Wind Walker (19 page)

They came that summer of ’47 … those dream-hungry emigrants sure as sun came. But the first of them to show up on Bridger’s doorstep weren’t bound for Oregon at all. They would claim to be the chosen lambs of God desperately in search of their Zion.

In those weeks that followed the arrival of his old friends, Jim Bridger kept Scratch and Shadrach busy with this and that around his post. Waits-by-the-Water and Shell Woman pitched in to help in a big way, what with Gabe’s Flathead wife, Cora, having died in childbirth. Both women started right up with baby Josephine, and gave a mother’s affection to six-year-old Felix too. Besides helping the trader get his store ready for the emigrant season, Magpie was right there on the heels of the two women, mostly helping out by watching over Shell Woman’s little ones when she didn’t have her hands in something with the women. But Flea—now he was given the most grown-up job of all.

Their second night at Fort Bridger, the three families sat around a cheery fire built in a pit outside the post buildings, dug near the center of the open compound where they had taken their supper of antelope, served with some Jerusalem artichokes and wild onions Flea and Magpie dug up along the river. As the stars popped into view, one by one, and the
winter-cured cottonwood crackled at their feet, Bridger called young Flea over to stand at his knee.

“Your pa an’ me, we been talking,” Gabe began, then looked at the boy squarely. “You unnerstand my American talk, son?”

Flea nodded, his eyes flicking once to his father’s face.

“When I asked your pa if’n you was ready to be give a young man’s work, he said he figgered the only way to find out was to see if you was up to it.”

Flea gulped. “What work?”

“You unnerstand that word, work?”

“He does now, Jim,” Titus replied. “Maybeso he didn’t a couple days back when we rolled in here. But I think my boy’s got a quick mind about him an’ he’s caught on.”

Shadrach agreed, “He dove in like a snapper, didn’t he, Scratch?”

So Bass prodded, “G’won and tell him, Gabe.”

Bridger trained his attention on the boy, raising a hand to place it on the lad’s shoulder as everyone quieted in that circle. “One of the most important jobs I got at this here post is my horses. Man don’t have no horse in this country, he’s likely to die.”

“But Tom Fitzpatrick got hisself put afoot—-back to thirty-two! An’ he wasn’t rubbed out!” Sweete admonished.

Jim flicked him an evil look and said, “That’s another story for another time, Shadrach. Now, Flea—if’n a man ain’t got a strong horse under him, he’s likely good as dead too. Good animals always been important to your mama’s people, and to us white folks too.”

Flea nodded, his dark eyes growing all the bigger now.

“You figger you’re up to havin’ me put my horses in your care?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed, and his brow knitted.

“Flea,” Titus said in Crow, “our friend asks you if you would do a man’s work to look after all his horses at this fort.”

Without saying a word, Flea turned slowly from looking at his father to staring incredulously at Jim Bridger. Then he spoke, “Flea? You want
me
see to your horses?”

“That’s what I’m asking, son.”

“Ever’ morning you’ll bring ’em out of the corral over yonder.” Titus pointed at the stockaded corral attached to the fort walls, its size a bit smaller than the post compound. “Take ’em down to water, then lead ’em up to a pasture to graze for the day. You understand ever’thing I’ve said in American talk?”

The boy’s head bobbed. “I understand.”

“You want the work?”

Suddenly Flea’s smile lit up as if there were a blaze of stars behind his face. “I work with the horses, yes!”

“What about me, Gabe?” Sweete asked. “You still need me work up on the Green at your ferry?”

“You was my segundo years ago, Shad—so I know I can count on you being at my back.”

Sweete leaned forward, his powerful forearms planted on top of his knees. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“Where we need to be for the next few weeks is up to that ferry on the Green. Got to haul a load of goods there, take us a small pack string: new rope to run across the river, saws to cut timbers for the raft big enough to hold a good-sized wagon, nails an’ such we might need to build a cabin for the fellas gonna run the ferry for me.”

