started toward the agent.
“Wasn’t sure that was really you, Titus Bass!” the agent’s voice boomed as they met near the Shoshone delegation and pounded one another on the back. “Heard stories every now and then. Lots of stories ’bout you. Most of ’em got to do with some new way they said you gone under!” When they backed apart, Fitzpatrick said, “Wasn’t all that sure when you come through the crowd an’ sat down with Bridger there. Neither of us look much the same as we did years back when beaver was high an’ we was young.”
Reaching out to stroke the side of Fitzpatrick’s long hair, Scratch said, “You ain’t changed much, you ol’ whitehead. Shit, I ’member when them Injun trappers brung you into Pierre’s Hole back to thirty-two. Lookin’ at you was like we’d all see’d a ghost our own selves. Your ha’r used to be sleek an’ black as a otter’s … an’ after what you come through, gettin’ chased down by them Blackfoot, it’d turn’t white as snow.”
“Can you figger it’s been almost twenty year now?” Fitzpatrick asked.
“Agent Fitzpatrick?” Mitchell intruded with a scolding tone. “Can you and your old crony wait until tonight after we’ve concluded the day’s negotiations to reminisce?”
Fitzpatrick grinned and shrugged as he whispered, “Back to business, Scratch. We’ll talk later. I’ll come look up you an’ Jim at the Snake camp after supper—”
“I didn’t ride in with Gabe’s Shoshone.”
“Just come to see these here doin’s on your own?”
“Hell, Fitz,” he said with a growing smile, “we got your invite clear up to the Yallerstone country. Meldrum talked me into coming down with—”
“Meldrum?” he wheezed. “The trader up there in Crow country?”
By this moment Mitchell had come right to the edge of the shade, growing irritated at this rude delay. “Agent Fitzpatrick, will you and Colonel Bridger bring the Shoshone over for their speech—”
But Fitzpatrick wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the stuffy official from the East. “Robert Meldrum? From Fort Alexander?”
“That’s him!”
“You mean you two brung the Crow down?”
“A old friend like you asks us,” Titus said, “how you figger we’re gonna let you down?”
Fitzpatrick wheeled on the official, bubbling with joy, “The Crow are here!” Then he suddenly whirled on Bass again. “Wh-where are they?”
Turning Fitzpatrick away from the side of the awning, Scratch led the agent a half dozen steps so they had a clear eye-shot at the long, low slope. “There they be, Fitz—waiting for you an’ this impatient hotheaded son of a bitch to tell us where to camp—”
The superintendent’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “Agent Fitzpatrick—there’s important business at hand to conduct!”
Wheeling about, Fitzpatrick flapped his arms at the superintendent. “And we’ll get to that business, Mr. Mitchell … but for now I’ve got to tell my friend here where he can camp with the delegation he and Robert Meldrum just brought in from the north country.”
“D-delegation?” Mitchell echoed, his crimson face marked with lines of irritation as he took three steps forward to stand bathed in the bright afternoon light.
“The Crow!” Fitzpatrick bellowed. “By jigs, if the Crow ain’t here for your peace talks!”
Mitchell demanded, “Where?”
Scratch pointed, saying, “On the hill, waitin’ for me to tell ’em where to camp.”
“You brought their delegation down from the Yellowstone country?” Mitchell inquired as he quickly started toward the three former trappers.
“Robert Meldrum did,” Scratch admitted to the superintendent. “I just come along ’cause he asked me to.”
“Who are you?”
But the white-haired Indian agent answered before Scratch could. “This here’s Titus Bass. There ain’t nowhere you go in these here mountains what you won’t hear ghosty stories told about this nigger, Mr. Mitchell. Titus Bass been about as far north as you can get afore a man gets chewed up by Blackfoot war parties, and as far south as Taos and the Apache country too. Hell, I even heard a tale you went out to California with Bill Williams sometime back!”
That’s when Bridger joined in, “This man an’ the fellers he was with stole more Mexican horses than ever come outta California!”
“So what do you have to do with the Crow?” Mitchell asked.
“My wife’s people,” he replied. “Live with ’em, hunt an’ fight with ’em too.”
“Mr. Bass,” and Mitchell suddenly held out his hand. “May I say I truly appreciate your efforts in bringing the Crow chiefs down to make a most momentous peace.”
As they were shaking, Titus said, “They got the wrong man. Wasn’t me. Robert Meldrum’s the man you an’ Fitz here invited to come with the Apsaluukes.”
“Still the same, I personally appreciate your efforts,” and Mitchell tipped his hat.
“I was in the mood for a trip,” Titus replied. “Brung my family down this way for to visit some ol’ friends, Mr. Mitchell.”
After sundown that evening Bridger and Fitzpatrick came to eat supper in the Crow camp with those two companions from the beaver days. The Indian agent explained that he had come by himself rather than bringing his Arapaho wife and infant son from his camp, worrying over the reception that might be given her by the Crow. But Scratch sent him right back for the woman and the boy.
“Way I see it, we’ve had us a long ride down from the Yellowstone, so my woman’s got a hankerin’ for woman talk, Fitz,” Titus said. “Much as there’s real bad blood atween me an’ the ’Rapaho, I figger that’s atween me an’ their menfolk. Not atween my wife an’ yours.”
Soon as the agent returned with his family, the women eventually got to communicating about children and the never-ending work of a woman, using their hands in sign language at the cooking fire, where they roasted the haunch of a tender young pony Fitzpatrick and his interpreters had butchered earlier that morning. After Jim related the grim story of how the Cheyenne had ambushed the Shoshone delegation far west of Laramie, he and Fitzpatrick went to work explaining all that had gone on since the first of the warrior bands began gathering at the fort.
“We stopped at the post,” Titus explained, “an’ Meldrum found out the place been sold to the army couple years back.”
Fitzpatrick wagged his head. “Everything would’ve been run better if the fur company still saw to things ’stead of the army.”
“You picked a good time of the year for this peace council,” Bridger said. “No emigrants on the trail. So there’s no problems with the Sioux and them Cheyenne for white wagon folks.”
“’Cept that we started runnin’ outta grass a mite soon,” the agent declared. “That’s when we moseyed on downriver, here to this valley.”
“You had to see this confabulation, Scratch!” Bridger said, his face animated. “How that bunch of soft-brained pork-eaters got all them supplies loaded up in wagons and hauled over here, I’ll never know!”
“Beads an’ blankets, knives an’ coffee for the chiefs, eh?” Titus asked.
That’s when Fitzpatrick wagged his head dolefully. “No. We still don’t have any presents for these Injuns.”
“N-no presents?” Meldrum squawked with indignation. Then he lowered his voice, saying, “What the hell you think I promised these here Crow you’d give ’em—”
“Hold on,” Fitzpatrick argued. “The presents is comin’. Just ain’t got here yet.”
“Better be any day now,” Bridger groaned. “That’s all I gotta say.”
“You mean you convinced all these Injuns to come talk peace with you an’ each other,” Titus said, “but you didn’t bring no goddamned presents for ’em?”
“I said the wagons are comin’,” the agent snapped. “Ah hell, Scratch—it ain’t you I’m angry at. It’s these damned officials from back east, and their soldiers. This summer they used my good name to invite all these warrior bands here My name! And now I’m the one gonna be huggin’ two handfuls of bare ass if those trade goods don’t get here by the time these talks are all over and the chiefs put their marks on Mitchell’s treaty.”
Bass clucked in sympathy, “You’re in a bad way if them goods don’t reach us soon. What with old enemies
