Ride the Moon Down

by Terry C. Johnston

  By afternoon it was time to ride over to look up those friends who had shared a cold winter siege with him along the Yellowstone. Zeke settled in the shade with him as Kit Carson, Joe Meek, Shad Sweete, and others came up to have themselves some palaver and a little of what whiskey remained in the American Fur Company kegs.

  “Jehoshaphat!” Bass growled as his cup was filled, looking round at those company trappers who hadn’t been with Bridger’s men last winter on the Yellowstone. “If the sight of them Blackfoot skedaddling wasn’t call for ol’ Gabe to pour out a extra ration of Pratte and Chouteau’s whiskey!”

  Holding the small keg beneath one arm and doing the pouring now, Sweete added, “Damn me, boys—but this child won’t ever again have me cause to get likkered up on one poor cup!”

  The two of them were holding court there beside the Green River that hot July day, eighteen and thirty-seven, telling and retelling the tale of that just-about battle with those Blackfoot some twelve hundred strong. One bunch after another of Andrew Drips’s brigade showed up to hear the story of when one white man’s bony rump turned back the biggest war party ever heard tell of in the mountains.

  “More Injuns than ever these eyes see’d in one place,” Bridger testified.

  One of Drips’s trappers regarded Bass warily, demanding, “You really the one showed his arse and made them Blackfeets run away?”

  Before Titus could reply, Shad slammed a hand down on Scratch’s shoulder, sloshing some whiskey as he answered for Bass. “Just the sight of this coon’s arse turned them niggers’ hearts to water!”

  Nearly every one of those doubters who came to hear the story looked Bass up and down, plainly struggling to believe the tale because Scratch wasn’t near so tall, nor anywhere as big, as Meek or Sweete. And besides—Titus was a damned sight older than every other trapper most knew out there in the mountains. The skeptical listeners clearly had trouble believing the story … until Carson or Meek, Sweete or Bridger, told them about those northern lights and that terrifying crimson sky.

  A legend was a’borning—but all the more a tale about that frightening celestial display than a tale about one man pulling aside his breechclout to insult the enemy.

  “Gabe!”

  The whole bunch turned with that cry of alarm from Meek. Joe stood just beyond the circle of their shelters at the edge of the prairie, pulling a looking glass from his eye. More than a hundred men fell silent in a blink. That tone of warning and danger in the big man’s voice damn well didn’t belong at rendezvous. Here they came to relax among companions and friendlies. But those who remembered the deadly battle in Pierre’s Hole knew how quickly a summer’s tranquil stillness could be’ shattered.

  “It’s them Bannocks again!” another man cried.

  “Bannawks?” Grabbing Sweete by the arm, Bass demanded, “What’s going on?”

  On Shad’s face was a look of murderous determination. “Trouble. You bring your gun?”

  “Right over there. But I didn’t figger I’d ever—”

  Bridger interrupted everything with his bellow. “Where them Nez Perce?”

  “Over here!” George Ebbert answered.

  “Keep ’em outta sight, Squire,” Bridger ordered. Turning round to the rest, he commanded, “Lick your flints and prime your pans, boys. This can’t be no social call.”

  Not with the way those three dozen Bannock warriors were coming on at the gallop.

  Unlike the rest of the suspicious trappers, Scratch kept expecting the horsemen to raise their rifles into the air, firing them in that universal sign of friendship upon approaching a camp.

  “This ain’t gonna be good, Shad,” Bass said as he eased up beside the taller man. He quickly licked the pad of his thumb, ran it along the underside of the flint in the gun’s hammer to swab it clean of burned powder smudge. “S’pose you tell me what lit a fire under their asses.”

  “Few days a’fore the Nepercy village ever come in for ronnyvoo, six of ’em come on ahead of the rest to find out for sure where the white men was camped. Them Bannocks already had their village on up Horse Crik, and some of their men run onto the Nepercy,” Shad began. “So those Bannocks up and took the Nepercy horses and most everything else they had too.”

  “Even though both tribes was coming in to ronnyvoo?”

