FRONTIER STORIES 
 
By the Same Author. 
 
 TALES OF AN ENGINEER. With Rhymes of the 
 Rail. $1.25. 
 
 THE EXPRESS MESSENGER, and Other Stones 
 of the Rail. #1.25. 
 
 FRONTIER STORIES. Si. 2:. 
 
FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 CY WARMAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1898 
 

 
 Copyright, 1898, 
 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS. 
 
 ilttttetts Press: 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK .... 3 
 
 " INJUN FIN UM PAPER-TALK." 21 
 
 A SCALP FOR A SCALP 37 
 
 SLAYING THE WILD BULL 51 
 
 VALLEY TAN 61 
 
 IN THE HOSPITAL 71 
 
 THE BISHOP OF PRICE 81 
 
 A QUIET DAY IN CREEDE 93 
 
 A COWBOY S FUNERAL 105 
 
 HALF-BREEDS 121 
 
 THE SEDUCTIVE SIX-SHOOTER 129 
 
 THE BRAKEMAN AND THE SQUAW 139 
 
 HOSKANINNI 149 
 
 TlCKABOO l6l 
 
 LITTLE CAYUSE 171 
 
 THE WAHSATCH BAND OF BANDITS .... 197 
 
 WANTA WANDA 211 
 
 A COUPLE o CAPTAINS 237 
 
 M105421 
 
Columbine of Cripple Creek 
 
Frontier Stories 
 
 
 THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE 
 CREEK 
 
 ONCE there was war at Cripple Creek 
 red-mouthed war, as they say in battle 
 tales. It all began when the miners of the 
 district went on strike. First they simply quit 
 work, and there was idleness. Then they 
 objected to anybody else working, and there 
 was trouble ; and finally they fortified Bull 
 Hill, placed a small cannon at the top, and 
 there was anarchy. 
 
 Two railroads ran to Cripple Creek from 
 Colorado Springs, and they were soon com 
 peting for the business of carrying deputy 
 sheriffs to the turbulent camp. 
 
 From the " Heart of the Lion " district 
 in the far northwest came trouble-loving 
 foreigners of almost every faith and many 
 
FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 iongaes. These men built strong forts, into 
 which they piled rifles, revolvers, salt meat, 
 and dynamite. War correspondents from 
 the Denver dailies wrote thrilling stories of 
 battles in the bush, and told wonderful tales 
 of deadly dynamite mines that had been laid 
 in the path of the sheriff s army. From the 
 larger cities of the West, men who were unhap 
 pily married, who could n t whistle a tune, or 
 had some other good and valid reason for 
 courting death, came and offered themselves 
 either to the county or to the strikers. 
 
 One rainy night a train-load of deputy 
 sheriffs arrived at the Divide, where they left 
 the train and began to march across the range 
 to the riotous camp. All night they tramped, 
 tramped the slippery trail ; while up the oppo 
 site side of the range a locomotive toiled over 
 a new and uncertain track, with another train- 
 load of men who were coming to the rescue of 
 the State. 
 
 It was not yet light when the train came to 
 a stop in sight of the terminal, and instantly a 
 dozen rifles rattled in the cedars, and the win 
 dows of the coaches were shattered. The 
 
THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK 5 
 
 sheriff, or deputy in command, was instantly 
 killed, but his successor ordered the men to 
 charge the rioters, and in that charge another 
 life was lost. A desperado who had joined 
 the strikers and who had a natural hatred for 
 an officer of the law, faced a single deputy in 
 a narrow trail and offered battle. The officer, 
 who happened to be a quick shot, had the 
 good fortune to " wing " his antagonist at the 
 first exchange of compliments, and the latter, 
 having lost the use of his pistol arm, turned 
 and ran. The sheriff gave chase, and in the 
 gray dawn saw the man dodge either in or 
 around a board house. As the man disap 
 peared the sheriff sent a couple of bullets after 
 him. Now the door of the house opened 
 quickly; a figure in a long robe stood upon 
 the threshold, and seeing the man driving 
 straight for the house with drawn and smoking 
 pistol, raised its right arm and fired. The 
 sheriff fell to the ground, shot through the 
 right lung with a forty-four calibre cartridge. 
 The figure upon the threshold waited a mo 
 ment, and when nobody came, advanced 
 slowly to where the wounded man lay and 
 
FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 bent over him. The man was already uncon 
 scious, but evidently still alive, and in that 
 condition was carried into the house with 
 such tenderness as one would not expect to 
 receive in so rough a community at such a 
 time. 
 
 It was broad daylight when the wounded 
 man opened his eyes and asked, with the air 
 of a fainting actress, "Where am I?" 
 
 " In the house of a friend," said the other. 
 
 The sick man closed his eyes for a moment 
 to collect his thoughts, and as he opened them 
 again he saw the figure disappearing behind 
 the chenille hangings. 
 
 Only three or four men sat down to break 
 fast at Mrs. Collins s boarding-house on the 
 morning of the first battle. There had been 
 fighting; two men had been killed, and the 
 strikers had retired behind the breastworks. 
 
 A local doctor had split the skin below the 
 sheriffs shoulder-blade, removed the lead, 
 sluiced the wound, left a man to look after the 
 patient, and promised to call again. He did 
 call again, and again, until the strikers waited 
 
THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK 7 
 
 upon him one dark night, and informed him 
 that if he continued to doctor the deputy 
 sheriff, who had come to the camp to shoot 
 innocent workingmen for so much a day, he 
 would be made to suffer for it. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that the miners will 
 boycott me if I save this man s life?" asked 
 the doctor, indignantly. 
 
 "Well, not exactly," the spokesman replied. 
 " We 11 most like give ye notice, an if ye still 
 hang about well, ye won t need no patients 
 see?" 
 
 Although he had prided himself on being 
 the first doctor in the camp, and on knowing 
 every man in the district by sight, at least, 
 these faces were all new to the doctor. 
 
 The business at Mrs. Collins s boarding- 
 house fell off during the strike to such an 
 extent that she was obliged to discharge the 
 cook, employ a man to wait at the table, and 
 go into the kitchen herself. The old men 
 would not boycott her, but they kept away. 
 The boycotted doctor, who had heard of her 
 trouble and knew the cause of it, came to 
 patronize the widow s boarding-house, for 
 
8 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 misery loves company. Finally she let the 
 waiter go. 
 
 At last June came and put the winter away. 
 The strike had been " declared off," but none 
 of the former boarders had returned to the 
 table of the widow Collins. She was harboring 
 a hated deputy, the story went, who had been 
 wounded at her very door, shot through the 
 right lung, and they would not eat under her 
 roof so long as this man remained. The 
 doctor s practice had suffered, but he had a 
 bank account that had grown up with the 
 camp, and continued to pay his board at the 
 widow s, where his best paying patient was 
 beginning to convalesce. 
 
 Mrs. Collins found plenty of time to devote 
 to the wounded deputy, now that she had no 
 boarders (if we except the doctor), and often 
 sat for hours together reading aloud to him. 
 Nuns have lost their hearts to handsome pa 
 tients ; priests have forgotten their vows under 
 the soft pressure of a woman s hand, and these 
 people were not stronger than priests and nuns. 
 The deputy soon began to listen for the first 
 
THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK 9 
 
 footsteps of his gentle hostess, and to mark 
 them as she went to and fro about her morn 
 ing s work. In time he could tell by the rattle 
 of plates when the last of the breakfast dishes 
 were being put away. 
 
 "You may go out and get the air now, 
 John," he would say to his attendant. 
 
 " Just bang on the windy, mum, if I am 
 wanted," John would say, for he knew a few 
 little things, and Mrs. Collins would nod her 
 head goodnaturedly and reach for the broom 
 to give the dining-room a brushing up. Of 
 course she prided herself on her ability to keep 
 her little secret, and the sick man, who had 
 given himself over to single-blessedness a 
 decade ago, knew that if he ever fell in love 
 not a soul would know of it. 
 
 And that s the way things went on till the 
 end of June, and the sick man stood in the 
 middle of summer with the wild grass about 
 his feet, wild birds above, his hands full of 
 flowers, and his heart full of love. 
 
 One day Mrs. Collins went up the hill a 
 little way with them to show them a pretty 
 spring, with columbine all about it ; and when 
 
TO FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 they had found the place, John (he was Irish) 
 climbed away up the mountain side, almost 
 out of sight, and the lovers were left alone. 
 The panorama that spread out before them was 
 beyond description. The world was especially 
 beautiful to the man, for he had fallen asleep, 
 as it were, when winter was everywhere in the 
 hills, and now awoke to see the summer in its 
 matchless mantle of many-shaded green. Away 
 down at the foot of the hill lay the little valley, 
 where in winter the snow, and in summer the 
 grass, will touch your stirrups if you ride that 
 way. Across the valley crept a narrow ribbon 
 of water, and far to the north the new grade of 
 the Midland Railway tumbled down into the 
 dark canon. To the east and a little south 
 rose a mile of mountain that was Pike s 
 Peak, standing there in the blaze of summer 
 like a great queen in a green gown and a white 
 mantle. A black plume fluttered from her 
 spotless crest and floated down into the dark 
 shadows below her shoulders that was the 
 smoke of a locomotive away up there against 
 the sky. 
 
THE COL UMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK I I 
 
 One day when they had gone to the spring 
 and the intellectual Irishman had left them 
 alone, Mrs. Collins climbed up into a little 
 side gulch where they had seen some beautiful 
 flowers, and when she returned she had her 
 hands full of rough native rock. Her face was 
 all aglow with excitement as she assured her 
 companion that it was pay dirt. She had been 
 all her life in the hills. Her father had been 
 an assayer, and Mr. Collins superintendent of 
 mines. The man, who knew nothing of mineral 
 rock, looked at her and smiled, glad to encour 
 age her, for she became radiantly beautiful to 
 him, away there in the hills, as she tried to 
 explain to him the nature of the rock and how 
 it came to be there so near the surface. It 
 was a "blow out," a chimney of ore, she said, 
 and when John came down she made him plant 
 a stake, upon which she wrote the sheriff s 
 name. 
 
 The next day Mrs. Collins would go up to 
 the claim again. She was so enthusiastic over 
 it that her lodger began to be sorry for her, 
 and when she said she would like to sink a 
 shaft, he set John to digging a hole near the 
 
12 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 stake. By the time the hole was ten feet deep 
 the sick man was strong enough to draw the 
 bucket out. Day after day they worked at the 
 claim, John at the bottom, the deputy at the 
 top, and Mrs. Collins coming up two or three 
 times a day to sample the ore and offer valuable 
 suggestions as to the proper timbers to be used. 
 The man who was working the windlass thought 
 the timbering was a waste of time. " For," 
 said he, " when we have grown tired of this 
 playing at prospecting we 11 haul up the rope 
 and let the hole fill up." 
 
 We 11 all be rich," said Mrs. Collins, " be 
 fore this shaft fills up." 
 
 They had worked the claim more than a 
 month, made love and lost money, but there 
 was no understanding between Mrs. Collins 
 and her companion as to the condition of the 
 partnership. His name was on the stake; 
 they both knew that; but the claim was hers 
 by right of discovery, as was his heart by the 
 same token. They seemed to have reached 
 that happy state wherein it is more glorious to 
 give than to receive, and went on drilling and 
 
THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK 13 
 
 trusting each other blindly. Mrs. Collins had 
 faith in the future of the " Columbine," as she 
 called the claim, and he was happy, willing to 
 toil all day to see her smile at night. The 
 trusting pair were as busy as they were happy, 
 while John and Cupid were both working over 
 time. John s salary had been doubled since 
 his duties had increased. Every Saturday night 
 he received eighteen shining dollars, and every 
 Sunday slipped in through a side door and left 
 them in the vault of the First National Bank 
 of Cripple Creek. The smooth-faced, boyish- 
 looking cashier (he was Irish, too) came in 
 time to expect John of a Sunday morning as 
 a freighter expects a cocktail. 
 
 It was during John s absence one Sunday 
 that Mrs. Collins discovered in an Eastern 
 review an illustrated account of the Cripple 
 Creek war. She had begun to read it aloud, 
 when, suddenly, upon turning a page, she came 
 to a portrait which she recognized, the picture 
 of one of the deputy sheriffs who had been 
 killed. A dozen lines recounted the virtues 
 of the dead deputy, of whose past life up 
 to that time she had known very little, and 
 
14 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 cared less. This she had been reading in 
 silence, her bosom heaving with emotion, until 
 at its conclusion two tears stole through her 
 lashes and fell upon the page. Her companion 
 had been watching her intently, and at sight 
 of her tears crossed the small space that was 
 between them and took a seat beside her on 
 the little hair-cloth tete-a-tete. In the open 
 book he looked upon his own likeness, and 
 read the lines that told at once of his life and 
 death, the reading of which had so affected 
 her, and he guessed that she must love him. 
 Many times she had thrilled at the sound of 
 his voice, and he at the touch of her garments 
 as she brushed past him, but never had they 
 been so near each other as now. Those who 
 have sat near the flame of a divine passion 
 know what it is ; those who have not have 
 the best of their lives to live. It is something 
 to be felt and not talked about, and we shall 
 not attempt to describe this scene. We know 
 that before John returned there was a complete 
 understanding between the two prospectors. 
 The name upon the stake was not to be 
 changed, and it was to be her name as well. 
 
THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK 15 
 
 It was here, also, at this time, that the erstwhile 
 deputy learned the name of his long-robed 
 assailant ; for Mrs. Collins would not consent 
 to be his wife until she had told him it was 
 her hand that had held the pistol that had 
 almost taken his life ; but he forgave her. 
 
 The happy prospector began to look at life 
 seriously, now that he had elected to take a 
 wife, and thought it time to stop this playing 
 at mining, and devote his waking hours to 
 something more profitable. 
 
 He had been sober and industrious all his 
 life, and had saved some money. But Mrs. 
 Collins had faith enough in the claim for a 
 whole family, and when her future husband 
 talked of abandoning the prospect she would 
 not listen to the proposition. 
 
 " But let us engage in some other business," 
 urged the man ; " open a little shop, say, and 
 prospect on the side. I have a thousand 
 dollars in the First National Bank of Denver 
 that would start us in business." 
 
 Mrs. Collins patted a protesting foot, looked 
 out at the window and up the gulch where her 
 
1 6 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 faith was. The prospector read his answer in 
 her face. 
 
 " But if you say so," he went on, " we will 
 blow it all against the prospect and start anew 
 what do you say? " 
 
 " Put it all into the l Columbine/ " was 
 her reply, as she slipped her hand into his, 
 " and if we fail, we can work we are both 
 strong." 
 
 So the bank account was transferred to 
 Cripple Creek, a full force was put to work, 
 and the money began to burn. Mrs. Collins, 
 anxious to do her part, insisted on boarding 
 the men. The man who loved her objected, 
 but yielded in the end, as he had done in the 
 other matter, weakened his own hand, and 
 helped her. 
 
 The days and weeks went by rapidly enough 
 now. The summer had left the hills, but it 
 stayed in the hearts of the happy lovers. 
 Nature in this wonderland loses none of her 
 beauty in changing from summer to autumn 
 dress. The white mantle was deepening upon 
 the shoulders of the queen of the foot hills; 
 
THE COLUMBINE OF CRIPPLE CREEK 17 
 
 winter s frosty finger had touched the quivering 
 aspen and put about her waist a girth of gold, 
 while her trailing gown was flowered with oaks 
 aflame. 
 
 There was gold in the sunset and gold in the 
 hills, but not a trace in the rock that came 
 from the Columbine. The last dollar had been 
 drawn from the bank, and the prospector was 
 losing heart, but the brave woman urged him 
 on. The men, being sure of their board, 
 offered to work another week and trust the 
 " boss " for their wages, and the proposition 
 had been accepted. It was not until the after 
 noon of the last day of that last week s work 
 that the character of the ore changed. Mrs. 
 Collins had not visited the mine that day. 
 Her heart had been too heavy to carry up the 
 hill. When they had finished supper, and the 
 men had gone, with empty pockets, to swell 
 the crowds in the streets and saloons, John 
 brought out a piece of the rock that had come 
 up in the last bucket. He gave it to the 
 woman, who looked at it, turned the lamp 
 higher, and looked again. 
 
 " It s ore ! it s ore ! " she cried, holding 
 2 
 
1 8 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 the piece of rock close to the light, as the two 
 men drew near. She hugged it, kissed it, and 
 wept over it, until the men were sorry for her. 
 One of them put a hand gently upon her 
 shoulder to attract her attention. 
 
 "You don t believe?" she asked, excitedly; 
 " come with me." 
 
 The help in the kitchen shrank from the 
 woman as she entered, thinking her mad. A 
 peculiar characteristic of the mineral-bearing 
 rock of this region is that, when exposed to 
 intense heat, it will show beads of pure gold 
 upon the surface. Mrs. Collins knew this, and 
 she placed the rock on the top of the range, 
 which, being full of pitch knots, was red hot. 
 In a few moments the rock began to heat. 
 The woman smiled triumphantly, while the 
 rest stood about in open-mouthed amazement 
 and watched the rock sweat gold. 
 
 " Now will you believe ? Now will you 
 believe?" cried Mrs. Collins, turning to the 
 man who had called it " playing at prospect 
 ing ; " and to the surprise of all she kissed him 
 and burst into tears again, and he led her 
 away. 
 
"3J|nfun 
 
 um 
 
"INJUN FIN UM PAPER-TALK." 
 
 AWAY to the west and a little south, where 
 the corners of Colorado, Utah, and 
 Nevada come close together, there is a rough 
 and roadless country, filled with high moun 
 tains, dark canons, and deep and rapid rivers. 
 Between the hills are verdant vales, notably 
 the valley of the San Juan, where countless 
 herds feed and wax fat. Here, for the past 
 four or five years, old Hatch and his band of 
 red robbers had made life a burden to stock 
 men, and the cattle business a losing game. 
 They were mostly renegade Utes. Hatch 
 himself was a troublesome mixture of Ute, 
 Mexican, Hot Tamolla, and white man. He 
 was short and stout, with a thick neck and an 
 ugly, dark, round face that was seamed and 
 scarred like the face of a German student. 
 
22 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 He was an outlaw, a desperado pure and 
 simple ; a quick, impulsive, but dead shot, and 
 he ruled his band, not with an iron hand, but 
 with an iron rod with a hole in it. He was the 
 one supreme judge who passed upon the acts 
 of his associates, and from his decision there 
 was no appeal. Hatch was quite a drunkard 
 in his way, but he never allowed his men to 
 drink while on duty. Once a Navajo, who had 
 joined the gang, grew groggy while on picket 
 duty. He slept the night away and up into 
 the morning, and when old Hatch found him 
 so he had him lashed to the cedar tree against 
 which he reposed, and then stole softly away, 
 leaving the luckless Navajo to be rudely 
 awakened by a band of gaunt wolves that were 
 already hanging about the camp. The heart 
 less leader laughed when he thought how the 
 Navajo would writhe and wriggle in a vain 
 effort to break his bonds. " Mebby so," he 
 said, "coyotes come and cut him rope, an 
 mebby so cut him th oat." Just how it all 
 ended I don t know, for all we found were the 
 white bones of the drunken Navajo, with a 
 rotten reata still about his arms, holding them 
 
INJUN FIN> UM PA PER- TA LK " 23 
 
 hard to the trunk of a tree that stood at the 
 head of Epsum Wash. Doubtless, if you are 
 passing that way, you may see them there still. 
 The boy a mere youth, who had run away 
 from home to become a cowboy who was 
 our guide across this wild waste of the world s 
 ballast, who showed us the bones and told 
 this tale, was himself murdered by the " Red 
 Band " in less than a month from the day we 
 left him. 
 
 The murder of this boy, who was in the 
 service of one of the large cattle companies, 
 caused the stockmen on the San Juan to get 
 together and resolve to put a quick end to 
 the Red Band of desperadoes and outlaws. 
 Many expeditions had been organized for the 
 purpose of capturing or killing off the trouble 
 some gang, but all efforts had failed. They 
 were in Colorado to-day, in New Mexico 
 to-morrow, and another day might see them 
 in Nevada, or over the border into the territory 
 of Utah. The little army that now went forth 
 to avenge the death of the young cowboy was 
 led by a reformed half-breed who had been 
 for a brief season one of the gang. This half- 
 
24 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 breed was rather intelligent, and had the repu 
 tation, among the Indians, of being able to 
 decipher paper-talk, which to them seemed a 
 marvellous accomplishment. About this time 
 one of the robbers, who had just had his ears 
 shot off by old Hatch for having awkwardly 
 stampeded a band of horses which they were 
 preparing to steal, deserted the Red Band and 
 joined the cattle men. Prompted by a spirit 
 of revenge this crop-eared outlaw cheerfully 
 led the stockmen to the camp of the robbers, 
 and the battle was on in no time. The de 
 serter was recognized at once and promptly 
 perforated by the members of the band, who, 
 after emptying their rifles, galloped away, leav 
 ing two of their number behind. Instead of 
 being frightened by this encounter, the Red 
 Band became more desperate and daring than 
 ever. In the meantime old Hatch came to be 
 hated as much as he was feared by the mem 
 bers of his gang. They might have killed him 
 off, and doubtless would have done so, only 
 Hatch had a son who would naturally inherit 
 the command, and who would just as naturally 
 do some killing himself on his father s account ; 
 
" INJUN FIN* UM PA PER- TA LK" 25 
 
 so Hatch, Sr. Hatch-a-Kavv, as he was 
 called was permitted to live. 
 
 One day the band was surprised by a com 
 pany of cowboys, and a fierce and desperate 
 fight followed. It had been quietly arranged 
 among the members of the Red Band that 
 their leader should be removed during the 
 next engagement. A Navajo, who hated the 
 Ute leader on general principles, and particu 
 larly because of his cruelty to the drunken 
 man at Epsum Wash, had been selected to 
 kill old Hatch. This particular battle was so 
 fierce and fatal that it seemed for a time that 
 old Hatch, who always fought at the head of 
 his band, must surely fall ; but he did not. 
 Men went down at his very elbow and still he 
 sat his horse as though he were bullet proof. 
 The cowboys, fighting in a little open park, 
 were at a great disadvantage, for the robbers 
 were among the trees and rocks. Two of the 
 cowboys had their horses shot from under 
 them, and now as they leaped to places behind 
 two of their companions, old Hatch shouted to 
 his men, and the Red Band, uttering a wild 
 yell, dashed forward in pursuit of the cowboys, 
 
26 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 who were already flying from the field. The 
 Navajo, who had been expecting old Hatch to 
 fall at every volley from the cowboys, was dis 
 appointed. He had allowed the golden oppor 
 tunity to pa$s, and the thought of it made 
 him desperate. He had caught quick side 
 glances from two or three of his companions 
 during the engagement, and now as they 
 charged he saw them laughing at him. They 
 were calling him a coward squaw in their 
 minds and the shame of it all made him mad. 
 Young Hatch had caught the glances of the 
 Red murderers and knew what it meant. 
 
 " Now ! Now ! " said one of the gang, riding 
 close by the Navajo. But the firing from the 
 enemy had already ceased, and the Navajo 
 knew that if their leader were to fall now the 
 circumstance would attract attention, and cause 
 young Hatch to investigate. He did not know 
 that the watchful heir apparent had an eye on 
 him, and so when his companions called him 
 "squaw" to his very face he raised his rifle 
 and fired. The assassin had scarcely taken 
 his eyes from his falling victim when a bullet 
 from young Hatch s rifle passed through his 
 
" INJUN FIN UM PAPER-TALK" 27 
 
 heart. Hatch had been in command less than 
 four seconds when a third shot was fired in 
 this mutinous engagement, and that bullet 
 pierced the leader s right lung. At this point 
 the gang seemed to lose heart, and when 
 young Hatch wheeled his horse and faced them 
 not a hand was raised against him. His face 
 was hard, and his half-closed eyes were full of 
 hate. 
 
 " Hatch-a-Kaw is dead," he said, waving 
 a hand toward the fallen leader, " killed by one 
 of his own people; he could not have be en 
 killed otherwise. Behold Hatch-a-Kaw-Kaw, 
 the new leader, who cannot be killed ! " and 
 he pointed proudly to the torn place in his 
 breast where the bullet had passed out. The 
 gang were awed by this indisputable evidence 
 of a charmed life, and only grunted and 
 glanced suspiciously at one another. 
 
 " Does any man say," young Hatch went 
 on, "that Hatch-a-Kaw-Kaw shall not com 
 mand ? If any man would lead this band let 
 him first be shot as I have been, and if he die 
 not, then let him eat of the lizard, the rattle 
 snake, and the owl, and if he still live he shall 
 be chief of the Red Band." 
 
28 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 This was unquestionably a fair proposition, 
 but there were no takers. Three or four mem 
 bers of the gang reined their horses close 
 together and discussed the matter, while young 
 Hatch kept his small eyes playing from one 
 to the other, for he was not quite sure about 
 the charmed life he pretended to enjoy. 
 
 " We are willing," said one of the robbers, 
 speaking for the conference committee, " that 
 Hatch-a-Kaw-Kaw shall rule, but not as his 
 father ruled." 
 
 "And what fault can you find in that just 
 man?" demanded the leader. 
 
 "We object to being left lashed to a tree 
 to be eaten up alive," said the spokesman. 
 
