Snowbound and Eclipse (16 page)

This was a solemn day, mean black clouds, mean wind, mean sleet spitting in our faces, and the serpent's men had froze-up beards again, icicles dangling and clanging off beards, and eyebrows pasted with ice. They was all cold and wet down inside, round the waist, over the belly. The colonel never took the lead, never broke a trail himself, but let shifts of his men do that, busting up the crust and making a path. It was all done without an order. The men seemed to know when to quit, and another bunch would bust up crusted snow and the serpent would snake along, heading for the river that ran betwixt naked banks where the wind never slowed or quit. If the serpent thought to feed the mules there, he would be surprised.

Ahead loomed the worst heights a man could fathom, a white death so high it vanished into the cast-iron sky. I knew that country; it was bad enough in the summer, and now I couldn't tell one part of it from another. White canceled out everything. I would go in there as much a pilgrim as the next fellow. But it didn't matter to the serpent. He would go in there and drag the whole company to its doom. And what for? Not a railroad. No. He was looking for the tunnel into hell, is what he was trying to find. The more I thought upon it, the more I thought I should help him to the tunnel of hell. Why would a sane man do this?

We proceeded out on that vast flat, with nothing but snow and sagebrush and greasewood and wind. They told me it was Thursday, December 7, but I never know one day from another. For once we made good time, though the wind was bad and the temperature was worse and the air scraped heat out of me. I entertained myself by watching the spirits of the mules hovering just above them. When animals are fed and healthy, their spirits climb back inside of them and stay there, but now their spirits rode their backs along with the packs, and that told me what I wanted to know. The mules plodded listlessly, but we made time anyway.

Godey sent hunters ahead, but I heard no muffled shots on the wind and doubted that we would feast on deer or elk that night. Most of the day we were wrapped in a gray cocoon, with ice crystals stinging our faces and melting down into our beards, where the moisture froze, until we clicked and clanked as we progressed. We could not see the looming mountains, except at rare intervals, and our only companion was silence that day.

We camped on an open plain that night; there was absolutely no shelter for man or beast, and the miserable mules huddled together for warmth. Occasionally the mules on the outside burrowed into the center, for a moment of warmth. The mule herd seemed to understand this process, and periodically there would be a great shifting as mules on the outside, exposed to icy blasts, would burrow toward the middle of the herd for respite. We laid our bedrolls on iron ground and pulled stiff canvas over us. There was no fuel for fires, so we went nearly hungry, but for a few pieces of jerky the colonel had stashed away for moments like this. I never heard such silence. The company said nothing, each man caught in his private thoughts.

My thoughts were on the mules, which declined to eat snow for moisture, knowing somehow it would only chill
them worse than the icy gales were chilling them. Men lay restlessly in bedrolls, which did little to stay the cold, and the night passed interminably, each man awake and locked in his private thoughts.

I suppose the serpent slept. Like the rest of us, he huddled in blankets underneath flapping canvas. He knew no suffering, saw it not in others, and blamed all suffering on the sufferers. A true Beelzebub, I thought. Parson Williams, as I am known, saw the man through and through and saw the need for exorcism. By the light of a gray dawn there was another few inches of snow on the ground. The company, without firewood for coffee or food, trembled itself together, threw packsaddles over the wretched mules, pulled the cinches tight, loaded the panniers, and departed on a compass course because it was impossible to fathom direction. I've been fair uncomfortable, but that night tested my endurance and made all my wounds and scars howl at me. I loathed the serpent, who acted as if everything was normal, and contemplated shooting him where he stood. Instead, I took some satisfaction in the certainty that he would do the job himself.

Once again, wordlessly, we slogged west through crusty drifts and treacherous mounds of grimy snow, a giant serpentine string of men and animals coiling toward the Rio del Norte, which we struck in the middle of the day. Here the serpent sent us north along the east bank, thereby signaling to me that he would not bring us safely around the southern flanks of the mountains, as I had proposed. I saw naught but horns on his skull and spent the day conjuring up ways to shoot him in the back, one wobble of my rifle, and thus to prevent what soon would befall us.

