Wind Walker (77 page)

“But we ain’t really like them, are we?” Jim asked.

“Not in no world I’d ever be part of,” Titus replied.

“You ’member how Shad told us them Mormons shot our friends down in cold blood up there at the ferry?”

Titus took his eyes from Bridger’s face and stared through the gap in the timbers where his barrel lay … peering out at the oncoming riders and wagons, the muted sound of voices, the jangle of bit chains and clopping of hooves just beginning to reach their ears. Brigham Young’s Avenging Angels came on slow, riding easy and not at all on the alert. Gabbing as men do when they don’t have a concern in the world that they are being watched and are riding into an
ambush. He sensed a cry for justice welling up within his empty belly, burning at the back of his throat—or, was it a scream for revenge? To shoot four or more of these Mormons out of their saddles the way they had cut down five of his unarmed, defenseless friends at the Green River crossing might go a long way to quieting its angry voice.

His mouth had gone dry by the time he struggled to ask Bridger, “What’s your thinkin’ on how to play this, Jim?”

“We both seen our share of killin’ … an’ killin’s easy for men like us, Scratch. Hell, all them red niggers the two of us put under in more’n twenty-five winters—why, we could wait for them Saints to ride right up to us afore we let fly an’ there’d be more dead Mormons on the ground than I care to bury.”

“Spill what you got to say, Jim,” Titus said, angry with the way Bridger’s words had pricked his own conscience as the enemy got all the closer.

“You was once a fair shot with that ol’ table leg you call a rifle,” Gabe said. “You think you can knock that big gray hat off the one riding that roan out in front?”

Before he answered, Titus laid his cheek along the comb of the buttstock and peered down the worn, browned barrel, lining up the sharp rise of the front blade in that notch of the curved buckhorns of his rear sight. He held it on the hat, let out half a breath … then he said, “I think I can do that for you, Gabe.”

“Awright,” Bridger replied. “When that roan of his comes even with that pile of stone off there by the willows—you knock the bastard’s hat off.”

“You better signal the others, so them boys don’t think we’re openin’ up the fight.”

Jim turned, put two fingers between his lips, and whistled with the call of a meadowlark. Of the three signals they had agreed upon, that was the signal telling them to hold their fire. The other signals ordered them to fight for their lives, or to turn and slip away into the hills. Only three choices facing the ten of them now.

From those men waiting on the south, and from Shad’s bunch on the north, came the answering calls. Scratch peered over the barrel of the flintlock, waiting, amused that not one of those oncoming riders had paid any attention to the bird calls. Flatlander settlement types didn’t know a jay from a whippoorwill no how.

“He looks about there, Scratch!” Jim whispered low.

“Hush,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to concentrate over here, Gabe.”

Bringing the hammer back to full cock, Titus slipped his finger inside the trigger guard and set the back trigger. Then lightly touched the front trigger and slowly let his breath out as he blinked, blinked again, and held high on the Mormon’s big gray hat. Just a twitch here and he could put a lead ball through the man’s forehead, maybe right on up the bastard’s big nose, or right on into his grinning, gaping, stupid mouth. …

The gun went off a bit by surprise—and everything exploded into action at once. The hat went sailing, tumbling through the air as the roan’s rider threw himself onto the ground and started crawling backward toward the first wagon on his hands and knees. At the same instant other horses bucked and shied, men bellowing orders or screaming in surprise as they peeled this way and that—

“You there!” Bridger hollered as his eyes crept over the top of the low, burned timbers. “You Brigham Young boys! There’s only two ways outta this valley now!”

Scratch had turned and already had the barrel blown out and a load of powder poured down the muzzle.

“Who the blazes are you?” a voice demanded as the wagons rattled to a halt.

“I’m Jim Bridger! Right now, you an’ all your wagons are on my land!”

“It’s Bridger!” another voice hollered. “We got the reward! We got the damned reward!”

“Shuddup!” the first voice snapped. “Bridger, this isn’t your place no more. The lawfully appointed authority of
Utah Territory has seized your land and all your worldly goods, in partial payment for your crimes against the citizens of Green River County—”

“This here ain’t no court of law!” Scratch hollered as he finished ramming home a ball and shoved the wiping stick into the thimbles beneath the barrel. “Quit your spoutin’ an’ start fightin’, you murderin’ sonsabitches!”

“Who-who’s with you, Bridger?”

