The Westerners

"SHE'S MY GIRL!"

THE WESTERNERS

By

Stewart Edward White

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP

Copyright, 1900 and 1901, by
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[ "SHE'S MY GIRL!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece ]

[ A SIOUX COUNCIL ]

[ THAT BABY CRY, "MAMA!" ]

[ "COME ACROSS, OR I'LL..." ]

[ "WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!" ]

[ JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT. ]

[ "ARE YOU STILL MAD?" ]

[ "MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED. ]

I

THE HALF-BREED

A tourist of to-day, peering from the window of his vestibule train at the electric-lit vision of Three Rivers, as it stars the banks of the Missouri like a constellation against the blackness of the night, would never recognize, in the trim little modern town, the old Three Rivers of the early seventies.

To restore the latter, he should first of all sweep the ground bare of the buildings which now adorn it, leaving, perhaps, here and there an isolated old shanty of boards far advanced toward dissolution. He would be called upon to substitute, in place of the brick stores and dwellings of to-day, a motley collection of lean-tos, dug-outs, tents, and shacks, scattered broadcast over the virgin prairie without the slightest semblance of order. Where the Oriole furniture factory now stands, he must be prepared to see—and hear—a great drove of horses and oxen feeding on bottom-land grass. And for the latter-day citizens, whose police record is so discouraging to the ambitious chief, and so creditable to themselves, he must imagine a multitude more heterogeneous, perhaps, than could be gathered anywhere else in the world—tenderfeet from the East; mountaineers from Tennessee and Kentucky, bearing their historic long pea rifles; soft-voiced Virginians; keen, alert woodsmen from the North; wiry, silent trappers and scouts from the West; and here and there a straight Indian, stalking solemnly toward some one of the numerous "whiskey joints." The court-house site he would find crowded with canvas wagons, noisy with the shrill calling of women and children. Where Judge Oglethorpe has recently erected his stone mansion, Frank Byers would be running a well-patronized saloon. Were he to complete the picture by placing himself mentally at the exact period of our story's opening, he would find the whole town, if such it might be called, seething, turbulent, eager, and—it must be confessed—ready for trouble.

For all these varied swarms had gathered from three points of the compass for the purpose of pushing on to the gold discoveries of the Black Hills. They had rushed eagerly to this extremest point—and stopped. As far as the border of the great wilderness it was possible to journey individually; beyond that mysterious boundary nothing could be accomplished alone. Trained scouts and plainsmen there became necessary, and these skilled men declined to attempt the journey.

Their reasons were simple and cogent. Throughout all of the previous winter unusual snows had covered the pasturage to such a depth that much of the range stock, on which the plainsman relied to draw his heavy "schooners," had died of cold and exhaustion, while of the survivors but an insignificant remnant was fit to travel. After causing this damage, the snow had melted in four days, leaving the streams swollen, and the trails in an awful state, especially in the Bad Lands, where, in the deeper gullies, they must have been quite washed out. As an incidental climax, piled on top to make good measure, the Ogallalas were on the war-path; and of all the Sioux the Ogallalas are the worst.

Nobody gave a thought to the Ogallalas. That was part of the game. But a blind man could see that those emaciated cattle couldn't stand the racket. And so Three Rivers steadily congested, and the conditions of life daily became more exacting.

One of the many who had reached the frontier town, only to find himself checked in his desire to push ahead, was a young man of twenty-two or three. He had made a long journey, and he was correspondingly disappointed when he foresaw, as his immediate prospect, a summer's sojourn in a sun-baked, turbulent, unprofitable region. Not that he was content with a superficial proof of its necessity. He sought the preventing causes at the very sources of them: he examined the cattle carefully; he questioned closely the men who knew the trails, the fords, the Indians. When he had quite finished his patient investigations, he swore briefly and gustily, and then went on a three-days' spree, from which he sobered into a quiet cigarette-smoking lounger, waiting for what might turn up. Nothing did.

The days followed one another until a month had passed, which seemed as long as a year. Men gambled away one another's small store of wealth, drank away their own disappointments, shot each other's lives out unmolested. Three spasmodic vigilance committees hanged six men by the neck until they were dead, but speedily allowed themselves to dissolve and the town to relapse, because of a happy combination of sheer laziness and sympathy with the offenders.

Rumors of an advance flew thick. They were always brought heavily to earth by a charge of common-sense or investigation. Nevertheless, others were speedily on the wing; and men looked at them. Ensuing disappointment came in time to possess a cumulative force that amounted to a dull, sullen anger against nothing in particular.

The young man of whom mention has already been made, took his month with an outward seeming of imperturbability, but with an increasing inner tension. He was a tall, dark, straight young man, broad-shouldered and clean built; strong, but with fine hands and feet. His hair was straight and black; his features clean-cut and swarthy. By his restless eye and a certain indefinable cast of expression you knew him for a half-breed. He gave out his name as Michaïl Lafond, and he lived much in himself. Toward the close of the troublous thirty days, a practised observer might have noticed that his slender fingers were rarely still. Otherwise the half-breed appeared the most indifferent member of the community.

His apparent idleness did not prevent him from investigating in his painstaking manner each rumor as it took form. This was the reason why, when finally the formation of a genuine train was undertaken by three of the specialists known as scouts, Michaïl Lafond was one of the earliest to know of it, and one of the first to apply for admission. He owned four strong little horses of mustang stock, and a light, two-wheeled wagon of the bob-tailed type. Most of his life had been spent in the great Northern wilderness. He was expert in his own kind of woodcraft, accustomed to hardships, and a good shot. In every respect he knew himself fitted to become a member of such an expedition as the present. He had no doubt of his acceptance. When he realized that at last his waiting was ended, he saddled one of his horses, and rode three miles out on the lonely prairie, where he jumped up and down, shook his fists in the air, and screamed with delight. This was the half-breed of it. Impassibility may be stupid or intensely nervous. Then, all a-tremble, he rode back to where the three specialists in question were camped, just on the border of the town, and proffered his formal application.

The three to whom he addressed himself were practically at the head of their profession. It was not a profession of easy access, but one to which only a long and dangerous apprenticeship gave admittance. Its members were men who had lived their lives on the frontier, either as express riders, hunters, trappers, army scouts, or as members of the Indian tribes themselves. They were a hardy, bold, self-reliant race, equal to all emergencies, and exacting from the men in their charge the most implicit obedience. To their wonderful resourcefulness is due the fact that so many comparatively weak forces were enabled to penetrate in safety a hostile country teeming with the most treacherous and wily foes.

As with all crafts, they had their big men—the masters, as it were—whose deeds they emulated, whose feats of skill and divination they spoke of with awe, whose names they worshipped. Of such were Kit Carson, Wild Bill, Jim Clarke, Buffalo Bill, Slade, and the three men with whom we have to deal—Jim Buckley, Alfred, and Billy Knapp.

Billy Knapp was dark, tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired, wearing a bristly mustache and goatee. A stranger might have remarked his frowning, beetling brow with a little uneasiness, but would have taken heart from the energetic kindliness of the eyes beneath. In fact, eager, autocratic energy was the dominant note in Billy's character. He succeeded because this energy carried him through—with some to spare.

Jim Buckley was also tall and large, but he gave one less the idea of nervous force than of a certain static power. He was a mass which moved slowly but irresistibly. His seal-brown beard, his broad forehead, the distance between his wide, steady eyes strengthened this impression. One felt that his decisions would be hardly come at, but stubbornly held. Success was inevitable, but it would be the result of slow thinking, deep purpose, and a quiet tenacity of grip that never let go.

As for Alfred—everybody has heard of him. His place in the annals of the West is assured, and his peculiarities of person and character have been many times described. Surely no one is unfamiliar with his short, bandy legs, his narrow, sloping little shoulders, his contracted chest, his queer pink and white face, with its bashful smile, his high bald head. Everybody knows his fear of women. Everybody knows, too, that he never had an opinion of his own on any subject. His speciality was making the best of other people's, no matter how bad they were; and competent judges say he could accomplish a more gloriously perfect best out of some tenderfoot's fool notion than another man with the advice of experts. Some people even maintain that Alfred was the best scout the plains ever produced, only he was so bashful that it took an expert to appreciate the fact.

When Lafond approached the camp of these men and threw himself from his pony, he found only Jim Buckley, sitting in the shade of one of his wagons, smoking his pipe.

"One says that you will tak' train through thees summer," began the half-breed abruptly. "Ah lak' to go also."

Buckley looked his interlocutor over keenly.

"Yes," said he slowly, between puffs. "That's right. We aims to pull through, but we don't aim to take no lumber with us. You married?"

Lafond shook his head. "No! No! No!" he cried vehemently.

"That's all right. Got any cattle?"

"Four horses."

"That one of them?"

"Yes."

The scout arose, still with the same appearance of deliberation, and inspected the pony thoroughly, with the eye and movements of an expert.

