And far beyond the timbered walls stood more than thirty buffalo-hide lodges, where brown-skinned women worked over outdoor fires and naked children chased one another in their games. Bridger had him an outright settlement of his own!
In moments it became clear there were actually two stockades, one a bit larger than the other, but sharing a length of one timbered wall in common. The gates of both were visible to the riders as they came tearing in from the north, finally slowing their heaving horses to a lope on that broad flat … when a lone figure stepped into sight from one of the open gates, the lowering sun at his back. He tore the flat-brimmed, low-crowned hat from his head and O’ed up his mouth for a greeting.
“What’s your lather for, boys? Can’t be no redskins lickin’ it after you—”
The instant his voice melted away in midsentence, the man slowly lowered his hat to his side and began to wag his head, a huge smile growing on his face. “As I live an’ breathe … if’n you ain’t a pair for these sore eyes!”
“Gabe!” Shad shrieked as he bounded off his horse and hit the ground at a trot to seize the shorter man in his big arms while Ghost and Digger bounded around the two like pups.
“Lordy!” Bridger gasped after several moments. “C-come peel this here b’ar off me, Scratch!”
Reluctantly Shad released the trader and lowered Bridger to the ground once more as Titus legged out of his saddle and strode over to the pair.
“Just look at you!” Bridger exclaimed to Sweete. Then he turned to Bass to ask, “He’s growed some since I last saw him. Don’cha think he’s growed some?”
“I’ll allow I was still a pup when we first throwed in with the general,* Gabe,” Sweete said as he threw an arm back over Bridger’s shoulder, “but I ain’t growed outta a pair o’ mokersons in many a winter!”
When Bridger stepped toward him with his arms opened, Bass gave the trader a fond embrace. “Damn, but it shines to see you, Gabe!”
“How come you never rode down from Crow country to see me afore now?”
“Ain’t been anywhere close to the Green in more summers than I care to count,” Scratch explained. “Last time it was … I think I rode through here with Ol’ Solitaire on our way south.”
“South? Makin’ to Robidoux’s post?”
“Gone farther, we did—all the way to Californy for some Mexican horses.”
Bridger snorted, slapped his knee with his hat before he repositioned it on his head. “Was you in that bunch that throwed Peg-Leg out in the desert?”*
“Yep. I figger Solitaire gave him better’n a oily-tongued backstabber deserved,” Scratch replied. “You ever hear what ever come of him?”
“Last I heard tell, he’s still raising hell and putting a chunk under it too!” Bridger declared. “Someone said he aims to make California his own. From what folks has told me recent, American soldiers gone down an’ took Santa Fe from the Mexicans afore they marched out to do the same in California. So, Peg-Leg figgers to make something outta himself out there.”
“Just the place for his kind, out there,” Bass grumbled sourly. “Keep Peg-Leg busy so’s he won’t come back to these here mountains to make trouble for the rest of us.”
Bridger wheeled on Sweete. “How long you coons fixin’ to stay?”
Shad looked at Titus with a shrug. “We ain’t never thought ’bout it.”
But Bass scratched at his chin reflectively and said, “Lemme see now. Ain’t long afore it turns summer, when plews ain’t worth the sweat off your ass. An’ since there ain’t gonna be no ronnyvoo to ride off to this year, so … I figger next best place for the season is Bridger’s post.”
“You mean that?” the trader asked. “The two of you stay through the summer?”
“Don’t see a reason why we can’t—do you, Shadrach?”
Sweete threw a big arm over Bridger’s shoulder. “We’re movin’ in, Gabe!”
For a moment there, the trader’s tongue was tied, until he blinked his eyes and finally confessed, “Gotta tell you both, that’s some good news to this here child. Past winter was hard on me. I l-lost my Cora.”
Bass took a step forward and laid his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Your wife?”
“She died givin’ birth to our li’l Josephine last autumn,” he explained. “Josie’s our third.”
“That mean you’re raising all three of ’em by yourself?” Sweete asked with concern.
“Sometime back I sent Mary Ann off to Doc Whitman’s mission up in Cayuse country!” Bridger declared proudly. “She’s goin’ to school with Joe Meek’s girl. But my boy, Felix, he’s been here with me, an’ the baby too. So it’ll be some punkins to have your women around to help out. Lately I’ve found there’s a lot a man ain’t really the best at.”
