The Adventurous Life of Tom Iron Hand Warren: Mountain Man (The Mountain Men Book 5) Read online

  The Adventurous Life of Tom “Iron Hand” Warren: Mountain Man

  Terry Grosz

  Contents

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  CHAPTER ONE: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

  CHAPTER TWO: MEDICINE LAKE COUNTRY AND UNWANTED COMPANY!

  CHAPTER THREE: BLACKFEET AND THE LEGEND OF “IRON HAND” BEGINS!

  CHAPTER FOUR: BEAVER TRAPPING AND A FRONTIER “DOCTOR’S REMEDY”

  CHAPTER FIVE: TROUBLE, “IRON HAND” AND FRONTIER JUSTICE

  CHAPTER SIX: FORT UNION AND THE LEGEND OF “IRON HAND” CONTINUES

  CHAPTER SEVEN: UNEXPECTED SURPRISES AND THE TRUCE HOLDS

  CHAPTER EIGHT: NEW TRAPPING GROUNDS, DEADLY GROS VENTRE SURPRISES

  CHAPTER NINE: THE RETURN, THE GROS VENTRE AND A FORTUNE IS MADE

  CHAPTER TEN: THE PORCUPINE RIVER, THE “BAD SEED” AND SAVING THE BROTHERS “DENT”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: JOHN PIERRE AND SINOPA’S REVENGE, “WAMBLEESKA”

  CHAPTER TWELVE: A “FAMILY” NO MORE -- OLD POTTS, BIG FOOT AND CROOKED HAND CHOOSE TO STAY

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE BROTHERS YORK, THE ARIKARA, WHITE EAGLE COMES OF AGE, IRON HAND, AND ST. LOUIS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: KEELBOATS, REUNITED, “BUCKSKINS” AND GABE’S RIFLE

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: FLOWERS IN THE GRAVEYARD AND THE ‘SIXTH SENSE’

  A look at Flowers and Tombstones of a Conservation Officer

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  About the Author

  The Adventurous Life of Tom “Iron Hand” Warren: Mountain Man

  by

  Terry Grosz

  Wolfpack Publishing

  P.O. Box 620427

  Las Vegas, NV 89162

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Terry Grosz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62918-789-1

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  Dedication

  Years ago my younger son, Christopher, like his father, was able to marry the love of his life. Little did he realize that he, just like his father, had been given through the grace of God, an Angel! As a result of that union made in Heaven, Christopher and Lisa were graced with a short but wonderful marriage, a son, Gabriel, and a daughter, Laurel.

  Christopher, a police officer, taken before his time at the age of 35, left his wife Lisa to carry on and to raise their two children. Since that day, my wife Donna and I have watched “Chris’s Angel” raising two very beautiful children. Regardless of the long and arduous hours she puts in as a school principal and mother, Lisa always found time for her children. Time in exposing them to the wonders of our society, better understanding religion, enjoying the outdoors in camping, hunting and fishing, the teamwork found in sports, the values of education, and the art of living gracefully within our nations’ history, humanity and heritage.

  To her mother-in-law and father-in-law, the Angel Christopher saw in Lisa comes forth in a loving and understanding way that is exceptional! Lisa, being the loving and exceptional woman that she is, makes sure her children are shared in such a giving way that it is always love-based and extraordinary. In her own loving and caring way, Lisa is as close to Christopher’s mother and father as is any caring, loving and much-loved biological daughter!

  It is to this Renaissance Woman and Lady for all seasons, that I dedicate this book...

  CHAPTER ONE: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

  In the spring of 1828, Kenneth McKenzie, Factor for John Jacob Astor, owner of the recently established “American Fur Company”, posted an advertisement on the front page of the Missouri Republican newspaper in St. Louis indicating a need for men for work on the new frontier.

  That article read, “Need 120 enterprising young men to ascend the Missouri River in keelboats and on horse to its source, there to be employed for a period of one, two or three years as hunters, trappers, woodcutters, blacksmiths, carpenters, and camp keepers for the American Fur Company. The criteria needed for employment is as follows: One needs to be masculine, adventurous, well-armed and able to work/trap for a period of from one to three years. Work materials, horses, mules, provisions and trapping equipment for company employees will be provided by the soon to be built Fort Union Trading Post, owned and operated by the American Fur Company. That trading post once constructed, will be located adjacent the headwaters of the Missouri River.”

