Come Sundown Page 10

  As he rode away to some other adventure, I looked toward his mother. She watched him disappear behind the lodges, no emotion showing in her face. I had to wonder if she remembered being coddled as a child after some accident; if she recalled her white parents comforting her after a fall, or calming her fears after a nightmare. Her blue eyes darted toward me for a second, then she stooped back to her work with the buffalo meat.

  After leaving this camp, I would not see Nadua, or Quanah, for seven years. And oh, how things would change.

  Nine

  Seven years flew, like seven good friends ridden down the trail, never to return. Seven winters, as the Indians would say, each colder than the last. Seven times the earth circled the sun, spinning as it circled, its own moon whirling about it in turn. And me, in the middle, wasting seven years of my life among the Indians.

  I don’t mean to suggest that nothing happened to me in seven years. Plenty happened. I rode, traded, ransomed captives. I sold the horses and robes I acquired and spent money on jags with my friends. Some of the money I buried for later use, or deposited in banks that were beginning to show up in the Texas and Colorado settlements.

  I scouted for Kit Carson on some of his punitive expeditions against renegade Jicarillas. Otherwise, I tried to keep peace among the Indians, as did Kit and William Bent. But the whites were coming in increasing numbers, making peace difficult to achieve. Settlers pressed onto the fringes of the rich Comanche ranges. Prospectors found gold in Colorado, stirring the Cheyennes to warfare. Hunters shot buffalo by the hundreds and thousands, driving the nations of the plains to acts of utter desperation.

  That is all I will say about those seven years, for you want to know about the battles at Adobe Walls. About Kit and Quanah. I must include William Bent, too, for in those days, the societies of seven nations revolved around the wisdom and diplomacy of this gifted Indian trader of the plains and mountains. I will hold to my narrative of those events, and not bore you with every little thing that happened to me, personally, during those years. Suffice it to say that I fairly wallowed in the revelries and agonies of life.

  In September of 1860, I completed a successful summer trading expedition among the Comanches and Kiowas here at the Crossing on the Canadian River. I took a large herd of horses to William Bent’s trading post at Big Timbers. My Comanche friends, Kills Something, Fears-the-Ground, and Loud Shouter rode with me to help herd the horses and to hold council with the Cheyennes. When we arrived at William’s substantial stone trading post, we found that he had turned it over to the U.S. Army. An officer there told me that William had established a new trading post and ranch at the mouth of the Purgatoire River, where it emptied into the Arkansas River, a day’s ride above Big Timbers. The place was called Bent’s Stockade.

  So we camped at William’s former trading post, which the army was now calling Fort Fauntleroy. I stayed up most of the night, keeping the horses bunched. Kills Something relieved me before dawn, and I caught a few hours of sleep. The next day we rode up the Arkansas, letting the horses graze as we trailed them, for I wanted them to arrive in good shape. In the late afternoon, we spotted a small gathering of Cheyenne tipis across the Arkansas, near the left bank of the mouth of the Purgatory. On the opposite bank of the Purgatory’s mouth, we found William’s Mexican workers busily clearing fields and building rail fences. We saw the defensive stockade surrounding the ranch buildings and pens—a great circular wall made of vertical timbers set side by side, sharpened to points at the top. Effective, but not nearly as impressive as the towering adobe walls of Bent’s Old Fort had once been, or even the stone-walled trading post at Big Timbers, now housing Fort Fauntleroy.

  As we swam our horses over the Arkansas, I heard a bell ring three times from the stockade, and assumed it sounded to announce our arrival. We landed just upstream of the Arkansas’s confluence with the Purgatory and rode toward the stockade. Riding around the curved north wall of the stockade, I gathered that William had had his laborers dig a huge circular trench, into which the butt ends of the timbers had been set upright and lashed together with rawhide. The result was a battlement too high to breach and too thick for a bullet to penetrate. Each log tip had been sawn to a point, probably by two men laboring over a double-ended logging saw. My only concern was that it might be set afire, especially in years to come as the green timbers cured.