 " Very well," said Hatch, after a moment s 
 thought. " Hereafter when a man deserves 
 chastisement he shall be shot as becomes a 
 warrior ; " and the gang grunted their assent. 
 
 In a shallow grave they cached old Hatch, 
 and by his side his assassin. The cowboys in 
 their retreat had seen the fight and the fall of 
 the desperate leader, and now from the cliffs 
 above they witnessed the silent funeral. After 
 the obsequies the new leader put himself at the 
 
"INJUN FIN UM PAPER-TALK" 2C) 
 
 head of the gang, and they filed out over the 
 foot-hills. 
 
 That night, when they had encamped, the 
 peace pipe was brought, and when young 
 Hatch had eaten the heart of an owl, the head 
 of a rattlesnake, and swallowed a lizard, they 
 all smoked, and Hatch-a-Kaw-Kaw was de 
 clared chief of the Red Band of Robbers. 
 
 " Now," said the reformed half-breed to his 
 cowboy companions, " we can frighten this 
 gang out of the country in another sleep. Old 
 Hatch has assured them a thousand times that 
 if he should ever be killed by his band he 
 would come back when they slept and blind 
 them and tear out their tongues. They believe 
 this," he went on, "and if we can cause old 
 Hatch to move about some, they will know he s 
 after them and fly the country." 
 
 The gang would camp, the half-breed argued, 
 near the springs, " Hoss-Shoot-Em " springs, they 
 are called, because a crazy Indian camped there 
 for weeks and shot all the horses, wild and 
 tame, that came there to drink. He fancied 
 that horses were evil spirits, and as the Indians 
 never kill a person who is malade de tete, Hoss- 
 
30 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 Shoot-Em was not molested until the cowboys 
 came and killed him off; then the springs took 
 his name. 
 
 As soon as it was dark the cowboys uncov 
 ered old Hatch, carried him away and propped 
 his lifeless body up by the springs ; and when 
 the Red Band came down to water their horses 
 they found the dead leader sitting there in the 
 moonlight, with his rifle resting across his lap. 
 " See," said the young leader, " he comes silent 
 like the lizard, watches in the night like an owl, 
 and when the time comes he will strike like the 
 rattlesnake wuh ! " And the gang wheeled 
 about and galloped back to the hills. 
 
 Superstitious as they were, all these Indians 
 were not cowards, and when daylight came they 
 determined to revisit the springs, for they were 
 famished for water, and so were their horses. 
 It took them some time to work up nerve 
 enough to approach the springs, but the horses, 
 being almost crazed by thirst, helped them, 
 and in time the riders drank as the other ani 
 mals had done. They now concluded, while 
 they were there, that it would be a good scheme 
 to build a fire and cremate old Hatch, to stop 
 his travelling about by night. 
 
"INJUN FZAT UM PAPER-TALK" 31 
 
 Hatch-a-Kaw-Kaw made one objection to 
 this. They must first cut off the old man s 
 head. The rest they might burn, but not the 
 head. And it was so ordered. 
 
 When the body had been burned and the 
 head buried the band went away and were 
 troubled no more by the dead chief. It was 
 not long before the cattle men were made aware 
 that young Hatch was doing business at the 
 old stand, and they set about to find out the last 
 resting-place of the dead chief. Upon visiting 
 the springs they found old Hatch s head, which 
 the coyotes had unearthed and picked clean. 
 
 "If there is any one thing tha t will scare 
 them to death," said the half-breed, " it s the 
 sight of paper-talk from the dead." When one 
 of the cowboys had dug up an envelope with 
 writing on it, the half-breed took the head of 
 his former chief, hung it upon a cedar snag 
 that stood close by the trail along which the 
 robbers must come to the springs, rolled the 
 envelope up and stuck it into old Hatch s eyes. 
 
 That night when the gang came down the 
 trail they found the grinning face of old Hatch 
 on the cedar snag, and stopped. One daring 
 
32 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 young redskin began to ride in a circle round 
 the cedar, coming nearer and nearer at each 
 turn, but when he saw the paper he stopped. 
 If it were blank white paper, as it seemed to 
 be, there was no harm in it ; so the daring red 
 skin snatched the envelope and galloped back 
 to the gang. 
 
 " Paper talk," said the chief, as he unfolded 
 the envelope and hurriedly handed it back to 
 the Indian who had brought it. 
 
 "What him say? " asked the chief. 
 
 " Me no sabbe," said the Ute, eying the 
 envelope. " Ony Run-a-way Bill, him sabbe 
 paper-talk me fin urn Bill," and before an 
 objection could be offered the young robber 
 drove his heel hard against his pony and gal 
 loped away in the direction of the ranch where 
 the half-breed was employed. 
 
 It was daylight when the Indian reached the 
 ranch, and when he saw the half-breed ride to 
 the range he rode after him. When they were 
 far in the hills the Indian galloped up to the 
 half-breed, holding out the paper. 
 
 "See, Bill, see!" he cried, shaking the 
 envelope ; " me fin urn paper-talk, old Hatch s 
 
" INJUN FIN* UM PA PER- TALK" 33 
 
 eye, devil, spider. Bill, what he say ? quick, 
 what he say? " 
 
 The half-breed took the paper and pretended 
 to read, then he opened his mouth wide and 
 glanced about hurriedly. 
 
 " Quick, Bill ! quick ! " urged the Indian, 
 grasping the arm of his companion. " What 
 e say?" 
 
 "One more sleep," began the cowboy, look 
 ing at the envelope, " an old Hatch come back 
 an put out your eyes, an pull out " 
 
 " Say, Bill, how many sleep he make um 
 paper-talk? " 
 
 " Oh, me no sabbe. Mebby so one moon, 
 mebby so half- moon." 
 
 " Spider Bill ! " cried the Ute, filled with 
 terror, " mabby so one sleep uh ! devil ! 
 hell ! " and the Indian lay down close to the 
 neck of his cayuse and dashed away for the 
 springs. 
 
 When he had told the story of the paper-talk, 
 and what it said, the gang put clubs to their 
 horses and miles between them and Hoss- 
 Shoot-Em, and from that day the band of Red 
 Robbers has kept clear of the San Juan. 
 3 
 
A SCALP FOR A SCALP. 
 
 " OEE that old cottonwood back of the 
 
 O roundhouse?" asked the superintend 
 ent as the car crashed by a small station far 
 out on the plains. I saw the tree. 
 
 "Keep that in mind," said my friend, "and 
 I 11 tell you a story it ends at that tree." 
 
 The light train was now swinging around the 
 long curves by the banks of a slowly running 
 river ; the official lighted a fresh cigar, put his 
 feet up in an empty chair, and told the story : 
 
 " A band of bad Indians, under the ferocious 
 Bear Foot, had been threatening us for three 
 days. The scouts had scarcely slept for as 
 many nights, and at dawn of the fourth morn 
 ing trouble commenced. The Pawnees, who 
 were on picket duty under government pay, 
 were as wily as the Sioux, who were planning 
 the capture of our little station. When the 
 enemy had crept up almost into our camp, 
 keeping under the bank of the river, they were 
 
38 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 detected by the trained ear of the red scouts. 
 The captain in command of the government 
 forces was slow to believe that the river which 
 ran past the roundhouse was literally alive with 
 Sioux, but he knew the scout was too sly to 
 advise an attack that was unnecessary. 
 
 " If the Sioux were actually creeping up in 
 the darkness, under the bank of the stream, 
 it was easy to guess the object. When they 
 were there in sufficient numbers they would 
 swarm out upon us like red ants, before the 
 drowsy soldiers could get to their feet. 
 
 "The scout and the captain crept close to 
 the river and lay upon the ground listening for 
 any sound that might be made by the crawling 
 Sioux. Occasionally they could hear a shuf 
 fling, scuffling sound, and now and then a 
 low kerplunk as a pebble rolled down the 
 bank and fell into the water. In a little while 
 the captain had become convinced that there 
 were Indians in the river. How many, he 
 could not tell, but he knew that Bear Foot 
 would not come alone. 
 
 "The scouts were now awakened and lined 
 up near the roundhouse, between the track and 
 
A SCALP FOR A SCALP 39 
 
 the river. We had fifty men, mostly Pawnees, 
 and they were now placed ten feet apart, so 
 that we covered about five hundred feet of the 
 river. The captain passed along the line 
 and apprised the men of the danger. At the 
 flash of a bull s-eye lamp in the roundhouse the 
 men were to fall down and crawl up to within 
 ten yards of the stream and lie quiet until 
 dawn, unless the Sioux came out before that 
 time. They had not been waiting ten minutes 
 when a reef of feathers showed up along the 
 bank. Instantly every one of the scouts lev 
 elled his gun at the Sioux, who, unable to see 
 the soldiers, poised upon the edge of the bank 
 to listen. The captain knew that his men had 
 their fingers upon the triggers, and the first 
 warning the Sioux had was the officer s com 
 mand to his men to fire. Before the Sioux 
 could gain their feet, or even drop behind the 
 bank, the scouts blazed away. A dozen or 
 more Indians rolled down into the river, but 
 Bear Foot knew that we had but a handful of 
 men, while he had hundreds. The sound of 
 our rifles was still echoing in the grove down 
 the river when the bank bristled again with 
 
40 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 redskins. There was no need for the captain 
 to order his men to fire now the Pawnee 
 scouts were hot stuff. They hated the Sioux 
 as bitterly as it is possible for any human 
 being to hate another, presuming, of course, 
 that Indians are human, and instantly they 
 let go again. The line of heads above the 
 bank seemed to waver, but a moment later 
 they reappeared ten times as many as before. 
 
 " The captain of the scouts saw at a glance 
 that at the rate they were now coming from the 
 river the Sioux would soon outnumber his force 
 ten to one. The scouts at the beginning had 
 a decided advantage over the attacking party, 
 and the officer determined to hold it. 
 
 "They did not fight Indians with maps and 
 charts, and the officers commanding the scouts 
 rarely had the pleasure of overlooking a battle 
 through a field-glass from the summit of a far- 
 off hill. A man s head had to work rapidly, 
 and his hands as well, and sometimes his feet. 
 The Sioux fought close in, as the Romans 
 fought, and the conflict was usually short and 
 decisive. 
 
 " Seeing the Sioux determined and desperate, 
 
A SCALP FOR A SCALP 41 
 
 the captain ordered his men to charge, and, 
 leaping to their feet, the scouts advanced at a 
 run, firing as they went. Many of the warriors 
 were swept back by the charge, but others 
 came up out of the dark river to take their 
 places. Our men rushed right upon the bank 
 of the stream, firing the lead into the Sioux as 
 they came swarming up from the river. 
 
 "When the scouts had emptied their rifles 
 and pistols they clubbed their guns. Many of 
 the Sioux were now gaining the level ground 
 above the bank where the fight was raging. 
 Only the great advantage our men held 
 being able to engage the Sioux before they 
 could get to their feet or use their guns gave 
 us hope. But, as the enemy grew still more 
 numerous with each passing moment, the 
 scouts realized that the struggle must be short 
 and bloody, and they fought with the despera 
 tion of men making a last stand at the door 
 of death. 
 
 "Day was dawning rapidly now, and the 
 scouts, observing that the stream of Sioux was 
 pouring into the centre of our line, and that 
 the extreme right and left had little to do, 
 
42 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 began to close up. They had been in so 
 many close fights that the men seemed, when 
 once set to work, to know just what to do, 
 and they moved like dancers who go through 
 the different figures of a quadrille without 
 prompting. 
 
 " A half-circle thrown about one hundred 
 feet from the bank of the stream would now 
 inclose the combatants, so close and desper 
 ate was the fighting. In a little while the 
 scouts had formed a solid line along the bank, 
 while those not engaged there fought, and usu 
 ally finished, the Sioux who succeeded in gain 
 ing the level plain. Some were slaughtered 
 and others were forced to leap the bank and 
 rejoin their comrades; seeing which the war 
 riors hurrying up the river became discouraged 
 and began to retreat. By this time it was so 
 light that we could see the desperate faces 
 of the savages. It was a novel sight to me, 
 for I did not belong at the front. I had 
 arrived only the day before with a train- 
 load of material, and had persuaded the cap 
 tain, whom I knew very well, to allow me to 
 remain near him during the exercises, never 
 
A SCALP FOR A SCALP 43 
 
 dreaming that I might be called upon to fight 
 for my life. I did not rush frantically into the 
 fiercest of the fight, nor did I run away. I 
 had asked to be allowed to take part, and so 
 stood my ground and did what I could. But 
 now, after the chill of the first fright had 
 passed away, I began to study the faces of 
 these desperate red men, who, having ceased 
 yelling, were working with wonderful coolness 
 to wipe each other from the face of the earth. 
 Despite the fact that it was awfully interesting, 
 there was something touchingly sad in the 
 spectacle of these red desperadoes, who were 
 born brothers, and who ought to have been 
 fighting shoulder to shoulder, if there was 
 fighting to do, closing in upon one another 
 in a desperate struggle that could end only 
 in death. 
 
 " As I stood watching a big Sioux who was 
 fighting three scouts single-handed, and who, 
 up to this point, seemed not only to hold his 
 own, but who had killed one of his assailants, I 
 observed a Pawnee dart past me. Turning to 
 look where he ran, I saw that he was engaging 
 a Sioux who must have been stealing up t>e- 
 
44 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 hind me. As the men came together they 
 appeared, by mutual agreement, to drop their 
 guns and pistols and agree upon knives as 
 the proper weapons with which to settle their 
 differences. They came at each other half 
 crouching, but when not more than six feet 
 separated them they paused and glared at 
 each other like wild beasts. Then they flew 
 at each other, their knives clashed, and they 
 bounded back as if they had been rubber 
 balls. Without taking time to breathe, they 
 were at it again, and mixed up so that I could 
 not say which was which. Very naturally I 
 wanted to help the Pawnee, who by his bravery 
 had saved my life, but I dared not fire, or 
 even strike with my clubbed rifle, for fear of 
 hitting the scout. Perhaps the most I had 
 ever done for him was to give him a cigar or 
 some very bad tobacco, but he had heroically 
 taken my place in a hot engagement, in which 
 I would not have lasted longer than a snow- 
 flake would last in the fire-box of the 49. 
 When these savage souls had been leap 
 ing and slashing at each other for forty or 
 fifty seconds, they were both covered with 
 
A SCALP FOR -A SCALP 45 
 
 blood, but, so far as fierceness went, they 
 were still undaunted. The last of the invad 
 ing army had been driven back to the river. 
 The scouts were running along the bank, 
 firing at the dark forms of the Sioux who were 
 swimming down stream to get out of range of 
 the deadly rifles of the Pawnees. 
 
 " Don t stand so close, said a voice from 
 behind me, and at the same time the captain 
 took hold of my arm and pulled me back. A 
 half-dozen scouts now joined us, but no one 
 offered to help the Pawnee, whose face and 
 arms were reeking with blood. As they fought 
 the men kept working away from the river and 
 toward the roundhouse. It seemed to me that 
 the Sioux had the best of the fight, and I said 
 so to the captain, but he refused to interfere 
 or to believe that any living Indian could kill 
 this Pawnee in a single-handed engagement. 
 
 " How men could lose so much blood and 
 still fight so fiercely was a mystery to me, for 
 they seemed to grow stronger rather than 
 weaker as the battle progressed. 
 
 " Without noticing where I went, I had been 
 walking backward since the fight began, and of 
 
46 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 a sudden, finding it necessary to step quickly to 
 keep clear of the knives, my back struck against 
 the cottonvvood tree. Before I had time to 
 slip away, the Sioux, to escape the Pawnee, 
 leaped back against me. The moment he felt 
 himself come in contact with me he dug back 
 with his bloody knife, which passed between 
 my right arm and my body and stuck fast in 
 the tree. The Pawnee was quick to take 
 advantage of the situation and leaped upon 
 his antagonist, but the wily Sioux had not 
 taken his eye from the scout, and now, twist 
 ing his knife from the cottonwood, he made a 
 last desperate effort to slay him. For a moment 
 the men were so mixed up that it was utterly 
 impossible to tell one from the other. They 
 were on the ground, up again, now rolling over 
 each other and then leaping high into the air. 
 For a moment they seemed to be kneeling, 
 clasped in each other s arms. Now the left 
 hand of the Sioux went to the Pawnee s hair 
 and at the same instant the scout reached for 
 the scalp of his foe. There was a swift flash 
 of steel and the two men leaped to their feet. 
 They glared at each other ; each at the bloody 
 
A SCALP FOR A SCALP 47 
 
 trophy the other held, and a mighty change 
 came over the hideous features of the panting 
 savages. 
 
 "The look of ferocious hatred disappeared 
 at once, and in its place there came an expres 
 sion of utter hopelessness and indescribable 
 despair. 
 
 " Of course they could fight no more, for 
 each now stood in the presence of the dead ; 
 for, in the eyes of these Indians, to lose one s 
 scalp was to lose one s life. As if moved by 
 a single impulse they dropped each his scalp 
 and weapons, put their heads down, and started 
 for the river. Each seemed bent upon reach 
 ing the bank before his dreadful companion 
 could throw his hideous form into the stream, 
 but they were not less equally matched in 
 death than they had been in life, and so it 
 came out, at the end of it all, that they leaped 
 from the high bank together and went down 
 into the dark water." 
 
t\)t OTiltJ Bull 
 
SLAYING THE WILD BULL. 
 
 " T WAS on the plains in the sixties," said the 
 A short man, draining his glass of ordinary. 
 He did not look over thirty, but he must have 
 been more than forty, for the tales he told 
 carried so much of the color of the country that 
 one found it difficult to disbelieve them. The 
 Spanish gentleman had just finished an interest 
 ing account of a bull-fight which had taken 
 place at Barcelona, in which, by some accident, 
 the bull had had the best of it. 
 
 " I saw a bull-fight on the plains once," said 
 the short man, laying his tools down, "right 
 out in the open, with nothing to hide behind, 
 nowhere to stand but on, and nowhere to fall 
 but off, as the deceased bard of St. Joe would 
 say. 
 
 " It was while we were locating the line of 
 the Union Pacific simply driving across 
 the country and making observations. A 
 
52 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 couple of Sioux fell in with our party and were 
 riding along looking for a chance to steal some 
 thing, when we came suddenly upon a small 
 herd of buffalo. The rear guard, a sturdy old 
 bull, was feeding along in a sag between the 
 sand-hills, and the wind, blowing from him to 
 us, prevented him from scenting our party until 
 the two Indians dashed by, cutting him off 
 from the main herd. Lowering his head the 
 great brute bounded away up the little hill, at 
 the top of which the two Sioux sat waiting to 
 receive him. Each of the Indians carried a 
 rifle, but to our surprise they were left hanging 
 at the saddles. The bull made straight for one 
 of the horses, but just as he seemed about to 
 collide the broncho sprang to one side and an 
 arrow from the Indian s bow was driven deep 
 into the back of the bull. We expected the 
 animal to bolt now, but he was enraged and 
 scorned to escape. Turning, he came straight 
 for the other Sioux, only to plough the air close 
 alarmingly close to the agile horse, which 
 carried his rider safely to the rear. The first 
 Indian had by this time fixed another arrow, 
 and when the charge was made planted it deep 
 
SLAYING THE WILD BULL 53 
 
 behind the bull s left shoulder. The fight had 
 by this time become so exciting that our driver, 
 forgetting the danger, had driven up to within 
 a hundred yards of the scene of the battle. 
 Having bounded by one of the Indians, carry 
 ing another arrow away with him, the infuriated 
 animal caught sight of our wagon and drove 
 straight for us. It was like standing on the 
 track in front of a locomotive, and every man 
 of us, realizing the great danger, was seized with 
 fear that almost froze his blood. The driver 
 was so filled with terror that he made no 
 attempt to avoid the collision, which, from the 
 moment the bull passed the Indian, seemed 
 inevitable. On he came, snorting like a snow- 
 plough and looking as formidable, and not one 
 of us had presence of mind enough to reach for 
 a rifle; we were too badly scared to move. 
 But not so with the Sioux ; seeing our danger 
 the brave fellows turned their horses and came 
 galloping past the bull, one on either side, and 
 as they passed him each drove an arrow into 
 the mad brute. These new wounds seemed 
 only to increase his rage, and on he came, 
 tearing toward us ; but before they reached our 
 
54 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 wagon the Indians whirled their horses, and 
 with arrows drawn stood between us and the 
 approaching buffalo. The horses had barely 
 time to turn before the bull was upon them. 
 One of the bronchos sprang away, his rider 
 emitting a wild yell as he sent another arrow 
 into the bleeding buffalo. The other Indian 
 was not so fortunate. His horse failed to clear, 
 and one of the bull s horns caught in its side 
 just behind the girth and ploughed a great 
 furrow back to the flank. 
 
 " The buffalo appeared to appreciate the 
 advantage of this thrust, and at once turned 
 and charged the unhorsed Sioux. The Indian 
 might have ended the fight by taking up his 
 rifle, but he did not. Standing erect at the side 
 of his dead horse he faced the rapidly advanc 
 ing foe, and sent an arrow deep under the 
 shoulder-blade. As the arrow left the string 
 the Indian dropped beside the body of his 
 horse, and the buffalo passed over him without 
 doing any damage. Now the mounted Sioux 
 claimed the attention of the wounded bull, and 
 again the Sioux on foot. By this time the 
 buffalo fairly bristled with arrows and resembled 
 
SLAYING THE WILD BULL 55 
 
 a huge porcupine. We could see that the ani 
 mal was getting groggy, as they say of prize 
 fighters, but his sand seemed never to leave 
 him. With a roar that would send a chill down 
 your spine, with blood spurting from his nostrils, 
 he would drive like a hurricane at his tormen 
 tors, who, with the exception noted, seemed to 
 avoid him by about the breadth of two hairs. 
 When they had fought five minutes the earth 
 for the space of fifty feet about resembled a 
 ploughed field. The one living horse was 
 flecked with the froth of battle, and, like the 
 buffalo, showed unmistakable signs of exhaus 
 tion. As the action of the bull grew slower, the 
 horseless Sioux fought further from cover. At 
 times he would stand forth in the very face of 
 his furious adversary, and after discharging his 
 arrow leap to one side while the monster 
 brushed by. 
 
 "We were surprised at the beginning of 
 the fight to see the Indians using their bows, 
 allowing their rifles to remain at the saddle, but 
 our surprise was still greater now, when the 
 mounted Sioux turned his horse about and left 
 the field, leaving his companion to fight it out 
 
56 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 single-handed. The bull seemed to take new 
 courage, finding but one of his assailants, and 
 for a time fought desperately. Of a sudden he 
 stopped, facing the Indian. With his front feet 
 far apart he appeared to rest, perhaps to collect 
 his fast failing strength. He was an object now 
 to excite one s pity, and, although it may seem 
 unchristian, I almost wished he could win, for 
 in those days there were nearly as many Indians 
 as buffaloes, and they were infinitely more 
 dangerous. 
 
 " An arrow had destroyed one of the bull s 
 eyes, blood was rushing from his mouth and 
 nostrils and trickling from a score of wounds 
 along his spine. His life blood was ebbing 
 away, and now, seeing his tormentor standing 
 before him, he made a last desperate effort to 
 reach him. With a mighty roar the bleeding 
 brute bounded forward, and it seemed to us 
 that he had regained all his lost strength, for he 
 went with the speed and force of an express 
 train. The daring Sioux drew another arrow 
 and let it drive into the buffalo, made a feint of 
 dodging to the right, and then, leaping far to 
 the left, let fly another arrow as the bafBed bull 
 went by. 
 
SLAYING THE WILD BULL 57 
 
 " The buffalo was by this time acquainted 
 with the Sioux s tricks, and the moment he 
 passed the Indian, whirled and came back at 
 his adversary with renewed vigor. The Sioux, 
 surprised perhaps by the suddenness of the 
 charge, leaned back, stumbled, and nearly fell 
 backward over the body of his dead horse. 
 Before he could regain his feet the animal was 
 upon him. It seemed that in another moment 
 the Indian would be tossed high in the air, but 
 the new lease of life the bull had was out, and 
 in that moment in which we had looked to see 
 him triumph, the great beast stumbled and fell 
 in a heap at the Sioux s feet." 
 
an 
 
VALLEY TAN. 
 
 HIGH up in the Henry Mountains the 
 Mormons make what the cowboys call 
 " valley tan," which is only a poetic name for 
 very bad liquor. In these high lands of Utah 
 live Utes, Piutes, coyotes, and cowboys, and 
 here and there in a narrow vale, you see the 
 squat cabin of a settler. Occasionally a wan 
 dering trapper may be seen walking the river 
 (the Lord knows what he traps), stopping at 
 night with the placer miners who are washing 
 flour-gold from the sands of the Colorado. 
 Sometimes in the narrow canons you meet 
 strange bands of men who only nod in silence, 
 glance at your mount and trappings, and pass 
 peacefully on down the winding trail. Among 
 these bands of homeless men you nearly always 
 see men with dark faces, Mexicans and Indians, 
 with enough " white blood " to make them 
 
62 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 ambitious, and enough red to make them kill 
 a man for a new saddle. 
 
