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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Mountain Man
R. Howard Trembly
There was, many years ago, a mountain man by the name of Seth Edwards, a man of enormous height and strength. He had fought the Shoshone of the Great Basin, the Comanche of the South Plains, and the Utes in the Rocky Mountains of the continental divide. He even searched for gold in the Superstition Mountains when no white man had ever gone into these spiritual sentinels of the Apache and come out alive again.
He hated Indians, and with his well-honed skills as an outdoorsman and Indian fighter, considered them not much more than a nuisance to be dealt with, as a lesser man might swat a persistent fly buzzing around his head. In all of his years as a mountain man, trapping the great mountains of the East and West, he’d not come across one Indian who he deemed a real challenge to his own abilities. That is, until the boy showed up.
The boy referred to, was an Indian to be sure. The man guessed him to be about ten or twelve years at the most, or maybe older but small for his age. He hadn’t seen the boy at first, just kept finding things missing from his camp while he was out tending his trap lines. Mostly it was food come up missing, sometimes a blanket or a piece of rope. Nothing the man couldn’t get along without, irritating at the most. ¬¬
Still, they were the man’s possessions and any thief that took from Seth Edwards was bound to pay a heavy price for his misadventures. Be he man or boy, white or red, Seth was bound by his own personal law to take revenge on the larcenist by extracting a pound of flesh in the form of the heart from he who dared steal from the mountain man.
It was after returning from a mining town to get supplies when Seth first noticed things missing from his camp. Thinking it was a raccoon, he set a trap, sure of a quick kill and another skin to be added to his stash of furs waiting to be sold at the next rendezvous. After leaving the miner’s camp in a hurry ahead of some miners that wanted nothing more than to lynch him from the nearest tree, he was in no mood to have his hard-won supplies pilfered.
While stopping at the only tent saloon in the little town of Dentin, he was having a beer at the bar when a miner came up to him and asked, “Ain’t you that trapper that don’t like Indians?”
Seth said nothing, just continued sipping his beer and enjoying the coolness dribble down his throat.
“I asked you a question, mister! Ain’t you the one they call the Indian hater?” The miner, a man of about six-feet, two inches moved closer to Seth who still ignored him. The man moved still closer, and with an unmistakable defiance to his voice said, “I’m married to an Indian woman, so what you gonna do about it?”
“You’re drunk!”
“I may be drunk but I can still whip a no-good murderer when I see one! Now I said, ‘I’m married to an Indian woman, so what you gonna do about it’?”
“I think you’re just a drunk squaw man that don’t have the sense to know when to leave well enough alone. And I never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to murder me or take something of mine first. Now go away!”
“I ain’t going nowhere till you apologize to me and my wife!”
“O.K. I apologize for calling you a no-good, low-down cowardly drunken squaw man. Now, go away. I’m trying to drink my beer and don’t want any trouble.”
“That’s better! I ‘cept yer apology.” The man staggered over to a table where some other miners were sitting, drinking beer, smoking long black cigars, and playing poker. Seth braced himself for what he knew was to come. Soon the man was back at his side.
“My friends said that weren’t no apology a’tall. Said you was tryin’ to make a fool out a me.” The man turned with his back to the bar and his right side to Seth. A large framed revolver stuck out of the man’s belt, the butt tilted to the right for an easy draw. “Now I want a real apology or I’m goin’ to kill you right here and now.”
Seth let his right foot slide closer to the man with the gun. “You got your apology, and you’re facin’ the wrong way if you expect to draw that gun. Now git away from me while I’m still in a good mood,” Seth said quietly.
“Why you no good--” the man’s hand went for his gun. At the same time Seth transferred his weight to his right foot, blocked the draw with his elbow and grabbed the man by the throat in one smooth motion too quick for the eye to follow. In an instant the man was lifted off his feet and thrown over the bar with such force that he landed against the shelf of whiskey bottles behind it. There was a loud crash as the man hit; his body slumped to the ground in an unconscious heap on the dirt floor.
The miners at the table jumped up and rushed the mountain man only to be met by the half-inch muzzle of Seth’s Hawkins Fifty. They stopped in their tracks, not wanting to be the one that felt the searing blast and the .50 caliber round ball coming from within the gawking black eye of the rifle.
