She turned to him, her cheeks blushing slightly. “One of the married men, they caught him sneaking a look at the women while we was bathing in the Platte, back yonder by the Chimney Rock.”
Titus asked, “So Hargrove give that poor fella some lashes?”
“Mr. Kinsey,” Roman said. “From the look on Hargrove’s face as he laid into Kinsey’s back, I’d say our wagon captain would make a damn good hell-and-brimstone preacher!”
“He didn’t stop till Mr. Kinsey passed right out,” Amanda explained as she smoothed the front of her apron. “That’s when they let Mrs. Kinsey and a couple of her husband’s friends come and untie him from the wagon gate.”
Titus ground his teeth in anger. “Tied the man to a wagon gate an’ whupped him?”
Roman Burwell nodded. “Mrs. Kinsey, she knowed I had some salve along to put on the cuts our oxen or mules get. I give her some for them bad cuts on her husband’s back.”
“They out-an’-out whupped him like a dumb brute?” Scratch growled.
“I know he had some punishment comin’,” Amanda confessed, “but Hargrove didn’t need to cut the man to a bloody ribbon neither.”
Burwell drew in a long sigh. “We all know how you gotta have rules, and how you gotta punish when the rules is broke. But, that was the first time Hargrove whipped anyone.”
Shadrach asked, “He have the whole camp watch the whippin’?”
Roman nodded. “Women and children too.”
With a wag of his head, Sweete commented, “After he cut that poor nigger’s back up with his whip in front of every mother’s child, growed or pup, he sure as hell didn’t have to whip no one else from there on out, I’ll wager.”
“C’mon, Shadrach,” Titus said as he stuffed a second pistol in his belt. “There’s no telling what this Hargrove gonna do with us, if’n he’ll whip a man half to death for sneaking a look at some gals takin’ their bath in the river.”
They took a few steps away from the fire before Scratch stopped and said, “Hol’ on, Amanda. You ain’t comin’ along.”
“You can’t stop me,” she argued. “Every other wife and mother gonna be there to see what goes on.”
“But you can’t vote,” Titus said. “Maybe it’s better you stay here … if’n there’s a li’l trouble.”
“If there’s trouble, that just gives me an even better reason to come along.”
“Titus,” Roman used his father-in-law’s name for the first time, “best you realize you aren’t gonna talk her out of this.”
“I ain’t?”
Amanda wagged her head. “No, you aren’t, Pa.”
He snorted in disgust, but a grin crept onto his face as they started off again. “Lot of respect a father gets around here.”
“Haven’t you figgered it out yet, Pa?” she asked as Titus and Shad waved back at their wives, who were staying behind with all the children.
“Figgered what out?”
Roman jumped in to say, “That your daughter’s just as mule-headed as you.”
Bass smiled at Amanda. “Are you now?”
“Leastways,” Shad said with a chuckle, “the woman’s fortunate she got her mama’s purty looks an’ not your bird-dog face!”
“You best be careful who you call a dogface, Shadrach,” Titus warned, squinting one eye at the tall man as they neared the assembly. “You damn well may need all your friends when you go up against a vote by preacher Hargrove.”
A cool breeze stirred the air as Roman Burwell stepped through the women and children who parted for them. It was clear to Scratch how the lines had been drawn and solidified across the last day of travel. Those who had cast their lot with Phineas Hargrove now tended to cluster close by the wagon captain and his hired men at the right side of the circle, while the majority of the train comprised the other two thirds of that milling ring, with no clear leader to throw the weight of their votes behind. All they had to hold on to was that they knew far, far more about Oregon country than they knew about California. Most every pamphlet and news story published back east, most every backer of emigration, spoke only of Oregon. These settlers had cast their eyes on Oregon. They trusted the dream of place more than they could ever trust the persuasive charisma of that one powerful man and all his money.
As they entered the assembly, more than a dozen men made a point of crowding around Burwell to shake the man’s hand, and that many more nodded or murmured with approval as Bass and Sweete followed Roman around the inner edge of the circle, stopping just short of that spot where Hargrove was holding court among his loyal supporters.
One of the faithful leaned in and whispered something to the captain.
Hargrove turned. “Ah, I see the principals have finally arrived,” he gushed with enthusiasm and a metallic smile. “It’s time we call this council of the Hargrove Oregon Company to order.”
Titus leaned close to Amanda and whispered, “Ain’t gonna be the Hargrove Oregon Company for much longer, is it?”
“Maybe call it the cowards-run-to-California company,” she whispered back to Titus just before she stepped over to her husband’s elbow and squeezed one of his big, rough hands. Just as quickly she inched back through that front row of men until she stood among the other women and children who would serve only as spectators for this rare practice of frontier democracy.
Only adult males possessed the right to vote. Their wives and children did not hold such a privilege. From that outer fringe of this assembly, Amanda could only watch what was guaranteed to have a bearing on her family’s fortunes and its future from here on out, no matter how the vote came down.
Scratch watched his daughter take up her position with the other women, who all looked on in silence. Come what may this warm summer evening as the land finally cooled, he realized that the vote Hargrove would call for would affect his daughter’s family, one way or the other. If Hargrove convinced enough of the emigrants to vote against Bass and Sweete tagging along to Fort Hall, then it was a certainty the two of them would have to push on ahead of the train so they could go through with their plans to help scratch up an old comrade from the beaver days to guide the farmers on down the Snake to the Columbia, on into Oregon country. But if enough of these emigrants turned aside the wishes of their wagon master, there might well be a chance that Hargrove would retaliate against the Burwells for what the wagon master would see as mutiny.
Titus Bass hadn’t lived fifty-three years not to recognize an oily-tongued, snake-bellied, duplicitous bastard when he saw one. Dangerous thing was, Hargrove seemed just the sort of man mean enough to make anyone who turned against him pay for that transgression, and pay dearly. Throughout that day after the long procession had formed up and slowly rambled out of that meadow along Black’s Fork, pushed for Muddy Creek, then dawdled through that easy crossing, Scratch had weighed out the heft of that dilemma.
Would it just be all the better for him and Shad to tell Hargrove that they would turn around and start back for Fort Bridger in the morning, then secretly slip around the far side of the Bear River Divide and march on to Fort Hall on their own—so there would be no more confrontations with the man and his bullies that might end up hurting his daughter and the ones she loved in the long run? Maybeso, the two of them didn’t need to ride on to Fort Hall in any event. Wasn’t it entirely possible that Roman and the others who would not be turned away from Oregon could find someone to pilot them to the Willamette on their own? Did these farmers and settlement folks really need two old hivernants throwing in to see them through to Fort Hall and their digging around for a pilot? Maybe this matter of his tagging along to the Snake River was causing more trouble than all the good he could ever do.
Phineas Hargrove stepped to the center of that open ground surrounded by the men who had selected him to serve as their captain all the way to Oregon, while his seven hired men dispersed among the others. Titus began to cipher how many men there were, how many votes there would be to count when it came down to a show of hands.