  “Damn right,” Shad replied sourly. “Put afoot, them six run on in here, asking us to protect ’em till their village got here. Fact be, while we was making our own way here, we heard this same bunch of Bannock bastards been doing some thieving: raised some traps and plunder from some Frenchies working Bear River last month … so Gabe was more’n happy to help out them Nepercy.”

  “How so?”

  Sweete answered, “Them six Nepercy waited till dark a couple nights ago, then slipped off to the Bannock camp to see what they could do ’bout getting their ponies back. We didn’t see ’em till next morning when the six of ’em come in with their horses.”

  “They’d stole ’em back from the Bannawks?”

  Sweete nodded. “Damn right. I s’pose them Bannocks didn’t figger no one’d dare try, so most of the warriors was off hunting when the Nepercy stole their ponies back. Them Nepercy bucks rode right in here, told us to be ready for a fight with the Bannocks, and give the finest horse to Bridger hisself.”

  “That was a stroke of medicine,” Bass said as the Bannock warriors neared the tree line. By now he could see the horsemen were painted. Not a good sign at all.

  Seizing the halter of the Nez Perce gift horse, Bridger hollered, “Grab tight on your horses, boys! I’ll wager these buggers aim to run ’em off!”

  With war screeches, snorting horses, and the slamming of hooves as they brought their ponies to a dusty halt, the horsemen careened into the trappers’ camp with bluster enough for twice their number. Two of their group waved their weapons, yelling at the rest, sending the warriors this way and that through the camp. Each one of the three dozen naked warriors bellowed threateningly, shaking his old fusil or bow or war club at the white men.

  Damn if those Bannock didn’t try their best to frighten the horses, bullying the white men by swinging their own mounts at the trappers who remained on foot among the shelters. One of the leaders, a barrel-chested youngster, halted his pony near Bridger, hollering down at the brigade leader.

  “Get over here, Mansfield!” Bridger ordered. “I need someone what knows this red nigger’s tongue!”

  Cotton Mansfield trotted over to begin making sense of the youth’s shrieking bravado. “Says he don’t want no trouble with you—with no white man. But he come for the ponies, them horses took from his camp.”

  “You tell him I don’t know nothing about horses took from his camp,” Bridger snarled. “Tell him his manners is bad and he better get his ass outta here till he can act better.”

  Shouting among themselves, the Bannock slowly regathered around their leader at the edge of the trapper camp.

  Mansfield whispered to Bridger from the corner of his mouth, “They didn’t figger to have to fight white men, Gabe.”

  “That big young’un told you that?”

  Nodding, Mansfield said, “They only come for to kill them Nez Perce and get their horses back—”

  “Tell ’em to get!” Bridger growled, the short fuse on his anger all but gone.

  “Watch out, Gabe!”

  Bridger whirled at the warning from one of his men, finding the second leader of the bunch loping up atop his pony. He was shouting at the rest of the horsemen.

  “Jim!” Mansfield whispered sharply. “He knows that horse of yours come from the Nez Perce!”

  “To hell with him!” Meek yelled as Omentucken, his Shoshone wife, cautiously stepped from their shelter and stood beside her imposing husband to watch the confrontation.

  Bass could see the dark cloud suddenly cross the second, older Bannock leader’s face. His dark, chertlike eyes narrowed on Bridger as he came to a halt beside the gift horse and began to mutter something to the othe
rs.

  Scratch turned to Carson, saying, “That nigger looks to be bad from mouth to headwaters, Kit.”

  Mansfield translated, “This’un says you got his horse—”

  “Tell him it ain’t his,” Bridger snapped. “Belonged to the Nez Perce and they give it to me. A present what’s mine now.”

  They watched the way Mansfield’s translation struck the Bannock leader. Furious, he drew himself up atop his pony and shouted to the rest.

  “He’s just told ’em they come for horses or blood!” Mansfield warned.

  “Get ready, boys!” Sweete ordered as everyone braced in a crouch, weapons ready.

  Slapping his quirt along his pony’s flanks, the older Bannock leader forced his horse between Bridger and the Nez Perce pony. As Bridger’s hand was wrenched from the lariat around its neck, the war chief seized the bridle.

