lie WAGON EMERSON HOUGH CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Barbara Hirshfeld The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022481323 Cornell University Library PS 3515.09293C8 1922a The covered wagon / 3 1924 022 481 323 KVM^KiS 9 WM li H| \'' ^WB^BKSL'M ^^^E ^BP Tf^B Qubfl 1 ^^"' 1 fth? •fl t ^'' ^^ H p*^ % ■ 'Sii^^S m ^ »», WR" iHI p.^ K Jl fe ^H ^. -£j^^^i^ J ll a *^'^^^BHB ^ctHMB i hkes^^^^ ll j|P|a 1 .. . ^. sy 1 L«^ tSte , i«, tWP /^^B •^IH^^^^^I -' \ Jm ' ijM HHHHp ' "^HBJlKiyJ^B 1 ^'?^ i^l ^^^^^^B Pmi'^KJ ^^1 ^^^^^^^^^v vii -''^N ->^jU ^^^H ^^I^I^^^^^H^ ^■K^ --^>^ 1 ^H ^^^^^K '*' tlh^ ^ ij^ 1 |H ^I^BH' m B9»fl^^v 9 [< ■v 1 ^^HP|'4 ^-' mi ^H^^^^ -, -irf h J 1 H^ "I'll ride him now, to show you,'' [page 45] THE COVERED WAGON BY EMERSON HOUGH AUTHOR OF 54-40 OR FIGHT, NORTH OF 36, Etc GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Made in the United States of America ^5 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY EMERSON- HOUGH A L^:i y/ r Copyright, 1922, by The Curtis Publishing Co. CONTENTS I. — Youth Marches . . . II. — The Edge of the World III. — ^The Rendezvous . IV. — Fever of New Fortunes V. — The Black Spaniard . VI. — Issue Joined . . . VII. — The Jump-off . VIII. — Man Against Man . IX.— The Brute .... X. — Ole Missoury . XI. — ^When All the World Young .... XII.— The Dead Men's Tale XIIL— Wild Fire .... XIV.— The Kiss .... XV.— The Division . . . XVI.— The Plains .... XVII. — The Great Encampment XVIII. — Arrow and Plow . . XIX. — Banion of Doniphan's XX. — ^The Buffalo . . . Was PAGX 1 17 21 34 42 49 53 60 68 75 78 90 104 116 126 129 137 152 156 CONTENTS CEAPTEa XXI. — The Quicksands „, ., ,., XXII. — ^A Secret of Two . ,., XXIII. — ^An Armistice . ,. ,. XXIV.— The Road West ,. „ , XXV.— Old Lj^Nmie . . ,. XXVI.— The First Gold . . XXVII.— Two Who Loved . . XXVIII. — ^When a Maid Marries . XXIX.— The Broken Wedding . XXX. — The Dance in the Desert XXXI.— How, Cola! . . ?* . XXXII. — The Fight at the Ford XXXIIL— The Families Are Coming XXXIV. — ^A Matter of Friendship XXSV;— Gee— Whoa— Haw^ XXXVI. — ^Two Love Letters . XXXVII. — ^Jim Bridger Forgets XXXVIIL— When the Rockies Fell XXXIX.— The Crossing . . . XL. — Oregon! Oregon! . XLI. — ^The Secrets of the Sierras XLII. — Kit Carson Rides XLIII. — The Killer Killed . XLIV. — Yet if Love Lack . XLV. — The Light of the Whole World VAoa i66 174 17^' 182 187 196 202 208 220 231 243 261 268 280 291 297 307 317 333 348 352 357 360 368 374 The COVERED WAGON CHAPTER I YOUTH MARCHES ""W" OOK at 'em come, Jesse I More and more! I Must be forty or fifty families." * ' Molly Wingate. middle-aged, 22£tly» dark browed and strong, stood at the door of the rude tent which for the time made her home. She was pointing down the road which lay like an ecrjj. ribbon thrown down across the prairie grass, bordered beyond by the timber-grown bluffs of the Missouri. Tesse Wingate allowed his team of harness-marked horses to continue their eager drinking at the water- ing hole of the little stream near which the camp was pitched until, their thirst quenched, they began bury- ing their muzzles and blowing into the water in sensu- ous enjoyment. He stood, a strone and tall man- of perhaps forty-liive yea^a, of keen blue eye and short, close-matted, tawny beard. His garb was the loose dress of the outlying settler of the Western land^ I THE COVERED WAGON tiiree-quarters of a century ago. A farmer he must have been back home. Could this encampment, on the very front of the American civilization, now be called a home? Be- yond the prairie road could be seen a double furrow of jet-black glistening sod, framing the green grass and its spangling flowers, first browsing of the plow on virgin soil. It might have been the opening of a farm. But if so, why the crude bivouac? Why the gear of travelers? Why the massed arl3ike wagons, the scores of morning fires lifting lazy blue wreaths of smoke against the morning mists ? The truth was that Jesse Wingate, earlier and im- patient on the front, out of the very suppression of energy, had been trying his plow in the first white furrows beyond the Missouri in the great year of 1848. Four hundred other near-by plows alike were avid for the soil of Oregon; as witness this long line of newcomers, late at the frontier ijendesrous. "It's the Liberty wagons from down river," said the campmaster at length. "Missouri movers and set- tlers from lower Illinois. It's time. We can't lie here much longer waiting for Missouri or Illinois, either. The grass is up." "Well, we'd have to wait for Molly to end her spring term, teaching in Clay School, in Liberty," re- joined his wife, "else why'd we send her there to grad- uate? Twelve dollars a month, cash money, ain't to be sneezed at," 2 YOUTH MARCHES "No; nor is two thousand miles of trail between here and Oregon, before snow, to be sneezed at, either. If Molly ain't with those wagons