Ride the Moon Down

by Terry C. Johnston

  And now those days were gone. Bass told himself he had better admit that beaver would never shine again, not the way that beaver had shined back then.

  It almost made a growed man wanna cry, it did. Sitting here sipping cheap puke-up liquor, watching a handful of sad, old hivernants try to wrangle themselves a square deal from a bunch of Pierre Chouteau’s slick city types out from St. Louis. Men like him and Shad who had seen the sun set on better than five thousand days of glory in these high and terrible mountains … men who had withstood freezing winters and blazing-hot summers … men who had stared right back into the eye of sudden, certain death and withstood the grittiest test of wills … the sort who had always treated every other man fairly and given more than a day’s work for what wages the company offered him when it came time for an accounting beneath the trading canopy.

  Men who now were all but begging Andrew Drips’s weasel-eyed hired hands to realize that for seasons beyond count they had risked their health, their hair, their very lives to trap that beaver the company was buying less than cheap. These last few members of a dying breed, who for a short time in history had stood head and shoulders above any man anywhere in the world, were being told that their labors weren’t worth much at all, that the risks they had taken were worth even less than that … that their lives had little meaning in a world that was already passing them by.

  So rather than openly bawl, Bass sat there and drank. Sip by sip, cup by cup, hoping to numb the goddamned pain of watching those proud men come to the counter to beg for another year’s supplies, men willing to turn over their hard-won beaver dirt cheap, willing to pay prices that would choke a big-boned Missouri mule for what possibles might get them through till next summer.

  Then Drips came out to stand before less than a hundred trappers gathered there. Bridger and Fraeb stood off to the side, their long faces showing they already knew what the partisan was about to tell the crowd.

  “I s’pose it don’t come as no surprise to most of you,” Drips began before that hushed assembly. “For the past two summers, there’s been rumors Pratte and Chouteau weren’t going to send out no supply caravan to ronnyvoo.”

  He waited a moment while some of the crowd muttered in disgust and disillusionment.

  “But they was just rumors, men. Rumors. Last summer we come, even when the beaver take wasn’t worth the trip. And this spring the company decided to give it one last try.”

  For a long time Drips looked over the crowd formed in a huge crescent around his trade canopy. It seemed that his eyes touched almost every man there—most he knew, some better than others. Perhaps he was struggling to find the words. Perhaps—Scratch thought—Drips was trying to decide whether or not to use those words Bass was certain the partisan had practiced all the way out to rendezvous.

  “Men … this here’s the last supply train to the mountains.”

  It was as if they already knew. There was no sudden gasp of surprise or alarm. These men already knew. While Drips himself might have expected anger, a torrent of unrequited rage … Bass realized these men likely felt they had been owed more than rumors. They were damn well due the truth. And now they knew for sure. Rather than be hung out on a strand of spider’s silk for another year, not knowing. Not knowing.

  Now they could get on with what it was they were going to do with the rest of their lives.

  “What about the brigade?” a voice cried out in that hot, breathless, midsummer stillness.

  “Yeah!” hollered another of those deep voices. “Ain’t the company gonna put a outfit in the field this year?”

  But Drips stood there, unspeaking.

  “Ain’t you gonna take us north for the fall hunt?”

  Still the company partisan remained mute, staring at the ground.

  “Sure they will!” another voice cried, strong with hope. “Bridger’s back to pilot!”

  “No,” Drips finally declared, his face a bland and emotionless mask. “I’m turning back for St. Louis when the trading is done and I can get on my way.”

  A stunned, quiet pall had overtaken them as every last man of them stood there in numbed silence.

  Then Joe Meek took a step forward. “How ’bout you, Gabe?” he asked. “You gonna lead a brigade this fall, ain’cha?”

  Bridger hung his head, staring at the toes of his moccasins for some time, eventually pushing himself away from the tree where he had been standing beside the crusty Henry Fraeb. Jim said, “’Fraid there’s no more company brigade, Joe. You’ll recollect I quit off the company last year. So I ain’t part of it no more. Now I’m … I’m just the same as all of you.”

