CHAPTER VII
THE NEW WORLD
Franklin crossed the Missouri River, that dividing stream known to a generation of Western men simply as "the River," and acknowledged as the boundary between the old and the new, the known and the untried. He passed on through well-settled farming regions, dotted with prosperous towns. He moved still with the rolling wheels over a country which showed only here and there the smoke of a rancher's home. Not even yet did the daring flight of the railway cease. It came into a land wide, unbounded, apparently untracked by man, and seemingly set beyond the limit of man's wanderings. Far out in the heart of this great gray wilderness lay the track-end of this railroad pushing across the continent. When Franklin descended from the rude train he needed no one to tell him he had come to Ellisville. He was at the limit, the edge, the boundary! "Well, friend," said the fireman, who was oiling the engine as he passed, and who grinned amiably as he spoke, "you're sure at the front now."
Franklin had not advised his friend Battersleigh of his intended arrival, but as he looked about him he saw that he had little need for any guide.
Ellisville as an actual town did not yet exist. A rude shanty or two and a line of tents indicated the course of a coming street. The two hotels mentioned by Battersleigh were easily recognised, and indeed not to be evaded. Out of the middle of this vast, treeless plain the great stone hotel arose, with no visible excuse or palliation, a deliberate affront to the solitude which lay far and wide about. Even less within the bounds of reason appeared the wooden building which Franklin learned was the Cottage. "Surely," thought he, "if the railroad company had been mad in building the stone hotel, much worse must have been the man who erected this rambling wooden structure, hoping for customers who must come a thousand miles." Yet was this latter mad act justified before his very eyes. The customers had come. More than forty cow ponies stood in the Cottage corral or in the street near by. Afar there swelled the sound of morning revelries.
Franklin wanted breakfast, and instinctively turned toward the stone hotel at the depot, where he learned were quartered the engineers and contractors on the railroad work. He seated himself at one of the many tables in the vast, barren dining room. Half the attendants were haughty young women, and half rather slovenly young men.
Franklin fell under the care of one of the latter, who greeted him with something of the affection of an old acquaintance. Coming to the side of his chair, and throwing an arm carelessly across Franklin's shoulder, the waiter asked in a confidential tone of voice, "Well, Cap, which'll you have, hump or tongue?" Whereby Franklin discovered that he was now upon the buffalo range, and also at the verge of a new etiquette.
After breakfast Franklin paused for a moment at the hotel office, almost as large and empty as the dining room. Different men now and then came and passed him by, each seeming to have some business of his own. The clerk at the hotel asked him if he wanted to locate some land. Still another stranger, a florid and loosely clad young man with a mild blue eye, approached him and held some converse.
"Mornin', friend," said the young man.
"Good-morning," said Franklin.
"I allow you're just in on the front," said the other.
"Yes," said Franklin, "I came on the last train."
"Stay long?"
"Well, as to that," said Franklin, "I hardly know, but I shall look around a bit."
"I didn't know but maybe you'd like to go south o' here, to Plum Centre.
I run the stage line down there, about forty-six miles, twict a week.
That's my livery barn over there—second wooden building in the town.
Sam's my name; Sam Poston."
"I never heard of Plum Centre," said Franklin, with some amusement. "Is it as large a place as this?"
"Oh, no," said Sam hurriedly, "not nigh as large as this, but it's a good town, all right. Lots on the main street there sold for three hundred dollars last week. You see, old man Plum has got it figgered out that his town is right in the middle of the United States, ary way you measure it. We claim the same thing for Ellisville, and there you are. We've got the railroad, and they've got my stage line. There can't no one tell yet which is goin' to get the bulge on the other. If you want to go down there, come over and I'll fix you up."
Franklin replied that he would be glad to do so in case he had the need, and was about to turn away. He was interrupted by the other, who stopped him with an explosive "Say!"
"Yes," said Franklin.
