“Man what can’t walk,” Bass declared, rising, wiping the knife off across his own legging, “that man can’t never be a warrior no more.”
31
Times was hard. Goods come at a king’s ransom and peltries was low. But never would there be a shortage of Injuns!
’Cept up north where some said the Blackfoot was no more. Even so … it didn’t take both of Bass’s eyes to see that the Sioux and Shians could turn into devils their own selves and drag hell right out of its shuck.
That long, cold night Flea rode with his mother. Times when a boy gets scared good, seemed what he needed most was the arms of a woman wrapped around him. Magpie held her own, stayed quiet atop her own pony as they hurried to mount up again, putting out on the trail down Vermillion Creek for the trading post. She’d make some man a fine wife one day, he thought as they urged their horses into a gentle lope that night beneath the cold stars. Already she was a female who did her level best to understand what needed doing … and did it without a complaint.
That long night he thanked the sky more than once that Magpie had a lot of her mamma in her.
From where Sweete rode at the back of the pack, grunting down his pain, the big man kept an eye peeled so that no one would slip up on them out of the dark. Then, just before dawn, they loped into the narrow, high-rimmed valley of the Green through this only portal along the Vermillion, and spotted that crude stockade standing beside the river less than a mile off. Shad kicked his horse into a full gallop, racing to catch Bass at the head of the pack.
“Trouble?” Scratch asked, his eyes flicking to the big man, then watching the gray horizon bobbing behind Sweete’s shoulders.
“I just been listening hard all night,” he announced as he pulled back on the reins to ease his big horse down into a lope alongside Bass. “Think we been follered all the way.”
“The two of ’em?”
“Yep,” Shad replied. “I figger they dogged our trail hoping to find a place to jump us again when we dropped our guard.”
“No figgering to it now,” Titus explained. “Lookee there.”
Twisting in the saddle, Sweete turned to look behind them at that place along the skyline where Bass was pointing. Two shadowy horsemen reined up atop the bluff as the trappers and their party continued into the valley.
“Thunder’s balls—they was there all night, Scratch.”
Nodding, Titus said, “Only reason they pulled off was they see’d the fort, see’d all the stock out grazing.”
“And they don’t reckon to pick a fight when the odds is so bad against ’em.”
“Trouble is,” Scratch growled, “if them bastards didn’t know this here fort was here, they know now.”
Across the meadow that surrounded the post on three sides, most of the horses and mules busily grazing in that dawn’s light lifted their heads at the clatter of hooves, then began to drift away from the path of the oncoming strangers streaming toward them at a lope. Inside the stockade ahead a voice called out, followed by the bleat of a goat.
Bass hadn’t heard that sound … since Taos that winter of thirty-four. Better than five years ago. There were traders up and down the South Platte, two posts here west of the mountains, so just how was Josiah faring now? Had he made a go of it with those trade goods down in the Mexican settlements?
The narrow gate at the east side of the stockade was shoved open, and a lone figure stepped out guardedly, a rifle in hand as Bass and Sweete slowed their outfit.
“Who goes there?”
“That you, Sinclair?”
“No,” the voice cried as Scratch came to a halt. “Name’s Thompson.”
At that moment a goat butted its way through the gate and dived out between the man’s legs.
“Son of a bitch!” Thompson snarled as he bolted into motion. “Get back here, you!” He was after the goat in a sprint, but within a few steps he slid to a stop and grumbled at the animal, “To hell with you. Go get et up by wolves for all I care.”
Easing his mount up close to the man, Bass held down his hand. “You was gone last time we was here.”
“Me and Billy Craig got back with supplies from St. Louis more’n two weeks ago,” Thompson explained.
“Sinclair said you went for them trade goods,” Shad declared as he dropped to the ground, “but he didn’t say nothing ’bout you bringing no goats.”
