BEEF DAY
Fort Shakie was on its downhill way in those days, and almost at the
bottom of the decline. It was considered a post of penance by enlisted
men and officers alike, nested up there in the high plateau against
the mountains in its place of wild beauty and picturesque charm.
But natural beauty and Indian picturesqueness do not fill the place in
the soldierly breast of fair civilian lady faces, nor torrential
streams of cold mountain water supply the music of the locomotive's
toot. Fort Shakie was being crept upon by civilization, true, but it
was coming all too slow for the booted troopers and belted officers
who must wear away the months in its lonely silences.
Within the memory of officers not yet gray the post had been a hundred
and fifty miles from a railroad. Now it was but twenty; but even that
short leap drowned the voice of the locomotive, and the dot at the
rails' end held few of the endearments which make soldiering sweet.
Soon the post must go, indeed, for the need of it had passed. The
Shoshones, Arapahoes, and Crows had forgotten their old animosities,
and were traveling with Buffalo Bill, going to college, and raising
alfalfa under the direction of a government farmer. The Indian police
were in training to do the soldiers' work there. Soon the post must
stand abandoned, a lonely monument to the days of hard riding, long
watches, and bleak years. Not a soldier in the service but prayed for
the hastening of the day.
No, there was not much over at Meander, at the railroad's end, to
cheer a soldier's heart. It was an inspiring ride, in these autumn
days, to come to Meander, past the little brimming lakes, which seemed
to lie without banks in the green meadows where wild elk fed with the
shy Indian cattle; over the white hills where the earth gave under the
hoofs like new-fallen snow. But when one came to it through the
expanding, dusty miles, the reward of his long ride was not in keeping
with his effort.
Certainly, privates and subalterns could get drunk there, as speedily
as in the centers of refinement, but there were no gentlemanly
diversions at which an officer could dispel the gloom of his sour days
in garrison.
The rough-cheeked girls of that high-wind country were well enough for
cowboys to swing in their wild dances; just a rung above the squaws on
the reservation in the matter of loquacity and of gum. Hardly the sort
for a man who had the memory of white gloves and gleaming shoulders,
and the traditions of the service to maintain.
Of course there was the exception of Nola Chadron, but she was not of
Meander and the railroad's end, and she came only in flashes of summer
brightness, like a swift, gay bird. But when Nola was at the
ranchhouse on the river the gloom lifted over the post, and the sour
leaven in the hearts of unmarried officers became as sweet as manna in
the cheer of the unusual social outlet thus provided.
Nola kept the big house in a blaze of joy while she nested there
through the summer days. The sixteen miles which stretched between it
and the post ran out like a silver band before those who rode into the
smile of her welcome, and when she flitted away to Cheyenne,
champagne, and silk hats in the autumn, a grayness hovered again over
the military post in the corner of the reservation.
Later than usual Nola had lingered on this fall, and the social outlet
had remained open, like a navigable river over which the threat of ice
hung but had not yet fallen. There were not lacking those who held
that the lodestone which kept her there at the ranchhouse, when the
gaieties of the season beckoned elsewhere, was in the breast of Major
Cuvier King. Fatal infatuation, said the married ladies at the post,
knowing, as everybody knew in the service, that Major King was
betrothed to Frances Landcraft, the colonel's daughter.
No matter for any complications which might come of it, Nola had
remained on, and the major had smiled on her, and ridden with her, and
cut high capers in the dance, all pending the return of Frances and
her mother from their summering at Bar Harbor in compliance with the
family traditions. Now Frances was back again, and fortune had thrown
a sunburst of beauty into the post by centering her and Nola here at
once. Nola was the guest of the colonel's daughter, and there were
flutterings in uniformed breasts.
Beef day was an event at the agency which never grew old to the people
at the post. Without beef day they must have dwindled off to acidulous
shadows, as the Indians who depended upon it for more solid sustenance
would have done in the event of its discontinuation by a paternal
government.
