I am not overly religious, and I make no claim to understanding Scripture better than anyone else, but there is a quote that has stuck with me and sums up the state of our existence to a remarkable degree.
My morbid streak is showing again.
But back to that cleft in the earth, and to the buffalo and the dust and the fear that coursed through my veins. I made it to the bottom and helped the others hold fast to our horses, which were in a state of sheer terror and fit to bolt. They plunged and reared and whinnied.
Along both rims flowed endless shaggy forms with their bulging humps and wicked black horns. On and on, until my nerves were raw and my mind numb and I could barely breathe for the dust in the air.
We never forget certain moments in our lives. Moments so profound, so intense, they are indelibly seared into our being. Such it was with me when Augustus Trevor hollered, “The worst is over!”
He was right. The thunder was not as loud. The snorting and grunting was less. The herd was thinning.
I clung to the reins on my mount and to the rope to the pack animals, and I could have wept for joy. The only reason I didn’t, I suppose, is that I was too dazed. The blank expressions of the others showed they were in the same state.
At length the ground stopped trembling, the dust stopped swirling, and the thunder ceased altogether.
Trevor was first to stir and climb to the top. He raised his head above the rim and gazed about him with the air of someone who does not believe what he is seeing. Then he beckoned.
I do not know what I expected. Pockmarked earth, yes, and to find that in places the grass had been pounded down to bare dirt. I had not counted on the bodies, though. Mostly cows and calves but I also spied a few old bulls. They had tripped or stumbled or tired and gone down, never to rise again. Brown mounds ringed by red, some so badly mangled I honestly could not tell that they had been buffalo.
“It’s a miracle!” Wilson exclaimed. “The Lord be praised!” He shook his pudgy hands at the sky, his belly jiggling.
“We live!” young Billingsley marveled. “We still live!” He jumped up and down in glee.
I shared their relief, but more so that my supplies had been spared than that we had. That might seem hard-hearted, but I am a naturalist, after all, and my easel and my sketchbooks are my means of recording my endeavors for posterity.
Soon we were underway.
Once again the dangers I had taken so lightly had shown they were not to be mocked. Either I learned my lesson, or I perished.
It was that simple.
Chapter Three
We have arrived at an oasis of civilization in the middle of nowhere.
Since Trevor repeatedly referred to it as a fort, I had envisioned a structure along military lines, even though he stressed it was civilian run, and had never been anything but a trading center.
I can think of no better way to convey what I beheld than to say it was a castle made of mud. Adobe, the style is called, a word of Spanish extraction. More aesthetic than logs, it lent an atmosphere of dignity and sophistication to what was essentially a site where beads, trinkets and liquor were traded for furs.
How they ever built it with a relative handful of men, I cannot conceive. I would have thought an army would be required.
The dimensions were as follows: the front and rear walls were approximately one hundred and forty feet in length, the side nearer one hundred and eighty. The average height was fourteen feet, and all the walls were three feet thick. They were proof not only against rifles and pistols and arrows, but a cannon ball would not penetrate.
As if that were not enough, at the northwest and southeast corners were towers housing cannons.
At its maximum, provided provisions were adequate, the fort could sustain two hundred men and twice that in stock and poultry.
I had to paint it.
I also had to paint the men who ran it.
This remarkable enterprise was the brainchild of the Bent brothers and Ceran St. Vrain. I saw more of the latter than the former, who were busy with freighters bound for Santa Fe.
St. Vrain is an aristocratic gentleman, well-read and kindly yet firm in his dealings with subordinates. It was from his lips that I first heard the names which would soon figure so prominently in my life. It happened when he mentioned having a Cheyenne wife.
“How remarkable,” I responded.
“Not really,” said he. “Quite a few white men have found Indian maidens much to their liking. Nate King and Joseph Walker are the most famous examples.”
I had never heard of either and stated as much.
“Good Lord, man,” St. Vrain said. “Walker’s explorations are legendary. As for King, he is one of my closest friends and as ideal an example of the mountain man as you are likely to meet.”
“The mountain man?”
“That is what people are calling whites who stayed on in the mountains after the beaver trade faded. King was one of the best of the trappers and one of the first whites to go Indian, as they say. His wife is a Shoshone, and I don’t mind admitting she is as beauteous a woman as ever drew breath.”
“It is a good thing your own wife is not here beside us,” I joked. “She might take exception.”
“No, she would not,” St. Vrain responded good-naturedly. “Winona and my wife are good friends.”
An idea occurred to me. “This Nate King knows these mountains well, then, I gather?”
“No one knows them better. He used to live not all that far from here, at the eastern edge of the mountains. But he has since moved deeper in, and we do not see him nearly as often.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I would like to meet him.”
“I cannot speak highly enough of his character or that of his best friend, Shakespeare McNair.”
The name stirred the vaguest of recollections. “I would swear I heard of him when I was a boy.”
“You probably did,” St. Vrain grinned. “McNair is older than Methuselah. He was one of the first, if not
“Have they any children, King and McNair?”
“Nate King does,” St. Vrain said, and his face clouded.
“What?” I prompted.
“Nothing.”
“Is there something about them I should know? What if I run into them in my travels?”
“It is only that Nate’s son—” St. Vrain began, and caught himself. He gazed about us at the bustle of activity, then lowered his voice. “Zach King is his name. A nice enough lad, so long as you stay on his good side. The taint of being a breed has scarred him and made him more vicious than he would be otherwise, in my estimation.”
“Because he has a white father and a red mother?”
“Exactly that, yes. Halfbreeds are held in low esteem on the frontier, or anywhere else, for that matter. Most whites regard them as prone to violence, and many Indians do not want anything to do with them because they are considered bad medicine.”
“Are the opinions justified?”
“Oh, please. We are men of culture, you and I. We know superstition when we hear it. My own children are half-and-half, and they are as kind and as ordinary as any of so-called purer blood.” St. Vrain shook his head. “No,
