Then all went hushed as Bridger and his men halted before the central lodge, dismounting. Handing their horses to those in the crowd, the booshway and his best men strode up to the handful of old counselors who stood at the lodge entrance. Dressed in the spanking-new knee-length morning coat and canvas pantaloons Lucien Fontenelle had purchased in St. Louis specifically for him, Gabe respectfully removed his hat to bare his hair greased back and freshly combed for this momentous occasion. Swallowing audibly, he spoke as clearly as he could those halting Flathead words, stuttering nervously.
A wrinkled oldster turned and called out to the lodge, whereupon a middle-aged warrior emerged to stand before Bridger.
“That’s Insala,” Bass declared in a whisper as Waits stood on tiptoe to have herself a better look through the expectant crowd.
In but a moment Bridger turned and waved his arm—signal for more of his men to push their way out of the crowd with more than a dozen ponies, two of them laden with blankets he pulled off and laid before the Flathead chief. Upon the blankets the best men then spread a glittering array of knives and tomahawks, kettles and beads, cloth and ribbon, finger rings and hawksbells. Packets of vermilion and indigo ink joined the rest as Bridger stepped back, gestured across his gifts, then crossed his arms and waited ceremonially for the chief’s answer.
Dramatically, Insala stepped forward and knelt at the first blanket, fingering this, inspecting that, closely peering at most everything before he moved on to the second blanket … slowly, thoughtfully studying it all while the crowd murmured quietly, the hundreds upon hundreds of witnesses waiting in the bright summer sun as the chief decided if the gifts were enough compensation for this sale of his daughter.
Eventually the old warrior stood and moved over to stop inches from Bridger, gazing into the white man’s eye as Gabe dropped his arms to his side and gulped, clearly showing his anxiety, his face bright with sweat.
Suddenly Insala raised his arms and brought his hands down on Bridger’s shoulders four times as the Flathead people set up a huge roar, laughing and cheering, women keening while the drums began thumping again. While Bridger grew wide-eyed, the chief quickly turned and pointed to his lodge door, calling out in his tongue.
As one of the old counselors pulled aside the flap, a head emerged, just as the crowd fell silent once more. In that noiseless pause the chief’s beautiful daughter came to stand beside her father, a red-striped white trade blanket folded over her left arm. Taking it from the bride’s arm, Insala nudged Bridger a step closer to the shy young woman. Then the chief unfurled the blanket so he could wrap it around his daughter and her new husband.
Taking hold of Bridger’s wrist, Insala stuffed two corners of the blanket into the trapper’s hand so the white man held the blanket around himself and his new bride—then the chief suddenly raised both of his arms into the air and shouted.
His Flathead people answered in kind and took to singing once more as they surged in and began circling the newlyweds, shoving against one another, against members of the other tribes, against the outnumbered white men, everyone slowly dancing in a great sunward swirl as Bridger self-consciously put his forehead against his bride’s brow and gazed into her eyes.
“By damn,” Scratch exclaimed to his friends nearby as they all craned their necks for a good look through the throbbing, dancing, celebrating masses, “if’n it don’t look to be that Gabe’s a’blushing!”
“It’s his wedding day, goddammit!” Rufus Graham snarled.
Elbridge Gray bellowed, “I figger he’s thinking ’bout his wedding night!”
“She sure be a purty-enough gal to make a feller get all het up,” Isaac added.
After a matter of minutes Bridger and his escorts started to knife their way slowly through the celebrants who spread out in a wide cordon along either side of the path the bride and groom were now taking to begin their journey back to the American camp. Drumming and singing continued, laughs and snorts and wild music floated on the afternoon air all along those two miles of valley bottom ground where the tall grass, bluestem, and wild flax waved in the summer breeze.
By the time the parade had reached the trapper camp, most of the Indians were turning about, making their way slowly back to their villages where fires would be kindled and supper put on the boil. Meanwhile the trappers were streaming around a large open meadow where a few were feeding wood to huge bonfires and beginning to stake out slabs of meat to roast, some rolling up small kegs of whiskey and stumps for that time when the musicians would settle around the leaping fires while the sun continued its fall toward the western hills.
Of a sudden Bass became aware of a change in the tone of the celebration when a knot of trappers nearby began shouting, cheering, jeering, hollering in that way of angry, worked-up men.
“You stay with Magpie, here,” he told his wife, lifting the child from his shoulder, passing the girl to Waits-by-the-Water. “I’ll be back soon.”
Motioning the four old friends to follow him, Titus loped with many others toward the growing commotion. Back and forth the crowd surged, stretching itself this way and that so it always left just the right amount of open ground for the brutal, bare-knuckled sport raging at its center. On the ground lay three white men, by their vivid dress plainly some of Fontenelle’s and Drips’s French voyageurs. Of the trio, two sprawled across one another, clearly unconscious, while the third struggled clumsily, attempting to drag himself from the ground as he wagged his head. In their midst a fourth voyageur gamely tried to duck as he flailed away with wild, ineffective haymakers at the lone man the four of them had been fighting off.
A tall tree trunk of a man—a frightening, slab-shouldered giant bigger than Silas Cooper had been, a giant every bit as imposing as was Emile Sharpe, the half-breed Red River Metis who had come west to the Green River in search of Josiah Paddock.
Laughing sinisterly, the giant quickly stepped aside as the lone voyageur lumbered past, grabbing the shorter man’s hair and using it to hurl his victim around in a tight circle as the Frenchman shrieked in torment, clawing at the big man’s wrist. But as the monster of a brute guffawed and spouted in broken English, it was immediately clear he too was a Frenchman.
“Enfant d’garce!”
Slowly the giant raised his left arm, hoisting the voyageur by the hair until the shorter man dangled, his toes barely brushing the ground. Mule-eyed, the voyageur clung to the giant’s left wrist, completely helpless as the monster roared his foreign French oath, spat a wad of phlegm into the small man’s face, then flung his maul-sized fist squarely between the struggling voyageur’s eyes.
Then let his victim go.
Stunned senseless, the short man crumpled to his knees, watery-legged and totally oblivious as the giant shadowed him once again, looped a big hand around his throat, then flung him up at the end of his arm again where the voyageur swung freely. This time the giant smashed his fist into the middle of the small man’s face with a sickening crackle of cartilage and bone, blood spurting from the crushed tissues.
Again the monster cocked back his arm, ready for another blow—