Colter's Journey

by William W. Johnstone

  “Half-breed Métis. Dangerous and meaner than a gut-shot silvertip griz.”

  Lightning flashed again, but not so close. The rain seemed to be lessening, and Tim figured the animals out there would feel a little bit better.

  He remembered the one-eyed man’s question.

  “I needed to find Patricia. And my sisters.”

  “You’re sweet on her?”

  Tim shrugged. “Well, they are my sisters, too.”

  “How old?”

  He thought to remember. “Margaret. She’s my younger sister. She’s . . . twelve . . . no . . . thirteen. We had—” He stopped speaking as he remembered.

  His ma made what passed for a cake at Scotts Bluff. Everyone from the train, even Just Jenkins, gathered around to sing a sweet English ballad to Margaret and wish her a long life. Someone had said that before they knew it, Margaret would be married and giving her ma and pa plenty of grandbabies. She blushed. So did Ma. Tim thought it sounded disgusting.

  * * *

  He needed to block out that memory. “Nancy’s seventeen.”

  That seemed to make the mountain man’s one eye darken.

  “Patricia’s my age. Fifteen.” He straightened. “I’m sixteen. Almost.”

  The one-eyed man nodded.

  Tim thought, shook his head. “I don’t know how old Mrs. Scott is.”

  The man laughed. “Well, I should hope not. Women don’t give them facts away so freely.”

  Almost as quickly as the rain had started, the storm stopped. It was as if someone had quit working the pump’s handle. Tim looked out at the darkness. It had turned into night. Although the rain had stopped, the world out there got darker and darker.

  “Time for sleep, boy. Close your eyes. I’ll wake you up now and then, just to make sure your head ain’t broke too badly.”

  Tim stared.

  “It’s just something I learned. You took a couple nasty blows. Folks been known to fall to sleep and never wake up.”

  Tim felt a sudden wave of fear.

  “I don’t think you’re going to die, boy. You showed me enough grit. You killed Baillarger, which ain’t no easy task. Jim Bridger been trying to put him under for four years. You survived Jackatars’s raid. You buried your folks and that other gent. And instead of following the ruts and saving your own hide, you had the gumption to go off—afoot, in this country, mind you—against them god-awful vermin who took the womenfolk. I’ll wake you up just to make sure.”

  Tim nodded. His eyes closed, but opened immediately. “I forgot your name, sir.”

  The one-eyed monster laughed. “It ain’t Sir, boy. Get that through that addled mind of yours right quick.”

  Tim tried to smile, but just couldn’t manage one.

  “Reno. Jed Reno.”

  Tim nodded and closed his eyes. He wondered if he would ever wake up once he fell asleep. Or if he would just wake up dead. With his eyes closed, he heard himself say, “Mr. Reno . . . I’m sorry.”

  Silence. Then a fart.

  And then, “Apology accepted, boy. But it there ain’t no Mister to it. Call me Reno. Or Jed. Or Plenty Medicine.”

  BOOK TWO

  GREEN RIVER

  CHAPTER 22

  Tim could have sworn he heard birds singing and chirping when he woke early the next morning. The air smelled sweet and fresh, though the buckskins he wore reeked. Another aroma aroused his stomach, and he threw off the big robe that had kept him warm, and sat up. Stretching, he realized his body didn’t ache so much.

  At the corner of the little shelter—too small to be called a cave—the Cyclops in buckskins named Reno sat against the wall pulling what looked like thick thread through a long piece of leather. On a rock near the fire, were two steaming tin cups, smelling just like coffee. Tim saw no pot, just the cups.

  “Morning,” Jed Reno said without looking up from his work.

  Tim had to clear his throat. “Morning,” he repeated, climbed over the robe, holding up his pants as he hunched over to keep from hitting the roof of their shelter, and sat across the fire.

  Still focusing on his stitching, Reno tilted his head toward the cups.

  “Help yourself.”

  Tim had to let go of the pants, but he was sitting, so there was no problem. When he unloosened the neckerchief around his neck and used it to pick up a tin cup without burning his fingers, Reno smiled.

  The coffee warmed him. Strong. Thick as tar. He looked around, but still saw no pot. Nor did he find any sign of breakfast.

  “How’d you make it?”

