That was agreed; and sorrowfully again they rode up the trail, soon to be guided by the glow of the camp fires.
Little doubt could there be as to Baptiste Tabeau’s fate, but of course his disappearance must be probed to a certainty. At day-break the lieutenant himself, with Thomas Fitzpatrick and Kit and Godey and several others (Oliver being assigned to guard duties), departed for the wounded-mule brush, in search of further sign.
When they returned, about noon, they brought only the news which had been feared. Daylight had shown the worst: crimson stains and crushed bushes where Baptiste must have been pierced with an arrow; a crimson path for twenty paces, where he had desperately struggled along; a spot where he had fallen; and then the trace where he had been dragged to the river and thrown in. A shred of leather, from his saddle, was found; but all else—horse, gun, clothing—had vanished completely. The Diggers had taken them. Even the wounded mule was gone.
Thus, May 9, 1844, perished wilderness-breaker Baptiste Tabeau, Frémont man from St. Louis. The place of his death is on the left bank of the Virgin River in northwestern Arizona. So, in many a lonely spot, sleep the brave; their monument their deeds achieved for others.
[XXIII]
THE HOME STRETCH
Fain would the Frémont and Carson men have taken the war trail and have avenged the murder of their comrade; but their horses and mules were crippled, the country was vast and strange, they must push onward to safety. So they headed, as before, into the northward. Amidst the general mutterings of anger and bated revenge Kit Carson it was who remarked, quietly:
“Wall, the Good Book says something about reaping whar we have sowed. White men did the fust killing, when the Joe Walker party shot down these hyar same Diggers, on the march across from the Salt Lake in Thirty-three. Now thar’s war, an’ thar ever will be, an’ the white man air to blame, but the Injun’ll suffer most.”
The country grew better, in appearance; cedars and pines flourished upon the hills, birds were present, and before uplifted snowy mountains of a loftier range. At the Vegas de Santa Clara, or the Meadows of Santa Clara, near to the Virgin River, the company were in southwestern Utah.