Landing, on the Missouri frontier, that the second exploring expedition
of Lieutenant John Charles Frémont had started, and that the rendezvous
was to be Fort St. Vrain. “White Head,” or Thomas Fitzpatrick the
famous mountain-man, was the guide, and Lucien Maxwell was accompanying
as far as St. Vrain, on his way to Taos.
It did not take long for the Carson party to mount and ride for
Bent’s, thence to proceed on northward for St. Vrain, 200 miles. But
at Bent’s was it learned that Lucien Maxwell had hastened south, from
St. Vrain, to obtain mules in Taos, for the lieutenant; and that the
lieutenant and a party were following, along the foothills, to meet the
mules.
Now, at this time Texas was striving to be free from all claims of
Mexico, and armed Texans had been invading New Mexico and threatening
Santa Fé and Santa Fé caravans. This had caused the Mexican government
to forbid intercourse back and forth across the border between New
Mexico and foreigners; and the chance that Lieutenant Frémont might
secure mules from Taos was slim. At Bent’s Kit Carson himself turned
off, up the Arkansas, to meet the lieutenant and to warn him of
conditions.
He met him at the little settlement of the Pueblo, about seventy miles
from the post. The town is to-day Pueblo, Colorado. Lieutenant Frémont
immediately sent Kit back to Bent’s, with a request that the fort
supply some mules, if possible.
Meanwhile the Carson men, under Ike Chamberlain, rode on to St. Vrain.
Fort St. Vrain was situated opposite where the St. Vrain creek empties
into the South Platte River, not far from the present Colorado town of
Greeley. It was built of adobe clay bricks, and was commanded by Mr.
Marcelin St. Vrain, younger brother of the Ceran St. Vrain who formed
one in the partnership Bent, St. Vrain & Co., of the Santa Fé Trail.
A slim, boyish man was Marcelin St. Vrain, with black hair, black eyes
and black whiskers. His wife was a Sioux girl.
The fort was out on the plains, a short distance from the foothills.
Here awaiting the return of the lieutenant from his side trip up the
South Platte and down to the Arkansas was Thomas Fitzpatrick with a
detachment of twenty-five of the Frémont men.
A ruddy-faced, rather heavy-set man was Thomas Fitzpatrick, with thick
hair turned snow white and with his left hand crippled. A severe
adventure, in the summer of 1832, with Blackfeet Indians who had chased
him and forced him to hide in a cave for three days, had whitened his
hair; and the bursting of his rifle had crippled his hand. The Indians
called him not only “White Head” but also “Bad Hand” and “Broken Hand.”
He and Ike and the other Taos trappers greeted each other tumultuously,
for all knew and respected Thomas Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick had brought the wagons and the heavy baggage. He was
waiting and resting the animals. Lieutenant Frémont had taken one light
wagon, and a cannon――a brass twelve-pounder; for this second expedition
was armed with a field-piece, to be used if the Indians grew too bold.
About this cannon centred much of the post gossip. Some of the rumors
said that the cannon was to be used to conquer Oregon from the
British; some said that it was to be used to seize California from
the Mexicans; nobody knew exactly what the plans were, save that the
trail was to lead across the mountains, and west by the Snake to the
Columbia, surveying the overland route until it connected with the
survey north and south along the Pacific Coast in California and
Oregon, made by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the Navy in 1841.
To operate the cannon piece the lieutenant had engaged at St. Louis
a regular cannoneer, by name of Zindel――Louis Zindel, who had been a
non-commissioned officer of artillery in the Prussian army. Besides,
in the company was a young negro man, named Jacob Dodson, not a slave,
but free born, although in service to the family of Senator Benton,
the lieutenant’s father-in-law; two greenhorns, Mr. Theodore Talbot,
government draughtsman of Washington, and Mr. Frederick Dwight, of
Springfield, Massachusetts, who was making a tour to the Sandwich
Islands by way of Vancouver; Mr. William Gilpin, also for Vancouver;
and two Delaware Indians, old man and son. Then, here at St. Vrain,
in the Fitzpatrick company, were two comrades of the 1842 expedition:
Alexis Ayot and Baptiste Bernier, whom Oliver was glad to see. Five
other members of the first expedition――Mr. Preuss, the bristly-headed
German scientist, Basil Lajeunesse the fearless voyageur, Louis Ménard
(a cousin of Maxwell), François Badeau and Raphael Proue――were south
with the lieutenant.
Consequently, although Oliver felt somewhat disappointed that Henry
Brandt and Randolph Benton were not to be along, he foresaw, by the
preparations and by the make-up of the company, that it was going to be
a tremendous trip.
