The First Mountain Man Read online

  “Fools and dreamers,” Greybull said quietly. “But, hell, wasn’t we the same when we pushed out here, Preacher? I was at Pierre’s Hole back in ’32 when one of the first bunch of colonizers came a-staggerin’ in. John Wyeth was one of them. But he tried again and I was tole he made it. You’ll get them through, Preacher. I kinda wish I was goin’ along.”

  “Please feel free to take my place,” Preacher said dryly.

  Preacher laid around the fort for the next several days, waiting for the second train to roll in. Then he would carefully inspect the wagons and give the people a good eyeballin’. ’Sides, them folks would be trail-worn and sufferin’ bad from the wearies. They’d need some rest.

  He didn’t have to work at avoiding Melody now. She’d changed her tactics and had latched onto Lieutenant Maxwell-Smith, hoping to make Preacher jealous. The lieutenant squired her about, with her hangin’ on his arm, shakin’ her bustle and battin’ her eyes at him.

  Preacher only made matters worse by tipping his hat at them every time they met and saying, “Mighty handsome couple you are. Yes, siree. You shore do complement each other. Mighty handsome couple.” Then he would go away chuckling.

  “You tryin’ to get the lou-tenant kilt?” Trapper Jim asked one afternoon, after Preacher had tipped his hat and Melody had bared her teeth at him like a mad puma.

  “The boy needs some excitement in his life.” Preacher jerked his head toward a man over by the company store. “You know that hombre over there?”

  “Cain’t say that I do. He drifted in last evenin’. Name’s Luke.”

  “Trapper?”

  “No traps or pelts on his pack horse. I don’t much cotton to him, Preacher. He’s a tad shifty-eyed to suit me.”

  “What’s he ridin’?”

  “Big gray with a reworked brand. ’Course, that don’t mean nothin’. As many folks that’s been kilt tryin’ to come west, that horse could have belonged to anybody.”

  “Yeah,” Preacher said, but he was unconvinced. After Jim had wandered off, Preacher walked over to the store to eyeball the man called Luke. He stood on the rough-hewn log porch and stared at the young man.

  Luke smiled at Preacher. He did not receive a returning smile. “You want something?” Luke asked in a nervous voice. Preacher was known from the Big Muddy to the blue waters as a man a body had best not mess with.

  Preacher didn’t immediately reply. He was busy studying the clothes the young man had on. He had a feeling he’d seen that jacket somewheres before. Yeah, he knew he had. But where? Then it came to him. At the ruins of the ambushed wagon train. He’d tried that jacket on himself and found it too tight across the shoulders.

  ’Course that didn’t mean the feller had done anything wrong. Preacher had taken clothes there himself. Only a damn fool leaves useable clothing to rot in the weather if he is able to put them to use—but not to sell or barter. A man had to draw a line somewheres.

  Luke’s right hand drifted to the pistol tucked down behind his belt, a movement that did not escape the eyes of Preacher.

  Then something else returned to Preacher. Edmond had knowed the man who owned that coat. He had found his body and put the coat on over his tortoured flesh before they dragged off the bodies and caved the earth over them.

  That meant ...

  “Goddamn grave robber,” Preacher told the young man.

  “What’d you mean, Preacher?”

  “How’d you know who I was?” Preacher demanded.

  “Uh ... I asked and somebody told me.”

  “Who?”

  “I ... ah, disremember ’xactly.”

  “You’re a damn liar!”

  Lieutenant Maxwell-Smith and Melody came strolling by about that time. They both was gonna have to buy new shoes if that second wagon train didn’t soon get here and they all could get gone.

  “Here, now!” Maxwell-Smith said. “What’s going on here?”

  “Look close, Melody,” Preacher said. “You recognize the jacket this grave-robbin’ scum is wearin?”

  “Why ...” She peered at the frightened Luke. “That’s the suit coat we buried poor Mister McNally in! Edmond put it on the poor man himself.”

  “That’s right,” Preacher said grimly.

  Luke grabbed for his pistol and Preacher kicked the young man on the knee, knocking him off balance. Preacher stepped forward and busted Luke on the side of the jaw with a big hard fist. Luke went down, addled to his toes.

