Ashley will pack up to move out.”
“Talk is he’s give up on the mountains,” Fraeb announced, dour as ever, looking at Smith, Ashley’s partner. His words appeared to stun all the rest into silence.
“That’s likely just talk,” Rogers declared testily as he turned to Jedediah for confirmation.
With a wag of his head Smith announced, “Maybe not, Harrison.”
Bridger replied, “The general’s made him his fortune awready in just more’n four years, ain’t he?”
“And I hear tell he’s got a purty gal back in St. Lou ready to marry ’im,” Jed explained. “No man could blame Ashley for cashing in his plews and kicking up his boots now.”
“What I heerd this morning is that we’re due to be working for new booshways right soon,” John Gaither, one of the horsemen beside Fraeb, suddenly disclosed.
“Who you figger’s gonna booshway this new outfit?” Bridger demanded, eyes widening with interest.
“Could be that I’ll stay on when the general quits the trade,” Smith answered calmly.
Close to twenty sets of eyes immediately turned on him in surprise at the revelation.
“You h’ain’t the only one to run these here mountains,” Fraeb declared, making it sound as if he weren’t sure it wasn’t a joke.
But as surprising as was the news that Ashley was giving up the fur trade, it really came as no shock that Jedediah Strong Smith would be staying on. He was as driven, directed, and no-nonsense as they came out here in the far west. Some might even say he was, in his own Puritan way, consumed by his quest.
“So this here palaver ain’t no bald-face, is it, Jed?” Bridger asked.
Smith shook his head. “Ashley come to me this morning,” he explained, looking from face to face as he spoke to that breathless crowd. “But—it ain’t just me gonna lead the new company, fellas. Understand that. General said he wanted to talk things over with a few of us.”
“A few,” Fraeb grumbled as if his belly was soured on green apples. “Who be the other’ns gonna talk things over?”
“Two of ’em,” Smith answered. “Billy Sublette—”
Bridger interrupted, youthfully assertive, “Billy’s a good man.”
“… and the third be Davy Jackson,” Jed concluded.
“J-jackson!” Fraeb sputtered. “Why, that no-account sprout ain’t got the right—”
“Davy’s a damned workhorse, Frapp,” Bridger interrupted before Smith got his mouth open. “He’s allays worked harder’n any man I knows of out here.”
Now Jed spoke up, “And that’s why I’ll partner with the man any season, Frapp. Ain’t a trapper here what don’t already know that Davy’s brigades always brings in their furs. From only God knows where! But Jackson brings in the plews for to make the general a handsome profit.”
“Hrrrumph,” Fraeb snorted. “So it’s to be Sublette, Smit’, und Jackson, is it, now?”
With a shrug Jedediah Smith replied, “Don’t know for sure, till we talk with the general: hear what he’s got to offer about selling out. Don’t know any of the rest, fellas—but I’ve already told my outfit that no matter me being booshway of a new company or not, we’re setting out for a long ride to explore us that country to the southwest.”
Daniel Potts came up to stop beside Bass, asking of Bridger, “Jim—if Smith’s outfit heads off south, where you figger we’ll be bound?”
With a smile young Bridger replied, “Fitz told me we’re going back north.”
“To Blackfeet country?” hollered a man from the crowd.
“Where the furs are sleek and the plews are prime, boys,” Bridger replied.
Potts slapped an arm on Bass’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t wanna come north with Fitzpatrick’s bunch?”
“What?” Titus responded in mock horror. “And leave my skelp to hang in some red nigger’s lodge up there in Blackfeet country?”
“So, better that you leave it off to some mangy, flea-bit ’Rapaho buck, eh?” Beckwith prodded with a wide, toothy grin, coming up to the group as Smith and Bridger were dispersing the gathering.
“I sure as hell know my hair ain’t near as purty as yours be, Jim Beckwith,” Titus replied with a grin. “But I figger if’n I stay outta Blackfeet country, I’ll stand a damn good chance of keeping my hair locked on right where it is!”
Back and forth for the better part of an hour a pair of Etienne Provost’s free trappers gambled with the two older Shoshone warriors, all four of them squatting on the dusty buffalo robe so well used it had places where the hair had been rubbed off right down to the smooth hide.
Titus had watched men gamble with painted pasteboards before, sometimes throwing down their wagers on the strength of a particular hand, or no more than the fate held in a single card. From up the Ohio clear on down the Mississippi, he himself had watched the fever take hold of those who put their lives and fortunes into their varied games of chance. At times he had witnessed the sly work of those who dared not leave things to chance, but instead preferred offering sham games of skill and sleight of hand.
As much as he had tried, not once in all those years had Bass been able to guess which shell the pea was hiding under. And those games of bones proved no better a tempt of Dame Fortune for Titus. He had no earthly clue to the mysteries of how those dice rolled this combination or that—and why some men came out winners while most walked away with pockets much, much emptier than when they had stepped forward to take their chance at bucking the tiger.
But this here game was like nothing he had ever seen before.
The white men sat across from their brown-skinned counterparts, about two feet of bare buffalo fur between them where they tossed the short pieces of carved bone. Each one of the half-dozen bones was different in shape, marked with altogether different drawings, slashes, lightning bolts, and the like, each of the symbols first carved into the bone’s surface, then filled with some dark, inky substance so that the scratchings stood out in bold relief against the yellowed surface of the old bone. Over the years of use each of the half-dozen had taken on a rich patina from much handling.
First one side, then the other was awarded possession of the bones. When the two Shoshone held three bones apiece, it was up to the trappers to place their wager on the blanket between them. It might be as little as a few glass beads, or a single flint big enough for a man to clamp in the huge lock on his tradegun or even in starting a fire with a good steel. But as the hour wore on, the betting grew richer—as it ofttimes does when the gambler no longer plays with his head, but begins to wager what lays dear to his heart.
Down came the skinning knife, its wood handle well oiled to a deeply burnished glow by the hand of the trapper now offering it.
All around Bass white men and Shoshone alike muttered their comments that no longer was this to be a game of beads and powder, vermilion and shiny girlews. Now, with the wager of that knife, it had become a game of some worth.
The two Shoshone looked at one another a long moment; then one shrugged and removed a strand of buffalo bones from around his neck. He laid it atop the knife and gazed at the white men to await their approval. Both nodded, accepting the wager, and the first warrior rubbed and clacked the magical bones within the hollow of his two hands, closing his eyes, raising his face to the sunny sky overhead, and chanting. His partner, the one who had offered his necklace, also chanted, but a different and discordant, off-key dirge that grew louder and louder until both Indians were nearly shouting their disparate songs.
All the time the two trappers kept their eyes locked on the jumping, flashing, clacking hands with such intensity, trying their best to shut out the disquieting noise of the two gamesters.
Then suddenly the hands flew open over the buffalo robe and the singing abruptly stopped as the bones tumbled across the fur. And four heads bent low to study the markings.
The other just wagged his head dolefully in silence.
The gleeful warrior picked up the knife and the necklace, glanced quickly at his companion, then flung the necklace back onto the buffalo robe.
Asked one of the trappers, “Jamus, you got anything what you can lay down?”
Into his shooting pouch Jamus stuffed his hand and came out with a long strip of blood-red trade ribbon, a
