The First Mountain Man (16 page)

“You're a fine woman, Melody. I believe that. A looker, too. You 'bout as easy on the eyes as any female I ever seen. But I ain't the man for you. I got to say that I'm prideful you like me. Any man who wouldn't be is a pure damn fool. So lets us be friends. No more than that. 'Cause it can't be, Melody. You and me ... just can't be.”

He turned and walked away.

Richard stepped out of the shadows, moving quietly in his fringed buckskins. Melody turned to face him.

“You heard, Richard?”

“Not intentionally, Melody. I was bringing you a cup of coffee and a biscuit when I heard you talking. I didn't want to interrupt Preacher. He was telling you the truth, Melody. Heed his words.”

She took the tin cup and the biscuit with thanks. “I've never had a man affect me the way he does, Richard. And I've never said that to anybody.”

“Melody, I had a pet wolf once. I raised it from a cub. Found it when I was summering on my grandfather's farm in the country. I loved that wolf. But I had to let it go. I cried like a baby, but I still turned it loose. It belonged to nature. It was a while thing—just like Preacher. This is where he belongs, and he knows it. Just like that wolf longed to be free. I truly believe that wild animal loved me, in its own way. But it loved the land more. I finally saw that and let it return to its rightful heritage.”

Richard saw that Melody was crying, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. He stood for a moment, then turned away and walked back to their wagon.

* * *

Preacher was in the saddle, restlessly walking Hammer up one side and down the other of the wagon train. Faint streaks of gray were slowly highlighting the eastern horizon.

He stopped by the gee-gaw wagon. Trapper Jim sat on the seat, the reins in his big, work-hardened hands. “Are ye filled with excitement and wonderment at the journey ahead?” Jim said with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Where'd you hear that?

“One of the movers said it about fifteen minutes ago. I like to have fell offen this seat.”

“What I'm filled with is coffee and biscuits and fatback. You et?”

“A right good meal. One of the movers hailed me and fed me. Right nice folks. Preacher, I had me a run-in with that boy called Avery. Last evenin'. He's gonna cause us some woe, I'm feared”

“I got the same thoughts. What'd he do?”

“Sassed me right smart. I was of a mind to box his ears. But ifn I'd a-done that, I'd probably had to kill his pa. He was a-watchin' close. Shootin' the man wouldn't a been no way to start off a trip.”

“It would have spoiled this evenin', for sure,” Preacher agreed. “Yeah . . .” he sighed. “The boy's gonna be trouble. I gleaned that right off. Swift thinks so too. He told me he come close to banishin' the wagon from the train but he just couldn't do it in the middle of hostile country.”

“You might have to do it, Preacher. Some of the other movers wanted to call a meetin' here at the fort and discharge the family. Since others talked 'em out of it.”

“I guess we'll cross that river when it comes time.” Preacher lifted the reins. “Be shovin' off in a few. Talk to you later.”

“I'll shore be creepin' along,” Jim said with an easy grin. “All filled with wonderment and excitement.”

Preacher laughed and moved up the line. “Get the kids that's ridin' into the wagons!” he yelled.

Preacher moved up to the rear of another wagon. “Replace that rope on your grease buckets, Sanders,” he told the man standing beside the oxen. “You'll love it 'fore the day is gone.”

At another wagon, he said, “Secure your canvas back here, Smithers. A good gust of wind and she'll rip and sail clear to the blue waters.”

Wagonmaster Swift was mounted on a fine-looking black. He blew his bugle and called, “All know that those not yet ready to take their place in the line of march must fall to the dusty rear for this day. Get in place!”

“All fires out!” Preacher yelled.

Preacher eyeballed Lieutenant Maxwell-Smith, all decked out in his dress uniform, as he rode out of the fort on his pony, a-bouncin' up and down on his silly little saddle like the British is trained to do.

“Count your young 'uns,” Preacher yelled.

“Drovers to the livestock in the rear,” Swift yelled, and tooted on his bugle again.

