The First Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “You’re a woman first,” he told her. “And a hell of a woman, at that.”

  She blushed and tried to adjust her bonnet, pushing some blonde hair back under the brim and almost fell off the pony.

  “Hang on, sister,” Preacher told her. “You’re all lucky them Injuns took saddles from the dead pilgrims for their ponies. You’d be plumb uncomfortable if you was ridin’ bareback.”

  “I can just imagine,” Melody muttered.

  “I bet you cain’t, neither. Here come the others. I figured I’d get them movin’.” He looked with approving eyes at the way the men sat their saddles. They could ride. Penelope, on the other hand, was bouncing up and down like a little boat on a great big lake in the middle of a storm. “Grab ahold of that saddle horn, sister,” Preacher said. “And hang on. The damn thing ain’t for tootin’, you know.”

  She gave him a dark look and muttered something under her breath.

  “Must you use profanity?” Edmond said.

  “Will if I want to, and I want to, so hush up and stay in line. And don’t get lost. Which way’s what’s left of the wagon train?”

  “On the Oregon Trail,” Richard said.

  Preacher whoaed up and twisted in the saddle. “Somebody’s been playin’ games with you folks. The Oregon Trail is ’way, ’way south of here. People, you was lost!”

  “As a goose,” Melody said. “I knew that, but nobody would listen to me.”

  Richard and Edmond both looked embarrassed. Richard said, “I suspected our guide didn’t know what he was doing. He drank a lot.”

  “I know lots of guides who drink a lot,” Preacher said. “That ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Where’d you folks outfit and jump off from?”

  “Missouri,” Melody told him. “Our guide told us we would bypass Fort Hall because he knew a better route.”

  “Damn fool,” Preacher muttered. “All right. How far north is the train?”

  “I would say about fifteen miles,” Edmond said. “No more than that, I’m sure.”

  “Probably not that far,” Preacher said. “Injuns wouldn’t travel that distance in these mountains ’fore torturin’ and rapin’. If that’s what they had in mind.”

  “Perhaps you could take us on to Oregon?” Edmond suggested.

  “I’ll take you somewheres,” Preacher said, and pointed his horse’s nose north.

  Night draped the mountains before they could reach the site of the wagon train. Preacher killed a couple of rabbits with a sling and stopped before dark to build a small fire. While the meat was cooking, he said, “We’ll eat, then move on a couple of miles and make camp for the night. It’s gonna be cold, so you folks use your saddle blankets for warmth.”

  “But they smell!” Penelope complained.

  “You will too ’fore you get where you’re goin’,” Preacher told her. “Like a bunch of polecats—but you’ll be alive. So shut up.”

  Preacher let the others eat the rabbits while he chewed on jerky and ate a handful of some berries he’d picked. He was used to lean times. These pilgrims looked like they’d never missed a meal in their lives.

  He carefully put out the fire and moved them north a couple of miles for a cold camp. Melody was the only one who didn’t complain, even though she was just as uncomfortable as the others.

  She’ll do, Preacher thought. She’s tough.

  Their eyes met in the darkness through the dim light of the quarter moon. She blinked first, then laid her head on the saddle. Preacher grinned and rolled up in his blankets.

  Across the small clearing, Edmond had watched the silent exchange through hot eyes, and bristled in anger.

  * * *

  They all saw the buzzards long before they reached the site of the ambush and massacre. Those carrion birds who had not yet feasted on dead flesh soared and circled and wheeled and waited their turn in the sky, while the others staggered around on the ground, too full and heavy to lift off.

  “It ain’t gonna be pretty,” Preacher warned. “I’ve seen it before. When you puke, don’t get none on me. Where are you folks from anyway?”

  “Philadelphia,” Richard said.

  “Shoulda stayed there. This country’s too crowded as it is. Can’t ride for five days without seeing some damn body.”

  “It’s called progress,” Edmond said.

  “It’s a damn nuisance, is what it is,” Preacher retorted.

  “Must you swear constantly?” Melody asked.

  “Yeah, I must. I’m gettin’ in practice for our rendezvous down south. Although it don’t look like I’m gonna make it.”