  “S-same as us?” Robert Newell echoed, his voice rising an octave in grave concern.

  “I don’t see nowhere else for any of us to go but to the trading posts now, boys,” Bridger tried to explain, his voice quiet in that hush of a summer afternoon that stretched out long and warm west of the Continental Divide. “Any man what figgers to go on trapping beaver … he’s gonna have to trade his plews, gonna have to get his possibles at them forts from here on out till … till …”

  When Bridger’s words drifted off into an uneasy stillness, a croaky frog of a voice called out, “Till what, Jim?”

  “Till there ain’t no more call for beaver.”

  No more call for beaver?

  Jehoshaphat! What had become of the world?

  For longer than he could imagine, folks had been wearing beaver hats. Because of those hats, there had always been those who went after the beaver, and those who traded the beaver from them. But now there were nowhere near the beaver a man once found on the streams. Damn, if he and his friends hadn’t worked so hard, they’d worked themselves right out of a job.

  Scratch was sure Bridger turned away because he felt all those eyes boring into him. Here was a friend who had faced the very worst that winter could throw at a man, faced the very best any painted-up, blood-in-his-eye enemy could hurl his way … of a sudden grown self-conscious, maybe even a mite scared, of staring down all those broken-hearted men.

  “So can I buy you a drink, Scratch?”

  He turned to find Sweete at his shoulder, the big man’s eyes brimming above those cheeks of oak-tanned leather.

  Titus felt the weariness come of those seasons spent high and alone right down into the bone of him. Quietly he said, “Don’t mind if I do, Shadrach.”

  Men slowly drifted off in more than a dozen directions. Some stepped back to the trading canopy with their plews at the end of each arm, though there really wasn’t all that much beaver in camp to speak of. But many more clustered around Andrew Drips now, firing questions at the partisan on how they were to go about getting their pay if they chose not to continue in the mountains, asking how a man might accompany the fur caravan back to the settlements when Drips turned for the States.

  Sad questions, Titus thought, questions from confused and bewildered, worried men.

  With Shad he returned to their tree, to their kettle and their cups. Returned to their memories of brighter times, shining times. Sip by sip of the potent grain alcohol diluted with some creek water and bolstered by a handful of peppers too made the memories easy to conjure up.

  By and large, though they looked weathered and worn and weary, their kind were still young men, most no older than Bridger, who was here in his midthirties. But for a brief time they had been the cocks of the walk. Poor frontier boys from the southern mountains, adventurous souls from far up in New England—some Scotch, Irish, and English too, even a few Delaware and Iroquois thrown in. They had laid down moccasin tracks where few men had ever dared to walk—at least no white man.

  In this land as wild as the red men who roamed across it, these few daring souls took on the dress of those who had been there far back in time: some of this reckless breed combed their hair out with porcupine brushes so that it would spill in great manes over the collars of their blanket coats while others twisted their hair in a pair of braids interwoven with colorful ribbons or wra
pped in sleek otter skins; across their backs they sported a merry calico or buckskin shirt tanned a fragrant smoky hue; intricate finger-woven sashes or wide leather belts decorated with brass tacks held up leggings of doe skin or blanket wool, even drop-front britches sewn of durable elk hide.

  While most coupled with tribal women only at summer rendezvous or in winter camps, some proudly took one or more tribal women as wives. A few hung hoops of wire adorned with beads or stones from their ears, and a handful even painted themselves before every battle, or for every rendezvous debauch. They learned to lavish on their best horse the same attention a warrior would give his own war pony: tying up its tail, braiding ribbons in the mane, or dabbing its muscular flanks with earth pigment. No Indian dandy ever strutted with more swagger than these few hundred had in their heyday.

  Moment to moment that afternoon and on into the evening, then through the few following days left them, Scratch and Shadrach, Bridger and Carson, Meek and Newell, talked round the whiskey kettles and the firefly campfires—enthralling one another with stories of tight fixes and derring-do, improbable windies and tall tales, brags and boasts big and small, all those noisy recollections as well as those quiet remembrances of those who no longer gathered with them … those gone on ahead to that big belt in the blue. Those who had already made that last solitary crossing of the Great Divide.

