Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  Titus grew thoughtful. “H-how you figger Joe an’ Doc are doin’ out there?”

  “Meek and Newell? In all these years since that last ronnyvoo when they pointed their noses for Oregon, I only see’d Joe back one time, when he come to fetch up my Mary Ann, take her back to Whitman’s school.”

  “They made farms outta that Willamette country, like they said they was?”

  Bridger nodded. “Both of ’em likely young men, Titus. They didn’t have near as many rings on ’em as you an’ me. Young niggers like them can make a go of anything. There’s nothing but time ahead for ’em. But—for fellers like us, most of our days are already on the back trail.”

  He nodded reluctantly but tried a valiant grin. “Man sure does do things a bit differently when most of his time is at his back. The choices he makes. What comes to be more important to him.”

  With a long sigh, Bridger said, “You done me real good here while I was away, Scratch.”

  “Didn’t take longer’n a day afore the hammer felt good in my hand again.”

  Jim grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “So you like blacksmithing, do you?”

  “Don’t go getting the idee that I’m hiring out for no job at Bridger’s fort!” he protested.

  “It’s a fine turn you done for us,” Bridger said. “The young’uns an’ me. I’ll miss your woman’s help, an’ that boy of yours too, when you light out for Crow country.”

  For a moment, Bass toed his moccasin into the flaky ground near the corral gate where the two of them stood talking in the shade of the tall timbers. “’Bout that, Gabe,” he began. “Me an’ the woman, we been talking while you was away to the ferry with Shad.”

  “You ain’t thinking of taking off soon?” Bridger asked, then hurried right on. “Hell, I could’ve figgered that. I don’t blame you none, Scratch: not wanting to be around when them emigrants come rolling through here with their wide-eyed young’uns screamin’ and throwin’ their Bibles at us an’ their poke bonnets—”

  “Thought we’d stay for ’while, Gabe.” He interrupted Bridger just as the trader was getting to midstride.

  “Maybeso till late summer. Till the last of them emigrants get on past here to Fort Hall. Me and the woman figger that’ll still give us plenty of time to ride north to find a Crow village to put in a winter with.”

  “You’ll stay? By jiggies, if that ain’t the finest piece of news I’ve had in a long, long while!”

  “I s’pose Shad an’ his family gonna stay on till the end of the season too.”

  Bridger nodded. “Up at the ferry, he talked about laying through the winter here with us.”

  “Be good for all of you. Them young’uns of yours, they need women around,” Bass admitted. “Hell, that Felix can make hisself understood to the gals, no matter he don’t speak no Crow or Cheyenne!”

  “Wimmens is just that way!” Bridger enthused, then held out his hand. “Thankee, Scratch. This summer’s bound to be a season we look back on for many a year to come.”

  They shook as Titus asked, “What else you see needs doin’ around here now afore them corncrackers show up on Jim Bridger’s doorstep?”

  “Why—I was gonna push on over Southern Pass to Fort William, buy me some trade goods afore the first wagons reach them. Don’t figger any of those sodbusters gonna coax their wagons this far west till the second week of July.”

  He wagged his head. “Can’t help you do nothing with Fort John. My face ain’t welcome in them parts—”

  “I don’t need you to come with me. I can handle the pack string my own self,” Bridger declared. “But, I’m taking Shell Woman and her pups with me when I light out, morning after next.”

  “I’m sartin Shad’s got a case of the lonelies for her.”

  “An’ he asked if’n you’d come back for a day or so,” Bridger explained.

  “To see Shadrach?”

  “Yep. He figgered things was gonna get busy for ’im and the others, once the easters start showing up to pay their toll on the ferry, so he wanted to spend a li’l time with you while he could. Him an’ me, we’ll have the hull durn winter to catch up an’ tell lies. But, the two of you ain’t got much time to be knee to knee till you take off north come the end of the season.”

  Titus felt that smile grow not just on his face but all through him. “Damn, if you two ain’t about the finest friends a feller could have, Gabe. Yeah, for sartin, let’s us go see Shad. I’d like to lay eyes on this ferry you two strung across the Green River for them wagon folks!”