Thompson shook hands with the big man, then said, “I joined up with Sublette and Vaskiss’s supply train when they come out with their goods. Didn’t always intend to bring goats—started with some pigs … but them bastards couldn’t make it walking all the way. So a’fore I pushed out of Independence, I traded my pigs for some goats.”
“You got more’n that one?” Scratch asked as he glanced over at the children, seeing their sleepy eyes widen as they followed the antics of that strange new animal scampering around the legs of their horses.
“Made it with eight,” Thompson said. “If’n the coyotes don’t get that damned runaway. Maybe we ought’n just shoot it and cook it on a spit.”
“Ho!” Sinclair called from the gate, emerging as he dragged leather braces over his shoulders, stuffing his cloth shirt into the waistband of his leather britches. “Bass and Sweete, ain’t it?”
“That’s right,” and Scratch came out of the saddle to step up and shake hands.
Prewett asked, “How was your fall hunt?”
Bass turned to eye the rim of the valley. “Hunt was poor, wuss’n I figgered … but the ride in here was enough to pucker a man’s bunghole.”
“Injuns?” Thompson asked.
Pointing with his outstretched arm, Bass declared, “We left some dead bodies back there at sundown.”
“You rode in all night?”
“Two of ’em followed us,” Scratch said, “so there’s likely more.”
“What are they?” Thompson asked.
With a shrug Sweete said, “Sinclair here said the Snakes come through here earlier in the fall lay that they’re Sioux.”
“That true, Prewett?” Thompson asked.
Sinclair nodded once. “’Cuz of them, the Snakes gone and left the hole early in the fall. I done my best to keep the stock in close, just in case they made a jump on the fort, till you and Billy got back.”
Thompson turned back to Sweete. “That woman and those young’uns of yours likely tired from your ride—”
“They ain’t mine,” Shad said.
So the trader turned to Bass. “Why don’t you boys tie off your stock close to the wall and bring them on in for some breakfast? We’ll make a place on the floor of a storeroom for them young’uns to sleep after their bellies is full.”
“You got any flour?” Shad asked. “Got some, yes,” Thompson replied. “Cornmeal?”
“Some of that too,” Sinclair answered this time.
Smiling broadly, Scratch slapped Sweete on the shoulder. “Keep your flour for this flatland nigger, trader man. Ever since Taos many winters ago, Titus Bass been half-froze for corn cakes!”
By nightfall it was evident a storm lay across the horizon, and by the following morning a half foot of new snow had blanketed everything. Two days later the first trappers working the surrounding area began trudging in—by and large every one of them men who had forsaken ever again working for the fur monopoly threatening to abandon them. Joe Walker showed up with only his Shoshone squaw along, announcing he expected to stay only as long as it took for the weather to clear before he would turn north to search out the village of his wife’s people for the winter. Kit Carson and his bunch straggled in from the southwest, having found the trapping difficult over in the Uintah country. And just past nightfall on the third day Joe Meek and Robert Newell showed up at the gate. The wet winter storm caught them on their way back from Fort Hall where they had left their wives.
Now some thirty-five trappers, along with assorted wives and children, had congregated at Fort Davy Crockett with winter’s first hard blast.
Fr
om dawn till dusk across those next three days while the weather slowly cleared, either Shad or Titus stayed out with their grazing animals, guardedly watching the tall hills that surrounded the post. For the most part, the partners preferred using that part of the bottom ground just north of the fort, which placed the stockade somewhere roughly between their horses and that Vermillion Creek portal.
If the sun put in an appearance, Waits-by-the-Water and the children abandoned the stockade walls to spend the day beneath the canopy Titus stretched between some of the old cottonwoods. Around a small fire the woman tanned and stretched hides, made extra moccasins for her family, or fussed over a special piece of decorative quillwork while Magpie and Flea played, napped, and played some more there within that small grove.
