaty, a time when his children experienced more and more contact with a new outfit of white emigrants every few days.

Winter had come early to the valley of the Green in ’51, so Scratch ended up keeping his family right there at the post till spring. By that time many things stood in need of repair, both at the fort and up at Bridger’s Green River ferry too, keeping him and Shadrach more than busy. About the same time those wet and muddy days of 1852, the first of Brigham Young’s Mormon migration for the season had shown up at the fort. But these resolute Saints weren’t making an arduous journey to the valley of the Salt Lake … instead, they were bound from Salt Lake City for the valley of the Green River itself, where the Prophet had commanded them to establish themselves and profit in the emigrant trade under the spoken will of God.

“Will of God?” Titus Bass asked that spring day as he, Shadrach Sweete, and a half dozen other old mountain men interrupted their repairs to Bridger’s ferry when the column of Mormons rode up to the crossing.

They claimed they came with charters from Brigham Young himself, stating that they, and only they, had legal right to operate in trade with the emigrants inside the territory of Utah.

That’s when Bass snorted and wiped some sweat off the end of his nose. “Territory of Utah, you say? You fellers be a long way off from the territory of Utah. This here ain’t the United States. Why, this here’s the free Rocky Mountains.

Free! Far as you can see off in all directions—we’re standin’ in the free Rocky Mountains.”

Shad Sweete joined in, “You’ll have to ride a long way to the south afore you get to your territory of Utah—”

“You do understand that our Promised Land of Zion has become the territory of Utah, under a mandate by the federal government in Washington City—back in 1850—don’t you?” one of the horsemen declared as he inched his horse forward. He was a hard-jawed, fiery-eyed zealot if there ever was one.

“No,” Bridger himself replied, “ain’t heard nothin’ ’bout the government makin’ no new territory for your people.”

The zealot continued, “Then you haven’t heard that this country all around the Green River, including that back down at your trading post too—it’s all part of the territory of Utah now.”

For the first time, Bass stared from under the wide brim of his hat and really studied the man. Then he took a few steps closer to have himself a better look at just who this tarnal fool was, and asked, “You there, the feller tellin’ us all this news we ain’t got no use for—what’s your name?”

“Hickman,” he replied. “My name is William Hickman. Being an attorney I can attest to the legality of the rights transferred to these people by the new governor of the territory, Brigham Young. You men are clearly operating your business without the necessary charter granting you the legal right to operate in trade with the emigrants. I am here to inform you men that you must stop your work, pack up your belongings, and move away from this crossing.”

“You’re full of horse apples,” Bass roared with laughter as Shadrach pounded him on the back.

The hard-eyed zealot inched his horse closer until it made Titus nervous enough to lay his hand on the butt of the big pistol sticking from his belt. At the sight of that, the Mormon immediately reined back, glaring at Scratch, then eventually turned his granitelike gaze on Bridger again.

“Jim Bridger, I hereby notify you that you are illegally operating a trading establishment inside the boundaries of the legitimate territory of Utah, County of Green River, without the necessary compact signed by the duly appointed governor—”

“Illegal?” Titus squeaked, taking one step closer to the rider before Bridger flung out his arm, grabbing Bass by his collar, and stopped his old friend in his tracks.

“What you mean I’m illegal?” Bridger echoed.

Hickman said, “You’ll have to quit operation at your post—”

“Quit?” Jim squawked. “I been in business more’n ten years right there on Black’s Fork, son. Afore Brigham Young ever knowed about me an’ my post … afore there ever was your god-blamed territory o’ Utah! You don’t have no right to tell me I gotta move … an’ Brigham Young sure as hell ain’t got no business sayin’ he can throw me outta business—”

“He’s the governor,” Hickman said, patting a hand against a pocket of his wool coat, “and I am carrying his compacts here, documents that state you are operating illegally within the boundaries of the territory of Utah.”

In frustration Bridger glanced at Shadrach, then at Titus, and finally back to Hickman. His eyes narrowed, “Was you in that bunch of Pioneer Saints what Brigham Young brought through here back in forty-seven?”

