by Mike Blakely
We spent a day skinning elk and quartering meat, hanging the quarters high in ponderosa pines several hundred yards from our camp. There were grizzlies in those mountains, and Kit insisted we avoid them at all cost. He had seen friends mauled, and had, himself, had narrow escapes from huge bears.
The next morning, we went to pack the elk meat on our mules, and found that a grizzly had indeed tried to claw our meat down from the trees where we had hung the quarters. Almost all the bark had been stripped from the tree where the meat hung. Judging from the size of the scrape marks on the tree trunks, the bear was a huge one. The smell of the big grizzly terrified the mules and horses, and they pranced constantly as we tried to pack the meat, and flinched at every little flutter of leaves in the forest. Kit and I kept our rifles within reach as we packed the mules, and watched constantly over our shoulders.
I was scared. The forest was thick around us, and even a big bear might sneak quite near without our seeing him. I knew that one or two rifle balls might fail to stop a charging grizzly. Still, there was no leaving our elk meat behind. It took us hours, but we got it all packed on the mules and left that place, to everyone’s relief, without ever actually seeing the bear that had terrified us so. I have always wondered if he saw us.
We rode east with our little pack string, retracing our path through the San Juans. The trail often led above the timberline, and the views of craggy peaks jutting above the clouds awed me. I was happy to share the company of an experienced mountain voyageur, and wondered if I could find my way out of this maze of valleys and ridges should something happen to Kit.
I was riding Major, my veteran paint stallion. He was now twelve years old, which was rather aged for a frontier mount, yet I had spared Major many a hard mile by using other horses for punishing rides whenever I could. In those days, I rarely traveled without a spare mount or two. So Major was still plenty sound for his age, and possessed the experience and good judgment few other horses could equal. On top of all that, he was a handsome paint, flashy and well muscled, and many a rider had envied my ownership of him over the years.
Kit decided to take us back toward William Bent’s ranch on a new trail that would swing down to the San Luis Valley. As Indian agent, he wanted to check on some Utes he thought would be camping there.
“It’s a good trail,” Kit claimed. “I’ve traveled it before. Twice’t.”
THE TRAIL WAS a good one, at first. It wound gracefully among evergreens and bluffs, just a few hundred feet below the timberline. Then, we rounded a mountain bend and found that an avalanche had torn down the steep slope ahead of us and carried away boulders, trees, and soil, leaving only a shifting mass of scree underfoot where once a level trail had stood. As avalanches rate, this had been a rather minor one—only about a hundred yards in width. Still, that would be one hundred yards of unstable footing underneath our animals, with a steep slope below strewn with slick plates of rock that dropped at a sheer angle five hundred feet to a beaver pond below that looked no bigger than my thumbnail held at arm’s length.
“Well,” Kit said, looking up and down the path of the avalanche. “Let me test it.”
He dismounted and went ahead on foot, checking each step, catlike, before placing his full weight on the shifting rocks. He continued like this, step by step, sometimes moving rocks ahead of him by hand, until he reached the other side of the avalanche, where the trail became solid again. Now he turned around and came back the same way he had gone, again testing each step before he committed his full weight to the slope. Halfway across, I saw him stop, stand erect, and turn his back to the slope. He stood there half a minute in the middle of that avalanche’s path, staring out at the valleys, cliffs, waterfalls, and timbered mountainsides below. Finally, he resumed his cautious return to my side of the avalanche and set foot on firm ground.
“The only other way is to go back where the griz was this mornin’ and try to find another pass from there.”
“That’s a long way back,” I said, remembering my fear of the unseen bear.
“Yep.”
“It’s only a hundred yards or so across,” I observed.
He nodded. “Lead your horse. If the critters slip, don’t try to help ’em, Kid. Look out for yourself.”
I dismounted and swallowed hard. I tried to remind myself that this was the nature of life in the wilderness and if I wasn’t up to crossing an occasional landslide, I should stay in town with the white women.
