“How’s your train falling apart?” Sweete repeated.
“We got to Laramie with our company captain,” she began to explain. “We elected him at Westport, mostly because he had a little experience on the plains. Last year he’d come out to Fort Laramie on his own to ride part of the trail for himself. Mostly, he got himself elected because he had more money than the rest of us … and that meant he had more wagons and guns for our protection, and some hired men along too. But, they weren’t family men like the rest of us. Just single fellas, going out to start over in Oregon on the captain’s pay.”
The fear he read in her eyes made Titus bristle. “Now the rest of you got trouble with some of ’em?”
“Yes … well, no,” she responded with a frustrated shake of her head. “The captain, his name is Hargrove— back at Laramie he ran onto a pilot who says he knows the country from here on out. Says he’s been out to Oregon a half dozen times. Was a mountain trapper too, he claims.”
“What’s his name?” Sweete demanded suspiciously.
“I can’t rightly remember,” she answered, her face gray with concern. “Only that Hargrove said he was our Moses,” she admitted.
“He here?” Titus asked.
She nodded.
“Point ’im out to me.”
Amanda turned with the child still clutching her hand and stepped away to the right where the three of them would have a better view of the central actors in this dramatic dispute taking place beside Black’s Fork.
“There he is,” Amanda announced, bitterness in her voice pointing quickly. “That’s him. Got a full beard like yours, and he’s wearing those skin clothes—like yours, Pa.”
Peering through the anxious crowd shifting from one foot to the other, Titus trained his good eye on the figure who was turned slightly away from him for the moment. Then the tall man addressing the group took a step forward, and Scratch easily made out the pilot.
“Harris,” Sweete whispered it like a curse.
“That nigger gets drunk at the drop of a hat—an’ when he does, he ain’t leading no one nowhere,” Bass grumbled in agreement of Shad’s sentiment.
“No, he hasn’t made any trouble with his drinking,” Amanda argued. “Problem is, the pilot’s going off with Hargrove and his wagons.”
“Off where?”
“Taking them to California,” she said with exasperation and a shake of her head.
Scratch turned from glaring at Harris to look down at his daughter. “Thought you said your train was bound for Oregon?”
Amanda pursed her lips, then said, “Back at Westport we was formed as a company for Oregon Territory. That’s where most of us still want to go. But late this afternoon Hargrove sent around his men, calling a council meeting.”
“Hargrove?” Shad echoed.
She explained, “When we got here a little while ago, he started off telling us he and his hired men would stay on with us till we reached Fort Hall. That’s where Hargrove said he was turning off for California.”
“An’ your captain is taking your new pilot with him to Californy,” Bass completed the dilemma.
“That’s right,” she answered, reaching out to gently squeeze his hand. “After that we won’t have us our company captain and all his guns along. And we won’t have our pilot to get us from Fort Hall to the Willamette.”
Without turning to look at his tall friend, Scratch glared at the tall, well-dressed speaker named Hargrove and said quietly, “Let’s go have us a listen, Shadrach.”
Leading their horses, the pair inched forward on foot to the outer edges of the crowd. It was there that Titus whispered, “I didn’t see him my own self earlier this summer, but them Marmons Gabe an’ me run into on the Sandy said they come across Harris at Pacific Springs in the pass. Coming from Oregon hisself, he told ’em. When Brigham Young said he had no need to hire him to lead his bunch into the valley of the Salt Lake, Harris said he’d push on to Fort John—where he claimed there’d be plenty of trains what’d hire him to pilot them through.”
“No-good bastard found him some work, he did,” Sweete responded in a whisper so sharp that it made a few of the nearby emigrants turn their heads and flick a disquieting look at the pair in buckskins.
Bass leaned over and whispered to Amanda, “That’s your Moses, all right. His name’s Moses Harris. Sometimes, that nigger goes by the name o’ Black Harris. His cheeks burned so dark the skin shines like burnt powder. How he come by that name.”
With an involuntary shudder, she declared, “I’d just as soon he go off a different way, Pa. Never did like the way he looked at me or any other woman with the train. Them eyes of his all over me—makes my skin tremble like I was cold and had spiders crawling on me at the same time.”
“From what I recollect, that’un’s a coward … less’n he’s got a bellyful of John Barleycorn,” Shad observed.
“Shshshsh!” One of the emigrants turned and pressed a finger to her lips at the two old mountain men.
“—which means all of you are free to follow me to my new home in California,” boomed the tall man who towered over the stockier Harris, “or, you can make your own way to Oregon without our help.”
“I recall this company elected you our captain,” protested a tall, wide-shouldered man as he stepped from the edge of the crowd, tugging at one of his frayed suspenders that threatened to slip off his shoulder. He was clearly growing agitated. “Back at Westport, before we ever headed out, we elected you, Hargrove—because you said you was gonna lead us to Oregon.”
“A man has a right to change his mind,” Phineas Hargrove argued now with a winning smile. “Between leaving Westport behind and the Green River crossing, I’ve come to believe California is where my fortunes lie.”
Another, heavier man lunged from the inner edge of the gathering to growl, “But we was formed around you to take us to Oregon. That’s where we all wanna go! We’re a Oregon company!”
Hargrove turned to the shorter man with that look of disdain written upon his face. “And you’re all free to follow your dreams from Fort Hall,” he reminded them. “But any of you who want to see what California has to offer, I repeat that Mr. Harris here has agreed to lead us south and west from Fort Hall, to the Humboldt and on to northern California.”
That’s when the tall man with the thick neck that disappeared into the collar of his shirt took three more steps that brought him onto the open ground at the center of the great circle where Hargrove and Harris held court. Amanda raised herself on the toes of her boots and whispered into her father’s ear, “That’s Roman.”
“Roman?” Titus repeated, appraising the man. “Your husband?”
She nodded.
As Roman Burwell came to a sudden halt before Hargrove, three of the captain’s hired men stepped protectively closer to their employer, their flinty gazes full of intimidation for the farmer who said, “There was something about you, Hargrove—right from when I first laid eyes on you at Westport. Something slick and oily from the start.”
“I got you this far, Burwell,” the captain sneered down his long, patrician nose. “I can’t nurse the rest of you all the way to Oregon. You’ll have to get there on your own.” With an amused grin, Hargrove stepped away from his hired men and walked around Burwell tauntingly. “Why, the rest of you could even elect Burwell here as your new captain!”
But that suggestion met with a strained, awkward silence while Hargrove waited for someone to speak up.
Instead, it was Burwell himself who shattered the silence, “Ain’t no one gonna choose me for to be the captain, Hargrove. I ain’t got the makings of a train captain. Just a simple man. I could never pretend to be nothing I ain’t. But that’s just what you done to the rest of us.”
Hargrove ground to a halt and he leaned in at the side of the farmer’s face. “What’s that mean, Burwell?”
The big sodbuster struggled to keep his beefy hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists. “One thing I can’t abide by is a man saying he’s one thing, when he’s lying through his teeth at me. I brung my family all the way here—hell, we all got our families with us. We was bound for Oregon, following a man who said he was gonna lead us to the Willamette River … and now we find out that man’s a damned liar!”
