ain’cha?”
Bridger hung his head, staring at the toes of his moccasins for some time, eventually pushing himself away from the tree where he had been standing beside the crusty Henry Fraeb. Jim said, “’Fraid there’s no more company brigade, Joe. You’ll recollect I quit off the company last year. So I ain’t part of it no more. Now I’m … I’m just the same as all of you.”
“S-same as us?” Robert Newell echoed, his voice rising an octave in grave concern.
“I don’t see nowhere else for any of us to go but to the trading posts now, boys,” Bridger tried to explain, his voice quiet in that hush of a summer afternoon that stretched out long and warm west of the Continental Divide. “Any man what figgers to go on trapping beaver … he’s gonna have to trade his plews, gonna have to get his possibles at them forts from here on out till … till …”
When Bridger’s words drifted off into an uneasy stillness, a croaky frog of a voice called out, “Till what, Jim?”
“Till there ain’t no more call for beaver.”
No more call for beaver?
Jehoshaphat! What had become of the world?
For longer than he could imagine, folks had been wearing beaver hats. Because of those hats, there had always been those who went after the beaver, and those who traded the beaver from them. But now there were nowhere near the beaver a man once found on the streams. Damn, if he and his friends hadn’t worked so hard, they’d worked themselves right out of a job.
Scratch was sure Bridger turned away because he felt all those eyes boring into him. Here was a friend who had faced the very worst that winter could throw at a man, faced the very best any painted-up, blood-in-his-eye enemy could hurl his way … of a sudden grown self-conscious, maybe even a mite scared, of staring down all those broken-hearted men.
“So can I buy you a drink, Scratch?”
He turned to find Sweete at his shoulder, the big man’s eyes brimming above those cheeks of oak-tanned leather.
Titus felt the weariness come of those seasons spent high and alone right down into the bone of him. Quietly he said, “Don’t mind if I do, Shadrach.”
Men slowly drifted off in more than a dozen directions. Some stepped back to the trading canopy with their plews at the end of each arm, though there really wasn’t all that much beaver in camp to speak of. But many more clustered around Andrew Drips now, firing questions at the partisan on how they were to go about getting their pay if they chose not to continue in the mountains, asking how a man might accompany the fur caravan back to the settlements when Drips turned for the States.
Sad questions, Titus thought, questions from confused and bewildered, worried men.
With Shad he returned to their tree, to their kettle and their cups. Returned to their memories of brighter times, shining times. Sip by sip of the potent grain alcohol diluted with some creek water and bolstered by a handful of peppers too made the memories easy to conjure up.
By and large, though they looked weathered and worn and weary, their kind were still young men, most no older than Bridger, who was here in his midthirties. But for a brief time they had been the cocks of the walk. Poor frontier boys from the southern mountains, adventurous souls from far up in New England—some Scotch, Irish, and English too, even a few Delaware and Iroquois thrown in. They had laid down moccasin tracks where few men had ever dared to walk—at least no white man.
In this land as wild as the red men who roamed across it, these few daring souls took on the dress of those who had been there far back in time: some of this reckless breed combed their hair out with porcupine brushes so that it would spill in great manes over the collars of their blanket coats while others twisted their hair in a pair of braids interwoven with colorful ribbons or wrapped in sleek otter skins; across their backs they sported a merry calico or buckskin shirt tanned a fragrant smoky hue; intricate finger-woven sashes or wide leather belts decorated with brass tacks held up leggings of doe skin or blanket wool, even drop-front britches sewn of durable elk hide.
While most coupled with tribal women only at summer rendezvous or in winter camps, some proudly took one or more tribal women as wives. A few hung hoops of wire adorned with beads or stones from their ears, and a handful even painted themselves before every battle, or for every rendezvous debauch. They learned to lavish on their best horse the same attention a warrior would give his own war pony: tying up its tail, braiding ribbons in the mane, or dabbing its muscular flanks with earth pigment. No Indian dandy ever strutted with more swagger than these few hundred had in their heyday.
Moment to moment that afternoon and on into the evening, then through the few following days left them, Scratch and Shadrach, Bridger and Carson, Meek and Newell, talked round the whiskey kettles and the firefly campfires—enthralling one another with stories of tight fixes and derring-do, improbable windies and tall tales, brags and boasts big and small, all those noisy recollections as well as those quiet remembrances of those who no longer gathered with them … those gone on ahead to that big belt in the blue. Those who had already made that last solitary crossing of the Great Divide.
Damn, but there were too many of them, Bass thought as he struggled to hold back the tears. And now this would be the last reunion, this final gathering of a very, very small Falstaffian brotherhood.
In the shrinking camps most men made out not to give a damn—drinking hard, laughing loud, fighting and wrassling, doing all they could to hold back the specter of death the way most men are wont to do when they don’t know just how they should feel. From the Indian villages came the distant thump of drums, the soft trill of a lover’s flute, and a wail of voices singing of birth and war and death. Not the Flathead nor the Nez Perce, not even the Shoshone fully understood, much less believed, that this was to be the last gathering of these summer celebrants. Instead, for the wandering bands it would be life as they had lived it across the centuries: summer afternoons and sweet, cool evenings smoking their pipes, watching children chase and play, scraping hides and sewing beads, telling stories of warpath heroism or creation myths.
Where would they go now? he wondered. Did the tribes go back to the way things had been before the white man came out west with his long caravans of shiny trade goods and powerful weapons?
So bittersweet was that flood of the memories, soul-prints of his life made across mountain and plain: juicy hump rib and buffalo tongue around a winter fire, beaver tail and painter meat on the spit, the sharp relish of strong coffee or a handful of high, glacial water so cold it set your back teeth to aching. Games of hand or taking a chance on the well-worn cards of euchre and Old Sledge, foolish wagers on shooting a mark or throwing a ’hawk, running a’foot or racing your horse … they were times when a man knew who his friends were and how their stick would float.
But now those sweetest of days were gone like river-bottom sand a’wash come spring runoff, swept away in the rush of the seasons.
So like youth, held here but briefly in one’s hand—youth truly experienced by those who believe youth will be theirs forever—the high times in these shining mountains had come and were never to be again. Like impetuous youth, these men did not realize their era had come and gone until the light had begun to fade for all time. And like the young who never fathom the precious gift granted them, these rough-hewn souls had squandered their days, wastrels with those brief seasons allotted them.
Late of a lazy summer morning Robert Newell strode back into camp, eager to share some news with his friends, especially that best of companions.
“Joe!” Doc hallooed as he approached the group lounging upon the ground whiling away these last hours of this last summer reunion.
“You’re ’bout to bust at the seams, Doc,” Titus said. “Just lookit him, boys. G’won, Doc—spill your beans.”
“Them missionary folks what’s bound for Oregon country,” Newell began in a gush as he knelt in their midst, “well, now—you know they asked Black Harris to guide ’em on west from here.”
“Ain’t he gonna do it?” Joe asked.
Newell shook his head emphatically. “One of the preachers, named Little John, he fetched me over to their camp and told me Harris was asking far too much to pilot them on to Oregon …”
When Newell paused dramatically, excitement flickering in his eyes, Carson said, “Spit it out, man!”
“Them preachers asked me to pilot ’em all the way to the Columbia country, boys!”
