The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (38 page)

“I held him in my arms till I was sure, then I ran into the river and tried to drown myself. But it isn’t easy, not for a boy that age. You keep coming up, and whether you want to or not, you swim. And after a while, you get sick.”

“Coulter—”

“I’m not quite done. My mother never spoke a word directly to me from that day forward. I lived at home three more years, and she never addressed a sentence to me in all that time. If something needed doing, she’d say like, ‘I hope extra firewood will be chopped for the wash while I’m gone.’

“She believed I did it a-purpose, out of jealousy, and nearly everybody
else did, too. I was the target for every child in town. They’d yell ‘Cain slew Abel! Cain slew Abel!’—having likely heard it from their parents.

“In the long run, I took to fighting back, and naturally that showed they were right. I had a vicious streak; it was a throwback in the blood. That’s what they said. So when I was fifteen, I left for good. My mother’d got married again, to a man that knocked me around, her, too, and I ran away one night after they’d gone to bed. I never went back. Some years later, I heard she’d died of consumption. On her deathbed, one of the women bathing her face asked if they ought to try and reach me. T only had the one son,’ she said. ‘I had one boy, Phillip, that was murdered,’ ”

I’m ashamed to admit it, Melissa, but I couldn’t think of anything to say for quite a little while. Finally I said, “Coulter, that’s a terrible story, terrible. But—”

“Maybe you’d care to step down now, doctor. I haven’t any doubts you’d dislike riding with a murderer. Everybody else has, whenever they heard.”

“Coulter, if I may be so bold with a man who could whip me with one hand, you’re something of an ass. The incident you describe was an accident, just as your brother said. By the way, what a wonderful boy he must have been. These things happen every day, something like them, somewhere on earth. In your case, you let it grow, and fester, and take possession of you, with some cause to be sure. But tell me something—isn’t this the first time you ever went over the story to an outsider?”

“I’ve never laid tongue to it since the day I told my mother and she beat me unconscious with a poker.”

“How do you feel—at the moment, I mean?”

He gave a long sigh. “Doctor, I can’t say why, I’m not smart enough and haven’t the education, but it seems like somebody’s just rolled a mountain off my chest.”

“I’m delighted,” I said, getting down. “Now listen to me. I’m going to repeat your account, word for word, to our people. Then I want you to come have supper with us at seven.”

For a second, he looked uneasy again. “Maybe tomorrow—I’ve got to catch up on—”

“Tonight”
I said firmly. “You’re within sight of getting out of
the woods. But you’ve got two or three more steps to take. Flinch now and you’re finished.”

Turning to leave, I added, “Coulter, do what you think Sandy might have done.”

He looked angry, then relaxed.

“I may be dropping in,” I heard him call as I walked back down the train.

Now I’d better move on in a hurry. Sad events should never be dwelt on. We tarried two hours at Independence Rock, “the registry of the desert,” so called because of the names, initials, dates and origins scratched on it by parties coming before us. Climbing up as far as they could, Jaimie and Po-Povi chiseled a memento there-two names, a boy’s and an Indian girl’s—for the generations to come to marvel at. Do you suppose that inscription will be legible a hundred years from today, when the warm shroud of earth is pulled long since over us all? Will some gay band of picnickers, come out from the cities that have risen here, puzzle over those words: JAIMIE McP. and PO-POVI? What were they like, the two who left those clumsy letters? Where were they going? And what became of them after they left?

This is foolish speculation. Beneath the blasts of desert wind, the spire itself may crumble within a few decades. This is harsh and pitiless country.

Five days out from the Rock, beyond the Devil’s Gate, a thirty-foot fissure in a mountain wall, and approaching a granite canyon, Coulter came riding back with every look of concern. He offered no salutation, which was unusual, but spurred his horse rapidly to the rear. Then he galloped up the other side, shading his eyes to peer first at one frowning wall, then at the opposite.

Plainly he had no fancy for what he saw, for he set about closing up spaces between wagons, in tones by no means gentle.

Jaimie, on his spotted pony, rode up and said, “Coulter smells Indians—he doesn’t like the canyon.”

This was hard to believe, for Indians along the way had generally been peaceful, barring our boy’s mishap and the infrequent raids by night.

