Fighting Caravans Page 4

  He lost track of days. The endless prairie had engulfed Clint. Already he seemed to have traveled twice the eighteen hundred miles the guides claimed lay between the Missouri and Santa Fé.

  One day they arrived at the Crossing of the Cimmaron a full two hours before sunset. Curtis suddenly confronted Clint, rifle in hand, and with a grin that electrified Clint.

  “Chuck the work. Grab your gun an’ come with me,” said the scout.

  “What’s up?” queried Clint.

  “Buffalo, an’ if we hustle we’ll git a shot before any of these fellars. . . . No, don’t fetch the army rifle. Grab thet old buffalo gun. . . . Good! She’s loaded. Now follow me.”

  Following Dick Curtis was easier said than done, Clint soon discovered. The plainsman started off at a lope, led down into a swale under a hill, and soon placed the camp out of sight and sound. When he slowed to a walk it was none too soon for the panting Clint. His breast was throbbing, hot and wet. The old buffalo gun weighed a hundred pounds. Presently Clint glanced up from the hunter’s heels to observe that he was making way up a grassy draw, warm and fragrant. They jumped rabbits, coyotes, and once a heavier beast which made a commotion in the grass.

  Finally Curtis began to crawl, motioning Clint to do the same. The plainsman was not very communicative while on a stalk. Clint had to bite his tongue to keep from asking what it was all about. He would have preferred a little preparation. Curtis was too sudden. Clint had little confidence in his own marks-manship, and it seemed likely that he would be directed to shoot at something presently.

  Curtis ceased crawling and looked back, his face shiny with sweat.

  “Don’t blow so hard,” he whispered. “An’ you move as noisy as a cow. . . . Boy, we’re huntin’, an’ there’s some buffalo less ’n a hundred feet.”

  “Oh—no!” gasped Clint, suddenly limp.

  “Shore are. Can’t you hear them nippin’ grass? Git your breath now. They haven’t winded us.”

  Clint had more to get than his breath. Was not this genial frontiersman taking too much for granted? Clint drew in deeper and deeper breaths, expanding his lungs until he thought he would burst; and he fought with all his might the threatened collapse of what seemed to be his whole interior being.

  Curtis touched him and crawled on. Very softly Clint followed, keeping his rifle off the ground and his head beneath the crest of the tall grass—no slight tasks. But he had almost recaptured his breath. The hunter wormed his way flat, like a snake, and made no more noise than a snake. Clint believed he was doing better when suddenly he reached Curtis’s side.

  “Look,” whispered his guide, parting the grass.

  They had come out on the brow of the slope. Clint’s startled gaze took in what seemed a mountain of black woolly fur right before him. He shook like a leaf and his heart gave a great bound, then seemed to stop. The black thing was an enormous bull buffalo, standing almost broadside, with his huge head up. He had heard or scented them.

  “Aim behind his shoulder,” whispered Curtis. “Low down . . . lower. There! Freeze on him. . . . Now!”

  Clint knew he could hit the beast, but what would happen then? As one in a dream he leveled the heavy rifle, rested on his knee, strained with his last ounce of will to stiffen, covered the hairy space indicated—and pulled trigger. BOOM: The tremendous kick knocked Clint flat and the gun fell in front of him. He heard a rumbling. Then he scrambled up, ready to run. The scout was laughing uproariously.

  “Aw! I missed him!” cried Clint, in despair.

  “Nary miss,” replied Curtis, giving Clint a slap on the shoulder. “You hit plumb center. He walked off a few steps, gave a heave an’ a groan, an’ keeled over. The rest of the bunch ran off the other way, which was darn lucky fer us. . . . But I thought you’d shot thet buffalo gun?”

  “I had. Only now I forgot to hold it tight. . . . I’ll betcha I’ll never forget again.”

  “Wal, lad, you didn’t disappoint me,” returned Curtis, with satisfaction. “An’ Kit Carson will shore be tickled when I tell him. Come now an’ take a look at your first buff.”