  Damn, but there were too many of them, Bass thought as he struggled to hold back the tears. And now this would be the last reunion, this final gathering of a very, very small Falstaffian brotherhood.

  In the shrinking camps most men made out not to give a damn—drinking hard, laughing loud, fighting and wrassling, doing all they could to hold back the specter of death the way most men are wont to do when they don’t know just how they should feel. From the Indian villages came the distant thump of drums, the soft trill of a lover’s flute, and a wail of voices singing of birth and war and death. Not the Flathead nor the Nez Perce, not even the Shoshone fully understood, much less believed, that this was to be the last gathering of these summer celebrants. Instead, for the wandering bands it would be life as they had lived it across the centuries: summer afternoons and sweet, cool evenings smoking their pipes, watching children chase and play, scraping hides and sewing beads, telling stories of warpath heroism or creation myths.

  Where would they go now? he wondered. Did the tribes go back to the way things had been before the white man came out west with his long caravans of shiny trade goods and powerful weapons?

  So bittersweet was that flood of the memories, soul-prints of his life made across mountain and plain: juicy hump rib and buffalo tongue around a winter fire, beaver tail and painter meat on the spit, the sharp relish of strong coffee or a handful of high, glacial water so cold it set your back teeth to aching. Games of hand or taking a chance on the well-worn cards of euchre and Old Sledge, foolish wagers on shooting a mark or throwing a ’hawk, running a’foot or racing your horse … they were times when a man knew who his friends were and how their stick would float.

  But now those sweetest of days were gone like river-bottom sand a’wash come spring runoff, swept away in the rush of the seasons.

  So like youth, held here but briefly in one’s hand—youth truly experienced by those who believe youth will be theirs forever—the high times in these shining mountains had come and were never to be again. Like impetuous youth, these men did not realize their era had come and gone until the light had begun to fade for all time. And like the young who never fathom the precious gift granted them, these rough-hewn souls had squandered their days, wastrels with those brief seasons allotted them.

  Late of a lazy summer morning Robert Newell strode back into camp, eager to share some news with his friends, especially that best of companions.

  “Joe!” Doc hallooed as he approached the group lounging upon the ground whiling away these last hours of this last summer reunion.

  “You’re ’bout to bust at the seams, Doc,” Titus said. “Just lookit him, boys. G’won, Doc—spill your beans.”

  “Them missionary folks what’s bound for Oregon country,” Newell began in a gush as he knelt in their midst, “well, now—you know they asked Black Harris to guide ’em on west from here.”

  “Ain’t he gonna do it?” Joe asked.

  Newell shook his head emphatically. “One of the preachers, named Little John, he fetched me over to their camp and told me Harris was asking far too much to pilot them on to Oregon …”

  When Newell paused dramatically, excitement flickering in his eyes, Carson said, “Spit it out, man!”

  “Them preachers asked me to pilot ’em all the way to the Columbia country, boys!”

  Meek bolted to his feet, looking every bit as stunned as he had when Bridger announced his bad news. “You … you g-going to take them folks on to Oregon ’stead of trapping beaver with me, Doc? ’Stead of staying in these mountains with us?”

  Newell grabbed his best friend by the forearms, gazing intently into Meek’s eyes. “Come with me, Joe.”

  “C-come with you?”

  Doc’s head bobbed eagerly. “We are done with this life in the mountains, so come with me, Joe.”

  “Done?”

  “We’re done wading in beaver dams, done with freezing or starving. Done I say—done with Injun fighting and Injun trading. Look around you, Joe: the fur business is dead in these mountains, and the Rockies is no place for us now.”

  Meek gasped in surprise, “Doc Newell—fixing to leave the mountains for good?”

  “Goddamned right, Joe! We are young yet, and we have all life laid out a’fore us! We can’t waste it here when this life is dead!”

  “But … Oregon?” Meek asked uncertainly.

