[pg 172]
"Hush!" said Banion sternly. "Not another word!"
"Figure on what it means to you." He turned to Woodhull. "I know what it means to me. I've got to have my own last chance, Woodhull, and I'm saving you for that only. Is your last chance now as good as mine? This isn't mercy--I'm trading now. You know what I mean."
Woodhull had freed his face of the mud as well as he could. He walked away, stooped at a trickle of water to wash himself. Jackson quietly rose and kicked the shotgun back farther from the edge. Woodhull now was near to Banion's horse, which, after his fashion, always came and stood close to his master. The butts of the two dragoon revolvers showed in their holsters at the saddle. When he rose from the muddy margin, shaking his hands as to dry them, he walked toward the horse. With a sudden leap, without a word, he sprang beyond the horse, with a swift clutch at both revolvers, all done with a catlike quickness not to have been predicted. He stood clear of the plunging horse, both weapons leveled, covering his two rescuers.
"Evener now!" His teeth bared. "Promiseme!"
Jackson's deep curse was his answer. Banion rose, his arms folded.
"You're a liar and a coward, Sam!" said he. "Shoot, if you've got the nerve!"
Incredible, yet the man was a natural murderer. His eye narrowed. There came a swift motion, a double empty click!
[pg 173]
"Try again, Sam!" said Banion, taunting him. "Bad luck--you landed on an empty!"
He did try again. Swift as an adder, his hands flung first one and then the other weapon into action.
Click after click, no more; Jackson sat dumb, expecting death.
"They're all empty, Sam," said Banion at last as the murderer cast down the revolvers and stood with spread hands. "For the first time, I didn't reload. I didn't think I'd need them."
"You can't blame me!" broke out Woodhull. "You said it was no quarter! Isn't a prisoner justified in trying to escape?"
"You've not escaped," said Banion, coldly now. "Rope him, Jackson."
The thin, soft hide cord fell around the man's neck, tightened.
"Now," shrilled Jackson, "I'll give ye a dog's death!"
He sprang to the side of the black Spaniard, who by training had settled back, tightening the rope.
[pg 174]
Catching the intention of the maddened man, now bent only on swift revenge, Banion sprang to the head of his horse, flinging out an arm to keep Jackson out of the saddle. The horse, frightened at the stubborn struggle between the two, sprang away. Woodhull was pulled flat by the rope about his neck, nor could he loosen it now with his hands, for the horse kept steadily away. Any instant and he might be off in a mad flight, dragging the man to his death.
"Ho! Pronto--Vien aqui!"
Banion's command again quieted the animal. His ears forward, he came up, whickering his own query as to what really was asked of him.
Banion caught the bridle rein once more and eased the rope. Jackson by now had his shotgun and was shouting, crazed with anger. Woodhull's life chance was not worth a bawbee.
It was his enemy who saved it once again, for inscrutable but unaltered reasons of his own.
"Drop that, Jackson!" called Banion. "Do as I tell you! This man's mine!"
Cursing himself, his friend, their captive, the horse, his gun and all animate and inanimate Nature in his blood rage, the old man, livid in wrath, stalked away at length. "I'll kill him sometime, ef ye don't yerself!" he screamed, his beard trembling. "Ye damned fool!"
[pg 175]
"Get up, Woodhull!" commanded Banion. "You've tried once more to kill me. Of course, I'll not take any oath or promise from you now. You don't understand such things. The blood of a gentleman isn't anywhere in your strain. But I'll give you one more chance--give myself that chance too. There's only one thing you understand. That's fear. Yet I've seen you on a firing line, and you started with Doniphan's men. We didn't know we had a coward with us. But you are a coward.
"Now I leave you to your fear! You know what I want--more than life it is to me; but your life is all I have to offer for it. I'm going to wait till then.
"Come on, now! You'll have to walk. Jackson won't let you have his horse. My own never carried a woman but once, and he's never carried a coward at all. Jackson shall not have the rope. I'll not let him kill you."