 Five hundred miles of wilderness and desert 
 lay between these hills and the railway station 
 on the Green River, and its good hiding for 
 desperadoes and outcasts, who have burned all 
 the bridges between them and civilization. Ten 
 years ago you would not meet a man in a day s 
 travel who had less than two six-shooters hang 
 ing to him, and often a rifle resting lightly 
 across his saddle. It was a long and tiresome 
 journey across the desert to court, and so the 
 men who lived down there in the wilds had 
 fallen into the habit of settling any little differ 
 ences that might arise with a pair of six- 
 shooters. Fortunately, there being no politics, 
 very little religion, and no women, there was 
 not much to quarrel over; so the disputes 
 were few and far between. It was so at least 
 until the Mormons began brewing "valley tan," 
 and then there came a change. Wherever red 
 liquor runs, blood will run. A small moonlight 
 distillery can create more crime and general 
 disturbance than all the politicians and women 
 in a whole State. These little liquor mills were 
 
VALLEY TAN 63 
 
 especially demoralizing among Indians, who 
 are always looking for something that will 
 " make drunk quick." 
 
 A couple of half-breeds, who had, with the 
 help of a rawhide rope and a branding iron, 
 accumulated a bunch of cattle on the San Juan, 
 traded the herd for a small gin-mill at the head 
 of Windy Gulch, near Tickabo canon. They 
 made whiskey, under the guidance of a Mexican 
 expert, regardless of the laws enacted by Con 
 gress for the regulation of the liquor business. 
 Also they made money and many drunkards. 
 By and by the revenue department got wind, 
 for the thing had begun to smell to Washington. 
 A couple of moonshine detectives went after 
 the illicits, and in the course of a fortnight 
 found themselves in the wilds of the Henry 
 Mountains. They reached Windy Gulch late 
 in the afternoon of a day upon which both the 
 proprietors, with a number of friends, of various 
 shades of character and complexion, had im-* 
 bibed freely of the raw new run. One of the 
 proprietors, a half-Ute, and one of the guests, 
 a Piute, had quarrelled and emptied their re 
 volvers without settling the difficulty. When 
 
64 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 the Piute had run out of ammunition he hit 
 the still-man with a stone, climbed his cayuse, 
 and galloped away. 
 
 Now it was all right for the proprietor of a 
 distillery to be shot at, or even shot, but the 
 slugging of a man with a rock was a thing an 
 Indian might not do with impunity. The still- 
 man was desperate and all his companions 
 were indignant. After reloading his firearms 
 the still-man mounted a cayuse and started 
 after the insolent Indian. 
 
 A little way down the gulch the fleeing Piute 
 met a cowboy, who supplied him with car 
 tridges ; and, having refilled his guns, he rode 
 on swiftly down the trail. 
 
 The two detectives, riding slowly up the 
 canon, heard the clatter of a pony s feet upon 
 the stony trail, and reining their horses into a 
 side canon waited the coming of the stranger. 
 A moment later they saw the Indian sailing 
 past, his knees cocked high, as an Arabian 
 rides, but with his heels digging vigorously into 
 the flanks of his thin cayuse. At every other 
 jump of his broncho he glanced over his 
 shoulder with a quick, nervous glance, and 
 
VALLEY TAN 65 
 
 wriggled his quirt constantly above the curved 
 back of his half-wild horse. The two officers 
 let him pass, and as they turned to ride back 
 to the trail the scar- faced half-breed came 
 down the canon, riding like the wind, but 
 looking straight ahead. Like the Piute he was 
 wriggling his quirt above the back of his horse, 
 but he was making good time. The other 
 Indian s horse was thin and spent, and in a 
 little while the still-man would overtake the 
 runaway Indian and then there would be 
 trouble. 
 
 The detectives saw that it would be impos 
 sible for them to get under cover, and so waited 
 beside the trail until the red man came to a 
 sudden stop. 
 
 "You see um Pilute?" demanded the half- 
 breed, bringing his hand down over his face, 
 smearing it with blood. 
 
 The white man nodded. 
 
 " Me Lute him Pilute hit um lock. You 
 see um blood?" and he swiped his smeared 
 face again. 
 
 " Yes," said one of the detectives. " You see 
 um whisk-shop up gulch? " 
 5 
 
66 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 " Yes, me no see um," said the Indian. 
 "Damn! me kill um;" and driving his heels 
 into his horse s sides he dashed away down 
 the trail. 
 
 Now because he knew the other man, if he 
 followed, would overtake him, or because he 
 wanted to fight, or because he was crazy drunk, 
 the Piute had stopped a little way down the 
 gulch, and when his pursuer hove in sight, 
 the fight began. The two detectives, hearing 
 the shooting, trailed back and saw the excite 
 ment. It was not a cause in which a white man 
 felt called upon to take sides, and so the men, 
 remaining at a safe distance, watched these half- 
 wild Indians sail into each other. When they 
 had exchanged a few shots, and each had 
 received slight wounds, they dismounted and 
 standing beside their horses aimed deliberately, 
 and as accurately as drunken men can, at each 
 other. When one six-shooter had been emptied, 
 another was pulled, and when both were empty 
 they were reloaded with what skill the com 
 batants could command. Being discouraged 
 the two men left their horses and walked slowly 
 toward each other, firing as they advanced. 
 
VALLEY TAN 67 
 
 The Ute fell, and the other, standing, continued 
 to fire. The Ute struggled to his feet and 
 advanced, firing again. The two Indians finally 
 came face to face in the narrow trail, and neither 
 sought to shield himself from the other s mur 
 derous fire, but sought only to slay his opponent. 
 The men who saw the fight say there was some 
 thing pathetic in the picture of these two-legged 
 animals walking deliberately to death. It was 
 not brave, it was beastly. It was like two 
 vicious dogs, mad with the smell of blood, 
 devouring each other. Again the Ute went 
 down, and a moment later the other sank to 
 the ground. Now they rested on their elbows 
 and gave each other a parting shot. The two 
 men waited for some moments and then ap 
 proached the battle scene. A camp robber 
 was screaming on a cedar bough above the 
 prostrate figures, and looking into the distorted 
 faces of the Ute and Piute, who were both 
 dead. 
 
 An hour later the U. S. officers had taken 
 possession of the moonshine mill and the 
 remaining proprietor ; and that was the end of 
 the " valley tan " industry at Windy Gulch. 
 
IN THE HOSPITAL. 
 
 \ T 7E were in the hospital together, Wilson 
 V V and I, in the same ward. I was ill 
 from the effects of bucking snow in the moun 
 tains, and he had been hurt in a collision in the 
 Trinidad yards. He was the travelling engineer 
 of the road, and while he was asleep in Colonel 
 Ricker s special, a standard-gauge engine had 
 crashed into the car and Wilson had had his right 
 leg broken above the knee. Dr. O Connor, 
 the chief surgeon, had rigged a pulley at the 
 foot of Wilson s bed and was pulling his leg. 
 A piece of bell-cord was fastened to the pa 
 tient s foot, passed over the pulley, and loaded 
 down with as many weights as the house sur 
 geon considered necessary. Wilson was fifty 
 years old and the process of knitting the 
 broken bone together was extremely painful. 
 It grew so serious at one time that we were 
 alarmed. The sufferer was thrown into a fever 
 and talked " out of his head." Away in the 
 
72 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 night when the nurse nodded over against the 
 wall, Wilson, delirious, told me some wonderful 
 tales. My friend s attendant was an Italian 
 who seemed to rejoice in the moans of the 
 inmates of the institution. Sometimes when 
 the place was still, and he thought I was asleep, 
 he would hang an extra weight on Wilson s 
 string, and then when the patient s moans had 
 put the Mafia to sleep, I would steal over and 
 take it off. Often since, when I have seen 
 Wilson limping, I have thought seriously on 
 what I did ; for the more weight the patient 
 bore, the longer his leg would be, and it was 
 full half an inch short when he was able to 
 walk ; but it was hard for me to see him suffer 
 so and to hear him moan. 
 
 " Frank," said I one day when he was able 
 to sit up in bed, "you used to tell the best 
 Indian stories when the fever was high that I 
 ever heard." 
 
 When I had retold some of them to him, he 
 took off his glasses and declared that what he 
 had said in his delirium was wholly true. He 
 had been the engineer on the construction 
 train which laid the track of the Kansas Pa- 
 
IN THE HOSPITAL 73 
 
 cific. " I have often run fifty miles without 
 being out of sight of buffalo," said he. " I 
 have seen a single band that made a proces 
 sion so long that you could see neither the 
 head nor the tail of the herd. They were 
 interesting, but not nearly so much so as the 
 Indians were. I remember one morning our 
 conductor took a rifle and went out to shoot a 
 buffalo for breakfast. Our camp was in a 
 little valley, along one side of which ran a high 
 chalk bluff. We had seen no Indians for 
 nearly a week, and so were getting careless. 
 The conductor was stalking a herd, hugging 
 the bluffs, when he was surprised by a band of 
 Indians who began to shower arrows at him 
 from the top of the wall. He must have seen 
 that they could not descend so steep a cliff, 
 but instead of retreating across the open vale 
 out of the reach of their arrows, he sought 
 refuge under the bluff. Here for a time he 
 was secure. A line of redskins stood upon 
 the wall ready to fill his back with arrows the 
 moment he started to fly, while others with 
 clubs, tomahawks, and rocks began the work of 
 crumbling the shelf-like wall away in order to 
 
74 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 reach their victim. For nearly an hour the 
 wild yells of the bloodthirsty hair-lifters filled 
 his ears and froze his blood. At first the fall 
 ing debris dropped some feet in front of him, 
 but as the Indians by constant stamping and 
 beating, wore the projecting shelf away, the 
 broken rock began to pile high in front of 
 him, and rolling about his feet threatened to 
 bury him alive. Now the red villains, hanging 
 over the wall, began to send arrows at him. 
 The cloud of dust made by the falling rock 
 and dirt made it impossible for the conductor 
 to use his rifle when the Indians poked their 
 painted faces over the wall. The most he 
 could do was to discharge his rifle at random 
 occasionally to show them that he was still 
 alive and fighting. Almost before he was 
 aware of it he found himself a prisoner. The 
 bits of rock had piled up about his feet until 
 he found it impossible to move. There was 
 nothing now to hope for, as he knew well that 
 his tormentors would never give over the fight 
 until he was either killed by an arrow or buried 
 alive. 
 
 " When an hour had gone by and he did 
 
IN THE HOSPITAL 75 
 
 not return a party went to look for him. In a 
 little while we came within sight of the band 
 of murderers on the cliff and readily guessed 
 that the conductor was being besieged. 
 
 " Spurring our horses to a dead run we 
 charged the band, and when within rifle range 
 began to pour the lead into them. For a time 
 they withstood the storm bravely, but never an 
 arrow was aimed at us. 
 
 "An Indian would hang over the wail, two 
 or three of his companions holding on to his 
 feet, and send a poisoned arrow after the con 
 ductor. Some of them were wounded or 
 killed by our bullets, but that seemed to make 
 them the more determined to kill the prisoner. 
 We were by no means anxious to approach 
 within reach of their arrows, but the problem 
 of rescuing the conductor was becoming a 
 serious one. Even now he might be dead, for 
 we could neither see nor hear him, so great 
 were the din and the dust. Finding it impos 
 sible to drive the red devils away from their 
 murderous work, our commander ordered us to 
 charge, and galloping up to within a hundred 
 yards of the bluff we halted, and taking delib- 
 
76 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 erate aim let fly a shower of lead that sent a 
 half-dozen Indians to the earth. At that mo 
 ment an Indian, who had just discharged an 
 arrow at the imprisoned conductor, leaped to 
 his feet and gave an exultant yell. Instantly 
 the whole band, taking up the cry, disappeared 
 behind the edge of the cliff. 
 
 " Leaving a majority of our force on guard, 
 the captain and I approached toward where the 
 Indians had been aiming their arrows. So dense 
 was the cloud of dust that hung about the hill in 
 the still morning air that we were unable, for a 
 time, to locate the unfortunate man. To our 
 calls he made no reply, and we knew that he 
 was beyond human aid. When we finally found 
 him he was still standing upright, with the 
 chalk from the bluff piled above his waist. A 
 number of arrows were sticking in his arms 
 and shoulders. Only the small end of one 
 stood above his coat. It had entered just 
 behind his collar-bone, near the left side of 
 his neck, and, passing downward, the point of 
 it had pierced his heart. His head hung upon 
 his breast, while his helpless hands rested upon 
 the rocks that had been heaped around him. 
 
IN THE HOSPITAL 
 
 77 
 
 " It would be as impossible for me to describe 
 the expression on the dead man s face as it 
 has been for me to forget it. It was a sight to 
 take out of a white man s heart any whit of 
 Christian sympathy he may have harbored there 
 for his red brother. It was hard to look upon 
 there, but when we had carried the poor fel 
 low s body back to his home and borne it up 
 to the door of a little white cottage to the very 
 spot upon which he had kissed his wife and 
 baby " good-by " only a few days before, it 
 was harder still. When his gray-haired mother 
 bent her stiff knees beside the dead man, 
 when his wife wept over his coffin, and his 
 blue-eyed baby stood staring at the cold white 
 face, unable to understand, there crept into my 
 heart a feeling of bitter hatred for those red 
 devils which I am afraid I shall never be able 
 to overcome;" and the sick man sighed and 
 turned away his face to hide whatever he had 
 in his eyes. 
 
Btebop of price 
 
THE BISHOP OF PRICE. 
 
 IN the face of the well-established fact that 
 the earth is full of gold, and the other fact 
 that the Uintah Indian reservation is about to 
 be thrown open to prospectors and others, this 
 story of Smith s will be of interest. You may 
 not find the mine, but you can t fail to find 
 Smith of Utah. No doubt you will find him at 
 the railway station wherever and whenever you 
 leave the train. There are as many Smiths as 
 there are Youngs in Utah. 
 
 " I Ve read your story of the Peso-la-ki 
 mine," said Smith. " It s a good story, but I 
 know a better one, because it s the story of a 
 better mine. Caleb Rhoads, a rich Mormon, 
 formerly Bishop of Price, could tell you more, 
 but he won t. Some people who had money 
 and faith, offered the bishop $10,000 to tell 
 them, and he refused. Forty years ago," con 
 tinued Smith of Utah, " Caleb Rhoads and his 
 brother found a rich placer in the Uintah reser- 
 6 
 
82 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 vation, but the Indians found the Rhoads, and 
 had trouble with them. 
 
 " The prospect was a rich one, and the two 
 brothers concluded to fight for it. It was so 
 rich in gold that they could shake enough 
 yellow meal out of a single pan of dirt to fill 
 the bowl of an ordinary cob pipe. 
 
 " Well, the Indians came and saw, and 
 killed Caleb s brother and crippled Caleb. It 
 was almost a miracle that he escaped. As it 
 was, he brought away enough flint and lead 
 to sink a raft, all comfortably cached in his 
 hide. He is a stayer, is this same Caleb 
 Rhoads, and he went back the following sum 
 mer and brought out a goodly bag of dust. 
 
 " He continued to go every summer for 
 years and years, and his neighbors marvelled at 
 the easy life he led, and some of them offered 
 to be company for him, but the wily Caleb 
 wouldn t have it. Once they made up a 
 jackpot and offered to buy a share in these 
 annual sorties, but they were not for sale. At 
 length, when four decades had passed away 
 and Caleb had grown rich with little or no 
 exertion, some of his neighbors determined to 
 
THE BISHOP OF PRICE 83 
 
 follow the prospector into the hills. Caleb 
 heard of it and made his friends welcome, but 
 refused to be responsible for the followers. 
 
 " If you get lost in the hills, said he, 
 you ll have yourselves to blame, for I sha n t 
 hunt you out. 
 
 " Well, they all agreed to keep up with the 
 prospector, and arrangements were made ac 
 cordingly for a long journey. Caleb gave out 
 the day and date upon which he would vamose, 
 but no one believed him. For a week they 
 watched his house as terriers watch a rathole, 
 and Caleb slept through it all like an innocent 
 babe. Finally, when the last night came the 
 men who were to go with the prospector were 
 so sure that he would steal away that they had 
 their horses saddled and ready all night. To 
 their great surprise, Caleb never stirred until 
 daylight, when he started his men out to call 
 his neighbors who were to accompany him. 
 That made the men feel so mean that they 
 outdid each other in helping the prospector to 
 pack. One of the party suggested that Caleb 
 might be luring them out for the purpose of 
 losing them, and gave it as his opinion that 
 
84 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 they might better keep watch the first night, 
 but the others only laughed at him. 
 
 " He can t lose me, Charley, said one of 
 the young men ; and so they ceased to be 
 suspicious of Caleb. 
 
 " In order, as he said, to reach a favorite 
 camping-ground, they were obliged to travel 
 far into the night, and when they had finally 
 camped, and had supper, Caleb kept them up 
 for hours telling them wonderful tales of the 
 wild country to which he would lead them. 
 When at last they rolled up in their blankets 
 the weary men slept soundly until Caleb called 
 them to get breakfast. He apologized for 
 having to get them out so early, but they must 
 make thirty-five miles that day across an arm 
 of the desert before they could find water, 
 which in that country is only to be found in 
 rock basins, or tanks, as the cowboys call them. 
 All day long the four men and eight horses 
 trailed across the arm of this shipless sea, with 
 out food or water for themselves or their 
 animals. 
 
 "What with their all-night watch at Price, 
 followed by a hard day s work and a short 
 
THE BISHOP OF PRICE 85 
 
 sleep, they were heart-sick and saddle-sore 
 long before the fringe of pine that marked the 
 place of water came in sight. By the middle 
 of the afternoon the foothills seemed to be 
 within rifle range of them. When the sun 
 went down the hills began to retire, as it were, 
 and finally melted away in the darkness. The 
 horses were tired, and the pack horses had to 
 be urged on constantly, and now went along 
 doggedly, holding their dusty noses close to the 
 sand. Presently the moon came out of the 
 desert a little way behind them and shone on 
 the evergreen trees that garnished the foothills. 
 Now they came to a little stream, not more 
 than a foot wide, that ran across the trail. 
 
 " The famished horses stopped short. Caleb, 
 dismounting, scooped up a handful of the 
 water, tasted it, and shouted to the men to 
 push on. The water was poisoned with alkali. 
 When at last they found water, the men were 
 utterly done out. It was with difficulty that 
 Caleb persuaded them to cook some supper, 
 for they were all for sleeping, hungry as they 
 were. The good captain cheered them with 
 the assurance that they would have no more 
 
86 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 such work. They were in God s country now, 
 he told them, where water and game could be 
 found in abundance. 
 
 " < To-morrow, said Caleb, you can go as 
 you please, for I assure you that I am not fond 
 of these forced marches. " 
 
 " That night when they had finished supper, 
 a couple of Indians came up to the fire and 
 begged, or rather demanded, food. They were 
 inclined to be ugly, so the white men fed them, 
 but they refused to go away. They wanted 
 tobacco, which was given them, and then they 
 asked for whiskey. They could not have 
 whiskey, Caleb told them. Me know how get 
 whisk, said an ugly savage, tapping the rifle 
 that rested in the hollow of his arm. Now the 
 young men who had come out to fathom the 
 mysteries of the old Mormon s wealth, grew 
 suddenly homesick. To the surprise and 
 amazement of his companions, Caleb rose 
 deliberately, walked over to the savage, and 
 began to kick him out of camp. What 
 surprised them still more was that the Indian 
 made no show of resistance, but went his way. 
 
 " This little incident put away any fear that 
 
THE BISHOP OF PRICE 87 
 
 might otherwise have broken the much-needed 
 rest of the weary voyagers, and in a little while 
 they were sleeping like dead men. But Caleb 
 could not sleep, not because he had any fear 
 of the Indians, but he could not afford it. 
 Shortly after midnight he untied his two horses 
 and led them away. When out of sight and 
 hearing of the camp he stopped, opened his 
 paniers, and took out eight ready-made mocca 
 sins. He put one on each of the eight feet 
 that went with his two horses and stole softly 
 away. In the course of an hour he found 
 water and camped, but he made no fire. As 
 soon as it was light he set out on his journey, 
 the muffled feet of his horses making little or 
 no noise, and leaving tracks in the sand on the 
 selvage of the desert that looked like Indian 
 tracks going the other way. 
 
 " The young men slept until the sun was up, 
 and when they awoke looked very foolish. 
 They found the tracks of Caleb s horses, and 
 without stopping to make coffee, took the trail. 
 In an hour they lost it on a barren sweep of 
 sandstone, and they never found it again. 
 When they had grown weary of the search they 
 halted for breakfast. 
 
88 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 " Like hundreds of others they had acquired 
 that beastly American habit of drinking before 
 breakfast, and now when they sought the jug 
 they found a note from their late leader. It 
 was neatly folded and had one corner caught 
 playfully in the mouth of the jug and held there 
 by the cork. 
 
 " It was a very brief message, no date and 
 no signature, but it was pithy and to the point. 
 Only one of the men had seen it, and now his 
 companions called to him to read it. One of 
 the men had paused with the brown jug thrown 
 above his curved elbow, his hand on the handle 
 and his mouth stealing to the mouth of the 
 jug, as the mouth of a Mexican maiden glides 
 to the kiss of her caballero. At the very 
 moment when the man was about to read 
 aloud the old bishop s last message, a half- 
 dozen Indians jumped into the camp. One of 
 them took the jug gently from the bewildered 
 prospector, smelled it, and took a drink. 
 
 "A very large man, who was extremely 
 dirty, ugly, pockmarked, and generally unhand 
 some, kicked the Indian and reached for the 
 jug. Before drinking he kicked the Indian 
 
THE BISHOP OF PRICE 89 
 
 again and swore at him in a blending of 
 Spanish, Indian, and bad English. Manifestly 
 this was the leader. 
 
 " By the time this important individual had 
 quenched his thirst a dozen Indians had come 
 into camp. They ate what they could find, 
 drank all the whiskey, and signed to the white 
 men to get up. When they were mounted the 
 pockmarked man tapped his rifle and said 
 1 Vamos ! 
 
 "The three men, thoroughly frightened, 
 reined their horses down the gulch. 
 
 " When they had left the foothills far behind 
 them and felt the sun hot on the back of their 
 necks, one of them asked the man who had 
 Caleb s letter to read it. Listen, then/ said 
 the man who was riding in front, and who now 
 held up the sheet of white paper ; and then he 
 read: Adios. " 
 
A QUIET DAY IN CREEDE. 
 
 IT was a quiet day in Creede Camp, in the 
 morning of the summer of 92. Most of 
 the miners were away in the hills, many of the 
 gamblers and others of the night shift were still 
 sleeping, though it was now 4 p. M. A string 
 of burros, laden with heavy loads of boards, 
 which they were about to drag away up to the 
 Last Chance, stood dreaming in San Luis 
 avenue and having their pictures taken by the 
 writer. Some fishermen, with long cane poles 
 thrown over their shoulders, were trailing out 
 at the lower end of the town, in the direction 
 of the Rio Grande. A string of heavy ore- 
 wagons was coming down the mountain from 
 the Amethyst mine. The brake on the forward 
 wagon gave way when the team was nearly 
 down to the foot of the hill, and instantly the 
 heavy load shot forward, and the poor animals 
 . there were six of them bounded away 
 in a mad effort to keep out of the way of the 
 
94 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 heavy load. The wheel horses appeared to 
 understand that they were expected to hold 
 the wagon back, and they did what they could ; 
 but the force of the great wagon threw them 
 off their feet, and when they fell slid them 
 along the rocky road to the foot of the hill, 
 grinding and crushing their legs under the 
 wheels, and when the wagon finally stopped 
 they were both dead. All this happened just 
 above and in full view of the town, so that 
 many of the people saw it and heard the 
 poor animals cry, almost as a human being 
 would cry for help, while they were being run 
 down and killed by the ore-wagon. 
 
 A moment later the crowd which had col 
 lected to view the wreck had its attention di 
 verted by a baby burro that now came reeling 
 down the principal street with a well-developed 
 "jag" and a gait like Riley s " wabbledy " 
 calf. Some hoodlums had given the burro 
 beer, and he was as drunk as a man. 
 
 A sorry-looking young woman was working 
 the shops and saloons on the shady side of the 
 avenue. She carried a long sheet of writing- 
 
A QUIET DAY IN CREEDE 95 
 
 paper, upon which she asked people to put 
 their names, and opposite their names the 
 amount of their subscriptions. One of the 
 girls had died the night before, and this money 
 was asked to pay some one to dig a hole at the 
 top of the hill and to hire an express wagon 
 to haul the girl up there. When the woman 
 came to the Leadville dance hall she entered 
 and was greeted sadly by another woman who 
 stood over behind a low railing which extended 
 from the end of the bar to the front of the tent, 
 fencing off a little space which served as an office 
 for the proprietor and the woman, who was a si 
 lent partner in the firm. The visitor pushed the 
 paper over toward the man a small, sallow- 
 looking man of thirty-two, who was ever fidget 
 ing and glancing at the door of whatever house 
 he happened to be in. The man glanced down 
 the column, saw " Soapy Smith, $5," and, as he 
 hated " Soapy," he immediately raised him five, 
 gave the woman the money, and wrote just 
 under his name and the ten, " Charity cover- 
 eth a multitude of sins." Then he passed out 
 from behind the bar and began walking slowly 
 to the rear end of the long room. The woman 
 
96 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 with the sorry face and the long white paper 
 passed out. Upon the threshold she met a man 
 in miner s clothes, and even as she turned to look 
 at him a very short man rode up to the door of 
 the tent and handed a double-barrelled shot 
 gun to the man at the entrance. As the miner- 
 looking man entered the tent with the gun the 
 woman with the paper turned as if she would 
 follow him, for she feared that the stranger 
 might do violence, reluctant as she was to 
 believe that a man in a refined mining centre 
 would resort to the use of so clumsy, not to say 
 unconventional, a shooting iron as a shot-gun. 
 " Hello, Bob ! " called the man with the gun, 
 and as the keeper of the dance hall turned he 
 raised the weapon and let go both barrels. 
 The shot, without scattering, entered the throat 
 of the victim and carried his gold collar-button 
 out through the back of his neck. 
 
