Mountain Man - Vardis Fisher Page 12

  Sam talked to her about these things after they had gone to bed, trying to foresee all the possible dangers. He would build a corral for her pony but if she did not watch out the wolves would sneak into it to chew the leather hobbles, or to hamstring the beast and bring it down. For an unknown reason the wolf had a great fondness for horseflesh. Folding one of her small hands into a big palm and sniffing the night air for scent of an enemy, he would talk to her until she fell asleep. His sense of kinship with all the wild things of nature was so strong in him that he wanted his wife to share it; to know the ways of the water ouzel, sandpiper, kildeer, and flicker; the songs of birds, such as the plover’s, the two notes of which were the two g’s on the flute stop of a pipe organ; or such as the meadow lark’s, for it seemed to him that in the lower of two keys it stated the theme and expressed it again in a higher key. With his mouth organ he tried to imitate the songs of birds, and at last, thinking of himself as a man with many blessings he would fall asleep.

  He did not want Lotus ever to know about a whiteman’s cities and way of life. Even a trading post was so crowded, and so rank with human odors, that he was glad when his exchanges were made and he could get away, alone and free, into the vastness. The big trapping companies had so debauched the red people with rum that drunkenness, which Sam abhorred, was rife at the post; red warriors were sprawled everywhere, their black eyes out of focus and their rum-sotted minds busy with evil plots. Sam had heard that some of the company traders put narcotics in the rum and that the drugs filled the redmen with such wild lunacies that on one occasion they roasted a trader alive on his own fire, thrusting a sappling through his body and suspending it from two tripods, so that it could be turned over and over in the flames like a haunch of venison. Sam had seen stone-drunk braves dragged by their heels out of trading posts and scattered over a half acre of ground, until it was literally covered with them. He had seen haughty warriors sitting under sun shelters, which their old limping discarded wives had been forced to build for them—sitting, half drunk, with their young beauties, while the old crones hustled around, trying to steal more rum for their lords, or with their bodies buy more. In front of each arrogant red prince stood a tripod, on which were his shield, bow and quiver, medicine bag and pipe. The Indian male was so innocent and gullible that when giving him rum in exchange for pelts the white trader could let three or four fingers slip down into the cup, to displace that much liquor; or he would actually put melted suet in the cup to the depth of half an inch and let it harden before pouring rum in. As the redman got drunker the whiteman would dilute the rum, until at last it was one part rum and ten parts river water. Sam had watched drunken warriors gamble at the game of Which Hand, until one owned all the horses and clothing and weapons, and the other sat stark-naked, wondering what else they could find to wager.

  To impress his wife with the way thousands of immigrants were pushing into the Western lands, to overrun the homes of the red people, Sam had wanted to show a few landmarks, such as Independence Rock in the lovely valley of the Sweetwater, a river that at first was not Eau Douce but Eau Sucrée, because a packload of sugar had been lost in it. The great granite table was two thousand feet long and almost two hundred feet high, and would eventually have, Sam supposed, at least a hundred thousand Mormon names chiseled on its top, eighty thousand of whom would be polygamous wives. But he had decided to go far west of the Rock, for he was on his way to Bridger’s post. He had wanted to show her Scotts Bluff, after telling her the story of another brave man.

  A party of trappers coming down the Platte had capsized their canoe and lost practically all their supplies, including their powder. Defenseless in enemy land, they had given way to panic. One of them, a man named Scott, had become too ill to walk, and the others, retending they were only going over the hills to find food for him, abandoned him on the river bank. What had been his thoughts after he realized the cowards had deserted him? Even after the fleeing party had overtaken an armed group of whitemen they did not mention the sick man they had left to die, but said that Scott had died and they had buried him. The next year some of the men in that armed group came back up the river and found the skeleton. It was plain to them that Scott had crawled on his hands and knees for more than forty miles, in a pathetic and desperate effort to overtake the cowards who had left him. Hugh Glass had crawled farther than that, with maggots swarming in his wounds—digging in the earth for roots, chewing on old bones, all the way to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri, his soul burning on the one thought of vengeance. Would Sam Minard ever dedicate his life to vengeance? He could see no likelihood of that, but he was not looking very clearly into the future.

