“Drips come out from St. Louie with a small pack train last year,” Elbridge explained. “Had him no more’n two dozen carts an’ some seventy-five men.”
“Getting smaller and smaller ever’ year now,” Isaac grumped.
Titus stretched out his legs, his knees aching from those countless seasons spent submerged in freezing water. “That Scotsman feller, Stewart—he come out again last summer?”
Gray’s head bobbed. “Sartin sure did. Brung him out some others too. Had ’nother furrin-borned fella with him this time. Name of Sutter.*That’un said he was setting his sights on making it all the way to the land of them Spanyards in California.”
Rufus Graham snorted with laughter. “It were funny to hear that li’l rip of a runt grumble and cuss with his funny talk! Why, don’t you know he went from camp to camp at ronnyvoo, trying to hire him an outfit of fellers to guide him on to California.”
“He have him any takers?” Scratch asked.
Rufus nodded. “A few hooked up with Sutter and give up on beaver.”
“You ’member how that li’l pecker called ’em all a bunch of robbers!” Solomon hooted. “He howled that all it seemed most fur men really wanted to do in California was rob churches, stealing cattle and horses!”
“More’n a handful signed on with Sutter leastways,” Elbridge said. “And Stewart brung out a pair of young fellers, just to make a trip west.”
“Either of them two hap to be a artist—maybeso that Miller fella he had with him couple years back?” Titus asked.
“Just peach-faced boys,” and Isaac shook his head solemnly. “Their papa sent ’em out to see the West.”
Itching the side of his cheek, Scratch asked, “Who’s their papa?”
“William Clark, of St. Louis,” Rufus answered. “Same one took that bunch all the way to the far ocean with Lewis back … oh, more’n thirty year ago now.”
“His two boys come out to see this country for themselves, I reckon,” Elbridge observed with a wry smile.
“I’ll bet ol’ man Clark sent his young’uns out here to see this here country the way it was when he come through here years ago,” Bass grumbled sourly. “See this country a’fore it ain’t no more.”
“Ain’t no more?” Rufus squealed.
“Lookit, boys—nigh onto ever’ summer we see’d missionaries coming to ronnyvoo, on their way west with their carts and wagons and milk cows,” Scratch declared grimly. “We see’d white women and Englishmen, Bible-thumpers and furriners … and for ever’ one of ’em come out here—there’s just a li’l less wild country left for the likes of you and me.”
The others fell silent for a few moments, thoughtful. Then Solomon said, “I recollect Scratch is right on that. Even more of them goddamned missionaries come through last summer too.”
“More?” Bass groaned.
Gray said, “Had four white women with ’em too.”
“Don’t s’prise me none,” Bass admitted.
“Even had us a li’l fun when one of them preachers married one of the company fellers to his Nez Perce woman.”
“Married her?” Bass said. “You mean like stand-up white folks, read-the-Bible married?”
Elbridge nodded enthusiastically. “Them Nepercy stood around stone-faced and quiet as church mice whilst that missionary said the proper words over ’em both.”
“Most off, I recollect how last year them clerks from St. Louis didn’t have a good word to say ’bout things back east,” Isaac explained. “They was grumping over how bad they was having it with furs.”
Simms went on to explain how the eastern hands who accompanied the caravan for that summer trip to the mountains and back were eager to describe just how gloomy the financial picture had become in the East. The Panic of Thirty-seven had the States in its grip. Money was tight, times were hard, trade goods were never more expensive, and beaver was falling fast.
“That ronnyvoo last summer no better’n this’un,” Bass said.
“Most fellers pretty down, that’s for sure, what with all them company clerks was telling ever’one,” Rufus explained. “Then we heard tell the company was so disgusted, they wasn’t gonna bring out no more trade goods. No more ronnyvoo.”
“Disgusted?” Titus repeated.
“Rumor was the company bosses tol’t Drips they wasn’t much happy with the mountain trade no more,” Elbridge took up the story. “They figgered maybeso to do it all from the fur posts.”
“Fur posts!” Titus squeaked in disbelief. “Won’t be no more ronnyvoo?”
