by Nancy Radke
“Stew smells good,” he said, setting his rifle aside. He was sitting up, looking at it.
“Rabbit. I’ll get you a spoon.”
I had one big spoon and one little one in my bag. I handed him the big one and we ate, taking turns dipping out of the hot pot. I’d cut that rabbit small enough so we’d not need our knives to spear out the chunks.
It was almost too hot to eat, but it spread a warmth through me that was both relaxing and sustaining.
“I’d like to know what happened to Pa,” I said, after we’d slowed down somewhat and were near the point of emptying the bowl.
“He come upon me when I’d landed myself in a whole heap of trouble. I was riding down a gully when I surprised a bear. A big one, but gaunt from long winterin’ and as ill-tempered as they get. He rushed me. I tried to shoot, but my horse was a’buckin and trying to run out of that there gully at the same time. He hit a soft spot and slid right down on top of that bear. The ole bear was swinging left and right. He killed my horse and reared up to take me out, when your Pa showed up and shot him.”
I nodded.
“He could see I’d been hurt and jumped off’n his horse to check on me.”
He looked at me, sorrowful-like.
“The bear wasn’t dead. Must have been knocked out only. He come a’roaring back to life and caught your pappy across the head. Snapped his neck. He was dead before he hit the ground.”
Poor Pa. Always trying to help someone else.
“That thar bear went after your Pa’s horse, a’roarin mad, which give me time to grab his gun and shoot that bear again, and twice more for good measure.”
“Thank you.”
“Your pa saved my life. I didn’t have the strength or a shovel to bury him, so just put rocks over him. When I’m more up to travelin’, we can go back. If the bear pelt’s any good, you can have it for a blanket.”
“No, I don’t think I’ll want it. At least not thinking about it this minute.”
“I’m a’goin to try to sleep some more, Ma’am. Then I’ll be able to keep watch tonight.”
He put down his spoon. “Mighty fine stew,” he said, and just lay down and passed back out.
That sleep was the best medicine he could get, so I banked the fire low, then moved the horses to new grass, while I sat near them and kept watch.
I missed Pa already. I missed the stories he was always telling me. Still, he wanted to live and die in this country that he loved, far from civilization. He got his wish. I’d like to think that he was with Ma.
He’d pointed out the notch in the mountains where he was headed, traveling lightly over the land so as to not leave much sign of our passing. He left the shoes off our horses, so they would look more like Indian horses had passed by. He always checked before riding over a ridge, which had saved us a couple of times.
I knew why I was here, near the western border of Montana, but I didn’t know where Luke was headed. As evening drew close, I brought in the horses and the shrubs I had gathered, bringing them under the overhanging ledge with me.
Luke was awake and looked to be hurting. I could see sweat on his forehead and pain in his face.
I took off his bandages and looked him over. One of his wounds showed angry red. “You were lucky it was a bear and not a cougar. Cats have dirty claws, and you can die from the infections.”
“That was my nickname as a boy. Lucky. I was lucky your Pa came and kept that bear from killing me. Lucky for me, but not for him.”
“You say he thought the bear was dead?”
“I’m sure of it. He went over and nudged it with his foot. Then he turned his back on it and come toward me. That bear bounced up mighty quick, and took him out before he had time to turn around. I’d be dead, too, if’n the bear hadn’t went after the horse next. It was going after whatever moved. It gave me a chance to grab your Pa’s rifle.”
I pictured it in my mind. Pa had died well, saving another man’s life. He put great stock in dying well. He always said that you couldn’t count on a long life. Everyone’s time on earth was short. You just had to live well, doing for others, and hopefully die well. You needed to live in such a way that you left things better than they were.
“I’ve got some water boiled up. I figured we could wash some of your wounds, if they need it. Better yet, Pa showed me some plants, like yarrow, that the Indians used as medicine. I gathered up some as we rode along.”
I brought over my small poke filled with various leaves, each group wrapped separately in a tiny bit of cloth. I pulled out a few of the ones that would be good to heal wounds.
