Chapter 07

Spring of 1860

In the second week of spring the entire March family, plus Don, take all of the wagons to Arizona town to purchase building materials. The families staying behind start working on their cabins now the sites are ready for construction after being cleared and flat stones are laid down for a base to build on. There’s no hurry, so the travellers take their time and go via the river to pan for more gold to collect another twenty-five pounds or so in the half day they spend at the site.

Town

When they reach the town a big surprise is finding both the Wilson families camped on the edge of town. They pull up at the camp to greet them and introduce Don. Sam says, “Things sure went to hell soon after your last visit. Major Walker was moved and a new Captain took over. He and his new Lieutenant hate the Indians. Some new ranchers arrived and they’ve been causing trouble with the Indians as well. I sold up to one of the new ranchers so I wouldn’t get caught in the middle of their war. Been camped here for the last two weeks while waiting for you.”

Ann asks, “What’s Long Snake doing about this, Dad?”

“He’s waiting for one of the better braves to arrive to take over the care of a few old women and all of the young orphans so he can lead the rest of the village off into a more remote and safer mountain area.”

Will asks, “What are the people in town doing about it?”

“There’s been new shopkeepers move in too, and many of them hate all Indians. The good ones are selling up and moving out when they can sell off their stock. A few have already left and the dry goods shop you go to is getting ready to move out when he sells enough stock.”

“Well, we best get up there to buy everything we can.” Sam nods yes.

The March family moves on into town. After dismounting Will looks back at the camp to see Jim and Nora sitting on a long covered wagon while they head south out of town. The speed they’re going at makes it clear the wagon is empty and they’re in a serious hurry to get to where they’re going. Will wonders what that’s about.

It doesn’t take them long to unload the furs and blankets they have. The shopkeeper gives them their usual price, but when they enter the shop it’s only about half as full as it used to be. One good thing is the owner of the sawmill left all of his remaining cut wood under the control of his friend, this shopkeeper, when he packed up and left a few weeks ago. So the first thing they do is to load up all of the beams, boards, and nails he has on hand. All the glass window panes, bolts of cloth, thread, wool, needles, scissors, salt, gunpowder, .36 Minié balls, varnish, shovels, and anything else they can think of they may need in the next few years is bought and loaded into the six big wagons, the three horse-wagons, and the three pack-horses they have with them. Lots of cooking and eating gear for the new households is also included.

By the time they’re finished buying and loading all they want, or may use in the next few years, there’s very little left to sell. The owner looks around and says, “With you cleaning me out I can pack what’s left on my wagons and head to California. I dreaded the idea of having to wait while I slowly tried to sell this lot.”

Will asks, “What will the people here do for a store after you leave?”

“At the west end of town is a new dry goods store, they’ll go there! All the really good people have already left or are about to leave, and I don’t care about the rest getting overcharged by that thief.”

From the tone of the reply it’s clear the two shop owners don’t get on, and Will wonders why, but he doesn’t press the matter. He does ask, “If you’re in such a hurry to move out why buy our furs and blankets?”

“They’ll bring a good price in California and are worth the trouble to take with me. Anyway, I figured I could sell them before I left, but you bought a lot more than I thought you would. With the way this place is changing where will you go to shop in the future?”

“Although it’s easier to come here it’s not that much harder to go to Tucson or Santa Fe if I don’t mind the extra trail time. So we’ll go to one of them. Now to pay you what we owe. Will gold dust be OK?”

The man’s eyes open wide as he nods yes. The two retire to his office where he sets up a set of scales. He places five ten dollar gold coins on one side and Will fills up the other side with gold dust until it balances. They keep doing this until the man has enough gold to equal what Will owes him, then Will adds a bit more while saying, “For exchange costs.”