There were phases of Indian life and character which one never saw
save on beef day, which fell on Wednesday of each week. Guests at the
post watched the bright picture with the keen interest of a pageant on
the stage; tourists came over by stage from Meander in the summer
months by the score to be present; the resident officers, and their
wives and families--such as had them--found in it an ever-recurring
source of interest and relief from the tedium of days all alike.
This beef day, the morning following the meeting between Saul Chadron
and his mysterious guest, a chattering group stood on the veranda of
Colonel Landcraft's house in the bright friendly sun. They were
waiting for horses to make the short journey to the agency--for one's
honesty was questioned, his sanity doubted, if he went afoot in that
country even a quarter of a mile--and gayest among them was Nola
Chadron, the sun in her fair, springing hair.
Nola's crown reached little higher than a proper soldier's heart, but
what she lacked in stature she supplied in plastic perfection of body
and vivacity of face. There was a bounding joyousness of life in her;
her eager eyes reflecting only the anticipated pleasures of today.
There was no shadow of yesterday's regret in them, no cloud of
tomorrow's doubt.
On the other balance there was Frances Landcraft, taller by half a
head, soldierly, too, as became her lineage, in the manner of lifting
her chin in what seemed a patrician scorn of small things such as a
lady should walk the world unconscious of. The brown in her hair was
richer than the clear agate of her eyes; it rippled across her ear
like the scroll of water upon the sand.
There was a womanly dignity about her, although the threshold of
girlhood must not have been far behind her that bright autumnal
morning. Her nod was equal to a stave of Nola's chatter, her smile
worth a league of the light laughter from that bounding little lady's
lips. Not that she was always so silent as on that morning, there
among the young wives of the post, at her own guest's side. She had
her hours of overflowing spirits like any girl, but in some company
she was always grave.
When Major King was in attendance, especially, the seeing ones made
note. And there were others, too, who said that she was by nature a
colonel among women, haughty, cold and aloof. These wondered how the
major ever had made headway with her up to the point of gaining her
hand. Knowing ones smiled at that, and said it had been arranged.
There were ambitions on both sides of that match, it was known--ambition
on the colonel's part to secure his only child a station of dignity, and
what he held to be of consequence above all achievements in the
world. Major King was a rising man, with two friends in the cabinet.
It was said that he would be a brigadier-general before he reached
forty.
On the major's side, was the ambition to strengthen his political
affiliations by alliance with a family of patrician strain, together
with the money that his bride would bring, for Colonel Landcraft was a
weighty man in this world's valued accumulations. So the match had
been arranged.
The veranda of the colonel's house gave a view of the parade grounds
and the long avenue that came down between the officers' houses,
cottonwoods lacing their limbs above the road. There was green in
the lawns, the flash of flowers between the leaves and shrubs,
white-gleaming walls, trim walks, shorn hedges. It seemed a pleasant
place of quiet beauty that bright September morning, and a pity to
give it up by and by to dust and desolation; a place where men and
women might be happy, but for the gnawing fire of ambition in their
hearts.
Mrs. Colonel Landcraft was not going. Indians made her sick, she said,
especially Indians sitting around in the tall grass waiting for the
carcasses to be cut up and apportioned out to them in bloody chunks.
But there seemed to be another source of her sickness that morning,
measuring by the grave glances with which she searched her daughter's
face. She wondered whether the major and Frances had quarreled; and if
so, whether Nola Chadron had been the cause.
They were off, with the colonel and a lately-assigned captain in the
lead. There was a keener pleasure in this beef day than usual for the
colonel, for he had new ground to sow with its wonders, which were
beginning to pale in his old eyes which had seen so much of the
world.
"Very likely we'll see the minister's wife there," said he, as they
rode forward, "and if so, it will be worth your while to take special
note of her. St. John Mathews, the Episcopalian minister over there at
the mission--those white buildings there among the trees--is a
full-blooded Crow. One of the pioneer missionaries took him up and
sent him back East to school, where in time he entered the ministry
and married this white girl. She was a college girl, I've been told,
glamoured by the romance of Mathews' life. Well, it was soon over."
The colonel sighed, and fell silent. The captain, feeling that it was
intended that he should, made polite inquiry.
