Chapter VII: Preface: ix (5)

All around, as far as the eye could reach, was dry desolation, not a spear of grass, not a drop nor sign of water anywhere. Night came on; he crept under a projecting rock to try to sleep, being afraid to make a fire, for he had seen signs of Indians, whom he feared. When he awoke it was Christmas day. They were now in what a little later came to be known as Death Valley, because so many of those who entered it never came out.

One day their eyes were gladdened by the sight of water. It was far ahead of them, but it gleamed in the sunlight and cheered them on. But alas! it proved to be salt water. Soon they reached a condition where it was decided that all the provisions of civilized life should be pooled, and served only to the women and children and that, as occasion required, an ox should be killed, the meat dried and served to the men; every scrap of the ox, the hide and horns excepted, was used for food, every drop of blood was as precious to them as the grains of gold they were in search of. Four of the teamsters now decided to take their share of the provisions, together with their blankets and guns, leave the party and push on to try to save themselves.

The party crawled along, the oxen hardly able to stand, having had no food or water for many days, and as far as Manley could see, there was no prospect of any being found. A solemn council was held, at which it was agreed that they could only live till the last of their cattle had been eaten up. It was then agreed that they should turn back to the place where they had last found a spring of water and grass, and that there the party should camp, while two of the youngest men, taking some of the food, should push on till they found a settlement where they could get help and food, and return as fast as possible; they hoped that in ten days they might be able to return with the needed relief.

The next morning the oxen were hitched up and started back to the spring. Shortly after they had started, one of them became so feeble that he lay down and never rose again, and when they were within two miles of the spring, another one could travel no further, and also lay down. Arriving at the spring, they carried water back to him, so that he recovered and came on to the spring.

Manley and a man named Rodgers, from Tennessee, were selected, and agreed to undertake the hazardous journey. Preparations were at once made for their departure; the weakest of the oxen was slaughtered, and the meat dried; the women made rawhide moccasins and knapsacks, and packed as much of the dried meat as could be comfortably carried. Manley and Rodgers started off with the expressed hopes and blessings of each member of the party.

Manley writes: “I wore no coat or vest, but took half a light blanket, while Rodgers wore a thin summer coat, and took no blanket; we each had a small tin cup and a small camp-kettle that held a quart. Bennett had me take his seven-shooter rifle, and Rodgers had a good double-barreled shotgun; we each had a sheath-knife, and our hats were small-brimmed affairs, fitting close to the head, and not very conspicuous to the enemy, as we might rise up from behind a hill, or a hiding-place, into view. We tried on our packs and fitted the straps a little, so that they would carry easy, and started off.”

The party they left in camp consisted of thirteen adults and six children; there was very little civilized food, the oxen that might be killed when necessary being their chief reliance.

Manley and Rodgers took a course due west as nearly as the mountains would permit. Days passed, but they found no water. A big snow-capped mountain in the distance lured them on, and not till they came within its influence did they find relief. In order not to miss a possible chance of finding water, they separated, agreeing on a general course each would take, and that if either found water he should fire his gun as a signal. In a little while Rodgers fired his gun, and going to him, Manley saw that he had found a little ice as thick as window glass; eagerly they put some of it into their mouths and gathered all they could. It just filled their quart kettle; this they melted, and thus saved their lives. They had become so thirsty and their mouths and tongues became so dry that they could not chew their dried beef; the saliva would not flow. On they went again; in a few days they found a well developed trail leading toward the west. This they followed and came up with a party written of in the histories as the Jay-Hawkers. They were camped at some water holes where they had killed an ox and were drying the meat.

From them they received some fresh meat, and were also much refreshed by the water; they filled their canteens and pressed on, every moment being precious. When they parted, tears flowed freely from all eyes. Many of the larger company, being men past middle life, had about concluded that their chances of surviving the hardships through which they were passing were rather slim. They gave Manley and Rodgers the names and addresses of the friends they had left in the old home, asking them to tell their friends where and how they had found them, provided that they themselves were fortunate enough to reach a post office.

Soon after leaving the camp of the Jay-Hawkers, Manley and Rodgers realized that they had crossed the divide and that every step they took was down the Pacific slope; soon they began to see signs of life; a crow came in sight and perched within gunshot, and very promptly he was shot and bagged in Rodgers’ knapsack. A little later a hawk hove in sight, and it was very promptly taken care of in the same way; then a little further along they spied a quail; it also they shot.

