Part 7

In 1835 Carson was hunter for Bent’s Fort, keeping the garrison of forty men supplied with buffalo meat. Once he was out hunting with six others and they made their camp tired out. “I saw,” says Kit, “two big wolves sneaking about, one of them quite close to us. Gordon, one of my men, wanted to fire his rifle at it, but I would not let him for fear he would hit a dog. I admit that I had a sort of idea that these wolves might be Indians; but when I noticed one of them turn short around and heard the clashing of his teeth as he rushed at one of the dogs, I felt easy then, and was certain that they were wolves sure enough. But the red devil fooled me after all, for he had two dried buffalo bones in his hands under the wolf-skin and he rattled them together every time he turned to make a dash at the dogs! Well, by and by we all dozed off, and it wasn’t long before I was suddenly aroused by a noise and a big blaze. I rushed out the first thing for our mules and held them. If the savages had been at all smart, they could have killed us in a trice, but they ran as soon as they fired at us. They killed one of my men, putting five shots in his body and eight in his buffalo robe. The Indians were a band of snakes, and found us by sheer accident. They endeavored to ambush us the next morning, but we got wind of their little game and killed three of them, including the chief.”

It was in his eight years as hunter for Bent’s Fort that Kit learned to know the Indians, visiting their camps to smoke with the chiefs and play with the little boys. When the Sioux nation invaded the Comanche and Arrapaho hunting-grounds he persuaded them to go north, and so averted war.

In 1842 when he was scout to Fremont, he went buffalo hunting to get meat for the command. One day he was cutting up a beast newly killed when he left his work in pursuit of a large bull that came rushing past him. His horse was too much blown to run well, and when at last he got near enough to fire, things began to happen all at once. The bullet hitting too low enraged the bison just as the horse, stepping into a prairie-dog hole, shot Kit some fifteen feet through the air. Instead of Kit hunting bison, Mr. Buffalo hunted Kit, who ran for all he was worth. So they came to the Arkansas River where Kit dived while the bison stayed on the bank to hook him when he landed. But while the bison gave Kit a swimming lesson, one of the hunters made an unfair attack from behind, killing the animal. So Kit crawled out and skinned his enemy.

One of his great hunting feats was the killing of five buffalo with only four bullets. Being short of lead he had to cut out the ball from number four, then catch up, and shoot number five.

On another hunt, chasing a cow bison down a steep hill, he fired just as the animal took a flying leap, so that the carcass fell, not to the ground, but spiked on a small cedar. The Indians persuaded him to leave that cow impaled upon a tree-top because it was big magic; but to people who do not know the shrubs of the southwestern desert, it must sound like a first-class lie.

One night as the expedition lay in camp, far up among the mountains, Fremont sat for hours reading some letters just arrived from home, then fell asleep to dream of his young wife. Presently a soft sound, rather like the blow of an ax made Kit start broad awake, to find Indians in camp. They fled, but two of the white men were lying dead in their blankets, and the noise that awakened Carson was the blow of a tomahawk braining his own chum, the voyageur, La Jeunesse.

In the following year Carson was serving as hunter to a caravan westward bound across the plains, when he met Captain Cooke in camp, with four squadrons of United States Cavalry. The captain told him that following on the trail was a caravan belonging to a wealthy Mexican and so richly loaded that a hundred riders had been hired as guards.

Presently the Mexican train came up and the majordomo offered Carson three hundred dollars if he would ride to the Mexican governor at Santa Fe and ask him for an escort of troops from the point where they entered New Mexico. Kit, who was hard up, gladly accepted the cash, and rode to Bent’s Fort. There he had news that the Utes were on the war-path, but Mr. Bent lent him the swiftest horse in the stables. Kit walked, leading the horse by the rein, to have him perfectly fresh in case there was need for flight. He reached the Ute village, hid, and passed the place at night without being seen. So he reached Taos, his own home in New Mexico, whence the alcalde sent his message to the governor of the state at Santa Fe.

The governor had already sent a hundred riders but these had been caught and wiped out by a force of Texans, only one escaping, who, during the heat of the fight, caught a saddled Texan pony and rode off.

Meanwhile the governor--Armijo--sent his reply for Carson to carry to the caravan. He said he was marching with a large force, and he did so. But when the survivor of the lost hundred rode into Armijo’s camp with his bad news, the whole outfit rolled their tails for home.

Carson, with the governor’s letter, and the news of plentiful trouble, reached the Mexican caravan, which decided not to leave the protecting American cavalry camped on the boundary-line. What with Texan raiders, border ruffians, Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and other little drawbacks, the caravan trade on the Santa Fe trail was never dull for a moment.

During these years one finds Kit Carson’s tracks all over the West about as hard to follow as those of a flea in a blanket.

