Chance Reilly
By
Patrick Lindsay
Copyright 2018
… Holding the Winchester in my right hand, I sprinted for the two large boulders in front of me. I caught a blur of movement in front as I dove the last few yards for the cover of the rocks. Bullets whined above my head. I squirmed along the base of the boulders to the edge, put the barrel of the Winchester around the corner and fired a couple shots in their direction, just to keep them honest.
I studied the area around me. Nothing was moving out there at the moment. I looked for any place they could be hiding, other than behind the rocks, but saw nothing else to give them cover. Far to my right, partially hidden in a small stand of trees, were three ponies. Well, at least I had a pretty good idea of how many of them I was dealing with.
I assessed my situation. Between the two boulders was a crevice I could use to shield the barrel of the Winchester. It gave me a limited view to my front and to my right. I felt pretty confident I could keep them at bay in that direction, assuming there were no more than two or three of them. To my left it was a little more worrisome. The angle of the boulders gave me less vision to that side. It was possible they could flank me if I wasn’t careful. I took a small swig of water and kept a watch to my front, and as best I could, to the left flank. Time dragged by. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry. The sun rose overhead and I took off coat. I had enough water to last me for a couple days, but I was more concerned about what would happen if I was still here when evening fell. I checked to my front one more time then crawled over to look at my left flank. Had I seen movement out there or was it my imagination?
Chapter One
The journey by rail had been uneventful so far. The train had left the station at Wyandotte, Kansas only about 30 minutes ago. The flat grasslands spread out to the horizon from my seat at the window and I had faint memories of having travelled this way before, down the Santa Fe Trail with my parents when I was just a little boy. They had hoped for a fresh start and a good life in the western lands. My father had named me Chance, because he believed every man had a chance in this country if he worked hard and put his mind to it. He and my mother had come from Ireland, looking for that chance for themselves and their children. Our surname was O’Reilly, but the army had somehow shortened that to Reilly, and that’s the name I went by now.
Just a week ago I had been in New York, living a life that wasn’t entirely of my own choosing, knowing it was up to me to make changes if I wanted a life I could be proud of. My life in the West seemed a long time ago, but returning to it now made sense to me. If anybody could use a fresh start and some better days ahead, it was me. As the miles rolled by, I turned and stared out the window again, seeing the occasional small herd of buffalo feeding on the grass. They were much less plentiful than I remembered.
The motion of the train and the hot sun through the window made me sleepy. The train was only half full, with no one sitting next to me or across from me. I scooted a little to the side on the bench and rested my head on my coat, up against the window. Somewhere along the way I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up when the train jolted me and a blast of steam escaped the engine. I looked out the window and saw that we had stopped at a siding to take on additional wood. There were just a few nondescript buildings around the railroad siding, and few signs of life. We stayed just long enough to load up a flatcar with the split logs, and then sparks flew from the engine as we gradually picked up speed and pulled away. I looked out at the late afternoon sun and thought about the life I’d just left behind.
I was alone in this world and that thought weighed heavily on me at times. I’d had an aunt and uncle in New York City who had been kind to me and taken me in after I’d lost my parents. The four of them had come together to their new country, but while my parents had dreamed of moving west, my aunt and uncle were content to stay in the east. I’d come back to them at thirteen years of age, and I know I was a handful. There were many ways for an orphaned Irish boy could get into trouble in the early 1860’s in New York City, and I’d found several of them.
They’d insisted I get more schooling and that was good for me. It was the things outside the schoolroom that had caused me trouble. My uncle had worked at the docks and I’d helped him from time to time, and it was a rough and tumble life. I had spent a lot of time with the other Irish boys in the neighborhood as well, and we spent more time fighting than anything else. We organized into neighborhood gangs. My uncle had finally taken me aside and told me that if I got into trouble with the law, I didn’t have a place under his roof any more. I solved the problem in 1864 at age sixteen by lying about my age and enlisting in the Union Army.
The army was hungry for new troops and we didn’t spent much time in training. We joined Warren’s V Corps as the Army of the Potomac tried to advance through Northern Virginia, and we found that the rebels had plenty of fight left in them. I was fortunate to be at the rear for the first few actions we encountered, but then found myself in the thick of the fight for Petersburg in June of 1864. On the morning of June 18th we were ordered forward as a part of a general assault on the Confederate troops. After an initial breakthrough, we were scrambling up a hill toward a second Confederate position when I felt a wicked blow in the left thigh and went down. The bullet passed through cleanly but did a lot of damage. Unlike so many others, my leg was saved, but I finished the war with the troops guarding Washington D.C. On rainy days, I still had a slight limp to remind me of my time in the army.
I came back to the present as the train lurched and continued on to the west, with the shadows lengthening when I glanced out the windows. The conductor came by and I asked him when the next stop would be. “Ellis, Kansas, tomorrow morning,” he said, barely glancing at me as he went by. I dug into my knapsack for a little beef jerky and settled in for another night on a train. I watched out the window as the darkness deepened and eventually drifted off to sleep.
