[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]
Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1896. FIVE CENTS A
COPY.
VOL. XVIII.--NO. 896. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.
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[Illustration]
HOW UTE JACK WAS TAKEN.
BY OWEN WISTER.
Augustus Albumblatt, young and new and sleek with the latest
book-knowledge of war, reported to his first troop commander at Fort
Brown. The ladies had watched for him, because he would increase the
number of men, the officers because he would lessen the number of
duties; and he joined at a crisis favorable to becoming speedily known
by them all. Upon that same day had household servants become an extinct
race. The last one, the commanding officer's cook, had told the
commanding officer's wife that she was used to living where she could
see the cars. She added that there was no society here "fit for man or
baste at all." This opinion was formed on the preceding afternoon when
Casey, a sergeant of roguish attractions in G troop, had told her he
would be a brother to her always. Three hours later she wedded a
gambler, and this morning at six they took the stage for Green River,
two hundred miles south, the nearest point where the bride could see the
cars.
"Frank," said the commanding officer's wife, "send over to H troop for
York."
"Catherine," he answered, "my dear, our statesmen at Washington say it's
wicked to hire the free American soldier to cook for you. It's too
menial for his manhood."
"Frank, stuff!"
"Hush, my love. Therefore York must be spared the insult of twenty more
dollars a month, our statesmen must be re-elected, and you and I,
Catherine, being cookless, must join the general mess."
Thus did all separate housekeeping end, and the garrison began unitedly
to eat three meals a day what a Chinaman set before them, when the
long-expected Albumblatt stepped into their midst, just in time for
supper.
This youth was spic-and-span from the Military Academy, with a
top-dressing of three months' thoughtful travel in Germany. "I was
deeply impressed with the modernity of their scientific attitude," he
pleasantly remarked to the commanding officer. For Captain Duane, silent
usually, talked at this first meal to make the boy welcome in this
forlorn two-company post.
"We're cut off from all that sort of thing here," said he. "I've not
been east of the Missouri since '69. But we've got the railroad across,
and we've killed some Indians, and we've had some fun, and we're glad
we're alive--eh, Mrs. Starr?"
"I should think so," said the lady.
"Especially now we've got a bachelor at the post!" said Mrs. Bainbridge.
"That has been the one drawback, Mr. Albumblatt."
"I thank you for the compliment," said Augustus, bending from his hips;
and Mrs. Starr looked at him and then at Mrs. Bainbridge.
"We're not over-gay, I fear," the Captain continued; "but the flat's
full of antelope, and there's good shooting up both cañons."
"Have you followed the recent target experiments at Metz?" inquired the
traveller. "I refer to the flattened trajectory and the obus
controversy."
"We have not heard the reports," answered the commandant. "But we own a
mountain howitzer."
"The modernity of German ordnance--" began Augustus.
"Do you dance, Mr. Albumblatt?" asked Mrs. Starr.
"For we'll have a hop and all be your partners," Mrs. Bainbridge
exclaimed.
"I will be pleased to accommodate you, ladies."
"It's anything for variety's sake with us, you see," said Mrs. Starr,
smoothly smiling; and once again Augustus bent blandly from his hips.
But the commanding officer wished leniency. "You see us all," he
hastened to say. "Commissioned officers and dancing-men. Pretty
shabby--"
"Oh, Captain!" said a lady.
"And pretty old."
"_Captain!_" said another lady.
"But alive and kicking. Captain Starr, Mr. Bainbridge, the Doctor, and
me. We are seven."
Augustus looked accurately about him. "Do I understand seven, Captain?"
"We are seven," the senior officer repeated.
Again Mr. Albumblatt counted heads. "I imagine you include the ladies,
Captain? Ha! ha!"
"Seven commissioned males, sir. Our Major is on sick-leave, and two of
our Lieutenants have uncles in the Senate. None of us in the churchyard
lie--but we are seven."
"Ha! ha, Captain! That's an elegant double-entender on Wordsworth's
pome and the War Department. Only, if I may correct your
addition--ha! ha!--our total, including myself, is eight."
The commanding officer rolled an intimate eye at his wife.
That lady was sitting big with rage, but her words were cordial still:
"Indeed, Mr. Albumblatt, the way officers who have influence in
Washington shirk duty here and get details East is something I can't
laugh about. At one time the Captain was his own adjutant and
quartermaster. There are more officers at this table to-night than I've
seen in three years. So we are doubly glad to welcome you at Fort
Brown."
"I am fortunate to be on duty where my services are so required, though
I could object to calling it Fort Brown." And Augustus exhaled a smile.
"Prefer Smith?" said Captain Starr.
"You misunderstand me. When we say _Fort_ Brown, _Fort_ Russell, _Fort_
Et Coetera, we are inexact. They are not fortified."
"Cantonment Et Coetera would be a trifle lengthy, wouldn't it?" put in
the Doctor, his endurance on the wane.
"Perhaps; but technically descriptive of our Western posts. The Germans
criticise these military laxities."
Captain Duane now ceased talking, but urbanely listened; and from time
to time his eye would scan Augustus, and then a certain sublimated
laugh, to his wife well known, would seize him for a single voiceless
spasm, and pass. The experienced Albumblatt meanwhile continued,
"By-the-way, Doctor, you know the Charité, of course?"
Doctor Guild had visited the great hospital, but being now a goaded man
he stuck his nose in his plate, and said, unwisely: "Sharrity? What's
that?" For then Augustus told him what and where it was, and that
Krankenhaus is German for hospital, and that he had been deeply
impressed with the modernity of the ventilation. "Thirty-five cubic
metres to a bed in new wards," he stated. "How many do you allow,
Doctor?"