Here, for example, is a description of the American army of the Bear Flag republic seizing California in 1846. “A vast cloud of dust appeared first, and thence, a long file, emerged this wildest wild party. Fremont rode ahead--a spare, active-looking man, with such an eye! He was dressed in a blouse and leggings and wore a felt hat. After him came five Delaware Indians, who were his body-guard, and have been with him through all his wanderings; they had charge of the baggage horses. The rest, many of them blacker than the Indians, rode two and two, the rifle held in one hand across the pommel of the saddle. Thirty-nine of them there are his regular men, the rest are loafers picked up lately; his original men are principally backwoodsmen from the state of Tennessee, and the banks of the upper waters of the Missouri.... The dress of these men was principally a long loose coat of deerskin, tied with thongs in front; trousers of the same, which when wet through, they take off, scrape well inside with a knife, and put on as soon as dry. The saddles were of various fashions, though these and a large drove of horses, and a brass field gun, were things they had picked up about California. They are allowed no liquor; this, no doubt, has much to do with their good conduct; and the discipline, too, is very strict.”

One of these men was Kit Carson, sent off in October to Washington on the Atlantic, three thousand miles away, with news that California was conquered for the United States, by a party of sixty men. In New Mexico, Kit met General Kearney, and told him that the Californians were a pack of cowards. So the general sent back his troops, marching on with only one hundred dragoons. But the Californians were not cowards, they had risen against the American invasion, they were fighting magnificently, and Fremont had rather a bad time before he completed the conquest.

It was during the Californian campaign that Carson made his famous ride, the greatest feat of horsemanship the world has ever known. As a despatch rider, he made his way through the hostile tribes, and terrific deserts from the Missouri to California and back, a total of four thousand, four hundred miles. But while he rested in California, before he set out on the return, he joined a party of Californian gentlemen on a trip up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Two of the six men had a remount each, but four of them rode the six hundred miles without change of horses in six days. Add that, and the return to Kit Carson’s journey, and it makes a total of five thousand, six hundred miles. So for distance, he beats world records by one hundred miles, at a speed beyond all comparison, and in face of difficulties past all parallel.

For some of us old western reprobates who were cow hands, despising a sheep man more than anything else alive, it is very disconcerting to know that Carson went into that business. He became a partner of his lifelong friend, Maxwell, whose rancho in New Mexico was very like a castle of the Middle Ages. The dinner service was of massive silver, but the guests bedded down with a cowhide on the floor. New Mexico was a conquered country owned by the United States, at intervals between the Mexican revolts, when Kit settled down as a rancher. The words settled down, mean that he served as a colonel of volunteers against the Mexicans, and spent the rest of the time fighting Apaches, the most ferocious of all savages.

Near Santa Fe, lived Mr. White and his son who fell in defense of their ranch, having killed three Apaches, while the women and children of the household met with a much worse fate than that of death. The settlers refused to march in pursuit until Carson arrived, but by mistake he was not given command, a Frenchman having been chosen as leader.

The retreat of the savages was far away in the mountains, and well fortified. The only chance of saving the women and children was to rush this place before there was time to kill them, and Carson dashed in with a yell, expecting all hands to follow. So he found himself alone, surrounded by the Apaches, and as they rushed, he rode, throwing himself on the off side of his horse, almost concealed behind its neck. Six arrows struck his horse, and one bullet lodged in his coat before he was out of range. He cursed his Mexicans, he put them to shame, he persuaded them to fight, then led a gallant charge, killing five Indians as they fled. The delay had given them time to murder the women and children.

Once, after his camp had been attacked by Indians, Carson discovered that the sentry failed to give an alarm because he was asleep. The Indian punishment followed, and the soldier was made for one day to wear the dress of a squaw.

We must pass by Kit’s capture of a gang of thirty-five desperadoes for the sake of a better story. The officer, commanding a detachment of troops on the march, flogged an Indian chief, the result being war. Carson was the first white man to pass, and while the chiefs were deciding how to attack his caravan, he walked alone into the council lodge. So many years were passed since the Cheyennes had seen him that he was not recognized, and nobody suspected that he knew their language, until he made a speech in Cheyenne, introducing himself, recalling ancient friendships, offering all courtesies. As to their special plan for killing the leader of the caravan, and taking his scalp, he claimed that he might have something to say on the point. They parted, Kit to encourage his men, the Indians to waylay the caravan; but from the night camp he despatched a Mexican boy to ride three hundred miles for succor. When the Cheyennes charged the camp at dawn, he ordered them to halt, and walked into the midst of them, explaining the message he had sent, and what their fate would be if the troops found they had molested them. When the Indians found the tracks that proved Kit’s words, they knew they had business elsewhere.

