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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Injun and Whitey to the Rescue, by William S.
+Hart, Illustrated by Harold Cue
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Injun and Whitey to the Rescue
+
+
+Author: William S. Hart
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 14, 2005  [eBook #16870]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INJUN AND WHITEY TO THE RESCUE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Paul Ereaut, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 16870-h.htm or 16870-h.zip:
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+      or
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+
+
+
+
+
+The Golden West Boys
+
+INJUN AND WHITEY TO THE RESCUE
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM S. HART
+
+Author of Injun and Whitey and Injun and Whitey Strike Out for
+Themselves, etc.
+
+Illustrated by Harold Cue
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THEY COULDN'T SHOOT HIM--HE WAS GOING TOO FAST (_page 272_)]
+
+
+
+
+Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York
+Made in the United States of America
+Copyright, 1922, by William S. Hart
+All Rights Reserved
+Printed In The U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+_In the Boys' Golden West Series I have done my best to present to its
+readers the West that I knew as a boy._
+
+_Frontier days were made up of many different kinds of humans. There
+were men who were muddy-bellied coyotes, so low that they hugged the
+ground like a snake. There were girls whose cheeks were so toughened by
+shame as to be hardly knowable from squaws. There were stoic Indians
+with red-raw, liquor-dilated eyes, peaceable and just when sober,
+boastful and intolerant when drunk. And then there were those White Men,
+those moulders, those makers of the great, big open-hearted West, that
+had not yet been denatured by nesters and wire fences, men to whom a
+Colt gun was the court of last appeal and who did not carry a warrant in
+their pockets until it was worn out, men who faced staggering odds and
+danger single-handed and alone, men who created and worked out and made
+an Ideal Civilization,--a country where doors were left unlocked at
+night and the windows of the mind were always open,--men who were
+always kind to the weak and unprotected, even if they did have hoofs and
+horns, men like William B. (Bat) Masterson and Wyatt Earp. They and
+their kind made the frontier, that Great West which we can now look back
+upon as the most romantic era of our American History._
+
+_I love it; I love all that was ever connected with it; and to all those
+who are in sympathy with my crude efforts to set forth what little I
+know, to each and every boy who feels a choke in his throat when he
+reads the closing lines of "In Memory," I say, I have a choke in my
+throat too, and I am silently clutching your hand, for that red boy has
+crossed the Big Divide and gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds and the
+white boy is saying Farewell._
+
+The Author
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. An Arrival 1
+
+     II. A Surprise 13
+
+    III. Mystery 26
+
+     IV. Solution 39
+
+      V. Bunk-House Talk 51
+
+     VI. Boots 66
+
+    VII. Education and Other Things 77
+
+   VIII. Injun Talks 87
+
+     IX. Fish-Hooks and Hooky 115
+
+      X. A Hard Job 129
+
+     XI. The T Up and Down 139
+
+    XII. Felix the Faithless 150
+
+   XIII. A Fool's Errand 160
+
+    XIV. The Stampede 170
+
+     XV. The Cattle-Sheep War 185
+
+    XVI. "Medicine" 206
+
+   XVII. "The Pride of the West" 218
+
+  XVIII. Wonders 229
+
+    XIX. Threshing-Time 235
+
+     XX. The Story of the Custer Fight 247
+
+    XXI. Unrest 263
+
+   XXII. The New Order 271
+
+  XXIII. Pioneer Days 290
+
+   XXIV. "In Memory" 299
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  They couldn't shoot him--he was going
+  too fast _Frontispiece_
+
+  In Front of Them Stood Sitting Bull 16
+
+  Advancing into the Road with both Front
+  Paws Extended 120
+
+  The Man's Figure disappeared through
+  the Opening, the Bucket falling from
+  his Hands 202
+
+
+
+INJUN AND WHITEY TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN ARRIVAL
+
+
+There was no doubt that affairs were rather dull on the Bar O Ranch; at
+least they seemed so to "Whitey," otherwise Alan Sherwood. Since he and
+his pal, "Injun," had had the adventures incidental to the finding of
+the gold in the mountains, there had been nothing doing. So life seemed
+tame to Whitey, to whom so many exciting things had happened since he
+had come West that he now had a taste for excitement.
+
+It was Saturday, so there were no lessons, and it was a relief to be
+free from the teachings of John Big Moose, the educated Dakota, who
+acted as tutor for Injun and Whitey. Not that John was impatient with
+his pupils. He was too patient, if anything, his own boyhood not being
+so far behind him that he had forgotten that outdoors, in the Golden
+West, is apt to prove more interesting to fifteen-year-old youth than
+printed books--especially when one half the class is of Indian blood.
+
+As Whitey stood near the bunk house and thought of these things, his eye
+was attracted by a speck moving toward him across the prairie. He
+watched it with the interest one might have in a ship at sea; as one
+watches in a place in which few moving things are seen. The speck was
+small, and was coming toward Whitey slowly.
+
+From around the corner of the bunk house Injun approached. It will be
+remembered by those who have read of Injun that he was very fond of pink
+pajamas. As garments, pink pajamas seemed to Injun to be the real thing.
+It had been hard to convince him that they were not proper for everyday
+wear, but when he was half convinced of this fact, he had done the next
+best thing, and taken to a very pink shirt. This, tucked in a large pair
+of men's trousers, below which were beaded moccasins, was Injun's
+costume, which he wore with quiet dignity.
+
+"What do you s'pose that is?" asked Whitey, pointing at the speck.
+
+"Dog," Injun answered briefly.
+
+"A dog!" cried Whitey, who, though he had never ceased to wonder at
+Injun's keenness of sight, was inclined to question it now. "What can a
+dog be doing out there?"
+
+"Dunno," Injun replied. "Him dog." Injun's education had not as yet sunk
+in deep enough to affect his speech.
+
+Whitey again turned his eyes toward the object, which certainly was
+moving slowly, as though tired, and, as the boys watched, sure enough,
+began to resolve itself into the shape of a dog. Here at last was
+something happening to break the dullness of the day. A strange dog
+twenty-five miles from any place in which a dog would naturally be.
+
+Furthermore, when the animal was near enough to be seen distinctly, he
+furnished another surprise. He was entirely unlike any of the dogs of
+that neighborhood--the hounds, collies, or terriers. He was white,
+short, chunky. His head was very large for his size, his jaw undershot,
+his mouth enormous, and his lower lip drooped carelessly over a couple
+of fangs on each side. Under small ears his eyes popped almost out of
+his head, and his snub nose could scarcely be said to be a nose at all.
+From a wide chest his body narrowed until it joined a short, twisted
+tail, and his front legs were bowed, as though he had been in the habit
+of riding a horse all his life.
+
+Injun gazed at this strange being with something as near surprise as he
+ever allowed himself. "Him look like frog," he declared.
+
+"Why, it's a bulldog, an English bulldog!" exclaimed Whitey, who had
+seen many of this breed in the East.
+
+"More like bullfrog," Injun maintained solemnly. "What him do--eat
+bulls?"
+
+The brute's appearance surely was forbidding enough, and if Injun had
+been subject to fear, which he wasn't, he would have felt it now. He did
+not know, as many better informed people do not, that beneath this
+breed's fierce appearance lies the deepest of dog love for a
+master--and that's a pretty deep love--and that no other "friend of man"
+holds gentler, kinder feeling for the human race than this queerly
+shaped animal. And this in spite of the fact that he owes the very
+queerness of his appearance to man, who has had him bred in that shape,
+through countless generations, to the end that the poor, faithful beast
+may do brutal deeds in the bull ring and the dog pit.
+
+Whitey did not know all this--that the wide jaws were designed for a
+grip on the enemy, the snub nose to permit breathing while that grip was
+held, the widespread legs to secure a firm ground hold; in short, that
+he was looking at an animal built for conflict, which had the courage of
+a lion where his enemies were concerned, and the love of a wild thing
+for its young where its human friends were concerned.
+
+But Whitey knew the latter part of it--that bulldogs were friendly, and
+usually misunderstood, and he proceeded to let Injun in on his
+knowledge. "You needn't be afraid of him," he said.
+
+"No 'fraid, but no go too close," replied the cautious Injun.
+
+Now that this dog was in reach of humans he sat down, opened his
+cave-like mouth, allowing a few inches of tongue to loll out, panted,
+and looked amiably at the boys. He certainly was tired.
+
+"He's not only tired, he's thirsty," said Whitey, and ran to the stable
+for water.
+
+And while he was gone the bulldog and Injun looked at each other--Injun
+with his bronze skin, his long, straight hair, his calm face, and his
+steady, dark eyes. This descendant of thousands of fighting men regarded
+that descendant of thousands of fighting dogs. And what they thought of
+each other the dog couldn't tell, and Injun didn't, but ever after they
+were friends.
+
+Presently Whitey returned from the stable with a pan of water, and with
+Bill Jordan, foreman of the Bar O, Charlie Bassett, Buck Higgins, and
+Shorty Palmer, all the cowpunchers who happened to be on the place. They
+all knew bulldogs, and they regarded the newcomer with awe and respect.
+
+Whitey put the water before the dog, who, after favoring him with a
+grateful glance and a quiver of his stub tail, went to it.
+
+"He's sure awful dry," Bill said. "Ought t' take him up to Moose Lake.
+Looks like that pan o' water won't even moisten him."
+
+"Where d'ye reck'n he come from?" asked Shorty.
+
+"Dunno."
+
+"Mebbe he was follerin' a wagon, an' got lost," Buck Higgins suggested
+hopefully.
+
+"Wagon nothin'!" snorted Bill. "Nobody in these parts'd have a dog like
+that, an' if they did, what would he be doin' follerin' a wagon? He
+ain't built to run, he's built to fight."
+
+Where the dog had come from was something of a mystery. Neighbors were
+not near by, in those days, in Montana, the nearest being fourteen miles
+off, and the railway twenty-two, and nothing there but a water tank.
+There was some discussion regarding the matter which ended in a
+deadlock. It was certain that none of the ranchmen in the vicinity owned
+such a dog, and even so, or if a visitor owned him, how would he get to
+the Bar O? Walk, with "them legs"?
+
+While the discussion went on, the subject of it gulped down large chunks
+of beef which Whitey had begged from the cook, and after that he went
+with the men and boys to the ranch house, where, with an apologetic
+leer, and a wiggle of his tail, he stretched himself on the veranda, and
+fell into a deep sleep. He was very grateful, but he was also very
+tired.
+
+In a lonely ranch house matters are of concern which would create little
+comment in a city. This dog's coming was in the nature of an event at
+the Bar O. Bill, the foreman, and all the punchers were ready to neglect
+work for a considerable time and talk about it. Even Injun occasionally
+looked interested. But all the talk could not solve the problem of the
+animal's presence.
+
+The only one who knew lay sleeping on the veranda and couldn't tell. It
+isn't likely that he dreamed, but if he did it might have been of being
+tied to the handle of a trunk in an overland limited baggage car; of the
+train's stopping for water at a lonely tank; of the earthy, wholesome
+country smell that came through the door, left open for coolness.
+
+There had been a stirring in the grass near the track. A glimpse of an
+animal that looked something like a fox and something like a wolf, and
+wasn't either one, a wild animal that was sneaking around the train for
+the odd bits of food that were sometimes left in its wake. As the
+pungent scent of this beast reached the bulldog's snub nose, the leash
+that held him to the trunk became a thing of little worth. With a
+violent lurch he broke it, leaped from the door, landed sprawling
+alongside the track, and was off in pursuit of the strange animal.
+
+Now, any one who knows how a bulldog is built and how a coyote is built
+can imagine how much chance the first has to catch the second. The dog
+followed by sight, not by scent. With his head held as high as his short
+neck would allow he dashed on. The coyote didn't bother very much. After
+getting a good start he doubled on his tracks for a little way, turned
+aside, and sat down. And if he wasn't too mean to laugh, he may at
+least have smiled as his enemy rushed forward toward nowhere.
+
+Then that bulldog ran and ran until he couldn't run any more. Then he
+walked till he couldn't walk any farther. Then he slept all night, while
+other coyotes howled dismally near by. And in the morning he started off
+again, thinking he was going toward the train and his sorrowful master,
+really going in the opposite direction. But there was one thing that man
+hadn't taught him to do in all the years, and that was to quit, so he
+kept on. And at last, as any one will who keeps going long enough, he
+had to arrive somewhere and he reached the Bar O Ranch.
+
+So you and I and the dog know how he got there, but Bill Jordan, the
+punchers, and the boys didn't, and presently they gave up trying to
+figure it out.
+
+"'Tain't likely his owner'll show up, so he's ours," said Bill Jordan.
+
+"He's Whitey's," Buck Higgins maintained. "He saw him first."
+
+This law was older than any ranch house, or any cowpuncher, so it held
+good, and Whitey became the proud owner of the dog. The matter of his
+name came next in importance. Of course he had one, and he was awakened,
+and asked to respond to as many dog names as the party could think of.
+These were many, running from Towser to Nero, but they brought no
+response from the sleepy animal.
+
+"Must be somep'n unusual," Buck Higgins decided, and he ventured on
+"Alphonse" and "Julius Caesar," but they didn't fit.
+
+"Well, we jest nachally got t' give him a name," said Shorty Palmer.
+
+Again the list was gone over, but nothing seemed quite right. "Oughta be
+somep'n' 'propriate," said Bill Jordan. "How 'bout Moses? He was lost in
+th' wilderness."
+
+"Wilderness nothin'!" objected Buck. "In the bullrushes. Them ain't
+prairie grass."
+
+"Besides," said Whitey, "he ought to have a fighting name. Napoleon!"
+
+"'Tain't English."
+
+"Wellington."
+
+"Too long."
+
+As he seemed to have no choice in naming his own dog, Whitey turned in
+despair to Injun, who had stood solemnly by. "How about you?" Whitey
+asked. "Haven't you a name to suggest?"
+
+The dog knew that he was the subject of the talk, and possibly felt that
+he ought to keep awake, for he sat on the veranda and blinked at the
+humans. Injun gazed at him stolidly.
+
+"Huh!" he grunted. "Sittin' Bull."
+
+"Great!" cried all the others.
+
+This matter settled, the men went away. Sitting Bull stretched himself
+out on the veranda and again fell asleep, and Whitey told Injun that the
+dog's coming probably was a good omen. That there ought to be something
+doing on the ranch now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A SURPRISE
+
+
+It was early morning, and the Bar O Ranch slept, heedless of the keen
+late-autumn air that had in it just a faint, brisk hint of the fall
+frosts to come. Whitey came out of the ranch house and moved toward the
+stable. Sitting Bull trudged after him.
+
+The dog was entirely rested, having slept the better part of two days
+and nights. He seemed to know that Whitey was his new owner. Dogs have
+an instinct for that sort of thing. And though Bull was civil and
+friendly enough with every one else on the ranch, he took to Whitey by
+selection.
+
+At six o'clock each night Bull sat near the ranch-house front door as
+though waiting for some one. He waited a long time. Bill Jordan, who
+prided himself on what he knew about dogs, and men, said that Bull's
+former owner probably was a city man, and was in the habit of coming
+home at six; that the dog was waiting for him to appear. Be that as it
+may, in the days to come Bull gave up this custom. No one knew what he
+felt about the loss of his old master. He became a Montana dog. The city
+was to know him no more.
+
+Now he waddled along after Whitey, who was making for a straw stack,
+near the stable. Among the field mice, gophers, rabbits, and such that
+thought this stack was a pretty nice place to hang around, were two hens
+that were of the same opinion. At least they made their nests in the
+stack and laid their eggs there. And they were the only hens that the
+Bar O boasted, for hens were scarce in Montana in those days--as Buck
+said, "almost as scarce as hen's teeth, an' every one knows there ain't
+no such thing."
+
+It was Whitey's particular business to gather the eggs of those hens,
+which they saw fit to lay early in the morning. So Whitey came to the
+stack early, to be ahead of any weasels or ferrets, who had an uncommon
+fondness for eggs. This morning as he moved around the stack he didn't
+find any eggs, but he saw something black and pointed sticking out of
+the straw. Whitey took hold of the object and pulled, and the thing
+lengthened out in his hands.
+
+And right there a sort of shivery feeling attacked Whitey's spine and
+moved up until it reached his hair, which straightway began to stand on
+end, for the object was a boot and in it was a man's leg. The boot came,
+followed by the leg, followed by a man. From what might be called the
+twin straw beds, another man emerged. Both sat upright in the straw and
+rubbed their eyes. Whitey didn't wait to see if any more were coming, or
+even to think of where he was going. He fled.
+
+Instinct took him toward the ranch house, and good fortune brought Bill
+Jordan out of the door at the same moment.
+
+"Bill!" yelled Whitey, "there's two men in the straw stack!"
+
+Bill did not appear unduly excited. "They ain't eatin' the straw, are
+they?" he inquired.
+
+"No, but they look awfully tough, and they nearly gave me
+heart-disease," Whitey panted.
+
+"If tough-lookin' folks could give me heart-disease, I'd of bin dead
+long ago," Bill responded. "Let's go an' size 'em up."
+
+Bill strolled to the stack with Whitey. The two men, now thoroughly
+awake, were still sitting upright in the straw. In front of them stood
+Sitting Bull. His lower jaw was sticking out farther than usual, and he
+was watching the men and awaiting events.
+
+[Illustration: IN FRONT OF THEM STOOD SITTING BULL]
+
+"Hey! Call off yer dog, will ye?" requested one of the men.
+
+"He ain't mine," Bill answered calmly, indicating Whitey. "He's his."
+
+"Well, get him to call him off," said the man. "Every time we move he
+makes a noise like sudden death."
+
+Whitey summoned Bull, who came to him obediently enough, and the men
+rose to their feet, and stretched themselves and brushed off some of the
+straw that clung to their not over-neat attire. They were not as
+bad-looking as they might have been, neither were they as good-looking.
+One was tall and slim and wore a dark beard. The other was almost as
+tall, but, being very fat, did not look his height. He was
+clean-shaven, or would have been had it not been for about three days'
+stubbly growth. Their clothes were well-worn, and they wore no collars,
+but their boots were good.
+
+"What you fellers doin' here?" demanded Bill. "Ain't the bunk house good
+enough for you?"
+
+"We got in late, an' ev'body was in bed," said the taller of the two.
+"We're walkin' through for th' thrashin'."
+
+"Well, yer late for that too," said Bill.
+
+The threshing in the early days of Montana was an affair in which many
+people of all sorts took part, as will be seen later. Bill questioned
+the men, and their story was brought out. It seemed that they had come
+from Billings, in search of work at threshing. The taller, thin one was
+named Hank, but was usually called "String Beans," on account of his
+scissors-like appearance. He had formerly been a cowpuncher. The other
+had been a waiter, until he got too fat, then he had become a cook.
+Originally named Albert, after he had waited in a restaurant for a
+while he had been dubbed "Ham And," which, you may know, is a short way
+of ordering ham and eggs. And this name in time was reduced to "Ham."
+
+Bill Jordan did not seem to take the men seriously. Their names may have
+had something to do with his attitude, and the early West was not
+over-suspicious, anyway. It had been said that "out here we take every
+man to be honest, until he is proven to be a thief, and in the East they
+take every man to be a thief, until he is proven to be honest." You can
+believe that or not, as you happen to live in the West or in the East.
+Besides, Bill could make use of the talents of String Beans and Ham. He
+needed "hands" to work on the ranch.
+
+When Whitey found that his supposed tragedy was turning into a comedy,
+he felt rather bad about it, especially as Bill was inclined to guy him.
+
+"Lucky you didn't shoot up them two fellers what's named after food,"
+Bill said, when the strangers had retired to the bunk house. "Or knock
+'em out with some of them upper-cuts you're so handy in passin'
+'round." For a boy, Whitey was an expert boxer.
+
+"What was I to think, finding them that way?" Whitey retorted. "And they
+don't look very good to me yet."
+
+"Clothin' is only skin deep," said Bill.
+
+Whitey felt called on to justify his alarm. "It's not only their
+clothes," he said, "but their looks. You noticed that Bull didn't like
+them, and you know dogs have true instinct about judging people."
+
+"Let me tell you somethin' about dogs," began Bill, who usually was
+willing to tell Whitey, or anybody else, something about anything. "Dogs
+is supposed to be democratic, but they ain't. They don't like shabby
+men. I'm purty fond of dogs, but they got one fault--they're snobs. They
+don't like shabby men," Bill repeated for emphasis.
+
+As Whitey thought of this he remembered that the dogs he had known had
+this failing, if it was a failing. He also tried to think of some reason
+for it, so he could prove that Bill was wrong, but he couldn't. That is,
+he couldn't think of anything until Bill had gone away and it was too
+late. Then it occurred to him that it was only the dogs that belonged to
+the well-dressed that disliked the poorly dressed. That a shabby man's
+dog loved him just as well as though he wore purple and fine linen,
+whatever that was. Whitey looked around for Bill to confound him with
+this truth, but Bill had disappeared--a way he had of doing the moment
+he got the better of an argument.
+
+If the two men were aching to work, they had not long to suffer; Bill
+Jordan soon found occupation for them. Slim, the negro cook, had been
+taken with a "misery" in his side, and Ham was installed in his place.
+And to do Ham justice he was not such a bad cook. The ranch hands
+allowed that he couldn't have been worse than Slim, anyway. String Beans
+did not make so much of a hit as a cowpuncher. Bill watched some of his
+efforts, and said that though he was a bad puncher he was a good liar
+for saying he'd ever seen a cow before. So String Beans was sent to the
+mine to work.
+
+This quartz mine, up in the mountains, was the one near which Injun and
+Whitey had had so many exciting adventures. Now they owned an interest
+in it, as has been told, though Mr. Sherwood and a tribe of Dakota
+Indians were the principal shareholders. During the summer the mine had
+been undergoing development, and the first shipment of ore was soon to
+be made.
+
+With String Beans working at the mine, and Ham improving the men's
+digestion as a cook, it began to look as though Whitey's idea that they
+were desperate characters was ill-founded. In fact, the thought had
+almost passed from his mind, and was quite forgotten on a certain
+Saturday. On that day Injun and Whitey were free from the teachings of
+John Big Moose, and were out on the plains for antelope. They didn't get
+an antelope, didn't even see one. All they got were appetites; though
+Whitey's appetite came without calling, as it were, and always excited
+the admiration of Bill Jordan. After dinner that evening Whitey went to
+the bunk house. Some of the cowpunchers were in from the range, and
+Whitey loved to hear the yarns they would spin.
+
+So he lay in a bunk and listened to a number of stories, and wondered
+if they were all true--and it is a singular fact that some of them were.
+But Whitey's day's hunt had been long, and his dinner had been big, and
+his eyes began to droop.
+
+Buck Higgins was in the midst of a tale about being thrown from his
+cayuse and breaking his right arm. There was a wild stallion in this
+story, which every puncher in seven states or so had tried to capture.
+Now, Buck, with his right arm broken, naturally had to throw his rope
+with his left, and his manner of doing that took some description. It
+was during this that in Whitey's mind he, in a mysterious way, changed
+to Buck, or rather Buck changed to Whitey, and the stallion changed to
+an antelope, and pretty soon things began to get rather vague generally.
+
+When Whitey awoke, the bunk house was almost dark. How long he had been
+lying asleep he did not know. The light came from a candle, and
+presently Whitey heard voices. Three men were seated near by, and Whitey
+was about to get out of the bunk, when he recognized the voice of
+String Beans, and something held him back. It was evident that the men
+did not know that he was there.
+
+Whitey felt something warm stir against him, and, startled, put out his
+hand and encountered a hairy surface. It was Sitting Bull, who had
+crawled into the bunk after Whitey had fallen asleep, and crowded in
+between the boy and the wall. At the sound of String Beans' voice Whitey
+felt the hair along Bull's neck rise. He remembered the dog's dislike
+for the two men, and put his hand over Bull's mouth to keep him from
+growling. Whitey was glad he did not snore. He might now have a chance
+to learn whether the two were on the level or not.
+
+For the moment Whitey had some qualms about listening, but he soon
+dismissed them. If these men were open and aboveboard, why were they
+whispering in the dimly lighted bunk house? Whitey had never been able
+to overcome the first distrust he had felt for String Beans and Ham. He
+also had a feeling that he ought to justify that distrust, that in a way
+it was up to him. So he continued to eavesdrop.
+
+String's tones were low, and did not come to Whitey distinctly. This
+was unfortunate in one way, but fortunate in another, for had the men
+been nearer they probably would have seen the boy. Soon another voice
+broke in, and Whitey knew it as that of "Whiff" Gates, a puncher who was
+a constant smoker. Then came another voice, that of Ham And.
+
+Whiff Gates did not bear a good reputation, and it was only because of
+the scarcity of help that Bill Jordan kept him on. As Whitey reflected
+on this, and the "birds of a feather flock together" idea, he kept very
+still. His patience was soon rewarded, for as the men grew more earnest
+in their talk, their tones became louder, though Whitey could not hear
+as distinctly as he would have liked.
+
+However, he gathered that String had returned from the mine on account
+of an injury to his foot, caused by a piece of rock falling on it. That
+there had been some excitement at the mine, owing to a "bug hole" being
+discovered. Whitey learned afterwards this was a sort of pocket caused
+by the dripping of water, and containing a small but very rich quantity
+of ore. Whitey also heard something about a certain date, on which the
+three were to be at a certain place, but here, to his disgust, the
+voices were again lowered, as if in caution.
+
+On the whole, though this secret meeting seemed suspicious, the boy did
+not learn enough to form a basis for action. Presently the men went
+away, and after waiting until he considered it safe, Whitey left the
+bunk house, followed by the faithful Bull. Whitey decided not to tell
+Bill Jordan what he had heard. Bill probably would only poke fun at him
+and hand him one of those arguments he couldn't answer.
+
+But the next day he took Injun into his confidence. Injun had no use for
+String and Ham, and furthermore was a person who could keep a secret.
+And here was something for the boys to keep to themselves--a
+mystery,--something to be solved. They would lie low and await events.
+It made them feel quite important.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MYSTERY
+
+
+Awaiting events did not seem a very thrilling occupation. Of course,
+there was always John Big Moose's tutoring to fill in the gaps, but that
+was less thrilling than just waiting, if possible. The teaching took
+place in the big living-room of the ranch house, a room with a great
+stone fireplace, the stone for which had been carted down from the
+mountains; with walls decorated with Indian trophies--tomahawks, bows
+and arrows, stone pipes and hatchets, knives--and with beadwork,
+snowshoes, and many other interesting things. All these were enough to
+take a fellow's mind off his lessons, and besides there was the floor,
+with its bear and moose and panther skins, each with its history.
+
+And outside, viewed through the big windows, was the rolling prairie,
+with the touch of early fall on it, sometimes revealed in a light
+curtain of haze, at which a fellow could gaze and imagine he saw the
+squaws of the savage tribes gathering the maize for the coming winter's
+store, while the braves rode off to hunt the buffalo.
+
+Yes, it was rather distracting, but John Big Moose was very patient
+about the lessons, though he had been eager for knowledge himself. He
+had worked his way through a Western college, spurred on by the hope of
+bettering his people, the Dakotas, and he _had_ bettered them. And when
+Mr. Sherwood, Whitey's father, had gone East, with the understanding
+that John was to tutor Whitey and Injun, John had resolved to do his
+best.
+
+But this other Injun, Whitey's pal, was not what you might call eager
+for knowledge. Reading and writing were all right, and might be put to
+some practical use, but arithmetic seemed rather useless, and when it
+came to the "higher branches," geometry and trigonometry, they loomed up
+to Injun like a bugbear of the future. In his heart Injun pined for his
+truly loved field of study--the great outdoors.
+
+But presently there came a slight break in the dull routine of words and
+figures--a half-holiday. The first shipment of ore was to be made from
+the mine. John Big Moose represented his tribe's interest in this mine,
+and he was to go and inspect operations. The ore was to come down from
+the mountain in sacks, loaded on horse and muleback, and to be delivered
+to the railroad at the Junction, a small settlement about twenty miles
+south of the ranch.
+
+The boys thought that as they were stock-holders in the mine, they ought
+to go along and attend to this matter, too, but John couldn't see it
+that way. He compromised on a half-holiday for them; study in the
+morning, freedom in the afternoon. So that morning they stuck to their
+lessons. With John there to oversee them they might neglect their
+studies. With him away, and the boys placed on their honor, the thing
+wasn't to be thought of.
+
+And here it might be repeated that Injun had a very strong sense of
+honor. He had faults, as most of us have, but breaking promises, or what
+he considered as promises, was not among them.
+
+So that afternoon, as Injun and Whitey could not be with the shipment of
+ore, they did the next best thing. They rode off into the foothills.
+And on a grassy hill that commanded a widespread view of the plains,
+they looked far off over the prairie. And winding across it, clear off
+near the horizon, they saw tiny specks which represented mules and
+horses, laden with the sacks of precious ore, and its escort of
+cowpunchers.
+
+That evening it was lonely at the ranch, Bill Jordan and the other men
+being at the Junction. String Beans nursed his sore foot, and Ham
+prepared dinner, which Injun had with Whitey in the ranch house. Time
+passed and still the men did not return. Evidently they were celebrating
+the shipment of the mine's first output, or waiting to see it put safely
+aboard the train at the Junction. So Whitey invited Injun to spend the
+night, and he accepted willingly, as it gave him a chance to wear the
+pink pajamas that he loved.
+
+Yawning time had come and passed. Whitey was sleeping soundly and
+dreamlessly, when he was aroused by a grip on his arm. It was Injun in
+his pink pajamas.
+
+"Some one come," he said.
+
+"Mebbe it's Bill and the others," Whitey ventured.
+
+"Not Bill--only one man," Injun replied.
+
+The coming of a man didn't seem important to Whitey, but he knew Injun
+must have had something on his mind, or he wouldn't have waked him, and
+he waited for his friend to speak more of the words of which he was so
+sparing. The next speech was not long.
+
+"Look," said Injun, and he went to the window.
+
+Whitey went and looked. There was a faint light in the bunk house, and
+another down by the horse corral. As the boys watched, a man came out of
+the bunk house, and even in the dim light Whitey recognized him. He was
+String Beans.
+
+"Why," whispered Whitey, "I thought he was lame. He doesn't even limp."
+
+"Him get well," Injun replied.
+
+The light at the corral moved toward and joined that at the bunk house,
+and the two revealed a man leading three horses.
+
+"It's Whiff!" gasped Whitey. "I thought he was with the men at the
+Junction."
+
+"Him get back," Injun grunted, with meaning.
+
+Absorbed in the scene being enacted before them, the boys watched in
+silence.
+
+Bill Jordan had said that Injun slept with his mind open; that most
+Injuns did; that if they hadn't done that all these years there wouldn't
+be no Injuns--and no doubt Bill was right. But any way you thought about
+it, it was remarkable that the slight sound outside--the thudding of a
+horse's hoofs on soft ground, or the letting down of the bars of the
+corral--should have wakened Injun. It probably was not the sound so much
+as the sense of something unusual, something threatening. Furthermore,
+Injun had a different way of figuring things from Whitey. Also he had
+been awake longer, so his mind had a better start, not being bewildered
+by sleep.
+
+"They're up to something," said Whitey.
+
+"Um," grunted Injun.
+
+The two men went into the bunk house and soon came out with another man
+who was fat. It undoubtedly was Ham. Each man carried a saddle, which
+he put on a horse. Then they mounted and rode away.
+
+A cloud moved away, like a curtain, and a full moon shed its light over
+the scene and into the window. The hour must have been late, for the
+moon was low. Whitey turned and looked at Injun, who was stolidly
+watching the riders disappear.
+
+"Can you beat that?" Whitey demanded. "String Beans walked as well as
+any one. I'll bet he wasn't hurt at the mine at all. That he was just
+pretending."
+
+"Uh," muttered Injun.
+
+"Mebbe they've stolen something," continued Whitey.
+
+"No, no come into the house, me hear 'em," said Injun. "In bunk house
+nothin' to steal."
+
+Suddenly Whitey thought of the negro cook, the only other man on the
+place, and demanded, "Where's Slim?"
+
+"Dunno," said Injun, and followed Whitey, who shoved his feet into a
+pair of slippers and ran hastily from the room.
+
+The bunk house was dark, the men having put out their lanterns before
+they rode away. Whitey groped for matches and, finding one, lighted a
+lamp. Slim was nowhere to be seen. Whitey looked at Injun in wonder and
+alarm. Injun looked at Whitey with no expression of any kind.
+
+"Mebbe they've killed Slim!" cried Whitey.
+
+"Mebbe," Injun agreed.
+
+Sitting Bull had silently followed the boys, and while they were
+investigating with their eyes, he was doing the same with his nose. His
+search had led him to a bunk, and with his fore paws on its edge, he was
+gazing into it, his head on one side and a very puzzled expression on
+his face. Bull rarely barked, except to express great joy, and he never
+was afraid. His nose had told him what was in that bunk; the curious
+movements of the object were what puzzled him. Attracted by the dog's
+interest, Injun and Whitey went to him.
+
+The bedding in the bunk heaved and rolled from side to side. Whitey
+reached over rather fearfully and pulled down the upper blankets, and
+Slim was brought to view. Not only was Slim bound and gagged, but a coat
+was tied around his head, to keep him from hearing. In fact, about the
+only thing to show that the man was Slim was his black hands.
+
+Injun and Whitey hastily removed the head covering and the gag, and
+Whitey eagerly asked what had happened. Slim was half choked and very
+indignant.
+
+"I dunno what happened to nobody, 'ceptin' to me," he gurgled. "Gimme a
+drink o' watah. I'se burnin' up."
+
+While Whitey held a cup of water to Slim's lips, Injun struggled with
+his bonds, and with great difficulty succeeded in releasing him. Whitey
+asked a hundred questions meanwhile, none of which Slim answered. He
+seemed entirely absorbed in his own troubles, and when he was free, he
+carefully felt himself all over.
+
+"Dis is fine foh mah misery, fine!" he said bitterly.
+
+As far as Whitey had ever been able to learn, a "misery" was a sort of
+rheumatism.
+
+"How is your misery?" he asked, despairing of getting him to talk about
+anything but himself.
+
+"Tehibul, tehibul," groaned Slim; "an' dey tie me wid a rawhide rope,
+too, dat jest eat into mah flesh." And Slim looked venomously down at
+the lariat that lay at his feet.
+
+"Who tied you?" Whitey inquired.
+
+"I dunno. Wen I wakes up dis yeah rag is bein' jammed into mah mouf, an'
+dis yeah coat bein' wrapped round mah haid, an' dat dere rope bein'
+twisted round mah body, till it cuts mah ahms an' legs somethin'
+scand'lus. I dunno who dey wuz, but dey suttinly wuz thorough," Slim
+admitted.
+
+"Then you didn't hear anything?" Whitey demanded.
+
+"Heah? I couldn't 'a' heard a elephant cough," Slim declared.
+
+"Well, Whiff and String Beans and Ham just rode away," said Whitey.
+
+"Dey did?" said Slim. Then an awful thought came to him, and he jumped
+to his feet. "Wheah's mah watch?" he cried. He hastily fumbled under the
+bedclothes, and brought to light an enormous, old-fashioned silver
+watch. Then he heaved a sigh of relief. "An' dat Ham gone, too! Now,
+how'm I goin' t' cook, wid dat misery wuss'n evah?"
+
+It was very plain to Whitey that all Slim could think about the affair
+was the way it concerned him personally. Also, there was no doubt in the
+boy's mind that the absent men were bent on mischief. Bill and the other
+cowboys were surely making a night of it at the Junction, in celebration
+of the gold shipment. Whatever was to be done in the matter Whitey and
+Injun would have to do. By this time Slim was busily rubbing some horse
+liniment on his arms and legs.
+
+"Injun and I will see what's to be done. You might as well go to sleep,"
+Whitey said to him.
+
+"Sleep! Ah couldn't sleep in Mistah Vanderbilt's bed."
+
+"Well, stay awake, then," said Whitey, as he left the bunk house,
+followed by Injun.
+
+In spite of Injun's belief that the men had not been in the ranch house,
+the boys took a look around, but nothing had been disturbed. Then, as
+they dressed, they talked things over. Whitey was not sorry that Bill
+Jordan was away. While not one to think ill of people, Whitey always had
+believed that String and Ham were queer, and the affairs of the night
+seemed to point to the truth of this. If Whitey could learn what sort of
+mischief the men were up to, it would be a feather in his cap, and it
+would give him great satisfaction to say "I told you so" to Bill, who
+always was so sure of himself. And if he and Injun could prevent the
+others from committing that same mischief, the boys would be something
+like heroes.