“You ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“‘If a path be dangerous known,’” he said, quoting Sir Walter Scott. “‘The danger’s self is lure alone.’” He grinned at me, then turned away and started across, leading his horse. He went faster this time, knowing his pony might lose patience and panic if he progressed too slowly. I followed, leading Major. Behind me came the mules, whom I trusted to follow even though I had untied the lead ropes lest one of them slip.
Kit came to the place halfway across where he had stopped to gaze out over the valley. He took a step. His horse followed, and the rock that had supported Kit slipped away under the weight of the horse. The mount panicked, scrambling for footing, and I remember thinking that I wished we had ridden mules instead of horses. Kit’s poor terrified horse clawed his own footing right out from under him. Kit tried to help the horse briefly by pulling the reins, but the cause was lost and Kit reluctantly cast the reins aside as the horse’s hind legs slipped out from under him.
I could only watch. I dared not even move. I will never forget what happened next. I can see it as clearly now as when it occurred. The falling horse clawed for purchase with his front hooves and tore the shifting rocks right out from under Kit’s boot. But Kit was wise to the dangers of the mountains and the evils of bad trails, and he threw himself back onto the slope spread-eagled, catching himself with his hands. Kit’s right leg stuck out into thin air, for the mountain slope had disappeared under that leg. And at that moment his doomed horse made a desperate lunge with his head and neck and slung the long leather reins whiplike toward Kit. One of the reins lashed out at Kit’s ankle, and like an impossible tendril of some killer vine, it wrapped around Kit’s boot and spur twice, snugged somehow under its own tautness, and entangled man with horse.
Nine hundred pounds of horseflesh now plummeted down the slide and Kit, like a calf at the end of a vaquero’s reata, shot down the slope behind the struggling horse. I watched in horror, my feet fused in place on the shaky slope. Kit kicked at the tangled rein, but it remained fast. He reached for the rein to free himself, but the horse flipped, throwing his head and yanking Kit down the landslide. The horse rolled again, right over Kit, and the gnashing sounds of sliding rock coupled with the grunts of the poor falling beast almost drove me to helpless insanity, for I could do nothing but watch.
Now, miraculously, Kit kicked free from the tangled rein. Here the avalanche’s path angled just enough to the right around a point that I thought Kit might land on the point instead of continuing his slide hundreds of feet below. I prayed he would make that point, my whole body wound as tight as steel cables.
The horse slammed against a boulder at the very edge of the rock slide a hundred feet below me, and Kit hit the same rock face just feet away from his mount. He landed on his head and his left shoulder, and came to a sudden stop that made me think of an egg dropped on the floor. The rocks that had been loosened continued to slide away downhill for several seconds, then everything became still and quiet except for the groans of the dying horse.
“Kit!” I yelled, as Major tossed his head behind me.
Slowly, I saw Kit roll onto his back. He lifted one arm and motioned for me to continue my crossing. I was astounded that he was alive, much less conscious.
Now I looked at the path that had evaporated before me. I had to cross. There was no going back. I turned straight up the mountainside to get above the place where Kit’s horse had fallen and pawed away the footing. Major followed, dipping his head low to look at the shak
y ground ahead of him, and snorting at the rocks as if to warn them. The mules followed Major, seemingly as unconcerned as mountain goats. We climbed above the place where Kit’s horse had destroyed what little integrity the slope held. I now turned back toward the far side of the rockslide, hoping the footing would bear our weight.
I angled slightly downhill now, heading for the place where the trail resumed. I could see it clearly, but I dared not rush toward it. I tested every step, and the animals stayed right behind me. Ten steps from good soil, a mass of loosened scree shifted under me and my horse, and we slipped a foot downward in a sudden plunge, then somehow found tenuous footing as the rocks we had loosened slid and skipped down the precarious slope. When I finally reached solid ground, I nearly dropped to my knees to kiss the earth, but there was no time for such foolishness, for Kit needed my help.
Leaving the beasts on the trail, I climbed downhill to the place where Kit had landed. I found him sitting up against a rock, rubbing his left shoulder. His face looked as stoic as ever, but I could see pain in his gathered brow. The dead horse lay beside him, its neck broken.
