Wind Walker tb-9

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Ain’t nothing gonna keep your tires from sinking under a heavy wagon,” Titus had told him, “but out here a wider tire do better crossing creek bottoms and rocky ground too.”

  The water in Muddy Creek was turgid and slow, brown as its name and tepid to boot. Only good thing about the stream, he thought as he watched his two oldest urge the pack animals across and up the north bank, was that the Muddy was running so shallow that it hadn’t so much as lapped at the bottom of a wagon box or licked at the bellies of their ponies. Besides, these small western streams weren’t all that wide. It wouldn’t be until these farmers got to the Bear that they would face their first test, a crossing that would prepare them, or weed them out, for the crucial two crossings of the capricious Snake River before they ever reached the mighty Columbia.

  There wasn’t much water to speak of in the bottoms around that great grove of cedars where Harris and Hargrove chose to stop the train an hour or so earlier than usual—but then, another hour wouldn’t find them camping at any better a place. Here they would have to hack away at the wind-stunted cedar for firewood, and scratch at the sandy bottoms in the nearby coulees to see if they could pool up any murky water. Bass was sure they could find enough here to satisfy their thirsty stock. But for the dust-choked humans, each wagon had carried along at least one pair of hardwood kegs filled with clear, cool water drawn from Black’s Fork. Water enough to boil their supper and brew their coffee until they camped tomorrow night on the Little Muddy as they neared the rugged north end of the Bear River Divide.

  All three women pitched in to get a fire pit dug and a supper fire started, while Flea and Magpie helped Lemuel and Leah lend their father a hand in dropping the heavy cottonwood yoke from the thick necks of the docile oxen. Four teams had managed to make it this far on the westward journey. With an eager dreamer’s foresight, Roman Burwell had started out from Westport with a full six teams. Two of the oxen had fallen dead either of disease or exhaustion back along the trail not far out of Laramie, and Roman had traded a third animal to Bridger for those four new three-inch iron tires Titus had fashioned for him. That left the farmer with nine oxen to get them across the roughest stretch of the road to Oregon. For the present, two of the beasts had the first signs of cracked hooves, but the farmer was doing all he could with salves and plasters to see those wounded creatures through each day’s long, dusty journey. As it was, Burwell carefully, thoughtfully, rotated his teams, so that after one day’s bone-jarring labor each two-ox hitch would have the next three days to rest up, dawdling along under the watchful care of Lemuel and Leah, both of whom herded them along on foot, using lean, seven-foot-long teamster’s whips. And when a long, steep slope was confronted, he could always bring up two or more of the fresher oxen, temporarily chaining them in tandem to drag the heavy wagon to the top of the rise.

  Bass came back to camp with a small doe slumped across the front of his saddle about the time the women had a bed of coals built up and their beds spread out for the night beneath the shade of the wagon box, along with a large square of waterproofed Russian sheeting they had strung from the side of the wagon to the nearby clumps of cedar. The venison wouldn’t make a meal fit for kings, but they weren’t about to starve either.

  After shooing the too-curious dogs away with a pair of legbones Titus hacked off the carcass with his tomahawk, the two Indian women showed Amanda how to skin out the doe, then bone out the steaks they tossed in the white woman’s two large skillets. While the meat went to frying, they set about showing Amanda how to chop up some of the liver and heart into fine pieces, then sprinkle the cubes with a dusting of flour before they stuffed it inside short sections of slippery intestine. Raking aside some of the gray ash and half-dead embers at the outer extreme of the fire, Waits and Shell Woman laid more than two dozen of their greasy treasures in the hot ashes, then promptly covered them with coals to slowly sizzle while they tended the steaks.

  “This ain’t the first you’ve et venison, is it, Lucas?” he asked his grandson.

  The boy glanced over at his father. “My pa takes me hunting sometimes.”

  “You a good hunter?” Titus asked. “Like your pa?”

  “We get some birds and rabbits, a few squirrels sometimes.”

  Roman cleared his throat self-consciously. “Don’t always bring down big game. S’pose I ain’t near as good with a gun as you’ve got to be all the years you been out here.”