"The trouble is that Mathews is an Indian out of his place," the
colonel resumed. "He returned here twenty years or so ago, and took up
his work among his people. But as he advanced toward civilization, his
wife began to slip back. Little by little she adopted the Indian ways
and dress, until now you couldn't tell her from a squaw if you were to
meet her for the first time. She presents a curious psychological
study--or perhaps biological example of atavism, for I believe there's
more body than soul in the poor creature now. It's nature maintaining
the balance, you see. He goes up; she slips back.
"If she's there, she'll be squatting among the squaws, waiting to
carry home her husband's allotment of warm, bloody beef. She doesn't
have to do it, and it shames and humiliates Mathews, too, even though
they say she cuts it up and divides it among the poorer Indians. She's
a savage; her eyes sparkle at the sight of red meat."
They rounded the agency buildings and came upon an open meadow in
which the slaughterhouses stood at a distance from the road. Here,
in the grassy expanse, the Indians were gathered, waiting the
distribution of the meat. The scene was barbarically animated. Groups
of women in their bright dresses sat here and there on the grass, and
apart from them in gravity waited old men in moccasins and blankets
and with feathers in their hair. Spry young men smoked cigarettes
and talked volubly, garbed in the worst of civilization and the
most useless of savagery.
One and all they turned their backs upon the visitors, the nearest
groups and individuals moving away from them with the impassive
dignity of their race. There is more scorn in an Indian squaw's back,
turned to an impertinent stranger, than in the faces of six matrons of
society's finest-sifted under similar conditions.
Colonel Landcraft led his party across the meadow, entirely
unconscious of the cold disdain of the people whom he looked down upon
from his superior heights. He could not have understood if any there
had felt the trespass from the Indians' side--and there was one, very
near and dear to the colonel who felt it so--and attempted to explain.
The colonel very likely would have puffed up with military consequence
almost to the bursting-point.
Feeling, delicacy, in those smeared, smelling creatures! Surliness in
excess they might have, but dignity, not at all. Were they not there
as beggars to receive bounty from the government's hand?
"Oh, there's Mrs. Mathews!" said Nola, with the eagerness of a child
who has found a quail's nest in the grass. She was off at an angle,
like a hunter on the scent. Colonel Landcraft and his guest followed
with equal rude eagerness, and the others swept after them, Frances
alone hanging back. Major King was at Nola's side. If he noted the
lagging of his fiancée he did not heed.
The minister's wife, a shawl over her head, her braided hair in front
of her shoulders like an Indian woman, rose from her place in startled
confusion. She looked as if she would have fled if an avenue had been
open, or a refuge presented. The embarrassed creature was obliged to
stand in their curious eyes, and stammer in a tongue which seemed to
be growing strange to her from its uncommon use.
She was a short woman, growing heavy and shapeless now, and there was
gray in her black hair. Her skin was browned by sun, wind, and smoke
to the hue of her poor neighbors and friends. When she spoke in reply
to the questions which poured upon her, she bent her head like a timid
girl.
Frances checked her horse and remained behind, out of range of
hearing. She was cut to the heart with shame for her companions, and
her cheek burned with the indignation that she suffered with the
harried woman in their midst. A little Indian girl came flying past,
ducking and dashing under the neck of Frances' horse, in pursuit of a
piece of paper which the wind whirled ahead of her. At Frances'
stirrup she caught it, and held it up with a smile.
"Did you lose this, lady?" she asked, in the very best of mission
English.
"No," said Frances, bending over to see what it might be. The little
girl placed it in her hand and scurried away again to a beckoning
woman, who stood on her knees and scowled over her offspring's dash
into the ways of civilized little girls.
It was a narrow strip of paper that she had rescued from the wind,
with the names of several men written on it in pencil, and at the head
of the list the name of Alan Macdonald. Opposite that name some crude
hand had entered, with pen that had flowed heavily under his pressure,
the figures "$500."
Frances turned it round her finger and sat waiting for the others to
leave off their persecution of the minister's wife and come back to
her, wondering in abstracted wandering of mind who Alan Macdonald
might be, and for what purpose he had subscribed the sum of five
hundred dollars.
