“And you know exactly where the hell you’re going?”
Titus pointed quickly in the general direction. “West. Out yonder.”
The younger, thin man with the beaklike nose chuckled, then said, “So do you know where you are?”
“I’m on the Missouri River,” Bass replied, flinging a thumb over his shoulder at the frothy, muddy, runoff swollen water. “Still east of the big bend.”
“Ain’t that far to the bend now!” the third man cheered.
“How far?” Titus replied eagerly, standing, stomping his heels down into the old boots.
With a shrug the older man said, “Not far. I never was one to measure things out exact.”
“He’s right,” the sergeant injected. “So you reach the big bend, what’s that mean to you?”
“Means the Missouri heads north,” Bass replied. “And me with it.”
With a bob of his head the big soldier said, “Sounds like he’s got him a notion of where he’s off to, Sergeant.”
“Could be, Culpepper,” the thin one replied, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at the stockade for emphasis. “But—still don’t sound like he knows where he’s landed.”
Titus tugged the broad-brimmed hat firmly down on his head. “You mean this here post on the Missouri?”
The sergeant swelled out his chest proudly, swinging an arm expansively, proudly, over all his regal holdings. “Osage, it’s called,” he offered. “Fort Osage.”*
* * *
It was a sometimes proposition, this Fort Osage was.
During the early 1820s it had become the jumping-off point for those traders headed down the Santa Fe Trail.
“But there’s been a post here back to O-eight,” the thin man called Lancaster explained as they sat With Titus at the stone fireplace in what served as the fort’s mess hall.
From the size of the stockade down to the tiny barracks, it was plain for any visitor to see that a large force had never manned Fort Osage.
“That’s back when General Clark chose this here place for a government trading house,” Sergeant Clayton explained. “I s’pose that’s why to some folks this place’ll always be known as Fort Clark.”
In fact, to those on the Lewis and Clark expedition marching west to the Pacific Ocean, this location was first noted as a favorable site for a post and ever after became known as Fort Point on June 23, 1804—perhaps because of the low bluff on which the post would be eventually situated. The red-haired William Clark again passed by the site early in the fall of 1808 with a troop of dragoon cavalry on his way to make a treaty with the Osage. On November 13 of that year, upon his return trip downriver, General Clark christened the post that would be abandoned less than five years later during the war scare—the government, army, and civilians alike believing the British in Canada were goading the tribes along the upper river to rise en masse and descend the Missouri, slaughtering all Americans in their path. The army did not garrison Fort Osage again, nor operate the post as a government trading house with the Indians west of the Missouri, until 1816.
Bass nodded, kneeling to take a twig from the fire, lighting his pipe. “So like you told me—there ain’t soldiers here all the time?”
Clayton said, “No there ain’t. Nowadays just when some fur trader gets some business going with the tribes upriver. Maybeso they station us here in the spring and the fall, what with the Santa Fe trade going and coming those times of year.”
“Last bunch of soldiers stationed here,” Culpepper said, jumping into the conversation enthusiastically, his eyes dancing, “three of ’em deserted.”
“Deserted?”
“Yep. Run off with all the lead and shot they could carry—”
Clayton interrupted, “’Cepting the sergeant. He damn well didn’t desert his station.”
“Yup.” Culpepper’s head bobbed as he declared, “Three soldiers tied that poor bastard up to the fur press out there in the compound afore they took off for parts unknown.”
“Must’ve been days later when some fellas finally showed up—coming downriver in a canoe what they tied up yonder,” Lancaster joined in. “They come up to find the gates open, and the sergeant sitting right out there—all trussed up like a Christmas hog.”
“He was still alive after all that time?” Bass inquired.
“Barely,” Clayton answered. “Poor son of a bitch’s wrists was flayed and bloody trying his best to break outta them ropes.”
“An’ he could barely utter a word,” Culpepper added. “Hoarse as a sour-mouthed bullfrog. Been screaming and cussing for all he was worth since the day them three run off.”
Lancaster wagged his head, saying, “No one to hear him anyway. Don’t know why he didn’t just shut his yap and wait till someone showed up.”
“Would you?” Culpepper demanded, turning on the older soldier. “Just sit there?”
“Still say it didn’t do him a bit of good,” Lancaster replied sourly.
“What ever become of him?” Titus asked.
“I heard the poor soul’s still mending down to St. Louis,” Sergeant Clayton explained.
Bass puffed on his pipe. “Army decided to send up some more men, even after them others run off?”
“These are good men,” Clayton replied, nodding at the others. “Both of ’em hard workers, and they’re loyal, too.”
“Not like them last three,” Culpepper spouted.
Nearby, Fire Prairie Creek meandered out of the timber toward the bluff where the stockade stood and eventually spilled into the Missouri. Many years before William Clark had ever chosen the site, Fire Prairie had acquired its name among the local tribes when four Osage warriors were killed by a large band of attacking Pawnee, who surrounded their enemies, then burned them alive, setting fire to the dry grass in a nearby meadow. To the peaceful bands situated in that big-bend country of the Missouri River, the army’s post and government factory had long been commonly known as Fire Prairie Fort.
“We had to drive off four sonsabitches when we got here,” Culpepper boasted.
“Interlopers,” Sergeant Clayton explained. “Civilian interlopers—likely taking squatters’ rights here to conduct some illegal whiskey trade with the peaceable bands in the country hereabouts.”
“They sure didn’t put up much of a argument,” Culpepper added. “Likely they figured we was just the advance of a hull big outfit.”
“So they skedaddled.”
Titus asked, “Where they go?”
Clayton shrugged. “Who knows? Last we saw of ’em they was heading west toward the bend. Ain’t none of my concern now.”
Bass gazed around the small, low-roofed room again, then asked, “They take anything you know of?”
“Not the way they was packing up in a hurry under our eyes,” Lancaster said. “For sure they was a snakey-looking lot—the sort what’d trade whiskey with the Injuns and be slick-handed at it too.”
As the first drops of rain hit the plank and sod roof overhead, Bass looked at the sergeant, asking, “You hear tell of anyone trading whiskey with them Pawnee up on the Platte?”
Shaking his head, Clayton said, “Not lately. Them soldiers quartered up at Atkinson see to it none of that slips by ’em.”
“Whiskey makes an Injun mean,” Culpepper instructed as if he were spouting gospel.
“You seen Injuns before, ain’t you?” the sergeant asked of Bass.
“I seen my share of Chickasaw … years ago now.”
“No,” Lancaster joined in. “Did you ever see any of these Injuns here abouts?”
“River Injuns,” Culpepper commented with self-satisfaction. “The ones what’re still wild.”
“I seen a few come through St. Lou,” Bass admitted. “But I s’pose I ain’t seen a real wild Injun in many a year.”
The wind gusted, rain battering against the small mullioned panes of glass on the two windows that looked out on the compound, where a torch sputtered in the sudden downpour. Titus got to his feet and left the warm corona near the fireplace to go to the door. He opened it and stared out at the heavy rain drowning the countryside as the torch outside flickered, then hissed—snuffed out and throwing the stockade’s compound into utter blackness. It sent a chill down his spine like a drop of January ice water.