The Westerners Part 5

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 hara.s.sed 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 s.n.a.t.c.h up the little girl, devouring her with kisses. Sometimes she would wrinkle her brow, peeping into the doctor's ma.n.u.scripts, 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 quant.i.ty 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, Michal 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 ma.s.sacred its men and women. It found itself in possession of fifty or sixty horses, half a score of wagons, some provisions, and a goodly quant.i.ty 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, Michal 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 Michal 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 Michal 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 Michal 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.

Michal 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.

Michal 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 Michal struck seldom in his own person. When he did, not one of the victims escaped, for no man must have seen Michal, the savage. Michal, 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 tw.a.n.ged 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 p.a.w.ns 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 p.a.w.nee brought into one of the reservations a small quant.i.ty 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 partic.i.p.ants. 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 trespa.s.sers 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 trespa.s.sers; 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 ident.i.ty came to light, through information stumbled upon by one of Custer's own scouts.