by Zane Grey
His dining-room would seat a hundred, and it often did. The house and kitchen were run by old experienced Mexican women, whose quarters were wholly isolated from those of the men. No guest of Maxwell’s ever saw a woman! The tables were waited upon by Mexican boys, clean, efficient, who spoke English well.
Back of the main house a splendid grove of cottonwoods shaded buildings of infinite variety. A carpenter shop, a blacksmith shop, a weaver’s and a shoemaker’s, a harness- and saddle-maker’s, all attested to Maxwell’s self-sufficiency. Beyond were the barns, the corrals, the sheds, many in number, all white and neat. And behind these the pastures spread fifty miles to the mountains.
Like other men of his type, Maxwell, called Colonel by his friends, was an inveterate gambler. He did not care whether he won or lost, but if he did win he was inexorable in collecting his due, if it took the very last dollar of his opponent. But if that loser or anyone needed money and asked for it, Maxwell would answer, “When will you pay this back?” Upon receiving a reply, he would invariably hand over the sum requested. Singularly enough, no man ever cheated Maxwell.
Clint Belmet was present one night in the livingroom when Kit Carson lost all he had to Maxwell, a circumstance which gave that worthy great satisfaction.
“See here, Lew, you’ve done me for every peso,” protested Carson, “an’ I’ve got to go home to my wife. I can’t go broke.”
“Sorry, Kit, but you would gamble with me. An’ you know you can’t play cards,” replied the colonel.
“I couldn’t tonight, that’s sure,” retorted Carson. “An’ you’ve got to lend me five hundred.”
Maxwell produced the amount and gave it to Carson, asking, “Kit, when’ll you pay me back?”
“Doggone it! I don’t know,” returned Kit, somewhat nettled, as there were several officers from the fort present. Carson and Maxwell had been close friends for thirty years, had gone through the Mexican and Texas wars together. Both had been Texas Rangers, and they had guided Frémont on his marvelous exploring trips across the Rockies. Carson had, according to history, saved Maxwell’s life several times, and Maxwell had repaid the debt at least once. Yet the colonel insisted that he know when Kit would return this five hundred dollars.
“Confound you! The next time I win five hundred from you!” exclaimed Carson.
“Which will be never,” said the colonel, with one of his rare smiles, yet he seemed perfectly satisfied with Kit’s promise.
The spring of this year Colonel Maxwell was very busy putting in crops, something he had to superintend himself, as the Mexican farmers were satisfactory only under direction. The ground was all high, and not irrigated, so it was important to plant early to take advantage of the spring rains.
There were two thousand Indians down in the valley, encamped together despite the fact that they were not all friendly and at other seasons might be warring upon each other. This was spring, however, and the trading of pelts had begun. The big courtyard before the store was an endless and fascinating circus to Clint. He often worked in the store, but as he was only learning the Indian languages, and as this was the rush season, he did not go behind the counters.
At Maxwell’s dining-table there sat a score of trappers and forty chiefs of the various tribes, and a dozen or more officers from the garrison. Flying Cloud, a chief of the Utes, had the seat of honor on Maxwell’s right. Clint sat on the left, and it was known to all who visited there that the colonel treated him as a son. To gaze across the bounteous table at that great chief was a thrilling yet doubtful pleasure for Clint. Flying Cloud had a magnificent bearing, but he was not handsome. His head was shaped like a hawk’s. No proof had ever been fastened upon this Ute chieftain, but border rumor whispered that he had massacred more than one caravan. It was accepted fact, however, that he would never attack one of Maxwell’s caravans. It was something to sit at that table, Clint thought, as he gazed down the line of lean, dark, fierce faces.
During this busy trading time three companies of soldiers patrolled the San Fernando Valley, which lay between Maxwell’s ranch and Taos. Here lived, at least at that season, ten well-known squaw men. These renegade whites had taken Ute squaws, and Pawnee squaws and Arapahoe squaws to wife, in Indian fashion, and they made whisky to sell to the Indians. The soldiers were there to put a stop to this illicit practice, but were not very successful.
