But the American had fired an instant before as that fusil was descending. Carson was already swinging to the side as his pistol erupted.
With the fusil tumbling from his hand, Chouinard shrieked in pain, clutching his bloody right arm. For a moment he gazed down at the path the bullet had taken: entering the wrist, traveling through the forearm, then exiting the elbow as it smashed bone. As his eyes glazed in agony, the Frenchman turned round to find Carson now some twenty yards away, stuffing his empty pistol into his belt.
“It’s over, Shunar!” Andrew Drips shouted, loping toward them on foot.
“No! I keel him!” the Frenchman cried like a wounded, terrified animal.
“Leave it be!” Drips commanded as he came to a halt beside the giant’s horse.
Instead of turning away, Chouinard cocked his leg back and kicked out at the company commander, sending Drips sprawling across the grass. Then the giant slowly sawed on the reins with his left hand before reaching for the scabbard at his back with that one good hand left him. The other arm hung useless, dripping gouts of blood onto the trampled, dusty grass.
“Reload, Kit!” someone hollered from the crowd.
But Carson hadn’t carried his pouch or powder horn into the fight.
“Shunar gets Kit close enough to use that knife,” Bridger grumbled, “he’ll make meat of Carson.”
Slashing his big heels into his horse’s ribs, Chouinard leaped toward the small American until his animal collided with Carson’s, wildly slashing the huge knife through the air. Kit was just regaining his balance from that blow when the Frenchman lunged out with that left arm, swinging low enough with the big butcher knife that Carson had to lean backward in the saddle.
Back and forth Chouinard slashed at the American, forcing Kit to dodge side to side so fast he could not regain his balance—eventually spilling from the saddle. Pitching headlong into the grass, Carson struggled to yank his foot from the stirrup as Chouinard savagely kicked at the American’s prancing horse, hurrying to get around to the other side where Carson hung from the saddle.
Terrified, Kit’s horse sidestepped again and again, for some miraculous reason keeping itself between Carson and the Frenchman’s horse in those frightening seconds as Kit battled to free his foot twisted in the stirrup.
He pulled his moccasin free just as the Frenchman sawed his reins in the opposite direction, deciding to spin around the rear of Carson’s horse. Kit stood, his right hand scraping at the back of his belt, fingers finding his scabbard empty. Somewhere on the ground nearby lay his knife.
But as clouds loomed across the sun, so too the Frenchman loomed over Kit. With a powerful grunt Chouinard brought his left arm down at the American who dived between the horse’s legs, rolled on a shoulder, then sprang up in a sprint.
Bass was already on his way, tearing away from the crowd the moment he realized Carson didn’t have a weapon left. “Kit!”
Right behind Carson the giant was goading his horse into a gallop, its hooves thundering like hailstones the size of cotton bolls on a hide tepee. Scratch could see Kit wouldn’t have time to reach him before Chouinard would ride Carson down from behind with that knife.
Meek yelled, “Behind you!”
The moment Kit turned his head to find Chouinard all but on him, Carson stumbled, sprawling in the grass as the Frenchman shot past. The giant reined up, his horse gone stiff-legged as the Frenchman yanked back on the reins. Kit grasshoppered out of the dirt, sprinting toward Bass once more.
When Kit was no more than ten yards away, Scratch hollered, “Now!” in warning, and heaved the heavy smoothbore pistol into an arc.
Both of Carson’s arms came up as he plucked the weapon from the sky, drew the hammer on back from half cock, and wheeled about in a crouch at the very moment Chouinard raced up, leaning off the side of his horse, attempting to impale the short American on that long knife.
But Kit dropped to one knee, gripping the huge pistol with both hands at the end of his outstretched arms, pulling the trigger point-blank in the Frenchman’s face—the force of that blow driving the giant off the far side of his horse as the huge lead ball entered just below the left eye socket before it flattened to splatter out the back of his immense head an instant later.
Kneeling there with the smoking pistol still in his hands, Carson remained motionless as the big man drooped farther and farther in the saddle, then suddenly collapsed into the grass.
From one side rushed Bridger and from another came Drips, both of the company booshways reaching the Frenchman as some in the hushed, murmuring crowd pressed forward, step by curious step.
Drips wagged his head as Bridger stood and announced, “Bastard was dead a’fore he hit the ground.”
The crowd erupted.
Meek was at Carson’s side, pulling Kit onto his feet. “Shot him in the saddle, Kit! By jump—you been shot too!”
Staggering a moment, Carson regained his balance and touched the side of his neck. “Just a graze, Joe.”
Newell, Bass, and a gaggle of others were crowding in on Carson now as Drips was ordering some company men to drag the body away. In a moment Bridger shouldered his way through the clamoring crowd, each one of them loudly reliving the frightening seconds of that duel, all at the same time.
“Damn—if this don’t call for a drink!” Bridger hollered above the noise.
“Maybeso later tonight, Gabe,” Carson announced as he turned to Bass, his hands shaking. Passing the pistol back to its owner, he said, “Thanks, Scratch. I’m beholden to you. Saved my life.”
“Maybeso, Kit—you’ll have yourself a chance to save my ha’r one day.”
Joe Meek draped a mighty arm over Carson’s small shoulder. “C’mon with Gabe—we ought’n have us some whiskey wet our gullets now that bastard’s dead, Kit!”
Carson finished shaking hands with Scratch, then turned to Meek. “We’ll all have us that drink together after supper, Joe. Right now I got something I better tend to.”
“Tend to?” Newell echoed, scratching the side of his head. “What you gonna do that’s better’n wetting down our dry with Bridger’s whiskey?”
Carson winked at them, saying, “Right now, boys—I’m on my way to buy me a wife!”
11
Nine days after his partner Thomas Fitzpatrick had reached the rendezvous at the mouth of New Fork River on the Green, Jim Bridger started north with his brigade.
With his sixty men went not only his new wife’s family and Insala’s band of Flathead, but the Nez Perce who had once again visited the white man’s rendezvous in their unremitting hope that a man of God would come to live among them, to show them how to earn their eternal reward. After two disappointing journeys to the trappers’ rendezvous, these Nez Perce were finally returning to their native ground with just such a man and his medicine book.
Reverend Samuel Parker.
This dour, humorless fifty-six-year-old evangelist had just volunteered to press on into the wilderness while his younger associate, Dr. Marcus Whitman, returned east to enlist more recruits for their mission work among the heathen savages of the Northwest. While Whitman might not approve of all the earthy and raw habits of the mountain trappers, the doctor nonetheless chose not to preach to or condemn them—unlike the bookish and haughty Parker.
Extending an uncharacteristic and polite patience to the good reverend, a large number of the unrefined trappers listened attentively as Parker discoursed on their need to immediately abandon those worldly ways he found so deplorable, including how the white men squandered away their hard-won wages in an orgy of whiskey and debauchery, having nothing left to show for their labors than the baubles they purchased for their pagan wives and half-breed children.