“‘AIN’T Y’U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?’”“‘AIN’T Y’U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?’”
“General?—What’s that?—Where did y’u see—What?Him?” The disgusting truth flashed clear on Jones. Uttering a single disconcerted syllable of rage, he wheeled and went by himself into the barracks, and lay down solitary on his bunk and read a newspaper until mess-call without taking in a word of it. “Ifthey go to put me in the mill fer that,” he said, sulkily, to many friends who brought him their congratulations, “I’m going to give ’em what I think about wearin’ disguises.”
“What do you think, Specimen?” said one.
“Give it to us now, Specimen,” said another.
“Against the law, ain’t it, Specimen?”
“Begosh!” said Jack Long, “ef thet’s so, don’t lose no time warnin’ the General, Specimen. Th’ ole man’d hate to be arrested.”
And Specimen Jones told them all to shut their heads.
But no thought was more distant from General Crook’s busy mind than putting poor Jones in the guard-house. The trooper’s willingness, after eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The American “statesman” does not care about our army until it becomes necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew all this well; and realizing that these soldiers, who had come into winter-quarters this morning at eleven, had earned a holiday, he was sorry to feel obliged to start them out again to-morrow morning at two; for this was what he had decided upon.
He had received orders to drive on the reservation the various small bands of Indians that were roving through the country of the Snake and its tributaries, a danger to the miners in the Bannock Basin, and tothe various ranches in west Idaho and east Oregon. As usual, he had been given an insufficient force to accomplish this, and, as always, he had been instructed by the “statesmen” to do it without violence—that is to say, he must never shoot the poor Indian until after the poor Indian had shot him; he must make him do something he did not want to, pleasantly, by the fascination of argument, in the way a “statesman” would achieve it. The force at the General’s disposal was the garrison at Boisé Barracks—one troop of cavalry and one company of infantry. The latter was not adapted to the matter in hand—rapid marching and surprises; all it could be used for was as a reinforcement, and, moreover, somebody must be left at Boisé Barracks. The cavalry had had its full dose of scouting and skirmishing and long exposed marches, the horses were poor, and nobody had any trousers to speak of. Also, the troop was greatly depleted; it numbered forty men. Forty had deserted, and three—a sergeant and three privates—had cooked and eaten a vegetable they had been glad to dig up one day, and had spent the ensuing forty-five minutes in attempting to make their ankles beat the backs of their heads; after that the captain had read over them a sentence beginning, “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery”; and after that the camp was referred to as Wild Carrot Camp, because the sergeant had said the vegetable was wild carrot, whereas it had really been wild parsnip, which is quite another thing.
General Crook shook his head over what he saw. The men were ill-provided, the commissary and the quartermaster department were ill-provided; but it would have to do; the “statesmen” said our armywas an extravagance. The Indians must be impressed and intimidated by the unlimited resources which the General had—not. Having come to this conclusion, he went up to the post commander’s, and at supper astonished that officer by casual remarks which revealed a knowledge of the surrounding country, the small streams, the best camps for pasture, spots to avoid on account of bad water, what mules had sore backs, and many other things that the post commander would have liked dearly to ask the General where and when he had learned, only he did not dare. He did not even venture to ask him what he was going to do. Neither did Captain Glynn, who had been asked to meet the General. The General soon told them, however. “It may be a little cold,” he concluded.
“To-morrow, sir?” This from Captain Glynn. He had come in with the forty that morning. He had been enjoying his supper very much.
“I think so,” said the General. “This E-egante is likely to make trouble if he is not checked.” Then, understanding the thoughts of Captain Glynn, he added, with an invisible smile, “Youneed no preparations. You’re in marching order. It’s not as if your men had been here a long time and had to get ready for a start.”
“Oh no,” said Glynn, “it isn’t like that.” He was silent. “I think, if you’ll excuse me, General,” he said next, “I’ll see my sergeant and give some orders.”
“Certainly. And, Captain Glynn, I took the liberty of giving a few directions myself. We’ll take an A tent, you know, for you and me. I see Keyser is sergeant in F troop. Glad we have a non-commissioned officer so competent. Haven’t seen him since ’64, at Winchester. Why, it’s cleared off, I declare!”
It had, and the General looked out of the open door as Captain Glynn, departing, was pulling at his cigar. “How beautiful the planets are!” exclaimed Crook. “Look at Jupiter—there, just to the left of that little cottonwood-tree. Haven’t you often noticed how much finer the stars shine in this atmosphere than in the East? Oh, captain! I forgot to speak of extra horseshoes. I want some brought along.”
“I’ll attend to it, General.”
“They shouldn’t be too large. These California fourteen-and-a-half horses have smallish hoofs.”
