She nodded as if beginning to understand. “I see: they are the white man’s house that he takes with him the same way my people move our lodges from camp to camp?”
With a grin he agreed. “Jehoshaphat, but you’ve got it right.”
“God dit,” she repeated with a wink.
As they ambled toward those fifteen-foot-high palisades, Titus could not remember the last time he had seen that red-and-white-striped flag. A banner every bit this big had flown from the top of the Fort Vancouver flagpole, but he figured he hadn’t seen America’s flag since reaching St. Louis to track down Silas and Billy more than a year back. With every tug of the wind, the huge flag snapped taut for a moment, allowing him to count another row of stars until he tallied up twenty-four. With each star representing a state, Bass reflected what new states had joined the union since he had abandoned the settlements back in twenty-five.
Craning his neck as they came alongside the walls, he peered up at the huge bastion that hung over the top of the northwest corner. He found another like it constructed at the southeast corner. And midway down the southern wall stood the massive gate where he reined to a halt and gazed up to take in the massive blockhouse perched atop the wall more than fifteen feet above them.
“Ho!” he called to a face he saw watching from the west window cut in the blockhouse.
“Ho, yourself,” the shaggy graying man called down.
Pointing at the gaping southern window, Scratch asked, “That your cannon?”
“It’s a cannon—but it ain’t mine,” the man replied. “Only here to visit. C’mon up an’ get yourse’f a good look-see for far an’ wide.”
“Holler down and have ’em open up the gate for us,” he asked.
Hanging partway out the window, the man shook his head. “They ain’t gonna open up these’r gates, on ’count of all them Sioux out there.”
Bass turned in the saddle to peer once again at all the lodges. “Afraid them Injuns’ll rush the fort?”
“I s’pose they are,” the man answered. “Most of ’em belong to a chief name o’ Bull Bear. Campbell invited ’em down from their country north of here to do some trading.”
“And now these fellers here won’t trade with ’em?”
“They been trading with them bucks last couple of days,” the man declared. “But the company don’t let very many come in at one time. No more’n a dozen I s’pect.”
“So how’s a man to get in?”
“She with you?” the stranger asked.
“My wife and our daughter.”
“Likely you come on round to the back side where you come in the corral gate.”
“Someone there to open up?”
“There will be in a shake or two,” he responded as he pulled his head back in the window and disappeared.
“We ride to another gate,” Bass explained in Crow.
On the river side they found a pole corral constructed along the entirety of that northern wall. Pulling back one half of a suspension gate wide enough to admit a wagon, Scratch was able to lead their animals into the corral where no more than a dozen horses grazed on dwindling piles of cut grass.
The narrow door behind them creaked open, and the older man poked his head out, looked this way and that, then spoke. “Tie off your critters there, then you come on in with me.”
Once they passed through the narrow door, the three of them entered a cool and shady part of the fort. The stranger started them for a low-railed balcony. Beyond it Titus caught a glimpse of the huge open courtyard.
“Name’s Bass,” he introduced himself, sticking out an empty hand.
“I’m Creede. Langston Creede.”
“How long you been working here?”
“Oh, I don’t work here,” Creede explained as they stepped onto the porch leading to the balcony. “I been trapping for the company. American Fur Company, that be.”
“Ain’t much else in the mountains these days,” Titus replied as they stopped at the low rail and peered into the bright September sunshine. “You come in with Fitzpatrick from ronnyvoo?”
The man nodded. “With him till four days ago when some of us got half-froze to get here on our own,” he said. “That pack train of theirs was dawdlin’ a leetle too slow for our likin’.”
“So you’re with them what’re leaving the mountains for good?”
“Naw,” and Creede leaned back to settle on the top rail of the balcony. “Ever’ three years me and a ol’ friend meet back to St. Lou and have ourselves a winter spree. Get some women, sleep on a real tick, and have some more women. Man gets a hunger for a white woman …” Then he caught himself, his eyes softening apologetically. “Sorry. Didn’t mean nothing again’ your woman here.”
“No trouble took by it, Langston. So have yourselves a good spree, then come back out to the mountains, eh?”
“I do, but Levi had him his job upriver—”
“Levi? You said your friend’s name is Levi?”
“That’s right. Levi Gamble,” Creede declared.
“G-gamble?”
“Ever you run onto him?”
“I’ll be damned,” Bass exclaimed in wonder with a grin growing big as his beard. “I knowed a man named Levi Gamble of a time. But that were so long ago, it couldn’t be the same man.”
“The nigger I know is older’n dirt,” Creede exclaimed with a chuckle. “But a damn good man. We been workin’ for American Fur a long time, Bass. Upper Missouri Outfit. The Western Department—no matter what them booshways called it, they always had plenty of work for us over the years.”
“Levi Gamble,” Titus sighed, staring at his toes and calculating the years, trying to sort through a jumble of feelings and recollections that name stirred in him. “Had to been the summer I run off from home.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A mess of winters,” he replied, his eyes moistening with rememberance. “Eighteen ten.”*
“That’s going on twenty-five years now, mister. I ain’t been out on the upriver near that long, but Levi damn well has.”
Bass grew excited. “Y-you think it’s the same feller?”
With a wag of his head Creede confessed, “Chances be, chances be. If’n the Levi Gamble you knowed first come up the Missouri to work for that Spanyard, Man-well Lisa.”
“That’s him, by damned!” Titus roared with a booming clap of his rough hands. “Levi was coming through Boone County back to the summer of eighteen ten, and I just ’bout beat him in a shooting match.”
Langston’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You say you just ’bout beat him in a shooting match?”
“Come this close,” and Bass held up a thumb and fingertip all but touching.
Creede shook his head. “Had to be a differ’nt Levi Gamble … or you must be one center of a shot,” he replied with a tinge of admiration in his disbelief. “In all these years I ain’t never knowed another man to shoot better’n Levi Gamble.”
Eagerly he asked, “So you’re meeting Levi back in St. Louie for your spree?”
“Come the end of winter we’ll be heading upriver again, on the first steamboat bound away for Fort Union,” Langston explained. “I ain’t gonna be trapping no more.” The man flexed his back with a sigh, “Find me ’nother way to make a living up on the high Missouri.”
“Levi still traps?”
“Not now, not for a long damned time,” Langston said. “You was saying how he beat you in that shoot?”
“Yeah—by the skin of his teeth!”
“Wasn’t long afore the booshway at Fort Pierre found out just how good Levi was and hired him for to be fort hunter. Since then Gamble’s sashayed on up the Missouri and been working for booshway McKenzie. But McKenzie ain’t gonna be around no more now, so I don’t know if Levi can figger on having him that sweet job no more. I s’pose I won’t know how McKenzie’s settled his dust till I meet up with Levi back to St. Lou.”