Wind Walker

EIGHT

They came that summer of ’47 … those dream-hungry emigrants sure as sun came. But the first of them to show up on Bridger’s doorstep weren’t bound for Oregon at all. They would claim to be the chosen lambs of God desperately in search of their Zion.

In those weeks that followed the arrival of his old friends, Jim Bridger kept Scratch and Shadrach busy with this and that around his post. Waits-by-the-Water and Shell Woman pitched in to help in a big way, what with Gabe’s Flathead wife, Cora, having died in childbirth. Both women started right up with baby Josephine, and gave a mother’s affection to six-year-old Felix too. Besides helping the trader get his store ready for the emigrant season, Magpie was right there on the heels of the two women, mostly helping out by watching over Shell Woman’s little ones when she didn’t have her hands in something with the women. But Flea—now he was given the most grown-up job of all.

Their second night at Fort Bridger, the three families sat around a cheery fire built in a pit outside the post buildings, dug near the center of the open compound where they had taken their supper of antelope, served with some Jerusalem artichokes and wild onions Flea and Magpie dug up along the river. As the stars popped into view, one by one, and the winter-cured cottonwood crackled at their feet, Bridger called young Flea over to stand at his knee.

“Your pa an’ me, we been talking,” Gabe began, then looked at the boy squarely. “You unnerstand my American talk, son?”

Flea nodded, his eyes flicking once to his father’s face.

“When I asked your pa if’n you was ready to be give a young man’s work, he said he figgered the only way to find out was to see if you was up to it.”

Flea gulped. “What work?”

“You unnerstand that word, work?”

“He does now, Jim,” Titus replied. “Maybeso he didn’t a couple days back when we rolled in here. But I think my boy’s got a quick mind about him an’ he’s caught on.”

Shadrach agreed, “He dove in like a snapper, didn’t he, Scratch?”

So Bass prodded, “G’won and tell him, Gabe.”

Bridger trained his attention on the boy, raising a hand to place it on the lad’s shoulder as everyone quieted in that circle. “One of the most important jobs I got at this here post is my horses. Man don’t have no horse in this country, he’s likely to die.”

“But Tom Fitzpatrick got hisself put afoot—-back to thirty-two! An’ he wasn’t rubbed out!” Sweete admonished.

Jim flicked him an evil look and said, “That’s another story for another time, Shadrach. Now, Flea—if’n a man ain’t got a strong horse under him, he’s likely good as dead too. Good animals always been important to your mama’s people, and to us white folks too.”

Flea nodded, his dark eyes growing all the bigger now.

“You figger you’re up to havin’ me put my horses in your care?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed, and his brow knitted.

“Flea,” Titus said in Crow, “our friend asks you if you would do a man’s work to look after all his horses at this fort.”

Without saying a word, Flea turned slowly from looking at his father to staring incredulously at Jim Bridger. Then he spoke, “Flea? You want me see to your horses?”

“That’s what I’m asking, son.”

“Ever’ morning you’ll bring ’em out of the corral over yonder.” Titus pointed at the stockaded corral attached to the fort walls, its size a bit smaller than the post compound. “Take ’em down to water, then lead ’em up to a pasture to graze for the day. You understand ever’thing I’ve said in American talk?”

The boy’s head bobbed. “I understand.”

“You want the work?”

Suddenly Flea’s smile lit up as if there were a blaze of stars behind his face. “I work with the horses, yes!”

“What about me, Gabe?” Sweete asked. “You still need me work up on the Green at your ferry?”

“You was my segundo years ago, Shad—so I know I can count on you being at my back.”

Sweete leaned forward, his powerful forearms planted on top of his knees. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“Where we need to be for the next few weeks is up to that ferry on the Green. Got to haul a load of goods there, take us a small pack string: new rope to run across the river, saws to cut timbers for the raft big enough to hold a good-sized wagon, nails an’ such we might need to build a cabin for the fellas gonna run the ferry for me.”

Leaning back slightly, his shoulders sagging with disappointment, Shad admitted, “I gotta tell you I don’t know a damned thing ’bout building a cabin, Jim. Ain’t never built a raft to float nothing anywhere near the size of a wagon, an’ I wouldn’t know the first thing ’bout stringing rope so it works a ferry.”