+
+As Whitey and Injun talked the matter over, Whitey reviewed what took
+place the night he overheard the whispered conversation in the bunk
+house.
+
+"They talked about the mine," he said to Injun, "and about meeting on a
+certain date. What day of the month is it?" he asked.
+
+By a miracle Injun happened to know the date, for John Big Moose had
+told him the day in September on which the ore was to be shipped, so
+Injun answered briefly, "Him thirty."
+
+"That was the date!" cried Whitey. "They said the thirtieth of
+September." Other scraps of the men's whispered talk began to come to
+Whitey's mind, and to have meaning. "They were to meet on that date, and
+they did. That's what String Beans was loafing around here for,
+pretending to be lame. And they rode south. Don't you see?"
+
+"Don't see nothin'," Injun answered.
+
+"Why," Whitey declared, jumping to his feet, "they've gone toward the
+railroad; toward the water tank, where all the trains stop. I believe
+they're going to hold up the gold shipment. Come on, Injun, let's get
+busy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOLUTION
+
+
+The moon was well down toward the western edge of the prairie when the
+boys rode away from the bunk house. They rode toward the south, in
+pursuit of the bandits, as they now called Whiff, String, and Ham.
+Whitey and Injun had settled on this course shortly after Whitey had
+decided that the men were intent on train robbery. There were several
+reasons for their choice.
+
+For one thing, it was too late to go and warn Bill and the other
+punchers at the Junction. And even if it were not, if they did that they
+would have to share with the ranch men the glory of the pursuit and
+possible capture of the bandits. It may have been rash of the boys, but
+after their former adventures they felt capable of taking care of three
+bandits by themselves--especially if they came on them unawares, which
+they intended to do. Had Bill been there, it isn't likely that he would
+have approved of their act, but with him away the boys could find
+plenty of reasons for doing what they wanted to do.
+
+Slim, the cook, had taken no interest in the affair. He was wrapped up
+in attending to his misery, and the boys left him in a bunk, soaked with
+liniment--which by rights was intended for a horse--and trying to sleep
+and forget his troubles.
+
+As the horses galloped over the rolling plains into the darkness of the
+south, the boys were thrilled by a glow of excitement. Each had his
+rifle hanging in a gun-boat from his saddle. The mystery of the night;
+the fresh, keen stirring of the September air; the spirit of adventure;
+the easy, swinging motion of the horses--all these made the night's
+hours worth living for.
+
+For a while, by the moon's light, Injun had easily been able to follow
+the tracks of the horses of the three men, and as they continued toward
+the south, Whitey felt sure that he had guessed correctly, so the horses
+were urged to a swifter pace. Little urging was necessary, however, as
+Whitey's "Monty" pony and Injun's pinto were fresh and seemed as eager
+for the chase as their masters.
+
+Whitey's plan for thwarting the bandits was simple. Before reaching the
+Junction, the boys were to branch off toward the east and intercept the
+train. They could stand on the track and swing a lantern, which Injun
+carried for the purpose. When the train came to a standstill, they could
+get aboard, and warn the train crew. It would be easy to recruit an
+armed force from among the passengers, for in those days, in the West,
+there were few men who went unarmed. And when the bandits attempted
+their hold-up, they would meet with a warm reception.
+
+The train left the Junction at six, and should reach the water tank
+about three-quarters of an hour later, though it often was late. As the
+boys had started from the ranch house at two, Whitey figured that they
+would have time enough, though none to waste.
+
+The hours could not be counted, but perhaps three had passed, and
+through the scented, velvety darkness there came a touch of gray in the
+east, which changed to pink, then to opal, as the coming sun tinged the
+low-lying clouds. The animal and bird life began to stir, preparing to
+greet the beauty of the dawn, or rather, to start on their affairs of
+the day, for it is likely that the denizens of the prairie had as little
+thought for the glory of the sunrise as had Injun and Whitey, whose
+minds were firmly fixed on train robbers.
+
+When the light was full, the boys drew up, and looked off toward the
+southwest. Whitey had been depending on Injun's never-failing sense of
+direction to carry them aright. This ability to point toward any point
+of the compass, in the dark, was one of Injun's gifts--though he didn't
+know what a compass was. And sure enough, away off there against the
+gray of the clouds was a line of high, tiny crosses, telegraph poles,
+near which stretched the tracks of the road.
+
+When he saw them, Whitey could not resist a whoop of joy. "If we ride
+straight for them, how far do you think we'll be from the water tank?"
+he asked.
+
+"Mebbe one mile, mebbe two," replied Injun, who seldom committed himself
+to an exact answer.
+
+"That's all right, come on!" cried Whitey, and they galloped straight
+for the railroad.
+
+When they reached the tracks, they dismounted and tied their ponies to
+neighboring telegraph poles, fearing the effect the noise of the train
+would have on the spirited animals. Then the boys went to the roadbed to
+await the coming of the train. The line stretched straight toward the
+west, until the rails seemed to join in the distance. But toward the
+east was a curve as the road approached a gully, at the bottom of which
+was a creek. It was from this creek that the water was drawn for the
+tank.
+
+The sunrise had seemed to promise a fair day, but the promise failed,
+for a mist was forming over the plains. The train was not in sight, and
+Whitey kneeled, and placed an ear to the track, knowing that he could
+detect the vibration caused by the train before it appeared.
+
+He rose and nodded his head. "I hear it," he said. For once Whitey had
+it on Injun. He knew about railroads and Injun didn't.
+
+"Light the lantern," said Whitey. Then he began to laugh.
+
+Injun gazed at the lantern, then at Whitey. He could see no cause for
+laughter.
+
+"I was wise when I suggested that lantern," said Whitey. "I never
+thought that it would be daylight, and its light wouldn't show."
+
+Injun almost smiled.
+
+"What we ought to have is a red flag," Whitey continued. "That's the
+proper thing to signal a train with in daytime."
+
+Injun grunted, and Whitey considered the matter. "I have it! Your
+shirt!" he cried. "It's pink, close enough to red. We'll wave that."
+
+Injun grunted again and looked doubtful. "Me get 'im back?" he asked.
+Injun didn't care any less for that shirt than he did for his pinto or
+his rifle--and he cared more for it than for his interest in the gold
+mine.
+
+"Sure, you'll get it back," said Whitey, and without a word Injun took
+off the shirt and handed it to Whitey.
+
+The boys gazed anxiously toward the west. Whitey thought of the three
+armed men, who now probably had handkerchiefs tied over their faces, and
+were lying in wait in the gully. Then of the oncoming train, with its
+unsuspecting passengers, and in the express car the bags of ore that
+were said to assay forty thousand dollars a ton. It wouldn't take much
+of _that_ to make it worth while for the bandits to hold up the
+shipment.
+
+Although the mist was getting thicker, it seemed singular that the train
+did not appear. The inaction of waiting was beginning to get on Whitey's
+nerves--and would have affected Injun's if he'd had any. At that, they
+had not been waiting very long, though they did not know it.
+
+"It must be getting near. I'll listen again," said Whitey.
+
+Whitey again placed his ear to the track, then looked up blankly. "It's
+stopped," he said, "Mebbe there's been an accident."
+
+Injun knew a good deal about plains and woods, and animals and birds,
+but was rather in awe of trains. He gazed at Whitey's face, which wore
+the same blank look as his own, and ventured no opinion. Two sharp,
+faint sounds came from the east--something between the crack of whips
+and the popping of corks. They were followed by three more.
+
+Injun knew about these. "Him shoot," he said.
+
+The startled expression on Whitey's face gradually gave way to one of
+understanding and disgust. "They came from the water tank," he said.
+"Don't you see? We're late, and what I heard was the train going the
+other way. Then it stopped, and they're holding it up." And Whitey sat
+down on one of the rails, thoroughly disgusted.
+
+For a while nothing was said. The disappointment was too great for
+words. The boys' chance for heroism had melted in the fog, which the
+mist had now become. Injun slowly put on his shirt. It was nothing but a
+garment now, no heroic rescue signal.
+
+"I'll bet that clock at the ranch was wrong. It always is. I might have
+known it," Whitey said dejectedly. The thought of the loss of the gold
+was forgotten in his disappointment at failure. "I hope no one was
+hurt--I mean none of the trainmen or passengers," he added. "But I
+guess not. Those bandits had the drop on them, and they couldn't have
+put up much of a fight. How do you suppose we heard those shots? We must
+be at least a mile from the tank.
+
+"Him fog," Injun answered. "Hear plain." And it is true that fog has a
+way of conveying sound.
+
+An idea brought Whitey to his feet with a leap. "What fools we are to be
+sitting here!" he cried. "We'll follow those robbers. The people on the
+train won't do that. They've no horses."
+
+Here, indeed, was a brilliant thought. The boys could track the bandits
+to their hiding-place, and possibly recover the ore. At least, they
+could return and report where the men had gone. There was a chance to
+distinguish themselves yet. In a moment they were mounted and dashing
+down along the track, toward the water tank.
+
+Presently a shrill whistle was followed by the faint rumbling of the
+train as it resumed its way. "See?" yelled Whitey. "The train's just
+starting. We won't be very late, and the men's tracks will be plain.
+Gee! I hope it doesn't rain."
+
+A few minutes' ride brought the boys to the deserted water tank. They
+dismounted to pick up the trail of the robbers. Near the tank, where the
+express car must have stood, were the traces of many feet. There were
+others leading from the cars in the rear. Noting these, Whitey said:
+"Mebbe they held up the passengers, too. It's likely that they would."
+
+But, singularly enough, most of these tracks led on toward the high
+bridge which spanned the gully. The boys followed them curiously, and
+when they reached the bridge Injun stopped.
+
+"Huh! Go back again, too," he muttered. And sure enough in the maze of
+footprints many seemed to lead back toward the water tank.
+
+"Why do you s'pose they went to the bridge? Prob'ly to see if it was
+safe; that the robbers hadn't damaged it," Whitey said.
+
+"Mebbe," said Injun, who was figuring things out in his own way and
+seldom spoke until he had them figured.
+
+From the scramble of footprints near the tank, Injun picked out those
+of three pairs that diverged from the mass. Injun traced these back
+toward the gully. Two of the tracks were made by ordinary boots, the
+other by high-heeled cowboy boots. Whitey left this part of the chase
+entirely to Injun, and followed, leading the ponies.
+
+
+Presently Monty gave voice to a shrill neigh, and to Whitey's surprise
+it was answered from the gully. "Look out!" Whitey called softly to
+Injun. "They haven't gone. There's one of their horses."
+
+But to Whitey's further surprise Injun paid no heed, but kept calmly on
+his way, and there was nothing for Whitey to do but to follow. The
+gully, or little canyon, was about fifty feet deep, and the creek that
+ran through it about that many feet wide. At the lowest part, near the
+stream, Injun paused.
+
+"Where are their horses?" Whitey whispered.
+
+"No tied here," Injun answered, which was plainer to see than his reason
+for knowing that they were not.
+
+Whitey was now greatly puzzled and, he had to confess to himself, not a
+little alarmed. But as the next impatient question was on his lips he
+stopped short. A cool breeze had sprung up, and was wafting aside the
+cloud-like fog. A rift in the fog disclosed a portion of the trestle
+bridge. And, hanging from it, with noosed lariats around their necks,
+were three limp, ghastly figures.
+
+In horror, Whitey clutched Injun's arm, and gasped, "The bandits!"
+
+Injun looked stolidly at the horrible sight, as for thousands of years
+his people had looked on death. "Uh," he said and pointed toward the
+water tank. "Walk marks go that way. No come back."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BUNK-HOUSE TALK
+
+
+About noon that day two sad boys rode into the Bar O Ranch, leading
+three tired-looking broncos, who had been put through some severe paces
+since early morning. One of the boys and all the horses were hungry, but
+the other boy had little desire for food. Whitey had been up against
+some rough adventures in the West. This was his first taste of the
+tragedy that was frequent, and often necessary in regulating the affairs
+of those days.
+
+And while Whitey was far from being a coward, as you know, the sight he
+had witnessed had left him a bit shaken. He and Injun unsaddled the
+ponies and horses, put them in the corral, and made their way to the
+ranch house. Bill Jordan and John Big Moose were in the living-room.
+Bill was getting the big Indian to help him with his accounts, which
+always were a puzzle to him. And this morning, after his night of
+merriment at the Junction, Bill was less inclined toward figures than
+usual.
+
+"Well, well," said John Big Moose, as the boys entered the room. "You
+two seem to have extended your holiday to the next morning."
+
+"You look kinda shaky, Whitey," said Bill "You been makin' a night of
+it, too?"
+
+Without further questioning Whitey sat down and told the story of the
+adventure, from the boys' awakening to their finding the bodies of the
+three men hanging from the railroad bridge.
+
+"So you were right about String an' Ham's bein' crooks," Bill said, when
+the boy had finished.
+
+"Yes, but even so, it seems terrible for them to die that way," Whitey
+replied.
+
+"The express folks is tired o' havin' their cars robbed, an' if you'd
+known what I found out at the Junction, you might o' saved yourself some
+trouble," said Bill. "They was a shipment of a hundred thousand dollars
+in gold in that there car, an' they was six fellers went along to
+pertect it. Not detectives, or nothin', just fellers that was hired, an'
+was dyin' for excitement. I reck'n some o' the passengers was as tired
+o' bein' held up as those fellers was pinin' for excitement, an' when
+String an' Ham an' Whiff made their poor little play, they musta thought
+they'd struck a hornet's nest."
+
+"But to hang them," Whitey protested. "Why didn't they shoot them, if
+they had to kill them?"
+
+"Well, ye see hangin' makes it look worse for the next fellers what
+thinks o' holdin' up a train," said Bill. "They'd stole three o' our
+hosses, anyway, an' that's a hangin' offense."
+
+But Whitey was not inclined to argue about the justice or injustice of
+the lynching. He went away with Injun, and tried to eat. And he tried,
+too, to forget the horror of the scene at the bridge. But all his life
+long he never quite succeeded in doing that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And that night, in the bunk house, the talk was all about the tragedy of
+the morning. Bill Jordan and four of the cowboys were there, to say
+nothing of Slim, the cook. Slim had another grievance, for, now that Ham
+had gone, he was again forced to cook for the men, misery or no misery.
+
+Whitey loved to sit in the long, half-lighted room, and listen to the
+talk and yarns of the cowboys, for, "boys" they were called, whether
+they were eighteen or fifty, and in many ways boys they seemed to have
+remained.
+
+They had threshed over the lynching. Whitey had answered a thousand
+questions about his experiences, had been praised and blamed with equal
+frankness, and now he was glad to see that the subject was to be
+dropped. For it had reminded Buck Higgins of lariats and their merits,
+especially for hanging men.
+
+"For all-round use give me a braided linen," said Buck.
+
+He was speaking of a rope that is made as its name suggests, and is very
+strong. If you have ever been in the West, you probably have seen a
+mounted cowboy carrying one of these thin but strong ropes coiled at the
+horn of his saddle, or dragging on the ground behind him to take the
+kinks out of it.
+
+"Rawhide's purty good," suggested Shorty Palmer.
+
+"Yes, but braided linen for me," Buck declared. "It's got any other
+kind o' rope beat a mile for strength."
+
+"Ever get stretched with one?" Jim Walker asked, with interest.
+
+"Nope," Buck replied, "but I seen other fellers that did."
+
+"G'wan, spill your yarn about it," said Shorty. "We don't care whether
+it's true or not."
+
+Buck was inclined to be offended. "Say, you all never heard me tell
+nothin' but th' truth," he snorted.
+
+"Sure, we didn't," said Jim. "Leastways, your yarns is told about places
+so far away that we has t' take 'em as true, not knowin' any one to call
+on for t' verify 'em."
+
+"Well, if they're made up, you c'n make up just as good ones
+yourselves," said Buck, and he lapsed into silence.
+
+"Your tale interests me strangely," said Bill. "Get to it. You started
+fine."
+
+"He didn't start at all," Jim said.
+
+"That's what Bill means," explained Shorty.
+
+"Aw, let him tell th' story," said Charlie Bassett. "You fellers that
+ain't liars yourselves is all jealous."
+
+Whitey would have thought that the tale was to go untold had he not
+known that every story of Buck's met with this sort of reception, and
+that nothing short of an earthquake could keep him from talking.
+
+"Well, just to show you fellers you can't queer me, I _will_ tell about
+this here lynchin'," Buck declared, after a pause.
+
+"'Twas back in Wyomin', 'bout five years ago," Buck began, "an' I was
+workin' for the Lazy I. An' rustlers was good an' plenty. An' every one
+knows that there ain't on easier brand to cover up than a lazy I. It was
+got up by old man Innes, what owned th' ranch, an' lived in Boston, an'
+was so honest an' unsuspectin' that he'd 'a' trusted Slim, here, with a
+lead nickel."
+
+Fortunately Slim was asleep, and did not hear this reflection on his
+character, so Buck continued:
+
+"Well, our stock had been disappearin' in bunches, an' purty soon them
+bunches begins t' seem more like herds, an' somethin' had t' be did,
+an' Squeak Gordon, th' manager, wa'n't no man for th' job."
+
+"Squeak!" interrupted Jim. "That's a fine name for a white man."
+
+"'Count of his voice," Buck explained briefly, and went on. "So it was
+up t' Lem Fisher, th' foreman, an' him an' 'bout seven punchers,
+includin' me, got th' job. 'Course, we had some idea of where them
+steers was goin', an' what brands was goin' over ours, but we was
+wantin' somethin' pos'tive before we c'd get busy.
+
+"I started talkin' 'bout braided linen ropes, not 'bout cattle thieves,
+so they's no use tellin' you of all th' figurin', an' trailin', an' hard
+ridin' we did. You know old Mr. Shakespeare sez that levity's th' soul
+o' wit."
+
+"Brevity," corrected Whitey.
+
+"What's the difference?" demanded Shorty. "Buck don't know what either
+o' them words means."
+
+"Neither do you," retorted Buck.
+
+"Anyway, they ain't got nothin' t' do with braided linen ropes. G'wan,"
+commanded Bill.
+
+"Well," resumed Buck, "one noon, in th' foothills, we come on what we
+was after, an' we did some stalkin' t' do it. We ketched three guys
+red-handed. They was artistic-like re-brandin' some of our calves so's
+Lazy I'd read Circle W. 'Course, they wa'n't but one thing t' do with
+them fellers, an' we perceeds to do it. But unfortunate enough they
+wa'n't a tree within miles of that there spot. It'd seem as though
+nature hadn't figured on no rus'lers conductin' bizness there, an'
+gettin' caught.
+
+"We felt purty bad about that, an' knowin' those fellers as we did made
+us feel worse. They sure didn't deserve shootin'. Then Lem Fisher, who
+always was handy with his memory, happens t' think of a canyon 'bout
+three mile away, with a bridge over it. Sort o' like that place at the
+water tank, where them boys was strung up this mornin', only deeper, an'
+th' stream under it swifter an' rockier.
+
+"Well, we conducts our three friends to this here canyon. They draw lots
+t' see who goes first, an' a feller named Red Mike wins--- or loses,
+rather--as he gets number one. The noose of one of these common manilas
+is attached to Mike's neck, th' other end is fastened to th' bridge,
+an' he's dropped over.
+
+"An' would you b'lieve it? When Mike comes to the end of that there rope
+with a jerk, th' rope breaks, an' Mike goes cavortin' down that swift
+stream, at th' rate of 'bout thirty miles an hour, bumpin' against th'
+rocks an' everythin'. An' he sure must 'a' disliked that, for he hated
+water.
+
+"The next feller on th' programmy was called 'Sure Thing' Jones. You c'n
+imagine why he was called that. He wouldn't even risk bein' honest.
+Well, Sure Thing watches perceedin's with a good deal of interest, an'
+he sees Mike disappear 'round a bend of them rapids, his arms an' legs
+wavin' somewhat wild.
+
+"Then Sure Thing goes up to Lem, an' he sez, 'Lem, have you got a
+braided linen rope in the outfit?'
+
+"'Sure,' says Lem. 'Why?'
+
+"'It's my turn next, an' I wish you'd use it on me,' says Sure Thing.
+'Ye see what happened t' Mike, an' I don't want t' take no chances. You
+know I can't swim.'"
+
+"Just the same," said Bill Jordan, determined to have the last word,
+"with all your advertisin' for braided linen ropes, I'll take old maguey
+for mine, swimmin' or no swimmin'."
+
+In the midst of the laugh which had followed Buck's grim tale, Sitting
+Bull, who had been lying near Whitey, rose to a sitting posture, his
+cave-like mouth open wide and raised at the corners, his eyes twinkling.
+
+"See Bull!" Bill Jordan cried delightedly. "He's laughin' at Buck's
+story yet. He's sure got a sense o' humor, that dog. He's just about
+human."
+
+Bull's expression raised another laugh. All the men liked him, but Bill
+was his especial admirer, and loved to dwell on Bull's wonderful
+intelligence and tell stories about it.
+
+"Me for bed," said Jim Walker. "After that jamboree las' night I feel's
+though I c'd sleep a month."
+
+"Wait a minute till I tell you 'bout me havin' Bull down t' th' Junction
+las' week, an' him chasin' th' fox," Bill said.
+
+"Tell nothin'," Jim answered. "Me for th' hay."
+
+"Aw, g'wan," protested Bill. "'Twon't take a minute, an' you got all
+'ternity t' sleep in, as the poet says."
+
+"An' I c'n use it," Jim yawned; "but cut loose, an' make it short."
+
+"Well," Bill began, "las' week Thursday I was goin' down t' th' Junction
+for feed, an' I takes Bull along. You know how he likes t' ride in a
+wagon? 'S almost human. Why, that there animal--"
+
+"Here, cut out them side comments," commanded Jim. "We know how smart
+that dog is, without your tellin' us any further. Get down t' bed rock!"
+
+"Well," Bill continued, "when we gets t' th' store, an' Al Strong's
+nigger's loadin' th' feed in th' wagon, I allows t' take Bull for a
+little stroll 'round, so's he c'n stretch his legs. So I ties a halter
+t' his collar an' starts out. I isn't exactly leadin' Bull, he's sort o'
+leadin' me, for you all know how strong he is. But we sure needs th'
+halter t' make Bull keep th' peace. He's had more fights at that there
+Junction! Say, he's the fightenist dog"--a warning look from Jim kept
+Bill to the thread of his story.
+
+"We passes th' homes of all Bull's live enemies, an' th' graves of his
+dead ones, an' gets to a rock, where we c'n sit an' study natur' a bit,
+before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o'
+Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I
+happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I
+looks up, he's plumb absent.
+
+"I ain't worried none, till I happens t' think we was only 'bout a
+quarter mile from that Englishman, Barclay's, place, what has that pack
+o' wolf-hounds that he hunts with. Fox-huntin' he calls it, though what
+he mostly chases is coyotes. Ain't it funny how when an Englishman comes
+t' this country he brings his habits with him, or twists ours aroun' t'
+fit his'n?"
+
+"Say," demanded Jim. "Is this a yarn 'bout a bulldog or a lecture on
+them foreign habits? 'Cause if it's that last, I--"
+
+"Well, anyway," Bill interrupted hastily, "I looks down th' road, an'
+Bull's beatin' it hot foot for that Barclay's place, an' I c'n see what
+happens if he meets up with them hounds. So I follers, swift's I can,
+spillin' some language to Bull--prayers, an' warnin's an' such. But
+before I gets there, I sees that pack o' hounds swarm over th' fence
+into th' road, an' purty soon, there is Bull, right in their midst, as
+th' feller says.
+
+"For th' rest of th' way I does nothin' but pray, an' see visions of th'
+biggest dog fight that ever hit Montana, but I keeps movin' rapid, an'
+when I gets on th' spot, there's Bull, right in th' middle of th' pack.
+Now all th' tails is waggin', an' that looks purty good, till I comes t'
+think that Bull always wags his tail before he goes into battle, 'cause
+he loves to fight so. An' all them hounds is sniffin' 'round, right
+pert, an' Bull is purty cocky, an' when I gets close enough, I hears
+Bull say:
+
+"'Hello, d'ye want t' fight?'
+
+"'Fight, no,' says one of th' hounds. 'We're goin' to chase a fox. D'ye
+want t' go?'
+
+"'Sure,' says Bull.
+
+"An' with that th' whole pack o' 'em leaps over a fence, an' beats it
+off toward th' hills.
+
+"Well, Bull don't even hesitate. He leaps at that there rail fence an'
+lands against it with his head, plunk--an' caroms back into th' road. He
+leaps again, an' comes back th' same way, but at th' third jump he goes
+through a wider place in th' rails, an' lands on th' other side o' the
+fence, on that there same head. Then he scrambles to his feet, an'
+starts off after them hounds.
+
+"Now, you all know that a bulldog ain't built for speed, he's built for
+war. In th' first place, his fore legs is so far apart they's almost
+strangers, an' his hind legs is too short, an' th' rest of him's too
+heavy for all of 'em. But Bull keeps goin', industr'ous. An' he goes so
+fast that 'bout every thirty yards he stumbles, an' falls on his face,
+an' his head plows up large chunks of Montana soil.
+
+"By this time them wolf-fox-hounds has flown into them hills, they
+touchin' th' ground 'bout every hunderd feet. An' Bull ain't one to let
+no hounds see him quit, an' he plows along, till at last he gets t' them
+hills an' is lost t' sight but t' mem'ry dear. Well, I goes back t' that
+rock, an' sits down, sad-like, thinkin' mebbe I never will see Bull
+again.
+
+"An' p'r'aps it's an hour goes by, when I hears somethin' that sounds
+like a engine puffin' strong on a upgrade, an' up over one of them
+hummocks comes Bull, draggin' himself along like he has flatirons tied
+t' his feet. An' he's all decorated with real estate, an' burrs, an'
+everythin' loose what would stick to him. An' when he gets to where I
+sits, he flops down flat on his back. He sure is exhausted; even his
+paws is limp. But one of his eyes seems t' hold a spark o' life, an' he
+fixes that on me. An' he asks, weak-like:
+
+"'Say, Bill, what in tarnation is a fox?'"
+
+The company looked at Bill fixedly; not reproachfully, but fixedly. Then
+slowly the men began to take off their clothes, with the idea of turning
+in. And Bill Jordan and Whitey started for the ranch house, for the same
+purpose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BOOTS
+
+
+The green of the prairie had given way to brown, and the brown to white,
+which rolled off to the sky-line and the hills in dazzling billows, in
+the cold light of the sun. For winter had the Bar O in its grip. And
+though winter was no gentle thing in Montana, there was a tingle in the
+cold, sharp air that made a boy want to whoop and to get on his
+snowshoes and go after rabbits, which wise old Nature had also turned
+white, so that they could blend in with the color of the landscape and
+the better avoid their enemies. Not that Injun ever whooped; he never
+did. His people always had reserved that form of expression for warlike
+purposes.
+
+There were many things the boys could do in winter, but these were
+forgotten for a time by Whitey, for a great event was about to take
+place. His father was to return to the ranch from New York, stopping
+over at St. Paul, on his way, to buy supplies. And as the snow was not
+too deep for sleighing, Whitey drove down to the Junction, with Bill
+Jordan, to meet Mr. Sherwood. And outside Whitey was all wrapped up in a
+buffalo coat, and inside he was so warm with excitement that the coat
+seemed hardly necessary.
+
+Now, of course, Whitey was awfully glad to see his father, and to hear
+the news about his mother and sisters, and about Tom Johnson, and George
+and Bobby Smith, and others of his boy friends. But after he had heard
+all this there was another thing that naturally came to his mind. Mr.
+Sherwood would not come back to the ranch without bringing Whitey some
+sort of present, and his father was singularly silent about what this
+was. In fact, he had not said anything about it at all. And it was after
+supper, and Mr. Sherwood was unpacking his trunk, when he rather
+carelessly said, "Oh, here's something I brought for you," and gave
+Whitey a parcel.
+
+Whitey thanked his father, and undid the parcel, and he dropped the
+things that were in it, and his eyes popped out, and for a moment he
+could hardly breathe, he was so excited, for they were Boots!
+
+And when Whitey recovered a bit he rushed over and actually hugged his
+father.
+
+Perhaps you would like to know why a pair of boots would cause all this
+feeling in Whitey. For one thing, it was because he never had owned any.
+In New York all the boys wore shoes, and when Whitey had come to the
+ranch he had worn them, too, until the soles of his feet had become hard
+enough, like Injun's, for him to go barefoot, which he delighted in
+doing.
+
+But in the late fall, and the spring, when it was colder, he again
+followed Injun's lead, and wore moccasins. Buckskin moccasins, with
+little bead decorations. In the cold of winter, when the snow was deep,
+and when the big thaws came, Whitey wore heavy, moccasin-like
+muck-lucks, made of buckskin, which laced high, nearly to his knees, and
+over the tops of which hung the tops of heavy, woolen socks.
+
+These comprised Injun and Whitey's footwear for the seasons. But there
+was one thing that Whitey envied the cowboys on the ranch their boots.
+For you must know that there are two things on which a puncher spends
+his money extravagantly--his boots and his saddle. Unless he happens to
+be a Mexican--then he spends it on his hat, too.
+
+So the dream of Whitey's life, the pinnacle of his ambition, the idea of
+the tip-top of ecstatic happiness that lived in his brain
+was--Boots. And now he had them. And they were beauties; with
+tops of soft leather with fancy stitching, inlaid with white enameled
+leather, and high heels, that a fellow could dig into the ground when he
+was roping a horse. In short, they were regular boots, that any one
+might be proud of. And they had been made to order for Whitey!
+
+It would be useless to attempt a description of how Whitey felt about
+those boots. Shakespeare would have to come back to life to do that, and
+I doubt if he could have done it. I _know_ that Bacon could not.
+Whitey's first impulse was to put the boots on, and go out and show them
+to all the men in the bunk house. His next impulse was to save the
+surprise till morning, when the decorations on the boots would show
+better.
+
+But he put them on. And after his father had finished unpacking, Whitey
+sat in the living-room with him, and it is to be feared that he listened
+rather absent-mindedly to his father's talk. He would stretch out his
+legs and admire the boots. Then he would twist his feet about so that he
+could get a good view of the high heels. Then he would double up his
+knees, and fairly hug the boots. And if Mr. Sherwood noticed all this he
+gave no sign. Probably he remembered the day he had his first pair of
+boots. And that night, though Whitey did not sleep in the boots, he took
+them to bed with him.
+
+In the morning Whitey restrained his impatience until breakfast-time,
+then strolled down to the bunk house, wearing the boots. Several of the
+men were there, just finishing the meal, and rolling their
+after-breakfast cigarettes. Whitey sat down, sort of offhand and
+careless-like, and to his pained surprise, no one noticed the boots.
+Then he crossed his legs and leaned back, with his hands clasped behind
+his head--and Buck Higgins noticed them.
+
+And Whitey certainly was gratified, for they attracted a great deal of
+admiration and praise, and there was much discussion about them, and
+feeling of the leather, and estimating how much they cost. After a while
+Injun arrived. Now, Injun did not care about boots, though he might have
+liked a pair had they been made of pink leather. But even Injun was
+moved to admiration by these boots.
+
+Then Whitey strutted around the ranch buildings and corrals for a while,
+and the milch cows, and the horses and the pigs--all the stock, in
+fact--had a good look at the boots. And Sitting Bull admired them so
+much that he wanted to lick them, but of course that wouldn't do.
+
+Bill Jordan had an errand at the Junction and he drove Whitey and Injun
+over with him. Al Strong's store was also the postoffice, and every man,
+woman, and child that happened to be there at mail-time had a fine view
+of Whitey's boots. That night, when Whitey went to bed, he was quite
+tired from exhibiting them.
+
+The next day Whitey figured that about every human being and animal in
+the neighborhood had seen his boots. Then he happened to think of the
+Indians fishing on the river. I say _on_ the river, for it was frozen
+over, with its first solid covering of ice. Now, the Indians never fish
+in the summer-time. Few white people know about it, but the Indians
+don't like to fish. They only eat fish when they can't hunt much. When
+the Indian goes into camp for the winter, he has his provisions all
+stacked to carry him through, but to be sure that these provisions will
+hold out, he will eat just a little fish.
+
+And this is the Indian's mode of fishing. He puts up a tepee right out
+on the ice, and puts a blanket inside the tepee. Then he cuts a hole in
+the ice, and lies down on the blanket and industriously watches the
+hole. You know that fish are very inquisitive, and when Mr. Inquiring
+Fish comes along to see about that hole, Mr. Indian spears him just back
+of the head, pulls him out, and has fried fish for supper.
+
+When Whitey beat it down to the river, to show his boots to a new
+audience, he was followed by Injun and Sitting Bull. Trouble was
+following, too,--Harrowing Trouble,--but Whitey didn't know it. On the
+frozen river were about a dozen tepees, standing up something like big
+stacks of cornstalks on a field of frosted glass. So there probably were
+about a dozen Indians, lying on their stomachs, watching as many holes
+in the ice.
+
+There was not one of those Indians that Whitey thought should miss
+seeing those boots. In the first tepee his reception was very
+gratifying. Little Eagle was the owner's name, and _he_ didn't care much
+about boots, but the decorations on these pleased his taste for the
+gaudy, and his eyes sparkled as he grunted his praise.
+
+So it went around the little fishing village, until Whitey entered about
+the eighth tepee, and that was where Trouble was right next to him.
+Inside the tent it was dark. And Whitey didn't fall into the hole in the
+ice--he walked into it. His life was not in danger, because he didn't
+mind a little cold water, and the Indian lying there on his stomach,
+with his eyes accustomed to the darkness, could see, and he quickly
+grabbed Whitey by the shoulders and yanked him out--but, oh! the boots!
+
+They were crinkled and soaked and water-logged and shrunken. And it took
+six Indians to get them off, two pulling on each boot, and two to hold
+Whitey. And when they were off, Whitey borrowed a pair of moccasins, and
+raced to the ranch house, with Injun and Sitting Bull.
+
+Now, in the living-room of the Bar O ranch house in winter--and in every
+other ranch house in that part of the country--was a big stove that held
+a stick of cordwood three feet long. In fact, it held four or five such
+sticks of cordwood, which, you can imagine, made a good fire. And
+straight to this fire went Whitey. He was wet, and he was ashamed. And
+he put the boots under the stove to dry, without anybody's seeing him.
+And he didn't say anything to his father about it, because he was
+ashamed. And he went to bed without saying anything about it.
+
+In the morning Whitey was up with the sun, and went to get his boots.
+And, oh, ye gods! Why didn't the heavens fall? What once was a pair of
+proud boots, looked like two little, brown wrinkled apples! It was a
+tragedy in six acts. It was worse than that, for one can find words for
+a tragedy. But why dwell on it?
+
+And while Whitey was getting the worst of the first, horrible shock, his
+father came into the living-room, and not knowing why, Whitey ran, and
+his father, not knowing why, I suspect, ran after him. Whitey was fleet
+of foot, and much smaller than his father, so he could make the stairs
+better. And he ran up and down and around, now slamming this door, and
+now slamming that one.
+
+And Whitey's father began to get angry. But Whitey had become a frontier
+boy, and accustomed to standing his ground in the face of a superior
+enemy--at least, when he couldn't run any farther. When he was finally
+run down, he backed into a corner, lifted his fists to the proper angle,
+and, in this boyish fighting attitude, said to his big, strong,
+wonderful dad, "Don't you hit me!"
+
+If it hadn't been for his father's strong sense of humor, Whitey
+probably would have been in for a sound trimming. As it was, his father
+paused and looked at him sternly; then his piercing blue eyes began to
+soften, and signs of his sense of humor began to appear about his mouth.
+And he turned on his heel, and walked away, leaving Whitey to his grief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+EDUCATION AND OTHER THINGS
+
+
+Winter dragged coldly by, saddened by the lessons of John Big Moose, and
+brightened by an occasional hunting trip the boys took to the mountains.
+Sitting Bull did not seem to justify Whitey's first idea of him; that he
+was a magnet for excitement. Apparently Bull was satisfied to lie by the
+big living-room stove and sleep, except when the boys were going for
+game. Then he was eager to go.
+
+"That there dog is like some folks," declared Bill Jordan. "He's
+powerful smart, but he's got a lot o' false idees 'bout himself. He
+ain't built for huntin' no more'n he is for runnin'. Why don't you take
+him along onc't, an' show him his mistake?"
