deeds by themselves or by Bill Williams, Jim Bridger, Captain Billy
Sublette, and others; and by Kit Carson. On the other hand, he never
heard “Kit” (as his friends lovingly called him) make much mention of
himself in any adventures; somebody else always was the hero.
When home in Taos Kit played much with his swarthy little daughter,
Adaline. Just what to do with her appeared to bother him. Oliver once
noted him saying, in his soft voice, with broad accent of the South and
the border mingled:
“I war raised without schooling; then I ran away an’ I war twelve years
on the trail an’ in the mountains ’fore I came out to Bent’s an’ to
Taos again. Now I’m thirty-two, an’ without any education ’cept trapper
education. ’Tisn’t human for a man not to be able to read or write; an’
what I’m to do with my leetle gal I don’t know. But I want her to have
education.”
This seemed to Oliver rather a queer idea from the great Kit Carson,
who could shoot and ride and trail and talk Indian talk and make Indian
sign, besides speaking a rude Spanish and some French. Why should such
a man care to read and write, or wish that his children should read and
write? But Kit Carson had been much in earnest, nevertheless.
Now was it the late fall of 1841, and Oliver still was the official
herder for the Carson company. However, he had grown very much during
these twelve months in the fresh air, riding and tramping and doing
man’s work. Tough of muscle and sturdy of frame, he was becoming
full-chested like Kit Carson himself. But he could not yet be called a
trapper.
The men were kind to him; he liked them; he stood their joking and
their rough ways, and tried to do what they told him was best to do. So
they apparently liked him, in turn, and would teach him how to shoot
quick and straight, and to ride easily and surely.
On this, an afternoon in the last week of November, he had been
permitted by Lieutenant Ike Chamberlain (a stalwart six-footer was Ike,
and a tremendous fighter, they all said) to take out upon herd Ike’s
favorite rifle――a heavy flint-lock, made by the celebrated gun-smith
Hawkins, of St. Louis. It was taller than Oliver, and the long barrel
was so heavy that he scarcely could hold it out; so when he shot it he
rested it upon brush, or crossed sticks, or whatever else was handy.
But the bullet sped true to the sight. “Plumb centre” shot a Hawkins
rifle.
With the heavy rifle balanced across his lap, with buffalo-horn
powder-flask and beaded hide bullet-pouch slung from his shoulders,
and with broad, keen skinning-knife belted by hide belt at his right
thigh, he was prepared to shoot rabbits. Obeying instructions of Ike
and Sol and the other men, he had learned to hit the rabbits only in
the head. It was fairer to the rabbit, for the rabbit had more chance
of escape by being missed. To hit a rabbit in the body was scorned by
mountain-men, and was deemed careless, slovenly work.
Bearing thirteen rabbits shot each through the head by single ball from
the flint-lock Hawkins mountain rifle, Oliver proudly drove the Carson
“cavvy” home at evening. Laden like valiant hunter he trudged through
the village, to exhibit his spoils――and to get his supper.
He found Taos stirred by excitement. Several strange teamsters were
forming centres of little groups of listeners. These were Santa Fé
caravan teamsters; they had sought Taos to report that between Taos and
Santa Fé a band of Indians had stampeded fourteen span of their mules,
and to ask help from the Kit Carson men.
At an unfortunate moment had the teamsters applied for the succor.
Trappers were out upon the final fur hunt of the year; a buffalo hunt
for Bent’s Fort was in progress; Ike Chamberlain had ridden away that
morning, upon errand bound; and Kit Carson was temporarily pallet-laid
by reason of a pistol wound through the left leg. His new Colt’s
revolving pistol had fallen from his belt, and striking upon its hammer
had discharged its ball diagonally through between knee and ankle.
As for the other men in Taos, they were slothful Mexican loungers, not
at all of a spirit to help the Americans fight the Indians. “Let the
Americans do their own fighting,” they said; “we want only to be let
alone.”
