Into the Unknown

by David Thompson

  “Stick to chipmunks and squirrels and you should be safe.”

  I convulsed anew.

  “Or how about insects and birds? I think butterflies and wrens would be best. They are about as harmless as anything gets.”

  “Please,” I begged between gasps. “I’m ready to split a gut.” But the laughter did me good in that it restored some of my vitality, to the point where I could sit up unaided. I suspect he made me laugh for that express purpose.

  Strange to relate, but whatever barrier had existed between us was gone. I thought of him as a friend, and I flatter myself that he began to think the same of me. He was more talkative thereafter, and I detected none of the wariness that was so much a part of his nature. He had accepted me, and I accepted him.

  I wanted to head out the next morning, but Zach wouldn’t hear of it. He claimed I needed a day to rest, and I did not object too strenuously.

  That evening we were seated by the fire eating roasted venison when Zach remarked, “I’ve been thinking about that horse.”

  There are moments when I wonder if I have a brain. This was one of them. “What horse?”

  “The one with the blood. The one I have been leading around the past couple of days.”

  “Oh.” The truth was, in my delirium I had forgotten about it. I glanced at where the animals were picketed.

  “I’ve seen that sorrel before,” Zach said, and tore off a strip of venison with his teeth.

  “You have? Where?”

  “In a corral at Bent’s Fort.”

  “You are certain? Who did it belong to?” As I recalled, the fort had two large inside corrals, one at the north end of the post and the other on the west side. Between them, they could hold over three hundred horses, mules and oxen.

  “The Bent brothers,” Zach said. “They have stock for trade and sale, and sometimes they rent horses out for short spells.”

  “So the Bents could have sold or traded it to practically anyone?”

  “Well, we know it wasn’t an Indian,” Zach said with his mouth full, and lustily chewing.

  “We do?”

  “The saddle,” Zach said. “Indians don’t much like white saddles. They use their own or ride bareback.” He chewed some more. “No, I think it was a white man, but then that doesn’t explain the bedroll and the packs.”

  “There weren’t any.”

  “Exactly. And white men don’t go anywhere without their bedroll and supplies.”

  I had not considered that. It added to the mystery.

  Three days of travel went by. By then we were deep in the mountains. I came to appreciate why much of the Rockies were unexplored. Except for the intrepid trappers of a generation ago, few white men had ever penetrated this far in among the towering peaks.

  Zach filled my head with facts about the land and the wildlife. I learned, for instance, that many of the streams only flowed during the winter and spring, that in the summer much that was green became parched and brown. And a lot of the water that did flow came from runoff from the snow high up. Rain was a relative rarity except in the summer when fierce thunderstorms broke out.

  I was particularly interested in the habits of the animals, and in that Zach did not disappoint. He was a font of information. I surmised that he had been a keen student of nature while growing up. When I made a comment in that regard, he looked at me and said he had never thought of it that way. He had learned what he had to in order to survive. I added that in my opinion, he would make an excellent guide for others who might want to venture into the mountains.

  Zach mentioned that whites were coming to the Rockies in greater numbers of late. It was the main reason his father had decided to move deeper in. He alluded to half a dozen homesteads scattered along the foothills.

  I replied that it would not be long before whites did to the Rocky Mountains as they had done to the Appalachians in the East. “No barrier, not even the Rockies, can stop the tide of western expansion,” I said, parroting what I had read in many newspapers. “Our Manifest Destiny will not be denied.”

  “Leave it to white men to think that multiplying like rabbits makes them special.”

  He grinned as he said it, but I detected an undertone of bitterness. He did not want to see the mountains overrun, and I can’t say as I blame him. Man—and when I say that I mean humanity in general, men and women combined—insists on turning wilderness into farmland and filling it with towns and cities, wiping out the wild in favor of the tame and the safe.

  That is what it was all about: living safe. People did not want to worry about being eaten by a grizzly whenever they stepped out their door.

  This was impressed on me the very next day.

  We stopped to rest the horses at noon. I spotted a woodpecker off in the woods, and taking my sketchbook, I hurried to catch it on paper before it flew off. It was the first of its kind I had seen, and I was so excited, I left my rifle behind. I lost sight of the woodpecker but continued toward where I had seen it last. I moved quietly, in order not to startle it into flight should I suddenly come upon it.

  I was so intent on finding the woodpecker that I paid no attention to the woods around me, an oversight I regretted when the undergrowth abruptly crackled to the passage of an immense form, and into the open lumbered a flesh-and-blood behemoth.

  Chapter Nine

  Another interesting fact Zach King had taught me, a fact few whites were aware of, was that there were two kinds of buffalo, not just one. Most people were familiar with the vast herds that grazed the plains, but few had ever heard that prairie buffalo had shaggier cousins who preferred mountain forests to grassland.

  And here I was, face-to-face with one.

  When I say it was a behemoth I do not exaggerate. It stood six feet at the shoulder and was over ten feet in length. In color it was a dark brown bordering on black. Its coat was, as I noted, shaggy, the long hairs thick and matted. I would say this one weighed well over a thousand pounds. It had a short tail with a tuft at the end, which constantly twitched, and large, dark hooves. But what impressed me the most were its striking hump, its broad head, and especially the pair of black horns that curved like scythes.