When each of Will’s wagons is full his family secures it and moves it to the Wilson family camp-site. So when Will walks out of the store after paying what he owes Light Fawn is leading the last of the pack-horses with horse-wagons down the road to the camp-site. Will mounts his horse and is heading after them when he’s passed by an Army troop on its way through town. The troop stops and the officer in charge says something to Light Fawn, to which she shrugs and turns away, which makes the officer angry. Will spurs Pegasus on and arrives in time to hear the officer, a Lieutenant, shout, “I told you to tell me where you stole these horses and goods from, Squaw!”

Will yells out, “Lieutenant, I’ll thank you to leave my people alone and to speak to me if you have anything to say about my property!”

The officer turns, saying, “I’ve not seen you about! Who are you?”

“The name’s Will March and I’ve a ranch up near the Bill Williams River. I haven’t been in town during the winter so I’m just stocking up. You must be new to the fort, because when I was there last autumn and I didn’t see you about then.”

“I arrived two months back with the new fort commander. You’ll have to call in to visit him so you can show him where your ranch is on the map.” Will doesn’t respond to that in any way. The officer turns and leads his troop out of town, going east on what looks like a patrol.

About twenty minutes later Will is finishing double checking all of the loads are secure on his wagons and on the Wilson family wagon. Now all they need to do is to wait for Jim and Nora to get back then they’ll leave. Will prefers to get out of town and not stay the night near the town due to the incident with the Lieutenant.

Noticing the only stock Sam has tied to his wagon are a few horses and his two best bulls he asks, “What happened to your stock, Sam?”

He grimaces and says, “The man who bought the ranch figured he could get the stock for nothing or next to nothing since I didn’t have enough hands to drive them anywhere. Well, I did a deal with the Major before he left and I sold most of the stock to the Army, but I had to hire most of Long Snake’s braves to drive the stock there because it was pay on delivery to the fort. They’re still working on what the Major bought. The rest I gave to Long Snake as payment for the hands on the drive. I got paid by the Major as his last official act before the handover. The new Captain was there, and he was not happy to see me with so many Indians. He got very angry when he heard me tell Long Snake I was paying him in stock and he could have the remains of the herd. Having the cattle on hand to eat is all that helped get them through the end of the winter because the new ranchers were killing all of the wildlife in the area, and that reduced what the Indians could hunt to eat.”

“Sounds like it’s a good idea he’s moving the tribe away from here.”

A little after this Sergeant Larkins rides up to Sam, dismounts, and says, “Mister Wilson, you get on well with Long Snake’s tribe. What can you tell me about this brave he’s waiting for to arrive? The rumours from the Indian scouts is the man is a great warrior so the Captain thinks the tribe will go on the warpath when he gets here. I don’t think so because that’s not how Long Snake thinks, but the Captain won’t listen to me.”

Sam waves Will over and the two men shake hands when he joins them. Sam says, “Sergeant, the man Long Snake is waiting for is a good provider and Long Snake wants him to take over the care of some old women and a bunch of orphaned children while the rest of the tribe goes off to hide in some very rough terrain to avoid the persecution by the new ranchers and the new Army officers at the fort.”

“That’s good to know! I’ve got another year then my time’s up. I think I’ll be leaving the Army then as I don’t want to get involved in the sort of murdering this new breed of officers will start.” He turns to Will and asks, “Mister March, have you heard of this brave called Fast Hand? Do you know what he’s like?”

Will laughs, long and hard. Now he knows where Jim has gone with the wagon: to the Indian camp to collect the orphans and old women. He sees the Sergeant is getting a bit upset at his laughter so he calms down a bit and says, “Sorry, Sergeant. I wasn’t laughing at you, just the situation. This is for your information only, and it is not to be passed on to anyone else. The three Indian women with me are my wives and my Indian name is Fast Hand. When I first visited the village I was attacked by a renegade Indian who had a knife and I was very quick to kill him by knocking his knife hand aside as I hit him once.”

The Sergeant laughs and replies, “Thank you for trusting me with the information. The Captain and Lieutenants don’t like anyone who helps the Indians so they’ll be after you. The Captain wants every white in the area to mark where they live on his map. I don’t know why, so you should be ready for when he sends someone for you to do that.”

