Eleven
As soon as Jamie and Sam and the mules vanished into the rocks those behind sought cover.
“No decent man would do that,” Sam remarked. “They must be scalawags.”
Jamie did not reply. His mind had already shifted to what the Shawnee called the Warrior's Way. His eyes had taken in all his surroundings, picking out the best defensive positions and any place he and Sam might be vulnerable. He concluded that they were in a very good spot.
“Secure the mules, Sam. And bring the rifles up here when you return.”
“Are they Indians, Jamie?”
“No. White men. But I don't have a clue as to who they might be. And that troubles me.”
After Sam had picketed the mules and gathered up the rifles, he said, “You told us about the man you had trouble with last summer, Jamie. Could this be him and his kin?”
“Maybe. But it could be anybody. To have lived no longer than I have, I certainly managed to gather more than my share of enemies.”
Sam nodded his head in agreement with that. Jamie had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and Sam had never known nor could think of anyone in recent memory who had more enemies than Jamie MacCallister.
The puzzle was suddenly solved when a shout rang out. “You give us them fine-lookin' mules and you boys can ride on. There ain't no mules worth dyin' for. Think about that.”
“Highwaymen,” Sam said with a snort.
Jamie smiled. “How can they be highwaymen when there are no highways out here, Sam?”
Sam shook his head. Jamie's sense of humor could surface at the strangest of times. “Then we'll just call them thieves.”
“Among other things.”
“How 'bout it, boys?” the shout came from the west of their location.
“Why don't you come and take them,” Jamie yelled defiantly.
“That ain't very smart on your part,” the unknown man yelled. “You bes' think 'bout that some.”
Jamie leveled his rifle and put a big ball whining and bouncing among the rocks where the thieves were hiding. He did not expect to hit anyone, and he didn't, but judging from the yelling, he sure caused some anxious moments among the brigands.
“Fire into those rocks, Sam. Let's give them something to think about.”
Sam and Jamie emptied eight rifles into the rocks as fast as they could pull their triggers, and this time they drew blood. A man gave out a terrible shout of pain, which was followed by horrible choking sounds, then silence.
“You sorry sons!” the voice shouted again. “You've kilt my partner.”
“Good!” Sam yelled.
Jamie looked at him and grinned. It had taken Sam awhile to learn about law and order in the wilderness, but once he caught on, the lesson stayed with him.
“That ball took half his head off!” the indignant brigand yelled.
Jamie and Sam remained silent. They had a small spring behind them in the rock. Not enough water for a sustained standoff but enough to get them by for a day or two. However, Jamie had no intention of letting this continue for a day or two. Sam, looking at the set of Jamie's jaw, could read that in his face. Jamie's eyes were bleak and cold, the pale blue softness replaced by a terrible hard light. Jamie would befriend anyone who needed help, but cross him, and he would become a deadly foe.
Suddenly, there came a shout from the rocks. “We'll meet again, boys! No man crosses Pete Thompson and lives long to boast about it.”
“Who is Pete Thompson?” Sam asked.
“I don't know,” Jamie replied. “But he's a fool, telling us his name after threatening to steal our mules.”
Seconds after the sound of the brigands' leaving reached them, Jamie was out of the rocks and moving toward the rocks just below them. He stood for a moment over the body of the dead man. Thompson had been right: the ball had made a mess of the man's head.
“You know him?” Sam asked.
Jamie shook his head. “No. Ground's too hard to dig here. Let's gather up some rocks and cover him best we can. Then we'll move on.”
Sam had long grown accustomed to Jamie's coldness when it came to dealing with outlaws, so the suggestion did not shock him as it would have years back. Sam went through the man's pockets and found only a few coins; no clue as to who he might have been. After covering the outlaw with rocks, Jamie went to retrieve the mules, and Sam Montgomery stood for a moment over the mound of rocks, battered hat in hand. He knew he should say something over the remains, but the words just would not come to him. He finally shook his head and walked back to Jamie and the mules. Jamie just looked at him and said nothing. Five minutes later, they were on the trail, heading east toward Bent's Fort.
* * *
Jamie asked around at the fort, but no one there had ever heard of anyone called Pete Thompson.
“Country's fillin' up,” a trapper said. “A body can't ride a whole week without seein' some settlers tryin' to scratch out a crop somewheres. But with the good comes the bad. I'll shore pass the word 'bout Thompson. I get him in gunsights, that'll be the end of Pete Thompson. We don't need his kind out here.”
