There were around seventy-five contestants, consisting of native horsemen and various white trappers—Frenchmen, Brits, Americans, Spanish, Scotsmen, a Swede—all of us crammed together, joking, vowing to win the race, edging for position. There were squaws to the side decked out in porcupine quills and white sheepskin dresses, and in the center of this writhing throng Red Elk and Layton cursed each other, threatening to battle before the race even began.
A flask was being passed down the line. It was handed to me and I drank from it and handed it on and it continued from hand to hand until it reached Grignon, who turned the flask upside down and drank until it was gone, then handed the empty flask to Layton, who tossed it over his shoulder.
“Wonderfully generous of you, Grignon,” he said.
“Much obliged, Captain,” he said.
Jenks waddled out in front of the line of jockeying horses.
“Well all you lard-eaters! You corncracking flatlanders! You pork-eating greenhorns! I’m heading back to the States by way of a flatboat on the Missouri and I can’t bring my horse. This marvelous creature saved me in many a scrape and I hate to part with her. She’ll go to the best rider, who won’t deserve her. This scramble is around the pinnacle and back. Take any route you want. First one back gets the horse.” He gripped a pistol and checked to make sure it was primed. “You had enough of my palavering?”
“Naw, we want more speeches,” someone yelled from the crowd.
“Tell us some mountain philosophy, Jenks,” another yelled.
“I got it right here,” he bawled, waving the pistol.
There were drunken guffaws and harsh yells and coughs and cries and all the men elbowing and pushing and shoving.
“On the sound of the gunshot,” Jenks yelled, and walked to the side where squaws and a few trappers too drunk to ride and Smith, who saw no profit in racing, watched. The rest of us were lined up, thigh to thigh, seventy-five men on horseback in the middle of those desert wastes.
The shadow of a hawk passed over us slowly. We waited and waited and waited and someone coughed and then Jenks raised the gun and …
BANG!
We were off.
Seventy-five tightly packed horses leaped forward at once. Grignon’s horse veered and stumbled and other horses fell over it and then there were pileups all down the line. My mare Sophie stepped nimbly among the fallen riders and was then galloping out into the open flatlands, fading cries and whinnies and curses behind me. Ahead of me there was a red-haired Scotsman named Frazier. To my left I saw Ferris and Bridger. To my right there was a trapper named Oates. I glanced back beneath my arm and saw Red Elk on his enormous Spanish stallion emerging from the dust, then Layton a little behind him, low in the saddle, perfectly poised. Some stragglers emerged from the dust far behind them but that was it. Almost all the other riders were entangled. In an instant it was a race between fifteen horses and not seventy-five.
Frazier had pulled his stirrups high so he rode crouched on top, charging across the desert. I could hear soft hoof beats behind me and looked beneath my arm to see Red Elk urging his horse on. There was a different sound to his horse, which was unshod. He was twenty feet behind me. Then ten. Then he was past me. Red Elk was a wonderful rider, thigh muscles tight, his body flowing easily with the motion of his magnificent horse.
Red Elk approached Frazier. He tried to pass him but Frazier cut him off. He tried to pass again, but Frazier moved to cut him off again and Red Elk’s horse stumbled and lost a step and Frazier inched farther ahead. Red Elk was two steps behind him. They were twenty feet ahead of Ferris, Bridger, and I. Red Elk reached behind his head where his cudgel rested in a leather holster. He gripped the club and … Smack!
Frazier tumbled from his horse and in an instant had disappeared behind us. His riderless horse veered off.
“Bastard,” I heard Ferris shout.
“Don’t have my gun,” I heard Layton yell from somewhere behind me.
I glanced back and saw Frazier limping away.
It was Red Elk in front now. Ferris had inched ahead of me on his mare. Layton was to my right, hanging back just behind me, though I felt certain he could have passed me if he’d wanted to. His Uncle Bill was the equal of any horse in the west.
