by Terry Grosz
Leo and Jeremiah had spent years working with the boys, teaching and honing their frontier skills to the point where there was little difference among the four in those abilities other than experience. Leo and Jeremiah had been pleased with the boys’ progress through the rigors of frontier survival training as they grew older, stronger, and wiser. Both young men, like their fathers before them, had adapted well and quite easily to the frontier teachings—so much so that soon they had gained an understanding of life on the frontier that was far beyond their years. They were crack shots with their rifles and pistols and skilled in knife use, including those skills necessary to defend oneself in a fight to the death. They were their adoptive fathers’ equals in tracking and trapping. They easily spoke various dialects of the Lakota, Crow, and Snake languages and were equally at ease with the talk of the plains, namely, speaking in sign. Reading the weather and animal signs and learning the ways of Native Americans came easily to the boys. So did the making and use of the ancient Native weapon: bows and arrows. At age seventeen, both young men stood slightly over six feet in height, weighed about 200 pounds, and were strap-steel tough from many hours of hard labor on their folks’ farms and small ranches.
Their adoptive Lakota mothers, White Feather and Prairie Flower, had taught the boys the domestic ways of the frontier, including making clothing, caring for hides and furs, becoming familiar with the many medicinal properties of native plants, and making even a mountain lion or bobcat loin taste good in a Dutch oven. They had also taught the boys how to treat wounds and sew up any torn flesh that was damaged so extensively that it couldn’t be left alone to heal by itself without fear of infection. The women also taught them to respect Mother Earth, honor the gods, and understand the way of the ancients.
The young men couldn’t wait to begin their new adventures. Little did they realize the many trails they would travel and the dangers they would experience before they laid their heads down on Mother Earth for the last time.
Reining up in front of the fort’s open outer gates in the summer of 1852, the boys were amazed at what lay before them. They had never been to the fort before. Fort Bridger was a collection of rough-hewn cottonwood logs forming a palisade within which was a small number of crudely made hay sheds, cabins, and storage rooms in addition to the trading post. To the south were about thirty Indian tepees occupied by white fur trappers and their Native American wives. Herds of horses and oxen belonging to Bridger roamed at will in the fort’s adjacent grassy fields. On this day, the tranquil scene was accompanied by the ringing of blacksmiths’ hammers clanging off iron rims being reset on the spokes of a traveler’s wagon wheel, the din of children playing around two different wagon trains circled outside the fort, and the barking of numerous dogs. The pungent smell of lye soap from the laundresses doing the weekly wash commingled with the fragrant aroma of baking bread. A sound foreign to the young men’s ears was the groaning of a hand-pumped organ and voices singing to the heavens in hopeful tones.
Dismounting, the four frontiersmen made their way through the gates into the center of the fort. Off to one side sat what was called the trading post, a building made just as crudely as the fort’s palisades. Hitching their horses, they went inside, where the young men met with many more new sights and smells: curing hides, gun oil, freshly baked bread and pies, made by the ladies in the wagon trains and exhibited for sale on a nearby counter, and both stale and fresh tobacco. At the far end of the wooden counter were salted and brined fish in open barrels and smoked slabs of bacon stacked up in greasy heaps. Beneath all these odors was the underlying pungent smell of stale sweat from unwashed bodies.
They heard laughter from a group of men nearby—voices that were liberally spiced with strong whiskey, from the raucous sounds. Before them were furs by the bale being traded and others packed for travel. The fresh-meat smell of elk and buffalo hindquarters hanging from the rafters, still dripping blood onto the dirty wooden floor, hung heavily in the air. It was all topped off by the thickness of the confined, oppressive, stagnant summer heat.
Hanging back, the two young men followed the leads of their adopted dads. Planning on drawing on their credit with the trading post from previous fur and hide sales, Leo and Jeremiah motioned Jim Bridger over. As he approached, the boys observed a powerfully built man who moved with the grace of a deer. After much back-slapping and a long pull by each man from a gallon jug of whiskey concealed beneath the counter, the three men got down to the business at hand.