Smiling with admiration for his old friend, Titus said, “I know a couple o’ gals gonna be real happy to get their hands on that baby girl of yours, Gabe!”
Bridger looped an arm around both of them as his attention was held by the young boy leading his horse toward them. “Times’ll shine, boys. Days gonna get real busy, here on out. I can use a hand from you both when them emigrants show their faces on the horizon.”
“Man just as soon stay busy as loaf in the shade, Jim,” Titus said.
“Every train bound for Oregon gonna come by here,” Bridger explained. “They’ll need fixin’s, trade off horses or a team of mules, maybeso dicker off some of their oxen too afore they push on for Hallee up on the Snake. Likely, most’ll need some repair work on their wagons—”
“Blacksmithin’?” Titus asked, the first twinge of excitement squirting through him.
“Yepper. Size down tires with this dry air out here, repair yokes and tongues and even boxes too,” Jim said. “You know anythin’ ’bout smithing, Titus Bass?”
“Hell, I worked Hysham Troost’s forge in St. Louie for a number o’ years afore I come west in twenty-five,” he announced proudly.
Bridger blinked in disbelief. “Hysham Troost teached you smithing?”
Bass nodded.
“Glorreee! That’s good enough for any man!” Bridger exclaimed. “You’ll sure as hell do, Scratch! My forge needs fixin’ up—some corncracker burnt half of it down late last summer afore we could put out the fire … but we’ll work out some pay for what you do to help around here an’ what business you scare up, both of you niggers.”
Fumble-footed, Sweete asked, “What you rigger I can do, Gabe?”
“No shortage of work to be done ’round here, Shadrach. But”—and he paused reflectively—“what I need most is someone smart to oversee my ferry on the Green.”
“Your ferry?”
“You didn’t see my ferry up there on the Green River when you come over the pass an’ down the Sandy?”
“Nope. We rode south of there.”
“Where from?”
“Bad doin’s at Fort John on the Platte,” Titus declared. “Them Frenchies tried to make off with my daughter.”
“Shit,” Bridger grumbled sympathetically. “They can all go to hell, them parley-voos! Glad I’m shet of American Fur and all o’ Chouteau’s Frenchies for good! So, tell me how you two come over from Fort John.”
Titus scratched the back of his neck and said, “We come south of the Black Hills, where the weather’d blowed the land clear.”
“You come through the Red Desert?”
“Yep,” Shad said. “It was tough doin’s, but we finally hit the headwaters of Bitter Creek, and follered it down to the Green. Come across the Seedskeedee near the mouth of Black’s.”
“I’ll be gone to hell,” Bridger exclaimed. “I ain’t been through that country since back to Ashley’s day—when we come north through that country to strike the Green. Damn, but I’ll bet that way’d cut a passel o’ few days off a trip between here an’ the North Platte.”
“Some of it’s rough,” Titus said, “but the winds keep the snow blowed out most of the time, I’d reckon.”
“Who’s this boy
you got along?” Bridger asked as the lean, copper-skinned youngster came up to a stop near the three men, leading his horse by a single rein. “He yours, Shadrach?”
“Nawww, he’s Scratch’s boy.”
Bass said, “Flea, shake hands with the man. He’s a ol’t friend of your pa’s. A good, ol’t friend.”
“Flea is my name,” the youngster said a bit nervously, holding out his hand to the trader.
“Jim Bridger is mine, Flea.”
“Bri-ger,” he repeated thoughtfully.
“Call me Jim,” Gabe replied. “How old’s the lad?”
“He’ll be eleven come winter.”
Jim turned back to the boy. “Didn’t I see you wrangling them horses your pa brung in?”
Flea nodded without speaking a word.
“He’s got some strong medicine, Gabe,” Titus declared, bursting with pride. “The boy’s damn good with the four-leggeds.”
Bridger laid a hand on Flea’s shoulder. “If your pa don’t mind, I’m sure we can find some work for you to do around here this summer too.”
“Wor-work?” and his big eyes flicked back and forth between his father and Bridger.
Titus chuckled. “I don’t think he knows what that word means, Jim.”