"Did you notice that girl in the dining room, pony-built like, slick, black-haired, dark eyes—wears glasses? Say, that's the smoothest girl west of the river. She's waitin', in the hotel here, but say" (confidentially), "she taught school onct—yes, sir. You know, I'm gone on that girl the worst way. If you get a chanct to put in a word for me, you do it, won't you?"
Franklin was somewhat impressed with the swiftness of acquaintanceships and of general affairs in this new land, but he retained his own tactfulness and made polite assurances of aid should it become possible.
"I'd be mightily obliged," said his new-found friend. "Seems like I lose my nerve every time I try to say a word to that girl. Now, I plum forgot to ast you which way you was goin'. Do you want a team?"
"Thank you," said Franklin, "but I hardly think so. I want to find my friend Colonel Battersleigh, and I understand he lives not very far away."
"Oh, you mean old Batty. Yes, he lives just out south a little ways—Section No. 9, southeast quarter. I suppose you could walk."
"I believe I will walk, if you don't mind," said Franklin. "It seems very pleasant, and I am tired of riding."
"All right, so long," said Sam. "Don't you forgit what I told you about that Nora girl."
Franklin passed on in the direction which had been pointed out to him, looking about him at the strange, new country, in which he felt the proprietorship of early discovery. He drew in deep breaths of an air delightfully fresh, squaring his shoulders and throwing up his head instinctively as he strode forward. The sky was faultlessly clear. The prospect all about him, devoid as it was of variety, was none the less abundantly filling to the eye. Far as the eye could reach rolled an illimitable, tawny sea. The short, harsh grass near at hand he discovered to be dotted here and there with small, gay flowers. Back of him, as he turned his head, he saw a square of vivid green, which water had created as a garden spot of grass and flowers at the stone hotel. He did not find this green of civilization more consoling or inspiring than the natural colour of the wild land that lay before him. For the first time in his life he looked upon the great Plains, and for the first time felt their fascination. There came to him a subtle, strange exhilaration. A sensation of confidence, of certainty, arose in his heart. He trod as a conqueror upon a land new taken. All the earth seemed happy and care-free. A meadow lark was singing shrilly high up in the air; another lark answered, clanking contentedly from the grass, whence in the bright air its yellow breast showed brilliantly.
As Franklin was walking on, busy with the impressions of his new world, he became conscious of rapid hoof-beats coming up behind him, and turned to see a horseman careering across the open in his direction, with no apparent object in view beyond that of making all the noise possible to be made by a freckled-faced cowboy who had been up all night, but still had some vitality which needed vent.
"Eeeeee-yow-heeeeee!" yelled the cowboy, both spurring and reining his supple, cringing steed. "Eeeeeee-yip-yeeeee!" Thus vociferating, he rode straight at the footman, with apparently the deliberate wish to ride him down. He wist not that the latter had seen cavalry in his day, and was not easily to be disconcerted, and, finding that he failed to create a panic, he pulled up with the pony's nose almost over Franklin's shoulder.
"Hello, stranger," cried the rider, cheerfully; "where are you goin', this bright an' happy mornin'?"
Franklin was none too pleased at the method of introduction selected by this youth, but a look at his open and guileless face forbade the thought of offence. The cowboy sat his horse as though he was cognizant of no such creature beneath him. His hand was held high and wabbling as he bit off a chew from a large tobacco plug the while he jogged alongside.
Franklin made no immediate reply, and the cowboy resumed.
"Have a chaw?" he said affably, and looked surprised when Franklin thanked him but did not accept.
"Where's yore hoss, man?" asked the new-comer with concern. "Where you goin', headin' plum south, an' 'thout no hoss?"
"Oh," said Franklin, smiling, "I'm not going far; only over south a mile or so. I want to find a friend. Colonel Battersleigh. I think his place is only a mile or so from here."
"Sure," said the cowboy. "Old Batty—I know him. He taken up a quarter below here. Ain't got his shack up yet. But say, that's a full mile from yer. You ain't goin' to walk a mile, are you?"