“I got a harpsichord in the back,” Jamie was told when he placed his order for a piano. “Been here nigh on five years. Man ordered it and never come back to get it. I guess his horse throwed him or a bear grabbed him or a rattlesnake struck him or the Injuns got him. I can make you a real deal on it.”
“I'll take it,” Jamie said quickly, without even inquiring as to the price.
A trapper standing nearby said, “You cain't tote no harpsichord acrost country on a mule, son. Thar wouldn't be nothin' left of it time you got where you was goin'.”
“Who owns that piece of a wagon out back?” Sam asked.
“Why . . . nobody,” the counterman said. “You want it, take it.”
And thus began the legend of the harpsichord. Years later, long after Andrew became one of the young country's best loved concert pianists, he still delighted in telling how his father and Sam Montgomery transported a harpsichord across several hundred miles of wilderness . . . and managed to get it to the valley in one piece.
It was quite a sight as Jamie and Samâwith Sam driving the wagonâpulled out at dawn from Bent's Fort.
“I want to hear some pretty music from the high country!” a trapper called out. Jamie waved.
“Hell,” another mountain man said. “Let's ride with them. I want to be shore that music machine gits to where somebody can make pretty sounds come out of it.”
“Damn good idee,” another said. “Let's do it.”
And so it was that a dozen heavily-armed, grizzled, buckskin-clad, bearded, and uncurried trappers and mountain men escorted the harpsichord from Bent's Fort to the valley. They encountered several bands of Indians, some of whom were decidedly unfriendly. But none of the war-painted Indians wanted to tangle with that tough-looking bunch. Several times, after supper, the men unloaded the harpsichord and Sam played the few tunes that he knew. It didn't matter that he played the same songs over and over, for to the mountain men, long separated from kith and kin, it brought back memories of parents, brothers and sisters, sweethearts, and a way of life they had long abandoned. Many times, Sam played long into the quiet night. Indians listened in amazement to the sounds in the darkness, looking at one another and shaking their heads. Truly, all white men were crazy.
Twelve
Andrew took to the harpsichord like a duck to water, while Rosanna's interests had shifted and she began to write. Sarah and Sam said she was gifted and should be encouraged.
Jamie listened and did not have to be hit on the head to know what was coming next. As usual, he was correct in his thinking.
“I've been talking with Sam and Sarah,” Kate said one evening, as she and Jamie sat in the dogtrot of the large cabin.
“Uh-huh,” Jamie said and waited for her to drop the other shoe.
“I think that Andrew and Rosanna should go back east to school.”
Jamie smiled in the darkness and waited.
“Well, what do you think, Jamie Ian MacCallister?” Kate asked.
Jamie stifled a chuckle. When she called him Jamie Ian MacCallister, the game was over and it was time to go home. For Kate would brook no further argument. “Oh, I think it's a grand idea, Kate.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yes. I have to go to St. Louis to hook up with Fremont and his party, and then proceed to someplace called Fort Levenworth to jump off. I can take the kids to the city and see them on their way east.”
“Really?” Kate was astounded. It wasn't like Jamie to give in so easily. She narrowed her eyes and stared at him through the darkness of evening. “Do you feel well, Jamie?”
“I feel fine.” The times Jamie had been sick in his entire life could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
She leaned over and put a small hand on his broad forehead. “No fever.”
He laughed and took her hand in his. “Kate, I want what is best for the children. It just took some time for me to get used to Andrew's not wanting to be like his dad, that's all. But I can't live their lives for them. Do any of the other kids want to go back east?”
She shook her head. “No. And I asked them separately so one wouldn't influence the other. When will you leave?”
“As soon as this Fremont person gets word to me. Do you want them to go now, Kate?”
She was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said softly. “Sam and Sarah's families will see to it that they get into the best schools.”
Jamie nodded his head then, realizing that Kate could not see the silent agreement, said, “I'll get Black Thunder and his people looking for Grandpa and for Preacher; tell them to come at once. I can't take Sam away from the fields. They'll ride with me to St. Louis. We'll probably hook up with a few others at the fort, so we'll have lots of protection along the way. You want go back for a visit, Kate?”
“No,” she said quickly. “This is my home. Here I stay.”
Her reply came as no surprise to Jamie, for Kate had cut all ties with what family she had remaining back in the States.
“It's going to be expensive,” Kate said. “The kids can't have homespuns in some fancy school. Their clothes will have to be store-bought.”