We rode around that first hill, down the canyon and along sandy soil at the bottom, then on hard, red rock where it was suddenly very hot and still and the hoof beats echoed off the rock walls. We rode back up the far side of the canyon, weaving among enormous boulders on the slope, and emerged on the open flatlands.
It was Red Elk in front, then Ferris, me, Layton, Bridger, and behind him a Brit on a mottled pony. The others had fallen far behind.
The group of us entered a low channel around the rock pinnacle. As I curved around the pinnacle, in a spot where a dry streambed ran up right along the base of the rock and made a three-foot channel, I came upon Ferris just getting back on his horse. He must have fallen as he made the turn. “Aggh,” I jeered as I raced past. He waved a hand to ward off someone behind me and I looked back to see Layton collide with Ferris, the two entangled, all legs and dust and whinnying, and then Bridger and the Brit raced past, and I was back out on the flats. Halfway there.
Red Elk was fifteen yards in front. I was second. Bridger and the Brit were ten yards behind me. I looked back and saw Layton and Ferris emerge from behind the pinnacle, not injured but far behind after having collided with each other.
I was approaching the small hill from where I had surveyed the route. Red Elk had turned to the left of the hill. I began to follow in his path but at the last moment went up over the top of the hill rather than around it, weaving among sage and scrub. When I emerged over the crest I passed the spot where I had surveyed the landscape. The blue lake was spread out in front of me with the pelicans wheeling and the white triangles of the native lodges to the west of the lake and the horses in the corral, all of it magnificently lit in the autumn light. I slipped down the back end of the hill, and as my path converged with Red Elk’s I realized I had made up some ground. We were neck and neck now, three feet separating us, close enough to touch each other. As we rode Red Elk turned and looked at me and reached behind his head as if he’d swipe at me with his cudgel but he did not. He just kept pace with me, the two of us riding alongside each other, Red Elk casting glances at me and then slowly inching past.
I spurred my horse, and for a moment I gained ground and oh, how I wanted to win, to prove myself to all those men, and to myself, to know that I was equal to any man in the west, with that unquenchable desire for accomplishment, for recognition, for glory. I urged Sophie on, but even as I yearned for victory, Red Elk was gaining ground. Sophie gave everything she had, but Red Elk had the better horse and was the better rider. He was soon several lengths ahead of me.
I glanced beneath my arm and saw Layton passing Bridger and the Brit. In front, Red Elk slipped farther ahead. We were approaching the small canyon that came in from the right and angled southwest. We’d all calculated the quickest route was to ride down the south side of the canyon and along the bottom, then come up on the north side through a dry channel and ride in the last quarter mile over the flatlands. But at that moment, as I galloped behind Red Elk, as I felt the possibility of winning slipping away, I did not follow him into the canyon but rode high along the white rock lip to a point where the canyon cut steeply through a narrow channel and the two banks were fifteen feet apart. I veered from the south bank and then rode straight for the precipice. I felt Sophie resisting but then she caught my intention and being an eager, obedient animal, burst forward with mad enthusiasm. We charged at the canyon and just as we reached the precipice I heard Alene say my name: William. I cannot explain this but can only say I heard it clearly, as if she’d whispered it in my ear to bring me back to reason—but too late. We were just on the precipice. Sophie leaped and I rose with her.
There was a moment where I was forty feet over the canyon, where my shadow and Sophie’s shadow crossed the c
anyon floor beneath me and Red Elk looked up to see a horse and rider sailing overhead, crosswise. And then, the thunk thunk of the front hooves. We landed heavily, stumbled but stayed upright, and were galloping on toward the wildly gesticulating drunken band of trappers and squaws and spectating savages that were waiting at the finish line. Red Elk emerged from the canyon and drove his stallion desperately, but I was too far ahead, and I, William Wyeth, on a third-year mare, had beaten all the other trappers and the natives in the race for that thoroughbred.
