Charcoal, had three weeks before come home from a hunting trip to his
little cabin where his wife, the Marmot, lived. He had found his wife
in the arms of Medicine-Pipe-Stem, and by his warrior’s right to defend
his own honor, had shot the intruder down. Charcoal had done justice,
and the tribe was ready to take his part, whatever the agent might say
or the Mounted Police might do for the white man’s law.
A week had passed of close inquiry, when one of the scouts rode up
to the ration house, where the people were drawing their supplies of
beef, and gave warning that Charcoal was betrayed to the Mounted
Police. Charcoal demanded the name of his betrayer, and learned that
Mr. Wilson, the agent, was his enemy. That evening Charcoal waited
outside the agent’s house, watching the lighted windows, where, on the
yellow blinds there were passing shadows cast by the lamp within, as
various members of the household went about their business. At last he
saw Mr. Wilson’s shadow on the blind, fired and shot the agent through
the thigh. The household covered the lamps, closed the shutters, sent
for help and hid the wounded man on a couch behind the front door,
well out of range from the windows. Next morning, in broad daylight,
Charcoal went up to the house with a rifle to finish Wilson, walked in
and looked about him, but failed to discover his victim behind the open
door. He turned away and rode for the hills. The Mounted Police, turned
out for the pursuit, were misled by a hundred rumors.
D Troop at the time numbered one hundred seventy men, the pick of
the regiment, including some of the greatest riders and teamsters in
North America, and led by Colonel S. B. Steele, the most distinguished
of all Canadian frontiersmen. After he had posted men to guard all
passes through the Rocky Mountains, he had a district about ninety
miles square combed over incessantly by strong patrols, so that
Charcoal’s escape seemed nearly impossible. The district however, was
one of foothills, bush, winding gorges, tracts of boulders, and to the
eastward prairie, where the whole Blood and Piegan tribes were using
every subtlety of Indian craft to hide the fugitive.
Inspector Jervis, with twenty police and some scouts, had been seventy
hours in the saddle, and camped at Big Bend exhausted, when a rider
came flying in reporting Charcoal as seen at Kootenai. The white men
rallied for the twenty-eight-mile march, but the Indians lay, and were
kicked, done for, refusing to move. The white men scrambled to their
saddles, and reeled off on the trail, unconquerable.
One day a Mormon settler brought news to Mr. Jervis that while cutting
fence rails, he had seen Charcoal creep out from the bush and make off
with his coat. So this Mormon led them to a little meadow, where they
found and surrounded a tent. Then Mr. Jervis took two men and pulled
aside the door, while they covered the place with their revolvers. Two
Mormons were brought out, shaking with fright, from the tent.
Further on in the gray dawn, they came to another clearing, and a
second tent, which they surrounded. Some noise disturbed the Marmot,
who crept sleepily to the door, looked out, then with a scream, warned
her husband. Charcoal slashed with his knife through the back of the
tent, crept into the bush, and thence fired, his bullet knocking the
cap from the officer’s head; but a volley failed to reach the Indian.
The tent was Charcoal’s winter quarters, stored with a carcass of beef,
five sacks of flour, bacon, sugar and deerskin for his shoes, and there
the Marmot was taken, with a grown daughter, and a little son called
Running Bear, aged eight.
So far, in many weeks of the great hunt Charcoal had his loyal wife to
ride with him, and they used to follow the police patrols in order to
be sure of rest when the pursuers camped. Two police horses, left half
dead, were taken up and ridden by this couple an extra forty miles.
An officer and a buck were feeding at Boundary Creek detachment when
Mr. and Mrs. Charcoal stole their chargers out of the stable. But now
Charcoal had to face the prospect of a lone fight, and with the loss
of his family, fell into blind despair. Then all his kinsfolk to the
number of thirty-seven, were arrested and lodged in prison.
Since his raid on the horses at Boundary Creek, all police stables were
locked, and visited frequently at night. Corporal Armour, at Lee’s
Creek came out swinging his lantern, sniffing at the night, bound for
the stable, when he saw a sudden blaze revealing an Indian face behind
the horse trough, while a bullet whisked through his sleeve. He bolted
for the house, grabbed his gun and returned, only to hear a horse
galloping away into the night. Charcoal for once, had failed to get a
remount. Sergeant Wilde was universally loved by the tribes. The same
feeling caused his old regiment, the Blues, at Windsor, to beg for
Black Prince, his charger, after his death, and sent the whole body of
the Northwest Mounted Police into mourning when he fell. Tradition made
him a great aristocrat under an assumed name, and I remember well how
we recruits, in the olden times, were impressed by his unusual physical
beauty, his stature, horsemanship and singular personal distinction.
