The Traherns #1 (28 page)

He’d pointed out the notch in the mountains where he was headed,
traveling lightly over the land so as to not leave much sign of our passing. He
left the shoes off our horses, so they would look more like Indian horses had
passed by. He always checked before riding over a ridge, which had saved us a
couple of times.

I knew why I was here, near the western border of Montana, but I
didn’t know where Luke was headed. As evening drew close, I brought in the
horses and the shrubs I had gathered, bringing them under the overhanging ledge
with me.

Luke was awake and looked to be hurting. I could see sweat on
his forehead and pain in his face.

I took off his bandages and looked him over. One of his wounds
showed angry red. “You were lucky it was a bear and not a cougar. Cats have
dirty claws, and you can die from the infections.”

“That was my nickname as a boy. Lucky. I was lucky your Pa came
and kept that bear from killing me. Lucky for me, but not for him.”

“You say he thought the bear was dead?”

“I’m sure of it. He went over and nudged it with his foot. Then
he turned his back on it and come toward me. That bear bounced up mighty quick,
and took him out before he had time to turn around. I’d be dead, too, if’n the
bear hadn’t went after the horse next. It was going after whatever moved. It
gave me a chance to grab your Pa’s rifle.”

I pictured it in my mind. Pa had died well, saving another man’s
life. He put great stock in dying well. He always said that you couldn’t count
on a long life. Everyone’s time on earth was short. You just had to live well,
doing for others, and hopefully die well. You needed to live in such a way that
you left things better than they were.

“I’ve got some water boiled up. I figured we could wash some of
your wounds, if they need it. Better yet, Pa showed me some plants, like
yarrow, that the Indians used as medicine. I gathered up some as we rode along.”

I brought over my small poke filled with various leaves, each
group wrapped separately in a tiny bit of cloth. I pulled out a few of the ones
that would be good to heal wounds.

“I’ll boil these up for a poultice and see if that will help.”

“Anything.”

I might be poisoning him, for all I knew, but Pa had been
positive these were for this purpose. He’d written on each paper what the herbs
were for, and I made sure I kept them separate.

I boiled them up, spread them on a piece of cloth and put them
warm on the wounds that looked to be infected.

I looked at some of the cloth he’d used for bandages. “This is
Pa’s shirt,” I said, suddenly realizing what I had in my hand.

“He didn’t need it no more,” Luke said. “The bear had shredded
it, and then I cut off what I needed. I’m right sorry.”

“No. You did well.” It bothered me though, to think Pa didn’t
even have a shirt on. It shouldn’t have, but I wanted to go wrap him in a
blanket and give him a decent burial.

I’d need to wait until Luke was able to travel and show me where
to find him.

Luke slept into the night. I fought to stay awake, but knew I
wasn’t going to make it. I started to doze.

“I’m awake now,” he said, his voice startling me. “You should’ve
woke me.”

“You needed your sleep,” I said and laid the rifle next to him.
I barely made it to my grassy bed. When I finally woke up, it was past
daylight.

Luke had a small fire going and was cooking rabbit. Rabbits.
There were two of them.

“Those were right good snares you made. I reset them.”

He had also taken the horses out and staked them close by. The
poultice had done the trick, pulling out the infection, and the sleep had done
the rest.

Rabbit for breakfast was delicious. He had done a good job of
roasting them. 

“Where you from, Luke?”

“Tennessee.”

“Where you going?”

“Idaho.”

I hadn’t heard that answer before. People usually said Oregon or
Washington. “Where’s that?” I asked.

“North of Wyoming.”

“What’s there?”

“Gold.”

Now to some people, gold is a beautiful thing. But you can’t eat
it, and mostly you can’t find it. It disappointed me to hear that that was
where he was headed.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Oregon. The Willamette Valley. Before all the good farm sites
are taken.”

“That sounds like your pa’s dream. How about you?”

My grandparents had had a farm, and Pa left it to hunt and trap.
I’d been raised in a store. He’d taught me how to hunt and trap, but he hadn’t
taught me how to farm.

It come to me. If I wanted a farm, I’d best marry a farmer.

CHAPTER THREE

“Do you know how to farm?” I asked Luke.

“Yep. It’s almost a bigger gamble than digging for gold. You
spend all your years trying to coax stuff from the ground and all you raise are
rocks and a few potatoes.”

“I’ve seen some mighty good farms back east.”

