Wind Walker tb-9

by Terry C. Johnston

  As Bass peered quickly over the crowd he spotted Amanda peeling herself away from a nest of women and children standing behind an inner cordon of their menfolk. But it wasn’t until she had reached the outer fringe of the crowd that he saw she wasn’t alone. Her hand gripped that of a young boy, a barefoot child, who shuffled along through the dusty grass to keep pace with his mother’s long strides. She turned and leaned down slightly to say something to the child as they circled around the gathering. In response the boy brought his tiny hand to his brow and peered into the distance at the two buckskin-clad horsemen. He still had his hand shading his eyes as Titus kicked out of the saddle and landed on the ground, only a moment before Amanda stopped before him.

  “This is my daughter Amanda,” Scratch announced as she held out her empty arm for her father. “Amanda, this here’s my good friend, Shadrach Sweete. Him an’ me, we’ve been through a lot together over the years—”

  “Oh, Pa!” she interrupted him, pain in her voice. “Our train’s breaking up!”

  He took her shoulder in one strong hand and quickly glanced at the heated argument taking place nearby at the center of the crowd. “That why you was late comin’ for supper?”

  Amanda’s eyes pleaded. “I’m sorry, for we got all caught up in this trouble—trying to sort out what we’re gonna do.”

  “How’s your train falling apart?” Sweete repeated.

  “We got to Laramie with our company captain,” she began to explain. “We elected him at Westport, mostly because he had a little experience on the plains. Last year he’d come out to Fort Laramie on his own to ride part of the trail for himself. Mostly, he got himself elected because he had more money than the rest of us … and that meant he had more wagons and guns for our protection, and some hired men along too. But, they weren’t family men like the rest of us. Just single fellas, going out to start over in Oregon on the captain’s pay.”

  The fear he read in her eyes made Titus bristle. “Now the rest of you got trouble with some of ’em?”

  “Yes … well, no,” she responded with a frustrated shake of her head. “The captain, his name is Hargrove—back at Laramie he ran onto a pilot who says he knows the country from here on out. Says he’s been out to Oregon a half dozen times. Was a mountain trapper too, he claims.”

  “What’s his name?” Sweete demanded suspiciously.

  “I can’t rightly remember,” she answered, her face gray with concern. “Only that Hargrove said he was our Moses,” she admitted.

  “He here?” Titus asked.

  She nodded.

  “Point ’im out to me.”

  Amanda turned with the child still clutching her hand and stepped away to the right where the three of them would have a better view of the central actors in this dramatic dispute taking place beside Black’s Fork.

  “There he is,” Amanda announced, bitterness in her voice pointing quickly. “That’s him. Got a full beard like yours, and he’s wearing those skin clothes—like yours, Pa.”

  Peering through the anxious crowd shifting from one foot to the other, Titus trained his good eye on the figure who was turned slightly away from him for the moment. Then the tall man addressing the group took a step forward, and Scratch easily made out the pilot.

  “Harris,” Sweete whispered it like a curse.

  “That nigger gets drunk at the drop of a hat—an’ when he does, he ain’t leading no one nowhere,” Bass grumbled in agreement of Shad’s sentiment.

  “No, he hasn’t made any trouble with his drinking,” Amanda argued. “Problem is, the pilot’s going off with Hargrove and his wagons.”

  “Off where?”

  “Taking them to California,” she said with exasperation and a shake of her head.

  Scratch turned from glaring at Harris to look down at his daughter. “Thought you said your train was bound for Oregon?”

  Amanda pursed her lips, then said, “Back at Westport we was formed as a company for Oregon Territory. That’s where most of us still want to go. But late this afternoon Hargrove sent around his men, calling a council meeting.”

  “Hargrove?” Shad echoed.

  She explained, “When we got here a little while ago, he started off telling us he and his hired men would stay on with us till we reached Fort Hall. That’s where Hargrove said he was turning off for California.”

  “An’ your captain is taking your new pilot with him to Californy,” Bass completed the dilemma.

  “That’s right,” she answered, reaching out to gently squeeze his hand. “After that we won’t have us our company captain and all his guns along. And we won’t have our pilot to get us from Fort Hall to the Willamette.”

