Returning to the fort alone, he flung the small bundle atop the end of the counter and waited for the clerk to finish with another customer. Eventually, the man pulled out fifteen of the pelts, laying them beneath one arm of a scale. Quickly adding weights to the other arm, the man found that he had to remove one of the pelts.
With a sigh he turned back to Titus. “I can get ’er down to forty-two dollars.”
“For the differ’nce gimme one of your best-looking glasses and the rest in your newest ’baccy. None of that ol’ stuff.”
“That ain’t gonna get you much in tobacco, mister.”
“Just treat me fair and we’ll call it even,” he said, taking up the ends of the rawhide rope he knotted around the plews left on the counter. “Fella don’t stand a chance no more,” he groused. “Appears your company is the only outfit trading in the mountains and at them posts in the upcountry. No good when you run all the other traders out.”
“Our company ain’t the only ones in the mountain trade,” protested the second clerk who had sauntered over to rest his elbows on the counter.
“I know,” Scratch said miserably. “I been to that fort the Bents got—but it’s a piece of riding, way down on the Arkansas.”
“It ain’t the only one,” the first clerk explained as he spread the small square of black calico on the counter.
“I don’t figger on riding all the way north to your Fort Union neither.”
“So I s’pose you ain’t heard,” the second man confided. “News come in the other day. We just heard some folks is raising a small post down on the South Platte a ways.”
“South Platte,” Titus echoed. “And it ain’t your company’s post?”
“Don’t belong to us,” the first man said. “We hear it belongs to one of Billy Sublette’s brothers.”
“Him and his partner, Louie Vaskiss, was here with Campbell last spring,” the second one explained. “I figger the two of ’em are throwing in together, what with big brother Sublette and Campbell calling it quits for the mountains.”
Titus tied up the four corners of the calico scrap and stuffed it into his possibles pouch. With a pat on the flap he told the clerks, “Thankee, fellas. For the geegaws, and for laying out the trail sign on that new post.”
“You gonna head that way?”
Nodding, he replied, “Figgered to do some trapping south of here anyway.”
“Good luck to you,” the second man cheered.
“Thankee—but after all these winters I know luck ain’t got much to do with me saving what I got left for ha’r,” Scratch declared. “Hard work, never giving up, and good friends … they been what keeps this nigger’s stick afloat through the years.”
“Of all the mistakes I have made in my life,” Sir William Drummond Stewart explained as darkness fell and the stars came out around them, “only two do I truly regret. All the rest I have atoned for, corrected.”
This last evening prior to Fitzpatrick’s departure for St. Louis, the Scottish nobleman had invited Bass to join him and a few guests for a final dinner before setting off for the east come morning. As soon as the sun fell, the air took on a new quality, growing crisp and chill, enough that he welcomed the fire’s warmth and the coffee that steamed in his cups.
While the conversation among Stewart’s guests had remained cheery and buoyant for some time, as the night wore on the nobleman grew more pensive.
“A child don’t get to be our age ’thout making his share of mistakes,” Bass reflected, sensing how the host was down in his mind. “Measure of a man is what he learns from the times he’s stumbled and snagged his foot.”
“Why do you say that, Titus?”
Shrugging, Scratch replied, “Don’t seem like you’re here. What’s eating your craw?”
“I’m sorry,” Stewart said, then turned to Marcus Whitman, saying, “I apologize, Doctor—and to the rest of you too. Perhaps I am brooding at the realization that with the morrow I will be abandoning these mountains, this western country where I have spent these past three summers, as well as that one winter at the mouth of the Columbia. I’ve hunted for and shot every big-game animal in this wilderness, including grizzly and elk, antelope and bighorn, mountain goat and more than my share of buffalo. More times than I can count I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with you mountaineers, taking part in at least a dozen skirmishes with the redskin natives.”
“Can’t you ever plan to return west?” Whitman prodded.
“I will certainly do my best to return, once I’ve seen to some nagging family and financial affairs back east,” the nobleman answered, grown all the more melancholy as they watched.
“Mayhaps you should shet yourself of what nags at you,” Bass suggested. “Put it behind you here and now, no matter if you don’t make it to another ronnyvoo.”
Sighing thoughtfully, Stewart eventually nodded. “I came to my first rendezvous with George Holmes—a traveling companion. Since setting off across the plains, we had tented together. Poor George. In rendezvous camp I had arranged a liaison … arranged for a squaw to come to our bower for the night, so I prevailed upon George to sleep elsewhere.”
Stewart related how Holmes had taken this request for privacy in good humor, carrying his blanket with him to a grassy spot near their bower, and lain down to sleep beneath the light of a nearly full moon. Sometime in the deep of early-morning darkness, the barking of dogs, shouts of men, and hammer of running feet awoke the nobleman. With a curious crowd he hurried to the commotion, finding a rabid gray wolf glaring at its victim without showing the slightest fear of the men rushing up. A few feet away sat George Holmes—his face torn and bleeding.
Turning to Whitman, Stewart explained, “There was nothing our Dr. Harrison could do for poor George but bathe his wounds and bind them up. In the next few days I couldn’t shake the sickness I felt in my soul that I had been the cause of this tragedy.”
Although Holmes’s wounds healed quickly, his normal, lighthearted mood began to worsen. Over the next few weeks, the nobleman explained to his audience, George began to grow more morose and despairing, expressing his certainty that he was bound to die of hydrophobia.
“It wasn’t until weeks later that poor George suffered his most terrifying fit,” Stewart declared. “He tore off his clothing, ripped out his hair, scratched at his skin as he ran shrieking into the timber. We immediately went in search of … but we never found a trace of him.”
“Not uncommon,” Whitman replied. “There is nothing anyone can do once the hydrophobia attacks the brain.”
His eyes begging for sympathy, Stewart said, “Never has a day gone by when I haven’t reproached myself for that sad, sad night.”
“Like the doctor said, I don’t figger you can blame yourself for what the wolf done,” Bass declared. And thinking that he should change the subject, he asked, “You said you made two mistakes. What of the second?”
For some time Stewart stared at the flames, then spoke with guarded resignation. “I have shot men in the heat of great battles, where I have run them through with my sword—looking them in the eye as I killed by my own hand. But never before have I indirectly done harm to another, much less caused their death. Not only did I bring about the ruin of George Holmes, but with heedless words uttered in the heat of my anger, I as much as pulled the trigger on the gun that killed another.”
From the corner of his eye, Scratch watched Antoine Clement suddenly turn away and step into the darkness beyond the fire’s light as if he were no longer able to endure his employer’s self-inflicted pain.