Trees began to appear, and stumbling into a narrow ravine and following it for many miles, it led them to a much larger one, and O joy! there was a babbling brook of clear, sparkling water that literally sang them welcome as it wimpled over the stones in its course. They drank liberally of its life-giving stream, then dressed and cooked their three birds, and began to feel that life still held something for them. Soon a broad, grassy meadow opened before them. I will quote Manley’s words describing this incident.

“Before us was a spur from the hills that reached nearly across the valley and shut out further sight in that direction, and when we came to it we climbed up over it to shorten the distance. When the summit was reached, a most pleasing sight filled our sick hearts with a most indescribable joy.

“I shall never have the ability to adequately describe the beauty of the scene as it appeared to us, and so long as I live that landscape will be impressed on my mind. There before us was a beautiful meadow of a thousand acres, green as a thick carpet of grass could make it, and shaded with oaks, wide-branching and symmetrical, equal to those of an old English park. While all over the low mountains that bordered it on the south, and over the broad acres of luxuriant grass was a herd of cattle numbering many hundreds, if not thousands. All seemed happiness and contentment, and such a scene of abundance and rich plenty and comfort, bursting thus upon our eyes, which for months had seen only the desolation and sadness of the desert, was like getting a glimpse of Paradise, and tears of joy ran down our faces. The day was bright with sunshine as well as with hope, and it was the first day of January, 1850.”

Not a human being was in sight, and they were very hungry; down in a deep gully cut out by the rains, a yearling steer was feeding; Manley, gun in hand, crawled near to him and fired two shots, and as quickly as possible they were enjoying some of his meat that they roasted at once. They ate till they were satisfied, the first time in many long, dreary weeks. They then dried the balance of the meat, one of them sleeping while the other worked, relieving each other every few hours. The miserable dried meat that had been so long in their knapsacks they threw away, and refilled them with this good, fresh meat store.

They also made for themselves moccasins from the hide of the steer, and then continued their journey, though not very sure that they might not be pounced on at any moment for shooting the yearling steer. Soon they came to a strange-looking house of the adobe Mexican type, that proved to be the home of a farmer. There they found the woman of the house, but she could not speak or understand a word of English.

They had come out from the Sierra Madre Mountains into the San Fernando Valley at a point not far from the mission of that name. They went there and were entertained for the night, sleeping on the floor, but indoors. Here they met an American, with whom they talked over their troubles, and concluded, under his advice, that they would save time by returning to the settler’s house at which they had stopped on the previous day, and get the provisions they wanted. They might go on to Los Angeles, some thirty miles away, and fare no better, that place being very badly demoralized on account of the rush to the gold mines.

Their new found friend agreed to go with them and act as interpreter. There they procured three horses, a little mule, a sack of beans, a sack of unbolted flour, and one of wheat, which they would have to grind themselves; also some dried meat. This food their friends showed them how to pack on the backs of the horses, and as quickly as possible they started on the return journey, to try and save the other members of the party.

About the fourth day out the horses got so worn out and feeble for the want of food and water that they could hardly crawl along; their heads flung low, almost touching the ground. They then concluded to bury the sack of wheat, hoping to find it on their return; this they did, and loaded the other sacks on the mule, which seemed to be in better condition.

The next day the ground became so rough and the grade so steep that the horses were unable to get over it, and had to be abandoned. Then, too, they found the bodies of two men who had traveled with them in the Jay-Hawkers’ party. They had died by the side of the trail and had to be left there. This, of course, was all very disconcerting to our brave fellows, and only the thought that many other lives depended on their efforts urged them on.

At last, on the twenty-sixth day after leaving their friends camped at the spring, they were again in its vicinity. Their first sight or sign of their fellow-travelers was to find the dead body of one of them--Captain Culverwell--lying on the trail. He lay on his back, his arms extended, his little canteen, made of two powder flasks, lying by his side. Manley writes: “This looked, indeed, as if some of our saddest forebodings were coming true. How many more bodies should we find?--or should we find the camp deserted, and never find a trace of the former occupants?

