The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway

by Henry Inman

Two men had been trapping in the Powder River country during one winter with unusually good luck, and they got an early start with their furs, which they were going to take to Weston, on the Missouri, one of the principal trading points in those days. They walked the whole distance, driving their pack-mules before them, and experienced no trouble until they struck the Arkansas valley at Pawnee Rock. There they were intercepted by a war-party of about sixty Pawnees. Both of the trappers were notoriously brave and both dead shots. Before they arrived at the rock, to which they were finally driven, they killed two of the Indians, and had not themselves received a scratch. They had plenty of powder, a pouch full of balls each, and two good rifles. They also had a couple of jack-rabbits for food in case of a siege, and the perpendicular walls of the front of the rock made them a natural fortification, an almost impregnable one against Indians.

They succeeded in securely picketing their animals at the side of the rock, where they could protect them by their unerring rifles from being stampeded. After the Pawnees had "treed" the two trappers on the rock, they picked up their dead, and packed them off to their camp at the mouth of a little ravine a short distance away. In a few moments back they all came, mounted on fast ponies, with their war-paint and other fixings on, ready to renew the fight. They commenced to circle around the place, coming closer, Indian fashion, every time, until they got within easy rifle-range, when they slung themselves on the opposite sides of their horses, and in that position opened fire. Their arrows fell like a hailstorm, but as good luck would have it, none of them struck, and the balls from their rifles were wild, as the Indians in those days were not very good shots; the rifle was a new weapon to them. The trappers at first were afraid the savages would surely try to kill the mules, but soon reflected that the Indians believed they had the "dead-wood" on them, and the mules would come handy after they had been scalped; so they felt satisfied their animals were safe for a while anyhow. The men were taking in all the chances, however; both kept their eyes skinned, and whenever one of them saw a stray leg or head, he drew a bead on it and when he pulled the trigger, its owner tumbled over with a yell of rage from his companions.

Whenever the savages attempted to carry off their dead,[64] the two trappers took advantage of the opportunity, and poured in their shots every time with telling effect.

By this time night had fallen, and the Indians did not seem anxious to renew the fight after dark; but they kept their mounted patrols on every side of the rock, at a respectable distance from such dead shots, watching to prevent the escape of the besieged. As they were hungry, one of the men went down under cover of the darkness to get a few buffalo-chips with which to cook their rabbit, and to change the animals to where they could get fresh grass. He returned safely to the summit of the rock, where a little fire was made and their supper prepared. They had to go without water all the time, and so did the mules; the men did not mind the want of it themselves, but they could not help pitying their poor animals that had had none since they left camp early that morning. It was no use to worry, though; the nearest water was at the river, and it would have been certain death to have attempted to go there unless the savages cleared out, and from all appearances they had no idea of doing that.

What gave the trappers more cause for alarm than anything else, was the fear that the Indians would fire the prairie in the morning, and endeavour to smoke them out or burn them up. The grass was in just the condition to make a lively blaze, and they might escape the flames, and then they might not. It can well be imagined how eagerly they watched for the dawn of another day, perhaps the last for them.

The first gray streaks of light had hardly peeped above the horizon, when, with an infernal yell, the Indians broke for the rock, and the trappers were certain that some new project had entered their heads. The wind was springing up pretty freshly, and nature seemed to conspire with the red devils, if they really meant to burn the trappers out; and from the movements of the savages, that was what they expected. The Indians kept at a respectful distance from the range of the trappers' rifles, who chafed because they could not stop some of the infernal yelling with a few well-directed bullets, but they had to choke their rage, and watch events closely. During a temporary lull in hostilities, one of the trappers took occasion to crawl down to where the mules were, and shift them to the west side of the rock, where the wall was the highest; so that the flame and smoke might possibly pass by them without so much danger as where they were picketed before. He had just succeeded in doing this, and, tearing up the long grass for several yards around the animals, was in the act of going back, when his partner yelled out to him: "Look out! D—-n 'em, they've fired the prairie!" He was back on the top of the rock in another moment, and took in at a glance what was coming.

The spectacle for a short interval was indescribably grand; the sun was shining with all the power of its rays on the huge clouds of smoke as they rolled down from the north, tinting them a glorious crimson. The two trappers had barely time to get under the shelter of a large projecting point of the rocky wall, when the wind and smoke swept down to the ground, and instantly they were enveloped in the darkness of midnight. They could not discern a single object; neither Indians, horses, the prairie, nor the sun; and what a terrible wind!

The trappers stood breathless, clinging to the projections of rock, and did not realize the fire was so near them until they were struck in the face by pieces of burning buffalo-chips that were carried toward them with the rapidity of the awful wind. They were now badly scared, for it seemed as if they were to be suffocated. They were saved, however, almost miraculously; the sheet of flame passed them twenty yards away, as the wind fortunately shifted at the moment the fire reached the foot of the rock. The darkness was so intense that they did not discover the flame; they only knew that they were saved as the clear sky greeted them from behind the dense smoke-cloud.

Two of the Indians and their horses were caught in their own trap, and perished miserably. They had attempted to reach the east side of the rock, so as to steal around to the other side where the mules were, and either cut them loose or crawl up on the trappers while bewildered in the smoke and kill them, if they were not already dead. But they had proceeded only a few rods on their little expedition, when the terrible darkness of the smoke-cloud overtook them and soon the flames, from which there was no possible escape.

All the game on the prairie which the fire swept over was killed too. Only a few buffalo were visible in that region before the fire, but even they were killed. The path of the flames, as was discovered by the caravans that passed over the Trail a few days afterward, was marked with the crisp and blackened carcasses of wolves, coyotes, turkeys, grouse, and every variety of small birds indigenous to the region. Indeed, it seemed as if no living thing it had met escaped its fury. The fire assumed such gigantic proportions, and moved with such rapidity before the wind, that even the Arkansas River did not check its path for a moment; it was carried as readily across as if the stream had not been in its way.