  Coming through the gate, I saw William letting down the rails to a large log corral. I recognized Kit Carson standing there with him in a plain store-bought suit. A third man was there, and I recognized him as William’s son-in-law, Tom Boggs, who had been gone several years to California. Tom and I had both served as couriers for the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, and I had bought my first horse from him, years before. I herded the ponies between a large cabin, which I assumed was William’s, and a bell standing on a post—the one that had tolled three times to announce our approach across the river. With the help of my Comanche friends, I worried the horses into the corral, then got down to shake hands and slap shoulders with the men I had not seen in too long.

  “Mr. Greenwood,” William said, “I thought you would never more be seen among civilized men. Where have you been?”

  “Out yonder,” I said, gesturing toward the wild Comanche range.

  “There’s a lot of yonder out there,” Kit said.

  “Less than last year.”

  “That’s true.” Kit gave me a big Mexican-style abrazo, almost squeezing the wind from my lungs in his crushing embrace.

  “You back for good?” I asked Tom Boggs.

  “For good or bad, I’m back,” Tom said. The years in California seemed to have treated him well, for he looked lean and strong, his face bronzed by the outdoor elements. I had always admired Tom for his good looks, common sense, and rock-solid character.

  “How’s Rumalda?”

  “She’s fine, Orn’ry, and she’ll be glad to see you alive. We’ll ride up to my cabin later and surprise her.”

  About this time, two young men rode in through the stockade gate from the field the Mexicans were clearing. They dismounted and approached. I didn’t recognize either, but the younger of the two looked Indian, though he wore white man’s clothing. The older was clearly of Anglo stock.

  “Mr. Greenwood,” William said, “you remember my eldest son, Robert. He’s nineteen now. Just back from St. Louis.”

  “Yes, good to see you again,” I said, shaking Robert’s hand. “You’ve grown so much I didn’t recognize you. Last time I saw you, you were no more than twelve.”

  “Likewise, good to see you, Mr. Greenwood.” He spoke perfect English, but his face looked very Cheyenne, for his mother was the daughter of a chief. “I remember you well from when I was a boy.”

  “You remember Robert’s elder sister, Mary, don’t you?” William said.

  “Of course.” I glanced around, but did not see a woman present.

  “Well, she married a danged old saloonkeeper in Missouri.”

  “Is that so?”

  The American man beside Robert Bent began to chuckle, and held his hand out to shake mine. “I’m R. M. Moore,” he said. “I was that danged old saloonkeeper. Now I’m not sure what I am, other than a greenhorn out West.”

  I shook his hand. “Perhaps you’re an empire builder, like your father-in-law.”

  “Maybe a stockade builder at best.”

  My Comanche friends had been standing by patiently, so I introduced them. They shook hands with the newcomers and the white men they already knew and respected, then mounted and rode toward the village of tipis downstream to meet or get reacquainted with the Cheyennes camped there. The rest of us sat on the ground, Indian style, and shared intelligence from our far-flung travels. Tom told about California. Kit told about the Jicarilla and Ute troubles. William groused about the gold fever to the north and the Cheyennes’ retaliatory raids on wagon trains and settlers. I related what I knew about the Texans’ encroachments on Comancheria, and the battles spawned because
of it. Robert Bent and R. M. Moore told us of news from the east—particularly the rumors of impending warfare between the Northern and Southern states.

  When I asked William why he had abandoned his stone trading post, he said, “The new Indian agent showed up with a wagonload of annuities owed to the Cheyennes. Damned fool. It was months late, half what they were promised, and he wanted to store it all in my commissary. I told him he could build his own commissary, that I was a private trader and didn’t feel obligated to store the government’s property. I was afraid the Cheyennes would attack my post to get the things they were owed, and I didn’t intend to get caught in the middle of that. We stayed up all night augerin’ about it, and I finally just decided to turn the whole damn place over to the government. The agent promised rent, but I’ve yet to see it.”

