And when the spring of ’53 arrived for certain—no, not the false spring that came every year, when the weather warmed and a man’s blood coursed a little stronger in his veins, but was quickly interrupted by another bout of bitter cold and a snowy, icy sleet that descended on this valley of the Green for one last onslaught of winter—but a genuine and warming spring, it was finally time to put things aright and make a hundred different repairs for his friend Bridger once more.
By then Waits was beginning to show, no mistaking that. Their fifth child this would be. Most every night after they had pulled the blankets over them and lay in the dark, she talked about how she was likely a grandmother by now, that Magpie probably had delivered her first child sometime around the beginning of last summer or so. And here she was, a grandmother, carrying another child of her own!
But she wasn’t old at all, Bass told her again and again. Hell, if she wanted to look at old, all she had to do was look at him! Why, he’d be celebrating his sixtieth birthday this coming winter. The coming of the child was an unexpected joy to them both, but it was even more so a special blessing from First Maker for him. Right from the moment he first noticed Waits’s belly beginning to swell, Titus had considered naming the child Lucas. Perhaps the way the Crow often named their young after a revered and respected elder who had passed away. Maybe, he asked the First Maker in the dark after the cabins went silent and only the tree frogs peeped softly down in the slough, maybe the Creator could tell him if it would be all right to name this child after that grandson who had been torn from him at Soda Springs so many, many summers ago.
So what with all the work that needed doing around the post that spring of ’53 and performing the extra repairs for the emigrants who dragged their wagons through the valley of Black’s Fork, the summer got later and later, and Waits got bigger and bigger … until they decided they’d just wait until this fifth child of theirs would come into the world at Jim’s post. This was, after all, the very place where they had first met Amanda’s youngest boy. Truth was, in the past few weeks Titus had begun to like the sound of Lucas Bridger Bass. If the boy was going to have a white first name, he might as well have the whole caboodle—down to carrying his pa’s last name too.
Rare were the times he and Jim had stolen off to hunt together, both of them so busy at the post or up at the ferry, what with that fat and lazy Vasquez and his wife living their high life with Brigham Young’s Saints down in Salt Lake City, and hardly ever showing their faces at the fort anymore. What a high-nosed hypocrite Vasquez had turned out to be, to his way of thinking. Why, word was Vasquez and his wife even rolled around in a splendid coach and four matched horses bought off the Mormons! A goddamned coach-and-four! If that wasn’t taking on airs, Scratch didn’t know what was. Seemed to be that Louis Vasquez had forgotten the old days and the old friends from those hard, lean times, and with every year seemed all the more eager to throw in with his new friends and business associates down in the valley of the Salt Lake.
So rarely did Titus and Gabe have any time to themselves, time like the old days when men rode off to hunt together, never really having to say much at all because they just enjoyed the moments and didn’t need to spoil it with a lot of talk—just like the old days when they were young and strength flowed through them like the rush of an icy spring runoff breaking through a high-country beaver dam. The old days when it seemed as if their way of life could never end … that all of them would live on forever and this glory life of theirs would never, ever ebb.
So he and Gabe had promised themselves a hunt that morning, * down in the bottoms a couple miles above the post, where the mule deer loved to make their beds. A hunt for the spirit of the old days, a hunt in the old way … a hunt they would never get to make now that Flea had come galloping up with that look of fear on his face.
“Riders?” Bridger echoed the way the youngster had growled the word in American. “Not wagon people?”
“No wagons. Hickerman come, with riders.”
“Hickman? Bill Hickman?” Titus said, bristling at the mere mention of the Mormon’s name. “You hear that, Gabe. Son of a bitch is back to try bullyin’ you outta these here free mountains again!”
It had been more than a year since they had glared at one another up at the Green River crossing. Hickman’s bunch of Mormons had retreated from the valley and hadn’t been seen again until this past May when William A. Hickman had moved his wagons filled with Salt Lake City trade goods past Fort Bridger without so much as stopping or so much as a by-your-leave, first attempting to erect a store not far from Jim’s ferry on the Green River, hoping to capture some of the emigrant trade. But, Jim’s employees—old mountain men all—at that well-established ferry hadn’t let Hickman and his bunch of Mormons bully them away. No, not since those ferrymen were all old veterans of the fur trade, men not about to knuckle under to the bluster and bravado of Brigham Young’s chosen people. Hickman’s outfit hadn’t stayed long on the Green before pushing east to Pacific Springs, which lay right on the western side of the great saddle that was the Southern Pass. There his operation finally began to capture a little of the emigrant trade, siphoning off some of what would have otherwise come on down to Black’s Fork to trade at the far better-known Fort Bridger.
Hearing the name of William A. Hickman was clearly not a good omen.
Seething, Scratch cursed the day the Saints had ever come into this wilderness in search of their Promised Land. Day by day, season by season, Brigham Young and his zealous faithful had gone and changed things far, far more out here than all those Oregon- and California-bound emigrants ever did. The others had gone on through to faraway lands, but the Saints had plopped down right in these mountains, where it eventually had become clear as sun that Brigham Young did not at all look favorably upon the notion that the influential old trapper-turned-trader was sharing this Rocky Mountain wilderness with the Prophet of the Lord. Especially now that the Saints’ Promised Land had become a United States territory, one that encompassed this wild and beautiful valley of the Green River, now that Governor Brigham Young was prepared to waste no effort to see that only his faithful would thrive in this new territory of Utah. No Gentile, especially the renowned Jim Bridger—who had been the real visionary to reveal the Promised Land to the Prophet himself—was bound to last long if he went up against the might of Brigham Young and his personal army of Avenging Angels.
“What’s he come to see me for?” Jim asked Flea.
“Take over your post.”
With a snort, Bridger scoffed at that with a grin. “You must’ve got that wrong, son. Hickman is a oily sort, that’s for certain, an’ I wouldn’t trust the bastard no farther’n I could spit—but I don’t think he’s got huevos big enough to try takin’ over my post—”
“Hickerman and many, many riders,” Flea interrupted.
“Where, son?” Titus asked, growing concerned as he studied his son’s face—heard how the youngster emphasized that word: many.
Flea pointed back in the direction of the post, less than two miles off to the east.
“At the fort awready?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
Flea dropped his pony’s rein and held up both hands, closed his fingers quickly, again and again, until he had tallied more than 150 horsemen.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Scratch exclaimed as his son’s hands finally dropped to his sides. He turned to look at Bridger. “All men?”
“Yes,” Flea answered again.