by Terry Grosz
That vengeance turned to fury as they tracked the Indians to where they had left their dead high up on burial scaffolds in a grove of cottonwoods. The young men pulled down all the scaffolds and scalped and mutilated the bodies. The remains were left for the meat eaters so that, according to Indian culture and tradition, the dead would wander forever outside the Happy Hunting Grounds, looking for their missing body parts.
Then, with heavy hearts filled with a murderous hatred for those still alive who were responsible for the destruction of their lives and their family, they turned their horses away from the old homesite. Now they reached out into the frontier that was to be their new home. Little did they realize that the Curse of the Spanish Gold had also found a new home.
Chapter Five
The Return to Fort Bridger is Followed By a Deadly Surprise
Reining up in front of Fort Bridger, the boys sat for a moment with their heavily loaded pack string and thought back to the happier time of their first visit. Then, without further delay, they spurred their horses into the inner compound. Hailing Jim Bridger from among a group of fur buyers with a wave, the boys dismounted and stood quietly waiting for him.
After greetings and a firm handshake all around, Martin said, “A raiding party of Lakota killed our parents and burned their cabins a few days back.”
Surprised and stunned over the news and the loss of his friends, Jim took a step back and just shook his head, saying, “That can’t be. Them two was as tough as a she-grizzly with cubs. There was no way in hell they could be taken face to face. What in damn nation happened?”
“As near as we could tell, they was ambushed, probably at first light. There were about thirty of them devils, but they paid heavily for attacking our moms and dads if the number of burial scaffolds we found says anything,” Jacob said coldly.
“And those Indians we found in their burial scaffolds will never enter the Happy Hunting Grounds now that we are done with them,” Martin uttered just as coldly.
Bridger, still stunned by the news, looked long and hard at the young men and then said, “What are your plans? Do we need to get up a group of trackers and run them murderous savages to ground so this doesn’t happen again?”
“No,” Martin quietly replied, with Jacob nodding in agreement. “We will kill our own snakes in due time. But right now we have fresh and dried meat to sell. With that and any remaining credit our folks had with you, we need to resupply.”
“Then we will begin tracking those responsible for killing our parents and kill every one of them,” Martin said quietly and in a deadly flat tone.
“We sure can use the meat, that’s for certain,” replied Bridger, looking over the heavily laden pack string. “Them folks in the wagon trains are always fresh-meat hungry, it seems. Move your pack string over to that shed, and I’ll have my men unload it. Then we can move into the store and see to it that you have what you need to pursue them killin’ sons’a bitches.” His lips tightened and his eyes narrowed. After a moment’s thought, he said, “You sure you young’uns don’t need some help? It sounds like there is still a passel of them killers on the loose, and they sure as hell will be watching their backsides for anyone cold- trackin’ ’em.”
“I thank you, Jim, but we will take care of them just as sure as if Leo and Jeremiah were still alive and needing to settle up the score. They be dead men, sure as shootin’,” said Jacob with a look in his eye that was very clear in its meaning.
Jim recognized that look, having borne the same one himself many times over the years when he was in a killing mood. He nodded and said, “Let’s go to the post. I’m sure I have something there all three of us could use about now, and then we can settle up on your folks’ credit and what you brought in today.” Jim and the two young men walked over to the trading post. Inside, the three of them went to the counter, and Jim brought out his books.
“Looks like your folks had $101.23 and a half cent on the books,” mumbled Bridger as he struggled ciphering over the figures in the book (Jim Bridger was basically illiterate).
About then three of Jim’s employees entered the store and told him the fresh meat, hides, and dried meat would bring about $60 on the market.
