[pg 259]
"But what shall we do?"
"What can we but lie close and hold the wagons?"
"And wait?"
"Yes."
"Which means only the Missouri men!"
"There's no one else. We don't know that they're alive. We don't know that they will come."
"But one thing I do know"--his dark face gathered in a scowl--"if he doesn't come it will not be because he was not asked! That fellow carried a letter from Molly to him. I know that. Well, what do you-all think of me? What's my standing in all this? If I've not been shamed and humiliated, how can a man be? And what am I to expect?"
"If we get through, if Molly lives, you mean?"
"Yes. I don't quit what I want. I'll never give her up. You give me leave to try again? Things may change. She may consider the wrong she's done me, an honest man. It's his hanging around all the time, keeping in her mind. And now we've sent for him--and so has she!"
They walked apart, Wingate to his wagon.
"How is she?" he asked of his wife, nodding to Molly's wagon.
"Better some ways, but low," replied his stout helpmate, herself haggard, dark circles of fatigue about her eyes. "She won't eat, even with the fever down. If we was back home where we could get things! Jess, what made us start for Oregon?"
[pg 260]
"What made us leave Kentucky for Indiana, and Indiana for Illinois? I don't know. God help us now!"
"It's bad, Jesse."
"Yes, it's bad." Suddenly he took his wife's face in his hands and kissed her quietly. "Kiss Little Molly for me," he said. "I wish--I wish--"
"I wish them other wagons'd come," said Molly Wingate. "Then we'd see!"
[pg 261]
Jackson, wounded and weary as he was, drove his crippled horse so hard all the night through that by dawn he had covered almost fifty miles, and was in sight of the long line of wagons, crawling like a serpent down the slopes west of the South Pass, a cloud of bitter alkali dust hanging like a blanket over them. No part of the way had been more cheerless than this gray, bare expanse of more than a hundred miles, and none offered less invitation for a bivouac. But now both man and horse were well-nigh spent.
Knowing that he would be reached within an hour or so at best, Jackson used the last energies of his horse in riding back and forth at right angles across the trail, the Plains sign of "Come to me!" He hoped it would be seen. He flung himself down across the road, in the dust, his bridle tied to his wrist. His horse, now nearly gone, lay down beside him, nor ever rose again. And here, in the time a gallop could bring them up, Banion and three of his men found them, one dead, the other little better.
"Bill! Bill!"
The voice of Banion was anxious as he lightly shook the shoulder of the prone man, half afraid that he, too, had died. Stupid in sleep, the scout sprang up, rifle in hand.
[pg 262]
"Who's thar?"
"Hold, Bill! Friends! Easy now!"
The old man pulled together, rubbed his eyes.
"I must of went to sleep agin," said he. "My horse--pshaw now, pore critter, do-ee look now!"
In rapid words he now told his errand. They could see the train accelerating its speed. Jackson felt in the bag at his belt and handed Banion the folded paper. He opened the folds steadily, read the words again and again.
"'Come to us,'" is what it says. He spoke to Jackson.
"Ye're a damned liar, Will," remarked Jackson.
"I'll read it all!" said Banion suddenly.
"'Will Banion, come to me, or it may be too late. There never was any wedding. I am the most wicked and most unhappy woman in the world. You owe me nothing! But come! M.W.'
"That's what it says. Now you know. Tell me--you heard of no wedding back at Independence Rock? They said nothing? He and she--"
"Ef they was ever any weddin' hit was a damned pore sort, an' she says thar wasn't none. She'd orto know."
"Can you ride, Jackson?"
"Span in six fast mules for a supply wagon, such as kin gallop. I'll sleep in that a hour or so. Git yore men started, Will. We may be too late. It's nigh fifty mile to the ford o' the Green."
[pg 263]
It came near to mutiny when Banion ordered a third of his men to stay back with the ox teams and the families. Fifty were mounted and ready in five minutes. They were followed by two fast wagons. In one of these rolled Bill Jackson, unconscious of the roughness of the way.
On the Sandy, twenty miles from the ford, they wakened him.
"Now tell me how it lies," said Banion. "How's the country?"
