Colter's Journey

by William W. Johnstone

  Rarely had the rogues beaten them with sticks or cuffed them with their rock-hard hands. Some of the men even kept a respectful distance from the prisoners.

  Yet they had been given practically nothing to eat, scraps fit for dogs, just enough to keep the women alive. When it had rained, they had been denied shelter. When it had snowed, they had not been given blankets or coats. They were graced with a cup of hot tea occasionally, maybe every third morning, but usually it was just tepid or brackish water, and no more than a few swallows each morning, around noon, and in the evening.

  Their clothes hung in rags, and vermin lived in their hair. Patricia’s forearms were covered with bug bites, and most of her skin, exposed to the harsh sun, had turned into leather, burned, peeled, hardened, bronzed, toughened.

  Her mother had whispered, “God’s will. They test our spirit. They break us. We will show them.”

  And they had. Patricia remembered hearing one of the men say that Tim’s younger sister would not live more than two days on the trail. But they all still lived. They all would live. For a while, anyway.

  * * *

  She stared at Dog Ear Rounsavall, hating him. She wondered if she had enough strength to crush his skull with the rock she held.

  “Patricia?” a voice called out from the fire.

  “I’m all right, Mother.” Patricia did not let go of the rock.

  Men began to stir, and Dog Ear Rounsavall slowly stopped smiling. He began backing away from her, into the shadows and the dark, although she felt as though his rancid breath, his stink, and his hideousness remained right before her.

  “You won’t live forever, girlie,” he called out, mockingly blowing her a kiss.

  “But I will outlive you,” she told him.

  CHAPTER 32

  Tim had seen how Jed Reno brewed his coffee, which was nothing like the way his ma used to make it. Following Reno’s lead, he dumped some beans into the two cups, filled them with water, and set both on a rock in the middle of the coals he had raked over to one side of the pit. Another idea nestled in his head. He considered it and decided it was worth a try.

  He felt certain that for a day or two, Reno would not be able to hold much solid food down. When Tim and his sisters were sick, his ma usually fed them chicken broth. He had not seen a chicken since Missouri, but he did have some jerked beef. He stuffed a few strips into another cup he found on the campground—one in surprisingly good shape, not even rusty—topped it with water and placed it on the stone with the coffee cups.

  For his own breakfast, he managed to swallow a few bites of pemmican. After checking and cleaning the wounds in Reno’s thigh, he added wood to the fire, kept the Lancaster rifle handy, and waited for the one-eyed mountain man to wake up . . . if he did.

  “Boy.”

  Tim’s eyes shot open, and he started to cock the Lancaster rifle before realizing that Reno had come to. Leaning the rifle against the saddle, he hurried over to the old trapper.

  Reno kept breathing rapidly.

  Is that a good sign or a bad one? Tim had no earthly idea.

  The mountain man wet his lips with his tongue.

  “How long have I been out, boy?”

  “Just since yesterday. You want something to eat?”

  Instead of answering, Reno said, “Help me up, boy.”

  Tim pulled him to a seated position, which almost wore both of them out. After a short hesitation to catch his breath, Tim carried the coffee and the broth to him.

  Reno’s head shook.

  “You have to eat,” Tim said, surprised to find himself arguing with a man old enough to be his father. “Get your strength back.”

  Reno cursed, then laughed, and shook his head.

  “All right, Mommie.” He held out his hand.

  Tim gave him the broth first.

  The big man sipped, scowled, look at the contents, sloshed them around in the cup, and then stared hard at Tim with that one blazing blue eye. “I don’t reckon, we got no whiskey left.”

  “You drunk it all.”

  Reno shook his head again. “No. You wasted it on this.” He pointed at his bandaged leg, but finished the broth, and even drank the coffee without further complaint.

  Pointing to the pile of wood Tim had gathered for the fire, Reno said, “Hand me that big stick.” He shook his head at the stick Tim picked up. “No. The other one. Straight one. That’s it.”

  Tim handed it to him.

  Reno tested it, and it snapped, prompting a curse from the trapper, who tossed it back toward the pile. “Get me my Hawken, boy.”

