Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869

by Terry C. Johnston

  “You have a plan to do this?” Bad Heart asked, speaking for the first time.

  He nodded, watching the anxious silence come over the council. “The white man is many. He will always be many here in our land. But, you must remember there is one thing the white man values more highly than his soldiers, more highly than his coffee and kettles.”

  Pile of Bones’s eyes narrowed. “What does he value more than all these?”

  “We will attack the white man’s homes … where he scratches at the ground and builds his mud-earth lodges.”

  “Is this what you call your great plan to drive the white man from our land?” demanded Feathered Bear.

  “Yes,” he answered quietly, turning to his rival.

  “We have done this before—”

  He held up his strong, powerful hand, silencing all. “This time will be different, my brothers. This time we will go to take what is most valuable to the white man … what he cannot replace. He can replace soldiers and kettles and blankets. But we will take something he will never replace.”

  “What is so valuable, Tall Bull?”

  “Soon, we will be riding south and east toward the white man’s settlements.”

  “To steal horses again,” sneered Feathered Bear.

  “No,” and Tall Bull smiled, a wolfish slash across his face. “This time we steal the white man’s women.”

  * * *

  “Damn them, Cody!” growled Major Eugene Asa Carr when he had burst into the scouts’ camp circle, accompanied by scout Bill Green. “They got away with a horse of mine.”

  “Hold up, Major,” Cody had replied. “Who got away with this horse?”

  Carr had gone ahead to tell the civilian scouts the story: Fifth Cavalry stock stolen right under the noses of the herders. Including a mule owned by Lieutenant W. C. Forbush and a horse very much prized by the major himself.

  That recollection now rolled before Seamus Donegan’s eyes as clear as the day Carr had sent them after the horse thieves.

  He gazed from a foggy hotel window he had thrown open just after dawn. Beside it he sat in a crooked wooden chair, watching the huge Denver City corral below for signs of activity that would indicate the auction was about to begin. In the room’s single bed lay Cody and the scout named Bill Green, back to back. Another civilian scout, Jack Farley, lay sprawled on his bedroll on the floor, snoring gently, his mouth hung open, tongue lolling like a hunting dog’s.

  Carr had continued his explanation, wringing his hands angrily. “Don’t have an idea or a clue to give you, except that Green here followed the trail back downriver to the old fort site.”

  Bill Green had shrugged when the others looked at him. “The trail split up … mixed up and all. I couldn’t make sense of it.”

  Cody looked at Carr. “You want me to get your stock back, General?”

  Carr had nodded eagerly. “We don’t have long, Cody. I’m expecting orders any day now.”

  Donegan remembered the young scout stretching before he replied. “Been looking for a chance to get out of camp, General. Figure I’ll take another man with me.”

  Carr had shaken his head that morning. “Make it a foursome, Cody.”

  “General’s right, Bill,” agreed Green. “Sign shows there’s at least two polecats involved. I’ll go along—you want me.”

  “All right,” Cody had replied. Then he nodded at Jack Farley. “You’re good at reading trail sign, Jack. Wanna come?”

  “I do,” he answered readily. “Ever since my brother got his arm shot off at Beecher Island—and died from the blood poisoning—I been itching to see some action. If white men are the only thieves we can trail for now, so be it.”

  Cody had turned to Donegan. “I got one more saddle to fill, Irishman.”

  Donegan recalled how he had grinned, turning away from that morning fire to scoop up both rifles and pistol belt. “Let’s ride.”

  Later that morning the four had reached the site of old Fort Lyon. At one time the place had been known on the plains as Bents’ Fort, purchased years before from the fur and Indian traders, George and William Bent. Later, when the annual spring floods on the Arkansas ate away at the riverbank below the fort, the army had raised a new post upstream.

  Below in dawn’s rose light spreading over Denver City, Seamus watched a high-walled freight wagon pull away from the corral and rattle up the ruts of Blake Street. Its taut white canvas top disappeared from view as he went back to remembering what had brought them all to this tiny hotel room overlooking the Elephant Corral.

