Free Come Sundown by Mike Blakely Page B

packed it on my mules, and continued on toward William Bent’s trading post at the Big Timbers on the Arkansas River.
    It would have made sense to stay warm in Taos that night, but I rode into the mountains to spend a cold night in camp. Sometimes even a genius, by foolishness or design, must do that which makes no sense. I had once fallen in love with a Taos girl who ended up marrying somebody else. She had had no choice in the matter. Marriages were arranged among the old Mexican families in New Mexico, and men who interfered had been known to die of mysterious causes—like bullet wounds. Anyway, it was better for everyone if I stayed away from Taos. My broken heart had mended, and there was no sense in reopening the wound. I rode into the mountains.
    It was cold, but the sky was spectacular. I rolled myself in a buffalo robe and watched the constellations slowly migrate westward, only the fog of my own breath standing between me and the light of stars distant beyond the comprehension of even a genius. I managed to sleep a few hours.
    I rose before the first hint of dawn, and took to the trail by the time I had light enough to find my way. Major had to break through snow up to his chest crossing the divide, but he plowed on with never a touch from my spurs, blasting the air ahead of us with the warm vapor from his nostrils.

    Once we crossed the divide of the Sangre de Cristos, conditions improved on the east slope. The snow was not as deep, and the late morning sun beamed down at an angle that warmed my thighs through my leather chaps. I rode on downhill until dusk and camped on a southern slope where the snow had melted and the ground had dried. I had never traveled this particular way, but I knew exactly where I was, and I knew how to get where I was going. Another two days in the saddle would fetch William Bent’s new trading post.
    I made a small fire, Indian style, and roasted some elk meat Roy Martin had given me. I put the fire out once I had eaten, for I didn’t care to attract attention from roving hostiles, whether they be Indian, Mexican, or white. I entertained myself by practicing sleight-of-hand tricks in the dark until I got too cold. Then I rolled myself in my buffalo robe and recited Lord Tennyson until I fell asleep. I had some frightful nightmares, for I had run out of the dogbane Burnt Belly had traded to me. I was looking forward to getting back to the camps on the Canadian so I could replenish my supply.
    My paint horse, Major, and my two mules were tired when I crossed the Arkansas River, but they waded into the icy waters and swam the narrow channel easily. After building a fire to dry my clothes and warm my shivering bones, I rode past the remains of Bent’s Old Fort, and remembered the days I had spent there when the place had been a working trading post—the largest and grandest the West ever knew. It had stood as a great adobe castle on the plains for over fifteen years, a rendezvous for the most intrepid explorers and voyagers the frontier had ever produced, a battlement with walls so imposing that it had never been seriously threatened by any war party or army. William Bent, its builder and master, had blown it to bits to keep the government from condemning it, as he and I had destroyed Fort Adobe on the Canadian.
    Downstream I rode, looking for the first of the huge cottonwoods that gave name to the place called Big Timbers—for decades a landmark on the north bank of the Arkansas. I knew from talk handed down the trail that William was building a new stone trading post at this location. About an hour before dusk I began to ride among the old cottonwoods—huge,
gnarled sentinels with bark like old scabs and limbs lying around them as if the monster trees had shaken them off—huge limbs that were themselves the size of respectable trees.
    Though his head hung low in fatigue, Major quickened his trot, for he knew the ancient campground and rendezvous called