ourselves for miles around. The lowering sun lighted up the under side of
the leaves and branches and their strange burdens, giving an effect
uncanny and weird, as though caused by unseen footlights. Not a sound
disturbed the oppressive quiet, not the quiver of a twig. Five of the six
trees bore oblong bundles, wrapped in comforters and blankets, and bound
with buckskin to the branches near the trunk, fifteen or twenty feet from
the ground, too high for coyotes, too tight for vultures. But what caught
our attention as we dropped into the gully was one of the bundles that
had slipped from its fastenings and was hanging by a thong.
It needed but a tug to pull it to the ground. Burfield supplied that tug,
and we all got a shock when the wrappings, dislodged by the fall, parted
at one end and disclosed the face of a mummy. I had retreated to the
other end of the little dip, not caring to witness some awful spectacle
of disintegration; but a mummy--no museum-cased specimen, labelled 'hands
off', but a real mummy of one's own finding--was worth a few shudders
to examine.
I looked into the shrivelled, but otherwise normal, face of the Indian
woman. What had been her life, her heart history, now as completely gone
as though it had never been--thirty years of life struggle in snow and
sun, with, perhaps, a little joy, and then what?
Seven brass rings were on her thumb and a carved wooden armlet encircled
the wrist. These I was vandal enough to accept from Burfield. There were
more rings and armlets, but enough is enough. As the gew-gaws had a
peculiar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped them in my gloves, and
surely if trifles determine destiny, that act was one of the trifles that
determined the fact that I was to be spared to this life for yet a while
longer. For, as I was carelessly wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very
much turned up, Burfield suddenly started and then began bundling the
wrappings around the mummy at great speed. Something was serious. I
stooped to help him, and he whispered:
"Thought I heard a noise. If the Indians catch us, there'll be trouble,
I'm afraid."
We hastily stood the mummy on end, head down, against the tree, and tried
to make it look as though the coyotes had torn it down, after it had
fallen within reach, as indeed they had, originally. Then we crawled to
the other end of the gully, scrambled up the bank, and emerged
unconcernedly.
There was nothing in sight but long stretches of sage brush, touched
here and there by the sun's last gleams. We were much relieved.
Said Burfield:
"The Indians are mighty ugly over that Spotted Tail fight, and if they
had caught us touching their dead, it might have been unhealthy for us."
"Why, what would they do?" I asked, suddenly realising what many white
men never do--that Indians are emotional creatures like ourselves. The
brass rings became uncomfortably conspicuous in my mind.
"Well, I don't suppose they would dare to kill us so close to the agency,
but I don't know; a mad Injun's a bad Injun."
Nevertheless, this opinion did not deter him from climbing a tree where
three bodies lay side by side in a curious fashion; but I had no more
interest in 'dead-trees,' and fidgeted. Nimrod had wandered off some
distance and was watching a gopher hole-up for the night. The place in
the fading light was spooky, but it was of live Indians, not dead ones,
that I was thinking.
There is a time for all things, and clearly this was the time to go
back to Severin's dollar-a-day Palace Hotel. I started for the
bicycles when two black specks appeared on the horizon and grew
rapidly larger. They could be nothing but two men on horseback
approaching at a furious gallop. It was but yaller-covered-novel
justice that they should be Indians.
"Quick, Burfield, get out of that tree on the other side!" It did not
take a second for man and tree to be quit of each other, at the imminent
risk of broken bones. I started again for the wheels.
"Stay where, you are," said Burfield; "we could never get away on those
things. If they are after us, we must bluff it out."
There was no doubt about their being after us. The two galloping figures
were pointed straight at us and were soon close enough to show that they
were Indians. We stood like posts and awaited them. Thud, thud--ta-thud,
thud--on they charged at a furious pace directly at us. They were five
hundred feet away--one hundred feet--fifty.
Now, I always take proper pride in my self possession, and to show how
calm I was, I got out my camera, and as the two warriors came chasing up
to the fifty-foot limit, I snapped it. I had taken a landscape a minute
before, and I do not think that the fact that that landscape and those
Indians appeared on the same plate is any proof that I was in the least
upset by the red men's onset. Forty feet, thirty--on they came--ten--were
they going to run us down?
