Matt said nothing.
“I’m sure you saw how much better Connors and Simon had it than the rest of you,” Mumford said.
“Yes, we all saw that.”
“It is a necessary part of the procedure,” Mumford said. “I could not expect someone to work for me without some sort of compensation. In the case of Connors and Simon, I compensated them by allowing them to eat better, to have better accommodations. And of course, I will do the same thing for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes. Winter is coming on, this will be your third winter. I’m sure you remember how cold and drafty the dormitory is. But if you move down to the end, where Connors and Simon were, you will find it much warmer and much more comfortable.”
“Why would I move down there?”
“If you are working for me, then it is your due,” Mumford said.
“You want me to do what Connors and Simon did? You want me to spy for you?”
“Yes.”
Matt shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I won’t do it.”
The smile left Mumford’s face. “You have no choice,” he said. “You will do it because I am ordering you to do it.”
Chapter Seven
“I can’t do it,” Matt told Tamara later that night. The two were sitting on the back porch of the home, listening to the frogs and the night-calling insects. “I won’t do it.”
“I thought you said he ordered you to do it,” Tamara said.
Matt nodded. “He did order me to do it. But I’m not going to. I can’t be like Simon and Connors. I can’t turn on the others in here.”
Tamara reached up to brush a fall of hair back from Matt’s forehead.
“You wouldn’t be like them,” she said. “You couldn’t be like them.”
“There might be some who wouldn’t understand,” Matt said. “They would think I had turned against them.”
“There might be some who would think that,” Tamara agreed. “But I would know better. So would Eddie, and Timmy, and Billy.”
Matt shook his head. “Maybe,” he said. “But I’m not going to take that chance.”
“What do you mean? What are you going to do?”
“I’m leaving this place.”
“Leaving? But where will you go? How will you live?”
“I don’t know, but anyplace is better than this.”
“When are you going?”
“Tonight,” Matt said. “When I know everyone is asleep.”
Tamara didn’t answer right away, and for a long moment the silence was invaded by the bleat and thrum of the frogs and insects. Finally, she reached over and put her hand on his.
“Matt, take me with you,” she said.
“Tamara, I can’t,” Matt answered. “Like you said, I have no idea where I’m going or what I am going to do. Winter is coming on. I could freeze to death up in the mountains, if I don’t starve first.”
“I don’t care,” Tamara said. “I’m willing to take that chance if you are.”
“Tamara, I . . .” Matt started.
“Matt, please. I’m fourteen years old now. Next year I’ll . . .” She paused in mid-sentence.
“You’ll what?”
“Matt, don’t you know what Captain Mumford makes the older girls do to earn money?”
“I thought all the older girls worked at Emma Smith’s Boarding House.”
“And you have no idea what goes on there?”
“Don’t you just clean and cook and make up the beds and such?”
“Beds, yes,” Tamara said. “Only we don’t just make them up.”
Suddenly Matt realized what Tamara was talking about.
“Are you saying that Captain Mumford makes you be with men?” he asked.
Tamara nodded, and her eyes brimmed over with tears. One began sliding down her cheek, and she reached up to brush it away with the tip of her finger.
“I didn’t know that,” Matt said. “I’ve been here for three years, and I didn’t know that.”
“Captain Mumford says he will horsewhip any girl who tells,” Tamara said. “Besides, it’s not something anyone would want to tell anyway.”
“Are you . . . ?” Matt began.
“Not yet,” Tamara said. “He doesn’t make anyone start until they are fifteen.”
“I’ll take you with me,” Matt promised.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Tamara said, spontaneously embracing him and kissing him on the cheek.
“Be ready to go tonight.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know, after midnight sometime, when everyone else is asleep,” Matt said. “You be standing in the door of the girls’ room, looking for me. I’m not coming in there.”
“I’ll be there,” Tamara said.
Matt wasn’t sure exactly what time it was when he left. He knew it was late at night because everyone was asleep and he could hear the snores and rhythmic breathing of the others. It was getting colder outside, and he had no overcoat, so he decided to take the blanket off his bed.
He walked down to the hall and stood just outside the girls’ dormitory. When Tamara didn’t come out, he decided to leave without her, but suddenly she was there.
“When I saw you with the blanket, I thought that might be a pretty good idea,” she whispered. “So I went back to get mine.”
“All right, let’s go, but keep quiet,” Matt said.
Leaving the dormitory, Matt and Tamara tiptoed through the darkened building, passing through the dining room, then making their way into the kitchen. There, they found several chunks of stale bread, which they stuck down into their pockets. Then, wrapping themselves in the blankets, they sneaked out through the back.
Once outside, they looked back toward the building that housed the Home for Wayward Boys and Girls. For a moment, Matt almost went back in. It wasn’t much, but it was the only home he’d had for the last three years. For some of the residents, it was the only home they had ever known.
“Are you sure you want to go with me?” Matt asked. “I mean, when you think about it, the Home kept us warm in the winter, gave us a place to sleep, and provided meals.”
“Such as they were,” Tamara said.
