Only the Brave: The Continuing Saga of the San Juan Pioneers Page 6

  June 25, 1884—Near Elk Mountain, San Juan County

  The next morning, as they rode single file toward the red mesa that now towered over them, Hy, who was in the lead, suddenly pulled up. He raised one hand, signaling the others to come up beside him. As they joined him, Redd grunted softly. He had evidently seen what Perkins was seeing. Without raising either his voice or his arm to point, Lem said, “I count six. No, seven.”

  “Look to the left of that large clump of cedar trees,” Hy said. “There are at least two more there standing in the shadows.”

  Kumen grunted softly. “Definitely Utes.”

  By this time, Mitch’s heart was pounding like a bass drum and his hands were suddenly clammy. He was about to say, “I don’t see them,” when a movement caught his eye in the shadow of a large cedar tree about seventy-five yards ahead of them. As he concentrated on the movement, a horse suddenly came into focus. Then another, and another. One by one he began to pick out the men. One was holding the ponies. Another squatted beside a dead cedar tree. The main group by the cluster of cedar trees was now clearly visible to him. “There’s one off to the left,” he said. “Behind the rocks.”

  “Got him,” Lem said. “Good eye. So ten for sure. Maybe more out of sight.”

  Mitch felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. Even as they watched, the Indians began to move—not toward them, but spreading out in a line. When they stopped, they were nearly shoulder to shoulder and formed a wide half circle.

  “What are they doing?” Mitch asked, forgetting his resolve not to ask stupid questions.

  Evidently Kumen didn’t think it was stupid, because he was shaking his head in disgust. “They’re blocking the way. The trail goes right through the middle of them.”

  “What do you think?” Lem asked. “Hostile?”

  “No,” Kumen said after a moment. “They’re just trying to scare us off. They know why we’re here, and they don’t like it. So they’re seeing if we’ll spook.”

  It’s working. I’m pretty darned spooked at the moment, Mitch thought. But he kept his lips clamped shut.

  “Okay,” Lem said. “We’re gonna sit here for five or ten minutes. Let them know that we’re not turning tail and running. But we don’t want to look like we’re trying to push them, either. Be sure to keep your hands away from your weapons, but let them see that we are armed. They have to know that we’re not backing down. This range is critical to our survival, and they’re gonna have to learn to share.”

  Kumen looked over at Mitch. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Then honesty overcame him. “A little nervous, I guess.”

  “Yeah, me too,” he chuckled. “And you can tell by how straight Hy’s sitting in the saddle that he’s not real comfortable at the moment either. Right, Hy?”

  He muttered something that neither of them caught.

  This is good. Keep it light. Don’t think about what’s going to happen when you start forward and reach that line of Indians.

  Kumen spoke again. “What you have to remember, Mitch, is that no matter the provocation, part of our mission out here is to make peace with the Indians. No one said that was going to be easy, but it has to be done. The native peoples of this land have been betrayed and treated like trash by white men for so long that they have a natural distrust of all of us. As someone once said, they are fed hatred for the whites in their mother’s milk. But we have to change that. We have to treat them with the utmost integrity. Even when we disagree and can’t give in to their every wish, they have to know that we’re different. That we will deal with them fairly. That we never lie to them, even in little things. We feed them and help them whenever we can.”

  “And there’s another thing,” Lem broke in. “Take this situation we’re in now. We can’t back down, but under no circumstances can we let it collapse into a gunfight. First of all, we’re outnumbered more than two to one. But second, and more important, if we kill one of them, no matter how justified it may be, it will unleash a war of retribution against our people. So we cannot—we must not!—lose control of the situation. We need to stay as cool as a can of milk in the ice house.”

  Mitch nodded and then couldn’t resist commenting, “I didn’t think you ever got ice down in this country.”

  The other three chuckled. He was catching on.

  But the calmness in Mitch’s voice was a flat-out lie. His mind was whirling, his stomach churning. Finally, he managed a pasty grin and added, “Thanks for not explaining all of that to my mother the other night.”