"None," answered the surgeon.
"Do I understand none, Doctor?"
"You do, sir. My patients breathe in cubic feet, and swallow their doses
in grains, and have their inflation measured in inches."
"Now there again!" exclaimed Augustus, cheerily. "More antiquity to be
swept away! And people say we young officers have no work cut out for
us!"
"Patients don't die then under the metric system?" said the Doctor.
"No wonder Europe's overcrowded," said Starr.
But the student's mind inhabited heights above such trifling. "Death,"
he said, "occurs in ratios not differentiated from our statistics." And
he told them much more while they looked at him over their plates. He
managed to say modernity and differentiate again, for he came from our
middle West, where they encounter education too suddenly, and it would
take three generations of him to speak clean English. But with all his
polysyllabic wallowing, he showed himself keen-minded, pat with
authorities, a spruce young graduate among these dingy Rocky Mountain
campaigners. They had fought and thirsted and frozen; the books he knew
were not written when they went to school; and so far as war is to be
mastered on paper, his equipment was full and polished when theirs was
meagre and rusty.
And yet, if you know things that other and older men do not, it is as
well not to mention them too hastily. These soldiers wished they could
have been taught what he knew; but they watched young Augustus unfolding
himself with a gaze that might have seemed chill to a less highly
abstract thinker. He, however, rose from the table pleasantly edified by
himself and hopeful for them. And as he left them, "Good-night, ladies
and gentlemen," he said; "we shall meet again."
"Oh, yes," said the Doctor. "Again and again."
"He's given me indigestion," said Bainbridge.
"Take some metric system," said Starr.
"And lie flat on your trajectory," said the Doctor.
"I hate hair parted in the middle for a man," said Mrs. Guild.
"And his superior eye-glasses," said Mrs. Bainbridge.
"His staring conceited teeth," hissed Mrs. Starr.
"I don't like children slopping their knowledge all over me," said the
Doctor's wife.
"He's well brushed, though," said Mrs. Duane, seeking the bright side,
"He'll wipe his feet on the mat when he comes to call."
"I'd rather have mud on my carpet than that bandbox in any of my
chairs," said Mrs. Starr.
"He's no fool," mused the Doctor. "But, kingdom come, what an ass!"
"Well, gentlemen," said the commanding officer (and they perceived a
flavor of the official in his tone), "Mr. Albumblatt is just twenty-one.
I don't know about you; but I'll never have that excuse again."
"Very well, Captain, we'll be good," said Mrs. Bainbridge.
"And gr-r-ateful," said Mrs. Starr, rolling her r piously. "I prophecy
he'll entertain us."
The Captain's demeanor remained slightly official, but walking home, his
Catherine by his side in the dark was twice aware of that laugh of his,
twinkling in the recesses of his opinions. And later, going to bed, a
little joke took him so unready that it got out before he could suppress
it. "My love," said he, "my Second Lieutenant is grievously mislaid in
the cavalry. Providence designed him for the artillery."
It was wifely but not right in Catherine to repeat this strict
confidence in strictest confidence to her neighbor Mrs. Bainbridge over
the fence next morning before breakfast. At breakfast Mrs. Bainbridge
spoke of artillery re-enforcing the post, and her husband giggled
girlishly and looked at the puzzled Duane; and at dinner Mrs. Starr
asked Albumblatt, would not artillery strengthen the garrison?
"Even a light battery," pronounced Augustus, promptly, "would be absurd
and useless."
Whereupon the mess rattled knives, sneezed, and became variously
disturbed. So they called him Albumbattery, and then Blattery, which is
more condensed; and Captain Duane's official tone availed him nothing in
this matter. But he made no more little military jokes; he disliked
garrison personalities. Civilized by birth and ripe from weather-beaten
years of men and observing, he looked his Second Lieutenant over, and
remembered to have seen worse than this. He had no quarrel with the
metric system (truly the most sensible), and thinking to leaven it with
a little rule of thumb, he made Augustus his acting quartermaster. But
he presently indulged his wife with the soldier cook she wanted at home;
and Mrs. Starr said that showed he dreaded his quartermaster worse than
the Secretary of War.
Alas for the Quartermaster's sergeant, Johannes Schmoll, that routined
and clock-work German! He found Augustus so much more German than he had
ever been that he went speechless for three days. Upon his lists, red
ink, and ciphering, Augustus swooped like a bird of prey, and all his
fond red-tape devices were shredded to the winds. Augustus set going new
quadratic ones of his own, with an index and cross-references. It was
then that Schmoll recovered his speech and walked alone, saying, "Mein
Gott!" And often thereafter, wandering among the piled stores and
apparel, he would fling both arms heavenward and repeat the exclamation.
He had rated himself the unique human soul at Fort Brown able to count
and arrange under-clothing. Augustus rejected his laborious tally, and
together they vigiled after hours, verifying socks and drawers. Next
Augustus found more horse-shoes than his papers called for.
"That man gif me der stomach pain efry day," wailed Schmoll to Sergeant
Casey. "I tell him, 'Lieutenant, dose horse-shoes is expendable. We
don't acgount for efry shoe like they was men's shoes, und oder dings
dot is issued.' 'I prefer to dake them oop!' says Baby Bismarck. Und he
smile mit his two beaver teeth."
"Baby Bismarck!" cried, joyfully, the rosy-faced Casey. "Yo-hanny, take
a drink."
"Und so," continued the outraged Schmoll, "he haf a Board of Soorvey on
dree pound horse-shoes, und I haf der stomach pain."
