CHAPTER IX

THE NEW MOVERS

Far away, across the wide gray plain, appeared a tiny dot, apparently an unimportant fixture of the landscape. An hour earlier it might not have been observed at all by even the keenest eye, and it would have needed yet more time to assure an observer even now that the dot was a moving object. Under the shifting play of the prairie sun the little object appeared now dark, now light in colour, but became gradually more distinct. It came always crawling steadily on. Presently an occasional side-blown puff of dust added a certain heraldry, and thus finally the white-topped wagon and its plodding team came fully into view, crawling ever persistently from the East into the West.

Meantime, from the direction of the north, there came travelling across the prairie another cloud of dust more rapid than that stirred up by the slow-moving emigrant wagon. Sam, the stage driver, was crossing on his regular buckboard trip from Ellisville to Plum Centre, and was now nearly half-way on his journey. Obviously the courses of these two vehicles must intersect, and at the natural point of this intersection the driver of the faster pulled up and waited for the other. "Movers" were not yet so common in that region that the stage driver, natural news agent, must not pause for investigation.

The driver of the wagon, a tall, dark man, drew rein with a grave salutation, his tired horses standing with drooping heads while there took place one of the pregnant conversations of the Plains.

"Mornin', friend," said Sam.

"Mornin', sir," said the other.

"Which way you headin', friend?" asked Sam.

"Well, sir," came the answer, slowly, "I rather reckon you've got me. I've just been movin' on out. I want to locate, but I reckon my team could travel a little further if they had to." This with a certain grimness in his smile, as though he realized the whimsicality of the average motive which governed in that day in quests like his. "Is there much travel comin' through here this season?" he resumed, turning in his seat and resting one foot on the wheel as he sat still perched on the high wagon seat.

"Well," replied Sam, "they ain't so much just yet, but they will be pretty soon. You see, the Land Office is about sixty mile east of here yet, and folks is mostly stoppin' in there. Land around here is pretty much all open yet. If they move the Land Office to the track-end, of course all this land will be taken up a good deal faster."

"Is it good farmin' land around here?"

"Sure. Better'n it is farther west, and just as good as it is farther east. Wheat'll do well here, and it ain't too cold for corn. Best cow country on earth."

"How is Ellisville doing now?"

"Bloomin'."

"Yes, sir, so I heard farther back. Is it goin' to be a real town?"

"That's whatever! How can it help it? It's goin' to be a division point on the road. It's goin' to have all the cattle-shippin' trade. After a while it'll have all the farmin' trade. It's goin' to be the town, all right, don't you neglect that. They's fifteen thousand head of cattle in around here now. Town's got two hotels, good livery stable—that's mine—half a dozen stores, nigh on to a dozen saloons, an' two barber-shops. Yes, sir, Ellisville is the place!"

"Which way are you bound, sir?" asked the stranger, still sitting, apparently in thought, with his chin resting on his hand.

"Well, you see, they's another town goin' up below here about twenty mile—old man Plum's town, Plum Centre. I run the mail an' carry folk acrost from Ellisville to that place. This here is just about halfway acrost. Ellisville's about twenty or twenty-five mile north of here."

Sam spoke lucidly enough, but really he was much consumed with curiosity, for he had seen, behind the driver of the wagon, a face outlined in the shade. He wondered how many "women-folk" the new mover had along, this being ever a vital question at that day. The tall man on the wagon seat turned his face slowly back toward the interior of the wagon.

"What do you think, Lizzie?" he asked.

"Dear me, William," came reply from the darkness in a somewhat complaining voice, "how can I tell? It all seems alike to me. You can judge better than I."

"What do you say, niece?"

The person last addressed rested a hand upon the questioner's shoulder and lightly climbed out upon the seat by his side, stooping as she passed under the low bow of the cover frame. She stood upright, a tall and gracious figure, upon the wagon floor in front of the seat, and shaded her eyes as she looked about her. Her presence caused Sam to instinctively straighten up and tug at his open coat. He took off his hat with a memory of other days, and said his "Good-mornin'" as the schoolboy does to his teacher—superior, revered, and awesome.

Yet this new character upon this bare little scene was not of a sort to terrify. Tall she was and shapely, comely with all the grace of youth and health, not yet tanned too brown by the searing prairie winds, and showing still the faint purity of the complexion of the South. There was no slouch in her erect and self-respecting carriage, no shiftiness in her eye, no awkwardness in her speech. To Sam it was instantaneously evident that here was a new species of being, one of which he had but the vaguest notions through any experiences of his own. His chief impression was that he was at once grown small, dusty, and much unshaven. He flushed as he shifted and twisted on the buckboard seat.

The girl looked about her for a moment in silence, shading her eyes still with her curved hand.

"It is much alike, all this country that we have seen since we left the last farms. Uncle William," she said, "but it doesn't seem dreary to me. I should think—"

But what she would have thought was broken into by a sudden exclamation from farther back in the wagon. A large black face appeared at the aperture under the front wagon bow, and the owner of it spoke with a certain oracular vigour.

"Fo' Gawd, Mass' William, less jess stop right yer! I 'clare, I'se jess wore to a plum frazzle, a-travelin' an' a-travelin'! Ef we gwine settle, why, less settle, thass all I say!"

The driver of the wagon sat silent for a moment, his leg still hanging over the end of the seat, his chin in the hand of the arm which rested upon his other leg, propped up on the dashboard of the wagon. At length, quietly, and with no comment, he unbuckled the reins and threw them out and down upon the ground on either side of the wagon.

"Whoa, boys," he called to the horses, which were too weary to note that they were no longer asked to go farther on. Then the driver got deliberately down. He was a tall man, of good bearing, in his shoulders but little of the stoop of the farmer, and on his hands not any convincing proof that he was personally acquainted with continuous bodily toil. His face was thin, aquiline, proud; his hair dark, his eyes gray. He might have been a planter, a rancher, a man of leisure or a man of affairs, as it might happen that one met him at the one locality or the other. One might have called him a gentleman, another only a "pilgrim." To Sam he was a "mover," and that was all. His own duty as proselyter was obvious. Each new settlement was at war with all others, population being the first need.

"We'll turn out here," said the man, striking his heel upon the ground with significant gesture, as was an unconscious custom among the men who chose out land for themselves in a new region. "We'll stop here for a bite to eat, and I reckon we won't go any farther west. How is this country around here for water?"

"Sure," said Sam, "excuse me. I've got a jug along with me. I nearly always carry some water along, because they ain't but one creek, and they ain't no wells.—Have a drink, miss?" And he politely pulled out the wooden stopper of a jug and offered it with a hand which jumped in spite of himself.

"Thank you, sir," said the girl, and her uncle added his courteous thanks also. "What I meant to ask, sir, however," he continued, "is what is the prospect of getting water in this part of the country in case we should like to settle in here?"

"Oh, that?" said Sam. "Why, say, you couldn't very well hit it much better. Less'n a mile farther down this trail to the south you come to the Sinks of the White Woman Creek. They's most always some water in that creek, and you can git it there any place by diggin' ten or twenty feet.

"That's good," said the stranger. "That's mighty good." He turned to the wagon side and called out to his wife. "Come, Lizzie," he said, "get out, dear, and take a rest. We'll have a bite to eat, and then we'll talk this all over."

The woman to whom he spoke next appeared at the wagon front and was aided to the ground. Tall, slender, black clad, with thin, pale face, she seemed even more unsuited than her husband to the prospect which lay before them. She stood for a moment alone, looking about her at the land which had long been shut off from view by the wagon tent, then turned and went close to the man, upon whom she evidently relied for the solution of life's problems. Immediately behind her there clambered down from the wagon, with many groanings and complaints, the goodly bulk of the black woman who had earlier given her advice. "Set down yer, Mis' Lizzie, in the shade," she said, spreading a rug upon the ground upon the side of the wagon farthest from the sun. "Set down an' git a ress. Gawd knows we all needs it—this yer fo'saken kentry. 'Tain' good as Mizzoury, let 'lone Kaintucky er Ole Vehginny—no, mam!"

There was thus now established, by the chance of small things, the location of a home. This wagon, with its occupants, had come far and journeyed vaguely, having no given point in view. The meeting of this other vehicle, here in the middle of the untracked prairie, perhaps aided by the chance words of a tired negress, made the determining circumstances. It was done. It was decided. There was a relief at once upon every countenance. Now these persons were become citizens of this land. Unwittingly, or at least tacitly, this was admitted when the leader of this little party advanced to the side of the buckboard and offered his hand.

"My name is Buford," he said slowly and with grave courtesy. "This is my wife; my niece, Miss Beauchamp. Your name, sir, I don't know, but we are very glad to meet you."

"My name's Poston," said Sam, as he also now climbed down from his seat, seeing that the matter was clinched and that he had gained a family for his county—"Sam Poston. I run the livery barn. I sure hope you'll stop in here, for you won't find no better country. Do you allow you'll move up to Ellisville and live there?"