Solomon said, “Ever’ year now more and more niggers give up trapping and ride off back east. That means there ain’t much beaver for them booshways no more.”
“What do Drips and Fontenelle fix to do if’n there ain’t no more mountain rendezvous?” Bass inquired.
“Fontenelle’s dead,” Elbridge disclosed. “I heard he died last year. Drips is the only one still running things in the mountains now.”
“He put Bridger out in the field with a strong brigade,” Rufus explained. “Joe Walker got ’nother outfit working for Drips. Damn if Walker didn’t come in to the Popo Agie last summer with a shit-load of Mexican horses. That was ’bout the best news the company got last summer. Needed them horses in a bad way.”
This was all so hard to comprehend. Right from Bass’s first year in the mountains, there had always been a summer rendezvous: a place to trade in his furs and barter for what he needed in possibles.
Titus wagged his head, unable to fathom it. “No more ronnyvoo?”
“But don’t you see?” Gray asked. “Drips ended up calling ever’one together and telling ’em the rumors was all wrong. Promised he’d be out here to Horse Crik this summer.”
Then Isaac said, “But the damage been done by the time Drips stomped on them rumors.”
“Damage?” Scratch asked.
“We heard tell of … maybeso a dozen fellers what listened to all them stories ’bout the company not having no more ronnyvoo,” Isaac continued. “Well, a few of them niggers slipped off from the Popo Agie ever’ night or so, taking their company traps and their company guns and their company possibles with ’em.”
“Ever’ last one of ’em running off with a good number of company horses too!” Rufus cried. “Ain’t never been so many deserters as there was last summer.”
Isaac said, “I s’pose it’s cuz no one was much for sure there’d be ’nother ronnyvoo.”
“Fact be, Drips says if we meet up next summer, he’ll show up here,” Elbridge explained. “Just this morning Drips got all the boys together and said Pierre Chouteau the younger back in St. Louis don’t know if he’ll send out another supply train next year—but if he does, it ought’n ronnyvoo with us right here where we been many times a’fore.”
“Damn if this all don’t take the circle!” Bass exclaimed in amazement. “Hard to reckon on them fellas stealing traps and possibles and horses from their brigades.”
Rufus shrugged in that easy way of his. “Man hears the company ain’t gonna be no more, I guess he reckons it’s time to take what he figgers is due him.”
“We … we even talked ’bout deserting our own selves last summer,” Solomon confessed.
“But we didn’t,” Elbridge stated firmly. “We signed on with the company to the end … and that’s damn well giving a man our solemn word. We ain’t none of us gonna steal from no man—not when we got our pride.”
“Makes a fella wonder,” Isaac ruminated, “what the hell we’re gonna do when the company tells us it don’t need us to trap its beaver no more.”
“Shit,” Bass growled as the others fell silent in the drone and buzz of busy insects. “From the looks of things—this here beaver business gone and sunk so low that white men even took to stealing from white men!”
* Swiss immigrant August Johann Sutter.
29
“You hear tell Bridger’s quit the company?”
For a moment there Titus Bass studied Shadrach S
weete’s face for any betrayal that the man was pulling his leg. “Gabe?” he asked in disbelief. “Not Bridger!”
The overly tall man bobbed his head as some others stepped up to listen in. “Can’t believe it my own self. I just come from Drips’s tent yonder. Last night Bridger said he might just do it—but I didn’t figger he ever would.”
“Quit the company?” asked an older, lanky man striding up in greasy buckskins.
“Told Drips he’d have to get someone else to guide the brigade this year,” Sweete explained as he turned to address the man nearly twice his age. “Bridger’s heading back to St. Louis with the fur caravan when it pulls out.”
If that report didn’t just about beat all the other bad news there was at this quiet little shindig beside the mouth of Horse Creek. First off, Bass had reached this rendezvous site on the Green River to find no more than one hundred twenty company trappers and fewer than thirty freemen waiting the arrival of the supply train. And from the looks of what few camps dotted the valley, one thing was certain as sun: no one had packed much in the way of beaver fur to this rendezvous of 1839.
