visible means of support except that of a newspaper correspondent. My
reports for Marshal Nix’s office always went by a circuitous route, lest
I be discovered, to have had my business known would have meant death.
Even Marshal Nix never knew the real source of much information which
reached his office.
I thought the outlaws were making a rendezvous at the little town of
Ingrim, and I determined to see for myself. Going to the office of the
Daily Leader, I secured a job at very poor pay to write up some towns in
Oklahoma. Suddenly, under pretext of an affection in the head I became
quite deaf. I knew better than go to the town of Ingrim first, lest I
might excite suspicion. So I began at Tecumseh some thirty miles from
Ingrim. I stayed in the town a week, solicited subscriptions and wrote
up the prospects of the place, said many flattering things of the
business men in my write-up, and when the papers came, I distributed
them. The people were pleased with my work, but some complained at
having to talk so loud to make me understand.
When I finished with Tecumseh, I rode with the mail carrier over to
Ingrim. Sure enough here were my outlaws. They loafed about the only
hotel and saloon, but were always on the alert. I appeared to take no
notice of anything, but kept boreing people to subscribe for my paper,
interviewing merchants and writing up the town. The merchants, I
discovered were glad to have the outlaws there, for they spent money
like water, they paid big prices for their cartridges and bought heavy
supplies of canned goods, which they sent away to be cached in the woods
and hills for a time of need.
One day I was sitting alone on the hotel veranda reading, when I heard a
man say to another, “I am going to see if that dam cuss is deaf or not.”
I heard his cat like step approaching, and then, click, click, he cocked
his revolver at the back of my head.
It was a trying moment, but I did not move, I did not dare to, for had I
quickly turned my head, I would have betrayed myself and lost my life.
When he was satisfied that I was deaf as a door nail, he invited me to
drink. I excused myself, and I heard him tell the other man that I did
not have the sense of a muskrat.
When I left town I owed the hotel man for my last days board, which I
promised to send to him, I did this for effect, and went in an opposite
direction from Guthrie.
Three days later and two emigrant wagons with farmer like men driving
the teams came down the long red road that leads from the north into
Ingrim.
An outlaw outrider saw them and rode casually down the road. He engaged
the driver of the first wagon in conversation a moment, and riding to
the side of the wagon he lifted the edge of the cover with his rifle,
and there saw six armed deputy marshals on the hay inside. The outlaw
wheeled his horse and rode furiously back to the village, waving his
broad white hat as a signal.
The marshals hurried from the wagons and the battle was on.
Twenty minutes of sharp fighting and the outlaws were fleeing from the
town on swift horses leaving one of their wounded behind, while the
wagons that brought the marshals, carried four of their number back to
Guthrie dead.
Almost at the same hour that afternoon, another tragedy was being
enacted in the dark forests of the Osage Indian Nation. Deputy Heck
Thomas had tracked Bill Doolin to his lair. He was sleeping under a rude
shelter of branches in the forest, when the breaking of a twig awoke
him. He saw Heck Thomas alone; not fifty feet away, and knew it was a
duel to the death.
Leaping behind a barricade of logs he opened fire on Thomas who had
sought the shelter of a tree. The duel lasted an hour, each jeering the
other. Thomas held his hat to one side of the tree and when Doolin sent
a bullet through it, he sank apparently helpless to the ground. A long
silence followed. Doolin again jeered the marshal. There was no answer.
He came from behind his barricade to see the effect of his shot, and
received a bullet through the brain.
It is worthy of mention here that when a company of Rough Riders for the
Spanish war was organized in Oklahoma, a son of Marshal Tighlman and a
son of Heck Thomas were among the first to enlist, and afterwards
stormed the heights of San Juan hill with Colonel Roosevelt.
XVI.
A NEW LAND OF CANAAN.
It was September of 1893. The Cherokee Strip, a large area of country in
the Indian Territory, was about to be offered for settlement.
Guthrie, Oklahoma, was at this time filled with homeseekers who were
camped about on vacant lots, in their wagons. They were men of good
intentions. There was also a horde of gamblers and petty thieves who
swarmed like ravening wolves scenting their prey. Saloons and gambling
houses were open day and night, and many a poor fellow fell into the
hands of these legalized bandits--to awaken from the effects of drugged
liquor and find themselves robbed of every dollar they possessed, and
their families without a day’s provisions ahead.