Jackson drew a sketch on the sand.
"They'll surround, an' they'll cut off the water."
"Can we ford above and come in behind them?"
"We mout. Send half straight to the ford an' half come in behind, through the willers, huh? That'd put 'em atween three fires. Ef we driv' 'em on the wagons they'd get hell thar, an' ef they broke, the wagons could chase 'em inter us again. I allow we'd give 'em hell. Hit's the Crows I'm most a-skeered of. The Bannacks--ef that's who they was--'ll run easy."
At sunset of that day the emigrants, now half mad of thirst, and half ready to despair of succor or success, heard the Indian drums sound and the shrilling of the eagle-bone whistles. The Crows were chanting again. Whoops arose along the river bank.
"My God! they're coming!" called out a voice.
[pg 264]
There was a stir of uneasiness along the line, an ominous thing. And then the savage hosts broke from their cover, more than a thousand men, ready to take some loss in their hope that the whites were now more helpless. In other circumstances it must have been a stirring spectacle for any who had seen it. To these, cowering in the sand, it brought terror.
But before the three ranks of the Crows had cleared the cover the last line began to yell, to whip, to break away. Scattering but continuous rifle fire followed them, war cries arose, not from savages, but white men. A line of riders emerged, coming straight through to the second rank of the Crow advance. Then the beleaguered knew that the Missourians were up.
"Banion, by God!" said a voice which few stopped to recognize as Woodhull's.
He held his fire, his rifle resting so long through the wagon wheel that Caleb Price in one swift motion caught it away from him.
"No harm, friend," said he, "but you'll not need this just now!"
His cold eye looked straight into that of the intending murderer.
The men in the wagon park rose to their work again. The hidden Bannacks began to break away from their lodgment under the river bank. The sound of hoofs and of shouts came down the trail. The other wing of the Missourians flung off and cleared the ford before they undertook to cross, their slow, irregular, deadly rifle fire doing its work among the hidden Bannacks until they broke and ran for their horses in the cottonwoods below. This brought them partly into view, and the rifles of the emigrants on that side bore on them till they broke in sheer terror and fled in a scatteredsauve qui peut.
[pg 265]
The Crows swerved under the enfilading fire of the men who now crossed the ford. Caught between three fires, and meeting for their first time the use of the revolver, then new to them, they lost heart and once more left their dead, breaking away into a mad flight west and north which did not end till they had forded the upper tributaries of the Green and Snake, and found their way back west of the Tetons to their own country far east and north of the Two-go-tee crossing of the Wind River Mountains; whence for many a year they did not emerge again to battle with the white nation on the Medicine Road. At one time there were forty Crow squaws, young and old, with gashed breasts and self-amputated fingers, given in mourning over the unreturning brave.
What many men had not been able to do of their own resources, less than a fourth their number now had done. Side by side Banion, Jackson, a half dozen others, rode up to the wagon gap, now opened. They were met by a surge of the rescued. Women, girls threw themselves upon them, kissing them, embracing them hysterically. Where had been gloom, now was rejoicing, laughter, tears.
[pg 266]
The leaders of the emigrants came up to Banion and his men, Wingate in advance. Banion still sat his great black horse, coldly regarding them.
"I have kept my promise, Captain Wingate," said he. "I have not come until you sent for me. Let me ask once more, do I owe you anything now?"
"No, sir, you do not," replied the older man.
"And do you owe me anything?"
Wingate did not answer.
"Name what you like, Major Banion," said a voice at his shoulder--Caleb Price.
Banion turned to him slowly.
"Some things have no price, sir," said he. "For other things I shall ask a high price in time. Captain Wingate, your daughter asked me to come. If I may see her a moment, and carry back to my men the hope of her recovery, we shall all feel well repaid."
Wingate made way with the others. Banion rode straight through the gap, with no more than one unseeing glance at Woodhull, near whom sat Jackson, a pistol resting on his thigh. He came to the place under a wagon where they had made a hospital cot for Molly Wingate. It was her own father and mother who lifted her out as Will Banion sprang down, hat in hand, pale in his own terror at seeing her so pale.
