The Covered Wagon - Emerson Hough (ebook voice reader txt) 📗

Ahead of it now dashed a horseman, swinging his rifle over his head and uttering Indian yells. He pulled up at the very door of the old adobe guard tower with its mounted swivel guns; swung off, pushed on into the honeycomb of the inner structure.

[pg 189]

The famous border fortress was built around a square, the living quarters on one side, the trading rooms on another. Few Indians were admitted at one time, other than the Indian wives of the engagés, the officials of the fur company or of the attached white or halfbreed hunters. Above some of the inner buildings were sleeping lofts. The inner open space served as a general meeting ground. Indolent but on guard, Old Laramie held her watch, a rear guard of the passing West in its wild days before the plow.

All residents here knew Jim Bridger. He sought out the man in charge.

"How, Bordeaux?" he began. "Whar's the bourgeois, Papin?"

"Down river--h'east h'after goods."

The trader, hands on his little counter, nodded to his shelves.

"Nada!" he said in his polyglot speech. "Hi'll not got a damned thing lef'. How many loads you'll got for your h'own post, Jeem?"

"Eight wagons. Iron, flour and bacon."

"Hi'll pay ye double here what you'll kin git retail there, Jeem, and take it h'all h'off your hand. This h'emigrant, she'll beat the fur."

"I'll give ye half," said Bridger. "Thar's people here needs supplies that ain't halfway acrost. But what's the news, Bordeaux? Air the Crows down?"

[pg 190]

"H'on the Sweetwater, h'awaitin' for the peelgrim. Hi'll heard of your beeg fight on the Platte. Plenty beeg fight on ahead, too, maybe-so. You'll bust h'up the trade, Jeem. My Sioux, she's scare to come h'on the post h'an' trade. He'll stay h'on the veelage, her."

"Every dog to his own yard. Is that all the news?"

"Five thousand Mormons, he'll gone by h'aready. H'womans pullin' the han'cart, sacre Enfant! News--you'll h'ought to know the news. You'll been h'on the settlement six mont'!"

"Hit seemed six year. The hull white nation's movin'. So. That all?"

"Well, go h'ask Keet. He's come h'up South Fork yesterdays. Maybe-so quelq' cho' des nouvelles h'out West. I dunno, me."

"Kit--Kit Carson, you mean? What's Kit doing here?"

"Oui. I dunno, me."

He nodded to a door. Bridger pushed past him. In an inner room a party of border men were playing cards at a table. Among these was a slight, sandy-haired man of middle age and mild, blue eye. It was indeed Carson, the redoubtable scout and guide, a better man even than Bridger in the work of the wilderness.

"How are you, Jim?" he said quietly, reaching up a hand as he sat. "Haven't seen you for five years. What are you doing here?"

He rose now and put down his cards. The game broke up. Others gathered around Bridger and greeted him. It was some time before the two mountain men got apart from the others.

[pg 191]

"What brung ye north, Kit?" demanded Bridger at length. "You was in Californy in '47, with the General."

"Yes, I was in California this spring. The treaty's been signed with Mexico. We get the country from the Rio Grande west, including California. I'm carrying dispatches to General Kearny at Leavenworth. There's talk about taking over Laramie for an Army post. The tribes are up in arms. The trade's over, Jim."

"What I know, an' have been sayin'! Let's have a drink, Kit, fer old times."

Laughing, Carson turned his pockets inside out. As he did so something heavy fell from his pocket to the floor. In courtesy as much as curiosity Bridger stooped first to pick it up. As he rose he saw Carson's face change as he held out his hand.

"What's this stone, Kit--yer medicine?"

But Bridger's own face altered suddenly as he now guessed the truth. He looked about him suddenly, his mouth tight. Kit Carson rose and they passed from the room.

"Only one thing heavy as that, Mister Kit!" said Bridger fiercely. "Where'd you git hit? My gran'pap had some o' that. Hit come from North Carliny years ago. I know what hit is--hit's gold! Kit Carson, damn ye, hit's the gold!"

"Shut your mouth, you fool!" said Carson. "Yes, it's gold. But do you want me to be a liar to my General? That's part of my dispatches."

[pg 192]

"Hit" come from Californy?"

"Curse me, yes, California! I was ordered to get the news to the Army first. You're loose-tongued, Jim. Can you keep this?"

"Like a grave, Kit."

"Then here!"

Carson felt inside his shirt and pulled out a meager and ill-printed sheet which told the most epochal news that this or any country has known--the midwinter discovery of gold at Sutter's Mills.

