Santa Fe Passage Read online

  SANTA FE PASSAGE

  Clay Fisher

  Copyright © 1952 by Clay Fisher

  E-book published in 2019 by Blackstone Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6191-9

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6190-2

  Fiction / Westerns

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  There is a road out there, its trace still dimly visible, like an old scar across the mind of memory. An old scar, perhaps, and a faint one, but deep and red and angry from the things which went into its carving across that barren, granite land.

  Seven hundred and forty miles as the wagon ruts crawled, it probed its wandering, two-tracked finger, from Westport and Kansas City on the clay cutbanks of the Mini Sosi, the Indian’s Big Muddy, the white man’s Missouri, to the Holy City of the Faith of Saint Francis, hard beneath New Mexico’s frowning Blood of Christ Mountains.

  The names of many men have graced that dangerous trail to the riches of Santa Fe. Names like De Vaca, Zebulon Pike, William Becknell, and Pierre Chouteau, the Bent brothers, and the St. Vrains. These are the famous names, all rewarded by a generous history, all praised and penned securely into their rights as openers of that great road.

  But there were others. Names never known and never to be known. The names of those who skinned the mules and guided the weary ox wagons which kept that road open. And of those who fought like furies to keep it closed. Names like “Laredo” and “Uncle Thorpe” and “Old Sam” Beekman. Like Satank and Big Foot and Ptewaquin. And Aurélie St. Clair and Don Pedro Armijo.

  And dark-faced, soft-spoken Kirby Randolph …

  1

  Coming slowly in out of the main current to nose gingerly among the clot of mongrel craft tied up along the levee, the trim packet flashed her stern paddles disdainfully. Choose as she might, she could do no better than a narrow berth between a pig-stinking Ohio hog barge and a broad-beamed old slut of a Natchez cotton steamer. Accordingly, the Prairie Belle backed haughtily, chuffed an irritated cloud of blue woodsmoke from her twin stacks, and prepared to slide daintily in through the opening.

  Leaning on the rail of her Texas deck, just forward of the glassed-in holiness of the pilot’s house, Kirby Randolph thought he knew how the Belle felt. And looking past the swarming levee at the rutted-mud charms of the town beyond, he shared her feelings.

  Yonder there, fronting on the river, eye-hurtful in its yellow paint and double-storied galleries, squatted old René Chouteau’s mansion. Past that, up Walnut Street, the cathedral glared defiantly, its Moorish nave rupturing the clean sky. Back of the cathedral lay the old town, Carondelet, called “Vide Poche” by the old-timers, after the traditionally empty pockets of its French-Canadian inhabitants. Still farther up the hill, naked in the splendor of its mud square, floated the bulbous dome of the old courthouse. In between and around these awkward landmarks sprawled the huddle of log hostelries, canvas saloons, and clay huts that was St. Louis in 1839.

  “She’s a sure enough ugly old bitch,” muttered Kirby, turning from the rail. “Funny how a feller cain’t hardly wait to get his arms around her.”

  Going below, he threaded his way through the welter of matériel and humanity littering the boiler deck. Everywhere were shaggy hales of buffalo robes, neat bundles of beaver plews, ragged cords of dried buffalo beef, and immense rolls of Indian-tanned doeskins. Prowling what free deck space remained, the chaperons of this polyglot lading easily equaled their merchandise in outlandish character.

  Forcing his way through the sweating crowd, Kirby wondered if the Belle hadn’t made a mistake by not going gallantly to the bottom somewhere up around the mouth of the Cannonball, taking the whole smelly crew with her. A quick look at the Ohio pig boat coming alongside with its squealing, milling burden convinced him that for all her elegant airs, the Prairie Belle was trafficking in the same trade. “Only difference,” he grunted to himself, “is thet these pigs on this h’yar boat has got only two legs.”

  “Talkin’ to yerse’f agin, Kirby?” The question came from a bright-eyed little man perched like a scrawny bird on a bale of green robes. He was perhaps fifty, lean and gray as a fox, wearing the grease-blackened buckskins and carrying the heavy Hawkens rifle of the mountain man. This was Sam Beekman, prairie mate of Lisa and Chouteau in the old days, dean of the current young crop of plew hunters.