"I've walked a good many thousand miles," said Franklin, "and I shouldn't wonder if I could get over this one."
"They's all kind of fools in the world," said the rider sagely, and with such calm conviction in his tone that again Franklin could not take offence. They progressed a time in silence.
"Say," said the cowboy, after a time—"say, I reckon I kin lick you."
"Do you think so?" said Franklin calmly, pulling up his shoulders and feeling no alarm.
"Shorely I do," said the other; "I reckon I kin lick you, er beat you shootin', er throw you down."
"Friend," said Franklin judicially, "I have a good many doubts about your being able to do all that. But before we take it up any further I would like to ask you something."
"Well, whut?"
"I'd just like to ask you what makes you tell me that, when I'm a perfect stranger to you, and when perhaps you may never see me again?"
"Well, now," said the cowboy, pushing back his hat and scratching his head thoughtfully, "blame if I know why, but I just 'lowed I could, sorter. An' I kin!"
"But why?"
"Say, you're the d——dest feller I ever did see. You got to have a reason fer everything on earth?" His tone became more truculent. "First place, 'f I didn't have no other reason, I kin lick ary man on earth that walks."
"Friend," said Franklin, "get down off that horse, and I'll give you a little wrestle to see who rides. What's your name, anyhow?"
"Whoa!" said the other. "Name's Curly." He was on the ground as he said this last, and throwing the bridle over the horse's head. The animal stood as though anchored. Curly cast his hat upon the ground and trod upon it in a sort of ecstasy of combat. He rushed at Franklin without argument or premeditation.
The latter had not attended country school for nothing. Stepping lightly aside, he caught his ready opponent as he passed, and, with one arm about his neck, gave him a specimen of the "hip-lock" which sent him in the air over his own shoulder. The cowboy came down much in a heap, but presently sat up, his hair somewhat rumpled and sandy. He rubbed his head and made sundry exclamations of surprise. "Huh!" said he. "Well, I'm d——d! Now, how you s'pose that happened? You kain't do that again," he said to Franklin, finally.
"Shouldn't wonder if I could," said Franklin, laughing.
"Look out fer me—I'm a-comin'!" cried Curly.
They met more fairly this time, and Franklin found that he had an antagonist of little skill in the game of wrestling, but of a surprising wiry, bodily strength. Time and again the cowboy writhed away from the hold, and came back again with the light of battle in his eye. It was only after several moments that he succumbed, this time to the insidious "grapevine." He fell so sharply that Franklin had difficulty in breaking free in order not to fall upon him. The cowboy lay prone for a moment, then got up and dusted off his hat.
"Mount, friend," said he, throwing the bridle back over the horse's neck without other word. "You done it fair!"
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Franklin, extending his hand. "We'll just both walk along together a way, if you don't mind. I'll get me a horse pretty soon. You see, I'm a new man here—just got in this morning, and I haven't had time to look around much yet. I thought I'd go out and meet my friend, and perhaps then we could talk over such things together."
"Shore," said Curly. "Why didn't you tell me? Say, ole Batty, he's crazy to ketch a whole lot o' hosses out'n a band o' wild hosses down to the Beaver Creek. He always a-wantin' me to help him ketch them hosses. Say, he's got a lot o' sassafiddity, somethin' like that, an' he says he's goin' to soak some corn in that stuff an' set it out fer hosses. Says it'll make 'em loco, so'st you kin go right up an' rope 'em. Now, ain't that the d——dest fool thing yet? Say, some o' these pilgrims that comes out here ain't got sense enough to last over night."
"Battersleigh is fond of horses," said Franklin, "and he's a rider, too."
"That's so," admitted Curly. "He kin ride. You orter see him when he gits his full outfit on, sword an' pistol by his side, uh-huh!"
"He has a horse, then?"
"Has a boss? Has a hoss—has—what? Why, o' course he has a boss. Is there anybody that ain't got a hoss?"
"Well, I haven't," said Franklin.
