Colter's Journey Read online

  “It was after Pierre’s Hole,” Reno said at last, thinking and before it all ended.

  “On the Green,” Bridger said. “Or near it.” A touch of melancholy could be heard in his ragged voice. Likely, he was thinking similar thoughts to those in Reno’s memories.

  “Most of ’em were,” Reno said. “I’m thinking near Fort Bonneville.”

  Bridger shook off the doldrums and depression of years gone by, and grinned. “Where or when it was don’t matter none. What matters, by grab, as that we remember it.” He swallowed bourbon and passed the jug to Reno, who did the same.

  He was right, Bridger was. And no one was likely to forget that time on or near the Green River, maybe back in ’35.

  That blowhard Joseph Chouinard, “The Great Bully of the Mountains,” had been bragging and fighting, and whupping the tar and feathers out of most anyone who dared contradict him or argue with him. He had beaten up two of his own, or maybe three, leaving those French-Canadians bloodied and broken. And then, one afternoon, he decided to pick fights with any Americans, if they had the sand to stand up to a bear of a man like him.

  “I shall take a switch,” the Frenchie had bragged, “and switch them I shall, for Americans are nothing more than mewling school boys.”

  And who should come to the fire but a little rooster, a thin, wiry cuss who looked like a dwarf when he stood next to the big bully.

  “Shut your trap,” the rooster crowed, “or I will rip out your guts.”

  That was the challenge, and Joseph Chouinard accepted. Immediately, he rose and returned to his lodge. Kit Carson, that cocky little bantam, did the same.

  It was on the Green River. Reno remembered. He knew the month—August—and the year—1835. He pictured everything perfectly, the open field enclosed by the lodges the traders and trappers and Indians had set up. Bets were being made as everyone gathered around to watch the fight.

  Chouinard returned first, mounted on his big stallion, armed with his Hawken rifle. He studied the field, and laughed. “Lâche. The Américain, he has run back to find his mère, no? Ha! I would—” He swallowed his words, for there at the opposite end of the field rode the little bantam fighting cock, Kit Carson, on a wiry skewbald of an Indian pony.

  Carson had been in such a hurry that he hadn’t even bothered saddling his mount. He rode bareback and carried a big horse pistol in his right hand. His left held the hackamore.

  The bully let loose with a curse and kicked his mount. Carson did the same. As they galloped toward each other, some Indian squaw began singing a death song. More bets were made, and then both riders pulled hard on their hackamores, and their horses slid to a stop. The mounts were so close, their heads actually touched.

  Carson’s voice carried across the open field. “Are you the French dog that aims to shoot me?”

  “No!” Chouinard yelled, already lifting his rifle.

  Carson brought his horse pistol up.

  Two shots roared as one, and both riders disappeared in a cloud of white smoke. You could see the lower halves of the horses, feet dancing on the ground, and then a body slammed on one side. It was the body of the bully.

  The smoke cleared.

  Carson weaved in the saddle but did not fall, and slowly he tugged on the hackamore, neck-reining the pinto gelding into a turn. He trotted back toward his lodge, holding the smoking horse pistol in his right hand.

  It had been a pretty good duel. Something to be talked about, to be embellished, over the coming years. Taos Lightning, other scraps, and other long drunks had fogged the memories of Jed Reno and Jim Bridger.

  Both men agreed that Carson had fired first, which had saved the little trapper’s life. His ball blasted through the bully’s right hand. Bridger said it blew his whole hand off, but Reno thought it only took off a thumb, and maybe the top of the trigger finger.

  “No,” Bridger said. “The ball went straight through the arm and came out near the elbow.”

  The two did agree Chouinard had managed a shot, but since Carson’s bullet struck first, it had spoiled the bully’s aim. Otherwise, Kit Carson would have been dead and the bully would have won the duel. Instead of drilling the bantam cock straight in the heart, the French-Canadian’s ball had carved out a good chunk of flesh along Carson’s neck. And the powder burns had scorched Carson’s eyes and singed his hair.

  As Chouinard lay writhing on the ground, his horse wandering away, Carson dismounted, and still furious and full of fight, found another pistol. That’s what Reno remembered.

  Bridger disagreed. “Carson fetched his own rifle, a. 50-caliber beauty.”

