Brand, Max - 1925 Read online

  Beyond the Outposts

  Brand, Max

  There lay the caravan, a crumbled, blackened ruin. The story was told even by the smoldering remnants of the wagons. There had not been time to curl the train into a perfect circle. The danger struck too quickly after the first warning. While the rear wagons were hurrying up and while the front wagons were slowly turning back to make the circle, the charge struck home. Through the gap the screaming riders must have poured. After that there was no chance to make an organized defense. Ten men in good positions may keep off a thousand Indians for a time, at the least. But when it comes to scattering fight, man to man, it takes a rare good white man to beat an Indian when the latter is attacking with his first rush. At any rate, not a soul remained alive, and most of them had been burned beyond recognition. First the Indians had looted the wagons of all that was useful to them. Then they had thrown the bodies of the whites into the wagons and set them all on fire, trusting to the fire itself to wipe out the traces of their crime. But we, wandering slowly through that dreadful place, were able to identify a few of the bodies, and from every one the scalp had been ripped away. There were fifty-three dead men. Not a soul had escaped except the two of us.

  Contents

  Author’s Comment

  WILL DORSET'S RETURN

  TROUBLE IN THE SHACK

  YOUNG DORSET'S ESCAPE

  ADVENTURE

  HANDY WITH A COLT

  CHUCK MORRIS

  A BATTLE OF FISTS

  CHUCK FINDS A PAL

  PRAIRIE DANGERS

  RECKONING

  INTO THE RED MAN'S CAMP

  IN THE CAMP OF THE SIOUX

  A LAST STAND

  SITTING WOLF

  STANDING BEAR HEAPS HONORS

  RISING SUN, A SQUAW MAN

  BLACKBIRD GIVES HER ANSWER

  BALD EAGLE

  IN THE CAMP OF THE PAWNEES

  A RIFLE TEST

  WHITE SMOKE

  THE MIGHTY STALLION FALLS

  THE TEEPEE OF THE RISING SUN

  AT THE FORT

  LEW PLEADS FOR THE INDIAN GIRL

  ASSEMBLING AN ARMY

  SLAUGHTER

  ON BALD EAGLE'S TRAIL

  FACING CERTAIN DEATH

  BACK AMONG THE SIOUX

  THE HEIR OF RISING SUN

  CHUCK'S ULTIMATUM

  BLACK BEAR TALKS

  CHUCK AND LEW - ENEMIES

  About the Author

  Author’s Comment

  Books are queer things, mostly written by people who want to show how many ways they can tell a lie. Scratch a writer and you'll find a liar every time. As old Chief Standing Bear used to say: "A man cannot work in two ways. He must live by his hands or by his tongue. Talk is for squaws, my son."

  But every white man, including me, is half squaw, and that's why I'm writing this book. Partly, too, because a good many things I've done have been misunderstood. Everything that I put down here is fact, and I hope the doubters will come to me for the proofs. That includes you, Chuck Morris. All that I write is the truth and only half the truth, at that, because how can Indians and the prairie be packed into words?

  Now that I've said this, I suppose that I'd better start in the usual way.

  WILL DORSET'S RETURN

  When a man writes of his own life, he generally begins with the house in which he was born and goes back to the list of his ancestors - modestly, of course, and by a sort of inference. For instance, in furnishing the hall he cannot help mentioning that the clock was given to the family by his father's dear friend, the Duke of Abercrombie, or that the basket-hiked sword that hangs from the wall was won by his great-grandfather, Sir Ernest, at Colloden. He goes on in this way until the reader, unless he is a born fool, has to guess that there is the blue blood of an old nobility in the veins of the writer. I confess at once that my family never had a coat of arms. If it had, my grandfather, Tom Dorset, would have traded it for one dram of whiskey, and, for another dram, he would have thrown in the whole family tree. As for the house in which I was born, I cannot remember it, because to celebrate my birth there was such carrying on that the house caught fire and burned to a cinder. They carried me, squalling, I suppose, out of the room where I lay just as the ceiling began to smoke, and so I had my first sight of the open sky that I have loved so much from that day to this. My poor mother was taken out next, and she died the following day of the shock.

