Blood on the Divide

by William W. Johnstone

  “Trains,” Weasel Tail repeated. “What do these trains do?”

  “Carry goods and people, I reckon. Be a right interestin’ sight to see, I ’pose. Some folks back East even got toilets in their houses.”

  “Inside the lodge?” Weasel Tail was appalled.

  “Yep. ’Fraid so.”

  Weasel Tail shook his head at the thought. “That would not be a good thing. I cannot imagine why people would want such a thing.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What are you going to do now, Preacher? You did not trap this season.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “You could come live with us,” Weasel Tail suggested, his face brightening. “Preacher is always welcome in our lodges. Why not? You are a great hunter and provider and my village has some fine-looking young women and you could choose one and she would make you a good partner. Your way of life is almost gone, Preacher, and ...” His voice trailed off and he sighed his frustration. “I mask my own fears, Preacher. I am afraid I will live to see the end of my own way of life. The whites just keep pushing westward and bringing sicknesses that we have never known before and do not have the power to combat. Many tribes have been nearly wiped out. Tamsuky of the Cayuse is already making talk against the Bible shouter Whitman west of us. The Cheyenne and Ute and Arapaho and Sioux and Blackfoot say we must fight to keep the whites out. I do not want to fight the whites.”

  “We would rather be friends,” a young warrior said. “But it is hard to be friends with whites who come now. They are not like you men. They are fearful people and they leave great mounds of stinking garbage behind them when the wagons leave.”

  Preacher knew that to be fact. He’d personally seen it. He nodded his head in agreement. “The Nes Percé?”

  Weasel Tail met his eyes. “They are as we. They do not wish to fight the whites. But a fight is coming, Preacher. If the advancing whites do not respect our land, and our way of life, and you know they will not, there will be war.”

  Preacher was a simple man; he did not have the words to be profound, even though he was considered fairly well educated among his peers, being able to read and write and do sums. He could but shake his head in agreement, for he knew the words of Weasel Tail to be true. Already, many of the tribes along the West Coast had been wiped out, had succumbed to sickness, or, for the most part, had been tamed. But Preacher, despite his gripings about the steadily growing numbers of people moving west, knew that many of the folks back East who moaned about the plight of the Noble Red Man did not know all the truth. The truth was that the whites were not stealing the land from the Indians, for the Indians didn’t own it. Most did not believe that anyone could really own part of the earth. They could not comprehend that. And the Indians were not poor, simple savages. They certainly could be savage – to the white man’s way of thinking – but on the plus side, many Indian tribes had very complex societies and laws and rules.

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Weasel Tail,” Preacher replied. “I ain’t no educated man, but I know that what you say is true. You and us here, we think alike on most things. That’s why we can get along. We respect your way of life and don’t try to change it. But these new folks comin’ out ...” He sighed, wishing he could tell the Indian about how the movers felt. But to tell the truth, he didn’t understand them either. “Yeah, you gonna have to change, Weasel Tail. They gonna make you change – or kill you.”

  Preacher had heard the stories about the Fox and the Sauk, and how back in ’32 a warrior named Black Hawk tried to lead about a thousand of his people back to their homelands, part of which included western Illinois. His original intent had been peaceful, not warlike. Black Hawk and his followers just wanted to go home. What they got was slaughtered as they fled, trying to swim across the Mississippi River back into Iowa.

  “Now Preacher is sad,” Weasel Tail said.

  “Yeah, I reckon I is. Farms and factories now are where the Ojibwa, Menominee, Iowa, Winnebago, Ottawa, and Potawatomi once lived. And that ain’t altogether right.”

  “What is a factory, Preacher?” a brave asked.

  “Well, it’s a place where people work to make things. Sort of like when your women all gather to sew together skins for a tipi.”

  “Ahh! And then when what they make is made, they go back to ... what?”

  “Well, they ship them goods out and then they start all over makin’ more goods.”

  “Why?”

  “So’s the people ... ah, so’s other people don’t have to make the goods that are made in the factory.”

