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

by Robert Lewis Taylor

  “I don’t mind if I do,” I said, grinning. I filled my shirt pocket.

  “That’s better. I don’t like to see a debt go unpaid, and neither does Brother Thomas. It’d plague him if he thought about it.”

  In ten minutes the street was clear, and we stepped out, walking very brisk and fast toward home. Everybody was waiting for us, Jennie and Kissel sitting down, looking glum, and the others, including Mrs. Kissel, all in the same room, on our side of the house.

  “Stir yourselves,” said my father, closing the door behind him. “We haven’t a minute to lose—we’re moving out tonight.”

  Nobody said a word, but you knew by the way they lit into the packing that we were glad things had finally come to a head.

  All was ready long before dark. When night fell, we kept the lamps lit till eight o’clock only, then blew them out. We waited in the darkness.

  The night was still, no wind, wholly clear without many stars, cool but not cold, and with that first springy softness in the air that means winter’s about gone. I tiptoed through the back door and stood smelling and listening. Already the ice on the canal was broken here and there, where children had thrown rocks in, and you could hear water gurgling below. Pretty soon now the snows would melt in the high mountains, and the river and streams of this valley would be a-bulge with ice water. Even now, they said, there were bare patches on mountain faces where an unusual March sun had beaten down for several days together.

  Sidling around, I peered up the street into the darkness. Then I saw something move across the street, a shape blacker than the shadows. I said to myself, what if Muller’s got somebody watching the house? We’d never get out.

  When I went back to tell the others, Mr. Kissel said, “I’ll take a look.” He crept out the back, and we tried to watch through the windows, but nobody could see anything but the darkness of the street.

  Suddenly, we heard sharp sounds of a scuffle—a scraping of feet on hard ground, a thud, and then a muffled cry. Five minutes later, there came two soft kicks at the back door, and upon our throwing it open, Mr. Kissel was there with one of Muller’s friends slung over his shoulder, unconscious.

  “I was obliged to invite him in,” Mr. Kissel said.

  My father and Mr. Coe took bandage strips and trussed the man up, hands and feet; then they strapped a wad of gauze in his mouth for a gag. He appeared to have a fair-sized knot on his forehead, and he was breathing heavy, like a horse that’s gone uphill a few miles.

  “What did you hit him with?” asked my father in his professional voice, bending down.

  “Knuckled him,” said Mr. Kissel.

  We talked in whispers, and did the tying up to matchlight, that burned a second or two, then flickered out. Now we kept watch in the dark again.

  It was just at ten when the door burst open, bringing us scrambling to our feet, and Marlowe shut it quickly behind him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Needed to make sure. Ready, all? Well, well, what’s this?”

  My father told how we had captured Muller’s friend, who was slumbering, then he said, “We’re packed up, children wrapped in blankets, and itching to get started.”

  “Then out we go. Leave him here; he’ll keep till morning. Single-file after me. Wagons and animals on edge of town.”

  “How on earth—?”

  “Never mind. No time for words.”

  As nearly as I could see, he led us, Kissel and Mr. Coe and my father carrying the smallest children, Mrs. Kissel leading the other by the hand, over a back route through the sleeping town and toward the Valley beyond.

  In a rocky hollow near the lake we found an Indian boy waiting with the Brice and Coe wagons, loaded with plunder and provisions along with the oxen, mules, and Spot. The moon was up, though veiled over with mist, and things looked ghostly pale as we tumbled children and women into the wagons, packed traps on the mules, which seemed in an agreeable humor for a change, and made the last adjustments of straps and other harness.

  “Hurry, hurry, don’t dawdle. They’ll be on our heels before daylight,” said Marlowe, mounted on a horse of his own now, riding up and down beside us.

  We cracked the reins and headed off toward the lake, across the Salt Valley, half frozen, patchy with snow, silvery in color under that dull moon.

  For hours after reaching the water, we followed the lake shore, crossing some foothills that came right down at one point, with snow to make it hard pulling, and before dawn left the lake to come out on what Marlowe said was the South Trail. Everybody was half dead with tiredness and the animals had that “sobbing” of their sides that my father once put in his Journals.

