“Where you an’ Rose been before.”
“Yessir—we two knew some about that kentry. First night out Henry set up his run of guards—but, damn! If the Assiniboin didn’t come in an’ hit us a few nights later. Skedaddled off with more’n thirty of our ponies. That put Henry in a real blue funk, so bad that t’weren’t long afore he decided agin tryin’ to make it all the way to Three Forks that season.”
“Can’t see why Henry’d wanna go back there anyways,” Bass said as he mopped his face there beside the glowing forge.
“Arter we was the ones went an’ jabbed a stick in that Blackfoot wasps’ nest more’n ten y’ar afore?” Washburn asked, then chuckled. “’Thout all the ponies we needed so we could make a faster march of it upriver, Henry said we’d go no farther’n the mouth of the Yallerstone, wait till spring to tramp on over.”
About a mile above the confluence of the two rivers, Andrew Henry’s men built themselves crude log shelters chinked with riverbank mud and began laying in wood to get them through the coming season, more hints of an early and cold winter becoming apparent every day.
“’Bout the time the leaves was really turnin’,” Isaac continued, “word come upriver that Missouri Fur was coming our way. Had plans of their own to raise up a post at the Three Forks afore winter set in hard. That’s when Henry changed his mind—figured to take him some men on up the Missouri. Thought it might not be a better place for us to winter in, a wee bit closer to the Forks come green-up.”
“The rest of Henry’s men stayed on at the Yellowstone?”
Washburn shook his head. “Henry sent ’em off too, south by west torst the high moun-tanes we could see off a ways.”
The Missouri Fur Company didn’t get as far as the Three Forks country that autumn, settling instead for erecting their post at the mouth of the Bighorn River on the Yellowstone. Henry himself didn’t get all that close to the Forks either. By the time the first hard snow had squeezed down on the high plains, he and his men were scampering to get their four log shelters built, all of them enclosed by a crude stockade, there at the mouth of the Musselshell beside the Missouri River. Which placed his base about the same distance from the fabled beaver country of the Three Forks as was the Missouri Fur brigade wintering in at the mouth of the Bighorn.
“Now that his post was up an’ the snow was flying,” Isaac explained, “Henry was dead set on sendin’ out parties to explore that kentry torst the Forks.”
“They ever get over to that Blackfeet country that winter?”
“Close to it, Titus,” he answered. “An’ for Henry’s troubles, the men found more beaver’n any man thort possible. Ever’ man’s spirits was higher’n those clouds along them stony peaks above us—every last man jack of us makin’ plans to get rich come spring trappin’, thar’ was so much prime plew to pull outta the streams in that kentry.”
Washburn nodded as if savoring that memory, swilling back some water from Titus’s piggin before wiping off his chin whiskers with the back of a buckskin-covered arm. “When that winter broke, them fellers Henry sent off skedaddled back from Crow kentry. Fitzpatrick, Clyman, an’ that Bible-toter, Jed Smith. Them an’ the rest’d moseyed far south of Crow land, an’ come back to tell of a pass they said would take a man right on over the moun-tanes.
“The wonder of it, Titus,” Isaac exclaimed. “They tol’t us it was so easy a man don’t know he’s crossed over the moun-tanes till he sees all the water flowing off to the west. A pure marvel, that pass!”
When spring came, so did the Blackfoot.
“April, it were, when they fust showed their devil faces,” Washburn continued. “By May, four of Henry’s twenty was kill’t—running off some of them ponies we still had. I watched it all damn near take all the starch right out of Henry’s backbone, it did. The man swore he was through with Blackfoot kentry, prime beaver or no. ‘Missouri Fur can have it,’ he vowed. ‘Lock, the stock, an’ the barrel too!’”
Andrew Henry retreated downriver a ways, with the intent of waiting for Ashley’s main group bringing up more supplies and horses.