Kit Carson was much perturbed, half sitting, restlessly, on his couch
of blankets and robes.
“What you got thar, boy?” he demanded.
“Rabbits. I shot every one in the head,” informed Oliver.
“Let me see ’em.”
Oliver brought in the bunch, and threw it down before Kit Carson, who
explored it with his sound foot.
“Wall!” he mused, slowly. “A lad who can shoot like that needn’t herd
cavvy. It’s time you went on the hunt. I’ll put a Mexican at herding.”
Oliver’s heart leaped gladly. Kit Carson fidgeted, ill at ease, and
continued: “Now those teamsters have come in, expecting us to help ’em
get back their stolen critters, an’ I haven’t got a single man to send
out after the red rascals. An’ hyar I’m laid up, myself! What do you
think, boy? You know the country. Do you reckon you could take these
fellows an’ help ’em get back their critters, if I told you exactly
whar to go?”
Oliver nodded. His eyes were big, his heart thumped in his throat so
that at last he could only stammer:
“I’ll try. I guess I could. I’ll try.”
“Wall,” said Kit, still restless, “nobody can do more than try. An’
hyar’s a chance for you at mountain-man work. ’Less I’m much mistaken,
those red rascals air making straight for――――” and he described to
Oliver a well-known box-canyon or enclosed pocket, among the hills
150 miles westward. Oliver nodded; he had been that far, once, upon
a little trip with Kit Carson, and he remembered the trail. “They’ll
take the critters thar an’ hide ’em; an’ now they won’t be expecting
pursuit. With everybody fresh mounted, if you leave right after eating
this evening you ought to get thar to-morrow evening, so as to rush the
camp in ’arly morning. Pick a good hoss out o’ the cavvy, for yoreself.
Fust go get something to eat. Thar come some o’ the men; I’ll tell ’em
what we’re to do.”
Treading air and vastly excited, himself, Oliver sped away to make his
preparations.
“Better fill yore powder flask, boy,” called Kit, kindly. “Help
yoreself from my horn, yonder. An’ thar’s the bullets. They fit Ike’s
gun. But don’t shoot ’less you have to; an’ if you do shoot, shoot as
straight as if you war shooting rabbits. Remember, it air the bullets
that hit that count.”
“Yes, sir; I’ll remember,” engaged Oliver, working eagerly.
So presently into the twilight glow rode the dozen teamsters, armed and
mounted as well as practicable. Two and two they rode: their bearded,
booted, flannel-shirted captain, and ragged Oliver high on a yellow
horse, side by side in the lead.
Through the twilight, and through the gloaming, and through the starry
night, at trot broken by now and then a brief space of walk, westward
rode the little cavalcade, to surprise the Apaches.
The dark blue sky gradually paled; paled the dusky earth; coyotes
homeward slinked; little brown birds twittered amidst the brush; from
the east spread upward a pink radiance; and stiff and chilled from the
night’s travel through the great open sage country, at rising of the
sun the pursuit jogged into the first of the hill defiles.
As they rode, the horsemen ate; chewing at strips of dried buffalo meat.
Higher and more numerous waxed the hills, their long steep slopes
covered with chaparral and stunted timber, and separated by bouldered
water-courses, many of them dry. The trail seemed a blind one.
“Do ye know whar you’re going, boy?” queried the teamster captain,
doubtfully.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been in here before, and Kit Carson told me,” answered
Oliver, hard at work thinking, and peering keenly.
At noon they rested by a stream, and let the horses graze, and dozed,
themselves, while down upon the wild maze of quiet wooded hills poured
the generous sun――his beams hot in the thin atmosphere.
After their nooning, again they rode. The country had grown wilder;
the hills had become peaks, snow-capped; the water-courses had cut
deep gulches and canyons. It was the favorite region of the Jicarilla
(Heek-ah-ree-yah, _i.e._, Basket) Apaches; the ancient volcano land of
northern New Mexico west of the Rio Grande. Here the Jicarillas had
their retreats.
