THE RED TRAIL
A breathless dawn hovered over the desert, that, having exhaled
throughout the night a withering heat stored by day, now lay swooning.
For four hours the caravan had been encamped, having traveled from
sunset till midnight. Now they must again bestir themselves and make
what time they could before the sun was high. Just as that fiery rose
peculiar to sunrise flushed the sky a cool breath of air was wafted over
the desert.
The oxen widened their nostrils and lifted their heads in deep, throaty
lowing. Steven sprang to his feet with a bound, and at once the whole
encampment seemed to be astir. There was no making of fires, for the
heat was too great and the desert had not even a tumbleweed upon it, nor
yet the usual buffalo chips. There was little water left. The men
nibbled at their hardtack and crackers as they harnessed up, and the
mules snatched at the meager leaves of the scant mesquite, or the spikes
of the Spanish dagger as they were whipped reluctantly into line. For
three days they had plodded through the burning sands without meeting
watercourse or pool--sixty-three miles between the great river and the
next tiny stream it was, but now, on the fourth day, they should be
nearing water. Pierre Lafitte came up from the rear, on foot, driving
his string before him, and took the lead.
“Pierre has a great nose for water,” St. Vrain explained when Steve
asked the purpose of the change in the order of the caravan. “He takes
the lead, for the red men are between us and the Lower Spring of the
Cimmaron. If Sand Creek ahead of us has not gone dry, we’ll be all
right, otherwise we may not be able to get water for several days. Thank
God,” he added, “that there are no women along on this trip.”
The train moved sluggishly along as the sun rose in a fiery haze. Even
the first rays smote Steven with incredible power. The tufts of gramma
grass and Spanish dagger had dwindled away, and only an occasional bit
of sage was seen, at which the mules grasped with twitching lips as they
passed. It could not yet have been eight by the sun when Pierre came
running back and stopped beside the colonel’s wagon. Comanches had been
on the warpath, he said, not later than yesterday, and he had found a
still bloody scalp dropped by some hasty rider. Urging the oxen to what
speed they could, St. Vrain pushed on to the edge of a dune ahead.
Steven drove the wagon following. As they cleared the summit they saw
beneath them a small caravan, maybe a dozen wagons, drawn into corral
formation; not a sign of life about it.
“_Mon Dieu!_” ejaculated the French traders who came up behind St.
Vrain. “_Dios Mio!_” The Mexican mule-drivers crossed themselves
fervently and rolled their eyes heavenward. The colonel raised a
cautioning hand. The wagons had not been burned; that meant either
Indians in ambush or survivors. Silently they rolled down over the brink
into the arroyo. But as the inevitable rattle of chains and creak of
wagon frames broke the silence, all at once a cry went up from that
still circle of wagons. Out of the covered hiding-places rose a score of
heads. Almost hysterically the caravaners came running forward; in
relief they threw themselves upon Pierre and the colonel.
From between the curtains of a covered wagon a delicate face looked out,
pale as the yucca flower, and as lovely, with startled eyes of gentian
blue and smooth fair hair--a young girl, not more than sixteen. Her arms
were tight about the shoulders of a boy of ten or eleven years. Steven
Mercer found himself looking toward those parted curtains, and the
colonel’s eyes, too, were drawn to the spot. “Sss-acré-dam’,” he drew
the breath between his teeth. “A woman like that, a girl, here, on the
worst spot of the Red Trail!”
There were but fourteen of them, all told, after all. An old woman was
inside one of the wagons, very sick. There had been thirty. Bound for
Santa Fe, attacked shortly after they left the Cimmaron Crossing,
pursued here where they’d taken a stand, their mules stampeded and run
off, only six that were tied remaining, and two of those they had been
forced to eat. They’d been here in this corral for three days and
nights; not a drop of water since yesterday noon. Every night the
Indians came and rode circles around them. But now they knew that the
white men had plenty of ammunition and so did not open fresh attack.
They did not dare abandon the wagons and walk on to the lower Cimmaron
Spring, for there were hundreds of Cherokees and Apaches from Texas
waiting there.
“Your only chance nevertheless,” said St. Vrain, brusquely, “was to have
pushed through. Let the child and the young woman ride; cache your
goods. Now we are come, it is best for all to turn back. It is as far to
Cimmaron Springs, farther, with red men in between, and the way
altogether harder, than to return to the Arkansas. We will cut across
the desert and take our chance.” He consulted the buffalo map upon which
he had chalked the desert wastes and the Cordilleran wildernesses.
“Right here we are at the nearest point to the river, nearer than to
Cimmaron Crossing, even.”