It was buckles the next month. The allowance exceeded the expenditure,
Augustus's arithmetic came out wrong, and another board sat on buckles.
"Yo-hanny, you're lookin' jaded under Colonel Safetypin," said Casey.
"Have something."
"Safetypin is my treat," said Schmoll; "und very apt."
But Augustus found leisure to pervade the post with his modernity. He
set himself military problems, and solved them; he wrote an essay on
"The Contact Squadron"; he corrected Bainbridge for saying "throw back"
instead of "refuse the left flank"; he had reading-room ideas, canteen
ideas, ideas for the Indians and the Agency, and recruit-drill ideas,
which he presented to Sergeant Casey. Casey gave him, in exchange, the
name of Napoleon Shave-Tail; and had his whiskey again paid for by the
sympathetic Schmoll.
"But bless his educated heart," said Casey, "he didn't learn me nothing
that'll soil my innercence!"
Thus did the sunny-humored Sergeant take it, but not thus the mess. Had
Augustus seen himself as they saw him, could he have heard Mrs. Starr--
But he did not; the youth was impervious, and to remove his complacency
would require (so Mrs. Starr said) an operation, probably fatal. The
commanding officer held always aloof from gibing, yet often when
Augustus passed him his gray eye would dwell upon the Lieutenant's back
and his voiceless laugh would possess him. That is the picture I retain
of these days--the unending golden sun, the wide, gentle-colored plain,
the splendid mountains, the Indians ambling through the flat clear
distance; and here, close along the parade-ground, eye-glassed Augustus,
neatly hastening, with the Captain on his porch, asleep you might
suppose.
One early morning the agent, with two Indian chiefs, waited on the
commanding officer, and after their departure his wife found him
breakfasting in solitary mirth.
"Without me," she chided, sitting down. "And I know you've had some good
news."
"The best, my love. Providence has been tempted at last. The wholesome
irony of life is about to function."
"Frank, don't tease so! And where are you rushing now before the cakes?"
"To set our Augustus a little military problem, dearest. Plain living
for to-day, and high thinking be jolly well--"
"Frank, you're going to swear, and I _must_ know!"
But Frank had sworn and hurried out to the right to the Adjutant's
office, while his Catherine flew to the left to the fence.
"Ella!" she cried. "Oh, Ella!"
Mrs. Bainbridge, instantly on the other side of the fence, brought
scanty light. A telegram had come, she knew, from the Crow Agency in
Montana. Her husband admitted this three nights ago; and Captain Duane
(she knew) had given him some orders about something; and could it be
the Crows? "Ella, I don't know," said Catherine. "Frank talked all about
Providence in his incurable way, and it may be anything." So the two
ladies wondered together over the fence, until Mrs. Duane, seeing the
Captain return, ran to him and asked, were the Crows on the war-path?
Then her Frank told her yes, and that he had detailed Albumblatt to
vanquish them and escort them to Carlisle School to learn German and
Beethoven's sonatas.
"Stuff, stuff, stuff! Why, there he does go!" cried the unsettled
Catherine. "It's something at the agency!" But Captain Duane was gone
into the house for a cigar.
Albumblatt with Sergeant Casey and a detail of six men was in truth
hastening over that broad mile which opens between Fort Brown and the
agency. On either side of them the level plain stretched, gray with its
sage, buff with intervening grass, hay-cocked with the smoky,
mellow-stained, meerschaumlike canvas tepees of the Indians, quiet as a
painting; far eastward lay rose-red long low hills, half dissolved in
the trembling mystery of sun and distance; and westward, close at hand
and high, lifted the great pale blue serene mountains through the vaster
serenity of the air. The sounding hoofs of the troops brought the
Indians out of their tepees to see. When Albumblatt reached the agency,
there waited the agent and his two chiefs, who pointed to one lodge
standing apart some three hundred yards, and said, "He is there." So
then Augustus beheld his problem, the military duty fallen to him from
Providence and Captain Duane.
It seems elementary for him who has written of "The Contact Squadron."
It was to arrest one Indian. This man, Ute Jack, had done a murder among
the Crows, and fled south for shelter. The telegram heralded him, but
with boundless miles for hiding he had stolen in under the cover of
night. No welcome met him. These Fort Brown Indians were not his
friends, and less so when he arrived wild drunk among their families.
Hounded out, he sought this empty lodge, and here he was, at bay, his
hand against every man's, counting his own life worthless except for
destroying others before he must die.
"Is he armed?" Albumblatt inquired, and was told yes.
Augustus considered the peaked cone tent. The opening was this way, but
a canvas drop closed it. Not much of a problem--one man inside a sack
with eight outside to catch him! But the books gave no rule for this
combination, and Augustus had met with nothing of the sort in Germany.
He considered at some length. Smoke began to rise through the meeting
poles of the tepee, leisurely and natural, and one of the chiefs said:
"Maybe Ute Jack cooking. He hungry."
"This is not a laughing matter," said Augustus to the bystanders, who
were swiftly gathering. "Tell him that I command him to surrender," he
added to the agent, who shouted this forthwith; and silence followed.
"Tell him I say he must come out at once," said Augustus then; and
received further silence.
"He eat now," observed the chief. "Can't talk much."
"Sergeant Casey," bellowed Albumblatt, "go over there and take him out!"
"The Lootenant understands," said Casey, slowly, "that Ute Jack has got
the drop on us, and there ain't no getting any drop on him."
"Sergeant, you will execute your orders without further comment."
At this amazing step the silence fell cold indeed; but Augustus was in
command.
"Shall I take any men along, sir?" said Casey in his soldier's machine
voice.
