“We’re too damn old to change our ways now,” Titus observed, feeling a bit reassured.
“Maybeso a old beaver trapper like me can make a life for hisself helping them emigrants bound for Oregon,” Jim admitted. “But I ain’t gonna change who I am or what I come to believe in after more’n twenty winters out here.”
He plopped a gnarled hand on Bridger’s knee and said fraternally, “Time was, I didn’t figger I wanted nothing to do with no emigrants comin’ through in their wagons, stirring up the buffler an’ bringing their white women to the mountains. But, long as them sodbusters keep right on going west to Oregon an’ don’t dally long in our country, I can help some corncrackers on their way to their own promised land on the Columbia.”
Jim grinned in the moonlight. “So we’ll both hold our tongue an’ help these here Saints find the promised land they chose for themselves. Them others, did they give you some bread with your supper?”
“It was mighty tasty, I do admit,” Scratch said as he lay on his side in the starlight. “Been some time since I ate white folks’ bread.”
“When I sat down with Brigham Young, I told him I ain’t see’d so much bread in years,” Bridger confessed as he lay back on his blankets. “So he asked me, ‘But, Mr. Bridger, how do you live without bread?’”
“What’d you tell ’im, Gabe?”
“Told him we live on meat. Dry our deer and buffler to eat in the lean times. And we also cook fresh when we can get it. Told him we have coffee to drink most of the time, for that we can have plenty of that brung out here.”
They lay in silence for a long time, until Scratch asked once again, “You’re sure ’bout bein’ so friendly to these here strangers?”
“Yes,” he answered in the dark. “Way out here on this side o’ the mountains, we ought’n treat other folks the way we wanna be treated ourselves, Scratch.”
Titus sighed, then said, “Long as it’s gonna help my friend, Jim Bridger … an’ don’t ever hurt you to open your door to this here Brigham Young.”
“Them Mormons gonna be putting down their roots and setting up shop so far south from here,” Jim explained, “we’ll never hear a sound from ’em.”
Titus Bass went to sleep that night, wanting to believe that every bit as much as his friend did.
But for the last nine days that little wary voice of warning was about all Titus had brooded on as he stayed just far enough ahead of the column’s vanguard that he would discourage any company as he dragged these saints of the latter days beyond that fateful meeting with Gabe and on toward Fort Bridger on Black’s Fork. It was just past midafternoon when Scratch had recognized the faraway river bluffs. He immediately turned about and covered that quarter mile back to the head of the march where Brigham Young and a half dozen of his Apostles rode.
“You’ll spy Jim’s post when you round the bend in the river,” Bass announced as he reined his horse around and brought it up near the group of riders. “I’m goin’ on to see to my family. Let ever’body know you’ll be comin’ soon.”
“Your family?” Young echoed. “You have an Indian wife like Major Bridger? Half-breed children too?”
His eyes narrowed at the judgmental tone the stocky man took. “Crow. My family’s Crow.”
“Are they a tribe from this part of the country?” asked Elder Woodruff.
He wagged his head. “North of here. Far … north of here.”
William Clayton stated, “Another band of Lamanites we’ve read about, President Young.”
“Band of what?” Titus asked.
“Lamanites,” Clayton repeated.
“Indians, Mr. Bass,” Young declared. “The red man, his women and children. They are a lost tribe of Israel—banished to this wilderness because they refused to turn their ears to the continued revelations of God.”
He tried out the word, “Lay-man …”
“Lamanites,” Clayton pronounced it correctly for the old trapper.
Titus asked, “All that what some Lamanite tol’t your people back east?”
Young smiled that same hard smile he wore most of the time, the sort of smile a man would use when he was scolding a disobedient child. “No, Moroni appeared to our founder and told him the word of God was meant for His chosen here in these latter days. For hundreds of years the world has not heeded God, but now these faithful, holy people have been raised up by the Almighty to forge a trail west—following a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, just as the thousands followed Moses out of bondage in Egypt to their Promised Land.”