“I’ll boil these up for a poultice and see if that will help.”
“Anything.”
I might be poisoning him, for all I knew, but Pa had been positive these were for this purpose. He’d written on each paper what the herbs were for, and I made sure I kept them separate.
I boiled them up, spread them on a piece of cloth and put them warm on the wounds that looked to be infected.
I looked at some of the cloth he’d used for bandages. “This is Pa’s shirt,” I said, suddenly realizing what I had in my hand.
“He didn’t need it no more,” Luke said. “The bear had shredded it, and then I cut off what I needed. I’m right sorry.”
“No. You did well.” It bothered me though, to think Pa didn’t even have a shirt on. It shouldn’t have, but I wanted to go wrap him in a blanket and give him a decent burial.
I’d need to wait until Luke was able to travel and show me where to find him.
Luke slept into the night. I fought to stay awake, but knew I wasn’t going to make it. I started to doze.
“I’m awake now,” he said, his voice startling me. “You should’ve woke me.”
“You needed your sleep,” I said and laid the rifle next to him. I barely made it to my grassy bed. When I finally woke up, it was past daylight.
Luke had a small fire going and was cooking rabbit. Rabbits. There were two of them.
“Those were right good snares you made. I reset them.”
He had also taken the horses out and staked them close by. The poultice had done the trick, pulling out the infection, and the sleep had done the rest.
Rabbit for breakfast was delicious. He had done a good job of roasting them.
“Where you from, Luke?”
“Tennessee.”
“Where you going?”
“Idaho.”
I hadn’t heard that answer before. People usually said Oregon or Washington. “Where’s that?” I asked.
“North of Wyoming.”
“What’s there?”
“Gold.”
Now to some people, gold is a beautiful thing. But you can’t eat it, and mostly you can’t find it. It disappointed me to hear that that was where he was headed.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“Oregon. The Willamette Valley. Before all the good farm sites are taken.”
“That sounds like your pa’s dream. How about you?”
My grandparents had had a farm, and Pa left it to hunt and trap. I’d been raised in a store. He’d taught me how to hunt and trap, but he hadn’t taught me how to farm.
It come to me. If I wanted a farm, I’d best marry a farmer.
CHAPTER THREE
“Do you know how to farm?” I asked Luke.
“Yep. It’s almost a bigger gamble than digging for gold. You spend all your years trying to coax stuff from the ground and all you raise are rocks and a few potatoes.”
“I’ve seen some mighty good farms back east.”
“Depends on your soil. Water. Climate. War. Anything can wipe out a farmer. It’s the most risky job in the world. You’ve got to love farming purt near more than you love livin,’ to be a farmer.”
“Yet people farm.”
“People farm. It’s the most independent of all jobs. No one is your boss. Yet it’s the most dependent on outside forces. Weather. Bugs.”
“What made you
want to go dig in the ground?”
“For gold? I want to make money, fast. I’ve a brother who lost his arm in the war. I’d like to dig out enough to buy a business for him. I figure if I can do that, then I’ll use whatever is left over for me.”
“And what do you want for yourself?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know. I jist want somethin’ for John.”
Now, I’d been disappointed when I found out he was a gold seeker, but took heart when he said it was for his brother. Maybe he wasn’t gold crazy after all. Especially when he didn’t know what he would do with any he found for himself.
“What did you say your name was?” he asked. “My mind wasn’t able to tie a knot in it.”
“Mahala.”
“Mahala,” he repeated. “I like it. It has music to it.”
“It was my grandmother’s name.”
He reheated the water that had the leaves in it and made himself another poultice. He tried to stick it on his backside, which was now looking raw.
“Let me,” I said. I hadn’t looked at the backside of anyone excepting Pa, and this gent’s looked pretty good to me, discounting the wound. He was all muscle and bone.
He lay on his stomach and I put the poultice on. The bear had swiped from his waist down to his leg, but just one claw had dug in deep, at his waist and again on his thigh. It had ripped his pants, so I just pulled them aside and laid on the poultice. There weren’t no one else there to do it. Then I took my rifle, checked it over, and went out to guard the camp.
