SKULKERS
There remained but one day until chance should settle the aspirations of
the dusty thousands who waited in Comanche; one day more would see Claim
Number One allotted for selection to some more or less worthy American
citizen.
The young man, Walker, had been received on a footing of fellowship into
the commune of the circus-tent. He said that he had concluded happily
the arrangements for the purchase of the sheep-ranch, and that he
intended to go and take possession of it in a few days. Meantime, he
appeared to be considerably shot up over June. In spite of Mrs. Reed's
frowns, he hung around her like a hornet after a soft pear.
There was considerable excitement in the camp of the communists that
morning, owing to preparations which were going forward for an excursion
over the land where somebody's Number One lay shrouded in green
greasewood and gray sage. For this important occasion Walker had engaged
the most notable stage-driver in that part of the country, whose turn it
was that day to lie over from the run between Comanche and Meander.
The party was to use his stage also, and carry lunch along, and make a
grand day of it along the river, trying for trout if conditions held
favorable. Smith was the name of the driver.
Smith was smiling like a baker as he drove up, for Smith could not
behold ladies without blushing and smiling. Smith had the reputation of
being a terror to holdup men. Also, the story was current in Comanche
that he had, in a bare-handed, single encounter with a bear, choked the
animal to death. There was some variance over the particulars as to the
breed of bear, its color, age, size, and weight. Some--and they were the
unromantic, such as habitually lived in Wyoming and kept saloons--held
that it was a black cub with a broken back; others that it was a
cinnamon bear with claws seven inches long; while the extremists would
be satisfied with nothing short of a grizzly which stood five feet four
at the shoulders and weighed eighteen hundred pounds!
But, no matter what romance had done for Smith, it could not overdo his
ancient, green vehicle, with the lettering,
BIG HORN VALLEY
along its side near the roof. It was a Concord stage, its body
swinging on creaking straps. It had many a wound of arrowhead in its
tough oak, and many a bullet-hole, all of which had been plugged with
putty and painted over long years ago for the assurance and comfort
of nervous passengers, to whom the evidence of conflict might have been
disturbing.
Now that there was no longer any reason for concealment, the owners had
allowed the paint to crumble and the putty to fall away, baring the
veteran's scars. These were so thick that it seemed a marvel that
anybody who took passage in it in those perilous days escaped. In a
sun-cracked and time-curled leather holster tacked to the seat at
Smith's right hand, a large revolver with a prodigious black handle hung
ready for the disciplining of bandits or bears, as they might come
across Smith's way.
Smith rounded up before the tent with a curve like a skater, bringing
his four horses to a stop in fine style. No matter how Smith's parts
might be exaggerated by rumor or humor in other ways, as a teamster he
stood without a peer between Cody and Green River. He leaped to the
ground with surprising agility and set himself about arranging the
interior of the coach for the accommodation of his passengers. He was
chewing on something which might have been bear-meat or buckskin, from
its apparent tenacious and unyielding nature.
Agnes Horton was to ride on the box with Smith, for she had a camera and
wanted to catch some views. Smith grew so red over handing her up that
Dr. Slavens began to fear lest he might take fire from internal heat and
leave them with only the ashes of a driver on their hands. But they all
got placed without any such melancholy tragedy, with a great many cries
of "Oh, Mr. Smith!" here, and "Oh, Mr. Smith!" there, and many
head-puttings-out on the part of the ladies inside, and gallantries from
Mr. Walker and Mr. Horace Bentley, the lawyer.
William Bentley, the toolmaker, with the basket of lunch upon his knees,
showered the blessing of his kindly smile upon them all, as if he held
them to be only children. Mrs. Mann, her black bag on her arm, squeaked
a little when the coach lurched on the start, knocking her head and
throwing her hat awry.
Smith, proud of his load, and perhaps a little vain on account of so
much unusual loveliness at his side, swung down the main street with its
early morning crowds. People waved at them the friendly signals of the
highroad of adventure, and June, in defiance of terrible eyebrows and
admonishing pokes, waved back at them, her wild hair running over her
cheeks. So they set out in the bright morning to view the promised
land.
They struck off down the Meander stage-road, which ran for the greater
part of its way through the lands awaiting the disposition of chance.
Mainly it followed the survey of the railroad, which was to be extended
to Meander, and along which men and teams were busy even then, throwing
up the roadbed.
