Last Mountain Man

by Johnstone, William W.

  Emmett shook his head. “Don’t rightly know. Looks to me like it don’t really belong to nobody. Way I look at it — and most other white folks — a man’s gotta do something with the land to make it his. The Indians ain’t been doing that. So I’m told. They just roam it, hunt it, fish, and the like.”

  “But how long have they been doing that. Pa?”

  The man sighed. He looked at his son. “I ’spect forever, boy.”

  They rode westward, edging north. Several weeks had passed since they rode from the land of Kirby’s birth, and already that place was fading from his mind. He had never been happy there, so he made no real attempt to halt the fading of the images.

  Kirby did not know how much his Pa had gotten for the land and the equipment and the mules, but he knew he had gotten it in gold — and not much gold. His Pa carried the gold in a small leather pouch inside his shirt, secured around his neck with a piece of rawhide.

  The elder Kirby was heavily armed: a Sharps .52 caliber rifle in a saddle boot, two Remington army revolvers in holsters around his waist, two more pistols in saddle holsters, left and right of the horn. And he carried a gambler’s gun behind his belt buckle: a .44 caliber, two-shot derringer. His knife was a wicked-looking, razor-sharp Arkansas Toothpick in a leather sheath on his left side.

  Kirby never asked why his father was so heavily armed. But he did ask, “How come them holsters around your waist ain’t got no flaps on them, Pa? How come you cut them off that way?”

  “So I can get the pistols out faster, son. This leather thong run through the front loops over the hammer to hold the pistol.”

  “Is gettin’ a gun out fast important, Pa?” He knew it was from reading dime novels. But he just could not envision his father as a gunfighter.

  “Sometimes, boy. But more important is hittin’ what you’re aimin’ at.”

  “Think I’ll do mine thataway.”

  “Your choice,” the father replied.

  Kirby knew, from hearing talk after Appomattox, the Gray was supposed to turn in their weapons. But he had a hunch that his father, hearing of the surrender, had just wheeled around and took the long way back to Missouri, his weapons with him, and the devil with surrender terms.

  His dad coughed and asked, “How’d you get that Navy Colt, son?”

  “Bunch of Jayhawkers came ridin’ through one night, headin’ back to Kansas like the devil was chasin’ them. Turned out that was just about right. ’bout a half hour later, Bloody Bill Anderson and his boys came ridin’ up. They stopped to rest and water their horses. There was this young feller with them. Couldn’t have been no more than a year or so older than me. He seen me and Ma there alone, and all I had was this old rifle.” He patted the worn stock of an old flint and percussion Plains’ rifle in a saddle boot. “So he give me this Navy gun and an extra cylinder. Seemed like a right nice thing for him to do. He was nice, soft-spoken, too.”

  “It was a nice thing to do. You seen him since?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You thank him proper?”

  “Yes, sir. Gave him a bit of food in a sack.”

  “Neighborly. He tell you his name?”

  “Yes, sir. James. Jesse James. His brother Frank was with the bunch, too. Some older than Jesse.”

  “Don’t recall hearin’ that name before.”

  “Jesse blinked his eyes a lot.”

  “Is that right? Well, you ’member the name, son; might run into him again some day. Good man like that’s hard to find.”

  As the days rolled past, the way ever westward, father and son learned more of the wild country into which they rode, ever alert for trouble, and they learned more of each other, becoming reacquainted.

  They saw herds of buffalo that held them spellbound, the size and number and royal bearing of the magnificent animals awe-inspiring. Even though the animals themselves were stupid. And many times, as they rode, father and son came upon the bones of what appeared to be thousands of the animals, callously slaughtered for their hide, hump, and tongue, the rest left to rot and stink under the summer sun.

  “Them is the Indians’ main food supply,” Emmett told his son. “And another reason why the savages is mad at the whites. I got to side with the savages ’bout this.”

  As they skirted the rotten bone yard, coyotes and a few wolves feasted on the tons of meat left behind. Kirby said, “This don’t seem right to me.”

  “Ain’t!” Emmett said, his jaw tight with anger. “Man shouldn’t never take no more than he hisself can use. This is just pure ol’ waste. Stupid.”

  “And the Indians had nothing to do with this?”

