The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (39 page)

A little cheer went up for Coulter, and he looked sheepish.

Then we tensed, waiting, and I’ll confess that my bowels were constricted in knots. The Indians were massed together, forsaking their lines, working themselves up for the signal, with whoops, yells, screams, and a rattling of weapons. Over everything rose an odd, high whine, eerie and unsettling. “Pay no mind, boys,” cried Coulter. “They’ve got some eagle-bone whistles, aimed to scare us out of putting up a fight. Get set, hold your fire, and wait for their signal.”

I rejoice to tell you, Melissa, that it never was given. Behind us, emerging like a mirage, a cloud of horsemen as impossible to count as leaves on a tree, approached in such numbers as to choke the canyon from wall to wall. There were hundreds—we could hear the rolling thunder of their hoofbeats before even the Crows spotted them.

“Now
wait
a minute,” said Coulter, shading his eyes.

Coming on, they seemed familiar, though they were Indians beyond a doubt.

Under the wagon, Jaimie cried out, “I know him! It’s Black Poddee, that gave me the horse.”

I should guess that fifteen hundred or more Sioux comprised the charge that swept over the luckless remaining Crows, driving them past us, with a great deal of slaughter, on up into the canyon and out of our lives.

An hour passed, and we assembled before our wagons. With massive dignity, Jaimie’s friend rode slowly toward us holding out his arm.

“Yellow Hair that carries letter,” he said in English.

“I’m here, all right,” spoke up Jaimie, looking self-conscious as the center of so much attention. He walked forward and the Indians in the front rank dismounted. The chief shook hands in the white man’s fashion, then this fierce and amusing old fellow drew out the paper Jaimie had signed, attesting his friendliness. At that moment, I believe, everyone in the train would have been happy to swear in court that Black Poddee was the greatest man in America.

In half an hour they were gone, to join other Sioux in the holy crusade against the Snakes and Crows, and we filed wearily back to the wagons, elated but depressed, too, in the awful emptiness that follows a battle, the anti-climax to perhaps the sharpest of all human experiences.

“That’s like Brice,” remarked Coe, who had stood unruffled beside us, exchanging shot for shot, as debonair throughout as a man grouse-hunting at an English country estate. “He’s taking a quiet nap against the wheel as if he fought Indians every day of his life.”

And then Jennie’s, “Oh, my God!”

An arrow pinned him to the hub, passing through his neck from back to front, severing the carotid artery, and, I think, snapping the bone itself. We drew it out later—a vicious thing, with a long, smooth stem, a bright turkey feather, and a heavy iron tip.

He was quite dead; I doubt if there had been an instant’s pain.

We disengaged Jennie, who had clasped him around the back, weeping like a tired child, and lifted her into the wagon. Our casualties had been heavy—ten killed and eighteen badly wounded, plus many animals dead or waiting to be finished.

Who had gained from this senseless encounter? Coulter says that many Crow squaws tonight will gash their breasts and amputate their fingers in mourning. We have met, injured each other horribly, and drawn off, both sides poorer forever for a witless act of violence in the sun.

And now, Melissa, we have been compelled to make a decision. The train—its remnants, that is—will proceed together to Fort Bridger, there to split up. The Kissels, Jennie, Coe (the good man has put aside his personal interests in our behalf), Po-Povi and ourselves will go to the Great Salt Lake, Citadel of the Mormons, and spend the winter recouping. Mrs. Kissel is ailing. While she doesn’t
complain, she quite obviously lacks strength to continue this cruel trek to California. She would be in her grave before snow fell.