  Using the .54-caliber rifle as a crutch, he stood up, staring straight ahead before hobbling off. He stopped a few yards away to unbutton his britches and urinate, hobbled on, then stopped again when he saw his dead horse.

  A silence, dark and foreboding, hovered over the campground. Tim could have sworn he saw the man bring a hand up to his face to wipe away a tear or two. Reno, however, said nothing. He looked at the other dead horse and then noticed the living ones tethered and hobbled fifty yards away.

  He looked back at Tim.

  “You bury them I killed?”

  “No.” Tim pointed to the woods. “The Indians are over there.” And nodded in the opposite direction. “The other man’s yonder.”

  With a nod, Reno started off toward the woods where Tim had dragged the dead white man. Slowly, Tim followed him, stopping a few yards away and watching as Reno dropped the Hawken, knelt, and drew the dead man’s knife from the sheath on his side.

  In horror, Tim saw Reno scalp the black-marked man, force the corpse’s mouth open, and stick the scalp lock inside.

  “That’s for my horse, Malachi. Rot in hell.” The mountain man examined the knife before tossing it away. Clumsily, he looked around for the Hawken.

  “Boy,” he called. “Give me a hand.”

  Tim obeyed, although he tried not to look at the man Reno had just scalped.

  When he stood, leaning against the rifle, he nodded. “Help me back.”

  “To the Indians?” Tim asked, horrified.

  “No. Indians was brave. Good men. Hated to have to kill them. They won’t go to the Happy Hunting Ground without their topknots. But him?” Reno turned, spit on Murchison, and looked back toward the campfire. “Back there. I’m tuckered out.”

  He was sweating by the time Tim helped him lay back on the robe and blankets, and Tim quickly handed him a canteen.

  Reno practically emptied the canteen then pulled back the bandage and examined the wounds, which he studied for several moments before facing Tim again.

  “I don’t remember—”

  “You did one,” Tim told him, knowing Reno needed the water. Besides, with water so handy, drinking so much wasn’t a problem. “I did the others.”

  Reno pulled the bandage back up, saw the rifles, the traps, and again looked at the horses and mule. “The other mounts?”

  Tim shook his head. “They ran off.” He pointed south. “That way.”

  Reno found his pipe, blackened from touching off the powder, and began filling the bowl with his blend of makeshift tobacco.

  That has to be a good sign, Tim thought, and he grabbed a branch from the fire so Reno could light his morning smoke.

  After a couple pulls, Reno removed the pipe, pointing the stem at the horses. “I won’t be much good for a couple days. That’s my guess. Could be a while longer. I just don’t know. Can’t sit a saddle, especially where we need to be going. And we can’t wait around here, not if we want to stop Jackatars and get your sweetheart and sisters back. Boy, you know how to make a travois?”

  Tim swallowed and shook his head.

  “Well, time you learned.”

  * * *

  Tim Colter rode ahead, the Lancaster in his arms, the two pistols in his belt, pulling the lead rope. Behind him trailed the black horse, saddled with Reno’s saddle, and the mule, loaded with packs and extra weapons. Behind the mule came Jed Reno on the travois.

  T
im had found straight limbs, roughly eight feet long, and secured cross sticks with rawhide and sinew to connect the two poles. After laying a robe over the travois, he secured the two poles to each side of the pack mule. As lousy as he felt in the saddle, he knew the mountain man had to be uncomfortable lying in that thing. More likely, he was in tremendous agony.

  Tim’s instructions were to follow the Green River till it turned east and into the Wind River Mountains. Don’t follow it, but head north, keeping Whiskey Mountain at his back.

  It had taken him and Reno two days just to reach where the river turned, and still the trapper could barely sit up. Riding horseback was definitely out of the question. For now.

  Tim shot an elk, and Reno told him to offer a prayer to the sky to thank the elk for his life and for helping Reno and Tim keep theirs. After butchering the elk under Reno’s directions, Tim cut out the liver—at Reno’s insistence—and they both ate it raw, although only the mountain man seemed to enjoy that meal. They ate some of the meat for supper, wrapped more in skins for later, but left the bulk of the magnificent animal for some grizzly, wolf, or buzzard.