  “Gran’papa gonna teach you how, Pa,” Lucas declared.

  A bit self-consciously, Roman reached down and pulled the boy against his leg, tousling his hair. “Yep, I s’pose your gran’pa can teach me ’bout hunting, son.”

  He instantly felt a stab of sadness for the man, having his own son point out his flaws and shortcomings to his face. But Lucas didn’t know any better. He was just a sprout, a pup who didn’t know any different, a child who would one day come to realize no man could be all things to his son.

  Dropping to his knee, Titus said, “I can teach your pa to hunt in this country, I’m sure, ’cause he pretty damn good at ever’thing else, Lucas. Back where you come from, I know your pa was far better at ever’thing he done than I ever could be. An’, when you get to your new home in Oregon country, your pa’ll be the best at what he’ll do out there too.”

  As he stood again, he glanced into Roman’s face, finding deep appreciation written in Burwell’s eyes.

  The women had dragged the skillets off the flames to cool and Amanda had just put some water on to heat for cleaning when a trumpet sounded faintly at the far end of the long camp scattered and strung out through the cedar grove.

  “What’s that horn for?” Shadrach asked.

  “They’re calling the council meeting,” Amanda said as she stood, kneading her hands into her apron, her eyes anxious as she stared into her husband’s face.

  Roman said, “That’s the way they let everyone know Hargrove is getting ready to start.”

  “Fixin’ to start in on Shad an’ me,” Titus replied.

  “Maybeso we should leg on over there,” Sweete suggested. “Since these doin’s got to do with you an’ me.”

  “Got everything to do with me too,” Burwell said as he stepped around the edge of the fire pit. “Your families are with mine—so I think I got some say in this vote.”

  “Vote?” Titus repeated.

  Amanda stepped up to loop her arm inside her husband’s elbow. “Hargrove loves to take a vote on everything.”

  “Least he did when we was forming up our company back at Westport,” Roman grumped. “But after he got hisself made captain of this train—”

  “And after he got us to vote for all these rules he wanted for the journey,” Amanda Continued, “Hargrove hasn’t had many meetings. And he hasn’t called for any votes since we voted to give the lash to one of the men.”

  “The lash?” Shadrach asked.

  She turned to him, her cheeks blushing slightly. “One of the married men, they caught him sneaking a look at the women while we was bathing in the Platte, back yonder by the Chimney Rock.”

  Titus asked, “So Hargrove give that poor fella some lashes?”

  “Mr. Kinsey,” Roman said. “From the look on Hargrove’s face as he laid into Kinsey’s back, I’d say our wagon captain would make a damn good hell-and-brimstone preacher!”

  “He didn’t stop till Mr. Kinsey passed right out,” Amanda explained as she smoothed the front of her apron. “That’s when they let Mrs. Kinsey and a couple of her husband’s friends come and untie him from the wagon gate.”

  Titus ground his teeth in anger. “Tied the man to a wagon gate an’ whupped him?”

  Roman Burwell nodded. “Mrs. Kinsey, she knowed I had some salve along to put on the cuts our oxen or mules get. I give her some for them bad cuts on her husband’s back.”

  “They out-an’-out whupped him like a dumb brute?” Scratch growled.

  “I know he had some punishment comin’,” Amanda confessed, “but Hargrove didn’t ne
ed to cut the man to a bloody ribbon neither.”

  Burwell drew in a long sigh. “We all know how you gotta have rules, and how you gotta punish when the rules is broke. But, that was the first time Hargrove whipped anyone.”

  Shadrach asked, “He have the whole camp watch the whippin’?”

  Roman nodded. “Women and children too.”

  With a wag of his head, Sweete commented, “After he cut that poor nigger’s back up with his whip in front of every mother’s child, growed or pup, he sure as hell didn’t have to whip no one else from there on out, I’ll wager.”

  “C’mon, Shadrach,” Titus said as he stuffed a second pistol in his belt. “There’s no telling what this Hargrove gonna do with us, if’n he’ll whip a man half to death for sneaking a look at some gals takin’ their bath in the river.”

  They took a few steps away from the fire before Scratch stopped and said, “Hol’ on, Amanda. You ain’t comin’ along.”

