THE GRAND PEAK
The Lieutenant's prediction that the following evening should see us
encamped at the foot of the Grand Peak was not borne out by the event.
Notwithstanding our many days on the prairies, we were yet far from
realizing the deception of distances in this high altitude and clear,
dry atmosphere.
That next day we lost many hours on a large fork of the river, where the
turning of the Spanish trace led us to believe that the party had set
off southward. Finding that they had returned and continued their ascent
of the main stream, we did likewise. This gave us but little progress
for that day.
But the next morning we set out, confident that we should reach the
Grand Peak within a few hours. Our astonishment was great when, after
marching nearly twenty-five miles, we found ourselves at evening
seemingly no nearer the mountains than at sunrise. Yet we had thought to
encamp at their base that night!
The following two days we spent in hunting buffalo and jerking the meat.
The marrow bones gave us a feast fit for a king,--fit even for citizens
of the Republic.
The second day of our march onward, still keeping to the Spanish trace,
we at last found ourselves appreciably nearing the mountains. What was
not so welcome, we came upon the fresh traces of two Indians who had
ascended the river very recently. Warned by this, we proceeded in the
morning more than ever wary of ambuscades. There was good reason for our
precautions.
Scarcely had the Lieutenant, Baroney, and myself ridden out in advance
of the party, when of a sudden the interpreter sang out: "_Voila! Les
sauvages!_"
A moment later we also caught sight of the Indians, a number of whom
were circling about us on the high ground, while others raced directly
upon us out of the dense groves of cottonwoods. All were afoot; which,
taken with the unmistakable cut of their hair and their red and black
paint, told us all too plainly that they were a war party of Pawnees
returning from an unsuccessful raid upon one of the Western tribes.
Knowing well how apt are the warriors to be evil-tempered after the
humiliation of a failure to strike their enemy, I prepared to sell my
life as dearly as might be. All the probabilities pointed to the
supposition that the party was made up of Skidis, or Loups, and I, for
one, had no desire to become a captive in their hands. It was enough to
have escaped in my boyhood from the stake and fire of the Shawnees. I
had no intention of now letting myself be crucified and mangled and
burned as a sacrifice to the morning star by these prairie savages.
But Pike, cool as ever, restrained Baroney and myself from firing, and
the Indians seemed to justify his moderation by flinging down their
weapons and running to us with outstretched arms. In a moment they were
all about us, in a jostling, jabbering crowd, patting and hugging us as
though we had been blood kinsmen. So urgent were they with their
friendly requests for us to dismount that we finally complied. On the
instant an Indian was upon each horse and riding off.
Still the others held to their friendly gestures, and upon looking back,
we could see the rest of their party making no less friendly
demonstrations among our soldiers. We were partly reassured when we
learned that the warriors were not Loups, but a party from the Grand
Pawnee. But the confirmation of our surmise that they were returning
from an unsuccessful raid upon the Tetans, or Ietans,--whom the
Spaniards call Comanches,--caused us to fall back upon our main party
and work it around to a camp in a little grove as speedily as possible.
During this man[oe]uvre more than one of our unwelcome visitors bent
their bows. But the firm insistence of our gallant leader won its way
with the savages. Soon all sixty were seated about us in a ring. The
Lieutenant then sat down opposite their chief, with the council pipe
laid out before him.
At his orders, gifts of tobacco, knives, and flints were placed beside
the chief. The present was greeted with guttural cries of
dissatisfaction, and the chief demanded with great insolence that we
should give them a quantity of our most valuable equipage, from
ammunition to blankets and kettles. To this, despite the advice and even
urgent plea of Baroney, our commander firmly refused to accede.
At last, after no little grumbling and threatening, they presented us
with a vessel of water, and drank and smoked with us, in token of amity.
Not satisfied with this, and warned by Baroney, I kept on my feet,
watching the treacherous warriors. Our wariness was justified by the
contemptuous manner in which many of their number threw away their
presents. When, immediately after this, we began to reload our pack
horses, the entire band pressed into our midst and began to pilfer right
and left.
For a time all was in the most perilous confusion, Pike and I having to
mount our horses to save the very pistols in our holsters. On every side
the savages were snatching articles, which the soldiers were doing their
best to wrest from them.
"The rogues!" cried Pike. "Baroney, command the chief to call off his
men. I'll not submit to open robbery!"
