Frontier America

by William W. Johnstone

  “And kickin’,” said Preacher. “What are you folks doin’ this far north of South Pass?”

  “Why, we’re headed for the Oregon Territory, of course. Those intrepid pioneers in the wagons behind us have engaged my services to lead them there.”

  “Then they won’t be happy when they have to backtrack for a week or more because you’ve taken them astray.”

  Powell sat up straighter in the saddle and glared at Preacher as he said, “I don’t appreciate that comment, sir. I know what I’m doing here.”

  “You couldn’t prove it by me. You need to turn around now and head back to South Pass. It’ll save you some time in the long run.”

  “You’re wrong,” Powell insisted. “We plan to cross the mountains by way of Churchill Pass.” The man pointed to the peaks visible in the distance. “There.”

  “Churchill Pass?” Preacher repeated with a frown. “I never heard tell of it.”

  “That’s probably because Edward Churchill, who discovered the pass and laid out the new route, didn’t do so until this past year. It’s been the talk of St. Louis and Independence, Missouri, in recent months, especially since Mr. Churchill’s book has come out—”

  “Hold on just a minute,” Preacher broke in. “You say this fella Churchill wrote a book?”

  “Yes, about his explorations of the Rocky Mountains. It not only details his discovery of the pass, it also mentions that there are a whole series of passes to the north, some more rugged than others, but all of them capable of having wagons travel through them. The area needs more extensive mapping . . .” Powell’s voice trailed off as he saw the grin spreading across Preacher’s rugged face. “What do you find so amusing, sir?”

  “A fella writes a book and makes all these wild claims, and folks just believe him without ever settin’ eyes on what he’s talkin’ about?”

  “I don’t see why Mr. Churchill would lie about such things,” Powell said stiffly.

  “He’s a writer, ain’t he? A fella who’ll write a book will do damn near anything to get folks to buy it, even if it means spewin’ out a pack of lies!”

  Powell stared angrily at Preacher. The three scouts didn’t look happy, either, but they weren’t as visibly upset as their boss. They had just been following Powell’s orders; their reputation as scouts and frontiersmen wasn’t at stake.

  Preacher figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to try to soothe Powell’s ruffled feathers. He asked, “How many wagon trains have you led west . . . Major, was it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re in the army now?”

  “Well . . . no. I served in the Mexican War and retained my rank.”

  In other words, he just called himself a major, thought Preacher.

  “And to answer your other question, I’ve led four immigrant trains from Independence to the Oregon Territory, and before that I took charge of more than a dozen such caravans from my home state of Pennsylvania out to Missouri. I have an excellent reputation, and frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me.”

  “Well, I don’t get back east that often,” Preacher said. “Listen, Major, I don’t mean to put a burr under your saddle, but I know these mountains, and I don’t care what some fancy pants book writer says, there ain’t no good passes in the direction you’re goin’.”

  “But why—” Powell stopped short. “Never mind. You’ve already given me your answer to that question. And I suppose there’s a faint possibility you may be right about Mr. Edward Churchill. But there’s also a chance you’re wrong. You can’t know every foot of this country.”

  Jethro Haines drawled, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I was you, Major. This is Preacher we’re talkin’ about. He’s been out here longer than just about anybody, and there can’t be many places west of the Mississipp’ where he ain’t set foot.”

  The other two scouts muttered their agreement with Haines. Powell didn’t like hearing it, but there was nothing he could do except swallow it.

  “We’re near the foothills,” he said. “We’ll push on that far and make camp for the night, and then we can discuss this further. I’ll need to talk to Mr. Dawlish and get his opinion on the matter.”

  Preacher asked, “Who’s this fella Dawlish?”

  “The settlers elected him the captain of the wagon train,” Powell explained. “I’m in charge, but I need to consult him before any decisions are made.”

  “I’d be glad to talk to him, tell him what I know about the mountains west of here.”

