Ride the Moon Down (69 page)

Joe looked over the others, many of whom hung their heads wearily. He eventually said, “I s’pose we ain’t.”

“And what if we did?” Titus asked. “Count the heads here—then remember how many riders them Sioux had.”

“Where is Thompson’s bunch, anyways?” Carson growled, turning in the saddle to look down their backtrail.

Shad spoke up. “They ain’t ever gonna have a chance of cutting off the Sioux with us if they ain’t caught up with us by now.”

“Maybeso we ought go on,” Meek suggested, but no more than halfheartedly.

“We do that, Joe,” Scratch said, wagging his head, “pushing our own horses so damned hard—we’re like’ to lose the ones we got a’fore we ever do turn back to the post.”

“Bass is right,” Sweete declared. “’Member them two carcasses we come across already?”

“Them were my horses the bastards run into the ground!” Carson squealed. “Sure wanna get me their hair for killing my horses!”

Shrugging, Meek said, “I see it the way Scratch’s stick floats. We can keep on chasing them horse thieves and kill what horses we got under us to do it … or we can take our lumps and mosey on back to the fort ’thout losing any more.”

The bunch grumbled, but no one said a thing against turning around. No one really had to because the choices were clear. Continue the chase and fight the overwhelming odds that they would lose what they still had, or head for Fort Davy Crockett. As much as it stung to turn around, Bass figured those horses weren’t worth all of those men dying out there.

“Sure sours my milk to give up,” Scratch admitted. “But I got my family at the fort. If I go and run the legs out from under this here horse, chances are good I won’t get back there to see ’em.”

Many of the others had squaws and children waiting in the shadows of the fort walls too. Grudgingly, they agreed.

“Keep your eyes peeled on the way back,” Sweete suggested.
“Sing out if’n you spot sign of Thompson’s bunch.”

But they didn’t. Not even a dust cloud. And none of them heard anything that night as they made camp astride the trail left behind by the stolen herd. Nor did they see anything of the others throughout the next day. Meek’s dozen riders reached the walls of Fort Davy Crockett late the next day, surprised to find that no word had come in from Thompson’s group.

Then a week passed. And another. Finally more than a month of waiting and wondering ground by, and most of the trappers figured on the worst. Even Philip Thompson’s Ute squaw had completed mourning her dead husband and was in the process of taking up with one of Joe Walker’s men when word of Thompson’s men reached Fort Davy Crockett.

“Sinclair!” shouted a man, bursting into Prewett Sinclair’s trading room late one afternoon early that winter of thirty-nine. “You better come out and talk with these Snakes.”

“Visitors? Tell ’em they can send two in here at a time to trade—”

“They don’t wanna trade,” the man interrupted Sinclair. “This bunch is ’bout as edgy as a pouch full of scalded cats.”

Sinclair glanced about the smoke-filled room. “Any of you know Snake?”

“Used to know a little,” Bass admitted. “Spent some time healing up in a Snake lodge long time back.”

Walker set his cup down on the plank table. “With what I learned from that woman of mine, I figger I can help you on what Scratch don’t know.”

“You boys give it a try for me?” Sinclair asked. “See what’s got this bunch so riled?”

Sinclair, Sweete, and a half-dozen others followed Scratch and Walker out the gate to find more than twenty warriors arrayed in a wide front some twenty yards from the fort wall. Every one of the horsemen had their weapons in view and their shields uncovered. That was a bad sign in any language.

Scratching at his memory to recall what he could of the Shoshone tongue, Bass called out, “Who leads this group?”

“I do,” a man called out as he urged his horse forward a few yards and came to a halt. Two others came up and stopped a yard behind him. “I am Rain.”

“The trader invites Rain and his warriors to trade,” Walker explained. “Two warriors can come in the wood lodge at a time—”

“I am not here to trade with Sinclair.”

“You know the trader?” Walker asked.

“Yes, I have come here often,” Rain replied. “My people always thought he was a good man.”

“No more?”

Rain shook his head. “Sinclair’s friend stole horses from us.”

Walker and Bass looked at one another, both bewildered. “Who is this friend stole your horses?”

“The one with the pointed chin,” Rain answered.

“What’s he saying?” Sinclair asked.

