Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Because I know Brigham Young ain’t gonna sit still till he’s got Bridger locked up down in his City of the Saints,” Titus explained. “He’ll send ’nother war party to find Gabe awright.”

  “And?” Shadrach asked, a smile growing huge on his face as he stepped forward to join his two friends.

  Bridger laid a hand on Bass’s shoulder, another on Sweete’s, then said, “That’s when they’ll find us waitin’ for ’em.”

  “I think you’re a damned fool, Mr. Bridger,” Chilton said, wagging his head.

  “A fool what’s had nearly his whole life stole from him by some God-spoutin’ bastards,” Jim growled. “Now, I’d sure appreciate it if’n you’d tell me where I could find this Mr. Hockaday you told me about when I first got here to see you.”

  “The surveyor?”

  “Yeah, him. Where can I find this surveyor?”

  “We’ve put him up in the barracks,” Chilton answered without enthusiasm, starting back to his chair. “I don’t really think he can help you, since that would involve him going back with you into Utah Territory to survey your claim.”

  “I think Mr. Hockaday deserves the chance to turn me down hisself,” Bridger said firmly.

  “It’s up to him, although he is a government employee,” Chilton declared. “If he wants to put himself at risk, I can’t stop him.”

  “Why’d this surveyor be puttin’ hisself at risk?” Titus asked.

  The major explained, “Because he would be caught with Mr. Bridger here.”

  “Ain’t no Mormons gonna catch me,” Jim said. “They tried once, a hunnert fifty of ’em. I got away from Blackfoot an’ Sioux, Cheyenne an’ Pawnee too. Ain’t no soft-headed Mormons gonna catch me.”

  “Mr. Bridger,” Chilton warned, “for the last time I’m suggesting in the strongest of terms that you stay well clear of your fort.”

  “Why?”

  “Fort Bridger lies inside the boundaries of Utah Territory, where you—like it or not”—Chilton sighed—“are a wanted man.”

  “Mr. Hockaday?” Titus Bass addressed the surveyor as the man emerged from his simple A tent pitched just outside what was left of the charred stockade of Fort Bridger. “You any good with a gun?”

  John M. Hockaday shifted the shooting pouch on his shoulder and tapped the hunting rifle he held across his body. “I’ve been known to hit my share of game.”

  Bridger stepped up to him. “You ever shoot at a man before?”

  The surveyor swallowed hard, but there was no fear in his eyes. “No. Never had to shoot at a man, white or red.”

  “You’re a good sort, Hockaday,” Bass replied as he flicked his gaze at the distant rider laying low against his horse’s withers. “Chances are, if’n you was born earlier, you’d been out here years ago. I figger you’d do to ride the river with.”

  “That some sort of compliment?”

  “Damn right it is,” Sweete said as he walked up with the six other old mountain men, who had returned to the ruins with Bridger the latter part of October, camping their families in a protected valley miles away.

  Grim-faced, they were all bristling with weapons as they turned, the sound of galloping hoofbeats becoming distinct, peering at the lone horseman racing toward them. The gray-bearded man dressed in buckskin leggings and a heavy blanket capote pushed back the hood at the same time he yanked back on the reins and skidded to a halt by Jim Bridger.

  “They comin’ on down the valley?” the trader asked the horseman.

  He swung out of the saddle and said, “More’n three dozen of ’em, Gabe.”

  “Doesn’t sound like good odds,” Hockaday said grimly, looking over the old trappers.

  Bass patted the surveyor on the shoulder. “I figger you can find yourself a place to lay into, place where you can stay outta the way, somewhere back inside the walls. Keep your head down an’ you won’t catch a stray ball—”

  “I’m not going to hide from this fight,” Hockaday interrupted with firm conviction.

  With a smile of admiration, Scratch replied, “Like I said, you’re a good man. Stay close to me an’ we’ll show these Marmons how to shoot center.”