“We'll manage. I'll buy them both proper clothes in St. Louis.” Jamie would be carrying a small leather sack of gold nuggets. He had found a thin vein in the mountains and took only what they needed to buy supplies. So-called government experts had declared that there was no gold anywhere west of the Mississippi River. Jamie and Preacher and Jamie's grandfather and a few other mountain men knew better. But they were keeping that knowledge to themselves. In a few more years, gold would be discovered in California, and that would start a rush of people moving west to seek their fortunes. Most would lose everything they had in a futile search for the yellow metal; still others would become rich beyond their wildest dreams. The vein that Jamie found would see to the needs of his family for decades, long after Jamie and Kate had made their mark on the settlement of the west and were laid to rest on a lonely plateau in the high country.
* * *
The women in the small settlement went to work, pulling dresses out of trunks and cutting and redesigning the fabric, making new patterns from the material for Rosanna. They used pictures from newspapers and magazines brought back from Bent's Fort by Jamie and Sam.
Fields of education were wide open for Andrew, but opportunities for women were slim in those days, and it was decided that if need be, Rosanna would be sent overseas for a proper education. With a sigh, Jamie went to his vein in the high country and started work with shovel and pick. That stopped when the elder MacCallister rode in and tossed a sack of gold nuggets on the table.
“That will see to the lad and lassie's education,” Silver Wolf declared. “I dinna know what I was goin' to do with the gold anyway. Now I know it will be put to a good use.”
“The girl's gonna have to ride sidesaddle when we get to St. Louis,” Preacher said.
“Sidesaddle!”
Rosanna shouted.
Kate and Sarah took Rosanna aside and began explaining to the young woman about the responsibilities of being a proper young lady. But surprisingly, it was her great-grandfather who calmed her down and worked with her on horsemanship, for riding sidesaddle was not nearly so easy as riding astride.
When the day came for the twins to pull out, it was a sad one for Kate, for she knew it would be years before she again saw her children. Jamie busied himself with the pack horses while Kate walked through the meadows with her kids.
For this trip, Jamie would ride a horse he had swapped for up north, from the Nez Perce, a big rump-spotted stallion the Nez Perce called “appaloosa.” The animal was much larger than the average appaloosa and had the same disposition as Horse, which is to say it was a killer. But around Jamie, the animal, whom Jamie had named Thunder, was gentle as a lamb.
Jamie's grandfather took one look at the big stallion and remarked, “You do like them mean, don't you, boy?”
Jamie smiled as he fed Thunder a tiny bit of sugar. The animal took the treat as gently as a baby. “He's not mean around me, Grandpa.”
Then the goodbyes were over and it was time to go. Kate stood dry-eyed (she had done her weeping the night before, lying in Jamie's arms) and watched them go. Then without another sign of emotion, she walked back into the large cabin, closed the door behind her, sat down at the harpsichord, and began playing.
* * *
Preacher joined them on the first day out, and on the second day out of the valley, another mountain man joined the partyâPreacher introduced him as Sparks. Sparks didn't have a whole lot to say, but Jamie liked him immediately and pegged him as a man to ride the river with.
“I been puttin' off goin' to St. Louie for five years,” Sparks said. “I got kin over in Ohio I need to see. Might as well tag along.”
Two other mountain men, a dwarf called Audie, and his partner, a huge bear of a man named Lobo, joined up halfway to the fort. Audie had been a schoolteacher back east until the west had beckoned him and he left all that behind. No one knew where Lobo came from or what his Christian name was, and nobody asked. It was not a polite thing to do. Audie talked like a walking dictionary, and before the first day had passed he and Rosanna and Andrew were the best of friends and the former headmaster was coaching the twins on grammar and what to expect once in school.
With the twins safe, Jamie began ranging out far ahead. He was well aware that trouble could rear up at any time: from Jack Biggers or the renegade mountain man Barney or Buford Sanders or Pete Thompson and his gang. Jamie was not particularly worried about the Indians, for even though the party was small in number, the Indians were well aware that with six mountain men, there would be at least forty guns between them, all fully loaded and ready to bang.
The journey to Bent's Fort was made without incident and the mountain men there immediately went on their best behavior around the lovely young Rosanna. There were probably a few who would have taken advantage of her, but to a man, they did not want to risk the terrible retribution of Silver Wolf, Preacher, Sparks, Audie, Lobo, and especially Jamie Ian MacCallister. In the raw west, men had been killed for merely accidentally jostling a good woman. Do a harm or a slight to a good woman and one risked the wrath of the entire community.
A train of wagons was about to leave for the trip back to the States, and Jamie hooked up with them. There had been some Indian trouble over on the Plains (in what would one day become the state of Kansas), and the wagon master was glad to have the added rifles. But the trip back east was uneventful. Perhaps it was the size of the wagon train and all the mounted and heavily armed men. Perhaps the Indians just did not feel like attacking. It was difficult, if not impossible, to tell.
