CHAPTER III

DISPUTED EMPIRE

To Santa Fe, seven hundred and fifty miles ahead--with but one white settlement in all the distance--lumbered the caravan. There were fifteen wagons, fifty men, and more than three times that many animals. Before them stretched the undulating prairies, waving with deep grass; behind wound the tail of the caravan. Above, the skies were richly blue, gorgeous with vast white clouds.

Four nights on the plains, under the stars, listening about the camp fire to talk of trader and trapper. Steven was filled with tales of the Trail, and of the fortunes that lay already mined and minted over the far mountains--theirs for the journeying after. Seated now in the lead wagon beside St. Vrain, Steven wondered if in all that vast wilderness of land there could be other living beings than the fifty men and near two hundred animals of their caravan.

“Ha! you think not,” said the Frenchman, chatting now in French, now in English. “In this land”--he swept his hand about the horizon--“live many great nations of red men--Kaw, Kansas, Pawnee, Arapahoe, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne. Many tribes, two to ten thousand strong.” It was the fur-traders, St. Vrain remarked with pride, who had taught the Indians to need white men’s goods--calico, whisky, looking-glasses, and gunpowder.

“Not so many people in Santa Fe,” said St. Vrain, “just about two thousand souls, but, _mon Dieu!_ there were near fifty thousand in the state, all told--Mexicans and Pueblo Indians--and that was worth risking something for. The Spaniards had been shipping everything but the foodstuffs of the land up from Mexico for almost three hundred years. And they have further to come than we. What could be easier than this?”

“It is wonderful,” Steven agreed, “yet I wonder if those new steam-driven engines which they ran on a track in Maryland last winter will not be crossing this plain some day. Think, they could pull all this freight without any effort at all.”

“I doubt if ever,” St. Vrain shook his head skeptically. “They could _never_ lay the track, and could make but little better time. We’ve come fast. We’ll be nooning at One-hundred-and-ten-mile creek. Day before yesterday I showed you where the Oregon Trail branched off; now the way lies straight ahead till we strike the Arkansas at the Bend. Your Senator Benton, and President Monroe, too, have been good friends to the traders, getting the old Trail surveyed. This is the way lad, that the first fellows who found that country yonder traveled. They followed the sunset, the Spaniards, till they struck a river flowing from the west, the Arkansas. And that’s the way the first traders, La Lande and Pursley, came twenty-five years ago; they’re still living in Santa Fe, doing business. And Captain Pike, exploring for the United States--I’ll show you a great peak named after him when we reach the mountains. But poor Pike got onto Mexican territory and built him a winter fort, thinking it was the United States, and they threw him into prison in Santa Fe as a spy. Lots of those who came after him met the same fate; and since they blazed the way many traders have come.

“I’ve heard it said out yonder”--the colonel nodded towards the sunset--“that those early Spaniards thought they were going to find cities with streets paved with gold! Seven of them!” The fat Frenchman threw back his head and laughed appreciatively. “But the gold is in the pocket, not in the street; and it’s _silver_, bar and bullion and minted coin.” He slapped his thigh, roaring heartily. “That is what the trader finds in honest trade where the Spaniard failed with all his bloodshed. Yet do you know, they hate us like pizen! Many a man who found his way across this trackless plain and through the mountain passes wasn’t able to find his way back. Rotted in Mexican jails like McKnight and his party back in 1812, that lay for ten years in Chihuahua carcels, their goods confiscate; _mais oui!_”

“How did this Pursley happen to be allowed to live in Santa Fe unmolested?” asked Steven, curiously, a trifle uneasy at such a record.

“They wouldn’t let him leave. He knows where free gold lies thick in those mountains,” the colonel replied. “He won’t tell where and they wouldn’t let him get away. They always hope to find out where. Some day he may tell and there’ll be a trail broader than this worn to the diggings, mark me.”

The colonel flecked the backs of his oxen to speed their measured pacing. “My countree she give up an empire here,” he said at length in English. “Two hundred year she been here, up and down the Mississip. England push down from the Great Lakes, from the Hudson Bay, but she can’t push the _voyageur_ off the rivers and _lacs_. Those Spanish they lie safe behind those mountains, like the dog in the mange; cannot hold this land and don’t want anyone else to. The Mexican, and now the Texan South, they get as bad as the Indian every year now. Don’t want traders to pass through Texas.