“I exchanged a few words with an arrogant Lieutenant about an hour ago. He was going out on patrol and stopped to accuse Light Fawn of stealing my horses and wagon. I told him off and he told me to go to the fort to mark the map for the Captain. Well, here’s my official answer. The next time I’m heading to or near the fort I’ll drop in to talk to the Captain to do that for him. However, I’ve several wagon loads of goods which include food needed by the others at the ranch and I’m on my way east. Since the fort is to the west it’ll have to wait until my next trip through here that goes west.”

Sergeant Larkins smiles and says, “Just out of interest, for myself, when do you think that’ll be?”

“With the only decent shopkeeper leaving town I’ll be doing my future shopping in Tucson or Santa Fe, so I expect my next trip near Fort Yuma will likely be somewhere around eighteen sixty-four or five. Not sure when I next expect to go to California. But then, I may go via Fort Mohave instead.” They all grin at his avoidance of the Captain. “By the way, Sergeant, with the issues on slavery and the bloodshed in the east on slavery I expect a war over slavery to start in that area within a year or so. I suggest you do all you can to stay west until your enlistment runs out, and then keep this side of the Mississippi until it’s all over. If you want to work on my ranch you can leave a message for me care of the Wells Fargo Bank in Santa Fe and I’ll get it the next time I’m there.” Larkins nods his understanding and they shake hands before he leaves.

About twenty minutes later Jim and Nora return with a wagon load of orphans and four old women. Long Snake leads twenty braves who came with them as security. They greet, have a talk, and the Indian men leave. Will passes a couple of canteens of water into the wagon for them to drink, along with some trail food to eat. Jim gets off the wagon to mount his horse and they move out on the road heading east.

When well out of town they pull off into the scrub to set up camp for the night. They should have waited for morning to leave, but no one wants to be near the town that long. Out here it’s harder for the Army to find them to ask questions they don’t want to answer.

On the Road Again

It’s a good thing they bought a lot more food than the original plan called for, because they need it with the twenty-six new mouths to feed.

The next day’s travel is no problem as they go past the stagecoach stations and the hamlets they go through. They’re near the point where Will wants to leave the road to turn north when he seesan Army troop in the distance heading for the road. He turns back and tells Sam of what he sees, then he goes along the wagon-train to tell all of the ladies to put on their large floppy hats so the soldiers can’t see them too well, he also makes sure the back cover of the wagon with the Indians in it is down as he tells all of the children to be very quiet because of the approaching troops, then he sneaks off into the scrub on the other side of the road.

Will watches when the soldiers ride up to the wagons. Sam stops to talk with the Lieutenant in charge and Sam waves for the wagons to keep going. Jim moves up to Sam’s scout position ahead of the wagons and the rest keep rolling along. The troops stop behind the officer and they just sit there looking about them; focussing on the scrub, not the wagons.

The officer isn’t happy Sam doesn’t stop the wagon-train, but he has no grounds to make him stop the wagons. They talk for a moment and the officer has a good look at Jim and Don when they go by before he waves the troop on after the last wagon passes them. Will sits and waits for ten minutes to make sure the troop keeps going, and it does. When it’s out of sight he moves off after the wagons.

When Will catches up to them Sam says, “The Lieutenant was asking where you were. I told him you were off doing something else and will catch up to us. I expect he thinks you’re making a call to the fort, so he won’t be happy when he finds out that isn’t so.” Both laugh.

A few miles further on they turn off the road and Will stops to tie bushes behind every wagon, he starts the wagons moving and he goes back to remove all of the traces of where they leave the road. He waits to see if anyone passes by. He’s happy when a coach goes by because it wipes out their tracks on the road.

A few hours after leaving the road they camp for the night. The rest of the trip back to the ranch is simple with no problems. However, they do take care to hide their tracks for the whole trip.

Back at the Ranch

When they get back everyone in the wagon-train is soon busy at work unloading everything from the wagons. The Wilson families are surprised at the way the caves are set up, and they love it.