Each night at sundown nearly everyone bustled back inside the mud-and-log walls for supper and some storytelling until the fire burned low, when folks slipped off for their camps outside the stockade. Every morning when Bass and Sweete untied their hobbled animals and led them outside the walls to graze, one of the three traders dragged their seven goats out to graze. One at a time each animal was led out to a small, low corral attached to the south wall, then tied with a short length of rope the cantankerous goats tried to chew until they were turned loose to spend their day in the enclosure with their own kind.
Just before dawn on the sixth day, the Sioux struck.
“Roll out! Roll out!”
With that shrill cry raised by those camped outside the stockade walls, Scratch flung the blankets and robe aside to scoop up his moccasins. When he had pulled on the outer, or winter, pair, he turned back to kiss Waits on the forehead, then quickly touched both of the children on the cheek.
“Stay here with them,” he ordered. “No matter what—you stay here.”
Shoving both arms into his coat, he snatched up a brace of pistols and two rifles, looping his shooting pouch onto his left shoulder.
In the fort’s cluttered courtyard the seven goats bleated and bawled—but nowhere near as loud as Samantha’s bray, growing noisy at the outside corner of the wall where she had been tied and hobbled near their horses.
One weapon boomed on the flat, followed quickly by two more. Sweete was behind him as he sprinted for the gate where one after another the trappers streamed through, joining those who had camped outside the walls. As Shad and Scratch peeled to the left, others tore to the right. Samantha and their nervous horses fought against their hobbles, yanking against their halters as the two darted among them.
“Make sure them ropes’ll hold,” Sweete called out above the many other voices and sporadic gunfire.
A minute later Titus hollered, “Grab your horse and follow me, Shad!”
Bareback, both of them broke from the rest of their animals, loping to join the many who were on foot, racing after the retreating warriors who were driving off what appeared to be more than a hundred horses.
“They get ’em all?” Sweete bellowed as he came to a halt among the half-dressed men. “Not all,” Meek declared as he peered up at Shadrach.
Carson pointed to the north of the post, saying, “No more’n a dozen horses left back yonder.”
Some of the angry trappers hurled oaths, flung fists into the air, while others continued to fire at the backs of the retreating warriors.
“My way of thinking,” Bass announced, “you niggers got in a bad habit of letting your stock graze free as you please.”
“But there ain’t never been no bad niggers in the Hole!” Thompson argued.
“How was we to know?” cried Dick Owens, a partner of Carson’s.
“Think about it, boys,” Scratch said. “What you figger them Sioux come all this way for if’n it weren’t to grab your horses?”
“Them really Sioux?” asked one of the group.
“Ain’t no goddamned Snakes gonna steal horses from us!” Walker snorted.
“Likely they was more of that same bunch we run onto,” Scratch told them. “They been sniffing round here for the better part of a week, ever since we rode in here.”
“How many you see?” Sweete inquired of one of the disgusted men returning from upstream.
“Three dozen.”
But another man argued, “More’n that. Goddamned well more’n that.”
“We’d give ’em a good fight—they come back to take their whupping,” Newell grumbled.
“They ain’t,” Thompson cried as he stomped up to the group. “Appears they run off least a hundred fifty head of prime stock. Mine and yours all, boys.”
“You figger to go after them horses?” Meek challenged.
The trader looked over the group, then turned to Meek. “I’ll take some of these fellas with me. You can lead ’nother bunch if you take a mind to, Joe. Maybeso we can trap them redbellies between us.”
“If’n they don’t outrun us, Philip,” Newell observed.
“You giving up a’fore you start, Doc?” the trader snarled.
“No, I’ll go with Meek’s group—”
“Any the rest of you don’t figger you got the balls to go tracking them Sioux, you best stay back here with Craig and Sinclair to mind the post,” Thompson flung his challenge at them all. “As for me, I’m gonna get them horses back, ’long with some Sioux ha’r hanging from my belt!”
Scratch and Shad volunteered to ride with Joe Meek, the first band after the thieves. Once they pushed through that narrow portal of the Vermillion, it was plain to see how carefully the Sioux had planned their escape. From that point all the way to the distant foothills, the raiders could push the horses flat-out with little to stand in their way. The Sioux had a good start on them, and it would take more than luck and skill to ever catch up with the thieves.
