by Don Bendell
Zack had heard that the Mosses were in the San Luis Valley, having crossed over the Big Range and passed through the Great Sand Dunes. He also told Joshua that he guessed they could possibly have said that to throw people off and might be hiding near Marble Mountain, which held the mysterious Caverna Del Oro, the “Cavern of Gold.”
Joshua was fascinated when he heard the story about the mysterious place from the grizzled ole shopkeeper.
In 1541, long before any white men were around, three Spanish monks from the Coronado Expedition came to the area accompanied by some Utes. They found a large labyrinth of caves with an entrance at about eleven thousand feet of elevation and a higher entrance at twelve thousand feet of elevation on the thirteen-thousand-foot Marble Mountain. However, the Indians felt the caves were inhabited by demon spirits, so they killed two of the monks. Instead of arguing about the demons, the third monk, named De La Cruz, convinced the Indians that he was able to control the demons, and they would do no harm to the Indians unless they did not treat him right.
The expedition then started enthusiastically mining the gold out, using the Indians, who were actually slaves captured or purchased along the way by the armed Spaniards accompanying the monks. They built a fort near the lower entrance, and apparently because the upper entrance, at twelve thousand feet, was so frequently under snow, they painted a very bright crimson cross above the upper entrance. They also supposedly built in two large wooden doors within five hundred feet of the lower entrance and locked a lot of gold behind them, with plans to travel by pack train back to Mexico with their treasure, and then return. Upon making this decision, the monks killed the Indians who had done all the mining for them.
Just four years before Joshua Strongheart met Zack Banta, Captain Elisha P. Horn had explored the Sangre de Cristos, mapping one of the massive fourteeners, and it was named for him, Horn Peak. A little to the south of Horn Peak was Marble Mountain, so Horn explored there also, and after hundreds of years of its whereabouts only being rumored, the Caverna del Oro was rediscovered by Horn and his explorers. They climbed up through very thick woods on a very rocky, boulder-strewn trail, wondering if they would ever reach timberline. From the bottom, they had only gone six and a half miles, but it seemed more like fifty to the weary explorers because of the rugged trail, thick forest, and rocks everywhere. Then suddenly, at around twelve thousand feet, they hit timberline, and around August they could finally get into the big treeless bowl and Horn spotted the faded crimson cross. Traveling to it, he found a skeleton garbed in Spanish armor, and an old Ute arrow protruded right through the armor. He started the careful exploration of the labyrinth of caves that, to this day, are so filled with noxious gasses, straight drops, and winding passageways, they should only be explored by very experienced and knowledgeable spelunkers with the right equipment.
Later, looking down below in the treed area, Horn found the ruins of the old fort that the Spanish explorers had built, and his men found many arrowheads, both around the old fort and around the upper cave entrance as well. In later years, equipment from the 1600s would be found, including pottery, a windlass and rope, a two-hundred-foot ladder, a skeleton chained to a cave wall, shovels, picks, and many other items.
Upon inspecting the area and based on the few research materials he was able to discover, Horn came to believe that the lower entrance to the mine, which was located in the aspen forests near the ruins of the old Spanish fort, had been completely entombed by a giant rockslide of thousands of massive boulders jarred loose from the giant limestone cliff. Decades later, the lower entrance would still be hidden away, but many experts in later years agreed with Captain Horn’s assessment that the entrance was probably buried under a slide, whereas the hidden gold was supposed to be locked away behind two, still undisclosed large wooden doors within five hundred feet of that entrance.
It was fascinating to Joshua to learn the many stories about the area. The Caverna del Oro was the talk of the entire territory right then because of its rediscovery by Elisha Horn.
Strongheart was not headed south yet, in the direction of Horn Peak and Marble Mountain just beyond, because he had some unfinished business to attend to. Charlie the Ute had no clue that Harlance had already come through and headed out of the area, because after sending up his smoke to alert McMahon of the approaching half-breed the day before, he had settled down with a bottle.
