Into the Savage Country (23 page)

“My name is Henry Layton and I am hardly a trapper,” Layton began. “My father is a landowner and manufacturer from St. Louis, and we are adventurers and students of nature. We were connected to a trapping brigade, were waylaid by misfortune, and are now washed up on your shores. We ask for nothing except safe passage to Santa Fe and back to our country. Any imprisonment will be heard of in Washington and will be forcefully resented and resisted.”

Echevaria’s pen remained poised, and after a long moment, in a sarcastic tone he said, “You are what?”

“We are three gentlemen travelers. I am a student of nature.”

“I can see you have immersed yourself in it,” Echevaria said, and began writing again. As he did, he said, “You look like trappers and I believe you are trappers. American trappers who are looking to establish trade with Santa Fe. Trade which, if established, will overrun the region with your compatriots.”

“We look like trappers because we traveled with a trapping brigade,” Layton said. “Beastly men among whom we suffered numerous privations. We have arrived here at this oasis of civilization by the will of God. I am a gentleman. And my companion
here”—he motioned to me—“is a law student and writer of verse.”

“Worthless occupation.”

“You are not alone in that estimation,” I said. “My father would agree with you.”

Echevaria smiled briefly and mirthlessly. He wore a frock that went up to his neck. He had languid movements.

“We stumbled upon your magnificent settlement—” Layton began.

“I do not agree with your estimation of the settlement. I am fifteen hundred miles from the capital and surrounded by barbaric wilds.”

“It is far superior to any of the American settlements.”

“I don’t doubt that. And yet it does not meet Spanish standards, which are different from Americans’.”

“Perhaps that is the case,” Layton said.

“It is the case,” he said.

“I see that it is,” Layton said. “We put ourselves at your mercy.”

“I would like nothing better than to show mercy,” Echevaria said dryly. “But you understand the position in which I sit in front of you is not as caretaker of an estate but as administrator of an entire region and with specific instructions on how to treat invaders.”

“We are hardly invaders,” Layton said. “We have washed up on your shores inadvertently. We appeal to your benevolence.”

“Benevolence whose bounds are constantly tested,” he said. “I am the administrator of a borderland territory far from any real civilization and not connected to the capital by anything but the most rudimentary of dirt paths. I have British forts on my northern edge. I have French trappers in the mountains and
Russians across the desert. I have your American counterparts in the interior, endlessly rapacious. Of all these threats, the Americans are the most worrisome. Once they begin to come they will not stop. I know this. Sickness and starvation do not stop them. Threats and imprisonment seem inducements. The only real defense I have are the beastly Comanche who have done more to protect our borders than all the soldiers. But even those ghastly natives will be no match for the hordes of greedy settlers if an easy and safe route is found to Santa Fe. I have been ordered to detain any foreigners, but particularly Americans, and particularly those who seek to establish a trading route with Santa Fe.”

“We did not seek to establish a route, but have sought to avoid it,” Layton said. “And the tales of our hardship and the hostility of the natives will discourage any who try to follow in our path. My friend here”—he gestured to me—“will write about it for all to read. But we must be given safe passage if our story is to be told.”

The administrator looked at us silently. There was no way to hide that we had been in the wilderness for months. Echevaria had begun to write again when Ferris stood and said, “May I borrow a sheet of parchment?,” and without waiting for a reply, took the paper and his quill and very quickly, very expertly, sketched Echevaria sitting at his desk. It was a striking resemblance, and it entirely surprised him.

“I had my training in medicine,” Ferris said. “But I have disappointed my father by taking off for the fur country to pursue my study of the arts.”

“Au natural,” Echevaria said.

“Precisely,” Ferris said.

Ferris finished the sketch and placed it in front of him, then
reached in his jacket and produced his sketchbook, which had the marvelous studies inside it.

“This is a portion of my work completed while among the trappers, which I mean to turn into full oil paintings when I return to my studio in St. Louis.”

Echevaria took the book reluctantly and opened the first page. He looked up at Ferris, surprised, and began to page through the various sketches.