And so it was agreed. The muleless caravan placed itself under the
captainship of the colonel. They were in the hands of their rescuers,
and, although one of them objected, they were forced to abandon all but
six of the wagons. The water was divided among the sufferers. The spare
horses and mules were brought up from the rear of the caravan and as
quickly as possible the six wagons were drawn out of the corral and
hitched up. Whatever of the goods they contained that could not be
crammed into the other wagons and redivided among the survivors was
hastily hidden in holes in the dry sand and the caravan driven over the
place to obliterate all signs. The girl and her brother remained in the
wagon in which they were. It was driven by her father, a lean,
thin-featured man. The old woman was transferred to St. Vrain’s own
wagon and the caravan turned about in the mounting heat and struck off
across a trackless desert at right angles to the direction from which
they had come. In this way they should at sundown be nearer the upper
course of the little trickle called Sand Creek than they were now to the
lower crossing. The men of the party said there was water in Sand Creek,
but the Indians had driven them back from it before they had drunk. The
caravan would go into corral and barricade itself at noon, while after
sunset Pierre and some of the hunters would, under cover of darkness,
hunt water at the creek.
Then Steven learned what the desert was. The heat of ten thousand
burning ovens rose from the scorched sands at his feet; for with the
heavier load on his wagon he had to walk. Singing cicadas and locusts
flew up and struck stingingly on the face. He thought of that pallid
girl behind those closed wagon flaps, as lovely as the Dresden china
figures in his mother’s cabinets--so far away, so very far away. He grew
light-headed, and fancied he was drinking long cool glasses of sparkling
water. He was not really suffering so far, but was drawing on the
reserves of untried young strength and full-blooded veins. He sang as he
walked, humming gay little French airs, and St. Vrain himself came
running back and spoke to him, harshly, gently, soothingly, marching
with him from time to time, while Steven showed him every now and again
where he saw water.
At a high white noon there came a cessation of the slow moving, the
mules slunk with drooping heads, the oxen lay in the shade of the
wagons, and the men lay beneath. The girl within the covered wagon was
silent, but the little lad cried out in delirium and the old lady
moaned. St. Vrain then repaired to his very last resource, his hidden
canteen, and poured the last of it out for the old lady, for the girl,
and for the boy. The man who lay beneath their wagon reached up for the
drink and would have fought with St. Vrain, but the captain of the
caravan silenced him with an oath and a shove and he sank back confused.
Stupor followed, a merciful stupor that descended upon man and beast
alike, and that ended only with the reviving of sundown and the awakened
torments of thirst and thickened tongues. Now Steven was keenly normal
except for the swollen, burning lining of his mouth.
“Keep it shut, my lad. Keep it shut,” St. Vrain kept reminding him.
He would go to the very mountains for water. With Pierre, then, and two
of the trappers, José and Marcel, Steven set out almost due south. They
had not traveled so far as he feared they must before they came to the
bed of a stream. Dry! Dry as a bone! Sand Creek indeed! But Pierre,
kneeling in the arroyo, dug a small hole into which water welled slowly.
It was incredible. They threw themselves flat and pressed their cracked
lips to the fluid, cool even as it rose from the sun-caked earth;
swelling from some inner stream jealously absorbed by the thirsty sands.
They filled the canteens, let the mules suck their fill--a slow
process--and as the stream continued to well they wet their shirts.
Marcel, a native of New Mexico, remained to guard the spot while the
others drove the mules back with the precious canteens, and upon their
return St. Vrain and a number of the _arrieros_ drove a bunch of mules
over the caked earth to the watering-spot. Everyone who could walk
visited the little spring.
Just in time to escape the flooding moonlight they returned. And then
for a few hours the caravan lay still in the white light, like a part of
the desert dunes among which they cowered. Before dawn they were again
moving across the caked sands, almost due north. “If we could keep
going,” said St. Vrain, “we’d make the Arkansas by midnight. But I’m
afraid it will be another day before we can do it.”
It depended upon whether the animals could stand the lack of water. It
had now been nearly forty-eight hours since they had drunk their fill at
the Arkansas; the small amount taken at the tiny spring would merely
tide them over for the time being. As the sun rose over that high desert
the caravan moved with a forced speed across the cracked earth.
Desperation drove them on. A tender chivalry rose in Steven for the
girl, who was again looking out between the flaps in the wagon that
followed his own. Why, she was driving the mules herself! Women needed
to be attended; girls needed to be offered a glass of water when it was
hot. But there was none. “Am I becoming light-headed again?” Steven
reflected, angrily. The sun had risen; he handed the reins to a driver
and, jumping down from his seat, strode back to the wagon following,
doffed his wide hat, and asked, “Is there anything I can do, ma’m’selle,
to be of service to you?”
The girl turned wonderingly; she was surprised and dazed. In the clear
morning light she saw the young ruddy youth, an Achilles, whom now she
looked at with seeing eyes for the first time. He appeared quite
beautiful to her, young, with that companionable quality that she had
found only in the little brother whose head was pillowed on her lap. She
looked at Steve and he saw in the blue eyes, that were fringed with dark
silky lashes, an expression he had never seen on a woman’s face, a look
which he was to learn meant suffering and discouragement, with courage
and hope to carry on. She gazed at him silently. He was embarrassed and
would have gone on ahead, but she spoke in a moment:
“How nice. No, sir, they ain’t anything anyone can do, is there? Do you
think we’ll ever get there?” She spoke softly. “Doren is sleeping good
now”--she nodded to the child in her lap--“and papa is asleep back in
the wagon. He needs it; he never slept all the time we were back there
after they ran the mules off. He couldn’t bear to give up the freight.
