by Zane Grey
Bent never saw his son again. Charley spoke the Indian languages fluently. He traveled all over. He returned from a long trip to Texas under the name of Lee Murdock, by which he was known until after the fight with Clint Belmet at Horner’s saloon in Fort Larned. This turned the keen eyes of the frontier upon him and outlawed him.
He had been playing a double game. He gambled among the whites during the winters; in the summers he developed a gang of from sixty to one hundred Indians and whites. Rumor affiliated Blackstone and his followers with Bent, or Murdock, but up to 1868 no actual proof of this conjecture was available.
This cold-blooded band of mixed villains attacked only stage-coaches and small caravans, murdered all, except young women who were so unfortunate as to be caught in one of these raids, and who were carried off into the mountains, never to be seen or heard of again. The stock and supplies of these caravans were traded to the Indians for pelts.
In the late summer of 1865 information reached Fort Larned that the caravan which had routed a Kiowa attack on a wagon-train on the Dry Trail had later, on the way south, been set upon by Charley Bent’s band and massacred, all except the two women, who were carried away into captivity.
A friendly Ute told this story to a trapper, who brought it to Fort Larned. As the Utes and Kiowas were on good terms, the information gained credence; and in the heart of Clint Belmet ever burned a steady white fire of unquenchable hate.
In 1866 after the reported discovery of gold on Maxwell’s Ranch an Eastern syndicate bought all Colonel Maxwell’s holding at a fabulous price. The colonel went East and Clint never saw him again. Rumors reached the freighters that the gold on the ranch had been a flash in the pan; it had failed, leaving the syndicate with a huge ranch which they did not know how to run.
Fatality certainly cast its shadow before it. Point of Rocks, where Jim Couch had suffered two attacks on his caravans, and which the old freighter dreaded more and more, saw a third onset by Comanches. It was a surprise attack, and before the famous cannon could be brought into requisition Couch had been killed. In fact, he fell over the cannon, in the act of firing it. Clint Belmet grasped the fuse from his clutching hand, and fired the charge which turned the tide of battle. Couch, Sanderson, and Hoyle were buried in the shadow of Point of Rocks, along with other freighters of their intrepid breed.
Buff Belmet took charge of Couch’s caravan. The best of the old frontiersmen and freighters wanted to drive under him. A fearless leader and a powerful force were imperative now.
In the fall of 1867 Belmet’s caravan, working west toward Fort Larned, came upon General Custer’s command, and traveled with it to Fort Larned.
This band of Custer’s was the most impressive spectacle Belmet had ever seen. There were fully five hundred army wagons and four thousand soldiers. It was a sight Clint never forgot.
At the fort the reason for the big force became manifest. General Custer was getting ready for his winter campaign of 1867 and 1868 against the allied tribes from Fort Larned to Fort Riley, and down the Wichita River in the Indian Territory.
No part of the Great Plains had been free from raids, and consternation had spread into the government camps and thence to Washington. The commanders of the different posts had been warned by their scouts; they knew what the Indians were doing, but were powerless. Without soldiers and supplies they could not even leave their forts. And but for the overland freighters, whom the savages could not daunt, they would have fared worse. The sending of General Custer was the first move by the government against these tribes.
At the fort General Custer sent for Clint Belmet. He was in the prime of life then, a yellow-haired, blue-eyed man of great force and most engaging personality.
“Belmet, you have been recommended to me,” said Custer. “I will need scouts in this campaign. Would you care to join my command?”
“Thanks, General. But I don’t see how I can,” replied Clint. “It’ll take me a month and more to get my caravan to Santa Fé. Winter will be on us then. I can’t get away from Santa Fé till spring.”
“You will get back here along in May?”
“I reckon, if it’s good weather. By June, anyway.”
“Please consider my proposal. It will not be too late in the spring.”
“I’ll do so. An’ I might accept if I can get a boss to handle my men.”
