“The man’s my father-in-law,” Burwell growled. “An’ the other’n is his good friend. That makes ’em both near kin to me.”
“But we do not have room for any travelers to throw in with this company!” Hargrove said, frustration crimping his features.
A new voice called out, “What’s it hurt?”
He turned on the man, “Why, Fenton—it hurts the rule of law and orderliness here in the wilderness. If we let things slip out here, even a little, then we truly are not bringing God’s order and civilization to our new homes.”
“These two won’t ruin nothing!” another shouted.
Then a voice seconded that opinion, “And I haven’t seen either of ’em coming round my wife and daughter like you claimed they would.”
Hargrove countered, “This is but the first day! There hasn’t been time for these beasts to show their true stripes.”
“Maybeso we oughtta put it to a vote!” called a voice.
“No, Pruett!” cried the wagon master. “We haven’t had our full debate.”
Bingham took two steps away from Burwell and yelled, “We can call for a vote now!”
“No!” Hargrove bellowed his desperation, wheeling to gesture at his supporters. “We haven’t heard anything from the other side!”
“I say let’s vote!” Burwell called.
Titus felt the palpable surge of electricity that shot through the murmuring crowd like a jolt of lightning.
“No—you can’t!”
But Burwell was not distracted. “Those who don’t want my father-in-law and his friend along to Fort Hall—”
“Not yet, you can’t vote yet!”
Yet Burwell continued, “—let’s see a show of hands!”
Immediately those on the far side of the assembly raised their arms—perhaps as many as twenty men, along with Hargrove’s eight hired men, while the train captain began to wave both of his arms frantically.
“No, no—there must be time for more debate!”
Roman Burwell continued, “So we should have a show of hands for those who see nothing wrong with these two men coming to Fort Hall with us.”
Only a blind man without ears would have trouble sorting out which way that vote went. As soon as more than sixty men held their arms in the air, they began a spontaneous cheer of relief, of jubilation, of revolt against the tyranny of the man who had arrogantly turned his back on them and would be making for California, leaving them high and leaderless at Fort Hall.
Burwell turned to Hoyt Bingham and said in a voice just loud enough for those close to hear, “I think it’s time we got this all settled here and now.”
“The new captain?” Bingham whispered.
“Yep. Let’s get this over with so we can toss Hargrove out on his ear.”
Bingham quickly looked at the wagon master shuffling over to his supporters, listened to the noise of their arguing, then pursed his lips and nodded his head once in agreement.
“Friends! Friends! Fellow members of the Hargrove Oregon Company!” Roman bellowed, shaking both arms aloft for silence. “We have an important vote to make tonight. Even more important than the one we just made.”
“Vote?” Hargrove squealed as he wheeled about on his bootheels. “What other vote? You can’t do this without your captain’s permission!”
Burwell took a step toward the center of the ring and told the crowd, “We oughtta vote on a new captain!”
For a long moment the entire assembly fell into a dead hush. Not a sniffle or cough, not one shuffle of a boot on the sandy soil or the murmur of a mother scolding a child—nothing for three long heartbeats. Then all hell broke loose. Hargrove’s supporters and hired men began screaming their objections—which only prompted the man’s detractors to cheer, clap their hands, and stomp their feet on the ground. Which drowned out most all of the naysayers.
Once more Roman was signaling for some quiet; then he yelled, “For our new captain, I throw in the name of Hoyt Bingham!”
“Hoyt B-bingham?” Hargrove yelled.
“I put a second on that vote!” Iverson shouted.
“How ’bout you, Roman?”
Burwell turned to the speaker, who stood at the side of the throng. “Mr. Ryder, I do appreciate your confidence in me an’ all—”
“You stood up to that two-tongued no-good who lied about taking us all the way to Oregon,” Ryder said as he scratched at his gray-flecked whiskers. “I say you showed you got the stuff to be our captain!”
