The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (40 page)

Bridger lifted his glass, though we were now only twenty or thirty yards away, and fixed it rather rudely on Coulter’s face. Then he gave every appearance of alarm, as if the Fort was under attack. It set my father and the others back a notch, especially Coe, who had a pretty stiff notion of manners, even after all these weeks on the trail.

“Get the children back!” cried the proprietor to the Indian women. “Shut and bolt the doors—bury the silver.” He stepped spryly aside and whisked the telescope out of sight behind the door, coming up with a very long rifle instead. His attitude was concerned, if not downright menacing.

Coulter, for his part, fell into this nonsense as if he’d done it before, and called, “I wonder if you could direct us to the person in charge of the Fort. We understood old Bridger was killed by a couple of Arapahoe children.”

“Keep back,” said Bridger to the women, who had yet to move a muscle in obedience to his commands. “Don’t show yourselves. It looks like Coulter.”

“Put down that rifle.”

“Come up, Coulter, but come slow, and don’t move your hands.”

Coulter now grinned and said, “By God, if you aren’t the worst-looking sight I ever run across. Have they quit sewing buttons on shirts?”

“What’s happened to your hair?” asked Bridger.

“It got singed.”

“You haven’t a particle of business outside the Fort without a guide, I’ve told you before, only you won’t listen.”

“These are friends,” said Coulter, introducing us. “They want to make serious talk, so cut out the piffle.”

At this odd point in their reunion, they shook hands, but each did it as though the other was an object of miserableness almost past belief.

“I didn’t figure on seeing you again,” said Bridger, “wandering around unattended.”

Inspecting him with an air of pity, Coulter said, “I’d almost forgot what an ugly old squirrel you are. It’s always a shock. Why in hades don’t you shave? It might help some.”

“Come in, gentlemen,” said Bridger, “make yourselves to home. I’m starting a new house next month, of imported Vermont marble, but the workmen aren’t quite ready to go.”

I found out later this was a lie; in fact, the proprietor of Fort Bridger practically never told the entire truth, if there was an opportunity to make up a better story. Coulter said that was the way he got his amusement, and my father added later that what he was, at heart, was “a first-rate working humorist, a rose wasting his fragrance on the desert air.”

When we went inside, Kissel stooped over to avoid striking his head and Bridger introduced two Indian women as his wives, saying their names were “Durn Your Eyes” and “Drat Your Hide.” None of our group had the impoliteness to inquire if he was joking, but these were the authentic names, according to Coulter, thought up by their husband several years before. The women were proud of them.

We got down to business and explained that we wanted to go to Salt Lake City for the winter. Then my father suggested that we would never make it without a guide. “He’ll do it,” said Coulter, addressing us, although Bridger was sitting at his elbow. “Once in a while there’s work to be done around here, so he gets away and hides whenever he can.”

“I’m not in good with Brigham Young right now,” said Bridger, in a serious vein. “He says I’ve been selling firearms to the Utes; what’s more, he’d admire to annex my Fort. It so happens I was meaning to go over and have a talk with him; you can ride along and welcome.”

This was wonderful news. He would be leaving the day after tomorrow, when his partner, Vasquez, returned from a trading trip. Meanwhile he said we might enjoy seeing the local sights. Then he
promised to take us, women and all, to a stream up in the mountains that he said had the fastest current in America, but he cautioned us beforehand not to stick our foot or hand in, so that we wouldn’t be scalded. “Water running that fast works up a power of friction against the bottom and sides,” he said, eyeing us with a kind of squint. “During the spring thaw, the temperature’s close to biling.”

Walking us down to the ferry, he rode over with us. A number of Indians were camped on the far bank, as well as the remnants of another train—three wagons altogether. “They’re stopping here,” Bridger said. “They like the country and mean to settle. They’re a mighty smart bunch—got everything they need right in their own crowd, butcher, baker, blacksmith, cobbler, and all like that. They didn’t pick a single man unless they needed him for a purpose.”

Sitting beside the nearest wagon, sunning himself on a stool, was a gray-bearded old man so ancient and rickety you’d have thought he might fall apart any minute. I could see my father trying to fight down the question.

“What’d they bring the old fellow for?”

“To start their graveyard with.”