  “I’ve read about those affairs,” Richard said. “Then you’re a real mountain man.”

  “I am.”

  “What drove you to this horrible existence?” Edmond asked.

  Preacher turned to look at the city man. “Horrible? What’s so horrible about it? I’m as free as an eagle, wild as a grizzly, mean as a wolverine, tough as a cornered wolf, and quick as a puma. I can out drink, out cuss, out fight, out dance, out sing, ride farther and faster than any man, and tell more lies than any ten men. And I’m good-lookin’, too.”

  Melody laughed at his words.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Edmond admonished him.

  “Why?” Preacher asked. “For bein’ what the good Lord intended me to be? You are what you are, I am what I am. It’s just as simple as that.” He reined up and let the horses drink. “This here’s what we call Shine Crick. I know what your guide was up too, now, but he was flat out wrong. He’d been listenin’to lies about a trail through the wilderness just to the west of us. There ain’t no wagon trail through there. You’d have to go north over a hundred miles and then cut west. But even then, that would be a tough pull. Windin’ way. Get caught there in the winter, and you’d die. You people were listenin’ to a fool. What happened to him anyways?”

  “When the savages attacked, he ran away,” Melody said. “I watched him leave.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Jack Harris,” Edmond said. “I did not like him. He was a lot like you.”

  “Jack Harris ain’t nothing like me,” Preacher told him. “Jack’s a back-shooter and a coward. Brags a lot about how brave he is, but when it comes down to the nut-cuttin’, he ain’t nowheres to be found.”

  “He claimed to be a mountain man,” Melody said.

  Preacher snorted. “He’s a hanger-arounder, is what he is. He tell you about the time I whupped him down at Bent’s Fort? No, he wouldn’t mention that. I whupped him to a fare-thee-well, I did. He ain’t liked me to this day.”

  “What was the fight about?” Richard asked. Although the man was in considerable pain, he’d come up in Preacher’s eyes by not complaining about his missing ear and by pulling his weight.

  “He insulted my mother. Now, you can insult me all day long—if you do it in a friendly manner—and I’ll just insult you back. But leave my dear sainted mother out of it. Or get ready to get bloody.”

  The wind shifted and brought a horrible stench with it, wrinkling the noses of the missionaries.

  “That’s ... the wagon train?” Melody asked, getting a little green around the mouth.

  “Yep,” Preacher said. “What’s left of the bodies, that is. Buzzards’ll try for the soft parts first. Belly and kidneys. It ain’t a real pretty sight. I’ve seen yards and yard of guts all strung out like rope. Why, I recollect one time, I come up on this Pawnee village that’d been hit by a band of Injuns that didn’t like ’em very much—nobody likes the Pawnee. And I seen ...” Preacher went into great long gory detail until the sounds of retching stopped him. Penelope and Edmond were off their ponies, kneeling down in the trail.

  “What’s the matter with you two?” he asked, with a very definite twinkle in his eyes. “Something you ate don’t agree with you, maybe?”

  * * *

  Richard and Melody dropped off their ponies and headed for the bushes when they approached the wagon train. It was evident t
hat the Indians had spent several hours torturing some of the survivors, and many Indian tribes could be very inventive when it came to torture.

  “Savages!” Edmond blurted. “They need the word of God even more than I thought.”

  “Is that right?” Preacher asked with an odd smile. “Savages, huh? ’Ppears to me I read where they was still cuttin’ off folks’ heads in France and drawin’ and quarterin’ folks over in England. Big public spectacle. Ain’t them religious countries? Would you call that civilized?”

  Melody and Richard returned from their hurried trip to the bushes, both of them pale. The stench from the bodies was horrible. Articles of clothing and broken pieces of furniture were scattered all over the area, along with what remained of tortured men and women and older kids.

  “Where are the young children?” Penelope asked, her voice no more than a whisper and her face very pale under her bonnet. “There were a dozen or more boys and girls.”

  “Injuns took them to raise,” Preacher said. “They do that sometimes. If the child behaves, they’ll live. Some tribes won’t harm a child at all. Others will kill them outright. Injuns are notional. Just like white folks, you might say.”

