Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  When the Ashley men had broken up into brigades for their spring hunt, Fitzpatrick’s band had marched north to trap the Portneuf River all the way to the Snake—where they dodged Blackfoot war parties more times than they’d care to recount. A second brigade moved far afield that spring, pushing past the Great Salt Lake not only in search of beaver but in search of that wondrous new country off somewhere in the interior basin. Still another band pushed all the way north to Flathead country, plunging into the mountains that would soon become known as the Bitterroots, where they found sign of and bumped up against their competitors trapping for John Bull’s Hudson’s Bay Company.

  Ashley’s men had worked hard and repeatedly put their lives on the line to earn this rendezvous. A good thine it was Ashley had thought to bring liquor along for the first time this trip out. Even better-that a large band of the western Shoshone had been curious enough at this growing gathering of the white men to wander in and join the celebration. Trouble was—no one knew at first if those horse-mounted warriors who suddenly appeared in the distance were friend or foe.

  “Dammit all anyway,” Bud Tuttle grumbled that second day after reaching the rendezvous site, “just when I was getting my dry gullet ready for some of Ashley’s whiskey—those damned red niggers go an’ show up and wanna fight!”

  Every man had turned out that late morning as the alarm spread and weapons were taken up. The men were grumbling, for it was to have been that day Ashley tapped his kegs of raw, clear corn liquor … and now, by bloody damn, a few hundred Injuns showed up on the nearby hills to make trouble. But Bridger, Fraeb, and two others quickly mounted up bareback and started off loaded for bear—counting on determining if these strangers be the friendly sort, or a fighting breed.

  “Where the blue blazes you think you’re bound?” Cooper demanded the moment he realized Bass was pulling his horse free of its picket pin.

  “Going with them yonder to have a look-see at the Injuns.”

  Silas snorted, wagging his head with a grin. “If’n that don’t take the circle, boys! We got us a greenhorn what goes riding off to make hisself trouble with red niggers … like them red-bellies ain’t trouble enough all by themselves!”

  “This h’aint none of your ’ffair,” the old German-born Fraeb grumbled as Bass joined the quartet loping toward the low hills.

  “My skelp too—so I figgered to see for my own self,” Titus replied as he reined his horse in alongside the others strung out in a broad front—their smooth faces bright in the summer sunshine of that morning, their long hair fluttering like battle flags behind these rough-edged knights-errant.

  Bridger’s eyes quickly dashed over the newcomer’s outfit, spotting the pair of pistols stuffed down in his belt and the long, heavy, and serviceable mountain rifle clutched atop Bass’s thighs. “Might’n be some of the same goddamned Blackfoots we fit not far north of here,” he declared by way of warning to the older man riding on his left. “Maybeso they follered our sign, figgering to have themselves another go at us.”

  Fraeb asked, “Ever you fit Injuns?”

  “Last spring it were,” Titus answered as they watched the horsemen on the crest of the hill begin to spread themselves out in a wide front. “’Rapahos, they was.”

  “That ain’t a good bunch neither, ’Rapahos ain’t,” Bridger said to Fraeb with no small measure of approval.

  “Wagh! ’Rapaho h’ain’t never be no Blackfoot,” the old German howled disparagingly. Then his eyes mocked Bass as he said, “An’ one fide don’ make you no fider.”

  “Leave ’im be, ol’ man,” Bridger scolded. “Sounds to me like this feller’s got him a few wrinkles on his horns already.”

  As Fraeb glared at Bass a moment longer but ventured not one word more, it became immediately apparent to Titus how Fitzpatrick’s men had come to respect that youngster from Missouri—no matter his age or theirs.

  “Lookee thar!” hollered the man on the off side of Fraeb.

  Scalplocks and feathers fluttered in the breeze as the warriors arrayed themselves on the crest of the hill in a battle front.

  “How many you make it, Frapp?” Bridger demanded as they slowed their lope to a walk.

  Just then a half-dozen of the brown-skinned horsemen punched ahead of the others from the center of that phalanx arrayed on the hill.

  “Coot be more’n a hunnert,” the old man roared. “H’ain’t allays good at ciphers come times like dis!”