  But we didn’t rest long. The animals were fed and watered, we lay down for maybe an hour, until the sky had paled a little across the Wasatch Mountains, then Marlowe was rousting us out. Nobody argued; we knew he told the truth when he said the Danites would pick up the trail by morning. We knew, too, that if caught it meant death for some and a kind of slavery for the rest.

  But I don’t recollect ever being so played out. We’d been keyed up and nervous for days, and now we had gone all night without sleep. Off and on, I rode Spot a little, but mostly I walked to keep him fresh. Now, with the daylight coming, Po-Povi and I got up, double, for a while and plodded along, nodding and waking, nodding and waking.

  When it was full light, we took to looking back over our shoulders. You do that without knowing it when you think you’re being followed. Nothing in sight, but after another rocky range, I noticed Marlowe, on a little peak, studying the low, level waste that stretched out in the shimmering haze behind us.

  “Anything?” said my father, when Marlowe got down again.

  “Dust cloud—air spiral. Nothing yet.”

  But he watched more frequently all that day and into the next. And finally, from another rock, studying the back trail, glancing at the sun, and making calculations, he called out:

  “So, ho! Company.”

  We stopped and collected in haste, the women frightened and white. For perhaps the hundredth time that day we stared back at the road we’d come along.

  “Other direction,” said Marlowe, pointing to the hills.

  We whirled round and saw nothing at first but a succession of rocky rills, over which thin clouds drifted, lonely and silent. Then I caught sight of a sun glint on metal, high in the boulders, a glitter followed by several others, spaced out with method.

  “Hadn’t we better form a defense?” cried my father, more agitated than I’d seen him yet on the trip. “We’re exposed on all sides.”

  “Harmless unless aroused,” said Marlowe, pointing up, where a loose, untidy figure carrying a brass-bound telescope was making its leisurely way down.

  “Dear me,” said my father. He sounded a little shaky in spite of himself. “Major Bridger.” And looking again. “Now don’t tell me—”

  The second man climbing down had the old sarcasticky, familiar look, hair and eyebrows grown back now, and little to show for his burns except two or three ugly white splotches on the backs of his sunburned hands.

  “My, my,” said Jennie, finding her voice. “We certainly missed you at Christmas. Or did you forget it was mentioned?”

  “How’s my girl?” said Coulter, unruffled and grinning.

  “He arrived at my fort,” said Major Bridger to Marlowe, just as Jennie was getting her back up to do something violent, “and was on his way to Salt Lake when your Injun boy came. We figured to ride up together and pass the time of day.”

  “We can do without Mr. Coulter,” said Jennie. “He’s busy with his other interests, in California.”

  “I ain’t convinced positive of that, ma’am,” said Bridger, pointing at the Valley.

  A speck of disturbance, a small roll of dust, moving, this time almost as far distant as the horizon.

  “Yep, they’re on their way,” said Coulter.

  “I’d figure about an hour,” said Bridger, looking at the sun.

  “How many?”r />
  “Look to be eleven or twelve.” He gazed through his spyglass. “They seem in a hurry. I hardly ever get in a hurry, myself. It makes you get there ahead of yourself, then you’ve got to fill in time till you catch up.”

  “Gentlemen,” cried my father, removing his hat to wipe off the band, “we’re entirely at your command. It’s a great, a very great, pleasure to see you. Had it not been for you, and Brother Marlowe, who, with his cus—”

  “Better hop to it,” said Marlowe.

  “My un-Saintly ear in the Mormon capital,” said Bridger, in a kind of introduction. “Buckingham Coulter, apprentice guide.”

  Coulter shook his hand, then he shook hands with Mr. Coe and Mrs. Kissel and Mr. Kissel and the little Indian girl, and made a mock bow to Jennie, who flushed and afterwards startled everybody by saying, “I don’t mind to be kissed hello, if we’re going to be killed anyway.”

