Vanguards of the Plains

Margaret Hill Mccarter

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• Publié par: ucta
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 44
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vanguards of the Plains, by Margaret McCarter This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Vanguards of the Plains Author: Margaret McCarter Release Date: August 31, 2004 [EBook #13345] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS *** Produced by Bryan Ness and PG Distributed Proofreaders VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS I COULD NOT SPEAK THEN, FOR ONE SENTENCE WAS RINGING IN MY EARS--"I WAS ALWAYS THINKING OF YOU" VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS A ROMANCE OF THE OLD SANTA FÉ TRAIL BY MARGARET HILL McCARTER AUTHOR OF The Price of the Prairie HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS 1917, Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America DEDICATION This story of the old Santa Fé Trail would do honor to the memory of those stalwart men who defied the desert, who walked the prairies boldly, and who died bravely--vanguards in the building of a firm highway for the commerce of a westward-moving Empire. CONTENTS FOREWORD PART I CLEARING THE TRAIL I. THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN II. A DAUGHTER OF CANAAN III. THE WIDENING HORIZON IV. THE MAN IN THE DARK V. WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST VI. SPYING OUT THE LAND VII. "SANCTUARY" VIII. THE WILDERNESS CROSSROADS PART II BUILDING THE TRAIL IX. IN THE MOON OF THE PEACH BLOSSOM X. THE HANDS THAT CLING XI. "OUR FRIENDS--THE ENEMY" XII. THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE PLAINS XIII. IN THE SHELTER OF SAN MIGUEL XIV. OPENING THE RECORD XV. THE SANCTUARY ROCKS OF SAN CHRISTOBAL XVI. FINISHING TOUCHES XVII. SWEET AND BITTER WATERS PART III DEFENDING THE TRAIL XVIII. WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN XIX. A MAN'S PART XX. GONE OUT XXI. IN THE SHADOW OF THE INFINITE PART IV REMEMBERING THE TRAIL XXII. THE GOLDEN WEDDING FOREWORD Westward, along the level prairies of a kingdom yet to be, my memory runs, with a clear vision of the days when romance died not and strong hearts never failed. The glamour of the plains is before my eyes; the tingle of courage, danger-born, is in my pulse-beat; the soft hand of love is touching my hand. I live again the drama of life wherein there are no idle actors, no stale, unmeaning lines. And beyond the action, this way up the years, there runs also the forward-gazing vision toward a new Hesperides: Through the veins Of whose vast Empire flows, in strength'ning tides, Trade, the calm health of nations. ***** And sometimes I would doubt If statesmen, rocked and dandled into power, Could leave such legacies to kings. I CLEARING THE TRAIL VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS A ROMANCE OF THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL I THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN There came a time in the law of life When over the nursing sod The shadows broke, and the soul awoke In a strange, dim dream of God. --LANGDON SMITH. It might have been but yesterday that I saw it all: the glinting sunlight on the yellow Missouri boiling endlessly along at the foot of the bluff; the flood-washed sands across the river; the tangle of tall, coarse weeds fringing them, edged by the scrubby underbrush. And beyond that the big trees of the Missouri woodland, so level against the eastern horizon that I used to wonder if I might not walk upon their solid-looking tops if I could only reach them. I wondered, too, why the trees on our side of the river should vary so in height when those in the eastern distance were so evenly grown. One day I had asked Jondo the reason for this, and had learned that it was because of the level ground on the farther side of the valley. I began then to love the level places of the earth. I love them still. And, always excepting that one titanic rift, where the world stands edgewise, with the sublimity of the Almighty shimmering through its far depths, I love them more than any other thing that nature has yet offered to me. But to come back to that picture of yesterday: old Fort Leavenworth on the bluff; the little and big ravines that billow the landscape about it; the faint lines of trails winding along the hillsides toward the southwest; the unclouded skies so everlastingly big and intensely blue; and, hanging like a spray of glorious blossoms flung high above me, the swaying folds of the wind-caressed flag, now drooping on its tall staff, now swelling full and free, straight from its gripping halyards. Between me and the fort many people were passing to and fro, some of whom were to walk with me down the long trail of years. Evermore that April day stands out as the beginning of things for me. Dim are the days behind it, a jumble of happy childish hours, each keen enough as the things of childhood go; but from that one day to the present hour the unforgotten deeds of