Never was there an American town where morals were at a lower ebb than
Guthrie was at that time. Street quarrels were frequent, and men shot
each other down in cold blood for trivial offenses. There were contests
over claims in Oklahoma proper, and it was no uncommon thing for a
witness to be shot down after he had finished testifying in the land
office. Or perhaps he was called to his door at midnight to stop a
bullet, or was shot through a window while sitting at home with his
family.
Highway robbery, burglary, thieving, perjury, gambling and
whisky-drinking ran riot. Courtesans and harlots, with painted faces and
tinseled dresses, plied their arts of conquest in open day; while city
officials, not to be outdone in the practices of the hour, took all
manner of bribes from all manner of men. This state of immorality
generated a stench over the town that all the perfume of Arabia the
Blest could not sweeten.
The Dalton gang of bandits was robbing Santa Fe trains in the Cherokee
Strip, while more than one hundred and fifty United States marshals were
searching for outlaws. When one was found, however, he was usually shot
first and the warrant for his arrest read to the corpse.
The men assembled at Guthrie at this time were from all quarters of the
United States, and represented almost every nationality. As one rider
dashed up the street on a very fine horse, a gust of wind lifted his
sombrero and landed it near where I stood. I picked it up and was in the
act of handing it to him when he exclaimed: “Hello, Bob, you here!”
“Yes,” I replied, scanning his face for an instant before recognizing
him. Then the face came back to me with pleasant memories. He was my old
friend--Mark Witherspoon. The reunion was, indeed, pleasant to both of
us, and it was late that night before we retired to our respective
abodes.
Mark had jostled about from pillar to post, in all parts of the world;
he had been in the mining camps of Australia and on the Rand in South
Africa; he had grown rich several times and lost all again and again,
and now he wanted an Oklahoma farm where, he concluded, he would settle
down and live quietly. Just as though wild and impulsive natures like
his could ever be content with a simple farming life. We agreed to make
the run together and, if possible locate our farms beside each other.
When the opening day came, a blazing southern sun beat down upon the
heads of more than one hundred thousand men drawn upon the line that
marked the border of the new El Dorado. Most of the country on the
southern border lay in high ridges, or in valleys and deep ravines,
which, in some places, were 100 feet in depth, with precipitous ledges
of rock on either side. The country was but sparsely covered with timber
and nearly void of water at this season of the year. The few streams
were impregnated with a mineral poison which had an evil effect for
a long time on the systems of those who drank the water. Yet these
men--many of whom had pioneered the plains of Nebraska and Kansas--were
forced, by the conditions of the times, to seek new homes in this wild
waste. For more than a year, more than 20,000 families had lived like
rats in dugouts along the banks of the Arkansas River, to the north.
To say they lived is a mistake--they only existed. Parched corn and
potatoes comprised the daily diet of hundreds. The winter of 1892 had
been unusually severe for that section, and scant clothing and a lack of
fuel added to the bitter suffering, while innumerable mounds of yellow
earth stood silent monuments to those who braved the vicissitudes of
the frontier in the hope of gaining homes.
In this new promised land there were some seventy Indian allotments to
be made. These were located by government officials near townsites, for
personal selfish purposes.
Then came an order from the Secretary of the Interior that all who would
file on lands must register. That caused men to form in ranks miles
long, to await their turn to register. It caused delay, and filled the
pockets of government officials who, for pay, gave preference to the men
of money. For days these men stood in line--a blazing sun above, and
treeless, waterless plains about. Many sickened and were carried away to
die, and, when the merciful night came, the others lay down on the bare,
hard ground, to dream of happy homes--and shiver in the chill autumn
darkness. The towns were platted by government employees. These plats
contained false reservations for parks, and were sold to the men in line
at a dollar each.
When we reached the line, a mighty caravan was there waiting, stretching
as far as the eye could see, east and west, to the dim horizon on
either side. Men were there with their families; in white covered
wagons, in light running rigs and on horseback. Among them were the
broad-hatted, swarthy fellows from the pampas and chaparalls of Texas.
