When the gun roared, the ball went wild.
As a terrified Newell ran for his gun, Harris started to reload while he stumbled after his intended target—angrily cursing and growling his intention to have the younger man’s scalp.
“Goddamn you, nigger! Gonna hang your ha’r on my belt before sundown!” the drunk man roared to the skies. “And you’re gonna be sleeping with the devil hisself by nightfall!”
Step by step Harris plodded after Newell, clumsily pouring powder down the barrel as he plodded toward the trees where the trapper had disappeared. Digging at the bottom of his pouch, Harris pulled out another ball and set it atop the muzzle. He lunged to a stop as he yanked the ramrod from its thimbles at the bottom of the barrel, preparing to set the ball against the charge when Andrew Drips and a dozen others sprinted up—drawn by the racket as the lazy camps burst into action with the alarm.
“Get me some damned rope!” the trader ordered those behind him.
Someone asked, “You gonna hang ’im?”
“I damn well may do just that!” Drips spat as he dodged side to side each time Harris wildly swung his rifle at those advancing on him. “Get me the goddamned rope!”
Again and again Harris heaved his heavy weapon in a crazy arc at his attackers. The moment the drunk knocked a man down with a grunt, Drips leaped onto him. Five of them jumped in to wrestle Harris to the ground as he spewed curses at them, whipping his head side to side, snapping his teeth at anything that got too close, attempting to clamp down on an ear, a nose, a finger.
“Gimme that rope!” Drips shouted as the others struggled to hold down the figure thrashing on the ground.
“You gonna hang ’im now?” a voice cried.
“No. We’ll fix him to that tree,” the trader exclaimed as a half dozen of them dragged Harris to his feet.
The bruised and bloodied drunk man spat at Drips and two others, promising to kill them before he went to finish with Newell.
“Son of a bitch stole my job!” the old veteran bellowed like a wounded bull with his balls snagged on cat claw. “No goddamned beaver for a man to trap any-mores … and now Newell’s stole my pilot job!”
A yard at a time they dragged Harris to the closest cottonwood where they shoved him to the ground. Wrapping the rope round and round the trunk, three of them secured him as Harris roared his curses at them, then pitiably cried in despair at the end of the beaver trade—only to suddenly curse some more.
Drips knelt at Harris’s side. The drunk man angrily spit at the trader. Wiping the glob of spittle from his cheek, Drips hissed, “I oughtta shoot you right where you are—”
“Go ahead and kill me!” Harris bawled. “Ever’thing’s gone anyway!” Then he broke into a sob, “It don’t matter to live no more.”
The stunned crowd fell to a hush around them.
“Let me tell you why I don’t shoot you and get it over with, Harris,” Drips explained as he leaned closer. “You been a good man, guiding our supply trains from St. Louis every summer. I figure that’s gotta count for something.”
“Just lemme kill Newell! Then you can do what you want with me! Nothing counts for nothing no—”
“If you’d killed him, I would have shot you dead myself,” Drips interrupted, shaking the man quiet. “Maybe better still, I would have hanged you with that rope holding you to this tree.”
“Hang me?” he spat. “I’m wuth more’n a hanging!”
“Look at you.” Drips slowly got to his feet. “You sure as hell ain’t worth a lead ball now.”
“I’ll kill you when I get these here ropes off—”
“Let’s hope you feel different come morning, Harris.”
Once more the drunk trapper whimpered, “M-morning?”
“You’ll be good and sober by then,” Drips declared, seeing Newell emerge from the trees armed with his pistol and a rifle. “Maybe by then the missionaries will be on their way, and there won’t be any cause for more trouble from you.”
With their eyes trained on the Columbia country, Newell, Meek, and William Craig started the three missionary couples west at first light, just as Andrew Drips had suggested they do. The rumble of their wagons and the clatter of their leave-taking awoke a hungover, blood-crusted Moses Harris still firmly lashed to his tree.
Red-eyed, the old veteran watched them depart, struggling to keep from showing his utter grief at being left behind. He bit his tongue and didn’t utter one word, not one curse, as the wagons rolled from the valley. Joining the missionaries when they set forth on this last momentous leg of the overland journey to Oregon were Joel P. Walker and his wife, along with their four children and his wife’s younger sister. They were to be the first family to ply what would soon become a great emigrant road.
With Dick Owens having thrown in with Philip Thompson’s bunch who had headed west to steal California horses, Kit Carson found himself alone when the end came. No more would he trap beaver, Kit had decided. Instead, he chose to ride south across the mountains for the Arkansas where he would apply to become a hunter for St. Vrain and the Bent brothers.
But hardest for Bass to take would be Shad Sweete’s decision.
“What’s come of their gumption?” Titus asked his partner as Carson left their camp after announcing his plans to abandon the fur business. “Won’t no one ride into these mountains to trap beaver no more? Looks to be we’re the last, Shadrach!”
The moment he turned to peer at Sweete’s eyes, Scratch’s stomach shriveled as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of pickling salt. He knew, even as he asked, “W-what is it? Why you got that look on your face?”
For a while longer the tall man stood there before his friend, shuffle-footed and dumb, unable or afraid to speak.
Bass said, “Them words are like cockleburrs choking you, so you best spit ’em out now. Ain’t nothing you’d say ever hurt me, for you’re my friend.”
“Beaver’s done, Scratch.”
“It ain’t done,” he snapped.
“Then maybeso … I’m done with beaver,” Sweete explained gently, seeing how he had wounded Bass. “Done splashing round in freezing streams and allays looking over my shoulder for red niggers. I’m done chasing after something I know I ain’t ever gonna find.”
Titus blinked back the sting at his eyes and asked, “What you been chasing, Shadrach?”
“Maybe I allays figgered I’d make me a little money at this, leastways enough to fix up a post for myself where I could do some trading.” Then Sweete shrugged. “But the last few seasons I come to figger the best I’m gonna do is have myself some steady work as a hand for someone else.”
“Who … who you figger you’ll work for?”
He gazed squarely at Bass, seeming a bit more confident. “Been thinking ’bout heading down to the South Platte. Maybeso that post you said Sublette and Vaskiss got.”
“There’s work down there, Shad,” Scratch admitted, choking back the pain already ripping his gut in two at this parting. It never got easy. Damn, but it never got any easier.
“I’ll find me something—”
“Bill Williams told us there’s other posts down in that country too,” Bass said. “Won’t be hard for a likely lad such as yourself to find work.”
Wearing a look of unashamed gratitude for Titus making it easier on him, Sweete nodded. “I’ll hunt for ’em. Maybeso do some trading for Vaskiss. You said yourself that’s dead center in the ’Rapaho and Cheyenne country.”
“I’d wager my last beaver dollar on you, Shadrach. You’ll make a life for yourself on them plains.”
“How—how ’bout you, Scratch?” Sweete asked, worry suddenly carving deep furrows on his brow.
“Don’t you fret over us none,” he said, glancing momentarily at the woman and their children. “Likely stick close by these mountains come fall, maybe winter up down to Sinclair’s post in Brown’s Hole. I’ll lay off that north country till it’s for certain them Blackfoot been took by the pox and ain’t gonna play the devil no more.”