Another of Colonel Maxwell’s many virtues lay in the fact that he would never sell a drop of liquor to an Indian, or invite one to drink; and if a white man under the influence of the bottle showed himself anywhere on Maxwell’s land he was promptly escorted off.
It was after that very dinner at Maxwell’s, on the 16th of May, that the first caravan from the east arrived. Clint was present when Dagget, the leader, came up to report to Maxwell. He appeared a typical freighter, stalwart, bearded, bronzed and weatherbeaten, dusty and smelling of horses.
Naturally the arrival of the first freighter that spring excited unusual interest. The men crowded around Dagget. And presently he did all the talking, while the others listened with growing breathless attention.
The North and South were at war. What had seemed a certainty was now a reality—the Union was fighting for its very existence. Soldiers were at a premium, and none or next to none could be spared for the caravans crossing the plains. Freighters were going to be difficult to engage, and only through higher wages. The government was sending soldiers from Kansas and Nebraska to strengthen all the forts. The Union commander at Fort Leavenworth, General Hunter, had called on all loyal states and territories for volunteers.
“Well, by God!” ejaculated Maxwell, his eyes like lightning. “So Sumter was fired on an’ there’s war? . . . New Mexico will secede from the Union! . . . There’ll be hell to pay out here on the frontier. I must see Kit Carson.”
“Colonel, reckon the Mexicans out hyar won’t help the situation any?” queried Dagget, shrewdly.
“No, they won’t,” returned Maxwell, decisively. “I can answer for mine. But there are Mexicans in Taos an’ Fort Union who’ll furnish arms an’ ammunition to the Indians—promise them scalps an’ plunder.”
“Thet’ll slow up the freightin’,” returned Dagget. “An’ last year there was more freight than we could haul.”
“Dagget, it’ll be worse this year. I’ll have over a hundred wagonloads. What’d you fetch out?”
“Biggest train I ever drove. Hundred an’ forty-two.”
“Lose any?”
“No. Got across fine. At Cow Creek we was jumped by Pawnees. They didn’t stand our cannon. At Phantom Island we had a brush with some Comanches. They wasn’t lookin’ for us. After buffalo an’ gave us a run. Next day we got stopped by a herd of buffalo thet took all day to pass. Goin’ north early this year.”
“It’s an early spring. Any wagons besides freighters with you?”
“Yes. We fell in with a small caravan of schooners from Texas. They joined us at Timpas. They had women an’ children, which was worrisome.”
“Ha! No wonder. I’m glad you fetched them in safe. Where are they bound?”
“Santa Fé an’ Californy. I reckon we’ll rest an’ feed up the stock hyar fer a week or two. I’ve got fifty wagons of supplies for you.”
“Good. I’m needin’ them bad enough. When can you start unloadin’?”
“Tomorrow, I reckon. How’s feed on the range?”
“Never better.”
“Wal, I’m needin’ some oats an’ grub. We’re short. Plenty of fresh meat, though.”
“Come up for dinner tonight, an’ fetch anybody. I want to hear more about the war,” concluded Maxwell.
Everybody at Maxwell’s, for that matter, wanted to hear about the war. It was the absorbing topic. It meant incalculable changes in frontier travel and life. Gambling, selling, and trading of pelts, the business of Maxwell’s store, were all suspended for the time being.
Clint was vitally and peculiarly interested, with the difference that he asked no questions
. He went from group to group and listened. The freighters, as a body, were inclined to be thrilled by prospects of the doubling of their earnings, and aghast at the probable necessity of freighting across the plains without the escort of soldiers.
Couch was jubilant. The tragedy of war between the Yankees and rebels did not seem to affect him.
“Wal, it means more an’ bigger business,” he said, rubbing his brawny hands. “We’ll double up our caravans, take two or three cannons, an’ blow hell out of the redskins.”
“But, boss,” queried one of the younger members of his clan, “haven’t some of us young fellars a pretty hard choice to make?”
“What, for instance?”
“Whether we’ll enlist in the army an’ which army?”