  “I marked the spot where I lost the trail, fellas,” Bill Green had explained when he dropped from the saddle and handed his reins up to Farley.

  As well, Donegan and Cody had dropped to the ground at the site of old Fort Lyon.

  “Trail just up and disappears,” Green apologized.

  “Got to be something here,” Donegan had muttered, his gray eyes scanning the tall grass. Something about it tugged at him, the way it stood and bent with the morning breeze, leading all the way to a large stand of cottonwood near the riverbank.

  “Let’s put your noses to work,” Cody said, leading them from the spot Green had marked.

  They fanned out, Farley bringing up the rear with the horses. Slowly working back and forth, studying the ground, the grass, the sage and willow for tracks, threads of clothing, horsehair, even a rock rolled out of the soil where it had been half buried by spring flood of years past.

  “Looka here,” Cody had said, motioning the other three close. From the broken grass he pointed.

  “I bet we find something in those trees,” Donegan had replied when they all stood staring at the stand of cottonwood.

  They had not been disappointed.

  “Must be about a dozen,” Farley declared when he had gone over the ground in the cottonwood grove.

  “Can’t figure how I missed it, Bill,” Green said.

  “Don’t matter,” Cody had replied. “We got the smell of ’em now. Look fellas, how they led the horses out of here, one at a time—just to confuse any trackers coming along after ’em. You listening, Irishman?”

  Watching the Denver street below him, Donegan remembered how he rose from the ground where he had been inspecting footprints. While Farley had studied the hoofprints, Seamus studied the clues of man’s passing.

  “Two of ’em come in,” Donegan had told them. “Two of ’em rode out each time. I figure they rode a pair of animals off a distance each time. Come back on foot for another two. Rode them off in a different direction … just to confuse trackers.”

  “You read it that way, Farley?”

  He had nodded at Cody. “Yep. I see it the same way.”

  “Let’s do an Injun circle,” Cody had suggested. “Till we cut some trail.”

  The four had ridden out a mile from the grove, making a large arc around the old fort site. When they hadn’t cut any sign, Cody led them out another mile. Then three. And four. Finally, at a five-mile circle out from the cottonwood grove, Farley had come upon the joining of the tracks.

  “I make it some eight horses and at least four mules,” the tracker had said, beaming up at the three horsemen.

  “By damned, we’ll get Carr’s horse back yet,” Cody had said. “They got a lead on us, so let’s buck.”

  The trail they had followed led them farther east down the north bank of the Arkansas River until it reached the mouth of Sand Creek. From there the trail led north, upstream from the Arkansas.

  “Cheyenne call this the Little Dried River,” Cody had told them. “Not far upstream is the place where Chivington destroyed Black Kettle’s camp back to ’sixty-four.”

  “You was a young whip back then, wasn’t you?” the older Farley had joked with Cody.

  “Old enough, Jack—to know Sand Creek’s nothing to be proud of.”

  After following the tracks a few miles upstream, the trail stopped in a copse of swamp willow where the prints became confused and split up once more.

&nb
sp; “They’re pulling the same stunt again,” Farley had said, wagging his head.

  “Don’t matter,” Cody had replied, staring off into the distance. He had turned to the rest of them as they loosened cinches and adjusted their saddles. “Tell me fellas—what are these thieves gonna do with a dozen horses and mules in this part of the country?”

  “I suppose they’re gonna sell ’em,” Green had answered.

  “Right. And where do you boys think these horse thieves gonna sell their booty?”

  Farley had shrugged his shoulders. “Closest place … be Denver City.”

  “Exactly,” Cody had said. He pointed to the confusion of tracks. “That may be a mess and won’t tell us a thing … but my money says we can find the general’s animals and those horse thieves in Denver.”

  “How far?”

  “Does it matter, Irishman?”

  Donegan recalled shaking his head. “Got nothing better to do, I suppose.”

  “Let’s go to Denver City, boys,” Cody cheered, climbing to the saddle and pointing them north.

  Seamus stretched his back and shoulders now, stiffening with the sitting he was doing at the window. Over time he had become as certain as Cody had been they would find the thieves today.