"Well, I've started out to get some land," said Buford, "and I presume that the first thing is to find that and get the entry made. Then we'll have to live on it till we can commute it. I don't know that it would suit us at Ellisville just yet. It must be a rather hard town, from all I can learn, and hardly fit for ladies."

"That's so," said Sam, "it ain't just the quietest place in the world for women-folks. Only five or six women in the place yet, outside the section boss's wife and the help at the depot hotel. Still," he added apologetically, "folks soon gets used to the noise. I don't mind it no more at all."

Buford smiled as he glanced quizzically at the faces of his "women-folks." At this moment Sam broke out with a loud exclamation.

"Say!" he cried.

"Yes, sir," said Buford.

"I'll tell you what!"

"Yes?"

"Now, you listen to me. I'll tell you what! You see, this here place where we are now is just about a mile from the White Woman Sinks, and that is, as I was sayin', just about halfway between Ellisville and Plum Centre. Now, look here. This country's goin' to boom. They's goin' to be a plenty of people come in here right along. There'll be a regular travel from Ellis down to Plum Centre, and it's too long a trip to make between meals. My passengers all has to carry meals along with 'em, and they kick on that a-plenty. Now, you look here. Listen to me. You just go down to the White Woman, and drive your stake there. Take up a quarter for each one of you. Put you up a sod house quick as you can—I'll git you help for that. Now, if you can git anything to cook, and can give meals to my stage outfit when I carry passengers through here, why, I can promise you, you'll git business, and you'll git it a-plenty, too. Why, say, this'd be the best sort of a lay-out, all around. You can start just as good a business here as you could at Ellisville, and it's a heap quieter here. Now, I want some one to start just such a eatin' place somewheres along here, and if you'll do that, you'll make a stake here in less'n two years, sure's you're born."

Sam's conviction gave him eloquence. He was talking of business now, of the direct, practical things which were of immediate concern in the life of the region about. The force of what he said would not have been apparent to the unpracticed observer, who might have seen no indication in the wide solitude about that there would ever be here a human population or a human industry. Buford was schooled enough to be more just in his estimate, and he saw the reasonableness of what his new acquaintance had said. Unconsciously his eye wandered over to the portly form of the negress, who sat fanning herself, a little apart from the others. He smiled again with the quizzical look on his face. "How about that, Aunt Lucy?" he said.

"Do hit, Mass' William," replied the coloured woman at once with conviction, and extending an energetic forefinger. "You jess do whut this yer man says. Ef they's any money to be made a-cookin', I kin do all the cookin' ever you wants, ef you-all kin git anything to cook. Yas, suh!"

"You ain't makin' no mistake," resumed Sam. "You go in and git your land filed on, and put you up a sod house or dugout for the first season, because lumber's awful high out here. It's pretty late to do anything with a crop this year, even if you had any breakin' done, but you can take your team and gether bones this fall and winter, and that'll make you a good livin', too. You can git some young stock out of the trail cattle fer a'most anything you want to give, and you can hold your bunch in here on the White Woman when you git started. You can cut a little hay a little lower down on the White Woman for your team, or they can range out in here all winter and do well, just like your cows can. You can git a lot of stock about you before long, and what with keepin' a sort of eatin' station and ranchin' it a bit, you ought to git along mighty well, I should say. But—'scuse me, have you ever farmed it much?"

"Well, sir," said Buford, slowly, "I used to plant corn and cotton, back in Kentucky, befo' the war."

"And you come from Kentucky out here?"

"Not precisely that; no, sir. I moved to Missouri from Kentucky after the war, and came from Missouri here."

Sam looked at him, puzzled. "I allowed you'd never ranched it much," he said, vaguely. "How'd you happen to come out here?"

The quizzical smile again crossed Buford's face. "I think I shall have to give that up, on my honour," he said. "We just seem to have started on West, and to have kept going until we got here. It seemed to be the fashion—especially if you'd lost about everything in the world and seen everything go to pieces all about you." He added this with a slow and deliberate bitterness which removed the light trace of humour for the time.

"From Kentucky, eh?" said Sam, slowly and meditatively. "Well, it don't make no difference where you come from; we want good men in here, and you'll find this a good country, I'll gamble on that. I've followed the front clean acrost the State, the last ten years, and I tell you it's all right here. You can make it if you take hold right. Now I must be gittin' along again over toward Plum Centre. See you again if you stop in here on White Woman—see you several times a week, like enough. You must come up to Ellis soon as you git straightened out. Ain't many women-folks up there, but then they're fine what there is. Say," and he drew Buford to one side as he whispered to him—"say, they's a mighty fine girl—works in the depot hotel—Nory's her name—you'll see her if you ever come up to town. I'm awful gone on that girl, and if you git any chanct, if you happen to be up there, you just put in a good word for me, won't you? I'd do as much for you. I didn't know, you know, but what maybe some of your women-folks'd sort of know how it was, you know. They understand them things, I reckon."

Buford listened with grave politeness, though with a twinkle in his eye, and promised to do what he could. Encouraged at this, Sam stepped up and shook hands with Mrs. Buford and with the girl, not forgetting Aunt Lucy, an act which singularly impressed that late inhabitant of a different land, and made him her fast friend for life.

"Well, so long," he said to them all in general as he turned away, "and good luck to you. You ain't makin' no mistake in settlin' here. Good-bye till I see you all again."

He stepped into the buckboard and clucked to his little team, the dust again rising from under the wheels. The eyes of those remaining followed him already yearningly. In a half hour there had been determined the location of a home, there had been suggested a means of livelihood, and there had been offered and received a friendship. Here, in the middle of the great gray Plains, where no sign of any habitation was visible far as the eye could reach, these two white men had met and shaken hands. In a half hour this thing had become matter of compact. They had taken the oath. They had pledged themselves to become members of society, working together—working, as they thought, each for himself, but working also, as perhaps they did not dream, at the hest of some destiny governing plans greater than their own. As Buford turned he stumbled and kicked aside a bleached buffalo skull, which lay half hidden in the red grass at his feet.



CHAPTER X

THE CHASE

The summer flamed up into sudden heat, and seared all the grasses, and cut down the timid flowers. Then gradually there came the time of shorter days and cooler nights. The grass curled tight down to the ground. The air carried a suspicion of frost upon some steel-clear mornings. The golden-backed plover had passed to the south in long, waving lines, which showed dark against the deep blue sky. Great flocks of grouse now and then rocked by at morning or evening. On the sand bars along the infrequent streams thousands of geese gathered, pausing in their flight to warmer lands. On the flats of the Rattlesnake, a pond-lined stream, myriads of ducks, cranes, swans, and all manner of wild fowl daily made mingled and discordant chorus. Obviously all the earth was preparing for the winter time.

It became not less needful for mankind to take thought for the morrow. Winter on the Plains was a season of severity for the early settlers, whose resources alike in fuel and food were not too extensive. Franklin's forethought had provided the houses of himself and Battersleigh with proper fuel, and he was quite ready to listen to Curly when the latter suggested that it might be a good thing for them to follow the usual custom and go out on a hunt for the buffalo herd, in order to supply themselves with their winter's meat.

Before the oncoming white men these great animals were now rapidly passing away, from month to month withdrawing farther back from the settlements. Reports from the returning skin-hunters set the distance of the main herd at three to five days' journey. The flesh of the buffalo was now a marketable commodity at any point along the railway; but the settler who owned a team and a rifle was much more apt to go out and kill his own meat than to buy it of another. There were many wagons which went out that fall from Ellisville besides those of the party with which Franklin, Battersleigh, and Curly set out. These three had a wagon and riding horses, and they were accompanied by a second wagon, owned by Sam, the liveryman, who took with him Curly's mozo, the giant Mexican, Juan. The latter drove the team, a task which Curly scornfully refused when it was offered him, his cowboy creed rating any conveyance other than the saddle as far beneath his station.

"Juan can drive all right," he said. "He druv a cook wagon all the way from the Red River up here. Let him and Sam drive, and us three fellers'll ride."

The task of the drivers was for the most part simple, as the flat floor of the prairies stretched away evenly mile after mile, the horses jogging along dejectedly but steadily over the unbroken short gray grass, ignorant and careless of any road or trail.

At night they slept beneath the stars, uncovered by any tent, and saluted constantly by the whining coyotes, whose vocalization was betimes broken by the hoarser, roaring note of the great gray buffalo wolf. At morn they awoke to an air surcharged with some keen elixir which gave delight in sense of living. The subtle fragrance of the plains, born of no fruit or flower, but begotten of the sheer cleanliness of the thrice-pure air, came to their nostrils as they actually snuffed the day. So came the sun himself, with heralds of pink and royal purple, with banners of flaming red and gold. At this the coyotes saluted yet more shrilly and generally. The lone gray wolf, sentinel on some neighbouring ridge, looked down, contemptuous in his wisdom. Perhaps a band of antelope tarried at some crest. Afar upon the morning air came the melodious trumpeting of wild fowl, rising from some far-off unknown roosting place and setting forth upon errand of their own. All around lay a new world, a wild world, a virgin sphere not yet acquaint with man. Phoenicians of the earthy seas, these travellers daily fared on into regions absolutely new.