Now the pursuit must ride more carefully, for Oliver was not certain
but that they might be near the Indians. So they scanned every ridge to
catch timely glimpse of Indian scout, and every hollow to catch glimpse
of tell-tale smoke. An oddly-shaped little peak was the landmark; and
as by way of draw and pass, from valley to valley, they neared it,
Oliver’s heart beat faster. Below the peak was that box-canyon or
enclosed basin where, according to Kit Carson’s judgment, the stolen
stock would be hidden.
At last the wearied little cavalcade wound around a wooded shoulder and
could scan the spot where lay the outlaw refuge. Up-wafted lazily, as
from the basin itself, into the sunset atmosphere above the fringing
trees and rocks, a film of hazy blue smoke. Indian camp!
However, too late was it, this day, to attack; darkness would
interfere. So the pursuit rode nearer, and sent two men forward afoot
to spy. They left; and they returned, scratched and grimy, in the dusk,
to report that a Jicarilla camp was located in the basin, that the
Indians were gorging and making merry around a fire, and that more than
fourteen span of mules, evidently stolen, were grazing freely, hobbled
not nor tethered, upon the grass of the secluded niche. Having driven
their spoil 150 miles into the heart of the Apache mountains, the
Indians evidently were expecting no interference.
And here, likewise 150 miles from white settlement, the pursuit grimly
squatted down to a fireless night and a long wait until dawn. They
slept at intervals; even Oliver slept, exultant though he was at having
led true, and anxious though he was for further results.
The dawn grayed; the men stiffly stirred about, saddling their hunched
horses and priming afresh their weapons.
“Let the boy show the trail,” bade the teamster leader, gruffly. “He’s
been hyar’bouts before, he says.”
Oliver was nothing loth; Kit Carson had told him exactly where to
strike the one entrance into the basin――the one entrance which also was
the one exit. Therefore, carrying the Ike Chamberlain rifle in approved
fashion in hollow of left arm, ready, Oliver forced his yellow horse
into the advance.
“When we charge, everybody yell ‘Kit Carson! Kit Carson!’” he proposed,
huskily. “When they hear that they’ll run, sure. They’re afraid of Kit
Carson.”
The teamster leader gravely nodded; and down the dim file, following
the yellow horse, was passed the word: “Yell ‘Kit Carson’!”
The mist of dawn enveloped the world, and lay moist upon twig and leaf.
In silence the single file threaded the pines; the moist carpeting of
needles gave no sound. Into a gravelly draw through which ran a newly
hoof-cut trail they rode; boulders closed about them; a stream flowed
past for the outer country; they quickened their pace to a trot; and,
every rifle poised, at a gallop they poured through the narrow entrance
and charged across the open park inside.
“Kit Carson! Kit Carson!” shrilled little Oliver, excitedly hammering
with his moccasined heels the flanks of his yellow horse.
“Kit Carson! Kit Carson!” welled hoarsely the chorus behind him.
Barked Apache dogs; snorted Apache pony and stolen mule, stampeding
here and there in the grayness. Spreading, on left and right, the
charging teamsters overtook Oliver. Before, recumbent figures around
the smouldering fires had up-leaped, throwing off blankets and robes,
seizing weapons, hesitating, to discharge hasty bullet or arrow, and at
thud of hoof, crack of rifle, and that terrible cry, “Kit Carson! Kit
Carson!” half-naked to flee, through the grayness――scurrying across the
level and scrambling amidst the rocky walls.
“Whang!” spoke Oliver’s Ike Chamberlain rifle――its butt half-way to his
shoulder, its heavy muzzle pointed out in the general direction of the
rout.
And “Whang!” “Bang!” spoke the pieces of the teamsters.
