Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Jim Bridger!”

  Gabe shouted in glee, “Shadrach Sweete, his own self!”

  As Vasquez waved his hat and the tall man started toward the riders, Sweete suddenly stopped, his huge moccasins kicking up dust. “Could that really be Titus Bass?”

  “Hell if it ain’t!” he roared back as he reined up, kicked his right leg over and plopped to the ground. “Damn, but you’re back from Oregon!”

  All three of them met at once there in front of the open double gates while curious Shoshone men and women came out from camp to shout their greetings to Washakie’s returning delegates.

  “You give up on farmin’?” Titus asked as he and Jim gazed up at the face of their old friend.

  “Never was much for scratchin’ at the ground,” Sweete admitted.

  “Been four year now,” Bridger stated as he pounded a hand on Shad’s shoulder. “What you done with yourself, young’un?”

  “Pray tell how’s that daughter of mine—Roman an’ their li’l’uns?” Scratch inquired before Shad could utter a word.

  “I spent some time with them, raising a cabin an’ a barn with Roman,” he explained. “At the same time I was helping Esau get a roof over his head for the comin’ winter too.”

  Bridger asked, “You have Hudson’s Bay folks lookin’ over your shoulder?”

  He nodded and stepped between the two of them, looping an arm over Jim’s shoulder, another thick arm around the bony Titus Bass, as they started moving slowly toward the open gates where Vasquez had disappeared, headed for the trading room. “We never went hungry, my family didn’t. Plenty of folks needed help, an’ they paid us in vittles. Me an’ Esau even lent a hand to Meek a’times.”

  “He ever come back to Oregon after them Cayuse troubles?”

  “Sure did,” Shad remarked. “Don’t know why he took a southern trail after he got word of the Injun murders back to Washington. But he traipsed on down through Santa Fe.”

  “I was wondering where he went,” Jim said. “After him and Squire Ebbert come through late that winter of forty-eight, I ’spected to see ’em come back through again inside of a year.”

  Coming to a halt just inside the double gates, Sweete turned to Bridger and said, “That had to be hard on you too, Gabe—losin’ your li’l Mary Ann—”

  Grabbing the front of Jim’s cloth shirt, Titus interrupted, “I didn’t know you’d lost your daughter too, Jim.”

  “Like Joe lost his li’l Helen, my Mary Ann was carried off by them Cayuse,” he confessed as he stared at the toes of his moccasins. “She was less’n thirteen summers by then. No tellin’ if them bastards killed the girl … or a buck took a shine to her an’ made her his squaw.”

  “Vaskiss’s missus told me you took a new wife,” Shad announced as women and children dismounted and kept their horses at a distance from the walls.

  “Hell—sounds to be you’ve been here long enough to catch up on all my news!”

  “Little more’n a week now, I callate,” Sweete said. “Snakes was already camped yonder when I got in. I s’pose they been markin’ time for Washakie and his chiefs to get back from the big talks over to Laramie.”

  “Truth be,” Titus whispered, “Gabe’s been married twice’t since you left, Shadrach.”

  He stared at Bridger incredulously. “Two wives?”

  “Married a Ute gal that next spring after you rode off for Oregon,” he explained. “But she died the followin’ summer givin’ birth to our girl. Forty-nine. Named the baby Virginia Rosalie.”

  “That’s a good name,” Shad remarked. “You give ’er that ’cause you was born in Virginia?”

  “Takes a friend to remember somethin’ like that!” Bridger replied.

  Sweete said, “Mrs. Vaskiss says you married a Shoshone this time.”

  “Washakie’s daughter,” he announced with a grin. “Last year. So we ain’t had no young’uns of our own yet.”

  While Sweete and Bridger continued catching up on years of news, Bass called Waits over and suggested she pick out a nearby spot to raise their lodge. When his family had started toward the gold-hued cottonwoods, he turned back to his old friends.

  Shad was saying, “With Mary Ann disappeared, you only got Cora’s two younger ones around the fort now.”

  “Felix, he’s turned ten years now, and li’l Josie, she’s almost six.”