"What do you mean?" demanded the prisoner, not without his effrontery.
The blood came back to Banion's face, his control breaking.
"I mean for you to walk, trot, gallop, damn you! If you don't you'll strangle here instead of somewhere else in time."
He swung up, and Jackson sullenly followed.
[pg 176]
"Give me that gun," ordered Banion, and took the shotgun and slung it in the pommel loop of his own saddle.
The gentle amble of the black stallion kept the prisoner at a trot. At times Banion checked, never looking at the man following, his hands at the rope, panting.
"Ye'll try him in the camp council, Will?" began Jackson once more. "Anyways that? He's a murderer. He tried to kill us both, an' he will yit. Boy, ye rid with Doniphan, an' don't know theley refugio. Hasn't the prisoner tried to escape? Ain't that old as Mayheeco Veeayho? Take this skunk in on a good rope like that? Boy, ye're crazy!"
"Almost," nodded Banion. "Almost. Come on. It's late."
It was late when they rode down into the valley of the Platte. Below them twinkled hundreds of little fires of the white nation, feasting. Above, myriad stars shone in a sky unbelievably clear. On every hand rose the roaring howls of the great gray wolves, also feasting now; the lesser chorus of yapping coyotes. The savage night of the Plains was on. Through it passed three savage figures, one a staggering, stumbling man with a rope around his neck.
They came into the guard circle, into the dog circle of the encampment; but when challenged answered, and were not stopped.
"Here, Jackson," said Banion at length, "take the rope. I'm going to our camp. I'll not go into this train. Take this pistol--it's loaded now. Let off thereata, walk close to this man. If he runs, kill him. Find Molly Wingate. Tell her Will Banion has sent her husband to her--once more. It's the last time."
[pg 177]
He was gone in the dark. Bill Jackson, having first meticulously exhausted the entire vituperative resources of the English, the Spanish and all the Indian languages he knew, finally poked the muzzle of the pistol into Woodhull's back.
"Git, damn ye!" he commanded. "Center, guide! Forrerd, march! Ye--"
He improvised now, all known terms of contempt having been heretofore employed.
Threading the way past many feast fires, he did find the Wingate wagons at length, did find Molly Wingate. But there his memory failed him. With a skinny hand at Sam Woodhull's collar, he flung him forward.
"Here, Miss Molly," said he, "this thing is somethin' Major Banion sont in ter ye by me. We find hit stuck in the mud. He said ye're welcome."
But neither he nor Molly really knew why that other man had spared Sam Woodhull's life, or what it was he awaited in return for Sam Woodhull's life.
All that Jackson could do he did. As he turned in the dark he implanted a heartfelt kick which sent Sam Woodhull on his knees before Molly Wingate as she stood in wondering silence.
Then arose sudden clamorings of those who had seen part of this--seen an armed man assault another, unarmed and defenseless, at their very firesides. Men came running up. Jesse Wingate came out from the side of his wagon.
[pg 178]
"What's all this?" he demanded. "Woodhull, what's up? What's wrong here?"
[pg 179]
To the challenge of Wingate and his men Jackson made answer with a high-pitched fighting yell. Sweeping his pistol muzzle across and back again over the front of the closing line, he sprang into saddle and wheeled away.
"Hit means we've brung ye back a murderer. Git yer own rope--ye kain't have mine! If ye-all want trouble with Old Missoury over this, er anything else, come runnin' in the mornin'. Ye'll find us sp'ilin' fer a fight!"
He was off in the darkness.
Men clustered around the draggled man, one of their, own men, recently one in authority. Their indignation rose, well grounded on the growing feeling between the two segments of the train. When Woodhull had told his own story, in his own way, some were for raiding the Missouri detachment forthwith. Soberer counsel prevailed. In the morning Price, Hall and Kelsey rode over to the Missouri encampment and asked for their leader. Banion met them while the work of breaking camp went on, the cattle herd being already driven in and held at the rear by lank, youthful riders, themselves sp'lin' fer a fight.