Fleeing figures pitched headlong to the dewy sward; from amidst the
rocks of the crumbling, sheer walls, where, at bay, they vainly
answered with shot and yell, others pitched headlong, or sank back, to
be still. While two or three of their number guarded the exit, that the
ponies and mules might not escape, the teamsters charged on, searching
the rocks with rifle and pistol; and not an Indian of the eighteen
thieving warriors was left alive.
But young Oliver found that this was very different from shooting at
rabbits; and in after days he never was certain whether he had killed
all――or none. However, he fired only the one shot; and at the close of
the battle he still was trying to reload!
In the sunrise, with eighteen ponies bearing Apache brands or
ear-marks, and with thirty-five mules and horses bearing trader or
trapper brands or ear-marks, the triumphant little cavalcade rode out
from the trampled strong-hold, upon trail for Taos. Sharing with the
teamster leader the advance, Oliver sat proudly his yellow horse. He
had earned his place.
At the close of the second day they entered Taos. Summoned by the
great clatter of hoofs and the loud volley of triumphant whoops, the
villagers cheered.
“Buen’ muchacho!” praised the natives, calling to Oliver: “Good boy!”
And Oliver passed on, to share in the report by the teamster captain at
the house of Kit Carson.
Kit Carson said little, but his blue-gray eyes brightened.
“Wall, I reckoned you’d find ’em thar,” he said, from his couch against
the wall. “Hyar, boy; fetch me that gun yonder.”
Oliver brought over to him, from the corner, the weapon. Kit Carson
handed it back to him.
“Take it. It’s yores,” he said. “Now you’re a mountain-man, an’ what’s
a mountain-man without a rifle? You’re a mountain-man an’ a Kit Carson
man, an’ it’s ’bout time you went on the trap trail. But,” he added,
with a twinkle, noting Oliver’s confusion, “you’ll have time to eat,
fust, an’ sleep.”
Clutching his treasure, and crowded with thanks which he could not
utter yet, Oliver staggered away.
Kit Carson’s rifle! Kit Carson’s own rifle! A rifle better than even
Ike Chamberlain’s; for Ike’s was a flint-lock, whereas this, scarce
a year old, was of the convenient new percussion-cap invention, and
had cost sixty dollars, gold. Moreover, in the stock were nineteen
brass-headed tacks, stuck there by Kit Carson, and each counting as an
Indian scalp!
IV
WORD FROM OLD FORT LARAMIE
Spring and the beaver-hunt season opened. The whole Carson company
organized for a trip far to the north. Oliver was apportioned his dozen
traps, and his name was upon the pay-roll. The company left early in
March; but Ike Chamberlain was in charge, for Kit Carson had astonished
them all by announcing that he was going to the States.
“It’s time my little gal had education,” he said, quietly. “Touse or
Bent’s air no place for her, or Santy Fee either, an’ I’m no fit person
to raise her. I’ve got kin back thar in Missouri, an’ maybe I can put
her with some o’ them, so she’ll grow up with white people an’ learn
civilized ways.”
“Have you been back thar since you come out, Kit?” asked somebody.
Carson shook his head.
“Nope,” he said; “in the sixteen years the only settlements I’ve seen
air trading posts o’ plains an’ mountains, an’ Touse an’ Santy Fee. I
war a boy when in fall o’ Twenty-six I left home. Ought to have gone
back, but didn’t. They say now Missouri’s grown a heap, an’ I won’t
know Franklin town, an’ thar’s so many other towns I’ll be lost.”
“Independence air the outfit point o’ the Santy Fee caravans, now,”
observed Ike Chamberlain――a fact that all knew. “Franklin air too far
down-river. An’ thar’s a new movement on――to Oregon in the Northwest
country; starts from the Missouri at Independence same as Santy Fee
trade does. Those missionaries who went out to the lower Columbia, over
the South Pass an’ the Snake River trail, in Thirty-four an’ after,
have been making big talks through the States, ’bout how Oregon air the
place for ’Merican farmers ’stead o’ British fur-hunters, an’ Congress
has been argufying, an’ Lu has jest heard from some o’ his folks that
thar’s a regular movement afoot this spring to send a big wagon-train
o’ settlers out by the Platte an’ Laramie trail, over South Pass an’
clear through to the Columbia. Isn’t that so, Lu?”
