The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana)

by Robert Lewis Taylor

  Camped beside the Big Sandy, and started on a stretch of twenty miles without water or grass. Everybody was in a grouchy humor when we reached the Green River, which was nearly three hundred feet wide, and the fording was done to considerably more cussing than had formerly been noted on the train. People were so tired out I almost felt glad that our bunch was calling it off for a while.

  On October twelfth we rode into sight of Fort Bridger, where we were to part, and of course there was some sniffling and carrying on. People went around shaking hands, and wishing good luck, and I honestly think we nearly backed out. But Mrs. Kissel now had to spend part of the day lying down, and my father, to do him credit, was bound and determined to get her back to health.

  Coulter was going on with the train. “I hired out to deliver it to California, and that’s where I’ll deliver it,” he told us. He waited a bit after we’d said everything, then followed Jennie to the tail of Brice’s wagon. Having a little free time on my hands, I crawled underneath to rest up.

  It was funny; Coulter had quit being so sarcastic with us, but he still spoke to Jennie with a kind of joky ragging.

  “I’ll be back, once I’ve got the sheep in the corral,” he said.

  “Indeed: you don’t mean it. And leave all that gold behind?”

  “I’m not much of a hand to go scratching in the ground like a squirrel.”

  Jennie gave a sniff. Now she was beginning to recover a little, she was handsome and lively. And since she’d been married, she was different, somehow. She had lost her sharp look and was softer and rounder. But there wasn’t much improvement in her manner toward Coulter. He got her back up, no mistake, but I thought she liked him, too. It was a different kind of liking than what she’d had for Brice. I heard one of the men say she hadn’t any more use for Coulter than a Jenny had for a Jack, but I didn’t know what he meant.

  “I hear gold-mining’s hard, back-weary work,” she said. “I don’t doubt you’d shy off. Gallivanting’s more your style.”

  “If a man’s without ties, he might as well roam. A man, that is, not a doddering mooncalf—”

  “You say anything against Brice and I’ll slap your Indian’s face.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Brice, so maybe I’ll give you a real excuse.” He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard, pushing her up against the tail gate so that she went limp, leaning over backwards, with her legs apart.

  When he let go, she caught her breath and hissed, “You vulgar roughneck. You ought to be ashamed. Leave me be.” But when he turned half around, she said, “Where are you going?”

  “California—remember?”

  Jennie began to cry, she was so mad, and said, “Go ahead. And don’t come back, hear?”

  “You want me to kiss you goodbye again, just for luck?”

  “No, I don’t! You catch me letting you. Not ever! Just once, then—not that way—all ri—”

  Then she broke loose, hanging on a second, and gasped, “You’ll have to stop. Damn you—I’d like to kill you!”

  “I’ll be in Salt Lake City by Christmas.”

  “I won’t be there.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I’ll marry a Mormon.”

  “I’ll make you a widow.”

  When he left, she put her head down against the board, breathing sort of hard, but she took it up again in a minute and kicked the wheel. She was an interesting case. Still, I couldn’t make out what was bothering her, and anyhow I was rested up, so I left.

  Before the train rolled on for California, Coulter took the men of our group to meet Jim Bridger, who he said was an old friend. If my father was right, Coulter’d only had a handful of friends since his childhood, and these were such hardened old geezers they wouldn’t care whether he murdered his brother or not. Being friends, they’d simply have figured he had a good reason.

  One was this Bridger, and another was a scout named Carson that Coulter said was somewhere on the Oregon Trail this year. He hoped to see him soon.

  Coulter told us that Bridger’s Fort, where the Mormon route to Salt Lake splits off from the California-Oregon Trail, was on Black’s Fork of the Green River, where it took the fresh waters from the Uintah Mountains. He said Bridger himself was one of the toughest birds alive. “In 1834, he came out of a fight with the Blackfeet at Powder River with two iron arrowheads in his shoulder,” Coulter said, “and a Doctor Whitman removed them while bridger sat on the grass, smoking a cob pipe and playing mumbledy-peg with a soldier. Injuns carried the story all over the West. In appearance he’s as mild as soup, but don’t be surprised at his stretchers. He ain’t any bad hand at storytelling; fact is, he’s famous for it.”