"Major Banion," began Caleb Price, "we've come over to get some sort of understanding between your men and ours. It looks like trouble. I don't want trouble."
[pg 180]
"Nor do I," rejoined Banion. "We started out for Oregon as friends. It seems to me that should remain our purpose. No little things should alter that."
"Precisely. But little things have altered it. I don't propose to pass on any quarrel between you and one of our people--a man from your own town, your own regiment. But that has now reached a point where it might mean open war between two parts of our train. That would mean ruin. That's wrong."
"Yes," replied Banion, "surely it is. You see, to avoid that, I was just ordering my people to pull out. I doubt if we could go on together now. I don't want war with any friends. I reckon we can take care of any enemies. Will this please you?"
Caleb Price held out his hand.
"Major, I don't know the truth of any of the things I've heard, and I think those are matters that may be settled later on. But I am obliged to say that many of our people trust you and your leadership more than they do our own. I don't like to see you leave."
"Well, then we won't leave. We'll hold back and follow you. Isn't that fair?"
"It is more than fair, for you can go faster now than we can, like enough. But will you promise me one thing, sir?"
"What is it?"
[pg 181]
"If we get in trouble and send back for you, will you come?"
"Yes, we'll come. But pull on out now, at once. My men want to travel. We've got our meat slung on lines along the wagons to cure as we move. We'll wait till noon for you."
"It is fair." Price turned to his associates. "Ride back, Kelsey, and tell Wingate we all think we should break camp at once.
"You see," he added to Banion, "he wouldn't even ride over with us. I regret this break between you and him. Can't it be mended?"
A sudden spasm passed across Will Banion's browned face.
"It cannot," said he, "at least not here and now. But the women and children shall have no risk on that account. If we can ever help, we'll come."
The two again shook hands, and the Wingate lieutenants rode away, so ratifying a formal division of the train.
"What do you make of all this, Hall?" asked sober-going Caleb Price at last. "What's the real trouble? Is it about the girl?"
"Oh, yes; but maybe more. You heard what Woodhull said. Even if Banion denied it, it would be one man's word against the other's. Well, it's wide out here, and no law."
"They'll fight?"
"Will two roosters that has been breasted?"
[pg 182]
Came now once more the notes of the bugle in signal for the assembly. Word passed down the scattered Wingate lines, "Catch up! Catch up!"
Riders went out to the day guards with orders to round up the cattle. Dark lines of the driven stock began to dribble in from the edge of the valley. One by one the corralled vehicles broke park, swung front or rear, until the columns again held on the beaten road up the valley in answer to the command, "Roll out! Roll out!" The Missourians, long aligned and ready, fell in far behind and pitched camp early. There were two trains, not one.
Now, hour after hour and day by day, the toil of the trail through sand flats and dog towns, deadly in its monotony, held them all in apathy. The lightheartedness of the start in early spring was gone. By this time the spare spaces in the wagons were kept filled with meat, for always there were buffalo now. Lines along the sides of the wagons held loads of rudely made jerky--pieces of meat slightly salted and exposed to the clear dry air to finish curing.
[pg 183]
But as the people fed full there began a curious sloughing off of the social compact, a change in personal attitude. A dozen wagons, short of supplies or guided by faint hearts, had their fill of the Far West and sullenly started back east. Three dozen broke train and pulled out independently for the West, ahead of Wingate, mule and horse transport again rebelling against being held back by the ox teams. More and more community cleavages began to define. The curse of flies by day, of mosquitoes by night added increasing miseries for the travelers. The hot midday sun wore sore on them. Restless high spirits, grief over personal losses, fear of the future, alike combined to lessen the solidarity of the great train; but still it inched along on its way to Oregon, putting behind mile after mile of the great valley of the Platte.
The grass now lay yellow in the blaze of the sun, the sandy dust was inches deep in the great road, cut by thousands of wheels. Flotsam and jetsam, wreckage, showed more and more. Skeletons of cattle, bodies not yet skeletons, aroused no more than a casual look. Furniture lay cast aside, even broken wagons, their wheels fallen apart, showing intimate disaster. The actual hardships of the great trek thrust themselves into evidence on every hand, at every hour. Often was passed a little cross, half buried in the sand, or the tail gate of a wagon served as head board for some ragged epitaph of some ragged man.
