AN ALARM IN BEACON CROSSING
A horseman riding from White River Homestead to Beacon Crossing will find
himself confronted with just eighty-two miles of dreary, flat trail; in
summer time, just eighty-two miles of blistering sun, dust and mosquitoes.
The trail runs parallel to, and about three miles north of the cool, shady
White River, which is a tantalizing invention of those who designed the
trail.
In the whole eighty-two miles there is but one wayside house; it is called
the "half-way." No one lives there. It, like the log hut of Nevil Steyne
on the bank of the White River, stands alone, a relic of the dim past. But
it serves a good purpose, for one can break the journey there, and sleep
the night in its cheerless shelter. Furthermore, within the ruins of its
old-time stockade is a well, a deep, wide-mouthed well full of cool spring
water, which is the very thing needed.
It is sunrise and a horseman has just ridden away from this shelter. He is
a man of considerable height, to judge by the length of his stirrups, and
he has that knack of a horseman in the saddle which comes only to those
who have learned to ride as soon as they have learned to run.
He wears fringed chapps over his moleskin trousers, which give him an
appearance of greater size than he possesses, for, though stout of frame,
he is lean and wiry. His face is wonderfully grave for a young man, which
may be accounted for by the fact that he has lived through several Indian
risings. And it is a strong face, too, with a decided look of what people
term self-reliance in it, also, probably, a product of those dreaded
Indian wars. He, like many men who live through strenuous times, is given
much to quick thought and slow speech, which, though excellent features in
character, do not help toward companionship in wild townships like Beacon
Crossing.
Seth is well thought of in that city--whither he is riding now--but he is
more respected than loved. The truth is he has a way of liking slowly, and
disliking thoroughly, and this is a disposition the reckless townsmen of
Beacon Crossing fail to understand, and, failing to understand, like most
people, fail to appreciate.
Just now he is more particularly grave than usual. He has ridden from
White River Farm to execute certain business in town for his
foster-parents, Rube Sampson and his wife; a trifling matter, and
certainly nothing to bring that look of doubt in his eyes, and the
thoughtful pucker between his clean-cut brows. His whole attention is
given up to a contemplation of the land beyond the White River, and the
distance away behind him to the left, which is the direction of the
Rosebud Indian Reservation.
Yesterday his attention had been called in these directions, and on
reaching the "half-way" he had serious thoughts of returning home, but
reflection had kept him to his journey if it had in no way eased his
mind.
Yesterday he had observed a smoky haze spreading slowly northward on the
lightest of breezes; and it was coming across the Reservation. It was
early June, and the prairie was too young and green to burn yet.
The haze was still hanging in the bright morning air. It had spread right
across his path in the night, and a strong smell of burning greeted him as
he rode out.
He urged his horse and rode faster than he had ridden the day before.
There was a silent sympathy between horse and rider which displayed itself
in the alertness of the animal's manner; he was traveling with head held
high, nostrils distended, as though sniffing at the smell of burning in
some alarm. And his gait, too, had become a little uneven, which, in a
horse, means that his attention is distracted.
Before an hour had passed the man's look changed to one of some
apprehension. Smoke was rising in a new direction. He had no need to turn
to see it, it was on his left front, far away beyond the horizon, but
somewhere where the railroad track, linking the East with Beacon
Crossing, cut through the plains of Nebraska. Suddenly his horse leapt
forward into a strong swinging gallop. He had felt the touch of the spur.
Seth pulled out a great silver timepiece and consulted it.
"I ken make it in two hours an' a haf from now," he muttered. "That'll be
haf past eight. Good! Put it along, Buck."
The last was addressed to the horse; and the dust rose in great heavy
clouds behind them as the willing beast stretched out to his work.
Beacon Crossing is called a city by those residents who have lived in it
since the railway brought it into existence. Chance travelers, and those
who are not prejudiced in its favor, call it a hole. It certainly has
claims in the latter direction. It is the section terminal on the railway;
and that is the source of its questionable prosperity.
There is a main street parallel to the railroad track with some stores
facing the latter. It has only one sidewalk and only one row of buildings;
the other side of the street is given up to piles of metal rails and
wooden ties and ballast for the track. The stores are large fronted, with
a mockery which would lead the unenlightened to believe they are
two-storied; but this is make-believe. The upper windows have no rooms
behind them. They are the result of overweening vanity on the part of the
City Council and have nothing to do with the storekeepers.
The place is unremarkable for anything else, unless it be the dirty and
unpaved condition of its street. True there are other houses, private
residences, but these are set indiscriminately upon the surrounding
prairie, and have no relation to any roads. A row of blue gum trees marks
the front of each, and, for the most part, a clothes-line, bearing some
articles of washing, indicates the back. Beacon Crossing would be bragged
about only by those who helped to make it.
The only building worth consideration is the hotel, opposite the depot.