“I’ll see the blacksmith myself, General.”
“Thank you. Good-night. And just order fresh stuffing put into the aparejos. I noticed three that had got lumpy.” And the General shut the door and went to wipe out the immaculate barrels of his shot-gun; for besides Indians there were grouse among the hills where he expected to go.
Captain Glynn, arriving at his own door, stuck his glowing cigar against the thermometer hanging outside: twenty-three below zero. “Oh Lord!” said the captain, briefly. He went in and told his striker to get Sergeant Keyser. Then he sat down and waited. “‘Look at Jupiter!’” he muttered, angrily. “What an awful old man!”
It was rather awful. The captain had not supposed generals in the first two hours of their arrival at a post to be in the habit of finding out more about your aparejos than you knew yourself. But old the General was not. At the present day many captains are older than Crook was then.
Down at the barracks there was the same curiosity about what the “Old Man” was going to do as existed at the post commander’s during the early part of supper.It pleased the cavalry to tell the infantry that the Old Man proposed to take the infantry to the Columbia River next week; and the infantry replied to the cavalry that they were quite right as to the river and the week, and it was hard luck the General needed only mounted troops on this trip. Others had heard he had come to superintend the building of a line of telegraph to Klamath, which would be a good winter’s job for somebody; but nobody supposed that anything would happen yet awhile.
And then a man came in and told them the General had sent his boots to the saddler to have nails hammered in the soles.
“That eer means business,” said Jack Long, “’n’ I guess I’ll nail up mee own cowhides.”
“Jock,” said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, “you and me ’ain’t got any soles to ourn because they’re contract boots, y’u see. I’ll nail up yer feet if y’u say so. It’s liable to be slippery.”
Cumnor did not take in the situation at once. “What’s your hurry?” he inquired of Jack Long. Therefore it was explained to him that when General Crook ordered his boots fixed you might expect to be on the road shortly. Cumnor swore some resigned, unemphatic oaths, fondly supposing that “shortly” meant some time or other; but hearing in the next five minutes the definite fact that F troop would get up at two, he made use of profound and thorough language, and compared the soldier with the slave.
“Why, y’u talk almost like a man, Jock,” said Specimen Jones. “Blamed if y’u don’t sound pretty near growed up.”
Cumnor invited Jones to mind his business.
“Yer muss-tache has come since Arizona,” continuedJones, admiringly, “and yer blue eye is bad-lookin’—worse than when we shot at yer heels and y’u danced fer us.”
“I thought they were going to give us a rest,” mumbled the youth, flushing. “I thought we’d be let stay here a spell.”
“I thought so too, Jock. A little monotony would be fine variety. But a man must take his medicine, y’u know, and not squeal.” Jones had lowered his voice, and now spoke without satire to the boy whom he had in a curious manner taken under his protection.
“Look at what they give us for a blanket to sleep in,” said Cumnor. “A fellow can see to read the newspaper through it.”
“Look at my coat, Cumnor.” It was Sergeant Keyser showing the article furnished the soldier by the government. “You can spit through that.” He had overheard their talk, and stepped up to show that all were in the same box. At his presence reticence fell upon the privates, and Cumnor hauled his black felt hat down tight in embarrassment, which strain split it open half-way round his head. It was another sample of regulation clothing, and they laughed at it.
“We all know the way it is,” said Keyser, “and I’ve seen it a big sight worse. Cumnor, I’ve a cap I guess will keep your scalp warm till we get back.”
And so at two in the morning F troop left the bunks it had expected to sleep in for some undisturbed weeks, and by four o’clock had eaten its well-known breakfast of bacon and bad coffee, and was following the “awful old man” down the north bank of the Boisé, leaving the silent, dead, wooden town of shanties on the other side half a mile behind in the darkness.The mountains south stood distant, ignoble, plain-featured heights, looming a clean-cut black beneath the piercing stars and the slice of hard, sharp-edged moon, and the surrounding plains of sage and dry-cracking weed slanted up and down to nowhere and nothing with desolate perpetuity. The snowfall was light and dry as sand, and the bare ground jutted through it at every sudden lump or knoll. The column moved through the dead polar silence, scarcely breaking it. Now and then a hoof rang on a stone, here and there a bridle or a sabre clinked lightly; but it was too cold and early for talking, and the only steady sound was the flat, can-like tankle of the square bell that hung on the neck of the long-eared leader of the pack-train. They passed the Dailey ranch, and saw the kittens and the liniment-bottle, but could get no information as to what way E-egante had gone. The General did not care for that, however; he had devised his own route for the present, after a talk with the Indian guides. At the second dismounting during march he had word sent back to the pack-train not to fall behind, and the bell was to be taken off if the rest of the mules would follow without the sound of its shallow music. No wind moved the weeds or shook the stiff grass, and the rising sun glittered pink on the patched and motley-shirted men as they blew on their red hands or beat them against their legs. Some were lucky enough to have woollen or fur gloves, but many had only the white cotton affairs furnished by the government. Sarah the squaw laughed at them: the interpreter was warm as she rode in her bright green shawl. While the dismounted troopers stretched their limbs during the halt, she remained on her pony talking to one and another.
