A Trail Too Far

by Robert Peecher

  "Three miles?" Amos said.

  "That's right. You'll get there after dark, but you won't have trouble finding it. It's just off the trail to the south, along a big stand of trees that follows the Pawnee Fork River. They's a ford there for crossing the Pawnee, and you can find it in the dark, no problem."

  "I would like to speak to the commander of the Fort. It's a matter of urgency," Amos said. He suspected he could trust D.B., but he did not know for sure and did not want to risk making a mistake by telling him about the men following.

  "Oh, well, the commander ain't there. Did you see any Injuns on the way in?"

  "We did not," Amos said. "Who is in command at the fort in the commander's absence?"

  "Well, nobody," D.B. said. "Word came in a few days ago about depredations back east a ways. Ain't but fifty cavalrymen at the fort anyway, and half of them were gone off on a scout to the north. When word came in about the Indian attacks, those that was left set tracks to the east."

  D.B. leaned toward Amos on the wagon, squinted his eyes and said in a hushed, meaningful way, "Dog Soldiers, prob'ly."

  "Where did this happen?" Amos asked.

  "Back near Council Grove."

  "We came through there a few days ago. Maybe a week ago. We ate at the Hays House. Rab said it was one of the last tastes of civilization we would have until we reach Santa Fe."

  "Hays House is good eating," D.B. said. "I like to get over there every couple of months for a bite, myself. Spend a day or two at Council Grove."

  "Tell me about these Indian attacks," Amos said.

  "A whole family was butchered. It happened not far from Six Mile Station, which I'm sure you passed. Terrible thing. They say them Injun bastards violated a young woman and her mama. Terrible thing. And then they killed a farmer and took his wagon."

  "Took his wagon?" Amos asked. "Like a buckboard wagon?"

  "Well, I reckon it could be like a buckboard wagon. It was Ted Gibson, a sod buster from out that way. He was on his way home after getting supplies and never made it home. His wife knew the route, and she found his body. But the wagon was gone. When word came in of Ted Gibson's murder and that other family, what was left of the cavalry all left out of Fort Larned and headed east."

  Amos Cummings had a sick feeling. If D.B. had only mentioned the family that was killed, he might not have suspected anything. But something about a farmer's wagon made his stomach clench. Was it possible that the men following them with the wagon were responsible for that murder, at least?

  "Do they know for sure that it was Indians?" he asked. "Were there witnesses?"

  "They found a knife at the farm that's definitely a Cheyenne knife. That's why they think it's Dog Soldiers. I don't mind telling you, we've been on alert here. If renegade Indians are raiding as far east as Council Grove, there's no reason to think they won't come here and do it, too. But if they think the fort is occupied they won't dare come near us."

  "If the fort is vacant, then perhaps it would be best for us to stop here for tonight," Amos said.

  "Sure," D.B. said happily. "Right up there. That's where you want to camp. Best grazing we've got left around the station, just now. It's been so dry these last two years that there ain't much for good grazing anyway, and now it's well chewed over."

  Amos drove his wagon into the area that D.B. indicated, and the station hand walked the entire way with the wagon train, glad to have strangers to chat with. He walked from Amos's wagon all the way along to the last one driven by Stuart Bancroft, greeting each of the drivers and introducing himself.

  He made faces to Stuart and Rebekah's young children, he took his hat off for Martha and Rachel, and he chatted a bit with Stuart about Indian depredations.

  When at last all the wagons were in place and driven into a half circle, D.B. stayed to help spread out the livestock and picket them.

  When that work was done, D.B. invited the group to come to the station for supper.

  "We've got the biggest pot of stew you've ever seen cooking on the fire. We're expecting a coach to come in later this evening, but there's plenty for you, too."

  "Thank you," Amos said. "We're obliged. We'll take you up on the offer. Just let us get things settled here."

  When D.B. walked off, Amos took Stuart away from the camp and told him about the Indian attacks.

  "You think those men who were following us might have killed the farmer?" Stuart asked.

