As he was digging at the bottom of his pouch for a lead ball, Bass watched how two of the Mormons were screaming at the others—ordering them off their horses and into the brush. Must be leaders of the bunch.
“I-I got one of them!” Hockaday announced.
“Kill ’im?” he asked.
“No, don’t think so,” the surveyor said. “Hit him in the leg.”
“Good enough,” Bridger growled. “Ain’t likely he can do any good with a gun no how, not now.”
The Mormons made it to the timber with their wounded as the wagons rattled up the valley and out of sight. Six horses lay on the crisp, brown grass of the meadow just now getting dusted with an icy snow—some of them lay dead in a heap, the others wounded and neighing pitifully. Two more hobbled around with broken legs, crying out. Bass wanted to drop them both and put them right out of their pain, but for the time being he’d save his shots for those Mormons hiding in the brush.
“Shad!” Bridger shouted. “Work your way in on ’em to the west!”
“You want any of ’em left alive?” Sweete called out.
“Only kill the ones what won’t run off, boys!” Gabe instructed. “Put them others afoot an’ let ’em walk outta here!”
“You don’t stand a chance, Bridger!” that voice cried again, the one with the mean edge to it. “Give up now and we won’t have to kill you to get you back to Salt Lake City as our prisoner.”
Scratch roared, “I’m afeared you Marmons don’t know what you bit off comin’ back here!”
“Only a matter of time, Bridger!”
The two of them both fired shots into the brush, then looked at one another. Gabe was the first to speak.
“He might be right, Scratch,” Jim whispered sadly. “Looks to be only a matter of time afore them an’ their kind run all over these mountains.”
“Naw, don’t go thinkin’ like that, Gabe,” he pleaded. “There’s still places for men like us. Get back far enough, up high enough … there’s still places left for our kind.”
“How far away, Scratch?” Jim asked as he began reloading. “How far’s a man gotta go to find such a place?”
“North,” he said as he poked his barrel back through the slot between the timbers. “Far enough from this here road to Oregon. Go far enough I can’t see trouble no more.”
“That’s where you’re fixin’ to take your family?”
He was sprinkling some priming powder in the pan when he looked up at his old friend. “This gotta be my last trip back to Crow country, Jim.”
“Why, ain’t you ever gonna come visitin’ again? Gonna let these here Saints run you off?”
Scratch wagged his head. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the dream one of them ol’ Crow rattle-shakers had for me. Said I was gonna go under if I ever left again.”
“So, when you go back now—you ain’t leavin’ no more?” Bridger asked, a grave look on his face.
Glancing quickly at the wide, questioning eyes of Hockaday, Titus said, “I got tired somewhere down the trail aways, Gabe. Don’t know where … can’t rightly say when neither. But, I wanna get my woman an’ our young’uns back north where there ain’t no white niggers stirrin’ up trouble for us.”
Bridger grinned and snorted, “Just Blackfoot!”
He laughed too. “That’s right. Man-allays knows what to expect outta Blackfoot, don’t he?”
Turning to Hockaday, Jim explained, “With them Blackfeets, there’s more killin’ and stealin’ too, than there be with any other red niggers.”
Bass nodded: “Up north, near them Bug’s boys, a fella puts his nose up like this … an’ he can tell what’s in the wind, Mr. Hockaday. Down here in this country a man’s gotta work to figger our which white men are good, which white men ain’t. Up there, life ain’t near so confusin’. You hunt an’ you live. Life goes on easy, ’cept for one worry. Only one worry, Mr. Hockaday. When the Blackfoot come ’round … there’s allays the worst kind of trouble. It’s a good an’ simple life.”
The surveyor asked, “Y-you’d rather live with that sort of worry than down-here where Bridger has made his claim?”
He stared along the barrel of his rifle at that patch of brush where some muzzle smoke appeared a second time. The Mormon hadn’t moved so was doing his damnedest to make himself an inviting target.
