The Lost Wagon Train

by Zane Grey

  “How’d you last so long on the frontier?”

  “Jest luck. An’ I can dodge.”

  “Latch, he packs a gun with six notches cut on the handle,” interposed Leighton.

  “Shore. They was on it when I stole the gun,” agreed Blaise.

  Latch came speedily to a decision. This fellow would be less dangerous for the present if he were taken along with the outfit. Latch had no great worry about getting rid of an undesirable. Blaise had had too much of Leighton’s society to be left at Fort Union.

  “Suppose you throw in with us and take whatever comes along,” suggested Latch, to both men.

  They agreed without question. Whereupon Latch told them to get horses and packs in readiness. “We have wagon, team, supplies. I’m as weak as a sick cat. But if I can’t sit up I’ll ride lying down.”

  They planned to pack that day and leave in the morning with the wagon train bound east. When they got as far as they cared to have company, Latch could explain that he wanted to travel more slowly on account of his condition.

  When he and Cornwall left the saloon Cornwall said: “Leighton has some good reason for wanting to pull out quick.”

  “I gathered that, Lester. Well, the sooner the better. It is not safe for me to have him hanging around these forts. The great mistake all these border outlaws make is to show their faces.”

  “Colonel, as far as Leighton is concerned the only safe way to have him is dead.”

  “God! what a blood-thirsty kid you are!”

  “I might say, ‘God! what a queer dreamer you are!’ I see through this border life, and if I cared a jot about living I’d know how to last a little while, anyway.”

  “Listen to the young sage,” scoffed Latch, though he never took Cornwall lightly. “Just how ought / conduct myself on this frontier to survive?”

  “Seven out of ten good men will fail to survive this West. Not one bad man ever will. Colonel, you are really a good man gone bad. If you must—well, make wagon trains vanish from the face of the earth, make them few and far between—and expect to hang.”

  “No rope for me. Not Steve Latch!” replied Latch, breathing hard.

  “Why don’t you start now?”

  “What?”

  “Your idea of giving up this life.”

  “I mean to. Will you come with me, Lester?”

  “Yes. You’ll need some one to help you live down what you’ve already done. Just so long as one of these outlaws remains above ground you will never be safe.”

  Latch was glad indeed to reach his tent and to lie down again. He sent Cornwall to the Tullt and Co. store to complete purchase of supplies and to ascertain if one wagon would haul the lot, and if not, to buy another. Thereafter, while Latch was resting and dreaming, the hours passed until late afternoon, when Kit Carson called.

  “Howdy, Latch,” was his hearty greeting. “Glad to see you can walk about.”

  “I’m feeling fine. Weak yet. But restless for the trail. I’ll be leaving in a day or two.”

  “So soon? Sorry to see you go. By the way, I slipped up on the deal for pelts. They are pretty foxy in there at Tullt’s. My Ute friends had sold out.”

  “Thanks just the same, Carson. Maybe it’s as well. I’m going to get short of funds sooner or later.”

  “Latch, it’ll be sooner if you hit the trail with that Leighton an’ his outfit,” declared Carson, bluntly.

  “You don’t say! Well…I told you I was hiring a bunch of hard border men.”

  “Do you know this Leighton?”

  “Not very well. He’s a Southerner—foot-loose and——”

  “Shore, I appreciate you’d rather have Rebels,” interrupted Carson as Latch paused. “Leighton has been under suspicion here. I don’t mind tellin’ you. Better profit by this hunch. He is playin’ a deep game of some kind, most likely against you. If you do take Leighton, be shore an’ sleep with one eye open. Whatever Leighton has been in the past, he’s headed now on a downgrade. Foot-loose men who drink an’ gamble an’ cavort with the camp sluts must have money. They are not the kind to help the West along. They hold it back. An’ soon they get caught an’ stop lead or stretch hemp.”

  “Have you talked with Leighton?”

  “Twice. Yesterday I bumped into him at Tullt’s an’ I said: ‘Say, Leighton, you must have been a good-lookin’ fellar before you got that scar? … ’ He cussed somethin’ fierce an’ said that was none of my—— ——business. An’ I come back at him, ‘Wal, I seen you was the kind of man who never wore a glove on his right hand an’ was lookin’ sharp to see some one first?’… I know men on the border. This Leighton is not a clean, hard-shoot-in’ outlaw like Handy. That fellar won’t do you dirt. But Leighton will. I hope you take my hunch.”

