Hawk Eyes

by David Althouse

  Hawk Eyes

  David Althouse

  Contents

  Copyright

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  1. The Wild-Eyed Desperado

  2. Trouble in a Riverfront Whorehouse

  3. Escape from Fort Smith

  4. Hiding Amongst the Cherokees

  5. A Cherokee Goddess

  6. Jesse Chisholm’s Trading Post

  7. Buffalo Skull

  8. A Maiden’s Song

  9. Hunting Buffalo Skull

  10. Mesas, Mountains, Gold, and the Hangman’s Noose

  11. Hawk Eyes Flies Away

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  A Look at America’s Yesteryears

  About the Author

  Hawk Eyes

  by

  David Althouse

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2016 David Althouse

  Wolfpack Publishing

  P.O. Box 620427

  Las Vegas, NV 89162

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62918-443-2

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  1 The Wild-Eyed Desperado

  My name is Benson Sadler, and my father brought me, a lad of sixteen at the time, to the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado in July of 1870, his intent to find his fortune in gold and silver near the area now called Silverton. Back in those days, men referred to the high-mountain flat as Baker’s Park, in recognition of Charles Baker, the man who first publicized to the world that gold and silver lay hidden beneath the ground in this scenic mountain heaven.

  Baker and a group of men explored the area to some degree before the outbreak of the War Between the States, and their stories of lode discoveries spread far-and-wide. Outbreak of war in 1861, coupled with the threat of hostile Ute Indians who populated the area, kept white men from the high-mountain park until about 1869.

  By 1870, fortune hunters had made their way back to Baker’s Park in earnest, having crossed Stony Pass from the Rio Grande River east of the Great Divide, making their way north up Cunningham Creek, and then spreading out along the ore-rich country cradling the Animas River.

  Baker’s Park offered my father a last chance. Until then, his life consisted of farming a rocky hillside in Tennessee, avoiding creditors, and raising me as best he could without the help of my mother who passed away when I was very young. We crossed the plains country in the brutal heat of summer in 1870, trudging along with horses and mules, making our way westward to the promise that was Baker’s Park.

  There is something about those San Juan Mountains, promise of riches or not, that offered at least the chance of new life to poor farmers like us. We left behind a bleak existence in Tennessee, as well as a few unpaid bills, crossed the endless scorched plains, and soon beheld majestic and far away peaks to the west. My eyes looked to those westward peaks with awe and wonder. Even as I beheld them from a point many miles to the east, their imposing size was obvious. This mountain country stood taller and greater than anything we had back home, and my mind pondered the many secrets, stories, and possible riches they held.

  Like many before us, we crossed Stony Pass, made our way up the creek, and meandered our way to the fly-by-night tent city in Baker’s Park on a picturesque summer day in 1870. Never had my eyes beheld a city such as this one, a city in its infancy, a city of prospectors, adventurers, crooks, and cons who conducted much of their business under the roofs of canvas tents. Until that first day there, my mind could not have imagined that tents could adequately serve as taverns, hotels, and offices for assayers, doctors, and lawyers. The education of a greenhorn farmer had just begun.

  Upon entering the tent city, my father, believing time was of the essence, moved quickly. Having first secured us a few days of lodging in a tent beside the river, my father left me at our canvas abode to stand guard over our belongings while he set out alone to better acquaint himself with the new community, meet the men of the town, purchase additional supplies, and ascertain possible locations for our mining efforts.

  Father had been gone only a few minutes when I walked out of our tent to absorb the sights and sounds and people of our new world. The view from tent city upward to the heavens stole my breath. Never had my eyes beheld such imposing peaks. There stood massive rock mountaintops that men today call Storm Peak, Sultan Mountain, Anvil Mountain, Tower Mountain, and Kendall Mountain. They loomed as gargantuan and angry gods peering down upon lowly ants building a new anthill. Immediately, my imagination stood captivated. This was a high-mountain world straight out of the pages of a fairy tale. Right then, a thirst was born in my heart to learn every trail and gulch, every cave and rock face in this fascinating new world that seemed to stand on end.

  With the hustle and bustle of hardened men all around me, and their curses filling the mountain air, my eyes gazed over the rippling water of the Animas River, over the inviting mountain openings that were Swansea and Idaho Gulches, and upward to the top of Kendall Mountain. My first thought was to one day scale its slopes to the summit, but movement detected out of the corner of my eye soon interrupted that interlude.

  I turned to get a better look.

  At first, my eyes refused to believe what they clearly saw: The picture of a man chained to a large aspen trunk adjacent the river. It took a moment to make sense of the complete spectacle. My eyes clearly beheld the irons around the man’s ankles, and they could easily follow the thirty-foot long chain over to the aspen trunk to which he lay shackled. The problem lay in digesting the scene clearly and concisely at first glance.

  The sight required a second, more thorough visual examination. The chain was, most certainly, attached to the base of the gigantic aspen, and, following it link by link in the opposite direction gave me to see a man fettered to the other end, seemingly sound asleep on the banks of the Animas. The men of the mining camp shuffled by the prisoner on a regular basis, as he sat situated within close proximity to the assorted tents of the new community. This no doubt explained the absence of any guard standing watch over the securely bound captive.

