“Been there more three winters back,” Bass declared.
“So it’s only me for while,” Sinclair advised. “Me, ’long with what Injuns show up.”
“Ever had you any trouble with Injuns hereabouts?” Scratch asked, peering round the narrow valley.
“Naw,” Sinclair said. “Snakes and Bannacks come by of a time, and even a few poor Diggers show their faces on the side of them hills yonder.”
Bass peered momentarily at the high bluffs across the river. “Up to ronnyvoo we heard you boys raised yourselves a fort fixing to do some trading down here.”
“That’s right,” Sinclair replied.
Sweete asked, “You trade beaver for possibles?”
Dragging a bare forearm beneath his nose, Sinclair said, “We’ll take robes too, if’n you wanna trade off your buffler hides.”
“We sleep in what we got,” Bass declared. “You mind us pitching camp over yonder for the night?”
“Not’all,” Sinclair replied. “You figger to stick around long?”
Sweete shook his head. “Planning to head on down to the Little Bear, maybeso find some beaver over on the Little Snake.”
“Good luck fellers,” Sinclair said, wiping some sweat off his brow. “Not the Little Bear. Likely you’ll have to work higher up the Little Snake to find beaver anymore.”
“Little Bear used to be good beaver country,” Bass observed.
“Been trapped out last two year,” Sinclair said.
“That’s a shame,” Bass told them, with an amused grin. “Had some of my hair took on the Little Bear, many a summer ago.”
“That where it was?” Sweete asked.
“Yup. Maybeso we’ll go see that spot for ourselves.”
“Lost hair, did you?” the trader asked, glancing at the graying curls on Bass’s shoulder.
“Just enough to sour my milk,” Titus answered, the grin becoming a smile. “After supper, we’ll mosey on over and jaw a bit.”
That evening Titus and Shad did pay a social call on Fort Davy Crockett, if not to share some stories with that new pair of ears, then to take a look at what the three proprietors had to offer in the way of goods and wares in trade for beaver pelts. Damn, if what few possibles sat on those shelves weren’t all English, shipped to Fort Vancouver near the mouth of the Columbia River, then packed overland to the Hudson’s Bay post at Fort Hall where they were purchased by the American partners to stock the skimpy shelves of this log-and-mud post erected on the east bank of the Green River.
Little wonder Philip Thompson had traipsed off to buy up what he could back in the States.
No more than two years old, the small fort boasted only three sides, each one no more than sixty feet in length, the high riverbank serving as a barrier on the fourth. Instead of separate pickets, the backs of three low buildings served as the stockade itself, interrupted by a narrow gate that faced the open ground stretching to the east. In that fertile bottom ground formed by its junction with Vermillion Creek, an array of native grasses flourished, thick, if not tall, throughout the short growing season, providing adequate grazing for the post’s stock. Nearby along the west bank of the creek lay a profusion of tepee rings where visiting Shoshone and Ute raised their lodges when they showed up to trade.
“You fellers keep a sharp eye for Sioux,” Sinclair warned the next morning as the small party saddled for the foothills.
“There ain’t no goddamned Sioux over this side of the mountains,” Sweete chortled. “Now, over in that country on—”
“Don’t be so sure,” the trader interrupted grimly. “Last bunch of Snakes through here told me they seen sign of Sioux on their way in here to trade.”
“Maybeso they was just having some fun with you,” Shad argued.
“I’ll lay them Snakes figgered to scare you into giving ’em a good trade!” Bass agreed as he waved and started away. “Sioux country’s a long, long ways off, Sinclair. Can’t for the life of me reckon why they’d roam all the way over here.”
Instead of leaving Brown’s Hole through the narrow pass carved over the aeons by Vermillion Creek, Bass and Sweete had decided to continue on down the Green River until they struck the Little Bear.* From there they headed east, closely inspecting the smaller feeder streams for sign of beaver activity. Mile after mile, day by day, they marched upstream, following that river to the mouth of the Little Snake. After stabbing up that winding valley for two frustrating days without finding any evidence of beaver, the two of them turned back for the Little Bear, following it east into the foothills and those timbered slopes still crowned with some of last winter’s snow.
Funny, Titus thought more than once, how this country down here got two, three times the snow that fell in Absaroka farther north. No two ways about it—that Crow country sure as hell got colder when it did get cold, but damn if winter didn’t batter these central mountains with that much more snow. Maybe that was the reason he had been able to continue trapping off and on through the last of that long winter while his wife had finished healing. On through the spring, a summer, and fall, then another long, full winter he and Waits-by-the-Water had remained with her people: migrating only when the Crow moved camp.
Once during a warm, dry spell late in the summer of thirty-eight, Bass had loaded two small packs of beaver on Samantha’s back and moseyed east to the mouth of the Tongue. He had somehow made his wife understand that he was half-froze for white-man talk, half-froze for white joking and white faces, half-froze for someone who could grasp how it was to be a half-wild white man living among his wife’s native people.
Looking back now, Titus knew those few days he languished with Tullock had done him a world of good. He had grown lonely across the months, seeing only that one white man in more than a year and a half. Damn well near the same feeling he had back in the spring of thirty-two after all that time in Crow country, fighting off Blackfoot like vicious, blood-drawing deerflies … then ran onto Josiah Paddock, recent of the settlements.
Man gets so lonely, he’s more than half-froze for a white voice, his own American language, another soul who might just understand when he admits he’s grown scared.
“Scared?” Sweete asked at the campfire that late-autumn night after they had been driven to the foothills by a first, heavy snow.
Titus nodded. “Ain’t you growed scared of what’s to become of all of us, Shadrach?”
The big man stared thoughtfully at the fire. “When there ain’t no more ronnyvooz, then I s’pose a nigger can take his plews to a post, like that Davy Crockett, or over to Hallee.”
“Don’t you see?” he asked the younger man. “When the fur company don’t figger it’s gonna send any more supply trains, then that means the company don’t figger the beaver business is worth the trouble. And when that happens, the price of beaver sinks in the mud for ever’body.”
“Trader’ll be back,” Sweete said hopefully. “Come next summer, they’ll come back to ronnyvoo.”
“I don’t reckon they will, Shad,” Bass whispered, gazing at the red embers of their fire as Waits-by-the-Water and the children slept. “The way things was … it’s all but done now.”
“You care to wager on that?” Sweete said, trying to sound as cheerful as he could.
“Sure. I’ll buy you a new shirt, a horn of powder, and get you good and drunk to boot,” Bass sighed. “If’n there’s ’nother ronnyvoo come summer.”
Shad was quiet a while before he asked, “How long you figger till the beaver’s done?”
“My boy ain’t gonna be very old,” he declared, peering across the fire at the two small heads of his children poking from their blanket and robe. “Once there was no forts. Then there was a few. Now they’re like ticks on a bull’s hump. The time’s changed, Shad. And it don’t appear there’s any going back. Good God in His heaven … but I pray this land don’t change too. Leastways, till I’m gone.”
A few days later they struck a buffalo trail as it angled across the rolling, broken country, meandering toward the headwaters of Vermillion Creek, taking them in the direction of Fort Davy Crockett.
“Shadrach,” Bass called out a few hours later, motioning the tall man over as their horses carried them west along that buffalo road. With Sweete come up beside him, he whispered, “Don’t make no show, but I want you to look down in the buffler tracks. Tell me what you see.”
The younger man casually peered off the left side of his horse, then the right. Eventually he looked at Bass. “Injuns.”