"Others as good?" he inquired.

"Bettaire," assured Lafond.

"Wagon?" pursued the laconic Buckley.

"Bobtail," responded Lafond with equal brevity. Though young, he already possessed some shrewdness in the reading of character.

Buckley sat down in the shade and relit his pipe.

"Where are you from?" he asked bluntly.

"Ontario."

"Woods?"

"Yes."

"Thought you wasn't no tenderfoot. Ever hit the trail?"

"Not on those plains. In the woods many times."

"We ain't takin' but damn few," went on Buckley dissertatively, "and them that goes has to be right on to their job. No women; good cattle. That's our motto. Reckon you-all fills the bill. Cyan't tell. Got to ask the others."

Lafond knew that this, from a man of Buckley's stamp, was distinct encouragement. At the moment, the other two members came up. Buckley, in a few words, told them of the newcomer's desires and qualifications.

Billy looked him over briefly.

"Yo're a breed, ain't yo'?" he inquired with refreshing directness. "I thought so." He turned to Buckley, with the air of ignoring Lafond altogether. "That bars him," he said, with a little laugh.

"He's got a mighty good line of broncs," Buckley objected.

"Don't care if his hosses are good," stated Billy decidedly. "He's a breed, an' that's enough. I seen plenty of that crew, and I ain't goin' to have one in the same country with me, if I can help it, let alone the same outfit."

He began to whistle and rummage in the back of the wagon, with a charming obliviousness to the presence of the subject of his remarks.

"That settles it," said Buckley, curtly and indifferently.

The half-breed, his nervous hands deep in his side-pockets, walked slowly to his horse. Then, in sudden access of rapid motion, he leaped on the animal's back and disappeared.

II

THE WOMAN

Barely had the dust of the half-breed's sudden departure sifted from the air, when Buckley arose and announced his intention of "taking a little look round." He was gone two hours, and returned looking solemn and earnest. Billy and Alfred were cooking things over a small fire. Buckley spat in a propitiatory manner toward seven small bushes, and conversationally informed the northwest corner of the canvas top on a nearby schooner that he, Jim Buckley, had decided to take along a woman.

Billy and Alfred thereupon spilled the coffee, and could not believe their ears.

"She's goin', if I have to take her by myself," Buckley concluded. And then Alfred and Billy looked up into his face, and saw that he was in earnest.

Alfred turned pink and wriggled the bacon, trying immediately to think how he was going to make the best of this. It did not look easy.

Billy Knapp exploded.

"You go to hell!" was his method of objection.

"She goes," repeated Jim, with even greater quietness of manner. "An' if you-all don' like it, why, jest say so. I quits. You got to have her, if you have me."

"I'd jest like to know why," complained Billy, a little sobered at this threat.

Whereupon Jim found himself utterly at a loss. He had not thought as far as that. He suddenly appreciated the logical weakness of his position; but then, again, intuitively, he realized more subtly its strength. So he said not a word, but arose lightly, and brought unto them the woman herself.

She was a sweet little woman, with deep, trusting blue eyes, and she accompanied Jim without a thought of the opposition she had excited. Jim merely told her she was to meet the other two men. She intended only to show her appreciation of their kindness.

She approached the fire, and assumed her most gracious manner.

"I want to thank you both, as well as Mr. Buckley, for being so good to me," she began, with real feeling. "I know how hard it is for you to take me just now, and I appreciate it more than I can say. I don't know what we would have done. You need not be afraid that we shall be much trouble, for we will all be brave, and not murmur. Your goodness has made me very happy, and I am going to pray to God for you to-night," said the little Puritan with simple reverence. It meant a great deal to her.

Alfred, as usual, was wrigglingly shy. Billy Knapp several times opened his mouth to object, but somehow closed it slowly each time without having objected. The woman saw. She thought it meant that her presence embarrassed them both, so with true tact she wished them a gentle good-night, and went away.

The three looked at one another.

"Well?" asked Jim defiantly.

Billy coughed. He spat in the fire. He exploded. "Damn it! She goes!" he roared with the voice of a bull.

They both looked expectantly toward Alfred. Alfred nodded his head. He was wondering how long it had been since anyone had prayed for him.

"Thar is a man with her," remarked Jim, after a moment's silence. "He's a tenderfoot. And a kid. The kid has blue eyes, too," he added irrelevantly.

"The camp'll be mighty riled," put in Alfred.

"Let's go see the tenderfoot," suggested the practical Billy.

They dropped everything, and went over to the "hotel," where they viewed the woman's husband at a safe distance. He was a slight, bent man, with near-sighted eyes behind thick spectacles, straight, light hair, and a peering, abstracted expression of countenance. He wore a rather shiny frock coat.

"Gee Christmas!" ejaculated Billy, and laughed loudly.

Alfred shook his head.

Jim looked grave.

They returned to camp, and began to discuss the question of ways and means. There would surely be trouble when the affair became known. The inclusion of a tenderfoot from Chicago, on account of his pinto team, had almost resulted in a riot of the rejected. Not one of the three was fatuous enough to imagine for a moment that Jack Snowie, for instance, who had been refused because he wanted to take his wife, would exactly rejoice over the scouts' decision. In fact, Jack had a rather well-developed sense of injustice, and a summary method of showing it. And he was by no means alone.

Jim agreed to transport the three in his schooner, which was one point well settled. Billy suggested at least a dozen absurd methods of keeping the camp in ignorance until the start had actually been made, each one of which was laughed to scorn by the practical Jim.

"She might put on men's clothes," he concluded desperately.

"For the love of God, what for?" inquired Jim. "Stick to sense, Billy. Besides, there's the kid."

Billy tried once more.

"They might meet us 'bout a hundred mile out. He could take Jim's schooner, here, and mosey out nor'-west, and then jest nat'rally pick us up after we gets good and started. That way, the camp thinks he palavers with Jim and us to get a schooner, and maybe they thinks Jim is a damn fool a whole lot, but Jim don't mind that; do you, Jim?"

"No, I don't mind that," said Jim, "but yore scheme's no good."

"Why?"

"He wouldn't get ten mile before somebody'd hold him up and lift his schooner off him. They's a raft of bad men jest layin' fer a chance like that to turn road agent."

Billy turned a slow brick-red, and got up suddenly, overturning the coffee-pot. A dozen strides brought him to the camp of the Tennessee outfit. There he raised his voice to concert pitch.

"We aims to pull out day arter to-morrow," he bellowed. "We also aims to take with us two tenderfeet, a woman, and a kid. Them that has objections can go to the devil."

So saying, he turned abruptly on his heel and returned to his friends. Jim whistled; but Alfred smiled softly, and began to recap the nipples of his old-fashioned Colt's revolvers. Alfred was at that time the best shot with a six-shooter in the middle West.

Seeing this, Billy's frown relaxed into a grin.

"I'm thinkin' that them that does object probably will go to the devil," said he.

In half an hour the news was all over camp. When Michaïl Lafond heard of it, he left his dinner half eaten and went out to talk earnestly to a great variety of people.

III

THE MAN WHO STOOD "99"

The three scouts would never have been able to explain satisfactorily their reasons for being so easily persuaded, or their obstinacy in adhering to the determination so suddenly made. Prue Welch would have thanked a divine providence for it. The doctor, her husband, took it as quite in the natural course of events.

He was a queer man, the doctor, a pathetic little figure in the world's progress—an outgrowth of it, in a certain way of thinking.

Born of good old New England stock, he spent his studious, hard-working boyhood on a farm. At sixteen he went to the high school, where he was adored by his teachers because he stood ninety-nine in algebra. Inconsequently, but inevitably, this rendered him shy in the presence of girls, and unwarrantably conscious of his hands and feet. So, when he went to college, he spent much time in the library, more in the laboratory, and none at all in the elemental little chaos of a world that can do so much for the wearers of queer clothes and queerer habits of thought. He graduated, a spectacled grind, bowed of shoulder, straight of hair, earnest of thought.

Much reading of abstract speculation had developed in him a reverence for the impractical that amounted almost to obsession. Given a bit of useless information and a chunk of solid wisdom, he would at once bestow his preference on the former, provided, always, it were theoretical enough. He knew the dips of strata from their premonitary surface wiggles to their final plunges into unknown and heated depths. He could deliver to you a cross-section of your pasture lot, streaked like the wind-clouds of early winter; and he could explain it in the most technical language. Nothing rock-ribbed and ancient escaped him in his frequent walks. He saw everything—except, perchance, the beauty that clothes the rock-ribbed and ancient as a delicate aura, invisible to the eye of science—and he labelled what he saw, and ticketed it away in the pigeon-holes of his many-chambered mind, where he could put his finger on it at any given moment in the easiest fashion in the world.

It is very pleasant to know where the Paleozoic has faulted, and how; or why the stratifications of the ice age do not show glacial scorings in certain New England localities. To verify in regard to lamination green volumes of obese proportions, or to recognize the projection into the geological physical world of the thought of a master, this is fine, is noble; this makes to glow the kindly light in spectacled blue eyes.