"I think she's the most romantic little thing in the world!" Nola was
declaring, in her extravagant surface way as they returned to where
Frances sat her horse, her wandering eyes on the blue foothills, the
strip of paper prominent about her finger. "Oh, honey! what's the
matter? Did you cut your finger?"
"No," said Frances, her serious young face lighting with a smile,
"it's a little subscription list, or something, that somebody lost.
Alan Macdonald heads it for five hundred dollars. Do you know Alan
Macdonald, and what his charitable purpose may be?"
Nola tossed her head with a contemptuous sniff.
"They call him the 'king of the rustlers' up the river," said she.
"Oh, he _is_ a man of consequence, then?" said Frances, a quickening
of humor in her brown eyes, seeing that Nola was up on her high horse
about it.
"We'd better be going down to the slaughter-house if we want to see
the fun," bustled the colonel, wheeling his horse. "I see a movement
setting in that way."
"He's just a common thief!" declared Nola, with flushed cheek and
resentful eye, as Frances fell in beside her for the march against the
abattoir.
Frances still carried the paper twisted about her finger, reserving
her judgment upon Alan Macdonald, for she knew something of the feuds
of that hard-speaking land.
"Anyway, I suppose he'd like to have his paper back," she suggested.
"Will you hand it to him the next time you meet him?"
Frances was entirely grave about it, although it was only a piece of
banter which she felt that Nola would appreciate. But Nola was not in
an appreciative mood, for she was a full-blooded daughter of the
baronial rule. She jerked her head like a vicious bronco and reined
hurriedly away from Frances as she extended the paper.
"I'll not touch the thing!" said Nola, fire in her eyes.
Major King was enjoying the passage between the girls, riding at
Nola's side with his cavalry hands held precisely.
"If I'm not mistaken, the gentleman in question is there talking to
Miller, the agent," said he, nodding toward two horsemen a little
distance ahead. "But I wouldn't excite him, Miss Landcraft, if I were
you. He's said to be the quickest and deadliest man with a weapon on
this range."
Major King smiled over his own pleasantry. Frances looked at Nola with
brows lifted inquiringly, as if waiting her verification. Then the
grave young lady settled back in her saddle and laughed merrily,
reaching across and touching her friend's arm in conciliating caress.
"Oh, you delightful little savage!" she said. "I believe you'd like to
take a shot at poor Mr. Macdonald yourself."
"We never start anything on the reservation," Nola rejoined, quite
seriously.
Miller, the Indian agent, rode away and left Macdonald sitting there
on his horse as the military party approached. He spurred up to meet
the colonel, and to present his respects to the ladies--a hard matter
for a little round man with a tight paunch, sitting in a Mexican
saddle. The party halted, and Frances looked across at Macdonald, who
seemed to be waiting for Miller to rejoin him.
Macdonald was a supple, sinewy man, as he appeared across the few rods
intervening. His coat was tied with his slicker at the cantle of his
saddle, his blue flannel shirt was powdered with the white dust of the
plain. Instead of the flaring neckerchief which the cowboys commonly
favored, Macdonald wore a cravat, the ends of it tucked into the bosom
of his shirt, and in place of the leather chaps of men who ride
breakneck through brush and bramble, his legs were clad in tough brown
corduroys, and fended by boots to his knees. There were revolvers in
the holsters at his belt.
Not an unusual figure for that time and place, but something uncommon
in the air of unbending severity that sat on him, which Frances felt
even at that distance. He looked like a man who had a purpose in his
life, and who was living it in his own brave way. If he was a cattle
thief, as charged, thought she, then she would put her faith against
the world that he was indeed a master of his trade.
They were talking around Miller, who was going to give them places of
vantage for the coming show. Only Frances and Major King were left
behind, where she had stopped her horse to look curiously across at
Alan Macdonald, king of the rustlers, as he was called.
"It may not be anything at all to him, and it may be something
important," said Frances, reaching out the slip to Major King. "Would
you mind handing it to him, and explaining how it came into my
hands?"