"No, don't go!" said the girl to her parents. "Be here with us--and God.'"
She held out her arms and he bent above her, kissing her forehead gently and shyly as a boy.
[pg 267]
"Please get well, Molly Wingate," said he. "You are Molly Wingate?"
"Yes. At the end--I couldn't! I ran away, all in my wedding clothes, Will. In the dark. Someone shot me. I've been sick, awfully sick, Will."
"Please get well, Molly Wingate! I'm going away again. This time, I don't know where. Can't you forget me, Molly Wingate?"
"I'm going to try, Will. I did try. Go on ahead, Will," she added. "You know what I mean. Do what I told you. I--why, Will!"
"My poor lamb!" said the strong voice of her mother, who gathered her in her arms, looking over her shoulder at this man to whom her child had made no vows. But Banion, wet eyed, was gone once more.
Jackson saw his leader out of the wagon gap, headed for a camping spot far apart. He stumbled up to the cot where Molly lay, her silent parents still close by.
"Here, Miss Molly, gal," said he, holding out some object in his hand. "We both got a arrer through the shoulder, an' mine's a'most well a'ready. Ain't nothin' in the world like a good chaw o' tobackers to put on a arrer cut. Do-ee, now!"
[pg 268]
The Missourians camped proudly and coldly apart, the breach between the two factions by no means healed, but rather deepened, even if honorably so, and now well understood of all.
Most men of both parties now knew of the feud between Banion and Woodhull, and the cause underlying it. Woman gossip did what it might. A half dozen determined men quietly watched Woodhull. As many continually were near Banion, although for quite a different reason. All knew that time alone must work out the answer to this implacable quarrel, and that the friends of the two men could not possibly train up together.
After all, when in sheer courtesy the leaders of the Wingate train came over to the Missouri camp on the following day there came nearer to being a good understanding than there ever had been since the first break. It was agreed that all the wagons should go on together as far as Fort Bridger, and that beyond that point the train should split into two or perhaps three bodies--a third if enough Woodhull adherents could be found to make him up a train. First place, second and third were to be cast by lot. They all talked soberly, fairly, with the dignity of men used to good standing among men. These matters concluded, and it having been agreed that all should lie by for another day, they resolved the meeting into one of better fellowship.
[pg 269]
Old Bill Jackson, lying against his blanket roll, fell into reminiscence.
"Times past," said he, "the Green River Rendyvous was helt right in here. I've seed this place spotted with tepees--hull valley full o' Company men an' free trappers an' pack-train people--time o' Ashley an' Sublette an' my Uncle Jackson an' all them traders. That was right here on the Green. Ever'body drunk an' happy, like I ain't now. Mounting men togged out, new leggin's an' moccasins their womern had made, warriors painted up a inch o' their lives, an' women with brass wire an' calico all they wanted--maybe two-three thousand people in the Rendyvous.
"But I never seed the grass so short, an' I never seed so much fightin' afore in all my life as I have this trip. This is the third time we're jumped, an' this time we're lucky, shore as hell. Pull on through to Bridger an' fix yer wagons afore they tumble apart. Leave the grass fer them that follows, an' git on fur's you kin, every wagon. We ain't likely to have no more trouble now. Pile up them braves in one heap fer a warnin' to any other bunch o' reds that may come along to hide around the wagon ford. New times has come on the Green."
"Can you travel, Jackson?" asked Hall of Ohio. "You've had a hard time."
[pg 270]
"Who? Me? Why shouldn't I? Give me time to pick up some o' them bows an' arrers an' I'm ready to start. I noticed a right fine horn bow one o' them devils had--the Crows allus had good bows. That's the yaller-an'-red brave that was itchin' so long to slap a arrer through my ribs from behind. I'd like to keep his bow fer him, him not needin' it now."
Before the brazen sun had fully risen on the second day these late peaceful farmers of Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, were plodding along once more beside their sore-footed oxen; passing out unaided into a land which many leading men in the Government, North and South, and quite aside from political affiliations, did not value at five dollars for it all, though still a thousand miles of it lay ahead.
