Bass scoffed, “An’ this here Brigham Young listens to all that his angels tell him about what God wants him to tell all his flock.”
Jim’s brow knitted. “Where you get these notions ’bout angels an’ his flock?”
“While you was havin’ supper with your Prophet, them others had a hold on my ear, telling me all ’bout this here Brigham Young bein’ the only one what knows the true word of God meant for the ears of man,” Titus confided sourly. “Damn, but they was preachin’ hard at Titus Bass. Harder’n any preaching I ever got whipped on these ol’ ears. Made my head ache with all their Urim an’ Thummin. Hell, they claimed they was the only folks bound to sit on a throne in glory. Angels named Moroni an’ Nephi … Gabe, this bunch wuss’n all the hell an’ brimstone preachers I knowed back in Kaintuck. These Marmons don’t holler sayin’s outta the Bible like McAfferty or Bill Williams neither! They got their own book they was thumpin’ an’ drummin’ on—”
“Young showed it to me. Where they get called Mormons—from their own book on the word from God,” Bridger said with an unmasked enthusiasm in his voice. “He said they still believe in the Bible, but it’s older, an’ their book is a newer word of God, meant for them what’s chose for heaven here in the latter days.”
For a moment, Titus had carefully studied his old friend. “Young change you into Marmon?”
Jim smiled and leaned forward to say in a hush, “Hell no, Scratch. But I give the man my manners an’ listened to all he had to say. We talked some more about the country an’ the Injuns an’ crops they could grow down there south of Utah Lake, but in atween it all he was giving me a sharp lesson on all they believed an’ why he’s brought his people out of Missouri—”
“Missouri!” Scratch interrupted. “Why, them Marmons hate Missouri an’ all the folks in that country! Afore I had my fill of supper for all they was poundin’ in my ears, they told me the Garden of Eden—where Adam an’ Eve was birthed by God—why, it was right outside where ol’ Fort Osage stood, near the mouth of the Blue River, on the Missouri! No preacher I ever heard spout a sermon back in Kaintuck ever come anywhere close to saying God started the hull world back yonder on the banks of the Missouri River!”
“An’ a Snake medicine man claims he can pull a evil spirit right out of a man’s mouth so he ain’t sick no more,” Jim argued. “These here Mormons just got their own way of seeing God, an’ Brigham Young says they only wanna be left alone by folks who don’t understand ’em.”
“You sure you ain’t gone Marmon on me?”
With a shake of his head, Bridger stated flatly, “No. I been out here in the Rocky Mountains too long to swaller talk about angels coming down from the clouds an’ Eden at our back door, an’ one prophet gonna talk to God hisself so he can tell me which way my stick floats an’ what don’t smell o’ horse apples.”
“We’re too damn old to change our ways now,” Titus observed, feeling a bit reassured.
“Maybeso a old beaver trapper like me can make a life for hisself helping them emigrants bound for Oregon,” Jim admitted. “But I ain’t gonna change who I am or what I come to believe in after more’n twenty winters out here.”
He plopped a gnarled hand on Bridger’s knee and said fraternally, “Time was, I didn’t figger I wanted nothing to do with no emigrants comin’ through in their wagons, stirring up the buffler an’ bringing their white women to the mountains. But, long as them sodbusters keep right on going west to Oregon an’ don’t dally long in our country, I can help some corncrackers on their way to their own promised land on the Columbia.”
Jim grinned in the moonlight. “So we’ll both hold our tongue an’ help these here Saints find the promised land they chose for themselves. Them others, did they give you some bread with your supper?”
“It was mighty tasty, I do admit,” Scratch said as he lay on his side in the starlight. “Been some time since I ate white folks’ bread.”
“When I sat down with Brigham Young, I told him I ain’t see’d so much bread in years,” Bridger confessed as he lay back on his blankets. “So he asked me, ‘But, Mr. Bridger, how do you live without bread?’”
“What’d you tell ’im, Gabe?”
“Told him we live on meat. Dry our deer and buffler to eat in the lean times. And we also cook fresh when we can get it. Told him we have coffee to drink most of the time, for that we can have plenty of that brung out here.”
They lay in silence for a long time, until Scratch asked once again, “You’re sure ’bout bein’ so friendly to these here strangers?”
“Yes,” he answered in the dark. “Way out here on this side o’ the mountains, we ought’n treat other folks the way we wanna be treated ourselves, Scratch.”
Titus sighed, then said, “Long as it’s gonna help my friend, Jim Bridger … an’ don’t ever hurt you to open your door to this here Brigham Young.”
“Them Mormons gonna be putting down their roots and setting up shop so far south from here,” Jim explained, “we’ll never hear a sound from ’em.”
Titus Bass went to sleep that night, wanting to believe that every bit as much as his friend did.
But for the last nine days that little wary voice of warning was about all Titus had brooded on as he stayed just far enough ahead of the column’s vanguard that he would discourage any company as he dragged these saints of the latter days beyond that fateful meeting with Gabe and on toward Fort Bridger on Black’s Fork. It was just past midafternoon when Scratch had recognized the faraway river bluffs. He immediately turned about and covered that quarter mile back to the head of the march where Brigham Young and a half dozen of his Apostles rode.
“You’ll spy Jim’s post when you round the bend in the river,” Bass announced as he reined his horse around and brought it up near the group of riders. “I’m goin’ on to see to my family. Let ever’body know you’ll be comin’ soon.”
“Your family?” Young echoed. “You have an Indian wife like Major Bridger? Half-breed children too?”
His eyes narrowed at the judgmental tone the stocky man took. “Crow. My family’s Crow.”
“Are they a tribe from this part of the country?” asked Elder Woodruff.
He wagged his head. “North of here. Far … north of here.”
William Clayton stated, “Another band of Lamanites we’ve read about, President Young.”
“Band of what?” Titus asked.
“Lamanites,” Clayton repeated.
“Indians, Mr. Bass,” Young declared. “The red man, his women and children. They are a lost tribe of Israel—banished to this wilderness because they refused to turn their ears to the continued revelations of God.”
He tried out the word, “Lay-man …”
“Lamanites,” Clayton pronounced it correctly for the old trapper.
Titus asked, “All that what some Lamanite tol’t your people back east?”
Young smiled that same hard smile he wore most of the time, the sort of smile a man would use when he was scolding a disobedient child. “No, Moroni appeared to our founder and told him the word of God was meant for His chosen here in these latter days. For hundreds of years the world has not heeded God, but now these faithful, holy people have been raised up by the Almighty to forge a trail west—following a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, just as the thousands followed Moses out of bondage in Egypt to their Promised Land.”
So Scratch had peered this way and that in the sky that afternoon, and saw no pillar of cloud. Nor had he seen any pillar of fire blazing in the sky after the Pioneer Party had made their camp each evening.