  It was Saturday. And every Saturday some of the finest stock in these parts came to Denver City, to be auctioned off at the Elephant Corral.

  Below him inside the corral itself stirred the first sign of life for the day. It was Robert Teats’s boy, Eugene, dragging a bucket of oats at the end of each arm.

  The sun would come up soon to chase the gray from the day.

  Seamus figured their chase was just about over.

  Chapter 13

  Mid-April 1869

  Settlers and entrepreneurs had arrived in Colorado Territory close on the heels of miners in the summer of 1858 when gold was discovered in Cherry Creek, near where the stream dumped into the South Platte River along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Those early arrivals had given the name of St. Charles to their first gold camp on the east bank of the creek. Scarcely a month later another group under the leadership of Dr. L. F. Russell established its camp on the west bank. They named their community Auraria, after Russell’s hometown in Georgia.

  The gold in Cherry Creek ran out all too quickly, and by autumn the weather began to conspire against the settlers who’d planned to spend their first winter in the shadow of the Rockies. Most of the sunshine residents promptly fled back East. Yet the teetotaling entrepreneur William Larimer cast his lot with the sole resident who remained behind in St. Charles when all others had abandoned the infant community. They renamed their town Denver City, after James W. Denver, governor of Kansas Territory, to which the area then belonged.

  By 1859 news of another gold strike in the nearby Clear Creek, some thirty miles west of the infant towns, brought west another flood of miners and assorted hangers-on. That same year the town’s first newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, printed its inaugural issue.

  Along both banks of Cherry Creek sprang neatly platted rows of log structures and clapboard buildings, with a scattering of newer brick homes. As early as 1860, when the two towns voted to combine and call themselves Denver City, the settlement boasted some twenty-nine stores, fifteen hotels, such as the Planters, the Broadwell, and the American House, along with various boardinghouses, twenty-three saloons serving a varying clientele, a pair of schools and two theaters, besides an assortment of sawbones and barristers, shoemakers and tailors, barbers and druggists, each kept busy in the boom of those early days.

  From sunup to sundown the streets of Denver City were clogged with freight wagons bound for all directions of the compass. Freight came in at the rate of twenty cents the pound from St. Joseph on the Missouri River, a trip taking some three weeks. Here on these streets silk rubbed shoulders with buckskin. Wagonmasters and teamsters, Indians, prospectors and fur trappers mingled with the rich and soon-to-be wealthy in the muddy, rutted byways of the new town. Miners packed the boardwalk outside the office of the town recorder, waiting to record their claims. Businessmen of all sorts made it a practice to carry their own small scales, on which they measured a customer’s purchase at two-bits a pinch.

  Here so close to the newest source of gold, E. H. Gruber and the Clark brothers erected a solid two-story brick building to enclose their minting equipment. There they struck their first ten-dollar single-eagle coin in July of 1860.

  Money moved fast and easy through the growing community. Luther and Charles Kountze founded the Colorado National Bank. Emigrating from Omaha, David Moffatt opened the first book and stationery shop in Denver City, staying on to found the First National Bank.

  By the spring of 1869, which found Bill Cody and his fellow scouts on the trail of horse thieves, Denver boasted a population of more than 7,000 souls.

  “Why don’t you get you some sleep, Seamus,” whispered Cody as he came to the window overlooking the Elephant Corral.

  The Irishman gazed up at his young friend. “No use sleeping. Can’t with the music Green’s making over there on the floor.”

  “Then make yourself useful,” Cody cheered, slapping him on the back. “Go buy us a pot of coffee.”

  “Aye, and a good idea that is.”

  Donegan rose from his chair, stretching the kinks from his muscles and working his joints. “Nothing much yet. Just Teats’s boy—taking some of the stock out to pasture.”

  “Spot anything marked with army brands?”

  “Nothing I could tell from here.”

  Cody settled in the chair. “Coffee do us both good.”

  Donegan nodded and left, pulling the door quietly into the jamb.