“We are giving up a safe haven for the unknown,” Matt said.
“Who are you trying to talk out of going? Me or you?” Tamara asked.
“I don’t know,” Matt answered honestly. “Both of us, I guess.” He shook his head. “But I can’t stay. I cannot and I will not replace Connors and Simon.”
The moon was full and bright, and it lit the path for them. A cool night breeze caused Matt to shiver, though in truth he didn’t know if his trembling was entirely from the cold, or from nervousness over his uncertain future. He pulled the blanket around himself, then began walking.
The Home for Wayward Boys and Girls was three blocks from Muddy Creek, and while that had not been a conscious goal, Matt quickly found himself on the bank of the creek, looking down at the water. That’s when he saw the boat.
“There,” he said excitedly, pointing to the boat. “That’s our way out of here!”
“We’re going to steal a boat?” Tamara asked.
“Nah, we’re not stealing it,” Matt said. “We’re just borrowing it. You keep a watch out while I untie it.”
Scrambling down the creek bank, Matt started untying the boat. That was when he heard the dogs barking.
“Tamara!” he called up the embankment. “Tamara, what is it?”
“Someone’s coming,” Tamara called down.
“Come on, hurry!”
“No!” Tamara said. “You go ahead. I’ll lead them away from the water.”
“Tamara, no, come on!” Matt said. “Hurry, we have to go now!”
“You go on!” Tamara called.
Matt saw Tamara turn and run away from the top of the bank.
“Help!” Tamara called. “Help me!”
“What are you doing out here, girl?” a man’s voice as
ked.
“I don’t know,” Tamara answered. “I think I must have been walking in my sleep, I just woke up out here. I’m lost and frightened. Please, help me get back to the Home.”
As Tamara distracted whoever had been alerted by the dogs, Matt stepped into the boat and pushed himself off. Picking up the paddle, he helped the swift-flowing water propel him downstream.
It was five or six miles before the creek was no longer wide enough or deep enough to support the boat. There, Matt abandoned it, and started walking. He stayed close to the creek because it was a source of water and because he had an idea that it might eventually lead him somewhere.
He ate the last of his bread on the third day. On the fourth day he found some wild onions and ate them, though the taste was so bitter that he could barely keep them down.
He had nothing at all to eat on the fifth day, but on the sixth he managed to catch a frog. He remembered eating frog legs back in Kansas, but they were rolled in batter and deep-fried. He had no way of cooking these legs; he had no matches. But he did have a pocket knife and he cut off the legs, skinned them, and ate them raw.
An early snow moved in just before nightfall of the sixth day, and the single blanket Matt had brought with him did little to push away the cold. It was also tiring to try and hold the blanket around him while walking, and he considered cutting a hole in the middle, but decided against it because he thought it would be less warm at night that way.
As the snow continued to fall, it got more and more difficult to walk. At first, it was just slick, and he slipped and fell a couple of times, once barking his shin on a rock so hard that the pain stayed with him for quite a while.
As the snow got deeper, he quit worrying about it being slick, and concerned himself only with the work it took just to keep going. His breath started coming in heaving gasps, sending out clouds of vapor before him. Once he saw a wolf tracking him, and he wished that he had his father’s rifle.
He found a limb that was stout and about as thick as three fingers. Using his knife, he trimmed the smaller branches off it, then managed to cut it to just the right size. He was able to use the limb as a cane to help him negotiate the deepening snowdrifts.
Just before dark, he sensed more than heard something behind him and, turning quickly, saw that the wolf, crouched low, had sneaked up right behind him. With a shout, and holding the club in both hands, he swung at the wolf and had the satisfaction of hearing a solid pop as he hit the wolf in the head. The wolf yelped once, then turned and ran away, trailing little bits of blood behind it as it ran.
Matt felt a sense of power and elation over that little encounter. He was sure that the wolf would give him no further trouble.
After the sun set, he found an overhanging rock ledge and got under it, then wrapped himself in the blanket. When night came, he looked up into the dark sky and watched as the huge, white flakes tumbled down. If it weren’t for the fact that he was probably going to die in these mountains, he would think the snowfall was beautiful.
“Lord,” he said, praying aloud. “I reckon I haven’t been all that good at prayin’, even though we had a chapel back at the Home. But I know that Mama used to pray to you all the time, and she seemed to take a lot of comfort in it, so if you don’t mind hearin’ from someone like me, I’m goin’ to pray to you now.
“I want you to look out for Eddie and Timmy, and all the other kids back at the Home. Truth is, Lord, I probably shouldn’t have left. Without me there to take care of them, there’s no tellin’ what Captain Mumford is goin’ to put them through. And there’s no tellin’ who he’s goin’ to get to take the place of those two no-accounts, Connors and Simon.