  When he rose, Clint observed the bull lying prone scarcely a hundred feet distant. He had gone only a few steps. Other buffalo showed a quarter of a mile off, ambling away. Clint ran forward with a sensation of mingled awe, delight, and regret. The eyes of the buffalo were glazing over, his tongue stuck out, and blood was streaming into the dry ground. Round and round the dead beast Clint walked, looking again and again at the great black head with its short shiny dark horns, the shaggy shoulders and breast, the tufts of hair down the forelegs. It was far larger than any ox in the caravan. It had an unpleasant odor, somehow raw and wild, wholly unlike that of domestic animals. Clint stared with gaping mouth until the practical Curtis called him to action:

  “Wal, you can break in your new knife. We’ll skin him. I’ll pack the hide back to camp an’ you can pack a hunk of rump beef. We’ll sure have rump steak fer supper. My mouth is waterin’ now.”

  Clint was to learn the arduous difficulties of skinning a tough old buffalo bull. But the two of them accomplished it before sunset and, heavily burdened, they labored back to camp by a short cut over the ridge.

  The two heavy guns and the generous cut of buffalo meat were about all Clint could carry, and Curtis staggered along under the roll of hide. Upon reaching the line of campers they were hailed vociferously. Before they got far there was a string of hungry freighters making a bee line in the direction of the dead buffalo. Clint received a strong impression of the savory nature of rump steak.

  When they arrived at Clint’s camp Curtis threw the huge hide down with a thud.

  “Thar! It shore was a ’tarnal load!”

  Belmet and his contingent crowded around, to stare at Clint and the scout, and to ask questions in unison.

  “Nope. It was Clint who shot him. I only packed in the hide,” replied Curtis.

  “Say! You mean to tell us that boy killed this buffalo?” demanded Belmet, incredulously.

  “Shore he did. Made a slick job of it.”

  “Aw, go wan,” retorted an Irish teamster, derisively.

  “Dick, we all know you’re given to tricks,” said another man.

  “Why, thet lad might lift a buffalo gun to his shoulder, but if he shot it he’d be knocked into a cocked hat.”

  “Well, I was,” laughed Clint, speaking for himself.

  “Fellars, he made a clean shot—plugged the old bull right through the middle; but he forgot to freeze on the gun, an’, wal, I thought he was goin’ clear down the hill.”

  “Haw! Haw! Haw!” they roared.

  “Clint, did you shoot him—honest?” asked Belmet, in a manner that showed he would believe the boy.

  “Sure did, paw.”

  “Belmet, I’m thinkin’ we’ll call him Buff,” said Curtis, with a broad grin, as he took his rifle from Clint.

  Right there Clint Belmet received the nickname that was destined to become known on the plains.

  “An’ I’m sure invitin’ myself to your camp fer supper,” continued Curtis. “There won’t be a grease spot left of our bull, an’ I can’t afford to miss my hunk of rump steak.”

  “You’re welcome,” returned Belmet, heartily.

  “Wal, Buff,” added one of the wags, addressing Clint, “next camp I’m askin’ you to take me huntin’.”

  As the calvacade drew well up on the slope toward the mountains, which began to show like dim vague clouds above the horizon, deer grew numerous. They traveled mostly in small herds and were quite tame. They would move away out of range, then stand to gaze at the wagons. Clint noted how the long ears stuck up. He saw several large groups, and once, as the caravan wound along a river on the edge of Colorado, a herd of at least two hundred trooped up out of the hollow. They made a spectacle Clint would never forget.

  “Jest like pets,” remarked an old freighter. “Pity to shoot them. I never do onless I’m hungry.”

  Clint’s opinion coincided with t
his. He reflected, though, that he had never heard anything approaching such sentiment spoken on behalf of the buffalo. Clint considered that strange, and after pondering over it he concluded the vast and countless numbers of buffalo dwarfed any value they might have. He wondered if it would always be so.

  Day after day the caravan plodded on. How short the days and what little progress the wagons made! Yet the miles counted. One camp, for the most part, resembled all the other camps, and their number seemed innumerable. They all had names, but Clint forgot those that did not associate themselves in his memory with some especial feature or incident.