  “Oh, I think she knows more than you think,” Hy said. “Our women are not without awareness of what our situation is. And we men don’t have a corner on courage either.”

  “And your mother is a courageous woman,” Lem added.

  “I know.” Then Mitch had a thought. “Is it true what you said to my mother about the Indians being afraid to kill Mormons?”

  “It is generally,” Kumen replied, “but there are a few bad ones in all three tribes, and there’s no predicting what they’ll do.”

  “Tell him about Navajo Frank,” Lem suggested. “We’re not in any hurry here.”

  “Ah, yes,” Kumen said. “Navajo Frank. He was an interesting one. He was in his mid to late twenties, I guess. He was taller than most Navajo and was a handsome, robust man who was quite happy and pleasant by nature. And very smart. In addition to Navajo, he spoke Ute, Piute, Moki, or Hopi as we call them, Mexican, and a pretty good smattering of English. But, like many others of these native peoples, he had this way of thinking that if you saw something you liked, you just took it.

  “Well, one day me and Thales Haskell caught him red-handed with some of our horses.”

  “You haven’t met Thales Haskell yet, have you?” Lem cut in.

  Mitch shook his head. “No, but I’ve heard of him.”

  “Thales Haskell spent years among the Indians as a missionary,” Lem explained. “He and Jacob Hamblin are probably the two best Indian men we have in the Church.”

  “That’s right,” Kumen said. “So, when Thales and me finally caught up with Navajo Frank, he was riding one of our lost animals. When we challenged him, he gave this lame excuse about finding him and being on his way to bring him to us. So Thales looked Frank in the eye and said with great solemnity, ‘Frank, if you continue to steal from the Mormons, you are going to take sick and die.’”

  “Really?” Mitch exclaimed. “And how did he take that?”

  “Oh, he gave us this big horselaugh and brushed it off, but he gave us back our horse. When he walked away he was still laughing at Haskell’s threat.

  “After that we didn’t see him for several months. Then one day he came into town. At first we barely recognized him. Instead of the rugged warrior we had known before, he was thin and haggard. His chest was all caved in and sunken. When he talked it was in a wheezing gasp.”

  “Whoa!” Mitch said. “No kidding!”

  “Oh,” Hy said. “He looked awful.”

  “He was looking for Thales,” Kumen went on. “Wanted him to write a letter to God and tell God that Frank would never steal again from the Mormons if God would save his life. But Thales, in that same solemn tone, told Frank he wasn’t sure he could do that because the Lord had warned him before and he’d had no ears for it. Frank begged him to intervene. Finally, Thales told him that if he would cease all of his stealing from that day on and use whatever influence he had over other Navajo to stop them from stealing from the Mormons, maybe the Lord might change His mind.”

  “And did he?”

  “He did,” Lem said. “He became a great friend to our people and regained much of his strength and good health.”

  “Wow,” Mitch murmured. “That’s incredible.”

  Suddenly, Kumen leaned forward in his saddle. “Uh, Lem?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look at that brave in the center of the line. Does he look familiar to you?”

  Going up in his stirrups, Lem peered forwa
rd and then released his breath in a long sigh. “Is that Moenkopi Mike?” he asked with a grim nod.

  “Yeah, I think it is.” Kumen turned to Mitch. “He gets his name from Moenkopi, a settlement on the reservation down near Tuba City. That’s Hopi and Navajo country, so no one knows how a Ute got that name. But he’s a bad one. Word is that he’s killed several men in cold blood.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more time.” Lem flicked the reins. “All right, here we go. Everybody stay easy now. Silent prayers might be in order too.”

  As the four men approached the half circle of stone-faced Utes, Mitch could count only two rifles and three or four pistols in the group. The others carried bows and arrows and hunting knives at their belts. Though he studied all of the Indians waiting for them, Mitch’s eyes kept going back to the man who was directly ahead of them.

  He was a savage-looking man, short in stature but with solid muscle in every part of his body. He had a massive jaw, which gave him an oversized mouth and made his head, which sat on a neck as thick as a bulldog’s, seem out of proportion to his short body. Throw in the long-barreled six-shooter he wore on his hip and the overall effect was chilling.