  Latch, after Kit Carson’s departure, experienced both elation and misgiving. Carson’s friendliness established the fact that Latch was still above suspicion in the eyes of soldiers and scouts at the fort. But never again could he give Leighton the benefit of a doubt.

  Three days out of Fort Union the east-bound caravan under Scout Dave Prescott halted at Stinking Springs for camp. It was a big wagon train, with heavily loaded wagons drawn by oxen, and therefore made but slow progress. Prescott was strong for taking the Dry Trail at Wagon Mount, thereby cutting off from ten days to three weeks on the route to Fort Dodge. The caravan, under escort, had little to fear from Indians.

  Latch had found riding in a wagon less of an ordeal than he had anticipated. To be sure, his second wagon, affording plenty of room, had been fitted up with a comfortable bed where he could lie at length or sit up and look about as the caravan rolled along. He had his camp separate from the freighters, where his men, Leighton, Black Hand, Augustine, Cornwall, and the two new members, Blaise and Handy, with the two Kiowas, took their turn at the chores. Blaise’s boast about his proficiency as a camp cook had not been a vain one.

  Away from Fort Union a few days, and gradually working into trail travel, the men settled down into a sort of comradeship. Drink was always the deterrent, and gambling left no chance for naturally agreeable impulses. Latch passed for a convalescent rancher returning to his ranch on a distant range east and south of the Canadian.

  “Wal, I don’t know the country hyar aboots,” said Prescott, who had taken to Latch, “but it runs in my mind thet’s Kiowa country.”

  “Wal, it shore is, scout,” drawled Latch.

  “How’n hell do you keep from havin’ yore har raised, let alone losin’ all yore stock?” queried Prescott.

  “By being a real friend to the redskins.”

  “Humph! Readin’ a leaf oot of Maxwell’s book, huh?”

  “Not on such a grand scale. I’m just starting. My range is as fine as the Vermigo. And my place will beat Maxwell’s all hollow. Of course, in time. I’m just feeling my way now.”

  Other freighters joined Prescott around the camp fire where Latch sat propped in an easy-chair. A cigar and a nip of fine brandy awaited all who visited Latch—a fact that was jealously kept secret by the freighters who had discovered it. Among them was Jim Waters, who was to become, a few years later, one of the most famous of the trail bosses, and to lose his life at the great Comanche raid at Pawnee Rock. He was a young man then, a giant in stature, Western born and already a trained scout.

  “Latch, you’ve got the right idea,” he agreed. “Most redskins remember a kindness an’ never forget an injury. Do you know Satana?”

  “I’ve seen him once. Why do you ask?”

  “Wal, he’s the Kiowa chief that pulls a lot of tricks Satock gets the credit for. I know. Both of these chiefs have rid up to my camp fires. I’d be leary of Satock. But I’d trust Satana. Mean-lookin’ runt of a reddy. Fierce as hell!”

  “Where are these chiefs now?” asked Latch.

  “Lord only knows. Your guide is a Kiowa. I’ll see if I can pump him,” replied Waters, and addressed the Kiowa. Hawk Eye could talk fairly well in the white man’s tongue, a fact he concealed here. H
e appeared to be a proud, calm, taciturn brave. His replies to Waters were brief but instant, and his gestures as ready and expressive.

  “Satock is on the war-path with the Pawnees,” said Waters, presently. “An’ Satana is far south on the Red River, waitin’ for the buffalo herds to come north.”

  “Speakin’ of Kiowas,” spoke up Prescott. “It struck me that Kit Carson, Beaver Adams, an’ them other scouts at Union are damn particular keen this spring.”

  “How so?” queried Waters. “They’re a lazy lot of trappers an’ like nothin’ better than a powwow around the camp fire.”

  “Wal, I don’t know,” replied Prescott, thoughtfully. “They damn near got me drunk before I knowed they was quizzin’ me. … Waters, did you ever hyar of Bowden’s lost wagon train?”

  “Shore. I’ve heahed aboot ’em all.”

  “Wal, it so happens that I was in charge of the wagon train followin’ Bowden out of Dodge, year an’ a half ago. Kit Carson ’peared not to have any particular interest. He asked me plumb straight where Bowden camped last on the Dry Trail. An’ I told him Tanner’s Swale. Thet satisfied Carson, I reckon. But the other scouts talked me dizzy.”

