Beyond Insala’s people stood more camp circles crowding this lush bottom ground: Nez Perce, Ute, Shoshone, and even a few lodges of Arapaho who had dared come trade with the trappers rather than to fight the white men. More than a thousand Indians all told, and most of them were streaming into the Flathead village with close to two hundred of the company trappers who were singing a variety of discordant songs, pounding on brass pots and iron kettles, one man even blowing reedily through an out-of-tune clarinet while several men dragged air through concertinas and others sawed catgut bows across the strings of their violins as the many processions threaded their way toward the center of the camp like throbbing spokes on a wagon wheel.
It was there the Flathead were not to be outdone as the old rattle shakers and thick-wristed drummers were already taking up their chants and high-pitched songs while the crowds shoved together, shoulder to shoulder, neck-craning to get themselves a good gander at the bridegroom riding into camp with an escort of the most dandified trappers Bass had ever seen. Wearing war paint of their own, feathers tied in their long hair as well as in the tails and manes of their horses, with strips of blue and red wool tied around their arms and legs or bands of brass wire encircling their wrists and upper arms, those half dozen who accompanied Bridger were a sight to behold.
Then all went hushed as Bridger and his men halted before the central lodge, dismounting. Handing their horses to those in the crowd, the booshway and his best men strode up to the handful of old counselors who stood at the lodge entrance. Dressed in the spanking-new knee-length morning coat and canvas pantaloons Lucien Fontenelle had purchased in St. Louis specifically for him, Gabe respectfully removed his hat to bare his hair greased back and freshly combed for this momentous occasion. Swallowing audibly, he spoke as clearly as he could those halting Flathead words, stuttering nervously.
A wrinkled oldster turned and called out to the lodge, whereupon a middle-aged warrior emerged to stand before Bridger.
“That’s Insala,” Bass declared in a whisper as Waits stood on tiptoe to have herself a better look through the expectant crowd.
In but a moment Bridger turned and waved his arm—signal for more of his men to push their way out of the crowd with more than a dozen ponies, two of them laden with blankets he pulled off and laid before the Flathead chief. Upon the blankets the best men then spread a glittering array of knives and tomahawks, kettles and beads, cloth and ribbon, finger rings and hawksbells. Packets of vermilion and indigo ink joined the rest as Bridger stepped back, gestured across his gifts, then crossed his arms and waited ceremonially for the chief’s answer.
Dramatically, Insala stepped forward and knelt at the first blanket, fingering this, inspecting that, closely peering at most everything before he moved on to the second blanket … slowly, thoughtfully studying it all while the crowd murmured quietly, the hundreds upon hundreds of witnesses waiting in the bright summer sun as the chief decided if the gifts were enough compensation for this sale of his daughter.
Eventually the old warrior stood and moved over to stop inches from Bridger, gazing into the white man’s eye as Gabe dropped his arms to his side and gulped, clearly showing his anxiety, his face bright with sweat.
Suddenly Insala raised his arms and brought his hands down on Bridger’s shoulders four times as the Flathead people set up a huge roar, laughing and cheering, women keening while the drums began thumping again. While Bridger grew wide-eyed, the chief quickly turned and pointed to his lodge door, calling out in his tongue.
As one of the old counselors pulled aside the flap, a head emerged, just as the crowd fell silent once more. In that noiseless pause the chief’s beautiful daughter came to stand beside her father, a red-striped white trade blanket folded over her left arm. Taking it from the bride’s arm, Insala nudged Bridger a step closer to the shy young woman. Then the chief unfurled the blanket so he could wrap it around his daughter and her new husband.
Taking hold of Bridger’s wrist, Insala stuffed two corners of the blanket into the trapper’s hand so the white man held the blanket around himself and his new bride—then the chief suddenly raised both of his arms into the air and shouted.
His Flathead people answered in kind and took to singing once more as they surged in and began circling the newlyweds, shoving against one another, against members of the other tribes, against the outnumbered white men, everyone slowly dancing in a great sunward swirl as Bridger self-consciously put his forehead against his bride’s brow and gazed into her eyes.