  Titus said, “I ’member how you lost your first wife, Cora—not long after she give birth to Josephine.”

  “An’ then three years later you lost your Ute wife givin’ birth too,” Sweete said, wagging his head in sympathy.

  “That was a patch of rough country there for a while,” he confessed, his eyes gone sad with the remembrance. “After Virginia Rosalie’s mama died, I had my hands full of a new-borned baby an’ no way to feed the poor thing … till this child come up with a idee.”

  Bass inquired, “You had a emigrant’s cow, a milker?”

  “Had two, an’ both of ’em was dry,” Bridger admitted. “So ever’ mornin’ I rode out to find me a small herd of buffier. Looked ’em over and picked out a likely cow. Dropped her quick with a ball in the lights. After a time, I got real good at cuttin out her udder ’thout spillin’ too much of the milk.”

  Scratch beamed with admiration. “That’s how you fed your daughter ever’ day—on buffler milk?”

  “You see’d her yourself over to the treaty doin’s at Horse Creek, Titus Bass. An’ on our ride back here—ain’t she a pistol? An’ I owe it all to buffler milk!”

  Shadrach looked about. “Which one is she?”

  “That’un,” and Bridger pointed to the scampering toddler set down upon the ground by her stepmother. “Blazes, but she’s fat an’ sassy! Just like her mama was. So I still got three young’uns around, but me an’ Mary plan on havin’ a fortful more of ’em on our own!”

  Turning to Bass, Sweete asked, “How’s Waits-by-the-Water took to Jim’s Shoshone wife?”

  “Hell, they get along slick. Seems that’s the way it is with Injun women. They can make their way with gals from ’nother tribe easy enough,” Scratch mused. “It’s the bucks can’t get along with bucks from ’nother tribe at all.”

  Bridger asked, “Why you s’pose that is?”

  Titus thought on that puzzlement a moment, then answered, “Maybe the reason they can is their bucks is allays off stealin’ squaws from some other tribe, bringing them squaws back to have more children for the band. I figure because of that the women get used to takin’ to squaws from other tribes like it’s no great shakes.”

  “Likely you’re right,” Bridger agreed. “Leastways, the three of us bound to see for ourselves on that ’count. What with us three coons havin’ a Snake, a Cheyenne, an’ a Crow gal too—three unfriendly tribes all mixed up together here at this post.”

  Shad snorted a laugh and said, “Why, if the three of ’em didn’t get along, these here ol’ stockade timbers couldn’t hold all the hell those gals’d make!”

  Titus jabbed an elbow into Sweete’s ribs and said, “From the looks of Gabe’s new wife, I figger her for the kind what can raise hell way up an’ stuff a chuck under it so hell’ll never come back down!”

  Bridger slapped them both on the back, and they started toward the post store. “I see’d that Louie come up from the Promised Land. You talked with him much since you been here, Shad?”

  “He come in couple days after I did,” Sweete said, then held his two hands out in front of his belly. “That’s a man ain’t ever missed a meal!”

  “Louie has put on some meat since he’s livin’ so high on the hog,” Jim declared. “He have any news ’bout Brigham Young’s Saints?”

  “Vaskiss only said he rode up here to sleep with his wife, since it’d been a long time he’d poked a woman. Down there with all them Mormons, he says he ain’t got a chance of finding a part-time night woman to keep his pecker warm.”

  “Why’s Vaskiss makin’ hisself cozy with the Marmons?” Scratch asked, a little co
ncerned about such a relationship.

  “Them Saints been comin’ through here ever’ summer since forty-seven, when you an’ me met their high president,” Bridger explained. “Brigham Young sure has been workin’ hard to change folks over to his religion. Hundreds and hundreds of ’em roll through here ever’ summer since you was here last.”

  “So Vaskiss went down there to the Salt Lake to become one of Brigham Young’s Marmons his own self?”

  Jim chuckled. “No, he ain’t no part of their religion. But as much business as we was doin’ with Brigham Young’s Saints up here, we figgered we could open up a tradin’ store down in Salt Lake City itself.”

  “That where Brigham Young ended up planting his promised land?”

