“Who goes there?”
“That you, Sinclair?”
“No,” the voice cried as Scratch came to a halt. “Name’s Thompson.”
At that moment a goat butted its way through the gate and dived out between the man’s legs.
“Son of a bitch!” Thompson snarled as he bolted into motion. “Get back here, you!” He was after the goat in a sprint, but within a few steps he slid to a stop and grumbled at the animal, “To hell with you. Go get et up by wolves for all I care.”
Easing his mount up close to the man, Bass held down his hand. “You was gone last time we was here.”
“Me and Billy Craig got back with supplies from St. Louis more’n two weeks ago,” Thompson explained.
“Sinclair said you went for them trade goods,” Shad declared as he dropped to the ground, “but he didn’t say nothing ’bout you bringing no goats.”
Thompson shook hands with the big man, then said, “I joined up with Sublette and Vaskiss’s supply train when they come out with their goods. Didn’t always intend to bring goats—started with some pigs … but them bastards couldn’t make it walking all the way. So a’fore I pushed out of Independence, I traded my pigs for some goats.”
“You got more’n that one?” Scratch asked as he glanced over at the children, seeing their sleepy eyes widen as they followed the antics of that strange new animal scampering around the legs of their horses.
“Made it with eight,” Thompson said. “If’n the coyotes don’t get that damned runaway. Maybe we ought’n just shoot it and cook it on a spit.”
“Ho!” Sinclair called from the gate, emerging as he dragged leather braces over his shoulders, stuffing his cloth shirt into the waistband of his leather britches. “Bass and Sweete, ain’t it?”
“That’s right,” and Scratch came out of the saddle to step up and shake hands.
Prewett asked, “How was your fall hunt?”
Bass turned to eye the rim of the valley. “Hunt was poor, wuss’n I figgered … but the ride in here was enough to pucker a man’s bunghole.”
“Injuns?” Thompson asked.
Pointing with his outstretched arm, Bass declared, “We left some dead bodies back there at sundown.”
“You rode in all night?”
“Two of ’em followed us,” Scratch said, “so there’s likely more.”
“What are they?” Thompson asked.
With a shrug Sweete said, “Sinclair here said the Snakes come through here earlier in the fall lay that they’re Sioux.”
“That true, Prewett?” Thompson asked.
Sinclair nodded once. “’Cuz of them, the Snakes gone and left the hole early in the fall. I done my best to keep the stock in close, just in case they made a jump on the fort, till you and Billy got back.”
Thompson turned back to Sweete. “That woman and those young’uns of yours likely tired from your ride —”
“They ain’t mine,” Shad said.
So the trader turned to Bass. “Why don’t you boys tie off your stock close to the wall and bring them on in for some breakfast? We’ll make a place on the floor of a storeroom for them young’uns to sleep after their bellies is full.”
“You got any flour?” Shad asked. “Got some, yes,” Thompson replied. “Cornmeal?”
“Some of that too,” Sinclair answered this time.
Smiling broadly, Scratch slapped Sweete on the shoulder. “Keep your flour for this flatland nigger, trader man. Ever since Taos many winters ago, Titus Bass been half-froze for corn cakes!”
By nightfall it was evident a storm lay across the horizon, and by the following morning a half foot of new snow had blanketed everything. Two days later the first trappers working the surrounding area began trudging in— by and large every one of them men who had forsaken ever again working for the fur monopoly threatening to abandon them. Joe Walker showed up with only his Shoshone squaw along, announcing he expected to stay only as long as it took for the weather to clear before he would turn north to search out the village of his wife’s people for the winter. Kit Carson and his bunch straggled in from the southwest, having found the trapping difficult over in the Uintah country. And just past nightfall on the third day Joe Meek and Robert Newell showed up at the gate. The wet winter storm caught them on their way back from Fort Hall where they had left their wives.
Now some thirty-five trappers, along with assorted wives and children, had congregated at Fort Davy Crockett with winter’s first hard blast.
From dawn till dusk across those next three days while the weather slowly cleared, either Shad or Titus stayed out with their grazing animals, guardedly watching the tall hills that surrounded the post. For the most part, the partners preferred using that part of the bottom ground just north of the fort, which placed the stockade somewhere roughly between their horses and that Vermillion Creek portal.
If the sun put in an appearance, Waits-by-the-Water and the children abandoned the stockade walls to spend the day beneath the canopy Titus stretched between some of the old cottonwoods. Around a small fire the woman tanned and stretched hides, made extra moccasins for her family, or fussed over a special piece of decorative quillwork while Magpie and Flea played, napped, and played some more there within that small grove.
Each night at sundown nearly everyone bustled back inside the mud-and-log walls for supper and some storytelling until the fire burned low, when folks slipped off for their camps outside the stockade. Every morning when Bass and Sweete untied their hobbled animals and led them outside the walls to graze, one of the three traders dragged their seven goats out to graze. One at a time each animal was led out to a small, low corral attached to the south wall, then tied with a short length of rope the cantankerous goats tried to chew until they were turned loose to spend their day in the enclosure with their own kind.
Just before dawn on the sixth day, the Sioux struck.
“Roll out! Roll out!”
With that shrill cry raised by those camped outside the stockade walls, Scratch flung the blankets and robe aside to scoop up his moccasins. When he had pulled on the outer, or winter, pair, he turned back to kiss Waits on the forehead, then quickly touched both of the children on the cheek.
“Stay here with them,” he ordered. “No matter what—you stay here.”
Shoving both arms into his coat, he snatched up a brace of pistols and two rifles, looping his shooting pouch onto his left shoulder.
In the fort’s cluttered courtyard the seven goats bleated and bawled—but nowhere near as loud as Samantha’s bray, growing noisy at the outside corner of the wall where she had been tied and hobbled near their horses.
One weapon boomed on the flat, followed quickly by two more. Sweete was behind him as he sprinted for the gate where one after another the trappers streamed through, joining those who had camped outside the walls. As Shad and Scratch peeled to the left, others tore to the right. Samantha and their nervous horses fought against their hobbles, yanking against their halters as the two darted among them.
“Make sure them ropes’ll hold,” Sweete called out above the many other voices and sporadic gunfire.
A minute later Titus hollered, “Grab your horse and follow me, Shad!”
Bareback, both of them broke from the rest of their animals, loping to join the many who were on foot, racing after the retreating warriors who were driving off what appeared to be more than a hundred horses.
“They get ’em all?” Sweete bellowed as he came to a halt among the half-dressed men. “Not all,” Meek declared as he peered up at Shadrach.
Carson pointed to the north of the post, saying, “No more’n a dozen horses left back yonder.”
Some of the angry trappers hurled oaths, flung fists into the air, while others continued to fire at the backs of the retreating warriors.
“My way of thinking,” Bass announced, “you niggers got in a bad habit of letting your stock graze free as you please.”
“But there ain’t never been no bad niggers in the Hole!” Thompson argued.
“How was we to know?” cried Dick Owens, a partner of Carson’s.
“Think about it, boys,” Scratch said. “What you figger them Sioux come all this way for if’n it weren’t to grab
