The Santa Fe Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “Dip out as much as you can, and put it in the barrels,” said Gavin.

  Wiley and Whit had been manning two of the shovels, beginning new holes as earlier ones began to fill. Ash and Vic took over the shovels, allowing Wiley and Whit to fill their own barrels.

  “After supper,” said Nip Kelly, “there’ll be time before dark for a couple of us to ride along this creek a ways. Maybe we can find out if any of our herd’s still here.”

  “It might be worth the ride,” Gavin said. “Take it upstream half a dozen miles, and then downstream an equal distance. If there are no cows, it’s on to the Cimarron.”

  Supper over, there was still more than an hour before sundown.

  “Ash and me are ridin’ downstream,” said Nip. “Who’s gonna ride the other way?”

  “I will,” Vic said. “Bonita, why don’t you ride with me?”

  Bonita nodded, and Vic went to saddle their horses. Pitkin had brought out the map and was studying it. Gavin and Woody joined him.

  “Another four hundred miles to Santa Fe,” said Pitkin, “but if this map is accurate in the slightest, our water problems should be over.”

  “Sorry,” Woody said, “but I don’t trust that map. It’s been wrong too often. I think we’ll continue scouting ahead.”

  “That’s about the way I feel too,” said Gavin.

  “Very well,” Pitkin said.

  Nip and Ash rode what they believed was seven miles down Sand Creek without seeing a single cow.

  “No tracks,” said Nip. “This bein’ a dry stream most of the time, there’s not enough graze to keep a goat alive. I reckon there was plenty of water here, after that cloudburst, but that herd was needin’ graze as much as water.”

  “No use ridin’ any farther, then,” Ash said. “I’ll gamble there won’t be any cows the other direction, either.”

  Vic and Bonita found no cows upstream, nor had Vic expected to. He had wanted to spend some time with Bonita, and after half a dozen miles, he reined up.

  “There are no cow tracks,” said Bonita. “Why are we looking for cows?”

  Vic laughed. “It seemed like a fair excuse for gettin’ you away from the rest of the outfit. I reckon you’re some give out, after ridin’ bellydown on a Comanche’s horse all of last night, and then ridin’ most of the day, gettin’ back to the outfit.”

  “My bottom’s a little raw,” Bonita said, “but after what you did this morning, you’ve got the right to ask anything of me that you want.”

  “Anythin’?”

  “Anything,” said Bonita.

  “That bein’ the case,” Vic said, “let’s dismount and set a spell under that tree.”

  They sat down with their backs to an oak. Vic reached for her, she came to him, and for a prolonged time they shared the embrace.

  “What did you think,” she asked, “when you found the Indians had taken me?”

  “I thought if they hurt you, I’d have killed every damn Indian on the frontier.”

  She laughed. “Suppose they had…violated me? Would you have left me to them?”

  “My God, no,” Vic said. “I was just prayin’ that you’d be alive. You think I’d blame you, if some highhanded Indian forced you to give in to him?”

  For a long moment she looked into his fierce blue eyes. Then she spoke.

  “It would be your right to forsake me, if another man used me. That was all I could think about, when that Indian was trying to…force me.”

  “I’m glad you brought him up short,” Vic said, “but even if he had taken you, then I’d still want you. For whatever it’s worth.”

  “It’s worth everything to me,” said Bonita. “Do you suppose Woody would…feel this strongly toward Nell, if an Indian had taken her?”

  “I almost know he would,” Vic replied. “He never asked any of us—Rusty, Gavin, or me—what happened in that Indian camp.”

  “Perhaps Nell told him.”

  “Not for him havin’ asked her,” said Vic.

  “The more I see of Texas men, the better I like them,” Bonita said.

  “I hope so,” said Vic, “because I can’t be nothin’ else. I reckon it’s time we started back. We both need some sleep. If you wake up later tonight, you can track me down on the second watch.”

  “Don’t be surprised if I do that,” Bonita said. “Jania and Laketa will be spending some time with Ash and Rusty, and I wouldn’t want you feeling neglected.”

  All the holes they had dug in the bed of Sand Creek had clear water the following morning, so the horses and mules had more than enough to quench their thirst before the outfit moved on to the Cimarron.