"I'll not have anything to do with the fellow!" said the major,
flushing hotly. "How can you ask such a thing of _me?_ Throw it away,
it's no concern of yours--the memorandum of a cattle thief!"
Frances drew herself straight. Her imperious chin was as high as Major
King ever had carried his own in the most self-conscious moment of his
military career.
"Will you take it to him?" she demanded.
"Certainly not!" returned the major, haughtily emphatic. Then,
softening a little, "Don't be silly, Frances; what a row you make over
a scrap of blowing paper!"
"Then I'll take it myself!"
"Miss Landcraft!"
"_Major_ King!"
It was the steel of conventionality against the flint of womanly
defiance. Major King started in his saddle, as if to reach out and
restrain her. It was one of those defiantly foolish little things
which women and men--especially women--do in moments of pique, and
Frances knew it at the time. But she rode away from the major with a
hot flush of insubordination in her cheeks, and Alan Macdonald
quickened from his pensive pose when he saw her coming.
His hand went to his hat when her intention became unmistakable to
him. She held the little paper out toward him while still a rod away.
"A little Indian girl gave me this; she found it blowing along--they
tell me you are Mr. Macdonald," she said, her face as serious as his
own. "I thought it might be a subscription list for a church, or
something, and that you might want it."
"Thank you, Miss Landcraft," said he, his voice low-modulated, his
manner easy.
Her face colored at the unexpected way of this man without a coat, who
spoke her name with the accent of refinement, just as if he had known
her, and had met her casually upon the way.
"I have seen you a hundred times at the post and the agency," he
explained, to smooth away her confusion. "I have seen you from afar."
"Oh," said she, as lame as the word was short.
He was scanning the written paper. Now he looked at her, a smile
waking in his eyes. It moved in slow illumination over his face, but
did not break his lips, pressed in their stern, strong line. She saw
that his long hair was light, and that his eyes were gray, with sandy
brows over them which stood on end at the points nearest his nose,
from a habit of bending them in concentration, she supposed, as he had
been doing but a moment before he smiled.
"No, it isn't a church subscription, Miss Landcraft, it's for a
cemetery," said he.
"Oh," said she again, wondering why she did not go back to Major King,
whose horse appeared restive, and in need of the spur, which the major
gave him unfeelingly.
At the same time she noted that Alan Macdonald's forehead was broad
and deep, for his leather-weighted hat was pushed back from it where
his fair, straight hair lay thick, and that his bony chin had a little
croft in it, and that his face was long, and hollowed like a
student's, and that youth was in his eyes in spite of the experience
which hardships of unknown kind had written across his face. Not a
handsome man, but a strong one in his way, whatever that way might
be.
"I am indebted to you for this," said he, drawing forth his watch with
a quick movement as he spoke, opening the back cover, folding the
little paper carefully away in it, "and grateful beyond words."
"Good-bye, Mr. Macdonald," said she, wheeling her horse suddenly,
smiling back at him as she rode away to Major King.
Alan Macdonald sat with his hat off until she was again at the major's
side, when he replaced it over his fair hair with slow hand, as if he
had come from some holy presence. As for Frances, her turn of defiance
had driven her clouds away. She met the major smiling and radiant, a
twinkling of mischief in her lively eyes.
The major was a diplomat, as all good soldiers, and some very
indifferent ones, are. Whatever his dignity and gentler feelings had
suffered while she was away, he covered the hurt now with a smile.
"And how fares the bandit king this morning?" he inquired.
"He seems to be in spirits," she replied.
The others were out of sight around the buildings where the carcasses
of beef had been prepared. Nobody but the major knew of Frances'
little dash out of the conventional, and the knowledge that it was so
was comfortable in his breast.
"And the pe-apers," said he, in melodramatic whisper, "were they the
thieves' muster roll?"
"He isn't a thief," said she, with quiet dignity, "he's a gentleman.
Yes, the paper _was_ important."
"Ha! the plot deepens!" said Major King.
"It was a matter of life and death," said she, with solemn rebuke for
his levity, speaking a truer word than she was aware.