The sun was warm that day, bordering on hot, and I soaked up the warmth. Around noon, I went back under the ledge, saw that Luke looked to be asleep, got myself a hunk of dried meat to chew on, and started to leave.
“How is it outside?” he said.
“Warm and toasty. Can you make it out? Sunshine is healing.”
He got up and walked out with me. We went back to where the horses grazed and he lay down in the grass.
“They’ll have this eaten down in a few more days,” he said. “I should be able to travel by then. I can walk better’n I can sit.”
“I been expecting wolves to find us,” I said.
“Or Indians.”
“We’re sort of off the trail for them.”
“That’s why it’s a good place,” he said.
“How did you know this was here?”
“I camped here a few nights ago, hiding from Indians who were on my trail. They searched, but couldn’t find me. When I was sure they left, I took off down the trail, but not on it as such. I was traveling alongside it. Got myself boxed in and had to retrace my steps. That’s when I ran into the bear. I was headed back here when your pa’s horse brought me into your camp. Figured I’d need a place to hide while I recovered. If I did.”
He would probably have made it. Western men tend to heal fast, but he’d have had to wash those wounds.
I hunkered down beside him, making sure I kept low. No sense standing tall and letting yourself be seen. “How long you been traveling?” I asked. Now it’s not considered proper to ask a stranger too many questions, but I was naturally curious.
“Month or so. Lost track.”
“About the same,” I said.
We sat out in that sun, soaking up and resting. It did us both good. Lots of sunshine, water and fresh meat.
I shared some of my father’s stories with him. He’d never been west of the Mississippi, so took great interest in them.
That night the wolves found us.
Luke saw the first one. Earlier, he’d helped me lay fire bundles near the rim of the overhang. We had the horses close, but now led them under with us.
I was ready to start the fire, but he told me to wait.
“Let them start to come in first. We ain’t wantin’ to use all our fuel, have none left when we’re needin’ it. Put your coals near, just not in.”
I did so.
“You shoot anything comin’ in on that side. I’ll take the middle and the other.”
So we waited while they gathered, making up their minds if we would be tasty or not. Finally they came, one rushing in from one side and another from the other side. We each shot and they dropped.
The rest started to rush in and I put the fire to the branches. Before it flamed up high enough, one came past, and Luke shot it. The rest backed off and sat down to wait. We fed the flames, a little at a time, finally using our grass beds.
“I’d love a big ole pine knot full of pitch, ‘bout now,” Luke said. “I’d take it out and swing it around and send those wolves a’howlin’.”
I went back and got more grass from my bed area. I looked out and noticed that the wolves were moving away. They stopped, looked at me, then ran off.
“They’re not going to like going hungry tonight,” I said. “They’ll probably come back tomorrow.”
“We won’t be here,” Luke said. “Come tomorrow, we’re ridin’.”
After a hearty breakfast of rabbits again, we broke camp. I picked up my snares and everything else, as we weren’t coming back.
It took us a full day to get to where Pa had been killed. Indians hadn’t found the spot, as the gully was overgrown. Crows were circling the dead bear and Luke’s horse, eating the flesh, and I backed away.
“I’ll help you bury your Pa good now,” Luke said. He showed me where he had put him, under a bank with the dirt caved onto him and some rocks on top of that. “We can’t leave him in the gully. When the rains come, it’ll wash him downstream.”
He helped me wrap Pa in a blanket. The body was already starting to decay and it was hard for me to see him like that, so Luke did most of the handling of him. We found a small depression in the soil, rolled a few rocks out of it to make it larger, then put Pa’s body there, in his blanket. Soil over the top, using my shovel, then we piled rocks over all.
We considered the dead bear. He hadn’t been bled out properly, and neither of us wanted the meat or to deal with the hide, so we left him to the crows and other scavengers.
