Chapter 5 - The Ride to the Ford
On the twenty-eighth of the month, the south wind blew, bringing a false thaw that turned the mountain trail into a roaring sluice of slush and red mud.
Elias loaded the wagon before dawn.
Two hundred and forty bricks of wintergreen tallow soap, each one wrapped neatly in brown butcher paper that Cora had saved from her packing crates and tied with coarse hemp twine.
They smelled so clean and sharp that even the two draft horses snorted and tossed their heads as if they were hauling sweet clover instead of grease.
Cora climbed onto the buckboard without Elias's help this time.
She used the wheel hub, her thick legs finding the iron rim, her strong arms pulling her bulk upward with a determined, practiced heave.
Elias climbed up beside her, wearing his buffalo coat and carrying the Sharps between his knees.
Under his seat was a heavy hickory club, its end weighted with lead shot.
"The mud will be deep at the Sweetwater ford," Elias said, snapping the reins.
"Vance knows the deadline is noon tomorrow. He'll have Davis watching the timber-line."
"Let him watch," Cora said, her chin set high, her wool bonnet tied tight against the raw wind.
"We're carrying trade goods, not stolen steers. A man can't be arrested for selling soap to miners."
"A man can be shot for breathing if the Judge owns the coroner," Elias muttered, but there was no fear in his voice now; there was only a hard, cold resolve that matched her own.
They made three miles before the sun cleared the granite peaks.
The wagon groaned, the wide iron tires sinking six inches into the thawing clay.
The draft horses leaned into their heavy leather collars, their massive shoulders bunching and steaming as they hauled the four-thousand-pound load down the switchbacks.
When they rounded the bend above the Sweetwater crossing, Cora saw the trap.
A heavy freight wagon was turned sideways across the narrowest part of the ford, one of its axles deliberately broken and resting in the rushing, ice-choked water.
Standing on the dry bank on the settlement side were three men.
Deputy Silas Vance, holding a double-barreled shotgun across his saddle horn; Davis, the stationmaster, holding the reins of their spare horses; and a third man, thick-set and wearing the gray wool frock coat of the town constable.
"Whoa," Elias called, pulling back on the team fifty yards from the water.
The horses stamped, the cold spray from the river wetting their hocks.
Vance stepped his horse forward, the mud sucking at the animal's fetlocks.
He had a wide, ugly grin on his face, his small teeth yellowed by tobacco.
"Road's closed, Elias!" Vance shouted over the roar of the melting ice.
"County road crew has to clear this wagon before any commercial freight passes. You're blocked."
Elias didn't reach for the rifle.
He looked at Cora.
"Hold the reins," he said quietly.
"Elias, no," Cora whispered, catching his sleeve.
"There's three of them. They want you to lift that gun so they can claim self-defense."
"I'm not lifting the gun," Elias said.
He handed her the thick leather straps, stepped down from the wagon bench into the freezing mud, and walked toward the water alone.
He carried nothing in his hands.
His buffalo coat was unbuttoned, swinging wide to show his flannel shirt and the broad leather belt that held his trousers.
"Stay back, Boone!" Vance yelled, his shotgun coming up to level with Elias’s chest.
"I'm warning you! You step into that ford and it's interference with a county officer!"
Elias didn't stop.
He waded straight into the thigh-deep water, the freezing current breaking against his massive legs like water against a boulder.
His pale eyes never left Vance's face.
"Davis," Elias said, his voice cutting through the roar of the Sweetwater like an iron bell.
"You've got three seconds to hook your team to that broken wagon and drag it out of the cut."
"You can't order me, you ridge-devil!" Davis shrieked, backing behind the constable's horse.
"Shoot him, Silas! He's coming for the team!"
Vance pulled both hammers back on the shotgun, the double click distinct and lethal over the sound of the water.
"One more step, Boone!"
Cora did not think.
She did not calculate her weight, her dignity, or the safety of her skirts.
She dropped the reins, snatched the long bullwhip from the floorboard of the buckboard, and stood upright on the wagon seat like a towering monument of wool and fury.
With an arm built by thirty years of hauling well-buckets and kneading fifty-pound batches of dough, she cracked the thirty-foot leather plaited whip over the heads of the horses.
The crack was not a warning; it was an explosion.
The whip tip caught the rump of Vance's horse with the precision of a scalpel.
The horse screamed, reared high on its haunches, and plunged sideways into the swollen river, throwing the deputy headfirst into the ice-cold mud.
The shotgun went off into the gray clouds, both barrels roaring harmlessly, spraying birdshot into the high pines.
Davis dropped his reins and bolted for the brush like a startled jackrabbit.
The constable sat frozen, his mouth open, looking from the thrashing deputy in the mud to the massive woman standing on the wagon bench with the whip coiled in her bleeding hands.
Elias didn't even look back at the buckboard.
He reached down into the freezing water, seized the broken tongue of the blocking wagon with his bare hands, braced his boots against the river gravel, and with a roar that echoed off the granite cliffs of the pass, he hauled the six-hundred-pound wagon frame out of the channel and flipped it onto the bank like an empty crate.
The way was open.
Elias turned, water dripping from his beard, his trousers black with icy silt, and looked up at Cora.
May you like
She was still standing on the bench, her bonnet hanging off her neck by its strings, her hair wild and whipping in the Wyoming wind.
"Drive the team across, Mrs. Boone," Elias roared over the river's rush, his face split into a wide, terrifying grin of pure triumph.
