by Terry Grosz
With that explanation, Tom stared back at his men and Lisa. The looks he got in return indicated to their way of thinking, it was a justified killing! Walking around, Tom and his men picked up all the weapons and packs of furs and placed them onto the keelboats. Tom also picked up Josh’s prized Military 1803 rifle from another dead Indian’s hand and then slipped the Missouri Constable badges being worn by the Cheyenne Indians into his shirt pocket.
Then he discovered the gold watch and chain being worn by another Indian. Opening up the watch face, he read the inscription on the cover. After reading the inscription addressed to “Bill Jenkins,” Tom just sat down heavily on a dead horse’s belly. Damn!, he thought. Here is evidence of the Jenkins clan that Gabe and Josh had been pursuing for years after the gang had killed their folks and kin. “How did this watch get into the hands of the Indians?” he asked himself out loud. He just couldn’t figure it out. Then it dawned on him that maybe his friends had been killed by the Jenkins clan, and then the Cheyenne had killed the Jenkins Brothers... Otherwise, why did the Cheyenne have personal articles from the Jenkins clan? Now the whole thing began to make sense. Tom suspected the Jenkins clan had somehow found and killed his friends. Then the Indians had discovered the Jenkins clan afterwards and had killed all of them for the furs and personal articles they possessed.
Sitting there for a few more moments, while his men took everything of value from the killing field, Tom’s mind kept whirling. Either way, justice was done. Those killing his friends were now all dead and the world would be better served, he thought as he rose from his seat on the dead horse and headed for his now-very overloaded keelboats.
That evening as the two keelboats floated leisurely down the Missouri, the men spotted a group of Mountain Men heading upriver to the fabled beaver-trapping grounds. I hope they fare better than my friends, thought Tom wistfully...
***
Years later, Tom and the keelboatmen disappeared for the most part from the West because of the miracle of steam-powered vessels. The following spring after Tom had ordered the Cheyenne Indians killed, when the Missouri flooded as it did every year, the horse and human remains of the Dent Brothers, their wives, the Jenkins clan, and the bloodied Cheyenne, were swept out into the currents. Soon they lay under tons of sand and silt, never to be seen again. Neither were many of the remainder of those hardy souls known as the fabled Mountain Men a few short years later when silk top hats replaced those made from beaver plews... Most were gone by the time of The Moon of The Popping Trees. They died a good death...
We in the civilized world are all walking between the two great eternities from our genesis to the exodus of our souls. And in so doing, we are all looking for the extended hand of God. However, the fabled Mountain Man of yesteryear, many of which who believed in the mystic ways of the Indians, were just looking for the extended hands of the Cloud People. Cloud People who were leading them to the next great beaver trapping waters not far from quiet campsites where cooking slabs of buffalo hump ribs were in abundance... Wagh!
About the Author
Terry Grosz earned his bachelor’s degree in 1964 and his master’s in wildlife management in 1966 from Humboldt State College in California. He was a California State Fish and Game Warden, based first in Eureka and then Colusa, from 1966 to 1970. He then joined the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and served in California as a U.S. Game Management Agent and Special Agent until 1974. After that, he was promoted to Senior Resident Agent and placed in charge of North and South Dakota for two years, followed by three years as Senior Special Agent in Washington, D.C., with the Endangered Species Program, Division of Law Enforcement. While in Washington, he also served as Foreign Liaison Officer.
In 1979, he became the Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two years later in 1981, he was promoted to Special Agent in Charge and transferred to Denver, Colorado, where he remained until his retirement in 1998.
Unity College in Maine awarded Grosz an honorary doctorate in environmental stewardship in 2001. His first book, Wildlife Wars, was published in 1999 and won the National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and Environment.
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