  Hunched forward in the chair kept warm by the Irishman since the early morning hours, Cody watched the traffic begin to throb as the city came to life below his window overlooking the Elephant Corral.

  In the autumn of 1858 businessmen Charles H. Blake and Andrew J. Williams had reached the Cherry Creek settlement from Iowa. Their stock of goods for miners and frontier customers had been packed into four prairie wagons, each drawn by a four-yoke of oxen. The two immediately erected their first double cabin on what was called “Indian Row” in Auraria, but in January of 1859 Blake and Williams moved their business across the creek and established themselves in the growing community of Denver City sprawling in the shadow of the front range.

  On the north side of the street they named for Blake, they raised their building of cottonwood logs, thirty feet wide by one hundred feet long. The pitched roof that was first covered with canvas was shingled by 1869. The front part of the place was occupied by a bar with a dozen gambling tables. Beyond that the rest of the interior had been divided by frame partitions to which were nailed canvas to a height of seven feet to set off rooms for various purposes. The first section was a dining hall where meals were served. Behind it were six apartments set off on each side of a narrow passage, all divided by the canvas walls. First called Blake & Williams Hall, then Denver Hall, and finally Denver House, the inn grew through that next decade, becoming Denver’s finest, as well as its first, by that spring of 1869.

  In the early days the inn’s patrons fetched water for their tin washbasins from a common water barrel standing in the hallway. Those patrons emptied their basins on the dirt floor to hold down the dust.

  Surrounding the hotel stood an eight foot wall, two feet thick, constructed of logs covered with groat, a mud and pebble mixture—something capable of withstanding the capricious climate of the high plains. Loopholes for riflemen were cut through the wall during construction, in the event of Indian attack. Enclosing the hotel itself, this corral spread 125 feet by 150 feet.

  Near the end of the Civil War, Blake and Williams sold the corral and gaming house. Ed Jumps managed the famous gambling room of the Denver House, while Robert Teats and his son Eugene ran the former, which they renamed the Elephant Corral. It was to Denver City that stockmen from all across the central plains brought their hors
es and mules to auction. And there was no finer place in Denver City than the Elephant Corral for a man expecting top dollar.

  Bill Cody watched as the first of the day’s patrons entered the corral, passing through the huge iron gate that fronted on Wazee Street. From his tiny room on the second story of the Chase Hotel that faced Fifteenth Street, Cody could look directly down on the corral and watch the activity in each of the stalls that bordered the corral’s three sides.

  Over the next hour a curious mixture of customers entered the corral, eager to peruse the day’s selection of animals for auction. Some wore the coarsest frontier clothing, or were dressed in fine Indian-made buckskins, while a minority sported styles freshly imported from the East—garments made of the finest velvets, silks and satins were in evidence. The few women who accompanied their gentleman friends carried parasols; flashing diamonds and sparkling jewelry accented their décolleté gowns.

  Most of the early activity centered on the long row of tables near the east end of the corral, where owner Teats had spread a sumptuous repast for his guests that would easily rival even the famous Delmonico’s of New York City. Here the contract teamster in muddy boots rubbed shoulders with the wealthy barons of this new city, every man with an eye kept on the auction ring.

  “We’re going to have to do something about dinner soon,” Seamus Donegan groaned, watching the feeding frenzy below. He poured the last of the coffee into his tin cup, grounds and all. “Having to sit here and watch them starch-shirts eating canned oysters and goose livers.”

  “You’re not the only one whose belly is hollering for fodder, Irishman,” joked Cody. “We’ll get Green to get us something—”

  Donegan pushed the tin cup of cold coffee across the washstand, watching Cody go tense. “You see something down there?”

  “Could be,” then he pointed out the window. “See that mule they’re leading ’round the crowd. Next up for auction. I’d lay my mother’s watch that’s Forbush’s mule.”

  “The lieutenant’s animal?” asked Farley.

  “Damn if it ain’t!” Cody cheered, standing of a sudden, flinging the chair out of his way. He yanked the pistol from his belt, slowly spinning the cylinder.