  “Jest thinkin’ we ain’t much different than them damn pigs,” vouchsafed the younger man, jerking his head toward the close-packed hunters and trappers, “savin’ we got only two legs. Same amount of squealin’ and millin’ around, appears to me.”

  “Wal, now, I mighten take leave to differ with ye on thet. I allow—”

  “Plank’s down!” the cry of the ropemen in the bow of the Prairie Belle announced her tie-up, interrupting the mountain men’s conversation. Kirby and Sam let themselves be carried along the deck and down the plank in the rush of the men to be off the boat. On the levee the two friends parted, Sam to see that his furs got safely off the Belle, Kirby to head for the Sublette Trading Company’s office up on Courthouse Square.

  “Reckon I’ll see ye over to the Rocky Mountain House,” nodded Sam. “Leastways, soon’s ye’ve had yer talk with Sublette and see’d thet slinky yeller gal of yern down to Vide Poche.”

  “Reckon ye will,” answered Kirby, his mind already racing up the narrow street behind the cathedral. “I’ll be along directly.”

  With a backhand wave to the old man, Kirby swung up Walnut Street to the Square, walking with the loose, bent-kneed gait which stamped his breed wherever it might stride. From the shoulder-length black hair, unwashed since the summer before, to the beaded toes of the Arapahoe hunting moccasins, he was the picture of the professional frontiersman: dirty, wild-haired, hard-eyed; lean, long-muscled, deceptively slow in motion.

  Going around the Square to Sublette’s, he marveled at the way the town had boomed. It struck him there must be nearly two thousand people camping here the year around now. Anywhere a man might want to look, there was nothing but people. And every scandalous kind under the sun. And the noise of them! They were making more racket than a flock of magpies ripping the boudins out of a live buffalo.

  The gaunt young trapper was glad to get off the street and into the quiet of Sublette’s store. His business there amounted to no more than cashing the sight draft which had been given him for his beaver plews at the upriver rendezvous, and he was soon done with that.

  Shambling along under the flaring torchlights of the square, head down and scowling, the mountain man didn’t see the flashy brougham until it was on top of him. Too late, he went jumping sideways, wilder than a spooked Sioux pony. The shoulder of the off-wheel horse clipped him in the backside, sending his lank body sprawling gutterward.

  There was a seeming fractional pause in midair during which the front of his eye made unhappy calculation of the coming gutter’s contents; a foot of liquid mud topped by a smoking meringue of warm road apples; while the tail of the eye took in a flying idea of the rig which had struck him; a custom-built Dearborn with a span of blood hackneys that would catch the eye of any Virginian, even on his way to the gutter.

  Of the driver he couldn’t be sure. But if “he” weren’t a willow stick of a girl, about sixteen, with a bright chestnut forelock and teeth that flashed c
leaner than fresh snow, he’d eat his buckskins. So much did Mr. Randolph’s well-trained eyes observe before the fluid soil of old Missouri parted to receive them.

  Kirby lay quietly in the mud, speculating on his immediate past and direct future. What in tarnal hell was better than six feet of grown mountain man to do about getting his behind knocked into a muddy gutter by five feet of red-haired girl? He eased his gutter companion, a long-dead cat, away from his dripping chin and reared up on one elbow. Best forget the whole thing, likely. After all, the mud wasn’t any more stinking than plenty he’d slept whole nights in up on the plains. And maybe she hadn’t swung the team into him on purpose. A man was always too quick to make out that accidents were insults.

  Halfway up on his hands, Kirby paused, sudden-struck by the awful truth. By Tophet, that kid had laughed. Laughed like crazy. A man might see wrong when he was hard hit and sent sailing, but he could sure hear right. “No sir, by God!” he announced to no one in particular. “She done it a’purpose!”

  “Ye goin’ to spend the night in thar, Casanovy?” The query came in such tones of familiar contempt as could be safely used on a mountain man by nobody but a very old friend. Kirby’s head slewed around as Sam Beekman lounged up to deliver his crotchety conclusion. “Whut in tunket alls ye, boy? Are ye drunk?”

  “Sam,” Kirby hauled himself to his feet, coming out of the puddle shaking himself like a wet dog, “did ye see thet female knock me in h’yar? She run me down with a rig. Young gal, no more’n a kid. Drivin’a stylish rig with two high-steppin’ bays.”