  Weasel Tail sighed and shook his head. “These other people, what do they do that makes them so important that other people must do their work for them?”

  Preacher smiled. “Well, it ain’t that they’s so important. It’s just that the people in the factory makes things for the people in the other factory ... sort of.”

  “Ayee!” Weasel Tail cried. “My head is reeling from confusion. Let me see if I understand all this. When both factories have finished making whatever it is they make, they all get together and trade, correct?”

  “Not exactly,” Preacher said – his own head was beginning to reel from confusion. “You see, white people use money. You’ve all seen the metal coins. Well, they have value to white people. So they give the coins for the goods that are made in the factories.”

  “There is more than one or two factories?”

  “Oh, yeah. Hundreds of ’em.”

  The Indians looked at one another. Weasel Tail said, “There are not that many things that have to be made.”

  “There is in the white man’s world.”

  “What makes these co-ins worth something?” another brave asked.

  “Well, I ain’t real sure about that,” Preacher admitted. “But it boils down to gold and silver is valuable.”

  “To who?”

  “The white man.”

  “Why?”

  “I ... don’t know. It just is.”

  Weasel Tail picked up a rock. “Could this be as valuable as gold or silver?”

  “If enough people thought so, yeah.”

  “So if enough people thought this rock was the worth of twelve horses, and I had twelve horses, they would give me this rock for the horses?”

  “Yeah ... that’s about it, I reckon.”

  “What would I do with the rock?”

  “You could use it to buy more horses from another person.”

  “There is no one in my tribe that stupid.”

  “Yeah ... well, you do have a point. I think.”

  “Will we have to use these co-ins you speak of?” a Shoshoni asked.

  “Probably. Someday. Yeah, you will.”

  “And how will we get them?”

  “You work for them.”

  “Where?”

  “In the factories and on the farms and things like that.”

  Weasel Tail stood up. “My head is aching from all this confusing talk about co-ins and factories and rocks that are worth twelve ponies. Why don’t whites just give a sack of potatoes for a shirt, or a horse for a wooden box that whites live in, or a gun for a shoe and be done with it?”

  “Well, because not all whites have a gun or a horse or a sack of potatoes.”

  “But they have co-ins?”

  “Well, yeah, some of them. Most of them.”

  Weasel Tail looked down at Preacher and shook his head. “Your people are very strange. Your people want to possess so many things that are useless that you complicate your society so you must carry around pieces of metal to purchase more things that you really do not need. I think I will never understand the mind of white people. They make my head hurt. White people live in houses that cannot be moved. What do the white people do when they get tired of looking at the same thing all the time?”

  Preacher chuckled. “Well, they sell their houses, I reckon.”

  “Then the people put the co-ins in their pockets and go chop down more trees
to build another wooden box they cannot move.”

  “That’s ... just about it, Weasel Tail.”

  “Well. That is very foolish. What happens when all the trees are gone?”

  “Weasel Tail, the trees ain’t never gonna be gone!”

  “What will prevent that from happening? I have been told that there are so many whites they cannot be counted. If that is true, if they all cut down trees to build their useless wooden houses, soon there will be no more trees, am I not right?”

  “Now he’s got me worryin’,” Rimrock said.

  “Me, too,” Windy said. “He’s got a point, Preacher.”

  “I don’t even know what in the hell any of you is talkin’ about,” Caleb said.

  “These clothes smell funny,” Carl said. “I’m gonna smell like a laundry for a week.”

  “Oh, hell!” Preacher said. “They’s trees all over the damn place. They grow up out of the ground natural. Stop worryin’ about trees.”

  “Somebody better worry about them,” Weasel Tail said somberly. “Trees are life. Indians know this. Whites do not. I am afraid that someday white people will cause the earth to die. Then see if you can buy another earth with your co-ins.” He waved his hand, and without another word, he and his party left the encampment.

  Rimrock took the empty coffee pot down to the river for more water. Windy placed another stick on the fire. Caleb leaned back against his saddle and looked reflective. Carl was fanning himself, trying to dispel the soap smell.