“That damn bugle is gonna get old 'fore this journey is done,” Preacher muttered.

Edmond and Richard rode up, all splendid in their new buckskins and wide-brimmed hats. Preacher noticed that Bible-thumpers they may be, but they were both armed with a brace of pistols and rifles in the boot.

As dawn split the skies, Edmond took off his hat, waved it over his head, and yelled, “Onward to our western destiny!” He jerked on the reins, his horse reared up, and Edmond fell out of the saddle, landing on his butt on the ground.

“Lord, give me strength,” Preacher said.

Book Two

1

“If God will only forgive me this time and let me off I will leave the country day after tomorrow—and be damned if I ever come into it again!”

 

“Did he ever return, Preacher?” Swift asked, after Preacher had told him about John Colter and his promise to God.

The men were riding together, ranging ahead of the slowly plodding oxen.

“Nope. He died in St. Louie a few years later. He was a hell of a man, though. I never knowed him, but nearly everyone speaks highly of him. He was captured twice and tortured by the Blackfeet, and both times he broke loose and escaped. One time he ran nekkid for miles after they'd tortured him. Finally hid out in a river. I'd like to have known him. I think he was probably a hell of a man.”

“What are you going to do after the train is safely placed in Oregon Territory, Preachers?”

“Head back just as fast as I can. You?”

“I'm going back to take another train through. There is good money to be had doing this sort of work and I like the open skies of the trail.”

“Lots of folks want to come out here, eh?”

“Thousands.”

“Plumb depressin'.”

They were on the south side of the Snake River. Across the river to the north lay the Snake River Plain, lava beds, and totally inhospitable terrain. They would not cross the Snake for several weeks, and that was if nothing went wrong.

For the first several days, it would amount to a shakedown. The movers would adjust to life on the trail and each would find their place in the long train. Those in command could pinpoint the trouble-makers and the whiners and complainers. All would soon know if the repairs made back at the fort would hold.

The first several days passed uneventfully, the weather was near perfect, and the wagon train soon settled into a routine. In four days, Preacher figured they had covered about thirty-five miles. He could ask for no better than that.

Preacher was not worried about Bum and Red Hand attacking this close to the fort. They would wait until the train was a good hundred miles out, then they would make their move. And they were about; Preacher had ranged out far and picked up their sign. Bum and Red Hand had gone on ahead, to pick out their ambush site, leaving scouts behind to watch the train for weak points. Soon they would start harassing the train.

Preacher was up early the morning of the sixth day out, earlier than usual. He had quickly put a stop to the sentries' habit of discharging their rifles at four o'clock in the morning to awaken the encampment. The first time they did it he damn near shot a man.

“Toot on that goddamn bugle to wake folks up,” he told Swift. “I don't want no guns goin' off in my ear at four o'clock in the morning.”

Preacher wasn't sure why he awakened so early, but many of his hunches had kept him alive in the wilderness, and he never questioned them.

Preacher moved silently past the sleepers, most of whom slept under their wagons, for the bed of any wagon was filled with precious possessions the movers had carefully packed, from woodburning stoves to coffee grinders to violins. They took whatever they could, for supplies were very scarce and very expensive on the coast.

Preacher stopped and gazed out at the blackness of night. Storm clouds had moved in during the night, and the stars and moon were unseen this early morning.

But something was out there in the darkness. Something that had triggered the mountain man's survival instincts and brought him out of a sleep. He wasn't sure, but Preacher had an idea that Bum or Red Hand was about to make a move. Probably to slip in, cut a throat or grab a child, and leave without disturbing anyone's sleep.

There! Preacher's eyes focused on a very slight movement in the gloom. Was that object—whatever it might be—there the night before? No. He stood motionless just outside the circled wagons, standing beside one of the nearly six-foot-high rear wheels, nearly two feet higher than the front wheels. The front wheels were smaller to allow for sharp turns.

The object that Preacher had spotted moved ever so slightly. Preacher smiled and quietly pulled out his long-bladed knife from its sheath. Preacher opined to himself that he'd been playing at this game longer than that fellow out there in the night ... and doing a better job of it.

