Caravans to Santa Fe

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.

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.