  “Reckon I didn’t,” grinned Sam. “But I kin call her cut fer ye, like as not. Young gal, looks about fifteen, sixteen, mebbe. Slim as a stick, sorrel hair, good teeth, purty as a blacktail fawn. Dearborn brougham, span of blood hackneys—”

  “Thet’s the outfit.” Kirby’s words grabbed quickly at Sam’s. “How come ye to know it, allowin’ ye didn’t see it?”

  “Anybody thet hadn’t spent his last three years squeezin’ castor out’n beaver sacs, would,” the old man growled. “Thet thar’s old Marcel St. Clair’s rig.”

  “Damn the rig,” grinned Kirby knowingly. “Who in hell’s the gal?”

  “Wal,” the old trapper laid his back against a torch post, shot a stream of Burley at the dead cat in the gutter, “accordin’ to the boys over to the Rocky Mountain House, she’s supposed to be old Marcel’s niece.”

  “Whut ye mean, supposed?” demanded Kirby, suspiciously.

  “Jest thet. Boys say she’s really his own kid, sired out’n some red squaw out thar to Fort St. Clair. Ye realize, don’t ye, thet these h’yar St. Clairs is them as makes up one half of the top-dog Santy Fee tradin’ firm of Blunt and St. Clair?”

  Kirby whistled under his breath. “Wal, old salt, appears I’ve stepped myse’f into mighty fast company.”

  Sam ignored him, continuing his narration. “Story goes, the gal was brung up out to Fort St. Clair in the Territory. Was runnin’ a leetle free out thar, seems like. A real fuzztail, the boys say, wilder than a green-broke colt. Marcel had her brung down h’yar to put in the convent so’s she could be cooled off somewhat.”

  Pausing, Sam took another spatshot at the cat. “Since bein’ down h’yar, she ain’t bin in nothin’ but trouble. Winged a wagon boss who took to allowin’ out loud thet she was purtier than a heifer. Downed him with one of them new leetle Colt’s revolvin’ pistols. Boys say she carries the dang thing around in her dress somewheres. Then she buggywhupt a woman down in front of Sublette’s fer callin’ her a high-flyin’ half-breed hussy—”

  “Did ye say ‘half-breed’?” Kirby’s break-in was slow and hard.

  “Now dammit, Kirby,” the old trapper’s continuing tones were uneasy, “ye know full well ye ain’t got no call to be so snotted-up about breeds. Besides, this h’yar gal’s no breed. Thet’s just a lot of dirty trapper’s lies!”

  “I allow ye’re lyin’, old hoss.” The tall youngster was grinning again, his weather eye warming to the old man’s stout defense of the girl. “But I aim to find out, all the same. I owe thet chit somethin’, white or half-breed. Happen right now is as good a time as any to give it to her.”

  “Whut ye thinkin’ of doin’?” the old man demanded suspiciously.

  “Never ye mind.” Kirby still had the grin working. “See ye at the Rocky Mountain House. And have my possibles packed fer me. I got to be movin’ on down the river to find myse’f a gal.”

  “Wal,” Sam’s acceptance of the assignment was laced with the caustic soda of long association, “if ye’re up to yer usual cub-bear form, I allow ye’ll be comin’ back from St. Clair’s with a fair runnin’ start fer the journey!”

  The eight-foot split-log stockade around the St. Clair place gave Kirby a pause—a pause long enough for him to ease up to it, pull himself up and swing-vault over to the opposite ground. Perhaps he made a little noise landing. But then so does a snowflake make a little noise landing.

  He hadn’t more than gotten over the stockade before he saw a lantern flash down by the gate, heard the crunch of the returning carriage wheels on the drive. He went into cover like a coyote, running the length of the tree-lined drive ahead of the approaching horses, to slip into the dark of the carriage house. There, he stepped behind a parked landau, pressed back into the shadows, waited noiselessly. The beam of the carriage lamps entering the building flicked across his face to light up a grin as wide as a catfish’s.

  The girl brought the bays up, wrapped the lines smartly, stepped down off the driving box and out into the lamplight almost before Kirby’s grin died away. As a matter of fact there were still traces of it lifting his mouth corners when he stepped up behind her.

