ropes. The wild horses were playing with them. After about two miles
the yellow pony and the doctor’s horse began to wheeze and to tire;
the wild band were running as strongly as ever――only romping along,
biting and kicking at each other. Then as if to show what they really
could do, led by their black stallion, they lengthened their strides,
opened the gap wider and wider, and were away.
The doctor hauled short.
“No use, Stub,” he called.
So Stub pulled down, and turned.
“No use,” he agreed. “But heap fun.”
“You bet!” pronounced the doctor, panting. “What do you say ‘heap’ fun
for? That’s not American; that’s Injun. Americans say ‘much’ fun, or
‘great’ fun.”
“All right,” Stub admitted――for the doctor knew. “Heap chase wild
horse, much fun.”
“Oh, pshaw!” the doctor laughed. “If I could only get into that head
of yours I’d take the ‘heaps’ out of it. How’s your white spot, these
days? Burn any?”
“Some days burn, some days no. Some days heavy, some days light.” And
with that, Stub kept his distance. He wished that the doctor would quit
talking about “getting into” his head. A medicine-man had dangerous
power.
The lieutenant and Baroney and the two soldiers had come as fast as
they could. There was a great deal of laughing and joking as the doctor
and Stub joined them, and all rode back for the main party, and camp.
The lieutenant joked the least. He never did joke much, anyway; he was
stern and quiet.
“We’ll delay no more for wild horses, men,” he said. “Our Country
expects something better of us than such child’s play at the
impossible. Forward again, now. We will hunt only for food, in line of
duty.”
This afternoon they marched thirteen miles.
The Spanish trail continued, up the river, and ever westward. It was a
pity that some of the wild horses had not been caught, for the other
horses were beginning to give out. The grass was short and thin, and
eaten off by the buffalo, and at night the men cut cottonwood boughs
for the horses to feed upon.
This was a rich meat country, though. Buffalo were constantly in sight,
by the thousand, many of them fat cows, and the hunters brought in
humps and tongues. The Spanish had left camp signs――at one camp almost
one hundred fires might be counted, meaning six hundred or seven
hundred warriors. A whole Spanish army had been through here, but the
lieutenant and his little army of sixteen marched on.
There were several old camp-places of Indians. One showed Comanche
signs; near by, the Spanish also had camped, as if making ready to meet
the Comanches, and Baroney and the lieutenant thought that the Comanche
range must be close at hand.
But where were the mountains? How far were the mountains, now? The
river was getting narrower and deeper, the country higher and rougher.
Two horses became so weak that they could not carry their packs. The
horses had been traveling, starved and foot-sore, under heavy loads
more than twenty miles a day.
John Sparks, who had been out hunting, returned with news.
“I sighted an Injun hossback,” he reported. “He made off up a little
ravine south of us. Don’t know whether he saw me or not.”
Before night fresh moccasin tracks not over a few hours old were
discovered. A large war party were somewhere just ahead. This night the
camp guards were doubled, but nothing happened.
In the morning the lieutenant took the doctor, John Sparks, and Stub
for interpreter, and circled south, to find the lone horseman. Only his
tracks were found; so they rode back again and the column marched on.
Nothing special occurred today, but everybody kept sharp lookout. The
country was lonely, broken by rocky spurs and uplifts, and the buffalo
herds seemed to be less in number.
The next day the lieutenant and the doctor led, as usual, with Baroney
and Stub behind them, and the column of toiling men and horses under
Sergeant Meek, following. The two weak horses had fallen down, to die,
and another was barely able to walk.
Lieutenant Pike frequently used his spy-glass, which made things ten
miles off appear to be only a few steps. In the middle of the day he
halted and leveled it long.
“Sees something,” said Baroney, in French.
In a moment the lieutenant galloped forward to the doctor, who had gone
on, and they both looked. But they did not signal, and they did not
come back; so what it was that they thought they saw, nobody knew. Stub
and Baroney strained their eyes, seeking. Aha!
“Smoke sign,” uttered Baroney.
“Heap smoke. Big fire. Mebbe cloud,” Stub answered.
From the little rise they could just descry, far, far to the northwest,
a tiny tip of bluish color, jutting into the horizon there. It did not
move, it did not swell nor waver. No smoke, then; cloud――the upper edge
of a cloud. The lieutenant and the doctor had read it, and were riding
on. In another minute it had sunk, swallowed by the land before.
“N’importe (does not matter),” murmured Baroney. “Perhaps more snow, my
gracious! But who cares?”