  Preacher shook his head. “Maybe Weasel Tail is right and we’re wrong. Hell, I don’t know. I just wish everybody would get along. Might as well wish for the moon.” He lay down and pulled a blanket over him. “Wake me up when it’s time to eat.”

  TEN

  All they could do was wait, and that was something they could do well. Carl pulled out a few days after Weasel Tail’s gloom-and-doom talk, saying he’d see the men around ... when they got shut of that damn bar of soap.

  “I still smell like a laundry,” he muttered as he rode away. “At least the fleas was company.”

  “What’s your plan, Preacher?” Windy asked, as the men lay around the fire, drinking coffee.

  “I really ain’t got one. I know the wagons got to pass right by here. So mayhaps I’ll see to it that they get clear of the Pardees. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do. I’ll damn shore try to talk them out of cuttin’ north and settin’ up yonder. That’s plumb foolish.”

  “Well, I don’t mind waitin’,” Caleb said.

  “You boys want to pitch in with me and see to the needs of a bunch of hammerheaded easterners, hey?”

  “It ain’t as if we had a whole lot of pressin’ engagements, Preacher,” Windy said.

  “We ain’t got nothin’ else to do, Preacher,” Rimrock said. “Throw another stick on that fire, Windy. It’s our lazy day.”

  The men did nothing but eat, sleep, hunt for game, fish, and tell totally outrageous lies to each other and about each other. The days drifted by and blended in. Time was unimportant. They could almost make themselves believe it was very nearly like when they first arrived in the Big Lonesome. But they all knew it was not. Already, wagon ruts were being carved in what some were calling the Oregon Trail.

  Then one morning the men heard the very faint sounds of bullwhips and the shouting of human voices.

  “Yonder come the pilgrims headin’ to the promised land,” Caleb said.

  “Yeah,” Rimrock said. “They in for a jolt, I’m thinkin’. ’Cause they ain’t no milk out here and the only honey usually has a bear close by it.”

  “One thing about it, though,” Preacher said, recalling last year when he led a party of pilgrims to the West Coast, “by now they’ll have gotten rid of much of the stuff they thought they just couldn’t live without. And they’ll be plenty trail wise, too.”

  “What I can’t figure out is just exactly where they think they’ll settle up north of here,” Rimrock mused. “And what they’re gonna do oncest they get there.”

  “That’s a mystery to me, too,” Preacher said. “But I reckon we’ll know directly.”

  “I wonder why the scout didn’t come up on us hours ago?” Windy said.

  “The fools probably don’t have one,” Preacher replied. “And don’t nobody go lookin’ at me.”

  The men and women and children stared at the four mountain men. And stared. Finally a man mounted on a fine bay horse stepped out of the saddle and pointed a finger at Preacher.

  “You there!” he shouted. “Come here.”

  The mountain men looked at each other and all smiled. Preacher raised his voice and told the man, “You got something you want to say to me, get over here and say it. The distance is the same for you as it is for me.”

  The man flushed a deep red. “I am not accustomed to such impudence, sir,” he called. “My name is Samuel Weller.”

  “I’m proud you know your name,” Preacher told him. “If a man don’t know nothin’ else, he shore ought to know his name. I fought a bear oncest in the woods and lost, so he took my name. Folks started callin’ me Preacher. So if you run into a bear with a Christian name, leave him be. It’s me.”

  Weller stared at Preacher for a moment. Then he walked toward the men, stopped, and shook his head. “That is utter balderdash, sir. Are you mad?”

  “I ain’t even upset. Are you?”

  Several of the men and women in and alongside the wagons at the front of the train started laughing, and Weller’s face again turned crimson. Preacher figured right off that he hadn’t made any points with Weller. Not that he gave a damn.

  “You there!” Weller pointed his whip handle at Rimrock. “We are in need of an experienced guide to lead us to our final destination. Are you interested?”

  “I ain’t even curious,” Rimrock told him.

