Across the better part of three weeks these Ashley men had camped together, sang and danced with one another, told stories of their spring hunts, and swapped outrageous lies. They had tried to outshoot, outwrestle, and outrun every other man jack among them. And they had joined in nothing short of wonderment that the general had even rolled a cannon across the plains, over South Pass, and on to rendezvous: a six-pounder! On wheels, no less!
Damn—some would say—don’t you see? If wheels could rumble along the Platte River and rattle over South Pass, then the cursed wagons of settlers could not be far off! Perhaps this land was not as remote, nowhere near as forbidding as they had hoped it would be … not if General Ashley had dragged his cannon on its wheeled carriage all the way from St. Louis!
Yet, they figured, this institution of the rendezvous just might last long enough—if the trade goods they depended upon would continue to make it out here every summer. But as every summer must come to an end, the time had come to bid one another farewell: time for the Smith, Jackson, and Sublette men to split apart into smaller trapping brigades, while the few free trappers in attendance drifted off to the four winds—going in secret to those places where their own most private medicine told them they would find a rich bounty of beaver.
This had been only the second rendezvous in the far west, yet it was to be Ashley’s last.
“Many of you have served with me personally,” the general continued, “and I shall always be proud to testify to your loyalty … how you men have stood by me through all danger. Let no man ever question the friendly and brotherly feelings which you have ever, one and all, shown for me.”
Titus Bass stood on the fringes of that group gathered in a crude crescent, the horns of which nearly touched Ashley’s shoulders. Scratch was not one of them, but nonetheless he was. Somewhere a quarter of a mile off lay Bud, Billy, and Silas—those three sleeping off one last hard night of swilling down the general’s liquor. Despite his own pounding hangover, for some reason Scratch realized that this morning he was likely to witness with his own eyes a man-sized chunk of history.
Out of their own heartfelt respect, many of the men had removed their hats—wide-brimmed beaver felt, or those of badger, skunk, wolf, or bear. A few men hung their heads, the better to shield their damp eyes from the appraisal of others. And a handful openly snorted back tears and dribbling noses.
“For these faithful and devoted services I wish you to accept my thanks; the gratitude that I express to you springs from my heart and will ever retain a lively hold on my feelings.”
With a loud sniffle the man beside Titus whispered, “I fought the Rees on the upper Missouri for the general.” He dragged the back of his sleeve under his nose. “And I’d still ride into hell and back again for the man.”
Such was a commonly held sentiment among that group simply because Ashley had all but single-handedly brought them here to the Rockies himself. And it was here in these mountains that most of these double-riveted but sentimental men had discovered, for the first time in their lives, just what it truly meant to live.
“My friends! I am now about to leave you, to take up my life in St. Louis. Whenever any of you return there, your first duty must be to call at my house, to talk over the scenes of peril we have encountered, and partake of the best cheer my table can afford you.”
“An’ you’ll always be welcome at my fire, General!” cried one of the throng.
“Hear! Hear!”
Ashley held up both hands to the noisy crowd, and when they had quieted, he concluded, “I now wash my hands of the toils of the Rocky Mountains. Farewell, mountaineers and friends! May God bless you all!”
Undoubtedly he must have felt the tide of good fortune was about to carry him home after four arduous western journeys. Twice he had fought his way up the Missouri, battling the Arikara and losing more than his share of good men. And twice now he had crossed the continental divide at South Pass—the very heart of the Rockies. No more would he face the scorching summer heat of the plains, nor the terrible, bone-numbing cold of the mountain winters … yet no more would he ever enjoy the company of such men as these.
Slapping a hand against one cheek, there beneath an eye about ready to tear as if he were swatting at a fly, Ashley turned on his heel and took up the reins handed him by one of the thirty-man escort who would accompany him back to St. Louis with his fortune in furs loaded on more than a hundred horses and mules. Tugging his hat down on his head while the rest of the escort rose to their saddles, the general led the cavalcade away without looking back.
“Farewell, General!”
The crowd surged forward, almost as one, as if those in the lead might just drag him from his horse—yet something restrained them as more of these hard men not easily given to sentiment sang out with voices hoarse and croaking.
“God’s speed, General! God’s speed!”
So it was that they parted, one from another … again.
That quixotic booshway Davy Jackson marched his band away from rendezvous with Ashley’s pack train. Somewhere west of South Pass he would bid his farewell to the general, then after trapping the country around Ham’s Fork and the Green, would point his own nose north toward the rich beaver country that lay at the foot of those pilot knobs the French voyageurs called Les Trois Tetons, or the Three Breasts.
Jedediah Smith took his small band of fifteen and moved west of south toward the great and salty inland sea, obsessed with what lay across that great expanse of desert even if it took him into Mexico: even if it meant he marched all the way to the land of the Spanish Californios.
Working their Way north to the Snake River, Billy Sublette would lead his brigade over to the Blackfoot River, turning east through Jackson’s Hole and marching north to eventually reach the land that would soon be known as Colter’s Hell. Two full decades before them, the wily trader Manuel Lisa dispatched Lewis-and-Clark veteran John Colter off from the mouth of the Bighorn to tell the Crow bands they were invited to Lisa’s post to trade. Traveling on foot and alone into the teeth of a Rocky Mountain winter, Colter was the first white man to visit this strange land of sulfurous smokes, boiling cauldrons of mud, and spewing geysers that would one day bear his name.
This trip out Jim Bridger would serve as one of Sublette’s lieutenants. And the stories the young trapper would soon tell of that mystical land of spewing waters and many smokes would for a generation be considered some of the biggest whoppers ever concocted by a frontiersman.
Meanwhile, the streams of the northern Rockies beckoned to Fitzpatrick once more. Despite the chances being good that he and his men might just rub up against more Blackfoot, north they headed nonetheless—hoping to trade with the Flathead for horses and skins until the beaver began to put on more fur come late autumn.
At the same time, Etienne Provost led his loose band of trappers west of north into the beaver-rich interior basin of the Snake River, where the odds were they would run across the Hudson’s Bay men under Peter Skene Ogden.
“Good huntin’!” came the cry from those off in one direction.
“Yup!” called those bound away in another. “Y’ best watch your topknot!”
And soon only the Shoshone village and a scattering of free trappers had Willow Valley to themselves. No more than a half-dozen small knots of hardy men tarried behind the company brigades—those of an independent streak who stubbornly refused the offers of one outfit or another to join up and ride along for the season.
“Maybeso it’s better to travel in small strings,” Scratch explained the common wisdom expressed by those of such persuasion. “A big outfit just hap to attract too much attention.”
“Possibly so,” Daniel Potts protested that last morning before Sublette’s brigade pulled out, “but if’n I’m to face them gut-eating Blackfoots again, I’d ruther have me a hull passel of fellers along for the fight.”
“But we don’t aim to stick our noses in Blackfoot country,” Bass replied.
Potts had pursed his lips as if he could see his words were winning no convert. “So be it, Titus Bass. Stay warm this winter … till next we ronnyvoo at the south end of Sweet Lake.”
“Till ronnyvoo,” Scratch repeated the word as if it had already become some spiritual incantation, shaking Daniel’s hand as they pounded one another on the shoulder.
The mulatto had offered his hand next, “Could well be we could winter here again. So remember our offer stands—you come join us if you grow tired of the company you’re keeping.”
Bass watched Beckwith glance over to the trees where Cooper and the other two reclined against their saddles, watching the great departure of the brigades hour by hour, without much excitement of their own or interest at all.
“I got me a place I belong,” Titus repeated.