A few days later, in rode Kit Carson with ten fine mules from Bent’s
Fort; and on the morning of July 23 in rode the lieutenant and party,
including Jacob Dodson the negro youth, and Sergeant Zindel the
artillerist, and Mr. Preuss, and Basil Lajeunesse. Lucien Maxwell was
not with them. He had not come back from his trip after mules at Taos.
The lieutenant had left word at the Pueblo that he would wait at
St. Vrain until the morning of the twenty-sixth. The morning of the
twenty-sixth dawned, and no Maxwell had appeared. Evidently he was not
coming. So the lieutenant ordered “Catch up!” and the company bustled
for the start. At this moment arose a new complication. Lieutenant
Frémont had decided that he ought to find a short cut from St. Vrain’s
Fort across the mountains to strike the Oregon Trail somewhere near the
South Pass, instead of travelling up to Fort Laramie and then turning
west for the Pass. Nobody at St. Vrain’s could tell him of any trail
except a danger-trail used mainly by hostile Indians. Such a trail did
traverse northwest, to the Sweetwater; but it was being given over to
the Plains Indians when they raided the Utes and the Snakes, and to the
Crows when they raided the Plains Indians, and only recently several
trappers had been killed on it.
Thereupon, hearing the plans, the two Delawares announced that the
mountains looked cold to them, the trail was beset with their enemies,
they were far from their own people, and they were going home.
“Very well,” said Lieutenant Frémont. “Let them go. We want only men.
But we must find another hunter or two, to take their places.”
“Godey’ll sign up,” advised Fitzpatrick. “You get him and you’ll have
somebody almost as good as Kit.”
Alexander Godey was a young French trapper and trader at the post.
Everyone seemed to like him; and although he put considerable time upon
his long, wavy black hair, brushing it and dressing it with Indian
care, none ventured to twit him about it. He was not a man to be
twitted.
“How about him, Kit?” asked the lieutenant.
“A fine fellow,” assured Kit, generously. “I don’t know a better. Take
him.”
Whereupon Godey of the silky locks was engaged.
The Snake widow of a French trapper who had been shot in a Fourth of
July celebration at the fort asked the lieutenant if she might not
journey with the expedition as far as the Bear River, beyond the Green,
so that she could join her own people; and she was accepted, and given
a small tent.
The expedition made an imposing sight. The Frémont party numbered some
forty men, as against the twenty-five of the previous year. The Carson
party were fifteen. The Frémont men were armed with Hall flint-lock
breech-loading rifles, which had been adopted by the army and were
thought to be a fine gun; but the Carson men were better armed, with
percussion-cap rifles, and with Colt revolving pistols. Besides the
brass twelve-pounder, there was a baggage train of twelve two-wheeled
carts and a light spring-wagon for the instruments, and six pack-horses
loaded with the Snake squaw’s household goods.
This was altogether too large an outfit with which to thread the
danger-trail of the short-cut. Therefore Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand was
directed to take the baggage train and about twenty-five of the men,
and proceed by the customary trail from St. Vrain’s Fort up to Fort
Laramie; thence by the Oregon Trail west over the South Pass and on to
the British Hudson Bay Company post of Fort Hall. The lieutenant and
Kit Carson would take the rest of the company through by the short cut,
and meet him at Fort Hall.
For his party the lieutenant chose Kit, and Charles Preuss the
bristly-headed German, and Jacob Dodson the young colored man, and
Louis Zindel the Prussian artillerist, Basil Lajeunesse and his brother
François Lajeunesse, Baptiste Bernier, Louis Ménard, Raphael Proue,
Baptiste Derosier, François Badeau, Auguste Vasquez a Spanish Creole,
and Henry Lee. The Snake woman with her six packs (atop of one her two
black-eyed, pretty little children) accompanied; and there were the
Carson men.
The course from St. Vrain’s fort was northwesterly, across a rolling
country. On the third day William New announced, to Oliver his partner:
“Thar she air.”
“What?”
“The Cache-à-la-Poudre, or Hide-the-Powder Creek. We follow her up, I
reckon, into the mountains. Know why she has that name?”
“Trapper name,” hazarded Oliver.
“Right. Thar war some Frenchmen hyar’bouts on the creek, five or
ten year ago. Injuns got after ’em, an’ they cached their powder
under-ground, so’s to save it. Don’t know whether they ever found
it ag’in or not, but they always referred to the creek as their
‘Hide-the-Powder’ creek, an’ the name stuck.”
