Spring and the beaver-hunt season opened. The whole Carson company organized for a trip far to the north. Oliver was apportioned his dozen traps, and his name was upon the pay-roll. The company left early in March; but Ike Chamberlain was in charge, for Kit Carson had astonished them all by announcing that he was going to the States. “It’s time my little gal had education,” he said, quietly. “Touse or Bent’s air no place for her, or Santy Fee either, an’ I’m no fit person to raise her. I’ve got kin back thar in Missouri, an’ maybe I can put her with some o’ them, so she’ll grow up with white people an’ learn civilized ways.”
“Have you been back thar since you come out, Kit?” asked somebody.
Carson shook his head.
“Nope,” he said; “in the sixteen years the only settlements I’ve seen air trading posts o’ plains an’ mountains, an’ Touse an’ Santy Fee. I war a boy when in fall o’ Twenty-six I left home. Ought to have gone back, but didn’t. They say now Missouri’s[57] grown a heap, an’ I won’t know Franklin town, an’ thar’s so many other towns I’ll be lost.”
“Independence air the outfit point o’ the Santy Fee caravans, now,” observed Ike Chamberlain—a fact that all knew. “Franklin air too far down-river. An’ thar’s a new movement on—to Oregon in the Northwest country; starts from the Missouri at Independence same as Santy Fee trade does. Those missionaries who went out to the lower Columbia, over the South Pass an’ the Snake River trail, in Thirty-four an’ after, have been making big talks through the States, ’bout how Oregon air the place for ’Merican farmers ’stead o’ British fur-hunters, an’ Congress has been argufying, an’ Lu has jest heard from some o’ his folks that thar’s a regular movement afoot this spring to send a big wagon-train o’ settlers out by the Platte an’ Laramie trail, over South Pass an’ clear through to the Columbia. Isn’t that so, Lu?”
Lucien Maxwell nodded. He was a dark, broad-shouldered young man, about twenty-three, and a favorite of Kit Carson’s. He was not in the Carson company, exactly, but was a trader with the Indians and for the Bent, St. Vrain & Co., on the Santa Fé Trail and between Bent’s Fort and Fort St. Vrain. He was much at Taos, where he had just married the Se?orita Luz Beaubien, daughter of Charles Beaubien, one of Taos’ most cultured residents. As Maxwell was much upon the trader trail to the States, and as he[58] lived, or at least his parents lived, at old Kaskaskia, Illinois, below St. Louis, he carried much news.
“Yes,” he answered. “I’ve a letter and a newspaper from home that say that Doctor White—Elijah White, who’s been missionary doctor in Oregon; you fellows have heard him—has been appointed Indian agent for the United States in Oregon; and when he goes out this spring a lot of settlers are going, too, so as to have him take ’em through.”
“Wagh!” grunted an old trapper. “Fat doings for Injuns! Thar’ll be hosses to steal an’ ha’r to lift, I’m thinking. Sioux an’ Blackfeet air half-froze for jest sech a caravan o’ greenhorns on a trail ’crost continent. Wagh! This chile’d rather go it alone.”
“Thar ought to be a line o’ posts from the Missouri clear to the mountains, all ’long the trail; an’ over across, too, if folks from the States air going to travel it,” declared Chamberlain.
“That ees so. Dose Injuns, dey get mad when dey see so many whites in buffalo country; an’ dose Britishers in Oregon, dey jus’ as soon Americans stay on dees side Rocky Mountains,” agreed Mariano, Mexican trapper.
“Well, this paper has a message in it from Washington, and there’s talk of a government expedition going out over the trail this very spring, to survey it and maybe see what can be done,” informed Maxwell.
“Wagh!” grunted the old trapper. “Hyar’s a coon that doesn’t need ary government expedition[59] to show him the trail. He travelled it with Ashley in Twenty-four, he did; an’ he war over the South Pass an’ into the Green River country t’other side, an’ he’s trapped through to the Columbia an’ Vancouver, an’ to Californy, too. Can’t tell mountain-men ’bout the way to Oregon.”
“Yep; an’ those missionary women crossed through in Thirty-six, an’ more in Thirty-eight,” chimed in another. “That broke the trail to the Oregon country, sure.”
“Seems to me the government must be planning a line of forts, and the expedition will spy out and report on that,” remarked Maxwell. “Like as not an army man will lead it.”
“Oregon country air a fine country,” asserted somebody. “Think o’ trying it, myself. ’Most went thar as settler when Joe Meek an’ Doc Newell an’ others took the Columbia Trail after last rendezvous in Thirty-nine.”
“Trés-belle, ess eet. I hear so from my cousin, who leeve in la valle Weellamette. He was Hudson Bay man, trapper; now he farmer,” volunteered Henri Menard, French-Canadian of St. Louis.
