Wind River

by Charles G. West

  “Dead.”

  Squint studied the boy’s expressionless face for a moment. “How? How long?” It was obvious the boy wasn’t much of a talker but Squint was determined to get the whole story out of him so he kept prodding him with questions until finally he wore him down and he began to talk. It was difficult at first and slow in coming, but once he started, the whole story came out.

  CHAPTER 2

  Robert’s parents were not really dead. At least Robert had no way of knowing whether they were or not. As far as he was concerned, they might as well be. So when he thought of them at all, he considered them dead. He was born in St. Louis. That much he was sure of because he could remember a little about St. Louis and playing in the streets as a small child with the few friends he had. He couldn’t remember a lot about his mother. She tolerated him at best. His father had absolutely no use for him. They made little effort to hide the fact that his birth had not come as a blessing to a family with five young’uns already fighting over what little food there was to eat.

  It seemed to him that he was a constant irritant to his parents, causing them to fight a great deal more than they did already. His father resented the fact that his mother had gotten herself pregnant for the sixth time, a deed he swore was not done by him. In fact, most of the time he referred to Robert as that bastard brat of yours. His mother denied it of course and hated his father for impregnating her with another child to birth. So one night in a saloon, when a mule skinner bound for Oregon casually stated to Robert’s father that he wished he had a son to work for him, it appeared to be the answer to his father’s prayers. It didn’t take much to persuade Robert’s mother and a deal was struck that very night. Robert, asleep in his corner of the cubbyhole he shared with his two brothers and three sisters, was trussed up and carried out like a sack of flour. He was all of ten years old.

  The mule skinner’s name was Lige Talbot. At first he tried to get Robert to call him Pa but the lad rebelled at the notion. He knew the nasty old man with the rivulets of tobacco juice framing his chin was not his pa and he refused to call him anything but sir. Lige kept Robert tied to his wagon for two days until he figured they’d gotten far enough from St. Louis to take any thoughts of running away out of the lad’s mind. His caution was well-founded because Robert did think about it, but he didn’t have anyplace to go. Lige told him that he had bought and paid for him so Robert knew he wouldn’t be welcome if he showed up back home. Being with Lige Talbot was better than being alone so he decided to stick it out for a while.

  Lige was bound for Oregon. He was always bound for Oregon and Robert soon came to believe that he would never get there. He didn’t have the fortitude required for the long trek so, although he started many times, he could never stick to it for very long. Two weeks out of St. Louis they joined a wagon train on the Oregon Trail but Lige’s powerful thirst for spirits caused them to leave the train in Kansas territory where Lige hired his mules out. There were many hauling jobs between the river and the settlement of Wyandotte and a man with a good team of mules could make some good money for himself. For a while, Lige prospered. He worked Robert hard but he treated him well enough. There was never any love lost between them, though. It was strictly business. Robert worked, and in return, Lige fed him and gave him a pallet to sleep on. The boy didn’t spend much time worrying about his existence. He just figured that all boys had to work sooner or later and he soon forgot his playmates and his brief exposure to childhood back in the streets of St. Louis.

  Winter passed and spring came around and, with it, Lige’s urge to move on again toward Oregon. He had tired of the work and had become bored with Wyandotte. Besides, he had a sizable grubstake built up. So, one morning he announced to Robert that it was time to pack up and go to Oregon. This time he made it as far as Nebraska before the itch for a bottle and a soft shoulder overpowered him and he settled in for a time at a small trading post near the Platte. It was here that Robert came to know firsthand about Indian trouble.

  The trading post was run by a man named Johnson so it was known throughout the territory as Johnson’s Crossing, built near one of the favorite crossings of the Platte. This location gave him access to the wagon trains heading west as well as trade with the Indians, mostly Pawnee and Ponca.

