“He looks a mite busy right now, don’t he?” Titus remarked. “Can you tell me where them Shoshone are in this bunch?”
“I can’t say I recognize one Indian from another, mister,” the soldier apologized.
“There he is! I see ’im!” Titus yipped with excitement, stepping away to his right around the throng toward the large band of warriors and chiefs who sat off by themselves, nearest the commissioners’ awning.
Once he got up behind the Snake delegates, Scratch whispered, “Gabe!”
Bridger turned, bringing a flat hand under his hat brim to shade his eyes while he studied the caller. His face immediately lit up and he scrambled to his feet, waving Titus to come his way. The instant Bass had threaded his way through the Shoshone, the trader looped his arms around him and exclaimed, “Scratch, you ol’ buzzard! It’s been three winters already! Damn me if I didn’t think you’d gone under for sure up in Crow country!”
“But here I walk, Gabe!”
“Sit,” Bridger said as they both settled on the robe and leaned their faces close to whisper. “Hell, if it ain’t four years this very month since you took off north.”
“You see’d any sign o’ Shadrach?” Titus asked. “He ever come back from Oregon?”
Wagging his head, sadly Bridger said, “No. He ain’t.”
“You hear anything from him?” he asked with disappointment. “Figger he made it there with that emigrant train?”
Bridger snorted, “Oh, that tall boy made it, all right. I heard it from Joe Meek’s tongue hisself.”
“When you see Joe?”
“He an’ Squire Ebbert come through, late that winter,” Bridger confided. “They was on snowshoes they’d made themselves: willow an’ rawhide. Had to put down their horses and eat ’em back up the trail. Starvin’ times.”
“What the hell they show up at Fort Bridger in the winter for?”
Jim explained, “Joe was hurtin’ something bad. He an’ Squire was the last of a bunch headin’ east for the States. Figgered to rally up some soldiers to come help out in Oregon.”
“The Britishers makin’ trouble?” Titus asked, bristling.
Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Injuns. Cayuse. They murdered Doc and Mrs. Whitman.”
“The sawbones what dug that arrowhead out’n your hump meat back at ronnyvoo?”
“Yep.”
“An’ that purty yellow-haired wife of his too?”
“Cayuse killed some young’uns what was at their mission school,” Bridger said gravely. “Joe lost him his daughter to them red buggers. Found her body dug up by wolves.”
“Murderin’ sonsabitches!” Titus grumbled, grinding a fist into his left palm. “Killin’ women an’ young’uns. Damn ’em to hell anyway. So w-what become of it? Them Oregoners make war on them Cayuse what started killin’ white folks?”
“Wasn’t a war on white people. Joe told me them red-bellies had it in for the Whitmans—so they killed ’em all at the school. Medicine men got ’em stirred up, to Joe’s way of thinking. Medicine men what didn’t like the Whitmans teachin’ their people ’bout the white God.”
“Joe go back to Oregon?”
“He’s back there, much as I know,” Jim replied. “But I ain’t see’d Shadrach.”
“Heard you come over here with the Snakes.”
Bridger nodded. “Where away was you bound, when you happed on Fitzpatrick’s big peace council?”
“We was invited,” Titus announced.
“In-invited?”
“Not a lonely ol’ badger like me! But Meldrum, trader up to Fort Alexander on the Yellowstone. Fitz asked him an’ the Crow to come.”
Bridger’s face lit up. “So you rode down with the Crow chiefs?”
“I did. Meldrum asked me. Brung the wife an’ young’uns too.”
“Let’s see now,” and Bridger scratched at his cheek with a widening grin, “I’ll bet you’re havin’ to use a big stick to knock them young Crow bucks away from that oldest girl of your’n. She was a purty thing.”
“Magpie? Why, we got the girl married off just afore we set off for these here peace talks.”
“Married! I’ll be dogged—I wouldn’t thought you were a coon old enough to marry off a daughter—”
“Mr. Bridger!”
They both turned to peer into the shade of the council tent, finding all the faces looking their way.
Scratch whispered from the side of his mouth, “Who’s that?”
“Mitchell—big white Injun father from back east,” Bridger hissed.
The big-bellied man gestured toward the open ground in front of the council awning and proclaimed, “Mr. Bridger, time has come for the Shoshone to give their speeches—”
“Who the hell’s that sittin’ with you, Gabe?” Fitzpatrick roared in interruption, lunging to his feet and starting their way.
“Been a long time since I laid eyes on yer white-haired carcass, Fitz,” Titus said as he got to his feet too and started toward the agent.
“Wasn’t sure that was really you, Titus Bass!” the agent’s voice boomed as they met near the Shoshone delegation and pounded one another on the back. “Heard stories every now and then. Lots of stories ’bout you. Most of ’em got to do with some new way they said you gone under!” When they backed apart, Fitzpatrick said, “Wasn’t all that sure when you come through the crowd an’ sat down with Bridger there. Neither of us look much the same as we did years back when beaver was high an’ we was young.”
Reaching out to stroke the side of Fitzpatrick’s long hair, Scratch said, “You ain’t changed much, you ol’ whitehead. Shit, I ’member when them Injun trappers brung you into Pierre’s Hole back to thirty-two. Lookin’ at you was like we’d all see’d a ghost our own selves. Your ha’r used to be sleek an’ black as a otter’s … an’ after what you come through, gettin’ chased down by them Blackfoot, it’d turn’t white as snow.”
“Can you figger it’s been almost twenty year now?” Fitzpatrick asked.
“Agent Fitzpatrick?” Mitchell intruded with a scolding tone. “Can you and your old crony wait until tonight after we’ve concluded the day’s negotiations to reminisce?”
Fitzpatrick grinned and shrugged as he whispered, “Back to business, Scratch. We’ll talk later. I’ll come look up you an’ Jim at the Snake camp after supper—”
“I didn’t ride in with Gabe’s Shoshone.”
“Just come to see these here doin’s on your own?”
“Hell, Fitz,” he said with a growing smile, “we got your invite clear up to the Yallerstone country. Meldrum talked me into coming down with—”
“Meldrum?” he wheezed. “The trader up there in Crow country?”
By this moment Mitchell had come right to the edge of the shade, growing irritated at this rude delay. “Agent Fitzpatrick, will you and Colonel Bridger bring the Shoshone over for their speech—”
But Fitzpatrick wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the stuffy official from the East. “Robert Meldrum? From Fort Alexander?”
“That’s him!”
“You mean you two brung the Crow down?”
“A old friend like you asks us,” Titus said, “how you figger we’re gonna let you down?”
Fitzpatrick wheeled on the official, bubbling with joy, “The Crow are here!” Then he suddenly whirled on Bass again. “Wh-where are they?”
Turning Fitzpatrick away from the side of the awning, Scratch led the agent a half dozen steps so they had a clear eye-shot at the long, low slope. “There they be, Fitz—waiting for you an’ this impatient hotheaded son of a bitch to tell us where to camp—”