But I didn't. It was odd how I didn't. I would fix it all up in my head and had it exact. I'd ride forward a piece, wait for a ground blizzard to veil me, and plant a ball between
his shoulder blades. I thus kept myself entertained for hours, whilst the company stumbled toward hell and finally dropped into a thickly timbered pocket beside the river, a haven for man and beast. That was December 8, 1848, and it had snowed in fits all day. The famished company made haste to free the wretched mules of their burdens and turn them loose, and I watched the beasts head for the river, there to slake a cruel thirst, and then to the willows and cottonwoods and red brush, where they tore at the bark and twigs and anything organic they could put their buck teeth around and strip free. It was poor fodder and would not put an ounce on any of them. But it would comfort them, the sticks and bark in their gut.

The hunters brought no game in; I knew they wouldn't. I have the vision, and I warned away the deer. “Make haste!” said I. “The serpent wants you.” I watched them hasten away and watched the snow swiftly fill their hoofprints until not a dimple remained. I saw it as clear as other men see a rock or a tree. Two does and two yearlings warned away, and now the serpent would never touch them.

We would eat more macaroni. It would do. If the mules might enjoy cottonwood bark, I might prosper on pasta. I watched the company drag deadfall and shake the snow off of it and build huge mounds of it. There was no lack of firewood in this forest. Somewhere above us, the wind raced, but in this wooded pocket under a cutbank we found a little peace. Then I saw fires bloom, bright orange in the lavender light, yellow in the gray darkness, and not just the usual three mess fires, either. They were building bonfires at every corner, fires to drive away darkness; fires to vanquish the serpent; fires to turn this cold wild into a bright parlor for a night; fires to soak heat into the frozen ground, heat a man's backside while another fire heated his front; fires to dry out their soaked duds. And now they were talking, too.
I heard shouts and cheer and relief. I have hardly heard better in a saloon, with a dozen men enjoying their cups and a good fire warming the pub. Fires circled the camp, and it was better than having a wild woman.

There would be no guard this night; no two-hour shifts. Those mules wouldn't stray from the bottoms and would eat all night, never pausing. Me, I drifted toward the dark river, which tumbled out of the mountains and flowed south and east. Snow lined its banks, eerie in the half light. I saw where an elk had descended its banks and crossed only recently.

“Go on, escape the serpent,” I said. “Old Parson Williams will have you for supper some other day.”

The next day, the serpent marched us up the Rio del Norte, but snows choked our progress and we made only three miles, finally camping in a piney wood. The mules would have nothing to eat once again. They never touched the resinous pine, which was poisonous to them. Godey spotted the elk tracks, got his five best hunters, and took off after the elk, which had retreated upslope into foothill forest. It didn't take long for the hunters to return dragging two elk over snow.

“So you stayed to feed the serpent,” I said, angry with the elk. “But now I will feed my empty belly on you and be glad because you were stupid.”

“Meat!” cried Stepperfeldt. “Meat tonight!” The man was a gunsmith, no hunter but handy to have around.

The elk, two young bucks, lay quiet in the snow, even as fresh flakes fell on their still-warm bodies. One had been shot through the neck; the other in the chest. The company rigged hempen ropes over limbs and slowly tugged the great four-foots up where they could be gutted. It took a gang of men to hoist an elk. I saw the elk spirits hover for a moment,
and then gallop away, never looking back. It made me angry. Expert butchers soon peeled back the supple elk hide, which would be valuable, especially for men whose boots were falling apart. I wanted the little two-point antlers. A bit of elk antler could make a man lusty. In time, every mess had thick elk cuts broiling or stewing, and the smell of it drifted through the air. But the butchers never stopped, because they wanted the elk cut up before it froze, and the rest of the meat would be carried with the company.

Old Parson Williams was well fed that night, in a camp scraped out of four feet of snow and surrounded by pines. Once again the mules were fractious, wanting to retreat downriver to the cottonwoods and a meal, so the serpent posted two-hour guards to check the poor beasts. It would have been better to let the mules feed and collect them in the morning, but it wouldn't make any difference. The serpent would snake up the mountain, and the mules would die.