Early upon the morning of the fourth day of their journey the travellers noted that the plain began to rise and sink in longer waves. Presently they found themselves approaching a series of rude and wild-looking hills of sand, among which they wound deviously as they might, confronted often by forbidding buttes and lofty dunes whose only sign of vegetation was displayed in a ragged fringe of grass which waved like a scalp lock here and there upon the summits. For many miles they travelled through this difficult and cheerless region, the horses soon showing signs of distress and all the party feeling need of water, of which the supply had been exhausted. It was nearly noon while they were still involved in this perplexing region, and as none of the party had ever seen the country before, none could tell how long it might be before they would emerge from it. They pushed on in silence, intent upon what might be ahead, so that when there came an exclamation from the half-witted Mexican, whose stolid silence under most circumstances had become a proverb among them, each face was at once turned toward him.

"Eh, what's that, Juan?" said Curly—"Say, boys, he says we're about out of the sand hills. Prairie pretty soon now, he says."

"And will ye tell me, now," said Battersleigh, "how the haythen knows a bit more of it than we oursilves? He's never been here before. I'm thinkin' it's pure guess he's givin' us, me boy."

"No, sir," said Curly, positively. "If Juan says a thing like that, he knows. I don't know how he knows it, but he shore does, and I'll gamble on him every time. You see, he ain't hardly like folks, that feller. He's more like a critter. He knows a heap of things that you and me don't."

"That's curious," said Franklin. "How do you account for it?"

"Kin savvy," said Curly. "I don't try to account for it, me. I only know it's so. You see if it ain't."

And so it was. The wall of the sand hills was for a time apparently as endless and impervious as ever, and they still travelled on in silence, the Mexican making no further sign of interest. Yet presently the procession of the sand dunes began to show gaps and open places. The hills grew less tall and more regular of outline. Finally they shrank and fell away, giving place again to the long roll of the prairie, across which, and near at hand to the edge of the sand hills, there cut the open and flat bed of a water way, now apparently quite dry.

"We're all right for water now," said Sam. "See that little pile of rocks, 'bout as high as your head, off to the right down the creek? That's water there, sure."

"Yep," said Curly. "She's there, sure. Or you could git it by diggin' anywheres in here in the creek bed, inside of four or five feet at most."

Franklin again felt constrained to ask somewhat of the means by which these two felt so confident of their knowledge. "Well, now, Curly," he said, "it isn't instinct this time, surely, for Juan didn't say anything about it to you. I would like to know how you know there is water ahead."

"Why," said Curly, "that's the sign for water on the plains. If you ever see one of them little piles of stones standin' up, you can depend you can git water there. Sometimes it marks a place where you can git down through the breaks to the creek bed, and sometimes it means that if you dig in the bed there you can find water, 'lowin' the creek's dry."

"But who built up the rock piles to make these signs?" asked Franklin.

"O Lord! now you've got me," said Curly. "I don't know no more about that than you do. Injuns done it, maybe. Some says the first wild-horse hunters put 'em up. They was always there, all over the dry country, far back as ever I heard. You ask Juan if there ain't water not far off. See what he says.—Oye, Juan! Tengo agua, poco tiempo?"

The giant did not even lift his head, but answered listlessly, "Agua? Si," as though that were a matter of which all present must have equal knowledge.

"That settles it," said Curly. "I never did know Juan to miss it on locatin' water yet, not onct. I kin fairly taste it now. But you see, Juan, he don't seem to go by no rock-pile signs. He just seems to smell water, like a horse or a steer."

They now rode on more rapidly, bearing off toward the cairn which made the water sign. All at once Juan lifted his head, listened for a moment, and then said, with more show of animation than he had yet displayed and with positiveness in his voice: "Vacas!" ("cows; cattle").

Curly straightened up in his saddle as though electrified. "Vacas? Onde, Juan?—where's any cows?" He knew well enough that no hoof of domestic cattle had ever trod this country. Yet trust as he did the dictum of the giant's strange extra sense, he could not see, anywhere upon the wide country round about them, any signs of the buffalo to which he was sure the Mexican meant to call his attention.

"Vacas! muchas," repeated Juan carelessly.

"Lots of 'em, eh? Well, I'd like to know where they are, my lily of the valley," said Curly, for once almost incredulous. And then he stopped and listened.—"Hold on, boys, listen," he said. "Look out—look out! Here they come!"

Every ear caught the faint distant pattering, which grew into a rapid and insistent rumble. "Cavalry, b'gad!" cried Battersleigh. Franklin's eyes shone. He spurred forward fast as he could go, jerking loose the thong which held his rifle fast in the scabbard under his leg.

The tumultuous roaring rumble came on steadily, the more apparent by a widening and climbing cloud of dust, which betokened that a body of large animals was coming up through the "breaks" from the bed of the stream to the prairie on which the wagons stood. Presently there appeared at the brink, looming through the white dust cloud, a mingling mass of tangled, surging brown, a surface of tossing, hairy backs, spotted with darker fronts, over all and around all the pounding and clacking of many hoofs. It was the stampede of the buffalo which had been disturbed at their watering place below, and which had headed up to the level that they might the better make their escape in flight. Head into the wind, as the buffalo alone of wild animals runs, the herd paid no heed to the danger which they sought to escape, but upon which they were now coming in full front. The horses of the hunters, terrified at this horrid apparition of waving horned heads and shaggy manes, plunged and snorted in terror, seeing which the first rank of the buffalo in turn fell smitten of panic, and braced back to avoid the evil at their front. Overturned by the crush behind them, these none the less served to turn the course of the remainder of the herd, which now broke away to the right, paralleling the course of the stream and leaving the wagons of the hunters behind them and at their left. The herd carried now upon its flank three figures which clung alongside and poured sharp blue jets of smoke into the swirling cloud of ashy dust.

It was neck and neck for the three. The cowboy, Curly, had slightly the advance of the others, but needed to spur hard to keep even with Battersleigh, the old cavalryman, who rode with weight back and hands low, as though it were cross country in old Ireland. Franklin challenged both in the run up, riding with the confidence of the man who learned the saddle young in life. They swerved slightly apart as they struck the flank of the herd and began to fire. At such range it was out of the question to miss. Franklin and Battersleigh killed two buffaloes each, losing other head by reason of delivering their fire too high up in the body, a common fault with the beginner on bison. Curly ran alongside a good cow, and at the third shot was able to see the great creature stumble and fall. Yet another he killed before his revolver was empty. The butchery was sudden and all too complete. As they turned back from the chase they saw that even Sam, back at the wagon, where he had been unable to get saddle upon one of the wagon horses in time for the run, had been able to kill his share. Seeing the horses plunging, Juan calmly went to their heads and held them quiet by main strength, one in each hand, while Sam sprang from the wagon and by a long shot from his heavy rifle knocked down a good fat cow. The hunters looked at the vast bodies lying prostrate along the ground before them, and felt remorse at their intemperance.

"The hunt's over," said Franklin, looking at the dead animals. "We've enough for us all."

"Yes, sir," said Curly, "we shore got meat, and got it plenty sudden.—Juan, vamos, pronto!" He made signs showing that he wished the Mexican to skin and dress the buffalo, and the latter, as usual, proceeded to give immediate and unhesitating obedience.



CHAPTER XI

THE BATTLE

Occupied for a few moments with the other at the wagon, Franklin ceased to watch Juan, as he went slowly but not unskilfully about the work of dressing the dead buffalo. Suddenly he heard a cry, and looking up, saw the Mexican running hurriedly toward the wagon and displaying an animation entirely foreign to his ordinary apathetic habit. He pointed out over the plain as he came on, and called out excitedly: "Indios! Los Indios!"

The little party cast one long, careful look out toward the horizon, upon which now appeared a thin, waving line of dust. A moment later the two wagons were rolled up side by side, the horses were fastened securely as possible, the saddles and blanket rolls were tossed into breastworks at the ends of the barricade, and all the feeble defences possible were completed. Four rifles looked steadily out, and every face was set and anxious, except that of the Mexican who had given the alarm. Juan was restless, and made as though to go forth to meet the advancing line.

"Vamos—me vamos!" he said, struggling to get past Curly, who pushed him back.

"Set down, d——n you—set down!" said Curly, and with his strange, childlike obedience, the great creature sat down and remained for a moment submissively silent.