  The prairie seemed endless. Clint felt that he was crossing the whole world. Yet the level plain, and the rolling prairie, and the heaving upland, all everlastingly gray and lonely, never palled upon his senses. It was home to millions of buffalo, and deer, wolves, antelope, and myriads of smaller animals, and to the nomadic savage tribes who lived upon them. To look back down a gradual slope that dimmed to a purple haze fifty miles away always swelled Clint’s heart. Far back there somewhere was the grave of his mother. He never forgot that. Both the distance and the event of her death seemed remote.

  One night when they reached camp late, Dick Curtis said to Clint, “Wal, Buff, if it’s clear tomorrow, about noon you’ll see the Rockies.”

  All the next morning, which was sunny and bright, Clint’s keen eyes, as he drove along, sought to pierce the wall of haze that rose above the horizon. At midday dim shapes began to emerge. They darkened and lifted. Gradually they took form. Mountains tipped by white clouds! They roused an indefinable emotion in Clint. After a while he made the astonishing discovery that the white cloud crown was snow. The high peaks were snow-tipped. How tediously the horses and oxen moved on! Clint longed to fly to where he could see the Rockies clearly.

  The approach, however, was so gradual that changes in the view came almost imperceptibly. Clint grew weary, watching and yearning. The prairie was wonderful, but the mountains! What could he call them?

  On the third day, as the wagons topped a ridge they had been ascending all morning, Clint gazed over broken yellow and gray foothill country that led up to the grand bulk of the divide. It was Clint’s first sight of the real grandeur of the Rockies. Black bulk heaving to the white peaks that pierced the blue! Mountain after mountain, peak after peak, ranged away into the purple obscurity of the north. Southward a lofty butte hid the range. Somewhere between that butte and the mountains must lie the pass over which the caravan had to go. It looked impossible. Clint followed the winding yellow road, down and around and into the foothills. Who had been the first to travel it? Clint knew it had been an old buffalo trail, then an Indian trail, next the trail of the explorers, then of the trappers, then the gold-seekers, and now the freighters, of whom he was one. But the first white men who trod that old trail—how intrepid, how magnificent! Clint had a vague conception of their spirit and their greatness.

  To Clint’s dismay, the mountains soon retreated and became lost to his view. That sunset he camped in the foothills. They were rocky, yellow, bare eminences, with but few trees and these scrubby. The air was cold and the night wind came keen down the draw. Clint enjoyed a wood fire once more.

  Next day the uphill grind went on, and it was a wearing winding between yellow hills, hot when the sun shone down direct.

  It took four days like this one to cross the pass into New Mexico, and the only interesting feature about the whole climb was its culmination.

  But once out in the open again, in the high country that gave promise of rugged beauty and wildness, Clint once more thrilled to the journey. At last the caravan drove into Fort Union. This was a small but important post, commanded by Major Greer, with four companies of dragoons. It was the principal distributing point for all of New Mexico.

  Dick Curtis took leave of Clint here.

  “Wal, Buff, I’m packin’ up into the hills to trap all winter. Hope to see you along the old trail somewhere in the spring.”

  “Good-by an’ good luck,” said Clint. “I wish I was goin’ with you.”

  “Sometime, when you’re older, I’d like to have you. Friends part out here an’ don’t always see each other again. . . . When the time comes for you to draw a bead on a redskin, remember Dick Curtis.”

  Half the load of the freighters was left at Fort Union, and when they resumed the journey the wagons were light. This made travel easier on men and animals. The trail from the fort wound along the course of the Colinas River, the first mountain stream in Clint’s experience. It was low and clear, and in some places there were deep pools where, according to one of the freighters, mountain trout abounded. Clint longed to have a try for them, but no opportunity afforded. Travel was fast and the soldiers were on the alert. Apache Pass was soon to confront them—one of the most dangerous points along the whole length of the overland trail. Many a massacre had been perpetrated there.

  Clint had no curiosity to see it. The mere idea of an Indian attack had a twofold effect upon him—to prickle his skin tight and to form a burning knot within him. The sensations were antagonistic and diverse.

