They hugged and pounded each other on the back, then stepped apart.
Smearing the back of his powder-grimed hand beneath both eyes, Scratch cleared his throat and told them with a strong voice, “That dream I tol’t you about … that’s where Titus Bass is gonna live for all time to come. That’s how Titus Bass is gonna stay with you.”
Quickly he turned on his heel and went to his gray pony before any of them could say or do something that would stay him any longer. Settling in the saddle, he gestured for his son to start the others down to the crossing. When his family were on their way toward the bank, Scratch turned for one last look at these old faces he would only see in dream from here on out.
“I’ll see you again—soon enough, my friends!” he cried out, his voice cracking with painful emotion. “Just dream of them glory days, by damn, you dream it in your hearts … for that’s where I’ll allays stay!”
They didn’t have all that much when they put Fort Bridger behind them and started for the Green River, not after the Mormons had stolen all the extra weapons, blankets, buffalo robes, even unto what extra clothing an old mountain man, his wife, and their children possessed.
But by the time Mary Bridger finished explaining to her people what had happened to all of them at the hands of Brigham Young’s Avenging Angels, Washakie’s Shoshone opened up their hearts and their hands to the family of Titus Bass. A blanket from this person, a buffalo robe from another, an old saddle someone wasn’t using, a worn kettle or dented coffeepot—nearly everyone gave something to the old mountain man, this good friend of Jim Bridger who had married the chief’s daughter.
Once again Titus was stunned by the generosity of these people who lived with far less than any Mormon family ever would own, yet were a people more than willing to share what little extra they had with this stranger and his Crow wife. On top of that, it had struck Scratch, the Shoshone and Crow held no undying love for one another. So it was with deep gratitude that he had watched as Little Fawn brought the first gift to place upon the ground in front of the brush shelter where Titus and his family were preparing to spend that cold night after running onto Washakie’s people near the banks of the Green River.
“While we menfolk was in council with Washakie’s headmen,” Jim had explained in a whisper as one person after another came forward with a gift for the Bass family, “that wife of mine went round the camp, tellin’ ever’one just what you an’ your’n been through to help us, Scratch. What you give up, what you lost just to be there to help a old friend like me.”
Scratch’s eyes brimmed as he looked over the goods given by people who did not have great wealth but were rich in spirit.
He said, “Don’t know how I’ll ever come to thank ’em all—”
“You awready have, Titus Bass,” Jim interrupted in a whisper. “These folks know you chose to stand by a friend against a whole damn army of thieves and murderers—an’ your family lost near ever’thing for it. These folks is honoring me by honoring my friend, Titus Bass.”
For a long time he could not speak, the lump so tight and raw in his throat. Instead, the old trapper stood on his tired legs, one arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulders, as they watched the procession of Washakie’s people bringing gifts to the family of that man they honored as a faithful friend.
Many times in the following days he squinted his eyes against the low winter light glinting off the icy skim of snow … and remembered back to that afternoon as the sun sank and the weather turned bitter. His wife and children had been doubly warmed with those gifts of clothing, blankets, and robes. From there on out, they had no fear of freezing before seeing Crow country. Enough robes to throw over a small shelter made of willow limbs he and Flea could tie together, forming a low dome. Two old kettles to boil the meat he and his son had somehow managed to scare up in the coulees and at the foot of the ridges as they plodded north for the Yellowstone. When at last they would reach the land of the Apsaluuke and found Pretty On Top’s people, they could crowd in with daughter Magpie, her husband, Turns Back, and what was sure to be their first child of their own. As soon as Titus, Turns Back, and Flea could, they would hunt for enough robes the women would flesh free of hair, grain to a smooth finish, then sew together to construct a small lodge for Waits-by-the-Water, replacing the one burned by the Mormon raiders.
By midwinter, life would return to normal. Something as close to normal as it could be for a man and his family who had lost a stillborn child, had everything else he had accumulated over the years either carted away to Salt Lake City or burned to uselessness in the cinder-choked ash heap that was Jim Bridger’s fort. What bright hope it had taken to raise those walls back in ’43, more than ten winters ago. The same hope that now carried Scratch and his family north through the short days, traveling between sunup and sundown, huddling through the long, bitter, winter nights as they chattered of the joy to come with seeing the faces of family and friends, gazing at familiar landmarks and that place a man called his home.
That used-to-be country where things might just stay the way they always had been for … just a little longer. A hope that it would be for all of them as it always had been for just … a little longer.
If that could be called a prayer, then it was the prayer of Titus Bass. The plea of a man who found himself caught in a world he did not recognize, a world where he felt lost and adrift. Better for him to flee that world the white man was changing into his own image. Far, far better for Titus Bass to strike out for what he knew, for what he remembered was tangible, for what he could embrace as the way things had always been, and might always be. That didn’t make him a coward, did it? he asked the First Maker. To escape all that he knew was wrong, to flee where he knew men still valued honor above all? As he considered it, Scratch tallied up every ill and evil wind that had befallen his family—from the attack by the Arapaho in Bayou Salade to the troubles for Magpie at Fort John, hired St. Louis killers to the devastation of the smallpox, Comanche kidnappers to a Taos uprising … against one travail after another they had prevailed, until Brigham Young’s Mormons came riding into their lives to kill their friends and steal everything Titus Bass had ever owned. And all of their troubles seemed to happen south of Crow country.
So this was the best a man could do—taking his family north away from all the trials they had ever encountered. Up there along the Yellowstone, back into the country of the River and Mountain Crow bands, life had remained virtually unchanged over these last twenty-some years. Few white men had ever come, fewer still had stayed on. The Blackfoot had their post up at the mouth of the Marias. The Assiniboine, their Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone. And the Crow had “Round Iron” Robert Meldrum at Fort Alexander near the mouth of the Rosebud. Despite those far-flung outposts, few white men had come to stay … sure as hell not the way it was to the south, from the Sweetwater and Devil’s Gate country all the way down to troubled and bloody Taos. Once a man got on the north side of Shoshone land and was headed into Absaroka, he would find life was quieter, more predictable, this far north—
“Friend!”
Scratch jerked back on the reins and brought the old rifle up, realizing he had been dozing, daydreaming, not paying a goddamned bit of attention. Behind him he heard Flea’s hoofbeats as the youngster’s pony hurried him from the far right flank.
He blinked in the waning light of that windy winter afternoon. Blinked again, clearing the water from his one good eye, and found the figure emerging from the brush. He wasn’t sure what to think, what the devil to expect as Flea galloped closer, protectively vigilant in the face of any danger to his father. But, that was not the sort of term an enemy would use, was it?