  “Good girl,” cried Coulter, slapping her on the rump and turning away to Bridger.

  Working in a hurry, now, we moved the wagons forward around a bend, where Bridger hid them and tied up the livestock in an opening between boulders. Then we moved the women and children higher, out of sight, and the men took positions that Bridger had already figured out. There was deep snow in the crevices, and a great deal more farther up.

  He said, “We’ll wait here behind the rocks. When they catch up, well hold a little church service.”

  There were twelve of them; peeping over the rocks, we watched them come on, at a fast trot, the best kind of gait for a burdened horse on a long haul.

  We were all nervous, even Coulter, I think, who felt that his responsibility—of getting us to California—was not yet over. And now he had a special interest in seeing Jennie through, too.

  “We’ll palaver first,” said Bridger. “If it ain’t unagreeable, hold your fire and leave me do the talking.”

  In fifteen minutes we could hear the rumble of their hooves; then the jiggling figures were blocked out of view for a minute, hidden between rocks of the curve. When they came out, they were uncomfortably close at hand.

  “That’s Muller with the bandaged jaw,” said my father in a low whisper. “Why not pick him off?”

  Bridger spat on one finger, held it up in the air, then nestled his rifle butt against his cheek, I couldn’t see the trigger move, but at the crack and puff of smoke, Muller’s hat flew off onto the ground. The party pulled up so sharp that one horse reared and spilled its rider.

  “Right there’ll do,” called Bridger. “I wouldn’t move none. Now let’s make talk.”

  “We come after the dissenters. Send down that girl and them,” cried Muller. “The others can go in peace.”

  “I don’t know as they fancy to return,” said Bridger. “Hold on, I’ll ask them.” He turned to my father and Mr. Kissel and went through some idiotic motions; then called back. “They believe not, but thank you kindly all the same.”

  “You refusing to chuck them down? Are you standing in the way of the Prophet and the Latter-Day Saints of the Church of Jesus Christ?”

  “I don’t hear good. You said Brigham Young sent you here his-self?”

  The man on the ground suddenly straightened up, holding a pistol, and fired a shot that chipped rock a foot in front of Coulter’s face.

  I heard him mutter, “Close,” and swinging up his rifle he shot the man very nearly in the middle—say an inch to the right—of his forehead.

  “There’s just a mite of an easterly breeze,” observed Bridger0.

  “I was too mad to take notice.”

  “Blasphemers! Enemies of God! We’ll hunt you down for this if it takes forever,” cried Muller in a kind of sob. Then the group scattered in a wild flurry of hooves around the bend and behind the rock.

  “Donkey-headed, ain’t they?” inquired Bridger.

  “What now?” my father asked.

  Our men scuttled over the rocks to huddle, and Bridger and Coulter said it was best to stay where we were till dark; then they mentioned something about visiting in the other camp. I didn’t understand it fully. But Major Bridger said, “Without pickets, there may be widders before morning.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Coulter. “Shoot one of these pious buzzards and you’re apt to make ten widders. Taken as a whole, the bunch might represent a hundred. Somehow it don’t seem right; it’s a sacrilege against—hold on, what’s that?”

  One of the band had thrust a long stick, with what looked like a pair of white drawers, up from behind a rock. Then a forehead rose very cautiously and a voice bellowed out:

  “Flag of truce!”

  “If you’re surrendering, lay down your guns and step out one by one,” Bridger called down.

  “We’re claiming flag of truce for burial. Under the rules of civilized war.”

  “Never heard of them. Anyhow, we ain’t at war. We was on root to California when jumped by bandits.”

  “You refuse a flag of truce?”

  “Our aim is to kill bandits.”

  “That man lying there requires decent burial in consecrated ground—our religion so ordains.”

  “Not necessarily—he committed suicide.”

  Coulter laughed out loud, and there issued from below a string of oaths to peel paint off a stovepipe.

  “The madder they are, the poorer the judgment,” remarked Bridger. The waiting went on. Presently the underdrawers came out again, and a voice resumed. We didn’t think it was Muller’s because the truth is that Muller wasn’t quite bright, so that others must have done the real thinking.

