Williams and Smith had their chuckle before Peg-Leg turned and hobbled off with a wave, starting the procession toward the stockade as shadows quickly deepened. More hallooing greeted the new arrivals as they neared the walls, men streaming out that lone open gate as lanterns began to glow behind the tiny, rawhide- covered windows pocking the walls of those few miserable cabins inside the fort.
“Robidoux here?” Bill asked.
“He’s here,” Smith declared as they halted before the gate. “But he’ll be leaving for Taos soon to fetch up more trade goods. Leave off your horses to graze over yonder with ours and bring your gear inside the walls. We been sleeping inside under the stars nights waiting for you.”
“We? Who else you got gonna be a good gun to have along?” Williams inquired.
“Two of them went with us that first year, Bill.”
“Who?”
“Dick … Dick Owens,” Smith declared guardedly, his voice lowering. “And, Thompson too.”
Smith pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes knowingly, and nodded. “You two fellers just stay outta each other’s way, and we won’t have us no trouble on this ride.”
Just how in blue blazes could two men keep from stepping on one another’s tails when both of them were going to be following Bill Williams and Thomas L. Smith out to California and back again with several thousand horses?
Maybe he just ought to pack up come morning and light out for the Bent brothers’ Arkansas fort, or one of those posts farther north on the South Platte. Perhaps he could dig up his cache near the mouth of the Popo Agie and trade off a few peltries, managing to end up with what geegaws he wanted for his woman, those things he wanted to give his children. Not everything to be sure. Only a soft-brained idiot wouldn’t admit that the bottom had gone out of beaver and it was going to be some time before the business rehabilitated itself. But in the meantime, Scratch figured he could get a little of this and a little of that, enough to show his family just how much he cared. If a man didn’t bust his ass to make it so his family could have a few good things—what in hell did a man bust his ass for anyway?
Time was, when there were no strings on his heart, Titus worked those freezing months in the high-country streams so he could reward himself with a good time once a year or so at summer rendezvous, maybe afford a new shirt or a pair of those fancy black-silk handkerchiefs, besides his necessaries. But a man didn’t work just to make a living … that made him nothing more than a slave to those who bought the fruits of his labor.
Now there weren’t that many buyers left. And what those few buyers were paying for plew wasn’t near enough to make a good living for any man daring to wade around in icy streams. Beaver was gone belly-up. Buffalo hides brought a squaw far more than the labors of any trapper. Buffalo better’n beaver? These mountains sure as hell had gone crazy!
Any man with a tin cup full of beads, a few hanks of silk ribbon, or a dozen packets of vermillion could talk a back-broke squaw out of a buffalo robe … when a man had to work hardscrabble in finding a likely stream with good sign, choose where to make his set, wade out crotch deep to pound in his trap stake, then wait before he would return to learn if his efforts had been rewarded or not.
But with buffalo, all a nigger had to do was trade off a few cheap geegaws for a winter-kill’t robe!
Maybe there was a chance the Bents or other traders on east of the mountains would give him a fair enough price on his beaver that he would not have to return home to Crow country empty-handed come autumn. He sure enough had time to pull out in the morning, tramp south to avoid those low passes still clogged with snow, then swing back north again along the Front Range—getting back home to her in good time before she’d start to fret and worry.
Perhaps when he got back home, he might even trade away some of that foofaraw he bartered off the traders for a few robes from the Crow women up in Absaroka. He could carry those robes over east to Tullock near the mouth of the Tongue—
What a chuckleheaded fool he was! Caught himself scheming how to become a robe trader on his own hook. No sense in sinking that low. A man had his pride and self-respect. A man had to earn himself a living … not live off the sweat of others.
But, this raid on California might well be the last shining chance to rear its head up in the middle of the twisting path that was his life. In dimly remembered years gone before he had recognized that first great opportunity when it stared him in the face near Rabbit Flash, Kentucky. Eagerly he seized that chance to escape the life of a farmer, to float down the great rivers all the way to New Orleans—to grapple with life on his terms.
But once in St. Louis he had all but smothered that fire in his breast out of fear or not knowing, worse yet— out of self-doubt. Another opportunity beckoned, standing squarely athwart his path, seductively beckoning him to the Rocky Mountains if only he dared to stare Lady Fate in the eye.
When he lost hair and was left for dead in those shining mountains, lesser men would wisely have chosen a different path from there on out. And when he learned that three former friends had stolen everything from him, lesser men would never have set out to put things right, or die trying. Later when an old friend killed a chief’s wife and Bass was handed the task of bringing back the hair—most men, lesser men to be sure, would have ridden off and never come back.…
Over and over life had laid obstacles and opportunities in his path, to do with either as he saw fit. And here at Fort Uintah as the raiders gathered before setting off for the California missions and ranchos, Lady Fate was beckoning to him once again. Luring, enticing, seductive in her sloe-eyed, half-lidded come-hither of an unflinching invitation. Ride to California and bring back his share of the horses he could then sell to the highest bidder. Just as things had been with beaver in the heyday of the fur trade.
He could turn his back on what might be this one last chance before these mountains changed forever … turn his back, ride away come morning, and wonder for all the rest of his days what might have been for him and those he loved.
But, Titus Bass had never shirked opportunity, or flinched in the face of challenge. As one of the last hardy holdouts, he had ridden down the moon on the beaver trade. What more was he expected to do, after all? This raid could bring him the wealth that had eluded him for all these seasons. But to make it, he had to put up with Philip Thompson.
“That who I think it is, Peg-Leg?” the tall, rawboned Thompson asked as Bill Williams’s newcomers stepped into the post square.
“Who?” Smith asked.
“That one.” And Thompson pointed arrogantly at Bass.
Most of the other trappers eased aside, left and right, so that no one stood between them now.
“Shit, Phil,” Dick Owens replied dumbly. “You know ’im. That’s Bass. He was with Walker, Meek, and the rest when they come to steal back your horses an’ kill you few winters back.”
“I ’member that!” Thompson snapped as he came to a halt about four paces from Titus. “I remember saying I figgered the whole shebang weren’t worth killing a white man over … but this here nigger said he’d gut me if he had the chance.”
Williams stepped into that dangerous ground between them. “There was a fire lit under all of us that cold day. No use bringing it up again—”
“There’s only one other nigger I wanted to get my hands on as bad as I wanted to get my hands on Joe Walker,” Thompson admitted with a grumble. “The white nigger who made them Yutas turn away.”
Titus said, “Ol’ Bill never told me you was carrying a tumble grudge for me after all this time, Thompson.”
“Only against Walker for calling me out,” Thompson confessed.
“But you allays talked ’bout Bass in the same breath as Walker,” Dick Owens disclosed.
“That’s right,” Thompson said. “I carried a sour belly for saying you’d gut me if’n you had the chance.”
“We all had bad feelings back then,” Smith explained. “But now we’re going to California together so we’re peaceful—”
Williams interrupted, “Out in California both of you can shoot your share of bean-bellies to get it out of your craws. Just don’t cause me no problems or I’ll leave both of you hanging from a low tree so the buzzards can pick out your eyeballs.”
Smith turned on Thompson. “You wanna back out of our plan, Phil?”
