by Terry Grosz
As the last wagon rumbled out of sight over a distant hill, Jim sadly headed for the comfort of the earthen jug under the counter in his store. Sitting on top of the counter over his jug of “old top-knot remover” was a foot high mound of gold nuggets that Jacob and Martin had left to pay off their debts to a man to whom they were forever indebted. Jim didn’t put his earthen jug down until later that afternoon. It seemed as if it took a lot longer that particular day to salve his old war wounds.
Off at the edge of the timber a short distance from the fort, a lone wolf howled. His howl was not returned, and its message was soon borne away in the whispers of the west winds like many other events now long past...
Jim Bridger died years later and was almost blind at the time of his death. However, he always wished he could return to his beloved mountains one last time, even though he could not now see them. He is buried in the State of Kansas...
***
The first day the wagon train only made about ten miles as the group worked out the tangles inherent in the operation. That evening several fires were made as different groups prepared their supper and rested from the day’s travails. The wagons were in a tight circle, and after the oxen and other livestock had been watered and allowed to graze, they were brought into the circle for protection from roaming bands of Indians and other predators. Jacob, Martin, and the Hall brothers made their campfire separate from the others as they cooked their meal in tired silence. Martin was one mess of dust from head to foot, having followed the dusty train as he rode from side to side, watching his charges. The Hall brothers were sore from riding on hard wagon seats all day, as was evident when they ate their dinners that evening standing up. Last but not least, Jacob’s knees were telling him that riding a horse all day was not as much fun as it had been during his younger days.
The next ten days were more of the same, only the caravan was now making about fifteen miles per day as everyone began settling into a pattern of travel and routine—as much as they could on the ever-changing trail.
One evening when Jacob and his crew were cooking their supper of biscuits, beans, and bacon, Daniel, the older man from Salt Lick, Kentucky, came over and quietly sat down with the men. He had brought a pie his wife, Betsy, had made in a Dutch oven. That quickly brought smiles to the four men’s faces when the heavenly smell reached their noses.
“How about from now on the four of you join my clan for supper? I have more and I would bet far better cooks than you four, and it would make for a merrier group if you were to join us,” said Daniel. When saying those words, he looked long, hard, and strangely carefully at Jacob’s face.
Rich Grosz’s camp was right next to Daniel’s, and Daniel’s and Martin Jones’s clans always ate together. That meant Jacob would be closer to Amanda and Martin to Kim, who was traveling with the Jones family.
The four men looked at each other, and Jacob, feeling a consensus, said, “We would be glad to join your camp, but only if we can help out with the grub.”
“Suit yourself,” said Daniel. “After all, you folks bought many of our provisions anyway.”
“Then it is done, and we would welcome any cooking better than the Hall brothers’ sad attempt at feeding the four of us,” Jacob said with a teasing smile. That statement got a burned biscuit bounced off his head by Jerry Hall, their camp cook for the evening.
With that invitation Daniel left, and Jacob and Martin made their rounds around camp and outside it for some distance, looking for any signs of trouble. A lone wolf’s howl was their only reward for vigilance, and it gave Jacob and Martin pause.
Life was good on the trail, and soon it would take an even more spectacular turn in the lives of Jacob and Martin.
At the end of the next day, after the wagons had been circled and the stock fed and watered, Jacob, Martin, and the Halls went over to join Daniel and his sons, Zeke and Jeremiah, by their cooking fire. A large pot of beans, bacon, and wild onions merrily boiled away, filling the cool night air with delicious smells along with the heavenly perfume of biscuits and a pie baking in two Dutch ovens at the fire’s edge. Having finished their chores, Martin Jones and his three sons ambled over to Daniel’s cooking fire as well. In the meantime, the men’s wives scurried around to get supper ready. As the men made small talk about the day’s journey, the welcome clanking of metal plates, utensils, and coffee cups being taken from the grub box could be heard. Soon great mounds of beans and biscuits were heaped on the plates, and the cups were filled with a black liquid so hot it was hard to hold the metal cups with bare hands. The men ate as if they meant it, and their wives and children ate quietly with them. When supper was finished, the men broke out their pipes as the women cleaned up. Talk centered around the arrival in Fort Hall in several days and the constant close presence of game. Several of the men wanted to hunt the next day for some fresh meat, and Jacob concurred.