“We marched toward camp like two Indians, silent and alert, looking out for dead bodies and live Indians, for really we expected to find the camp devastated by those rascals, rather than to find that it still contained our friends. About noon we came in sight of the wagons, still a long way off, but in the clear air we could make them out.

“No signs of life were anywhere about, and the thought of our hard struggles between life and death, to go out and return with the fruitless results that now seemed apparent, was almost more than human heart could bear. When should we know their fate? Where should we find their remains, and how learn their sad history, if we ourselves should live to get back again to settlements and life? If ever two men were troubled, Rodgers and I surely passed through the furnace. One hundred yards to the wagons, and still no sign of life; we fear that perhaps there are Indians in ambush, and with nervous, irregular breathing, we counsel what to do. Finally Rodgers suggested that he had two charges in his shotgun, and I seven in the Colts rifle, and that I fire one of mine and await results before we ventured any nearer. I fired, and in a moment a man came from under one of the wagons and stood up. Then he threw up his arms and shouted, ‘The boys have come!’ Then other bare heads appeared, and Mr. Bennett and wife and Mr. Arcane came running toward us. They caught us in their arms and embraced us with all their strength. Mrs. Bennett fell on her knees and clung to me like a maniac in the great emotion that came to her, and not a word was spoken.”

They estimated that they had traveled five hundred miles since they had left the camp, and found on their return that the party had been reduced till only Mr. and Mrs. Bennett and their four children and Mr. and Mrs. Arcane and their boy remained; the others had pressed forward from time to time to try to escape from the desert. Immediately they began to prepare for the long journey. There were five oxen still left. It was at once decided that everything should be left behind, only things absolutely necessary for the sustaining of life to be taken along--a kettle, a tin cup for each, a few knives, forks and spoons, and all the blankets and the clothes they wore. It was planned that the two women should each ride on an ox; though they had never known or heard of such a thing being done, they thought it practicable. The cloth in the wagon covers and in bed ticks was made into harness, the blankets being used for saddles, and one of the oxen, old Crump, the gentlest of them, was rigged out with saddle bags made from two of the men’s hickory shirts, in which the two youngest children were to be carried; the older ones were to ride like the women. Manley and Rodgers made new moccasins for themselves, and in a very few days they were ready to start.

It was very soon found that riding an ox was impracticable, and the women and older children had to walk. In a few days they were out of the valley, to which they had given the gruesome name, “Death Valley.” Their food consisted of soup made from the beans and flour boiled with some of the dried beef, some of which they also ate. When five days out, their stock of beans became entirely exhausted, but at the place where they were to camp for the night was the sack of whole wheat that Manley and Rodgers had buried. This they had hidden so well that they had considerable trouble locating it. When found, although it had been buried in the dry desert sand, it had absorbed enough moisture from it that it had swollen so that the bag was nearly at the bursting point. But it was sweet and quite fit for food. At this camp they had to kill an ox.

They had had no water all day. Manley and Rodgers had gone on ahead and started a fire, and made what preparations they could to ease the hardship of the situation, selecting the best spots on which to sleep, spreading the blankets, and having the soup ready to serve, so that when the weary, bedraggled women and children arrived, they could at once lie down and be served with their share.

The women declared that but for the children they would cheerfully lie down and die, rather than endure another such day. The distance from the last camp to this spring was longer and the trail much rougher than on any of the previous days. Near to this camp, too, they had to pass the place where the bodies of Mr. Fish and Mr. Isham lay, and which Manley and Rodgers had covered with sand.

At this camp they had to make moccasins for themselves and also for the oxen, whose feet had become so lacerated and tender from tramping over knife-edged stones, it was feared that they might give out altogether. These moccasins they made from the hide of the ox they had just slaughtered.

It was four days’ travel to the next water hole, and all the water they could have during that time was what they could carry in their canteens. This they did not dare use during the day, but must save for their soup; none but the children could have any water, and they only at long intervals, and after they had cried hard for it.

The third night they had to make their soup with salt water which they found in a water hole; the next day they had no water at all for themselves or the oxen, only a little for the children, till they arrived at water holes at the base of a snow mountain. The oxen had to subsist on greasewood, a shrub resembling a currant bush.