“No,” and the man’s eyes fluttered in embarrassment, “I did not have the honor to accompany the Prophet—”

“Then you best understand I’m goin’ to say this one time, so mark my words afore you fellers clear out of my sight,” Bridger interrupted him with a stony firmness. “It was near here, over yonder on the Sandy, where I took my supper with your Prophet, this Governor Brigham Young, when he was first comin’ to these parts … an’ I sure as blazes was already doin’ business outta my tradin’ post up on Black’s Fork long afore your Prophet, or your governor, or whatever the hell he calls hisself now—long, long afore any of you Mormons come trompin’ through this here free country, stumblin’ around like blind barn rats asking folks to help you find your Promised Land.”

“Under designation by the federal government, our Zion is now the territory of Utah,” Hickman repeated, “which includes the County of Green River, where you are standing, and back on Black’s Fork where you operate your trading post—”

“You’ve wore out your welcome, Mr. Hickman,” Bass interrupted, his voice harsh but even. “It’s high time you moved along.” While flat, his tone nonetheless carried a level of threat as his eyes touched a few of those horsemen on either side of Hickman, then came to rest once more on their spokesman.

“You’re … not going to leave this place, Mr. Bridger? Or close down operations at your post?”

Bridger sighed, “No.”

“It’s time you folks left,” Sweete said. “We got work to do.”

Bass tightened his grip on the pistol, having decided that if guns were brought into play, the first one to fall would be thick-tongued, big-talking William Hickman. “You been told get out. So while you Marmons can—git!”

“This is the territory of Utah, ruled by Governor Brig—”

“Git!” Bass roared this time. “Go on back to your Salt Lake Valley an’ tell your Marmon prophet that he don’t rule rabbit squat up here in these free mountains. Never will!”

Mumbling something to the other riders near him, Hickman savagely reined about in a half circle and retreated up the long slope of the cutbank. Two by two the others turned their horses about and followed that band of leaders angrily talking with one another, some of them peering back over their shoulders at the trio of old mountain men and those six others who had stood back from the confrontation, their long guns at the ready.

“This here’s the free mountains!” Shadrach echoed Bass’s sentiment to their retreating backs.

“You an’ your Prophet ain’t the rulers here!” Titus shouted, his fury unabated. “This is the free Rocky Mountains, an’ by God we’re free men!”

Before they realized how many days and weeks had slipped by, while they busied themselves performing repairs and making ready, it was time for the first train of emigrants to breast the horizon and rumble into the meadows—eager for trading at the store, looking forward to a day or two of layover to rest the animals, perhaps picking up a bit of news from Bridger on the condition of the trail ahead as he used a piece of charcoal from the fire to sketch out his map of the region on the rough-hewn planks of the trading room’s door. That year of ’52 had certainly been a busy season, one filled with sojourners—far more Saints pressing southwest for the Promised Land than folks headed to either California or Oregon.

And by the time the crush of travelers trickled off late in the summer, Bass and Waits-by-the-Water found one excuse after another to hang on for another day, then one more week, and eventually the first icy flakes began to fly. Winter set in. Truly a blessing to have good friends to wait out the season with, the incessant winds moaning through the timbers, winds working incessantly at the clay chinking stuffed between the log walls of their low-roofed shelters, winds that scooped up most of the snow and hurled it along in an icy blast that deposited great white drifts of it against both the northern and western walls of the corral stockade and the fort itself. Inside and out, the bitter winds sculpted beautifully hoary patterns on the snow it packed and hardened into something resembling the consistency of prairie sandstone.

And when the spring of ’53 arrived for certain—no, not the false spring that came every year, when the weather warmed and a man’s blood coursed a little stronger in his veins, but was quickly interrupted by another bout of bitter cold and a snowy, icy sleet that descended on this valley of the Green for one last onslaught of winter—but a genuine and warming spring, it was finally time to put things aright and make a hundred different repairs for his friend Bridger once more.

By then Waits was beginning to show, no mistaking that. Their fifth child this would be. Most every night after they had pulled the blankets over them and lay in the dark, she talked about how she was likely a grandmother by now, that Magpie probably had delivered her first child sometime around the beginning of last summer or so. And here she was, a grandmother, carrying another child of her own!

But she wasn’t old at all, Bass told her again and again. Hell, if she wanted to look at old, all she had to do was look at him! Why, he’d be celebrating his sixtieth birthday this coming winter. The coming of the child was an unexpected joy to them both, but it was even more so a special blessing from First Maker for him. Right from the moment he first noticed Waits’s belly beginning to swell, Titus had considered naming the child Lucas. Perhaps the way the Crow often named their young after a revered and respected elder who had passed away. Maybe, he asked the First Maker in the dark after the cabins went silent and only the tree frogs peeped softly down in the slough, maybe the Creator could tell him if it would be all right to name this child after that grandson who had been torn from him at Soda Springs so many, many summers ago.

