“Shadrach Sweete,” the man replied. “And you’re Titus Bass.”
“How you know me?”
Sweete chuckled. “Hell, anyone runs with Jim Bridger’s brigade knows who Titus Bass is.”
“But I ain’t never trapped with Gabe.”
“Don’t matter,” Sweete replied. “I recollect how we run across you a time or two through the years. Ain’t that many of us been out here long as me or you have. ’Sides, Gabe thinks the world of you. Why, ever’ time he tells that story of you losing your ha’r, or how you run onto that red nigger years later … whoooeee! Them tales keep the greenhorns from sucking in a breath!”
They laughed together; then Scratch asked, “You figger Fitz got his whiskey kegs open yet?”
“I seen him crack ’em my own self,” Sweete said.
“You think my word be good as plews with Fitz?”
“Damn if it wouldn’t be better’n most.”
Bass slapped the tall man on the back. “Then, what say you, Shadrach—let’s you and me go have us a drink of that saddle varnish these traders claim is whiskey!”
Sweete struck him as a gentle man shoved down inside a grizzly bear’s body. A little taller than Joe Meek, and so wide of shoulder too that Scratch wondered if he could lay a hickory ax handle across that broad beam with no hickory left to hang off at either end.
“Just like you, I come to the mountains myself in twenty-five,” Bass replied as one of the clerks poured out the whiskey into a pair of brand-new tin cups.
“But I bet you wasn’t no fourteen-year-ol’t pup like I was in twenty-five!”
Astonished by that admission, Titus asked, “How the hell you hire on with Gen’l Ashley when you was fourteen?”
“Just lookit me, you cross-eyed idjit!” Sweete bellowed with a disarming smile, standing back to spread his arms. “Even as a pup—I was big for my age!”
“You’re still a goddamned pup!” Titus growled at the man who stood a good half foot taller than he did and nudged something just shy of three hundred pounds.
After a long moment of quiet Sweete sighed. “Where’s the beaver gone, Scratch?”
He looked at the big man, then took another sip of his whiskey. “There’s beaver still, Shad. Up high. Back in a ways where no man’s yet gone. There’s beaver.”
“They say the easy beaver’s been caught,” Sweete agreed. “Ah, shit—we’re on the downside of our trade, what with folks back east wanting silk hats.”
“Beaver’s bound to rise, Shad,” he said with more hope than he felt. “Bound to rise.”
“If it don’t—what the hell’m I gonna do?” the big man asked. “I come to trap beaver when I was fourteen. What the hell’m I s’posed to do when I can’t make a living no more trapping beaver?”
“Let them others get all lathered up, run on back to what you run away from,” Bass said. “They just leave more beaver for niggers like you and me!”
At the sharp ring of the voice they both turned and squinted into the sunlight washing over everything beyond that shady copse of trees. A lone rider galloped up, shouting.
“The Nepercy! They’re fixing to come over with a parade!” the man huffed as the distant sound of drums first reached them. “Gonna show off front of them white women!”
“I’ll bet that’ll be some!” Bass exclaimed, bolting to his feet and swilling down the last of his whiskey before handing the empty tin to Sweete. “Be off to fetch my wife and girl so they can see.”
Zeke was straining at the end of his rope the moment Titus and his horse hoved into sight, yipping and prancing side to side, his big tail whipping mightily at the return of his master.
“You’re gonna have to see this!” Scratch called as he kicked his right leg over and landed on both feet.
He knelt as Magpie lumbered up toward him, clenching a well-moistened strip of dried meat she had been sucking on in one hand. He swept her into his arms and turned to his wife. “C’mon. Get your pony.”
“Where are we going in such a hurry?”
“Bet Magpie’s never see’d the Nepercy strut like prairie cocks. Likely you ain’t either.”
He positioned the girl in front of the saddle before he stuffed a left foot into the stirrup and swung his leg over, settling her onto his lap as he came down into the saddle. “Here,” he said to his daughter, wrapping her tiny hands around the thick látigo leather. “You hol’t on to the reins with me.”
Waits came up beside them, leading her pony. When she had leaped onto its bare back, she asked, “Why are the Pierced Noses making a procession?”
“They want to show off for the white women.”
He watched how that suddenly soured the expression on her face.
“For the white women,” she repeated. “Now the Pierced Noses are gone strange in the head for the white women.”
Titus leaned over and gripped her forearm sympathetically. “Don’t think nothing of it. Just wanted you and Magpie to see the show.”
For a moment Waits gazed at her daughter’s cheerful face, then said, “Yes. Let’s go see the show these Pierced Noses put on for the white women.”
As it turned out, all four tribes eagerly joined in the grand procession as it worked its way toward the site where the missionary women were camped. By the time Scratch and Waits dismounted and tied off their ponies, the front ranks of the march were approaching. Having started their ride at the west end of the valley, the Snake and Bannock passed through the Flathead camp, then the Nez Perce village, sweeping up more and more participants until some four hundred yelling, chanting, shrieking warriors boiled up and down the sides of the parade column.
Stripped as if for the hunt, they wore no more than their breechclout and moccasins, many painted with vivid colors, tying birds and feathers in their hair, wearing the skullcaps of wolves, badgers, even buffalo upon their heads. Shaking lances strewn with the scalp locks taken from vanquished enemies, the horsemen strutted as proudly as any war hero might. Old men rode stately at the center of the march, singing their battle songs as they beat on hand drums or shook buffalo-bladder rattles filled with stream-bottom pebbles. Younger men who had taken no scalps brandished their bows or war clubs or fusils, to which they had tied long strips of red and blue cloth to flutter in the summer breeze.
Within a nearby copse of trees, Captain William Drummond Stewart and Bridger assured Marcus Whitman and Henry Spalding that this noisy, bellicose charge was every bit as harmless as the charge made on them by the trappers racing out to meet the caravan. Both wives appeared at the flaps of their tall conical tent sewn of bed ticking and large enough to comfortably sleep all seven of the missionaries. But the moment pale and sickly Eliza Spalding spied the approach of the screaming warriors, she emitted a pained yelp, slapped a hand over her mouth, and turned on her heel—disappearing back into the sanctuary of her tent.
“Curse these godless savages for their nakedness!” the prim and proper one shrieked in horror as she ducked from sight.
But Narcissa Whitman of the twinkling blue eyes and ready smile clapped her hands together with glee before hurrying on her husband’s arm to the edge of the meadow to watch the approach of that cavalcade assembled in honor of the missionaries.
Closer and closer the warriors came, growing noisier, shrieking louder as they drew near until the front ranks spotted the holy man’s fair-haired wife. Like the reflex of a muscle, they put their ponies to the gallop, shouting anew as they raced toward that bed-ticking tent, shaking weapons and feathers, scalps and coup-sticks, tearing out and around, leaping again and again over clumps of gray and green sage, spurts of yellowish dust flaring from every flying hoof. When no more than ten yards away, the first chiefs in the parade suddenly swept to the side without slowing in the slightest, careening their snorting, wide-eyed ponies in a maddening loop that took them entirely around the tall conical tent held fast to the prairie with wooden stakes.