In 1863 Carson was sent with a strong military force to chasten the hearts of the Navajo nation. They had never been conquered, and the flood of Spanish invasion split when it rolled against their terrific sand-rock desert. The land is one of unearthly grandeur where natural rocks take the shapes of towers, temples, palaces and fortresses of mountainous height blazing scarlet in color. In one part a wave of rock like a sea breaker one hundred fifty feet high and one hundred miles in length curls overhanging as though the rushing gray waters had been suddenly struck into ice. On one side lies the hollow Painted Desert, where the sands refract prismatic light like a colossal rainbow, and to the west the walls of the Navajo country drop a sheer mile into the stupendous labyrinth of the Grand Cañon. Such is the country of a race of warriors who ride naked, still armed with bow and arrows, their harness of silver and turquoise....

They are handsome, cleanly, proud and dignified. They till their fields beside the desert springs, and their villages are set in native orchards, while beyond their settlements graze the flocks and herds tended by women herders.

The conquest was a necessity, and it was well that this was entrusted to gentle, just, wise, heroic Carson. He was obliged to destroy their homes, to fell their peach trees, lay waste their crops, and sweep away their stock, starving them to surrender. He herded eleven thousand prisoners down to the lower deserts, where the chiefs crawled to him on their bellies for mercy, but the governor had no mercy, and long after Carson’s death, the hapless people were held in the Boique Redondo. A fourth part of them died of want, and their spirit was utterly broken before they were given back their lands. It is well for them that the Navajo desert is too terrible a region for the white men, and nobody tries to rob their new prosperity.

In one more campaign Colonel Carson was officer commanding and gave a terrible thrashing to the Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches.

Then came the end, during a visit to a son of his who lived in Colorado. Early in the morning of May twenty-third, 1868, he was mounting his horse when an artery broke in his neck, and within a few moments he was dead.

But before we part with the frontier hero, it is pleasant to think of him still as a living man whose life is an inspiration and his manhood an example.

Colonel Inman tells of nights at Maxwell’s ranch. “I have sat there,” he writes, “in the long winter evenings when the great room was lighted only by the crackling logs, roaring up the huge throats of its two fireplaces ... watching Maxwell, Kit Carson and half a dozen chiefs silently interchange ideas in the wonderful sign language, until the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of another day. But not a sound had been uttered during the protracted hours, save an occasional grunt of satisfaction on the part of the Indians, or when we white men exchanged a sentence.”

XIV

A. D. 1845

THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD

John Nicholson was a captain in the twenty-seventh native infantry of India. He was very tall, gaunt, haggard, with a long black beard, a pale face, lips that never smiled, eyes which burned flame and green like those of a tiger when he was angry. He rarely spoke.

Once in a frontier action he was entirely surrounded by the enemy when one of his Afghans saw him in peril from a descending sword. The Pathan sprang forward, received the blow, and died. In a later fight Nicholson saw that warrior’s only son taken prisoner, and carried off by the enemy. Charging alone, cutting a lane with his sword, the officer rescued his man, hoisted him across the saddle, and fought his way back. Ever afterward the young Pathan, whose father had died for Nicholson, rode at the captain’s side, served him at table with a cocked pistol on one hand, slept across the door of his tent. By the time Nicholson’s special service began he had a personal following of two hundred and fifty wild riders who refused either to take any pay or to leave his service.

So was he guarded, but also a sword must be found fit for the hand of the greatest swordsman in India. The Sikh leaders sent out word to their whole nation for such a blade as Nicholson might wear. Hundreds were offered and after long and intricate tests three were found equally perfect, two of the blades being curved, one straight. Captain Nicholson chose the straight sword, which he accepted as a gift from a nation of warriors.

This man was only a most humble Christian, but the Sikhs, observing the perfection of his manhood, supposed him to be divine, and offered that if he would accept their religion they would raise such a temple in his honor as India had never seen. Many a time while he sat at work in his tent, busy with official papers, a dozen Sikh warriors would squat in the doorway silent, watching their god. He took no notice, but sometimes a worshiper, overcome with the conviction of sin, would prostrate himself in adoration. For this offense the punishment was three dozen lashes with the cat, but the victims liked it. “Our god knew that we had been doing wrong, and, therefore, punished us.”

There is no need to explain the Indian mutiny to English readers. It is burned deep into our memory that in 1857 our native army, revolting, seized Delhi, the ancient capital, and set up a descendant of the Great Mogul as emperor of India. The children, the women, the men who were tortured to death, or butchered horribly, were of our own households. Your uncle fought, your cousin fell, my mother escaped. Remember Cawnpore!

Nicholson at Peshawur seized the mails, had the letters translated, then made up his copies into bundles. At a council of officers the colonels of the native regiments swore to the loyalty of their men, but Nicholson dealt out his packages of letters to them all, saying, “Perhaps these will interest you.”

