The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana)

by Robert Lewis Taylor

  “For me? You mean mine?” I said, being practically addled with good fortune.

  “Yellow Hair bring son to Black Poddee,” he said. I shook his hand, shook hands all around, then wrote out on a paper, as he asked me, a statement that the chief and his tribe were good, friendly Indians.

  The moon was up, so I could see to go back. And didn’t I go back in style! I jumped on the pony, which was frisky and switched in a circle, but I hauled in to show who was boss, then called out thanks. At this, Black Poddee came up and shook hands all over again.

  “Black Poddee lodge, Yellow Hair home.”

  Looking them over, I felt just a little choked up. People can be nice to each other when they choose. They don’t do it often enough. Here these Sioux had gone to work in an hour’s time and wiped out my bad memories of the Pawnees. It goes to show that maybe you shouldn’t generalize, as they say, but should judge people on their own merits.

  Then Black Poddee slapped the pony sharply on the rump, and I was off home, swelled up with pride, as happy as I ever remember being in my life.

  Chapter XXVII

  Next morning everybody was bowled over at my story, but they hadn’t much time to discuss it, because at a pow-wow last night, it was settled that my father and the Kissels should get mules. We’d have to “pack,” as they called it. Jennie and Mrs. Kissel and the quartet would ride in Brice’s wagon. It was the only way.

  But as they talked—my father, chiefly—I noticed Mr. Kissel looking embarrassed, and contributing even less than usual. Then he said, “You folks had better go on. Mother and I’ll prefer to turn back.”

  “You what?” cried my father. “Now see here, Kissel, this was your expedition in the first place—the rest of us just tagged along. You can’t turn back!”

  Kissel was perspiring, but he stuck to his guns. “Mother and I’ve talked it over; we’ll turn back.”

  I had a thought, then, and spoke up, though my father had sworn me not to interrupt grownups during a conference.

  “I may get a licking for talking,” I said, “but it might be the Kissels haven’t any more money.”

  My father’s face looked like a balloon that’s been punctured.

  “Oh, I see.”

  Before he went on, Mr. Coe, who was sitting by, but not taking part, got up and took off his hat. He looked fussed, as my mother used to say.

  “Possibly it’s poor taste to mention it,” he said, “but the fact is, dash it all, it’s ridiculous to put so many strictures of form on the subject of money. What I’m trying to say, so very badly, is that I’m rather rich, in a moderate sort of way. Always have been. Vulgar, but there it is. Fellow left it me in a will—total stranger. Some sort of uncle, I believe they said. So, if you don’t mind—”

  Mr. Kissel said, “You’re a good and generous man, but we can’t take a loan that mightn’t be repaid. It wouldn’t be fit.”

  Clearing his throat, my father now got off some of his usual rubbish. “If it comes to that, and not to detract from the typical gesture of our esteemed friend, Henry Coe, I myself—”

  I interrupted; I couldn’t help it. I knew exactly how much money was left; and realized that because of Mr. Coe he was planning to bull right ahead and suggest that, he was rich, too, which could do nobody on earth any good, and might bring harm to several.

  So I dug into my pocket and dribbled those pretty gold pieces out on the ground. I’d shined them up; how they twinkled in the sun.

  “Son,” said my father, turning white, “step over to one side. We’d better have a chat.”

  “It’s all right; they’re mine.” I told them about finding the injured man’s jacket, and how I’d stowed the coins in the wagon pouch that Mrs. Kissel made me.

  “If the Kissels won’t take it outright,” I said, “I’d like to call it buying a share in their venture. Digging gold or farming!”

  Mr. Kissel gazed around in his slow way. Then he shook hands and said, “Lad, you’ve got a partner.” And after that, he said, “Thankee, all. You’re real friends.”

  This was as long a speech as he commonly made. Mrs. Kissel told me so afterward; she said in some ways it beat his proposal of marriage, which was so brief she almost missed it.