Still, a man had to try.
They rode down the rest of that day and on into the night, knowing full well the Sioux weren’t going to stop until they were assured no one was dogging their backtrail. Dawn came, and the trappers’ animals were showing need of rest and water. At the next trickle they found at the bottom of a creekbed, the trappers grabbed a little of both before moving on.
“Joe!” Bass hollered late that second afternoon. “Pull up top of that hill so we can palaver!”
Their horses snorted as the rest of the avengers came to a halt around them.
“What you got on your mind, Titus?”
He asked, “Is it as plain to you boys as it is to me that we ain’t gonna catch them Injuns?”
Meek and some of the others squinted into the distance at the wide trail they were following. They hadn’t seen the horses or the thieves since sundown the day before.
Joe looked over the others, many of whom hung their heads wearily. He eventually said, “I s’pose we ain’t.”
“And what if we did?” Titus asked. “Count the heads here—then remember how many riders them Sioux had.”
“Where is Thompson’s bunch, anyways?” Carson growled, turning in the saddle to look down their backtrail.
Shad spoke up. “They ain’t ever gonna have a chance of cutting off the Sioux with us if they ain’t caught up with us by now.”
“Maybeso we ought go on,” Meek suggested, but no more than halfheartedly.
“We do that, Joe,” Scratch said, wagging his head, “pushing our own horses so damned hard—we’re like’ to lose the ones we got a’fore we ever do turn back to the post.”
“Bass is right,” Sweete declared. “’Member them two carcasses we come across already?”
“Them were my horses the bastards run into the ground!” Carson squealed. “Sure wanna get me their hair for killing my horses!”
Shrugging, Meek said, “I see it the way Scratch’s stick floats. We can keep on chasing them horse thieves and kill what horses we got under us to do it … or we can take our lumps and mosey on back to the fort ’thout losing any more.”
The bunch grumbled, but no one said a thing against turning around. No one really had to because the choices were clear. Continue the chase and f
ight the overwhelming odds that they would lose what they still had, or head for Fort Davy Crockett. As much as it stung to turn around, Bass figured those horses weren’t worth all of those men dying out there.
“Sure sours my milk to give up,” Scratch admitted. “But I got my family at the fort. If I go and run the legs out from under this here horse, chances are good I won’t get back there to see ’em.”
Many of the others had squaws and children waiting in the shadows of the fort walls too. Grudgingly, they agreed.
“Keep your eyes peeled on the way back,” Sweete suggested. “Sing out if’n you spot sign of Thompson’s bunch.”
But they didn’t. Not even a dust cloud. And none of them heard anything that night as they made camp astride the trail left behind by the stolen herd. Nor did they see anything of the others throughout the next day. Meek’s dozen riders reached the walls of Fort Davy Crockett late the next day, surprised to find that no word had come in from Thompson’s group.
Then a week passed. And another. Finally more than a month of waiting and wondering ground by, and most of the trappers figured on the worst. Even Philip Thompson’s Ute squaw had completed mourning her dead husband and was in the process of taking up with one of Joe Walker’s men when word of Thompson’s men reached Fort Davy Crockett.
“Sinclair!” shouted a man, bursting into Prewett Sinclair’s trading room late one afternoon early that winter of thirty-nine. “You better come out and talk with these Snakes.”
“Visitors? Tell ’em they can send two in here at a time to trade—”
“They don’t wanna trade,” the man interrupted Sinclair. “This bunch is ’bout as edgy as a pouch full of scalded cats.”
Sinclair glanced about the smoke-filled room. “Any of you know Snake?”
“Used to know a little,” Bass admitted. “Spent some time healing up in a Snake lodge long time back.”
Walker set his cup down on the plank table. “With what I learned from that woman of mine, I figger I can help you on what Scratch don’t know.”
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