Johnstone, W. - Last Mountain Man

Kirby unsaddled Seven, allowing him to roll. He stripped the gear from the pack animals, setting them grazing. He picketed only the pack animals, for Seven would not stray far from him.

Taking a small hammer and a miner’s spike from his gear, Kirby began the job of chiseling his father’s name into a large, flat rock. He could not remember exactly when his Pa was born, but thought it about 1815.

Headstone in place, secured by heavy rocks, Kirby built his small fire, put coffee on to boil in the blackened pot, then sat down to read the letter from his Pa.

“Son,

I found some of the men who killed your brother, Luke, and stolt the gold that belonged to the Gray. Theys more of them than I first thought. I killed two of the men work for them, but they got led in me and I had to hitail it out. Came here. Not goin to make it. Son, you don’t owe nuttin to the Cause of the Gray. So don’t get it in your mind you do. Make yoursalf a good life and look to my restin’ place if you need help.

Preacher kin tell you some of what happen, but not all. Remember: look to my grave if you need help.

I also got word that your sis, Janey, leff that gambler and has took up with an outlaw down in Airyzona. Place called Tooson. I woodn fret much about her. She is mine, but I think she is trash. Dont know where she got that streek from.

I am gettin tared and seein is hard. Lite fadin. I love you Kirby-Smoke.

Pa.”

Kirby reread the letter. Look to my grave. He could not understand that part. He pulled up his knees and his head on them, feeling he ought to cry, or something. But no tears came.

Now he was alone. He had no other kin, and he did not count his sister as kin. He had his guns, his horses, a bit of gold, and his friend, Preacher.

He was eighteen years old.

Six

1869

Having been born and reared on a farm, the earth was naturally a part of Kirby. So on the Utah side of the Hole, the tall young man planted several gardens: corn, beans, greens, potatoes. All carefully irrigated from a small stream. Preacher had scoffed at this, saying, “I’d be gawddamned ifn I’d bust any sod!” But Kirby noticed the old man ate up the vegetables on his plate, and usually helped himself to seconds, sometimes thirds.

Kirby had caught up with a band of wild horses, mustangs with some Appaloosa mixed in, and started raising horses. He now had a respectable herd.

Kirby no longer practiced with his Colts. He did not need to practice. He was a crack shot and blindingly fast.

Preacher, now pushing hard into his sixty-eighth year, was just as spry as when Kirby had first laid eyes on him — and just as cantankerous and ornery.

Kirby laid claim to all the land between Vermillion Creek to the east, and about two sections past the still ill-defined Utah state line to the west. All the land from Diamond Peak to the north, down to and including Brown’s Hole. He rode once to a small town about a hundred and fifty miles from the Hole and filed on his claim. But the town died out a year later, becoming yet another ghost town on the western landscape, and Kirby’s claim was never recognized in the years ahead. It was illegal from the outset, since he was claiming far too much land, but Kirby figured — and figured correctly — that since the land was so desolate and in some instances, downright barren, no one else would want it.

Tucked away in the far reaches of the northwestern part of Colorado, Kirby and Preacher lived alone — and became something of a mystery, much as the hermit Pat Lynch would someday become. Pat, who later lived in the canyon with a pet mountain lion named Jenny Lind. Kirby and Preacher were not talkative men, sometimes going for days without speaking.

A wild and raging canyon cut down from the Hole: the Green River. It would later be named Lodore Canyon, by an army major, a geologist who was fond of quoting the poet Southey’s “How The Waters Come Down At Lodore,” as he shot the rapids.

Emmett Jensen’s grave was now covered with a profusion of wildflowers, clinging stubbornly to the rocky soil. Kirby visited the grave weekly, sometimes standing for hours by the site. He spoke silently to his Pa, wishing he knew what to do. He always left with a mild feeling of discontent, as if he should be doing something about the men who killed his Pa.

At first, Preacher had told him, “You just too young yet to do much of anything ’bout them men who kilt your Pa. You got all the makin’s, but you still need some seasonin’. Give it time, Smoke. Them folk be there when you ready to make your move.”

But as the months marched into a year, then two, Preacher knew the boy was gone, and in its place, a man grown. He knew, too, from his half century and more on the trail, that the young man called Smoke was a potentially dangerous man: big and solid and steady and strong as a bear. A man whose draw with those old Navy Colts was so fast as to be a blur. And he never missed. Never.

The old mountain man knew little of the emotion called love. He had liked the squaws he had wintered with, sharing their buffalo robes — liked them all. He had enjoyed playing with his children. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he held a memory of his mother: a faded, time-worn retention of the woman, but without a clear face. He knew he must have loved her as a child. But the call of the open plains, the wilderness, the unknown, the high lonesome, the untraveled hills and mountains and trails, had been too much, overpowering love.

But with the man he called Smoke, the mountain man knew what he felt must be love, for in Smoke was everything the old man would want in a son: strength, daring, courage, eager to face the unknown, willing to learn, to pit himself against the wilderness. Then, finally, the old man admitted the truth: He did not want Smoke to face the men on that list — for fear of losing him. He had been deliberately holding him back.

And that ain’t right, he concluded. The man is twenty year old, Preacher thought. Time to cut loose the tie-string and let him taste the world of people. He ain’t gonna like it — just like me — but he got to see for hisself.

The rattle of sabers and the pounding of hoofs broke into Preacher’s ruminations.

“Men comin’!” he called.

The young man known but to a few white men as Smoke stepped out of the cabin. His guns, as always, belted around his waist, the right hand Colt hanging lower than the butt-forward left gun. Had there been a woman with the detachment of cavalry, she would have called the young man handsome, and her heart might have beat just a bit faster, for he was striking-looking.

“Hello!” the officer in charge called. “I was not aware this area was inhabited by white men.”

“You is now,” Preacher said shortly,

“My name is Major John Wesley Powell, United States Army.”

“I’m Preacher. This here is Smoke. An’ now that we know each other, why don’t you leave?”

The major laughed good-naturedly. “Why, sir, we’ve come to do a bit of exploring.”

His good humor was not returned by either man. “What do you want to know ’bout this country?” Preacher asked. “Just name it, and I’ll tell you — save you a mess of trouble. Then you can leave.”

“May we dismount?”

“Dismount, sit, squat, stand, or kick your heels up in the air. It don’t make no difference to me.”

Major Powell laughed openly, heartily, then dismounted, telling his sergeant to have the men dismount and stand easy. “You old mountain men never cease to amaze me. And I mean that as a compliment,” he added. His eyes turned to Kirby. “But you’re far too young to have been a mountain man. Are you men related?”

“I’m his son,” Preacher said with a straight face. “He fell in the Fountain of Youth a few years back, but he bumped his head doin’ it and now he can’t recall where it is. I’m waitin’.”