Road Trip #22 On the Road Back to Reality---Almost

James Collins and Neil McMullen prepare breakfast on a nice spring day at the AntHill.

     I spent the night alternating between freezing outside and sweating inside the thirty-below sleeping bag, with little moments of sleep sandwiched between the extremes. I had to get up and pee a lot more than I did when I was sixty.  Altogether, during the night I slept almost six minutes, but I was very grateful I didn’t die.  I figured I could catch up on my sleep while Wayne drove to Muleshoe later in the day.  In the meantime, I was delighted to be alive.

     At 4:30 AM, James Collins stoked the fire and made coffee.  I was wide awake, so I joined him.  James quoted John Wayne, who said nothing good came from “burning daylight.”  I wondered, what daylight?  It was dark as pitch out there.  In two more hours we saw the first hint of light in the east.  We drank coffee and visited, two old friends in the dark, remembering a long and happy life, a lot of good people, and two or three regular horses' asses.

     Around 5:30, Wayne and Neil joined us, and we cooked breakfast.   Collins fried a pound of bacon and scrambled a dozen eggs.  Neil baked scratch biscuits, did hash brown potatoes with onions and made cream gravy.  Wayne and I fed the fire and set the table.  We had coffee, milk, and orange juice to drink.   Butter and jelly for the biscuits, and Tabasco and ketchup for the hash browns--it was another feast fit for the Queen of England.

    By the time we finished breakfast, it was light enough for the guys to go fishing.  I stayed in camp to strike my unused tent, deflate the unused air mattress and pack the unused gear.  I hoped to get in a little nap, but no such luck.  When I finished my chores, the guys were back, not a single fish among them.  The wind was frightful.  We decided to load up and move down into the valley, where Neil and James had a fishing lease at a nearby ranch.  We picked up Wayne’s truck as we moved down the mountain past the submariner’s place.

     Eighteen miles down the valley, we turned into a private gate and entered the “fishing lease.”  The same creek that flows past the Anthill meanders through the valley and the guys enthusiastically started working the banks on either side.  I stayed behind to watch the trucks and maybe catch a little shut-eye.  I was tired and sleepy.

     A deserted barn stood near the gate where we parked. I strolled over to look at several sets of elk antlers attached to the gable end of the primitive, unpainted structure.  I was not sure if the horns were trophies of past hunts, or simply picked up after they’d been shed.  Either way, I realized this valley was a special place.  Beavers built dams, bears roamed the woods and elk shed their horns here.  I saw a few live elk once, in Canada, but I have never seen a live bear in the wild.  During the seventies, beavers were talked about incessantly by truck drivers with C/B radios.  I understand they were desirable fuzzy little creatures, highly valued as trophies, but they certainly didn’t fell trees or build dams.

     Before I managed to get settled for a nap, the guys trekked back in from the stream, once again without any fish.  So far today the scoresheet read:  Fish 6; Boys 0.  Wayne and I said our goodbyes and prepared to load up for the 600 mile trip to Muleshoe.  We had enjoyed ourselves, but were both eager to get back to Texas.  Neil and James had been more than perfect hosts.  They had several hours work ahead of them, cleaning up and stowing gear when they got back to Gunnison.  We had left everything in disarray. Even the dirty dishes were piled in a box in the back of James’s vehicle.  One Dutch oven had the remnants of a pretty good cherry cobbler clinging to its sides.

     As we started back toward the truck, Wayne pitched me the keys and said, “Do you want to drive a while?”

     I wasn’t sure I could make the twelve miles back to pavement without falling asleep.  I hadn’t slept at all the night before.  It was nine hours to Buck’s place in Muleshoe and my plan was to sleep at least six of those hours.  Wayne was obviously very tired.  He had been afraid to allow me near the driver’s seat for the last 4,000 miles, but he had been wading, sloshing around and desperately fishing since daylight after a night with little sleep.  I knew he must be exhausted to even consider letting me take over the wheel.

     I grinned.  “Sure, I’ll drive.  I’m fresh as a daisy.”