The cavalcade turned up the creek, in the rain, and entered among
rugged, lofty mountains, their wild ravines and steep slopes thickly
covered with brush and flowers. The Cache-à-la-Poudre was crooked,
and must be crossed and recrossed; the gun-carriage, overseen by
the anxious Sergeant Zindel, and the spring wagon with its precious
instruments, were hauled through each time.
Thus was traversed first by explorers and map-makers the Overland Stage
Route from Denver to Salt Lake.
From the head of the Cache-à-la-Poudre they all passed over a ridge to
the Laramie River side of the divide here; loomed high, bare and snowy
on the west, the mighty Medicine Bow Mountains, which they must go
around, and now they encountered a wide Indian trail and sign of Indian
travel upon it.
XI
IN HOSTILE TERRITORY
So far the only traces of travel preceding had been those of Indian
travel. This afternoon who should appear upon the trail but a large red
ox! Had he been an elephant he would have created no keener interest,
and both the Frémont party and the Carson party collected about him.
“Ma foi!” exclaimed François Badeau. “Mebbe we back in Missouri, hey?”
“That’s shuah a big fine ox,” commented Jacob Dodson. “Guess some o’
those emigrants we saw at Kansas Landing are ahead of us.”
“Not very close, Jacob,” answered the lieutenant. “The Oregon Trail is
a hundred and more miles north, yet.”
“Seems to me this ox must have cut loose from his party at the Green,
an’ he’s making a short cut back through the hills, for Missouri,”
decided Kit Carson.
With their red ox in charge the expedition proceeded. It seemed to
Oliver rather mean to turn the brave animal about and make him retrace
his trail; but in the morning he could not be found, and the lieutenant
ordered the men not to look for him.
“Fact is,” declared the lieutenant, to Kit, “I’m glad he got away. He’s
won his life, so far as we’re concerned. I’d rather starve a while than
kill the old fellow and eat him.”
“Wall,” drawled Kit, “we’ll see if we can’t do better than pore beef.”
Whereupon, as if in reward, that evening he brought into camp a buffalo
cow whose fat was two inches thick: the finest buffalo, asserted every
man, that he ever had tasted.
To date the march had been not hard, and not unpleasant. The
gun-carriage and the spring-wagon had come through without mishap.
However, this next evening occurred the first accident, when, the
company having crossed the North Platte River to the north of the
Bull Pen or New Park, they were caught by the gathering dusk in a
deep ravine, where grew sage six feet high. Both lamps of the spring
wagon were knocked off, a thermometer was broken, and finally, at ten
o’clock, camp was pitched in the dark. Supper was at midnight. Some of
the men, who were out hunting buffalo, did not get in at all.
When they did come, in the morning, they brought much meat, and the
lieutenant and Kit agreed that it would be wise to dry this meat, for a
store against future need. There would be few buffalo, on the Pacific
side of the Rockies.
Camp was moved down the ravine, to a cottonwood grove in a grassy
little bottom-land upon the bank of the Platte. In this open place
between the river and the bluffs, pole frame-works were erected, on
which to hang the strips of buffalo meat, above fires, to dry.
Louis Ménard was horse-guard. Fortunately, he had a quick eye, had
Louis――and on a sudden the busy camp, with all hands at work “making
meat,” was startled by his loud shout, the “Whang!” of his Hall’s
carbine, and the tumultuous thud of hoofs as he raced his herd for the
grove.
“Injuns! Des sauvages!” he yelled, pointing over his shoulder.
True enough. Down from the bluffs at the upper end of the bottom-land
were galloping a score of half-naked Indians, while into the sky-line
of the summit behind them were pouring many more.
“To the grove! To the grove!” cried French and Americans, Frémont and
Carson men.
“The cannon!” ordered Sergeant Zindel, gutturally. “Qvick! Dis vay!”
All raced, afoot, for the grove, where Louis was driving his herd.
“R-r-round mit id!” gasped Sergeant Zindel.
The majority of the voyageurs and trappers instantly ranged themselves
flat upon the ground, amidst the brush, or crouched behind trees,
carbines and rifles at a ready. But the sergeant, and Jacob Dodson the
colored man, and two others, remained out with the gun, before the
grove. They were the cannoneers. Lieutenant Frémont calmly walked
forth, and stood by.
On dashed the red warriors――their robes and feathers flying, war bonnet
and decorated braids streaming in the air. Brandishing bow and lance
and gun and shield, with shrill yelps they now were charging across the
level.
“Cheyenne an’ ’Rapahoe,” muttered William New. “Wagh! I wonder if they
know what they’re doing?”