  Knowing full well that he might be venturing into what could well turn out to be a deadly confrontation, government surveyor John M. Hockaday nonetheless had accompanied Bridger, Bass, Sweete, and the other ferrymen on their return trip from Fort Laramie following their unproductive talks with the dragoons about righting the wrongs committed by Brigham Young’s “Avenging Angels.” In a matter of a few autumn days, Hockaday had completed his survey of Bridger’s claim on Black’s Fork—a site both Jim and Louis Vasquez had long ago claimed the Mexican government had given them title to back in the days prior to that brief war with Mexico. Rod by rod, Hockaday had carefully measured the ground Bridger had heretofore marked with piles of stream-washed stone. By the afternoon of November 6, the surveyor had completed his duties and been paid what Bridger could afford. As it turned out, Hockaday had reveled in the company of the old trappers and preferred staying around the gutted ruins of Fort Bridger for a few more days rather than immediately returning to Fort Laramie. Those few days turned into nine by that midafternoon of the fifteenth, when the sentry came racing up with his news.

  Bass and Bridger turned the sentry back around with orders to keep a watch at the far end of the valley, more than four miles off—not returning to the burnt-out hulk of the post until he was certain of the riders’ destination.

  “They got wagons too,” the sentry declared as his winded horse tugged at the reins he looped around one hand.

  That news worried Titus. He turned to Bridger. “They’re comin’ to settle in, Gabe. First they burn you out, take ever’thing the two of us own. Them wagons mean they come back to stay—just like folks with a eye to settle down in Oregon.”

  His brow wrinkling beneath the brim of his hat, Jim looked at the sentry. “Was there any women along?”

  “Didn’t spot a one, but … couldn’t rightly tell.”

  Shad stepped up to ask, “Possible they got their women inside the wagons?”

  With a shake of his head, the sentry said, “Ain’t nowhere to hide anyone in them wagons. They ain’t covered with bows—just got oiled sheeting tied over their plunder an’ sech.”

  “Three dozen of ’em—all men,” Titus reflected. “An’ they’re gonna come sashayin’ on in here—figgerin’ there won’t be a soul around, Gabe”

  “Let’s fix us a li’l surprise for ’em,” Bridger declared.

  On the face of it, most men wouldn’t have dared face more than three dozen armed Mormons with only ten men. But, nine of these weren’t your ordinary settlement folk. No, not these double-riveted, iron-mounted, battle-scarred mountain men. Their sunburned, wrinkled, lined, and weary faces were nothing less than the war maps of their lives—and the light aglow behind their eyes now as they prepared to go into battle once more was like a lamp turned on all the victories they had won and the coups they had earned. As things stood, they knew they were outgunned … but this bunch sure as hell wasn’t outmanned. Scratch looked around the small group of friends for a moment, his heart growing stronger. One of these old hivernants was clearly the equal of five, six, or more of those Mormon thieves riding back in to occupy what was left of Bridger’s post.

  Jim sent Shad with three of the men off to the timber on the north side of the meadow and another three just south of the half-standing walls. Then he and Bass took Hockaday and secreted themselves just inside the charred ruins of the corral, where they hunkered down out of sight and watched to the west, up the fork, for the first sign of the invaders. It was here in the cold they waited and shuddered as the shadows inexorably crawled with the low tracking of the late-autumn sun, and when the sentry returned with word that the Mormons were near, they waited some more.

  “There!” Bridger whispered harshly, the breathsmoke spewing from his lips in the freezing air.

  “It’s yours to open the dance, Jim,”
Titus reminded. “This here’s your show.”

  Gabe turned to look at him. “You lost almost as much as me when they drove us out, Scratch. This is gonna feel good to us both.”

  He patted the scratched, nicked, octagonal barrel of “Ol’ Make-’Em-Come,” his .54-caliber flintlock rifle. “Ever since last August, I been waitin’ to get them thievin’ murderers in the buckhorns of my sights, Gabe. That’s a mite long for a man to wait for justice—don’t you think?”

  “But we ain’t really like them, are we?” Jim asked.

  “Not in no world I’d ever be part of,” Titus replied.

  “You ’member how Shad told us them Mormons shot our friends down in cold blood up there at the ferry?”