Joshua turned to his right and headed toward the ridge looming before him. He could clearly see a switchback mining trail going right up the side of the ridge, and he jumped a creek, spooking some bedded mule deer, and headed toward it. He zigzigged back and forth up the trail, which was farther south down the ridge and out of Charlie’s sight.
When he saw him depart south from Westcliffe on the stage road, Charlie the Ute had sent up a smoke signal indicating that Strongheart was leaving the area, but he could not see him now climbing the mining trail he had used himself. He was wondering whether he should stay to send up more smokes or go back down.
Charlie thought about fixing breakfast, but instead he decided he should warm up by the fire and finish the bottle he had started on the day before. He grinned to himself as he raised it toward his lips.
Boom! The bottle exploded and liquid drenched his lap and legs with whiskey and broken pieces of glass. Charlie snapped his head and looked into the eyes of the half-breed he had been watching, holding a Colt .45 in his right hand, with smoke coming from the barrel. Joshua spun the gun back once into the holster. Charlie the Ute, eyes wide, raised his hands.
Strongheart said, “Put your hands down.”
The drunkard complied.
Joshua said, “Relax, I’m not going to shoot you, unless you do something stupid.”
He looked hard at Charlie’s face and tried to figure out how old he might be. He wondered if he might end up like Charlie if he allowed himself to continue drinking. He decided he would and made an even stronger vow to remember he could never touch alcohol again.
Strongheart said, “Why do you sell out your own people, Uncle?”
Charlie got a sad look on his face and said, “I let the fire in the water think for me. The wasicun gives me money. I buy whiskey.”
Strongheart said, “What are you called?”
“Charlie the Ute.”
“Okay, that is what you are called, but what is your name?” Strongheart asked.
“Nuni Kawa Goo Cheeu,” he responded. “But I have used the white man’s name since I left my tribe.”
Strongheart did not ask why he left the tribe, but he did admonish Charlie with “You make the white man look at us like women not warriors, when you drink like this.”
Charlie said, “I know. I am not worthy to be a Ute.”
Stiff-lipped, Joshua said, “Then become worthy again. Who paid you to send smokes about me? The one called Harlance?”
“Yes, it was he,” Charlie said.
Strongheart said, “Did he tell you where he would go?”
“He told me if I did good as a watchman, he might give me more money later.”
Joshua said, “How do you speak to him?”
Charlie said, “He said to go to the saloon in Westcliffe. It is—”
Joshua interrupted. “I know where it is.”
Charlie went on. “He said to tell the white man there I was in Westcliffe, and he would find me.”
Strongheart reached in his jeans and pulled out a twenty-dollar gold coin and tossed it to him. Charlie’s eyes lit up.
Joshua said, “Since you are in the white man’s world, you need money. Get a job. That will get you where you want to go. Maybe you could work in a mine or become a cowboy, but work. Do not drink again. If you spend this money on whiskey, I will shoot you and not the bottle.”
Charlie stood and threw his shoulders back. “I will not drink. I will work. What tribe are you?”
Joshua said, “I have two hearts. One is white. The other is Lakota.”
“Do you want to make a smoke,
Two Hearts?” Charlie the Ute asked.
Joshua said, “Not two hearts. I am called Strongheart. I must go.”
Charlie said, “You will kill this McMahon?”
Strongheart said, “Yes.”
Charlie said, “Good. He has the badger in his heart. You have the eagle in yours. I see this.”
Joshua touched his hat brim, saying, “The eagle must fly.”
He wheeled Gabriel around and rode away. He did not realize it, but Charlie the Ute would never drink again, and he would get a job farther east on the Arkansas, working at a mine. And from there, he would go on to other mines and gain experience and a reputation as a hard worker and proud man.
Strongheart had an outlaw and killer to find, and the search would take him back to Westcliffe for now. He rode down from the ridge and returned to the road. The muscular warrior started off toward Westcliffe with Gabe floating along at a fast trot. Strongheart saw several harems of elk, herds of deer and of pronghorns along the way. He could not get enough of the sweeping view of the long valley with all the fourteeners rising up into the sky to his right.