I'll send Jed over for her to-day. If I'm going to be captain I can't hold the people here on the river any longer, with May already begun." "She'll be here to-day," asserted his wife. "She said she would. Besides, I think that's her riding a little one side the road now. Not that I know who all is with her. One young man — two. Well" — with maternal pride — "Molly ain't never lacked for beaus! "But look at the wagons come!" she added. "All the country's going West this spring, it certainly seems like." It was the spring gathering of the west-bound wagon-trains, stretching from old Independence to ^Westport Landing, the spot where that very year the new name of Kansas City was heard among the emi- grants as the place of the jump-off. It was now an hour by sun, as these Western people would have said, and the low-lying valley mists had not yet fully risen, so that the atmosphere for a great picture did not lack. It was a great picture, a stirring ganor^jja of an earlier day, which now unfolded. Slow, swaying, stately, the ox teams came on, as though impelled by and not compelling the fleet of white canvas sails. The teams did not hasten, did not abate their speed, but moved in an unagitated advance that gave the massed 3 THE COVERED WAGON column something irresistibly epochal in look. The train, foreshortened to the watchers at the rendezvous, had a well-spaced formation — ^twenty wagons, thirty, forty, forty-seven — ^as Jesse Wingate mentally counted them. There were outriders; there were clumps of driven cattle. Along the flanks walked tall men, who flung over the low-headed cattle an admonitory lash whose keen report presently could be heard, still faint and far off. A dull dust cloud arose, softening the outlines of the prairie ships. The broad gestures of arm and trunk, the monotonous soothing of commands to the sophisticated kine as yet remained vague, so that still it was properly a picture done on a vast canvas — ^that of the frontier in '48; a picture of might, of inevitableness. Even the sober souls of these waiters rose to it, felt some thrill they themselves had never analyzed. A boy of twenty, tall, blond, tousled, rode up from J the grove back of the encampment of the Wingate family. "You, Jed?" said his father. "Ride on out and see if Molly's there." "Sure she is!" commented the youth, finding a plug in the pocket of his jeans. "That's her. Two fellers, like usual." "Sam WoodhuU, of course," said the mother, still hand over eye. "He hung around all winter, telling how him and Colonel Doniphan whipped all Mexico 4 YOUTH MAHCHES and won the war. If Molly ain't in a wagon of her own, it ain't his fault, anyways ! I'll rest assured it's accoimt of Molly's going out to Oregon that he's going too! Well!" And again, "Well !" "Who's the other fellow, though?" demanded Jed. "I can't place him this far." Jesse Wingate handed over his team to his son and stepped out into the open road, moved his hat in an impatient signal, half of welcome, half of command. It apparently was observed. To their surprise, it was the unidentified rider who now set spur to his horse and came on at a gallop ahead of the train. He rode carelessly well, a born horseman. In no more than a few minutes he could be seen as rather a gallant figure of the border cavalier — 3. border just then more martial than it had been before '46 and the days of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight." A shrewed man might have guessed this young man — ^he was no more than twenty-eight — ^to have got some military air on a border opposite to that of Oregon; the far Southwest, where Taylor and Scott and the less known Doniphan and many another fight' ing man had been adding certain thousands of leagues to the soil of this republic. He rode a compact, short- coupled, cat-hammed steed, coal black and with a dashing forelock reaching almost to his red nostrils — a horse never reared on the fat Missouri corn lands. Neither did this heavy embossed saddle with its silver S THE COVERED WAGON concho decorations then seem familiar so far north; nor yet the thin braided-leather bridle with its hair frontlet band and its mighty bit; nor again the great spurs with jingling rowel bells. This rider's mount and trappings spoke the far and new Southwest, just then coming into our national ken. The young man himself, however, was upon the face of his appearance nothing of the swashbuckler. True, in his close-cut leather trousers, his neat boots, his tidy gloves, his rather jaunty broad black hat of felted beaver, he made a somewhat raffish figure of a man as he rode up, weight on his under thigh, sidewise, and hand on his horse's quarters, carelessly; but hia clean cut, unsmiling features, his direct and grave look out of dark eyes, spoke him a gentleman of his day and place, and no mere spectacular pretender assum. ing a virtue though he had it not. He swung easily out of saddle, his right hand on the tall, broad Spanish horn as easily as though rising from a chair at presence of a lady, and removed his beaver to this frontier woman before he accosted her husband. His bridle he flung down over his horse's head, which seemingly anchored the animal, spite of its loud whinnying challenge to these near-by stolid creatures which showed harness rubs and not whitened saddle hairs. "Good morning, madam," said he in a pleasant, var, that as ancient as male and female. That Banion had known Woodhull in the field in Mexico he already had let slip. What had been the cause of his sudden pulling up of his starting tongue? Would he have spoken too much of that acquaintance? 