Wind Walker (22 page)

“You’re sure ’bout makin’ these Marmons welcome like this, Gabe?”

“I get back from Fort John, I’ll make it good by you.”

“Not that,” he whispered with a correcting shake of his head, “I mean, do you got your mind made up to help these here Marmons gonna set up their promised land right at your back door?”

“They ain’t gonna be no trouble, not like Utes or Bannocks, raising hell an’ running off with my stock if I give ’em the chance!” Bridger snorted. “The Saints only got a differ’nt God than you an’ me, Scratch. Hell, this here Brigham Young really ain’t no differ’nt from a Snake or ’Rapaho medicine man. Some shake a rattle or look at the dried blood in the belly of a badger for some sign of the One Above.”

Bass scoffed, “An’ this here Brigham Young listens to all that his angels tell him about what God wants him to tell all his flock.”

Jim’s brow knitted. “Where you get these notions ’bout angels an’ his flock?”

“While you was havin’ supper with your Prophet, them others had a hold on my ear, telling me all ’bout this here Brigham Young bein’ the only one what knows the true word of God meant for the ears of man,” Titus confided sourly. “Damn, but they was preachin’ hard at Titus Bass. Harder’n any preaching I ever got whipped on these ol’ ears. Made my head ache with all their Urim an’ Thummin. Hell, they claimed they was the only folks bound to sit on a throne in glory. Angels named Moroni an’ Nephi … Gabe, this bunch wuss’n all the hell an’ brimstone preachers I knowed back in Kaintuck. These Marmons don’t holler sayin’s outta the Bible like McAfferty or Bill Williams neither! They got their own book they was thumpin’ an’ drummin’ on—”

“Young showed it to me. Where they get called Mormons—from their own book on the word from God,” Bridger said with an unmasked enthusiasm in his voice. “He said they still believe in the Bible, but it’s older, an’ their book is a newer word of God, meant for them what’s chose for heaven here in the latter days.”

For a moment, Titus had carefully studied his old friend. “Young change you into Marmon?”

Jim smiled and leaned forward to say in a hush, “Hell no, Scratch. But I give the man my manners an’ listened to all he had to say. We talked some more about the country an’ the Injuns an’ crops they could grow down there south of Utah Lake, but in atween it all he was giving me a sharp lesson on all they believed an’ why he’s brought his people out of Missouri—”

“Missouri!” Scratch interrupted. “Why, them Marmons hate Missouri an’ all the folks in that country! Afore I had my fill of supper for all they was poundin’ in my ears, they told me the Garden of Eden—where Adam an’ Eve was birthed by God—why, it was right outside where ol’ Fort Osage stood, near the mouth of the Blue River, on the Missouri! No preacher I ever heard spout a sermon back in Kaintuck ever come anywhere close to saying God started the hull world back yonder on the banks of the Missouri River!”

“An’ a Snake medicine man claims he can pull a evil spirit right out of a man’s mouth so he ain’t sick no more,” Jim argued. “These here Mormons just got their own way of seeing God, an’ Brigham Young says they only wanna be left alone by folks who don’t understand ’em.”

“You sure you ain’t gone Marmon on me?”

With a shake of his head, Bridger stated flatly, “No. I been out here in the Rocky Mountains too long to swaller talk about angels coming down from the clouds an’ Eden at our back door, an’ one prophet gonna talk to God hisself so he can tell me which way my stick floats an’ what don’t smell o’ horse apples.”

“We’re too damn old to change our ways now,” Titus observed, feeling a bit reassured.

“Maybeso a old beaver trapper like me can make a life for hisself helping them emigrants bound for Oregon,” Jim admitted. “But I ain’t gonna change who I am or what I come to believe in after more’n twenty winters out here.”

He plopped a gnarled hand on Bridger’s knee and said fraternally, “Time was, I didn’t figger I wanted nothing to do with no emigrants comin’ through in their wagons, stirring up the buffler an’ bringing their white women to the
mountains. But, long as them sodbusters keep right on going west to Oregon an’ don’t dally long in our country, I can help some corncrackers on their way to their own promised land on the Columbia.”

Jim grinned in the moonlight. “So we’ll both hold our tongue an’ help these here Saints find the promised land they chose for themselves. Them others, did they give you some bread with your supper?”

“It was mighty tasty, I do admit,” Scratch said as he lay on his side in the starlight. “Been some time since I ate white folks’ bread.”

