Falconer's Law

by Jason Manning

  "You wouldn't last a fortnight without me to look after you," declared Rube Holly, "so I reckon I have to go along."

  Eben couldn't believe his ears. He stared at Rube, who sat cross-legged on the other side of the campfire. A chunk of buffalo hump meat sizzled on a spit above the flames, and its aroma had made Eben almost delirious with hunger. Now, though, he forgot all about his empty stomach.

  "You look downright addled, boy," growled Rube. "Pick yore jaw up off the ground, 'fore somebody trips over it."

  "You mean it?" cried Eben. "You're going to California?"

  "I said so, didn't I?"

  Eben glanced beyond Rube, at Luck. The Nez Perce woman stood at the edge of the firelight. Her square, blunt-featured face was impassive. She seemed to hang on every word; although she pretended to know absolutely no English, Eben had long suspected otherwise. Now, watching her, he was sure of it.

  "Rube, have you talked this over with Luck?"

  "Now why would I do that? She'll go where I go."

  "Listen," said Eben, leaning forward. "You ought to ask her."

  "For what? Permission? By thunder, boy, I ain't asked nobody for permission to do nothin' since I was a young whippersnapper half your size, and I ain't about to start now."

  "She's been a good and faithful mate to you, Rube. I'd hate to be the cause of discord between the two of you."

  "Lookee, Eben. I ain't the sentimental kind, but I got to confess, since we been together . . . well, this past year . . . Hellfire! I kinda think of you as the son I never had. I just cain't sit by and let you go gallivantin' off to California, of all places, without me. You don't know half of what you need to know to survive out here, and if I don't teach you, who the hell is going to? Them other pilgrims in Falconer's brigade . . ." Rube Holly shook his head. "Cain't trust 'em. And Falconer, he'll be too busy to pull yore chestnuts out of the fire every time he turns around."

  "I'm not that helpless, Rube," protested Eben, smiling. "You're just blowing smoke. You know as well as I do that Falconer has put together the finest damned brigade this country's ever likely to see."

  This was the general consensus. For instance, there was Gus Jenkins, regarded as one of the finest booshways ever to lead a passel of mountain men into the high country. In terms of the esteem in which he was held by his peers, Jenkins did not stand too much in Hugh Falconer's shadow. He was brave, and wise in wilderness ways, but perhaps best known for being fair-minded to a fault.

  One story in particular was inevitably recounted to prove this point. Jenkins and his brigade were trapping in the Beartooth range. Camped one evening beside a trail along a river, they were startled when a solitary Blackfoot warrior rode into their camp, accompanied by his wife and daughter, the horses of the women further burdened by travois laden with the family's belongings. It was only natural for the mountain men to snatch up their rifles with the intention of killing the warrior. The Blackfeet hated the white trappers who interloped on their land, and there was scarcely a mountain man alive who did not reciprocate in kind. The only points at issue were whether to kill the women outright too and how to divvy up the belongings. Or so the brigade thought—until Gus Jenkins placed himself between the Blackfoot and his own men. Jenkins proceeded to tell them that even the fierce Blackfeet lived by certain rules, and one of them was that an enemy could not be slain in a Blackfoot camp. It was only right that the reverse also apply—if the men wanted to curl this warrior's toes they would have to go through Gus Jenkins first.

  The mountain men were flabbergasted, then angry, then keenly disappointed. But nary a soul was willing to try Gus Jenkins on for size. At least, they said, they should partake of the Indian family's possibles. Might be some tobacco to be purloined. But Jenkins would not budge an inch from his principles. He would not, he declared, abide a brigade of thieves and murderers. Ashamed, the other trappers relented, and the Blackfeet were given safe escort out of the camp. Jenkins was no Indian lover—a few months later he took three scalps in a scrape with a Blackfoot war party. But on this occasion he reminded his men—and in retrospect they were grateful for the lesson—that the laws of God took precedence over the laws of nature, especially the one about kill-or-be-killed.

