by Don Bendell
In Florence, they had also broken into the house of an oil man with money and stolen some jewelry, cash, and valuables. To that point in time, those two incidents were the extent of their criminal activities.
Right now, they were getting money from Harlance with promises of more later, and they were being briefed on Joshua Strongheart. They all had seen Big Scars Cullen and could not forget him, as he was so large and tall. Just looking at him, anybody could tell that he was tougher than a bull buffalo with a toothache. That Strongheart had killed him gave each young man pause for thought.
In the meantime, Joshua was heading at a rapid pace along the western edge of the Wet Mountain Valley, just below the foothills. It had been a long day and the sun was almost blocked out by the mountains that stuck up so high in the sky over his right shoulder. He went into the trees and rode until he found a small rushing stream and then rode around until he found a group of rocks that would hide his fire and reflect it as well, plus two overhanging slabs he and Gabe could get under in case a storm blew in during the night. If there was one lesson Strongheart had learned long before, it was that the Rocky Mountains were one of God’s most majestic and beautiful creations, but they could also turn into one of His deadliest in minutes.
Many cowboys out in the mountains would find the first nice spot and curl up for the night without a thought. Strongheart had been taught too well to be a survivor, plus he knew he was after killers who knew he was coming for them. His campsite for the night was always picked out for its strategic significance, and he usually stopped early enough before sunset so he could set up a comfortable camp that was also hidden away from the elements and potential enemies. The cascading stream afforded not only fresh water for him and his horse, but sound as well to cover the clanging of a pan, a dropped piece of firewood, or the cracking of a branch. He’d also made sure there was good graze for Gabriel, as horses were grazing animals who needed that to feel normal.
The rocks, as mentioned, provided good shelter in case of storm, and his camp was situated a little above the stream on a bench to deter washing away in case of flash flood. His horse would let him know if anyone approached much better than any watchdog could. Horses’ eyes, ears, and nose were much larger and more powerful than any dogs’, so they could smell, hear, and see people or animals long before a dog could detect them. A simple whinny, with the nostrils flaring in and out and the neck strained forward and ears sticking toward whatever or whoever was approaching, would let Joshua know long before anyone or anything came into view.
Peering through the thick veil of trees, Joshua could see out into the valley below, and see anybody approaching, and he could also easily see Westcliffe and the activity in the rest of the valley. After placing a circle of dry rocks around a campfire hole he’d scooped out, he gathered firewood and kindling so he would have a fire and plenty of extra wood to use until his departure at first light. One of the most important things he made sure of was that there was a low, wide boulder between the campfire and the Wet Mountain Valley below, so nobody could see his fire.
Next, he broke evergreen branches and piled them on top of one another near the fire but not too close. He put on his small coffeepot and frying pan. Joshua had shot two rabbits while he was in the saddle and then gutted them after he had entered the trees. Now he walked over to the stream and knelt down to cut the head and paws off of each one with his knife. Next, he grabbed the skin on the belly next to where he had slit them open to gut them, stuck his fingers under the edges, and pulled hard, tearing the skin away from the flesh. Joshua tossed the bloody, furry hides into the stream and let them be carried downhill to where predators would smell them but not come near his camp. He then checked each carcass carefully for any signs of disease. He rinsed them and bushed away unwanted tissue with his fingers in the cold stream.
Next, after cutting a long green stick and two fairly thick green branches, he returned to his campfire. He set the cleaned carcasses on one of the evergreen boughs and, using his razor-sharp knife, quickly whittled into forked sticks the two thick green branches he’d brought from the stream. He then sharpened the other ends, and sharpened both ends of the long stick from the stream. Next, he quickly shaved all the bark off of each green branch and put his knife away. He stuck the pointed end of the forked sticks into the ground, then ran the long one through the body of each rabbit and set it on the forks. All he needed to do now was simply keep turning the long stick over the fire while the rabbits slowly cooked. While they smoked and sizzled over the fire, he walked out and found some sage, cleaned it in the brook, and brought it back. He’d also had found some mint, so he cleaned those leaves, too. He tore the sage into tiny pieces and sprinkled some on the rabbits. Joshua then cut off a slice of bacon and dropped it into the frying pan, where it started sizzling.