On the way back to camp, Coe said, “Did you hear what he said about that stream? I don’t believe it for a minute; it doesn’t stand to reason.”

“That man Bridger,” replied my father, about to burst, “is the most preposterous humbug and liar I’ve met in the course of a lifetime devoted to the study of such creatures. I don’t believe anything about him. I don’t even think he’s an Indian fighter.”

“Well,” observed Coulter, “you can’t say I didn’t warn you. But you corner him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d fight.”

All of us except Jennie stood beside the train as it pulled out, waving handkerchiefs and calling our last goodbyes. We had exchanged names and addresses, the way people do, and made vows of keeping in touch later on in the gold fields, knowing in our
hearts that we weren’t apt to meet again, ever. The passing of time eases the best intentions; it’s sad but true.

Coulter would return to Salt Lake City. When he said so, I believed him. But not Jennie. “That’s the last we’ll see of that critter,” she said, angrily fighting back the tears. “He’s purely worthless.” Standing apart, she turned around when he grinned and waved, riding by. “You performed me a service,” he had said to my father. “I’ll be along back to see you through to California.”

Then he offered one last piece of advice. “A word about Bridger, now. Never mind his yarn-spinning. Trust him as you’d trust your mother. You wouldn’t know it, but he’s guiding you because I asked him. So keep this in mind; never forget it. Trust him absolutely. There’s just about nothing he can’t do. And now—goodbye, all.”

My father spoke up with real affection. “Coulter, we regard you as a member of the family. It’ll be a happy day when we see you back.” Kissel crushed some of his bones with a handshake, and Mrs. Kissel broke down and sniffled; even Coe looked distressed to see him go.

So we split up. It was a mournful pass to come to. I found myself holding Po-Povi’s hand, with a good-sized lump in my throat. It was like watching all our hopes and plans go fading off in the distance. Would we really get to California? I didn’t much think so any longer.

Led by its owner, we pulled out of Fort Bridger before dawn on the day promised, prepared for a hard passage to the Great Salt Lake, much of it over scorched desert and soda flats.

Major Bridger was in a cheerful humor, but he cautioned us that the country was humming with Indians and that we must keep a sharp lookout.

He placed Coe’s wagon, still mule-drawn, in the front, the Brice wagon with children and Mrs. Kissel next in line, and our new pack mules, Kissel’s and my father’s, in the rear. The men were supposed to go on a kind of sentinel duty, roaming the flanks and dropping behind but never getting out of eyeshot. I trotted on Spot up forward near our guide, who rode an Indian pony as raggedy and careless as himself.

By dawn we were well beyond sight of the Fort, keeping to the eastern fringe of the mountains. This route, a short cut by the Great Salt Lake, was coming into use by the bolder of the California immigrants, but the majority still clung to the old trail that continued to Fort Hall and the Humboldt River.

It was October, now, but it was a blistering-hot day. Before us stretched an empty waste as forlorn as the eve of creation—no trees, no water, no grass, no growth except artemisia, or sagebrush, and I didn’t care if I never saw that wiry shrub again.

When it was full light, and the sun broiling down from about fifty yards high, we began to see the same old thrown-away furniture and wreckage. And before the day was out, dead oxen again, along with graves: “E. Pritchard, Died July 28, 1849.” My
father picked up a novel called
The Forger
, by a man named G.P.R. James, and read it walking along, occasionally laughing at something funny, but when Bridger pointed in his dry, squinted-up way at a file of Indians that had taken up the march beside us, scavenging, he put it hurriedly away.

The Indians were Utes, all but naked, so ratty and poor they made the Pawnees seem elegant by comparison. In the afternoon, at a time when the trail lay close to the hills, we passed a village of Diggers—outcast Utes—a breed so low they acted more animal than human. Bridger stopped to show a few dwellings; they were nothing but holes in the ground, a fox’s den, with a crude lean-to over the weather side. My father made a hasty sketch of one; I have it now: a shallow pit in which a stark-naked woman crouches, eyes wide and frightened; beside her a bowl of roasting crickets; and hung against a pole, in a skin pouch laced to a board, a papoose wrinkled and shrunken. One of the scavengers now came up with hand thrust out, saying, “Chreesmas gif, Chreesmas gif,” but Bridger shooed him away.