It was decided to cross the South Fork at the upper ford, so called. Here was pause again for the Wingate train. The shallow and fickle stream, fed by the June rise in the mountains, now offered a score of channels, all treacherous. A long line of oxen, now wading and now swimming, dragging a long rope to which a chain was rigged--the latter to pull the wagon forward when the animals got footing on ahead-- made a constant sight for hours at a time. One wagon after another was snaked through rapidly as possible. Once bogged down in a fast channel, the fluent sand so rapidly filled in the spokes that the settling wagon was held as though in a giant vise. It was new country, new work for them all; but they were Americans of the frontier.
[pg 184]
The men were in the water all day long, for four days, swimming, wading, digging. Perhaps the first plow furrow west of the Kaw was cast when some plows eased down the precipitous bank which fronted one of the fording places. Beyond that lay no mark of any plow for more than a thousand miles.
They now had passed the Plains, as first they crossed the Prairie. The thin tongue of land between the two forks, known as the Highlands of the Platte, made vestibule to the mountains. The scenery began to change, to become rugged, semi-mountainous. They noted and held in sight for a day the Courthouse Rock, the Chimney Rock, long known to the fur traders, and opened up wide vistas of desert architecture new to their experiences.
[pg 185]
They were now amid great and varied abundance of game. A thousand buffalo, five, ten, might be in sight at one time, and the ambition of every man to kill his buffalo long since had been gratified. Black-tailed deer and antelope were common, and even the mysterious bighorn sheep of which some of them had read. Each tributary stream now had its delicious mountain trout. The fires at night had abundance of the best of food, cooked for the most part over the native fuel of thebois des vaches.
The grass showed yet shorter, proving the late presence of the toiling Mormon caravan on ahead. The weather of late June was hot, the glare of the road blinding. The wagons began to fall apart in the dry, absorbent air of the high country. And always skeletons lay along the trail. An ox abandoned by its owners as too footsore for further travel might better have been shot than abandoned. The gray wolves would surely pull it down before another day. Continuously such tragedies of the wilderness went on before their wearying eyes.
Breaking down from the highlands through the Ash Hollow gap, the train felt its way to the level of the North Fork of the great river which had led them for so long. Here some trapper once had built a cabin--the first work of the sort in six hundred miles--and by some strange concert this deserted cabin had years earlier been constituted a post office of the desert. Hundreds of letters, bundles of papers were addressed to people all over the world, east and west. No government recognized this office, no postage was employed in it. Only, in the hope that someone passing east or west would carry on the inclosures without price, folk here sent out their souls into the invisible.
[pg 186]
"How far'll we be out, at Laramie?" demanded Molly Wingate of the train scout, Bridger, whom Banion had sent on to Wingate in spite of his protest.
"Nigh onto six hundred an' sixty-seven mile they call hit, ma'am, from Independence to Laramie, an' we'll be two months a-makin' hit, which everges around ten mile a day."
"But it's most to Oregon, hain't it?"
"Most to Oregon? Ma'am, it's nigh three hundred mile beyond Laramie to the South Pass, an' the South Pass hain't half-way to Oregon. Why, ma'am, we ain't well begun!"
[pg 187]
An old gray man in buckskins sat on the ground in the shade of the adobe stockade at old Fort Laramie, his knees high in front of him, his eyes fixed on the ground. His hair fell over his shoulders in long curls which had once been brown. His pointed beard fell on his breast. He sat silent and motionless, save that constantly he twisted a curl around a forefinger, over and over again. It was his way. He was a long-hair, a man of another day. He had seen the world change in six short years, since the first wagon crossed yonder ridges, where now showed yet one more wagon train approaching.