  “You can’t stop me,” she argued. “Every other wife and mother gonna be there to see what goes on.”

  “But you can’t vote,” Titus said. “Maybe it’s better you stay here … if’n there’s a li’l trouble.”

  “If there’s trouble, that just gives me an even better reason to come along.”

  “Titus,” Roman used his father-in-law’s name for the first time, “best you realize you aren’t gonna talk her out of this.”

  “I ain’t?”

  Amanda wagged her head. “No, you aren’t, Pa.”

  He snorted in disgust, but a grin crept onto his face as they started off again. “Lot of respect a father gets around here.”

  “Haven’t you figgered it out yet, Pa?” she asked as Titus and Shad waved back at their wives, who were staying behind with all the children.

  “Figgered what out?”

  Roman jumped in to say, “That your daughter’s just as mule-headed as you.”

  Bass smiled at Amanda. “Are you now?”

  “Leastways,” Shad said with a chuckle, “the woman’s fortunate she got her mama’s purty looks an’ not your bird-dog face!”

  “You best be careful who you call a dogface, Shadrach,” Titus warned, squinting one eye at the tall man as they neared the assembly. “You damn well may need all your friends when you go up against a vote by preacher Hargrove.”

  A cool breeze stirred the air as Roman Burwell stepped through the women and children who parted for them. It was clear to Scratch how the lines had been drawn and solidified across the last day of travel. Those who had cast their lot with Phineas Hargrove now tended to cluster close by the wagon captain and his hired men at the right side of the circle, while the majority of the train comprised the other two thirds of that milling ring, with no clear leader to throw the weight of their votes behind. All they had to hold on to was that they knew far, far more about Oregon country than they knew about California. Most every pamphlet and news story published back east, most every backer of emigration, spoke only of Oregon. These settlers had cast their eyes on Oregon. They trusted the dream of place more than they could ever trust the persuasive charisma of that one powerful man and all his money.

  As they entered the assembly, more than a dozen men made a point of crowding around Burwell to shake the man’s hand, and that many more nodded or murmured with approval as Bass and Sweete followed Roman around the inner edge of the circle, stopping just short of that spot where Hargrove was holding court among his loyal supporters.

  One of the faithful leaned in and whispered something to the captain.

  Hargrove turned. “Ah, I see the principals have finally arrived,” he gushed with enthusiasm and a metallic smile. “It’s time we call this council of the Hargrove Oregon Company to order.”

  Titus leaned close to Amanda and whispered, “Ain’t gonna be the Hargrove Oregon Company for much longer, is it?”

  “Maybe call it the cowards-run-to-California company,” she whispered back to Titus just before she stepped over to her husband’s elbow and squeezed one of his big, rough hands. Just as quickly she inched back through that front row of men until she stood among the other women and children who would serve only as spectators for this rare practice of frontier democracy.

  Only adult males possessed the right to vote. Their wives and children did not hold such a privilege. From that outer fringe of this assembly, Amanda could only watch what was guaranteed to have a bearing on her family’s fortunes and its future from here on out, no matter how the vote came down.

  Scratch watched his daughter take up her position with the other women, who all looked on in silence. Come what may this warm summer evening as the land finally cooled, he realized that the vote Hargrove would call for would affect his daughter’s family, one way or the other. If Hargrove convinced enough of the emigrants to vote against Bass and Sweete tagging along to Fort Hall, then it was a certainty the two of them would have to push on ahead of the train so they could go through with their plans to help scratch up an old comrade from the beaver days to guide the farmers on down the Snake to the Columbia, on into Oregon country. But if enough of these emigrants turned aside the wishes of their wagon master, there might well be a chance that Hargrove would retaliate against the Burwells for what the wagon master would see as mutiny.

  Titus Bass hadn’t lived fifty-three years not to recognize an oily-tongued, snake-bellied, duplicitous bastard when he saw one. Dangerous thing was, Hargrove seemed just the sort of man mean enough to make anyone who turned against him pay for that transgression, and pay dearly. Throughout that day after the long procession had formed up and slowly rambled out of that meadow along Black’s Fork, pushed for Muddy Creek, then dawdled through that easy crossing, Scratch had weighed out the heft of that dilemma.