 The report of the shot-gun startled the whole 
 camp, and as the Leadville was directly oppo 
 site my hotel, I rushed over and was almost the 
 first man in the place. One man had preceded 
 me, and as I entered he came out and shouted. 
 " Bob Ford s dead ! " 
 
A QUIET DAY IN CREEDE 97 
 
 At the moment I entered, the only person in 
 the room was the insignificant-looking woman 
 in the little office. She was weeping. She 
 knew me as the editor of the morning paper, 
 and at once began to pour out the story of 
 Bob s virtues. "He had planned," she said, 
 "to do much good." "Yes," said I, "it is 
 reported that he intended to kill off the entire 
 Chronicle force, including the editor." 
 
 "Yes, I know," she went on hurriedly, for 
 the place was filling up rapidly, "but he didn t 
 mean it he tole me so he did n t have it 
 in fur you-all a little bit. But say," she 
 continued, waving a hand in the direction of 
 the corpse, and her eyes filled with a fresh 
 flood of tears, "just to think they should shoot 
 him with that kind of a gun it just breaks 
 my heart; " and she leaned her head upon 
 the bar and wept bitterly. 
 
 Presently she lifted her head, dried her eyes, 
 and continued : 
 
 " Why, Bob would n t uv killed a coyote with 
 
 a shot-gun it s a coward gun. When he 
 
 killed Jesse James, the bravest man at ever 
 
 lived, an the deadest shot, he dun it with a 45, 
 
 7 
 
98 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 an ef he d a come down to clear out the 
 * Chronicle/ which he woulden , he d uv come 
 with his two han s an his six-shooter, an he d 
 a had you-all jumpin thu the winders an 
 scootin fur th willers fore yer could uv raised 
 a ban ." 
 
 " Well," said I, glancing toward the rear of 
 the room, to make sure he was still there, 
 " Bob s all right. He s a good fellow now." 
 
 I had known Ford. He was the first man 
 to whom I was introduced upon my first visit 
 to the camp. He had been our guide, and 
 had shown Judge Rooker and me the camp by 
 candle-light. It was upon this occasion that I 
 noticed his nervousness. If a man came in 
 and left the door open, Ford would slip back 
 and shut it. If there was a mirror over the 
 bar, he always kept his eyes on it, not to see 
 himself, but to observe those who passed to 
 and fro behind him. 
 
 In a pleasant way, I asked him if he was 
 expecting some one. He answered, smiling 
 sadly, that he was always expecting some one. 
 He had saved his life once in Kansas City by 
 looking into a mirror. A friend of the man 
 
A QUIET DAY IN CREEDE 99 
 
 he had murdered entered the room, saw Ford s 
 face in the mirror, and instantly reached for 
 his gun. Ford, lifting his glass, saw the man, 
 and the moment their eyes met, the man 
 weakened and passed on. My friend the 
 judge, from force of habit, I presume, began to 
 question Ford about the killing of Jesse James, 
 and the fellow told us that he had been led to 
 believe that if he killed James, whose friend 
 and messenger he had been, he would be the 
 greatest man in Missouri. That meant a great 
 deal to this boy of twenty-two, for outside of 
 Missouri there was little worth striving for. 
 And then, to justify his cowardly act, he related 
 that it had been planned by James that a bank 
 should be robbed shortly, and Ford had been 
 told that he was to enter the bank with James, 
 who would quietly shoot him, as he had begun 
 to mistrust the " kid." All this Ford pretended 
 to believe. He was confident that he would 
 have been murdered in a little while if he had 
 not put a bullet through Jesse s back while he 
 was hanging a picture. 
 
 Kelly, the "tough citizen" who removed 
 Ford, seemed, strangely enough, to regard the 
 
IOO FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 killing of this man much as Ford had looked 
 upon the killing of Jesse James. Ford was an 
 open enemy of society, and only a month be 
 fore his death had closed all the business houses 
 and put the camp to bed at nine p. M. The 
 morning paper had suggested that Ford be in 
 formed that he would be expected, in the future, 
 to refrain from shutting up the town, leave the 
 camp, or be hanged, just as he pleased ; and 
 for that he swore he would kill off the work 
 ing force, from the editor-in-chief down to 
 "Freckled Jimmie," the devil. . 
 
 However, Kelly was wrong. He was con 
 demned even by Ford s enemies for his 
 cowardly act, just as the public had disapproved 
 of the murder of Jesse James. All agreed that 
 the removal of Jesse would facilitate the move 
 ment of trains in Missouri, and that Ford s 
 absence would add much to the peace and 
 quiet of Creede camp, but no man admires a 
 coward. So Kelly was arrested, and later, when 
 he ran up against Judge (now Representative) 
 Bell s " equity mill," he was surprised to receive 
 a life sentence in the pen. 
 
 On the morning of the day following the kill- 
 
A QUIET DAY IN CREEDS IOI 
 
 ing, a half-hundred people assembled in a store 
 room, where religious services were held. 
 They brought Ford s coffin and placed it upon 
 a bench, and then the preacher got up and 
 preached a funeral sermon. He was not very 
 enthusiastic, I thought; but he had a tough 
 client and a hard case. He took for his text, 
 if he could be said to have taken anything, the 
 line which Ford had written upon the white 
 paper, "Charity covereth a multitude of sins," 
 and made the most of it. 
 
 When he had finished, an express wagon 
 backed up to the door, they put the dead man 
 in, and the wagon wound away up the trail to a 
 level spot above the town, where the unwept 
 and unfortunate girl had been buried the day 
 Ford died, where all about were new-made 
 graves, where Joe Simmons and "Slanting 
 Annie" slept side by side. 
 
 The autumn winds blow bleak and chill, 
 The sighing, quivering aspen waves 
 
 Above the summit of the hill, 
 Above the unrecorded graves, 
 
 Where halt, abandoned burros feed, 
 
 And coyotes call and this is Creede. 
 
jfuneral 
 
A COWBOY S FUNERAL. 
 
 NEARLY twelve months have elapsed since 
 the "Creede Chronicle " published the 
 story of Gambler Joe Simmons s funeral, which 
 was the first important event in the history of 
 that new camp. Up to that time Joe Simmons 
 had done very little to win the applause of the 
 newspaper fraternity, but, dying as he did on 
 the eve of the first issue of a great daily, he 
 made the hit of his life, got a good send off, 
 and helped the local force out immensely. 
 When, on the morning following the day of 
 Joe s burial, the newsboys marched up the 
 narrow streets that had been cut through the 
 willows, crying : " Morning Chronicle ; all bout 
 Joe Simmons fun al an shootin at Bob Ford s 
 Dance Hall," the entire edition was exhausted 
 in thirty minutes. All the gamblers and swift 
 characters bought copies for their scrap-books 
 (and in those days the history of Creede was 
 one continual round of scraps), and copies to 
 
1O6 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 send away. Probably nine hundred out of 
 every thousand people who read this story, 
 which told how Soapy Smith presided at the 
 grave, opened champagne, and said, " Now 
 let us drink to Joe s soul over there if there 
 is any over there," believed that what they 
 read was only a mining romance ; but it was 
 wholly true ; and the great daily, I am proud 
 to say, endureth still, a menace to road agents 
 and shell men, and a thorn in the side of as 
 crooked a City Council as ever embarrassed 
 a growing community. 
 
 Another funeral, equally interesting, came 
 under my notice on the desert not long ago. 
 A party of cowboys had gone to Thompson s 
 Springs, a small town in Utah, to buy supplies, 
 and while there filled up on " valley tan" and 
 amused themselves by shooting at the toes of a 
 tramp to see him dance. A bullet from a 
 " forty- five " glanced from the frozen ground, 
 struck a young man who had gone out of his 
 way to ask the shooters to desist, and killed 
 him. Seeing what they had done, the cowboys 
 fled, but were pursued by a sheriffs posse, and 
 one of the gang was fatally shot. The leaden 
 
A COWBOY S FUNERAL 107 
 
 missile from a Winchester rifle passed entirely 
 through him, and he began to sway to and fro ; 
 but the horse, so accustomed to carrying men 
 who were under the " influence," kept under 
 the form of the dying man until his compan 
 ions, seeing his condition, dashed forward and 
 supported him until his horse could be stopped. 
 The pursuing party were now pressing them so 
 closely that there was no time to lose. The 
 legs of the lifeless cowboy were lashed to the 
 horse, his hands tied to the saddle horn, and 
 a man rode on either side supporting the body 
 until it stiffened sufficiently to enable it to keep 
 its place in the saddle. 
 
 All night they dashed away over a trackless, 
 treeless plain, camping at daybreak on the San 
 Rafael River, where they remained all that day, 
 having hobbled their horses in a side canon, 
 where they could feed and go down to the 
 river and drink. When it was dark again the 
 dead cowboy was lashed to his old place in the 
 saddle, and away they went, over a soundless 
 sea of sand. 
 
 A hundred miles had been placed between 
 the scene of the shooting and the frightened 
 
IO8 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 fugitives when they camped at dawn on the 
 desert, not more than 200 yards from where 
 we were sleeping. They had little to fear from 
 us, however, as they outnumbered us two to 
 one, my party consisting of a travelling com 
 panion, a Mexican guide, and myself. 
 
 We were well mounted, and, as our horses 
 had been a great temptation to the Navajos, I 
 was afraid they might be to these wild sons of 
 the desert. Being thoroughly frightened, I 
 walked right over to their camp to show them 
 that I was not, making by this movement the 
 same cold bluff that Benighted Harry made on 
 the friendly guide-post. I remember, too, that 
 I whistled as I went along. 
 
 "Some one sick?" I asked, glancing at a 
 blanket bed. 
 
 " Worse n sick," was the reply. "One of 
 our gang was accidentally shot yesterday, and 
 we Ve stopped here to cache him." 
 
 Poor, unfortunate fellow, I thought ; it did 
 seem such a lonely, desolate place to be buried, 
 and I hinted as much. 
 
 " Gist what he wanted, used to always 
 say: 
 
A COWBOYS FUNERAL 1 09 
 
 " I want no fenced-in graveyard, 
 
 With snorin souls about ; 
 Just cache me in the desert, 
 When my light goes out. " 
 
 "Did your dead friend write verses?" was 
 my next question. 
 
 " Naw, he did n t write verses gist writ 
 poetry, that s all. Of course he warn t like 
 your eddicated New York poets, but a plain, 
 God-built chile o nature. Why, he was every 
 thing that was good in this layout, and here s a 
 gang that will be about as cheerful from this on 
 as a mockin bird with the tonsil-eat-us. Gist 
 ourt to heard him speak the Ship o the 
 Desert, and The Luck o Roarin Camp. 
 Always carried a copy of Gene Field s Western 
 verses. Said he knowed Field ; used to follow 
 him down to the midnight train at St. Joe, gist 
 to hear him speak < Little Willie to the ticket 
 agent." 
 
 As the speaker concluded he stepped over to 
 where the packs and saddles were and lifted a 
 long black bottle from one of the panniers, and 
 I noticed that there were tears in his eyes. 
 Having been brought up by poor but demo- 
 
IIO FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 cratic parents, I found no difficulty in doing 
 what I was expected to do, and then I gave 
 the bottle to the next man. When the black 
 assassin came back to the leader again he held 
 it up between him and the sun, which was 
 at that moment swinging up from the earth, 
 apparently not more than a mile away, and 
 took a long, gurgling drink. 
 
 When the bottle went back to its resting- 
 place it was empty, and it was evident that they 
 had been drinking before my arrival. 
 
 The black bottle, however, is a great boon, 
 alike to the light and the heavy drinker, as it 
 enables one to drink much or little without 
 causing comment. 
 
 Under the mellowing influence of the brain 
 destroyer the talking man became very sociable. 
 I was interested in the dead man this " God- 
 built chile o nature " and asked to be told 
 more about him, how he happened to come 
 West, and all. 
 
 "It was like this," he began, offering me a 
 saddle and taking a seat on the ground him 
 self. " It was like this : Doc was a friend of 
 the Ford boys, and when Bob disgraced the 
 
A COWBOY S FUNERAL III 
 
 name by killing Jesse James, Doc s girl roasted 
 the whole outfit from the stage, called them 
 murderers, and their friends associates after the 
 fact. Of course the house went wild had to 
 move the chandeliers and Doc said he was 
 afraid the queen o the ballet, as he called 
 her, would get tangled in her miskeeter-bar 
 dress and kick herself to death. Finally the 
 curtain went down, and Doc tuck his stand as 
 usual at the stage door to see her home, when 
 lo, and behold you ! out sweeps his fairy on the 
 arm of one of the James gang ; and when Doc 
 sees the two guns on the fellow, he was skeered 
 to death, and his heart was broke too. 
 
 " Too proud to pologize, Doc gist sold some 
 lots he had and come West and bought a bunch 
 of cattle on the lower end of the desert. In 
 the spring, when the cottonwood leaves came 
 out and the birds sang in the willows and 
 the wild flowers bloomed on the banks of the 
 Colorado, he used to stay in the canons whole 
 days, all alone, makin pictures and writin 
 poetry bout that girl. 
 
 " We fellows got tired seem Doc git the 
 worst of it, with no show to help his hand, so 
 
112 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 one day we does up a batch of pictures and 
 poetry and sends it out to the settlements, 
 billed for St. Joe. 
 
 "Bout two months, maybe three, Doc gits 
 a letter. Course we was all on, and all we had 
 to do was to watch Doc s face while he read 
 the letter. And such a transformation ! Every 
 wrinkle peared to leave his face at once and 
 the old-time frown faded from his forehead in 
 less than ten minutes. 
 
 " Doc answered the letter, of course, and 
 then he rode 200 miles to mail it and git killed, 
 and now this is the end of it all." 
 
 Without any explanation one of the men 
 opened another bottle and as silently passed it 
 to the leader, who, in turn, passed it to me. 
 
 I noticed that this man, who always received 
 the bottle first, always drank last, and, I thought, 
 most. 
 
 At that moment, Jeronimo, the Mexican, 
 having come over to say that my breakfast, 
 which consisted of jerked beef, jerked bread, 
 and water, was now ready, I was about to 
 depart when the leader, whom I have been 
 quoting so extensively, took up the unfinished 
 
A COWBOY S FUNERAL 113 
 
 business in the last bottle and it went round 
 again. 
 
 " Poor Doc," he began again. " He had 
 no more to do with the killin of that duck at 
 Thompson s Springs than he had to do with the 
 murder of Jesse James; but I suppose that 
 Injun of a sheriff had to git some one, and 
 he got the innocentest one of the lot. I can t 
 see, for the life of me, how that bullet shied off 
 and hit " 
 
 The speaker glanced at one of his com 
 panions, who at that moment was looking at 
 me without winking an eye. I dropped my 
 gaze, not daring to look at the man, who I 
 knew had said something he would like to take 
 back; but as I did so I could feel that they 
 were all looking at me, and my face fairly 
 burned under their scorching gaze. When the 
 leader sprang to his feet I ventured to raise my 
 eyes to his, but I almost regretted it the next 
 moment, for his face was white with rage. 
 
 " See here, pardner," he began, " you talk 
 too d n much." 
 
 "I have been listening," said I, "to the 
 story you have been good enough to tell me." 
 8 
 
114 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 " Better say drunk enough to tell you," said 
 one of the gang. 
 
 " Wai, then, you listen too d n much." 
 This from the man who had been doing all 
 the talking, and his voice was so harsh and 
 awful that I fairly shook in my laced boots. 
 " This was no funeral of yourn, and I don t 
 recollect sendin out any invites." 
 
 I apologized and said I would go away, but 
 the leader said, " Not yit." Then stepping up 
 in front of me he said very distinctly and very 
 slowly : 
 
 " You don t look like no cowboy ; you don t 
 look like no prospector, and you ain t got sand 
 nough to steal a hoss. Now will you be kind 
 nough to tell me who you are, and what the 
 devil you re doin on the desert with no gun 
 on you? " 
 
 I had felt all along that if I could get the 
 floor I could talk him out of killing me, and I 
 said very softly, very respectfully, that I was an 
 innocent, inoffensive, and almost inexperienced 
 mining expert, just hurrying in from this edge 
 of the earth to the shores of civilization, and 
 that the peace and quiet of a Christian woman, 
 
A COWBOY S FUNERAL 115 
 
 to say nothing of 65,000,000 outsiders, de 
 pended largely upon my safe return. I said 
 a great many other things equally eloquent and 
 to the point, which I cannot just now recall. 
 When I had finished they said they believed I 
 was "dead straight," and took me into their 
 confidence. They hinted, however, that they 
 had friends out at the settlements who would 
 " keep cases " on me and report any little 
 funny business on my part, in case I got back 
 alive and decided to get funny. 
 
 The leader advised me to be more guarded 
 in my conversation in the future, and I said, 
 " Don t mention it," and went away to break 
 fast after we had another drink from the 
 third bottle. 
 
 I can t say whether I did whistle or did not 
 whistle going back. After breakfast we all 
 went over to the funeral, and they asked me 
 to say something at the grave. I introduced 
 my travelling companion, who had been a 
 farmer twenty years ago in Vermont, where 
 every man is his own preacher ; and he put up 
 a very good and plausible prayer. 
 
 The leader stepped over to where I was 
 
Il6 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 standing and handed me a piece of brown 
 wrapping paper, on which some verses were 
 written in a dim, Horace Greeley hand, remark 
 ing, as he did so, that he reckoned that I read 
 writin all right. 
 
 " Gist found that in Doc s pocket," he said. 
 " Queerest duck you ever see writin his own 
 funeral song gist peared to know." 
 
 While we were thus engaged the cowboys 
 spread a new Navajo blanket out on the sand, 
 placed the dead body in the middle of it, and 
 folded the edges over so as to hide the face 
 and feet. A saddle rope was used to lower the 
 body into the shallow grave, round which we 
 stood with bare heads, our broad white hats 
 tossed about on the sand. The leader of the 
 gang led the singing, and the rest pushed in the 
 chorus. The air applied was plaintive and 
 pleading, a sort of mixture of negro minstrel 
 and the old time Methodist revival song, and 
 in spite of the pay-streak of pathos which the 
 reader will doubtless detect in the word-work, 
 there were moments when I could hardly help 
 laughing. I can t remember the verses, but 
 this is the chorus : 
 
A COWBOY S FUNERAL II 7 
 
 " Play the fife slowly, 
 
 And beat the drum lowly ; 
 Play the dead march as I m carried along. 
 
 Make a grave in the desert 
 
 And pull the sand o er me, 
 I m only a cowboy I know I ve done wrong." 
 
HALF-BREEDS. 
 
 TWENTY- FIVE men and five women were 
 living at Douglas Lake, B. C. Some had 
 ferried it round the Horn and up the selvage of 
 the Pacific. Others had hauled themselves 
 across the country behind a bull team. They 
 were cattle men, sheep men and farmers. 
 They were all working hard to build up a home 
 in a promising country. It was a democratic 
 community. The village blacksmith was mayor 
 of the town. 
 
 A Frenchman, who appears to have had 
 money, had gone in ahead of the Canadian 
 colony, roped a squaw, and reared a family. 
 After firewater, French blood is the worst thing 
 that can be mixed up with Indians. So the 
 Canadian said, and I believe history will bear 
 him out. Between the Frenchman and the 
 squaw four boys were born, and they appear 
 to have been bad boys from the beginning. 
 When the youngest was only 14 they stole a 
 
122 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 saddle from one of the cowboys, and they might 
 as well have taken a herd of cattle, for that 
 would not make a cowboy more angry. 
 
 A warrant was issued for the arrest of the 
 four boys, two other half-breeds, and a squaw, 
 and the gang began to hide out. They evi 
 dently concluded that they ought to do 
 something desperate, for, with no apparent 
 provocation, they killed an inoffensive shepherd 
 and put themselves on the defensive. The con 
 stable at Douglas Lake, who had just brought a 
 young wife to this wild country, went after the 
 murderers of the shepherd, and when he had 
 found them showed more sand than sense by at 
 tempting, single-handed and alone, to stand the 
 seven up. Of course, they killed the constable, 
 a brave, indiscreet, but useful citizen. 
 
 Now the whole community was up in arms 
 and after the outlaws. It is related of the real 
 Indians that they took their guns and went out 
 to help the people to punish the murderers. 
 They had profited by the presence of the pale- 
 faced people, for they had given the Indians 
 work, but they had no use for the half-breeds. 
 The desperadoes started to leave the country. 
 
HALF-BREEDS 123 
 
 They called upon one of the farmers, bound 
 him fast in his chair, and then helped themselves 
 to whatever they wanted, including horses. In 
 front of the door they flourished their firearms 
 and said, " These things " (their pistols) " will 
 put all the pale-faces at the left hand of Christ." 
 The leader, one of the sons of the Frenchman, 
 said that and then they galloped away. 
 
 But the people of Douglas Lake, and their 
 Indian allies, galloped after them. The outlaws 
 camped that night in an old cabin, and in the 
 morning woke to find the place surrounded by 
 desperate men white and red. Occasionally 
 a head would appear at the open window and in 
 stantly a bullet would peck at the chinking. If 
 one of the besiegers showed himself carelessly, 
 the outlaws would take a shot at him to show 
 that they were armed. 
 
 Nobody cared to interview the inhabitants of 
 the cabin, and the people determined to starve 
 the criminals out. A leader or commander was 
 elected, and men were detailed to guard the 
 cabin day and night. Uncomplainingly now, 
 the red men of the community stood watch 
 with the whites. On the third day an Indian 
 
124 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 left the besiegers and walked deliberately, un 
 armed, up to the cabin. He did not enter, but 
 called upon the gang to surrender. The half- 
 breeds seemed much surprised that the Indians 
 should help to hunt them out. They doubtless 
 reasoned that if a half-breed could hold so 
 much cussedness a whole Indian ought to be 
 beyond redemption. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the leader. " Here s my old 
 friend Jim, come with the rest to help hang 
 me." But Jim was not so good a friend as the 
 half-breeds had thought him. For and in con 
 sideration of $100 to him in hand paid, this 
 same Jim had revealed to the people of Douglas 
 Lake the plans of the half-breeds, which in 
 cluded the killing off of the entire white pop 
 ulation. This conclusion had been reached 
 immediately after the killing of the shepherd. 
 
 It was not until the afternoon of the sixth 
 day that the gang came out, emptied their 
 revolvers, tossed them in a heap upon the 
 ground, and held up their hands. Hunger and 
 thirst had made even death preferable to such 
 torture, and so the gang surrendered. Here 
 was material and opportunity for an interesting 
 
HA LF-BREEDS 125 
 
 lynching. The provocation had been great, 
 but, according to our informant, such a thing 
 was not even suggested. Having fed and wa 
 tered the gang, a deputation of citizens the 
 constable having been killed started across 
 the country, 50 miles, to New Westminster, 
 where a whole week was wasted in the trial 
 of the murderers. Two of the four brothers 
 and another half-breed were hanged. The 
 other three, being younger, were imprisoned, 
 and the squaw set free. Having spent a consid 
 erable part of his fortune in a bootless effort to 
 save the necks of his more or less unlawful 
 children, the old Frenchman went back to 
 France to try to forget it. 
 
 And that s the way the Canadians will do 
 in the Klondike. The dashing desperado will 
 not have the honor of being shot. Even the 
 famous reformer, Riel, was hanged like a horse 
 thief at the end of a rope. Voila. 
 
THE SEDUCTIVE SIX-SHOOTER. 
 
 J3UTCHERS are not allowed to serve on a 
 JJ coroner s jury, I believe, in some States, 
 presumably because the constant shedding of 
 blood hardens the human heart. Along the 
 same line of reasoning it is not too much to 
 say that with the constant handling of fire 
 arms comes a desire to use them on something 
 or somebody. With much use one becomes 
 expert with the six-shooter, and when in 
 trouble, or in search of it, such an one reaches 
 instinctively for his firearms, without taking 
 thought of the consequences. Instinctively a 
 man defends himself with that which is most 
 convenient. A negro barber turns to his razor, 
 a cowboy to his cartridge belt, a soldier to his 
 sword, while the English athlete puts up his 
 hands. 
 
 Another temptation to use the gun comes 
 with the feeling of security that pervades the 
 bosom of the expert. He is reasonably sure 
 9 
 
130 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 of success in a hand-to-hand fight with a 
 novice. 
 
 Having "killed his man," the killer begins 
 to swagger, and at the first opportunity hastens 
 to repeat the performance. Like the prize 
 fighter who has won the belt, he must keep 
 on fighting or lose his reputation, and finally 
 he actually goes looking for trouble. 
 
 Killing becomes a disease. Not for the 
 sake of killing merely does he do this, but 
 because he loves the excitement of fighting. 
 I asked Bob Ford, who had clasped left hands 
 with a Colorado cowboy, emptied his six- 
 shooter into the man, and taken the contents 
 of the cowboy s gun into his system, if there 
 was not a suffocating dread of being torn by 
 the bullet. 
 
