“Why, if that hoss don’t take the circle, Kit!” Scratch marveled as they watched the giant’s back grow smaller. “The bastard was just about to wade into you till you spoke your piece ’bout that ’Rapaho gal.”
Meek asked, “Figger that’s what made him run off with his tail ’twixt his legs?”
“No matter—he’s gone now,” Bridger announced. “Let’s have us a drink for that bastard showing us the white feather!”
“Dunno, but something tells me this ain’t over, Gabe,” Bass warned, sensing that gnawing in his belly about the suddenness of the giant’s backstepping once the squaw was mentioned. He turned to Kit, saying, “Best you watch your back.”
But Bridger and Meek jointly yoked their arms over the shorter man’s shoulders and cheerily dragged Carson off toward the whiskey canopy.
“There’s other gals you can poke,” Joe declared.
Newell caught up with them. “Allays other squars, Kit!”
Wagging his head, a bewildered Titus Bass sauntered back to the awnings where the trade goods lay, sensing that nothing had been settled between the two. Chouinard’s attack on Grass Singing had served to irritate a wound that had been opened and kept oozing for some five long weeks while the Bridger and Drips brigades sat on their thumbs, impatiently waiting for the long-overdue supply caravan to reach the mouth of New Fork.
The camps already sat atop a powder keg of emotion.
During those long days of waiting, rumors had begun to circulate that Sublette and Campbell had indeed given up the mountain trade in an agreement with Astor’s successors in St. Louis. Another story confirmed that the partners were even selling the fort they had built on the North Platte last summer to the new firm of Fitzpatrick and Fontenelle—quitting the fur trade completely to become landed gentry and mercantilists back in St. Louis.
First it was General William H. Ashley who had pulled out after he made his fortune, and now Sublette and Campbell appeared poised to do the same. Could it be, rumor had it, that the two of them were following Astor’s lead: getting out while the getting was good because there was no more money to be made in the mountain beaver trade?
A man had only to look around that sprawling rendezvous camp as they waited through those last days of June, on through the entire month of July and the first week of August, to see that the bales of beaver were small, and few. More and more of the grumblers in the company camps announced their plans to cash in their chips once the caravan arrived. And once Fitzpatrick showed up more than a month late on August 12 with those pack animals swaybacked beneath trade goods, one of Fontenelle’s St. Louis clerks busied himself telling all who would listen a depressing tale that served to thicken the aura of gloom already hanging over that rendezvous of 1835.
“Back home it’s all the talk—a story come upriver from N’orleans ’bout a French duke what was over visiting the Chinee last year,” the wag related to his rapt audiences. “Seems that Frenchie lost his beaver-plug hat over there, and them Chinee didn’t have nary a beaver-plug hat to sell him.”
The clerk went on to describe how the French diplomat had a tall hat specially made for him from the silk of those productive worms, a hat he proudly wore upon his return to Paris where it became all the envy, and the fashion conscious clamored to have one just like it. In droves the best dressed of Europe had begun to abandon their beaver felts and were ordering hats of Chinese silk.
By now, the clerk explained to slack-jawed trappers, this frightening trend was gripping the States. Silk was all the rage.
Any half drunk who cared to give it a thought couldn’t help but reckon what was at that moment being scrawled on the wall: if beaver was no longer in demand, then it stood to reason that beaver men were soon to become an endangered species.
In light of all that disgruntling talk of silk, the groaning about the poor price for plews, and the moaning about the high cost of possibles, it didn’t take all that much mulling over before Scratch decided he wasn’t about to trade off all his pelts to the company then and there. What with the low dollar beaver was bringing, coupled with the exorbitant prices demanded for what trade goods were being offered, he figured instead to hang on to half of his plews he might well end up trading off at that new Fort William raised down on La Ramee’s Fork. By any reckoning that post lay closer than Tullock’s new fort going up at the mouth of the Tongue, and much closer than either Taos to the south or Fort Union in the north.
There sure as hell had to be somewhere a man could squeeze a better dollar out of his pelts.
What with having a family now, why, a man needed to give due consideration to such matters—not as he had done in past summers when he would take what value was given, trade for his possibles and some whiskey at the prices demanded, then disappear for another year.
But the more he cogitated on it now in the shade of those awnings, the angrier it made him, realizing that the fur company, the traders, all of those who acted as middlemen to supply this to, or do that service for, the trappers were lining their palms and stuffing their pockets with fruits harvested through the risks taken by others. Those with the oiliest tongues turned out to be the richest at others’ expense.
And while he had galloped west many years ago hoping to leave that obscene inequity behind, with every summer Bass was coming to realize that the monied minority and their lackeys would always find some way to reach out from the settlements and exploit those who called this wilderness home.
Beaver had to come back, he told himself as he made his final decisions with more hope than horse sense. Beaver just had to come back.
“Run this up and tell me what I owe you,” he instructed the clerk after turning back what he hoped would be more than half of the necessaries and shiny presents he had picked out for his women.
“With all this fur of yours, you’ve got much more credit than these few purchases.”
“I ain’t trading all my furs,” he interrupted the man. “Gonna keep some for—”
“The Frenchman’s coming!”
Bass turned at that warning cry stabbing the hot summer air from beyond the tree line.
“Shunar’s coming!”
More of them took up the call as Titus swung around, his eyes digging, scratching, searching for Carson as he lamented, “Goddamn—there’s gonna be a fight now!”
Once more Bass scanned the trees, finding the giant just emerging a few hundred yards off on horseback. Even at this distance he could make out the shape of the firearm Chouinard had braced atop his right thigh as his horse loped toward the trading canopies.
At the sound of footsteps and loud voices Scratch turned, finding Carson hurrying past, out of the shade and shadow, to stop in the intense light as clouds continued to scud toward the sun. Behind the Frenchman came a growing crowd of the curious. The shelters poked back in the brush and trees now began to spew many more white men as well as Indians who had been visiting the trapper camps.
“Leetle Amereecan!”
Even at this distance they could all hear the bite of Chouinard’s voice in the dry, hot air.
A wisp of graying cloud brushed the face of the sun, sucking some of the intensity out of the afternoon light.
“Get my horse, Doc,” Carson ordered without turning.
While Newell hurried away, Bass stopped behind the short man, offering his weapon once more. “You want my pistol?”
Carson turned slightly, patted the butt of the big pistol he had stuffed into his belt this day. “Got mine, Scratch.”
Fifty yards away now, Chouinard shook the rifle overhead. “I keel you Amereecan! The squaw—she is mine!”
Turning suddenly, Carson snagged a handful of Bridger’s shirt. “Gabe, if’n this don’t turn out … promise me you’ll take my ponies, my plunder, over to that ’Rapaho camp.”
“What the hell for—”
“Promise me,” Kit begged. “Give it all to the ol’ man and try to tell him I done what I could to kill this bastard.”
“He ain’t gonna kill you.”
“Gimme your word, Jim,” Carson pleaded. “Tell him all white men ain’t lyin’, thievin’, snake-tongued bastards.”
“Awright,” Bridger agreed reluctantly.