Adoniram Welch left college with many honors. He returned to his little New England village, and for a space was looked upon as a local celebrity. This is a bad thing for most youths, but Adoniram it affected not at all. It availed only to draw upon him, in sweet contemplation, another pair of blue eyes, womanly, serious blue eyes, under a tangle of curly golden hair.

And so, although Prue Welch was a homely name, and Prue Winterborne a beautiful one, when Adoniram accepted the chair of geology offered him by his alma mater, the owner of the blue eyes went with him, and the new professor's thick spectacles somehow glowed with a kindly warmth, which even fine specimens of the finest fossils had never been able to kindle. He settled down into a little white house, in a little blossomy "yard," under a very big, motherly elm, and gave his days to the earnest mental dissection of the cuticle of the globe. His wife attacked the problem of life on six hundred dollars a year.

Now, from this state of affairs sprang two results. The professor evolved a theory, and Mrs. Professor, although she did not in the least understand what it was all about, came to believe in it, to champion it, to consider it quite the most important affair of the age. The professor thought so, too; and so they were happy and united.

The theory was a tremendous affair, having to do with nothing less than the formation of our continent. It was revolutionary in the extreme, but shed such illumination in hitherto dark corners of this and allied subjects that its probability, prima facie, was practically assured. To Prue Welch it seemed to be quite so; but the inexorable eye of science discerned breaks in the chain of continuity, gaps in the procession of proofs, which, while not of vast importance in a specious argument designed to furnish with peptonized intellectual pabulum the more frivolous-minded layman, nevertheless sufficed to destroy utterly its worth as a serious hypothesis. These breaks, the professor explained, could never be filled except by actual field-work. The proper field, he assured her, was the country of the Black Hills of South Dakota, then as distant as the antipodes. He proved this scientifically. Prue agreed, but did not understand. A number of years later she did understand, from hearing Billy Knapp joking with Alfred.

"These yar hills," said Billy, "was made last. The Lo'd had a little of everything left when he'd finished the rest, so he chucked it down on the prairie, an' called it the Black Hills."

However, the mere fact of her comprehension mattered not one iota. If Adoniram said a thing was so, to Prue its truth at once became age-old.

So it happened that the great theory hung fire wofully, and the country of their dreams came to lie beyond the frontier wilderness, whose tide was but just beginning to ebb back from the pine woods of Wisconsin and the oak openings of Illinois. This was finality. What lay beyond they did not trouble to inquire. The professor sighed the sigh of patient abnegation. The professor's wife believed, with beautiful trust, that a divine providence would provide, and that with the earth-wide fame that must accrue to the author of New World Erosions would come added opportunity for added reputation.

For a number of years the kind-hearted little professor looked steadfastly out of the window during examinations in geology, and turned a resolute deaf ear to the rustling of leaves as the despairing student manipulated a cleverly concealed volume. For a number of years he came home at four o'clock in the afternoon, and feverishly corrected blue books until six, in order to ransom from professional duties the whole of the precious evening. For a number of years he consulted authorities in German and other difficult languages, and waxed ever more enthusiastic over the new theory of erosions. During the interim the baby learned to walk, and Prue's belief in its father strengthened, if such a thing were possible. In time the professor and his wife grew to be quite old. He looked every bit of his thirty, and she was an aged dowager of twenty-five. Little Miss Prue was just two and a half.

One day, early in the spring, the professor was called to the door of his class-room to receive a telegram. He read it quietly, then dismissed his class, and went home.

"Prue," said he to his wife, "my father has just died. I must go up there at once, for he was all I had left in the world, and it is not seemly that I should be from his side."

You can see from his manner of speech that the professor had by now read a great many bookish books.

"We will go together," replied Prue.

So they put away mortality in the old Puritan fashion, standing wistful, but tearless, hand in hand, on the hither side of grief; for though in perspective the figure of the old New Englander loomed with a certain gloomy and ascetic grandeur, in the daily contact he had always held himself sternly and straitly in fear of God. For him the twin lamps of Science and Love had burned but darkly.

Adoniram Welch found himself sole heir of a few thousands and the old home.

On the way back to the college town, they planned the Western trip. The professor was to resign his chair at once. He and Mrs. Prue and little Miss Prue would travel by rail to Kansas or Iowa, there to join one of the wagon-trains which now, in the height of the first great gold excitement, continually braved savage warfare and brute thirst to gain the dark shadows of the hills.

During the next three weeks, Prue was a busy woman. The professor resigned, becoming thereby only "the doctor"; had an explanatory interview with the president of the college, and gave himself over to a series of delightful potterings. He pottered about among his belongings, and personally superintended just how everything was not stowed away. He pottered about among the faculty, to the members of which he talked mysteriously with ill-concealed exultation, for the theory was also a secret. He lovingly packed his books and papers and a small portion of his clothes, all of which Prue had to hunt out and repack. Altogether, he had a delightful, absent-minded time, seeing in the actual world no further than the end of his nose, but in the visionary world of his most technical hopes far beyond the farthest star.

But Prue had a New England village to answer; she had the family's belongings to take care of—no great task in itself; she had little Miss Prue to oversee. Grave men who were professors of astronomy, or Greek antiquities, or Hebrew, and who, therefore, knew all about it, told her, in language of whose correctness Addison would have been proud, that the aborigines of the American plains were bloodthirsty in the extreme. Fluttering women detailed anecdotes of sudden death at the hands of Indians. One and all bade her good-by with the firm conviction, openly expressed, that she would never return; upon which all whom weeping became wept, while others displayed their best handkerchiefs as a sort of defiant substitute for more open emotion. Prue saw the little town fade into distance with mingled feelings, of which terror was the predominant, until her husband explained to her, by the aid of an airy little octavo which he had stuffed into an inadequate bag, that Professor Nincomb's theory of glacial action was not only false, but would be conclusively proved to be so by the new theory of erosion. At this she brightened. Prue owned to a vague impression that glacial action had something to do with the North Pole, so the argument per se had little weight with her. But Prue was a New Englander, and devout in the New England fashion, and she settled back on Divine Providence with great thankfulness. She argued that no scheme of things could dispense ruthlessly with so wonderful an affair as the theory of erosions. Therefore the scheme of things would take care of the only possessor of the theory. Indians lost their terrors, she and little Miss Prue fell asleep together, leaving the doctor still poring excitedly over the octavo of Professor Nincomb.

Their first serious difficulties were encountered at Three Rivers. Of course, in the circumstances, the mild little doctor quite failed in his attempts to secure transportation. How should he, a scientist, know or care anything about gold excitements? The hustle confused him, the crowd stunned him, the fierce self-reliance and lack of consideration of these rough men alarmed him.

He came back to the board hotel very much discouraged. "There is not a conveyance of any sort to be found," he informed Mrs. Prue, "and there is great difficulty in estimating the precise duration of the present state of affairs. It may continue into next summer; or so, at least, I was informed by a very estimable person."

That was unbearable. Think of little Miss Prue being required, in the third year of her diminutive life, to face the heat of the plains in midsummer! Think of the cost of living a twelvemonth in such a place as Three Rivers! Prue put on her hat and went out into the turbulent camp. Until that moment she had deemed it wisest to remain in her room.

She was greeted only with respect. Men paused and looked after her. You see, Prue had such grave, calm eyes, that looked straight at you with so much confidence; and such a sensitive, serious mouth, that argued such a capacity for making up quiet opinions of people—and acting on them—that you were always very much inclined to take off your hat, even if you were Tony Quinn and middling drunk. It was not ten minutes before she had corroborated the doctor's bad news; but she had also heard incidentally of Billy Knapp, Alfred, and Buckley. The hotel-keeper pointed out the latter—that quiet man with the brown beard. Prue went straight to him and stated her case.

In the statement she laid great stress on the importance of the dip of strata. If the doctor did not get to work before long, he would be unable to finish his explorations before his means had become exhausted. Prue waxed quite technical. She used a number of long words and a few long phrases, hoping thus to awe the calm and contemplative individual in front of her.

Buckley did not comprehend the reasons. He did comprehend the unutterable eloquence of the eyes, for though her logic went for naught with the scout, it succeeded nevertheless in impressing Prue herself, in bringing more vividly before her the importance of it all. She clasped her hands, and tears choked her. When she had finished, Jim said gravely that she should go.

IV

ALFRED USES HIS SIX-SHOOTER

Michaïl Lafond merely spread the news, and made it a subject of discussion. In his statements he said nothing of his own grievance, nor did he suggest a plan. He knew that this was not a case for violence, nor did he care that it should become such. His actions always depended very much on how an impulse hit his queerly constructed nature. In the present instance he might either resolve to get even with Billy Knapp by means of personal vengeance, or his anger might take the direction of a cold, set determination to get through the plains journey in spite of the scout's prohibition. That the latter, rather than the former course happened to appeal to him, was purely a matter of chance. So, though he said little to the direct point, the plan finally adopted in secret by a choice few had a good deal of his desire mingled in its substance.