 "Well, yes at first," said he; "but the 
 moment the shooting begins you become drunk 
 vfith the excitement of the fight and the smell 
 of powder, and all thought of danger blows 
 by." 
 
 Now, this fellow had been a quiet, modest 
 youth up to the evil hour in which he was 
 tempted to take the life of Jesse James, his 
 
THE SEDUCTIVE SIX-SHOOTER 131 
 
 friend and benefactor. James had taught Ford 
 the use of the fascinating " forty- five," with 
 which the pupil slew the teacher. That was 
 the beginning of Ford s end. He gradually 
 grew in " cussedness " until he had acquired 
 the unenviable reputation of being a bad man, 
 and was, in the end, himself ignominiously 
 murdered. 
 
 Another instance in which the seductive six- 
 shooter led a man astray is the case of Frank 
 Rand of Illinois. I say of Illinois because it 
 was in that State, near the little town of Alti- 
 mont, that he wandered, an inoffensive tramp, 
 to a farmer s house one morning in quest of 
 food. The farmer lived in a little shack on the 
 railroad, on a bit of ground alone. He was n t 
 polite to the tramp, and the tramp resented 
 the insult. The farmer so forgot himself as to 
 kick the tramp, and the tramp pulled his gun 
 and killed the farmer. A gang of section men 
 saw the smoke, heard the shot, and saw the 
 man fall. Lifting the car to the track they 
 pumped into Altimont and gave alarm. 
 
 The tramp saw the car go and guessed the 
 cause of it. He glanced at his six-shooter and 
 
132 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 felt a certain security. A "gentleman of the 
 road " testified afterward that he had tramped 
 with Rand for a few weeks and found him a 
 most agreeable companion, quiet and inoffen 
 sive. He was reasonably honest, the man 
 said. The only thing he had known Rand to 
 steal was food and cartridges. If he could not 
 steal ammunition for his gun he would beg 
 money, go hungry, and buy it. As often as 
 they stopped to rest Rand took his six-shooter 
 to pieces, cleaned it and put it together again. 
 He was a wonderful shot. He could kill a 
 farmer s bull-dog as far as he could see him. 
 He would shoot the head from a tame pigeon 
 at the top of a country church, and kill brown 
 birds on the tops of telegraph poles. He 
 never missed whatever he aimed at. 
 
 So now, when he saw men hurrying out from 
 the little town, afoot, on horseback, and in top 
 buggies, he made no doubt they were after 
 him. He kicked out the empty shell, and 
 put in a fresh cartridge. Presently a horse 
 leaped the low hedge, and came straight for 
 the tramp, who was heading for some willows 
 down by a little stream. The man on the 
 
THE SEDUCTIVE SIX-SHOOTER 133 
 
 horse called to the man who was running 
 across the stubble to stop. For answer, Rand 
 turned slightly, but without slacking his pace, 
 and aimed at the horseman. There was a puff 
 of smoke from the tramp s pistol, the horse 
 plunged high, and then fell dead in the field, 
 shot square between the eyes. The rider got 
 to his feet, glanced at his poor dead horse, 
 and ran after the flying tramp. Others came 
 up, saw the wound in the horse s head, and 
 considered it only a chance shot. No one 
 thought for a moment that Rand had aimed 
 it so. In a little while they chased the fugi 
 tive out of the willows and across an open 
 field. A man with a swift horse rode round 
 the field, dismounted, and stood upon a little 
 culvert over which the tramp must pass. 
 Rand, running straight for the man, who held 
 the bridge and a double-barreled shotgun, 
 called to him and signalled to him with his 
 six-shooter. But the man held his place. 
 "Stand aside!" he shouted. The man delib 
 erately raised his shotgun. Without stopping, 
 Rand cut loose at the man. He threw up his 
 hands, waved his gun above his head, and 
 
134 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 then, as Rand went by, toppled over into the 
 ditch. Still running, the outlaw heard a rifle 
 crack close behind him, and the whine of a 
 bullet that whistled by. Glancing back, he 
 saw a man standing on the line fence, aiming 
 another shot at him. Again the toy gun 
 cracked, and the man, who had his feet in 
 the top crack of the fence, pitched forward 
 into the field. 
 
 Now, when the pursuing party came up and 
 saw the two men hit as the horse had been 
 hit, plump between the eyes, their hearts stood 
 still. What devil was this, at the crook of 
 whose finger men dropped dead? It is all 
 very well to go in pursuit of an outlaw, a mur 
 derer, but few men care to face a fiend of this 
 sort, even to avenge the death of a neighbor, 
 or bring the guilty to book. Life is sweet. 
 The pursuing party parleyed, and Rand ran 
 away. 
 
 A mile down the road he saw a boy riding a 
 good horse. He stopped the boy and told him 
 hurriedly that a man had been shot down the 
 road and that he was running for a doctor. 
 To hasten matters he borrowed the boy s horse 
 
THE SEDUCTIVE SIX-SHOOTER 135 
 
 and sent the boy on to tell the people who 
 were waiting there about it. 
 
 Now, when they had heard what the boy had 
 to say they knew that Rand had five miles the 
 start of them, that he could change horses as 
 often as he cared to, and so they gave up the 
 chase. I dare say many of them were glad of 
 the excuse. 
 
 As hard luck, or a dislike for honest toil, had 
 made a tramp, so now did the seductive six- 
 shooter make a murderer and an outlaw. 
 There was nothing for him now but to fight 
 it out to the end. Our desperado made his 
 way to St. Louis, where he met the old pal 
 with whom he had tramped through Illinois. 
 To his comrade he said nothing of the blood 
 that was on his hands. One day when the 
 two men were in a pawnshop, a couple of 
 officers in citizens clothes entered the place. 
 One of the men, a powerful young man, 
 who had spotted Rand, sprang upon the des 
 perado and bore him to the floor. Rand was 
 short, but powerfully built, and he gave the 
 officer a hard run. At last he lay quiet for 
 a moment, then turning he looked toward the 
 
136 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 other officer, who was struggling with the 
 harmless but thoroughly frightened tramp, and 
 called excitedly to the man who was holding 
 him. " Look out there ! " he shouted. " Help 
 your partner ! " 
 
 The officer, being off his guard, and having 
 already removed Rand s murderous six-shooter, 
 turned to see how his brother officer was get 
 ting on. Quick as a flash Rand pulled a der 
 ringer from his vest pocket and drilled a big 
 hole through one of the bravest and most 
 popular officers on the St. Louis force. 
 
 The shot, however, did not prove instantly 
 fatal, and with the help that came to him 
 the wounded man was able to disarm the 
 desperado. 
 
 After suffering indescribable agony for a few 
 days, the officer died. 
 
 I forget what they did with Rand, but if you 
 ask any man who lived in St. Louis a quarter of 
 a century ago, he can tell you. 
 
 The purpose of this story is to point a moral. 
 Boy, whoever you may be, wherever you roam, 
 fight shy of the seductive six-shooter. 
 
Brakeman anti 
 
THE BRAKEMAN AND THE SQUAW. 
 
 HERE is a story of the building of a branch 
 line on a mountain railroad. Con 
 ductor McGuire, being a new man, was in 
 charge of the construction train, with engineer 
 VVescott in charge of the engine. 
 
 N. C. Creede, afterward famous as the 
 founder of Creede camp, had located the 
 Madonna mine at Monarch camp, and created 
 a necessity for the branch road. They had 
 rushed the work, but the first snow caught them 
 still three miles from the booming silver camp. 
 A wandering band of Indians, hearing of the 
 excitement, and not understanding it, had 
 strayed into the Monarch country, and down 
 the gulch as far as Maysville, then a wild and 
 thriving village at the edge of the Arkansas 
 valley. One day, when it was storming, an old 
 squaw came to McGuire, and wanted a ride 
 up the hill. It was a cruel day, and the kind- 
 
140 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 hearted conductor carried the Indian to the 
 end of the track. 
 
 It was a month later when one of McGuire s 
 brake men, named Bo wen, who had been hunt 
 ing in the hills, rushed into the caboose with 
 the startling announcement that his partner, the 
 head brakeman, had been captured by the 
 Indians. 
 
 " Look here, Jack," said McGuire, " are you 
 lying? " 
 
 " Honest Injun ! " said Jack ; " if there s one 
 there s a million ; and they Ve got Mickey tied 
 to a stake. We had become separated. I was 
 standing on a precipice, looking for Mickey, 
 when I saw the Indians surround him." 
 
 " Now, Jack Bowen had lied so luminously 
 and so frequently to the conductor that the 
 latter was slow to believe this wild tale ; but 
 finally he was persuaded that it was true. Re 
 turning to Maysville with the engine, he gave 
 the alarm, and the sheriff of Chaffee County 
 made up a posse and set out in search of the 
 brakeman. 
 
 The sun was going down behind the range 
 when the engine and the caboose full of amateur 
 
THE BRA KEMA N AND THE SQUAW 141 
 
 Indian fighters returned to the end of the 
 track. Taking Bowen as guide, the sheriff 
 scoured the hills, but found no trace of the 
 missing man. The storm increased with the 
 darkness, and the sheriff s posse was forced to 
 return to camp. It were useless to put out 
 again in the face of such a storm, and the 
 sheriff was about to return to Maysville, when 
 the old squaw whom McGuire had helped up 
 the hill put her head in at the door of the 
 way car and signalled McGuire to come out. 
 She could scarcely speak a word of English, but, 
 pulling at the conductor s sleeve, she started 
 as though she would lead him into the hills. 
 As often as McGuire would stop, the squaw 
 would stop. He tried to persuade her into the 
 car, but she would not. Now the sheriff came 
 out, and when he saw the signals of the squaw 
 he guessed that she would lead them to the 
 captive ; and when McGuire had told him how 
 he had helped this Indian on her way up the 
 hill in a storm, he knew that the Indian was 
 trying to repay the conductor for . his kindness. 
 The unfortunate brakeman, McGuire explained, 
 had given the Indian tobacco and whiskey; 
 
142 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 therefore she would not see him die without 
 making an effort to save him. 
 
 The sheriff called his deputies, and taking a 
 half-dozen volunteers from Garfield camp, made 
 sign to the Indian and followed her away into 
 the wilderness of snow-hung pine and cedar. 
 Now and then the squaw would pause to get 
 her bearings. The snow had ceased falling 
 and the stars were out. After tramping for an 
 hour or more, the Indian signed to the sheriff 
 to stay, and then disappeared into a cedar 
 grove. Presently she returned and led them 
 to the edge of a precipice. Just below them, 
 in a little basin, they could see a pine fire 
 burning and Indians dancing in the light of it. 
 Sitting upon the snow hard by, they saw the 
 brakeman with his fettered hands over his 
 knees and his head bent forward like a man 
 nodding in a pew. The sheriff asked the Indian 
 to lead them on, and she made sign that they 
 must go far around, for the bluff was steep, and 
 they followed her. They had been a half-hour 
 out of sight of the Indian camp, but always 
 going down and down, so they knew now they 
 must be near. When they had gone within 
 
THE BRAKE MAN AND THE S QUA IV 143 
 
 one hundred yards of the Indians, who had not 
 heard them walking upon the muffled earth, 
 they stopped to discuss the work that was 
 before them. The Indian, putting her hand 
 on the sheriff s rifle, pushed it to the ground 
 and shook her head, meaning that she would 
 not have them kill the Indians, whom they 
 outnumbered two to one. The sheriff was at 
 a loss to understand how he was to capture 
 this band without firing, for he had no doubt 
 the Indians would fire upon him the moment 
 they caught sight of him. But the squaw was 
 equal to the emergency. She began to form 
 the men in two lines. Taking hold of their 
 coats she would place a man on the right flank 
 and another on the left, until she had divided 
 the sheriff s posse. She then placed the 
 sheriff at the head of one column and the con 
 ductor, whom she regarded as a sort of captain, 
 at the other, and then made sign to them to 
 go forward, one half to the right and the other 
 to the left. Then she made it plain to them 
 that she would have them surround the Indians. 
 She brought her two bony hands together slowly, 
 with the fingers spread out, and when they were 
 
144 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 quite together she closed her fists. So the 
 sheriff made out she would have them steal 
 upon the Indians and disarm them or awe 
 them into surrendering at the muzzles of their 
 guns, and he gave instructions to the men 
 accordingly. Of course each individual must 
 now use his judgment, and so the little band 
 surrounded the Indians. In the meantime the 
 squaw stole into the camp and squatted near 
 the fire. As the sheriff s men closed in upon 
 the Indians the squaw leaped to her feet and 
 put out a hand as a signal for the band to be 
 still. The Indians listened, but the sheriff s 
 men, seeing it all, stood still in the snow. Now 
 the squaw spoke to the Indians, saying that she 
 had seen a great many soldiers coming down 
 the* hill that evening and giving it as her opinion 
 that the camp would be surrounded and that 
 if the Indians resisted they would all be killed. 
 When she had succeeded in persuading them 
 that it would be best to surrender in case the 
 soldiers should come, she sat down again. This, 
 the sheriff concluded, was a signal for the men 
 to advance, and the posse moved forward. 
 When they were quite near, the Indians were 
 
THE BRAKE MAN AND THE SQUAW 145 
 
 made aware of their presence by the snapping 
 of a dry cedar-bough, and the sheriff, knowing 
 that delay would be dangerous, shouted to his 
 posse to advance. At the sound of his voice 
 the Indians sprang for their rifles, but when 
 they had got them and got to their feet again 
 the sheriff s posse, coming out of the woods 
 from every direction, held the glittering steel 
 barrels of their rifles in the glare of the camp- 
 fire, and the Indians laid down their arms. 
 
 The brakeman, who had concluded that he 
 was to be butchered or roasted, was almost 
 wild with joy. When asked by the sheriff why 
 they held the brakeman, the leader said the 
 white man was lost ; they found him, and were 
 only waiting for daylight, when they would take 
 him back to his people and get " heap rum." 
 The sheriff pointed to the white man s fettered 
 hands and asked the Indian to explain ; and the 
 Indian said that the man was " heap mad," and 
 they were afraid that if they left his hands loose 
 he would take their guns and kill them while 
 they slept, and if they left his feet unfettered 
 he would wander away in the storm and be 
 lost. 
 
 10 
 
146 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 After consulting the conductor and the more 
 important members of the posse, the sheriff 
 concluded, as it was manifest that the Indians 
 were only holding the brakeman for ransom, 
 that he would allow them to go their way, after 
 exacting a promise that they would return at 
 once to their reservation on the other side of 
 the range. 
 
Ibofifeaninni 
 
HOSKANINNI. 
 
 IT was along in the seventies that Cass Kite, a 
 fearless adventurer, drifted into the Navajo 
 reservation. The prospector s attention was 
 attracted by the splendid ornaments worn by 
 the Indians, most of them hammered from 
 pure horn silver. Hite began to cultivate the 
 acquaintance of Hoskaninni, who was not long 
 in office, having murdered his uncle, a thor 
 oughly bad Indian, to get the position of chief 
 of the Western tribe. He gathered from the 
 chief that the Indians owned a mine called the 
 " Peso-la-ki," where native silver grew on every 
 shelf. 
 
 He learned, also, that the Indians had quarried 
 all the silver that was in sight, and that the 
 mine could be bought. 
 
 In time an agreement was reached. Hos 
 kaninni was to show the Peso-la-ki mine to the 
 Hosteen Peso-la-ki (white silver hunter) for 
 2000 pesos 2000 pieces of silver. 
 
150 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 Hoskanirmi had paid so much attention to 
 the white man that the Indians began to guess 
 that something was up, and when a council 
 was called for the purpose of discussing the 
 proposed sale of the silver mine, there was 
 already a strong silver sentiment antagonistic to 
 the chief. 
 
 The council was called to meet at Hoska- 
 ninni s hogan, and on the day designated the 
 braves came sullenly and squatted upon the 
 ground. 
 
 The head Indian, in a viva voce message to 
 the house, stated the object of the meeting, 
 and followed with a very plausible plea for the 
 sale of the Peso-la-ki to the white man. In 
 addition to the 2000 pesos, they would have 
 the advantage of learning from their pale friend 
 how to mine ; they could find other valuable 
 mines and become rich and respectable. 
 While he anticipated no danger from this 
 arrangement, it was his intention, nevertheless, 
 to appoint a sub-chief to assist him in protect 
 ing his tribe, and a second assistant, who would 
 look after the mine to see that the white man 
 took no more land than he was entitled to. 
 
HOSKANINN 151 
 
 Each of these officers would be assisted by six 
 braves selected by the head chief. All these 
 men would be mounted on Mormon horses, 
 known as Mountain meadow stock, and armed 
 with the best rifles that money could buy. 
 
 A few ambitious braves, dazzled by the grand 
 parade of horses and rifles, fell into the trap of 
 the wily chief, and signified their willingness to 
 serve. 
 
 Hoskaninni was something of a fighter, and 
 made, at all times, a beautiful bluff; and when 
 Nevada Bill, a half-breed, stood up to oppose 
 the sale of the mine, the chief whipped out his 
 hatchet, and was about to cut the warrior off at 
 the hip pockets, when half a dozen braves 
 sprang between them. 
 
 Hite at this point made a medicine talk, in 
 which he counselled peace; the chief talked 
 more mildly now, but they would not have it. 
 
 Another brave took the floor and made a 
 manly plea for his people. 
 
 His argument was to the effect that while 
 Hoskaninni had been chosen chief partly be 
 cause he had dared to remove a man much 
 meaner, if possible, than himself, he had 
 
152 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 pledged himself to protect the people and 
 their property. He told, almost in tears, how 
 their grandfathers had suffered at the hands of 
 the Spaniards on the big water. " The smooth 
 trail travelled by Hoskaninni," said he, "our 
 fathers blazed with bleeding feet. They were 
 slaves ; they fought and gave us freedom, and 
 I, for one, will not submit silently to be bound 
 and branded like a maverick. 
 
 " Hardly has the paint dried up on the 
 splendid plumage of our new chief, when we 
 find him betraying his people to the pale-face. 
 It is an empty honor to be called in council if 
 the words are to be put into our mouths 
 what we shall say. Wuh ! I am ashamed to be 
 called a red man;" and the outraged Indian 
 strode from the tent. 
 
 Hoskaninni made another play with his 
 tomahawk when the back of the speaker was 
 turned, but a dozen hands were lifted against 
 him and the angry chief backed down. 
 
 Another noble red man took the floor, and 
 as he proceeded the excitement rose to fever 
 heat. 
 
 " When a chief was chosen," he began, " I 
 
HOSKANINNI 153 
 
 was in favor of a wiser and a better brave 
 one who had been tried for twenty dozen 
 moons and who was always to the front with 
 flying plumes when his people needed his ser 
 vice. Brave and just, fearless, but friendly to 
 other tribes, his own people never lost their 
 rightful place in his heart. If now he looked 
 from the hills of the happy hunting-grounds 
 his wrath would break the locks upon his lips 
 and his brave spirit would cry out : Begone, 
 ye gray spiders, who seek to take from my 
 people that which was given them by the Great 
 Father. Begone, ye squaws ! Your ears are 
 tickled with the applause of strange tribes, but 
 deaf to the appeals of your own people. 
 
 " So would he say so would he rebuke 
 the coyotes who lick the feet of a fat master for 
 a stout cayuse or a silver-mounted saddle. 
 Dogs ! ye make me tired." And another war 
 rior went out into the sage brush and the night. 
 
 Hite looked at Hoskaninni, and Hoskaninni 
 looked at Hite. They sat in silence for some 
 time ; then Hite rose up, put on his guns, and 
 said, " I will go." 
 
 " You will not," said the chief. " You will 
 
154 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 stay to-night with me ; they will not molest 
 you while you are my guest." 
 
 Till late at night the old chief paced the 
 floor with heavy arms about him, fearful that 
 his people might demand the white man, and 
 determined to defend him even to the extent 
 of risking his kingdom and his life. 
 
 At the dawn Hite was awakened by the old 
 chief, and looking out between the blankets 
 that served as a door to the house, they saw 
 three hundred ponies tied to the sage brush 
 about the camp. 
 
 " See," said Hoskaninni, " their backs are 
 bare ; Navajos go to war with no saddles. 
 My people will fight for the Peso-la-ki. I will 
 show you the mine, as I have promised, then 
 you must look out for yourself, for we shall 
 surely be killed. My people believe that if 
 the white man is allowed to dig in our country 
 we shall be made slaves, as the Utes were 
 enslaved by the Spaniards on the big water." 
 
 Hite said no, he would not purchase Peso 
 with his brother s blood, and Hoskaninni was 
 willing to let it go at that and continue to reign 
 over the Navajos. 
 
HOSKANINNI 155 
 
 Hite succeeded in leaving the land of Hos- 
 kaninni with his scalp, but the friendship of the 
 old Indian endured until the day he died. 
 
 Just before Hoskaninni s death Hite had the 
 misfortune to kill a man at Green River, Utah, 
 for which he was sentenced to a short term in 
 a Salt Lake prison. 
 
 During Kite s absence from his cabin on the 
 Colorado River his old friend called to pay 
 him a visit. The Navajo explained to Kite s 
 brother that he was growing old and that he 
 wished to do something for his pale friend, 
 " Hosteen-peso-la-ki," as he called him, before 
 he died, and with that end in view he had brought 
 a fine squaw to be the wife of the white man. 
 
 Upon learning that Hite was languishing in 
 prison, all because he had shot a hole in a 
 man s heart with a six-shooter when that same 
 man was shooting at him with a rifle, Hoska- 
 ninni grew furious. He gave a good illustration 
 of his innocence and loyalty when he demanded 
 to know why they did not get Hite out of prison. 
 
 " But we can t," said the brother of the con 
 demned man. 
 
 "Have you tried?" asked the Indian. 
 
 " No." 
 
156 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 "Then how do you know you can t do? 
 Hoskaninni will try. Maybe so git kill, but he 
 try, all same." 
 
 It required a great deal of talk to persuade 
 the old chief to return to his reservation instead 
 of moving upon the government prison at Salt 
 Lake. 
 
 The fact that Kite was pardoned after serv 
 ing a few months probably never came to the 
 ears of Hoskaninni, for the hand of death had 
 touched him, and he had already gone to his 
 own place. 
 
 The only thing this chief feared was water. 
 He invariably stripped naked when entering a 
 canoe or boat to cross a river, and when seen 
 thus he gave one the belief that he had spent 
 most of his life leaning against a barbed-wire 
 fence. Upon either thigh he had countless 
 scars, as though he had been whipped with a 
 flax hackle. They were wounds made by 
 arrows and bullets that he had received when 
 riding in a circle round the enemy with his 
 body hanging over the side of his pony. 
 
 In 1892, when in the reservation, we made an 
 effort to see the famous warrior, who is said to 
 
HOSKA NINNI 157 
 
 have been the only chief who did not surrender 
 to the United States Government in the war of 
 1866. A Navajo assured us that he would take us 
 to the hogan of Hoskaninni in two sleeps, for 
 which he demanded ten pesos. We made him 
 understand that we had learned that Hoska 
 ninni was dead. " Si," said the Indian, and 
 taking a miner s shovel from one of our party, 
 he made a grave about two inches deep in the 
 sand, lay down in it, crossed his hands, closed 
 his eyes, and said, " Si, all same Hoskaninni 
 mucho sleepa six moon." And we decided 
 not to wake him. 
 
 Although he has been dead but a little while, 
 the Indians have a very pretty story of his 
 going away. They assured us that on his 
 deathbed he made a solemn vow to guard the 
 trail that leads from the province of the pale 
 face to the land of the Navajo. It is in the 
 fullfilment of this promise, the natives say, that 
 the ghost of Hoskaninni gallops nightly down 
 Tickaboo canon, 
 
 That every night, at midnight, 
 
 As the winds go wailing by, 
 Rides the ghost of Hoskaninni 
 
 Gainst the Hosteen-Pes -la-ki. 
 
TICKABOO. 
 
 VERY many years ago the Spaniards lived 
 on the Colorado River and the Navajos 
 claim that their fore-Indians used to work as 
 slaves in the once famous Josephine mine and 
 that their grandmothers rocked the cradles of 
 the Spaniards and washed gold by the banks of 
 the big water. A Spaniard wrote to a friend in 
 Spain that there was wealth enough in the 
 Josephine to make the Catholic world indepen 
 dently rich. A smart old chief enlisted the 
 services of a number of tribes and made war on 
 the Spaniards, who were driven from the big 
 water and compelled to give up their slaves. 
 
 One of the stipulations of the treaty was that 
 the Spaniards should cover all traces of the 
 mine and leave it forever. 
 
 Some fifty years ago two Mormon boys were 
 sent to live with these Indians on the Colorado ; 
 the main object of the elders was to have the 
 boys learn the language and ways of the red 
 
1 62 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 man that they might be used in the work of 
 Christianizing the tribes, in accordance, of 
 course, with the book of Mormon. For a 
 time the children suffered greatly, but in the 
 course of a few years they became as hard and 
 hardy as the red man. 
 
 Old Tickaboo, the Ute chief, was very kind 
 to the pale children in many ways. In time of 
 war he hid them away in the hills, and in time 
 of peace he rode with them in the Utah vales, 
 and taught their young ideas how to shoot. 
 The Indians were extremely jealous of the white 
 boys, and as the years went by and the boys 
 grew to be men they began to be regarded as 
 real Indians, and only the older warriors who 
 remembered how tenderly they were cared for 
 by the chief looked upon them with jealous 
 eyes. 
 