  Preacher jerked the pistol out of the man’s britches and looked at it. The name Blaylock was carved in the butt, along with Boston, Mass., 1832.

  Greybull had come at a running lumber and jerked the now very badly frightened Luke to his feet, holding him by his neck with a huge hand.

  “Where’d you steal this, boy?” Preacher said, holding up the pistol.

  “I ain’t stole nothin’. It’s mine. My pa give it to me.”

  “What’s your pa’s name?”

  “Wilbur Mason.”

  “From where?”

  “Mary-land.”

  Preacher smiled, “Do you know what’s carved here, boy?” He traced the words with a blunt finger.

  “Yeah! My pa’s name.”

  “Where was your pa back in ’32?”

  “In the ground dead. Fever got him and my sister.”

  “Then how come this pistol’s got the name Blaylock carved on it? Along with Boston, Mass., 1832.”

  “I ...” Luke shut his mouth and shook his head.

  “I thought you told me you couldn’t read words?” Melody asked the mountain man.

  “I lie on occasion,” Preacher told her. “And I didn’t say I couldn’t read. I said it’d been a long time since I had, that’s all.”

  “What else have you lied about?” she pressed him.

  “This ain’t the time to go into that.” Preacher looked at Luke. “You ride with Bum and his trash, don’t you? You come in here to spy for him, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know no one named Bum Kel ...” Luke’s eyes darted from person to person like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar as he realized he had, more than likely, just stuck his head into a hangman’s noose. He knew the British had issued death warrants against Bum and anyone who rode with him.

  “Then how did you know his last name?” Maxwell-Smith asked.

  “I heared it one time,” Luke told them. “But I don’t ride with no gang. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong ’ceptin’ take this here coat offen a dead man. Critters had pulled him out from under the cave-in and the brush and had been eatin’ on him. I took his coat ’cause I needed it and then I buried him proper. Took me the better part of an hour to dig the hole. I even spoke words over the grave.”

  “You’re a lyin’ son!” Trapper Jim said, walking up and eyeballing the young man. “I know you. You’re Luke Chatfield. You’re wanted for murder back in the Ohio Territory.”

  “It’s a state now,” Melody said. “Admitted and recognized in 1803, I believe! How long have you been out here?”

  “I was borned here,” Jim said. “My daddy was half grizzly and half wild tornader and my momma was a Pawnee.”

  Preacher looked at him. “Wagh! Pawnee!” Preacher grinned. “I knowed there was something I didn’t like about you.”

  * * *

  Luke was tossed into the post stockade and would be taken—sooner or later—to the northern territories for trial. Bum was a gutsy outlaw, but all suspected he was smart enough not to attack a fort under the protection of the Crown. Not for someone as unimportant and blatantly worthless as Luke Chatfield.

  Luke had given up protesting his innocence the same day he was tossed in the stockade. Now he was offering to make a deal in return for his neck.

  “What do you think?” Maxwell-Smith asked Preacher.

  Preacher shrugged. “He’s gonna tell you that Bum has hooked up with Red Hand and they’s gonna ambush the wagon train somewheres between here and Fort Vancouver. Big deal. As far as him takin’ us t
o where they’s camped, forget it. When he don’t return on time, they’ll know he’s either dead or captured and shift camp. But it would be nice to know the size of Bum’s gang and how many renegades Red Hand has with him.”

  “And what do we offer him in return for that information?”

  “We don’t hang him.”

  15

  Luke took the offer without hesitation. “Bum’s got about twenty men, and he’s lookin’ for more. Bum wants the gold them missionaries is carryin’ and he wants the white women. Red Hand’s got near’bouts forty bucks with him.”

  “’Way more’n enough to give us hell out yonder on the trail,” Preacher said after they left the stockade building. “Red Hand’s people would hay-rass us at night, stealin’ and killin’ stock and cripplin’ the wagons. They’ll try to drag us down slow and then move in for the kill.”

  “And your plan is ... ?” Maxwell-Smith asked.

  By now this had become a challenge to the mountain man. “I’m takin’ the wagon train through to Oregon Territory. To hell with Bum Kelley and Red Hand.”