It was--terrible.” Tears stood in her eyes.
Steven had been walking along beside the wagon, but now he jumped up on
the seat and took the reins from her. Of course they’d make it. St.
Vrain said they’d left the Indians behind now, and once they reached the
Arkansas they’d be fairly near Bent’s Fort, and then they’d be safe.
Papa had put everything they owned into the goods, the girl went on,
stonily. Sold their home, all mamma’s furniture she left. She had
thought the trip might do Doren good; his lungs were weak. They’d come
all the way from Hartford, Connecticut, by way of the Lakes and then
down the Mississippi to St. Louis. A wonderful trip that was, but this
last journey had been like a nightmare. Weren’t there any folks at all
in this country, but Indians? She and Doren had lain in the bottom of
the wagon while the fight with the Comanches was going on, and two of
the men who had been shooting from the back of their wagon had been
dragged out and killed and their hair cut off right before her eyes.
“Scalped!” Steven nodded. “I know.” He felt the scar above his ear
reflectively. “Why don’t you try to lean back against the bales there
and close your eyes and sleep?” he suggested. He made a place for her
head.
She did not speak again, and Steven drove on through the heat. A fine
alkaline dust hung over the desert, settling upon men, mules, and
wagons, and sifted in upon the face of the sleeping girl. Far away
spirals of whirling dust appeared, and died down. The horizon was lost
in a vague haze and the universe seemed to be all one feverish, infernal
plain. About eleven o’clock Pierre came back along the line, giving the
signal to halt. Hardened men as they were, traders and trappers,
Mexicans born to the desert sun, they were ready to stop, yet so unusual
was the respect felt for Ceran St. Vrain, and so effectual the
discipline which he had always been able to maintain, there had not been
a single instance of insubordination at his orders for the march. Yet
now many could no longer stagger.
The mules were nearly perishing of thirst, and Steven had to turn his
head away from their agonized faces. He would have liked to pour the
last drops in his canteen over the caked muzzles, but the water must be
guarded for the girl lying in the wagon behind him. St. Vrain came back
to see how they were doing. He beckoned to Steve. The old woman had just
died. They would bury her there. Her husband was delirious; the poor old
fellow did not comprehend it, mercifully.
Some of the men from the rear of the caravan were pushing ahead on foot
in pursuit of phantom water-holes--mirages. St. Vrain sternly ordered
them back and took counsel with the oldest scouts and drivers, to the
end that, leaving Steven as his _mayordomo_ in charge of the spent
caravan, the colonel himself went ahead on foot, following his great
white ox, which stumbled forward, head low to the ground, neck
outstretched, as though it scented moisture on the glimmering air. It
was the last hope for the faithful beasts, which had been denied their
fill at the tiny Sand Creek. Without wagons or food the men of the party
might make the Arkansas River after nightfall. But what of the girl and
the little fellow?
Which of them was it tossing and moaning beneath that flimsy shelter
now? Steven stepped upon the axle and peered within their wagon. He saw
the man, raised upon one elbow, draining the last precious drops in the
canteen which Steven had placed there for the girl. He uttered an
involuntary protest, but it was too late. The man sank back once more in
a stupor, and at that moment a thin cry went up, carrying along the
palpitating air: “Water! water!”
New life was given the caravan. The mules strained at the wagons; the
men plodded beside them; they pushed ahead with their last strength and
came, after interminable striving, through a living furnace that
consumed with flameless heat, upon a great circular depression in the
alkaline plain--a buffalo wallow, at the bottom of which was water.
Water, thank God, muddy but not stagnant, thick and slimy as it was,
precious to that caravan. Canteens were filled first, hastily,
tremblingly, and then the oxen were released from their yokes and led
down to the muddy hole where the _arrieros_ were restraining their mules
from falling into the pool or from lying down in the wet, hot mud. Two
of the animals tottered at the brink, died, and fell down the slope,
whence they had to be hauled back and away. It was not a lovely sight,
nor were the men who drank. Steven strained the contents of his canteen
through a fine nainsook handkerchief which he extracted with difficulty
from his things, and after filling his own mouth to wash down the muddy
fluid which he had first drunk, and blessed, he hastened to the wagon
where the girl lay.
White as death, her lips cracked, she was half conscious, but took the
water pitifully, eagerly. The boy had refused, shaking his head, “Sister
first,” he whispered. “She gave all the rest last night to papa and me.”
Steve looked about for the man, but he had been one of the first at the
water-hole, lying on his stomach till he could drink no more. He was
tending the mules now, which he did faithfully.