 One of the boys, Shirtz by name, was a 
 special favorite of Tickaboo, who was now a 
 very old Indian. Many times he had told his 
 white friend the story of the lost mine ; how his 
 mother and his mother s mother had worked 
 there as slaves. Often Shirtz urged the old 
 man to show him where the mine was buried, 
 
TICK A BOO 163 
 
 but the snpftrsflfinns Indian said that the ghosts 
 of dead braves were there and that they must 
 not be disturbed. 
 
 Shirtz was a bearded man and there were 
 streaks of silver in his soft black hair when at 
 last Tickaboo promised to show him the grave of 
 the Josephine. It was in the early autumn when 
 the two men, with a trusty Indian cook and a 
 white friend of Shirtz, set out in search of the 
 long-lost mine. Miles and miles of these sand 
 stone mountains along the Colorado River are 
 entirely barren of vegetation, and water is 
 equally scarce. 
 
 The little band of explorers endured many 
 hardships, and at one time, after travelling two 
 whole days without water, the old chief lay 
 down to die. The Indian eye of Shirtz found 
 a narrow trail made by mountain sheep going 
 down to drink. After following the trail for an 
 hour he came to a pool of pure water standing 
 in a basin-shaped sand rock. They are called 
 tanks in that country and that one is known to 
 the cowboys as Tickaboo tank. To this pool 
 they carried the almost helpless form of the old 
 chief and nursed him back to life. 
 
164 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 They had been in camp nearly a week wait 
 ing for the old man to get strong enough to 
 resume the journey in search of the hidden 
 treasure, when one afternoon Tickaboo climbed 
 to the top of the canon wall and stood looking 
 with shaded eyes toward the setting sun. Then 
 he beckoned Shirtz, and Shirtz went up and stood 
 by the old chief and gazed over the waste of 
 wind-swept rock. 
 
 Just in front of them, a little to the north of 
 the sunset, they saw the snowy summit of the 
 Henry mountains. 
 
 " Yonder," said the old chief, pointing to the 
 west, " lies the Josephine, lost among the 
 twisted hills. There are the graves of my 
 people, and the white peaks are the monuments 
 put there by the Great Father to mark the 
 place. One more sleep, my son, and Tickaboo 
 will show you great mine." 
 
 When the two men came down to camp 
 Shirtz related to his white friend all that the old 
 man had said and they were in high spirits. 
 The old Indian cook was unable to account for 
 the hilarity of the camp that evening, for he was 
 kept in ignorance of the purpose of the trip. 
 
TICK A BOO 165 
 
 After supper Tickaboo called for his pipe and 
 the smart young man filled it partly with gun 
 powder and partly with tobacco. The aged 
 chief was restless. He was idiotically supersti 
 tious, and as he began to pull at his pipe he 
 mused on what he was about to do. For a half- 
 century he had held this great secret sacredly 
 in his heart. At last his love for his white 
 friend had tempted him, standing as he was 
 now on the edge of the grave, to show him the 
 ruins of the old mine. 
 
 "If it is right," said he, " we shall find it 
 if it is wrong there will be some token maybe 
 so my mother s ghost will come to me to-night 
 and tell me what to do. More blanket, son. 
 Waugh ! How the fire spits." 
 
 Shirtz wrapped the old chief warmly in an 
 extra blanket, and the two sat apart and con 
 versed softly. If a prowling lion snapped a 
 twig the Indian started up and looked for his 
 grandmother s ghost. A lone coyote stood 
 upon the canon wall and wailed, precisely 
 where the two men stood that afternoon, and 
 the chief said that it was the voice of a dead 
 brave warning him not to show the lost mine to 
 the white man. 
 
1 66 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 " I am afraid," said the aged Indian ; " the 
 hero of a hundred battles shakes like a squaw. 
 Tickaboo the brave is walking backward in the 
 night, and he shall fall, and his bones shall lie 
 by the trail to frighten the cayuse of the pale 
 face. These hills will swarm with the Hosteen 
 peso-la-ki, as the ant-hills swarm with ants, and 
 like lean badgers they will grub in the graves of 
 my people. You were wicked not to let me 
 die yesterday when I could die in peace, with 
 this great secret locked up in my cold breast." 
 
 " Did not your father, Bull-face the brave, 
 give this secret to your keeping?" said Shirtz, 
 "and can you not trust your son?" 
 
 " But you are not of my blood ; much as I 
 love you, I can see the face of the white man, 
 and he is my enemy. You think you love me 
 now, but when you have seen the face of your 
 own father, Tickaboo will be no more to you. 
 
 " Yes, it is so the lambs go with the sheep, 
 the calves with the cattle ; and you will forget 
 me when I am gone. Tickaboo has lived long 
 time, and has seen all his people die, but has 
 never been so troubled as he is to-night. The 
 fire burns low, the yellow moon is ashamed to 
 
TICK A BOO 167 
 
 shine the lean coyote keeps his place on the 
 ricks above ; there is much meaning, my son, 
 in all this. Tickaboo the brave is no more 
 Tickaboo is a squaw to-night, the child of a 
 white man stands between him and his people." 
 
 Again the coyote howled on the hill, there 
 there was a flash a puff of smoke and Ticka- 
 boo s pipe went to pieces. In vain did the 
 white men endeavor to persuade the old Indian 
 that it was only a joke, and that Shirtz s friend 
 had put powder in the pipe. 
 
 "It was a token a warning," the old man 
 said, and they would go no further. 
 
 All night the old chief sat wrapped in 
 thought and blankets, gazing into the flickering 
 fire : and at the dawn of day the little band began 
 the journey back to the village of the Utes. 
 The little joke of the white man had cost him 
 and his friend a fortune, for Tickaboo could 
 doubtless have found the lost mine, but he alone 
 held the secret. 
 
ILittle 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE. 
 
 WHEN there were no railroads west of 
 Missouri or east of California, they 
 used to carry mail and light freight on horse 
 back between St. Joe and Sacramento. This 
 service was known as the pony express. Horses 
 swift and strong, and riders brave and enduring 
 were employed, and relay stations were set fifty 
 miles apart across the great American desert. 
 
 Away out in Wyoming there lived a trapper 
 who was known only by the name of " Whip- 
 saw " a name given him by a gambler in 
 Deadwood. 
 
 A Sioux who had a hideous scar upon his 
 face had come to this trapper s camp one win 
 ter s day with a Pawnee baby, naked and nearly 
 frozen. The Sioux wanted to sell the boy, and 
 the trapper gave him a knife and kept the 
 child. The young Pawnee was not more than 
 three years old. 
 
FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 Two years later Whipsaw went to keep the 
 station called White Horse for the pony express, 
 taking the Pawnee with him. The little fellow 
 grew to love his white father, and seemed to 
 conceive a bitter hatred for all Indians. Like 
 other Indians, he was ever alert. The scratch 
 of a prowling bear on the cabin door or the 
 cry of a lone wolf on a far-off hill would wake 
 him from a sound sleep. He would hear the 
 hoofs of the incoming horses beating the plains 
 a mile away, and long before his white master 
 could hear the faintest sound. 
 
 "Cayuse, Cayuse," he would whisper in the 
 dead of night. He was an alarm-clock for the 
 station. 
 
 The little Pawnee was never too cold or too 
 sleepy to go out and welcome the weary rider 
 and pat the nose of the spent steed, saying 
 softly the while, " Cayuse, Cayuse." 
 
 In fact, it was the boy s great fondness for 
 horses that caused Whipsaw to call him " Little 
 Cayuse." 
 
 One night Whipsaw woke, and found the boy 
 sitting up in his blankets listening. 
 
 " Cayuse? " asked Whipsaw. 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 173 
 
 " Long time," said the boy, shaking his 
 head. " Long time no cayuse." 
 
 Then they knew what the child meant. It 
 was one o clock; the pony express was an 
 hour late and the boy knew, instinctively, that 
 it was so. 
 
 For another hour the two men sat and 
 waited for a sign from the boy, who listened 
 for the sound of the horse s feet. Presently 
 the Pawnee crawled out, put his ear to the 
 ground, came back and shook his master. 
 
 " Cayuse?" asked Whipsaw. 
 
 " Heap cayuse," was the boy s reply, and 
 they understood. 
 
 Little Cayuse seized his rifle, slipped out and 
 the two men followed him. To guard against 
 surprises of this sort, Whipsaw had dug short 
 trenches, deep enough to hide a man, all about 
 the cabin, and now to his surprise, Little Cay 
 use planted himself in one of these holes. 
 Without a word the two men took places, one 
 to the right the other to the left of the boy, and 
 waited. 
 
 The clouds were breaking, and in the star 
 light they could see the Sioux, six of them, 
 
174 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 near the cabin door. They listened one of 
 them pushed the door open, Now an Indian 
 went in, came out a moment later and they all 
 filed in, at the very moment that Whipsaw was 
 about to open fire. Instantly he changed his 
 plan. They would charge on the cabin door 
 and fight the gang, which outnumbered them, 
 even counting the boy, two to one. Without a 
 word Whipsaw got to his feet, and instantly 
 his companions were at his side. 
 
 Bob the express rider held his rifle, the 
 trapper laid his upon the ground and held a 
 six-shot revolver in either hand. It was to 
 be close and rapid fighting; he would empty 
 his six-shooters and after that the knife. Little 
 Cayuse grasped his rifle with fourteen shots in 
 the magazine. There was no word of com 
 mand, but as Whipsaw leaned forward they all 
 started double quick for the cabin. Ten paces 
 from the door they stopped, the boy still sand 
 wiched between the men. The Sioux must 
 have heard them, for now they came pouring 
 out. Before they had gained the open air the 
 little regiment opened fire. Two of the Indians 
 fell, the others returned the fire, but with bad 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 
 
 aim. Another round from the white men and 
 two more Sioux bit the dust. Bob was pump 
 ing his rifle, when a ball from the cabin door 
 shattered his right shoulder. Dropping the 
 gun he pulled his six shooter and continued to 
 fight. Having emptied both of the revolvers, 
 Whipsaw slammed one of them into the face of 
 a Sioux, who came for him with a knife. The 
 two men began fighting close now, while Little 
 Cayuse kept pumping small shot into the 
 other remaining Sioux. Seeing Whipsaw hard 
 pressed, the boy began to watch for a chance 
 to use his little rifle. Bob succeeded at last 
 in stopping his man, and then fell in a faint 
 from loss of blood. Whipsaw had been shot 
 and badly cut, when his antagonist paused to 
 get advantage. Instantly Little Cayuse shoved 
 the rifle as near the Sioux s left side as he 
 could get it and pulled the trigger, and the big, 
 bad Indian sank in a heap. 
 
 In the sag not far away they found the horses 
 that the robbers had ridden and the express 
 pony, with the pouch still on the saddle, 
 standing in a bunch, their bridles tied together. 
 
 About a mile up the trail they found the 
 
176 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 body of the rider, stiff and cold, with a bullet 
 hole in his head, and carried him back and 
 buried him, and there would n t have been a 
 soul at the funeral but for Little Cayuse. 
 
 The next day when they were caching the 
 carcasses of the dead Indians, Little Cayuse 
 shocked and surprised the white men by con 
 stantly clubbing and kicking the corpses. Of 
 a sudden he gave a wild yell, seized his rifle 
 and began emptying it into one of the dead 
 Indians. Whipsaw took the gun away from 
 him. 
 
 "See ! see ! " cried the boy, pointing at the 
 dead Indian, and the trapper recognized in the 
 object of the boy s wrath the hideous features 
 of the scar-faced Sioux who had sold the child, 
 by whose hands he had in his own good time, 
 been taken off. 
 
 Renegade Indians had made so much trouble 
 at White Horse station that Whipsaw and Little 
 Cayuse, determined to make it hot for the next 
 gang that called. 
 
 White Horse was the wildest, most dangerous 
 and desolate station on the pony-express line 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 177 
 
 between St. Joe and Sacramento. The place 
 had been cleaned out on an average of once a 
 month since its establishment, and Wells, Fargo, 
 & Co. were growing weary finding horses and 
 feed for all the lawless bands in Wyoming and 
 surrounding territories. 
 
 They had asked Whipsaw what he required 
 for the better protection of the station ; and the 
 ponies galloped back to Sacramento with his 
 answer : 
 
 11 A jug of squirrel whiskey, six six-shooters, 
 a whole lot of firecrackers, and a man." 
 
 The man with the supplies came up from 
 California a few days later, and Whipsaw began 
 to build his traps. He had been a trapper by 
 profession up to the time he came to White 
 Horse to take charge of the station. 
 
 He gave two of the six-shooters to the new 
 man, lifted a log with the help of his compan 
 ions, and fixed the other four firmly in a crack, 
 all pointing into the cabin and toward the door. 
 These instruments of death were so grouped 
 that Little Cayuse, lying on the dirt-roof of 
 the lean-to, could work them. A chink was 
 knocked out, and through this opening the boy 
 
178 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 was expected to feed the fireworks when the 
 house was full of Indians. 
 
 They made the " cat hole " large enough for 
 Little Cayuse, and in that way he could slip 
 from the cabin to the stable, and so to the roof 
 of the shed. 
 
 When the boy had played with his battery 
 and had mastered the mystery of the firecrack 
 ers, Whipsaw expressed the belief that the thing 
 would be a success. Little Cayuse grinned with 
 savage delight as he listened to the din of 
 the revolvers and the noise of crackers. 
 
 Almost 100 yards from the cabin door and 
 some 40 or 50 yards apart, they dug three pits, 
 long enough for a man to lie down in. These 
 pits were covered over with stout willows and 
 earth, save a space at the end next to the house, 
 which was covered by a trap door hung to one 
 of the willows by strong leather straps. The 
 tops of the doors were carpeted with burlap, 
 that had been wet and dabbed on the desert 
 until it caught the color of the earth. It was 
 summer time, and Whipsaw, the extra man, and 
 the rider who was lying over there, now took 
 their blankets and slept in the pits. Little 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 
 
 179 
 
 Cayuse, the seven-year-old Pawnee, slept in the 
 cabin, for no Indian could come near him without 
 his knowledge of the presence of the stranger. 
 
 They had been sleeping out for more than a 
 month, and the pony- express riders had be 
 gun to complain, when the west-bound rider, 
 due at White Horse at midnight, failed to arrive. 
 At one o clock Little Cayuse crept out to where 
 Whipsaw slept, and whispered : " Heap long 
 time me no see em cayuse." 
 
 " What you see?" 
 
 " Me see em heap gun far away, boom, 
 boom, boom, " said the boy. 
 
 One of the many peculiarities of Little 
 Cayuse was that he never " heard " anything. 
 He insisted always that he " saw " it thunder, or 
 that he " saw " the cayuse, the pony bringing the 
 mail, far away in the dead of night. 
 
 So Whipsaw knew that he had heard the 
 sound of firearms, and made no doubt that the 
 express rider had been killed. 
 
 Whipsaw ordered the boy to creep to the 
 other pits, warn the men, and get back to his 
 place. 
 
 The jug of " bug juice, " as he called it, 
 
180 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 Whipsaw had kept constantly just inside the 
 open door of the cabin. 
 
 Presently an Indian came crouching under 
 the eaves of the shed. Little Cayuse peering 
 over could see his bent back directly under 
 him, and could hardly resist the temptation to 
 plug him with the short rifle that had been 
 given him by the express company, but he 
 knew that this was only a scout, or spy, and 
 that more Indians were at hand. In a little 
 while the Indian worked his way to the cabin 
 door, found the jug, smelled of it, took a drink, 
 and then darted away as noiselessly as a cat. 
 
 It was some time before a sound was heard, 
 for the band of renegades would not stir until 
 they had drained the two-gallon jug. 
 
 Usually these bands were small, from six to a 
 dozen men, but this gang had thirty or forty des 
 perate Indians in it. The first intimation Little 
 Cayuse had of the return of the band was the 
 patter of feet, like the noise by a band of boys, 
 running barefoot down a dusty lane, and then 
 he saw the dark forms of the Indians coming 
 for the cabin like a swarm of grasshoppers. 
 
 They believed that all the people of the 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE l8l 
 
 station were in the house asleep, and would 
 be caught like rats in a trap. Outside the 
 door they paused for an instant, drew their 
 hatchets, and then rushed into the cabin. As 
 soon as he heard their shuffling feet upon the 
 floor, Little Cayuse began working his battery. 
 The Indians without rushed to the rescue of 
 their comrades within, who, being unable to 
 find the door, endeavored to fly from a hogan 
 whose very walls breathed thunder and light 
 ning. The moment he had emptied one 
 chamber of each of the pistols, the Indian boy 
 lighted a few hundred fire-crackers and shoved 
 them through the crack, rolled loosely in a 
 newspaper so as to hide the fire. When these 
 began to explode amid the savages, the boy be 
 gan the work of emptying the revolvers that 
 were fixed fast in the wall. To add to the con 
 fusion, the men in the pits now put up their 
 heads and each emptied a pair of forty-fives 
 into the struggling band of savages. Those 
 rushing in collided with those coming out, 
 and they all stumbled and fell over the twisted 
 bodies of the dying and dead. In the blind 
 ing smoke, the drunken savages began firing their 
 
I 82 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 rifles wildly, or hacked one another to death in 
 the awful darkness of the place ; all of which 
 the more confused the Indians without, caus 
 ing them to continue the struggle to gain an 
 entrance to the cabin. 
 
 Each passing moment added to the awfulness 
 of the scene. The wild war-whoops of these 
 painted pirates of the plain, the rattle of rifles, 
 the shrieks of the wounded, and the strangled 
 cries of the dying, were horrible to hear. 
 
 Having re-loaded their six-shooters, to have 
 handy for close fighting, the men in the pits 
 now began to use their rifles on the wild rabble 
 of red skins, who were struggling at the door of 
 the cabin. 
 
 Finding no one to attack, panic-stricken and 
 bewildered, the Indians, with a wild yell of 
 despair, turned to fly. Catching glimpses of 
 the glare of the guns that were aimed at them 
 from the pits, the savages now rushed toward 
 these yellow flames. 
 
 Instantly the men dropped back like so many 
 prairie dogs, pulled the doors down, and were 
 gone. 
 
 Being unable to compete with an enemy that 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 183 
 
 could make itself visible or invisible at will, that 
 could come and go like the spirits of the dead, 
 the Indians, with another wild, despairing cry, 
 fled from the field, leaving the dead to the 
 mercies of the mysterious foe. 
 
 About a month after the battle at White 
 Horse, Bob was able to take his ride again on 
 the pony express- 
 Little Cayuse was now more of a hero than 
 ever. The most he had done up to that night 
 had been to warn the men when the Sioux 
 were coming, but now it became known that 
 he had not only detected the enemy in the 
 act of stealing upon the station, but had actu 
 ally killed the leader of the murderous band 
 with his "thirty-eight." 
 
 One day when Whipsaw and the express 
 rider, who lay over at White Horse, were out 
 after buffalo, Little Cayuse was watching the 
 station. The hunters had been lured away by 
 the flying herd, and when the sun hung low in 
 the clear, hot sky, they had not yet returned. 
 For nearly an hour the Indian boy had been 
 watching a bare-backed broncho that seemed 
 
184 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 to be feeding about a mile away, but kept 
 working nearer and nearer to the station. 
 
 Presently the sharp eye of the Pawnee saw 
 that the animal had two pairs of front legs. 
 A quarter of an hour later he made out that 
 the rider was stalking in the shadow of the 
 horse. To and fro the animal went, out 
 toward the sunset that was blinding the boy, 
 and at each turn came nearer to the station. 
 When at last the round, red sun went down, 
 and the men did not return, the brave little 
 watchman took his rifle and planted himself in 
 the cabin door. At dusk the horse began to 
 circle round the cabin, but the boy kept his 
 place. Now not more than a hundred yards 
 separated the horse and the station. 
 
 The owner of the animal now started for the 
 cabin from the rear, and when he reached the 
 shed, or lean-to in which the express horses 
 were kept, he stopped. The boy cocked his 
 ear and his rifle. 
 
 The man started his horse round the house 
 one way, and crept round the other side on 
 tiptoe. As the head of the horse showed up 
 at the corner of the cabin, Little Cayuse stood 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 185 
 
 up to face whatever or whoever might come, 
 and instantly a powerful Sioux sprang upon 
 him from behind, twisted the gun from his 
 slender hands, threw him upon the back of 
 his horse and vaulted up behind him. 
 
 The big Indian gazed down upon the little 
 toy gun contemptuously, swept the horizon 
 with his eagle eye, leaned forward, clamped 
 the horse with his knees, and the animal 
 galloped away. 
 
 A half-hour later Whipsaw and Bob, tired 
 and hungry, rode up to the cabin. " Cayuse ! " 
 called Whipsaw, but there was no answer. 
 
 Dismounting, Bob threw the door of the 
 shed open, for his first thought was of the 
 express pony, and was greeted by a cheerful 
 neigh. Whipsaw went into the cabin, came 
 out, looked at his companion, and uttered the 
 one word, "Gone." He stopped and lifted 
 the boy s rifle, that had been discharged in the 
 scuffle, saw the empty shell in the " death 
 chamber," and wondered where the bullet had 
 gone. It seemed to be a consolation to find 
 that the boy had made some sort of a fight. 
 He had not gone willingly away with his own 
 
I 86 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 people. He had been stolen, captured, and 
 carried away by the Sioux, who would hold him 
 for a high reward, unless the boy should invite 
 death by attempting to escape. 
 
 That night the men had to keep watch for 
 the first time for more than a year, for Little 
 Cayuse would not be there to call them when 
 the first faint sound of horses feet was heard 
 on the distant plain. 
 
 As soon as it was light Whipsaw took the 
 trail of the horse that had carried the boy 
 away. In a sag, not far from the cabin, he 
 saw where an extra horse had been tethered, 
 and he knew then that the capture of Little 
 Cayuse had been the result of a well-laid plan, 
 and that it would be useless to follow the 
 thief. 
 
 The news of the capture was carried east to 
 St. Joe and west to Sacramento by the riders 
 of the flying bronchos that were racing across 
 the continent. The company immediately 
 offered a reward for the recapture of the 
 Indian boy, who had become not only an 
 alarm clock, but a watch dog, at the most 
 dangerous station on the entire route. 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 
 
 I8 7 
 
 For six hours the Pawnee, with feet lashed 
 to the saddle, rode in front of his captor. 
 Swift as the wind, silent as the shadows of 
 birds, they swept over the sage-covered desert 
 into the territory of Nebraska. 
 
 For nearly a year Little Cayuse lived among 
 the Sioux, but he never forgot his white master. 
 In all this time he made no attempt to escape, 
 and his captors began to believe that the boy 
 had become reconciled to his fate. It would 
 be pleasant to write here that Little Cayuse 
 was vastly superior to other Indians, that he 
 went regularly to the Platte, took off his belt, 
 and bathed him in the running stream, but 
 he did nothing of the kind. If he plunged 
 into the river occasionally it was because its 
 water was cool and refreshing, and not because 
 he panted to be clean. Cleanliness is next to 
 godliness. Little Cayuse was an Indian. He 
 would skin a rabbit alive to see how long it 
 would live naked, and share his dinner with a 
 crippled dog. 
 
 A mill-run of Indians of that day and age, 
 regardless of tribe or locality, would probably 
 show a result of about one Jekyll to sixteen 
 Hydes. 
 
 i/k / 
 
1 88 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 In the spring and summer following the cap 
 ture of the boy the Sioux were busy with the 
 Pawnees and the United States troops. The 
 band in which the boy was held were forced to 
 break camp one dark night and fly for their 
 lives. 
 
 Little Cayuse took advantage of the situation 
 and escaped. Not knowing that the Pawnees, 
 who were after the Sioux, were his own people, 
 he turned his face to the west and set out to 
 find his white friend. He travelled all night, 
 not knowing exactly to what point of the com 
 pass his swift feet were carrying him, and at 
 dawn hid beneath the bank of the river. 
 When the sun went down he set his face toward 
 the gold and resumed his journey. He made 
 note of the stars, so that when the gold was 
 gone he was able to keep his course toward the 
 west. 
 
 It was near midnight of the second " sleep ; " 
 the boy was hungry and tired. He knew by 
 his native instinct that he must be near the 
 station from which the Sioux had carried him a 
 year ago, and concluded to lie down and rest 
 until morning. He ate the last of a small 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 189 
 
 piece of dried buffalo meat that he had carried 
 with him. Away off toward the mountains at 
 the north he heard a lone wolf howl. Another 
 answered from the south of him. The boy, 
 being unarmed, was sore afraid. He got to 
 his feet, listened, and hurried on. Presently 
 he heard a sage-bush rattle, looked back, and 
 saw a dark shadow following him. He stopped 
 short, and the shadow stopped. He turned 
 and ran toward it, beating the night air with 
 his arms. The shadow flounced noiselessly to 
 one side, and he knew it was a wolf. 
 
 He turned and ran for a hundred yards, 
 glanced back, and the shadow was at his heels. 
 He faced about, and to his horror there were 
 three or four other shadows following the 
 first. 
 