Five feet, full in front of us they pulled in their horses to a dead
stop--unpleasantly, close, unpleasantly sudden. Then there was an
electric silence, such as comes between the lightning's flash and the
thunder's crack. The Indians glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each
measuring the other. Not a sound broke the stillness of that desolate
spot, save the noisy panting of the horses as they stood, still braced
from the shock of the sudden stop.
For three interminable minutes we faced each other without a move. Then
one of the Indians slowly roved his eyes all over the place, searching
suspiciously. From where he stood the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the
bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale brass rings and armlet were in my
gloves which I held as jauntily as possible. He saw nothing wrong. He
turned again to us. We betrayed no signs of agitation. Then he spoke
grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly face:
[Illustration: FIVE FEET FULL IN FRONT OF US, THEY PULLED THEIR HORSES TO
A DEAD STOP.]
"No touch 'em; savey?" giving a significant jerk of the head towards
the trees.
We responded by a negative shake of the head. Oh, those brass rings! Why
did I want to steal brass rings from the left thumb of an Indian woman
mummy! Me! I should be carving my name on roadside trees next!
There was another silence as before. None of us had changed positions,
so much as a leaf's thickness. Then the second Indian, grim and ugly as
the first, spoke sullenly:
"No touch 'em; savey?" He laid his hand suggestively on something in his
belt.
Again we shook our heads in a way that deprecated the very idea of such a
thing. They gave another dissatisfied look around, and slowly turned
their horses.
We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the
other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground
and--who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look
backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the passive elements of
a tragedy.
I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelt on the handle bar of the doctor's
wife's bicycle, and we hurried home like spanked children. That night,
after I had delivered unto the doctor's wife her own, and disinfected the
gewgaws in carbolic, I added two more subjects to my Never-again
list--bicycling in Montana and 'dead hunts.'
XIII.
JUST RATTLESNAKES.
It is a blessing that a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No
one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it
has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an inheritance from
our simian ancestors.
To me, I acknowledge, a rattler is just a horrid snake; so, when we were
told at Markham that rattlers were more common than the cattle which
grazed on every hill, I discovered that there were yet new imps to
conquer in my world of fear. Shakspere has said some nice things about
fear--"Of all the wonders, ... it seems to me most strange that men
should fear"--but he never knew anything about squirming rattlesnakes.
The Cuttle Fish ranch is five miles from Markham. That thriving
metropolis has ten houses and eleven saloons, in spite of Dakota being
'prohibition.' Markham is in the heart of the Bad Lands, the wonderful
freakish Bad Lands, where great herds of cattle range over all the
possible, and some of the impossible, places, while the rest of
it--black, green, and red peaks, hills of powdered coal, wicked land cuts
that no plumb can fathom, treacherous clay crust over boiling lava, arid
horrid miles of impish whimsical Nature--is Bad indeed.
Nimrod and I had been lured to the Cuttle Fish ranch to go on a wolf
hunt. The house was a large two storey affair of logs, with a long tail
of one storey log outbuildings like a train of box cars. We sat down to
dinner the first night with twenty others, a queer lot truly to find in
that wild uncivilised place. There was an ex-mayor and his wife from a
large Eastern city; a United States Senator--the toughest of the
party--who appeared at table in his undershirt; four cowboys, who were
better mannered than the two New York millionaires' sons who had been
sent there to spend their college vacation and get toughened (the process
was obviously succeeding); they made Nimrod apologise for keeping his
coat on during dinner; the three brothers who owned the ranch, and the
wife of one of them; several children; a prim and proper spinster from
Washington--how she got there, who can tell?--and Miss Belle Hadley, the
servant girl.
In studying the case of Belle I at last appreciated the age-old teaching
that the greatest dignity belongs to the one who serves. Else why did
the ex-mayor's wife bake doughnuts, and the rotund Senator toil at the
ice cream freezer with the thermometer at 112 degrees, and the
millionaires' sons call Belle "Miss Hadley," and I make bows for her
organdie dress, while she curled her hair for a dance to be held that
evening ten miles away, and to which she went complacently with her pick
of the cowboys and her employers' two best horses, while they stayed at
home and did her work! Else why did this one fetch wood for her, that
one peel the potatoes, another wash the dishes? And when she and the
rest of us were seated at meals, and something was needed from the
kitchen, why did the unlucky one nearest the door jump up and forage?
