The Ferguson Rifle (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  Talley came riding up. “We’ve taken our meat,” he said. “Let ’em have what’s left.”

  They followed us to the two buffalo and at once began butchering their remains. The one strong brave remained near us, watching but still wary.

  “Ask him what happened,” I suggested.

  Davy went to work, and the warrior told the story swiftly and in sign talk. I marveled at the gracefulness of the gestures, the ease and poetry of the hand movements.

  “During the last full moon, some Utes hit them. Killed four braves and three women, drove off their horses, and would have killed them all, but they fought them to a standstill.

  “The Utes pulled off, taking their horses along. Eight of their braves left alive followed to try to steal the horses back. Since then, they’ve had one antelope, wild onions, and that’s about all.”

  “Last full moon?” Ebitt muttered. “That’s close on to three weeks.”

  Soon we had found a camping place in a hollow near a slough. Within minutes the Indians were roasting the meat, some of them eating it raw. They were an attractive people, with strongly cut, regular features and fine physiques.

  True to my nature I had taken the time to study what was known about the western Indians as well as the country itself. Much was supposition, but James Mooney had gathered for the Bureau of Ethnology estimates on the various tribes. In 1780 the Cheyennes numbered about thirty-five hundred…which would figure out to some seven or eight hundred warriors, although it might be much less.

  I said as much to Talley. “That could be right,” he commented, “although you rarely see many in a bunch. The country won’t support them, so they split up into small bands like this.

  “That’s why they keep moving. The game drifts away from their villages and soon they’ve collected all the roots, seeds, and berries there are to be had. We feed several hundred people on land that will support maybe one Indian family.”

  “Talley,” I suggested, “these Indians need help, and we can use the company. Why don’t we stay with them if they’re going our way?”

  “All right,” Talley said. “I figure it was that same party who attacked us who stole their horses. There aren’t apt to be two bands of Utes this far from their home country.”

  The warrior had come over to where we sat our horses, Shanagan with him. “He’s worried,” Davy said. “His folks should have been back.”

  “Tell him his people need meat. We will stay until his young men return if they move west with us.”

  Davy’s fingers grew busy, and the reply came quickly, on the brave’s eloquent fingers. “They’re going west, and he thanks you.”

  What would my friend Timothy Dwight think of me now? Riding west with a band of Indians?

  Remembering the man, and what he knew of me, I smiled, for he would not have been surprised. The others, perhaps, but not Dwight.

  CHAPTER 6

  When we had come upon the Cheyennes, they hoped to kill a buffalo to relieve their hunger while on the march. Now with the fresh meat we provided, they were prepared to continue their move to the west.

  The travois that had been drawn by a squaw was now hitched to one of our packhorses.

  Davy Shanagan and the brave, whose name was Buffalo Dog, rode together, carrying on a conversation in sign talk with a word thrown in here or there. Listening to their conversation and to the other Indians, I soon picked up several words of the Cheyenne language.

  One of the old men knew of a camping place, and keeping scouts out to warn of danger, we moved toward it. After a while, Shanagan joined me at the point. “They’re ridin’ to join their people,” he said. “There’s a plenty of Cheyennes up yonder. These Injuns figure to take after the Utes. Get their ponies back.”

  “Let’s stay out of it. No use to make more enemies than we have.”

  “Now that may not be just that easy,” Shanagan said. “They’ll be wanting our help.”

  The Cheyennes preferred a camp on the open prairie but not too far from woods. The old man’s choice was a good one, and just before sundown Cusbe Ebitt killed a buffalo cow. We gave most of the meat to the Indians.

  Shanagan explained that the Cheyennes were convinced by my clothing that I was a great chief. “Let ’em think it,” he added. “It makes us big men in their eyes. Prestige…that’s the key word with Injuns.”

  We made our own camp closer to the woods than the Cheyennes, but within a hundred yards of them. Firewood was plentiful and the stand of trees offered some shelter from the increasing wind. Moreover we liked the background of trees against which our bodies merged and blended. Our fire we placed in a hollow behind the stump of a broken-off tree where it was perfectly masked.

  After collecting sufficient fuel for the night to come and the preparation of supper and breakfast, I moved to the point of the woods overlooking the plains. The position provided an excellent view in all directions, and sitting down just inside the belt of trees, I gave some thought to the situation.

  The government of the Spanish colonies was a jealous one, permitting no trade with anyone but the Indians, and guarding against trespass. Captain Fernandez, as a diligent soldier, would have orders to resist any encroachment upon what was believed to be Spanish territory. From him, we could expect nothing but trouble.

  Since I’d joined the mountain men, no plan of action had been discussed. We were riding toward the western mountains for a season of trapping and exploration. If all went as we hoped, we would find a favorable location and build winter quarters before snow fell, and if our trapping was successful, we could expect to return to Saint Louis in the spring with a bundle of furs.

  Riding in company with the Cheyennes, who by virtue of our contribution of meat accepted us as part of their group, we could avoid trouble with at least one tribe of Indians. If a large party of Cheyennes were waiting ahead of us, we might easily have been ambushed because any unattached party was fair game, but now that we had joined this group, we would be accepted.

