How The West Was Won Part 1

How The West Was Won.

by Louis L'Amour.

Part 1a"THE RIVERS.

The shining land lay opena"ready for conquest, and the ways into it were the rivers. Slow and mighty, turbulent and frothing, the rivers were the roads the first settlers took, building rafts, and flatboats, floating down water that was green, brown, black, flecked with foam, but that led ever onward into the heart of that dangerous but unawakened land where riches waited for the bold and the strong.

Chapter 1.

The sun was not an hour high when Linus Rawlings came upon the trail of the Ute war party. The high walls of the narrowing valley of the Rio Grande barred all escape, and Linus knew he was in trouble.

A man of infinite patience, he was patient now, sitting his line-backed buckskin in the dappling shadow of the aspens. Behind him trailed three pack horses carrying his winter's catch of furs, while before him the mountain slope lay bright with the first shy green of spring.

Nothing moved along that slope, nor in the valley below ... only the trembling leaves of the aspen. Linus, never one to accept the appearance of things in Indian country, remained where he was.

Against the background of the aspens he was invisible as long as he remained still, for his clothing, the horses, and their packs were all of a neutral color, blending well with their surroundings. Methodically, his eyes searched the slope, sweeping from side to side, taking in every clump of brush or aspen, every outcropping of rock, each color change in the gra.s.s. It had been a long time since Linus Rawlings had sky-lined himself on the top of a ridge, or slept beside a campfire. He had known men who did both things ... they were dead now. It was no accident that he always stopped with a background against which his shape could offer no outline. When in Indian country you never took a risk, whether you suspected an enemy to be near or not. You learned also to make a fire that was small, on which to prepare your meal, and after eating to shift your camp a few miles and sleep in darkness, without a fire.

Such things as these were the simple rules of survival in the Indian country; and besides these, there were othersa"never to take a step without a weapon, as well as to observe the movements of birds and animals as indications of danger. Linus no longer even thought about the necessity of doing such things, for they had become as natural as breathing.

He saw that the Ute war party comprised a dozen Indians; and if they were headed for a raid on the Spanish settlements to the south, they might well plan a rendezvous with other Indians along the trail. They were only minutes ahead of him, and the question was ... did they know he was behind them? He studied the slope with a skeptical eye. Behind his lazy, easy-going facade, Linus Rawlings' mind had been sharpened and his senses honed by thirty-two years of frontier living. Born in the dark forests of western Pennsylvania, where his family had been among the first to settle, Linus had moved west with his father to Illinois when only fifteen, and shortly after his father's death he had taken up with a keelboat outfit and had gone west to trap fur. In the sixteen years that followed he ranged from the Kootenai River in Montana to the Gila in Arizona, from the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific to the eastern slopes of the Black Hills. He trapped in company with Jim Bridger, Uncle d.i.c.k Wootton, Bill Williams, Joe Walker, Osborne Russell, and Jedediah Smith. In those years he left the mountains only twice, aside from a brief visit to the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Those two trips away from the mountains were to St. Louis and New Orleans.

Now Linus searched out the probable line of travel of the war party and studied it with care, but he could see no movement, nothing. But he recalled what Kit Carson had told him many years before: When you see Indians, be careful. When you do not see them, be twice as careful.

Linus had great respect for the Indian. He knew him, not as a poor heathen of whom the white man took advantage, but as a fierce fighting man who lived for war and horse-stealing. The Indian knew the wilderness, and how to live with it. No cat could move more quietly, no hawk had a keener eye; for the Indian lived by and with his senses, and a man could survive in Indian country only by being a better Indian.

Time lagged ... the morning sun touched the ridges behind him with gold. The gra.s.s was still; only the aspens trembled. A horse stamped impatiently, a bee buzzed lazily in the low-growing brush.

His rifle lay in front of him across the saddle, the muzzle pointing down slope, his right hand grasping it around the action, thumb resting on the hammer. Below him and to the right was another, somewhat larger clump of aspen. He gauged its height and his own position. To reach it he need be visible for no more than a minute.

A slight breeze moved behind him dancing the aspen leaves and stirring the gra.s.s, and when the breeze and its movement reached him, he moved with its movement, keeping the first clump of aspen behind him. He paused again when he had rounded the second clump, then started down the slope on the opposite angle to that he had been using.

A short distance ahead the narrow valley narrowed still more; then it widened out until it finally opened upon the plains. If the war party knew of him and planned an ambush, that would be the place. Not in the narrows, but just before they were reached or just after leaving them.

