“Thankee for spellin’ that out for me—but I ain’t an Injun gonna be run off by no Sioux or Cheyenne,” he said with a firm set to his jaw. “Besides, I got friends down there in that camp: Agent Fitzpatrick and Colonel Bridger both. I’m fixin’ to go see where these fellers lay that my Crow friends should set up our camp.”
Tapping his heels into his pony’s flanks, Titus set off on down the long, grassy slope, moving past the soldier detail. In a handful of seconds he heard the soldier growl the order for his men to about-face and follow him after the old man. It wasn’t long before he heard the officer set his horse into a lope. He caught up to the old trapper, coming alongside as Scratch approached the outskirts of the largest and most extensive village.
“I suggest that you cross the Platte here, mister. This is the Sioux village, here on the north side of the river. Just past the end of the Sioux camp stands the Cheyenne, then the Arapaho villages, on this north bank too.”
“Whose tents are those?” he asked, pointing across to the south side of the Platte, where more than a dozen wall tents stood in the V formed by the river and its junction with Horse Creek flowing in from the south.
“They are for Superintendent Mitchell and his peace commissioners.”
Titus reined his pony to the right and entered the shallow river. “Then what’s all them tents over there?”
“Across Horse Creek?” the soldier asked, pointing ahead. “That’s the army’s camp.”
“An’ them lodges near ’em?”
“The Shoshone—Colonel Bridger was asked to camp them near us for their protection.”
As his pony carried him onto the south bank of the Platte, Scratch reined to the left. “That be where I wanna go. I figger I’ll find Bridger with his Snakes.”
The soldier didn’t utter another word until their horses were crossing Horse Creek. “But you do realize the treaty grounds are across the stream too? The Sioux and Cheyenne, they’re holding talks with Fitzpatrick and the commissioners at this moment.”
“Then Fitzpatrick’s campin’ here with the soldiers too?”
“No, he and his interpreters have their shelters pitched farther upstream,” the soldier explained, pointing off to their right, up Horse Creek.
“I’ll g’won over to these here talks with you an’ see if I can spot Fitzpatrick or Bridger.”
Leaving the escort detail behind at the edge of the wagon corral with Meldrum and the Crow delegates, the old trapper and the young soldier ended up being momentarily stopped by the first row of pickets, dragoons who were posted at an outer ring around the treaty grounds, then halted a second time by an inner ring of guards too, as the horsemen neared the huge canvas awnings erected for shade. Despite the glaring intensity of the late- summer sun, the Indian delegates sat outside in the heat during the long speeches and wrangling. Only the white men sat beneath the awnings, stewing in their heavy wool uniforms, continually fanning themselves with their hats or folded papers.
Bass and the soldier dismounted several yards back from the massive crowd of Indians, then handed their horses’ reins to a hairy-faced guard before they walked around the throng, finally spotting Fitzpatrick’s long white mane. The agent sat in the midst of a mass of pale-skinned easterners. At his knee two dark-skinned interpreters squatted on a buffalo robe, speaking from time to time, their hands flying in the broad gestures of sign language.
“He looks a mite busy right now, don’t he?” Titus remarked. “Can you tell me where them Shoshone are in this bunch?”
“I can’t say I recognize one Indian from another, mister,” the soldier apologized.
“There he is! I see ’im!” Titus yipped with excitement, stepping away to his right around the throng toward the large band of warriors and chiefs who sat off by themselves, nearest the commissioners’ awning.
Once he got up behind the Snake delegates, Scratch whispered, “Gabe!”
Bridger turned, bringing a flat hand under his hat brim to shade his eyes while he studied the caller. His face immediately lit up and he scrambled to his feet, waving Titus to come his way. The instant Bass had threaded his way through the Shoshone, the trader looped his arms around him and exclaimed, “Scratch, you ol’ buzzard! It’s been three winters already! Damn me if I didn’t think you’d gone under for sure up in Crow country!”
“But here I walk, Gabe!”
“Sit,” Bridger said as they both settled on the robe and leaned their faces close to whisper. “Hell, if it ain’t four years this very month since you took off north.”
“You see’d any sign o’ Shadrach?” Titus asked. “He ever come back from Oregon?”
Wagging his head, sadly Bridger said, “No. He ain’t.”
“You hear anything from him?” he asked with disappointment. “Figger he made it there with that emigrant train?”
Bridger snorted, “Oh, that tall boy made it, all right. I heard it from Joe Meek’s tongue hisself.”
“When you see Joe?”
“He an’ Squire Ebbert come through, late that winter,” Bridger confided. “They was on snowshoes they’d made themselves: willow an’ rawhide. Had to put down their horses and eat ’em back up the trail. Starvin’ times.”
“What the hell they show up at Fort Bridger in the winter for?”
Jim explained, “Joe was hurtin’ something bad. He an’ Squire was the last of a bunch headin’ east for the States. Figgered to rally up some soldiers to come help out in Oregon.”
“The Britishers makin’ trouble?” Titus asked, bristling.
Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Injuns. Cayuse. They murdered Doc and Mrs. Whitman.”
“The sawbones what dug that arrowhead out’n your hump meat back at ronnyvoo?”
“Yep.”
“An’ that purty yellow-haired wife of his too?”
“Cayuse killed some young’uns what was at their mission school,” Bridger said gravely. “Joe lost him his daughter to them red buggers. Found her body dug up by wolves.”
“Murderin’ sonsabitches!” Titus grumbled, grinding a fist into his left palm. “Killin’ women an’ young’uns. Damn ’em to hell anyway. So w-what become of it? Them Oregoners make war on them Cayuse what started killin’ white folks?”
“Wasn’t a war on white people. Joe told me them red-bellies had it in for the Whitmans—so they killed ’em all at the school. Medicine men got ’em stirred up, to Joe’s way of thinking. Medicine men what didn’t like the Whitmans teachin’ their people ’bout the white God.”
“Joe go back to Oregon?”
“He’s back there, much as I know,” Jim replied. “But I ain’t see’d Shadrach.”
“Heard you come over here with the Snakes.”
Bridger nodded. “Where away was you bound, when you happed on Fitzpatrick’s big peace council?”
“We was invited,” Titus announced.
“In-invited?”
“Not a lonely ol’ badger like me! But Meldrum, trader up to Fort Alexander on the Yellowstone. Fitz asked him an’ the Crow to come.”
Bridger’s face lit up. “So you rode down with the Crow chiefs?”
“I did. Meldrum asked me. Brung the wife an’ young’uns too.”
“Let’s see now,” and Bridger scratched at his cheek with a widening grin, “I’ll bet you’re havin’ to use a big stick to knock them young Crow bucks away from that oldest girl of your’n. She was a purty thing.”
“Magpie? Why, we got the girl married off just afore we set off for these here peace talks.”
“Married! I’ll be dogged—I wouldn’t thought you were a coon old enough to marry off a daughter—”
“Mr. Bridger!”
They both turned to peer into the shade of the council tent, finding all the faces looking their way.
Scratch whispered from the side of his mouth, “Who’s that?”
“Mitchell—big white Injun father from back east,” Bridger hissed.
The big-bellied man gestured toward the open ground in front of the council awning and proclaimed, “Mr. Bridger, time has come for the Shoshone to give their speeches—”
“Who the hell’s that sittin’ with you, Gabe?” Fitzpatrick roared in interruption, lunging to his feet and starting their way.
“Been a long time since I laid eyes on yer white-haired carcass, Fitz,” Titus said as he got to his feet too and
