Come Sundown (16 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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THE DAY AFTER Burnt Belly's vision, the great camp-together began to break up. Women took lodges down and Burnt Belly came to me and told me that it was time for me to bring trade wagons to the Big Crossing on the Canadian River again, for Kills Something's warriors wanted to resupply before taking the warpath against the whites, and they had plenty of horses and buffalo robes with which to barter. It had been decided that the Stag Moon, July, would signal the beginning of the Comanche raids on the Texas frontier. So I bid farewell to my Comanche friends and struck out with my own herd of horses to William Bent's Stockade at the mouth of the Purgatory River.
My trip was relatively uneventful, except that I was chased by a hunting party of Mescalero Apaches, my bitter enemies, and had to leave a dozen horses behind for them to capture before I finally outdistanced them. I still got to William's stockade with twenty horses, so the trip was not a total loss. Anyway, a trader who had well-nigh gone Indian did not have that much use for money in those days. I could live off the fat of the land. Hell, I could live off the gristle of the land if pressed hard enough.
The farms and fields of William Bent and Tom Boggs were beginning to take shape. When I arrived, in early May, I found their fields dotted with sheep and cattle, and rowed with corn.
I told William that the Comanches would be waiting to trade hundreds of horses to us at the Crossing by June. This is what he had sent me to arrange, and he was pleased that I had succeeded. He offered to buy the small herd of horses I had brought with me, but urged me to sit and talk with him for a while before we got down to business. We pulled two chairs out of his cabin so we could sit in the sunshine and smell the cool high plains breeze as we talked. Along with his chair, William carried a newspaper, folded and tucked under his arm.
“Things must be going smoothly enough,” I mentioned. “I've been out of touch, but I haven't heard of any Cheyenne troubles.”
William frowned. “There's trouble coming, I fear. I've resigned as Indian agent for the Cheyennes.”
“Why?”
“You know I've seen the need for some time now for a treaty. One that would secure a permanent homeland for the Cheyennes on paper, recognized by Congress. I knew the Cheyennes would have to give up some of their old haunts, but I wanted to get financial compensation for them when they did give it up.”
“I remember you planning for it over a year ago.”
“Well, the Indian Bureau finally sent a delegation out here to hold a council with the Cheyennes and Arapahos. Typical government fiasco. I didn't even get word they were coming till they were almost here. They didn't give me any time to send word out to the Indians so I could plan a council. So when the delegation got here, only a few Arapahos happened to be at the fort, and no Cheyennes at all. But at least I got a look at the treaty they had drafted. That's what convinced me I needed to resign as Indian agent.”
“I gather the conditions weren't favorable.”
“Favorable to the politicians, maybe. They wanted to force both tribes onto a reservation between the Arkansas and Sand Creek that was no bigger than Maxwell's Ranch. Well, Maxwell may be a big man, but he's just one man. And they wanted to push two nations onto a reservation the size of one white man's ranch?”
“What about the remuneration?”
William rolled his eyes at the sky. “Ha! They offered four hundred fifty thousand dollars, payable over fifteen years. You're good at numbers. Figure it out.”
“Thirty thousand a year, and the two tribes have to split it.”
“Exactly. Fifteen thousand dollars a year for each tribe. Hardly fair pay for a territory the size of a European country. And they were supposed to use the money to buy everything they needed to start farms. Now, you tell me—what the hell does a free Plains Indian know about starting a farm?”
“Jack,” I answered.
“I couldn't put my name on that treaty, Mr. Greenwood, so I resigned.”
“So, that ended it? With the treaty and the reservation, I mean?”
“Hell, no. The bureau convinced Albert Boone to take over as agent. I guess they figured the Indians would respect the grandson of a great frontiersman like Daniel Boone. Albert managed to round up a few Arapaho and Cheyenne chiefs at Fort Wise, lavished a wagon full of presents on them, and convinced them to put their X marks on a treaty they didn't even understand. The bulk of the Cheyennes and Arapahos didn't even know it was going on.”
“Same old story,” I said.
“Unfortunately.” He swatted at a fly with the newspaper he had carried out of the cabin. “I should have done something about it. Maybe I shouldn't have resigned, after all. I don't know. Anyway, the government recognizes the treaty, but the Indians don't, of course. It's gonna lead to trouble sooner or later.”