“If that be the case, you boys have $161.23 and a half cent’s worth of credit coming. You can have anything in this here store you see. But if I was you, I’d get several kegs of powder, four horse pistols, some pig lead, and bullet molds for the pistols and Hawkens. Them rifles eat a lot of lead. Then I’d add a couple Green River knives, several tins of caps for those smoke sticks of yours, some horse and mule shoes with nails, and a couple of square axes.” Jim offered these suggestions based on his frontier experiences and knowledge of what faced the boys in the days ahead. He also offered his advice to the boys because he know that was what Leo and Jeremiah would expect from a close friend under the circumstances.
“That be good for a starter,” Martin agreed. “But we’ll need some staples as well because we may not be back for a spell.”
With that, out came the jug from under the counter. After each took a long pull, they wiped their mouths on their sleeves, and the ordering began. Jacob and Martin ordered a host of supplies designed to hold them for a long time on the trail. They also ordered several bags of grain because they intended to push their mounts hard in order to overcome the lead the killers now had on them. They realized grain-fed horses could go faster and farther than those subsisting only on tough mountain grasses.
When finished, they discovered they had a problem. The cost of the supplies they had ordered far exceeded their credit. They put their heads together, and after a short, quiet discussion, Jacob left the trading post. He returned to the counter carrying two gold ingots, which he laid down on the counter top, saying, “That ought’a just about cover what we owe you for the rest of them goods.”
Bridger nearly fell out of his moccasins, as did the three employees looking on when the glitter of the ingots greeted their eyes. Even in the soft light of the trading post’s interior, the ingots seemed to blaze with a devilish shine.
“Holy cow! Where in God’s good name did those come from?” Jim exclaimed as he lifted and fingered the heavy ingots. “I would say from the markings on the bars, they be Spanish gold,” he proclaimed in amazement before the boys could respond to his first question.
“According to family history, our real dads got them in trade from the Northern Utes many years ago at a rendezvous,” Jacob explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
“We figured since we still owed you some money for the goods we needed, it was time to use the gold. ’Sides, it makes our load a shade lighter,” Martin added.
“I would have offered you two credit for those goods if necessary. That’s the least I could do for the kin of two very dear friends,” Jim said.
“No, that wouldn’t do. We have the means to square with you, and that is what our family would have wanted,” said Jacob with a finality that told Jim the deal had been struck.
None of them foresaw the impact those glittering gold bars would have on those observing the transaction. As well as the impact on the boys down the trail as the curse continued to work its fatal and magical ways...
Chapter Six
The Boys Become Men
Jacob and Martin remembered that when they had come home from the plains to the southeast, they had not crossed any tracks from a large number of horses and mules such as the number that now made up the killers’ stock train. Keeping that in mind, the boys retraced their earlier route. Knowing the main bands of Lakota were on the plains for the most part, making meat, they figured the killers in the war party would soon leave the mountains to the south, hide their tracks, and then head east toward their villages on the prairies. The boys also figured they could cut several days’ lead from the killers and maybe intercept them, crossing their old trail before they got among their tribal members, if they took an angled route to try to find their trail. On the second day of skirting the base of the mountai
n ranges to the south of Fort Bridger, they cut across the tracks of a large pack string of loaded horses and mules. Their plan had paid off, and now they were setting out on the trail of tracks that from all indications were less than a day old.
After tying their horses and mules close to their sleeping area, the boys built a small fire and slowly cooked some fresh venison from a deer that Jacob had killed earlier with his bow and arrow to avoid alerting their quarry. As near as the boys could figure, they were about four hours behind the killers of their parents. The trick of bringing grain for their horses and mules to keep them fresh but fast had borne fruit of the deadliest kind, if those being pursued had only known.
Slipping into their sleeping furs, the boys began thinking through what they would do once they ran the killers to ground. Even though the war party far outnumbered the two of them, Leo and Jeremiah’s frontier survival teachings had been well learned. Both boys possessed the deadly killing instincts of their biological dads, and to them, this venture was nothing more than the extermination of a nest of nasty varmints that needed to be destroyed. Those vengeful thoughts continued until they slipped into a fitful sleep.