When approaching a dangerous place a traveler's attention is directed ahead, toward the likely spot for an ambush, and he overlooks the seemingly innocent ground he is just about to cross. After pa.s.sing a dangerous place, there is a tendency to let down.

Linus was in no hurry. The fleshpots of the East could wait a few hours or a few days longer. Using infinite care and holding well to the side of the valley, he worked his way along the bottom of the valley, following the river and keeping close to the trees or under them.

When he reached the place where the Utes had crossed, he drew up and allowed his horses to drink, and when they had drunk their fill he dismounted and drank himself, choosing a spot upstream from the horses. He was rising from the ground when he heard the shot.

He remained where he was, without changing position, listening.

How far off? A half mile? A mile?

The second shot barked hoa.r.s.ely, followed by three more shots fired in rapid succession, one of them overlapping a previous shot. Stepping into the saddle, he crossed the stream and pushed on, keeping in the shadow of the trees. When he approached a rise in the ground where the stream dipped through a cut, he left the stream and mounted the rise until his eyes could look over the top.

Before him lay a gra.s.sy meadow of some three hundred acres or more. On his left the waters of the stream pooleda"perhaps behind a beaver dama"and they caught the sunlight and sparkled with the ruffling wind. Beyond the meadow the stream again crossed the valley to flow through the narrows along the opposite side. At this point the walls of the mountain towered over a thousand feet above the meadow, sloping steeply up to the crests of the ridges. A man on foot might have climbed those walls at almost any point, but at no point could a horse scale them.

A puff of blue smoke hung above the dew-silvered gra.s.s, and some fifty yards this side of that smoke a horse was down in the gra.s.s, threshing out its life in bitter, protesting kicks.

At first Linus saw nothing else. The morning held still, as if waiting ... a slight coolness remained in the air despite the bright sun on the ridges. The Indian pony gave one last, despairing kick and died. The blood on its shoulder was bright crimson where it caught the sun ... And then an Indian moved. When the Ute moved, Linus immediately saw two others, their presence revealed by his suddenly focused attention. All were racing down the meadow, their backs toward him.

Obviously the war party had ridden into an ambush. Linus thought they must have been following a party of either Arapahoes or trappers without being aware of it. Rising in his stirrups, he looked beyond the dead horse, and from the vantage point of the knoll he could see them clearly ... five trappers lying in a buffalo wallow. Undoubtedly their horses were hidden in the trees where the stream again crossed the meadow, with a man or two on guard. Near the body of the horse lay a dead Indian. If there were any wounded they had been hidden. It was not much of a score against the Indians, and the white men were still outnumbered two to one.

Searching the terrain before him, he picked out several other Indians. The others in the party must be hidden somewhere among the trees along the stream. There was nothing he could do. To advance was to lay himself open to attack by the Utes, and perhaps by the ambushing party, who might not recognize him as a white man. All he could do was wait... a chance might come for him to make a run for it across the open meadow.

Where he was the trees were scattered, but close on his left was the thicker forest along the stream, which meandered back and forth across the narrow valley. Shadows fell about him and he was in a good position to remain unseen. He stayed in the saddle, ready to fight or run, as the developing situation might demand.

The smoke disappeared. The echoes of gunfire lost themselves down the canyon, and the sun crept further down the slope. Here and there the clefts in the mountain allowed shafts of sunlight to reach the meadow and the river. Birds chirped and twittered in the brush nearby, and Linus relied on them for a warning if an Indian started to move in his direction. His eyes continued to search the meadow.

And then he saw what he had half suspected. Two Indians were creeping through the gra.s.s toward the buffalo wallow. When the others fled, these two must have deliberately fallen from their horses in simulated death, for the sole purpose of this attack.

Lifting his rifle, he estimated the distance. The target was poor, the range too great. He was hesitating whether to chance a warning shot when someone fired from the trees where he believed the horses were hidden. One of the Utes screamed hoa.r.s.ely and leaped to his feet. Two buffalo guns boomed from the hollow and the Indian was slammed back to the gra.s.s, where he struggled an instant, then relaxed and lay still. The other Ute did not move, and three searching shots sent into the gra.s.s near him drew no response from him.

Linus chewed thoughtfully on a stem of gra.s.s and considered how rarely combat was as you expected it to be. Moments of smashing, thundering struggle were few; so often it was like this ... a few lazy-sounding shots in the still air, and then endless minutes of waiting, when nothing happened. Dew sparkled on the gra.s.s, and the birds were twittering again among the willows. His horse stamped a restless hoof against the turf and nicked his tail. The pack horses cropped indifferently at the gra.s.s, or stood three-legged, heads down, dozing in the morning warmth.

