“Even though both tribes was coming in to ronnyvoo?”
“Damn right,” Shad replied sourly. “Put afoot, them six run on in here, asking us to protect ’em till their village got here. Fact be, while we was making our own way here, we heard this same bunch of Bannock bastards been doing some thieving: raised some traps and plunder from some Frenchies working Bear River last month … so Gabe was more’n happy to help out them Nepercy.”
“How so?”
Sweete answered, “Them six Nepercy waited till dark a couple nights ago, then slipped off to the Bannock camp to see what they could do ’bout getting their ponies back. We didn’t see ’em till next morning when the six of ’em come in with their horses.”
“They’d stole ’em back from the Bannawks?”
Sweete nodded. “Damn right. I s’pose them Bannocks didn’t figger no one’d dare try, so most of the warriors was off hunting when the Nepercy stole their ponies back. Them Nepercy bucks rode right in here, told us to be ready for a fight with the Bannocks, and give the finest horse to Bridger hisself.”
“That was a stroke of medicine,” Bass said as the Bannock warriors neared the tree line. By now he could see the horsemen were painted. Not a good sign at all.
Seizing the halter of the Nez Perce gift horse, Bridger hollered, “Grab tight on your horses, boys! I’ll wager these buggers aim to run ’em off!”
With war screeches, snorting horses, and the slamming of hooves as they brought their ponies to a dusty halt, the horsemen careened into the trappers’ camp with bluster enough for twice their number. Two of their group waved their weapons, yelling at the rest, sending the warriors this way and that through the camp. Each one of the three dozen naked warriors bellowed threateningly, shaking his old fusil or bow or war club at the white men.
Damn if those Bannock didn’t try their best to frighten the horses, bullying the white men by swinging their own mounts at the trappers who remained on foot among the shelters. One of the leaders, a barrel-chested youngster, halted his pony near Bridger, hollering down at the brigade leader.
“Get over here, Mansfield!” Bridger ordered. “I need someone what knows this red nigger’s tongue!”
Cotton Mansfield trotted over to begin making sense of the youth’s shrieking bravado. “Says he don’t want no trouble with you—with no white man. But he come for the ponies, them horses took from his camp.”
“You tell him I don’t know nothing about horses took from his camp,” Bridger snarled. “Tell him his manners is bad and he better get his ass outta here till he can act better.”
Shouting among themselves, the Bannock slowly regathered around their leader at the edge of the trapper camp.
Mansfield whispered to Bridger from the corner of his mouth, “They didn’t figger to have to fight white men, Gabe.”
“That big young’un told you that?”
Nodding, Mansfield said, “They only come for to kill them Nez Perce and get their horses back—”
“Tell ’em to get!” Bridger growled, the short fuse on his anger all but gone.
“Watch out, Gabe!”
Bridger whirled at the warning from one of his men, finding the second leader of the bunch loping up atop his pony. He was shouting at the rest of the horsemen.
“Jim!” Mansfield whispered sharply. “He knows that horse of yours come from the Nez Perce!”
“To hell with him!” Meek yelled as Omentucken, his Shoshone wife, cautiously stepped from their shelter and stood beside her imposing husband to watch the confrontation.
Bass could see the dark cloud suddenly cross the second, older Bannock leader’s face. His dark, chertlike eyes narrowed on Bridger as he came to a halt beside the gift horse and began to mutter something to the others.
Scratch turned to Carson, saying, “That nigger looks to be bad from mouth to headwaters, Kit.”
Mansfield translated, “This’un says you got his horse—”
“Tell him it ain’t his,” Bridger snapped. “Belonged to the Nez Perce and they give it to me. A present what’s mine now.”
They watched the way Mansfield’s translation struck the Bannock leader. Furious, he drew himself up atop his pony and shouted to the rest.
“He’s just told ’em they come for horses or blood!” Mansfield warned.
“Get ready, boys!” Sweete ordered as everyone braced in a crouch, weapons ready.
Slapping his quirt along his pony’s flanks, the older Bannock leader forced his horse between Bridger and the Nez Perce pony. As Bridger’s hand was wrenched from the lariat around its neck, the war chief seized the bridle.
All around the two of them trapper rifles came up, and the last of the hammers were snapped back to full cock. Before any of the horsemen could react, one of the guns rang out—no man would later admit to firing the first shot—a deafening boom beneath that canopy of leafy cottonwood. Atop his horse the Bannock chief stiffened, arched backward, and spilled to the ground, a red smear on the center of his chest.
The wolf was out, and no way to put him back in his den.
With throaty screams the Bannock fired their smoothbores, aimed their bows, and fired their arrows. Some hurled their war clubs at the trappers who were diving this way or that as the air filled with gun smoke and shrieks, arrows and curses.
But in less time than it would take for a man to fill and light his pipe, the horsemen had turned and retreated, leaving six of their dead behind in the white man’s camp. Many of the trappers dashed from the trees, stopped, and leveled their long guns on the backs of the fleeing warriors. Another half dozen fell before the Bannock, were out of rifle range.
“Ah-h-h, Joe!”
Meek and the others spun at Squire Ebbert’s pained call. The trapper was slowly lowering Joe’s wife, the Mountain Lamb, to the ground. The front of her beaded shawl was dark with blood around the shaft of an arrow Ebbert held, his hand already slicked with crimson.
Collapsing beside her in an instant, Meek cradled his wife across his legs as he gently laid her upon the ground. Plainly, she had taken an arrow intended for him.
“Oh, God!” Joe whimpered as he peered down into her glazed, fluttering eyes. “Don’t die! Please don’t die.”
Shocked, Titus stood there with the others in a ring surrounding the man and woman as the sting of acrid black-powder smoke hung in the summer air, remembering the story of this Mountain Lamb and the two inseparable friends. Now the woman Joe loved, the mother of his own children, lay gasping in his arms, gurgling for air as a thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. She reached up with one hand to touch Joe’s face. Her fingers lightly brushed his thick beard before the arm fell limp.
“No-o-o-o!” Meek cried piteously, crumpling over her.
The sound of that moan, the sight of this big, powerful man brought to his knees with the death of his wife— it tore right through to the marrow of him. Of a sudden Bass realized how he would suffer should he lose Waits-by- the-Water. After all they had been through together …
Here was this friend of his, a man with whom he had shared the very real prospect of death. Someone who had stood at his back, and he at Meek’s.
“Shad,” Bass whispered harshly as he swallowed down the grief, allowing the anger through. “I reckon we got us some niggers to rub out.”
Sweete was the first to turn away from the circle, but with him came many others: Doc Newell, Squire Ebbert, Kit Carson, Isaac Rose, Cotton Mansfield, Dick Owens, and at least fifty more. There was no need of talk among them, much less any deliberation. Silently the half-a-hundred slipped off to catch up their horses and joined Bass at the edge of the prairie.
In the distance a smudge of dust clung to the horizon, the only sign of the fleeing Bannock.
Looking around at those grim-faced, determined men as they climbed atop their horses, Shad Sweete said, “We’re all friends of Joe’s. He’d do the same for any of you.”
Then Bass told them, “Want you to remember them young’uns what ain’t got a mother now! ’Sides Blackfoot—there ain’t no wuss thieves in the mountains!”
Suddenly a handful of them howled like wolves, raising their rifles. The rest joined in, yipping and shrieking,