  “Hell, no! Look at them shod pony tracks. Indians don’t shoe their ponies and drive wagons that left them tracks over there. The white man did this.”

  They passed the slaughter, both silent for a time. Finally the boy said, “Maybe the Indians have a point about the white man comin’ here.”

  His father spat a brown stream of tobacco juice from the ever present chew tucked in his cheek. “Reckon they do, boy. Not much is ever just black and white … always a middle ground that needs lookin’ at.”

  “Like the War between the States, Pa?”

  “Yeah. Right and wrong on both sides there, too.”

  “Was you a hero. Pa?”

  “We all was. Ever’ man that fought on either side. It was a hell of a war.”

  “Was you an officer?”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Why was everybody a hero, Pa?”

  “’cause they’ll never be — I pray God — another war like that one, boy. Don’t know the final count of dead, but it was terrible, I can tell you that.”

  They plodded on for another mile before the father again spoke. “I seen men layin’ side by side, some on stretchers, some on blankets, some just layin’ on the cold ground — all of them wounded, lot of them dyin’. The line was five or six deep and it stretched for more’n three miles along the railroad track. You just can’t imagine that, boy … not until you see it with your own eyes. Maybe one doctor for ever’ five hundred men. No medicine, no food, no nothing. Men cryin’ out for just the touch of a woman’s hand before they died. Toward the end of the war there wasn’t even no hope. We knew we was beat, but still we fought on like crazy men.”

  “Why, Pa?”

  “Ask a hundred men, boy, and they’d give you a hundred different answers. They was some men that fought ’cause they really hated the nigras. Some fought ’cause they was losin’ a way of life that was all they’d ever known. Some didn’t fight at all till they seen the Yankees come through burnin’ and lootin’ and robbin’ and rapin’. And some of them did that, too, boy, don’t never let nobody ever tell you no different.”

  Kirby got a funny feeling in the area just below his belly at the thought of rapin’. He shifted in the saddle.

  “I ain’t sayin’ the Gray didn’t have its share of scallywags and white trash, ’cause we did. But nothing to compare with the Yankees.”

  “Maybe that had something to do with the fact that the Blues had more men, Pa.”

  Emmett looked at his boy, thinking: boy’s got some smarts about him. “Maybe so, son.”

  They rode on, across the seemingly endless plains of tall grass and sudden breaks in the earth, cleverly disguised by nature. A pile of rocks, not arranged by nature, came into view. Kirby pointed them out.

  They pulled up. “That’s what I been lookin’ for,” Emmett said. “That’s a sign tellin’ travelers that this here is the Santa Fe trail. North and west of here’ll be Fort Larned. North of that’ll be the Pawnee Rock.”

  “What’s that, Pa?”

  “A landmark, pilgrim,” the voice came from behind the man and his son.

  Before Kirby could blink, his pa had wheeled his roan and had a pistol in his hand, hammer back. It was the fastest draw Kirby had ever seen — not that he had seen that many. Just the time the town marshal back in Missouri had tried a fast draw and shot himself in the foot.<
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  “Whoa!” the man said. “You some swift, pilgrim.”

  “I ain’t no pilgrim,” Emmett said, low menace in his tone.

  Kirby looked at his father; looked at a very new side of the man.

  “Reckon you ain’t, at that.”

  Kirby had wheeled his bay and now sat his saddle, staring at the dirtiest man he had ever seen. The man was dressed entirely in buckskin, from the moccasins on his feet to his wide-brimmed leather hat. A white, tobacco-stained beard covered his face. His nose was red and his eyes twinkled with mischief. He looked like a skinny, dirty version of Santa Claus. He sat on a funny-spotted pony, two pack animals with him.

  “Where’d you come from?” Emmett asked.

  “Been watchin’ you two pilgrims from that ravine yonder,” he said with a jerk of his head. “Ya’ll don’t know much ’bout travelin’ in Injun country, do you? Best to stay off the ridges. You two been standin’ out like a third titty.”

  He shifted his gaze to Kirby. “What are you starin’ at, boy?”

  The boy leaned forward in his saddle. “Be durned if I rightly know,” he said. And as usual, his reply was an honest one.