“No,” declared Couch, with startling suddenness that proved this question had been answered in his mind. “We freighters have got as big a duty an’ responsibility as the soldiers. If we all enlist what’s goin’ to become of the forts out here, an’ the settlers? Good many settlers comin’ west now. If the forts had to quit, these settlers wouldn’t have no protection. They’d be massacred by Injuns. . . . Don’t worry none about your duty, Bill. It’s sure to stick to our job.”
Maxwell stroked his silky beard and nodded his handsome head. “Boys, there’s a heap of sense in Couch’s talk. I believe I second it without reservation. Anyway, we’ll talk it out an’ look at it from all sides. That’s one reason I want to see Kit Carson.”
Later Jim Couch happened to espy Clint listening around a group in front of Maxwell’s store.
“Howdy, Buff! What’re you lookin’ so serious about now?” he inquired.
“Reckon everybody looks serious,” retorted Clint.
“See here. I reckon I’ve got to recognize you as a grown-up,” declared Couch. “You’re shore a big husky hombre, but you’re not twenty-one yet by some years, an’ till then you’re under my charge. You savvy?”
“But you wouldn’t compel me to go against my strong feelin’s?” protested Clint.
“Wal, no, I wouldn’t. Your dad left you in my charge, but if you kicked over the traces I reckon I’d have to stand it. Only, I hope you will listen to us older heads. Maxwell backs me up. Buff, you ask him.”
“I heard him stand by you.”
“Buff, you can do a lot for the Union, an’ more for the West, by stickin’ to your freighter job,” went on Couch, earnestly. “I’ve got several thousand dollars of yours an’ next trip to Kansas City I’ll bank it for you. These next few years will be rich ones for us. An’ some day you can settle down on a ranch out here. . . . You stick to Jim Couch.”
“I’m pulled both ways, Uncle Jim, but I reckon I ought to stay with you because my father wanted that,” replied Clint, soberly, and walked away.
Nevertheless, he had not wholly made a choice. Clint had strong patriotic leanings toward the Union. His father had anticipated the struggle between the North and the South. Often he had spoken of it to Clint, and of their duty as Northerners. Clint did not quite agree with Couch and Maxwell that his service to the freighters was as responsible as it might be to the army. He meant to talk to Kit Carson.
He strolled out across the range to get away from the crowd. He wanted to be alone, and he did not feel alone until he got out of sight of the ranch house, the Indian encampment, and the caravan of the freighters. To which end he climbed a knoll and found a resting-place under a cedar that overlooked the wide gray stretch of Maxwell’s ranch and led to the white-and-black country—the wonderful New Mexico uplands.
The Rockies to the north were snowclad, and the marble fields sloped down to the timber belt, from which the forests and canyons in turn descended to the grassy open. The sunny May day was warm and pleasant, yet a breath of the cold, pure air of the heights came down to Clint. So far he had not had much experience of the mountains, except to watch them and revel in them from afar.
Out to the south and the east, over the ranges of cedar and pine and grass, there extended a blue-hazed void that was distance. It held the magic of the Great Plains. Whatever the Rockies might come to mean to Clint, they could never minimize the prairie-land. Yet, though he sensed the strange, deep hold of the low open country, he could not bring himself to admit he loved it.
But at this time of his life, a critical one he scarcely realized, the vast spread of gray grass and purple ridge and winding lines of willow and cottonwood, the home of the buffalo and the savage, called to him with inexplicable and tremendous power. Still, he had it in him to give that up for the sake of his country, if it needed him to fight. He had no home, no relatives, except a few back in Illinois that had not been friendly or kind to his parents. He had no one to care for—to work for. If little May Bell had only never been lost!
Clint had to force himself out of sad and sweet reminiscence, but not before he had tried to picture May as she might have been at this time, a girl of sixteen, and probably the prettiest in the world.
Still, if he lived through the war he could return to the West and the life of a frontiersman. For that matter, he was hardly more likely to be killed by rebels in the East than by savages in the West. Clint considered the thing from both sides. It would be horrible to kill white men who had done him no injury. To kill Indians—the very thought sent a fiery thrill along his veins. Was it impossible for him to grow up and be like Maxwell, a friend to all red men? But the great rancher’s mother and father and little sweetheart had never been murdered by Comanches.
