A Trail Too Far

by Robert Peecher

  "Nope," Pawnee Bill said. "Three other men from the camp."

  Mickey Hogg stretched and sat up. He blocked the sun with his hat and looked out across the open plains between the two camps at the three men approaching them.

  "This ought to be interesting," Mickey Hogg said. "What do you reckon they want coming to our camp like this?"

  "Maybe they're looking to make a stand," Dick Derugy said. "Maybe that other one sniffed us out as trouble, and they're coming to try to settle us now."

  Mickey Hogg chewed on it for a moment, then shook his head. "They wouldn't come up without the other one. He's got sand. He wouldn't have let them come without him. He'd want to be involved in this. Unless he's circling around behind us somehow – and I don't know where he'd manage to do that without us seeing him – then I reckon this is a fishing party here."

  "A fishing party?" Chess Bowman asked.

  "Fishing for information," Mickey Hogg said "They're trying to figure out who we are and what we want. I'll do the talking. Wake me up when they get to the camp."

  Mickey Hogg laid back in the grass and put his hat back over his face.

  "I'm hungry," Chess Bowman announced, and he began rummaging through the buckboard wagon looking for something. "We don't even have enough wood to make a fire to cook on."

  "Quit your griping," Pawnee Bill said. "They'll be up here soon. I've got some jerky in my saddle bag there. Gnaw on that for a bit. By dawn we'll have all the grub we can want."

  Bill watched the approaching men, taking notice that not a man among them was armed with either rifle or revolver.

  "They's unarmed," Bill hissed at Mickey Hogg.

  In a few moments the men were close enough that Amos Cummings called out to the camp. "Hello, gentlemen! Mind if we step into your camp for a visit?"

  "Come on in," Pawnee Bill said. Then he reached out with the toe of his boot and pressed it against Mickey Hogg. "We got company Mickey. Wake up and be polite."

  Mickey Hogg made a great production out of rising from his slumber. He stretched and yawned, and then he put on a smile and walked out to Amos Cummings and the others, stretching out a hand in warm greeting.

  "I'm Mickey Hogg," he said. "That there is Pawnee Bill, and that's Chess Bowman, and that one over there is Dick Derugy."

  Amos Cummings shook hands with Mickey Hogg.

  "I'm Amos Cummings, and this is my brother-in-law Stuart Bancroft and my assistant Graham Devalt."

  "You the wagon master?" Mickey Hogg asked, leading the men back to the camp.

  "Not exactly the wagon master, no. We missed the wagon train we were supposed to join to California. It was going along the Oregon Trail. So we've struck out on our own with Mr. Sinclair as our guide. I believe you've had occasion to meet Mr. Sinclair."

  "He ain't much more than a boy," Mickey said. "Surprised you'd trust your family to a man so young."

  "He seems to know his way," Amos said. "We've not lost the trail, yet."

  "A lot of dangers on the trail besides just losing it," Mickey Hogg said, licking his lips. "Say, Cummings, you traveling with whiskey?"

  Amos was caught off guard by the question. "We have some, yes."

  "It's too bad you ain't brought it over here with you," Mickey Hogg said. "It's been some days since I've had a drink of whiskey. We should have provisioned ourselves better."

  "I should have thought to bring it," Amos said.

  "Would have been better if you did," Mickey Hogg said, laughing and turning to look at the others. "Wouldn't it, boys, be better if he'd brought some whiskey?"

  "Would have been better if you'd brought them womenfolk, too," Pawnee Bill said.

  Amos was caught off guard by the manners of the men. He made an effort at getting the conversation back on track.

  "Considering that we're camping so near to each other, we thought it would be neighborly to pay you a visit," Amos said.

  "Would have been more neighborly to bring some whiskey," Mickey Hogg said.

  "And them women," Pawnee Bill added.

  "We ain't interested in being neighborly," Dick Derugy said, and he stood up and casually picked up his rifle leaning against the buckboard wagon. "We're interested in whiskey and women. If you ain't got none to share, then you wasted your time in coming here to talk to us. We ain't on this trail to make friends."