"Ah--yes. Ah--no. Ah--do as you please."
The six troopers stepped forward to go, for they loved Casey; but he
ordered them sharply to fall back. Then, looking in their eyes, he
whispered, "Good-by, boys, if it's to be that way," and walked to the
lodge, lifted the flap, and fell, shot instantly dead through the heart.
"Two bullets into him," muttered a trooper, heavily breathing as the
sounds rang. "He's down," another spoke to himself with fixed eyes; and
a sigh they did not know of passed among them. The two chiefs looked at
Augustus and grunted short talk together; and one, with a sweeping lift
of his hand out towards the tepee and the dead man by it, said, "Maybe
Ute Jack only got three--four--cartridges--so!" (his fingers counted
it). "After he kill three--four--men, you get him pretty good." The
Indian took the white man's death so; but the white men could not yet be
even saturnine.
"This will require re-enforcement," said Augustus to the audience. "The
place must be attacked by a front and flank movement. It must be knocked
down. I tell you I must have it knocked down. How are you to see where
he is, I'd like to know, if it's not knocked down?" Augustus's voice was
getting high. "I want the howitzer," he screeched generally.
A soldier saluted, and Augustus chattered at him.
"The howitzer, the mountain howitzer, I tell you. Don't you hear me? To
knock the cursed thing he's in down. Go to Captain Duane and give him my
compliments, and--no, I'll go myself. Where's my horse? My horse, I tell
you! It's got to be knocked down."
"If you please, Lieutenant," said the trooper, "may we have the Red
Cross ambulance?"
"Red Cross? What's that for? What's that?"
"Sergeant Casey, sir. He's a-lyin' there."
"Ambulance? Certainly. The howitzer--perhaps they're only flesh wounds.
I hope they are only flesh wounds. I must have more men--you'll come
with me."
From his porch Duane viewed Augustus approach and the man stop at the
hospital, and having expected a bungle, sat to hear; but at Albumblatt's
mottled face he stood up and said, "What's the matter?" And hearing,
burst out: "Casey! Why, he was worth fifty of-- Go on, Mr. Albumblatt.
What next did you achieve, sir?" And as the tale was told he cooled,
bitter but official.
"Re-enforcements is it, Mr. Albumblatt?"
"The howitzer, Captain."
"Good. And G troop?"
"For my double flank movement I--"
"Perhaps you'd like H troop as reserve?"
"Not reserve, Captain. I should establish--"
"This is your duty, Mr. Albumblatt. Perform it as you can, with what
force you need."
"Thank you, sir. It is not exactly a battle, but with a, so-to-speak,
intrenched--"
"Take your troops and go, sir, and report to me when you have arrested
your man."
Then Duane went to the hospital, and out with the ambulance, hoping. But
the wholesome irony of life reckons beyond our calculations, and the
unreproachful, sunny face of his Sergeant evoked marches through long
heat and cold, back in the rough, good times.
"Hit twice, I thought they told me," said Duane; and the steward
surmised that one had missed.
"Perhaps," mused Duane. "And perhaps it went as intended, too. What's
all that fuss?"
He turned sharply, having lost Augustus among his sadder thoughts, and
here were the operations going briskly. Powder smoke in three directions
at once! Here were pickets far out-lying, and a double line of
skirmishers deployed in extended order, and a mounted reserve, and men
standing to horse--a command of near a hundred, a pudding of pompous,
incompetent, callow bosh, with Augustus by his howitzer, raising and
lowering it to bear on the lone white tepee that shone in the plain.
Four races were assembled to look on--the mess Chinaman, two black
laundresses, all the whites in the place (on horse and foot, some with
their hats left behind), and several hundred Indians in blankets. Duane
had a thought to go away and leave this humiliation under the eye of
Starr, for the officers were at hand also. But his second thought bade
him remain, and looking at Augustus and the howitzer, his laugh returned
to him.
It was an hour of strategy and cannonade, an hour which Fort Brown tells
of to this day; and the tepee lived through it all. For it stood upon
fifteen slender poles, not speedily to be chopped down by shooting lead
from afar. When low bullets drilled the canvas, the chief suggested to
Augustus that Ute Jack had climbed up; and if the bullets flew high,
then Ute Jack was doubtless in a hole. Nor did Augustus contrive to drop
a shell from the howitzer upon Ute Jack and explode him--a shrewd and
deadly conception; the shells went beyond, except one, that ripped
through the canvas, somewhat near the ground; and Augustus, dripping,
turned at length, and saying "It won't go down," stood vacantly wiping
his white face. Then the two chiefs got his leave to stretch a rope
between their horses and ride hard against the tepee. It was military
neither in essence nor to see, but it prevailed. The tepee sank, a huge
umbrella wreck along the earth, and there lay Ute Jack across the fire's
slight hollow, his knee-cap gone with the howitzer shell. But no blood
had flown from that, because he was already then dead some time. One
single other shot had struck him--one through his own heart, that had
singed the flesh.
"You see, Mr. Albumblatt," said Duane, in the whole crowd's hearing, "he
killed himself directly after killing Casey. But if your manoeuvres
with his corpse have taught you anything you did not know before, we
shall all be gainers."
"Captain," said Mrs. Starr, on a later day, "you and Ute Jack have ended
our fun. Since the Court of Inquiry let Mr. Albumblatt off, he has not
said Germany once--and that's three months to-morrow."
WANTED: A GIANT.
"The giant I want to look at,"
Said Bobbie, "must be so tall
It'll take me a week and two other days,
To look at him all!"
THE REMARKABLE ADVENTURES OF SANDBOYS.