Such was the talk following upon Kit Carson’s quiet announcement that he would go back this spring by early caravan to Missouri, and there leave his little half-Indian Adaline, to give her the schooling which he had missed. And Lucien Maxwell said he[60] “guessed” that he would go, too, and visit his parents and other relatives at Kaskaskia.
For the remainder of the company, north led the trapper trail: from old Taos up through the mountains of central Colorado, into the South Park, thence on over by wild passes into the Middle Park. They set their beaver traps in the side streams of the Grand River. It seemed best not to go on further, for Indian trouble was rumored.
This was Ute country, and the friendly dark Utes with their squaws followed the camps—the squaws skinning the beaver and asking only the carcass or a pinch of sugar, the bucks gorging and trading. Deer meat, elk meat, buffalo meat, and delicious roast beaver-tail which looked like thick gelatin and tasted like saltless pig’s-feet, was the camp menu. It was a very pleasant trapping trip.
About June 1, with eighteen packs of beaver, otter, and martin pelts—each beaver or otter bale containing eighty skins—half the company, led by Ike Chamberlain, rode out for Taos; the others stayed in, to rest and “make meat” and repair equipment, until opened the fall fur hunt. In the homeward travelling company was Oliver, now a seasoned trapper as well as an accepted “Carson man.”
Old Taos had not changed in the three months. Only, Kit Carson had gone, as promised, to the States. He had caught the first of the Bent, St. Vrain & Co. goods caravans out of Bent’s Fort for Missouri, five[61] hundred and more miles, to put Adaline where she would get some education. Lucien Maxwell had gone, too.
“Wall, Kit won’t stay long,” drawled Ike—his first remark after hearing the facts. “He’ll find things are different; the frontier’s grown up with people, an’ he’ll feel lonesome, ’mongst ’em. He’ll be coming back to Touse, right soon.”
Indeed, according to opinion ’twas time for his return already; and in mid-afternoon of the day after their own arrival, Oliver, upon the front porch of the Carson house, his attention attracted to a bustle and to the hurrying figure of Ike, thought that Kit might be in town or at least at Bent’s Fort. Through the plaza hastened tall Ike; straight-footed, slightly bow-legged, carrying, as customary, his long rifle.
“Get yore outfit ready for the trail ag’in,” he bade, quickly, with scarce a pause. “Word from Kit says to meet him at Fort Laramie, pronto! Leave to-morrow.”
“All right,” answered Oliver, astonished, but knowing better than to delay Ike for foolish questions.
Still, this was most sudden and unexpected. What was Kit Carson doing up at Fort Laramie, on the Oregon Trail, when he should have been at Bent’s Fort, on the Santa Fé Trail? Oliver set out after information.
The first of the company whom he encountered was[62] Mariano Medino, the Mexican, squatting and filling a powder-horn in a doorway.
“Ike has seen you?” queried Mariano.
“Yes. What’s news?”
“Ah, that Keet Carson, he say ‘Come to Laramie,’ an’ we come. That all I know,” answered Mariano, busily.
“Who brought the word?”
“Dos (two) Injuns. See? Over there,” directed Mariano, with nod of head.
Oliver looked, and noted a little knot of towns-people—mainly Mexicans, shoulders and heads shrouded in serapes or native blankets—standing before the Bent, St. Vrain & Co. local warehouse and gazing at the doorway. So across the plaza he trudged.
The knot was scrutinizing, without much comment, two Indians who leaned, stolid and unaffected and haughty, against the doorway posts. They were Indians of lighter coppery complexion than the Kiowas or the Apaches or the Utes; they were as light as a Cheyenne, and one had a scraggly moustache of black hairs. By this, and by the beading of their shirts and the shape of their moccasins, Oliver (a mountain-man) knew them to be Indians of a strange tribe. A voice at his elbow interrupted his examination.
“Those are Delawares, boy.” It was Bill Williams who spoke—Bill Williams, sometimes called “Preacher” Williams; not a Carson man, but an odd old trapper who from his lone trail occasionally appeared[63] in Taos. “Eastern Injuns they be, who war moved by the government into the Injun country ’long the Missouri frontier. Big hunters an’ fighters, but don’t often get to the mountains.”
“Are they the express from Kit?”
“They are the runners from Kit. Sent ’em from the mouth o’ the Kaw, or Kansas Landing ’bove Independence. Understand they came through, the seven hundred miles, in ’leven days, which is good travel.”
So it was; and evidently, therefore, the message from Carson for his men to meet him at Fort Laramie was urgent. And little time could be spent preparing; none could be wasted; for as everybody knew, Fort Laramie was four hundred miles from Bent’s Fort, and Bent’s Fort was two hundred and fifty miles from Taos.