  Mickey and Bill and Dick all laughed and slapped their knees as Amos, Stuart, and Graham turned around to walk back to their own camp. The Ohioans were surprised at the behavior of the other men.

  "Next time you feel like being neighborly, put on a dance and we'll come join you!" Pawnee Bill shouted, and Dick and Mickey Hogg both joined in shouting taunts at the other men.

  Only Chester Bowman refrained from the taunting. Chess Bowman knew what Mickey Hogg and Pawnee Bill were planning to do later, and he had no taste for it. He didn't enjoy the taunting, because he knew it was only a prelude to the worse that was coming.

  "They sure did leave in a hurry," Mickey Hogg said. "I guess they didn't feel like being neighborly after all."

  "When do you want to go down there and get to business?" Pawnee Bill asked. "I say the sooner the better. Just after dusk when it's good and dark and they don't see us coming."

  "No," Mickey Hogg said thoughtfully. "We'll wait until later into the night. Let them all get good and asleep. We'll go in with knives. Don't use a gun unless you got to. I don't want to wake anyone up."

  "Don't kill the women," Pawnee Bill said, and he looked deliberately at Dick Derugy. "Especially that young one. I want to get a look at her good and proper. We might even take her with us when we leave. Keep her around for a while."

  16

  The small wagon train drove on through the black night, each of the wagons spread out so that none was visible to the other.

  Matthew Cummings stayed near to his younger brother Paul to be sure they did not get separated. Each of them trailed a line of animals, tethered together. The animals moved without much argument, finding the cool of the night easier going than they did the heat of the day.

  Rab Sinclair had instructed the boys to keep moving and to not wait for the wagons to catch up. They could all come together again in the morning when the sun was up. As Rab had told them, the boys rode about a mile down the trail before they lit a lantern, and then they were able to move a little faster because in the lantern light the trail showed clearly.

  Martha Cummings drove the first wagon to leave. Her daughter Rachel rode with her in the wagon, and Rachel waited until they had made some distance before lighting a lantern. That lantern made it easy to see the trail and to keep on the right path, but they could not see the boys with the animals in front of them.

  Rebekah Bancroft followed her in the next wagon. Rebekah's three children rode with her in that wagon.

  Jeremiah Cummings, the oldest of the Cummings boys, drove the next wagon, and he rode alone.

  Stuart Bancroft was in the next wagon, and he was followed by Graham Devalt.

  Amos Cummings drove the last wagon out of the campsite, leaving almost two hours after the boys left out with the animals.

  Rab Sinclair spaced them out at such distances in the hopes that by leaving the camp one at a time it would lessen the risk that Mickey Hogg and the others might hear the wagons moving out or in some way become alerted to the flight of the Cummings party.

  Rab's sorrel horse was tied to the back of Jeremiah's wagon. The buckskin was tied to Amos's wagon. Rab put his pannier inside Stuart's wagon, deciding to lighten the load on the two horses.

  He kept Cromwell with him.

  "Your father was unnerved when he returned to camp after visiting those men," Martha Cummings told her daughter when they were well down the trail. "I do not say this to alarm you, but I want you to know that I think those men are very dangerous. By leaving we have spared ourselves any trouble from them tonight, but I am afraid they will catch back up to us."

  "What will we do?" Rachel asked.

  She
was trying to keep a brave face, but she had never known terror like this in her life. They were running from these other men. They were fleeing for their lives.

  "We will trust your father to think of some way of dealing with this," Martha Cummings said, though she had her doubts. She, too, was very afraid. "But if it comes to it, I want you to stay very close to Mr. Sinclair."

  "Mr. Sinclair?" Rachel asked.

  "Of course, Rachel," Martha Cummings said.

  Stuart Bancroft, driving his wagon along in the loneliness of the night, had begun to wonder about his brother-in-law's principles against violence. He had seen these men up close, and he did not like them. They were dirty and crass, and Stuart was convinced the men were dangerous. He had brought with him two rifles for hunting, and when he returned from his visit to the camp, the first thing he did was load both rifles. He gave one to Rebekah, who knew how to use it, and he kept the other in his wagon.

