“Gone to stone?” Narcissa asked with a gasp.
“I ’spect so,” Bridger answered. “Looked up at the tree where that li’l bird was sitting, singing its pretty songs. When I tapped on that tree with my knuckles—found it hard as rock too.”
“The tree was made of stone too?” Henry Spalding inquired with a bemused haughtiness.
“Not just the tree and that bird,” Bridger carried on with a wag of his head. “Right about then I heard more birds and their pretty calls. Ain’t shy to tell you I stood there with my jaw hung down so far I was ’fraid I’d step on it. For the longest time I waited right where I was, staring up at them peetreefied trees where even more of them peetreefied birds was singing more of their peetreefied songs!”
It felt so good to laugh with all the others who roared, stamping their feet, slapping one another on the back, dabbing at the tears in their eyes from laughing so hard. Even Cora had to grin a little behind her hand when the others hooted and whooped at her husband’s whopper.
Scratch said, “Say, Gabe—why don’t you tell these folks ’bout that looking-glass mountain you run onto one day you was out hunting elk.”
“Did you tell ’em that story, Black?” Bridger asked.
Harris shook his head. “I had ’nough of my own tales to tell ’em ’bout walking to St. Lou with Billy Sublette and that poor ol’ dog we had to eat to stay alive! So you go right ahead and tell ’em ’bout your looking-glass mountain your own self.”
Jim explained that one autumn day years before, he was out on his trapline when he noticed a fine-looking bull elk with an impressive array of antlers grazing not all that far upstream. Carefully, quietly he made his stalk, stopping every few steps to peer out from behind the brush to assure himself the elk hadn’t winded him or heard his approach. Even as Jim slipped well within rifle range and stepped from the edge of his cover, he was surprised the bull still did not bolt and run off, preferring instead to graze contentedly.
“With that big critter turned sideways to me, close as I was, I couldn’t fail to plug him in the lights,” Bridger confided. “My pan made fire, so when I brought my rifle down, I ’spected to see that bull drop, maybeso run off on the chance I’d missed. But there he was, big as all life itself—still chewing on his grass like I hadn’t hit him.”
“What did you do, Mr. Bridger?” Narcissa asked.
“I was downright disgusted with myself for missing that shot offhand the way I done, so I reloaded and stalked up a might closer to that bull. When he still didn’t pay me no mind, I aimed to drop him for certain, and pulled the trigger.”
Dr. Whitman asked, “And?”
With a shrug Bridger said, “Damn bull kept right on chewing his grass like I wasn’t nowhere around throwing lead at him. I was a mite angry now, not knowing if my sights been knocked wrong, so I reloaded and walked right up to where I knowed that lead ball couldn’t miss.”
“Did you kill the elk?” Spalding asked.
Wagging his head dolefully, Jim admitted, “Nope. Missed him three times! I was so mad, I was choking on fire. Decided if I couldn’t shoot that bull with my rifle, then I’d go bang him over the head with my rifle. I started off on a run, holding my gun over my head like this.”
He waited an extra moment as the group fell to a hush, assuring himself that he had every person’s rapt attention before he continued.
“I was running like nothing you ever seen when I smacked square into something that throwed me back a good twenty feet.”
“What was it?” Whitman asked. “Did you run into a tree?”
He looked over at the missionary with a dead-serious look on his face. “Weren’t no tree I run into, doc.”
“A bear?” Spalding prodded.
“Weren’t no bear neither,” Bridger explained. “Didn’t know what it was, cause there weren’t a thing ’tween me and that bull. Open as all get-out ’tween me and him! So I picked myself up off the ground, grabbed my rifle up too, dusted myself off, and started running to knock him in the head again—when, bam! I’m throwed off my feet again.”
Bridger went on to tell how angry he was when he yanked up his rifle and started racing for the elk a third time, only to find himself hurled off his feet once more.
“Now, I’ll admit this here fella ain’t the smartest child ever come to the mountains, so I figgered it was time to go a leetle slower at this,” Jim told them gravely, the way a man confided a deep secret. “I started walking slow toward that elk … when of a sudden I come smack into a wall.”
