together, never really having to say much at all because they just enjoyed the moments and didn’t need to spoil it with a lot of talk—just like the old days when they were young and strength flowed through them like the rush of an icy spring runoff breaking through a high-country beaver dam. The old days when it seemed as if their way of life could never end … that all of them would live on forever and this glory life of theirs would never, ever ebb.
So he and Gabe had promised themselves a hunt that morning, * down in the bottoms a couple miles above the post, where the mule deer loved to make their beds. A hunt for the spirit of the old days, a hunt in the old way … a hunt they would never get to make now that Flea had come galloping up with that look of fear on his face.
“Riders?” Bridger echoed the way the youngster had growled the word in American. “Not wagon people?”
“No wagons. Hickerman come, with riders.”
“Hickman? Bill Hickman?” Titus said, bristling at the mere mention of the Mormon’s name. “You hear that, Gabe. Son of a bitch is back to try bullyin’ you outta these here free mountains again!”
It had been more than a year since they had glared at one another up at the Green River crossing. Hickman’s bunch of Mormons had retreated from the valley and hadn’t been seen again until this past May when William A. Hickman had moved his wagons filled with Salt Lake City trade goods past Fort Bridger without so much as stopping or so much as a by-your-leave, first attempting to erect a store not far from Jim’s ferry on the Green River, hoping to capture some of the emigrant trade. But, Jim’s employees—old mountain men all—at that well-established ferry hadn’t let Hickman and his bunch of Mormons bully them away. No, not since those ferrymen were all old veterans of the fur trade, men not about to knuckle under to the bluster and bravado of Brigham Young’s chosen people. Hickman’s outfit hadn’t stayed long on the Green before pushing east to Pacific Springs, which lay right on the western side of the great saddle that was the Southern Pass. There his operation finally began to capture a little of the emigrant trade, siphoning off some of what would have otherwise come on down to Black’s Fork to trade at the far better-known Fort Bridger.
Hearing the name of William A. Hickman was clearly not a good omen.
Seething, Scratch cursed the day the Saints had ever come into this wilderness in search of their Promised Land. Day by day, season by season, Brigham Young and his zealous faithful had gone and changed things far, far more out here than all those Oregon- and California-bound emigrants ever did. The others had gone on through to faraway lands, but the Saints had plopped down right in these mountains, where it eventually had become clear as sun that Brigham Young did not at all look favorably upon the notion that the influential old trapper-turned-trader was sharing this Rocky Mountain wilderness with the Prophet of the Lord. Especially now that the Saints’ Promised Land had become a United States territory, one that encompassed this wild and beautiful valley of the Green River, now that Governor Brigham Young was prepared to waste no effort to see that only his faithful would thrive in this new territory of Utah. No Gentile, especially the renowned Jim Bridger—who had been the real visionary to reveal the Promised Land to the Prophet himself—was bound to last long if he went up against the might of Brigham Young and his personal army of Avenging Angels.
“What’s he come to see me for?” Jim asked Flea.
“Take over your post.”
With a snort, Bridger scoffed at that with a grin. “You must’ve got that wrong, son. Hickman is a oily sort, that’s for certain, an’ I wouldn’t trust the bastard no farther’n I could spit—but I don’t think he’s got
“Hickerman and many, many riders,” Flea interrupted.
“Where, son?” Titus asked, growing concerned as he studied his son’s face—heard how the youngster emphasized that word:
Flea pointed back in the direction of the post, less than two miles off to the east.
“At the fort awready?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
Flea dropped his pony’s rein and held up both hands, closed his fingers quickly, again and again, until he had tallied more than 150 horsemen.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Scratch exclaimed as his son’s hands finally dropped to his sides. He turned to look at Bridger. “All men?”
“Yes,” Flea answered again.
“He brung a goddamned army!” Jim growled.
Clamping a hand on his son’s bare shoulder, Titus asked, “They know you come to tell us?”
Flea shook his head. For a moment he sought the American for it, then broke into Crow. “I was in the trees with Jackrabbit. We heard horses coming. Everyone heard that many horses coming. Men with many guns. Guns here,” and he pantomimed stuffing his hand in his belt like a pistol. “And here,” he gestured for another pistol stuffed in the belt. “Lots of long weapons too.” Flea quickly raised an imaginary rifle to his shoulder.
Bridger’s eyes were wide and lit with flame as he lunged closer to Flea. “The women, the young’uns—they all right?”
Glancing quickly at his father, Flea looked at the trader and said, “Hickerman no hurt womens and youngs.”
“What’d he do with ’em?” Jim demanded as he gripped both of Flea’s broad shoulders.
“Put all in your lodge.”
“All of ’em?” Titus asked.
Flea nodded.
“How’d you get away?” Bridger inquired.
“I send Jackrabbit back to fort,” he explained. “Said to him: tell mama—tell her I go for you men folk. Be sure to tell her in Apsaluuke, brother. No word in American talk, I told him. Jackrabbit went slow from the trees to fort gate. Hickerman’s riders come out and jump around Jackrabbit, pulled him off horse, throwed him through gate … last thing I see—they pushed him on ground again.”
Titus felt his gorge rising. Those goddamned bastards abusing and muscling around a ten-year-old boy! Damn, but he’d hated bullies all his life—be it men like Silas Cooper or Phineas Hargrove, Bill Hickman or even Brigham Young his own saintly self.
Licking his lips in anger at the taste of bile drenching the back of his throat, Titus asked, “How you come from the fort?”
“Down the creek,” he answered in Crow. “These gun riders don’t see me for the trees and the brush. When they pulled Jackrabbit off his pony and into the fort, they didn’t see me in trees.”
“Did you watch Jackrabbit get to the cabin with the women and young’uns?”
“No,” Flea admitted. “Hickerman pulled Jackrabbit off ground by his hair at the gate, then I saw them no more. I led my pony to the water, got on and stayed in the creek till no eyes could see me from the fort.”
“Good,” Bass said. He turned to Bridger, his tone grave. “You an’ me go in there—don’t think we can count on doin’ any good agin’ more’n a hunnert fifty of Hickman’s gunners.”
“I don’t know what he’s fixin’ on doin’—come to take my post,” Jim groaned, desperation thick in his voice. “Or why he’s done it.” Then his eyes lit with hope and he said, “Maybeso you an’ me ought’n head to the ferry and get the rest o’ the fellas up at the Green.”
“Seven of ’em is all we could scrape together, Gabe,” Scratch declared. “That don’t make for good odds, even if we’re goin’ up agin’ bad-shot Marmons.”
Bridger snatched hold of the front of Bass’s shirt. “What the hell we gonna do? They got our women! Our young’uns too!”
Gently taking hold of Bridger’s shoulders, Titus said, “I dunno, Gabe. I ain’t never stared somethin’ like this in the eye, somethin’ where I had … no way out of it.”
Slowly, the trader released Scratch’s shirt. “Awright. How we gonna find out what Hickman wants and get our families out of there … ’thout gettin’ ourselves killed?”
“Only thing we can do is wait him out for a day or so—”
“Wait? They got our families in there!” Jim protested. “What’d you do if’n it were Injuns took hold of your woman an’ young’uns?”
“The Blackfoot done that to me once’t,” Titus reminded.