They were there from the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. Old soldiers
in the tattered blue of the Grand Army of the Republic were among the
strugglers for homes. Just in front of all was another line, composed of
the troops who were there to see that all kept back of the starting mark
until the signal should be given. The gleam of the rifle could be seen
in both lines. It was a thrilling scene; one upon which no man could
look without mingled feelings of admiration and pity.
The signal for many to start to the eternal promised land came as the
weary hours wore along. Worn with fatigue and exposure, and fainting
from sunstroke and thirst, many fell from frantic horses that went
dashing riderless over the plains. An officer rode down the line and
halted near the railroad tracks. It was near noon, and an eager man took
the action as a signal. There was a flash, a report. The man lay still
in the sun-baked dust; a drunken soldier had taken a life and desolated
a home. Some revolvers gleamed in the hands of angry Texans and in
another moment the soldier lay writhing in the dust.
Just then an officer waved his sabre and the signal guns boomed down the
line. Like a mighty tidal wave the dense mass of men, horses and wagons
swayed for an instant and then went on with a rush. There were cries and
shouts--and oaths and blasphemy from the drunken soldiers. The noise of
rumbling wagons and the clatter of horses’ hoofs sounded like the
distant roar of cannonading. On surged the swaying line, horsemen
dashing out in front here and there. Every little distance was to be
found the wreck of a wagon that had been crushed in the rush. Other
wagons were stalled in ravines, horses dropped from exhaustion, throwing
their riders, who lay in gullies or on the rocky sides of the mountain
ridges, with mangled limbs, begging for a drop of water. But the mad
fever of the rush was on all and little heed was paid to suffering.
Our horses were in fine condition and were fleet of foot and ere long we
were in the lead, in a wild race with the wind. We sighted a stream of
clear running water, whose banks were fringed with trees, and a valley
which stretched out for miles to the north. We reached a grove and found
the cornerstone that marked the dividing line of two sections. We fired
our Winchesters as a signal to the others that those claims were taken,
and immediately commenced throwing up earth to show that improvements
were under way. Then, tired out with the excitement of the day, we sat
down under the trees to rest and talk it all over, and, in the late
afternoon, fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
It was dark when Mark suddenly awoke and aroused me with the shout: “Get
up, for your life, get up! The plains are on fire!”
I was on my feet in an instant. The southern sky was aglow. Great
tongues of flame were leaping through the inky blackness of the night,
with a hiss and roar that sounded like the coming of a storm. We
hurriedly mounted our frantic horses and rode swiftly into the northern
darkness--whither, we knew not; our only thought was to distance the
fire far enough to give us a chance to burn a space about us and thus
find safety.
Suddenly I felt a falling sensation. Then there were pains in my head
and mysterious, dreadful aches in my legs. Visions flitted before
apparently unseeing eyes and at last I came to realize that I was lying
on a cot in a tent. Mark came in and I asked him where I was.
“Never mind now,” he said gently. Tomorrow came, and the next day, and
still another, but Mark remained silent. Gradually my mind became normal
and I distinctly recalled the last moments of consciousness; the prairie
fire, the wild ride to safety. Mark then added the closing chapter. My
horse had plunged into a rocky canon, fully 20 feet in depth. His horse
had scented the danger and had reared, saving him from my fate. He
back-fired the grass, and, in its light, saw me lying at the bottom of
the canon. Tenderly he cared for me during the night and in the morning
got a doctor, who set the broken limb, and here I was convalescing.
XVII.
TOLD AROUND THE CAMPFIRE.
“You knew Cora Belle Fellows, that white girl at Cheyenne Agency, South
Dakota, who married a buck Indian, eh, Bill?”
“Yep,” Bill Hawkins answered, “and I know what the results were, too.
“About a year after she had left a fashionable seminary in New York
state and came among the redskins to teach them manners and the like,
she surprised and shocked everybody by announcing her marriage to
Chaska, a full blood Sioux, twenty-one years of age. Then her troubles
began. She was frowned upon by both whites and Indians. She went with
Chaska to his tepee and lived upon the coarse chuck furnished by Uncle
Sam.
“Her escapade was commented upon by all the newspapers of the country at
the time, and a museum man of Chicago induced her and Chaska to place
themselves upon exhibition. For two years she was inspected by the
public, which in the meantime had made her presents until she had a
carload of furniture.