The position of the trappers was well chosen. Such an ambush in the open was an Indian trick, but obviously the Utes had been surprised by the use of their own tactics. Counterattack on the part of the Indians was difficult, because of the ones in the willows near the stream.

Yet if the stalemate continued until dark, the excellent position of the trappers would be worthless, for the superior numbers of the Indians could close in quickly. The trappers had laid their ambush, but now they had a bear by the tail. When they had failed to destroy the larger part of the party, they left themselves in a bad way.

For some time Linus had realized that his own position was increasingly perilous. Other Indians might come to rendezvous with these, or some Ute might move back far enough to discover him. Once seen, cut off as he was from the other white men, he would be surrounded and killed. But a sudden attack by him now, from an unexpected quarter, might work in his favor. At that moment, when the Utes were likely to be confused and uncertain, Linus chose to act.

Three Utes were exposed to his rifle. One was some distance away, two were relatively close by. Lifting his rifle, he settled his sights on the spine of the nearest Indian. He took a deep breath, let it out easily, then squeezed off his shot.

The gun boomed in the narrow valley, and the Indian at whom he had fired stiffened sharply, then rolled over, face to the sky. Instantly Linus fired again, then swinging his rifle far left, he squeezed off the third shot, each booming report slamming into the echo of the one before it. The first shot was a clean hit, the second a miss, the third a hit. Linus slapped his heels into the ribs of his buckskin and fled across the meadow, whooping and yelling.

He counted on the sudden attack, which he had tried to make appear as coming from several men, to surprise the Utes into giving him a running start. Astonished by the attack, the Utes fled for the brush, and as Linus dashed by the buffalo wallow, he saw the trappers on their feet, firing at the retreating Indians. Drawing up among the trees, Linus saw a lean, powerful man with slightly stooped shoulders drop from a tree.

"Waal, Linus," the man said as he came toward him with a broad grin, "you showed up when the squeeze was tight. Where you come from?" "Over on the Green."

The other trappers had come in, and they began to mount up. Their pack horses were heavily loaded.

"You took a sight of fur," Linus added.

"Bad year," Williams said, "and then a few weeks back we found us a mountain branch an' took more fur'n we'd took all year." Williams swung his leg over the saddle. "We're followin' the Rio Grande down to Taos."

Linus moved alongside him. "I'm for the East Down the Platte and the Missouri, then up the Ohio. I've taken urge to see the ocean water." "Fancy gals, more'n likely."

"Sure enough. It's a c.o.o.n's age since I've seen a woman all frilled out an' fussed up. And I aim to. But that there ocean water's been on my mind. I got to thinkin'a"a man as old as I am, and I ain't seen nothin' but Indians, mountains, an' fur."

"You'll see water ... a sight of it. Raised up in North Carolina myself. Never did see the ocean back thataway, but I seen the Pacific. Ain't like mountains, though. You seen it once, you seen it all."

"Most water I ever saw was Salt Lake."

"Folks do say that country back yonder is fillin' up. No time at all, folks say, until they are comin' thisaway. I hear talk of steam cars and a railroad clean to Californy."

"Fool talk," Linus commented. "Who would be fool enough to bring his womenfolk into Injun country? Besides, what's to bring *em? Fur's gettin' scarce, and there ain't nothing else. Not to speak of."

"Land ... folks want land."

"The Sioux will have something to say about that, the Sioux an' the Cheyenne, and the Arapahoe."

"You step light back east," Williams warned, "or you'll lose your hair. More devilment back east than in all these mountains. I hear tell the women folk really lay for a man back there ... ain't like Injun country where you swap a buck a couple of blankets and two, three ponies for a squaw." Linus traveled with the trappers for two days. The wind blew cold when he parted from them, but the flush of green was on the hills and the trees were leafing out. Here and there were dark patches where the earth was still damp from the melted snow.

Linus Rawlings rode with care. After all, this was Ute country. If all the Indians were like the Shoshones, Nez Perce or the Flatheads, it would have been different. A man could get to know them; to know them was to like them. The Nez Perce made the boast that no warrior of their tribe had ever killed a white man, and Linus was ready to believe it. But this was Ute country and next to the Blackfeet no tribe was more trouble to the white man, and beyond the Utes were the Arapahoe.

Chapter 2.

