“Blacksmithin’?” Titus asked, the first twinge of excitement squirting through him.
“Yepper. Size down tires with this dry air out here, repair yokes and tongues and even boxes too,” Jim said. “You know anythin’ ’bout smithing, Titus Bass?”
“Hell, I worked Hysham Troost’s forge in St. Louie for a number o’ years afore I come west in twenty-five,” he announced proudly.
Bridger blinked in disbelief. “Hysham Troost teached you smithing?”
Bass nodded.
“Glorreee! That’s good enough for any man!” Bridger exclaimed. “You’ll sure as hell do, Scratch! My forge needs fixin’ up—some corncracker burnt half of it down late last summer afore we could put out the fire … but we’ll work out some pay for what you do to help around here an’ what business you scare up, both of you niggers.”
Fumble-footed, Sweete asked, “What you rigger I can do, Gabe?”
“No shortage of work to be done ’round here, Shadrach. But”—and he paused reflectively—“what I need most is someone smart to oversee my ferry on the Green.”
“Your ferry?”
“You didn’t see my ferry up there on the Green River when you come over the pass an’ down the Sandy?”
“Nope. We rode south of there.”
“Where from?”
“Bad doin’s at Fort John on the Platte,” Titus declared. “Them Frenchies tried to make off with my daughter.”
“Shit,” Bridger grumbled sympathetically. “They can all go to hell, them parley-voos! Glad I’m shet of American Fur and all o’ Chouteau’s Frenchies for good! So, tell me how you two come over from Fort John.”
Titus scratched the back of his neck and said, “We come south of the Black Hills, where the weather’d blowed the land clear.”
“You come through the Red Desert?”
“Yep,” Shad said. “It was tough doin’s, but we finally hit the headwaters of Bitter Creek, and follered it down to the Green. Come across the Seedskeedee near the mouth of Black’s.”
“I’ll be gone to hell,” Bridger exclaimed. “I ain’t been through that country since back to Ashley’s day—when we come north through that country to strike the Green. Damn, but I’ll bet that way’d cut a passel o’ few days off a trip between here an’ the North Platte.”
“Some of it’s rough,” Titus said, “but the winds keep the snow blowed out most of the time, I’d reckon.”
“Who’s this boy you got along?” Bridger asked as the lean, copper-skinned youngster came up to a stop near the three men, leading his horse by a single rein. “He yours, Shadrach?”
“Nawww, he’s Scratch’s boy.”
Bass said, “Flea, shake hands with the man. He’s a ol’t friend of your pa’s. A good, ol’t friend.”
“Flea is my name,” the youngster said a bit nervously, holding out his hand to the trader.
“Jim Bridger is mine, Flea.”
“Bri-ger,” he repeated thoughtfully.
“Call me Jim,” Gabe replied. “How old’s the lad?”
“He’ll be eleven come winter.”
Jim turned back to the boy. “Didn’t I see you wrangling them horses your pa brung in?”
Flea nodded without speaking a word.
“He’s got some strong medicine, Gabe,” Titus declared, bursting with pride. “The boy’s damn good with the four-leggeds.”
Bridger laid a hand on Flea’s shoulder. “If your pa don’t mind, I’m sure we can find some work for you to do around here this summer too.”
“Wor-work?” and his big eyes flicked back and forth between his father and Bridger.
Titus chuckled. “I don’t think he knows what that word means, Jim.”
“I figger you for a lad who’d like to tend to our horses,” Bridger explained. “Ride ’em, brush ’em, see to the mares when they drop their foals?”
Flea glanced quickly at his father, then nodded to the trader. “I try do good for you, Jim.”
Squinting into the bright sunlight, Bridger gazed over his friends’ shoulders and asked, “So any of them women and young’uns comin’ our way really yours, Shad? Or they all belong to that ol’ bull named Titus Bass?”
* John Robertson was better known throughout the fur trade period and beyond as “Uncle Jack” Robinson.
*
* General William H. Ashley, founder of the rendezvous system, wherein every summer a trader brought his trade goods out from St. Louis to a predetermined spot of “rendezvous” in the central Rocky Mountains, taking in the mountain man’s beaver pelts in trade for powder and lead, blankets and beads, coffee and whiskey too.
*
EIGHT
They came that summer of ’47 … those dream-hungry emigrants sure as sun came. But the first of them to show up on Bridger’s doorstep weren’t bound for Oregon at all. They would claim to be the chosen lambs of God desperately in search of their Zion.
In those weeks that followed the arrival of his old friends, Jim Bridger kept Scratch and Shadrach busy with this and that around his post. Waits-by-the-Water and Shell Woman pitched in to help in a big way, what with Gabe’s Flathead wife, Cora, having died in childbirth. Both women started right up with baby Josephine, and gave a mother’s affection to six-year-old Felix too. Besides helping the trader get his store ready for the emigrant season, Magpie was right there on the heels of the two women, mostly helping out by watching over Shell Woman’s little ones when she didn’t have her hands in something with the women. But Flea—now he was given the most grown- up job of all.
Their second night at Fort Bridger, the three families sat around a cheery fire built in a pit outside the post buildings, dug near the center of the open compound where they had taken their supper of antelope, served with some Jerusalem artichokes and wild onions Flea and Magpie dug up along the river. As the stars popped into view, one by one, and the winter-cured cottonwood crackled at their feet, Bridger called young Flea over to stand at his knee.
“Your pa an’ me, we been talking,” Gabe began, then looked at the boy squarely. “You unnerstand my American talk, son?”
Flea nodded, his eyes flicking once to his father’s face.
“When I asked your pa if’n you was ready to be give a young man’s work, he said he figgered the only way to find out was to see if you was up to it.”
Flea gulped. “What work?”
“You unnerstand that word, work?”
“He does now, Jim,” Titus replied. “Maybeso he didn’t a couple days back when we rolled in here. But I think my boy’s got a quick mind about him an’ he’s caught on.”
Shadrach agreed, “He dove in like a snapper, didn’t he, Scratch?”
So Bass prodded, “G’won and tell him, Gabe.”
Bridger trained his attention on the boy, raising a hand to place it on the lad’s shoulder as everyone quieted in that circle. “One of the most important jobs I got at this here post is my horses. Man don’t have no horse in this country, he’s likely to die.”
“But Tom Fitzpatrick got hisself put afoot—-back to thirty-two! An’ he wasn’t rubbed out!” Sweete admonished.