13 THE COVERED WAGON Perhaps a closer look at the loose lips, the high cheeks, the narrow, close-set eyes of young Woodhull, his rather assertive air, his slight, indefinable swagger, his slouch in standing, might have confirmed some skeptic disposed to analysis who would have guessed him less than strong of soul and character. For the most part, such skeptics lacked. By this time the last belated unit of the Oregon caravan was at hand. The feature of the dusty drivers could be seen. Unlike Wingate, the newly chosen master of the train, who had horses and mules about him, the young leader, Banion, captained only ox teams. They came now, slow footed, steady, low; headed, irresistible, indomitable, the same locomotive power that carried the hordes of Asia into Eastern Europe long ago. And as in the days of that invasion the conquerors carried their households, their flocks and herds with them, so now did these half-savage Saxon folk have with them their all. Lean boys, brown, barefooted girls flanked the trail with driven stock. Chickens clucked in coops at wagon side. Uncounted children thrust out tousled heads from the openings of the canvas covers. Dogs beneath, jostling the tar buckets, barked in hostile salutation. Women in slatted sunbonnets turned im- passive gaze from the high front seats, back of which, swtmg to the bows by leather loops, hung the inevitable family rifle in each wagon. And now, at the tail gate 14 YOUTH MARCHES of every wagon, lashed fast for its last long journey, hung also the family plow. ' It was '48, and the grass was up. On to Oregon I The ark of our covenant with progress was passing out. Almost it might have been said to have held every living thing, like that other ark of old. Banion hastened to one side, where a grassy level beyond the little stream still offered stance. He raised a hand in gesture to the right. A sudden note of com- mand came into his voice, lingering from late military days. "By the right and left flank— wheel! March!" [With obvious training, the wagons broke apart, alternating right and left, until two long columns were formed. Each of these advanced, curving out, then drawing in, until a long ellipse, closed at front and rear, was formed methodically and without break or flaw. It was the barricade of the Plains, the moving fortresses of our soldiers of fortune, going West, across the Plains, across the Rockies, across the deserts that lay beyond. They did not know all these dangers, but they thus were ready for any that might come. "Look, mother!" Molly Wingate pointed with kindling eye to the wagon maneuver. "We trained them all day yesterday, and long before. Perfect!" Her gaze mayhap sought the tall figure of the young commjmder, chosen by older men above his fellow townsman, Sam WoodhuU, as captain of the 15 THE COVERED WAGOlf Liberty train. But he now had other duties in his own wagon group. Ceased now the straining creak of gear and came rattle of yokes as the pins were loosed. Cattle guards appeared and drove the work animals apart to graze. [Women clambered down from wagon seats. Sober- faced children gathered their little arms full of wood for the belated breakfast fires; boys came down for yfatcT at the stream. The west-bound paused at the Missouri, as once they had paused at the Don. A voice arose, of some young man back among the wagons busy at his work, paraphrasing an ante-bellum air: Oh, then, Susannah, Don't you cry fer me\ I'm goin' out to Oregon, With my banjo on »«,i kneel. CHAPTER II THE EDGE OF THE WORLD MORE than two thousand men, women and children waited on the Missouri for the green fully to tinge the grasses of the prairies farther west. The waning town of In- dependence had quadrupled its population in thirty days. Boats discharged their customary western cargo at the newer landing on the river, not far above that town; but it all was not enough. Men of upper Missouri and lower Iowa had driven in herds of oxen, horses, mules; but there were not enough of these. Rumors came that a hundred wagons would take the Platte this year via the Council BlufiFs, higher up the Missouri; others would join on from St. Jo and Leavenworth. March had come, when the wild turkey gobbled and strutted resplendent in the forest lands. April had passed, and the wild fowl had gone north. May, and the upland plovers now were nesting all across the prairies. But daily had more wagons come, and neighbors had waited for neighbors, tardy at the great rendezvous. The encampment, scattered up and down the river front, had become more and more congested. 