"You got this one," said Curly.
"How?" said Frank, puzzled.
"Why, you won him."
"Oh, pshaw!" said Franklin. "Nonsense! I wasn't wrestling for your horse, only for a ride. Besides, I didn't have any horse put up against yours. I couldn't lose anything."
"That's so," said Curly. "I hadn't thought of that. Say, you seem like a white sort o' feller. Tell you what I'll just do with you. O' course, I was thinkin' you'd win the whole outfit, saddle an' all. I think a heap o' my saddle, an' long's you ain't got no saddle yet that you have got used to, like, it don't make much difference to you if you get another saddle. But you just take this here hoss along. No, that's all right. I kin git me another back to the corral, just as good as this one. Jim Parsons, feller on the big bunch o' cows that come up from the San Marcos this spring, why, he got killed night before last. I'll just take one o' his hosses, I reckon. I kin fix it so'st you kin git his saddle, if you take a notion to it."
Franklin looked twice to see if there was affectation in this calm statement, but was forced, with a certain horror, to believe that his new acquaintance spoke of this as a matter of fact, and as nothing startling. He had made no comment, when he was prevented from doing so by the exclamation of the cowboy, who pointed out ahead.
"There's Batty's place," said he, "an' there's Batty himself. Git up, quick; git up, an' ride in like a gentleman. It's bad luck to walk."
Franklin laughed, and, taking the reins, swung himself into the saddle with the ease of the cavalry mount, though with the old-fashioned grasp at the cantle, with the ends of the reins in his right hand.
"Well, that's a d——d funny way gittin' on top of a hoss," said Curly. "Are you 'fraid the saddle's goin' to git away from you? Better be 'fraid 'bout the hoss.—Git up, Bronch!"
He slapped the horse on the hip with his hat, and gave the latter a whirl in the air with a shrill "Whoooop-eee!" which was all that remained needful to set the horse off on a series of wild, stiff-legged plunges—the "bucking" of which Franklin had heard so much; a manoeuvre peculiar to the half-wild Western horses, and one which is at the first experience a desperately difficult one for even a skilful horseman to overcome. It perhaps did not occur to Curly that he was inflicting any hardship upon the newcomer, and perhaps he did not really anticipate what followed on the part either of the horse or its rider. Had Franklin not been a good rider, and accustomed to keeping his head while sitting half-broken mounts, he must have suffered almost instantaneous defeat in this sudden encounter. The horse threw his head down far between his fore legs at the start, and then went angling and zigzagging away over the hard ground in a wild career of humpbacked antics, which jarred Franklin to the marrow of his bones. The air became scintillant and luminously red. His head seemed filled with loose liquid, his spine turned into a column of mere gelatine. The thudding of the hoofs was so rapid and so punishing to his senses that for a moment he did not realize where he actually was. Yet with the sheer instinct of horsemanship he clung to the saddle in some fashion, until finally he was fairly forced to relax the muscular strain, and so by accident fell into the secret of the seat—loose, yielding, not tense and strung.
"Go it, go it—whooop-e-e-e!" cried Curly, somewhere out in a dark world. "Ee-eikee-hooo! Set him fair, pardner! Set him fair, now! Let go that leather! Ride him straight up! That's right!"
Franklin had small notion of Curly's locality, but he heard his voice, half taunting and half encouraging, and calling on all his pluck as he saw some hope of a successful issue, he resolved to ride it out if it lay within him so to do. He was well on with his resolution when he heard another voice, which he recognised clearly.
"Good boy, Ned," cried out this voice heartily, though likewise from some locality yet vague. "R-ride the divil to a finish, me boy! Git up his head, Ned! Git up his head! The murdering haythin' brute! Kill him! Ride him out!"