  There were many hardworking, fair-minded men running trading posts across the country. Freeman Johnson was not one of them. He was a short stump of a man with a huge belly and a face full of hair, with not a single hair on the top of his head. When Robert first saw him, he thought the man looked as if his head was put on his neck upside down. Even a boy of Robert’s age could sense that the man was not to be trusted.

  Lige Talbot was a different story. Lige found a drinking companion and never seemed to catch on to the fact that Johnson would sell him a jug of cheap frontier whiskey at an exhorbitant price, then help him drink it up. Johnson had an enormous capacity for whiskey. Robert suspected this accounted for his huge belly. Lige proved to be such a good customer that Johnson let him and Robert sleep in the back of his stable. It wasn’t long until Lige drank up most of the money he had managed to put aside while hauling freight in Kansas. The close comradery Lige shared with Johnson faded quickly when the last of his money disappeared. With the money gone, they found they were no longer welcome to free housing in the stable. Johnson told them they would have to move out. In a moment of desperation, Lige agreed to trade Johnson two of his six mules in exchange for ninety dollars of credit and the use of the stable until the credit ran out. It was enough to make Lige feel comfortable for a while. Johnson was shrewd enough to know that Lige would use up most of the credit on whiskey that didn’t cost him a tenth of the total.

  Freeman Johnson was a double-dealing, underhanded scoundrel anytime he could get away with it. But he was at his worst when it came to dealing with the Indians who came in to trade with him. Robert came to despise the man, not so much for skinning ole Lige for everything he owned, because Lige more or less deserved it. He knew better than to throw his money away on whiskey but he did it anyway. No, Robert felt little pity for Lige. But it made him feel ashamed when Johnson openly cheated the Pawnees out of prime fox or beaver pelts for a jug of rotgut frontier whiskey.

  The young Pawnee men were like children, trusting Johnson to treat them fairly. It seemed to Robert that Johnson’s greatest delight was to introduce a young Indian to the evils of drink. It was a downright dirty thing to do because, for some reason Robert never understood, Indians never seemed to be able to handle liquor. It made them crazy. Johnson convinced them that it enabled them to get more powerful visions and the more they drank the more powerful the visions became. Whenever he got one of them hooked on it, he might as well have owned him because the poor devil would trade anything he owned for that damn jug. Visions were mighty important to an Indian. Usually a young buck would go off by himself for four or five days without food or water in hopes of inducing a vision that would reveal the path of his life for him. With Johnson’s firewater, they could sometimes get one in a matter of hours. The trouble was, with too much firewater, they soon didn’t want to do anything else. In the few months Robert was there, he had already seen more than a few bucks started on the road to oblivion, thanks to Freeman Johnson. Sometimes Robert would think about it at night, lying on his straw pallet in Johnson’s stable, and he wondered why God let somebody like Johnson go on doing the things he did. As it happened, it wasn’t God who decided to do something, but rather a band of war-painted savages.

  He heard them, nothing more than a rustle of hay at the far end of the stable. Still half asleep, he raised up on one elbow and stared at the small glow of light where the stable wall joined the back of the trading post. He glanced over at the lump that was Lige Talbot to see if he had noticed the light but the steady drone of Lige’s snoring told him he was too far gone to notice anything. As he watched the light, it suddenly seemed to become brighter and he realized at once that the light was a fire and the fire was rapidly growing int
o discernable flames. The stable was on fire!

  He was now fully alert and was about to yell out an alarm when he saw two, three, then four Pawnee warriors dart by the flames, heading in the direction of the front of the trading post. They looked like devils as the glow of the flames illuminated their faces, painted for war, causing their dark features to gleam menacingly and sending a shiver of cold fear down the boy’s spine. Their shadows, twisted and contorted, danced across the stable wall like dark imps as they filed by the fire. Instinctively, he lowered himself back down behind the straw and, as quietly as he could manage, crawled over to the sleeping form beside him.

  “Mr. Talbot,” he whispered. “Wake up, Mr. Talbot.”

