Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  “What’d he say there at the last?” Bridger asked.

  Bass watched the young man’s back until rider and pony disappeared around a brushy bend in the stream. “Said he’d come to us by sundown.”

  Gazing at the sun blazing high at midsky for a moment, Jim growled, “Sundown. Damn, hot as it is right now, I’ll lay it’s gonna get cold for our old bones afore sunup tomorrow.”

  “C’mon, Gabe. No sense thinkin’ ’bout what’s gonna be hard of it,” he cheered. “That Hickman’s got blood in his eye so he’s bound to put out searchers now that he ain’t found Jim Bridger sittin’ round home.”

  “I s’pose you’re right,” and Jim yanked at the knot tying his horse to a willow limb.

  Scratch swung into the saddle and stuffed his moccasins inside the big cottonwood stirrups. “We better scat into the hills afore Brigham Young’s bully-boys come beatin’ these bushes so they can get their hands on you.”

  Which is exactly what the Danite posse did.

  But those noisy Mormons didn’t search upstream far enough to get anywhere close to where Bridger and Bass lay in hiding, waiting for Flea to bring them some news as to who these interlopers were and what they wanted. Instead, two different groups of riders were spotted heading down one side of Black’s Fork, busting the brush for their wanted man, then crossing the creek to turn about for the fort by riding down the other side of the stream. The sun had just set behind them, but the sky was still radiant with an orangehued summer light when Titus spotted the lone horseman moving down from the hills through a narrow coulee, hugging the willow.

  Damn if that didn’t make him proud of the boy. From the looks of things, Flea had come around the long way, climbing north toward the ridge before he made a long and circuitous loop back to the west. Now that he had reached Black’s Fork, every fifty yards or so Flea reined up his pony, turned around, and waited. Likely listening for the sounds of anyone dogging his back trail. Then he advanced a little farther before he stopped again and waited.

  From their perch up on the rocks, the two old trappers could clearly see the Danites hadn’t followed the youth, or—better yet—that Flea had shaken any who had attempted to tail him by leaving the fort in the opposite direction before circling back around behind the low hills. The young man’s face was a stony mask of determination mixed with utter hatred when the two men stepped out of the brush and made themselves known.

  “What you find out, son?” Titus asked in American as Flea slid from the back of his pony and pulled off the thick saddle blanket he had been sitting on.

  The youngster stuffed his head through a slit previously cut through the middle of it so that it hung from his bare shoulders like a greaser’s poncho. “I hear these men talk to my mother. They ask, she Bridger woman? She say other woman, point to The Fawn.” Then he looked at Jim to say, “Sheriff, he come for you.”

  “One of ’em’s a sheriff?” Bridger asked.

  But Titus interrupted to ask, “What’s a sheriff come to take Jim for?”

  “Sheriff shake paper in hand. Say come take you away—you sell powder and guns to bad Injuns … Injuns gonna kill their people.”

  “Injuns gonna kill Mormons?” Bridger asked.

  “I s’pose that’s what they come to arrest you for, Gabe.” Then Scratch spat a brown stream at the dry grass near his moccasin toe. “We both know that’s horseshit.”

  “Here I was the one what even warned ’em two year ago that the Bannocks was gettin’ a mite fractious an’ was comin’ to raid their settlements!” Jim grumped.

  “None of this has to make sense to no one but that goddamned Brigham Young,” Titus said. “He’s the one wanted you out of here right from the start. Can’t you see that now?”

  “Why the hell he’d want to get rid of me for?”

  “Man like him—all his high-an’-mighty kind—these here mountains ain’t near big enough for him an’ the rest of us too,” Bass growled. “Way they’re showin’ their colors, Brigham Young an’ his Marmons ain’t no better’n a pack o’ plunderin’ Blackfoots. Come to steal away ever’thing they can … an’ what they can’t steal—they’ll kill.”

  “You don’t think they’ll harm them women an’ young’uns in there?”

  “I dunno,” Titus admitted. “Don’t know what to think anymore now. The hull durn mountains is turned topsy on us, Gabe. The used-to-be’s don’t count for nothin’ anymore.”

  Bridger’s hands flexed into fists as he asked, “What’s a man to do when that Lion of the Lord sends out a murderin’ bunch that outnumbers us the way they do?”

