Lost with Lieutenant Pike / How from the Pawnee Village the boy named Scar Head marched with the young American Chief clear into the Snowy Mountains; how in the dead of winter they searched for the Lost River and thought that they had found it; and how the Spanish Soldiery came upon them and took them down to Santa Fé of New Mexico, where another surprise awaited them

by Edwin L. Sabin

They discovered also a well-traveled trail up along an eastern branch of the main river, not far above the western fork. It was a horse trail. Camps beside it showed that soldiers—probably Spanish—had used it. So the Spanish came in here.

The lieutenant and the doctor talked considerably of Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. It lay somewhere south. The lieutenant was anxious to know more about it, so as to make report upon it to the United States government. He could not leave the stockade, himself, but the doctor arranged to go.

Evidently this had been the plan for some time. A trader by the name of William Morrison, in the United States, had sent goods there, three years ago, in charge of another man named Baptiste Lalande, to be sold. But Lalande had never come back with the money. Doctor Robinson had agreed with William Morrison to visit Santa Fe, if near there, and collect the money. This would be an excuse for spying around.

At the end of the first week, when the stockade was partially finished, the doctor left for Santa Fe. He set out westward, up the south bank of the fork (which was the wrong direction, although none of them knew it), and promised to return with his report in a week or ten days.

The men were not so certain about this. Sergeant Meek wagged his grizzled head dubiously.

“Not to criticize a superior officer, but strikes me it’s a risky move. The doctor’s pure grit, all right enough, to head alone through a country full o’ Injun sign and Spanish sign to boot, and he’s like to run his foot into a wolf trap. For if he gets there, them Spanish will be curyus to know where he come from; and what’s to prevent their back-trailing him? Oh, well; there’s something afoot that we don’t understand. Our duty’s to obey orders, and if the lieutenant says for us all to go to Santy Fee, go we will. But we’ll not go there by any orders o’ the Spanish.”

This evening Corporal Jerry Jackson was started out, to get John Sparks and Tom Dougherty, if he could, and also Hugh Menaugh, on the other side of the mountains. He took with him Freegift Stout, William Gordon, John Brown and John Mountjoy.

That left in the stockade only the lieutenant, Sergeant Meek, Terry Miller, Jake Carter and Alex Roy (whose feet had been badly frozen), and Stub. They missed the doctor, and Corporal Jerry’s squad, but could get along for a few days.

This was February 7. No word might be expected from the doctor or Corporal Jerry for at least a week. Nothing especial happened during the week. The men and Stub kept on laboring at the stockade, the lieutenant read in a French book a great deal, or hunted for deer, taking Stub as companion.

By the sixteenth the walls of the stockade were about done, and the inside ditch, for the pickets, was being pecked out—a slow job in the frozen earth. Nine days had passed, and still there was no sign from the doctor or Corporal Jerry. This morning the lieutenant and Stub went out hunting again, down the main river. The lieutenant carried his favorite musket—the one whose grip had been mended. Stub wore a pistol, the mate to Hugh Menaugh’s, borrowed from the lieutenant.