“Think I would rather live where folks don’t make out to be something they ain’t, Mr. Hockaday,” he said, turning slightly to look at the surveyor again. “Some folks; like these here Marmons—they gussy up their talk with all the Bible words, but they ain’t no God-fearin’ folk. Hell, Jim, even Ol’ Solitaire—Bill Williams his own self—was more a holy man than Brigham Young an’ a hull territory of his Marmons, all of ’em throwed together in a tater sack!”
Titus looked back down along the barrel at his sight picture and set the back trigger. “No, Mr. Hockaday—these here Marmons are the sort to parade around in the clothes of some holy folk … when all along they really set out to steal ever’thing they want an’ murder ever’ man what stands in their way.”
Scratch waited a few moments after firing at the leafless brush, staring at that spot where he had been aiming. But he never spotted another puff of muzzle smoke. Fact was, during those heartbeats he waited, the Mormons started yelling a lot at one another, and their return fire was quickly withering.
Then through the trees upstream, Titus saw what blur of movement the other old free men could see from their positions. Their enemy was mounting up, helping those bleeding, wounded men onto what they had left of horses, every one of them retreating without much grace or ceremony.
“Ain’t that downright ill mannered of ’em, Gabe,” Titus growled as he pulled the barrel back through the opening, blew down the muzzle, then stuck the plug to his powder horn between his teeth.
“Ill m-mannered?” Hockaday asked.
“That’s right,” Bass replied, pouring a measure of powder from his horn into a brass charger. “I ’spected them holy folks to have better manners than they showed, Mr. Hockaday. You see, Brigham Young’s murderers just run off with their tails atween their legs … but ’thout givin’ any of us the slightest by-your-leave or fare-thee-well!”
Gabe was laughing as he clambered to his feet and peered over the top of the timbers, shaking his fist at the sky. “You tell Brigham Young he’s gonna have to send more’n you milk-teat pilgrims if’n he wants to drive me outta my home!”
By that time Scratch was scrambling to his feet, having rammed home a lead ball. He cradled the flintlock across his left elbow and began to prime the pan on the gun’s ignition. “Only way them murderin’ thieves ever gonna take this here place from you, Jim—they’re gonna have to come agin us with a army.”
When Titus turned to look at him, Bridger’s smile of victory had faded. His face was like a fruit gone sour and pithy.
“That’s just what Brigham Young’s gonna do now that we throwed this bunch back, Scratch,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You an’ me both know it. Lookit us, just lookit us—there be less’n a dozen ol’ hivernants left in these here mountains now. We won’t ever hold back that bastard’s army when he sends it next time.”
Bridger turned away slowly, his shoulders sagging with regret and more while he started trudging away from the charred wall. Titus turned, his eye finding the rest of their friends emerging from the brush and cottonwoods, stepping into the open and starting for the ruins of Bridger’s post, their breath become long streamers in the icy air.
“Jim!” he cried as the snow began to turn serious. Bridger stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at Bass. “Come north with-me, Gabe. Come north.”
The trader deliberated on it for a long moment as he stared at the toes of his moccasins, then raised his eyes. “No. I’m gonna take Mary an’ the young’uns to the Green River. That’s where Brigham Young’s territory of Utah ends. Where his Saints don’t rule.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothin’
right now,” Jim admitted as Shad and the others slowly moved up and stopped in silence. “But come spring, I’ll scout for a better crossing, build me a better ferry too.”
“You gonna run it your own self?” Titus asked.
For a moment Gabe looked at the others as if he were a man who regretted dragging his friends through any more of his tribulations, and finally said, “If’n I have to, I will run it myself.”
“I’ll help,” Shad offered. “I ain’t got nowhere to be in a hurry.”
Then one by one the other old mountain men offered their services too, even though Jim was quick to remind them that Brigham Young’s Saints had already murdered five of their friends in a vicious and surprise attack.
“Don’t know for the rest of these fellas,” one of them replied to Bridger’s warning. “But for me, I ain’t got nowhere else to be neither. Like for Shadrach here, I figger the Seedskeedee is good a place as any for a man to stay out the rest of his days.”