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
AN INDIAN EXPERIENCE.
Sandboys, in his stories of adventure told to Bob and Jack, had so
frequently in past years alluded to Indians that it suddenly occurred to
Bob to find out if possible just how far Sandboys's experiences with the
original owners of the soil had gone. There had been Indians in this
section of New Hampshire. The boys knew that well, for the names of many
of the hills and rivers attested the fact--Pemigewasset, Ammonoosuc,
Moosilauke--all these names were decisive evidence that the red men had
once inhabited the region, and dominated it sufficiently to leave their
names at least forever impressed upon it. Furthermore, the Great Stone
Face that looked stolidly out over the placid surface of the little
lake, less than a mile from the hotel, had connected with it many an
Indian legend which the boys had from time to time picked up in the
course of their stay.
But it was not with the Indian as an idea, a memory, that caught their
fancy. They wanted to have something of the Indian of the present, a
live Indian and therefore a bad one, and with this end in view they
approached Sandboys one evening while waiting for their parents to come
down to supper.
"Of course," Sandboys said in reply to their question--"of course
there's been Indians around here, but there ain't any now.
Civilization's driven 'em all out to Nebrasky an' Honnerlulu and other
Western States where they can afford to live. They hung on here as long
as they could, but when the hotels began to get built and a new set of
prices for things was established in the section, they couldn't afford
to stay, so they enervated out West."
"They what?" asked Bob, to whom Sandboys's meaning was not quite
obvious.
"Enervated--skipped--moved out. That's the right word, ain't it?" asked
Sandboys.
"Emigrated, I guess you mean," suggested Jack.
"That's it--emigrated. I allers gets enervated and emigrated mixed up
somehow," Sandboys confessed. "Fact is, when words gets above two
syllabuls they kerflummux me. I really oughtn't to try to speak 'em, but
once in awhile they drop off my tongue without my thinking, and most
generally they gets fractured in the fall. But as I was tellin' you,
when it began to git expensive living here in the mountains, the Indians
found they was too poor to keep in with the best society, and they
energated to Nebrasky and other cheaper spots. I've allers felt that the
government ought to remember that point, an' instid of sendin' the army
out with cannon and shot to kill the Indians and git kilt itself, they
should civilize the section by buildin' a half a dozen swell hotels an'
charge people ten dollars a day for breathin' the air. That'll kill an
Indian quicker'n anything--or if it don't, instid of goin' about
scalpin' soldiers and hullaballoin' in war-paint, after one or two
seasons he'll begin to make baskits out of hay an' bulrushes an' sell
'em to guests for eight dollars. From what I know about Indians, they'd
rather sell a baskit worth ten cents for eight dollars than kill a man,
a fact which the government doesn't seem to take notice of. I'd like to
be put in charge of the Indian question for just one administration at
Washington. You wouldn't hear about any more Piute or Siouks uprisin's
in the West, but you would hear of a great increase in the hay-baskit
industry and summer-hotel-buildin' trade."
"It sounds well," said Jack.
"I guess it does," said Sandboys. "It would work too."
"It might be dangerous for two or three seasons for the guests, though,"
said Bobbie. "I don't think I'd want to go to a place for the summer
where the Indians were thick and still wild. I don't want to get
scalped."
"Oh, you'd be all right as long as you wasn't a dude!" rejoined
Sandboys. "Now that the dudes has taken to wearin' their hair long in
the back, no wild Indian's goin' to bother with boys. There's no fun
scalpin' a small boy, with football scalps in sight. You've hit on the
great trouble about Indians, though," Sandboys added, reflectively. "You
can civilize 'em. You can teach 'em Latin, Greek, French, or plumbing.
You can teach 'em to dance and sing. You can make 'em wear swaller-tail
coats and knickerbockers instead o' paint an' hoss blankets, but you
can't entirely kill their taste for takin' hair that don't belong to
'em. It was on just that point that I had my only experience with
Indians in this place here, and I tell you what there was lively times
that summer. It nearly ruined this hotel, and if it hadn't been for me,
I kind o' think it would have been goin' on yet.
[Illustration]
"It was back in the eighties somewhere that it happened. I don't
remember whether it was '87 or '88. Tennyrate, it was the year Mr.
Hicks's boy Jimmie caught a five-pound bass in Echo Lake with his
Waterbury watch. Ever hear about that? Funniest thing y' ever heard of.
Jimmie Hicks was the liveliest little boy you ever saw. You two rolled
into one wouldn't be half as lively. He was everywhere at once, Jimmie
was. He's the boy that busted the hole in the roof with the elevator.
Set the thing goin' up, couldn't stop it, and bang! first thing he knew
the whole thing had smashed up through the roof and toppled over on its
side. He had a watch--a Waterbury watch. His father got it for him just
because it took an hour to wind it up, and that kept Jimmie busy for an
hour a day, anyhow, an' he used to be doin' everything he could with it.
I've seen him smash a black fly on the wall with it, usin' it like a
sling-shot; but the queerest thing of the lot was his catchin' the bass
with it. He was out in a boat, an' nothin' would do but he should trail
that watch in the water after him. The bass he see it, thought it was a
shiner, snapped at it, swallered it, and Jimmie pulls him in. Weighed
five pounds an' three ounces on the office scales. It was that year we
had the time with old Rocky Face--I don't remember his Indian name, but
Rocky Face was what it meant in English.