The colonels read, and were chilled with horror at finding in their trusted regiments an abyss of treachery. Their troops were disarmed and disbanded.

To disarm and disperse the native army throughout Northwestern India a flying column was formed of British troops, and Nicholson, although he was only a captain, was sent to take command of the whole force with the rank of brigadier-general. There were old officers under him, yet never a murmur rose from them at that strange promotion.

Presently Sir John Lawrence wrote to Nicholson a fierce official letter, demanding, “Where are you? What are you doing? Send instantly a return of court-martial held upon insurgent natives, with a list of the various punishments inflicted.”

Nicholson’s reply was a sheet of paper bearing his present address, the date, and the words, “The punishment of mutiny is death.” He wanted another regiment to strengthen his column, and demanded the eighty-seventh, which was guarding our women and children in the hills. Lawrence said these men could not be spared. Nicholson wrote back, “When an empire is at stake, women and children cease to be of any consideration whatever.” What chance had they if he failed to hold this district?

Nicholson’s column on the march was surrounded by his own wild guards riding in couples, so that he, their god, searched the whole country with five hundred eyes. After one heart-breaking night march he drew up his infantry and guns, then rode along the line giving his orders: “In a few minutes you will see two native regiments come round that little temple. If they bring their muskets to the ‘ready,’ fire a volley into them without further orders.”

As the native regiments appeared from behind the little temple, Nicholson rode to meet them. He was seen to speak to them and then they grounded their arms. Two thousand men had surrendered to seven hundred, but had the mutineers resisted Nicholson himself must have perished between two fires. He cared nothing for his life.

Only once did this leader blow mutineers from the guns, and then it was to fire the flesh and blood of nine conspirators into the faces of a doubtful regiment. For the rest he had no powder to waste, but no mercy, and from his awful executions of rebels he would go away to hide in his tent and weep.

He had given orders that no native should be allowed to ride past a white man. One morning before dawn the orderly officer, a lad of nineteen, seeing natives passing him on an elephant, ordered them sharply to dismount and make their salaam. They obeyed--an Afghan prince and his servant, sent by the king of Cabul as an embassy to Captain Nicholson. Next day the ambassador spoke of this humiliation. “No wonder,” he said, “you English conquer India when mere boys obey orders as this one did.”

Nicholson once fought a Bengal tiger, and slew it with one stroke of his sword; but could the English subdue this India in revolt? The mutineers held the impregnable capital old Delhi--and under the red walls lay four thousand men--England’s forlorn hope--which must storm that giant fortress. If they failed the whole population would rise. “If ordained to fail,” said Nicholson, “I hope the British will drag down with them in flames and blood as many of the queen’s enemies as possible.” If they had failed not one man of our race would have escaped to the sea.

Nicholson brought his force to aid in the siege of Delhi, and now he was only a captain under the impotent and hopeless General Wilson. “I have strength yet,” said Nicholson when he was dying, “to shoot him if necessary.”

The batteries of the city walls from the Lahore Gate to the Cashmere Gate were manned by Sikh gunners, loyal to the English, but detained against their will by the mutineers. One night they saw Nicholson without any disguise walk in at the Lahore Gate, and through battery after battery along the walls he went in silence to the Cashmere Gate, by which he left the city. At the sight of that gaunt giant, the man they believed to be an incarnate god, they fell upon their faces. So Captain Nicholson studied the defenses of a besieged stronghold as no man on earth had ever dared before. To him was given command of the assault which blew up the Cashmere Gate, and stormed the Cashmere breach. More than half his men perished, but an entry was made, and in six days the British fought their way through the houses, breaching walls as they went until they stormed the palace, hoisted the flag above the citadel, and proved with the sword who shall be masters of India.

But Nicholson had fallen. Mortally wounded he was carried to his tent, and there lay through the hot days watching the blood-red towers and walls of Delhi, listening to the sounds of the long fight, praying that he might see the end before his passing.

Outside the tent waited his worshipers, clutching at the doctors as they passed to beg for news of him. Once when they were noisy he clutched a pistol from the bedside table, and fired a shot through the canvas. “Oh! Oh!” cried the Pathans, “there is the general’s order.” Then they kept quiet. Only at the end, when his coffin was lowered into the earth, these men who had forsaken their hills to guard him, broke down and flung themselves upon the ground, sobbing like children.

Far off in the hills the Nicholson fakirs--a tribe who had made him their only god--heard of his passing. Two chiefs killed themselves that they might serve him in another world; but the third chief spoke to the people: “Nickelseyn always said that he was a man like as we are, and that he worshiped a God whom he could not see, but who was always near us. Let us learn to worship Nickelseyn’s God.” So the tribe came down from their hills to the Christian teachers at Peshawur, and there were baptized.

XV

A. D. 1853

THE GREAT FILIBUSTER