He was still alive, wasn't he?

Preacher motionlessly stayed his position, holding the big-bladed knife close to his leg, to prevent any glimmer of light from reflecting off the polished metal, the heavy blade held edge up for a gut cut.

The man Preacher watched moved closer to the encircled wagons, moving expertly and soundlessly on moccasined feet. Preacher caught the glint of faint light off a blade.

Come to do some dirty work, eh?
Preacher thought.
Well, just come a little bit closer and you'll find your work is gonna be a tad more difficult than you figured
.

The man made the circle of wagons with one final and swift dash. Preacher could smell the grease and smoke on the half-naked flesh of the renegade Indian. The buck took one more step and grunted in surprise as his eyes picked out the shape of Preacher, standing not two feet from him.

It was the last sound the Indian ever made. Preacher whipped his knife and laid the razor-sharp blade under the Indian's jaw, cutting off any further sound from the savaged throat. He grabbed the Indian by the hair and soundlessly lowered him to the dewy ground.

Not one mover had heard a thing, even though an entire family of husband and wife and two kids was sleeping under the wagon not five feet from the death scene.

Preacher stood for a moment, waiting to see if the renegade had come alone or had some help waiting for him in the night. After several moments, Preacher concluded the buck had been working alone. He relaxed some.

Preacher squatted down and contemplated on whether to scalp the renegade. He decided against it. These movers might think him to be a terrible savage if he done that. Most of them thought that anyways. Preacher wiped his blade clean on the Indian's leggings. He left the body where it was and walked off toward the center of the encirclement for some coffee. He smiled, figuring it was gonna be right interestin' in a few minutes. Just as soon as Swift tooted on his bugle.

Preacher almost scared the crap—literally—out of the man whose job it was to keep a small fire burning and the coffee hot for the sentries when he approached him as silent as a ghost and said, “Howdy.”

“Lord God!” the mover said, whirling around, his rifle at the ready. “You took ten years off my life.”

“You wouldn't have had ten seconds left you if I'd been a hostile,” Preacher told him. “Dwell on that for a time.”

Preacher squatted down and took a tin cup and poured it full of strong coffee. “I figure it's near'bouts four o'clock. You got airy watch?”

The mover reached into a vest pocket, clicked open the lid, and consulted his timepiece. “Five minutes 'til four,” he said. “My woman made panbread last evening. It's there.” He pointed. “And there's some jam to spread on it.”

“Kind of you,” Preacher said, helping himself. “Where y'all from?”

“Ohio. Lost my farm when the depression struck. Couldn't sell my pigs. I went bust. Had to do something and this seemed like the thing to do.”

“Goin' to the promised land, eh?”

“Beats watchin' my woman and kids starve.”

“I reckon. What's your name, pilgrim?”

“Prather.”

“Well, Prather, let me give you some advice about guard work. Don't stand in one spot for very long. Move around. And when you're stationary, stay in the shadders. Move your eyes, not your whole body. We got people after us that can come into a camp like this, cut a throat, and be gone and won't nobody know they's done it 'til the body's found.”

“I do not believe that, sir.”

“Is that right?” Preacher did not take umbrage at the words. One of the many things he'd learned about these eastern people was that they thought they could flap off at the mouth and not be held to account for their remarks. “Well, I reckon in about two minutes you gonna have to be eatin' them words. We'll see.” Preacher chuckled.

“I see nothing amusing,” Prather said.

“Neither will them folks sleepin' warm in their blankets under that wagon yonder, I 'spect. But it might just teach them a hard lesson.”

“You're a strange man, Preacher.”

“I been called worse.” Preacher ate his panbread and drank his coffee. “Just about now,” he said, as Swift tooted on his bugle.

“Holy Christ!” a man yelled and his wife began screaming and the kids rolled out from under the wagon.

Preacher guffawed and slapped his knee. “Hee! I called it right, didn't I, Prather?”

