Bass cleared his dusty, parched throat. “So this here’s American Fur?”
“And me as well. I’ve been the trader for more’n nine months here already,” Murray admitted. “Larpenteur was called back to Union last November—so it’s just me and four engages.”
Titus finally swung to the ground as his wife and children came out of their saddles. “So Tullock and Van Buren ain’t no more.”
“No, sir. You know Tullock long?”
“Me and him go back some. What’d you name this place?”
“Larpenteur named it for our chief factor.”
“Fort Culbertson?”
“No. We’ve blessed it with our factor’s first name,” Murray declared. “You’re standing at the walls of Fort Alexander.”
Over the next few days the visiting Crow went about their business with the powerful company that had brought an end to both the beaver business and the mountain rendezvous, the economic giant who had crushed a glorious way of life in its mighty fist. It surprised Titus to discover he was still sore having to deal with American Fur again, but he reminded himself he’d done it before. What few furs he had managed to trap the previous spring did garner some shiny geegaws for the children, a few yards of wool cloth for Waits, and that much-needed powder and bar lead. Their trading done with Murray at this new Yellowstone post, Yellow Belly’s band turned about on the fifth morning and started upriver once more.
That second winter began early and proved to be even harder than the last. Spring was long in coming. Because the weather had made them prisoners, few of the Crow had many furs to trade on their next journey down the Yellowstone to Fort Alexander.
“Murray here?” Titus asked the figure stepping from the gate as he and two dozen of the Crow men dismounted in advance of the village.
At first the solidly built man did not acknowledge his question; instead, he shaded his eyes that early autumn day and noted the dust haze rising over the hundreds of Crow who were steering their herds into the expansive meadow filled with grass already cured by the first frost.
“No, Murray doesn’t work here no more,” the stranger replied as his eyes finally came back to look upon Bass.
After another full round of seasons spent listening to nothing but the Crow tongue, Scratch’s ear picked up a strong Scottish accent, all that much heartier than Murray’s brogue. “You in charge?”
“No. The factor’s named Kipp.”
“He here?”
“Inside. Come with me,” the man offered, then he gestured at the Crow men. “Three of them at a time, only.”
Scratch hit the ground and rubbed his aching knees. With the advent of every year he resented that pain brought of being in the saddle a little more. Holding out his hand, he said, “I’m Titus Bass.”
“Robert Meldrum,” the man answered, brushing a thick shock of sandy brown hair from his eyes. “You live with this band I see.”
“With my wife, young’uns too.”
Meldrum surprised Scratch when he turned to face the throngs of Crow men and suddenly began speaking loudly, in a respectable Crow. “Your chiefs must decide who among you will be the first to come inside and smoke before trading. We’ll set the prices, then the trading can begin in earnest after sunrise tomorrow.”
As the headmen gathered to discuss who would accompany the trader into the fort, Bass grabbed the white man’s elbow. “You speak good Crow, Meldrum.”
“Had some practice,” the trader replied.
“Figgered you for a Scotchman, from the sound of your words.”
“I’m Scots, that’s for sure,” Meldrum admitted with a characteristic burr. “Born on the moors in the second year of the century. Came to Kentucky with me parents.”
“You’ve been out here for some time,” Titus observed.
“Came west with Ashley’s trading caravan in twenty-seven. Didn’t go back with the other clerks after rendezvous.”
“Twenty-seven …” And he pondered the roll of sites. “I recollect that’un was held over at the bottom of Sweet Lake.”*
“Still some small affairs back then,” Meldrum declared as he kept his gray eyes pinned on the Crows’ deliberations. “But they got bigger.”
“An’ noisier too,” Scratch said. “So how come you speak such good Crow?”
“Married one. It helps.”
“Damn if it don’t. Haven’t got me no idee how a fella gets along with a Injun gal if he don’t know her tongue!”
“Most fellows, they have no intentions of sticking around long enough to learn to speak their woman’s language.”