“I’d be greatly indebted to you,” returned the general, cordially. “I need men who know the country and the Indians, and these renegade rebels who are leading the savages to murder and pillage. I have my reports from post commanders, but very little direct information from scouts like yourself — men who are in constant contact with the conditions out here. Would you be good enough to give me your angle on what I am up against?”
“For the present nothin’ of any great moment,” rejoined Clint, thoughtfully. “There hasn’t yet been any considerable bandin’ of the tribes together. I would advise breakin’ their strength before that consolidation can be effected. Renegade leaders like Murdock — his real name is Charley Bent — are like torches in dry prairie grass.”
“Bent? I have a report on him. Do you know where he hangs out?”
“Up the Cimmaron somewhere.”
“Belmet, can any of these Indian chieftains be placated — be persuaded to sign treaties?”
“They have been in the past. But they are growin’ bitter an’ doubtful. They have reason. I’ve no use for Indians. I lost my mother — my father — my friends — my uncle, all by Indians. But I don’t blame them. This is a harsh statement.... Let me tell you the kind of thing that makes Indians bitter. Last spring a small caravan of twenty-two wagons went along the trail out here, got to Sand Creek, an’ expected to be at the Crossin’ of the Cimmaron in three days. Some Kiowas rode into camp — sixteen in all — an’ they were hungry. These travelers — they weren’t freighters — refused to feed them. The Kiowas started away an’ a teamster shot one of them in the back. Killed him. The Kiowas stopped, picked their dead comrade up, an’ went on without ever a word. That night a big force of them swooped down on the camp, killed the teamsters, burned the wagons, drove off the stock.... Six days later some trappers came down from the hills, found the chain, wagon rims, an’ finally twenty-two scalped an’ mutilated men. They hurried on here to Larned an’ reported the massacre. The colonel sent out a detachment of soldiers, but the Kiowas were never rounded up.”
“Well, Belmet, that’s the other side of the story, and it is black,” replied Custer, sadly.
“General, in my opinion — an’ this I got from my uncle Jim Couch, an’ Kit Carson — the great danger is that the northern an’ southern tribes of the Great Plains will join forces. The Sioux are powerful and we hear rumors. Indian rumors, perhaps, but the more to be reckoned with for that.”
Clint went on to Santa Fé with his caravan, spent the winter there, and in the spring started back. Custer was still out on his campaign, which, according to gossip at the fort, had not yet been markedly successful.
When Clint reached Kansas City he learned something that reminded him of his talk with General Custer. The government had made a treaty with the Nez Percé Indians of the Northwest, granting them the Walla Walla Valley forever for their home. The Indians lived up to their agreement. But the whites forced themselves into the valley, and the government ignored their incursions. The Nez Percés went on the warpath, causing a great loss of life and property. And in the end the white men gained possession of the valley under military protection.
Belmet realized that there was no sense in dodging the truth. Government and army, gold-seekers and pioneers, even the freighters in some degree, had been unscrupulous and unkind in their treatment of the red man.
And that very winter, though Clint did not know of it until spring, the government made an appropriation of four hundred thousand dollars to treat with three of the Indian tribes — the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas. Congress failed to live up to the agreement. What became of the money
no one on the frontier ever knew. These three tribes, after waiting months and making appeal after appeal to the government through army posts and agents, went on the warpath and spread death and destruction for five hundred miles around.
Clint Belmet saw the worst of 1868 and 1869 on the Old Trail. During these years the government strengthened all the forts in and around New Mexico. The freighting trade quadrupled, heavy caravans traveling both ways. Belmet became one of the famous train bosses, and the name “Buff” was familiar all along the line.
He had accumulated a considerable amount of money, for with his own and Jim Couch’s, which fell to him, he invested in pelts and thus made the freighting business pay him in two ways.
Couch’s cannon had belched its slugs many and many a time after its owner’s death. Belmet owed his caravan credit for being a magnificent fighting unit, but the cannon backed them up, surely helped them out of many a tight place. None of the Indians but the Comanches could stand a cannon charge. The roar seemed to dispel their courage as much as the slugs. Belmet’s band had secured the services of a soldier who had been a gunner in the army. He was a little red-headed Irishman named Benny Ireland. He had no fear of death or devil, and he loved a fight. His one great failing was impatience, which manifested itself in his habit of singing out to the Indians, when the freighters were lying low awaiting a surprise attack, “Cum on, ye red devils, an’ I’ll blow ye to smithereens!”