Then Bridger took a step toward Bass as icy pricks of snow danced and swirled about them. Standing beside Titus, Hockaday tugged up the collar of his coat and shivered as a gust of wind slapped some of the sharp, cold lancets against their exposed skin.
Jim asked, “How ’bout you, Scratch? You got any place better to be than Green River come next spring?”
“Crow country.”
Sweete inquired, “Why you fix your sights so far away up there?”
“Yeah,” Bridger added, “this here’s a good country too.”
“For some folks, I’ll lay as that’s so,” he sighed. And finally said, “One time a ol’ friend of mine named Rotten Belly told me Crow country was right where First Maker intended it to be. A man goes south, he must wander and worry over a desert, where the water’s too warm an’ folks grow sick. If a man goes north, the summers are short and the snow lays deep a long, long time. To the west the people eat fish and they grow old too soon, their teeth rotten too, since’t they don’t have proper meat. And in the east, a man finds the water muddy, the land closed in so he can’t see far at all, and too many folks creepin’ out from the settlements. No, Gabe—I’ll head for that Yallerstone country. Seems to this child he’s been showed the right place.”
“You gonna winter your family on the Green with us, or you figger to head north now?”
He squinted his eyes and drew in a long breath of the cold, shocking air. Then he answered, “Now’s the time my bones tell me go north, afore winter sets in too hard.”
“What you say to ridin’ with us to the Green?” Bridger asked.
With a sad smile, Titus said, “I’d like to ride with you fellas that far. One last journey together, till it’s time for me to cross the Seedskeedee. Cross the Green … one last time.”
THIRTY-ONE
A week later as they were nearing the Green River, they ran onto Washakie’s village marching south. Word of the troubles had reached Bridger’s father-in-law, and he was leading more than twelve hundred warriors south to spend the winter in the Black’s Fork country, if need be to drive off any more of the Mormon attacks.
But Gabe and the others had sat in that council circle with the headmen of the Shoshone nation while he tried to explain to them that he did not want them to take up his cause. Eventually the Indians came to understand in their own way that if they sought to protect this friend and relation from those white men who stole and murdered, then the white man’s dragoons would be called upon to come after Washakie’s people. And even if the Shoshone won the first few contests with the white soldiers, more and more would keep coming … just as the Snakes had watched more and more white men flooding through their country, heading for Oregon, California, and—the valley of Brigham Young’s Saints.
“I do not profess to understand the heart of the white man,” Washakie admitted sadly. “I do know the heart of other red men. I know if those hearts mean to do me good, or if they seek to do me evil. Their hearts are there for me to read.”
“Like the hearts of the Blackfoot who struck your people a few days ago?” Jim asked.
“Yes—a large war party of them,” Washakie said, nodding with pride. “They came far to the south to attack my people—because they did not expect us to be so strong. They have not been as powerful as they were since the spotted sickness wasted so many of them away like breathsmoke. So our fighting men ran them off, like yipping dogs with their tails curled between their legs. The mighty Blackfoot!”
“This is good!” Bridger exclaimed, and quickly translated again for the rest of the old trappers who did not understand the Shoshone tongue.
“But,” Washakie warned, “a hurt animal is a dangerous animal. And the war party may try to hurt others—the Flathead, Assiniboine, or even the Crow. But,” and now he smiled as he said, “I am assured they have learned never to come south again to raid Washakie’s people!”
He and Bridger were the same age, and between them had been a strong bond that dated back to when Jim’s trapping brigade was fighting off an overwhelming number of Blackfoot, slowly being bested, until Washakie and his warriors showed up and drove off the attackers.
“Sometimes I do not understand the things the white man does,” the chief continued. “The Grandfather far to the east, who told us to make peace with the white man and with the other tribes at Horse Creek, he tells us we must no longer steal ponies from our enemies.”
“That’s right,” Bridger said.
