The Saga of Harlan Waugh (The Mountain Men)

by Terry Grosz

  But that wasn’t his biggest surprise. After receiving an arrow in the head from Big Eagle, the bear had finally dropped Harlan. Then it had turned and tried to kill Big Eagle. However, it had run headlong into a one-ounce slug of lead fired by Big Eagle from Harlan’s Hawken, which he had picked up off the ground under the grizzly’s very feet. The slug had torn through the bear’s heart and spine and eventually landed him in the cooking pot.

  The two boys brought Harlan back to the camp and fixed him up as best as they could with the needle and thread they found in the cabin stores. Then they skinned out the bear, cut him into quarters, and wrestled him back to camp for the huge meat supply he offered. As if that were not enough effort at their young ages, they also ran the rest of the trap-line and brought the beaver they caught back for processing.

  In fact, the whole time Harlan had been out, they had cared for him and run the trap-line as well. The boys had caught and processed seventy-four beaver in the two weeks Harlan had been under the weather or out of it completely! That did not include the great bear’s dressed hide, which now adorned the cabin wall and stretched partly onto the roof. That had been one big and pissed-off bear—a ten-footer, he later discovered.

  It was another month before Harlan had regained some of his looks and the full use of the mauled left arm and shoulder. The eyebrow had healed beautifully but left a long scar across Harlan’s face. He would live with his signs of battle with the griz’ and carry them proudly when among his own kind at the rendezvous and trading posts.

  As a surprise, Big Eagle and Winter Hawk had labored long and hard over the grizzly bear’s claws while Harlan was recovering. They made the claws into a fine necklace with leather thongs from an elk skin, and the twenty claws looked very distinctive and impressive. When presenting the necklace to Harlan after he had recovered, he was floored by the scope and degree of the gift from a couple of kids who were fast becoming just like the sons he had always wanted.

  From then on, Harlan wore the grizzly-bear claws proudly as a reminder not only of the battle but also of the quiet love he now shared with his boys.

  His scalp was another matter. It had healed badly because of all the tearing and subsequent infection caused by the bear’s slobber. An ugly canine-tooth bite scar ran around the entire top of his head. In fact, it appeared that the boys had sewn the loose scalp on almost backward! It eventually healed, and flattened out in the process like normal skin. But Harlan lost all his hair from the infection! He was now bald as a river rock. But he was alive, and a good wolf-skin cap would keep warm the bald pate that soon came to be known among his peers as his trademark.

  ***

  Little remained of that beaver trapping season; soon the ice became too thick to chop, and the beaver take dropped off. Now was the time to trap other valuable furbearers. Harlan worked hard at those activities as well as instructing the boys in the fine art of forest trapping, including the making of deadfalls and snares. Soon the mink, gray fox, bobcat, northern lynx, gray wolf, and coyote hides began flowing into the camp for processing.

  In the evenings, after the work was done and the livestock cared for, the real training began, to the boys’ way of thinking. By the light of the fire in their fireplace, Harlan taught them how to handle, load, repair, and care for a Hawken rifle.

  Soon both were experts at loading, shooting, casting bullets, and caring for their rifles. Harlan modified one of the older Hawkens by shortening the stock so the smaller Winter Hawk had a rifle of his own that he could easily shoot.

  Then came hour after never-ending- hour on how to put an edge on and care for a knife, ax, and tomahawk. That was followed by instruction in how to correctly use a knife for gutting, skinning, and food preparation as well as in defense of one’s life.

  Those lessons were followed by sessions in the proper use and care of a tomahawk and how to use such a weapon in the self-defense or to defend others. Then, came endless hours of practice with a tomahawk and knife at a throwing target in front of the cabin. They also practiced one-on-one knife combat with Harlan when the winter weather was tolerable.

  Last but not least, Harlan worked with Big Eagle on the making of arrow shafts from nearby willows and the knapping of flint and chert arrowheads. They spent hours in bow-and-arrow practice until Big Eagle got quite good—deadly, in fact.