Oliver anxiously watched the cannoneers. How rapidly they worked.
Sergeant Zindel evidently understood his business. With jerky stiffness
he bustled hither, thither――but already the piece had been swung about,
to open down the bottom-land, a load in red flannel bag had been rammed
home, and Jacob Dodson was thrusting after it a case of canister.
“R-r-ready!” ordered Sergeant Zindel, squinting along the breech, while
Jacob turned the elevating screw. He sprang up, blowing a match or
slow-fire fuse. “Back mit you! Back-vaaerts, all!” And Jacob and the
two other helpers recoiled, out of range of the imminent explosion.
“The blame fools!” muttered William New, at the Indians. “They’ll be
blown to smithereens. Wagh! they will! It’ll rain scalps.”
The racing reds now were scarce two hundred yards away, charging madly,
hammering their ponies’ flanks with moccasined heel, urging to top
speed.
“Feuer!” shouted stanch Sergeant Zindel, suddenly advancing his
slow-match to touch-hole――and Oliver’s eyes leaped to see the enemy
shrivel and scatter. But――――
“Wait!” commanded Lieutenant Frémont, springing to arrest the
sergeant’s hand. And――――
“Wait!” cried Kit Carson, running out, his hand high.
For just at the instant the Indians, as if they had noted whom they
were charging, in mid-pace had hauled their ponies short, and ploughing
up the sod had stopped in a jumbled mass of wildly tossing riders.
“Just in time, by thunder,” exclaimed William New. “Another minute, an’
thar’d ’a been more meat than buff’ler meat scattered about on this
hyar bottom. Wagh!”
A single rider had come forward from the serried front of mounted
warriors; Kit Carson strode right on, to meet him, and hold parley. The
whites in the grove might breathe easier.
“Tonnerre!” was reciting Louis Ménard. “As I sat my horse, out there,
I happened to glance at the bluff and saw an Injun stick his head up
over. That was the good fortune; n’est-ce-pas?”
The sergeant, and his cannoneers, and the lieutenant, remained in the
open beside the piece, awaiting the result of the parley. The sergeant
occasionally blew upon his slow-match; and once he and Jacob hitched
the gun around a few inches, for still better aim.
Presently Kit Carson turned back, and with him came two chiefs. The
other Indians followed, slowly, riding at ease; and many, dismounting
here and there, squatted or strolled about, gradually forming a
semi-circle of seated forms.
“It’s all right,” announced Ike Chamberlain, standing at ease. “Kit’s
made the peace sign. Wall, they jest saved their scalps, I can tell
’em.”
“We’d ’a bo’hd a thousand holes right through ’em; we shuahly would,”
declaimed Jacob Dodson.
“These air a war party o’ Cheyennes an’ ’Rapahoes,” explained Kit
Carson to the lieutenant. “They say they tuk us for Crow or Ute
enemies――but being as they’re on their way home after a licking up
north an’ consequently air feeling ugly, I reckon they tuk us for what
they could get; an’ that warn’t much.”
“It would have been more if they hadn’t stopped when they did,”
answered the lieutenant. “I suppose now they want presents. We’ll have
to give them a little. Can’t spare much――and they don’t deserve even
that.”
The chiefs grunted and shook hands with the lieutenant; they cast
curious glances at the brass cannon, and exchanged a guttural comment.
“They think that’s heap gun,” interpreted William New. “White man’s
medicine strong, they say.”
The uninvited guests, squatting in expectant half-circle, like hungry
but dignified mastiffs, willingly passed the pipe of peace around, and
as willingly accepted tobacco and scarlet cloth and knives.
“They’ve been up ag’in the Snakes, over on the Green River,” repeated
William New, to Oliver, after having chatted with one or two. “They
surprised a village near Jim Bridger’s fort, while most o’ the men
folks were off on an antelope surround, an’ carried away a few scalps
an’ a lot o’ hosses. Most the hosses belonged to the fort. Wagh! I bet
ye Bridger war mad! How-some-ever, ’fore this hyar war party got very
fur, with their plunder, the Snakes overtuk ’em, seized the hosses,
killed several warriors an’ wounded some more. These Injuns warn’t
feeling very happy, coming home licked, an’ they war on the ready for
revenge o’ any kind that happened. Red an’ white scalps air alike to
Injuns in that frame o’ mind; everybody’s an enemy. But look at that
’ere Snake woman. She’s b’iling under her blanket!”
Apart, secluded at the edge of the grove, with her blanket drawn
entirely over herself and two children, crouched the Snake widow,
motionless.