“I slept right up next to him, the first night,” Luke said. “He kept me warm and alive. I cut off a hunk of his meat and ate it raw, to get the moisture. The next morning, I climbed on your pa’s horse and rode off, knowing I needed water.”
Luke took his gear off his dead horse. Ammunition and a Henry rifle. A long rope. An extra pair of shoes and socks. A bedroll. A canteen. His flat gold pan.
“You know how to use that?” I asked.
“Sort of. You get sand in it and water and swish it around in a circle-like. The gold is heavy and sets down on the bottom.”
“If there is gold.”
“If there’s gold. I heard tell the streams are rich with it.”
“Pa didn’t think so. He made his money trapping. Enough to buy the store. He sold it for enough to give us a stake to get to Oregon.”
“How come y’all were way up here and not with a wagon train?” Luke asked as we mounted up, ready to ride out.
“Pa and I talked it over before we left. It takes a wagon train three months to travel the trail. Pa figured we could do it in less than half the time on horseback, as we could take a more straighter, northern route, the same one he had taken to come back after his trapping days. I know where the pass is he intended to go through. You can see it from here.”
I pointed it out to him. “Up there. A mountain that looks like an arrowhead, with the southern half broke off. That’s on the north side of the pass. There’s a notch between it and the other mountain.”
“Not much.”
“You stay off the arrowhead mountain. There’s a trail on the southern one, going halfway around, then up an over a pass between the two. It’s not a good trail, Pa walked it, but he thinks the horses can make it.”
“And if not?”
“We can go south to the Oregon Trail and finish up on it. But we shouldn’t have to.”
We rode on down the trail, guns ready, for it never paid to be careless in Indian country. Th
ere had been a war going on between the Indians and our government, which was supposed to be over, but Pa said that some Indians go into the mountains for months to hunt and trap and wouldn’t know anything about a war, or in this case, a treaty. So we rode at alert, ready if need be.
That night we were miles closer to the notch and it still looked the same distance away.
We made a dry camp in a cluster of rocks. It was almost a natural fort, halfway up a ridge. It had no water and no grass, so we didn’t stay longer than to take turns sleeping.
This country was full of sagebrush, jackrabbits, rattlesnakes, Indians, rocks, dirt, coyotes, wolves and bears. Also antelope and sage grouse. The grouse were larger than chickens, and tasted wonderful. They ran along the ground, and I caught two in a trap. The antelope were curious, and could be hunted with a white cloth on a stick, to keep them near.
We finally made it to the notch in the mountains. This trail was used by the Indians, and we had been carefully avoiding them. I was thankful Luke was with me, for I had heard stories of what they did to their captives, and knew we could die a terrible death if we got caught by a raiding party. The Indians had welcomed the first trappers into this country, but now realized that these people were coming to stay, more and more of them. They fought back, lost the war, but still kept up some small raids. The clashing of two civilizations. It would continue until we melded together.
We prayed for our safety, picked up our guns, and started up the trail while it was still dark. It was breaking daylight when we reached the bad spot Pa had told me about, an overhanging ledge on one side and a cliff on the other, with just about three feet of trail. We led the horses and walked, the saddle horns scraping now and then on the overhang.
It was there we met the Indians.
CHAPTER FOUR
There were four Indians, on foot, and they yelled and lowered their lances. Luke shot one as they tried to rush him, then a second, but the others came through quickly.
I had dropped to my knees, and tried to avoid Pride’s hooves as he started backing up. One of his hooves went off the trail and I figured we might lose him even as I shot past him into the Indian that was trying to kill Luke. I didn’t know if I would hit the horse or Luke or the Indian, with everyone scrambling on that ledge, but Luke’s luck held and I hit the Indian. The fourth Indian ran up, all his momentum carrying him forward, and when he threw himself at Luke, Luke simply dropped down and let the man go over him. I don’t know if he figured Pride would stomp on him, or if I would shoot him, but then I didn’t have to. As he went past Luke, he went over the edge and out of sight. It all happened so fast, it was over in a heartbeat, and I found my legs a mite wobbly.