Redeye (10 page)

“Has he got a job?” I asked Zack.

“He works for the government. Surveying or some such. I met him after the war. And he did some trapping somewhere along in there. We did some of the last big cattle drives for the Bridger Company. We drove one bunch from Texas up to Oregon and got lost in the mountains up there. God awful trip. His eyes were just starting to go bad then. In fact that's the trip we gave out of food and had to kill a mule. You ever had any mule's head soup?”

“Nosir.”

“We did. Without salt. It's better with salt.”

“What's wrong with his eyes, anyway?”

“Red and swolled. He has to wear them glasses.”

“He looks poorly.”

“He is poorly. He always was. Always looked that way, except he used not to have a beard. And he's pretty old. Looks old. He's probably on up in his sixties. Seems like his mind wanders sometimes. I have heard that he killed a man over in Parson Creek, a Mormon, somebody said a Jack Mormon, but I don't put no stock in it.”

“Is that a Mormon that ain't a Mormon no more?”

“That's about it. They won't let you go—they have to kick you out.”

“Do you believe all that about Joseph Smith?”

“That's as easy to believe as any of it. I just ain't ever took real good to the Beacon City Mormons. My folks was a different brand of Mormon.”

“I don't like that Bishop.”

“He's a hard man. I've heard he was involved in the Mountain Meadows.”

“Did you ever know anybody involved in it?”

“No, but I remember hearing about it when I was nine years old. I know I was nine because we'd just moved to Salt Lake City. I heard it whispered more or less and you got a clear idea that it was something that wouldn't be talked about, something that Mormons were ashamed of. Since then I've heard sides—one that the Indians did it, one that the Mormons did it. One that the wagon train was guilty of doing something to the Indians, one that they was innocent. Then there was the Calvin Boyle trial. But I remember the men and women in our church back when I was a boy. They was mighty good people. People that would give you the shirts off their backs. Mighty good. I don't really know what happened at Mountain Meadows, and so that's my opinion on it.”

. . . The West has never been without its foreigners, large and small, clean and dirty, smart and dumb, handsome and ugly, fierce and timid, rich and poor, &c. Arriving in Mumford Rock
about the same time as Cobb Pittman and Star Copeland was a young Englishman, one Andrew Collier. Collier was of distinguished upper-class English stock . . .

Merriwether Ranch
Mumford Rock, Colorado
United States of America
August 19, 1891

Dear Father,

This correspondence brings an urgent request toward which I fervently hope you will be favourably inclined. Rather than continue west across the Pacific to Asia, thence home to England, I wish to remain here in Colorado and return in the spring by an easterly route. As you hear more about my present circumstances, I hope you will concur.

The landscape here is splendid. The state of Colorado is an alpine region of high mountains and generally rugged terrain. Here, around a ranch in the southwest extreme of the state, the landscape is substantially different from that to the north and east. Here, rather than high mountains, there exists a desert-like terrain formed by plateaus that rise in terraces, and are occasionally laced by gigantic furrows called “canyons,” an adaptation of the Spanish name. On the cusp of the geological
change from the mountains to the plateau region is situated the small mining town, Mumford Rock. Abel Merriwether's ranch is approximately eight miles west of Mumford Rock, which is in turn twenty miles southwest of another town, Garvey Springs. A recently established railroad connects Mumford Rock, Garvey Springs, and Denver, Colorado, the latter being the commercial centre of the state.

The Bright Owl River, just west of the ranch, runs northeast by southwest. Across the Bright Owl from the ranch is the eastern point of Mesa Largo, the most eminent and extensive mesa in the region—over sixty miles long, and ten to thirty miles wide. The mesa, I am told, is covered on its flat top with small cedars and piñon (
Juniperus occidentalis
and
Pinus cembroides
), which are able to withstand the area's searing summer heat.

Within Mesa Largo, along canyon walls, hidden away, are cliff dwellings once inhabited by prehistoric Indians. I am hopeful about the possibility of exploring these dwellings and recording my findings in detail. Only in the last four years has Abel Merriweather—the local cowboy and rancher (and a first-rate chap) on whose ranch I now reside—discovered that Mesa Largo is probably full of cliff dwellings like those described in your Ferguson's
Aztec Ruins
. Only a few such dwellings have been discovered in isolated canyons in New Mexico and Arizona (nearby territories) and in Brown Canyon, Colorado.

