E-text prepared by Al Haines
THE FREEBOOTERS OF THE WILDERNESS
by
AGNES C. LAUT
Author of
"The Conquest of the Great Northwest," "Lords of the North," etc.
New York
Moffat, Yard and Company
1913
Copyright, 1910, by
Moffat, Yard and Company
New York
Published September, 1910
Second Printing, October, 1910
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER
I TO STRADDLE OR FIGHT
II AN INTERLUDE THAT CAME UNANNOUNCED
III THE CHALLENGE TO A LOSING FIGHT
IV STACKING THE CARDS
V THE CHOICE THAT COMES TO ALL MEN
VI WHEREIN ONE PLAYS AN UNCONSCIOUS PART
VII WHILE LAW MARKS TIME, CRIME SCORES
VIII A VICTIM OF LAW'S DELAY
IX EIGHT INTO MIGHT
X THE HANDY MAN GETS BUSY
XI SETTING OUT ON THE LONG TRAIL
XII THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW VEILS ITSELF
XIII THE MAN ON THE JOB
XIV ON THE GAME TRAIL
XV THE DESERT
XVI BITTER WATERS
XVII WHERE THE TRACKS ALL POINT ONE WAY
PART II
XVIII WITHOUT MALICE
XIX BALLOTS TOR BULLETS
XX A FAITH WORKABLE FOR MEN ON THE JOB
XXI THE HAPPY AND TRIUMPHANT HOME-COMING
XXII A DOWNY-LIPPED YOUTH IN GRAY FLANNELS
XXIII IT AIN'T THE TRUTH I'M TELLIN' YOU: IT'S
ONLY WHAT I'VE HEERD
XXIV I AM UNCLE SAM
XXV THE QUESTION IS--WHICH UNCLE SAM?
XXVI THE AWAKENING
XXVII THE AWAKENING CONTINUED
XXVIII THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD
FOREWORD
I have been asked how much of this tale of modern freebooters is true?
In exactly which States have such episodes occurred? Have vast herds
of sheep been run over battlements? Have animals been bludgeoned to
death; have men been burned alive; have the criminals not only gone
unpunished but been protected by the law-makers? Have sheriffs "hidden
under the bed" and "handy men" bluffed the press? Have vast domains of
timber lands been stolen in blocks of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of acres through "dummy" entrymen? Have the federal law
officers been shot to death above stolen coal mines? Have Reclamation
Engineers, and Land Office field men, and Forest Rangers undergone such
hardships in Desert and Mountain, as portrayed here? Have they not
only undergone the hardship, but been crucified by the Government which
they served for carrying out the laws of that Government? In a word,
are latter day freebooters of our Western Wilderness playing the same
game in the great transmontane domain as the old-time pirates played on
the high seas? Is this a true story of "the Man on the Job" and "the
Man on the Firing Line" and "the Man Higher Up" and the Looters?
I answer first that I am not writing of twenty years ago, or yesterday,
or the day before yesterday, but _to-day_, the Year of our Lord
1909-1910 in the most highly civilized country the world has ever
known; in a country where self-government has reached a perfection of
prosperity and power not dreamed by poet or prophet. The menace to
self-government from such national influences at work need not be
described. The triumph of such factors in national life means the
wresting of self-government from the people into the hands of the few,
a repetition of the struggle between the Robber Barons of the Middle
Ages and the Commoners.
It seems almost incredible that such lawlessness and outrage and
chicanery can exist in America--many of the outrages would disgrace
Russia or Turkey--yet every episode related here has ten prototypes in
Life, in Fact; not of twenty years ago, or yesterday, or the day before
yesterday, _but to-day_. For instance, the number of sheep destroyed
is given as fifteen thousand. The number destroyed in two counties
which I had in mind when I wrote that chapter, by actual tally of the
Stock Association for the past six years, is sixty thousand. Last year
alone, five thousand in one State suffered every form of hideous
mutilation--backs broken, entrails torn out; fifteen hundred in an
adjoining State had their throats cut; three men were burned to death;
one herder in a still more Northern State was riddled to death with
bullets.
Or to take the case of the timber thefts, I refer to two hundred
thousand acres in California. I might have referred to a million and a
half in Washington and Oregon.
