The Saga of Harlan Waugh (The Mountain Men) (5 page)

Five days later, Harlan began again to come back to reality from the spirit world. Slowly opening his eyes, he became aware that he was hazily looking through one eye that was still full of blood. It would be another two weeks before that eye would clear enough to see.

He realized it was hard to smile or frown due to the damage done to his face by the grizzly’s tearing, six-inch-long front claws. Trying to reach his face, he discovered that his left arm was sore as a boil and would not work. He made an attempt with his other arm and felt a hand grabbing it and stopping him from reaching those damaged places on his head and face.

“Welcome back from the spirit world,” came the reassuring voice of Big Eagle.

“Is he gonna be all right?” said another worried voice, that of Winter Hawk in his broken English.

“Yes, he will be fine, but not as good looking as he once was,” said Big Eagle.

“Are you hungry?” Big Eagle asked Harlan.

Realizing he was famished, Harlan roared out that he was starved and then regretted his animated talking and movement as the pain returned with a rush like the maddened grizzly. Soon, Big Eagle was spooning the best-tasting thick onion-and-meat soup that he had ever eaten into his mouth. After his third bowl, Harlan asked, “What is this? It’s great!”

“Soup from that old griz’ you tangled with back there at the beaver dam many days ago,” replied Big Eagle with a pleased grin.

That struck Harlan as funny. The bear had come to kill and eat him, and now their fortunes had been reversed. Harlan smiled and then started to laugh, only to regret it as he did. His face burned and hurt like hell, as did his shoulder, with any kind of movement. The top of his head, on the other hand, was totally numb. That he couldn’t quite figure out...

***

A week later a wobbly Harlan was on his feet, and what a surprise was in store for him. In the looking glass from the cabin stores, he saw himself for the first time since he and the grizzly had “danced.”

His scalp had been almost tom off but had been sewn back on with a needle and thread. It was swollen and had taken on many shades of color, much hair had fallen out, and he smelled like hell, partly from putrefaction and partly from the evil-smelling poultice Big Eagle had squashed all over the damaged areas. His left eyebrow had been almost completely removed but sewn back as well and, aside from being bright red with infection around the edges, appeared to be healing.

His left shoulder was another matter. It had four large canine-tooth holes, two in the front and two in the back, driven deeply to the bone. It was leaking green-and-yellow pus, and he could not move it at all due to its stiffness. In short, he was alive but in one hell of a stinking mess.

But that wasn’t his biggest surprise. After receiving an arrow in the head from Big Eagle, the bear had finally dropped Harlan. Then it had turned and tried to kill Big Eagle. However, it had run headlong into a one-ounce slug of lead fired by Big Eagle from Harlan’s Hawken, which he had picked up off the ground under the grizzly’s very feet. The slug had torn through the bear’s heart and spine and eventually landed him in the cooking pot.

The two boys brought Harlan back to the camp and fixed him up as best as they could with the needle and thread they found in the cabin stores. Then they skinned out the bear, cut him into quarters, and wrestled him back to camp for the huge meat supply he offered. As if that were not enough effort at their young ages, they also ran the rest of the trap-line and brought the beaver they caught back for processing.

In fact, the whole time Harlan had been out, they had cared for him and run the trap-line as well. The boys had caught and processed seventy-four beaver in the two weeks Harlan had been under the weather or out of it completely! That did not include the great bear’s dressed hide, which now adorned the cabin wall and stretched partly onto the roof. That had been one big and pissed-off bear—a ten-footer, he later discovered.

It was another month before Harlan had regained some of his looks and the full use of the mauled left arm and shoulder. The eyebrow had healed beautifully but left a long scar across Harlan’s face. He would live with his signs of battle with the griz’ and carry them proudly when among his own kind at the rendezvous and trading posts.

As a surprise, Big Eagle and Winter Hawk had labored long and hard over the grizzly bear’s claws while Harlan was recovering. They made the claws into a fine necklace with leather thongs from an elk skin, and the twenty claws looked very distinctive and impressive. When presenting the necklace to Harlan after he had recovered, he was floored by the scope and degree of the gift from a couple of kids who were fast becoming just like the sons he had always wanted.

