Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 919
Clint handed the glass back to the smiling captain.
“So they fight — each other,” he said, rather low. He felt a little sick.
“Lucky for us. That saved us a fight.”
“I hope the Pawnees kill all those red-devil Comanches,” returned Clint, grimly, suddenly answering to what the West had roused in him.
On the following morning, bright and early, the cavalcade was on the way again, with orders to keep close together and watch sharply for Indians. Sometimes clever Indians ambushed a wagon-train and attacked in the center, causing loss of life and freight before the mounted riders and scouts, who usually rode in front and in the rear, could reach the scene of conflict. Comanches, particularly, were wonderful horsemen, attacked as swiftly as the rush of a cyclone, and then were gone. No sign of Indians, however, marred the drive.
To Clint’s disappointment, the caravan passed right through Council Grove, only a few of the freighters, and these the last in order on the line, halting for a few moments. The train drove on to Fort Zarah on the Walnut River, where two days were necessary to unload supplies for that place.
“Paw, did you see the Bells when we drove through Council Grove?” queried Clint, eagerly, on the first opportunity that offered.
“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 cavalcade 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 this. 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 “No, son, I didn’t,” replied his father, turning away. Clint was busy at the moment, but later he got to thinking this over, and it struck him that his father appeared unusually abrupt and noncommittal. So when time offered, Clint approached him.
“Did you speak to anyone at Council Grove?”
“Yes. I stopped for a few moments long enough to hear some sickenin’ bad news.... Clint, I wanted to tell you before, but I couldn’t. Hard as it is, though, you ought to be told.”
“Somethin’ happened to our friends, the Bells?”
“It sure did,” replied Belmet, gloomily, and he left the task upon which he had been occupied.
“Paw — was it bad?” asked Clint, his voice thickening.
“Couldn’t be no worse.... A week or so after we left Council Grove it ‘pears Sam Bell got sick of the frontier an’ wanted to go back home. There was a rumor that a gambler fleeced him out of all his cash. No one could talk him out of the idea. An’ he got on the first stage for Independence. Accordin’ to some the stage broke down an’ the dozen or more travelers had to make camp while the driver rode back for help. There was several mounted riders with the stage, good Injun-fighters, but durin’ the night the party was raided by a bunch of redskins. The grown-ups were killed, scalped, an’ left naked on the plain. The stage was burned an’ all valuables stolen. There was no sign of the little girl, May Bell. It ‘pears sure she was carried off into captivity.... The stage-driver never got back at all. It was buffalo-hunters comin’ the other way who fetched the news to Council Grove.”
Clint stood up unflinching to this shock, and with hundred and fifty miles, but was not safe for an unescorted train, and without scouts who knew where to go for water.
Several days out from Fort Larned the perceptible heave of the prairie land began in earnest. How vast the slow, endless rise of grass! It was no longer green, but gray and, in more barren spots, a bleached white. No better feed, however, could have been found. Clint did not grow accustomed to the boundless expanse. More and more it fascinated him. As he drove on he watched the plain, and his keen eye seldom went long without espying bird or beast of some kind. Travel was slow, because of the grade, and uphill driving was easier, at least for the drivers. The road appeared to wind more than formerly, owing to frequent washes and gullies that had to be headed. Clint believed he drove and watched for days without seeing a bush or a tree. When camp was reached nothing but buffalo chips could be found to burn. These made a first-rate fire. Clint was always ready to gather this fuel, for anything that led him away from camp had an attraction. Buffalo were sighted often, though so far off that Clint could scarcely believe his eyes.
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. 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, tin’ 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 pinon 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 breasted 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, pinons, 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.”
“Spaniards? They’re white people, of course,” replied Clint, thoughtfully. “‘Pears to me the whites are payin’ dreadful high for this West.”
“Right you are, Buff. But any old plainsman like me will tell you the whites haven’t begun to pay what they’ll have to.”
Las Vegas was such a rough town that Clint’s father would not allow him much liberty, especially at night. Between Las Vegas and Santa Fé there were two stations, San José and Barrel Springs. The Spanish atmosphere and color of Santa Fé were delightful to Clint, and he appreciated the comparative quiet of this very old town.
The wagon-train unloaded here, and then drove out along the river several miles, to good feed, wood, and water, and there located camp for the winter.
“Six months an’ more, son,” announced Belmet. “We’ve work, of course, but I’m worryin’ about your schoolin’.”
“I fetched some school books, paw, an’ I’ll go through them. If I get stuck can’t you help me?”
“Wal, I ain’t so all-fired smart, myself. But mebbe there’s some one in the outfit who can.”
“How about huntin’?” queried Clint, anxiously. “Fine. I inquired of a trapper in town. Buffalo, an’ turkey right along the river here. An’ up in the hills bear an’ lion, also deer. We won’t want for fresh meat, anyway.”
“I saw a lot of Indians in town,” returned Clint, weighing the fact doubtfully.
“Yes, but there are six troops of dragoons at the fort. They’re out an’ around a good deal, I’m told, an’ the Injuns won’t bother us.”
“I’d never trust an Indian.”
“Good,” said Belmet, with satisfaction.
That very day numerous Indians visited the camp.
They were friendly. Couch, the train boss, gave orders for everybody to feed them and be otherwise kindly disposed. Clint was both repelled and attracted by the Apaches. He never would be able to abide the Comanches, no matter how friendly.
CHAPTER 5
TΗΕ ERECTION OF camping quarters was a matter of preference. Some of the freighters lived in their wagons, others pitched tents, and a few took advantage of the abundance of wood to build cabins. Clint and his father belonged to the last and smallest contingent.
They were new to log-cabin construction, as their neighbors most jocosely informed them.
“Buff, what is thet thar shed you’re puttin’ up?” queried the old plainsman who had taken a liking to Clint.
“Shed? It’s a log cabin,” replied Clint.
“Shore it ain’t to live in!”
“Hey, Belmet,” asked another friend, “air you a carpenter?”
“Them logs don’t gibe,” remarked a third.
Belmet took it all good-naturedly and turned to Clint: “Say somethin’ to them scallywags.”