The quiescence of the camp astonished and puzzled the three scouts. They had expected an outbreak, and were prepared for it. It did not come.

The three days slipped by; everything was packed; and early in the morning, before the dawn's freshness had left the air, the little band defiled across the prairie. A curious crowd gathered sleepily to watch it go, but there was no demonstration. Billy openly congratulated himself. Alfred looked to see that his revolvers were still capped.

The party comprised an even dozen "schooners," each drawn by four tough ponies. Besides these, a dozen men rode on horseback. On occasion, their mounts could be pressed into draft service. The men themselves were a representative lot; tall, bronzed, silent. They had taken part in the fierce Indian wars, then just beginning to lull; they had ridden pony-express with Wild Bill; they had stalked revenue officers in the mountains of Tennessee. As they strode with free grace beside their teams, or sat, with loose-swaying shoulders, their wiry little broncos, they drew to themselves in the early light the impressiveness of an age—the age of pioneers.

At their head rode Billy Knapp. At their rear rode Jim Buckley. Alfred was a little of everywhere at once. As a matter of habit, these three carried their rifles cross-fashion in front of them, but the new Winchesters and the old long-barrelled pieces of the other score of men were still slung inside the canvas covers, for the Indian country was yet to see. Beneath the axles hung pails. The wagons contained much food, a good supply of ammunition, and a scanty equipment of the comforts of life. In one of them were three wooden boxes, two trunks, the doctor, Mrs. Prue, and little Miss Prue herself, laughingly proud at being allowed to dangle along the dew-wet grass the heavy coil of a black snake whip.

The men shouted suddenly, the horses leaned to their collars, the wagons creaked, and the swaying procession began to loom huge and ghost-like in the mist that steamed golden-white from the surface of the prairie.

Then, from the haze of the town, six more wagons silently detached themselves, and followed in the wake of the first.

This second caravan differed from the other in that it deployed no outriders, and from the close-drawn canvas of its wagons came, once in a while, the sharp cry of a child, followed immediately by the comforting of a woman. The men drove from the seats, and across the lap of each was a weapon.

About five miles out, the first caravan halted until the second drew nearer. Billy Knapp cantered back to it. One of the men in the foremost wagon thereupon clamped the brake and jumped to the ground, where he stood, leaning on the muzzle of his big mountaineer's rifle, chewing a nonchalant plug.

"What's this?" demanded Billy, reining in his horse.

The man shifted his quid.

"Nawthin'," he drawled, "'xcept that this yare outfit's a-goin' too."

Billy's eyes snapped.

"We settled all thet afore," said he, with outward calm.

"This yare outfit's a-goin' too," reiterated the man.

"The hell it is!" cried the scout angrily. "We all said no women and no poor hosses, and that goes. Yore hosses are a lot of crowbait, and——"

"The women is women as is women," cried another voice, "and not yore leetle white-faced, yaller-haired sort that'd keel over if yo' said boo to her!"

During the laconic dialogue, the schooners had gradually drawn nearer, until now they were grouped in a rough crescent around the two men. Billy looked up to see a tall woman in blue gingham haranguing him from behind one of the seats.

"I reckon if she can go, we can; and you jest chalk that down, Mr. Speckleface!" she went on. Billy was slightly pockmarked.

Other canvas flaps opened, and the audience was increased by half.

"We're goin'," went on the woman, "whether you want us to or not; an' what's more, you got t' take care of us in the Injun country, an' if you don't I'll curse you from the grave, you white-livered, no 'count cradle robber, you! Folks has some rights on the plains, an' you know it jest's well as I do, an' if you think you can shake yore ole pals for a lot of no 'count tenderfeet, an' not find trouble, you jest fools yoreself up a lot, let me tell you that. If Dave yere had th' sperrit of a coyote, he'd fix you, Mr. Seoul!" with vast contempt.

"You men are all alike! A pretty face——" began the virago again, but Billy had fled at speed.

The man, who had been chuckling silently, spat and threw the rifle into the hollow of his arm.

"Good for you, Susie," he remarked.

"You shut up!" replied Susie with acerbity, and retired within. The man had yet to learn that one should never voluntarily step within the notice of an angry woman.

The two wagon-trains proceeded as before—one behind the other by about half a mile.

At intervals Billy or Jim went back to expostulate. They might be able to undertake the responsibility of one woman, hardly of nine! But they never got a hearing, as all the conversation was vituperative and one-sided.

Alfred led the party to a deep, swift crossing of the Platte. By the aid of the extra ponies the ford was made without loss. The second party had a hard struggle, but emerged dripping and triumphant.

Billy and Jim were again put to rout in an attempt at mere verbal dissuasion.

Alfred took them roundabout through a piece of country, cut and gullied by rains. Some hills they climbed by the help of long ropes. The second party dragged their wagons up singly, using all their animals to each wagon. They lost some time, but the evening of the day following they strung out in the rear as imperturbably as ever. Alfred ordered all the riders into the wagons, and, by alternating the ponies, made forced marches, hoping thus to shake the others off. The others, however, discovering that Alfred's party had been doubling and twisting through the worst country, detached a single rider, whose business it was to search out the directest and easiest route. Thus they caught up. Alfred discovered it too late, for they were now on the borders of the Indian country.

Here a serious problem presented itself. The second party had, up to now, made no attempt to close in and join forces. On entering the Indian country, they would certainly do so. The question was, whether they should be resisted or received.

If they were not repulsed, could they be brought through successfully? If they were resisted, would the resistance be effective? One thing or the other must be decided immediately, for, whatever the policy adopted, it must be a settled policy before entering hostile ground.

In the contest of endurance, the score of men comprising the main party had taken part amusedly. They were under the command of the scouts. When the scouts ordered speed, speed was made. When they said to climb hills, hills were climbed. When they advised difficult fords, the difficulties of crossing were overcome. If the other train had trouble keeping up with the procession, why, that was good enough fun. But actual resistance was a different matter. After all, according to their lights, these other men were entirely in the right. They had been excluded from the expedition, on the basis of a rule which had been agreed to after some grumbling; and now that the rule had been broken by the very framers of it, there seemed to be no longer fair grounds of exclusion; and therefore a certain rough sense of justice inclined them to take sides with the bearers of the pea rifles in the rear. At the same time, they felt the truth of Billy's statement, that it would be impossible to get so unwieldy a caravan over the rough country and through the dangers to come. So, seeing reason on both sides, they maintained a guarded neutrality.

Resistance being out of the question, the three next considered the other horn of the dilemma. Alfred rode over to examine the prospective addition to the party. He found the animals in poor condition, partly because of the forced marches he had himself imposed. In his opinion they would not last out the journey, and he so reported, to the great consternation of the other two.

While they lamented, Prue came up and heard a part. She demanded the whole, and they told her frankly. The heroine of romance, realizing herself the cause of the trouble, would have offered to return with the other women, and so the whole question would have been resolved; but Prue was only a very nice little woman, in love with her husband. Her chief concern was not the triumph of eternal justice, but whether the whole expedition would come to nothing. She pondered.

"If you can't keep them from going with us, and if you can't get through if they do go with us," she said finally, "it seems to me that the only way to fix it would be to do something so they couldn't go"—with which vague hint this Puritan looked wickedly at them all, and went away, clinching her small hands with anger. From the hint, they made a plan to which all three agreed.

Next morning Jim roused the camp an hour earlier than usual, and insisted on an immediate departure. The horses were hitched, and the breakfast things put away. Then Alfred rode over to the other camp, with Jim and Billy following at a little distance.

People start a camp on the plains, in a safe country, by arranging the wagons in a rough semicircle. Behind this semicircle the horses are hobbled, and left to graze. In front of it the cooking-fire is built. During the night, besides the regular sentinels, one man is assigned to ride herd, but this is unnecessary in full daylight; so at breakfast the horses are left to graze quite unprotected. In a hostile country, picket ropes and more care are needed. This party had so hobbled twenty-four animals—four for each wagon, which is a scant supply.

Alfred cantered rapidly up to the herd from the east. He had made a long detour, so as to approach in the eye of the sun. With the twelve chambers of his revolvers he killed eleven horses. As I have said, Alfred was one of the best pistol shots in the middle West; After this, he put spurs to his mount, and shot away like an arrow in the direction of his own camp.

The unsuspicious mountaineers, at breakfast, did not gather their wits until too late. Then eight of them leaped fiercely upon some of the remaining animals, and pursued the wagon-train, which, under the frantic urging of Billy and Jim, was already under way in close order. A few of their bullets spattered against the wagon-bodies, and they wounded a horse.

This roused the other men. Neutrality was all right enough, but they could not afford to lose horses, so they made such a brave show of rifle muzzles that the eight fell back. Three to one was too big odds; but their rage was great.

