“Get Moses and Liza,” Jamie told Wells. “And the rest of the people. No point in having to repeat the same story over and over.”
Sally came over, carrying half a side of bacon and Sarah came with a plate heaping with hot biscuits and Hannah brought over several dozen eggs. Maria Nunez brought sliced potatoes and peppers to fry with them, and Lydia and Mary came with bowls of hot gravy and several jars of jams and jellies. Breakfast was a very important meal. The women started cooking breakfast while the men gathered with mugs of steaming hot coffee.
“They won’t be hard to track,” Juan opened the conversation.
“Do we want to track them?” Moses said bitterly.
“They are both grown,” Sam offered. “We don’t have the right to force them to stay.”
“Neither will turn out well,” Wells said. “They’re both sneaks and thieves.”
Jamie stood silently, listening to the exchange. He agreed with Wells, although he felt sorry for both Roscoe and Anne. They were torn between two worlds, never feeling they truly belonged in either one. Their father had been a white plantation owner and their mother, Ophelia, a very beautiful, albeit a rather foolish and shallow, woman of high color. After her husband, a no-count named Titus, had deserted the family back in the Big Thicket country of Texas, Ophelia had hanged herself.
Titus and his son Robert were somewhere in the west. Jamie hoped he would not run into them.
“Let them go,” Jamie finally said, putting an end to the quiet bickering. “The horses they stole were not much, and the supplies can be replaced. Let’s just wish them well and get on with our lives.”
“And eat,” Swede said, his stomach rumbling at the good smells wafting through the cool morning air.
Fifteen
Jamie camped by the banks of the Missouri River, just north of the jumping-off place, and waited for them to show. He’d told Carson where he’d link up with the party. The winter past had been an uneventful one in the valley, with no births or deaths among the settlers and no more outlaw attacks. The Indians in the area had accepted them and were friendly, due in no small part to Jamie, who told the new preacher not to attempt to convert the Indians. They worshipped their own gods and were happy. The minister didn’t like that, but he wasn’t going to argue with Jamie about it.
Jamie knew that trouble with the Indians came when the white man tried to change the Indian into a mirror image of the whites. It wasn’t going to work, now or ever.
An Indian was an Indian and the best way to get along with the red man was to leave him to his own ways. But Jamie knew the white man had to try to change everything and everybody into what he felt was best for them—in reality, he was changing others into what he felt was best for himself.
Jamie knew he would never change the white man’s ideas about Indians, so for the most part, he kept his mouth shut about his views and managed to get along with most Indians.
Fremont was impressed with Jamie (most men were) and began talking at once about manifest destiny. Jamie didn’t have the foggiest idea what in the hell Fremont was talking about, but he managed to nod his head in all the right places. Jamie liked Fremont but considered the man to be a bit on the windy side. Fremont’s second in command, a tall German named Charles Preuss, was excellent at his job, but a tad on the stuffy side. Jamie saw immediately that Pruess and Fremont did not really get along.
Jamie had to smile in somewhat of a bitter remembrance, for Colonels Bowie and Travis had not gotten along well either, but when it came right down to the nut-cuttin’, they got in double harness and gee-hawed with the best of them.
The rest of the party were men that Jamie got on well with, eager types who knew their business and were chomping at the bit, ready to go to work.
It was May 1842.
Kit Carson was the group’s official guide and Jamie the scout, which suited Jamie fine. That meant that he could range out far ahead of the others and therefore stay pretty much to himself.
Fremont’s expedition went off without a single incident with the Indians in the area, although the party was well armed and expecting trouble. Fremont’s only obvious mistake was in declaring that a mountain of his choosing was the highest peak in the Rockies. It wasn’t. There were about sixty other mountains in the area that were higher. But in August of that year, as the expedition was winding down, Fremont and a few others climbed the peak and planted the American flag on the summit. The mountain was later named for Fremont.