“I figger you for a lad who’d like to tend to our horses,” Bridger explained. “Ride ’em, brush ’em, see to the mares when they drop their foals?”
Flea glanced quickly at his father, then nodded to the trader. “I try do good for you, Jim.”
Squinting into the bright sunlight, Bridger gazed over his friends’ shoulders and asked, “So any of them women and young’uns comin’ our way really yours, Shad? Or they all belong to that ol’ bull named Titus Bass?”
* John Robertson was better known throughout the fur trade period and beyond as “Uncle Jack” Robinson.
* Borderlords
* General William H. Ashley, founder of the rendezvous system, wherein every summer a trader brought his trade goods out from St. Louis to a predetermined spot of “rendezvous” in the central Rocky Mountains, taking in the mountain man’s beaver pelts in trade for powder and lead, blankets and beads, coffee and whiskey too.
* Death Rattle
EIGHT
They came that summer of ’47 … those dream-hungry emigrants sure as sun came. But the first of them to show up on Bridger’s doorstep weren’t bound for Oregon at all. They would claim to be the chosen lambs of God desperately in search of their Zion.
In those weeks that followed the arrival of his old friends, Jim Bridger kept Scratch and Shadrach busy with this and that around his post. Waits-by-the-Water and Shell Woman pitched in to help in a big way, what with Gabe’s Flathead wife, Cora, having died in childbirth. Both women started right up with baby Josephine, and gave a mother’s affection to six-year-old Felix too. Besides helping the trader get his store ready for the emigrant season, Magpie was right there on the heels of the two women, mostly helping out by watching over Shell Woman’s little ones when she didn’t have her hands in something with the women. But Flea—now he was given the most grown-up job of all.
Their second night at Fort Bridger, the three families sat around a cheery fire built in a pit outside the post buildings, dug near the center of the open compound where they had taken their supper of antelope, served with some Jerusalem artichokes and wild onions Flea and Magpie dug up along the river. As the stars popped into view, one by one, and the winter-cured cottonwood crackled at their feet, Bridger called young Flea over to stand at his knee.
“Your pa an’ me, we been talking,” Gabe began, then looked at the boy squarely. “You unnerstand my American talk, son?”
Flea nodded, his eyes flicking once to his father’s face.
“When I asked your pa if’n you was ready to be give a young man’s work, he said he figgered the only way to find out was to see if you was up to it.”
Flea gulped. “What work?”
“You unnerstand that word, work?”
“He does now, Jim,” Titus replied. “Maybeso he didn’t a couple days back when we rolled in here. But I think my boy’s got a quick mind about him an’ he’s caught on.”
Shadrach agreed, “He dove in like a snapper, didn’t he, Scratch?”
So Bass prodded, “G’won and tell him, Gabe.”
Bridger trained his attention on the boy, raising a hand to place it on the lad’s shoulder as everyone quieted in that circle. “One of the most important jobs I got at this here post is my horses. Man don’t have no horse in this country, he’s likely to die.”
“But Tom Fitzpatrick got hisself put afoot—-back to thirty-two! An’ he wasn’t rubbed out!” Sweete admonished.
Jim flicked him an evil look and said, “That’s another story for another time, Shadrach. Now, Flea—if’n a man ain’t got a strong horse under him, he’s likely good as dead too. Good animals always been important to your mama’s people, and to us white folks too.”
Flea nodded, his dark eyes growing all the bigger now.
“You figger you’re up to havin’ me put my horses in your care?”
The boy’s eyes narrowed, and his brow knitted.
“Flea,” Titus said in Crow, “our friend asks you if you would do a man’s work to look after all his horses at this fort.”
Without saying a word, Flea turned slowly from looking at his father to staring incredulously at Jim Bridger. Then he spoke, “Flea? You want me see to your horses?”
“That’s what I’m asking, son.”
“Ever’ morning you’ll bring ’em out of the corral over yonder.” Titus pointed at the stockaded corral attached to the fort walls, its size a bit smaller than the post compound. “Take ’em down to water, then lead ’em up to a pasture to graze for the day. You understand ever’thing I’ve said in American talk?”
The boy’s head bobbed. “I understand.”
“You want the work?”