So what with all the work that needed doing around the post that spring of ’53 and performing the extra repairs for the emigrants who dragged their wagons through the valley of Black’s Fork, the summer got later and later, and Waits got bigger and bigger … until they decided they’d just wait until this fifth child of theirs would come into the world at Jim’s post. This was, after all, the very place where they had first met Amanda’s youngest boy. Truth was, in the past few weeks Titus had begun to like the sound of Lucas Bridger Bass. If the boy was going to have a white first name, he might as well have the whole caboodle—down to carrying his pa’s last name too.

Rare were the times he and Jim had stolen off to hunt together, both of them so busy at the post or up at the ferry, what with that fat and lazy Vasquez and his wife living their high life with Brigham Young’s Saints down in Salt Lake City, and hardly ever showing their faces at the fort anymore. What a high-nosed hypocrite Vasquez had turned out to be, to his way of thinking. Why, word was Vasquez and his wife even rolled around in a splendid coach and four matched horses bought off the Mormons! A goddamned coach-and-four! If that wasn’t taking on airs, Scratch didn’t know what was. Seemed to be that Louis Vasquez had forgotten the old days and the old friends from those hard, lean times, and with every year seemed all the more eager to throw in with his new friends and business associates down in the valley of the Salt Lake.

So rarely did Titus and Gabe have any time to themselves, time like the old days when men rode off to hunt together, never really having to say much at all because they just enjoyed the moments and didn’t need to spoil it with a lot of talk—just like the old days when they were young and strength flowed through them like the rush of an icy spring runoff breaking through a high-country beaver dam. The old days when it seemed as if their way of life could never end … that all of them would live on forever and this glory life of theirs would never, ever ebb.

So he and Gabe had promised themselves a hunt that morning, ^* down in the bottoms a couple miles above the post, where the mule deer loved to make their beds. A hunt for the spirit of the old days, a hunt in the old way … a hunt they would never get to make now that Flea had come galloping up with that look of fear on his face.

“Riders?” Bridger echoed the way the youngster had growled the word in American. “Not wagon people?”

“No wagons. Hickerman come, with riders.”

“Hickman? Bill Hickman?” Titus said, bristling at the mere mention of the Mormon’s name. “You hear that, Gabe. Son of a bitch is back to try bullyin’ you outta these here free mountains again!”

It had been more than a year since they had glared at one another up at the Green River crossing. Hickman’s bunch of Mormons had retreated from the valley and hadn’t been seen again until this past May when William A. Hickman had moved his wagons filled with Salt Lake City trade goods past Fort Bridger without so much as stopping or so much as a by-your-leave, first attempting to erect a store not far from Jim’s ferry on the Green River, hoping to capture some of the emigrant trade. But, Jim’s employees—old mountain men all—at that well-established ferry hadn’t let Hickman and his bunch of Mormons bully them away. No, not since those ferrymen were all old veterans of the fur trade, men not about to knuckle under to the bluster and bravado of Brigham Young’s chosen people. Hickman’s outfit hadn’t stayed long on the Green before pushing east to Pacific Springs, which lay right on the western side of the great saddle that was the Southern Pass. There his operation finally began to capture a little of the emigrant trade, siphoning off some of what would have otherwise come on down to Black’s Fork to trade at the far better-known Fort Bridger.

Hearing the name of William A. Hickman was clearly not a good omen.

Seething, Scratch cursed the day the Saints had ever come into this wilderness in search of their Promised Land. Day by day, season by season, Brigham Young and his zealous faithful had gone and changed things far, far more out here than all those Oregon- and California-bound emigrants ever did. The others had gone on through to faraway lands, but the Saints had plopped down right in these mountains, where it eventually had become clear as sun that Brigham Young did not at all look favorably upon the notion that the influential old trapper-turned-trader was sharing this Rocky Mountain wilderness with the Prophet of the Lord. Especially now that the Saints’ Promised Land had become a United States territory, one that encompassed this wild and beautiful valley of the Green River, now that Governor Brigham Young was prepared to waste no effort to see that only his faithful would thrive in this new territory of Utah. No Gentile, especially the renowned Jim Bridger—who had been the real visionary to reveal the Promised Land to the Prophet himself—was bound to last long if he went up against the might of Brigham Young and his personal army of Avenging Angels.