The band of Cheyennes and Arapahoes――two tribes who called one another
cousin――stayed here until sunset; then they rode away; and then the
Snake woman emerged from her blanket, and glaring after them shook her
fist, at these the enemies of her people.
That night double guards were placed; however, the camp slept
unmolested, here 200 miles from Fort St. Vrain.
The road this next day was very rough; and during the next day the
roughness increased, with dense sage, interminable, blocking the way.
To the north uplifted a divide forming the Sweetwater Valley of the
Oregon Trail. Therefore diverging from the west into the north, and
abandoning the unseen trail over which, in less than a score of years,
would hasten the stages from Denver to Salt Lake, the Frémont and
Carson men marched across Great Divide Basin of southern Wyoming for
the familiar country of the Sweetwater.
In a cold rain storm, the evening of August 9, they camped beside the
Sweetwater River, about twenty miles above the famous Devil’s Gate.
From St. Vrain’s Fort they had travelled 315 miles.
XII
THE EMIGRANT TRAIL
To be beside the friendly guiding Sweetwater was a great relief. Now
the South Pass was only eighty or ninety miles west, with a plain trail
connecting. But what a trail this had become, in a short year! So many
wagons had traversed it――the hoofs of the oxen and of the horses all
pointing west――that the tough sage-brush had been crushed flat in a
great, winding furrow forever leading onward. Strange was it to come
upon such a trail, in this wilderness of plain and butte more than a
thousand miles from the frontier.
This morning, when daylight revealed the sudden highway, exclamations
of astonishment ran through the camp and adown the column, as now the
march was made so much easier.
“Wagh! The Snake woman says it air the great medicine road o’ the
whites,” remarked William New.
“Looks to me as if all the folks in Missouri were moving out to
Oregon,” called back Ike.
“You would think so, if you had been with us at the start,” responded
Basil Lajeunesse, who was riding to chat with the Carson men. “Oregon
and California both. Name of a dog! Until the trail forked and we
turned off for St. Vrain the Laramie route was a string of beads, so
thick were wagons. That Doctor Whitman, he has stirred people up. One
thousand for Oregon――men and women and the children――were collected at
the Kansas, waiting for him.”
“These air fresh sign,” quoth Ike, with an eye upon the hoof marks and
wheel tracks, and the freshly plucked springs where women and children
must have wandered, picking nosegays.
“Lieutenant Frémont, he stirred people up, too,” continued Basil,
proudly. “It is ‘South Pass,’ ‘South Pass,’ everybody talk about ‘South
Pass,’ so easy to cross. And the Congress talk, too, all about Oregon,
and it say it will give to every American settler in Oregon six hundred
forty acres of land and for his child one hundred sixty acres. I should
like to go, myself, but I do not know as my family like to go.”
“Some’ll never get thar,” grunted William New. “Thar’s a grave,
already. Wonder the wolves or the Injuns haven’t dug it open yet. They
will.”
The South Pass was crossed. Still onward led the great trail.
Occasionally at camping-spot or elsewhere relics were to be noted. Once
Oliver found a ragged doll; and was seen again a hasty grave.
The Big Sandy creek, at the foot of the pass, where a year before
the camp had been made ere turning north to climb the Peak, was left
behind, and now ahead waited new country.
On August 15――
“Thar’s the Green,” announced Oliver’s faithful mentor, William New.
“We’re pretty high in Mexican territory, too. Some say it reaches up
this fur, west o’ the mountains, along the Rio Verde. Seedskeedee River
air what she’s called by the Crows――which means peerairie-hen river.”
The river was about 400 yards wide. The road forded it at a shallow
place, and turned down along it. The current flowed among wooded
islands.
That night, at camp, Lieutenant Frémont much discussed the river with
Kit Carson and Basil Lajeunesse and Mr. Preuss and others.
“This must be the same as the Buenaventura, or Good-Fortune River of
the early Spanish,” asserted the lieutenant. “That is, if it has a
branch emptying into the Pacific.”
“Never heard of any,” answered Kit Carson. “Did you, Basil?”
“Ma foi, not I,” declared Basil, promptly. “But I never have been
beyond, where lies the desert.”
“Wall, I have,” resumed Kit. “I’ve been west down the Mary’s River
to its end in the Sinks; and I’ve been on the lower end o’ this hyar
Green――or what mout be this hyar Green, whar it’s called the Colorado.”
“What’s below, Kit?” queried the lieutenant, quickly. “I hear strange
stories of fine valleys at the bottoms of canyons entered by a secret
trail, and of wonderful beaver grounds and ancient towns, shut in by
walls a mile high.”