The indefinite dust line turned from gray to dark, and soon began to show colours—black, red, roan, piebald—as the ponies came on with what seemed an effect of a tossing sea of waving manes and tails, blending and composing with the deep sweeping feather trails of the grand war bonnets. Hands rose and fell with whips, and digging heels kept up the unison. Above the rushing of the hoofs there came forward now and then a keen ululation. Red-brown bodies, leaning, working up and down, rising and falling with the motion of the ponies, came into view, dozens of them—scores of them. Their moccasined feet were turned back under the horses' bellies, the sinewy legs clamping the horse from thigh to ankle as the wild riders came on, with no bridle governing their steeds other than the jaw rope's single strand.

"Good cavalry, b'gad!" said Battersleigh calmly, as he watched them in their perfect horsemanship. "See 'em come!" Franklin's eyes drew their brows down in a narrowing frown, though he remained silent, as was his wont at any time of stress.

The Indians came on, close up to the barricade, where they saw the muzzles of four rifles following them steadily, a sight which to them carried a certain significance. The line broke and wheeled, scattering, circling, still rising and falling, streaming in hair and feathers, and now attended with a wild discord of high-keyed yells.

"Keep still, boys; don't shoot!" cried Franklin instinctively. "Wait!"

It was good advice. The mingling, shifting line, obedient to some loud word of commando swept again up near to the front of the barricade, then came to a sudden halt with half the forefeet off the ground. The ponies shuffled and fidgeted, and the men still yelled and called out unintelligible sounds, but the line halted. It parted, and there rode forward an imposing figure.

Gigantic, savage, stern, clad in the barbaric finery of his race, his body nearly nude, his legs and his little feet covered with bead-laden buckskin, his head surmounted with a horned war bonnet whose eagle plumes trailed down the pony's side almost to the ground, this Indian headman made a picture not easily to be forgotten nor immediately to be despised. He sat his piebald stallion with no heed to its restive prancing. Erect, immobile as a statue, such was the dignity of his carriage, such the stroke of his untamed eye, that each man behind the barricade sank lower and gripped his gun more tightly. This was a personality not to be held in any hasty or ill-advised contempt.

The Indian walked his horse directly up to the barricade, his eye apparently scorning to take in its crude details.

"Me, White Calf!" he exclaimed in English, like the croak of a parrot, striking his hand upon his breast with a gesture which should have been ludicrous or pompous, but was neither. "Me, White Calf!" said the chief again, and lifted the medal which lay upon his breast. "Good. White man come. White man go. Me hunt, now!"

He swept his arm about in a gesture which included the horizon, and indicated plainly his conviction that all the land belonged to him and his own people. So he stood, silent, and waiting with no nervousness for the diplomacy of the others.

Franklin stepped boldly out from the barricade and extended his hand. "White Calf, good friend," said he. The Indian took his hand without a smile, and with a look which Franklin felt go through him. At last the chief grunted out something, and, dismounting, seated himself down upon the ground, young men taking his horse and leading it away. Others, apparently also of rank, came and sat down. Franklin and his friends joined the rude circle of what they were glad to see was meant to be an impromptu council.

White Calf arose and faced the white men.

"White men go!" he said, his voice rising. "Injun heap shoot!"

"B'gad, I believe the haythen thinks he can scare us," said Battersleigh, calmly.

Franklin pointed to the carcasses of the buffalo, and made signs that after they had taken the meat of the buffalo they would go. Apparently he was understood. Loud words arose among the Indians, and White Calf answered, gesticulating excitedly:

"Heap good horse!" he said, pointing to the horses of the party. "White man go! Injun heap get horse! Injun heap shoot!"

"This is d——d intimidation!" shouted Battersleigh, starting up and shaking a fist in White Calf's face.

"Give up our horses? Not by a d——d sight!" said Curly. "You can heap shoot if you want to turn loose, but you'll never set me afoot out here, not while I'm a-knowin' it!"

The situation was tense, and Franklin felt his heart thumping, soldier though he was. He began to step back toward the wagons with his friends. A confused and threatening uproar arose among the Indians, who now began to crowd forward. It was an edged instant. Any second might bring on the climax.

And suddenly the climax came. From the barricade at the rear there rose a cry, half roar and half challenge. The giant Mexican Juan, for a time quieted by Curly's commands, was now seized upon by some impulse which he could no longer control. He came leaping from behind the wagons, brandishing the long knife with which he had been engaged upon the fallen buffalo.

"Indios!" he cried, "Indios!" and what followed of his speech was only incoherent savage babblings. He would have darted alone into the thick of the band had not Franklin and Curly caught him each by a leg as he passed.

The chief, White Calf, moved never a muscle in his face as he saw his formidable adversary coming on, nor did he join in the murmurs that arose among his people. Rather there came a glint into his eye, a shade of exultation in his heavy face. "Big chief!" he said, simply. "Heap fight!"

"You bet your blame life he'll heap fight!" said Curly, from his position upon Juan's brawny breast as he held him down. "He's good for any two of you, you screechin' cowards!"

Curly's words were perhaps not fully understood, yet the import of his tone was unmistakable. There was a stirring along the line, as though a snake rustled in the grass. The horse-holders were crowding up closer. There were bows drawn forward over the shoulders of many young men, and arrows began to shiver on the string under their itching fingers. Once more Franklin felt that the last moment had come, and he and Battersleigh still pressed back to the wagons where the rifles lay.

The Indian chief raised his hand and came forward, upon his face some indescribable emotion which removed it from mere savagery, some half-chivalrous impulse born perhaps of a barbaric egotism and self-confidence, perhaps of that foolhardy and vain love of risk which had made White Calf chief of his people and kept him so. He stood silent for a moment, his arms folded across his breast with that dramatic instinct never absent from the Indian's mind. When he spoke, the scorn and bravado in his voice were apparent, and his words were understood though his speech was broken.

"Big chief!" he said, pointing toward Juan. "White Calf, me big chief," pointing to himself. "Heap fight!" Then he clinched his hands and thrust them forward, knuckles downward, the Indian sign for death, for falling dead or being struck down. With his delivery this was unmistakable. "Me," he said, "me dead; white man go. Big chief" (meaning Juan), "him dead; Injun heap take horse," including in the sweep of his gesture all the outfit of the white men.

"He wants to fight Juan by himself," cried Franklin.

"Yes, and b'gad he's doin' it for pure love of a fight, and hurray for him!" cried Battersleigh. "Hurray, boys! Give him a cheer!" And, carried away for the moment by Battersleigh's own dare-deviltry, as well as a man's admiration for pluck, they did rise and give him a cheer, even to Sam, who had hitherto been in line, but very silent. They cheered old White Calf, self-offered champion, knowing that he had death in a hundred blankets at his back.

The meaning of the white men was also clear. The grim face of White Calf relaxed for a moment into something like a half-smile of pride. "Heap fight!" he repeated simply, his eyes fixed on the vast form of the babbling giant. He dropped his blanket fully back from his body and stood with his eyes boring forward at his foe, his arms crossed arrogantly over his naked, ridging trunk, proud, confident, superb, a dull-hued statue whose outlines none who witnessed ever again forgot.

There was no time to parley or to decide. Fate acted rapidly through the agency of a half-witted mind. Juan the Mexican was regarding the Indian intently. Perhaps he gathered but little of the real meaning of that which had transpired, but something in the act or look of the chieftain aroused and enraged him. He saw and understood the challenge, and he counted nothing further. With one swift upheaval of his giant body, he shook off restraining hands and sprang forward. He stripped off his own light upper garment, and stood as naked and more colossal than his foe. Weapon of his own he had none, nor cared for any. More primitive even than his antagonist, he sought for nothing letter than the first weapon of primeval man, a club, which should extend the sweep of his own arm. From the hand of the nearest Indian he snatched a war club, not dissimilar to that which hung at White Calf's wrist, a stone-headed beetle, grooved and bound fast with rawhide to a long, slender, hard-wood handle, which in turn was sheathed in a heavy rawhide covering, shrunk into a steel-like re-enforcement. Armed alike, naked alike, savage alike, and purely animal in the blind desire of battle, the two were at issue before a hand could stay them. All chance of delay or separation was gone. Both white and red men fell back and made arena for a unique and awful combat.

There was a moment of measuring, that grim advance balance struck when two strong men meet for a struggle which for either may end alone in death. The Indian was magnificent in mien, superb in confidence. Fear was not in him. His vast figure, nourished on sweet meat of the plains, fed by pure air and developed by continual exercise, showed like the torso of a minor Hercules, powerful but not sluggish in its power. His broad and deep chest, here and there spotted with white scars, arched widely for the vital organs, but showed no clogging fat. His legs were corded and thin. His arms were also slender, but showing full of easy-playing muscles with power of rapid and unhampered strength. Two or three inches above the six-feet mark he stood as he cast off his war bonnet and swept back a hand over the standing eagle plumes, whipped fast to his braided hair. White Calf was himself a giant.

