A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 4

Of course I should have risen superior to these local misjudgments, and in fact I did keep to my work although only a faint voice here and there was raised in my defence. Even after _Rose_ had been introduced to London by William Stead, and Henry James and Israel Zangwill and James Barrie had all written in praise of her, the editors of the western papers still maintained a consistently militant att.i.tude. Perhaps I should have taken comfort from the fact that they considered me worth a.s.saulting, but that kind of comfort is rather bleak at its best, especially when the sales of your book are so small as to be confirmatory of the critic.

Without doubt this persistent antagonism, this almost universal depreciation of my stories of the plains had something to do with intensifying the joy with which I returned to the mountain world and its heroic types, at any rate I spent July and August of that year in Colorado and New Mexico, making many observations, which turned out to have incalculable value to me in later days. From a roundup in the Current Creek country I sauntered down through Salida, Ouray, Telluride, Durango and the Ute Reservation, a circuit which filled my mind with n.o.ble suggestions for stories and poems, a tour which profoundly influenced my life as well as my writing.

The little morocco-covered notebook in which I set down some of my impressions is before me as I write. It still vibrates with the ecstasy of that enthusiasm. Sentences like these are frequent. "From the dry hot plains, across the blazing purple of the mesa's edge, I look away to where the white clouds soar in majesty above the serrate crest of Uncomphagre. Oh, the splendor and mystery of those cloud-hid regions!...

A coyote, brown and dry and hot as any tuft of desert gra.s.s drifts by.... Into the coolness and sweetness and cloud-glory of this marvelous land.... Gorgeous shadows are in motion on White House Peak.... Along the trail as though walking a taut wire, a caravan of burros streams, driven by a wide-hatted graceful horseman.... Twelve thousand feet! I am brother to the eagles now! The matchless streams, the vivid orange-colored meadows. The deep surf-like roar of the firs, the wailing sigh of the wind in the gra.s.s--a pa.s.sionate longing wind." Such are my jottings.

In these pages I can now detect the beginnings of a dozen of my stories, a score of my poems. No other of my trips was ever so inspirational.

Not content with the wonders of Colorado I drifted down to Santa Fe and Isleta, with Charles Francis Browne and Hermon MacNeill, and got finally to Holbrook, where we outfitted and rode away across the desert, bound for the Snake Dance at Walpi. It would seem that we had decided to share all there was of romance in the South West. They were as insatiate as I.

For a week we lived on the mesa at Walpi in the house of Heli. Aided by Dr. Fewkes of Washington, we saw most of the phases of the snake ceremonies. The doctor and his own men were camped at the foot of the mesa, making a special study of the Hopi and their history. Remote, incredibly remote it all seemed even at that time, and some of that charm I put into an account of it which _Harper's_ published--one of the earliest popular accounts of the Snake Dance.

One night as I was standing on the edge of the cliff looking out over the sand to the west, I saw a train of pack horses moving toward Walpi like a jointed, canvas-colored worm. It was the outfit of another party of "tourists" coming to the dance, and half an hour later a tall, lean, brown and smiling man of middle life rode up the eastern trail at the head of his train.

Greeting me pleasantly he asked, "Has the ceremony begun?"

"The snakes are in process of being gathered," I replied, "but you are in time for the most interesting part of the festival."

In response to a question he explained, "I've been studying the Cliff-Dwellings of the Mesa Verde. My name is Pruden. I am from New York."

It was evident that "The Doctor" (as his guides called him) was not only a man of wide experience on the trail, but a scientist as well, and I found him most congenial.

We spent the evening together, and together we witnessed the mysterious snake dance which the natives of Walpi give every other year--a ceremony so incredibly primitive that it carried me back into the stone age, and three days later (leaving Browne and MacNeill to paint and sculpture the Hopi) we went to Zuni and Acoma and at last to the Grand Canon of the Colorado, a trip which laid upon my mind a thousand glorious impressions of the desert and its life. It was so beautiful, so marvelous that sand and flies and hunger and thirst were forgotten.

Aside from its esthetic delight, this summer turned out to be the most profitable season of my whole career. It marks a complete 'bout face in my march. Coming just after _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, it dates the close of my prairie tales and the beginning of a long series of mountain stories. Cripple Creek and the Current Creek country suggested _The Eagle's Heart_, _Witches' Gold_, _Money Magic_, and a dozen shorter romances. In truth every page of my work thereafter was colored by the experiences of this glorious savage splendid summer.

The reasons are easy to define. All my emotional relationships with the "High Country" were pleasant, my sense of responsibility was less keen, hence the notes of resentment, of opposition to unjust social conditions which had made my other books an offense to my readers were almost entirely absent in my studies of the mountaineers. My pity was less challenged in their case. Lonely as their lives were, it was not a sordid loneliness. The cattle rancher was at least not a drudge.

Careless, slovenly and wasteful as I knew him to be, he was not mean. He had something of the Centaur in his bearing. Marvelous horsemanship dignified his lean figure and lent a notable grace to his gestures. His speech was picturesque and his observations covered a wide area.

Self-reliant, fearless, instant of action in emergency, his character appealed to me with ever-increasing power.