“But two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of goods have been carried over this trail this year, my lad.” The colonel nodded impressively. “I talk with all the traders who buy for forts and with fur-traders as well. And that is not all. Colonel Bent tells me that seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of trade has been taken in to Santa Fe from Mexico this year from everywhere. For this reason I myself and Charles Bent have made our move to Taos this year. Colonel Bent stays on the Arkansas. Too bad there is no river to Santa Fe. See how many trading stations and forts already on the Oklahoma.

“But come, I see you are more interested in stories of adventure. Is it not so? You shall have enough of it before you have finished.” Steven’s eyes lit with delight. “Last year a company of young men from Franklin, Missouri,” the colonel continued, “reached Santa Fe, sold their goods, and months later came staggering back to Independence on foot, almost dead. They’d been attacked almost from the moment they left Santa Fe, their mules stampeded off. They had finally to hide nearly all the money they’d made, ten thousand dollars silver--cached it on Chouteau’s island on the border.

“Will they go back for the money? I bet you _que oui_! Some of them are with that caravan ahead with Bent. Major Riley will guard them to the cache. Oh, you’ll have adventure aplenty my lad.”

“Tonight I stand guard for the first time”--Steven was hugely pleased--“but everything has been very quiet so far, Colonel.”

“Let us hope it will continue to be so,” replied St. Vrain, fervently, “as we have no military escort. We’re but four days out and there is a six weeks’ journey at least before us. Do you see that dark streak yonder on the horizon? That’s buffalo, a hundred herds, likely.”

To Steven the endless, treeless prairie stretching away before them held all the lure of the sea for the sailor. His eager eyes looked over its waves, anticipating what lay beyond. A natural road, surveyed five years before as far as the Mexican border. But through the mountains beyond, where there were no roads--that was where the survey was needed; where many a good man was killed from ambush in some narrow canyon.

Great clouds were massing to the south and rolling up into the sky, their fleecy whiteness shadowed by heavy, rain-filled masses. The _mayordomo_ rode forward from the rear to consult with the colonel. They decided that, with so heavy a storm brewing, it would be well to halt and have supper over before the rain began. The cry went down along the line of the small army that stretched out for a mile in the rear, “Catch up, ca-aa-atch uu-up!”

The colonel ordered his outfit to make a halt immediately and the cook went about making a fire of caked buffalo dung, which he lit with the dried grasses of the prairie. Soon coffee was steaming in enormous pots, salt pork and beans were warming in huge iron kettles, and flapjacks were mounting on a hot iron griddle. There were many individual parties in the caravan who cooked and ate by themselves, but the colonel’s outfit had a cook. The colonel carried with him a small tent, which was not always set up, a camp table and folding chairs, so that upon occasion he could eat with comfort and style. But tonight he and Steven, the _mayordomo_ and Pierre, squatted about the camp fire, and in the queer half-light that hung below the clouds, now rumbling and thundering ominously, they quickly dispatched their food. The colonel at once set about making his wagon shipshape for the night, and the _arrieros_ ran about, covering their cargoes and _aparejos_. The mules and oxen were turned into the improvised corral of the caravan train; the wagons were driven into a circle and locked together by running the long tongues under the beds of the wagons ahead. This had scarcely been accomplished when with a great drive of wind that set loose rope and canvas a-slapping and whipping, the storm was upon them.

As he could not reach his own wagon, Steven ducked for the colonel’s tent, which was pitched just outside the circle of wagons and in a little depression against a hill. He found the colonel sitting in the center of his bed, a pipe in his mouth, a lantern already lit, and a huge limp map spread out upon his knees. It was a buffalo hide upon which was drawn in charcoal and in colored rock a plan of the Rockies and of certain passes that lay beyond. While the thunder cracked over their heads and the little tent rocked and swayed in the gale till Steven thought it must surely collapse, St. Vrain unconcernedly examined his map, shouting to Steve, “We’re takin’ a new trail over the mountains this side Santa Fe; old buffalo and mountain-sheep trail. _Les animals sylvestres_, wild critters, knew it was the easiest way, but no one on two legs had sense to find it out till by accident recently.”