"Oh, then, Susannah!" roared Jed Wingate, trudging along beside Molly's wagon in the sand. "Don't you cry fer me--I'm going through to Oregon, with my banjo on my knee!"
Fair as a garden to the sun-seared eyes of the emigrants seemed the mountain post, Fort Bridger, when its rude stockade separated itself from the distortions of the desert mirage, whose citadels of silence, painted temples fronted with colossal columns, giant sphinxes, vast caryatids, lofty arches, fretwork façades, fantastically splendid castles and palaces now resolved themselves into groups of squat pole structures and a rude stock corral.
[pg 271]
The site of the post itself could not better have been chosen. Here the flattened and dividing waters of the Black's Fork, icy cold and fresh from the Uintah Mountains to the southward, supported a substantial growth of trees, green now and wonderfully refreshing to desert-weary eyes.
"The families are coming!"
Bridger's clerk, Chardon, raised the new cry of the trading post.
"Broke an' hungry, I'll bet!" swore old Jim Bridger in his beard.
But he retired into his tepee and issued orders to his Shoshone squaw, who was young and pretty. Her name, as he once had said, was Dang Yore Eyes--and she was very proud of it. Philosophical withal, though smarting under recent blows of her white lord, she now none the less went out and erected once more in front of the tepee the token Bridger had kicked down--the tufted lance, the hair-fringed bull-neck shield, the sacred medicine bundle which had stood in front of Jeem's tepee in the Rendezvous on Horse Creek, what time he had won her in a game of hands. Whereupon the older squaw, not young, pretty or jealous, abused him in Ute and went out after wood. Her name was Blast Your Hide, and she also was very proud of her white name. Whereafter both Dang Yore Eyes and Blast Yore Hide, female, and hence knowing the moods of man, wisely hid out for a while. They knew when Jeem had the long talk with the sick white squaw, who was young, but probably needed bitter bark of the cottonwood to cure her fever.
[pg 272]
Painted Utes and Shoshones stood about, no more silent than the few local mountaineers, bearded, beaded and fringed, who still after some mysterious fashion clung to the old life at the post. Against the newcomers, profitable as they were, still existed the ancient antipathy of the resident for the nonresident.
"My land sakes alive!" commented stoical Molly Wingate after they had made some inquiries into the costs of staples here. "This store ain't no place to trade. They want fifty dollars a sack for flour--what do you think of that? We got it for two dollars back home. And sugar a dollar a tin cup, and just plain salt two bits a pound, and them to guess at the pound. Do they think we're Indians, or what?"
"It's the tenth day of August, and a thousand miles ahead," commented Caleb Price. "And we're beyond the buffalo now."
"And Sis is in trouble," added Jed Wingate. "The light wagon's got one hind spindle half in two, and I've spliced the hind ex for the last time."
Jackson advanced an idea.
"At Fort Hall," he said, "I've seed 'em cut a wagon in two an' make a two-wheel cart out'n hit. They're easier to git through mountains that way."
"Now listen to that, Jesse!" Mrs. Wingate commented. "It's getting down to less and less every day. But I'm going to take my bureau through, and my wheat, and my rose plants, if I have to put wheels on my bureau."
[pg 273]
The men determined to saw down three wagons of the train which now seemed doubtful of survival as quadrupeds, and a general rearrangement of cargoes was agreed. Now they must jettison burden of every dispensable sort. Some of the sore-necked oxen were to be thrown into the loose herd and their places taken for a time by cows no longer offering milk.
A new soberness began to sit on all. The wide reaches of desert with which they here were in touch appalled their hearts more than anything they yet had met. The grassy valley of the Platte, where the great fourfold tracks of the trail cut through a waving sea of green belly deep to the oxen, had seemed easy and inviting, and since then hardship had at least been spiced with novelty and change. But here was a new and forbidding land. This was the Far West itself; silent, inscrutable, unchanged, irreducible. The mightiness of its calm was a smiting thing. The awesomeness of its chill, indifferent nights, the unsparing ardors of its merciless noons, the measureless expanses of its levels, the cold barrenness of its hills--these things did not invite as to the bosom of a welcoming mother; they repelled, as with the chill gesture of a stranger turning away outcasts from the door.