  "A one shot rifle will not be much, but if you wait and shoot it when they are very close, it might be enough," he told his wife. "If you must use it, make sure that you hit what you are shooting at."

  Amos Cummings was not questioning his beliefs about violence, but he was contemplating how a man who opposes the use of violence can get by in a world where others do not share the same principles.

  Stuart Devalt, for his part, was wishing he had never come west.

  Through the night, those in the wagons caught themselves drifting off to sleep with increasing frequency as the night wore on. Their eyes would shut, their minds would drift, and they would wake with a start, realizing they were driving a wagon down the Santa Fe Trail. For each of them, it happened many times.

  Both Matthew and Paul dozed in their saddles.

  When dawn finally came and the sun rose at their backs, the younger Cummings boys led their animals off of the trail and down behind a stand of trees at a creek. Matthew and Paul picketed the animals at intervals so they would have room to graze.

  Matthew, doing as Rab Sinclair had taught him, rode back down the trail to make sure that the livestock would not be seen by anyone approaching from the east.

  Then they took turns watching.

  One by one, the wagons came into view, and when the boys were certain of who was driving them, they came out from behind the stand of trees and led each of the wagons to where the livestock were hidden.

  "I do not understand why Mr. Sinclair has not caught up to us," Martha Cummings said when Amos climbed down from his wagon, the last to arrive.

  "He never caught me during the night," Amos said. "A single rider on a horse, he should have easily overtaken me."

  Matthew spoke up.

  "He told me he might not catch us," Matthew said.

  "What else did he tell you?" Amos Cummings asked, finding himself suddenly very worried.

  "Well, he told me that when dawn came I should find a stand of trees near a creek and picket the animals behind it, like I've done. He said we should make a camp for just a couple of hours for everyone to sleep a bit, and then we should keep moving. He said so long as we stay on the trail we'll come to a stagecoach stop and an army fort before we stop."

  "He said all of that?" Amos Cummings asked.

  "Yes, sir. He said if he wasn't here after we'd been in camp for a couple of hours, that we should go on without him."

  Martha walked over to her husband and, taking him by the arm, led him away from the others.

  "Amos, you don't think Mr. Sinclair has abandoned us, do you?" she asked in a hushed tone.

  "Of course not," Amos said. "He's left his two spare horses and the pannier with us. He could not survive out here without his supplies."

  Martha Cummings was not so sure.

  "If he has not abandoned us, then where is he?" she asked.

  Amos had a thought, but he did not want to say it out loud to his wife. The last he had seen Rab Sinclair, the man was sitting astride his blue roan with his Hawken rifle across his lap and the Colt Dragoon in his holster.

  "We should sleep for a couple of hours, and then we should get moving," Amos said. "Those were his instructions to Matthew. Obviously he thought there was some chance he might be delayed, or he would not have left explicit instructions for us to leave without him. He will catch back up to us."

  ***

  The six wagons of the Cummings party left out of their campsite shortly before noon. The people were all exhausted, though the animals were holding up well. Because they had relied on mules to pull the wagons through the night, they were now going forward with oxen harnessed to each wagon and so they made very slow progress.

  Matthew Cummings was riding on Rab Sinclair’s buckskin horse. Whenever he came to a hill, he would sit atop his horse for a long while, watching the back trail as the wagons passed. He was watching for a lone rider or three riders and a buckboard. Nothing appeared on the horizon to the east.

  Every member of the wagon train was going forward with some sort of fear. Stuart Bancroft now drove the last wagon. He had decided he would act as a kind of rearguard.

  Amos Cummings drove the first wagon, leading the train. As they set out in the late morning, Amos said he would keep moving until they arrived at the stagecoach relay station that Rab had told Matthew about, and he warned the other travelers that he might continue well into the night if they had to. What he hoped was that Rab Sinclair would catch up to the wagon train and give advice on how to proceed. But if Rab Sinclair did not show up, the stage station was not a bad bet. Somewhere nearby the stage station was a fort – Amos could not remember the name of it. But a fort meant cavalry and safety. He could report the men who'd been following them – Mickey Hogg and the others – at the fort. Perhaps they might even get an escort to ride a ways with them.