“By damn,” Scratch exclaimed to his friends nearby as they all craned their necks for a good look through the throbbing, dancing, celebrating masses, “if’n it don’t look to be that Gabe’s a’blushing!”
“It’s his wedding day, goddammit!” Rufus Graham snarled.
Elbridge Gray bellowed, “I figger he’s thinking ’bout his wedding night!”
“She sure be a purty-enough gal to make a feller get all het up,” Isaac added.
After a matter of minutes Bridger and his escorts started to knife their way slowly through the celebrants who spread out in a wide cordon along either side of the path the bride and groom were now taking to begin their journey back to the American camp. Drumming and singing continued, laughs and snorts and wild music floated on the afternoon air all along those two miles of valley bottom ground where the tall grass, bluestem, and wild flax waved in the summer breeze.
By the time the parade had reached the trapper camp, most of the Indians were turning about, making their way slowly back to their villages where fires would be kindled and supper put on the boil. Meanwhile the trappers were streaming around a large open meadow where a few were feeding wood to huge bonfires and beginning to stake out slabs of meat to roast, some rolling up small kegs of whiskey and stumps for that time when the musicians would settle around the leaping fires while the sun continued its fall toward the western hills.
Of a sudden Bass became aware of a change in the tone of the celebration when a knot of trappers nearby began shouting, cheering, jeering, hollering in that way of angry, worked-up men.
“You stay with Magpie, here,” he told his wife, lifting the child from his shoulder, passing the girl to Waits-by-the-Water. “I’ll be back soon.”
Motioning the four old friends to follow him, Titus loped with many others toward the growing commotion. Back and forth the crowd surged, stretching itself this way and that so it always left just the right amount of open ground for the brutal, bare-knuckled sport raging at its center. On the ground lay three white men, by their vivid dress plainly some of Fontenelle’s and Drips’s French voyageurs. Of the trio, two sprawled across one another, clearly unconscious, while the third struggled clumsily, attempting to drag himself from the ground as he wagged his head. In their midst a fourth voyageur gamely tried to duck as he flailed away with wild, ineffective haymakers at the lone man the four of them had been fighting off.
A tall tree trunk of a man—a frightening, slab-shouldered giant bigger than Silas Cooper had been, a giant every bit as imposing as was Emile Sharpe, the half-breed Red River Metis who had come west to the Green River in search of Josiah Paddock.
Laughing sinisterly, the giant quickly stepped aside as the lone voyageur lumbered past, grabbing the shorter man’s hair and using it to hurl his victim around in a tight circle as the Frenchman shrieked in torment, clawing at the big man’s wrist. But as the monster of a brute guffawed and spouted in broken English, it was immediately clear he too was a Frenchman.
“Enfant d’garce!”
Slowly the giant raised his left arm, hoisting the voyageur by the hair until the shorter man dangled, his toes barely brushing the ground. Mule-eyed, the voyageur clung to the giant’s left wrist, completely helpless as the monster roared his foreign French oath, spat a wad of phlegm into the small man’s face, then flung his maul-sized fist squarely between the struggling voyageur’s eyes.
Then let his victim go.
Stunned senseless, the short man crumpl
ed to his knees, watery-legged and totally oblivious as the giant shadowed him once again, looped a big hand around his throat, then flung him up at the end of his arm again where the voyageur swung freely. This time the giant smashed his fist into the middle of the small man’s face with a sickening crackle of cartilage and bone, blood spurting from the crushed tissues.
Again the monster cocked back his arm, ready for another blow—
“Shunar!”
A hush descended upon the spectators like a blanket.
The voyageur hung limp as a length of buffalo gut at the end of the huge tormentor’s arm, as if no more than a clump of oiled canvas swaying in the hot afternoon breeze. Slowly, the Frenchman turned from the victim he had imprisoned at the end of his left arm to stare narrow-eyed at the one who had cried out his name.
Amid the sudden silence, Isaac Simms leaned in and whispered to Bass, “That’s Drips—company booshway!”
Still this giant named Chouinard did not release his fourth victim.
