And now another such ocean might not be all that far away to the west, after all.
“Let’s drink to young Jim Bridger!” Beckwith roared suddenly, standing with his cup held high. “And to Bridget’s Hole!”*
Immediately they all shot to their feet. But Bridger was the last, looking young and sheepish among their lined faces scraped clean of beard these past few days. The fire danced in their eyes, flickered on the dull sheen of their tin cups, as together they roared, celebrating one of their own.
“Hear, hear! To young Jim Bridger!” Bass shouted with the others.
Taken altogether, those men gathered in Willow Valley that night were a pitifully small lot indeed.
“Hear, hear! To the far salt ocean!”
But few in numbers though they be, each man of them stood tall, head and shoulders above any who had chosen to stay behind, those who cowered east of the Missouri … this breed here and forever after to stand taller still than any of those who would come in their wake.
“To the beaver, by God!”
Here they were of a breed just newly born, yet already beginning to die … so short was their glorious era.
“To the Rocky Mountains, by damn!”
“Hear, hear!” Scratch shouted with them, tears coming to his eyes, so emotional was it to stand among these men strong enough to match those high and terrible places.
“To the very heart of the world!”
“To the Rocky Mountains!”
“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Titus cried as he bolted to his feet with the first shots up the valley. “What you make of that?”
Cooper barely budged, his eyes fluttering open slightly. He squatted with his back resting against a pile of their bedding: buffalo robes and blankets. “Target shooting. Feller wins, he get hisself a drink of likker.”
But those shots were coming too close together, Bass thought. And they damn well came from the wrong direction. From the Shoshone camp!
“What you think, Billy?” Bass inquired, nervously scratching at his bearded cheek.
Hooks kept on whittling the bark off another short section of willow. He had a pile of pale sticks on one side of him, and a rumpled pile of curled slivers of bark on the ground between his legs. “I figger them red niggers’ business is their own business. Leave it be.”
“But—the shootin’!”
“Ain’t no one shootin’ at us,” Cooper snapped. “Just let it be and lemme sleep.”
Then Bass whirled on Tuttle, “You think we ought’n go see what’s the ruckus, Bud?” He watched Tuttle glance at Cooper, as if asking permission.
“Nawww,” Bud finally answered, “like Silas said: ain’t none of our affair—”
Hooves pounded up on the valley floor—three horses skidding to a halt as their riders leaned over to throw their news at the quartet of free trappers.
“A bunch of bad Injuns just jumped the Shoshone camp, boys!” a rider announced, pointing. “Come riding down off the hills. Cutting up the Snakes’ camp something fierce. I s’pose they didn’t know we was here—or didn’t care.”
Cooper stirred only enough to push his hat back from his face and ask, “What tribe?”
“Blackfeets.”
“Blackfeet,” Titus repeated almost at a whisper, his heart beginning to slam in his chest so hard, he thought it would squeeze right out between his ribs.
“That’s right,” a second horseman said. “Bug’s Boys!”
“Grab your gun and c’mon!” the third Ashley man ordered as more hooves pounded close.
A half-dozen riders shot by, whooping and yelping, knees like pistons in the stirrups as the wind whipped back the brims on their hats, fluttered their long hair out behind them just the way it did the horses’ manes and tails. In their wake came a rider who peeled himself off and brought his mount crow-hopping to a jarring halt before Titus and Tuttle as the other trio of riders kicked their horses into motion and tore out after the six.
“You comin’, Scratch?” Jim Beckwith asked breathlessly.
“Fight them Blackfeets?”
He nodded, swallowing. “Ain’t none of us ever gonna have a better chance to get in our licks.”
Cooper snorted in derision, then said, “Sounds like pretty big words comin’ from a black-assed Negra.”
Beckwith glared for a moment at the giant, then snarled, “I sure as hell don’t see you grabbin’ up your gun to show us all just how brave you are.”
“You come down off’n that horse, Negra-boy … I’ll show you who’s brave an’ who I can pound into mule-squat!”
Beckwith turned from Cooper as if to ignore him the best he could. “I’m going, Scratch. You can come with me … or you can stay with these here.”
“He’ll stay with us,” Silas snapped, “’cause he knows better. That ain’t his fight.”
Hooks echoed, “Yup—not your fight, Scratch.”
Then Titus watched another dozen or so riders race past in a flurry of hooves and hair, weapons, whooping, and dust a’flying.
“Maybeso it oughtta stay atween just them Shoshone against the Blackfoot,” Tuttle apologized for his reluctance.
Wagging his head, Bass replied, “Looks to be it ain’t just the Snakes’ business. No, I gotta go.”
As he whirled about to race over to unlash his horse from its picket pin, Cooper bellowed, “You go get yourself hurt in this foolishness—don’t y’ come whimperin’ to me.”
“I won’t,” Bass promised, his heart rising to his throat as he yanked his horse back toward the spot where his blankets lay.
Silas continued, “We got us plans for the fall hunt. If y’ go off an’ get yourself hurt—don’t figger on trapping with us none. I ain’t dragging along no bunged-up, strapped-down whimper boy!”
“Awright,” Bass agreed as he swept up his rifle and dropped his pouch over one shoulder, “that’s a bargain: I get myself hurt by them Blackfoots, you three just go on off to hunt ’thout me this year.”
Cooper was beginning to rise, his face growing more crimson as he found his warnings were going unheeded. “You ’member that scuffle we had us with the Arapaho, don’t y’?”
“I do,” Titus replied, leaping atop the horse, bareback.
“You was cut up good, y’ dumb nigger,” Silas reminded. “You was damned lucky it were winter time so we had us the time to wait on y’ to heal up—or we’d damn well left y’ to rot on your lonesome right there with them Utes!”
“C’mon, Beckwith,” Bass said bravely as he reined around, turning his back on Cooper. “There’s Blackfeet to fight.”
He gave the horse his heels in its ribs and flanks, setting the animal into a run. Although Bass could not make out the loud, angry words Silas flung at his back, he hoped Cooper’s anger would cool by the time he returned. It just might be an even wager: fighting the worst Indians in the northern Rockies, or suffering another one of Silas Cooper’s beatings.
After no more than a quarter of a mile’s run they spotted the first of the buffalo-hide lodges in the distance. And gathered just this side of them were a swirling knot of trappers dismounting and handing off their horses to others on foot. At their center stood three men: Fitzpatrick, Fraeb, and one man Bass did not know.
Leaping to the ground near the group, Titus asked Beckwith, “Who’s that younger fella with Fitz and Ol’ Man Frapp?”
“Sublette.”
Scratch joined Beckwith at the fringe of the group, whispering to the mulatto, “Billy Sublette?”
Beckwith nodded as a small party of Shoshone raced up through the village on horseback. The trappers backed away slightly as the warrior leader sought out the chief of the trappers.
“Gut Face!” the Shoshone called in English when he recognized Sublette.