17 THE COVERED WAGON Men began to know one another, families became ac- quainted, the gradual sifting and shifting in social values began. Knots and groups began to talk of some sort of accepted government for the common good. They now were at the edge of the law. Organized society did not exist this side of the provisional gov- ernment of Oregon, devised as a modus vivendi dur- ing the joint occupancy of that vast region with Great Britian — an arrangement terminated not longer than two years before. There must be some sort of law and leadership between the Missouri and the Columbia. Amid much bickering of petty politics, Jesse Wingate had some four days ago been chosen for the thankless task of train captain. Though that office had small authority and less means of enforcing its commands, none the less the train leader must be a man of courage, resource and decision. Those of the earlier arrivals who passed by his well-organized camp of forty-odd wagons from the Sangamon country of Illinois said that Wingate seemed to know the business of the trail. His affairs ran smoothly, he was well equipped and seemed a man of means. Some said he had three thousand in gold at the bottom of his cargo. More- over — and this appeared important among the Northern element, at that time predominant in the rendezvous he was not a Calhoun Secesh, or even a Benton Demo- crat, but an out and out, antislavery, free-soil man. And the provisional constitution of Oregon, devised i8 THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by thinking men of two great nations, had said tliat Oregon should be free soil forever. Already there were mutterings in 1848 of the com- kig conflict which a certain lank young lawyer of Springfield, in the Sangamon country- — Lincoln, his name was — two years ago among his personal friends had predicted as inevitable. In a personnel made up of bold souls from both sides the Ohio, politics could not be avoided even on the trail ; nor were these men the sort to avoid politics. Sometimes at their camp fire, after the caravan election, Wingate and his wife, their son Jed, would compare notes, in a day when personal politics and national geography meant more than they do to-day. "Listen, son," Wingate one time concluded. "All that talk of a railroad across this country to Oregon is silly, of course. But it's all going to be one country. The talk is that the treaty with Mexico must give us a slice of land from Texas to the Pacific, and a big one ; all of it was taken for the sake of slavery. Not so Oregon — that's free forever. This talk of splitting this country. North and South, don't go with me. The Alleghanies didn't divide it. Burr couldn't divide it- The Mississippi hasn't divided it, or the Missouri, so rest assured the Ohio can't. No, nor the Rockies can't! A railroad? No, of course not. But all the same, a practical wagon road from free soil to free soil — I reckon that was my platform, like enough. It made me captain." 19 THE COVERED WAGON "No, 'twasn't that, Jesse," said his wife. ^'That ain't what put you in for train captain. It was your blamed impatience. Some of them lower loway men, them that first nominated you in the train meeting — town meeting — ^what you call it, they seen where you'd been plowing along here just to keep your hand in. One of them says to me, 'Plowing, hey? Can't wait? Well, that's what we're going out for, ain't it — ^to plow?' says he. 'That's the clean quill,' says he. So they 'lected you, Jesse. And the Lord ha' mercy on your soul!" Now the arrival of so large a new contingent as this of the Liberty train under young Banion made some sort of post-election ratification necessary, so that Wingate felt it incumbent to call the head men of the late comers into consultation if for no better than reasons of courtesy. He dispatched his son Jed to the Banion park to ask the attendance of Banion, Wood- hull and such of his associates as he liked to bring, at any suiting hour. Word came back that the Liberty men would join the Wingate conference around eleven of that morning, at which time the hour of the jump- off could be set. CHAPTER III THE RENDEZVOUS AS to the start of the great wagon train, little time, indeed, remained. For days, in some instances for weeks, the units of the train had lain here on the border, and the men were growing restless. Some had come a thousand miles and now were keen to start out for more than two thousand miles additional. The grass was up. The men from lUinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas fretted on the