  Without turning to look at his tall friend, Scratch glared at the tall, well-dressed speaker named Hargrove and said quietly, “Let’s go have us a listen, Shadrach.”

  Leading their horses, the pair inched forward on foot to the outer edges of the crowd. It was there that Titus whispered, “I didn’t see him my own self earlier this summer, but them Marmons Gabe an’ me run into on the Sandy said they come across Harris at Pacific Springs in the pass. Coming from Oregon hisself, he told ’em. When Brigham Young said he had no need to hire him to lead his bunch into the valley of the Salt Lake, Harris said he’d push on to Fort John—where he claimed there’d be plenty of trains what’d hire him to pilot them through.”

  “No-good bastard found him some work, he did,” Sweete responded in a whisper so sharp that it made a few of the nearby emigrants turn their heads and flick a disquieting look at the pair in buckskins.

  Bass leaned over and whispered to Amanda, “That’s your Moses, all right. His name’s Moses Harris. Sometimes, that nigger goes by the name o’ Black Harris. His cheeks burned so dark the skin shines like burnt powder. How he come by that name.”

  With an involuntary shudder, she declared, “I’d just as soon he go off a different way, Pa. Never did like the way he looked at me or any other woman with the train. Them eyes of his all over me—makes my skin tremble like I was cold and had spiders crawling on me at the same time.”

  “From what I recollect, that’un’s a coward … less’n he’s got a bellyful of John Barleycorn,” Shad observed.

  “Shshshsh!” One of the emigrants turned and pressed a finger to her lips at the two old mountain men.

  “—which means all of you are free to follow me to my new home in California,” boomed the tall man who towered over the stockier Harris, “or, you can make your own way to Oregon without our help.”

  “I recall this company elected you our captain,” protested a tall, wide-shouldered man as he stepped from the edge of the crowd, tugging at one of his frayed suspenders that threatened to slip off his shoulder. He was clearly growing agitated. “Back at Westport, before we ever headed out, we elected you, Hargrove—because you said you was gonna lead us to Oregon.”

  “A man has a right to change his mind,” Phineas Hargrove argued now with a winning smile. “Between leaving Westport behind and the Green River crossing, I’ve come to believe California is where my fortunes lie.”

  Another, heavier man lunged from the inner edge of the gathering to growl, “But we was formed around you to take us to Oregon. That’s where we all wanna go! We’re a Oregon company!”

  Hargrove turned to the shorter man with that look of disdain written upon his face. “And you’re all free to follow your dreams from Fort Hall,” he reminded them. “But any of you who want to see what California has to offer, I repeat that Mr. Harris here has agreed to lead us south and west from Fort Hall, to the Humboldt and on to northern California.”

  That’s when the tall man with the thick neck that disappeared into the collar of his shirt took three more steps that brought him onto the open ground at the center of the great circle where Hargrove and Harris held court. Amanda raised herself on the toes of her boots and whispered into her father’s ear, “That’s Roman.”

  “Roman?” Titus repeated, appraising the man. “Your husband
?”

  She nodded.

  As Roman Burwell came to a sudden halt before Hargrove, three of the captain’s hired men stepped protectively closer to their employer, their flinty gazes full of intimidation for the farmer who said, “There was something about you, Hargrove—right from when I first laid eyes on you at Westport. Something slick and oily from the start.”

  “I got you this far, Burwell,” the captain sneered down his long, patrician nose. “I can’t nurse the rest of you all the way to Oregon. You’ll have to get there on your own.” With an amused grin, Hargrove stepped away from his hired men and walked around Burwell tauntingly. “Why, the rest of you could even elect Burwell here as your new captain!”

  But that suggestion met with a strained, awkward silence while Hargrove waited for someone to speak up.

  Instead, it was Burwell himself who shattered the silence, “Ain’t no one gonna choose me for to be the captain, Hargrove. I ain’t got the makings of a train captain. Just a simple man. I could never pretend to be nothing I ain’t. But that’s just what you done to the rest of us.”

  Hargrove ground to a halt and he leaned in at the side of the farmer’s face. “What’s that mean, Burwell?”