“Gray Fox heap savvy,” said she to Mr. Long. “He heap get up in the mornin’.”
“Thet’s what he does, Sarah.”
“Yas. No give soldier hy-as Sunday” (a holiday).
“No, no,” assented Mr. Long. “Gray Fox go téh-téh” (trot).
“Maybe he catch E-egante, maybe put him in skookum-house (prison)?” suggested Sarah.
“Oh no! Lor’! E-egante good Injun. White Father he feed him. Give him heap clothes,” said Mr. Long.
“A—h!” drawled Sarah, dubiously, and rode by herself.
“You’ll need watchin’,” muttered Jack Long.
The trumpet sounded, the troopers swung into their saddles, and the line of march was taken up as before, Crook at the head of the column, his ragged fur collar turned up, his corduroys stuffed inside a wrinkled pair of boots, the shot-gun balanced across his saddle, and nothing to reveal that he was any one in particular, unless you saw his face. As the morning grew bright, and empty, silent Idaho glistened under the clear blue, the General talked a little to Captain Glynn.
“E-egante will have crossed Snake River, I think,” said he. “I shall try to do that to-day; but we must be easy on those horses of yours. We ought to be able to find these Indians in three days.”
“If I were a lusty young chief,” said Glynn, “I should think it pretty tough to be put on a reservation for dipping a couple of kittens in the molasses.”
“So should I, captain. But next time he might dip Mrs. Dailey. And I’m not sure he didn’t have a hand in more serious work. Didn’t you run across his tracks anywhere this summer?”
“No, sir. He was over on the Des Chutes.”
“Did you hear what he was doing?”
“Having rows about fish and game with those Warm Spring Indians on the west side of the Des Chutes.”
“They’re always poaching on each other. There’s bad blood between E-egante and Uma-Pine.”
“Uma-Pine’s friendly, sir, isn’t he?”
“Well, that’s a question,” said Crook. “But there’s no question about this E-egante and his Pah-Utes. We’ve got to catch him. I’m sorry for him. He doesn’t see why he shouldn’t hunt anywhere as his fathers did. I shouldn’t see that either.”
“How strong is this band reported, sir?”
“I’ve heard nothing I can set reliance upon,” said Crook, instinctively levelling his shot-gun at a big bird that rose; then he replaced the piece across his saddle and was silent. Now Captain Glynn had heard there were three hundred Indians with E-egante, which was a larger number than he had been in the habit of attacking with forty men. But he felt discreet about volunteering any information to the General after last night’s exhibition of what the General knew. Crook partly answered what was in Glynn’s mind. “This is the only available force I have,” said he. “We must do what we can with it. You’ve found out by this time, captain, that rapidity in following Indians up often works well. They have made up their minds—that is, if I know them—that we’re going to loaf inside Boisé Barracks until the hard weather lets up.”
Captain Glynn had thought so too, but he did not mention this, and the General continued. “I find that most people entertained this notion,” he said, “and I’m glad they did, for it will help my first operations very materially.”
The captain agreed that there was nothing like a false impression for assisting the efficacy of military movements, and presently the General asked him to command a halt. It was high noon, and the sun gleamed on the brass trumpet as the long note blew. Again the musical strain sounded on the cold, bright stillness, and the double line of twenty legs swung in a simultaneous arc over the horses’ backs as the men dismounted.
“We’ll noon here,” said the General; and while the cook broke the ice on Boisé River to fill his kettles, Crook went back to the mules to see how the sore backs were standing the march. “How d’ye do, Jack Long?” said he. “Your stock is travelling pretty well, I see. They’re loaded with thirty days’ rations, but I trust we’re not going to need it all.”
“Mwell, General, I don’t specially kyeer meself ’bout eatin’ the hull outfit.” Mr. Long showed his respect for the General by never swearing in his presence.
“I see you haven’t forgotten how to pack,” Crook said to him. “Can we make Snake River to-day, Jack?”
“That’ll be forty miles, General. The days are pretty short.”
“What are you feeding to the animals?” Crook inquired.
“Why, General,youknow jest ’s well ’s me,” said Jack, grinning.
