“Popo, these raiders,” he spoke quietly in Crow, “they found Bridger’s whiskey.”
“They bust open the kegs, them gut-bait, high-talkin’ preachers?”
Flea shook his head. “No, they took down cups, poured the whiskey, passed it around. Drank up one barrel. Then opened a second barrel too.”
“They’re drinkin’ my goddamned whiskey?” Jim squealed after Titus translated. “That ain’t good for them women and our young’uns—”
“Maybe it might just be,” Scratch said, clutching at hope. “Could be, them Marmons gonna have themselves a hurraw on your free whiskey. I’ll lay a wager that Brigham Young is the sort of preacher what figgers whiskey is the devil’s own squeezin’s, so he told ’em to destroy all your whiskey they found.”
Bridget’s eyes gleamed. “So they’re destroyin’ it drop by drop in their cups?”
Titus nodded. “Right. An’ if I can put my faith in them gals of ours, they’ll slip off with the young’uns when them Marmons is drunk an’ our families got the chance to get away.”
“My mama, she told these sheriff men they don’t touch her or any child,” Flea explained. “Bridger woman, she told sheriff that he hurt her or any child, her father was the great chief Washakie. This great chief of Shoshone people hear they hurt her—then Washakie put ten-times-hundred warriors into battle to wipe out sheriff men … then go wipe out all the villages where sheriff men come from.”
Bridger grinned, “Damn if Mary didn’t tell ’em off!”
Still, Bass asked of his son, “W-what’d these Marmons say to The Fawn’s speech?”
Flea smiled. “Sheriff men good now. Said they want no trouble with Washakie people. Said they don’t hurt no woman, hurt no child either. Leave them alone in Bridger lodge—go drink on Bridger whiskey barrels, drink lots on whiskey barrels.”
“They put out guards?” Titus asked. “You see any guards when you rode off?”
He thought a moment, then held up some fingers.
To which Scratch said, “So Hickman an’ Brigham Young’s sheriff got less’n a dozen guards out for the night, while the rest of ’em are bathin’ their gullets with your whiskey, Gabe. I don’t think them women gonna sit over there in that fort of your’n for long tonight.”
“Likely Waits-by-the-Water can help Mary an’ all the young’uns slip off afore first light?”
Bass nodded with a grin. “I figger them preachy Marmons gonna be dead drunk by then, my friend.”
There was nothing better in the world than the feel of Waits in his arms, her head nestled in the crook of his neck—just the smell and sense of her as Waits-by-the-Water shuddered against him in utter relief. For the first time in these past few months, Titus suddenly realized how big she had become, her belly swollen with their child she was carrying.
It was at that moment he noticed how his two youngest stood off to the side in the dim light of false dawn. Titus waved them close. Jackrabbit and little four-year-old Crane both came up to their parents, one arm hugging their father’s leg, the other arm hugging their mother’s leg.
“What kind of god do these white man worship?” she sobbed against him in Crow. “A god that is no better than the Blackfoot spirit that allows them to attack a woman’s home, to capture her children—the same god who commands all his evil followers to commit misdeeds in the name of the First Maker?”
“I haven’t figured that out,” he whispered quietly in the first hints of a coming sun. “But from what I’ve seen, the leader of these people is every bit as evil as any Blackfoot war chief I ever ran up against. Maybe even more evil, because he parades around in all the trappings of the one man God has picked to lead His chosen people.”
Within minutes of their emotional reunion with their wives and children, Mary Bridger began to tell her husband about the conversations she had with Hickman, as well as the Mormon sheriff and a few of the 150-man posse sent from Salt Lake City with Brigham Young’s orders to arrest the trader for providing powder and lead and firearms to Indians who were reportedly hostile to the Mormon settlement of the Great Basin. Mary went on to confirm Flea’s story of how she had cowed the posse leaders and protected the fort’s occupants by immediately telling them in her best English that she was the daughter of the great chief Washakie—so that if these raiders dared hurt anyone her father would see to it that a thousand Shoshone warriors swept the land clear of all Mormon outposts.
“One of them Saints told her they had nothin’ but the deepest friendship for Washakie’s Shoshone,” Bridger declared. “But they said they still had orders to take me down to Salt Lake City with ’em so I could stand trial for my crimes against the territory of Utah.”
“What’d she tell ’em then?”
“Mary lied an’ told ’em she hadn’t see’d me for a few days—I was out huntin’,” Jim replied. “So that’s when they sent out them four search parties to look for me in the hills.” Then he grew pensive, staring at the thin red line across the far horizon, where a new day was coming. A new day.
“What is it, Gabe?”
“Mary said there was a bunch—forty men she counted—ordered north to the Green River,” Bridger stated grimly. “From the house where she an’ Waits locked themselves in, she heard the orders give to them forty Mormons to ride straight for the ferry on the Green an’ take it by force.”
“Shadrach’s up th-there,” Bass stammered. “An’ more’n another ten ol’ hivernants we know—friends of ours workin’ that ferry till the river freezes up for the winter. Them Marmons go to shootin’, I don’t know how long them boys can hold out.”
“That’s where we oughtta go first,” Bridger declared firmly.
“Awright. I figger them Marmons down in your post won’t be risin’ real early this mornin’—seein’ how Mary let ’em all get a real snootful of her husband’s whiskey,” Titus said. “We’ll light out for Green River to see if we can help Shad an’ the rest hold off them snake-belly, back-stabbin’ thieves.”
*August 26, 1853.
TWENTY-NINE
“Who the hell’s out there?” a harsh voice called from the night.
“That you, Jack?” Titus hollered, having shushed Bridger. He did not want Gabe announcing his presence to anyone now that Jim was a wanted man. “Uncle Jack?”
“Yep—who’s askin’?”
He located Robinson’s shadow blackened against the backdrop of starshine. “Titus Bass.”
“Why the hell you didn’t come on in, Titus?” Robinson said with some irritation.
But Scratch did not move. Instead, he stayed in hiding beside Bridger and asked, “Who else here with you, ’cept for your woman, Jack?”
“Wasn’t you down to Bridger’s post, Titus?” Jack hollered.
“I was, sometime back,” he answered, wanting to trust the old mountain man, who had squatted on Ham’s Fork even before Bridger and Vasquez built their post on Black’s Fork.
“Jim with you?”
“Why you askin’ that, Jack?” Bass demanded, suspicion squirming in his belly. “You see’d a bunch o’ Marmons come through day or two back?”
Robinson did not answer immediately. Rather, there arose the rustle of unseen movement, the crunch of sandy ground beneath rawhide moccasin soles.
“Scratch—it’s Shadrach. C’mon in—”
“Shad, you’re awright?”
“Big as life,” Sweete answered. “Bring your mangy face over.”
Before he did, Bass wanted to assure himself that Sweete didn’t have a Danite gun to his back. Maybe he should ask first to see just how Shad answered. “We heard trouble was headed your way at the ferry.”
“Mormons?” Sweete asked. “Damn if they didn’t hit us yesterday. The bastards got—”