  “I really wish I could let you have some men, Preacher. But I don’t have the authority to do so.”

  “I’ll get them through. They’ll be some that don’t make it. I’ll lose some to accidents, some will probably fall to diseases, and Bum and Red Hand will get some more. But most of them will get through. Or I’ll be buried along the trail with them.”

  Preacher fixed up one wagon and with Lieutenant Maxwell-Smith’s permission, commissioned Trapper Jim to drive it through. The wagon would be filled with gee-gaws to trade with the Injuns they would encounter along the way. Preacher stocked the wagon with bolts of calico and Hudson’s Bay blankets. He laid in a stock of metal knives and a trunk filled with three-pound carrots of tobacco. He put in several dozen one-pound metal kettles and lots of cheap but flashy trinkets.

  The second wagon train finally rumbled up to the walls of the fort and Preacher stood and watched as more kids than he’d seen in many a year poured out of the wagons. Seemed like they never would stop coming, all of them yelling and shouting and giggling and runnin’ around like a bunch of idiots.

  “I sure hope some of them is midgets,” he said to Greybull.

  The huge mountain man slapped Preacher on the back. “I got to go a-scoutin’ ol’ son. We’ll say our hail and farewells now, I reckon.”

  “You be careful out there, you moose,” Preacher said, shaking hands with the man. “Stay with your hair now, you hear?”

  “You ride easy in the saddle, Preacher. And try not to get hitched up with that honey-haired filly.”

  The men grinned at each other and Greybull was gone, walking to his horse to begin his lonely and dangerous job. Preacher stood in the open gates of the fort and watched him until he was swallowed up by the wilderness.

  He wondered if he would ever see the man again.

  He’d wondered those thoughts many times. He wondered them when Jed Smith went off on his last adventure back in ’30. Commanches got him.

  Preacher shook such thoughts from his head and set about locating and acquainting himself with the guide and wagon master of the train.

  “There appears to be a small problem,” Maxwell-Smith said, stopping Preacher along the way.

  “Well, hell, when ain’t there been?” Preacher said. “What’s wrong now?”

  “The guide just quit. Said he was going back to St. Louis.”

  Preacher dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “I don’t need no second opinion in gettin’ this train acrost the wilderness. How about the wagon master?”

  “He seems to be a good, solid man. He’s staying on.”

  “Let’s go meet him.”

  He introduced himself as Swift and Preacher immediately sized him up as a man who would brook no nonsense from anyone. Swift was a well-built man of middle age with quick intelligent eyes. Preacher knew that he was also being sized up by the wagon master.

  “You’ve been over the trail?” Swift asked.

  “More’n once.”

  “How bad is it from this point on?”

  “You ever been to hell?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “You’re about to get a goodly taste of it. You got any sickness with you?”

  “No. At least nothing more serious than blisters and sore muscles. My bunch are all in good shape. I insisted that all people be scratched before we left.”

  Preacher’s first impression of the man had been correct. Swift knew his business.

  “We’ve got sheep, goats, milk cows, and extra mules and oxen,” Swift said. “We hooked up with a small train three days ago. We are thirty-one wagons and more than a hundred and twenty people.”

  “Most of them kids,” Preacher remarked.

  Swift smiled. “Correct, sir. But I’ve found them to be well-behaved and they’ve become trail-wise. You’ll find none of them dashing off to become lost in the woods. One did, back in Wyoming. We never found him. That settled the rest of them down.”

  “It usual takes something like that to do it, so I been told. Sorry you had to lose the kid. I got things to say, and I be honest with you, Swift. I been a mountain man for all my life—since I was twelve year old. I come out to this land—this land—fifteen year after Mackenzie. I wasn’t the first. But them that was first, they left. I stayed. Blackfeet probably wouldn’t hate the white man so much if Lewis hadn’t shot one he caught stealin’ rifles ...”

  A crowd of people from the fort and both wagon trains had gathered around, listening to this buckskin-clad, shaggy-haired, wild-looking man of the mountains.