  “Yep,” Bridger answered. “He didn’t take ’em on south of there, down where I suggested they should go.”

  Shad inquired, “So most of the time Vaskiss is mindin’ the store down there with them Mormons, while you’re tendin’ to things up here at the post?”

  “That’s the fix of it,” Jim responded. “Vaskiss hired him a couple Mormons to help out down there. Shows we done ever’thing we could to make things good atween them folks an’ us. Hell, two year back—right about the time Louie was settin’ up the store in Salt Lake City, some bad blood got started atween the Bannocks an’ the Mormons.”

  “What sort of bad blood?” Titus asked.

  Bridger’s eyes flicked around, then he said in a low voice, “’Cause of what’s happened with things down there—sometimes I don’t know if I can trust Louie’s wife no more.”

  “So Vaskiss is wrapped up in this bad blood atween the Bannocks and Mormons?” Sweete asked.

  With a shrug of his shoulders, Bridger said, “Most times, I don’t know which way Louie’s stick is floatin’ anymore. But when a whisper of troubles started two years back, we heard some Mormon settlers killed a Bannock who was making a brave show of things, trying to order the Mormons off Bannock land.”

  “Them Marmons just up an’ killed that Injun?” Titus asked.

  Jim nodded. “So that got the fire started in their red bellies. Them Bannocks was makin’ plans for war on them Mormons homesteadin’ outside the Salt Lake Valley. So when we heard ’bout the rumbles of trouble, me an’ Vaskiss thought we ought’n let Brigham Young’s folks know the Bannocks was fixin’ to make raids on ’em. Louie wrote Brigham Young a letter, warnin’ him them Injuns was buyin’ up lead an’ powder an’ talkin’ mean about killin’ off ever’ Mormon they caught.”

  “What ever come of it?” Shad asked.

  Shrugging again, Jim said, “Never heard nothing more of any troubles. Bannocks never did start them raids … but over the last two years, Vaskiss got closer’n closer to Brigham Young. Real cozy when he’s down there in that City of the Saints.”

  “You still trust ’im as your partner?” Scratch asked.

  It took a few moments before Bridger would answer. When he finally did, Jim said, “I don’t ever wanna think any man I did ever’thing I could to help would ever jab a knife in my back.”

  Titus studied his old friend’s face a long time, then asked, “Who was you talkin’ about, Gabe? Louie Vaskiss … or, was you meanin’ Brigham Young?”

  As his eyes narrowed and he peered around to be sure the three of them were alone, Jim Bridger confessed, “Sad thing is, Scratch—my belly tells me I better watch my back for the both of ’em.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Father!”

  Titus Bass had already turned at the rapid hammer of the pony’s hoofbeats, Jim Bridger at his elbow, both of them tying off their horses to branches before setting off into the thick brush of the river bottom in search of mule deer … when he heard the boy’s warning call.

  “Father!” Flea cried out again.

  This was the youngster’s seventeenth summer, eighteen and fifty-three. For the briefest flicker of a moment, Scratch felt an immense pride in his son, how the young man sat a horse at a full gallop, the pony’s tail held high, mane fluttering in the hot August breeze, and Flea’s long, unbound hair trailing freely behind him. But that pride swelled in his breast but an instant until the rider got close enough for Titus to recognize the pinch of fear on his son’s face.

  He stepped away from the horses, more toward the opening formed by the willow and cottonwood that rustled with the hot, late-summer breezes.

  Bridger started to say, “Damn, but that boy’s gonna scare off all the—”

  He broke off his friend’s complaint. “Somethin’ ain’t right, Gabe.” And as his son approached, he called out in American, “Is there trouble at the fort?”

  Yanking back on the single rein that was knotted around the pony’s lower jaw, Flea shuddered to a halt atop the animal, then flew off its back and landed barefoot in the dry, brown grass, his breechclout flapping.

  “Visitors,” he growled in his father’s American tongue. Then shook his head as he thought of better, perhaps more descriptive, words. “Riders. Many … riders!”

  All the boy’s life, his American talk had been getting better, but especially in these seasons just shy of two years, while they had remained at Fort Bridger following the Fort Laramie treaty, a time when his children experienced more and more contact with a new outfit of white emigrants every few days.