  So Titus had scratched the dogs’ ears and kissed his family in farewell, then helped deliver Shadrach’s family to the banks of the Green River a few miles south of the mouth of the Big Sandy. It brought a sting to his eyes to see how happy it made all four of them to be reunited once more: man, woman, and young ones too. The way things were meant to be. Early that following morning the three men bridled the string of mules, then cinched on the pads and empty pack-saddles Bridger would bring back laden with trade goods for the store at his post on Black’s Fork.

  “I figger I can ride on with you till we reach the Sweetwater,” Scratch announced after they had muscled the mules across the Green by rope and pulleys, then had the animals strung out in line.

  Sweete bobbed his head. “With the other fellas here to help, I ain’t got nothing for him to do here, Gabe. Maybeso he can give you a hand with them cantankerous mules till you reach the other side of the pass.”

  “Sure you don’t mind heading in that direction?”

  “Ever’thing’s near ready for them wagon folks back at your fort,” Bass declared. “So my woman’ll just shoo me outta the store when I stick my nose in there. Yep—I’ll give you a hand with this here string till we hit the Sweetwater.”

  The grin shining on Bridger’s face right then convinced Titus that a few extra days with an old friend were more than worth any struggle that might come with those contrary-minded mules. In fact, the following day as they were slowly making their way up the Little Sandy toward the Southern Pass, Titus had been reflecting on just how much more enjoyable it was to be in this high, dry country with a string of mules than it was to be back at Fort Bridger where he felt like he was underfoot and clearly not wanted around by his wife and Magpie, womenfolk who constantly fluttered from one task to the next—with the children and the trading post and preparing meals. With a mule a man realized what he was up against and could coax some occasional cooperation out of them … but, with women, it was nothing less than a tale of confusion, confabulation, and not a little woe sometimes—trying his best to sort out why a woman would sometimes utter the exact opposite of what she really meant to tell him.

  “Man’s just a simple critter,” he declared to Bridger that afternoon. “We’re the last of God’s creations ever gonna figger out the heart of a woman.”

  Jim chuckled in the warm sun. “Soon as a man understands he ain’t never gonna read the sign in a woman’s breast, the sooner he’ll make peace with life—”

  “What’s that yonder?” Scratch interrupted.

  “Looks to be a string of riders.”

  Bass shaded his eyes with a hand. “The first emigrants come west ’thout wagons?”

  Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Don’t callate how they could. Have no idea who they be. Or what they’re doing out here.”

  “Them riders is all dressed in civil clothes,” Titus commented as he peered into the mid-distance with that one good eye, then turned in the saddle to dig in his bags for his spyglass. “Ain’t any Fort John fellas, is it?”

  “Not a reason they’d be comin’ this way,” Jim surmised. “Besides, them parley-voos wouldn’t be dressed in settlement clothes, would they?”

  “If it ain’t Frenchies from the Platte, what bunch gonna march over the pass ’thout no wagons?”

  Bridger waited as Bass brought the spyglass to his eye, then asked, “You see any women with that bunch?”

  “Nary a one.”

  Jim said,
“No womenfolk—squaws or corncracker—neither one. Such only makes me curiouser and curiouser who them riders are.”

  He squinted through the spyglass and surmised, “Maybe their wagons and women coming behind where we can’t see.”

  Bridger nodded. “That’s the story. Damn, if this first bunch ain’t one helluva lot earlier’n I figgered they’d come. For the life of me—can’t callate how they made it across the prerra so fast.”

  Titus watched the horsemen draw closer and closer, those in the vanguard suddenly spotting the small mule train already pulled up at the side of a low hill overlooking the Little Sandy. “Only way for ’em to be this far this early is they got ’em a jump on leavin’ the settlements, or they hunkered down for winter right out on the prerra—ahead of ever’one else.”

  “Maybeso you’re right,” Jim declared. “This bunch had to spend the winter a long way out from the settlements for ’em to make it here now.”

  “S’pose we ought’n go on down there an’ be civil, don’t you, Gabe?”