[Illustration]
"He was a quiet, peaceable, civilized old Indian, and the last of the
old tribe that used to live about here. The others had fled to Nebrasky,
as I told you, because they couldn't stand the expense of livin' in the
White Mountains, but Rocky Face said they couldn't freeze him out. He'd
been born here, and he was goin' to die here, if he had to steal a
livin'. So he staid on, an' lived in an old pine-bough shanty he built
for himself up on the other side of Mount Lafyette. What he fed on
nobody knew, but every once in a while he'd turn up at the hotel and
ask what they'd charge to let him look at the clock, and everybody'd
laugh, and call him a droll old Indian, and ask him to come back.
Finally he got to makin' baskits and birch-bark canoes and bows and
arrows, and he'd sell 'em to the guests. They took so many of 'em that
Rocky Face soon got to earnin' twenty an' thirty dollars a day, an' when
he got to that point he could afford a small back room in the hotel, and
so he came here to live.
"He became one of what they call the features of the place, an' they got
to puttin' his picture in the hotel perspectacle."
"Prospectus, do you mean?" queried Bob.
[Illustration]
"Hyop. That's the thing," said Sandboys. "They put his picture in that
as one o' the sights. They called him 'A Rollic of the Past: The last of
the Pemmijehosophats.' He used to make a good many people nervous, the
way he eyed their hair, for, as I've said, although he'd become more or
less civilized, it wasn't in him not to covet other people's hair. About
that time there was an awfully pretty girl here from down South
somewheres--Conneticut, I think. She was a regular belle, and she had
the finest yeller hair you ever see. Every night she'd be out rowin' on
the lake with all the legible young men in the place; but all of a
sudden she didn't come down to breakfast one morning. She had it sent
up, an' her mother looked very anxious when she came down and said her
daughter was very sick. Then two other ladies didn't appear any more,
and a very well known old lady remarked in my hearin' that there was a
thief in the house--she'd lost a switch. Well, that set me to thinkin',
but I couldn't come to any conclusion until one night I took a pitcher
of ice-water up to the Conneticut young lady's room, and, by Joe, there
she sat readin', with scarcely no hair at all on her head."
"Scalped?" cried Bob, in horror.
"Not a bit of it," said Sandboys. "Robbed! An' then it all came to me.
That old last of the Pemicans had spoke several times about her hair to
me, an' I could see he was kind of thirsty for it, an' I made up my mind
to two things. First was, Miss Conneticut's hair was nothin' but a wig;
and second, old Rocky Face had it. I stole into his room that night when
he was at supper and opened his trunk. Will you believe it, it was full
o' false hair, an' in an old hat-box in one corner was the beautiful
yeller locks of Miss Conneticut. That feller'd scalped enough bureaus to
fill three good-sized mattresses."
"As much as that?" cried Jack.
"Hyop!" said Sandboys. "Most o' the ladies didn't like to mention it,
but there was hardly one of 'em that hadn't lost two or three headsful
to that old sinner, and I found it out. Of course I told the proprietor,
and the hair was restored to its owners. Miss Conneticut appeared again,
more popular than ever, and old Rocky Face was sent to jail, and he's
never come out as I know of."
"Well, that is a singular story," said Bob.
"Isn't it," said Jack. "I should think Miss Conneticut ought to have
been very much obliged to you."
"She was," replied Sandboys. "She gave me twenty-five dollars--five for
findin' the wig, and twenty for keepin' quiet about it around the hotel.
That's one reason I can't remember her real name."
THE BOY WRECKERS.
BY W. O. STODDARD.
CHAPTER IV.
"Whoop! Bully!" That shout came from the wreckers, within fifty yards,
just as Pete got the hook of the Captain's "gaff" into the gills of the
bass, and Kroom himself hoisted the prize on board. Every ounce of their
suspicion was gone in a moment, and the cat-boat tacked away; but just
then Sam said, in a very low voice:
"There's that white thing, if it's a life-preserver. It's got stuck
again."
In the other boat there was trouble. All the men noticed the _Elephant_
with her extra passenger, now that she was near enough; and suddenly the
man at the helm stood up and said:
"Captain Kroom did go to the wreck. I saw that big feller that's with
him. He was on the _Goshawk_ when the tug left her. We'd better watch
Kroom and see if he's gropplin' on his own account. We can't do or say a
thing unless we can pick up what was thrown over."
"Thrue for ye," replied the man next him. "Thin the inlet's the place to
wait for thim. We can luk into his boat, sure."
"I'll tell you what, boys," said the steersman, "those fellers threw
over more'll we know of. They'll come back for every pound of it, but we
can beat 'em."
It looked as if their view of the matter was just as Captain Kroom had
said. They had not the slightest idea but what it was entirely honest to
do what they were attempting. Does not anything that drifts ashore
belong to the land it is stranded on?
It is true that the laws of most countries and the rights of other men
are against the wreckers, but they have a strong belief in a kind of
"storm law." It is a law that reaches out into the sea sometimes, and
covers anything which may be found floating around. It certainly takes
in all that can be fished up from the bottom.
That is the general idea of the men who are known as wreckers. The
cat-boat with these four men in it ran on into the inlet for quite a
distance while they were talking about Kroom and the _Goshawk_ and the
tug-boats.
The place at which they had anchored was very near the bay side of the
long sandbar island whose front was toward the ocean. Here they were
entirely hidden, but at the same time they were unable to keep any watch
upon the _Elephant_ and the possible doings of her crew. This was not
exactly what they intended, and before long the steersman arose and
remarked to his mates:
"This won't do. You'd better put me ashore. I'll go over to the ocean
beach and keep an eye on 'em. Glad I brought my glass along. 'Tisn't
only old Kroom. Some o' the tug-boat fellers may have come back."
A pretty spirited debate followed, and all the while the weakfish and
flounders were biting freely. They therefore were having pretty good
luck in their ordinary character of fishermen.