Jacob woke from his restless sleep with a start but without any discernible movement other than opening his eyelids. Something was wrong, and he quickly became aware that someone was in their camp. Reaching slowly across his bedding in the dark, he put his hand over his sleeping brother’s mouth as he closed his other hand over the comforting butt of his close-at-hand pistol. Martin, ever woods-wise, awoke with no start or other movement. He too was instantly ready to face the danger his brother’s hand had told him was near. By training, both boys slowly laid their pistols across their chests on the sleeping furs and quietly cocked the hammers against the sound-dampening fur. Nothing moved or made a sound as Jacob frantically used his senses to try to locate the intruders.
All of a sudden, there they were! Two darkened forms rose up from the ground at the very feet of the two boys’ sleeping furs until they were standing over them. Pow—pow went Jacob’s and Martin’s pistols in bright flashes, almost at the same moment. The muzzle flashes blinded the two boys’ night vision as they quickly rolled off to either side from under their sleeping furs. Quickly discarding their fired pistols, they grabbed and cocked their second ones, pulled from their sashes in one practiced motion. The quick move to one side from their beds after firing a weapon was a lesson the boys had learned from their adoptive fathers, who in turn had learned it as young adopted men from the boys’ biological fathers.
Boom—boom went two rifle flashes from the dark as the unseen assailants sent hot lead slugs and flame from their rifle muzzles into the sleeping furs, which just seconds before had been occupied. In fact, the shooters were so close that shooting into the furs set them afire.
Lunging toward where he figured his shooter was standing, based on the rifle’s flash, Jacob fired his pistol point-blank in that direction. The flash from his pistol illuminated a man standing just feet away, hurriedly reloading his rifle. In an instant Jacob was on him, repeatedly plunging his knife deeply into the man’s vitals. Warm blood spewed over his hand and arm as his blade found the man’s heart, and the pungent stink of urine from the dying man soon also scented the cool night air. Throwing the dying man to the ground, Jacob turned and desperately tried to find his brother in the dark now that the illumination from the small blaze in his sleeping furs had gone out. Quickly moving to the sounds of a nearby struggle, he grabbed his Hawken from his bedside and discovered a pile of men moving violently on the ground by his feet. Grabbing the man on top of the pile and throwing him off to one side, he screamed out his brother’s name.
“Here,” shouted Martin as he jumped up from under the bloody body of another man he had just gutted with his knife.
Whirling, Jacob took aim from the hip at the shape of the man he had tossed off the heap, who was now trying to untangle himself from some bushes. Boom went the Hawken, and the sound was quickly followed by a groan as the heavy lead slug found its mark. Jumping onto the moving shape, Jacob soon discovered that the man had been gut-shot and was no longer a danger.
Grabbing the man’s rifle so it could not be used against them, Jacob hurriedly tossed some dry pine needles on the coals of their fire, and soon a flaring light softly flooded the bloody scene. Martin was covered with blood, but the worried Jacob soon discovered that it was only the blood of the man whom he had disemboweled.
At the end of Jacob’s and Martin’s sleeping furs lay the two men killed by the boys’ pistols, their bodies still twitching occasionally. Off to one side of Martin’s bed lay another man, still quivering from the great loss of blood that occurs when one is knifed deeply in the blood-vessel-rich guts. The man Jacob had knifed after missing him with his second pistol shot was obviously now trapping in the Happy Hunting grounds.
Now that things had quieted down, Jacob and Martin began examining the five men they had just killed or mortally wounded. They were surprised to discover that three of them were the men who had watched them pay Jim Bridger with the gold ingots! Martin reached over and grabbed the dying man whom Jacob had shot with his Hawken. The man screamed in pain at being so roughly handled but was alive enough under questioning to tell the boys that the five of them had followed them and planned to kill them for the rest of their gold.
Jacob cleanly cut his throat to the spine after that information was revealed, putting him out of his misery.