  Tim had seen country before, but nothing like what he was seeing. Granite mountains rose to the heavens. So did the trees, some lodgepole pines but mostly Douglas firs and spruce. He saw more bighorn sheep than he ever thought existed in the entire world, moose—he had never seen one before—and even a grizzly that, thankfully, ignored the horsemen as they rode up along a ridge.

  The streams were clear, flowing rapidly, and full of trout. So they ate trout for supper and breakfast.

  Or course, he would never have found his way out of the forest and mountains if not for Jed Reno.

  Every now and then, Reno would get off the travois and hobble on ahead. He had managed to fashion a suitable crutch out of limbs he found in the thick forests. “That way,” he would say, and limp back to the travois.

  After following animal trails in the dense woods, along creek beds through rugged canyons, or climbing over rocks and fallen brush, every night Tim fell asleep sore and exhausted. Every morning he had to wake up, cook something for breakfast, and break camp.

  Sometimes, he could scarcely breathe, the air felt so thin. Twice, he woke up in the morning and had to shake snow and ice off his robe. He had to lead the horses up steep ridges one at a time, and often came away with hackamore-burned hands, skinned knees, and a bleeding forehead. After that, he had to haul Jed Reno up those ridges using a rope.

  Once, as he dragged Reno behind him in the travois, the mountain man called out, “Boy, we got a bit of company.”

  Tim stopped, turned in the saddle, and watched a bear cub following the travois. He laughed. The cub seemed curious, acted more like a puppy dog. His good humor did not last long. The bear cub reminded him of Wilbur, Mr. Scott’s dog, and suddenly he remembered its lifeless body filled with so many arrows. He recalled how heavy the dog was when he had laid it in the shallow grave alongside Mr. Scott.

  “Boy.”

  Tim stared down at Jed Reno and made himself smile. The cub had stopped, keeping a respectful distance, and started making strange grunts, then started furiously scratching near his ear.

  “Sure is a cute thing.”

  Reno cursed. “Boy, it won’t be cute and it sure won’t be funny when that cub’s mama comes hunting for him. That’s a silvertip griz, boy, and its mama will have us for supper.”

  Tim frowned. “You want me to shoot it?”

  “Shoot it?” Reno laid back and groaned and cussed. “That’d just bring its mama coming in madder than I’m about to get at you. And if you then shot its mama, she’d be even madder. No, boy, I don’t want you to shoot it. I just want you to get us the hell away from here before we all wind up in a grizzly she-bear’s stomach.”

  When he went to sleep thinking no day could be any worse than that one, he knew similar thoughts would be entering his mind the next night . . . if he lived through the next day.

  * * *

  At night, Reno would patch his pants. The sun had burned his white leg, except for where the bandage protected the arrow wounds. He stitched various skins until he had some sort of mountain man’s patchwork quilt that covered his leg to his moccasin. Elk skin. Wool. Wolf pelt. Buckskin. “It ain’t pretty, but it’ll do.”

  On they went.

  Through snowbanks. Through the ghost of forests in a land blackened by fire years back. Across rivers, over mountains, and into verdant valleys filled with majestic lakes, only to have to deal with another mountain, another forest, even a thunderstorm now and then in the late afternoon.

  They came to a pass, and Reno pointed off to the west. “Yonder lie the Tetons.”

  Tim gave the wonderful mountains barely a glance. “I suppose we’ll be climbing them next,” he said, not trying to hide his bitterness.

  “No, boy.” Reno pointed. “That way.”

  That way looked no better than the Tetons. “Where are we going?” Tim finally asked.

  Reno answered with one word. “Hell.”

  * * *

  When they reached the South Fork of the Shoshone River, Reno decided he could ride. Tim didn’t believe him, but the trapper insisted. “We’ve wasted enough time. I’ll ride. Or die.”

  The first day, Tim thought Reno would die, but he woke the next morning to find the one-eyed mountain man cooking trout for breakfast.

  The second day, Tim thought he would die.

  The third day, Reno did not need Tim to help him into the saddle, although he grunted and swore and struggled to make it to the stirrup on his own.