Yet huge and menacing as he stood, the figure opposed to him was still more formidable. Juan, the mozo overtopped him by nearly half a head, and was as broad or broader in the shoulder. His body, a dull brown in colour, showed smoother than that of his enemy, the muscles not having been brought out by unremitted exercise. Yet under that bulk of flesh there lay no man might tell how much of awful vigour. The loop of the war club would not slip over his great hand. He caught it in his fingers and made the weapon hum about his head, as some forgotten ancestor of his, tall Navajo, or forgotten cave dweller, may have done before the Spaniard came. The weapon seemed to him like a toy, and he cast his eye about for another more commensurate with his strength, but, seeing none, forgot the want, and in the sheer ignorance of fear which made his bravery, began the fight as though altogether careless of its end.

White Calf was before his people, whose chief he was by reason of his personal prowess, and with all the vanity of his kind he exulted in this opportunity of displaying his fitness for his place. Yet in him natural bravery had a qualifying caution, which was here obviously well justified. The Mexican made direct assault, rushing on with battle axe poised as though to end it all with one immediate blow. With guard and parry he was more careless than the wild bull of the Plains, which meets his foe in direct impetuous assault. White Calf was not so rash. He stepped quickly back from the attack, and as the mozo plunged forward from the impulse of his unchecked blow, the Indian swept sternly at him with the full force of his extended arm. The caution of the chief, and the luck of a little thing, each in turn prevented the ending of the combat at its outset. Half falling onward, the Mexican slipped upon a tuft of the hard gray grass and went down headlong. A murmur arose from the Indians, who thought at first that their leader's blow had proved fatal. A sharp call from Curly seemed to bring the Mexican to his feet at once. The Indian lost the half moment which was his own. Again the two engaged, White Calf now seeking to disconcert the Mexican, whom he discovered to be less agile than himself. Darting in and out, jumping rapidly from side to side, and uttering the while the sharp staccato of his war call, he passed about the Mexican, half circling and returning, his eye fixed straight upon the other's, and his war club again and again hurtling dangerously close to his opponents head. One shade more of courage, one touch more of the daring necessary to carry him a single foot closer in, and the victory had been with him, for no human skull could have withstood the impact of a pound of flint impelled by an arm so powerful.

Juan the mozo stood almost motionless, his own club half raised, the great muscles of his arm now showing under the brown skin as he clinched hard the tiny stem of the weapon. He seemed not perturbed by the menaces of the chieftain, and though unaware that the latter must in time suffer from the violence of his own exertions, nevertheless remained the fuller master of his own forces by simply waiting in this one position. His readiness for offence was the one defence that he offered. His brute courage had no mental side. The whistling of this threatening weapon was unheeded, since it did not hurt him. He glared in fury at the Indian, but always his arm remained half raised, his foot, but shifted, side stepping and turning only enough to keep him with front toward his antagonist. The desperate, eager waiting of his attitude was awful. The whisper of the wings of death was on the air about this place. The faces of the white men witnessing the spectacle were drawn and haggard. A gulp, a sigh, a half groan now and again came from their parted lips.

White Calf pursued his rapid tactics for some moments, and a dozen times sped a blow which still fell short. He gained confidence, and edged closer in. He feinted and sprang from side to side, but gained little ground. His people saw his purpose, and murmurs of approval urged him on. It seemed that in a moment he must land the fatal blow upon his apparently half-stupefied opponent. He sought finally to deliver this blow, but the effort was near to proving his ruin. Just as he swung forward, the giant, with a sudden contraction of all his vast frame, sprang out and brought down his war axe in a sheer downward blow at half-arm's length. White Calf with lightning speed changed his own attack into defence, sweeping up his weapon to defend his head. On the instant his arm was beaten down. It fell helpless at his side, the axe only hanging to his hand by means of the loop passed around the wrist. A spasm of pain crossed his face at the racking agony in the nerves of his arm, yet he retained energy enough to spring back, and still he stood erect. A cry of dismay burst from the followers of the red champion and a keen yell from the whites, unable to suppress their exultation, Yet at the next moment the partisans of either had become silent; for, though the Indian seemed disabled, the mozo stood before him weaponless. The tough, slender rod which made the handle of his war axe had snapped like a pipestem under the force of his blow, and even the rawhide covering was torn loose from the head of stone, which lay, with a foot of the broken hard-wood staff still attached, upon the ground between the two antagonists.

Juan cast away the bit of rod still in his hand and rushed forward against his enemy, seeking to throttle him with his naked fingers. White Calf, quicker-witted of the two, slung the thong of his war club free from his crippled right hand, and, grasping the weapon in his left, still made play with it about his head. The giant none the less rushed in, receiving upon his shoulder a blow from the left hand of the Indian which cut the flesh clean to the collar bone, in a great bruised wound which was covered at once with a spurt of blood. The next instant the two fell together, the Indian beneath his mighty foe, and the two writhing in a horrible embrace. The hands of the mozo gripped the Indian's throat, and he uttered a rasping, savage roar of triumph, more beastlike than human, as he settled hard upon the chest of the enemy whose life he was choking out. Again rose the savage cries of the on-lookers.

Not even yet had the end come. There was a heaving struggle, a sharp cry, and Juan sprang back, pressing his hand against his side, where blood came from between his fingers. The Indian had worked his left hand to the sheath of his knife, and stabbed the giant who had so nearly overcome him. Staggering, the two again stood erect, and yet again came the cries from the many red men and the little band of whites who were witnessing this barbarous and brutal struggle. Bows were bending among the blankets, but the four rifles now pointed steadily out. One movement would have meant death to many, but that movement was fore-stalled in the still more rapid happenings of the unfinished combat. For one-half second the two fighting men stood apart, the one stunned at his unexpected wound, the other startled that the wound had not proved fatal. Seeing his antagonist still on his feet. White Calf for the first time lost courage. With the knife still held in his left hand, he hesitated whether to join again in the encounter, or himself to guard against the attack of a foe so proof to injury. He half turned and gave back for a pace.

The man pursued by a foe looks about him quickly for that weapon nearest to his own hand. The dread of steel drove Juan to bethink himself of a weapon. He saw it at his feet, and again he roared like an angry bull, his courage and his purpose alike unchanged. He stooped and clutched the broken war axe, grasping the stone head in the palm of his great hand, the jagged and ironlike shaft projecting from between his ringers like the blade of a dagger. With the leap of a wild beast he sprang again upon his foe. White Calf half turned, but the left hand of the giant caught him and held him up against the fatal stroke. The sharp shaft of wood struck the Indian in the side above the hip, quartering through till the stone head sunk against the flesh with a fearful sound. With a scream the victim straightened and fell forward. The horrid spectacle was over.



CHAPTER XII

WHAT THE HAND HAD TO DO

In this wide, new world of the West there were but few artificial needs, and the differentiation of industries was alike impossible and undesired. Each man was his own cook, his own tailor, his own mechanic in the simple ways demanded by the surroundings about him. Each man was as good as his neighbour, for his neighbour as well as himself perforce practised a half-dozen crafts and suffered therefrom neither in his own esteem nor that of those about him. The specialists of trade, of artisanship, of art, were not yet demanded in this environment where each man in truth "took care of himself," and had small dependence upon others.

In all the arts of making one's self comfortable in a womanless and hence a homeless land both Franklin and Battersleigh, experienced campaigners as they were, found themselves much aided by the counsel of Curly, the self-reliant native of the soil who was Franklin's first acquaintance in that land. It was Curly who helped them with their houses and in their household supplies. It was he who told them now and then of a new region where the crop of bones was not yet fully gathered. It was he who showed them how to care for the little number of animals which they began to gather about them; and who, in short, gave to them full knowledge of the best ways of exacting a subsistence from the land which they had invaded.

One morning Franklin, thinking to have an additional buffalo robe for the coming winter, and knowing no manner in which he could get the hide tanned except through his own efforts, set about to do this work for himself, ignorant of the extent of his task, and relying upon Curly for advice as to the procedure.

Curly sat on his horse and looked on with contempt as Franklin flung down the raw skin upon the ground.

"You've shore tackled a bigger job than you know anything about, Cap," said he, "and, besides that, it ain't a job fittin' fer a man to do. You ought to git some squaw to do that for you."

"But, you see, there aren't any squaws around," said Franklin, smiling. "If you'll tell me just how the Indians do it I'll try to see how good a job I can make of it."

Curly shifted his leg in his saddle and his cud in his mouth, and pushing his hat back on his forehead, assumed the position of superintendent.

"Well, it'll take you a long time," said he, "but I 'low it ain't no use tellin' you not to begin, fer you'll just spile a good hide anyhow. First thing you do, you stretch yer hide out on the ground, fur side down, and hold it there with about six hundred pegs stuck down around the edges. It'll take you a week to do that. Then you take a knife and scrape all the meat off the hide. That sounds easy, but it'll take about another week. Then you git you a little hoe, made out of a piece of steel, and you dig, and dig, and dig at that hide till you git some more meat off, and begin to shave it down, thin like. You got to git all the grease out of it, an' you got to make all the horny places soft. Time you git it dug down right it'll take you about a year, I reckon, and then you ain't done. You got to git brains—buffalo brains is best—and smear all over it, and let 'em dry in. Then you got to take your hide up and rub it till it's plum soft. That'll take you a couple of weeks, I reckon. Then you kin smoke it, if you have got any place to smoke it, an' that'll take you a week, it you don't burn it up. Sometimes you kin whiten a hide by rubbin' it with white clay, if you can git any clay. That might take you a few days longer. Oh, yes, I reckon you kin git the hide tanned if you live long enough. You'd ought to put up a sign, 'Captain Franklin, Attorney at Law, an' Hide Tanner.'"