  Would it just be all the better for him and Shad to tell Hargrove that they would turn around and start back for Fort Bridger in the morning, then secretly slip around the far side of the Bear River Divide and march on to Fort Hall on their own—so there would be no more confrontations with the man and his bullies that might end up hurting his daughter and the ones she loved in the long run? Maybeso, the two of them didn’t need to ride on to Fort Hall in any event. Wasn’t it entirely possible that Roman and the others who would not be turned away from Oregon could find someone to pilot them to the Willamette on their own? Did these farmers and settlement folks really need two old hivernants throwing in to see them through to Fort Hall and their digging around for a pilot? Maybe this matter of his tagging along to the Snake River was causing more trouble than all the good he could ever do.

  Phineas Hargrove stepped to the center of that open ground surrounded by the men who had selected him to serve as their captain all the way to Oregon, while his seven hired men dispersed among the others. Titus began to cipher how many men there were, how many votes there would be to count when it came down to a show of hands.

  “I’m going to assume that most of you don’t have any idea why I’ve heralded this meeting tonight with our trumpet,” Hargrove began, his stentorian voice clear as a clarion bell over the crowd of hundreds.

  “You don’t want my father-in-law to ride along to Fort Hall,” Burwell roared as the throng fell quiet. “Him and his friend, both men good on the trail—”

  “They did not sign on at our Westport depot, the way the rest of you did,” Hargrove interrupted. “If there is a rule, there must be a good reason for that rule. You all joined our company according to the rules, agreed to abide by the rules, and this wilderness is by far the last place we should be letting those rules slide—not here in the lawless wilderness.”

  “What harm does it do to bend a rule this one time?” asked a man at the edge of the crowd.

  “I’ll tell you what harm it does, Mr. Bingham. It begins the breakdown in civil order,” Hargrove preached with that booming voice of his.

  Another settler asked, “How will they break down civil order?”

  Turning, the wagon master said, “Mr. Iverson, all a man has to
do is look at these two … two ruffians Burwell wishes to bring along to see that there can be no good come of this to our wagon company.”

  “What are you claiming they’re gonna do, Hargrove?”

  He turned slightly again to address the new speaker, “Dahlmer, isn’t it? Agreed, we have no idea what men such as these might do to disrupt the law-abiding orderliness of our company. These roughs have been freed of the constraints of civil society for more years than we could ever guess. They have lived without the fetters of responsible, God-fearing men, like the rest of you.”

  “How safe are our wives and daughters around these two strangers?” one of Hargrove’s backers prompted.

  “Yes, yes,” Hargrove said. “Wouldn’t you fear for your wives and daughters with such lawless, unscrupulous creatures as these ruffians and scoundrels along on the journey?”

  “Hold on a minute!” cried a man standing near Burwell. “Why the devil we have to fear for our wives and daughters from these two? You know something about them you ain’t told us?”

  Hargrove took two steps toward the doubter. “Just look at them, dressed like Indians, their hair long and unkempt like a pagan savage keeps his hair. Dp you want that specter residing in our camp?”

  Off to Bass’s left a man took a step into the ring before he spoke, “So what the blazes do you call that?”

  Turning on his heel, the wagon master looked in the direction the farmer was pointing. “What, Ammons? Call what?”

  “That pilot you hired back at Fort Laramie.”

  With a hearty laugh, Hargrove asked, “Harris? You mean Harris?”

  “Yeah,” Ammons responded with a tug on his soiled suspenders. “These two who came along with Burwell don’t look no worse than your handpicked pilot.”

  “For God’s sake, the man is our pilot!” Hargrove shrieked.

  Roman Burwell snorted, “Sure as the devil looks like he’s your pilot to California, Hargrove!”

  “Listen, Burwell,” Hargrove snarled as he whirled on the big farmer, “ever since Laramie, Harris has been our pilot. Each and every one of you trusted in me to engage a pilot when we reached Fort Laramie. This man is our guide. He’s not like those other two who threw in with your family at Fort Bridger.”