To the north there was a rise of land, running up in benched gradations
to white and barren distant heights; behind them were brown hills. Far
away in the blue southwest--Smith said it was more than eighty
miles--there stood the mountains with their clean robes of snow, while
scattered here and there about the vast plain through which they drove,
were buttes of blue shale and red ledges, as symmetrical of side and
smooth of top as if they had been raised by the architects of
Tenochtitlán for sacrifice to their ugly gods.
"Old as Adam," said Smith, pointing to one gray monument whose summit
had been pared smooth by the slow knife of some old glacier. The sides
of the butte looked almost gay in the morning light in their soft tones
of blue and red.
"From appearances it might very well be," agreed Agnes.
She looked at Smith and smiled. There was the glory of untrammeled space
in her clear eyes, a yearning as of the desert-born on the far bounds of
home. Smith drove on, his back very straight.
"Older," said he with laconic finality after holding his peace for a
quarter of a mile.
Smith spoke as if he had known both Adam and the butte for a long time,
and so was an unquestionable authority. Agnes was not disposed to
dispute him, so they lurched on in silence along the dust-cushioned
road.
"That ain't the one the Indian girl jumped off of, though," said Smith,
meditatively.
"Isn't it?"
She turned to him quickly, ready for a story from the picturesque
strangler of bears. Smith was looking between the ears of the
off-leader. He volunteered no more.
"Well, where is the one she jumped from?" she pressed.
"Nowhere," said Smith.
"Oh!" she said, a bit disappointed.
"Everywhere I've went," said he, "they've got some high place where the
Indian girl jumped off of. In Mezoury they've got one, and even in
Kansas. They've got one in Minnesota and Illinoy and Idaho, and bend my
eyebrows if I know all the places they ain't got 'em! But don't you
never let 'em take you in on no such yarns. Them yarns is for suckers."
Somehow Agnes felt grateful toward Smith, whose charitable purpose
doubtless was to prevent her being taken in. But she was sorry for the
fine tradition and hated to give it up.
"But _didn't_ one ever jump off a cliff or--anything?" she asked.
Smith struck out with a free-arm swing and cracked his whip so loudly
that three female heads were at once protruded from the windows below.
"What I want to know," said he argumentatively, "is, who seen 'em
jump?"
"I don't know," she admitted; "but I suppose they found their bodies."
"Don't you believe it!" depreciated Smith. "Indian maidens ain't the
jumpin' kind. I never seen one of 'em in my day that wouldn't throw down
the best feller she ever had for a red umbreller and a dime's worth of
stick candy."
"I'm sorry for the nice stories your knowledge of the Indian character
spoils," she laughed.
"The thing of it in this country is, miss, not to let 'em take you in,"
Smith continued. "That's what they're out for--to take in suckers. No
matter how wise you may be in some other place, right here in this spot
you may be a sucker. Do you git my words?"
"I think so," she responded, "and thank you. I'll try to keep my eyes
open."
"They's places in this country," Smith went on, for he liked to talk as
well as the next one, once he got under way, "where you could put your
pocketbook down at the fork of the road with your card on top of it and
go back there next week and find it O. K. But they's other places where
if you had your money inside of three safes they'd git at it somehow.
This is one of that kind of places."
They had been dropping down a slope scattered with gray lava chunks and
set with spiked soapweed, which let them to the river level. Ahead of
them, twisted cottonwoods and red willows marked the brink of the
stream.
"This is the first bench," said Smith, "and it's mainly good land.
Before the books was opened for registration the gover'ment give the
Indians choice of a homestead apiece, and they picked off all this land
down here. Oh, well, on up the river they's a little left, and if I draw
a low number I know where to put my hand on a piece."
"It looks nice and green here," said she, admiring the feathery
vegetation, which grew as tall as the stage along the roadway.
"Yes, but you want to watch out for greasewood," advised Smith, "when
you come to pick land in this country. It's a sign of alkali. Pick that
gray, dusty-lookin' stuff. That's sage, and where it grows big,
anything'll grow when you git the water on it."
"But how _do_ you get the water on this hilly land?" she asked.
The question had been troubling her ever since she had taken her first
look at the country, and nobody had come forward with a satisfactory
explanation.
"You got to go up the river till you strike your level," explained
Smith, "and then you tap it and take the water to your land."
"But if you're on the 'third bench' that I hear them talking about so
much--then what do you do up there, a thousand or two feet above the
river?"
"You go back where you come from if you're wise," said Smith.