Now must the Kit Carson men at Taos fall to, making ready. Bullets must be moulded, powder-horns replenished, repairs put upon saddle and shirt and leggins, new moccasins found or the old ones soled again. Nobody might tell whither this next trail led, nor how long ere it would turn home; and few cared, even though they had just come in from another trail of three months.
Two men were sent back to the summer camp to tell the Sol Silver party what had happened; three were assigned to see the bales of pelts through to market at St. Louis; and before noon of the following day the rest, fifteen of them, under Lieutenant Ike,[64] with plenty of horses and mules for saddle and pack, clattered out of Taos, bound straight for Fort Laramie, more than six hundred miles away.
Riding northward, on the sixth day the hurrying squad emerged in sight of Bent’s Fort, above whose brown, high walls flew the Stars and Stripes: a token and a challenge, planted here on the farthest border where the United States met Mexico.
Fording the Arkansas, in this the southeastern part of present Colorado, the Carson men were in American territory. Swarthy William Bent, proprietor, who lived at the fort, and whose wife was a Cheyenne woman, welcomed them into the broad gateway.
Mr. Bent was enabled to supply a little news.
“Why, yes, there’s a lot of talk this spring of emigration to the Oregon country,” he said; “reports from Missouri are, that some one hundred settlers, including women and children, left, middle of May, over the trail for Oregon. And a government expedition’s afoot. Maxwell’s been hired for it. Like as not you’ll find Kit’s mixed up in some of that business, too.”
From Bent’s, with its brave flag, its brass cannon piece upon the wall, and its sturdy garrison, on pushed the squad.
Two hundred miles more they rode, until, where green foothills met green plains, under the eye of Long’s Peak, was stationed, as Oliver well knew, Fort St. Vrain, brother post to Bent’s. He was wondering[65] whether Ike was not intending to swing into the west and visit this post, when, like the others, he sighted a horseman approaching at a gallop.
“Injuns!” cried voices in the cavalcade.
“White man, I reckon,” cried others.
“Close up, close up,” ordered Lieutenant Ike, gruffly. “An’ keep yore eyes peeled for more.”
Rapidly the horseman approached. Nearer he drew, speeding recklessly, his pony now and then jumping to avoid a badger hole or prairie-dog hole. Presently could be descried his long hair and a kerchief turban streaming in the breeze that he made; above his head he flourished his rifle—its muzzle puffed smoke, as signal that he was a friend and was coming with empty gun.
“White!” grunted several voices, simultaneously.
“Wagh!” uttered another. “Not exactly, boys. If that airn’t Jim Beckwith, I’m a beaver!”
Jim Beckwith! Oliver knew Jim Beckwith—or Beckwourth, as he called himself—and had seen him in Taos. He was a mixed blood, half French and half negro, and was celebrated because, when early a trapper, he had been adopted by the Crow Indians and made a head war-chief.
Arriving, while jogged the squad, he halted his pony by pulling it to its haunches. A romantic figure he was, with head bare, Indian fashion, with dark, handsome, almost Indian features, his sinewy, graceful[66] frame sheathed in gaily fringed and beaded buckskin.
“How,” he greeted.
“How,” and “Hello, Jim,” greeted the squad.
“From Touse?”
“Yep.”
“Where bound?”
“Up to Fort John.”
“What’s the news?”
“Nothing much. Kit sent for us, is all.”
“Wants you on that expedition.”
“What expedition?”
“Government.”
“How’d you know?”
“’Cause part of it’s just passed on up through St. Vrain. I was there and saw it. Young army fellow by name of Frémont’s captain, and he said Carson and rest of the crowd are waiting at Laramie. Maxwell was along, too, and he said same. Maxwell’s hunter, Kit’s guide. Kit took one party up by way the North Platte trail, Frémont and Maxwell came in ’cross country by South Platte. They’re all to meet at Fort John or Laramie.”
“Heap doings,” muttered Lieutenant Ike. “What’s the lodge talk?” he asked.
“Oregon trail’s being broken by settlers. First company’s already passed Laramie. Sioux are bad, and Gros Vents and Cheyennes have joined ’em, for war-path up Sweetwater. They’re hot for Crow and[67] white scalps, and Snake hosses. You fellows are liable to lose ha’r.”
“Wagh! But what’s this hyar expedition for?”
“To make the trail wider. To tell the government at Washington where South Pass is, near as I could find out from Maxwell.”
“But who doesn’t know whar South Pass air!” exclaimed a chorus.
“Wall,” quoth Lieutenant Ike, “if we’ve all been thar once we can all go thar ag’in. Kit’s sent for us, an’ that’s ’nough. Come on, boys.”