  “In the cups. Pour water over some beans and let them soak. No room for a pot.” Reno looked up, thinking. “I don’t reckon I’ve seen an actual coffeepot since eighteen forty. Last Rendezvous.” He lowered the big needle and drew a knife, snipping the thick thread.

  “I’ve never seen thread like that,” Tim said.

  “Sinew.”

  “Sinew?”

  “Deer tendon, in this case. Tough. Shrinks when it dries.” Reno held up the piece of leather, which Tim realized had been fashioned into a belt—five inches wide, dark brown, and complete with a cast-iron buckle. He almost spilled his coffee when Reno tossed it to him.

  “That’ll keep them britches on.” Reno reached for his own cup of coffee, only he did not need a bandanna to keep his fingers from blistering. “Drink up. Daylight’s a precious commodity out here.”

  After another sip, Tim looked around. He wondered if he should ask, decided against it, and then his stomach growled. After wetting his lips and fortified by another sip of the bitter, black tar, he asked, his voice meek, “What about breakfast?”

  Reno finished his coffee, emptying the dregs and beans on the fire, which sizzled. “You’re drinking it.” He came to his knees and began scooping wet sand over the fire.

  Quickly, Tim finished his coffee and tried to help Reno break down the camp, though he grew to realize he was probably more in the way than anything else. Giving up, he let Reno work while he answered nature’s call and then buckled the belt over his waist. He still didn’t like wearing the dead man’s clothes—even the Basque’s moccasins—but he knew better than to complain to that monster who had rescued him.

  Reno stuck the two cups into the robe, which he rolled up and secured with rawhide. After he had cleared the overhand, he heaved it over his shoulders and walked to the mule. He secured it onto a packsaddle, then came back to the shelter and picked up two rifles. “Come on,” he ordered.

  Tim Colter obeyed.

  They walked a good fifty yards before stopping. The morning amazed Tim, how clear the sky had become, how fresh the land smelled. Reno spit, and, without a word, handed one of the big rifles to Tim. He almost dropped it, for it weighed at least ten pounds, maybe more, and stretched more than four feet from butt to barrel’s end.

  “Careful,” Reno grunted. “That’s a Hawken.” He hefted the other rifle he held. “Same as mine. Sam Hawken made mine. Cost me twenty-five dollars, and I’ve been offered better than one-fifty for it since. Mine’s a fifty-four caliber. One you hold is a fifty. Look at it. Study it.”

  The rifle felt uncomfortable, but Tim obeyed. It was, he knew, a thing of beauty. The stock was dark maple, the butt plate was iron, as were the trigger guard, forestock cap, and patch box. Oddly, he saw two triggers, but only one barrel. He did not ask Reno about this, though, because the man already thought him to be a fool, and he did not wish to give the mountain man more evidence of that fact.

  “Ever shoot a rifle before, boy?”

  “Uh . . . I saw Pa . . . my father . . . shoot one.” Tim swallowed. “It was at a turkey shoot.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Danville.”

  Reno stared blankly and wordlessly.

  “Pennsylvania.”

  He spat. “Gun like this?”

  Tim looked at the heavy Hawken. “No, sir. Pa said it . . . was . . . um . . . per- . . . percussion?”

  Reno spat again and snorted. “Figures. Don’t
favor percussion rifles much. Flintlock’s easier to fire, more reliable than copper caps. Quicker to reload, too, no matter what some hardware clerk’ll tell you.” He butted his rifle on the wet earth, and nodded at Tim. “Let’s see how you shoot.”

  The Hawken rifle could easily have been the wheel of a steamboat. Tim had no idea how to use it.

  “It’s loaded,” Reno said. “All you have to do is prime it. You’re lucky, too. No wind today. Come a gale, it can blow the powder out of your pan, and repriming it wouldn’t be no easy chore.”

  Tim lowered the gun, butting it the way Reno had, and leaned over.

  Reno barked something and pushed Tim back with his free hand. “Boy, don’t lean over a rifle’s bore like that.”

  “But . . . you said it wasn’t primed.”

  “Don’t lean over a gun barrel, boy. All guns are loaded. Don’t look down the barrel.” He gestured. “Pick it up, prime her.”

  Tim got the hammer to half cock, shook out powder into the pan—Reno’s nod told him he had enough—and closed the frizzen. He looked around.

