family.”
“From me an’ my family too,” Titus reminded him.
Robinson muttered, “Stealin’ an’ murder ain’t right—”
“These folks ain’t like you an’ me, Uncle Jack,” Titus interrupted. “Ever’thing these Marmons do agin us an’ our kind … why, they figger it’s the work of their god and his awmighty prophet, Brigham Young.”
“Damn Brigham Young!” Bridger shrieked. “I give him my hand. I offered to guide his people down to a valley where they could settle in peace an’ grow their crops an’ no one’d ever bother ’em again! The night I took supper with that bastard Prophet, he told me he an’ his people was runnin’ from folks what wanted to hang him, folks what wanted to kill all his faithful believers.”
Jim turned to his friends, tears of frustration and rage pooling in his eyes. “Can you believe I was took in by the son of a bitch? Here I was gonna do all I could to help him an’ his folks who he said just wanted a place of their own to live out their lives an’ believe the way they wanted to believe … an’ Brigham Young puts a butcher knife atween my shoulders!”
“You just say it,” Titus offered. “I’ll ride with you to the valley of the Salt Lake so you can strangle that evil son of a bitch with your own bare hands, Gabe.”
“Th-there ain’t near ’nough of us no more,” Bridger said quietly. “Time was, we could ride out in the four directions an’ be back inside of two weeks with more’n a hunnert … likely two hunnert trappers. Time was we could’ve rid right down on Salt Lake City an’ dragged Brigham Young out of his house—quakin’ an’ shudderin’ an’ blubberin’ for me to spare ’im before we dropped a rawhide rope round his fat preacher’s neck … but not no more.”
“There ain’t a hunnert of our kind in these mountains anymore,” Titus declared. “Ain’t nowhere near half that many, not all the way from the Marias on the north to Taos an’ Santy Fee on the south. Them what ain’t gone west to Oregon like Meek an’ Newell, or run back east to what they used to be … the rest is standin’ right here with us.” He swept his arms around the group. “Lookit us, fellas. Just lookit us. We’re all that’s left of a glory breed … an’ ever’ last one of us is barely hangin’ on to what was by our fingernails.”
Slowly the handful of men drifted off in different directions, not one of them uttering another word, each of them wallowing in his own thoughts, recollections, memories of a brighter day, shining times when they were still kings of this mountain empire, before the big fur companies choked the very life out of the beaver trade … long, long before the settlers’ wheels cut through the heart of these mountains. Long, long before these self-anointed Saints came to murder, plunder, and steal everything worth living for.
Funny, Titus thought as he and Waits-by-the-Water walked arm in arm toward the smoldering log hut near the southeastern corner of the stockade, the one that Bridger had turned over to them, but that night back in ’47 when Gabe had supper alone with Brigham Young by the crossing of the Sandy, the Prophet had swayed Jim with tales of how the Saints had been persecuted by the majority of folks wherever they had attempted to build their temples and live out their lives according to the dictates of their holy leader. Funnier still it was, now that Brigham Young’s Saints had come to this land and through the sheer strength of their numbers had become the majority for the first time in the history of their church.
But what did these Saints do when they finally found themselves totally powerful over others already living in these free mountains? Did they let those other folks be, let others live their lives according to their own beliefs? No—Brigham Young’s holy, self-righteous people turned out to be murderers and thieves even worse than those who had hounded the Mormons out of every city back east … for the Saints committed their evil, stole from Gentiles, staining their hands with the blood of innocents—all in the name of their gods!
There wasn’t much of anything the Mormons had left behind. They had plundered everything of any value: blankets, clothing, weapons, cooking vessels stolen from every hut. And what they hadn’t loaded up on Bridger’s wagons before heading south for Salt Lake City, they had destroyed. Waits bent to pick up the remains of a brass kettle, smashed in half by the butt of a rifle or the heel of a boot, then stabbed with a bayonet until it could never be used again.
All that he and his woman had managed to acquire over twenty years together was gone in one fit of murderous thievery. Even when the Blackfoot, Sioux, or Cheyenne had raided, none of those tribes had ever completely stripped Titus Bass of everything. He gazed around, his heart aching and his eyes stinging with bitter tears. All it seemed they had left were their children—
Waits-by-the-Water suddenly hunched over in a spasm of pain, huffing loudly.
“Mary!” he cried from the ruins of what had been their little cabin as he threw his arms around his trembling wife. Sensing the volcanic quake shudder through Waits-by-the-Water, he hollered again, with even more urgency. “Shell Woman! Mary! Someone, come help us!”
Titus heard the footsteps pounding up behind them. Still holding her tightly against him as she caught her breath, her knees gone watery, Scratch peered back over his shoulder from the charred ruins, finding their children frozen in place, their wide eyes locked on their mother. Jim and his wife ran up and ground to a halt with Toote and Shad, the smoking timbers staining the air.
Seeing that frightened look in Mary’s eyes, Scratch realized the woman knew what they were up against.
Quietly, calmly supporting his trembling wife, Titus Bass said, “Mary—we’re gonna need your help. This baby’s comin’ too early.”
He had asked Waits-by-the-Water if she wanted to come with him, but he knew that no matter how strong she was, she still was in no condition to straddle a horse.
He could have cut some saplings and tied together some sort of travois to carry her in … if she had wanted to go along with him into the hills.
But she had shaken her head, bit down on her lower lip almost hard enough to draw blood to keep from crying out loud, and buried her face against him until it was time for him to go. Alone.
They didn’t have much they could do for a proper burial shroud, what with the Mormons stealing most everything and burning what they didn’t take with them when they cleared out of the valley. But Jim Bridger did manage to find some scraps of flour sacks his wife, Mary, and Shell Woman quickly stitched together with some delicate and narrow leather whangs until they had a piece of coarse burlap big enough to wrap twice round the tiny corpse. Into this mourning sack they sewed the infant, this one and only garment the child would wear on this earthly veil. Soon enough, he thought as Gabe helped his wife with those stitches, soon enough the burlap would fall to tatters beneath the howling winds of this coming winter … then the tiny body would begin to go the way of all flesh. Back to dust, set upon the winds for all time to come.
When the little bundle was ready, Jim came over and nodded, then turned away. Neither he nor Shad had been able to say anything, their grief was so palpable.
“I will go now,” he said to her as the fire’s light flickered on the sheen across her wet cheeks.
“Say the prayers,” she begged him in Crow.
She didn’t have to. “I know the prayers to say. Through the seasons, I have said the words over so many. Over your father, and your brother too. These same prayers we both said over the grave of my grandson. And finally … the words spoken over the body of your mother too.”
“Wh-why?” she whimpered again, grinding her face into his shirt. “Did we do something wrong to bring all this pain? Is there something we could have done to change this—”
Pressing two fingertips against her lips, Titus reassured her with words he did not yet believe, “This is not about us—not about what we did or what we didn’t do.”
“How can this be about that little man who died coming too early?” she asked in a husky whisper, her throat sore from the hours of hard breathing and the difficult labor.
“It isn’t about our son either,” he said. “It’s about whoever makes these choices. Who decides what’s to live … and what’s to die.”
“Will we ever know?”
He squeezed her shoulders against him for a long time, then finally said, “If we’re lucky, we might figure it out one day. But … I don’t think we ever will know why it was us, why it was here and now … why it was that little boy of ours.”
She sobbed for several more minutes; then her trembling slowed until she finally pushed herself back from him enough to gaze up at her husband’s eyes. Waits said, “Make it a safe place for him who has no name. Make it a