  Powell jerked his head in a curt nod and said, “Of course. You and your, ah, son are welcome to spend the night in our camp, as late in the day as it is.”

  “We’re obliged to you for your hospitality.”

  Powell wheeled his horse around and barked orders at the scouts. All four men rode back toward the wagons, which had come to a halt by now while the conference was going on.

  Preacher crossed his hands on the saddlehorn, leaned forward, and said to Hawk, “At least we know now why the wagon trains have been comin’ farther and farther in this direction. They’re all lookin’ for a pass that ain’t there.”

  “How can we stop them?” Hawk asked.

  “I don’t know, short of goin’ back east and writin’ a book about how this fella Churchill is a windbag who don’t have any idea what he’s talkin’ about.” Preacher laughed. “And I don’t reckon that’s gonna happen. But once enough wagon trains have to turn around and go back down to South Pass, word will get back to Independence sooner or later and folks will stop puttin’ any stock in Churchill’s lies. Many Pelts and the rest of the Crow who agree with him will just have to put up with things the way they are for a while.”

  “That will not be easy to do as long as the hunting is bad.”

  “I’ll have a talk with Haines,” Preacher said. “He seems to have a pretty good idea what’s goin’ on. If he can keep any huntin’ parties close to the wagons and not let them go too far into the foothills, it shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, the best thing would be if those wagons turn around in the mornin’ and head back the other way. Maybe I can help get that idea through Powell’s head.”

  He lifted Horse’s reins and nudged the stallion into an easy lope. Hawk rode beside him as they headed toward the slowly rolling wagons.

  CHAPTER 9

  The foothills

  The man with the long, ragged beard lowered the spyglass from his eye and turned his head to look at the others gathered on the back side of the ridge.

  “The wagons are movin’ again,” he reported. “Looks like they’re comin’ on in this direction like they were before those two fellas rode up. The parley with the old gent and the redskin didn’t change their minds.”

  A tall, slender figure with a ruddy face and hawk nose moved closer and asked in a husky voice, “What could you tell about the two riders?”

  The bearded man shook his head as he collapsed the spyglass and stowed it away in a beaded, fringed pouch slung over his right shoulder so that the strap angled down to the left across his chest.

  “Not much, really,” he said, “except that one was white and t’other was an Injun. I said the white man was old, but I don’t even know that for sure. I just saw some gray in his hair and mustache. Some fellas turn gray before others.” He grinned as he ran the knobby-knuckled fingers of his left hand through his long, tangled beard. “Reckon I’m livin’ proof of that.”

  One of the others, a gangling man with straw-colored hair under his pushed-back felt hat, laughed and said, “You was born old, Appleseed.”

  “And born mean, too,” said the man called Appleseed. “You best remember that, Charlie.” He looked at the lean figure who had spoken first to him. “Plan still the same, Winter?”

  “Why would it not be?”

  “Well, those two who came ridin’ up look like they’re throwin’ in with the pilgrims, at least for now. That’d be two more guns on their side.”

  Winter made a curt, dismissive ge
sture.

  “It doesn’t matter. We will take them by surprise, and many will die before they even know what’s happening. Just like the other times.”

  Some of the men nodded and muttered agreement. There were twenty-five of them in all, each man a hardened, experienced thief and killer. It had taken Winter years to put together this gang, and now they were ready to loot the steady stream of wagon trains heading west through this country.

  They had attacked three such trains so far without losing a man, taking all the money the immigrants had saved up to start their new lives in the Pacific Northwest, as well as plenty of goods that they had sold at trading posts where the unscrupulous proprietors never gave a thought to where the loot came from and wouldn’t care if they had known.

  Sure, there were some risks, but they didn’t really amount to much, and the scheme was going to make them all rich in the long run. A lot of blood would be spilled along the way . . . but that didn’t matter to any of these men.

  “All right,” Winter went on. “For now we stay out of sight. Appleseed, you and Harkness follow those wagons. Once they’ve made camp for the night, one of you stay there to watch them while the other comes back to fetch us. Understand?”

