Once he got up behind the Snake delegates, Scratch whispered, “Gabe!”
Bridger turned, bringing a flat hand under his hat brim to shade his eyes while he studied the caller. His face immediately lit up and he scrambled to his feet, waving Titus to come his way. The instant Bass had threaded his way through the Shoshone, the trader looped his arms around him and exclaimed, “Scratch, you ol’ buzzard! It’s been three winters already! Damn me if I didn’t think you’d gone under for sure up in Crow country!”
“But here I walk, Gabe!”
“Sit,” Bridger said as they both settled on the robe and leaned their faces close to whisper. “Hell, if it ain’t four years this very month since you took off north.”
“You see’d any sign o’ Shadrach?” Titus asked. “He ever come back from Oregon?”
Wagging his head, sadly Bridger said, “No. He ain’t.”
“You hear anything from him?” he asked with disappointment. “Figger he made it there with that emigrant train?”
Bridger snorted, “Oh, that tall boy made it, all right. I heard it from Joe Meek’s tongue hisself.”
“When you see Joe?”
“He an’ Squire Ebbert come through, late that winter,” Bridger confided. “They was on snowshoes they’d made themselves: willow an’ rawhide. Had to put down their horses and eat ’em back up the trail. Starvin’ times.”
“What the hell they show up at Fort Bridger in the winter for?”
Jim explained, “Joe was hurtin’ something bad. He an’ Squire was the last of a bunch headin’ east for the States. Figgered to rally up some soldiers to come help out in Oregon.”
“The Britishers makin’ trouble?” Titus asked, bristling.
Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Injuns. Cayuse. They murdered Doc and Mrs. Whitman.”
“The sawbones what dug that arrowhead out’n your hump meat back at ronnyvoo?”
“Yep.”
“An’ that purty yellow-haired wife of his too?”
“Cayuse killed some young’uns what was at their mission school,” Bridger said gravely. “Joe lost him his daughter to them red buggers. Found her body dug up by wolves.”
“Murderin’ sonsabitches!” Titus grumbled, grinding a fist into his left palm. “Killin’ women an’ young’uns. Damn ’em to hell anyway. So w-what become of it? Them Oregoners make war on them Cayuse what started killin’ white folks?”
“Wasn’t a war on white people. Joe told me them red-bellies had it in for the Whitmans—so they killed ’em all at the school. Medicine men got ’em stirred up, to Joe’s way of thinking. Medicine men what didn’t like the Whitmans teachin’ their people ’bout the white God.”
“Joe go back to Oregon?”
“He’s back there, much as I know,” Jim replied. “But I ain’t see’d Shadrach.”
“Heard you come over here with the Snakes.”
Bridger nodded. “Where away was you bound, when you happed on Fitzpatrick’s big peace council?”
“We was invited,” Titus announced.
“In-invited?”
“Not a lonely ol’ badger like me! But Meldrum, trader up to Fort Alexander on the Yellowstone. Fitz asked him an’ the Crow to come.”
Bridger’s face lit up. “So you rode down with the Crow chiefs?”
“I did. Meldrum asked me. Brung the wife an’ young’uns too.”
“Let’s see now,” and Bridger scratched at his cheek with a widening grin, “I’ll bet you’re havin’ to use a big stick to knock them young Crow bucks away from that oldest girl of your’n. She was a purty thing.”
“Magpie? Why, we got the girl married off just afore we set off for these here peace talks.”
“Married! I’ll be dogged—I wouldn’t thought you were a coon old enough to marry off a daughter—”
“Mr. Bridger!”
They both turned to peer into the shade of the council tent, finding all the faces looking their way.
Scratch whispered from the side of his mouth, “Who’s that?”
“Mitchell—big white Injun father from back east,” Bridger hissed.
The big-bellied man gestured toward the open ground in front of the council awning and proclaimed, “Mr. Bridger, time has come for the Shoshone to give their speeches—”
“Who the hell’s that sittin’ with you, Gabe?” Fitzpatrick roared in interruption, lunging to his feet and starting their way.