“By the time you an’ me get done up there together, you’ll know,” Bridger replied. “I figger I can leave you at the Green to run that ferry as my segundo. Way I see it, we got us till late June, early July afore the first of them emigrants gonna show their faces on this side of the Southern Pass.”

Bass nodded, saying, “Three of us can make short work of that.”

But the trader turned to Titus and said, “Me an’ Shad, we’ll get it done, just the two of us.”

Now Scratch’s shoulders sank with disappointment. “You don’t figger me to go along, what’m I gonna do around here?”

With a snort, Bridger waved his arm in a wide arc at the stockade walls. “Hell, coon—you’re gonna take care of Fort Bridger till I get back!”

“T-take care—”

“Watch over things: the stock mostly. But, your boy’s gonna help you do that. ’Sides taking over looking after li’l Josie, your women gonna help out with all that’s gotta get done in the store afore them emigrants show up ready to buy up ever’thing we got for sale, then be on their way to Oregon. But the biggest job you gotta see to is to rebuild my forge so you got a place to work.”

“Rebuild your forge?”

Jim shrugged. “You’re handy—I figger you can get yourself set up soon enough, and start hammering out some hardware on my forge I got out under that awning next to our quarters.”

“I-I ain’t worked a hammer an’ anvil since … spring o’ twenty-five, Jim!”

“Hell, it’ll come back to you slick as shootin’. You was trained by Hysham Troost, so I know it’ll come back quick. Need you to start cutting and shaving down wheel spokes too, with one of them drawknives. Them emigrants gonna need new spokes, and we ought’n have a few spare ox-yokes on hand too. I got one you can measure against. We’ll need clasps an’ hasps an’ joint brackets too—I figger by the time they get here, them eastern sodbusters discovered how their wagons been shrinking up an’ nothing’s fitting right no more.”

He took his eyes from Jim’s face and stared at the fire, wagging his head slightly. “I s’pose it may be just like breathin’, Gabe. Fire an’ sweat, iron an’ muscle.” Then Titus turned to look at his wife, admitting, “I ain’t got near the muscle I had when I worked for Troost, but—for you I’ll give it ever’thing I got.”

Bridger immediately leaned over and slapped Bass on the thigh. “Damme if we don’t have us a plan!” He leaped to his feet, reaching down to grab both of young Felix’s hands, sweeping his young son to his feet and spinning him away from the circle of folks at the fire, taking the boy round and round in a clumsy, flatfooted imitation of a genteel dance.

Scratch glanced over at Waits, finding her eyes wide and sparkly as she giggled, watching Bridger and his son. Leaping to his feet, Titus surprised his wife when he yanked her to her feet and dragged her a few feet from the fire to begin spinning her about in the same fashion: leaning on the left foot, then his right, as they spun on the balls of their feet, her leather dress billowing out and back, out and back, while the fringes on his leggings flew and flapped, slapping his legs and hers too as they weaved around one another and back, again and again. In a matter of heartbeats Shad had Shell Woman up and clomping around too, the small woman staring intently at the ground, ever mindful of where her husband’s big feet were landing as the pair hobbled in an ungainly circle. Laughing with the joy that only children could ever know, Magpie pulled Flea away from the fire and the two of them started spinning at full speed, their hands clasped, arms fully outstretched, heads flung back as they roared in glee.

Then suddenly it seemed everyone started to tumble onto the spring-green grass at once, spilling and tripping over one another, adults laughing and shrieking like children themselves—so much they all had tears in their eyes as they gazed at one another’s happy faces, sharing this one delicious moment of such exquisite, undiluted joy before the real work would begin on the morrow.

With the arrival of both those self-anointed sojourners fleeing the States in search of their Promised Land, and with the appearance of a train of dewy-eyed dreamers come forth from their eastern woodlands—none of these laughing, carefree people sprawled on the grass of Fort Bridger had any way of knowing this would be a summer that was to change all of their lives … forever.

Bridger was back at the fort as promised, less than a month after he and Sweete had plodded off to the northeast with their pack train of supplies for the Green River. They hadn’t been there a day before three old faces from the beaver days chanced by. Jim hired them on the spot to work for Shadrach at the ferry.