  Chapter Six

  A Winter Surprise

  Leaving the cabin one cold morning to break the lake’s ice and get some cooking and coffee water, Big Eagle came face to face with thirty heavily armed Snake Indian warriors quietly sitting on their horses facing Harlan’s cabin. Without any sign of fear or surprise, Big Eagle summoned Harlan by calling through the open cabin door. Harlan emerged, and Winter Hawk, unseen by the Snakes, picked up his rifle and took up his station at a shooting port inside the cabin, just in case things got out of hand.

  Harlan, showing no fear, raised his hand in the sign of peace. For the longest time no one among the Indians moved as they sat on their horses looking long and hard at the cabin and its trappers in their hunting grounds.

  Then a tall man, looking every bit the Indian in his dress, moved his horse forward and said in perfect frontier English, “Good morning, and who might you be?”

  Surprised at hearing English spoken, Harlan said, “I am called Harlan Waugh. This is my son, Big Eagle, and my other son, who is inside the cabin fixin’ breakfast, is called Winter Hawk.”

  Big Eagle took a quick glance at Harlan. Harlan had never called him his son before. However, Big Eagle liked the title, and it made him feel proud to be called “son” by a mighty warrior and mountain man like Harlan.

  “Who might you be?” asked Harlan.

  “I am Joe Meek, the meanest, best-shootin’, biggest-eatin’, greatest squaw-lovin’, knife-throwin’, fur-trappin’ mountain man in the West. And by the looks of your face and head, you are a great mountain man as well if them be the marks of a mighty unhappy grizzly.”

  “They be the marks of a griz’ all right,” uttered Harlan. “A griz’ who tried to make me his dinner and stayed for dinner instead.”

  Meek smiled through a huge growth of facial hair and said, “Care if I light down a bit? Gets a mite cold sittin’ up here on a horse in the dead of winter.”

  “Make yourself at home, and your friends as well,” said Harlan. Meek turned to the Snakes and in their tongue advised them to dismount, which they did.

  “How we going to feed such a number of people, Harlan?” asked Big Eagle, assuming that a meal was to follow since they had dismounted and were making motions as if to stay.

  “Go fill that big pot with water and bring it to our outside campfire. I will have our big meat cooking pot there by the time you return and just fill it half full. In the meantime, Winter Hawk and I will cut some slabs of meat from those grizzly hams in the cache house and start them cooking with a load of dried rice and the beans from last night’s supper for thickening.”

  Big Eagle headed for the lake to get water as instructed. When he returned, a roaring fire had been built and their large rendering pot had been placed at the fire’s edge. Into that eventually went five large pots of water, thirty pounds of previously hard-smoked and salted grizzly ham cut into generous chunks, four pounds of dried rice, and the remaining pot of beans from supper.

  That was followed by a handful of salt, pepper, and some crushed, dried hot red pepper flakes. Winter Hawk brought out another large cast- iron pot and hung it over the fire on the cooking rod. Into that four-gallon pot went cold water from the lake, and as soon as it was boiling, he added eight large handfuls of freshly ground coffee beans and four handfuls of brown sugar cones.

  Soon the talk around the large fire was animated as the cold men began warming up and smelling good things to come. Then one man noticed something on Winter Hawk and brought it to the attention of the group in the Snake language. There was an immediate and abrupt silence, and then the talk really got animated. As Winter Hawk once again approached the fi
re with two Dutch ovens for biscuit-making, one of the Snakes grabbed him by the collar and loudly proclaimed something in his tongue, the only word of which Harlan understood was “Crow!”

  Winter Hawk tried to pull away, but the man was too strong and had a firm grip on the boy. In a flash Winter Hawk had drawn his knife, twisted around in his shirt, and faced off with his antagonist. Seeing that he was confronted with a determined youth with a knife, the older man went for his tomahawk, only to have Winter Hawk disarm him in a blinding flash.

  That move happened so fast that the man was stunned. Realizing he was now disarmed, he drew a pistol from his sash, only to have Joe Meek restrain him at the last moment. It was good that Meek acted so rapidly because Big Eagle had drawn a bead with his Hawken on the man who was about to shoot his brother with a pistol.