A flag was flying over Laramie stockade, and this flag the mountain men saw fit to salute with many libations, hearing now that it was to fly forever over California as over Oregon. Crowding the stockade inclosure full was a motley throng--border men in buckskins, engagés swart as Indians, French breeds, full-blood Cheyennes and Sioux of the northern hills, all mingling with the curious emigrants who had come in from the wagon camps. Plump Indian girls, many of them very comely, some of them wives of the trappers who still hung about Laramie, ogled the newcomers, laughing, giggling together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those drunk were other than sullenly silent and resentful as they watched the white man's orgy at Old Laramie on the Fourth of July of 1848.

[pg 193]

Far flung along the pleasant valley lay a vast picture possible in no other land or day. The scattered covered wagons, the bands of cattle and horses, the white tents rising now in scores, the blue of many fires, all proved that now the white man had come to fly his flag over a new frontier.

Bridger stood, chanting an Indian song. A group of men came out, all excited with patriotic drink. A tall man in moccasins led, his fringed shirt open over a naked breast, his young squaw following him.

"Let me see one o' them damned things!" he was exclaiming. "That's why I left home fifty year ago. Pap wanted to make me plow! I ain't seed one since, but I'll bet a pony I kin run her right now! Go git yer plow things, boys, an' fotch on ary sort of cow critter suits ye. I'll bet I kin hook 'em up an' plow with 'em, too, right yere!"

The old gray man at the gate sat and twisted his long curls.

The sweet wind of the foothills blew aslant the smokes of a thousand fires. Over the vast landscape passed many moving figures. Young Indian men, mostly Sioux, some Cheyennes, a few Gros Ventres of the Prairie, all peaceable under the tacit truce of the trading post, rode out from their villages to their pony herds. From the post came the occasional note of an inharmonic drum, struck without rhythm by a hand gone lax. The singers no longer knew they sang. The border feast had lasted long. Keg after keg had been broached. The Indian drums were going. Came the sound of monotonous chants, broken with staccato yells as the border dance, two races still mingling, went on with aboriginal excesses on either side. On the slopes as dusk came twinkled countless tepee fires. Dogs barked mournfully a-distant. The heavy half roar of the buffalo wolves, superciliously confident, echoed from the broken country.

[pg 194]

Now and again a tall Indian, naked save where he clutched his robe to him unconsciously, came staggering to his tepee, his face distorted, yelling obscene words and not knowing what he said. Patient, his youngest squaw stood by his tepee, his spear held aloft to mark his door plate, waiting for her lord to come. Wolfish dogs lay along the tepee edges, noses in tails, eyeing the master cautiously. A grumbling old woman mended the fire at her own side of the room, nearest the door, spreading smooth robes where the man's medicine hung at the willow tripod, his slatted lazyback near by. In due time all would know whether at the game of "hands," while the feast went on, the little elusive bone had won or lost for him. Perhaps he had lost his horses, his robes, his weapons--his squaws. The white man's medicine was strong, and there was much of it on his feasting day.

[pg 195]

From the stockade a band of mounted Indians, brave in new finery, decked with eagle bonnets and gaudy in beaded shirts and leggings, rode out into the slopes, chanting maudlin songs. They were led by the most beautiful young woman of the tribe, carrying a wand topped by a gilded ball, and ornamented with bells, feathers, natural flowers. As the wild pageant passed the proud savages paid no attention to the white men.

The old gray man at the gate sat and twisted his long curls.

And none of them knew the news from California.

[pg 196]

The purple mantle of the mountain twilight was dropping on the hills when Bridger and Carson rode out together from the Laramie stockade to the Wingate encampment in the valley. The extraordinary capacity of Bridger in matters alcoholic left him still in fair possession of his faculties; but some new purpose, born of the exaltation of alcohol, now held his mind.

"Let me see that little dingus ye had, Kit," said he--"that piece o' gold."

Carson handed it to him.

"Ye got any more o' hit, Kit?"

"Plenty! You can have it if you'll promise not to tell where it came from, Jim."

"If I do, Jim Bridger's a liar, Kit!"

He slipped the nugget into his pocket. They rode to the head of the train, where Bridger found Wingate and his aids, and presented his friend. They all, of course, knew of Fremont's famous scout, then at the height of his reputation, and greeted him with enthusiasm. As they gathered around him Bridger slipped away. Searching among the wagons, he at last found Molly Wingate and beckoned her aside with portentous