Really didn’t matter, as things turned out, because when a rider hailed the camps a few days back, announcing that the trader’s caravan was approaching—Bass, like the rest, eagerly scanned that bench to the east, expecting to watch a long mule train or string of carts snake their way into the bottoms, bringing with them more recruits for the autumn brigades, perhaps joined by another large party of missionaries bound for Oregon country with their damned wagons, carriages, and milk cows.
But what caravan pilot Black Harris led into the valley was instead four small two-wheeled carts, each pulled by a pair of mules and carrying no more than eight hundred pounds of the company’s trade goods. On either side of each noisy, squeaking cart trudged a dust-coated, parched pair of St. Louis hired hands—no more than eight employees to assist in the exchange of furs across those few days it would take to trade furs for staples before Harris would turn his outfit around for the settlements. Besides those eight clerks, another half-dozen mule tenders were along to care for the cantankerous stock.
And there in the sheets of dust stirred up by them all, bringing up the rear of that pitifully small caravan, came two small carts and some missionaries, after all. In addition to those bound for the fertile fields of the heathens, Black Harris was accompanied by a German physician and his small party from St. Louis who had come to the mountains for a summer of recreation and adventure.
“Damn poor doin’s,” Scratch had grumbled. From what he could see, he didn’t figure he had missed a damned thing on the Popo Agie the summer before.
And now Gabe was headed east.
Maybeso if a man did have him some family back in Missouri country, Titus rationalized his old friend’s intentions, there might be reason for him to throw it all in and head back now that the business was no more than a ghost of its former glory. But he figured it had to be something mighty powerful to pull a man like Jim Bridger back to the States—quitting the beaver streams, abandoning his Flathead wife and children, forsaking these mountains for the runty hills of the east.
“You figger Gabe ain’t never coming back?” the tall bone rack of a stranger asked of Sweete.
Shad could only shrug. “Bridger ain’t said what he ’tends to do. But I don’t figger him for staying long back there. Most ever’thing he’s ever knowed is out here.”
“Damn straight,” the older man grumped, giving Bass a close, squint-eyed appraisal of a sudden. “If there ain’t beaver to skin and red niggers to skulp in the Big Stonies … by God there’s allays horses to steal from the greasers out to Californy!” And with that next breath he poked his face right into Scratch’s and asked, “I know you, pilgrim?”
“Maybeso,” Titus replied with a chortle, raising his arms into the air, one on either side of his head, fingers spread like antlers. “—If’n you’re that crazy nigger what’s gonna turn into a bull elk when you’re gone under!”
“I thort it was you,” the homely man declared with a grin, holding out a bony paw to shake. “The nigger what’s called Scratch. Last saw you down to Taos.”
Nodding, Bass shook the strong, lean hand and said, “Shad, this here’s Bill Williams.”
“Ol’ Bill Williams?” Sweete asked. “Ever’body knows of Ol’ Solitaire. Man, if I ain’t heard a passel of tales ’bout you!”
“Ain’t none of ’em the truth,” Williams snapped. As suddenly he smiled hugely. “Then again, maybeso ever’ last one of ’em be the truth too!”
Scratch looked the old veteran in the eye and asked, “How you read the sign, Bill? Fat cow or poor bull? You figger the mountain trade ’bout to go under with Bridger heading east and all these here niggers running off with horses and traps they stole’t?”
Williams snorted. “Maybeso fur is done for a while. But beaver’s bound to rise, I allays say. If’n a man needs to, he can find hisself something to do till the plews are prime again.”
“What else is a child s’posed to do if’n he don’t trap?” Sweete demanded testily.
Regarding the tall man warily, Williams said, “You are a big chunk of it, now, ain’cha?” He put a finger to his temple. “Think on it—and maybeso you’ll come up with something to do till beaver comes back.”
“What you fixing to do, Bill?” Scratch asked.
“Me and few others been kicking round the idee of riding west for Californy—steal some Mex’can horses like I tol’t you.”
Sweete wagged his head. “Why horses?”
“Out here a nigger can buy ’em for a rich man’s ransom … or he can ride back east to get horses for hisself. So there might just be some real good money in it for a child who steals some horses in Californy what he can sell to the forts.”