Franklin laughed heartily at Curly's sarcasm. "There's one thing sure, Curly," said he; "if I ever get this thing done I shall have to do the work myself, for no one ever knew you to do any work but ride a horse. Now, I think I can tan this hide, and do it in less than a year, and in less than a week, too. I can peg it out, and I can make me the iron hoe, and I can soften the hide with brains, and I can rub it until it is finished. I have, or can get, about all the ingredients you mention except the clay. If I had some white pipe clay I believe I could really make me a beautiful robe for a counterpane for my bed next winter."

"If it's only clay you want," said Curly lazily, "I can git you plenty of that."

"Where?" said Franklin.

"Over in a little holler, to the crick back o' town," said Curly. "You go on an' tack out your hide, an' I'll ride over and git you some."

"How'll you carry it," said Franklin, "if you go on horseback?"

"Kerry it!" said Curly contemptuously. "How'd you s'pose I'd kerry it? Why, in my hat, o' course!" and he rode off without deigning further explanation. Franklin remained curious regarding this episode until, an hour later, Curly rode up to the house again, carrying his hat by the brim, with both hands before him, and guiding his pony with his knees. He had, indeed, a large lump of white, soft clay, which he carried by denting in the crown of his hat and crowding the clay into the hollow. After throwing down the clay and slapping the hat a few times on his knee, he seemed to think his headgear not injured by this transaction.

"There's yer blamed clay," said he; "it'll be a good while before you need it, but there she is."

The two were joined at this juncture by Battersleigh, who had come over to pay a morning visit, and who now stood looking on with some interest at the preparations in progress.

"It's makin' ye a robe is it, Ned, me boy?" said he. "I'm bound it's a fine thing ye'll do. I'll give yer four dollars if ye'll do as much for me. Ye wouldn't be leavin' old Batty to sleep cold o' nights, now, wud ye, Ned?"

"Oh, go tan your own robes," said Franklin cheerfully. "I'm not in the wholesale line."

"You might git Juan to tan you all one or two," said Curly. "He kin tan ez good ez ary Injun ever was."

"But, by the way, Curly," said Franklin, "how is Juan this morning? We haven't heard from him for a day or two."

"Oh, him?" said Curly. "Why, he's all right. He's just been layin' 'round a little, like a dog that's been cut up some in a wolf fight, but he's all right now. Shoulder's about well, an' as fer the knife-cut, it never did amount to nothin' much. You can't hurt a Greaser much, not noways such a big one as Juan. But didn't he git action in that little difficulty o' his'n? You could a-broke the whole Cheyenne tribe, if you could a-got a-bettin' with 'em before that fight."

"Odds was a hundred to one against us, shure," said Battersleigh, seating himself in the doorway of the shack. "Ye may call the big boy loco, or whativer ye like, but it's grateful we may be to him. An' tell me, if ye can, why didn't the haythins pile in an' polish us all off, after their chief lost his number? No, they don't rush our works, but off they go trailin', as if 'twas themselves had the odds against 'em, och-honin' fit to set ye crazy, an' carryin' their dead, as if the loss o' one man ended the future o' the tribe. Faith, they might have— Ned, ye're never stretchin' that hide right."

"Them Cheyennes was plenty hot at us fer comin' in on their huntin' grounds," said Curly, "an' they shore had it in fer us. I don't think it was what their chief said to them that kep' them back from jumpin' us, ater the fight was over. It's a blame sight more likely that they got a sort o' notion in their heads that Juan was bad medicine. It they get it in their minds that a man is loco, an' pertected by spirits, an' that sort o' thing, they won't fight him, fer fear o' gettin' the worst of it. That's about why we got out of there, I reckon. They'd a-took our hosses an' our guns an' our meat, an' been blame apt not to a-fergot our hair, too, if they hadn't got the idee that Juan was too much fer 'em. I'll bet they won't come down in there again in a hundred years'"

"I felt sad for them," said Franklin soberly.

Curly smiled slowly. "Well, Cap," said he, "they's a heap o' things out in this here country that seems right hard till you git used to 'em. But what's the ust carin' 'bout a dead Injun here or there? They got to go, one at a time, or more in a bunch. But now, do you know what they just done with ole Mr. White Calf? Why, they taken him out along with 'em a ways, till they thought we was fur enough away from 'em, an' then they probably got a lot of poles tied up, or else found a tree, an' they planted him on top of a scaffold, like jerked beef, an' left him there fer to dry a-plenty, with all his war clothes on and his gun along with him. Else, if they couldn't git no good place like that, they likely taken him up on to a highish hill, er some rocky place, an' there they covered him up good an' deep with rocks, so'st the wolves wouldn't bother him any. They tell me them buryin' hills is great places fer their lookouts, an' sometimes their folks'll go up on top o' them hills and set there a few days, or maybe overnight, a-hopin' they'll dream something. They want to dream something that'll give 'em a better line on how to run off a whole cavvie-vard o' white men's hosses, next time they git a chanct."

"Ye're a d——d Philistine, Curly," said Battersleigh calmly.

"I'm sorry for them," repeated Franklin, thoughtfully, as he sat idly fingering the lump of clay that lay between his feet. "Just think, we are taking' away from these people everything in the world they had. They were happy as we are—happier, perhaps—and they had their little ambitions, the same as we have ours. We are driving them away from their old country, all over the West, until it is hard to see where they can get a foothold to call their own. We drive them and fight them and kill them, and then—well, then we forget them."

Curly had a certain sense of politeness, so he kept silence for a time. "Well," said he at length, "a Injun could tan hides better'n a white man kin—at least some white men."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Franklin, rousing and replying stoutly. "The white man wins by dodging the issue. Now, look you, the Indian squaw you tell me about would probably hack and hack away at this hide by main strength in getting the flesh off the inside. I am sure I shall do it better, because I shall study which way the muscles run, and so strip off the flesh along those lines, and not across them."

"I didn't know that made any difference," said Curly. "Besides, how kin you tell?"

"Well, now, maybe there are some things you don't know, after all, Curly," said Franklin. "For instance, can you tell me how many boss ribs there are in the hump of a buffalo?"

"Well, no—o," admitted Curly. "But what's the difference, so long ez I know they're all good to eat ?"

"Plainly, a d——d Philistine," said Battersleigh again, striking a match for his pipe. "But I'm not sure but he had you there, Ned, me boy."

"I'll show you," said Franklin eagerly. "Here it is on the hide. The hump came to here. Here was the knee joint—you can see by the whirl in the muscles as plainly as you could by the curl in the hair there—you can see it under a wolf's leg, the same way; the hair follows the lines of the muscles, you know. Wait, I could almost make you a dummy out of the clay. Now, look here—"

"You're a funny sort o' a feller, Cap," said Curly, "but if you're goin' to tan that hide you'd better finish peggin' it out, an' git to work on it."



CHAPTER XIII

PIE AND ETHICS

One morning Battersleigh was at work at his little table, engaged, as he later explained, upon the composition of a letter to the London Times, descriptive of the Agrarian Situation in the United States of America, when he was interrupted by a knock at his door.

"Come in, come in, Ned, me boy," he exclaimed, as he threw open the door and recognised his visitor. "What's the news this mornin'?"

"News?" said Franklin gaily, holding his hands behind his back. "I've news that you can't guess—good news."

"You don't mean to tell me they've moved the land office into Ellisville, do you, Ned?"

"Oh, no, better than that."

"You've not discovered gold on your quarter section, perchance?"

"Guess again—it's better than that."

"I'll give it up. But leave me a look at your hands."

"Yes," said Franklin, "I'll give you a look, and one more guess." He held up a small bag before Battersleigh's face.

"It's not potatoes, Ned?" said Battersleigh in an awed tone of voice. Franklin laughed.

"No; better than that," he said.

"Ned," said Battersleigh, "do ye mind if I have a bit smell of that bag?"

"Certainly," said Franklin, "you may have a smell, if you'll promise to keep your hands off."

Battersleigh approached his face to the bag and snuffed at it once, twice, thrice, as though his senses needed confirmation. He straightened up and looked Franklin in the face.

"Ned," said he, his voice sinking almost to a whisper, "it's—it's apples!"

"Right," said Franklin. "And isn't that news?"

"The best that could be, and the hardest to believe," said Battersleigh. "Where'd you get thim, and how?"