Then Jim took his life in his hands, and rode a little way out on the prairie toward them, waving a white handkerchief. Somebody shot at him, and bored a hole through the looseness of his flannel shirt, whereupon he dismounted and dropped two horses with his new-model Winchester. His own horse was killed in the exchange, but Jim could take care of himself in frontier fashion.

Before the men could reload or move, Jim, imperturbably, arose from behind his dead mount, and waved his white handkerchief again. There was a moment's hesitation, then someone returned the signal. Jim promptly advanced. His remarks were brief and businesslike, and were received in sullen silence.

"You fellows have got to go back," said he. "You have hosses enough left to get your women back with, by goin' slow. If you try to shoot us up any, we'll kill every hoof you have. So don't come any funny business."

He turned squarely on his heel, and walked away rapidly. He wanted to get his distance before the reaction came. Michaïl Lafond, no longer impassive, shook his rifle after him.

"You damn skunk!" he shouted, hoarse with anger. "Tell your damn woman I'll pull every hair from her head!"

Jim did not turn his head, but ducked into the long grass, where he wriggled along Indian fashion. Lafond, who had thrown his rifle into position for a shot, started forward in pursuit, his face twisted with passion, but he was dragged back by main strength. Two of the horses bore double, and the little group turned sullenly toward the east.

The mood of the original party, after this incident, was grim. The bonds of plains brotherhood had been lightly broken.

Alfred had resorted to such desperate measures in making the best of undesirable conditions brought to pass by someone else.

Billy Knapp had done so because he had entered into a game, and declined to be beaten by anyone.

Jim alone was happy. He had done it solely and simply for a woman; and the woman had seen him fight for her.

V

LAFOND DESERTS

The eight men of the attacking party returned slowly to the little dip of land which held the temporary camp. They were defeated, baffled, and angry. If a stranger had accosted them at that moment, he would probably have been gruffly answered one minute and assaulted the next. But for the present they were silent. They were Anglo-Saxons and Tennessee mountaineers for the most part; hence they were also adaptable, and attuned to the fatalism that comes from much contemplating of cloud-capped peaks and wind-swept pines.

Not so with Michaïl Lafond, who alternately raved and wept, frantically brandishing his rifle. An impassive mountaineer sat behind him, holding him to the party. If not thus restrained, he would, in the heat of anger, have attacked the whole train single-handed, for he was brave enough in his way. The sober second-thought of the Indian in him might perhaps have caused him to pause on the brink of the charge and sink into the long grasses to await the chance of a more silent blow; but the impulse up to that point would have been real and whole-souled. So it was now. The man raved as a maniac might. He called down the curses of heaven on his companions for cowards.

And in this, when he reached camp, he was ably seconded by the women. They surrounded him in a voluble and indignant group, and listened to him with sympathy, casting glances of scorn toward their passive lords and masters in the background. In their way they became as excited as Lafond. One or two wept. Most employed the variety of their vocabularies in giving the world what is known as a "piece of their minds."

In the still air of a prairie morning their hysterical cackle rose like the crying of an indignant band of brant. Lafond told, dramatically, what should have been done. The women, in turn, told how effectively they would have done it. The men were taking stock of the situation.

The mountaineers wasted little discussion on what might have been done. The question before them was that of the most practical method of returning over the long miles of prairie they had traversed in their pursuit of Alfred and his outfit. They entertained not a moment's doubt as to the necessity of the return. Their equipment consisted now of ten horses and six wagons. By humoring the animals they might be able to get through with a pair to each schooner. This meant the abandonment of one of the wagons, and the lightening of the others. It was decided. One of the men strode to the group of women.

Lafond was in the midst of a tirade, but when he saw the mountaineer approach, he prepared to pay eager attention to the plan of action.

"H'yar," announced the latter, with a little the heavier shading on his accustomed drawl, "that's enough of this h'yar jaw, I reckon. You-all come along and pack up."

"And when is it that we do pursue them?" asked Lafond eagerly.

"Pursue nothin'," replied the man. "We're goin' back."

There was a moment's silence.

"And you intend not to get that revenge?" the half-breed inquired.

"Revenge!" snorted the man. "You damn fool—with that outfit?" He swept a descriptive gesture toward the women. "Besides, what's the good now?" Lafond fell silent, and withdrew from the group.

The man of mixed blood is not like other men, and cannot be judged by the standards of either race. From his ancestors he takes qualities haphazard, without balance or proportion, so that the defects of virtues may often occur without the assistance of the virtues themselves. And, besides, he develops traits native to neither of the parent races, traits which perhaps can never be comprehended by us who call ourselves the saner people. He is superstitious, given to strange impulses, which may unexpectedly, and without reason, harden into convictions; obscure in his ends; unscrupulous in his means. No man lives who can predict what may or may not suffice to set into motion the machinery of his passions. A triviality is enough to-day. To-morrow the stroke of a sledge may not even jar the cogs. But, once started, the results may be tremendous, and quite out of proportion to the first careless touch on the lever. Such passions are dangerous, both to their possessor and to those who stand in their way.

A SIOUX COUNCIL

Now, from the gainsaying of his lesser revenge—the proving to Billy Knapp the futility of his objections—Lafond conceived the desire for a greater. There entered into his life one of those absorbing passions which are to be encountered in all their intensity only in such men as he—passions which come to be ruling motives in the lives of those who harbor them; gathering to themselves all lesser forces which are spread more evenly over saner existences; losing their first burning intensity, perhaps, but becoming thereby only the more sustained, cool, and deadly; so that at the last they lie unnoticed in the background of the man's ordinary life, coloring, influencing every act—a religion to which, without anger, but without relenting, he bends every long-planned effort of even his trivial and daily deeds. You may not understand this, unless you have known a half-breed; but it is true.

Interrupted in the midst of his flow of anger, and deprived of the immediate solace of shooting things at his enemies, Lafond fell into a sulking fit. During the rest of the day he brooded. After dark that night he wound his way silently through the grasses, crept up behind the solitary sentinel considered necessary in this peaceful country, stabbed the man in the back, and returned to camp. Thus his way was clear. Then he took from the wagons three slabs of bacon, a small sack of coffee, a large supply of powder, lead, and caps, a blanket, and a frying-pan and cup. With these he mounted the hill, past the dead sentinel, to the ponies. Two of the latter he drew apart from the herd. One of them he saddled; the other he packed with his supplies. Then the half-breed led them silently westward for a good half-mile. Then he mounted and rode away.

VI

THE WOMAN AND THE MAN

The wagon-train under the command of Billy Knapp, and Alfred, and Jim Buckley had a very hard trip before they were done with it. The only difficulty they did not encounter was lack of water. There was too much of that. Several times the party had to camp in one spot for days while the wagons were laboriously warped across rivers of mud and quicksand, with steep, slippery clay banks. How little Prue stood the journey so well, neither her father, her mother, nor the men of the party were able to divine; but she did, and, what is more, she seemed to think it great fun. So cheerful was she, and so sunny, that the men came to grudge each other her company. And as for Mrs. Prue and the doctor, who could help loving the patient sweetness of the one, or the pathetic, gentle, impracticable kindness of the other?

Yes, it was a hard journey; but somehow the feeling was not entirely of joy and relief when the stockade of Frenchman's Creek shimmered across the broad, flat foot-hills. There they separated. The dangers were over.

Then, to the surprise of everyone, the doctor waked up and knew just where he wanted to go. He displayed an unexpected familiarity with the general topography of the hills. It puzzled Billy. And, to the vaster astonishment of both his confrères, Jim suddenly announced, with quite unwonted volubility, that he had been intending all along to start in prospecting at the end of this trip, and that here he meant to quit scouting and leave the society of his brothers in arms—unless, of course, he added, as a doubtful afterthought, they wanted to join him. They profanely replied that they did not.

Most of the men pushed on immediately to Rockerville, whither a majority of the former inhabitants of Frenchman's Creek had already emigrated. Alfred and Billy decided to get over in the Limestone for a "big hunt" before returning East. Prue said good-by to them with real feeling, and most of them threw out their chests and were very gruff and rude because they were sorry to leave. Prue understood. They were kind-hearted men, after all, these rough pioneers. Billy remembered for almost two years how she looked when she said that, which was extraordinary for Billy. He had led so varied a life as pony-express rider, stage-driver, scout, Indian, bronco-buster, hunter, and trapper, that he had little room in his memory for anything short of bloodshed or a triumph for himself.

Finally, after all the rest had gone, Jim and the doctor made the mutually delightful discovery that they had selected the same locality, the one for his prospecting, the other for his scientific investigations. So the doctor simply left his outfit in Jim's wagon, and they all went up together.

The little scientist was as excited as a child. To him the country was as a document—a document which he had studied thoroughly in the pocket editions. He now had it before him in the original manuscript, open and unabridged.

