Category: Old West

Corn Damage, 1 of 3

Outside, the dogs were barking wildly. Indians? Suzanna twitched the window curtain just enough to peek out without being seen.

Then she saw the reason for the barking and sprang from the window to the door. She ran wildly across the yard toward the field of knee-high corn, pulling off her apron as she went. The deer were everywhere and she charged in among them, waving the apron, crying “Shoo! Shoo!”

Both the dogs plunged in after her, rampaging through the corn, and the deer fled. Chest heaving, Suzanna stood in the center of the field and surveyed the damage. Some of the plants were completely uprooted. She wasn’t sure if the deer or the dogs had wreaked the most havoc.

Suzanna lifted her hands to the sky helplessly, then looked down at the dogs, who were lying, panting, at her feet. “You weren’t much help,” she said irritably.

She looked around the field again and her jaw tightened. As soon as Gerald returned, they were building a fence.

from Moreno Valley Sketches II

The Road to Santa Fe–and Taos

santa-fe-trail-map-1826-cropped-small

In February 1825, the United States Congress appropriated $25,000 to mark and survey a road between Missouri and Santa Fe. The survey was intended to formalize the informal trail that had been in use since at least 1821. In what would eventually become Colfax County, the “mountain branch” of the Trail crossed Raton Pass and moved directly south through what are now Cimarron and Rayado en route to Santa Fe. However, the Congressional Survey party took what was known as the Cimarron Cut Off, which swung south from the Arkansas River in what is now southwest Kansas to angle southwest until it connected with the mountain branch near Rayado.

At this point, travelers to Taos could decide whether to swing down through Santa Fe and then north or to cut west across the mountains. Taos was an important destination for those Trail travelers who were dealing in beaver fur or looking to outfit men engaged in fur trapping. Travelers headed there could take two different routes, depending on their mode of transportation. If their goods could be packed onto mules, they could follow a well-established mule track across the Cimarron range into the southern part of the Moreno Valley and then over Apache Pass to Valle Escondido. Just north of Valle Escondido, they would hit the San Fernando River, which would lead them into the Taos Valley. But if they needed to get wagons across and into Taos, they would have to find another route, such as the one Santa Fe Road Commissioner George C. Sibley followed. This route swung into the mountains south of Rayado and then north to Taos, where he completed the Santa Fe Road survey maps in late 1825.

Sources: Brown, J. C, and George Champlin Sibley. [Santa Fe route]. 1825. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/98687168/&gt;.

Schmidt, Steve. Presentation to Santa Fe Trail Association, Cimarron, NM. June 2015.

 

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Decision Point

Three years after the Great Rebellion, Henry still drifted. There was nothing behind him in Georgia and nothing further west than San Francisco. Not that he wanted to go there. The California gold fields were played out.

But he needed to get out of Denver. A man could stand town life only so long and he’d been here three months. The Colorado gold fields were collapsing, anyway. Played out before he even got here.

“Been too late since the day I was born,” he muttered, putting his whisky glass on the long wooden bar.

“I hear tell there’s gold in Elizabethtown,” the bartender said. He reached for Henry’s glass and began wiping it out. He knew Henry’s pockets were empty.

“Where’s Elizabethtown?”

“New Mexico Territory. Near Taos somewheres.”

Henry nodded and pushed himself away from the bar. “Elizabethtown,” he repeated as he hitched up his trousers. “Now there’s an idea.”

 from Moreno Valley Sketches

Reprieve

“Please don’t shoot him, Papa.”

Gerald lowered the gun and looked down at the boy. “Coyote’ve been nipping at the elk all spring and they left tracks by that half-eaten calf up the hill.”

Andrew shook his head. “He didn’t kill that calf, Papa.”

Gerald frowned. “You know that for a fact?”

Andrew hesitated, then nodded. “I’ve been watching him. He lets me get mighty close. He’s not as skittish as the others.”

“You’ve been following that coyote around?”