  Lige Talbot was deep in sleep, aided as usual by the strong spirits of the night before, and he was not easily aroused. Robert had to shake him roughly, several times, before he stirred.

  “What is it, boy?” he finally replied, his voice angry, irritated at having his rest interrupted.

  “Indians,” Robert whispered. “We got to get out of here! Indians is burning the stable!”

  “What?” Lige replied, not able to comprehend as yet.

  “Indians!” Robert insisted, still tugging at Lige’s shoulder. “We got to get out of here!”

  Lige recovered his senses enough to get his eyes open and what he saw was enough to bring him out of his blanket. The hay at the end of the stable was blazing by then, sending sparks drifting into the back part of the building where the two of them were sleeping. It would be only a matter of minutes before the whole stable would go up in flames. “The mules!” he yelled and scrambled to his feet.

  Robert had already gathered up his scant possessions in preparation for flight and he didn’t have to be told to follow Lige when he ran for the back door of the stable. There were no Indians to be seen inside the building. Robert guessed they were busy setting fire to the trading post. They had evidently not seen the two of them sleeping in the stable, or were simply not interested in them.

  The mules were in the corral out behind the building with all the other animals—horses mostly, along with a couple of pigs in one corner and one milk cow. This late in the spring, Johnson didn’t keep horses inside. Once outside, they could see the trading post catching up in flame. Lige was too worried about his mules to check on Johnson’s welfare and he yelled to Robert to get around behind them while he ran to open the corral gate. It wasn’t necessary to warn Johnson anyway because, while they were chasing the livestock toward the gate, they heard him shouting profanities at the savages on the other side of the building. The shouts were followed by gunshots, fired by Johnson no doubt, but Robert never found out for sure. There were only three or four shots fired and then the only sound they could hear were the war cries of the savages.

  The entire structure was ablaze by then and it lit up the corral and smaller outbuildings. Robert was terrified but still managed to make his feet move toward the gate, waving his arms, trying to herd the animals out of the corral. They too were terrified by the flames and the noise and, at first, they simply ran around and around the small corral in panic. Lige was finally able to turn the lead animal, a large bay mare, toward the opening and freedom and the horses and mules jammed the small gate, almost stopping it up. Robert could see several Indians running in their direction from the front of the trading post in an effort to head them off. It was no doubt their intention to take the animals themselves. Beyond the illumination of the firelight, he could see dark figures in the shadows, closing in on him from both sides. On his right a shadow moved toward the corral. Off to his left, several shadows moved from the trees on a line to intercept him. In his terror, he looked to Lige for assistance but Lige was concerned only with his mules and his own hide. Robert did the only thing he could and that was to get into the middle of the stampeding animals and run with them. He grabbed the tail of a small, dappled gray horse and let the animal pull him through the mass of flying hooves and dirt clods.

  He lost his footing and went down in the mud churned up by the many hooves but he held on to the gray’s tail, dragged until he could manage to scramble to his feet. As soon as he was up and running again, he looked ahead for Lige, just in time to see the axe buried in Lige’s neck. Lige had been too occupied with two of his mules to see the axe coming or the Indian who killed him. It didn’t look real. It was so grotesque, the axe buried up to the handle in the side of Lige’s neck and the utter shock registered on his face. Robert could not believe it was happening right before his eyes. He didn’t have time to react. Things were happening too fast in that moment of confusion. The horses, slowed by the narrow opening in the fence they were all trying to pass through at the same time, squeezed in together. Robert was fearful that he might be crushed by the sheer weight of the horses, even if the Indians didn’t kill him. But he still held on to the gray’s tail, although he felt he was drowning in a sea of horseflesh.

