“Less’n trouble just drops right outta the sky an’ into that man’s lap,” Scratch remarked.
“You don’t figger it’s smart just to stay outta that wagon camp and not to bite off trouble on your own?” Sweete wagged his head with a wry grin. “Like Hargrove told us?”
“I was just askin’ how many guns Hargrove’s got working for him, s’all,” Titus replied. “It sours my milk, Shadrach—bullies like that wagon cap’n an’ his sort. I had my craw filled up to here with their kind. American Fur bully-boys an’ all the rest, strangled things for the li’l man.”
“There’s Hargrove, and eight others, like I said,” Burwell repeated.
“Why you wanna know, Scratch?” Shadrach asked.
“Only need to see what trouble I’m bitin’ into,” Titus explained, “so I can figger how long it’s gonna take for me to chew it up an’ spit it back out again.”
TWELVE
“Do you want us to go with you?” she asked him.
Titus looked at his wife. Last night, after they had returned to the post from having supper with Amanda’s family in the wagon camp, he thought he had had that question all figured out. But as the two of them stirred now in the predawn darkness, in their lodge pitched just outside the post walls, he knew he already had changed his mind.
“It will be a long journey,” he reminded.
“Not as far as it is from here to the land of my people,” she declared. “You still did not answer my question.”
For a moment he watched her as she laid more kindling on the feeble embers in the fire pit. “I thought you would stay here, for the children.”
“They go everywhere we go, Ti-tuzz.”
He heard the rustling of blankets. Looking over his shoulder, he found Magpie sitting up at the edge of the darkness. “You do your best not to make noise.”
She whispered, “I wanted to tell you something before you decided you were going alone.”
“I am not going alone,” he explained again in Crow. “Shadrach and his family are going with me.”
Magpie pushed some of her long hair out of one of her almond-shaped eyes. “We belong with you more than we belong here waiting for you at Bridger’s post.”
Scratch looked back at his wife again. “Much of that country will be new to me. Parts of it I’ve never been through.”
“Many summers ago, that was the country where you met Big Throat for the first time.” Waits-by-the-Water used the Crow’s name for Bridger as she leaned back and put some larger wood on the fire that began to cast a warm glow on the inside of the small lodge. “But I would not worry even if it was a completely strange land to you.”
“My popo will see us through it,” Magpie chimed in.
He grinned, his heart feeling much lighter. “Then you want to go with me when the wagons leave this morning?”
Waits leaned over and laid her hand on his. “Magpie and I will take care of everything in the lodge—taking only what we need for the journey. Flea can see to the horses. So that means you will see to Jackrabbit.”
“Do you want to take down the lodge and drag a travois with us?”
“We have enough of the heavy cloth we can tie up if we need shelter from the rain,” she stated. “I will leave the lodge here. Big Throat can care for it while we are gone to this Snake River I have heard so little about.”
So it was decided, not so much by him as by the two women in his family. They would be setting out together on this long journey this morning, all of them, as a family. Somewhere over the past day and a half he had first come to believe it would be far better for him to go alone, to leave her and the children behind at Bridger’s post when he set off with Shadrach’s family in following Hargrove’s wagon train to Fort Hall. Sweete had eagerly volunteered to ride along during their big supper inside the fort walls two nights ago after Hargrove’s meeting at the wagon camp.
After that brief and clearly unfinished confrontation with the wagon captain and his bully-boys, Amanda’s family had come back to the post with the old trappers for what was to have been a supper to celebrate this reunion of father and daughter and families. But for a while there it had all the makings of a wake, what with Amanda and Roman quietly despairing on what they would do once the train reached the Snake River and Phineas Hargrove pointed his nose southwest on the California Trail.
But by the time Shadrach returned from fetching his family for supper, the tall trapper sashayed up to the fire as cocky as any prairie grouse, plainly ready to bust his buttons with what he just had to tell Titus before he would burst.
“We’re gonna light out with the wagon train day after tomorrow.” He unloaded his news the moment everyone fell quiet around that fire crackling in the pit at the center of the stockade.
Bridger’s face grew worried. “You’re leaving me, Shad?”
Sweete looked at his old friend. “Wanna see some new country, Gabe. I’ll get to Fort Hall, then turn around. I’ll be back afore you can miss me.”
“What’m I gonna do ’thout you here?”
With a snort, he flung his thick arm around Bridger’s shoulder and shook his friend. “Same as you done afore I showed up!”
Bridger looked a little jealous of that freedom Shad was taking to wander. “Tired of that ferry work you was doin’?”
“Them seven others gonna work out slick for you,” Shad replied. “’Sides, the season is winding down awready. If them emigrants ain’t anywhere close to the crossing of the Green by now, they ain’t gonna make it through the mountains afore winter sets in. I figger we’ve see’d all but the stragglers by now.”
Jim chewed his upper lip a moment. “I’ll lay you’re right on that. Likely we’ve awready seen just about all of them what’s gonna be passing through.”
“Maybe some more of them Marmons,” Titus growled.
Turning to Bass, Jim said, “Young told me there’d be a heap more Saints come through here next season— but wasn’t no more coming through this summer.”
“A good thing too,” Bass declared with a slight shudder. “Didn’t like the read I got off that man’s sign. I seen my share of fellas glad-slap you on the back with one hand while’st the other hand’s dippin’ into your purse for all you’re worth.”
“That prophet didn’t seem like such a bad sort to me,” Bridger responded, “far as a preacher goes.”
Bass declared, “Doc Whitman—now that was a good preacher!”
With a wave of his hand, Bridger said, “Young and his flock gone on to their promised land. Even if Brigham Young don’t take ’em where I told him they should settle, I wish all good things for ’em. Sorry I couldn’t do a li’l more trading with that preacher’s folks. Likely them Saints won’t have much to do with Jim Bridger from here on out.”
“The farther they stay away from you, the better it is by me,” Titus said, then turned to Shad and asked, “Shell Woman wanna go?”
“See some new country with me,” he admitted. “Ever since I brung that gal out of Cheyenne country, her eyes has growed hungry to see more an’ more!”
Titus looked down at Waits-by-the-Water, recognizing the interest that was apparent on her face as she managed to snag a few words here and there of the men’s conversation. Roman Burwell stepped back to the fire, bringing young Lucas by the hand. Just before he had settled with the boy by his knee, Amanda rocked onto her toes to whisper something in her husband’s ear.
The emigrant turned to Shad in a huff, asking, “You say you’re riding along with Hargrove’s train, Mr. Sweete?”
“Figgered I’d come along to Fort Hall with you, lend a hand in what I could,” Shad said.