Eve Prescott stood alone, a few feet back from her family, watching the boats that thronged the Hudson River and the Erie Ca.n.a.l. The sh.o.r.e was piled high with bales, barrels, and crates, merchandise and household goods, all awaiting shipment to the West. Nothing on the farm where she had lived until then, or in the tiny village nearby, had prepared her for this. Big, roughly dressed men pushed back and forth, shouting, wrangling good-naturedly, loading or unloading boats and wagons. Huge drays rumbled past, drawn by the largest horses she had ever seen, big Percherons or Clydesdales. On the river there was the shrill piping of whistles, the clang of bells, and the sound of steam exhausts.

Bunched about the Prescotts were other emigrants like themselves, huddled about their goods and clothing, waiting for the call that would take them aboard a ca.n.a.l boat. They, too, were cutting all their ties, leaving all that was familiar behind, venturing into a new and frightening country. Looking about her, she saw other men like her father, men who talked loudly of the Ohio country, of taking up new land, of opportunity, the black earth, rainfall, and the wild game to be had for the hunting. They talked loudly to cover their own dismay; for it is one thing to talk of and plan a venturea"there is room for excitement, enthusiasm, and conjecturea"but it is quite another thing to actually begin a new life, to take one's family and step off into the nothingness of the unknown as these men were doing. They had been bold before, and Eve, knowing such men, knew they would be bold again, but now they were frightened, as she was. Now she felt her heart pounding, and she seemed to have difficulty in breathing. All this activity was so impersonal. These bold-eyed men shoving past her, shouting at their worka"what could they care about her, about her family? Yet here and there her eyes intercepted a bold, appreciative glance that warned her these men could care ... on one level, at least. She was surprised to find that she was excited and pleased by such glances rather than repelled. Back home every man had been catalogued; she knew the ones who were married, and therefore ineligible, and those who were single. She knew exactly how to gauge each man's interest in her, and what it meant or could meana"and she had not been interested in any of them.

Also, they knew her. They knew she was not to be lightly had by any man, and they found her stand-offish when they came courting with marriage in mind. She felt no real regret for what she was leaving behind, other than the fact that she was leaving all that was familiar, all that she had known. She was leaving the familiar fields and trees, the school where she had learned to read, write, and work sums, the house where she knew every board that creaked, and could tell how the fireplace would act on clear or cloudy days, or when the wind was strong.

Inwardly she shrank from the dust, the coal smoke, and the confusion of Albany. The green fields of her upstate home had been fresh and cool. They had been homea"but they were home no longer.

The farm had been sold. Other feet trod the boards of the house now, and it was just as well. She felt that there was nothing for her. "You dream too much!" Her father often told her that in his half-irritated yet affectionate way, and it was true. Now her dreams lay westward, somewhere down the Ohio.

She knew only vaguely where the Ohio River lay, or the lands to which they were going, those uncertain lands, theirs for the taking, which no one had seen. Her father had not even seen a map, if any existed. All they had seen was some scratchings in the dirt near the back stoop as a drifter traced with a stick the course of the Ohio River and pointed out the lands that lay open to taking. The Ohio country was the wild west, the wilderness. And that was where they were going.

For several years now she had been hearing that name ... the Ohio ... until it was burned into her consciousness. Men talked of it as they talked of the Promised Land.

Nearby a bearded man talked knowingly of the Missouri and the Platte, of keelboating and the fur trade. He was talking to two drunken Carialers about the Indians in the wild lands along those rivers. She had never heard of either of those distant riversa"the Ohio was far enough west for her. A self-contained girl, she quietly watched the movement about her, but her thoughts were far away in that yet unknown Ohio country. If she had met no one here, how could she expect to find anyone out there where there were even fewer people? More than one of her friends had settled for less than they wanted. When a girl pa.s.sed eighteen she began to feel a little desperate. Her face, though, showed none of the thoughts that was held tightly within her. Her sister Lilith, slender, pretty, and sixteen, turned swiftly and came to her side. "Oh, isn't it exciting, Eve? But I don't understand why we have to go west. Why can't we stay here?"

"Pa's a farmer. He's got to go where there's land to be taken. Besides, you'd soon find this very dull. Things are only exciting until you get used to them, until you know their pattern, and then it all becomes humdrum." "But don't you ever want to do anything different? Eve, I just don't understand you at all!"

"Why should you? Sometimes I think you don't even understand yourself." Lilith glanced quickly at her sister. "But you do, don't you? I mean, you know what you want, and everything. I wish I did." Her brow furrowed. "Eve, I don't know what's the matter with me. All I know is that I don'ta"I just don't want any of this ... of the farm, either." She looked out over the crowded river. "Am I bad? Or just a fool? I mean, I dream about so many things ... impossible things."

"Are they impossible, Lil? If you can dream of them, maybe they are possible.

