The Covered Wagon Part 36

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.

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."

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 gra.s.sy 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.

"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. G.o.d'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 a.s.sociate, 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.

"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 G.o.d the Injun shot her, an' she wished to G.o.d he'd killed her then an' thar. I'd like such fer a bride, huh? That's one h.e.l.l 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.

"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. .h.i.t 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, d.a.m.n ye, right here? Ef a gal loves a man he orto marry her, ef only to cure her o' bein' a d.a.m.n fool to love any man. Why don't you marry her right now?"

"Because I love her!"

Bridger sat in disgusted silence for some time.

"Well," said he at last, "there's some kinds o' d.a.m.ned 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!"

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 G.o.d!"