Not until after dark did they move, when a cooler air had come creeping
over the alkali to take the place of the hot air that rose from the
desert. The water-hole, once a large salt lick in which the rains had
gathered, had saved their lives. Toward dawn they stumbled upon the
banks of the Arkansas, where the animals waded into the clear stream,
and the men, clothes and all. Steven half carried, half led, Doren and
his sister down to the water.
At sundown the next evening it was a different lot of beings who sat
about their camp fires under the great cottonwoods that lined the river
bank. Young grouse were roasting on a turning spit, and fish from the
river. A short way up a little tributary stream Pierre had caught a
beaver which he skinned at once. Having roasted the body whole for the
men, he now prepared that great delicacy, the tail, for the young lady.
He thrust the stick into it and, holding it over the fire until the
large scales puffed up, he peeled it and in a moment offered it on a tin
plate. Coffee bubbled, and unleavened bread was flapped on the hot
stones.
St. Vrain now talked with the men of the rescued caravan, none of whom
he had ever seen before, and learned something of the history of each.
Three were from Franklin, Missouri; several were from Pennsylvania or
New England; and the remainder were traders from the South. None of them
had ever before been on the Santa Fe Trail, although two of them had
been by boat up to Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, at the Three Forks, where they
had traded with the Indians.
The father of the girl introduced himself as James Bragdon, of Hartford,
Connecticut, and though he was a man of rather wry face and expression,
he made himself agreeable. He introduced his “little gel,” Hope,
affably, and his little lad, Doren. Yet Steven could not like the man.
The Mexicans and the bronzed trappers all came up, as though casually,
to gaze at the girl. Among those burned and weathered faces her fairness
shone like a white yucca moth at night. Yet there was stamina behind the
seeming fragility; food and water had revived her, brought a coral color
to her lips, so ashen upon the desert trip. She was pretty, Steven
thought, though, being used to fair women, he was not so startled by her
exceeding blondness as were the men of the caravan, accustomed to darker
Frenchwomen and Indian squaws, so that this girl seemed almost of
another species of being.
She wore a plain little figured print dress, somewhat short-waisted,
reflecting still the Empire style, but with leg-o’-mutton sleeves, a
broad collar, and a wide blue slat sunbonnet. Doren was a nice-looking
boy, rather fair himself, with delicate even features. He adored his
sister and still took refuge from his father’s discipline with her. She
in turn worshiped and mothered the boy, quietly but with a passionate
fierceness, but to everyone else she was indifferent.
One of the trappers came up with the gift of a buffalo robe for her and
a smaller robe for the boy, already smoked and softened. St. Vrain kept
a sharp eye on Bragdon’s daughter, and cautioned her not to step as much
as fifty feet from the wagons. The trail ran westward almost parallel to
the banks of the Arkansas, which was flowing now through cottonwood
groves, and tree and shrub offered ambush for prowling savages. The
caravan rested profoundly that night. Steven took a watch for six hours,
and then spread his blanket in the cool grass beside the river.
The caravan did not start until toward evening of the following day, for
both beasts and men were exhausted from their march in the desert and
the strain of the long fast from water. Refreshed by food, drink, and
rest, they set out to make ten miles that night, and by a bright
moonlight this was accomplished. A keen watch was being kept for
Indians, and St. Vrain hoped that possibly they might encounter Major
Riley of Fort Leavenworth, returning from Chouteaux Island at the
Mexican border, whither he had escorted Colonel Bent’s caravan. But they
saw no sign of him, and Pierre was sure that he saw fresh tracks on the
Trail just beyond their first night’s camp by the river, tracks leading
back over the Trail. As indeed they were, for the major with his three
companies had passed while St. Vrain was on the desert.
But as day followed day and no Indians were seen, they began to breathe
easier. The river here was from five to six hundred feet wide, flowing
through a rolling plain which stretched away for hundreds of miles
without a tree, apparently. Yet the stately trees upon the banks of the
river and along the bottom land were enormous and ancient. Sometimes the
river narrowed and flowed between banks of shale and limestone, but they
had left the gleaming white cliffs of sand far behind. They were
ascending steadily in altitude, approaching the slopes of the Rockies
before them. The hunters brought in rabbit, beaver, quail, antelope, and
even bear meat. They knew every foot of the land, every small stream,
every haunt of the four-footed. Buffalo was varied with black-tail deer,
the finest venison in the world.
This was the land of the Shoshones, the Snake Indians, the greatest of
the Indian nations, who were of the same race as the wild Comanches to
the south. They were a fine and friendly people, said St. Vrain. Steven
was now joining the short hunting forays by means of which the trappers
kept the caravan supplied with meat. He was learning from them the ways
of the wild, in which the wily and seasoned white men surpassed even the
Indians.