+
+So one day when the snow was light, and snowshoes were not needed, Injun
+and Whitey took Bull to the hills with them, and he was mad with
+delight. But all he did was to rush excitedly about and frighten the
+game, except once, when Whitey had a good but hard shot at a rabbit.
+Then Bull got between Whitey's legs and tripped him up, so that Whitey
+missed the shot.
+
+The boys came back without any game, and apparently without convincing
+Bull that he was no hunter, for the next time they started he was just
+as eager to go as before.
+
+"You thought he'd be cured of wanting to hunt, but he isn't," Whitey
+said reproachfully to Bill Jordan. "I don't think he's so smart, after
+all."
+
+"Smart!" exclaimed Bill. "Why, he's just nachally too clever t' give up.
+He'd keep on tryin' till he did b'come a great hunter."
+
+This was the usual satisfaction Whitey got out of Bill's arguments, but
+Bull went hunting no more.
+
+One of the boys' other diversions had to do with a Chinaman named Wong
+Lee. Wong had succeeded the colored man, Slim, as cook at the Bar O.
+Slim had thought the Montana winter too severe for his miseries, and had
+gone South for good, and as Wong was a much better cook, no one felt
+sorry. Wong was placid, industrious, and very amiable, but beneath all
+this he must have had nerves, as I suppose Chinamen have, in common with
+other people.
+
+He slept in a shack near the bunk house, and carried his industry so far
+that at night he would do all the washing that was to be done at the
+ranch house, for which he was paid extra. And here was the boys' chance.
+Injun was like most other boys when it came to mischief, and Whitey
+taught him the ancient game of tick-tack. In case you don't know it,
+I'll tell you how it's done.
+
+To make a tick-tack get a long string, the longer the better; meaning
+the longer the safer. Then get a small fish-hook, and tie it to the end
+of your string, and tie a little stone about eight inches below your
+fish-hook. Select a dark night and the window of the person whose nerves
+you wish to disturb. Then sneak up, and fasten the fish-hook to one of
+the cross pieces of the window. Then go to the end of your line, and
+hide behind a wagon or a post. Pull your string, and "tick-tack" goes
+the stone on the window.
+
+Wong Lee took it all in good part. He had been a boy once, himself,
+away off in China. And though Wong Lee never had played tick-tack, he
+probably had played other, Chinese boy games that Injun and Whitey would
+have been glad to know about, and Wong Lee was of such a disposition
+that he probably would have told them all about it, had he and the boys
+come to an understanding in the matter.
+
+Instead of that, when that irritating little sound got on his Chinese
+nerves, Wong Lee would chase out in answer to the tick-tack, with his
+pigtail standing straight out in the wind, and pursue the boys from
+cover to cover. But he was game, and though he must have known who his
+tormentors were, he never reported them to Mr. Sherwood or to Bill
+Jordan.
+
+And so, with one thing and another, the winter finally merged into
+spring, the soft rains melting away the snow, and giving the brown earth
+its chance to turn to tender green. And the swollen river was dotted
+with cakes of ice, among which the wild ducks dropped on their way South
+where, it was to be hoped, Slim had recovered from his miseries. And, as
+everybody knows, spring is a time that stirs boys and young men to
+unrest.
+
+Perhaps you have noticed that when a fellow is just swelling up with a
+desire to do something big in the world, some trifling little thing
+comes along and knocks his ambition to splinters. When he is burning to
+kill a bear, he has to go on an errand for his mother--or something like
+that. Well, here was Whitey, with this spring feeling inciting him to
+great deeds, instead of making him lazy, as it does some people, and he
+went to the bunk house, followed by Sitting Bull. And there was Bill
+Jordan, with a letter in his hand, and something on his mind that he was
+dying to tell, but would rather die than not take his time about
+telling.
+
+So Bill proceeded to peddle out his news, a bit at a time. "John Big
+Moose's goin' t' New York," was the first thing Bill said.
+
+"Hooray!" Whitey cried.
+
+"That's a fine way t' take th' news that you're goin' t' lose your dear
+teacher," Bill said reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, of course I'm sorry that John is going away, but just think,
+there'll be no more lessons," Whitey answered.
+
+"O' course," Bill said, and he looked at the boy in a very peculiar way.
+
+But Whitey was too excited to notice the look. "What's John going for?"
+he asked.
+
+"Your father's sent for him," answered Bill. Mr. Sherwood's business had
+again taken him to the big city. "An' now that this here gold mine's
+turnin' out so well," Bill continued, "an' John has some money, your
+father don't think it's fair t' keep him here teachin' a couple o' kids,
+when there's a big openin' for John right there in New York. An' it
+seems your father's got John some job as a chemist, though goin' into a
+drug store don't seem no big openin' t' me," Bill added thoughtfully.
+
+"John isn't going to be a drug clerk," Whitey said, disgusted at Bill's
+ignorance. Whitey knew something of the big Indian's ambitions, having
+heard him discuss them with Mr. Sherwood. "Father probably has heard of
+an opening in some college, where John can become an instructor in
+chemistry."
+
+Bill didn't know what that meant, either, but, not wishing to display
+his ignorance further, he said hastily, "Oh, that's diff'runt."
+
+"When's John going?" demanded Whitey.
+
+"Right off. Gonna drive him t' th' Junction to-day."
+
+"Then no more lessons!" cried Whitey. "We'll be off for a hunting trip.
+I hear Moose Lake is just loaded with wild geese. Where's Injun? I must
+run and tell him."
+
+"Wait a minit," cautioned Bill. "There's somethin' more. But first I
+must tell you how s'prised an' pained you make me by showin' this here
+dislike for learnin'."
+
+"Surprised nothing," retorted Whitey. "Did you like it when you were a
+kid?"
+
+"Nope," Bill confessed promptly. "But I'm dern sorry I didn't, now. You
+ain't got no idea what a handicap a feller's under what ain't got no
+eddication."
+
+Whitey thought that what Bill had just said had given him a pretty good
+idea of the handicap, but he was wise enough to say nothing. Bill sat
+down and began to roll a cigarette.
+
+"O' course, they's a lot of things in life that you can't learn outa
+books," Bill said. "But th' feller with th' book-learnin' generally has
+th' upper hand. There's one thing books never rightly teached no boy,
+an' that's lookin' ahead. I've often wondered why they didn't pay more
+'tention t' that, but mostly a boy has t' learn it for himself. If he
+happens t' be born in the wilderness he just nach'lly has t' learn it,
+or I reckon he'd die."
+
+Whitey fidgeted about, knowing that Bill was on one of his favorite
+topics, and wouldn't stop and tell the rest of his news until he was run
+down.
+
+"Take Injun, f'r instance," Bill went on. "He's got a way o' figurin'
+out things that's wonderful, an' once in a while that way o' figurin'
+has saved his life. They's a highbrow word for that stuff, an' it's
+'observation.' You just stick to that observation thing, kid, an' you'll
+find it a heap o' use t' you in this country."
+
+Whitey knew of Injun's wonderful powers of observation which he had
+often shown on the trail, but could not help thinking that some of his
+red friend's cleverness was due to the lore inherited from his Indian
+ancestors, with their knowledge of the wild and of the habits of its
+beasts and birds. But Bill droned on while Whitey squirmed with
+impatience, and presently a welcome interruption came in the person of
+Shorty Palmer, who dashed into the room.
+
+"Say, Bill," Shorty cried, "you got th' new time-table?"
+
+"Sure," said Bill. "Last time I was to the Junction."
+
+"Well, didn't you notice that th' Eastern Express leaves two hours
+earlier now?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It does, an' you'll have t' burn up th' prairie t' make it, an' Buck's
+got th' team all hitched, an' John Big Moose's just throwin' things into
+his trunk, an' you'd best get a move on."
+
+"Jumpin' garter snakes!" cried Bill. "I never--"
+
+"Oh," Whitey interrupted, "this observation thing is great stuff. And
+you just stick to it, and--"
+
+"Shucks, I ain't got no time t' argue with kids," said Bill, and
+started for the door.
+
+"Hold on," called Whitey. "What was that other news you were going to
+tell me?"
+
+"Nothin'," said Bill, "'cept your father writes that now John Big Moose
+is goin', you an' Injun'll have t' go t' school at th' Forks," and he
+hurried from the bunk house, followed by Shorty.
+
+Whitey sank down on a stool in despair. Gone were the dreams of
+adventure, of wild geese and bears just wakening from their winter's
+sleep. School! And with those few kids at the Forks!
+
+"What's the use of anything?" Whitey muttered dejectedly.
+
+And Bull, who at times was very sympathetic, looked up at him as much as
+to say, "Nothing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+INJUN TALKS
+
+
+That night, in the bunk house, Bill Jordan was holding forth to a select
+few--Jim Walker, Charlie Bassett, Buck Higgins, and Shorty Palmer; all
+old friends and true, who could dispute and quarrel with one another
+without the serious results that would have attended such action on the
+part of strangers.
+
+"Talkin' 'bout Injuns," said Bill, "all I don't know 'bout 'em you c'd
+write on a hummin'-bird's finger-nail."
+
+"Hummin'-birds don't have no finger-nails," corrected Shorty Palmer.
+
+"Sure they don't," allowed Bill. "But you c'd write it on one if they
+did."
+
+"They has claws," persisted Shorty. "B'sides, no hummin'-bird ain't
+goin' t' stay still long enough for you to write on his claw."
+
+"I know that, too," said Bill. "That thing I was sayin' is what's called
+a figger o' speech. Same as 'independent as a hog on ice,' or 'dead as
+a door nail.' Ev'body knows them things ain't independent or dead. It's
+just a fancy way o' expressin' yourself. Can't you give a feller credit
+for no 'magination?"
+
+"Oh, you got 'magination all right," Shorty agreed. "You ain't in no
+ways hampered by facts. But, anyway, we wasn't talkin' 'bout Injuns."
+
+"No, but we was goin' to," retorted Bill, "for I was about t' d'rect th'
+conversation in them channels when you makes them ign'rant
+interruptions."
+
+"Oh, go on an' talk, Bill," Jim Walker broke in. "Don't pertend that
+Shorty, nor th' whole United States Army, c'd stop you if you wanted t'
+chin."
+
+Thus urged Bill began his discourse. "What started my mind workin' on
+this here Injun question was somethin' that come up to-day," he said.
+"John Big Moose bein' gone, you know, Mr. Sherwood writes me that Injun
+an' Whitey is t' go to school over to th' Forks. So on my way back from
+drivin' John t' th' Junction I stops at that there temple o' knowledge,
+as th' feller says, t' prepare th' mind o' Jennie Adams, what teaches
+there, for th' comin' of this bunch of new scholards.
+
+"Y' all know Jennie, old Hog Adams's daughter. Th' one with th' wart on
+her chin, that was engaged for matrimoney to Sid Gilman till one day
+they was ridin' t'gether, an' Sid's cayuse slips into a gopher hole, an'
+Sid falls off an' sprains his ankle, an' lets loose such a string o'
+cuss words that Jennie--"
+
+"Say, Bill," protested Buck Higgins, "'f you couldn't shoot no
+straighter'n you c'n talk you'd be a mighty poor risk for a insurance
+comp'ny. Nev' mind this here Jennie's history from th' time of th'
+flood. Get down t' th' present day."
+
+"Well," Bill continued reluctantly, "I tells Jennie 'bout Injun an'
+Whitey's bein' 'bout t' be added to her string o' pupils, an' what d'ye
+s'pose she responds? That there ain't nothin' doin' with Injun. That
+Whitey, bein' a paleface, is entitled t' absorb all th' knowledge he c'n
+hold, but that Injun, bein' copper-colored, has got t' get along with
+other brunettes of his kind, back in some school east of here,
+'specially designated by a patern'l gov'ment."
+
+"Did she say all them words?" demanded Charlie Bassett.
+
+"Just like that," Bill replied. "'S though she knew 'em by heart. Must
+'a' bin some circular, or somep'n' she'd learned aforehand."
+
+"Well, what d'ye think o' that?" Jim Walker exploded. "Think o' that
+John Big Moose, an' all he knows, an' him bein' allowed t' learn folks
+in some Eastern high school, an' that there Jennie Adams, what don't
+know enough t' tell time by a kitchen clock, not bein' puhmitted t'
+learn Injun nothin'. It ain't right."
+
+Bill Jordan leaned back, well satisfied with the effect he had produced.
+"'Course it ain't right," he said. "Th' reason for it is that th'
+cemetery o' learnin' where John's goin' t' teach is a private
+institootion, an' this here shack o' Jennie's is controlled by th'
+gov'ment. I ain't no anarkiss, but--"
+
+"What's an anarkiss?" interrupted Buck.
+
+"A feller what's ag'in' th' gov'ment," explained Bill. "You can't make
+me b'lieve that our Injun ain't as good as th' scholards at Jennie's
+emporium. Take that potato-faced brother Jim of hers, f'r instance,
+that's a coyote in 'pearance an' a rattlesnake at heart. Why, Injun's
+a--a--prince of timber buck too compared t' him."
+
+Bill did not know what a Prince of Timbuctoo was, and neither did the
+other punchers, but it sounded impressive, and served to vent his
+feelings against a law which affected his friend Injun--for as such
+Bill, and all the men in the bunk house, regarded the boy.
+
+There may have been reasons why the Indian children were kept from
+association with whites. But in the minds of these men of the plains,
+who knew both the bad and the good in the red men, and the bad and the
+good in the white men of that day and that country, the reasons were not
+founded on justice. Furthermore, they were conceived by lawmakers far
+away. So the cowboys vented their feelings against what seemed to them
+rank injustice.
+
+"But t' get back t' what I know 'bout Injuns," said Bill, after the
+discussion had gone on for some time. "What d'ye s'pose our Injun
+thinks 'bout this here rule as says he ain't as good as that pie-faced
+Jim Adams? He knows 'tain't right, same as we do, an' he thinks to
+himself, 'Here's another thing I got t' put up with, an' if I rare up
+an' make a row 'bout it, I'll get th' wuss of it, as my people always
+has. So what'll I do? I'll lay low, an' say nothin', an' I won't give
+them white brothers no chance t' see that they've hurt my feelin's. I'll
+hide my hurt with my pride--one o' th' only things my white brothers has
+left me.'"
+
+There was silence for a moment in the bunk house. Then Jim Walker spoke.
+"Well, Injun may think that," he said. "But whatever he thinks you won't
+never really know. He's that savin' o' speech, like all Injuns."
+
+"They're savin' enough o' speech here, 'mongst us folks," Bill Jordan
+said. "But with their own people they're great speech-makers."
+
+"G'wan," objected Buck Higgins. "Who ever heard of a Injun talkin'
+much."
+
+"Yes, siree," Bill declared. "They're great talkers 'mongst folks they
+knows and trusts. Why, at their pow-wows they're reg'lar orators.
+Ev'body knows that what's had a lot t' do with 'em, same as me. John Big
+Moose was easy with white folks, an' look the way he could spill
+langwidge. 'Most as good as we all."
+
+The others silently agreed to this, thinking what a great advantage it
+would be to John Big Moose in the Eastern college to talk as well as
+they did.
+
+"Our Injun boy could talk as well as John Big Moose, if he was usin' his
+own speech, an' wanted to," continued Bill. "He's rather jerky now
+'count of his not knowin' our langwidge very well, for one thing, an'
+from bein' in th' habit of concealin' his thoughts from white men--like
+all other Injuns--for another thing."
+
+Now you, who read this, must know by this time how well Bill Jordan
+liked to tell things and to prove them--if he could; and if he couldn't
+make the other fellow believe they were true, to think up something the
+other fellow couldn't answer; and if he couldn't do that, to go away
+before the other could think of an answer. We all have known boys or men
+of this sort, and, being human, we don't like to have them assuming
+that they know more than we do. That is, we don't like it all the time.
+And this sort of feeling was stirring in that bunk house, at that
+moment. And finally Charlie Bassett spoke.
+
+"Bill," he said, "you're allus tellin' us somethin' 'bout somethin' what
+we don't know nothin' 'bout, with th' idee of gettin' us t' think you're
+a pretty wise feller. Now, all this you've bin tellin' us 'bout Injuns
+_sounds_ reason'ble, but if you want us to really b'lieve it, you've got
+t' show us. Ain't that so, fellers?"
+
+The others, thus appealed to, nodded solemnly.
+
+"How'm I goin' t' prove it?" asked Bill, thus driven into a corner.
+
+"By gettin' Injun t' talk," Charlie answered. "An' furthermore I'll
+betcha a can of peaches or a apple pie for each one of this gang, all
+'round, that you can't prove it."
+
+Canned peaches are regarded as a great luxury in the West, or were at
+that time, to say nothing of apple pies, and Bill considered the matter.
+Moreover, his reputation was at stake, and that was a bigger thing to
+him than peaches or apple pie either. After careful thought he spoke.
+
+"I'll have t' go you," he said, "but there's two conditions to this here
+contest."
+
+"Give 'em a name," said Charlie.
+
+"Th' first is, that Injun's gotta be among friends."
+
+"We're all his friends," Charlie said. "Won't we do?"
+
+"Yes, just us an' Whitey, if he's along," Bill agreed. "The next
+condition is, that I don't agree t' make Injun talk direct on no
+subject. F'r instance, if I asks him what he thinks 'bout bein' barred
+out o' that there school, I don't promise he'll tell me right out. He
+may spring some tale or yarn that shows what he thinks; mebbe he will,
+but I don't claim t' get no exact expression of his feelin's in th'
+matter."
+
+"Them conditions goes," Charlie agreed, "don't they, fellers?"
+
+The "fellers" agreed that they did, and it now only remained to await
+the coming of Injun. He was Whitey's guest at the ranch house that
+night, the night of the last day of Whitey's freedom from school. As it
+was early, no doubt the boys would soon appear at the bunk house, to
+listen to the sort of Arabian Nights' entertainment that was afforded by
+the tales of the cowpunchers.
+
+There was a momentary lull in the talk of the men, a lull in keeping
+with the outer night, which was still and very dark. Presently a faint
+light flickered across the southern windows of the bunk house, followed
+by a low rumble in the northeast.
+
+"Storm in th' mountains," volunteered Jim.
+
+Another moment of silence was followed by a brighter glare, as the sky
+in the south caught the reflection of the northern lightning. The former
+rumble was succeeded by a more distinct series of crashes, as though the
+storm gods of Indian belief were warming up to their work.
+
+"Reck'n she's comin' this way," said Bill Jordan.
+
+There was the sighing of a gentle breeze through the cottonwoods, then a
+glare that shamed the oil lamps, and, so fast that it almost might be
+said to trip on the light, a crash that caused the men to turn and
+regard one another, almost in awe.
+
+"Them mountain storms sure comes downhill fast," said Shorty.
+
+As though announced by the breeze a roar of wind tore through the trees,
+and shook the bunk house windows. The darkness was split by vivid,
+bluish-green flashes to which the thunder responded in an almost
+constant cannonading. The door opened, and Injun and Whitey forced their
+way in, then threw their weight upon it in the effort to close it
+against the force of the wind. Bill went to their aid.
+
+"Funny how th' wind allus swings 'round with them storms," said Bill,
+when the door was closed. "Seems t' back up an' get underneath 'em, then
+push 'em from behind."
+
+"We've missed the rain, anyway," gasped Whitey, sinking down on a bunk.
+
+"Not by much," said Bill, as the swish of a downpouring torrent sounded
+on the walls and roof and hissed through the bending branches of the
+cottonwoods.
+
+Gradually the thunder drew grumblingly away. The wind ceased to clamor,
+and for a time the rain, relieved of the gale's force, fell straight in
+a steady tattoo on the roof. Then it passed, and a slighter coolness of
+the air, noticeable even in the closeness of the bunk house, was the
+only token left of the storm's spurt of fury.
+
+"Them storms is like some folks' money; comes hard and goes easy," said
+Shorty Palmer.
+
+"Comes quick an' goes quicker's more like it," corrected Bill Jordan.
+
+"Have it your own way," grumbled Shorty. "Not that I have t' tell you
+that, for you'd have it, anyway."
+
+Now that the momentary interruption of the summer tempest had passed,
+the minds of the company turned to the subject of Bill and Charlie's
+wager, with the object of it, Injun, sitting on a cracker box and gazing
+solemnly at nothing in particular. The other men all looked expectantly
+at Bill, who fidgeted a moment in his chair, then started, in what he
+intended for a light, conversational tone.
+
+"Y' all ready for school to-morrow, Whitey?" Bill began, on his
+roundabout attack.
+
+"Yeh," Whitey replied gloomily.
+
+"Too bad 'bout you, Injun. Kind o' disappointin', their barrin' you out.
+Kind o' unfair, too."
+
+Injun's response to this was as broad a grin as he ever showed to the
+world. "Me glad," he said. "No like school."
+
+This was rather a setback to Bill, who had expected to play on Injun's
+feeling of resentment. He rolled a cigarette and planned a new line of
+attack. He knew that all the punchers would be glad to see him fail to
+make Injun talk, and this didn't make Bill any more easy in his mind. It
+may have been pleasing to him to have worked up a reputation for knowing
+more than the others, but this reputation was not without its drawbacks.
+For one thing, it was hard to keep it up; for another, it filled his
+friends with glee when he failed to keep it up. He puffed hard on his
+cigarette, and thought harder.
+
+Whitey broke the silence. "Tell us a story, Bill," he suggested.
+
+"I ain't exactly got no story in mind," Bill replied. "We was talkin'
+'bout folks, b'fore you an' Injun come, an' how they is apt t' be
+unjust, 'specially in th' way o' makin' laws an' such, an' it kind o'
+got me thinkin' serious; kind o' drove stories out o' my head."
+
+"Why, John Big Moose was talking about that the other day," Whitey
+exclaimed, "and how hard it is for one body of people to understand and
+sympathize with another, and about that sayin', 'Man's inhumanity to man
+makes countless thousands mourn.' Of course, you know that saying.
+Bill?"
+
+"'Course," answered Bill. "My father was allus mentionin' of it."
+
+"Your old man was a blacksmith, wa'n't he, Bill?" Buck Higgins asked.
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Seems t' me 'twould 'a' bin more in the way o' sense if he'd talked
+'bout man's unhumanness t' hosses," Buck said lightly.
+
+Bill ignored this, and got back to the serious side of the subject.
+"It's somethin' t' make a critter think," he declared. "Take white folks
+an' Injuns, f'r instance. They ain't never rightly understood each
+other, 'cause they ain't never bin rightly in tune with each other, an'
+that's another way o' sayin' they ain't bin in symp'thy. An' th' only
+way they could get that way would be t' tell, outspoke, what they thinks
+o' each other. Now they's Injun, here. He's bin our friend for some
+time, an' we bin his, but no one ain't never knowed his _real_ 'pinion
+of us, an' I think it'd be some help in adjustin' matters all round if
+we did."
+
+Shielding his mouth with his hand, Shorty Palmer turned to Buck Higgins,
+and spoke in a hoarse whisper, that could be heard distinctly by
+everybody. "Bill's like one o' them big express trains you see at th'
+Junction," Shorty hissed. "Takes him some time t' get started, but he
+gets somewheres when he does."
+
+Bill tried to look as though he hadn't heard this, and turned to Injun,
+with what was supposed to be an expression of brotherly frankness on his
+face. "Just among friends, Injun, d'ye think white folks as a class
+stacks up perty good?"
+
+Injun stared at Bill. "Huh," he grunted. "Mebbe some good, mebbe some
+bad."
+
+"O' course," said Bill, "they's good an' bad 'mongst 'em, but I mean t'
+stack 'em up against Injuns, as a whole tribe, see?"
+
+"Injuns same way. Mebbe some good, mebbe some bad."
+
+This did not seem to be getting anywhere, and Bill became more personal.
+"Now, Injun, honest," he said, "don't you think your people are
+underdogs in these here conditions the whites have forced 'em into, an'
+that they got a constant grouch against most whites?"
+
+"My people good people. Him see straight," Injun replied, with dignity.
+
+Bill was sorry now that he had started on this line of attack. He knew
+that the Min-i-ko-wo-ju tribe, a branch of the Sioux or Dakotas, of
+which Injun was a member, had been treated very fairly by Mr. Sherwood,
+Whitey's father. That largely through the influence of Mr. Sherwood,
+aided and abetted by John Big Moose, the educated Dakota, the
+Min-i-ko-wo-jus had come in for their share of the recently discovered
+gold mine. He also knew that gratitude was a strong factor in the Indian
+character.
+
+But with all his boasted knowledge of his red brothers, what Bill did
+not know was what Injun was thinking of, and that was something
+unconnected with his white brothers, or their justice or injustice to
+his kind. It was something induced by the stillness of the night,
+following the storm. Thoughts of another night, when Injun was not in a
+long, narrow bunk-house room, surrounded by booted cowboy friends, but
+in a tepee, dimly lighted by a central fire, around which squatted his
+serious-faced, copper-hued kinsmen, smoking their long pipes, and
+telling of their deeds and mishaps.
+
+And when his mind was fixed on a subject, Injun--like other Indians--was
+not to be deflected by the thoughts of others. Bill might talk and talk
+of justice and injustice, or about cows or cartridges; Injun's mind
+would stay put, and when he spoke, if it was two hours afterwards, it
+would be of that night in the tepee.
+
+But it was not that long before the silence that had fallen on the men
+was broken. Bill was trying to think of another line of argument that
+would induce Injun to speak at length. Whitey, who knew Injun better
+than any one else, was looking at him, and realizing that he had
+something on his mind. "Why don't you tell us a story, Injun?" Whitey
+asked.
+
+There was another long pause in the bunk house, and nothing could be
+heard save the ticking of the alarm clock that was Wong's special
+property, on which he relied to give him his three a.m. call to
+get the punchers' breakfast ready by sunup. And then Injun spoke, he who
+rarely talked, save in monosyllables.
+
+"When owl sleep; when thunder don't beat drum; when wind don't make
+noise like big whistle; when trees stand straight up and don't bend;
+when everything quick is in hole; when Great Spirit he make sign and
+everybody him sleep--then I hear my papa tell story about my mamma's
+brother; how he get 'um fingers worn off on end. My mamma's brother him
+great buck; call him 'buck' when him brave, before him made Chief.
+
+"My mamma's brother him know white man scout, great friend my mamma's
+brother. Him talk Indian talk, just like Sioux. My mamma's brother
+friend him work for army; him watch when Indian go on war path. Him good
+man. Him like Indian. Him know Indian no bad.
+
+"My mamma's brother friend him say to my mamma's brother him like to
+bring his friend, White Chief, to Indian war dance. Him say White Chief
+he no tell what he see. My mamma's brother he say no: White Chief, with
+much ribbon on clothes, have crooked tongue. My mamma's brother friend
+he say White Chief he no tell; give word before Great Spirit. My mamma's
+brother then he say come."
+
+As the clipped sentences fell in soft gutturals from Injun's lips his
+face remained expressionless, except for his eyes, which gazed back into
+the dim, smoke-laden tepee and into the face of his father, a great
+story-teller of a race of great story-tellers; a survivor of the age-old
+days when the deeds and legends of all men were made history by the
+voice alone. And the men, their wager forgotten, and Whitey, too, leaned
+forward and saw the tepee and saw Injun's uncle talking to the scout,
+whom he trusted, and who trusted the White Chief.
+
+In what followed, Injun left some of the details to the imagination of
+his hearers, or perhaps thought that they knew of them. Of how, before
+the great war dance, the chiefs of the tribe assembled in conclave in
+their council tent. And before these chiefs, who sat as a sort of jury,
+appeared the young men of the tribe. And each young Indian told of his
+brave deeds, performed since the last war dance, and according to these
+deeds the chiefs decided whether the young man was worthy to become a
+chief.
+
+He needed no witnesses; his word was sufficient--for the Indian spoke
+only the truth. And the descendant of a chief was held more worthy of
+honor than another, for brave blood flowed in his veins. But after each
+young man was deemed worthy, he must prove his bravery at the dance.
+From a center pole hung a number of rawhide thongs. Through the breast
+or back of each young brave two slits were cut, and a stick or skewer
+was passed through them, and a thong tied to each end of the skewer.
+Then the braves danced around the pole, leaning back and supporting
+their weight on the skewer, and when this weight tore the skewer from
+the flesh, the braves were deemed worthy to become chiefs. But should
+one give up, or faint from pain, he was deemed unworthy. And the torture
+suffered by all was great--but the torture borne by those through whose
+backs the skewers were passed was greater.
+
+"White Chief and scout come to Indian war dance," Injun continued. "At
+dance, when braves make talk and tell how they do things what make 'em
+chief, my mamma's brother he tell how him ride on prairie and see two
+white men. Him ride to them quick to show him friend. White men say
+Injun bad. White men shoot at my mamma's brother. My mamma's brother him
+shoot at white men. Him kill white men. My mamma's brother him made
+chief, after him dance with stick through breast until stick break.
+
+"Scout, my mamma's brother friend, and White Chief they go 'way. My
+mamma's brother friend him say to White Chief, 'You see now why you no
+tell. Injun him good, no blame. White men they bad, want kill Injun.'
+
+"White Chief him say, 'No, Injun bad. Me tell.'"
+
+"Him go back and--"
+
+The door of the bunk house opened suddenly and a cowboy stalked in, a
+lean, dark man, rather short and slim, with eyes of that peculiar light,
+slaty gray that have a staring effect; apparently no depth to them.
+These, with heavy overhanging brows and an inclination to sneer, gave
+him a forbidding appearance. His hat and slicker glistened with water.
+At his entrance Injun ceased speaking abruptly.
+
+"Gee, I got soaked in that rain," said the newcomer. "Stopped at th' Cut
+on my way back from th' Junction. Th' railroad hands got paid, to-day,
+an' they're raisin' cain. Wisht I'd stayed there, 'stead o' gettin'
+soaked."
+
+"I wish you had, too," Bill Jordan murmured to himself, unheard by the
+other.
+
+This puncher, Henry Dorgan, was a man who was vaguely disliked on the
+ranch, with nothing in particular on which to hang the cause of the
+feeling. It was characteristic of him, for one thing, that he had no
+nickname. In a country where almost every one's name was familiarly
+shortened into Hank, or Bill, or Jim, or was changed to Kid, or Red, or
+Shorty, he remained Henry--not even Harry.
+
+He threw off his hat and slicker, stamped to shake off the moisture that
+clung to his boots, sat down, and prepared to make himself at home.
+
+"Go ahead, Injun," said Jim Walker. "You was just at th' most
+interestin' part."
+
+Injun rose, walked to a bucket in a corner, poured himself a dipper of
+water, and drank calmly. Then he returned, sat down and looked straight
+ahead of him. There was a painful tension, of which Dorgan did not seem
+to be aware. Buck Higgins tried to dispel it.
+
+"Perceed, Injun," he said. "We're all a-waitin' on you."
+
+Without embarassment, Injun continued to say nothing. Bill Jordan began
+to show signs of nervousness, which finally broke into speech.
+
+"Had anythin' t' eat, Henry?" he asked.
+
+"Nope. Too busy drinkin' an' things, at th' Cut," replied Dorgan, who,
+however, showed no signs of intoxication.
+
+"Better go out t' th' kitchen, an' rustle yourself somep'n'," Bill
+suggested.
+
+"Wong'll get crazy if I monkey with his grub," objected Henry.
+
+"I'll take care o' Wong. G'wan, you don't wanta be hungry," Bill said.
+
+"I c'd do with some beans an' coffee," Dorgan allowed, and took himself
+off.
+
+After he was gone, there was another period of silence. It was so
+unusual for Injun to talk at all, and the effort to start him again
+having failed, it seemed now to occur to everybody that it probably
+would be better to let him alone until he got in the mood again.
+Presently Whitey saw Injun's eyes take on their former faraway look, as
+though they were gazing into his father's tepee fire, or into the red
+faces of his kinsmen.
+
+"What did the White Chief do when he went back?" Whitey asked softly.
+
+"Him go back and get plenty soldiers," responded Injun. "And come get my
+mamma's brother, and tie him on pony, with him face looking at pony
+tail. My mamma's brother him lose much blood where stick break through
+chest. Him almost died when get to Fort. White Chief put him in log
+calaboose. Him stay there long, long time; mebbe so twenty, thirty
+moons.
+
+"Then him dig dirt in floor with hands, and cover up when they bring him
+bread and water--and he hide his hands all the time, fingers so much
+bleed. Then when dark and no moon, him dig out last dirt, him come up
+outside. Him run sixty mile, him come my father, him tell my father."
+
+"My father he say to our people, 'Now, we fight, and we fight heap!'"
+
+Injun paused for a moment, as one considering and about to utter
+judgment. "White man bad. Injun he no bad," he said.
+
+Injun's story was concluded. He rose and walked from the bunk house.
+
+There was a moment's hush broken by Jim Walker. "Who in thunder d'ye
+s'pose that White Chief was?" he demanded. "Gee! We sure butted into
+some real Injun history."
+
+"That's what I'm thinkin'," said Bill Jordan. "An' seein' as how Injun's
+uncle was old Rain-in-the-Face, an' seein' as how th' old man's fingers
+was all stubbed off at th' ends, an' seein' as how Lonesome Charlie
+Reynolds, th' greatest scout what ever lived, was a great friend of th'
+Injuns, an' spoke their langwidge, an' seein' as how he was scout for
+General Terry, up at old Fort Buford, an' seein' as how that's where th'
+Seventh Cavalry was quartered, an' seein' as how Captain Tom Custer was
+always hated by th' Sioux, an' by old Rain-in-the-Face in partic'ler--by
+golly, boys!--"
+
+Bill paused, as he and the men were impressed by the important point to
+which his line of argument was leading, then went on excitedly: "We only
+have t' reason deflectively t' put our fingers on th' button what caused
+th' doggonedest Injun fights this country ever knowed!"
+
+"It begins, gee whiz! it begins--we all are all right, boys! It begins
+in '75, with Injun's tribe. An' in '76, General Custer an' Captain Tom
+Custer an' two hundred an' sixty-one o' their men was all wiped out. An'
+them Injuns kep' right on fightin' till '81, when John Gall, th' big
+Sioux Chief, surrenders at that big fight in th' snow, when it was
+fifty-two below, an' them Injuns was fightin' in their skins, with no
+coverin' but a blanket.
+
+"Just think of it, boys. An' sittin' right here in this bunk house,
+years an' years after, us cowpunchers get th' real cause o' th' whole
+rumpus, which them Washington folks has bin figurin' out for years, an'
+couldn't do it none whatever. Didn't I tell you all when a Injun talks
+he says somethin'?"
+
+There was no disputing this, and the men looked solemn as they
+considered the series of great tragedies and the chain of circumstances
+which had led up to them. Then, as the impression made on Bill Jordan
+began to fade, and thoughts of his own importance to take its place, he
+turned triumphantly to Jim Walker.
+
+"Well, did I make Injun talk, an' do we get them peaches?" Bill
+demanded.
+
+"_You_ make him talk!" Jim returned scornfully. "All you did was t' make
+him shut up. Whitey made him talk."
+
+"G'wan," Bill retorted. "Didn't them suggestions o' mine 'bout white men
+an' Injuns start him thinkin' 'bout that bad White Chief hombre? An'
+didn't I get rid o' Henry Dorgan, 'cause Injun's distrustful of him, an'
+wouldn't chin with him 'round?"
+
+"'F y'ask for my opinion, I don't b'lieve none o' you made him talk,"
+said Shorty Palmer. "I think he just--"
+
+"I didn't ask for your opinion," Bill interrupted. "No feller c'n tell
+me nothin' 'bout Injuns--"
+
+But if this bunk house argument were followed to its end I should have
+to write another book. Perhaps you can guess who paid for the peaches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FISH-HOOKS AND HOOKY
+
+
+After breakfast the next morning when Injun and Whitey came out of the
+ranch house, Whitey was heavy-hearted. The thought of going to that
+school at the Forks was the cause of his depression. It was like some
+sort of penalty one must pay for being a boy. Injun was to escort Whitey
+to the school, as an act of friendship--as one might go to another's
+funeral.
+
+Sitting Bull was sleeping peaceably on the veranda. Sitting Bull had no
+regard for the man who said that "early to bed and early to rise makes a
+man healthy and wealthy and wise," or he never had heard of him. Sitting
+Bull always slept late. There were other rules that boys must follow to
+which Bull paid no attention. He did not chew his food carefully, as
+every one knows that boys should. There were times when Whitey envied
+Bull, and this first day of school was one of them.