So Scratch had peered this way and that in the sky that afternoon, and saw no pillar of cloud. Nor had he seen any pillar of fire blazing in the sky after the Pioneer Party had made their camp each evening.
Yet, even while there had been no fire in the heavens for the past nine nights, there was no mistaking the flames in Brigham Young’s eyes as he gazed into the distance and caught sight of something to make his case to the faithful.
“There, Mr. Bass,” the Prophet declared as he pointed up the valley. “Behold—there is your pillar of cloud.”
With murmurs of assent and wonder, Titus looked on up the valley of Black’s Fork. A thin column of woodsmoke arose from the direction of Fort Bridger. A cold chill tumbled down his spine, so cold and shocking it reminded him of stepping into a beaver pond in spring, cracking a thin layer of ice with his moccasins as he waded in to his crotch, numbing everything from his waist down. He looked again at Brigham Young, at the Prophet’s faithful, who were pointing and muttering in agreement that they were indeed seeing the pillar of cloud God had put before them, leading them onward to their Promised Land.
Chimney smoke.
Titus wagged his head and put heels to his horse. As the big red pony loped toward Fort Bridger, the old man did his best to pray that the Prophet and his chosen few would soon spot more woodsmoke to continue them on their way, to lead them far from the valley of Black’s Fork, to take their kind on to a distant kingdom of their own … so they could not possibly lay waste to the simple, earthly dreams of his old friend, Jim Bridger.
“Think of the trade my flock can offer you and Major Bridger as we bring the Saints through this wilderness to Zion, marching those thousands right past your gates!” extolled the Prophet.
Bass’s heavy hammer clanged against the short, glowing strip of band iron one last time, a splatter of crimson fireflies spewing from the anvil, a few of them snuffing themselves out on his grimy, cinder-stained moccasins. Bass laid the hammer on top of the stump where the anvil was perched and dragged the reddish strap of iron to the bucket with a pair of long, leather-wrapped tongs. As the crimson metal sissssed into the bubbling water, Titus dragged the back of his right forearm over his eyes, smearing beads of moisture and blackened cinders across the top half of his face. Droplets of sweat had begun to sting his eyes already irritated by the thick smoke. No matter that he couldn’t see with the left, both eyes still burned fiercely as he worked over fire and iron, flame and muscle.
“Jim’s gonna be some pleased with that,” he sighed, wishing the Saints would turn away and leave him to his work.
“Our migration to Zion should more than guarantee Major Bridger a handsome profit for a short season’s work,” Young continued, his thumbs hooked in the top pockets of his vest. “Those Gentiles going on to … the emigrants going on to Oregon or perhaps to California will only be the sauce for what income you can make from our faithful.”
He dragged the iron from the bucket with those tongs, turning the wide hub band this way, then that, inspecting it closely before he stepped over to the fire hopper and began hauling down on the long bellows handle he had repaired just this morning, bringing his coals to full heat. As he yanked down again and again in rhythm with his heartbeat, Scratch let his eyes bounce from man to man to man, across all eight of those who had followed Brigham Young to this shady corner of the post, all of them standing there like a broad-shouldered, multiheaded shadow, having tag
ged along behind their leader, hanging on his every word, whim, and need, as if Young’s every utterance was the very breath of God itself.
“What’s this Gen-tile?” he asked as the coals began to glow anew with the infusion of air.
Young cleared his throat. “A Gentile is a non-Mormon. One who has not yet come to the faith that will save him everlasting.”
“Me? I’m a Gentile?”
“What faith are you, Mr. Bass?”
“I don’t figger there’s a name I can rightly put on it.”
“Were you raised up with any church teaching?”
“My ma, she tried hard,” Titus explained. “With me an’ her other young’uns. But I s’pose your kind would call her a Gentile—no matter that she was as good an’ God-fearin’ a woman as ever walked this earth.”