Bass shushed Sinclair as Walker continued. “This one with the pointed chin—you’re sure he stole horses from you?”

“Yes. He and others came to spend two nights with us,” Rain continued the amazing story. “They said they were on their way south to the white man post on the Sage River.
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They were leading some horses they boasted they had stolen from the men at the Snake River fort.”

“How many horses did they steal from that fort?”

“At least three times the fingers on my one hand. And when they left our village to continue south, they took more than twice as many more horses from us!”

“This is not good,” Bass muttered to Walker, shaking his head.

Joe Walker asked the chief, “What do you want the trader Sinclair to do?”

“We want our horses back,” Rain declared firmly. “We came to take scalps—but we want the scalps of those who stole horses from us. They are white men with no honor: to steal from other white men, then steal from Indians they say are their friends. We honored them with our hospitality—fed them, let them sleep in our robes. What sort of man would steal from us after we treated him as one of our own?”

Bass thought a moment, then said, “Their scalps are not worth the trouble, Rain. Will you let us go after the thieves?”

Rain talked low to the warriors behind him, then asked, “You white men will go after the others and get our horses back?”

“We can try,” Titus said. “If we find them, we will bring the ponies to you.”

“And if you don’t,” Rain vowed, “my band will no longer be a friend to this place and all who camp here. My men will return to steal the horses from this place.”

Grimly, Joe Walker asked, “How long will you give us?”

Peering at the half-moon rising in the late-afternoon sky for a long moment, the war chief finally said, “Indian-talkers, you will have till the moon grows fat. Then we will be back to take the horses that graze in this meadow … along with the scalps of every man, woman, and child still here when we return.”

“Can’t understand how I figured Thompson wrong,” William Craig moaned at their fire that third night on their cold ride down the Green.

“Folks change,” Joe Walker said as he slid the blade of his knife round and round on the whetting stone.

Robert Newell asked, “You figure to use that knife on Thompson?”

“Maybe he should,” Titus Bass roared abruptly, surprising them all. “Man just up and turns his coat like Thompson and them others—maybe it’s up to folks like us to kill him.”

Walker gazed at Bass wordlessly, no need of language between men of like mind.

“You really fixing to kill them white men when we catch up to ’em?” Dick Owens asked.

“Maybeso we’ll see what happens when we get down there to take them horses back,” Bass said as he poked a twig into the fire.

“They’re just Injun horses,” William Craig said. “English horses too. It ain’t like they stole ’em from any friend of mine—”

“No friend of your’n?” Bass snarled. “Didn’t them English help out the three of you your first two seasons?”

“Y-yes—”

“What ’bout them Snakes?” Walker asked this time. “Didn’t they come in to trade with you and Thompson and Sinclair, when they could’ve come riding in and run off with all your stock?”

Craig regarded his Nez Perce wife a moment, then stared at the fire. “I s’pose I do owe the Snakes some decent—”

“Goddamned right,” Bass interrupted. “That’s what turned it for me. When Thompson and Peg-Leg stole horses from the English up at Fort Hall, I just figgered the English was a big outfit what could take care of itself. But when them white niggers rode into that Snake village and was treated so goddamned good by ’em, only to take off with some of their horses … then I knowed wrong was wrong.”

“No matter them niggers are white men,” Walker vowed. “Them horses is going back to the Snakes. If’n Thompson and the rest put up a fight … I’ll kill ’em the way I would any man what stole from my friends. That about the way you sack it, Scratch?”

“Stealing from no-good red niggers like Blackfoot is one thing,” Bass agreed. “But I never did cotton to stealing from folks who done me a good turn.”

“Maybeso anyone here who don’t figure this may come to gunplay better turn back in the morning a’fore we push on,” Walker said as he slid his knife back into its scabbard. “Ruther not have such a man along when I need to know who’s watching my back in a fight.”

“Comes down to it,” Meek said, “you can count on me and Doc.”

“Me and Dick too,” Carson said, angling a thumb at Owens.

“You’re in with Bass, ain’cha, Shad?” Walker asked.

Sweete smiled. “Me and Scratch see eye to eye on most things. I’d as soon hang a white turncoat’s scalp from my belt as a Blackfoot’s. ’Sides—Titus Bass hauled my hash outta the fire more’n once. I’ll stand at his back in ary fight he calls me to.”