  When I asked Kit about Lucien Maxwell, he said, “Aw, Kid, you ought to see the place on the Cimarron. Lucien took and built him a gristmill thirty foot tall, of stone. He got claim to the whole Beaubien-Miranda Grant, by act of Congress. He figures he owns more than a million acres of land. All I know is that it takes more than two days to ride acrost it.”

  “That’s what brought me and Rumalda back from California,” Tom said. “She owns about two thousand acres of the Vigil-St. Vrain Land Grant, and we’re confident Congress will recognize it, too, even though it’s even bigger than Maxwell’s grant. We’re squattin’ on Rumalda’s land right here and now, as a matter of fact. This is the parcel she got—the northeast corner of the grant. Ceran St. Vrain is Rumalda’s godfather, and he saw to it she got a share of the grant.”

  The talk of land turned to talk of family, so I asked Robert Bent how his two younger brothers were doing in school. “I remember how Charles ambushed me with his practice arrows when he was no more than six,” I said. “He almost unhorsed me.”

  Robert chuckled, but his face showed that he missed his younger brother, and worried about him. “He hasn’t changed a whole lot. Charles stays in trouble all the time in school. He’ll fight any bully that calls him ‘half-breed’ and makes them call him ‘Cheyenne’ before he’ll let them up off the ground. He just wants to come back to the plains. He doesn’t have much use for school.”

  “He better find a use for it,” William growled.

  “And George?” I asked.

  “George gets along fine until Charles drags him into some kind of trouble. You’d think it would be George keeping Charles out of trouble, since he’s older, but he lets Charles talk him into the damnedest schemes.”

  “You mind your language, son,” William warned.

  “Sorry,” Robert said, looking at the ground. “Anyway, all George can talk about these days is the war fever. He wants to join the South and fight. I kept telling him to stay out of it, but he’s got his mind set on going off to fight. I think a lot of it is Charles egging him on, even though Charles is only thirteen, and too young to take up a rifle if the fightin’ does start.”

  We sat on the ground for hours and talked. Most of the men gravitated to the corral fence where they could lean against the rails as their legs stretched out across the dirt, or crossed Indian style. I ended up using the bell post as my backrest. I looked up to study it once. It was a large bell—like one that would grace the belfry of a church—with two trunnions resting in an iron cradle upon which it could swing, pendulumlike. An iron arm jutted from one side of the bell, and from the end of the arm dangled a rope, which was now swaying gently in the breeze. It was a nice, big bell for such a far-flung frontier settlement, and the post made a fine backrest as I talked with my friends and new acquaintances.

  When dusk approached, we decided to ride to Tom Boggs’s cabin, a couple of miles up the Purgatory, to surprise his wife, Rumalda, who was a friend of mine from the old days in Taos. Tom and Rumalda and the other newcomers had built cabins upstream at a place they were calling Boggsville, in honor of Tom.

  Tom had chosen a fine piece of property for his fledgling settlement. The ground was almost level, sloping just slightly toward the bed of the Purgatory, which flowed a mere arrow shot away. Old cottonwoods shaded the ground he had staked out. As we rode through a scattering herd of sheep, I saw smoke issuing from the cabins that stood in rows along what might someday be streets. As we rode into Boggsville, I smelled food, and my hunger started to gnaw at me, so I asked Tom Boggs, “What’s on the menu tonight, Tom?”

  “The menu?” he replied. “Antelope, cantaloupe, and shit. But we’re out of antelope and cantaloupe.”

  All the men roared with laughter at my expense, but I didn’t even care. It felt good to be back among these friends.

  AFTER A COUPLE of days of feasting and yarning and overseeing the ranch work, Kit announced that he was riding west to do some elk hunting in the San Juan Mountains he knew so well as an old trapper and trader. William and Tom and their partners were too busy building their new enterprises, but I relished the idea of taking the trail with Kit. We loaded one mule with provisions and equipment, and led two others on which to pack elk meat.

  On a clear day, a rider who stood in the stirrups of a tall horse, and rode just a little west of Boggsville, could see the Spanish Peaks, ninety miles away. It was wide-open country, still green in September, blazing hot at noon, and cool enough for a blanket at night. It was peppered with antelope and sometimes trodden under by buffalo; blustery, usually dusty, but sometimes boggy; consistent in its constant production of surprises.