  Winter had come early to the valley of the Green in ’51, so Scratch ended up keeping his family right there at the post till spring. By that time many things stood in need of repair, both at the fort and up at Bridger’s Green River ferry too, keeping him and Shadrach more than busy. About the same time those wet and muddy days of 1852, the first of Brigham Young’s Mormon migration for the season had shown up at the fort. But these resolute Saints weren’t making an arduous journey to the valley of the Salt Lake … instead, they were bound from Salt Lake City for the valley of the Green River itself, where the Prophet had commanded them to establish themselves and profit in the emigrant trade under the spoken will of God.

  “Will of God?” Titus Bass asked that spring day as he, Shadrach Sweete, and a half dozen other old mountain men interrupted their repairs to Bridger’s ferry when the column of Mormons rode up to the crossing.

  They claimed they came with charters from Brigham Young himself, stating that they, and only they, had legal right to operate in trade with the emigrants inside the territory of Utah.

  That’s when Bass snorted and wiped some sweat off the end of his nose. “Territory of Utah, you say? You fellers be a long way off from the territory of Utah. This here ain’t the United States. Why, this here’s the free Rocky Mountains.

  Free! Far as you can see off in all directions—we’re standin’ in the free Rocky Mountains.”

  Shad Sweete joined in, “You’ll have to ride a long way to the south afore you get to your territory of Utah—”

  “You do understand that our Promised Land of Zion has become the territory of Utah, under a mandate by the federal government in Washington City—back in 1850—don’t you?” one of the horsemen declared as he inched his horse forward. He was a hard-jawed, fiery-eyed zealot if there ever was one.

  “No,” Bridger himself replied, “ain’t heard nothin’ ’bout the government makin’ no new territory for your people.”

  The zealot continued, “Then you haven’t heard that this country all around the Green River, including that back down at your trading post too—it’s all part of the territory of Utah now.”

  For the first time, Bass stared from under the wide brim of his hat and really studied the man. Then he took a few steps closer to have himself a better look at just who this tarnal fool was, and asked, “You there, the feller tellin’ us all this news we ain’t got no use for—what’s your name?”

  “Hickman,” he replied. “My name is William Hickman. Being an attorney I can attest to the legality of the rights transferred to these people by the new governor of the territory, Brigham Young. You men are clearly operating your business without the necessary charter granting you the
legal right to operate in trade with the emigrants. I am here to inform you men that you must stop your work, pack up your belongings, and move away from this crossing.”

  “You’re full of horse apples,” Bass roared with laughter as Shadrach pounded him on the back.

  The hard-eyed zealot inched his horse closer until it made Titus nervous enough to lay his hand on the butt of the big pistol sticking from his belt. At the sight of that, the Mormon immediately reined back, glaring at Scratch, then eventually turned his granitelike gaze on Bridger again.

  “Jim Bridger, I hereby notify you that you are illegally operating a trading establishment inside the boundaries of the legitimate territory of Utah, County of Green River, without the necessary compact signed by the duly appointed governor—”

  “Illegal?” Titus squeaked, taking one step closer to the rider before Bridger flung out his arm, grabbing Bass by his collar, and stopped his old friend in his tracks.

  “What you mean I’m illegal?” Bridger echoed.

  Hickman said, “You’ll have to quit operation at your post—”

  “Quit?” Jim squawked. “I been in business more’n ten years right there on Black’s Fork, son. Afore Brigham Young ever knowed about me an’ my post … afore there ever was your god-blamed territory o’ Utah! You don’t have no right to tell me I gotta move … an’ Brigham Young sure as hell ain’t got no business sayin’ he can throw me outta business—”

  “He’s the governor,” Hickman said, patting a hand against a pocket of his wool coat, “and I am carrying his compacts here, documents that state you are operating illegally within the boundaries of the territory of Utah.”

  In frustration Bridger glanced at Shadrach, then at Titus, and finally back to Hickman. His eyes narrowed, “Was you in that bunch of Pioneer Saints what Brigham Young brought through here back in forty-seven?”