In about two miles more, the lieutenant and the doctor halted again,
on the top of a low hill that cut the way. They gazed, through
the spy-glass, examining ahead. They did not leave the hill. They
stayed――and the lieutenant waved his hat. He had seen something, for
sure. Baroney and Stub were a quarter of a mile from him. The soldiers
were a quarter of a mile farther.
“Come! He signals,” rapped Baroney. Now he and Stub galloped, to find
out. Behind, the soldiers’ column quickened pace, for the orders of
Sergeant Meek might be heard, as he shouted them.
The lieutenant and the doctor were gazing once more, with eyes and
spy-glass both.
“What is it? The savages?” cried Baroney, as he and Stub raced in, up
to the top of the flat hill.
Or the Spanish? The Spanish trail had been lost, for the past day or
two. Maybe the Spanish were encamped, and waiting. The lieutenant
answered.
“No. The mountains, my man! The mountains, at last!”
“Hurrah!” cheered the doctor. “See them?”
Baroney stared. Stub stared. It was the same bluish cloud, only larger
and plainer. It jutted sharply――no, it sort of floated, but it did not
move. It was fastened to the earth. And north from it there extended
a long line of other clouds, lower, as far as one might see; while
southward from it were still lower clouds, tapering off.
“One big mountain! A giant! Ma foi, how big!” Baroney gasped.
“All mountains. The Mexican mountains, on the edge of the United
States,” announced the lieutenant. “Take the glass. Look――you and Stub.”
Look they did. The spy-glass worked wonders. It brought the clouds
much closer, and broke them. They were no longer clouds――they changed
to mountains indeed. In the spy-glass they shimmered whitely. That
was snow! Or white rocks! They were medicine mountains. And the big
mountain, so high, so mysterious, so proud: a chief mountain.
“You have been there?” asked the doctor, eagerly, of Stub. “With the
Utahs?”
“No.” And Stub shook his head. “Not there. No remember.”
“Pshaw!” the doctor answered.
The column came panting up. The doctor and the lieutenant again waved
their hats.
“The mountains, men! You see the Mexican mountains――the Great Stony
Mountains. Three cheers, now, for the Mexican mountains!”
Everybody cheered three times: “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” Only the
horses stood with heads drooping; they did not care.
“How far, would you think, cap’n?” Sergeant Meek queried.
“We ought to reach their base day after to-morrow.”
“Hooray!”
But although they all marched ten more miles to-day, and more than
eleven miles the next day, and more than twenty-three miles the next
day, from camp on the third evening the big chief mountain and the
lesser mountains seemed no nearer than before.
“Sure, they’re marchin’ faster’n we are,” said John Sparks.
“Spirit mountains,” Stub decided. “See ’em, no get ’em.”
Another horse was about to die. There were fresh Indian signs, again.
The Spanish trail had been found――it led onward, toward the mountains.
The country was growing more bare, the air thinner and chillier.
Through the spy-glass the mountains looked bare.
When the next herd of buffalo were seen, the lieutenant ordered camp
made, and sent hunters out to kill meat enough for several days. There
might be no buffalo, farther on. It was a poor country. He himself did
not hunt. He went up on a hill and drew pictures of the mountains, on a
piece of paper.
Stub did not hunt, either; he was almost out of arrows. He followed
Lieutenant Pike to the hill, and watched him. But the pictures were
only crooked lines, like Indian pictures.
The lieutenant glanced aside at him, and smiled. His smile was sweet,
when he did smile.
“Would you like to climb that big blue mountain?” he asked.
Stub had to think, a moment. The big blue mountain! Yes, big and blue
it was――and white; and very far. The thunder spirit might live there.
Winter lived there. Could anybody climb it? It never was out of sight,
now, except at night (and it never was out of sight, for days and days
afterward), but it seemed hard to reach.[A]
[A] This was the celebrated Pike’s Peak, of Colorado, later named for
Lieutenant Pike, first white man to tell about it.
“Top?”
“Yes, clear to the top,” smiled the lieutenant.
Stub’s eyes widened; and he smiled also.
“Sure. No afraid, with you.”
“Good!” the lieutenant praised. “We’ll see.”
The hunters killed seventeen buffalo, and wounded many more. When the
best of the meat had been smoked, there were nine hundred pounds of it,
and one hundred and thirty-six marrow-bones. The camp finished off the
marrow-bones in one meal, as a feast before marching on to storm the
big blue mountain.
VIII
BAD HEARTS IN THE WAY
“Des sauvages (Indians)!”