  Scratch said, “Only thing I figger on us to do is get word over to Laramie.”

  “Fort Laramie?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Them soldiers is the only law you got to go to for help.”

  Bridger shuddered. “Used to be, we settled things here ourselves. Took care to right a wrong on our own.”

  “Don’t bet your last pair of wool drawers on it,” Scratch said, “but I’ll bet Brigham Young knowed you was the sort to take care of yourself. That’s why he sent more’n a hunnert an’ a half up here to steal your post away from you. With that many of them niggers swoopin’ down on your fort, that Marmon president knew damn well there was nothin’ you could do to fight back.”

  He watched Bridger grind his teeth on the dilemma for a few moments, until Flea laid his hand on his father’s forearm.

  “Popo, these raiders,” he spoke quietly in Crow, “they found Bridger’s whiskey.”

  “They bust open the kegs, them gut-bait, high-talkin’ preachers?”

  Flea shook his head. “No, they took down cups, poured the whiskey, passed it around. Drank up one barrel. Then opened a second barrel too.”

  “They’re drinkin’ my goddamned whiskey?” Jim squealed after Titus translated. “That ain’t good for them women and our young’uns—”

  “Maybe it might just be,” Scratch said, clutching at hope. “Could be, them Marmons gonna have themselves a hurraw on your free whiskey. I’ll lay a wager that Brigham Young is the sort of preacher what figgers whiskey is the devil’s own squeezin’s, so he told ’em to destroy all your whiskey they found.”

  Bridget’s eyes gleamed. “So they’re destroyin’ it drop by drop in their cups?”

  Titus nodded. “Right. An’ if I can put my faith in them gals of ours, they’ll slip off with the young’uns when them Marmons is drunk an’ our families got the chance to get away.”

  “My mama, she told these sheriff men they don’t touch her or any child,” Flea explained. “Bridger woman, she told sheriff that he hurt her or any child, her father was the great chief Washakie. This great chief of Shoshone people hear they hurt her—then Washakie put ten-times-hundred warriors into battle to wipe out sheriff men … then go wipe out all the villages where sheriff men come from.”

  Bridger grinned, “Damn if Mary didn’t tell ’em off!”

  Still, Bass asked of his son, “W-what’d these Marmons say to The Fawn’s speech?”

  Flea smiled. “Sheriff men good now. Said they want no trouble with Washakie people. Said they don’t hurt no woman, hurt no child either. Leave them alone in Bridger lodge—go drink on Bridger whiskey barrels, drink lots on whiskey barrels.”

  “They put out guards?” Titus asked. “You see any guards when you rode off?”

  He thought a moment, then held up some fingers.

  To which Scratch said, “So Hickman an’ Brigham Young’s sheriff got less’n a dozen guards out for the night, while the rest of ’em are bathin’ their gullets with your whiskey, Gabe. I don’t think them women gonna sit over there in that fort of your’n for long tonight.”

  “Likely Waits-by-the-Water can help Mary an’ all the young’uns slip off afore first light?”

  Bass nodded with a grin. “I figger them preachy Marmons gonna be dead drunk by then, my friend.”

  There was nothing better in the world than the feel of Waits in his arms, her head nestled in the crook o
f his neck—just the smell and sense of her as Waits-by-the-Water shuddered against him in utter relief. For the first time in these past few months, Titus suddenly realized how big she had become, her belly swollen with their child she was carrying.

  It was at that moment he noticed how his two youngest stood off to the side in the dim light of false dawn. Titus waved them close. Jackrabbit and little four-year-old Crane both came up to their parents, one arm hugging their father’s leg, the other arm hugging their mother’s leg.

  “What kind of god do these white man worship?” she sobbed against him in Crow. “A god that is no better than the Blackfoot spirit that allows them to attack a woman’s home, to capture her children—the same god who commands all his evil followers to commit misdeeds in the name of the First Maker?”

  “I haven’t figured that out,” he whispered quietly in the first hints of a coming sun. “But from what I’ve seen, the leader of these people is every bit as evil as any Blackfoot war chief I ever ran up against. Maybe even more evil, because he parades around in all the trappings of the one man God has picked to lead His chosen people.”