I nodded. “Don't blame yourself, Colonel Bent. There are forces out there beyond our control. We do our best. I don't know what to do for the Comanches and Kiowas half the time. I try to advise them, but I'm just one voice.”
Of course, William was anxious for news from Comancheria, so I told him what I knew. You may have wondered about this. I gathered a lot of information among the Comanches in those days—information that could have saved the lives of white people, if taken seriously. You may ask yourself what you would have done in my place. Would you have sent word to the Texas settlements that they would soon be under attack by vengeful bands of Comanches? Would that not endanger your Comanche friends?
With matters of this nature, I always sought William Bent's wisdom. For more than three decades, he had urged peace among the plains tribes where others had fomented warfare. He knew what to do and how to look at the problems on a grander scale. So many free traders, like me, came to him with news gathered from the scattered bands of the roaming nations that he possessed a greater intelligence than anyone alive concerning Indian affairs on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains. He knew the attitudes among the various tribes, the movements of war parties, the epidemics of diseases in
various Indian camps, the locations of buffalo herds, the wealth of each village in robes and horses. His mind held a social, military, political, economic, and demographic map of the nations that constantly changed and evolved season upon season, moon upon moon. Hell, he knew what most of the influential chiefs had for breakfast. So it was natural that I would take my concerns about the coming Comanche raids to William.
As I moved my chair over a little, keeping the shadow of the cabin from chilling me, I said, “The Comanches will begin raiding the Texas farms and towns in July. I've heard them make their plans in council. Should we warn somebody?”
William rolled the newspaper in his hand and thumped it against his other palm in an absentminded gesture of frustration. “It won't do a damn bit of good. Nobody knows where the Comanches are going to strike. There's not enough of them to raid the whole frontier, so they'll just pick at it here and there. We can warn the Texans, and maybe they'll post lookouts for a while, but then they'll get complacent after a week or so, and all our warnings will be forgotten. Anyway, if they didn't want to get raided, they shouldn't have moved into Comanche country with their guns cocked and their surveying instruments over their shoulders.”
“Still,” I said, “shouldn't we at least attempt to warn them? To protect ourselves, if nothing else.”
William rubbed his brow. He must have been weary of worrying himself over Indian affairs. “You're right, of course. We ought to be able to tell 'em we told 'em when the scalps start to peel. It's our duty to report these things, even if nobody takes heed. I'll write a letter to the governor in Austin, if I still remember how to write. I haven't dipped into my inkwell for months. If I write the Texas governor, maybe he'll get the newspapers to print up some warnings.”
“I've heard that Governor Houston is sensitive to Indian affairs.”
William looked at me with a wry twist to his mouth. “Governor Houston's been kicked out of office, Kid.”
This news astounded me, for Sam Houston was among the greatest of Texas heroes. As a general, he had won independence
for the Republic of Texas from Mexico, twenty-five years ago. He had served as president of the republic, U.S. senator from the state of Texas, and most recently, governor. “What could Houston possibly have done to get kicked out?” I asked.
“He refused to take the Confederate oath.”
My mind did everything it could to reject the obvious. “You mean Texas seceded?”
William reached for the newspaper under his arm. “You probably don't even know that Lincoln won the election last fall, do you? Then it started with South Carolina, back in December. After that, it was Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia … One secession after another. I forget what order they all came in. Anyway, the army will need plenty of horses.”
All I could say was, “You don't mean …”
William tossed the newspaper onto my lap. It was a copy of the
St. Louis Democrat,
only four weeks old. It must have just arrived at William's stockade on one of the Santa Fe Trail freight wagons he contracted to haul goods for the army forts out West. The front-page headlines read:
WAR! WAR! WAR!
FORD SUMTER CAPTURED!
Details of the Artillery Battle
Major Anderson Surrenders to General Beauregard
As I scanned the highly inflamed account, I could not help noticing the date of the attack: April 12, 1861.
A
remarkable thing happened to me out West as the Civil War was beginning to rage in the East—a thing I thought would never happen to me again. I fell in love. It wasn't like the time I fell for Gabriella Badillo in Taos, when her beauty instantly overwhelmed me and sent me spinning into terrific
cartwheels of elation like a bird shot from the sky. I had become too cynical for that. No pretty face could warm the cockles of my heart with a smile or a glance—I wasn't even sure my heart had cockles anymore. No, this time the feeling overtook me by degrees, one word, one laugh, one touch at a time.