Thus Baroney shouted, pointing, from where he had checked his horse on
the edge of a little rise overlooking a dip in the trail.
They all had been marching two more days, and had covered about forty
more miles. This made seven days’ travel, counting the two days of meat
camp, and eighty-five miles, since the Big Blue Mountain had first been
sighted. Now it and the lesser mountains were much plainer.
But here were the Indians, sure enough. The lieutenant had rather been
expecting them. Yesterday the fresh tracks of the two men, again, had
given warning. So the column were marching close together.
The Indians, on foot, were running toward the column, from some trees
on the river bank, at the right.
“Close up, men,” the lieutenant ordered.
“Close up, close up! Look to your priming!” ordered Sergeant Meek.
And the lieutenant and the doctor, with Baroney and Stub ready to
interpret for them, led for the Indians.
“Pawnee, hein (hey)?” said Baroney.
“No Republic Pawnee; Grand Pawnee. War party; no horses,” Stub
explained. There was a difference between the Republic Pawnees and the
Grand Pawnees.
“Others yonder, lieutenant!” exclaimed the doctor.
They looked. Another squad of the Indians were running down from a hill
on the left. They carried flags on lances――the Grand Pawnee war colors.
“Make a surround!” guessed Baroney.
The lieutenant reined his horse, and drew his curved sword.
“Company, halt! Watch sharp, men!”
He glanced right and left, waiting to see if this was an attack.
No――for, as the doctor suddenly said:
“Those first fellows act friendly, lieutenant. They have no arms;
they’re holding out empty hands.”
“Forward!” ordered the lieutenant.
In a minute more they met the Indians from the timber. These Pawnees
did indeed act friendly――and all too friendly! They crowded in among
the soldiers, shaking hands, putting their arms around the soldiers’
necks, even trying to hug the lieutenant and the doctor and Baroney and
the others who rode horseback.
The lieutenant got off, good-naturedly; instantly a Pawnee leaped into
the saddle and rode the horse away. The doctor and Baroney lost their
horses, also; Stub (who knew what the Pawnees were up to) was almost
dragged down, but he stuck fast.
All was in confusion of laughter and jostling and pretended play.
“No, no!” the lieutenant objected, growing angry; and half drew a
pistol. The men were getting together, wresting their guns from the
Pawnees’ hands and holding them high, to keep them free.
More Pawnees, from the timber, had joined, with guns and bows and
lances; and the Pawnees from the hillside had come in. They included
two chiefs.
The two chiefs issued orders, and the play stopped. The horses were
returned. Then all went on to the trees by the river, for a talk.
Here matters again looked bad. The warriors frolicked, in spite of the
chiefs. They were Grand Pawnees――sixty: a war party out to plunder the
Padoucahs. But they had not found any Padoucahs; so this seemed a good
chance to plunder somebody else, instead of returning home empty-handed.
The lieutenant’s face was red, as he angrily warded off the hands that
clutched at his pistols and gun and horse’s bridle.
“Stand firm, men!” he called. “Don’t let loose of a thing――don’t let
them get behind us!”
“Kape your distance, you red rascals!” rasped Tom Dougherty, as they
hustled him about.
“Steady! Steady!” Sergeant Meek cautioned.
“By thunder, they’d like to strip us,” the doctor exclaimed.
Even Stub objected vigorously, in Pawnee. The Grand Pawnees were indeed
rascals.
Guns were being cocked――click, click; several of the Pawnees, angry
themselves, leveled bended bows. It was likely to be a fight between
the sixteen Americans and the sixty Pawnees; and Stub sat alert, ready
to pluck an arrow as quick as lightning.
“Guard those packs, men!” the lieutenant kept shouting.
But the two chiefs were working hard, shoving the warriors back,
clearing a space. The head chief spoke to the lieutenant, and signed.
“He says: ‘Let us talk,’” Baroney interpreted.
“Very well. Tell him we will talk or we will fight,” replied the
lieutenant. “We won’t be robbed. If it is peace, we will give him
presents.”
They all sat down in a ring, with the lieutenant and Baroney and the
two chiefs in the center. The Americans sat under the American flag,
the Pawnee warriors sat under the Grand Pawnee flags. The doctor,
however, stood up, watching everything.
The Pawnee head chief took out a pipe and tobacco, for a peace smoke.
That looked good. But before filling the pipe, the two chiefs made
speeches.
“They ask what presents you will give them. They say they are poor,”
Baroney translated. And that was what they had said.