“Then she concluded to go back to the Agency and make a farmer out of
Chaska, and so with the money earned in the museum, she and her Indian
lord returned. She purchased land some miles from the Agency and built a
house.
“The agent and myself rode out there about six months after they had
gone to housekeeping. We were both curious to know how they were getting
along.
“It was a sight for your whiskers. Outside sat nearly all her furniture.
The covers of plush had been ripped off for Indian horse trappings, the
wood was stained and weather cracked.
“The house was without doors, worn blankets being hung instead. The
floors were cold and bare. In a corner upon an old mattress lay Cora
Belle Fellows or Mrs. Chaska. An old squaw sat by her side, crooning
some lingo over her new born kid. She did not want to talk and we went
away. Chaska soon after left her and took a wife from his own tribe,
leaving her to live in a tepee about the Agency like any other squaw,
feeding on Uncle Sam’s grub.
“You might as well have tried to shove butter down a wildcat’s neck with
a hot awl as to have tried to talk that gal out of marrying the buck.”
“Marrying is bad business, anyway, unless they are both hooked up
right,” observed the cook. “There is old Ben Berkley living over on the
Cottonwood. He was pretty well fixed before he married that widder. She
was a spiritualist or something of the sort, and used to go off in
trances and have white lights coming around until she scared old Ben
nearly to death. She was always running over the country telling
people’s future and leaving Ben at home to cook. He took to drinking and
one day got the D. T.’s and thought a freight engine was chasing him up
and down the alleys of the town, and he finally crawled under a barn to
keep out of its way, when the boys rescued him. After that he would not
drink any more, but poured the licker in his boots and would get as full
as a tick by absorption.
“His wife had brought to the ranch a measley water Spaniel, which Ben
used to amuse himself with by throwing cobs and sticks into the river
and teaching the dog to swim in and get them and bring them back to him,
not thinking of the great blessing it was finally to be to him.
“Ben had been blasting out a hole for a cyclone cellar with sticks of
gun-cotton, when his wife took it into her head that she wanted a mess
of fish.
“‘No time to fish,’ said Ben. ‘Take a stick of that dynamite and go down
to the creek where the water is still and blow out a mess for yourself.’
“His wife took the cartridge and lit the fuse, then gave the thing a
toss into the creek. The dog was there and thinking she was playing with
him, swam in and got the cartridge and came running up the bank to give
it to her. Then she started to run over the plowed ground, yelling at
the top of her voice, ‘Drap it, Tige! Drap it!’ There was an explosion
and a hole in the ground big enough to bury a horse. The dog had gone up
higher than Elijah, while Mrs. Berkley was laying in a furrow with one
leg injured by the cartridge. In a day or two the leg swelled up and old
Ben sent for the cross-roads doctor, who decided that the injured leg
would have to come off.
“The doctor went to town the next day to get some tools, and was so glad
over getting a job that he filled up on cactus whiskey and came back and
cut off the wrong leg. The sore leg got well afterwards, but, Gee-whiz!
It tickled old Ben nearly to death, for she has to stay at home now.”
“Story sounds fishy to me,” remarked Ned Antler.
“Billy Bolton nearly lost his life for using that word,” said Hank Pool.
“You all know Billy runs a paper over at Woodward, on the Panhandle
trail.
“There had been a hold-up in town, and Jim Belden was accused of it.
After the trial before a justice of the peace, Belden was acquitted. In
commenting on the affair in his paper the next day, Billy said Belden’s
story which secured his release sounded fishy. Belden was a bad man. He
saddled his broncho, filled his saddle pockets with grub, and his skin
full of whiskey and went over to Billy’s printing office. He hitched the
broncho in front, and with the paper in one hand and his Winchester in
the other he went in and asked Billy what he meant by saying his story
was fishy. Billy was taken by surprise, for he saw that Belden meant to
kill him, as he was all ready to hit the trail.
“‘Fishy,’ says Billy. ‘Aha, fishy, fishy. Why that’s a compliment, my
dear boy. Saint Peter used to fish and said so many good things that
people used to call his sayings fishy. It was a favorite expression with
Aristotle and Socrates, when they addressed Napoleon the Great, to say,
‘I hope your royal majesty will speak some imperial fishy things today.’
