Once more the train faced the desertOnce more the train faced the desert.Page115.A FRONTIER DUELEMERSON HOUGH1848From “The Covered Wagon.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton and Company, New York.[12]
Once more the train faced the desertOnce more the train faced the desert.Page115.
Once more the train faced the desert.Page115.
Once more the train faced the desert.Page115.
EMERSON HOUGH
1848
From “The Covered Wagon.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton and Company, New York.[12]
Oncemore 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 made 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 midafternoon 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 powerfullonesome, somehow. Let’s you an’ me have one more drink.”
“That sounds reas’nable,” said Jackson. “Shore that sounds reas’nable 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, and 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 whisky on his partner’s head.”
“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, ye git 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.
“How!” exclaimed Bridger as he filled both cups and put them on the ground. “Have ye wiped yer barrel?”
“Shore I have. Let’s wipe again.”
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 high the top o’ the tin. That’ll be safer fer myskelp, 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 you 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!”
“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.
“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 eyes, 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.
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 statuelike 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 look what ye done to the likker! If ye’d held a leetle higher, above the level o’ the likker, like I told ye, she wouldn’t have busted open thataway. 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 plumb-center shot,” grumbled Bridger. “Do-ee look now! Maybe ye think ye kin do better shootin’ 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—I kin shoot that close 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.”
“I’ll just bet ye a new mule agin yer pony ye kain’t do nothin’ o’ the sort!” retorted Bridger.
“All right, I’ll show ye. O’ course, ye got to hold still.”
“Who said I wouldn’t hold still?”
“Nobody. Now you watch me.”
He stooped at the little water ditch which had been led in among the buildings from the stream and kneaded up a little ball of mud. This he forced into the handle of the tin cup, entirely filling it, then washed off the body of the cup.
“I’ll shoot the fillin’ out’n the handle an’ not out’n the cup!” said he. “Mud’s cheap, an’ all the diff’runce in holdin’ is, ef I nicked the side o’ yer haid it’d hurt ye ’bout the same as ef what I nicked the center of hit. Ain’t that so? We’d orto practice inderstry an’ ’conomy, Jim. Like my mother said, ‘Penny saved is er penny yearned.’ ‘Littledrops o’ water, little grains o’ sand,’ says she, ‘a-makes the mighty o-o-ocean an’ the plea-ea-sant land.’”
“I never seed it tried,” said Bridger, with interest, “but I don’t see why hit hain’t practical. Whang away, an’ ef ye spill the whisky shootin’ to one side, or cut ha’r shootin’ too low, yourcaballois mine—an’ he ain’t much!”
With no more argument, he in turn took up his place, the two changing positions so that the light would favor the rifleman. Again the fear-smitten Chardon adjusted the filled cup, this time on his master’s bared head.
“Do-ee turn her sideways now, boy,” cautioned Bridger. “Set the han’le sideways squar’, so she looks wide. Give him a fa’r shot now, fer I’m interested in this yere thing, either way she goes. Either I lose ha’r er a mule.”
But folding his arms he faced the rifle without batting an eye, as steady as had been the other in his turn.
Jackson extended his long left arm, slowly and steadily raising the silver bead up from the chest, the throat, the chin, the forehead of his friend, then lowered it, rubbing his sore shoulder.
“Tell him to turn that han’le squar’ to me, Jim!” he called. “The damn fool has got her all squegeed around to one side.”
Bridger reached up a hand and straightened the cup himself.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“All right! Now hold stiddy a minute.”
Again the Indian women covered their faces, sitting motionless. And at last came again the puff of smoke, the faint crack of the rifle, never loud in the high, rarefied air.
The straight figure of the scout never wavered. The cup still rested on his head. The rifleman calmly blew the smoke from his barrel, his eye on Bridger as the latter now raised a careful hand to his head. Chardon hastened to aid, with many ejaculations.
The cup still was full, but the mud was gone from inside the handle as though poked out with a finger!
“That’s what I call shootin’, Jim,” said Jackson, “an’ reas’nable shootin’ too. Now spill half o’ her where she’ll do some good, an’ give me the rest. I got to be goin’ now. I don’t want yer mule. I fust come away from Missoury to git shet o’ mules!”
Chardon, cupbearer, stood regarding the two wild souls whom he never in his own more timid nature was to understand. The two mountain-men shook hands. The alcohol had no more than steadied them in their rifle work, but the old exultation of their wild life came to them now once more. Bridger clapped hand to mouth and uttered his old war-cry before he drained his share of the fiery fluid.
“To the ol’ days, friend!” said he once more; “the days that’s gone, when men was men, an’ a friend could trust a friend!”
“To the ol’ days!” said Jackson in turn. “An’ I’ll bet two better shots don’t stand to-day on the soil o’ Oregon! But I got to be goin’, Jim. I’m goin’ on to the Columby. I may not see ye soon. It’s far.”
He swung into his saddle, the rifle in its loop at the horn. But Bridger came to him, a hand on his knee.
“I hate to see ye go, Bill.”
“Shore!” said Jackson. “I hate to go. Take keer yerself, Jim.”
The two Indian women had uncovered their faces and, gone inside the lodge. But old Jim Bridger sat down, back against a cottonwood, and watched the lopping figure of his friend jog slowly out into the desert. He himself was singing now, chanting monotonously an old Indian refrain that lingered in his soul from the days of the last rendezvous.
At length he arose and, animated by a sudden thought, sought out his tepee once more. Dang Yore Eyes greeted him with shy smiles of pride.
“Heap shoot, Jeem!” said she. “No kill-um. Why?”
She was decked now in her finest, ready to use all her blandishments on her lord and master. Her cheeks were painted red, her wrists were heavy with copper. On a thong at her neck hung a piece of yellow stone which she had bored through with an awl, or rather with three or four awls, after much labor, that very day.
Bridger picked up the ornament between thumb and finger. He said no word, but his fingers spoke.
“Other pieces. Where?”
“White man. Gone—out there.” She answered in the same fashion.
“How, cola!” she spoke aloud. “Him say, ‘How, cola,’ me.” She smiled with much pride over her conquest, and showed two silver dollars. “Swap!”
In silence Bridger went into the tepee and pulled the door flaps.