He paid no attention to the débris and discard of this new day which lay all about him as he sat and dreamed of the days of trap and packet. Near at hand were pieces of furniture leaning against the walls, not bought or sold, but abandoned as useless here at Laramie. Wagon wheels, tireless, their fellies falling apart, lay on the ground, and other ruins of great wagons, dried and disjointed now.
Dust lay on the ground. The grass near by was all cropped short. Far off, a village of the Cheyennes, come to trade, and sullen over the fact that little now could be had for robes or peltries, grazed their ponies aside from the white man's road. Six hundred lodges of the Sioux were on the tributary river a few miles distant. The old West was making a last gallant stand at Laramie.
[pg 188]
Inside the gate a mob of white men, some silent and businesslike, many drunken and boisterous, pushed here and there for access to the trading shelves, long since almost bare of goods. Six thousand emigrants passed that year.
It was the Fourth of July in Old Laramie, and men in jeans and wool and buckskin were celebrating. Old Laramie had seen life--all of life, since the fur days of La Ramée in 1821. Having now superciliously sold out to these pilgrims, reserving only alcohol enough for its own consumption, Old Laramie was willing to let the world wag, and content to twiddle a man curl around a finger.
But yet another detachment of the great army following the hegira of the Mormons was now approaching Laramie. In the warm sun of mid-morning, its worn wheels rattling, its cattle limping and with lolling tongues, this caravan forded and swung wide into corral below the crowded tepees of the sullen tribesmen.
Just before the start of the wagon train.
Just before the start of the wagon train.
Just before the start of the wagon train.
Just before the start of the wagon train.
Ahead of it now dashed a horseman, swinging his rifle over his head and uttering Indian yells. He pulled up at the very door of the old adobe guard tower with its mounted swivel guns; swung off, pushed on into the honeycomb of the inner structure.
[pg 189]
The famous border fortress was built around a square, the living quarters on one side, the trading rooms on another. Few Indians were admitted at one time, other than the Indian wives of theengagés, the officials of the fur company or of the attached white or halfbreed hunters. Above some of the inner buildings were sleeping lofts. The inner open space served as a general meeting ground. Indolent but on guard, Old Laramie held her watch, a rear guard of the passing West in its wild days before the plow.
All residents here knew Jim Bridger. He sought out the man in charge.
"How, Bordeaux?" he began. "Whar's the bourgeois, Papin?"
"Down river--h'east h'after goods."
The trader, hands on his little counter, nodded to his shelves.
"Nada!" he said in his polyglot speech. "Hi'll not got a damned thing lef'. How many loads you'll got for your h'own post, Jeem?"
"Eight wagons. Iron, flour and bacon."
"Hi'll pay ye double here what you'll kin git retail there, Jeem, and take it h'all h'off your hand. This h'emigrant, she'll beat the fur."
"I'll give ye half," said Bridger. "Thar's people here needs supplies that ain't halfway acrost. But what's the news, Bordeaux? Air the Crows down?"
[pg 190]
"H'on the Sweetwater, h'awaitin' for the peelgrim. Hi'll heard of your beeg fight on the Platte. Plenty beeg fight on ahead, too, maybe-so. You'll bust h'up the trade, Jeem. My Sioux, she's scare to come h'on the post h'an' trade. He'll stay h'on the veelage, her."
"Every dog to his own yard. Is that all the news?"
"Five thousand Mormons, he'll gone by h'aready. H'womans pullin' the han'cart,sacre Enfant! News--you'll h'ought to know the news. You'll been h'on the settlement six mont'!"
"Hit seemed six year. The hull white nation's movin'. So. That all?"
"Well, go h'ask Keet. He's come h'up South Fork yesterdays. Maybe-soquelq' cho' des nouvellesh'out West. I dunno, me."
"Kit--Kit Carson, you mean? What's Kit doing here?"
"Oui.I dunno, me."
He nodded to a door. Bridger pushed past him. In an inner room a party of border men were playing cards at a table. Among these was a slight, sandy-haired man of middle age and mild, blue eye. It was indeed Carson, the redoubtable scout and guide, a better man even than Bridger in the work of the wilderness.