Two miles north, the wind coming from the south ruffled the silver-tipped hairs on the back of the large cinnamon-colored boar grizzly bear. He had fed on a lightning-struck heifer out beyond Westcliffe, but that was long gone and his hunger pangs were sharp. He had spent half the day tearing up a hillside to dig out a ground squirrel and had devoured it in minutes. As he walked up the long ridgeline, his nostrils grabbed the scents coming along the mountain breezes from the south. He smelled aspen, water, pine, the smell of a horse far off, and man. Instinctively, he almost left the area that carried that scent, but he was too hungry. There was the smell of bacon and cooking rabbit. His large tongue came out and licked his lips. The mighty bruin stood on his hind legs and raised his head, over eight feet in the air now. His mouth hung open and his nostrils flared taking in the scents from Joshua’s camp two miles distant.
Ursus horriblis, the mighty bear dropped to all fours and trotted forward along the face of the mountain, following the smell of cooking food on the wind. Although he hated and avoided man smells, since leaving his mother at the end of two years, this bear was motivated by two things: his stomach and the scent of sows in estrus.
Strongheart saw steam pouring out of his coffeepot and pulled the pot off the fire to set it on one of the flat-topped rocks. In the bacon grease he had dropped a couple biscuits he had packed in Westcliffe, and they were now heated up. He poured out a cup of coffee and started cutting chunks of meat off one of the rabbits. The warrior took a few bites and savored the flavor.
Gabe’s head came up and his ears went forward, his eyes looking north along the side of the mountain. Joshua strained to glimpse anything through the trees but saw nothing. He crawled over to his saddle and withdrew his carbine from the scabbard, still eating rabbit and biscuits. Gabriel was now acting even more antsy, and Joshua knew the big horse was watching something with great interest.
Joshua spotted movement in the trees and within seconds saw the big bear coming down on him at a fast trot. He stood up and cocked the carbine. The bear’s horrible eyesight had prevented him from recognizing the threat before. However, the sound of the gun being cocked did register with him, and he stopped abruptly. He stood on his hind legs and tested the wind. He smelled Joshua’s soap, perspiration, and even the iced tea he had drunk, the coffee, rabbit, bacon, and biscuits. Joshua yelled at him, and the bear dropped to the ground, popping his teeth and growling.
Strongheart did not want to shoot this bear, especially with a carbine. His shots would have to be perfect, but he also had no need to take a bear right now. He was after even more dangerous predators.
He grabbed a biscuit, rubbed it in the grease, and tossed it at the bear. The bear ran forward, curious, and sniffed it, then grabbed the biscuit and swallowed it. He took two steps forward and sniffed the ground where the biscuit had hit.
Strongheart’s shot hit the dirt just inches in front of the monster’s highly sensitive nose. Dirt sprayed in the bear’s eyes and went up his nostrils. The sound of the shot scared him, and with a roar, he swapped ends and took off at a race-horse-fast run away from the scents on the breeze.
Joshua and Gabe watched until long after the be
ar had disappeared into the forest. The hungry intruder did not slow down for miles, and his instincts as a survivor took priority over his hunger. He hated man scents, and bad things happened when he got near them.
Strongheart kept his rifle handy but went over to the big spotted gelding and petted him and gave him some loving. He went back to his coffee and unloaded the carbine and cleaned it. Next, he would sharpen his knife. These were lessons drummed into his head by Dan when he was a boy that had never left him.
While Strongheart slept lightly in his Sangre de Cristo camp, Harlance McMahon sat around in an old adobe building with his new gang of mixed-tribe American Indians who spoke more Spanish than English and had nowhere else to go in life. The little gang had become their family, and each, while plugging away on the bottle passed around, was pledging to lay his life down for the others.