  “Rock over yonder.” Reno gestured lazily and stepped away.

  Tim remembered what his father had done at the turkey shoot. The rifle came up, he braced the butt against his shoulder, and brought the hammer to full cock. Trying to steady the long gun proved awkward. Trying to look down the sights troubled him even more. The barrel moved in clockwise circles, and he could not steady it. He quickly decided that he should just pull the trigger as soon as the barrel hit the bottom part of his target. Or whenever he thought it was there.

  He pulled the trigger, saw the smoke in the pan, then heard and felt the cannon blast.

  Jed Reno picked up the Hawken first, examined it, laid it gently on the ground, and extended a hand toward Tim.

  Tim’s ears rang. His right shoulder felt as if an elephant had kicked it, maybe cleaved it all the way in two. He looked quickly at his shoulder, relieved to find it still attached to the rest of his body, accepted the mountain man’s hand, and let him pull him to his feet. “Did I hit the rock?”

  Reno stared.

  Tim knew the answer and frowned. “Can I try it again?”

  There seemed to be some glint in the man’s lone blue eye, maybe even a bit of respect for Tim’s gumption. The light, however, faded, and Reno picked up the Hawken on the ground. He did not offer it back to Tim, but walked on ahead, carrying both his rifle and the one Tim had just shot.

  “Powder and lead are precious commodities out here, boy,” Reno said as he moved back toward the camp. “When you fill them britches you’re wearing, maybe you’ll be able to handle a Rocky Mountain rifle. But we need to get moving.”

  Back at camp, the mountain man reloaded the rifle Tim had fired. Tim watched him intently, trying to memorize everything Reno did. Finished, he sheathed the rifle in a long buckskin pouch, which he fastened into a packsaddle. Easy to reach, Tim figured, if they came to a fight.

  He also pulled out something black and white and hideous, which he tossed in front of Tim’s feet. “Put that on your head, boy,” he ordered.

  Tim recognized it and frowned. It was the skunk cap the Basque had worn. He already wore the dead man’s buckskins, even the moccasins. He wasn’t about to put that ugly thing on his head. “No.”

  Reno’s eye squinted. “Boy, it’s a nice morning, but this ain’t nice country. You wear a hat for protection and brag. The protection you’ll need from the sun . . . because you ride out here with no hat, the sun’ll bake your brains and you’ll keel over. You keel over, and I ain’t stopping to pick you up. Them duds you had—like some girl’s bonnet—that won’t do enough. Pick up the hat.”

  Reluctantly, Tim obeyed.

  “The brag,” Reno said as he went about checking the straps on the mule. “That’s important, too. Somebody might recognize that ugly thing covering your topknot as once belonging to miserable Abaroa. That’ll make them respect you a tad. Make them think that you killed that slimy Basque.”

  “But I didn’t kill him,” Tim said. “You did.”

  “But I got my own hat, boy. And it’s a damn sight better looking than what you got.” Reno walked about camp, making sure nothing was left behind. He kicked more sand onto the dead fire and secured the Basque’s black mustang to a lead rope that also held the mule. Tim noticed that it had no saddle. Reno must have left it behind.

  The two other horses were saddled, with hackamores instead of bridles and reins. Reno gestured to the pinto, smaller than Reno’s big dun. “You always have two horses?”

  Reno swung onto his big horse. “That’s the one you left behind. Belonged to the man you killed by the creek. Reckon he won’t mind you riding it.”

  Tim’s stomach churned. “But . . . I looked . . . I didn’t see . . .”

  “What did you think, boy? That the vermin Jackatars left behind to make sure you were dead was afoot?”

  Tim picked up the hackamore’s end. He wondered if he could reach the stirrup, but after finding a rock, he stood on it. It might be cheating, but he did manage to climb onto the horse’s back.

  The horse moved around a bit, but Tim pulled hard on the hackamore, and the pinto stopped moving around and started backing up.

  “Let up, boy,” Reno said. “You want him to stop, pull straight back. You keep pulling, he’ll think you want him to back up. Tug the rope. He’ll mind you. Unless he bucks you off.”

  Tim absorbed that. He hoped he could remember. “I looked for the horse,” he said again.

  “Not hard, I figure,” Reno said.

