Crack in the Sky (47 page)

At Bass’s left a trapper was shouting, “Get ready to give ’em a salute!”

Most already had their rifles in the air by the time those in the lead sprinted past 250 yards.

“Give them pork eaters a mountain how-do!” a voice called out somewhere in that cluster where Bass found himself as the trappers funneled closer and closer together with every yard.

Horses’ nostrils flared as big as their frightened eyes, straining at the bits and hackamores, lunging forward across the uneven ground at a maddening gallop.

At two hundred yards the rider at Bass’s elbow shouted, “Whiskey for my whistle!”

That journey to the last hundred yards took no more than a matter of heartbeats…. Then he could see their faces.

The pilgrims’ eyes and mouths grew as wide and gaping as were the eyes and nostrils of the trappers’ horses. And those leaders of that pack train were already standing in the stirrups, shouting something to the first horsemen racing their way. They raised their long rifles into the air and fired: mushroom puffs of smoke immediately followed by the dull echo of a half-dozen scattered booms carried off on the summer breeze.

Immediately echoed by a gunfire greeting from a handful of the charging riders … then another ten … and now two dozen more. Gray smoke hung in tattered shreds just above Scratch’s head as he raced on.

The headman coming down off the slope toward them was warwhooping and waving his rifle like a fiend. Suddenly he reined up in a flurry of dust and leaped to the ground, his horse wheeling away in the excitement. Snatching the broad-brimmed felt hat from his head, he started sprinting on foot toward the oncoming riders.

One of those horsemen just ahead of Bass yanked back on his reins, his horse’s head twisted to the side as it stiff-legged to a halt and the rider lunged to the ground, nearly spilled, then was up and finding his gait, running those last few steps until he and the leader of the pack train met one another with a violent collision, banging into one another, then dancing round and round as they pounded on each other. As Scratch shot on by, beginning to rein back his own horse, he recognized Robert Campbell as one of the two. Then, as the pair continued their spin, he recognized Bill Sublette—the trapper chief called Cut Face by Washakie’s Shoshone, whom Sublette had helped fight against the Blackfoot back to the summer of 1826.

All around him now the free trappers were popping their hands against their open mouths,
whoo-whooing
and
hoo-hooing
like attacking savages, not slowing in the slightest as they exploded through the ranks of the pack train—bawling mules, rearing horses, and frightened men fresh from the settlements, all of them gone white-faced and gulping at the long-haired, buckskinned, half-naked
mountain men wheeling round and round the long train as if they were attacking their quarry.

On all sides more guns went off. Puffs of gray clouds hovered in the hot air, barely dissipating on the gentle breeze as old hands shrieked their war cries and Sublette’s greenhorns grumbled and cursed, fighting their frightened, balky mules. More and more of the company men breathlessly slowed their attack, reining up and leaning off their horses to shake hands, calling out their greetings, some even managing to hug a newcomer here or there in the ragged procession.

As he reined about, Bass saw that Campbell and the pack-train leader were remounted and loping on toward the brigade encampment, where a few well-browned lodges bordered a small glade.

By then more than three dozen Indians had splashed across the Popo Agie—warriors, women, and naked brown children, along with half a hundred barking, baying half-wild dogs who weaved between the legs of man and horse alike, adding their voices to the excitement as Campbell and Sublette slid to the ground, the reins to their horses taken by one of the company men who led the animals away.

“By damn, it’s Billy Sublette his own self!” Hatcher roared as he reined his horse from a gallop to a walk beside Titus.

“Any man know if he brung likker this year?”

Jack’s head bobbed like a young child’s on Christmas morning. “Some of them greenhorns say Sublette brung him some likker all the way from the States!”

“Damn if I could ever feel this dry again!” Scratch bellowed.

Hatcher himself dragged a forearm across his lower face. “Let’s get these here horses tied off, then get back afore that trader opens up his packs!”

But tapping those whiskey kegs wasn’t the first item of business.

As Hatcher’s men sprinted back through the trees toward Campbell’s lodge and that scattering of bowers
tied here and there among the saplings, those shelters made from oiled Russian sheeting or thick Indian trade blankets, the last of the pack train reached the company camp. As the newcomers dismounted, Sublette ordered them off in one direction or another. Back in the trees the unloading of the first mules began, while at three other points to the north, east, and south more divisions were made, particular bundles dropped at each location according to the trader’s instructions.