“A wall?” Whitman repeated.
“Weren’t a wall, ’sactly. But it were a solid mountain, clear all the way through. Took me near all the rest of that day, but I got over that mountain, where I saw that elk chewing his grass on the far side. Why, that bull had to be more’n twenty mile away from me when I’d tried to shoot him!”
Spalding snorted dourly. “Twenty miles? How could you even see the animal?”
“Don’t you see, Rev’rend?” Bridger said respectfully, grinning a bit as he pulled on the pilgrim’s leg. “That there mountain was so big, clear as glass, that it were just like a giant looking glass that made the bull seem big and close—just the way folks use a looking glass to see things far, far away!”
“Your looking-glass mountain!” Narcissa squealed with glee, clapping her hands. “Marvelous, marvelous!”
“How true, Mrs. Whitman,” agreed the tall man in the showy buckskins as he stepped to the edge of the fire pit. Holding out his tin cup, Joshua Pilcher said, “Bridger is a consummate storyteller. And one of the finest booshways these mountains have ever seen. I’m sure Jim will join me in proposing a toast now that he and his partners have wrapped up our business and we no longer have to keep our talks under wraps.”
“Why all the secrecy, Joshua?” Stewart asked.
“My benefactors demanded it of me,” Pilcher explained. “At least until we came to terms, shook hands, and the matter was sealed.”
Stewart turned to Bridger, asking, “What matter, Jim?”
“We sold our company to Joshua’s bosses,” Bridger confessed. “Today.”
“Pratte, Chouteau and Company,” Pilcher said. “But they’ll continue to be known as the American Fur Company out here in the mountains.”
“Because they’ll be the only American fur company out here in the mountains,” Tom Fitzpatrick added.
“So here’s to a united front,” Pilcher proposed, lifting his tin cup. “One American company, to face down the threat of that giant Hudson’s Bay Company.”
“Hear! Hear!” slurred Lucien Fontenelle, clearly inebriated already.
Andrew Drips reluctantly nodded and held his cup high as Fitzpatrick stood.
Bridger finally got to his feet. The smile that he had worn while he’d been regaling them with his whoppers was fading quickly. In its place this veteran of the mountains wore a grave expression of defeat.
Bass instantly felt a sharp stab of sorrow for the younger man who had made an honorable name for himself after a youthful indiscretion had marred a reputation yet unborn. At seventeen Bridger had come upriver with Ashley and Henry. Green as a willow, he had volunteered to stay behind with the badly mauled Hugh Glass, then agreed to abandon the old frontiersman—running off with rifle, pistol, knife, and shooting pouch. But unlike most, who would have made excuses for the wrong they had done, year by year Bridger put in a yeoman’s work protecting those under his care.
But no matter the times that Bridger had attempted to better his lot by joining in one partnership after another, Lady Fate steadfastly refused to smile on him. Once again the fickle dame had turned her face from him. It damn well didn’t seem fair, not fair at all.
“Here’s to success, to our American company,” Pilcher repeated, then swilled down the potent libation from his cup.
“No,” Bass demanded as he stood and held his cup up to Bridger. The others froze. “I won’t drink to no bunch of tie-necked booshways back east, or the fancy
two-faced struttin’ prairie cocks they send out here to do their thievin’ for ’em.”
Pilcher’s face went ashen, his eyes dark in that sullen face. “Are you r-referring to me, sir?”
For but a moment Bass glared at Pilcher; then he quietly said, “You damn well know I am.”
The partisan’s ashen face flushed red with anger in the firelight. His lips moved, but it was a moment before the words came out. “Are—are you a company man?”
With a snort of laughter Bass said, “Hell, I’m a free man, Pilcher! Ain’t no turncoat like you!”
“How dare you—”
Already Bass was turned to Bridger and Fitzpatrick, interrupting the angry cackle from the company lackey by saying, “It ain’t gonna be no goddamned rich niggers like them parley-voos back in St. Louie, and it won’t be bastards with a high opinion of themselves like Pilcher here what’s gonna beat John Bull at the beaver business. Mark the words of this one man. What’s gonna drive Hudson’s Bay outta the mountains, and keep ’em out, ain’t fellas like Joshua Pilcher and all his snuff-snortin’, sheet-sleeping kind.”