I will not say that I consciously and deliberately cut myself off from my prairie material, the desertion came about naturally. Swiftly, inevitably, the unplowed valleys, the waterless foothills and the high peaks, inspired me, filled me with desire to embody them in some form of prose, of verse.

Laden with a myriad impressions of Indians, mountaineers and miners, I returned to my home as a bee to its hive, and there, during October, in my quiet chamber worked fast and fervently to transform my rough notes into fiction. Making no attempt to depict the West as some one else had seen it, or might thereafter see it, I wrote of it precisely as it appeared to me, verifying every experience, for, although I had not lingered long in any one place--a few weeks at most--I had observed closely and my impressions were clearly and deeply graved.

In fear of losing that freshness of delight, that emotion which gave me inspiration, I had made copious notes while in the field and although I seldom referred to them after I reached my desk, the very act of putting them down had helped to organize and fix them in my mind.

All of September and October was spent at the Homestead. Each morning I worked at my writing, and in the afternoon I drove my mother about the country or wrought some improvement to the place.

In the midst of these new literary enthusiasms I received a message which had a most disturbing effect on my plans. It was a letter from Sam McClure whose new little magazine was beginning to show astonishing vitality. "I want you to write for me a life of Ulysses Grant. I want it to follow Ida Tarbell's _Lincoln_ which is now nearing an end. Come to New York and talk it over."

This request arrested me in my fictional progress. I was tempted to accept this commission, not merely because of the editor's generous terms of payment but for the deeper reason that _Grant_ was a word of epic significance in my mind. From the time when I was three years of age, this great name had rung in my ears like the sound of a mellow bell. I knew I could write Grant's story--but--I hesitated.

"It is a mighty theme," I replied, "and yet I am not sure that I ought to give so much of my time at this, the most creative period of my life.

It may change the whole current of my imagination."

My father, whose att.i.tude toward the great Commander held much of hero-worship and who had influenced my childish thinking, influenced me now, but aside from his instruction I had come to consider Grant's career more marvelous than that of any other American both by reason of its wide arc of experience and its violent dramatic contrasts. It lent itself to epic treatment. With a feeling that if I could put this deeply significant and distinctively American story into a readable volume, I should be adding something to American literature as well as to my own life, I consented. Dropping my fictional plans for the time I became the historian.

In order to make the biography a study from first-hand material I planned a series of inspirational trips which filled in a large part of '96. Beginning at Georgetown, Ohio, where I found several of Grant's boyhood playmates, I visited Ripley, where he went to school, and then at the Academy at West Point I spent several days examining the records.

In addition, I went to each of the barracks at which young Grant had been stationed. Sacketts Harbor, Detroit and St. Louis yielded their traditions. A month in Mexico enabled me to trace out on foot not only the battle grounds of Monterey, but that of Vera Cruz, Puebla and Molina del Rey. No spot on which Grant had lived long enough to leave a definite impression was neglected. In this work I had the support of William Dean Howells who insisted on my doing the book bravely.

In pursuit of material concerning Grant's later life I interviewed scores of his old neighbors in Springfield and Galena, and in pursuit of his cla.s.smates, men like Buckner and Longstreet and Wright and Franklin, I took long journeys. In short I spared no pains to give my material a first-hand quality, and in doing this I traveled nearly thirty thousand miles, making many interesting acquaintances, in more than half the states of the Union.

During all these activities, however, the old Wisconsin farmhouse remained my pivot. In my intervals of rest I returned to my study and made notes of the vividly contrasting scenes through which I had pa.s.sed.

Orizaba and Jalapa, Perote with its snowy mountains rising above hot, cactus-covered plains, and Mexico City became almost dream-like by contrast with the placid beauty of Neshonoc. Some of my experiences, like "the Pa.s.sion Play at Coyocan," for example, took on a medieval quality, so incredibly remote was its scene,--and yet, despite all this travel, notwithstanding my study of cities and soldiers and battle maps, I could not forget to lay out my garden. I kept my mother supplied with all the necessaries and a few of the luxuries of life.

In my note book of that time I find these lines: "I have a feeling of swift change in art and literature here in America. This latest trip to New York has shocked and saddened me. To watch the struggle, to feel the bitterness and intolerance of the various groups--to find one clique of artists set against another, to know that most of those who come here will fail and die--is appalling. The City is filled with strugglers, students of art, ambitious poets, journalists, novelists, writers of all kinds--I meet them at the clubs--some of them will be the large figures of 1900, most of them will have fallen under the wheel--This bitter war of Realists and Romanticists will be the jest of those who come after us, and they in their turn will be full of battle ardor with other cries and other banners. How is it possible to make much account of the cries and banners of to-day when I know they will be forgotten of all but the students of literary history?"

My contract with _McClure's_ called for an advance of fifty dollars a week (more money than I had ever hoped to earn) and with this in prospect I purchased a new set of dinner china and a piano, which filled my mother's heart with delight. As I thought of her living long weeks in the old homestead with only my invalid aunt for company my conscience troubled me, and as it was necessary for me to go to Washington to complete my history, I attempted to mitigate her loneliness by buying a talking machine, through which I was able send her messages and songs.