Ambrose attended him when he rode out for the last time on Black
Prince, followed by an interpreter and a body of Indian scouts. They
were in deep snow on a plain where there stands a line of boulders,
gigantic rocks, the subject of weird legends among the tribes. Far off
against the sky was seen riding fast, an Indian who swerved at the
sight of the pursuit and was recognized for Charcoal. Wilde ordered
Ambrose to gallop the twenty miles to Pincher Creek, turn the people
out in the queen’s name, send a despatch to Fort Macleod, and return
at once. The Indians tried for Charcoal at long range, but their new
rifles were clogged with factory grease hard frozen, so that the pin
failed of its impact, and they all missed fire. Wilde’s great horse was
drawing ahead of the ponies, and he called back:--
“Don’t fire, or you’ll hit me by mistake!”
As he overtook Charcoal he drew his revolver, the orders being to fire
at sight, then laid the weapon before him, wanting for the sake of a
great tradition, to make the usual arrest--the taking of live outlaws
by hand. Charcoal’s rifle lay across the saddle, and he held the reins
Indian fashion with the right hand, but when Wilde grabbed at his
shoulder, he swerved, touching the trigger with his left. The bullet
went through Wilde’s body, then deflecting on the bone of the right
arm, traversed the forearm, came out of the palm, and dropped into his
gauntlet where it was found.
Wilde rolled slowly from the saddle while Black Prince went on and
Charcoal also, but then the outlaw turned, galloped back and fired
straight downward into the dying man. Black Prince had stopped at
a little distance snorting, and when the Indian came grabbing at
his loose rein, he struck with his forefeet in rage at his master’s
murderer. Charcoal had fired to disable Wilde as the only way left him
of escaping “slavery”; now he had to conquer the dead man’s horse to
make his escape from the trackers.
Some three weeks ago, Charcoal’s brothers, Left Hand and Bear Paw,
had been released from jail, with the offer of forty pounds from
the government and ten pounds from the officer commanding, if they
could capture the outlaw. The tribes had decided that Charcoal’s body
belonged of right to the police, and after Wilde’s death he could
expect no mercy on earth, no help or succor from any living man. From
the slaying, like a wounded beast to his lair, he rode direct for home,
came to the little cabin, tied Black Prince to a bush and staggered
toward the door. Out of the house came Left Hand, who ran toward him,
while the outlaw, moved by some brute instinct, fled for the horse. But
Left Hand, overtaking his brother, threw his arms about him, kissing
him upon both cheeks, and Bear Paw, following, cast his rope over the
helpless man, throwing him down, a prisoner. The brothers carried
Charcoal into the cabin, pitched him down in a corner, then Left Hand
rode for the police while Bear Paw stayed on guard.
It was Sergeant Macleod who came first to the cabin where Bear Paw
squatted waiting, and Charcoal lay to all appearance dead in a great
pool of blood upon the earthen floor. He had found a cobbler’s awl
used in mending skin shoes, and opened the arteries of his arm, that
he might take refuge from treachery in death. From ankle to groin his
legs were skinned with incessant riding, and never again was he able to
stand upon his feet.
For four months Charcoal had been hunted as an enemy by D Troop, now
for a like time he was nursed in the guard-room at Fort Macleod, and,
though he lay chained to the floor in mortal pain, his brothers of the
guard did their best. As he had been terrible in the field, so this
poor hero was brave in suffering--humble, and of so sweet a disposition
that he won all men’s hearts. Once he choked himself with a blanket;
once poisoned himself with a month’s collection of cigarette stubs;
each time nearly achieving his purpose, but he never flinched, never
gave utterance even to a sigh, except for the moaning in his sleep.
At the trial his counsel called no witnesses, but read the man’s own
defense, a document so sad, so wonderfully beautiful in expression,
that the court appealed to the crown for mercy, where mercy had become
impossible.