  Faint sounds from the camps behind me only served to emphasize the stillness of the plain before me. The sun was gone but light remained, and a sky shot with crimson arrows from beyond the horizon. Shadows gathered in the hollows among the low hills…a wind stirred the grass, then the trees…there had been a lull, a moment of stillness. In the east there was a mutter of thunder…still far off.

  For the first time, I found myself wondering what I had done. Behind me lay the career I might have had, a career as a teacher, an author…perhaps even in politics, for my friends were well situated in all these areas.

  Few men had better educations, few had read so widely in so many fields, and now I had left it all behind. With the sudden death of my wife and son, my life had begun to seem empty and pointless. I had come west on impulse, and what lay behind it I did not know. Was it a secret desire to die? Had I come west for that?

  Or to lose myself in a land far from all I knew, from old memories and old associations?

  Rising, I walked back to the fire. Talley was squatted beside the coals roasting a chunk of beef, and the smell was good. Kemble was cleaning his weapon, giving it all the care a mother would give a child.

  Ebitt came up to the fire, carrying some knots and large fragments broken from a stump. “Are you from Boston, Scholar?”

  “From Virginia, and then Carolina. When the war ended, we moved near Boston. We lived in the country not too far out.”

  We talked campfire talk while the coffee came to a boil and the meat roasted. Meanwhile we ate wild onions dug from the prairie soil.

  “My family worked with iron,” Ebitt said. “I had no taste for it then, but one day I’ll go back.” He looked up at me. “We did ornamental ironwork. Pa considered himself an artist.”

  “Some of them were,” I said. “I have seen the screen in the cathedral at Nancy, done by Jean Lamour, and
the staircase in the town hall…beautiful work. And there was always Malagoli of Modena.”

  Ebitt lowered his chunk of meat, looking up at me. “Were your people in iron, too? I’ve heard my father talk of such men. They were the masters!”

  “You’re a smith, then?” I asked him.

  He lifted his hands to me. They were square, powerful hands. “Iron is in the blood. Once a man has worked with it, it never leaves him. Yes, I was a smith, but I grew restless thinking of the western lands. At nights I would lie in my bed and think of all that vast, open land…unridden and untouched. One day I shouldered a pack and started out.”

  “There’s no telling about wandering men,” Talley commented. “They come from everywhere. I knew James Mackay. He was west in 1784, and again in ’86, ’87, and ’88.”

  Kemble agreed. “Truteau was an educated man. Jean Baptiste Truteau. He came from Montreal, taught school for a while in Saint Louis, I hear…that was about ’74, but some years later he was in the Mandan villages, trading. He lived with the Arikara, too.”

  We made our plans. Of the lands toward which we were moving we knew nothing but hearsay. There were furs…we did know that, and once in the mountains we had no doubt of our ability to find them.

  For three days then we moved steadily toward the setting sun. We rode the flanks or point along with Buffalo Dog, and we saw no enemies. Several times we killed buffalo, and once an antelope. The Cheyennes were well supplied with meat, and the wounded brave grew better. Soon he could walk a little, and on the day we reached the hollow near the North Platte, he was able to ride. His name was Walks-By-Night, and he had counted many coups.

  He rode beside me. “Why do you give us meat?” he demanded.

  “You need meat,” I said.

  He was not satisfied, but after a while he asked, “Where do you go?”

  “To trap fur in the western mountains,” I said. “First, I must have horses. This,” I said, “is a splendid animal, but he needs time to learn to feed upon your grasses. He will learn, but in the meantime he should not be ridden as hard as I must ride. I shall need a western horse.”

  “I will give you a horse,” Walks-By-Night replied. “When we come to our people, I have many horses.”

  “It would be a great gift. I have nothing to give Walks-By-Night.”

  “You have given meat to my people. You have ridden beside us when the Utes might have come, or the Pawnees.”

  To that I made no reply. Our presence might have contributed to their safety, and it was well that he believed so, for we wanted their friendship.

  “You do not count coup? You take no scalps?”

  How to explain that without offending him or seeming weak? “The Great Spirit knows of my victories. It is enough.”

  “Your medicine is strong,” he said.

  Yet we rode with care. The air was cooler, the wind a little stronger, and the coulees deeper. The greater the distance from the settlements, the greater the danger. We were all aware of this, and aware, too, that we were being watched. Twice tracks were seen where horsemen had observed us for some time, and by now they knew our numbers. Without doubt they also knew of an encampment of Cheyennes to the west, toward which we were obviously pointing.

  If they wished to destroy us, they must attack soon, and Walks-By-Night was aware of this, as was Buffalo Dog.

  We found a camp in a shallow place where there was green grass from a seep, and a few gooseberry bushes growing about. One lone ash tree grew nearby and there was a dead tree lying on the ground.

  While the others made a fire, Walks-By-Night and I rode a circle wide about the camp, scouting every rise in the ground, but we saw nothing but a few buffalo.

  During the passing days, my meager supply of Cheyenne words had increased so that with it and what English Walks-By-Night knew, we managed to communicate. I was also acquiring some skill with sign language, and then to my surprise I discovered that the Indian talked very passable French.