They were nine days from camp, their beans, flour and wheat all used up. They must now subsist on the beef obtained by killing their oxen. An ox yielded very little meat, and it was of the very poorest quality, giving very little nutrition; always they had to kill the poorest-conditioned one, so as to make sure the others could travel on, for they were now reduced to skin and bone.

The moccasins of the entire party were again completely worn out, so that, as one of the women expressed it, their feet ached like the tooth-ache; not only were their feet blistered and sore, but their dresses were worn off nearly to their knees by being draggled through the chaparral of the desert. But they could not stop long enough to kill an ox or make moccasins, but must plod on that the lives of the whole party might be saved. Their camp would be at a spring, and they must reach it that day, but they were caught by darkness four hours short of it, and did not reach it till four hours after daylight the next day; and to make matters worse, a rain-storm, the second they had encountered since leaving Wisconsin, came up that turned to snow, and at sunrise there were two inches of snow on the ground. Their condition was truly miserable. They rested long enough at the next spring to kill an ox and make moccasins. The amount of meat procured from the ox when dried was easily carried in the mule’s pack, it was so very small.

The next morning, after their meal of soup made from the meat of the ox, they felt somewhat refreshed, and in better spirits. It was a two days’ journey to the next water hole. They were now in what later came to be called the Mojave Desert, a waterless, barren plain, on which nothing grew with which they could make a fire, nothing to which they could even tie their animals, and when they camped that night, they simply tied them together. They could not make a fire; they had to content themselves with a little dried meat, and a little sip of water, for they were still another day from water, that they reached late the following afternoon, and also found a little grass for the cattle.

The next day, a few hours after starting, they lost the trail; the ground was of such a nature it could not retain marks of a trail. It was plenteously covered with the bones of animals, however, showing that many had passed that way, all of which so depressed the women that they had to go into camp until the next morning. That night they came to the water hole they had planned to reach the night before; all that the cattle could have for food was a few sage-bushes at which they nibbled. The next day they were in a hilly country, and the day following they came to the little babbling brook that had so delighted Manley and Rodgers the first time they saw it.

Here Manley writes in his journal, “New life seemed to come to the dear women. ‘O what a beautiful stream!’ they cried, and they dip in a tin cup and drink, and drink again, then watch the rollicking brook as if it was the most entertaining thing in the whole wide earth.”

It was now the seventh day of March, 1850, twenty-two days since they left their wagons, and four months since they entered Death Valley, and about a year since they left Wisconsin. It had been for them a year of wandering, struggle and terrible hardship. They took a long rest, the cattle eating their fill, and then slowly traveled to the home of the settler where Manley and Rodgers had obtained their supplies. The woman recognized them, and when the men came home they were handsomely treated.

None of our travelers had a cent of money. Mr. Arcane sold his two steers, all the property he had in the world, to the Mexicans, and with the money obtained started for San Pedro, the post of Los Angeles; there he hoped to obtain a passage on a sailing vessel to San Francisco. The Bennetts, Manley and Rodgers leisurely went on to Los Angeles, some thirty miles away, and from there found their way to the mines.

A FRONTIER DUEL

EMERSON HOUGH

1848

From “The Covered Wagon.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton and Company, New York.[12]

Once more the train, now permanently divided into two, faced the desert, all the men and many women now afoot, the kine low-headed, stepping gingerly in their new rawhide shoes. Gray, grim work, toiling over the dust and sand. But at the head wagon, taking over an empire foot by foot, flew the great flag. Half fanatics? That may be. Fanatics, so called, also had prayed and sung and taught their children, all the way across to the Great Salt Lake. They, too, carried books. And within one hour after their halt near the Salt Lake they began to plow, began to build, began to work, began to grow, and made a country.

The men at the trading post saw the Missouri wagons pull out ahead. Two hours later the Wingate train followed, as the lot had determined. Woodhull remained with his friends in the Wingate group, regarded now with an increasing indifference, but biding his time.

Bridger held back his old friend Jackson even after the last train pulled out. It was midafternoon when the start was made.

“Don’t go just yet, Bill,” said he. “Ride on an’ overtake ’em. Nothin’ but rattlers an’ jack-rabbits now fer a while. The Shoshones won’t hurt ’em none. I’m powerful lonesome, somehow. Let’s you an’ me have one more drink.”

“That sounds reas’nable,” said Jackson. “Shore that sounds reas’nable to me.”