"By diplomacy," said Franklin. "Morrison, one of the transit men of the engineers, was home in Missouri for a visit, and yesterday he came back and brought a sack of apples with him. He was so careless that he let the secret out, and in less than half an hour he had lost two thirds of his sack of apples—the boys wheedled them out of him, or stole them. At last he put the bag, with what was left of the apples, in the safe at the hotel, and left orders that no one should have even a look at them. I went out and sent a man in to tell the clerk that he was wanted at the depot, and while he was away I looted the safe—it wasn't locked—and ran for it. It was legitimate, wasn't it? I gave Sam one big red apple, for I knew he would rather have it, to give to his Nora, the waiter girl, than the best horse and saddle on the range. The rest—behold them! Tell me, do you know how to make a pie?"

"Ned," said Battersleigh, looking at him with an injured air, "do you suppose I've campaigned all me life and not learned the simplest form of cookin'? Pie? Why, man, I'll lay you a half section of land to a saddle blanket I'll make ye the best pie that ever ye set eye upon in all your life. Pie, indeed, is it?"

"Well," said Franklin, "you take some risks, but we'll chance it. Go ahead. We'll just save out two or three apples for immediate consumption, and not put all our eggs in one basket."

"Wisely spoken, me boy," said Battersleigh. "Ye're a thrue conservative. But now, just ye watch Batty while he goes to work."

Battersleigh busied himself about the little box which made his cupboard, and soon had out what he called his "ingraydeyints."

"Of course, ye've to take a little flour," he said, "that's for the osseous structure, so to speak. Ye've to add a little grease of some sort, lard or butter, an' we've nayther; the bacon fat'll do, methinks. Of course, there's the bakin' powder. Fer I've always noticed that when ye take flour ye take also bakin' powder. Salt? No, I'm sure there's no salt goes in at all; that's against reason, an' ye'll notice that the principles of philosophy go into all the ways of life. And, lastly, makin', as I may say, the roundin' out of the muscular and adipose tissue of the crayture, as the sowl of the pie we must have the apples. It's a sin to waste 'em peelin'; but I think they used to peel 'em, too. And ye've to put in sugar, at laste a couple o' spoons full. Now observe. I roll out this dough—it's odd-actin' stuff, but it's mere idiosyncrashy on its part—I roll this out with a bottle, flat and fine; and I put into this pan, here, ye'll see. Then in goes the intayrior contints, cut in pieces, ye'll see. Now, thin, over the top of the whole I sprid this thin blanket of dough, thus. And see me thrim off the edges about the tin with me knife. And now I dint in the shircumference with me thumb, the same as July Trelawney did in the Ould Tinth. And there ye are, done, me pie, an' may God have mercy on your sowl!—Ned, build up the fire."

They sat at the side of the little stove somewhat anxiously waiting for the result of Battersleigh's labours. Every once in a while Battersleigh opened the oven door and peered in. "She isn't brownin' just to suit me, Ned," he said, "but that's the fault o' the chimney." Franklin opined that this anxiety boded no certainty of genius, but kept silent. "I'm wonderin' if it's right about that bakin' powder?" said Battersleigh. "Is it too late now, do ye think?"

"This isn't my pie, Battersleigh," said Franklin, "but if anything has gone wrong with those apples it'll take more than a little diplomacy to get you out of the trouble."

As they sat for a moment silent there came the sound of approaching hoof-beats, and presently the cracking and popping of the feet of a galloping horse fell into a duller crunch on the hard ground before the door, and a loud voice called out,

"Whoa-hope, Bronch! Hello, in the house!"

"Come in, Curly," cried Battersleigh. "Come in. We've business of importhance this mornin'."

Curly opened the door a moment later, peering in cautiously, the sunshine casting a rude outline upon the floor, and his figure to those within showing silhouetted against the background of light, beleggined, befringed, and begloved after the fashion of his craft.

"How! fellers," he said, as he stooped to enter at the low door. "How is the world usin' you all this bright and happy mornin'?"

"Pretty well, me friend," said Battersleigh, his eyes on the stove, importantly. "Sit ye down."

Curly sat down on the edge of the bed, under whose blanket the newspapers still rattled to the touch, "Seems like you all mighty busy this mornin'," said he.

"Yes," said Franklin, "we've got business on hand now. You can't guess what we're cooking."

"No; what?"

"Pie."

"Go 'long!"

"Yes, sir, pie," said Franklin firmly.

Curly leaned back on the bed upon his elbow, respectful but very incredulous.

"Our cook made a pie, onct," said he, to show himself also a man of worldly experience. "That was down on the Cimarron, 'bout four years ago. We et it. I have et worse pie 'n that, an' I have et better. But I never did git a chance to eat all the pie I wanted, not in my whole life. Was you sayin' I'm in on this here pie?"

"Certainly you are. You wait. It'll be done now pretty soon," said Franklin.

"If ye can poke a straw into thim, they're done," said Battersleigh oracularly. "Curly, hand me the broom."

Curly passed over the broom, and the two, with anxiety not unmixed with cynicism, watched Battersleigh as he made several ineffectual attempts to penetrate the armour of the pie.

"Stop lookin' at me like a brace o' evil-minded hyenies," protested Battersleigh. "Ye'd make the devil himself nervous, a-reghardin' one so like a object o' suspicion. Mind ye, I'm goin' to take it out. There's nothin' at all whativver in that ijee of stickin' it with a straw. Moreover, these straws is shameful."

The others watched him eagerly as he removed the hot tin from the oven and set it upon the bare table.

"I'm thinkin' it looks a bit dumpish midships, Ned," said Battersleigh dubiously. "But there's one thing shure, ye'll find all the apples in it, for I've watched the stove door meself, and there's been no possibility fer them to escape. And of course ye'll not forgit that the apples is the main thing in an apple pie. The crust is merely a secondary matter." Battersleigh said this in an airy manner which disarmed criticism. Curly drew his clasp knife from his pocket and cut into the portion assigned to him. Franklin was reserved, but Curly attained enthusiasm at the second bite.

"Rile Irish," said he, "I'm not so sure you're such a h——l of a military man, but as a cook you're a burnin' success. You kin sign with our outfit tomorrer if you want to. Man, if I could bake pie like that, I'd break the Bar O outfit before the season was over! An' if I ever could git all the pie I wanted to eat, I wouldn't care how quick after that I fanned out. This here is the real thing. That pie that our cook made on the Cimarron—why, it was made of dried apples. Why didn't you tell me you had real apples?"

The pie, startling as it was in some regards, did not long survive the determined assault made upon it. Curly wiped his knife on the leg of his "chaps" and his mouth on the back of his hand.

"But say, fellers," he said, "I plumb forgot what I come over here for. They's goin' to be a dance over to town, an' I come to tell you about it. O' course you'll come."

"What sort of a dance can it be, man?" said Battersleigh.

"Why, a plumb dandy dance; reg'lar high-steppin' outfit; mucha baille; best thing ever was in this settlement."

"I'm curious to know where the ladies will come from," said Franklin.

"Don't you never worry," rejoined Curly. "They's plenty o' women-folks. Why, there's the section boss, his wife—you know her—she does the washin' for most everybody. There's Nora, Sam's girl, the head waiter; an' Mary, the red-headed girl; an' Kitty, the littlest waiter girl; an' the new grocery man's wife; an' Hank Peterson's wife, from down to his ranch. Oh, there'll be plenty o' ladies, don't you never doubt. Why, say, Sam, he told me, last time he went down to Plum Centre, he was goin' to ask Major Buford an' his wife, an' the gal that's stayin' with them—tall gal, fine looker—why, Sam, he said he would ast them, an' maybe they'd come up to the dance—who knows? Sam, he says that gal ain't no common sort—whole outfit's a puzzler to him, he says, Sam does."

"And when does this all happen, Curly, boy?" asked Battersleigh.

"Why, night after to-morrer night, to the big stone hotel. They're goin' to clean out the dinin'-room for us. Three niggers, two fiddlers, an' a 'cordion—oh, we'll have music all right! You'll be over, of course?"

"That we will, me boy," responded Battersleigh. "It's mesilf will inthrojuce Captain Franklin to his first haythin ball. Our life on the claim's elevatin', for it leaves time for thought, but it is a bit slow at times. An' will we come? Man, we'll be the first."

"Well, then, so long, fellers," said Curly. "I got to be movin' along a little. See you at the dance, sure."

"Now, as to a ball, Battersleigh," said Franklin, argumentatively, when they were alone, "how can I go? I've not the first decent thing to wear to such a place."

"Tut, tut!" said Battersleigh. "There speaks the coxcombry of youth. I make no doubt ye'd be the best-dressed man there if ye'd go as ye stand now. But what about Batty? On me honour, Ned, I've never been so low in kit as I am this season here, not since I was lance sergeant in the Tinth. You're able to pull out your blue uniform, I know, an' b'gad! the uniform of an officer is full dress the worrld over! Look at Batty, half mufti, and his allowance a bit late, me boy. But does Batty despair? By no means. 'Tis at times like this that gaynius rises to the occasion."