From then on, Harlan wore the grizzly-bear claws proudly as a reminder not only of the battle but also of the quiet love he now shared with his boys.

His scalp was another matter. It had healed badly because of all the tearing and subsequent infection caused by the bear’s slobber. An ugly canine-tooth bite scar ran around the entire top of his head. In fact, it appeared that the boys had sewn the loose scalp on almost backward! It eventually healed, and flattened out in the process like normal skin. But Harlan lost all his hair from the infection! He was now bald as a river rock. But he was alive, and a good wolf-skin cap would keep warm the bald pate that soon came to be known among his peers as his trademark.

***

Little remained of that beaver trapping season; soon the ice became too thick to chop, and the beaver take dropped off. Now was the time to trap other valuable furbearers. Harlan worked hard at those activities as well as instructing the boys in the fine art of forest trapping, including the making of deadfalls and snares. Soon the mink, gray fox, bobcat, northern lynx, gray wolf, and coyote hides began flowing into the camp for processing.

In the evenings, after the work was done and the livestock cared for, the real training began, to the boys’ way of thinking. By the light of the fire in their fireplace, Harlan taught them how to handle, load, repair, and care for a Hawken rifle.

Soon both were experts at loading, shooting, casting bullets, and caring for their rifles. Harlan modified one of the older Hawkens by shortening the stock so the smaller Winter Hawk had a rifle of his own that he could easily shoot.

Then came hour after never-ending- hour on how to put an edge on and care for a knife, ax, and tomahawk. That was followed by instruction in how to correctly use a knife for gutting, skinning, and food preparation as well as in defense of one’s life.

Those lessons were followed by sessions in the proper use and care of a tomahawk and how to use such a weapon in the self-defense or to defend others. Then, came endless hours of practice with a tomahawk and knife at a throwing target in front of the cabin. They also practiced one-on-one knife combat with Harlan when the winter weather was tolerable.

Last but not least, Harlan worked with Big Eagle on the making of arrow shafts from nearby willows and the knapping of flint and chert arrowheads. They spent hours in bow-and-arrow practice until Big Eagle got quite good—deadly, in fact.

Chapter Six

A Winter Surprise

Leaving the cabin one cold morning to break the lake’s ice and get some cooking and coffee water, Big Eagle came face to face with thirty heavily armed Snake Indian warriors quietly sitting on their horses facing Harlan’s cabin. Without any sign of fear or surprise, Big Eagle summoned Harlan by calling through the open cabin door. Harlan emerged, and Winter Hawk, unseen by the Snakes, picked up his rifle and took up his station at a shooting port inside the cabin, just in case things got out of hand.

Harlan, showing no fear, raised his hand in the sign of peace. For the longest time no one among the Indians moved as they sat on their horses looking long and hard at the cabin and its trappers in their hunting grounds.

Then a tall man, looking every bit the Indian in his dress, moved his horse forward and said in perfect frontier English, “Good morning, and who might you be?”

Surprised at hearing English spoken, Harlan said, “I am called Harlan Waugh. This is my son, Big Eagle, and my other son, who is inside the cabin fixin’ breakfast, is called Winter Hawk.”

Big Eagle took a quick glance at Harlan. Harlan had never called him his son before. However, Big Eagle liked the title, and it made him feel proud to be called “son” by a mighty warrior and mountain man like Harlan.

“Who might you be?” asked Harlan.

“I am Joe Meek, the meanest, best-shootin’, biggest-eatin’, greatest squaw-lovin’, knife-throwin’, fur-trappin’ mountain man in the West. And by the looks of your face and head, you are a great mountain man as well if them be the marks of a mighty unhappy grizzly.”

“They be the marks of a griz’ all right,” uttered Harlan. “A griz’ who tried to make me his dinner and stayed for dinner instead.”

Meek smiled through a huge growth of facial hair and said, “Care if I light down a bit? Gets a mite cold sittin’ up here on a horse in the dead of winter.”