Jamie and the others saw to the boarding and the safe passage of Andrew and Rosanna, and then Jamie's Grandpa and the others headed back to the High Lonesome. Jamie decided to prowl about St. Louis for a time. Stepping into a smoky tavern one evening, he spied Carson, holding court with a group of St. Louis dandies. Carson spotted Jamie and waved him over with a shout and a grand flourish.
“Now here, folks, you have a living legend. Jamie Ian MacCallister. Scout, Injun fighter, one of the heroes of the Alamo, and a man to ride the river with.”
The men took one look at the bulk of Jamie and wisely made a path for him. Amid much shouting and hurrahing, Kit pulled Jamie over to one side and whispered, “What's been happening west of here, lad?”
“The first large wagon train pushed through over the Oregon Trail,” Jamie said. “Fifty wagons, so I was told.”
“Damn!” Carson said. “The gates is open now, Jamie. And they'll be hell to pay amongst the Injuns.”
“They're not happy about it,” Jamie agreed, taking a mug of ale someone thrust into his hand. He took a sip and asked, “When do we leave?”
“Next spring. We'll meet on the Missouri River at an army post called Levenworth.”
Jamie nodded his head. “Then I'll see you there.” He drained his mug of ale and left, ignoring the shouts from those who wanted him to stay and relate some of his adventures. But Jamie would leave the bragging to someone else. Boasting about his exploits was not his forte.
Jamie took the northern route back because he wanted to see some of the country he'd be helping to explore. He found the entire mission to be mildly amusing. If Fremont wanted information about any particular area, all he had to do was ask the mountain men or trappers. They'd been roaming all over the west for more than fifty years. The more Jamie dealt with the federal government the more he realized they wasted money, duplicated efforts, and in general, didn't know what they were doing much of the time.
Jamie had a hunch that in a hundred and fifty years it would be just as bad.
Maybe worse.
* * *
Jamie rode into the valley in late summer. He topped a long rise and sat his horse for a time, looking down at the peaceful scene. During his two and a half months of wandering he had ridden through some lovely and lonely country, seen some sights, and encountered no problems with any Indians. He had stayed in their villages, eaten their food, sat around the fires and talked, and been welcomed. Both his grandfather and Preacher had warned him about the Pawnee, however, and he took their warnings to heart, giving that tribe a wide berth.
Jamie spotted a new building and figured rightly it was the new church and schoolhouse. Then his eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened as he spotted two new graves in the outlaw cemetery. He quickly shifted his gaze to the spot picked out for the community's burying ground. No graves there. Yet.
Jamie noticed something else, too: the new graves were fresh, the mounds of earth still raw. He spoke to Thunder and the big stallion moved down the slope toward the settlement. He'd been spotted now, and the folks had gathered outside their cabins, watching him ride in.
Jamie swung down and handed the reins to Jamie Ian, one of the few people other than Jamie that Thunder would allow to handle him. He embraced Kate and shook hands with the others.
He cut his eyes to the graveyard and said, “What happened?”
“Renegades,” Sam said. “They came in a rush late one Sunday afternoon.”
“The graves are very fresh,” Jamie remarked.
“Yes. Last week, as a matter of fact. There were ten of them. The man who appeared to be the leader shouted that they'd be back, and soon. With more men.”
“Which way did they ride out?”
Sam pointed to the west. “That way.” He stared at Jamie. “What are you going to do, Jamie?”
Jamie did not reply directly to the question. Instead, he called to Jamie Ian. “Saddle Horse for me, son.” He turned to Kate, putting his big hands on her slender shoulders. “The children got off safely and I waited in St. Louis until I received word that they were met by Sam and Sarah's people. Now, Kate, pack food for me. I will not tolerate attacks upon this community. Not now, not ever.”
Kate did not argue. Their long awaited homecoming in each other's arms would have to wait for a little longer. She turned and walked into the large cabin. Jamie called to his son. “Jamie Ian! Saddle a horse for yourself and then provision yourself and take up arms. You're coming with me.”
Kate paused at the doorway and slowly turned around to stare at her husband. There was a terrible expression on her face and her blue eyes were cold. Jamie met her icy stare and said, “He's a man growed, Kate. And he's already been bloodied. Besides, where were we at his age?”
Kate forced a smile and her eyes warmed a bit. To the temperature of a fjord in January. “On the run, as I recall. Or very close to it. I'll pack food for the both of you. It's time for Ian to flee the nest, I suppose.”
“He won't be flying far,” her husband told her. “And he'll return to hearth and home.”