“You want any of ’em left alive?” Sweete called out.
“Only kill the ones what won’t run off, boys!” Gabe instructed. “Put them others afoot an’ let ’em walk outta here!”
“You don’t stand a chance, Bridger!” that voice cried again, the one with the mean edge to it. “Give up now and we won’t have to kill you to get you back to Salt Lake City as our prisoner.”
Scratch roared, “I’m afeared you Marmons don’t know what you bit off comin’ back here!”
“Only a matter of time, Bridger!”
The two of them both fired shots into the brush, then looked at one another. Gabe was the first to speak.
“He might be right, Scratch,” Jim whispered sadly. “Looks to be only a matter of time afore them an’ their kind run all over these mountains.”
“Naw, don’t go thinkin’ like that, Gabe,” he pleaded. “There’s still places for men like us. Get back far enough, up high enough … there’s still places left for our kind.”
“How far away, Scratch?” Jim asked as he began reloading. “How far’s a man gotta go to find such a place?”
“North,” he said as he poked his barrel back through the slot between the timbers. “Far enough from this here road to Oregon. Go far enough I can’t see trouble no more.”
“That’s where you’re fixin’ to take your family?”
He was sprinkling some priming powder in the pan when he looked up at his old friend. “This gotta be my last trip back to Crow country, Jim.”
“Why, ain’t you ever gonna come visitin’ again? Gonna let these here Saints run you off?”
Scratch wagged his head. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the dream one of them ol’ Crow rattle-shakers had for me. Said I was gonna go under if I ever left again.”
“So, when you go back now—you ain’t leavin’ no more?” Bridger asked, a grave look on his face.
Glancing quickly at the wide, questioning eyes of Hockaday, Titus said, “I got tired somewhere down the trail aways, Gabe. Don’t know where … can’t rightly say when neither. But, I wanna get my woman an’ our young’uns back north where there ain’t no white niggers stirrin’ up trouble for us.”
Bridger grinned and snorted, “Just Blackfoot!”
He laughed too. “That’s right. Man-allays knows what to expect outta Blackfoot, don’t he?”
Turning to Hockaday, Jim explained, “With them Blackfeets, there’s more killin’ and stealin’ too, than there be with any other red niggers.”
Bass nodded: “Up north, near them Bug’s boys, a fella puts his nose up like this … an’ he can tell what’s in the wind, Mr. Hockaday. Down here in this country a man’s gotta work to figger our which white men are good, which white men ain’t. Up there, life ain’t near so confusin’. You hunt an’ you live. Life goes on easy, ’cept for one worry. Only one worry, Mr. Hockaday. When the Blackfoot come ’round … there’s allays the worst kind of trouble. It’s a good an’ simple life.”
The surveyor asked, “Y-you’d rather live with that sort of worry than down-here where Bridger has made his claim?”
He stared along the barrel of his rifle at that patch of brush where some muzzle smoke appeared a second time. The Mormon hadn’t moved so was doing his damnedest to make himself an inviting target.
“Think I would rather live where folks don’t make out to be something they ain’t, Mr. Hockaday,” he said, turning slightly to look at the surveyor again. “Some folks; like these here Marmons—they gussy up their talk with all the Bible words, but they ain’t no God-fearin’ folk. Hell, Jim, even Ol’ Solitaire—Bill Williams his own self—was more a holy man than Brigham Young an’ a hull territory of his Marmons, all of ’em throwed together in a tater sack!”
Titus looked back down along the barrel at his sight picture and set the back trigger. “No, Mr. Hockaday—these here Marmons are the sort to parade around in the clothes of some holy folk … when all along they really set out to steal ever’thing they want an’ murder ever’ man what stands in their way.”
Scratch waited a few moments after firing at the leafless brush, staring at that spot where he had been aiming. But he never spotted another puff of muzzle smoke. Fact was, during those heartbeats he waited, the Mormons started yelling a lot at one another, and their return fire was quickly withering.
Then through the trees upstream, Titus saw what blur of movement the other old free men could see from their positions. Their enemy was mounting up, helping those bleeding, wounded men onto what they had left of horses, every one of them retreating without much grace or ceremony.
“Ain’t that downright ill mannered of ’em, Gabe,” Titus growled as he pulled the barrel back through the opening, blew down the muzzle, then stuck the plug to his powder horn between his teeth.
“Ill m-mannered?” Hockaday asked.
“That’s right,” Bass replied, pouring a measure of powder from his horn into a brass charger. “I ’spected them holy folks to have better manners than they showed, Mr. Hockaday. You see, Brigham Young’s murderers just run off with their tails atween their legs … but ’thout givin’ any of us the slightest by-your-leave or fare-thee-well!”
Gabe was laughing as he clambered to his feet and peered over the top of the timbers, shaking his fist at the sky. “You tell Brigham Young he’s gonna have to send more’n you milk-teat pilgrims if’n he wants to drive me outta my home!”
By that time Scratch was scrambling to his feet, having rammed home a lead ball. He cradled the flintlock across his left elbow and began to prime the pan on the gun’s ignition. “Only way them murderin’ thieves ever gonna take this here place from you, Jim—they’re gonna have to come agin us with a army.”
When Titus turned to look at him, Bridger’s smile of victory had faded. His face was like a fruit gone sour and pithy.
“That’s just what Brigham Young’s gonna do now that we throwed this bunch back, Scratch,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You an’ me both know it. Lookit us, just lookit us—there be less’n a dozen ol’ hivernants left in these here mountains now. We won’t ever hold back that bastard’s army when he sends it next time.”
Bridger turned away slowly, his shoulders sagging with regret and more while he started trudging away from the charred wall. Titus turned, his eye finding the rest of their friends emerging from the brush and cottonwoods, stepping into the open and starting for the ruins of Bridger’s post, their breath become long streamers in the icy air.
“Jim!” he cried as the snow began to turn serious. Bridger stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at Bass. “Come north with-me, Gabe. Come north.”
The trader deliberated on it for a long moment as he stared at the toes of his moccasins, then raised his eyes. “No. I’m gonna take Mary an’ the young’uns to the Green River. That’s where Brigham Young’s territory of Utah ends. Where his Saints don’t rule.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothin’ right now,” Jim admitted as Shad and the others slowly moved up and stopped in silence. “But come spring, I’ll scout for a better crossing, build me a better ferry too.”
“You gonna run it your own self?” Titus asked.
For a moment Gabe looked at the others as if he were a man who regretted dragging his friends through any more of his tribulations, and finally said, “If’n I have to, I will run it myself.”
“I’ll help,” Shad offered. “I ain’t got nowhere to be in a hurry.”
Then one by one the other old mountain men offered their services too, even though Jim was quick to remind them that Brigham Young’s Saints had already murdered five of their friends in a vicious and surprise attack.
“Don’t know for the rest of these fellas,” one of them replied to Bridger’s warning. “But for me, I ain’t got nowhere else to be neither. Like for Shadrach here, I figger the Seedskeedee is good a place as any for a man to stay out the rest of his days.”