So—we will rest over the winter among the followers of Brigham Young. And with the first buds of Spring, the first flight of birds toward the north, our group, rested and refreshed, shall be off once more, headed for those beckoning fields of gold to which we have addressed our energies and our resolution. My spirits have never been higher; and your son is the picture of radiant health. I remain, strengthened by adversity, on the brink of colossal fortune, your devoted swain,

S
ARDIUS
M
C
P
HEETERS
(
in slightly decelerated transit
)

From what I’d heard of these Mormons, I didn’t care too much about them. Besides, we were supposed to be off adventuring after gold and not holed up with a bunch of mule-headed religious nuts. My father always claimed that people who took on about being pious would bear watching. “I wouldn’t trust one for a second,” he said. Back home, he was barely civil to the Reverend Carmody, and when we left church each Sunday, he’d take his watch and slip it into his trousers pocket before shaking hands on the way out. He was only having fun, but my mother said it was irreverent and pointed up his deficiencies before God. But the preacher they’d had before Carmody sat up praying with the wealthiest old man in the parish when he was down sick of malnutrition, being something of a miser, and finally prayed so hard that when the man died, they came to find out he’d changed his will. And right after the burial, the preacher collected his inheritance, turned in his stole, and moved to Philadelphia. He’d been popular around Louisville, but nobody heard from him again until two years later, when he got into the news from being shot. So I don’t intend to dwell on that winter with the Mormons, but will just hit the high spots—there
were
a few—then get right on to California.

After the fight with the Crows, we reorganized and moved on fast to Fort Bridger. Within a few days, we’d left the Platte forever. Nobody was sorry. It seemed we had been within view of this sluggish nuisance for as long as we could remember.

We followed the Sweetwater, within sight of the Wind River Mountains, over a country a-swarm with mosquitoes, and finally
began the long rocky climb toward the snow ridge that “divides the Continent.” That is, the rivers change directions here; the ones on the East flow toward the Eastern sea, and those on the West empty into the Pacific.

For several days in a row, there was little grass, but the ground was carpeted over with thistles, on which the oxen and mules fed, though without much appetite. Food for the immigrants was scarcer. Mostly people still were refreshed from Laramie, but Coulter kept trying to bag game, which could often be seen on these rocks up above. Twice he shot antelope, but the wolves moved in and devoured them before we could get there.

Several women came down with fever, so my father and Dr. Merton were hopping again. The upward pull was affecting both people and beasts. Part of it, my father said, was anxiety, fear of the summit we were approaching, which they called South Pass. But when we arrived, it was no worse than the road before, and was nineteen miles wide. We hardly knew we’d got to the top, but if you ran or moved fast, you knew it well enough, for they said the altitude here was over seven thousand feet high.

From the top we went along a level road two or three miles, then started a gentle descent to a gushing fountain known as Pacific Spring, very cold and good, being the last water for a long time. And after this we passed over a dry brown plain with what they called buttes—reddish-brown knobs of sandy rock—standing straight up like mushrooms. My father said they were once islands in a great inland sea, but he got into an argument with two other men about it, and was kept busy all afternoon.

Camped beside the Big Sandy, and started on a stretch of twenty miles without water or grass. Everybody was in a grouchy humor when we reached the Green River, which was nearly three hundred feet wide, and the fording was done to considerably more cussing than had formerly been noted on the train. People were so tired out I almost felt glad that our bunch was calling it off for a while.

On October twelfth we rode into sight of Fort Bridger, where
we were to part, and of course there was some sniffling and carrying on. People went around shaking hands, and wishing good luck, and I honestly think we nearly backed out. But Mrs. Kissel now had to spend part of the day lying down, and my father, to do him credit, was bound and determined to get her back to health.

Coulter was going on with the train. “I hired out to deliver it to California, and that’s where I’ll deliver it,” he told us. He waited a bit after we’d said everything, then followed Jennie to the tail of Brice’s wagon. Having a little free time on my hands, I crawled underneath to rest up.

It was funny; Coulter had quit being so sarcastic with us, but he still spoke to Jennie with a kind of joky ragging.

“I’ll be back, once I’ve got the sheep in the corral,” he said.

“Indeed: you don’t mean it. And leave all that gold behind?”

“I’m not much of a hand to go scratching in the ground like a squirrel.”

Jennie gave a sniff. Now she was beginning to recover a little, she was handsome and lively. And since she’d been married, she was different, somehow. She had lost her sharp look and was softer and rounder. But there wasn’t much improvement in her manner toward Coulter. He got her back up, no mistake, but I thought she liked him, too. It was a different kind of liking than what she’d had for Brice. I heard one of the men say she hadn’t any more use for Coulter than a Jenny had for a Jack, but I didn’t know what he meant.