“How bad are you hurt?” I asked.
“I’ll live.”
“Can you walk?”
“I ’magine I can, here directly. It’s my chest that hurts. And my shoulder. I landed on my shoulder.”
“Is it broken?”
“I didn’t hear nothin’ crack, other than my skull slammin’ agin’ that there boulder.”
“If you hadn’t hit that boulder, you’d still be falling.”
“I ain’t complainin’.” Kit reached up to me with his right hand. “Easy,” he said.
Gently, I helped him to his feet. He winced, but made no whimper. In fact, to my surprise, I heard Kit chuckle. I feared for a moment that he had lapsed into delirium.
“One time, Kid, right after Peg Leg Smith cut his own leg off to keep the gangrene from a bullet wound from killin’ him, his friends was haulin’ him home on a litter slung between two mules. That was the only way they could think to get him out of there with one leg cut off at the knee. Well, that litter busted on a steep trail, and Peg Leg fell about as far as I did, I guess. Maybe fu’ther. Landed in a stream and laid there cussin’ in the cold water. Couldn’t get out. He didn’t know how to get around yet, one-legged. His friends made their way to him and stood around laughin’ at him a while, then finally pulled him out. They tell me he cussed all the way back to Taos.”
I smiled at Kit, amazed that he had felt compelled to tell me a story just now, but I guess he was trying to make a point. “Do you want me to try to get your saddle off that horse?”
“Naw, Kid, the tree’s probably busted. My rifle slid on down the mountain, so it’s lost, too. Just get the bridle and the canteen, if you would.”
I salvaged what I could from Kit’s saddle and we climbed back up to the animals I had left on the trail. I insisted that Kit ride Major while I hiked ahead on foot with my rifle.
Kit was in pain, and couldn’t move his left arm or shoulder for days. He would always claim that he merely “sprained” his shoulder in that fall, but I think he cracked a bone or two, and suffered some internal bruising or bleeding. In fact, he never fully recovered from the accident. It changed his posture a little—not so much that you’d notice unless you knew him well. And though he had many a fight and a hard ride still ahead of him, that little fall in the San Juans would come back to haunt Kit in the final days.
Eleven
While Kit convalesced from his accident, I stayed around William’s stockade and helped him build fences of split pine rails lashed together with rawhide. We also surveyed the course of an irrigation ditch using a transit William had hauled west. The ditch would catch water from the Purgatoire and cast it out on a gently sloping field of about 230 acres. The Mexican laborers were busy clearing this field of rocks, which they used to build a rock fence around the field itself.
At night, I would entertain the Americans, the Mexicans, and the Indians with my violin, which I had previously left with William for safekeeping. I carried it now in a fringed and beaded deerskin case that a Comanche woman had made for me in trade for a hatchet. Between the classical concertos and the folk songs, I managed to find something everyone could appreciate, and when things got particularly dull, I could always fiddle behind my back, behind my head, or between my legs. Herr Buhler, my old violin instructor at the Saint-Cyr School for Boys in Paris, would have gone mad had he ever seen me playing between my legs on the left-handed Stradivarius that I had stolen from him. But I imagined that he had probably drunk himself to death by now anyway.
It felt good to play again. I hadn’t made music in a while, and was rusty, though no one noticed but me. After a few nights of playing, the fluid strokes and sharp staccatos came back to me, though my fingertips hurt from lack of conditioning. One night, we even had a square dance, with Tom Boggs calling.
Freight wagons would come through on this, the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail, so we enjoyed newspapers and other things from back East. A few Americans decided to stay at Boggsville to tend flocks or herd cattle or clear fields for William. With every new arrival came more talk of the political excitement involving slavery and states’ rights. At William’s stockade, we had heard rumors that certain Southern states had entertained debates on the subject of secession in their houses of congress—this in response to a growing abolitionist sentiment in the North. The abolitionists believed the federal government should abolish slavery, while the Southern states maintained that the constitutional provision for states’ rights, particularly in the Tenth Amendment, gave the states the authority to decide whether or not to allow slavery. There was talk in the North of ratifying another amendment to the Constitution—one that would outlaw slavery. Most agreed that the slave states would secede should such an amendment pass, or even come before Congress.