The leading factors in Belmet’s success in freighting heavy and valuable loads were the hardened and experienced frontiersmen he drew to him, and the fact that he would not handle anything but a large caravan. Then he had grown to be almost as keen on the scent of Indians as the dog Jack, whom he never forgot. It was that he was ready for attacks from the Indians and did not run to avoid them.
Nevertheless, there were other good reasons why Buff Belmet was molested less than other caravan leaders. He invariably remembered the advice of Kit Carson and the methods of Colonel Maxwell with Indians. Belmet never picked a fight; he never turned Indians away hungry; he never dealt in any way but strict honesty with them.
It was indisputable that some of the caravans invited disaster. Kelly’s band of two hundred and forty men — a very large caravan — left Taos in the late summer of 1869. At Lower Springs, about five days south of Fort Larned, a small band of Comanches rode into camp and asked for sugar and coffee. There were not more than forty Indians and some of these were in poor condition. The freighters showed the hungry Indians not only sugar and coffee and other appetizing food, but also made faces at them and refused to feed them. Moreover, they drew their rifles and ordered the Comanches to get out.
The Indians moved on. And this large caravan of freighters, secure in numbers, paid little heed to the incident. Before daylight a large band of Comanches stampeded their stock. All the freighters rode out to fight and drive their animals back. They recovered horses and oxen, but they left eight dead comrades and brought in seventeen more wounded. From that time on they had to fight these Comanches day and night for one hundred and fifteen miles. They had one hundred and three oxen killed, and thirty horses. Twenty-seven wagons had to be abandoned. And their casualty list totaled eighty-three dead and seventy-six wounded.
On Buff Belmet’s western trip in the fall of that year he fell in with John Hatcher, whose caravan contained forty wagons and about fifty men. Hatcher had been raised in the Shawnee Nation in Kansas. Probably he was the best Indian-fighter on the plains, according to the frontiersmen. Jim Barlow, who had thrown in with Belmet at Kansas City, had sixty-eight wagons and seventy-two men. These caravans added to Belmet’s of seventy-four wagons and eighty-one men, and Couch’s famous six-pound cannon, constituted a most formidable force.
Beyond Fort Larned they expected an attack every mile of the road. It was due. While making camp early the third day out they saw a band of white men ride by, leading and driving extra horses without packs. Belmet and Hatcher bent hawk eyes on these riders.
“Wal, I see two sick an’ crippled men among them,” said Hatcher. “What’s your idee, Buff?”
“Road agents,” declared Belmet. “Jim, I think I’ll stop that gang.”
“No, siree. Don’t do it,” returned the older frontiersman. “We can’t court trouble. Shore they looked like bad eggs. Them six hosses they’re leadin’ are stage hosses, if I ever seen any. But we haven’t any actual right to stop these men. Suppose they wasn’t crooked? I’d gamble on thet, but we can’t take the risk.”
Next morning Hatcher’s caravan, which was in the lead, halted to wait for Belmet’s to catch up.
An abandoned stage-coach stood on one side of the road. Eight dead men were lying about. The strong box had been broken open and contents taken, as had also the mail sacks. All the bodies had been riddled with bullets; the driver had nine holes in him.
“Wal, Buff, I’m sorry I didn’t let you stop them road agents yesterday,” said Hatcher. “All we can do now is bury these poor fellows an’ report the murder at the fort.”
Belmet reported the disaster to the army officials, who at once sent out troops in pursuit of the robbers. They returned the third day, while Belmet was still at the fort. They brought three prisoners. At the rendezvous of the gang the soldiers had killed ten, recovered forty-five stolen horses and eighteen thousand seven hundred and forty dollars in gold, silver, and paper.