  “I’m ridin’ ahead for a look at the Cimarron,” Gavin told Woody. “Care to ride along with me?”

  “Yes,” Woody said. “I’m anxious to see if the herd—or any part of it—is there.”

  While there were some cow tracks leading toward the distant river, it was obvious the stampede had lost its momentum at Sand Creek. Neither rider said aloud what both were thinking. The herd, if it had drifted on to the Cimarron, had done so not in a mass, but was likely strung out for miles. Strangely enough, well before they reached the river, the cow tracks began to come together, as though the scattered herd had smelled the water.

  “They picked it up along here, and started to lope,” Woody observed.

  “They shouldn’t have been that thirsty,” said Gavin, “unless they hung around at Sand Creek until it dried up. But that wouldn’t have made any sense, with no graze.”

  Woody laughed. “Me boy, don’t ever underestimate the stupidity of a cow.”

  Their first look at the Cimarron was encouraging, for there was some green along the banks that proved to be young willows. While there was no abundance of grass, there was some, with a promise of more. The river was by no means bank-full, and in places, there were wide sand bars where the stream narrowed to the extent that a man could step over it without muddying his boots. But the sand bars revealed many more cow tracks.

  “Water—or the lack of it—is a mite disappointin’,” Gavin said. “East of here, where we found the Comanche camp, the water was deeper and wider.”

  “That’s important information,” said Woody. “Proof enough that as long as we follow the Cimarron, there’ll be water.”

  Three miles after reaching the Cimarron, they came up on nine longhorn cows. Picking at the graze along the river, the animals lifted their heads, watching the riders.

  “Look at ’em,” Gavin said. “They know who we are, and the cantankerous varmints know they run off and left us in the desert.”

  Woody laughed. “You’re givin’ ’em credit for more smarts than I would, amigo. All I’d be willin’ to admit is they know when they’re dyin’ of thirst, and that nothin’ matters except the next water hole.”

  There were more and more cattle, as they continued along the Cimarron, and when they eventually reined up, they were feeling better about the herd.

  “More than a thousand head, so far,” Woody said.

  “At least that many,” said Gavin, “and every reason to believe we’ll find the rest of them somewhere along this river. But I reckon it’s time we rode back and told the others. I was reachin’ for straws when I told Pit we’d likely find ’em scattered along the Cimarron. Now he’ll believe anything an old Texas trail driver tells him.”

  “Well, let’s ride back and find out,” Woody said. “We’ve probably ridden farther than the outfit will travel today, but we needed to know if we could actually gather the herd, or if we’ve just been givin’ Pit false hopes. Now we can promise him somethin’ he can sink his teeth into.”

  “Splendid,” said Pitkin, when he was told about the many cows Woody and Gavin had discovered along the Cimarron. “We can gather them as we progress.”

  “It should work out that way,” Gavin said. “We’ll run a tally every day until we have them all.”

  The second day of travel along the Cimarron brought them to Willow Bar, a rid
ge of sand covered by a heavy growth of willows. Many cattle had taken refuge there from the sun, and riders flushed them out from beneath the trees. Several miles beyond the willows, everybody—even Pitkin—reined up to stare at the massive piles of bones.

  “Tarnation,” Rusty said, “what happened here? An Indian massacre?”

  “Ain’t likely,” said Vic. “I don’t see nothin’ but mule bones. See them skulls?”*

  They traveled on, not wishing to spend the night near the mounds of bleaching bones.

  “Beginning right now,” Gavin said, after supper, “I’m steppin’ aside as trail boss. I’m passing the honor back to our amigo, Woodrow Miles.”

  “He never calls me Woodrow unless I’m about to draw another deuce,” said Woody. “What is it? Indians? Rustlers? Another prairie fire?”

  They all laughed at the two Texans hoorawing one another, all of them knowing and appreciating what Gavin had accomplished while Woody had been wounded.

  “Señor trail boss, suh,” Vic said, with a cockeyed, left-handed salute, “requestin’ permission to run a tally on the herd, suh.”