The wind was up the next morning when they tried to restart their fires. Shards of icy snow skittered along the ground, gusting this way and that, scattering the ashes and embers. Finally the men saddled up and pushed on without coffee in their bellies.

Mile by mile they rode south-southwest, almost into the teeth of that storm racing off the horizon. But instead of snow, the lowering sky brought only a deepening cold. No man could claim he was warm punching against that brutal wind. Hour by hour they continued down that ages-old trail the Ute had used for centuries, a trail that was leading them toward the mouth of the Uintah River where three winters before Antoine Robidoux had raised his log stockade. It was there the Shoshone said they would find Thompson, Peg-Leg Smith, and the rest lying low with their stolen horses.

But none of them knew for certain what would happen when they finally found Thompson’s horse thieves.

That night, and again the following morning, they had to chip holes in the thick ice sealing the Green in order to water their weary horses. The men huddled sleepless around their fires, wrapped in blankets and robes, remembering high times, talking about the glory days that had been and would never be again.

And they talked about justice swift and sure. These
men who were of a breed all their own had written their own code of honor across this raw and lawless land.

“Man don’t steal from those what treat him as a friend,” Bass explained to those grown cold and hungry and tired of the journey.

“I’d ruther gut me a red nigger than chase after white men what took a few horses from some Injuns,” Dick Owens grumbled, once more on the verge of turning back.

For a moment Titus looked at Kit Carson, Owens’s friend and partner. Then Scratch said, “Ain’t none of us likes what’s staring us in the eye, Dick. But white man, or red nigger—wrong is wrong … and less’n a man stands up for right in a land where there ain’t no laws ’cept what’s right, then we might just as well turn this here place over to them sheriffs and constables and preachers and high-toned, honey-tongued lawyers right now.”

“Scratch is right,” Joe Walker agreed. “If’n we don’t do what’s right, then we might as well hand this land over to them what’ll turn everything bad on us. You better decide a’fore morning, Dick. I figger we’ll reach Fort Winty
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by late morning tomorrow.”

“Dick’s gonna ride with us,” Carson said firmly, turning to his partner. “Ain’cha, Dick?”

Owens reluctantly nodded. “It don’t make a lick of sense for me to turn back now. Not alone, it don’t.”

“I don’t want you along if’n your heart ain’t in it, Owens,” Scratch threatened.

“It ain’t, and that’s the truth,” Owens admitted. “Them are white men. They stole’t horses from the English, stole’t horses from the Injuns. They didn’t steal no horses from me—”

“They might as well took horses from me, Dick,” Titus said. “I know Peg-Leg Smith. Got drunk with him a time or two my own self. But when he and the rest went thieving horses from them Snakes, from Injuns what always done their best to treat us good, that’s when Peg-Leg crossed the line.”

“But they’re white men,” Owens groused. “Same as you and me.”

“Makes it all the worse of ’em,” Titus argued. “I got me a choice, Dick. Either I go get them horses back for the Snakes and make it right by them … or them Snakes go do it for themselves.”

“What you figger them Snakes would do, Scratch?” Meek asked.

“Start killing white men,” he declared flatly. “Snakes been our friends for as long as I’ve knowed ’em, boys. So if you want our friends to start killing white men, then you go right on back: tuck your tail and turn back for home.”

“There ain’t no easy way at this,” Carson advised. “I’m mad as a spit-on hen that them boys stole horses … but I’m even madder at ’em for what might happen if we don’t get them horses back to the Snakes.”

“Amen to that, Kit,” Titus grumbled as he eyed the reluctant Dick Owens. “Amen to that.”

Late that next morning as he bellied down atop the sage-covered hill alongside Meek and Walker, Bass focused his long brass spyglass on the log-and-mud fort below them at that junction where the Uintah flowed into the Green. In that subfreezing silence, Scratch could hear the snuffle of their own horses tied behind them, just below the skyline.

He passed the glass to Walker. “Seems they might’n be expecting visitors. Look there at the island in the middle of the Green, just downriver.”

“I see ’em,” Walker said. “That’s where they’re herding the horses, Joe.” He handed the glass on to Meek.

They waited till the muscular trapper finished looking over the scene below; then Titus asked, “We go for the horses? Or … we go to raise hell with them horse thieves?”