Even while Baroney interpreted the order, the chief slipped a knife from
the belt of one of the privates who was turned the other way, and hid it
behind his shield. Almost in the same moment he faced the Lieutenant,
and flung out his hand in a gesture of injured innocence.
Baroney hastily interpreted his ironic, hypocritical reply: "The great
white chief has an open hand, a good heart. It cannot be he grudges his
poor red friends a few small gifts. My braves are wretched; they are
needy; they hunger."
"Hungry, are they?" shouted Pike. "Then we'll give them lead to eat!
Stand ready to fire, men!" He rose in his stirrups and pointed his
pistol at the chief. "By the Almighty! I'll shoot the next scoundrel who
touches our goods!"
I looked for an instant acceptance of the challenge. Intermingled among
us as they were and so greatly superior in numbers, the savages had
every advantage. In hand to hand fighting their clubs and knives and
stone tomahawks would have been as efficient as our weapons, while our
firearms, once emptied, would have taken us more time to reload than an
Indian would require to shoot a quiverful of arrows.
For a long moment our fate hung in the balance, while the enraged
pilferers gripped their weapons and glared at us with murderous hate.
The tense silence was broken only by the sharp clicking of our hammers.
Suddenly Sergeant Meek, far too well disciplined to fire without orders,
yet unable to restrain his pugnacity, seized a brawny young warrior by
the shoulder, and whirling him around like a child, sent him flying off
with a tremendous kick.
"Begone, ye varmint!" he roared.
It was the last straw to the savages. Overawed by our unquailing
boldness in the face of their superior numbers, they followed their
staggering fellow, sullen and scowling, muttering threats, yet afraid to
strike.
We waited with finger on trigger, until the last of their long file had
glided beyond gunshot. Then the Lieutenant, half choking with rage,
ordered us to take stock of our losses. It did not soothe him to find
that the thieves had managed to make away with some thirty or forty
dollars' worth of our property. Not even the ferocious Sioux and
Chippewas had dared to rob him in this brazen fashion. But with only
sixteen guns, all told, it was wiser for us to submit to the outrage
than to imperil the expedition and perhaps lose our lives in an attempt
to follow and punish the rascals.
That evening the Lieutenant and I went back and lay in wait beside our
trace, thinking that the thieves might return and attempt to steal our
horses. It would have been only too well in keeping with the habits of
these savages, for the Pawnees are the most noted horse-thieves of all
the prairie tribes. Fortunately our watch proved needless.
By noon of the day after this encounter we came to the third large
southern branch of the river, immediately beyond which a fork on the
north bank ran off about northwest toward the Grand Peak which we had
first sighted so far out on the prairies. As the Peak now seemed only a
day's journey distant, the Lieutenant decided to attempt its ascent
with a small party. But first we joined in erecting a breastwork,--the
first American building in all this vast wilderness; the first structure
south of the Missouri and west of the Pawnee Republic to float the
glorious Stars and Stripes!
Shortly after noon of the second day the Lieutenant marched for the peak
with Miller, Brown, and myself.
Instead of reaching the foot of the peak by nightfall, as we had
expected, we were compelled to camp under a cedar tree, out on the bleak
prairie. Severe as was the cold, we felt still greater discomfort from
the lack of water. Again we marched for the great mountain, in the fond
expectation of encamping that night upon its summit. Instead, we hardly
reached the base of the lofty rise. Fortunately we there found a number
of springs, and succeeded in killing two buffaloes.
Still untaught by experience, we foolishly left our blankets and all
other than a pocketful of provision at our bivouac, and set off up the
mountain at dawn, assured that we could reach the top by noon and
descend again by nightfall. Almost at the start I brought down a deer of
a species unknown to us, it being larger than the ordinary animal, and
its ears much like those of a mule. The carcass was flayed without
delay, and the skin hung well up in a pitch-pine, together with the
saddle.
Made impatient by the delay, we began our climb with a will, determined
to reach the summit even earlier than we had planned. In this, however,
we were to be most sadly disappointed. After clambering up the steep
slopes and precipices all day without arriving at the crest, we were
forced to take refuge for the night in a cave. While preparing to creep
into this cheerless shelter, our discomfort over the utter lack of
blankets, food, and water was for the moment forgotten in the curious
sensation of standing under a clear sky and gazing at a snowstorm far
below us down the mountain.