  But he could not help seeing what lay open to view. The caravan halted some distance from Apache Pass, while scouts went forward to reconnoiter. Clint saw a narrow defile leading between high narrow cliffs of yellow stone. The stream led in there and so did the road. It did not take much acumen to grasp that it was a perilous place for wagon-trains and a perfect setting for an ambuscade. The hills on each side were rough and covered with brush. Concealment for a large body of Indians and their horses was possible on both sides of the Pass.

  One of the teamsters was holding forth to a group of companions. The manner in which he pointed to the Pass and surroundings indicated familiarity. Clint joined the circle.

  “Yep, I was in thet fight here over a year ago,” he was saying. “I guess I was. Look here—an’ here.” He showed scars on his head and arm. “There was a big train, a hundred wagons about, an’ some old Indian-fighters. We got split up by accident, an’ some of us drove into the Pass before the others showed up below here. Wal, I was among the bunch thet went in first. An’ soon we thought hell had busted loose. They’d let us get well in before startin’ the ball, an’ then they shot right down on us. Wal, the rest of our men heard the shootin’ an’ they came a-runnin’. The Indians—they was Apaches, the worst red men thet ever lived—were all on the right-hand side an’, as it proved, had their horses down in the draw there. When the shootin’ an’ yellin’ were at their highest naturally them Apaches didn’t see or hear our seventy-odd men who were comin’ up back. Thet is, they didn’t see them first off. Wal, they made a runnin’ fight for their horses an’ left twenty-seven dead an’ crippled Indians behind. The crippled ones didn’t stay crippled long! . . . We had nine dead an’ a lot hurt, some bad, an’ I was one. We’d got off wuss if we hadn’t piled off at the first fire an’ hid under the wagons. We could have held them off, too. . . . Wal, since thet last fight there hasn’t been a big caravan go through without a company of soldiers.”

  “An’ quite right thet is,” spoke up another freighter. “But one of these days a wagon outfit will risk it. Apache Pass hasn’t seen the last of its bloody massacres. Kit Carson himself told me thet.”

  In due time the scouts returned, reporting the coast clear and that passage could be made without risk. Whereupon the caravan proceeded. Clint was all eyes. Apache Pass was a tortuous crack in the hills, dark and yellow, almost haunted. The shallow stream flowed over the roadbed. Clint pictured the scene of the massacre, and when he emerged once more into the open he was in a cold sweat.

  Beyond the Pass the road climbed over beautiful slopes of gray grass, almost silver, that led up to isolated cedars and on to thick woods of piñon and at last the dark-green pines. Deer and antelope trotted in plain view. Huge rocks loomed up here and there; a flock of wild turkeys spotted the gray slope, oblivious of the passing cavalcade. From the heights a breeze blew down and ravens breast
ed it, swooping, sailing as if in play.

  The days multiplied and passed swiftly, as if by magic. Such marvelous country inspired Clint more than the purple plains. New Mexico appeared white and black, though the grass that looked white at a distance was really gray, and the black of the timbered ridges and ranges was a dark green. It was a wild and fragrant country. The smell of cedars, piñons, pines, and sage was new and intoxicating to Clint.

  Starvation Peak near Las Vegas struck Clint even more wonderfully than had the first sight of the Rockies. It was an isolated green peak, sheering to a steep butte of rock, scantily spotted with cedars, and level on top.

  Clint asked an old freighter the reason for its name.

  “Wal, it’s an interestin’ story, an’ true enough, I reckon,” replied the plainsman. “In the early days, I don’t know how fur back, but ’most two hundred years, some Spaniards got in a fight with Injuns. Apaches, I suppose, though I ain’t sartin about that. Wal, the Spaniards took to the peak thar. Climbed it an’ fought from on top. They had grub an’ water for a spell, an’ no doubt they was expectin’ help from somewhar. But it never came. The Injuns surrounded the peaks, keepin’ such watch as only Injuns can. An’ they starved the Spaniards to death. Thet’s why it’s called Starvation Peak.”