Those who remained behind worked hard in their absence so they have the main walls and roof of the first cabin finished with the second one half done. They also have quite a bit of the land cleared and readied with the crops planted.

Some of the beams and boards are used to finish the first cabin and the family moves into it. Then they all work to finish the second cabin, followed by the third. The extra cooking and eating gear is given to the families as house warming gifts and they’re soon set up to live in their own cabins. They all go to the trouble to have inside running water via pipes from streams near their cabins.

Many of the beams and boards are used to make rooms within the caves. The cave nearest the barn is the first one completed with wood frame walls for rooms. It’s set up to house both the Wilson families with the common cooking and living areas along the side with the water and the stove, with the bedrooms against the opposite side wall. Space for a family is set up on each side of the entrance to the next cave. They use the same basic set up in the other two caves. Don and the old women live in the middle living cave, but his area is set up for when Ginny will join him. Will’s family and the orphan children live in the top cave.

A large part of the remainder of the spring is spent in readying more land for crops, especially feed crops for the stock. The older boys are put to work extending the line of scrub and fence from the barn area to up in front of all of the caves to create a new hidden field beside the existing field for the barn stock. Buried pipes are used to water the new field area and it’s set up to be a large irrigated vegetable garden for them. The fence and scrub line is extended across the end of the garden to hide it from the view of anyone coming down the valley from that end.

The hardest task is to make opening window frames to put them in the windows of all of the caves and cabins. Will insists on having them double-glazed for extra insulation, which is what makes it hard work to make them right. They do get it all done, and they like the extra natural light available during the day when the shutters are left open. One aspect of this the others don’t realise is Will makes all of the windows to have the glass in them at a slight angle inwards at the bottom so they’re not likely to reflect any sunlight back to searchers, regardless of the time of day. He’s very conscious of making everything look like there’s no one about when someone is just riding through the valley. Even all of the crop fields are set up behind a good screen of trees or scrub people have to ride through before they can see the crops.

’White man’ style clothes are made for all of the children and they’re taught how to behave in a way that doesn’t scream Indian. They’re all trained in the use of pistols and rifles then they’re given guns to carry with them when out and about. By the end of spring Will and Sam are taking the older boys and girls out to do the hunting of game for fresh meat for everyone at the caves.

In the first week of summer Will decides to make a shopping trip to Santa Fe to deposit the rest of the gold he has, and to get some supplies to ensure they’ll get through the winter. He wants to get enough stoves with hot water tanks plus bath tubs for all of the cabins as well as more of the flushing toilet troughs for the cabins to use. He also wants more baths for each of the caves so they’ll have two each. However, no more guns, balls, or powder because they’ve enough to do them a few years. Also, he still has all of the fuses he didn’t use in the caves for fear of doing unintended damage, despite buying them to blast the doorways through the rock.

The plan is for the whole March family and Don to go. One of the other couples, Philip and Jenny, will go with them as well. Don and Ginny will get married while Don visits his parents. The older children are also going along. Sam and the others will stay at the ranch to keep an eye on things and to continue with some of the work projects.

Santa Fe, Again

They move out with nine full wagons and the horse-wagons are last, all drag bushes behind them to disturb and hide the trail they make. Will makes a detailed map of the trail while they go, he also makes a point of destroying any places that do stand out enough to make the trail easy to recognise without the map. After they cross the river they stop to load a lot of small to medium sized rocks into some of the wagons, and when they reach places where the trail is starting to show the tracks of the wagons from the earlier trips he has a wagon with rocks go first so he can drop rocks off the back and they work them into the ground. By the time the last wagon is through there are no clear wagon tracks visible due to the scattered rocks breaking them up.

Will uses gunpowder to remove the stumps of where they cut down trees on earlier trips and he then drags large rocks over to dump into the holes, he removes the drag marks afterwards. It takes them much longer to travel while working over the trail, but they all understand what he’s doing is to stop others from following them without their permission, and thus they’ll be a lot safer from bandits.