  “That’s the hull thing ’bout being a trader in the heart of this big wilderness,” Bridger confessed. “Man’s gotta be a good neighbor to what all kinds come riding through his country.”

  The sun was suspended just past midsky as the first four riders broke away from the head of that gaggle of horsemen and loped toward the two old trappers.

  “Elder Orson Pratt!” announced the long-faced one who was first to speak. He held out his hand. “What are your names?”

  “Elder?” Titus echoed. “You don’t look so damn old to me.”

  “That’s a way our brethren have of addressing one another,” Pratt declared with a self-assured grin. “The title doesn’t refer to our age, just our wisdom in the word of God. What name do you go by, good sir?”

  “Titus Bass,” he answered, tapping the brim of his wide hat with two fingertips. “This here’s Jim Bridger.”

  Pratt’s face lit up, as did the countenances of the other three. “The Jim Bridger?”

  “I’m the onliest one,” Gabe replied.

  Turning sideways in his saddle, Pratt said exuberantly, “Elder Woodruff, ride back and tell the President that God has surely blessed us this day. Explain that Jim Bridger himself has been delivered into our hands!”

  As the round-faced man in the flat-brimmed black hat reined his horse around and loped back toward the main party, Pratt didn’t get a word out before Bridger spoke up, “Me delivered into your hands?”

  The stranger nodded enthusiastically. “We prayed we might run onto you, Mr. Bridger. Two days ago we met up with a small company of men come from Oregon.”

  “Oregon?” Jim repeated. “They was headed east?”

  “On their way to the States on some business,” Pratt explained. “Left Oregon on the fifth of May, horseback and making good time they claimed. Major Harris, their guide, was bringing them through to Laramie, where he would take his leave of their party and stay at that post until he could hire out to one of the emigrant companies if they wished to employ his services, leading them back to Oregon.”

  Titus asked, “That where your train is headed?”

  Pratt shook his head. “My, no. We’re on the way to a land of our own. Where the Lord Himself is guiding us.”

  “We are the Saints of the living God,” declared the man beside Pratt, his face flushed with the heat. “We have come to find the paradise He has promised to our Prophet, President Young.”

  “Saints, you said?” Titus commented as his eyes moved across the three strangers. They did have the same look about them as those men camped near the Pueblo when he arrived to deliver word of the slaughter in Taos a few months back. “I met me a hull camp of fellers down on the Arkansas last winter what called themselves Saints too. There more’n one bunch o’ Saints come west to find their promised land?”

  The second man had turned to Pratt and was talking almost before Bass was finished. “That must be Captain Brown’s party. Praise God for their deliverance!”

  Then he turned back to address Bass and Bridger, “I am Elder James Little. This is good news you’ve brought us this day about our first pioneer party to push west from Winter Quarters on the Platte.”

  “Pioneers?” Bridger echoed as the rest of the main body came up.

  “We are the vanguard of a mighty migration,” stated a solid man as he brought his horse to a halt. The solid, big-honed man wore no mustache, only a full beard, and his eyes appeared to shine with the first sign of a fever. “Good day to you both. I am President Young. Brigham Young. Pray, which of you is Jim Bridger?”

  “He is,” Titus said, indicating his friend.

  Young heeled his horse forward, stopping immediately on Bridger’s off side, and held out his hand. “I am very, very pleased to meet you, Mr. Bridger.”

  They shook as Jim said, “Call me Jim.”

  “Then you must be sure to call me Brigham.”

  “You’re chief to these here Saints?” Titus asked. “An’ them Saints I met down on the Arkansas last winter?”

  “Captain Brown’s party is safe and well?”

  “They was when I last saw them middle of winter.”

  Young smiled. “This is truly an auspicious day, brothers! We learn that our fellow Mormons are safe in the hand of God, and Jim Bridger has been brought to help us.”

  “Marmons?” Titus repeated.

  “No … Mor-mons,” Young corrected, his face hardening.

  “That’s what I said: Mar-mons,” he replied. “Thought you said you were saints.”

  With a benevolent smile, Young explained, “We are known by both names. Ours is the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, but most folks call us Mormons, because of the Book of Mormon we read, revelations of the latter day.”