Or referring to the mineral lands, I mention two thousand acres of
coal. I might have told another story of fifty thousand acres, or yet
another of three hundred thousand acres of gold and silver lands. When
I narrate the shooting of a man at the head of a coal shaft, the
stealing of Government timber by the half million dollars a year
through "the hatchet" trick, or the theft of two thousand acres by
"dummies," I am stating facts known to every Westerner out on the spot.
In which States have these episodes occurred? Take an imaginary point
anywhere in Central Utah. Describe a circle round that point to
include the timber and grazing sections of all the Rocky Mountain
States from Northern Arizona to Montana and Washington. The episodes
related here could be true of any State inside that circle except (in
part) one. Such forces are at work in all the Mountain States except
(in part) one. That one exception is Utah. Utah has had and is having
tribulations of her own in the working out of self-government; but, for
reasons that need not be given here, she has kept comparatively free of
recent range wars and timber steals.
This story was suggested to me by a Land Office man--one of the men on
the firing line--who has stood the brunt of the fight against the
freebooters for twenty years and wrested many a victory. I may state
that he is _still_ in the Service and will, I hope, remain in it for
many a year; but these episodes are hinged round the Ranger, rather
than the Land Office or Reclamation men, because, though the latter are
fighting the same splendid fight, their work is of its very nature
transitory--dealing with the beginning of things; while the Ranger is
the man out on the job who remains on the firing line; unless--as my
Land Office friend suggested--unless "he gets fired." As to the
hardships suffered by the fighters, to quote one of them, "You bet:
only more so."
Just as this volume goes to press, comes word of fires in Washington,
Oregon, Idaho and Montana, destroying dozens of villages, hundreds of
lives and millions of dollars worth of property in the National
Forests; and it is added--"the fires are incendiary." Why this
incendiarism? The story narrated here endeavors to answer that
question.
The international incidents thinly disguised are equally founded on
fact and will be recognized by the dear but fast dwindling fraternity
of good old-timers. The mother of the boy still lives her steadfast
beautiful creed on the Upper Missouri; and the old frontiersman still
lives on the Saskatchewan, one of the most picturesque and heroic
figures in the West to-day. I may say that both missionaries support
their schools as incidentally revealed here, without Government aid
through their own efforts. Also, it was the stalwart man from
Saskatchewan who was sent searching the heirs to the estate of an
embittered Jacobite of 1745; and those heirs refused to accept either
the wealth or the position for the very reasons set forth here.
Calamity's story, too, is true--tragically true, though this is not
all, not a fraction of her life story; but her name was not Calamity.
PART I
THE MAN ON THE JOB
FREEBOOTERS OF THE WILDERNESS
CHAPTER I
TO STRADDLE OR FIGHT
"Well," she asked, "are you going to straddle or fight?"
How like a woman, how like a child, how typical of the outsider's
shallow view of any struggle! As if all one had to do--was stand up
and fight! Mere fighting--that was easy; but to fight to the last
ditch only to find yourself beaten! That gave a fellow pause about
bucking the challenge of everyday life.
Wayland punched both fists in the jacket pockets of his sage-green
Service suit, and kicked a log back to the camp fire that smouldered in
front of his cabin. If she had been his wife he would have explained
what a fool-thing it was to argue that all a man had to do was fight.
Or if she had belonged to the general class--women--he could have met
her with the condescending silence of the general class--man; but for
him, she had never belonged to any general class.
She savored of his own Eastern World, he knew that, though he had met
her in this Western Back of Beyond half way between sky and earth on
the Holy Cross Mountain. Wayland could never quite analyze his own
feelings. Her presence had piqued his interest from the first. When
we can measure a character, we can forfend against surprises--discount
virtues, exaggerate faults, strike a balance to our own ego; but when
what you know is only a faint margin of what you don't know, a siren of
the unknown beckons and lures and retreats.
She had all of what he used to regard as culture in the old Eastern
life, the jargon of the colleges, the smattering of things talked
about, the tricks and turns of trained motions and emotions; but there
was a difference. There was no pretence. There was none of the
fire-proof self-complacency--Self-sufficiency, she had, but not
self-righteousness. Then, most striking contra-distinction of all to
the old-land culture, there was unconsciousness of self--face to
sunlight, radiant of the joy of life, not anaemic and putrid of its own
egoism. She didn't talk in phrases thread-bare from use. She had all
the naked unashamed directness of the West that thinks in terms of life
and speaks without gloze. She never side-stepped the facts of life
that she might not wish to know. Yet her intrusion on such facts gave
the impression of the touch that heals.