Clint Belmet got permission to interview the road agents, and came very near being too late, for when he reached them they had nooses around their necks. Three more hardened wretches would have been difficult to find. The first laughed at Clint’s query, the second cursed him, but the third, a young man in his early twenties, replied: “Shore I know Lee Murdock. But thet ain’t his right name. Get me out of this necktie an’ I’ll tell you where he is.”
Captain Duncan, the veteran soldier in charge, spoke curtly to Clint:
“Sorry, Belmet. It’s impossible.... Swing ’em up, men!”
The three robbers were jerked off their feet almost before Clint could turn his back. He returned to his caravan, his head bent, his mind darkly on the past. Some day he would run across Lee Murdock. That seemed written in his fate on the plains. Clint had vowed he would never stop freighting until he encountered Murdock and Blackstone, or he knew for sure that they had met their just deserts.
On the way to Santa Fé the caravans were delayed by washouts, due to heavy summer storms. At length Clint and Hatcher decided to take the road to Maxwell’s Ranch and avoid all this rough travel. Such a détour meant many more miles, but in the end they would reach Santa Fé as soon as by the main trail.
The road had not been used for years. Weeds and grass had grown up in it, and all the miles along this road Clint knew so well, his mind brooded over the melancholy past.
At length the caravans reached the ranch, to pitch camp in the beautiful grove of cottonwoods. The leaves were turning gold.
Maxwell’s Ranch had reverted to the wild. In place of grazing horses and cattle, only buffalo and deer dotted the wide gray pastures. Clint climbed the slope, recalling what he had heard about the operations of the St. Louis Company that had purchased the ranch from Maxwell. They had taken over all the stock, but the object of buying was to work the placer mines. Half a million dollars had been spent there. A forty-mile canal had been dug, to fetch a two-foot stream down to the diggings. But the company found no gold and were ruined.
Clint surveyed the ranch house. What a change! Only a few years, yet the fences were all down, the windows were vacant holes, the doors gone, the walls crumbling. Not a living creature to be seen. The rooms were bare, cold, gloomy. Indians had scratched characters on the faded whitewash of the adobe walls. The dining-hall that had once been the Mecca for all frontiersmen, hunters, trappers, soldiers, and travelers, and the Indians, was now a den for wolves. Bones and piles of wolf dung! For Clint Belmet the hall of Maxwell’s banquets was haunted.
After supper he walked along the edge of the cottonwood grove to t
he spot where Couch’s camp had been located. He could have gone to it blindfolded. The grove at this point was comparatively lonely, as his freighters had not driven up so far. Beyond the clump of willows, precisely the same, stood the spreading cottonwood under which Couch’s wagon had stood. The leaves aloft were sighing. A golden glow from the reflection of the setting sun mellowed the glade.
Clint’s forehead was damp and his hands clammy. He plunged to the grass and lay back against the trunk of the cottonwood. The wagon had stood there. He remembered that the high seat, where he had rested with May Bell, was just under the spreading branch. He had held her in his arms there, had kissed her sweet lips and been kissed in return. Just here the tongue of the wagon had lain upon the ground. May Bell had sat about there — with a roguish devil in her dark eye. But he had not understood. He had been only a tortured youth.... Here Murdock had stood, sneering and cool, and there, close to Clint’s hand, he had lain, bloody-mouthed and senseless.
But that flashing heat of memory did not survive. Clint sat alone in the place of his dream. And his eyes grew dim. The hard years since that unforgettable hour had not killed the sweetness of memory. Never, though, since he had read May Bell’s crucifying letter had he permitted himself this weakness. He had not lived solely for revenge, but his search for Murdock and Blackstone had given the color and vitality to his trips to and fro on the Old Trail.
But now it was as if only a night had intervened. He had become a stern, ruthless frontiersman, surviving by wit and nerve and fierce resistance. Yet in this spot his heart seemed to burst, and slow salt tears burned his eyes. Regret, remorse, prayer were unavailing. The iron of the plains had cut deeply into his soul. Yet love lived there still, hidden, unquenchable as the fires of the sun.