It is--ah, ahah, sort of an international e pluribus unum expression, a
general sort of a non compos mentis, as it were, you understand.’
“‘Oh, well, if that’s all,’ said Belden, ‘it’s all right, but I wouldn’t
use the word often if I were you, for some of the boys might not be as
well posted as I am. Much obliged, Billy. I was just passing and thought
I would subscribe for the paper for a year. Here is $2.00. Mail it to me
at Lampassas.”
“Bolton got off light,” said Tom Tyler. “Over at Las Vegas two years ago
a sheep man called ‘Doc’ Kinnie a liar and before the fellow could think
twice Doc had his ear sliced off, and he went around afterwards using
it for a beer check. He would call up the house and pay for the drinks
with the sheepman’s ear; he always redeemed it, though, for fear the
owner would buy it back.” “Cut it out, boys, cut it out, get to roost in
your blankets,” said the boss. “We hit the trail at 5 o’clock in the
morning and make the drive to Cimarron by noon.”
An hour later, the fire had smouldered to embers, the stars twinkled in
the great dark blue dome of the sky, a soft south breeze fanned the
Oklahoma plains and all was silent, save the tramp of horses’ hoofs as
the outriders circled the herd of bedded cattle.
XVIII.
THE LONE GRAVE ON THE MESA.
High upon the mesa northwest of Colorado City, Colo., and near the old
cemetery used by the pioneers of the early sixties, there is a lonely
grave, around which clings a romance of the early days, which is
recalled by the phenomena which many persons say they have witnessed
when passing at night.
As the story goes, Marie Tinville, the beautiful daughter of Victor
Tinville lived with her parents in a cabin near Colorado City, in 1863.
About that time Leon Murat, a dashing young fellow of about 20 years
came out from St. Louis and found employment on her father’s ranch. It
was a case of love at first sight, intensified by isolated conditions
and an almost constant companionship.
The cabin stood near the now famous Garden of the Gods, and many were
the evenings the young people wandered among the towering rocks in the
wondrous bright moonlight of that region, and talked of love, while the
shadows of Pike’s Peak shrouded the dreamy valley.
Love’s young dream was rudely awakened one day in the autumn of 1864, by
the call to arms to join Colonel Chivington in his campaign against the
hostile Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians, who were then murdering the
settlers of Colorado.
Men were needed, and Leon was brave. He kissed his sweetheart good-bye
and rode away with that avenging column of horsemen who fought the
battle of Sand Creek in Colorado, November 29, 1864.
Murat’s command did nearly three months’ campaigning over the dry,
heated plains before any effective work was accomplished.
Early in November a mounted column of 650 Colorado volunteers of Colonel
Shoup’s Third Regiment, 175 of the First Regiment and a few mounted
Mexicans, formed the fighting force under Colonel Chivington. A large
band of Indians was located on the banks of Sand Creek, about forty
miles north of where Ft. Lyons now stands and near the village of Kit
Carson.
Bent’s Fort, a rude frontier structure of palisades, stood some miles
below Ft. Lyons. It was to this point that Colonel Chivington led his
men when he learned that Black Kettle and White Antelope with some three
thousand braves, were encamped upon the banks of Sand Creek.
The column made prisoners of all whom they met, lest word should reach
the Indians that they were pushing forward to the attack. At Bent’s Fort
a halt was made to rest riders and horses. On the night of the 28th the
column headed for the encampment on Sand Creek, taking as a guide, a
half breed son of Colonel Bent, and carrying in their rear a small brass
cannon and ammunition wagon.
The night was cold and a bleak wind blew from the north. With jingle of
spur and clank of sabre the column rode fours abreast through the
darkness. The Indian guide led them through a shallow lake in the hope
that the ammunition might become wet. When about half way through the
lake Murat’s horse floundered and wet him completely in the icy waters.
The column rode on while Anthony Bott remained to assist him. After
dividing his own dry clothing with Murat the two started to find the
trail of the flying column in the darkness. They were favored both by
their knowledge of the plains and the instinct of their horses, but for
five hours they were alone in the darkness of a hostile country.