Leaning back slightly, his shoulders sagging with disappointment, Shad admitted, “I gotta tell you I don’t know a damned thing ’bout building a cabin, Jim. Ain’t never built a raft to float nothing anywhere near the size of a wagon, an’ I wouldn’t know the first thing ’bout stringing rope so it works a ferry.”

“By the time you an’ me get done up there together, you’ll know,” Bridger replied. “I figger I can leave you at the Green to run that ferry as my segundo. Way I see it, we got us till late June, early July afore the first of them emigrants gonna show their faces on this side of the Southern Pass.”

Bass nodded, saying, “Three of us can make short work of that.”

But the trader turned to Titus and said, “Me an’ Shad, we’ll get it done, just the two of us.”

Now Scratch’s shoulders sank with disappointment. “You don’t figger me to go along, what’m I gonna do around here?”

With a snort, Bridger waved his arm in a wide arc at the stockade walls. “Hell, coon—you’re gonna take care of Fort Bridger till I get back!”

“T-take care—”

“Watch over things: the stock mostly. But, your boy’s gonna help you do that. ’Sides taking over looking after li’l Josie, your women gonna help out with all that’s gotta get done in the store afore them emigrants show up ready to buy up ever’thing we got for sale, then be on their way to Oregon. But the biggest job you gotta see to is to rebuild my forge so you got a place to work.”

“Rebuild your forge?”

Jim shrugged. “You’re handy—I figger you can get yourself set up soon enough, and start hammering out some hardware on my forge I got out under that awning next to our quarters.”

“I-I ain’t worked a hammer an’ anvil since … spring o’ twenty-five, Jim!”

“Hell, it’ll come back to you slick as shootin’. You was trained by Hysham Troost, so I know it’ll come back quick. Need you to start cutting and shaving down wheel spokes too, with one of them drawknives. Them emigrants gonna need new spokes, and we ought’n have a few spare ox-yokes on hand too. I got one you can measure against. We’ll need clasps an’ hasps an’ joint brackets too—I figger by the time they get here, them eastern sodbusters discovered how their wagons been shrinking up an’ nothing’s fitting right no more.”

He took his eyes from Jim’s face and stared at the fire, wagging his head slightly. “I s’pose it may be just like breathin’, Gabe. Fire an’ sweat, iron an’ muscle.” Then Titus turned to look at his wife, admitting, “I ain’t got near the muscle I had when I worked for Troost, but—for you I’ll give it ever’thing I got.”

Bridger immediately leaned over and slapped Bass on the thigh. “Damme if we don’t have us a plan!” He leaped to his feet, reaching down to grab both of young Felix’s hands,
sweeping his young son to his feet and spinning him away from the circle of folks at the fire, taking the boy round and round in a clumsy, flatfooted imitation of a genteel dance.

Scratch glanced over at Waits, finding her eyes wide and sparkly as she giggled, watching Bridger and his son. Leaping to his feet, Titus surprised his wife when he yanked her to her feet and dragged her a few feet from the fire to begin spinning her about in the same fashion: leaning on the left foot, then his right, as they spun on the balls of their feet, her leather dress billowing out and back, out and back, while the fringes on his leggings flew and flapped, slapping his legs and hers too as they weaved around one another and back, again and again. In a matter of heartbeats Shad had Shell Woman up and clomping around too, the small woman staring intently at the ground, ever mindful of where her husband’s big feet were landing as the pair hobbled in an ungainly circle. Laughing with the joy that only children could ever know, Magpie pulled Flea away from the fire and the two of them started spinning at full speed, their hands clasped, arms fully outstretched, heads flung back as they roared in glee.

Then suddenly it seemed everyone started to tumble onto the spring-green grass at once, spilling and tripping over one another, adults laughing and shrieking like children themselves—so much they all had tears in their eyes as they gazed at one another’s happy faces, sharing this one delicious moment of such exquisite, undiluted joy before the real work would begin on the morrow.

With the arrival of both those self-anointed sojourners fleeing the States in search of their Promised Land, and with the appearance of a train of dewy-eyed dreamers come forth from their eastern woodlands—none of these laughing, carefree people sprawled on the grass of Fort Bridger had any way of knowing this would be a summer that was to change all of their lives … forever.