Lucien Maxwell nodded. He was a dark, broad-shouldered young man, about
twenty-three, and a favorite of Kit Carson’s. He was not in the Carson
company, exactly, but was a trader with the Indians and for the Bent,
St. Vrain & Co., on the Santa Fé Trail and between Bent’s Fort and Fort
St. Vrain. He was much at Taos, where he had just married the Señorita
Luz Beaubien, daughter of Charles Beaubien, one of Taos’ most cultured
residents. As Maxwell was much upon the trader trail to the States,
and as he lived, or at least his parents lived, at old Kaskaskia,
Illinois, below St. Louis, he carried much news.
“Yes,” he answered. “I’ve a letter and a newspaper from home that
say that Doctor White――Elijah White, who’s been missionary doctor in
Oregon; you fellows have heard him――has been appointed Indian agent for
the United States in Oregon; and when he goes out this spring a lot of
settlers are going, too, so as to have him take ’em through.”
“Wagh!” grunted an old trapper. “Fat doings for Injuns! Thar’ll be
hosses to steal an’ ha’r to lift, I’m thinking. Sioux an’ Blackfeet
air half-froze for jest sech a caravan o’ greenhorns on a trail ’crost
continent. Wagh! This chile’d rather go it alone.”
“Thar ought to be a line o’ posts from the Missouri clear to the
mountains, all ’long the trail; an’ over across, too, if folks from the
States air going to travel it,” declared Chamberlain.
“That ees so. Dose Injuns, dey get mad when dey see so many whites
in buffalo country; an’ dose Britishers in Oregon, dey jus’ as soon
Americans stay on dees side Rocky Mountains,” agreed Mariano, Mexican
trapper.
“Well, this paper has a message in it from Washington, and there’s talk
of a government expedition going out over the trail this very spring,
to survey it and maybe see what can be done,” informed Maxwell.
“Wagh!” grunted the old trapper. “Hyar’s a coon that doesn’t need ary
government expedition to show _him_ the trail. He travelled it with
Ashley in Twenty-four, he did; an’ he war over the South Pass an’ into
the Green River country t’other side, an’ he’s trapped through to the
Columbia an’ Vancouver, an’ to Californy, too. Can’t tell mountain-men
’bout the way to Oregon.”
“Yep; an’ those missionary women crossed through in Thirty-six, an’
more in Thirty-eight,” chimed in another. “That broke the trail to the
Oregon country, sure.”
“Seems to me the government must be planning a line of forts, and the
expedition will spy out and report on that,” remarked Maxwell. “Like as
not an army man will lead it.”
“Oregon country air a fine country,” asserted somebody. “Think o’
trying it, myself. ’Most went thar as settler when Joe Meek an’ Doc
Newell an’ others took the Columbia Trail after last rendezvous in
Thirty-nine.”
“Trés-belle, ess eet. I hear so from my cousin, who leeve in la
valle Weellamette. He was Hudson Bay man, trapper; now he farmer,”
volunteered Henri Menard, French-Canadian of St. Louis.
Such was the talk following upon Kit Carson’s quiet announcement that
he would go back this spring by early caravan to Missouri, and there
leave his little half-Indian Adaline, to give her the schooling which
he had missed. And Lucien Maxwell said he “guessed” that he would go,
too, and visit his parents and other relatives at Kaskaskia.
For the remainder of the company, north led the trapper trail: from old
Taos up through the mountains of central Colorado, into the South Park,
thence on over by wild passes into the Middle Park. They set their
beaver traps in the side streams of the Grand River. It seemed best not
to go on further, for Indian trouble was rumored.