“What’s he come to see me for?” Jim asked Flea.

“Take over your post.”

With a snort, Bridger scoffed at that with a grin. “You must’ve got that wrong, son. Hickman is a oily sort, that’s for certain, an’ I wouldn’t trust the bastard no farther’n I could spit—but I don’t think he’s got huevos big enough to try takin’ over my post—”

“Hickerman and many, many riders,” Flea interrupted.

“Where, son?” Titus asked, growing concerned as he studied his son’s face—heard how the youngster emphasized that word: many.

Flea pointed back in the direction of the post, less than two miles off to the east.

“At the fort awready?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

Flea dropped his pony’s rein and held up both hands, closed his fingers quickly, again and again, until he had tallied more than 150 horsemen.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Scratch exclaimed as his son’s hands finally dropped to his sides. He turned to look at Bridger. “All men?”

“Yes,” Flea answered again.

“He brung a goddamned army!” Jim growled.

Clamping a hand on his son’s bare shoulder, Titus asked, “They know you come to tell us?”

Flea shook his head. For a moment he sought the American for it, then broke into Crow. “I was in the trees with Jackrabbit. We heard horses coming. Everyone heard that many horses coming. Men with many guns. Guns here,” and he pantomimed stuffing his hand in his belt like a pistol. “And here,” he gestured for another pistol stuffed in the belt. “Lots of long weapons too.” Flea quickly raised an imaginary rifle to his shoulder.

Bridger’s eyes were wide and lit with flame as he lunged closer to Flea. “The women, the young’uns—they all right?”

Glancing quickly at his father, Flea looked at the trader and said, “Hickerman no hurt womens and youngs.”

“What’d he do with ’em?” Jim demanded as he gripped both of Flea’s broad shoulders.

“Put all in your lodge.”

“All of ’em?” Titus asked.

Flea nodded.

“How’d you get away?” Bridger inquired.

“I send Jackrabbit back to fort,” he explained. “Said to him: tell mama—tell her I go for you men folk. Be sure to tell her in Apsaluuke, brother. No word in American talk, I told him. Jackrabbit went slow from the trees to fort gate. Hickerman’s riders come out and jump around Jackrabbit, pulled him off horse, throwed him through gate … last thing I see—they pushed him on ground again.”

Titus felt his gorge rising. Those goddamned bastards abusing and muscling around a ten-year-old boy! Damn, but he’d hated bullies all his life—be it men like Silas Cooper or Phineas Hargrove, Bill Hickman or even Brigham Young his own saintly self.

Licking his lips in anger at the taste of bile drenching the back of his throat, Titus asked, “How you come from the fort?”

“Down the creek,” he answered in Crow. “These gun riders don’t see me for the trees and the brush. When they pulled Jackrabbit off his pony and into the fort, they didn’t see me in trees.”

“Did you watch Jackrabbit get to the cabin with the women and young’uns?”

“No,” Flea admitted. “Hickerman pulled Jackrabbit off ground by his hair at the gate, then I saw them no more. I led my pony to the water, got on and stayed in the creek till no eyes could see me from the fort.”

“Good,” Bass said. He turned to Bridger, his tone grave. “You an’ me go in there—don’t think we can count on doin’ any good agin’ more’n a hunnert fifty of Hickman’s gunners.”

“I don’t know what he’s fixin’ on doin’—come to take my post,” Jim groaned, desperation thick in his voice. “Or why he’s done it.” Then his eyes lit with hope and he said, “Maybeso you an’ me ought’n head to the ferry and get the rest o’ the fellas up at the Green.”

“Seven of ’em is all we could scrape together, Gabe,” Scratch declared. “That don’t make for good odds, even if we’re goin’ up agin’ bad-shot Marmons.”

Bridger snatched hold of the front of Bass’s shirt. “What the hell we gonna do? They got our women! Our young’uns too!”

Gently taking hold of Bridger’s shoulders, Titus said, “I dunno, Gabe. I ain’t never stared somethin’ like this in the eye, somethin’ where I had … no way out of it.”

Slowly, the trader released Scratch’s shirt. “Awright. How we gonna find out what Hickman wants and get our families out of there … ’thout gettin’ ourselves killed?”