+
+But when the boys started for the corral to get their ponies, Bull
+roused himself and expressed a wish to go with them. He had a mistaken
+idea that he could keep up with the horses for nine miles, and it was
+with some difficulty that Whitey got him to give it up.
+
+"He don't know what he's missing," Whitey said sadly, as he and Injun
+turned from the disappointed Bull and walked reluctantly to the corral.
+
+It was a beautiful day, too. Did you ever notice that the first day of
+school always is beautiful? Injun and Whitey's ponies made short work of
+the nine miles of road that skirted the foothills and led to the Forks,
+the spirited animals seeming to drink in the bracing morning air that
+swept down from the mountains as though it were a tonic, which indeed it
+was.
+
+The Forks was a spot at which a road that led down from the mountains
+joined the road to the Junction. The mountain road was little more than
+a trail, seldom traveled, and almost overgrown with grass, and where it
+joined the other stood the shack which was used as a schoolhouse. This
+shack had been built by some early homeseeker, who had long ago
+abandoned it to seek other pastures. It was old and discouraged-looking,
+and patched in spots with pieces of tin and boards. As a temple of
+learning it was not an inviting-looking place.
+
+The pupils evidently had assembled in the shack, for tied in the shelter
+of some maples near by were four cayuses and two weary-looking mules.
+There were eight scholars, as Whitey knew, so he guessed that the mules
+carried double. Injun seemed much more cheerful on this occasion than
+Whitey, who dismounted and tied Monty near the other animals. Then,
+before entering for the sacrifice, he tiptoed over to the shack and
+peeped into the window. He tiptoed back to where Injun sat calmly on his
+pinto. There was a look of horror on Whitey's face.
+
+"Girls!" he whispered.
+
+Bill Jordan had not told Whitey that some of Miss Adams's pupils were of
+the fair sex. He had left that as a pleasant surprise. And there were
+just two things in life that Whitey was mortally afraid of--one was
+girls and the other was school.
+
+Some persons regard the Indians as a cruel and heartless race. I do not
+hold with this opinion, but I am bound to state what Whitey's friend
+Injun did now. He grinned--actually grinned. Whitey gave him a sad,
+reproachful look, and with his package of lunch under his arm, slouched
+into the schoolhouse.
+
+It is needless to follow Whitey into this seat of learning. If this were
+a record of the torments and horrors he underwent during his boyhood
+days, it might be well to describe this period at length. But suffice it
+to say that Jennie Adams, the teacher, was a young woman who, if given a
+little time to think, could tell you, without using a paper or pencil,
+how much six pounds of butter would cost at twelve cents a pound. Also,
+that the girl pupils, of whom there were four,--those who rode the mules
+double,--had a habit of tittering, also of leaning over close to each
+and making whispered remarks about Whitey.
+
+A week of this did not add to Whitey's thirst for knowledge, which was
+not very strong at best, and it was just a week from this first day
+that he was again riding toward the schoolhouse, and something
+happened. It was another bright morning, and Whitey had reached a spot
+where the road branched up into the foothills to avoid a marsh, when he
+noticed signs of excitement in his pony, Monty. These signs would have
+been stronger had the wind been blowing the other way, and had Monty's
+nose made him aware of the exact danger that lurked near. As it was, his
+ears, which were much keener than Whitey's, caught sounds of some
+disturbing presence, and Whitey had difficulty in keeping him in the
+road.
+
+At a sharp turn, Whitey and Monty were greeted by a roar that was deeper
+than that of any automobile horn you ever heard, a roar that had menace
+behind it, and that came from a large brown bear which had risen on its
+hind legs and was advancing into the road with both front paws extended
+wide, as though with the intent of embracing both Whitey and Monty.
+
+[Illustration: ADVANCING INTO THE ROAD WITH BOTH FRONT PAWS EXTENDED]
+
+Monty did not wait for any guiding rein to turn him. He wheeled on a
+space about as big as a cigar-box, and hit the trail for home, and for
+some time he and Whitey gave a fair imitation of a runaway train on a
+down grade. All Whitey could do was to lie low on Monty's neck, digging
+his moccasins into Monty's ribs, for fear he would change his
+mind--which he didn't.
+
+And neither Whitey nor Monty knew that that roar came from a mother
+bear, and that back of the bear was a small cub, with a round, funny
+little stomach, industriously combing the bushes for berries, and
+regarding life as one round of pleasure. There was no need for them to
+know that. Whitey had had experiences with bears, as you may remember.
+If wireless had been invented, he might possibly have been willing to
+use it as a means of introduction, but in no way he could think of at
+the moment was he willing to meet a bear on its native heath.
+
+That settled it. No school that day. Couldn't expect a fellow to go to
+school when he had to run into bears on the trail. What was an old bear
+doing near the ranch, anyhow? Didn't seem right. When Monty had toned
+down his headlong trip away from that bear, or thought he was at a safe
+distance, Whitey found himself near the river, and idly turned Monty
+toward its banks. Might as well take a little ride. Fellow didn't learn
+much at that school, anyway. And so, after the ways of boys and men,
+Whitey made excuses for not doing what he didn't want to do.
+
+With his mind somewhat at ease, Monty ambled along the shore of the
+Yellowstone, with Whitey enjoying the scenery as much as his conscience
+would let him, and his conscience getting weaker every minute. And
+presently, at some distance, he saw a small huddled-up figure sitting on
+the bank. Closer inspection proved this figure to be pink, and still
+closer inspection revealed it to be Injun. Wondering what Injun was
+doing in that neighborhood, Whitey approached, and was surprised to find
+that Injun was fishing.
+
+Knowing that Indians never fish except through necessity, Whitey was
+puzzled. As he drew nearer, Injun turned and regarded him, betraying no
+surprise at Whitey's being there; at his not being in school. Whitey
+dismounted and sat near his friend.
+
+"What are you fishing for, Injun?" he asked.
+
+"Fish," Injun replied seriously.
+
+"Of course," said Whitey. "I mean what do you want to catch the fish
+for?"
+
+"Gum," spoke Injun briefly.
+
+"Gum?" demanded the bewildered Whitey. "You can't make gum out of fish."
+
+Injun said nothing at all. Whitey thought that perhaps he had a bite,
+but he hadn't. He just didn't ooze information. It had to be dragged
+from him. So Whitey proceeded.
+
+"Please explain about this fishing for gum," he said politely.
+
+"Gum him chew," Injun replied.
+
+"Oh, chewing-gum!" cried Whitey. A light dawned on him, for he knew that
+Injun was very fond of chewing-gum. So was Whitey. "You trade the fish
+for gum."
+
+"No trade; sell 'em; get much gum."
+
+This was the first commercial instinct that Whitey had ever known Injun
+to show, and he looked at him admiringly. At that moment Injun got a
+bite. He did not betray any of the excitement a white boy does on such
+an occasion. He solemnly pulled in his line, and when it was almost in,
+a good-sized pickerel squirmed off the hook, and flopped back into the
+water. And now Injun showed no disappointment. He seriously examined the
+worm on his hook, to see that it was intact, then cast the line into the
+river again.
+
+Whitey watched him in silence. Injun got another bite, and the same
+operation was repeated, except that the fish that escaped was larger
+than the other. Injun patiently rebaited his hook. "Biggest one him get
+away," he grunted.
+
+Whitey knew something about fishermen and the stories they tell: that it
+is always the biggest fish that escaped. But in this case it seemed to
+be true, for strung on a willow twig was Injun's catch, about six small
+pickerel.
+
+"How long you been fishing here?" Whitey asked.
+
+"Since sunup."
+
+"And that's all you've caught?" Whitey indicated the string of fish.
+
+"Um."
+
+"Let's see your hook," Whitey said, as another pickerel was pulled
+almost to shore, and then flopped back into its native element.
+
+When Injun displayed the hook, Whitey saw that it was one of the little
+ones they had used in fastening the tick-tack to Wong's window. "Why,
+this is too small for pickerel," exclaimed Whitey. "It's for perch. You
+ought to have a bigger one."
+
+"Yes, me know," said Injun.
+
+Again Whitey was impressed by Injun's patience. There he had sat for
+several hours, watching those big fish return to the Yellowstone and
+safety. Whitey knew that he never could have stood it. Finally he
+questioned him.
+
+"If you knew that the big fish would fall off that hook, and that they
+are just waiting to be caught, how could you stand just getting the
+little ones?" Whitey said. "They're not worth much."
+
+"Mebbe after time big fish him swallow hook, then me get him," answered
+Injun, which was a pretty long speech for him, and explained many
+matters.
+
+As Whitey sat watching Injun waiting for an accommodating and greedy
+pickerel to come along, a great idea was born to him--a fishing
+partnership between him and Injun.
+
+And that was why, if Whitey could have been closely watched, one would
+have seen him sneaking around the ranch barn every morning, just before
+it was time to start for school, and slipping things into his pockets.
+And on examination these things would have been seen to be fishing-lines
+and hooks of the proper size for pickerel.
+
+And that is why, for about four days a week, Injun and Whitey sat
+dangling their feet in the Yellowstone River, catching large flocks of
+pickerel, which they peddled to neighboring ranchmen at two bits a
+half-dozen. And that is why they were always well supplied with
+chewing-gum.
+
+Now, it is not my purpose to defend or excuse this conduct of Injun and
+Whitey's, but simply to record it. If you are looking for a moral in
+this story, you may find it in what followed on the heels of this
+fishing partnership. In the first place, no boy without money may
+display things which cost money without attracting attention, followed
+by suspicion. Gum costs money, and the chewing of it is a very apparent
+action.
+
+Soon Bill Jordan was saying to Jim Walker: "Where d'you s'pose them kids
+get all that gum?"
+
+Jim was answering, "Down t' th' Junction."
+
+"But they ain't got no money," Bill was objecting.
+
+Then Buck Higgins was sauntering up and remarking, "Say, Sid Griggs,
+over t' th' Diamond Dagger, was tellin' me, t'day, how Injun and Whitey
+sells him herds o' fine pick'rul at six bits a throw."
+
+"Why don't they bring some home? When do they ketch them pick'rul?
+That's where they get th' cash!" Bill Jordan was exclaiming, in a rather
+disconnected manner, thus showing that the putting of two and two
+together is fatal to wrongdoers.
+
+Then Bill called on Miss Jennie Adams, at her temple of learning, and
+found that Whitey had spent only a week there, and confirmed
+his--Bill's--suspicion that school hours had become fishing hours.
+
+Bill Jordan was big and strong enough to lick Whitey, but he felt that
+he had not the moral right to do so, and he was greatly puzzled. He
+realized that, as you may lead a horse to the water but you can't make
+him drink, so you may lead a boy to school but you can't make him study.
+Most of Bill's own school hours had been spent in hunting, as he didn't
+care for fishing. Thus, if Bill lectured Whitey, the boy could throw
+Bill's own ignorance of book-learning in his face.
+
+The more Bill thought over this matter the more undecided he became, and
+finally he saddled his horse and rode down to the Junction, and resorted
+to what was, for him, a very unusual action. So later in the day Mr.
+Sherwood received the following telegram, in his New York office:
+
+Whitey wont learn nothin. Ketches pickrul. What will I do?
+
+William Jordan
+
+You will notice that this message took exactly ten words--which was
+evidence of more thinking on Bill's part.
+
+Bill waited patiently at the Junction, and late that night received the
+following answer:
+
+Put the boy at such a hard job that he will be glad to resume his
+studies.
+
+Sherwood
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A HARD JOB
+
+
+The next day, as Whitey--all unconscious of the plot against
+him--returned from the affairs of his fishing partnership, he was met by
+Bill Jordan.
+
+"Whitey," said Bill, "I got somep'n' for you t' do, an' I'm 'fraid it'll
+take you out o' school for a while."
+
+Whitey looked sharply at Bill for a trace of suspicion or sarcasm, but
+Bill's face was as blank as a Chinaman's.
+
+"'S very important," Bill continued, "an' I think your father'd consider
+me justified in takin' you away fr'm your lessons." Having studied this
+matter all out beforehand, Bill was using larger words than usual. "I
+got a letter for t' be delivered t' Dan Brayton, up at th' T Up and Down
+Ranch, 'bout some business o' your father's. Really, I ought t' go
+m'self, an' see Dan pussonally, but I ain't got time. Can't spare any o'
+th' men, 'count o' th' roundup's comin' on. Don't see nothin' t' do,
+except t' make you th' messenger."
+
+Whitey was delighted. "Where is the T Up and Down?" he asked.
+
+"'Bout a hunderd an' fifteen miles no'thwest o' here, t'other side o'
+Zumbro Creek," Bill answered.
+
+"Good!" cried Whitey. "I'll take Injun, and--"
+
+"Wouldn't do that," Bill objected. "Dan hates Injuns, an' he'd sure be
+rambunctious 'bout this one."
+
+"All right," Whitey agreed, rather reluctantly. "If I start early
+enough, Monty and I ought to make it some time to-morrow night."
+
+If Whitey had been noticing Bill's face at that moment, he would have
+seen a rather peculiar smile cross it, but he wasn't. Nor did he suspect
+anything the next morning, when he met Bill at the corral before dawn.
+
+"That Monty hoss o' yours seems sort o' lame, this mornin'," said Bill.
+"Reck'n one o' th' other cayuses must 'a' kicked him, or somep'n. Dunno
+as he c'd stand th' trip."
+
+And, sure enough, Monty limped slightly as he moved about the corral.
+Whitey did not know that a hair tied around a horse's leg, just above
+the hock, will make the animal limp, and will not be noticeable, nor
+that as a part of Bill's scheme Monty had been so treated. So Whitey was
+worried about his pony, but Bill assured him that Monty would probably
+be all right in a day or so--when it was too late.
+
+"Pshaw, I'll have to ride a strange horse!" Whitey said dejectedly.
+
+"I bin thinkin'," said Bill, "what with our bein' kinda short on stock,
+just now, an' th' boys needin' all their strings for th' round-up, an'
+everythin', it might be a good scheme for you t' go in th' stage. Be
+sort of a change for you. You c'd ride as far as Cal Smith's ranch, an'
+he'd lend you a hoss t' take you on t' th' T Up and Down."
+
+Again the unsuspecting Whitey was delighted, as every Western boy was,
+in those days, to ride on the old-fashioned but swift-moving
+stage-coaches that were still the main means of communication between
+many places in that sparsely settled country.
+
+At six o'clock Whitey was waiting in the road, with Bill, and when the
+coach appeared, and was halted, was hoisted up to a seat beside the
+driver; a seat of honor that did not happen to be occupied that trip.
+Messenger boys and telephones were unknown on the Frontier at that time.
+Even the telegraph lines were limited to the course of the big railroad
+that pointed its nose from St. Paul to the Pacific. So Whitey, with the
+important letter sewed inside his shirt, thereby became the first
+messenger boy known to the history of the West.
+
+And he surely enjoyed seeing the driver wield his long whip, and capably
+handle the six reins that controlled the six spirited horses. And going
+down grade Whitey would have to put his arm around the driver's middle,
+because his legs were not quite long enough to reach the dashboard, and
+if the body of that old-fashioned stage-coach had hit him in the middle
+of the back, Whitey would have beaten the horses down the hill.
+
+Everything went well for ninety miles, and at a certain trail the
+driver pulled up and said, "Well, son, here's where you have t' wear out
+your moccasins. There's your trail, bearing off t' th' right. Follow it
+for twenty-five miles, an' you'll be where you want t' go."
+
+"Twenty-five miles!" gasped Whitey. "Do you mean to say that I have to
+walk twenty-five miles?"
+
+"Sure," said the driver. "If you keep goin' good an' lively th' rest o'
+th' day, you c'n hit th' Zumbro before dark, an' just one mile this side
+o' th' Zumbro is Cal Smith's ranch. He'll take care o' you overnight,
+an' you c'n go t' th' T Up and Down in th' mornin'."
+
+"B--but I didn't know I had to walk," Whitey protested.
+
+"Reck'n you do, unless you c'n ketch a jack-rabbit an' ride him," the
+driver answered.
+
+"I thought the ranch was right on the line of the stage road," Whitey
+said weakly. "Bill Jordan didn't say anything about walking."
+
+"Well, Bill's a funny cuss, an' mebbe he kept this for you as a sort o'
+s'prise," the driver allowed, with a grin. "Good-bye. Giddap!" And the
+coach whirled away, in a cloud of dust, leaving Whitey standing in the
+lonely road, looking off over the lonelier prairie.
+
+But nothing was to be gained by that, and he started along the trail,
+which really was a little-used wagon track. And as he walked he thought
+about Bill Jordan, and his conclusions were none too pleasant. He did
+not suspect that this was part of a deep-laid plot of Bill's. Rather he
+thought that, as the driver had said, this was one of Bill's jokes, and
+he could fancy Bill and Jim Walker and Buck Higgins and the others
+chuckling over the trick, and Whitey planned how he would get even with
+Bill when he returned. He little guessed how long it would be before
+that return, and how many events would intervene to drive thoughts of
+revenge from his mind.
+
+And Whitey trudged on and on, and the walking was very bad, for there
+had been a succession of heavy rains, almost cloud-bursts, that had made
+the road soggy. And for several miles the trail led through rocky hills,
+and there the walking was even worse, for the rains had washed the
+earth out of the trails, leaving a series of sharp stones that certainly
+were hard on moccasin-clad feet. And the harder the trail was, the
+harder became Whitey's opinion of Bill Jordan and his jokes.
+
+Darkness comes late in that northern country, and it was dusk when
+Whitey had another unpleasant surprise, for he came to the Zumbro, and a
+sight met his eyes that would have made almost any grown-up stand back
+and look a lot. She wasn't a creek, she was a river; no, she wasn't a
+river, she was a rearing, roaring, raging torrent, owing to the rains
+and floods that had filled the banks to overflowing.
+
+And this wasn't the worst of it. Where was Cal Smith's ranch, a mile
+this side of the Zumbro? The driver had told him about that, so it
+couldn't have been another of Bill Jordan's jokes. Whitey looked back,
+and saw a line of hills, and realized that the ranch lay behind them,
+and that he had passed it. And sorrowfully he retraced his steps.
+
+They say that the last mile of a long walk is the worst, and it
+certainly proved so in this case, for it was dark when Whitey turned off
+into a side road and the lights of Cal Smith's ranch house met his view.
+
+There may have been more welcome sights to Whitey than the yellow gleams
+of those window lights, but he could not remember them, as he limped
+toward the house. Even the sharp barking of a dog, that was stilled by a
+call from an opening door, sounded good to him. And when he was in the
+house, where he was welcomed by big, genial Cal Smith, and seated at a
+table in the kitchen, devouring ham and eggs and home-made bread and
+pie, and drinking hot coffee, provided by good-natured, motherly Mrs.
+Cal--why, it was almost worth the tramp to meet such a reception at the
+end of it.
+
+And friendly and hospitable as were Mr. and Mrs. Cal, there were other
+and greater attractions in that household for Whitey. There were five
+young Smiths,--five boys, three older and two younger than, Whitey,--and
+not a girl in sight. In that company Whitey forgot all about being
+tired. A new boy, that knew stories, was meat and drink to them--and
+five boys, that knew stories that were new to Whitey, were meat and
+drink to him.
+
+Their sleeping quarters were the garret, and while a lantern swung from
+a beam, and Mr. and Mrs. Cal were asleep, and the boys were supposed to
+be asleep, those kids just wrote and rewrote a history of the West that
+would make all the tenderfeet in the world stay at home, and forever
+hold down the population of the Frontier.
+
+And the smallest boy, named Cal after his father, had a hard time
+keeping awake, but was bound to do it if it killed him; and the biggest
+boy, named Abe after Abraham Lincoln, probably knew more about wild
+animals than any boy in the world; and the smallest boy never had killed
+any animals, except a stray mole or two, that happened to get out in the
+daytime, by mistake, but he was _goin' to_--and--well, there was so much
+to be told, and it had to be told so fast, that no shorthand writer that
+ever lived could have put it all down.
+
+But finally, no matter how interesting the company, sleep will come to
+healthy boys, and just before that time came, and could not be put off
+any longer, they happened to be talking about dreams. Abe said that if
+you would tie a rope around your neck, and tie it to a beam, just before
+you went to sleep, you would sure dream of a hanging. And, of course,
+Whitey had to try it.
+
+He tied the rope around his neck, he tied the other end around a beam,
+and he went to sleep. There were six boys in that bed, and there was a
+whole lot of crowding, and Whitey was sleeping on the outside. And he
+didn't have to dream about any hanging, because he came so near the real
+thing. I don't have to tell you how it happened. Bill Jordan's letter
+came mighty near not being delivered. However, all ended happily, and
+save for rubbing that part of his anatomy where he wore a collar after
+he was grown up, Whitey was all right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE T UP AND DOWN
+
+
+The next day Cal Smith said that a joke was all very well, but
+twenty-five miles was far enough to carry it, and he staked Whitey to a
+horse to make the rest of the trip with, Whitey to return the horse on
+his way back. When they reached Zumbro Creek it hadn't gone down a bit,
+except to go down stream, and it was doing that like the dickens. It
+certainly was a very bad-tempered-looking creek, but Cal Smith wasn't
+afraid of it.
+
+He had brought along all his sons, and a couple of ranch hands, and
+instructed them to stand by with ropes, while he took Whitey about a
+quarter of a mile up the creek, and the two of them plunged in. Cal
+Smith was not going to let any kid try to swim a horse across that creek
+by himself.
+
+It was quite a sight to see all those Smith boys standing in a line on
+the bank. With the biggest one, Abe, at one end, and the smallest one,
+Cal, at the other, and the rest of them standing according to their
+sizes, they looked like a flight of steps. And little Cal was too small
+to be of any use, but he didn't know that, and some one had given him
+the end of a lariat to hold, and he clutched it, and looked as anxious
+and important as any one.
+
+All went well with Cal Smith and Whitey until they got to about the
+middle of the creek, and then, zowie! the full force of the current hit
+them, and they went down the stream as though they were a couple of
+feathers. But the little range ponies were just as game as Cal Smith,
+and they kept fighting that stream as though they were humans, and kept
+edging over and edging over until they finally got a footing and
+scrambled out on the other bank, a full quarter of a mile below the
+ford. So Zumbro Creek had beat them a whole half-mile down stream, on
+that trip across.
+
+"So long, son," said Cal Smith. "You've only got about twelve miles to
+go to reach the T Up and Down, and you'd better stay there a couple of
+days before you start back, to give this creek a chance to learn how to
+behave itself."
+
+Then Cal Smith rode back a half-mile up the stream to make the return
+trip, and Whitey watched, and the flight of steps of Smith boys watched.
+And when Cal landed safely, and Whitey waved at them all from a
+distance, as he rode away, he felt, as I think you will feel, that it
+was no wonder Western men had the reputation of being big-hearted, when
+a man like Cal Smith would take all that trouble for a boy he never had
+seen before.
+
+The T Up and Down was a rather small ranch, boasting not over a thousand
+head of cattle, but its manager, Dan Brayton, proved to be a very large
+man. That is, he was large around, for he was not tall. He must have
+weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and when Whitey first saw him, he
+at once wondered how he ever got on a horse, and then Whitey reflected
+that it sure would take a mighty strong horse to buck with Dan on it.
+
+When Whitey arrived, Dan was in what he called his office, a small room
+all fitted up with saddles and bridles, and boots and spurs, and belts
+and guns, and--oh, yes; there was a little desk almost hidden in the
+litter, and Dan Brayton was seated at it, his face all wrinkled in the
+effort to solve some figures written on a piece of paper.
+
+Dan received Whitey cordially, but seemed surprised to hear that he was
+the bearer of an important letter from Bill Jordan. He held the letter
+in his hand and looked at it critically, as people do who are not in the
+habit of receiving many letters, and he asked:
+
+"How is Silent?"
+
+"Silent?" inquired the puzzled Whitey.
+
+"Sure, Silent," replied Dan. "That's what we allus called Bill Jordan
+back in Wyomin'."
+
+"Why, he talks all the time," said Whitey.
+
+"That's th' reason we called him Silent," Dan answered, chuckling.
+
+Whitey did not know that Bill Jordan hated this nickname, and had done
+his best to leave it behind when he moved from Wyoming, and that when he
+came to Montana he only got rid of it by licking several cowpunchers who
+tried to tack it onto him there. But he answered that Bill was very
+well. When Dan had looked the letter up and down, and behind and
+before, and over and back, he finally opened it and read it.
+
+But before he had finished it, he was attacked by a violent fit of
+coughing and choking, and became almost purple in the face. Whitey
+feared that he might be about to have a fit of apoplexy, which he had
+heard that stout people are subject to, but Dan gasped out something
+about going to get a drink, and hurried from the room, and was gone a
+long time.
+
+Even then Whitey did not suspect anything. He was so pleased with the
+journey--barring the twenty-five-mile walk--and with the strange
+experiences he was having, that his mind had no room in which to harbor
+suspicious thoughts of Bill Jordan. When Dan returned, he seemed better,
+though his face was a trifle red. He apologized to Whitey, saying that
+he was subject to such "spells." Then he inquired how Whitey got along
+on his trip to the T Up and Down.
+
+Whitey described his journey, and Dan seemed much concerned about
+Whitey's having had to walk the twenty-five miles, and couldn't
+understand how Bill Jordan had made the mistake of supposing that Cal
+Smith's ranch was on the stage road. And when Whitey told him that the
+driver thought Bill was playing a joke on him, Dan shook his head
+solemnly, and seemed almost about to have another spell, and allowed
+that Bill suttinly wouldn't play no joke o' that kind.
+
+Whitey had thought that most fat people were jolly, and was surprised to
+find Dan Brayton so serious. But he thought maybe it was the letter that
+made him so, for when he looked at it, he wrinkled up his forehead, and
+coughed behind his hand, and seemed to be considering it very weightily.
+At last he spoke.
+
+"This here letter's very important," Dan said, "an' I don't wonder Bill
+wouldn't trust none o' them fool punchers with it. An' 'course, Bill
+didn't c'nfide its insides t' you, knowin' how important your father
+takes all them important matters o' his."
+
+Whitey wondered if Dan didn't know any other long word besides
+"important," but he said nothing, while Dan thought and thought about
+the letter, and finally spoke again.
+
+"I bin thinkin'," he said, "that I'll have t' c'nsider this here matter
+'t some length, 'fore decidin' on no course o' action. You don't mind
+stayin' overnight, do you?"
+
+Whitey replied that it had been his intention to remain at the T Up and
+Down for a day or two, if it was agreeable to Dan, so that matter was
+settled.
+
+"Th' ain't much t' see 'round here, th' country bein' kind o' flat an'
+uninterestin', an' I reck'n, bein' rather tired, you wouldn't mind just
+settin' here an' readin', while I go an' c'nsult with my foreman," Dan
+said, and went away and presently returned with a big thick book, which
+was very heavy, and gave it to Whitey. "This here's my fav'rut book,"
+Dan continued, "an' is very absorbin'. Set in my chair there, an' read
+y'self t' death, 'f you feel like it," and Dan took himself off.
+
+So Whitey sat in Dan's chair, which happened to be the only chair in the
+room, and was extremely uncomfortable, being all sagged down on one
+side, on account of Dan's weight. The book proved to be a
+several-years-old copy of the Congressional Record, containing the
+speeches made before Congress at that time, and in addition to being
+heavy, it was more than dull. Whitey couldn't understand how Dan found
+it "absorbin'." Dan certainly must be a serious-minded person, despite
+his fat. And yet, from over near the bunk house, Whitey heard loud
+laughter coming from several men. He reflected hopefully that perhaps
+the hands were not so solemn as Dan Brayton.
+
+But this hope was ill-founded, for later, when Dan took Whitey to the
+bunk house, he found all the punchers who were there were reading
+serious-looking books. Whitey supposed that "like master, like man,"
+they must be taking after Dan Brayton. He did not know that some of
+those cowboys couldn't read at all, and if he had looked close enough he
+might have seen that some of those who could read were holding their
+books upside down.
+
+Whitey's stay at the T Up and Down turned out to be as dull as the
+Congressional Record. There was an old-fashioned melodeon in the
+living-room of the ranch house, and it was very much out of tune. One of
+the punchers could play, and he played, and the others sang hymns, and
+sang them very badly, and when they had finished the hymns, they started
+on doleful songs like "The Cowboy's Lament," and "Bury Me On the Lone
+Perare-e-e."
+
+These seemed to be great favorites with the punchers, and Whitey
+wondered at it. They were getting less popular with him every minute.
+Afterwards he learned what may have made them please the men; that
+almost all the songs sung on the ranges are written by the cowboys
+themselves, and they may be dismal because of being composed during
+lonely night rides.
+
+One puncher called "Little" Thompson, who was high and narrow in
+build--shaped something like a lath, with a face something like an
+undertaker's--sang at length. First a doleful ditty that went like this:
+
+  "Oh! my name it is J.W. Wright, I came from Tennessee.
+  There was a killin' in th' mountains, th' sheriff got his, ye see.
+  I left my wife an' babies, them kids I loved so well,
+  An' I'll find a grave on th' lone prairee,
+  Oh! pardners, ain't it hell?"
+
+After this had dragged out its weary length he got an encore, and
+responded with this gem:
+
+  "We came up over th' long trail,
+  Three thousand cattle strong.
+  Ned Saunders needed a hair cut,
+  Fer his hair was too darned long.
+
+  "Oh, th' night was dark an' stormee,
+  An' the Injuns round did yell,
+  So we herded into a canyon,
+  An' th' sons-o'-guns come like hell.
+
+  "Ned lost his hair, he didn't care,
+  Fer he had lots t' spare,
+  Oh, te-tumity tum-tum,"--and so on.
+
+There were at least a hundred verses of this last, each verse more
+deadly dull than the one before, and Little was very conscientious; he
+didn't slight any of them. Long before he was through, Whitey envied the
+fate of Ned Saunders. But the evening was only mortal, it had to end,
+and at last it did.
+
+Whitey must have shown signs of wear, for as they parted to go to bed,
+Dan Brayton said to him, "Cheer up, it may rain to-morrow," and it did!
+
+Now, if there was anything more depressing than the T Up and Down when
+the weather was fine, it was that same ranch when it rained. How Whitey
+got through that awful day he never really knew. The most cheerful thing
+that happened was during dinner, when Dan Brayton told a long yarn about
+a brother of his, who had small-pox and fleas at one and the same time,
+and, as Dan said, "was more t' be pitied than scorned." And this might
+have been a joke, though no one laughed. But at last evening came with
+another programme of dirges, then night with its blessed sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FELIX THE FAITHLESS
+
+
+To Whitey's intense relief the following morning was clear, and he
+realized, with delight, that at last he would be able to get away from
+the T Up and Down. He had never been so tired of a place in his life. It
+was almost worse than school.
+
+After breakfast Dan Brayton took Whitey into his office, and while
+Whitey sat on a saddle, Dan slouched in his saggy chair and talked
+business.
+
+"I'm sure glad you bin able t' stay a coupl'a days," he said. "It musta
+bin a pleasant change for you, an' it's give me a chanst t' think over
+this here important business o' your father's. I've writ a letter for
+you t' deliver, t' my friend Walt Lampson, o' the Star Circle, down
+so'east o' here a piece, for you t' take t' him. Y' see, we can't fill
+all your dad's r'quir'munts, so I'm callin' on Walt t' sort o' help out
+with th' balance."
+
+Dan looked impressively at Whitey, who didn't understand much of what
+he was talking about, and didn't care about anything he was to do, he
+was so glad to get away from the T Up and Down.
+
+"This'll take you out of your way a bit," Dan went on, "but you won't
+have t' cross th' Zumbro, an' I'll send back that hoss you borrowed from
+Cal Smith, by one o' the hands. An' I'll lend you one o' my nags t' take
+you as far as Willer Bend, where you c'n get another mount. Little
+Thompson'll go that far with you, an' from there on th' goin's
+straight."
+
+So, on the borrowed horse, and with the letter sewed inside his shirt,
+Whitey set forth with Little Thompson, the tall, thin, solemn cowboy who
+had sung the dismal songs. And glad as he was to leave, Whitey regretted
+that he did not have a more cheerful companion. For Little's idea of
+entertainment was to talk about funerals.
+
+He seemed to have enjoyed going to them greatly, and described each
+individual one at length. Never before had Whitey known what a subject
+for conversation funerals could make. Little dwelled on the burial of
+each one of his immediate family, then passed on to his distant
+relatives, then to his friends, then to his acquaintances. Whitey's
+nerves were pretty steady, as you know, but after about four hours of
+this, Little got him so fidgety that he thought he would fall off the
+horse. Finally he thought Little had changed the subject, and breathed a
+sigh of relief.
+
+"Drink's a awful evil," Little announced solemnly. "They was a friend o'
+mine, one o' them two-handed drinkers, what was down to Bismarck, an'
+got in th' c'ndition what liquor perduces, an' this friend o' mine was
+standin' on th' sidewalk, an' 'long comes a funeral."
+
+"Here it is again!" muttered Whitey, with a groan.
+
+"An' this friend o' mine," Little continued, "sees this here funeral,
+an' bein' in th' c'ndition he's in, he thinks it is a percession, an' he
+waves his hat an' cheers, an' he gets urrested."
+
+Little looked sternly at Whitey as though to drive the moral of this
+story home, and to warn him never to drink and cheer a funeral. But at
+this moment "Willer Bend" hove in sight, and the talk turned to other
+channels.
+
+The Bend was a relief in more ways than one, for it was a beautiful spot
+on the sharp turn of a narrow creek, whose banks were overhung by
+weeping-willows, the green of their leaves made vivid by the recent
+rain. One Chet Morgan, a nester, lived here. Nesters--or small
+farmers--were not usually popular in the early days of the Western
+ranges, as they had a way of fencing in the springs, or water-holes, to
+provide irrigation for their crops. But there was plenty of water in
+that country, so Chet was welcome to all of it he wanted.
+
+While Whitey sat in the doorway of the small shack, Little had a long
+talk with Chet, near the stable, and Chet seemed to be nodding his head
+in agreement to everything the puncher said. They then rested awhile and
+had dinner with the nester, and after that Little rode away, leading
+Whitey's borrowed horse. There seemed no reason for Whitey's staying any
+longer, and Chet again went to the stable, and returned leading what is
+called a jack, "jack" being short for "jackass."
+
+"Here's your mount, son," said Chet, "an' if you'll keep t' th'--"
+
+"Am I to ride _that_?" Whitey demanded, pointing at the jack.
+
+"Sure," Chet replied. "Both of my hosses has glanders, but this jack's
+all right. I've rid him offen. You'll find him gentle an' perseverin'
+an' good comp'ny. Mebbe he does go a mite faster toward home than away
+from it, but he allus gets somewhere. His name's Felix, after a uncle o'
+mine what--"
+
+Followed a personal history of Chet's uncle, to which Whitey did not
+listen. He was thinking of the figure he would cut arriving at the Star
+Circle on Felix, and hoped he would get there at night. Chet returned to
+the subject of the jack, to whose back a blanket was strapped.
+
+"I'm sorry my saddles won't fit him," said Chet, "but you'll find
+sittin' on this blanket as comf'tbul as your mother's rockin'-chair, an'
+you've only sixty mile t' go."
+
+"Sixty miles!" gasped Whitey.
+
+"Thassall. Now you keep t' that road, with them hills t' your right, an'
+when you get t'--"
+
+Chet described at length Whitey's route to the Star Circle Ranch. Sadly
+Whitey mounted Felix and set forth. Again the road proved little but a
+grass-grown wagon track through the rolling plain edged by the gray
+hills. And soon it seemed to Whitey that Chet had been over-enthusiastic
+when he said that Felix's back was easy as a rocking-chair. At first it
+might have seemed so, but after awhile it felt more like a rail fence.
+
+And Whitey discovered peculiar traits in Felix. He constantly wanted to
+turn to the right, and had to be pulled back, and he was cold-jawed. And
+once in a while he would stop short, and when Whitey urged him on, would
+start in a despondent way, with his head down and his ears flopping, and
+would have to be kicked or whipped to be urged to do anything faster
+than a walk. It was all very discouraging.
+
+Perhaps you never have seen a horse or a jack attached to the end of the
+pole of one of those old stone grinding-mills, around which he marches
+and marches, while the grain is ground between the whirling stones in
+the center. That was Felix's regular job, which accounted for many of
+his peculiarities--but Whitey never knew about it.