This has a verandah and a tie-post, and there are always horses standing
outside it, and always men standing on the verandah, except when it is
raining, then they are to be found inside.
It was only a little after eight in the morning. Breakfast was nearly over
in the hotel, and, to judge by the number of saddle-horses at the
tie-post, the people of Beacon Crossing were very much astir. Presently
the verandah began to fill with hard-faced, rough-clad men. And most of
them as they came were filling their pipes, which suggested that they had
just eaten.
Nevil Steyne was one of the earliest to emerge from the breakfast room. He
had been the last to go in, and the moment he reappeared it was to survey
swiftly the bright blue distance away in the direction of the Indian
Reservations, and, unseen by those who stood around, he smiled ever so
slightly at what he beheld. The two men nearest him were talking
earnestly, and their earnestness was emphasized by the number of matches
they used in keeping their pipes alight.
"Them's Injun fires, sure," said one, at the conclusion of a long
argument.
"Maybe they are, Dan," said the other, an angular man who ran a small
hardware store a few yards lower down the street. "But they ain't on this
side of the Reservation anyway."
The significant selfishness of his last remark brought the other round on
him in a moment.
"That's all you care for, eh?" Dan said witheringly. "Say. I'm working for
the 'diamond P's,' and they run their stock that aways. Hev you been
through one o' them Injun risings?"
The other shook his head.
"Jest so."
Another man, stout and florid, Jack McCabe, the butcher, joined them.
"Can't make it out. There ain't been any Sun-dance, which is usual 'fore
they get busy. Guess it ain't no rising. Big Wolf's too clever. If it was
spring round-up or fall round-up it 'ud seem more likely. Guess some
feller's been and fired the woods. Which, by the way, is around Jason's
farm. Say, Dan Lawson, you living that way, ain't it right that Jason's
got a couple of hundred beeves in his corrals?"
"Yes," replied Dan of the "diamond P's." "He bought up the 'flying S'
stock. He's holding 'em up for rebrandin'. Say, Nevil," the cowpuncher
went on, turning to the wood-cutter of White River, "you oughter know how
them red devils is doin'. Did you hear or see anything?"
Nevil turned with a slight flush tingeing his cheeks. He didn't like the
other's tone.
"I don't know why I should know or see anything," he said shortly.
"Wal, you're kind o' livin' ad-jacent, as the sayin' is," observed Dan,
with a shadowy smile.
The other men on the verandah had come around, and they smiled more
broadly than the cowpuncher. It was easy to see that they were not
particularly favorable toward Nevil Steyne. It was as Dan had said; he
lived near the Reservation, and, well, these men were frontiersmen who
knew the ways of the country in which they lived.
Nevil saw the smiling faces and checked his anger. He laughed instead.
"Well," he said, "since you set such store by my opinions I confess I had
no reason to suspect any disturbance, and, to illustrate my faith in the
Indians' peaceful condition, I am going home at noon, and to-morrow intend
to cut a load or two of wood on the river."
Dan had no more to say. He could have said something but refrained, and
the rest of the men turned to watch the white smoke in the distance.
Decidedly Steyne had scored a point and should have been content; but he
wasn't.
"I suppose you fellows think a white man can't live near Indians without
'taking the blanket,'" he pursued with a sneer.
There was a brief silence. Then Dan answered him slowly.
"Jest depends on the man, I guess."
There was a nasty tone in the cowpuncher's voice and trouble seemed
imminent, but it was fortunately nipped in the bud by Jack McCabe.
"Hello!" the butcher exclaimed excitedly, "there's a feller pushin' his
plug as tho' them Injuns was on his heels. Say, it's Seth o' White River
Farm, and by the gait he's travelin', I'd gamble, Nevil, you don't cut
that wood to-morrow. Seth don't usually ride hard."
The whole attention on the verandah was centred on Seth, who was riding
toward the hotel from across the track as hard as his horse could lay foot
to the ground.
In a few moments he drew up at the tie-post and flung off his horse. And a
chorus of inquiry greeted him from the bystanders.
The newcomer raised an undisturbed face to them, and his words came
without any of the excitement that the pace he had ridden in at had
suggested.
"The Injuns are out," he said, and bent down to feel his horse's legs.
They seemed to be of most interest to him at the moment.
Curiously enough his words were accepted by the men on the verandah
without question. That is, by all except Steyne. No doubt he was irritated
by what had gone before, but even so, it hardly warranted, in face of the
fires in the south, his obstinate refusal to believe that the Indians were
out on the war-path. Besides, he resented the quiet assurance of the
newcomer. He resented the manner in which the others accepted his
statement, disliking it as much as he disliked the man who had made it.