“Bring half a bale of tobacco, a dozen knives, and flints and steels
enough for all, sergeant,” the lieutenant ordered.
The head chief made another speech. He was refusing the presents. He
asked for corn, powder and lead, blankets, kettles――all kinds of stuff.
“Tell him that there are our presents. We have nothing else for him,”
the lieutenant answered. “We are ready to smoke with him.”
The chief did not lift the pipe. He and the other chief sat, with bad
spirit showing in their eyes. The warriors commenced to hoot, and
handle their guns and bows again.
“He will not smoke such poor presents,” Baroney reported. “I think
they mean trouble. A little tobacco, lieutenant; maybe a little tobacco
and powder.”
“You had best look out, lieutenant,” warned the doctor. “I don’t like
their looks.”
“Tell the chief he will get nothing else. He can take those presents or
leave them,” bade the lieutenant, to Baroney.
Baroney hated to do it, but he had to obey. The head chief scowled.
Then he signed, and an old man lugged in a kettle of water, as a return
present.
Stub heard the Pawnee warriors talking scornfully.
“See what manner of men these white men are, with their rags and their
poor gifts,” they said. “They do not travel like the Spanish. They look
like beggars.”
But Stub well knew that although their horses were thin and sore, and
they themselves were lean and tattered and almost barefoot, these
Americans could fight.
Now Chief Pike and the two Pawnee chiefs drank from the kettle of
water, out of their hands, and smoked the pipe, and ate a little dried
buffalo meat. Several Indians were called upon by the chief, to pass
the knives and flints and steels around. Indians who were given the
presents threw them upon the ground.
The lieutenant shook hands with the chiefs, and rose.
“All ready, doctor,” he called. “Pack your animals, sergeant, where
necessary. We march.”
The Pawnees sprang up, too, and crowded forward again.
“They make a surround,” said Baroney.
“Look out, lieutenant! They’re stealing your pistols――mine, too!” cried
the doctor.
The lieutenant leaped upon his horse just in time to rescue his
pistols, hanging from the saddle. He was hemmed in. The soldiers were
swearing and darting back and forth, grabbing at thieves and protecting
the baggage also.
Now the lieutenant had lost his hatchet. He exclaimed furiously.
“Tell the chief my hatchet is gone.”
The chief only said:
“These are small matters for a great man.”
He drew his buffalo robe high and turned his back.
The lieutenant flushed, more angry still, and stiffened in his saddle.
He meant business. Stub had seen him look this way before.
“Leave the baggage and get your men to one side, sergeant. Quick!
Be ready with your guns. That’s it. Baroney, tell the chief that the
next warrior who touches our baggage or animals shall die instantly.
Sergeant, at the first attempt, let the men shoot to kill.”
The Pawnees understood. They saw the muskets half leveled, and the
grim, determined faces behind. A warrior stretched out his hand,
stealthily, to a pack――and John Spark’s muzzle covered him in a flash.
He jumped back.
“Go!” suddenly ordered the head chief. The Pawnees sullenly gathered
their presents, and without another word filed away, the whole sixty.
“See if we’ve lost anything, sergeant,” said the lieutenant.
“One sword, one tomahawk, one axe, five canteens and some smaller stuff
missing, sir,” was the report.
The soldiers waited eagerly. They wished to follow and fight.
“No matter,” gruffly answered the lieutenant. “We must save our lives
for our work, my men. We have work to do. Forward, march.” He shrugged
his shoulders, and added, to the doctor: “I feel as badly as they do.
This is the first time I ever swallowed an insult to the Government and
the uniform. But our number is too small to risk failure of our plans.
Now for the mountains.”
“By gar, once more my scalp was loose,” said Baroney, to Stub.
“Yes. They had black hearts, those Grand Pawnee,” Stub gravely agreed.
This day they marched seventeen miles, and the next day nineteen miles.
In all they had come more than one hundred and twenty miles, their eyes
upon the Big Blue Mountain, as the lieutenant called it. And at last
they had just about overtaken it.
From camp, here where the river split into two large forks, one out of
the west, the other out of the south, the Big Blue Mountain looked to
be quite near, up a small north fork.
“Le Grand Mont,” Baroney called it. “The Grand Peak.” And the men
called it that, too.
“Sure, it can’t be more’n one day’s march now,” John Sparks declared,
as from camp they eyed it again. “We can be there to-morrow at this
time, with ease, in case those be the orders.”
In the sunset the mountain loomed vast, its base blue, but its top
pinkish white. After everything else was shrouded in dusk, its top
still shone.