Each word was interrupted by terrific peals of thunder, and flashes of lightning, and after a short time by a cloudburst directly over the caravan, which let loose such a deluge that the colonel’s lantern was doused, while at the same time a flood of water ran over the floor and left the bed islanded in the center. Steven wished he were in his wagon, well above the flood, but he had no thought of venturing out in the storm to reach his own bunk.

“Time to go on watch.” In the darkness the colonel set his mouth to Steve’s ear and roared. Amazed, but none the less ready, Steven struggled out through the whipping flaps of the tent and staggered blindly toward the spot where his wagon stood. He collided with St. Vrain’s _mayordomo_, who shouted, “Watch.” Steve’s buckskin shirt and breeches were already slimily wet, but he managed to reach inside the wagon, feel about till his hand encountered his own bundle, and drag out a heavy, stiff, Navajo blanket. He thrust his head through the slit, grabbed his gun, and stumbled toward the corral opening, to take orders.

Between peals of thunder that drowned the voice, and torrents of rain beneath which even the mules hung their heads and drooped their tails, Steve was assigned the northwest watch. He strode away to his first post, reflecting that upon a night like this no Indian would be thinking of attack. The thought reminded him of what he felt would be Indian tactics, and he crouched lower as he walked, holding his gun ready, cocked, as though charging into battle, instead of into the prairie dark.

Beyond he could see, as the lightning flashed, a small clump of bushes on the side of a little knoll not fifty feet from the caravan corral. He made toward this, planning to crouch in the lee of it, where he would not be seen in the occasional flashes of lightning. The blanket, a poncho, was already getting in its good work, for he felt warm, if wet, next his skin, and the coarse Navajo wool was practically water-proof. The tail of his beaver cap performed its office nicely, but the brim could not keep the sheets of water out of his eyes or his mouth.

As he stooped toward the bush he heard a whizzing noise from behind, ducked involuntarily, but not enough to completely escape a blow from the missile hurled at him. It nicked his ear and scalp, but he had no time to notice the pain. A form rose up out of the blackness and grappled him. His gun was wrenched away in the struggle to keep his feet and to hold fast the arms of wire that clutched below his thighs. He kicked forward mightily, a kick that caught the dark assailant amidships, and down they went together, to roll struggling to the bottom of the knoll. By which time Steve’s long arms and longer legs had done much toward increasing the distance between himself and his attacker, and when they reached the bottom he was on top, but straining in every sinew, winded, his throat almost cut off from air by fingers of steel.

It infuriated Steve. The blood of fighting ancestors of the sea rose in his brain and suffused his eyes, so that literally he saw red in the night’s blackness. Fingers gouged his eyeballs. It was agony. With a howl of rage he lifted his big-boned young body and lunged down with one hundred and seventy pounds, his knees landing in the other’s stomach. The clutching hands relaxed, the figure went limp. Steven got to his feet, stumbling backward over the fallen rifle. He recovered the weapon and faced about to charge the darkness and any other attacks it harbored. A flash of lightning showed the figure of an almost nude Indian lying before him, face turned to the sky, eyes open.

Steven felt overcome by weakness; his legs were turned to water. He struggled back toward where the wagons must be, missed them completely, had a sense of being utterly alone in a limitless space of storm and prairie. Blindly and a trifle wildly he headed in the opposite direction; then a brilliant flash showed him the wagons lying to his left. A few moments later he bumped into the captain for the night, pacing his rounds about the wagons. A sudden lull of the thunder and winds had come and the rain had lessened to a mild, steady downpour.

“Indians,” Steven gasped to the captain. He pointed toward the bush where he had taken his station. “Guess I killed him!” He sank dazedly upon a bale of cargo, his eyeballs still tortured. Half a dozen men had already spread in a cordon in some deep matted grass beyond the corral. A dozen more came running; the camp was alert. There was firing, muffled and sounding far away. Steve pulled himself together and hurried toward the sound. The _mayordomo_ rose up out of the grass. “On guard!” he barked. “At the gate!” and without any inquiry into Steven’s condition slunk on all fours round to the other side of the wagons.