  Titus took his eyes from Bridger’s face and stared through the gap in the timbers where his barrel lay … peering out at the oncoming riders and wagons, the muted sound of voices, the jangle of bit chains and clopping of hooves just beginning to reach their ears. Brigham Young’s Avenging Angels came on slow, riding easy and not at all on the alert. Gabbing as men do when they don’t have a concern in the world that they are being watched and are riding into an ambush. He sensed a cry for justice welling up within his empty belly, burning at the back of his throat—or, was it a scream for revenge? To shoot four or more of these Mormons out of their saddles the way they had cut down five of his unarmed, defenseless friends at the Green River crossing might go a long way to quieting its angry voice.

  His mouth had gone dry by the time he struggled to ask Bridger, “What’s your thinkin’ on how to play this, Jim?”

  “We both seen our share of killin’ … an’ killin’s easy for men like us, Scratch. Hell, all them red niggers the two of us put under in more’n twenty-five winters—why, we could wait for them Saints to ride right up to us afore we let fly an’ there’d be more dead Mormons on the ground than I care to bury.”

  “Spill what you got to say, Jim,” Titus said, angry with the way Bridger’s words had pricked his own conscience as the enemy got all the closer.

  “You was once a fair shot with that ol’ table leg you call a rifle,” Gabe said. “You think you can knock that big gray hat off the one riding that roan out in front?”

  Before he answered, Titus laid his cheek along the comb of the buttstock and peered down the worn, browned barrel, lining up the sharp rise of the front blade in that notch of the curved buckhorns of his rear sight. He held it on the hat, let out half a breath … then he said, “I think I can do that for you, Gabe.”

  “Awright,” Bridger replied. “When that roan of his comes even with that pile of stone off there by the willows—you knock the bastard’s hat off.”

  “You better signal the others, so them boys don’t think we’re openin’ up the fight.”

  Jim turned, put two fingers between his lips, and whistled with the call of a meadowlark. Of the three signals they had agreed upon, that was the signal telling them to hold their fire. The other signals ordered them to fight for their lives, or to turn and slip away into the hills. Only three choices facing the ten of them now.

  From those men waiting on the south, and from Shad’s bunch on the north, came the answering calls. Scratch peered over the barrel of the flintlock, waiting, amused that not one of those oncoming riders had paid any attention to the bird calls. Flatlander settlement types didn’t know a jay from a whippoorwill no how.

  “He looks about there, Scratch!” Jim whispered low.

  “Hush,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to concentrate over here, Gabe.”

  Bringing the hammer back to full cock, Titus slipped his finger inside the trigger guard and set the back trigger. Then lightly touched the front trigger and slowly let his breath out as he blinked, blinked again, and held high on the Mormon’s big gray hat. Just a twitch here and he could put a lead ball through the man’s forehead, maybe right on up the bastard’s big nose, or right on into his grinning, gaping, stupid mouth. …

  The gun went off a bit by surprise—and everything exploded into action at once. The hat went sailing, tumbling through the air as the roan’s rider threw himself onto the ground and started crawling backward toward the first wagon on his hands and knees. At the same instant other horses bucked and shied, men bellowing orders or screaming in surprise as they peeled this way and that—

  “You there!” Bridger hollered as his eyes crept over the top of the low, burned timbers. “You Brigham Young boys! There’s only two ways outta this valley now!”

  Scratch had turned and already had the barrel blown out and a load of powder poured down the muzzle.

  “Who the blazes are you?” a voice demanded as the wagons rattled to a halt.

  “I’m Jim Bridger! Right now, you an’ all your wagons are on my land!”

  “It’s Bridger!” another voice hollered. “We got the reward! We got the damned reward!”

  “Shuddup!” the first voice snapped. “Bridger, this isn’t your place no more. The lawfully appointed authority of Utah Territory has seized your land and all your worldly goods, in partial payment for your crimes against the citizens of Green River County—”

  “This here ain’t no court of law!” Scratch hollered as he finished ramming home a ball and shoved the wiping stick into the thimbles beneath the barrel. “Quit your spoutin’ an’ start fightin’, you murderin’ sonsabitches!”

  “Who-who’s with you, Bridger?”

  “Enough to empty half your saddles afore you get turned around an’ off my land,” Jim attested.