“Leastwise, they got him four walls an’ a roof over his head,” Jim explained. “Shad claimed it was for the first time in years. It’ll keep the rain off ever’ afternoon, an’ the hot sun too.”

“Summer’s comin’,” Bass agreed. “The heat be here soon.”

“An’ so will those emigrants, with their oxes and mules, every critter’s tongue hanging out as they roll up to Fort Bridger, Rocky Mountain territory!”

“Hell if that don’t have a good ring to it, Gabe!” Titus cheered. “Lookit all around you—this here’s all your’n. I s’pose it’s like them parley-voos over there at Fort John lay claim to ever’thing they put their eyes to. This side of the mountains is yours.”

“Maybeso it is after all, Scratch,” Bridger mused. “Once the emigrants cross over the pass, I’m all there is atween that American Fur Company post on the North Platte an’ the Hudson’s Bay post on the Snake.”

“That’s a helluva stretch of country, Gabe.”

“That means we’re in the right place to give them emigrants what they need as they go on their merry way to that Oregon country.”

Titus grew thoughtful. “H-how you figger Joe an’ Doc are doin’ out there?”

“Meek and Newell? In all these years since that last ronnyvoo when they pointed their noses for Oregon, I only see’d Joe back one time, when he come to fetch up my Mary Ann, take her back to Whitman’s school.”

“They made farms outta that Willamette country, like they said they was?”

Bridger nodded. “Both of ’em likely young men, Titus. They didn’t have near as many rings on ’em as you an’ me. Young niggers like them can make a go of anything. There’s nothing but time ahead for ’em. But—for fellers like us, most of our days are already on the back trail.”

He nodded reluctantly but tried a valiant grin. “Man sure does do things a bit differently when most of his time is at his back. The choices he makes. What comes to be more important to him.”

With a long sigh, Bridger said, “You done me real good here while I was away, Scratch.”

“Didn’t take longer’n a day afore the hammer felt good in my hand again.”

Jim grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “So you like blacksmithing, do you?”

“Don’t go getting the idee that I’m hiring out for no job at Bridger’s fort!” he protested.

“It’s a fine turn you done for us,” Bridger said. “The young’uns an’ me. I’ll miss your woman’s help, an’ that boy of yours too, when you light out for Crow country.”

For a moment, Bass toed his moccasin into the flaky ground near the corral gate where the two of them stood talking in the shade of the tall timbers. “’Bout that, Gabe,” he began. “Me an’ the woman, we been talking while you was away to the ferry with Shad.”

“You ain’t thinking of taking off soon?” Bridger asked, then hurried right on. “Hell, I could’ve figgered that. I don’t blame you none, Scratch: not wanting to be around when them emigrants come rolling through here with their wide-eyed young’uns screamin’ and throwin’ their Bibles at us an’ their poke bonnets—”

“Thought we’d stay for ’while, Gabe.” He interrupted Bridger just as the trader was getting to midstride.

“Maybeso till late summer. Till the last of them emigrants get on past here to Fort Hall. Me and the woman figger that’ll still give us plenty of time to ride north to find a Crow village to put in a winter with.”

“You’ll stay? By jiggies, if that ain’t the finest piece of news I’ve had in a long, long while!”

“I s’pose Shad an’ his family gonna stay on till the end of the season too.”

Bridger nodded. “Up at the ferry, he talked about laying through the winter here with us.”

“Be good for all of you. Them young’uns of yours, they need women around,” Bass admitted. “Hell, that Felix can make hisself understood to the gals, no matter he don’t speak no Crow or Cheyenne!”

“Wimmens is just that way!” Bridger enthused, then held out his hand. “Thankee, Scratch. This summer’s bound to be a season we look back on for many a year to come.”

They shook as Titus asked, “What else you see needs doin’ around here now afore them corncrackers show up on Jim Bridger’s doorstep?”

“Why—I was gonna push on over Southern Pass to Fort William, buy me some trade goods afore the first wagons reach them. Don’t figger any of those sodbusters gonna coax their wagons this far west till the second week of July.”