Of course, they had not been in a real stand-up gunfight against someone like Joshua Strongheart. There were so many stories in the West of 1873 about gunfighters, and they were all glamorous. Many boys were growing up dreaming about becoming gunfighters. The end of the Civil War eight years earlier had spawned the beginning of the “Gunfighter era” in the Old West, and many kids thought that being one of them would make a man a somebody. Gunfighters often had been lawmen until a page turned in their lives and suddenly they were on the other side of the law. Men fought usually from just a few feet away, guns often misfired, and more often than not the shooters missed their targets. However, then as now, when the youngsters thought about gunfights, it was always quick draw, standing off at a distance, and most did not know what happened when your target fired back at you first. Harlance knew these things about his current young charges, and he had a short period of time to try to cram shooting, quick draw, aiming, reloading, and bonding into a cohesive unit for them to learn.
He did not really know Strongheart’s background, but he had seen what the man could endure, what he could do in the face of danger, and he knew the man had singlehandedly wiped out the rest of his gang of men, who had been to war, fought in gun battles, and wore battle scars on their bodies. He had even tackled the seven-foot-tall, thick-as-a-tree Big Scars Cullen in a bare-handed battle and bested him, then shot him down. So Harlance didn’t really need to know Joshua’s background.
The crook also had no mistaken impressions about this young gang. He knew they were just going to slow Strongheart down a little, but this man would keep coming. Harlance would plan an ambush, set a trap, and leave the gang to fight his battle. He would be hell-bent for leather to rejoin the two remaining gang members that he might have a chance with, Gorilla Moss and his son Percival. Harlance had no doubt that Strongheart would kill some of these inexperienced young men, but his hope was for them to get some bullets into the man, as well. He did not care if all of them were killed as long as they slowed Strongheart down, took away some of his power, weakened him in some way.
Another problem Harlance would have to tackle in the morning had cost him more money. All of these former slaves had pistols, but when young men in the Old West dreamed about becoming fast gunfighters, none of them ever had the money to spend on bullets to practice shooting for hour upon hour. They had all been practicing quick draw over and over, but he wanted them to have the experience with live shooting. Once they go that down, he planned to walk up and slam them unexpectedly in the chest or shoulder while they practiced, so they could handle shooting while getting hit by bullets and still keep fighting. So he had already gone into the mercantile and bought a good supply of bullets.
Harlance felt that he was really thinking this out. He had seen what Strongheart had accomplished when he set the ambush for him in a canyon. He had sniffed it out, even though someone miles away let Harlance know he was on his way. He had outsmarted him and outfought Big Scars Cullen, who he also put the sneak on. That in itself was no easy task, McMahon thought, as Cullen was certainly no pilgrim. The big man had been over the mountain and down the river a time or two. Outfighting Big Scars was something that McMahon had never dreamed anybody would ever be able to do.
He knew that he indeed had a fight on his hands, and he would do all he could to even the odds more or, better yet, make them all in his favor. Harlance wondered where Strongheart was this night.
The next morning, when the sun was just starting to climb up into the sky, Joshua climbed into the saddle and looked back at his camp. He had left plenty of firewood for the next hombre spending the night, the cooking fire pit, the bough bed, and other niceties. The fire was out, sprinkled with water and covered with dirt. Other than that, the whole area looked natural. Harlance and his new young gang would not be awake for another six hours.
The handsome young Pinkerton man set his horse at an easy trot down to the trail he could clearly see below, which wound along the base of the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristos. He was heading south to Music Pass. There were two passes that crossed over to the Great Sand Dunes, Music Pass and Medano Pass, which was pronounced Madanow. Strongheart was taking Music Pass, which crossed over first. He did not know what awaited him on the western side of the Big Range. He had been in the San Luis Valley and had always seen the Great Sand Dunes as a far-off tan-colored pile of sand. He was anxious to see what they were like up close. Medano Pass would bring him right out on the edge of the Great Sand Dunes, but Music Pass would actually bring him out slightly north of them.