leash. All along the crooked river front, on both sides from Independence to the river landing at Westport, the great spring caravan lay encamped, or housed in town. Now, on the last days of the rendezvous, a sort of hysteria seized the multitude. The sound of rifle fire was like that of a battle — every man was sighting-in his rifle. Singing and shouting went on everywhere. Someone fresh from the Mexican War had brought a drum, another a bugle. Without instructions, these began to sound their summons and continued all day long, at such times as the performers could spare from drink. The Indians of the friendly tribes — Otos, Kaws, Osages — come in to trade, looked on in wonder at the 21 THE COVERED WAGON revelings of the whites. The straggling street of each of the near-by river towns was full of massed wagons. The treble line of white tops, end to end, lay like a vast serpent, curving, ahead to the West. Rivalry for the head of the column began. The sounds of the bugle set a thousand uncoordinated wheels spas- modically in motion. Organization, system were as yet unknown in this rude and dominant democracy. Need was therefore for this final meeting in the in- terest of law, order and authority. Already some wagons had broken camp and moved on out into the main traveled road, which lay plain enough on west- ward, among the groves and glades of the valley of the Kaw. (Each man wanted to be first to Oregon, no man wished to take the dust of his neighbor's wagon.) Wingate brought up all these matters at the train meeting of some three score men which assembled under the trees of his own encampment at eleven of the last morning. Most of the men he knew. Banion unobtrusively took a seat well to the rear of those who squatted on their heels or lolled full length on the grass. After the fashion of the immemorial American town meeting, the beginning of all our government, Wingate called the meeting to order and stated its pur- poses. He then set forth his own ideas of the best manner for handling the trail work. His plan, as he explained, was one long earlier perfected in the convoys of the old Santa Fe Trdl. 22 THE RENDEZVOUS The wagons were to travel in close order. Four parallel columns, separated by not too great spaces, were to be maintained as much as possible, more especially toward nightfall.) Of these, the outer two were to draw in together when camp was made, the other two to angle out. wagon lapping wagon, front and rear, thus making an oblong corral of the wagons, into which, through a gap, the work oxen were to be driven every night after they had fed. The tents and fires were to be outside of the corral unless in case of an Indian alarm, when the corral would represent a fortress. The transport animals were to be hobbled each night. A guard, posted entirely around the corral and camp, was to be put out each night. Each man and each boy above fourteen was to be subject to guard duty under the ancient common law of the Plains, and from this duty no man might hope excuse unless actually too ill to walk; nor could any man offer to procuie any substitute for himself. The watches were to be set as eight, each to stand guard one-fourth part of alternate nights, so that each man would get every other night undisturbed. There were to be lieutenants, one for each of the four parallel divisions of the train; also eight sergeants of the guard, each of whom was to select and handle the men of the watch under him. No wagon might change its own place in the train after the start, dust or no dust. 23 THE COVERED WAGON When Wingate ended his exposition and looked around for approval it was obvious that many of these regulations met with disfavor at the start. The demo- cracy of the train was one in which each man wanted his own way. Leaning head to head, speaking low, men grumbled at all this fuss and feathers and Army stuff. Some of these were friends and backers in the late election. Nettled by their silence, or by theii; murmured comments, Wingate arose again. "Well, you have heard my plan, men," said he. "The Santa Fe men worked it up, and used it for years, as you all know. They always got through. If there's anyone here knows a better way, and one that's got more experience back of it, I'd like to have him get up and say so." Silence for a time greeted this also. The Northern men, Wingate's partisans, looked uncomfortably one to the other. It was young WoodhuU, of the Liberty contingent, who rose at length. "What Cap'n Wingate has said sounds all right td me," said he. "He's a new friend of mine — I never saw him till two-three hours ago — ^but I know about him. What he says about the Santa Fe fashion I know for true. As some of you know, I was out that way, up the Arkansas, with Doniphan, for the Stars and Stripes. Talk about wagon travel — ^you got to have a regular system or you have everything in a mess. This here, now, is a lot like so