He wagged his head. “Can’t help you do nothing with Fort John. My face ain’t welcome in them parts—”

“I don’t need you to come with me. I can handle the pack string my own self,” Bridger declared. “But, I’m taking Shell Woman and her pups with me when I light out, morning after next.”

“I’m sartin Shad’s got a case of the lonelies for her.”

“An’ he asked if’n you’d come back for a day or so,” Bridger explained.

“To see Shadrach?”

“Yep. He figgered things was gonna get busy for ’im and the others, once the easters start showing up to pay their toll on the ferry, so he wanted to spend a li’l time with you while he could. Him an’ me, we’ll have the hull durn winter to catch up an’ tell lies. But, the two of you ain’t got much time to be knee to knee till you take off north come the end of the season.”

Titus felt that smile grow not just on his face but all through him. “Damn, if you two ain’t about the finest friends a feller could have, Gabe. Yeah, for sartin, let’s us go see Shad. I’d like to lay eyes on this ferry you two strung across the Green River for them wagon folks!”

So Titus had scratched the dogs’ ears and kissed his family in farewell, then helped deliver Shadrach’s family to the banks of the Green River a few miles south of the mouth of the Big Sandy. It brought a sting to his eyes to see how happy it made all four of them to be reunited once more: man, woman, and young ones too. The way things were meant to be. Early that following morning the three men bridled the string of mules, then cinched on the pads and empty pack-saddles Bridger would bring back laden with trade goods for the store at his post on Black’s Fork.

“I figger I can ride on with you till we reach the Sweetwater,” Scratch announced after they had muscled the mules across the Green by rope and pulleys, then had the animals strung out in line.

Sweete bobbed his head. “With the other fellas here to help, I ain’t got nothing for him to do here, Gabe. Maybeso he can give you a hand with them cantankerous mules till you reach the other side of the pass.”

“Sure you don’t mind heading in that direction?”

“Ever’thing’s near ready for them wagon folks back at your fort,” Bass declared. “So my woman’ll just shoo me outta the store when I stick my nose in there. Yep—I’ll give you a hand with this here string till we hit the Sweetwater.”

The grin shining on Bridger’s face right then convinced Titus that a few extra days with an old friend were more than worth any struggle that might come with those contrary-minded mules. In fact, the following day as they were slowly making their way up the Little Sandy toward the Southern Pass, Titus had been reflecting on just how much more enjoyable it was to be in this high, dry country with a string of mules than it was to be back at Fort Bridger where he felt like he was underfoot and clearly not wanted around by his wife and Magpie, womenfolk who constantly fluttered from one task to the next—with the children and the trading post and preparing meals. With a mule a man realized what he was up against and could coax some occasional cooperation out of them … but, with women, it was nothing less than a tale of confusion, confabulation, and not a little woe sometimes—trying his best to sort out why a woman would sometimes utter the exact opposite of what she really meant to tell him.

“Man’s just a simple critter,” he declared to Bridger that afternoon. “We’re the last of God’s creations ever gonna figger out the heart of a woman.”

Jim chuckled in the warm sun. “Soon as a man understands he ain’t never gonna read the sign in a woman’s breast, the sooner he’ll make peace with life—”

“What’s that yonder?” Scratch interrupted.

“Looks to be a string of riders.”

Bass shaded his eyes with a hand. “The first emigrants come west ’thout wagons?”

Shaking his head, Bridger said, “Don’t callate how they could. Have no idea who they be. Or what they’re doing out here.”

“Them riders is all dressed in civil clothes,” Titus commented as he peered into the mid-distance with that one good eye, then turned in the saddle to dig in his bags for his spyglass. “Ain’t any Fort John fellas, is it?”

“Not a reason they’d be comin’ this way,” Jim surmised. “Besides, them parley-voos wouldn’t be dressed in settlement clothes, would they?”

“If it ain’t Frenchies from the Platte, what bunch gonna march over the pass ’thout no wagons?”

Bridger waited as Bass brought the spyglass to his eye, then asked, “You see any women with that bunch?”

“Nary a one.”

Jim said, “No womenfolk—squaws or corncracker—neither one. Such only makes me curiouser and curiouser who them riders are.”