The boy scuffed the muddy ground with his boot. “I was curious.” He lifted his head. “The calf was dead when he ate off it.”

Gerald shook his head. “You are something else,” he said. He scanned the valley. The coyote was still visible. It trotted purposefully across the far side of the grassy slope beyond the meandering creek. “We’d best head back,” he said. “They’ll be waiting dinner on us.”

from Moreno Valley Sketches

A Half-Broke Chestnut

Jerry was sitting on the top rail of the corral fence, twirling his lariat thoughtfully and studying the horses, when Betty came out of the house.

She scattered the grain to the chickens and crossed the yard to the corral.

“I don’t suppose you’d want a half-broke gelding for a birthday present,” he said, nodding at a chestnut-colored pony.

Betty chuckled. “Not ’til you break him.”

“He’s right pretty.”

“He is. And half-broke.”

He grinned. “You chicken?”

“Just smart. Married you, didn’t I?”

He smiled down at her as he unbuttoned his right shirt pocket with his left hand.

“How ’bout this instead?” He handed her a small plush-covered box.

“Oh Jerry,” she said. She opened the box. Two small diamond chips on a heart-shaped locket gleamed up at her in the sunlight.

“Oh Jerry,” she said again as he slipped down to give her a kiss.

from Moreno Valley Sketches II

Misnomer

“Who you callin’ squirt?” The tall young man with the long sun bleached hair moved toward him down the bar, broad shoulders tense under his heavy flannel shirt.

“I didn’t mean anything,” the man said apologetically. The premature wrinkles in his face were creased with dirt.  Clearly a local pit miner. He gestured toward the tables. “I heard them callin’ you that. Thought it was your name.”

“Only my oldest friends call me that,” the young man said.

“Sorry ’bout that,” the other man said. He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Pete. They call me Gold Dust Pete, ’cuz that’s all I’ve come up with so far.”

They shook. “I’m Alfred,” the younger man said. “My grandfather called me Squirt. It kinda got passed down as a joke when I started getting my growth on.”

Pete chuckled. “I can see why it was funny,” he agreed. “Have a drink?”

from Moreno Valley Sketches

Virginia City, New Mexico is Born. And Dies.

On January 6, 1868 Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell, co-owner of the Maxwell land grant, announced a public auction of 400 lots in Virginia City, a new town six miles east of today’s Elizabethtown. The new town was located along Willow Creek on Baldy Mountain’s southern slopes and  named after Maxwell’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Virginia.

lucien-maxwell

Unfortunately, the town got off to a slow start. Only fifteen houses were in the next two months. Due to poor sales, the town had collapsed by the time Virginia married U.S. Army officer A.S.B Keyes two years later without Maxwell’s permission. What little remains of Virginia City is now on private property.

Sources: Urban, Jack. C.. Lure, Lore, and Legends of the Moreno Valley. Angel Fire, NM: Moreno Valley Writers Guild, 1997: 32.  Murphy, Larry R. Philmont. A History of New Mexico’s Cimarron Country. Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1972: 90. Freiberger, Lucille. Lucien Maxwell: Villain or Visionary. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1999: 103.

 

ONE-EYED PETE

“They call me One-Eyed Pete,” he told the girl. “Can you guess why?”

She examined his face. “’Cuz of what the bear did?”

He ran a gnarled finger over the left side of his face. “Nah, that’s just a scratch.” When he grinned, the scar twisted his smile into a grimace, but his right eye sparkled with mischief. “There’s more than one way of seein’.”

She gave him a puzzled frown.

“They also call me One Mind Pete.”

“We all have only one mind.”

“Most of us have half a dozen minds,” he told her. “Can’t decide which one to listen to at any one time.”

She giggled. “That’s true.”

“I’m pretty single-minded,” he said. “Makes me kinda stubborn.”

“But then you don’t have to decide,” the child pointed out. “You just know.”

“You sure are one smart cookie,” he said.

 from Moreno Valley Sketches