Jim Bridger - Greatest of the Mountain Men

CHAPTER 1

FACES WEST!

AH-A-A-AH! Jim Bridger slapped his mouth with his hand, giving a shrill Indian war whoop as he pranced around an imaginary campfire in the center of the room. We air goin’ West to kill grizzly b’ars and fight Injuns!"

His younger brother John and their sister, four-year-old Mary Ann, imitated his prancing and whooping.

Oh, hush! Hush! cried Chloe, their mother, straightening her thin body from stirring a savory-smelling kettle of stew bubbling over the open fire. Her usually mild blue eyes snapped as she said, We won’t see any bears or Indians. We’re going to live near St. Louis. It will be quite civilized, I hope. I want you younguns to get some schooling . . . . . .

Jim stopped in his tracks and stared at her with a shocked expression. No Injuns! No b’ars! His tone was accusing — as if he suspected his mother of deliberately depriving him of some precious right.

Of course not. St. Louis is quite a city. The gateway to the West, they call it. She sighed as she looked around at the few primitive comforts of the cabin, finally gained after considerable prodding of her husband who had been born with an itching foot. There was a puncheon floor, a long table made of a split log set on pegs, and benches made of smaller split logs. There was even real glass in the two windows, taking the place of the oiled skins which had been there until they grew cracked and torn.

Of course, she went on softly as though speaking to herself, it will mean making a fresh start. Oh, why can’t men ever be content to settle down? Why do they feel they must forever keep pushing westward? What are they looking for? Oh, well! I suppose I’ll have to make the best of it as other women are doing. Come, children. Wash up now and sit down to supper. She started ladling the stew into wooden bowls.

James Bridger, senior, strode into the house and placed his surveying instruments carefully in a corner. He was a tall, rugged-looking man, to whom his gray-eyed, brown-haired namesake bore a strong resemblance.

He threw his long legs over a bench and pulled his bowl of stew toward him. Time we were moving on, he growled. A frown made a deep crease between his eyes. Gettin’ too danged civilized around here. No hunting. Country all taken by farming. No work for a good surveyor around here any more.

You were doing all right running the inn in Richmond. Chloe spoke mildly, but there was a slight bite to her tone.

Ho! No red-blooded man can stand being cooped up inside! He started to eat, then stopped with his fork midway to his mouth and his stern eyes bored into his wife’s. And you needn’t tell me we’re doing all right at farming. I haven’t any stomach for following a plow.

I hanker to go West and fight Injuns, young Jim broke in.

At eight years, James Felix Bridger was a sturdy lad, a head taller than most boys his age, and with strength and stamina to match his size. He was strong-featured, with a determined set to his chin and a way of giving such a steady straightforward gaze that people were wont to give him his way.

Born March 17, 1804, in Richmond, Virginia, the date of his birth coincided with an event which was to have far-reaching effects on his destiny and on that of the nation. It was the same year in which the Lewis and Clark exploration of the region of the Louisiana Purchase was to open a rich new world where Jim Bridger would help shape history. Their report of the wondrous Rocky Mountains and the country beyond stirred men’s imaginations, causing a ferment of unrest which would push the frontier farther and farther westward.

I’m going to ride the buckskin when we go West, Jim informed his father.

You’ll ride in the wagon with the other younguns, his father replied. The buckskin is skittish. Only half broke.

I air riding the buckskin, Jim repeated sopping up the remaining drops of gravy in his bowl with a piece of bread.

We’ll see, was all his father said.

He often shook his head over his oldest child. Jim’s a headstrong youngun, he told Chloe. Too set on getting his own way. But he’s smart. Knows his way around in the woods better’n most men. I reckon he’ll make out all right.

I reckon he will, Chloe agreed. If he ever gets some schooling.

Jim was shrewd enough not to press the matter of riding the buckskin horse, Comanche. He would handle the matter in his own way.