Before they reach the Beale’s Wagon Road Will scouts ahead to find a spot to join it where dumping the rest of the rocks on the road makes sense. He only has to change their approach point a little to join the road about a mile from where they did on the past trips. The road at this point has a small stream flowing across it and it’s muddy, so dumping the rocks around the area to improve the road makes very good sense.

The rest of the trip to Santa Fe is without any issues, although they do meet a lot of people on the road who’re heading west.

Will and his group are able to camp at the same spot as on their last trip to Santa Fe and they soon set up camp. There’s not much left of the day so they set up camp for the night.

Next Day

In the morning Will leaves Big Fawn and Little Fawn to watch the camp while he takes the rest into town to visit Don’s family and to see what they have for sale in the store. The first thing they notice is all of the posters and talk about the upcoming presidential election plus the controversies over some of the candidates and subjects being covered.

Don’s father’s store has everything they want so they work out a deal and arrange to collect it in the morning. Don, Ginny, Jenny, and Philip stay to talk with Don’s family and to visit Philip’s family while Will and Ann lead the rest back to the camp.

Trouble

When they pass the last buildings before the camp they see five men in their camp. One is standing over Will’s ladies with one of their rifles in his hands, another is giving orders, and the other three are hitching the horses up to the wagons. Will doesn’t hesitate, he tells those with him to take cover while he races closer as he only has pistols on him and he has to cover about twenty yards to get close enough to shoot well.

He only takes a moment to race to within in twenty yards of the camp while drawing one pistol. He stops, kneels, takes aim, and shoots the man watching his ladies between the shoulder blades. The others stop what they’re doing and look up. Will aims at the one in charge and shoots him in the chest when the man turns around. He’s fast to shift aim to shoot the other three while they go for their handguns. In less than a minute all five of the men are dead. Will and the ladies in camp race over to start stripping the dead while Ann brings the rest of their people into the camp.

Will is a little concerned when he sees the man in charge has a badge and is a deputy sheriff. Will shrugs and continues with the clean up. He drags the dead off to the side, gets Pegasus and he puts a pack on her, he then loads the pack with the bags of gold he has. He wants it in the bank in case there’s any trouble from the shooting.

Big Fawn helps Will with the loading as she says, “They looked at us while they went to the other camp, spoke to people there, then raced over here with their guns out. The deputy said we’d stolen everything because we’re Indians and Indians don’t own anything. He said he was impounding it all then you arrived back. I don’t know why he did it!”

“Well, now he won’t be doing it again. I’ll go talk to the town sheriff after I bank the gold.” Several minutes after arriving he’s on his way to the bank with the gold on Pegasus, Little Fawn, Light Fawn, and two of the older boys are armed with shotguns, plus two long rifles on Pegasus.

The four Indians form a box around the horse and Will walks to the side to keep an eye on everything. A lot of people look at them while they move through the town, but no one says anything. They may find the grim expressions on their faces an indication to keep back.

When they stop at the Wells Fargo bank Will says to the guard at the door, “Please have two more guards and couple of clerks come out to help me with my deposit.” The man nods yes, opens the door, and he calls to someone inside. Another man walks out, looks at them, listens to the guard, and he goes back inside. A moment later two guards with rifles exit the bank to take up positions on either side of the door while two others ask Will what he wants taken in.

Between the men, Will, and the two boys they carry in everything from the pack on Pegasus while the two ladies keep a watchful eye on all about them. They place it all on a desk half-way down the left side of the room and a better dressed man says, “Good morning. Welcome to Wells Fargo Bank, Santa Fe. How can we help you today?”

Will pulls out one pack of gold dust he’s already weighed, hands it to the man, and says, “Weigh and value this first, please.”

The man walks away to get a set of scales, and he returns to the desk. He puts the scales down, calibrates them, opens the bag, and smiles when he pours the gold into the bowl on one side. Next he places weights on the other side until they balance. He looks at Will, “That’s one pound of gold dust. Which I’m sure you already knew.”