Neither of the boys, who were fast becoming men, slept much during the rest of the night, especially after a grizzly bear, smelling the blood, came into camp and dragged away one of the dead men. Within moments, he commenced loudly tearing apart the body and eating it just a few yards away.
The next morning found the boys slowed by the addition of the five men’s horses and pack mules. Those animals were so jaded that they made travel difficult, but still they pushed on after their family’s killers.
From their place of observation the next evening, they could see several small lights from campfires blinking out on the prairie in a grove of cottonwoods. Tying their animals in a distant plum thicket, the boys prepared for the battle to come. Again, they gave no thought to the odds against them, just the killing that was soon to follow.
Rigging elk-leather slings, each boy placed two of the recently killed trappers’ primed and ready-to-fire rifles over their shoulders. Then, with a Hawken in each hand, they started their sneak down into the Indian camp. After an hour of deliberate stalking and slow sneaking, they were in position to overlook the Indians’ camp from a distance of a few yards. There were eleven sleeping Indians and one nodding off and on as he guarded the large stolen mule and horse herd. The one on guard soon died quickly and quietly at the hands of Jacob and his sharp knife. After another half hour of careful sneaking, the boys were within feet of the eleven sleeping men. Carefully laying down their extra rifles after cocking them against the quiet of their buckskin shirts, the boys looked at one another. The odds were great, but it would take a lot to overcome what they felt in their hearts, and they could almost believe that the odds were in their favor. The Indians’ two campfires burned brightly, clearly illuminating those sleeping on the ground. That would make the killing a lot easier.
The brothers were excellent shooters, especially when dedicated to the moment in pulling the trigger. Jacob whistled loudly, and when the sleeping Indians jumped to their feet in confused alarm, the first two up took rifle slugs in their guts. Then all hell broke loose! As the Indians struggled to wake up, grab their weapons, and defend themselves all at once in the face of danger, one man after another was smashed with a heavy rifle slug from their assailants until eight of them lay on Mother Earth for the last time. The remaining three tried to fight off their assailants with their rifles, but two died from the enraged Jacob’s and Martin’s pistol shots at close range. When the remaining Indian tried to fire his flintlock, it misfired. Standing there defenseless, he began singing his death song, only to hav
e it cut short by a pistol shot from two feet away from a wild-eyed Martin.
The boys scalped and mutilated all the dead Indians so they could never enter the Happy Hunting Grounds. The two boys, if hardened hearts were any kind of measure, were fast becoming men of the frontier. They left the Indians’ bodies where they had fallen for the scavengers and other Indians to discover. Come daylight, Jacob and Martin were pushing a large and fully loaded horse and mule pack string back to where they had left their own animals.
“Jim, come here. You won’t believe your eyes,” said a skinner in Jim Bridger’s employ.
Jim ran up to the Fort Bridger lookout and stared in disbelief at the sight below: a pack string numbering sixty-nine horses and mules! Leading the herd was Jacob with his own pack string and a bell mule. Bringing up the rear was a very dusty Martin, covered in dried blood.
“Holy catfish,” said Jim as he scrambled down from the fort’s walls and ran out to greet the two young men. He thought, Them boys sure do have a passel of their dads in them!
“Where in thunder did you lads get such a string of horse and mule flesh?” he asked, out of breath in the emotion and excitement of the moment.
“Well, two horses and six mules be our’n. Those sixteen horses and mules on the outside of the herd belonged to our folks. The rest belonged to those killin’, thievin’ Indians and five of your men from the fort,” replied Jacob as Martin rode up beside his brother.
“So that’s where those varmints went,” Bridger uttered disgustedly. “One day they was here, and the next, after you two left, they was gone along with two of my best horses and a belly-load of stolen supplies. You say them varmints be dead?”
“Sure did,” replied Jacob with a wry grin.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of polecats. They was nothing but trouble when they was here with their drinking, whoring around, and all,” continued Jim. He disgustedly spat a long stream of tobacco juice onto the dusty ground at his feet.
