“I’ll bet he can,” Scratch replied, and fingered some soft sateen ribbon. “And he’s gotta make him his profit, or the new company will have to go off and find it ’Nother trader.”
Despite the fact that this summer’s trade fair was undeniably the largest held to date—taking in more than 170 packs of beaver, the most ever—it was plain to see that Jedediah Smith, David Jackson, and William Sublette were beginning to question the future profits they might wrench from the mountain trade. Or maybe it was nothing more than the toll taken by all those seasons in the Rockies, those years gone from kin left behind in the East, every winter-count giving a man far too much time to dwell on old friends rubbed out and no longer around.
When Sublette handed mail to his two partners, Davy learned that he had lost another member of his family to pneumonia. And ’Diah opened a letter from his brother, reading that their mother had died.
Maybe the partners’ decision to sell out was nothing more than those two of them believing they had had enough of the uncompromising wilderness and the unforgiving winters. Perhaps the time had come to invest their fortunes in more civilized ventures. Besides, Sublette had arrived at rendezvous with news that John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company no longer appeared to be content to stay on the Missouri. And not only were Astor’s men eager to entice small bands of free trappers to the new fort they were raising at the mouth of the Yellowstone—but word was that American Fur had even dispatched a full-fledged brigade into the Central Rockies so they could give the upstarts a run for their money.
Maybe the time had come for the three of them to find a smarter way to make their fortunes than this annual gamble that was the Rocky Mountain fur trade. So while Billy reaffirmed his desire to continue supplying the summer rendezvous during that first week of August in the valley of the Wind River, ’Diah and Davy decided that they just might invest their hard-won earnings in the lucrative Santa Fe trade down in the southwest.
Over the past two days with most of the bartering done for the year and the old company accounts being settled, the firm of Smith, Jackson, & Sublette formally dissolved their partnership, and for a promissory note in the amount of more than fifteen thousand dollars they sold out to five new partners. Now Billy Sublette would be supplying his brother, Milton, along with Tom Fitzpatrick, Henry Fraeb, Jean Baptiste Gervais, and Jim Bridger himself—all long-time veterans of the mountain trade.
And with their new partnership, the five gave birth to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
Gabe, Milt, and Broken Hand would take more than two hundred men north along the Bighorn, cross the Yellowstone and plunge into the heart of Blackfoot country—performing a grand and daring sweep that would take them all the way to the Great Falls of the Missouri before circling south toward the Three Forks, then trapping their way to the east along the Yellowstone with plans to winter at the mouth of the Powder. Just let Bug’s Boys dare try tackling a brigade that size.
Those Blackfoot be damned!
At the same time, OP Frapp and Jervy laid plans to lead their brigade west from rendezvous for the continental divide, striking the Snake, which they would follow west to its forks before the great cold began to close in and they made for their winter camp in Willow Valley.
And come the spring that enterprising brigade would venture even farther to the west now that Jedediah Smith was no longer a booshway, no longer able to object to his partners and force his employees to refrain from trapping in that land beyond the spine of the continent, a region jointly held by treaty with the English of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Come spring more than a hundred Americans of the newly born Rocky Mountain Fur Company intended once again to lay claim to that beaver-rich region.
The English be damned.
Let there be no mistake! The Rocky Mountain Fur Company had come to the mountains!
Every one of those hot summer days at rendezvous hundreds upon hundreds of dollars had been spent upon supplies, foofaraw, and the trader’s grain alcohol—a lot of it bartered for women, bet on games of chance with cards or dice, and wagered on horse races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, and footraces for those hearty or daring enough to venture out into the late-July heat.
“They had a feller get so drunk he kill’t one of his friends,” Caleb exclaimed one afternoon, coming back with Bass from watering their horses.
“Funniest damned thing,” Scratch added, wagging his head and smiling with those teeth the color of pin acorns, “they had the feller what did the killing tied up to a tree till he sobered.”
“And was he ever bellering!” Wood declared.
Snorting with a gust of laughter, Titus continued, “But they had the dead feller he killed laid out on the ground right where he was shot, flat on his belly. And the four of ’em what tied the killer up … why—they was using that dead nigger for a card table while they was all playing eucher!”
Caleb slapped Bass on the shoulder, laughing. “With that poor, dead nigger going stiff on ’em!”
His eyes narrowing in disgust, Asa McAfferty grumbled, “Don’t s’prise me one whit. So much alcohol. This many niggers. Why, a man gets tight enough on all that demon rum in Sublette’s kegs … purely amazing to me more men don’t get theirselves killed.”
Hatcher watched the white-head shuffle off. “Asa—maybe ye ought’n go get ye a drink of Sublette’s milk!”
“Milk?” he roared in disbelief the instant he wheeled about on his heel.
“That damn milch cow!” Elbridge Gray explained. “I had me a pint cup of it this afternoon—warm it was, fresh from the udder like I ’membered it back to Ohio.”
Scratch couldn’t fathom it himself. “Milk? You gone and drunk yourself milk here in the Rocky Mountains?”
“I done it too,” Solomon boasted. “Sublette’s been selling it ever’ morning and evening: two dollar a pint cup.”
“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Bass grumbled, and shook his head. “First off he brings wagons and fine folks’ carriages and beef cows out to ronnyvoo in these here tall hills … and now Sublette sells milk to trappers? What is the Rocky Mountains coming to?”
“Sublette and his other two partners are turning back for St. Louie in the morning,” Rufus explained. “You want you a drink of milk, Titus Bass—you better make it tonight!”
“Shit! I’d ruther let you fellers suck down all of Sublette’s milk so I can go tell Bug’s Boys that Jack Hatcher’s bunch is coming north: a bunch more likely to nurse on their mamas’ breasts as they are to hanker after a fight with them Blackfoot!”
Late on the morning of August 4, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette did indeed set off at the head of that column of ten wagons, a pair of carriages, and some fifty men, heading south by east for the North Platte and the settlements, hauling a small fortune in beaver pelts. Both brigades of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company rolled out to bid them farewell, as well as most of the free men of the mountains—all of them eager to see the booshways off in proper style.
Unlike General Ashley, these three were men who had first come to the mountains as nothing more than hire-ons. They had worked hard, played their cards smart, and stepped forward when called upon to do the difficult. All three had seen more than their share of friends cut down by enemy warriors. All three had suffered the cold, endured the heat and thirst, put up with the hunger and the fatigue like any man.
So it was that three grand and rousing huzzahs were raised for the three booshways at the moment they set off for the States. Cheers and whistles, accompanied by a final shaking of hands and backslapping all around. Here was a trio who would do to ride the river with. Here were three men who had come from humble beginnings to rise all the way to the top of the mountain trade itself.
Here were men who would be missed in those seasons yet to come.
At least Sublette would return come summer, Bass mulled as he turned back to camp with the others. And those five partners of the newly formed Rocky Mountain Fur Company weren’t the sort to quake with fear at the prospect of Blackfoot or tremble at the threat of John Jacob Astor. Sure, there were places in the Rockies where the beaver had been thinned out. But down in the marrow of him, Scratch knew there still had to be a passel of holes back in the mountains where a man could find virgin streams overrun by the flat-tails.
All a man had to do was ride a little farther, work a little harder, climb a little higher, and he would discover those untouched valleys.
Especially if he rode alone.
“Yestiddy—over in the company camp—I come upon a feller named Green reading to some other niggers,” Rufus declared that night as the Wind River Valley quieted just past dark.