“When I sat down with Brigham Young, I told him I ain’t see’d so much bread in years,” Bridger confessed as he lay back on his blankets. “So he asked me, ‘But, Mr. Bridger, how do you live without bread?’”

“What’d you tell ’im, Gabe?”

“Told him we live on meat. Dry our deer and buffler to eat in the lean times. And we also cook fresh when we can get it. Told him we have coffee to drink most of the time, for that we can have plenty of that brung out here.”

They lay in silence for a long time, until Scratch asked once again, “You’re sure ’bout bein’ so friendly to these here strangers?”

“Yes,” he answered in the dark. “Way out here on this side o’ the mountains, we ought’n treat other folks the way we wanna be treated ourselves, Scratch.”

Titus sighed, then said, “Long as it’s gonna help my friend, Jim Bridger … an’ don’t ever hurt you to open your door to this here Brigham Young.”

“Them Mormons gonna be putting down their roots and setting up shop so far south from here,” Jim explained, “we’ll never hear a sound from ’em.”

Titus Bass went to sleep that night, wanting to believe that every bit as much as his friend did.

But for the last nine days that little wary voice of warning was about all Titus had brooded on as he stayed just far enough ahead of the column’s vanguard that he would discourage any company as he dragged these saints of the latter
days beyond that fateful meeting with Gabe and on toward Fort Bridger on Black’s Fork. It was just past midafternoon when Scratch had recognized the faraway river bluffs. He immediately turned about and covered that quarter mile back to the head of the march where Brigham Young and a half dozen of his Apostles rode.

“You’ll spy Jim’s post when you round the bend in the river,” Bass announced as he reined his horse around and brought it up near the group of riders. “I’m goin’ on to see to my family. Let ever’body know you’ll be comin’ soon.”

“Your family?” Young echoed. “You have an Indian wife like Major Bridger? Half-breed children too?”

His eyes narrowed at the judgmental tone the stocky man took. “Crow. My family’s Crow.”

“Are they a tribe from this part of the country?” asked Elder Woodruff.

He wagged his head. “North of here. Far … north of here.”

William Clayton stated, “Another band of Lamanites we’ve read about, President Young.”

“Band of what?” Titus asked.

“Lamanites,” Clayton repeated.

“Indians, Mr. Bass,” Young declared. “The red man, his women and children. They are a lost tribe of Israel—banished to this wilderness because they refused to turn their ears to the continued revelations of God.”

He tried out the word, “Lay-man …”

“Lamanites,” Clayton pronounced it correctly for the old trapper.

Titus asked, “All that what some Lamanite tol’t your people back east?”

Young smiled that same hard smile he wore most of the time, the sort of smile a man would use when he was scolding a disobedient child. “No, Moroni appeared to our founder and told him the word of God was meant for His chosen here in these latter days. For hundreds of years the world has not heeded God, but now these faithful, holy people have been raised up by the Almighty to forge a trail
west—following a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, just as the thousands followed Moses out of bondage in Egypt to their Promised Land.”

So Scratch had peered this way and that in the sky that afternoon, and saw no pillar of cloud. Nor had he seen any pillar of fire blazing in the sky after the Pioneer Party had made their camp each evening.

Yet, even while there had been no fire in the heavens for the past nine nights, there was no mistaking the flames in Brigham Young’s eyes as he gazed into the distance and caught sight of something to make his case to the faithful.

“There, Mr. Bass,” the Prophet declared as he pointed up the valley. “Behold—there is your pillar of cloud.”

With murmurs of assent and wonder, Titus looked on up the valley of Black’s Fork. A thin column of woodsmoke arose from the direction of Fort Bridger. A cold chill tumbled down his spine, so cold and shocking it reminded him of stepping into a beaver pond in spring, cracking a thin layer of ice with his moccasins as he waded in to his crotch, numbing everything from his waist down. He looked again at Brigham Young, at the Prophet’s faithful, who were pointing and muttering in agreement that they were indeed seeing the pillar of cloud God had put before them, leading them onward to their Promised Land.

Chimney smoke.

Titus wagged his head and put heels to his horse. As the big red pony loped toward Fort Bridger, the old man did his best to pray that the Prophet and his chosen few would soon spot more woodsmoke to continue them on their way, to lead them far from the valley of Black’s Fork, to take their kind on to a distant kingdom of their own … so they could not possibly lay waste to the simple, earthly dreams of his old friend, Jim Bridger.