  “You’re a wanted man in this territory!”

  Rolling back onto his belly to stuff his barrel out between the timbers, Scratch bellowed, “An’ you’ll be a dead man afore the sun goes down!”

  “We don’t want any violence,” the voice shouted. “Only came to occupy what’s left of the post where you were selling weapons and powder to the Indians—”

  “You an’ your bunch will come in here over my dead body!” Jim protested.

  A third voice called out from the milling horsemen, “If that’s the way you want it!”

  Another of the Mormons cackled, “The reward on your head is good no matter if you’re dead!”

  Titus spit behind him, the warm tobacco juice steaming in the subfreezing air. “You give them Marmons ’nough of a chance awready, Gabe. They showed they ain’t the kind to appreciate what you’re doin’ to let ’em ride on outta here with their hair.”

  “S’pose you’re right,” Bridger replied as the Mormons started forming in a broad front. “Best get your head down, John.”

  The surveyor looked at Bridger, then at Bass, his eyes wide. “I’m here to defend myself, Jim.”

  With a grin, Titus said, “Go find yourself a shootin’ hole, Mr. Hockaday. We’re ’bout to send these here Marmons straight on to heaven!”

  “Give the boys a whistle, Scratch!” Gabe growled.

  He and Titus signaled the other groups with a quick, short blast of the Stellar’s jay, then Scratch leveled his gun again at the riders just as the Mormons kicked their horses into a lope and started a ragged charge toward the charred walls.

  Scratch’s gun was the first to speak. The bullet slammed into a horse’s chest, the animal skidding to a halt and collapsing on its haunches, tossing its rider clear. All around the Mormons, guns began to explode. Riders screamed in pain and terror as lead sailed through their midst. Other men bellowed orders. Horses reared and neighed. Wagons lurched onto two wheels as their drivers careened them about in a half circle as tight as they could, beating a retreat.

  As he was digging at the bottom of his pouch for a lead ball, Bass watched how two of the Mormons were screaming at the others—ordering them off their horses and into the brush. Must be leaders of the bunch.

  “I-I got one of them!” Hockaday announced.

  “Kill ’im?” he asked.

  “No, don’t think so,” the surveyor said. “Hit him in the leg.”

  “Good enough,” Bridger growled. “Ain’t likely he
can do any good with a gun no how, not now.”

  The Mormons made it to the timber with their wounded as the wagons rattled up the valley and out of sight. Six horses lay on the crisp, brown grass of the meadow just now getting dusted with an icy snow—some of them lay dead in a heap, the others wounded and neighing pitifully. Two more hobbled around with broken legs, crying out. Bass wanted to drop them both and put them right out of their pain, but for the time being he’d save his shots for those Mormons hiding in the brush.

  “Shad!” Bridger shouted. “Work your way in on ’em to the west!”

  “You want any of ’em left alive?” Sweete called out.

  “Only kill the ones what won’t run off, boys!” Gabe instructed. “Put them others afoot an’ let ’em walk outta here!”

  “You don’t stand a chance, Bridger!” that voice cried again, the one with the mean edge to it. “Give up now and we won’t have to kill you to get you back to Salt Lake City as our prisoner.”

  Scratch roared, “I’m afeared you Marmons don’t know what you bit off comin’ back here!”

  “Only a matter of time, Bridger!”

  The two of them both fired shots into the brush, then looked at one another. Gabe was the first to speak.

  “He might be right, Scratch,” Jim whispered sadly. “Looks to be only a matter of time afore them an’ their kind run all over these mountains.”

  “Naw, don’t go thinkin’ like that, Gabe,” he pleaded. “There’s still places for men like us. Get back far enough, up high enough … there’s still places left for our kind.”

  “How far away, Scratch?” Jim asked as he began reloading. “How far’s a man gotta go to find such a place?”

  “North,” he said as he poked his barrel back through the slot between the timbers. “Far enough from this here road to Oregon. Go far enough I can’t see trouble no more.”

  “That’s where you’re fixin’ to take your family?”

  He was sprinkling some priming powder in the pan when he looked up at his old friend. “This gotta be my last trip back to Crow country, Jim.”