"Here resolution almost faints!" wrote one.
A general requisition was made on the scant stores Bridger had hurried through. To their surprise, Bridger himself made no attempt at frontier profits.
[pg 274]
"Chardon," commanded the moody master of the post to his head clerk, "take down your tradin' bar an' let my people in. Sell them their flour an' meal at what it has cost us here--all they want, down to what the post will need till my partner Vasquez brings in more next fall, if he ever does. Sell 'em their flour at four dollars a sack, an' not at fifty, boy. Git out that flag I saved from Sublette's outfit, Chardon. Put it on a pole for these folks, an' give it to them so's they kin carry it on acrost to Oregon. God's got some use for them folks out yan or hit wouldn't be happenin' this way. I'm goin' to help 'em acrost. Ef I don't, old Jim Bridger is a liar!"
That night Bridger sat in his lodge alone, moodily smoking. He heard a shaking at the pegs of the door flap.
"Get out!" he exclaimed, thinking that it was his older associate, or else some intruding dog.
His order was not obeyed. Will Banion pulled back the flap, stooped and entered.
"How!" exclaimed Bridger, and with fist smitten on the blankets made the sign to "Sit!" Banion for a time also smoked in silence, knowing the moody ways of the old-time men.
"Ye came to see me about her, Miss Molly, didn't ye?" began Bridger after a long time, kicking the embers of the tepee fire together with the toe of his moccasin.
[pg 275]
"How do you know that?"
"I kin read signs."
"Yes, she sent me."
"When?"
"That was at Laramie. She told me to come on with you then. I could not."
"Pore child, they mout 'a' killed her! She told me she'd git well, though--told me so to-day. I had a talk with her." His wrinkled face broke into additional creases. "She told me more!"
"I've no wonder."
"Ner me. Ef I was more young and less Injun I'd love that gal! I do, anyhow, fer sake o' what I might of been ef I hadn't had to play my game the way the cards said fer me.
"She told me she was shot on her weddin' night, in her weddin' clothes--right plum to the time an' minute o' marryin, then an' thar. She told me she thanked God the Injun shot her, an' she wished to God he'd killed her then an' thar. I'd like such fer a bride, huh? That's one hell of a weddin', huh? Why?"
Banion sat silent, staring at the embers.
"I know why, or part ways why. Kit an' me was drunk at Laramie. I kain't remember much. But I do ree-colleck Kit said something to me about you in the Army, with Donerphan in Mayheeco. Right then I gits patriotic. 'Hooray!' says I. Then we taken another drink. After that we fell to arguin' how much land we'd git out o' Mayheeco when the treaty was signed. He said hit war done signed now, or else hit warn't. I don't ree-colleck which, but hit was one or t'other. He had papers. Ef I see Kit agin ary time now I'll ast him what his papers was. I don't ree-colleck exact.
[pg 276]
"All that, ye see, boy," he resumed, "was atter I was over to the wagons at Laramie, when I seed Miss Molly to say good-by to her. I reckon maybe I was outside o' sever'l horns even then."
"And that was when you gave her the California nugget that Kit Carson had given you!" Banion spoke at last.
"Oh, ye spring no surprise, boy! She told me to-day she'd told you then; said she'd begged you to go on with me an' beat all the others to Californy; said she wanted you to git rich; said you an' her had parted, an' she wanted you to live things down. I was to tell ye that.
"Boy, she loves ye--not me ner that other man. The Injun womern kin love a dozen men. The white womern kain't. I'm still fool white enough fer to believe that. Of course she'd break her promise not to tell about the gold. I might 'a' knowed she'd tell the man she loved. Well, she didn't wait long. How long was hit afore she done so--about ten minutes? Boy, she loves ye. Hit ain't no one else."
"I think so. I'm afraid so."
"Why don't ye marry her then, damn ye, right here? Ef a gal loves a man he orto marry her, ef only to cure her o' bein' a damn fool to love any man. Why don't you marry her right now?"
[pg 277]
"Because I love her!"
Bridger sat in disgusted silence for some time.
