“How many winters you been out here, Bass?”
“Twenty-five were my first summer.”
“An Ashley man.”
“No,” and he wagged his head emphatically. “Come west on my own hook and paid dearly for it, I s’pose. Lost some hair to some red niggers down to Bayou Salade, but I ain’t gone under yet.”
Wyeth clucked sadly, then said, “Appears the only ones making any real money out of the mountain fur trade was Ashley and now Sublette. Damn him, damn him.”
“Heard how he finagled the Rocky Mountain Fur boys to break their agreement with you.”
“Sublette overtook my supply train not far out of the western settlements,” Wyeth declared, “and he stayed ahead of me the rest of the way.”
“Knowed the trail better, I’d s’pose,” Bass stated as he rubbed a thumb across the edge of a camp ax.
“I couldn’t travel as fast as he with the cattle,” Wyeth explained. “Started out with more. But what I have left we’ll put to good use eventually.”
“How much for an ax?”
“Two-fifty,” Wyeth said.
“Gimme two. What you figger to do for fur season?” Titus said as he inched down the rows of crates and blankets Wyeth’s men had opened and spread across a shady patch of ground beside Ham’s Fork—not all that far south of where Bass had camped with his family so that he might stay as far away as he could from the loud and raucous company camps pitched downstream toward Black’s Fork.
“I may send some of the men out. I’ve been struggling to convince more to sign on with me when I venture into the Snake River country.”
“Beaver country there.”
“Yes,” Wyeth exclaimed, beaming. “I want to get as far as I can from that country where Sublette and Campbell are building their fort on the Platte.”
“Jehoshaphat!” he exclaimed, coming to a stop. “W-where on the Platte?”
“Mouth of La Ramee’s Fork, right there on the trail to the mountains.”
Nodding, Bass said, “I know the place. Damn, a fort just east of the mountains. And you know them two Bent brothers got theirs down south on the Arkansas. So you’re gonna trap west of the mountains, eh?”
“I’ve got these men in my employ, and a supply train filled with trade goods,” Wyeth explained. “I’ll put them to work in the Snake country before the end of August, then go on to the mouth of the Columbia. Plan to return to the Snake before winter sets in hard.”
“All the way down the Columbia,” Bass repeated. “Going to see that white-headed Doctor there?”
“No. I’m meeting a ship there. Our enterprise plans to catch enough salmon to fill the belly of that ship before we turn it around for Boston and I turn east to rendezvous with my brigade.”
“I got a friend what’s come here with Hudson’s Bay,” Bass explained. “It was him told me about how Sublette dealt you off the bottom of the deck with Rocky Mountain Fur.”
“Ah, but Doctor McLoughlin’s spies don’t realize that I’ll be up there on the Columbia real soon to take, for myself some of their salmon!” Wyeth spouted with glee.
Titus ran his thumbnail down a bar of lead. “What’s your lead going for?”
“Dollar the pound.”
“Gimme twenty pounds,” Bass advised. “Tell me, how you figure them Hudson’s Bay men are spies?”
“Hell,” Wyeth gushed, “they couldn’t come here expecting to do much business at all. You take a look at their camp?”
“I was there yestiddy.”
“See much in the way of trade goods?” Wyeth prodded. “Anything anywhere close to what I got laid out for you here?”
Scratch looked it over, side to side, and had to admit the Yankee was right. “Didn’t see nowhere near what you got.”
“And you won’t—because they didn’t bring but enough to make a little show. They aren’t here to trade, not really. They come to be McLoughlin’s eyes and ears. Ever since Jedediah Smith stumbled into Vancouver, the Doctor wants to stay informed of just what Americans will be trapping this side of the mountains—in what Hudson’s Bay claims is their country.”
“Maybeso,” Bass replied, not really wanting to admit that Jarrell Thornbrugh could be there for the unexpressed purpose of spying in the American fur country for McLoughlin.
And this was American fur country, no matter what Hudson’s Bay believed, no matter what treaty some government fellas had signed their names to in jointly occupying this ground. But if the central Rockies ever began to run out of beaver, Bass was damned sure the American trapping brigades would push farther and farther west, bumping right up against the British outfits with greater frequency.
Mayhaps that would leave the northern rivers for him to trap with little crowding to speak of.
Scratch turned to find one of those who had been grading his pelts now coming up behind Wyeth. “What you gonna give me for my beaver?”
Wyeth took the slip of paper, glanced at it, then stuffed it into the pocket of his canvas breeches. “You didn’t have much in the way of fur.”
“Already took care of most down to Taos.”
“Didn’t leave you with much in the way to outfit you for another year,” Wyeth explained.
“I don’t need much. ’Sides, I got some possibles cached up on the Yallerstone,” Bass replied. Then he gestured toward all that he had chosen so far. “My plews gonna cover what’s here? And still leave me a little for at least one good whiskey headache?”
“Believe me, Mr. Bass,” the Yankee said, “for bringing the last of your furs to me instead of taking them to that thief William Sublette, you’re going to get yourself a one-day bargain in trade goods—the likes of which you’ll never see again!”
Throughout the rest of that morning they arm-wrestled on the value of the last of Bass’s pelts, then on the price of each and every item Scratch had pulled from the crates and barrels of trade goods. And when it was over, they both could smile and have themselves a drink, toasting their mutual fortunes.
“I’ll be trapping up in Crow country,” Bass explained, eyeing the number of crates and bales in Wyeth’s camp. “My wife’s people. If’n the furs are good up there, I’ll stick close to home for spring too. You gonna haul this hull outfit around, supplying ’em from your winter camp?”
Wyeth stared at the last of his whiskey shimmering in the bottom of his cup a moment, then declared, “I suppose I have no choice—seeing how I’ve been left with all these trade goods, abandoned by a faithless group of bastards who are refusing to honor their contract with me.”
“Goddamned shame a man’s word ain’t wuth near what it used to be,” Bass commiserated.
“So what does such a man with all these trade goods do, Mr. Bass?”
For a minute he reflected on the possibilities. “I been out to the Columbia where you said you was going to meet that ship of your’n.”
“You’ve been to Vancouver yourself?”
“Yep—so I don’t figger a savvy nigger would wanna build hisself a post anywhere near the white-headed Doctor.”
“McLoughlin,” Wyeth said thoughtfully. “Yes. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense, would it?”
“Mayhaps a man with all this plunder to trade”—and Bass swung his free arm in a semicircle to indicate the profusion of goods—“should stake out his own ground.”
“His own ground?”
“Find hisself a spot where he won’t have no one near to bump up again’ him in business.”
Wyeth’s eyes shone wide and bright. “Yes, yes!”
“Someplace where he would plop hisself down and be there with his post and his goods for the trappers what wander by,” Bass explained, seeing that fire of excitement flicker boldly in the Yankee’s eyes. “Someplace where that post of his would bring in the friendlies.”