  Within minutes of their emotional reunion with their wives and children, Mary Bridger began to tell her husband about the conversations she had with Hickman, as well as the Mormon sheriff and a few of the 150-man posse sent from Salt Lake City with Brigham Young’s orders to arrest the trader for providing powder and lead and firearms to Indians who were reportedly hostile to the Mormon settlement of the Great Basin. Mary went on to confirm Flea’s story of how she had cowed the posse leaders and protected the fort’s occupants by immediately telling them in her best English that she was the daughter of the great chief Washakie—so that if these raiders dared hurt anyone her father would see to it that a thousand Shoshone warriors swept the land clear of all Mormon outposts.

  “One of them Saints told her they had nothin’ but the deepest friendship for Washakie’s Shoshone,” Bridger declared. “But they said they still had orders to take me down to Salt Lake City with ’em so I could stand trial for my crimes against the territory of Utah.”

  “What’d she tell ’em then?”

  “Mary lied an’ told ’em she hadn’t see’d me for a few days—I was out huntin’,” Jim replied. “So that’s when they sent out them four search parties to look for me in the hills.” Then he grew pensive, staring at the thin red line across the far horizon, where a new day was coming. A new day.

  “What is it, Gabe?”

  “Mary said there was a bunch—forty men she counted—ordered north to the Green River,” Bridger stated grimly. “From the house where she an’ Waits locked themselves in, she heard the orders give to them forty Mormons to ride straight for the ferry on the Green an’ take it by force.”

  “Shadrach’s up th-there,” Bass stammered. “An’ more’n another ten ol’ hivernants we know—friends of ours workin’ that ferry till the river freezes up for the winter. Them Marmons go to shootin’, I don’t know how long them boys can hold out.”

  “That’s where we oughtta go first,” Bridger declared firmly.

  “Awright. I figger them Marmons down in your post won’t be risin’ real early this mornin’—seein’ how Mary let ’em all get a real snootful of her husband’s whiskey,” Titus said. “We’ll light out for Green River to see if we can help Shad an’ the rest hold off them snake-belly, back-stabbin’ thieves.”

  *August 26, 1853.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Who the hell’s out there?” a harsh voice called from the night.

  “That you, Jack?” Titus hollered, having shushed Bridger. He did not want Gabe announcing his presence to anyone now that Jim was a wanted man. “Uncle Jack?”

  “Yep—who’s askin’?”

  He located Robinson’s shadow blackened against the backdrop of starshine. “Titus Bass.”

  “Why the hell you didn’t come on in, Titus?” Robinson said with some irritation.

  But Scratch did not move. Instead, he stayed in hiding beside Bridger and asked, “Who else here with you, ’cept for your woman, Jack?”

  “Wasn’t you down to Bridger’s post, Titus?” Jack hollered.

  “I was, sometime back,” he answered, wanting to trust the old mountain man, who had squatted on Ham’s Fork even before Bridger and Vasquez built their post on Black’s Fork.

  “Jim with you?”

  “Why you askin’ that, Jack?” Bass demanded, suspicion squirming in his belly. “You see’d a bunch o’ Marmons come through day or two back?”

  Robinson did not answer immediately. Rather, there arose the rustle of unseen movement, the crunch of sandy ground beneath rawhide moccasin soles.

  “Scratch—it’s Shadrach. C’mon in—”

  “Shad, you’re awright?”

  “Big as life,” Sweete answered. “Bring your mangy face over.”

  Before he did, Bass wanted to assure himself that Sweete didn’t have a Danite gun to his back. Maybe he should ask first to see just how Shad answered. “We heard trouble was headed your way at the ferry.”

  “Mormons?” Sweete asked. “Damn if they didn’t hit us yesterday. The bastards got—”

  That was enough proof for him. Titus scrambled to his feet, whistled into the night, then started for Robinson’s earthen dugout, hearing Flea whistle back to Bridger, who had stayed in hiding with the women and their children.

  “Who’s that with you, Scratch?”

  “I brung Gabe,” he answered as he started toward the two figures. “Our families got out of the post after Mary set them Saints to swillin’ down Jim’s whiskey like they’d never heer’d of Brigham Young’s temperance sermons at all.”