He squinted through the spyglass and surmised, “Maybe their wagons and women coming behind where we can’t see.”

Bridger nodded. “That’s the story. Damn, if this first bunch ain’t one helluva lot earlier’n I figgered they’d come. For the life of me—can’t callate how they made it across the prerra so fast.”

Titus watched the horsemen draw closer and closer, those in the vanguard suddenly spotting the small mule train already pulled up at the side of a low hill overlooking the Little Sandy. “Only way for ’em to be this far this early is they got ’em a jump on leavin’ the settlements, or they hunkered down for winter right out on the prerra—ahead of ever’one else.”

“Maybeso you’re right,” Jim declared. “This bunch had to spend the winter a long way out from the settlements for ’em to make it here now.”

“S’pose we ought’n go on down there an’ be civil, don’t you, Gabe?”

“That’s the hull thing ’bout being a trader in the heart of this big wilderness,” Bridger confessed. “Man’s gotta be a good neighbor to what all kinds come riding through his country.”

The sun was suspended just past midsky as the first four riders broke away from the head of that gaggle of horsemen and loped toward the two old trappers.

“Elder Orson Pratt!” announced the long-faced one who was first to speak. He held out his hand. “What are your names?”

“Elder?” Titus echoed. “You don’t look so damn old to me.”

“That’s a way our brethren have of addressing one another,” Pratt declared with a self-assured grin. “The title doesn’t refer to our age, just our wisdom in the word of God. What name do you go by, good sir?”

“Titus Bass,” he answered, tapping the brim of his wide hat with two fingertips. “This here’s Jim Bridger.”

Pratt’s face lit up, as did the countenances of the other three. “The Jim Bridger?”

“I’m the onliest one,” Gabe replied.

Turning sideways in his saddle, Pratt said exuberantly, “Elder Woodruff, ride back and tell the President that God has surely blessed us this day. Explain that Jim Bridger himself has been delivered into our hands!”

As the round-faced man in the flat-brimmed black hat reined his horse around and loped back toward the main party, Pratt didn’t get a word out before Bridger spoke up, “Me delivered into your hands?”

The stranger nodded enthusiastically. “We prayed we might run onto you, Mr. Bridger. Two days ago we met up with a small company of men come from Oregon.”

“Oregon?” Jim repeated. “They was headed east?”

“On their way to the States on some business,” Pratt explained. “Left Oregon on the fifth of May, horseback and making good time they claimed. Major Harris, their guide, was bringing them through to Laramie, where he would take his leave of their party and stay at that post until he could hire out to one of the emigrant companies if they wished to employ his services, leading them back to Oregon.”

Titus asked, “That where your train is headed?”

Pratt shook his head. “My, no. We’re on the way to a land of our own. Where the Lord Himself is guiding us.”

“We are the Saints of the living God,” declared the man beside Pratt, his face flushed with the heat. “We have come to find the paradise He has promised to our Prophet, President Young.”

“Saints, you said?” Titus commented as his eyes moved across the three strangers. They did have the same look about them as those men camped near the Pueblo when he arrived to deliver word of the slaughter in Taos a few months back. “I met me a hull camp of fellers down on the Arkansas last winter what called themselves Saints too. There more’n one bunch o’ Saints come west to find their promised land?”

The second man had turned to Pratt and was talking almost before Bass was finished. “That must be Captain Brown’s party. Praise God for their deliverance!”

Then he turned back to address Bass and Bridger, “I am Elder James Little. This is good news you’ve brought us this day about our first pioneer party to push west from Winter Quarters on the Platte.”

“Pioneers?” Bridger echoed as the rest of the main body came up.

“We are the vanguard of a mighty migration,” stated a solid man as he brought his horse to a halt. The solid, big-honed man wore no mustache, only a full beard, and his eyes appeared to shine with the first sign of a fever. “Good day to you both. I am President Young. Brigham Young. Pray, which of you is Jim Bridger?”

“He is,” Titus said, indicating his friend.

Young heeled his horse forward, stopping immediately on Bridger’s off side, and held out his hand. “I am very, very pleased to meet you, Mr. Bridger.”