The wind stopped, and the lightning. The rain descended in a warm, steady stream. Curiously warm, thought Steven, as he wiped his dripping face. Repressing an involuntary shudder that shook him, he tried to pierce the darkness, watching this side and that, his rifle presented, nerves tense. The rain stopped. Hours passed, hours during which Steven grew rather faint, with a strange nausea at the pit of the stomach. He longed to lie down, to sleep, and fought the shameful stupor that crept over him, and was conquered, only to settle again. He would be disgraced, and the penalty unnamable, were he to sleep at his post. He had a vague feeling of remorse that he had not said good-by to his father and mother before he left New Orleans--so long ago, so far away. He must not go to sleep.

St. Vrain, the _mayordomo_, and some others appeared suddenly out of the gloom. St. Vrain held up a dark lantern which he had been carrying under his cloak, and in the barely perceptible light looked at Steven. “Come on into my tent. He’s relieved from guard duty.” He nodded to one of the trappers, and Steve followed him a trifle uncertainly. In the tent the colonel drew out a kit with bandages and salve, a rude equipment but skillfully handled with the deftness of long practice.

“Tomahawk cut; leetle further and he shave off your ear. Leetle further and he shave off the top of your head--Kiowa,” the colonel explained when he had finished the job. “Treacherous and fierce. Out scouting. You put fear in the spy. He run, run his horse, but we get him. Morning is nearly come now; you will go to catch some sleep.”

Steven managed to reach his bunk in the wagon just in time. Clambering over the seat, he sank with a reeling head to his couch on the bales and his senses swam off to blissful unconsciousness the moment his head touched the blanket pillow. How much time had passed when he was waked he could not imagine. The sun was shining straight in his face, but he could have slept the clock around. “Breakfast,” he could hear the cry. “We’re off in a half hour.”

He had been asleep but a few hours and ached in every muscle. Then he remembered his tussle with the Indian the night before. He dragged himself out to the camp fire, where scalding coffee and corn bread were being passed out hurriedly. The coffee was bracing, and St. Vrain’s hearty reception even more so. Steven noticed for the first time that the front of his coat and his sleeve had literally been soaked with blood, and his poncho was still damp and stained a dull red.

The _arrieros_ were shouting to the mules, which came running and stood each beside his own equipage and cargo, waiting to be saddled, except a few unruly ones who kicked up their heels and dashed off before the pursuit of their drivers. The oxen went readily into their yokes, and in an incredibly short time the caravan was once more moving over the prairie, not so smoothly this morning, for the road was gummy and slippery with mud. It was heavy and the ruts became deep.

“There’ll be no nooning today,” St. Vrain announced as he rode by on a mule. “We’ll make Cottonwood Creek by night and go into camp there.” But an unexpected occurrence was to set even the captain’s decision aside. They had passed out of the storm-soaked area into a dry region where apparently not a drop of rain had fallen.

Almost unperceived by Steven, a vibrating trembling of the earth became apparent. It developed rapidly into a roar like distant thunder. Steven listened, surprised; there was something elemental, alarming, in the tremor. A number of hunters and trappers were riding by at a dead run.

“Buffalo! buffalo!” the shout went up. Leaping from his seat, Steven ran ahead in time to see a cloud of dust come rolling over the crest of a slope about a quarter of a mile beyond and to the right of the caravan. Out of the dark cloud a black moving mass came thunderingly forward. It was a herd of perhaps thousands of buffalo charging straight down upon them. The caravan train was thrown into a panic. The oxen pushed forward mightily, lowing in their fear. The mules went crazy, pulling out of the ruts and dashing madly away from the oncoming stampede, while the drivers yelled, lashed with their long whips, and pulled back on the reins. The driver of Steven’s wagon leaped out, thrusting the whip into Steve’s hands, and he found himself shouting at the crazed animals, lashing them on the off side while the driver tugged at their heads on the nigh side, trying to turn them from the Trail, straining to keep the wagon from overturning, while to the right the stampede came nearer and nearer. He had a momentary impulse to jump, but realized he was safer right on the wagon. He was more frightened than ever he had been in his life before.

