William Johnstone - Battle of the Mountain Man

Ned felt somewhat more relaxed now. It did not appear Cole meant to harm him, not by the way he stood with his rifle lowered and his other hand empty. “Are you one of the early mountain men to come to this region?” he asked.

Cole’s deeply wrinkled face twisted with a touch of humor, a grin of sorts. “Me? Hell no, I wasn’t one of the first. Fact is, I come real late to this country, after Preacher an’ Puma an’ a whole bunch of others. I reckon you could say I’m a newcomer to these parts. Hardly been here more’n twenty years.”

It was the mention of Preacher’s name that caught Ned’s full attention. “So there really is, or was, a mountain man by the name of Preacher?”

“He sure as hell weren’t no ghost, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

“Is he still alive? Would he talk to me?”

Now Cole wore a guarded look, shifting his weight to the other foot Knee-high moccasins with bead-work and porcupine quills, badly worn in places, protected his feet. “I ain’t in the business of answerin’ questions. I trap beaver an’ hunt a few griz now an’ then fer their skins… that’s where I got my handle, the one I go by. I done told you more’n I shoulda, how Puma was dead, an’ where to look fer Huggie.” He paused, and it seemed he was thinking. “I’ll tell you this much, Mr. Buntline, so it’ll save you some time. You ain’t gonna find Preacher ’less he wants to be found, an’ that’s if he’s still alive. He’d be close to ninety years old now, if he ain’t crossed over the Big Divide up yonder in the sky. He never was a sociable feller, I hear tell.”

“But have you actually met him?”

“Nope. Ain’t many folks alive who kin say they did. One is Smoke Jensen, only Smoke ain’t gonna tell you nothin’ ’bout oT Preacher. Preacher nearly raised Smoke, case you didn’t know, an’ I’ve heard it said even Smoke don’t know if Preacher is still alive somewheres.”

“Why would they cut off all communication between them if they were once so close?”

“Yer askin’ the wrong feller, but I reckon it’s what Preacher wanted… to live out the last of his years by hisself up in these here mountains.”

Ned wanted more from Cole. “I’ve got a sack of Arbuckles in my packs. I’d be happy to build a fire and offer you a cup, just for the information you already gave me, a gesture of friendship or whatever you wish to call it.”

Cole frowned, and it appeared he was sizing Ned up far more critically before he agreed to coffee.

“A cup of that Arbuckles do sound mighty nice, but I ain’t gonna trade no more information ’bout my friends for it. You git that through yer head afore-hand.”

Ned nodded quickly. “I won’t ask about your friends. You can tell me anything you want about yourself, if you wish to, or we can simply share a cup of coffee and I’ll be on my way.”

Cole glanced upslope at the old cabin Ned had seen earlier. “Bring yer mule. There’s a firepit an’ some seasoned wood up yonder. I use that ol’ place from time to time, if’n I git caught in a snowstorm come winter. Ain’t nobody lives there no more. Used to belong to a helluva mountain man…”

“Whose cabin was it?” Ned asked.

Cole gave him a stern look. “I done told you I ain’t gonna talk ’bout none of my friends, them that’s crossed over, an’ them that ain’t.”

Ned blew steam away from the rim of his cup, all the while examining Grizzly Cole closely. Cole had to be near sixty, weathered skin and snowy hair, gnarled hands, rheumy eyes that had surely seen so many things he needed for his stories about the men who’d first explored these wild mountains. But Cole was not about to be tricked into telling him anything he wasn’t willing to say, Ned judged.

“There ain’t many beaver left in this part of the lonesome,” he said. “Used to be beaver dams every quarter mile on these creeks. They got trapped real hard by men who didn’t understand nature. You gotta take some an’ leave some, so they’ll multiply an’ raise a new crop every spring.”

“Experienced men like Preacher or Smoke Jensen and Puma Buck wouldn’t have trapped them out, so it had to be others who did this to good beaver country.”

Cole eyed him. “I done warned you I ain’t gonna talk ’bout none of my friends. But you’s right ’bout the three you mentioned. They knowed Mother Nature’s ways, all right. If’n this high country never saw nobody but their kind, it’d still be plumb thick with beaver an’ every breed o’ critter there is. That’s what put ol’ Preacher an’ Smoke on the warpath a long time back, when men come up here to change things. Some came with cattle to push other grazin’ animals out. Some showed up with cross-cut saws to cut amber. There was a few who didn’t bring nothin’ but bad intentions. That’s a part of what put Smoke Jensen into the gunfighter’s trade.”

Griz Cole was telling Ned far more than he meant to without realizing it, with a slip of the tongue now and then. “I’m going to ask Jensen if he’ll talk to me about some of it. Readers back east would be fascinated.”

“The only thing he’s liable to tell you is to skedaddle if you ask him about the past. Huggie might talk to you a little, an’ Del Rovare can git kinda windy at times, ’specially if his tongue got loosened with a dab o’ whiskey. But there ain’t none of ’em gonna tell you much, Mr. Buntline. These men ain’t city folk with an inclination towards idle talk.” He looked off at the mountain peaks around them, toying with his coffee cup for a time. “It takes a man who likes his own company to live up here, an’ most of us don’t have no hankerin’ for outsiders who come nosin’ around. Winters git long an’ lonesome for some. Me, I like the sound of fallin’ snowflakes on pine limbs, the howl of a north wind at night when the fire’s warm inside a cabin.“

“Do very many mountain men have a woman, a wife?”

“Some. Not many. Womenfolk ain’t built for the loneliness or this rough life. There’s a few. Smoke’s got him a lady who takes to the high lonesome like a bear takes to honey. Sally’s built different than most women. Puma used to have him a Ute squaw. Cute little thing. She died of the smallpox back in ’59 I believe it was. Injuns ain’t got much tolerance for a white man’s diseases.”

“Did Puma himself die of old age?”

Cole gave him a hard stare. “That ain’t my story to tell, Mr. Buntlme. You’ll have to ask somebody else.” He drained a big swallow of Arbuckles from his cup, squatting across the rock-lined firepit from Ned. “I’ve told you too much already. Much as I enjoyed this coffee, you an’ me are done talkin’. If you ride north, maybe ten miles or so, you’ll be in Huggie Charles’s trappin’ range. Now I’ll warn you, he can be a real disagreeable feller at times, so don’t go tryin’ to push yer luck with him. You can say I told you where to look fer him. It’ll be up to him if he decides to show hisself, or blow a tunnel plumb through yer head with his rifle. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On the mood he’s in, an’ on how you handle yourself. If it was me, I wouldn’t shoot no game or raise no ruckus. Just ride quiet an’ mind yer own business. He’ll look you up if he’s curious ’bout why yer there.” He drank the last of his coffee and stood up, wincing, as though he felt a pain somewhere in one of his legs. Then he bent down and lifted his Sharps .52 caliber rifle, holding it by the muzzle. “Good luck, Mr. Buntline. I’m grateful fer the Arbuckles. Don’t figure on gittin’ what you came here for. Them readers you’ve got is most likely to have to read somethin’ else. Stories from a real mountain man are gonna be mighty hard to come by.”