They shook as Jim said, “Call me Jim.”

“Then you must be sure to call me Brigham.”

“You’re chief to these here Saints?” Titus asked. “An’ them Saints I met down on the Arkansas last winter?”

“Captain Brown’s party is safe and well?”

“They was when I last saw them middle of winter.”

Young smiled. “This is truly an auspicious day, brothers! We learn that our fellow Mormons are safe in the hand of God, and Jim Bridger has been brought to help us.”

“Marmons?” Titus repeated.

“No … Mor-mons,” Young corrected, his face hardening.

“That’s what I said: Mar-mons,” he replied. “Thought you said you were saints.”

With a benevolent smile, Young explained, “We are known by both names. Ours is the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, but most folks call us Mormons, because of the Book of Mormon we read, revelations of the latter day.”

“Two names for the same thing,” Bass muttered to Bridger out of the side of his mouth. “Ain’t that just like a confabulating religion?”

“Are-you bound for your post?” Young asked Bridger, stoically ignoring Bass’s comment.

Jim wagged his head. “Fort John for supplies.”

“Could I prevail upon you to spend some time with us before we proceed on our way?” Young pleaded. “You see, we have these maps of Colonel Fremont’s. It would be most helpful if you could—”

“Fremont?” Bridger snorted with a huge grin and a shake of his head. “Best you don’t count on them Fremont maps none! Might end up marching right into the sea, you foller a map drawed by the Colonel Fremont I know!”

“They’re not to be relied upon?” the Prophet asked, dumbfounded.

“Truth is,” Jim said, “I’m ashamed of any map Fremont’d draw. He knows nothing of the country hereabouts.”

Drawing in a long sigh, Young said, “Exactly, Mr. Bridger. That’s why it was God’s will that He delivered you to me here. Weeks ago I heard you alone were the man to know this interior country. And for weeks now I’ve prayed God would lead me to you.”

Squinting his eyes, Jim asked, “What you want of me, Brigham?”

The man’s face lit up. “Why, I want you to help me find the Promised Land for my people!”

That afternoon as Bridger and Bass joined the Mormon pioneers in making camp beside the ford of the Little Sandy, Scratch got to brooding that Brigham Young sounded more and more like the Moses of a bygone day, what with all the stories his mother had read him from her great family Bible back in Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky. This one, a new Moses, explaining how he was leading his people out of turmoil and despair back east, where they could not practice their chosen religion in Illinois or Missouri, guiding his flocks of faithful onto the prairie to escape to Zion, much as Moses led his people into the wilderness in search of their own Promised Land.

“The information you give us about the country west of here is considerably more favorable than the news given us by Major Harris,” Orson Pratt declared at that great council of the Twelve held beside the ford of the Little Sandy, where Bridger and Bass agreed to tarry till breakfast, answering every last one of the Saints’ questions concerning the unknown country ahead.

“If this here Harris is a feller of dark skin,” Bridger explained, “I figger you run onto Moses Harris, but he goes by the name Black Harris. You read the same sign, Scratch?”

Bass nodded.

Brigham Young confessed, “Said he was a pilot—could guide for us. We shared a camp with him last night at Pacific Springs, but, I’ll admit I never got the man’s first name. Moses.”

Bridger said, “I don’t know how he come to call hisself a major, but I’d be curious to hear what he told you Mormons ’bout where you’re headed.”

“There’s the lake where I feel I’m drawn,” Brigham declared. “I asked him about that lake.”

“Big’un, or small?” Bridger inquired. “Salt or sweet?”

Young grinned. “Salt. Yes! Salt.”

“What’d Harris say ’bout it?”

“Not much good,” Young admitted, his jowls working. “The whole region is sandy, destitute of timber of any size, and there’s no vegetation but for the wild sage. Tell me, should I trust the word of Major Harris?”

Making a casual sign of the cross from brow to breast, Bridger explained, “Can’t figger what he’d know of that part of the country. As for me, there’s plenty of timber. Last twenty year, I made sugar from the trees. Right where Harris told you there ain’t no timber.”

“So you do know the valley?”

Titus snorted, “Know it? Hell, Bridger floated on the Salt Lake his own self.”