  When they came to the Oregon Trail Sam halted for an hour and looked east and west. Most of the Indian tribes now believed that before long swarming masses of humanity would overflow this magnificent land and drive the red people from their homes. Did they also foresee that hundreds of beautiful rivers and creeks would be polluted? Now a man could lie on his belly and drink the pure waters of any of them, except those in alkali wastes, like the Humboldt; but there were no pure waters where man pushed up his cities and scattered his filth. What an unsightly country it would all be someday!—with its unplanned mushrooming cities, the stink and belching dark of thousands of smokestacks, the paralyzing poisons of sewers and clutter of vast junkyards. He guessed the few men who needed space and freedom as they needed air would move north to Canada; and again north, until on the whole earth there would be no broad clean land to go to, but only the litter and stench and ugliness that the swarming billions would make of the earth.

  Going over to the Trail, he looked curiously at the wheel ruts. Within the past week a wagon train had squealed and churned along these ruts, with dusty unclean women clutching their whimpering children under the canvas tops, their eyes staring past the bent backs of the drivers at the country ahead. Week after week and mile after mile they pushed on and on. Arriving at Bridger’s post on Black’s Fork of Green River, Sam learned that the Mormons hadn’t come, and was feeling relief when Bridger said, “They kallate next spring. They’re on the Meesouri now, ole Brigham and his thousan wives, holed up fer the winter.”

  “All the Mormons?”

  “The hull shittaree, thousans and thousans.”

  “Going where?”

  “Only God and Brigham knows.”

  “And all with more than one wife?”

  Look alive, said Jim; had any but the bosses had more than one, in the Bible or anywhere? Brigham, they said, had fifty mebbe; the one next to him mebbe forty-five, and the next forty, and so on down to the corporal, who mebbe had two. A man could never tell when Jim Bridger was serious.

  That was a fine filly Sam had, he said, his strange eyes (they looked gray but flecked with tiny pieces of bright steel) sizing up Lotus. At this post Sam bought on credit, against next spring’s beaver packs. He bought a fast horse for his wife; and a good rifle and a Bowie, and plenty of powder and ball, as well as cooking utensils, a half dozen three-point blankets, awls, needles, and thread; for he would be away trapping and she would be making leather clothing for the three of them.

  “Ya mean ya intend ta leave her alone?” asked Jim, narrowing his eyes at Sam.

  “In the cabin on the Little Snake,” Sam said.

  “All winter?”

  “She’ll have a fast horse,” Sam said. “She shoots well. Besides, no red varmints ever go away down there.”

  How did Sam know he hadn’t been watched in his journey all the way south? How did he know how many red devils had smelled along his tracks? By God, he would think it over, Jim said; you never could tell where the red varmints would show up, or when. After Sam was ready to go, and Jim had told him to watch his topknot, Jim said again, “You better think it over.” The words troubled Sam, for he knew that in all the West there was no man more Indian-wise than Jim Bridger. But he looked at his wife and thought, she’ll be all right.

  With Lotus on her new pony, a strong spirited sor
rel with a blazed face, and with two laden packhorses, Sam headed into the southeast. It was desolate country, with mountains in the far distance. It was yonder on a branch of the Yampah, that Henry Fraeb and Jim Bridger had built a post; and it had been there only five or six years ago that Henry and four of his men had been killed in a battle with the Sioux. Possibly Jim had this battle in mind when he told Sam to think it over. Sam had been twice to the Uintahs to trap; so far as he knew, no Indians ever came as far south as the Little Snake in the wintertime.

