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.
“Thank you,” he said to Preacher. He reloaded the empty cylinders.
Preacher scalped the Pawnee, then tossed the bloody scalp locks to Kirby. “They yourn, Smoke. Put ’em in that war bag I give you. They worth four dollars to you. Go on … four dollars ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.”
With his father watching him through eyes that had seen much, Kirby picked up the bloody hair and placed them in a beaded pouch Preacher had given him.
Emmett, who had ridden with the great Confederate Ranger J. S. Mosby for a year, was the furthest from being a stranger to guns and gunplay. Although Kirby would not learn of it for years, his father had been with Mosby when they rode into the middle of a Union Army camp at Fairfax, Virginia one night. They had asked their way to headquarters and there, Mosby awakened the Yankee general, Stoughton, by rudely and ungentlemanly slapping the man on his butt.
“Have you ever heard of J. S. Mosby?” the Confederate guerrilla asked in a whisper.
Angry, the general replied, “Of course! Have you captured him?”
“No,” Mosby said with a smile. “He’s captured you.”
The Confederate Rangers then kidnapped the Union general from under the noses of the general’s own men.
“You’re smooth and quick,” Emmett complimented his son. “And I have seen some men who were smooth and quick.”
“Thank you. Pa,” Kirby said. He was just a little bit sick and embarrassed by what he’d done and all the attention he was receiving. The scalp locks in his war bag were not helping his stomach any.
“Be careful how you use your newfound talent, son,” the father cautioned. “Use it for good, and not for evil. Temper your talent.”
Then the man coughed and thought of his own mission westward. He wondered how and when he should tell his son.
“Yes, Pa. I will.”
Preacher looked at the boy and wondered.
The trio rode for several days without encountering any more hostiles. They saw smoke, often, and knew they were being watched and discussed, but they rode through without further incident from the Pawnee. Three of them had killed more than twelve Pawnee, wounding several more in two quick fights. The Indian may have been a savage — to the white man’s way of reasoning — but he was not a fool, and he was a first-class fighting man, many of the tribes the greatest guerrilla fighters the world would ever know. Part of that is knowing when to fight and when to back off. This was definitely one of the back-off times.
“This here is the Cimarron Cutoff,” Preacher said. They had pulled up and sat their horses, the man and boy looking where he pointed. “The southern route to Santa Fe. Better for wagons and women, but the water is scarce. The northern route is best for water and graze, but it’s tough. Lord, it’s tough.”
“Why?” Emmett asked.
“Mountains. Rocky Mountains. Make them mountains where I’s born look like pimples.”
“Where is that, Preacher?” Kirby asked.
“East Tennysee. Long time ago.” His eyes clouded briefly with memories of a home he had not seen in more than half a century. At first the man had planned to return for a visit, but as the years rolled by, those plans dimmed, never becoming reality. Then he realized his Ma and Pa would be dead — long dead — and there was no point in going back.
The price many men paid for forging westward, opening up new trails for the thousands that would follow.
“I run off when I were twelve,” Preacher said, looking at father and son. “That were, best I can recall, fifty-two year ago, 1813, I believe it was. I’ve spent the better part of fifty year in the mountains. And I reckon I’ve known ever’ mountain man worth his salt in that time, and some that thought they was tough, but weren’t.”
