“What happened to them that wasn’t?” Kirby asked.
“I helped bury some of ’em,” Preacher said quietly.
“You must know your way around this country, then,” Emmett said.
“Do for a fact. I helped open up this here Santa Fe Trail, and I’ve ridden the Mormon Trail more’un once. Boys, I been up the mountain, over the hill, and ’crost the river. And I’ve seen the varmit.” He looked hard at Kirby. “But Smoke, I swear I ain’t never seen the likes of you when it comes to handlin’ a short gun. It’s like you was born with a Colt in your hands. Unnatural.”
The old mountain man was silent for a time, his eyes on the deep ruts in the ground that signified the Santa Fe Trail. “I don’t know where you two is goin’. Probably you don’t neither. You may be just a-wanderin’, that’s all. Lookin’. That’s dandy. Good for folk to see the country. So I’ll tag along here and there, catch up ever’ now and then see how you’re a-makin’ it. I usually don’t much take to folk. Like to be alone. Must be a sign of my
“We’re heading, in a roundabout way,” Emmett said, “to a place called I-dee-ho.”
“Rugged and beautiful,” Preacher said. “Been there lots of times. But were I you — ’course I ain’t — I’d see Colorado first. Tell you what: I got me a cache of fur not too far from here. Last year’s trappin’. Ya’ll mosey around, take it easy, and keep on headin’ northwest. From here, more north than west. Ya’ll will cut the northern trail of the Santa Fe in a few days. Stay with it till you come to the ruins of Bent’s Fort. I’ll meet you there. See you.” He wheeled his horses and rode off without looking back, pack horses in tow.
Emmett looked at his son. Preacher liked the boy. And if he would agree to see to him through the waning months of his boyhood … well, Emmett’s mission could wait. The men he hunted would still be there. But for now, he wanted to spend some time with his son.
“How about it, Kirby — I mean, Smoke. Want to see Colorado?”
The boy-rapidly-turning-man grinned. “Sure, Pa.”
Long before 1865, Bent’s Fort lay in ruins. But from 1834 to 1850, the post ruled the fur trade in the southern Rockies. By 1865, the mountain men were almost no more. Time had caught up with them, and in most cases, passed them by. Civilization had raised its sometimes dubious head and pushed the mountain men into history. Those that remained were men, for the most part, advanced in years (for their time), heading for the sunset of their lives. But they were still a rough breed, tough and salty, not to be taken lightly or talked down to. For these men had spent their youth, their best years, and the midpoint of their lives, in the elements, where one careless move could have meant either sudden death or slow torture from hostiles. Mountain men were not easily impressed.
But the gathering of mountain men stood and watched as Kirby and his father rode slowly into the ruins of the old post, rifles across their saddles, pack animals trailing.
Kirby and his father did not know Preacher had spread the word about the boy called Smoke.
Kirby, as did many boys of that hard era, looked older than his years. His face was deeply tanned, and he was rawboned, just beginning to fill out for his adult life. His shoulders and arms were lean, but hard with muscle, and they would grow much harder and powerful in the months ahead.
“He don’t look like much to me,” an aging mountain man said to a friend.
“Neither did Kit,” his friend replied. “Warn’t but four inches over five feet. But he were a hell of a man.”
The mountain man nodded. “That he were.” His eyes were on Kirby. “Funny way to wear a brace of short guns.”
“Faster than a snake, Preacher says.”
The mountain man cocked an eye at his friend. “Preacher’s been known to tell a lie ever’ now and then.”
“Not this time, I wager. That there kid’s got a mean look to his eyes. Mayhaps he don’t know it yet, but he do. Give him two-three years, I’d think long ’fore tanglin’ with him.”
That got him an astonished look. “Hell-fire, Calico. You fit a grizzly once!”
“Won, too,” the old man said. “But I’m thinkin’ that kid’s part bear, part puma, part rattler. I’ll go ’long with Preacher on this one.”
“Does have a certain set to that squared-off jaw, don’t he?”
“Yep. Big hands on him.”
Kirby and Emmett sat their horses and stared. Neither had ever seen anything like this colorful assemblage. The men (only a few squaws were in attendance and they stayed to themselves), all of them sixty-plus in years, were dressed in wild, bright colors: in buckskin breeches and shirt, with beaded leggings, wide red or blue or yellow sashes about their waists. Some wore whipcord trousers, with silk shirts shining in a cacophony of colors. All were beaded and booted and bearded. Some held long muzzle-loading Kentucky rifles, or Plains’ rifles, with colorfully dyed rawhide dangling from the barrel, the shot and powder bags decorated with beads.
This was to be the last great gathering of the magnificent breed of men called Mountain Man. Many of them, after this final rendezvous in the twilight of their years, would drift back into the great mountains they loved, never to be heard from or seen again, to die as they had lived — alone. Their graves the earth they explored, their monuments the mountains they loved, tombstones rearing above them forever. They were a breed of man that flourished but briefly, whose courage and light helped to open the way west.
When Emmett and Kirby spotted Preacher, they could not believe their eyes. They sat their horses and stared.
Preacher was clean, his beard trimmed. He wore new buckskins, new leggings, a red sash around his waist, and a light they had never seen sparkled from his eyes. “Howdy!” he called. “Ya’ll light and sit, boys.”
“I don’t believe it,” Emmett said. “His face is clean.”
“Water to wash in over there,” Preacher said, pointing. “Good strong soap, too. But you’d best dump what’s in the barrel, though. It’s got fleas in with the ticks.”
When Emmett and son walked out into the final rendezvous of the mountain men, on this, their first day at the old post, they were greeted warmly, if with a bit of constraint.