  The old man laughed. “You got sand to your bottom, all right.” He looked at Emmett. “He yourn?”

  “My son.”

  “I’ll trade for him,” he said, the old eyes sparkling. “Injuns pay right smart for a strong boy like him.”

  “My son is not for trade, old-timer.”

  “Tell you what. I won’t call you pilgrim, you don’t call me old-timer. Deal?”

  Emmett lowered his pistol, returning it to leather. “Deal.”

  “You pil … folk know where you are?”

  “West of the state of Missouri, east of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “In other words, you lost as a lizard.”

  Emmett sighed, more a painful wheezing. “Back south of us is a tradin’ post and a few cabins some folks begun callin’ Wichita. You heard me say where Fort Larned was.”

  “Maybe you ain’t lost. You two got names?”

  “I’m Emmett, this is my son, Kirby.”

  “Pleasure. I’m called Preacher.”

  Kirby laughed out loud.

  “Don’t scoff, boy. It ain’t nice to scoff at a man’s name. Ifn I wasn’t a gentle-type man, I might let the hairs on my neck get stiff.”

  Kirby grinned. “Preacher can’t be your real name.”

  The old man returned the grin. “Well, no, you right. But I been called that for so long, I nearabouts forgot my Christian name. So, Preacher it’ll be. That or nothin’.”

  “You the one left all them dead buffalo we seen a ways back?” Kirby asked.

  “I might have shot one or two. Maybe so, maybe not.”

  “Seems like a waste to me.”

  “Did me, too.”

  “That mean you ain’t gonna kill no more?”

  “Didn’t say that, now, did I?”

  Emmett waved Kirby still. “We’ll be ridin’ on, now, Preacher. Maybe we’ll see you again.”

  Preacher’s eyes had shifted to the northwest, then narrowed, his lips tightening. “Yep,” he said smiling. “I reckon you will.”

  Emmett wheeled his horse and pointed its nose west-northwest. Kirby reluctantly followed. He would have liked to stay and talk with the old man.

  When they were out of earshot, Kirby said, “Pa, that old man was so dirty he smelted.”

  “Mountain man. He’s a ways from home base, I’m figuring. Tryin’ to get back. Cantankerous old boys. Some of them mean as snakes. I think they get together once a year and bathe.”

  “But you said you soldiered with some mountain men.”

  “Did. But they got out in time. ’Fore the high lonesome got to them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They stay up in the high country for years. Don’t do nothin’ but trap and such. Maybe they won’t see a white man once ever’ two years — except maybe another mountain man. Sometimes when they do meet, they don’t speak. All they’ve got is their hosses and guns and the whistlin’ wind and the silence of the mountains. They’re alone. It does something to them. They get notional … funny-actin’.”

  “You mean they go crazy?”

  “In a way, I’m thinkin’. I don’t know much about them — nobody does, I reckon. But I think maybe they didn’t much like people to begin with. They crave the lonesomeness of space. The mountain men I was with, now, they were some different. They told me ’bout that old man’s kind. They’re brave men, son, don’t never doubt that — probably the bravest men in the world. Got to be to live like they do. And what they’ve done will …” He thought for a moment. “… contribute to this country now that we fought the war and can put the nation back together.”

  “That’s a real pretty speech, Pa.”

  Emmett reddened around the neck.

  “What’s contribute?”

  “Means they done good.”

  Kirby looked behind them. “Pa?”

  “Son.”

  “That old man is following us, and he’s shucked his rifle out of his boot.”

  Two

  Preacher galloped up to the pair, his rifle in his hand. “Don’t get nervous,” he told them. “It ain’t me you got to fear. We fixin’ to get ambushed … shortly. This here country is famous for that.”

  “Ambushed by who?” Emmett asked, not trusting the old man.

  “Kiowa, I think. But they could be Pawnee. My eyes ain’t as sharp as they used to be. I seen one of ’em stick a head up out of a wash over yonder, while I was jawin’ with you. He’s young, or he wouldn’t have done that. But that don’t mean the others with him is young.”

  “How many?”

  “Don’t know. In this country, one’s too many. Do know this: We better light a shuck out of here. If memory serves me correct, right over yonder, over that ridge, they’s a little crick behind a stand of cottonwoods, old buffalo wallow in front of it.” He looked up, stood up in his stirrups, and cocked his shaggy head. “Here they come, boys … rake them cayuses!”