They drank of a keg which the master of the post had hidden in his lodge, back of his blankets; drank again of high wines diluted but uncolored--the “likker” of the fur trade.

They drank from tin cups, until Bridger began to chant, a deepening sense of his old melancholy on him.

“Good-by!” he said again and again, waving his hand in general vagueness to the mountains.

“We was friends, wasn’t we, Bill?” he demanded again and again; and Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity. He himself began to chant. The two were savages again.

“Well, we got to part, Bill. This is Jim Bridger’s last rendyvous. I’ve rid around an’ said good-by to the mountings. Why don’t we do it the way the big partisans allus done when the rendyvous was over? ’Twas old Mike Fink an’ his friend Carpenter begun hit fifty year ago. Keel-boat men on the river, they was. There’s as good shots left to-day as then, and as good friends. You an’ me has seed hit; we seed hit at the very last meetin’ o’ the Rocky Mountain Company men, before the families come. An’ nary a man spilled the whisky on his partner’s head.”

“That’s the truth,” assented Jackson, “though some I wouldn’t trust now.”

“Would ye trust me, Bill, like I do you, fer sake o’ the old times, when friends was friends?”

“Shore I would, no matter how come, Jim. My hand’s stiddy as a rock, even though my shootin’ shoulder’s a leetle stiff from that Crow arrer.”

Each man held out his firing arm, steady as a bar.

“I kin still see the nail heads on the door yan. Kin ye, Bill?”

“Plain! It’s a waste o’ likker, Jim, fer we’d both drill the cups.”

“Are ye a-skeered?”

“I told ye not.”

“Chardon!” roared Bridger to his clerk. “You, Chardon, come here!”

The clerk obeyed, though he and others had been discreet about remaining visible as this bout of old-timers at their cups went on. Liquor and gunpowder usually went together.

“Chardon, ye git two fresh tin cups an’ bring ’em here. Bring a piece o’ charcoal to spot the cups. We’re goin’ to shoot ’em off each other’s heads, in the old way. You know what I mean.”

Chardon, trembling, brought the two tin cups, and Bridger with a burnt ember sought to mark plainly on each a black bull’s-eye. Silence fell on the few observers, for all the emigrants had now gone and the open space before the rude trading building was vacant, although a few faces peered around corners. At the door of the tallest tepee two native women sat, a young and an old, their blankets drawn across their eyes, accepting fate, and not daring to make a protest.

“How!” exclaimed Bridger as he filled both cups and put them on the ground. “Have ye wiped yer barrel?”

“Shore I have. Let’s wipe again.”

Each drew his ramrod from the pipes and attached the cleaning worm with its twist of tow, kept handy in belt pouch in muzzle-loading days.

“Clean as a whistle!” said Jackson, holding out the end of the rod.

“So’s mine, pardner. Old Jim Bridger never disgraced hisself with a rifle.”

“Ner me,” commented Jackson. “Hold a hair full, Jim, an’ cut high the top o’ the tin. That’ll be safer fer my skelp, an’ hit’ll let less whisky out’n the hole. We got to drink what’s left. S’pose’n’ we have a snort now?”

“Atter we both shoot we kin drink,” rejoined his friend, with a remaining trace of judgment. “Go take stand whar we marked the scratch. Chardon, damn ye, carry the cup down an’ set hit on his head, an’ ef you spill a drop I’ll drill ye, d’ye hear?”

The _engagé’s_ face went pale.

“But Monsieur Jim----” he began.

“Don’t ‘Monsieur Jim’ me or I’ll drill a hole in ye anyways! Do-ee-do what I tell ye, boy! Then if ye crave fer to see some ol’-time shootin’ come on out, the hull o’ ye, an’ take a lesson, damn ye!”

“Do-ee ye shoot first, Bill,” demanded Bridger. “The light’s soft, an’ we’ll swap atter the fust fire, to git hit squar for the hindsight, an’ no shine on the side o’ the front sight.”

“No, we’ll toss fer fust,” said Jackson, and drew out a Spanish dollar. “Tails fer me last!” he called as it fell. “An’ I win! You go fust, Jim.”

“Shore I will ef the toss-up says so,” rejoined his friend. “Step off the fifty yard. What sort o’ iron ye carryin’, Bill?”