When he was taken out to die, the troop was on guard surrounding the
barracks, the whole of the tribes being assembled outside the fence.
The prisoner sat in a wagon face to face with the executioner, who wore
a mask of black silk, and beside him was the priest. Charcoal began to
sing his death song.
“Stay,” said the priest, “make no cry. You’re far too brave a man for
that.” The song ceased, and Charcoal died as he had lived.
XXVI
A. D. 1898
A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE
When a boy has the sea in his blood, when he prays in church for
plague, pestilence and famine, for battle and murder and sudden death,
his parents will do well to thrash him tame. For then if he can be
tamed he may turn out well as a respectable clerk; but if he has the
force of character to get what he wants he will prove himself and be,
perhaps, like John Boyes, of Hull, a king at twenty-five.
Boyes ran away to sea, and out of the tame humdrum life of the modern
merchant service made for himself a world of high adventure. As a
seaman he landed at Durban, then earned his way up-country in all
sorts of trades until he enlisted in the Matabeleland Mounted Police,
then fought his way through the second Matabele war. Afterward he was
a trader, then an actor, next at sea again, and at Zanzibar joined an
Arab trading dhow. When the dhow was wrecked, and the crew appealed to
Allah, Boyes took command, so coming to Mombasa. From here the crown
colony was building a railway to Uganda, a difficult job because the
lions ate all the laborers they could catch, and had even the cheek to
gobble up white officials. Up-country, the black troops were enjoying
a mutiny, the native tribes were prickly, the roads were impossible and
there was no food to be had. Boyes was very soon at the head of a big
transport company, working with donkey carts and native carriers to
carry food for the authorities.
Northward of the railway was Mount Kenia, a lofty snow-clad volcano;
and round his foothills covering a tract the size of Yorkshire or
of Massachusetts lived the Kikuyu, a negro people numbering half a
million, who always made a point of besieging British camps, treating
our caravans to volleys of poisoned darts, and murdering every visitor
who came within their borders. Boyes went into that country to buy food
to supply to the railway workers (1898).
He went with an old Martini-Henry rifle, and seven carriers, over a
twelve thousand foot pass of the hills, and down through bamboo forest
into a populous country, where at sight of him the war cry went from
hill to hill, and five hundred warriors assembled for their first look
at a white man. Through his interpreter he explained that he came to
trade for food. Presently he showed what his old rifle could do, and
when the bullet bored a hole through a tree he told them that it had
gone through the mountain beyond and out at the other side. A man with
such a gun was worthy of respect, especially when his drugs worked
miracles among the sick. Next day the neighbors attacked this tribe
which had received a white man instead of killing him, but Boyes with
his rifle turned defeat to victory, and with iodoform treated the
wounded. The stuff smelt so strong that there could be no doubt of its
magic.
The white man made a friend of the Chief Karuri, and through the
adventures which followed they were loyal allies. Little by little he
taught the tribesmen to hold themselves in check, to act together. He
began to drill them in military formation, a front rank of spearmen
with shields touching, a rear rank of bowmen with poisoned arrows.
So when they were next attacked they captured the enemy’s chief, and
here again the white man’s magic was very powerful--“Don’t waste
him,” said Boyes. The captive leader was put to ransom, released, and
made an ally, a goat being clubbed to death in token that the tribes
were friends. Then a night raid obtained thirty rifles and plenty of
ammunition, and a squad of picked men with modern arms soon formed the
nucleus of the white man’s growing army. When the Masai came up against
him Boyes caught them in ambush, cut their line of retreat, killed
fifty, took hundreds of prisoners and proved that raiding his district
was an error. He was a great man now, and crowds would assemble when he
refreshed himself with a dose of fruit salts that looked like boiling
water. His district was at peace, and soon made prosperous with a
carrier trade supplying food to the white men.
Many attempts were made by the witch doctors against his life, but he
seemed to thrive on all the native poisons. It was part of his clever
policy to take his people by rail drawn by a railway engine, which
they supposed to be alive, in a fever, and most frightfully thirsty.