This was Ute country, and the friendly dark Utes with their squaws
followed the camps――the squaws skinning the beaver and asking only the
carcass or a pinch of sugar, the bucks gorging and trading. Deer meat,
elk meat, buffalo meat, and delicious roast beaver-tail which looked
like thick gelatin and tasted like saltless pig’s-feet, was the camp
menu. It was a very pleasant trapping trip.
About June 1, with eighteen packs of beaver, otter, and martin
pelts――each beaver or otter bale containing eighty skins――half the
company, led by Ike Chamberlain, rode out for Taos; the others stayed
in, to rest and “make meat” and repair equipment, until opened the fall
fur hunt. In the homeward travelling company was Oliver, now a seasoned
trapper as well as an accepted “Carson man.”
Old Taos had not changed in the three months. Only, Kit Carson had
gone, as promised, to the States. He had caught the first of the
Bent, St. Vrain & Co. goods caravans out of Bent’s Fort for Missouri,
five hundred and more miles, to put Adaline where she would get some
education. Lucien Maxwell had gone, too.
“Wall, Kit won’t stay long,” drawled Ike――his first remark after
hearing the facts. “He’ll find things are different; the frontier’s
grown up with people, an’ he’ll feel lonesome, ’mongst ’em. He’ll be
coming back to Touse, right soon.”
Indeed, according to opinion ’twas time for his return already; and
in mid-afternoon of the day after their own arrival, Oliver, upon the
front porch of the Carson house, his attention attracted to a bustle
and to the hurrying figure of Ike, thought that Kit might be in town
or at least at Bent’s Fort. Through the plaza hastened tall Ike;
straight-footed, slightly bow-legged, carrying, as customary, his long
rifle.
“Get yore outfit ready for the trail ag’in,” he bade, quickly, with
scarce a pause. “Word from Kit says to meet him at Fort Laramie,
pronto! Leave to-morrow.”
“All right,” answered Oliver, astonished, but knowing better than to
delay Ike for foolish questions.
Still, this was most sudden and unexpected. What was Kit Carson doing
up at Fort Laramie, on the Oregon Trail, when he should have been at
Bent’s Fort, on the Santa Fé Trail? Oliver set out after information.
The first of the company whom he encountered was Mariano Medino, the
Mexican, squatting and filling a powder-horn in a doorway.
“Ike has seen you?” queried Mariano.
“Yes. What’s news?”
“Ah, that Keet Carson, he say ‘Come to Laramie,’ an’ we come. That all
I know,” answered Mariano, busily.
“Who brought the word?”
“Dos (two) Injuns. See? Over there,” directed Mariano, with nod of head.
Oliver looked, and noted a little knot of towns-people――mainly Mexicans,
shoulders and heads shrouded in serapes or native blankets――standing
before the Bent, St. Vrain & Co. local warehouse and gazing at the
doorway. So across the plaza he trudged.
The knot was scrutinizing, without much comment, two Indians who
leaned, stolid and unaffected and haughty, against the doorway posts.
They were Indians of lighter coppery complexion than the Kiowas or the
Apaches or the Utes; they were as light as a Cheyenne, and one had a
scraggly moustache of black hairs. By this, and by the beading of their
shirts and the shape of their moccasins, Oliver (a mountain-man) knew
them to be Indians of a strange tribe. A voice at his elbow interrupted
his examination.
“Those are Delawares, boy.” It was Bill Williams who spoke――Bill
Williams, sometimes called “Preacher” Williams; not a Carson man, but
an odd old trapper who from his lone trail occasionally appeared in
Taos. “Eastern Injuns they be, who war moved by the government into the
Injun country ’long the Missouri frontier. Big hunters an’ fighters,
but don’t often get to the mountains.”
“Are they the express from Kit?”
“They are the runners from Kit. Sent ’em from the mouth o’ the Kaw, or
Kansas Landing ’bove Independence. Understand they came through, the
seven hundred miles, in ’leven days, which is good travel.”