  "I think it's possible," Amos said, noting that Stuart reached the same conclusion without him saying it.

  "If they killed the farmer, they might also have killed the family," Stuart said.

  "Might have," Amos agreed.

  "Where is Rab Sinclair?" Stuart asked.

  Amos ignored the question. "I am uncomfortable leaving the camp unattended and going to supper at the station house. It's light now, but we would be coming back to camp after dark. Those men could be in our camp waiting for us."

  "You and the women and children go on up to supper," Stuart suggested. "I'll stay here and keep a watch on the camp. Leave Jeremiah and Graham with me. When you come back, the three of us will walk up to the station house for supper."

  "Do we have an obligation to go and look for Rab?" Amos asked.

  Stuart shrugged his shoulders. "I honestly don't know."

  The station consisted of a large wooden barn and a fenced paddock for spare horses. The station house was a flat, adobe building with rooms for the station manager and his hand, a large kitchen, a store with a few supplies, and a great room with two large tables for feeding travelers.

  Silas Carver, the station manager, sat next to Amos Cummings as they ate.

  "D.B. says that Rab Sinclair is your guide, but that he ain't with you," Silas said. "Seems an odd way to guide a wagon train."

  "We ran into some trouble," Amos said. "We had four men following us. Three were mounted and one drove a buckboard wagon. Mr. Sinclair had some reservations about these men. And so yesterday afternoon we stopped as if to make camp, but after sundown we left the camp and drove the wagons through the night."

  Silas was older than D.B., and his round belly told the tale of which one of the two did all the manual labor at the stagecoach station. When it came time to harness and hitch up a new horse team, it was D.B. doing that work. Silas, while he might have been handy when he was younger, had reached an age where managing the station and doing the cooking was the extent of what he could offer. His beard was the color of ash, and his smallish eyes were quick. D.B.'s naturally friendly attitude might have made him seem a bit oafish, but Amos was certain that Silas Carver missed nothing.

  "That doesn't explain what happened to Rabbie," Silas said.

  "I was the last wagon to leave the camp. He told me drive on and not wait for him. He said he was going to stay back for a bit." Amos paused, not sure if he should say any more. But Silas was looking at him in a way that made him say the rest of what he had on his mind. "We're not sure if he confronted the men who were following us or if he has abandoned us."

  Silas nodded thoughtfully and looked at D.B.

  "You know him better than I do. My impression was that he was an honest man. What do you think, D.B.? Would Rab Sinclair agree to guide these folks to Santa Fe and leave them?"

  "I don't hardly think so," D.B. said. "You don't think he went after them fellows and had trouble, do you?"

  Silas took a drink of water from his metal cup and then breathed heavily through his large nose.

  "Hard to say what might have happened."

  The conversation at the table fell silent. Even the young Bancroft children seemed to understand that something serious was being discussed, and they kept their talk to their mother to a whisper.

  It was Matthew Cummings who broke the silence.

  "I think Mr. Sinclair is fine," he said.

  "Course he is," D.B. agreed. "Rabbie's just a little bit young, but he knows how to survive. You don't grow up among the Osage and the Cheyenne without learning a thing a two."


  "Do you think these men who followed us could have been responsible for the murder of that farmer?" Amos asked, directing the question to Silas.

  Again, Silas took a long time to answer, chewing on a piece of meat from the stew.

  "Could be," he said. "I hate to think of white folks doing such things."

  From somewhere off in the distance, those at the table heard a horn blow.

  "That'll be the coach," D.B. said, getting up from the table.

  He took up a horn at the door of the station and walked outside and blew a response. "I'm going to get the horses ready," he called back into the station house, and then walked off to the paddock.

  "I reckon it's time for me to earn my wages. Appreciate the company, and you folks is welcome to stay or go as you please. Send them others up for supper whenever you get back to your camp."

  Amos sent Matthew and Paul to the camp with the women and children and told them to send Stuart, Jeremiah, and Graham to the station house for supper, but Amos lingered a bit to have a word with the coach driver.