“Why do ye ask? Ye know ol’ Mike Sheets in Virginia never bored a better. I’ve never changed.”

“Ner I from my old Hawken. Two good guns, an’ two good men, Bill, o’ the ol’ times--the ol’ times! We kain’t say fairer’n this, can we, at our time o’ life, fer favor o’ the old times, Bill? We got to do somethin’, so’s to kind o’ git rested up.”

“No man kin say fairer,” said his friend.

They shook hands solemnly and went onward with their devil-may-care test, devised in a historic keel-boat man’s brain, as inflamed then by alcohol as their own were now.

Followed by the terrified clerk, Bill Jackson, tall, thin and grizzled, stoical as an Indian, and too drunk to care much for consequences, so only he proved his skill and his courage, walked steadily down to the chosen spot and stood, his arms folded, after leaning his own rifle against the door of the trading room. He faced Bridger without a tremor, his head bare, and cursed Chardon for a coward when his hand trembled as he balanced the cup on Jackson’s head.

“Damn ye,” he exclaimed, “there’ll be plenty lost without any o’ your spillin’!”

“Air ye all ready, Bill?” called Bridger from his station, his rifle cocked and the delicate triggers set, so perfect in their mechanism that the lightest touch against the trigger edge would loose the hammer.

“All ready!” answered Jackson.

The two, jealous still of the ancient art of the rifle, which nowhere in the world obtained nicer development than among men such as these, faced each other in what always was considered the supreme test of nerve and skill; for naturally a man’s hand might tremble, sighting three inches above his friend’s eyes, when it would not move a hair sighting center between the eyes of an enemy.

Bridger spat out his tobacco chew and steadily raised his rifle. The man opposite him stood steady as a pillar, and did not close his eyes. The silence that fell on those who saw became so intense that it seemed veritably to radiate, reaching out over the valley to the mountains as in a hush of leagues.

For an instant, which to the few observers seemed an hour, these two figures, from which motion seemed to have passed forever, stood frozen. Then there came a spurt of whitish-blue smoke and the thin dry crack of the border rifle.

The hand and eye of Jim Bridger, in spite of advancing years, remained true to their long training. At the rifle crack the tin cup on the head of the statuelike figure opposite him was flung behind as though by the blow of an invisible hand. The spin of the bullet, acting on the liquid contents, ripped apart the seams of the cup and flung the fluid wide. Then and not till then did Jackson move.

He picked up the empty cup, bored center directly through the black spot, and turning walked with it in his hand toward Bridger, who was wiping out his rifle once more.

“I call hit mighty careless shootin’,” said he, irritated. “Now look what ye done to the likker! If ye’d held a leetle higher, above the level o’ the likker, like I told ye, she wouldn’t have busted open thataway. It’s nacherl, thar warn’t room in the cup fer both the likker an’ the ball. That’s wastin’ likker, Jim, an’ my mother told me when I was a boy, ‘Willful waste makes woeful want!’”

“I call hit a plumb-center shot,” grumbled Bridger. “Do-ee look now! Maybe ye think ye kin do better shootin’ yerself than old Jim Bridger!”

“Shore I kin, an’ I’ll show ye! I’ll bet my rifle aginst yourn--ef I wanted so sorry a piece as yourn--I kin shoot that close to the mark an’ not spill no likker a-tall! An’ ye can fill her two-thirds full an’ put yer thumb in fer the balance ef ye like.”

“I’ll just bet ye a new mule agin yer pony ye kain’t do nothin’ o’ the sort!” retorted Bridger.

“All right, I’ll show ye. O’ course, ye got to hold still.”

“Who said I wouldn’t hold still?”

“Nobody. Now you watch me.”

He stooped at the little water ditch which had been led in among the buildings from the stream and kneaded up a little ball of mud. This he forced into the handle of the tin cup, entirely filling it, then washed off the body of the cup.

“I’ll shoot the fillin’ out’n the handle an’ not out’n the cup!” said he. “Mud’s cheap, an’ all the diff’runce in holdin’ is, ef I nicked the side o’ yer haid it’d hurt ye ’bout the same as ef what I nicked the center of hit. Ain’t that so? We’d orto practice inderstry an’ ’conomy, Jim. Like my mother said, ‘Penny saved is er penny yearned.’ ‘Little drops o’ water, little grains o’ sand,’ says she, ‘a-makes the mighty o-o-ocean an’ the plea-ea-sant land.’”