Bridger was back at the fort as promised, less than a month after he and Sweete had plodded off to the northeast with
their pack train of supplies for the Green River. They hadn’t been there a day before three old faces from the beaver days chanced by. Jim hired them on the spot to work for Shadrach at the ferry.

“Leastwise, they got him four walls an’ a roof over his head,” Jim explained. “Shad claimed it was for the first time in years. It’ll keep the rain off ever’ afternoon, an’ the hot sun too.”

“Summer’s comin’,” Bass agreed. “The heat be here soon.”

“An’ so will those emigrants, with their oxes and mules, every critter’s tongue hanging out as they roll up to Fort Bridger, Rocky Mountain territory!”

“Hell if that don’t have a good ring to it, Gabe!” Titus cheered. “Lookit all around you—this here’s all your’n. I s’pose it’s like them parley-voos over there at Fort John lay claim to ever’thing they put their eyes to. This side of the mountains is yours.”

“Maybeso it is after all, Scratch,” Bridger mused. “Once the emigrants cross over the pass, I’m all there is atween that American Fur Company post on the North Platte an’ the Hudson’s Bay post on the Snake.”

“That’s a helluva stretch of country, Gabe.”

“That means we’re in the right place to give them emigrants what they need as they go on their merry way to that Oregon country.”

Titus grew thoughtful. “H-how you figger Joe an’ Doc are doin’ out there?”

“Meek and Newell? In all these years since that last ronnyvoo when they pointed their noses for Oregon, I only see’d Joe back one time, when he come to fetch up my Mary Ann, take her back to Whitman’s school.”

“They made farms outta that Willamette country, like they said they was?”

Bridger nodded. “Both of ’em likely young men, Titus. They didn’t have near as many rings on ’em as you an’ me. Young niggers like them can make a go of anything. There’s nothing but time ahead for ’em. But—for fellers like us, most of our days are already on the back trail.”

He nodded reluctantly but tried a valiant grin. “Man sure does do things a bit differently when most of his time is at his back. The choices he makes. What comes to be more important to him.”

With a long sigh, Bridger said, “You done me real good here while I was away, Scratch.”

“Didn’t take longer’n a day afore the hammer felt good in my hand again.”

Jim grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “So you like blacksmithing, do you?”

“Don’t go getting the idee that I’m hiring out for no job at Bridger’s fort!” he protested.

“It’s a fine turn you done for us,” Bridger said. “The young’uns an’ me. I’ll miss your woman’s help, an’ that boy of yours too, when you light out for Crow country.”

For a moment, Bass toed his moccasin into the flaky ground near the corral gate where the two of them stood talking in the shade of the tall timbers. “’Bout that, Gabe,” he began. “Me an’ the woman, we been talking while you was away to the ferry with Shad.”

“You ain’t thinking of taking off soon?” Bridger asked, then hurried right on. “Hell, I could’ve figgered that. I don’t blame you none, Scratch: not wanting to be around when them emigrants come rolling through here with their wide-eyed young’uns screamin’ and throwin’ their Bibles at us an’ their poke bonnets—”

“Thought we’d stay for ’while, Gabe.” He interrupted Bridger just as the trader was getting to midstride.

“Maybeso till late summer. Till the last of them emigrants get on past here to Fort Hall. Me and the woman figger that’ll still give us plenty of time to ride north to find a Crow village to put in a winter with.”

“You’ll stay? By jiggies, if that ain’t the finest piece of news I’ve had in a long, long while!”

“I s’pose Shad an’ his family gonna stay on till the end of the season too.”

Bridger nodded. “Up at the ferry, he talked about laying through the winter here with us.”

“Be good for all of you. Them young’uns of yours, they need women around,” Bass admitted. “Hell, that Felix can make hisself understood to the gals, no matter he don’t speak no Crow or Cheyenne!”

“Wimmens is just that way!” Bridger enthused, then held out his hand. “Thankee, Scratch. This summer’s bound to be a season we look back on for many a year to come.”