  He shrugged at my astonishment. “Many French trapper,” he said. “All the time they come. Live in village. Ride with us. My people long time lived beside Great Lakes, then beside river far to north.”

  “This is not your homeland then?”

  “No. My people lived north of Great Lakes in what you call Canada. The Cree were our people, too…far, far ago. All Indians have moved. No Indian lives where he once lived.”

  “It is the same with us…with all peoples. A long time ago our ancestors lived in what we call Russia…or beyond in Central Asia. Then they came west…many, many people came west, and some of them occupied empty lands, some took lands by driving others out.”

  “They were white men?”

  “Yes. There was not one migration, but many. The horse made it easy for them to move, and with the horse to ride they became more powerful.”

  “It was so with us,” Walks-By-Night said. “The Sioux have become strong with the horses.”

  We dismounted on a hillside. There in the sand around an anthill he drew me a rough picture of the western Great Lakes and showed me where once his people had lived and how they had moved west to the Sheyenne River in what was now the lands of the Dakotas or Sioux.

  The Sioux had got the horse by trade or by theft from southern Indians who had them by theft from the Spanish. And once mounted the Sioux had pushed west from their homeland to conquer much of the Dakota lands of Nebraska, part of Montana, and Wyoming.

  It was growing darker. “Some say you people came from here”—I sketched in the northern steppes of Siberia—“and that you migrated across this water to America. They say my people came from here too.”

  He put his finger on the western Tarim and southwestern Russia. “And you from here? Then once our people may have ridden together…there?” He put a finger making a wide sweep of Central Asia.

  “It could be,” I said. Standing up I gathered my reins and stepped into the saddle. “Your people went east and north, mine went west and south, and now we meet again…here.”

  “It is far? This land we come from?”

  “Very far. Perhaps three hundred suns of riding…perhaps more.”

  “We have come far.” He looked at me. “We have come far to fight again here.”

  I smiled. “But not you and me, Walks-By-Night. I think there is friendship between us.” I held out my right hand. “Between us let there never be blood.”

  “Only of our enemies,” he said.

  So we rode into camp together, and dismounted by our fire.

  “See anything?” Kemble asked.

  “A few buffalo…nothing more.” I cut myself a chunk of meat and began to roast it over the fire. Walks-By-Night had gone down to his own people.

  The meat smelled good, and I was hungry. I thrust a stick into the coals and a few sparks went up…disappeared.

  I began to eat my meat and listen to the campfire talk.

  CHAPTER 7

  We were noticeably higher when we moved out in the morning, the air was cooler, and the vegetation was changing to shorter grass, drought-resisting plants. Yet it was the Cheyennes that interested me most of all, and whenever possible I led Buffalo Dog or Walks-By-Night to talk of their people.

  The horse had revolutionized the Cheyenne way of life, and once the horse had arrived in numbers, the Indians had almost ceased from planting, and had become meat eaters, buffalo hunters. Their way of life was in many ways easier as well as more dramatic. The Cheyenne lived upon the herds much as did the wolf, but the wolf could only kill the poorer stock while the Indian looked for fatter, healthier animals. The white man, when he came in numbers, would do the same.

  Yet much of their killing was wasteful, for often the Indians would stampede a herd over a cliff, killing great numbers, although much of the meat would inevitably rot. Such a way of life could support only a limit
ed number of Indians, but constant warfare and occasional blood feuds kept down their ranks.

  In the distance we could see a faint line along the horizon and gradually I began to realize it was a far-off mountain range. Excitement grew within me. Soon we would be there and settled down to the business of trapping.

  Suddenly Shanagan came racing to me. “Scholar! Look!”

  Atop a low line of hills to the south, several warriors had appeared. They sat their horses, watching us.

  Sliding my rifle from its sheath, I made ready for an attack. But Buffalo Dog went racing by us and out upon the plain, calling out to the strange warriors. Slowly, they began to ride down off the ridge and we saw there were but four.

  Walks-By-Night was beside me. “They come. Our people.”

  The four, riding a wide open line, rifles at the ready, came down the slope to meet Buffalo Dog. They drew together, stopped, and there was much talk. Meanwhile we had halted the column.

  Now they came toward us—four warriors, one of them scarcely able to sit his saddle.

  We had the story before the sun was high. They had come up to the Ute encampment, found it empty. Warily they had approached up a draw. Two lodges stood there, a fire was burning, nobody was in sight.

  A rifle lay across a bundle of furs; a pot was over the fire; there were saddles and equipment lying about. The horses were tethered among the trees back of the lodges. Emerging from the draw, the Cheyennes were sure they had come upon a camp where the Utes were gone buffalo hunting.

  They went into the camp. One Cheyenne stooped to lift the rifle; another started for the lodge nearest him. Suddenly there was a burst of fire. Three Cheyennes dropped where they stood, the others scattered, running. Another fell as he ran.

  Hidden in their lodges, with holes made in the buffalo hide tepees from which they could fire, the Utes had waited until the Cheyennes were in their camp and at point-blank range.

  The Cheyennes had recovered some of their horses, most of which had been lost in the chase that followed.