+
+Among the interesting things about animals is their sense of time. Many
+of them seem to be as accurate as clocks and some of them as useful as
+calendars. One dog, in particular, comes to my mind, whom his master
+used to bathe on Sundays. And when this custom was firmly fixed in
+his--the pup's--mind, he would go away on Friday night and stay away
+till Monday morning. He got to be the dirtiest dog in town.
+
+And the easiest time for an animal to tell is the time to stop work and
+eat. Felix was very clever in that regard. At about six o'clock the
+unsuspecting Whitey dismounted to stretch himself and ease the strain of
+jouncing up and down on that rocking-chair that had come to feel like a
+ridge-pole. Naturally his eyes turned away from Felix, to whom he was
+beginning to take a personal dislike.
+
+Whitey's eyes were brought back with a jerk by the soft thud of little
+hoofs on the prairie, for Felix was beating it back toward Willer Bend,
+with a speed that astonished his late rider. Whitey started after him
+instinctively, but he soon realized that that was useless, and he stood
+and watched, while Felix became a blurred spot in the distance. Whitey
+didn't know that it was time to quit for the day at the
+grinding-mill--and it would not have done him any good if he had.
+
+But he knew that it was lonely on the prairie. And that he had come only
+about a third of the way to the Star Circle Ranch. So he supposed he
+must be in for another walk, for he wouldn't go back to Willer Bend for
+that Felix, not if he died for it. He started determinedly on his
+course. He might meet some one who would give him a lift. Anyway, it was
+going to be a moonlight night, and wouldn't be so bad; and walking
+wasn't much slower than riding Felix, and was far more comfortable.
+
+So Whitey trudged and trudged until dusk came. Then he sat down and ate
+some of the food he had brought with him. Then darkness came, and a big
+moon poked its head up over the eastern horizon, and rode up into the
+sky, where it began to get smaller and more silvery, and to flood the
+prairie with its light. And Whitey started, and it wasn't so bad to
+tread the soft road, and to hear the hum of the insects, and to feel the
+gentle night breeze against his face, and it would be something to tell
+about afterwards.
+
+Whitey did not know what time it was when he sat down on a hummock to
+rest. And he must have fallen asleep, for after a while, out of some
+vague country that seemed like the mountains near the Bar O Ranch, a
+great giant came rushing down toward him. And the giant had a head like
+Felix's, but on top of it was a big yellow light--like those lamps
+miners wear on their heads--that grew brighter and brighter, and the
+giant roared louder and louder, until he woke Whitey up.
+
+Whitey rubbed his eyes, then pinched himself to make sure he was awake,
+for the roaring still sounded in his ears, and he looked around and saw
+two little red and green lights disappearing in the distance. And then
+he understood that he must have sat down near the track of the
+railroad, for those lights were on the end of a train, and the big
+yellow light on the giant's head must have been the engine's headlight.
+
+Well, the road followed the railway for a distance, and it couldn't be
+such an awful way to the Star Circle Ranch. Should he go on, or should
+he sleep some more? He might catch cold from the dew, but he could put
+on his slicker, and--he was awfully tired.
+
+He yawned, he nodded, he was sound asleep before he knew it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A FOOL'S ERRAND
+
+
+When Whitey arrived at the Star Circle Ranch, at about ten o'clock in
+the morning, he was still a very tired boy. The Star Circle was a much
+larger ranch than the T Up and Down, with a much smaller manager, for
+Walt Lampson, who was also part owner of the place, was not much taller
+than Whitey, and he was serious-looking, too--didn't look at all like
+Cal Brayton.
+
+After Whitey had delivered his letter to Walt Lampson and had eaten some
+breakfast, which the cook had rustled for him, he began to tell Walt of
+his adventures in coming from the T Up and Down, and he was surprised
+when Walt roared with laughter. This attracted some of the cowpunchers,
+and they roared, too. Whitey had to repeat the part about Felix going
+home. It seemed strange to Whitey that Cal Brayton who looked so merry
+should be so solemn, and Walt Lampson who looked so solemn should be so
+merry.
+
+After sleeping for about twelve hours at a stretch for three nights
+Whitey might be said to be a trifle rested and able to look around and
+take an interest in his surroundings. And he began to discover things
+about the character of the men on the Star Circle Ranch. They were given
+to loud laughter, but he noticed that most of this laughter was at the
+misfortunes of others. And they were always playing jokes on one another
+and cutting up tricks; but beneath this playfulness there seemed to be a
+sort of fierceness--something like the ferocity that lurks beneath the
+play of a tiger.
+
+He had plenty of time for these reflections and feelings, as Walt
+Lampson did not seem to be in a hurry about attending to Mr. Sherwood's
+business, and Whitey caught Walt and the men looking at him in a
+peculiar way, when they thought he was not noticing them. On the third
+day after his arrival--an unpleasant, lowering day, for that time of the
+year, with a cold wind--Walt spoke thus to Whitey:
+
+"I'm havin' some stock cut out, t'day, t' send to your dad. How'd ye
+like t' go out on th' range an' take a look at it?"
+
+"Is that the business Bill sent me on?" asked Whitey.
+
+"Partly," Walt answered. "What d'ye say? You might as well do that as
+loaf around here."
+
+"I'll go," said Whitey.
+
+"All right. You c'n go with Hank Dawes. He's startin' pretty soon, an'
+he'll get you a hoss."
+
+It was some relief to Whitey to be galloping over the prairie, though
+Hank Dawes was not the man he would have chosen as a companion. Hank's
+cruelty to his horse turned Whitey against him. Whitey had seen many
+animals treated unfeelingly, but he never could understand how a man
+could enjoy torturing one, as Hank seemed to. Finally, after an outburst
+on Hank's part that included quirting and spurring and swearing, Whitey
+could hold in no longer.
+
+"If you'd treat your horse better he'd behave better," he said angrily.
+"You ought to know that."
+
+For a moment Hank looked blankly at Whitey, then burst out laughing. He
+could not understand any one's having consideration for a horse, and
+the boy's anger struck him as being funny. Whitey turned from him in
+disgust, baffled by such a lack of understanding and feeling.
+
+The writer knows many men in the West, and, having been born and raised
+there, naturally thinks Westerners the finest men in the world. But for
+him to deny that there are good and bad among them would be idle. As
+idle to deny that some of them were cruel to their horses. Among these
+the Indians and Mexicans bear the worst reputations with those who are
+supposed to know. But, for the sake of truth, the author wishes to say
+that he found the Indians uniformly kind to their horses. And as for the
+Mexicans, not only were they always kind and considerate to their
+mounts, but they were among the greatest horsemen in the world.
+
+Whitey and Hank rode for a time in a silence broken only by Hank's
+occasional profane mutterings at his patient horse, then Whitey descried
+two objects moving toward him from the west. At first he mistook them
+for two horsemen, then discovered that one horse was being led, then
+that the rider was Injun, and the led horse was Monty. With a whoop of
+astonishment and joy Whitey galloped toward them.
+
+"Hello, Injun, what's all this?" yelled Whitey when within speaking
+distance, so glad that he was almost ready to embrace his friend.
+
+Injun, as usual, showed no surprise, but there was a gleam of welcome in
+his eye. "Monty, him stolen," he said. "Me find him."
+
+Whitey wormed Injun's story from him, in jerky sentences, while Hank
+Dawes rode up and looked on, and listened indifferently. It seemed that
+two days before, at the Bar O Ranch Monty had "turned up missing."
+Injun, who knew Monty's hoofprints as one friend would know the color of
+another's eyes, had taken it upon himself to follow them. They had led
+him a long chase, ending at a night camp, many miles west of the spot
+where he and Whitey met.
+
+Injun had tied his pony some distance from the camp. This that he might
+not whinney a greeting to Monty. Then Injun had crept up on the
+camper-thief, and waited patiently until "him snore heap." Then Injun
+had quietly extracted Monty from that camp, and silently faded away
+into the night. He was now on his way to the Bar O.
+
+"Didn't you see who the thief was?" asked Whitey.
+
+"Him fire out. Me 'fraid make light," said Injun, unknowingly giving a
+hint of the time he must have visited at the camp.
+
+Monty was showing his joy at meeting Whitey, who was patting the pony's
+neck.
+
+"This isn't my saddle!" Whitey cried suddenly.
+
+"Him Bill Jordan's saddle," said Injun, grinning. It seemed to appeal to
+Injun's peculiar sense of humor that the clever Mr. Jordan should have
+had his saddle stolen.
+
+"Did Bill suspect any one?" inquired Whitey.
+
+"Guess heap, can't tell," Injun replied. "Henry Dorgan, him leave
+Monday," Injun added darkly, plainly willing to connect the man he
+disliked with the theft.
+
+Whitey hardly thought that Dorgan would risk a return to the ranch for
+Monty, though he always had admired the pony. If Dorgan had stolen
+Monty, it was pleasant to think that he was now wending his way across
+the plains on foot.
+
+Another idea occurred to Whitey. "Why don't you stay with me, Injun?" he
+demanded. "Then we can ride back to the Bar O together."
+
+Injun grinned his agreement to the idea, not saying that he had thought
+of it first. So Whitey transferred his person to Monty, and, leading the
+Star Circle horse, he and Injun and Hank Dawes continued on their way.
+And Mr. Dawes was allowed to ride ahead while Whitey told Injun what had
+befallen him since leaving the Bar O Ranch, and of his present errand.
+
+Injun cast a knowing eye at the sky. "No cut out cows t'day," he said.
+"Heap storm comin'."
+
+"What's the difference?" Whitey asked. "Maybe we can ride night herd.
+It'll be great fun."
+
+Riding night herd was not Injun's idea of fun, but he was so glad to be
+with Whitey again that he made no objection. He seldom made objections,
+anyway. It occurred to neither of the boys that after Injun's long
+pursuit of the horse-thief, it would be a hardship for him to ride all
+that day and possibly that night. And, of course, Injun wasn't hungry.
+He had not been fool enough to start out on a long chase without
+providing himself with food.
+
+So the boys rode on. Even had they known into what they were riding it
+is unlikely that they would have turned back. Had Walt Lampson known of
+the coming peril he would not have been at the Star Circle, laughingly
+telling his men of sending Whitey on a wild-goose chase, that would end
+with his spending a night in the saddle, facing a blinding storm.
+Lampson and all the men he could summon would have been heavily armed,
+dashing at full speed toward the threatened herd.
+
+Buck Milton, the range boss, made a better impression on Whitey than any
+other man he had seen at the Star Circle. He was tall, blond, sinewy. He
+was thoughtful and serious, and not ill-natured. He looked like a man
+who could take a joke which he might not understand any too well, and
+put up a fight in which he would prove a deadly factor. In short, he
+was a character you would look at twice, and Whitey was surprised to
+find him in the Star Circle outfit.
+
+Hank Dawes handed Buck a letter, which Whitey took to be instructions
+from Walt Lampson, and Buck read it, talked to Hank a moment, and when
+Buck rode over to where Whitey waited with Injun, he was smiling.
+
+"There won't be no cuttin' out t'day," he said. "Too late, for one
+thing, and for another it's goin' t' storm. You boys like t' stay with
+th' herd t'night? Be kinda rough."
+
+"Why, yes. We'd like it immensely. It'll be a sort of adventure," Whitey
+replied.
+
+"Well, some folks might call it that," said Buck. "You might stick along
+with me." And he and the boys rode off together.
+
+You must know of the old, old enmity that existed between the cowmen and
+the sheepmen of those early days of the Western ranges. In the
+neighborhood in which Whitey found himself, this enmity was particularly
+bitter, for more and more had the sheep been encroaching on the plains
+that the cattlemen regarded as their own. And the reason for this
+enmity: once the white-coated flocks had passed over the land it was
+dead as a feeding-ground for cattle.
+
+So little wonder that the cattlemen thought of the sheep as pests or
+vermin, and considered their owners as deadly foes, and in turn were
+regarded as foes by the sheepmen. The cattlemen were in possession of
+most of the ranges, and possession was nine points of the law in a
+country in which there was little law, except that of the gun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE STAMPEDE
+
+
+Along the banks of the Yellowstone, where it wended its snakelike course
+to the Missouri, wandered the massive herds of the Star Circle, and
+around them rode the cow waddies, the few outriders, keeping their
+charges from straying, and ever watchful for the dreaded sheep, which
+had of late sprung up like buffalo grass, and, as Buck Milton expressed
+it, "in a country that God had made for cows."
+
+And over the range in like peace grazed the enemy; white-fleeced, soft
+and downy as doves, and as harmless and innocent. Of all weapons ever
+used in warfare the strangest, these living emblems of innocence. It was
+a warfare fought far from the public eye. The men who fought the cattle
+were little like those bull-fighters of Spain who responded to the
+applause of thousands. They acted in the dark, if they could, and for
+hire, and yet they may have had hearts--but those who hired them surely
+had none.
+
+And all unconscious of coming danger the boys rode with the few
+herders, or by themselves, near the wandering cattle. The storm had held
+off while twilight faded, but now the sky was cloud-curtained, and the
+night fell inky black and silent save for sounds from the herd. The soft
+thudding of hoofs, the occasional low-voiced note, possibly of a cow to
+its young, seemed to blend into a murmur, strange and fascinating to
+Whitey, commonplace and tiresome to the men of the range.
+
+Then the storm began to send signals of its approach from air and sky.
+First the hushing of the wind, then the pale glares from the distant sky
+where the earth's edge joined it, then the rumble of thunder, growing in
+volume with the brighter, green flashes of the lightning--all familiar
+enough to Whitey, but now giving him a thrill because felt in strange
+surroundings. The nervous stirring of the mass of beasts near by added
+to the boy's thrill, for a coming storm was never to be taken calmly by
+the hulking, helpless brutes.
+
+And when the rush of wind and the crashing of the coming tempest
+sounded, and the herders were renewing their watchfulness, another storm
+was breeding that they did not dream of. For over beyond, in a gully,
+the sheepmen were gathered. And each man carried a white garment, like
+those you may have seen pictured as worn by the old raiders of the
+South--the Ku-Klux Klan. They were waiting only for the lightning to
+become blinding, the thunder to become deafening.
+
+And when the electrical storm was at its height, you will know what
+happened when those white-clad figures went among the thousands of
+range-bred beasts, guarded by a pitiful handful of men. For range cattle
+are accustomed to a man only when he is mounted; then he is a part of
+his horse. It is dangerous for him to go among them on foot; then he is
+a strange animal. Many a cowboy has dismounted, rescued a steer from the
+mire--and had to run for his life. Thus were those white-clad figures
+doubly monstrous and terrifying to the herd.
+
+You may have thought that the cowboy wears his revolver for protection
+against his human enemies, but it is rather for a protection of the
+cattle against themselves in that strange panic known as a "stampede."
+Whitey and Injun, riding near the edge of the herd, and bowing against
+the fury of the storm, did not need Buck Milton's hoarse shouts of
+warning to make them swing aside. They were helpless to aid in diverting
+the mass of maddened animals that swung toward them, and galloping their
+horses to a point of safety, they turned in their saddles and viewed the
+strange sight.
+
+Lighted by the almost continuous flashes of the lightning, the
+bellowing, thundering herd crashed by.... Far behind it, and in safety,
+were the white figures of the men who had caused the panic, sneaking off
+into the night. They had been seen by the Star Circle riders, but there
+was no time to think of them now. At the head of the herd, Whitey could
+see two men, their horses set at a mad run. Buck Milton was one, and the
+other a dare-devil young fellow named Tom, who was Buck's closest
+friend.
+
+And as Buck and Tom rode, Whitey could see them firing their guns
+almost in the faces of the foremost maddened steers. They were trying to
+divert the leaders, and thus turn the herd until it would circle in its
+course, and finally the entire mass of beasts would be running round and
+round, in a course known as "milling." And there Whitey learned the real
+use the cowboy has for his gun.
+
+What was going on beyond, Whitey could not see, and he could hear
+nothing above the uproar of the storm, and the clamor of the stampede,
+except the faint cracking of the guns of Tom and Buck. As Whitey held
+the almost fear-maddened Monty in check, the wild-eyed steers, with
+lowered heads and panting sides, sped by. At their head Whitey saw Tom
+swing nearer toward the leaders, then he saw Tom no more. There were two
+dangers to be feared in that mad race; if a steer fell, the others would
+trip over it, and many of them would die; if a man were caught in the
+rushing mass, it meant sure death.
+
+Morning came, with the sun graying the low clouds, from which fell a
+cold drizzle; a setting drear enough for the scene the boys were to
+witness. A handful of gaunt men, sad but determined, their spent,
+drooping horses near by, stood facing a shallow grave scooped out of the
+prairie. Near it lay a blanket-covered figure that the dreaded stampede
+had crushed into a shape of which Whitey feared to think.
+
+As the cowboys lowered the shape into the grave, Buck Milton turned his
+head away for a moment. Then he said simply, "Tom was my pardner for
+nine years." And again, after a pause, "And who's goin' t' tell his gal
+over on the Little Divide?"
+
+There seemed no need for words just then, for after their grief for
+their friend the men's faces showed the turn of thought to his
+murderers, the sheepmen. Whitey never had seen the intent to kill come
+into men's faces before. It was grim, but not repulsive, for in a way
+there was justice in it. And poor Tom, who yesterday had been less than
+a name to Whitey, had now become the central figure in a tragedy.
+
+But no one could have told what Injun thought. He, who came of a race
+that held vengeance above most things, looked on, seemingly unmoved.
+
+Followed busy days on the Star Circle, during which Walt Lampson
+probably forgot the existence of Whitey and Injun. It was doubtful to
+the boys that he even noticed them when they rode back to the ranch
+house, after the funeral of Buck's friend Tom. Whatever thoughts of
+revenge were cherished by Walt and Buck had to be held in check while
+the stampeded herds were rounded up from the many-mile radius of prairie
+over which they had strayed.
+
+To do this the entire force of the Star Circle was needed. Divided into
+parties the men rode north, east, south, and west for a distance of
+about twenty miles. Then they trailed round and round, in a great,
+narrowing circle that took in that wide radius, and as the cattle were
+met, in bunches or small herds, they were gathered and driven into a
+common center until they formed one great herd.
+
+Whitey and Injun managed to go with Buck Milton's men, as Whitey liked
+Buck better than any of the other punchers, but the death of Tom had
+left Buck in a gloomy mood, and he spoke but little, either to the men
+or to the boys. The others were loud in their oaths and threats of
+vengeance; Buck was silent--and somehow, Whitey could not help feeling
+that Buck was the most dangerous enemy the sheepmen would have to deal
+with.
+
+This round-up lasted a full week. During it Walt Lampson had found time
+to consider his course of action against the stampeders of his herd. So
+when Whitey and Injun returned, they found that the Star Circle was to
+be involved in one of the scourges of the time--a range war.
+
+If you had been there would you have wanted to stay and see the thing
+out? The answer is so simple that you know what Whitey and Injun wanted
+to do. But Whitey knew that hardened as Walt Lampson was, he would not
+allow the boys to accompany the coming expedition against the sheepmen,
+so Injun and Whitey did what you probably would have done, and what
+Br'er Rabbit did--they lay low. And Walt either forgot to send them
+home, or thought that they would stay at the Star Circle while the war
+was on.
+
+For two days after the round-up nothing was done at the ranch, beyond
+the oiling of guns, and consultations among the men. Walt Lampson seemed
+to be waiting for something. On the third night there was a meeting in
+the ranch-house living-room. A meeting which Whitey and Injun attended
+unseen, by the simple method of hiding. It may have been wrong to
+listen, but it was worse to die, and Whitey felt that he surely would
+expire if he didn't know what was going on. Injun had no scruples at
+all.
+
+A traveler might have thought that all trails led to the Star Circle
+Ranch, that gloomy night, for from every point of the compass came
+riders, alone, by twos, and by threes. Desperate, hard men, who had used
+their bodily strength to conquer the elements and to build up their
+herds, as mine-owners use machinery to crush the gold out of the ore.
+For this war of the sheep against the cattle was a common war, and it
+was to be fought to a finish in that country.
+
+So that was what Walt was waiting for, thought Whitey as he looked into
+the living-room from a crack in the office door, held slightly ajar. Had
+Whitey been in a criminal court during the last appeal of opposing
+counsel, he would have seen in the jury box no more thoughtful, set, and
+determined faces than those assembled in that ranch-house room.
+
+The decision this court reached was: to catch the culprits and hang
+them; to drive their sheep over the hills into the deepest canyons to
+die by thousands; to hunt out the hiding owners, and let Colt guns be
+both judge and jury. Merciless and hard it seems, doesn't it? But those
+were merciless and hard days, when "only the strong survived."
+
+"There's just one man I ever knowed who could do this work right," Walt
+Lampson said. "The greatest two-handed man with a gun that ever was
+born, an' a fool jury sent him to the pen, five years ago, for brandin'
+a few calves."
+
+"You mean Mart Cooley," said another ranchman. "There was only one of
+him. But he done two years at Deer Lodge, an' nobody's ever seen him
+since."
+
+"Guess again," Walt replied. "I heard o' him. He's been down in the
+Chinook Country. An' what's more I've got word o' Mart, an' he's comin'
+here t'night."
+
+Walt's words caused a sensation, and while it is subsiding I may as well
+explain that in those frontier days there was a vast stretch of mesa or
+prairie known as the Chinook Country, because of the unseasonable, warm,
+and soothing winds that blew there. You may have read Bill Jordan's tale
+about these winds, in the first Injun and Whitey story. They would melt
+the snow, and cause the cowmen to start out their feeding herds, only to
+be caught by the northers, that brought the bitter, perishing cold, and
+killed the stock by thousands. On account of this uncertain condition
+the Chinook Country was avoided in the early days, save by those who
+located there for _reasons_--which no one was ever known to question.
+And in this desolate place Walt Lampson had heard of Mart Cooley, and
+from there he had lured him to the Star Circle Ranch.
+
+Whitey waited, almost breathless, for the thrill that was to come at
+his first sight of the "bad man" of the West; the "two-gun man" who has
+long since passed into history, but was then a factor of the troublous
+times.
+
+And you might like to hear a word or two about the ways he handled his
+gun, for he had more than one way. But first, the way he didn't handle
+it. Ordinarily, when you are shooting at a mark with a pistol, you cock
+the weapon, close one eye, and gaze along the barrel with the other
+until the sight is in line with the mark, and, holding the pistol
+steady, pull the trigger. That was what the gunman didn't do.
+
+He sighted his weapon much as you throw a stone--by judging with his
+eye. He filed off the sight, so it wouldn't catch in the holster And he
+didn't use the trigger at all. That, too, could be taken off. Let us say
+that he was using both guns. He drew them from their holsters with
+marvelous speed. As he did so, he flipped back the hammers with his
+thumbs, and allowed them to fall on the cartridges, thus firing the
+first shots. The remaining shots were fired by working the hammers in
+the same way, and the actions caused an up-and-down movement of the
+guns. Seems a funny way to fire a revolver, doesn't it? But it wasn't
+funny for the man who was in front of the bad man.
+
+He had another way of not leveling the gun at all, but firing from his
+hip, the revolver being held there, and the hammer worked with the
+thumb. Another and very expert way was to fire from the holster, not
+taking the gun out at all. This was remarkably quick and deadly.
+
+But the strangest way of all, that was sometimes used at close quarters,
+was called "fanning." The gun was held at the hip, the first shot fired
+with the thumb-hammer movement. The gunman spread out the thumb and
+fingers of his other hand, and quickly drawing them across the hammer,
+one after another, they fired the shots with lightning rapidity. You
+would be surprised at the speed with which shots can be fired in this
+way. Try it sometime--with an empty gun.
+
+Whitey, waiting behind the living-room door, had heard in bunk-house
+talk of these various ways in which the bad man proved himself an
+artist with his gun--had to prove himself one, if he wanted to remain
+alive. But when Mart Cooley, the most deadly man of that kind in the
+West, entered the living-room and faced the ranchmen, Whitey did not get
+his thrill--at first. For Mart was not a very large, nor a very
+fierce-looking person, as he stood sidewise to Whitey, and talked to the
+others.
+
+Not often does crime fail to leave its mark on a man. The mouth, the
+chin, the forehead; some feature usually shows traces of it. And when
+Mart Cooley turned and Whitey saw his eyes, he got his thrill. They were
+a hard, light, steely gray, and they looked out from lowered lids, oh,
+so steadily. Months of brooding in the prison had helped to harden
+Mart's eyes, that had needed no help in that way; brooding over
+imaginary wrongs, for he thought his arrest an injustice. Other men had
+stolen a few cows, and got away with them, but Mart was made to suffer,
+and came to think himself a victim.
+
+Out in the barren waste of the Chinook Country, lonely and gloomy, Mart
+had planned vengeance. But against whom? No one man could fight the
+Government. Failure was sure to come, and it meant death or
+worse--further imprisonment. In time Mart had come to regard all
+humanity as his enemy. Thus does crime and solitude twist the mind of
+man. Mart was ripe for a killing. And these men were offering him a
+chance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE CATTLE-SHEEP WAR
+
+
+Next morning before dawn a determined and desperate band of men rode
+from the Star Circle Ranch, under the leadership of Mart Cooley. Whitey
+and Injun were wise enough not to show themselves, Whitey fearing not
+only that they would be forbidden to go, but that they would be sent
+home. This would be mortifying, to say the least. But if he were not
+forbidden--well, we all know the kinds of excuses with which we ease our
+consciences.
+
+While this was going on in Whitey's mind, Bill Jordan was sleeping at
+the Bar O. But had Bill known whither his joke on Whitey was leading the
+boys, it is likely that he would not have slumbered so peacefully.
+
+So they waited until the warlike expedition had disappeared on the
+rolling prairie, and then they followed at a distance. And that was
+easy, for Injun could have tracked that mass of horses' hoofprints in
+his sleep.
+
+Most of the time Injun and Whitey were out of sight of the cattlemen.
+So in order to make this story run right along, it is necessary to tell
+what happened to the men while the boys were absent, all of which Injun
+and Whitey heard about afterwards.
+
+It was well along in the forenoon when in the distance a mass of moving
+dots, with moving specks on its outskirts, indicated a flock of sheep,
+and spurring their horses to a gallop the men dashed toward it. And I
+regret to say that when the flock was reached, the gallop did not end.
+The men rode straight through that bleating, panic-stricken mass, on the
+edge of which two hysterical collies vainly tried to exert control of
+their charges. The cattlemen were looking for the shepherd.
+
+Some distance beyond the flock, or where the flock had been, for the
+sheep were now rushing across the plain, was a two-horse, canvas-topped
+wagon, with a stove-pipe protruding through the top at the back. For
+your sheepherder does not sleep on the ground like the cowboy, but
+prefers a sheltering wagon. When the men reached this shelter, there
+was no one in sight. As they reined in, one of the leaders called, "Come
+out of there, you black-hearted dog!"
+
+There was no response. Twenty guns were drawn from their holsters. There
+was a moment's pause, and the guns were raised. But the curtains of the
+wagon were drawn, and a figure appeared and descended to the ground. The
+guns were held suspended in the hands of their surprised owners--for
+they faced a woman.
+
+The lynching party drew the line at killing the woman--though she did
+not know that--but they did not draw the line at making her talk. She
+was a half-breed, and she spoke English very badly, but with a gun
+thrust in her face, she spoke enough.
+
+And from what the frightened creature gasped out, and from what Mart
+Cooley figured in his mind, this is what was learned: Knowing that the
+cattlemen would seek revenge, but would first round up their scattered
+herd, the sheepmen had had time to act. They had driven almost all their
+sheep to the home ranch of the big owners, thinking they could be
+protected better there. They had gathered all the men available, and
+these were at the ranch, awaiting an attack. The woman's flock was too
+far away to be driven in, and she had been left in charge because the
+sheepmen had thought that the cowmen would not harm her.
+
+With this knowledge gained, the party wasted no more time on the woman
+or on her scattered sheep, but started off for the bigger game. When
+Injun and Whitey arrived on the spot, the woman had nothing more to say.
+She possibly felt that she had talked enough. Besides, she was busy
+smoking a pipe and waiting for the clever dogs to gather the scattered
+flock. But the ground was like the page of a book to Injun, and he read
+there, much better than the woman could have told him, that the sheep
+had been scattered, and the direction in which the men had gone.
+
+Donald Spellman, the manager of the sheep ranch, was a clever, daring,
+and resourceful man. His ranch house was situated at the head of a
+narrow canyon, or coulee, that led up into steep, barren hills down
+which no horse could go. Into this pocket he had the sheep driven by
+thousands. Across the narrow entrance his men had built a heavy
+barbed-wire fence that was not visible from the foothills. In the
+daytime the pass could be defended from the ranch house. At night, with
+the sheepmen stationed in the hills, an attempt to break through that
+wire fence would be more than dangerous. And this was the situation
+against which Mart Cooley led his determined band.
+
+It was at the end of a hard day's ride, and, late afternoon, when the
+cattlemen arrived in sight of the enemies' stronghold. They had circled
+the plains to the west, and ridden down in the shelter of the hills, to
+avoid coming within rifle range of the house. These western hills were
+rocky, and at their end a growth of firs, scrub oak, and brush gave the
+lynchers shelter. They were four or five hundred yards from the house,
+which was in plain view.
+
+Mart Cooley, Walt Lampson, Buck Milton, and a couple of ranchmen stood
+in this natural screen and took in the situation.
+
+"Sheep must be up in that coulee," said Walt.
+
+"Sure," Mart replied. "They c'n wait. That there house is sure in a good
+spot. If it'd bin planned for a fort it couldn't be better." He stood
+and silently regarded the house, his eyes narrowed more than usual. "How
+many men d'ye s'pose they've got in there?" he asked finally.
+
+"Reck'n they could scrape up 'bout twenty-five, in th' time they've
+had," Walt answered.
+
+"An' some o' 'em shepherds, an' rotten shots, an' they's fifty o' us,"
+Buck put in. He was eager for action.
+
+"Well, I come here t' fight, an' I'm paid for it," said Mart Cooley.
+"But if we go after 'em in th' open an' th' daylight, they'll get a lot
+of us. We'll wait till night."
+
+"Suits me," said Walt Lampson. "I don't want no sheepman t' get me."
+
+There was a puff of smoke from the house, and a bullet whined over the
+men's heads. They dropped to the ground. The lynchers raised their
+rifles and emptied them, but not at the house. Back of it and to the
+left was a raised water tank, and into the lower part of this the shots
+were directed. As the men wormed their way back through the scrub, and
+around the hill, thin streams of water began to trickle from the tank.
+
+"If we have t' stick 'round awhile, we'll leave 'em some thirsty,
+anyhow," said Walt.
+
+Volleys of harmless shots had followed their creeping course, for at
+five hundred yards it is hard to hit an object on the ground--especially
+when it is protected by scrub.
+
+Under cover of the steep hills the cattlemen waited for night. There was
+no sign of attack from the hills. Evidently the sheepmen were keeping
+their forces in the house during the daylight hours. After a brief
+twilight the night fell, cloudy and very dark. And Mart Cooley had
+formed another plan.
+
+One of the men knew the lay of the canyon. Its only practical outlet was
+that guarded by the sheepmen. But a short way up the canyon there was a
+spring in the hills, which found its outlet in a narrow stream that
+ended in a small waterfall at the edge of a cliff. Mart figured on his
+force entering the canyon, stampeding the sheep, and driving them over
+this waterfall. It was as simple as it was cruel, but you may have
+noticed that it takes clever people to think of simple things, and Mart
+Cooley was proving almost as clever with his mind as he was with his
+guns. For Mart also figured on the effect on the sheepmen's nerve when
+they found their herds gone, and their water from the tank giving out.
+
+Under cover of darkness Mart led about fifteen men around the hill,
+which they skirted, and, giving the ranch house a wide berth, made their
+way toward the mouth of the canyon. There was only one thing to guide
+them on their course. Where the western hills raised their heights
+toward the sky, their outline showed darker than the surrounding night.
+From this wall of black, Mart's force steered a diagonal course that
+would lead to the center of the canyon's mouth. Once in the canyon, out
+of range of the house and among the sheep, lanterns and fires would
+provide light enough for the men's purpose.
+
+It is not likely that there was an idea of poetic justice in the mind
+of Mart Cooley; a thought that in stampeding the sheep he was repaying
+the sheepmen in their own coin for stampeding the cattle, repaying them
+with the death of the victims added as interest.
+
+The plan seemed to be working out easily--too easily. Then, from one of
+the foremost rider's mounts, came the shrill neigh of a horse in pain,
+and the thudding of the animal's hoofs as it shied violently, for it had
+collided with the barbed wire fence. This was Mart's first intimation
+that there was a fence, but he had no time to think that he had been
+matched in cleverness by Donald Spellman, for things began to happen.
+
+First came the sound of a cowbell. At intervals along the lower strands
+of barbed wire bells had been hung. Next came a volley of shots, from
+the hills, which had been sought by the sheepmen under the cover of the
+night. They were firing toward the sound of the bells. The firing was
+not well-directed, but it was steady and dangerous.
+
+It is doubtful whether the attackers could have cut their way through
+the fence, handicapped as they were, but they had no chance to try, for
+just then a third thing happened. A cloud-obscured moon had been
+climbing the eastern hills, and at that moment the clouds parted and the
+entire valley was bathed in moonlight.
+
+The light was peaceful and beautiful, but it brought a deadly effect.
+Not only did it reveal the cattlemen to their enemies in the hills, but
+to those in the distant ranch house, as well. The cracking of rifles was
+almost continuous in that fatal triangle, in which the sheepmen formed
+two points, and the cowmen the tragic third.
+
+As the trapped fifteen rushed their mounts toward the shelter of the
+western hills, drawing farther away from their eastern enemies, they
+were forced to a nearer approach to the ranch house, to run the gantlet
+of its concealed sharp-shooters. A galloping horse, with its rider, does
+not offer an easy mark; fifteen of them, the objective of twenty rifles,
+form a better target. And when Mart Cooley's followers reached the
+shadows of the farther hills, they did not number fifteen, but eight.
+
+It was into this party of flying horsemen that Injun and Whitey were
+carried bodily. As darkness had come on, the boys had ridden cautiously
+in the tracks of the advancing party. They had been attracted by the
+sound of the shots, and approached as near as they dared, to witness the
+battle. They were near the corner of the hill when the terrified horses
+dashed toward them, and to avoid being run down they had spurred their
+ponies ahead and were swept along with the flying riders.
+
+Well, Mart Cooley had made the mistake of not figuring on the cleverness
+of Donald Spellman, and the result of this was not only to make him
+furious with himself, but to add to his, and to all the other men's
+desire for revenge. All thoughts of starving the enemy out were lost,
+absorbed in a lust for killing. The excited men paid no attention to the
+boys. It is doubtful if they even saw them.
+
+Mart took his forty-odd men back to the firs and scrub oaks at the lower
+point of the western hills, and there they stretched out in the brush,
+and prepared to bombard the ranch house. The moonlight was now Mart's
+friend instead of his enemy. The sheepmen were divided. Those on the
+hills would come in range of the cattlemen's rifles if they attempted to
+cross the moonlit valley, and in the meantime they were harmless.
+
+A number of volleys were fired into the house, not at the windows, but
+beneath the window ledges. When men are besieged in a house they must
+fire from the windows, kneeling by them. Several of the cattlemen's
+bullets tearing through the wooden wall of the house had caught these
+kneeling figures, and the fire from the place, never accurate, began to
+weaken. Mart had another purpose in view, but of that he said nothing.
+Possibly he was mortified by the failure of his sheep raid.
+
+Knowing Injun and Whitey as you do, you can imagine that they got as
+near to this dangerous situation as they could. No one ordered them back
+because no one noticed them. But they fired no shots. The wish to kill
+any man, no matter how vile, filled no part of Whitey's young life. It
+would be hard to answer for Injun. Hard to tell what the blood of all
+his fighting forefathers was prompting him to do.
+
+But Injun couldn't fire a shot if he wanted to. You may remember the
+Winchester that had been presented to Injun at the Bar O Ranch. He had
+left the gun at home. Injun knew nothing of the modern silencer, but he
+had one of his own--his bow and arrows. When he had started out in
+pursuit of the horse-thief, whom he supposed to be Henry Dorgan, Injun
+had carried these. No explosive gunshots for him. He expected to have to
+work silently.
