Where Trails Run Out

By Anna Prince Redd

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Chapter 5

Synopsis: A company of twenty-four young men and two families — James L. Davis, his wife Mary, and their four children; Henry H. Harriman, his wife Elizabeth, and their five children — are called to explore a route from Cedar City, in Southern Utah, to San Juan County. The two families are to remain in San Juan and, at a point where the Montezuma Creek comes into the San Juan River, are to establish an outpost and prepare for the coming of the main company of settlers, members of the San Juan Mission. The twenty-four scouts are to return to their homes and report their findings. The purpose of the mission is to cultivate and maintain peaceful and friendly relations with the Indians, who are almost the sole occupants of the large isolated country.

While driving her team at night, across a sultry, menacing desert, Elizabeth has a frightening experience with a mysterious Indian. She feels that she will see the Indian again and that he will know if she needs help. The company travels over rough and dangerous country and after much suffering, finally reaches Moenkopi, an Indian outpost and a supply point for traders and pioneers. The Davis family remains at Moenkopi and the others go on toward the San Juan. They reach what seems to loom as an impenetrable forest of giant greasewood trees, mysterious and forbidding in the twilight. The men attack the greasewood forest and clear a way through. The company moves on, followed by a horde of interfering Indians, until they reach a lake, almost dead of thirst. There is an astonished exclamation from the captain of the company, and a command: “Halt!”

In sight of water, yet denied it, Elizabeth knows the agony of what is in store for the helpless company.

“How!” the guttural fell like a whiplash. The voice was low, but it jerked every chin in the train to attention.

“How!” Silas Smith flung the word back at the scowling Indian chief.

“Me Chief Peogament! White man no pass!” The Indian chief folded his arms and looked impassively at the placid water of the lake.

“Chief Peogament,” Silas said, and stood up in his stirrups, “white man say ‘How!’ ” Then, turning to his men, he called, “Company forward!”

The wagons crowded ahead. James Decker’s, Henry’s, Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth stood up, ready to leap for the water, her dark eyes blazing, and her heart knocking her breath out. They’d show these arrogant Piutes!

But, as suddenly, she seemed to have no heart at all, for there, massed against a wall of coral rock just inside the corridor, stood several hundred painted warriors, and behind them, the horde of squaws that had followed them three days before, come again as mysteriously as they had disappeared on the trail behind.

Silas Smith rode down upon Peogament, barely missing his elbows. Peogament’s arms shot out and caught Smith’s bridle. “No pass!” he hissed.

“Peogament,” Smith waved his arm for the rest of the wagons to come up to the front, controlling his temper and his frightened horse, “now hat I know you speak my language, we’ll see about that!” he said.

Peogament clung tenaciously to Captain Smith’s bridle reins, trying to maintain his dignity. But the frightened horse lashed out at him with his hoofs, and the angry chief had to leap back.

“White man no good for Indians!” he said, showing his teeth in snarling rage. “Horses eat up grass! Rain gods dry up springs if Peogament let white man pass!”

Near Elizabeth’s wagon sat George Hobbs, as statuesque in his saddle as the braves who were massed against the cliffs. Elizabeth, now as angrily alive as the rest of the little company, glanced furtively in his direction. Nothing else in all the world was important but that water in the lake. Her children were dying of thirst. Let Peogament stand there till the crack of doom! Let George Hobbs take care of Silas Smith. They were equal to their job. Her job was to get water for her children.

She reached slowly under the wagon seat for her water pail.

“I wouldn’t do that, Elizabeth,” George Hobbs said, yet there wasn’t the slightest indication that he had seen his sister’s movement. And for the moment Elizabeth hated him as she did Peogament. She let the bucket fall slowly, quietly, back into its place under the seat.

Through the long minutes that ensued, Elizabeth sat inert, hearing the men’s voices, low or loud with anger, but she heard little of any meaning. The effort was too great, she was too tired even to wonder why the children were so quiet. A deadening numbness was in her limbs. It crept up and up to her brain. Water. Water. Water. Dripping – dripping – dripping her to sleep.

“Company forward!” The command dispelled the numbness in her brain. She clutched her lines. Now, now they could get to the lake!

But there was a new agitation. Every young man in the train had crowded past her wagon, swaying in his saddle, dizzy from anger and thirst.

“No much water!” Peogament cried. “Indians have stock, too!”

“Company forward!” Captain Smith shouted again, and started to ride on. Only then did Elizabeth realize they were not going to camp, not going to have water.

“Company –”

There was the crack of Peogament’s buckskin quirt. It cut the air and whined to silence against Smith’s unguarded face and, before he could recover from the blow, it struck again. Elizabeth recoiled. An angry shout came from the crowding cowboys.

“Out of the way, Hobbs,” they yelled. “We’ll take a hand in this.”

“Talk! What’s it to us! We’ve got guns that say we’re goin’ to have all the water we want!” Hamilton Thornton said, leveling his gun at Peogament’s head.

George Hobbs had seemed to make no move, yet his pistol barrel gleamed in the sun, close to the center of Thornton’s forehead.

“What’s that order, President Smith?” he drawled.

“Company forward!” Smith cried. “that’s my order!”

