The superintendent’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “Agent Fitzpatrick—there’s important business at hand to conduct!”
Wheeling about, Fitzpatrick flapped his arms at the superintendent. “And we’ll get to that business, Mr. Mitchell … but for now I’ve got to tell my friend here where he can camp with the delegation he and Robert Meldrum just brought in from the north country.”
“D-delegation?” Mitchell echoed, his crimson face marked with lines of irritation as he took three steps forward to stand bathed in the bright afternoon light.
“The Crow!” Fitzpatrick bellowed. “By jigs, if the Crow ain’t here for your peace talks!”
Mitchell demanded, “Where?”
Scratch pointed, saying, “On the hill, waitin’ for me to tell ’em where to camp.”
“You brought their delegation down from the Yellowstone country?” Mitchell inquired as he quickly started toward the three former trappers.
“Robert Meldrum did,” Scratch admitted to the superintendent. “I just come along ’cause he asked me to.”
“Who are you?”
But the white-haired Indian agent answered before Scratch could. “This here’s Titus Bass. There ain’t nowhere you go in these here mountains what you won’t hear ghosty stories told about this nigger, Mr. Mitchell. Titus Bass been about as far north as you can get afore a man gets chewed up by Blackfoot war parties, and as far south as Taos and the Apache country too. Hell, I even heard a tale you went out to California with Bill Williams sometime back!”
That’s when Bridger joined in, “This man an’ the fellers he was with stole more Mexican horses than ever come outta California!”
“So what do you have to do with the Crow?” Mitchell asked.
“My wife’s people,” he replied. “Live with ’em, hunt an’ fight with ’em too.”
“Mr. Bass,” and Mitchell suddenly held out his hand. “May I say I truly appreciate your efforts in bringing the Crow chiefs down to make a most momentous peace.”
As they were shaking, Titus said, “They got the wrong man. Wasn’t me. Robert Meldrum’s the man you an’ Fitz here invited to come with the Apsaluukes.”
“Still the same, I personally appreciate your efforts,” and Mitchell tipped his hat.
“I was in the mood for a trip,” Titus replied. “Brung my family down this way for to visit some ol’ friends, Mr. Mitchell.”
After sundown that evening Bridger and Fitzpatrick came to eat supper in the Crow camp with those two companions from the beaver days. The Indian agent explained that he had come by himself rather than bringing his Arapaho wife and infant son from his camp, worrying over the reception that might be given her by the Crow. But Scratch sent him right back for the woman and the boy.
“Way I see it, we’ve had us a long ride down from the Yellowstone, so my woman’s got a hankerin’ for woman talk, Fitz,” Titus said. “Much as there’s real bad blood atween me an’ the ’Rapaho, I figger that’s atween me an’ their menfolk. Not atween my wife an’ yours.”
Soon as the agent returned with his family, the women eventually got to communicating about children and the never-ending work of a woman, using their hands in sign language at the cooking fire, where they roasted the haunch of a tender young pony Fitzpatrick and his interpreters had butchered earlier that morning. After Jim related the grim story of how the Cheyenne had ambushed the Shoshone delegation far west of Laramie, he and Fitzpatrick went to work explaining all that had gone on since the first of the warrior bands began gathering at the fort.
“We stopped at the post,” Titus explained, “an’ Meldrum found out the place been sold to the army couple years back.”
Fitzpatrick wagged his head. “Everything would’ve been run better if the fur company still saw to things ’stead of the army.”
“You picked a good time of the year for this peace council,” Bridger said. “No emigrants on the trail. So there’s no problems with the Sioux and them Cheyenne for white wagon folks.”
“’Cept that we started runnin’ outta grass a mite soon,” the agent declared. “That’s when we moseyed on downriver, here to this valley.”
“You had to see this confabulation, Scratch!” Bridger said, his face animated. “How that bunch of soft-brained pork-eaters got all them supplies loaded up in wagons and hauled over here, I’ll never know!”
“Beads an’ blankets, knives an’ coffee for the chiefs, eh?” Titus asked.
That’s when Fitzpatrick wagged his head dolefully. “No. We still don’t have any presents for these Injuns.”
“N-no presents?” Meldrum squawked with indignation. Then he lowered his voice, saying, “What the hell you think I promised these here Crow you’d give ’em—”
“Hold on,” Fitzpatrick argued. “The presents is comin’. Just ain’t got here yet.”
“Better be any day now,” Bridger groaned. “That’s all I gotta say.”
“You mean you convinced all these Injuns to come talk peace with you an’ each other,” Titus said, “but you didn’t bring no goddamned presents for ’em?”
“I said the wagons are comin’,” the agent snapped. “Ah hell, Scratch—it ain’t you I’m angry at. It’s these damned officials from back east, and their soldiers. This summer they used my good name to invite all these warrior bands here My name! And now I’m the one gonna be huggin’ two handfuls of bare ass if those trade goods don’t get here by the time these talks are all over and the chiefs put their marks on Mitchell’s treaty.”
Bass clucked in sympathy, “You’re in a bad way if them goods don’t reach us soon. What with old enemies camped closer’n you an’ me could spit tobaccy at each other. They don’t get their blankets and kettles, beads and paint for their women … what do you think this many warriors gonna start doin’?”
“Hell if I don’t already know what they’ll start doin’,” Fitzpatrick complained. “And, to tell the truth, I hope they start with Mitchell and his bunch!”
“I’ll drink to that!” Bridger cheered. “Where’s some whiskey, Tom?”
“We ain’t got any of that either,” the agent groaned. “Mitchell didn’t want any likker in camp—seein’ how it’s contraband out here in Injun country.”
Bass made a sour face and looked over at Bridger. “You got any whiskey wuth drinkin’ over to your post on Black’s Fork, Gabe?”
“That’s a mighty long way to ride for a drink, Scratch.”
For a moment he thought about his loneliness for Magpie, then realized how safe she was up there in Crow country. She now belonged to another man. Reassured, Titus burst out laughing. “I wasn’t talkin’ ’bout tonight, you idjit! I just figgered I could foller you back to your post when these important folk got their peace talks all wrapped up here.”
“C-come to visit?”
With a shrug, Scratch said, “You an’ me got four years of catchin’ up to do, Gabe. An’ we can do a lot o’ palaver with some whiskey to wet our gullets.”
Bridger slapped Titus on the knee exuberantly. “My new wife gonna be tickled as a hen what’s just laid her first egg!”
“You got a new wife?” he asked.
“She’s my third,” Bridger confessed to his old friends.
Titus grinned. “I didn’t even know ’bout what happed to your second wife.”
“Ute gal,” he said, staring into the fire. “Married back in forty-eight. But she died givin’ birth to my li’l Virginia Rosalie, that next summer of forty-nine.”
“A Flathead gal, an’ a Utah gal too,” Titus recounted. “If you ain’t the marryin’ fool! So who’s your third wife?”
“Li’l Fawn. She’s a Snake, daughter of Washakie his own self. But I call her Mary,” Bridger boasted a little behind a big smile. “Still, there’s time she gets hungry for woman talk so she takes off to see her kin over at some camp. But if your wife comes over for a visit to the fort, she’s gonna be just the poultice to put on Mary’s case of the lonelies! Tell me true now, you’ll really come visit for the fall when we turn back for the Green?”