Only then did William Sublette have one of his clerks unlash the two leather trunks from the packsaddle atop a weathered old mule the booshway kept close at hand. With both of those three-strap trunks resting at his feet, the trader knelt to unbuckle the straps across the first chest.

Quickly flinging back the top and reaching inside, Sublette said, “Bob—get that other’n open and we’ll give out the mail.”

The moment Campbell crouched over the second trunk, the anxious crowd of boisterous men began to shove close.

“Get back! Get back, there!” Sublette growled at his eager employees. “You’ll all get mail if’n you got mail comin’!”

“You heard the man!” hollered a young, clean-shaven trapper as he shouldered his way toward the center of the mass. “You damn well waited more’n a year for mail—you niggers can wait a li’l more!”

Damn, if that wasn’t Bridger himself!

“Jim!” Bass hollered, lunging toward the younger man known among his brigades as the “little booshway.”

He hadn’t given up on the mountains!

Bridger turned, his eyes squinting in the bright light, giving measure to the onrushing trapper.

“Titus Bass!” hollered Scratch as he held out his hand and came to a stop. “You ’member me from twenty-six?”

Bridger held out his hand, saying, “Titus Bass. I do recollect meeting you. Twenty-six—was it that long ago?”

“You tol’t me all ’bout your float down to the big salt, Jim!”

“Damn, if that wasn’t a time to make my bung pucker!” Bridger roared. “Good to see ol’ faces here, Titus Bass! Three y’ar now, and you still got your ha’r too!”

“Not all of it,” Bass replied, patting the back of his head, sweeping off the blue bandanna and the tanned Arapaho scalp lock without ceremonial preliminaries.

A sudden hush fell over those men in that immediate area, followed quickly by an excited murmur as even more pushed in to have themselves a look at Bass.

For his part, Bridger stood on his toes as Titus bowed and turned his head so his friend could inspect the bare skull. “Man’s gotta keep that bone covered, don’t he?”

“I do for certain, Jim!”

Sublette began calling out names, his left arm cradling a mass of folded, sealed, and posted letters as well as small wrapped packages, while Campbell unbuckled the last strap securing the top of the second trunk. He threw back the lid and stuffed both hands down into the masses of old newspapers and correspondence from loved ones and family far, far away.

Bridger’s fingers brushed the long scalp Bass held. “Injun hair?”

“Arapaho,” Scratch answered. “Last spring it happed I run onto the same nigger scalped me two year ago.”

Bridger rocked back on his heels, grinning widely. “Damn, but that’s got the makin’s of a windy tale!”

“Ain’t no bald-face to it!” Jack Hatcher cheered as he came up to slap his arm around Bass’s shoulder. “Ever’ word’s the truth!”

“The hell you say,” Jim declared. He pointed at Bass’s head. “Get that topknot of your’n covered, or you’re like to burn your brains.”

Holding the scalp on with one hand, Scratch slid the bandanna onto his head, smoothing it back from the forehead. “Out here a man’s gotta pertect what little he’s got left for brains.”

“I better see camp’s set up for the train like Billy asked me to do,” Bridger said as he began to turn away. “I figger you’ll be round for a few days afore pulling out?”

“There’s whiskey to guzzle down my gullet, Jim,”
Bass exclaimed. “I ain’t pulling out till Sublette’s kegs is empty or I’m gone bust and don’t have no more beaver to trade!”

Jim asked, “Where you camped?”

“Yonder,” he answered, pointing upstream. “You’ll find us there a ways—two, maybe three rifle shots.”

“Camped just close enough to get in trouble with Billy Sublette’s whiskey!” Hatcher bellowed. “Far ’nough away for us to sleep it off when we do!”

Although Sublette announced he would not be hammering in the bungs to those whiskey kegs until the following morning, there was no dearth of gaiety that evening as twilight broke across the valley of the Popo Agie. Whiskey would be pouring soon enough, they knew, but for now the booshways stored the potent grain alcohol in Campbell’s lodge, where a rotation of trusted guards would be stationed throughout the night.