  “Once Fort Union is completed, Company Trappers in the fall and winter months will ascend the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers and their tributaries, for the purposes of trapping beaver, fox, river otter, muskrat, and other fine furs. Come the following spring, Company Trappers will return to Fort Union to deposit their furs taken during the previous trapping season and resupply with provisions from company stores for the next fall and winter trapping seasons.”

  “All men wishing to apply for such opportunity must report to Factor Kenneth McKenzie at Third and Dowell Street at ten in the morning come Friday next. There, selections will be made of those meeting the above criteria, contracts drawn, signatures affixed and upriver travel arrangements to the Missouri headwaters made.”

  “Come the third day of March, this year of our Lord, three keelboats loaded with provisions and necessary equipment will leave Landing #4 and ascend the Missouri River by poling and cordelling (a French word describing the pulling of keelboats upstream with a long cable attached to the vessel’s main mast by 20-30 men walking along the shore). The keelboats will be closely followed by the company’s needed horse and mule herds being walked along the banks of the Missouri by new employees. That company of boats and men will proceed upriver until the headwaters of the Missouri are reached. Once reached, Fort Union will be constructed by the teams of men, so commerce can begin with the various Indian tribes in the area.”

  (Author’s Note: Fort Union was not a military fort but one privately owned by New York businessman John Jacob Astor, for the commerce generated in trade with the Assiniboine, Crow, Cree, Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Hidatsa, and Lakota Tribes, in buffalo robes, furs and peltries in exchange for the white man’s goods and alcohol. Of historic note, the Indians traded hides and furs that they considered were of common value, for white man’s goods, which they considered highly desirable and valuable. In turn, the white man traded commonly valued goods from their culture, for that which he considered extremely valuable, namely furs, buffalo and bearskin robes and hides. Furs of which at the time were considered very valuable in European society because many of the native furbearing animals on that continent had been reduced or extirpated. American furs were also valuable because European cloth in that day and age was course, rough and colorless. On the other hand, furs were soft, colorful and warm, thus highly desired and valuable to European men and women of the day.)

  Come ‘sign-up’ day, found an excited and noisy crowd of about 250 hopeful men milling around a table with one Kenneth McKenzie and a Company Clerk seated behind him conducting the business of e
nlistment. Both men were assessing each potential employee’s abilities and values to John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company and in the process, explaining in detail what the business opportunity afforded, expressed the known associative dangers and hardships, and gathered up the signatures of those who were seriously interested, deemed of note and had passed muster.

  As McKenzie personally interviewed each potential candidate standing in line for mental and physical fitness worthy of being employed by the American Fur Company, he could not help but noticing a giant of a man quietly waiting in line for his turn to be interviewed. That imposing figure was a very tall, heavily bearded and a massively framed individual, who stood at least six-and-a-half feet tall, or better than a foot taller than everyone else in the crowd! Intrigued over the physiognomy and dress of the giant of a man, McKenzie kept a casual examining eye cocked on the mysterious giant-sized individual until he finally stood ready at the front of the line for his turn to be interviewed.

  It became quickly obvious to the sharp-eyed, experienced ‘Man of the Mountains’ McKenzie, that the person standing before him had been compelled, based on the coarseness of his dress and the sadness carried in his face, to be a subject of recent hard times. Without making it obvious and in keeping with the privacy of the men and the culture of the times, McKenzie quietly from the corner of his eyes, offhandedly examined the man standing before him. At first glance, the giant of a man appeared to be extremely muscular, bronzed from long exposure to the sun, wore his hair shoulder length, and his general coarse makeup, other than his massive dark beard, made him almost appearing like that of a very large Indian.

  It was then that McKenzie realized the giant of a man standing before him was silently examining him as much as he was being examined! Then McKenzie noticed the man’s unusual eyes. They were deep, examining and piercing in manner from under his slouch hat. So much so, that they ‘portrayed’ to the experienced man of the frontier, McKenzie, unremitting vigilance, slightly masked by a deep sadness. On the whole, the giant stranger impressed McKenzie as taciturn, frontier-tested, yet one capable of extreme strength or tenderness, depending upon whatever moment in time was called for.