  The four of them were riding abreast now, their stirrups nearly touching one another’s. Instinctively, they inched even closer together. They reined up about twenty feet in front of the Indians, keeping their hands on their saddle horns in clear view of the warriors. Lem raised an arm in greeting, palm to the front.

  “Greetings, my brothers,” Lem said quietly and with perfect calm.

  Every eye was on him, but no one moved or spoke. The expression on the faces of these natives was not encouraging. The lower lips were pushed out, which Mitch knew was a sign that they were angry.

  “And greetings to you, Mike,” Lem went on, not bothered at all by their silence. “We’ve not seen you for a while. Is all well with you?”

  Not the tiniest flicker that Mike had even heard him.

  “Has the hunting been good?” Lem went on, as if he weren’t carrying on a one-sided conversation.

  Nothing.

  Lem smiled, then shrugged and raised his hand in farewell. “Well, good hunting.” Then, moving very deliberately, he wheeled his horse to the right and walked it around the end of the half circle of braves before turning back and returning to the trail.

  The next minute and a half was the longest of Mitch’s life. He didn’t look at the Indians as he rode past them, but he could feel their gaze burning into his back. He fought back the temptation to hunker down in the saddle in case one of them tried to put a bullet or an arrow in his back.

  No one moved. No one spoke. Mitch wasn’t even sure if they blinked. They remained as silent and stoic as before. As the Mormons passed around them and started down the trail further into Second Valley, the braves turned and watched them go, but that was all.

  A minute or so later, Mitch risked a glance over his shoulder. Nothing. They had vanished into the cedar forest as silently as ghosts.

  They rode steadily for several hours, passing through Second Valley. Lem, the only one who had been with the scouting party the previous year, seemed to know where he was going, so he led the way.

  Though they had climbed considerably, the rugged escarpment of the vast plateau still loomed high over their heads. There were unshod pony tracks everywhere, which confirmed that the country was heavily used by the Utes, but the tracks were so random that they gave the group no clue as to a trail. Kumen speculated that this was done deliberately to throw the white men off.

  By three o’clock they found themselves in broken country, moving into a veritable maze of canyons, cliffs, and ledges. It was not looking good, and their spirits were flagging.

  “Hey!”

  Mitch’s low cry brought the others up short. They were scattered now, looking for some way up the steep canyon walls. If they could get high enough, Lem kept saying, maybe they could spot some distant landmarks and locate where they were. When the group turned to look at him, Mitch was pointing and gaping at the same time. About fifty yards ahead of them, an Indian astride a horse with no saddle and only a rope for a bridle had suddenly appeared from a stand of cedar trees. He sat there, staring at the four men, not moving.

  Mitch’s hand started edging down to touch his pistol before he remembered Kumen’s advice and jerked it away. He waited for his three companions to join him. “What do we do?” he asked.

  Before anyone could answer, the Indian raised a hand and called out to them. To their surprise, he was waving at them to come forward.

  “It’s a young lad,” Hy said, squinting against the afternoon sunlight. “’Bout your age, Mitch, I’m guessing.”

  Kumen was standing in his stirrups peering at the solitary figure. “Ute. No question about that.”

  And without waiting for a response, he nudged his horse forward. Instantly, the boy kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks and disappeared into the trees again. But as he did so, he again waved them forward with a sweep of his arm.

  “What is he doing?” Mitch asked.

  “Looks like he wants us to follow him,” Lem answered. He said it like he didn’t find that thought a particularly happy one.

  “Think it’s a trap?” Hy asked.

  After a moment, Kumen shook his head. “Don’t think so. Let’s follow him and find out.”

  They didn’t see him again until they had become hopelessly lost once more in the tangle of boulders, cedar trees, escarpments, blind canyons, and narrow washes. There were still horse tracks everywhere, so they had no way of determining which set was his. Finally they pulled up, trying to decide which way to go.

