pecker warm.”
“Why’s Vaskiss makin’ hisself cozy with the Marmons?” Scratch asked, a little concerned about such a relationship.
“Them Saints been comin’ through here ever’ summer since forty-seven, when you an’ me met their high president,” Bridger explained. “Brigham Young sure has been workin’ hard to change folks over to his religion. Hundreds and hundreds of ’em roll through here ever’ summer since you was here last.”
“So Vaskiss went down there to the Salt Lake to become one of Brigham Young’s Marmons his own self?”
Jim chuckled. “No, he ain’t no part of their religion. But as much business as we was doin’ with Brigham Young’s Saints up here, we figgered we could open up a tradin’ store down in Salt Lake City itself.”
“That where Brigham Young ended up planting his promised land?”
“Yep,” Bridger answered. “He didn’t take ’em on south of there, down where I suggested they should go.”
Shad inquired, “So most of the time Vaskiss is mindin’ the store down there with them Mormons, while you’re tendin’ to things up here at the post?”
“That’s the fix of it,” Jim responded. “Vaskiss hired him a couple Mormons to help out down there. Shows we done ever’thing we could to make things good atween them folks an’ us. Hell, two year back—right about the time Louie was settin’ up the store in Salt Lake City, some bad blood got started atween the Bannocks an’ the Mormons.”
“What sort of bad blood?” Titus asked.
Bridger’s eyes flicked around, then he said in a low voice, “’Cause of what’s happened with things down there—sometimes I don’t know if I can trust Louie’s wife no more.”
“So Vaskiss is wrapped up in this bad blood atween the Bannocks and Mormons?” Sweete asked.
With a shrug of his shoulders, Bridger said, “Most times, I don’t know which way Louie’s stick is floatin’ anymore. But when a whisper of troubles started two years back, we heard some Mormon settlers killed a Bannock who was making a brave show of things, trying to order the Mormons off Bannock land.”
“Them Marmons just up an’ killed that Injun?” Titus asked.
Jim nodded. “So that got the fire started in their red bellies. Them Bannocks was makin’ plans for war on them Mormons homesteadin’ outside the Salt Lake Valley. So when we heard ’bout the rumbles of trouble, me an’ Vaskiss thought we ought’n let Brigham Young’s folks know the Bannocks was fixin’ to make raids on ’em. Louie wrote Brigham Young a letter, warnin’ him them Injuns was buyin’ up lead an’ powder an’ talkin’ mean about killin’ off ever’ Mormon they caught.”
“What ever come of it?” Shad asked.
Shrugging again, Jim said, “Never heard nothing more of any troubles. Bannocks never did start them raids … but over the last two years, Vaskiss got closer’n closer to Brigham Young. Real cozy when he’s down there in that City of the Saints.”
“You still trust ’im as your partner?” Scratch asked.
It took a few moments before Bridger would answer. When he finally did, Jim said, “I don’t ever wanna think any man I did ever’thing I could to help would ever jab a knife in my back.”
Titus studied his old friend’s face a long time, then asked, “Who was you talkin’ about, Gabe? Louie Vaskiss … or, was you meanin’ Brigham Young?”
As his eyes narrowed and he peered around to be sure the three of them were alone, Jim Bridger confessed, “Sad thing is, Scratch—my belly tells me I better watch my back for the both of ’em.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Father!”
Titus Bass had already turned at the rapid hammer of the pony’s hoofbeats, Jim Bridger at his elbow, both of them tying off their horses to branches before setting off into the thick brush of the river bottom in search of mule deer … when he heard the boy’s warning call.
“Father!” Flea cried out again.
This was the youngster’s seventeenth summer, eighteen and fifty-three. For the briefest flicker of a moment, Scratch felt an immense pride in his son, how the young man sat a horse at a full gallop, the pony’s tail held high, mane fluttering in the hot August breeze, and Flea’s long, unbound hair trailing freely behind him. But that pride swelled in his breast but an instant until the rider got close enough for Titus to recognize the pinch of fear on his son’s face.
He stepped away from the horses, more toward the opening formed by the willow and cottonwood that rustled with the hot, late-summer breezes.
Bridger started to say, “Damn, but that boy’s gonna scare off all the—”
He broke off his friend’s complaint. “Somethin’ ain’t right, Gabe.” And as his son approached, he called out in American, “Is there trouble at the fort?”
Yanking back on the single rein that was knotted around the pony’s lower jaw, Flea shuddered to a halt atop the animal, then flew off its back and landed barefoot in the dry, brown grass, his breechclout flapping.
“Visitors,” he growled in his father’s American tongue. Then shook his head as he thought of better, perhaps more descriptive, words. “Riders. Many … riders!”
All the boy’s life, his American talk had been getting better, but especially in these seasons just shy of two years, while they had remained at Fort Bridger following the Fort Laramie treaty, a time when his children experienced more and more contact with a new outfit of white emigrants every few days.
Winter had come early to the valley of the Green in ’51, so Scratch ended up keeping his family right there at the post till spring. By that time many things stood in need of repair, both at the fort and up at Bridger’s Green River ferry too, keeping him and Shadrach more than busy. About the same time those wet and muddy days of 1852, the first of Brigham Young’s Mormon migration for the season had shown up at the fort. But these resolute Saints weren’t making an arduous journey
“Will of God?” Titus Bass asked that spring day as he, Shadrach Sweete, and a half dozen other old mountain men interrupted their repairs to Bridger’s ferry when the column of Mormons rode up to the crossing.
They claimed they came with charters from Brigham Young himself, stating that they, and only they, had legal right to operate in trade with the emigrants inside the territory of Utah.
That’s when Bass snorted and wiped some sweat off the end of his nose. “Territory of Utah, you say? You fellers be a long way off from the territory of Utah. This here ain’t the United States. Why, this here’s the free Rocky Mountains.
Free! Far as you can see off in all directions—we’re standin’ in the free Rocky Mountains.”
Shad Sweete joined in, “You’ll have to ride a long way to the south afore you get to your territory of Utah —”
“You do understand that our Promised Land of Zion has become the territory of Utah, under a mandate by the federal government in Washington City—back in 1850—don’t you?” one of the horsemen declared as he inched his horse forward. He was a hard-jawed, fiery-eyed zealot if there ever was one.
“No,” Bridger himself replied, “ain’t heard nothin’ ’bout the government makin’ no new territory for your people.”
The zealot continued, “Then you haven’t heard that this country all around the Green River, including that back down at your trading post too—it’s all part of the territory of Utah now.”
For the first time, Bass stared from under the wide brim of his hat and really studied the man. Then he took a few steps closer to have himself a better look at just who this tarnal fool was, and asked, “You there, the feller tellin’ us all this news we ain’t got no use for—what’s your name?”
“Hickman,” he replied. “My name is William Hickman. Being an attorney I can attest to the legality of the