While preparations were being made for the move, he lived in a world of perpetual excitement. He did not know why it was so, but the word West to him spelled high Adventure. He could scarcely wait to start the journey. Meanwhile, as his father was winding up his affairs, Jim went about getting his way regarding the horse. It was true that the buckskin, Comanche, was only half broken. Mr. Bridger had not had time to complete his training, but now Jim took the initiative in the matter.

First, he won Comanche’s friendship by feeding him apples or bits of sugar cane. He talked to him, accustoming the horse to the sound of his voice. He rubbed his neck and nose. Finally he got to the point where the horse would come to his whistle when he perched on the fence surrounding the wide pasture. Then he coaxed the buckskin close enough to the rail fence so that he could throw himself over the wide back. Comanche promptly bucked him off.

You won’t get an apple for that, Jim said as he picked himself up, rubbing the spot which had hit the ground.

The gentling process went on until Jim was able to get a bridle on Comanche. With reins to give him a degree of balance and to serve as a check on the horse, he was able at last to ride round and round the pasture. With a halter tied close to the fence, he got the saddle on Comanche’s back. The horse showed his resentment at this new indignity by more bucking, but Jim persisted until Comanche finally became his willing servant.

At last the eventful moving day arrived. The Bridger family was up before dawn. The big wagon stood by their door. Much of their household stuff had been packed the evening before. After breakfast, the bedding and the rest of the cooking utensils were stowed away and the canvas wagon sheet tied over the load. Now Mr. Bridger led the team of bays from the barn and began harnessing them to the heavy wagon.

Comanche, too, was in the barn. It was Mr. Bridger’s plan to tie him to the back of the wagon as a spare horse. But Jim was ready for his surprise. He lifted the saddle from the rail and heaved it onto Comanche’s back after adjusting the bridle. Then he climbed aboard and rode out into the yard and around the wagon, striving all the while to keep a straight face. He was aware of his mother’s wide eyes, her shocked expression.

Get off that horse before you get your neck broke, you crazy youngun! his father cried.

I won’t get my neck broke, Jim told him calmly. I have been riding Comanche for a month. I’ve made a good riding horse of him. See.

He pounded his heels against Comanche’s ribs and the horse broke into an easy lope, up the road and back.

When he returned, he saw the anger on his father’s face change to reluctant admiration. From his father’s expression he guessed that his dad wanted to thrash him yet his pride in his son held him back. The boy’s face broke into his infectious grin. He lifted his worn coonskin hat high and cried, Faces West! On to adventure. On to hunt Injuns and b’ars! He turned his horse and the little procession set forth with eight-year-old Jim in the lead.

It was a slow but pleasant ride across the Blue Ridge Mountains and along the trail of Daniel Boone, through wooded country beautiful with spring. To Jim and his younger brother, John, it was one long picnic or camping-out-trip, but Jim realized that his mother was wearied by the end of the day by the jouncing of the wagon and the fretfulness of little Mary Ann.

The slowness of the journey did not bother Jim because every hill, every turn of the trail beckoned with some fresh adventure and his lively imagination saw the feathered headdress of Indians, bears, or other varmints behind every clump of bushes. When the going was too slow, he urged Comanche into a gallop and over the hill he went giving war whoops to frighten away any hostile tribes which might block their way.

He felt vastly important to be in the lead of the caravan. He made it his business to kill game birds during the day and at evening to pick out pleasant camping sites where there was an abundance of wood for fuel and fresh water and grass for the animals.

While their father unhitched the horses and watered them, Jim and John gathered wood and built the campfire. Then, because Chloe was so travel-weary, and also because he liked doing so, the father cooked the evening meal. Jim watched him and learned the tricks of outdoors cooking — of putting water and salt in a cavity scooped in the sack of cornmeal and making little cakes to be fried in fat — of plastering game birds with mud after removing the entrails, then cooking them in the coals. When the hardened mud was broken away, the feathers came, too, and there lay the bird, juicy and tender.

After the meal the boys raced and romped and screamed until they had used up their excess energy; then they rolled in quilts to sleep beneath the stars.

Why do people live in houses? Jim asked his father one evening. This way of living air so much fun I don’t see any sense in doin’ any other way.