The men who had ridden forward were trying to turn the avalanche of buffalo, but it was impossible to swerve more than a portion of the herd, and, borne on by their own momentum, a horde was sweeping down upon the pack train. It looked as though they must pass directly over the caravan. Snorting, their little eyes blood-shot, blood streaming from the nostrils of many that had been shot, they came straight towards Steve’s wagon. The mules in the path of these monarchs of the plain went wild, rearing, bucking, their heavy cargoes notwithstanding, while some of them bolted off the Trail and clear out of sight. His oxen lowing frantically, Steve managed to pull out of the road. The hunters, who had wheeled and were riding along beside the massive animals, were firing into their ranks. It seemed as though bullets must be less than grape seed against the hairy leather hides, yet one after another fell, but without affecting the charge, for the rest stampeded on over them.

The shooting of the lead bulls, however, parted the mass and the ponies galloping alongside caused a division in the ranks; while one part swerved off at right angles, a great herd passed right through and over the ranks of the caravan. Two wagons were upset and beneath the thundering hoofs of the irresistible mass many of the mules were overtaken and went down. When the buffalo had passed over the spot nothing remained to be seen of mules, cargo, _atajo_, saddles. They were ground into the dust.

St. Vrain was dashing up and down on his horse, trying to keep the whole caravan from utter demoralization, while the hunters bore hard on the flanks of the swerving beasts, dropping many of them, and diverting them off and across the plains, following the rest of the herd. The caravan was finally brought to a halt. It took hours to pursue and bring back the stampeded mules that had escaped and to repair the damage. When this was done and order somewhat restored, all fell to with alacrity at skinning buffalo and butchering the fresh meat. It was very welcome, as it was the first of any consequence they had had since leaving Independence.

While they were cutting out the tenderest parts, Steve helping, and learning how to wield a knife, his hands covered with grease and gore, a sound the like of which he had never before heard, and which he was never to forget, split the air. A troop of Indians mounted on pinto ponies rode over the hill, and bore down on the still disorganized caravan.

“I thought so,” said St. Vrain. “That herd was stampeded down upon us.”

The band of feathered red men now approached circuitously at a canter, their demonstrations friendly. There must have been fifty or sixty of them. Each brave held up both hands as a signal not to shoot, while they came nearer and nearer until they were able to see lying on the plain the large number of buffalo that had been killed, and to take in the extent of the caravan. Because of the rolling character of the country through which they were now passing it was impossible to tell how far the train might extend, or whether beyond the rise in the near distances a military escort might be following.

Steven was thrilled at so close a view of Indians, the first he had ever seen with the exception of the redskin he had knocked out the night before. He admired their splendid physiques (they were naked above the waist), but saw that both cunning and cruelty showed in their faces. As the braves came forward St. Vrain stood up, the men all laid hands on their rifles, waiting for the Indians to make the first move. “How!” grunted the leader, and there was “Howing” on both sides, ending with the Indians dismounting. The _mayordomo_ came inconspicuously forward, having ridden the length of the caravan, bringing back the stragglers, making sure that those who had gone in pursuit of either mules or cargo had returned. If they were cut off from the rest they might lose what was more important than cargo or horses; and it was necessary to be ready to take a united stand should the Indians open an attack.

St. Vrain, having butchered three buffalo and taken choice bits from half a dozen others, offered the Indians the remainder of the carcasses. This was highly agreeable to them, as it offered meat and hides without a round of their own ammunition having been fired, and as St. Vrain and the _mayordomo_ gave the signal to go on, the red men dismounted and set swiftly to work to skin the fifty or sixty odd carcasses that lay thick about them. The _mayordomo_ informed the Indians that they were making haste to overtake a mythical division of their caravan which was ahead of them.

And so the caravan passed on without a shot having been fired, or a drop of blood having been sacrificed, other than that of the great bison.

