The Westerners Read online

  Produced by Al Haines

  [Frontispiece: "SHE'S MY GIRL!"]

  THE WESTERNERS

  By

  Stewart Edward White

  NEW YORK

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Copyright, 1900 and 1901, by

  STEWART EDWARD WHITE

  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

  CONTENTS

  I. THE HALF-BREED II. THE WOMAN III. THE MAN WHO STOOD "99" IV. ALFRED USES HIS SIX-SHOOTER V. LAFOND DESERTS VI. THE WOMAN AND THE MAN VII. THE REINS OF POWER VIII. THE MAKING OF A HOSTILE IX. THE BROTHER OF GODS X. THE PRICE OF A CLAIM XI. THE BEGINNING OF LAFOND'S REVENGE XII. THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS XIII. THE DISSOLVING VIEW XIV. INTO THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS XV. IN WHICH CHEYENNE HARRY LOSES HIS PISTOL XVI. AND GETS IT BACK AGAIN XVII. BLACK MIKE MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE AND STARTS A COLLECTION XVIII. TIRED WINGS XIX. THE BROAD WHITE ROAD XX. THE EATING OF THE APPLE XXI. LAFOND MAKES A FRIEND XXII. IN WHICH THE TENDERFEET CONDUCT A SHOOTING MATCH AND GLORIFY PETER XXIII. A FOOL FOR LUCK XXIV. BILLY STARTS IN ON HIS FIFTY THOUSAND XXV. JACK GRAHAM SPEAKS OUT XXVI. AND HAS TO GO TO WORK XXVII. PROSPERITY XXVIII. LAFOND GOES EAST XXIX. BISMARCK ANNE ARRIVES XXX. ANCESTRAL VOICES XXXI. LAFOND'S FIRST CARD XXXII. IN WHICH THERE IS SOME SHOOTING XXXIII. FUTILITY XXXIV. LOVE'S EYES UNBANDAGED XXXV. OUT OF THE PAST XXXVI. UNDER THE ETERNAL STARS XXXVII. ASHES

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "SHE'S MY GIRL!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

  A SIOUX COUNCIL

  THAT BABY CRY, "MAMA!"

  "COME ACROSS, OR I'LL..."

  "WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!"

  JIM PUT UP A GOOD FIGHT.

  "ARE YOU STILL MAD?"

  "MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED.

  I

  THE HALF-BREED

  A tourist of to-day, peering from the window of his vestibule train atthe electric-lit vision of Three Rivers, as it stars the banks of theMissouri like a constellation against the blackness of the night, wouldnever recognize, in the trim little modern town, the old Three Riversof the early seventies.

  To restore the latter, he should first of all sweep the ground bare ofthe buildings which now adorn it, leaving, perhaps, here and there anisolated old shanty of boards far advanced toward dissolution. Hewould be called upon to substitute, in place of the brick stores anddwellings of to-day, a motley collection of lean-tos, dug-outs, tents,and shacks, scattered broadcast over the virgin prairie without theslightest semblance of order. Where the Oriole furniture factory nowstands, he must be prepared to see--and hear--a great drove of horsesand oxen feeding on bottom-land grass. And for the latter-daycitizens, whose police record is so discouraging to the ambitiouschief, and so creditable to themselves, he must imagine a multitudemore heterogeneous, perhaps, than could be gathered anywhere else inthe world--tenderfeet from the East; mountaineers from Tennessee andKentucky, bearing their historic long pea rifles; soft-voicedVirginians; keen, alert woodsmen from the North; wiry, silent trappersand scouts from the West; and here and there a straight Indian,stalking solemnly toward some one of the numerous "whiskey joints."The court-house site he would find crowded with canvas wagons, noisywith the shrill calling of women and children. Where Judge Oglethorpehas recently erected his stone mansion, Frank Byers would be running awell-patronized saloon. Were he to complete the picture by placinghimself mentally at the exact period of our story's opening, he wouldfind the whole town, if such it might be called, seething, turbulent,eager, and--it must be confessed--ready for trouble.

  For all these varied swarms had gathered from three points of thecompass for the purpose of pushing on to the gold discoveries of theBlack Hills. They had rushed eagerly to this extremest point--andstopped. As far as the border of the great wilderness it was possibleto journey individually; beyond that mysterious boundary nothing couldbe accomplished alone. Trained scouts and plainsmen there becamenecessary, and these skilled men declined to attempt the journey.