  McKenzie’s practiced eyes then quietly surveyed the man’s array of needed frontier survival equipment. He noticed that the man possessed two pistols neatly tucked in his sash, a ten-inch-long cutting and gutting knife hanging from the belt on his right side, a much-used tomahawk as evidenced from its heavy wear neatly tucked under his belt on his left side, and his massive right hand carried a state-of-the-art, brand new, large bore Hawken rifle. McKenzie’s practiced eyes also observed that the large bore Hawken, or “Rocky Mountain Rifle” as it was also called, weighing in at over ten pounds, yet was carried as easily and lightly as a ‘willow twig’ in the large man’s massive and calloused hands!

  When it was his turn interviewing with McKenzie, the man offered his physical services as a way to make it safely through Indian Country with the protection afforded by being included in a large and well-armed fur brigade. However, once there, the man advised he wished to remain on the frontier as a “Free Trapper” and not that of a company man. Then the giant of a man quietly advised that he was willing to work for ‘found and wages’ in order to earn his keep during the trip upriver and while helping to build the new fort. McKenzie, sensing the man’s value as a laborer based on his size and possibly as a leader of men on the difficult and dangerous trip upstream based on his quiet manner and bearing, especially when it came to cordelling one of the heavy and awkward maneuvering keelboats upriver, agreed and happily signed him on as a laborer. But McKenzie also took the time and made a notation on the signing papers that the giant of a man wished to remain as a Free Trapper once the work at Fort Union had been completed and he contractually agreed. McKenzie also noticed that the man spoke in such a manner and his flourish of a signature upon the just signed papers indicated that a highly educated man was standing before him, which was an anomaly in that day and age.

  With that bit of business completed, the huge man now known to McKenzie as Tom Warren, quietly faded off into the noisy and still excited crowd of other hopeful humanity hoping to be signed on, disappearing as silently and mysteriously as he had arrived. Little did McKenzie realize that his “Man Mountain Dean” just interviewed was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an experienced Topographical Engineer, who was no longer in the military. Tom was also of independent means after the sale of his farm and a man who had just lost his wife and young child to a recent smallpox epidemic. Hence the look of great sadness spelled across the man’s face and carried in his eyes.

  As McKenzie would come to learn, Tom no longer longed for the life as an industrious colonist with family responsibilities but for that of a “Mountain Man”. A Mountain Man leading a life where every footstep was beset with primitive enemies, angry beasts and evil men of his own kind, with many a moment pregnant with peril and life’s challenges. To that end, Tom hopefully prayed that his great family loss of loved ones would now somehow be supplanted with the extreme dangers and challenges life in the far west were soon to offer him as that of a Free Trapper. At the end of that day, McKenzie had signed up his quota of 120 men, and little did anyone truly realize that for one man, “The Adventurous Life of Tom “Iron Hand” Warren, Mountain Man”, had just begun by affixing his signature to an innocent-appearing piece of paper...

  Come the date set for departure, found Tom riding his favorite horse and leading his two fully loaded packhorses with what he figured he would need for the start of his new life as a Free Trapper on the new frontier. Upon his arrival at the pre-arranged ‘jumping-off’ site, he was surprised to discover that McKenzie had placed him in charge of leading the heavily packed horse and mule herd safely northward through dangerous Indian Country. In so doing, he was to slowly parallel the progress of the three keelboats moving upriver, under pole and cordelle. Toward that end, it was also Tom’s responsibility as the leader of the horse and mule herd to move ahead at the end of each day, and pick a safe campsite for the tired keelboat men to land, eat supper and spend the night. That soon became the daily regimen for the next several months, as the fur brigade slowly made their way northwards towards the headwaters of the Missouri River and future home of the American Fur Company’s Fort Union Trading Post.

  Eventually, the headwater site was gained and the keelboats safely anchored on the western side of the river and their final camp made. Tom in turn, had his horse and mule wranglers swim the now unpacked herd of animals, whose packs had been transferred earlier to the keelboats, across the Missouri to join the keelboat boatmen camped near the site of the soon to be constructed Fort Union. The next day, the fur brigade surprisingly found themselves surrounded by hundreds of welcoming and curious Indians.