  Riding west through this country, Kit and I had plenty of time to talk. Kit had been Indian agent for the Jicarilla Apaches and the Utes for several years, so much of our conversation revolved around them. “The white men ain’t gonna quit comin’,” he said. “They’ll take over this whole country and there ain’t nothin’ nobody can do to stop it, so the only hope for the Indians is to take up farmin’ and ranchin’ and live in houses. Some of them are startin’ to see it that way, but others get riled and want to fight if you even mention it. Those damn prospectors keep pressin’ onto land the government set aside for the Indians. It’s the yaller metal, Kid. Makes them fools crazy. Now, it’s the buffalo hunters, too. They’re killin’ ’em for hides alone and leavin’ the meat to spoil. If that won’t rile an Indian, I don’t know what would. Hell, it riles me. But I’ve tolt the Indians, Kid, it’s like trying to hold back a great storm cloud. I’ve tolt ’em that when they murder white people, I will respond with force, and by God, I’ve done it. You know. You’ve rid with me a time or two. It’s unpleasant business, damned unpleasant, but I don’t know any other way short of all-out war, and it may come to that anyway.”

  These problems clearly troubled Kit. He felt caught in the middle, for he was as much an Indian at heart as he was white. Though he could neither read nor write, he could speak seven Indian languages, and he understood the Indian mind. On the trail, he lived like an Indian, for he had learned from them long ago. He was universally respected among the tribes of the plains and mountains, even when he rode against them with army troops to punish some killing or raid. The Indians called him “Little Chief” and told many stories about his bravery. I had heard these tales among Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Utes.

  Kit’s job as Indian agent was tough, and took him away from his family often. But after he had vented his frustrations to me on the trail, he seemed to feel better, and let the matter drop. From then on, we talked about game sign, though there was less of it than in years past to talk about. I asked Kit about the old days trapping beaver in the mountains, and he told me many a rollicking story of his exploits.

  Toward the end of our second day of travel, we rode around a bend and spotted a large buck drinking from a beaver pond. The moment we came into view, he threw his head up, looked at us for one second, then turned to run into the nearby pines. The sight reminded me of the opening lines to The Lady of the Lake, so I began to recite:

  The stag at eve had drunk his fill,

  Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,

  An
d deep his midnight lair had made

  In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade.

  Kit looked at me and his mouth dropped open. “That’s a purty batch of words. Did you just make that up?”

  I laughed. “Not me, Kit. That’s Sir Walter Scott.”

  “Say some more of it.”

  So I continued to recite from memory as we rode to some campground Kit knew of up the trail. He made me stop often and repeat certain lines, and he seemed quite enthralled with the epic poem that began with a stag hunt and led the listener through battles and desperate romance. I continued to recite the poem to Kit that night in camp as he lay back against his saddle and smoked his old clay pipe. The mood of The Lady of the Lake, though set long ago and far away, suited the tone of affairs on the plains, with some factions spoiling for war, and others trying heroically to avoid it.

  Kit stopped me and repeated certain lines he particularly liked:

  Now man to man and steel to steel

  A Chieftain’s vengeance thou shalt feel

  Then …

  … my pass, in danger tried

  Hangs in my belt and by my side

  And, later …

  Slight cause will then suffice to guide

  A Knight’s free footsteps far and wide

  A falcon flown, a greyhound strayed,

  The merry glance of mountain maid;

  Or, if a path be dangerous known,

  The danger’s self is lure alone.

  Ten

  We had a fine hunt. We were far enough into the mountains that few prospectors had passed through the country, so game was plentiful. I shot a young bull elk and a cow. Kit shot a cow and a big mature bull. Four shots were enough. We did not intend to draw attention to ourselves with gratuitous gunfire. Though we were in Ute country, and Kit was on good terms with the Utes, you never knew in those days when a roving band of angry Pawnees or Blackfeet or Apaches might be prowling, looking for the game we were harvesting, or scalps from foolish white hunters.