  Reno conceded that Bridger was probably right because not too many mountain men carried more than one horse pistol.

  Either way, Carson returned to the field bound and determined to finish off the “Great Bully of the Mountains.”

  The two men on the trading post porch stared at one another, remembering. They drank more bourbon, and they smoked awhile for Jed Reno had put some tobacco in his own pipe, lighting it with the match Bridger had left on the table near the bowl that held the mule hair and the long bone needle.

  “Did Carson kill the bully?” Bridger finally asked.

  Reno blew a stream of blue smoke toward the beautiful roof over the porch of dirt. “That was a long time ago, Jim.” What has it been? Seven years? Eight?

  “He wanted to,” Bridger said. “That much I recollects. Maybe that’s when Broken Hand Fitzpatrick stopped him. Could be how come I got a mite confused over who was in the fight.”

  “Could be.” Reno found the jug of bourbon and looked around. The last of the Conestogas was a quarter mile to the west. “Was Chouinard the one we had to chop his arm off when it took to festering?”

  Bridger’s head shook. “That was Thunder Bay Chadron. On the Pope Agie.”

  That was right, Reno remembered. “Thunder Bay. Another French-Canadian.”

  “Got his fingers took off in a trap. The gangrene set in. Jim Beckwourth cut off the arm with his hatchet.” Bridger used the pipe stem to show where the blade had fallen.

  “Jim Beckwourth,” Reno said. Another name, another memory. “He still living with the Crows?”

  “Was a chief or somethin’.” Bridger sighed. “Nah. He taken off before ’40, got civilized, took to tradin’. Last I heard tale, he’d set up shop at Fort Vasquez fer Bent and Saint Vrain and that lot of hoss thieves.”

  “Country ain’t the same no more, Jim,” Reno said. “People ain’t the same.”

  “Peoples is stupid,” Bridger lamented.

  Reno figured they were both drunk enough, so he set his pipe on the table, belched, and asked, “So iffen a body had a mind to hunt down Louis Jackatars, gut him like a fish, and lift his topknot, where mighten he look first?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Tim Colter woke up with a start. He didn’t remember falling asleep. In fact, standing in the freezing water, he didn’t understand how he could have fallen asleep. His teeth chattered so relentlessly, he feared they might shatter. His waterlogged legs felt numb. He blinked and blinked, and heard the beavers snarling at him. He could see them glaring at him, telling him it was time to leave their home.

  He sucked in a deep breath. It was morning. He could see the beavers and the few rays of sunlight that managed to sneak through the wooden dam the animals had constructed. He also smelled something besides the musky odor of the wild animals whose home he had invaded. His stomach began to growl and his mouth watered.

  Someone had lit a fire and was cooking breakfast.

  “Mama . . .” he whispered, and made his way out of the beaver dam.

  Maybe it had been a dream. Yet he had spent the night all alone standing inside a beaver dam, wet, cold, and crying. Sleepwalk? Had he? He wasn’t sure. He did remember Old Man Peevy back in Danville. Everybody said the drunkard would roll out of his bed maybe once a month in the middle of the night, walk in his nightshirt all the way to the Grove Furnace. If you stopped him, he would talk to you a
s though he were wide awake and it was two in the afternoon, instead of three in the morning. Sometimes, he would even say that he was sleepwalking. Other times, maybe the night watchman at the furnace would tell him that it was a holiday, or that Mr. Peevy had the day off, or even that he was sleepwalking and needed to go to bed. Tim had always wanted to see Old Man Peevy sleepwalking . . . or anybody sleepwalking, for that matter. He thought it would be a funny thing to see.

  Tim shook his head.

  Sleepwalking. Yeah. That’s what I must have done. Me and Old Man Peevy.

  He heard the bubbling of the water as he sloshed through it, felt his shoes on the stones in the creek’s bed as he came out of the water, breathing in fresh morning air that did not reek of animals, beaver scat, or wood felled by the sharp teeth of animals and stacked in a creek. The sun felt good, and his face warmed by the touch of daylight. Even though filtered by the trees, it also blinded him. He smelled the salt pork sizzling in a skillet.

  “Ma!” he yelled. “Ma! It’s me.”