“I never seed it tried,” said Bridger, with interest, “but I don’t see why hit hain’t practical. Whang away, an’ ef ye spill the whisky shootin’ to one side, or cut ha’r shootin’ too low, your _caballo_ is mine--an’ he ain’t much!”

With no more argument, he in turn took up his place, the two changing positions so that the light would favor the rifleman. Again the fear-smitten Chardon adjusted the filled cup, this time on his master’s bared head.

“Do-ee turn her sideways now, boy,” cautioned Bridger. “Set the han’le sideways squar’, so she looks wide. Give him a fa’r shot now, fer I’m interested in this yere thing, either way she goes. Either I lose ha’r er a mule.”

But folding his arms he faced the rifle without batting an eye, as steady as had been the other in his turn.

Jackson extended his long left arm, slowly and steadily raising the silver bead up from the chest, the throat, the chin, the forehead of his friend, then lowered it, rubbing his sore shoulder.

“Tell him to turn that han’le squar’ to me, Jim!” he called. “The damn fool has got her all squegeed around to one side.”

Bridger reached up a hand and straightened the cup himself.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“All right! Now hold stiddy a minute.”

Again the Indian women covered their faces, sitting motionless. And at last came again the puff of smoke, the faint crack of the rifle, never loud in the high, rarefied air.

The straight figure of the scout never wavered. The cup still rested on his head. The rifleman calmly blew the smoke from his barrel, his eye on Bridger as the latter now raised a careful hand to his head. Chardon hastened to aid, with many ejaculations.

The cup still was full, but the mud was gone from inside the handle as though poked out with a finger!

“That’s what I call shootin’, Jim,” said Jackson, “an’ reas’nable shootin’ too. Now spill half o’ her where she’ll do some good, an’ give me the rest. I got to be goin’ now. I don’t want yer mule. I fust come away from Missoury to git shet o’ mules!”

Chardon, cupbearer, stood regarding the two wild souls whom he never in his own more timid nature was to understand. The two mountain-men shook hands. The alcohol had no more than steadied them in their rifle work, but the old exultation of their wild life came to them now once more. Bridger clapped hand to mouth and uttered his old war-cry before he drained his share of the fiery fluid.

“To the ol’ days, friend!” said he once more; “the days that’s gone, when men was men, an’ a friend could trust a friend!”

“To the ol’ days!” said Jackson in turn. “An’ I’ll bet two better shots don’t stand to-day on the soil o’ Oregon! But I got to be goin’, Jim. I’m goin’ on to the Columby. I may not see ye soon. It’s far.”

He swung into his saddle, the rifle in its loop at the horn. But Bridger came to him, a hand on his knee.

“I hate to see ye go, Bill.”

“Shore!” said Jackson. “I hate to go. Take keer yerself, Jim.”

The two Indian women had uncovered their faces and, gone inside the lodge. But old Jim Bridger sat down, back against a cottonwood, and watched the lopping figure of his friend jog slowly out into the desert. He himself was singing now, chanting monotonously an old Indian refrain that lingered in his soul from the days of the last rendezvous.

At length he arose and, animated by a sudden thought, sought out his tepee once more. Dang Yore Eyes greeted him with shy smiles of pride.

“Heap shoot, Jeem!” said she. “No kill-um. Why?”

She was decked now in her finest, ready to use all her blandishments on her lord and master. Her cheeks were painted red, her wrists were heavy with copper. On a thong at her neck hung a piece of yellow stone which she had bored through with an awl, or rather with three or four awls, after much labor, that very day.

Bridger picked up the ornament between thumb and finger. He said no word, but his fingers spoke.

“Other pieces. Where?”

“White man. Gone--out there.” She answered in the same fashion.

“How, cola!” she spoke aloud. “Him say, ‘How, cola,’ me.” She smiled with much pride over her conquest, and showed two silver dollars. “Swap!”

In silence Bridger went into the tepee and pulled the door flaps.

EL DORADO

BAYARD TAYLOR

From “Eldorado.” Reprinted by permission of the authorized publishers, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.