  He then awoke, arose without seeing me, and situated himself in a cross-legged sitting position, staring into the fast-moving waters of the Animas.

  As if feeling my gaze upon his back, the captive turned around and his piercing eyes, easily the first characteristic of his face to notice, seemed to look right through me. Never had I seen such eyes on the face of a man. They seemed knife-like in their power to cut to the chase.

  “I’m not a ghost, boy. I’m a real live human bein’, and I’m surely chained to that beautiful aspen tree yonder. Your eyes ain’t playin’ tricks.”

  “Why are you chained?”

  “I had to kill a man and the local citizen’s committee – they call it – decided I’m to be hanged tomorrow at daybreak.”

  “Are you a murderer? Did you truly kill a man?”

  “I killed him. I sure did, and he wasn’t the first one.”

  The first question to run through my mind was, “Is this man with the haunting, piercing eyes a mad man, a killer, a man needful of hanging?”

  “You’d best be on your way, boy. You get seen talkin’ with me and your Pappy yonder will thrash you for minglin’ with a murderer, or else the townies hereabouts will think you’re wantin’ to slide me a pistol. If I was you, I’d skedaddle.”

  “Who did you kill, mister – and why?”

  “Listen, boy. It’s no use. Do yourself a favor and perambulate on out of here before you get yourself in trouble. Scat!
”

  I could not accept the notion that he was a wanton murderer. Sure, his eyes glowed wild and piercing, like a flash of lightning from the skies; his partly-braided golden hair flowed half way down his back; and his hardened, scarred, and leather-like skin had tanned an almost coffee brown under a lifetime of baking suns. His clothes were made of buckskin, fringed throughout. Surely, lurking beneath his outlaw exterior was a story, his story, I thought, while standing there with eyes locked on this spectacle of a man who had seemingly lived a life on the edge.

  His hawk-like eyes demanded attention. They spoke of a man who had been up the hill and down the river, as the old timers might put it, of great secrets and stories waiting to be told, of great sorrow, and even of ghostly things not of this world.

  “You’re readin’ me boy. That’s good. I like a man what can read another. I’m good at that, myself. That makes us pards.”

  That sealed it.

  He possessed too easy and pleasant of a demeanor to be a murderer, and, to boot, it seemed he could read men’s minds. I stood convinced he owned a story and I wanted to hear it.

  “You want I should fetch you a pistol, mister?”

  His eyes emanated a look of fierceness and sadness at once, and I knew I beheld a scarred soul.

  “I don’t reckon I’ll need one.”

  “You want I should go tell my pa? Pa will know what to do.”

  The energy coming from his eyes shot right through me, and he held his glance on me for what seemed like a minute. The look in his eyes fortified my belief that he was not a man with whom to start trouble. Goose pimples welled over my body as I overcame the urge to shudder. Had I never before seen veritable death on two feet, I was surely beholding it now.

  “I’m hopin’ not to be here in the mornin’ when they come to take me to the hangin’ tree, boy.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Far, far away.”

  “How will you get away, mister?”

  He stood, and then he motioned to the skies with outstretched arm. He gazed off into the heavens as if in conversation with something or somebody far away in another world. It seemed as if an unseen force held him in its clutches, and only after a few minutes did he turn to me again.

  “If I can, I will fly out of here, fly away in the night like a hawk.”

  “You sure you don’t need a pistol, mister?”

  “I could use some cigarettes. I’ve never smoked ’em, but I think I could use some now.”

  At break neck speed, I ran through the tent city on a quest for smokes. Having secured all I could buy with the little money on me, I returned to the man with the mysterious eyes. He lit his first smoke.

  When I returned to the outlaw, he appeared more at ease, as if something had happened to change his disposition while I was away. I could not begin to understand the man’s sudden transformation.

  After having only been asked his name, and the events leading up to his current predicament, the prisoner inhaled the tobacco smoke and began talking. His willingness to talk took me by surprise. In the same situation, most men would prefer their own company, to be alone, perhaps to meditate, or to make peace with God.

  Not so with this man. He seemed at ease, and at peace.

  “I’m gonna tell you a story, boy – my story. But, before I do, I want to give you somethin’, somethin’ to take with you and safeguard for the rest of your life.”

  From out of a pocket in his buckskin coat, he pulled a large lock of raven black hair, held together by an intricately braided leather strip. He cast adoring eyes upon the lock before running his fingers through it over and over, giving me to know it held deep significance in his life.

  “Take this, for it will bring you luck.”

  Then, he recounted to me his story, a story I will remember always. I lay his tale before you now, exactly as it was told to me – in the unvarnished words of the desperado himself. What follows are the words of Hawk Eyes, a man whose piercing eyes and simply-told story will remain etched in my memory until my dying day.

  2 Trouble in a Riverfront Whorehouse

  The more I think back on it, boy, the more I realize my life story is one of just downright bad luck! There just ain’t no other way of puttin’ it, and there ain’t no better place to start tellin’ it than from the beginnin’. I reckon if I don’t tell the whys and wherefores to you right now, then I might not get another chance to tell anyone ever again. The downhill slide of my life started in a Fort Smith whorehouse on a September evenin’ back in 1864, ’bout five years ago. If my memory serves me right, I figure it was ‘bout mid-September, pretty much near the endin’ days of the War Between the States in the eastern Indian Territory and western Arkansas. I will get to the whorehouse part here in a bit.