I pierced the waiting crowd and the men practically lifted me off my horse. Jenks took the halter of the prize horse and thrust it at me. Beyond the shrieking throng, Layton pulled up short and turned away, furious. He was terribly competitive and an awful loser. Pegleg had begun to bait him when the halter was jerked from my hand and Red Elk was in front of me.
“Mine!” he was saying. “Mine! Mine!”
I reached to grab the halter. Red Elk raised his cudgel but was struck from the side and knocked into the dust. Layton stood over him.
“Wyeth won, you beast!” he shouted.
Red Elk moved to rise, but Layton was standing over him and would have kicked him if Red Elk had not rolled aside. A moment later Red Elk was up, gripping his cudgel, but Pegleg was there holding a pistol two inches from Red Elk’s head. Within another two seconds forty guns were pointed at Red Elk, who stood with the cudgel half raised, understanding the madness of his actions. Slowly he lowered the cudgel and casually slid it in the loop of his deerskin holster. He brushed dust from his chest and looked at Layton and then at me and spoke slowly, with Branch translating: “You are the men who aided the Crow in the massacre of the Blackfoot. Now you have stolen my horse.”
“Won the horse. Not stole,” Layton said in his imperious tone.
Red Elk studied Layton, then me. “I know where you trap. I know the country you must cross with your pelts.”
With that, he turned and walked off. There was a moment of silence, and then Pegleg held a bottle to Layton.
“Drink up. Tomorrow you’ll be under Red Elk’s scalping knife.”
That sent the men chattering and jesting and the crowd closed around us again and the celebration resumed, but all the while that look from Red Elk crackled inside me.
By late afternoon we had left the flats and started back to the mountains. I was leading my new black thoroughbred, which was a marvelous creature but wholly impractical for the trapping land. We half expected an ambush by Red Elk and his men, but it did not come, and by evening we were back in our protected mountains.
By mid-fall we knew we would accomplish what I had not thought possible: We would average somewhere between two hundred fifty to three hundred pelts a man, which was the largest take for a small brigade in the history of the fur trade. We knew that if we could bring those pelts to market, it would change all our lives and possibly the borders of the west, but as the season’s end approached our enormous return provided little satisfaction, as having those furs in the mountains and having them in St. Louis were two different things. The Blackfoot had vowed revenge against us and Captain Pike had placed a bounty on our furs and it seemed every trapper in the west knew that we carried a fortune.
One night that October, just as Ferris and I were settling down to eat from a burbling pot of fat and meat, Layton came into the firelight and sat with an utterly self-satisfied and complacent expression.
“What is it?” Ferris said. “You’ve come here to say something. Out with it.”
“You don’t think I came to enjoy the company?”
“God,” Ferris said, turning to me. “Does he think us simpletons? What is it?”
Layton took a taste from the pot, smacked his lips, and said, “Eat your wonderful potage. Tomorrow we wander.”
“Guess these drainages aren’t rich enough for you,” Ferris said.
“Aren’t looking for drainages,” Layton said. “But looking for a way out of them.”
Ferris considered this. So did I. We understood his meaning.
“Through Spanish land?” I guessed.
“Why not?”
“Not the quickest way,” Ferris said.
“But maybe the safest. Not a lot of Brits to the south,” Layton said. “And not everyone knowing what we carry in that direction either.” Then, seeing Ferris’s reluctance, “The others can scrape up the dregs. If we find safe passage we save the brigade. And you can bring your quill and parchment and record land that’s never been put to paper. What possible argument could you have against it?”
Ferris seemed to resist the idea for a moment, as if he felt we were shirking by leaving the brigade behind while they worked, then seeing the sense in it, leaned back on his elbows, and said, “When were you thinking we’d start?”
“Tomorrow at dawn. Can you be ready?”
“Of course.”
“Wyeth?”
“I’d rather sleep till midday,” I said, and Layton tossed a stick at me.