It was late that night before Steven had the opportunity of satisfying his sharp appetite upon one of the juiciest, most delicious steaks he had ever eaten. An abundance of food now offered itself to the caravaners. Quail and grouse started up from underfoot, and at Diamond Springs, and later at Cottonwood Creek, the fish were so plentiful that they could be almost scooped out with the hands. But the caravan did not linger here nor make a camp as planned. Instead they forded the stream by moonlight. It proved deeper than the drivers had thought, so that the oxen had to swim with the heavy wagons behind them, and it was several hours before the entire caravan got safely across. There was no bivouacking until nearly dawn, by which time everyone was nearly devoured with mosquitoes. But nothing more was seen of Indians. They camped that night on a branch of the little Arkansas and the mosquitoes continued like a plague.

From that time on good progress was made, at least fifteen miles each day. And this in spite of, or perhaps because of, the torment of flies which took the place of mosquitoes. Some of the mules ran off, wild with the fly-bitten sores for which there was no healing under the circumstances. They saw frequent bands of wild horses and traveled with buffalo constantly, sometimes parting the herds as they passed through them. The plains in the distance were dark with the shaggy coats of thousands of grazing beasts, moving in small herds of fifty to one hundred. Thousands of month-old buffalo calves frisked beside their mothers and the prairies were covered with great “buffalo rings” trodden in the grass by the vigilant bulls, circling the mothers and their young in defense against wolf and coyote.

The caravaners often shot buffalo from the wagons as they passed and paused only long enough to cut the tidbits from the carcasses, especially the tongue and the hump. St. Vrain frowned on this wantonness however, and gave orders not to shoot unless food was needed. Some of the trappers dried a quantity of the meat, stringing small strips and tying a lineful along the sides of the wagon to dry in the sun and air.

Steven joined the buffalo-hunters a few days after their encounter with the Indians, and brought down a bull. Swept along by a trained pony in company with the racing herd, thrilling with an excitement greater than any he had yet experienced, he drew bead after bead, but his shots went wild until, by chance he was honestly persuaded, a foolish creature swerved into the path of his bullet and fell. Nevertheless, it gave the Southern lad a standing with the hardened trappers and traders, along with his exploit with the Indian on his first night guard.

“Lad,” said St. Vrain one night as he sat before the fire and rolled himself a cigarette in the thin inner husk of corn, “you seem to take to the life, but you’ve had but a taste. There are hardships ahead. We stop at Cow Creek tonight, and tomorrow afternoon we should strike the Arkansas at the Great Bend. Pawnee Rock lies not far beyond. Ah, that is where, my young fr’en’, I have encountered great dangers. It is the battleground of Cheyenne and Pawnee, the hunting-ground of all. Two years ago we stood with a caravan there for three whole days, fighting off a band of Pawnees. Forty-two men we were, and twenty-six mule wagons, with a bunch of loose stock. We were without water two nights and nearly three days till at length I ordered to hitch up and drive on to Pawnee Forks, where the trail crosses the Arkansas. We made it, a double crossing, for the river bends like a horseshoe, as you will see. But the wagons were smashed up, and when we reached the other side the Indians began firing on us from the bluffs. We cleaned ’em out and lost but four men, with seven wounded. Twenty mules were crippled and a dozen killed.”

“There was another young fr’en’ of mine on that trip”--St. Vrain puffed at his cigarette reminiscently--“Christopher Carson. ‘Kit,’ we call him. Just a boy, Steven, make half of you, but fight like a mountain cat. Those bloodthirst’ Pawnees got to know him.”

“Are all the Indians so hostile?” asked Steve.

“No. The Comanches and Utes nearer the border of Mexican territory are much more friendly. We deal squarely with the Indians with whom we trade, and they with us. And the Indians of the towns, the Pueblos, as the Spaniards say, who live beyond the mountains only, in New Mexico, they do not fight unless attacked or treated badly. They cultivate the land, they work, they are good people.”

“Except when the Mexicans set them on the Americanos,” said Pierre, who was sitting near. “Between Indian and Spaniard, though, monsieur, I rather deal with the Indian, me!” He spat disgustedly. “How many thousan’ mile I travel to get my wage after ten year. I no longer work for American Fur Company. I work for Rocky Mountain Fur Company. _Hein_, St. Vrain? I work from Taos to Bent’s Fort.”