He never failed to stop and ask at the girl’s wagon how she fared and if
there was anything that he might do for her. But beyond a feeling of
pity and sympathy, and a growing dislike for the father, he had little
conversation with Hope Bragdon after their escape in the desert. This
was a world for men; he pressed heels exultantly into his mare’s flanks
and rode ahead over the road in advance of the caravan, scouting. ’Twas
adventure he had come for, not ladies’ company. They were making speed
as they neared Bent’s Fort, although it was a constant ascent to a
higher altitude. Beyond them lay the Rocky Mountains, blue and jagged.
Sometimes Doren rode with him on a gentle pony. Hope Bragdon’s austerity
softened before his kindness to the boy and she grew to look for Steven,
her face lighting at his approach. Hope Bragdon’s life so far had not
departed from the hard and sterile traditions of her New England
heritage. She was used to enduring, to going without, to repressing any
desire that might be regarded as an indulgence. Even her passionate love
for the little brother whom her mother had thrust into her tiny arms
when she lay dying had to be curbed. But it only burned the more
fiercely for that. If she petted him when as a little fellow he ran
crying to her with a hurt, it only earned him a slap or a harsh reproof.
The tiring round of household tasks left Hope with little enthusiasm;
her nature reflected the cold, repressed, dreary outlook of her life.
Steven felt this lack of grace and did not realize why it was or notice
that her face did lighten when he dropped by to talk, because she
invariably became more repressed and unresponsive. Yet as the caravan
halted on that last night before they made the Fort the two blond young
people stood talking for a moment in the shafts of the late afternoon
sun. St. Vrain eyed them shrewdly, and later, pulling at his pipe, he
spoke unexpectedly:
“I wish you’d marry her, lad. It’s not safe for a woman like that to be
in this country loose like. French trapper’s likely to stride up when we
make the Fort and offer her father a couple of hundred fox or beaver,
and some horses thrown in, for her, and from what I’ve seen of the old
man he’s likely to take it--and hand her over.”
Steven was aghast; then he smiled weakly. “You will have your jest,
Colonel Ceran. I have no thought of maids or matrimony yet. I am not
eighteen.”
“_Non!_” the colonel was surprised. “_Est-ce possible?_ There is plenty
of time, true, before thee. But wait till you get to the Fort”--he
tapped down the tobacco in his red Indian pipe--“you will see something
more of this land, of this life of men and beasts on the frontier. You
will see the kind of women to which the men become accustomed, also. And
you will see something of trading, real trading.”
Twenty-four hours later they rounded a curve in the river bank and came
upon the new Fort, begun just the year before, and scarcely more than a
third finished now. All about the heavy walls of the main building were
pitched dozens of tents, made of buffalo skins, or deerhide stretched
over saplings for the briefest sort of shelter. Blanketed Indians,
fringed trappers, a duke in fustian who turned out to be Colonel Bent
himself, turned the encampment into a busy community.
Shouts of welcome greeted the train led by St. Vrain as it came at a
run, pellmell, down a short hill and up the slope to the trading
station, already made famous by the name of the Bent brothers. Some of
the men of the rescued party were weeping with relief and the let-down
of emotions after their exhausting journey. Yet Hope Bragdon, pale and
with trembling lips, only held tighter to the tired boy beside her.
French trappers and Mexican _arrieros_ swore in their respective
tongues, horses whinnied, oxen lowed, the mules brayed. There was a
mêlée as the caravan gradually came to a stop in the open space beside
the half-finished buildings, and the unloading began.
St. Vrain immediately introduced Steven to Colonel Bent, and at the same
time informed him that there was a young woman with the caravan. Was
there any white woman at the Fort at the time who could go to her? There
wasn’t. Then would Steven go and say that a room in the Fort would be at
her disposal? Steven went, and found Hope hovering anxiously over Doren,
who felt sick at his stomach, he said, and lay listlessly on the
blankets, his slender face quite sallow under the tan. Hope was trying
to get her fire to burn in order to heat water for the boy, to make him
a comfortable bed, and to start food for her father at the same time,
while Bragdon attended to his animals.
Hope was made the more nervous because outside her wagon a circle of
Indian squaws had gathered, watching the young white woman intently.
Their stolid demeanor could not hide their wonder and curiosity. St.
Vrain spoke to them in a voice of authority, ordering them away with a
wave of the hand, with the exception of one young woman whom he
instructed to wait upon the white girl and attend to her wants. The
Indian was a Pawnee, a pleasant-faced girl, who spoke and understood a
little English. In a few moments she had the fire burning well and had
laid a soft couch of white pine boughs. Hope was afraid to move Doren,
who seemed to have collapsed with exhaustion. The Indian girl brought a
broth made of fresh venison with herbs for the boy, and roasted quails
with new corn for Hope and her father. Hope fed Doren with a spoon
first; he was too far gone with fatigue to be fully roused.
When he had made sure that Hope was comfortably taken care of, Steve
hurried back to St. Vrain and Bent, who had gone on into the great room
of the Fort where business was transacted and traders and trappers ate
and lounged and smoked. Here the _engagés_, the trappers employed by St.