  "Jehu, on your way in did you pass any other travelers today?" Amos asked.

  "I don't recall that we did," the jehu answered. He and the shotgun rider were both young men who enjoyed the freedom of their work.

  The other travelers looked to be in some misery, complaining about being bumped and jostled for thirty miles and cramped in the coach with too many bags of mail. They all stretched their legs and paced about inside the station house, no one too eager to sit down to the meal.

  "A lone rider on a blue roan?" Amos asked, looking also at the shotgun rider.

  "Nope," the jehu said. "Nothing like it. That would have caught my eye for sure. I don't recall the last time I saw a lone man on this trail."

  "What about four men with a buckboard wagon? Three of them mounted. Driving some spare mounts."

  "Nope," the jehu said. "We didn't pass nobody on the trail today. Nor yesterday, neither. In fact, it's been four or five days since we last encountered anyone."

  Amos thanked them and went back to the camp. He passed Stuart, Graham, and Jeremiah on their way up to the station house.

  "I take it Mr. Sinclair did not come into the camp?" he asked.

  "No," Stuart said. "No sign of anyone other than the stagecoach. Did you ask if they passed him?"

  "They said they did not see him," Amos said.

  "He's been frightened and run off," Graham Devalt said. "We're on our own now, for sure."

  ***

  No one in camp, except the children, slept particularly well.

  The stagecoach left out of the station before the party bedded down, and watching it bounce over the trail in the dim lantern light from the camp, Amos Cummings did not envy the human beings inside it. They might arrive in Santa Fe weeks ahead of his wagon train, but he had to wonder what condition the passengers would be in when they finally reached the end of their journey.

  By the time they got into their bedrolls, everyone in the party was aware that the stagecoach driver had seen nothing of Rab Sinclair on the ride in. A general sense that something terrible might have happened to their guide pervaded the Cummings party, and Graham Devalt was the only one who did not regret it. But even Graham did not sleep well, because the adults all seemed to understand, without saying it aloud, that there was a strong possibility that Mickey Hogg and the men with him had committed murder.

  "We'll have to keep a watch through the night," Amos Cummings said. "Martha, I want you to take the first watch. You wake me at midnight, and I'll take the second watch. Jeremiah, I'll wake you at three o'clock in the morning to take the third watch. Tomorrow we will pass the watch to others so that no one is overly fatigued."

  All of the bedrolls were laid out inside the half circle of wagons, and the livestock were picketed nearby. They hung lanterns on the outskirts of the camp to give light away from where they were sleeping. Martha Cummings sat in a chair with a rifle across her lap.

  After everyone had gotten inside their bedrolls, Rachel decided she could not sleep and pulled a chair up beside her mother.

  "You should sleep while you can," Martha whispered to her daughter.

  "I know I should, but I am too upset," Rachel said.

  "We're all scared, but we must not let our fears overcome us," Martha said.

  "It's not that," Rachel said. "I'm scared, surely, but it's not fear that's preventing me from sleeping. Oh, mother, I feel just terrible. I should never have teased Mr. Sinclair the way I did. He has done nothing but help us through this entire journey. And I tried to humiliate him because he was never taught to read."

  Rachel twisted at the tail of her shirt, one borrowed from her brother.

  "Think of how foolish we would have been out here if we'd kept wearing our dresses," she said. "A person is a dress is useless in a wagon train. I thought Mr. Sinclair was the rudest, most unsophisticated man in the world for suggesting that we should wear trousers – but of course he was right! And every other thing he has told us to do was just as right. But we argued and fought with him, and I ridiculed him."

  Tears welled up in the young woman's eyes. "Do you think they have killed him?"

  "Oh, Rachel, you mustn't even talk like that," Martha said, and she reached out a hand to pat her daughter's head. "I do not know what has delayed Mr. Sinclair, but you heard how those men in the station house talked about him. Surely a man who has that kind of reputation at his age can handle himself."

  "But what if they are four killers?" Rachel asked. "What if these men did kill that farmer and take his wagon?"