Watching anxiously, we saw a faint puff of smoke behind the canyon wall, off to our right. It was followed by two others in
quick succession, then nothing at all—empty sky where a second before something had been burning.

Events now came rapidly. Pointing to a high rock, Jaimie shouted and we saw silhouetted against the blue expanse a motionless figure, then two shots rang out from somewhere in the train ahead, and Coulter came galloping back, very fast, sitting his horse twisted to one side in the saddle, the better to address us: “Circle! Circle wagons—this is an attack!” Above the confusion, we could hear him repeating it all down the line—“This is an attack, this is an attack.”

One’s first reaction to the words is a chilly gripping of the bowels. It is difficult to grasp that in a few moments you may be shot at, and perhaps wounded or killed. Fortunately there was little time for reflection. The dust rose in clouds around us as thirty-odd heavy “prairie schooners” wheeled into the defensive ellipse, horses and oxen rearing and complaining, men cursing and sawing at the reins, a tempest of frightened movement in an otherwise silent desert. Coulter skidded up to leap off and begin inspecting guns, and then he placed women behind wheels and boxes and covered children over with planks and tarpaulins. His manner was neither impolite nor gentle, and only a fool would have argued; he meant business.

Up ahead, nothing yet in sight. Then Coulter said, “We’ve got a visitor.”

Down the canyon passage an Indian came riding, alone, on a fine-looking horse. He was coming along fast, but a hundred yards or so before reaching us, he swerved his horse suddenly, nearly falling, to plant a garlanded spear in the sand. Then he galloped back and disappeared around the bend.

No sooner had he disappeared than several dozen others, the advance guard, the head men, trotted out from the bend ahead to survey us impassively. Our Mr. Coulter now walked forward boldly, with his customary look of contempt when dealing with Indians, leaned over and picked up a handful of dust. He held it high, for all of them to see, then threw it down.

Then he returned, not running, but he didn’t tarry, either.

“That’s it,” he said. “They gave us a challenge, and I took it up. Get yourselves ready; they won’t be over a minute or two.”

And only a few seconds later, “Here they come.”

Two files, straddling us, swept past close against the canyon
walls, difficult to see, because the sun was directly overhead and both sides were shadowed. Several arrows fell inside our enclosure, but none caused damage.

“Don’t fire,” Coulter sang out. “Not on this pass. Hold up; it makes them nervous.” He ran, bending low, from one group to another, and his serene indifference to this crisis, and our enemies, began to rub off on us a little.

At the far end, they collected, whooping, and gathered for another run.

“Crows, with Snakes amongst them, black as niggers,” muttered Coulter.

Not having attracted our fire, they spread out from the walls this time, and we looked them over. Some were large and well made, others appeared poor and bedraggled. Many were entirely naked, while the bodies of a few were covered with the skins of hares sewn together. In general, their hair was long, they had aquiline features, and the average height, I should say, was five feet six or seven inches. And Coulter was right about one thing—a sprinkling—Snakes, or Shoshones—were as dark as our Louisville negro.

I seized up an arrow that struck the sand not far from my feet, without force, having been fired high into the air. It was crudely wrought, poorer in quality than those of the Sioux we had seen, but it was strongly tipped with iron, procured at some trading post, no doubt.

“Now, lads,” said Coulter. “They’ll be careless this run. Pick a man well out in the sunlight, and if you ain’t a dead aim,
hit his horse!”

One of our number cried, “I draw the line on that, it ain’t humane. I’ll shoot for the man.”

“You do that, Wilson,” said Coulter, “and that yellow-haired tyke of yours’ll have herself a honeymoon with twenty-five bucks.”

The man stepped back angrily, but I noticed that when the lines came down, screaming with such frightful effect as to have paralyzed a less hardy group, he took cool aim and dropped a pinto mare head over heels on its rider. My physician’s eye could spot the signs of a broken neck—the tilted head, the threshing of the lower limbs, the whole body flopping like a chicken before he died.

One notes these small pictures against the larger screen of battle.
I was loading and firing the Hawken rifle, a cumbersome weapon which rested between the spokes of a wheel. These Indians were shooting guns as well as arrows; I saw a man hit, though not badly, across our enclosure.

“How many altogether?” I asked Coulter during one of his low-crouching sorties.