 He ran at them ; they flounced about, but 
 did not run away. Now he had to study the 
 stars to get his bearings again, and, when he 
 started forward, found himself surrounded by 
 the gaunt, gray wolves of the plain. Brave as 
 he was, the boy s heart stood still, while the 
 hungry animals crouched nearer. He tried to 
 pick up something to throw, but there was 
 
FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 nothing but the dry earth and the sage 
 brush. 
 
 Far down the plain he thought he heard the 
 hoofs of a horse hitting the trail. He put his 
 ear to the earth and heard to his joy the un 
 mistakable callatter, callatter, of a horse s flying 
 feet. Near and nearer came the sound, and 
 closer crept the wild dogs of the desert. The 
 boy s trained ear told him that he was north 
 of the trail upon which the horse seemed to be 
 travelling, and that the lone rider would pass 
 to the south of him. Darting this way and that 
 he succeeded in driving the wolves away for 
 a moment, and then hurried across the sage 
 brush. He had not gone a hundred yards 
 before he found himself surrounded by the 
 band again. The horse was now so near that 
 he could hear the animal s breath coming with 
 a snort like the exhaust of a locomotive at 
 each jump, and the wolves were so close to 
 him that he could hear them lick their chops, 
 and see their eyes shining like green glass in 
 the darkness. Now he could see the horse 
 outlined against the horizon and the rider lean 
 ing forward holding the broncho hard between 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 19 I 
 
 his knees. The boy made another desperate 
 effort to escape from his pursuers, darted for 
 ward and a moment later his bare feet felt the 
 trail. At that moment one of the wolves 
 snapped his sharp teeth through the calf of 
 the boy s leg, threw him to the ground and in 
 stantly he was covered by a dozen leaping, 
 snarling, snapping wolves that completely 
 blocked the trail. The horse stopped so sud 
 denly that a less watchful rider would have 
 been hurled into the heap. 
 
 "Yeh pirates o th plain," cried the man, 
 whipping out a six-shooter. He knew the 
 rolling brown bundle for a band of wolves, and 
 reckoned that below the heap there struggled 
 a buffalo calf or a young antelope. 
 
 As the rider began to empty his revolver 
 rapidly into the band they began to scatter, 
 and as the smoke cleared away the Pawnee, 
 torn and bleeding, staggered to his feet. 
 
 "Cayuse ! " cried the rider. 
 
 " Wuh ! " grunted the Indian, as he recog 
 nized his old master, Whipsaw. 
 
 The man grasped the boy by one arm and 
 lifted him to the back of the horse. A wolf 
 
192 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 snapped at the boy s feet. Taking another 
 shot at them, Whipsavv scattered the band and 
 the horse dashed away again. But these wolves 
 had tasted blood, and they gave chase. 
 
 A mile away, in the cabin at White Horse, 
 the rider who was to carry the mail on West, 
 and the wounded rider whose place Whipsaw 
 had taken, heard the rattle of the revolver, 
 armed themselves and started up the trail. 
 
 Meanwhile the bloodthirsty wolves came 
 nearer and nearer, snapping at the flying heels 
 of the frightened horse and leaping up in a 
 mad effort to drag the wounded boy, whose 
 blood had reddened their tongues, from the 
 saddle. 
 
 Holding the boy with one hand and leaving 
 the horse to guide himself, Whipsaw pointed his 
 pistol over his shoulder and pumped lead into 
 the darkness behind him. An occasional yelp 
 told of a wolf that had been hit, but still the 
 band came on. 
 
 As the men came from the cabin the spent 
 horse galloped up to the door, with the howl 
 ing wolves at his heels. 
 
 A few rounds from the rifles of the two men 
 
LITTLE CAYUSE 193 
 
 and the sight and scent of civilization soon put 
 the wolves to flight, and the fresh rider, with a 
 fresh horse, dashed on toward the coast. 
 
 The wounded rider led the tired horse away. 
 Whipsaw carried the boy into the cabin and 
 laid him tenderly upon his blankets, that had 
 been kept ready and waiting for him all these 
 weeks and months. His chest, arms, and legs 
 were fearfully torn, and into the open wounds 
 Whipsaw poured the contents of a quart bottle. 
 Not a murmur nor a moan came from the 
 hero of eight summers as the red liquor was 
 poured into his bleeding wounds. 
 
 "There s five hundred in this for you," said 
 the pony-express man, limping in from the 
 shed. "An* it might have been mine ef it 
 hadn t been fer them infernal Injins." 
 
 Whipsaw made no reply, for he was not 
 thinking of the reward that had been offered 
 by Wells, Fargo, & Co., owners of the pony 
 express. He was thinking of the brave boy 
 who had once saved his life. The gray old 
 plainsman was deeply touched by the boy s 
 bravery, and his eyes were wet for the first 
 time within a quarter of a century. He would 
 13 
 
194 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 not let his rough companion see his tears, but 
 allowed them to fall upon the brown face of 
 the boy. 
 
 " Poor Little Cayuse," said Whipsaw. 
 
 " Wuh ! " said Little Cayuse. 
 
of 
 
THE WAHSATCH BAND OF 
 BANDITS. 
 
 TT 7HEN the Denver and Rio Grande 
 V V Railroad was extended through the 
 black canon of the Gunnison, over Soldier 
 Summit a nd across the Utah Desert to the city 
 of Salt Lake, it opened a new and fruitful field 
 for enterprising train robbers. It brought 
 business to the very door, so to speak, of a 
 band of bandits who had been driven from 
 Purgatory range in Colorado and were now 
 living a rather monotonous life in the Wahsatch 
 Mountains in Utah. By changing their names 
 and whiskers as often as they changed their 
 postoffice address, and by receiving their mail 
 anonymously, these hunted criminals were able 
 for a time to keep clear of the officers of the 
 law, and to make occasional sorties into the 
 desert for the purpose of flagging the midnight 
 express. This new and enterprising railroad, 
 
198 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 being the most direct route, enjoyed the 
 privilege of carrying the gold from the San 
 Francisco Mint to the Treasury at Washington 
 or the Sub-Treasury at New York, and this 
 fact was among the many things known to the 
 half-breed leader of the Wahsatch band. These 
 bandits were well mounted, having the pick of 
 the thousands of splendid horses that graze in 
 the broad and beautiful plain that begins at 
 Fruitville and ends at Ogden. The Mormons 
 had organized and hunted the gang, but with 
 poor success. When they were in need of 
 meat the outlaws would ride into the valley, 
 rope and slaughter a steer or sheep, and long 
 before daylight be sleeping in their mountain 
 caves again. 
 
 If they wanted something from a grocer they 
 would enter one of the quiet Mormon villages, 
 disguised as cowboys or Indians, play drunk, 
 shoot up the town, and in the excitement help 
 themselves and ride away, while the people 
 peered after them, only too glad to let them go. 
 
 An Indian chief, who had been a warrior of 
 some note in his time, offered, for a considerable 
 reward, to capture or kill the outlaws. Having 
 
THE WAHSATCH BAND OF BANDITS 199 
 
 received the proper authority, he made a Spanish 
 sortie. With a dozen men, well mounted, this 
 Indian started for the hills to hunt the bandits. 
 All the people of the valley gave aid to the 
 Indians, thinking perhaps that whatever the 
 result might be, the loss to the church would 
 be trifling. 
 
 At the last little town near the foot of the 
 range the red chief and his band were given an 
 ovation, with red liquor on the side. Nothing 
 can be worse for a community than the mixing 
 of firewater, firearms, and Indians. 
 
 The outlaws heard of the coming of the red 
 sheriff, and arranged a reception for him. 
 
 They had their hiding-place in a narrow 
 canon, that pinched out at the top so that a 
 horseman could ride so far and no farther. 
 
 The trail to this canon led over a sweep of 
 barren rock, so that it was difficult to follow. 
 But now, being anxious to have the Indians 
 find them, the bandits rode down the canon 
 to the valley, turned and came back again, 
 making a new, plain trail. Then, carrying their 
 horses and other chattels out over the blind 
 trail, they established themselves at a point 
 
2OO FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 above the old camp and beyond where the 
 canon walls came together. 
 
 The Indians soon found the trail, and, flushed 
 with firewater, they gave chase. In a few 
 hours, and much sooner than they expected, 
 they came upon the old camp, and before 
 they could raise their rifles the outlaws were 
 pouring lead into them from the crags above. 
 
 Three or four of the Indians fell at the first 
 fire, and what added to the horror of the situ 
 ation was that they were unable to return the 
 fire, so completely were the outlaws hidden in 
 the jagged rock. Panic-stricken, the Indians 
 dashed down the canon, but the bandits con 
 tinued to shower the lead after them. The 
 leader and two more of his men fell in the 
 retreat, and that was the last time the Indians 
 of Utah undertook to arrest the bandits. 
 
 It was shortly after this fight that the rail 
 road was opened, and the gang determined to 
 enter upon the more romantic business of train 
 robbing. 
 
 The first two or three attempts made by the 
 Utah gang to hold up the midnight express had 
 resulted to their embarrassment. 
 
THE WAHSATCH BAND OF BANDITS 2OI 
 
 Once the air had failed to work, and at 
 another time a desperate cowboy who hap 
 pened to be among the passengers, disputed 
 the territory, and put the bandits to flight. 
 Another such water haul would bring about 
 the leader s impeachment, and that distin 
 guished individual determined to re-establish 
 himself in the confidence and esteem of his 
 companions. 
 
 Solitude, about as desolate a spot as there is 
 on the American continent, was selected as the 
 proper place to rob the train. 
 
 There was not a house at that station ; only 
 a solitary switch target at either end of a long 
 and lonely side-track. A red cotton handker 
 chief soaked in bear s oil was set ablaze as the 
 long train, with two engines, came roaring 
 down the desert. Instead of swinging the 
 torch steadily back and forth across the track, 
 the amateur flagman allowed the light to bob 
 about in an awkward, unseemly manner that 
 caused the man on the leading locomotive to 
 mistrust the "token." 
 
 He blew his whistle long and loud, ending 
 with the two familiar "toot-toots," in answer 
 
202 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 to the signal and shut off. The waiting rob 
 bers hastily put out the torch as the train came 
 on, but instead of applying the air which was 
 his business, the leading engineer (sotto voce) 
 sounded " Off brake," and opened up again. 
 Before the bewildered robbers could realize 
 what had happened the train, the speed of 
 which had scarcely slackened, went thunder 
 ing by. 
 
 Just what had been avoided by the sagacity 
 of the daring engineer might have remained 
 a secret had not the baffled bandits been so 
 indiscreet as to send a shower of bullets into 
 the rear car of the flying train. 
 
 It is a dangerous thing to run by a stop 
 signal, but whatever succeeds is successful, and 
 the wisdom of the engineer s action was not 
 questioned, so far as we know, by any of the 
 railway officials. Indeed, the same trick has 
 been worked more than once since. It was 
 done very successfully in the lone cut on the 
 Lake Shore Road only a year or two ago, but 
 it is not safe to try it too often with the same 
 gang. 
 
 That night, when the band had retired to a 
 
THE WAHSATCH BAND OF BANDITS 203 
 
 safe place among the hills over against the 
 range, they held an important meeting. 
 
 Manifestly, the leader did not know his 
 business, and his resignation was called for ; he 
 refused to surrender, and the gang voted to 
 disband. He had been a poor provider at 
 best. The gang breakfasted lightly, lunched 
 lighter still, and in the twilight stole away. 
 Only one man remained loyal to the old 
 leader, and while the others headed for the 
 hills these desperadoes rode back to Solitude. 
 
 At a flag station they robbed a section house, 
 secured a red light and a spike maul, and 
 determined to take one more fall out of the 
 midnight express. 
 
 It was Ed Maloney s run out that night, and 
 when he armed himself with a brand new six- 
 shooter the trainmen gave him the laugh. The 
 trainmaster said something about locking an 
 empty barn, but Maloney took the gun, shoved 
 it into the bosom of his engine jacket, and 
 pulled out for Grand Junction. 
 
 Almost every engineer has his hobby, and 
 Maloney s specialty was the book of rules, a 
 small volume printed by the company for the 
 
2O4 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 guidance of its employees. If he wanted to 
 clean a headlight or take a pill he would first 
 consult the book, and, if he failed to find any 
 thing printed on that subject, he would then 
 proceed, deliberately, to do the very best he 
 could without instructions. 
 
 " It is much better," he used to say, " to 
 rely on a good book than a bad memory." He 
 had often declared to his fireman that he ex 
 pected that little book to save his life some 
 day. 
 
 However, upon this particular occasion he 
 elected to fortify himself with a " forty- five," 
 regardless of what the trainmen might think 
 about it. 
 
 Finally, there was a long, mournful blast of 
 the whistle, and when the sound had died 
 away in the desert, the conductor picked up 
 his white light, said " Solitude," and stepped 
 out on the rear platform. Three or four men 
 followed him, but all they could see was the 
 dripping railing, the chain across the rear end 
 of the car, the wet bell-rope fastened to the 
 chain, and the darkness closing rapidly around 
 them. 
 
THE WAHSATCH BAND OF BANDITS 205 
 
 But what Maloney saw would have turned 
 their hair gray. It was a regulation red light, 
 but it was not being handled by a car hand, 
 and Maloney determined to disregard it. At 
 any other time he would have stopped, but a 
 precedent had been established. An engineer 
 had run past a signal at this very siding the 
 night before, and had been voted a great head ; 
 so Maloney only whistled, looked sharp and 
 let them go. 
 
 The robbers had expected this, and that is 
 why they had broken the switch bridle and 
 opened the switch at the far end of the siding. 
 Maloney half expected this, and the moment 
 his headlight shone upon the leaning target he 
 shut off, reversed and applied the air-brakes, 
 full upon the whirring wheels. 
 
 A moment later the big, black engine shot 
 off in the desert, turned half over on her left 
 side, caught the fireman and crushed him to 
 death. Maloney, thrown through the cab win 
 dow, floundered in the adobe mud for a few 
 seconds, and was on his feet again. So well 
 had he performed his duty that all the cars 
 except the mail, express, and smoker, remained 
 
2O6 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 upon the rail. The express car was what the 
 robbers wanted, but it was driven high up on 
 the mail car, which was resting on the tail of 
 the tank. Maloney, boiling with rage, felt for 
 his book of rules. It was there all right, but 
 there was no light to read by, and like enough 
 there was no rule to cover urgent emergencies, 
 such as now confronted him. 
 
 The only rule he could call to mind was the 
 one at the bottom of the time card, " In case 
 of doubt, take the safe side," and Maloney felt 
 for his gun. In the general confusion it had 
 dropped down into his overalls, but he fished 
 it out and approached the wreck. The oil box 
 in which the supplies were carried, had been 
 jarred loose and driven up against the furnace 
 door. When it had been there a few seconds 
 the oil ignited, and instantly the whole interior 
 of the wrecked engine cab was aflame. When 
 the flash came it showed Maloney face to face 
 with the two robbers. Being quick and cool, 
 the engineer raised his revolver and blazed away 
 at one of the men, and the robber chief was 
 left without a follower. But, even as Maloney 
 pressed the trigger, the desperado held his own 
 
THE IVAHSATCH BAND OF BANDITS 207 
 
 gun close to the engineer s breast and let go. 
 The conductor and passengers who were now 
 hurrying up from the rear, saw the murderous 
 weapon pointed straight at Maloney s heart and 
 made no doubt but that he would be dead in 
 an instant. But when the gun went off the 
 big engineer only staggered, clapped his left 
 hand over his heart, and blazed away at the 
 robber. The spectacle of a man shot through 
 the heart still showing fight seemed to fill the 
 bandit with terror, and being a coward, as 
 many of these fellows are, he turned and dashed 
 away into the darkness, while Maloney still 
 holding his hand to his left breast, sent stray 
 bullets over the desert where the robber ran. 
 
 In the glare of the light Maloney opened his 
 shirt to look for the bullet hole, and there was 
 only a big red spot over his heart. Closing 
 his shirt he examined his jumper, pulled his 
 book of rules out, and found a deep furrow 
 ploughed across the cover. 
 
 "That did the business," said the engineer, 
 as the conductor approached. " I told you 
 that book would be the saving of my life some 
 day." And then they started to put out the fire. 
 
OTantatoan&a 
 
WANTAWANDA. 
 
 A BOUT the middle of the first half of the 
 ^~* present century an English captain, named 
 Stuart, came to America to see the show. 
 
 Like most of his countrymen he wanted to 
 get right out on the ragged reef of civilization, 
 hang over the edge, and look down into the 
 unknown. At St. Louis he fell in with Fitz- 
 patrick, a trapper, who was heading for the 
 Yellowstone country with a goodly company of 
 fur catchers. The Englishman was an enthu 
 siastic sportsman and by the time they had 
 reached the Rocky Mountains he was thor 
 oughly convinced that this was the wildest and 
 woolliest, biggest and bulliest country then un 
 mapped. When they paused to rest, well up 
 in the Rockies, he said he had seen a lot of 
 fun. He had fought a wounded buffalo bull 
 with a pistol, and had killed a grizzly bear with 
 a bowie ; but he was now about to figure 
 
212 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 in fights that would make him forget these 
 things. 
 
 The party fell in with a band of Cheyennes 
 who were encamped on the Big Horn, not far 
 from a band of Sioux, with which tribe the 
 Cheyennes happened to be upon calling terms 
 at the moment. 
 
 Fitzpatrick, the captain of the fur-catchers, 
 was at home with the Indians because of the 
 crimson cloth, red liquor, and other things that 
 he would swap for the robes and peltry of the 
 red men. 
 
 While the trappers showed their trinkets to 
 the bucks and does of the Cheyennes a scout 
 came leaping into the light of the camp fire to 
 say that a small band of Crows (sparrow-hawks) 
 had come up in the early part of the evening 
 and encamped in a canon midway between the 
 Cheyenne and the Sioux camp. 
 
 "Hoop-a-la ! " said the Cheyenne chief, twirl 
 ing his battle-axe; " me heap hate a Crow for 
 he fight only Ingin, like a white man. Maby- 
 so me ketch em Medicine Calf, the curly- 
 haired Crow. Hoop-a-la ! " 
 
 To avoid the risk of being surprised them- 
 
IV A NT A WA NDA 213 
 
 selves, the Cheyennes put out their fires and 
 rolled up in their blankets to sleep, so as to be 
 fresh and frisky at the matine e that would open 
 with the waking morn. 
 
 The Cheyenne chief sent for Fitzpatrick. 
 " Will the white chief join me in the sport at 
 the other end of the sleep? " he asked. 
 
 "No," said the trapper; "the Crows are our 
 friends." 
 
 " So they are ! so they are ! " said the Indian ; 
 " and that s one of the reasons why I want to 
 rub em out ; but since you are so fond of them 
 you may go and sleep with em and I ll rub you 
 out, and all these white-livered coyotes that 
 yelp at your heels. Hoop-a-la ! Ingin git a 
 good many fun this grass ! " And the Chey 
 enne jumped up and cracked his moccasins 
 together so sharply that the beads fairly rattled. 
 
 Fitzpatrick said he would see about it and 
 went out. 
 
 In the camp of the palefaces Fitzpatrick 
 explained the situation. Some of the men said 
 the Crows were only Indians, and they might as 
 well have fun with them as not ; others said 
 the Crows had always been the friends of the 
 
214 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 white trappers, and had helped them fight the 
 bloody Blackfeet upon countless occasions ; but 
 a majority being in favor of going, it was so de 
 cided. Only the obstinate Englishman held 
 out. As a matter of principle he objected to 
 being pushed into a fight that was not his. 
 Even if the Crows had been no better than the 
 Sioux or the Cheyennes he could not see why 
 the trappers should go out against them just to 
 please this pagan. But back of all this there 
 was a story, a very short story, to be sure, 
 but long enough and strong enough to hold 
 on to the honor of an Englishman. 
 
 At Fort Cass, where the Crows did their trad 
 ing, a drunken Crow had attempted to steal a 
 handsome rifle from the captain, but the watch 
 ful officer had caught him in the act, followed 
 him into his lodge, levelled his pistol, and 
 snapped a cap in the Crow s face ; whereupon 
 the Indian swung his battle-axe for the English 
 man s head, and must have killed him had not 
 Wantawanda, a Crow woman, thrown a shawl 
 between the hatchet and the Englishman s head, 
 causing the weapon to glance. Seeing the In 
 dian enter the lodge, followed by the white man, 
 
WA NT A WA NDA 2 I 5 
 
 she followed also, and so saved the English 
 man s life. He knew that she had done this, 
 and upon the impulse of the moment seized 
 her by both hands and tried to thank her, but 
 she could not understand. She only knew that 
 he was splendid, and that her wild heart beat 
 wildly in her sun-browned breast as he held her 
 hands. Presently, when he released her, she 
 picked up the rifle that had been abandoned 
 by the Indian, placed it in the captain s hands, 
 and left the lodge. 
 
 The woman was sister to Medicine Calf, the 
 curly-haired Crow chief, who was not a Crow 
 any more than he was a meadow lark, but the 
 Crows did not know this. 
 
 Very naturally, now, the Englishman s mind 
 wandered back to the banks of the Yellowstone 
 and to Wantawanda, who had saved his life. 
 
 The thing to do, he said, was to go, if the 
 chief said go. Go and fight, and die, if neces 
 sary, with the friends of the white man. 
 
 He was so earnest, and there was so much 
 truth and justice in what he said, that it was 
 finally so determined ; but when they would go 
 they found that the Cheyennes had taken all 
 
2l6 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 their horses and goods and carried them away 
 for safe keeping. 
 
 " Ho\v is this?" asked Fitzpatrick, entering 
 the lodge of the Cheyenne chief. " You bid us 
 to go, and when we would depart we find all 
 our horses and goods are gone." 
 
 "It s only a little way," said the chief; 
 " can t you walk? " 
 
 " Yes, but we want our horses." 
 
 " You 11 have wings, if white men tell the 
 truth, after this sleep," said the Cheyenne, with 
 a quizzical look, which was his nearest approach 
 to a smile. " My squaws want your crimson 
 cloth, my young men your weapons, and I 
 well, I can use your fire-water." 
 
 " You 11 want ice water in an hour from now, 
 you old thief," said the trapper, levelling his rifle 
 at the Indian, " if you don t trot out my horses ! " 
 
 " Come," said the Cheyenne, without moving 
 from the robe upon which he sat smoking, " this 
 is not a thing to be settled by you and me. The 
 Crows are our enemies ; you say they are your 
 friends ; that makes you the enemy of the 
 Cheyenne, to be killed by my braves like any 
 other enemy. I have sent a messenger to the 
 
W A NT A WA NBA 2 I 7 
 
 camp of the Sioux. They will come to the 
 canon from the sunrise, so," and he drew a 
 half circle on the sand floor " and we will 
 come from the sunset, so ; " and the circle was 
 complete. 
 
 " In there will be the Crows with the curly- 
 haired chief, who is neither a white man nor a 
 red man, but a bad black man from the hot 
 country, who kills Cheyennes, Sioux, Black- 
 feet, and As-ne-boines ; for the fun of it." 
 
 " The Medicine Calf is a white man," said 
 Fitzpatrick, " and a great brave." 
 
 " So ? And does the white chief here, my 
 guest and brother, take the scalp of the In- 
 gin? The lodge of the Medicine Calf is dark 
 with the scalps of my people. He knows not 
 the God of the white man, but goes after his 
 medicine, dances the scalp dance, and marries 
 much Ingin, yet he is not of them. They say 
 his medicine is heap strong that he can t be 
 killed we shall see." 
 
 "The Medicine Calf is not of this band," 
 said the trapper, resting his rifle in the curve of 
 his left arm. " This band is led by the Little 
 Gray Bull." 
 
2l8 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 " So ! Then we shall have the hide of the 
 Little Gray Bull." 
 
 "Come, will you have my horses brought?" 
 asked the trapper, tapping his rifle with his 
 rough right hand. 
 
 The Cheyenne removed his pipe, swept the 
 air in a circle, and said : " That would not save 
 your scalp, nor the scalps of your men, nor of 
 your friends, the Crows. All about are the 
 Cheyenne braves guardmg every trail. You 
 cannot escape. They would come here and 
 kill you now, only you are my guest. They 
 have agreed, if you go with us and fight the 
 Crows, not to kill you, but if you refuse, or if 
 you should so far forget your manners as to 
 murder your host, then you shall all die." 
 
 Fitzpatrick saw the folly of resistance, and so 
 bowed to the pagan and backed out, for the 
 pagan had a gun. 
 
 When the matter had been discussed in the 
 camp of the trappers it was decided that they 
 should accompany the Cheyennes with as much 
 cheerfulness and sangfroid as they could com 
 mand, but when it came to the fight they would 
 all shoot high. Later, if they kept their hair, 
 
WANT A W A NDA 2 1 9 
 
 Fitzpatrick would explain the whole affair to the 
 mulatto chief, Medicine Calf, and all would be 
 well. 
 
 Still the Englishman demurred. There were 
 three or four others in the party, who were out 
 merely for pleasure, but who had been given to 
 understand that in all matters affecting the safety 
 of the party they would be expected to obey 
 the captain, Fitzpatrick, without a murmur. 
 A trapper s outfit in the 2o s and 30*3 was an 
 absolute monarchy, and the captain of the 
 company was the monarch. This fact was 
 impressed upon the Englishman by Dr. Har 
 rison (a son of "Tippecanoe "), and finally the 
 Briton bowed to the inevitable. 
 
