Buffalo Palace (41 page)

Bass nodded. “Not much—when there ain’t no one else out here what wants beaver fur in trade.”

“Ever you et painter, Scratch?”

“P-painter?” Titus asked as they neared the fire where Fitzpatrick and Bridger’s brigade had been bedding down.

“Sure.
Painter,”
Potts repeated. “Mountain cat. Some calls it a lion. But most of the fellas I know calls that mountain cat a painter.”

“And you eat that lion?”

Potts smacked his lips. “Some fine eatin’. C’mon—we’ll get some on the fire. One of the boys shot a pair this morning up torst the hills yonder.”

That mountain lion was a treat to the pallet and a tongue grown used to elk and venison. Bass eagerly went back for more, eventually slicing himself a third helping of the roast and loin steaks. Later on Bud Tuttle showed up in time to squeeze himself down by Bass and Potts as one of Fitzpatrick’s men brought out his small concertina to the cheers and claps of all those Ashley men gathered at the fire.

Pulling two short leather latches from the tiny pegs that held the instrument closed, the player was then able to slip his hands into leather straps on either side and began to wheeze some air in and out of the squeezebox until he suddenly began to stomp one leg lustily, his foot pounding the ground as he whirled round and round, wailing out the words to the rollicking song accompanied by his concertina’s wild strains.

Many of the others noisily clapped in rhythm as a few leaped to their feet, bowed low to one another, then began to circle round this way and round that, arms locked and head thrown back, wailing and caterwauling worse than any wharfside alley filled with tomcats.

“Man could grow used to this ever’ night, couldn’t he, Scratch?” Tuttle asked, jabbing an elbow into Bass’s ribs. “Music, likker, and the womens!”

Scratch had almost forgotten about such seductive lures, doing his best to stay as far away as he could from the temptations of those young women and their flint-eyed menfolk downstream in the Shoshone village.

Titus looked off in the direction of the quartet’s camp. “Cooper and Hooks didn’t come with you?”

Tuttle grinned as he clapped along with the wheezing squeezebox. “They daubin’ their stingers again.”

“Hell, I should’a knowed,” Titus replied. “Likely them two’ll be daubin’ their stingers when Gabriel blows his goddamned horn!”

“Maybe that, or Gabriel can find ’em laid out under a trader’s likker kegs!”

A cloud quickly passed over Scratch’s face as the firelight flickered on the dancers all. “Silas didn’t go and drink up all our earnin’s, did he?”

Tuttle bravely tried to maintain the smile, then admitted, “Ah, shit—Scratch. Him and Hooks been having themselves such a spree, they ain’t give a damn thought one to seeing that we’re outfitted for the coming winter.”

“Where’s the plews?”

Tuttle hemmed and hawed a moment, then answered.

Bass demanded, “How many packs you figger we got left?”

“Not near enough—”

“All gone in likker?” he squeaked in disbelief.

Dropping his head to look at his hands suddenly stilled even though the music, laughter, and merriment continued around them, Tuttle replied, “An’ foofaraw for the squaws.”

“Damn him,” Bass muttered between clenched teeth. “Sort of a bitch beat me near to death an’ said I owed him my hides … so now he don’t even use them hides he stole from me to trade for what it is we really need!”

“Trouble?” Jim Beckwith asked, curious when Bass’s voice grew louder in the midst of the revelry.

Finally shaking his head, Titus answered, “No. No trouble, Jim.”

As Beckwith turned back to clapping and stomping with the music, Titus grabbed Tuttle by his shirt. “Listen, Bud—we gotta be sure no more of them hides go to pay for geegaws and girlews so them two sonsabitches can stick some Injun gals with their peckers.”

Turtle’s head bobbed, almost in time with his Adam’s apple.

“You figger we can hide them plews somewhere’s till morning?” Titus inquired. “When we can get ’em traded off to Ashley?”

“I s’pose—”

“Ain’t no s’posin’ about it, Bud,” Titus interrupted. “We gotta do it first thing come morning—or Ashley ain’t gonna have him no more powder and lead, no coffee and blankets left to trade.”