“These here young’uns are getting ready to go out on a hunt to make meat for our families,” Leo informed Bridger. Bridger looked seriously at the two boys and then, with no sign of emotion, brought his eyes back to Leo and Jeremiah. “They will need to be supplied for at least a ten-day trip out onto the plains, and that is why we are here. I will need to use a portion of our credit to procure some powder, caps for their Hawkens, two nipple picks, a couple extra skinning and gutting knives, a steel, two sharpening stones, and two pounds of your long-leaf Virginia chew. They will also need a six-quart Dutch, a boilin’ pot, an ax, and a couple of fire steels,” said Leo as Jeremiah nodded in agreement. “Then they will need a large sack of your salt yonder and two pounds of pepper. While you’re at it, Jim, throw into that mix a jug of your bear lard, a jug of honey for biscuits, ten pounds of flour, and a two-pound sack of sugar cones. And they will need five pounds of your dried pintos there and a large bag of coffee beans,” continued Leo as his experienced eyes roamed across the selection of goods on the shelves behind the counter.
“That we’un can fix right up,” said a grinning Jim Bridger, who was quick in taking in the order, and a sharp man when it came to bargaining. Turning, he beckoned for one of his clerks to give him a hand pulling together the goods just ordered. Soon the wooden counter began to fill with stacks of the items Leo had requested. As each requested tool was laid out on the counter, Jeremiah carefully examined it for any flaws from shoddy manufacturing. He also checked the beans and flour for any signs of weevils. Pleased with each item as it arrived, he replaced them on the counter and grinned at Bridger through his massive beard.
“That will about do it,” said Bridger as he looked up at his two grizzly-bear-sized friends, men he knew from long-past rigorous days of trapping wet and cold on the beaver streams. “I will remove the cost of these goods from what I owe the two of you in credit from previous fur deals. That is, unless you have a problem with that.”
“That’ll be fine with us,” replied Leo with a smile, knowing they had made a good trade and gotten the supplies needed to make the boys’ upcoming trip safe and successful. “At least they’re covered in the food and ‘chew’ department,” thought Leo.
“Well, if that be a deal, I can’t let the two of you out of sight without sharing a bit more of my snakebite medicine afore you go,” Bridger replied with a smile, as if he needed to justify the snort of whiskey the three friends were soon to share.
The boys, knowing their places, stood silently, delighted by the friendship the three mountain men openly shared. The trading, drinking, and palavering over, the four walked back out into the bright sunlight carrying armloads of their trade items. Greeting their eyes were friendly Indians, trappers, travelers, children, and numerous dogs along with a few domesticated pigs looking for food scraps. The boys grinned at the activity playing out before their eyes, a far cry from the quiet and solitude they had grown up with in the wilds. Yet they were already missing the comfort of home and wishing they were once again back within its less busy and noisy confines.
With their newly acquired supplies loaded on two pack animals, the four turned their backs on the noisy fort and headed out into the comforting and well-loved quiet of the high intermountain prairie toward their homes.
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About the Author
Terry Grosz earned his bachelor’s degree in 1964 and his master’s in wildlife management in 1966 from Humboldt State College in Califor
nia. He was a California State Fish and Game Warden, based first in Eureka and then Colusa, from 1966 to 1970. He then joined the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and served in California as a U.S. Game Management Agent and Special Agent until 1974. After that, he was promoted to Senior Resident Agent and placed in charge of North and South Dakota for two years, followed by three years as Senior Special Agent in Washington, D.C., with the Endangered Species Program, Division of Law Enforcement. While in Washington, he also served as Foreign Liaison Officer.
In 1979, he became the Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two years later in 1981, he was promoted to Special Agent in Charge and transferred to Denver, Colorado, where he remained until his retirement in 1998.
He has earned many awards and honors during his career, including, from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Meritorious Service Award in 1996, and Top Ten Award in 1987 as one of the top ten employees (in an agency of some 9,000). The Fish & Wildlife Foundation presented him with the Guy Bradley Award in 1989, and in 1993 he received the Conservation Achievement Award for Law Enforcement from the National Wildlife Federation.
Unity College in Maine awarded Grosz an honorary doctorate in environmental stewardship in 2001. His first book, Wildlife Wars, was published in 1999 and won the National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and Environment. He has had ten memoirs published since then—For Love of Wildness, Defending Our Wildlife Heritage, A Sword for Mother Nature, No Safe Refuge, The Thin Green Line, Genesis of a Duck Cop, Slaughter in the Sacramento Valley, Wildlife on the Edge, Wildlife’s Quiet War, and Wildlife Dies Without Making a Sound (in two volumes)—and his Mountain Men Novels—Crossed Arrows, Curse of the Spanish Gold, The Saga of Harlan Waugh, The Adventures of the Brothers Dent, and The Adventures of Hatchet Jack.
Several of Grosz’s stories were broadcast as a docudrama on the Animal Planet network in 2003.
Terry Grosz lives in Colorado.
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