  Indians of such character that the group soon discovered anything of value not tied down quickly disappeared! With that, McKenzie formed work parties to begin clearing the ground and building Fort Union. Additionally, he organized several other parties of men to ‘round the clock’ guard and make sure the provisions on the keelboats and the valuable herds of horses and mules did not ‘walk off’ in the hands of the milling crowds of curious Indians!

  Thirty days later, the logs were cut and the walls went up around the huge fort, as work then began in earnest in constructing the house of the fort’s Factor or Bourgeois. Following that piece of important construction, the places of residence for the Company Clerks along the inside of the fort’s quadrangle were also constructed, as were the barracks for the Engagés. While one crew finished those buildings, another group of men constructed the storehouses across the square for storing the merchandise, provisions, furs (once they began flowing into the fort), and the other soon to follow peltries. Last and very important, up went the inside buildings designated to be used by the fort’s blacksmiths. “Blacksmithing” being a frontier industry that was critical to the everyday functioning of the fort for making horseshoes and s
hoeing the mules and horses, repairing firearms, making door and window shutter hinges, barrel hoops, tools, nails, and other items of like importance used in furthering the overall industry of the trading post.

  Then came the day when the closely guarded keelboats were finally offloaded and the goods and provisions brought within the fort’s walls and placed into the storage houses for safer keeping. By now, over a hundred tepees were gathered around the outside of the walls of the fort and along the nearby river bottom, as their occupants waited for the fort to be opened for business and the trading and related commerce to begin.

  Tom, now working alongside the rest of the common laborers, did so because of his word to McKenzie and that he realized he needed to ‘top off’ his supplies before he headed into the field for a season of fall and winter of trapping. By so doing, with the pay he was earning and the money he had from sale of his farm back in Missouri, he hoped to be able to purchase at the much-inflated frontier prices, his needed ‘top-off’ provisions like coffee, sugar, dried fruit, gunpowder, pigs of lead, and the like. All things he had not brought with him because of the possibility of spoilage, theft or having to carry the excess weight of such items over those many hundreds of miles traveled.

  In the interim, Tom had met and worked alongside several, whom he considered good men, who were also former Free Trappers from prior trapping expeditions into that area of the frontier. In so doing, they had decided to form their own small group of higher-classed Free Trappers for the safety in numbers that offered once they were out on their own in Indian Country.

  One of the older men in their newly formed group was a much experienced trapper and prototypical “Mountain Man” who went by the name of “Old Potts”. He had trapped with Vasquez in the first ’07 fur trapping expedition on the upper Missouri at the old Fort Raymond. Another of Tom’s newly formed party of friends and experienced Mountain Man was a man with only one eye who went by the moniker of “Big Foot Johnson”. He had also been an experienced blacksmith from his former indentured life in civilized America, who knew firearms backwards and forwards as well as many of the techniques of ironworking. As such, “Big Foot” was constantly tinkering with the newly formed group of fur trappers’ long guns and making replacement parts for their highly accurate .50 caliber Hawken rifles when he was not cutting and hauling logs for the fort. As for only having one eye, Big Foot had lost it in a saloon fight when his opponent had gotten him down and had gouged out his left eye with his thumb! Not to be out done, Big Foot got up off the floor at an opportune moment of the fight in a fury of pain and a load of adrenalin, and had killed his opponent by cutting out his liver with his long-bladed sheath knife! After that episode, Big Foot’s reputation on the frontier was such that one did not want to mess with him or come at him from his blind side. The final member of Tom’s little group of experienced Mountain Men was a man who went by the frontier name of “Crooked Hand Harris” or “Crooked Hand” for short. The Indians had given Crooked Hand his frontier name, because in an earlier fight with the Blackfeet up on the Madison River, he had gotten excited when the killing had slid in too close to him for comfort and in hurriedly reloading his rifle at the time, a .40 caliber flintlock, he had inadvertently placed his hand over the muzzle and it had mistakenly discharged! In so doing, his off hand was badly damaged and remained crooked and deformed for the rest of his life. However, he had learned to adapt his broken hand in his reloading drills and could reload a rifle and shoot it with the best of them, especially his Hawken, which he named “Never Miss”. He had named his rifle “Never Miss” because every time he lifted it to his shoulder, something always died...