  There was too much confusion and noise. Robert couldn’t keep up with the horses and still look around him to see what was going on. So he concentrated on the one thing, staying on his feet and holding on to the gray for dear life, half expecting to feel the sudden bite of a tomahawk or the sting of an arrow at any moment. Once through the gate, the mob of horses and mules headed for the open country. The gray hesitated for just a moment as if she was waiting for Robert. That moment was all the time Robert needed. He didn’t have to think about it. He quickly released the gray’s tail and jumped on her back. As soon as the horse felt the boy’s weight on her back, she bolted after the rest of the animals in full stride.

  Robert had ridden a few horses and mules around the corral of the trading post and once or twice down to the river with Lige, but never at a full gallop. And on those occasions, even though he had no saddle, at least he had a bridle and reins to hold on to. His primary thought now was not to fall off and be trampled to death. So he clamped his knees as tight as he could on the gray’s sides and wrapped his arms around her neck. He couldn’t be concerned with who or what might be pursuing him. All he could do was hang on. The night was dark so he couldn’t even see where he might be running to. He just had to trust that the gray wouldn’t stumble or run him into anything while she was blindly following the mob of horses.

  After what seemed to Robert like a long terrifying ride but, in actuality, was only about a half mile, the horses gradually began to slow down until all but a few of the wilder ones broke into a trot and finally a walk. The gray, along with the other horses close by him, stopped and began milling about a small creek. Their panic subsided, they now seemed uncertain of their purpose and appeared to wait for direction from some source. All was quiet behind them. The Pawnees were evidently in no hurry to recover the livestock. Robert guessed they figured there was no one close enough to come to Freeman Johnson’s rescue. They could round up the horses at their leisure after having their fun with Johnson, or what was left of him anyway. Robert didn’t want to think about that at the moment. The one thing he was absolutely certain about was that he would be long gone when they did get around to looking for the stock. He pulled the gray’s head around and gently kicked her into a canter, letting her go pretty much in any direction she fancied. He didn’t care as long as it was away from the trading post. The fact that the gray set out toward Colorado territory would have held no interest for Robert, even had he known.

  CHAPTER 3

  The next few days following that terrifying night were but a blur in the boy’s memory. It had all happened so fast that the one dominant thought in his mind was to run, and run he did. He kicked the gray into a gallop for most of that first night, ever fearful that he might suddenly hear the sound of the Pawnee raiders overtaking him. The rolling hills offered scant cover from pursuers so he knew he had to purchase as much distance as possible before daylight exposed him on the open prairie. The course he set was a wandering one. In fact, he had set no course at all, merely hanging on to the gray, pulling on the horse’s ear occasionally when she sh
owed signs of turning back toward their back trail. Eventually the night passed and, when daylight brought no sign of pursuers anywhere on the horizon, Robert finally permitted the weary horse to rest.

  For the better part of a week he rode in a generally southwesterly direction, for this seemed to be the easiest route toward the mountains on the distant horizon. He came across enough streams to keep him and his horse from dying of thirst and there was plenty of grass for the horse. But Robert was getting weaker and weaker from want of food. Once he found a bush loaded down with reddish-blue berries and he filled his stomach with the sour fruit. When he had eaten all he could hold, he filled his pockets with the rest of them. The stomachache that resulted almost made him vomit them back up but he realized he had to have nourishment of some kind or he would lose what little strength he had.

  He was grateful that the horse had more or less adopted him because he knew that, with no reins or even a rope, he could be afoot at any time the gray decided to rid herself of her burden. Whoever owned the horse had evidently broken her properly. As he rocked along with the rhythm of the gray’s walk, he thought about who might have previously owned the animal before she ended up in Johnson’s corral. These thoughts led to thoughts of the night of the raid and to Lige Talbot. Poor Lige, he never knew what hit him. Robert guessed that if Lige had to die, it was best that he got struck down before he had a chance to think about it. The image of Lige with the Pawnee’s axe buried in his neck would burn in Robert’s mind for a long time. He wondered if Lige had felt any pain, or if life was just snuffed out like a candle. When he concentrated on the image long enough, it would make him shudder and he knew he didn’t want to die that way, quickly or not.