Joshua rode down past Marble Mountain and Horn Peak and took the trail that would take him up to Music Pass and allow him to drop down into Sand Creek Lakes, both the upper and lower lakes. Music Pass got its name from the Ute Indians because of the musical sounds that could be heard from the various winds and rock formations. The panoramic ride did not begin right away, as Joshua went up through a very thick forest of aspens, hardwoods, and evergreens. It was also very rocky and steep at the beginning, but the scenery at the pass was invigorating, and the winds there gave him some comfort as it was an unreasonably hot day, even at that elevation. Towering above Strongheart and the whole valley were the thirteen-thousand-plus-foot Tijeras, Music, and Milwaukee Peaks. After a break for Gabe to catch his wind at a scenic overlook near the pass, Joshua started a pretty steep descent into the Sand Creek Valley.
The trail split into two different trails, and Joshua knew from talking to Jerome that they led to the Upper Sand Creek Lake and Lower Sand Creek Lake. Jerome had told him that if he was going to camp, the lower lake would be the place to do it. In the past, some had told him it was the most beautiful place they had seen ever. Joshua rode down the trail toward Lower Sand Creek Lake. The two lakes were about two miles apart, and the upper lake was a few hundred feet higher. Strongheart rode into a very large meadow and immediately spotted a large herd of bighorn sheep, and two magnificent rams were in a fight. He just sat his horse and watched. They would rear up on their hind legs and slam their heads into each other. Seconds later, the loud banging sound would reach Joshua’s ears. At the other end of the meadow a large harem of elk grazed on the mountain gamma grasses. Gabriel snorted a little, and Joshua knew the horse wanted water from the creek. He rode him over and let him drink to his heart’s content.
A short time later, Strongheart trotted up to the lake and was very much in awe of its majestic and pristine setting. Tijeras Peak towered dramatically over the lake, the shore of which came right up against the base of the mountain. The glacial lake itself was crystal clear and teeming with land-locked cutthroat and rainbow trout, which were popping bugs all over the smooth mirrored surface.
Across the lake, Joshua saw two men with a small canvas tent in the background, and both were fly-fishing near the base of the peak. They had long bamboo poles, and one started pulling in a small cutthroat. Strongheart gave them a wave, and they waved heartily in return. Men had been fly-fishing for years, centuries actually. In fact, as early as the second century, Claudius Aelianus had written about fishermen from Macedonia making lures out of feathers and red wool and catching many fish. Back east,
Strongheart knew they had even started fly-fishing clubs in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Of course they also had not had any America Indian attacks back east for years, he thought.
Joshua thought about stopping here for late lunch, but then decided that since it was now later in the afternoon, he would camp by the lake and leave the next morning for the Great Sand Dunes. He trotted around the lake to the south shore, where he found a very secluded cove, which gave him total privacy. In fact, he found a campsite where someone had already camped, made a nice fire pit, and like Joshua, left a good supply of firewood. He had his coffee going when one of the fishermen rode over to him bareback on a mule. He introduced himself as a rancher near Westcliffe and gave Joshua three fish for lunch. Strongheart thanked him and offered coffee, but the man wanted to get back to his fishing. He spoke about having just the right kind of fly at the right time of year to catch fish after fish.
Joshua made lunch, ate, and decided to explore a bit on foot, while he left Gabe to share the grassy meadow with numerous deer, elk, and bighorn that appeared and disappeared.
Running behind his camp was a stream that led to an area full of cascading waterfalls. Joshua could not believe how many beautiful wildflowers grew all around here, and the place reminded him of home.
The next morning at daybreak, Joshua looked back at Tiejas Peak, Music Peak, and Milwaukee Peak and truly understood why these mountains were called the Sangre de Cristos, the “blood of Christ,” when he saw the beautiful crimson hues on the snowfields.
The ride down the western slope of the Sangres was fairly uneventful except for rounding a bend in the trail and coming upon a large tom mountain lion feeding on a small doe he had apparently just killed right in the middle of the trail. The cat barely glanced at Joshua; he just disappeared into the trees without looking back. Most people living in lion country spent their entire lives without ever seeing one, but Joshua was in the wilds and in the saddle so much that he saw them from time to time.
