“Like we just told him—we ain’t with no outfit,” Scratch declared, surprised to discover just how proud that made him to state it so unequivocally. “We are an outfit.”
“This bunch is on its own hook,” Caleb Wood emphasized.
“Thort you might be some of American Fur coming in,” the second man said. “They been dogging near every one of our brigades since last summer.”
“This here’s Mad Jack Hatcher,” Scratch exclaimed proudly, sweeping an extended arm toward their leader. “He’s the one what heads this outfit of free mountaineers.”
“Hatcher, is it?” Nathan Porter asked, extending his hand to Jack. “From the sounds of it, you got a passel of furs to trade.”
“We got plenty of plew,” Hatcher agreed as they shook. “But where’s my men to find something to trade them furs for?”
The taller of the company men said, “Just as soon’s the rest of the brigades ride in, we’ll start the trading.”
“At mountain prices, I’ll lay!” Scratch snarled.
Porter nodded. “After all, this here’s the mountains—”
“Wagh!” Hatcher snorted with the guttural roar of the grizzly boar. “Mountain prices, he said, boys!”
“Get ready to get yourselves honey-fuggled by them company booshways!” Caleb Wood cried as he pounded a hand on Porter’s back, both of them laughing easily.
But the second man was clearly uncomfortable as Hatcher’s men guffawed along with many of the company men. “Mountain prices is what we all take in exchange. Ain’t no man better’n any other.”
“No, I savvy you’re right there,” Scratch said as he stepped up before the tall trapper. “But just as long as we get what’s fair for our plew here in the mountains, a man don’t mind paying mountain prices for his necessaries.”
“Hold on!” Rowland jumped forward, his face drawn and gray with concern. “Y-you mean … if’n there ain’t gonna be no trader come out—there ain’t gonna be no whiskey?”
“No whiskey!” shrieked Rufus Graham.
Now it was Porter’s turn to roar with laughter. “Ain’t got enough to float a bullboat back to St. Louie, boys … but we have us enough to wash the dust out’n your gullet!”
“Whooo-haw!” Bass shouted with glee, sidling up to fling an arm over Porter’s shoulder. “How smooth it be? Like a Natchez whore’s baby-haired bum?”
Nathan Porter turned and looked at Bass in alarm. “Smooth? Hell, it ain’t smooth!”
A new trapper stepped forward. “Ain’t no such a thing as smooth likker in these here mountains, friend. Ever’ drink’ll cut’cha going down and land like a bar of Galena lead when it hits bottom.”
“I wanna know if it can take the shine off my traps,” Hatcher said.
“An’ can it peel the varnish off my saddle tree?” Bass inquired.
“Hell if it can’t!” the man replied with a near toothless grin.
Bass looked over at Hatcher, and they both smiled so broadly, it nearly cracked their faces in half.
Scratch screamed, “Then bring on that there likker, fellers—’cause I got me a two-year thirst to rid myself of!”
Although there was indeed a small supply of crude grain alcohol at the south shore of Sweet Lake, that summer of 1828 there would be no great and boisterous revelry because Sublette and Jackson had already reached the mountains with some twenty thousand dollars in supplies the winter before. Despite the shortage of trade goods and liquor, the air of excitement, camaraderie, and fellowship swelled as the sun began to drop and twilight approached each evening.
Rendezvous was rendezvous. Make no mistake of that. A man worked a whole year to journey off to some prearranged valley for this reunion with faces and friends he had not seen in all those months of grueling labor in freezing streams, fighting off the numbing cold of the past winter, defending himself against horse-raiders and scalping parties. This July a double handful of the new company’s men would be missing.
Survivors of one more year in the wilderness, Hatcher’s men joined other free trappers and brigade men at their fires for swapping stories, generously lathered with exaggeration bordering on lies, catching up on any fragment of the stale news brought out from the settlements by the traders last winter—news seemingly as fresh as these men in the wilderness wished to make every report and flat-out rumor.
As night eased down, black-necked stilts called out softly from the rushes in the nearby marsh bordering the lake.
“Listen to that, won’t you?” a stranger said to Bass at that cluster of fires in the brigade camp where all of them had gathered.
“A purty sound,” Titus replied, hearing the birds’ calls fade across the water.
“If’n you think that’s purty,” Rowland said to the stranger as he strode up, “then you ain’t never heard Jack play his fiddle.”
The man whirled on Rowland. “One of your men has him a fiddle?”
“We do,” Bass declared proudly.
A new stranger with a big red nose leaped up from the ground where he had been lying. “He can play it?”
“Damn if he can’t,” Rowland declared.
Bass nodded. “Plays so damned bad, it hurts more’n your ears when you’re nursing a hangover!”
“Hey, Squeeg!” the man with the big red nose roared across the fire. “One of these here free men plays the fiddle!”
“Who’s the one with the fiddle?” demanded a tall, barrel-chested man.
“I am,” Hatcher volunteered, standing from his stump. “Jack Hatcher’s the name.”
“Mine’s Brody.”
Then Jack warned, “But I don’t play for free.”
“That’s right,” Solomon Fish agreed. “None of us play for free.”
Brody wheeled around on Fish. “What’s it you play?”
“Gimme a kettle an’ a stick,” Solomon said with a straight face.
“The hell with you,” and Brody turned back to Hatcher. “You play for a drink, won’cha?”
“The devil hisself got a tail, don’t he?”
The tall man took a wide, playful swing at Hatcher. “Go get your fiddle, coon! This bunch is half-froze for sweet music!”
That twilight as the sky grew dark and meat broiled on the end of sharpened sticks, spitted and sizzling over the leaping flames, Jack Hatcher returned with the scuffed and scratched, journey-weary oak-brown violin case.
“I’ll be dogged!” some man quietly exclaimed. “He do have him a fiddle!”
Another voice asked across the fire, “Can he really play it?”
“Your toes’ll be tapping in less time’n takes to lift a Blackfoot’s hair!” Caleb Wood explained.
“By doggy! Lookee thar’!” one of them marveled as they all bent over Jack when he knelt beside one of the numerous fires. One at a time he took the narrow straps from their buckles until he slowly folded back the top to expose the violin.
Gently taking hold of it by the slim neck, Jack retrieved the instrument from the case and with his right hand took out the bow. Several wild strands of worn catgut sprayed in all directions as he stood. Scratch smiled at the sight of Hatcher turning slowly toward the others, his face beaming with crazed anticipation of this moment: rendezvous, his music, and that wild revelry he brought other men at these all-too-short summer gatherings.
With his bow hand he shoved an unruly shock of black hair from his eyes, then swept the bow around in a wide arc, describing the greater part of a circle.
“Stand back, boys!” he warned ominously. All of them obeyed, eagerly retreating to give him wide berth. “I gets to playing—Jack Hatcher needs him plenty of room!”
“Back, you dogs!” Caleb repeated, nudging a couple of men back a bit farther.
How handsome Hatcher looked at that moment, Scratch thought. He was proud to be here, proud it was this very time in the seasons of man. These borning days in the mountains. Most proud to stand among these iron-mounted men, proud not only of this breed—but most proud to be one of those whom Jack called friend.