  “Go on,” said Woody, “but take somebody with you for a second count. You never get within two hundred cows, on your own.”

  Rusty went with him, and the count they brought back was encouraging.

  “At least twenty-five hundred,” Rusty said. “That’s Vic’s count. I say there’s more.”

  “Then we’ll go with the low count,” said Woody. “That means we have to come up with another thousand of the varmints, to reach the number we started with.”

  Their third, fourth, and fifth days following the Cimarron, the number of longhorns grew to thirty-four hundred.

  “It’s been nothing short of a miracle, finding as many as we have,” Woody said. “The rest may have been taken by Indians, or wandered so far, we’d never find them.”

  “We shall take what we have, and consider the gather finished, then,” said Pitkin.

  At their last camp before leaving the Cimarron, Pitkin again took out the map. He had noted distances between points according to what he had been told at Council Grove, and before leaving Independence.

  “From the numbers you have,” Woody said, “how far are we from Santa Fe?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-five miles,” said Pitkin. “We are a hundred and forty miles from the crossing of the Arkansas. We are in the extreme northwest corner of Indian Territory. Shouldn’t we be out of reach of the Comanches?”

  “Not necessarily,” Woody said. “I wouldn’t consider us out of their reach until we’ve crossed the Canadian River.”

  Pitkin sighed. “At least another seventy-five miles.”

  Upper Cimarron Spring. July 23, 1869.

  It became their first camp after leaving the Cimarron. The spring flowed into a ravine, which in turn, emptied into the river four miles distant. There was fresh water, flowing beneath towering cliffs, spires, and crags, through wild currant and plum thickets, its banks a profusion of grapevines. The trail passed over the ridge more than a quarter of a mile from the spring, and the remains of old campfires attested to its popularity as a campsite.

  “After the desert,” Naomi said, “I’m thankful for any water, but before we leave here, let’s fill all our water barrels with this fresh water from the spring.”

  Slowly but surely, they began passing landmarks on the trail that had been included in the map Pitkin had.

  “That must be Rabbit Ears Peaks up ahead and to our right,” said Pitkin. “According to the map, there’s a spring at Round Mound.”

  Round Mound, a round-topped cone, rose more than a thousand feet above the plain, and was by far the most prominent monument on the trail. It was visible for two days before they reached it.

  “I want to climb to the top of it,” Nell said.*

  “I think not,” said Pitkin.

  Half a dozen miles west of Round Mound, the outfit reached Rock Creek, and for the first time, they began having trouble with the wagons. The dry air of the high plains began playing havoc with the woodwork of the wagons. Tires rattled loose, spokes backed out of the hubs, while wheels began to wobble. The chuck wagon was the first to show signs of collapse, and ironically, Wiley and Whit Stubbs had a solution to the problem.

  “We got water here at Rock Creek,” Wiley said. “We’d best lay over here for a day or two, until the wagon wheels is watered and swole.”

  “Yeah,” said Whit. “We was havin’ to do it all the time, back in Missouri. Old wagon we had was so near used up, we spent most of our time fiddlin’ with it.”

  “Startin’ with the chuck wagon,” Woody said, “show us how to cure those rickety wheels.”

  “Be glad to,” said Wiley. “Y’all been mighty kind to Whit an’ me. We’ll do both your wagons ’fore we do ours.”

  Wiley and Whit proceeded to jack up the chock wagon, and with four pillars of rock supporting it, removed all four wheels. These they rolled down to the creek and submerged in the water.

  “We’ll leave ’em there all night,” Whit explained. “By in the mornin’, that wood will be swole so tight, them tires an’ fittings won’t work loose for six months.”

  Quickly they removed the wheels from Pitkin’s wagon, and finally, the wheels from their own two wagons. All were put underwater in Rock Creek.

  “There is much to be learned on the frontier,” said Pitkin. “It appears that every man has at least one skill that may be foreign to the rest of us.”

  “That’s gospel,” Nip Kelly said. “There’s considerable more to ranching than just the knowin’ which end of a cow is which. You’d do well, addin’ Wiley and Whit to your payroll. You’re headin’ for snow country, where you can’t depend on grass. A wise rancher grows his own hay, and that—like removin’ and soakin’ wagon wheels—just ain’t cowboy work.”