A moment after some of the crowd began to roar its approval, Roman shushed them again and said, “No. I won’t let my name be put in the vote.”
“Why, Roman?”
Burwell turned to the man. “Mr. Truell, I won’t let you vote on me ’cause I know I’m nothing more than a simple farmer. I know I haven’t got the brains to lead this outfit to Oregon.”
That’s when Titus roared, “But you got the heart to do it, son!”
Roman turned and stared incredulously at his father-in-law with something in his eyes that told Scratch that the man was about to loose some tears.
Suddenly Bingham was beside Burwell, saying, “I don’t believe what Roman Burwell says when he tells you he doesn’t have the brains to lead this outfit. But I do believe that Roman has the heart to make a good captain of this Oregon company. I will serve as your captain … but only if Roman Burwell will serve as my coleader!”
The deafening roar of more than two hundred throats drowned out the exasperated cries of the desperate knot of men and women which had tightened around Phineas Hargrove.
“All those in favor!” Bingham called for the vote.
But the noise was even louder still, frightening magpies and jays from their roosts in trees for a full half mile around the cedar breaks.
“Any opposed?” Bingham shouted. “Any ’cept Hargrove’s California Company?”
“But we’re going to the same place!” Hargrove growled as he parted his supporters and advanced on Bingham and Burwell, his hired men in tow. “I will serve out my term as the leader of this whole company—”
Suddenly Roman and Bingham stood shoulder to shoulder before him, more than two dozen friends closing in a phalanx behind their newly elected leaders. That stopped the wagon master and his young muscle in their tracks.
“Unless Hoyt Bingham has something against it,” Burwell announced to the throng, “Phineas Hargrove and his people can travel with us till we get to Fort Hall—but only ’cause the rest of us gonna let them stay.”
“Amen to that!” Bingham cheered. “Out here in this new country we’re gonna build, a man can’t stay leader if the people he leads decide they won’t follow him!”
Burwell drew himself up and looked down at the smooth-faced Hargrove. “It’s a new day, Cap’n. No more are you gonna walk on the rest of us just so you can get yourself and your guns to California.”
The apologetic look that came over Hargrove’s face appeared convincing enough to the crowd.
“I-I can see now where I’ve been a little harsh,” he confessed with downcast eyes. “But, I had a job to do—a job you men of this train elected me to”
“Now you take your people to California,” Roman reminded him.
“Yes,” Hargrove agreed, appearing contrite and duly chastised. “I’d proudly serve as the leader of this train until we reach Fort Hall … but, it appears I must turn over command to your new leaders: Burwell and Bingham.”
The crowd roared again as men pounded the new upstarts on the back. Hargrove reached out his hand, shaking with both of those new leaders as his hired men held back the gathering. That brief formality seen to, the wagon master turned abruptly and disappeared with his men forming a protective ring around him as they took their leave from the low knoll.
Maybeso, Titus thought, things just might be working out for these folks after all.
“You see’d Roman?”
Amanda turned to answer her father early the next morning, “He and Lemuel went down
to the hollow to find one of the cows that wandered away last night.”
“Together?” he asked, some small itch nagging him, small but buried deep enough he could not quite find it to scratch.
“Yes,” she replied. “Something wrong, Pa?”
Titus shook his head and lamely tried out a gap-toothed smile on her. “Naw—I just ’spect they’ll blow that trumpet anytime now an’ the train be rolling out.”
“We’re about ready here,” Amanda declared. “Team’s hitched and the milkers are over there with Leah and Annie.”
As she turned away to toss the last of the bedrolls over the rear gate of the wagon, Scratch slowly scanned the cedar breaks that surrounded them on three sides. There wasn’t all that much tall cover, and it sure as hell wasn’t a forest the likes of which you’d find against the foothills. Just some low scrub cedar that ran more than five miles in all directions across the rolling, rumpled landscape. But the thickets were nonetheless tall enough to hide a man on foot, and sure as hell thick enough to conceal a cow that had wandered off in search of a fresh mouthful of grass sometime during the night.