  “Flag of truce for a parley.”

  “What about?”

  “Wish to state our case.”

  “What case?”

  “Grievance against the dissenters.”

  We held a whispering session, then Bridger cried, “Two step out and advance, unarmed. Walk soft and slow, so the noise won’t set off my rifle.”

  After a puzzling long time, Muller and a man we hadn’t seen before approached as far as the first rocks below, maybe fifty yards down, where we had a good look at Muller’s bandaged-up face and mean little eyes. He was ugly.

  “That’ll do. You’ll be comfortable there.”

  “Ain’t you going to let us up? Don’t tell me we got stand down here in the sun.”

  “Why no,” said Bridger. “You don’t need to. Why don’t you collect up your Saints and skedaddle back to Salt Lake?”

  For some reason, I got the notion they were stalling. They wouldn’t speak right out, but kept hemming and hawing. But Muller’s companion finally said, “What it amounts to is this. We mean to take that girl. Send her down and the others can do as they please. Now you’ll own up that’s fair.”

  “Couldn’t ask for fairer,” said Bridger. “I’ll see if she’s ready.” He called out to Jennie, but without waiting for her answer, said. “This places us in a mighty embarrassing position. She ain’t ready.”

  “Very comical,” cried Muller, exploding. “Send that trollop down from there, you dried-up old piss-pot, or I’ll—” His companion caught his arm roughly, and they withdrew a few feet to talk, turning their backs.

  At that moment a pebble rolled down from the heights, bounding a couple of times to hit almost at my feet.

  “Mistuh Coe!” yelled Othello from the end of the ledge, and we whirled to see him stand up, grabbing Jennie’s pistol, and fire at three men scrambling down from above. A rifle cracked and he fell, screaming; then both Coulter and Bridger dashed over, shooting into the rock and shouting for us to watch the people below.

  These now burst into view with a cockadoodle of triumph and fanned out over the sand, firing as they ran. I heard bullets zinging off rocks everywhere around.

  With one of the guns from the wagon, I drew a bead on Muller, aiming for his belly, but the second I pulled the trigger, sweat dripped stinging into my eyes and I missed. I could have cried. The trouble was, I wanted it too bad. Any other time, I’d have waited till I could see.

/>   The tables had been reversed all in a twinkling. One minute we’d been sitting up braggy and safe, now we were caught between cross fire. There were too many of them. Of the original twelve or thirteen (it was thirteen, we learned later) one was dead, three were sliding their way down from above, and nine were trying to work up from below, some clawing like madmen at the rocks. Then Jennie let off her double shotgun, from Brice’s wagon, and the man with Muller threw his hands over his face, which really wasn’t there any more; at the same time, a pistol cracked and one of the Saints spread-eagled on a rock directly above Mrs. Kissel. His head hung down, eyes open and staring, like a man that wanted to say something.

  For the moment it was over. The two remaining above got down, from over to one side, and the party below broke off to scramble back out of sight. One was taking it powerfully slow, dragging his left foot, and Coulter shot another in the back before they disappeared. He fell in his tracks like a sack of wheat, heavy, with not so much as a muscle twitch; it wasn’t at all pretty to see.

  But we had some troubles, too. Othello was breathing in noisy gasps that swelled his chest up and down, and my father bent over one of the Kissels, a yellow-haired tyke about two and a half, with I disremember which name. He was dead, struck in the neck by a ricochet, and hadn’t made a sound. None had cried, or even whimpered, during the whole racket. They were good kids; I’d never paid any attention to them before.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said my father; then he went over to Othello. Coe was on his knees, with his hat off, holding the darky’s head. “You promised, Mistuh Coe.”

  “You’re a free man. I pronounce you, Othello Watkins, forever free, in the presence of these witnesses. I’d hoped to say these words in California,” said Coe, with tears running down his face. “I should have left you on the auction block in New Orleans.”

  “Mistuh Coe, I’m—glad—to-be—free.”