us, most of our days are already on the back trail.”
He nodded reluctantly but tried a valiant grin. “Man sure does do things a bit differently when most of his time is at his back. The choices he makes. What comes to be more important to him.”
With a long sigh, Bridger said, “You done me real good here while I was away, Scratch.”
“Didn’t take longer’n a day afore the hammer felt good in my hand again.”
Jim grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “So you like blacksmithing, do you?”
“Don’t go getting the idee that I’m hiring out for no job at Bridger’s fort!” he protested.
“It’s a fine turn you done for us,” Bridger said. “The young’uns an’ me. I’ll miss your woman’s help, an’ that boy of yours too, when you light out for Crow country.”
For a moment, Bass toed his moccasin into the flaky ground near the corral gate where the two of them stood talking in the shade of the tall timbers. “’Bout that, Gabe,” he began. “Me an’ the woman, we been talking while you was away to the ferry with Shad.”
“You ain’t thinking of taking off soon?” Bridger asked, then hurried right on. “Hell, I could’ve figgered that. I don’t blame you none, Scratch: not wanting to be around when them emigrants come rolling through here with their wide-eyed young’uns screamin’ and throwin’ their Bibles at us an’ their poke bonnets—”
“Thought we’d stay for ’while, Gabe.” He interrupted Bridger just as the trader was getting to midstride.
“Maybeso till late summer. Till the last of them emigrants get on past here to Fort Hall. Me and the woman figger that’ll still give us plenty of time to ride north to find a Crow village to put in a winter with.”
“You’ll stay? By jiggies, if that ain’t the finest piece of news I’ve had in a long, long while!”
“I s’pose Shad an’ his family gonna stay on till the end of the season too.”
Bridger nodded. “Up at the ferry, he talked about laying through the winter here with us.”
“Be good for all of you. Them young’uns of yours, they need women around,” Bass admitted. “Hell, that Felix can make hisself understood to the gals, no matter he don’t speak no Crow or Cheyenne!”
“Wimmens is just that way!” Bridger enthused, then held out his hand. “Thankee, Scratch. This summer’s bound to be a season we look back on for many a year to come.”
They shook as Titus asked, “What else you see needs doin’ around here now afore them corncrackers show up on Jim Bridger’s doorstep?”
“Why—I was gonna push on over Southern Pass to Fort William, buy me some trade goods afore the first wagons reach them. Don’t figger any of those sodbusters gonna coax their wagons this far west till the second week of July.”
He wagged his head. “Can’t help you do nothing with Fort John. My face ain’t welcome in them parts—”
“I don’t need you to come with me. I can handle the pack string my own self,” Bridger declared. “But, I’m taking Shell Woman and her pups with me when I light out, morning after next.”
“I’m sartin Shad’s got a case of the lonelies for her.”
“An’ he asked if’n you’d come back for a day or so,” Bridger explained.
“To see Shadrach?”
“Yep. He figgered things was gonna get busy for ’im and the others, once the easters start showing up to pay their toll on the ferry, so he wanted to spend a li’l time with you while he could. Him an’ me, we’ll have the hull durn winter to catch up an’ tell lies. But, the two of you ain’t got much time to be knee to knee till you take off north come the end of the season.”
Titus felt that smile grow not just on his face but all through him. “Damn, if you two ain’t about the finest friends a feller could have, Gabe. Yeah, for sartin, let’s us go see Shad. I’d like to lay eyes on this ferry you two strung across the Green River for them wagon folks!”
So Titus had scratched the dogs’ ears and kissed his family in farewell, then helped deliver Shadrach’s family to the banks of the Green River a few miles south of the mouth of the Big Sandy. It brought a sting to his eyes to see how happy it made all four of them to be reunited once more: man, woman, and young ones too. The way things were meant to be. Early that following morning the three men bridled the string of mules, then cinched on the pads and empty pack-saddles Bridger would bring back laden with trade goods for the store at his post on Black’s Fork.
“I figger I can ride on with you till we reach the Sweetwater,” Scratch announced after they had muscled the mules across the Green by rope and pulleys, then had the animals strung out in line.
Sweete bobbed his head. “With the other fellas here to help, I ain’t got nothing for him to do here, Gabe. Maybeso he can give you a hand with them cantankerous mules till you reach the other side of the pass.”
“Sure you don’t mind heading in that direction?”
“Ever’thing’s near ready for them wagon folks back at your fort,” Bass declared. “So my woman’ll just shoo me outta the store when I stick my nose in there. Yep—I’ll give you a hand with this here string till we hit the Sweetwater.”
The grin shining on Bridger’s face right then convinced Titus that a few extra days with an old friend were more than worth any struggle that might come with those contrary-minded mules. In fact, the following day as they were slowly making their way up the Little Sandy toward the Southern Pass, Titus had been reflecting on just how much more enjoyable it was to be in this high, dry country with a string of mules than it was to be back at Fort Bridger where he felt like he was underfoot and clearly not wanted around by his wife and Magpie, womenfolk who constantly fluttered from one task to the next—with the children and the trading post and preparing meals. With a mule a man realized what he was up against and could coax some occasional cooperation out of them … but, with women, it was nothing less than a tale of confusion, confabulation, and not a little woe sometimes—trying his best to sort out why a woman would sometimes utter the exact opposite of what she really meant to tell him.
“Man’s just a simple critter,” he declared to Bridger that afternoon. “We’re the last of God’s creations ever gonna figger out the heart of a woman.”
Jim chuckled in the warm sun. “Soon as a man understands he ain’t never gonna read the sign in a woman’s breast, the sooner he’ll make peace with life—”
“What’s that yonder?” Scratch interrupted.
“Looks to be a string of riders.”
Bass shaded his eyes with a hand. “The first emigrants come west ’thout wagons?”
Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Don’t callate how they could. Have no idea who they be. Or what they’re doing out here.”
“Them riders is all dressed in civil clothes,” Titus commented as he peered into the mid-distance with that one good eye, then turned in the saddle to dig in his bags for his spyglass. “Ain’t any Fort John fellas, is it?”
“Not a reason they’d be comin’ this way,” Jim surmised. “Besides, them parley-voos wouldn’t be dressed in settlement clothes, would they?”
“If it ain’t Frenchies from the Platte, what bunch gonna march over the pass ’thout no wagons?”
Bridger waited as Bass brought the spyglass to his eye, then asked, “You see any women with that bunch?”
“Nary a one.”
Jim said, “No womenfolk—squaws or corncracker—neither one. Such only makes me curiouser and curiouser who them riders are.”
He squinted through the spyglass and surmised, “Maybe their wagons and women coming behind where we can’t see.”
Bridger nodded. “That’s the story. Damn, if this first bunch ain’t one helluva lot earlier’n I figgered they’d come. For the life of me—can’t callate how they made it across the prerra so fast.”
Titus watched the horsemen draw closer and closer, those in the vanguard suddenly spotting the small mule train already pulled up at the side of a low hill overlooking the Little Sandy. “Only way for ’em to be this far this early is they got ’em a jump on leavin’ the settlements, or they hunkered down for winter right out on the prerra— ahead of ever’one else.”
“Maybeso you’re right,” Jim declared. “This bunch had to spend the winter a long way out from the settlements for ’em to make it here now.”
“S’pose we ought’n go on down there an’ be civil, don’t you, Gabe?”
“That’s the hull thing ’bout being a trader in the heart of this big wilderness,” Bridger confessed. “Man’s gotta be a good neighbor to what all kinds come riding through his country.”
The sun was suspended just past midsky as the first four riders broke away from the head of that gaggle of