  Shad embraced him quickly, and Robinson grabbed his wrist to shake. Then Titus started to ask, “Any more of the fellers get away from the crossin’—”

  That’s when the figures came out of the brush, or bent low as they made their way through the low doorway of Robinson’s hut. He quickly counted six of them.

  “This all?” Titus asked as he heard the hoofbeats and footsteps coming up behind him. Suddenly, he remembered, a panic rising in him as he asked, “Where’s Shell Woman? Your two young’uns, Shad?”

  “They’re inside with Jack’s woman,” Sweete replied. “Good thing was, they was over here visitin’ when the Mormons come down on us. No tellin’ who’d got hurt, the way the bastards was shootin’ us up—”

  “How many was up there with you, Shad?” Titus asked now. “How many workin’ when the sonsabitches come down on you boys?”

  “Twelve, countin’ me,” Sweete admitted. “Them Mormons had us surrounded afore any of us got up in the mornin’. Kill’t the first one of us got out to take a piss. Shot down two more through that day. Night come an’ the rest of us we slipped off one at a time—every one of us makin’ tracks for Uncle Jack’s diggin’s.”

  Bridger came up and embraced both Sweete and Robinson. Then he asked, “Them Saints shot three of my men?”

  “Maybe more,” Shad replied. “Don’t know for sure. Only seven of us made it here—on foot.”

  Titus had been working it on his fingers. He said, “That leaves two more what ain’t made it yet.”

  “Likely dead,” Robinson advised sourly. “We been waiting for them shooters to show back up here to ambush the rest of us, way they did on the Seedskeedee.”

  “Goddamned murderers!” Bass growled menacingly. “Five men murdered, Gabe! I tell you—we should let Washakie’s Snakes tear right on through them Marmon settlements, right on through their God-blessed Utah Territory, an’ be done with the lot of ’em. We can hang back, waitin’ for Brigham Young hisself to try sneakin’ out from the safety of his city … then we can be done with that evil son of a bitch—”

  “We can’t do that,” Jim interrupted. “Not just yet.”

  “How come they didn’t get their hands on you two?” Shad suddenly asked.

  Titus snorted without a lick of humor, “Me an’ Gabe been hunted down by Diggers a
n’ Blackfoot, Sioux an’ Cheyenne. You wanna stand here an’ tell me you think some flatfooted Marmons gonna find Titus Bass or Jim Bridger in these hills?”

  “Wouldn’t give ’em a snowflake’s chance in hell!” Robinson roared, setting the other old mountain men to laughing.

  Sweete suggested, “With them Mormons come up to take the ferry outta our hands, maybe all the rest of us can move on down to your post an’ take it back. You got plenty of powder an’ lead for us to hold off—”

  “There’s more’n a hunnert of the bastards still down there at Gabe’s fort,” Titus snarled. “Not countin’ the bunch ambushed you pilgrims, that’s still some ten-to-one odds agin us goin’ up agin them oily Marmons.”

  After a moment of reflection, Shadrach wagged his head and laid a hand on Bridger’s shoulder. “What to do now, Gabe?”

  “I ain’t for certain sure,” Bridger admitted, his face long and sad. “But somethin’ tells me I got to have a look at things down there on Black’s Fork.”

  Titus could not believe his ears. “You mean—head back to your post where all them Marmons is waitin’ for you to show back up in that country?”

  Resolutely, Jim nodded once. “I reckon I better see what’s become of them Saints, what they’re doin’ to what’s mine.”

  “No tellin’ what’11 happen, they catch us out in the open, Gabe,” warned Shad.

  “You can stay here, any of you,” Bridger suggested. “I ain’t askin’ you to come back with me to my post.”

  “Your mind’s made up?” Titus inquired.

  “This here’s my country,” Jim answered. “I was here long afore Brigham Young. So as long as the mountains is free, I’ll be here long after Brigham Young an’ his Saints is gone. Just as long as these here Rocky Mountains stay free—”

  “I’ll ride with you, Jim,” Titus vowed as he stepped up to his old friend. “I’ll even ride with you to Salt Lake City so you can lay your hands on Brigham Young hisself. Don’t you ever doubt me, Jim Bridger. You can count on Titus Bass to ride into hell with you.”