“Henry wasn’t able to do damn much ’thout those horses,” Washburn said as he stuffed his cheek full of tobacco he tore loose from a dark brown carrot of the cured leaf, then stuffed back in the pouch at his hip. “Henry said the gen’ral was headed our way with them horses, plunder, an’ ’nother batch of likely young’uns wantin’ to make their fortune in the moun-tanes. So he sent Jed Smith down on the best pony we had us, with word for Ashley to hurry on up. It was weeks later afore we saw Jed again—but he t’weren’t leading the gen’ral our way. No, sir. The preacher come back in a lather, bellering that by the time he got to the river an’ run onto Ashley, the gen’ral run hisself into a mess of trouble at them goddamned Ree villages.”
“Them’s the Injuns you hate just as bad as the Blackfoots,” Titus observed.
“Damn right. One evenin’ it seems Ashley stopped his new keelboat at them villages to trade for horses so he could carry his trade goods an’ supplies overland to Henry. Most all the men with him was sleeping on the riverbank, wrapped up tight in their blankets, when them Rees started firing on ’em at the peep o’ day! Must’ve been some fight, Titus.”
Even though they were heavily outnumbered, Ashley’s men held on the best they could, pinned down on that sandy beach below the bluffs where the Arikara villages stood, giving the warriors a wide field of fire. The general ordered his French keelboat crew to raise anchor and pole their way closer to shore to pick up his men—but for the longest time the boatmen refused. At last Ashley and some Americans steered the keelboat toward the men left on the bank. By the time the retreat was made, fourteen of the general’s men lay dead at the edge of the Missouri. Another ten were seriously wounded. Ashley cut the anchor rope and allowed the keelboat to float downriver, far beyond the villages and fear of a second attack.
“As soon as Jed Smith told us how the gen’ral been chewed up by them Rees, Henry an’ the rest of us come down on the double. A long march that was. We skirted round the village an’ found Ashley’s boys camped on the west bank of the river, lickin’ their wounds. They buried the dead an’ sat thar’ waitin’ fer the chance to get in some knocks. Forted up, they was, with some other traders what were headed upriver behind them. Them an’ a hull mess of Colonel Leavenworth’s regulars—more’n two hunnert of ’em come to punish the Rees an’ get the fur traders past the villages.”
But though the white soldier chief now possessed numerical superiority over the Arikara, he still did not press his advantage.
“Arter shootin’ up Ashley’s bunch so bad, them Rees got off scot-free!” Washburn grumped. “Goddamned army, anyways! All it done is show them Rees our backsides an’ make ’em wanna thumb their noses at the white man.”
“That bunch of soldiers didn’t go off and attack the village?”
“Hell, no! An’ that show of yaller was bound to make them red niggers harder to deal with come the next time we run into one t’other. So whar’ we laid to way below the villages, on down to Fort Kioway—what some folks on the river call Fort Lookout—Henry and Ashley had themselves a real rip-snorting confab, arguing on what best be done ’bout their trapping business. All that money, all them supplies lost in that fust boat sunk to the bottom of the river, then all them trappers kill’t with Henry an’ down at the Ree villages too—with nothin’ yet to show for it!”
“Had to be a pretty sad time of it for all of you,” Bass said as he stabbed the spring into cold water with a steamy hiss.
“Well, now—it truly were some sad doin’s. But the two of ’em finally decided Henry should point his nose for the Yallerstone once’t again. Summer was almost gone by then. Already August—so Henry tol’t us—when we pulled away from Ashley’s bunch again.”
“Headed back to the up-country to trap beaver?”
“That’s the true of it, Titus,” Isaac replied. “Johnson Gardner, Black Harris, Milt Sublette, Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, some eight or so more of us. A small party, most every man still afoot, using what horses we had to pack the goods we took off Ashley’s boat, the one the gen’ral called
Henry planned to push back up along the Missouri River to that country just south of the Arikara villages, from there to strike out overland to reach the Grand.
“Damn, but we wasn’t gone far when the Mandans jumped us.”
“Mandans? Thought they was friends to the white man!”
“Not right then, Titus. That far upriver they’d heard tell of what the Rees got away with—how the yellow-