Morning found us half famished with thirst and hunger and bruised by our
rocky beds, but we needed no urging to resume our laborious ascent. The
view from our lofty mountain side was the grandest I had ever seen.
Above us arched the translucent sky in an illimitable dome of purest
sapphire, rimmed before our upturned eyes by gaunt, jagged rocks and
fields of dazzling snow. Behind and below us the vast desert of prairies
stretched away to east and north and south, far beyond the reach of
human eye, its tawny surface closely overhung by a sea of billowy white
clouds. Far to the south, at least a hundred miles distant, we noted in
particular a vast double, or twin, peak, which stood out from and
overtopped the heights of the front range even as our Grand Peak dwarfed
its neighbors.
But we did not linger long to gaze at this sublime prospect. Though our
thermometer here registered well below zero, we struggled on upward
through the waist-deep snow to the first of the summits which rose
before us. An hour found us close upon what we took to be the goal of
our efforts.
At last, panting from our exertions and the rarity of the air, we
floundered up the final rise to the crest. In this wild, scrambling rush
Brown dropped to the rear, while the Lieutenant, though physically the
least robust of the party, forged ahead even of myself, upborne by his
zealous spirit. He, the leader of the expedition, should be--must
be--the first to set foot upon the summit of the Grand Peak!
With a final rally of his wiry strength, he uttered a shout and dashed
up over the thin, hard-crusted snow of the summit to the crest,--only to
stop short and stand staring off beyond, in bitter disappointment.
"Look!" he cried. "The Grand Peak!"
"The Grand Peak!" I shouted back, too excited to perceive the import of
his tone and bearing. "The Grand Peak! We'll name it for you,--for the
first American to sight it; the first to mount its crest; the first--"
[Illustration: "'The Grand Peak!' I shouted. 'We'll name it for you'"]
My exultant cry died away on my lips. I halted and stood gaping in
speechless amazement at the peak that loomed skyward over beyond the
lesser height we had mounted. What we had taken for the Grand Peak was
no more than a satellite that had masked the Titan from our view! As we
gazed from our hard-won crest, there uprose before us, grander than
ever, the vast bulk of the mighty mountain, its sublime summit
glittering with eternal snows. But the nearest ridge of its stupendous
pyramidal base was yet a full sixteen miles distant!
I turned and shouted the discovery to Miller and Brown, who toiled up
beside us to stare at the awesome beauty of the Peak in dull wonderment.
At last Pike regained his usual firm composure.
"We will begin the return march," he ordered, without betraying a trace
of his keen disappointment either in look or voice.
"Send them back," I replied, nodding toward Brown and Miller. "Let us go
on and make the attempt alone."
"My thanks to you, John!" he exclaimed. "But it would be madness, sheer
madness. Through these snows we could not reach the base of the Peak
short of a day's march; and look at that ascent! I doubt if any man
could scale those heights."
"Not at this season. Yet, if you give the word to make the attempt--"
"No!" he rejoined. "Without food, and clad as we are in summer wear, no!
It is enough to have ascended this peak, without our being so mad as to
attempt the impossible."
"Then the sooner we reach the plain, the better," I said, pointing to
the mountain side behind us.
While we had stood viewing the indescribable grandeur and sublimity of
the Peak and the snow-clad sierras which stretched away in savage
majesty to north and south of their mighty chieftain, the clouds below
us were rolling upwards, were enveloping the entire mountain upon which
we stood. Fearful of being lost in a snowstorm upon these bleak heights,
we descended rapidly down a cleft, and regained our bivouac at the foot
of the mountain just as the snow began to fall.
Here we found our blankets and other camp equipment as we had left them.
But the ravens had robbed us of all our food, other than an unstripped
fragment of the deer's ribs. Though one of the men had killed a
partridge during our descent, the bird and the lean deer bones together
formed a scant enough meal for four men who had not eaten in two days.
About noon the next day we shot two buffaloes, upon whose flesh we
gorged ourselves like Indians, and I, for one, am convinced that we had
well earned the full meal.
In the valley, all up and down the creek, we found many old Comanche
camps, but the Indians had undoubtedly gone south for the Winter.
The next day brought us back to our little stockade on the Arkansas.