“Let ’im go, Shunar!” Drips demanded as he stepped within six feet of the giant, his hand resting on the butt of his belt pistol.
It was as if the entire crowd of hundreds, white and red alike, waited to draw a breath—watching this small, spare man dare to stop within easy reach of the monster.
Slowly considering the command, Chouinard gazed at his prisoner for a long moment, then flung the voyageur to the ground with an audible snap of bone.
“Goddamn you!” Andrew Drips shrieked as he went to one knee beside the crumpled victim.
Immediately the giant took a step to loom over Drips. The company leader jerked his head up to glare at the giant and yanked that pistol from his belt—holding it out at the end of his arm, the hammer coming back to full cock with one swift motion.
“I’ll kill you,” Drips said with studied coolness. “You big pigheaded Frenchman, don’t you doubt that I will shoot you between your goddamned eyes where you stand.”
“Maybe I grab your gun first,” Chouinard growled in reply, “keel you before you can pop your leetle gun.”
The pistol held steadily on its target as Drips slowly rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off the giant, nor the muzzle of that pistol from that spot between the giant’s slitted eyes.
“I’ll let you have this chance, you parley-voo bastard,” Jim Bridger said as he stepped from the edge of the crowd with his pistol drawn, flanked by the huge, bear-chested Meek and the smaller tow-headed Carson. “You so much as move torst Drips—I’ll drop you.”
“Lookee here,” Meek said on the far side of Bridger, wagging the end of his short-barreled smoothbore. “This here’s what I call a camp clearer, you son of a bitch. Loaded with a good handful of drop shot. I touch this’r trigger and it’ll cut you in half.”
“That’s right,” Carson added, his blue eyes flashing with menace. “Then the whole crowd gonna see you piss on yourself while you breathe your last.”
Drips slowly lowered his pistol, eventually stuffing it into his belt again as he said, “I figure Shunar here can see the deck’s stacked again’ him, don’t you, Frenchman?”
The giant smiled wickedly as his dark eyes glowered at Bridger, Meek, and Carson. “Amereecans. Like buffalo dung—you Amereecans are everywhere.”
“I oughtta shoot a gut-load of drop shot in you just for that!” Meek snapped.
“There’ll be no more blood here today!” Bridger ordered.
“Jim’s right!” Drips said as he knelt again beside that fourth victim. “Damn you anyway, Shunar. You better pray these men of mine recover enough to ride out of here for the fall hunt.”
“I have some fun—”
Shooting to his feet, Drips stood all but toe to toe with the giant, staring up at the huge man who stood more than a head taller, interrupting the Frenchman with a fist he shook beneath Chouinard’s chin. “And I’ll kill you if it happens again! I might kill you yet—goddamn you! Costing me four men. Even you aren’t worth four goddamned men!”
Drips lowered his fist, spun on his heel, and furiously spat, “You go costing me my men—I’ll put you down my own self!”
“If you want some help, Drips,” Meek growled, “I’ll be glad to kill him for free.”
Chouinard immediately raised his two fists like mauls and took a step toward Meek, but Carson and Bridger lunged forward a step at the same moment Drips whirled on the giant.
“I’ll give you a five count for you to get out of my sight, Shunar,” the booshway ordered.
“Ahh, but I come here to dance and drink some with—”
“There’ll be no dancing for you here today,” Bridger warned. “This here’s my wedding, and you ain’t welcome round here no more. Go back to your camp and make your own fun there.”
A childlike look crossed the monster’s face, something hurt, wounded. “Shunar no dance? No sing and drink?”
“You heard the booshway!” the bandy-legged Carson snarled, glaring up crane-necked at the giant who stood more than a foot taller than he. “Get outta here, Frenchie!”
For a moment more his breath heaved in his ironmonger’s barrel of a chest; then Chouinard hurled himself around and flung his way through the crowd, knocking men aside if they weren’t quick enough to leap out of his way.
“Damned good thing he’s gone,” Bridger sighed, relief in his voice.
Dragging a hand through his shoulder-length light-brown hair, the thirty-year-old Carson glanced at Meek and the others who stood close at hand, then glared at Chouinard’s back as the giant disappeared through the crowd. “That there’s a killing just waitin’ to happen.”
