OLD LARAMIE
An old gray man in buckskins sat on the ground in the shade of the adobe
stockade at old Fort Laramie, his knees high in front of him, his eyes
fixed on the ground. His hair fell over his shoulders in long curls
which had once been brown. His pointed beard fell on his breast. He sat
silent and motionless, save that constantly he twisted a curl around a
forefinger, over and over again. It was his way. He was a long-hair, a
man of another day. He had seen the world change in six short years,
since the first wagon crossed yonder ridges, where now showed yet one
more wagon train approaching.
He paid no attention to the débris and discard of this new day which lay
all about him as he sat and dreamed of the days of trap and packet. Near
at hand were pieces of furniture leaning against the walls, not bought
or sold, but abandoned as useless here at Laramie. Wagon wheels,
tireless, their fellies falling apart, lay on the ground, and other
ruins of great wagons, dried and disjointed now.
Dust lay on the ground. The grass near by was all cropped short. Far
off, a village of the Cheyennes, come to trade, and sullen over the fact
that little now could be had for robes or peltries, grazed their ponies
aside from the white man's road. Six hundred lodges of the Sioux were on
the tributary river a few miles distant. The old West was making a last
gallant stand at Laramie.
Inside the gate a mob of white men, some silent and businesslike, many
drunken and boisterous, pushed here and there for access to the trading
shelves, long since almost bare of goods. Six thousand emigrants passed
that year.
It was the Fourth of July in Old Laramie, and men in jeans and wool and
buckskin were celebrating. Old Laramie had seen life--all of life, since
the fur days of La Ramée in 1821. Having now superciliously sold out to
these pilgrims, reserving only alcohol enough for its own consumption,
Old Laramie was willing to let the world wag, and content to twiddle a
man curl around a finger.
But yet another detachment of the great army following the hegira of the
Mormons was now approaching Laramie. In the warm sun of mid-morning, its
worn wheels rattling, its cattle limping and with lolling tongues, this
caravan forded and swung wide into corral below the crowded tepees of
the sullen tribesmen.
[Illustration: _A Paramount Picture.
The Covered Wagon_.
JUST BEFORE THE START OF THE WAGON TRAIN.]
Ahead of it now dashed a horseman, swinging his rifle over his head and
uttering Indian yells. He pulled up at the very door of the old adobe
guard tower with its mounted swivel guns; swung off, pushed on into the
honeycomb of the inner structure.
The famous border fortress was built around a square, the living
quarters on one side, the trading rooms on another. Few Indians were
admitted at one time, other than the Indian wives of the _engagés_, the
officials of the fur company or of the attached white or halfbreed
hunters. Above some of the inner buildings were sleeping lofts. The
inner open space served as a general meeting ground. Indolent but on
guard, Old Laramie held her watch, a rear guard of the passing West in
its wild days before the plow.
All residents here knew Jim Bridger. He sought out the man in charge.
"How, Bordeaux?" he began. "Whar's the bourgeois, Papin?"
"Down river--h'east h'after goods."
The trader, hands on his little counter, nodded to his shelves.
"Nada!" he said in his polyglot speech. "Hi'll not got a damned thing
lef'. How many loads you'll got for your h'own post, Jeem?"
"Eight wagons. Iron, flour and bacon."
"Hi'll pay ye double here what you'll kin git retail there, Jeem, and
take it h'all h'off your hand. This h'emigrant, she'll beat the fur."
"I'll give ye half," said Bridger. "Thar's people here needs supplies
that ain't halfway acrost. But what's the news, Bordeaux? Air the Crows
down?"
"H'on the Sweetwater, h'awaitin' for the peelgrim. Hi'll heard of your
beeg fight on the Platte. Plenty beeg fight on ahead, too, maybe-so.
You'll bust h'up the trade, Jeem. My Sioux, she's scare to come h'on the
post h'an' trade. He'll stay h'on the veelage, her."
"Every dog to his own yard. Is that all the news?"
"Five thousand Mormons, he'll gone by h'aready. H'womans pullin' the
han'cart, _sacre Enfant_! News--you'll h'ought to know the news. You'll
been h'on the settlement six mont'!"
"Hit seemed six year. The hull white nation's movin'. So. That all?"
"Well, go h'ask Keet. He's come h'up South Fork yesterdays. Maybe-so
_quelq' cho' des nouvelles_ h'out West. I dunno, me."
"Kit--Kit Carson, you mean? What's Kit doing here?"
"_Oui._ I dunno, me."
He nodded to a door. Bridger pushed past him. In an inner room a party
of border men were playing cards at a table. Among these was a slight,
sandy-haired man of middle age and mild, blue eye. It was indeed Carson,
the redoubtable scout and guide, a better man even than Bridger in the
work of the wilderness.
"How are you, Jim?" he said quietly, reaching up a hand as he sat.
"Haven't seen you for five years. What are you doing here?"
He rose now and put down his cards. The game broke up. Others gathered
around Bridger and greeted him. It was some time before the two
mountain men got apart from the others.
"What brung ye north, Kit?" demanded Bridger at length. "You was in
Californy in '47, with the General."