“Think of the trade my flock can offer you and Major Bridger as we bring the Saints through this wilderness to
Zion, marching those thousands right past your gates!” extolled the Prophet.

Bass’s heavy hammer clanged against the short, glowing strip of band iron one last time, a splatter of crimson fireflies spewing from the anvil, a few of them snuffing themselves out on his grimy, cinder-stained moccasins. Bass laid the hammer on top of the stump where the anvil was perched and dragged the reddish strap of iron to the bucket with a pair of long, leather-wrapped tongs. As the crimson metal
sissssed
into the bubbling water, Titus dragged the back of his right forearm over his eyes, smearing beads of moisture and blackened cinders across the top half of his face. Droplets of sweat had begun to sting his eyes already irritated by the thick smoke. No matter that he couldn’t see with the left, both eyes still burned fiercely as he worked over fire and iron, flame and muscle.

“Jim’s gonna be some pleased with that,” he sighed, wishing the Saints would turn away and leave him to his work.

“Our migration to Zion should more than guarantee Major Bridger a handsome profit for a short season’s work,” Young continued, his thumbs hooked in the top pockets of his vest. “Those Gentiles going on to … the emigrants going on to Oregon or perhaps to California will only be the sauce for what income you can make from our faithful.”

He dragged the iron from the bucket with those tongs, turning the wide hub band this way, then that, inspecting it closely before he stepped over to the fire hopper and began hauling down on the long bellows handle he had repaired just this morning, bringing his coals to full heat. As he yanked down again and again in rhythm with his heartbeat, Scratch let his eyes bounce from man to man to man, across all eight of those who had followed Brigham Young to this shady corner of the post, all of them standing there like a broad-shouldered, multiheaded shadow, having tagged along behind their leader, hanging on his every word, whim, and need, as if Young’s every utterance was the very breath of God itself.

“What’s this Gen-tile?” he asked as the coals began to glow anew with the infusion of air.

Young cleared his throat. “A Gentile is a non-Mormon. One who has not yet come to the faith that will save him everlasting.”

“Me? I’m a Gentile?”

“What faith are you, Mr. Bass?”

“I don’t figger there’s a name I can rightly put on it.”

“Were you raised up with any church teaching?”

“My ma, she tried hard,” Titus explained. “With me an’ her other young’uns. But I s’pose your kind would call her a Gentile—no matter that she was as good an’ God-fearin’ a woman as ever walked this earth.”

“I would never mean to give offense—”

“Much as she tried to get the Bible into my head an’ part o’ my heart,” Bass continued without waiting for Young to finish, “I fell into the life what snared most boys I knowed on the frontier, snared ’em same as me. Whiskey an’ wimmens. Bad whiskey and even badder wimmens.”

He liked watching how those temporal, carnal words landed on their ears: the averted eyes, the downturned faces, as each man did his best to stare at the ground; a few gazed upward as if asking for heaven to cast its gloried benevolence on this pagan sinner, perhaps even asking for a thunderbolt to be sent from above to strike down this blasphemer.

“Even Mary, the mother of Christ Jesus, was an apostate from the true church,” Young instructed. “She herself was not redeemed by the blood of her son.”

“He was the one they nailed on the cross, weren’t he?”

With a smile, the Prophet nodded. “Yes. The Christ Jesus, who married the two Marys and Martha too before He was betrayed and crucified … married all three, whereby He could sow His seed before He ascended to the right hand of God.”

“My mam didn’t ever teach me Jesus was married afore,” Bass admitted as he studied the iron band again. “Havin’ three wives, hmmm—sounds to me like you’re saying Jesus wasn’t satisfied to be with just one woman.”

“Do you doubt that Christ Jesus married the three?”

He shrugged and replied, “I don’t know enough ’bout anything to answer your questions. I’m just a simple man who manages to sin a lot—”

“What sin was once in a man’s heart is of no bearing to God,” Brigham Young replied. “And therefore of no bearing to me. It’s what a man decides to become that marks him for the Lord’s work—”

“It ain’t a case of what I’ll become, you best unnerstand. It’s what I
am
that I’ll allays be.”

The Prophet took a step closer, holding out his hands before him, palms up. “Look at these hands, Mr. Bass. Once these were the hands of a carpenter. I too was a simple man with the hands of a carpenter.” He looked up from staring at his palms. “Did you know Jesus was a carpenter Himself?”