Morning found little change in the scenery. We pulled into the station at Ellis and disembarked to stretch our legs. A boarding house served breakfast, which turned out to be a bowl of beef and beans. I wasn’t sure how well the bowl had been washed, but I wasn’t going to complain. I went out back to walk around as much as I could before the train pulled away again. There was just a small collection of weathered clapboard buildings and it took only a few minutes to make a complete lap around them. I came back to the train, where the conductor told me we would arrive in Denver by evening. From there I planned to buy a horse and ride down to the area around Cimarron, New Mexico. It was there I had lived as a boy and hoped to live again.
I dozed again as the train moved west and north. I awoke from time to time and saw more hilly terrain, and finally, mountains pushing up toward the sky, off in the distance. The window of the train felt cooler to my touch. As we moved closer to Denver, I thought about the years since the war and my decision to come west.
When I returned to New York after the war, I found that my uncle had been unable to continue working at the docks. He had become a shopkeeper with the help of a group called the Tammany Society, or sometimes they were called Tammany Hall. I found that they had lent him the money to begin his business, and it was patronized and supported by fellow Irish immigrants. I helped him in his shop, and through his contacts, also found some work at the docks. The population of New York had swollen since the end of the war, and conditions were bad in much of the Five Points area where we lived. I got the impression that my aunt and uncle were very dependent on other Irish immigrants, of which there were a great many ever since the time when we had arrived in the 1840’s. The Tammany Society sometimes brought food to help us out, and I was fortunate enough to live in a room above the shop.
The Metropolitan site on 51st Street was close enough for me to reach by foot every day, but in walking those few blocks, I left one world and entered another. The plate glass mirrors were said to the largest in the world; the patrons were wealthy and beautifully dressed. Guests came from foreign countries as far away as Japan. When I carried my first set of bags to one of the rooms, I found that they were steam heated—a luxury I had never heard of. I was tipped well by the guests and I began to save a little money for the first time in my life. I knew I had the job only because I had the approval of Boss Tweed. When he asked me to hang out at the voting sites on Election Day with others and lean on a few folks to vote the way The Boss wanted, or when he asked to deliver envelopes to certain politicians or businessmen, no questions asked, who was I to question him? There were whispers about carpenters and other workmen close to The Boss becoming wealthy by doing a little work on the County Courthouse and other government projects, but I was benefitting also, and I chose to look the other way.
Two things happened to change the life I had settled into. First, newspaper articles began to appear, charging that The Boss had been at the center of a large amount of corruption, overcharging for building projects, exchanging jobs for favors and selling privileges. In spite of his role in founding and supporting charities, orphanages, and other public works, opinion began to turn against him, and eventually he was investigated and prosecuted. After making bail on a conviction, he was eventually sent to jail for a year, then returned to jail later, unable to make bail this time. My life began to unravel, and now I understood why my uncle wanted me to keep more distance from him.
The second event that changed my life was my uncle’s declining health. He had known only a hard life of eighteen and twenty hour work days in the bad sections of Dublin and New York, and it took its toll. His health continued to decline until the spring of 1876, when he passed away. My aunt decided to sell the shop and return to her mother and sister in Ireland. I saw her off on the ship she took home, and then gathered up my few belongings and the little money I had saved and boarded a train headed west. Age twenty-eight seemed as good a time as any to start afresh.
The train whistle sounded as we crossed Cherry Creek and we made our arrival in Denver, now the capital city of the new state of Colorado. The railroads and recent silver strikes had created a boom town in Denver. Besides the usual saloons, hotels, and mining supply stores, I saw a number of restaurants and even a couple of theaters. The buildings seemed a lot newer than those in New York, and the air was crisp and clean, but I had no desire to live in a city again. I disembarked with my knapsack, breathed in deeply and started down the street in search of a place to stay for the night.
Chapter Two
I came down the stairs at Parker’s Boarding House the next morning and found the owner, who asked to be called only Ma, serving up breakfast to three other boarders. I ate, paid her for the food and lodging, and asked where I could buy a horse, guns and supplies. She merely pointed down the street and told me I could find all three I if went out, turned right and kept walking. I walked a mile or so until I came to the livery stables, walked in and asked about horses for sale.
It had been a while since I’d ridden a horse, but I had in mind a horse with plenty of endurance for herding cattle. He also needed to be nimble enough to take me through a mountain pass if needed. A little speed would come in handy too. The livery stable owner digested this information and watched the horses milling around in the corral. He rolled the tobacco chew in his mouth, turned around and spit. “It’ll cost you.” I shrugged and watched as he threw a noose over a sorrel gelding, maybe fifteen hands, and brought him over. We put a saddle and bridle on the sorrel and the proprietor handed me the reins. I climbed on.
The sorrel crow-hopped a couple times at the unfamiliar rider, then settled down to a steady gait around the corral. I got down, looked him over for a while, checked his feet and his teeth, then turned around and offered $150. The man snorted and spit again. “Two hunnerd.” We argued back and forth for a while. Eventually, I walked away with the horse, a bridle, saddle and blanket for $190. I named the horse Archie, for no particular reason.