“I would never mean to give offense—”
“Much as she tried to get the Bible into my head an’ part o’ my heart,” Bass continued without waiting for Young to finish, “I fell into the life what snared most boys I knowed on the frontier, snared ’em same as me. Whiskey an’ wimmens. Bad whiskey and even badder wimmens.”
He liked watching how those temporal, carnal words landed on their ears: the averted eyes, the downturned faces, as each man did his best to stare at the ground; a few gazed upward as if asking for heaven to cast its gloried benevolence on this pagan sinner, perhaps even asking for a thunderbolt to be sent from above to strike down this blasphemer.
“Even Mary, the mother of Christ Jesus, was an apostate from the true church,” Young instructed. “She herself was not redeemed by the blood of her son.”
“He was the one they nailed on the cross, weren’t he?”
With a smile, the Prophet nodded. “Yes. The Christ Jesus, who married the two Marys and Martha too before He was betrayed and crucified … married all three, whereby He could sow His seed before He ascended to the right hand of God.”
“My mam didn’t ever teach me Jesus was married afore,” Bass admitted as he studied the iron band again. “Havin’ three wives, hmmm—sounds to me like you’re saying Jesus wasn’t satisfied to be with just one woman.”
“Do you doubt that Christ Jesus married the three?”
He shrugged and replied, “I don’t know enough ’bout anything to answer your questions. I’m just a simple man who manages to sin a lot—”
“What sin was once in a man’s heart is of no bearing to God,” Brigham Young replied. “And therefore of no bearing to me. It’s what a man decides to become that marks him for the Lord’s work—”
“It ain’t a case of what I’ll become, you best unnerstand. It’s what I am that I’ll allays be.”
The Prophet took a step closer, holding out his hands before him, palms up. “Look at these hands, Mr. Bass. Once these were the hands of a carpenter. I too was a simple man with the hands of a carpenter.” He looked up from staring at his palms. “Did you know Jesus was a carpenter Himself?”
“Before you say He married them three women?”
“Christ Jesus—the Savior who came to the New World after He was crucified,” Young extolled. “He appeared to God’s chosen to tell them how all others in the land of Old Israel had forsaken Him and His promise. So Jesus left them with a new promise, and that word is told in our holy book. How Adam was God, conceived on the great star of Kolob, the site for the conception of all the gods. The most amazing story of all is told in our book, Mr. Bass.”
He wagged his head and turned back to the coals, dragging the iron strip out of the fire again and looping its crescent over the end of the anvil. “I don’t read much. Ain’t since I come out here.”
“One of the Apostles could read some of the holy book to you—”
“I got work to do.”
But Young was not easily deterred. “While you continue with your work.”
“I’m too old—”
“No man should deny himself a chance at eternal life, especially when he grows long in the tooth, Mr. Bass.”
He picked up the hammer and gave the red-hot crescent a slam, sparks sputtering from the anvil. “I am what I am, Preacher. I see what I see, an’ I hear what I hear. No man can see or hear for me.”
“But you can see the truth, hear the truth of our word, and judge for yourself as the many who have already made a stand for the new nation of Israel.”
Again and again his hammer rang against the crimson metal he inched around the anvil, slowly tightening the crescent into a solid circle the size he would need to work onto a wagon’s wheel hub. “I been out here since twenty-five …” and the hammer rang. “I seen things with my own eyes …” that hammer rang again. “Things I’d never dreamed … back east … heard an’ smelled an’ felt … all manner of things out here … things what wasn’t really there … they’s called ghosts … or shades … or hoo-doos—”
“Spirits, Mr. Bass,” Young interrupted. “Like the Holy Spirit that will enter your bosom and seize your heart with a fire of unquenchable flame.”