  “So you was thet scout!” ejaculated Waters.

  “Yes. An’ I always was a little testy aboot thet,” admitted Prescott. “You see, I was in a hurry. You know how a fellar feels on thet Dry Trail. An’ I didn’t take no particular trouble aboot Bowden’s campin’ at Tanner’s. How’n hell was I to know his wagon train got lost right there? But it shore did. I found no more trace of Bowden. Reckoned it strange. Didn’t bother my haid. Didn’t want to think aboot it. So later at Independence, when I got called on the carpet aboot it, I wasn’t any too damn pleased.”

  “Wal, Dave, you ought to have seen more,” returned Waters, gravely.

  “Hell, yes. But I didn’t”

  “Have you been by Tanner’s since?”

  “Nary time. An’ I ain’t keen aboot it this time. Shore, we could lick Satock an’ Satana with Nigger Hoss throwed in. But I ain’t hankerin’ to fight.”

  “Tell you what, Dave. If this wagon-train raidin’ don’t stop I’m goin’ to haul a six-pound brass cannon.”

  “Cannon! What in hell for?”

  “To turn loose on the reddys.”

  Prescott laughed heartily at the idea of a trail boss imagining he could intimidate or deplete a bunch of Kiowas with an army cannon.

  “Lot of heavy haulin’ all for naught,” declared he.

  “Wal, you wait an’ see,” replied Waters, doggedly. “I’ve been a gunner an’ I know what I can do.”

  Latch had felt a slow fire return to heat out the icy terror in his vitals. The camp-fire blaze had temporarily burned down, so that he sat in comparative shadow. What a strained, fixed attention sat upon Leighton and Black Hand! Or was that in himself?

  “What about this—Bowden’s lost wagon train?” he asked, casually, after puffing out a cloud of cigar smoke. “Runs in my mind I’ve heard that name… Bowden.”

  Whereupon he was compelled to hear again the story of the famous lost caravan. This time it had an intense interest because related by the scout who had followed Bowden on the Dry Trail. Prescott had more to say than had any other narrator of that tragic event. Another drink of brandy certainly warmed his tongue. He had met Bowden in Fort Dodge and described him minutely. He remembered the red-headed daughter—or was it niece?—and the children. Latch’s ears, however, dinned and closed and dinned again around that thundering and terrible juncture of Prescott’s story. Prescott remembered having found a baby’s shoe—something he said he forgot to tell the commanding officer at Fort Bent. He had recalled it, however, for the scouts at Union.

  The camp-fire scene would live in Latch’s memory—Hawk Eye watching the glowing embers with inscrutable eyes—Leighton sitting in shadow like a statue—Cornwall in the light, his beautiful face cold, serene, as inscrutable as the Kiowa’s—the vaquero smoking his cigarette, his sloe-black gaze on the storyteller—Black Hand dropping his shaggy head. Latch saw only these men who knew.

  Next day Latch’s outfit slowly climbed the plateau alone. Prescott’s caravan already resembled a long white thread growing hazy far out and down on the Dry Trail. All that day Latch lay sick and clamped on his bed in the wagon. But he crawled out at sunset when camp was made in a clump of cedars, high up, with cold water running from the rocks. He walked about, gradually recovering. The loneliness, the wildness of the scene, the smell of burning cedar and the trickle of water, the call of the owls and wail of the coyotes—all these prevailed upon his mind and worked on the ever-returning dread.

  Days later, when Hawk Eye led the small train down the stony range to the brink of Spider Web Canyon, Latch was the old Latch again. Strength and force had returned, at least enough to give him activity.

  How well he remembered the place—a singular stony surface all along the rim, worn by wind and rain, a hard gneiss—like rock that left no sign of iron-shod hoof or wheel. Cedars grew thickly in spots where there was earth to take root in. A brook slid down a rut in the rock. And the strange cleft called Spider Web Canyon yawned below, filled with sunset gold and purple. This point was a day’s ride from that part of the canyon where Latch had established his cabin—where Cynthia would be waiting. His troubled hungry heart leaped up in his breast. Only stern control kept him from acting like a madman. He walked away from his comrades so he could not hear any more. Leighton’s “By God! right there is where my Tullt and Company Number One A wagon went over the rim!” was all Latch could bear.