“Tomorrow before we stop for the evening, why don’t several of you break away from the train and kill the camp a deer or pronghorn,” suggested Jacob. “However, don’t ever lose sight of the wagon train, no matter what. That is your only protection, so take heed. We are in Lakota Indian country, and they don’t cotton to white men killing their game. In fact, just before my brother and I came to Fort Bridger, we buried some folks from three wagons that had strayed into Lakota territory looking for homesteads and figured dead wrong.”
The men nodded in agreement with Jacob’s stern warning, full well knowing the frontier could be a deadly place. Even though they had Howard Larson along, an arrow or rifle ball in the wrong place could be hard for a doctor on the trail to fix.
As they sat around the fire enjoying their meal and a smoke afterward, Jacob noticed that Daniel kept looking at him as if he were seeing something extraordinary. He also realized, even though it was less noticeable, that Martin Jones was staring intently at Martin. By now he and Martin were getting a little uncomfortable under the older men’s stares. Then they discovered that Zeke and Jeremiah were studying them closely as well.
“Where you boys from again?” asked Daniel, out of the blue.
“We was born in the Wind River Mountains north of here. Our moms were from the Snake Tribe of the same area, and our dads were mountain men,” said Jacob, still feeling uneasy at the intense, piercing looks he and his brother were getting.
“Did either of you really get to meet your dads?” asked Daniel.
“No, not really,” said Martin. “They was killed by the Gros Ventre when we was just little guys.”
Now Martin Jones and his sons were looking openly at Jacob and Martin as if something were seriously wrong.
“Why all the questions?” asked Jacob, who was becoming a little irritated by their traveling companions’ bad staring manners and personal questions.
“What were the names of your dads?” asked Martin Jones, ignoring Jacob’s question as his sons kept looking intently at the two men.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Martin, who was also becoming perturbed. Out West a man’s name and background were private territory that strangers should not try to enter and explore. It was neither polite nor wise to do so.
“No offense, gentlemen,” said Daniel, reading their irritation at being grilled, “but we might know you from our past.”
“I don’t know how, since you folks are from Kentucky and we are from Snake Indian lands north of here,” Jacob replied coldly, feeling a little out of sorts.
Then Martin remembered something and slowly said, “According to our stepparents, our fathers came from somewhere east of a river called the Mississippi in ’29. They went to St. Louis and joined up with a fur brigade and went west, trapping beaver and other furbearers. To our understanding, they were young men at the time, hardly older than sixteen. They was killed in ’36 by the Gros Ventre Jacob spoke of.”
Daniel went almost white and appeared to be having a hard time breathing. Martin Jones rose from his seat on a log, and tears began streaming down his cheeks in torr
ents, an emotion rarely exhibited by an Indian.
Zeke spoke softly and in measured words to Jacob. “I think you are my long-lost grandson!”
Jacob looked at Zeke in stunned silence.
“And I think you are my grandson as well,” said Martin Jones, looking at Martin in disbelief and awe.
For a moment there was stunned silence around their campfire, and the nearby campfires, overhearing the conversation, fell silent as well.
“How do you figure, Zeke?” asked Jacob in disbelief.
“My stepson, Jacob, was the son of my Uncle Lemuel and Aunt Sarah. His parents were killed by marauding Indians on their farm in Kentucky. My wife, Margaret, and I raised Jacob. When he grew up, he teamed up with his Delaware Indian boyhood friend, Martin, and they came west at the age of sixteen to join the mountain men in 1829. They too went to St. Louis, joined the fur brigades, and after that we lost track of them. What you two remember hearing about your dads coming up the Mississippi River in 1829 and going into the fur trade when they were sixteen years old, and the fact that they were named Jacob and Martin, more than likely makes you my grandson, Jacob. And Martin is Martin Jones’s grandson!”