 The night was nearly done when the white 
 men rolled up their blankets about all they 
 possessed now and fell asleep. 
 
 Long before day the captain of the trappers 
 was summoned before the chief, who demanded 
 to know the decision of the white men. 
 
 "We will follow the great chief," said the 
 trapper, submissively. 
 
 " Good ! only you must march in front to the 
 canon, then fall in the middle. We would not 
 
22O FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 deprive our white brothers of the glory of the 
 battle." 
 
 And so they went, the whites in front, fol 
 lowed by all the warriors and braves of the 
 Cheyenne band. At dawn they stood upon 
 the sloping wall of the wide, shallow canon, 
 the whites in the centre, the Indians on either 
 flank. As the day began to dawn they could 
 discern the Sioux outlined upon the opposite 
 bluff. Down in the quiet vale the Crows still 
 slept, rolled in their blankets, nor dreamed of 
 danger. A more quiet, peaceful scene could 
 not be imagined. It had been raining some 
 where afar off toward the Oregon coast, and the 
 far we stern sky was covered with a flaky veil, 
 through which the blue began to show, lit by 
 the light of breaking morn. Of a sudden the 
 Crows began to spring up. The enemy had 
 been discovered. The water, racing down the 
 canon after countless cloud bursts, had planed a 
 groove in the bottom of the narrow vale, and in 
 this furrow the Crows placed themselves to 
 receive the shock of the charge. At a signal 
 from the Cheyenne chief the battle began. 
 
 The chief in command of the massacre (it 
 
WA N TA WA NDA 221 
 
 was not a battle, for the Crows were out-num 
 bered fifty to one) soon discovered that the 
 range was too long. The bullets missed the 
 mark, for the Indians at that time were only 
 amateur marksmen, and all the arrows fell 
 short. He ordered his braves to charge, and 
 the scalp-hungry Cheyennes began to slide and 
 fall down the hill, while the Sioux followed the 
 example of their allies. The white men, how 
 ever, held back, only advancing far enough to 
 avoid punishment at the hands of the Chey 
 ennes. Seeing themselves surrounded and com 
 pletely cut off, the Crows began that stubborn 
 stand that is invariably made by men who give 
 no quarter and ask none. 
 
 As the enemy advanced from either side, the 
 Crows, who were great warriors, and who, owing 
 to their close relations with the whites, always 
 had an abundance of ammunition and good 
 guns, delivered a killing fire, causing their ene 
 mies to fall back to the foot of the bluffs. Two 
 or three Cheyennes and as many Sioux had 
 been killed and carried to the rear. A number 
 of warriors had received severe and painful 
 wounds, causing all of them to thirst for the 
 
222 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 blood of the Crows. Another charge was or 
 dered. This time the two red lines of nearly 
 naked warriors came nearer to the narrow gully 
 from which the Crows were sending forth a 
 sweeping rain of lead. Many a Crow was seen 
 by the whites, who had remained upon the high 
 ground, to fall from the edge of the ditch as the 
 Cheyennes advanced. After five or ten minutes 
 the Indians broke again, picking up their dead 
 and wounded on the way back to the bluffs. 
 The whites were forgotten now, so wild had the 
 Indians become. A dozen Cheyennes lay dead, 
 and the Sioux had suffered severely. Again 
 they charged. This time they came quite near 
 to the trench that was rapidly filling with the 
 bodies of the brave band, while along the bed 
 of the dry arroyo a red rill rippled from the 
 drifted dead. Ever in the wildest of the fight, 
 the waving feathers of the Little Gray Bull, 
 leader of the band, could be seen, first upon 
 one side and then upon the other side of the 
 trench, fighting and calling to the enemy to 
 come on. Gradually the resistance of the 
 Crows grew weaker and weaker, and finally 
 ceased. Again from the death-trench came 
 
WANTAIVANDA 
 
 22 3 
 
 the Little Gray Bull, foaming and bellowing, 
 and daring the Indians to come and kill him. 
 The spectacle of this brave, who seemed to bear 
 a charmed life, so terrified the Sioux that they 
 fled by the hundred as he advanced. Turning, 
 the Bull saw that the Cheyennes still held their 
 ground near the trench. Leaping over his 
 dead comrades the chief advanced towards the 
 Cheyennes, waving his battle-axe, and to the 
 amazement of the whites, they too fled. They 
 called to the Crow to go, that he was too great 
 a brave to be killed. " My heart is too full of 
 hate for you," said he, " to accept your mercy. 
 My people will take vengeance upon you and your 
 friends. Come, you cowards, and kill the Little 
 Gray Bull. He has ridden your horses until he is 
 tired of riding. Your squaws are his slaves ; his 
 lodge is darkened by the scalps of the Cheyennes." 
 
 Again he charged and the Cheyennes crouched 
 still closer to the cliff. 
 
 At this juncture, while the whites were admir 
 ing, and the Indians dreading, the daring brave, 
 a half-breed Snake, a horse-herder, took aim 
 and shot the Little Gray Bull dead. 
 
 " There," said the half savage, who is usually 
 
224 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 worse than a whole savage, " we can go to 
 breakfast." 
 
 In the trench all were dead except two Crow 
 boys, moccasin-bearers. These the Chey- 
 ennes made prisoners, and after dividing the 
 gruesome trophies of war with the Sioux, the 
 Cheyennes, accompanied by the whites, started 
 back to camp. 
 
 As they rode along, the Crow boys sitting be 
 hind their respective captors, the little savages 
 held quiet converse by nod and sign. Pres 
 ently each drew a knife and plunged it into 
 his captor, killing both instantly. The startled 
 braves turned upon the boys and hacked them 
 to pieces. This they had expected, no doubt, 
 but chose death, and this measure of revenge, 
 rather than to become slaves of, or warriors with, 
 the Cheyennes. 
 
 Upon reaching camp the Cheyenne chief re 
 turned all the horses and other property to the 
 trappers, who, glad to be off, set out for the 
 Crow country. When they had arrived within 
 a few miles of the Crow village Fitzpatrick sent 
 a messenger, asking the curly-haired chief to 
 visit him. The Medicine Calf said he was too 
 
WANTAWANDA 22$ 
 
 busy, but invited the trapper to come to the vil 
 lage. When the trappers had made camp near 
 the Crows the chief called upon them, and in 
 the evening of the same day Fitzpatrick and his 
 companions returned the call. The splendid 
 horses that the trappers rode attracted the 
 attention of the Crows at once, for they were 
 great horse thieves as well as great warriors. 
 
 When the rest had retired to the camp of the 
 trappers without the village Fitzpatrick remained 
 to talk with the Medicine Calf, whom he had 
 known in St. Louis, where he had lived before 
 he became a Crow. Gradually now the trap 
 per told the chief of the massacre of the band 
 of Crows, and of the bravery of the Little Gray 
 Bull. He did not, however, tell how one of his 
 half-breed herders had killed the Bull in order 
 that he might go to breakfast. 
 
 The Medicine Calf was in a rage in a mo 
 ment. He had lived so long with the Crows, 
 had lied so luminously to them about his " medi 
 cine," and the awful -pull of the rabbit s foot 
 that he wore about his black neck, that he had 
 actually come to take himself seriously and to 
 believe the things he said. 
 15 
 
226 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 When the trapper had left the hogan of the 
 chief a Crow warrior slid noiselessly into the 
 awful presence. 
 
 " Uh ! can the Medicine Calf sleep when the 
 enemy is among us ? " asked the Indian, seeing 
 the Calf rolled up in his blankets. 
 
 "What enemy? " 
 
 " The paleface the enemy that pretends to 
 be a friend. One of them rides my father s 
 horse, which he could only do after killing the 
 Little Gray Bull." 
 
 "They are my friends," said the Medicine 
 Calf; " be good to them." 
 
 With a grunt that showed disgust the young 
 Indian strode out to spread the story of his dis 
 covery throughout the village. 
 
 No doubt the Medicine Calf smelled trouble 
 here, but the negro that was in him made him 
 drowsy, the white man that was in him (his 
 father was French) made him wish the rival 
 fur catchers away, while the savage that he had 
 acquired made him more or less indifferent 
 when it was only a question of the life or death 
 of a score or so of the two-legged animals of the 
 earth ; so he rolled over and fell asleep. 
 
W A N TA WA NDA 22*] 
 
 From a half-breed in the trapper s outfit one 
 of the squaws had the story of the slaughter, but 
 nothing of the part the whites had taken, and 
 when that story met and got mixed up with the 
 horse story the village began to boil. Indians 
 were dodging from lodge to lodge. The son of 
 the Little Gray Bull took command, keeping 
 the warriors away from the chief s lodge, and 
 by midnight had everything arranged for the 
 massacre of Fitzpatrick and his party. They 
 were to take no guns. In order that the peace 
 ful slumbers of the Medicine Calf might not be 
 broken, they had arranged to steal upon the 
 unsuspecting trappers and tomahawk them while 
 they slept. 
 
 In a lodge not far from the Medicine Calf an 
 interpreter and clerk for the American fur com 
 pany, named Winters, was sleeping that night. 
 Shortly after midnight he heard some one creep 
 ing into his tent. It was an Indian woman. 
 " Get up," said she, " the Crows are going to 
 kill all the white people that are camped in the 
 canon." 
 
 The interpreter leaped from his couch, 
 when the woman, knowing what he would do, 
 
225 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 threw her arms about him -and hugged him 
 down. 
 
 " Let me go ! " he hissed. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "To warn the Medicine Calf and save the 
 people." 
 
 " But you cannot. They are guarding him 
 and you. Give me paper-talk. I cannot speak 
 with the white people, but give me paper- 
 talk and I will put it into the hand of the tall 
 brave who rides the big white horse." 
 
 " How can you leave the village and reach the 
 camp? " 
 
 " I 11 find the way," she said, holding out her 
 hand eagerly for the paper-talk that should warn 
 and save the whites. 
 
 Believing this to be the surest and quickest 
 way of reaching the trappers, the interpreter, 
 leaning from the door of his tent, wrote by the 
 dim light of the stars : " Fly for your lives, all 
 of you the Crows," and signed his name, 
 which was well known to the captain of the 
 trappers. 
 
 Noiselessly as a moccasin-footed rabbit moves 
 over the face of a ledge the Indian girl stole 
 
WA NTA WA NDA 22() 
 
 .from the tent, and when she had left the village 
 behind her sped through the forest like a fright 
 ened deer. 
 
 The whites were all asleep, and being in the 
 Crow country, where all whites were consid 
 ered safe, had no guards out. Already their 
 horses had been rounded up and led away by 
 the Crows. The Indian stole silently into the 
 camp. Near a dim fire she found the English 
 captain and touched his hand. Immediately 
 he sat up. " Who s here? " he whispered, for 
 the touch of the woman s hand told him that it 
 was the hand of a friend. " Wantawanda," said 
 the girl, pressing the paper into his hand. 
 Holding the letter close to a coal the white 
 man read what was written there. A cold 
 wave swept over him as he got to his feet, just 
 in time to see the faithful Indian, who had once 
 before saved his life, leap into the black forest 
 on her way back to the village. Instantly the 
 captain of the outfit was notified, the camp was 
 awakened, the fires smothered out, and every 
 man ready to mount his horse. Alas ! no 
 horses could be found ! This was no time to 
 try to find them. Every moment s delay in- 
 
2 3 
 
 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 creased the danger, and if the Crows should 
 discover them trying to escape, that would 
 mean death to all of them. Placing himself 
 at the head of the little company of thirty or 
 forty men Fiizpatrick led them in a half-circle 
 around the village and down the river. 
 
 And so, when the son of the Little Gray Bull, 
 followed by his band, leaped into the camp of 
 the trappers, they hacked and chopped into the 
 empty blankets that had been abandoned by the 
 white men. 
 
 In a little while they found the trail, but 
 could not follow it in the forest. Impatiently 
 they waited for the dawn, and long before it 
 was light enough for a white man to see they 
 were hot upon the trail of the trappers. 
 
 Hearing a great noise in the village, the Medi- 
 icine Calf came from his tent and asked a squaw 
 what the racket was ail about. 
 
 "The whites have all been killed," said the 
 woman ; " did n t you know it? " 
 
 Now the white man that was in the curly- 
 haired chief came to the surface. Hastening to 
 the tent of the interpreter he found it full of 
 Crows. The interpreter said he had wanted to go 
 
WA N TA WA NDA 2 3 I 
 
 to the chief, but the Indians would not let him. 
 The whites, he had learned, had gone down the 
 river, followed by about a thousand Indians. 
 
 Suddenly the Medicine Calf became wild. 
 Part of this might have been for the benefit of 
 the interpreter, but it seemed real rage. " I am 
 mad!" he shouted in the Crow tongue, leap 
 ing upon his war horse. " The Medicine Calf 
 goes to die for his friends, the whites ! " and 
 away he went, followed by the " Dog soldiers." 
 Some six or eight miles from the village he 
 overtook the Crows, who were at that moment 
 surrounding the trappers. Dashing through the 
 line the chief rode to where the whites were 
 huddled for a last stand, and shouted to the 
 Indians to stand back. With all his bluster 
 and bravado, his love for the spectacle of 
 Indian warfare and the wild whoop of the 
 slaughter, this more than half white man was 
 absolutely indifferent to personal danger. It 
 required a brave, cool man to face these sav 
 ages, who were thirsting for the blood of the 
 trappers, whom they regarded as the slayers of 
 their brother-braves. 
 
 For a moment it seemed to the little band of 
 
232 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 palefaces that they must all be swept away, but 
 by deftly touching the "Medicine " at his throat 
 and reminding the Crows that he was their 
 great chief, that these men were his guests, 
 and that if they deserved killing there was no 
 call for undue haste, he held them back. 
 
 In the meantime, speaking in English to the 
 whites, he bade them each mount behind an 
 Indian, his body guard, or staff, called the 
 " Dog soldiers," because they worshipped dogs, 
 having crowded about to protect their chief. 
 
 All the whites mounted save the English 
 captain. " I 11 not ride behind one of the 
 thieves," said he ; and then, shaking his fist at 
 the Medicine Calf, said in strong English, " Any 
 man who would live among these red devils is 
 a damned rascal." 
 
 This so enraged the Calf that he would have 
 made the Englishman suffer for his rashness 
 had he not dreaded the consequences. The 
 interpreter at the village would hear of it, 
 though all the trappers perished in a moment, 
 and it would be hard to explain away. Besides, 
 he would not care to have the blood of so 
 many whites upon his hands ; so he let it pass. 
 
WANTAWANDA 
 
 233 
 
 Finally the Englishman, rather than be scalped, 
 rode back to the village with the rest. 
 
 After much talk the chief succeeded in hav 
 ing the horses and other property restored to 
 the whites, except the horse that had belonged 
 to the Little Gray Bull (which they had brought 
 from the Cheyennes), the fire-water that had 
 evaporated, and the red cloth that the squaws 
 had already ripped up for shawls and blankets. 
 
 Again the little army of fur-hunters, adven 
 turers, and sight-seeers, set out for more con 
 genial communities, followed, that night, by the 
 son of the dead Bull and a company of expert 
 horse-thieves. Two sleeps from the Crow vil 
 lage they came upon the camp of the trappers 
 and stole every hoof of their stock, and left 
 them to walk out of the land of the Crows. 
 
 After months of wandering in the wilds of the 
 West the English captain reached St. Louis, 
 where he bought a mile of beads, a few acres 
 of crimson cloth, and countless other trin 
 kets, and forwarded them to Fort Cass, for 
 Wantawanda. 
 
Couple o Captains; 
 
A COUPLE O 1 CAPTAINS. 
 
 " TIMMINY Christmas," groaned Tom, "how 
 
 I my arm aches ! " 
 
 " Don t think o your arm," said Gene, twist 
 ing in his blankets. " I d take your wound for 
 the prospect of promotion that hangs over your 
 head." 
 
 " Be quiet," said Tom, and he sighed heavily. 
 
 The stars were burning like coals of fire in 
 the blue above them, and all about the winds 
 were breathing in the sagebush. The two boys 
 had been in battle that day a hot fight with 
 the Sioux and Tom had belabored and 
 larruped a wily warrior singlehanded and 
 alone under the very nose of the Colonel, and 
 for that reason, and not because he had received 
 a slight though painful wound in his arm, his 
 comrade Gene argued that promotion would 
 come to Tom. It did come, and still another, 
 and in less than a month s time he was a 
 captain. 
 
238 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 Gene was a big, brave, strong youth, and it 
 was not long until he, too, began to take on 
 markers at the tops of his shoulders. Without 
 any of that invisible something commonly called 
 " pull," both boys fought themselves up, so that 
 at the end of the five years strife with the Sioux 
 they were captains of cavalry. It was all very 
 exciting, even thrilling at times. But the war 
 ended one fine day, as wars will, and the two 
 captains found themselves without employment, 
 and one of them at least without tangible 
 means of support. The disbanding of the army 
 had thrown some thousands of men suddenly 
 upon a country in which all the good jobs 
 seemed to be filled. 
 
 " We must do something," said Tom. 
 
 "Yes," assented his friend; "we ll have to 
 get married or go to work sooner or later, I 
 suppose." 
 
 " I wish we could get into something to 
 gether." 
 
 " Like enough if we did get in together, 
 they d put us in separate cells," said Gene. 
 He had money not much perhaps but 
 money, and parents well-to-do, and could af- 
 
A COUPLE 0> CAPTAINS 239 
 
 ford to joke. But it was a serious matter with 
 Tom. He was as poor as a Greek and as 
 proud as a Spaniard. One day he hailed Gene 
 with a happy shout, and announced that he had 
 a job for both, where they could work together 
 by day and bunk together at night. 
 
 "So it s work, is it?" asked Gene, looking 
 his friend over. 
 
 " Well, yes. You were not expecting a job 
 stopping balls in a tennis court, were you? " 
 
 " Not exactly ; but I thought we were going 
 into some sort of business together." 
 
 " This is business good business, and you 
 wind it up with a brake-chain every time the 
 whistle blows." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Braking on the Burlington." 
 
 "W-h-at?" 
 
 " Braking on the Burlington." 
 
 Gene smiled. 
 
 The Burlington had just been opened as far 
 as Omaha, and Ottumwa was only a small set 
 tlement. Iowa was right out on the raw edge 
 of the wide, wild West. The Indians were 
 wrecking stations and robbing freight cars, and 
 
240 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 a flagman three cars from the caboose could n t 
 call his scalp his own. 
 
 "Passenger train, I presume?" said Gene, 
 breaking the hush. 
 
 " Freight." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Freight." 
 
 " Say, Tom, you re crazy. What you want 
 to throw yourself away on a box car for? It 
 won t do not for me it s preposterous ! " 
 
 "It beats walking." 
 
 " Perhaps, but we have n t had to walk yet. 
 Think of it ! Society column of the Chicago 
 Tribune, Captain Smith and Captain Jones 
 are braking on freight out of Ottumwa. Come, 
 Tom, I m not broke yet ; besides, you are too 
 young and handsome to be killed." 
 
 " Then you won t go ? " 
 
 "No," said Gene, and he commenced to 
 sing : " Don t you go, Tommy, don t go ; stay 
 away, Tommy, don t go." 
 
 " Well, I Ve always feared it would come to 
 this sooner or later," said Tom. He held out 
 his hand, and Gene took it. 
 
 " I love you, Tommy," said he; "but I can t 
 
A COUPLE CAPTAINS 241 
 
 join you in a blue jumper and go skating with 
 you over the icy tops of rolling box-cars." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Tom. 
 
 " Good-bye ! God be good to you, captain 
 my captain ! " 
 
 "The same to you," called Tom, and his 
 friend watched him wander away down among 
 the cars in the newly railed freight yards. 
 
 " Ticket," called the conductor. 
 
 The man was reading. 
 
 "Ticket," and he touched the man s shoulder, 
 and the man looked up. 
 
 " Why hel-lo, Tom. What you doing? " 
 
 " I m trying to run this train," said Tom, 
 passing the punch to his left hand in order to 
 shake the hand the passenger held out. 
 
 When the conductor had worked the train, 
 he came back to the passenger with the 
 book. 
 
 " Say, Gene," said the ticket- taker, " I was 
 so elated over this unexpected pleasure that I 
 forgot to get your ticket. You ought to be 
 ashamed to make me ask the third time for it." 
 
 " Well, you can keep right on, for I Ve got 
 16 
 
242 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 no ticket. I had barely time to throw myself 
 aboard as the train pulled out." 
 
 "Well, you ve got money, haven t you? 
 Cause if you have n t, I know where you can 
 borrow." 
 
 Gene smiled and gave up, and then the two 
 ex-captains of cavalry sat and talked of the old 
 days, when there were no railroads there. 
 
 " Well, Tom, you ve made a great success of 
 this railroad business, and I m proud of you," 
 said Gene, glancing at the bright blue uniform 
 the captain wore. 
 
 Tom smiled. " What are you driving at, 
 Gene?" 
 
 " Readin law." 
 
 "Well," said Tom, "I guess that ll beat 
 brakin on freight." 
 
 And so the two men talked on to the end of 
 the run; the conductor dropped off, and the 
 law student went on to Chicago. 
 
 In the jam and crowd about the gates of 
 the Burlington station at Chicago men often 
 bump up against old comrades unexpectedly, 
 and so it fell out that as Gene was sweeping 
 
A COUPLE O CAPTAINS 243 
 
 through a narrow gate he ran bang into a 
 man. 
 
 " Hello, Gene," said the man; "wait a 
 moment." 
 
 Gene waited impatiently, for five minutes, it 
 seemed to him. He was glad enough to meet 
 an old friend, but the diagram had gone to the 
 sleeping-car conductor, and Gene wanted to 
 secure a place. Finally, as the train was about 
 to pull out in fact the time was up by the 
 big clock on the wall the waiting traveller 
 was gladdened by the reappearance of the busy 
 man. 
 
 "What s the matter with you, Tom? Do 
 you want me to get left? " 
 
 Tom smiled. " My dear Gene, don t you 
 know this train would not pull out without 
 you? " 
 
 "That s all very funny," Gene replied; 
 "but I Ve got no place to sleep." 
 
 "Well, you won t sleep much to-night, for 
 you are going to sit up and visit with me." 
 
 By this time Tom had been met by a smart 
 black porter, who, at a faint signal from his 
 master, took the hand baggage from the over- 
 
244 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 anxious traveller and ran up the rear steps of 
 the rearmost car. 
 
 " Is this my car?" asked Gene, stopping 
 and glancing along the platform. 
 
 " No, it s mine ; but you can ride. Come, 
 hand yourself aboard ; I sha n t make you put 
 up this trip." 
 
 The train conductor, ever alert, saw the two 
 men enter the car, lifted his white light, and 
 the big engine breathed softly, and moved out 
 of the station shed. 
 
 Gene, following the trail of the black boy, 
 stood upon the platform of a car that seemed 
 to be all plate glass, and stepped hesitatingly 
 into a luxurious drawing-room. 
 
 " Now what s all this folderol, Tom ! " asked 
 Gene, for he had been abroad and had lost 
 track of his old " pal " of the plains. 
 
 Tom was a modest man, and so told his 
 friend in a modest way that he was the General 
 Manager, and that this was the private car that 
 the company had given over for his comfort 
 and convenience. We may suppose it was a 
 pleasant evening that the two captains passed 
 as the train carried them away to the West. 
 
A COUPLE CAPTAINS 245 
 
 A few years later Tom left the Burlington 
 and went over to take charge of the Union 
 Pacific. He had an agreement that gave him 
 a fabulous salary, and the written promise of 
 the owners of the property that the road should 
 be run by him from Omaha and not by anyone 
 else, and, above all, that he should not be com 
 pelled to take signals from the seaboard, given 
 by men who were in the habit of putting a day 
 coach in the shops to have the stove changed 
 to " the front end," instead of turning the car 
 on the table or running it round a "Y." 
 
 This good and useful man had been at his 
 new post but one short year when he was called 
 in by the Great Manager of the Universe, and 
 when the news of his death went over the wire 
 it made heavy the hearts of thousands of rail 
 way employees all over this continent, for he 
 was, without question, one of the most humane 
 managers that has ever lived. 
 
 All night long, from North to South, from 
 East to West, as the conductor swung down 
 from a coach or a way car, the operator would 
 meet him and say in a low tone, " Tom Potter s 
 
246 FRONTIER STORIES 
 
 dead." In most cases the conductor would 
 make no reply, but when he handed the order 
 up to the engineer, he would say, as the opera 
 tor had said to him, "Tom Potter s dead." 
 
 " No ! " the engineman would say, turning 
 to watch the conductor, who was already taking 
 his way sadly back to the caboose to break the 
 news to the brakemen. 
 
 " What s that? " asks the fireman. 
 
 " Tom Potter s dead." And then the en 
 gineer would open the throttle slowly, and if 
 she slipped, he gave her sand and humored 
 her and he did n t swear. 
 
 The other captain, who has also made a 
 name and a place for himself, is still with us. 
 He is the "split-trick" in the prosperous law 
 firm of Gleed, Ware and Gleed, of Topeka. He 
 is the wholesome, happy two-hundred-pound 
 poet of the Kansas capital whose pen-name is 
 " Iron Quill ; " and if you doubt this story it is 
 probably because you have been reading 
 romances and have lost confidence in the 
 simple true tales that from time to time appear 
 in print. 
 
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