“Depends on your soil. Water. Climate. War. Anything can wipe
out a farmer. It’s the most risky job in the world. You’ve got to love farming
purt near more than you love livin,’ to be a farmer.”

“Yet people farm.”

“People farm. It’s the most independent of all jobs. No one is
your boss. Yet it’s the most dependent on outside forces. Weather. Bugs.”

“What made you want to go dig in the ground?”

“For gold? I want to make money, fast. I’ve a brother who lost
his arm in the war. I’d like to dig out enough to buy a business for him. I
figure if I can do that, then I’ll use whatever is left over for me.”

“And what do you want for yourself?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know. I jist want somethin’ for John.”

Now, I’d been disappointed when I found out he was a gold
seeker, but took heart when he said it was for his brother. Maybe he wasn’t
gold crazy after all. Especially when he didn’t know what he would do with any
he found for himself.

“What did you say your name was?” he asked. “My mind wasn’t able
to tie a knot in it.”

“Mahala.”

“Mahala,” he repeated. “I like it. It has music to it.”

“It was my grandmother’s name.”

He reheated the water that had the leaves in it and made himself
another poultice. He tried to stick it on his backside, which was now looking
raw.

“Let me,” I said. I hadn’t looked at the backside of anyone
excepting Pa, and this gent’s looked pretty good to me, discounting the wound.
He was all muscle and bone.

He lay on his stomach and I put the poultice on. The bear had
swiped from his waist down to his leg, but just one claw had dug in deep, at
his waist and again on his thigh. It had ripped his pants, so I just pulled
them aside and laid on the poultice. There weren’t no one else there to do it.
Then I took my rifle, checked it over, and went out to guard the camp.

The sun was warm that day, bordering on hot, and I soaked up the
warmth. Around noon, I went back under the ledge, saw that Luke looked to be
asleep, got myself a hunk of dried meat to chew on, and started to leave.

“How is it outside?” he said.

“Warm and toasty. Can you make it out? Sunshine is healing.”

He got up and walked out with me. We went back to where the
horses grazed and he lay down in the grass.

“They’ll have this eaten down in a few more days,” he said. “I
should be able to travel by then. I can walk better’n I can sit.”

“I been expecting wolves to find us,” I said.

“Or Indians.”

“We’re sort of off the trail for them.”

“That’s why it’s a good place,” he said.

“How did you know this was here?”

“I camped here a few nights ago, hiding from Indians who were on
my trail. They searched, but couldn’t find me. When I was sure they left, I
took off down the trail, but not on it as such. I was traveling alongside it.
Got myself boxed in and had to retrace my steps. That’s when I ran into the
bear. I was headed back here when your pa’s horse brought me into your camp.
Figured I’d need a place to hide while I recovered. If I did.”

He would probably have made it. Western men tend to heal fast,
but he’d have had to wash those wounds.

I hunkered down beside him, making sure I kept low. No sense
standing tall and letting yourself be seen. “How long you been traveling?” I
asked. Now it’s not considered proper to ask a stranger too many questions, but
I was naturally curious.

“Month or so. Lost track.”

“About the same,” I said.

We sat out in that sun, soaking up and resting. It did us both
good. Lots of sunshine, water and fresh meat.

I shared some of my father’s stories with him. He’d never been
west of the Mississippi, so took great interest in them.

That night the wolves found us.

Luke saw the first one. Earlier, he’d helped me lay fire bundles
near the rim of the overhang. We had the horses close, but now led them under
with us.

I was ready to start the fire, but he told me to wait.

“Let them start to come in first. We ain’t wantin’ to use all
our fuel, have none left when we’re needin’ it. Put your coals near, just not
in.”

I did so.

“You shoot anything comin’ in on that side. I’ll take the middle
and the other.”

So we waited while they gathered, making up their minds if we
would be tasty or not. Finally they came, one rushing in from one side and
another from the other side. We each shot and they dropped. 

The rest started to rush in and I put the fire to the branches.
Before it flamed up high enough, one came past, and Luke shot it. The rest
backed off and sat down to wait. We fed the flames, a little at a time, finally
using our grass beds.

“I’d love a big ole pine knot full of pitch, ‘bout now,” Luke
said. “I’d take it out and swing it around and send those wolves a’howlin’.”

I went back and got more grass from my bed area. I looked out
and noticed that the wolves were moving away. They stopped, looked at me, then
ran off.

“They’re not going to like going hungry tonight,” I said.
“They’ll probably come back tomorrow.”