And ride him out Franklin did, perhaps as much by good fortune as by skill, though none but a shrewd horseman would have hoped to do this feat. Hurt and jarred, he yet kept upright, and at last he did get the horse's head up and saw the wild performance close as quickly as it had begun. The pony ceased his grunting and fell into a stiff trot, with little to indicate his hidden pyrotechnic quality. Franklin whirled him around and rode up to where Battersleigh and Curly had now joined. He was a bit pale, but he pulled himself together well before he reached them and dismounted with a good front of unconcern. Battersleigh grasped his hand in both his own and greeted him with a shower of welcomes and of compliments. Curly slapped him heartily upon the shoulders.
"You're all right, pardner," said he. "You're the d——dest best pilgrim that ever struck this place, an' I kin lick ary man that says differ'nt. He's yore horse now, shore."
"And how do ye do, Ned? God bless ye!" said Battersleigh a moment later, after things had become more tranquil, the horse now falling to cropping at the grass with a meekness of demeanour which suggested innocence or penitence, whichever the observer chose. "I'm glad to see ye; glad as ivver I was in all me life to see a livin' soul! Why didn't ye tell ye was coming and not come ridin' like a murderin' Cintaur—but ay, boy, ye're a rider—worthy the ould Forty-siventh—yis, more, I'll say ye might be a officer in the guards, or in the Rile Irish itself, b'gad, yes, sir!—Curly, ye divvil, what do ye mean by puttin' me friend on such a brute, him the first day in the land? And, Ned, how are ye goin' to like it here, me boy?"
Franklin wiped his forehead as he replied to Battersleigh's running fire of salutations.
"Well, Battersleigh," he said, "I must say I've been pretty busy ever since I got here, and so far as I can tell at this date, I'm much disposed to think this is a strange and rather rapid sort of country you've got out here."
"Best d——n pilgrim ever hit this rodeo!" repeated Curly, with conviction.
"Shut up, Curly, ye divvil!" said Battersleigh. "Come into the house, the both of you. It's but a poor house, but ye're welcome.—An' welcome ye are, too, Ned, me boy, to the New World."
CHAPTER VIII
THE BEGINNING
Franklin's foot took hold upon the soil of the new land. His soul reached out and laid hold upon the sky, the harsh flowers, the rasping wind. He gave, and he drank in. Thus grew the people of the West.
The effect upon different men of new and crude conditions is as various as the individuals themselves. To the dreamer, the theorist, the man who looks too far forward into the future or too far back into the past, the message of the environment may fall oppressively; whereas to the practical man, content to live in the present and to devise immediate remedies for immediate ills, it may come sweet as a challenge upon reserves of energy. The American frontier subsequent to the civil war was so vast, yet so rapid, in its motive that to the weak or the unready it was merely appalling. The task was that of creating an entire new world. So confronted, some sat down and wept, watching the fabric grow under the hands of others. Some were strong, but knew not how to apply their strength; others were strong but slothful. The man of initiative, of executive, of judgment and resource, was the one who later came to rule. There was no one class, either of rich or of poor, who supplied all these men. The man who had been poor in earlier life might set to work at once in bettering himself upon the frontier; and by his side, equally prosperous, might be one who in his earlier days had never needed to earn a dollar nor to thrash a fellow-man. Civilization at its later stages drives the man into a corner. In its beginning it summons this same man out of the corner and asks him to rely upon himself for the great and the small things of life, thus ultimately developing that sturdy citizen who knows the value of the axiom, "Ubi bene, ibi patria." The great deeds, the great dreams become possible for nation or for individual only through the constant performance of small deeds. "For it must be remembered that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments. The greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstructions and frequent interruptions."
Such philosophy was for Franklin unformulated. Care sat not on his heart. There were at first no problems in all the world for him. It was enough to feel this warm sun upon the cheek, to hear the sigh of the wind in the grasses, to note the nodding flowers and hear the larks busy with their joys. The stirring of primeval man was strong, that magnificent rebellion against bonds which has, after all, been the mainspring of all progress, however much the latter may be regulated by many intercurrent wheels. It was enough for Franklin to be alive. He stood straight, he breathed deep. This infection was in his blood.