* Carry the Wind
10
“Where is that black-hearted sonuvabitch!” Carson roared.
Bass jerked around there in the shade of that awning strung over the trading blankets where he was consumed that morning with selecting between bolts of the fine woolen tradecloth or some of the coarser ginghams and calicos. Red-faced and slit-eyed, the diminutive Carson suddenly appeared, on the verge of exploding, as Meek, Newell, and others leaped to their feet, surrounding Kit.
“Who you looking for?” Tom Fitzpatrick demanded as he stepped around a plank counter toward Carson.
Shaking with anger, Kit growled, “The Frenchman! Shunar!”
“We got rid of him yestiddy, Kit,” Meek declared soothingly.
“Run him off,” Carson concurred. “But—he went and made trouble for hisself in the ’Rapaho camp.”
“’Rapahos?” Newell repeated. “Where you been sparking that purty squaw?”
A dark cloud immediately shadowed the short man’s countenance. “When Shunar left here, the bastard went down by the crik, close by the ’Rapaho camp. He laid a’wait there for dark to come, watching for Grass Singing.”
“She the squaw you had your eye on?” Meek asked.
“He figgered to catch her in the brush,” Carson declared, then went on to explain the rest of the story.
After breakfast that morning he had decided it was about time for him to take himself a wife, just like booshway Bridger had done the day before. After all, Kit reasoned, he had been in the mountains four years already, and a man could do with a good helpmate. So he had taken account of all that he possessed and what credit he could wrangle out of the company clerks, then packed it all aboard two ponies he led over to the Arapaho village.
“She had to know I’d be coming,” Carson told them. “I could see it in her eyes ever since them ’Raps come into ronnyvoo. The gal knowed I had my eye on her too. Already I been over to smoke twice’t with her pa.”
“But you don’t speak no ’Rapaho!” Meek hollered.
“Don’t have to,” Carson shut him off. “Plain as sign to the ol’ man I was there for his daughter. After coming two times, he sure as hell figgered I’d be back with my presents, be back to buy her for my wife.”
But when Kit had shown up at the lodge with his gifts earlier that morning, the girl’s father spurned Carson’s offering,
angrily signing enough of the story to explain why he and his daughter wanted nothing more to do with white men. The old warrior made it plain enough as he held two fingers projecting from his lips to signify the forked tongue of the pale-skinned trappers, then ordered Carson to leave just before he began to sing a war song to his bow and quiver of arrows.
Fitzpatrick asked, “What got the two of ’em so damned fractious over white men?”
“Shunar.” Carson spat it as if he had just spoken the most vile word in his vocabulary.
Meek asked, “What’s that horse’s ass got to do—”
“I tol’t you!” Carson barked. “We run him off from here, so that snake-bellied coward went right down to the crik and waited for Grass Singing to show up for water.”
For a breathless minute, more than a hundred men stood there in absolute silence beneath the morning sun, watching Kit quake in anger—knowing all too well the outcome of that story.
“So the Frenchie …” Fitzpatrick began. “He—”
“He tried,” Carson interrupted. “Her pa signed that Shunar tore her skirt off, scratched her all over when he throwed her down in the bushes and got hisself ready to poke her. That li’l gal ain’t never had a man afore!”
“How you know for sure?” Meek inquired.
Suddenly glaring at his tall friend, Kit snapped, “Grass Singing wears a virgin’s horsehair knot,” gesturing around his waist then between his legs to symbolize the knotting of an Arapaho chastity belt. “She showed me herself, Joe. When the big bastard went to grab for his knife so’s he could cut her belt off—”
“She made her play,” Bass finished Carson’s sentence.
Kit looked over at Titus. “That’s right, Scratch. Her pa signed that she somehow wriggled away from him like a tadpole, what with Shunar just having him one hand to hold her down.”
“So for sure he didn’t …” Fitzpatrick began.
“No,” Carson answered, staring at the ground in the midst of that swelling crowd. “But my gut tells me he’ll try again till one of ’em is dead.”
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