  My father decided the house must have been set on fire by our old enemies, the Connells. He was a silent man who did most of his talking with his hands, after the way of Standing Bear, the Sioux chief I would come to know. This time he simply took down the rifle from the wall and went out with his dog to find a Connell or two, just as another man might have started out to hunt coons. He was too lucky, you might say, because, when he found one, he found six, and all fighting men. He gave them warning and got behind a tree. Take it all in all, that was about as sizable a little battle as a man would care to mix into on a summer day. My father, Will Dorset, killed Jerry Connell first - then Peter and Jasper. After that the other three shot him to pieces and left him there for dead. The sheriff came along a little later and gathered him up.

  Of course, it was taken for granted that he would die, but he had a way of disappointing people. He got well, and then nobody knew what to do with him. He had killed three men, but, when the odds are six to one, you can't call it murder - at least not in Virginia. Everyone was puzzled by the case and, when the case was tried, the judge was no exception.

  It was hard to catch a Connell for testimony at that trial because they had three good reasons for wanting to see Will Dorset set free. And those three reasons were their three dead men. They didn't want Virginia law at all. They wanted to use Connell law on him, just as he had used Dorset law on their dead men. Besides, if he were set free, it would open up the entire feud and keep everyone amused for a long time. They could go after Uncle Abner. They could even go after me, because in a real hundred-per-cent feud age doesn't count. I was pretty small, but a life is a life. The Indians feel the same way about scalps, so I suppose that it's human nature. If Father were hanged or put in prison, that ended things.

  No one wanted to see Will Dorset hanged, and no jury would have called him guilty if it hadn't been for the judge. He said something had to be done, and he promised the jury that, if they would find Father guilty, he would see that Will Dorset didn't hang. They all said guilty after that, and the judge turned right around and sentenced him to life imprisonment! It was a mighty poor decision, as anybody can see, and that judge was so unpopular in Virginia afterward that he couldn't have been elected dog catcher in our county. However, that didn't prevent Father from going to prison, and it didn't help me, because it gave Uncle Abner Dorset a sort of whip hold over me. He could always tell me that I was bad by nature and bad by inheritance from my father who was rotting in jail. My Uncle Abner could do more harm with his tongue than any other man could do with a blacksnake whip.

  Not that I can claim that he was wrong, and that I was good. But I've noticed that there's usually something to be said on both sides of every question - even for Indians, in spite of the bloodthirsty fools who say that the only good Indians are the dead ones. Since I'm limited to the facts, I have to admit that I loved trouble from the time I could walk. I have an idea that most good boys are weaklings. I was strong. I had to be strong or else die young from the life that Uncle Abner made me live, because he started me in at a man's work when the plow handles were as high as my chin. It was rough work and hard work. Perhaps it made me a little smaller than I might have grown, but it kept me compact and tough and limber. From as early as I can remember, I have had more strength in my arms and hands than othe
r boys, or other men.

  Let me say right here that strength has nothing to do with bulk. I've never stood more than five feet and ten inches, and I've never weighed more than a hundred and sixty-five pounds, but I've never found a man who could put me down, not even Chuck Morris, of whom I guess you all have heard. I hope this doesn't sound like boasting, but you have to start with this understanding of me in order to appreciate all of the things that happened. And I attribute my strength entirely to the tremendous work that my uncle made me do. It would have killed most boys or wrecked them. But I was too mean to die. In addition to strength I had to have a quick eye and a quick foot because, when anything went wrong, Uncle Abner never asked questions. He simply came to me and threw the first thing that he put his hands on. Once it was an axe that cut a gash across my head. Once it was a big hunting knife that just missed me and clipped a little notch out of my right ear.