And indeed, even to an ordinary observer, the Black Hills are a strange series of formations.

They run north and south at the westernmost edge of the northern prairie, and are, altogether, about as large as the State of Vermont. Unlike other ranges, they possess no one ridge that serves as a backbone to the system. The separate peaks rise tumultuously, like the rip of seas in a tideway, without connection, solitary, sombre. Between them lie deep gorges, or broad stretches of grass-park, which dip away and away, until one catches the breath at the grand free sweep of them. Huge castellated dikes crop up from the ridge-tops like ramparts. Others rise parallel in the softest verdure, guarding between their perpendicular sides streets as narrow and clean-cut as the alleys of a city of skyscrapers.

Through it all, back and forth, like the walls of a labyrinth, run the broken, twisted, faintly defined geological systems, which cross each other so frequently and so vigorously that all semblance of order is lost in the tumultuous upheaval. Here are strata deposited by the miocene tertiary; here are breakings forth of metamorphic rocks of many periods; here are the complex results of diverse influences and forces. Down in the south is a great cavern—of which ninety-seven miles and twenty-five hundred rooms have, at this writing, been explored—which was once the interior of a geyser. For ages it spouted; for ages more its fluids crystallized and petrified into varied and beautiful forms; and then, finally, many layers of stratified rock were slowly overlaid to seal forever this dried-out, beautiful, lifeless mummy of a cave. It lies there now, as it has lain through the centuries, with a single, tiny opening by which it can be entered—a palace of vast re-echoing halls, hung with jewels, a horror-haunted honeycomb of unsounded depths, a solemn abode wherein not the faintest drip of water, not the gentlest sigh of air through the corridors, breaks the eternal silence. Only its mouth roars continually as the winds rush in or out. The Indians assign to it the spirits of their dead warriors, and cannot be induced to approach it. Geologists rave over it, and cannot be persuaded to come away.

But this is in the latter day of railroads and tenderfeet. At the time of which this story treats, little was known of the country. It was simply a great second-hand shop, of a little of everything in the geological line.

When the party arrived at Spanish Gulch, the doctor was so eager to get into the wonderful hills that only with the greatest difficulty did he constrain himself to help Jim erect a log cabin for the accommodation of his family. Even then he was not of much use, although he could at least help to lift timbers. Jim practically did it alone, and it took him almost a month; but when it was done, it was very nice. The doctor accepted the free gift of the scout's labor and skill quite as a matter of course, just as he had taken the free gift of an ordinarily expensive pilotage across the plains; but the woman appreciated, and perhaps she understood, for she suddenly became very shy in Jim's presence. And then, sometimes, she would gaze at him, when he was not looking, with an adoration of gratitude filling her eyes.

After the doctor's home was finished, Jim betook himself into another gulch, where he constructed a less elaborate shelter for his own occupation. Thenceforward he spent much of his time in mysterious prospecting operations; but two or three times a week he liked to sit perfectly silent under the tree which overshadowed the doctor's cabin, watching Prue, if she happened to be near, playing with Miss Prue, or trying to talk with the doctor. He never went inside the house, even in the winter; and he never seemed to try to know Prue any more intimately. It would have been difficult for him to say just what pleasure he discovered in these visits.

After a little, the routine of life became fixed. The doctor took up his work systematically. Each morning he plunged into the hills. His little bent form moved from ridge to ridge, following his own especial leads as earnestly as the most eager gold prospector of them all. Sometimes he got lost, but generally he managed to reach home at sunset. He was entirely preoccupied. He ate his meals as they were set before him without question, he pulled on his well-mended clothes without noticing the new patches, he warmed himself before his fire without a thought of whence came the wood, blazing up the mud-chimney.

Prue at first wondered a little at this, for even in his intensest absorption the doctor's home-life had been much to him; but in time she came to appreciate his mood, and to rely on herself even more than usual. She had such an exalted opinion of his work that she easily fell into the habit of sacrificing herself to it. She watched for the things that pleased him, or, rather, did not bother him, for his pleasures were negative; she carefully excluded all disturbing influences, and came to look on this lonely time as only a probation, sooner or later to be over, after which, in the fulness of his success, he would turn to her with his old love. To hasten this she would have cut off her right hand.

So, much to the disgust of Jim Buckley, the brave little woman took the management of things upon herself. During the long days, while the doctor was away, she schemed to make both ends meet. She raised a few vegetables in a plot of open ground on the sunny side of the creek, working in it daily with an old spade. Her face was hidden in the depths of a sunbonnet, and her hands were covered with a pair of deerskin gauntlets, for she could not forget, poor woman! that she was gently bred, and she hated to see her skin reddening in the dry air of the hills.

Items of necessity she bought scantily, sparingly, of travelling pedlars, for prices were high. Candles for the winter, corn-meal, occasionally flour, coffee, sugar—all these counted. Things cost so much more here than she had anticipated. Prue saw the end coming, distant though it might be. She sometimes did little bits of mending for passing miners, and was paid for it. Oftener she skimped on the daily meals, pretending that she was tired and did not care to eat. The doctor never noticed, nor did she mean that he should.

In the presence of his work, he could think of nothing else. Once, when they ran out of wood, she told him of it. It worried him for a week. Material necessities drew his mind away from the attitude of calm scientific investigation. The pile of fuel that goes with every new shack lasted the first winter through. After that was gone, Prue used the chips made when the house was built, as long as they held out. Then she tried to chop down a tree herself. Jim Buckley found her sitting on a stone, the axe between her knees, her face buried in her hands. Beside her was a pine scarred at random with weak, ill-directed blows. He made a few profane remarks into his thick beard concerning the doctor, then took the axe from her, and started to work. In a week enough firewood was piled over against the house to last the winter. During that week he ate his noon meals in the little cabin. The woman did her best, and used up a fortnight's provisions in the attempt to make a respectable showing before the hungry man. But in spite of that he saw through her pitiful efforts, and offered to let her have money. She drew herself up and showed him the door. When he had gone, bewildered, she went out and looked at the white shining wood-pile and wept bitterly.

But in spite of economy the closest, and the sacrifice of absolutely every non-essential, the time came when the last cent had gone. The woman stood face to face with want. And, as ill-luck would have it, at this period the doctor was especially brimming with enthusiasm, for he had almost achieved the one result he needed to fill out his scheme. He worked feverishly to forestall the snow. He was full of his system, alternating between glowing enthusiasm and a haunting fear that the winter would set in too early. He must have uninterrupted time for work until then, he said. On this depended his professional reputation, their fortune.

She set her lips firmly and looked about her. The flour and meal were gone; there were no candles, and without candles how could the doctor put the last touches to his book when winter fell? Little light filtered through the oiled paper of the windows. She sold her ring to some passing gamblers. The money soon slipped away. For a few days she fought hard with her pride. Then she put on her sunbonnet, and, kissing the child tenderly, went, with heightened color, down the gulch to Jim Buckley's.

She found him sitting on a stump in front of his dirt-roofed shack, pounding into sand some quartz in an iron mortar. He did not hear her until she stood beside him. Then he arose, drawing his gaunt form up quickly, taking off his broad hat, and wiping his grimy hands on his jeans.

"Mr. Buckley," she said hurriedly, before he could speak, "I have come to tell you how sorry I am that I was so rude to you. You have been very kind to me, and I had no right to speak to you as I did. No, no!" she implored, as Jim opened his mouth to expostulate. "I must tell you that, and please don't interrupt me.

"My husband is doing some very valuable work," Prue continued, "very valuable, and when he gets it done he will be very famous and very rich. But just now it takes all his time and attention, so that he doesn't realize—how—poor—we—are." The little woman's cheeks burned, and she lowered her head until the sunbonnet hid her face. "Of course, if I should tell him," she went on proudly, "he would attend to it at once. But I mustn't do that. He needs such a little time to finish his work, and I mustn't—must I?" And she suddenly looked up into Jim's honest eyes with an imploring gesture.

Jim was standing, his broad hat against his knee, looking at her fixedly. No doubt he was thinking how, when he had first seen her, her cheeks were as full and ripe as the apples of his old home in New England; and was wondering if the dip of strata were worth this. Seeing that he intended no reply, she looked down again and went on.

"I came here to see you about that. Once, Mr. Buckley, you offered to lend me some money, and I—I—am afraid I was very rude. And now—oh, dear!" And suddenly the poor little figure in faded and patched calico sank to the ground, and began to sob as if her heart would break.

Jim was distressed. He started forward, hesitated, looked up at the sky and down the gulch. Then he threw down his hat and darted into the cabin, returning in a moment with a buckskin bag, which he tossed impulsively into her lap.

"There, there!" he said distractedly. "Why didn't you say so before? Stop! Please stop! Oh, the——"

She looked up suddenly with a blinding smile.