"How are you, Jim?" he said quietly, reaching up a hand as he sat. "Haven't seen you for five years. What are you doing here?"
He rose now and put down his cards. The game broke up. Others gathered around Bridger and greeted him. It was some time before the two mountain men got apart from the others.
[pg 191]
"What brung ye north, Kit?" demanded Bridger at length. "You was in Californy in '47, with the General."
"Yes, I was in California this spring. The treaty's been signed with Mexico. We get the country from the Rio Grande west, including California. I'm carrying dispatches to General Kearny at Leavenworth. There's talk about taking over Laramie for an Army post. The tribes are up in arms. The trade's over, Jim."
"What I know, an' have been sayin'! Let's have a drink, Kit, fer old times."
Laughing, Carson turned his pockets inside out. As he did so something heavy fell from his pocket to the floor. In courtesy as much as curiosity Bridger stooped first to pick it up. As he rose he saw Carson's face change as he held out his hand.
"What's this stone, Kit--yer medicine?"
But Bridger's own face altered suddenly as he now guessed the truth. He looked about him suddenly, his mouth tight. Kit Carson rose and they passed from the room.
"Only one thing heavy as that, Mister Kit!" said Bridger fiercely. "Where'd you git hit? My gran'pap had some o' that. Hit come from North Carliny years ago. I know what hit is--hit's gold! Kit Carson, damn ye, hit's the gold!"
"Shut your mouth, you fool!" said Carson. "Yes, it's gold. But do you want me to be a liar to my General? That's part of my dispatches."
[pg 192]
"Hit" come from Californy?"
"Curse me, yes, California! I was ordered to get the news to the Army first. You're loose-tongued, Jim. Can you keep this?"
"Like a grave, Kit."
"Then here!"
Carson felt inside his shirt and pulled out a meager and ill-printed sheet which told the most epochal news that this or any country has known--the midwinter discovery of gold at Sutter's Mills.
A flag was flying over Laramie stockade, and this flag the mountain men saw fit to salute with many libations, hearing now that it was to fly forever over California as over Oregon. Crowding the stockade inclosure full was a motley throng--border men in buckskins,engagésswart as Indians, French breeds, full-blood Cheyennes and Sioux of the northern hills, all mingling with the curious emigrants who had come in from the wagon camps. Plump Indian girls, many of them very comely, some of them wives of the trappers who still hung about Laramie, ogled the newcomers, laughing, giggling together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those drunk were other than sullenly silent and resentful as they watched the white man's orgy at Old Laramie on the Fourth of July of 1848.
[pg 193]
Far flung along the pleasant valley lay a vast picture possible in no other land or day. The scattered covered wagons, the bands of cattle and horses, the white tents rising now in scores, the blue of many fires, all proved that now the white man had come to fly his flag over a new frontier.
Bridger stood, chanting an Indian song. A group of men came out, all excited with patriotic drink. A tall man in moccasins led, his fringed shirt open over a naked breast, his young squaw following him.
"Let me see one o' them damned things!" he was exclaiming. "That's why I left home fifty year ago. Pap wanted to make me plow! I ain't seed one since, but I'll bet a pony I kin run her right now! Go git yer plow things, boys, an' fotch on ary sort of cow critter suits ye. I'll bet I kin hook 'em up an' plow with 'em, too, right yere!"
The old gray man at the gate sat and twisted his long curls.
The sweet wind of the foothills blew aslant the smokes of a thousand fires. Over the vast landscape passed many moving figures. Young Indian men, mostly Sioux, some Cheyennes, a few Gros Ventres of the Prairie, all peaceable under the tacit truce of the trading post, rode out from their villages to their pony herds. From the post came the occasional note of an inharmonic drum, struck without rhythm by a hand gone lax. The singers no longer knew they sang. The border feast had lasted long. Keg after keg had been broached. The Indian drums were going. Came the sound of monotonous chants, broken with staccato yells as the border dance, two races still mingling, went on with aboriginal excesses on either side. On the slopes as dusk came twinkled countless tepee fires. Dogs barked mournfully a-distant. The heavy half roar of the buffalo wolves, superciliously confident, echoed from the broken country.
