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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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Riding west through this country, Kit and I had plenty of time to talk. Kit had been Indian agent for the Jicarilla Apaches and the Utes for several years, so much of our conversation revolved around them. “The white men ain't gonna quit comin',” he said. “They'll take over this whole country and there ain't nothin' nobody can do to stop it, so the only hope for the Indians is to take up farmin' and ranchin' and live in houses. Some of them are startin' to see it that way, but others get riled and want to fight if you even mention it. Those damn prospectors keep pressin' onto land the government set aside for the Indians. It's the yaller metal, Kid. Makes them fools crazy. Now, it's the buffalo hunters, too. They're killin' 'em for hides alone and leavin' the meat to spoil. If that won't rile an Indian, I don't know what would. Hell, it riles me. But I've tolt the Indians, Kid, it's like trying to hold back a great storm cloud. I've tolt 'em that when they murder white people, I will respond with force, and by God, I've done it. You know. You've rid with me a time or two. It's unpleasant business, damned unpleasant, but I don't know any other way short of all-out war, and it may come to that anyway.”
These problems clearly troubled Kit. He felt caught in the middle, for he was as much an Indian at heart as he was white. Though he could neither read nor write, he could speak seven Indian languages, and he understood the Indian mind. On the trail, he lived like an Indian, for he had learned from them long ago. He was universally respected among the tribes of the plains and mountains, even when he rode against them with army troops to punish some killing or raid. The Indians called him “Little Chief” and told many stories about his bravery. I had heard these tales among Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Utes.
Kit's job as Indian agent was tough, and took him away from his family often. But after he had vented his frustrations to me on the trail, he seemed to feel better, and let the matter drop. From then on, we talked about game sign, though there was less of it than in years past to talk about. I asked Kit about the old days trapping beaver in the mountains, and he told me many a rollicking story of his exploits.
Toward the end of our second day of travel, we rode around a bend and spotted a large buck drinking from a beaver pond. The moment we came into view, he threw his head up, looked at us for one second, then turned to run into the nearby pines. The sight reminded me of the opening lines to
The Lady of the Lake,
so I began to recite:
The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
And deep his midnight lair had made
In lone Glenartney's hazel shade.
Kit looked at me and his mouth dropped open. “That's a purty batch of words. Did you just make that up?”
I laughed. “Not me, Kit. That's Sir Walter Scott.”
“Say some more of it.”
So I continued to recite from memory as we rode to some campground Kit knew of up the trail. He made me stop often and repeat certain lines, and he seemed quite enthralled with the epic poem that began with a stag hunt and led the listener
through battles and desperate romance. I continued to recite the poem to Kit that night in camp as he lay back against his saddle and smoked his old clay pipe. The mood of
The Lady of the Lake,
though set long ago and far away, suited the tone of affairs on the plains, with some factions spoiling for war, and others trying heroically to avoid it.
Kit stopped me and repeated certain lines he particularly liked:
Now man to man and steel to steel
A Chieftain's vengeance thou shalt feel
Then …
… my pass, in danger tried
Hangs in my belt and by my side
And, later …
Slight cause will then suffice to guide
A Knight's free footsteps far and wide
A falcon flown, a greyhound strayed,
The merry glance of mountain maid;
Or, if a path be dangerous known,
The danger's self is lure alone.
W
e had a fine hunt. We were far enough into the mountains that few prospectors had passed through the country, so game was plentiful. I shot a young bull elk and a cow. Kit shot a cow and a big mature bull. Four shots were enough. We did not intend to draw attention to ourselves with gratuitous gunfire. Though we were in Ute country, and Kit was on good terms with the Utes, you never knew in those days when a roving band of angry Pawnees or Blackfeet or Apaches might be
prowling, looking for the game we were harvesting, or scalps from foolish white hunters.
We spent a day skinning elk and quartering meat, hanging the quarters high in ponderosa pines several hundred yards from our camp. There were grizzlies in those mountains, and Kit insisted we avoid them at all cost. He had seen friends mauled, and had, himself, had narrow escapes from huge bears.
The next morning, we went to pack the elk meat on our mules, and found that a grizzly had indeed tried to claw our meat down from the trees where we had hung the quarters. Almost all the bark had been stripped from the tree where the meat hung. Judging from the size of the scrape marks on the tree trunks, the bear was a huge one. The smell of the big grizzly terrified the mules and horses, and they pranced constantly as we tried to pack the meat, and flinched at every little flutter of leaves in the forest. Kit and I kept our rifles within reach as we packed the mules, and watched constantly over our shoulders.