“And it’s going to be obeyed,” Hobbs added.

One look into George Hobbs’ steel eyes and Thornton fell back. Even the grim Peogament was swayed, jostled aside by the onrush of wagons that followed the command. Then, surprisingly, the old Indian chief wrapped his arms in his blanket and stepped aside allowing the train to pass. Whether he was impressed by Hobbs’ gunplay, Smith’s determination, or because he believed the whites would die of thirst anyway, the scouts could never afterward decide.

Peogament held his braves in check by the mere force of his silent contempt. Not an Indian moved. Not one looked after the passing train.

Driving so close to the lake, so close that she could have leaned down and trailed her fingers in the water, Elizabeth saw it slipping from her. The teams neighed for water as they passed, too tired to stampede. The heron went on with its feeding on the shore.

Great wrenching sobs tore Elizabeth. “We can’t – we can’t go on!” But only a fevered mirage taunted her with its cool blue depth. The lake was gone. The sun poured down on her bowed head.

“Wife!” Elizabeth tried to pen her eyes but the process was too painful.

“Bethy!”

A heavenly coolness was spreading over her face and down her throat, trickling between her breasts. There was no need to open her eyes. You couldn’t see heaven, you just felt it.

“Bethy, here’s a drink!”

Water was pouring between her ips – cool, cool …

“Elizabeth Harriman!”

That sounded like Henry when he was being bossy. Her eyes came open … Water … Her face, her arms, bathed in it, began to feel like her own again, and, suddenly, her whole being was clamoring for direction. “Henry,” she cried. “Where did you get this water?”

“From our own wells – three of them. We’ve been digging all night.”

“Then we didn’t kill the Indians,” she said almost regretfully. Then, appalled at the thought, she added: “Henry, am I sick?”

“Of course not,” he assured her.

“Then why am I in bed? I was driving — and … and you came and put your arms around me …”

“Yes,” he answered. “Then I put you to bed.”

“Then I am sick!” She tried to struggle to a sitting position, but Henry pushed her back. “The children,” she moaned. “They need me.”

“Not right now, Bethy,” he said. “They’ve had water, too. They are still asleep.”

“Water –” she began happily, but was asleep before she could finish the thought.

Henry sagged wearily to the bed beside her. Forty hours without sleep does a man in, he thought, and took Elizabeth’s hand to hold while he slept.

The sun was an hour high before there was the slightest stir in camp. Men slept in sprawled positions, their legs dangling half out of their wagon bunks; others had dropped beside the wells they had worked all night to dig. Not even a guard remained awake.

Silas Smith yawned lazily, nor bothering to move his head in the direction where George Hobbs could be expected to lie, since they were never far apart.

“Are our red brothers still with us?” he asked, squinting at the sun for the time of day.

“Yep,” George answered. “Thick as ants around a honey jug.”

“How are their manners?”

“Improving, I should say. At lest our guards think so. They sleep like babes.”

“Should I court-martial ’em?” Silas got up on his elbow to look at the cmap. “Or have we been asleep, too?”

His eyes traveled around the circle of wagons and back to his own clay-caked hands and boots. “What a night!” he laughed. “I’m hungry. I doubt if there’s chuck enough in this whole camp to fill me up!”

“There won’t be if Peogament’s Piutes ever get sassy again,” George commented. “I like the Navajos better. They’re farther away!”

“They are our brothers, George, all of the whole kit and caboodle of them. and somehow I like the idea. Even Peogament has the strength of his convictions. I sorta admire their stand. They have no way of knowing whether we mean well or not. We’ll have to talk sign language.”

He said no more, but George knew something unusual was taking shape in is leader’s mind. He could wait, he thought, and set the stage ready for it.

Reluctantly the camp came to life. Then, seeing the three wells flowing with clear water, the men scrambled for another drink. At least this was no bad dream!

Silas and George agreed that the Indians had waited around the prostrate camp for hours, perhaps all the night while they had been doing the digging. For once it didn’t matter. They were there, and their eyes showed satisfaction. Again the white man’s water magic had done its work.

Elizabeth awoke, wonderfully alive and glad. The world seemed better than she had ever know it. She threw back the door flaps of her wagon and looked out.

“Calling Bayles and Butt, Boy Washers, Incorporated!” she cried.

“Awake, and just about ready for duty, Ma’am,” the Butt end of the corporation grunted, pulling away at a water-logged boot to get it on over his still wet sock. “I used tis darn thing for a goblet last night when the wells came in, and it needs a deal of coaxing now,” he added.

The company cooked, sang, had prayers, and then ate. Peogament and his braves looked on. Surly, vindictive, the Indian chief took no notice of the rapidly disappearing meal, though its odors must have tantalized his nostrils. Elizabeth, watching him furtively, decided that his very ugliness was his distinction. What a horde there was! She hoped they didn’t decide they were all hungry at the same time.

But the Indians made no move toward the spread of tempting food.

“Break camp as soon as you’ve finished, boys,” Captain Smith called, wiping his brown beard on his bandana and smoothing it to a lustrous point again. “We aim to reach San Juan before the river dries up!”