Washakie continued, “The Great Father tells us we must no longer raid and plunder and kill our enemies. Is this so?”
“When you put your mark on that paper, that is what you agreed to,” Jim declared.
Drawing himself up Washakie asked, accusingly, “Then where were these other white men when we put our marks on that paper and promised not to steal or kill? Where were they?”
“Who?” Bridger asked.
“The white men who came to your lodge, stole your horses and stock, drove my daughter and your children off into the cold, then carried everything else away before they burned your lodge? Where were those white men when we made our promises?”
Gabe wagged his head. “They did not sign the paper.”
“Why does the Grandfather and his soldiers allow this?” Washakie demanded, slamming a fist into an open palm. “How can this be right, for white men to steal from those who have been their friends? How can those white men come kill their friends?”
Bridger shrugged. Without an answer.
“You white men have a strange justice, my old friend,” Washakie replied sourly. “You are my son, you are my brother. So I will do what you ask of me, instead of driving these bad white people from our land forever. For your sake only, I will not draw my knife against them.”
Bass leaned over and whispered into Bridger’s ear, “You unnerstand what you just done?”
“What?”
“You just saved the life of the one man who’s set out to steal ever’thing he can from you,” Titus explained. “The man who’s set out to murder friends of your’n if they stood against him. You unnerstand you just saved the wuthless, flea-bit hide of Brigham Young hisself.”
Turning to his old friend, Jim’s eyes reflected the pain and frustration that Titus was himself feeling. Gabe said, “If’n it turns out that I saved Brigham Young’s life by savin’ these Shoshone from even more trouble, then that’s the way it’s gotta be, Scratch. One day, Brigham Young an’ me gonna square accounts. That’s as certain as sun.”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” Bass grumbled. “Brigham Young’s the wust cut of coward. He’s not man enough to stand an’ fight you square, Jim. He’s a yeller-backed, throat-cuttin’, weasel-gutted coward who’s gone high an’ mighty, hidin’ behin’t all his believers, lettin’ his army of Avengin’ Angels do his dirty blood work for him. No man I ever had respect for gone an’ hid behin’t a murderin’ mob the way Brigham Young does.”
Near the end of their council, Gabe explained to Washakie that he was going to spend the win
ter on the Green, and when spring arrived he and his friends would build a new ferry for the white-topped wagons heading west along the Great Medicine Road. Once the ferry was in operation, Bridger declared that he intended to take Mary and the children back east, as far as the settlement of Westport perhaps. There they should be out of harm’s way, either white or red.
“Will you keep my daughter far from her father for all time?” Washakie asked solemnly.
“Long as I see it’s safe out here, old friend,” he sighed, “I’ll bring her back one day. But I want my father-in-law to understand I’ve lost two wives already. I could not go on if I lost Little Fawn too.”
Nodding, Washakie said, “A woman goes the way of her husband. If he rides into trouble, she rides too. But if he takes his family far, far away from harm, then she must go with her husband. My heart will grieve for our separation, but I know you will take her where she will be safe.”
That was all any man ever wanted for his family, Titus thought that night through and on into the graying of the morning. Somewhere safe where a man could live out the last of his days in peace. Maybe in Absaroka.
Washakie’s camp was slow to awaken that cold morning as a few errant snowflakes bobbed and danced on a cold wind, scudding along an icy rime that coated the ground. But somehow Shadrach and Bridger sensed what was afoot. They awoke the other old friends early and kicked life into their fire, then set coffee on to boil before they pitched in to help bundle up what few possessions Waits-by-the-Water owned after the Mormons had burned or stolen everything from Jim’s post. Old friends joked and kidded one another, like they had in the old days, squatting around the fire, drinking the steamy coffee, and chewing on strips of lean, dried buffalo. But by the time the sun was rising low upon the southern horizon, Scratch knew he could no longer put off this one last crossing of the Green.
“We’ll be here all summer long,” Bridger reminded, “somewhere along this stretch of the river.”
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