     I managed to keep the truck on the road until we got to the pavement at Hwy 114, then turned right and headed southeast to Saguache.  Wayne was trying to stay awake and watch my driving, but it was a losing battle.  I was fighting to keep at least my good eye open.  At Monte Vista, we turned due east and paralleled the New Mexico border to Walsenburg, then turned right and took I-25 into New Mexico.  We turned off the freeway at Wagon Mound and headed toward Roy, in the high, rolling plains country that had once been the exclusive domain of the Comanche.

Wagon Mound.  A lonesome reminder of the Santa Fe Trail.

     This country is full of history.  I-25 roughly follows the route of the Santa Fe Trail, and Wagon Mound was a landmark on the old trail. Kit Carson led wagon trains up and down this trail, and lonely soldiers protected traders and travelers as they moved from the civilized areas east of St Louis to the Spanish colonial center at Santa Fe.  Trade was brisk and the trail was relatively safe.  But it wasn’t safe away from the trail.  Wayne and I were headed into the heart of Comancheria.

     The terrain here is vacant grassland, with undulating plains as far as the eye can see.  No trees, no cactus, no mesquite, nothing but endless dry grassland, as plain and limitless as the sea.  The road was straight, with a slight turn one way or the other every twenty miles or so.  Wayne was sound asleep.  I was hallucinating.

     I saw a troop of U.S. Calvary, headed by Col. Ranald Mackenzie, called “Bad Hand” by the Comanche.  A couple of hundred soldiers on horseback were strung out parallel with the highway, about four hundred yards away, followed by pack mules and two wagons.  The troops seemed to be moving slowly, but they stayed beside me over a hundred miles, just moseying along on the rolling grassland, searching for Indians and water, not necessarily in that order.  It was 1873, and I was watching Bad Hand and his troops as they moved across the trackless plains.

     The troops halted and set up camp.   Mackenzie called his chief scout, and two junior officers to his tent.  “How far to fresh water, Mr. Bent?”  He asked the scout.

     “Well, Colonel, I don’t rightly know.  This is the first time I ever come this far east of the trail.  It ain't safe out here.  The horses and mules don’t act like they smell no water.  I been out ten miles ahead and they ain’t no water up there.  I think we better backtrack while we can.”

     “Captain Johnson, how are our supplies holding out?”

     “Sir, we have plenty of everything except water.  We’re ten days out now.   If we go on half rations, the water might last ten more days.  If everyone keeps drinking a full canteen every day, we’ll be dry in five days.  We better head back.”

     “Very good.  Cut the water ration to one canteen every three days.  Same ratio for the horses and mules. We’ll dry camp here tonight and continue east tomorrow morning.  I will not return to Fort Union without Comanche scalps. That will be all, gentlemen.”  Mackenzie listened to his men, but made decisions on his own.  He was a strict disciplinarian, considered cruel by many of his troops.  He was arguably the greatest Indian fighter who ever lived.

     A few miles east of Mackenzie’s camp, I was shocked out of my reverie by a triangular road sign.  It was bright yellow and the most unusual thing I had seen all day.  Except for grassland, a few antelope, and dejected soldiers, I had been all alone on this sea of grass, operating on auto pilot. I could not remember any detail of the road for the last hundred miles.  I was glad Wayne was still asleep.  He would have been bent out of shape if he waked up and caught me napping.

     The road sign had no words, just a silhouette of a truck on a steep downhill grade.  Another sign showed a sharp curve to the left.   I slowed some and had no trouble negotiating the curve as Wayne came awake.  We were on a long slope, down into a deep, steep-walled canyon.  A mile later, at the bottom of the canyon, the road did a sharp right turn and we crossed the bridge over the Canadian River.  On the flat banks near the river, cottonwood trees and deep green grasses grew, while sheer rocky cliffs rose up 2000 feet on either side.  The setting was absolutely beautiful and completely unexpected.  The Indians must have loved this place.  It was invisible from a half mile on either side of the canyon rim.

     As we climbed up the east slope, I caught a glimpse of smoke rising from several teepees scattered along the west bank of the river.  Cook fires in the Comanche camp.  By the time Mackenzie and his troops get here, the camp will be gone, faded into the high plains without a trace.  Comanche scouts have been watching the soldier’s progress since they left Fort Union. I blinked and shook off the images.  No reason to mention any of that to Wayne.  He'd think I'd been drinking or something.

Ruins of Fort Union.  Mackenzie passed thru here in 1881, when he was commander of the district of New Mexico for the US Army.