And in the meantime they help you to be happy. It helps ... I know it helps." "It's easier for you. You know what you want. You want a man, and you even know the kind of man ... and you want a home. That ... that isn't what I want at all. Not for a while, at least."

"I know."

"Eve ... what if you never find him? After all, you're twenty and ana"" "And an old maid?" Eve smiled. "Don't be afraid to say it, Lil. But I know I'll find him. I just know I shall."

A shrill, piping whistle came from a boat on the river, and then a blast from the horn of a ca.n.a.l boat. The boat reversed its wheels and the water flew. "It isn't a place that makes you happy or unhappy, Lil, it's the people you love, and who love you."

"Ma says I'm flighty. Do you think I am, Eve?"

"No." Eve paused. "You're different from us, Lil, but in your own way you're just as steady. I never did see anybody catch on to the accordion the way you did ... Pa says you take after Aunt Mae."

"The one who ran off with a gambler? Pa has never said any such thing to me! Why, he would never even mention her name in front of us! Whatever happened to her, Eve? Was she awfully unhappy?"

Just then their brother Sam, a lean, husky young man of nineteen, with a quick, easy smile, came strolling up from the river and paused alongside of Zeke, who was lying on their rolled-up bedding. "It will be soon now," he said. "How are you, Zeke?"

Zeke opened his eyes abruptly. "I ain't half as poorly as ma makes out. If she'd stop spooning that medicine into me, I think I'd get well." Eve's eyes went from her brother to her parents. Zebulon and Rebecca Prescott looked every inch of what they werea"st.u.r.dy, independent farmer folk ... and pioneers. At first her mother had objected to leaving a home that was becoming more comfortable year by year; but once their decision had been made, the excitement had taken hold of her too.

Zebulon's best argument was a good one. They were not getting rich where they were, which was not important, for they lived well, but there was no land for the boysa"not for more than one of them, at least. Suddenly there was a surge in the crowd about them and over the confusion they heard a voice proclaiming: "The Pride of Utica, now loading! All a-boarrrd for the Pride of Utica! The Ramsey family ... the Peter Smiths ... John and Jacob Voorhies ... L. P. Baker ... the Stoeger family, all eight of them ... all a-boarrrd for the Pride of Utica."

"We're next, pa," Sam said, stooping to lift a trunk to his shoulder. "We'd best move down to the sh.o.r.e."

A gaunt Scotsman in a faded homespun shirt let his glance fall to Zeke, who was struggling up from his temporary couch. "The boy's health your reason for goin' west, Prescott?"

"Partly ... only partly. Mostly," Zebulon said gravely, "our trouble was rocks.

Why, there'd be years when we'd crop a hundred bushels of rocks to the acre."

"Now, Zebulon, you shouldn't lie to the man like that. Ours was good land." "Lie? Now, Rebecca, you know I'm a G.o.d-fearing man, and I'd not lie. I tell the truth as I see it. Why, in that country where we lived a man never used a plow. He just blasted out the furrows with gun powder. "Time came it was too much for me. When I hauled the bucket out of the well, even that was full of rocks, and I says to myself, *Zeb, here you be with an ailin' son an' a twenty-year-old daughter who won't take to herself a husbanda"" "Pa! How you do go on!"

"a"and another daughter who acts like she ain't just right in the head,' so I just made myself a vow. If I could find a man who had five hundred dollars there'd be another fool ownin' that farm. Well, sir, the Good Lord provided such a man and here we are!"

"Mr. Harvey," Rebecca protested, "don't you believe a word of it. We had the best farm in the county. It was pa's itching foot that brought us to this, and heaven knows where we'll end up."

"I'm headed for Illinois," Harvey replied, "and folks say there are grown men out there who have never seen a rock."

He gestured toward the three hulking young men who lurked nearby, staring hungrily at the girls. "These are my boys, Angus, Brutus, and Colin. I think they want to become acquainted with your daughters." "Single, I take it."

Harvey nodded. "So far ... but they're girlin'." "That Illinois country sounds good to me. Lilith, take up your accordion an' strike up a tune for the lads."

"I ain't in the mood, pa."

"Lilith," her father said sternly, "there's a time for coaxin', but this here ain't it. You play something."

She shrugged, and picking up the accordion with a disgusted glance at Eve, she started to play and sing "Miss Bailey's Ghost." It became apparent at once that she both played and sang with an uncommon flair. "Now, you see here, Lilith! You know better than to play that one! Play something the boys can sing."

She glanced at the three boys. "What songs do you know?"

"I can sing *Yankee Doodle,' " Colin suggested.