“And we need flints bad.”

“See? Just like I told you. Now, I want you get back to camp while them two is off knocking the dew off their lilies and drag the last of them packs off into the bushes somewhere outta camp where they can’t find ’em—drunk or sober.”

“M-me? Ain’t you—”

“Awright, I’ll damn well come and help you.”

Turtle seemed much relieved to have an accomplice in their crime.

“Hell, don’t worry none, Bud,” Titus explained. “If them two ever come back to camp tonight, I don’t figger they’ll be thinking none about plews till long after sunup anyways.”

Bud chuckled. “I do believe you’re likely right, Scratch. They’ll have daubin’ on their minds.”

“C’mon.”

By the time they had dragged what they had left in the way of those heavy packs out of their camp, away from their blanket and canvas bowers and into the nearby bushes, the half-moon was on its rise. It, along with the glittery stars overhead, was enough to cast some faint shadows as Bass and Tuttle made their way back through
the raucous camp toward Fitzpatrick’s fire, where the concertina player was taking himself a rest and many of the others were settling back, their cups filled with Ashley’s liquor, jawing and swapping exaggerated tales of their experiences and exploits.

“How ’bout them two, Bridger?” someone called out as Tuttle and Bass came into the fire’s light. “They hear your tale of the Salt Sea?”

As some of the bunch chuckled and jabbed elbows into one another’s ribs, the young Bridger turned to gaze over his shoulder at the two free trappers. “Don’t believe they have.”

“Then tell ’em!”

Nonplussed, Jim turned around on his stump and asked the returning pair, “Since we run onto your outfit north of here, I ever tell you fellas about the time I floated down to the Great Salt Sea?”

“Y-you been all the way out there to the west?” Tuttle asked, turning slowly in disbelief to look at Bass.

Bud’s question brought howls of laughter from a few of that bunch gathered round the fire.

“Don’t pay these dunderheads no mind,” Bridger confided.

“What they laughing at us for?” Titus asked, feeling sheepish—as if some joke were about to be played on them.

Bridger offered up a cup of liquor, handing it to Bass as he said, “Don’t fret none, now: some of these here coons ain’t got the brains God give a buffler gnat.”

One of the scoffers cried out, “Just ’cause we don’t believe you floated where you said you floated, don’t mean we got us gnat-brains!”

“Sit yourselves down, fellas,” young Bridger said, “an’ I’ll tell you ’bout that leetle trip I had me through hell’s canyon in a bull boat—”

“All the way to the Salt Sea!” bellowed one of the doubters, accompanied by roars of laughter from the rest.

Wagging his head as if he was used to the good-natured ribbing, Jim exclaimed with mock seriousness, “I’ll swear. There be times a mountain man is a most consarned critter, boys. Now, you go take a look at them
niggers laughin’ their bellies sore over there on their logs, and you’ll see just what I mean. Some of these here beaver trappers are the most uncertainest fellers ever—cuz they’ll argeefie about near anything. And that even includes argeein’ about argeein’!”

“There t’weren’t a bit of blamed sense in argeein’ about it,” Bridger declared, back to being solemn-faced now that he was warming to his tale. “But these here other yahoos good for that.”

Many of the rest pounded their knees and back-slapped one another in unbridled mirth, guffawing lustily as the liquor and the camaraderie warmed them all that summer night as stars shown like diamonds and the moon hung like a slice of translucent mother-of-pearl right over their heads.

“What they don’t got in good sense,” Fitzpatrick declared, “these fellers make up for with big grins!”

“Last year it were!” one of the laughers roared out, anxious to get on with the tale. “G’won, Jim—tell ’em!”

“I will,” Bridger snorted, and turned back to Bass and Tuttle with a wink, “just as soon as you yabberin’ yahoos shut your fly-traps!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” commanded one of the laughers, who stood, weaving a bit in his drunkenness, waving his arms at the others for quiet. When they all fell silent behind hands, he declared, “Go right on ahead, young Jim. We’s a’waiting on your windy story.”