  It was Kumen who saw him first. “There he is.” He had come out of the trees again, this time only twenty or so yards ahead of them. His arm came up as he waved them on and then rode back into the trees.

  And so it went. If they got lost, their guide would appear for a moment or two to make sure they were still following, and then he would slip away again. The fourth time it happened, Kumen nodded his head. “I think he’s showing us the way up to the top.”

  “Or leading us into a trap,” Lem observed. “If he’s helping us, why so secretive?”

  “I’m going to find out,” Kumen said. “Stay here.” He cupped one hand to his mouth, shouted something unintelligible, and then spurred his horse forward.

  For a moment the boy looked startled, but then he stopped and turned back to face Kumen.

  As Kumen rode away, Mitch had a sudden thought. “Does he speak Ute, too?” Mitch had heard he was fluent in Navajo.

  “Enough to get by,” Lem replied. “Kumen doesn’t talk much about it, but he was tutored in the ways of the Indian by Thales Haskell himself.”

  They watched Kumen slow his horse to a walk as he approached the boy. One hand came up, and they could hear him say something to the Indian. The young brave visibly relaxed and raised his hand in the same gesture. A moment later their horses were side by side and they were launched in a vigorous conversation. Once the boy waved his hand around in a big circle. Twice he motioned toward a ridge ahead of them, pointing out a narrow canyon in the steep slope.

  Two minutes later, Kumen was on his way back to the others and the boy was gone again.

  “All right,” Kumen said as he rejoined them. “Here’s the situation. He is just a boy. His name is Henry. When I asked him how old he was, he wasn’t sure, but he thought that this winter would be his thirteenth.”

  “Is he Ute, then?” Mitch wondered.

  “Oh, yes. He’s part of that hunting party that confronted us back there.”

  “I don’t understand, then,” Hy said. “What’s he doing?”

  Kumen grinned at them. “Helping the Lord answer our prayers, that’s what. He wants to show us the way up Elk Mountain.”

  “Why?” Lem and Mitch asked at the same time.

  “Because he’s a good boy. He likes the Mormons. I guess he knew Thales Haskell and developed a great love of the Mo
rmons from him. He says that the other braves were out ahead of us until about half an hour ago. Now they want us to pass through so they’re behind us.”

  And have us trapped, Mitch thought.

  Kumen went on. “They’ve split up and are riding separately so we can’t use their tracks to find the trail. So this boy is pretending to do the same, only when he’s sure none of the others are close by, he pops out to help us.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Hy breathed in wonder.

  “He says we go up that little backbone there and then the trail is easier to see. But he’ll stay ahead of us and make sure we reach Kigaly Springs. Then he’s going to have to rejoin the band or they’ll wonder where he is.”

  “Kigaly Springs?” Lem chortled. “Get me there and we’re not lost anymore. We camped there last year. It’s a beautiful place with lots of water and feed for our mounts.”

  “Henry says that Moenkopi Mike will be watching us now, so don’t search the trees too carefully for the next hour or so.”

  Kigaly Springs was set in a narrow draw with thick timber on the north-facing slope above them. It wasn’t a large spring, but the water was ice cold and a welcome reprieve from the tepid water in their canteens. They made camp quickly and settled down to wait.

  They didn’t have to wait long. The first sign came when their horses pricked up their ears and turned their heads to look up the draw. Then Kumen’s horse whinnied softly. A moment later another horse answered.

  “Well,” Mitch said, “they know where we are now.”

  “Oh, I think they’ve known that for some time,” Lem grunted.

  Two or three minutes later, they heard the sound of something coming through the brush. “Calm and unruffled,” Kumen whispered. “Let them make the first move.”

  But there was no such move. When several figures appeared, it was as if the white men were not there. Mike was in the lead, with the rest of them in single file behind them. Henry was in the rear. One by one they passed by. They looked down their noses at the white men, and their lips were pushed out even more than before. Moenkopi Mike glared at them but didn’t speak. Neither did any of the others. When Henry passed them, he kept his eyes straight ahead.