Margaret, Zeke’s wife, stepped into the firelight and, looking hard at Jacob, said, “I can see the family resemblance now. Zeke, look at his nose and eyes! He is the son of our long-lost son, Jacob!”
She ran into Zeke’s arms as tears rolled down her cheeks, staining the front of her dress just as they had many years before on the farm, the day Jacob and Martin had decided to leave home and venture west into the fur trade.
Neither Jacob or Martin knew what to say or do.
“If that be the case, then Martin and I are your long-lost kin,” Jacob said slowly, still hardly believing what he was saying or hearing.
For a long time no one moved. Other members of the wagon train who had drifted over to Daniel’s campfire stood frozen as the family histories unraveled in front of everyone.
Margaret left Zeke’s arms and ran crying to the still confused Jacob. Jacob found himself holding her tightly, as if she had belonged there all along.
Martin Jones walked over to Martin and said, “The Great Spirit has smiled on me and my family this day. I had hoped before I passed over to the Cloud People, that I would see my son once again. But I have his son, and I will love you like my son, who is now with the Cloud People.”
Not really knowing why, Martin walked into his grandfather’s arms and felt at home with himself for the first time in his short life.
There was much laughing, crying, back-slapping and handshaking all around as the wagon train welcomed Martin and Jacob into their family in a way reserved for kin, however long lost. Soon Jacob and Martin’s reserve had melted away as their newfound family members told them stories about their dads that matched what they had been told by their stepparents before they had been killed by the Lakota. Many present found themselves in tears, and then someone called out for a celebration.
Abruptly leaving the crowd gathered around Daniel’s campfire, Jacob strode over to one of his and Martin’s wagons. He returned carrying a small keg of whiskey, and a party such as had never before been seen on the California Trail whirled away into the wee hours.
The wagon train made only ten miles the next day, as the travelers rose later and moved more slowly than usual...
Chapter Nineteen
A Deer Hunt Brings Surprise Visitors
The next afternoon, as the wagon train settled in for the evening, Otis Barnes and Marvin Clary left the circle of wagons with their rifles. They had spotted a small herd of mule deer quietly feeding a quarter mile away in a creek bottom. Slowly sneaking up on the feeding animals, Otis and Marvin each picked out a large buck. The men settled into their rifles, and on a prearranged quiet count, they both fired. The roar from their two rifles echoed throughout the small valley, and the deer herd quickly sprinted for the safety offered by the surrounding sagebrush. Walking closer to the creek bottom, the men were pleased at what they saw. Marvin’s large six-point buck kicked his last as the result of a fine head shot, and the deer shot by Otis, a five-point, had already stopped moving. The two men decided that Marvin would return to the wagon train and get several pack horses on which to load and carry the two large deer back to the waiting camp. Otis would gut the animals and wait for Marvin’s return.
As he started to gut the second animal, Otis heard horses’ hoofs as Marvin returned with some horses to carry the deer...or so he thought. Looking up, Otis was surprised to see not Marvin but about fifteen mounted Indians coming at him hell bent for leather! Quickly realizing that the rifle he had just grabbed had not been reloaded, he took off running all out for the protection offered by the wagon train several hundred yards away.
“Indians, Indians!” he yelled as he ran as fast as he could. However, his escape was not to be. The mounted Indians quickly surrounded the running man and forced him to a stop with a surround of their horses.
Hearing Otis’s warning yells, Jacob and Martin mounted their horses and went at a gallop to rescue him. Seeing that it would do no good to race toward the Indians in such a threatening manner, since Otis had already been captured, the two men reined to a slowed canter with arms raised in the sign language of friendship.
Back at the wagon train, Jerry and Dave Hall were making the frightened travelers form a defense against any attack. Kim and Amanda ran to the edge of the circled wagons, and their hearts froze when they saw Jacob and Martin riding into sure death if the Indians so decided! Then they were hustled back out of sight by their fathers as the men prepared to defend themselves against what they considered the heathen terrors of the plains.