“Hear! Hear!” bellowed Shad Sweete with a bull’s roar.
Warmed to his toast, Scratch continued. “It’s gonna be men the likes of Jim Bridger what keeps the beaver trade alive in these here mountains. Brave and honorable men like Jim Bridger what pertect this here land for America!”
Two days later, John Bull rode into rendezvous again.
As they had done for the last two years, half-breed Thomas McKay and factor John L. McLeod led a small brigade of guides and trappers to visit the annual American trading fair during their three-year-long expedition through the Snake River country. When Scratch rode over to look up an old friend, he was confronted with a pair of surprises.
The first was finding Kit Carson and his young Arapaho wife riding in with McKay’s outfit.
“We wintered over at Fort Hall,” Carson said. “So come spring, seemed a good idee for me and Godey, ’long with four others, to throw in with the Hudson’s Bay brigade.”
That news was nothing short of astonishing to Titus Bass. From time to time faithless belly-draggers like Joshua Pilcher offered to work for the British, but no one the likes of Christopher Carson who had stood up for the flag back when that Frenchie Shunar was boasting he would switch any American who chanced to cross his path.
It struck him hard. “S-so you trapped for John Bull, Kit?”
Carson shrugged. “We worked all the way down the Mary’s River this spring. Didn’t get but a few beaver and we near starved. Come close to eating ever’ last horse we had, so McKay headed for Fort Walla Walla to get some stock. Meantime, we managed to make it in to Fort Hall. McKay come there with plenty of new mounts so we could ride on in here to ronnyvoo.”
“Damn if that don’t take the circle,” Bass brooded. “You going over to the Englishers.”
“Not that way at all,” Thomas McKay said as he stepped up. “Carson doesn’t want to go back with us.”
With a nod and a grin Kit explained, “I’m gonna look for Bridger. See if Gabe’ll have me back. I’ve had enough of starving in that English country.”
Just then the Yankee trader, Nathaniel Wyeth, approached. He too had just arrived with the Hudson’s Bay brigade that mid-July day. Bass anxiously looked over the brigade dismounting to start dropping packs from their mules. For this second summer in a row he didn’t see the familiar face of his old friend.
“I’m asking after Jarrell Thornbrugh,” Titus announced as Wyeth came to a stop near McKay and McLeod.
Then he saw how the men dropped their eyes, their smiles disappearing as they self-consciously turned away.
Scratch swallowed and tried his best to make his words sound cheerful. “That big son of a bitch ain’t come to ronnyvoo again, and here I was—fixing to get him good and drunk like before!”
“I’m afraid Jarrell’s dying a slow and terrible death,” disclosed the half-breed McKay, John McLoughlin’s stepson.
“I looked for him here last summer,” Bass explained, his voice starting to, quiver. His eyes were already pleading when he asked, “He at Vancouver where the white-headed doctor can care for him?”
McLeod said, “Far as I heard, Thornbrugh’s still at one of our trading houses south of the Columbia where he was taken ill. We all fear it was the arrow that found him in a fight with some renegade Umpqua.”
“Took an arrow?” Bass said.
“A year ago spring,” McLeod continued. “Heard he didn’t feel so poorly until it came time to set out from the Siskyou country to meet us inland for our last journey to rendezvous.”
“He never reached us in time to come along,” McKay declared. “But we really didn’t know he was in such a bad way until after we returned last fall.”
“None of you see’d him for two summers?”
Both McKay and McLeod shook their heads. The half-breed said, “Doctor McLoughlin fears it can only be a matter of time.”
In his mind he was plotting the grueling distance and the exhausting months of travel that journey would consume if he chose to stab his way across the Snake River wilderness, down to the Columbia, pushing west to Vancouver where he might learn just where Jarrell was dying, somewhere far to the south of that British fort. The man might be dead by the time he reached his side. If he wasn’t already.