  "We don't know that that's what happened," Martha Cummings said.

  Rachel wiped her eyes. She sighed heavily.

  "I think I'm in love," she whispered.

  "Oh," Martha said, a grin crossing her face. "That might explain why you treated Mr. Sinclair so cruelly. It's sometimes difficult, when we feel very deeply for someone, to express it. And then it comes out as a muddled mess."

  "You did not think I was referring to Graham?" Rachel asked.

  "Of course not," Martha said. "Mr. Sinclair is very dashing with his long hair and tan skin and buckskin coat. And he grew up among the Indian tribes and he seems a little wild and intriguing. It is perfectly natural and absolutely to be expected that a young woman would be drawn to such a man. And he is very handsome. Of course I knew to whom you referred."

  "Mother, the way you talk about him, I would almost think you have taken a fancy to him as well."

  Martha laughed, and she was glad that no nearby lanterns gave away the fact that she was blushing. "I think my affections for Mr. Sinclair are limited to those that a woman of my age feels toward a young, motherless man. Sympathy, I suppose, and motherly love, perhaps."

  "What should I do?" Rachel asked, and there was a hint of desperation in her voice.

  "Oh, Rachel," Martha Cummings sighed. "You should realize that you could never live the kind of life that he would offer you, and he could never be constrained to the kind of life you could live. And you should get into your bedroll and pray as hard as you can that Mr. Sinclair is safe and well, and that we will be, too."

  For the next hour Martha did her best to stay awake, though she was entirely exhausted. She knew why her husband had put the onus of the first night's watch on his own family, but she deeply regretted that her brother did not step forward to take her watch. She was so tired, and she did not even know what she was watching for, or how to keep a watch. The thing that kept her awake more than anything was fear that she would miss something – some sound in the dark, some movement of shadow in the distance.

  When the moment of danger came, Martha Cummings was awake, but she caught no warning – neither sound nor shadow. She missed entirely the meaning when the horses picketed nearby blew an alert.

  Mickey Hogg had snuck into camp, squeezing between a couple of the wagons, and had come at Martha Cumming from behind. Soundlessly, he reached one hand around her – that hand clutching a l
arge knife – and put the knife at her throat. His other hand clutched roughly at her mouth, covering it so that she did not let loose a scream.

  Martha's eyes grew wide with fright. She could hear and then feel Mickey Hogg's breath against the side of her face. He whispered harshly, "If you make a sound, woman, we'll cut the throat of every man, woman, and child in this camp. Now you just set that rabbit gun on the ground, easy and quiet, and then you stand up and come with me. You make any noise, any noise at all, and we'll set in among these folks and kill all of them while you watch."

  Her mother's instinct was to obey.

  Martha set the rifle down on the ground, and with Mickey Hogg still holding a knife at her throat and a hand over her mouth, she stood from her seat. Slowly, he backed her along the length of the wagons, and when they'd reached the edge of the camp he turned her and started walking her toward the livestock. He took his hand away from her mouth, but clutched her shoulder so tightly that it hurt.

  He hissed at her in a hushed whisper.

  "I've got a saddled horse over here for you. You make any move to get away from me, and I'll come back here and gut your children," Mickey Hogg said. "You don't want to see your children's insides strewed all over the ground, do you?"

  "No," Martha whispered.

  Another man was waiting near their own livestock, standing with three horses.

  "Damn, Mickey, I can't believe you did it," he said, almost too loud.

  "Hush up now," Mickey Hogg hissed at Dick Derugy.

  Hogg pushed Martha Cummings into the saddle of one of the horses, but he took the reins. He climbed onto his own horse, and leading her, started to ride away. Dick Derugy followed behind Martha.

  They walked the horses quietly in a wide arc that took them well away from the station house. Even in the dark, Martha was certain they were not coming back toward the trail but instead were riding off into the deserted plains.

  In his exhaustion, Amos Cummings slept well past midnight when his wife was supposed to wake him so he could take the next watch.