“Only thing we can do is wait him out for a day or so—”

“Wait? They got our families in there!” Jim protested. “What’d you do if’n it were Injuns took hold of your woman an’ young’uns?”

“The Blackfoot done that to me once’t,” Titus reminded.

“You went after ’em too. Back when Waits got the pox and her brother was kill’t freein’ her from Bug’s boys with you.”

“Then you know there’s nothin’ gonna stop me from goin’ after Hickman once them Marmons light out for the Salt Lake with our families,” Titus vowed.

“We just sit?”

“No,” and he was struck with an idea. “We got Flea here. He looks ’bout as much a Injun as them Marmons ever see’d.”

“Flea?” Bridger echoed.

Scratch turned to his eldest boy. “Son, I want you to ride in there like you come to do some tradin’—”

“He ain’t got nothin’ to trade!” Bridger interrupted.

“Shit,” Titus grumped. “Awright. You just come ridin’ in there to have yourself a gander at all the shiny geegaws the trader got for sale. You unnerstand?”

Flea nodded. “No American talk?”

“Not one word, ’cept to say Bridger, an’ maybe the word trade” Titus explained. “That way them Marmons won’t know you unnerstand much American.”

Jim stepped up the youngster. “Can you do this?”

Unflinchingly, he answered in his harshest American, “I can damn well do.”

“This gonna be just ’bout the most important thing you ever done for your mother,” Scratch declared. “For your friends too.”

Flea looked his father in the eye steadily as he said in Crow, “I am a man now, Father. There are many ways for a warrior to fight to protect the ones he loves. Sometimes a man doesn’t have to raise a weapon to defend his family. Now is the time to show you I am a man.”

That declaration brought tears to the old man’s eyes. He blinked and swiped at his cheeks, then laid his arm around his tall son’s shoulders and brought the young man against him in a tight embrace.

When he took a step back and looked at Flea, Scratch said, “I-I didn’t realize how much you’d growed, son. Jupiter’s fire, if you ain’t shot up taller’n me in the last year or so. Yes, you’re a man by anyone’s ’count—an’ that makes your pa real proud.”

Bridger held out his arm and clasped wrists with the youngster. Then Flea snatched up the long buffalo-hair rein, a handful of mane, and leaped onto the pony’s bare back.

Titus stepped up, laying his hand on the lad’s bare knee, and asked, “You know them rocks way upstream what look like a mountain lion’s head?”

Flea nodded.

“That’s where you’ll find us when you got some news,” Scratch concluded.

In Crow, the youngster said, “I hope to rejoin you by sunset.” Then he spun his pony around and kicked it in the flanks to set off at a lope.

“What’d he say there at the last?” Bridger asked.

Bass watched the young man’s back until rider and pony disappeared around a brushy bend in the stream. “Said he’d come to us by sundown.”

Gazing at the sun blazing high at midsky for a moment, Jim growled, “Sundown. Damn, hot as it is right now, I’ll lay it’s gonna get cold for our old bones afore sunup tomorrow.”

“C’mon, Gabe. No sense thinkin’ ’bout what’s gonna be hard of it,” he cheered. “That Hickman’s got blood in his eye so he’s bound to put out searchers now that he ain’t found Jim Bridger sittin’ round home.”

“I s’pose you’re right,” and Jim yanked at the knot tying his horse to a willow limb.

Scratch swung into the saddle and stuffed his moccasins inside the big cottonwood stirrups. “We better scat into the hills afore Brigham Young’s bully-boys come beatin’ these bushes so they can get their hands on you.”

Which is exactly what the Danite posse did.

But those noisy Mormons didn’t search upstream far enough to get anywhere close to where Bridger and Bass lay in hiding, waiting for Flea to bring them some news as to who these interlopers were and what they wanted. Instead, two different groups of riders were spotted heading down one side of Black’s Fork, busting the brush for their wanted man, then crossing the creek to turn about for the fort by riding down the other side of the stream. The sun had just set behind them, but the sky was still radiant with an orangehued summer light when Titus spotted the lone horseman moving down from the hills through a narrow coulee, hugging the willow.

Damn if that didn’t make him proud of the boy. From the looks of things, Flea had come around the long way, climbing north toward the ridge before he made a long and circuitous loop back to the west. Now that he had reached Black’s Fork, every fifty yards or so Flea reined up his pony, turned around, and waited. Likely listening for the sounds of anyone dogging his back trail. Then he advanced a little farther before he stopped again and waited.