  Every time I touched that nick in my ear, I couldn't help remembering I led the life of the hunted around my home, and, therefore, it was my right to hunt others just as I was hunted. That was boy logic, even if it was bad logic. I started after the white boys in the neighborhood, naturally. Sometimes they won, and sometimes I won, until I was about fifteen and had my full weight together with a good deal of my settled strength. After that, things always went my way, and finally the fathers of the white boys called on Uncle Abner and told him that their sons would carry guns from that time on.

  I had to turn my attention to the Negroes. This was away back before the war, and perhaps some of you who live in the North and never understood Negroes and never will, might wonder that slaves would stand up to a white boy. They wouldn't, if the white boy was the son of some rich plantation owner. But I was out of blood, only a step or two above white trash. Those slave boys had to work almost as hard as I did, and they were as tough as leather. However, fire will bum through almost anything, and I was fire in those days. Eventually they never went out to play or hunt except in bands of five or six, and I found ways of plaguing even groups like that.

  Altogether, I have to admit that I was a thoroughly bad boy. About once a week Uncle Abner cornered me and gave me a hiding with his blacksnake whip. I used to fight back until he knocked me out. He was like my father - a giant of a man - and I still lacked a man's hardened strength.

  There were some pleasant times that had nothing to do with fighting. The best were the long winter evenings when Aunt Agnes taught me my lessons. She was a lean, withered woman with a long, skinny neck. Books used to fire her eye, and she managed to get me interested. I worked hard, partly because I felt that one way of getting free from Uncle Abner was to learn enough to fit myself for a better way of living. But I was never meant for a life indoors, and, even when the whole countryside was crusted over with snow, I found enough mischief outdoors to keep me busy.

  In the spring of my sixteenth year I felt that I was close to manhood and decided to run away, and I did. Uncle Abner, however, had no mind to give up a strong hand who worked on worse food than a slave could exist on and who never had to be paid. He caught me ten miles from home. We had a grand fight while it lasted, but he finished me with a blow from the butt end of his big whip. Then he tied my hands behind my back, tethered me to the pommel of his saddle, and drove me home like a horse. Every few steps that whip sang behind me and cracked across my shoulders. It was as long a ten miles as I ever walked. But I set my teeth and made up my mind the next time I would get away and leave no trace.

  That night I went to bed early, but on my heap of straw in the attic I couldn't sleep. The whip cuts across my back were too sore. I lay there, turning and twisting, until I heard Aunt Agnes go to bed. Uncle Abner was busy repairing a broken yoke, and he was still up when someone knocked at the front door. It opened, and a gust of wind sneaked up into the attic through the open trap door. Then I heard Uncle Abner shout out: "Will!"

  I heard a big voice answer: "Well, Abner, here I am!"

  "Are they after you?" asked Uncle Abner.

  "I suppose they are," said the big voice. "I'm not here for long. Only stopped off to see how the boy is comin' on."

  I knew it was my father. I knew he'd escaped from prison. And I was so excited that the cuts across my back stopped burning. I wriggled over on my stomach and looked down through the trap door, and I saw the biggest man I've ever laid eyes on, except Chuck Morris. He wasn't actually any taller than Uncle Abner, and I don't imagine that he weighed many pounds more, but bigness isn't in pounds. He looked like a man chopped out of raw rock. He sat by the fire with his big, ugly head dropped on one fist, and that fist looked strong enough to knock down an ox.

  TROUBLE IN THE SHACK

  It was like seeing a ghost turned into flesh and blood. I'd heard so much about Will Dorset and heard him put into the past tense so often I'd almost forgotten that he was still alive. Only at Christmas time Aunt Agnes always made up a package and sent it to him. The rest of the year he was dead. Now that I saw him before me, I could understand everything that I had wondered at before - why he had killed three men out of the six before the last of the six had been able to down him - and why people in that part of the country always used to say of a powerful man: "As strong as Will Dorset." He was the sort of man that one picks out of a thousand - or a million.

  "Now where's it to end?" asked Abner, standing up and looking down in a helpless way at my father.

