Then Bridger took a step toward Bass as icy pricks of snow danced and swirled about them. Standing beside Titus, Hockaday tugged up the collar of his coat and shivered as a gust of wind slapped some of the sharp, cold lancets against their exposed skin.
Jim asked, “How ’bout you, Scratch? You got any place better to be than Green River come next spring?”
“Crow country.”
Sweete inquired, “Why you fix your sights so far away up there?”
“Yeah,” Bridger added, “this here’s a good country too.”
“For some folks, I’ll lay as that’s so,” he sighed. And finally said, “One time a ol’ friend of mine named Rotten Belly told me Crow country was right where First Maker intended it to be. A man goes south, he must wander and worry over a desert, where the water’s too warm an’ folks grow sick. If a man goes north, the summers are short and the snow lays deep a long, long time. To the west the people eat fish and they grow old too soon, their teeth rotten too, since’t they don’t have proper meat. And in the east, a man finds the water muddy, the land closed in so he can’t see far at all, and too many folks creepin’ out from the settlements. No, Gabe—I’ll head for that Yallerstone country. Seems to this child he’s been showed the right place.”
“You gonna winter your family on the Green with us, or you figger to head north now?”
He squinted his eyes and drew in a long breath of the cold, shocking air. Then he answered, “Now’s the time my bones tell me go north, afore winter sets in too hard.”
“What you say to ridin’ with us to the Green?” Bridger asked.
With a sad smile, Titus said, “I’d like to ride with you fellas that far. One last journey together, till it’s time for me to cross the Seedskeedee. Cross the Green … one last time.”
THIRTY-ONE
A week later as they were nearing the Green River, they ran onto Washakie’s village marching south. Word of the troubles had reached Bridger’s father-in-law, and he was leading more than twelve hundred warriors south to spend the winter in the Black’s Fork country, if need be to drive off any more of the Mormon attacks.
But Gabe and the others had sat in that council circle with the headmen of the Shoshone nation while he tried to explain to them that he did not want them to take up his cause. Eventually the Indians came to understand in their own way that if they sought to protect this friend and relation from those white men who stole and murdered, then the white man’s dragoons would be called upon to come after Washakie’s people. And even if the Shoshone won the first few contests with the white soldiers, more and more would keep coming … just as the Snakes had watched more and more white men flooding through their country, heading for Oregon, California, and—the valley of Brigham Young’s Saints.
“I do not profess to understand the heart of the white man,” Washakie admitted sadly. “I do know the heart of other red men. I know if those hearts mean to do me good, or if they seek to do me evil. Their hearts are there for me to read.”
“Like the hearts of the Blackfoot who struck your people a few days ago?” Jim asked.
“Yes—a large war party of them,” Washakie said, nodding with pride. “They came far to the south to attack my people—because they did not expect us to be so strong. They have not been as powerful as they were since the spotted sickness wasted so many of them away like breathsmoke. So our fighting men ran them off, like yipping dogs with their tails curled between their legs. The mighty Blackfoot!”
“This is good!” Bridger exclaimed, and quickly translated again for the rest of the old trappers who did not understand the Shoshone tongue.
“But,” Washakie warned, “a hurt animal is a dangerous animal. And the war party may try to hurt others—the Flathead, Assiniboine, or even the Crow. But,” and now he smiled as he said, “I am assured they have learned never to come south again to raid Washakie’s people!”
He and Bridger were the same age, and between them had been a strong bond that dated back to when Jim’s trapping brigade was fighting off an overwhelming number of Blackfoot, slowly being bested, until Washakie and his warriors showed up and drove off the attackers.
“Sometimes I do not understand the things the white man does,” the chief continued. “The Grandfather far to the east, who told us to make peace with the white man and with the other tribes at Horse Creek, he tells us we must no longer steal ponies from our enemies.”
“That’s right,” Bridger said.
Washakie continued, “The Great Father tells us we must no longer raid and plunder and kill our enemies. Is this so?”
“When you put your mark on that paper, that is what you agreed to,” Jim declared.
Drawing himself up Washakie asked, accusingly, “Then where were these other white men when we put our marks on that paper and promised not to steal or kill? Where were they?”
“Who?” Bridger asked.
“The white men who came to your lodge, stole your horses and stock, drove my daughter and your children off into the cold, then carried everything else away before they burned your lodge? Where were those white men when we made our promises?”
Gabe wagged his head. “They did not sign the paper.”
“Why does the Grandfather and his soldiers allow this?” Washakie demanded, slamming a fist into an open palm. “How can this be right, for white men to steal from those who have been their friends? How can those white men come kill their friends?”
Bridger shrugged. Without an answer.
“You white men have a strange justice, my old friend,” Washakie replied sourly. “You are my son, you are my brother. So I will do what you ask of me, instead of driving these bad white people from our land forever. For your sake only, I will not draw my knife against them.”
Bass leaned over and whispered into Bridger’s ear, “You unnerstand what you just done?”
“What?”
“You just saved the life of the one man who’s set out to steal ever’thing he can from you,” Titus explained. “The man who’s set out to murder friends of your’n if they stood against him. You unnerstand you just saved the wuthless, flea-bit hide of Brigham Young hisself.”
Turning to his old friend, Jim’s eyes reflected the pain and frustration that Titus was himself feeling. Gabe said, “If’n it turns out that I saved Brigham Young’s life by savin’ these Shoshone from even more trouble, then that’s the way it’s gotta be, Scratch. One day, Brigham Young an’ me gonna square accounts. That’s as certain as sun.”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” Bass grumbled. “Brigham Young’s the wust cut of coward. He’s not man enough to stand an’ fight you square, Jim. He’s a yeller-backed, throat-cuttin’, weasel-gutted coward who’s gone high an’ mighty, hidin’ behin’t all his believers, lettin’ his army of Avengin’ Angels do his dirty blood work for him. No man I ever had respect for gone an’ hid behin’t a murderin’ mob the way Brigham Young does.”
Near the end of their council, Gabe explained to Washakie that he was going to spend the winter on the Green, and when spring arrived he and his friends would build a new ferry for the white-topped wagons heading west along the Great Medicine Road. Once the ferry was in operation, Bridger declared that he intended to take Mary and the children back east, as far as the settlement of Westport perhaps. There they should be out of harm’s way, either white or red.
“Will you keep my daughter far from her father for all time?” Washakie asked solemnly.