  “Two names for the same thing,” Bass muttered to Bridger out of the side of his mouth. “Ain’t that just like a confabulating religion?”

  “Are-you bound for your post?” Young asked Bridger, stoically ignoring Bass’s comment.

  Jim wagged his head. “Fort John for supplies.”

  “Could I prevail upon you to spend some time with us before we proceed on our way?” Young pleaded. “You see, we have these maps of Colonel Fremont’s. It would be most helpful if you could—”

  “Fremont?” Bridger snorted with a huge grin and a shake of his head. “Best you don’t count on them Fremont maps none! Might end up marching right into the sea, you foller a map drawed by the Colonel Fremont I know!”

  “They’re not to be relied upon?” the Prophet asked, dumbfounded.

  “Truth is,” Jim said, “I’m ashamed of any map Fremont’d draw. He knows nothing of the country hereabouts.”

  Drawing in a long sigh, Young said, “Exactly, Mr. Bridger. That’s why it was God’s will that He delivered you to me here. Weeks ago I heard you alone were the man to know this interior country. And for weeks now I’ve prayed God would lead me to you.”

  Squinting his eyes, Jim asked, “What you want of me, Brigham?”

  The man’s face lit up. “Why, I want you to help me find the Promised Land for my people!”

  That afternoon as Bridger and Bass joined the Mormon pioneers in making camp beside the ford of the Little Sandy, Scratch got to brooding that Brigham Young sounded more and more like the Moses of a bygone day, what with all the stories his mother had read him from her great family Bible back in Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky. This one, a new Moses, explaining how he was leading his people out of turmoil and despair back east, where they could not practice their chosen religion in Illinois or Missouri, guiding his flocks of faithful onto the prairie to escape to Zion, much as Moses led his people into the wilderness in search of their own Promised Land.

  “The information you give us about the country west of here is considerably more favorable than the news given us by Major Harris,” Orson Pratt declared at that great council of the Twelve held beside the ford of the Little Sandy, where Bridger and Bass agreed to tarry till br
eakfast, answering every last one of the Saints’ questions concerning the unknown country ahead.

  “If this here Harris is a feller of dark skin,” Bridger explained, “I figger you run onto Moses Harris, but he goes by the name Black Harris. You read the same sign, Scratch?”

  Bass nodded.

  Brigham Young confessed, “Said he was a pilot—could guide for us. We shared a camp with him last night at Pacific Springs, but, I’ll admit I never got the man’s first name. Moses.”

  Bridger said, “I don’t know how he come to call hisself a major, but I’d be curious to hear what he told you Mormons ’bout where you’re headed.”

  “There’s the lake where I feel I’m drawn,” Brigham declared. “I asked him about that lake.”

  “Big’un, or small?” Bridger inquired. “Salt or sweet?”

  Young grinned. “Salt. Yes! Salt.”

  “What’d Harris say ’bout it?”

  “Not much good,” Young admitted, his jowls working. “The whole region is sandy, destitute of timber of any size, and there’s no vegetation but for the wild sage. Tell me, should I trust the word of Major Harris?”

  Making a casual sign of the cross from brow to breast, Bridger explained, “Can’t figger what he’d know of that part of the country. As for me, there’s plenty of timber. Last twenty year, I made sugar from the trees. Right where Harris told you there ain’t no timber.”

  “So you do know the valley?”

  Titus snorted, “Know it? Hell, Bridger floated on the Salt Lake his own self.”

  The Prophet was taken aback. “You’ve floated the lake? Then it isn’t all as big as Fremont shows it is on his map?”

  “It’s so durn big we figgered it for the ocean at first!” Jim explained.

  “I ’member you telling me that story, Gabe,” Bass said with fond remembrance. “Not long after I first met up with you. Same time I met Beckwith* too.”

  Bridger smiled. “I recollect that too, sitting by the crik an’ scrubbin’ the grease off our hides. Shit, weren’t we the young bucks back then?”

  The Prophet waved a hand in the manner of a man impatient to bring someone else’s conversation back to his topic. “What do you know of Hastings’s route?”