Near the river’s mouth stood the tall cottonwood stockade that the year before had been christened Fort William in honor of one of its original owners. But in leaving the mountains for more sedate business ventures, William Sublette and Robert Campbell relinquished this massive post to the victors who would stay to the bitter end.
While Fitzpatrick’s caravan plodded on down the gentle slope toward the impressive timbered walls, Titus pulled the pack animals to the side of the march and halted. Waits reined up beside him.
“That’s some,” he gasped in English.
Removing the hand she had clamped over her mouth in awe, she repeated, “Some.”
“Only see’d two other forts,” he continued in his native tongue. “One on the Missouri called Osage, and that post of Tullock’s they call Cass. Both of ’em small.”
She nodded, wide-eyed with wonder. “Cass.” And made a sign using her two hands, “Small.”
He chuckled and said, “Nothing like this. This here’s a hull differ’nt place, woman. A hull differ’nt place.”
Scattered across the plain within a half mile of the stockade walls stood the lodges of those bands invited there to trade—three camp circles, along with their separate herds, where riders moved to and from the fort, women and children streaming back and forth along the shady riverbanks for water, bathing, or to swim naked in the glistening waters. It struck Bass as a damned fine idea that hot afternoon.
“Who are these people?” Waits asked in Crow.
“They look familiar?”
“Those are not Crow lodges,” she said guardedly.
“I didn’t figure they would be,” he replied, a little cold water suddenly dashed on his ardor. “This ain’t Crow country.”
“What northern people?”
It took her a moment to consider how to explain that. “They do not talk like the men from your country,” Waits said. “Their skins are fair, like yours and your friends’, but their tongues speak a different language—”
“Parley-voos!” he roared, remembering a dim tale told here and there. “That’s right. Them parley-voos call ’em Sioux.”
But the sound of the word did little to bring him comfort. Not that he had ever had a run-in with the tribe, but he had heard a few stories from those who had bumped up against these powerful warrior bands pushing farther and farther west across the plains until they now had virtually reached the foot of the Rocky Mountains, claiming that prime hunting ground by right of might.
They would just do their best to stay clear of any what might stir up some trouble.
Pointing at a piece of open ground to the southwest of the fort, Waits-by-the-Water asked, “What do your people call those boxes with the round white tops and large rosettes on the side?”
With the one good eye Scratch squinted a little into the distance obscured by the summer haze, then chuckled. “We call them wagons. The rosettes turn and roll—hoops called wheels. They carry the wagons.”
“Do men push them?”
“No,” he said, and scanned those six wagons, finding that not one of them was hooked to a team. Instead, all sat abandoned, motionless on that open bottom ground, their tongues either pointed heavenward, or lying hidden among the tall grass. “Horses pull them. Most times, four horses or more. The people ride, just the way we ride a horse, or your people pull someone on a travois.”
She nodded as if beginning to understand. “I see: they are the white man’s house that he takes with him the same way my people move our lodges from camp to camp?”
With a grin he agreed. “Jehoshaphat, but you’ve got it right.”
“God dit,” she repeated with a wink.
As they ambled toward those fifteen-foot-high palisades, Titus could not remember the last time he had seen that red-and-white-striped flag. A banner every bit this big had flown from the top of the Fort Vancouver flagpole, but he figured he hadn’t seen America’s flag since reaching St. Louis to track down Silas and Billy more than a year back. With every tug of the wind, the huge flag snapped taut for a moment, allowing him to count another row of stars until he tallied up twenty-four. With each star representing a state, Bass reflected what new states had joined the union since he had abandoned the settlements back in twenty-five.
Craning his neck as they came alongside the walls, he peered up at the huge bastion that hung over the top of the northwest corner. He found another like it constructed at the southeast corner. And midway down the southern wall stood the massive gate where he reined to a halt and gazed up to take in the massive blockhouse perched atop the wall more than fifteen feet above them.
“Ho!” he called to a face he saw watching from the west window cut in the blockhouse.
“Ho, yourself,” the shaggy graying man called down.
Pointing at the gaping southern window, Scratch asked, “That your cannon?”
“It’s a cannon—but it ain’t mine,” the man replied. “Only here to visit. C’mon up an’ get yourse’f a good look- see for far an’ wide.”
“Holler down and have ’em open up the gate for us,” he asked.
Hanging partway out the window, the man shook his head. “They ain’t gonna open up these’r gates, on ’count of all them Sioux out there.”
Bass turned in the saddle to peer once again at all the lodges. “Afraid them Injuns’ll rush the fort?”
“I s’pose they are,” the man answered. “Most of ’em belong to a chief name o’ Bull Bear. Campbell invited ’em down from their country north of here to do some trading.”
“And now these fellers here won’t trade with ’em?”
“They been trading with them bucks last couple of days,” the man declared. “But the company don’t let very many come in at one time. No more’n a dozen I s’pect.”
“So how’s a man to get in?”
“She with you?” the stranger asked.
“My wife and our daughter.”
“Likely you come on round to the back side where you come in the corral gate.”
“Someone there to open up?”
“There will be in a shake or two,” he responded as he pulled his head back in the window and disappeared.
“We ride to another gate,” Bass explained in Crow.
On the river side they found a pole corral constructed along the entirety of that northern wall. Pulling back one half of a suspension gate wide enough to admit a wagon, Scratch was able to lead their animals into the corral where no more than a dozen horses grazed on dwindling piles of cut grass.
The narrow door behind them creaked open, and the older man poked his head out, looked this way and that, then spoke. “Tie off your critters there, then you come on in with me.”
Once they passed through the narrow door, the three of them entered a cool and shady part of the fort. The stranger started them for a low-railed balcony. Beyond it Titus caught a glimpse of the huge open courtyard.
“Name’s Bass,” he introduced himself, sticking out an empty hand.
“I’m Creede. Langston Creede.”
“How long you been working here?”
“Oh, I don’t work here,” Creede explained as they stepped onto the porch leading to the balcony. “I been trapping for the company. American Fur Company, that be.”
“Ain’t much else in the mountains these days,” Titus replied as they stopped at the low rail and peered into the bright September sunshine. “You come in with Fitzpatrick from ronnyvoo?”
The man nodded. “With him till four days ago when some of us got half-froze to get here on our own,” he said. “That pack train of theirs was dawdlin’ a leetle too slow for our likin’.”
“So you’re with them what’re leaving the mountains for good?”
“Naw,” and Creede leaned back to settle on the top rail of the balcony. “Ever’ three years me and a ol’ friend meet back to St. Lou and have ourselves a winter spree. Get some women, sleep on a real tick, and have some more women. Man gets a hunger for a white woman …” Then he caught himself, his eyes softening apologetically. “Sorry. Didn’t mean nothing again’ your woman here.”
“No trouble took by it, Langston. So have yourselves a good spree, then come back out to the mountains,