The Prophet was taken aback. “You’ve floated the lake? Then it isn’t all as big as Fremont shows it is on his map?”

“It’s so durn big we figgered it for the ocean at first!” Jim explained.

“I ’member you telling me that story, Gabe,” Bass said with fond remembrance. “Not long after I first met up with you. Same time I met Beckwith^* too.”

Bridger smiled. “I recollect that too, sitting by the crik an’ scrubbin’ the grease off our hides. Shit, weren’t we the young bucks back then?”

The Prophet waved a hand in the manner of a man impatient to bring someone else’s conversation back to his topic. “What do you know of Hastings’s route?”

“It’s a likely way to get where you’re goin’,” Bridger answered.

The Prophet drew a few lines in the dirt at their feet. “Through Weber’s Fork?”

“Yep. Go right on by my fort, keep marching south by west instead of turning north for Fort Hall. That takes you on Hastings’s road to California. He come out last summer—”

“So that route will lead us to the valley of the Salt Lake?”

“Less’n you get lost off it. Been least a hunnert wagons go through there last year, by way of Hastings’s road.”

“What do you know of the country beyond the valley?”

Jim hastily scratched some lines on the ground with the tip of his belt knife. “After you get around these here mountains, it’s purty flat for aways.”

“From there?”

He jabbed his knife into the grassy soil. “A country covered with a hard, black rock. Ever’ stone looks to be glazed, just like glass. An’ ever’ piece so hard and sharp it’ll cut your horses’ hooves to ribbons in a matter of a mile.”

G. A. Smith leaned forward and asked, “South of the valley of the Salt Lake, what lies there?”

“You run onto the Green again,” Jim answered. “The way runs through some level country, then winds into some hilly ground, but all of it bare as the face of hell, all the way to the salt sea.”

Howard Egan interrupted now. “Hastings reports that from your fort to the Salt Lake it is no more than a hundred miles. How far say you?”

“I been that way more’n half-a-hunnert times,” Bridger declared. “But I couldn’t lay any number on how far it is from my post.”

Wilford Woodruff asked, “Can we pass through the mountains farther south of here with wagons?”

“Sartin you can,” Jim replied. “But there’s places you’ll be in heavy timber, where you’ll have to cut your way through for wagons.”

Now Young asked, “You said you’d floated the lake. Have you been to the other side?”

“I know a half dozen men or more been around that lake,” Bridger said. “Had a brigade over there one autumn. Some of ’em got their horses stole by Diggers or Utes^*—you best watch out for them Utes, they’ll be troublesome for you—so we cut some canoes outta cottonwoods an’ sent our men around the lake, looking for beaver.”

“How long did it take for them to bring back the beaver pelts?”

He grinned at Young. “Never did find no beaver, and them boys was about three moons getting back to us. Said it was more’n five hunnert fifty miles to get around.”

“What of these Indians stole your horses?”

“Utahs and Diggers both, bad Injuns. They catch you out, got you beat on the odds—they’ll plunder your outfit an’ whup you, if’n they don’t just kill you outright. But, a bunch big as you got here, ain’t got no worry. Them Injuns is yeller cowards less’n they got big odds in their favor.”

“With my apologies, President Young?” James Little injected. “I’d like to ask Mr. Bridger about the favorable conditions for growing our crops, like corn.”

“Yes, how is the soil in the valley?” asked William Clayton.

“I know of a feller was a trapper too, he has him a small place up in the valley of Bear River,” Bridger explained. “Soil’s good up there for his growing season, so I figger it’s good on south in the Salt Lake country. Only trouble is—”

“Trouble?” Young repeated the word with his stentorian voice.

“I figger the nights get too cold in the Salt Lake Valley for your people to grow Missouri field corn. Frosts of a night’ll kill off most grain. Country south of Utah Lake better for your crops.”

Three of the bystanders immediately leaned over Brigham Young’s shoulders as the Prophet hunched in study of his Fremont maps.

“Ah, here it is,” Young announced with pride. “Is this the valley?”

Jim squinted and asked, “A little’un? South of the Salt Lake?”

“Yes,” the Prophet assured.