“Make yourself at home, and your friends as well,” said Harlan. Meek turned to the Snakes and in their tongue advised them to dismount, which they did.

“How we going to feed such a number of people, Harlan?” asked Big Eagle, assuming that a meal was to follow since they had dismounted and were making motions as if to stay.

“Go fill that big pot with water and bring it to our outside campfire. I will have our big meat cooking pot there by the time you return and just fill it half full. In the meantime, Winter Hawk and I will cut some slabs of meat from those grizzly hams in the cache house and start them cooking with a load of dried rice and the beans from last night’s supper for thickening.”

Big Eagle headed for the lake to get water as instructed. When he returned, a roaring fire had been built and their large rendering pot had been placed at the fire’s edge. Into that eventually went five large pots of water, thirty pounds of previously hard-smoked and salted grizzly ham cut into generous chunks, four pounds of dried rice, and the remaining pot of beans from supper.

That was followed by a handful of salt, pepper, and some crushed, dried hot red pepper flakes. Winter Hawk brought out another large cast- iron pot and hung it over the fire on the cooking rod. Into that four-gallon pot went cold water from the lake, and as soon as it was boiling, he added eight large handfuls of freshly ground coffee beans and four handfuls of brown sugar cones.

Soon the talk around the large fire was animated as the cold men began warming up and smelling good things to come. Then one man noticed something on Winter Hawk and brought it to the attention of the group in the Snake language. There was an immediate and abrupt silence, and then the talk really got animated. As Winter Hawk once again approached the fire with two Dutch ovens for biscuit-making, one of the Snakes grabbed him by the collar and loudly proclaimed something in his tongue, the only word of which Harlan understood was “Crow!”

Winter Hawk tried to pull away, but the man was too strong and had a firm grip on the boy. In a flash Winter Hawk had drawn his knife, twisted around in his shirt, and faced off with his antagonist. Seeing that he was confronted with a determined youth with a knife, the older man went for his tomahawk, only to have Winter Hawk disarm him in a blinding flash.

That move happened so fast that the man was stunned. Realizing he was now disarmed, he drew a pistol from his sash, only to have Joe Meek restrain him at the last moment. It was good that Meek acted so rapidly because Big Eagle had drawn a bead with his Hawken on the man who was about to shoot his brother with a pistol.

“You are a brave one, little man,” said Meek with a smile of newfound respect. “Not only brave but deadly as well. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I taught him,” said Harlan in a cold, flat tone. He also had his Hawken at the ready. At that range, someone would have died had cooler heads not quickly prevailed.

“We didn’t come here fer no fight,” said Meek quickly with apology in his voice. “We smelled your campfire and, not sure who you were, come a-lookin’. We was headed to make meat on a small buffalo herd in the sagebrush some few miles distant when we came across your campsite. Seein’ you appeared to be friendly, we was hopin’ for some hot coffee. But seein’s you was willin’ to feed us, that were even better. Small Buffalo Running here took a look at your young ’un and figured he were a Crow. Them’s mortal enemies of the Snake.”

“That may be in general, but these here boys are mine and being raised up in a Christian way. Their entire clan was killed some months back by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. I am all they have now. They have no tribal enemies unless someone tries to kill them or hurt their loved ones. If that happens, then they will defend themselves like the griz' that danced on my head some time back. Nothing more, nothing less,” Harlan stated in a tone cold enough to let Meek know he was ready to be a good neighbor but would kill in a heartbeat if pushed to his limit.

Meek turned to the Snake leader and spoke to him in his language. It was obvious that the Snakes trusted Meek, and soon there were grins all around, especially regarding the issue of one of their own, and a grown man at that, being disarmed by a small Indian boy who was obviously quickly growing into a man. To smooth over that man’s feelings, Harlan walked over to the tomahawk still lying in the fresh snow, picked it up, and turned to Winter Hawk.

“Winter Hawk, would you return this tomahawk to its rightful owner?” he asked, realizing that to do so would go a long way toward defusing the uneasy moment.

For a moment Winter Hawk just stood looking at the extended tomahawk. Then, grasping it firmly, he sheathed his knife and handed it purposefully back to its owner.