  Coulter would be ready to travel in two days, riding in a wagon for a week, so we went back to Fort Bernard and bargained for three mules, with pack saddles, some large canteens, coffee, beans, bacon, tools and other gear. It took all one morning. These Mexican Indians were sharp, and a Yankee working with them, a Mr. New, was worse, because he never disagreed but had a way, mild and accommodating, of saying, “Why, yes, it’ll bear pondering,” as if he’d let us know in a week or two, while he understood perfectly well we were in a raging hurry.

  My gold came to four hundred and forty dollars, more than we needed, and Mr. Kissel said we’d plough the rest into seed, come California. This didn’t exactly suit me; I’d planned to buy a sluice box and get rich washing gold, but I didn’t complain; he was too happy.

  We pulled out on a Friday, a nice, cloudy day, cool for traveling. The rest of the Kissels’ oxen were hitched to the Brice wagon, which had also lost one, and we had our new mules going. Everybody’s supplies were built up, and their spirits seemed revived by the layover. Coulter was riding in a wagon belonging to the drovers, one they’d figured on selling in California. They do that—haul things out, sell, and come back light. And make a very nice profit, if the trip goes well, and they’re still alive.

  For some days we went along, quiet and peaceful, except for packing and unpacking the mules. No matter how we arranged them, in an hour these packs would slip around to swing under the mules’ bellies. It was a botheration, but it must have been worse for the mules, because on about the third day, they appeared to get sick of it; they began to act up. First thing you know, they’d run down and stand in a stream, or jump up and down stiff-legged, till the packs fell off altogether. One kicked a man they called Muttonhead Braden near a clump of greasewood. My father had to tend him; he was colored up like a rainbow.

  The road kept moving up, still in sandy soil, still within view of the Platte, too, but getting closer to the summit of the Rocky Mountains, now. We passed the Black Hills, and camped one night on Beaver Creek, where there was good grass, with lots of trees—cottonwood, willows and such—and signs of antelope and deer. That evening, the women gathered wild green peas, and we felt charged up after eating fresh vegetables for a change. My father was in his glory, picking various new plants to show around, often using their Latin names, as if the English wouldn’t serve, and among others, he collected sunflowers, wild daisies, and “wild heliotrope,” but he got in an argument with Dr. Merton over this last one.

  I forgot to say he’d swapped Cream in on the mules, at Fort Bernard, because the white horse attracted flies and other bugs, exactly as Coulter stated. The poor creature was all over welts. Bugs didn’t bother my spotted pony, which I’d named Spot, after discarding several names that didn’t suit him. Spot struck just the right note, somehow, though my father inquired if I didn’t think it was too subtle, which I figured was some kind of joke.

  Anyhow, this Spot and I hit it off fine. Coulter called me to his wagon and said, “You may not know it, but you’ve got a real horse there. You can’t wear an Indian pony out, ride him all day.” I was glad to hear it, and asked him how he felt. He didn’t look so good, all bundled up in oily bandages, with his black hair gone. I was sorry for him, all right, but I couldn’t get out of my mind about him backing off from Shep.

  But I heard more about that soon. Some bad things lay just around the next turn of the trail. We didn’t know it, but we had nearly finished one long leg of our journey. Our lives were going to be changed, but I’d better let my father tell what happened.

  Beyond Independence Rock

  En route to California

  Sept 25, 1849.

  Dear Melissa:

  There may be a hiatus in my correspondence, owing to new plans which we,
our particular group, have decided upon. Alterations have taken place. The Lord in His wisdom has seen fit to point us in a different direction, and in the nick of time, too. It bears out what I have tried to emphasize to you and the children: trust in Providence; in the long run, He’ll see you through. I recall numerous examples. With apologies, there was one occasion on a shantyboat, in my unreformed period, during the course of a contest at cards. I had need—it bordered on a religious yearning—for a jack of spades, to complete what is known (professionally speaking) as “an inside straight,” and I shut my eyes in brief prayer, calling the Supreme Dealer’s attention to the fact that, minus the jack, my family were in for something of a shock, financially speaking.

  Did I get it? Did that jack drop like a gentle rain from Heaven? It did not. In actual fact I drew the deuce of clubs, which was of no use whatever, and seldom is to anybody (unless you’re playing with “wild” cards, of course, and then you must remember to hang onto it, as being valuable). The point is, had I drawn that jack, gambling might have gripped my soul like a vise, causing me to end up a ne’er-do-well in the backwashes of Louisville, instead of in my present fortunate condition.