“I suppose I do if you say so, Jack. Ten pounds first ten days, five pounds next ten, and you’re out of grain for the next ten. Is that the way still?”
“Thet’s the way, General, on these yere thirty-day affairs.”
Through all this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now returned to Captain Glynn and shared his mess-box.
They made Snake River. Crook knew better than Long what the animals could do. And next day they crossed, again by starlight, turned for a little way up the Owyhee, decided that E-egante had not gone that road, trailed up the bluffs and ledges from the Snake Valley on to the barren height of land, and made for the Malheur River, finding the eight hoofs of two deer lying in a melted place where a fire had been. Mr. Dailey had insisted that at least fifty Indians had drunk his liniment and trifled with his cats. Indeed, at times during his talk with General Crook the old gentleman had been sure there were a hundred. If this were their trail which the command had now struck, there may possibly have been eight. It was quite evident that the chief had not taken any three hundred warriors upon that visit, if he had that number anywhere. So the column went up the Malheur main stream through the sage-brush and the gray weather (it was still cold, but no sun any more these last two days), and, coming to the North Fork, turned up towards a spur of the mountains and Castle Rock. The water ran smooth black between its edging of ice, thick, white, and crusted like slabs of cocoanut candy, and there in the hollow of a bend they came suddenly upon what they sought.
Stems of smoke, faint and blue, spindled up from a blurred acre of willow thicket, dense, tall as two men, a netted brown and yellow mesh of twigs and stiff wintry rods. Out from the level of their close, nature-woven tops rose at distances the straight, slight bluesmoke-lines, marking each the position of some invisible lodge. The whole acre was a bottom ploughed at some former time by a wash-out, and the troops looked down on it from the edge of the higher ground, silent in the quiet, gray afternoon, the empty sage-brush territory stretching a short way to fluted hills that were white below and blackened with pines above.
THE CHARGETHE CHARGE
The General, taking a rough chance as he often did, sent ground scouts forward and ordered a charge instantly, to catch the savages unready; and the stiff rods snapped and tangled between the beating hoofs. The horses plunged at the elastic edges of this excellent fortress, sometimes half lifted as a bent willow levered up against their bellies, and the forward-tilting men fended their faces from the whipping twigs. They could not wedge a man’s length into that pliant labyrinth, and the General called them out. They rallied among the sage-brush above, Crook’s cheeks and many others painted with purple lines of blood, hardened already and cracking like enamel. The baffled troopers glared at the thicket. Not a sign nor a sound came from in there. The willows, with the gentle tints of winter veiling their misty twigs, looked serene and even innocent, fitted to harbor birds—not birds of prey—and the quiet smoke threaded upwards through the air. Of course the liniment-drinkers must have heard the noise.
“What do you suppose they’re doing?” inquired Glynn.
“Looking at us,” said Crook.
“I wish we could return the compliment,” said the captain.
Crook pointed. Had any wind been blowing, what the General saw would have been less worth watching.Two willow branches shook, making a vanishing ripple on the smooth surface of the tree-tops. The pack-train was just coming in sight over the rise, and Crook immediately sent an orderly with some message. More willow branches shivered an instant and were still; then, while the General and the captain sat on their horses and watched, the thicket gave up its secret to them; for, as little light gusts coming abreast over a lake travel and touch the water, so in different spots the level maze of twigs was stirred; and if the eye fastened upon any one of these it could have been seen to come out from the centre towards the edge, successive twigs moving, as the tops of long grass tremble and mark the progress of a snake. During a short while this increased greatly, the whole thicket moving with innumerable tracks. Then everything ceased, with the blue wands of smoke rising always into the quiet afternoon.
“Can you see ’em?” said Glynn.
“Not a bit. Did you happen to hear any one give an estimate of this band?”
Glynn mentioned his tale of the three hundred.
It was not new to the General, but he remarked now that it must be pretty nearly correct; and his eye turned a moment upon his forty troopers waiting there, grim and humorous; for they knew that the thicket was looking at them, and it amused their American minds to wonder what the Old Man was going to do about it.
“It’s his bet, and he holds poor cards,” murmured Specimen Jones; and the neighbors grinned.
And here the Old Man continued the play that he had begun when he sent the orderly to the pack-train. That part of the command had halted in consequence,disposed itself in an easy-going way, half in, half out of sight on the ridge, and men and mules looked entirely careless. Glynn wondered; but no one ever asked the General questions, in spite of his amiable voice and countenance. He now sent for Sarah the squaw.
“You tell E-egante,” he said, “that I am not going to fight with his people unless his people make me. I am not going to do them any harm, and I wish to be their friend. The White Father has sent me. Ask E-egante if he has heard of Gray Fox. Tell him Gray Fox wishes E-egante and all his people to be ready to go with him to-morrow at nine o’clock.”
