During the next year or so, I would hear news from time to time of the Cheyenne, though I never sought it, for it was plumb through the lands of the southern part of the tribe that them gold-rushers had to pass coming from the east, and then those that was busted went trooping back through the same region on their way home. You can imagine what this movement would do to the buffalo herds on which the Indians depended for the necessities of life. There was also now a regular stagecoach line which followed the Republican River through this same country, and I think I have mentioned how a regular thing, with a schedule, will upset an Indian.
But with this provocation there was fewer incidents than you might think: for all his wildness, maybe because of it, a redskin is a patient cuss and always tolerant at first of anything unusual. The Cheyenne thought the people rushing west for gold was insane, and didn’t bother them much for that reason. Once in a while the young men might steal a white person’s horses, and it was standard practice when sighting a wagon drove by civilians for the Indians to come up and get coffee or tobacco, and they didn’t so much beg for it as they had used to but sort of threatened. They did the latter because it seemed to work with white people better than expecting hospitality. But if the emigrants stood up to them, the Indians generally would not do them harm. One of the reasons for which being that the Cheyenne was never well armed. If they got hold of a few modern rifles, then they never had powder or lead. Even iron arrowheads wasn’t easy for them to procure: they had to get the makings, a barrel hoop or whatnot, from the white man.
I mention these facts because of the rot you’d hear in Denver. Indians would never have been popular in that city unless they all decided to commit mass suicide, I reckon. Now I have told you I got a white taste for building a community where previous only “the savage and beast had aimlessly wandered,” which is to quote from the old type of journalism, and as a result I found them local Arapaho uninspiring. But they wasn’t doing any harm except to stink and carry lice—which was also true of a good many of the early white citizenry of Colorado, I might add. Still, there was always talk of wiping them out, and the way I remember is that this was less said by the prosperous than by them who had had no luck at finding gold. If you sold all your belongings to go West for fortune and ended up busted, why, it seemed like the fault of the Indians.
But to get back to my affairs: owing to rival commercial operations coming out of Missouri, Bolt, Ramirez, and me found ourselves getting undercut on prices, on account of goods cost more for us to buy in Santa Fe than they did in the eastern settlements, for much of them had to come overland from Missouri in the first place, and the trip down to New Mexico while shorter was more arduous owing to mountains, deserts, and lack of water than that across the plains. It was at this time that Bolt and Ramirez got the idea for me to make the journey to Westport, Missouri, what is now Kansas City, and come back with a pack train of supplies that would be more “competitively priced,” as they put it, being both of them great for business.
I made the trip to Missouri alone, with a pack horse, without incident, carrying quite a bundle of money with which to buy goods. I figured to hire mule drivers in Westport for the return, and that’s what I did, and got the supplies and animals and wagons, and we set out for Colorado within a couple weeks.
One day towards the end of August we was taking our noontime rest along a stretch of the Arkansas River in west Kansas that was treeless for miles, and I had crawled under a wagon for a bit of shade, laying there on a rolled saddle blanket and puffing at a short pipe I had lately took up as a vice. Maybe I had even started to nap, which would have been logical, when a sense of sudden quiet made itself known. I wasn’t on unusually good terms with them skinners, who resented being hired by a kid, and had had to be fairly obvious about my Colt’s Dragoon.
Well, now I got a suspicion they was about to jump me nonetheless, and it jerked me from my dream, gun in hand.
But what I saw from beneath the wagon was fringed leggings and a pair of moccasins with a little strip of blue and red beading across the instep and an interrupted band of white running from ankle to toe. I had once set and watched Shooting Star apply them beads, strung on sinew and stitched with a bone needle.
They belonged to Burns Red in the Sun, who must be wearing them at this moment though I could see him only as high as the waist from where I lay. He wasn’t alone, but accompanied by some fifteen or twenty other pairs of moccasins. And there was something about them feet and legs that didn’t look too friendly.