“Been a long time since I laid eyes on yer white-haired carcass, Fitz,” Titus said as he got to his feet too and started toward the agent.
“Wasn’t sure that was really you, Titus Bass!” the agent’s voice boomed as they met near the Shoshone delegation and pounded one another on the back. “Heard stories every now and then. Lots of stories ’bout you. Most of ’em got to do with some new way they said you gone under!” When they backed apart, Fitzpatrick said, “Wasn’t all that sure when you come through the crowd an’ sat down with Bridger there. Neither of us look much the same as we did years back when beaver was high an’ we was young.”
Reaching out to stroke the side of Fitzpatrick’s long hair, Scratch said, “You ain’t changed much, you ol’ whitehead. Shit, I ’member when them Injun trappers brung you into Pierre’s Hole back to thirty-two. Lookin’ at you was like we’d all see’d a ghost our own selves. Your ha’r used to be sleek an’ black as a otter’s … an’ after what you come through, gettin’ chased down by them Blackfoot, it’d turn’t white as snow.”
“Can you figger it’s been almost twenty year now?” Fitzpatrick asked.
“Agent Fitzpatrick?” Mitchell intruded with a scolding tone. “Can you and your old crony wait until tonight after we’ve concluded the day’s negotiations to reminisce?”
Fitzpatrick grinned and shrugged as he whispered, “Back to business, Scratch. We’ll talk later. I’ll come look up you an’ Jim at the Snake camp after supper—”
“I didn’t ride in with Gabe’s Shoshone.”
“Just come to see these here doin’s on your own?”
“Hell, Fitz,” he said with a growing smile, “we got your invite clear up to the Yallerstone country. Meldrum talked me into coming down with—”
“Meldrum?” he wheezed. “The trader up there in Crow country?”
By this moment Mitchell had come right to the edge of the shade, growing irritated at this rude delay. “Agent Fitzpatrick, will you and Colonel Bridger bring the Shoshone over for their speech—”
But Fitzpatrick wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the stuffy official from the East. “Robert Meldrum? From Fort Alexander?”
“That’s him!”
“You mean you two brung the Crow down?”
“A old friend like you asks us,” Titus said, “how you figger we’re gonna let you down?”
Fitzpatrick wheeled on the official, bubbling with joy, “The Crow are here!” Then he suddenly whirled on Bass again. “Wh-where are they?”
Turning Fitzpatrick away from the side of the awning, Scratch led the agent a half dozen steps so they had a clear eye-shot at the long, low slope. “There they be, Fitz—waiting for you an’ this impatient hotheaded son of a bitch to tell us where to camp—”
The superintendent’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “Agent Fitzpatrick—there’s important business at hand to conduct!”
Wheeling about, Fitzpatrick flapped his arms at the superintendent. “And we’ll get to that business, Mr. Mitchell … but for now I’ve got to tell my friend here where he can camp with the delegation he and Robert Meldrum just brought in from the north country.”
“D-delegation?” Mitchell echoed, his crimson face marked with lines of irritation as he took three steps forward to stand bathed in the bright afternoon light.
“The Crow!” Fitzpatrick bellowed. “By jigs, if the Crow ain’t here for your peace talks!”
Mitchell demanded, “Where?”
Scratch pointed, saying, “On the hill, waitin’ for me to tell ’em where to camp.”
“You brought their delegation down from the Yellowstone country?” Mitchell inquired as he quickly started toward the three former trappers.
“Robert Meldrum did,” Scratch admitted to the superintendent. “I just come along ’cause he asked me to.”
“Who are you?”
But the white-haired Indian agent answered before Scratch could. “This here’s Titus Bass. There ain’t nowhere you go in these here mountains what you won’t hear ghosty stories told about this nigger, Mr. Mitchell. Titus Bass been about as far north as you can get afore a man gets chewed up by Blackfoot war parties, and as far south as Taos and the Apache country too. Hell, I even heard a tale you went out to California with Bill Williams sometime back!”
That’s when Bridger joined in, “This man an’ the fellers he was with stole more Mexican horses than ever come outta California!”
“So what do you have to do with the Crow?” Mitchell asked.