"Yes, I was in California this spring. The treaty's been signed with
Mexico. We get the country from the Rio Grande west, including
California. I'm carrying dispatches to General Kearny at Leavenworth.
There's talk about taking over Laramie for an Army post. The tribes are
up in arms. The trade's over, Jim."
"What I know, an' have been sayin'! Let's have a drink, Kit, fer old
times."
Laughing, Carson turned his pockets inside out. As he did so something
heavy fell from his pocket to the floor. In courtesy as much as
curiosity Bridger stooped first to pick it up. As he rose he saw
Carson's face change as he held out his hand.
"What's this stone, Kit--yer medicine?"
But Bridger's own face altered suddenly as he now guessed the truth. He
looked about him suddenly, his mouth tight. Kit Carson rose and they
passed from the room.
"Only one thing heavy as that, Mister Kit!" said Bridger fiercely.
"Where'd you git hit? My gran'pap had some o' that. Hit come from North
Carliny years ago. I know what hit is--hit's gold! Kit Carson, damn ye,
hit's the gold!"
"Shut your mouth, you fool!" said Carson. "Yes, it's gold. But do you
want me to be a liar to my General? That's part of my dispatches."
"Hit" come from Californy?"
"Curse me, yes, California! I was ordered to get the news to the Army
first. You're loose-tongued, Jim. Can you keep this?"
"Like a grave, Kit."
"Then here!"
Carson felt inside his shirt and pulled out a meager and ill-printed
sheet which told the most epochal news that this or any country has
known--the midwinter discovery of gold at Sutter's Mills.
A flag was flying over Laramie stockade, and this flag the mountain men
saw fit to salute with many libations, hearing now that it was to fly
forever over California as over Oregon. Crowding the stockade inclosure
full was a motley throng--border men in buckskins, _engagés_ swart as
Indians, French breeds, full-blood Cheyennes and Sioux of the northern
hills, all mingling with the curious emigrants who had come in from the
wagon camps. Plump Indian girls, many of them very comely, some of them
wives of the trappers who still hung about Laramie, ogled the newcomers,
laughing, giggling together as young women of any color do, their black
hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy
with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet
peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords. Older
squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own
stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close. Of the
full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those drunk were other
than sullenly silent and resentful as they watched the white man's orgy
at Old Laramie on the Fourth of July of 1848.
Far flung along the pleasant valley lay a vast picture possible in no
other land or day. The scattered covered wagons, the bands of cattle and
horses, the white tents rising now in scores, the blue of many fires,
all proved that now the white man had come to fly his flag over a new
frontier.
Bridger stood, chanting an Indian song. A group of men came out, all
excited with patriotic drink. A tall man in moccasins led, his fringed
shirt open over a naked breast, his young squaw following him.
"Let me see one o' them damned things!" he was exclaiming. "That's why I
left home fifty year ago. Pap wanted to make me plow! I ain't seed one
since, but I'll bet a pony I kin run her right now! Go git yer plow
things, boys, an' fotch on ary sort of cow critter suits ye. I'll bet I
kin hook 'em up an' plow with 'em, too, right yere!"
The old gray man at the gate sat and twisted his long curls.
The sweet wind of the foothills blew aslant the smokes of a thousand
fires. Over the vast landscape passed many moving figures. Young Indian
men, mostly Sioux, some Cheyennes, a few Gros Ventres of the Prairie,
all peaceable under the tacit truce of the trading post, rode out from
their villages to their pony herds. From the post came the occasional
note of an inharmonic drum, struck without rhythm by a hand gone lax.
The singers no longer knew they sang. The border feast had lasted long.
Keg after keg had been broached. The Indian drums were going. Came the
sound of monotonous chants, broken with staccato yells as the border
dance, two races still mingling, went on with aboriginal excesses on
either side. On the slopes as dusk came twinkled countless tepee fires.
Dogs barked mournfully a-distant. The heavy half roar of the buffalo
wolves, superciliously confident, echoed from the broken country.
Now and again a tall Indian, naked save where he clutched his robe to
him unconsciously, came staggering to his tepee, his face distorted,
yelling obscene words and not knowing what he said. Patient, his
youngest squaw stood by his tepee, his spear held aloft to mark his door
plate, waiting for her lord to come. Wolfish dogs lay along the tepee
edges, noses in tails, eyeing the master cautiously. A grumbling old
woman mended the fire at her own side of the room, nearest the door,
spreading smooth robes where the man's medicine hung at the willow
tripod, his slatted lazyback near by. In due time all would know whether
at the game of "hands," while the feast went on, the little elusive bone
had won or lost for him. Perhaps he had lost his horses, his robes, his
weapons--his squaws. The white man's medicine was strong, and there was
much of it on his feasting day.
From the stockade a band of mounted Indians, brave in new finery, decked
with eagle bonnets and gaudy in beaded shirts and leggings, rode out
into the slopes, chanting maudlin songs. They were led by the most
beautiful young woman of the tribe, carrying a wand topped by a gilded
ball, and ornamented with bells, feathers, natural flowers. As the wild
pageant passed the proud savages paid no attention to the white men.
The old gray man at the gate sat and twisted his long curls.
And none of them knew the news from California.