That evening Scratch and his family were invited to sit for supper with the post’s factor, James Kipp. Even more so than Robert Meldrum, this man was clearly educated; not the usual sort who had worked his way up through the ranks on muscle.
“I heard your name afore—from a ol’ friend of mine works downriver at Fort Union,” Titus explained as they were introduced.
“Who was that?”
“Levi Gamble. Maybeso you know ’im.”
“He was a good man, a steadfast employee in his day.”
“In h-his day?” Titus echoed. “He ain’t working at the fort no more?”
“Last word I had, Gamble took to drinking, hard too,” Kipp disclosed. “Seems he lost his wife when she was burned terribly, a lodge fire as I recall. She lingered awhile, pitifully—then died in his arms.”
“Damn,” Scratch muttered under his breath, his eyes flicking quickly to glance at his woman.
“I was told Levi never got over her painful death. Immediately took to drink. On this last stay of mine at Fort Union, I heard he’d died of consumption … although I think he succumbed to a powerful combination of too much alcohol and his just plain giving up after the death of his wife.”
“This news about Levi come recent?”
“Yes. Seems I’m newly come here from Fort Union myself,” Kipp explained with a generous smile. His well-wrinkled face crinkled warmly. “It’s been no more than two weeks since the last supply steamboat came upriver and dropped me off with the year’s goods.”
“In less’n a year—this place awready had three booshways,” Scratch commented.
“It’s a fact of the business,” Kipp explained with a shrug of his shoulders. “I myself have been shuttled around from post to post since I came upriver.”
“Where you born and raised back east?”
“Born in Canada,” Kipp disclosed. “Eighty-eight. That makes me fifty-six years old now.”
Scratch folded fingers down as he calculated. “So you’re six years older’n me. An’ that’s some, Mr. Kipp. Out here I don’t run across many fellas what can say they’re older’n me.”
“Spent a lot of time among the Mandans when I first ascended the Missouri. Learned their language, could even write it too, while I was in the employ of the Columbia Fur Company.”
“Can’t say I ever heard of ’em.”
Kipp grinned. “They’re no more, Mr. Bass. Long, long time ago, they merged with American Fur—which made John Jacob Astor all the bigger.”
“You stayed on, I take it.”
The factor nodded. “They liked the cut of my timbers, so the bosses gave me the job of building Fort Floyd.”
“Ain’t heard of that’un neither. Where’s it stand?”
Kipp poured more coffee into Waits-by-the-Water’s cup as he answered, “You’ve been there: mouth of the Yellowstone. Never was known as Fort Floyd for long. It’s been called Fort Union almost from the first day.”
“Then I have been there,” Scratch confessed. “Years back, when the Deschamps family was near done in.”*
“A most awful blood feud between those families,” Kipp clucked, then settled back atop a crate with his glass of port. “After building that post, the company partners thought well enough of James Kipp to put me in charge of raising Fort Clark back among my Mandan friends.”
“When was that?”
“Thirty-one,” Ki
pp answered. “A profitable year for the company.”
“Aye—them was shinin’ times. Each year beaver just kept getting better’n better too,” Bass said with a wistful smile. “You s’pose beaver’s bound to rise, Mr. Kipp?”
The trader wagged his head. “The sun has set on the beaver trade, my good man. But I must say that—in those years when beaver was king—I met some interesting people while downriver at Fort Clark,” Kipp explained. “One of the most remarkable was an American artist named Catlin, George Catlin. He was at the post, painting the Mandans left and right. The following winter, thirty-three and thirty-four, a German prince—Maximilian—came upriver on a sportsman’s holiday. He brought with him a wonderful artist who became a fast friend of mine. Karl Bodmer was his name.”
“I met a artist fella my own self once, years back at a ronnyvoo it was,” Titus chimed in. “Named Alfred Miller. You met him?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Miller come west with a Scotchman—a rich fella named William Drummond Stewart. That Scotchman even brung ol’ Jim Bridger a suit of armor one summer!”