Vrain and the Bents, passed their time when they were not out on the
ranges, hunting. The room was crowded now with as many Indians and
hunters and trappers as could squeeze into it, and the air was filled
with the smoke of Indian pipes and Mexican cigarettes. Against the
smooth adobe walls hung colored blankets. The ceilings were dark beamed
with heavy, hand-hewn cedar timbers from the mountains; the floors were
roughly boarded. Great fireplaces at either end of the room threw out
enough heat to warm the entire place in winter, and now their warmth was
such that all the doors were open. Colonel Bent and his brother George
slept in small adjoining rooms, and on the other side of the main hall
lay the only other completed room, a large _bodega_, or storehouse.
A babel of Spanish, French, English, mingled with the strange, halted
gutturals and intoned syllables of several Indian tongues. Steven was
stirred with that keen delight that he had always felt on the waterfront
of the Mississippi, where dark-skinned East Indians and yellow Chinese
ate bananas from some South American port. In these faces he fancied he
saw strange racial resemblances--the dark, fine aquilinity of the far
East in a Cheyenne brave; the broad cheek bones and narrowed eyes of the
Japanese leered at him in the blanketed redskin holding out some
silverwork for his inspection.
“That is Sleek Foot, the Navajo, the slickest fur-trader that ever
wandered from his hogan,” warned St. Vrain. “Take nothing of him....
There’s to be no trading till morning, Sleek Foot.” The Navajo grunted a
protest. “Colonel Bent’s orders. Then you’ll see something, Steven, my
lad, that’ll show you the art of trading.”
Through the open doors there now came Indian women bringing great pots
and platters of food. Roast fowl of all sorts was heaped on the table,
stewed squash and corn bread, the dark beans to which Steven had long
since become accustomed, and last of all great hunks of bear meat. As a
special feast Colonel Bent had coffee served with that greatest of all
delicacies and delights, sugar. The braves and French ’breeds sat on the
floor about the wall, and ate with their hunting-knives and fingers from
the food that was heaped upon a huge tortilla before each. When they had
at length finished, they ate the tortilla and drank from tin cups. The
traders sat on benches about the long rough table, and under the
swinging lanterns they fed as men should feed. Colonel Bent knew well
that to keep the Indians and the trappers well-fed brought to his
shelves many a pelt that meant good gold on the Mississippi.
When the hairy white men and the unbearded savages had their fill and
lay or squatted with gorged stomachs before the flaming logs a fiddle
struck up. There was buck-and-wing and high stepping and Indian
clogging, and some of the gay French lads took turns with the pretty
Cheyenne maidens. A French trapper chucked a pretty squaw under the
chin. It was Pierre Lafitte, _mon Dieu_, already celebrating his return
and the money in his pockets. Out flashed a tomahawk, and a friendly
Arapahoe was just in time to save Pierre’s skull from falling into two
pieces. The trappers began their gaming before the fire.
“Little enough to lose tonight,” shrugged Robert Bent, “tomorrow when
the trading’s over they’ll squander their winter’s catch. Pierre,” he
called out, “save out enough to stake yourself. You don’t want to go in
debt for provisions for next winter.”
“So you have thrown in your lot with the traders, my boy,” said Colonel
Bent, kindly, to Steven. “My friend St. Vrain tells me that you are no
tenderfoot; _au contraire_, that you tackled the Kiowa scout on the
night of your first watch. It was perhaps just as well that you did not
overtake our party, for we were attacked when nearly here, and two of my
fr’en’s shot before my nose, almos’. And that with Major Riley jus’
behin’ us and Captain Felipe Cooke ahead. You did not meet him
returning? Nor hear the news?
“I have heard from a returning guide that the ten thousand dollars which
the young traders from Franklin cache at Chouteaux Isle was all there.
They find it all uncovered! The dirt had been washed away by the river
and the rains; it was safe and sound, yet anybody could have taken it.”
St. Vrain roared with laughter at such a tale of buried treasure, and
Steve’s eyes were almost as round as a child’s.
“We have had little trouble with the Indians,” Bent went on, seriously,
“until just these past few years since the free traders began to come
over the Trail. If you treat the Indian right he will treat you fair
enough, I have found. I go everywhere, alone, up into the country among
all the tribes, and am away for months at a time. But when your
government breaks treaties, like where they give the Cherokees’ land on
the Arkansas and the Verdigris to the Creeks, you see what happens!
Reprisals, like the attack on the caravan you rescued. And traders are
careless; go away from their wagons alone, get shot. Then the others
shoot at all Indians, good or bad, and something is started, because
some unfriendly Indians of a different tribe maybe kill one fellow off
by himself. They do not behave that way with me. I have more trouble
with the Spaniard,” he laughed; “but be careful in Santa Fe, _mon
fils_.”
“I have heard something from Colonel Ceran of the history of the traders
to Santa Fe,” Steven replied.