“My wife’s people,” he replied. “Live with ’em, hunt an’ fight with ’em too.”
“Mr. Bass,” and Mitchell suddenly held out his hand. “May I say I truly appreciate your efforts in bringing the Crow chiefs down to make a most momentous peace.”
As they were shaking, Titus said, “They got the wrong man. Wasn’t me. Robert Meldrum’s the man you an’ Fitz here invited to come with the Apsaluukes.”
“Still the same, I personally appreciate your efforts,” and Mitchell tipped his hat.
“I was in the mood for a trip,” Titus replied. “Brung my family down this way for to visit some ol’ friends, Mr. Mitchell.”
After sundown that evening Bridger and Fitzpatrick came to eat supper in the Crow camp with those two companions from the beaver days. The Indian agent explained that he had come by himself rather than bringing his Arapaho wife and infant son from his camp, worrying over the reception that might be given her by the Crow. But Scratch sent him right back for the woman and the boy.
“Way I see it, we’ve had us a long ride down from the Yellowstone, so my woman’s got a hankerin’ for woman talk, Fitz,” Titus said. “Much as there’s real bad blood atween me an’ the ’Rapaho, I figger that’s atween me an’ their menfolk. Not atween my wife an’ yours.”
Soon as the agent returned with his family, the women eventually got to communicating about children and the never-ending work of a woman, using their hands in sign language at the cooking fire, where they roasted the haunch of a tender young pony Fitzpatrick and his interpreters had butchered earlier that morning. After Jim related the grim story of how the Cheyenne had ambushed the Shoshone delegation far west of Laramie, he and Fitzpatrick went to work explaining all that had gone on since the first of the warrior bands began gathering at the fort.
“We stopped at the post,” Titus explained, “an’ Meldrum found out the place been sold to the army couple years back.”
Fitzpatrick wagged his head. “Everything would’ve been run better if the fur company still saw to things ’stead of the army.”
“You picked a good time of the year for this peace council,” Bridger said. “No emigrants on the trail. So there’s no problems with the Sioux and them Cheyenne for white wagon folks.”
“’Cept that we started runnin’ outta grass a mite soon,” the agent declared. “That’s when we moseyed on downriver, here to this valley.”
“You had to see this confabulation, Scratch!” Bridger said, his face animated. “How that bunch of soft-brained pork-eaters got all them supplies loaded up in wagons and hauled over here, I’ll never know!”
“Beads an’ blankets, knives an’ coffee for the chiefs, eh?” Titus asked.
That’s when Fitzpatrick wagged his head dolefully. “No. We still don’t have any presents for these Injuns.”
“N-no presents?” Meldrum squawked with indignation. Then he lowered his voice, saying, “What the hell you think I promised these here Crow you’d give ’em—”
“Hold on,” Fitzpatrick argued. “The presents is comin’. Just ain’t got here yet.”
“Better be any day now,” Bridger groaned. “That’s all I gotta say.”
“You mean you convinced all these Injuns to come talk peace with you an’ each other,” Titus said, “but you didn’t bring no goddamned presents for ’em?”
“I said the wagons are comin’,” the agent snapped. “Ah hell, Scratch—it ain’t you I’m angry at. It’s these damned officials from back east, and their soldiers. This summer they used my good name to invite all these warrior bands here My name! And now I’m the one gonna be huggin’ two handfuls of bare ass if those trade goods don’t get here by the time these talks are all over and the chiefs put their marks on Mitchell’s treaty.”
Bass clucked in sympathy, “You’re in a bad way if them goods don’t reach us soon. What with old enemies camped closer’n you an’ me could spit tobaccy at each other. They don’t get their blankets and kettles, beads and paint for their women … what do you think this many warriors gonna start doin’?”
“Hell if I don’t already know what they’ll start doin’,” Fitzpatrick complained. “And, to tell the truth, I hope they start with Mitchell and his bunch!”
“I’ll drink to that!” Bridger cheered. “Where’s some whiskey, Tom?”
“We ain’t got any of that either,” the agent groaned. “Mitchell didn’t want any likker in camp—seein’ how it’s contraband out here in Injun country.”
