Titus hoped, figuring that the young fella was the sort who could no longer live back in the States. After all, it seemed Bridger was the sort to take life on its own terms, the sort to take each day by the horns, the kind who could build himself a bullboat, wave fare-thee-wells to his friends, and take off floating downstream into an adventure and a salty lake of such great proportions that few believed him when he finally returned with his tall tales of a land never before touched by the eyes of a white man.
Bridger would be back, he told himself. While others ran from the danger and the risk and the challenge, men like Jim Bridger and Titus Bass would run to embrace the danger and the risk and the challenge each new day brought them with the rising of the sun.
Of a sudden in his reverie there intruded a clamor of activity as company men burst into the groves where they had tied up their blanket and willow-branch bowers, scooping up their saddles and bridles with an excited chatter.
“What’s going on?” Titus asked as he got to his feet at the shady base of the cottonwood where he had been watching the lazy passing of the Popo Agie.
All around him more and more of the company men were hurrying to saddle up their mounts, the first beginning to sweep up their loaded rifles and pistols.
Should he seize his weapons?
Someone had to answer him—“Injuns?”
But before it appeared any of them had heard him, Campbell’s men were whooping at the top of their lungs, gushing in unbounded joy.
Finally one of the brigade stopped long enough to blurt out to the free trapper, “God-bless-it—the trader’s come in!”
“Trader?”
Trembling with excitement, the skinny whiffet of a man whirled and shot out his arm toward the red-rimmed southeastern hills that framed this verdant, emerald valley. “Sublette’s train comin’ in!”
Squinting into the resplendent midsummer’s light, Bass stepped to the edge of the shade and stared expectantly at the upvault of those crimson bluffs where a long file of horsemen and burdened mules were fanning out across the skyline, backlit by the late-morning sun. More than fifty riders were up there now, all gawking down at the valley below them. And there had to be at least three times that many pack animals, every last one of them reluctant to hurry before their eager masters. Despite the distance, Scratch could almost hear the newcomers barking and bawling at their contrary charges.
A gray mushroom puffed from the end of a distant rifle, a tiny blot against the summer’s blue—a heart’s throb later came the low boom of that rifle held aloft by the pack train’s leader.
Good thing, too, that was. Out here in this country a man never rode up silently on a camp. Prudence dictated that you always announce your arrival, and even discharge your weapon to show peaceful intentions. That gunshot only confirmed Bass’s fervent hope.
“Trader!” he screeched wildly as his feet lurched into motion beneath him, almost as if they were in that much more of a hurry to be off announcing the news to Hatcher’s outfit.
But Jack and the rest were already caught up in a flurry of saddling and mounting by the time he reached them.
“Comin’ to find you!” Elbridge Gray shouted as Bass sprinted up through the trees. Red-faced, the big-nosed trapper tugged on the reins to his own horse with one hand, which also held his rifle, while in the other he gripped the reins to Scratch’s saddle mount.
“Thankee, Elbridge!”
Gray turned and vaulted into the saddle, kicked his toes into the huge cottonwood stirrups. “Get high behind, Scratch! That’s Billy Sublette and he’s bringing likker to ronnyvoo!”
“Likker, Titus Bass!” echoed Hatcher himself as he goaded his horse past them at a trot, then kicked it in the ribs the instant he reached the edge of the meadow. The pony was off like a shot.
By the time Bass swept the rifle from his blanket and stuffed a foot into a stirrup, swinging his horse around, the rest were already on their way across the grassy flat, a wide fan of company trappers and free men gradually streaming together toward that grassy point where the first of those arriving riders were making their way down a gentle slope slanting off those far red hills.
Those dark horses and indistinguishable riders were no more than five hundred yards away now as the last of the pack animals lumbered off the top of the ridge, spilling toward the valley.
“Likker!” Scratch cried as he kicked the horse into a gallop.
“Likker!” he bellowed when he caught up with the rest of Hatcher’s bunch.
“Likker!” was the cry echoed by another two dozen free trappers and nearly the whole of the Campbell brigade.
At four hundred yards Titus could recognize how the nervous greenhorns were bringing up their weapons, waving rifles in the air, shouting at one another.
“Goddamn pilgrims!” Bass growled as he kicked the horse in the flanks again, urging even more speed from it so he wouldn’t be among the last to greet the supply train.
Past three hundred yards the dry-throated riders raced at a full gallop, that wide fan narrowing as the frantic horsemen galloped full tilt, their wide hat brims whipped back by the run, some hats whipped right off their heads, careening back into the belly-high grass.
At Bass’s left a trapper was shouting, “Get ready to give ’em a salute!”
Most already had their rifles in the air by the time those in the lead sprinted past 250 yards.
“Give them pork eaters a mountain how-do!” a voice called out somewhere in that cluster where Bass found himself as the trappers funneled closer and closer together with every yard.
Horses’ nostrils flared as big as their frightened eyes, straining at the bits and hackamores, lunging forward across the uneven ground at a maddening gallop.
At two hundred yards the rider at Bass’s elbow shouted, “Whiskey for my whistle!”
That journey to the last hundred yards took no more than a matter of heartbeats…. Then he could see their faces.
The pilgrims’ eyes and mouths grew as wide and gaping as were the eyes and nostrils of the trappers’ horses. And those leaders of that pack train were already standing in the stirrups, shouting something to the first horsemen racing their way. They raised their long rifles into the air and fired: mushroom puffs of smoke immediately followed by the dull echo of a half-dozen scattered booms carried off on the summer breeze.
Immediately echoed by a gunfire greeting from a handful of the charging riders … then another ten … and now two dozen more. Gray smoke hung in tattered shreds just above Scratch’s head as he raced on.
The headman coming down off the slope toward them was warwhooping and waving his rifle like a fiend. Suddenly he reined up in a flurry of dust and leaped to the ground, his horse wheeling away in the excitement. Snatching the broad-brimmed felt hat from his head, he started sprinting on foot toward the oncoming riders.
One of those horsemen just ahead of Bass yanked back on his reins, his horse’s head twisted to the side as it stiff-legged to a halt and the rider lunged to the ground, nearly spilled, then was up and finding his gait, running those last few steps until he and the leader of the pack train met one another with a violent collision, banging into one another, then dancing round and round as they pounded on each other. As Scratch shot on by, beginning to rein back his own horse, he recognized Robert Campbell as one of the two. Then, as the pair continued their spin, he recognized Bill Sublette—the trapper chief called Cut Face by Washakie’s Shoshone, whom Sublette had helped fight against the Blackfoot back to the summer of 1826.
All around him now the free trappers were popping their hands against their open mouths,
On all sides more guns went off. Puffs of gray clouds hovered in the hot air, barely dissipating on the gentle breeze as old hands shrieked their war cries and Sublette’s greenhorns grumbled and cursed, fighting their frightened, balky mules. More and more of the company men breathlessly slowed their attack, reining up and leaning off their horses to shake hands, calling out their greetings, some even managing to hug a newcomer here or