Meanwhile more of the newcomers were assigned the task of picketing the pack animals, some to erect the five large awnings under which Sublette would conduct his business from the shade. A pair of greenhorns assembled a large balance scale beneath the oiled sheeting that was to be Sublette’s headquarters, while a few trusted clerks began to unpack the trade goods, checking off every item as it emerged from those canvas and paper and blanket bundles wrapped up back in early spring, back in St. Louis, back in the far, far States of America.

Fires roared and meat roasted, coffee boiled and men laughed, pulling uproarious pranks or puffing unbelievable windies for the newcomers fresh off the prairie who suddenly found themselves here now among these half-wild veterans of the wilderness, those hivernants who had wintered in the fastness of these terrible mountains inhabited by never-before-seen savages and unimaginable beasts. This first night always served as an initiation of sorts—a tradition none too kind but always applied in good humor to those greenhorns struck dumb to suddenly discover themselves in the company of these hard cases who had survived Blackfeet and blizzards, scorching deserts and dry scrapes, men who had outlasted loneliness
and deprivation … yet were willing still to risk it all again for another roll with Lady Fate’s dice.

Here and there in the bright, flickering flames, the few among them who could read each sat with a cluster of those who could not, reciting those undecipherable words written by mothers and fathers, sisters or brothers, or even more moving—soul-wrenching prose and promises written by sweethearts left behind when men abandoned hearth and homes, daring to challenge these mountains. Letters of yearning and words of caring scribbled on small sheets of foolscap, stories from home counties read from yellowed newsprint. Lockets of hair sent west many, many months before, sent beyond the wide Missouri with faith and a prayer that it would reach a beloved son, would make it to a beloved brother, by the hope of some aching heart that it might just find its way to a beau known to be somewhere out west beneath a wide and faraway sky.

Stories and news of the east were dragged from the newcomers, tales of places and rivers and towns left far behind, a long time ago. Some men laughed at themselves and traded jokes on others, while more sat on downed logs and listened with red-rimmed eyes to what was read them of home another world away. Men who sat in abject silence, listening, men who sat remembering those dim-lit faces once more, remembering the black-earthed closeness of those gently rounded hills and hardwood forests, men who thought back to how long it had been, how far they had come since choosing to leave all that had been, since choosing to cast their lot with the few, with these bravest of the brave.

Like men become so crazed, they dared not consider the odds against them. Men torn by not knowing if they ever would return to what was left behind … men not able to understand why they didn’t really care if they ever did go back.

Night came down on that far valley, the sun hiding its face beyond the Wind River Mountains. Although he had no letters, although he had no loved ones who knew where to write him—Scratch felt that here he was among his chosen brotherhood. Families were no more than a matter of
chance. Here he felt himself embraced in the bosom of those who were his family of choice. Men who expected no more from him than they were willing themselves to give in return.

Songs of old leaped from those strings that Jack Hatcher pressed beneath his dancing fingers, tunes came wheezing and wailing from that squeezebox of a concertina that a weaving and bobbing Elbridge Gray clutched at the end of his outstretched arms.

Into that wide circle of fires’ light, pairs of hardened men came. Turning to bow to one another, they readily clasped hands and danced with festive abandon: whirling recklessly—ofttimes spinning one another so robustly they landed in a heap at the very edge of the merry flames, where they guffawed at one another until bounding to their feet, stomping and shimmying some more. While some preferred to imitate the fancy steps learned long ago in polite white company back east, others stomped toe and heel round and round, swooping low and howling in their own earsplitting rendition of the scalp or buffalo or war dance.

And at the border of that open-air dance floor stood those copper-skinned spectators who looked on in unabashed amazement at this unfettered celebration by men who had survived another year in the mountain trade, witnessing this raucous revelry of those who had journeyed west to join that small fraternity of white men come to challenge an unforgiving land. Shoshone males brought their women and children across the creek, here to watch impassively this annual gathering of the white man’s own noisy, strutting warrior bands.

A few like Bass turned their gaze upon this young woman or that, wondering just what it would take in the way of foofaraw to talk one of those dark-skinned beauties into the willows, to convince her to join him back into the shadows where a few minutes of fevered coupling might ease this aching woman-hunger he suffered, might quench his parched thirst for a moistened coupling with a woman soft, a woman smooth, a woman as eager as he.