“What you figger them Snakes would do, Scratch?” Meek asked.
“Start killing white men,” he declared flatly. “Snakes been our friends for as long as I’ve knowed ’em, boys. So if you want our friends to start killing white men, then you go right on back: tuck your tail and turn back for home.”
“There ain’t no easy way at this,” Carson advised. “I’m mad as a spit-on hen that them boys stole horses … but I’m even madder at ’em for what might happen if we don’t get them horses back to the Snakes.”
“Amen to that, Kit,” Titus grumbled as he eyed the reluctant Dick Owens. “Amen to that.”
Late that next morning as he bellied down atop the sage-covered hill alongside Meek and Walker, Bass focused his long brass spyglass on the log-and-mud fort below them at that junction where the Uintah flowed into the Green. In that subfreezing silence, Scratch could hear the snuffle of their own horses tied behind them, just below the skyline.
He passed the glass to Walker. “Seems they might’n be expecting visitors. Look there at the island in the middle of the Green, just downriver.”
“I see ’em,” Walker said. “That’s where they’re herding the horses, Joe.” He handed the glass on to Meek.
They waited till the muscular trapper finished looking over the scene below; then Titus asked, “We go for the horses? Or … we go to raise hell with them horse thieves?”
For a long moment the wind breasted that hilltop before Joe Walker spoke. “I ain’t eager to spill a white man’s blood, Scratch. Since they got them horses on that island, I’m for slipping down there and stealing ’em back so none of us is forced to kill one of them thieving niggers.”
“I’ll go for that,” Meek responded. “Get them horses back without fighting them fellers.”
Walker turned to Bass. “What say you, Scratch?”
A gust of wind howled over the crest of that hill, then whimpered on its way. “I say a thief is a thief, no two ways to it. But … if we can get back them horses without a fight doing it your way, Joe—then I’ll be satisfied.”
“Glad we all agree,” Walker declared.
“Just mark my word, boys,” Bass snagged their attention again, “if one of them thieving niggers raises his gun at me, he’s damn well dead where he stands.”
*
*
32
For some reason a stretch of the Green down below them wasn’t frozen near as solid as the rest. Beneath a thin, riffled layer of icy scum Titus could make out the river’s sluggish current.
From the willows where he lay, Bass studied the far bank, listening for any sounds coming from the log stockade where three smoky spires rose slowly into the leaden sky. Off to his left lay the narrow grassy island where the thieves had corralled their horses. No more than a half dozen more grazed near the walls of Robidoux’s post.
He stared at the telltale color of that ice again. More times than he could count he had crossed frozen rivers, leading his horse and the mule. Times were Titus Bass had crossed the slurried Yellowstone itself bare-assed naked while a winter storm slammed down on that country. He damn well knew cold water as well as any man … likely because it scared the hell out of him like nothing else could.
The pale, translucent green of that ice indicated there had to be a spring feeding the river with a trickle of warm water, causing much of the ice around that spring to grow about as soft as a cotton bale left out on the St. Louis levee in a spring downpour.
Back when Joe Walker led the two dozen down from the hills into the river valley, Sweete was the first to spot the nearby smudge of smoke hanging in an oily pall beyond the bare ridges. That smoke was a good sign either of a band of trappers camping nearby, or a village choosing to spend out the winter close to this trading post erected by men who frequently used Taos as their supply base. As much smoke as there was, Scratch figured it had to be Indians. Carson volunteered to have a look for himself.
By the time Bass, Walker, and Joe Meek had bellied their way down from the hilltop after glassing the fort and horse island, Kit was riding in from that solitary foray to scout the village downriver.
“I say they’re Yutas,” Carson explained, handing his reins to Dick Owens and promptly kneeling on the hard ground.
Dragging a knife from its scabbard, Carson traced a line to represent the river, scratched a small square for the stockade across the Green, then gathered up a handful of stones he positioned to indicate where the Indians had erected their lodges.
“How many fighting men?” William Craig asked in worry.
“Sixty, maybe seventy,” Carson said, dragging the back of a hand beneath his red, runny nose. “Twenty-some lodges.”
Walker turned to Craig, asking, “Why you figger we oughtta worry ’bout them Yutas? They never caused me no trouble.”
The trader shrugged. “It’s clear some Injuns don’t want other Injuns trading for powder and guns—”
“You s’picious them Yutas don’t like the idea of you trading with the Shonies up at Davy Crockett?” demanded Meek.
“I dunno how that bunch down there will act when we go riding in there to take them horses from Robidoux,” Craig admitted.
“Yutas ain’t never hurt no man I know of,” Bass interrupted brusquely. “Less’n you shaved that bunch on some deal you ain’t told us about, trader—them Yutas won’t give our outfit no never mind. We only come for the horses them white men stole’t, so we ain’t got no truck with that village.”
“It’s plain as sun Thompson’s boys picked up more horses from somewhere,” Carson explained as he stabbed the point of his knife into the ground along that line representing the river. “There’s better’n fifty on that island now.”
“Ever’ last one of ’em will make a nice present for them Snakes,” Bass growled. “Less’n we get horses back for Rain, his warriors gonna do their damndest against ever’ white man in this country—guilty or not.”
Walker nodded. “No man here wants war with them Snakes. We got enough enemies awready.”
Meek knelt to lean over Carson’s shoulder, stabbing a finger at the shorter man’s drawing of the island. “A good thing Peg-Leg and the rest don’t have no guard on them ponies.”
“That’ll make it easy for us to get the horses started away,” Walker announced. “We won’t have to do no shooting at them boys.”
“You come up with a plan, Joe?” Newell asked.
Joseph R. Walker looked over the two dozen of them a moment before he explained. “Half of us gonna cross to the island and wrangle them horses across the ice toward the north bank. I want the other half of you to split off in two outfits. One go with Bass on the upriver end of the island and cross over just below the fort. The other’n go with Carson downriver of the island and make your crossing there. Both you boys’ll wait to show yourselves till we get onto the island and start the herd across the ice to shore.”
“Good,” Meek responded. “That way we’ll have them horses penned up a’tween the three outfits so they won’t go stampeding off if’n there’s shooting.”
Walker cleared his throat. The others got to their feet in an uneasy silence. Some coughed softly, others shuffled their moccasins in nervousness.
“Kit—you take your five men on downriver now,” Walker instructed, then waited while Carson turned, quickly and silently pointing to Dick Owens and four others. The six pushed from the group toward their horses tethered nearby.
“Take your men off too, Scratch.”