  When they came close to the mountains Sam and Lotus killed four deer, jerked the flesh and rode on. He had seen his wife looking back now and then, back into the long misty distance out of which they had come. Was she homesick for her people? Did she wonder why her man came so far to find trapping? He had tried to explain it to her: there was good trapping in areas up north but it was staked out by the older men. There was a cabin away down there, plenty of game within rifle reach, and an abundance of food for her horse. In the cabin she could be warm and safe and busy with her needles. Little Snake country was almost a no man’s land: west beyond the mountains were the friendly Eutaws; northwest were the Snakes, but far away. The Blackfeet were to hell and gone a thousand miles up north, the Crows, Cheyennes, Comanches, and Arapahoes all far away. A war party from any of these tribes might kill her for her horse and weapons but he was sure that none would come away down south after the heavy snows fell. And he was sure that no scouts had seen them on their long ride down. Trapping in the Uintahs would be very good and fast; he might come out with five packs, even six. Back in there he’d not have to watch for enemies day and night, and so could get a lot done. Lotus had said she wanted to go with him and help him but he felt that he ought to be firm; as a husband he’d be no better than a Digger if he took a pregnant wife to the high mountain meadows and subzero cold, with no place for a bed but the earth under a fir tree. He was deep in debt now; he had a wife and would soon have a child. It was time to strap on his medicine bag and go.

  The cabin to which he took Lotus was about like the one he had built on the Musselshell. On the wind side of it he now put up a small corral and a storm shelter for her pony; with her help he gathered a lot of meadow grass for the horse and this he piled against the cabin where the coldest winds would strike. He dragged in a lot of firewood. Every day he gave her lessons in firing her gun, and before long she could ride into the hills and within two hours bring back a deer. They jerked enough meat to feed her until the following May. He told her, over and over, never to go far from the cabin after the deep snows came. A piece of chinking in a wall he shaped so that she could remove it in an instant, and thrust her rilfe barrel hrough. Again and again he pointed to the mountains in the west and said he would be there. working hard in every daylight hour and until long after dark. He would be thinking of her all day and dreaming of her all night.

  After a week or two at the cabin he learned that she was pregnant; he put her right cheek against his beating heart and held her close. God Almighty, now he would have a son, to ride the swiftest and shoot the straightest of any man in the mountains! When would it be born? He counted off the months: in May perhaps, or June: somewhere along there. This night he held her nightlong and the next day he looked round him for other things to do, to make her cozy and safe. Possibly in sunny weather she would like to sit by the doorway and look into the west where he would be: so he brought a piece of thick log for her to sit on. They were sitting on it one evening when, abruptly, she rose and sat on his lap and looked steadily and gravely into his eyes. Her gaze was so searching that he was troubled. Did she think he intended to abandon her? Surrendering to a great gush of tenderness that poured through him and warmed him all over, he drew her close and murmured promises and endearments in her ear. “I will never leave you,” he said. “Not in all the years of my life—never, never. I will come back,” he said over and over. He would return with many packs of fine pelts, so that next summer they could pay their debt and have money to buy things for the following winter, and for their son. In all the languages he knew he told her that rather than doubt his return she should doubt that the sun would rise or the snows fall. He framed her face and kissed her forehead, eyelids, cheeks, lips, and the leather jacket over her breasts. Looking into her eyes, he said, “I love you, I need you, I will never leave you.” With a quick impulsive movement she touched her lips to the point of his nose and said, “I love you.” His heart leapt. Had he, then, after all, won this strange girl from a strange people? He said he wanted to take with him a lock of her hair, and from the back of her head, above the nape, he took a lock, and kissed it and held it to his lips. He stretched it out and thought it two feet long; her hair when down hung below her waist. Round and round a foreiinger he wound the hair, and kissed it, and pressed it to her lips; and then tucked it away under his leather shirt. She had watched him as though a little astonished. Had an Indian husband anywhere in the world ever taken a lock of his woman’s hair, to cherish through a long lonely winter?

