The First Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  On the afternoon of the first day past the river, Swift galloped up to Preacher. “Two families have pulled out, Preacher. They say they’re going to stay right here. They’re not going any further.”

  The news came as to no surprise to the mountain man. He’d been expecting something like this for weeks. “They’s actin’ like damn fools by doin’ it, but I ain’t gonna waste no time jawin’ with ’em. Leave ’em be.”

  “Man, they’ll die out here!”

  “That’s their problem. I didn’t sign on to hold nobody’s hand. ’Sides, they got a chance of survivin’ here. They’s cabins all over the wilderness. Life’ll be hard for ’em, but they could make it.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say on the subject?”

  “There ain’t nothing else to say, far as I’m concerned.”

  The wagon train rolled on, leaving two families behind, standing silently by the side of the trail, waving at those who continued on. Preacher did not look back.

  He had it in his mind that the movers weren’t about to stay out here in the wilderness. They’d had a gutful of it and were planning on headin’ back East to civilization. How they planned on getting back across the rivers and the like was anybody’s guess. He could be wrong about their plans, but he didn’t think so. And it was just as well, for this country was no place for cowards or the faint-hearted. The wilderness seemed to bring out the best in some and the worst in others. It oftentimes appeared to Preacher that the sometimes savage vastness seemed to know the cowardly or timid who came into it. The silent earth they were buried in was the only homestead they ever occupied.

  After the brief rains that fell the day Ballard died, the sun returned and it came with a vengeance, baking the hand in midsummer’s heat. The trail was dust that coated wagons, animals, and people. And the stretch they were coming up on was void of water.

  “Top your barrels,” Preacher told them at a creek. “Fill everything that’ll hold water. Your animals come first. You drink after them. Swift, we’ll be headed straight north once we make this next thirty or so dry miles.” He took a stick and drew in the dust. “Here’s the Snake, and this here’s the Burnt River. I’m takin’ us right between ’em.” He moved the stick north. “Once we get up here, that’s close to Lookout, we’ll rest. We’ll be about thirty-five miles from where I figure Bum and Red Hand is gonna hit us.”

  “Maybe they’ll have given up by then?” Swift said hopefully.

  “Don’t count on it,” Preacher told him.

  They moved on through the heat and the choking dust. That afternoon, they buried the Ellsworth baby. No one among them knew why the baby died. She had appeared to be a perfectly healthy baby.

  “Damn fools!” Preacher said. “Fools to start a two thousand mile journey through the wilderness with a woman that’s with child.”

  The mother’s wailings could be heard as she stood over the small mound of earth, being comforted by other women. Richard had told Edmond that he, not Edmond, would conduct the brief service. Edmond protested, but Richard prevailed.

  “Maybe they didn’t have no choice in the matter,” Dupre said.

  “This family did,” Preacher said sourly. “They sold a good business back East to become movers. Ellsworth told me he wanted a great adventure. I asked him why he didn’t wait ’til his woman birthed? He just looked at me and walked off. Damn fool!”

  “We stayin’ the night here?” Beartooth asked.

  “No,” Preacher said. “We’d use too much water and we ain’t got it to spare. We got to push on.”

  “Gonna be hell gettin’ that mother away from that grave,” Jim said.

  “Yeah,” Preacher’s reply was short.

  Preacher walked away, back to his horse. He cinched it up tight and swung into the saddle, riding up to Swift, who was unsaddling his horse. “Put it back on, Swift.”

  “What?”

  “Your saddle. We’re pullin’ out in a few minutes.”

  “Man, you can’t be serious! Mary is sick with grief. She’s flung herself across the grave.”

  “Well, unfling her. Pour some laudanum down her throat and knock her dopey and put her in the wagon. Swift, I ain’t tryin’ to be no mean, heartless man. But we got to move. We stay here, and we use up the water. No matter what you tell these people, half the water’ll be gone come the mornin’. And we won’t be no closer to more water. Now get the goddamn people to their wagons. Toot on that bugle and do it!”

  “I refuse to be so cruel! The mother has a right to her grief.”