  I froze, transfixed with amazement and awe.

  The buffalo stared a few moments, then snorted and pawed the ground as if about to charge.

  My awe was replaced by fear. I had my pistols, but they were a puny defense. Should it attack, it would be on me before I could draw and shoot. I wanted to wilt into the earth.

  Movement behind the buffalo warned me there were others. I had stumbled on a small herd. The bull confronting me was protecting the others.

  I did not know what to do. My instinct was to flee, but Zach had told me never to run, that to take flight nearly always provoked an animal into giving chase. But he had been talking about meat eaters at the time. I wondered if the same applied to buffalo.

  The bull snorted again, and repeated its gouging of the earth with its great dark hoove.

  I thought that if I stayed stock-still it would lose interest and leave, but instead it took a step toward me and rumbled deep in its massive chest, a prelude, for all I knew, to rushing me.

  Then I remembered Zach saying how he once calmed a black bear that had been about to charge him by speaking quietly to it. I tried the same tactic. “There, there,” I said softly. “I would rather not be gored or trampled, if you don’t mind. You go your way and I will go mine.”

  The buffalo shook its head, as if my words were buzzing insects that annoyed it. It sniffed loudly.

  I recalled something else. Zach had warned me that animals could smell fear, and that a predator might take that as a sign of easy prey. But buffalo were not predators in the true sense. They only attacked when provoked. Or so I fervently prayed.

  The bull took another step.

  I swore I could hear the hammering of my heart. I was near breathless with dread.

  I decided to slowly back away. That would show I posed no threat. But
the instant I moved my foot, the buff rumbled and snorted and bobbed its head, its horns like twin swords.

  Moving only my eyes, I glanced to the right and the left, seeking a tree I could climb. There were plenty, but none I could reach before the buffalo reached me.

  Then a second shaggy form appeared. I tensed my legs to flee. But the second buffalo, a cow, gave a grunt and turned around, and the bull wheeled and followed after her. Then the whole herd, which I estimated to be about ten animals, moved off.

  My relief was so profound, I grew weak in the legs. My knees nearly buckled. I smothered an impulse to laugh, afraid the sound might bring the bull back.

  A hand fell on my shoulder and I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “You handled that well,” Zach said.

  Sweat was trickling down my brow, and I mopped it with a sleeve. “You were behind me the whole time?”

  Zach had my rifle as well as his, and he held mine out to me. “You forgot this.”

  “Would you have shot if it charged us?”

  “I would do what I could.”

  The implication, of course, was that the bull would have killed us. “I must be more careful,” I said with a pasty grin.

  “You must be more careful,” Zach agreed, but he was not grinning.

  The next event of note occurred days later.

  We came to another stream and followed it to where it forked. Zach drew rein and shifted in the saddle to inform me, “This is where I blindfold you.”

  “Is that really necessary?” I was mildly irritated. We had been getting along so well, and he had been so friendly, I assumed he had given up on the idea.

  “You agreed,” Zach reminded me.

  I submitted, but I was not happy about it. He used a strip of buckskin from a parfleche.

  My horse was added to the string. I know not how many miles we traveled, but it took forever. Since I did not have the reins in hand, I held to the saddle. Every dip and roll seemed worse than it would have if I could see. Why that should be I cannot say, unless it was that in being deprived of sight, my other senses were sharpened. Twice I was nearly unhorsed. Once, when a tree limb brushed my arm and I gave a start, and again when rocks were clattering from under us and my mount stumbled.

  My patience came to an end, and I curtly demanded, “How much longer?”

  “It is not far now.”

  “I hope this valley of yours is all you claim it to be.” I was being petty to spite him.

  “You will find out soon enough.”

  We had been climbing for thousands of feet. The ringing echo of the clomp of our horses suggested we were in a canyon. Then the echoes stopped, and I had the impression, by the sound of muted thuds and the rustle of leaves, that we were in a forest. “Are we there yet?” I asked.

  Zach laughed.

  “What do you find so amusing?”

  “You remind me of my sister when she was ten.”

  I did not know how to take that, but it did not sound like a compliment. “You can hardly fault me,” I responded. “How would you like to be led around blindfolded for mile after mile?”

  “I wouldn’t like it one bit.”

  I admired his honesty. He must have reined up because my horse came to a stop, and the next I knew, fingers were prying at the strip. We were in heavy timber. A shaft of sunlight was on my face, causing me to squint against the bright glare. Blinking, I looked about, but all I saw were trees and more trees. “Is this King Valley?”

  Zach laughed again, tossed me the lead rope to my packhorse, and clucked to his own mount. “Stay behind me so you don’t take an arrow.”

  “How is that again?”

  He did not answer but goaded his bay into a trot. Eager to see his loved ones, I suspected, and I kept up with him as best I was able. To be honest, he was a far better horseman than I could ever hope to be.