  "Get me some food," commanded my father. "I haven't had a bite for forty-eight hours."

  One could believe it, too, seeing the amount of cold pork and cornbread and milk that he swallowed while Uncle Abner told him how things were.

  "I've been doing all that a man could do for any son of his own," said Uncle Abner, "but your boy is turning out wild, Will. Mighty wild."

  "I'm glad of it," said Father. "I hate a mealy-mouthed mama's boy. I want a man for a son. Is he a man, Abner?"

  "Watching him grow up and caring for him has made an old man out of me before my time, Will," said Uncle Abner.

  My father raised his head as he finished eating and gave Uncle Abner a queer look, which made me guess that Will Dorset was nobody's fool. "You look able to stand up and take care of yourself," he said. "How big has he grown?"

  "Small," said Uncle Abner.

  "Small? That's bad."

  "But tough, Will. Tough as hickory."

  "Well, that's something. I'll have a look at him after a time."

  "Are you taking him along with you?" asked Abner, very anxious.

  "Not I.Take him along with me? The way I travel and the life I live from now on would kill a dog.. .even if I get away from them."

  "Are they close after you?"

  "I don't know. Two of them came up with me at Glendon. I knocked their heads together and came on."

  "Glendon! Then they'll guess you're heading for home. They'll spread the news...."

  My father frowned at him. "Those men are dead," he said.

  Uncle Abner coughed like a man half strangled. "Dead," he echoed. "If you're caught here, then...."

  "The devil, man," said Will Dorset. "Stop that talk. I know you, Abner, as well as you know me. Let's tell the truth and listen to the devil groan."

  Uncle Abner bit his lip. "I have a horse you'd be welcome to, Will, if you want to start right on...."

  "Horse? I know your horses. They wouldn't stand up under my weight. It takes a mean man to make one of your horses walk a mile. I've used spurs on your cattle before, and I'd rather walk. Life isn't that dear to me. It's kind of you, Brother, but I'll trust to my own legs. Now tell me how your luck has been. I've had few enough letters from you."

  "I've been working day and night like...."

  "Don't whine. I hate a whiner, you know. Well, let the letters go. What I want to know about is the money. I suppose you've used it?"

  "I had to, Will. I had to. With another mouth to feed in this family...."

  "Haven't you been able to get any work out of the boy?"

  "Quicker to
do things myself," said Uncle Abner. "A lot quicker. Maybe a harder man and a sterner man would have got work out of him, but I never could stop remembering he was your flesh and blood. I was too tender with him, and I started him in lazy habits, I'm afraid."

  "He's been useless, then?"

  "Worse'n that. Much worse."

  My father yawned. The wind cuffed the door and rattled it so that Abner Dorset jumped as though a voice had shouted at him. But my father gave the door not a glance.

  "I think that's a lie," he said. "I know your tenderness. I remember it pretty well when I was a boy and a younger brother."

  "A lie," said Abner with a dark look, "is a pretty dangerous thing to give, even to a brother."

  "Now you talk like yourself," said my father, nodding. "You haven't changed much. Well, the thousand dollars is gone, then?"

  "Soaked up long ago... long ago. Agnes could know when we had to spend the last of it on clothes and shoes for your son. But I've forgot, it was so long ago."

  At that, I laid hold of the rags that clothed me and felt my rage and hate, bursting in my throat. But still I waited. I did not want to appear until a crisis came.

  Uncle Abner seemed none too pleased by the talk about money. He hurried the conversation off in another direction. "But where do you aim to go, Will?"

  "West," said my father. "West, man, where old lives are forgotten and new lives are being lived. I'm going out where there's elbow room. I was never meant for this crowded country"

  My heart jumped at that. A dozen times in my life I had talked with hunters from the mountains who had been west of the Mississippi, or who had heard tales from their friends about the prairies. I had in mind a vague picture of the bison of the plains and of how the Indians hunted them. To me the very word prairie was like a hint of heaven.

  "It sounds like a good idea. Your trail would be lost there without much trouble."