  Another man who had signed on to accompany Hugh Falconer to California was Bearclaw Johnson. Next to a Blackfoot Indian, a mountain man dreaded the grizzly bear most. The grizzly was the true king of the Rockies. But Bearclaw wasn't afraid of them. Tracking down and killing bears, especially grizzlies, was more than a hobby for Johnson—it was an obsession. No one knew why he hated bears so. Seldom did he speak to anyone, so it was difficult to know anything at all about him. He was a loner, a big growling hulk of a man, and some said he looked more like a grizzly than a man, and all agreed a grizzly's disposition could be far more pleasant at times. The only man Bearclaw seemed to have any respect for was Falconer.

  It was said of Bearclaw that he liked nothing better than to beard a grizzly in its den. While with a brigade up on the Musselshell, Bearclaw was called upon to rid the valley of a grizzly that had killed two horses and a mule. Happy to oblige, Bearclaw, accompanied by two other brave souls, tracked the creature to a cave. Entering the cave, the men were unpleasantly surprised to discover not one but three full-grown bears in residence. Rifles spoke. One bear fell dead in its tracks. Bearclaw's companions ran for their lives; wise enough to know that a man cannot outrun a bear, they clambered up a steep slope above the cave entrance. The second grizzly, wounded, gave chase, but Bearclaw fell upon it with pistol and knife and, after a terrible struggle, killed it. The third grizzly, the biggest and meanest of the lot, dragged the injured and now weaponless Bear-claw back into its lair. Giving Johnson up for dead, the other two mountain men contrived to start a rock slide, which completely closed the mouth of the cave.

  Winter came, and passed. The brigade was preparing to leave the valley the following spring when, to everyone's astonishment, Bearclaw Johnson reappeared. He had slain the third grizzly with his bare hands. Trapped in the cave, more dead than alive, he had survived on raw bear meat, and kept from freezing by wrapping himself in the bloody hides of the two grizzlies killed inside the cave. Farther back in the cave he had discovered a spring—a bare trickle of water. Using bones from the carcasses, he had laboriously dug himself out of his mountain tomb—an endeavor that took him months to accomplish.

  There were others in Falconer's brigade worthy of note: Bordeaux, better known among his peers as French Pete, a famous Indian fighter, the product of the union of a voyageur and an Arikara princess; "Doc" Maguire, an Irish-born physician wanted on a murder charge in Great Britain, a man who liked strong drink and who kept his set of pearl-handled throwing knives as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel; Cotton Phillips, a runaway slave who was as talented as any Indian when it came to reading sign and the weather. This was a rough-hewn collection of free souls, grown half wild in the high country, square pegs in civilization's round holes. Only a man like Hugh Falconer could mold them into a brigade, where every man would have to rely on every other if any were going to survive.

  "Finest set of misfits, scoundrels, and outcasts ever assembled," said Rube Holly, sardonically. "And how 'bout Falconer pickin' that feller Sixkiller to go along?"

  Eben nodded ruefully. "Reckon I'll have to sleep with one eye open. But I'm not going to back out just because Sixkiller's part of the brigade."

  "Oh, no, not you. Back out? That would be too smart a thing to do. You'd do well to slit that Injun's throat first night out. Iffen you don't, he'll like as not have yore head tied to his saddle."

  "There won't be any of that. Falconer won't allow it. He called us all together this afternoon. Laid down the law. And nobody wants to answer to him. He knows what he's doing, Rube. If he wants Sixkiller along, then he must have a good reason."

  "Why do you reckon he's takin' you?"

  Eben lifted his leather-bound journal. "We'll be writing a page of history, and everybody knows it. So someone has to make a rec
ord."

  "Well, I hope yore book has a happy ending for us all. It's the great unknown we're going to on the morrow."

  "You're not coming just on my account," smiled Eben. "Admit it. You're dying to see California, too, like the rest of us."

  "True enough," admitted Rube. "I just hope we don't all have to die just to see it."

  Eben brushed the old mountain man's reservations aside. "We'll do fine. Wait and see. With Hugh Falconer leading us, what could go wrong?"