The trumpet blew, a shrill blare on the hot breeze that foretold a scorcher of a day.
And he turned, finding Amanda over by the wagon, wheeling suddenly, her eyes finding him.
The trumpet blew its warning again.
Scratch watched his daughter swallow as she blinked into the distance, smoothing her open hands down the rumpled pleats at the front of her dirty brown dress.
“Ma!”
They both whirled, finding Lemuel trudging out of the cedar breaks, the front of his shirt dark with sweat. This early in the cool of daybreak? As the youth lunged closer, Bass could see how his hair was plastered with dampness, his face glistening.
“Lem!” she cried, starting for him.
“I heard the trumpet!” he gushed breathlessly as he approached the wagon and his mother, who lunged forward to greet him. “Come fast as I could.”
“Where’s your pa?”
“He’s not here?” the boy asked as his dusty boots slid to a halt on the flaky soil. “Didn’t he come back with the cow yet?”
“N-no,” she answered, her voice small, pinched off.
Titus was there immediately, his hands gripping Lemuel’s shoulders, turning the lad toward him. “Where’s your pa?”
“Dunno, Gran’pa,” the boy said, fear starting to show in his eyes.
“Thought the two of you went out after the cow together?”
That third and final call of the trumpet blared brassily over the encampment. Titus turned quickly to the east. Saw how the sun would be rising soon.
Lemuel nodded and swallowed hard after his race to get back to camp. “We did, together. But, it was getting later and later. Pa thought we ought to split up so he could work the other side of the hill from me.”
“You don’t know where he went?”
Turning, the boy pointed. “I come from there. Pa was on the far side of the hill. I figured he or Hargrove’s men’d find the cow afore I got to the end of the draw, then doubled back—like Pa told me to—”
“You say Hargrove’s men?” Titus interrupted, his belly tightening.
With a nod and a gulp, Lemuel answered, “Three of ’em ran onto me. They was riding horses. Asked where Pa was, was he on foot like me. I told ’em we was looking for one of our cows wandered off. They said for me to start on back to the wagons—we was pulling out soon.”
“Where’d they go?” he asked, a little desperation creeping into his voice, that tiny itch grown to a full-blown uncontrollable urge just screaming to be scratched.
“They said they’d find Pa, then headed off the way I told ’em he went,” the boy admitted. “Said they could find the cow better on horseback than Pa could on f—”
“You say they was riding horses?”
“Yes—”
Titus had freed his desperate grip on the boy’s shoulders and was turning away as Hoyt Bingham rode up with Hargrove and three of his hired men on horseback. Shadrach was coming over from the shady spot where his family had slept out the night.
“That’s them, Gran’pa,” Lemuel declared in a quiet voice just behind Bass’s shoulder.
“Who?”
“The three who said they’d find Pa and the cow.”
“Them three ridin’ up behin’t Hargrove?”
“Yessir.”
“Great God, Amanda!” Hargrove bawled as Digger lowered his head and growled. “You haven’t got your yoke of oxen hitched to that wagon yet?”
“We’re … looking for Roman.”
Hargrove acted as if taken aback by that pronouncement. “But, we’re leaving right now. Already put the head of the march on the trail for the Little Muddy.”
“Oh, no, no!” she whimpered. “Roman’s not back—”
“The boy here says these three niggers o’ your’n turned him back from helpin’ his pa look for a missing cow,” Titus interrupted his daughter, instantly snagging the attention of the five riders as he moved toward Amanda beside the wagon. Shad angled around so that he stood behind Bingham and the quartet of horsemen, his double-barreled flintlock smoothbore cradled across his left forearm.
“What about this, Hargrove?” Bingham demanded.
Turning to one of his hired men, Hargrove asked, “Yes, what about that, Corrett? You know where Burwell went?”
Corrett shrugged, pulling at an earlobe. “We run onto the boy out in the thicket, like the old man said.”