  “Mr. Kelly,” Pitkin said, “that is a most astute observation. I shall consider it.”

  “Don’t just consider it, Father,” said Nell, who had heard the conversation. “Do it.”

  “Perhaps I shall,” Pitkin replied, with a hint of a smile. “We seem to have developed a tolerance for others, of late, and it is most becoming.”

  “If you are referring to my once shoddy treatment of the Stubbs family,” said Nell, “you are quite right. I have found them to be…more than I expected.”

  Nip Kelly laughed. “Nothin’ like spendin’ some time with Bonita, naked in an Indian camp, to temper one’s judgment.”

  “Precisely what I was thinking,” Pitkin replied.

  They were speaking of Nell as though she wasn’t listening to every word, and for just a moment the old Nell surfaced, prepared to become furious. But then the truth of it got through to her, and she turned away without a word.

  Wiley and Whit were up and about before first light. Before Gonzales had breakfast ready, the wagon wheels had been removed from the creek and each was mounted on the wagon from which it had been removed. The dried-out wood had swollen to normal size, and Pitkin appraised their work with appreciation. Wiley and Whit still were a little in awe of the Englishman, and got hurriedly to their feet when he approached.

  “I am impressed with your ingenuity and willingness,” Pitkin said. “Unless the two of you have other-plans, upon reaching Santa Fe, I’d like for you to become part of my outfit. You may consider it until then, if you wish, before making your decision.”

  “I reckon we can make that decision now, sir,” said Wiley. “We been wonderin’ what in tarnation we was goin’ to do in New Mexico, once we sell these wagonloads of whiskey, ain’t we, Whit?”

  “We have,” Whit agreed. “Paw needed us to help him with the wagons, and we didn’t know what we was goin’ to do, beyond that.”

  “Starting today, consider yourselves part of the outfit,” Pitkin said.

  “We’re obliged,” said Wiley, “but it wouldn’t be fair, until we rid ourselves of these wagons. We can’t take no wages until then.”

  “You c
an, and you will,” Pitkin said. “Despite the wagons, you will be expected to do what must be done, such as the manner in which you reclaimed those wagon wheels, as well as defend against Indians or outlaws. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” they answered in a single voice.

  Nell had spoken to Woody about Wiley and Whit the night before, and Woody had an idea what Pitkin was proposing. He was sure of it, when Pitkin concluded his conversation, and his appreciation for the Englishman rose another notch.

  “Head ’em up, move ’em out,” Woody shouted.

  The trail, during the course of the day, passed through rough sandstones and emerged near Point of Rocks. It was a rock spur striking to the south, with a good spring below. The rocks of the range were like jagged teeth, rugged, and all pointing southwest. Finally, beyond Point of Rocks, the outfit reined up. If Pitkin’s map meant anything, they were more than six hundred miles from Independence, and less than two hundred from Santa Fe.

  The Canadian River. July 31, 1869.

  “This is the first damn river since leavin’ Independence that’s had a genuine ford with a bottom of solid rock and a decent approach from either bank,” said Woody.

  “Not only that,” Vic observed, “but it’s no wider than a creek.”

  It was true enough, and the wagons were crossed immediately, without difficulty. The horse remuda and the herd followed.

  “Now,” said Woody, “I’d say we’re well out of reach of the Kiowa and Comanche, but we can’t be any less vigilant. There may be outlaws.”

  But the outfit had entered a region known for torrential rains, violent hailstorms, and dangerous lightning. Such a storm began building in the far west, and a massive bank of dirty gray clouds swallowed the sun two hours early.

  “If I’m any judge,” Woody said, “whatever’s on the way will hit us sometime tonight. I reckon we’d better prepare our shelters and stay where we are, until it blows itself out.”

  Deuce Rowden and his five companions had chosen their camp well. West of the Santa Fe Trail, along the Canadian River, they had been waiting for two days. Each man had taken a turn on daytime lookout, watching for the Pitkin outfit. While they had approached the Canadian crossing, Watt Grimes had watched from a distance. Now he made his way to his horse and rode back to warn the others.