Belle was never nearest the door. She sat at the middle of the long
table, so that she could be handy to everything that was 'circulating.'
But I refer this case to the author of those delightful papers on the
"Unquiet Sex," and hark back to my story.
That night the moon was full, and the coyotes made savage music around
the lonely ranch house. First from the hill across the creek came a
snappy _wow-wow, yac-yac_, and then a long drawn out _ooo-oo_; then
another voice, a soprano, joined in, followed by a baritone, and then the
star voice of them all--loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For an instant I
saw him silhouetted against the rising moon on the hill ridge, head
thrown back and muzzle raised, as he gave to the peaceful night his
long, howling bark, his "talk at moon" as the Indians put it. The
ranchman remarked that there were "two or three out there," but I knew
better. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them; I am not deaf.
The next morning we were up with the dawn and started by eight to run
down Mountain Billy, the grey wolf who lived on the ranchmen of the Bad
Lands. Our outfit was as symmetrical as a pine cone;--dogs, horses, mess
wagon, food, guns and men. All we needed was the grey wolf. I was the
only woman in the party, and, like "Weary Waddles," tagged behind.
[Illustration: THE COYOTES MADE SAVAGE MUSIC.]
It was the middle of September, and the weather should have known
better. But it was the Bad Lands, and there was a hot spell on. By three
o'clock the thermometer showed 116-1/2 in the shade, and I believed it.
The heat and glare simmered around us like fire. The dogs' tongues nearly
trailed in the baked dust, the horses' heads hung low, an iron band
seemed ever tightening around my head, as the sun beat down upon all
alike with pitiless force.
When we came to the Little Missoula, even its brackish muddy water was
welcome, and I shut my eyes to the dirt in the uninviting brown fluid,
and my mind to the knowledge of the horrid things it would do to me, and
drank; Tepid, gritty, foul--was it water I had swallowed? The horse
assigned to me, a small, white, benevolent animal named 'Whiskers,'
waded in knee deep and did the same. Whiskers was a 'lady's horse,'
which, being interpreted, meant aged eighteen or twenty, with all spirit
knocked out by hard work; a broken down cow pony, in fact, or, in local
parlance, a 'skate,' a 'goat.' He had lagged considerably behind the
rest of the party.
However, Whiskers did not matter; nothing mattered but the waves on
waves of heat that quivered before my eyes. I shut them and began
repeating cooling rhymes, such as 'twin peaks snow clad,' 'From
Greenland's Icy Mountains,' and the 'Frozen North,' by way of living up
to Professor James' teachings. Whiskers was ambling on, half-stupefied
with the heat, as I was, when from the road just in front came a
peculiar sound. I did not know what it was, but Whiskers did, and he
immediately executed a demi volte (see Webster) with an energy I had
not thought him capable of.
Again came the noise, yes, surely, just as it had been described--like
dried peas in a pod--and gliding across the road was a big rattlesnake. I
confess had Whiskers been so inclined, I should have been content to have
passed on with haughty disdain. But Whiskers performed a left flank
movement so nearly unseating me that I deemed it expedient to drop to the
ground, and Whiskers, without waiting for orders, retreated down the road
at what he meant for a gallop. The rattler stopped his pretty gliding
motion away from me, and seemed in doubt. Then he began to take on a few
quirks. "He is going to coil and then to strike," said I, recalling a
paragraph from my school reader. It was an unhappy moment! I knew that
tradition had fixed the proper weapons to be used against rattlesnakes:
a stone (more if necessary), a stick (forked one preferred), and in rare
cases a revolver (when it is that kind of a story). I had no revolver.
There was not a stick in sight, and not a stone bigger than a hazelnut;
but there was the rattler. I cast another despairing glance around and
saw, almost at my feet and half hidden by sage brush, several inches of
rusty iron--blessed be the passing teamster who had thrown it there. I
darted towards it and, despite tradition, turned on the rattler armed
with the goodly remains of--a frying pan.