  Chapter 8

  At daybreak of the following day, Falconer and his brigade put the Green River behind them and embarked on their great adventure. There were thirty men in the group, including two Indians—Sixkiller and a Nez Perce named Blue Feather—and three women, all of them squaws, with Luck among them. Some of the trappers had signed on because they knew that ahead of them lay the last of the unexplored wilderness. Others conceived of the benefits that might accrue from the blazing of a new trade route to that land of untold riches known as California. Almost all of them were conscious of the fact that just to be a participant in Hugh Falconer's quest would be a feather in their cap, for the very scope and daring of the expedition guaranteed that it would be long remembered, the subject of conversation around countless campfires for many years to come.

  It should have been a moment to remember for Eben Nall, a moment of great excitement and flavor. But he scarcely took note of the world around him, for he was deeply troubled.

  Late last night he had been roughly awakened by a trapper bearing bad tidings. Silas had killed a man, the trader named Portugee, and then fled the camp on the black stallion, escaping certain retribution at the hands of Portugee's vengeful partners.

  Immediately Eben had a hunch that the Arapaho woman named Annie, the one with the cut nose, was at the center of this storm of violence. He was right. Apparently Annie had shared Portugee's blankets. In a jealous rage Silas had confronted the trader. There were no witnesses to the killing—not even Annie, who had run for her life. But the evidence indicated that Portugee had put up one hell of a fight, and some even suggested that Silas might have slain the man in self-defense. Portugee had owned a well-deserved reputation for being violent and bad-tempered.

  Eben cursed his brother for a fool. It was bad enough that Silas had allowed Annie to get under his skin—what had he expected when he sent a woman with a propensity for infidelity to a man like Portugee to barter for whiskey without money to pay for it? Naturally Portugee had thought of another medium of exchange. But for Silas to flee the scene had been a downright stupid thing to do. Had he stayed, most of the other mountain men would have accepted a claim of self-defense. It wouldn't have been the first killing over a woman at rendezvous, not by a long shot. But by running away Silas had wrapped himself in the black mantle of guilt—it must have been murder, reasoned the others, else why would he run?

  "Doesn't necessarily make it murder," Eben told Rube Holly. "Might just mean he knew Portugee's partners would want his hide."

  Rube shook his head. "You're within yore rights to take up for kin, boy, but that won't float, and you know it. A man don't run away from trouble, not if he's in the right, and any kind of a man."

  There was no use in trying to defend Silas—Eben's heart really wasn't in it, so he gave it up as hopeless. You could not convincingly argue a point that you yourself did not believe. Whether Portugee put up a fight or not, whether it was self-defense or not, it was still murder, because Portugee was dead for no good reason, and the blame came back squarely on Silas, since Silas had made the fatal mistake of caring whose blankets Annie shared. His mistake, because the cutnose sign was a warning he had not heeded. It was there to advertise the indisputable fact that this woman was an adulteress who would betray any man's trust. You could not attach even a sliver of blame to Annie. She had made no promises; she had not masqueraded behind false pretense. Eben had known Silas was lying when he'd said he didn't care. I know you, Eben remembered saying. You hate to lose. At that moment Eben had had a premonition. He wasn't really surprised that something like this had happened. Worst of all, it was not passion but possessiveness that had motivated Silas to strike out in a bloody rage—Eben was fairly sure his brother never had loved the Arapaho woman.

  And so that morning, as he rode out of camp a member of Falconer's brigade, with everyone else in fine spirits, Eben felt no pride, no excitement, but rather was sick to his stomach with shame and disappointment.

  That Hugh Falconer knew what he was doing was obvious to all concerned from the very beginning. Each man was required to have at least two horses in addition to the one he chose to ride—the extras were to be loaded with provisions. Rube Holly explained to Eben the significance of this.

  "I've ridden with quite a few outfits in my day," said the old-timer, "and more often than not they come up short on possibles before the year is out. A mountain man just natcherly likes to travel light. He'll give precious little thought to tomorrow. I've seen men who'll eat till they're sick on a good day of huntin', and let most of the meat spoil—and a week later they're starvin'. Hugh's got it figured so's we shouldn't lack for anything on this trip. And if for some reason we get in a tight spot where our next meal's concerned, well, we've got all these extry ponies for emergency rations."

  "I would never make steaks out of this mare," said Eben, indicating the Appaloosa beneath his saddle.