Then a second rider explained, “But we never saw hide or hair of him. So we come on back afore we got left behind.”
“No sign of him, Jenks?” asked the ousted wagon master.
That second rider shook his head convincingly. “No, Mr. Hargrove. No sign.”
Turning back to Amanda and Bingham, clearly ignoring Bass, Hargrove crossed his wrists on his saddlehorn and said, “There you have it, Mrs. Burwell. My men weren’t able to find your husband. Perhaps he’s been bitten by a rattler.”
“Oh, Pa—”
Titus looped his arm over her shoulder as she started to sag. He held her up against his side. “We’ll find him, Shad an’ me.”
Worry creased Bingham’s face. “Who’s going to get your wagon moving?” He pointed off at the rest of the wagons, the last of which were rumbling into motion, oxen lowing, mules braying, men barking commands at the animals, and women hollering at their children to catch up. “The train’s on its way.”
“You’ve got to stop them, Hoyt!” Amanda shrieked, trembling fingers at her lips.
Calmly, deliberately, before Bingham could utter a word, Hargrove declared, “We can’t do that. Wagon master Bingham was elected by all the people to get this company through to Oregon. We have these rules for the good of the entire group.”
Scratch had to restrain his daughter as she attempted to lunge forward, sobbing, “But you can’t go off and leave us!”
Bingham started to speak, then wagged his head. “Roman will show up soon enough.”
“One man and one cow cannot stay this company from the miles we must put behind us today,” Hargrove asserted as he leaned back and straightened his spine reflexively. “Your husband should have thought more about you than he did his cow, Mrs. Burwell,” he said, putting a real emphasis on the word Mrs.
“Wh-where you going?” Titus asked as Bingham and Hargrove pulled their horses around in that jumble of hired men.
“Wagon master Bingham has got a train to move one day closer to Oregon,” Hargrove announced with triumph brightening his face.
Then Scratch could only stare at the backs of those five men as they kicked their horses into a lope and shot away, intent on catching the head of the column just then winding its way toward the sagebrush bottoms, raising those first choking spirals of yellow dust for the day.
FOURTEEN
As he scanned the thick cedar breaks before him, Scratch wondered which of them he would find first: the cow, or his son-in-law.
There was no chance of uncertainty here. In his black-and-white world, there was enough evidence already in hand to assure himself that Hargrove and his cronies had something to do with Roman Burwell’s not getting back to camp in time to depart with the rest of the train … with or without that missing cow. If one of the Burwells’ cows had ever managed to wander off on its own through the night.
At the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Sweete again, coming out of a knot of horse-high cedar. They waved and gestured to tell one another the direction they were moving in their search; then each disappeared from the view of the other once more. It had been that way ever since the two old friends had mounted up and left their wives behind with several rifles and a pistol apiece for them and Amanda too. Titus Bass didn’t trust Phineas Hargrove and them young bucks of his any farther than he could puke.
“I’m goin’ with you,” Sweete had announced as the backs of those five riders headed down the long slope toward the bottoms, where the grayed canvas of the wagontops looked like the back of a bull snake winding its way north by west for the Little Muddy and the north end of the Bear River Divide.
For a long moment Amanda had shoved herself against her father, clinging to him, sobbing into his chest. That’s when Titus noticed his four grandchildren coming their way, their eyes filled with questions, even the beginnings of a little terror.
“Amanda, your young’uns,” he whispered and pulled her away from him slightly so he could peer into her face. “They need you right now.”
“B-but … Roman?”
His eyes narrowed meaningfully. “We’ll find ’im. Shadrach an’ me. You … you see to the young’uns while we’re gone. Don’t let ’em see you worry.”
She nodded and swallowed deeply, quickly dragging a palm down both of her cheeks as she blinked her eyes clear. “Yes, you’re right,” she said bravely, then attempted a smile. “I’ll wait here with the children while you and Shad go f-find Roman.”
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