He took them down to the sea at Mombasa, even on board a ship, and
on his return from all these wonders he rode a mule into the Kikuyu
country--“Some sort of lion,” the natives thought. It impressed the
whole nation when they heard of the white man riding a lion. He had
a kettle too, with a cup and saucer to brew tea for the chiefs, and
a Union Jack at the head of his marching column, and his riflemen
in khaki uniform. All that was good stage management, but Boyes had
other tricks beyond mere bluff. A native chief defied him and had five
hundred warriors in line of battle; but Boyes, with ten followers
only, marched up, clubbed him over the head, and ordered the warriors
to lay down their arms on pain of massacre. The five hundred supposed
themselves to be ambushed, and obeyed. It was really a great joke.
So far the adventurer had met only with little chiefs, but now at the
head of a fairly strong caravan he set forth on a tour of the whole
country, sending presents to the great Chiefs Karkerrie and Wagomba,
and word that he wanted to trade for ivory. Karkerrie came to call
and was much excited over a little clock that played tunes to order,
especially when a few drops of rain seemed to follow the music. “Does
it make rain?” asked Karkerrie.
“Certainly, it makes rain all right,” answered Boyes.
But it so happened that rain was very badly needed, and when Boyes
failed to produce a proper downpour the folk got tired of hearing
his excuses. They blamed him for the drought, refused to trade and
conspired with one of his men to murder him. Boyes’ camp became a fort,
surrounded by several thousands of hostile savages. One pitch-dark
evening the war cry of the tribe ran from village to village and there
was wailing among the women and children. The hyenas, knowing the signs
of a coming feast, howled, and all through the neighborhood of the
camp the warriors were shouting, “Kill the white man!”
As hour by hour went by the sounds and the silences got on the white
man’s nerves. It was always very difficult to keep Kikuyu sentries
awake, and as he kept on his rounds, waiting the inevitable storming
of his camp at dawn, Boyes felt the suspense become intolerable. At
last, hearing from one of his spies that Karkerrie was close at hand
disposing his men for the assault, Boyes stole out with a couple of
men, and by a miracle of luck kidnaped the hostile chief, whom he
brought back into the fort a prisoner. Great was the amazement of the
natives when at the gray of dawn, the very moment fixed for their
attack, they heard Karkerrie shouting from the midst of the fort orders
to retreat, and to disperse. A revolver screwed into his ear hole had
converted the Chief Karkerrie. Within a few days more came the copious
rains brought by the white chief’s clock, and he became more popular
than ever.
Boyes made his next journey to visit Wakamba, biggest of all the
chiefs, whose seat was on the foothills of the great snow mountain.
This chief was quite friendly, and delightfully frank, describing the
foolishness of Arabs, Swahili and that class of travelers who neglected
to take proper precautions and deserved their fate. He was making quite
a nice collection of their rifles. With his camp constantly surrounded
and infested by thousands of savages, Boyes complained to Wakamba about
the cold weather, said he would like to put up a warm house, and got
plenty of help in building a fort. The chief thought this two-storied
tower with its outlying breastworks was quite a good idea. “What a
good thing,” said he, “to keep a rush of savages out.”
After long negotiations, Boyes managed to bring the whole of the
leading chiefs of the nation together in friendly conference. The fact
that they all hated one another like poison may explain some slight
delay, for the white man’s purpose was nothing less than a solemn
treaty of blood-brotherhood with them all.
The ceremony began with the cutting into small pieces of a sheep’s
heart and liver, these being toasted upon a skewer, making a mutton
Kabob. Olomondo, chief of the Wanderobo, a nation of hunters, then took
a sharp arrow with which he cut into the flesh of each Blood-Brother
just above the heart. The Kabob was then passed round, and each chief,
taking a piece of meat, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to his
neighbor to be eaten. When Boyes had eaten blood of all the chiefs, and
all had eaten his, the peace was sealed which made him in practise king
of the Kikuyu. He was able at last to take a holiday, and spent some
months out hunting among the Wanderobo.
While the Kikuyu nation as a whole fed out of the white chief’s hand,
he still had the witch doctors for his enemies, and one very powerful
sorcerer caused the Chinga tribes to murder three Goa Portuguese. These
Eurasian traders, wearing European dress, were mistaken for white men,
and their death showed the natives that it would be quite possible to
kill Boyes, who was now returning toward civilization with an immense
load of ivory. Boyes came along in a hurry, riding ahead of his slow
caravan with only four attendants and these he presently distanced,
galloping along a path between two hedges among the fields of a
friendly tribe--straight into a deadly native ambush. Then the mule
shied out of the path, bolted across the fields and saved his life.