  “... But they ain’t nobody blamin’ Lewis. He done what he had to do. But the Blackfeet still tell the story about how, not too long after that, one of Lewis’ own party accidental shot him in the ass. Lewis had to be toted around on a litter for some time. Blackfeet still get a big laugh when they tell that story.

  “Now I’m gettin’ to what it was I was original gonna tell you, Swift. I know the trail. I been over it and back. But I ain’t never guided no wagon train filled with females and squallin’ kids. I ain’t got no patience with young’uns. So I’ll stay shut of the train as much as possible.

  “One more thing and then I’m done. Don’t cross me when I tell you something to do. If I tell you to gather the wagons, you give that order right then and there. If I tell you we’re stoppin’ early in the day—I got a reason for it. And I warn you now that we got a bad bunch of outlaws on our trail and they’ve hooked up with some renegade Injuns who’s headed by a Blackfoot called Red Hand. And so’s I won’t have to answer a bunch of gawddamn foolish questions, Red Hand was named cause they’s a big birthmark on his hand that’s red.” Preacher caught Penelope’s eyes and said, “Kinda like them two dogs I was tellin’ y’all about.”

  “Well!” Penelope tossed her curls and marched off.

  “I beg your pardon?” Swift leaned forward. “Did I miss something?”

  “Naw. Where was I? Oh. That’s about it, I reckon. You folks have put some hard miles behind you, and you’ve got some hard ones ahead of you. You folks get busy checkin’ out your wagons and the like. We’ll start whenever you people have rested and resupplied. Until then, don’t bother me. I don’t have the patience for a bunch of damn fool questions from a pack of pilgrims that shoulda stayed to home in the first place.”

  Preacher nodded his head at Swift, then wheeled about and stalked off without another word.

  “What an ill-tempered, sharp-tongued, savage man!” one woman observed of the mountain man.

  Maxwell-Smith smiled and said, “Be thankful you have him to guide you, madam. There is no more qualified man in all the western lands. However, he does take some getting accustomed to.”

  Melody looked at the young lieutenant and rolled her eyes at what had to be the understatement of the year.

  * * *

  Preacher squatted on his heels and with a stick, drew a crude map in the dirt for Swift and
a handful of men from the newly arrived wagon train.

  “We’re here, on the Snake. Once we leave here, we’ll dip south just a mite, then start anglin’ some north and west. What’s left of the Blackfoot is north of us. Also north of us, but that don’t mean a whole lot, ’cause Injuns is roamers—they apt to pop up anywheres so don’t never take nothin’ for granted—also is the Nez Perce, the Flatheads, and some Crow and Shoshone. Over here,” he jabbed the stick, “is the Bannocks and here is where you’ll find the Paiutes. The Yakimas is all over this area here.

  “Don’t worry about the Paiutes. They’s pretty peaceful Injuns. War ain’t very high up their list of things to do. In their society there ain’t no glory or honor in fightin’ and killin’. When a Paiute hears a bunch of whites is comin’, they been known to hide their kids in brushpiles or run off in a panic.

  “Shoshone ain’t quite that kind to the white man. I get along with them alright, though. I ain’t never had no problem with the Washos neither. Tell the truth, I ain’t expectin’ much in the way of Injun troubles. This is probably gonna be the largest wagon train most Injuns west of here has ever seen. Injuns ain’t foolish; they ain’t gonna attack nothin’ that they think is gonna beat them back or cause a lot of deaths and injuries. Them that attacked us here at the fort did so out of rage and desperation. It’s Bum Kelley and Red Hand that’s gonna be causin’ us the problems.”

  “My people will be ready to go in two days,” Swift said.

  Preacher stood up. “That’s when we’ll stretch ’em out, then.”

  * * *

  On the morning of the pull-out, Preacher rolled out of his blankets while the stars were still bright overhead. He saddled Hammer and rigged up his light-loaded pack horse—most of his things were in the wagon—and tied the reins to the back of the wagon driven by Jim.

  Richard and Edmond had made their appearance in their new trail gear the day before. Preacher had been wondering about those two, so he was not surprised when they showed up all in buckskin. They’d arranged for one of the Flathead women who’d returned to the fort to make the skins.