The Westerners Part 2

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 n.o.ble; 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sured.

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 a.s.sured 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 cla.s.s-room to receive a telegram. He read it quietly, then dismissed his cla.s.s, 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 G.o.d. 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 subst.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances, 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

Michal 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 gra.s.s 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."