[Illustration: THE HORRID THING WAS READY FOR ME.]
The horrid thing was ready for me with darting tongue and flattened
head--another instant it would have sprung. _Smash_ on its head went my
valiant frying pan and struck a deadly blow, although the thing managed
to get from under it. I recaptured my weapon and again it descended upon
the reptile's head, settling it this time. Feeling safe, I now took hold
of the handle to finish it more quickly. Oh, that tail--that awful,
writhing, lashing tail! I can stand Indians, bears, wolves, anything but
that tail, and a rattler is all tail, except its head. If that tail
touches me I shall let go. It did touch me, I did not let go. Pride held
me there, for I heard the sound of galloping hoofs. Whiskers' empty
saddle had alarmed the rest of the party.
My snake was dead now, so I put one foot on him to take his scalp--his
rattles, I mean--when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny
thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to
think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance
that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my
heart and captured his 'pod of dry peas.'
Oh, about the wolf hunt! That was all, just heat and rattlesnakes.
The hounds could not run; one died from sunstroke while chasing a jack
rabbit. No one lifted a finger if it could be avoided. All the world was
an oven, and after three days we gave up the chase, and leaving Mountain
Billy panting triumphantly somewhere in his lair, trailed back to the
ranch house with drooping heads and fifteen rattle-snakes' tails. Oh, no,
the hunt was not a failure--for Mountain Billy.
XIV.
AS COWGIRL.
Till the time of the "WB" round-up all cows looked alike to me. We were
still at the Cuttle Fish ranch, which was in a state of great activity
because of the fall roundup. Belle, the servant girl, had received less
attention of late and had been worked harder, a combination of
disagreeables which caused her to threaten imminent departure. The
cowboys, who had been away for several days gathering in the stragglers
that had wandered into the wild recesses of those uncanny Bad Land hills,
assembled in full force for the evening meal, and announced, between
mouthfuls, that the morrow was to be branding day for the several
outfits, about two thousand head of cattle in all, the 'WB' included,
which were rounded up on the Big Flat two miles distant from the ranch.
This was the chance for me to be relieved of my crass ignorance
concerning round-ups, really to have a definite conception of the term
instead of the sea of vagueness and conjecture into which I was plunged
by the usual description--"Oh, just a whole lot of cattle driven to one
place, and those that need it are cut out and frescoed." How many was a
whole lot, how were they driven, where were they driven from, what were
they cut out with, how were they branded, and when did they need it? My
ignorance was hopeless and pathetic, and those to whom I applied were all
too familiar with the process to be able to describe it. I might as well
have asked for a full description of how a man ate his dinner.
"Will you take me to the round-up to-morrow?" I asked of the 'WB' boss.
"Well, I could have a team hitched up, and Bob could drive you to the
Black Nob Hill, where you can get a good view," was the tolerant reply.
Bob had wrenched his foot the day before, when roping a steer, and was
therefore incapacitated for anything but 'woman's work'--'a soft job.'
"Oh, but I do not want to be so far away and look on; I want to
be _in_ it."
He looked at me out of the angle of his eye to make sure that I was in
earnest. "Tain't safe," he said.
"Then you mean to say that every cowboy risks his life in a round-up?"
"Oh, well, they're men and take their chances. Besides, it's their
business."
I never yet have been able to have a direct question answered by a true
mountaineer or plainsman by a simple yes or no. Is there something in the
bigness of their surroundings that causes the mind to spread over an
idea and lose directness like a meadow brook?
However, by various wiles known to my kind, the next morning at daybreak
I was mounted upon the surest-footed animal in the 'bunch.'
"She's a trained cow pony and won't lose her head," the boss remarked.
Thus equipped, I was allowed to accompany the cowboys to their work, with
the understanding that I was to keep at a safe distance from the herd.
Van Anden, a famous 'cutter out,' whatever that meant, was deputed to
have an especially watchful eye upon me. Van Anden was a surprisingly
graceful fellow, who got his six foot of stature in more places during
the day than any of the smaller men. He was evidently a cowboy because he
wanted to be one. There were many traces of a college education and a
thorough drilling in good manners in an Eastern home, which report said
could still be his if he so wished; and report also stated that he
remained a bachelor in spite of being the most popular man in the
country, because of a certain faithless siren who with gay unconcern
casts languishing glances and spends papa's dollars at Newport.