“Do not get entangled with Mexican politics,” warned Colonel Bent. “Do
not be embroiled in anything, so you will not prejudice the foreign
trade, and find yourself enchained for a bagatela. Above all,” he smiled
broadly, “be careful with the beautiful señoritas.” With which cheerful
advice he bid them goodnight and Steven followed St. Vrain outside to
his tent. In spite of forebodings about the message he carried, he fell
asleep almost in an instant, drugged with the rare air of the foothills,
the scent of pine knots burning, and all the fresh strangeness of
glorious mountains that loomed above them.
He knew that morning had come because, after a conscious interval, he
felt tinglingly alive. Opening his eyes upon the buffalo hides that
tented him, he realized that he was in a different land, that he was at
an elevation far above the sea level which he had always known, that he
had at last crossed the plains. Steven leaped to his feet and thrust his
head between the flaps of the tent, intent on getting himself water for
bathing. His eyes were caught by a strange pantomime going on just
beyond, in front of Bragdon’s wagon. A Cheyenne chief stood before the
Yankee with a horse at either hand. Bragdon was holding out a jug and a
sack of something or other. The Indian shook his head and gestured, but
as the white man continued merely to stand and look at him the Indian
threw at his feet a large bundle of beaver pelts. Bragdon stepped back
to his wagon and started to pull forth more of his wares; but just at
this moment Hope appeared in the door of the tent. The chief stepped
forward, caught her by the hand, and pulled her over to where her father
stood, making signs and talking rapidly, while he pointed at the
shrinking girl.
It was unmistakable. There was an expression of greed on the Yankee’s
face as he stooped to examine the pelts before he concerned himself with
his daughter, and Steven wondered for a moment if he would actually
consider parting with Hope for a good trade. The Indian evidently
thought it a settled thing. Two horses for a squaw! And beaver to boot!
When a Cheyenne maiden was won for two! Yet as Bragdon seemed to
hesitate the brave called to an old woman puttering near at her fire and
she waddled over to interpret. “No more unless the maiden is strong and
good to work,” translated the squaw in careful measured English. At this
juncture Steven stepped into the picture, forgetting his morning
ablutions. Hope had torn her hand away from the brave, and now she
turned with relief at sight of Steve’s tumbled tawny head.
“He wanted to buy _me_!” she cried with more than a trace of fright.
“I don’t wonder,” replied Steven; “so would many. Too bad that we don’t
do it that way.” He grinned as he looked at Bragdon, but there was
dislike beneath the smile, and the older man flushed with annoyance and
embarrassment.
“The greasy savage,” he muttered. “Do they think they can get a white
girl for a few mangy beaver skins?”
“You sound, sir,” said Steven, forgetting caution in a sudden rage
against this man, “as though it were the amount only that deterred you;
the number of skins only that you were regretting!”
“Mind your own business and I’ll tend to mine,” replied Bragdon,
harshly. “We’re white, ain’t we?”
“I beg your pardon,” Steven replied, stiffly. Yet he could not, for all
that, get over the feeling that Bragdon’s fingers itched for the furs or
more like them.
Hope was feeding Doren some of the ground Indian meal prepared by the
Pawnee girl, and smiled shyly at Steven as he passed, “as though she
really had something to be grateful for, poor child,” he thought, and
was touched, for it was the first time that he had seen her act
naturally, without a stiff reserve when anything was done for her.
He found the three traders taking coffee, bacon, pan bread, and fried
Indian mush at the table in the big room, and joined them. The trading
was to begin shortly, and already a crowd of Indians was gathered
outside the rear door of the establishment. It was Colonel Bent’s custom
to deal thus, spreading his wares before the door, and permitting no one
to come inside but the chiefs.
By mid-morning the trading was well under way. Colonel Bent was
exchanging only a portion of the goods which St. Vrain had brought with
him and the balance of what he himself had transported over the Trail a
few weeks earlier. The independent traders who had been in St. Vrain’s
train, and those whom he had rescued, were at liberty to dispose of
anything they did not wish to reserve for the Santa Fe trade. Steven was
amazed to see buffalo robes, beautifully cured and sometimes bound, sold
for one dollar. Even on the plains they brought a dollar and a half,
while in the cities, where they were now very fashionable, they were
sold for not less than thirty-five dollars. The Indians brought forward
their pelts, the lustrous silver fox, rich mink, and beaver, otter,
deer, and golden tawny cat of the mountains, the lynx, the white and
prairie wolves full plumed. Beside the silky little prairie fox lay
antelope and buffalo, and the striped panther of the Rockies shone
beside the pelts of grizzly and cinnamon bear.
The red man spread his furs upon the ground before himself and his
horses, all of his wealth to be exchanged for the white man’s
goods--flannel and beads, whisky and tobacco, sugar, whistles, mirrors,
knives, or guns. The trade was on. Colonel Bent knew his Indians and
could speak their tongues, but when one of a nation whose language he
did not know came forward, the deal would be made through using a bundle
of sticks to represent the goods.
