When they came to the Oregon Trail Sam halted for an hour and looked east and west. Most of the Indian tribes now believed that before long swarming masses of humanity would overflow this magnificent land and drive the red people from their homes. Did they also foresee that hundreds of beautiful rivers and creeks would be polluted? Now a man could lie on his belly and drink the pure waters of any of them, except those in alkali wastes, like the Humboldt; but there were no pure waters where man pushed up his cities and scattered his filth. What an unsightly country it would all be someday!—with its unplanned mushrooming cities, the stink and belching dark of thousands of smokestacks, the paralyzing poisons of sewers and clutter of vast junkyards. He guessed the few men who needed space and freedom as they needed air would move north to Canada; and again north, until on the whole earth there would be no broad clean land to go to, but only the litter and stench and ugliness that the swarming billions would make of the earth.
Going over to the Trail, he looked curiously at the wheel ruts. Within the past week a wagon train had squealed and churned along these ruts, with dusty unclean women clutching their whimpering children under the canvas tops, their eyes staring past the bent backs of the drivers at the country ahead. Week after week and mile after mile they pushed on and on. Arriving at Bridger’s post on Black’s Fork of Green River, Sam learned that the Mormons hadn’t come, and was feeling relief when Bridger said, "They kallate next spring. They’re on the Meesouri now, ole Brigham and his thousan wives, holed up fer the winter."
"All the Mormons?"
"The hull shittaree, thousans and thousans."
"Going where?"
"Only God and Brigham knows.”
"And all with more than one wife?"
Look alive, said Jim; had any but the bosses had more than one, in the Bible or anywhere? Brigham, they said, had fifty mebbe; the one next to him mebbe forty-five, and the next forty, and so on down to the corporal, who mebbe had two. A man could never tell when Jim Bridger was serious.
That was a fine filly Sam had, he said, his strange eyes (they looked gray but flecked with tiny pieces of bright steel) sizing up Lotus. At this post Sam bought on credit, against next spring’s beaver packs. He bought a fast horse for his wife; and a good rifle and a Bowie, and plenty of powder and ball, as well as cooking utensils, a half dozen three-point blankets, awls, needles, and thread; for he would be away trapping and she would be making leather clothing for the three of them.
"Ya mean ya intend ta leave her alone?" asked Jim, narrowing his eyes at Sam.
"In the cabin on the Little Snake," Sam said.
"All winter?"
"She’ll have a fast horse," Sam said. "She shoots well. Besides, no red varmints ever go away down there.”
How did Sam know he hadn’t been watched in his journey all the way south? How did he know how many red devils had smelled along his tracks? By God, he would think it over, Jim said; you never could tell where the red varmints would show up, or when. After Sam was ready to go, and Jim had told him to watch his topknot, Jim said again, "You better think it over." The words troubled Sam, for he knew that in all the West there was no man more Indian-wise than Jim Bridger. But he looked at his wife and thought, she’ll be all right.
With Lotus on her new pony, a strong spirited sorrel with a blazed face, and with two laden packhorses, Sam headed into the southeast. It was desolate country, with mountains in the far distance. It was yonder on a branch of the Yampah, that Henry Fraeb and Jim Bridger had built a post; and it had been there only five or six years ago that Henry and four of his men had been killed in a battle with the Sioux. Possibly Jim had this battle in mind when he told Sam to think it over. Sam had been twice to the Uintahs to trap; so far as he knew, no Indians ever came as far south as the Little Snake in the wintertime.
When they came close to the mountains Sam and Lotus killed four deer, jerked the flesh and rode on. He had seen his wife looking back now and then, back into the long misty distance out of which they had come. Was she homesick for her people? Did she wonder why her man came so far to find trapping? He had tried to explain it to her: there was good trapping in areas up north but it was staked out by the older men. There was a cabin away down there, plenty of game within rifle reach, and an abundance of food for her horse. In the cabin she could be warm and safe and busy with her needles. Little Snake country was almost a no man’s land: west beyond the mountains were the friendly Eutaws; northwest were the Snakes, but far away. The Blackfeet were to hell and gone a thousand miles up north, the Crows, Cheyennes, Comanches, and Arapahoes all far away. A war party from any of these tribes might kill her for her horse and weapons but he was sure that none would come away down south after the heavy snows fell. And he was sure that no scouts had seen them on their long ride down. Trapping in the Uintahs would be very good and fast; he might come out with five packs, even six. Back in there he’d not have to watch for enemies day and night, and so could get a lot done. Lotus had said she wanted to go with him and help him but he felt that he ought to be firm; as a husband he’d be no better than a Digger if he took a pregnant wife to the high mountain meadows and subzero cold, with no place for a bed but the earth under a fir tree. He was deep in debt now; he had a wife and would soon have a child. It was time to strap on his medicine bag and go.
The cabin to which he took Lotus was about like the one he had built on the Musselshell. On the wind side of it he now put up a small corral and a storm shelter for her pony; with her help he gathered a lot of meadow grass for the horse and this he piled against the cabin where the coldest winds would strike. He dragged in a lot of firewood. Every day he gave her lessons in firing her gun, and before long she could ride into the hills and within two hours bring back a deer. They jerked enough meat to feed her until the following May. He told her, over and over, never to go far from the cabin after the deep snows came. A piece of chinking in a wall he shaped so that she could remove it in an instant, and thrust her rilfe barrel hrough. Again and again he pointed to the mountains in the west and said he would be there. working hard in every daylight hour and until long after dark. He would be thinking of her all day and dreaming of her all night.
After a week or two at the cabin he learned that she was pregnant; he put her right cheek against his beating heart and held her close. God Almighty, now he would have a son, to ride the swiftest and shoot the straightest of any man in the mountains! When would it be born? He counted off the months: in May perhaps, or June: somewhere along there. This night he held her nightlong and the next day he looked round him for other things to do, to make her cozy and safe. Possibly in sunny weather she would like to sit by the doorway and look into the west where he would be: so he brought a piece of thick log for her to sit on. They were sitting on it one evening when, abruptly, she rose and sat on his lap and looked steadily and gravely into his eyes. Her gaze was so searching that he was troubled. Did she think he intended to abandon her? Surrendering to a great gush of tenderness that poured through him and warmed him all over, he drew her close and murmured promises and endearments in her ear. "I will never leave you," he said. "Not in all the years of my life—never, never. I will come back," he said over and over. He would return with many packs of fine pelts, so that next summer they could pay their debt and have money to buy things for the following winter, and for their son. In all the languages he knew he told her that rather than doubt his return she should doubt that the sun would rise or the snows fall. He framed her face and kissed her forehead, eyelids, cheeks, lips, and the leather jacket over her breasts. Looking into her eyes, he said, "I love you, I need you, I will never leave you." With a quick impulsive movement she touched her lips to the point of his nose and said, "I love you." His heart leapt. Had he, then, after all, won this strange girl from a strange people? He said he wanted to take with him a lock of her hair, and from the back of her head, above the nape, he took a lock, and kissed it and held it to his lips. He stretched it out and thought it two feet long; her hair when down hung below her waist. Round and round a foreiinger he wound the hair, and kissed it, and pressed it to her lips; and then tucked it away under his leather shirt. She had watched him as though a little astonished. Had an Indian husband anywhere in the world ever taken a lock of his woman’s hair, to cherish through a long lonely winter?