  “You bet,” Appleseed replied. “Come on up here and belly down beside me so we can keep an eye on ’em, Charlie.”

  Charlie Harkness moved up to the ridge crest and stretched out beside Appleseed. He took off his hat so there would be less chance of being spotted as he peered over the top, but at this distance, that wasn’t really much of a worry. And the sun was behind them, so Appleseed could use the spyglass without having to worry about the light reflecting from its lens.

  Winter motioned for the other men to withdraw. They moved back down the hill and along a brushy gully until they came to a circular depression in the rocks where a spring trickled out and formed a small pool. It was a good campsite, with water and enough grass for the horses and rugged terrain around it that kept anybody from stumbling into it accidentally.

  Winter had searched for a long time for such a suitable spot. A Crow village was located about ten miles away, but the Indians seldom ventured in this direction. Winter had nothing but disdain for the Crow, anyway.

  One of the men poked around at the embers of the fire until flames began to leap up again. He put a pot of water on to boil for coffee.

  Winter stood next to the fire, a compelling figure in a flat-crowned black hat with a tight chin strap, high-topped boots, black leather trousers, and a beaded poncho taken from the body of a dead Mexican down around Santa Fe several years earlier. A sweep of a copper-colored hand was all that was needed to brush the poncho back and reveal a black gunbelt and holster in which rode a Colt Dragoon. Hundreds of hours of practice had made Winter an expert in the revolver’s use.

  One of the men stepped up to the fire and said, “It’s still a couple of hours until dark, Winter. We’re gonna be waitin’ here for a while. I got an idea about how you and me could spend that time.”

  Winter glanced over and said, “You’ve got an idea, do you, Porter?”

  The man had a rust-colored goatee and bushy eyebrows the same shade. He wore a black frock coat but had a coonskin cap on his head with the tail hanging straight down his back. He nodded in answer to Winter’s question and said, “That’s right. I figured you and me could go over yonder in those trees and have us a sportin’ good time.”

  He reached down to rub his crotch with his left hand and leered.

  Winter’s right arm came up in a vicious backhanded blow almost too swift for the eye to follow. Knuckles cracked against Porter’s cheekbone. Caught by surprise, he took a half-step back. The toe of Winter’s right boot hooked behind his left ankle and jerked. Porter yelped as he went over backward and landed hard on his butt. The coonskin cap fell off his head. Instinctively, he started to reach under his coat for the gun or the knife he carried there.

  Winter was faster, by a large margin. The poncho swung back, strong, slender fingers closed around the Dragoon’s grips, and the gun whispered out of leather. Winter stuck the muzzle under Porter’s bearded chin and roughly forced the man’s head back. Porter’s hand froze where it was, halfway under the coat’s lapel. His eyes were wide.

  “You haven’t been riding with us for long, but you’ve been a good man so far, Porter,” Winter grated. “You follow orders, you keep a cool head under fire, and killing doesn’t bother you. But what the hell ever possessed you to make you think you could say such a thing to me?”

  With the gun muzzle shoved so hard into his throat like that, Porter couldn’t get any words out. He grunted a couple of times, but that was all he could manage.

  Without moving the gun, Winter reached up with the other hand, loosened the chin strap, and pulled the black hat off. Long, straight hair as black as a raven’s wing tumbled out. A shake of the head let the hair fall halfway down the back of the poncho. The late afternoon sunlight shone on a few strands of pure white in the midnight dark hair.

  “Your mistake, Porter,” Winter went on as she held the hat in her left hand, “was thinking that just because I’m a woman, I’d be interested in a handsome, silver-tongued devil like you. Is that what you think?”

  She moved the gun a little, enough for him to gasp, “Not . . . not anymore. I’m sorry, Winter.”

  She had eared back the Dragoon’s hammer when she shoved the barrel under his chin. She lowered the hammer carefully now, moved the gun, and patted its barrel lightly against the side of his head a couple of times.