In spite of that, however, they all seemed to feel very much as did
their steersman, and the entire four at last decided to go ashore on the
bar and walk over to watch Kroom. They left their boat, pulled all the
way out of water, at the bay end of the inlet, and there was not another
craft of any kind in sight when they began to trudge across the sand.
In the _Elephant_, slowly sailing along from its place of danger too
near the surf, the course of affairs had been very interesting to its
crew.
"Pete," said Sam, at the moment when the wrecker boat tacked away and
the big sea-bass lay floundering fiercely on the bottom, "that's the
largest fish I ever saw caught."
"Biggest kind!" responded Pete. "You or I couldn't have done anything
with him. They generally catch 'em off shore, with a bass-rod and a
reel. Tire 'em out, you know, before they try to pull 'em in. It's
science!"
Sam had heard of such things, and it made a proud boy of him to find
himself right in among what seemed to him the greatest fishing in all
the world--unless, he thought, it might be fishing for sharks or whales.
Captain Kroom himself had been a whaler, and Pete had been out
shark-fishing. Sam was beginning to feel a good deal of respect for
Pete, and he whispered to him:
"Why don't you try on that blue suit? It's as dry as a bone. See if it
fits."
Captain Pickering must have heard him, for he said at once: "That's it,
boy; put it on. What you need most is a new rig."
"Sam pulled it up," he said. "It's one of his fish."
"Fisherman's luck," laughed Captain Kroom, with a very deep, hearty
laugh. "It's your share. Put it on."
Pete had eyed that suit until he knew every seam and button of it. Hour
after hour during the cruise of the _Elephant_ he had grown better and
better acquainted with the strange idea that it was to be his own. He
had hardly told himself how much more it must have cost than had any
clothes he had ever owned before. "Guess I'll wait till I get home," he
said.
"No, you don't," thundered Captain Kroom; "I want to see how you look in
it. Put it on!"
Pete was pretty well accustomed to obeying the Captain, and not to do so
now would have been something like mutiny on shipboard. He turned very
red in the face, and he put on the trousers wrong side out the first
trial, but then he got them right, and the blue shirt and the jacket
followed.
"They fit him!" exclaimed Sam. "Make him look like another fellow."
So they all said, and it made little difference that Pete was still
barefooted or that his straw hat turned up in front. It was an
out-and-out sailor rig, and it had taken only a twinkling, or perhaps
two or three twinklings, to get it on.
Meantime the _Elephant_ had tacked to and fro, and Captain Kroom and Sam
had kept their trolling-lines out. As for Captain Pickering, he had
again opened his valise, and was now at work with his double-barrelled
spy-glass, as Sam called it.
"Kroom," he remarked, "keep on fishing. Those chaps are in the inlet,
out of sight, just now. One more tack and we can stretch on across the
channel, not far from that buoy."
They all knew that he meant the bit of white float, the life-preserver,
that was continually appearing and disappearing among the waves to the
eastward.
"Now!" exclaimed Captain Kroom; but at that instant Sam shouted,
"Oh! Guess it's a bluefish!"
"Just the thing!" replied Kroom. "Pull! While you're getting him in
we'll try for that float. It isn't a hundred yards away."
At that moment, unknown to the crew of the _Elephant_, the four wreckers
were plodding along across the dry hot sand of the bar-island, eager to
reach the seaward beach, from which they might discover what was going
on inside of the tossing, foaming lines of the surf.
The life-preserver was nothing but a long India-rubber-cloth bag of
wind, bent around in a ring. It was meant to be worn under the arms of a
person in the water. There it was, bobbing to and fro on the water, but
not getting along very well. The tide was strong, but there was a hitch
as of something that dragged on the bottom.
"Got it!" exclaimed Pickering, as the _Elephant_ swung around close to
the float. "I'll fetch it up as quick as I can! Oh!"
He had not caught it, for it bobbed away from him as if it were dodging.
"Gaffed!" said Captain Kroom the next instant. "That's it, Pete. Now
hold hard. Don't let it get away."
"I won't!" almost gasped Pete, tugging with all his might. "Can't you
tack, Captain?"
The _Elephant_ seemed to swing on her own account, so perfectly was she
handled by the old sailor, but Pickering now had hold of the handle of
the gaff, and it was not likely to get away from him.
"In she comes!" he said, but he was now grasping a rope that was knotted
hard to the life-preserver.
"I'll let the boat kite along," said Kroom. "Don't let anybody see you
pull that in."
He was keeping the sail of the _Elephant_ full spread toward the bar and
the inlet. That was why a man with a spy-glass, who came running down
the beach and began to look, shouted back to some other men:
"There she comes! They're only trolling. They haven't stopped for
anything. But the sail kind o' hides 'em."
The _Elephant_ had not paused, to speak of, but behind her sail Captain
Pickering was lifting something over her gun-wale.
"Conscience!" he exclaimed. "This here is part of my luggage that I
thought went on the tug this morning. I saw all the rest of it stowed
away safe enough, but I'd ha' lost this."
"Some o' the tug crews are the worst kind o' wreckers," remarked Captain
Kroom. "We've beat 'em this time, unless there were some more
life-preservers out."
"Guess not," said Pickering. "There isn't much in this that would be
hurt by salt water. It's had a soak, that's all."
It was not so large a valise as the other, but it seemed as heavy. It
was just the thing to keep a life-preserver under in deep water, and to
let a strong current drag it along into shallows.
"Don't open it till you get ashore," suggested Kroom. "I'm heading the
boat for the inlet. Cast off the float."