"Well," said he at last, "there's some kinds o' damned fools that kain't be cured noways. I expect you're one o' them. Me, I hain't so highfalutin'. Ef I love a womern, an' her me, somethin's goin' to happen. What's this here like? Nothin' happens. Son, it's when nothin' happens that somethin' else does happen. She marries another man--barrin' 'Rapahoes. A fool fer luck--that's you. But there mightn't always be a Injun hidin' to shoot her when she gits dressed up agin an' the minister is a-waitin' to pernounce 'em man an' wife. Then whar air ye?"
He went on more kindly after a time, as he reached out a hard, sinewy hand.
"Such as her is fer the young man that has a white man's full life to give her. She's purty as a doe fawn an' kind as a thoroughbred filly. In course ye loved her, boy. How could ye a-help hit? An' ye was willin' to go to Oregon--ye'd plow rather'n leave sight o' her? I don't blame ye, boy. Such as her is not supported by rifle an' trap. Hit's the home smoke, not the tepee fire, for her. I ask ye nothin' more, boy. I'll not ask ye what ye mean. Man an' boy, I've follered the tepee smokes--blue an' a-movin' an' a-beckonin' they was--an' I never set this hand to no plow in all my life. But in my heart two things never was wiped out--the sight o' the white womern's face an' the sight o' the flag with stars. I'll help ye all I can, an' good luck go with ye. Work hit out yore own way. She's worth more'n all the gold Californy's got buried!"
[pg 278]
This time it was Will Banion's hand that was suddenly extended.
"Take her secret an' take her advice then," said Bridger after a time. "Ye must git in ahead to Californy. Fust come fust served, on any beaver water. Fer me 'tis easy. I kin hold my hat an' the immigrints'll throw money into hit. I've got my fortune here, boy. I can easy spare ye what ye need, ef ye do need a helpin' out'n my plate. Fer sake o' the finest gal that ever crossed the Plains, that's what we'll do! Ef I don't, Jim Bridger's a putrefied liar, so help me God!"
Banion made no reply at once, but could not fail of understanding.
"I'll not need much," said he. "My place is to go on ahead with my men. I don't think there'll be much danger now from Indians, from what I hear. At Fort Hall I intend to split off for California. Now I make you this proposition, not in payment for your secret, or for anything else: If I find gold I'll give you half of all I get, as soon as I get out or as soon as I can send it."
"What do ye want o' me, son?"
"Six mules and packs. All the shovels and picks you have or can get for me at Fort Hall. There's another thing."
[pg 279]
"An' what is that?"
"I want you to find out what Kit Carson said and what Kit Carson had. If at any time you want to reach me--six months, a year--get word through by the wagon trains next year, in care of the District Court at Oregon City, on the Willamette."
"Why, all right, all right, son! We're all maybe talkin' in the air, but I more'n half understand ye. One thing, ye ain't never really intendin' to give up Molly Wingate! Ye're a fool not to marry her now, but ye're reckonin' to marry her sometime--when the moon turns green, huh? When she's old an' shriveled up, then ye'll marry her, huh?"
Banion only looked at him, silent.
"Well, I'd like to go on to Californy with ye, son, ef I didn't know I'd make more here, an' easier, out'n the crazy fools that'll be pilin' in here next year. So good luck to ye."
"Kit had more o' that stuff," he suddenly added. "He give me some more when I told him I'd lost that fust piece he give me. I'll give ye a piece fer sample, son. I've kep' hit close."
He begun fumbling in the tobacco pouch which he found under the head of his blanket bed. He looked up blankly, slightly altering the name of his youngest squaw.
"Well, damn her hide!" said he fervently. "Ye kain't keep nothin' from 'em! An' they kain't keep nothin' when they git hit."
[pg 280]
Once more the train, now permanently divided into two, faced the desert, all the men and many women now afoot, the kine low-headed, stepping gingerly in their new rawhide shoes. Gray, grim work, toiling over the dust and sand. But at the head wagon, taking over an empire foot by foot, flew the great flag. Half fanatics? That may be. Fanatics, so called, also had prayed and sung and taught their children, all the way across to the Great Salt Lake. They, too, carried books. And within one hour after their halt near the Salt Lake they began to plow, began to build, began to work, began to grow and make a country.