And Sarah, standing on the frozen bank, pulled her green shawl closer, and shouted her message faithfully to the willows. Nothing moved or showed, and Crook, riding up to the squaw, held his hand up as a further sign to the flag of peace that had been raised already. “Say that I am Gray Fox,” said he.
On that there was a moving in the bushes farther along, and, going opposite that place with the squaw, Crook and Glynn saw a narrow entrance across which some few branches reached that were now spread aside for three figures to stand there.
“E-egante!” said Sarah, eagerly. “See him big man!” she added to Crook, pointing. A tall and splendid buck, gleaming with colors, and rich with fringe and buckskin, watched them. He seemed to look at Sarah, too. She, being ordered, repeated what she had said; but the chief did not answer.
“He is counting our strength,” said Glynn.
“He’s done that some time ago,” said Crook. “Tell E-egante,” he continued to the squaw, “that I will not send for more soldiers than he sees here. I donot wish anything but peace unless he wishes otherwise.”
Sarah’s musical voice sounded again from the bank, and E-egante watched her intently till she was finished. This time he replied at some length. He and his people had not done any harm. He had heard of Gray Fox often. All his people knew Gray Fox was a good man and would not make trouble. There were some flies that stung a man sitting in his house, when he had not hurt them. Gray Fox would not hurt any one till their hand was raised against him first. E-egante and his people had wondered why the horses made so much noise just now. He and his people would come to-morrow with Gray Fox.
And then he went inside the thicket again, and the willows looked as innocent as ever. Crook and the captain rode away.
“My speech was just a little weak coming on top of a charge of cavalry,” the General admitted. “And that fellow put his finger right on the place. I’ll give you my notion, captain. If I had said we had more soldiers behind the hill, like as not this squaw of ours would have told him I lied; she’s an uncertain quantity, I find. But I told him the exact truth—that I had no more—and he won’t believe it, and that’s what I want.”
So Glynn understood. The pack-train had been halted in a purposely exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command. Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men’s village, and the troops went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze ostentatiously unprotected, so that the peoplein the thicket should have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook’s tent, and Sergeant Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a little occasional breeze, that passed like a chill hand laid a moment on the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar, because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command of a battalion, they held the attitude of school-boys to a master—the instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and Cumnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they stood at the fire, but away from him.
“How do you like this compared with barracks?” the sergeant asked, conversationally.
“It’s all right,” said Jones.
“Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn’t enjoy it much myself. Sit down and get warm, won’t you?”
The men came and stood awkwardly. “I ’ain’t never found any excitement in getting up early,” said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted, and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones kicked the log into better position. “But this affair’s gettin’ inter-esting,” he added.
“Don’t you smoke?” Keyser inquired of Cumnor, and tossed him his tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.
“Arizona’s the most outrageous outrage in the United States,” declared Jones.
“Why did you stay there six years, then?” said Cumnor.
“Guess I’d been there yet but for you comin’ along and us both enlistin’ that crazy way. Idaho’s better. Only,” said Jones, thoughtfully, “coming to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it’s a wonder a man don’t just split like a glass chimbly.”
The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.
“How! how!” said a strange, propitiating voice.
It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself. They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and “How! how!” he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who remained seated.
“Good-evening,” said the sergeant.
“Christmas is coming,” said Jones, amicably.
“How! how!” said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp and shaken his head; but the Indian’s nerves were evidently on the sharpest strain.
“Sit down!” said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started suspiciously.
“Warm here!” Jones called to him, and Cumnor showed his pipe.
The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount, looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.
“He’s a jim-dandy,” said Cumnor.
“You bet the girls think so,” said Jones. “He gets his pick. For you’re a fighter too, ain’t y’u?” he added, to E-egante.
“How! how!” said that personage, looking at them with grave affability from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the sergeant’s pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures,the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp, crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview. Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances. The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.
By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten o’clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race she served. She hardly knew what was in her own mind. Then it became eleven, and Crook was tired of it, and made the capping move in his bluff. He gave the orders himself.
“Sergeant.”
Keyser saluted.
“You will detail eight men to go with you into the Indian camp. The men are to carry pistols under their overcoats, and no other arms. You will tell the Indians to come out. Repeat what I said to them last night. Make it short. I’ll give them ten minutes. If they don’t come by then a shot will be fired out here. At that signal you will remain in there and blaze away at the Indians.”
So Keyser picked his men.