  “That’s all right. You’re not the first man I’ve had to teach that lesson to in the last ten years. And you’re still alive, so it turned out better for you than it did for a lot of them.” Her husky voice hardened. “Just don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t. You . . . you can count on that.”

  Winter stepped back and holstered the Dragoon. She put the hat on again but pushed it back so that it hung behind her head by the chin strap and her hair still fell loose. She looked around at the rest of the men and asked, “Anybody else have a suggestion about how we can spend the time while we’re waiting for that wagon train to make camp?”

  Nobody spoke up, and after a moment, Winter nodded. She extended a hand to Porter. After a second’s hesitation, he reached up and clasped wrists with her. She helped him to his feet, displaying the strength in her lean, muscular body.

  “This never happened,” she said to him.

  He shook his head and agreed, “No, ma’am, it sure didn’t.”

  “Don’t ma’am me,” she snapped. “I’m not some white schoolmarm. My name is Winter Wind, warrior of the Blackfoot people, and do not ever forget it.”

  The wagon train camp

  Major Frank Powell had halted the wagons on a broad, level stretch between two of the first foothills. By this time in the journey, the immigrants were quite experienced and efficient in setting up camp. They pulled the wagons into a circle, unhitched the teams of oxen, and herded the massive, stolid beasts into an enclosure set up with stakes and ropes inside the circle.

  Cooking fires were built using firewood and buffalo chips diligently gathered along the way. The plains these wagons had crossed were largely treeless. Now that the foothills and mountains were in sight, the settlers could see more trees than they had laid eyes on in weeks.

  Preacher and Hawk rode up to the campsite, dismounted, and led their horses through a gap between two of the wagons. Saddle mounts were corralled in a different part of the circle from the ox teams. Preacher and Hawk headed that way, and as they did, Preacher spotted Major Powell talking to a medium-sized man with thinning gray hair and a sober demeanor. Preacher figured that was Dawlish, the man Powell had mentioned who’d been elected by the immigrants as their captain.

  Powell saw them and waved them over. Still leading their horses, Preacher and Hawk joined the wagonmaster.

  “Mr. Dawlish, these are the two men I was telling you about,” said Powell. “Preacher and his
son, Hawk That Soars. Fellows, this is Jason Dawlish, the captain of this wagon train.”

  Dawlish nodded and said, “Preacher, is it? No last name?”

  “Oh, I’ve got one,” Preacher said, “but it’s been so long since I used it that I don’t hardly remember what it is. And it don’t matter. Preacher will do.”

  “Major Powell tells me that you doubt the existence of Churchill Pass.”

  Preacher noticed that the man hadn’t acknowledged being introduced to Hawk, and that irritated him. But he put that feeling aside for the moment and said, “It ain’t a matter of doubt. I know there ain’t any good passes in the direction you’re goin’. None that you can take a whole passel of wagons over, that’s for sure.”

  “Mr. Churchill’s book was very specific—”

  “He was wrong, or he was lyin’,” Preacher broke in. “More’n likely lyin’, since accordin’ to Major Powell this fella Churchill is a book writer.”

  Dawlish frowned and said, “That’s a very cynical attitude.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I do know the mountains. You folks are wastin’ your time tryin’ to go any way other than through South Pass.”

  “But without someone taking a chance and exploring, new routes are never discovered,” Dawlish argued. “You sound like all the naysayers who told Christopher Columbus that he couldn’t reach the east by sailing west.”

  “And you sound like a teacher.”

  “I was the headmaster of a school back in Pennsylvania. I hope to set up a similar institution of higher learning once we reach the Oregon territory.”

  Preacher nodded and said, “That’d be a fine thing. It’s good for folks to learn. Most of my schoolin’ came from livin’ out here”—he swept a hand at their surroundings—“and that’s taught me where you can go and where you can’t. But that ain’t my decision. I reckon it’s up to you and Major Powell where this wagon train goes, so we’ll leave you to figurin’ it out.”