“Hoo-doos or spirits … no matter what you call ’em … that sort of thing may give a man like you … the willies an’ shakes … but such ghosty doin’s don’t make no nevermind … to the peoples out here … out to these here mountains … the red folks ain’t the kind to preach an’ push … what they have in their heart … push it on me the way you preachers push … a man’s medeecin is his medeecin … so who the blazes am I … to make so little of what another man carries … in his heart … who the hell am I to say … what makes him a man? … or to say I’m a man … an’ he ain’t?”
“I’ve attempted to explain to you where the Lamanites have been judged wrong, where the Indians, the cursed ones of this continent, came from and how God turned His face from them because they turned their faces from His true word,” Young said impatiently as he stepped around the side of the anvil to gaze directly into the trapper’s face. “The Indian believes in the sanctity of his beliefs about his world because he is in a state of ignorance—he knows not the word of God, Mr. Bass. Be careful, very careful, you do not covet the ignorance of these savages, or you are a heathen yourself, destined for the pit of fire. The reason these heathens can’t spread the healing power of their teaching is because they have no knowledge of the one true God.”
Scratch slammed the hammer down on the red-hot iron with a vengeance. “Their God is the same as yours, Preacher.”
Young’s face brightened with that benevolent smile that made Bass realize the Prophet believed he was ministering unto a lesser man, one who was every bit as ignorant as a heathen Indian, totally unworthy of salvation for the color of his skin.
“No,” the Prophet argued, “the spirits of these Indians are not the same as the one true Creator. These red savages live in a state of ignorance, for there will be no happy hunting ground for them when they die without the salvation of the word.”
From the corner of Scratch’s eye, the old trapper spotted his wife step from the open doorway of the store and stop against the building, then slowly settle to the half-log bench propped against the cabin wall. Waits-by-the-Water smiled at him, then closed her eyes and turned her face up to the warming sun. Apparently very much at peace.
Turning back to Brigham Young, he asked, “Your God an angry God, Preacher?”
For a moment, Young appeared to heft his thoughts around like a carpenter might take the measure of the grain in a piece of wood. “Yes, at times He can be an angry, vengeful God. When He alone determines He will smite the unrighteous—”
“What of all them sinners back to Missouri?” Titus asked as he continued to hammer on those last few inches of iron. “Other places too … where the folks riz up … an’ throwed you Marmons out? Why didn’t your God … smite them Gentiles … why did your God … make it so hard on your people?”
That question startled the Prophet. He quickly glanced at those followers around him with a look that Titus figured was Young’s wondering if any of them had explained the story of their y
ears of travail to this ignorant Gentile.
“It is not for a man to know the inner workings of the heart of God, Mr. Bass,” he finally answered. “I suppose it will all be revealed to us in due time.”
“Maybeso, not in your lifetime?”
Young finally nodded. “Perhaps not in my lifetime, yes. But just as Moses led his Israelites to the Promised Land but could not cross over, this might not be revealed to me before I close my eyes and take my final breath … then stand at the foot of the throne of God, when all things will finally be revealed to me.”
Titus sighed, “Some things just meant to be a … a mystery, Preacher.”
“Mystery, you say?”
In the tongs Bass held up the small hoop of iron that had lost all its crimson glow. Suspended between the two of them. The anointed Prophet and the dirt-ignorant old trapper. “Most ever’ kind of folk I come to know out here—man, an’ woman too—they figger what they can’t wrap their minds around ain’t for ’em to unnerstand.”
“But God has clearly shown mankind that He wants us to understand.”
“Where’s this hoop start, Preacher?”
“Why—clearly at the end you curved in.”
“Did your own hoop start when you was born?”
“My … hoop?” he asked with the sort of smile one would wear when answering the questions of a young child.
For a moment Scratch considered how best to explain that simple concept to this self-assured preacher. “The long journey your own spirit takes—ain’t it like a hoop? You’re born, live your life good as you can, then you die. So did your own hoop start when you was born?”
Young cleared his throat and reflected. “Certainly … no, it didn’t. My spirit yearned for a place among God’s faithful and chosen people at this very time in history.”
“You’re saying you was somewhere else on this hoop when you was born?”
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