  Before Kirby could ask what a cayuse was, or what good a rake was in an Indian attack, the old man had slapped his bay on the rump and they were galloping off. With the mountain man taking the lead, the three of them rode for the crest of the ridge. The pack horses seemed to sense the urgency, for they followed with no pullback on the ropes. Cresting the ridge, the riders slid down the incline and galloped into the timber, down into the wallow, the whoops and cries of the Indians close behind them.

  The Preacher might well have been past his so-called good years, but the mountain man had leaped off his spotted pony, rifle in hand, and was in position and firing before Emmett or Kirby had dismounted. Preacher, like Emmett, carried a Sharps .52, firing a paper cartridge, deadly up to seven hundred yards, or more.

  Kirby looked up in time to see a brave fly off his pony, a crimson slash on his naked chest. The Indian hit the ground and did not move.

  “Get me that Spencer out of the pack, boy,” Kirby’s father yelled.

  “The what?” Kirby had no idea what a Spencer might be.

  “The rifle. It’s in the pack. A tin box wrapped up with it. Bring both of ’em. Cut the ropes, boy.”

  Slashing the ropes with his long-bladed knife, Kirby grabbed the long, canvas-wrapped rifle and the tin box. He ran to his father’s side. He stood and watched as his father got a buck in the sights of his Sharps, led him on his fast-running pony, then fired. The buck slammed off his pony, bounced off the ground, then leaped to his feet, one arm hanging bloody and broken. The Indian dodged for cover. He didn’t make it. Preacher shot him in the side and lifted him off his feet, dropping him dead.

  Emmett laid the Sharps aside and hurriedly unwrapped the canvas, exposing an ugly weapon, with a potbellied, slab-sided receiver. Emmett glanced up at Preacher, who was grinning at him.

  “What the hell are you grinnin’ about, man?”

  “Just wanted to see what you had
all wrapped up, partner. Figured I had you beat with what’s in my pack.”

  “We’ll see,” Emmett muttered. He pulled out a thin tube from the tin box and inserted it in the butt plate, chambering a round. In the tin box were a dozen or more tubes, each containing seven rounds, .52 caliber. Emmett leveled the rifle, sighted it, and fired all seven rounds in a thunderous barrage of black smoke. The Indians whooped and yelled. Emmett’s firing had not dropped a single brave, but the Indians scattered for cover, disappearing, horses and all, behind a ridge.

  “Scared ’em,” Preacher opined. “They ain’t used to repeaters; all they know is single shots. Let me get something outta my pack. I’ll show you a thing or two.”

  Preacher went to one of his pack animals, untied one of the side packs and let it fall to the ground. He pulled out the most beautiful rifle Kirby had ever seen.

  “Damn!” Emmett softly swore. “The blue-bellies had some of those toward the end of the war. But I never could get my hands on one.”

  Preacher smiled and pulled another Henry repeating rifle from his pack. Unpredictable as mountain men were, he tossed the second Henry to Emmett, along with a sack of cartridges.

  “Now we be friends,” Preacher said. He laughed, exposing tobacco-stained stubs of teeth.

  “I’ll pay you for this,” Emmett said, running his hands over the sleek barrel.

  “Ain’t necessary,” Preacher replied. “I won both of ’em in a contest outside Westport Landing. Kansas City to you. ’Sides, somebody’s got to look out for the two of you. Ya’ll liable to wander ’round out here and get hurt. ’Pears to me don’t neither of you know tit from tat ’bout stayin’ alive in Injun country.”

  “You may be right,” Emmett admitted. He loaded the Henry. “So thank you kindly.”

  Preacher looked at Kirby. “Boy, you heeled — so you gonna get in this fight, or not?”

  “Sir?”

  “Heeled. Means you carryin’ a gun, so that makes you a man. Ain’t you got no rifle ’cept that muzzle loader?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Take your daddy’s Sharps, then. You seen him load it, you know how. Take that tin box of tubes, too. You watch out for our backs. Them Pawnees — and they is Pawnees — likely to come ’crost that crick. You in wild country boy … you may as well get bloodied.”