Clint grew dreamy in contemplation of the scene. Gradually he ceased to ponder the knotty question of war or freighting, the East or the West, the work he loved or that which he would hate. He listened to the sough of the wind in the cedar over his head, low and pleasant, a strange sound, never anything but music. And he watched the mountains awhile.
They changed with the movement of the sun and clouds. Now one of the snowy peaks split the blue sky, and again a cloud lodged against it, enveloping it down to the fringed edge of pines. Beautiful black shadow-ships crossed the vast slopes. It was an unknown and wild kingdom to him. But the trappers and the hunters and the Indians penetrated the fastnesses of gorge and canyon and timbered saddle whence they brought the furs to trade.
Clint ended as always, however, in giving his allegiance to the lowland. At his feet the gray bleached grass was blowing in the wind; down in the valley tumbleweeds were rolling along like balls; far out over the miles the yellow dust devils were rising. The gray knolls arose, some bare, others dotted with cedars, and round hills dark with pine broke the monotony; and beyond, a vast valley, bowl-shaped and speckled, lay in the hollows between the ranges; and over the center slept the blue phantom of the distant plains; and on each side sheered up the broken slopes, on and ever upward, black-belted, red-cragged, yellow and gray with open spots, and at last the purple-black that ended abruptly in the snowy domes.
Clint spent hours there, but he arrived nowhere in decision, except that the West had chained him for all of his life.
He returned to the ranch, arriving about the middle of the day, and therefore at the busiest hour, so far as a movement of the whites and Indians was concerned. The wide road leading from ranch house to store, the courtyard, the long porch, were colorful with Indians, Mexicans, and visitors from the caravans. Those from Dagget’s wagon-train were not difficult to pick out, especially the Texas contingent, among whom were women and children. They seemed to excite universal interest, especially among the Indians and the trappers.
At the store there appeared to be more business going on than during the earlier hours. Clint mingled among the customers. One blond Texan attracted his attention by reason of unusual height—he was seven feet tall, fair of hair and blue of eye, a wonderful specimen of pioneer from the Lone Star State. Clint was not short himself, but he felt small beside this giant.
Two curly-headed youngsters, boys of about five and seven, sat on some bales with hands and mouths full of candy, manifestly the first they had had fo
r a long time. They were in a rapture that both amused and touched Clint. Far indeed from their thoughts were the hardship and the peril of the frontier.
“Howdy, Johnnie!” said Clint, by way of striking up acquaintance. The lad addressed had the friendliest kind of look and smile, but he could not talk with his mouth full and his cheeks puffed out round with candy.
Next Clint was taken with more than passing interest in two young women who were making purchases. He lingered to listen to their voices. They seemed excited and happy to be safe in this wonderful place, and the stern business of pioneering at that moment was far from their thoughts.
Presently others, undoubtedly of this Texan caravan, entered the store. In all Clint’s experience west of Kansas City he had not seen together so many women and girls. He counted them. Nine! It amused him somewhat to realize that he would have liked to talk to them. But Clint was shy. He could not take advantage of even the friendliest glances. Still he realized that he was an object of interest, and put it down to the credit of his buckskin garb, or perhaps the gun he wore in his belt.
Presently, however, one of the young women giggled and said to her companion in a quite audible voice: “One of those trappers. Isn’t he handsome?”
Clint blushed and moved away. It flattered him to be taken for a trapper, but the rest of the compliment embarrassed him and he concluded he had better leave the store.
Then he turned to go out and looked into a pair of beautiful, dark, hazel eyes that gave him a shock.
A young girl had come in, accompanied by a middle-aged woman and a stalwart young man, another Texan.
The girl seemed startled, too, probably because Clint had almost collided with her.
“Say, trapper, look out aboot where you’re haidin’,” drawled the Texan, with the cool, slow, Southern accent Clint knew so well.