  First of all, to clear up our mystery about Coulter. Nine or ten days out from Laramie, traversing rough country near the Independence Rock, a gigantic elevation surrounded by soda ponds, I walked forward to see Coulter, who is up and about, regaining his hair, his scars healing, and in general convalescent. Finding him driving a wagon, his strength far from fully returned, I climbed to the seat and made conversation on general subjects for a while. Then, seizing the bull by the horns (the metaphor is apt in this case), I said:

  “Friend Coulter, at the risk of provoking your ire, I’d like to ask a question. I have a theory and wish to test it out.”

  “The air’s free over the desert,” he said. “I haven’t heard of any ordinances corking up speech.”

  “My theory is,” I went on, despite this odd rejoinder, “that you weren’t physically afraid of that ruffian Baggott, not this much”—and I snapped my fingers—“but were cowed by something possibly quite trivial out of your past. I speak medically, as your personal physician, in the hope of finding a solution.”

  Astonishingly enough, he turned quite pale. Then he wet his lips with his tongue and said, “Some things are better left as they be.”

  “I disagree. Seen clearly, out in the light, they often appear foolish, and without the significance that has built up over the years.”

  “Not in this case.”

  “There’s no way to tell till it’s tried. You’ve never told us where you came from, Coulter. Where were you born?”

  After a long pause, he said, “Western Kentucky.”

  “Your father, what’d he do there?”

  “I never saw him. He was drowned, duck-hunting, when I was in the crib. He waded out into the river after a bird and stepped in a hole, wearing boots.”

  “What was your mother like?”

  “She had a hard row. She did a man’s work to keep us fed and growing.”

  “Us?”

  He snapped the reins at the oxen, and said, “Camp time, soon. Time I was back in the saddle.”

  “How many in the family, Coulter?”

  For a minute, I thought he would refuse to answer; then he said, “I had a twin. His name was Phillip. People called him Sandy. He was fair, where I’m dark.”

  “What did Baggott mean when he said, ‘Why don’t you tell them what happened to your brother?’ ”

  “Twins aren’t always like. He was bigger than me, smarter, as good-looking as they come. My mother favored him; she couldn’t help it, and you don’t have to believe it, but I didn’t blame her. He was the leader of the boys around there, and the funny thing was, he didn’t try to be; he just was.”

  “What happened?”

  I don’t think he heard me. After being pent up so long, the words were tumbling out.

  “—and if there was a game, with choosing up, he was chose first, always, every time. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do better than anybody his age, or even older. Neither could you flinch him, no matter what. One time there was a sycamore slanted out over the water’s edge, and we climbed up and looked down—this was in the summer barefoot time—and nobody would jump. Then Sandy went off that limb like a frog. I’ll bet it was seventy feet high. After that, of course, I had to do it, but my head hit a piece of drift, and it knocked me cold. I came to on the riverbank; Sandy had pulled me out.”

  “I see,” I said. “But it was natural to resent him. Nearly anybody would in the circumstances.”

  “Resent him? I liked him better than anybody I ever knew, or am apt to know again.”

  “Then I really don’t understand, Coulter.”

  “Not long after our twelfth birthday, my mother gave me a hiding for something Sandy had done—he didn’t know about it—and that afternoon we played Injuns in the willows down by the river. We were both tricked out like savages, with sticks and such in our caps, to blend in with the bushes, and had bows and arrows we’d made. The bows weren’t bad for kids—they had a nice spring. For arrows, we’d smooth down a piece of ash and tip them with odd-shaped pieces of tin we’d find lying around at the tinsmith’s—ends they’d cut off, you know.

  “Playing along the bottoms, we flushed up a deer, a very good head, and watched him jump in the water and head downstream, swimming high, head and shoulders out, the way they do.

  “Sandy said, ‘He’ll climb out below. Run down and head him off, and I’ll trail along and meet you.’