A day later the caravan had entered the rich and beautiful valley of the Arkansas, following the Trail where it swung in toward the Big Bend, through a hunting-ground that abounded in all manner of game. Thirteen miles beyond lay Pawnee Rock. There were signs of a caravan having preceded them by not many days. St. Vrain and the _mayordomo_ discussed the possibility of its being the army detachment that had followed Bent’s caravan. Every man was supplied with plenty of powder, two good muskets, a pouchful of balls. They threaded the valley of the Arkansas prepared for a surprise attack.

Steven, like all the other men, had for weeks been sleeping with his loaded gun by his side. Night alarms were frequent, yet the only attacks were those of mosquitoes, against which guns were useless.

There was an incessant scratching and brushing and switching of tails to keep off horse flies and a giant and bloodthirsty mosquito. Steven’s pet riding-mule ran off insane with the flies and never came back. Steven was so eager to bear his part that he slept little; as a consequence, when his turn came for night watch it was all that he could do, even with the help of the mosquitoes, to keep his eyes open and not disgrace himself eternally by falling asleep at his post. After midnight, however, it was not so difficult, but next day he drowsed and nodded on the wagon seat and slept outright while Pierre drove beside him.

He was roused when the trapper yelled out, “Pawnee Rock,” and opened his eyes to see looming high before them the rock of bloody record, as gory a stone of sacrifice, according to the colonel’s stories, as that famed in old Mexico for the slaughter of Aztec victims. As they passed below the face of the cliff the colonel came riding by to see what might lie beyond on the far side. But for once the sentinel of the plains harbored no dead, no skeletons. There was no sign of a struggle having taken place there, and the caravan continued onward to the Forks with a breath of relief. At the Forks they left the southern trail that followed the river so closely, and took to the northern route, which the colonel thought less open to ambush.

The Forks was the last water seen for two days. They passed out of the verdure that followed the level river banks and into a sweltering land where the mosquitoes were still unbearable. The caravan plodded along until on a dazzling midday, when the order came to halt for a mooning, the animals stood with open, panting months. A large white ox that was yoked to St. Vrain’s wagon lay down in the shade of the Conestoga, as it was called, and the colonel helped Steve stretch a blanket from two poles to give the beast some relief from the heat of the sun. The colonel was distressed at finding that the oxen upon which he had counted so much could not, apparently, withstand as much drought as the mules. But he learned that the animal had not had its fill at the Forks and had been suffering patiently. Steve begged to be allowed to go off with Pierre to fetch water for the ox, as they were not more than a few miles inland from the river, and St. Vrain agreed. That night they crept on hands and knees through the deep grass, their pace accelerated by the giant gnats and buzzing of their constant companions. The river lay beyond. There was scarcely a tree along the level banks, and to approach it would mean exposing themselves. They would be seen, without doubt, for a bright moon was shining now. Pierre, fortunately, struck one of the numerous buffalo trails that had been trodden through the grass by the passage of many hoofs, and following it, still on hands and knees, they came out at the river’s edge where the trail was worn in a deep and narrow cut through the bank. In the shadow of the cut they could not be seen. They flung themselves down, drank their fill, and filled the canteens. On the other side of the river reared high white sand dunes that gleamed in the moonlight. The full moon, riding like a lantern over the prairie, showed them for a few moments three feathered riders on the opposite bank. They dropped, and retreated for a mile on flat stomachs.

Reaching the caravan again, Steven poured one canteen after another into a basin for the panting creature on whose life depended their means of locomotion and the transportation of a part of that valuable cargo for the sake of which death in the desert, torture by Indians, were being defied. The ox looked up at them gratefully and drained the basin at one suck. Before long it was sufficiently revived to stagger to its feet and graze. “We return to the river again tomorrow night,” said St. Vrain, “and two days later will be at Cimmaron Crossing. We’ll cross the Arkansas there and take the shorter, southern trail straight to Santa Fe.”

This trail led through a desolate stretch of desert, a high arid plateau, swept by blistering winds. Steven was disappointed that they would leave the Arkansas behind and not make Bent’s Fort.