I climbed on Archie and headed back down the street toward the boarding house. I stopped in front of a store with a sign proclaiming firearms for sale and walked inside. A middle aged gentleman with a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose walked over and held out his hand.
“Tom,” he said. “Chance,” I told him. We shook hands. “What can I do for you, Chance?”
“I need a rifle and a pistol, with ammunition for both,” I told him. He led me to a display in the back of the store and took down three rifles from the shelves, laying them down on a countertop. He picked up the first.
“Spencer Carbine,” he said, handing it to me. “Light, fast, and easy to carry in the saddle. Are you passing through any Injun territory?” I told him I was riding down through southern Colorado to New Mexico and he took the rifle back. “You’ll need something more rapid-fire.”
He handed me the second rifle. “Henry,” he said. “It’s accurate and can fire twice as many per minute as the Spencer.” I hefted the rifle to my shoulder and sighted down the barrel. “It’s heavy,” I observed, and looked at the last rifle on the countertop. He handed me the last one. “Winchester 1873 model,” he said. Lever action, rapid fire, and lighter than the Henry. I sell more of these than anything else.” I lifted the rifle to test the weight and feel of it, and sighted down the barrel. “I’ll take it.”
Tom took the Winchester from me and set it down near the register. He moved down toward a display of revolvers and began to set some out on the countertop. “That’s OK, I told him. Just give me the 1873 Colt revolver.” Tom glanced back and grinned slightly. “The Peacemaker?” I nodded. He carried the revolver to the register and set out ammunition, then scratched some numbers on a piece of paper. “$38 altogether,” he said. I winced. The $275 I’d brought with me from New York was disappearing fast. “Will you throw in a holster?” He thought for a second, then nodded and laid a holster on top. I counted out some gold coins, took my purchases outside, strapped on the Colt revolver and loaded the rest of my purchases in the saddlebags.
My last stop in Denver would have to be the general store. I went in to buy some food, mainly beans and beef jerky, along with a cooking pot and a few other items. At the last minute I realized I had nothing to sleep on, so I bought a bedroll and blanket. I paid for my items, and then asked the shopkeeper about a trail south into New Mexico. He tore off a thick piece of wrapping paper, sketched out a route on it, and handed it to me. “Watch yore scalp,” he said. “Those Apaches might not take kindly to you passin’ through. You lookin’ for gold?”
That got my attention. “Gold?” He turned around and started stacking some shirts on a shelf. “Yep. Prospector by the name of John somebody came through here a few weeks ago with some gold ore. Said it came from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains down there. West of where you’re goin’ through. Wouldn’t say nothin’ else about it.”
Well, that gave a man something to think about. That and I had to keep an eye peeled for the Jicarilla Apaches I knew were there along my travel route. I looked at the paper and saw that he had marked out mountain ranges, rivers, and a trail to the south. I tucked it inside my shirt, went out, mounted on Archie, and turned him south tow
ard my destination. I checked my map while riding out of town. The first stop that night, I hoped, would be the town of Pueblo. Archie seemed eager to keep moving at a steady pace, so I pushed on throughout the day, passing through some small rocky hills and scraggly pine trees. The broken clouds gave me a break from the sun and made it a pleasant ride. I stopped occasionally to give Archie some water and a little rest. When I saw Pueblo lying south of me in the distance, I pulled off the trail and made camp for the night.
Morning found me headed south again, and the storekeeper’s question about hunting for gold in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains returned to my mind. I could see some peaks of the eastern range to my west as I rode, and found that I more and more wanted to look around. I planned to reach the northern route of the Santa Fe Trail before dark. By mid-morning, I decided I had time to ride over and explore a bit in the mountains. I nudged Archie over onto a faint trail I saw reaching out toward the snow-capped peaks.
As we covered a few miles, the elevation began to climb and I found myself passing through increasingly thick stands of juniper, spruce and aspen trees. Archie began to labor a little bit as we climbed, and I pulled over now and then to give him a breather. I saw a few tracks of black bears and mountain lions, so I kept a sharp eye out as we passed through. Mostly though, I remembered the shopkeeper’s warning about hostile bands of Jicarilla Apaches. We forded a few rushing streams and continued to climb. After another hour, we reached a fairly high hill with a good view toward the east. I was mindful not to outline myself against the sky, so I pulled Archie back under a thick stand of trees and took stock of what I saw around me.
I thought of what I knew about mining in the wilderness. One way it was done was to pan the mountain streams. You just sifted the runoff from areas you hoped were laden with gold ore and looked for the gold flakes in the pan. The other way I knew of was more physically demanding. You looked for the veins of gold ore on the walls of crevices or caves on the sides of the mountains or rock formations, and then worked them with a pickaxe. Seeing the natural caves and rocky walls around me, I figured that was the more likely way to do it here. I wasn’t allergic to hard work, so that part didn’t bother me. The problem was more likely to be about refining the ore you accumulated. With a horse and maybe one or two pack animals, you might not have the ability to pack enough ore out of here with one or two trips. Making multiple trips would attract a lot of attention, and there was still the problem with the Apaches.
Chance Reilly Page 1