“Doesn’t hurt to check your scales are working right before we get to the rest of it,” and he waves at the bags on the desk. The man smiles again as he pours the weighed gold into a bag they have for such things before getting another of Will’s bags and pouring it into the bowl. For the next half hour or so he’s busy weighing the gold and writing the figures down. It’s easier for him to adjust the amount of gold in the bowl so he weighs one pound lots, bags them, and marks them on a sheet.

When he’s finished the man turns to Will, saying, “You’ve seventy-two pounds, eight and a half ounces of gold dust, Sir. How do you wish to be paid?”

“I’m Will March, I did some business through here last year and I’ll be doing more in the years to come. I want you to use the gold to open an account for me and to deposit it all to the account. Then have the balance of my account in your San Francisco office transferred to this account. I’ll need to set things up for the other family members to have access to the money as well. In the next few days I’ll be buying some things and looking to have your people do bank notes for the payments for me.”

“Certainly, Sir! Glad to help you. Please come to my desk and let’s get the account paperwork done.” In a few minutes all of the papers and forms for everything are completed, and one very happy bank manager is telling Will where he can find the town sheriff and an undertaker.

Will stops at the undertaker in the next block and says to him, “I had some men trying to steal my gear at the camp south of town. Here’s ten dollars to collect them and put them in a common grave.”

The man takes the money and says, “I’ll go get them, but I’ll see if I know them. If they’re locals and have family I’ll ask the family what they want done. Do you have an issue with that?” Will simply shakes his head no and he leaves.

At the Sheriff’s Office Will stops, and when he points at the hitching rail Pegasus walks up to it to stand there; much to the amusement of the sheriff sitting on a chair beside the door. Will nods at the man and says, “Sheriff, my name’s Will March. I arrived at the camp south of town yesterday afternoon then I came into town this morning to see a few people. I left a few of my people in the camp and the rest came into town. When we got back to the camp I found five men holding three of my people under armed guard and hitching my horses to my wagons to steal them. So I raced into range and I shot them. When I was checking them for anything worthwhile I found this on the one in charge.” He tosses the deputy sheriff’s badge to the sheriff.

The sheriff catches the badge, looks at it, looks up at Will, and says, “Was he short, and a bit overweight?” Will nods yes. “I see you have four Indians with you. Your people at the camp, were they Indians?” Will gives another nod. “OK! Not your fault. Jack was a dumb ass Indian hater who went out of his way to cause trouble for any he saw. But I do need to come out to see what other idiots he had go with him.”

“I paid the undertaker up the road to go get them, so you can save a walk and see them when he gets them into town.”

“Do you know how it started?” Will waves Little Fawn forward and she tells the story from start to finish. The man nods, “Sounds just like Jack to go off like that. Sorry about your trouble, Mister March, but it seems you were a bit quick to shoot them.”

“I might have been a bit slower in shooting if they weren’t in the process of hitching up my horses to my wagon with seventy pounds of gold dust in it. To me it looked like they were out to steal my gold. I’ve just come from putting it all in the bank.”

“Yeah! I can see how you jumped to that conclusion real quick. I’ll have to be more careful in selecting deputies in the future. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone around here about the gold. I don’t want all of the fools rushing around here digging the place up and destroying all of the land.”

Will grins, “I’ll not tell anyone. But the bank staff saw me deposit it and they know I’ve a ranch out by the Colorado River. How long before one of them talks is out of my hands. So far, they and you are the only ones in town who know I brought gold in, apart from my family. It’s placer gold found along the Colorado River, so it’s a good distance away if they want to go looking for it. Also, that’s a lot of river they need to check out.”

The sheriff laughs, “I guess I’ll let people know which river to go to when the word gets out. That’ll slow a few down. Get much?”

“Last year I took over seventy pounds to San Francisco and just put a bit over seventy pounds into the bank today. That’s what I collected in a bit over two years.”