“I was told Levi never got over her painful death. Immediately took to drink. On this last stay of mine at Fort Union, I heard he’d died of consumption … although I think he succumbed to a powerful combination of too much alcohol and his just plain giving up after the death of his wife.”
“This news about Levi come recent?”
“Yes. Seems I’m newly come here from Fort Union myself,” Kipp explained with a generous smile. His well- wrinkled face crinkled warmly. “It’s been no more than two weeks since the last supply steamboat came upriver and dropped me off with the year’s goods.”
“In less’n a year—this place awready had three booshways,” Scratch commented.
“It’s a fact of the business,” Kipp explained with a shrug of his shoulders. “I myself have been shuttled around from post to post since I came upriver.”
“Where you born and raised back east?”
“Born in Canada,” Kipp disclosed. “Eighty-eight. That makes me fifty-six years old now.”
Scratch folded fingers down as he calculated. “So you’re six years older’n me. An’ that’s some, Mr. Kipp. Out here I don’t run across many fellas what can say they’re older’n me.”
“Spent a lot of time among the Mandans when I first ascended the Missouri. Learned their language, could even write it too, while I was in the employ of the Columbia Fur Company.”
“Can’t say I ever heard of ’em.”
Kipp grinned. “They’re no more, Mr. Bass. Long, long time ago, they merged with American Fur—which made John Jacob Astor all the bigger.”
“You stayed on, I take it.”
The factor nodded. “They liked the cut of my timbers, so the bosses gave me the job of building Fort Floyd.”
“Ain’t heard of that’un neither. Where’s it stand?”
Kipp poured more coffee into Waits-by-the-Water’s cup as he answered, “You’ve been there: mouth of the Yellowstone. Never was known as Fort Floyd for long. It’s been called Fort Union almost from the first day.”
“Then I have been there,” Scratch confessed. “Years back, when the Deschamps family was near done in.”*
“A most awful blood feud between those families,” Kipp clucked, then settled back atop a crate with his glass of port. “After building that post, the company partners thought well enough of James Kipp to put me in charge of raising Fort Clark back among my Mandan friends.”
“When was that?”
“Thirty-one,” Kipp answered. “A profitable year for the company.”
“Aye—them was shinin’ times. Each year beaver just kept getting better’n better too,” Bass said with a wistful smile. “You s’pose beaver’s bound to rise, Mr. Kipp?”
The trader wagged his head. “The sun has set on the beaver trade, my good man. But I must say that—in those years when beaver was king—I met some interesting people while downriver at Fort Clark,” Kipp explained. “One of the most remarkable was an American artist named Catlin, George Catlin. He was at the post, painting the Mandans left and right. The following winter, thirty-three and thirty-four, a German prince—Maximilian—came upriver on a sportsman’s holiday. He brought with him a wonderful artist who became a fast friend of mine. Karl Bodmer was his name.”
“I met a artist fella my own self once, years back at a ronnyvoo it was,” Titus chimed in. “Named Alfred Miller. You met him?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Miller come west with a Scotchman—a rich fella named William Drummond Stewart. That Scotchman even brung ol’ Jim Bridger a suit of armor one summer!”
“Yes, I’ve heard of Stewart,” Kipp disclosed.
“You was at Fort Clark till you come here?”
The trader shook his head. “Once my employers had their Mandan post running smoothly, I was dispatched into Blackfoot country, where I built Fort Piegan at the mouth of the Marias.”
“Damn, if you ain’t the fort-buildingest fella I ever met,” Bass enthused. “Time was, there wasn’t a post in this north country … and now the Injuns can durn well pick where they wanna go, north or south, to trade off their robes. Beaver ain’t wuth a tinker’s damn no more. Just robes. Life’s changed, Mr. Kipp. Life’s changed a hull bunch up here in the north country.”
“I detect a strong note of resignation, Mr. Bass. If not a deep regret.”
With a slight nod, Titus sighed, “Some long winter nights, I sit with my woman and young’uns by the lodge fire, thinking back on how things use to was. But the beaver are near gone most places I go, and they damn well ain’t wuth the time to scrape ’em no more anyhow. ’Sides, no fur companies like your’n ever gonna hire trappers no more—you just trade all your furs off the Injuns.”
“That, yes—but we also barter with a few of the last trappers—men like yourself who are still working the mountain streams.” Kipp scratched at his bare jowl thoughtfully, then said, “It won’t ever be the same again, my friend. God knows things won’t ever be the same again.”
“Missionaries been trampin’ through my mountains,” Scratch grumbled, feeling very possessive and protective of his shrinking world. “Bringing their white women. For now they’re just passing through on their way to Oregon country … but one of these days, I know in my gut they’re gonna stop and settle down right here in the mountains. Gonna ruin what life we got left.”
“The Jesuits have dispatched one of their own, a Father De Smet, to make contact with the northwestern tribes,” Kipp announced. “I met him at Fort Union two years ago when he came through.”
“What’s a Jesuit?”
“Of course, I couldn’t expect you to know that it’s a Catholic order of priests—”
Scratch howled with alarm, “The Papists are sending their missionaries out here too!”
“De Smet told me he attended the last rendezvous ever held, on his way to the Flathead in the summer of forty. Later that fall, he came downriver to Fort Clark, where I made his acquaintance.”
Titus wagged his head. “Even when things are changing all around me,” he declared, “I wanna believe things don’t have to change for me. Not for me and these Crow I’m running with.”
“What do you think of Mr. Meldrum here?” Kipp asked, indicating the post trader seated down the table.
“He seems to be a likeable kind.” And Bass winked at Meldrum. “Any man what speaks Crow good as he does and marries hisself into the tribe can’t be a bad sort, now can he?”
“Some of his wife’s people watched Robert black-smithing,” Kipp declared. “So the Crow call him Round Iron.”
“That’s another reason for me to like Meldrum,” Bass admitted. “Back in Saint Louie I sweated over an anvil and bellows for a few years afore I come out to the mountains.”
“You were apprenticed in your youth?” Meldrum asked.
“Nawww—was awready growed—a good trade for a man to learn,” Titus recalled with a sigh. “Meldrum ain’t the first trader your company’s sent to Crow country to get married so all the tribe’s furs come to him.”
Kipp’s eyes flashed to Meldrum for a moment before he asked, “You’re referring to the mulatto Beckwith?”
“He’s a humbug if ever there was one!” Meldrum growled menacingly.
“That’s probably the nicest thing Robert could say about the mulatto,” Kipp replied. “While Beckwith might have been on the company payroll, he never was a company man.”
“Not only is he totally without any abilities as an honest businessman, but—he’s a scoundrel of the first order!” Meldrum roared his disapproval. “Cheated whoever got within reach or was in his way: the Crow, the company, his factors—”
“Last time I see’d Jim Beckwith, was two year ago,” Titus confided. “He and a few other Americans built themselves a small trading post on the Arkansas.”
“Near the Bent brothers’ fort?” Meldrum inquired.
“Upriver a good ways, closer to the mountains.”
Meldrum snarled, “I say, let that southern country have him so the thieving bastard won’t ever show his lying face up here again.”
“Far as I know he’s settling in down there, for a fact,” Titus told them. “Got him a Mex wife, even opened up