  Their reasons were simple and cogent. Throughout all of the previouswinter unusual snows had covered the pasturage to such a depth thatmuch of the range stock, on which the plainsman relied to draw hisheavy "schooners," had died of cold and exhaustion, while of thesurvivors but an insignificant remnant was fit to travel. Aftercausing this damage, the snow had melted in four days, leaving thestreams swollen, and the trails in an awful state, especially in theBad Lands, where, in the deeper gullies, they must have been quitewashed out. As an incidental climax, piled on top to make goodmeasure, the Ogallalas were on the war-path; and of all the Sioux theOgallalas are the worst.

  Nobody gave a thought to the Ogallalas. That was part of the game.But a blind man could see that those emaciated cattle couldn't standthe racket. And so Three Rivers steadily congested, and the conditionsof life daily became more exacting.

  One of the many who had reached the frontier town, only to find himselfchecked in his desire to push ahead, was a young man of twenty-two orthree. He had made a long journey, and he was correspondinglydisappointed when he foresaw, as his immediate prospect, a summer'ssojourn in a sun-baked, turbulent, unprofitable region. Not that hewas content with a superficial proof of its necessity. He sought thepreventing causes at the very sources of them: he examined the cattlecarefully; he questioned closely the men who knew the trails, thefords, the Indians. When he had quite finished his patientinvestigations, he swore briefly and gustily, and then went on athree-days' spree, from which he sobered into a quiet cigarette-smokinglounger, waiting for what might turn up. Nothing did.

  The days followed one another until a month had passed, which seemed aslong as a year. Men gambled away one another's small store of wealth,drank away their own disappointments, shot each other's lives outunmolested. Three spasmodic vigilance committees hanged six men by theneck until they were dead, but speedily allowed themselves to dissolveand the town to relapse, because of a happy combination of sheerlaziness and sympathy with the offenders.

  Rumors of an advance flew thick. They were always brought heavily toearth by a charge of common-sense or investigation. Nevertheless,others were speedily on the wing; and men looked at them. Ensuingdisappointment came in time to possess a cumulative force that amountedto a dull, sullen anger against nothing in particular.

  The young man of whom mention has already been made, took his monthwith an outward seeming of imperturbability, but with an increasinginner tension. He was a tall, dark, straight young man,broad-shouldered and clean built; strong, but with fine hands and feet.His hair was straight and black; his features clean-cut and swarthy.By his restless eye and a certain indefinable cast of expression youknew him for a half-breed. He gave out his name as Michail Lafond, andhe lived much in himself. Toward the close of the troublous thirtydays, a practised observer might have noticed that his slender fingerswere rarely still. Otherwise the half-breed appeared the mostindifferent member of the community.

  His apparent idleness did not prevent him from investigating in hispainstaking manner each rumor as it took form. This was the reasonwhy, when finally the formation of a genuine train was undertaken bythree of the specialists known as scouts, Michail Lafond was one of theearliest to know of it, and one of the first to apply for admission.He owned four strong little horses of mustang stock, and a light,two-wheeled wagon of the bob-tailed type. Most of his life had beenspent in the great Northern wilderness. He was expert in his own kindof woodcraft, accustomed to hardships, and a good shot. In everyrespect he knew himself fitted to become a member of such an expeditionas the present. He had no doubt of his acceptance. When he realizedthat at last his waiting was ended, he saddled one of his horses, androde three miles out on the lonely prairie,
where he jumped up anddown, shook his fists in the air, and screamed with delight. This wasthe half-breed of it. Impassibility may be stupid or intenselynervous. Then, all a-tremble, he rode back to where the threespecialists in question were camped, just on the border of the town,and proffered his formal application.

  The three to whom he addressed himself were practically at the head oftheir profession. It was not a profession of easy access, but one towhich only a long and dangerous apprenticeship gave admittance. Itsmembers were men who had lived their lives on the frontier, either asexpress riders, hunters, trappers, army scouts, or as members of theIndian tribes themselves. They were a hardy, bold, self-reliant race,equal to all emergencies, and exacting from the men in their charge themost implicit obedience. To their wonderful resourcefulness is due thefact that so many comparatively weak forces were enabled to penetratein safety a hostile country teeming with the most treacherous and wilyfoes.