  How well he remembered that red-lettered wagon go sliding down the gradual grade, to gather momentum, to screetch its iron wheels on the rock, to leap off the rim into space! Latch heard again the faint crash come up from below. The Bowden wagon by some chance had been left to the last. All the others had preceded it down that slope into the abyss. All empty except for stinking, putrid bodies of the members of Bowden’s lost wagon train! The fifty-three loads of supplies, bedding, tents, hardware, rifles and ammunition, had been cached for pack transportation down the canyon, to be lowered over the rim on ropes—a gigantic labor that took months. All these details came back to Latch while he fought to contain himself, to keep sane a few days longer. And as he gazed the strange beauty and solitude of this Kiowa retreat flooded over him. It was so far down to the rim from where he stood that he could only make out the smoky void. But the opposite rim stood out, limned in gold, ragged with its cedars, cracked and seamed with all the western wall, in strange variance there to the wall farther down, where the rock sheered stupendously high and unbroken. A lonely rent in the earth! A burrow for a hunted man! Latch’s blood ran wild, his pulses throbbed, his eyes dimmed so that the purple abyss and the ragged breaks blurred, his dry lips would not have given utterance to the beloved name, Cynthia, even if she had appeared before him. Would she be well, happy, sure of his return, faithful, with those red lips parted? Incredible as he knew his conviction was, yet he felt it in his overcharged heart, in his surging blood. She was one woman in a million, all love, all passion, unabatable and unquenchable. He yielded to thought of her kisses, her embraces. His remorse at the long separation followed in poignant sweeps, like great waves against a dam. But he had prepared her for a possible long wait. She loved solitude, nature. She would never grow tired of Spider Web Canyon. The days would slip into months while she dreamed, worked, studied, waited. Thus he soothed the still small voice of conscience, thus he stilled the thunder of his rumbling heart, thus he clung rapturously to his fool’s dream.

  A possible wagon route from this camp on the rim of Spider Web down to Latch’s Field drew the Kiowa guide back on the high plateau to the north. The supplies Latch had hauled were for the ranch which Keetch had been instructed to develop. So Latch had to forego the tumultuous rapture of a glimpse of Cynthia’s log cabin in the depths of Spider Web Canyon. He bore this patiently. Only a few more days!

  On the second day, late in the afternoon, Hawk
Eye led out upon the edge of the sloping plateau to a point where the valley containing Latch’s Field unrolled in magnificent panorama below. The Indian’s gesture had something grand in its slow-sweeping, all-possessing motion. It thrilled Latch, as if it signified that here something great would come to pass.

  Dry camp was made on this slope. It would require another day to wind down the zigzag trail and cross to the head of the valley. Meanwhile Latch sought a point where he could see to advantage.

  The hour was near sunset. Golden rays swept down from the hills to burn the green of the range and the timber. Far down the valley black ragged patches blotted out the gray of valley floor. Buffalo! The immense herd was on the way north, and straggling bunches had wandered into the gateway. Satana, with his hunters, would be down there.

  The head of the valley—the thousands of acres Latch had bought from the Kiowa chieftain and had called Latch’s Field—lay only twelve or fifteen miles distant as a crow flew. The soft purple of the groves contrasted vividly with the open spaces of gold. What a lovely protected valley! It was going to be a home. And at its back door opened the secret canyon passage to Satana’s hiding. Already Latch felt safe. If he never committed another crime, surely this valley would be a haven. Latch longed with a terrible longing to be left alone there with his lovely wife.

  With his naked eye he could make out the dark ragged cleft in the notch of the bluff where Spider Web Creek emerged, the wandering line of sunset-flushed willows, the groves of cottonwood and walnut, the numberless spaces of grassy meadow between the trees, and lastly the open range, rolling vast and solitary down to the prairie.

  With the aid of his glass he saw the corrals and barns and ranchhouse Keetch had been instructed to start. The latter appeared an unfinished structure, yellow in the sunlight, with stretched wings like a fort. When completed, this ranch-house would be second only to Maxwell’s.

  Across the brook and farther down Latch made out log cabins, widely separated. With the cattle grazing around they had every appearance of being smaller ranches that certainly had not been there when last he had surveyed that scene. These occasioned him concern. Keetch could scarcely have gone beyond his instructions.