  “Well.” Tim dropped his head. “Yeah. I thought maybe he was a runner.”

  “Sort of like Pheidippides?”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t sir me, either, boy. Pheidippides, boy. Don’t you know your Greek? Don’t you know about Marathon?”

  “No, si—” Tim managed to choke back the sir.

  “Figures.” Reno rode ahead, pulling the lead rope and the mule and other horse behind him.

  Tim realized that Reno would leave him there, so he kicked the pinto’s sides, and felt the horse move along. After a while, as he grew slightly more comfortable in the saddle, he tired of looking at the black mustang’s tail and rode up until he was alongside Jed Reno.

  The mountain man seemed to smile.

  “How long have you lived here?” Tim asked.

  “I was born here, boy,” the man said.

  Tim thought the man had to be lying, but he wasn’t about to say anything along those lines. He wanted to ask more questions, but the man kept riding slowly, looking at the land, though Tim decided any trail left by the raiders who had taken Patricia and his sisters had to have vanished after the rain.

  At last, Reno reined in. Tim stopped a good fifteen feet past him, then decided to test his horsemanship, and pulled hard on the hackamore. He kept pulling. To his amazement, the horse backed up, then stopped when he released the pressure.

  Smiling in spite of himself, he turned toward Jed Reno. The look on his face made Tim lose the smile . . . and his pride.

  Reno’s long arm stretched southward.

  “You could do me a favor, boy, by riding that way. Just keep south. Day or two, you’d be at the Bitter. Follow it to the Green, and you’ll come directly to Bridger’s Trading Post. Might be the train you was with is still there. Likely not. But Jim would hold you till I come back with your sisters and that girl who’s sweet on you.”

  Tim shook his head.

  “You could also tell Jim—and any emigrants who happen to be there—that Indians didn’t kill your folks. You could help me stop a war.”

  Tim knew he would not even consider it.

  “I’m going with you. I . . . have . . . to.”

  Reno tugged on the hackamore and kept riding west.

  Tim caught up with him after a while.

  “I have to,” he said again.

  “I heard you the first time, boy.” Without looking at Tim, Reno continued. “Now you hear
me. You want to ride out for revenge or to be some hero to your sweetie, make your sisters think high on you, that’s your business. Not mine. Out here, we let a body make up his own mind. I won’t argue with you. But know this. Slow me down, I leave you. Get hurt and can’t go on, I leave you. Get killed, I leave you. Get lost, I won’t come looking for you. You made your decision. I’ve made mine.”

  The Cyclops known as Jed Reno did not speak another word that day.

  CHAPTER 23

  Eventually, they came to a small creek. The water flowed but not as wide nor as fast as in the past. Tim felt proud of himself for coming to that conclusion based on the wide bed of the creek. He wasn’t sure he was right, of course, but he wasn’t about to ask the silent man who had studied the area for a good five minutes or more before dropping out of the saddle and wrapping the hackamore around a clump of sagebrush.

  Once Tim had dismounted, he stood around like an oaf until Reno handed him the lead rope that secured the mustang and mule. Rope in hand, Tim just stood and watched Reno work his way around the camp, stopping here and there to poke at something on the ground. Why, he even picked up a clod of horse droppings . . . then broke it open and rubbed it around in his fingers. He merely wiped the manure off on his buckskin britches, frowned, and moved to another bit of sage.

  Silently, Tim thought his ma would have had a stroke had she seen anyone do that—and not wash his hands afterwards. He didn’t mind standing around. After most of the day in the saddle, he felt relieved as he stretched the muscles in his aching legs. The insides of his thighs felt chaffed. His buttocks might never recover.

  Reno picked something out of the sage. “Ute.” He looked to the south, his frown hardening. “You’re bringing all of them in, just like Red Prairie figured.” After tucking what appeared to be a beaded headband inside his belt, Reno moved over a few more yards, stopping again, fingering something in the dirt, and heading toward a small rise north of the creek.

  Behind Tim, his horse peed.

  Tim scowled, and stepped a little bit ahead and away from the pinto to avoid any splatter.

  After what seemed like hours, Jed Reno walked back down the rise and toward the creek, tucking the Hawken underneath his shoulder. Once he stopped, he held out a piece of brown cloth in his dirty, thick fingers.