The thirty-one remaining troopers stopped joking, and watched the squad of nine and the interpreter file down the bank to visit the three hundred. The dingy overcoats and the bright green shawl passed into the thicket, and the General looked at his watch. Along the bend of the stream clear noises tinkled from the water and the ice.
“What are they up to?” whispered a teamster to Jack Long. Long’s face was stern, but the teamster’s was chalky and tight drawn. “Say,” he repeated, insistently, “what are we going to do?”
“We’re to wait,” Long whispered back, “till nothin’ happens, and then th’ Ole Man’ll fire a gun and signal them boys to shoot in there.”
“Oh, it’s to be waitin’?” said the teamster. He fastened his eyes on the thicket, and his lips grew bloodless. The running river sounded more plainly. “—— —— it!” cried the man, desperately, “let’s start the fun, then.” He whipped out his pistol, and Jack Long had just time to seize him and stop a false signal.
“Why, you must be skeered,” said Long. “I’ve a mind to beat yer skull in.”
“Waitin’s so awful,” whimpered the man. “I wisht I was along with them in there.”
Jack gave him back his revolver. “There,” said he; “ye’re not skeered, I see. Waitin’ ain’t nice.”
The eight troopers with Keyser were not having anything like so distasteful a time. “Jock,” said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, as they followed the sergeant into the willows and began to come among the lodges and striped savages, “you and me has saw Injuns before, Jock.”
“And we’ll do it again,” said Cumnor.
Keyser looked at his watch: Four minutes gone. “Jones,” said he, “you patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It’s a big one—all brothers.” Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the tangle, fleeting visions of yellow and red through the quiet-colored twigs. Others squatted stoically, doing nothing. A few had guns, but most used arrows, and had these stacked beside them where they squatted. Keyser singled out a somewhat central figure—Fur Cap was his name—as his starting-point if the signal should sound. It must sound now in a second or two. He would not look at his watch lest it should hamper him. Fur Cap sat by a pile of arrows, with a gun across his knees besides. Keyser calculated that by standing close to him as he was, his boot would catch the Indian under the chin just right, and save one cartridge. Not a red man spoke, but Sarah the squaw dutifully speechified in a central place where paths met near Keyser and Fur Cap. Her voice was persuasive and warning. Some of thesavages moved up and felt Keyser’s overcoat. They fingered the hard bulge of the pistol underneath, and passed on, laughing, to the next soldier’s coat, while Sarah did not cease to harangue. The tall, stately man of last night appeared. His full dark eye met Sarah’s, and the woman’s voice faltered and her breathing grew troubled as she gazed at him. Once more Keyser looked at his watch: Seven minutes. E-egante noticed Sarah’s emotion, and his face showed that her face pleased him. He spoke in a deep voice to Fur Cap, stretching a fringed arm out towards the hill with a royal gesture, at which Fur Cap rose.
“He will come, he will come!” said the squaw, running to Keyser. “They all come now. Do not shoot.”
“Let them show outside, then,” thundered Keyser, “or it’s too late. If that gun goes before I can tell my men—”
He broke off and rushed to the entrance. There were skirmishers deploying from three points, and Crook was raising his hand slowly. There was a pistol in it. “General! General!” Keyser shouted, waving both hands, “No!” Behind him came E-egante, with Sarah, talking in low tones, and Fur Cap came too.
“HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN”“HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN”
The General saw, and did not give the signal. The sight of the skirmishers hastened E-egante’s mind. He spoke in a loud voice, and at once his warriors began to emerge from the willows obediently. Crook’s bluff was succeeding. The Indians in waiting after nine were attempting a little bluff of their own; but the unprecedented visit of nine men appeared to them so dauntless that all notion of resistance left them. They were sure Gray Fox had a large army. Andthey came, and kept coming, and the place became full of them. The troopers had all they could do to form an escort and keep up the delusion, but by degrees order began, and the column was forming. Riding along the edge of the willows came E-egante, gay in his blankets, and saying, “How! how!” to Keyser, the only man at all near him. The pony ambled, and sidled, paused, trotted a little, and Keyser was beginning to wonder, when all at once a woman in a green shawl sprang from the thicket, leaped behind the chief, and the pony flashed by and away, round the curve. Keyser had lifted his carbine, but forbore; for he hesitated to kill the woman. Once more the two appeared, diminutive and scurrying, the green shawl bright against the hill-side they climbed. Sarah had been willing to take her chances of death with her hero, and now she vanished with him among his mountains, returning to her kind, and leaving her wedded white man and half-breeds forever.
“I don’t feel so mad as I ought,” said Specimen Jones.
Crook laughed to Glynn about it. “We’ve got a big balance of ’em,” he said, “if we can get ’em all to Boisé. They’ll probably roast me in the East.” And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington, and explained to each other how they would have done it.