  “We gonna have our hands full,” commented one of the others. “Be no doubt of that.”

  “Gloree!” Bass cried. “Bridger! Don’t count on a fight this day. Look yonder!”

  The young partisan and the rest looked off where Bass was pointing, to the near side of the hill, where just then appeared more than a hundred women, children, and old ones among their packhorsescbegin to make out the beginnings of their pony herd.

  “Believe this feller’s right, Frapp!” Bridger hollered into the dry, hot wind. “Man don’t bring him his squaws an’ pups along when he’s out for skelps and coup.”

  The old German snorted, his eyes nicking at Bass with something bordering contempt. “Mebbe we just run up again’ a bunch on the move, Jim. Blackfoots move camp ever’ now and den.”

  “These here ain’t Blackfoot,” Bridger declared as the six horsemen came to a halt at a point halfway between the broad front of warriors and the five white men.

  “Why, them’s Snakes!” one of the others stated.

  “Damn right they are,” Bridger agreed, getting close enough to recognize faces.

  “Same bunch wintered up with us?” one of the others asked.

  Bridger whooped, “By God, if they ain’t!”

  Following the young man’s lead, the rest again urged their horses into a lope, reining up only when they came nose to nose with the Shoshone ponies.

  “By damn, these are a handsome people, ain’t they?” Bridger asked, turning aside to Bass. Then his hands grew busy, dropping rein and resting the rifle across his thighs as he commenced talking sign.

  In the quiet of that brief conversation, disturbed only by the snorting and blowing of the horses and the shrill cry of a golden eagle that circled overhead, Bass watched the far slope as the ground behind the cordon of warriors filled with those the horsemen had been ready to defend: the old men, women, children, all those on foot and urging along the pack animals, travois, and pony herd.

  One of those handsome, smiling warriors who had been using his flying hands to talk with Bridger now turned atop the bare back of his pony and signaled with the long feathered lance he held aloft and waved, scalps and birds’ wings fluttering on the summer wind along the shaft.

  Instantly a universal cry went up from the far hillside as the mounted warriors bellowed their happy approval and burst into motion—their ponies moving this way and that along the side of the hill, everyone waving, singing, shouting at those behind to hurry on into the valley.

  “This feller’s name is Washakie,” Bridger explained, putting the emphasis on the last syllable. “One of the leaders of this here bunch what wintered up near one of our other brigades in these parts. Down yonder in that very valley.”

  “You don’t say,” Fraeb grumbled with disgust.

  Bridger would not let the old German’s sourness nettle him a bit. With a wry grin Jim said, “Washakie says he remembers him a feller named Sobett—”

  “Don’t he mean Sublette?” one of the others interrupted.

  “One and the same,” Bridger replied, his eyes twinkling. “An’ he recalls a man what’s so tanned by the sun Washakie says he has the face of a feller been burned with powder!”

  “Only one coon like that,” Fraeb roared. “Black Harris!”

  By that time the front of the Shoshone procession had all but enveloped them. Titus reached out and grabbed young Bridger’s arm. “This feller, Harris—he a Negra like Beckwith?”

  Flopping his head back and laughing, Bridger ended up slapping a knee as he answered, �
�Not near as none of us know! Oh, he might have him some Negra blood back on one side of his family or t’other … but his skin ain’t brown like no Negra’s skin. No, his hide is like nothing I ain’t never see’d afore—Washakie got it right: just like Harris gone and got his face burned with powder. There be a blue-blackish sheen to it, see? Ain’t the color of his hands—not his skin nowhere else on him. Just on the man’s face.”

  As the procession swept up to them, the Shoshone leaders nudged their ponies into motion. Reining their horses about in the midst of the Shoshone, the four white men began that short ride back to Ashley’s camp, leading the noisy Shoshone cavalcade in grand order. As they drew closer to the streamside bowers and shelters the trappers had erected at the edge of a large meadow, brown-skinned singers suddenly began to raise their voices in half a hundred different songs of welcome, homecoming, or in the spirit of good hunting. At least that many or more beat on small handheld drums or shook rattles made of gourd, some constructed of dried animal bladders or animal scrotums filled with stream-washed pebbles, then tied to short peeled sticks. Children chattered, their high voices tremulous above all the others, and women occasionally shrieked at unruly ponies, flailing switches at those yapping, playful dogs darting in and out among the legs of people and ponies alike.