His father looked across the fire at his older son sitting staring into the fire, his arms hugging his knees and his gray eyes full of dreams.

I know just how you feel, lad, he said quietly. Then he threw a half-mischievous glance at his wife, sitting with her back resting against a stump, the drowsy Mary Ann in her arms.

The womenfolk, though, have different ideas about living, he drawled. They’re all for houses and fixing things up. A fellow may prefer a he-man life in the open, but the first thing he knows some quiet little lady with the strength of a squirrel has him all tangled up with civilized fixings and some fine day he wakes up to find himself cooped indoors for the rest of his life.

That’ll never happen to me, Jim said stoutly. Me, I’m goin’ to spend my life outdoors huntin’ and doin’ what I want to do. I won’t let any girl coop me up.

We’ll see about that, his mother smiled at him fondly. There’ll come a day when you’ll be willing to settle down, and in bad weather it’s very pleasant to have a roof over your head and a warm fire and a soft bed.

I air goin’ to live outside, winter and summer, Jim insisted.

Reaching the broad Mississippi by midsummer, the family located on a small farm at Six-Mile-Prairie not far from St. Louis, then a booming town of fifteen hundred. Being so near the thriving center suited Chloe’s desire to be on the threshold of civilization, while the farm life gave the boys the chance to roam at will out of doors — something Mr. Bridger considered necessary to a man child’s well-being. As he had hoped, the father found all the surveying he could manage to do. He was busy from morning until night and was seldom at home.

Jim found the life along the big river fascinating. Within the next few years he made friends with the rough and rugged rivermen and learned a lot about handling boats and rafts on the sluggish but treacherous waters.

Then suddenly tragedy struck the little family. An epidemic of cholera was sweeping the country. The father was away from home when one day Jim returned from his wanderings along the river to find his mother in bed, her face flushed and hot. She tossed and moaned and muttered strange things that made no sense. Jim was beside himself with anxiety. First, he had a notion of getting on Comanche and riding to St. Louis to find a doctor. But that would take hours. There were no neighbors. John was moping around, too, and complaining of aches and pains and his forehead was hot to Jim’s touch. Mary Ann was fretting. He could not leave them.

He pumped cold water from the well and bathed his mother’s hot face. This seemed to soothe her. Her head did not roll so on the pillow, but she still looked at him with glazed eyes as if she did not recognize him.

Finally she fell asleep — or so Jim thought. He ordered John to undress and get into bed and he helped Mary Ann undress and put her on her pallet. Then he set about cooking cornmeal mush. John and Mary Ann ate a bit, but Jim decided he would let his mother awake of her own accord before he gave her a bowl of gruel. Probably sleep would be better for her than food at this time. She seemed to be slumbering very soundly now and was not tossing at all.

Rest would do her good. Probably she was worn out. He knew that she was too frail for pioneer life. She had come from a prominent family named Tyler, and until her marriage she had not known hardships.

When it grew dark in the little cabin, Jim lit the tallow candle and busied himself straightening up the place until his mother should awaken. When his work was done, he sat on the doorstep, watching the stars come out and listening to all of the pleasant small noises of evening and feeling the cool breeze from the river on his cheeks.

Finally he began to grow drowsy. The cornmeal mush would be stiff by now. He would have to build up a fire and make more for his mother.

He tiptoed in to his mother’s bed. She was not stirring. In fact, there was something frightening about how still she lay. Jim bounded to the table and picked up the candle and held it above his mother’s face. It held a peaceful expression and all signs of weariness were gone. But Jim’s heart stood still. It took almost more courage than he possessed to put out his hand and touch her forehead. It was cold now, cold as stone. He leaped back, an involuntary cry on his lips.

The other two children stirred in their sleep. Jim again stepped closer to the bed. His mother’s hand rested outside the coverlet. He touched it and found it, too, was stone cold. He pulled the coverlet from under the still hand and slowly covered the serene face. Then he placed the candle on the floor, sank to his knees, and buried his face against the bed covers and gave way to