  But late in the afternoon, a new salvation presented itself.

  With the afternoon sun in his eyes, Amos was able to see something up ahead that broke the monotony of the plains. At first he thought it was just a small stand of trees, but as it grew larger on the horizon he realized it was something else. He sent Matthew ahead on the buckskin to investigate, and after about thirty minutes the boy returned.

  "It's the stage station!" Matthew said, and the relief in his son's voice matched his own relief.

  If nothing else, a stagecoach relay station manager could offer advice on what to do.

  Amos called loudly to the oxen and cracked his whip over their backs to try to speed the beasts along a little faster. The stagecoach station, out here in the middle of nowhere, gave him a sudden sense of hope.

  "Ride back and let the others know we will pass by the station and go on to the fort," Amos said.

  The station was run by two men, Silas Carver and Danny Beck. Folks all called Danny by his initials.

  D.B. met the wagon train out on the road near the station. Danny Beck was about Amos's age, early- to mid-forties. He had a growth of beard on his face that suggested he'd not shaved in a number of days, but not so much of a beard that it looked intentional. He was powerfully built from years of hard work, but he had one of the friendliest, most genuine smiles that Amos Cummings had ever seen.

  "There's good grazing if you'll go past the station about a hundred yards," D.B. called to Amos Cummings. "Y'all get that rain a couple days back? First good rain we've had in a long time. Looks like maybe two years of drought is going to finally come to an end."

  As Amos came up close to him, D.B. walked along beside the wagon.

  "This your wagon train?" D.B. asked.

  "I suppose it is. I'm Amos Cummings, come from Ohio."

  "I'm Danny Beck. Folks call me D.B. I'm a hand at the relay station here."

  D.B. looked down along the wagon train and at the boys leading the livestock.

  "You're a brave man taking this trail without a guide," he said.

  "We have a guide," Amos said. "He stayed back yesterday and has not caught us up yet."

  "Who's your guide?" D.B. asked.

  "Rab Sinclair. Do yo
u know him?"

  D.B. laughed and clapped his hands together. "Rabbie Sinclair? Of course I know him. Knew his pa from years back. Just about watched that boy grow up. I come to Topeka in '54 with the first wave of settlers. Rabbie and his pa were living with the Osages then, but they spent the winter in Topeka. How long ago did y'all leave out?"

  "Not yet three weeks from Independence," Amos said. "We've been on the trail eighteen days."

  "You've made good time," D.B. said. "You're three hundred miles along the Trail. You've got about five hundred miles to go to get to Santa Fe. You must be making about fifteen mile a day. That's good. Of course, with Rabbie Sinclair leading you, I'd expect you to be to Santa Fe last week!"

  D.B. laughed at his own joke. "That's a boy who knows his way around. From the Missouri to the Sierra Nevada, there ain't many blades of grass Rabbie Sinclair ain't trod upon or trees he ain't leaned against or streams he ain't dipped his canteen into. One time when Kit Carson was lost he sought out Rabbie Sinclair to be his guide."

  Amos Cummings looked at D.B. with some surprise but saw that the man was grinning. "You're joking," Amos said.

  "It's a joke," D.B. admitted, "but it ain't far from the truth."

  "But he's just a boy," Amos said. "I understand that he's had vast experiences in the West, but he's not old enough to have traveled so much."

  "When you live among the Injuns, you don't stay in one place too long. He grew up with the Osages and the Sioux and the Utes and some tribes out toward California, too. They all thought his daddy was touched in the head because he used to hold services and read from the Bible to Indians who couldn't speak a word of English. So they let him come and go as he pleased and didn't bother him much. They gave him squaw wives because they worried he might have big medicine. But whatever they thought of his pa, them Injuns treated Rab like he was full-blooded. Now, where did you say Rab was?"

  "Rab said there was a fort nearby," Amos said. "How far to the fort? I would like to camp there if it is practical."

  "It ain't but three miles farther," D.B. said. "Used to be Camp Alert when it was closer, just down by the Pawnee River there, but when they moved in the spring they named it Fort Larned."