It was a clear day, and far to the south he could see the rising volcanic-borne mounts called the Spanish Peaks, dozens of miles to the south, near the border of New Mexico Territory. These unusual and beautiful peaks stood alone, side by side, apart from the Sangre de Cristo range. Very unusual mountains, they had volcanic-made spines running down them in several places called the Dikes, which looked like dinosaur tails. They were made from molten magma weathered away and exposed by erosion, and they varied in size from one foot wide to, in some places, up to fourteen miles long. Visitors traveling from the east could see the Spanish Peaks from more than one hundred miles away. Joshua saw an angry thundering storm over the top of fourteen-thousand-foot Kit Carson Peak, and he could see lightning strikes high up in the snowy area. Some seconds later, he heard the low, rumbling sound of distant thunder.
That was one of the things that made the frontier of the Old West unique. Folks who had lived in the eastern United States their whole lives were always amazed at the vast expanses of space out west and how many miles you could see. From the top of the mountains the vast amount of land visible was incredible.
More than one “dude” traveling out west would see lightning and angry storm clouds in the distance and be ready to head for cover until hearing some old-timer saying, “Don’t worry none, son. This is Monday. Yer lookin’ at Thursday’s weather.”
Strongheart rode into Westcliffe, which was actually more like turning onto the one main street, which ran east and west, and he immediately headed toward the saloon where he had already educated the barkeep. The bartender was not there. Instead, there was a very large man with graying hair, a well-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, and a leathery tanned face.
Joshua was waiting for a negative greeting when the graybeard said, “You the half-breed that roughed up my bartender?”
Strongheart was ready to draw quickly if need be, and he replied calmly, “He needed it.”
The man stuck out his hand and grinned broadly. “I agree. I kicked his sorry tail out of here. Young man, my sister married a handsome young Comanche lad down Texas way, and a better brother-in-law or a more honor-able one, I could never ask for. We are not all prejudiced like that polecat. My name is Jerome J. Guy, and I own this establishment. I apologize for your previous experience, but it shall not be repeated.”
The Pinkerton grinned and stuck out his hand. “My name is Joshua Strongheart, sir.”
Jerome said, “I live in Colorado Springs and have done well with investments. Mines are operating around here, and I think there will be some big strikes eventually. It’s inevitable. I wanted to own real estate here when that occurs. Are you part Ute, Kiowa?”
Joshua said, “I am half Lakota. White men call us the Sioux. My father was a great warrior. My mother was white and married another great warrior, a lawman, who raised me as a father.”
“Best of both worlds, young man,” Jerome said. “I understand that you have been tracking down the members of the McMahon brothers gang one by one.”
Joshua said, “They shot me up a little when they held up the stage on Copper Gulch Stage Road, and they stole an antique wedding ring that belonged to a widow from Canon City. It was all she had to remember her husband. I told her I would get her ring back.”
“You, sir, are a man of substance,” Jerome replied. “Do you need money to help your quest?”
Joshua laughed, “No, sir, thank you. I work. I have a job.”
Jerome said, “May I inquire where you are employed?”
Joshua said, “Confidentially?”
Guy responded, “Of course.”
Strongheart proudly said, “I am a Pinkerton agent.”
“Oh, that is indeed fortuitous for the young lady that she met a man of your background,” Jerome said.
He poured a beer, set it in front of Joshua, and went on. “If ever I have met a man who has impressed me as being able to keep his oath in such a manner, that man would be you, Mr. Strongheart.”
“Joshua, please.” Joshua pushed the beer back across the bar, saying, “Thank you, but you seem to be a man who lives in modern times. Don’t drink, but I would love an iced tea if you have any iced tea.”
“Sweet Mary!” exclaimed Jerome “I have found another iced tea lover. I enjoy it very much with sugar. I have tried to introduce it to others, especially on hot days, but everybody wants beer or whiskey.”