  Weller opened his mouth, then abruptly closed it as the name Preacher began sinking in. Preacher! The man who had rescued the missionaries and then led the wagon train to the Pacific. My word! The man was a living legend.

  Weller walked over to where Preacher and the other mountain men stood, rifles in hand, pistols and knives hung all about them. Good Lord, he thought, facing the men, but they certainly were a disreputable-looking bunch. But they all seemed... quite capable. He looked at Windy. For a man of his small size, he certainly had a bold and reckless demeanor about him.

  Weller looked at the bulk of Rimrock. The man was very nearly a giant. Certainly capable of breaking a man in two. Rimrock grinned at the man.

  Caleb was a long and lean and lanky man, but Weller knew those types of men could possess extraordinary endurance and strength. Preacher was, well, Preacher. Wide shoulders and hard-packed muscle in his arms. Huge wrists. The man had only a stubble of beard, so obviously he shaved quite often. But there was one more thing about Preacher that Weller had missed at first glance, but not now. The man was dangerous. Not dangerous in the unpredictable sense, but dangerous in that he would be a bad man to have as an enemy.

  Weller cleared his throat and was about to speak when a woman’s voice cut him off.

  “Oh, Preacher!”

  Miss Drum came rushing up, quite unladylike, Weller thought, and threw her arms about Preacher’s neck and boldly kissed the man right on the lips! Weller was taken aback by the utter brazenness of it.

  “Preacher! I just knew I’d see you again,” she exclaimed, and kissed him again.

  Preacher’s eyes were wide with shock. Embarrassed, he disentangled himself from the woman and held the well-endowed young lady at full arm’s length. “Betina. You’re lookin’ well.”

  “To say the least,” Rimrock muttered.

  “Amen, brother,” Windy whispered.

  Caleb stared at the woman.

  “I just knew we’d meet again, Preacher,” Betina gushed. “Were you waiting for us to come along?”

  “Well ... tell you the truth, yes. I was wantin’ to talk you folks out of this crazy notion of headin’ north, and poin
t you either west to the Oregon Territory or back home.”

  She shook her curls. “Preacher, we are going to build a town just north of here. Along the banks of the Wind River. We shall have shops and stores and a church and a school. Isn’t that right, Mr. Weller?”

  “That is correct, Miss Drum,” the man said – a bit stiffly, Preacher thought.

  Preacher took off his hat and rubbed his forehead with a hard and callused hand. “Betina, listen to me, girl. There ain’t nothing up there where you’re talkin’ about ’ceptin’ Injuns. It’s too soon for all this, girl. You’ve had you a taste of how wild and savage this land can be. But you ain’t seen nothin’ until you winter out here. That is, providin’ you and the rest of these good folks survive ’til the winter. Betina, there ain’t nothin’ up yonder. No trails, no roads, no civilized folks, no nothin’. There ain’t nothin’ ’tween Fort William and Fort Hall ’ceptin’ wilderness, Injuns, and renegades. It’s a fool’s errand you’re on, girl.”

  She stared at him for a long moment and Preacher knew he had not dissuaded her. “I am determined, Preacher. We shall have our town to the north.”

  Then Weller had to stick his mouth into it. “We shall trust in the Lord, Preacher,” Weller said. “He has guided us this far, and we shall continue to bask in the light of His providence.”

  “Mayhaps you be right, Weller,” Preacher said.

  Weller beamed his delight at that.

  “’Cause I reckon that old sayin’ holds true,” Preacher added.

  “And what might that be, sir?”

  “That the Good Lord looks after drunks, children, and fools!”

  * * *

  “This ain’t right what you’re doin’, Preacher,” Rimrock bluntly told him.

  Preacher stopped in his rolling of blankets into canvas groundsheet and looked up at the man. “You don’t mean to tell me that you’re stayin’?”

  “I got to, Preacher. These people ain’t got a prayer out yonder on their own.”

  Preacher stood up. “Rim, there ain’t even no good trail that leads up yonder to where these fools want to go. You know that as well as me. We’ve all been there. There ain’t nothin’ there. So why there, Rim? Answer me that.”