  “What you think, Bass?”

  Titus turned, finding the young Bridger had reined his horse into a walk beside him just before they entered the top of the trappers’ camp. “About what?”

  “Don’t you figger these Snake women to be just about the purtiest a man can find him in these here mountains?”

  “S-snake women?”

  “Snake, Shoshone,” Bridger repeated. “I s’pose they’s called Snakes on account for the way they sign their tribe.” Shifting his rifle to his rein hand, Jim raised the other and made a wriggling motion, in the manner a reptile would slither along the ground. “Snake.”

  Bass nodded, turning now to steal himself a look at some of the black-eyed women who were threading their way in among the warriors as the men of Ashley and Provost formed a long corridor for the Shoshone to pass through on their way to selecting a campsite farther south in Willow Valley. While he figured he would wait until he had himself a chance at a right-close inspection to offer his judgment on the pouting-lipped beauty of the squaws, he nonetheless could readily see that they were, by and large, a lighter-skinned people than the Ute he had come to know over the past winter.

  Down, down through a wide gauntlet of grinning, gaping, brown-toothed white men the Shoshone paraded like royalty come to visit. While the trappers occasionally fired off a rifle into the air, perhaps a smoothbore musket or their belt, pistols, the Snakes waved and sang, shouted and shrieked, pounding their drums and shaking their rattles even louder. A few warriors held eight-inch lengths of wing bone in their lips, small and delicate fluffs tied at the end of these whistles to dance on the wind while the men blew that eerie, high-pitched screech of a golden or bald-headed eagle. How easily its call rose above the noisy clamor of all the rest.

  Bridger slapped Titus on the arm and motioned Bass to follow him away from the hubbub grown so noisy it was useless trying to talk. They joined Fraeb and the other two trappers angling off to the side of the procession, where they reined up to watch the parade pass them on by. The Shoshone streamed right on through the trappers’ camp, down the valley a good half mile where their pony herd would not have a chance to mingle with the white man’s horses and mules grazing across the creek on the benches farther up the valley.

  More than a dozen men jogged up to stop among the five horsemen.

  “Them’s your Snakes, ain’t they, Bridger?”

  “They are that, Jedediah,” Jim replied with a filial pride. “Prettiest people in these mountains, to my way of thinking.”

  “Appears Bridger’s gone and got himself partial already,” Harrison Rogers commented.

  As brigade clerk, Rogers was never far from the side of the taller, square-jawed man who stood as erect as a hickory ramrod at the center of that group of men on foot. A devoutly Christian man, a New Englander who had carried his Bible into what many back east considered to be a godless heathens’ wilderness, one of the handful who refrained from the burn of whiskey on his tongue or the heat of a naked squaw wrapped up with him in a blanket—this fire-eyed partisan was no less than Jedediah Strong Smith himself.

  “If any of you men are going to partake in the sins of the flesh before we set off,” Smith began, hurling his booming, fire-and-brimstone voice over those who had followed in his wake, “the next few days might well be your last for a long, long time to come.”

  One of the eleven called out, “You mean you’re ’Mowing us to have a spree with them Injun womens, Jed?”

  Smith turned to John Reubasco. “Until I tell you it’s time to pack up and move out, what sinning you do will be between you and your God.”

  “But I don’t have me no God, Jed,” cried Abraham LaPlant, another of Jed’s brigade and one of Smith’s closest friends, a man who could get away with joshing their devout leader.

  Smith wagged his head, his grin widening. “Then all I can do is to warn you and your kind, Abe: best see that none of you go swilling down Ashley’s liquor like it was baptismal water!”

  They all laughed heartily at that, then Rogers inquired, “How long you figger till we’re packing oft to the southwest, Jed?”

  In turn, Smith looked up at Bridger. “You got any news on the general’s plans, Jim?”

  Bridger shrugged. “I figger ronnyvoo’s over when he gets him all the fur bought up.”

