Part 39 (1/2)
”Put that popgun down before I take it away from you and spank you with it!” Joe roared. ”You crazy old goat! I wouldn't work for you if you were the last man on this Trail!”
”You got just fifteen seconds,” Snedeker warned.
”Why you--!”
Joe was angry as he had been only once or twice in his life. In Missouri, the code was hospitality. Here, where there was so much s.p.a.ce and so few people, that code should have been much more powerful.
Snedeker did not have to give him a job, but by all the rules of humanity he should have offered food and shelter.
”I won't tell you again!” Snedeker breathed.
Joe grasped the rifle's muzzle, twisted it aside, and brought his right hand back to deliver a smas.h.i.+ng blow to the other's chin. Suddenly he found the rifle in his hands. Snedeker reeled away from him, roaring with laughter. Joe stood dumfounded, not knowing what to think. When the old mountain man straightened, his eyes were no longer the color of smoke. They were friendly.
”Lordy, lordy!” he chortled. ”You win!”
”Win what?”
”The job you asked for, man! Sort of knowed when you spoke of Shoshone Seeley that you was all right; Shoshone wouldn't ask n.o.body to stop here 'thout they was. But they's a lot of half-witted Injuns 'round here, an'
some even more half-witted emmy-grants will be stoppin'. They'll bluff you out of your eye teeth if you let 'em, an' I can't have n.o.body who lets themselfs be bluffed. Will say, though, that you might show a mite more sense. Thutty-five a month for you'n your team, quarters, and found for yourself. All right?”
”It's all right with me.”
”Good,” Snedeker p.r.o.nounced, ”on account that's all you'd get anyhow.
Your folks with you?”
”They're in the wagon.”
”Bring 'em in, man! Bring 'em in! Anybody with the sense of a jack rabbit wouldn't leave his folks set in the wagon on a day like this!”
Joe brought his family in and introduced them to Snedeker and Ellis Garner. The children went to the fireplace, and stood gratefully in its warmth. Barbara smoothed her tumbled hair with her hand. Snedeker nudged Joe and he looked at Ellis Garner. A smile of purest joy glowed on the young man's face.
”He's a woman chaser,” Snedeker said in a whisper that carried clear across the room. ”Chased one here all the way from Maryland. But, lordy, lordy! She sure didn't have the s.h.i.+ne of _that_ filly!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Winter
In the time he'd spent at Snedeker's, Joe had learned a great deal.
Snedeker was a Mountain Man, one of that rare breed who had waded every stream in the west in their search for beaver. They fought every tribe of Indians that showed fight, went without hesitation where they wished to go, and spent incredibly long and dangerous months with only their rifles and their resourcefulness as protection. Then they took their furs to some wild fort, or some wilderness rendezvous, and in a few days spent all the money they had earned in a whole season of perilous living.
The heyday of the Mountain Men spanned only a brief sixteen years when no gentleman was really dressed unless he wore a beaver hat. Silk replaced beaver, and broke the fur market. But though their livelihood was gone, the Mountain Men weren't. Some returned to the east. Some guided wagon trains across country that they knew as well as the emigrants knew their own back yards. Some simply disappeared, gone in search of what they considered wild and free country. And some, like Snedeker, merely transferred their way of living to other pursuits and lived much as they always had.
At their first meeting, Snedeker had enraged Joe. Now Joe understood him, and with understanding had come both liking and respect. Throughout his adult life Snedeker had bowed to no will except his own, and he saw no reason for changing his ways. But, though his outward air was that of a grizzly bear with a sore paw, inwardly he was soft as a marshmallow. A shrewd bargainer, he seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of how much money emigrants carried and how much they were willing to spend.
But no penniless emigrant had ever been turned away, though Snedeker would not outfit them clear to Oregon. Whether they were east- or westbound, he gave them a couple of days' supplies and sent them to Laramie where, as Snedeker knew, they became the government's responsibility.
Joe had lost his misgivings about wintering at the post. No war party could take Laramie, but neither could any take Snedeker's. They'd already tried it and succeeded only in running off a few horses. Taking their trail, Snedeker had brought back the stock he'd lost and a number of the Indian ponies as well. Besides, according to Snedeker, there was small danger of an Indian attack in winter. The tribes that came to Laramie wintered on northern hunting grounds, and their ponies had to exist as best they could. Since no western Indian would think of going into battle without a mount, they made war in the spring after there was sufficient gra.s.s to fatten and strengthen their horses. The three the Towers had met must have been strays, or possibly they had to go to Laramie for something they needed.
On a wind-swept hill about a half mile from the post, Joe sank his ax cleanly into a pine. Expertly he measured his next strike, and when the ax sank in, a large chip of wood broke out. Wasting not one blow of his ax or a half ounce of strength, Joe felled the tree cleanly and rested a moment. He glanced over to where Ellis Garner had another pine two-thirds felled. Joe nodded approvingly. There were tricks to handling an ax. When he and Ellis had started felling trees, which Snedeker needed to enlarge his post, Ellis had had a lot to learn. But under Joe's expert guidance he was learning fast, and, given a year or two of experience, he would be a good ax man himself.