“You men stay back! This is between this man and me. I never hurt a white man before just for defending an Indian, and I’m not doing it now. He was going to try to kill me and I was just defending myself. Nothing more to it than that. Now if any of you think he’s worth dying for, I’ll oblige ya. So think real hard before you make a move on me!”
“Mister, we ain’t mad at you for hitting him. We all saw what he was going to do!” one of the miners said.
“Then why you all rushing me?” Seth asked, confused.
“We’re mad at you for breaking all them whiskey bottles! Them’s all we got till next month when the supply wagons come back in! When the rest of the miners hear about this you’ll be lucky to get out of here alive. We lynched men for a lot less,” the miner explained.
Now back at camp it all seemed like a bad dream. And when he found some of his supplies gone, he was enraged. But the question was, who had taken his stuff? The trap he’d set came up with nothing. Even bait only brought in a curious bear and a squirrel.
The bear, he shot and skinned, smoking the meat for later use. The squirrel got away by running up a tree, all the while keeping the trunk between him and the mountain man. There were not even raccoon tracks to show of any being in the area. So, what had stolen his supplies? A bear would have torn the camp to pieces, and besides, the food was tied well out of reach of any bear. The only answer: it must be human. Another mountain man down on his luck? Not likely.
The thief was probably an Indian too old or too sick to fend for himself. And any Indian was a bad Indian in Seth Edwards’ mind. So he set another trap, a much bigger trap! After two days the trap was left empty and Edwards was overdue to service his trap lines. Besides, maybe it was just a onetime thing. The thief could be dead or have moved on, and the trap lines wouldn’t tend themselves.
Three days on the line and he was back--three days for the thief to come and take what he wanted. What was wanted was more food, not all of it, just enough to not be noticed by a tired man three days gone from camp.
But Seth noticed, and when he did he grew angry inside, and more importantly, determined. Determination tempered with anger was a powerful tool, and Seth Edwards knew how to use that tool to the utmost. If the robber came back a third time, the man of the mountains was surely to be waiting, and just as surely, the thief was going to be dead.
For two days and nights Seth waited--waited like a man waited for a big old grizzly that had a habit of raiding a man’s camp while he was gone. Several times the birds quit singing, alerting the man to something coming his way. Then, when he figured the thief was about to strike again, the birds started their eternal courtship with the world and Seth knew the opportunity was lost.
It was midwinter before anything came up missing again. Seth had gone to get more supplies and tend his traps on the way, leaving his camp absent for almost a week. It wasn’t only food gone this time--it was a blanket and a small pack of sulphur, along with a rusty old knife whose blade was too short to be of any use to the mountain man anymore.
He’d stuck the knife in a tree to hang his lantern on when he needed more light. It wasn’t the loss of the knife that made him mad; it was the principle. After all, there was more’n enough limbs that would do the same thing as the knife. And the blanket? It was too short to cover the large mountain man, so it also wasn’t much of a loss. But why the sulphur?
Siddley Muldoon had been a mountain man since the age of six, at least in his mind. A little small then, but if anyone could follow in his father’s footsteps it was Siddley. When his father came in from the trap lines, Siddley was the first of his brothers to meet the old man on the trail several miles from their small cabin in the mountains.
Now Siddley was hailing the camp of Seth Edwards, his friend of many years. “Ho the camp!” he yelled when fifty yards out.
“Come in, Sid. I been watching you for ten minutes now.”
The two men smiled at each other. “You always was the best of the mountain men. Guess I should’ve known I can’t sneak up here without you seein’ me afore I got here.”
“You done better this time, Sid. If I hadn’t been watching for someone else, you’d have got clean up here without me knowin’. You’re getting better in your old age, I can tell.”
“Ya think so? Well, that’s good to hear from you. I just thought I was only gettin’ old, and the way my bones creak when I walk, I’d figure you’d hear me for miles.” Both men laughed.
“It’s good to see you, my friend. It’s been some time.”
“That it has. That it has.”
“You’re repeating yourself again.”
“I told you I was old. By the time I get to the end of a sentence I done forgot what I was saying in the first part.”
