One
JULY1837
GREENRIVERVALLEY(FUTUREWYOMING)
Ants. The men looked like an army of ants crawling around in the valley below.
Juniper Collins studied the chaotic sight from atop her horse far above on the mountain pass. Her mount shifted beneath her, the mare’s movement uneasy. The action seemed to set off the same agitation in her sisters’ horses on either side of her. The four of them had come hundreds of miles and traveled nearly two months on this mission, but they hadn’t expected the trapper rendezvous to look like this.
Mayhaphordewould be the better word for the mass spreading before her. A horde of men and horses and lodges and ... Air congealed in her lungs. How would they ever find someone in this madness who knew the Peigan Blackfoot woman named Steps Right?
“Oh my.” Rosemary, the oldest of the four sisters, spoke just as the first shouts echoed across the open land.
“Wagon ho!” a man’s gruff voice yelled.
“It’s here!” The fellows nearest them waved hats.
“Let’s go, boys!”
And just like that, the horde stampeded up the slope toward them. The whoops and yells charged ahead of the men, all racing toward the wagons right beside Juniper and her sisters.
“Run!” As usual, Rosemary took charge. She spun her horse away from the wagons, right into the flank of Juniper’s mare. Rosemary waved her hand to shoo them all ahead of her. “Quick! Behind those rocks.”
The horses scrambled to obey as all four of them aimed toward a cluster of boulders that would be large enough to hide them.
Juniper reined in behind her sisters to make sure no one dropped back, and the first men reached the wagons just as she tucked her mare behind the rocks. Some of these swarming trappers must have seen them dodge this direction, but the wagons looked to be the biggest draw. The crazed men probably hadn’t even realized women had arrived with the supplies they’d been waiting all year to trade for.
“Ho up! Ho there, I say!” Mr. Provost waved his hat and spun his horse, his shout barely rising above the clamor.
A gunshot ripped through the air, its boom finally lowering the volume of the trappers a small bit.
“Quiet!” Again Mr. Provost bellowed above the commotion.
The trappers ignored him as they surged around the wagons.
Two more rifles fired, puffs of gunsmoke clouding around the drivers of two of the middle wagons.
At last, the mountain men stopped pressing forward, and an unsteady quiet settled over the group.
Mr. Provost’s voice sounded once more, this time not as frantic. “Settle down, the lot of ya. No trading until morning, an hour after sunup. Any man who touches these wagons before then will be shot.”
A grumble spread through the crowd, but the mass of men eased away from the rigs. Mr. Provost turned his mount toward the first wagon and moved in front of the lead mules. “Make a road, men. Make a road.”
The sea parted before him as the grumble turned to the rising tone of conversation. A few trappers yelled out as the group passed.
“You came just in the nick o’ time, Provost.”
“Hope at least two of those wagons are full o’ whiskey.”
“Got a white beaver skin yur gonna love. Save me a barrel of the good stuff.”
Mr. Provost tipped his hat at a few of the voices as he rode past them. The men in the crowd seemed remarkably restrained now compared to their stampede moments before.
How would Juniper and her sisters ever find someone among all these people who could direct them to the Blackfoot woman their father had known twenty years ago? Should they start by asking among the white men or the natives?
For that matter, telling the difference may not be as easy as they’d expected. Though she’d not looked hard at faces, more than one fellow possessed skin dark enough that she couldn’t be sure if they were half-Indian or simply spent too much time in the sun.
A tiny squeal sounded from behind her, and she spunto see Lorelei, the next sister down from herself in age, struggling to hold onto the newest pet she’d picked up on the trail—a coyote pup. A tiny thing, only a few weeks old, with barely enough teeth to gnaw the scraps of meat Lorelei shredded into tiny pieces for him.