  His eyes opened, shut tightly, opened again. He was surprised that he could still stand on his own feet. He blinked, and looked at his fingers, the skin shriveled up like an old prune he had been in that awful water so long.

  “Pa!” he called out. He found the smoke, white and small and snaking its way through the trees. “Margaret! Nancy!” Another name came to him. He wet his lips with his tongue. “Patricia!”

  Water pooled at his feet, and then he saw the shadow rise in front of the smoke. His heart pounded. He half expected to see his father striding toward him, scolding him for making his ma worry herself sick, that this territory was no place to play hide-and-seek.

  The shadow moved toward him, slowly coming into focus. His heart stopped. His breath held. He shook with fright and the awful memories of what he had witnessed, what he had run from yesterday.

  He was not sleepwalking. He had not dreamed anything.

  The man in greasy buckskins standing before him was not his father.

  That man sprayed tobacco juice on a sapling, wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand, and said with a wry chuckle, “I told the breed that ye was hidin’ in that beaver dam.”

  Tim Colter heard himself say, “Huh?”

  “The breed, he says, ‘Nah. That squirt ain’t Colter.’ He says—”

  “I am Colter.”

  Again, Tim heard his own voice.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “What did ye say?”

  Tim swallowed. He shivered. “Where’s my ma?” he asked, trying to hide the fright in his voice. Trying, but knowing he had failed. “My pa?”

  The bearded man grinned again. His teeth were blacker than his hair, which was braided, Indian fashion, and hung well past his shoulders. He wore buckskins and moccasins. A hatchet hung in the belt around his waist, along with a big flintlock pistol. Loop earrings of shiny brass and tarnished silver, hung in his left ear, and his hat was the head and tail of some wild animal Tim did not recognize. Red, yellow, and black markings were on his face not covered by the thick black beard. War paint of some kind. Vermillion. Whatever else Indians used.

  Memories so horrible almost knocked Tim to his knees. He could hear his mother screaming again, and his sister, and those horrible yells of the Indians as they swarmed. His mother’s shouts echoed. He put his pruny hands to his ears, hoping to block out her shouts. He didn’t want to hear them, but they were in his head. Forever.

  Run, Tim! Run!

  Again, he saw the tomahawk slam into Ma’s head.

  The buckskin man with braids stepped closer, and Tim lowered his hands.

  “Where’s my pa?” he asked timidly.

  The man grinned his black teeth. “Ye’ll see ’im soon, boy. And yer ma, too.” With that, he drew a knife that had been sheathed behind his back. “Real soon.”

  Tim blinked. He still wasn’t sure it wasn’t some horrible nightmare. Indians had attacked the wagons. Indians. But this man . . . he was dressed like an Indian with the war paint on his face and his hair hanging in greasy braids. Yet . . .

  “You’re white,” Tim said.

  “Aye. And yer dead.”

  With a scream, Tim turned and ran. Well, he tried to run, but the black-braided white man moved like a deer, and before Tim had covered five strides, he felt the breath leave his lungs, and he fell into the creek. He came out of the water, spitting and gasping for breath. Water cascaded off his face, and he saw the mountain man straddling him, laughing, while holding the knife in his left hand.

  Tim tried to brace himself for the blade, wondering if the man would slice his throat or stab him in the heart. Maybe he would gut him like a fish. Whatever, Tim knew he was about to die. He wanted to pray. He wanted to close his eyes so he would not see the death coming. Yet his eyes felt frozen in fear. They would not even blink.

  “Knife’d be too easy for a sister like ye, boy.” The man tossed the knife to the bank. “Ye be as wet as a trout.” He laughed. “Let’s see if ye can swim.”

  The man leaned forward, planting both hands on Tim’s shoulders, and shoved him into the water. Tim tried to suck in as much breath as he could. His head banged against the stones lining the bed. His lungs screamed for air. His eyes were closed.

  The water muffled his hearing, but he could make out the man’s laughter. Playing. Toying with Tim. Killing him slowly. Tim’s fingers flexed in the water. He tried to bring himself up, but the man was too strong. He had maybe a good foot and more than a hundred pounds on Tim, and he was a man. Tim knew he was only a boy. In a moment, he would be a dead boy.