  “I don’t know any white person who would harm a child!” Edmond said.

  “Then you don’t know many of your own kind,” Preacher told him shortly. “You folks start gatherin’ up clothing you think might fit you and what food and powder and shot that might be found. Get yourselves some warm clothing.”

  “Stealing from the dead!” Penelope said.

  Preacher turned slowly and looked at her. “Lady, you are beginnin’ to wear on me. Do you—any of you—know the trouble you’re in? I don’t think so. We’re smack in the middle of hostile Injun country, and from the paint on them dead bucks, they’re on the warpath. Somethin’s stirred them up. And it’s reasonable to think that they ain’t the only tribe that’s took up their war axes.” Preacher knelt down and began drawing in the dirt. The others leaned over to watch him.

  “Now pay attention,” Preacher said. “We’re here. Dry Crick is behind us here. The South Fork of the Shoshone is to our west. The Oregon Trail is ’way to hell down here. ’Way I see it is like this: we got hostiles on the warpath all around us. We’d be damn fools to try to make it south to the wagon trail.” He looked at all of them for a moment, then sighed. “I reckon I’m stuck with you. I can’t in no good conscience leave you. Hell, you’d all die. Don’t none of you seem to know north from south or what’s up or down.”

  “Now, see here!” Edmond protested.

  “Shut your fly-trap,” Preacher told him. “And don’t argue with me. I been makin’ it in these mountains for years. You’re just a helpless baby in the wilderness. And folks, if you think this is wild, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We couldn’t make it with wagons where I’m thinkin’ of carryin’ you, but on horseback...” He shrugged his shoulders. “... We got a chance. We’re goin’ into the Big Titties . . .”

  “The what?” Penelope blurted, high color springing onto her cheeks.

  “Mountain range that was named Les Grand Tetones by a French trapper ’cause they reminded him of big tits,” Preacher said, ducking his head to hide his grin. The grin did not escape Melody. “It’s wild, people. It’s the most beautiful and wildest thing you’ll ever see. And it’s slow goin’. But it’s the safest way. We might run into some Bannocks in yonder; but I get on well with the. Likewise the Nez Perce further on west and north. Good people. It’s our only shot, folks, and we got to take it. Now look around for a bottle of whiskey.”

  “My word, man!” Edmond said. “Are you thinking of getting drunk at a time like this?”

  Preacher gave him a look of disgust. “No, you ninny. Take a look at your friend’s head. Where his ear used to be. It’s fillin’ up with pus—infection, to you. I got to open it up, clean it out, and cauterize it with a hot blade. The whiskey’s for him, to ease the pain. Even with that, y’all gonna have to hold him down. If we don’t do that, he’ll die. So shut your mouth and get to lookin’.”

  Preacher slowly circled the ambush site on foot and concluded that the Injuns who had done this had not been back. No need to, for at first glance there was precious little left to plunder. He began searching the rubble, grateful that the Injuns had not burned the wagons. They had raped and killed and tortured, run off the horses and mules. They’d eaten the oxen, then lay up in a stuffed stupor for a day or so. But this was a sight that Preacher had seen more than once since pilgrims began pushing west. He knew all the secret places where folks liked to stash valuables.

  He found a cache of food in one wagon, including several pounds of coffee. Preacher immediately set about building a small smokeless fire out of dead wood and made a pot of coffee.

  “Man, we have to bury the dead!” Edmond said.

  “You bury ’em if you’re in that big a hurry,” Preacher told him. “There ain’t enough left of most of ’em to bother with. You’d best worry about stayin’ alive. The dead’ll take care of themselves. I’m fixin’ to have me some coffee.”

  Preacher drank the hot strong brew while the others rummaged around, picking up this and that, stepping gingerly around the torn and bloated bodies.

  “You women find you some men’s britches and get in ’em,” Preacher called from the fire. “Be easier ridin’ that way.”

  “I most certainly will not!” Penelope squalled in outrage at just the thought.

  “Either you do it, or I’ll snatch them petticoats offen you and dress you myself,” Preacher warned her. “I ain’t gonna put up with them dress tails gettin’ snagged on bushes and such. My life and your lives are at stake here. Damn your modesty.”