Jamie considered the entire expedition the most boring few months of his life. Fremont and Pruess squabbled much of the time, usually over minor matters. Pruess became outraged when Fremont insisted upon shooting the rapids on a part of the Platte in a collapsible rubber raft. The raft capsized and many valuable records of the trip were lost in the white water. Jamie left the party shortly after that and headed west. The findings of Fremont were presented to Congress the next year, and Fremont was the hero of the time. No mention of Jamie Ian MacCallister’s part in the expedition was noted in the report.
Jamie drifted northwest. He had told Kate he would be gone for the better part of a year so he was not expected back for many more months. There was a natural restlessness in Jamie; the urge to see new country, to stand on windswept mountains, and to camp and relax in lush valleys that few, if any, white men had ever before witnessed. He pointed Horse’s nose to the northwest.
Preacher had told him about a place where scalding hot water shot out of the ground and into the air for hundreds of feet. Knowing that Preacher sometimes tended to stretch the truth just a bit, Jamie decided to see for himself. He headed deeper into the wilderness, even though winter was only a few weeks away from lashing out with its first cold fury.
Jamie ran into Sparks, Lobo, and Audie in Jackson Hole and told them what he’d been doing and where he was planning on going.
“For once Preacher didn’t embellish the truth,” Audie said. “I have personally witnessed the astonishing sight of those geysers of which he speaks.”
“Say what?” Lobo questioned.
“I’ve seen the hot water come out of the ground, you ninny,” Audie said.
“I wish to hell you’d speak plain words just once in a while” Lobo groused.
“Osborne Russell seen the things,” Sparks said. “He said they was good in helping to fix food. Gets the kettle hot real quick. He said they was thousands and thousands of the squirtin’ things scattered all over the place. I personal ain’t never seen none of them.”
“Want to ride along with me?” Jamie asked.
Sparks thought about that for a moment. He nodded his head. “Might as well. But I’ll tell you this: we get caught by winter in that country, we’re stuck for a time.”
“For a fact, it’s a hard country,” Lobo said. “But I’m game.”
“We shall all go,” Audie said. “Why not? Demand for beaver is over. I fear our days are numbered. What else do we have to do?”
“I wish you’d quit talkin’ like that,” Lobo said. “I don’t know what I’d do if trappin’ plays out.”
“Seek honest employment,” Audie told him with a smile. “Work, for an example.”
“Wagh!” the huge mountain man said. “I run away from a farm back east. Ain’t never been back. Started to go back a few years ago. Then I run into a feller who come from the same part of the country. He told me my ma and pa was both dead. I never did get along with none of my brothers or sisters, so I decided there wasn’t no point in makin’ that long trip for naught.”
“I do know the feeling,” Jamie said.
“Let’s pack up and ride,” Sparks suggested.
* * *
“Magnificent!” Audie said, staring at the spouting geysers as the men stood in what one day would be known as Yellowstone National Park.
“Quite a sight,” Sparks admitted.
“It’s . . . awesome,” Jamie said.
“Godamnest thing I ever seen, that’s for shore,” Lobo rumbled.
&nbs
p; The men scouted the area and found one geyser that seemed to erupt at fairly regular intervals.
After a time, Sparks said, “A faithful ol’ spouter, ain’t she?”
In 1870, the surveyor general of Montana Territory, Henry Washburn, and a bank examiner, Nathaniel Langford, named the world’s most famous geyser, “Old Faithful.” Old Faithful erupts every thirty to one hundred twenty minutes, blowing hot water as high as one hundred and sixty feet into the air.
After a few days, Lobo and Audie decided to head back south and Jamie and Sparks decided to head west. Jamie had written Kate a letter and Audie promised that he would “personally deliver the love-filled missive to the dear lady.”
“Quite a pair,” Sparks said, as he and Jamie packed up and pulled out. “Ol’ Lobo cain’t hardly write his own name and Audie’s got so much education he’s fairly bustin’ with it.”