+
+While most of the men had their eyes and the sights of their guns fixed
+on the house, Mart Cooley kept his eyes on the sky. But despite this
+Mart noticed that no shots came from two figures near him, and looking
+closer he saw the crouching Whitey and Injun, the latter with his bow
+and arrows. Mart was about to speak to them, when a cloud crossed the
+moon. Mart gave vent to an oath of satisfaction and started forward.
+Then he thought of something, came back, and grasping Injun by the arm,
+dragged him forward with him.
+
+It was a large cloud that obscured the moon, so there was a long period
+of darkness. Whitey stayed where he was. He wondered whether Mart Cooley
+would come and drag him forward, and rather hoped so. He wondered
+whether this darkness would give the men on the hills a chance to join
+their fellows in the ranch house. And Whitey also wondered where Buck
+Milton was. He hadn't seen him with the party. But Buck was lying out
+there on the plain; that is, the mortal Buck was. The other Buck was
+probably with his friend Tom.
+
+At last Whitey's curiosity could hold him back no longer, and he crept
+forward to the front line of men, keeping well to one side. They had
+ceased firing, the house was dark. And the sheepmen there had ceased
+firing too. Their only marks had been the flashes of the cattlemen's
+guns, and those showed no longer.
+
+All the men were hushed, as though in expectancy. Whitey peered into the
+darkness, as they were doing. The cloud's ragged edge showed at the
+lower half of the moon, and the ranch house could be dimly seen. From
+halfway between it and the men a small light appeared, flickered for a
+moment, then rising in the air described a graceful half-circle and
+alighted on the ranch house roof. Another, another, and then others
+followed. Injun was firing lighted arrows.
+
+The moon came forth, and a volley of shots was poured from the ranch
+house toward the spot from whence the arrows had come. A volley from the
+cattlemen penetrated the walls of the house. Whitey trembled for Injun,
+out there in No Man's Land. He need not have trembled, for that young
+person was safely crouching behind a boulder.
+
+For the first time Whitey noticed that a breeze was stirring. Just as in
+the night when you light a match a breeze springs up to put it out, so
+now wind seemed to come to fan those burning arrows on the ranch house
+roof. Whitey watched, chilled but fascinated. The men around him were in
+the whirl of a fight. He was a spectator; one who saw other men being
+forced out of a trap to their deaths. The arrows burned like tinder.
+Whitey did not know that they were soaked in oil, brought along for the
+purpose of firing the house.
+
+There had been no rain for a week, so the roof was dry, and soon narrow,
+snake-like lines of flame began to creep across it. Whitey thought of
+the feelings of the imprisoned sheepmen, knowing what was going on
+overhead, but helpless to prevent it. It seemed that they surely must
+make some effort. Both sides had ceased firing. Then an idea occurred to
+Whitey. Why did not the sheepmen escape from the back of the house? A
+volley of shots from the other side of the valley seemed to answer the
+question. Under cover of the darkness Mart Cooley had sent half his men
+to a point that commanded the rear of the ranch house. Their shots
+sounded continuously for a moment and told a plain story. The sheepmen
+had tried to escape from the back, and had failed.
+
+These shots told another story. Why were they not answered from the
+hills? Because the hill men had joined their fellows in the ranch house.
+All were cooped up there, making their choice of deaths; by fire or by
+bullets. Anything would be better than the fire. Why didn't they do
+something? Whitey found himself growing impatient with these doomed men
+whom he never had seen.
+
+Something was stirring on the ranch house roof and glittered
+occasionally in the moonlight. The cattlemen watched it intently. It was
+the head of an axe, forcing its way through from beneath. The cattlemen
+laughed. When the wielded axe had formed a sufficient opening, the head
+and shoulders of a man appeared in it, and his hands followed,
+supporting a bucket of water. Twenty of the attackers' rifles were
+directed toward the roof, but at an order from Mart Cooley they were
+lowered. Mart raised his rifle, fired a single shot, and the man's
+figure disappeared through the opening, the bucket falling from his
+hands and pitching down over the edge of the roof.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAN'S FIGURE DISAPPEARED THROUGH THE OPENING, THE
+BUCKET FALLING FROM HIS HANDS]
+
+"Now they know what kind o' shootin' t' expect when they come out," said
+Mart.
+
+So Whitey knew why Mart alone had fired. It was to add to the fears of
+the sheepmen--if that could be done. Anyway, no other man appeared at
+the opening in the roof.
+
+Whitey watched the flames creep up and down the roof, growing higher as
+they stole along. He saw them flicker over the eaves, lap the walls of
+the house, and finally clasp it like a red, flaring robe. But Whitey did
+not think of the fire in those terms, but as a thing of horror, of
+death.
+
+You, who have followed the adventures of Whitey, know that he had been
+in situations in which he was threatened with death. But then he had
+been upheld by excitement; by the necessity of protecting himself. And
+he had even faced death, but then he had come on it unexpectedly, in the
+case of the hanging train robbers. This was a different matter; waiting
+to see men burned out and shot down. And it is small wonder that
+Whitey's nerves quivered, that the burning house began to dance before
+his eyes, and that he buried his face in his arms, to shut out the
+sight.
+
+It is unlikely that Walt Lampson had thought of Whitey, until he chanced
+to see this action. Then he spoke, and not unkindly.
+
+"You'd better get back there behind the hill, kid," Walt said. "This
+ain't no place for you."
+
+And so Whitey rose, and returned to where Monty was tethered, and he
+was not ashamed of the fact that he stumbled as he walked. But Injun
+still crouched out behind the boulder. There was no quivering of his
+nerves. The only fear he might have had was that if he returned he would
+be sent to the rear; and he was too wily to take a chance. So most of
+what followed was seen by Injun, and heard about by Whitey.
+
+There came the time when the surviving sheepmen could no longer remain
+in the house. Like a wise leader, Donald Spellman divided his forces,
+and ten crouching figures emerged from the front of the house, and ten
+from the back, and were outlined against the flames, as they scurried
+away. How they were harried and followed and shot down would not make
+pleasant reading, and what happened to those who were captured it is not
+necessary to write, as you will remember what the cattlemen had sworn to
+do at their meeting.
+
+After this, if there had been any who doubted Mart Cooley's skill as a
+gunman, they doubted no longer. And it was the misfortune of Donald
+Spellman to come under Mart's aim. Or perhaps it was his good fortune
+to be mortally wounded by a bullet, instead of ending his life as did
+the captives. But Spellman had something to say before he died, and he
+said it to Walt Lampson.
+
+"You got us," he gasped, "an' you got us right. An' I only got one thing
+to tell you, an' to tell you quick. I didn't plan that cattle stampede.
+It was a dirty trick."
+
+"Who did?" Walter asked eagerly.
+
+And Spellman answered that question with the last words he ever spoke.
+
+It was at this time that Injun, still crouching behind his boulder, saw
+something like a miracle--a dead man coming to life. The man had fallen
+at the first volley, and the fight had swung past him. And now he rose,
+and stole hastily on his moonlit way. Injun watched solemnly. He had no
+mind to give a warning, and probably get shot for his pains. He might
+even have admired the trick, if he had not had a closer view of the
+runaway, who was Henry Dorgan.
+
+When Injun discovered this, he was solemn no longer. He reached for his
+bow, but there was no arrow to fit in it. The last had been shot at the
+ranch house. Injun watched Dorgan disappear into the night, and said
+bitter things--in the Injun language.
+
+So ended the last of this engagement in the cattle-sheep war, except for
+one incident. The cause of it all was still to be dealt with--the sheep.
+And here was another picture that Whitey fortunately missed. A tragic
+picture, seen from the hills at dawn, as the white, panic-stricken
+creatures, crowding, bleating, and complaining, were forced through the
+canyon to the bed of the narrow, shallow stream, on their way to the
+opening in the cliffs, through which the brook fell in a tiny waterfall
+over the edge of the precipice. These innocent instruments and victims
+of the greed and passions of man!
+
+These things happened, my friends. Let you and me, and all of those who
+love America and the West, send up a silent prayer to the Creator that
+they are of the past, that they may never happen again--to leave such
+harrowing pictures in the minds of men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"MEDICINE"
+
+
+The sun was shining on the Star Circle Ranch. Whitey sat in the doorway
+of the bunk house, and listened to the talk and laughter of two or three
+idle punchers inside. Two days had passed since the tragedy. Though the
+laughing cowboys had not forgotten it, it was already a thing of the
+past; "all in a day's work." For it was like that in the West, in those
+times--death one day, laughter the next.
+
+Another being sat in the sunshine near the distant Bar O Ranch house;
+squat, bow-legged, his face wrinkled with anxiety and expectancy, he
+looked longingly off at the dusty road along which Whitey had gone,
+waiting and hoping for his friend's return. Thus sat Sitting Bull,
+forgotten but not forgetting.
+
+Injun approached Whitey, from the direction of the Star Circle Ranch
+house. In his hand was an object which he regarded gravely as he walked.
+Two grunted words at a time he used in telling Whitey the meaning of
+this object.
+
+The ranchmen had thought that Injun's services on the night of the
+fight deserved some reward. A messenger had been sent to Jimtown, and
+had returned with the reward, which had just been presented to Injun. It
+was a stickpin, a large imitation emerald, in a solid gold setting, to
+be inserted in one's necktie, the latest thing in fashion in a country
+where few men wore ties. Whitey looked at the pin, and, glad of the
+chance, he laughed and laughed. Injun did not laugh. He liked the
+stickpin. He was proud of it.
+
+Louder sounds of merriment in the bunk house attracted Whitey, and,
+leaving Injun to gloat over his treasure, Whitey joined the men inside.
+It may have been that they, too, were glad to have laughter help them to
+forget the dangers and tragedies of the times. One of them had just told
+a story--which might have been a story in both senses of the word.
+Knowing that a yarn usually comes with a cowboy, or a cowboy usually
+comes with a yarn, Whitey sat down and waited.
+
+I have written that most of the mirth on the Star Circle was aroused by
+the troubles of others, but that was not true of all of it. On a
+cracker box sat a dreamy-eyed, short, fat puncher; almost too fat for
+his job. His nickname was "Single." He had been married five times. So
+you can see that Single was a man of experiences. Furthermore, he was
+always willing to talk about them. He gazed thoughtfully at Injun, who,
+out in the sunlight, was still admiring his stickpin.
+
+"The two funniest things in th' world t' me is mules an' Injuns," Single
+said.
+
+"Injuns don't never say or do nothin' funny," retorted a sour-looking
+puncher.
+
+"I mean queer, odd," Single replied.
+
+"What do you know 'bout Injuns?" demanded the other.
+
+"What do I know 'bout 'em!" snorted Single. "My third wife was a
+half-breed."
+
+"Gosh, Single!" another puncher broke in. "I knew you'd had plenty o'
+wives, but I never knew you'd had no half wives."
+
+"Th' wa'n't nothin' halfway 'bout her," Single replied bitterly, "'cept
+th' breed." He seemed lost in gloomy thought, and fearing that he would
+not talk at all, Whitey spoke.
+
+"That was an inappropriate present to give Injun," he said.
+
+"An inawhat?" asked Single, whose education had been neglected.
+
+"Inappropriate. I mean it was something you wouldn't think he'd like,"
+Whitey explained hastily.
+
+"I dunno," Single answered. "You can't never tell 'bout a Injun. He
+looks stuck on that there present now," and he nodded toward Injun, who
+was devouring the stickpin with his eyes. "Mebbe he thinks it's
+med'cine," Single went on.
+
+"Medicine!" exclaimed Whitey.
+
+"Sure--good luck," said Single. "An' if he does, you couldn't pry it
+off'n him with a steam dredge."
+
+It had not occurred to Whitey that Injun was superstitious. He never had
+talked about it--but he never talked much about anything. And an
+Indian's "medicine" is superstition, pure and simple. He cherishes some
+object that he has come upon under conditions that make him think it
+lucky. Sometimes the medicine man of his tribe performs a rite over this
+object, and that gives a sort of religious flavor to it, making it
+almost sacred in the owner's view. His belief in it is tribal; has come
+down from his forefathers. It is very hard to shake an Indian's faith in
+his medicine.
+
+While Whitey was recalling these facts, which he had heard about,
+Single's eyes were narrowing--looking inside his head, one might say, to
+find there a story that fitted in with Injun's interest in his gift.
+
+"Speakin' o' my third wife's half brother," Single broke out, at last.
+
+"What kind o' fambly was that?" interrupted the sour puncher. "Thirds,
+an' halfs, an' things. Sounds more like 'rithmetic than a fambly."
+
+"It was harder'n 'rithmetic," Single replied darkly. "This here half
+brother o' my wife's was a Cognowaga" (Caughnawaga).
+
+"Gee, what a fambly!" groaned the other, but Single did not heed him.
+
+"An' his name was Sam Sharp," Single went on. "'Course that wasn't his
+real name. He was a sportin' gent, an' that was his sportin' name. He
+was one o' them all-round fellers. Run! Say, he c'd make a jack-rabbit
+look like a fly in a tub o' butter. He c'd jump higher'n this here roof,
+an' vault twic't as high. An' them big shots an' weights that they
+put--I'd hate t' tell you how far he c'd put 'em. You wouldn't b'lieve
+me."
+
+"We don't b'lieve you, anyhow," muttered one of the boys, but Single
+didn't seem to hear. He was wrapped up in his story.
+
+"He'd throw th' discus from here down t' th' corral."
+
+"What's a discus?" asked a puncher.
+
+"It doesn't matter, but he c'd throw it," said Single. "An' he was
+champeen of America; not only that, but champeen of th' whole world."
+
+Now, it didn't make much difference whether Single's story was true or
+not. One didn't have to believe it to enjoy it. He aimed to astonish,
+rather than to be truthful. But these statements were too much for the
+imagination of his hearers--or rather for their lack of it. He was
+greeted by a chorus of hoots and yells of disbelief, that developed into
+a volley of boots and spurs and cans and anything that could be thrown,
+and he was fairly driven from the room.
+
+And the odd part of it was that Single was only a little ahead of his
+time. For there was an Indian boy living then who afterwards did things
+as hard to believe, so marvelous that I must tell about him.
+
+His name is Jim Thorpe, and he is a Sac and Fox Indian. His running
+record for one hundred yards is ten seconds. For one hundred and twenty
+yards, with three-feet-six-inch hurdles, fifteen seconds; running broad
+jump, over twenty-three feet; running high jump, over six feet. He put a
+sixteen-pound shot over forty-three feet, and a fifty-six pound weight
+in the neighborhood of twenty-eight feet, and made a pole-vault of over
+twelve feet. He ran a half-mile and a mile at great speed.
+
+When the Olympian Games were held in Sweden, and all the champion
+athletes of the world took part, it was the ambition of each to win one
+event, or even to run one-two-three in it. There were five events in the
+Pentathlon and ten in the Decathlon. _Jim Thorpe won them all_.
+
+He won the all-round championship of America a couple of times, a feat
+paled by those he accomplished in the Olympian Games. He is the greatest
+football player that ever lived, and one of the greatest Major League
+baseball players, drawing a large salary from one of the clubs, and
+playing yet. And if you don't believe me, all you have to do is to look
+at the sporting-records.
+
+Whitey was greatly disappointed when Single was driven out of the bunk
+house. He wanted to hear the rest of that story about the third wife's
+half brother. So Whitey went after Single, and tried to coax him to come
+back.
+
+And the other punchers were sorry that they had been so hasty, for they
+wanted to see how far Single's imagination would carry him.
+
+Whitey had heard an old yarn about a parrot in a mining camp. A magician
+was giving a performance at the camp, and after every trick the miners
+would say, "I wonder what he's going to do next?" One of them was
+smoking, a spark fell in a keg of powder, and blew the camp away from
+that place. The parrot landed a quarter of a mile off, most of his
+feathers gone, his cage was a wreck. And, peering out, he asked, "I
+wonder what he's going to do next?"
+
+That was the way it was with those cowpunchers, and they joined Whitey,
+and finally smoothed over Single's feelings, and coaxed him to continue
+his story--which he wanted to do, anyway.
+
+"Well, this here Sam Sharp had his faults," Single continued, when he
+was settled again in his seat. "For a feller that c'd move so quick he
+was s'prisin' lazy; so lazy he'd trip over his feet gettin' out o' his
+own way. An' drinkin', an' gamblin'!--say, I won't take your time
+tellin' you all th' things he liked. All you had t' do was t' ast
+yourself was a thing wrong. If it was, Sam liked it.
+
+"Bein' a champeen, o' course Sam had a manager what made money out o'
+Sam's stunts, for both o' 'em. This manager was a white man named
+Gallager, an' his life was made a burden, for he had t' train Sam for
+them there stunts, an' Sam didn't cotton to trainin' nonesoever. When he
+oughta be doin' it, he'd be off dancin', or drinkin', or pokerin', or
+somethin'. An' Gallager got sicker an' sicker of such doin's.
+
+"Well, bein' a Injun, Sam had a med'cine. It was a twig. Where he got
+it I don't know, but it was firm fixed in Sam's nut that he couldn't run
+without that there twig was tucked inside his shirt. An' that twig was
+s'posed t' work both ways. For when Sam was runnin' 'gainst another
+feller, he'd put th' twig down in one of th' other feller's footprints,
+an' Sam thought that kept th' other feller back.
+
+"Now, this here twig was one o' Gallager's greatest troubles. For Sam
+was always losin' it, or leavin' it behind, an' him or Gallager havin'
+t' go after it, an' races was havin' t' be held back, or put off, for
+Sam wouldn't run without that twig. So Gallager hated it.
+
+"Along comes a time when Sam is stacked up t' meet a corkin' good
+runner. An' Sam was off gallivantin' 'round at dances, an' worse things,
+an' not trainin' none whatever. An' Gallager says t' himself, 'Here's
+where I cure that Injun of th' twig habit.' You see, Sam was that soft
+from loafin', he couldn't have beat a mud turtle up a hill, so Gallager
+figgers Sam'll likely lose th' race, anyway, an' it'll be worth it t'
+get clear o' that infernal twig. So Gallager lets Sam stay soft.
+
+"Along comes th' day o' th' race, an' Gallager hadn't done nothin' or
+said nothin', an' Sam runs an' loses, an' after it's all over Gallager
+goes t' him.
+
+"'Got your twig?' he says.
+
+"'Uh,' grunts Sam.
+
+"'Stick it in th' other feller's footprints?'
+
+"'Uh.'
+
+"'Got it in your shirt?'
+
+"'Uh huh,' says Sam, an' pulls out th' twig.
+
+"'Well, you didn't win, did you?' says Gallager.
+
+"'Um, um,' says Sam, lookin' at th' twig.
+
+"'Then th' twig's no good, is it?' asks Gallager, lookin' Sam firmly in
+th' eye, an' Sam returnin' th' look.
+
+"'NO!' says Sam, an' he throws th' twig away."
+
+The cowpunchers did not believe this story. They did not think that an
+Indian can be cured of his medicine. But I know it is true, for I knew
+the Indian.
+
+It might not be amiss to state here that there is another Indian alive
+to-day, who was a baby in arms when Sam Sharp lived, who ran in and won
+thirty-eight Marathon races, when no one else in the world ever finished
+first, second, or third in over three. His name is Tom Longboat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"THE PRIDE OF THE WEST"
+
+
+Whitey wandered over to the Star Circle Ranch house. He wanted to see
+Walt Lampson, who had paid little attention to him since the night of
+the fight. Whitey was getting tired of staying at the Star Circle, and
+thought Walt might be ready now to ship the cattle to the Bar O, and
+thus give Whitey something to do.
+
+Walt was not in the living-room, which was a large, untidy place that
+also served as an office. There was a great, flat desk in one corner,
+and lying on it--among some dusty papers, reports and stock books--was a
+six-gun, with its belt and holster, a silver watch, a knife, and other
+odds and ends. These were the property of poor Buck Milton, waiting till
+they were claimed, or would be disposed of.
+
+Whitey looked at them sadly. Near the watch lay a crumpled and soiled
+piece of paper, and as Whitey glanced at it his own name caught his eye.
+Surprised, he picked the paper up and read it through before he
+realized what it was--Bill Jordan's letter to Dan Brayton, of the T Up
+and Down, the letter Whitey had delivered. It ran:
+
+Friend Dan--
+
+Whitey Sherwood, the kid what fetches this here letter, is tired uv
+school. He had ruther fish. This here letter is sposed to be on
+importunt business uv his dads, the owner uv this here ranch. The
+business is to make Whitey tireder out uv school than what he was in it.
+I started the ball rollin. Kin you keep it goin?
+
+ Hopin this will find you the same
+
+                                        Yours truly
+                                        Wm Jordan
+
+There were two notations in pencil at the bottom of the letter. One
+read:
+
+Walt--Im passin the kid along to you. Get busy.
+
+                                        Dan
+
+And the other, Buck's:
+
+Dont kill this kid but come as near to it as you kin.
+
+                                        Walt
+
+A great light broke in on Whitey. So this was the meaning of it all? the
+twenty-five mile walk to Cal Smith's house; the singular conduct of the
+men at the T Up and Down; the nester's lending him that jack Felix, that
+he knew would run home and leave Whitey alone on the plains; and Walt
+Lampson's sending him out on the range, in the face of a storm. And as a
+sort of high peak in his mountain range of troubles Whitey remembered
+Little Thompson's talk about funerals. Whitey buried his head in his
+hands and groaned at the thought. He had dreamed of funerals ever since.
+He determined to make a will and put in it that Little Thompson should
+not be allowed to come to his (Whitey's) funeral.
+
+They had passed him along from one to another, making a fool of him, and
+laughing behind his back all the time. He knew how rough cowmen often
+were in their fun, and the only wonder was that they hadn't treated him
+worse. He supposed that they would have done so had his father not been
+a ranch-owner. So! they probably thought he was something of a
+molly-coddle. He was angry enough, but this thought made him
+angrier--that he hadn't been treated worse. Which goes to show what a
+reasonable thing anger is!
+
+Whitey went out, sat down behind the cook's shack, and gave way to
+gloomy reflections. He reviewed his past life for quite a way back, and
+everything in it seemed to be wrong. He wanted to do big things, and he
+always was just missing them. If he had been earlier when he followed
+those train robbers, he might have warned the people on the train, and
+been a sort of hero. If, if, if--oh, what was the use?
+
+But it certainly is bitter to think you might make yourself a hero, and
+find that some one else has made a fool of you. Whitey remembered a
+saying that the first time a fellow is fooled it is the other fellow's
+fault--and the next time it is his own. They wouldn't fool him again.
+He'd do something big yet. He'd show them!
+
+The first thing to do was to find Injun. The next thing to do was to
+leave that Star Circle Ranch. Whitey hated it there, anyway. And the
+next was a thing not to do--not to go back to the Bar O, and have Bill
+Jordan and the others laugh at him. The first thing proved easy, and
+Whitey proceeded to tell Injun his troubles.
+
+"Huh," said Injun. "Better'n him school."
+
+"I know it's better than school," said Whitey, annoyed, as we always are
+when we seek sympathy and get facts. "I'd rather do 'most anything than
+go to that awful school. But what I object to is being made a fool of."
+He was suffering from mortification, which is a sort of ingrowing anger,
+and the more it sunk in, the angrier he got.
+
+And here was the plan he unfolded to Injun; the plan to get even with
+Bill Jordan. They would go to Moose Lake, in the foothills of the
+mountains. You may remember that on the southwestern shore of this lake
+was a cabin, which had been the scene of some of the boys' former
+adventures. They would make this cabin their headquarters. Bill Jordan
+never would suspect that they were there. They would live by fishing
+and hunting, which were good at that time of year. As for other
+provisions, Whitey had some money, and they could buy them at Jimtown,
+on the way. No one knew them there. Whitey even planned getting a
+message to Bill Jordan that he, Whitey, was dead. Bill would feel pretty
+sorry then, at the result of his silly trick. And when Whitey thought
+Bill was sorry enough, he would return, and advise Bill never to be so
+silly again. You see, he was in a very savage mood. He would get over
+that, but he didn't realize it then.
+
+As Injun heard these plans, he considered them. He was very well
+satisfied where he was. There had been fighting there, there might be
+more, and he liked fighting. Fishing and hunting were all very well, but
+he'd had a lot of them in his young life, and they were no novelty. It
+was like asking a sailor to go for a sail, on his day off. And Injun
+couldn't fully understand Whitey's wanting to do all these things. But
+do you think he voiced his objections to them? He did not. For in one
+way Injun was like a faithful dog he accepted things he didn't
+understand. So one liked his loyalty more than one pitied his ignorance.
+
+No one paid any attention to the boys when they rode away from the Star
+Circle Ranch. They might be going hunting, or just for a ride, for all
+the ranchmen knew or cared. They struck off toward the northwest, in
+which direction lay Jimtown, with Moose Lake far beyond, nestling in the
+foothills of the Rockies.
+
+It was a beautiful day, with the haze of fall shrouding the distance, a
+hint of brown tingeing the prairie grass, the sun a bit milder with its
+rays and paler in its face than in midsummer. And the old sun seemed a
+trifle lazy, as if lying back awaiting the frost that would nip the
+rolling mesa, to be followed by the gales that would sweep across it,
+then by the whirling blizzards that would hold the plains in their
+frigid grasp. Yes, it was a beautiful day--a day on which it was very
+hard to stay mad.
+
+Creeping across the northern distance the boys saw two wagons. Evidently
+they had come from Jimtown. Wagons are as interesting sights on a
+prairie as they are uninteresting in a city, so the boys shifted their
+course slightly that they might investigate. And these were the rarest
+wagons that crawled across the plains, for they carried a show!
+
+During the many months that Whitey had been in the West only one show
+had come to the Junction, and that at a time when Injun and Whitey had
+been hunting in the mountains. Lives there a boy with soul so dead that
+he does not hunger for a show? I leave you to answer that, and to guess
+how hungry Whitey was for one.
+
+But if you have in your mind any big, gilded wagons, with pictures of
+beautiful women on their sides, and drawn by many prancing white horses
+with red plumes on their heads, get that vision right out of your mind.
+These were "prairie schooners," covered with old, weather-beaten canvas,
+creaking along on wheels on which mud had long taken the place of paint,
+and drawn by mules!
+
+And the only things to indicate their character were letters painted on
+the old canvas sides, where they drooped between the wooden arches that
+supported them; letters which read: "The Mildini Troupe. Pride of
+the West." And that was enough. For everybody in that part of
+Montana knew the Mildinis. They came once a year--if nothing happened to
+prevent.
+
+There were three in the company--Mr. Mildini, who was short and fat, and
+had a twinkle in his eye, and had been born Murphy; Mrs. Mildini, who
+was slim and sharp-featured, and whose eyes were bright, without any
+twinkle in them; and Signor Antolini, who was of medium height and
+rather thin, and had a nose like a hawk, and had been born on Mulberry
+Street, in New York City. Two thirds of this troupe remained the same,
+year after year, but sometimes Signor Antolini was Signor Somebody Else.
+
+This doesn't seem to offer much chance for entertainment, does it? To
+Injun it was a wonderful troupe. To Whitey, who had been to all sorts of
+entertainments in the East, it was a novelty. Perhaps it would be bad
+enough to be good. Anyway, it was a show. Thoughts of revenge against
+Bill Jordan could be abandoned for the time being. They would have to
+wait. Meanwhile, Injun and Whitey would follow the show.
+
+Mr. Mildini, who drove the first wagon, was very friendly, and smoked a
+pipe. Signor Antolini, who drove the second wagon, was also friendly,
+and smoked cigarettes. Mrs. Mildini, who slept in the first wagon,
+expressed no feelings at all. That wagon contained the trunks and
+chattels of Mildini and wife, and in it they made their home. The other
+wagon held the instruments and properties of the show, the cooking
+utensils, and the bed of Signor Antolini. It was all very simple, and
+very fascinating, when you thought of it, to be traveling around the
+country in the sunshine, pausing at different places to entertain
+admiring audiences.
+
+Where were they from? From Jimtown, where they had showed the night
+before. And where bound? To the Hanley Ranch, a big wheat ranch, about
+twenty miles east. It was threshing-time there, and there would be
+plenty of men to make an audience. Mr. Mildini meant plenty from his
+point of view. A settlement of five houses looked good to him.
+
+Oh, yes, Whitey knew the Hanley Ranch. It was fourteen miles west of the
+Bar O. Oh, no, Mr. Mildini didn't mind their riding along with the
+troupe. He was glad of the company. They could have dinner with them,
+too, if they liked. And perhaps they wouldn't mind helping with the
+stock, if they didn't make the ranch that day, and had to camp.
+
+Sometimes they had trouble with the wagons; they were old. Sometimes
+they got stuck in the mud. You never could tell. Yes, the show business
+was fascinating, but very uncertain. Mr. Mildini was chatty and not a
+bit stand-offish, as one might think a talented person would be.
+
+So, when that old fall sun sank down toward the west, it outlined two
+shabby wagons, crawling along the lonely prairie. Near one rode an eager
+white boy, occasionally leaning over and drinking in the wisdom that
+fell from the lips of a little Irishman; near the other, a pink-shirted
+Indian lad, stolid and silent, but in his breast burning the fever that
+stirs every boy who is going to a show.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+WONDERS
+
+
+Perhaps if you were born in, or have visited, a great Eastern city you
+have sat in an enormous amphitheater, a fifth of a mile in length, with
+tiers and tiers of private boxes, and rows and rows of seats. In the
+sawdust arena you have seen three circus rings, a performance going on
+in each; acrobats, bare-back riders, trained animals, what not; and
+around the edge of it all a procession of clowns, doing their merry
+stunts. And you have craned, strained, and twisted your neck, trying to
+take it all in. And that is your idea of a show.
+
+In such a place sat Whitey, for that was what a show recalled to his
+mind, but when he opened his eyes, and came away from that mind circus,
+he was in a very different place.
+
+Large it was and barren, with rough-boarded sides; with lofts, and
+stalls, and racks, and farming implements crowded into corners, and an
+earthen floor, and--well, perhaps you have seen a big Western barn,
+which answers the purpose of housing many things and animals. Such was
+the setting in which the Mildini Troupe performed; the Pride of the
+West!
+
+Each individual of the audience sat on whatever he, or she, could get to
+sit upon; a saddle, a blanket, a box, a rare chair or two. Perhaps that
+audience would have proved to you almost as interesting as the
+performance, for it was made up of many sorts of men that the threshing
+had brought together--farm-hands, cowpunchers, store-keepers,
+blacksmiths, bartenders, hold-up men, but no sheepherders. Sheepherders
+were not welcome among threshers, nor in any other Western community. Of
+women there were two--the wife of the foreman of the ranch, and one who
+helped her.
+
+No person on the ranch was absent, for before the performance the
+Mildinis had given a sort of sample of their talent; of what all were to
+expect. A tight-rope had been stretched across the Yellowstone River,
+and on this, clad in pink tights, balance-pole in hand, Signor Antolini
+had walked, high over the more or less raging flood.
+
+Do you ever tire of shows? I hope you don't. I don't, and offhand I
+can't think of many people who do. So I'll assume that, with Injun and
+Whitey, you'd like to see a bit of this poor little troupe's efforts,
+which were pathetic in a way, though no one thought of that.
+
+Whitey had been wondering what particular talents Mr. Mildini was master
+of, and he found that they were many. He could and did dance, sing, and
+tell comic stories in a number of dialects, all convulsing. But tricks
+were the crowning wonder of Mildini's performance, though he called them
+"feats of magic."
+
+I'd hesitate to tell you the things he could take out of a silk hat;
+live rabbits, endless strips of colored paper, jars of imitation
+goldfish, and many other useless articles. It is true that the silk hat
+was his, no one in the audience having been able to produce one, when
+requested to do so but it was passed freely among the crowd to be
+examined; to convince doubters that there was no "deception." Endless
+eggs could Mildini take from his mouth, ears, hair, or from the mouth,
+ears, or hair of any "gent" in the audience.
+
+And every one, from store-keeper to hold-up man, wondered and laughed
+and was pleasantly deceived. And after one of the most difficult tricks,
+when a puncher said, "I wonder what he's goin' t' do next?" the people
+near Whitey were puzzled when he burst into laughter.
+
+Then there was Mrs. Mildini, who, it seemed, was "Mademoiselle Therese,"
+who not only could draw enchanting melodies from a violin, but could
+make it speak in the language of various barnyard creatures, such as
+geese, chickens, pigs--oh, almost anything. And the music she could
+extract from one string--"one string, mind you, ladees and gentlemun!"
+It was marvelous.
+
+It is true that she introduced an element of sadness in the evening when
+she played "Home, Sweet Home," and "Way Down upon the Swanee River,"
+reducing even the bartenders and hold-up men almost to tears. But
+possibly a touch of the serious lends a pleasant contrast to merriment.
+
+There remained Signor Antolini, who was the "World's Greatest
+Contortionist," and who certainly could contort in a manner to shame an
+angleworm: could twist his slim body into knots that it would seem
+almost impossible to untie; and could pass it through a hoop through
+which any sensible person would be willing to bet it couldn't go.
+
+Whitey had cause to remember this talent of the Signor's, for in after
+days when Whitey tried to pass _his_ body through a small hoop, it
+didn't pass. It held Whitey firmly, in a very painful position, all
+twisted up like that. And as no one happened to be near, it was some
+time before Whitey's yells brought Bill Jordan, who cut the hoop in two,
+and instead of applauding, laughed.
+
+And last of all came a little play in which the "entire company" took
+part, a comic little play, in which Signor Antolini was a professor who
+was going to teach Mrs. Mildini to be an actress. But they were
+constantly interrupted by Mr. Mildini, who was a funny darky, all
+blacked up. And then it appeared that Mr. Mildini could play on many
+instruments; one of them a long spoon, which he used as a flute. There
+was no end to that man's talents. And to think he had been so friendly
+and chatty with Whitey on the plains!
+
+Well, once in a while it's a good thing to forget that you ever were a
+"city fellow," and saw wonderful performances, and to be able to enjoy a
+simple show like this. And I suppose the world is a better place for the
+Mildinis in it, who travel through rough countries, and for a little
+while make people forget the hardships of their lives; lives sometimes
+touched by tragedy.
+
+That's the way Whitey felt about it when, for the last time, the troupe
+had left the small raised platform that had been built at one end of the
+barn to represent a stage, and had retired to the stalls, which served
+as dressing-rooms.
+
+The men of the audience were leaving, and most of their faces held
+traces of the pleasure the Mildinis' efforts had given them; others had
+returned to their usual hardness. Among the last was one the sight of
+whom caused Injun to grip Whitey's arm so forcibly that he almost cried
+out with pain as he was drawn back into the shadows and Injun pointed
+out Henry Dorgan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THRESHING-TIME
+
+
+Injun was a being who ran more to feelings, or instincts, than to
+reasons, and like many persons of that kind his instincts often ran
+truer to form than the reasons of others. While Dorgan was not a likable
+man, he was not one whom everybody would distrust; he did not have the
+word "villain" printed on his face. Yet Injun thought he was one, and if
+asked for his reasons probably could not have told them.
+
+You know that Injun suspected Dorgan of taking Whitey's pony, and now
+Whitey learned for the first time that Injun had seen Dorgan stealing
+away from the sheep ranch on the night of the war. Whitey wondered why
+Injun had not told him this before, but it was not Injun's way to tell
+everything he knew, even to Whitey. That was one of Injun's charms.
+
+No one ever had suspected Dorgan of being a sheepman. He might have been
+at that ranch as a mere visitor. Injun thought he went there on foot,
+after Monty had been taken away from him. It is well known that in the
+Old West horse-stealing was considered about the worst crime a man could
+commit, not only because of the value of the horse, and a man's being so
+dependent on it, but because the horse helped to steal itself, as all
+one had to do was to get on it and ride away. It never would do to
+accuse Dorgan of the crime without pretty good proof.
+
+Of course, it made Whitey wild to think of any one's stealing Monty, and
+as he and Injun stood in a corner of the barn, and talked the matter
+over, they decided on the following course: they would stay at the
+Hanley Ranch for a while; Dorgan had not seen them. If he ran away when
+he did see them, that would be an indication of guilt, but no proof. But
+if Dorgan stayed on, the boys might be able to get some proof of his
+guilt. He was a dangerous man to deal with; that made it all the more
+interesting. If they had known how dangerous Dorgan really was, they
+might have considered the matter more seriously.
+
+The next morning the Mildini Troupe went on its way across the lonely
+prairie, and Whitey watched the departure with regret. He would have
+liked to travel farther with that troupe.