“You had anything to eat?”
“What day is it?”
“Monday, I think, or maybe Friday. Oh hell, you know what day it is. I can’t even tell what year it is, and besides, what’s that got to do with it?”
“I ate yesterday about dark.” Siddley answer.
“I’ll get some grub on the fire and you can tell me why you came way up here this time of year. The rendezvous isn’t for another four months.”
Sid Muldoon suddenly became silent, his head went down and Seth could see he was starting to breathe hard. Something was on the old man’s mind and it wasn’t easy for him to get it out in the open. Edwards busied himself with fixing the food while Muldoon wrestled with whatever personal demon he had inside. Finally, Sid spoke. “I done seen the Princess!” He said in a low, emotion-filled voice.
Seth was tending the fire with his back toward his friend and at first didn’t think he’d heard the man right. Again the voice came to his ears saying, “I’ve seen the Princess.”
Seth turned to face the man. “You saw what?”
“I seen the Princess!”
“You must be daft. There ain’t no Princess.”
“Aye, I believed as you do for most of my life. But I seen her and she is real.”
Seth stood up to his full height and looked down on his friend. Sorrow showed in Seth’s eyes. Many a man had been driven insane by the loneliness of the long winters alone in the mountains. But for it to happen to Muldoon was more than Seth could bear. It was a lonely life the mountain man lived and every friend he had was counted as a treasure amongst them. To lose one such as Muldoon was a tragedy to Seth’s heart and to the mountains where they lived.
“Muldoon. The Princess is only a story, a legend told to little kids down on the flatlands. I heard it myself when I was a child. It was said that when a mountain man saw the Princess she would be all aglow as if a light came from within her. And if I remember right, it was said when a man saw her, he was either going to die within days or if his heart was pure, even if on the outside he didn’t show it, his life would change in such a way as to serve others for all the rest of his life. And I tell you, it’s all hogwash!”
“Maybe so, I know the story too. No matter if it’s hogwash or not, I tell ya, I saw her just as plain as day two nights ago up on Poncho Pass. I was riding along watching for Indians when I saw this glow ahead. Thinking it was a campfire, maybe Injuns, I swung off my horse, and taking my extra guns with me, I stalked up to the light thinking I might kill a whole passel of them, or at least a squaw and her children.
“But alas, it was the Princess! And I am now bound to die from seeing her. I have come to you, my friend, to warn you. Give up your hatred while you can, for mine has surely doomed me.”
Never in all the time living in the mountains had Seth felt such a cold chill run down his back. It was if the icy hand of death had reached out and touched a finger to his spine. Feeling pity for the man before him he reached down to place a hand on his shoulder, and as he did so the man fell over. Dead!
Why? Muldoon was in perfect health as far as Seth knew. So what killed his friend? Did he have a wound Muldoon hadn’t talked about? A man doesn’t just die for no cause. And the thing about seeing the Princess. This surely could not be the foundation of his friend’s death. Or by the greatest stretch of the imagination was this so-called Princess of the Mountains the one who killed him?
No! It was impossible for such a thing to happen. Maybe some men might believe it was true, but certainly not Muldoon or himself. Seth remembered over many a campfire in years past, how Muldoon had laughed at such a notion when brought up by others. Muldoon was an educated man coming back to the mountains only after being to Europe and England to study, then adapting to the ways and the language of the mountains.
Why the mountains had called such a man was only a guess, but Seth always figured it was something to do with his being brought up in the high country as a child. Of course, that was before his pa found the biggest gold strike this side of the great divide and became rich. Afterward, they’d moved to the flatlands and traveled the world over.
Then as suddenly as Muldoon had left he was back, and stayed until this very moment when for whatever mysterious reason he died. Perplexed and deeply saddened, Seth sat down beside his friend and for a long moment with eyes lowered, prayed for the soul of one of the only close friends he had in the wilderness.
“Why?” he asked himself again, looking at the still form beside him. Getting back to his feet he bent over and gently parted the man’s coat, looking for a reason or source of what killed him. His chest was clear of any signs of trauma as well as his neck and abdomen. Seth gently rolled the corpse on its stomach and checked for any visible wounds on its back, but found none.