The woman I fell in love with caught my eye at first sight, but her real beauty would take its time revealing itself to the depths of my heart. It began when I rode up the Purgatory from William's stockade to visit my old friend Tom Boggs, at Boggsville. Tom and Rumalda, and their growing brood of children, were still herding sheep and cattle, tending gardens, and still planning to dam the Purgatory and scratch out a canal.
Boggsville, tiny and remote as the place might be, always afforded a certain charm to a rider approaching from the vast plains that surrounded it. Perched on a parcel of fine, level ground near the Purgatory yet beyond the reach of flood waters, shaded by the boughs of ancient cottonwoods, it was the kind of place an Indian would choose to make a camp, a soldier would occupy as a supply depot, or a trapper-trader would envision as a site for rendezvous. Tom Boggs was part Indian by nature, though not by blood; part soldier by necessity of the times; and part trapper-trader by experience. Thus it was logical that he had chosen this spot to settle.
The log cabins Tom had built here only added to the wild, rustic allure of the place. The day I rode up from William's stockade to visit the denizens of Boggsville, I found three Cheyenne tipis standing between the log cabins and the Purgatory, and they, too, pleased my senses. As I rode my Comanche mount into the settlement, two young Cheyenne women happened to be walking up to the cabins from the tipis. I spotted Tom Boggs sitting on his east-facing front porch, his hands busy with some task. My horse snorted, and Tom looked my way.
I arrived at the porch about the same time as the two Cheyenne women. One of them wore a yellow blanket, probably of Navaho making, for it was a fine one, worn casually over one shoulder. This woman glanced toward me without meeting my eyes, in the Indian way. Her face was pretty—bronzed and
broad and strong—yet delicate by Cheyenne standards, a people renowned for their physical good looks. The woman with her looked like an elder sister.
I got down from my horse as Tom Boggs smiled at me and stepped down from the porch. In his left hand he held a horsehair headstall he had been building. His right hand came forward to shake mine.
“Well, I'll be doggone,” he said. “Look what the wind blew out of Comancheria.”
I shook Tom's hand, then turned to tip my hat to the Cheyenne women. The one with the yellow blanket tipped her head forward in an almost imperceptible nod, still refusing to meet my eyes with hers. And that, for the time being, was that. As I have said, the years, and my experiences, had tempered my vulnerabilities to the charms of pretty faces.
“I fear the wind will be blowing hot down there when I return,” I said to Tom.
“Then don't go back.”
“I must, and you know it.”
He grinned ever larger as he finally got through shaking my hand. “I guess so.” He turned to the visiting Cheyenne women, and spoke to them in Spanish, saying,
“La mujer de la casa está lista. Momento, por favor.”
He stepped up on the porch and cracked the front door, saying,
“Rumalda, querida, tenemos visitantes. Y una sorpresa.”
The lady of the house was ready, he had said to the women outside. And to Rumalda, inside the house, he had said, Dear, we have visitors. And a surprise.
Within seconds, Rumalda came to the door and gasped with appropriate delight when she saw me. She jumped off the porch and embraced me, seemingly amused by my embarrassment.
“It is so good to see you again, Rumalda,” I said.
“My dear Honoré,” she said apologetically, “I have promised to trade some things with my Cheyenne friends.”
“We will visit later,” I replied. “I'll be around for several days before heading back to trade with the Comanches.”
Tom slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Come on, let's go look at the cows.”
Well, I had seen cows before, but the prospect of a ride with
an old friend on this fine day suited me, and we spent hours seeking the high rolls in the plains to count heads on cattle. We found the cattle thriving on the rich prairie grasses, and only once did we ride into a flurry of black vulture wings to inspect the carcass of a calf that had fallen victim to wolves.
“We lose a third of our calf crop to wolves,” Tom said. “Seems these ol' cows can fight 'em off most times, but the calves don't have a prayer if they get caught away from their mama. Any wolf you see, Orn'ry, I want you to kill it, you hear?”
“I hear you. How's the market for cattle? Is it worth the trouble?”