I was scared. The forest was thick around us, and even a big bear might sneak quite near without our seeing him. I knew that one or two rifle balls might fail to stop a charging grizzly. Still, there was no leaving our elk meat behind. It took us hours, but we got it all packed on the mules and left that place, to everyone's relief, without ever actually seeing the bear that had terrified us so. I have always wondered if he saw us.
We rode east with our little pack string, retracing our path through the San Juans. The trail often led above the timberline, and the views of craggy peaks jutting above the clouds awed me. I was happy to share the company of an experienced mountain voyageur, and wondered if I could find my way out of this maze of valleys and ridges should something happen to Kit.
I was riding Major, my veteran paint stallion. He was now twelve years old, which was rather aged for a frontier mount, yet I had spared Major many a hard mile by using other horses for punishing rides whenever I could. In those days, I rarely traveled without a spare mount or two. So Major was still plenty sound for his age, and possessed the experience and good judgment few other horses could equal. On top of all that,
he was a handsome paint, flashy and well muscled, and many a rider had envied my ownership of him over the years.
Kit decided to take us back toward William Bent's ranch on a new trail that would swing down to the San Luis Valley. As Indian agent, he wanted to check on some Utes he thought would be camping there.
“It's a good trail,” Kit claimed. “I've traveled it before. Twice't.”
 
 
THE TRAIL
WAS
a good one, at first. It wound gracefully among evergreens and bluffs, just a few hundred feet below the timberline. Then, we rounded a mountain bend and found that an avalanche had torn down the steep slope ahead of us and carried away boulders, trees, and soil, leaving only a shifting mass of scree underfoot where once a level trail had stood. As avalanches rate, this had been a rather minor one—only about a hundred yards in width. Still, that would be one hundred yards of unstable footing underneath our animals, with a steep slope below strewn with slick plates of rock that dropped at a sheer angle five hundred feet to a beaver pond below that looked no bigger than my thumbnail held at arm's length.
“Well,” Kit said, looking up and down the path of the avalanche. “Let me test it.”
He dismounted and went ahead on foot, checking each step, catlike, before placing his full weight on the shifting rocks. He continued like this, step by step, sometimes moving rocks ahead of him by hand, until he reached the other side of the avalanche, where the trail became solid again. Now he turned around and came back the same way he had gone, again testing each step before he committed his full weight to the slope. Halfway across, I saw him stop, stand erect, and turn his back to the slope. He stood there half a minute in the middle of that avalanche's path, staring out at the valleys, cliffs, waterfalls, and timbered mountainsides below. Finally, he resumed his cautious return to my side of the avalanche and set foot on firm ground.
“The only other way is to go back where the griz was this mornin' and try to find another pass from there.”
“That's a long way back,” I said, remembering my fear of the unseen bear.
“Yep.”
“It's only a hundred yards or so across,” I observed.
He nodded. “Lead your horse. If the critters slip, don't try to help 'em, Kid. Look out for yourself.”
I dismounted and swallowed hard. I tried to remind myself that this was the nature of life in the wilderness and if I wasn't up to crossing an occasional landslide, I should stay in town with the white women.
“You ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“‘If a path be dangerous known,'” he said, quoting Sir Walter Scott. “‘The danger's self is lure alone.'” He grinned at me, then turned away and started across, leading his horse. He went faster this time, knowing his pony might lose patience and panic if he progressed too slowly. I followed, leading Major. Behind me came the mules, whom I trusted to follow even though I had untied the lead ropes lest one of them slip.
Kit came to the place halfway across where he had stopped to gaze out over the valley. He took a step. His horse followed, and the rock that had supported Kit slipped away under the weight of the horse. The mount panicked, scrambling for footing, and I remember thinking that I wished we had ridden mules instead of horses. Kit's poor terrified horse clawed his own footing right out from under him. Kit tried to help the horse briefly by pulling the reins, but the cause was lost and Kit reluctantly cast the reins aside as the horse's hind legs slipped out from under him.
I could only watch. I dared not even move. I will never forget what happened next. I can see it as clearly now as when it occurred. The falling horse clawed for purchase with his front hooves and tore the shifting rocks right out from under Kit's boot. But Kit was wise to the dangers of the mountains and the evils of bad trails, and he threw himself back onto the slope spread-eagled, catching himself with his hands. Kit's right leg stuck out into thin air, for the mountain slope had disappeared under that leg. And at that moment his doomed horse made a desperate lunge with his head and neck and slung the long
leather reins whiplike toward Kit. One of the reins lashed out at Kit's ankle, and like an impossible tendril of some killer vine, it wrapped around Kit's boot and spur twice, snugged somehow under its own tautness, and entangled man with horse.