  The train had camped on one of the three river forks surrounding the Fort, and we walked on in, Coulter and my father leading the way, Kissel and Coe behind them, me bringing up the rear. The first thing you noticed was how foxy Bridger had been in his location. The Fort was plopped down on an island in the middle branch of that stream, and we had to get to it by flat-bottomed boat, though we could have waded, they said. When we reached the island, the Fort wasn’t any beauty, but it seemed solid for defense, being eiicircled all around with a strong stockade that had a heavy gate in the middle. The construction was picket, with the lodging apartments and offices opening into a hollow square, like Laramie. On the north side a corral was full of animals—mules, horses, oxen, ponies, and the like—and Bridger’s house stood in a southern corner—a long cabin of very ordinary appearance for a man so well known, calling himself a military Major to boot.

  We observed that the proprietor of this seedy dwelling was now within view on his doorstep, and I’ll copy down what my father said in the Journals: “A man of middle stature, lean, very leathery of countenance, wearing a fringed buckskin shirt in indifferent repair, also a low black hat, and on his face a look both of deeply ingrained mischief and studied innocence; small eyes, close together but incredibly sharp and black, nose beaky, neck wattled, mouth set as if determined to avoid laughing at some epic jest.”

  At the time of our arrival, he was lugging a big brass spyglass, which we understood later was with him most always. He knew everything going on in that area, and the Indians never understood how he managed.

  His meeting with Coulter was somewhat out of the common, as such formalities went. It departed from custom.

  As he stood there, in an easy slouch, holding his telescope, we could see two fat Indian women in the doorway behind, and at their feet a number of copper-colored brats.

  Bridger lifted his glass, though we were now only twenty or thirty yards away, and fixed it rather rudely on Coulter’s face. Then he gave every appearance of alarm, as if the Fort was under attack. It set my father and the others back a notch, especially Coe, who had a pretty stiff notion of manners, even after all these weeks on the trail.

  “Get the children back!” cried the proprietor to the Indian women. “Shut and bolt the doors—bury the silver.” He stepped spryly aside and whisked the telescope out of sight behind the door, coming up with a very long rifle instead. His attitude was concerned, if not downright menacing.

  Coulter, for his part, fell into this nonsense as if he’d done it before, and called, “I wonder if you could direct us to the person in charge of the Fort. We understood old Bridger was killed by a couple of Arapahoe children.”

  “Keep back,” said Bridger to the women, who had yet to move a muscle in obedience to his commands. “Don’t show yourselves. It looks like Coulter.”

  “Put down that rifle.”

  “Come up, Coulter, but come slow, and don’t move your hands.”

  Coulter now grinned and said, “By God, if you aren’t the worst-looking sight I ever run across. Have they quit sewing buttons on shirts?”

  “What’s happened to your hair?” asked Bridger.

  “It got singed.”

  “You haven’t a particle of business outside the Fort without a guide, I’ve told you before, only you won’t lis
ten.”

  “These are friends,” said Coulter, introducing us. “They want to make serious talk, so cut out the piffle.”

  At this odd point in their reunion, they shook hands, but each did it as though the other was an object of miserableness almost past belief.

  “I didn’t figure on seeing you again,” said Bridger, “wandering around unattended.”

  Inspecting him with an air of pity, Coulter said, “I’d almost forgot what an ugly old squirrel you are. It’s always a shock. Why in hades don’t you shave? It might help some.”

  “Come in, gentlemen,” said Bridger, “make yourselves to home. I’m starting a new house next month, of imported Vermont marble, but the workmen aren’t quite ready to go.”

  I found out later this was a lie; in fact, the proprietor of Fort Bridger practically never told the entire truth, if there was an opportunity to make up a better story. Coulter said that was the way he got his amusement, and my father added later that what he was, at heart, was “a first-rate working humorist, a rose wasting his fragrance on the desert air.”