“Enough to empty half your saddles afore you get turned around an’ off my land,” Jim attested.

“You’re a wanted man in this territory!”

Rolling back onto his belly to stuff his barrel out between the timbers, Scratch bellowed, “An’ you’ll be a dead man afore the sun goes down!”

“We don’t want any violence,” the voice shouted. “Only came to occupy what’s left of the post where you were selling weapons and powder to the Indians—”

“You an’ your bunch will come in here over my dead body!” Jim protested.

A third voice called out from the milling horsemen, “If that’s the way you want it!”

Another of the Mormons cackled, “The reward on your head is good no matter if you’re dead!”

Titus spit behind him, the warm tobacco juice steaming in the subfreezing air. “You give them Marmons ’nough of a chance awready, Gabe. They showed they ain’t the kind to appreciate what you’re doin’ to let ’em ride on outta here with their hair.”

“S’pose you’re right,” Bridger replied as the Mormons started forming in a broad front. “Best get your head down, John.”

The surveyor looked at Bridger, then at Bass, his eyes wide. “I’m here to defend myself, Jim.”

With a grin, Titus said, “Go find yourself a shootin’ hole, Mr. Hockaday. We’re ’bout to send these here Marmons straight on to heaven!”

“Give the boys a whistle, Scratch!” Gabe growled.

He and Titus signaled the other groups with a quick, short blast of the Stellar’s jay, then Scratch leveled his gun again at the riders just as the Mormons kicked their horses into a lope and started a ragged charge toward the charred walls.

Scratch’s gun was the first to speak. The bullet slammed into a horse’s chest, the animal skidding to a halt and collapsing on its haunches, tossing its rider clear. All around the Mormons, guns began to explode. Riders screamed in pain and terror as lead sailed through their midst. Other men bellowed orders. Horses reared and neighed. Wagons lurched onto two wheels as their drivers careened them about in a half circle as tight as they could, beating a retreat.

As he was digging at the bottom of his pouch for a lead ball, Bass watched how two of the Mormons were screaming at the others—ordering them off their horses and into the brush. Must be leaders of the bunch.

“I-I got one of them!” Hockaday announced.

“Kill ’im?” he asked.

“No, don’t think so,” the surveyor said. “Hit him in the leg.”

“Good enough,” Bridger growled. “Ain’t likely he can do any good with a gun no how, not now.”

The Mormons made it to the timber with their wounded as the wagons rattled up the valley and out of sight. Six horses lay on the crisp, brown grass of the meadow just now getting dusted with an icy snow—some of them lay dead in a heap, the others wounded and neighing pitifully. Two more hobbled around with broken legs, crying out. Bass wanted to drop them both and put them right out of their pain, but for the time being he’d save his shots for those Mormons hiding in the brush.

“Shad!” Bridger shouted. “Work your way in on ’em to the west!”

“You want any of ’em left alive?” Sweete called out.

“Only kill the ones what won’t run off, boys!” Gabe instructed. “Put them others afoot an’ let ’em walk outta here!”

“You don’t stand a chance, Bridger!” that voice cried
again, the one with the mean edge to it. “Give up now and we won’t have to kill you to get you back to Salt Lake City as our prisoner.”

Scratch roared, “I’m afeared you Marmons don’t know what you bit off comin’ back here!”

“Only a matter of time, Bridger!”

The two of them both fired shots into the brush, then looked at one another. Gabe was the first to speak.

“He might be right, Scratch,” Jim whispered sadly. “Looks to be only a matter of time afore them an’ their kind run all over these mountains.”

“Naw, don’t go thinkin’ like that, Gabe,” he pleaded. “There’s still places for men like us. Get back far enough, up high enough … there’s still places left for our kind.”

“How far away, Scratch?” Jim asked as he began reloading. “How far’s a man gotta go to find such a place?”

“North,” he said as he poked his barrel back through the slot between the timbers. “Far enough from this here road to Oregon. Go far enough I can’t see trouble no more.”

“That’s where you’re fixin’ to take your family?”

He was sprinkling some priming powder in the pan when he looked up at his old friend. “This gotta be my last trip back to Crow country, Jim.”

“Why, ain’t you ever gonna come visitin’ again? Gonna let these here Saints run you off?”

Scratch wagged his head. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the dream one of them ol’ Crow rattle-shakers had for me. Said I was gonna go under if I ever left again.”