  He told himself a thousand times that she would be all right while he was away. Indian women, unlike the white, did not have to have doctors and nurses and a ton of medicines. The child would not be born before his return. She would be all right. He would come riding in from the mountains with both packhorses loaded with pelts from their manes to their tails. The cabin had no windows; he had fixed the door so that she could bar it; and he told her over and over, a dozen times, always to carry the knife in her belt, a revolver at her waist, and keep her rifle within reach. He had told her what the woman on the Musselshell had done with an axe. Lotus had a good axe and she must keep it always just inside her door. He thought it would be safe for her to fire her gun any time the wind was from the north; but she had plenty of jerked meat, and flour, dried fruits, roots, coffee, sugar; she had plenty of wood, plenty of bedding, and more than enough skins to keep her busy. The nearest Indian was two hundred miles away. She would be all right.

  Nevertheless, during his last days and nights with her he did not act like a husband who thought his wife would be all right. Her courage had deeply touched him: hardly more than a child, and a long way from her people, she had given him no sign at all that she was afraid. He had also been moved when, seeing her at last for the remarkable person she was, he understood what an ordeal it must have been for her to go with him. He would then take her to his lap and hold her, and debate with himself whether she should go with him or stay here. But then he would see her seven or eight months pregnant in the high cold mountains, and riding a horse out not long before her child would come; he would see her with no roof over her, alone all day while he walked miles and miles on his traplines; and he would convince himself again that it would be best for her to remain here. Trying to follow him from trap to trap, she would wear herself out. It would be bad for the child. She might become sick …. He was still debating the matter back and forth when the November morning came that he had set for his departure. It was snowing, a deep quiet storm, in which nothing was visible but the millions of swirling flakes as big as dollars. He saddled his stud and the packhorses and hitched them to the corral. He then went to his wife, who had been standing in the doorway, looking at him and at the storm into which he would disappear. There was no sign of mountains and river now.

  He shook snow off his leather coat, slapped across his belly and thighs, and said the Almighty had more ways of making the earth lovely than mortal man could have thought of. He was trying to be cheerful but he felt the loneliest he had ever felt since saying goodbye to his people. He stood by her and together they looked up at the marvelous dusk of flakes. Then he took her in his arms and kissed over her hair and face; bent to kiss the leather over her belly; and held her close for a full five minutes.

  Then suddenly in an instant he took his farewell, as he had taken it from his people, and was gone. He was on his stallion, with the packline in hand, riding away into the snows. Lotus stood looking after him as long as he was in s
ight, and long after he was gone. For more than an hour she stood there, looking into the gloom. Was she thinking that he had abandoned her, in this strange lonely land almost a thousand miles from her people—that she ought to leap on her pony and head north, to the Bitterroots and home? Whatever she was thinking or feeling, there was little sign of it in her lovely face. A white girl of her age might have broken down and run crying after her man; this girl, after looking for an hour at the gloom into which her husband had vanished, went to the corral to hear the breathing of her pony. She glanced down at the knife in her belt, the revolver at her waist; and then with a start thought of her rifle and hastened into the cabin to get it. She carefully examined the priming. She looked up the river, the direction from which her enemies would come, if they came. She then crawled between two poles and went over to her horse, and leaning the rifle against her with the stock between her feet, she looked at the pony’s quiet eyes. She put her right hand under its jaw and to its right cheek, and her right cheek to its left cheek, and stood there while the storm turned her and the pony and the cabin and everything a pure mountain-winter white.

  PART TWO

  KATE

  11

  IT WAS LATE April in 1847 when Sam Minard came down from the mountains. Peltwise, he had had a full winter; he had found more top-quality beaver in one group of streams than he had ever found before. From the first week of his arrival he had trapped but his finest pelts had been taken in February and March. He had trapped all day long, every day of the month, and even in nighttime when the moon was full. Of first-class pelts, called a plus. and pronounced by the mountain men plew, he had two and a half packs; of inferior pelts he had almost three packs: and be had about fifty otter.