Nine hundred pounds of horseflesh now plummeted down the slide and Kit, like a calf at the end of a vaquero's reata, shot down the slope behind the struggling horse. I watched in horror, my feet fused in place on the shaky slope. Kit kicked at the tangled rein, but it remained fast. He reached for the rein to free himself, but the horse flipped, throwing his head and yanking Kit down the landslide. The horse rolled again, right over Kit, and the gnashing sounds of sliding rock coupled with the grunts of the poor falling beast almost drove me to helpless insanity, for I could do nothing but watch.
Now, miraculously, Kit kicked free from the tangled rein. Here the avalanche's path angled just enough to the right around a point that I thought Kit might land on the point instead of continuing his slide hundreds of feet below. I prayed he would make that point, my whole body wound as tight as steel cables.
The horse slammed against a boulder at the very edge of the rock slide a hundred feet below me, and Kit hit the same rock face just feet away from his mount. He landed on his head and his left shoulder, and came to a sudden stop that made me think of an egg dropped on the floor. The rocks that had been loosened continued to slide away downhill for several seconds, then everything became still and quiet except for the groans of the dying horse.
“Kit!” I yelled, as Major tossed his head behind me.
Slowly, I saw Kit roll onto his back. He lifted one arm and motioned for me to continue my crossing. I was astounded that he was alive, much less conscious.
Now I looked at the path that had evaporated before me. I had to cross. There was no going back. I turned straight up the mountainside to get above the place where Kit's horse had fallen and pawed away the footing. Major followed, dipping his head low to look at the shaky ground ahead of him, and snorting
at the rocks as if to warn them. The mules followed Major, seemingly as unconcerned as mountain goats. We climbed above the place where Kit's horse had destroyed what little integrity the slope held. I now turned back toward the far side of the rockslide, hoping the footing would bear our weight.
I angled slightly downhill now, heading for the place where the trail resumed. I could see it clearly, but I dared not rush toward it. I tested every step, and the animals stayed right behind me. Ten steps from good soil, a mass of loosened scree shifted under me and my horse, and we slipped a foot downward in a sudden plunge, then somehow found tenuous footing as the rocks we had loosened slid and skipped down the precarious slope. When I finally reached solid ground, I nearly dropped to my knees to kiss the earth, but there was no time for such foolishness, for Kit needed my help.
Leaving the beasts on the trail, I climbed downhill to the place where Kit had landed. I found him sitting up against a rock, rubbing his left shoulder. His face looked as stoic as ever, but I could see pain in his gathered brow. The dead horse lay beside him, its neck broken.
“How bad are you hurt?” I asked.
“I'll live.”
“Can you walk?”
“I 'magine I can, here directly. It's my chest that hurts. And my shoulder. I landed on my shoulder.”
“Is it broken?”
“I didn't hear nothin' crack, other than my skull slammin' agin' that there boulder.”
“If you hadn't hit that boulder, you'd still be falling.”
“I ain't complainin'.” Kit reached up to me with his right hand. “Easy,” he said.
Gently, I helped him to his feet. He winced, but made no whimper. In fact, to my surprise, I heard Kit chuckle. I feared for a moment that he had lapsed into delirium.
“One time, Kid, right after Peg Leg Smith cut his own leg off to keep the gangrene from a bullet wound from killin' him, his friends was haulin' him home on a litter slung between two mules. That was the only way they could think to get him out
of there with one leg cut off at the knee. Well, that litter busted on a steep trail, and Peg Leg fell about as far as I did, I guess. Maybe fu'ther. Landed in a stream and laid there cussin' in the cold water. Couldn't get out. He didn't know how to get around yet, one-legged. His friends made their way to him and stood around laughin' at him a while, then finally pulled him out. They tell me he cussed all the way back to Taos.”
I smiled at Kit, amazed that he had felt compelled to tell me a story just now, but I guess he was trying to make a point. “Do you want me to try to get your saddle off that horse?”
“Naw, Kid, the tree's probably busted. My rifle slid on down the mountain, so it's lost, too. Just get the bridle and the canteen, if you would.”
I salvaged what I could from Kit's saddle and we climbed back up to the animals I had left on the trail. I insisted that Kit ride Major while I hiked ahead on foot with my rifle.
Kit was in pain, and couldn't move his left arm or shoulder for days. He would always claim that he merely “sprained” his shoulder in that fall, but I think he cracked a bone or two, and suffered some internal bruising or bleeding. In fact, he never fully recovered from the accident. It changed his posture a little—not so much that you'd notice unless you knew him well. And though he had many a fight and a hard ride still ahead of him, that little fall in the San Juans would come back to haunt Kit in the final days.

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