“We were coming down from the Umpqua, my brother and I,” says Armstrong, “goan across to the States, to drive out cattle next summer. We was a little late one morning, along of our horses havin’ strayed off from camp, and that was how we met them men. Two on ’em ther’ was,—a tall, most ungodly Pike, and a little fat, mean-lookin’ runt. We lighted on ’em jest to the crossin’ of Bear River. They was comin’ from Sacramenter, they said. I kinder allowed they was horse-thieves, and wanted to shy off. But Bill—that was my brother——”
Here the poor fellow choked a little.
“Bill, he never couldn’t think wrong of nobody. Bill, he said, ‘No. Looks was nothin’,’ he said, ‘and we’d jine the fellers.’ So we did, and rode together all day, and camped together on a branch we cum to. I reckon we talked too much about the cattle we was goan to buy, and I suppose ther’ aint many on the Pacific side that aint heard of the Armstrongs. They allowed we had money,—them murderers did. Well, we camped all right, and went to sleep, and I never knowed nothin’, ef it warnt a dream that a grizzly had wiped me over the head, till I woke up the next day with the sun brilin’ down on my head, and my head all raw and bloody, as ef I’d been scalped. And there was Bill—my brother Bill—lyin’ dead in his blankets.”
A shudder passed through our group. These were the men we had tolerated, sat with at the camp-fire, to whose rough stories and foul jokes we had listened. Brent’s instinct was true.
Armstrong was evidently an honest, simple, kindly fellow. His eyes were pure, gentle blue. They filled with tears as he spoke. But the stern look remained, the Rhadamanthine whisper only grew thicker with vengeance.
“Bill was dead,” he continued. “The hatchet slipped when they come to hit me, and they was too skeared, I suppose, to go on choppin’ me, as they had him. P’r’aps his ghost cum round and told ’em ’t warnt the fair thing they’d ben at, and ’twarnt. But they got our horses, Bill’s big sorrel and my Flathead horse, what’s made a hunderd and twenty-three miles betwixt sunrise and sunset of a September day, goan for the doctor, when Ma Armstrong was tuk to die. They got the horses, and our money belts. So when I found Bill was dead, I knowed what my life was left me for. I tied up my head, and somehow I crep, and walked, and run, and got to Box Elder. I don’t know how long it took, nor who showed me the way; but I got there.”
Box Elder is the northernmost Mormon settlement, or was, in those days.
“I’ll never say another word agin the Mormon religion, Jake,” Armstrong went on. “They treated me like a brother to Box Elder. They outfitted me with a pistol, and this ere horse. They said he’d come in from a train what the Indians had cut off, and was a terrible one to go. He is; and I believe he knows what he’s goan for. I’ve ben night and day ridin’ on them murderers’ trail. Now, men, give me time to think. Bill’s murderers aint at Bridger. They was there last midnight. They must be somewheres within fifty miles, and I’ll find ’em, so help me God!”
His hoarse whisper was still. No one spoke.
Another rush of hoofs down the slope behind!