  The big sodbuster struggled to keep his beefy hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists. “One thing I can’t abide by is a man saying he’s one thing, when he’s lying through his teeth at me. I brung my family all the way here—hell, we all got our families with us. We was bound for Oregon, following a man who said he was gonna lead us to the Willamette River … and now we find out that man’s a damned liar!”

  The short, black quirt suspended from the end of Hargrove’s wrist flew out in a blur, the two ends of the horsewhip catching Burwell high across one cheekbone. It stunned the farmer as he stumbled back a step more in shock than pain, bringing his hand to his face. When he brought the fingertips away and looked down at the trickle of blood the whip had opened in his flesh, a gasp escaped from those emigrants close by. Amanda took one step into the crowd before Titus seized her arm and yanked her back, where he could lay an arm over her shoulder.

  “Your husband don’t need you making more trouble for him,” he whispered sternly, then he and Shad shared a look that both men understood immediately. He leaned down, tousling his grandson’s hair, then whispered to Amanda, “Daughter, you keep the boy here with you.”

  Then Scratch took a step away from her, stopped, and turned back to whisper, “Don’t you move from this spot, Amanda. Chances are, you’ll only make things a mite messier.”

  “No one … no one at all, calls me a liar, Burwell,” Hargrove bellowed at the crowd. He held the short whip at the end of his arm menacingly, slowly dragging it around the crowd in an arc.

  The farmer wiped his bloodied fingers on his worn canvas britches, then suddenly pointed at some children inching toward him. “Lem, you keep your sisters back.”

  The twelve-year-old boy obeyed instantly, putting his hand on the shoulders of his two younger sisters and nudging them back against the fringe of the crowd.

  Burwell stood for a moment, as if he were a big, dumb brute working up a fighting lather, his eyes gone to slits as he flexed those fists open and closed, open and closed. “No man’s ever gonna hit me ’thout me hittin’ him back!”

  But the farmer lunged no more than two steps in Hargrove’s direction when he lurched to an ungainly halt, jerking back as he stared down at the pistols those three hired men had pulled out of their belts, their wide muzzles only a matter of feet from Burwell’s belly.

  Dramatically, Hargrove dragged the leather strands of his horsewhip through his open left palm. “The rest of you have got to understand, I am not doing this to hurt any one of you. I am not that sort of man. I simply have my own interests to see to. My own dreams to chase. And those dreams beckon me from California now. I will nonetheless bring you all the way to Fort Hall—”

  “Where you’re gonna take our pilot from us,” Burwell grumbled, staring down at those three pistols. “And take your extra guns with you too.”

  “Why shouldn’t I, Burwell?” Hargrove asked. “Have I been paid by this company to lead you to Oregon?”

  “You asked us to elect you!” a voice cried from the crowd.

  “We elected you to take us to Oregon!”

  “But I’m not going to Oregon now,” Hargrove argued. “And, this company of poor farmers never contracted to pay me any money to get you there—”

  “Never was any talk of pay,” the big farmer reminded. “You put your own name up for captain, said you wanted to lead us to Oregon … so you was chose as captain to take these people to Oregon.”

  “Mr. Harris here says the chances are better than good you’ll find someone at Fort Hall who knows the road and can pilot the rest of you to Oregon,” Hargrove suggested with a flippant gesture of that horsewhip.

  A woman’s voice cried out, “But we won’t have us no captain neither!”

  “You can elect a man to serve when you embark from Fort Hall. Till then, I will dutifully serve as your company captain. And as captain, my orders are that we move at dawn day after tomorrow.” Drawing in a long breath, Hargrove quickly said, “Since I hear no other business, this meeting of the Hargrove Company is adjourned.”

  Some of the crowd stood rooted in their places, whispering among themselves. Others began to wander away from the shady banks of Black’s Fork, slowly starting back toward their wagons laid out in an orderly pattern across the grassy meadow. Hargrove leaned close to Burwell and said something to the farmer that no one else could have heard, then turned away with his men and the pilot.

  “Harris!” Scratch hollered as the crowd before him splintered into whispering knots. He gave Shad another nod, and they started toward their old compatriot.