  All around the two of them trapper rifles came up, and the last of the hammers were snapped back to full cock. Before any of the horsemen could react, one of the guns rang out—no man would later admit to firing the first shot—a deafening boom beneath that canopy of leafy cottonwood. Atop his horse the Bannock chief stiffened, arched backward, and spilled to the ground, a red smear on the center of his chest.

  The wolf was out, and no way to put him back in his den.

  With throaty screams the Bannock fired their smoothbores, aimed their bows, and fired their arrows. Some hurled their war clubs at the trappers who were diving this way or that as the air filled with gun smoke and shrieks, arrows and curses.

  But in less time than it would take for a man to fill and light his pipe, the horsemen had turned and retreated, leaving six of their dead behind in the white man’s camp. Many of the trappers dashed from the trees, stopped, and leveled their long guns on the backs of the fleeing warriors. Another half dozen fell before the Bannock, were out of rifle range.

  “Ah-h-h, Joe!”

  Meek and the others spun at Squire Ebbert’s pained call. The trapper was slowly lowering Joe’s wife, the Mountain Lamb, to the ground. The front of her beaded shawl was dark with blood around the shaft of an arrow Ebbert held, his hand already slicked with crimson.

  Collapsing beside her in an instant, Meek cradled his wife across his legs as he gently laid her upon the ground. Plainly, she had taken an arrow intended for him.

  “Oh, God!” Joe whimpered as he peered down into her glazed, fluttering eyes. “Don’t die! Please don’t die.”

  Shocked, Titus stood there with the others in a ring surrounding the man and woman as the sting of acrid black-powder smoke hung in the summer air, remembering the story of this Mountain Lamb and the two inseparable friends. Now the woman Joe loved, the mother of his own children, lay gasping in his arms, gurgling for air as a thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. She reached up with one hand to touch Joe’s face. Her fingers lightly brushed his thick beard before the arm fell limp.

  “No-o-o-o!” Meek cried piteously, crumpling over her.

  The sound of that moan, the sight of this big, powerful man brought to his knees with the death of his wife—it tore right through to the marrow of him. Of a sudden Bass realized how he would suffer should he lose Waits-by-the-Water. After all they had been through together …

  Here was this friend of his, a man with whom he had shared the very real prospect of death. Someone who had stood at his back, and he at Meek’s.

  “Shad,” Bass whispered harshly as he swallowed down the grief, allowing the anger through. “I reckon we got us some niggers to rub out.”

  Sweete was the first to turn away from the circle, but with him came many others: Doc Newell, Squire Ebbert, Kit Carson, Isaac Rose, Cotton Mansfield, Dick Owens, and at least fifty more. There was no need of talk among them, much less any deliberation. Silently the half-a-hundred slipped off to catch up their horses and joined Bass at the edge of the prairie.

  In the distance a smudge of dust clung to the horizon, the only sign of the fleeing Bannock.

  Looking around at those grim-faced, determined men as they climbed atop their horses, Shad Sweete said, “We’re all friends of Joe’s. He’d do the same for any of you.”

  Then Bass told them, “Want you to remember them young’uns what ain’t got a mother now! ’Sides Blackfoot—there ain’t no wuss thieves in the mountains!”

  Suddenly a handful of them howled like wolves, raising their rifles. The rest joined in, yipping and shrieking, half-a-hundred horses prancing and sidestepping nervously.

  “Let’s go raise some Bannock hair for Joe!” Titus bellowed, savagely kicking heels into the pony’s ribs.

  Away they all shot, dirt flying in clods, streams of it spraying up in cockscombs, streaming down in golden-lit clouds as they spread across the prairie at the gallop, that lone gray-white dog struggling to keep up with the lean, long-legged horses driven in furious pursuit of the Bannock.

  Men after blood, revenge boiling in their veins.

  By the time the fifty had crossed that four miles of river-bottom land, the three dozen Bannock had reached their village and issued their warning. Young boys were already driving in the small herd of ponies. Old people were gathering up the children. Women were frantically yanking lacing pins from lodges, tearing stakes from the ground, dragging lodge skins and poles from the anchor tripods. At the moment the first one of them spotted the oncoming trappers beneath the dusty cloud in the middistance, she raised a pitiful shriek.