And so the General’s bluff partly failed. E-egante kept his freedom, “all along o’ thet yere pizen squaw,” as Mr. Long judiciously remarked. It was not until many years after that the chief’s destiny overtookhim; and concerning that, things both curious and sad could be told.[A]
After cutting the Gazelle’s throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent, secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was the other man—the unknown one. There were his boot-prints this fine morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.
The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn’s relations with the Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn’s “rusted mustache had livened up; same ez flow’rs ye’ve kerried a long ways when yer girl puts ’em in a pitcher o’ water.” Being the sentiment of a placer miner, the lover’s feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the Gazelle’s that was purely official; it was forhim that she personally cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits—gold, coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust—that her hall of entertainment earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton’ needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once, on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to the right place. A woman’s name and an address at San Antonio were certainly scrawled on the parcel. The faithful Drylyn waited till the stage came in, and handed over his treasure to the messenger, who gave him one amazed look that he did not notice. He ought to have seen that young man awhile afterwards, the package torn open, a bag of dust on his knee, laughing almost to tears over a letter he had found with the gold inside the wrapping. But Drylyn was on the road up to Salvation Gap at that time. The shot-gun messenger was twenty-three; Drylyn was forty-five. Gazelles are apt to do this sort of thing. After all, though, it was silly, just for the sake of a laugh, to let the old lover learn the face of his secret rival. It was one of those early unimagined nails people sometimes drive in their own coffins. An ancient series of events followed: continued abject faith and passion on the miner’s part; continued presentsof dust from him to the lady; on her part continued trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn’s first sickening dawn of doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to the Gap come out of the Gazelle’s tent so early in the morning; the instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever, calculating wild beast. So now her throat was cut, and she was good and dead. He had managed well. The whole game had shown instantly like a picture on his brain, complete at a stroke, with every move clear. He had let the man go down the hill—just for the present. The camp had got up, eaten its breakfast, and gone out to the ditches, Drylyn along with the rest. Owing to its situation, neighbors could not see him presently leave his claim and walk back quickly to the Gap at an hour when the dance-hall was likely to be lonely. He had ready what to say if the other women should be there; but they were away at the creek below, washing, and the luxurious, unsuspecting Gazelle was in bed in her own tent, not yet disturbed. The quiet wild beast walked through the deserted front entrance of the hall in the most natural manner, and so behind among the empty bottles, and along the plank into the tent; then, after a while, out again. She would never be disturbed now, and the wild beast was back at his claim, knee-deep, and busy among the digging and the wetness, in another pair of overalls just like the ones that were now under some stones at the bottom of a mud-puddle. And then one very bad long scream came up to the ditches, and Drylyn knew the women had returned from their washing.
He raised his head mechanically to listen. He had never been a bad man; had never wished to hurt anybody in his life before that he could remember; but as he pondered upon it in his slow, sure brain, he knew that he was glad he had done this, and was going to do more. He was going to follow those tracks pretty soon, and finish the whole job with his own hand. They had fooled him, and had taken trouble to do it; gone out of their way, made game of him to the quick; and when he remembered, for the twentieth time this morning, that day he had carried the package of gold-dust—some of it very likely his own—to the smooth-faced messenger at Folsom, Drylyn’s stolid body trembled from head to foot, and he spoke blind, inarticulate words.