Bass made a sour face and looked over at Bridger. “You got any whiskey wuth drinkin’ over to your post on Black’s Fork, Gabe?”
“That’s a mighty long way to ride for a drink, Scratch.”
For a moment he thought about his loneliness for Magpie, then realized how safe she was up there in Crow country. She now belonged to another man. Reassured, Titus burst out laughing. “I wasn’t talkin’ ’bout tonight, you idjit! I just figgered I could foller you back to your post when these important folk got their peace talks all wrapped up here.”
“C-come to visit?”
With a shrug, Scratch said, “You an’ me got four years of catchin’ up to do, Gabe. An’ we can do a lot o’ palaver with some whiskey to wet our gullets.”
Bridger slapped Titus on the knee exuberantly. “My new wife gonna be tickled as a hen what’s just laid her first egg!”
“You got a new wife?” he asked.
“She’s my third,” Bridger confessed to his old friends.
Titus grinned. “I didn’t even know ’bout what happed to your second wife.”
“Ute gal,” he said, staring into the fire. “Married back in forty-eight. But she died givin’ birth to my li’l Virginia Rosalie, that next summer of forty-nine.”
“A Flathead gal, an’ a Utah gal too,” Titus recounted. “If you ain’t the marryin’ fool! So who’s your third wife?”
“Li’l Fawn. She’s a Snake, daughter of Washakie his own self. But I call her Mary,” Bridger boasted a little behind a big smile. “Still, there’s time she gets hungry for woman talk so she takes off to see her kin over at some camp. But if your wife comes over for a visit to the fort, she’s gonna be just the poultice to put on Mary’s case of the lonelies! Tell me true now, you’ll really come visit for the fall when we turn back for the Green?”
“I damn well couldn’t think of a better place to be than visitin’ with ol’ friends till our tongues get tired!”
* Thirty-six miles down the North Platte.
* Carry the Wind
* September 10, 1851.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Those nights during the great peace council in the valley of the North Platte were given over to feasting and dancing. One hell of a feast and a lot of nonstop dancing.
Because no buffalo roamed anywhere close to that great overland road by the end of a busy, bustling emigrant season, the tribal bands had depleted their supplies of fresh meat days ago. In fact, to Titus Bass’s way of thinking, it stood to reason that this sad business with the great buffalo herd having been split
in two by the white tide sweeping west to the shining sea had to be the sorest spot for these nomadic Indians of the plains. Not only did the shaggy beasts refuse to wander close to the Oregon and Mormon trails, but most of the abundant game in the region had either been killed off or driven away, miles and miles to the north or the south of this great migration highway. Too, there wasn’t much for the ponies of those wandering bands of brown-skinned hunters to graze on either—not after the oxen, mules, and horses of the white sojourners had cropped every edible shoot right down to the ground, starting with the first train through in early spring and running right on through until the last wagons had rattled through late in the summer.
For white and red alike, a glorious era had come and gone by that autumn of 1851. There were now, and forever would be, two great buffalo herds. But even put together their numbers came nowhere near the infinite black multitude that had once blanketed this endless and incomprehensible buffalo palace.
It wasn’t long before the bands ran out of their supply of dried meat and they took to making a dent in the dog population. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho all had long favored the canine—the younger the pup, the better. So too was dog a delicacy with the Crow delegates. But not among the Shoshone. They did not eat dog. Instead, Washakie’s Snake representatives sacrificed one of their fine young ponies each day. With tens of thousands of horses grazing the bottomland and hillsides, no one was about to go hungry as the Laramie peace council crawled toward a final agreement.
Just as each day’s parley had begun, that final morning Superintendent D. D. Mitchell had the cannon fired promptly at 9:00 a.m., his signal for the delegates to assemble at the treaty grounds. Again the Sioux made a grand and showy entrance when they crossed the river. In the lead rode an ancient warrior. Tied to a long staff carried above his head fluttered a faded and worn American flag.
“That ol’ fella claims he got that flag from the redheaded chief, Clark,” Thomas Fitzpatrick explained to Scratch.
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