“Mayhaps them greasers shoot your head off too,” Bass snorted, “you try riding off with their horses.”
“Them pepper beans?” Williams asked with sour laughter.
“Any man gets shot at enough,” Titus replied, “I figger the odds gotta mean he’s gonna get hit with a lead ball one day.”
“Ain’t a greaser gun made can hit me,” Williams boasted.
Turning to Sweete, Bass asked, “If you ain’t gonna steal Mex’can horses like Bill here—you gonna stay on with Drips’s brigade now that Bridger ain’t along?”
With a shrug Shadrach said, “Been thinking I might just head west a mite—work out of Fort Hall. Hear the British promise to treat Americans right on their prices for goods, on what they’ll offer for beaver.”
“Some ol’ partners of mine said they heard the same thing.”
“Goddamn them English!” Williams grumbled. “I’d steal ever’thing out from under ’em and burn down their posts a’fore I’d deal with John Bull!”
“Maybeso I figure to have me somewhere to sell my beaver when the Americans pull outta the mountains, ol’ man,” Sweete advised.
“There’s other posts,” Williams argued. “Don’t have to deal with them Englishers.”
“Fort Lucien?” Bass inquired. “St. Louis parley-voos own that’un.”
Williams shook his head emphatically, saying, “But the company don’t own that Vaskiss post on the South Platte. And they don’t run them others down in that country neither.”
“What others?” Titus asked.
“Some soldier named Lupton left the army to jump in the beaver trade year or two back,” Williams said. “’Side his, there’s two more on the Platte: Fort Jackson and Fort Savary—all of ’em trading with the Cheyenne and ’Rapaho.”
Titus asked, “Robes?”
“Beaver from white men, robes from redbellies,” Williams answered. “And now the Bents are offering top dollar for all the horses we can bring ’em. Californy or Injun—makes ’em no differ’nce.”
Sweete said, “All of them places over on the east side of the mountains.”
“And that can be a ride for a man what wants to have somewhere handy to trade his fu
rs,” Bass observed. “Only reason I ever traded up to Tullock’s post at the mouth of the Tongue was I found myself up in that Crow country.”
Nodding, the old trapper said, “Ain’t whistling in the dark there, Scratch—but ary man what wants to stay in this here country can allays do his business on this side of the mountains.”
Sweete growled. “You just said you wasn’t giving none of your business to them English over at Fort Hall—”
“I ain’t talking ’bout Fort Hall, you idjit!” Bill snapped. “Ain’t either of you heard ’bout them two posts on south of here?”
Bass and Sweete glanced at one another before looking back at Williams.
“No doubt you two ignernt coons been spending too much of your time up in Blackfoot and Crow country!” the old man snorted. “Down near the mouth of the Winty is Robidoux’s post … and just northeast of there a leetle is Fort Davy Crockett.”
“Northeast, where?”
“Brown’s Hole. East side of the Green. Fort’s been there more’n a year … maybeso two year now this summer.”
“They in the beaver business?” Titus asked. “Got trade goods?”
“Them fellers all been trappers,” Williams declared. “So I figger they know how to treat a man fair. Better’n this goddamned company got this hull country by the balls—squeezing down so hard they’re choking the life right out of the beaver trade.”
Bass looked at Sweete. “I been there.”
“Brown’s Hole?”
Nodding, Scratch said, “Trapping might be fair in that country. Chances are a man won’t bump into too many Injuns. Maybeso we’d make a pair of it if’n you ain’t give up on the mountains—”
“I ain’t give up on the mountains!” Shad roared.
“Then you cogitate ’bout heading south with me to trap that Uinty country, go sniff out just how fair a man gets treated down to this Fort Davy Crockett.”
“I’ll think on it some,” Shad replied, screwing up his lips thoughtfully.
“You lemme know next day or so,” Bass said. “It ain’t like we got a whole lot of choices no more, Shad. There ain’t many ways for niggers like us to make our living. We don’t trap beaver—we can always turn to horse stealing like Ol’ Solitaire here … or turn back for the settlements.”
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