  When we went inside, Kissel stooped over to avoid striking his head and Bridger introduced two Indian women as his wives, saying their names were “Durn Your Eyes” and “Drat Your Hide.” None of our group had the impoliteness to inquire if he was joking, but these were the authentic names, according to Coulter, thought up by their husband several years before. The women were proud of them.

  We got down to business and explained that we wanted to go to Salt Lake City for the winter. Then my father suggested that we would never make it without a guide. “He’ll do it,” said Coulter, addressing us, although Bridger was sitting at his elbow. “Once in a while there’s work to be done around here, so he gets away and hides whenever he can.”

  “I’m not in good with Brigham Young right now,” said Bridger, in a serious vein. “He says I’ve been selling firearms to the Utes; what’s more, he’d admire to annex my Fort. It so happens I was meaning to go over and have a talk with him; you can ride along and welcome.”

  This was wonderful news. He would be leaving the day after tomorrow, when his partner, Vasquez, returned from a trading trip. Meanwhile he said we might enjoy seeing the local sights. Then he promised to take us, women and all, to a stream up in the mountains that he said had the fastest current in America, but he cautioned us beforehand not to stick our foot or hand in, so that we wouldn’t be scalded. “Water running that fast works up a power of friction against the bottom and sides,” he said, eyeing us with a kind of squint. “During the spring thaw, the temperature’s close to biling.”

  Walking us down to the ferry, he rode over with us. A number of Indians were camped on the far bank, as well as the remnants of another train—three wagons altogether. “They’re stopping here,” Bridger said. “They like the country and mean to settle. They’re a mighty smart bunch—got everything they need right in their own crowd, butcher, baker, blacksmith, cobbler, and all like that. They didn’t pick a single man unless they needed him for a purpose.”

  Sitting beside the nearest wagon, sunning himself on a stool, was a gray-bearded old man so ancient and rickety you’d have thought he might fall apart any minute. I could see my father trying to fight down the question.

  “What’d they bring the old fellow for?”

  “To start their graveyard with.”

  On the way back to camp, Coe said, “Did you hear what he said about that stream? I don’t believe it for a minute; it doesn’t stand to reason.”

  “That man Bridger,” replied my father, about to burst, “is the most preposterous humbug and liar I’ve met in the course of a lifetime devoted to the study of such creatures. I don’t believe anything about him. I don’t even think he’s an Indian fighter.”

  “Well,” observed Coulter, “you can’t say I didn’t warn you. But you corner him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d fight.”

  All of us except Jennie stood beside the train as it pulled out, waving handkerchiefs and calling our last goodbyes. We had exchanged names and addresses, the way people do, and made vows of keeping in touch later on in the gold fields, knowing in our hearts that we weren’t apt to meet again, ever. The passing of time eases the best intentions; it’s sad but true.

  Coulter would return to Salt Lake City. When he said so, I believed him. But not Jennie. “That’s the last we’ll see of that critter,” she said, angrily fighting back the tears. “He’s purely worthless.” Standing apart, she turned around when he grinned and waved, riding by. “You performed me a service,” he had said to my father. “I’ll be along back to see you through to California.”

  Then he offered one last piece of advice. “A word about Bridger, now. Never mind his yarn-spinning. Trust him as you’d trust your mother. You wouldn’t know it, but he’s guiding you because I asked him. So keep this in mind; never forget it. Trust him absolutely. There’s just about nothing he can’t do. And now—goodbye, all.”

  My father spoke up with real affection. “Coulter, we regard you as a member of the family. It’ll be a happy day when we see you back.” Kissel crushed some of his bones with a handshake, and Mrs. Kissel broke down and sniffled; even Coe looked distressed to see him go.

  So we split up. It was a mournful pass to come to. I found myself holding Po-Povi’s hand, with a good-sized lump in my throat. It was like watching all our hopes and plans go fading off in the distance. Would we really get to California? I didn’t much think so any longer.