“So, when you go back now—you ain’t leavin’ no more?” Bridger asked, a grave look on his face.

Glancing quickly at the wide, questioning eyes of Hockaday, Titus said, “I got tired somewhere down the trail aways, Gabe. Don’t know where … can’t rightly say when neither. But, I wanna get my woman an’ our young’uns back north where there ain’t no white niggers stirrin’ up trouble for us.”

Bridger grinned and snorted, “Just Blackfoot!”

He laughed too. “That’s right. Man-allays knows what to expect outta Blackfoot, don’t he?”

Turning to Hockaday, Jim explained, “With them Blackfeets, there’s more killin’ and stealin’ too, than there be with any other red niggers.”

Bass nodded: “Up north, near them Bug’s boys, a fella puts his nose up like this … an’ he can tell what’s in the wind, Mr. Hockaday. Down here in this country a man’s gotta work to figger our which white men are good, which white men ain’t. Up there, life ain’t near so confusin’. You hunt an’ you live. Life goes on easy, ’cept for one worry. Only one worry, Mr. Hockaday. When the Blackfoot come ’round … there’s allays the worst kind of trouble. It’s a good an’ simple life.”

The surveyor asked, “Y-you’d rather live with that sort of worry than down-here where Bridger has made his claim?”

He stared along the barrel of his rifle at that patch of brush where some muzzle smoke appeared a second time. The Mormon hadn’t moved so was doing his damnedest to make himself an inviting target.

“Think I would rather live where folks don’t make out to be something they ain’t, Mr. Hockaday,” he said, turning slightly to look at the surveyor again. “Some folks; like these here Marmons—they gussy up their talk with all the Bible words, but they ain’t no God-fearin’ folk. Hell, Jim, even Ol’ Solitaire—Bill Williams his own self—was more a holy man than Brigham Young an’ a hull territory of his Marmons, all of ’em throwed together in a tater sack!”

Titus looked back down along the barrel at his sight picture and set the back trigger. “No, Mr. Hockaday—these here Marmons are the sort to parade around in the clothes of some holy folk … when all along they really set out to steal ever’thing they want an’ murder ever’ man what stands in their way.”

Scratch waited a few moments after firing at the leafless brush, staring at that spot where he had been aiming. But he never spotted another puff of muzzle smoke. Fact was,
during those heartbeats he waited, the Mormons started yelling a lot at one another, and their return fire was quickly withering.

Then through the trees upstream, Titus saw what blur of movement the other old free men could see from their positions. Their enemy was mounting up, helping those bleeding, wounded men onto what they had left of horses, every one of them retreating without much grace or ceremony.

“Ain’t that downright ill mannered of ’em, Gabe,” Titus growled as he pulled the barrel back through the opening, blew down the muzzle, then stuck the plug to his powder horn between his teeth.

“Ill m-mannered?” Hockaday asked.

“That’s right,” Bass replied, pouring a measure of powder from his horn into a brass charger. “I ’spected them holy folks to have better manners than they showed, Mr. Hockaday. You see, Brigham Young’s murderers just run off with their tails atween their legs … but ’thout givin’ any of us the slightest by-your-leave or fare-thee-well!”

Gabe was laughing as he clambered to his feet and peered over the top of the timbers, shaking his fist at the sky. “You tell Brigham Young he’s gonna have to send more’n you milk-teat pilgrims if’n he wants to drive me outta my home!”

By that time Scratch was scrambling to his feet, having rammed home a lead ball. He cradled the flintlock across his left elbow and began to prime the pan on the gun’s ignition. “Only way them murderin’ thieves ever gonna take this here place from you, Jim—they’re gonna have to come agin us with a army.”

When Titus turned to look at him, Bridger’s smile of victory had faded. His face was like a fruit gone sour and pithy.

“That’s just what Brigham Young’s gonna do now that we throwed this bunch back, Scratch,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You an’ me both know it. Lookit us, just lookit us—there be less’n a dozen ol’ hivernants left in these here mountains now. We won’t ever hold back that bastard’s army when he sends it next time.”

Bridger turned away slowly, his shoulders sagging with
regret and more while he started trudging away from the charred wall. Titus turned, his eye finding the rest of their friends emerging from the brush and cottonwoods, stepping into the open and starting for the ruins of Bridger’s post, their breath become long streamers in the icy air.