But down below there the screams were sounding. A brother miner came running by. Drylyn realized that he ought to be running too, of course, and so he ran. All the men were running from their various scattered claims, and Salvation Gap grew noisy and full of people at once. There was the sheriff also, come up last evening on the track of some stage-robbers, and quite opportune for this, he thought. He liked things to be done legally. The turmoil of execration and fierce curiosity thrashed about for the right man to pitch on for this crime. The murdered woman had been so good company, so hearty a wit, such a robust songstress, so tireless a dancer, so thoroughly everybody’s friend, that it was inconceivable to the mind of Salvation Gap that anybody there had done it. The women were crying and wringing their hands—the Gazelle had been good to them too; the men were talking and cursing, all but Drylyn there among them, serious and strange-looking; so silentthat the sheriff eyed him once or twice, though he knew nothing of the miner’s infatuation. And then some woman shrieked out the name of Drylyn, and the crowd had him gripped in a second, to let him go the next, laughing at the preposterous idea. Saying nothing? Of course he didn’t feel like talking. To be sure he looked dazed. It was hard luck on him. They told the sheriff about him and the Gazelle. They explained that Drylyn was “sort of loony, anyway,” and the sheriff said, “Oh!” and began to wonder and surmise in this half-minute they had been now gathered, when suddenly the inevitable boot-prints behind the tent down the hill were found. The shout of discovery startled Drylyn as genuinely as if he had never known, and he joined the wild rush of people to the hill. Nor was this acting. The violence he had set going, and in which he swam like a straw, made him forget, or for the moment drift away from, his arranged thoughts, and the tracks on the hill had gone clean out of his head. He was become a mere blank spectator in the storm, incapable of calculation. His own handiwork had stunned him, for he had not foreseen that consequences were going to rise and burst like this. The next thing he knew he was in a pursuit, with pine-trees passing, and the hurrying sheriff remarking to the band that he proposed to maintain order. Drylyn heard his neighbor, a true Californian, whose words were lightest when his purpose was most serious, telling the sheriff that order was certainly Heaven’s first law, and an elegant thing anywhere. But the anxious officer made no retort in kind, and only said that irregularities were damaging to the county’s good name, and would keep settlers from moving in. So the neighbor turned to Drylynand asked him when he was intending to wake up, as sleep-walking was considered to be unhealthy. Drylyn gave a queer, almost wistful, smile, and so they went along; the chatty neighbor spoke low to another man, and said he had never sized up the true state of Drylyn’s feeling for the Gazelle, and that the sheriff might persuade some people to keep regular, when they found the man they were hunting, but he doubted if the sheriff would be persuading enough for Drylyn. They came out on a road, and the sleep-walker recognized a rock and knew how far they had gone, and that this was the stage-road between Folsom and Surprise Springs. They followed the road, and round a bend came on the man. He had been taking it easily, being in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he recognized the sheriff’s voice, telling him it would go better with him if he did not try to kill any more people, he was greatly relieved that it was not highwaymen after him and his little gold, and he put up his pistol and waited for them, smiling, secure in his identity; and when they drew nearer he asked them how many people he had killed already. They came up and caught him and found the gold in a moment, ripping it from his pocket; and the yell they gave at that stopped his smiling entirely. When he found himself in irons and hurried along, he beganto explain that there was some mistake, and was told by the chatty neighbor that maybe killing a woman was always a mistake, certainly one this time. As they walked him among them they gave small notice to his growing fright and bewilderment, but when he appealed to the sheriff on the score of old acquaintanceship, and pitifully begged to know what they supposed he had done, the miners laughed curiously. That brought his entreating back to them, and he assured them, looking in their faces, that he truly did need to be told why they wanted him. So they held up the gold and asked him whose that had been, and he made a wretched hesitation in answering. If anything was needed to clinch their certainty, that did. They could not know that the young successful lover had recognized Drylyn’s strange face, and did not want to tell the truth before him, and hence was telling an unskilful lie instead. A rattle of wheels sounded among the pines ahead, and the stage came up and stopped. Only the driver and a friend were on it, and both of them knew the shot-gun messenger and the sheriff, and they asked in some astonishment what the trouble was. It had been stage-robbers the sheriff had started after, the driver thought. And—as he commented in friendly tones—to turn up with Wells and Fargo’s messenger was the neatest practical joke that had occurred in the county for some time. The always serious and anxious sheriff told the driver the accusation, and it was a genuine cry of horror that the young lover gave at hearing the truth at last, and at feeling the ghastly chain of probability that had wound itself about him.
The sheriff wondered if there were a true ring in the man’s voice. It certainly sounded so. He was talkingwith rapid agony, and it was the whole true story that was coming out now. But the chatty neighbor nudged another neighbor at the new explanation about the gold-dust. That there was no great quantity of it, after all, weighed little against this double accounting for one simple fact; moreover, the new version did not do the messenger credit in the estimation of the miners, but gave them a still worse opinion of him. It is scarcely fair to disbelieve what a man says he did, and at the same time despise him for having done it. Miners, however, are rational rather than logical; while the listening sheriff grew more determined there should be a proper trial, the deputation from the Gap made up its mind more inexorably the other way. It had even been in the miners’ heads to finish the business here on the Folsom road, and get home for supper; pine-trees were handy, and there was rope in the stage. They were not much moved by the sheriff’s plea that something further might have turned up at the Gap; but at the driver’s more forcible suggestion that the Gap would feel disappointed at being left out, they consented to take the man back there. Drylyn never offered any opinion, or spoke at all. It was not necessary that he should, and they forgot about him. It was time to be getting along, they said. What was the good in standing in the road here? They nodded good-day to the stage-driver, and took themselves and the prisoner into the pines. Once the sheriff had looked at the driver and his friend perched on the halted stage, but he immediately saw too much risk in his half-formed notion of an alliance with them to gallop off with the prisoner; his part must come later, if at all.