  Chapter XXIX

  Led by its owner, we pulled out of Fort Bridger before dawn on the day promised, prepared for a hard passage to the Great Salt Lake, much of it over scorched desert and soda flats.

  Major Bridger was in a cheerful humor, but he cautioned us that the country was humming with Indians and that we must keep a sharp lookout.

  He placed Coe’s wagon, still mule-drawn, in the front, the Brice wagon with children and Mrs. Kissel next in line, and our new pack mules, Kissel’s and my father’s, in the rear. The men were supposed to go on a kind of sentinel duty, roaming the flanks and dropping behind but never getting out of eyeshot. I trotted on Spot up forward near our guide, who rode an Indian pony as raggedy and careless as himself.

  By dawn we were well beyond sight of the Fort, keeping to the eastern fringe of the mountains. This route, a short cut by the Great Salt Lake, was coming into use by the bolder of the California immigrants, but the majority still clung to the old trail that continued to Fort Hall and the Humboldt River.

  It was October, now, but it was a blistering-hot day. Before us stretched an empty waste as forlorn as the eve of creation—no trees, no water, no grass, no growth except artemisia, or sagebrush, and I didn’t care if I never saw that wiry shrub again.

  When it was full light, and the sun broiling down from about fifty yards high, we began to see the same old thrown-away furniture and wreckage. And before the day was out, dead oxen again, along with graves: “E. Pritchard, Died July 28, 1849.” My father picked up a novel called The Forger, by a man named G.P.R. James, and read it walking along, occasionally laughing at something funny, but when Bridger pointed in his dry, squinted-up way at a file of Indians that had taken up the march beside us, scavenging, he put it hurriedly away.

  The Indians were Utes, all but naked, so ratty and poor they made the Pawnees seem elegant by comparison. In the afternoon, at a time when the trail lay close to the hills, we passed a village of Diggers—outcast Utes—a breed so low they acted more animal than human. Bridger stopped to show a few dwellings; they were nothing but holes in the ground, a fox’s den, with a crude lean-to over the weather side. My father made a hasty sketch of one; I have it now: a shallow pit in which a stark-naked woman crouches, eyes wide and frightened; beside her a bowl of roasting crickets; and hung against a pole, in a skin pouch laced to a board, a papoose wrinkled and shrunken. One of the scavengers now came up with hand thrust out, saying, “Chreesmas gif, Chreesmas gif,” but Bridger shooed him away.


  “They beg in Brigham Young’s city,” he said. “They ain’t dangerous unless they got an advantage, and then they’ll kill you with pleasure.”

  The scout had been businesslike and silent, considering his reputation for talking, and I think my father was relieved. Bridger placed a strain on him. He never knew how to act when the tall tales began. Only twice during the day did our guide pull any nonsense, and as Mr. Coe said, these two made up for everything. Once, rolling along a perfectly straight, well-marked trau, in what seemed like the middle of the desert, Bridger stopped and glanced to the right and left, as if checking his bearings. Then he uncorked his spyglass and had a careful look around. After this, he wheeled his horse off the trail and began a wide, bothersome detour, finally ending up back on the road.

  “I durn near made that same mistake again,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve bashed up me and my horse twicet already.”

  “What is it? Why’d we leave the trail?” demanded my father, as the others rode up, sweating in the sun.

  Bridger pointed back. “It’s that pesky road-block—a mountain of pure glass. You can’t see it unless you get right on top, almost.”

  “Where?” cried my father. “Surely you can’t be serious. I can’t see a thing.”

  The trouble with this fellow was, his departures from normal were so crazy and unexpected he caught everybody flat-footed. That’s what made my father so mad.

  “First time I encountered it, I fired at an antelope and didn’t ruffle a hair. I laid down a regular bombardment until I found out what was the matter. He was standing on the other side.”

  “A mountain of transparent glass,” said my father, with heavy scorn.

  “You’d better have a last look. You don’t see them often. There ain’t more than a handful in the entire West.”

  “No, I expect not,” said my father, about to blow up again. “How do you like it, Coe? Pretty, don’t you think?”