[pg 194]
Now and again a tall Indian, naked save where he clutched his robe to him unconsciously, came staggering to his tepee, his face distorted, yelling obscene words and not knowing what he said. Patient, his youngest squaw stood by his tepee, his spear held aloft to mark his door plate, waiting for her lord to come. Wolfish dogs lay along the tepee edges, noses in tails, eyeing the master cautiously. A grumbling old woman mended the fire at her own side of the room, nearest the door, spreading smooth robes where the man's medicine hung at the willow tripod, his slatted lazyback near by. In due time all would know whether at the game of "hands," while the feast went on, the little elusive bone had won or lost for him. Perhaps he had lost his horses, his robes, his weapons--his squaws. The white man's medicine was strong, and there was much of it on his feasting day.
[pg 195]
From the stockade a band of mounted Indians, brave in new finery, decked with eagle bonnets and gaudy in beaded shirts and leggings, rode out into the slopes, chanting maudlin songs. They were led by the most beautiful young woman of the tribe, carrying a wand topped by a gilded ball, and ornamented with bells, feathers, natural flowers. As the wild pageant passed the proud savages paid no attention to the white men.
The old gray man at the gate sat and twisted his long curls.
And none of them knew the news from California.
[pg 196]
The purple mantle of the mountain twilight was dropping on the hills when Bridger and Carson rode out together from the Laramie stockade to the Wingate encampment in the valley. The extraordinary capacity of Bridger in matters alcoholic left him still in fair possession of his faculties; but some new purpose, born of the exaltation of alcohol, now held his mind.
"Let me see that little dingus ye had, Kit," said he--"that piece o' gold."
Carson handed it to him.
"Ye got any more o' hit, Kit?"
"Plenty! You can have it if you'll promise not to tell where it came from, Jim."
"If I do, Jim Bridger's a liar, Kit!"
He slipped the nugget into his pocket. They rode to the head of the train, where Bridger found Wingate and his aids, and presented his friend. They all, of course, knew of Fremont's famous scout, then at the height of his reputation, and greeted him with enthusiasm. As they gathered around him Bridger slipped away. Searching among the wagons, he at last found Molly Wingate and beckoned her aside with portentous injunctions of secrecy.
[pg 197]
In point of fact, a sudden maudlin inspiration had seized Jim Bridger, so that a promise to Kit Carson seemed infinitely less important than a promise to this girl, whom, indeed, with an old man's inept infatuation, he had worshiped afar after the fashion of white men long gone from society of their kind. Liquor now made him bold. Suddenly he reached out a hand and placed in Molly's palm the first nugget of California gold that ever had come thus far eastward. Physically heavy it was; of what tremendous import none then could have known.
"I'll give ye this!" he said. "An' I know whar's plenty more."
She dropped the nugget because of the sudden weight in her hand; picked it up.
"Gold!" she whispered, for there is no mistaking gold.
"Yes, gold!"
"Where did you get it?"
She was looking over her shoulder instinctively.
"Listen! Ye'll never tell? Ye mustn't! I swore to Kit Carson, that give hit to me, I'd never tell no one. But I'll set you ahead o' any livin' bein', so maybe some day ye'll remember old Jim Bridger.
"Yes, hit's gold! Kit Carson brung it from Sutter's Fort, on the Sacramenty, in Californy. They've got it thar in wagonloads. Kit's on his way east now to tell the Army!"
"Everyone will know!"
[pg 198]
"Yes, but not now! Ef ye breathe this to a soul, thar won't be two wagons left together in the train. Thar'll be bones o' womern from here to Californy!"
Wide-eyed, the girl stood, weighing the nugget in her hands.