busy years run clearly in my memory as I lift my pen to write somewhat of their dramatic record. And that this may not seem all a backward gaze, let me face about and look forward from the beginning--a stretch of canvas, lurid sometimes, sometimes in glorious tinting, sometimes intensely dark, with rifts of lightning cleaving through its blackness. But nowhere dull, nowhere without design in every brush-stroke. I had gone out on the bluff to watch for the big fish that Bill Banney, a young Kentuckian over at the fort, had told me were to be seen only on those April days when the Missouri was running north instead of south. And that when little boys kept very still, the fish would come out of the water and play leap-frog on the sand-bars. If I failed to see them this morning, I meant to run back to the parade-ground and play leap-frog myself with my cousin Beverly, who wanted proof for most of Bill Banney's stories. Beverly was growing wise and lanky for his age. I was still chubby, and in most things innocent, and inclined to believe all that I heard, or I should not have been taken in by that fish story. We were orphans with no recollection of any other home than the log house near the fort. We had been fathered and mothered by our uncle, Esmond Clarenden, owner of the little store across the square from our house, and a larger establishment down at Independence on the Missouri River. Always a wonderful man to me was that Esmond Clarenden, product of one of the large old New England colleges. He found time to guard our young years with the same diplomatic system by which he controlled all of his business affairs. He laid his plans carefully and never swerved from carrying them through afterward; he insisted on order in everything; he rendered value for value in his contracts; he chose his employees carefully, and trusted them fully; he had a keen sense of humor, a genial spirit of good-will, and he loved little children. Fitted as he was by culture and genius to have entered into the greater opportunities of the Eastern States, he gave himself to the real upbuilding of the West, and in the larger comfort and prosperity and peace of the Kansas prairies of to-day his soul goes marching on. The waters, as I watched them, were all running south toward that vague, down-stream world shut off by trees at a bend of the course. I waited a long time there for the current to shift to the north, wondering meanwhile about those level-topped forests, and what I might see beyond them if I were sitting on their fl at crests. And, as I wondered, the first dim sense of being shut in came filtering through my childish consciousness. I could not cross the river. Big as my playground had always been, I had never been out of sight of the fort's flagstaff up-stream, nor down-stream. The wooded ravines blocked me on the southwest. What lay beyond these limits I had tried to picture again and again. I had been a dreamer all of my short life, and this new feeling of being shut in, held back, from something slipped upon me easily. As I sat on the bluff in the April sunshine, I turned my face toward the west and stretched out my chubby arms for larger freedom. I wanted to see the open level places, wanted till it hurt me. I could cry easily enough for some things. I could not cry for this. It was too deep for tears to reach. Moreover, this new longing seemed to drop down on me suddenly and overwhelm me, until I felt almost as if I were caught in a net. As I stared with half-seeing eyes toward the wooded ravines beyond the fort, suddenly through the budding branches I caught sight of a horseman riding down a half-marked trail into a deep hollow. Horsemen were common enough to forget in a moment, but when this one reappeared on the hither side of the ravine, I saw that the rider's face was very dark, that his dress, from the sombrero to the spurred heel, was Mexican, and that he was heavily armed, even for a plainsman. When he reached the top of the bluff he made straight across the square toward my uncle Esmond Clarenden's little storehouse, and I lost sight of him. Something about him seemed familiar to me, for the gift of remembering faces was mine, even then. A fleeting childish memory called up such a face and dress somewhere back in the dim days of babyhood, with the haunting sound of a low, musical voice, speaking in the soft Castilian tongue. But the memory vanished and I sat a long time gazing at the wooded west that hid the open West of my day-dreams. Suddenly Jondo came riding up on his big black horse to the very edge of the bluff. "You are such a little mite, I nearly forgot to see you," he called, cheerily. "Your Uncle Esmond wants you right away. Mat Nivers, or somebody else, sent me to run you down," he added, leaning over to lift me up to a seat on the horse behind him. Few handsomer men ever graced a saddle. Big, broad-shouldered, muscular, yet agile, a head set like a Greek statue, and a face--nobody could ever make a picture of Jondo's face for me--the curling brown hair, soft as a girl's, the broad forehead,