The Forest Ranger had heard the Valley talk of MacDonald, the Canadian
sheep rancher, belonging to some famous fur-trade clans that had
intermarried with the Indians generations before; and Wayland used to
wonder if it could be that strain of life from the outdoors that never
pretends nor lies that had given her Eastern culture the red-blooded
directness of the West. To be sure, such a character study was not
less interesting because he read it through eyes glossy as an Indian's,
under lashes with the curve of the Celt, with black hair that blew
changing curls to every wind. Indian and Celt--was that it, he
wondered?--reserve and passion, self-control and yet the abandonment of
force that bursts its own barriers?
She had not wormed under the surface for some indirect answer that
would betray what he intended to do. She had asked exactly what she
wanted to know, with a slight accent on the--you.
"Are you going to straddle or fight?"
Wayland flicked pine needles from his mountaineering boots. He
answered his own thoughts more than her question.
"All very well to say--fight; fight for all the fellows in the Land and
Forest Service when they see a steal being sneaked and jobbed! But
suppose you do fight, and get licked, and get yourself chucked out of
the job? Suppose the follow who takes your place sells out to the
enemy--well, then; where are you? Lost everything; gained nothing!"
She laid her panama sunshade on the timbered seat that spanned between
two stumps.
"Men must decide that sort of thing every day I suppose."
"You bet they must," agreed the Ranger with a burst of boyishness
through his old-man air, "and the Lord pity the chap who has wife and
kiddies in the balance--"
"Do you think women tip the scale wrong?"
"Of course not! They'd advise right--right--right;
fight--fight--fight, just as you do; but the point is--can a fellow do
right by them if he chucks his job in a losing fight?"
The old-mannish air had returned. She followed the Ranger's glance
over the edge of the Ridge into the Valley where the smoke-stacks of
the distant Smelter City belched inky clouds against an evening sky.
"Smelters need timber," Wayland waved his hand towards the pall of
smoke over the River. "Smelters need coal. These men plan to take
theirs free. Yet the law arrests a man for stealing a scuttle of coal
or a cord of wood. One law for the rich, another for the poor; and who
makes the law?"
They could see the Valley below encircled by the Rim-Rocks round as a
half-hoop, terra-cotta red in the sunset. Where the river leaped down
a white fume, stood the ranch houses--the Missionary's and her Father's
on the near side, the Senator's across the stream. Sounds of mouth
organs and concertinas and a wheezing gramaphone came from the Valley
where the Senator's cow-boys camped with drovers come up from Arizona.
"Dick," she asked, "exactly what is the Senator's brand?"
"Circle X."
"A circle with an X in it?"
The Ranger stubbornly permitted the suspicion of a smile.
"So if the cattle from Arizona have only a circle, all a new owner has
to do is put an X inside?"
"And pay for the cattle," amplified Wayland.
"Or a circle with a line, put another line across?"
"And hand over the cash," added the Ranger.
"Or a circle dot, just put an X on top of the dot?"
"And fix the sheriff," explained the irrelevant [Transcriber's note:
irreverent?] Ranger.
"And the Senator has all the appointments to the Service out here?"
"No--disappointments," corrected Wayland.
They were both watching the grotesque antics of a squirrel negotiating
the fresh tips of a young spruce. The squirrel sat up on his hind legs
and chittered, whether at the Senator's brands or their heresy it would
be hard to tell; but they both laughed.
"Have you room on the Grazing Range for so many cattle?"
"Not without crowding--"
"You mean crowding the sheepmen, off," she said.
"What is the use of talking?" demanded Wayland petulantly. "Neither
you nor I dare open our mouths about it! Tell the sheriff; your ranch
houses will be burnt over your ears some night! Everybody knows what
has happened when a sheep herder has been killed in an accident, or
hustled back to foreign parts; but speak of it--you had better have cut
your tongue out! Fight it: you know what happened to my predecessors!
One had a sudden transfer. Another got what is known as the
bounce--you English people would call it the sack. The third got a job
at three times bigger salary--down in the Smelter.
"It's all very well to preach right--right--right, Eleanor; and
fight--fight--fight; and 'He who fights and runs away, _May_ live to
fight another day'; but what are you going to do about it? I sweat
till I lay the dust thinking about it; but we never seem to get
anywhere. When we had Wild Bills in the old days, we formed Vigilant
Committees, and went out after the law breakers with a gun; but now, we
are a law-abiding people. We are a law-abiding age, don't you forget
that! When you skin a skunk now days, you do it according to law,
slowly, judiciously, no matter what the skunk does to you meantime,
even tho' it get away with the chickens. Fact is, we're so busy
straining at legal gnats just now that we're swallowing a whole
generation of camels. We don't risk our necks any more to put things
right--not we; we get in behind the skirts of law, and yap, yap, yap,
about law like a rat terrier, when we should be bull dogs getting our
teeth in the burglar's leg.