  “Shadrach Sweete! If this ain’t a joy for these old eyes!” Harris bellowed after he had stopped and turned on his heel, recognizing the tall man coming his way through the dispersing crowd.

  Curious, Hargrove and his hired men halted as well, forming a crescent behind the pilot.

  “Finally talked yourself into leading a train I see!” Bass said as he came to a stop in front of the old trapper. “Don’t know me, do you?”

  Harris wagged his head. “I s’pose to?”

  “Naw. I never run with Bridger an’ Sweete,” he grumbled as his eyes peered into Hargrove’s face, taking a quick measure of the captain. “I was a free man, Harris.”

  Without a word of reply to Bass, Harris turned to Sweete. “Thought I see’d ye workin’ for Jim Bridger at his Green River ferry when we come across the Seedskeedee.”

  “I was,” Shad said.

  “Ain’t got no job? Maybe ye’re hankerin’ to find a li’l work with some emigrants, are ye?”

  “I got work if I want it, right here at Bridger’s post,” Sweete declared.

  That’s when Bass interrupted, “Shadrach, you ’member how they had to tie this here nigger to a tree till Doc an’ Joe got started off from ronnyvoo for Oregon a few years back?”

  Harris’s eyes glared like those of a diamondback rattler ready to strike as they instantly shifted to Titus Bass. “What kind of bullshit—”

  “You was a no-good snake belly back then,” Scratch continued as Amanda rejoined her husband, several yards away at the edge of the trees. “An’ it looks like you’ve hooked up with your own no-good kind again, Harris.”

  “Are you referring to me?” Hargrove demanded as he strode up beside Harris, about half a head taller than either the pilot or the old trapper.

  His eyes flashed to Hargrove’s. “Way you side-talked these folks, you’re a slick’un, you are.”

  “Who the hell is this, Harris?”

  “Never met ’im. So I dunno—”

  “Far as you need to know,” Titus said, glaring at Hargrove, “I’m just a nigger what hates bald-faced liars even more’n that sodbuster you hit with your—”

  Scratch’s left arm shot up and out, his forearm
cracking against Hargrove’s wrist as the captain brought up his horsewhip. Bass immediately rolled his hand and seized the man’s forearm, which compelled the three hired men to bring up their pistols, each muzzle pointed at Bass.

  Hargrove snarled, “Best you let me go, mister.”

  “I ain’t ’bout to let you go till these lizard-hearted bastards of yours put their pistols away in their pants.”

  Hargrove snorted a chuckle. “And if they don’t? I figure they can put three balls in you before you even begin to reach for your pistol. Now—for the last time—take your hand off me.”

  “Maybeso these three cowards can shoot one man,” Bass admitted after a moment of reflection. “But if I know my ol’ partner, he’s got his pistol pointed at you right now. So no matter what happens to me, you’re the first’un to go down after them three cowards of your’n shoot me. No matter what, you die where you’re standin’.”

  Titus didn’t know for sure what Sweete had done behind him. Or if he had done anything at all. The only thing he could do was count on his old friend to be there at his back. And from that look in Hargrove’s eyes when the captain glanced at Shadrach, Titus could plainly see there was reason enough to give Hargrove pause.

  “No man calls me a liar and gets away with it,” he hissed at the trapper.

  “Seems to me there’s more’n a hunnert folks here who believe that’s just what you are, a low-down liar,” Titus declared, sensing some of the building fury cause the captain’s arm to tremble. “Best you cipher this too—I ain’t one of your farmers, Hargrove. I don’t cotton to no whippin’s, an’ I figger any man what’s gotta sashay around with the likes o’ these here hired snake bellies, why—that man’s no more than a coward.”

  Hargrove attempted to yank his arm free. “Maybe I should shoot you myself,” he growled as he rested his left hand on the butt of his pistol protruding from the front of his belt.

  “Go right ahead,” Scratch prodded. “You’ll never get it out afore Shadrach kills you dead where you stand.”

  Harris’s face was painted with worry as he took a step closer to Hargrove. “The big’un—he can do it, Cap’n.”