Read The Saga of Harlan Waugh (The Mountain Men) for Free Online Page A

Indians moved as they sat on their horses looking long and hard at the cabin and its trappers in their hunting grounds.
    Then a tall man, looking every bit the Indian in his dress, moved his horse forward and said in perfect frontier English, “Good morning, and who might you be?”
    Surprised at hearing English spoken, Harlan said, “I am called Harlan Waugh. This is my son, Big Eagle, and my other son, who is inside the cabin fixin’ breakfast, is called Winter Hawk.”
    Big Eagle took a quick glance at Harlan. Harlan had never called him his son before. However, Big Eagle liked the title, and it made him feel proud to be called “son” by a mighty warrior and mountain man like Harlan.
    “Who might you be?” asked Harlan.
    “I am Joe Meek, the meanest, best-shootin’, biggest-eatin’, greatest squaw-lovin’, knife-throwin’, fur-trappin’ mountain man in the West. And by the looks of your face and head, you are a great mountain man as well if them be the marks of a mighty unhappy grizzly.”
    “They be the marks of a griz’ all right,” uttered Harlan. “A griz’ who tried to make me his dinner and stayed for dinner instead.”
    Meek smiled through a huge growth of facial hair and said, “Care if I light down a bit? Gets a mite cold sittin’ up here on a horse in the dead of winter.”
    “Make yourself at home, and your friends as well,” said Harlan. Meek turned to the Snakes and in their tongue advised them to dismount, which they did.
    “How we going to feed such a number of people, Harlan?” asked Big Eagle, assuming that a meal was to follow since they had dismounted and were making motions as if to stay.
    “Go fill that big pot with water and bring it to our outside campfire. I will have our big meat cooking pot there by the time you return and just fill it half full. In the meantime, Winter Hawk and I will cut some slabs of meat from those grizzly hams in the cache house and start them cooking with a load of dried rice and the beans from last night’s supper for thickening.”
    Big Eagle headed for the lake to get water as instructed. When he returned, a roaring fire had been built and their large rendering pot had been placed at the fire’s edge. Into that eventually went five large pots of water, thirty pounds of previously hard-smoked and salted grizzly ham cut into generous chunks, four pounds of dried rice, and the remaining pot of beans from supper.
    That was followed by a handful of salt, pepper, and some crushed, dried hot red pepper flakes. Winter Hawk brought out another large cast- iron pot and hung it over the fire on the cooking rod. Into that four-gallon pot went cold water from the lake, and as soon as it was boiling, he added eight large handfuls of freshly ground coffee beans and four handfuls of brown sugar cones.
    Soon the talk around the large fire was animated as the cold men began warming up and smelling good things to come. Then one man noticed something on Winter Hawk and brought it to the attention of the group in the Snake language. There was an immediate and abrupt silence, and then the talk really got animated. As Winter Hawk once again approached the fire with two Dutch ovens for biscuit-making, one of the Snakes grabbed him by the collar and loudly proclaimed something in his tongue, the only word of which Harlan understood was “Crow!”
    Winter Hawk tried to pull away, but the man was too strong and had a firm grip on the boy. In a flash Winter Hawk had drawn his knife, twisted around in his shirt, and faced off with his antagonist. Seeing that he was confronted with a determined youth with a knife, the older man went for his tomahawk, only to have Winter Hawk disarm him in a blinding flash.
    That move happened so fast that the man was stunned. Realizing he was now disarmed, he drew a pistol from his sash, only to have Joe Meek restrain him at the last moment. It was good that Meek acted so rapidly because Big Eagle had drawn a bead with his Hawken on the man