“These are unexpectedly excellent,” he said.

“I appreciate your discernment,” Ferris said. “We have taken to the road for inspiration. We have almost lost our lives. We are begging hospitality and safe passage.”

Echevaria shut the notebook, turned, and said something in Spanish to one of the maids. A moment later a glass of water was placed before me and one before Layton and one before Ferris. The glass was crystal, heavy, and the water was cool and fresh. I tried to drink slowly.

“You must forgive me. I have so many troubles,” Echevaria said.

“We have only one. We beg safe passage,” Layton said.

“You may get your passage,” Echevaria said. “It will be for once, and it will not be free. And it will not be in the direction you hoped. But you will not be detained.”

I heard Ferris let out a long, slow breath. Echevaria began writing again. After a moment, without looking up, he said to a footman, “Bring them to the kitchen and feed them. And don’t lead them through the front rooms when they go out.”

An hour later we were led around to the dirt square where we’d first been detained. The flogged natives were now lolling beneath the oak tree. Our horses were waiting for us. Echevaria
emerged from the front of the house and motioned to the soldiers who walked over. Our knives were given back and our rifles and all the pistols, except for the Collier, which was handed to Echevaria, who turned it over and heard some explanation in Spanish. He examined it closely.

“Ingenious,” he said. “Barbaric. Ingenious.”

He put the Collier in his shirt.

“We will escort you to the edge of our land and point you to a route that leads to the west and north where, in two days’ ride, you will come across a company of trappers that has gathered illegally on the wrong side of the border. You can encamp with them and find safe passage back to your country. I am sending out messengers this afternoon. If you stray from your route, you will be arrested. If you attempt to bring any furs to market in this direction, you will be tried and sentenced to death for espionage. If you show up in Santa Fe or try to recruit men or if I see you again for any reason, you will be cut down. Good day.”

Echevaria turned and started inside and Layton said, “What did the natives do to deserve such treatment?”

“They traded horses with an American trapping company,” he said.

Five minutes later we were riding on a well-worn path down the valley. The five soldiers rode behind us, close at first, then further away, and when I looked back a third time they were far in the distance riding back toward the settlement.

“Gentlemen of the road,” I said. “Wonderfully inventive, Layton.”

“It was not my tongue but Ferris’s quill that saved us. Bravo, Ferris,” Layton said.

“I believe it was the combined effect of the three of us
together,” Ferris said. “We hardly seem like trappers, grouped as we are.”

“But we will appear exactly like trappers if we pass with horses and pelts,” I said. “What chance do we have of heading this way again with the brigade?”

“We have accurately assessed the possibility,” Layton said. “There is none. We cannot bring our fortune in this direction.”

“At least we know,” Ferris said.

“Yep,” Layton said. “Now we know.”

In the distance we could see that the road turned to the north and beyond the road were the jagged peaks of the high mountains. It was late afternoon. It was a warm, still day, more like fall than winter. The hills around us were green and we could hear many birds in the shrubs. After some time Ferris began singing “The Banks of Newfoundland.” Layton and I joined in and the three of us sang as we rode:

We had ridden ten days until we were at the southern edge of the high mountains. On that afternoon we turned northerly again toward the high peaks and the three of us sang our way back into that vast wilderness.

The next morning Layton rose in a poisonous mood. He complained of the lack of fuel for the fire. He complained of the
uselessness of our voyage, the letdown of heading back to the drudgery and monotony of the brigade, and the depression of even thinking of returning to St. Louis and his father’s company. He complained of the difficulty in moving our furs, and the stupidity and risks of the fur trade in general, and the heavy loans he had taken on to fund the brigade, and all the dangers and pitfalls of that desperate business, and how it was worse for him than for any of us, as he had gambled more on it and had more to lose, and how his life was unending misery and toil.

