drop—praying he was playing rabbit.”
“His woman’s gotta grieve proper, in the way of her own people,” Bass said, turning to Beckwith. “Why’n’t you take her to the man’s body, Jim.”
With a nod the mulatto stepped over to the Flathead woman and made sign for her to follow him. Bass watched them scramble over the rocks and hurry out through the tall grass.
“Let’s get what horses we have left and see how best to get our wounded and dead into camp,” Campbell ordered, directing some of the men to bring up the few horses they still possessed. He turned to Bass. “How far to camp?”
At the moment Titus opened his mouth to speak, the Flathead woman raised a mournful wail from the prairie. With the hair prickling on the back of his neck, Scratch turned to see her crumple down to her knees, bending over the body of Louis Boldeau. There she rocked back and forth as Beckwith stood nearby, his hat held in both hands. For the life of him, Bass didn’t know what was a more pitiful sight: Potts mourning over the body of an old friend, or the squaw keening over the body of her man.
“Not far, Booshway,” Bass finally answered, tearing his eyes from the woman yanking her knife from its scabbard, dragging it across the first clump of hair she held out in the other hand as she hacked it from her head. This she held up toward the sky, slowly opening her left hand to let that hair spill into the wind. “You ain’t far from camp now.”
Then, as the other survivors began to pick their way out of the rocks, Scratch turned his face to gaze at the sky so immense overhead, wondering—wondering just how far a man was from God out here now.
“Mind my word, boys: I ain’t gonna pay these scalpin’ prices to no man, no booshway, no goddamned company!”
Scratch stepped up to the outer fringe of that gathering of free trappers who were loosely circled around a bareheaded older man intently haranguing the swelling crowd beneath a hot summer sun that late morning four days after their scrap with the Blackfeet.
“Damn the mountain prices!” someone called from the crowd.
“But that’s just what they are!” Jack Hatcher bellowed as Bass stopped at his elbow. “These here are mountain prices, Glass—and a free man pays or a free man don’t dance!”
“You … you say his name is Glass?” Scratch asked in a whisper.
From the side of his mouth, Hatcher said with an admiring grin, “Yep. Glass be that ol’ wolf-bait’s name.
“Turning and taking a step closer to Mad Jack, Glass-grumbled, “I’ll wager you’re the kind what riggers it’s fair for the traders to charge us twice or three times what things is wuth just for ’em bringing the goods all the way out here to us, eh?”
“Every man’s entitled to have hisself paid for his labor,” Jack argued. “Even a damned double-backed, gobble-necked trader!”
Glass wagged his head, sputtering, “B-but, you’re a free man!”
Bass whispered, pursuing his question, “That really Hugh Glass?”
“And I’ll die a free man! A free man what don’t pay no tariff to no company, and no tariff to you neither!” he hollered back at Glass. Then Hatcher quickly turned his head to look Titus square in the face. “Ye heard tell of that ol’ coon?”
“I do,” Scratch replied in a hush. “First heard of him clear back to St. Louie. Friend of mine told me ’bout that ol’ feller dragging hisself back to the Missouri after a sow grizzly chewed him up an’ he was left for dead by the bunch he was traveling with.”
Hatcher grinned. “That’s the man awright. One and the same. Have him show ye his scars after he steps down from preachin’ hellfire to this short pew of sinners.”
“What’s the rub he’s greasin’?” Scratch asked.
“Like Glass is saying: all these here men ought’n take a stand against being dangled at the mercy of the traders. Him and a few others trailed in here with him yesterday and called all the free men together out of the camps to grouse about the tall prices we’re faced with payin’ to Smith, Jackson, and Sublette.”
“For the life of me, sounded there like you was coming down on the other side of this fight,” Scratch replied.
“Nawww,” Jack explained with a widening grin. “Hell, Glass does have him a good point. An’ he’s right on most every count. I’m just the nigger what likes to argufy with that ol’ buzzard ever’ now and then ’cause it gets him so riled—’bout as steamed as a unwatched tea kettle over the fire.”
“So what’s Glass figger we can do about what toll the traders charge us for their goods?”
“And for what they give us for our plews,” Hatcher added. “Don’t forget they got us two ways of Sunday!”
“Like I told you—them three friends of mine got rubbed out with my furs last summer, they figgered to float downriver to the first post they come onto and trade there, ’stead of packing our plew into ronnyvoo, where a trader can skelp us both top and bottom.”
As the heated discussion continued among the gathering, Jack wagged his head. “Ye saying we should pack our furs all the way to a fort, Scratch? Ye know how far the closest post is nowdays?”
“Why—we ride in all the way to ronnyvoo,” Bass explained. “Ain’t nothing more to ride our plew all the way to a fort.”
“Damn—closest fort’s clear over to the Missouri—taking a man right through Sioux and Ree country, Scratch!”
Glass shushed the crowd and stepped toward Titus and Jack. “Did I just hear you fellers talkin’ ’bout taking your furs to a fort clear over on the Missouri?”
“As crazy a notion as I’ve ever heard!” Hatcher snorted with a wry grin.
“Then again, maybe not,” Glass declared, turning his eyes to gaze at Scratch. “Way you’re talking, friend— must be you heard of the new post they’re building at the mouth of the Yallerstone.”
With a shake of his head Titus answered, “No—I ain’t heard no such a thing.”
“That’s old news, Glass!” cried someone in the crowd.
Another man called out, “No man’s had the balls to open Henry’s old post in many a year!”
Whirling on the naysayers, Glass roared, “You dumb, Digger-brained idjits! I ain’t talkin’ ’bout Henry’s old post!”
“What fort at the mouth of the Yallerstone ye speakin’ of?” Jack demanded, glaring at the old trapper.
“Mackenzie’s post.”
Amid the sudden noisy murmurs in the crowd, Hatcher asked, “The same Mackenzie been on the upper river for some time?”
“That’s the nigger,” Glass declared. “The one what runs the Upper Missouri Outfit for American Fur now.”
His head bobbing, Caleb Wood shouted, “That’s a man knows what he’s doing!”
Titus asked, “Where you hear all this news, Glass?”
Glass turned back to Scratch. “From Mackenzie’s own tongue hisself.”
The mumblings and murmurings grew louder among the free trappers until Glass waved his arms and got the crowd shushed.
“This last spring I run across a bunch of pork eaters raising their stockade walls up there on some high ground just above the mouth of the Yallerstone,” Glass explained after he had those curious men completely quiet. “Mackenzie his own self was there—seeing the place was built proper. Said he was naming it Fort Floyd.”
“That’s still a hell of a trip up to that country,” Solomon Fish complained, scratching contemplatively at his beard of blond ringlets.
“Then come to ronnyvoo year after year,” Glass replied with a shrug, “and pay mountain prices.”
Hatcher demanded, “Mackenzie’s prices gonna be better?”
“Yeah!” Scratch protested. “And is he gonna give us a better dollar on our plew?”
Stepping back toward Titus, Glass explained, “Mackenzie didn’t say much more’n asking me to come down here to ronnyvoo and tell you he was open for business, even while they’re building the post.”
Some of the men looked at one another, almost as if calculating the journey they would have to make then and there that very summer if they chose to pack their beaver all the way north to where the Missouri River issued out of the badlands.