"Now, don't say anything naughty!" she cried airily through her tears. She laughed queerly at Jim's open mouth and astonished eyes. He could not grasp the meaning of her change of mood. Before he could recover, she was on her feet, a roguish vision of blushing cheeks and dancing eyes. She shook the buckskin bag in his face.

"Aren't you afraid you'll never be paid, sir?" she demanded; then, with a quick sob, "I think you are the kindest man in all the world!" The next instant the alders closed about her fluttering figure on the trail. For a week after, her cheeks burned, and she was afraid to look out of the cabin lest Jim should be coming up the path.

As the winter wore away, however, she began to see the bottom of the little buckskin bag. The doctor was as absorbed as ever. She could not bring her pride to the point of asking Buckley for another loan, and so again the terror of poverty seized upon her. Her eyes looked harassed and worn, and her mouth had queer little lines in the corners. She would stand watching the flames in the chimney for hours, and then would turn suddenly, hungrily, and snatch up the little girl, devouring her with kisses. Sometimes she would wrinkle her brow, peeping into the doctor's manuscripts, trying to make out how near the end he was, but she always laid them down with a puzzled sigh. She did not eat enough, and she grew thin. She tried expedients of which she had read. For instance, one day she went down into the creek bottom and cut some willows. She peeled the bark from them, and from the inside rind she collected a quantity of fine white dust, with which she made a pasty kind of dough. The biscuits were tough and of a queer flavor. Even the doctor, after tasting one of them, looked up in surprise.

"What do you call this, my dear?" he inquired.

She clapped her hands gayly, and laughed with a catch in her voice.

"Oh, a queer Indian dish I've learned, that's all. You never do pay any attention to what you eat, so I thought I'd make you for once."

"Oh," said the doctor, smiling faintly.

The willow flour appeared no more.

So the long winter drew to its close, and still the brave little woman set her face resolutely forward, striving to help the doctor with his life-work as only a woman can. She could see no way out. The case was hopeless, and often she shed impotent tears over her inability. He worked so hard, and she did so little!

And then the spring brought with it the solution.

VII

THE REINS OF POWER

For two weeks after, Michaïl Lafond, cut loose from the crippled wagon-train returning to Three Rivers, travelled westward by the sun, sleeping under the stars, living on bacon, coffee, and an occasional bit of small game, drinking muddy water from buffalo wallows which providential rains had filled. At the end of that time he was raided by the Sioux. When they approached him, he led forward his two ponies, placed his rifle on the ground in front of their noses, unslung his powder-horn and laid it beside the weapon, and stepped back, throwing his arms wide apart. The Indians rode forward silently, a strange, naked band, whose fancy ran to chrome yellow, and took possession of Lafond and his equipment.

The half-breed became a squaw man, and lived with these Indians for some time. At first he was given drudgery to do. He did it, but kept his eyes open, and learned the language. After a little his chance came.

The band captured a wagon-train, and massacred its men and women. It found itself in possession of fifty or sixty horses, half a score of wagons, some provisions, and a goodly quantity of blankets, axes, utensils, and the rude necessities of life on the frontier. An Indian cannot possess too many ponies, he is always ready to eat, and blankets come handy in winter; but he has absolutely no use for the rest of the plunder. So he usually puts a torch to the lot, and has a bonfire by way of celebration.

On this occasion, Michaïl Lafond succeeded in getting Lone Wolf to postpone the bonfire, to lend him twenty ponies, and to detail to his service half as many squaws. The feat in itself was a mark of genius, as anyone who knows the Indian character will admit, and cost Michaïl many of his newly learned words, put together with all of his native eloquence.

The twenty ponies, driven by the ten squaws, drew the schooners and their contents to the Bad Lands, where Michaïl concealed them in a precipitous gully of the deeply eroded sort so common in that strange, rainless district. Then he returned fifteen of the ponies to Lone Wolf. Lone Wolf's band took up quarters within striking distance of the cached schooners.

All this was done by Michaïl Lafond, and when it was completed he drew a long breath. He felt that the foundations of his influence were laid. It was no light thing thus to have drawn self-willed savages from their accustomed ways of life. He had done it only by vague promises of great benefits to accrue in the immediate future, said benefits to be "big medicine" in the extreme. Lone Wolf had pondered much; had seen an opportune shooting star; had consented.

A month later, a half-breed returned alone across the plains from the hill country. At Pierre he announced open trail. He had himself come through without the least trouble, he claimed, although he had seen many Indians. This was strictly true. He went on to say that he would sell his outfit cheap, as he was anxious to go on east. The gold prospects were good. He had a partner squatting on several claims, to whom he would return the following year. He hinted mysteriously of capital to be invested and exhibited a small nugget of placer gold. Most of this was untrue, and the nugget he had found, not in the placer beds, but in a small pasteboard box in one of the schooners.

The outfit brought three hundred and fifty dollars, for the half-breed sold cheap. With this money and the horses he departed the day following.

Michaïl was now richer by three hundred and fifty dollars and five horses than he had been before his capture by the Indians. Were it not for two considerations, he might have decamped with the proceeds. Conscience was not one of them. In the first place, his Caucasian instincts taught him to look ahead to larger things. In the second place, his Indian blood would not let him lose sight of certain bits of savagery he had in contemplation. So, instead of decamping, he purchased with the money, in a town where he was unknown, five of the new breech-loading rifles and nearly five thousand rounds of ammunition. His tale here was simple. The trail was not open, and a wagon-train was soon to attempt the task of opening it. He loaded the munitions on his five broncos, and joined Lone Wolf, who was outlying near at hand.

In the course of the next six months a certain half-breed, with various stores and outfits, was observed in several small towns on the border of the frontier. In half of them he was headed east and sold his outfit; in the other half he was headed west and bought rifles. At the end of the year there remained no more schooners in the cache of the Bad Lands, but Lone Wolfs band was the best armed in all the West. Michaïl Lafond had let slip the chance of embezzling some thousands of dollars, but he had gained what was much mere valuable to him—power over an efficient band of fighting men, and the implicit confidence of a tribe of Sioux Indians. He was respected and feared. His unseen influence was felt throughout the whole plains country.

Lafond was too shrewd either to repeat his venture or to become identified with the tribe. His influence, as has been said, was unseen and unsuspected. Lone Wolf's band was successful from the Indian standpoint, pernicious from the white man's. That was all that appeared on the outside. Lafond himself became a savage. He slept out with little cover, and often rode with none at all. He ate dog and rattlesnake, when dog and rattlesnake happened to be on the bill of fare. He carried a knife deep in the recess of a long, loose buckskin sheath; and from the ridge of his tepee hung five clotted horrors, torn from the heads of the victims of his personal prowess. The number of these might easily have been augmented, but Michaïl struck seldom in his own person. When he did, not one of the victims escaped, for no man must have seen Michaïl, the savage. Michaïl, the civilized, would need a clear field before him when once again he appeared in the towns.

The life was fascinating to such as he. He loved it, but he did not forget his purposes. When at last he had gathered firmly the reins of his power, he shook them, and the twin steeds of Murder and Rapine swept destroyingly through the land.

For the present there was peace on the plains. Wagon-trains came across the Pierre trail, or further down along South Fork. Custer explored. White men settled in the Black Hills, in spite of the treaty. The Indians hunted buffalo, and their wives made robes, and cut tepee poles from the valley of Iron Creek.

But in spite of all the seeming tranquillity, the seeds of discord had been sown broadcast, and Lafond, with his devilish cleverness of insight, could see that the struggle was not long to wait. Both sides felt aggrieved, and both sides had more than a show of reason for feeling so. Perhaps, in the long run, this was an inevitable result of the advance of civilization; but it is a little unfortunate that the provisional races must be set aside so summarily. That fact serves occasionally to cast a doubt in reflective minds on the ultimate benefit of the civilization.

We who look upon our tamed country, or those plainsmen who have perforce to struggle in the thick of the avenging troubles which follow injustice as surely as symptoms follow the disease, may not be able to see the Indian's side of the question. We, the peaceful citizens, enjoy the security of policed cities and fenced prairies; and we are convinced that it is worth the price. They, the pioneers, fight, and are maimed; they lose their worldly possessions, and their heart-strings are twanged to the tuning of grief; and so they become partisans, to whom the old scriptural saying that "he who is not for me is against me" comes home with a sternness brewed of tears.

But to those others who looked on from the height, to the men who sat safe, but moved the pawns on the board—to them there was a real justice, and they infringed it; a real duty, and they failed it. They held the whip hand and spared not the lash, and it shall be visited unto them.

Nearly fifty years ago, a Lieutenant Warren, at the head of a small exploring party, approached the Black Hills. He was met near the South Fork by a friendly but firm deputation of Sioux chiefs. Pah-sap-pah was sacred. Pah-sap-pah must not be entered. All the rest of the country was open, by the courtesy of the red men, to their white brothers, but sacred land must not be profaned. Warren acquiesced, and contented himself with ascertaining the general extent and configuration of the forbidden district. When, in the fulness of time, the government entered into treaty with these Indians, Warren's policy was continued, and the Black Hills were, by a special clause, exempted from white invasion forever. According to the Indians, the place was the abode of spirits, and each tree, each rock, each dell, had its own especial manitou whom it were sacrilege to offend by the touch of profane hands.