+
+The owner of the Hanley Ranch seldom came there. He lived in the East,
+leaving the affairs of the place entirely in the hands of a manager
+named Gilbert Steele. It was a common saying in that part of the country
+that "Gil Steele was as hard as his name." He was an ambitious and an
+active man, and regarded every dollar wrung out of the ranch for its
+owner as a sort of triumph for himself.
+
+There are men who are successful only when working for others; whose
+every independent effort is a failure. Steele was such a man, and that
+made him bitter, but none the less energetic. He acted not only as
+manager, but as foreman of the ranch, which included two sections,
+twelve hundred and eighty acres. And he had many enemies.
+
+Perhaps you have wondered at that queer audience in the barn, and why
+threshing-time should bring it together. In those days in the West
+threshing-time was an era of prosperity, and twenty-five or thirty men
+would band together and buy a threshing-machine. They owned plenty of
+horses, and they would go from ranch to ranch with this machine, and
+thresh the grain. Now, this threshing-time being of short duration, it
+drew into it men whose occupations were entirely different at other
+times of the year. Hence, the bartenders, hold-up men, cowpunchers--whom
+it would be fatal to ask where they came from--the blacksmiths, and the
+store-keepers.
+
+Gil Steele had been at the Bar O, so Whitey was known to him, and he
+supposed that the boy had come merely to see the show. So Gil was rather
+surprised, the next morning, when Whitey asked for a job for himself and
+for Injun.
+
+"What do you want to work for?" Steele demanded. "Your father's got
+plenty o' money."
+
+Whitey's real reason was that he wanted to be among the men to watch
+Dorgan, but he equivocated--which is a pretty way of saying that he told
+a white lie.
+
+"Bill Jordan thinks I'm a softy," Whitey replied. "He's trying to make
+it so hard for me that I'll be glad to go back to school. And I want to
+show Bill that I'm not afraid of work." You see, there was enough truth
+in this to keep Whitey's conscience from aching.
+
+"All right," said Steele. "More hands mean quicker work and more money.
+But I never heard of an Injun wanting to work before."
+
+"Tame Injun," Injun said solemnly, which was as near a joke as he ever
+came in the years Whitey knew him.
+
+This work came under the head of what a fellow doesn't really have to
+do, and everybody knows the difference between that and labor that a
+fellow does have to do--about the same difference that there is between
+work and fun. The threshing-machine was run by horse power. You remember
+Felix, the jack that Whitey rode across the prairie, and Felix's job of
+turning the little grinding-mill? The horses had the same sort of job,
+except that there were teams of them, revolving around a central pivot,
+that furnished the power that worked the great machine in whose maw
+sheaves of wheat were fed, to come out as grain.
+
+Injun and Whitey's jobs were to hold the sacks into which the grain
+fell. And there they worked, from sunup to sundown, in the heat, and the
+dust from the chaff, with never a murmur. They were happy because it
+_wasn't_ work, it was an adventure, with expectancy and danger in it.
+And Gil Steele was happy, because he was practically getting the work of
+two men for the pay of two boys.
+
+The sleeping quarters in the Hanley Ranch were altogether taken up by
+the extra help required to feed the threshers. So the threshers
+themselves occupied tents, and it was in one of these that Whitey and
+Injun were bedded, much to their joy. It fitted in with their plans to
+watch Dorgan, and see if they could learn something that would confirm
+their suspicions of him.
+
+So far Dorgan had been an utter disappointment. Not only had he
+refrained from beating it, but he had greeted the boys pleasantly when
+they met. As far as outward appearances went, Dorgan might have been a
+Sunday school superintendent. Had he been one at heart, there would be
+no more story for me to tell.
+
+But there were times when Dorgan could be forgotten. With a crowd like
+that gathered on the Hanley Ranch, you can imagine the yarns there were
+to spin in the long evenings, with nothing to do but spin them. Perhaps
+some of the tales those men didn't dare to tell--the secrets hidden
+behind their hardened faces, the faults, the crimes, the horrors that
+could have been revealed--these might have proved more thrilling than
+the stories that came forth; but that is something that neither you, nor
+Whitey, nor I will ever know.
+
+The tales that were told there had the proper setting, and if you have
+thought much about stories you know what that means. You tell a ghost
+story late at night, seated before a fireplace in an old country house.
+The only light comes from the flames of the dying fire logs that flicker
+as the wind howls down the chimney; the only sounds, the beating of the
+rain on the walls and roof, and--during the creepy pauses in the
+yarn--the creakings that a lonely house gives out in the night hours.
+Tell that same story on a sun-lighted June morning, in the orchard,
+when the trees are all in blossom. Oh, boy! you know the difference.
+
+One night when Whitey had been to the ranch house on an errand, he
+returned to the tent to find a disturbance going on. Dorgan, who slept
+in another tent, was a visitor. Somewhere he had obtained liquor; under
+its influence his pleasant manner had fled, and he was picking on Injun.
+The dislike that Dorgan concealed during his sober moments had reached
+the point at which he demanded that Injun be put out of the tent. It was
+a place for white men, not for Injuns. Injun was not afraid of Dorgan,
+and had no idea of leaving, so Dorgan was going to put him out. Injun
+wasn't going to let Dorgan put him out.
+
+At this moment Whitey arrived. What would have happened to an unarmed
+boy against a drunken, armed man or to two unarmed boys, for Whitey
+started to interfere, is something else we never shall know, for a
+cowboy put in his oar.
+
+You know that a cowboy remains a "boy" until he is old enough to die.
+This one was sixty, he wasn't a typical puncher at all. He had a thin,
+hawk-like face, steady gray eyes, rather long hair which also was gray
+like his moustache and goatee. He had been a soldier and an Indian
+fighter, and he looked it. As Dorgan lurched toward the boys, who stood
+tense, with flashing eyes, and prepared for resistance, this cowboy
+stepped between, and spoke to Dorgan.
+
+"I wouldn't do that if I was you," he said, and he spoke in a sort of
+drawl, but there didn't seem to be any drawl in his cool, gray eyes. In
+spite of his condition Dorgan appeared to realize this, for he paused
+uncertainly. "I don't hold myself up as no defender o' Injuns," the old
+puncher went on calmly, "but I've had a bit o' truck with 'em, fer an'
+ag'inst, I'm some judge of 'em, an' I reck'n this one c'n stay right
+here."
+
+Dorgan began to stiffen a little and his fingers clutched, as one's will
+when one thinks of reaching for a gun. The other man had a gun, too, but
+he made not the slightest movement toward it, and he spoke even more
+quietly than before.
+
+"If I was you," he repeated, "bein' in th' c'ndition you're in, I'd beat
+it. You may have objections for t' state, thinkin' this ain't none o'
+my business, an' you c'n state 'em now--or f'rever hold your peace."
+
+Dorgan looked around the tent, as if for moral support, but didn't find
+any. A singular quiet had fallen on the place; a sort of disconcerting
+quiet. A warning ray of sense must have come into Dorgan's fuddled brain
+as he looked again at the old puncher, for without a word he stumbled
+out into the darkness.
+
+"That was mighty fine of you," Whitey said warmly, but the old man
+didn't seem to hear him.
+
+He sat down and built a cigarette, and when it was lighted began to
+drawl between puffs. "There's a lot o' folks that don't know nothin'
+'bout Injuns, that has a lot o' 'pinions concernin' 'em," he said. "They
+say you've got t' live with a feller t' know him, but that ain't so. You
+c'n find out a lot by fightin' him. That's how I got my feelin' for
+Injuns, an' it's th' kind you have for a good fighter."
+
+The incident with Dorgan seemed to have passed from his mind, though
+Whitey had lived long enough in the West to know that tragedy had
+lurked near. The old puncher leaned back, his hands behind his head, and
+puffed clouds of smoke into the air. He looked at the smoke as though he
+saw pictures in it. Then he carefully threw the cigarette down and
+ground his heel into it. As the other men had remained silent while he
+was talking to Dorgan, they remained silent now.
+
+He was a product of an epic time in the West, a time when the others had
+been boys. Naturally a quiet man, he had had little to say. He also was
+known as a dangerous man, and when a quiet and dangerous man seems
+inclined to talk, it is sometimes worth while to wait. Instead of
+speaking, he rolled another cigarette, and again looked into the smoke.
+
+But presently the old puncher awoke from his dream and looked at the
+surrounding faces, some coarse, some wicked, but all attentive, all
+plainly inviting him to talk.
+
+"Yes, sir, a feller that was in th' Seventh Cavalry, in th' old days,
+got a good many lessons 'bout Injuns," he began. "An' if you like, I c'n
+tell you some things 'bout th' biggest Injun fight that ever happened
+in these parts, 'cause I was there."
+
+So he told the story, and I shall leave out the questions with which it
+was interrupted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE STORY OF THE CUSTER FIGHT
+
+
+"You know my bein' with Major Reno is why I'm able t' tell this story,
+'cause all th' Old Man's outfit--'Old Man' bein' what we called General
+Custer--was wiped out.
+
+"Us soldiers didn't know all th' ins an' outs o' what was goin' on, but
+we did know that th' Old Man was a whole lot dissatisfied. There'd bin a
+lot o' talk 'bout him havin' gone t' Washington, an' havin' a talk with
+President Grant, at which interview, so 'twas said, th' President'd told
+him th' first duty of a soldier was obedience, but we didn't know
+nothin' 'bout that--whether 'twas true or 'twasn't true. All we knowed
+was that he was away a long time, an' when he come back he sure had fire
+in his eye.
+
+"General Terry was in command at old Fort Buford, an' when th' Injuns
+broke out, he was in command of all th' soldiers in that part of th'
+country. General Phil Sheridan was his chief, but we never seen him.
+
+"Well, when the Injuns broke loose, Terry he thought as it was th'
+spring o' th' year, it was a good time t' get 'em. So 'bout th' first o'
+June, '76, all th' get-ready stuff was gone over, an' all th' good-byes
+was said with them as had famblies, an' we was loaded onto th' steamer
+Far West, an' headed down th' old Missouri.
+
+"When we got to th' mouth o' th' Yellowstone it was June twenty-first.
+We unloaded. An' General Terry says t' our Old Man--don't forget we just
+called him that; General Custer was only thirty-eight years old--Terry
+says, 'You take your Seventh men an' scout ahead an' let Charlie
+Reynolds go ahead o' you.' 'Cause everybody knowed that Charlie Reynolds
+savvied Injuns an' Injun ways better'n any white man that ever
+lived--him that was known as 'Lonesome Charlie.'
+
+"An' Terry he says t' Custer, our Old Man, 'When you get t' th' Little
+Big Horn country you wait for me, as I'm travelin' heavy. I'll be four
+days makin' it.'
+
+"An' again says Terry t' our Old Man: 'If you see any Injuns in force,
+halt an' stay there till I come up, but don't start any fight unless
+they force it on you, an' if they do force it on you, fight on th'
+defensive'--which, as you all know, is backin' up. 'Fight on th'
+defensive till I come up with you, an' then we'll give 'em hell.'
+
+"Our Old Man he said, 'You bet,' an' we left.
+
+"General Custer he was in command, and Colonel Benteen an' Major Reno
+was his officers. After doin' twenty or thirty miles in th' saddle, we
+was sure a s'prised bunch o' rookies when we didn't stop. We didn't
+stop. No, siree! We kep' right on a-goin'. We didn't stop when we hit
+forty miles, nor sixty miles, nor eighty miles. It was ninety miles from
+where we left Terry when th' Old Man said, 'Coffee an' biscuits,' an'
+believe me, we wanted 'em bad.
+
+"We'd bin in th' saddle for twenty-two hours, an' if you don't think
+that's ridin', try it sometime. The hosses was all in. My hoss--'Long
+Tom' I called him--he layed down as soon as I off-saddled him, an' stuck
+his face into his nose-bag an' eat layin' down. First time I ever seen a
+hoss do that.
+
+"Charlie Reynolds, he was ahead, an' he come back an' had a pow-wow
+with th' Old Man an' Reno an' Benteen, an' we seen 'em workin' th' field
+glasses overtime. 'Course, we didn't know what was bein' said, or what
+was goin' on. All we c'd see was that they was mighty excited like. All
+except Charlie. He musta had his say an' then stopped--Injun like.
+'Cause Charlie, he was just a white Injun.
+
+"I got Lieutenant Hodgson to let me have a peep through his glasses.
+After a ride like that, in a Injun country, a regular c'n be quite on
+speakin' terms with his officers, an' when I looked through them glasses
+what I seed didn't mean much t' me. 'Way off, down by th' river, was
+some tepees an' stuff layin' 'round, just like it was a Injun camp.
+That's what it looked like t' me, an' that's what I found out afterwards
+was what it looked like t' th' Old Man.
+
+"Benteen an' Reno, they wasn't expressin' much opinion, as they was
+expectin' t' stay right where they was an' wait devel'pments, like Terry
+said they was t' do, but th' Old Man, he said, 'Attack!' An' right there
+was where Charlie Reynolds come in.
+
+"He says that th' Injun village was a decoy; that he c'd tell by th'
+stuff, th' buffalo robes an' all, that was layin' 'round; that there was
+eight thousand fightin' Injuns in that part of th' country, an' that it
+was a safe bet that seven thousand nine hundred an' ninety-nine was
+layin' right in behind them hog-backs--low hills--a-waitin' for us.
+
+"But th' Old Man was mad. He was out t' do somethin' an' he was a-goin'
+t' do it. An' he says, 'You're all wrong, but we're goin' t' attack,
+anyhow.'
+
+"An' Charlie he says somethin', an' walks away, an' I seen th' Old Man
+starin' an' glarin', an' I says t' m'self, 'When we git back t' th' Fort
+it's a court-martial for Charlie, sure.' An' then it all happened.
+
+"Boots an' saddles, an' we that was so all-in we c'd just stretch out
+an' groan with tiredness, was up an' on th' move. My hoss, Long
+Tom,--an' he was as game a animal as ever lived,--just wavered an'
+swayed when I hit th' saddle. Gee, boys! we was sure an all-in bunch!
+
+"Why did th' Old Man do it? How in thunder do I know? He just done it.
+I'm supposin' he was sort o' smartin' under them stay-back orders he
+had, an' such like, an' just nachally cut th' cable; same as Admiral
+Dewey done at Manila Bay, only Dewey, he won out, an' our Old Man--well,
+that's th' story.
+
+"But just to digress or switch off, or whatever that big word is, for a
+minute. I want t' say that our Old Man, whatever his faults was,--an' I
+guess he had a-plenty,--he was game. He was a fighter. He said, 'Come
+ahead,' every time: he never said, 'Go ahead,' An' if all th' boys
+layin' out there on th' prairie in their graves c'd tell, I'm bettin' my
+six-shooter ag'in' what you all know about th' Rooshian langwidge that
+they'd say as how th' Old Man died with a sword in one hand an' a gun in
+th' other, a-lookin' right into th' sun.
+
+"Well, we made a wide circle--a detower--an' come up ag'in 'way behind
+th' village, an' right there th' Old Man made his great mistake. I ain't
+blamin' him none, but it sure shows how a big man c'n lose his head just
+by bein' crazy mad an' wantin' t' fight. Even th' rookies, what had
+seen a lot o' service, knowed that he was makin' himself liable--an' him
+a general--t' be called up on a drumhead court-martial.
+
+"There he was, a thousand miles from anywhere, dividin' his force in th'
+face of a superior enemy. An' that enemy th' greatest fighters that ever
+th' sun shined on. You know we men that fighted Injuns knows what they
+was made of. All this talk 'bout Injuns not bein' fighters, an' not
+bein' game, an' one white man bein' as good as ten Injuns, makes me feel
+like th' organ-grinder Dago what said, 'It makes me sick, an' makes th'
+monkey sick, too!'
+
+"Well, to git back. Gee, you fellers'll think I'm a Williams J. Bryant
+runnin' f'r President. Notice I said runnin'! No, I ain't tryin' t' be
+funny. I just wish I could be. It'd sort o' take th' weight off th'
+awfulness of what I remember as what happened, an' what I can't tell
+right 'cause I ain't got eddication an' brains enough.
+
+"Th' Old Man, he split us up, him takin' companies C, E, F, I, and L,
+givin' Benteen four companies an' Reno three companies. He ordered Reno
+t' go t' th' left an' cross th' Little Big Horn an' attack, th' Injuns
+from th' rear. Benteen he told t' go straight ahead, an' he himself took
+th' right. I was with Reno, an' I saw personal what he was up ag'inst.
+We crossed th' Little Big Horn an' went right into what seemed a million
+warriors.
+
+"I was right alongside of Lieutenant Hodgson, Lieutenant McIntosh, an'
+Doctor De Wolf when they fell, an' I see Charlie Reynolds--he'd refused
+t' go with th' Old Man--put up a fight that if I was a artist, an' c'd
+draw pictures, I c'd make a fortune puttin' it on paper. He started with
+a Springfield, then went to his six-shooter, an' wound up with a knife
+before he went down with a bullet through his heart an' at least a dozen
+Injuns piled all 'round him. Suicide, I reck'n it was. He knowed he was
+right, but he also knowed he'd disobeyed orders, an' he just kept pilin'
+right in till he got his.
+
+"Reno done th' only thing he could do. He retreated back across th'
+river, an' got up ag'in a bluff 'bout three hunderd feet high. Reno
+Hill, they call it now. An' there we fought for five or six hours, when
+Benteen, who'd bin fightin' in th' center, heard heavy firin' over on
+his right where Custer was. An' Benteen, he bein' a honest-t'-God Injun
+fighter, he knowed that Custer was gone, so he fought his way through to
+us, knowin' that we had th' hill behind us.
+
+"An' for three days we kept goin'--not runnin', just standin' an' layin'
+down there fightin'. Sure, we stopped firin' at night, but we didn't
+stop work. We dug all night long, usin' knives, tin cups, an' plates
+instead o' spades an' picks, makin' breast-works; an' then we started
+fightin' all over ag'in in th' mornin'.
+
+"Say, boys, I ain't strong f'r prohibition. It'd take me ten years t'
+git up nerve enough t' put my foot on a brass rail an' order sody-water
+in a drug store, but let me tell you somethin'. On th' afternoon o' that
+second day's fightin' there was nothin' on earth to us like water. Th'
+wounded was beggin' for it. Oh, boys, they was beggin' for it somethin'
+pitiful, an' we that wasn't wounded, our tongues was all swollen an' our
+lips was parched till they cracked open. So some of th' boys volunteered
+t' go to th' river, an' we took canteens an' camp kettles an' started.
+
+"One of us never come back, an' a lot of us got shot up, but we got
+water. Not much, but we got water. I never will forget how I wanted t'
+wet my hoss, Long Tom's, tongue, but a wounded bunkie he needed it. That
+night we went ag'in an' got some for th' stock, an' it was just in time,
+for they sure was dyin' for it.
+
+"Th' fightin' opened ag'in next mornin', an' kept goin' till th'
+afternoon. It was th' twenty-seventh o' June, when all at once we seen a
+panic start among th' Injuns, an' they began t' stampede, leavin' their
+dead all over th' hills. An' Terry come into sight, an' strong men cried
+on each other's necks--an' I ain't a bit ashamed t' say that I was one
+of 'em.
+
+"When Terry got in, an' congratulatin' an' hand-shakin' was all over,
+Lieutenant Bradley he come in, sayin' he'd found Custer, an' we all
+dragged ourselves to th' spot.
+
+"There they was, all dead, two hunderd an' sixty-one of 'em. Not one
+lived t' tell th' tale. Them that'd bin deployed as skirmishers lay as
+they fell, havin' bin entirely surrounded in an open plain. The men in
+th' companies fell in platoons, an', like them on th' skirmish line,
+lay just as they fell, with their officers behind 'em in th' right
+places.
+
+"Th' Old Man, General Custer, was in th' middle, an' round him lay th'
+bodies of Captain Tom Custer an' Boston Custer, his brothers, Colonel
+Calhoun, his brother-in-law, an' young Reed, his nephew. An' right near
+was Mark Kellogg, th' Bismarck Tribune's newspaper man. He wasn't
+scalped or touched; just lay as he fell.
+
+"Kellogg savvied Injuns, an' used t' say in his paper, 'Hold on a
+minute, let's talk this over,' when all th' long-whiskered grangers,
+what had come in from Illinois, would raise a holler, an' want th'
+United States soldiers t' kick th' Injuns off th' land what they owned.
+An' th' Injuns remembered, even when they was crazy with fightin'. An'
+just th' same as they didn't touch th' White Chief, Custer, just th'
+same they didn't touch th' feller what shoved a lead pencil an' once in
+a while said, 'Give 'em a chance.'
+
+"Did they ever find out how many Injuns was there? Not def'nite, but
+near enough. On th' tenth annivers'ry of th' fight th' survivors held a
+reunion on th' battle-field, an' bein' as I was line-ridin' for Tracy's
+Tumble H outfit at th' time, I sneaked off an' went over.
+
+"They'd done a wonderful thing; somethin' that'd never bin done before,
+an' most likely never'll be done ag'in. Dave Barry--him as th' Injuns
+called 'th' Shadow Catcher'--was a great friend o' Charlie Reynolds,
+Barry speakin' Injun talk, an' bein' adopted into th' tribe, an'
+savvyin' Injun ways just th' same as Charlie did. An' Dave wanted t' get
+the real dope on th' fight on Charlie's account, an' him bein' also a
+close friend of old John Gall, th' chief what led th' Injuns in th' big
+fight.
+
+"Now, Barry he persuaded--nobody knows how he done it--he persuaded John
+Gall t' go along t' this reunion. An' then, as if one miracle wasn't
+enough, he pulled another. By golly, he got th' old man t' make a talk.
+Boys, it sure was some picture, on that June evenin', t' see that Injun
+when th' blanket fell off his shoulders, standin' like one o' them
+bronze statutes, with th' settin' sun a-hittin' him. I sure never will
+forget it. Old Gall, he pointed here an' there, showin' where
+Rain-in-th'-Face was, an' where Crazy Hoss was, an' where Crow King
+was--an' all th' rest of th' other chiefs.
+
+"An' then Barry, who was interpretin' for th' old Injun, asked him
+quiet-like, in th' Injun lingo, 'How many of you was there, John?' An'
+th' old Injun he paused like, while every one waited t' hear, an' then
+he pointed to th' ground, an' said some Injun words. An' Barry, he said
+in that quiet, firm, even voice o' his'n, 'We were like the blades of
+grass on the ground.' So you see what th' old Seventh was up ag'inst,
+boys.
+
+"A mighty funny thing happened after th' talk. You all know Will Curley.
+He's s'posed t' be th' only survivor of Custer's men. No, I ain't sure
+he is. How should I know? I wasn't there, I was with Reno, two miles
+away. Well, th' bunch sorta interduced, or tried t' interduce, Old John
+t' Will Curley.
+
+"Will Curley had somehow got himself a brand-new Stetson, in celebration
+of th' occasion, an' when Barry said, in Injun talk, 'John, this is Will
+Curley,' Old John he never moved a muscle, but his eyes looked like
+forked lightnin'. You know, Curley is a Crow--th' perpetual enemy of th'
+Sioux--an' in addition t' that, Curley he was a scout for th' whites.
+Old Gall he walked slowly over t' Curley, with a walk that made me think
+o' nothin' else on earth but a painter, an' when he got t' Will he
+paused, with everybody holdin' their breath t' see what'd happen, an'
+then it did happen!
+
+"Th' old man reached out an' took that brand-new Stetson off Will
+Curley's head, an' shook it an' knocked it on all sides, an' put it on
+his own head an' walked away. Insultin'!--all I c'n say is, if it ever
+happened t' me, it'd be my dyin' wish that I'd have a gun in each hand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few moments of silence followed the old cow-puncher's story. In
+reciting this page from the book of his life he had lost thought of his
+surroundings, but now he remembered, and seemed startled at having
+talked so much. He retired within himself, his eyes taking on an
+introspective look as though, as one of the boys expressed it, "he was
+tellin' stories t' himself."
+
+He paid no heed to the comments the men made on his story of the Custer
+fight. It had impressed them because it had rung true. The comments were
+made in murmurs or whispers. As Injun had sat during the tale he sat
+now; stolid, expressionless. Now and then Whitey stole a look at him. In
+his mind Whitey was connecting the old puncher's story with the one
+Injun had told in the bunk house at the Bar O, and with what Bill Jordan
+had said afterwards; that Injun had revealed the start or source of the
+greatest Indian fight the country ever knew.
+
+It had been a hard day, and one by one the men dropped off to sleep,
+until only Whitey and the old puncher were left, he rolling an
+occasional cigarette, and living in that past which the events of the
+night had brought back to him. Whitey realized this, and had to admit
+that it was a pretty exciting place in which to live. And he wondered if
+the old puncher would like to have another page in his book of life; a
+sort of explanatory page, like the key in an arithmetic.
+
+It was almost dark in the tent. Only one lighted lantern hung from a
+pole. And in low tones, so as not to disturb the sleepers, Whitey told
+the old man the story of Injun's mamma's brother and his friend the
+scout; and of the White Chief, and the dance, and the arrest and the
+escape; and of Injun's father's resolve that "we fight heap!"
+
+The old puncher didn't know who these Indians were of whom Whitey was
+talking, but he listened politely at first and interestedly at last. And
+when Whitey had finished the story, he added, "Injun's uncle was old
+Rain-in-the-Face, and he was a great friend of Charlie Reynolds, the
+scout."
+
+Then Whitey crept off to bed, and allowed the old man to figure out in
+his mind--as Bill Jordan had done--the start of "the doggonedest Injun
+fight this country ever knowed!" And far into the night the old
+cowpuncher thought of this other page, added to the book that was to
+entertain him as he went down the steeper side of the hill of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+UNREST
+
+
+The second and last week of the threshing at the Hanley Ranch was well
+on its way, and nothing had occurred to break the routine of hard work
+in the daytime and nights spent in a tent, in an atmosphere laden with
+tobacco smoke and the yarns of rough men.
+
+The boys had not succeeded in confirming their suspicions against Henry
+Dorgan, and if Dorgan felt any resentment against them, or against the
+old cowpuncher who had defended them, he failed to show it.
+
+Whitey now discovered a new trait in his friend Injun--persistence.
+Injun was very determined in his efforts to get something on Dorgan. He
+had made up his mind that Dorgan had stolen Monty, and his mind was not
+like a bed that could be unmade easier than it could be made up. At
+first Whitey thought that this was a phase of the Indian's well-known
+desire for vengeance, but Injun didn't seem to be vindictive in the
+matter. He didn't even mention Dorgan's attempt to put him out of the
+tent. Whitey was interested in this trait of Injun's and liked him the
+more for it. If Injun was a stick-to-itive fellow, so was Whitey. He
+would show Bill Jordan that he couldn't make a fool of him and get away
+with it.
+
+And finally, as a reward of perseverance, Injun did get something on
+Dorgan, though it didn't amount to much. Injun averred, and it may have
+been true, that Monty had a deadly fascination for Dorgan; that when
+Monty was around, Dorgan couldn't keep his eyes off him. And Injun said
+that he saw Dorgan approach Monty in the corral, probably to admire him
+more closely, and that Monty showed great hatred for Dorgan; laid back
+his ears and bit and kicked at Dorgan.
+
+"Him no like um. Him must know um," declared Injun, being firmly
+convinced that Monty's actions indicated a close acquaintance with
+Dorgan.
+
+However, Monty couldn't give any spoken evidence that Dorgan had stolen
+him, so there the matter rested. And there was something else to occupy
+the boys' minds. There seemed to be a vague feeling of unrest at the
+ranch. There always had been bad blood between Gil Steele and the
+workers. He not only was a hard taskmaster, getting the last ounce of
+work out of the men, but he was close in money matters, and had all
+sorts of fines and penalties he imposed when the men were late or
+neglected their work. There was continual wrangling and haggling.
+
+With this sort of thing on the surface you will understand that it would
+be easy to stir up more serious trouble from underneath, and something
+of the sort was going on. It was something Whitey couldn't put his hand
+on, but he could read it in signs shown by some of the men. And there
+were mysterious meetings and gatherings of the disaffected ones.
+
+Of course, Injun was quick to sense all this, and had no scruples about
+butting in and finding out all about the trouble. As bad examples are as
+catching as good ones, and more so, Whitey joined Injun in his
+investigations. So behold! A dark night on the prairie. A tent showing
+only a streak of yellow light where the opening folds did not quite
+meet. Two boys lying on their stomachs near the edge of the tent,
+industriously listening.
+
+This was not their own tent. There seemed to be few grumblers in that.
+It was the tent in which Henry Dorgan was housed. And listen as they
+might, and sharp as Injun's ears were, they heard nothing definite. Just
+murmurs, an occasional oath or two, and what might have been threats, in
+louder tones. It was very discouraging. So at last they returned to
+their own tent, to the yarn-spinning threshers and the silent old
+cowpuncher.
+
+Whitey soon gave up this form of effort, but Injun did not; possibly
+because Dorgan was in the other tent. Friday night came, almost the last
+of the threshing. Injun was absent on his eavesdropping quest, which so
+far had yielded nothing. The men in Whitey's tent were merrier than
+usual and, it must be admitted, more profane. Then along came bad luck,
+in the person of Mrs. Gilbert Steele.
+
+Mrs. Steele, you must know, was one of these motherly women who didn't
+have anything to mother. She was stout, round-faced, good-natured, and
+industrious; quite the opposite to her rather cold-blooded husband. And
+this matter of her not having anything to mother was responsible for
+many things, as you shall learn. Threshing-time was rush time with her.
+She had few chances to think of anything except food, but this night she
+happened to have a little leisure, and had devoted it to consideration
+of Whitey. "That poor boy out in that tent with all those rough men. Why
+didn't I think of him before?"
+
+So Mrs. Steele had waddled out to the tent, and had arrived at a moment
+when there was a particularly strong outburst of profanity on the part
+of one of the rough men. Though this was nipped in the bud as Mrs.
+Steele entered the tent, it caused her to reproach herself more bitterly
+than before. She promptly took Whitey under her wing and told him that,
+crowded as the ranch house was, a place there should be found for him to
+sleep.
+
+Whitey was greatly taken aback. Of course he didn't want to go. He
+thought it made him look foolish in the eyes of the men, and it did. He
+thought he might get out of it by explaining to Mrs. Steele, and he
+didn't. Perhaps that lady believed that Injun's morals were swear-proof,
+or that he didn't have any, for she didn't mention him. And to crown
+Whitey's annoyance and chagrin, just as he was being led away to the
+darned old house Injun appeared. And his face was lighted up--for
+Injun's. And his eyes were shining with an unholy light. For he had
+heard something!
+
+There would have been another story to tell if Injun had acted
+differently. But in the first place he was an Indian, and it was not in
+his blood to follow any fat white woman and rescue a boy from her
+clutches. In the next place he was Injun; he had his own personality. We
+Caucasians are apt to think that because the red and yellow people look
+pretty much alike, they all are alike. Then when we come to know them,
+and find that they have as many differences as we have, we are rather
+surprised. This may be conceited of us, but it is natural. You probably
+know by now that Injun was a very independent person. So he started off
+to take charge of affairs himself.
+
+Meanwhile Whitey, feeling much like a fool, and possibly looking like
+one had there been light enough to see, was being led to the ranch
+house. Arrived there and seated in the living-room, motherly Mrs. Steele
+apologized for not thinking of him before, and surrounding him with all
+the comforts of home, away from those vulgar men. She was inclined to be
+proud of herself for having done so at this late hour. Had she known
+what Whitey was thinking about the comforts of home and about her, she
+would not have been so proud.
+
+For a while she entertained Whitey by talking about New York, which she
+had visited ten years before, when on her honeymoon. She was surprised
+to learn that Whitey had not even heard of any of the people she had met
+there, he having been born in New York and having lived there the first
+fourteen years of his life. Well, well; it was a queer world, anyway.
+Perhaps you will get the best idea of how unhappy Whitey was by
+imagining yourself in the same position.
+
+In his misery Whitey formed vague plans for escape. Then a new horror
+awaited him. He was to sleep in the Steeles' bedroom, in a cot at the
+foot of their bed! In vain he protested that the living-room floor was
+good enough for him. Mrs. Steele wouldn't hear of it. So he was shown
+into the bedroom, and when he was undressed and clothed in one of Gil
+Steele's long white night-shirts, Mrs. Steele returned and took his
+clothes away to brush them!
+
+Whitey's cup of bitterness was full. This was a fine position for a hero
+to be in. He tried the sour-grapes idea: perhaps Injun hadn't learned
+anything that amounted to anything, after all. But that didn't work.
+There were no two ways about it, he was an abused being. By golly, this
+was worse than school! But after working hard all day in the hot sun,
+even an abused being will get sleepy. So at last the curtain of sleep
+fell on Whitey; of dreamless sleep--perhaps he was too mad to dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE NEW ORDER
+
+
+At midnight Whitey was awakened; awakened and almost strangled at the
+same time. A hand was clamped across his mouth, with force enough to
+push his teeth down his throat. A lamp burned low in the room. Whitey
+saw Mrs. Steele bending over him. Her face was ashen with fear. Her
+eyes, bulging from her head, looked to Whitey to be the size of saucers.
+Whitey struggled vainly in her clutch.
+
+"They're going to kill my husband!" she gasped. "Go, go to your father's
+ranch. Get the vigilantes. Bring them here quick, for God's sake!
+They'll murder him, they'll murder him!"
+
+She dragged Whitey from the bed and, half pulling him behind her, groped
+her way to the side door of the ranch house and into the blackness of
+the night. Tied to a bush, by a hackamore, was an iron-gray colt, the
+fastest on the ranch. After that night's work he was known to be the
+fastest in that part of the country.
+
+Mrs. Steele gave the half-awakened Whitey a "foot up" upon the pony,
+untied the hackamore, and he was gone. Fortunately for Whitey the horse
+was turned in the right direction. That pony had been wanting to run
+ever since he was born. This was the first time he ever had had a
+chance, and he sure took advantage of it.
+
+Back toward the men's quarters the night was fractured by sounds like
+those of a healthy young riot. These meant nothing to Whitey, nor did
+the pung! pung! of bullets, when he started, or rather when the colt
+started. Perhaps the men were shooting wide, or perhaps the pony was
+going so fast the bullets couldn't catch him. Be it said for the
+threshers they didn't know they were shooting at a boy.
+
+You will admit that being wakened from a sound sleep, shot on to the
+back of an almost wild colt, and borne across a dark prairie at
+lightning speed does not tend to make one think clearly. Whitey had only
+one lucid thought during that ride. If any cowpunchers mistook his
+white-clad figure for a ghost, they couldn't shoot him--he was going
+too fast. In a vague way he was thankful for this.
+
+The distance was fourteen miles, and it seemed to Whitey as though he
+made it in thirteen jumps. When the pony arrived at the Bar O Ranch, he
+still had the boy with him. And when Whitey pulled up the restless colt,
+and roused the slumbering household, he had another sensation coming,
+for his father was there.
+
+Mr. Sherwood had intended his coming to the ranch that day as a
+surprise, and it was. And he had had a surprise coming to him. He had
+laughed when Bill Jordan told him how he was hazing Whitey. Then Walt
+Lampson, of the Star Circle, had arrived with Mart Cooley, who was now
+working for Walt. They had dropped in to see if Whitey had arrived home
+safely, supposing that he had started for home when he left the Star
+Circle.
+
+When it was learned that Whitey wasn't at home, and no one knew where he
+was, Mr. Sherwood had his surprise, and it wasn't pleasant. And Bill
+Jordan looked crestfallen. They had talked it over till late, and
+decided to start a search for Whitey in the morning. Then, when Whitey,
+clad in a large night-shirt and riding a half-wild pony, came to summon
+the vigilantes--well, it seemed a time for surprises.
+
+The men hastily dressed and armed themselves, summoned all the others on
+the ranch, and saddled their horses. While this is going on, at the risk
+of telling you something you already know, a word about the vigilantes.
+In the Old West various bodies of men were formed to clean up the wilder
+elements. Sometimes they enforced their law by being lawless themselves.
+They made a man be good if they had to hang him to do it. The law was
+weak. By harsh, rough treatment--as a tigress might treat its cub--they
+made it strong. And when the law was strong and able to care for
+itself--again like the tigress--they allowed it to do so; the vigilantes
+disbanded.
+
+The Bar O mustered about ten men. The rider of the fastest horse dashed
+ahead to the Junction, to get reenforcements to join the ranchmen on
+their way to the scene of action. And now came bitter, oh, bitter!