  Once, down on the prairie, I had been trying to sketch and ride at the same time when I dropped my sketchbook. He happened to be riding beside me at the time, and when I lifted my reins to swing around and retrieve it, he said, “Let me.” And just like that, he wheeled his horse in a loop while dropping onto its side as it turned so that he hung by a forearm and an ankle. Then, as neatly as you please he snatched up my sketchbook and swung back up. All, mind you, in a fraction of the time it takes me to describe the feat. I complimented him, and he offhandedly remarked that he had learned the trick when he was seven, on his Indian pony. Seven! When I marveled at his ability, he said that it was “nothing,” that if I wanted to see real riding, I should see the Comanches.

  “The only problem with that,” he observed matter-of-factly, “is that when you see Comanches, they are usually out to kill you.”

  In any event, here we were, threading through dense woodland, when up ahead I glimpsed a patch of blue that must be the lake he had mentioned now and again. I also spied something else, and it so surprised me that I drew rein in amazement. “What in the world?”

  You see, Zach had told me about the three cabins I should expect. To the north of the lake was his; to the west of the lake was his father’s; to the south of it stood the cabin belonging to Shakespeare McNair. But Zach had not said anything about another dwelling, one so remarkable and so out of place, that for a few seconds I was under the illusion I was in an Eastern forest and not deep in the Rockies.

  Before me was a large lodge constructed of logs and intertwined limbs. In effect it was a conical mound, a type of structure I had encountered among Eastern tribes but never imagined I would come across out here. The lodge itself was unusual enough, but the entire outer surface had also been painted a vivid green.

  I had barely absorbed this wonder when I beheld figures moving toward us. Indians, judging by their features and their buckskins. Their clothes, strangely enough, had been dyed the same vivid green as their lodge. The two in the lead were men, one twice as old as the other, with enough similarities of face and build to suggest they were father and son. Both were armed with bows and had arrows nocked to the strings. The youngest started to raise his, then smiled and exclaimed, “Stalking Coyote!”

  I looked at Zach in puzzlement.

  “My Shoshone name.”

  “Not that,” I responded, and motioned at the lodge and the family of Indians. “You never said anything about them.”

  “Oh.” Zach drew rein. “They are Nansusequa. The last of their kind. They are from east of the Mississippi. Their village and all their people were wiped out by whites who wanted their land. We are letting them live here.”

  He introduced me. The father was Wakumassee, the son Degamawaku. The mother was called Tihikanima, the older daughter Tenikawaku, the youngest girl was Mikikawaku. Mouthfuls, those names.

  The father spoke English, although poorly. The son knew a few words, too. Zach explained that we had just arrived from Bent’s Fort and he was eager to get home. He promised the Nansusequa to bring me over to visit in a day or two.

  Presently, we were out of the trees and in the open air, and for the first time I saw King Valley in all its magnificent splendor. I was so dazzled, I again reined up.

  The problem with language is that while words can come close to conveying our meaning, they are a poor substitute for the experiences that spawn them. In this instance, my powers of description cannot do King Valley justice. It was magnificent.

  But to give you some idea: imagine an immense bowl. The bottom and sides of the bowl were green with grass and woodland. Higher up, where the timber ended, was the brown of earth and rock. Splashes of ivory crowned several of the highest peaks, and to the northwest was the white of a glacier. I asked Zach if he would take me up to see it.

  “When elk sprout wings and fly,” was his reply.

  “What do you have against glaciers?” I figured he was joking with me.

  “Only that they can kill you if you are not careful.”

  (I later learned that he and his wife had a harrowing experience when they went up to see it.)

/>   The blue-green of the lake was breathtaking. The water was fed in part by runoff from the glacier. It was refreshingly cold and delicious to the taste, and so clear that I could see the bottom for up to fifty or sixty feet out.

  We reined to the north and followed the shoreline. I was gazing out over the lake, noting the variety of waterfowl. There were geese and ducks galore. Scores and scores of them, some of which, unless I was grossly mistaken, were unknown to science. I couldn’t wait to sketch and paint them.

  Zach’s cabin appeared to be remarkably well constructed. At my inquiry, he revealed that his father oversaw the work. He spoke with such pride, I gathered that the two of them were exceptionally close.

  Zach rode faster. His eyes were on the cabin. He was no doubt hoping for his wife to rush out to greet him, but no one had appeared by the time we drew rein in a cloud of dust. Zach immediately swung down and ran inside, emerging moments later to inform me no one was there.

  “She must be at my folks’.”

  We left the packhorses in the corral. Zach said we would strip them when we got back. He was so eager to see his beloved, it was humorous. But I did not laugh. Even though we were friends by now, I sensed there were certain things you did not do or say to him.

  We headed for his father’s cabin at the west end of the lake, riding at the water’s edge. A dozen or so large white birds caught my attention. I gave a start when I recognized them as trumpeter swans. They were swimming with their heads held high in regal poise. I confess that swans are my favorites, and I made it my first order of business that as soon as I met the rest of Zach’s family, I would retrieve my easel and paints and render the trumpeters on canvas.

  I was watching them, entranced by their grace and beauty, when the nearby water, which was quite still since no wind was blowing, suddenly swelled upward as if thrust by some invisible force. I could not believe what I was seeing. The water rose to a height of four or five feet and then swept in a wave toward a flock of mallards. The ducks instantly took wing, quacking in alarm.