“We won’t be here,” Luke said. “Come tomorrow, we’re
ridin’.” 

After a hearty breakfast of rabbits again, we broke camp. I
picked up my snares and everything else, as we weren’t coming back.

It took us a full day to get to where Pa had been killed.
Indians hadn’t found the spot, as the gully was overgrown. Crows were circling
the dead bear and Luke’s horse, eating the flesh, and I backed away.

“I’ll help you bury your Pa good now,” Luke said. He showed me
where he had put him, under a bank with the dirt caved onto him and some rocks
on top of that. “We can’t leave him in the gully. When the rains come, it’ll
wash him downstream.”

He helped me wrap Pa in a blanket. The body was already starting
to decay and it was hard for me to see him like that, so Luke did most of the
handling of him. We found a small depression in the soil, rolled a few rocks
out of it to make it larger, then put Pa’s body there, in his blanket. Soil
over the top, using my shovel, then we piled rocks over all.

We considered the dead bear. He hadn’t been bled out properly,
and neither of us wanted the meat or to deal with the hide, so we left him to
the crows and other scavengers.

“I slept right up next to him, the first night,” Luke said. “He
kept me warm and alive. I cut off a hunk of his meat and ate it raw, to get the
moisture. The next morning, I climbed on your pa’s horse and rode off, knowing
I needed water.”

Luke took his gear off his dead horse. Ammunition and a Henry
rifle. A long rope. An extra pair of shoes and socks. A bedroll. A canteen. His
flat gold pan.

“You know how to use that?” I asked.

“Sort of. You get sand in it and water and swish it around in a
circle-like. The gold is heavy and sets down on the bottom.”

“If there is gold.”

“If there’s gold. I heard tell the streams are rich with it.”

“Pa didn’t think so. He made his money trapping. Enough to buy
the store. He sold it for enough to give us a stake to get to Oregon.”

“How come y’all were way up here and not with a wagon train?”
Luke asked as we mounted up, ready to ride out.

“Pa and I talked it over before we left. It takes a wagon train
three months to travel the trail. Pa figured we could do it in less than half
the time on horseback, as we could take a more straighter, northern route, the
same one he had taken to come back after his trapping days. I know where the
pass is he intended to go through. You can see it from here.”

I pointed it out to him. “Up there. A mountain that looks like
an arrowhead, with the southern half broke off. That’s on the north side of the
pass. There’s a notch between it and the other mountain.”

“Not much.”

“You stay off the arrowhead mountain. There’s a trail on the
southern one, going halfway around, then up an over a pass between the two.
It’s not a good trail, Pa walked it, but he thinks the horses can make it.”

“And if not?”

“We can go south to the Oregon Trail and finish up on it. But we
shouldn’t have to.”

We rode on down the trail, guns ready, for it never paid to be
careless in Indian country. There had been a war going on between the Indians
and our government, which was supposed to be over, but Pa said that some
Indians go into the mountains for months to hunt and trap and wouldn’t know
anything about a war, or in this case, a treaty. So we rode at alert, ready if
need be.

That night we were miles closer to the notch and it still looked
the same distance away.

We made a dry camp in a cluster of rocks. It was almost a
natural fort, halfway up a ridge. It had no water and no grass, so we didn’t
stay longer than to take turns sleeping.

This country was full of sagebrush, jackrabbits, rattlesnakes,
Indians, rocks, dirt, coyotes, wolves and bears. Also antelope and sage grouse.
The grouse were larger than chickens, and tasted wonderful. They ran along the
ground, and I caught two in a trap. The antelope were curious, and could be
hunted with a white cloth on a stick, to keep them near.

We finally made it to the notch in the mountains. This trail was
used by the Indians, and we had been carefully avoiding them. I was thankful
Luke was with me, for I had heard stories of what they did to their captives,
and knew we could die a terrible death if we got caught by a raiding party. The
Indians had welcomed the first trappers into this country, but now realized
that these people were coming to stay, more and more of them. They fought back,
lost the war, but still kept up some small raids. The clashing of two
civilizations. It would continue until we melded together.

We prayed for our safety, picked up our guns, and started up the
trail while it was still dark. It was breaking daylight when we reached the bad
spot Pa had told me about, an overhanging ledge on one side and a cliff on the
other, with just about three feet of trail. We led the horses and walked, the
saddle horns scraping now and then on the overhang.

It was there we met the Indians.