Buffalo Palace (37 page)

Hysterically laughing, Hooks said, “Just look at him, Scratch! Why, I cain’t hardly believe my own eyes. It’s a Negra—out in these here mountains!”

Potts growled, struggling to hold Beckwith, “He’s as good a man as any.”

“If Beckwith here ain’t the kind to walk away from the fight we had us with Blackfoot not long back,” Bridger interrupted them all as he hurried up purposefully, Cooper and Fitzpatrick both scrambling to stay with him,
“then he sure as hell ain’t the kind to back off from no fight with you.”

“Fight?” Cooper repeated as he stepped between the two, grinning from ear to ear, raking his long beard with his fingers, and taking a measure of those standing with the mulatto. “There ain’t gonna be no fight here … will there, now, Billy?”

“No fight, Silas,” Hooks agreed quickly, then giggled some more like a man willing to rub salt into another’s wounds.

“Damn ride der’ h’ain’t be no fide here,” declared a swarthy, dark-eyed, much older man as he eased up on the far side of Fitzpatrick, his fists clenched and ready.

It was plain the trapper had something on the order of twenty years on Bass, maybe as much as a decade older than Cooper. More than a life outdoors had aged his face: many a year on the frontier had clearly left their mark on the man. His accent was thick, throaty, yet something that sang of its own rhythm, an accent Titus could not remember hearing since those youthful days along the Lower Mississippi: maybe Natchez, more likely all the way down to New Orleans, where the Spanish, French, and Creole tongues mingled freely with the upriver frontier dialects.

“Easy there, Henry,” Fitzpatrick coaxed the German-born Henry Fraeb. “Frapp here gets his blood up pretty quick, but there ain’t no need for cross words, is there, fellas?”

“We’re all friends here,” Cooper readily agreed. “Right, Billy?”

Hooks giggled behind his hand, his eyes gleaming with childlike innocence again. “I ain’t never see’d no Negra out here—”

“Beckwith is the name, not Negra,” the mulatto repeated firmly. It was plain his pride had been wounded. He looked at Hooks steadily and said, “Beckwith. Maybeso you’ll remember it one day.”

“Why, you gonna be something big up on a stick?” Billy mocked, then suffered himself another fit of laughter.

“G’won and help them others with their plunder,” Silas ordered sternly, slapping Hooks across the upper arm, plainly made uneasy by the readiness of the others to back the mulatto.

Cooper waited while Hooks moved off wagging his head, still giggling to himself. “Pay him no mind fellas,” he advised good-naturedly. He tapped a finger to the side of his head, explaining, “Billy’s just … just a bit slow a’times. Why, he finds him some simple joy in most ever’thin’.”

His eyes angry, Bridger argued, “Being soft-brained don’t give a man no right—”

“You’re right,” Silas interrupted, nodding at the much younger man. “C’mon now, fellas. What say we forget this trouble … let’s camp!”

“Man’s right,” Fitzpatrick said grudgingly, eyeing Bridger, Fraeb, and Beckwith with a look that told them all that he expected them to smooth their ruffled feathers and put the matter to rest. “Sun’s down and this bunch ain’t et since morning. ’Sides—we move on to shining times tomorrow.”

Cooper shouldered in between Fitzpatrick and Bridger as the group moved toward the fire, asking, “You boys figger the general spoke the truth when he tolt us he’d pack likker this summer?”

Fitzpatrick said, “Ashley’s a man allays done what he said he’d do. If he says there’ll be likker to ronnyvoo—there’ll be likker there, by God.”

Bass watched the rest gradually settle near the fire with Cooper. But instead of joining them, Potts and Beckwith hung back with Titus.

“So, fellas,” Scratch finally asked in that uneasy silence, “we still going to have us our soak?”

The mulatto shrugged dolefully. “S’pose I could use some water.”

“Damn right you could use some water!” Potts exclaimed suddenly, joyfully, flailing an arm exuberantly at Beckwith. “You’re coming to the river, or you’re dang well stayin’ downwind o’ me from here on out!”

As cold as the water was, nonetheless Scratch plopped himself down in a little pool of it near the sandy bank, just as Potts and Beckwith readily did as twilight put a twinkle to the summer sky. They sat up to their armpits in a little backwater the Bear had long ago cut out of the side of the bank.

In the last of the real light Titus noticed the dull glimmer
of something hung round the mulatto’s neck on a narrow thong. “What’s that you got yourself?”