“I hear gold-mining’s hard, back-weary work,” she said. “I don’t doubt you’d shy off. Gallivanting’s more your style.”

“If a man’s without ties, he might as well roam. A man, that is, not a doddering mooncalf—”

“You say anything against Brice and I’ll slap your Indian’s face.”

“I wasn’t talking about Brice, so maybe I’ll give you a real excuse.” He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard, pushing her up against the tail gate so that she went limp, leaning over backwards, with her legs apart.

When he let go, she caught her breath and hissed, “You vulgar
roughneck. You ought to be ashamed. Leave me be.” But when he turned half around, she said, “Where are you going?”

“California—remember?”

Jennie began to cry, she was so mad, and said, “Go ahead. And don’t come back, hear?”

“You want me to kiss you goodbye again, just for luck?”

“No, I don’t! You catch me letting you. Not ever! Just once, then—not that way—all ri—”

Then she broke loose, hanging on a second, and gasped, “You’ll have to stop. Damn you—I’d like to kill you!”

“I’ll be in Salt Lake City by Christmas.”

“I won’t be there.”

“You’d better.”

“I’ll marry a Mormon.”

“I’ll make you a widow.”

When he left, she put her head down against the board, breathing sort of hard, but she took it up again in a minute and kicked the wheel. She was an interesting case. Still, I couldn’t make out what was bothering her, and anyhow I was rested up, so I left.

Before the train rolled on for California, Coulter took the men of our group to meet Jim Bridger, who he said was an old friend. If my father was right, Coulter’d only had a handful of friends since his childhood, and these were such hardened old geezers they wouldn’t care whether he murdered his brother or not. Being friends, they’d simply have figured he had a good reason.

One was this Bridger, and another was a scout named Carson that Coulter said was somewhere on the Oregon Trail this year. He hoped to see him soon.

Coulter told us that Bridger’s Fort, where the Mormon route to Salt Lake splits off from the California-Oregon Trail, was on Black’s Fork of the Green River, where it took the fresh waters from the Uintah Mountains. He said Bridger himself was one of the toughest birds alive. “In 1834, he came out of a fight with the Blackfeet at Powder River with two iron arrowheads in his shoulder,” Coulter said, “and a Doctor Whitman removed them
while bridger sat on the grass, smoking a cob pipe and playing mumbledy-peg with a soldier. Injuns carried the story all over the West. In appearance he’s as mild as soup, but don’t be surprised at his stretchers. He ain’t any bad hand at storytelling; fact is, he’s famous for it.”

The train had camped on one of the three river forks surrounding the Fort, and we walked on in, Coulter and my father leading the way, Kissel and Coe behind them, me bringing up the rear. The first thing you noticed was how foxy Bridger had been in his location. The Fort was plopped down on an island in the middle branch of that stream, and we had to get to it by flat-bottomed boat, though we could have waded, they said. When we reached the island, the Fort wasn’t any beauty, but it seemed solid for defense, being eiicircled all around with a strong stockade that had a heavy gate in the middle. The construction was picket, with the lodging apartments and offices opening into a hollow square, like Laramie. On the north side a corral was full of animals—mules, horses, oxen, ponies, and the like—and Bridger’s house stood in a southern corner—a long cabin of very ordinary appearance for a man so well known, calling himself a military Major to boot.

We observed that the proprietor of this seedy dwelling was now within view on his doorstep, and I’ll copy down what my father said in the Journals: “A man of middle stature, lean, very leathery of countenance, wearing a fringed buckskin shirt in indifferent repair, also a low black hat, and on his face a look both of deeply ingrained mischief and studied innocence; small eyes, close together but incredibly sharp and black, nose beaky, neck wattled, mouth set as if determined to avoid laughing at some epic jest.”

At the time of our arrival, he was lugging a big brass spyglass, which we understood later was with him most always. He knew everything going on in that area, and the Indians never understood how he managed.

His meeting with Coulter was somewhat out of the common, as such formalities went. It departed from custom.

As he stood there, in an easy slouch, holding his telescope,
we could see two fat Indian women in the doorway behind, and at their feet a number of copper-colored brats.