The next morning, much to the envy of the rest of the brigade, Layton, Ferris, and I set out to survey for the possibility of an alternate, more hidden route out of the western mountains. We started south, and for ten days we traveled across rolling, deserty slopes and up through high, snowbound passes, sleeping in shrubs or dense woodland and passing through numerous barren valleys. It was fall, and very dry and cold for that time of year. The valleys we passed through were occupied by native and American and Spanish trappers, all of them half starving and with few returns. The farther south we traveled the more trapping parties we encountered, and the more barren the land became. Everywhere we found the animals diminished and the men impoverished. I thought of the piles of beaver flesh we had left behind, the rotting buffalo after the surround, the waste that was involved in the industry, not overwhelming as long as we were trapping in empty, open country, but in those crowded drainages the effect of trapping brigades passing through year after year was clear. It had been a wild and untamed and beautiful country, but very quickly, in several years, it was becoming something else—mapped, over-trapped, and hostile. In ten years’ time there would be few who remembered the land as it had been in all its pure and savage glory. I was glad I had been there to see it. I was glad I had not spent my last season in waterways where the men were desperate and starving.
On the tenth day of our wander, as the mountains had begun to diminish and the air became gentler, we crested a dry ridge to see a green valley spread out beneath us, dotted with horses and cattle and regular squares of plowed land. We could hear cowbells rising faintly from the rivulets, a sound I had not heard for more than two years. Beyond the fields was a white steeple and the whitewashed walls of a church.
“Whatta you say we take a ride down there and give our regards to the conquistadores?” Layton said. “Gentlemen like us. They’ll probably give us dinner and brandy in crystal glasses.”
Ferris took a deep breath and looked away. “They’re Spanish, Layton. They arrest American trappers.”
“But we’re not trappers,” Layton said. “We’re gentlemen adventurers from St. Louis, seeking safe passage to Santa Fe.”
“Good God,” Ferris said.
“And they’re not Spanish anymore,” Layton said. “They’re Mexicans. Completely different thing.”
“Same people,” Ferris said. “Different name.”
Layton made an impatient sound in his throat. “We have ridden ten days to determine our chances of safe passage to the south. I can see no other way of determining those chances than meeting the men we would certainly encounter if we passed through with a brigade and pack train. I am going to pay them a visit. Who is coming with me?”
Layton started down the slope. I looked at Ferris.
“Not a good idea,” he said.
“Nope,” I said, and the two of us followed Layton down into the valley.
We had been riding for less than ten minutes when a group of five men on horses started out from the settlement toward us. Th
ey wore steel helmets and carried long staffs with curved blades. Three greyhounds streaked across the plowed land toward us, then curved around behind and came running back, making our horses skitter. Two hundred yards off natives plowing by hand stopped and watched silently as the five horsemen flanked us on either side and held their lances out, poised, as if to gut the horses. A man with a thick black beard on a black horse trotted up. He wore a curved sword on his belt and had a haughty expression.
“Hola,” Layton said in a cheerful, entirely false tone.
“Ustedes están ingresando a las tierras de San Cristóbal.”
“Somos caballeros de la carretera y venimos a ver al administrador para pedirle permiso para pasar por sus tierras. Nos dirigimos rumbo a Santa Fe,” Layton said in a halting Spanish.
“Usted es francés.”
“Americans,” Layton said. Then to us, “I told him we’re gentlemen of the road, asking for directions to Santa Fe. I think it worked.”
“Undoubtedly,” Ferris said.
The man with the sword said something to one of the men behind him, then the men with the lances moved closer and motioned for us to follow.
We rode on hard-packed trails between plowed fields where natives stopped to watch us go by. When I looked back they were still watching. I could hear bells ringing from the church.
After fifteen minutes we arrived at the settlement, which had a hardened mud wall around it, painted white. Inside the walls were apple and pear trees and the church had the large white cross on top that we’d seen from the mountainside. There was a square in the center with an oak tree and native children playing a game with colored hoops.
Into the Savage Country Page 17