Beckwith held it up, gazed down at it again a moment. “A guinea. First pay I ever got. Stamped with the year I was born.” He held it up for Bass to see.

Leaning over, Titus stared in the fading light at the large round coin, a tiny hole drilled near its top right through the king’s head. There below the nobleman’s neck was emblazoned the date 1800. “You was born six years after me.”

Potts suggested, “Tell him where you got your coin, Jim.”

“We never was the best-off folks in Portage des Sioux outside of St. Charles,” he explained. “So my pa set me to work with a blacksmith, learn me a trade.”

“You don’t say,” Titus replied with happy recognition. “I worked for many a year in Hysham Troost’s place.”

“There in St. Lou? I heard of it, often,” the mulatto replied. “Casner’s was the blacksmith shop where I apprenticed for some five years.”

“Then you come out here to the mountains?” Bass inquired.

“Nawww. Not when I left Casner’s,” Beckwith said. “First I fought Injuns with Colonel Johnson’s expedition up to Fever River when I was released from Casner’s indenture … only nineteen, I was by then. Short time later I figured to take me a ride on down to N’Awlins … where I got yellow fever for my trouble. Barely made it back home alive to my folks at Portage des Sioux, and there I stayed put, healing up, till I learned General Ashley was outfitting him a new brigade for the mountains.”

“I first knowed of Ashley some time back—had him outfits going upriver for the last few years,” Bass observed. “When was it you first come out with him?”

“Back to twenty-four,” Jim answered, his eyes growing wide with excitement, “and that was the first year the general wasn’t headed upriver with them keelboats to get on by the Ree villages. This time he was bound to ride overland for the mountains.”

“Say, boys—my belly’s beginning to holler for fodder,” Potts declared, leaning over to scoop up a handful of
sand from the bottom of the pool. “Telling me it’s time to eat my fill of that elk we shot this morning.”

For a few moments Titus watched with interest as Potts, then Beckwith, scooped up one handful after another and used it to scrub their skin.

“What’re you two doing?”

Potts replied, “Givin’ ourselves a good washing.”

“Just sittin’ there in the river isn’t going to help a man much,” the mulatto advised.

“When was the last time you sat your ass down in some water?” Potts asked.

With a shrug Titus said, “Been a long time. ’Cept for times I swum rivers with my critters and stood freezing in mountain streams—I ain’t been near no washing water for more’n a year.”

“Once a year,” Potts instructed, “a man ought’n wash up proper … as good a cleaning as he can.”

Bass said, “I never figgered I’d be one to carry me lye soap.”

“We ain’t the sort to carry no soap neither,” Beckwith explained. “But a good hard scrubbin’ with sand does a toler’ble job, Scratch.”

“Awright,” Titus answered them, scooping up a double handful of sand, which he smeared over his chest.

“Rub it hard, now,” Potts said. “Gotta get shet of all that stink afore ronnyvoos.”

“If you watch, you’ll see your horses and mules does about the same thing when they have themselves a roll in the dirt,” Beckwith said as he pulled one leg out of the water and began sanding it.

Next to his, Bass’s leg was starkly white. In fact, Scratch was so pale, his legs reminded him of the skinny white legs on the pullets the family raised back on the place in Boone County. Only his hands from wrist down were deeply tanned, along with that wide vee extending from his neck onto his chest, as well as his darkened face. Except for those river crossings when he briefly stripped off his clothing, every other part of his pale hide had been protected from much exposure to the sun’s light as far back as he could remember.

At first it was an odd sensation, rubbing the river bottom grit from chin to toe, but soon enough it became a
right pleasant feeling. In fact, his skin began to tingle and glow the more he scrubbed.

“That ’bout does it for me,” Beckwith announced as he rose out of the water, turned, and long-legged it onto the riverbank to stand dripping among the foxsedge.

“I’m done too,” Potts agreed as he stood with a splash.

Bass watched in amusement as the two trembled and quaked, shaking what they could of the water from their flesh just like a hound. Then, as the evening breezes cooled, they quickly stepped into their clothing, despite still being a little damp. Potts pulled on leather britches and a ragged, dirty calico shirt. Beneath his linen shirt Beckwith wore a pair of leggings and a breechclout, same as Bass.

As Titus emerged from the water, shivering in the gentle movement of a cool wind, the other two plopped to the ground and began pulling on their moccasins.

“Dang if it ain’t time to fill up my meatbag,” Potts declared. “Been a long stretch since breakfast.”

“C’mon, now—don’t dally,” Beckwith urged Bass. “Unless you hurry, there won’t be a thing left for us to eat.”

