Read Online Buffalo Palace by Terry C. Johnston - Free Book Online Page B

the post would be eventually situated. The red-haired William Clark again passed by the site early in the fall of 1808 with a troop of dragoon cavalry on his way to make a treaty with the Osage. On November 13 of that year, upon his return trip downriver, General Clark christened the post that would be abandoned less than five years later during the war scare—the government, army, and civilians alike believing the British in Canada were goading the tribes along the upper river to rise en masse and descend the Missouri, slaughtering all Americans in their path. The army did not garrison Fort Osage again, nor operate the post as a government trading house with the Indians west of the Missouri, until 1816.
    Bass nodded, kneeling to take a twig from the fire, lighting his pipe. “So like you told me—there ain’t soldiers here all the time?”
    Clayton said, “No there ain’t. Nowadays just when some fur trader gets some business going with the tribes upriver. Maybeso they station us here in the spring and the fall, what with the Santa Fe trade going and coming those times of year.”
    “Last bunch of soldiers stationed here,” Culpepper said, jumping into the conversation enthusiastically, his eyes dancing, “three of ’em deserted.”
    “Deserted?”
    “Yep. Run off with all the lead and shot they could carry—”
    Clayton interrupted, “’Cepting the sergeant. He damn well didn’t desert his station.”
    “Yup.” Culpepper’s head bobbed as he declared, “Three soldiers tied that poor bastard up to the fur press out there in the compound afore they took off for parts unknown.”
    “Must’ve been days later when some fellas finally showed up—coming downriver in a canoe what they tied up yonder,” Lancaster joined in. “They come up to find the gates open, and the sergeant sitting right out there—all trussed up like a Christmas hog.”
    “He was still alive after all that time?” Bass inquired.
    “Barely,” Clayton answered. “Poor son of a bitch’s wrists was flayed and bloody trying his best to break outta them ropes.”
    “An’ he could barely utter a word,” Culpepper added. “Hoarse as a sour-mouthed bullfrog. Been screaming and cussing for all he was worth since the day them three run off.”
    Lancaster wagged his head, saying, “No one to hear him anyway. Don’t know why he didn’t just shut his yap and wait till someone showed up.”
    “Would you?” Culpepper demanded, turning on the older soldier. “Just sit there?”
    “Still say it didn’t do him a bit of good,” Lancaster replied sourly.
    “What ever become of him?” Titus asked.
    “I heard the poor soul’s still mending down to St. Louis,” Sergeant Clayton explained.
    Bass puffed on his pipe. “Army decided to send up some more men, even after them others run off?”
    “These are good men,” Clayton replied, nodding at the others. “Both of ’em hard workers, and they’re loyal, too.”
    “Not like them last three,” Culpepper spouted.
    Nearby, Fire Prairie Creek meandered out of the timber toward the bluff where the stockade stood and eventually spilled into the Missouri. Many years before William Clark had ever chosen the site, Fire Prairie had acquired its name among the local tribes when four Osage warriorswere killed by a large band of attacking Pawnee, who surrounded their enemies, then burned them alive, setting fire to the dry grass in a nearby meadow. To the peaceful bands situated in that big-bend country of the Missouri River, the army’s post and government factory had long been commonly known as Fire Prairie Fort.
    “We had to drive off four sonsabitches when we got here,” Culpepper boasted.
    “Interlopers,” Sergeant Clayton explained. “Civilian interlopers—likely taking squatters’ rights here to conduct some illegal whiskey trade with the peaceable bands in the country hereabouts.”
    “They sure didn’t put up much of a argument,” Culpepper added. “Likely they figured we