“But that’s spilt milk, Lord. The Home is back there, and I’m here, and I probably wouldn’t live long enough to make it back there even if I tried. I’m probably goin’ to die pretty soon now. Of course, I don’t reckon I have to tell you the way things are right now. I’m out of food, it’s gettin’ colder, and the creek has quit so I’m out of water too. I know Mama is up in heaven with you, ’cause she was a very good woman. And Cassie is up there too. And though I didn’t know Pa all that well, seein’ as he was off to war for most of my life, well, I figure he’s probably up there also, ’cause I don’t think Mama would’ve married a bad man.
“But now it comes to me, Lord, and I have to confess that my chances don’t look all that good. I killed those two men back at the wagon. Well, I don’t have to tell you about it, you saw me do it. I can’t rightly say that I shot either one of them to save my family because, as you know, my family was already dead. The only reason I shot ’em is because they needed killin’. And I have to be honest with you, Lord, I aim to hunt down Payson and Garvey and the others who were with them, and kill them as well. So if you let me live through this, then I’m going to take it that it’s all right with you. And if it isn’t all right with you, Lord, then I hope you just go ahead and take me tonight.
“Amen.”
Finishing his prayer, Matt pulled the blanket more securely around him, pulled up his legs, then leaned back against the rock. Strangely, the cold seemed to be less intense and he felt his body warming. He also felt his eyes growing very heavy and he closed them, then drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Eight
With Smoke Jensen
The sudden snowfall had caught Smoke by surprise. It shouldn’t have caught him by surprise. Preacher had taught him well how to gauge the change in weather.
“When the clouds is low in the west and there’s these long, scraggily tails hangin’ down from ’em, then like as not you’ll be gettin’ snow soon as they start movin’ over the mountains.”
Smoke needed to be on the other side of the mountain range, and he was afraid that the snow might be so heavy as to close the pass. So, though every ounce of him wanted to hole up somewhere long enough to ride the storm out, he pushed on through, fighting the cold, stinging snow in his face until he reached the top of the pass. He made it through, and had started looking for a place to spend the night when he saw the boy.
He almost didn’t see him; there was a big drift of snow so that only the boy’s head and shoulders were sticking out. He was under an overhanging ledge, and his head was back and his eyes were closed.
“Damn, who is that?” he asked aloud. “And what’s he doing here?”
Smoke stared in shocked surprise at the young boy. Was he sleeping? Or was he dead?
The boy’s face and lips were blue, and there were ice crystals in his eyebrows and hair. The blanket around him, which was his only protection against the cold, was frozen.
It didn’t look good.
“Here, try some of this.”
Matt opened his eyes and saw a man sitting on the bed beside him, holding a cup. He took the cup and raised it to his mouth, but jerked it away when it burned his lips.
The man who handed him the cup laughed. “Oh, maybe I should have told you it was hot.”
Matt tried again, this time sipping it through extended lips. It was hot, and bracing, and good.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Broth, made from beaver,” the man said.
“Don’t know that I’ve ever tasted beaver before,” Matt said calmly.
Smoke laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’ll say this for you, boy, you do have sand,” Smoke said. “You sure seem to be taking this in stride.”
Matt took another swallow, then looked around. He was in a room, or more accurately, a one-room cabin. There was a fireplace on one side in which a fire was burning briskly, putting out enough heat to warm the entire room. The interior walls were made of mud-chinked logs. There was a table and several chairs, a couple of chests, and a wall rack that held three rifles and a shotgun. There were antlers on the wall, and bearskins on the floor. The very bed he was lying on had skins and well as blankets.
“Beaver broth is good,” he said.
“I made some biscuits,” the man said, handin
g one to Matt.
Matt took one of the biscuits and began eating it hungrily.
“Whoa, slow down, slow down, you’ll make yourself sick,” he said. “How long has it been since you ate?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “I don’t even know how long I’ve been here.”
“I brought you here night before last,” the man said. “You’ve been asleep for the whole time. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to wake you up. I was thinking I would have to bury you out back somewhere.”
“Where is here?”
“I’ll tell you where here is after you answer some of my questions. Who are you?”
“My name is Matt.”
“Matt what?”
“Just Matt.”
The man nodded. “All right, Just Matt, that’s good enough for me,” he said. “My name is Smoke Jensen.”
“Smoke? You mean, like smoke from a fire?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard of such a name.”
“I’ve never heard of someone who was just Matt.”
“I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I guess if your name is Smoke, then that’s your name.”
“My real name is Kirby. Kirby Jensen. But folks have called me Smoke from the time I was a kid, so it sort of belongs to me now.”
“You were going to tell me where I am.”
“You are in my cabin in the Gore Range.”
“Gore Range? What is the Gore Range?”
“It is a mountain range in Colorado,” Smoke explained.
“Oh.”
“Are you lost, Matt?”
“No, I’m not lost. I knew I was in Colorado,” Matt replied.
Smoke laughed again. “Well, as long as you knew you were in Colorado,” he said.
Matt took another swallow of the broth.
“Tell you what, Matt. As soon as you’ve got your strength, I’ll take you back.”
“No!” Matt said sharply. “No, I won’t go back!” He tried to get up and get out of bed, but he was too weak and he fell back onto the bed.
Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man Page 6