Ferris and I listened to these complaints without comment, as we’d learned that any engagement in his commentary when he was in that poisonous mood only heightened his bile. A few times he seemed to struggle with himself, understanding he was being a foolish, insufferable fellow, but he did not seem able to check his tongue and kept up his unpleasant commentary all morning and into the afternoon until Ferris and I were ready to turn our guns on him. In these moments he seemed the most vain, self-involved, comtemptuous creature imaginable.

Late that afternoon we arrived at the encampment that Echevaria had spoken of. It was a congregation of various trapping companies and free trappers and at least five hundred natives who had settled down in a long, thin valley on the border between Mexico and the United States. Eight or nine merchants, undoubtedly from Santa Fe, had illegally carried their goods out on ponies and set up booths where powder, lead, smelting ladles, bullet molds, tobacco, hatchets, knives, and many other items were sold for a thousand percent increase on Santa Fe prices. The traders’ goods were spread out on gray blankets, and drunken trappers were squandering their year’s salaries on Taos Whiskey and gifts for squaws.

Ferris had stopped at the first of the traders and begun to barter for a flask when we heard the cries and shouts of men in
the distance. The three of us turned toward this tumult, which seemed to come from beyond some cottonwoods, and a Swedish trader with beaver skins piled up in a lodge behind him, said, “Da mountain men play gladiator, yes they do.”

“Play what?” Layton said.

“Gladiator,” he said.

There was another distant roar and Ferris paid for the flask and the three of us rode on through the grove of cottonwoods and past three trappers snoring in the shrubbery and emerged to see a clump of two or three hundred men surrounding a makeshift corral. Inside the corral, chained to a boulder, was a large bear. At the far end of the corral, tottering, stood an enormous black bull with a series of inch-deep gashes on its side. One of the bull’s horns was missing and blood oozed from the spot where the horn should have been. On the near side of the corral, facedown in the dust, lay a young Spaniard in an embroidered wool bolero. A group of young men, also in boleros, stood at the edge of the corral, looking silently at the young man who appeared to be trampled and gored.

“What in God’s name is this?” Layton asked a bearded trapper who stood at the edge of the corral.

“Bull-bear brawl,” the trapper said. “What you see is what it is. You get in there and touch that beast’s head you get a sack of gold.” I noticed the bear had a patch of lime on its forehead. “That pup in there’s the second who tried.”

“Where’s the first?” Ferris asked.

The trapper motioned to a lump wrapped up in a buffalo robe. “That’s the first.”

At that moment the young men in boleros leaped into the corral and dragged the lifeless Spaniard off. Meanwhile, Layton had gotten off his horse and thrust his weapons at me.

“Hold these for me, will you, Wyeth?” he said.

“You’re not serious?” I said.

“But I am,” he said in a small voice.

“You’ll be torn limb from limb.”

“Then the bile will run out of me and I’ll die a fine fellow and not a blackguard,” he said. I began to speak, and in that self-pitying tone he employed in his worst humor, he said, “I have not had the proper training. I cannot restrain myself. My demons have overtaken me. You hardly need deny it. I have not the will to conquer them on my own but I will conquer them with the help of this contest.”

“Getting yourself killed is hardly the solution, Layton”

“But risking death is,” he said in a pointed tone. “Danger subdues the ill humor. Adventure and camaraderie are a remedy.”

“You will perish and we’ll all be stranded without a captain.”

“Then you and Ferris will benefit, as you ought,” he said.

I began to say that I hardly hoped for that, but he interrupted, “This is the cure for my ill humor. I have no choice.”

Layton tossed his weapons at me, then pushed his way toward the barker, shouting out, “If there are no brave men here I suppose I’ll have to do!”

I heard Ferris laugh loudly behind me. “Good God. Is he volunteering?”

“I believe he is,” I said.

“Stop him,” Ferris said, but it was too late. The men had crowded around Layton to get a look at him. He was puffed up now that he was at the center of the crowd. He began parading back and forth in that mincing way of his, baiting the men.

“Am I the only brave man here? I guess I am.”

There were roars and clapping. Layton went on, “I thought I’d heard they had men in the south. I guess I was wrong.”