Nor was the reason of this hatred far to seek. Seth was a loyal white man
who took his life in his own hands and fought strenuously in a savage land
for his existence, a bold, fearless frontiersman; while he, Nevil, knew in
his secret heart that he had lost that caste, had thrown away that
right--that birthright. He had, as these men also knew, "taken the
blanket." He had become a white Indian. He lived by the clemency of that
people, in their manner, their life. He was one of them, while yet his
skin was white. He was regarded by his own race as an outcast. He was a
degenerate. So he hated--hated them all. But Seth he hated most of all
because he saw more of him, he lived near him. He knew that Seth knew him,
knew him down to his heart's core. This was sufficient in a nature like
his to set him hating, but he hated him for yet another reason. Seth was
as strong, brave, honest as he was the reverse. He belonged to an
underworld which nothing could ever drag a nature such as Seth's down to.
He knocked his pipe out aggressively on the wooden floor of the verandah.
"I don't believe it," he said loudly, in an offensive way.
Seth dropped his broncho's hoof, which he had been examining carefully,
and turned round. It would be impossible to describe the significance of
his movement. It suggested the sudden rousing of a real fighting dog that
had been disturbed in some peaceful pursuit. He was not noisy, he did not
even look angry. He was just ready.
"I guess you ought to know, Nevil Steyne," he said with emphasis. Then he
turned his head and looked away down the street, as the clatter of hoofs
and rattle of wheels reached the hotel. And for the second time within a
few minutes, trouble, such as only Western men fully understand, was
staved off by a more important interruption.
A team and buckboard dashed up to the hotel. Dan Somers, the sheriff, and
Lal Price, the Land Agent, were in the conveyance, and as they drew up,
one of the horses dropped to the ground in its harness. The men, watching
these two plainsmen scrambling from the vehicle, knew that life and death
alone could have sent them into town at a pace sufficient to kill one of
their horses.
"Boys!" cried the sheriff at once. "Who's for it? Those durned Injuns are
out; they're gittin' round Jason's place. I'm not sure but the woods are
fired a'ready. They've come from the south, I guess. They're Rosebuds.
Ther's old man Jason and his missis; and ther's the gals--three of 'em.
We can't let 'em----"
Seth interrupted him.
"And we ain't going to," he observed. He knew, they all knew, what the
sheriff would have said.
Seth's interruption was the cue for suggestions. And they came with a
rush, which is the way with men such as these, all eager and ready to help
in the rescue of a white family from the hands of a common foe. There was
no hesitation, for they were most of them old hands in this Indian
business, and, in the back recesses of their brains, each man held
recollections of past atrocities, too hideous to be contemplated calmly.
Those who were later with their breakfast now swelled the crowd on the
verandah. The news seemed to have percolated through to the rest of the
town, for men were gathering on all sides, just as men gather in civilized
cities on receipt of news of national importance. They came at once to the
central public place. The excitement had leapt with the suddenness of a
conflagration, and, like a conflagration, there would be considerable
destruction before it died down. The Indians in their savage temerity
might strike Beacon Crossing. Once the Indians were loose it was like the
breaking of a tidal wave on a low shore.
The sheriff was the man they all looked to, and, veteran warrior that he
was, he quickly got a grip on things. One hard-riding scout, a man as wily
as the Indian himself, he despatched to warn all outlying settlers. He
could spare no more than one. Then he sent telegraphic messages for the
military, whose fort a progressive and humane government had located some
two hundred miles away. Then he divided his volunteers, equipped with
their own arms, and all the better for that, and detailed one party for
the town's defence, and the other to join him in the work of rescue.
These things arranged, then came the first check. It was discovered that
the driver of the only locomotive in the place was sick. The engine
itself, a rusty looking ancient machine, was standing coldly idle in the
yards.
A deputation waited upon the sick man, while others went and coupled up
some empty trucks and fired the engine. Seth was among the latter. The
deputation returned. It was fever; and the man could not come. Being ready
campaigners, their thoughts turned on their horses.
The sheriff was a blank man for the moment. It was a question of time, he
knew. He was standing beside the locomotive which had already begun to
snort, and which looked, at that moment, in the eyes of those gathered
round it, despite its rustiness, a truly magnificent proposition. He was
about to call for volunteers to replace the driver, when Seth, who all the
time had been working in the cab, and who had heard the news of the
trouble, leant over the rail that protected the foot-plate.
"Say, Dan," he said. "If none of the boys are scared to ride behind me,
and I don't figger they are, I'll pump the old kettle along. Guess I've
fired a traction once. I don't calc'late she'll have time to bust up in
forty miles. I'll take the chances if they will."
The sheriff looked up at the thoughtful face above him. He grinned, and
others grinned with him. But their amusement was quite lost on Seth. He
was trying to estimate the possible result of putting the "kettle," as he
called the locomotive, at full steam ahead, disregarding every other tap
and gauge on the driving plate, and devoting himself to heaping up the
furnace. These things interested him, not as a source of danger, but only
in the matter of speed.
"Good for you, Seth," cried Dan Somers. "Now, boys, all aboard!"
And Seth turned to the driving plate and sounded a preliminary whistle.