“Yes, I’ve heard of Stewart,” Kipp disclosed.
“You was at Fort Clark till you come here?”
The trader shook his head. “Once my employers had their Mandan post running smoothly, I was dispatched into Blackfoot country, where I built Fort Piegan at the mouth of the Marias.”
“Damn, if you ain’t the fort-buildingest fella I ever met,” Bass enthused. “Time was, there wasn’t a post in this north country … and now the Injuns can durn well pick where they wanna go, north or south, to trade off their robes. Beaver ain’t wuth a tinker’s damn no more. Just robes. Life’s changed, Mr. Kipp. Life’s changed a hull bunch up here in the north country.”
“I detect a strong note of resignation, Mr. Bass. If not a deep regret.”
With a slight nod, Titus sighed, “Some long winter nights, I sit with my woman and young’uns by the lodge fire, thinking back on how things use to was. But the beaver are near gone most places I go, and they damn well ain’t wuth the time to scrape ’em no more anyhow. ’Sides, no fur companies like your’n ever gonna hire trappers no more—you just trade all your furs off the Injuns.”
“That, yes—but we also barter with a few of the last trappers—men like yourself who are still working the mountain streams.” Kipp scratched at his bare jowl thoughtfully, then said, “It won’t ever be the same again, my friend. God knows things won’t ever be the same again.”
“Missionaries been trampin’ through my mountains,” Scratch grumbled, feeling very possessive and protective of his shrinking world. “Bringing their white women. For now they’re just passing through on their way to Oregon country … but one of these days, I know in my gut they’re gonna stop and settle down right here in the mountains. Gonna ruin what life we got left.”
“The Jesuits have dispatched one of their own, a Father De Smet, to make contact with the northwestern tribes,” Kipp announced. “I met him at Fort Union two years ago when he came through.”
“What’s a Jesuit?”
“Of course, I couldn’t expect you to know that it’s a Catholic order of priests—”
Scratch howled with alarm, “The Papists are sending their missionaries out here too!”
“De Smet told me he attended the last rendezvous ever held, on his way to the Flathead in the summer of forty. Later that fall, he came downriver to Fort Clark, where I made his acquaintance.”
Titus wagged his head. “Even when things are changing all around me,” he declared, “I wanna believe things don’t have to change for me. Not for me and these Crow I’m running with.”
“What do you think of Mr. Meldrum here?” Kipp asked, indicating the post trader seated down the table.
“He seems to be a likeable kind.” And Bass winked at Meldrum. “Any man what speaks Crow good as he does and marries hisself into the tribe can’t be a bad sort, now can he?”
“Some of his wife’s people watched Robert black-smithing,” Kipp declared. “So the Crow call him Round Iron.”
“That’s another reason for me to like Meldrum,” Bass admitted. “Back in Saint Louie I sweated over an anvil and bellows for a few years afore I come out to the mountains.”
“You were apprenticed in your youth?” Meldrum asked.
“Nawww—was awready growed—a good trade for a man to learn,” Titus recalled with a sigh. “Meldrum ain’t the first trader your company’s sent to Crow country to get married so all the tribe’s furs come to him.”
Kipp’s eyes flashed to Meldrum for a moment before he asked, “You’re referring to the mulatto Beckwith?”
“He’s a humbug if ever there was one!” Meldrum growled menacingly.
“That’s probably the nicest thing Robert could say about the mulatto,” Kipp replied. “While Beckwith might have been on the company payroll, he never was a company man.”
“Not only is he totally without any abilities as an honest businessman, but—he’s a scoundrel of the first order!” Meldrum roared his disapproval. “Cheated whoever got within reach or was in his way: the Crow, the company, his factors—”
“Last time I see’d Jim Beckwith, was two year ago,” Titus confided. “He and a few other Americans built themselves a small trading post on the Arkansas.”
“Near the Bent brothers’ fort?” Meldrum inquired.
“Upriver a good ways, closer to the mountains.”