When everything was in readiness for their departure, the camp came to attention, waiting his word to start.

There was an impressive silence. Hobbs and Smith alone stood within the circle of Indians around the wells. Silas took off his hat and laid it, brim down, in the circle. George took off his gun belt and laid it beside Silas’ hat, enjoying the ceremony that Silas had previously explained.

“Peogament, Chief of the Piutes,” Silas began, “the white man brings you water. The white man leaves you water. Are you the white man’s brother?”

“White man bad for Indians,” Peogament said, as sullenly as on the day before. “But white man’s wells are good.”

There was no sign of friendliness in his ugly face, no yielding in his crooked form. But among his tribesmen there was a stir of excitement, a wise nodding of heads.

Smith pantomimed broadly, indicating the gift of the wells.

George Hobbs picked up his guns and Captain Smith put on his hat.

“Company move out!” he cried, and the scouting train moved east toward Montezuma on the San Juan.

By fives and tens and fifties the Piutes fell in behind and, for the time at least, the white men and the Indians were brothers.

The company took its way into the desert, keeping to the north and east. The sun scorched their bodies, parched their tongues, and dried up the last remaining water pockets in the rocks. As long as there was water and food the Indians following them were peaceable and often helpful. Many of them worked at the road building and were paid in food, money, or clothes. Always suspicious, however, they watched the movements of the small company with jealous eyes. Never before had white men been allowed to pass unmolested through this Indian territory. Only because of the white man’s “water magic” were they permitted to do so now. But there were other problems, too. Scarce as was the water supply, fuel was less plentiful. Nothing but scrawny brush grew along the way. And to make it worse, the temperature dropped with the going down of the sun each night, leaving the scouts shivering miserably by their small brush fires.

George Hobbs rode uneasily ahead of the company, wondering what lay ahead. It had been ten hours since the last water stop, and still there was no sign of the advance scouts. The air was raspy with sand that stung the skin like sparks of burning chaff. How much longer could they hold the scowling Peogament in check? At the least sign of distress because of water, the surly chief became arrogant, inciting his braves to acts of thievery and near violence.

Plowing along in the bottomless sand trenches that they called a road, George noted that the stock showed increasing signs of weariness and nervous tension. He rode back along the line. The savages were an ill-tempered mob, ready to blame their discomfort on the first white man to cross their surly purpose. They were hungry as well as thirsty, he thought, and wished with all his heart there was food enough in camp to fill them up and stop their mouths.

Joining Silas near the rear of the line, he asked, “Shall we try for water again?”

“We’ve got to do something,” Silas answered. “Our well digging has failed persistently these last few days. We’d better try digging again. At least it keeps these pestiferous Indians amused.”

“Another twenty-four hours and we won’t need water, Silas,” George answered. “But what’s the commotion down there?”

“The rear wagons are bunching. Come on, George!” Silas whirled his horse, scattering papooses and dogs in all directions as he galloped into the center of the milling Indians.

“What goes on?” he demanded.

George, using his broad-brimmed hat as a swatter, cleared a path for himself and halted at Silas’ side.

“What’s wrong?” Silas demanded again.

Hans Bayles’ horse has a broken leg, busted clean in two,” Parley Butt answered. “And these bloomin’ cannibals want to eat the horse alive.”

“Can nothing be done, Hans?” George asked, swinging out of his saddle to examine the crippled horse.

“Not a thing!” Hans exclaimed. “You shoot him, President Smith. I can’t stomach to shoot my own horse.”

Silas told Peogament to move the squaws and papooses and dogs out of the way so he could shoot. Peogament complied with a wave of his hand, and Silas rode up to the trembling horse and put his gun to its forehead.

Hans shuddered. He beat his way out of the laughing mass of squaws and papooses and joined Parley Butt at the edge of the camp.

“Let them gorge!” Parley exclaimed. “It may be the means of saving the rest of us from trouble.”

“Yes/’ Hans agreed, “the Indians will be pacified for a few hours at least.”

“If we don’t get to water by noon tomorrow,” Parley said uneasily, “we’ll not care what these blasted Indians do.”

“That’s just it, Parley. That’s what worries me. Dead or alive, I don’t want no squaws a quarrelin’ over my carcass!”

Parley laughed uproariously. “Well, if that’s not the blamedest thing to be thinkin’!” he chuckled. “Gettin’ so thirsty must’ve gone to your head.”

“Let’s move up where President Smith is,” Hans said with a relieved grin. “Maybe things aren’t as serious as I think they are.”

“President Smith is going to send some more water scouts out. Maybe he’ll choose us, Hans. He fears the other scouts have either got lost or have died of thirst.”

“I’d as leave die huntin’ for water, as to die wishin’ for it,” Hans said. “We’ll ask to go, whether he chooses us or not!”

Parley agreed, and they started toward the group of men that had collected in the center of the camp. But before they had gone ten steps they stopped dead in their tracks. From the ledge where the camp guards were stationed, came a long sustained cry.

“That’s neither a coyote nor an Indian!” Hans shouted. “Come on!”

With Parley at his heels, he turned and ran toward the ledge. And the strange, long-drawn cry was repeated.

(To be continued)