  “Her grievin’ ain’t gonna change a damn thing. The baby’s dead. She’s with Jesus, Swift. There ain’t nothin’ in that hole in the ground.”

  “We’re staying right here for the night.”

  “Then go to hell, Swift. You either get these people movin’, right now, or I’m gone, and I won’t be back. I told you from the git-go, I tell you to stop, we stop, I tell you we go, we go. And you agreed to those terms. Now I’m tellin’ you, Swift. Get this train rollin’!”

  Swift looked up at Beartooth, Nighthawk, and Dupre rode up. He looked up at Jim, saddling his horse. “What’s he doing?”

  “Gettin’ ready to pull out with us,” Preacher told the man.

  “You’d all leave us? Swift looked at the unflinching grazes of the mountain men.

  They sat their saddles silently, staring their answers at the wagonmaster.

  “My God, but you’re a cruel, heartless pack of brutes!”

  “To your wagons!” Preacher shouted. “Let’s go. Move it, people.”

  “No!” the grieving mother screamed.

  “I said, get to your wagons and goddammit, do it now or I leave you here!” Preacher roared.

  Slowly, with undisguised ill-feeling toward him in their eyes, the settlers began moving toward their rolling homes. Mary screamed and Ellsworth fought his wife. She kicked him, she slapped him, she bit him and she cursed him and fought him from the grave to the wagon. He manhandled her into the wagon and her other children held her down.

  “Pour some laudanum in her,” Preacher told Richard. “Force a whole bottle down her. Knock her out, get her drunk, and tie her in.” He looked at Swift. “Toot that bugle, wagonmaster. Toot it loud and toot it now.”

  Preacher sat his horse by the side of the trail and watched the wagons roll past, following Nighthawk, Dupre, and Beartooth. He wanted to be damn sure they all headed out. The hot looks he received bounced off him like raindrops off his fringed buckskins. When the last wagon passed, followed by the livestock, Preacher rode back to the head of the column.

  “You shore didn’t win no new friends back yonder,” Beartooth observed.

  “No. But I kept some old ones alive.”

  * * *

  They prodded on, through the dust and the heat and the dryness, each step drawing them closer to the mountains where Preacher was certain Bum and Red Hand were waiting. When they made camp that evening, Preacher saw to it that the water was carefully rationed. They had just enough water left to make the next crossing. They had twelve waterless miles to go before they came to Burnt River. Once they left there, it was just over thirty dry miles to the Powder.

  Preacher walked the camp. Very few people had anything to say to him. That in itself did not trouble him. Preacher was a hard man in a hard land, and to survive out here, that was what it took. These pilgrims would soon discover that, or they’d die. That was the bottom line.

  Preacher went back to his own kind and sat down by the fire, accepting a cup of coffee from Jim.

  “We’ll lose some when them renegades hit us,” the trapper said. “This won’t be no little skirmish. Bum and Red Hand will throw everything they’ve got at us.”

  Preacher sipped at his coffee and then nodded his head. “I’ve done all I know to do. I’ve seen to it they’s plenty of powder and shot. I’ve warned ’em what they can expect. I can’t do no more.”

  “You know,” Dupre said, waving his hand at the encircled wagons. “T
his is what we’re all gonna end up doin’ ’fore it’s all said and done.”

  “What?” Jim asked.

  “Either guidin’ trains through or scoutin’ for the Army. That’s all that’s left.”

  “Wagh!” Beartooth said.

  “Ummm!” Nighthawk said.

  “He’s right,” Preacher spoke softly. “What else can we do? Think about it. Another two, three years, the fur will all but be gone. Them’s that’s plannin’ on trappin’ forever is kiddin’ theyselves. Can’t none of us tolerate no towns or houses for any length of time. I can’t see none of us clerkin’ in no store. We damn shore ain’t gonna get married and settled down and scratch in the ground raisin’ crops—at least I ain’t. So you tell me what that leaves us.”

  “You must make plans on returning to civilization and law and order,” Edmond said, strolling up.

  Trapper Jim said a very ugly word that summed up the feelings of all the mountain men.