Mystified, he began to wonder if it might really have something to do with the spirit of the Indian Princess. No! He would not, could not, allow himself to believe in such nonsense. All mountain men are superstitious, but only on practical matters, like always taking your right boot off before the left. Of course, some swear it is the left boot first, not the right. Whatever works for them they accepted as the gospel.
Flatlanders had their own superstitions like bad luck would follow if a black cat walked across your path, or never walking under a ladder. The mountain men laughed at these. Their own beliefs weren’t such childish affairs as the people down in the valleys and out on the plains. And besides, some of the flatlanders’ convictions, like throwing salt over their left shoulder for good luck, was downright costly for a mountain man. Who would throw good salt away when it was so hard for a mountain man to get in the first place?
The more Seth studied his friend’s body for a cause of death, the more he began to wonder about the Princess. He was so involved with his thoughts that he completely forgot about the stealings from his camp. Could something that was no more than a mist kill a man? Muldoon certainly thought so.
While Seth Edwards buried his fellow mountain man on a little knoll a few dozen yards from his camp, he wondered about the Princess and the legend that went with her. From the time he was a little boy he’d heard the stories. They told of an Indian Princess who was loved by all the tribes in the mountains for her beauty and her love of the children, not just of her own tribe, but from all of them. When a child was orphaned or sick, the Indians gathered them up and brought them to her to care for.
This took place many years in the past before the Europeans settled in this land. It was said that every Indian in every tribe knew someone or was a relative to someone she had saved. When she died at a young age, still beautiful and innocent of all sins, the various tribes gathered together and carried her to a sacred ground in the mountains and there built a great fire on which to cremate her so she would be free from her earthly bounds.
As her body was being devoured by the flames, a great medicine man, respected by all that knew him, came forth and in a trance told of how the beautiful maiden was unwilling to leave her children behind. So instead, she would walk the mountains in search of any child who needed help. She would protect them until time was no more.
Seth didn’t know how the part about, if a man saw her and his heart was not pure he would die within days of seeing her apparition, began. Maybe it was a story the Injuns started to scare the white man off their land. Maybe a white man made it up just to outdo some other’s story. When mountain men got together and started to have a little sour mash, stories often took on new twists and turns. This was more‘n likely how it got started, Seth reasoned to himself. Yes, it was nothing more than a story told around a campfire, a story only the weak of mind believed.
Yet Muldoon was not weak of mind, and he saw her and now he was dead! A cold shudder ran up Seth’s spine as he threw the last shovel full of dirt over Siddley Muldoon.
Later sitting by the fire Seth reminisced about the man that lay buried a few dozen yards away. He had been a good man, Seth believed, who’d give you anything he owned. An honest man to be sure. A kind man? Mostly, but as Seth sat remembering, a thought came forward he’d not had in years.
Over a campfire one winter night back in the trees of a small canyon, Muldoon mentioned how his sister was raped and murdered by Indians when he was a child. His father found her, or what was left of her, scalped and naked a hundred yards back of their cabin. It was then Muldoon had said his father promised if they could get enough furs together to buy a place in a valley far away, they’d move there and never come back.
Shortly afterward his father found a thick vein of gold, enough to make him a rich and powerful man. They left the mountains, and true to his word, Muldoon’s father never sat foot in them again. It was also when the younger Muldoon promised to avenge his sister when he grew old enough.
Was that the reason Siddley came back? Was he in the mountains to avenge his sister? A promise made as a child often fades away with the years. But some men, a very few, keep the promise alive within their hearts until they are able to fulfill it. Suddenly, Seth realized Muldoon never did any trapping, and he surely didn’t need the money anyway! So what was Siddley Muldoon doing back in the high country?
Why had he given up a life of ease for the hardships of the wilderness? Hadn’t he just told Seth that before he saw the Princess he was hoping it was an Indian campfire with maybe a squaw and her children to kill? Seth sat back suddenly, spilling coffee in his lap. The hot liquid penetrated his leather pants and burned his leg, causing him to jump up. And when he did, Seth caught a glimpse of a small boy, an Injun boy, running through the trees carrying a blanket over his shoulder.