When they reached the section which, according to Smith, had not all
been taken up by the Indians already, the party got out occasionally for
closer inspection of the land. The men gravely trickled the soil through
their fingers, while the women grabbed at the sweet-smelling herbs which
grew in abundance everywhere, and tore their sleeves reaching for the
clusters of bullberries, then turning red.
Dr. Slavens and William Bentley tried for fish, with a total catch
between them of one small trout, which was carried in triumph to the
place picked upon by Smith for the noonday camp. Smith would not trust
the coffee to any hand but his own, and he blackened up the pot
shamefully, Mrs. Reed declared.
But what did Smith care for the criticism of Mrs. Reed when he was
making coffee for Agnes? What did he care, indeed, for the judgment of
the whole world when he was laying out his best efforts to please the
finest woman who ever sat beside him on the box, and one for whom he was
ready to go any distance, and do any endeavors, to save her from being
made a sucker of and taken in and skinned?
It was pleasant there by the river; so pleasant that there was not one
of them but voted Wyoming the finest and most congenial spot in the
world, with the kindest skies, the softest summer winds, and the one
place of all places for a home.
"Yes," Smith remarked, tossing pebbles into the river from the place
where he sat cross-legged on the ground with his pipe, "it takes a hold
of you that way. It goes to twenty below in the winter, sometimes, and
the wind blows like the plug had popped out of the North Pole, and the
snow covers up the sheep on the range and smothers 'em, and you lose all
you got down to the last chaw of t'backer. But you stick, some way, and
you forgit you ever had a home back in Indiana, where strawberries
grow."
"Why, don't they grow here?" asked the miller's wife, holding a bunch of
red bullberries caressingly against her cheek.
"I ain't seen a natural strawberry in fourteen years," said Smith, more
proud than regretful, as if such a long abstinence were a virtue.
"Natural?" repeated Mrs. Reed. "Surely you don't mean that they
manufacture them here?"
"They send 'em here in cans," explained Smith, "pale, with sour water on
'em, no more like real, ma'am, than a cigarette's like a smoke."
The men with pipes chuckled their appreciation of the comparison. Horace
Bentley, with a fresh cigarette--which he had taken out of a silver
case--in his fingers, turned it, quizzically smiling as he struck a
match.
"It's an imitation," said he; "but it's good enough for me."
The sun was slanting near the rough hills beyond the river when they
started back to Comanche.
"You've seen the best of the reservation," explained Smith, "and they
ain't no earthly use in seein' the worst of it."
They were well along on the way, passing through a rough and outcast
stretch of country, where upheaved ledges stood on edge, and great
blocks of stone poised menacingly on the brows of shattered cliffs, when
Smith, who had been looking sharply ahead, pulled in suddenly and turned
to Agnes with apologetic questioning in his eyes. It seemed to her that
he had something on his mind which he was afraid to put into words.
"What is it, Mr. Smith?" she asked.
"I was just goin' to say, would you mind goin' inside and lettin' that
doctor man take your place for a while?"
Smith doubtless had his reason, she thought, although it hurt her pride
that he should withhold his confidence. But she yielded her place
without further questioning, with a great amount of blushing over the
stocking which a protruding screwhead was responsible for her showing to
Dr. Slavens as he assisted her to the ground.
The sudden stop, the excitement incident to changing places, threw the
women within the coach into a cackle.
"Is it robbers?" demanded Mrs. Reed, getting hold of June's hand and
clinging to it protectingly as she put her head out and peered up at
Smith, who was sitting there stolidly, his eyes on the winding trail
ahead, his foot on the brake.
"No, ma'am," answered Smith, not looking in her direction at all.
"What is it, then?" quavered Mrs. Mann from the other side of the
stage.
She could not see Smith, and the desolation of their surroundings set
her fancy at work stationing dusty cowboy bandits behind each riven,
lowering stone.
"Oh, I _hope_ it's robbers!" said June, bouncing up and down in her
seat. "That would be just fine!"
"Hush, hush!" commanded her mother, shaking her correctively. "Such a
wicked wish!"
Milo Strong, the teacher from Iowa, had grown very pale. He buttoned his
coat and kept one hand in the region of his belt. One second he peered
wildly out of the windows on his side, the next he strained to see if
devastation and ruin were approaching from the other.
"Smith doubtless had some very commonplace reason for making the
change," said William Bentley, making room for Agnes beside him. "I
expect Miss Horton talked too much."
With that the stage started and their fears subsided somewhat. On the
box Smith was looking sharply at the doctor. Then he asked:
"Can you drive better than you can shoot, or shoot better than you can
drive?"