Just then another unruly trapper cried out, “Best tell us only the true of it, boy!”

That sent the entire bunch into fits of laughter that did not end until Bridger had gone to the kettle with his tin cup, dipped some of the heady grain liquor from it, and resettled back on the trunk of a downed Cottonwood. Casually he took himself a swig and looked round at those gathered there as things quieted once again.

He asked them, “You ’bout done with your pokin’ fun at me?”

“G’won head, Jim,” Fitzpatrick said gravely as he bent forward to select a stout cottonwood limb from the stack of wood near the fire. “I’ll damn well thrash the next son of a bitch what interrupts young Bridger’s story with his silly gaping!”

“Thankee, Fitz,” Bridger replied, and took himself another sip of the liquor before he set the cup on the ground between his worn moccasins. “Like that big-nosed yahoo over there told you, it were some two winters back.”

“A year and a half ago?” Tuttle asked.

Nodding his head, Bridger replied, “Near ’bouts. Late fall it were.”

“Hell, it could’ve been early winter too, Jim,” declared Fitzpatrick. “Nobody was keeping track nohow.”

“Leastwise—the first snows had come to this here country,” Bridger continued. “Most of us was settling in for the winter not far on down this here same valley, it were.” He pointed south with a wag of his arm. “Seemed that not all the trapping outfits was in yet—but most was already here.”

Ashley’s men were settling in real good, too, Jim explained. They had cut down strong saplings and lashed them together into eastern-style wickiups over which they interlaced branches to turn the dry snows of that high prairieland. Here in what they had come to call Willow Valley the previous year, the trappers had a good source of water, plenty of grass to last their animals for the winter, and plenty of protection from the harshest of the season’s winds. Firewood lay within easy reach along the creeks and streams that tumbled out of the surrounding hills. Day by day they shot buffalo, laying in more and more of the hides they fleshed and draped over the wickiups for insulation, slicing and drying thin strips of the lean
red meat over smoky fires … knowing the hard days of bitter cold and deep snows were not long in coming.

Just beyond that range of hills to the west of them lay the valley of the Bear—a river that would soon become the irritating source of contention between the Ashley men.

Earlier that July of 1824 more than fifty of them had followed Jedediah Smith and John Weber across the deceivingly low South Pass and on to the country of the Green River. By late August that year they had reached the crest of an unexplored mountain range and peered off to the west, down into the valley of a new river they would soon find had already been visited and named by the John Bull trappers for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

From the heights Smith’s men could see how the Bear flowed north out of a lake they would come to name for the sweet taste of its water. But upon following this new river the trappers discovered the river precipitously reversed itself in some forbidding lava beds. Steadfastly following the Bear upstream, the trappers continued their march south. Eventually that autumn they reached the Willow Valley, and there they decided to winter. Just to the southwest of their encampment the trappers could climb to high bluffs and stare down at the Bear River as it appeared to twist back to the north in the distance once more—but this time it flowed through a narrow canyon filled with thunderous white water.

Just as it is the way with any men who find too much time on their hands, the trappers turned their discussions of that unpredictable Bear River into an argument—with nearly every soul taking a side—and then that argument boiled into a matter of wagers: did that river continue north, or curl itself back south still another time? Hell, just what did happen to that fitful, fickle river after it disappeared in that high-walled gorge?

“Until Fitz here reminded ever’ last nigger of us there weren’t no way to know who’d win them wagers,” Jim continued his story in the hush of that starry night, “because no man knowed for sure where that river went.”

Fitzpatrick said, “Hell—I didn’t figger there’d be a man among ’em what’d go to find out for his own self!”

“Didn’t count on young Jim here!” Daniel Potts cried out.

“He’s a struttin’ cock if ever there was one!” another man shouted as others added their admiration.

“Wasn’t like I jumped at the chance,” Bridger admitted. “But some of these here yahoos come to me with such straight, no-account faces and told me I was the coon they could trust to take on that there canyon—which’d put their argeement to rest, once’t and for all.”