  “You are a brave one, little man,” said Meek with a smile of newfound respect. “Not only brave but deadly as well. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

  “I taught him,” said Harlan in a cold, flat tone. He also had his Hawken at the ready. At that range, someone would have died had cooler heads not quickly prevailed.

  “We didn’t come here fer no fight,” said Meek quickly with apology in his voice. “We smelled your campfire and, not sure who you were, come a-lookin’. We was headed to make meat on a small buffalo herd in the sagebrush some few miles distant when we came across your campsite. Seein’ you appeared to be friendly, we was hopin’ for some hot coffee. But seein’s you was willin’ to feed us, that were even better. Small Buffalo Running here took a look at your young ’un and figured he were a Crow. Them’s mortal enemies of the Snake.”

  “That may be in general, but these here boys are mine and being raised up in a Christian way. Their entire clan was killed some months back by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. I am all they have now. They have no tribal enemies unless someone tries to kill them or hurt their loved ones. If that happens, then they will defend themselves like the griz' that danced on my head some time back. Nothing more, nothing less,” Harlan stated in a tone cold enough to let Meek know he was ready to be a good neighbor but would kill in a heartbeat if pushed to his limit.

  Meek turned to the Snake leader and spoke to him in his language. It was obvious that the Snakes trusted Meek, and soon there were grins all around, especially regarding the issue of one of their own, and a grown man at that, being disarmed by a small Indian boy who was obviously quickly growing into a man. To smooth over that man’s feelings, Harlan walked over to the tomahawk still lying in the fresh snow, picked it up, and turned to Winter Hawk.

  “Winter Hawk, would you return this tomahawk to its rightful owner?” he asked, realizing that to do so would go a long way toward defusing the uneasy moment.

  For a moment Winter Hawk just stood looking at the extended tomahawk. Then, grasping it firmly, he sheathed his knife and handed it purposefully back to its owner.

  “I am sorry I acted so fast,” signed Winter Hawk.

  Without a word, the embarrassed warrior took his tomahawk and put it back in his sash. The act caused him and the rest of the Indians to nod their approval of the young man’s courage. The earlier action now forgotten, everyone gathered around the pot of steaming coffee.

  Between Harlan’s extra tin cups and those some of the Snakes carried, everyone was soon getting his fill of the scalding, bitter brew. Then the stew pot full of bear meat, rice, beans, and spices was ready, and in a very short time it too was emptied by the fast warming men and Harlan’s crew. Afterward, Meek walked over to Harlan, slapped him on the back, and shook his hand.

  “Glad to have another white man in these here parts,” he happily exclaimed. Then he asked, with a knowing grin, “By the way, what type of grub was in that pot? That weren’t no griz furnishin’ the meat, were it?”

  “That be the same one who intended me as a meal,” Harlan answered with devilment in his eyes.

  “We couldn’t have eaten better’n we tried,” Meek replied with a twinkle in his own eyes, knowing his band of Snakes and their total fear of everything grizzly. “By the way, Chief Low Dog wants to know if you and your sons would like to go with us to make meat. He has observed that you have some fine Hawken rifles, and those are better than our flintlock and fusil rifles at bringin’ down the buflfler. He says he would be very happy if you would join him in the killin’ because his tribe is low on winter grub.”

  Looking closely at the man he had met just an hour earlier, Harlan decided Meek was a man of his word and not a threat. He turned to the boys and told them to get together their Hawkens, plenty of powder and shot, their gutting and skinning knives, and some jerky.

  “We are going off with our newfound friends to make meat,” he told them. From the looks on the boys’ faces, Harlan could tell they were excited beyond belief.

  “Go on, now,” he urged, and the boys were off like a shot, eager for a new adventure.

  Turning to Meek, Harlan said, “Tell the chief we would be honored, and since we could use some fresh meat ourselves, we will help them kill many buffalo with our rifles.”

  When Joe advised the chief of Harlan’s decision, he got a big smile, and the translation created a ripple of excitement that went through the Indians’ ranks at the prospect of having the big Hawkens as an aid in getting some great-tasting winter rations.