  Smith added, “Sure to snatch up what furs Provost and the others brung in too.”

  “Likely the general will light out for St. Louie soon as he has all of his packs filled with them geegaw goods traded out,” Bridger continued. “Then there ain’t no more reason for ary a man to hang on here at ronnyvoo, an’ Ashley will pack up to move out.”

  “Talk is he’s give up on the mountains,” Fraeb announced, dour as ever, looking at Smith, Ashley’s partner. His words appeared to stun all the rest into silence.

  “That’s likely just talk,” Rogers declared testily as he turned to Jedediah for confirmation.

  With a wag of his head Smith announced, “Maybe not, Harrison.”

  Bridger replied, “The general’s made him his fortune awready in just more’n four years, ain’t he?”

  “And I hear tell he’s got a purty gal back in St. Lou ready to marry ’im,” Jed explained. “No man could blame Ashley for cashing in his plews and kicking up his boots now.”

  “What I heerd this morning is that we’re due to be working for new booshways right soon,” John Gaither, one of the horsemen beside Fraeb, suddenly disclosed.

  “Who you figger’s gonna booshway this new outfit?” Bridger demanded, eyes widening with interest.

  “Could be that I’ll stay on when the general quits the trade,” Smith answered calmly.

  Close to twenty sets of eyes immediately turned on him in surprise at the revelation.

  “You h’ain’t the only one to run these here mountains,” Fraeb declared, making it sound as if he weren’t sure it wasn’t a joke.

  But as surprising as was the news that Ashley was giving up the fur trade, it really came as no shock that Jedediah Strong Smith would be staying on. He was as driven, directed, and no-nonsense as they came out here in the far west. Some might even say he was, in his own Puritan way, consumed by his quest.

  “So this here palaver ain’t no bald-face, is it, Jed?” Bridger asked.

  Smith shook his head. “Ashley come to me this morning,” he explained, looking from face to face as he spoke to that breathless crowd. “But—it ain’t just me gonna lead the new company, fellas. Understand that. General said he wanted to talk things over with a few of us.”

  “A few,” Fraeb grumbled as if his belly was soured on green apples. “Who be the other’ns gonna talk things over?”

  “Two of ’
em,” Smith answered. “Billy Sublette—”

  Bridger interrupted, youthfully assertive, “Billy’s a good man.”

  “… and the third be Davy Jackson,” Jed concluded.

  “J-jackson!” Fraeb sputtered. “Why, that no-account sprout ain’t got the right—”

  “Davy’s a damned workhorse, Frapp,” Bridger interrupted before Smith got his mouth open. “He’s allays worked harder’n any man I knows of out here.”

  Now Jed spoke up, “And that’s why I’ll partner with the man any season, Frapp. Ain’t a trapper here what don’t already know that Davy’s brigades always brings in their furs. From only God knows where! But Jackson brings in the plews for to make the general a handsome profit.”

  “Hrrrumph,” Fraeb snorted. “So it’s to be Sublette, Smit’, und Jackson, is it, now?”

  With a shrug Jedediah Smith replied, “Don’t know for sure, till we talk with the general: hear what he’s got to offer about selling out. Don’t know any of the rest, fellas—but I’ve already told my outfit that no matter me being booshway of a new company or not, we’re setting out for a long ride to explore us that country to the southwest.”

  Daniel Potts came up to stop beside Bass, asking of Bridger, “Jim—if Smith’s outfit heads off south, where you figger we’ll be bound?”

  With a smile young Bridger replied, “Fitz told me we’re going back north.”

  “To Blackfeet country?” hollered a man from the crowd.

  “Where the furs are sleek and the plews are prime, boys,” Bridger replied.

  Potts slapped an arm on Bass’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t wanna come north with Fitzpatrick’s bunch?”

  “What?” Titus responded in mock horror. “And leave my skelp to hang in some red nigger’s lodge up there in Blackfeet country?”

  “So, better that you leave it off to some mangy, flea-bit ’Rapaho buck, eh?” Beckwith prodded with a wide, toothy grin, coming up to the group as Smith and Bridger were dispersing the gathering.