“That’s the place I’m telling you of,” Bridger continued. “There’s a band of good Injuns down that way, got farms of their own, and they raise grains. I can buy the very best wheat from ’em. As I recollect that country, I ’member a valley down that way. If there was ever a promised land your God was leading you to, it’s gotta be that valley aways on south of the Salt Lake Valley.”

Surprised at that declaration, Young stammered, “W-why do you call it a promised land?”

“There’s a cedar grows down there, bears a fruit, like juniper berries, but bigger an’ yellow—’bout the size of a small plum. And the Injuns in the country ain’t thieves. They feed themselves: pick them berries and grind ’em into a meal.”

Little asked, “There’s a lot of this fruit?”

“I figger I could gather more’n a hunnert bushels off one tree alone,” Jim declared. “I’ve lived on that fruit afore, when I couldn’t bring no game to bait.”

“How’s the water, Mr. Bridger?” asked Egan.

“Streams running outta the mountains all over, and many springs too.”

Young sighed with impatience, “How far is it from the valley of the Salt Lake?”

Jim brooded a moment, then said, “Twenty days’ ride from there.”

The Prophet’s face hardened. “That far?”

“Maybe not that far … just the country you gotta go through to get there is so bad. Nothin’ much for your animals to eat. Not like it is here on the Little Sandy, where your horses got all the feed they want. But once you get there, you’ll find a copper mine on one of the rivers running through the valley. Fact be, there’s a whole mountain of copper. Gold an’ silver down there too. I never had no use for such. You spot veins of coal in the hills. Yessir, that land is good. That there’s your promised land, Brigham Young. Soil is rich. Nights don’t get cold in the growin’ season. That country is thick with persimmons. Ever you ate a persimmon? That’s a shame you ain’t. There’s wild grapes down there too, for a man to make the best wines.”

“It takes a good climate to grow grapes, Prophet,” commented Woodruff.

So Brigham asked, “How far north have you seen these grapes growing?”

“Never saw any around Utah Lake,” he answered, “but I seen lots of cherries and berries. That’s better country than the valley of the Salt Lake. But, it’s far better south of there, where I told you. Plenty of timber, an’ the fish in the streams ain’t never been caught. Even found some wild flax growing down there.”

Young asked, “How many years has it been since you were in that country?”

“A year ago, this coming July,” Bridger declared. “There’s good rain there, but not much wind. If your God brung you out here to a promised land, it’s for sure it ain’t in the Salt Lake Valley. By gonnies, you won’t find no promised land till you get south of Utah Lake.”

The Prophet brushed both hands down the front of his dusty vest and said, “Perhaps it would not be prudent of us to bring a great population to that basin until we have ascertained whether grain will grow there or not, to sustain our faithful.”

At that moment three more men stepped up to the assembly, one of whom announced, “Supper is heated, President Young.”

The Prophet stood and tugged on the points at the bottom of his vest. “I would like to take my supper in the shade of that tree over there, Brother Whipple. Would you throw down a blanket and set two places under the branches?”

“T-two, sir?”

Young turned to peer at Jim. “Would you do me the honor of eating with me tonight? I have so many more questions I want to ask you about the valley of the Salt Lake … and that valley you said was God’s own Promised Land. Join me, please?”

“We be glad to,” Bridger replied.

Young cleared his throat. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding, Mr. Bridger. I invited only you to dine with me. Not your friend here.”

“You don’t wanna eat with him, then I ain’t—”

“Gabe,” Bass interrupted. “G’won ahead with this fella. S’all right. I ain’t gonna go hungry.”

Jim studied his eyes a minute. “Awright. I’ll eat my supper an’ then we’ll make camp. Light out in the morning.”

Titus nodded, then watched Brigham Young turn Bridger away, the two of them walking toward the tree where the three young men were spreading a blanket and preparing to serve supper.

A strange people, Bass thought to himself as he sighed and turned away. You’d think a man what calls hisself a prophet of God would know where God wants him to go already, Titus brooded. Wouldn’t you think this Brigham Young would have no need to ask Jim Bridger for directions to the Promised Land?

^* James P. Beckwith (sometimes spelled Beckwourth).

^* Tribes of the central and southern basin and plateau region.