  As to my given name and my Christian name, I never held with either. Folks had always referred to me as Hawk Eyes, sayin’ my eyes looked just like those of a hawk what you might see settin’ on a fence post. Those Choctaw boys I grew up with first started callin’ me that, and the name stuck. Soon, even white folks took to the name, and I came to prefer it myself. Just like them Choctaw folks, I figured the name pegged me closer than any other name. So when folks was bein’ introduced to me and such, I always said, “Glad to meet you so-and-so, I’m Hawk Eyes.”

  I come up as a boy in Fort Smith, where my Pappy had himself a little tradin’ post off the Garrison Road. He traded a lot with the Choctaws and the Cherokees thereabouts in the Indian Territory over to the west of Fort Smith. Pappy dealt fair-and-square with everyone and that meant the Indians, too. He had a good name among all the Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes over in the Indian Territory. Some of my best boyhood friends were Choctaws and Cherokees. I especially kicked around a lot with those Choctaws, raisin’ all kinds of hell over in the Choctaw Nation. Fact, it was a Choctaw feller we all called Big Buck Wright what was the best friend I had growin’ up and, if I remember right, it was him what first ever called me Hawk Eyes.

  It weren’t all just an Indian up-bringin’, though. Early on, when I was just a young boy, ma was still alive. Sometimes, she would read to me from the Bible. My problem was that I never seemed to get a grip on the message at hand. Whenever she read to me ’bout them Christians gettin’ thrown in there with those lions, I was busy tryin’ to figure out some way them folks could’ve licked them varmints.

  Fort Smith in the autumn of 1864 weren’t no place to be, unless you were a Yankee, and you could find a good supply of ’em roamin’ the streets of town in those days. The Federals were in complete control of the town, no doubt ‘bout it. They were watchin’ and controllin’ everything comin’ in and goin’ out, and that meant people, too. There was still some Rebel resistance to ’em, though. The Federals had recently had their hands full fightin’ off Confederate Cherokee and Creek snipers hunkered down over in the brush on the west side of the Poteau River, and a fellow by the name of Buck Brown was givin’ ’em hell all along the Telegraph Road, cuttin’ telegraph lines and robbin’ the mail and such. And, of course, I can’t forget Stand Watie, the leader of them Cherokee Mounted Rifles over in the Nations. He was showin’ them Yankee boys what fightin’ was all ‘bout over there, stingin’ ’em here and stingin’ ’em there, just like a wasp you can never get rid of. But, hell, I knew the short life of the Confederacy would end soon, and them folks in the blue uniforms would be in charge of the whole country then.

  I started out feelin’ none too enthusiastic ’bout the cause of my Southern friends and kinfolk. Towards the end, though, when I seen all those Federals hellin’ it into town, I guess I came to feel that there was somethin’ a helluva lot wrong with that. I guess I started to support the cause, but only after me and the whole world knew she was lost.

  There’s somethin’ else I’ll always remember ’bout that time, somethin’ ’bout the nature of folks and the way we’re all kind of different. I remember the people of Fort Smith were up against a lot at that time. These folks from up north were everywher
e, and they were in control and they went around lettin’ everyone know it. And, if you were to buck ’em they would up and kill you. If they were to get a hold of Buck Brown – they would have killed him. Or Stand Watie – they would’ve killed him, too. And the fact was they were executin’ Confederates right there in the town of Fort Smith, with the town folks just watchin’. What’ll never leave my memory is the picture of the faces of them Fort Smith folks when all this was happenin’. When it looked like all the chips were down – and they were – there weren’t no give in ’em. Of course, I ain’t includin’ scalawags. But there’s a lesson there ‘bout folks: Some of us have to do the buckin’ and some of us have to just sit around all doe-eyed when we’re all bein’ run roughshod over.

  My brother Beau now, he was the biggest Confederate of ’em all. Once the war broke out, why he just had to suit up to go out and kill all the Yankees he could, help the South get this little skirmish over with, and come back home. Well, I wouldn’t let him. I told him that he needed to stay in Fort Smith and help Pappy and me herd longhorn cattle from Texas up the Texas Road so we could sell ’em to the Confederates in Arkansas and Indian Territory. We could serve the South, as Beau felt he had to do, and make money at the same time. And that’s what we did for almost three years. Then, on a spring day in April of 1863, Beau said he was goin’ and there weren’t no man stoppin’ him, and off he went to join Douglas Cooper and his Choctaw-Chickasaw regiment.

  Shortly after Beau said he was goin’ off with Cooper and them, Pappy pulled me aside. “Boy,” he said, “You’re goin’ with him. You know as well as me that your brother ain’t no fighter. He’s thinkin’ more with his rebel heart than he is with his brain. It’s your job to make sure that he don’t get his fool self shot, you hear? You bring your brother back home or you don’t come back yourself.”