“They’ve got us about six to one. And they’ve picked a nice day for it.” He looked ruefully up at the sky.

The heat in our canyon was growing unbearable. A sun that seemed ten times life-size blazed down without pity, and not a breath of air stirred.

We had four casualties on the next two passes, none fatal; a youth hit by a ball in the shoulder, two men wounded at almost identical spots in the groin, and a scalp injury, unserious but bloody.

Over the uproar, I could hear Coulter bawling for the dozenth time, “Pick a horse, pick a horse—forget the man.”

By now I was no longer firing, but had quit by request to tend wounded. Jaimie, lying beneath the Brices’ wagon, was shooting a borrowed revolver, and Jennie was working careful, methodical havoc with one of Kissel’s rifles. Mrs. Kissel loaded for us all. Our situation was quite plainly desperate. In a battle of attrition, into which this was degenerating, we were hopelessly outclassed. Our number would be so reduced that we could expect a direct charge long before sundown; I heard Coulter say so, in a tone not meant to be generally audible, to one of the drovers.

Still they came on, in endless supply. On the next pass, several bucks formed a cluster, reining up, and giving a bloodcurdling huzza, headed straight at us. All of our men on that side rose instantly to their feet to draw careful bead, but a stark-naked Indian, accoutered only in head feathers and paint, still got inside our circle, leaping his horse over barrels and boxes between the wagons. Yelling bloody murder, he began thrusting left and right with a lance, but his moment of glory was short-lived.

Kissel rose towering before him, there was a flash of steel against the sun, and we heard that curious ripping sound that one makes when a watermelon is split with a knife. With his ax, Kissel parted the Indian’s skull from crown to chin; it was cleft as a pine faggot
is divided for the fire. It was a sight, I assure you, that I shall carry to my grave.

With complete lack of emotion, as if it were a farming chore he had to do, Kissel then seized the brave by the waist and hurled his remains outside our fort. His shattered skull was a trifle too much for civilized stomachs.

Coulter came over, brushing the sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve; an occupational hazard with this kind of fighting. He’d been everywhere, plugging up holes, speaking both comfort and direction, and occasionally reproach, looking after the women, rearranging barricades, gentling stock—I saw him draw two arrows from the backs of oxen, hit by those high, looping shots that were meant to distress mainly by annoyance—and keeping our spirits alive by a perfectly callous disregard of danger to himself.

Now in the lull he stopped beside us for a second. “God damn these Crows,” he said, adding a few details which I’ll refrain from setting down verbatim. “We’ve dropped a bunch, but they won’t haul off. Any other tribe, they’d pull up for a while, collect the dead, maybe wait till tomorrow. That’s what the Snakes’d do, left to themselves.”

I asked how long he thought we had.

“Three more passes and they’ll try to ride in. They’re calling, doctor; who’s that hit? Damn the luck, it’s that swamp rat Billings, from Georgia. He and his wife are the best shots we’ve got.”

In the next few minutes, I tried counting the Indians fallen. Twenty-six horses were down, on both sides, some still kicking and many crying horribly. Around these, sprawled in every attitude of death, were forty-odd braves; the number being difficult to figure, because not a few were all but invisible beneath mounts. Other horses, riderless, had taken to flight. And a fair proportion of the men down were moving, trying to rise, clutching an injured part, crawling in one direction or another. One fellow, wounded in the eyes, fascinated us all by coming slowly, on hands and knees, directly toward us, his sense of orientation gone.

I heard a pistol crack from beneath our wagon, and peering downward, saw Jaimie’s eyes a-gleam with excitement. And the next instant he had drawn a knife and started forward. I grabbed his collar and shouted, “What is this? What are you trying to do?”

“I thought I’d take his hair,” was the incredible reply.

I drew back to cuff him, but I was too late. The faithful Jennie had already performed that service with neat, graceful competence.

Twenty minutes later, Coulter scrambled rapidly around the enclosure, passing out hand weapons of every variety—axes, knives, his own tomahawk—gained God knows where—mallets, hammers, clubs, anything to repel the concerted rush we all now expected. Raising his voice, he cried, “They’re coming in, men. We’ll stand them off—we can do it. If we don’t, save a ball for the women and children. I’m proud of you—you’ve done your duty like men—everybody here. Now let’s give them hell!”