The hot coffee was quickly forgotten as Seth ran for his rifle and brought it to his shoulder in one practiced motion. The sights lined up on the small boy before Seth realized what he was about to do. Pulling the rifle off target he squeezed the trigger, the blast scaring the boy so bad he dropped the blanket and froze. But in an instant the boy again scooped up the blanket and ran off through the woods like a deer with a cougar chasing it.
Seth didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the scene before him until he realized the boy had just stolen his best blanket! Slowly, anger crept over Seth’s being, knowing this boy was probably the one stealing from him all along. The nerve of the boy to sneak into his camp while he was but a few feet away burying Muldoon.
Seth hated Injuns, although he’d never killed any that wasn’t trying to kill him. In fact, in the years he lived on the high land, not one Injun fell to his bullet. There had been many opportunities, but each time, Seth told himself there might be more Injuns around, and one Injun wasn’t worth losing a scalp over.
He was aware not all mountain men would let the chance to kill an Injun go by. He’d seen the bodies of several Injuns through the years, all with neat round holes in their heads. On one morning he found a squaw and her infant with their throats cut. At the time it made his stomach turn. He’d even went so far as to build a platform, and after placing the two bodies on it, started a large fire to dispose of their corpses.
Later, Seth realized how big a chance he’d taken. But for some reason he knew it was the right thing to do. He felt it in his heart. Now so many years later, with his good friend dead and buried, Seth wondered if he truly did hate Injuns any more. The Indian wars were so long ago. The anger left him.
It was getting late in the evening when Seth realized he needed water. Soon it would be too dark to see, so taking a water skin he walked down to the stream for more. As he came out of the trees a glow caught his attention. To his shock and disbelief, there on the other side of the stream stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, Indian or white.
She stood facing him, her body enveloped in a glow that appeared to permeate her whole being. His mind flashed the message: this was the Princess of the Mountain! Then the legend was true! She held her hand out to him and then slowly turned to point downstream where a great falls dropped the stream a hundred feet down to the rocks below.
A log crossed the stream just above the falls and to his dismay Seth saw the Indian boy clinging to the log with one hand, the other held tightly to the stolen blanket. Before he even gave it a thought, Seth was off and running as fast as his powerful legs could carry him. He reached the log just as the boy’s strength left him and he started falling toward the water below.
Seth dove with all his might and at the very last instant grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled him to safety. In the excitement, he forgot about the Princess.
“Boy, I don’t know if ya understand me or not, but you’re going to take me to where ya got my things. I’ll figure what to do with ya later,” Seth said angrily.
Taking the blanket away from the child he motioned him to lead the way. The Indian boy reluctantly led him to a small trail going up the side of a tree-lined cliff. The trail was so well hidden that Seth had come by it many times without suspecting it was there. As they reached the top, Seth saw a small cave hidden from anyone who came by below.
Seth checked his rifle and motioned the boy to go in ahead of him. “Don’t try any tricks or someone will die,” he told the boy, “and it ain’t going to be me!”
The cave was more of a tunnel than a cave. Seth strained his eyes to see into the darkness. When his vision adjusted, he saw a small glow around a corner in the tunnel cave. The Princess suddenly came back to mind, and for a moment Seth wondered if this was his end as it was for Muldoon.
A noise came softly to his ears and Seth moved cautiously on, his rifle at the ready. Slowly peering around the corner he was shocked to find five little Indian children huddled around a smokeless fire, their half-starved faces looking back at him without the slightest fear showing. It broke the mountain man’s heart and he handed the blanket back to the boy.
“If I’d only known. If I’d only known,” he said to himself.
Hearing a sound like a gentle wind behind him, he saw the glowing apparition of the Princess at the cave entrance.
“Don’t worry, Princess,” the big man said, tears rolling down his cheeks. “As long as Seth Edwards is alive, these children will not go hungry again.”
The Princess smiled a knowing smile, and although she said nothing, he heard in his mind the words, “You are a good man, Seth Edwards, and I trust these children to you.” As suddenly as she had come, she faded away into the mist of time. And as she did, a strange warmth flowed through the man, and Seth Edwards felt her love for the children grow strong in his heart.
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