Where would they go now? he wondered. Did the tribes go back to the way things had been before the white man came out west with his long caravans of shiny trade goods and powerful weapons?
So bittersweet was that flood of the memories, soul-prints of his life made across mountain and plain: juicy hump rib and buffalo tongue around a winter fire, beaver tail and painter meat on the spit, the sharp relish of strong coffee or a handful of high, glacial water so cold it set your back teeth to aching. Games of hand or taking a chance on the well-worn cards of euchre and Old Sledge, foolish wagers on shooting a mark or throwing a ’hawk, running a’foot or racing your horse … they were times when a man knew who his friends were and how their stick would float.
But now those sweetest of days were gone like river-bottom sand a’wash come spring runoff, swept away in the rush of the seasons.
So like youth, held here but briefly in one’s hand—youth truly experienced by those who believe youth will be theirs forever—the high times in these shining mountains had come and were never to be again. Like impetuous youth, these men did not realize their era had come and gone until the light had begun to fade for all time. And like the young who never fathom the precious gift granted them, these rough-hewn souls had squandered their days, wastrels with those brief seasons allotted them.
Late of a lazy summer morning Robert Newell strode back into camp, eager to share some news with his friends, especially that best of companions.
“Joe!” Doc hallooed as he approached the group lounging upon the ground whiling away these last hours of this last summer reunion.
“You’re ’bout to bust at the seams, Doc,” Titus said. “Just lookit him, boys. G’won, Doc—spill your beans.”
“Them missionary folks what’s bound for Oregon country,” Newell began in a gush as he knelt in their midst, “well, now—you know they asked Black Harris to guide ’em on west from here.”
“Ain’t he gonna do it?” Joe asked.
Newell shook his head emphatically. “One of the preachers, named Little John, he fetched me over to their camp and told me Harris was asking far too much to pilot them on to Oregon …”
When Newell paused dramatically, excitement flickering in his eyes, Carson said, “Spit it out, man!”
“Them preachers asked me to pilot ’em all the way to the Columbia country, boys!”
Meek bolted to his feet, looking every bit as stunned as he had when Bridger announced his bad news. “You … you g-going to take them folks on to Oregon ’stead of trapping beaver with me, Doc? ’Stead of staying in these mountains with us?”
Newell grabbed his best friend by the forearms, gazing intently into Meek’s eyes. “Come with me, Joe.”
“C-come with you?”
Doc’s head bobbed eagerly. “We are done with this life in the mountains, so come with me, Joe.”
“Done?”
“We’re done wading in beaver dams, done with freezing or starving. Done I say—done with Injun fighting and Injun trading. Look around you, Joe: the fur business is dead in these mountains, and the Rockies is no place for us now.”
Meek gasped in surprise, “Doc Newell—fixing to leave the mountains for good?”
“Goddamned right, Joe! We are young yet, and we have all life laid out a’fore us! We can’t waste it here when this life is dead!”
“But … Oregon?” Meek asked uncertainly.
“We ain’t the sort to go back to the States,” Newell said, affectionately slipping an arm around the big man’s shoulder. “I say come with me, Joe. Let us go on down to the Willamette and take up farms.”
“Oregon,” Meek repeated the word as if trying out the sound of a mysterious lodestone for the first time. “Oregon, you say?”
“We’ll take them preachers and their wives, that Walker family too—all of their wagons on to Fort Hall where we’ll gather up our wives and light out for Oregon.”
Bass watched the glow cross Meek’s face, so contagious was Newell’s enthusiasm. It was the look of a man grown so weary and old, suddenly granted new vigor. Where resignation once was scrawled, now Titus could read the hope and joy boldly written on Joe’s face.
“There’s nothing left for you boys here,” Bass charged them as he got to his feet, flinging one arm around Newell and the other around Meek. “Man needs to find him some country what he can call his own. Sounds to me that Oregon is where you two will make your stand.”
34
Two days later, when all the beaver had been turned over to Andrew Drips and that sad little rendezvous was quietly dying with a whimper, Reverend Philo B. Littlejohn finally sought out Moses Harris to explain that he had arrived at a most difficult decision.
“My party has decided that to guide us from here to Oregon—your price is simply too high.”
“I reckon you don’t have no notion just how far a piece that is to pilot you,” Black Harris snarled caustically, glaring the missionary up and down. “I figger what I asked is only fair—seeing how I’ll miss out on the fall trapping to get you folks through to the Columbia.”
“I won’t quibble that you asked what you determined was fair for you,” the round-faced minister replied.
Realizing that he might be letting a good thing slip from his grasp, Harris suggested, “Maybe we can dicker some more to come up with a dollar more to your liking, but still gonna be fair to me—”
“That won’t be necessary now,” the preacher declared.
“What you mean: won’t be necessary?”
Littlejohn cleared his throat self-consciously, then said, “We enlisted a pilot for our journey, and for a price much lower than you demanded of us—”
“Lower?” Harris growled. “Who’s the bastard cut me outta my goddamned job?”
Red-faced, the preacher exclaimed, “There’s no call for your oaths, Mr. Harris!”
Standing there seething, his hands balling into fists before him, the mountain veteran growled menacingly, “Tell me who took my job!”
“His n-name is Newell,” the missionary confessed as he inched backward, seeking escape from Harris’s fury. “He plans to make a home for his family in Oregon—”
“Not if the son of a bitch is dead!” Harris interrupted as he whirled away in a fury, to start his search of the company camp.
Unsuccessful, he finally headed for the trader’s tent. He didn’t find Newell there that morning either, but he did find that the clerks were opening up the last of the kegs they had packed west. Harris felt a sudden, inexplicable thirst coming on. Some hard drinking was clearly in order before he continued his search for the man who had stolen his job.
By midafternoon Harris’s well-soaked despair had grown ugly. Taking up his rifle, he lumbered away from the trader’s canopy intent on finishing his deadly mission. With so few trappers attending this final rendezvous, the search didn’t take him long now. He spotted Newell crossing a patch of open ground some seventy yards off near a free man’s camp. Harris shoved his rifle against a shoulder, squinted his bleary eyes, and attempted to hold steady on his target.