She considered these wax cylinders a poor subst.i.tute for my actual voice, but she got some entertainment from them by setting the machine going for the amazement of her callers.

November saw me settled in Washington, hard at work on my history, but all the time my mind was working, almost unconsciously, on my new fictional problems, "After all, I am a novelist," I wrote to Fuller, and I found time even in the midst of my historical study to compose an occasional short story of Colorado or Mexico.

Magazine editors were entirely hospitable to me now, for my tales of the Indian and the miner had created a friendlier spirit among their readers. My later themes were, happily, quite outside the controversial belt. Concerned less with the hopeless drudgery, and more with the epic side of western life, I found myself almost popular. My critics, once off their guard, were able to praise, cautiously it is true, but to praise. Some of them a.s.sured me with paternal gravity that I might, by following their suggestions become a happy and moderately successful writer, and this prosperity, you may be sure, was reflected to some degree in the dining room of the old Homestead.

My father, though glad of the shelter of the Wisconsin hills in winter, was too vigorous,--far too vigorous--to be confined to the limits of a four-acre garden patch, and when I urged him to join me in buying one of the fine level farms in our valley he agreed, but added "I must sell my Dakota land first."

With this I was forced to be content. Though sixty years old he still steered the six-horse header in harvest time, tireless and unsubdued.

Times were improving slowly, very slowly in Dakota but opportunities for selling his land were still remote. He was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices. "I will not give it away," he grimly declared.

My return to the Homestead during the winter holidays brought many unforgettable experiences. Memories of those winter mornings come back to me--sunrises with steel-blue shadows lying along the drifts, whilst every weed, every shrub, feathered with frost, is lit with subtlest fire and the hills rise out of the mist, domes of brilliant-blue and burning silver. Splashes of red-gold fill all the fields, and small birds, flying amid the rimy foliage, shake sparkles of fire from their careless wings.

It was the ant.i.thesis of Indian summer, and yet it had something of the same dream-like quality. Its beauty was more poignant. The rounded tops of the red-oaks seemed to float in the sparkling air in which millions of sun-lit frost flakes glittered. All forms and lines were softened by this falling veil, and the world so adorned, so transfigured, filled the heart with a keen regret, a sense of pity that such a world should pa.s.s.

At such times I was glad of my new home, and my mother found in me only the confident and hopeful son. My doubts of the future, my discouragements of the present I carefully concealed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Red Men and Buffalo

Although my _Ulysses Grant, His Life and Character_ absorbed most of my time and the larger part of my energy during two years, I continued to dream (in my hours of leisure), of the "High Country" whose splendors of cloud and peak, combined with the broad-cast doings of the cattleman and miner, had aroused my enthusiasm. The heroic types, both white and red, which the trail has fashioned to its needs continued to allure me, and when in June, '97, my brother, on his vacation, met me again at West Salem, I outlined a tour which should begin with a study of the Sioux at Standing Rock and end with Seattle and the Pacific Ocean. "I must know the North-west," I said to him.

In order to report properly to any army post, I had in my pocket a letter from General Miles which commended me to all agents and officers, and with this as pa.s.sport I was in the middle of getting my equipment in order when Ernest Thompson Seton and his wife surprised me by dropping off the train one morning late in the month. They too, were on their way to the Rockies, and in radiant holiday humor.

My first meeting with Seton had been in New York at a luncheon given for James Barrie only a few months before, but we had formed one of those instantaneous friendships which spring from the possession of many identical interests. His skill as an ill.u.s.trator and his knowledge of wild animals had gained my admiration but I now learned that he knew certain phases of the West better than I, for though of English birth he had lived in Manitoba for several years. We were of the same age also, and this was another bond of sympathy.

He asked me to accompany him on his tour of the Yellowstone but as I had already arranged for a study of the Sioux, and as his own plans were equally definite, we reluctantly gave up all idea of camping together, but agreed to meet in New York City in October to compare notes.

The following week, on the first day of July, my brother and I were in Bismark, North Dakota, on our way to the Standing Rock Reservation to witness the "White Men's Big Sunday," as the red people were accustomed to call the Fourth of July.

It chanced to be a cool, sweet, jocund morning, and as we drove away, in an open buggy, over the treeless prairie swells toward the agency some sixty miles to the south, I experienced a sense of elation, a joy of life, a thrill of expectancy, which promised well for fiction. I knew the signs.

There was little settlement of any kind for twenty miles, but after we crossed the Cannonball River we entered upon the unviolated, primeval sod of the red hunter. Conical lodges were grouped along the streams.

Hors.e.m.e.n with floating feathers and beaded buck-skin shirts over-took us riding like scouts, and when on the second morning we topped the final hill and saw the agency out-spread below us on the river bank, with hundreds of canvas tepees set in a wide circle behind it, our satisfaction was complete. Thousands of Sioux, men, women, and children could be seen moving about the teepees, while platoons of mounted warriors swept like scouting war parties across the plain. I congratulated myself on having reached this famous agency while yet its festival held something tribal and primitive.