“That medicine man come up with a answer for us?” Isaac asked.
Bass nodded as he settled at the fire. “The ol’ goat was at it for more’n a day. Just a while back he come to Frapp and told ’em all that Fitz ain’t dead—”
“That’s some plumb fine news!” Caleb hooted, stomping a foot.
Jack shushed the sudden clatter and noise, “But if he ain’t dead, where’s he? And where’s the whiskey?”
“That old Crow says Fitzpatrick ain’t gone under, but he’s on the wrong trail.”
“On the wrong trail!” Rufus squeaked.
“Hell—we ain’t gonna get no whiskey now!” Elbridge groaned as he slapped his forehead and turned away with utter disgust.
Hatcher flapped his hands again for quiet. “What’s that mean: wrong trail?”
“Ain’t no one knows,” Scratch answered with a shrug. “So Frapp’s going out in the morning to look for Fitz.”
Biting on his lower lip, Solomon advised, “There ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell Frapp gonna find Fitz out there to the east.”
“Not in time for us to have a ronnyvoo!” Graham complained.
“Shuddup, goddammit!” Hatcher demanded again. “To hell with ronnyvoo!”
Caleb leaped to his feet, hulking over Hatcher, bristling like a spit-on hen. “To hell with ronnyvoo?”
Jack glared up at his friend. “Damn right. We got bigger problems, boys.” He waited a minute as Wood turned back to the group and the others settled around the fire to hear what their leader had to say. “For a man to miss ronnyvoo one’s thing … but for a man to figger him out a way to get through the winter in Injun country ’thout supplies—that’s the real fly in this nigger’s ointment.”
“Jack’s right,” Bass replied. “Like I said when we come in and Bridger told us the trader wasn’t here yet—man’s got to make one of two choices.”
As Hatcher looked them over, the rest stared into the fire as afternoon’s shadows grew longer. “So what’s it gonna be, fellers?”
Elbridge drew himself up and jutted out his proud chin. “Taos. There we’ll find Workman’s lightning and Mex gals.”
“What ’bout them soldiers?” Graham worried.
“That is a problem,” Hatcher agreed thoughtfully.
Scratch grumbled, “Damn, but me and Asa really boogered things good down there, didn’t we?”
“Weren’t none of yer fault,” Jack scolded. “Any one of us done the same if we was jumped by a greaser soldier.”
“’Specially when you was jumped same time you was crawling the hump of some Mex whore!” Rufus roared.
“Maybeso we can slip into Workman’s place one night,” Solomon suggested, holding his hands up for quiet. “Ask him about the lay of the land with the governor’s men.”
“If things don’t look good,” Bass continued, “you can skedaddle back north.”
“We?” Jack chimed in. “You mean ye ain’t gonna come to Taos with us for the winter?”
Scratch shook his head and snorted. “Ain’t gonna be healthy for this child down there for a couple winters yet.”
“So if we care to slip on down to Taos for the winter and supply-up,” Hatcher commented as he turned on Bass, “what ye gonna do for yer own self?”
For long moments he stared at the fire, poking a long stick into the flames. When he brought out the fiery end of that dry limb and peered at it, Scratch said, “I got friends back in Crow country. I’ll winter up there.”
“You’ll be awright ’thout no supplies?”
“Hell, yes,” Titus answered. “Might run low on ball and powder afore next summer … but I’ll get by. ’Sides, fellers—just think what Sublette’s gonna have to pay us next summer for beaver!”
“Whoooeee!” Caleb cheered.
Isaac said, “And ain’t there gonna be a heap of it too come next year?”
“When you was over visiting Bridger,” Jack inquired, turning to Bass, “you hear any word from the company booshways on where they’ll join up for next ronnyvoo?”
“Heard talk about Pierre’s Hole,” Bass replied. “But I don’t figger they’ve decided hard on it.”
That ended up being the best any of those few hundred men gathered on the Green could do—company trapper or free man: nothing more than talk about and dream on next summer, next rendezvous, next time they’d see Billy Sublette’s trade caravan coming in. But with the way a man planned for, anticipated, and downright lusted after each annual gathering for a whole year … it was all he could do to calmly accept that there would be another autumn, another winter, and another spring of wading knee-deep in icy mountain streams before he would trade some of his furs in for whiskey, for enough foofaraw to get him laid with a bright-eyed squaw gal.
It was purely painful there in the valley of the upper Green after Henry Fraeb pulled out to look for partner Fitzpatrick as each new day of August came and went.
When Tom Fitzpatrick did not show up in St. Louis by the agreed-upon date, the partners of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette proceeded with their initial plans of entering the Santa Fe trade. By the time the eastbound Fitzpatrick reached the settlement of Independence, he learned that the three partners had already come through with a caravan bound not for the mountains, but for Mexico. There was little other choice but to gallop after the wagon train. Somewhere in that hot, waterless country of what is today southwestern Kansas, he caught up to the three partners. They told Fitzpatrick he would have to join them all the way to Taos, where they would outfit him with supplies for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
By then the caravan had entered the most dangerous and deadly water scrape on the Santa Fe Trail. Far out ahead of the wagons, searching for water in any of the few sandy, dry river bottoms, Jedediah Smith was confronted by some Comanche buffalo hunters. Although his life oozed out on the end of a deadly fourteen-foot buffalo lance, his body was never found.
Even with Smith missing, Jackson and Sublette proceeded on to Taos, where they disbanded their partnership after turning over some six thousand dollars in supplies to Fitzpatrick. While Jackson headed west to California and his own fortunes, Sublette turned back for St. Louis to begin gathering finances and goods for his 1832 trading venture to the mountains.
Leaving Tom Fitzpatrick to load up what little he had been given on the backs of the mules he purchased in Taos, he hired some extra hands eager to go north into the Rockies, and made for the mountains—already more than a month late and with little hope of finding the company brigades and the free men still gathered, still awaiting his arrival.
Without any coffee and not so much as a twist of tobacco. And whiskey? Only in a man’s dreams was there any whiskey! It was shaping up to be another long, dry year.
What few bands of friendly Flathead and Shoshone showed up didn’t hang around long. With summer growing old, it would soon be a time for making winter meat.
Bass and the rest watched the lodgeskins come down, seeing the women tie the poles together into travois, watched the dust trails disappear against the horizon. Then the first of the free men began to pack up their plews and set off.
“Bridger offered any of us to throw in and travel with the company brigades to their fall hunt,” Solomon declared late one morning as he returned to Hatcher’s camp.
“What the hell we do that for?” Caleb demanded.
Fish shrugged. “He says Frapp’s gonna find Fitzpatrick. And when he does, Fitz is gonna have supplies for Rocky Mountain Fur. Only way any free man’s gonna get supplies is he’s gonna have to be hanging close to a company brigade.”
“The hell with ’em,” Rufus griped.
Elbridge asked, “We’ll go to Taos, right, Jack?”
“We’re gonna drown that goddamned Sublette in beaver next summer,” Hatcher declared.