He opened his icebox, produced two frosted beer mugs, and put chips of ice in each. He then pulled out a pitcher and poured iced tea into the mugs, adding sugar to his.
“Sugar?”
“No, thank you, sir,” Strongheart said, lifting the mug in toast and then pouring the cold liquid down his throat.
All he could think about when he first came in was how good a cold beer would taste after a hot day of traveling, but he genuinely enjoyed iced tea and one swallow rid him of any beer temptation.
“I have seen Harlance McMahon, Big Scars Cullen, who looks more like a grizzly than a man, and I think I know what the Mosses look like. I heard they went to the San Luis Valley,” Jerome added. “Do not let that Cullen get his hands on you. Biggest strongest man I ever saw.”
Now on his second glass of tea, Joshua said, “I killed him yesterday.”
“My word!” Jerome said. “He was deadly with a gun or a knife, too. How did you kill him?”
Strongheart said, “We had a difficulty. He did not like pain, so he grabbed iron and made me shoot him.”
“I saw the marks on you and wondered, but you got into a scrap with Big Scars Cullen and survived, and then a shoot-out? Incredible!” Jerome said, genuinely impressed, “I shall always be on your side in any disagreement,” and he ended that with a chuckle.
Strongheart promised to stop in when he was again in the Westcliffe area, and Jerome promised to try to get him information on any of the remaining three outlaws. After another mug of iced tea, and trail directions, Joshua decided to camp out near the trail leading to Music Pass. He would cross over into the Great Sand Dunes and try to locate the Moss outlaws, figuring that Harlance would want to enlist their aid.
He mounted up on Gabriel, and the spotted horse set out due west, toward the mountains looming a few miles before him.
What he did not know was that Harlance had ridden in the other direction, down the mountain due east from Westcliffe, on the winding wagon road that would take him all the way out into the prairie, to Pueblo on the Arkansas River.
But instead of heading into Pueblo, when Harlance got down off the winding road at the edge of the plains, he turned left, or north, toward Florence, a small community also on the Arkansas River, near Canon City. The second oil well in the United States had been discovered in Florence eleven years earlier, and many oil wells were producing at the time, making the berg start to come into its own as an oil refinery location. Harlance rode toward Florence, to the all-but-abandone
d old trading community of Hardscrabble. At the base of the Greenhorn Mountains and looking out upon the prairie, Hardscrabble had been a trading post and fortress which was mainly visited by the many traders and trappers who ventured into the area from the mountains to the west, north, and south. Utes and Arapahos had many fights with each other over this area, as well. Hardscrabble was established in the 1830s originally as a trading post and later as a small settlement created by trader Maurice Leduc.
Now it was all but abandoned and off the beaten path. Backed up against the Greenhorns, it had numerous trails behind it, in the smaller range, that would head back uphill toward the Wet Mountain Valley, where Westcliffe was centered, or eventually get anybody fleeing to the road from Canon City to Westcliffe, called Oak Creek Grade.
Harlance had run into Mario Alkala, who had a gang of five other former slaves—three Utes, one Navajo, and two Arapahos—who were now banded together to make money any way they could but not become slaves ever again. They had one moral code and it was encompassed in one word—survival—and to its end they would be as ruthless as need be.
Hard Moccasins was a Jicarillo Apache who had scouted for the U.S. Army out of Fort Union, just south of the border, in New Mexico Territory, and was heading back after visiting the home of his now-retired commanding officer who lived near Denver. The retired officer had showered Hard Moccasins with gifts, as the scout had saved his life several times. These included a pack horse, panniers, and pack saddle to carry all the gifts on. He had resupplied in Florence, with plans to camp along the Front Range that night, and was riding near Hardscrabble, on the Hardscrabble Road running south out of Florence. The gang surrounded him, shot him out of the saddle, and divided up all his goods and food. They dragged his body to an arroyo and kicked the dirt of a cut bank over the body to get it out of sight until the next flash flood.