I suffered that night from fits of Christianity, and the next morning when the serpent showed his face, I squatted next to him. “Cross the river here, and go back down, and I'll take you around these peaks safe and sound,” says I.

“That's a detour,” he said.

“It be more like a safe passage,” I replied, full of holy righteousness.

“Take us to Saguache River, and then up Cochetopa Pass,” he said blandly. “That's how the Spanish did it and how we'll do it.” He smiled kindly. I thought maybe to kill him on the spot but decided to wait.

I saw how it was with him and nodded. I had me some elk shoulder and coffee for breakfast, put a well-cooked piece in my possibles bag, and hied me down to the mules, which were standing in snow. Their backs were coated with the latest snowfall, and icicles dangled from their manes and
bellies, jaws, and tails. They hadn't been grained and were gnawing on one another's manes and tails. But even as I stood there, some of the serpent's Creoles began doling out a little maize and putting a few mouthfuls in nosebags and feeding the animals twenty at a time.

I watched one mule, one I fancied because it was plainer than most, sigh, eye me wearily, and stuff his hard-frozen snout into the bag, and soon I heard the quiet crunching of corn succumbing to molars. Half of it would go down that throat and emerge untouched a few hours later. That old mule's spirit hovered there and told me what I wanted to know. It wouldn't be long now.

It was cold again, that morning of December 12, but clear for a change.

This time the serpent sought me out. “You know the way to Saguache River?”

“I've walked over the hull country,” I said.

“This is the most important day of all, then. We must find it. I'm depending on you.”

“Well, it's not so hard. Just go wherever a railroad would go.”

He laughed softly. I don't reckon I'd seen him laugh much. I had made a good joke, I thought.

There were no thoughts of railroads these days. We took off late, but in sunlight, with intense blue skies overhead for a change. Serpent's luck, I called it, as we worked up a deepening canyon that would take us once again into mountains.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

John Charles Frémont

The guide was steering us ever westward instead of northwest. I pulled out my brass compass and checked, not liking it. We were leaving the headwaters of the Rio del Norte, a place of pine-clad hills and sloughs, where creeks and rivers tumbled together to form the great river.

By some mysterious fashion Old Bill had assumed the lead, working us away from the larger stream and up a branch I knew nothing about. I had sketches to work from. So had Preuss. Some came from knowledgeable mountaineers in Saint Louis and Westport. The most recent one had been drawn by Richens Wootton, who knew this country as well as Bill Williams.

This was a tumbled and rocky land, with giant gray outcrops, steep slopes, somber pine forests, groves of spidery cottonwoods and aspen, fierce, cruel creeks. And snow lazily smothered the country. It had caught and settled in every valley and dip, so that we were crossing spots that were ten or twenty feet deep, perilously working upslope in a tamped-down trench that reached over our heads.

This creek was not the Saguache River. I was sure of it. That stream was formidable, according to my informants, and had carved a broad valley that could support a wagon road—or a railroad. And it ran north and west, not straight west.

Yet there was Old Bill, perched on his bony mule, putting the beaters to work pounding a trail up this creek running within a narrow defile guarded by gloomy slopes. It was no easy task, and progress was slowed by steep grades,
deadfall, giant boulders blocking the way, and a perilous drop to our right, which threatened the lives of our burdened mules.

I pulled aside until Preuss drew up.

“Do you know where we're going?” I asked him.

The topographer smiled wanly. “All I have is rough maps, sketched by men with bad memories.”

“What do you call this creek?”

“I don't call it anything. How should I know? Maybe we should call it Old Bill Williams River, eh?”

“I need to know. I need to stop this.”

“Why don't you talk to him, yah?”

“Where is Saguache? The river?”

He shrugged. “It is maybe twenty miles north. But that is a guess.”

“And where is Cochetopa Pass?”

Preuss grinned evilly. I had the sense that he was enjoying this side excursion and maybe enjoying my discomfort, too. I have a way of reading men.