  “In the not too distant future,” Edmond said, ignoring the profanity, “I can envision this trail being a wide and well-traveled road. Engineers will come in and build bridges across the rivers. There will be towns along the way. The railroads will cut through the mountains and link coast to coast . . .”

  “Plumb depressin’,” Preacher said.

  “That’s the most terriblest thing I ever heard of!” Beartooth said. “Them people best stay home. What’s all them people gonna do out here?”

  “Bring civilization and law and order,” Edmond told him. “Raise families and build towns and schools and churches. Make a decent life for thousands of people. All sorts of factories will be built . . .”

  “To make what?” Jim asked.

  “All sorts of goods for the newly arrived settlers. It’s the law of supply and demand. It’s called progress, gentlemen. You can either be a part of it, or it will coldly push you aside. You cannot stop progress, gentlemen. It’s futile to try.” Edmond turned and walked away, back to his wagon.

  “What’s fu-tile?” Beartooth asked.

  “I don’t know,” Preacher said. “But it sounds bad to me.”

  “Railroads!” Beartooth said. “There ain’t nobody gonna build no damn railroad through the mountains. It can’t be done.”

  “Melody told me they’s people back East taken to travelin’ in balloons,” Preacher said.

  The mountain men stared at him. “Now, Preacher . . .” Dupre said. “You have told some whoppers in your time, but . . .?”

  “It’s true. They make a big bag and then fill it with hot air and soar up to the clouds. They ride in baskets that’s got little stoves in ’em. They keep the bag filled with hot air by burnin’ wool and straw and the like.”

  “That ain’t natural,” Beartooth said. “If God meant for men to soar, He’d birthed us with wings.”

  “How high up do they soar?” Nighthawk asked.

  “I don’t know. I ain’t never seen one. More’n a mile, I reckon.”

  “What happens if the bag busts?” Dupre asked.

  Preacher shrugged his shoulders. “I reckon you’d have to fall back to the earth. What the hell other direction would you go? Up?”

  “Why, that’d be the same as jumpin’ off a damn mountain?” Jim said. “Who’d be foolish enough to do that?”

  “Then folks back East, I guess. There ain’t nobody ever gonna get me up in no damn oversized picnic basket.”

  Jim looked around him at the rapidly quieting camp. “Folks back East just ain’t got good sense.”

  Preacher glanced at him. “Took you this long to figure that out?”

  11

  When they had run the long dry miles and finally came to Burnt River, Preacher told them to rest and water up. Nighthawk had already switched his saddle to another pony and was ready to pull out for the Powder, to see what he could learn.

  “You be careful, Hawk,” Preacher told him. “That’s a mean, nasty bunch up yonder.”

  “And also very sure of themselves,” the Crow said. “Red Hand is an arrogant fool, and Bum Kelley is worse. I will be back in two days.” Preacher nodded his head and stepped back, watching him leave.

  “We got trouble,” Dupre said quietly, appearing at Preacher’s elbow. “One of the movers is about to go mad, I’m thinkin’.”

  Preacher was not surprised, and he had a pretty good idea who it was. A very soft-spoken and timid little man from New Hampshire. His wife was timid and their kids were timid. Never heard a peep out of any of them. Preacher had been watching the man as the deep wilderness closed around them. Day by day, he talked more to himself in a mumbling sort of way. He wandered the camp after dark, twisting his hands and rubbing his arms nervously.

  “Winston?”

  “That’s him. Swift is over there talking to him now. The Big Empty got to him, I reckon.”

  “Let’s go have a look.”

  The man’s eyes were wild looking. His hands were shaking and his face was pale as a fresh-washed and sunshine-dried sheet. He also had a pistol shoved down his belt.

  “Winston!” Swift said. “Where is your family, man? Talk to me.”

  “What about his family?” Preacher whispered.

  “They’s missin’. All of them.”

  Swift looked around. His eyes were not friendly. He still hadn’t gotten over Preacher’s insistence they move on so quickly after the Ellsworth baby’s death. “No one’s seen them since this morning. Winston was late getting started. The stock drovers said he didn’t catch up with them until we’d been on the trail more than an hour.”