"Keep hit, Miss Molly," said Bridger simply. "I don't want hit no more. I only got hit fer a bracelet fer ye, or something. Good-by. I've got to leave the train with my own wagons afore long an' head fer my fort. Ye'll maybe see me--old Jim Bridger--when ye come through.
"Yes, Miss Molly, I ain't as old as I look, and I got a fort o' my own beyant the Green River. This year, what I'll take in for my cargo, what I'll make cash money fer work fer the immygrints, I'll salt down anyways ten thousand; next year maybe twicet that, or even more. I sartainly will do a good trade with them Mormons."
"I suppose," said the girl, patient with what she knew was alcoholic garrulity.
"An' out there's the purtiest spot west o' the Rockies, My valley is ever'thing a man er a womern can ask or want. And me, I'm a permanent man in these yere parts. It's me, Jim Bridger, that fust diskivered the Great Salt Lake. It's me, Jim Bridger, fust went through Colter's Hell up in the Yellowstone. Ain't a foot o' the Rockies I don't know. I eena-most built the Rocky Mountains, me." He spread out his hands. "And I've got to be eena'most all Injun myself."
"I suppose." The girl's light laugh cut him.
[pg 199]
"But never so much as not to rever'nce the white woman, Miss Molly. Ye're all like angels to us wild men out yere. We--we never have forgot. And so I give ye this, the fust gold from Californy. There may be more. I don't know."
"But you're going to leave us? What are you going to do?" A sudden kindness was in the girl's voice.
"I'm a-goin' out to Fort Bridger, that's what I'm a-goin' to do; an' when I git thar I'm a-goin' to lick hell out o' both my squaws, that's what I'm a-goin' to do! One's named Blast Yore Hide, an' t'other Dang Yore Eyes. Which, ef ye ask me, is two names right an' fitten, way I feel now."
All at once Jim Bridger was all Indian again. He turned and stalked away. She heard his voice rising in his Indian chant as she turned back to her own wagon fire.
But now shouts were arising, cries coming up the line. A general movement was taking place toward the lower end of the camp, where a high quavering call rose again and again.
"There's news!" said Carson to Jesse Wingate quietly. "That's old Bill Jackson's war cry, unless I am mistaken. Is he with you?"
"He was," said Wingate bitterly. "He and his friends broke away from the train and have been flocking by themselves since then."
Three men rode up to the Wingate wagon, and two flung off. Jackson was there, yes, and Jed Wingate, his son. The third man still sat his horse. Wingate straightened.
[pg 200]
"Mr. Banion! So you see fit to come into my camp?" For the time he had no answer.
"How are you, Bill?" said Kit Carson quietly, as he now stepped forward from the shadows. The older man gave him a swift glance.
"Kit! You here--why?" he demanded. "I've not seed ye, Kit, sence the last Rendyvous on the Green. Ye've been with the Army on the coast?"
"Yes. Going east now."
"Allus ridin' back and forerd acrost the hull country. I'd hate to keep ye in buckskin breeches, Kit. But ye're carryin' news?"
"Yes," said Carson. "Dispatches about new Army posts--to General Kearny. Some other word for him, and some papers to the Adjutant General of the Army. Besides, some letters from Lieutenant Beale in Mexico, about war matters and the treaty, like enough. You know, we'll get all the southern country to the Coast?"
"An' welcome ef we didn't! Not a beaver to the thousand miles, Kit. I'm goin' to Oregon--goin' to settle in the Nez Percé country, whar there's horses an' beaver."
"But wait a bit afore you an' me gits too busy talkin'. Ye see, I'm with Major Banion, yan, an' the Missoury train. We're in camp ten mile below. We wouldn't mix with these people no more--only one way--but I reckon the Major's got some business o' his own that brung him up. I rid with him. We met the boy an' ast him to bring us in. We wasn't sure how friendly our friends is feelin' towards him an' me."
[pg 201]
He grinned grimly. As he spoke they both heard a woman's shrilling, half greeting, half terror. Wingate turned in time to see his daughter fall to the ground in a sheer faint.
Will Banion slipped from his saddle and hurried forward.