Pickering had already done that; but as the _Elephant_ bowed her head
and swung away, the life-preserver, although robbed of its precious
drag, seemed to be following her.
"Pete," said Sam, "look! I can see those fellows."
"They've come over the bar to watch what we're doing," growled Kroom.
"Pickering, now's our time to run through into the bay. I've an idea in
my head. Can't you hide those things?"
Off came Pickering's coat, and down it went over the two valises, side
by side. Next to them lay the handsome shapes of the bass and the two
bluefish, and one more was added to these by Sam himself before they had
sailed a hundred yards.
Only four fish, but they made a pretty good appearance. At all events,
there was not a sign of recaptured wreckage on board the _Elephant_. Her
crew and passengers could not hear the wreckers saying to each other:
"Kroom's giving it up. He's off for home. We can go back now."
"Boys," it was the steersman, after a long squint through his glass, "I
can see our float! She's coming. Let's go for the boat. Now's our time."
Perhaps so; but they had lost a great deal of time, and the _Elephant_
was already in the inlet, running well, when they started back.
"Wish there was more wind," said Pickering, impatiently. "Their boat's
over there somewhere."
"That's what I'm after," replied Kroom; "and I reckon we'll get there
first."
That might depend a great deal on the strength of the breeze, and even
more on the crookedness of the channel. Account had also to be taken of
the fact that no man can do his fastest walking in yielding sea-sand.
"There it is!" said Pete. "Captain, they hauled their boat a'most out o'
water."
"They can shove it in again quick enough," replied Kroom. "I don't know
exactly what to do or say. The fact is, they're a prime good lot of
fellows--hard-working, sober, peaceable. All of 'em go to meeting."
"Well, Kroom," said Pickering, "I knew a real partiklar feller once, and
they said he'd been a pirate. I didn't quite believe it of him."
"Here we come!" responded Kroom, as the _Elephant_ glided somewhat
lazily around a sandy curve. "Jump ashore, Pete! Get there!"
Sam had already noticed how remarkably quick his long-shore comrade
could be in his movements, but he was surprised now at the sudden
elastic bound which took Pete out of the _Elephant_ as she almost grazed
the bank on that side of the inlet. Then away he went toward the wrecker
boat, and his bare feet were the correct thing for sand-walking, or
wading.
At that very moment the four bay fishermen came in sight, toiling along
breathlessly under the hot sun, and the foremost of them shouted:
"Hullo, Kroom! Want to see ye!"
"Come on!" roared Kroom. "We'll wait for ye! H'ist yourselves along.
Plenty o' time!"
Pete was now at the hauled-out boat and was peering over into her, but
he had not uttered a sound. He was thinking very fast indeed. "We've got
'em!" he said to himself. "What rascals they are! Who'd ha' thought it
of 'em! This is what it means to be wrecked among wild savages. Take
everything you have. But then they murder a fellow, and old Kroom says
some of 'em eat him. Now I wonder what they'll say when they find
they're caught?"
He did not have to wait long before he found out. Here came the
_Elephant_, her sail slipping down as she ran her nose into the sand.
Out stepped Captain Pickering, and at the same moment the four bay
fishermen came in a hurry to the opposite side of the cat-boat.
"My quadrant!" shouted Captain Pickering. "Those two English guns of
mine, and Captain Sanders's spare chronometer! It beats all!"
"Yours, are they?" loudly responded the steersman of the cat-boat.
"Well, if I ain't glad to see ye! And old Kroom, too! I was wonderin'
how we'd get 'em back to their owners."
[Illustration: "WHAT?" THUNDERED CAPTAIN KROOM. "JUST SAY THAT OVER
AGAIN!"]
"What?" thundered Captain Kroom. "Just say that over again!"
"Why, Captain," replied the fisherman, "them there insurance fellers are
straight enough, but the tug-boat men are no better than so many river
thieves. Reg'lar wreckers! We couldn't do a thing while they were
around. Some of the _Goshawk_'s crew were just as bad."
"Ye'd not belave me," put in another of the fishermen, "but it's so.
They're all foreigners, ivery mon av thim. Not an American among thim.
The dirthy spalpanes! It's bad enough for a mon to foind himself
wrecked, widout bein' ploondered. We got away these things from the
toog-boat min, but they threw over stuff and buoyed it to coom and get
it. We was gropplin' for it the day. I hope ye're no wrecker, Captain
Kroom. They say most o' thim owld sailors'll sthrip ony wreck."
The bronzed face of Captain Kroom was furious with indignation for a
moment, and then he burst into a very deep-chested roar of laughter.
"Sam," whispered Pete, "think of their taking him and you and me for
wreckers."
"They'll have to give up all those things, though," whispered back Sam.
The bay fishermen had no thought of doing anything else. They listened
with keen interest to the account of the spar buoy, that had been set
adrift without their knowledge. They seemed entirely satisfied with the
capture of the life-preserver. In return, they told all they knew of the
ways of the tug-boat men, and Pat Malone again and again asserted that
"those chaps are all sorts, from iverywhere, and not wan American."
Captain Pickering was ready to pay the four very honest fishermen
liberally for the time they had spent in watching the thieves and in
grappling. It was quite dark, however, before the _Elephant_ again had
her crew on board.
"Biggest day I ever had," said Sam to Pete. "Let's come again, right
away."
"Bully!" said Pete. "We'll come out with Captain Kroom."
"Come along, boys," put in the Captain. "We'll fish all summer. Glad
there's more breeze to carry us home. Pickering, it's just as I told
you. Our bay fishermen are honest. They' wouldn't cheat you in the
weight of a flounder."