"Think you, Ned, me boy," said Battersleigh, one day, as they stood at the tent door—"think you, this old gray world has been inhabited a million years, by billions of people, and yet here we have a chance to own a part of it, each for himself, here, at this last minute of the world's life! Do you mind that, what it means? Never you think a chance like that'll last forever. Yet here we are, before the law, and almost antedatin' the social ijee. It's the beginning man, it's the very beginnin' of things, where we're standin' here, this very blessed day of grace. It's Batty has travelled all his life, and seen the lands, but never did Batty live till now!"
"It's grand," murmured Franklin, half dreamily and unconsciously repeating the very words of his friend, as he had done before.
Yet Franklin was well bitten of the ambition germ. It would serve him to run only in the front rank. He was not content to dream. He saw the great things ahead, and the small things that lay between. In a week he was the guiding mind in the affairs of the odd partnership which now sprang between him and his friend. Battersleigh would have lived till autumn in his tent, but Franklin saw that the need of a house was immediate. He took counsel of Curly, the cowboy, who proved guardian and benefactor. Curly forthwith produced a workman, a giant Mexican, a half-witted mozo, who had followed the cow bands from the far Southwest, and who had hung about Curly's own place as a sort of menial, bound to do unquestioningly whatever Curly bade. This curious being, a very colossus of strength, was found to be possessed of a certain knowledge in building houses after the fashion of that land—that is to say, of sods and earthen unbaked bricks—and since under his master's direction he was not less serviceable than docile, it was not long before the "claim" of Battersleigh was adorned with a comfortable house fit for either winter or summer habitation. Franklin meantime selected the body of land upon which he proposed to make settlers' entry, this happily not far from his friend, and soon this too had its house—small, crude, brown, meagre, but not uncomforting to one who looked over the wide land and saw none better than his own. Then, little by little, they got precious coal from the railroad, this land having but scant fuel near at hand, and they built great stacks of the bois des vaches, that fuel which Nature left upon the plains until the railroads brought in coal and wood. Each man must, under the law, live upon his own land, but in practice this was no hardship. Each must of necessity cook for himself, sew for himself, rely upon himself for all those little comforts which some men miss so keenly, and which others so quickly learn to supply. To these two this was but comfortable campaigning.
There remained ever before the minds of the settlers the desirability of laying this land under tribute, of forcing it to yield a livelihood. Franklin had no wish to depart from his original plans. He looked to see all the ways of the civilization he had left behind come duly hither to search him out. He was not satisfied to abandon his law books for the saddle, but as yet there was no possibility of any practice in the law, though meantime one must live, however simply. It was all made easy. That wild Nature, which had erected rude barriers against the coming of the white man, had at her reluctant recession left behind the means by which the white man might prevail. Even in the "first year" the settler of the new West was able to make his living. He killed off the buffalo swiftly, but he killed them in numbers so desperately large that their bones lay in uncounted tons all over a desolated empire. First the hides and then the bones of the buffalo gave the settler his hold upon the land, which perhaps he could not else have won.
Franklin saw many wagons coming and unloading their cargoes of bleached bones at the side of the railroad tracks. The heap of bones grew vast, white, ghastly, formidable, higher than a house, more than a bowshot long. There was a market for all this back in that country which had conceived this road across the desert. Franklin put out a wagon at this industry, hauling in the fuel and the merchandise of the raw plains. He bought the grim product of others who were ready to sell and go out the earlier again. He betimes had out more than one wagon of his own; and Battersleigh, cavalryman, became Batty, scouter for bones, while Franklin remained at the market. It was Franklin who, bethinking himself of the commercial difference between hard black horn and soft, spongy bone, began the earliest shipments of the tips of the buffalo horns, which he employed a man to saw off and pack into sacks ready for the far-off button factories. Many tons of these tips alone he came to ship, such had been the incredible abundance and the incredible waste; and thus thriving upon an industry whose cause and whose possibility he deplored, he came to realize considerable sums and saw the question of subsistence pass rapidly into unconcern. Thus he had gone to work in his new and untried world with a direct and effective force. He dropped from him as a garment the customs and standards of the world he had left behind, and at once took his place as a factor in a new order of things.