  * * *

  Meat roasted on a spit that night, for Reno had gone hunting that evening. Tim leaned over and cut off a chunk with his knife. He felt satisfied, full. Leaning back, he stared at the stars, so bright, so inspiring. A million of them stretched across the sky. He could see the Milky Way. He felt as if he could almost touch it.

  “Jed?” Tim called out.

  “Yeah, boy.”

  “What did you feel the first time you were out here?”

  “Huh?”

  “How did it feel, I mean? Being here. Seeing all this. For the first time.”

  “Boy, that was more than a few years ago. Lot of whiskey drunk since that time. Lot of getting my head knocked around, my arse halfway froze off, and two eyes I had.”

  “You know, some things you never forget.” Tim frowned, remembering the dream, that nightmare, and the face of that brute of a man, Dog Ear Rounsavall. He would never forget that. He made himself focus on the stars, the night, the warmth of the fire, and the fullness of his stomach.

  “You’re talking nonsense, boy,” Reno said.

  “No, I’m not. You know. How did it feel?”

  The one-eyed Cyclops spit into the fire, grunted, farted, and sighed. “Felt like I was blessed, boy. That’s right. Blessed. That I was put there, at that very moment, to see it. With both of my eyes. ’Cause I had two back in them olden times. Felt like I was the luckiest person on the face of God’s green earth. That answer your question, boy?”

  Tim laughed. “I guess so.”

  Reno sat up, tore off a hunk of meat, and shoved it into his face.

  “But like I said, boy, that was some time ago. Back in 1822 or thereabouts. Now, I know better. I know that this country will kill you if you ain’t careful, and even if you are careful, you can wind up just as dead as some green fool kid who ain’t got the sense to follow the ruts left by a passel of immigrants and walk his way to safety at Jim Bridger’s place.”

  Tim laughed again. “I’m still alive, Jed.”

  “For the time being. Maybe not tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

  Tim leaned back, chewed the meat. It tasted sort of funny. “Jed?”

  “What now, boy?”

  “What is this we’re eating?”

  “Marmot,” Reno said.

  “What?”

  “Marmot.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it ain’t no bug
and it ain’t no painther or elk, boy. It’s a damned marmot.”

  Tim sat up. He spit into his hand what he hadn’t swallowed and stared at it.

  “It tastes like—”

  “Lichen and moss, I figure. It’s a marmot. Kind of like a otter, and kind of like a groundhog. A big, swimming type of prairie dog, I guess. A marmot, boy.”

  Tim tossed the remnants into the fire and heard the meat sizzle on the coals.

  “Boy,” Reno said, “I ain’t exactly partial to the taste myself. But it was handy, and after I killed it, I thanked its spirit for letting me take its life so we could live. I’d rather have elk, boy, but the marmot was handy. I’d rather have some Taos Lightning, but I couldn’t find that, neither. Marmot. Just tell yourself it’s roast beef and stewed tomatoes.”

  * * *

  The fourth day, Reno sharpened his knives and hatchet. He looked up, his cold eye burning through Tim. “Trail’s about over, boy. Tomorrow . . . maybe the next day, we’ll be there. Let’s hope Murchison wasn’t lying when he told me where to find Jackatars.”

  Tim’s head shook. “He said ‘Hell.’ ”

  Reno grinned without humor. “That’s right. I’ve thought about that. Wonder if your being here is something the Almighty planned or if maybe you’re kin to him. You’ve sure proved your salt, kid. I ain’t saying you’ve grown into them britches, but you got us this far. I sure wasn’t no help.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Hell, boy. That’s where Jackatars plans to trade them women to the Blackfeet. Hell. Colter’s Hell.”

  BOOK THREE

  COLTER’S HELL

  CHAPTER 33

  The way the story went, or at least the way Jed Reno had heard it most often and told it to Tim was something like this. “John Colter came to this country with Lewis and Clark. He hailed from Virginia, or maybe Kentucky, or possibly Kentucky via Virginia. In any event, he joined the Lewis and Clark expedition in Pittsburgh, and when they set out, Colter quickly proved himself as the best marksman and best hunter in the group.