  Chapter Seven

  Making Meat

  From behind a small hill the band of hunters watched a herd of about 150 buffalo feeding in a brush-covered creek bottom some fifty yards away. Harlan, the chief, and Joe Meek conferred about the plan of attack. Soon Harlan returned to the boys to advise them of the plan. The three of them with their five Hawkens would follow the ravine down to a small hill at the bottom overlooking the feeding buffalo.

  They would quietly climb the hill and, staying out of sight of the animals, start shooting those at the closest edge of the herd. Once the herd started to move off, the Snake warriors would give chase from two sides, killing as many as they could. By then, the rest of the tribe—made up of mostly women, children, and young men—would have arrived, and the butchering and hauling would commence.

  With a wave of the hand for good luck to the rest of the hunters, off went Harlan and the boys. In about forty minutes they were in position and quietly spread out just below the ridgeline. Harlan took three Hawkens, and each boy carried his own rifle as they crawled to a point at the top of the ridge from which they could see the animals below.

  On Harlan’s signal, they started shooting. Five shots from the Hawkens dropped five cow buffalo right off the bat. Harlan was pleased that the boys had done so well with shot placement, and watching them rapidly reloading made him even prouder. Their training had been well received, and now the proof was in the pudding. After reloading, the five Hawkens barked again in ragged succession. Once again, five cow buffalo struggled with the last of their lives.

  Now the herd was getting nervous. But, sensing no danger from the small puffs of white smoke on the ridgeline and the noise of rifles being fired, the animals more or less held their ground. Boom— boom—boom—boom—boom, and five more cows dropped to roam the plains no more. With that, the herd began to nervously drift off to the west, only to run into fifteen mounted Indian riders charging out from the line of willows. The chase was on! The crack of the riders’ rifles in the cold winter air put the herd into a full stampede back in the direction from whence it had come.

  Seeing the danger while quickly reloading, Harlan and the boys hurriedly moved together as the buffalo roared up the little hill toward them. Their Hawkens barked once again, staggering and then killing three buffalo in front of the charging herd. Harlan then stood up so the stampeding animals could see him and calmly shot the herd leader with his first reserve Hawken. Grabbing his remaining Hawken, Harlan dropped another buffalo, which skidded over the snow-covered earth and came to rest not thirty feet before him.

  The inert form looming so large in front of the stampede split the lead
ers. The boys stood up with their quickly reloaded Hawkens and dropped two more from the herd, turning the animals away from the hilltop on which they now stood, helpless with empty rifles.

  The buffalo thundered down off the hill, right into the rest of the mounted warriors on the other side, and the slaughter was complete. Reloading all five Hawkens, Harlan, with a proud heart, and his two boys walked back to their horses and mules, which were tethered in the creek bottom behind them. Over the soft crunching sounds of their moccasins in the snow, they could hear excited talking and laughing from the Snake hunters. Soon the tribe had descended on the fallen buffalo for its first taste in a long time of fresh, hot buffalo liver, soon to be sprayed by salts from the gall bladder.

  Walking their horses and mules back to the top of the small hill, they were amazed at what they saw. Dark brown blotches of dead buffalo dotted the snow-covered prairie and sagebrush for a square mile. Scattered throughout the area were thirty mounted riders whooping it up, with another fifty tribal members scattered about, voicing their delight over the harvest lying before them.

  Walking over the rim of the hill, Harlan and the boys began skinning and gutting the five buffalo they had dropped in the face of the stampede. Soon their mules were braying loudly over the weighty loads of steaming meat and hides they were being made to carry. That which they couldn’t carry was left to the tribe or the scavengers. As was often the case, too many buffalo had been killed even for the Snakes to utilize all the meat, so many prairie creatures happily ate their fill for a few days.

  Joe Meek rode up to Harlan and the boys and dismounted. Walking over to Harlan, he said, “The chief is extremely happy over your help on this hunt. He says his people will have much meat for at least another month, and then maybe the deep snow will leave and the hunting will become easier. He asked me to let you know that you and the boys are welcome in his land. Even though the boys are from the hated horse-stealing Crow Nation, they will be welcome as long as he is the chief.”