Of the four attendants behind, two were speared. Moreover the whole
country was wild with excitement, and five thousand fighting men were
marching against Boyes. He camped, fenced his position and stood to
arms all night, short of ammunition, put to the last, the greatest of
many tests. Once more his nerves were overstrung, the delay terrified
him, the silence appalled him waiting for dawn, and death. And as usual
he treated the natives to a new kind of surprise, taking his tiny force
against the enemy’s camp: “They had not thought it necessary to put any
sentries out.”
“Here,” says Boyes, “we found the warriors still drinking and feasting,
sitting round their fires, so engrossed in their plans for my downfall
that they entirely failed to notice our approach; so, stealthily
creeping up till we were close behind them, we prepared to complete our
surprise.... Not a sound had betrayed our advance, and they were still
quite ignorant of our presence almost in the midst of them. The echoing
crack of my rifle, which was to be the signal for the general attack,
was immediately drowned in the roar of the other guns as my men poured
in a volley that could not fail to be effective at that short range,
while accompanying the leaden missiles was a cloud of arrows sent by
that part of my force which was not armed with rifles. The effect of
this unexpected onslaught was electrical, the savages starting up with
yells of terror in a state of utter panic. Being taken so completely
by surprise, they could not at first realize what had happened, and
the place was for a few minutes a pandemonium of howling niggers,
who rushed about in the faint light of the camp-fires, jostling each
other and stumbling over the bodies of those who had fallen at the
first volley, but quite unable to see who had attacked them; while,
before they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, my men had
reloaded, and again a shower of bullets and arrows carried death into
the seething, disorganized mass. This volley completed the rout, and
without waiting a moment longer the whole crowd rushed pell-mell into
the bush, not a savage who could get away, remaining in the clearing,
and the victory was complete.”
It had taken Boyes a year to fight his way to that kingdom which had
no throne, and for another eighteen months of a thankless reign he
dealt with famine, smallpox and other worries until one day there came
two Englishmen, official tenderfeet, into that big wild land which
Boyes had tamed. They came to take possession, but instead of bringing
Boyes an appointment as commissioner for King Edward they made him
prisoner in presence of his retinue of a thousand followers, and sent
him to escort himself down-country charged with “dacoity,” murder,
flying the Union Jack, cheeking officials, and being a commercial
bounder. At Mombasa there was a comedy of imprisonment, a farce of
trial, an apology from the judge, but never a word of thanks to the
boyish adventurer who had tamed half a million savages until they were
prepared to enter the British Peace.
XXVII
A. D. 1898
JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN
From the Right Honorable Cecil Rhodes to Ewart S. Grogan in the year
1900:--
“I must say I envy you, for you have done that which has been for
centuries the ambition of every explorer, namely, to walk through
Africa from South to North. The amusement of the whole thing is that
a youth from Cambridge during his vacation should have succeeded in
doing that which the ponderous explorers of the world have failed to
accomplish. There is a distinct humor in the whole thing. It makes me
the more certain that we shall complete the telegraph and railway,
for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of a Cambridge
undergraduate.”
It took death himself to beat Rhodes. Two years after that letter was
written news went out through the army in South Africa that he was
dead. We were stunned; we felt too sick to fight. For a moment the guns
were hushed, and silence fell on the veldt after years of war. That
silence was the herald of lasting peace for British Africa, united by
stronger bonds than rail or telegraph.
* * * * *
Grogan was an undergraduate not only of Cambridge, but also of the
bigger schools called War and Adventure, for he had traveled in the
South Seas, climbed in the Alps, and fought in the Matabele campaigns,
before he made his holiday walking tour from the Cape to Cairo. He
was not the usual penniless adventurer, but, reckoned by frontier
standards, a man of means, with the good manners that ease the way for
any traveler. From the Cape to the Zambesi he had no need to tread
old trails again, and far into the heart of Africa there were already
colonies with steamers to speed the journey up to Lake Tanganyika,
where his troubles really began. Through two-thirds of the journey
Grogan had a partner, Mr. A. H. Sharp, but they were seldom in company,
for one would explore ahead while the other handled their caravan of
one hundred fifty negro carriers, or one or both went hunting, or lay
at the verge of death with a dose of fever.