“How high, d’ye think?” queried soldier Freegift Stout.
“Thray miles higher’n we be; mebbe four,” guessed Pat Smith.
“He’s a grand wan all right,” sighed Tom Dougherty. “Even a bur-rd wud
nade an ixtra pair o’ wings to get atop him, I’m thinkin’.”
“No mortal man, or nothing else on two legs could do it, I reckon,”
said John Brown. “Unless that be the cap’n himself.”
“American can,” Stub reminded, proudly.
“You’re right, boy,” soldier Terry Miller approved. “Under orders an
American would come pretty close to filling the job.”
The lieutenant and the doctor had been gazing at the peak; it
fascinated them, like it fascinated the men, and Stub. That night they
talked together until late, planning for to-morrow. The lieutenant had
decided to climb the mountain.
He sent for Sergeant Meek. The sergeant stood before him and saluted.
“I intend to take Doctor Robinson and two of the men, and this boy,
to-morrow, and set out for the big mountain,” the lieutenant said. “The
camp will be left in your charge.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Sergeant Meek.
“These reports of the journey to date I also leave, with my personal
baggage. The mountain is only a short day’s march, but I have to
consider that we may be cut off or meet with other accident. To-morrow
morning I will lay out a stockade, here, for the protection of your
party. You are to wait here one week, with due caution against
surprises by the savages and the Spanish. Admit nobody except your own
command into the stockade. If we do not return or you do not hear from
us within the seven days, you are to take my papers and such baggage
as may be necessary, and march down river by the safest direct course
for the nearest American settlement or military post, as may be. At the
American frontier you will leave your men under instructions to report
at St. Louis, and you will press ahead at best speed and deliver my
papers to General Wilkinson, the head of the Army, wherever he may be.
In event of your disability, you will entrust the papers to Corporal
Jackson――acquainting him in advance with what is expected of him. In
the meantime, here or on the march, keep your men alert and together,
and do not forget that our Country depends upon our performing our duty
without regard to our own interests.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant. He gulped――the ragged, weather-worn
soldier. “Excuse me, sir――’tis only a day’s march yonder, you say?
You’ll be coming back, sir?”
“If within human possibility, sergeant. But I must climb that mountain
to its highest point, in order to make certain of our position and
ascertain the trend of the various streams. We are near the sources of
the Arkansaw, as is evident. Our instructions are to find the heads of
the Arkansaw and the Red River, on our way to the Comanches.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant.
“That is all. Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir. I make bold to wish you good luck, sir. I wish I
might be going with you, sir.”
“Thank you, sergeant.”
The lieutenant sat up late, writing. In his buffalo-robe, Stub dreamed
of to-morrow, and the Grand Peak. He had understood only part of the
lieutenant’s long speech; but it was enough to understand that he was
to be taken.
IX
A TRY AT THE “GRAND PEAK”
Early in the morning the lieutenant set the men at work cutting down
fourteen trees, for stockade logs. A stockade was a fort. This fort was
to be only a pen, open on the river and five feet high on the three
other sides.
Soldiers John Brown and Terry Miller were the men chosen. That made
a party of five. They all took only a blanket or robe apiece, and a
little dried meat, besides their guns and Stub’s bow and arrows. They
started horseback at one o’clock, to cross the river and travel up the
north fork, for the Grand Peak.
The men paused long enough to give three cheers, and wave their caps.
“Bon voyage (Good journey),” Baroney called.
“Good luck to yez.”
“We’ll be lookin’ for you back.”
“When ye get to the top, be lightin’ us a bonfire, Terry.”
The lieutenant raised his hat, in reply. The doctor waved, the two
soldiers and Stub waved. And the five splashed through the ice-cold
water and left the eleven men under Sergeant Meek to build the fort.[B]
[B] The fort was near present Pueblo, Colorado. Lieutenant Pike’s squad
marched up the west side of Fountain Creek.
According to the doctor, this was the twenty-fourth day of the month
named November. By the morning light the Grand Peak, glistening white,
had looked to be nearer than ever. The lieutenant was certain that a
half-day’s march would bring them to its base; to-morrow they would
climb it, and would be back in camp on the third day.
Mile after mile they hastened, their eyes scanning the distance before.
The route up along the small fork was gravelly and bare, except for
clumps of sage brush, and the willows bordering the stream. In places
they had to cross deep washes cut by the rains. Not a living thing was
sighted, save rabbits and prairie-dogs and a few antelope. And the
Grand Peak and the line of lesser peaks――some white, some steel-gray,
waited.