“I have a hunch that Audie, in his own way, would be just about as dangerous as Lobo,” Jamie remarked.
“Worser. That little man will shoot you faster than a rattler can strike. Or cut you. I’ve seen him do both. He ain’t no one to fool with.”
“Preacher speaks highly of him.”
Sparks chuckled. “Preacher’s something, ain’t he? I been knowin’ him since he furst come out here. He was just a raggedy-assed kid, maybe twelve or thirteen at the most. Ridin’ a wore-out old mule. Preacher’s a good friend to have, and probably one of the worst enemies a man could ever have.”
Jamie and Sparks rode straight west, past Targhee Pass and right into the Centennial Mountains. Nez Perce and Flathead country. They crossed the Bitterroot Range, forded the Lemhi River, and touched the northern part of the Lemhi Range. Days later, they found a place to cross the Salmon (the River of No Return) and were immediately swallowed up by one of the harshest wilderness areas Jamie had ever seen.
“Most men I know fight shy of this country, Jamie,” Sparks said one evening, as the men were enjoying coffee and fresh caught trout. “She’s wild and beautiful and dangerous. They’s creatures roam this part of the country that’s not human, but they ain’t animal, neither.”
“Are you having a joke on me, Sparks?”
The mountain man shook his head. “No. Injuns call ‘em Sasquatch. Among other things. Now, I ain’t never seen one, and I hope to God I never do. But I’ve knowed plenty of ol’ boys out here who has. Brave men. And more’n one’s left these parts swearin’ to the Almighty that they’d never come back. One of the bravest warriors I ever seen was a Nez Perce name of Two Bears. He come face to face with a Sasquatch and when he returned to his village, his hair was snow white—and he was a right young man at the time. Sasquatch is real, Jamie—they prowl this land. And mighty creatures they is, too. All covered with hair . . . some of them nine feet tall and a good five hundred pounds.”
Jamie knew that mountain men often took great liberties with the truth, but looking at Sparks’s face in the flickering glow of the fire, Jamie sensed that the man was serious.
He drank his coffee and asked, “Any of them ever hurt a human being?”
“Not so far as I know. Injuns say they’re shy creatures. Not much is known about them.”
“Where do they live?”
Sparks shook his head. “No one knows. But I seen the bones one time of what the Blackfeet said was a Sasquatch. I can tell you this much: it weren’t no human nor bear. Just looking at them bones give me a fright I ain’t never forgot. This Blackfoot was investigatin’ a cave he found and there was the bones, all laid out proper on some sort of crude-made bed.”
Long after the fire had burned down to coals and Sparks was asleep, Jamie lay awake in his blankets. Wouldn’t it be something if he could see one of those creatures? But not up too close, mind you. Jamie finally closed his eyes and slept. He dreamed about great hairy monsters, nine feet tall.
Jamie came awake with a start, reaching for his rifle. It was about two hours before dawn, he guessed. Cutting his eyes, he saw that Sparks was wide awake, both hands gripping his rifle.
“What was that noise, Sparks?” he whispered.
“Don’t know. Tweren’t no Injun though.”
“Bear?” Jamie asked hopefully.
“Not unless he’s a clumsy bastard.”
Both men were thinking the same thing, but neither of them wanted to put it into words. Both of them reached out at the same time to toss wood onto the fire. Using a long stick, Jamie poked around until a small flame sprang up and touched the dry wood.
“Ain’t it amazin’ how fire gives such comfort to a man?” Sparks whispered.
Another crash came from the dark timber and both men nearly jumped out of their buckskin britches.
“Dead tree falling,” Jamie said.
“You wish,” was Sparks reply.
“Could be it’s the Indians playing a joke on us,” Jamie suggested.
“Not likely.”
Not another sound came out of the forest and both men cautiously crawled out of their blankets and rolled them. Jamie put the battered pot on to boil water and then dumped in the coffee, adding cold water to settle the grounds. Sparks crawled around gathering up more wood to build two more fires.