"You know whose drovers are rustling cattle up North from Arizona? You
know who pays the gang? So do I! You don't know whose cattle those
are: so don't I! To-morrow when they are branded fresh, they'll be the
Senator's; and what are you sheep people going to do with this crowd
coming in from the outside? The law says--equal rights to all; and you
say--fight; but who is going to see that the law is carried out, unless
the people awaken and become a Vigilant Committee for the Nation? Tell
Sheriff Flood to go out and round up those rustlers: he'll hide under
the bed for a week, or 'allow he don't like the job.' Senator Moyese
got him that berth. He's going to hang on like a leech to blood.
"Now, look down this side! Do you know a quarter section of that big
timber is worth from $10,000 to $40,000 to its owners, the people of
the United States? Do you know you can build a cottage of six rooms
out of one tree, the very size a workman needs? The workmen who vote
own those trees! Do you know the Smelter Lumber Company takes all for
nothing, half a million of it a year? Do you know that Smelter,
itself, is built on two-thousand acres of coal lands--stolen--stolen
from the Government as clearly as if the Smelter teams had hauled it
from a Government coal pit? Do you know there isn't a man in the Land
Office who hasn't urged and urged and urged the Government to sue for
restitution of that steal, and headquarters pretend to be doubtful so
that the Statute of Limitations will intervene?"
On the inner side, the Ridge dropped to an Alpine meadow that billowed
up another slope through mossed forests to the snow line of the Holy
Cross Mountains. What the girl saw was a sylvan world of spruce, then
the dark green pointed larches where the jubilant rivers rioted down
from the snow. What the man saw was--a Challenge.
"See those settlers' cabins at an angle of forty-five? Need a sheet
anchor to keep 'em from sliding down the mountain! Fine farm land,
isn't it? Makes good timber chutes for the land looters! We've to
pass and approve _all_ homesteads in the National Forests. You may not
know it; but those _are_ homesteads. You ask Senator Moyese when he
weeps crocodile tears 'bout the poor, poor homesteader run off by the
Forest Rangers! If the homesteader got the profits, there'd be some
excuse; but he doesn't. He gets a hired man's wages while he sits on
the homestead; and when he perjures himself as to date of filing, he
may get a five or ten extra, while your $40,000 claim goes to Mr.
Fat-Man at a couple of hundreds from Uncle Sam's timber limits; and the
_Smelter City Herald_ thunders about the citizen's right to homestead
free land, about the Federal Government putting up a fence to keep the
settler off. That fellow--that fellow in the first shack can't speak a
word of English. Smelter brought a train load of 'em in here; and
they've all homesteaded the big timbers, a thousand of 'em, foreigners,
given homesteads in the name of the free American citizen. Have you
seen anything about it in the newspaper? Well--I guess not. It isn't
a _news_ feature. We're all full up about the great migration to
Canada. We like to be given a gold brick and the glad hand. Of
course, they'll farm that land. One man couldn't clear that big timber
for a homestead in a hundred years. Of course, they are not
homesteading free timber for the big Smelter. Of course not! They
didn't loot the redwoods of California that way--two hundred thousand
acres of 'em--seventy-five millions of a steal. Hm!'" muttered
Wayland. "Calls himself Moyese--Moses! Senator Smelter! Senator
Thief! Senator Beef Steer--"
She laughed. "I like your rage! Look! What's that mountain behind
the cabin doing?"
"Shine on pale moon, don't mind me," laughed Wayland; but suddenly he
stopped storming.
The slant sunlight struck the Holy Cross Mountain turning the snow
gullies pure gold against the luminous peak. Just for a moment the
white cornice of snow forming the bar of the apparent cross flushed to
the Alpine glow, flushed blood-red and quivering like a cross poised in
mid-air. An invisible hand of silence touched them both. The sunset
became a topaz gate curtained by clouds of fire and lilac mist; while
overhead across the indigo blue of the high rare mountain zenith slowly
spread and faded a light--ashes of roses on the sun altar of the dead
day.