The book was most likely Charles Averill’s Kit Carson: Prince of the Gold Hunters, published earlier that year and the first of many novels to wildly exaggerate Carson’s heroics. Disgusted, Carson urged his companions to toss the book into the fire over Ann White’s grave.

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On the return the column was struck by a sudden blizzard. In the ensuing whiteout most of the captured ponies were lost as the command drifted before the storm. Grier’s black servant was lost in the storm, and the men suffered terribly. It was even worse for Lobo Blanco’s people, caught on the open prairie to the east without any lodges or buffalo robes. A great many of them perished. Carson, Leroux and Grier, with some of the dragoons, staggered into Captain Judd’s camp at Las Vegas on November 24. From there Carson left the command for Rayado.

In 1850 Congress authorized $1,500 to be paid by Indian agent Calhoun for the return of the White girl, but neither she nor her nurse was ever found. The Apaches declared that they were dead. In response to the White murders, Calhoun got his request for more troops, and in 1851 Fort Union was built near where the Cimarron and mountain branches of the Santa Fe Trail came together just to the west of Point of Rocks. The army relentlessly pursued the Jicarrillas, and in 1854 dragoons under Lieutenant David Bell killed Lobo Blanco. Ironically, this was after a failed parley in which the chief attempted to kill the young officer.

Back in Taos, Sergeant Kronig was ordered to copy the official military report of Grier’s expedition. “I copied it and to my surprise I read of the wonders that we had performed,” he grumbled. As he worked, Major Benjamin Beall of the 1st Dragoons stepped into the office to inquire how Kronig was doing. When the young German remarked on his surprise on reading of such a brilliant campaign that he had not witnessed, the old soldier simply smiled and remarked that it was “paper talk.”

Kit Carson also now knew the strange power of paper talk. On the far reaches of the Canadian he had come face to face with his own legend in one of the most remarkable moments in all of frontier history. The discovery of Averill’s book made it seem as if life was imitating art, but with tragic consequences. The failure of his ride to save Ann White would haunt him all the rest of his days.

Paul Andrew Hutton is a University of New Mexico Distinguished Professor, executive director of Western Writers of America and author of Phil Sheridan and His Army. Suggested reading: Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, by Hampton Sides; and Kit Carson & the Indians, by Tom Dunlay.

This article was written by Paul Andrew Hutton and originally published in the April 2007 issue of Wild West Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

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