All in all, he had explained to his own wife, it was natural the way the trappers grew so adolescent or fiddle- footed around the white women. Natural because Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding reminded these men of loved ones left far behind in the States. Perhaps a lost love who had broken a young man’s heart; maybe a beloved older sister or auntie. Or perhaps an adored mother who had always smiled and caressed and wiped away a little boy’s tears.
Natural for a white man to act somewhat childish around those white women, he had explained to his wife, since those white women reminded a man of those he had once loved a lifetime long ago.
After a supper of mountain mutton and elk tenderloin, sliced with their belt knives and eaten using forks made from peeled, forked twigs, Sir William Drummond Stewart opened some of his treasures and brought out more of the exquisite and exotic foods he had packed to the mountains from last winter’s sojourn in New Orleans. Besides the savory selections of game, the Scotsman had provided his guests with a sampling of sardines and cured ham packed in newfangled airtight tins. For dessert he had prepared platters heaped with a variety of dried fruits, green mango pickles brought from Caribbean islands, and a butter-colored marmalade made from Seville oranges shipped all the way from Spain.
“Why do you suppose there is such unhappiness on Cora’s face?” Titus asked his wife in Crow as Stewart’s servant made the rounds with a coffeepot.
For a long moment she gazed at the pregnant Flathead woman. “Among my people a woman lives a step behind her husband.”
“That does not tell me why Cora looks sad and angry at the same time.”
With a sigh Waits explained. “Don’t you see? Her husband is talking too much to the white woman, laughing with her. Maybe Cora thinks her husband would be happier with a white woman for a wife.”
“Because the women are from the same people we are?”
For a moment Waits pursed her lips, considering. “Maybe because this husband doesn’t talk so much to his wife, doesn’t laugh so much with her as he does with the white woman. Perhaps Cora thinks there is something only you whites understand, something we wives will never share with our white husbands.”
“So this fear can hurt a woman’s heart?”
“Yes,” she answered, gazing fully at him as he took the sleeping child from her arms and cradled Magpie in his. “If Cora married one of her own people, they would talk more, maybe even laugh more together too.”
“Like we laugh?”
She smiled. “Yes, like us. But not all white men are like you, Ti-tuzz.”
He still found that it tickled him each time she stuck her own English pronunciation of his name at the tail end of all her Crow.
As he sat there watching the guests, glancing too at the dejected Cora, Scratch figured he couldn’t blame the booshways and trappers from fluttering around the woman. Not only was Narcissa Whitman a treat for the eyes, but she did her best to put them at ease around her, from the highest of company partners to the lowliest of skin trappers. It continued to amuse him how, after more than two days, these hardened mountaineers who annually bought or traded for squaws with carnal abandon were suddenly acting like bashful little boys, or performing like strutting, overconfident adolescents suffering their first schoolhouse crush around Narcissa Whitman.
“So did Black Harris tell you all about my peetreefied forest on your way west, ma’m?” Bridger asked the missionary.
Titus grinned and sipped at his coffee, amused to know what was coming.
“No, not rightly, Mr. Bridger,” Narcissa replied. “Each night around the fire Mr. Harris did tell us many a story on our way across the plains. But he claimed he dared not tell any of your stories because no one could do it better than you.”
Bridger glanced up at Harris, pilot for that year’s supply train, and winked. “Why, thankee, Black.”
“G’won and tell the lady ’bout your forest, Gabe,” Harris instructed. “I told her: good as I was at spinning a yarn, Jim Bridger still be the champeen spinner.”
Grinning, Bridger took a sip of his coffee, then set down his cup as his eyes danced over the five greenhorns from the States. Then he began his tale by explaining how he and his brigade came to find themselves in a new stretch of country up near Blackfoot territory. Gabe told how he was out hunting when he came across some game birds singing sweetly in the trees.