Suddenly Flea’s smile lit up as if there were a blaze of stars behind his face. “I work with the horses, yes!”
“What about me, Gabe?” Sweete asked. “You still need me work up on the Green at your ferry?”
“You was my segundo years ago, Shad—so I know I can count on you being at my back.”
Sweete leaned forward, his powerful forearms planted on top of his knees. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“Where we need to be for the next few weeks is up to that ferry on the Green. Got to haul a load of goods there, take us a small pack string: new rope to run across the river, saws to cut timbers for the raft big enough to hold a good-sized wagon, nails an’ such we might need to build a cabin for the fellas gonna run the ferry for me.”
Leaning back slightly, his shoulders sagging with disappointment, Shad admitted, “I gotta tell you I don’t know a damned thing ’bout building a cabin, Jim. Ain’t never built a raft to float nothing anywhere near the size of a wagon, an’ I wouldn’t know the first thing ’bout stringing rope so it works a ferry.”
“By the time you an’ me get done up there together, you’ll know,” Bridger replied. “I figger I can leave you at the Green to run that ferry as my segundo. Way I see it, we got us till late June, early July afore the first of them emigrants gonna show their faces on this side of the Southern Pass.”
Bass nodded, saying, “Three of us can make short work of that.”
But the trader turned to Titus and said, “Me an’ Shad, we’ll get it done, just the two of us.”
Now Scratch’s shoulders sank with disappointment. “You don’t figger me to go along, what’m I gonna do around here?”
With a snort, Bridger waved his arm in a wide arc at the stockade walls. “Hell, coon—you’re gonna take care of Fort Bridger till I get back!”
“T-take care—”
“Watch over things: the stock mostly. But, your boy’s gonna help you do that. ’Sides taking over looking after li’l Josie, your women gonna help out with all that’s gotta get done in the store afore them
emigrants show up ready to buy up ever’thing we got for sale, then be on their way to Oregon. But the biggest job you gotta see to is to rebuild my forge so you got a place to work.”
“Rebuild your forge?”
Jim shrugged. “You’re handy—I figger you can get yourself set up soon enough, and start hammering out some hardware on my forge I got out under that awning next to our quarters.”
“I-I ain’t worked a hammer an’ anvil since … spring o’ twenty-five, Jim!”
“Hell, it’ll come back to you slick as shootin’. You was trained by Hysham Troost, so I know it’ll come back quick. Need you to start cutting and shaving down wheel spokes too, with one of them drawknives. Them emigrants gonna need new spokes, and we ought’n have a few spare ox-yokes on hand too. I got one you can measure against. We’ll need clasps an’ hasps an’ joint brackets too—I figger by the time they get here, them eastern sodbusters discovered how their wagons been shrinking up an’ nothing’s fitting right no more.”
He took his eyes from Jim’s face and stared at the fire, wagging his head slightly. “I s’pose it may be just like breathin’, Gabe. Fire an’ sweat, iron an’ muscle.” Then Titus turned to look at his wife, admitting, “I ain’t got near the muscle I had when I worked for Troost, but—for you I’ll give it ever’thing I got.”
Bridger immediately leaned over and slapped Bass on the thigh. “Damme if we don’t have us a plan!” He leaped to his feet, reaching down to grab both of young Felix’s hands, sweeping his young son to his feet and spinning him away from the circle of folks at the fire, taking the boy round and round in a clumsy, flatfooted imitation of a genteel dance.
Scratch glanced over at Waits, finding her eyes wide and sparkly as she giggled, watching Bridger and his son. Leaping to his feet, Titus surprised his wife when he yanked her to her feet and dragged her a few feet from the fire to begin spinning her about in the same fashion: leaning on the left foot, then his right, as they spun on the balls of their feet, her leather dress billowing out and back, out and back, while the fringes on his leggings flew and flapped, slapping his legs and hers too as they weaved around one another and back, again and again. In a matter of heartbeats Shad had Shell Woman up and clomping around too, the small woman staring intently at the ground, ever mindful of where her husband’s big feet were landing as the pair hobbled in an ungainly circle. Laughing with the joy that only children could ever know, Magpie pulled Flea away from the fire and the two of them started spinning at full speed, their hands clasped, arms fully outstretched, heads flung back as they roared in glee.
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