  Just when Tim thought his lungs would explode, that he would have to open his mouth and nose and drown, he felt himself jerked out of the water. His head hurt. His lungs burned as he sucked in fresh air while water poured off his face, his head, his shoulders, and his arms. He coughed and gagged.

  The man laughed. “Not so fast. Not so fast. I had to spend all night out here, waitin’ fer ye. I wants ye to die real slow. Then I’ll cut off yer head and show it to the breed.”

  “But—”

  Tim felt the wind rush, and felt himself being pushed back down toward the stream. Once again, he felt the cold water—though it did not feel quite as frigid—and his head hit the creek bed so hard he opened his mouth and swallowed a mouthful of the dirty water before his instincts took over, closing the airways and stopping himself from drowning. His hands groped. His brain worked. He heard the man’s evil laughter, heard him say, “Die, boy, but die slow. Slowly. So ye shall remember me and yer death when yer dancin’ in the fires below.”

  He almost opened his mouth and lungs, just to spoil his killer’s fun. He could drown himself. End the misery. See his mother. His father. Maybe even Patricia Scott.

  A second before he opened his mouth to end it all, something took hold of him. Something made him stop. A voice inside his head cried No!

  It was the voice of Patricia Scott. Something told him that she wasn’t dead, but she was in desperate trouble. She needed him. She needed him to save her from a fate ten thousand times worse than death. So did his two sisters.

  His hands worked. So did his brain. He would not die. Not there. Not at the hands of the big piece of vermin.

  Again, the mountain man jerked Tim out of the water, laughing.

  “How’s it feel, boy?” His breath reeked. “Ye ready now, kid? Ye ready to die?”

  Tim’s eyes opened. He saw the man’s face. As he breathed in fresh air, Tim brought his right hand up as fast, as hard, as he could swing it.

  From the corner of his eye, the man spotted the movement, and his expression changed. He turned and cursed.

  Holding a stone, the largest one Tim could find, smoothed by the fast-flowing water in the creeks for who knew how many years, his right hand smashed the corner of the man’s head.

  Tim didn’t realize he had that much strength in him. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe the braided man with the black teeth just had not expected it, or maybe the stone was harder t
han even Tim had imagined. He heard the crunch, and the man’s grunt, and felt himself falling back into the creek. But he was not being pushed. He was falling on his own, and the man with the beard and the Indian paint and the sinister laugh was falling to his side.

  Tim splashed in the water and rolled over. He didn’t figure he had hit the man hard enough to kill him, and hearing the man’s roars of curses, he knew he hadn’t even knocked out that murdering cur.

  Coming up out of the water, Tim tried to stand, but his shoes slipped on the wet stones, and he went down again, stopping himself with his hands. He pushed himself up and glanced at the killer. Fear paralyzed him.

  Blood gushing from a gaping slice in his forehead, the man pulled the big horse pistol and roared, “Die! Die, pig!”

  Tim saw the hammer fall. He saw the flash in the pan, but it wasn’t much of a flash. It fizzed, and that was all. Likely, water had fouled the powder. Again, the man cursed and threw away the useless weapon. He turned, searching for the knife he had tossed aside when he’d decided to drown Tim.

  The killer found the knife and lunged, but Tim was no longer there. The man fell into the water, came up cursing again, slicing wildly with the lethal blade.

  Tim was running. Running for his life.

  He reached the woods. Briars and brambles slapped at his face, ripped his soaked sleeves. He ran. Ran to live. Ran to somehow find Patricia and his sisters and save them. Ran to save his own hide.

  The man with the knife was right behind him.

  CHAPTER 7

  Something told Tim not to run into the clearing. Stick to the woods. In the open, the man would run him down and use that knife to send him to meet his Maker. Yet the man chasing him had lived his life in the woods, trapping, killing, hunting. Tim was a kid from Danville, Pennsylvania. In the open, rolling hills or in the little thicket, he had no chance.

  Yet he had to try. He lowered his shoulder, leaned forward, and ran as hard and as fast as he could, using his arms to shield his face from the low branches and brambles.

  Tim’s mind worked. Worked better than it had at the subscription school in Danville, or when his mother had taught him ciphering and helped him with his reading and writing on the long journey from Pennsylvania to the Oregon Country. Even as he ran to stay alive, his brain worked.