The men at the trading post saw the Missouri wagons pull out ahead. Two hours later the Wingate train followed, as the lot had determined. Woodhull remained with his friends in the Wingate group, regarded now with an increasing indifference, but biding his time.
Bridger held back his old friend Jackson even after the last train pulled out. It was mid afternoon when the start was made.
"Don't go just yet, Bill," said he. "Ride on an' overtake 'em. Nothin' but rattlers an' jack rabbits now fer a while. The Shoshones won't hurt 'em none. I'm powerful lonesome, somehow. Let's you an' me have one more drink."
[pg 281]
"That sounds reas'nble," said Jackson. "Shore that sounds reas'nble to me."
They drank of a keg which the master of the post had hidden in his lodge, back of his blankets; drank again of high wines diluted but uncolored--the "likker" of the fur trade.
They drank from tin cups, until Bridger began to chant, a deepening sense of his old melancholy on him.
"Good-by!" he said again and again, waving his hand in general vagueness to the mountains.
"We was friends, wasn't we, Bill?" he demanded again and again; and Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity. He himself began to chant. The two were savages again.
"Well, we got to part, Bill. This is Jim Bridger's last Rendyvous. I've rid around an' said good-by to the mountings. Why don't we do it the way the big partisans allus done when the Rendyvous was over? 'Twas old Mike Fink an' his friend Carpenter begun hit, fifty year ago. Keel-boat men on the river, they was. There's as good shots left to-day as then, an' as good friends. You an' me has seed hit; we seed hit at the very last meetin' o' the Rocky Mountain Company men, before the families come. An 'nary a man spilled the whiskey on his partner's head."
[pg 282]
"That's the truth," assented Jackson. "Though some I wouldn't trust now."
"Would ye trust me, Bill, like I do you, fer sake o' the old times, when friends was friends?"
"Shore I would, no matter how come, Jim. My hand's stiddy as a rock, even though my shootin' shoulder's a leetle stiff from that Crow arrer."
Each man held out his firing arm, steady as a bar.
"I kin still see the nail heads on the door, yan. Kin ye, Bill?"
"Plain! It's a waste o' likker, Jim, fer we'd both drill the cups."
"Are ye a-skeered?"
"I told ye not."
"Chardon!" roared Bridger to his clerk. "You, Chardon, come here!"
The clerk obeyed, though he and others had been discreet about remaining visible as this bout of old-timers at their cups went on. Liquor and gunpowder usually went together.
"Chardon, git ye two fresh tin cups an' bring 'em here. Bring a piece o' charcoal to spot the cups. We're goin' to shoot 'em off each other's heads in the old way. You know what I mean"
Chardon, trembling, brought the two tin cups, and Bridger with a burnt ember sought to mark plainly on each a black bull's-eye. Silence fell on the few observers, for all the emigrants had now gone and the open space before the rude trading building was vacant, although a few faces peered around corners. At the door of the tallest tepee two native women sat, a young and an old, their blankets drawn across their eyes, accepting fate, and not daring to make a protest.
[pg 283]
"How!" exclaimed Bridger as he filled both cups and put them on the ground. "Have ye wiped yer bar'l?"
"Shore I have. Let's wipe agin."
Each drew his ramrod from the pipes and attached the cleaning worm with its twist of tow, kept handy in belt pouch in muzzle-loading days.
"Clean as a whistle!" said Jackson, holding out the end of the rod.
"So's mine, pardner. Old Jim Bridger never disgraced hisself with a rifle."
"Ner me," commented Jackson. "Hold a hair full, Jim, an' cut nigh the top o' the tin. That'll be safer fer my skelp, an' hit'll let less whisky out'n the hole. We got to drink what's left. S'pose'n we have a snort now?"
"Atter we both shoot we kin drink," rejoined his friend, with a remaining trace of judgment. "Go take stand whar we marked the scratch. Chardon, damn ye, carry the cup down an' set hit on his head, an' ef ye spill a drop I'll drill ye, d'ye hear?"
Theengagé'sface went pale.
"But Monsieur Jim--" he began.