“It is now that the war has started. We're filling army beef contracts in three territories. We've trailed cows as far north as Fort Laramie. That's to say nothing of the beef we send to the Indian agencies.”
“Speaking of Indians,” I said, rather casually. “Who are the women camped at Boggsville?”
“Daughters of Lone Bear. The oldest one, called Amache, is married to John Prowers.”
“I remember John—from Bent's Old Fort. He still trading?”
“That he is. Left his wife and her sister here for safekeeping so he could make the rounds among some Utes.”
“What's the sister's name?”
Tom chuckled. “They call her Appears-with-the-West-Wind. I can't pronounce it in Cheyenne.”
“Nomeme-ehne,” I said.
“That sounds about right. I'll tell you something else about those gals. They're smart as a whip. They speak about a dozen languages between them, and they act like they can't speak English, but they sure understand it. They'll talk to you in Spanish, but not in English. West Wind—the one you fancy with the yellow blanket—she can cipher numbers, too. Does it all in her head. She can multiply and divide, count money—American or Mexican—and even figure percentages and exchange rates, all in her head.”
“How do you know that?”
“John Prowers told me. Says sometimes he takes the sisters around to the trading houses and camps and to the Indian
agency, and West Wind helps him make his negotiations and divvy up goods and things. Says she never makes a mistake.”
“Are you sure she hasn't been to school somewhere?”
“No, she can't read or write.”
This I found interesting. I had known many an Indian among the various tribes to possess intelligence beyond the common white man, but few so readily grasped things to which their cultures had never been introduced—like percentages. Almost all Indians could count into the hundreds and thousands. They could leave painted representations of numbers in the form of pictographs. The Indians also used common sense division and multiplication.
But seldom had I heard of an uneducated Indian who could figure percentages and count money. Especially a woman, for women were expected to keep their minds on their work and their children, and they had plenty of both to tend. This West Wind, the pretty and unassuming Cheyenne girl with the yellow blanket, was becoming more and more interesting to me. I understood a mind that needed no prodding to cipher. My mind forever whirred with numbers and fractions, angles and degrees, equations and coefficients. Was West Wind a genius like me? Imagine two souls such as ours meeting way out here in one of the last wild places. What were the odds?
Of course, I was letting my hopes get too far ahead of probabilities, but some things did supersede mathematical chances.
Luckily, about that time, something occurred to take my mind off the intriguing West Wind. We trotted over a rise in the prairie and spotted a lone wolf skulking along about three hundred yards ahead. Instantly, the wolf tucked his tail and ran for his life. Without a word, Tom Boggs spurred his cow pony to a gallop. As he charged ahead of me, he took his reata down from his saddle strings and built a loop. Tom had lived for years in California and had learned to whirl a rawhide noose from the old rancheros. His cow pony was trained to chase whatever fled, be it bovine, equine, bruin, or canine, and a run of almost two miles got us close enough for Tom to throw a loop at that terrified lobo. With no timber in sight, the wolf had nowhere to brush up.
By the time the rawhide passed over his nose, Tom was already jerking the slack with one hand and his reins with the other. The pony slid to a stop on his haunches, the rawhide tightened, and the wolf somersaulted at the end of the rope. The poor fear-stricken canine jumped up in an instant and ran, half-blinded by shock, right under Tom's horse, who started bucking as the reata sang about his ankles. I drew my pistol, paced the doomed wolf with the muzzle, and sent a bullet through his brain, for I was a good pistol shot, even when shooting from the saddle at a moving target. The wolf's body folded and rolled and he lay there limp, the only movement about him being the wind making his fur wiggle.
Tom's horse only bucked harder when I fired, but Tom seemed unflustered. Even with his pony crow-hopping and switching ends, Tom had kept an eye on the wolf and my marksmanship, and now, as he forked his spry mount and pulled at the bridle reins, he sang out, “Good shot, Orn'ry!” A moment later, he yelled, “Yee-ha!” and soon had his wild cow pony checked.
The wolf? We left him to the vultures, of course. It was probably one of the wolves that had been preying upon Tom's calves. Maybe not. Those were the days when a man was honor bound to kill a wolf on sight. The days when men were not afraid to ride green horses that were not afraid to run wild carnivores. How could I have known then that in years to come, I would sit outdoors at night and almost weep for want of hearing the lonely howl of a wolf?

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