announcing, “C’mon over. Any friend of Bridger’s is a friend o’ mine.”
“When you come to the mountains, Uncle Jack?” Sweete asked after they shook hands.
“Thirty-one. Rode west with Fitzpatrick. Mizzable trip: Jed Smith was kill’t by Comanches on the Cimarron water scrape. After we took on supplies in Taos from Davey Jackson, I stayed on with Fitz and we come north. Next summer when we fought the Blackfoot in Pierre’s Hole, I was wounded.”
Titus asked, “Ronnyvoo of thirty-two?”
“Weren’t nothing bad, really,” Robinson explained. “I was off my feed for the fall hunt, but stayed on my feet through till winter.” He turned and whistled again. “Madame Jack! Godblessit—get out here, now!”
He turned back to the two trappers and shrugged, saying, “She’s a bit shy when there’s other wimmens about. Just menfolk show up, why—she’s there, lickety on the spot. But when squaws come about, she’s a shy one.”
From the doorway emerged a stocky woman with an amiable face, carrying a large gourd trussed up in a leather cradle complete with a wooden handle. From the fingers of her other hand were suspended four tin cups, two of which she passed out to the trappers, then poured each of them a splash of cool water from the gourd.
“You mind we noon with you, rest the horses?” Titus inquired.
Robinson smiled warmly. “I’d like that, like that a lot, boys. Gimme a chance to talk to new ears. Haven’t yet had much travel on the road this year.”
“Road?” Sweete echoed.
“Oregon Road,” Robinson declared to the tall man. “Wasn’t you coming over the Southern Pass from the east?”
“No, we come south, through that Red Desert country,” Scratch explained. “That what they call that way over the pass now? The Oregon Road?”
“Ever since last summer,” Robinson said. “Some say it’s the Emigrant Road, for it’s carried a few on to California.”
“Some claim American soldiers took Californy. But I’ll wager it’s Mexican country, still,” Bass said as he handed his cup to Waits-by-the-Water.
“Most of ’em we see’d come through last year are makin’ for Oregon,” Jack went on. “I managed to trade off some good stock for what animals they wored out getting this far west.”
Quickly glancing about, Scratch said, “Not them skinny horses. What good stock you got, Uncle Jack?”
“Have ’em grazing over yonder, a mile or more, on some good grass aways up the Black’s—trail you’ll foller to get to Bridger’s big post.”
Sweete asked, “Injuns don’t raid?”
“Hell,” Jack snorted, “this here’s Snake country. They take good care of us fellers. Both Gabe and me got hitched into the tribe, you see. Utes don’t dare come north, and them Bannocks is afraid to make Washakie angry. Naw, we don’t worry none ’bout Injuns runnin’ off our stock. Maybeso you fellers ought’n think ’bout settlin’ down on Black’s Fork like me an’ Gabe done.”
“Just gonna visit for a spell is all,” Sweete answered for them both. “My woman’s country is back on the other side of the mountains.”
“An’ my family’s home is in Crow country,” Bass stated. “We only come to visit Gabe. Thankee for the offer but it ain’t likely we’ll be putting down no roots.”
“Not in no country where there’s settlers passing through on their way to Oregon country,” Shad said as he took a cup of water to his young son.
Robinson explained, “Man does what he can, now that there ain’t no furs the traders want—’ceptin’ buffler hides.”
“Much as I can,” Titus offered, “I’ll stay off this here road you said them corncrackers and sodbusters ride west.”
“Same road Billy Sublette, Pilcher, an’ Drips come west to ronnyvoo with their goods,” Robinson explained after he shuffled his wife back into the hut to fetch some dried meat to offer their midday guests.
“That means these overlanders using the same trail?” Scratch inquired.
Robinson nodded. “From Fort Bridger, they’ll break north to Fort Hall.”
“An’ where they go from Hallee?” Titus asked.
“Striking out through that Snake country.”
Wagging his head, Sweete said, “That’s ’bout the roughest piece of ground I ever put a horse through.”
Scratch turned to Shad and asked, “You been west of Hallee?”
“More’n once. Was a time the booshways didn’t want the English to have that country all to their own.”
“Can’t be fit for wagons,” Scratch grumbled.
“Ain’t,” Robinson agreed. “Some’ll try to get their wagons on from Fort Hall, take ’em clear to the Willamette. Other’ns gonna sell off their wagons to them English at Fort Hall—trade for mules and horses to get ’em on to the Columbia.”
“Bet you ain’t ever floated down that Columbia River, Shadrach!” Bass needled his tall friend.
“I s’pose you’re claimin’ you did?”
“How the hell other way a man gonna get to meet Doctor John at Fort Vancouver?” Titus sneered. “An’ I sure as the devil didn’t float around the horn in no sea ship to get there neither!”
“I forgot—you told me ’bout that trip,” Sweete admitted.
In a quieter voice, Titus confided, “That float o’ mine down the Columbia with Jarrell Thornbrugh was fearsome enough to make my ass stay puckered for a month of Sundays!”*
Soon enough there was dried meat for them all to chew on while the horses cropped at the new grass growing taller and thicker in the meadows surrounding Robinson’s poor hut.
“I enjoyed myself, Uncle Jack,” Titus declared later, as he had stood and held his hand out to their host. “I truly did.”
“You come on back an’ visit any time. Both of you.”
“We’ll be close,” Shad advised. “A fella can ride over for a visit ’most any time.”
Robinson and Madame Jack, his Shoshone wife, stood outside their hut, arm in arm as they waved the others on their way.
The sun was warm on his face and the back of his hands as he gave his last salute and plodded on up Black’s Fork. A spring breeze rustled through the sage, stirring a strong scent of turpentine through the air, just before a couple of dozen sage grouse whirred away from the path of their horses, the birds chucking as they settled back to earth and sorted themselves out again for their timeless dance on this patch of mating ground. It was a good day, here in a country where no emigrants plowed fields, no Frenchmen stole plews or a man’s daughter, no Indians came to trouble a man and his hard-won peace. Maybe Bridger and Robinson did have things figured right … at least for themselves. Trouble was, Titus doubted he could stay planted in one spot for long enough to raise up log walls or sink down some roots. Yet walls and roots were what it took for a man to survive in this part of the world rapidly changing around him.
For men like him and Shad, they had to keep on searching out that shrinking corner of the world where it wouldn’t matter if they refused to build walls and overlay them with roofs, refused to plant crops or tend a store. And if he was lucky, Scratch brooded, that shrinking sliver of the old life and the old world would last just long enough till Titus Bass could no longer load his gun, mount his horse, and ride away from what was closing in around him. Maybeso what he had come to call his used-to-be country would last long enough to see a used-to-be man clear through till the end of his days.
“See that smoke yonder?” Titus asked his son as the two of them reined up with Shad Sweete, at the breast of a low ridge.
“Top of the trees?”
“Yep. What smoke you make it out to be?”
The youngster was thoughtful a moment. “Not grass, Popo. Fire smoke.”
“Right again, boy. Bet we’ll spot horses, maybe some lodges by the time we cover ’nother hour or so.”
“How long you figger it from here?” Shad squinted into the late spring sunlight.
“I callate we’ll be drinking from Bridger’s jug afore the sun goes down.”
From the mouth of Ham’s Fork a day ago they had followed Black’s Fork as it looped around and made for the southwest. Now they had entered a broad valley where this tributary of the Green River was splintered into