From their perch up on the rocks, the two old trappers could clearly see the Danites hadn’t followed the youth, or—better yet—that Flea had shaken any who had attempted to tail him by leaving the fort in the opposite direction before circling back around behind the low hills. The young man’s face was a stony mask of determination mixed with utter hatred when the two men stepped out of the brush and made themselves known.

“What you find out, son?” Titus asked in American as Flea slid from the back of his pony and pulled off the thick saddle blanket he had been sitting on.

The youngster stuffed his head through a slit previously cut through the middle of it so that it hung from his bare shoulders like a greaser’s poncho. “I hear these men talk to my mother. They ask, she Bridger woman? She say other woman, point to The Fawn.” Then he looked at Jim to say, “Sheriff, he come for you.”

“One of ’em’s a sheriff?” Bridger asked.

But Titus interrupted to ask, “What’s a sheriff come to take Jim for?”

“Sheriff shake paper in hand. Say come take you away—you sell powder and guns to bad Injuns … Injuns gonna kill their people.”

“Injuns gonna kill Mormons?” Bridger asked.

“I s’pose that’s what they come to arrest you for, Gabe.” Then Scratch spat a brown stream at the dry grass near his moccasin toe. “We both know that’s horseshit.”

“Here I was the one what even warned ’em two year ago that the Bannocks was gettin’ a mite fractious an’ was comin’ to raid their settlements!” Jim grumped.

“None of this has to make sense to no one but that goddamned Brigham Young,” Titus said. “He’s the one wanted you out of here right from the start. Can’t you see that now?”

“Why the hell he’d want to get rid of me for?”

“Man like him—all his high-an’-mighty kind—these here mountains ain’t near big enough for him an’ the rest of us too,” Bass growled. “Way they’re showin’ their colors, Brigham Young an’ his Marmons ain’t no better’n a pack o’ plunderin’ Blackfoots. Come to steal away ever’thing they can … an’ what they can’t steal—they’ll kill.”

“You don’t think they’ll harm them women an’ young’uns in there?”

“I dunno,” Titus admitted. “Don’t know what to think anymore now. The hull durn mountains is turned topsy on us, Gabe. The used-to-be’s don’t count for nothin’ anymore.”

Bridger’s hands flexed into fists as he asked, “What’s a man to do when that Lion of the Lord sends out a murderin’ bunch that outnumbers us the way they do?”

Scratch said, “Only thing I figger on us to do is get word over to Laramie.”

“Fort Laramie?”

He nodded. “Yep. Them soldiers is the only law you got to go to for help.”

Bridger shuddered. “Used to be, we settled things here ourselves. Took care to right a wrong on our own.”

“Don’t bet your last pair of wool drawers on it,” Scratch said, “but I’ll bet Brigham Young knowed you was the sort to take care of yourself. That’s why he sent more’n a hunnert an’ a half up here to steal your post away from you. With that many of them niggers swoopin’ down on your fort, that Marmon president knew damn well there was nothin’ you could do to fight back.”

He watched Bridger grind his teeth on the dilemma for a few moments, until Flea laid his hand on his father’s forearm.

“Popo, these raiders,” he spoke quietly in Crow, “they found Bridger’s whiskey.”

“They bust open the kegs, them gut-bait, high-talkin’ preachers?”

Flea shook his head. “No, they took down cups, poured the whiskey, passed it around. Drank up one barrel. Then opened a second barrel too.”

“They’re drinkin’ my goddamned whiskey?” Jim squealed after Titus translated. “That ain’t good for them women and our young’uns—”

“Maybe it might just be,” Scratch said, clutching at hope. “Could be, them Marmons gonna have themselves a hurraw on your free whiskey. I’ll lay a wager that Brigham Young is the sort of preacher what figgers whiskey is the devil’s own squeezin’s, so he told ’em to destroy all your whiskey they found.”

Bridget’s eyes gleamed. “So they’re destroyin’ it drop by drop in their cups?”

Titus nodded. “Right. An’ if I can put my faith in them gals of ours, they’ll slip off with the young’uns when them Marmons is drunk an’ our families got the chance to get away.”