"I guess it's about a stand-off," replied the doctor without a ripple of
excitement; "but I was brought up with four mules."
Without another word Smith stood on the footboard, and Dr. Slavens slid
along to his place. Smith handed the physician the lines and took the
big revolver from its pocket by the seat.
"Two fellers on horseback," said he, keeping his eyes sharply on the
boulder-hedged road, "has been dodgin' along the top of that ridge kind
of suspicious. No reason why any honest man would want to ride along up
there among the rocks when he could ride down here where it's smooth.
They may be straight or they may be crooked. I don't know. But you meet
all kinds along this road."
The doctor nodded. Smith said no more, but stood, one knee on the seat,
with his pistol held in readiness for instant action. When they reached
the top of the ridge nobody was in sight, but there were boulders
enough, and big enough, on every hand to conceal an army. Smith nodded;
the doctor pulled up.
The stage had no sooner stopped than Walker was out, his pistol in hand,
ready to show June and all her female relatives so dear that he was
there to stand between them and danger as long as their peril might
last.
Smith looked around carefully.
"Funny about them two fellers!" he muttered.
From the inside of the stage came June's voice, raised in admiration of
Mr. Walker's intrepidity, and her mother's voice, commanding her to be
silent, and not draw down upon them the fury of the bandits, who even
then might be taking aim at them from behind a rock.
Nobody appearing, between whom and June he might precipitate himself,
Walker mounted a rock for a look around. He had no more than reached the
top when the two horsemen who had caused the flurry rode from behind the
house-size boulder which had hidden them, turned their backs, crouching
in their saddles as if to hide their identity, and galloped off.
"Huh! Old Hun Shanklin's one of 'em," sniffed Smith, plainly disgusted
that the affair had turned out so poorly.
He put his weapon back in its place and took the lines.
"And that feller, he don't have to go around holdin' people up with a
gun in his hand," he added. "He's got a safer and surer game of it than
that."
"And that's no cross-eyed view of it, either," Dr. Slavens agreed.
Walker came over and stood beside the near wheel.
"One of them was Hun Shanklin!" said he, whispering up loudly for the
doctor's ear, a look of deep concern on his youthful face.
Slavens nodded with what show of unconcern he could assume. For, knowing
what he knew, he wondered what the gambler was there for, and why he
seemed so anxious to keep the matter of his identity to himself.
When they arrived at Comanche the sun was down. Mrs. Reed hurried June
indoors, all exclamations and shudders over what she believed to have
been a very narrow escape. Vowing that she never would go exploring
around in that wild land again, she whisked off without a word for
Smith.
The others shook hands with the driver, Agnes coming last. He took off
his hat when it came her turn.
"Keep your eyes skinned," he advised her, "and don't let 'em play you
for a sucker. Any time you need advice, or any help that I can give you,
if I'm not here I'm on the road between here and Meander. You can git me
over there by telephone."
"Thank you, Mr. Smith," said she warmly and genuinely, wondering why he
should take such an unaccountable interest in her.
The others had gone about their business, thinking strongly of supper,
leaving Smith and her alone beside the old green stage.
"But don't ask for Smith if you call me up," said he, "for that's only
my first name, and they's a horse-wrangler over there with that for his
last. They might think you wanted him."
"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered, all confusion over the familiarity
that she had been taking all day. "I didn't know your other name--nobody
ever told me."
"No; not many of 'em down here knows it," he responded. "But up at
Meander, at the barn, they know it. It's Phogenphole."
"Oh!"
"But if you don't like it," added Smith, speaking with great fervor, and
leaning toward her a little eagerly and earnestly, "I'll have a bill put
through the Legislature down at Cheyenne and change it!"
They ate supper that evening by lantern-light, with the night noise of
Comanche beginning to rise around them earlier than usual. Those who
were there for the reaping realized that it would be their last big
night, for on the morrow the drawing would fall. After the first day's
numbers had been taken from the wheel at Meander, which would run up
into the thousands, the waiting crowds would melt away from Comanche as
fast as trains could carry them. So those who were on the make had both
hands out in Comanche that night.
They all wondered how it would turn out for them, the lumberman and the
insurance agent--who had not been of the party that day in Smith's
coach--offering to lay bets that nobody in the mess would draw a number
below five hundred. There were no takers. Then they offered to bet that
all in the mess would draw under five hundred. Mrs. Reed rebuked them
for their gambling spirit, which, she said, was rampant in Comanche,
like a plague.