“Is that wise?” Jamie asked.
“Woods creatures don’t like fire. ’Sides, it comforts me.”
“It’ll be light in about another hour or so.”
“Not soon enough for me.”
A roar came out of the woods that sent chills racing up and down the spines of both men. Neither of them had ever heard anything like it in their lives. It was not human, but neither was it animal.
Long after the echoes of the roaring had died away, Sparks broke the silence with a whispered, “You a prayin’ man, Jamie?”
“Occasionally. I did a sight of it at the Alamo.”
“I ‘spect you did. I just done me a little talkin’ with the Lord.”
“I hope He heard you.”
“No more’n I do.”
“Coffee’s ready.”
“Pass me a cup. I ain’t takin’ my eyes off them woods yonder. I seen something movin’.”
Jamie poured and passed the mountain man a cup. “What did it look like?”
“You know what it looked like.”
A crash came from behind the men and both men nearly spilled their coffee spinning around to face the sound.
“More’n one of ‘em,” Sparks said. “I think they’re gettin’ ready to attack.”
“I thought you said they never bothered humans.”
“I have been known to be wrong from time to time.”
Then came the sound of something beating a stick against a tree, followed by grunts and howling and roaring.
“I think we done something to make them mad,” Sparks said.
“If I knew how, I’d apologize.”
“I just wish it would get light.”
“How far is it across this range?”
“Don’t know. Like I said, most white men avoid this area. They has been trappers who dared try it, though.”
“How long did it take them?”
“I don’t know. They never come out.”
“Is there a way around it?”
“Couple of hundred miles out of our way.”
“Hell with this!” Jamie said and stood up.
“What are you doing? Git back down to the ground, man. Them things can hurl a rock hundreds of feet.”
“You ever seen one do it?”
“Well . . . no.”
Jamie stood in the dancing light of the fires and roared and shook his rifle at the darkness that surrounded the tiny pocket of light in the wilderness.
“You gonna make them damn things mad, Jamie.”
A roar came out of the woods, but it sort of choked off near the end.
“What’d that thing do?” Sparks asked. “Swaller a bug?”
Then they both heard the sounds of muffled giggling.
“I know that giggle,” Sparks said, standing up. “Com
e on!”
Both men ran toward the timber. They pulled up short when they came upon Preacher. The mountain man was sitting on a log and laughing so hard tears were running out of his eyes.
Both men picked him up bodily, hauled him off, and threw him into the cold waters of a creek.
Sixteen
“I never seen two growed-up men so skirred,” Preacher said, sitting by the fire with a blanket wrapped around him. He sipped coffee and giggled.
“I ought to shoot you, Preacher,” Sparks said.
Preacher giggled.
“What are you doing up here, Preacher?” Jamie asked.
“Roamin’ around. Skirrin’ growed-up men by actin’ like the boogy man.”
“You been through this country a-fore, Preacher?” Sparks asked.
“I’ve skirted it a time or two. But I ain’t never traveled east to west all the way through. Been aimin’ to do it, though. You boys game?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Jamie said.
Preacher was oddly silent for a few moments. So still and quiet that Sparks finally asked, “Something wrong, Preacher?”
Preacher slowly nodded his head. “Yeah. I ain’t gonna say it ain’t never been done, ’cause it has. But winter is nigh, boys. We get trapped in there, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt.”
Jamie smiled. “Then we’d better get going, hadn’t we?”
The trio of men were days deep into mostly unexplored wilderness (by white men) before Sparks started looking back over his shoulder and muttering to himself.
Finally Jamie asked, “Sparks, what are you mumbling about?”
“Something is followin’ us, that’s what.”
Preacher looked behind them. “I ain’t felt the short hairs on my neck standin’ up, Sparks. ’Sides, this is Nez Perce and Flathead country, mostly. We all get on well with them.”
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