But this was no Beau Brummel day. There was work to do, and hard work,
as I soon discovered. We had ridden perhaps a mile; my teeth were
still chattering in the early morning cold (breaking ice on one's bath
water and blowing on one's fingers to enable one to lace heavy boots
may suit a cowboy: I do not pretend to like it), when we began to
notice a loud bellowing in the distance. Instantly my companions
spurred their horses and we went speeding over the Little Missoula
bottom lands, around scrub willows and under low hanging branches of
oak, one of which captured my hat, after breaking both of the hat pins,
and nearly swept me from the saddle.
On I rushed with the rest, hatless, and as in a cloud of fury. Van Anden
took a turn around that tree and was at my side again with the hat before
I realised what, he was doing. I jerked out a "thank you" between lopes,
and of course forbore to remark that a hat without pins was hollow
mockery. I dodged the next low branch so successfully that the pommel in
some miraculous way jumped up and smashed the crystal in my watch, the
same being carried in that mysterious place, the shirt waist front, where
most women carry their watches, pocket books, and love letters.
When we got into the open the terrible bellowing--a combination of
shriek, groan, and roar in varying pitch--grew louder, and I could just
discern a waving ghostly mass in the gray morning mist. I wondered if
this were the herd, but found it was only the cloud of dust in which it
was enveloped.
Four of the cowboys had already disappeared in different directions. I
heard the 'WB' boss say, "Billy, to the left flank. Van, them blamed
heifers," as he flew past them.
Van dashed forward, I gave my black mare a cut with the quirt and
followed. Van's face, as he turned around to remonstrate, was a study of
surprise, distress, and disgust, for I was undoubtedly breaking rules.
"Don't bother about me," I called as airily as possible, as I shot past
him. He had checked his horse's speed, but now there was nothing to do
but to follow me as fast as he could. I shall have to record that he
swore, as he turned sharply to the right into a group of cattle. Poor
man, it was dreadful to saddle him with a woman at such a juncture, but
I was not a woman just then. I was a green cowboy and frightened to
death, as the cattle closed around me, a heavy mass of ponderous forms,
here wedged in tightly and bellowing, some with the pain of being
crushed, some for their calves. I expected every instant to be trampled
under foot.
"Stick to your horse, whatever you do, and work to the left," I heard Van
shouting to me over the backs of a dozen cows. The dust, the noise, and
the smell of those struggling creatures appalled and sickened me. How was
I ever going to work to the left in that jam? I could see nothing but
backs and heads and horns. I allowed myself one terrified groan which was
fortunately lost in the general uproar. But the pony had been in such a
situation before, if I had not, and she taught me what to do. She gave a
sudden spring forward when a space just big enough for her appeared, then
wove her way a few paces forward between two animals who had room enough
on the other side of them to give way a little, while the space I had
just left had closed up, a tight mass of groaning creatures.
Thus we worked our way to the left whenever there was a chance, and at
last through the dust I could see the heavenly open space beyond.
Forgetting my tactics, I made straight for it, and was caught in one of
those terrible waves of tightly pressed creatures which is caused by
those on the outside pressing towards the centre, and the centre giving
until there is no more space, when comes the crush. Fortunately I was on
the outskirts of this crush, and by holding my feet up high we managed to
squeeze through that dreadful, dust covered, stamping, snorting bedlam
into the glorious free air and sunshine. Already I had a much better
conception of what a 'whole lot' of cattle meant.
From the vantage ground of a little hill I could see the whole herd, and
realised that I had been in only a small bunch of it, composed of cows
and calves. Had I gone to the right I should soon have gotten into a
raging mass of some thousand head of bulls. They were pawing and tearing
up the ground that but a little before had been covered with grass and
late flowers, and occasionally goring one another. The cowboys were
riding on the outskirts of this life-destroying horde, forcing the
stragglers back into line, and by many a sudden dash forward, then to the
right, sharp wheel about, and more spurts this way and that, were slowly
driving it toward another mass of cattle, a half mile further on, which
could be distinguished only by the clouds of dust which enveloped it.