  “We ain’t the sort to go back to the States,” Newell said, affectionately slipping an arm around the big man’s shoulder. “I say come with me, Joe. Let us go on down to the Willamette and take up farms.”

  “Oregon,” Meek repeated the word as if trying out the sound of a mysterious lodestone for the first time. “Oregon, you say?”

  “We’ll take them preachers and their wives, that Walker family too—all of their wagons on to Fort Hall where we’ll gather up our wives and light out for Oregon.”

  Bass watched the glow cross Meek’s face, so contagious was Newell’s enthusiasm. It was the look of a man grown so weary and old, suddenly granted new vigor. Where resignation once was scrawled, now Titus could read the hope and joy boldly written on Joe’s face.

  “There’s nothing left for you boys here,” Bass charged them as he got to his feet, flinging one arm around Newell and the other around Meek. “Man needs to find him some country what he can call his own. Sounds to me that Oregon is where you two will make your stand.”

  34

  Two days later, when all the beaver had been turned over to Andrew Drips and that sad little rendezvous was quietly dying with a whimper, Reverend Philo B. Littlejohn finally sought out Moses Harris to explain that he had arrived at a most difficult decision.

  “My party has decided that to guide us from here to Oregon—your price is simply too high.”

  “I reckon you don’t have no notion just how far a piece that is to pilot you,” Black Harris snarled caustically, glaring the missionary up and down. “I figger what I asked is only fair—seeing how I’ll miss out on the fall trapping to get you folks through to the Columbia.”

  “I won’t quibble that you asked what you determined was fair for you,” the round-faced minister replied.

  Realizing that he might be letting a good thing slip from his grasp, Harris suggested, “Maybe we can dicker some more to come up with a dollar more to your liking, but still gonna be fair to me—”

  “That won’t be necessary now,” the preacher declared.

  “What you mean: won’t be necessary?”

  Littlejohn cleared his throat self-consciously, then said, “We enlisted a pilot for our journey, and for a price much lower than you demanded of us—”

>   “Lower?” Harris growled. “Who’s the bastard cut me outta my goddamned job?”

  Red-faced, the preacher exclaimed, “There’s no call for your oaths, Mr. Harris!”

  Standing there seething, his hands balling into fists before him, the mountain veteran growled menacingly, “Tell me who took my job!”

  “His n-name is Newell,” the missionary confessed as he inched backward, seeking escape from Harris’s fury. “He plans to make a home for his family in Oregon—”

  “Not if the son of a bitch is dead!” Harris interrupted as he whirled away in a fury, to start his search of the company camp.

  Unsuccessful, he finally headed for the trader’s tent. He didn’t find Newell there that morning either, but he did find that the clerks were opening up the last of the kegs they had packed west. Harris felt a sudden, inexplicable thirst coming on. Some hard drinking was clearly in order before he continued his search for the man who had stolen his job.

  By midafternoon Harris’s well-soaked despair had grown ugly. Taking up his rifle, he lumbered away from the trader’s canopy intent on finishing his deadly mission. With so few trappers attending this final rendezvous, the search didn’t take him long now. He spotted Newell crossing a patch of open ground some seventy yards off near a free man’s camp. Harris shoved his rifle against a shoulder, squinted his bleary eyes, and attempted to hold steady on his target.

  When the gun roared, the ball went wild.

  As a terrified Newell ran for his gun, Harris started to reload while he stumbled after his intended target—angrily cursing and growling his intention to have the younger man’s scalp.

  “Goddamn you, nigger! Gonna hang your ha’r on my belt before sundown!” the drunk man roared to the skies. “And you’re gonna be sleeping with the devil hisself by nightfall!”

  Step by step Harris plodded after Newell, clumsily pouring powder down the barrel as he plodded toward the trees where the trapper had disappeared. Digging at the bottom of his pouch, Harris pulled out another ball and set it atop the muzzle. He lunged to a stop as he yanked the ramrod from its thimbles at the bottom of the barrel, preparing to set the ball against the charge when Andrew Drips and a dozen others sprinted up—drawn by the racket as the lazy camps burst into action with the alarm.