“That’s where you’re fixin’ to take your family?”
He was sprinkling some priming powder in the pan when he looked up at his old friend. “This gotta be my last trip back to Crow country, Jim.”
“Why, ain’t you ever gonna come visitin’ again? Gonna let these here Saints run you off?”
Scratch wagged his head. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the dream one of them ol’ Crow rattle-shakers had for me. Said I was gonna go under if I ever left again.”
“So, when you go back now—you ain’t leavin’ no more?” Bridger asked, a grave look on his face.
Glancing quickly at the wide, questioning eyes of Hockaday, Titus said, “I got tired somewhere down the trail aways, Gabe. Don’t know where … can’t rightly say when neither. But, I wanna get my woman an’ our young’uns back north where there ain’t no white niggers stirrin’ up trouble for us.”
Bridger grinned and snorted, “Just Blackfoot!”
He laughed too. “That’s right. Man-allays knows what to expect outta Blackfoot, don’t he?”
Turning to Hockaday, Jim explained, “With them Blackfeets, there’s more killin’ and stealin’ too, than there be with any other red niggers.”
Bass nodded: “Up north, near them Bug’s boys, a fella puts his nose up like this … an’ he can tell what’s in the wind, Mr. Hockaday. Down here in this country a man’s gotta work to figger our which white men are good, which white men ain’t. Up there, life ain’t near so confusin’. You hunt an’ you live. Life goes on easy, ’cept for one worry. Only one worry, Mr. Hockaday. When the Blackfoot come ’round … there’s allays the worst kind of trouble. It’s a good an’ simple life.”
The surveyor asked, “Y-you’d rather live with that sort of worry than down-here where Bridger has made his claim?”
He stared along the barrel of his rifle at that patch of brush where some muzzle smoke appeared a second time. The Mormon hadn’t moved so was doing his damnedest to make himself an inviting target.
“Think I would rather live where folks don’t make out to be something they ain’t, Mr. Hockaday,” he said, turning slightly to look at the surveyor again. “Some folks; like these here Marmons—they gussy up their talk with all the Bible words, but they ain’t no God-fearin’ folk. Hell, Jim, even Ol’ Solitaire—Bill Williams his own self—was more a holy man than Brigham Young an’ a hull territory of his Marmons, all of ’em throwed together in a tater sack!”
Titus looked back down along the barrel at his sight picture and set the back trigger. “No, Mr. Hockaday— these here Marmons are the sort to parade around in the clothes of some holy folk … when all along they really set out to steal ever’thing they want an’ murder ever’ man what stands in their way.”
Scratch waited a few moments after firing at the leafless brush, staring at that spot where he had been aiming. But he never spotted another puff of muzzle smoke. Fact was, during those heartbeats he waited, the Mormons started yelling a lot at one another, and their return fire was quickly withering.
Then through the trees upstream, Titus saw what blur of movement the other old free men could see from their positions. Their enemy was mounting up, helping those bleeding, wounded men onto what they had left of horses, every one of them retreating without much grace or ceremony.
“Ain’t that downright ill mannered of ’em, Gabe,” Titus growled as he pulled the barrel back through the opening, blew down the muzzle, then stuck the plug to his powder horn between his teeth.
“Ill m-mannered?” Hockaday asked.
“That’s right,” Bass replied, pouring a measure of powder from his horn into a brass charger. “I ’spected them holy folks to have better manners than they showed, Mr. Hockaday. You see, Brigham Young’s murderers just run off with their tails atween their legs … but ’thout givin’ any of us the slightest by-your-leave or fare-thee- well!”
Gabe was laughing as he clambered to his feet and peered over the top of the timbers, shaking his fist at the sky. “You tell Brigham Young he’s gonna have to send more’n you milk-teat pilgrims if’n he wants to drive me outta my home!”
By that time Scratch was scrambling to his feet, having rammed home a lead ball. He cradled the flintlock across his left elbow and began to prime the pan on the gun’s ignition. “Only way them murderin’ thieves ever gonna take this here place from you, Jim—they’re gonna have to come agin us with a army.”
When Titus turned to look at him, Bridger’s smile of victory had faded. His face was like a fruit gone sour and pithy.
“That’s just what Brigham Young’s gonna do now that we throwed this bunch back, Scratch,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You an’ me both know it. Lookit us, just lookit us—there be less’n a dozen ol’ hivernants left in these here mountains now. We won’t ever hold back that bastard’s army when he sends it next time.”
Bridger turned away slowly, his shoulders sagging with regret and more while he started trudging away from the charred wall. Titus turned, his eye finding the rest of their friends emerging from the brush and cottonwoods, stepping into the open and starting for the ruins of Bridger’s post, their breath become long streamers in the icy air.
“Jim!” he cried as the snow began to turn serious. Bridger stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at Bass. “Come north with-me, Gabe. Come north.”
The trader deliberated on it for a long moment as he stared at the toes of his moccasins, then raised his eyes. “No. I’m gonna take Mary an’ the young’uns to the Green River. That’s where Brigham Young’s territory of Utah ends. Where his Saints don’t rule.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothin’ right now,” Jim admitted as Shad and the others slowly moved up and stopped in silence. “But come spring, I’ll scout for a better crossing, build me a better ferry too.”
“You gonna run it your own self?” Titus asked.
For a moment Gabe looked at the others as if he were a man who regretted dragging his friends through any more of his tribulations, and finally said, “If’n I have to, I will run it myself.”
“I’ll help,” Shad offered. “I ain’t got nowhere to be in a hurry.”
Then one by one the other old mountain men offered their services too, even though Jim was quick to remind them that Brigham Young’s Saints had already murdered five of their friends in a vicious and surprise attack.
“Don’t know for the rest of these fellas,” one of them replied to Bridger’s warning. “But for me, I ain’t got nowhere else to be neither. Like for Shadrach here, I figger the Seedskeedee is good a place as any for a man to stay out the rest of his days.”
Then Bridger took a step toward Bass as icy pricks of snow danced and swirled about them. Standing beside Titus, Hockaday tugged up the collar of his coat and shivered as a gust of wind slapped some of the sharp, cold lancets against their exposed skin.
Jim asked, “How ’bout you, Scratch? You got any place better to be than Green River come next spring?”
“Crow country.”
Sweete inquired, “Why you fix your sights so far away up there?”
“Yeah,” Bridger added, “this here’s a good country too.”
“For some folks, I’ll lay as that’s so,” he sighed. And finally said, “One time a ol’ friend of mine named Rotten Belly told me Crow country was right where First Maker intended it to be. A man goes south, he must wander and worry over a desert, where the water’s too warm an’ folks grow sick. If a man goes north, the summers are short and the snow lays deep a long, long time. To the west the people eat fish and they grow old too soon, their teeth rotten too, since’t they don’t have proper meat. And in the east, a man finds the water muddy, the land closed in so he can’t see far at all, and too many folks creepin’ out from the settlements. No, Gabe—I’ll head for that Yallerstone country. Seems to this child he’s been showed the right place.”
“You gonna winter your family on the Green with us, or you figger to head north now?”
He squinted his eyes and drew in a long breath of the cold, shocking air. Then he answered, “Now’s the time my bones tell me go north, afore winter sets in too hard.”
“What you say to ridin’ with us to the Green?” Bridger asked.
With a sad smile, Titus said, “I’d like to ride with you fellas that far. One last journey together, till it’s time for me to cross the Seedskeedee. Cross the Green … one last time.”