The Navajo whom Steven had seen the night before came forward and laid a
buffalo robe upon the ground. William Bent laid down two sticks,
indicating the equivalent in goods for the robe; the Navajo insisted on
another stick, a smaller one again, and the colonel appeared to relent.
He gave in, when the deal was concluded to the Navajo’s satisfaction.
For beaver the Indians got three dollars a pound; there were fifty packs
each made up of sixty pelts that would bring five dollars a pound in St.
Louis. But Colonel Bent was disappointed. “Ashley got one hundred and
twenty-three packs last year,” he complained.
For a land otter three dollars was paid, and one dollar for a buck, two
doe, or four ’coon skins. The braves were already tottering about, drunk
from the whisky they craved and from tulapai, that heady distillation
from the giant cactus made by the Apaches. St. Vrain swore and William
Bent was angry, for he could see that before the day was half over there
would be knifings and quarrels. Where had they gotten it?
“A nice way, this, to repay our help,” fumed St. Vrain. “Some of the
traders in the other caravan have been selling them liquor.” Alcohol was
sold from two to five dollars a pint, but it was against the law to sell
to Indians.
Some of them were buying tobacco at a dollar and a half a plug, and
Steven could scarcely credit his eyes when he saw an Indian give a
dollar and sixty cents for a pint cup of gunpowder, while for the same
measure of steaming coffee he paid nothing at all at Colonel Bent’s,
although at any other trading station even the trappers were obliged to
pay one dollar and twenty cents for the drink, sweetened.
Steven bought from a young Pueblo Indian who had come up from Taos a
beautiful lynx robe, for which he paid in silver. The Indian was
delighted with the exchange and naïvely offered additional skins, which
Steven refused. He bought also a strange garment made by the Cheyenne
squaws of sewed rabbit skins, the only fabric that plains Indians had
until the traders came, and for this he gave silver money. “A bad
precedent, for a trader,” he was warned.
By the time night fell there had been half a dozen brawls, and when
Steven entered the big room of the Fort at dusk he saw his friend Pierre
gambling with a slight, sandy-haired trapper in fringed buckskins, a lad
not much older than Steve and not nearly so tall or so broad.
“My fr’en’ Kit Carson,” St. Vrain introduced. “I have tol’ you of the
trip we take together two year ago. He’s just back from the Picketwire,
as these here folks call Le Purgatoire, the River of Los’ Souls.”
The stranger bowed gravely and said with a sad smile, “I’m aimin’ to
keep my friend Peer here busy till he gets his fill of playin’; ’cause,
if he gambles his nine years’ stake away, isn’t nothin’ will save some
one’s getting knifed before mornin’.”
Carson was to guide St. Vrain’s party over the Raton Pass and down to
Santa Fe, a ten-day trip, ordinarily. Three mornings later they were
off, ascending into a rarer air and a rocky grandeur that filled the boy
from New Orleans with a headiness like wine. Carson dropped alongside
Steven often and rode beside him, pointing out spots of interest.
“Beyond that far peak yonder”--he nodded northwest--“you see that blue
shadow? That’s Pike’s Peak. They get you, you know, the mountains,” he
added, reflectively, “You can’t never leave ’em, once you’ve known ’em.”
“Kit’s a great lad,” said St. Vrain. “Already he knows every inch o’ the
land for a hundred miles; the sources o’ streams, which way they flow;
every peak and pass. He’s a fearful fighter, too, lookin’ sweet as a
woman, yet he can get along with Indians, even at his age, better than
anyone else except William Bent.”
On the third or fourth day they struck Raton Pass, and at that altitude
Steve felt a ringing in his ears and an exultation forever to be
associated with the grandeur of the country that lay before them as they
emerged, and thereafter as they wended their way over hemlock-darkened
slopes and saw beyond the bare reaches above timber line the distant
jagged structure of snowy peaks. Santa Fe lay below, they told him. The
caravan threaded narrow canyons and ascended to high trails from which
they could look down into vast valleys in the bottom of which molten
quicksilver flowed in narrow ribbons. Across the empty spaces the blue
light of the heavens hung motionless, amethystine in the shadow of
titanic hills or the eclipse of a far cloud.
Down mountain roads strewn thick with stone and perilous to the feet of
oxen the heavy wagons rocked and slid, with locked wheels, through
fertile level valleys, and one bright morning they awoke in a land that
shone red as an inferno, where earth and rock alike were red, the color
of the red man’s skin. The stunted cedar, the cloudless turquoise sky,
alone remained familiar to make the stranger know he was still upon this
earth.
“Why is it so red?” Steven marveled.
“It’s the blood that’s been shed here,” replied St. Vrain, solemnly,
“and the red Indians that’ve lived and died and been buried in this
land.”
“Glorieta!” yelled the mule-drivers. “Glorieta!” answered the echoes.
“Santa Fe tonight,” shouted Kit Carson. “Santa Fe! Santa Fe!” The echoes
must have carried almost across the hills.