  In a flurry the women entirely abandoned their lodges and belongings, wheeling through the line of warriors, racing for the nearby bank of Horse Creek. Into the knee-deep water they churned on foot, turning upstream toward a narrow sandbar of an island where a few warriors beckoned, urging them on. Once onto the sandbar, the women took out their knives or tin cups, starting to dig in the soil while others tore at the skimpy willow and buckbrush, piling up all they could to construct some sort of shelter that, though it would not stop a bullet, would nonetheless hide them from view.

  As Titus came off the pony in a run with the others, he slapped the horse on the rump, turning it away as the first of the arrows hissed overhead. He turned at the shrill whimper, expecting to find a friend he knew had been hit.

  Instead he discovered Zeke, an arrow shaft trembling from a front shoulder. The old dog stumbled sideways, seized by pain and fear. As Bass whistled and headed for him in a sprint, Zeke tried biting at the shaft until he lost his balance and collapsed onto his side.

  Lunging onto the dog, Bass flung his rifle aside and seized the shaft, tugging on it gently at first. Good—didn’t feel as if it had buried itself in bone. Quickly he spread his legs out and laid most of his weight atop the struggling animal while he folded Zeke’s muzzle into the crook of his left elbow, then ripped the arrow from the fleshy muscle.

  Bright red blood slicked the grayish fur, oozing for a moment till Bass pushed a bit of the tobacco quid he had been chewing into the hole. Quickly he looked at the arrow he had tossed to the ground. The stone point was still attached—not enough time for the sinew to grow damp enough that the shaft would pull free.

  As gunfire began all around him, trappers swearing and Bannock yelling, crying, wailing, and shrieking, Scratch rubbed the old dog’s ears.

  “Ain’t your day to die, Zeke,” he whispered into the closest ear. “This ain’t your fight neither. G’won—you get back with them horses.”

  Slowly Titus came onto his hands and knees, rocked back to let the dog lick at the oozy wound. Zeke peered up at him, then struggled to stand, throwing his head a few times before he managed to stand.

  “G’won, get!”

  Scratch flung an arm toward the horses peacefully grazing more than a hundred yards off. Reluctantly the dog started away, hobbling on three legs, favoring the one wounded foreleg. Zeke stopped once, some distance away, peered back at his master, then kept on.

  Scratch dragged a hand under his nose, smearing the dribble, and cleared the clog in his throat—thanking the First Maker that
the dog hadn’t been taken from him. Magpie and Flea needed a dog to play with and watch over them. Good thing that old mongrel was tough as he was. Scarred and stove-up though they were, the two of them made a handsome pair.

  The hot afternoon breeze struck him full in the face as he raced the few yards toward the riverbank where he finally joined the rest. The smell of those Bannock was strong on the wind, a day rank with the stench of blood and dying.

  Hour by hour the siege went on. Lead sang into the brush on that island. Every now and then arrows whined out of the willows on the sandbar, arcing down from the summer blue. Sometimes they struck a man in the leg, or a foot, perhaps pinned an arm to the ground until someone else freed him and wrapped the ragged wound.

  “Goin’ back—get us some water,” George Ebbert said with cracked, dry lips as he crawled past the clump of red willow where Bass and Sweete held down their post.

  “Take ’nother man with you, Squire,” Shad ordered. “Bring back what water you can. And load up with some ball and powder too.”

  Bass nodded, his tongue starting to swell with thirst just the way it had on that death march he had made with McAfferty down on the Gila. “We’re gonna be here for a spell.”

  The warriors were too far away from the white men to make sure kills with their arrows. And every time one of them showed enough of his brown body to make a target, a trapper’s rifle roared. Someone grunted on that island of misery. A woman cried out, wailing—until more warriors shrieked their war songs anew, drowning out her grief with their unremitting fury. On and on it went as the day aged and twilight came on.

  Ebbert returned with water in some Mexican gourds and a few tin canteens. Meek and three more men had chosen to join him on the ride back from camp, their packs filled with lead balls of different calibers and horns of powder to resupply those who were laying siege to that bloody island. The sun continued to sink behind the western hills, and the first stars appeared. Finally it was dark, with nothing more than a thin rind of a new moon rising overhead.