  "Huh!" grunted Rube. "You just ain't been hungry enough, younker. I have been. Hell, I've been so hungry a time or two my partner started to look pretty tasty."

  Eben had to laugh. "You've got no worries there. You'd be too tough and stringy to chew."

  " 'Nother thing about these extry horses. A lot of men left rendezvous poor as a church mouse. Not these pilgrims, though. Hugh knows they've all got good sense iffen they still have the wherewithal to own three horses and lay in all these supplies. Means they didn't drink or gamble away all of their profits."

  "Or maybe," said Eben, wryly, "they were all smart enough to bet on me beating Sixkiller in that race."

  Four days out they reached the Bear River country. Here Falconer called a halt.

  "We're going to linger a while," he told the others. "There is plenty of game in these parts, and I want every man in the brigade to have at least fifty pounds of dried and jerked meat before we head on. Hunt in pairs. I haven't seen much in the way of Indian sign for several days, but you know that doesn't mean anything. The Blackfeet have been plenty active since green-up, and so have the Snakes."

  The valley of the Bear River had plenty of good grass and water, and lots of timber filled with game, as Falconer had said it would be. Eben, of course, paired up with Rube Holly. He was glad for the chance to try out his brand-new Kentucky rifle. Their first day out they bagged a deer and several wild turkeys. They put the turkeys in the pot and gave the deer to Luck for dressing out and transforming into strips of smoked and sundried venison. It was an auspicious beginning; with thirty men scouring the valley for prey the game was bound to become scarce in a hurry. Such indeed proved to be the case. Every day thereafter they were forced to venture farther and farther afield to find something besides tree squirrels to shoot at.

  With all the shooting going on in the valley, Eben began to wonder when, not whether, the Indians would show up. Only question was, would they be friendly? Turned out they were. A small hunting party of Bannocks appeared on the fourth day of their sojourn on the banks of the Bear River. The Bannocks lived to the west, and Falconer engaged them in a daylong palaver, questioning them about every detail of the land that lay in the direction of the setting sun.

  "Reckon they'll raise a fuss over our passing through their country?" Eben asked Rube Holly.

  "It's true, you never know with them Bannocks. They're as changeable as the wind. Not like the Nez Perces, who've been friendly with white folk from the get go. Bannocks can be all smiles one day and trying their level best to lift yore hair the next. But I think they'll let us come on without too much squ
awlin'."

  "On account of Falconer?"

  "On account we got sixty packhorses loaded up with goods."

  "You mean you think they'll try to steal our possibles?"

  " 'Course they will. They're Injuns, ain't they? And not just our possibles but the ponies too. Lessen he's been converted by some Bible-thumper like that Reverend Gray, an Injun ain't never heard of the Ten Commandments, 'specially the ones about not stealin' and covetin'. In their book it's perfectly all right to steal. Not a thing in the world wrong with it. More like a game to them than anything else. I recalls spending dang near a whole season up on the Rosebud playin' who's got the horses with a band of pesky Absaroka Crows. They stole 'em from me four or five times, and I always stole 'em right back. Oh, we fired a few potshots at each other now and agin, but nobody got hurt. It was all in good sport, you understand."

  The Bannocks left all smiles and handshakes, having smoked a pipe of peace with Falconer and accepted a few blankets and some brand-new knives as tokens of his gratitude for their information.

  Eben wondered if the Indians had really left the valley. Maybe they would linger, lurking out of sight and hoping one of the "hairfaces" would grow careless. Before long, Eben's overwrought imagination had him seeing an Indian crouched behind every rock and tree trunk. Two days after the Bannocks' visit, he saw a lone rider back up in the trees. He and Rube had been out hunting all day, with no success. The sun had dropped behind the snow-clad peaks to the west, and a purple gloom permeated the forest. They were a long way from camp, and on their way back, when Eben happened to throw a glance over one shoulder. That was when he saw the horseman, sitting his motionless cayuse, watching them from about fifty yards away. Eben's heart jumped into his throat and lodged there, choking him. A cold chill shot down his spine into his scrotum. He brought up the Kentucky rifle and was drawing a bead when the rider called out.