+disappointment for Whitey. He was not to be allowed to go. He had been
+hero enough. The only clothing that iron-gray pony had on during that
+fourteen-mile ride was a hackamore, and the only clothing Whitey had on
+was a night-shirt. He was fit for nothing except to lie face downward
+and sleep--no attitude for a hero.
+
+Whitey begged, he appealed, he almost wept, but his father was firm. He
+was willing to risk his own life; he would not risk his son's. So, with
+tears in his eyes, Whitey stood and watched the party gallop away in the
+darkness. And beside him, a lantern in his hand, stood the cook, an
+elderly man who had taken Wong Lee's place. And he watched wistfully,
+too, for he wanted to go, but he had left one of his legs on a Southern
+battle-field.
+
+Whitey choked back a sob with which the silence would have been broken.
+He felt something warm and moist on his hand, and looked down. It was
+the tongue of Sitting Bull, the faithful--forgotten but not forgetting.
+And as Whitey gazed at the friendly ugly face of the dog, he noted the
+determination marked in every feature of it. He could not imagine any
+one's stopping Bull from going into a fight if he wanted to go into it.
+And perhaps unconsciously Whitey's under lip and jaw shot out, and his
+face took on much the expression of Bull's. Whitey would like to see any
+one stop _him_ from going.
+
+That new, elderly cook not only approved of Whitey's purpose of
+disobedience or rebellion, he aided him in it; yes, if it cost him his
+job! There was the iron-gray colt, still restless and as ready for the
+fourteen-mile ride back as he was for his breakfast. While Whitey limped
+into the ranch house for some clothing and footwear, the cook had his
+own troubles getting his own saddle and bridle on that pony.
+
+When Whitey reappeared and was helped into the saddle, he let out a yell
+of agony and helped himself out again. This would never do. The leather
+felt like hot iron. A consultation. The cook's blankets were brought
+out, folded and cinched on the saddle, the stirrups shortened. Again
+Whitey mounted. The torture was somewhat less. Painfully he galloped
+away. A last look back showed the lantern on the ground, the cook
+kneeling beside it, with both arms around Sitting Bull, restraining that
+warrior from following.
+
+When the Bar O men and Lampson and Cooley were joined by the contingent
+from the Junction, about forty determined vigilantes dashed over the
+prairie. Their horses were fresh and they made good speed. The cloudy
+darkness had given way to starlight that dimly illumined the still
+night. Mr. Sherwood had aimed at a sufficient force to overawe the
+threshers, if possible. There was little talk.
+
+They had made perhaps ten miles when there was a distraction. A horse
+came galloping toward them. A dozen rifles were drawn from their
+gunboats. When the horse drew near, it made a detour, avoiding them, and
+eyes accustomed to the darkness could see that it was riderless. With no
+pause, but commenting on this, they rode on.
+
+About two miles farther on, from the surface of the plain came a flash
+of flame and the short bark of a forty-five, followed by another and
+another. The men reined in, but the shots were directed the other way.
+The marksman was evidently too occupied with his invisible target to
+notice them. But on their nearer approach he rose to his feet and
+started to run. A shot over his head, a sharp command, and he halted and
+was surrounded by the vigilantes, but not before he had slily dropped
+some object in the grass. One of the men dismounted and struck a match.
+
+"Why, it's Henry Dorgan!" exclaimed Mart Cooley.
+
+Dorgan appeared to be greatly flustered and in pain. His left arm was
+helpless from a wound in the shoulder, and from the fleshy part of it an
+arrow protruded. It probably had been less painful to leave it there
+than to pull it out. It was a home-made arrow.
+
+"What you shootin' at?" demanded Bill Jordan.
+
+"That infernal Injun," whined Dorgan. "He's bin pesterin' me; follerin'
+me like a shadow."
+
+The vigilantes peered into the darkness, and made out a hummock on the
+prairie. It was a dead horse, and from behind it Injun rose and came
+toward the group. He had been reassured by the sound of Bill's voice.
+
+"Lemme go!" cried Dorgan. "I don't want no more truck with him," and he
+started as if to run, but was roughly held back.
+
+"What's all this rumpus about, Injun?" Bill Jordan demanded, when the
+boy was within hearing.
+
+Injun indicated Dorgan. "Him steal Monty," he said.
+
+"Is that Monty lying dead over there?" Mr. Sherwood inquired anxiously.
+
+"No. Him run away," Injun replied.
+
+"Then it musta bin Monty that passed us," said Bill Jordan.
+
+Through short, sharp questioning it was developed that Injun had seen
+Dorgan take Monty from the Hanley Ranch corral, had borrowed a mount for
+himself, and followed; that he had winged Dorgan with an arrow, the
+shock of which had jarred him so that he had fallen from the pony. The
+other arrow in Dorgan's arm was the result of another lucky shot by
+Injun. When the vigilantes arrived, Dorgan was striving to return the
+compliment. He had succeeded in killing Injun's borrowed horse, behind
+which that expert young person had barricaded himself. It took but a
+minute to tell this story. Again Injun indicated Dorgan and said:
+
+"Him drop something." Running back in the course Dorgan had taken, Injun
+returned with a small but heavy canvas bag. It was filled with gold and
+silver coins, the principal currency of the West in those days. This
+promised interesting developments, but Dorgan, who had fallen into a
+sullen silence, refused to answer when questioned about the bag.
+
+"What's going on at the Hanley Ranch, Injun?" Mr. Sherwood asked. "Have
+those threshers killed Gil Steele?"
+
+"Dunno, Make heap noise. Much fire-wa--whiskey," said Injun, suddenly
+remembering his education. His object had been to "get" Dorgan. His plan
+had been to watch Monty. The plan had worked. That was all he knew.
+
+"Come, we've lost time enough," said Mr. Sherwood. "Two of you fellows
+will have to ride double. One take Injun, the other Dorgan. Injun, you
+take Dorgan's gun, and if he makes a break, plug him."
+
+But Dorgan didn't want to go back to the Hanley Ranch, and suddenly he
+became very talkative. He could explain about the money and Monty and
+everything.
+
+"No time for chinning," Bill Jordan said. "Boost him up."
+
+"Would you b'lieve a Injun 'stead o' me?" Dorgan wailed, as he was being
+boosted onto the horse of a disgusted cowboy.
+
+"Sure--a rattlesnake," declared Bill. And the party started, Injun
+proudly carrying Dorgan's reloaded six-gun.
+
+Except for the horses bearing double the rest of the ride was made at
+breakneck speed. When the vigilantes approached the Hanley Ranch house,
+a noise was heard such as is supposed to come from Donnybrook Fair. They
+headed for the sounds, but as they arrived the racket had ceased. It was
+followed by an ominous stillness. This, in turn, was broken by a woman's
+scream.
+
+Over a score of men, most of them half drunk, were gathered in front of
+a large barn. From the ridge of this projected a derrick-beam with a
+pulley through which a rope was roved. One end of the rope was in the
+hands of several threshers, the other was in a noose around Gil Steele's
+neck. Mrs. Steele was being bound and gagged by other men. The action of
+the group came to an abrupt standstill as the vigilantes dismounted and
+crowded into the foreground.
+
+"Unloose that rope," said Mr. Sherwood. He released Mrs. Steele himself.
+
+The man who seemed to be the thresher's leader glanced around at the
+vigilantes, their number, their rifles, and their Colt guns. He unloosed
+the rope.
+
+"Now, what's all this about?" demanded Mr. Sherwood, seeing that danger
+was averted.
+
+In an instant Babel broke loose. The sober and half-drunken men and Gil
+Steele began loud and angry explanations. Steele was interrupted by his
+wife, who staggered and almost fell as she threw herself on his breast
+and fainted. Thus was the step from tragedy to comedy taken, but no one
+thought of laughing. The tragedy was too close.
+
+Then came another interruption: the arrival of the double-laden horses
+with Injun and Dorgan. When the latter was dragged into the group, and
+the bag of money thrown on the ground in front of him, there was another
+ominous silence. Gil Steele released himself from his wife, who had
+recovered. He knelt and with trembling fingers undid the neck of the
+bag, and displayed its contents of gold and silver. That bag of money
+was the key to the whole situation. Again Babel broke loose.
+
+In time, out of the yells, curses, threats, and other sounds, this story
+was extracted: Gil Steele's closeness, not to say meanness, had made him
+more than unpopular. The threshers who owned the machine worked a
+percentage of the grain which they carted away to the railroad. Gil had
+tried to reduce this percentage. The threshers, abetted by Henry Dorgan,
+had tried to increase it. Dorgan also had told the hired hands that
+Steele intended to reduce their wages. Steele had become angry and
+refused to talk to any of the men. In some mysterious way Dorgan had
+introduced a keg of whiskey into the situation.
+
+The hands had demanded their money, and none was forthcoming. They had
+attacked Gil Steele, who had wounded one of them and fled. It was then
+that Mrs. Steele had sent Whitey for aid, as it was certain that the
+infuriated mob would hang Steele if they found him. Gil was hidden in a
+most unromantic place; a sort of dugout, one-third dirt, one-third
+boards, and one-third stone, in which hams were smoked. You know how
+near he came to going from that place to his death.
+
+And Henry Dorgan had created the disturbance so that under cover of it
+he might steal the bag containing the money for the men.
+
+When this fact was apparent to the minds of the excited hands, they and
+Gil Steele made a rush for the cowering Dorgan, but Mr. Sherwood and
+some of the vigilantes intervened with drawn weapons and forced them
+back. The vigilantes would see that the law punished Dorgan. There was
+loud-voiced protest against this, but the attackers were outnumbered and
+were helpless.
+
+During this Walt Lampson and Mart Cooley had been talking apart, and now
+Walt stepped forward. "This law business is all well enough," he said,
+"but I got somethin' t' say about Dorgan." He faced the crowd. "Lots o'
+you fellers are cowmen, ain't you?" he asked. Most of the men were.
+"When the Star Circle herd was stampeded by them white-caps," Lampson
+went on, "an' we got them sheepmen for doin' it, Donald Spellman cashed
+in, but before doin' so he told me who put up the job. It was this
+feller Dorgan. Him a cowman, an' he turned ag'in' his kind for money.
+Are we goin' t' let him get away?"
+
+Henry Dorgan's feeling of relief was gone, and he crouched behind Mr.
+Sherwood and Bill Jordan, white-faced with fear, as a loud "No!" came
+from a majority of the men. This turn of events caused a breach in the
+vigilantes' ranks. The Bar O men stood by Mr. Sherwood, but some of the
+cattlemen from the Junction hated sheepmen more than they loved the law.
+
+"Better give Dorgan up," Walt Lampson advised Mr. Sherwood.
+
+"No," replied Mr. Sherwood.
+
+A movement began in the crowd. Men ranged themselves on one side or the
+other. With the Bar O men and those left from the Junction crowd, Mr.
+Sherwood now headed about twenty vigilantes; they were outnumbered. The
+old cowpuncher, he of the Custer story, came and stood by Bill Jordan.
+It being evident that it would take a fight to get Dorgan, Walt Lampson
+stepped back and Mart Cooley took his place.
+
+"Mart's a bad hombre, boss," Bill Jordan whispered to Mr. Sherwood. "You
+ain't got no call t' get killed. You better get out o' this."
+
+"Are you going to get out, Bill?" Mr. Sherwood asked, and Bill grinned.
+
+As this Western bad man and this Eastern business man faced each other,
+they represented not only violence against law, but something else--the
+old order against the new: the old order that survives only on the
+printed page and in the memory of man.
+
+"Better give in," Walt Lampson shouted from the crowd. "That skunk
+Dorgan ain't worth sheddin' blood for."
+
+"The law is," Mr. Sherwood replied determinedly.
+
+His courage seemed to make an impression on the mutineers, as moral
+courage usually does, but not on Mart Cooley, who was regarding Mr.
+Sherwood coldly. Mart did not reach for a gun. Your bad man never
+did--until the gun was to go into action. And there was this silent
+pause between the two factions, when a word would have meant bloodshed.
+
+Whitey had ridden into the outskirts of the scene, unnoticed, and had
+seen his father facing Mart Cooley, the man who handed out death so
+easily and unerringly. As Whitey dismounted and staggered toward the
+center of the crowd, he was joined by Injun, who was standing near.
+Whitey's face was ashen and his teeth clenched. He was not going to see
+his father killed if he could help it, though he had not the slightest
+idea how he could help it. Mr. Sherwood exclaimed angrily when he saw
+his son approach with Injun.
+
+Near by stood Mrs. Steele, with clasped hands and staring eyes, helpless
+with fear. The boys' coming caused a moment's irresolution in the crowd.
+Mrs. Steele saw her chance, and fear left her. She boldly forced her way
+to where Injun and Whitey stood, and turned to her husband, who was
+foremost among the lynchers.
+
+"Gil!" she cried, pointing at Whitey. "You ain't goin' to kill this boy?
+He saved your life!" She saw a change come in her husband's face and was
+quick to follow up her advantage. She grasped Injun by the arm. "And
+this Injun," she called. "See what he did for you. You ain't goin' to
+fire on him?"
+
+"No, by----, I ain't!" said Steele.
+
+In his thirst for revenge he had been willing enough to oppose his
+rescuers; indeed, some of them would have been fighting with him; but to
+fight against the boys was different. He drew his gun from its holster,
+threw it on the ground, went over to Whitey, and grasped him by the
+hand.
+
+It would be hard to say what turned the tide of that mob's feelings.
+Whether it was Whitey's standing by his father, Mrs. Steele's quick wit,
+or Gil's throwing down his gun, or all three. But the tide was turned.
+The desire to kill was gone, and no one knew this better than Mart
+Cooley. As he and Walt Lampson moved toward the horses, he paused and
+spoke to Mr. Sherwood.
+
+"You got good nerve, all right," he said, "and so has the kid."
+
+Mr. Sherwood smiled, and Mart Cooley went on into the shadows, from
+which he never came again, as far as the father and son's lives went.
+And it must be admitted that Whitey's nerves were rather shaken by now,
+with the excitement of the ride and the fear for his father and all. But
+it was something to have been the first messenger boy in the West--even
+if you were started off as a joke--and to help bring about the new order
+of things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PIONEER DAYS
+
+
+Injun and Whitey sat on the veranda of the Bar O Ranch house, with
+Sitting Bull between them. One of Whitey's hands rested on the head of
+the dog, who leered at him lovingly. Now that Whitey was back, Bull was
+so full of contentment that it almost gave him indigestion.
+
+"Injun, do you remember the day Bull came?" Whitey asked. "And how I
+said maybe it was a good omen, and there ought to be something doing on
+the ranch? Well, there has been something doing--on and off."
+
+"Um," said Injun, looking at Bull, with a gleam of appreciation in his
+eye. "Him good med'cine."
+
+Whitey's night ride from the Hanley Ranch had created much favorable
+comment in the neighborhood, and Injun had come in for his share of
+praise. Some one called them "the rescuing kids." But Whitey found that
+being a hero wasn't what it was cracked up to be. When any one praised
+him he was inclined to blush, and that made him sore at himself.
+
+But the extraordinary effect of the affair was the change in Gil Steele.
+As Bill Jordan said, it had "jarred Gil loose from his meanness." The
+result of this jarring was that Gil presented Whitey with the iron-gray
+colt, with _a silver-mounted saddle and bridle_. The neighborhood gasped
+at that, and gasped again when Gil gave Injun a pair of gold-mounted
+six-guns, with an embossed leather cartridge-belt and holsters. You can
+imagine the figure Injun cut when decorated with these. And he slept
+with them on.
+
+And, pleasing to relate, Gil prospered more when he was generous than he
+had when he was mean. In time he became very well off.
+
+Things seemed to be coming Whitey's way, for the school problem was
+solved, too. Mr. Sherwood brought this news from the East. John Big
+Moose was to return. Not that John had been unsuccessful in the Eastern
+college; far from that. He had gained the respect and esteem of the
+students. It is true that they called him "Big Chief," but there was
+more affection in the nickname than even the boys suspected.
+
+But John was like many another man--and boy--who, when he gets what he
+wants, finds that he doesn't want it so much, after all. It was not only
+that John longed for the greater reaches and the free life of the West;
+he felt a call to return to and to aid his own people. There were plenty
+of men to teach in colleges; there were few who could help the Indians
+as John could.
+
+And he agreed to direct Injun and Whitey's studies until the time came
+for them to go away to school, which would not be long.
+
+So, with Henry Dorgan safely in jail awaiting trial, and a vacation in
+prospect, pending John Big Moose's return, something must be done.
+Wouldn't do for the boys to sit around twirling their thumbs. They began
+to talk about this, or rather Whitey began to talk and Injun to slip in
+a grunted word now and then; and suddenly Whitey had an idea.
+
+Often on the plains and in the mountains Whitey had thought of the
+pioneer days of the West; thoughts such as the country arouses in the
+minds of all boys and of some men. Whitey could close his eyes and
+imagine that he saw an old wagon train wending its way across the
+prairie, its line of white-topped schooners drawn by drooping, tired
+horses, its outriding guard of scouts, clad in buckskin, alert,
+keen-eyed, each with a long rifle resting in the hollow of his arm. Or
+in the mountains he saw an old, fur-capped trapper crouch behind the
+shelter of a boulder, his single-shot, heavy-barreled rifle directed
+toward an unconscious, lumbering grizzly, the trapper's life hanging on
+the accuracy of his one shot. Yes, like all boys Whitey was full of
+these dreams.
+
+"Injun, we'll take a pioneer hunting trip!" he cried.
+
+It took a little time to explain this matter to Injun, but when it was
+explained Injun was keen for the plan, too, for his being Injun didn't
+make him different from any other boy at heart. He was to take his bow
+and arrows. Whitey would borrow an old-fashioned Springfield rifle, that
+belonged to his father. There would be no Winchester repeaters, nor
+trout rods with multiplying reels, nor any of the modern weapons for
+slaying game or fish. It would be a sort of return to the wild.
+
+And here the first trouble arose with Injun; that of leaving his
+six-guns behind. It took some time to coax him to do this; to entrust
+them to the safe in the ranch house. But, that done, it was necessary
+only to get Mr. Sherwood's permission and to make the preparations. Mr.
+Sherwood was not in the ranch house, nor in the bunk house, where Bill
+Jordan was starting one of his lengthy yarns. Whitey paused there for a
+moment.
+
+"What I don't know about boys a tongue-tied man could tell in half a
+second," Bill was saying.
+
+"A tongue-tied man couldn't tell nothin' in half a second," objected
+Shorty Palmer.
+
+"That's just what I mean," Bill said. "There ain't nothin' to tell. Now,
+'bout a boy bein' civil. You don't often find one, out West here, and
+when you do it's mostly accident; mebbe inherited. 'Course you c'n train
+a boy t' be p'lite, but you got t' be careful, like in trainin' any
+other animal, an' not take th' spunk outa him. Most folks thinks that
+when a boy's civil he ain't got nothin' else t' recommend him, but
+'tain't allus so. Now, I knowed a boy, onc't--"
+
+But Whitey fled. He could not afford to wait for Bill's story, which
+probably would take all the morning. He found his father, overcame that
+gentleman's objections to the pioneer hunting trip, and Injun and Whitey
+had a busy time gathering the food, weapons, and clothing for their
+journey to the mountains, where the simple life was to be led.
+
+It was shortly after noon when they rode away, the men on the ranch
+watching, and perhaps each feeling in his heart a little twinge, as
+though he'd like to be a kid again, and up to some such boyish prank.
+Whitey was on Monty, Injun on his pinto, leading a pack-horse laden with
+their few belongings. From the corral the intelligent eyes of the
+iron-gray colt regarded them with interest; the colt that was to be
+trained for racing, and that Whitey hoped to ride in rodeos.
+
+This country was so full of game that all one had to do was to go a mile
+from any town, in any direction, to find it. Prairie chickens were most
+prolific; the principal game. They were so plentiful that one could
+walk through thousands of them and they would part and allow the hunter
+to move among them, without taking wing.
+
+Of course, one never would dream of shooting at a bird unless it was on
+the wing. The only time that was excusable was when hunting for
+partridges among the trees in the foothills. Usually Injun with his bow
+and arrow would take first shot at the partridge as it perched in the
+tree branches. If he missed, which he seldom did, Whitey would let go
+his shot-gun when the partridge was on the wing. And as Injun seldom
+missed, Mr. Partridge lost both ways. But this day the shot-gun was at
+home, so Injun bagged all the partridges they needed for food.
+
+The prairie chickens have a peculiar call. First the hens cry, in a
+high, treble, "Chuck-luck, chuck-a-luck!" and the male replies, in a
+deep, full sound, "Bomb-bombo-boo!"
+
+In that part of the country there was a rather eccentric character named
+Charlie Clark. He had been creased on the head by a bullet sometime,
+somehow, and he was not exactly all there. And Injun and Whitey used to
+interpret the calls of the prairie chicks to:
+
+"Char-lie--Clar-k--Char-lie--Clar-k--Char-lie--Clar-k--" for the hens,
+and:
+
+"Darn'd ol-fool--" for the males.
+
+And so the boys went on their merry, heedless way. They expected to camp
+in the foothills that night, and had made about ten miles in a leisurely
+way, when Injun happened to look back and saw an object approaching them
+in an uncertain and wobbly but determined manner. Injun's sharp eyes
+soon identified it as Sitting Bull. The boys were first surprised, then
+sorry that Bull should have had such a long pursuit, but that did not
+keep back Whitey's laughter when Bull staggered up to where they waited
+for him. He sure was a happy dog, and fatigue did not keep him from
+showing it, his method being to twist his body into almost a
+half-circle, wag his stump tail, and prance about gazing delightedly up
+at the boys.
+
+As a hunting companion he was a frost. Looking at it in that light, and
+after deep consideration, Injun spoke. "Him must go back," he said.
+
+"How?" asked Whitey.
+
+More profound thought, and Injun spoke again. "Me take him," he decided.
+
+"Oh," said Whitey, "and I wait up in the mountains alone. Perhaps you
+wouldn't mind sending me daily or hourly reports of Bull's condition
+while he is recovering from the fatigue of his journey." Injun didn't
+know whether this was sarcasm, or if he was being kidded, and he didn't
+care. His was a serious mind that was not easily turned to light
+thoughts. "No," said Whitey, "he goes with us, I can't bear to
+disappoint him." And perhaps Injun was better satisfied at this
+decision, though he did not express himself.
+
+So the journey was resumed. For a time Whitey would carry Bull. When he
+tired, Injun would carry Bull awhile. When Injun tired, Bull would
+waddle a way. It was a strange way for a dog to go hunting.
+
+As we are soon to part from Injun and Whitey, there is one more thing I
+feel that I should tell you about them. In a way I don't like to tell
+it, in another way I feel that I ought to tell it and--anyway, I'm
+_going_ to tell it and to call it:
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+"IN MEMORY"
+
+
+Up in the mountains, about two miles northwest of Moose Lake, was a hole
+which old Mother Nature had carelessly left there, and afterwards
+thoughtfully filled with water. The water was blue--probably in
+imitation of the near-by sky--so the place was called Blue Lake.
+
+At Moose Lake there was a cabin and a canoe, as you may remember, and to
+Injun and Whitey that had seemed too civilized for a pioneer hunting
+trip. So they had fished the canoe out of the lake, and had made a
+portage with it. The canoe was light, and a boy could carry it over his
+head for quite a distance before he got tired or fell over a rock.
+
+Blue Lake was an ideal place for a wild camp. It was almost circular and
+nearly a mile in diameter. To the north its shore blended with the
+heights that led to the peaks; heights clad with a rugged growth of
+pines and firs that extended toward the timber line. There was nothing
+gentle or park-like about the Blue Lake.
+
+Its chilly depths were spring-fed, and sheltered trout that were far
+from logy. They would put up an awful fight for life, and as the boys
+were using back-to-nature poles, made from the branches of trees, the
+fish tried the patience even of Injun.
+
+When not tied to a tree Sitting Bull's part in the hunting was to
+interfere with matters as much as possible. As a hunting dog he had only
+one advantage; he didn't bark. But he deserved no credit for that. It
+wasn't his nature to bark. As Bull tore enthusiastically about, Whitey
+would watch him with a rueful smile, and say, "The only way he could
+help would be by going home, and of course he can't do that."
+
+"In early October a crisp morning found Injun and Whitey leaving camp to
+begin what for them was a special day's hunting. They were going for
+deer. The deer loved the secluded shores of the lake, and some distance
+from the camp a run led to a spot where the animals came down to drink.
+This morning the camp was down the wind from that spot; so it was ideal.
+The boys planned to go in the canoe, and Sitting Bull was securely tied
+to a tree to await their return. But Bull looked so longing, so lonely,
+there was so much entreaty in his eyes, that Whitey allowed his heart to
+overrule his head.
+
+"He can't raise much of a row in the canoe, and he won't bark," Whitey
+said rather shamefacedly. "Let's take him along."
+
+Injun said nothing, as usual, but he didn't look disapproving. So they
+got into their canoe and paddled up the wind until near the run, where
+they found a low, overhanging branch and ran the canoe under it. So
+masked they waited for Mr. Deer to come and drink.
+
+In about an hour he came and with him was Mrs. Deer, or maybe it was his
+daughter, and not his wife, for she looked so young and timid one hardly
+could picture her as the mate of Mr. Deer. He was a big fellow who would
+weigh about four hundred pounds, and had fourteen points--little
+branches shooting off his horns.
+
+It was Injun's turn to shoot first, and he pulled back his bowstring and
+braced himself to let go. Right here it may be said that at thirty yards
+an arrow propelled by an Indian-made bow is just as deadly as a bullet,
+if it hits its mark. But Injun shot a little high and caught the buck in
+the shoulder. He threw up his head and let out a roar of battle, looking
+every inch the magnificent creature that he was, and just churned the
+waters of the lake, which he was in up to his knees.
+
+He didn't have very long to bellow his defiance, for Whitey's
+Springfield rifle spoke. Now Mr. Deer turned almost completely over from
+the shock, but again the hit was not in a vital spot. The canoe was
+rocking a little, and Mr. Deer was not exactly posing to be shot at. And
+there was another excuse that I have mentioned before--buck fever: the
+disease that comes when a big buck deer jumps up from nowhere, and
+causes the hunter to lose his head and do the wrong thing.
+
+You would think that Injun and Whitey would have been over that? Well,
+perhaps they should have been immune, but you will remember that our
+mighty hunters were just boys, and even frontier boys can be excused for
+a sudden attack of a complaint that grownups have. And the grownup who
+says that he never has had it, at some time in his life, that Mr.
+Grownup has not done any deer hunting, or that Mr. Grownup lies. And
+what's more, some grownups never get over it.
+
+Perhaps Sitting Bull had given the fever to Injun, for the dog was
+trembling so that he shook the canoe; each particular hair stood on end,
+and if any one had stroked Bull, he probably would have got the electric
+shock of his life. Anyway, Injun sure had buck fever for the first time
+in his young life, for in bracing himself for his next shot he sat too
+far back on his left leg, and when he let go his arrow, over went the
+canoe. All hopes for a successful issue of that battle would have ended
+right there had not Injun's arrow by a lucky shot gone straight into Mr.
+Deer's heart. With one mighty lunge in the air he fell back in the water
+toward the shore, where his horns and part of his body remained above
+the surface. When the canoe went over, Whitey held his rifle high over
+his head, so it was still dry and ready for use--a needless precaution
+in this case.
+
+I hate to write this part of the story. The deer's daughter--she must
+have been his daughter--had lots and lots of chances to run away, but
+she didn't do it. She just stood there like the poor, timid, scared
+thing she was, with every quiver of her graceful body, every look of her
+big, brown, childlike eyes saying, "Please, why did you kill my father,
+who was my only protector? And please, please don't hurt me!"
+
+Did you, Mr. or Miss Reader, ever have a helpless animal look at you in
+that way? If you did, you know it's awful--awful to remember!
+
+Whitey fired. He couldn't miss at that distance. And he ran forward to
+force Miss Deer to fall on the bank, clear of the water, which she did.
+She looked at Whitey while he was shoving her over, Whitey nor no one
+else can ever describe that look, and Whitey, boy as he was, turned away
+his head as she fell. Injun stood by dripping, silent, his face a mask
+for his feelings. And Sitting Bull was shivering, but not with cold or
+excitement; he had caught the dying look of the doe. And Bull's ugly
+face reflected the feelings of his heart, that was both brave and
+gentle, for actually, yes, actually! there were tears in Bull's eyes.
+
+The canoe was brought to shore, the water was dumped out of it, the
+paddles were recovered. Then a rope was fastened to Mr. Deer, and by
+means of a log lever he was hauled out of the lake and dressed. But
+Injun didn't talk and Whitey didn't talk. And Bull didn't wander around
+as usual and smell the scents that gave him so much excitement and
+delight, and that the boys couldn't smell at all. The deer's head, hide,
+and some of the meat were put into the canoe. The rest of the meat was
+tied high in trees, safe from marauding animals. The boys didn't touch
+Miss Deer. They got into the canoe with Bull and paddled away. They
+didn't look back.
+
+The rest of the day and evening were spent in a constrained silence.
+Sitting Bull felt the constraint. He lay on the ground, his great head
+between his paws, and moodily watched the boys. Several hours had
+passed; it was night, at the camp-fire; still no words had been spoken.
+Finally Whitey stopped looking into the fire and stood up straight.
+
+"Injun, where's the spade?" he asked. "I've got something to do."
+
+Injun answered Whitey's question, but asked none of his own. "Me go
+help," he said.
+
+With Sitting Bull as a passenger, they paddled the canoe back over the
+moonlit lake until they came to the run. And the two boys dug a grave
+for Miss Deer, and laid her in that grave just as she fell, and covered
+it with a pile of stones so the coyotes couldn't touch her. And when the
+morning sun came up over the hills, Injun and Whitey were in a new camp
+miles away.
+
+Injun said nothing to Whitey and Whitey said nothing to Injun, but to
+the day of his death Injun never shot at a Miss Deer again. And although
+Whitey is now a middle-aged man, to this day he has never again shot at
+a Miss Deer. Nor has he ever forgotten the look in the eyes of that Miss
+Deer which those boys buried on the bank of Blue Lake, twenty-six years
+ago.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+"_The Books You Like to Read at the Price You Like to Pay_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_There Are Two Sides to Everything_--
+
+--including the wrapper which covers every Grosset & Dunlap book. When
+you feel in the mood for a good romance, refer to the carefully selected
+list of modern fiction comprising most of the successes by prominent
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+
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+
+_Don't forget the other side, but in case the wrapper is lost, write to
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_There is a Grosset & Dunlap Book for every mood and for every taste_
+
+EDGAR RICE BURROUGH'S NOVELS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE MAD KING
+  THE MOON MAID
+  THE ETERNAL LOVER
+  BANDIT OF HELL'S BEND, THE
+  CAVE GIRL, THE
+  LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, THE
+  TARZAN OF THE APES
+  TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR
+  TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN
+  TARZAN THE TERRIBLE
+  TARZAN THE UNTAMED
+  BEASTS OF TARZAN, THE
+  RETURN OF TARZAN, THE
+  SON OF TARZAN, THE
+  JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN
+  AT THE EARTH'S CORE
+  PELLUCIDAR
+  THE MUCKER
+  A PRINCESS OF MARS
+  GODS OF MARS, THE
+  WARLORD OF MARS, THE
+  THUVIA, MAID OF MARS
+  CHESSMEN OF MARS, THE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S
+
+STORIES OF ADVENTURE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A GENTLEMAN OF COURAGE
+  THE ALASKAN
+  THE COUNTRY BEYOND
+  THE FLAMING FOREST
+  THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
+  THE RIVER'S END
+  THE GOLDEN SNARE
+  NOMADS OF THE NORTH
+  KAZAN
+  BAREE, SON OF KAZAN
+  THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
+  THE DANGER TRAIL
+  THE HUNTED WOMAN
+  THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH
+  THE GRIZZLY KING
+  ISOBEL
+  THE WOLF HUNTERS
+  THE GOLD HUNTERS
+  THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE
+  BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
+
+ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE VANISHING AMERICAN
+  THE THUNDERING HERD
+  THE CALL OF THE CANYON
+  WANDERER OF THE WASTELAND
+  TO THE LAST MAN
+  THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER
+  THE MAN OF THE FOREST
+  THE DESERT OF WHEAT
+  THE U.P. TRAIL
+  WILDFIRE
+  THE BORDER LEGION
+  THE RAINBOW TRAIL
+  THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
+  RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+  THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
+  THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
+  THE LONE STAR RANGER
+  DESERT GOLD
+  BETTY ZANE
+  THE DAY OF THE BEAST
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS
+
+The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore, with
+Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.
+
+
+ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS
+
+  ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+  KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE
+  THE YOUNG LION HUNTER
+  THE YOUNG FORESTER
+  THE YOUNG PITCHER
+  THE SHORT STOP
+  THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER BASEBALL STORIES
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
+
+RAFAEL SABATINI'S NOVELS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jesi, a diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birth-place of
+Rafael Sabatini, and here he spent his early youth. The city is
+glamorous with those centuries the author makes live again in his novels
+with all their violence and beauty.
+
+Mr. Sabatini first went to school in Switzerland and from there to Lycee
+of Oporto, Portugal, and like Joseph Conrad, he has never attended an
+English school. But English is hardly an adopted language for him, as he
+learned it from his mother, an English woman who married the
+Maestro-Cavaliere Vincenzo Sabatini.
+
+Today Rafael Sabatini is regarded as "The Alexandre Dumas of Modern
+Fiction."
+
+
+MISTRESS WILDING
+
+A romance of the days of Monmouth's rebellion. The action is rapid, its
+style is spirited, and its plot is convincing.
+
+FORTUNE'S FOOL
+
+All who enjoyed the lurid lights of the French Revolution with
+Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the
+adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a
+turn in Restoration London with the always masterful Col. Randall
+Holles.
+
+BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT
+
+An absorbing story of love and adventure in France of the early
+seventeenth century.
+
+THE SNARE
+
+It is a story in which fact and fiction are delightfully blended and one
+that is entertaining in high degree from first to last.
+
+CAPTAIN BLOOD
+
+The story has glamor and beauty and it is told with an easy confidence.
+As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of a sardonic humor,
+cold nerves, and hot temper. Both the story and the man are
+masterpieces. A great figure, a great epoch, a great story.
+
+THE SEA-HAWK
+
+"The Sea-Hawk" is a book of fierce bright color and amazing adventure
+through which stalks one of the truly great and masterful figures of
+romance.
+
+SCARAMOUCHE
+
+Never will the reader forget the sardonic Scaramouche, who fights
+equally well with tongue and rapier, who was "born with the gift of
+laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
+
+JACKSON GREGORY'S NOVELS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MAID OF THE MOUNTAIN
+
+A thrilling story, centering about a lovely and original girl who flees
+to the mountains to avoid an obnoxious suitor--and finds herself
+suspected of murder.
+
+DAUGHTER OF THE SUN
+
+A tale of Aztec treasure--of American adventurers who seek it--of
+Zoraida, who hides it.
+
+TIMBER-WOLF
+
+This is a story of action and of the wide open, dominated always by the
+heroic figure of Timber-Wolf.
+
+THE EVERLASTING WHISPER
+
+The story of a strong man's struggle against savage nature and humanity,
+and of a beautiful girl's regeneration from a spoiled child of wealth
+into a courageous strong-willed woman.
+
+DESERT VALLEY
+
+A college professor sets out with his daughter to find gold. They meet a
+rancher who loses his heart, and becomes involved in a feud.
+
+MAN TO MAN
+
+How Steve won his game and the girl he loved, is a story filled with
+breathless situations.
+
+THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN
+
+Dr. Virginia Page is forced to go with the sheriff on a night journey
+into the strongholds of a lawless band.
+
+JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH
+
+Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being robbed
+by her foreman. With the help of Bud Lee, she checkmate's Trevor's
+scheme.
+
+THE SHORT CUT
+
+Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a quarrel. Financial
+complications, a horse-race and beautiful Wanda, make up a thrilling
+romance.
+
+THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER
+
+A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice's Ranch much to her
+chagrin. There is "another man" who complicates matters.
+
+SIX FEET FOUR
+
+Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
+Thornton, but she soon realizes he is not guilty.
+
+WOLF BREED
+
+No Luck Drennan, a woman hater and sharp of tongue, finds a match in
+Ygerne whose clever fencing wins the admiration and love of the "Lone
+Wolf."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
+
+
+
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