Meantime the little town added building after building along its straggling street, each of these houses of a single story, with a large square of board front which projected deceptively high and wide, serving to cover from direct view the rather humiliating lack of importance in the actual building. These new edifices were for the most part used as business places, the sorts of commerce being but two—"general merchandise," which meant chiefly saddles and firearms, and that other industry of new lands which flaunts under such signboards as the Lone Star, the Happy Home, the Quiet Place, the Cowboy's Dream, and such descriptive nomenclature. Of fourteen business houses, nine were saloons, and all these were prosperous. Money was in the hands of all. The times had not yet come when a dollar seemed a valuable thing. Men were busy living, busy at exercising this vast opportunity of being prehistoric.
One by one, then in a body, as though struck by panic, the white tents of the railroad labourers vanished, passing on yet farther to the West, only the engineers remaining at Ellisville and prosecuting from the haven of the stone hotel the work of continuing the line. The place of the tents was taken by vast white-topped wagons, the creaking cook carts of the cattle trail, and the van of the less nomadic man. It was the beginning of the great cattle drive from the Southern to the Northern ranges, a strange, wild movement in American life which carried in its train a set of conditions as vivid and peculiar as they were transient. At Ellisville there was no ordered way of living. The frontier was yet but one vast camp. It was, as Battersleigh had said, the beginning of things.
Many of the white-topped wagons began to come from the East, not following the railroad, but travelling the trail of the older adventurers who had for a generation gone this way, and whose pathway the railroad took for its own. Some of these wagons passed still onward, uncontent. Others swerved and scattered over the country to the south and southwest, from which the Indian tribes had now been driven, and which appeared more tempting to the farming man than lands farther to the west and higher up that gradual and wonderful incline which reaches from the Missouri River to the Rockies. One by one, here and there, these new men selected their lands and made their first rude attempts at building for themselves the homes which they coveted and had come far to win.
Ellisville lay at an eddy in the Plains, and gathered toll of the strange driftwood which was then afloat. Though the chutes at the railway were busy, yet other herds of cattle passed Ellisville and wandered on north, crowding at the heels of the passing Indians, who now began to see their own cattle to be doomed. The main herd of the buffalo was now reported to be three or four days' drive from Ellisville, and the men who killed for the railroad camps uttered loud complaints. The skin-hunting still went on. Great wagons, loaded with parties of rough men, passed on out, bound for the inner haunts, where they might still find their prey. The wagons came creaking back loaded with bales of the shaggy brown robes, which gave the skin-hunters money with which to join the cowmen at the drinking places. Some of the skin-hunters, some of the railroad men, some of the cowmen, some of the home-seekers, remained in the eddy at Ellisville, this womanless beginning of a permanent society. Not sinless was this society at its incipiency. In any social atmosphere good and evil are necessary concomitants. Sinless men would form a community at best but perishable. Tolerance, submission, patriotism so called, brotherly love so named—all these things were to come later, as they have ever done in the development of communities, builded mainly upon the foundation of individual aggressiveness and individual centrifugence. Having arrived, we wave scented kerchiefs between us and the thought of such a beginning of our prosperity. Having become slaves, we scoff at the thought of a primitive, grand, and happy world, where each man was a master. Having lost touch of the earth, having lost sight of the sky, we opine there could have been small augur in a land where each man found joy in an earth and sky which to him seemed his own. There were those who knew that joy and who foresaw its passing, yet they were happy. Edward Franklin saw afar off the dim star of his ambition; yet for him, as for many another man in those days, it was enough to own this earthy this sky, to lie down under his own roof at night to untroubled dreams, to awake each morning to a day of hopeful toil.
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.