“He’s right.” Potts smacked with relish. “Them others can eat a horse by themselves—and all we got us is half a elk!”

Titus leaped into his clothes, suddenly discovering he was himself immensely hungry after the long day’s ride, followed by that invigorating bath. As the trio neared the fire lighting the ring of deeply tanned faces, Fitzpatrick stood, wiping his greasy fingers in his hair as he called out.

“That you, Potts?”

They strode into the corona of firelight as Daniel announced, “It’s me.”

“You got Beckwith?”

“I’m here,” the mulatto replied, coming into the light.

All three stopped near the fire ring. Potts was the first to yank his knife from his belt and bend down over one of the two roasting elk quarters. He sliced himself a long, narrow slab of the pink meat still dripping juice and blood into the flames below—each drop landing with a merry hiss.

“Just wanted to tell you what I reminded the rest here,” Fitzpatrick declared. “When you roll out in the morning, see to it you trim off that beard of your’n.”

Potts eyed the brigade leader. “All of it?”

Fitzpatrick nodded. “You too, Beckwith.”

Scratching at the side of his face, the mulatto said, “A shame, Fitz. I been growing real particular to it since winter.”

Sporting his own brown beard, Fitzpatrick replied, “If you don’t wanna stay working for Ashley long, then a man can keep his beard, boys. Otherwise—you know the general’s rule. He don’t ’llow no beards on his men.”

Titus asked, “Why’s Ashley so all-fired against beards?”

“He’s a trader, mind you,” Fitzpatrick explained, stepping close. “And traders allays deal with them Injuns, don’t they?”

“Yep,” Billy Hooks answered, leaping into the conversation.

With a cursory glance at the mat of facial hair on Hooks, Fitzpatrick went on. “General’s come to know Injuns don’t like beards. They don’t much favor any kind of hair on a man’s face.”

“That’s why they pluck ever’ damn hair out,” Bridger added with a mock shudder. “Even the eyebrows too.”

Fitzpatrick continued. “Few years back Ashley learned him that some Injun bands won’t have nothing to do with a man wearing a beard. They say it hides a feller’s face. And the Injuns is big on reading a man’s face to see that he’s talking straight.”

“Man kin grow him a beard,” Potts declared, “but he dare’st not let the general ever see it.”

“All that fuss over a man’s beard?” Tuttle inquired.

“You free trappers don’t have to worry none over that,” Fitzpatrick explained.

Potts stepped back with a second slice of elk hanging from his knife. “But you free trappers best ’member the general takes care of his own fellas first.”

“An’ if Ashley’s got anythin’ left after he outfits his own for the next year,” a new man spoke up with an accent that reminded Bass of the Spanish and French
tongues heard at the mouth of the Mississippi, “then you free trappers might get to pick over the leavin’s.”

Bass studied that speaker for a moment as the older man bit down on one end of a long strip of meat, pulled the strip out from his lips with one hand, then used the knife he clutched in his other hand to slice off a good mouthful. He had long black hair prematurely sprinkled with gray where it hung loosely on either side of his well-wrinkled face, and his beard was starting to show a dusting of iron too, although the man was clearly younger than Titus.

Potts explained, “Louis here don’t cotton much to you free trappers joining in on our ronnyvoos.”

Around a mouthful of the meat, Louis Vasquez spoke up for himself, his dark Spanish eyes glaring at Daniel Potts. “This here’s the general’s doin’s—ronnyvoo is. Them don’t work for the general has no business barterin’ plews for Ashley’s trade goods.”

“’Sides powder and lead, coffee and sugar,” Fitzpatrick said, “the rest of it’s all foofaraw anyway, Vaskiss.”

“Their kind wanna work for Ashley, eh?” Vasquez growled. “Let ’em sign on wit’ Ashley.”

Silas snorted. “An’ fight Blackfeet up there in the devil’s own country like you boys done? No thankee. Pll trap where I wanna trap an’ stay aways from making trouble for myself.”

Then Hooks chimed in, “That means us keeping our noses far from Blackfoot country!”

“Weren’t all that far north of here,” Bridger declared. “Was a good li’l scrap of it. Show ’em what I mean, fellas.”

Five of the others brandished scalps they had hanging from their belts.

“That’s five Blackfoot what ain’t ever gonna raise my hair!” Bridger exclaimed.

“’Nother’n was shot up bad—but the rest rode off with his carcass,” Fitzpatrick said. “Couldn’t raise his scalp.”