Franklin grinned amiably. "Thank you for the suggestion about the uniform, at least," he said. "Now, if we can fix you up as well."

Battersleigh came and stood before him, waving a long forefinger.

"Listen to me, Ned," he began, "an' I'll lay down to ye a few of the fundamental rules of conduct and appar'l.

"A gintleman never lies; a gintleman never uses unseemly haste; a gintleman is always ready for love and ready for war—for, Ned, me boy, without love and war we'd miss the only two joys of life. Thereto, a gintleman must shoot, fence, ride, dance, and do anny of 'em like a gintleman. For outwardly appar'l, seein' him clane within, me boy, a gintleman should make the best of what he finds about him. I have slept sweet in turban or burnous in me time. Dress is nothing that we may always control. But if ye found yeself a bit low in kit, as Batty is this day, what would ye say, Ned, me boy, was the first salient—what is the first essintial in the dress of a gintleman, me boy?"

"Linen," said Franklin, "or is it gloves?"

"Ned," said Battersleigh solemnly, laying a hand upon his shoulder, "ye're the dearest boy in the world. Ye're fit to be lance sergeant yersilf in the ould Tinth Rigiment. Right ye are, quite right. White, white, me boy, is the first colour of a gintleman! White, to show the integrity of his honour and the claneness of his merit roll. Shure, he must have his weapons, and his horse—for a gintleman always rides—and his hat and gloves are matter of course. But, first of all, essintial to him as the soap and crash, is white, sir—yes, white! A touch of white at neck and wrist anny gintleman must show who presints himself at a ball."

"But, now, how?"

Battersleigh pointed a long finger at Franklin, then turned it upon himself, tapping with import upon his forehead. "Look at me, at Batty," he said. "Here is where gaynius comes in, me friend. I may be far from the home that bore me—God prosper them that knows it now!—and I may be a bit behind with me allowance; but never yet was Batty without the arms and the appar'l of a gintleman. Ned, come with me."

Grasping his companion by the arm, Battersleigh stepped outside the house, and strode off with long steps across the prairie. "Come," he said, as one who commanded alike secrecy and despatch. Humouring him, Franklin followed for a quarter of a mile. Then, bending his gaze in the direction of the march, he saw afar, fluttering like a signal of distress in the engulfing sea about, a little whipping flag of white, which was upheld by the gaunt hand of a ragged sage bush. This, as he drew near, he discovered to be a portion of an old flour sack, washed clean and left bleaching in the sun and wind until it had assumed a colour a shade more pure than its original dinginess.

Battersleigh made dramatic approach. "There!" said he, pointing with triumphant dignity to the fluttering rag.

"Yes, I see," said Franklin, "but what do you want of this piece of sack?"

"Sack!" cried Battersleigh, offended. "'Sack!' say you, but I say, 'White!' Look ye, the history of a man is something sacred. 'Sack!' say you, but I say, 'White!' A strip of this at me neck and at me wrist; me hat, an' me sabre and me ridin' whip—I r-ride up to the dure. I dismount. I throw me rein to the man. I inter the hall and place me hat and gloves in order as they should be. I appear—Battersleigh, a gintleman, appears, standin' in the dure, the eyes of all upon him. I bow, salutin', standin' there, alone, short on allowance, but nate and with me own silf-respect. Battersleigh, a bit low in kit and in allowance, with white at neck and wrist, bows, and he says, 'Ladies and gintlemen, Battersleigh is here!'"



CHAPTER XIV

THE FIRST BALL AT ELLISVILLE

The wife of the section boss sat in conscious dignity, as became a leader of society. She was gowned in purple, newly starched, and upon her bosom rose and fell the cross that Jerry gave her long ago. Below her in order of station came Nora, the head waiter, and the red-headed waiter girl, and the littlest waiter girl, and the wife of the new grocery man. These sat silent and unhappy at one part of the long row of chairs that lined the side of the hall. Opposite to them, equally silent and equally unhappy, sat a little row of men. Jerry, the section boss, made no claim to social distinction. He was a simple, plain, hard-working man, whose main concern was in his work, and whose great pride was in the social triumphs of his wife. Jerry was short and broad and sturdy, and his face was very, very red. Near to Jerry sat the new grocery man, and Curly the cowboy, and Del Hickman, another cowboy, and several other cowboys, and Sam, the stage-driver. They were all silent and very miserable. The lights of the big hanging kerosene lamps flickered and cast great shadows, showing the women all with heads very high and backs straight and stiff, the men in various attitudes of jellyfish, with heads hanging and feet screwed under their chairs in search of moral support.

It was the beginning of the ball. These were the first arrivals. At the head of the hall, far off, sat three musicians, negroes alleged to play violins and an accordion, and by that merit raised to a bad eminence. Gloomy, haughty, superior, these gazed sternly out before them, ready for the worst. Now and then they leaned over the one toward another, and ventured some grim, ghastly remark. Once the leader, an old and gray-haired man, was heard to utter, inadvertently above his breath, the ominous expression, "Yass, indeed!" All in all, the situation was bodeful in the extreme. There was no speech other than that above noted.

After a vast hiatus the door at the main entrance was pulled cautiously open, a little at a time. Evidently some one was looking in. The consciousness of this caused two or three men to shuffle their feet a trifle upon the floor, as though they expected the death march soon to begin. The littlest waiter girl, unable to stand the nervous strain, tittered audibly, which caused Nora, the head waiter, to glare at her through her glasses. At length the door opened, and two figures entered affrightedly, those of Hank Peterson, a neighbouring rancher, and his wife. Hank was dressed in the costume of the time, and the high heels of his boots tapped uncertainly as he made his way over the wide hollow-sounding floor, his feet wabbling and crossing in his trepidation. None the less, having forthwith decoyed to the row of men sitting silent against the wall, he duly reached that harbour and sank down, wiping his face and passing his hand across his mouth uncertainly. His wife was a tall, angular woman, whose garb was like that of most of the other women—cotton print. Yet her hair was combed to the point of fatality, and at her neck she had a collarette of what might have been lace, but was not. Conscious of the inspection of all there assembled, Mrs. Peterson's conduct was different from that of her spouse. With head held very high and a glance of scorn, as of one hurling back some uttered word of obloquy, she marched down the hall to the side occupied by the ladies; nay, even passed the full line as in daring review, and seated herself at the farther end, with head upright, as ready for instant sally of offence.

The door opened again and yet again. Two or three engineers, a rodman, a leveller, and an axeman came in, near behind them more cattlemen. From among the guests of the hotel several came, and presently the clerk of the hotel himself. The line of men grew steadily, but the body upon the opposite side of the room remained constant, immobile, and unchanged. At these devoted beings there glared many eyes from across the room. More and more frequent came the scrape of a foot along the floor, or the brief cough of perturbation. One or two very daring young men leaned over and made some remark in privacy, behind the back of the hand, this followed by a nudge and a knowing look, perhaps even by a snicker, the latter quickly suppressed. Little by little these bursts of courage had their effect. Whispers became spasmodic, indeed even frequent.

"Say, Curly," whispered Del Hickman hoarsely to his neighbour, "ef somethin' don't turn loose right soon I'm due to die right here. I'm thirstier'n if this here floor was the Staked Plains."

"Same here," said Curly in a muttered undertone. "But I reckon we're here till the round-up's made. When she do set loose, you watch me rope that littlest waiter girl. She taken my eye, fer shore."

"That's all right, friend," said Del, apparently relieved. "I didn't know but you'd drew to the red-headed waiter girl. I sorter 'lowed I'd drift over in thataway, when she starts up."

Sam, the driver, was sitting rapt, staring mutely across the great gulf fixed between him and Nora, the head waiter. Nora, by reason of her authority in position, was entitled to wear a costume of white, whereas the waiters of lower rank were obliged by house rules to attire themselves in dark skirts. To Sam's eyes, therefore, Nora, arrayed in this distinguishing garb, appeared at once the more fair and the more unapproachable. As she sat, the light glinting upon her glasses, her chin well upheld, her whole attitude austere and commanding, Sam felt his courage sink lower and lower, until he became abject and abased. Fascinated none the less, he gazed, until Curly poked him sharply and remarked:

"Which 'un you goin' to make a break fer, Sam?"

"I—I d-d-don't know," said Sam, startled and disturbed.

"Reckon you'd like to mingle some with Nory, hey?"

"W-w-w-well—" began Sam defensively.

"But she don't see it that way. Not in a hundred. Why, she'll be dancin' with Cap Franklin, or Batty, er some folks that's more in her line, you see. Why in h——l don't you pick out somebody more in yer own bunch, like?" Curly was meaning to be only judicial, but he was cruel. Sam collapsed and sat speechless. He had long felt that his ambition was sheer presumption.