The Westerners Part 1

The Westerners.

by Stewart Edward White.

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 subst.i.tute, 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 gra.s.s. 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 mult.i.tude 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 compa.s.s 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.

n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed, 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 c.u.mulative 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 Michal 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, Michal 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. Impa.s.sibility 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sured, 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," a.s.sured 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 d.a.m.n 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."