In the meantime, the Indians forcefully took Otis’s rifle. It was obvious in their eyes that the white man was soon going to die for trespassing and hunting on their lands. This prime hunting area had lately been overrun by the white-topped wagons and the white men and women who rode within them. They had killed or spooked off most of the game, muddied the watering holes, and grazed off all the grass with their ever-hungry livestock. If this flood of white men didn’t stop soon, all the tribes in the region would starve to death or be driven from their lands, many of the Indians believed.
Many-Horses-Walking sat on his horse quietly looking down at the white man they had just captured. This man was concerned but appeared not to be afraid like all the others they had caught and killed in similar circumstances. Yes, he was a brave one, thought Many-Horses-Walking. Then he turned his attention to the two riders from the wagon train coming his way with their hands raised in the sign of friendship. He thought he would listen to what they had to say and then kill all three of them in front of the members of the wagon train. Then he would take their horses and firearms as tribute for their foolish hunting or crossing on Lakota lands.
Walks-in-the-Sun, son of Chief Many-Horses-Walking, patiently sat beside his father as they awaited the arrival of the two brave but heavily outnumbered men approaching their group of mounted warriors. Then, standing higher in his stirrups so he could see better, Walks-in-the-Sun strained his eyes in disbelief! Suddenly spurring his horse out from the group of warriors, he rode madly toward the two white men, howling like a banshee! Riding his horse directly into the side of Martin’s, the young Indian jumped off, tackling Martin from his saddle and spilling both men off their horses and onto the ground with a resounding crump and a cloud of dust.
“Martin! Jacob!” the young Indian man yelled as he wrestled with Martin.
Removing his hand from the butt of his pistol, Jacob leaped off his horse and jumped onto the pile of Martin and Walks-in- the-Sun. All three rolled around on the ground like a bunch of goofy kids. This move by the howling Indian attacking Jacob and Martin and the three of them apparently locked in mortal combat caused near panic in the wagon train. Kim and Amanda turned away, not knowing what was going on but assuming the worst, and began crying.
Rising to their feet, the three men were hugging and talki
ng in Lakota and sign all at the same time. The men in the wagon train and the mounted warriors waited in confusion as things began sorting themselves out. Chief Many-Horses-Walking rode over to the trio and quickly recognized Jacob and Martin. Quietly stepping off his horse, he strode over to Jacob and grabbed his shoulders in a sign of friendship. Then he did the same with Martin, who was happy to see his old friend. Confusion still reigned in the wagon train, but Dave and Jerry kept the travelers in check and at the ready as they waited for the outcome of the conference going on in the middle of the prairie between their wagon masters and the Indians.
Soon the worried travelers standing behind their barricade of wagons saw Otis Barnes striding across the field toward the wagon train carrying his rifle. Behind him came Jacob, Martin, and Walks-in-the Sun, followed by Chief Many-Horses-Walking and his warriors. The parade of men also included two warriors dragging the dead bucks toward the wagons behind their horses.
Arriving back at the circle of wagons, Jacob and Martin introduced their friends, Lakota Chief Many-Horses-Walking and his son Walks-in-the-Sun, to the still worried travelers. Soon everybody’s hackles lay back down after the scare, and even more so when Jacob asked the women to prepare a big dinner using the fresh deer meat for everyone. Jacob also asked that a big pot of sweetened dried fruit be boiled, along with many pots of coffee. Then Jacob and Martin took the chief to their wagons and handed him several sacks of blue and red beads, several Green River skinning knives, some whetstones, a keg of powder, a sack of flints, a sack of coffee beans, and a sack of brown-sugar cones. The smile on the chief’s face told everyone he was now more than happy. The chief in turn distributed some of his gifts to his men, which created even more smiles all around. Then Jacob broke out a keg of cigars and passed them around to everyone, and soon a happy haze of cigar smoke filled the circle of wagons. That was followed by many good smells from the cooking fires, and shortly thereafter the wagon-train travelers and the Lakota were happily enjoying a feast as friends.