For many years the treaty was respected. Then a Pawnee brought into one of the reservations a small quantity of gold dust, which he confessed to have found in the Hills.

The following spring, Custer, at the head of an expedition of one thousand two hundred men, entered into a long scout with the avowed purpose of exploring the Black Hills for indications of gold. In this he acted directly under his governmental orders. Thus was the treaty first broken.

Next year the Hills were overrun with miners, illegal miners, just as the troops had been with illegal explorers. They scattered through the wilderness in vast numbers, and about a hundred of them staked out, near the centre of the Southern Hills, a town which they named Custer City. The irony was unconscious. What followed was farcical, and was relished as such by the participants. Bodies of troops were sent to enforce the treaty. Legally they did so. Although inferior in numbers to the miners, and no better armed, they succeeded several times in sweeping all the trespassers together into one band. The latter submitted good-naturedly. The culprits were then turned over to civil authority. Civil authority waited only for the disappearance of the troops to set the miners at liberty; whereupon they scurried, as fast as their animals could carry them, back to the prospect-holes of their choice. It was all a huge joke, and everybody knew it.

In the meantime the Indians were becoming restive. It may not be known to the general reader, but it is a fact, that one of the strongest virtues of the red man's character is his fidelity to his given word. A liar is, in his moral code, the most despised of men. He cannot conceive the possibility of broken faith, and there are recorded instances wherein an Indian condemned to capital punishment has been set free on his oral promise to return for his hanging; and he has returned. Therefore the Sioux could not understand the infraction of the treaty.

They had viewed with alarm the scouting expedition by Custer. On the invasion by the horde of miners, the following spring, an outbreak was only avoided by the prompt action of the troops in evicting the trespassers; but now, this winter of 1875, the more sagacious of the Indian leaders were beginning to suspect the truth, namely, that the eviction had been nothing but a form, and that Pah-sap-pah, in spite of the treaty, was lost to them forever. Affairs were ripe for a great Indian war; and, realizing this, the department set on foot Crook's and Reynolds' unfortunate expedition toward the Big Horn.

The savages at once began to gather under a famous chief, Sitting Bull. The storm rumbled, and Custer was despatched to effect a junction with his brother officers somewhere north of the Hills.

VIII

THE MAKING OF A HOSTILE

Meanwhile a personal animus had sprung up against that general because of a mild stroke of justice on his part against a singularly proud man.

It seems that the personnel of Custer's former expedition to the Yellowstone included two civilians, a Dr. Honzinger and a Mr. Baliran. These men were not, of course, subject to the full rigor of military discipline, and so were accustomed to depart from, and return to, the main line of march at will. When they did not reappear in due time from one of these little trips, search was made; and they were found killed with arrows. Dr. Honzinger's skull was crushed in, but neither man was scalped, for the doctor was bald and the other wore his hair clipped short. Some time later, knowledge of the murderer's identity came to light, through information stumbled upon by one of Custer's own scouts.

At that period, rations and ammunition were distributed regularly at the various agencies. In return the savages promised to be good Indians and to submit to the white men's laws. This promise they kept faithfully enough, but according to their own standards. At the times of distribution, when inevitably a great many of the Indians were gathered together, the occasion was signalized by feasting and ghost dances. The latter are uncouth exhibitions enough, consisting decoratively of much cheap body-paint, many eagle feathers, and trashy jewelry; musically of most unmusical pounding and screaming; and physically of a crouching posture and a solemnly bounding progression from one foot to the other around a circle. They are accompanied by a recital of valorous deeds.

Such a dance was organized at the Standing Rock Agency, below Fort Lincoln, in the winter of 1875. As usual, besides the gathering of old warriors and squaws, assembled to watch the dance, the audience included a number of white men, present on business or pleasure. Among them was Charley Reynolds, one of Custer's scouts. This man stood exchanging idle comment and chaff with another scout, and throwing an occasional glance in the direction of the vortex of dancers, swirling about in gaudy confusion, like a whirlwind of autumn leaves. Suddenly he closed his mouth with a snap and leaned forward at keen attention. He had caught a few words that interested him.

The dancers had reached the point of frenzy. They leaped forward with solemnity still, but it was a quivering solemnity held in leash. Their bodies were tense, and the trailing knives and hatchets trembled with nervous force. Each warrior, nostrils distended and eyes flashing, was declaiming his deeds with an ecstasy that bordered on madness, rolling out tale after tale of murder, theft of horses—the only sort of theft countenanced by the Indian code—and fortitude under suffering. Noticeable among these dancers was a young warrior painted in the manner of the Uncpapa Sioux. He was of magnificent physique and striking countenance, but the most remarkable feature of his appearance was a huge, ragged scar across the muscles of his back. When the scout looked toward him, he was shaking in the air the chain of a watch, and declaiming at the top of his voice in the Sioux language.

"And he was great in body," he chanted, "and he fell, and I killed him with a stone, and the other fled, and I shot him, and so they died! I killed them! I am a great warrior, for I killed two white men, and these things are tokens that I speak the truth!"

He rattled the chain, and went through a vivid pantomime of the slaying of the two white men. Charley Reynolds recognized the trinket as belonging to Dr. Honzinger.

The young warrior was called Rain-in-the-Face, and he was at that time esteemed as the bravest of the northern Sioux. Others, such as Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull, might have been greater in generalship, but neither had the Uncpapa youth's reputation for sheer personal bravery. In the sun dance he had hung for four hours. The incisions behind the great muscles of the back, through which the rope was threaded, had been cut too deep, and the flesh failed to give way when Rain-in-the-Face was suspended. For some time he hung in midair, his whole weight depending from the loops of torn muscles, the blood streaming over his limbs, and the hot sun beating down upon him. Then the chiefs attempted to cut him down, but Rain-in-the-Face refused to permit it. Four hours later the flesh rent away from his bones, and he fell. That day made him the idol of the Sioux nation.

Charley Reynolds lost no time in informing Custer of his discovery, for the policy of the period was to punish as many culprits as possible, in order that the whites might establish, as soon as might be, a moral as well as military supremacy over the turbulent savages. The commander resolved to arrest Rain-in-the-Face. To that end he detailed a hundred men under Captain Yates.

Contrary to what one unused to the Indian character might expect, no difficulty was anticipated in finding the culprit. To be sure, the plains were broad and the hiding places many, but Rain-in-the-Face was at once an agency Indian and a reckless man. He drew his rations and he drew them boldly. With his blanket wrapped about him and his rifle peeping from its folds across his left arm, he stalked here and there among the agency's few buildings. Any distribution day at the reservation would discover him there.

But, on the other hand, the captain was not at all sure of being able to arrest him when found. A hundred men would stand but small chance in a fight with six hundred well-armed savages; whereas the appearance of a larger expedition would serve merely to frighten every agency Indian out into the wilds. The situation was not encouraging. How not to alarm the quarry, and how still to possess strength enough to seize it, was the problem that confronted Captain Yates.

His first move may seem, when cursorily examined, most unwise. He detailed a lieutenant and forty of his little command, whose orders were to proceed farther down the river, ostensibly for the purpose of making inquiries concerning three Osage Indians wanted for murder. Thus his available force was reduced to sixty, and with that handful he intended to capture and take away, in the face of ten times the number, one of the most popular fighting men of the Sioux nation.

But, as a matter of fact, in so dividing his forces the captain was correct in his tactics. He realized that surprise was his only effective weapon, and his ruse made surprise certain by lulling any suspicion as to the object of the expedition.

Arrived at the agency, a cursory examination disclosed the fact that Rain-in-the-Face was not among the groups of Indians camped on the prairie. He must, therefore, be inside the agency building itself. Captain Yates distributed his men near the little structure, and Colonel Tom Custer went inside with half a dozen soldiers.

The room was found to be full of blanketed Sioux warriors, muffled to the eyes, indistinguishable in the half light, except as eagle-feathered silhouettes. Greetings were exchanged, pipes filled, and a grave silence fell on the little group. The minutes passed, but no one moved. The atmosphere was dense with smoke, and still the parties watched each other—the whites with veiled eagerness, the Indians with unsuspicious stolidity. Finally the agent piled dry wood on the fire, and the blaze leaped up the chimney. The heat became oppressive, so after a moment the warrior nearest the fireplace threw back the blanket from his shoulders. It was Rain-in-the-Face himself.

On this rather dramatic disclosure, one of the troopers uttered an exclamation. The Indian, always suspicious, at once leaped back and cocked his rifle; but before he could raise the piece or pull the trigger, Colonel Custer wound his arms around him from behind. The other Indians rushed from the room.