“They beg in Brigham Young’s city,” he said. “They ain’t dangerous unless they got an advantage, and then they’ll kill you with pleasure.”

The scout had been businesslike and silent, considering his reputation for talking, and I think my father was relieved. Bridger placed a strain on him. He never knew how to act when the tall tales began. Only twice during the day did our guide pull any nonsense, and as Mr. Coe said, these two made up for everything. Once, rolling along a perfectly straight, well-marked trau, in what seemed like the middle of the desert, Bridger stopped and glanced to the right and left, as if checking his bearings. Then he uncorked his spyglass and had a careful look around. After this, he wheeled his horse off the trail and began a wide, bothersome detour, finally ending up back on the road.

“I durn near made that same mistake again,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve bashed up me and my horse twicet already.”

“What is it? Why’d we leave the trail?” demanded my father, as the others rode up, sweating in the sun.

Bridger pointed back. “It’s that pesky road-block—a mountain of pure glass. You can’t see it unless you get right on top, almost.”

“Where?” cried my father. “Surely you can’t be serious. I can’t see a thing.”

The trouble with this fellow was, his departures from normal were so crazy and unexpected he caught everybody flat-footed. That’s what made my father so mad.

“First time I encountered it, I fired at an antelope and didn’t ruffle a hair. I laid down a regular bombardment until I found out what was the matter. He was standing on the other side.”

“A mountain of transparent glass,” said my father, with heavy scorn.

“You’d better have a last look. You don’t see them often. There ain’t more than a handful in the entire West.”

“No, I expect not,” said my father, about to blow up again. “How do you like it, Coe? Pretty, don’t you think?”

Falling in with the humor, Coe shook his head. “You couldn’t convince me it’s glass. If I know anything about gems that mountain’s solid blue-white diamond.”

“You don’t say,” said Bridger, studying Coe with new interest. “Well, now, you may be right. Next trip out, I’ll bring a jeweler with an eyeglass and have him look her over. Be worth a fortune, if it wasn’t flawed.”

“Get up,” cried my father, swatting one of the mules. “We’ve got a journey to finish.” But in an hour, he’d forgotten the mountain and made the mistake of asking Bridger what he knew about California.

“I’ve got a fair knowledge of it,” said Bridger. “I’ve been out three times, and enjoyed it, but wouldn’t care to live there.”

“Why not?” demanded my father, bridling slightly.

“Well, sir, I’d in nowise relish the longevity. No, when my threescore and ten’s up, as they say in the Book, I’ll be ready to call her off.”

“What do you mean? What the deuce has longevity got to do with it? California’s just like every place else.”

“Not exactly. There’s a difference in that respect,” said Bridger. “A few die on schedule, give or take a couple of decades, but the majority’ll go right on without a hitch. You never know they’ve aged. It’s the climate. Take the case of a man I know out there, name of Psalter, living north of Sacramento. If I remember right, he’ll be two hundred and fifty-five in November. He’s a tragic example, but there don’t seem to be any help for it. When he got to be two hundred, he was plumb wore out, wanted to die and get some rest. But he couldn’t make it, no matter what. He went to the priests and begged permission to commit suicide, but they thumbsed down on it—said there wasn’t any scriptural precedent.

“Then his youngest sister—she couldn’t have been over a hundred and fifty and hadn’t been paid any attention to before, being the baby—came up with a fine idea. ‘Why don’t you move away, get out of the state, maybe that’ll work?’ she said. Well, sir, he was tickled pink. He arranged all his affairs and journeyed over into Nevada, and sure enough, he died, within a month. But he’d left in his will he wanted to be buried in California, so they plopped him down, after a beautiful service, in the Sacramento graveyard, with a marble slab to seal the bargain: ‘Horace E. Psalter. 1594-1794. Rest in Peace.’

“However—” Bridger paused and squinted sideways at my father.

“Yes, of course. I quite understand,” said my father in disgust, as if he was talking to an idiot.

“Yes, sir,” said Bridger. “The climate was too much for him. He wouldn’t stay dead. He came back to life, and being a husky sort of fellow, he busted the box and pushed right out. He was perfectly resigned, last time I saw him. Says he don’t aim to make any more tries—he’ll stay on and die in California if it takes till Doomsday.”