On the plains and in the mountains, we knew this business was serious and dangerous. Men of both loyalties—North and South—now lived out West, including enough zealous abolitionists and secessionists to foment considerable violence. Opinions differed as to just how serious the trouble might get.
“If South Carolina secedes,” Tom Boggs said one night, “hell, the army and the navy will just march right in there and blow hell out of the place. How does one state expect to stand up against the whole federal government?”
But William grunted and shook his head. “I don’t know. Could be they’ll all secede at the same time, or one after another. The Union Army isn’t big enough to stop them from Virginia all the way to Texas.”
“But the South couldn’t win a war like that,” said R. M. Moore. “The North has all the manufacturing plants.”
“The only thing the rich men in the South think they can’t do,” William said, “is let their slaves get taken away from them. They know that would crush their economy. They may be gentlemen of honor and intelligence, but they have acquired their wealth on the backs of people that are whipped like dogs, and they are not about to give up that wealth and go out in their own fields to pick their own cotton. They are just arrogant enough to drag the whole republic into a bloody war so that they can go on trading people like animals and living high on the hog because of it.”
This surprised me somewhat, coming from William, for he had owned a slave himself in the past, a manservant named Dick Green who had worked at Bent’s Old Fort as a blacksmith. However, I had known Dick Green, and knew that William treated him like any other man. Dick had ridden and fought alongside white men, Mexicans, and Indians, and had drawn wages like anyone else at Bent’s Old Fort. I could see now that William might have bought this man to thwart the institution of slavery rather than perpetuate it.
“If it comes to war,” I said, posing a question for discussion, “how will it affect us out here in the territories?”
William puffed on his pipe for a few seconds. “Colorado and New Mexico territories are mostly Union in sympathy. I don’t think the
re will be much trouble this far west.”
“Maybe not,” Kit Carson said. “Except for the gold. Takes money to make war. The South could go after the Colorado gold fields. Maybe even California.”
“You think so?” Tom Boggs said.
“Like William said, they’re arrogant. They think they can do whatever they take a mind to do. Especially the Texans.”
“The worst trouble will come from the Indians,” William added. “We saw it during the Mexican War. When civilized men go to fightin’ one another, the Indians always sieze the opportunity to make raids and take back land they’ve lost. Can you imagine what a time the Comanches will have in Texas if the Texans secede and go to fightin’ the Union? I wouldn’t want to be a farmer on the fringes of Comanche territory right now.”
And so the speculation rambled, day after day, night after night, no one really knowing what to expect. And so it goes on, year after year, war after war. We could never have understood at that time that the War Between the States would last so long, or that the frontier would pass so quickly. The Comanches who laughed at me as I sawed my fiddle in contorted poses could scarcely have grasped how quickly everything they knew and loved would vanish in flame and dust.
I’VE MENTIONED THE big bell at William’s stockade, mounted on the top of an eight-foot pole set in the ground. I asked William about it one day. “Come from a school that burnt down in Missouri. I hauled it out here.”
The bell had three purposes, William said. If visitors were seen approaching the stockade, the bell was rung three times to alert everyone of a new arrival. I remembered having heard this bell sound thrice the first time I, myself, approached the stockade.
“Of course, you know by now that I use it to call the horses,” William continued. Every day, before hay or grain was fed to riding stock in the corrals, the bell was sounded five times. This trained the horses to expect feed at the sound of the bell. Often, riding stock was turned out to graze around the stockade. If William wanted the horses back inside the corrals in a hurry, all he had to do was ring that bell, and the horses would come running for their feed. The signal for feeding time was five rings, as opposed to the signal for approaching riders—three rings. This number made no difference to the horses, of course, only to the men. The horses would come running at the mere sound of the bell, no matter how many times it tolled.