I am told that the local population believes all pottery from
Mesa Largo is only “old Aztec stuff.” But Merriwether is convinced we're onto something quite different. As plans advance I will send reports, and will surely write from the mesa itself once we are upon it.

I have uncovered only one study of cliff dwellings in the region. Completed in 1874, it is sketchy at best. Father, I do believe that I could be the first explorer to contribute significant narrative detail based upon systematic observations in Mesa Largo. Many exciting questions arise. During what era did the cliff dwellers arrive on Mesa Largo? When did they leave? Why did they leave? How were their culture and daily lives related to the Mescadey and the pueblo dwellers to the south of Mumford Rock, and to other agricultural and even nomadic tribes of this region?

Upon my return to England I shall endeavour faithfully to convert my findings into a book-length publication that might well establish these people as being worthy of future archaeological study.

Father, my extended stay will make necessary about two hundred pounds for my expenses during the next six months. Would you please arrange for my trust to send the funds in said amount to me, in care of the Merriwether Ranch, Mumford Rock, Colorado, USA? I should be most grateful. A portion of these funds will be used to outfit myself for trips into the mesa.

Warmest regards to Mother. Please convey my love to Mary Charlotte and tell her that I am thinking of her and that I
imagine her applying herself to her studies with gusto, especially to her Latin, which will certainly be of service in her botany lessons next year.

With Sincerest Regards and
with Love,
Your devoted son,
Andrew

Next morning, the road we got on was mostly rutted. Mr. Pittman said it was made by the Mormons when they first come out here. By the time it was getting hot we had left the river for good. The road dropped down to an arroyo and we went along it with Zack, Mr. Pittman, and the bell cow up front, and me bringing up the rear. We had tall mountains to the east and mostly mesas and buttes to the west. We were in a long valley. It was getting just as hot as the day before.

At dinnertime we drove the cows into the shade of some bushy little trees that looked like buffalo berry, but wasn't. We ate the same stuff we'd been eating, but added some beans.

After dinner we started along a little sand flat in the arroyo, and saw right off that two cows were missing. The only place they could have gone was up this little finger gorge in the plateau, a right considerable mesa, but not close to as big as Mesa Largo. There was a little draw close by where we could corral
the cows and mules while we tracked the missing ones. Mr. Pittman said he'd stay with the cattle—and that he had some work to do with Redeye.

Once we got a ways up the gorge on a narrow ledge along the wall of the plateau, we got off the horses, hobbled them, and blocked the trail so they couldn't go back down. We started up on foot. Cattle hoofprints were right there along the ledge. Zack said it didn't make sense that they'd be going up, unless they was smelling water. He said they could smell better than a deer.

The cliff below us had started out at ten or fifteen feet high, but had gotten higher and higher until we was I guess over eighty feet straight up walking along this ledge which was down to less than four feet across, and if you looked down you got dizzy. We thought there might be a tank or a spring on top where we'd find our cattle.

The ledge ended up ahead of us where there'd been a old slide, but when we got a little closer we saw a new slide—which had taken out a big rock that must have rested right in the middle of the ledge because when we got near we saw that there was a hole in the slide that you could step through and it led into a kind of cave.

We stepped through and there was all these little rooms all built together and looking really . . . old. Light come in through a big opening on the far side. It was a cliff dwelling—looked like what Star had told me about Mr. Merriwether finding in Mesa Largo. I'd never seen one. And there stood the cows at a seep spring back where the cave wall met the cave floor, just like a
slanting attic wall. The rooms were crumbled in most places and the whole place was covered by the roof of this cave. The cave floor, before the slide, had been a ledge that dropped off into the canyon. It was a more or less long shallow cave right in the wall of the cliff. Some of the littlest square rooms were on top of each other. There was little doors in the walls shaped like a fat T. You could tell they was doors and not windows because the windows were smaller and there wadn't no way to get in except through these short doors. The place had to be very, very old. We went into a room that was about six feet by six feet and less than head high. It was by itself, off from the others. Somehow it all made me want to measure everything.

Inside was corncobs everywhere, and four tall standing pots, two broken by the fallen rocks and two whole ones, and there was some very old skins piled in a corner. The smell was some kind of ancient smell of dryness, no dampness—a smell I'd never smelt before. Not bad, just different.