Johnstone, W.: Last Mountain Man

“Buffalo meat, usually. Indians cut it into strips, dry it. That’s called jerky. They take the jerky, crumble it, then beat hell out of it. Then they mix it with fleece —”

“With what?”

“Fat. Boilin’ fat. Then you drop in a few berries, make it up in a brick, and wrap it. Best eatin’ you ever put in your mouth. Don’t spoil. Lasts for months. Shore do.” He put his bloody scalps into a pouch on his wide belt and closed the flap.

“Won’t those stink?” Kirby asked.

“They do get right ripe,” the mountain man admitted.

“Do we bury these Indians?” Emmett inquired.

“Hell no!” Preacher looked horrified. “Plains’ Injuns don’t plant they dead like we do. ’Sides, they be back for ’em, don’t you fret about that. Right now, I ’spect we better git from here. Put some country ’twixt us and them live Injuns. Let’s go.”

The trio rode at a steady gallop for several miles, then walked their horses, resting them as best they could. They repeated this several times, putting miles between them and the battle site by the creek. Late afternoon, they pulled up by a tiny stream and made a short camp.

“We’ll make the fire small,” Preacher said. “Use them dry buffalo chips we picked up. They don’t hardly make no smoke. We’ll have us coffee and beans, then douse the fire and make camp ’bout two-three miles from here. Place I ’member. We’ll post guards this night, boys, and ever’ night from here on in.” He glanced at Kirby. “This is hostile country, Smoke.”

Kirby sighed. He guessed it was going to be Smoke for the rest of his life. Or at least until Preacher left them. He looked at his Pa. Emmett was smiling.

Kirby said nothing until the fire was glowing faintly and the coffee boiling. The beans cooked, he sliced bacon into a blackened skillet then looked at Preacher.

“Why Smoke, Preacher?”

“All famous men got to have good-soundin’ nicknames — impressive ones. Smoke sounds good to me. And believe me, Smoke, I have known some right famous men in my time.”

“I’m not famous,” Kirby said, a confused look on his face. Already a nice-looking boy, he would be a handsome man.

“You will be, I’m thinkin’,” the mountain man said stretching out on the ground. “You will be.” And he would say no more about it.

They ate an early supper, then doused the fire, carefully checking for any live coals that might touch off a prairie fire, something as feared as any Indian attack, for a racing fire could outrun a galloping horse. They moved on, riding for an hour before pulling into a small stand of timber to make camp. Preacher spread his blankets, used his saddle for a pillow, and promptly closed his eyes.

Emmett said, “I’ll stand the first watch … Smoke,” and he grinned. “Then wake Preacher for the second, and you can take the last watch, from two till daylight. Best you go on to sleep now, you’ll need it.”

Just as Kirby was drifting off to sleep, Emmett said, “If you don’t like that nickname, son, we can change it.”

“It’s all right. Pa,” the boy murmured, warmed by the wool of the blanket. “Pa? I kinda like Preacher.”

“So do I, son.”

“That makes both of you good judges of character,” the mountain man spoke from his blankets. “Now why don’t you two quit all that jawin’ and let an old man get some rest?”

“Night, Pa — Preacher.”

“Night, Smoke,” they both replied.

Preacher rolled the boy out of his blankets at two in the morning, into the summer coolness on the Plains. The night was hung with the brilliance of a million stars.

“Stay sharp, now, Smoke,” Preacher cautioned. “Injun don’t usually attack at night; bad medicine for them. Brave gets kilt at night, his spirit wanders forever, don’t never get to the Hereafter in peace. But Injuns is notional, and not all tribes believe the same. Never can tell what they’re gonna do. More’un likely, if they’re out there, they’ll hit us at first light — but you don’t never know for shore.” He rolled into his blankets and was soon snoring.

The boy poured a tin cup full of scalding, hot coffee, strong enough to support a horseshoe, then replaced the pot on the rock grate. Preacher had showed him how to build the fire, surrounded by rocks, larger rocks in the center to support a pan or pot, the fire hot, but no bigger than a hand. The air opening lay at the rear, facing the camp. The fire was fueled by buffalo chips, hot and smokeless, and the fire could not be seen from ten feet away.

While there was still light, Kirby (he could not bring himself to even think of himself as Smoke) had carefully cleaned and oiled the Navy Colt taken from the dead Indian. He had cut the flap off his holster and punched a hole in the front of the leather, threading a piece of rawhide through the hole, the loop to be placed over the hammer, securing the weapon. He did the same to a holster Preacher gave him, for his second weapon, then, using a wide belt — also given him by Preacher, from his seemingly never emptying packs — he buckled on his twin .36s. The right hand pistol he wore butt back, the left hand pistol, he carried butt forward, slightly higher than the other pistol. The big-bladed bowie knife was in its bead-adorned sheath, just behind the left hand Colt.

He had no way of knowing at this juncture of his young life, but with that action involving the pistols, and with what would follow in only a matter of hours, he was taking the first steps toward creating a legend that would endure as long as writers would write of the West. Men would fear and respect him; women would desire him but only one would ever find herself truly loved by him; children would play games, imitating the man called Smoke, and songs would be written and sung about him, both in the Indian villages and in the white man’s saloons.

But on this pleasant night, Kirby was still some years away from being a living legend: He was just a slightly frightened young man, just a few months into his sixteenth year, sitting in the middle of a vast open plain, watching for savage Indians and hoping to God none were within a thousand miles of him. He almost dozed off, caught himself, and jerked back awake. He bent forward to pour another cup of coffee, rubbing his sleepy eyes as he did so.

That movement saved his life.

A quivering arrow drove into the tree where Kirby, just a second before, had been resting. Had he not leaned forward, the arrow would have driven through his chest.

Although Kirby had not yet practiced his gun moves, he had carefully gone over them in his mind. He drew first the right-hand Colt, then the left-hand gun, the heavy bark of one only a split second behind the first. Always a well-coordinated boy, his motions were almost liquid in their smoothness, the Colts in the hands of one of those few to whom guns seem almost an extension of the body. Two Pawnee braves went down in lifeless heaps. Kirby shifted position and the Navy Colts blasted the night in thunderous roars. Two more bucks were cut down by the .36 caliber balls.

Then the smoke-filled night was silent except for the fading sounds of Indian ponies racing away, away from the white man’s camp. The Indians wanted no more of this camp: They had lost too many braves; too much death here.

“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this!” Preacher exclaimed, walking around the dead and dying Pawnee. “I knowed Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, Uncle Dick Wooten, and Rattlesnake Williams … and a hundred other salty ol’ boys. But I ain’t never seen nothin’ to top this here. Smoke, you may be a youngster in years, but you’ll damn shore do to ride the river with.”

Kirby did not yet know it, but that was the highest compliment a mountain man could give another man.