  “Making a big circle, I waded over a stretch of backwater, and in a minute, sure enough, I heard the deer stomping through sand. I didn’t move, but I remember thinking, I’ll snag this fellow and Sandy will be proud. He was always bragging about things I did, whenever I did something.

  “But there wasn’t time for woolgathering, for the leaves gave a rustle, his antlers poked into view and I let drive—”

  He stopped.

  “Go ahead, Coulter. Get the whole thing off your chest.”

  “I shot him directly through the left eye socket—the arrow sank nearly up to the feathers in his skull. He was dying when I ran up, but when I leaned down, he said, ‘Tell Ma it was an accident-tell her I said so.’ A few seconds after that, he was gone.

  “I held him in my arms till I was sure, then I ran into the river and tried to drown myself. But it isn’t easy, not for a boy that age. You keep coming up, and whether you want to or not, you swim. And after a while, you get sick.”

  “Coulter—”

  “I’m not quite done. My mother never spoke a word directly to me from that day forward. I lived at home three more years, and she never addressed a sentence to me in all that time. If something needed doing, she’d say like, ‘I hope extra firewood will be chopped for the wash while I’m gone.’

  “She believed I did it a-purpose, out of jealousy, and nearly everybody else did, too. I was the target for every child in town. They’d yell ‘Cain slew Abel! Cain slew Abel!’—having likely heard it from their parents.

  “In the long run, I took to fighting back, and naturally that showed they were right. I had a vicious streak; it was a throwback in the blood. That’s what they said. So when I was fifteen, I left for good. My mother’d got married again, to a man that knocked me around, her, too, and I ran away one night after they’d gone to bed. I never went back. Some years later, I heard she’d died of consumption. On her deathbed, one of the women bathing her face asked if they ought to try and reach me. T only had the one son,’ she said. ‘I had one boy, Phillip, that was murdered,’ ”

  I’m ashamed to admit it, Melissa, but I couldn’t think of anything to say for quite a little while. Finally I said, “Coulter, that’s a terrible story, terrible. But—”

  “Maybe you’d care to step down now, doctor. I haven’t any doubts you’d dislike riding with a murderer. Everybody else has, whenever they heard.”

  “Coulter, if
I may be so bold with a man who could whip me with one hand, you’re something of an ass. The incident you describe was an accident, just as your brother said. By the way, what a wonderful boy he must have been. These things happen every day, something like them, somewhere on earth. In your case, you let it grow, and fester, and take possession of you, with some cause to be sure. But tell me something—isn’t this the first time you ever went over the story to an outsider?”

  “I’ve never laid tongue to it since the day I told my mother and she beat me unconscious with a poker.”

  “How do you feel—at the moment, I mean?”

  He gave a long sigh. “Doctor, I can’t say why, I’m not smart enough and haven’t the education, but it seems like somebody’s just rolled a mountain off my chest.”

  “I’m delighted,” I said, getting down. “Now listen to me. I’m going to repeat your account, word for word, to our people. Then I want you to come have supper with us at seven.”

  For a second, he looked uneasy again. “Maybe tomorrow—I’ve got to catch up on—”

  “Tonight” I said firmly. “You’re within sight of getting out of the woods. But you’ve got two or three more steps to take. Flinch now and you’re finished.”

  Turning to leave, I added, “Coulter, do what you think Sandy might have done.”

  He looked angry, then relaxed.

  “I may be dropping in,” I heard him call as I walked back down the train.

  Now I’d better move on in a hurry. Sad events should never be dwelt on. We tarried two hours at Independence Rock, “the registry of the desert,” so called because of the names, initials, dates and origins scratched on it by parties coming before us. Climbing up as far as they could, Jaimie and Po-Povi chiseled a memento there-two names, a boy’s and an Indian girl’s—for the generations to come to marvel at. Do you suppose that inscription will be legible a hundred years from today, when the warm shroud of earth is pulled long since over us all? Will some gay band of picnickers, come out from the cities that have risen here, puzzle over those words: JAIMIE McP. and PO-POVI? What were they like, the two who left those clumsy letters? Where were they going? And what became of them after they left?