And what of Waits-by-the-Water and Magpie? Now that his wife carried another child, he couldn’t fathom taking her along on such an exhausting quest. So if he were to go alone, what was he to do with his family? Take them all the way north to Crow country before he hurried west.
As much as he felt compelled to ride to Jarrell’s side, Titus was pulled in the opposite direction at the same time, realizing he now had stronger loyalties to consider. Unlike that solitary winter’s journey to Fort Vancouver in hopes of putting McAfferty’s ghost to rest, now Bass was no longer alone in life. He had family—a wife, his daughter, and another child on the way. Weighty responsibilities to the ones he loved.
“If’n I’d wanna write Jarrell some thoughts, could one of you see my letter’d get to him?”
McLeod nodded. “We’ll see it’s carried back with our annual express.”
“Are you learned?” Wyeth quietly asked the American trapper. “Can you write your friend that letter?”
Scratch pursed his lips, reluctant to admit that shortcoming. Eventually he shook his head. “Used to write a bit. I can read a mite, but it ain’t much. I figger to find someone what can help me—”
“I’ll write your letter for you,” the Yankee interrupted enthusiastically.
“I’d be in your debt, Nathaniel. Much ’bliged.” He felt an instant and overwhelming gratitude for this man who had been so wronged by William Sublette.
“When you’re ready, all you have to do is tell me what you want to say to the man, and I’ll transcribe it, word for word,” Wyeth stated. “When would you like to start?”
He wagged his head, unsure, then asked, “How long you gonna be here afore you turn back for Fort Hall?”
Wyeth smiled with a hint of wistful regret. “The fort is no longer mine. I’ve sold it to the British. That’s how I came to ride in with McLeod and McKay. I plan to head east from here—make Boston by autumn. Which means I’ll be around until the fur train starts back for St. Louis.”
“So John Bull drove you out too,” Titus said sadly.
“Perhaps. But if I am put out of business, then the blame must be squarely laid at the feet of the two men who have already fled the mountains for gentler climes and far easier money.”
“Sublette and Campbell?” McLeod asked.
“Yes,” Wyeth answered bitterly. “But I feel some small measure of pride knowing that those cowardly thieves fled the mountain trade long before business reversals now force me to leave this country. Years ago when they defrauded me, I vowed I would roll a stone into their garden …”
When Wyeth paused, Bass said, “And there ain’t never be
en a stone bigger’n the Hudson’s Bay Company.”
The Yankee smiled, gratitude written in his eyes now. “It will be an intriguing and most exciting contest to watch, won’t it, Bass? These two long-surviving fur giants, one American and the other British—locked in this final, mortal combat for mountain peltries. A fight to the death.”
Scratch shuddered. “I’m a’feared it’ll be a fight to the death of us all.”
Time was when men like General Ashley could reap immense harvests of beaver without establishing permanent posts. But the easy beaver was taken, and Ashley retired.
Now those men who came west hoping to grow rich so they could retire back east had to climb higher, penetrate farther into the fastness of the mountains, or dare to slip around the edges of that forbidden Blackfoot country. Smith, Jackson & Sublette had failed: the first dead on a Comanche lance, the second off to have a try at Spanish California, and the last escaped back to St. Louis, having pillaged the fur business of every last dollar he could squeeze, finagle, or steal from it.
Their successors, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, had gone under as well—two of its partners eventually giving up on the mountains. And now Bridger, Fitzpatrick, and Drips had shown the white feather, becoming nothing more than hired trappers for the rich moguls in St. Louis.
Where once there had been a handful of big companies along with those small outfits working on a moccasin string, now there remained only one.
The tragic scenario was playing itself out just as he and Bridger had figured it would. With fewer beaver reaching rendezvous every year, and the market for those pelts diminishing with each rendezvous season, what with the price of supplies and trade goods continuing to escalate at the same time, only the biggest company of them all had pockets deep enough to stay in this fight for the Rocky Mountains.
First the traders brought milk cows, then two-wheeled carts, and freight wagons, and even a Dearborn carriage! And now, not only were the preachers come to the mountains to deliver their hellfire and sulfurous brimstone sermons … but they’d brought white women along too!
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