  “Watch that pistol of his,” Preacher said to Dupre. He walked around to the rear of the wagon and looked inside. It was the awfulest mess he’d ever seen. Looked like a pack of Injuns had gone berserk. He picked up a shirt that caught his eye. It was covered with blood. “Damn!” he whispered.

  Carrying the shirt, he walked around to the front of the wagon and opened the lid to the jockey box and looked in. A small hatchet was on top of the various tools. The axe head was bloody, with several strands of hair stuck to the edge. Preacher held the axe to the light. The hair was of different colors.

  “Take his pistol, Dupre,” Preacher called.

  The mountain man reached down quickly and jerked the pistol from Winston’s belt. Winston offered no resistance. “What’d you find, Preacher?”

  Preacher walked around the wagon and held up the bloodstained shirt and the bloody axe. “This.”

  Winston screamed and jumped up. Swift popped him a good lick that put the crazed man on the ground, stunned but not out. “The voices told me to do it. They’ve been talkin’ to me for days and days now. I could resist them no longer. I had to do it, I say, I had to.”

  “Where’d you do them in, man?” Swift asked.

  “Back at last night’s camp. After the train pulled out this morning.”

  Preacher turned to Trapper Jim. “Saddle us some horses. And rig up three pack horses. We’ll bring the bodies back when, or if, we find them. It’ll be long dark ’fore we get there, but it’s got to be done. Dupre, you ride with me.”

  The mood of the settlers very quickly grew dark, and some men were talking about a rope and the nearest tree limb.

  “Chain Winston to a wagon wheel,” Preacher told Swift. “We’ll be back sometime tomorrow.”

  The mountain men rode easily back down the trail. There was no need to hurry, the victims weren’t going anywhere. Neither man was all that anxious to find the bodies of the woman and her two daughters, for they were both pretty sure that by now the varmits had been at the bodies. It had been a horrible and shocking event, but not so appalling to the mountain men. They had seen it all before, more than once. The loneliness of the wilderness was something that not everyone could endure. The vastness of it all and the silence worked on some people. The savage land, void of accustomed amenities, had driven many people mad. They had all known trappers who had gone berserk and killed friends while they slept. This was not a land for the weak-hearted
; no place for those who could not live without newspapers and comfortable chairs and lamplight and walls.

  The mountain men, leading the pack horses, rode through the twilight and into the night, finally reaching the site of the previous night’s campgrounds.

  The vultures and the varmits had been at work all that day, but enough was left for identification. While Dupre kept the carrion eaters away with firebrands, Preacher rolled the torn and partly eaten bodies into canvas and lashed them onto the nervous and skittish pack horses. They rode back up the trail for a few miles before making camp for the night.

  They hung the canvas-wrapped bodies from limbs to keep the varmits from them and made camp away from the now odious carcasses. They were back at the wagon train by noon of the following day.

  Winston was bug-eyed and slobbering. He had soiled himself and was a pitiful sight chained to a wagon wheel. During the night he had gone completely around the bend and had been reduced to a babbling idiot, or so it appeared.

  Avery’s father had built him a noose and was talking hanging.

  “You can’t hang no madman,” Preacher told him. “He ain’t responsible for what he done.”

  “We do what you tell us to do when it involves the trail,” Swift told Preacher. “But I set the law of the train.”

  Preacher could not argue the words. That was the rule of any wagon train. He walked away and joined his friends, sitting on the ground away from the still-circled wagons. Beartooth handed him a cup of coffee.

  “Dispatched each one with a blow to the head,” Dupre said. “I reckon them poor little girls only had a few moments of fright. But we’ll never know.”

  “Did he abuse them?” Jim asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Preacher said. “They was all some et on. I’d rather think he didn’t.”

  “Them pilgrims has been workin’ theyselves up into a frenzy,” Beartooth said. “I think they’re gonna hang him.”

  “T’ain’t up to us to interfere,” Preacher replied. “If it was up to me, I’ll turn him loose. Injuns won’t bother him. He’d survive for a time. But on the other hand, he might get his hands on another axe, or a club or rock, and do in somebody else who’s comin’ up behind us. Personal, I’m just glad the decision ain’t up to me.”