“My mama, she told these sheriff men they don’t touch her or any child,” Flea explained. “Bridger woman, she told sheriff that he hurt her or any child, her father was the great chief Washakie. This great chief of Shoshone people hear they hurt her—then Washakie put ten-times-hundred warriors into battle to wipe out sheriff men … then go wipe out all the villages where sheriff men come from.”

Bridger grinned, “Damn if Mary didn’t tell ’em off!”

Still, Bass asked of his son, “W-what’d these Marmons say to The Fawn’s speech?”

Flea smiled. “Sheriff men good now. Said they want no trouble with Washakie people. Said they don’t hurt no woman, hurt no child either. Leave them alone in Bridger lodge—go drink on Bridger whiskey barrels, drink lots on whiskey barrels.”

“They put out guards?” Titus asked. “You see any guards when you rode off?”

He thought a moment, then held up some fingers.

To which Scratch said, “So Hickman an’ Brigham Young’s sheriff got less’n a dozen guards out for the night, while the rest of ’em are bathin’ their gullets with your whiskey, Gabe. I don’t think them women gonna sit over there in that fort of your’n for long tonight.”

“Likely Waits-by-the-Water can help Mary an’ all the young’uns slip off afore first light?”

Bass nodded with a grin. “I figger them preachy Marmons gonna be dead drunk by then, my friend.”

There was nothing better in the world than the feel of Waits in his arms, her head nestled in the crook of his neck—just the smell and sense of her as Waits-by-the-Water shuddered against him in utter relief. For the first time in these past few months, Titus suddenly realized how big she had become, her belly swollen with their child she was carrying.

It was at that moment he noticed how his two youngest stood off to the side in the dim light of false dawn. Titus waved them close. Jackrabbit and little four-year-old Crane both came up to their parents, one arm hugging their father’s leg, the other arm hugging their mother’s leg.

“What kind of god do these white man worship?” she sobbed against him in Crow. “A god that is no better than the Blackfoot spirit that allows them to attack a woman’s home, to capture her children—the same god who commands all his evil followers to commit misdeeds in the name of the First Maker?”

“I haven’t figured that out,” he whispered quietly in the first hints of a coming sun. “But from what I’ve seen, the leader of these people is every bit as evil as any Blackfoot war chief I ever ran up against. Maybe even more evil, because he parades around in all the trappings of the one man God has picked to lead His chosen people.”

Within minutes of their emotional reunion with their wives and children, Mary Bridger began to tell her husband about the conversations she had with Hickman, as well as the Mormon sheriff and a few of the 150-man posse sent from Salt Lake City with Brigham Young’s orders to arrest the trader for providing powder and lead and firearms to Indians who were reportedly hostile to the Mormon settlement of the Great Basin. Mary went on to confirm Flea’s story of how she had cowed the posse leaders and protected the fort’s occupants by immediately telling them in her best English that she was the daughter of the great chief Washakie—so that if these raiders dared hurt anyone her father would see to it that a thousand Shoshone warriors swept the land clear of all Mormon outposts.

“One of them Saints told her they had nothin’ but the deepest friendship for Washakie’s Shoshone,” Bridger declared. “But they said they still had orders to take me down to Salt Lake City with ’em so I could stand trial for my crimes against the territory of Utah.”

“What’d she tell ’em then?”

“Mary lied an’ told ’em she hadn’t see’d me for a few days—I was out huntin’,” Jim replied. “So that’s when they sent out them four search parties to look for me in the hills.” Then he grew pensive, staring at the thin red line across the far horizon, where a new day was coming. A new day.

“What is it, Gabe?”

“Mary said there was a bunch—forty men she counted—ordered north to the Green River,” Bridger stated grimly. “From the house where she an’ Waits locked themselves in, she heard the orders give to them forty Mormons to ride straight for the ferry on the Green an’ take it by force.”

“Shadrach’s up th-there,” Bass stammered. “An’ more’n another ten ol’ hivernants we know—friends of ours workin’ that ferry till the river freezes up for the winter. Them Marmons go to shootin’, I don’t know how long them boys can hold out.”

“That’s where we oughtta go first,” Bridger declared firmly.

“Awright. I figger them Marmons down in your post won’t be risin’ real early this mornin’—seein’ how Mary let ’em all get a real snootful of her husband’s whiskey,” Titus said. “We’ll light out for Green River to see if we can help Shad an’ the rest hold off them snake-belly, back-stabbin’ thieves.”

^*August 26, 1853.