Meldrum snarled, “I say, let that southern country have him so the thieving bastard won’t ever show his lying face up here again.”
“Far as I know he’s settling in down there, for a fact,” Titus told them. “Got him a Mex wife, even opened up a li’l trade store too.”
“Is he even aware that some of the Crow mean to kill him if he ever returns to this country?” Meldrum disclosed.
That shocked Titus. “W-what for?”
“They think he betrayed them by living with them for so long, then suddenly leaving them to return to civilization,” Kipp explained.
“That’s right,” Meldrum added. “A few—not all, mind you—but some of the harshest warriors and headmen would love to get their hands on him, Mr. Bass. Believe me, I married into the same band Beckwith ruined with his shameless scams. There’s no affection for him among the Crow people now.”
“Damn shame,” Scratch brooded, thinking how Bill Williams appeared to hate Beckwith with this very same fury. “I knowed Jim Beckwith for almost as long as I been out here in the mountains. Shame to see what haps to a fella when he turns his back on them what was once his friends.”
Many were the times since that autumn journey to Fort Alexander when Titus reflected on how circumstances changed the folks around him—when he didn’t consider he was any different. Not from that first winter with the Yuta,* and not from the time of his first contact with these Crow … Scratch looked back to weigh the possibility that he might have treated anyone less than the way he wanted to be treated himself. If there ever had been a code among men out here in the mountains, that was its evenhanded preamble.
But as the fates undermined the economic structure of their lives, Scratch had watched the long-held code splinter. No longer could a white man count on the help of another without question. White men stole not only from white men—just as the big fur companies did day in and day out—but desperate white men had taken to stealing from their red allies.
That whole unspoken code of honor lay in shambles by the time Scratch had followed Bill Williams and Peg-Leg Smith west to California. It was clear that the new watchword was now: every man for himself. No more camaraderie. No longer any sense of that fraternal brotherhood he had experienced in the heady heyday of the beaver trade.
As Yellow Belly’s band turned around on the Yellowstone and started up the Bighorn in the last autumn moon, something struck him for the first time. While a right-thinking man knew he never could recapture what had been … Scratch held out the possibility th
at, at the very least, he might well revisit old memories. And while his most glorious days were behind him now, he decided a man was due a chance to relive those seasons through reminiscence with old friends.
Not once that following winter did he ever give any serious thought to heading back east to find Hames Kingsbury or any of Ebenezer Zane’s other Kentucky riverboatmen.* Those who hadn’t suffered a violent death in the intervening thirty-five winters surely weren’t the sort of men who left any traces of their whereabouts, from New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi all the way north to the upper waters of the Ohio River.
Then too, no man could argue there was any need of hunting down the three who had stolen a fortune in furs from him back when he first came to the mountains. More than ten years ago he stumbled across Bud Tuttle, who had become a Santa Fe trader, then hunted Billy Hooks all the way to dockside in St. Louis, finding that poor demented soul was dying fast from the venereal disease eating away at his brain. But the sweetest revenge came when Scratch watched Silas Cooper die with his own eyes.†
And there was no sense in trying to turn back the calendar in hoping to run down his old partner Jack Hatcher. Any reunion they might have shared had been snuffed out by a Blackfoot bullet in Pierre’s Hole. Not to mention how Asa McAfferty had gripped fate itself by the throat and strangled the life out of it high in a snowy bowl at the end of a long manhunt.††
But there had been a man who had stood at his shoulder through one skirmish and ordeal after another, a man who had lived through some of the last glory days of Titus Bass. And he was still alive … at least according to Mathew Kinkead’s claim. How long ago was it? Back in the fall of ’42, that’s when Kinkead declared the man was doing well for himself.
“Yes,” Waits-by-the-Water said with a smile as harsh winds gusted a new snow outside their lodge, “I remember your friend, Josiah Paddock. Do you remember that you believed I loved him?”
“I was pretty stupid back then.”
Death Rattle Page 45