“Pulling down my sights on one, I fixed to shoot it in the head, so I wouldn’t ruin the meat,” he declared. “And I did just that, shot the damn bird’s head right off—excuse my language, ma’m.”
“Yes, of course. Please—go ahead,” Narcissa pleaded, anticipation bright on her face.
“Durn if I didn’t see the head go flying off in a hunnert pieces,” Bridger continued. “And when the body went toppling off its branch, why—just like the head, it broke in more’n a thousand pieces when it hit the ground.”
“B-broke into pieces?” Dr. Whitman echoed with a disbelieving sputter.
“Well, now—I walked right over there and couldn’t find my bird,” Bridger declared. “But laying there at my feet was pieces of that bird, pieces laying all over the place. Like it was a broken rock. I picked some up and studied ’em real hard. Weren’t like no bird I’d ever laid eyes on. Hard as rock.”
“Gone to stone?” Narcissa asked with a gasp.
“I ’spect so,” Bridger answered. “Looked up at the tree where that li’l bird was sitting, singing its pretty songs. When I tapped on that tree with my knuckles—found it hard as rock too.”
“The tree was made of stone too?” Henry Spalding inquired with a bemused haughtiness.
“Not just the tree and that bird,” Bridger carried on with a wag of his head. “Right about then I heard more birds and their pretty calls. Ain’t shy to tell you I stood there with my jaw hung down so far I was ’fraid I’d step on it. For the longest time I waited right where I was, staring up at them peetreefied trees where even more of them peetreefied birds was singing more of their peetreefied songs!”
It felt so good to laugh with all the others who roared, stamping their feet, slapping one another on the back, dabbing at the tears in their eyes from laughing so hard. Even Cora had to grin a little behind her hand when the others hooted and whooped at her husband’s whopper.
Scratch said, “Say, Gabe—why don’t you tell these folks ’bout that looking-glass mountain you run onto one day you was out hunting elk.”
“Did you tell ’em that story, Black?” Bridger asked.
Harris shook his head. “I had ’nough of my own tales to tell ’em ’bout walking to St. Lou with Billy Sublette and that poor ol’ dog we had to eat to stay alive! So you go right ahead and tell ’em ’bout your looking-glass mountain your own self.”
Jim explained that one autumn day years before, he was out on his trapline when he noticed a fine-looking bull elk with an impressive array of antlers grazing not all that far upstream. Carefully, quietly he made his stalk, stopping every few steps to peer out from behind the brush to assure himself the elk hadn’t winded him or heard his approach. Even as Jim slipped well within rifle range and stepped from the edge of his cover, he was surprised the bull still did not bolt and run off, preferring instead to graze contentedly.
“With that big critter turned sideways to me, close as I was, I couldn’t fail to plug him in the lights,” Bridger confided. “My pan made fire, so when I brought my rifle down, I ’spected to see that bull drop, maybeso run off on the chance I’d missed. But there he was, big as all life itself—still chewing on his grass like I hadn’t hit him.”
“What did you do, Mr. Bridger?” Narcissa asked.
“I was downright disgusted with myself for missing that shot offhand the way I done, so I reloaded and stalked up a might closer to that bull. When he still didn’t pay me no mind, I aimed to drop him for certain, and pulled the trigger.”
Dr. Whitman asked, “And?”
With a shrug Bridger said, “Damn bull kept right on chewing his grass like I wasn’t nowhere around throwing lead at him. I was a mite angry now, not knowing if my sights been knocked wrong, so I reloaded and walked right up to where I knowed that lead ball couldn’t miss.”
“Did you kill the elk?” Spalding asked.
Wagging his head dolefully, Jim admitted, “Nope. Missed him three times! I was so mad, I was choking on fire. Decided if I couldn’t shoot that bull with my rifle, then I’d go bang him over the head with my rifle. I started off on a run, holding my gun over my head like this.”
He waited an extra moment as the group fell to a hush, assuring himself that he had every person’s rapt attention before he continued.