“There's a body of a savage over here!” the mover yelled. “And his throat's been cut.'

Preacher looked at Prather. “Don't ever call me no liar again, pilgrim. I don't like it. It's bad business out here in the wilderness. I cut that Injun's throat. Cut it 'fore he could cut yours or grab some child or jerk the hair off a woman. You got a lot to learn about this country, mover. You folks think you're goin' to a city that's got boardwalks and streetlamps and the like?” He laughed. “You're all in for a surprise, you are.”

Preacher rose and walked over to the wagon, stepping over the tongue and pointing to the dead Indian. “Red Hand's got a dozen different tribes in his bunch. All of 'em bad poison. But this one's a rogue Kiowa. See that raggedy sash hangin' over his shoulder? That means at one time he was a Principal Dog. One of the ten bravest men in the tribe. Or wanted Red Hand to think he was. If he was a Dog, he musta done something terrible to get kicked out of the whole damn tribe.”

“How could he get this close without one of the sentries seeing him?” a woman asked.

Preacher smiled at her. “You traveled twelve hundred or so miles and still don't understand, do you, ma'am? The Good Lord alone only knows how you folks made it this far.” Preacher shook his head and walked away.

“Here now, sir. What about this dead savage?” a man called after him.

“You wanna bury him, hop to it. Was it up to me, I'd just roll him 'bout fifty feet away from the wagon and leave him lay. Some of his own will come fetch him. If they don't, the buzzards or varmits will take care of him.”

“That's disgusting, sir!” a woman called.

“Practical, is what it is,” Preacher called over his shoulder, and kept walking.

In the years ahead, when thousands of movers would attempt either the Oregon or California Trail, they would not be so kind to their own dead. Between 1837 and the late 1860's, more than half a million people would try those trails. It is not known exactly how many died, but twenty thousand would not be an unlikely number. Many times wagonmasters simply would not halt the train for a lengthy funeral, and the bodies were buried in very shallow graves—if they were lucky—or simply stretched out alongside the trail for the elements and the varmints. Old diaries have writings in them telling of the callousness toward the dead. People rolling or riding, or in most cases walking across the trail have written of witnessing human hands and feet and even heads sticking up out of the ground. And still they came, but the Great Adventure illusion had long been shattered. It was either broiling hot or bone-chilling cold. Across the plains the dust would pile three or four inches thick inside the wagons. Animals and humans alike dropped dead from exhaustion, or lack of water, or disease. Wheels splintered and wagons collapsed on people, crushing them to death, or shattering bones so badly that the movers had to be knocked on the head, held down, and the limb crudely sawed off before gangrene set in.

And still they came, by the thousands. In what is now Wyoming, the ruts of their passing wagons are still there, visible after a century and a half, hundreds of miles of them. Silent ghosts of the past. Of humankind's insatiable urge to move, to settle, to strive for a better life.

They rode and drove and walked through dust storms so violent they could not see the wagon in front of them. Cholera struck them hard, due in no small part to crowded campgrounds where bacteria thrived on mounds of garbage and excrement. Cholera killed by horrible degrees: violent dehydration, uncontrollable diarrhea, vomiting, sweating, death. When cholera struck on the trail, many times those afflicted were abandoned by their fellow movers and left to die alone in the vast stillness of what many called the Big Lonesome.

And still they came.

Those who took the route to California faced hardships not known on the northern route to Oregon Territory. They faced deserts seemingly so cruel many thought they had been guided straight to Hell. Tongues became so swollen from thirst people actually tore their lips off in panicked frenzy. Christianity received a lot of converts on the way west.

Starvation took its toll. Canvas rotted or was ripped away and when the oxen or cattle dropped dead, they were skinned and the hides used as a roof over the ribs of the wagon—until hunger drove the people to tear down their roofs and eat the hides.

On occasion, some of the graves were dug up by scalawags in a train coming close behind and the bodies robbed of rings. On very, very rare occasions, some reverted to cannibalism and dug up the bodies and ate them.

But still they came.