  “Evenin’, ma’am,” he murmured, his left arm sliding around her neck with the greeting.

  The girl’s gasp was cut off in its infancy as the crotch of the lean arm tightened on her throat. At the same time its stillbirth was abetted by the rough buckskin gag whipped across her mouth and cinched down on her struggling tongue hard as a spade bit.

  The trapper knotted the gag, slung his kicking victim under one arm and stepped away from the carriage so as to be in the best light from its lamps. “Coo-ee, boys!” he called softly to the nervous horses, and seated himself on a convenient bundle of hay. Here, with dispatch and admirable restraint, he set about doing what he had come to do—turning the spoiled St. Clair girl over his bony knee and whaling the tar out of her.

  Applying his outsize hand to the bobbing target beneath it, Kirby’s pleasures were not entirely derived from the objective feelings of poetic justice. By cripes, she might be a little thing, sure enough, but she wasn’t all little.

  Still, the trapper didn’t let his gift for quick physical assay mitigate the force of his visit’s primary object. He’d got his in that gutter half an hour ago, and now she was getting hers.

  She strained and twisted in his grasp, a perfect slim fury, but the left hand that could neck-down an eight-hundred-pound Indian pony wasn’t too tired by her inspired wriggling. What terminated the spanking was the coming bob of a lantern from down the drive.

  Of course! The jasper who’d let her in down at the gate just now would be coming along up to the carriage house to see to the horses. He’d have to let up on her, else he wouldn’t have time to give her a good look at him before he had to make his tracks. As it was, he’d probably have to drop the jasper in making it.

  Easing off the hay bundle, he straightened, spinning the girl around to face him. “Take a good look, honey,” his voice purred with the grin in it, “so’s next time ye run over this man ye’ll know him!” As the words got out of him, Kirby began to see what he was looking at.

  The grin fell open with the gaping mouth.

  The girl’s eyes flared at him, green as a trapped she-wolf’s, her nostrils spread thin and wide and whistling with the breath in them. Her hair, burning red in the smok
y lamplight, spilled thick and wild to her shoulders, a heavy forelock of it shadowing the dark face and high-flushed cheeks. From the corner of the wide, full-lipped mouth, a thin trickle of blood showed bright under the twisted gag.

  “Lord Almighty, ma’am—” Kirby breathed the phrase, his own gray eyes fired with the beauty of her. The movement of his belt knife, flicking up to sever the cruel buckskin, was no quicker than the one which followed the fall of the parted gag from her mouth. Kirby’s arm went behind her head, his body stepping into hers before she could move. The next instant his lips, more cruel than any gag, were driven into her bleeding mouth.

  Kirby tasted the fire of that kiss long after the blood of it had ceased to salt his lips.

  The girl shot him low down, in the left side, the little .34-caliber ball plowing up and across the last four ribs. He hadn’t felt her pull the gun, had no idea where she’d gotten it from. He just knew that he felt it ease into his belly. His wild twist, sideways, timed with the hammer fall, was pure reflex.

  Reflex, too, was the snake-fast strike his left hand made for her right wrist. But the backhand slash of his right hand across her face was deliberate. The blow sent her back across the piled hay, limp as a broken doll, leaving Kirby towering over her, the silver-mounted Colt smoking in his left hand, his face black with the distortion of pain and anger.

  “Ye half-breed witch!” The snarl came out of him twice as bitter for its choking softness.

  Her eyes were open, staring up at him blankly. He saw them widen ahead of the strange suddenness of her warning cry. “A-ah!” The word sprang from her with startling force. Kirby, struck by its foreign sound in that time and place, nevertheless responded to its message without question or delay. “A-ah!” It was the Dakota Sioux warning word. A-ah! Beware! Sudden danger! Look out!

  As the mountain man spun around, he snapped his long body over in a doubled-up crouch. The dull flash of the thrown knife hissed high past his bent shoulder, precisely where his broad back had been the instant before. The figure following the knife was the tallest redskin the trapper had ever seen. Dressed in the plain shirt and leggins of a Sioux hunter, the Indian loomed over Kirby like a mountain over a foothill. And Kirby stood six-three, with nothing between him and the bare earth but the thickness of an elkhide moccasin sole.