  Preacher looked westward and shook his head. He’d been in the Tetons, but never with a bunch of persnickety pilgrims, and certainly with no females draggin’ along.

  “Disgraceful!” Penelope said, holding up a pair of men’s britches and shaking them.

  “Just get in them,” Preacher said. “Be right interestin’ to see what you ladies look like without all them underthings hidin’ your natural charms.”

  “You are a vile, disgusting man,” Edmond told him.

  “Maybe,” Preacher said, sipping another cup of coffee. “But I’m the only hope you got of stayin’ alive. I’d bear that in mind was I you.” He looked at Richard, standing with the bottle of whiskey Preacher had found. “Drink it down, missionary. Get stumblin’ drunk.” He took out his knife and laid it on the stones around the fire. “This ain’t gonna be no fun for neither of us.”

  3

  Preacher had to practically sit on the man to get him to take the first couple of slugs. After that, it got easier and Richard got sillier and looser than a goose. He passed out right in the middle of his story concerning the time he peeped in on his sister taking a bath. “Lord, what wonders I did behold that evening,” said he, then fell backward, out cold.

  Preacher grabbed his knife and went to work. He opened the wound, let it drain, cut away the infected skin, then applied a poultice he’d made. Long before Richard woke up, Preacher had cauterized the wound with the hot blade. Edmond got sick.

  “It ain’t as bad as it looked,” Preacher said. “He’s gonna have him a numb of an ear. Leastways his hat won’t fall down that side. But he’s gonna be hard to get along with for a couple of days. High as we are, wounds heal quick—air’s so clean and pure. Won’t be for long, the way folks keep showin’ up out here,” he added.

  Preacher prowled around some and found more articles he could use, including some soap and some store-bought britches and shirts that looked like they might fit him. There was a nice lined Mackinaw coat that had only been burned a little bit, and he took that. Best looking coat he’d ever had. And bless Pat, he found him some brand new long handles in the bottom of a trunk. In the same trunk, he found him a fancy razor and new strop and a mug with soap. He was tempted to take some boots off the dead, but he knew he’d worn moccasins for so long his feet w
ould not be comfortable in anything else.

  He wandered off down to the crick.

  “Glory be!” Melody said, upon sighting him an hour later. “You are a fine looking man!”

  “Melody!” Penelope admonished her brazenness.

  Preacher had shaved, leaving only a moustache. He had bathed from top to bottom—he hoped nobody downstream tried to drink out of that crick for a day or two—and had dressed in the new clothes. He really felt a little self-conscious. He took the whiskey bottle and dabbed some on his freshly shaved face.

  “First time in ten years I been without a beard,” Preacher said. “Feels funny.” He looked at Richard. “He made a sound yet?”

  “Moaned a couple of times,” Edmond said. “I’m beginning to get concerned about him.”

  Preacher shook his head. “He’s just passed out drunk, that’s all. I been that way myself a time or two.”

  “I’m sure,” Penelope said, giving him an acid look.

  Preacher just grinned at her. Penelope needed a good man to roll around in the blankets with her for a night or two. He figured that might change her whole outlook.

  Of course, he admitted, he could be wrong. It happened from time to time. He was wrong back in ’26 or ’27, he recollected.

  * * *

  Rather than break their backs burying the dead, they dragged the bodies to a shallow ravine and then caved earth in over them. Preacher, Edmond, Melody, and even Penelope pitched in to drag small logs and then spent the better part of an hour placing rocks over the mass gravesite. It wouldn’t prevent digging and burrowing animals from getting to the bodies, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances.

  Preacher stood holding a new hat he’d found to replace his old one and listened to Edmond deliver a long-winded eulogy. Five minutes passed. Ten. The sun beat down mercilessly. Fifteen minutes, and still Edmond droned on.

  Preacher couldn’t take it anymore. “Amen, brother!” he shouted and walked off.

  They pulled out the next morning, heading into a wilderness that only a handful of white men—and no white woman—had ever seen. Richard was in some pain, but he never complained. The man might be a Bible-thumper, but he was steadily rising in Preacher’s estimation.