“Nawww.” And for some reason he felt sorry for Williams, the others too. Then, suddenly, he felt very sorry for himself as well. “When beaver’s gone under, then I’ll find me something else to do.”
“Ain’t gonna be long,” Williams claimed.
“Not ready to be a horse stealer, Bill. When I can’t find no more flat-tails in the mountains, or when the trader says my plews ain’t wuth a red piss … till then Titus Bass be a trapper. It’s who I am, Bill.”
“Here’s to shining times, then, Titus Bass,” Williams said with as much cheer as he could muster, bringing up a long-boned paw.
He shook the offered hand. “Here’s to Californy, Bill Williams. Here’s to Mexican horses.”
The moment he pulled his hand away from Williams, Bass kicked his pony into a lope, riding away feeling unsettled as he stuffed the hand back into a blanket mitten.
It seemed as if he didn’t understand this world anymore. While he wasn’t watching, wasn’t paying attention, the world Titus Bass knew had been changing unseen and unheard. It was as if one of those big prairie winds had picked him up in one place and in one time, then set him right down in a different place and in a different time…. Scratch felt unhitched. Adrift. His belly cold with uncertainty.
No longer sure what the seasons ahead would bring.
33
It had taken Joe Walker and the rest more than eight days to get that small herd of horses back to Fort Davy Crockett and the Shoshone. Two of those days were spent rounding up the strays after a freak winter thunderstorm blew in from the southwest—pelting the countryside with a hard, icy rain driven by tempestuous winds and accompanied by flashes of lightning and prolonged peels of thunder that promptly frightened the skittish ponies and set off a wild stampede across miles of muddy ground. The Shoshone were satisfied.
But Prewett Sinclair was furious that Craig hadn’t come back with Thompson’s scalp. After some heated debate Sinclair and Craig decided they had best part company. Once their present stock of goods was disposed of, their partnership at Fort Davy Crockett would be dissolved.
Late in February, just before Bass was preparing to set off for the foothills in search of beaver, Sinclair formed a new venture with a trapper grown weary of dangerous work and poor prospects. While Sinclair remained at the post, Robert Hewell loaded more than three hundred pelts onto their packhorses and headed out for Fort Hall to barter for trade goods and supplies.
Down in the spring Shad and Titus had run onto Kit Carson. Because Dick Owens had ended up turning around on them to throw in with Thompson, Williams, Peg-Leg, and those others headed for the California ranchos, Carson had enlisted Jack Robinson as his new partner for the spring hunt. After a night of pitching tales and swapping lies the trappers saddled up to go their separate ways the next morning.
“See you to ronnyvoo on the Seedskeedee!” Bass had cried.
Carson wagged his head. “I can’t figger there’ll be no more ronnyvoo, Scratch.”
“You ain’t coming to Horse Creek?” Sweete asked.
“Ain’t planning to,” Kit confessed. “Don’t see no sense in making a long ride to somewhere there ain’t gonna be no trader, no trade goods.”
Sadly, Titus asked, “So what you gonna do, Kit?”
“We’ll see if Robidoux treat us fair down at his Winty post. He better—seeing how we should’ve burned him out for hiding them horse thieves.”
“Fort Robidoux, eh?” Bass brooded. Then sighed as he gripped Carson’s hand tightly. “You boys watch your topknots, hear? One day we’ll run across your sign again.”
“Keep your eye on the backtrail,” Carson called out as he and Robinson started away.
The backtrail. That’s about all it seemed they had anymore, Bass ruminated more and more throughout that spring and into the first part of summer as he and Sweete started for the Green River. The backtrail. There sure as hell wasn’t any future to speak of, what with the way the company had threatened not to show up at all for the coming rendezvous.
When he really got down in his mind, it seemed as if everything he had ever wanted, all that had ever mattered in his life, it all lay behind him. Then he would look at Flea and Magpie … or feel Waits-by-the-Water’s head rest against his shoulder, and he would grow hopeful anew.
Maybe the beaver were about killed off. Maybe folks weren’t wearing beaver any longer and the fur companies didn’t give a damn about trappers no more … and maybe the only folks who would ever come through these mountains would be settlers destined for the fertile ground of that rainy place called Oregon Territory.
That was all right, he convinced himself as he held her tight through those nights when he couldn’t sleep for brooding on the terror it gave him. He had his powder and lead so his family would never go hungry. But what of those pretty things he wanted to provide for her—what if the trader didn’t show this summer? Never showed again? Would he have to go to Fort Hall, or Fort Union, or over to the South Platte if he didn’t ride over to see Robidoux or Sinclair?
He wasn’t sure just how he felt one day to the next as he and Shad continued north. One morning he found himself hopeful, but the next he was sure that life as he had known it was over. His emotions were taking the same sort of ride a broken twig would endure racing down a swift mountain stream swollen with spring run-off.
For all these years he figured he had come to count on things outside himself. Now, Scratch realized … he could not put his faith in anything but Titus Bass. In this world turned upside down, that faith in himself might well be all he could count on.
This summer of 1840 the Flathead had come again to the Green near Horse Creek, waiting for the man of God who had been promised to them for many years. In those warm days while they all kept a patient vigil, Bass came to feel sorry for those Flathead, seeing how they sent out riders every day to watch for the approach of the trader’s caravan from the States. For years now missionaries had come overland, briefly visiting rendezvous before they continued on to the far northwest to establish themselves, their schools and their churches among the Palouse and Nez Perce … always passing the Flathead by. Every summer the missionaries had taken their potent medicine from God elsewhere.
So there was no small celebration in the valley of the Green that thirtieth day of June when the first Flathead rider came racing back to rendezvous screaming with delight.
Those trappers who understood the Flathead tongue quickly translated the happy news emanating from the village. The trader was coming! Carts had been spotted. Many people. And four wagons.
Surely, now, with the white man’s lumbering white-topped wagons, there had to be missionaries along. And—dare they hope after all these years—those new missionaries had finally come to bring their power to the Flathead?
Three Protestant ministers and their wives had come west with Andrew Drips and his caravan. But to the soul-flattening disappointment of those joyous Flathead who turned out to greet these arrivals from the States, the six missionaries were bound for the Oregon country. While the Shoshone gave the caravan a raucous greeting, firing guns and racing round and round the column, the Flathead were turning back for their village in despair.
Sympathizing with their unfathomable grief, Scratch watched with curiosity as a lone man peeled off from the caravan on foot, calling out in his heavy accent for the Flathead to stop, to turn around and wait for him. Having walked on foot all the way from St. Louis, the stranger was nothing short of slit-eyed and sunburned beneath his flat-brimmed black hat. With stinging alkali dust coating his long wool frock, Belgian friar Pierre Jean deSmet shook hands with the head men. An amused contentment was written on his face at the joy the Flathead wore on theirs when he announced he had come alone to teach them how to turn their faces to God.
But no one could have been more happy than Titus Bass.
With Flea on his shoulders, Scratch walked out from the trees, Shad Sweete at his elbow. It was as if his hopes, his very prayers, had been answered by the arrival of that caravan. The fur trade wasn’t dead. No … not yet.
“Truth be, didn’t really figger we’d see a supply train this year, Shadrach.”
“Me neither. But there it comes, Titus!”
What with the way the company partisans had been grumbling about the poor returns, the dwindling number