"Don't 'Monsieur Jim' me or I'll drill a hole in ye anyways! Do-ee-do what I tell ye, boy! Then if ye crave fer to see some ol'-time shootin' come on out, the hull o' ye, an' take a lesson, damn ye!"
[pg 284]
"Do-ee ye shoot first, Bill," demanded Bridger. "The light's soft, an' we'll swap atter the fust fire, to git hit squar for the hindsight, an' no shine on the side o' the front sight."
"No, we'll toss fer fust," said Jackson, and drew out a Spanish dollar. "Tails fer me last!" he called as it fell. "An' I win! You go fust, Jim."
"Shore I will ef the toss-up says so," rejoined his friend. "Step off the fifty yard. What sort o' iron ye carryin', Bill?"
"Why do ye ask? Ye know ol' Mike Sheets in Virginia never bored a better. I've never changed."
"Ner I from my old Hawken. Two good guns, an' two good men, Bill, o' the ol' times--the ol' times! We kain't say fairer'n this, can we, at our time o' life, fer favor o' the old times, Bill? We got to do somethin', so's to kind o' git rested up."
"No man kin say fairer," said his friend.
They shook hands solemnly and went onward with their devil-may-care test, devised in a historic keel-boat man's brain, as inflamed then by alcohol as their own were now.
Followed by the terrified clerk, Bill Jackson, tall, thin and grizzled, stoical as an Indian, and too drunk to care much for consequences, so only he proved his skill and his courage, walked steadily down to the chosen spot and stood, his arms folded, after leaning his own rifle against the door of the trading room. He faced Bridger without a tremor, his head bare, and cursed Chardon for a coward when his hand trembled as he balanced the cup on Jackson's head.
[pg 285]
"Damn ye," he exclaimed, "there'll be plenty lost without any o' your spillin'!"
"Air ye all ready, Bill?" called Bridger from his station, his rifle cocked and the delicate triggers set, so perfect in their mechanism that the lightest touch against the trigger edge would loose the hammer.
"All ready!" answered Jackson.
The two, jealous still of the ancient art of the rifle, which nowhere in the world obtained nicer development than among men such as these, faced each other in what always was considered the supreme test of nerve and skill; for naturally a man's hand might tremble, sighting three inches above his friend's eye, when it would not move a hair sighting center between the eyes of an enemy.
Bridger spat out his tobacco chew and steadily raised his rifle. The man opposite him stood steady as a pillar, and did not close his eyes. The silence that fell on those who saw became so intense that it seemed veritably to radiate, reaching out over the valley to the mountains as in a hush of leagues.
For an instant, which to the few observers seemed an hour, these two figures, from which motion seemed to have passed forever, stood frozen. Then there came a spurt of whitish-blue smoke and the thin dry crack of the border rifle.
[pg 286]
The hand and eye of Jim Bridger, in spite of advancing years, remained true to their long training. At the rifle crack the tin cup on the head of the statue-like figure opposite him was flung behind as though by the blow of an invisible hand. The spin of the bullet acting on the liquid contents, ripped apart the seams of the cup and flung the fluid wide. Then and not till then did Jackson move.
He picked up the empty cup, bored center directly through the black spot, and turning walked with it in his hand toward Bridger, who was wiping out his rifle once more.
"I call hit mighty careless shootin'," said he, irritated. "Now lookee what ye done to the likker! Ef ye'd held a leetle higher, above the level o' the likker, like I told ye, she wouldn't o' busted open thataway now. It's nacherl, thar warn't room in the cup fer both the likker an' the ball. That's wastin' likker, Jim, an' my mother told me when I was a boy, 'Willful waste makes woeful want!'"
"I call hit a plum-center shot," grumbled Bridger. "Do-ee look now! Maybe ye think ye kin do better shoot'in yerself than old Jim Bridger!"
"Shore I kin, an' I'll show ye! I'll bet my rifle aginst yourn--ef I wanted so sorry a piece as yourn--kin shoot that clost to the mark an' not spill no likker a-tall! An' ye can fill her two-thirds full an' put yer thumb in fer the balance ef ye like."