  As with all crafts, they had their big men--the masters, as itwere--whose deeds they emulated, whose feats of skill and divinationthey spoke of with awe, whose names they worshipped. Of such were KitCarson, Wild Bill, Jim Clarke, Buffalo Bill, Slade, and the three menwith whom we have to deal--Jim Buckley, Alfred, and Billy Knapp.

  Billy Knapp was dark, tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired, wearing abristly mustache and goatee. A stranger might have remarked hisfrowning, beetling brow with a little uneasiness, but would have takenheart from the energetic kindliness of the eyes beneath. In fact,eager, autocratic energy was the dominant note in Billy's character.He succeeded because this energy carried him through--with some tospare.

  Jim Buckley was also tall and large, but he gave one less the idea ofnervous force than of a certain static power. He was a mass whichmoved slowly but irresistibly. His seal-brown beard, his broadforehead, the distance between his wide, steady eyes strengthened thisimpression. One felt that his decisions would be hardly come at, butstubbornly held. Success was inevitable, but it would be the result ofslow thinking, deep purpose, and a quiet tenacity of grip that neverlet go.

  As for Alfred--everybody has heard of him. His place in the annals ofthe West is assured, and his peculiarities of person and character havebeen many times described. Surely no one is unfamiliar with his short,bandy legs, his narrow, sloping little shoulders, his contracted chest,his queer pink and white face, with its bashful smile, his high baldhead. Everybody knows his fear of women. Everybody knows, too, thathe never had an opinion of his own on any subject. His speciality wasmaking the best of other people's, no matter how bad they were; andcompetent judges say he could accomplish a more gloriously perfect bestout of some tenderfoot's fool notion than another man with the adviceof experts. Some people even maintain that Alfred was the best scoutthe plains ever produced, only he was so bashful that it took an expertto appreciate the fact.

  When Lafond approached the camp of these men and threw himself from hispony, he found only Jim Buckley, sitting in the shade of one of hiswagons, smoking his pipe.

  "One says that you will tak' train through thees summer," began thehalf-breed abruptly. "Ah lak' to go also."

  Buckley looked his interlocutor over keenly.

  "Yes," said he slowly, between puffs. "That's right. We aims to pullthrough, but we don't aim to take no lumber with us. You married?"

  Lafond shook his head. "No! No! No!" he cried vehemently.

  "That's all right. Got any cattle?"

  "Four horses."

  "That one of them?"

  "Yes."

  The scout arose, still with the same appearance of deliberation, andinspected the pony thoroughly, with the eye and movements of an expert.

  "Others as good?" he inquired.

  "Bettaire," assured Lafond.

  "Wagon?" pursued the laconic Buckley.

  "Bobtail," responded Lafond with equal brevity. Though young, healready possessed some shrewdness in the reading of character.

  Buckley sat down in the shade and relit his pipe.

  "Where are you from?" he asked bluntly.

  "Ontario."

  "Woods?"

  "Yes."

  "Thought you wasn't no tenderfoot. Ever hit the trail?"

  "Not on those plains. In the woods many times."

  "We ain't takin' but damn few," went on Buckley dissertatively, "andthem that goes has to be right on to their job. No women; good cattle.That's our motto. Reckon you-all fills the bill. Cyan't tell. Got toask the others."

  Lafond knew that this, from a man of Buckley's stamp, was distinctencouragement. At the moment, the other two members came up. Buckley,in a few words, told them of the newcomer's desires and qualifications.

  Billy looked him over briefly.

  "Yo're a breed, ain't yo'?" he inquired with refreshing directness. "Ithought so." He turned to Buckley, with the air of ignoring Lafondaltogether. "That bars him," he said, with a little laugh.

  "He's got a mighty good line of broncs," Buckley objected.

  "Don't care if his hosses _are_ good," stated Billy decidedly. "He's abreed, an' that's enough. I seen plenty of that crew, and I ain'tgoin' to have one in the same country with me, if I can help it, letalone the same outfit."

  He began to whistle and rummage in the back of the wagon, with acharming obliviousness to the presence of the subject of his remarks.

  "That settles it," said Buckley, curtly and indifferently.

  The half-breed, his nervous hands deep in his side-pockets, walkedslowly to his horse. Then, in sudden access of rapid motion, he leapedon the animal's back and disappeared.