many volunteers enlisting for war. There's always a sort of prelimi- 24 THE RENDEZVOUS nary election of officers; sort of shaking down and shaping up. I wasn't here when Cap'n Wingate was elected — our wagons were some late — ^but speaking for our men, I'd move to ratify his choosing, and that means to ratify his regulations. I'm wondering if I don't get a second for that?" Some of the bewhiskered men who sat about him stirred, but cast their eyes toward their own captain, young Banion, whose function as their spokesman had thus been usurped by his defeated rival, Woodhull. Perhaps few of them suspected the argumentum ad hominem — or rather ad feminam — ^in WoodhuU's speech. Banion alone knew this favor-currying when he saw it, and knew well enough the real reason. It was Molly! Rivals indeed they were, these two, and in more ways than one. But Banion held his peace until one quiet father of a family spoke up. "I reckon our own train captain, that we elected in case we didn't throw in with the big train, had ought to say what he thinks about it all." Will Banion now rose composedly and bowed to the leader. "I'm glad to second Mr. Woodhull's motion to throw our vote and our train for Captain Wingate and the big train," said he. "We'll ratify his cap- taincy, won't we?" The nods of his associates now showed assent, and Wingate needed no more confirmation. 25 THE COVERED WAGON "In general, too, I would ratify Captain Wingate's scheme. But might I make a few suggestions?" "Surely — go on." Wingate half rose. "Well then, I'd like to point out that we've got twice as far to go as the Santa Fe traders, and over a very different country — ^more dangerous, less known, harder to travel. We've many times more wagons than any Santa Fe train ever had, and we've hundreds of loose cattle along. That means a sweeping off of the grass at every stop, and grass we've got to have or the train stops. "Besides our own call on grass, I know there'll be five thousand Mormons at least on the trail ahead of us this spring — ^they've crossed the river from here to the Bluffs, and they're out on the Platte right now. We take what grass they leave us. "What I'm trying to get at, captain, is this: We might have to break into smaller detachments now and again. We could not possibly always keep aligrment in four columns." "And then we'd be open to any Indian attack," interrupted Woodhull. "We might have to fight some of the time, yes," rejoined Banion; "but we'll have to travel all the time, and we'll have to graze our stock all the time. On that one basic condition our safety rests — grass and plenty of it. We're on a long journey. "You see, gentlemen," he added, smiling, "I was with Doniphan also. We learned a good many things. 26 THE RENDEZVOUS For instance, I'd rather see each horse on a thirty-foot picket rope, anchored safe each night, than to trust to any hobbles. A homesick horse can travel miles, hob- bled, in a night. Horses are a lot of trouble. "Now, I see that about a fourth of our people, insluding Captain Wingate, have horses and mules and not ox transport. I wish they all could trade for oxen before they start. Oxen last longer and fare better. They are easier to herd. They can be used for food in the hard first year out in Oregon. The Indians don't steal oxen — they like buffalo better — ^but they'll take any chance to run off horses or even mules. If they do, that means your women and children are on foot. You know the story of the Donner party, two years ago — on foot, in the snow. They died, and worse than died, just this side of California." Men of Iowa, of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, began to nod to one another, approving the words of this young man. "He talks sense," said a voice aloud. "Well, I'm talking a whole lot, I know," said Ban-, ion gravely, "but this is the time and place for our talking. I'm for throwing vn with the Wingate train, as I've said. But will Captain Wingate let me add even just a few words more? "For instance, I would suggest that we ought to have a record of all our personnel. Each man ought to be required to give his own name and late residence, and the names of all in his party. He should be obliged 27 THE COVERED WAGON to show that his wagon is in good condition, with spare bolts, yokes, tires, bows and axles, and extra shoes for the stock. Each wagon ought to be required to carry anyhow half a side of rawhide, and the usual tools of the farm and the trail, as well as proper weap- ons and abundance of ammunition. "No man ought to be allowed to start witli this caravan with less supplies, for each mouth of his wagon, than one hundred pounds of flour. One hun- dred and fifty or even two hundred would be much better — ^there is loss and shrinkage. At least half as much of bacon, twenty pounds of coffee, fifty of sugar would not be too much in my own belief. About double the pro rata of the Santa Fe caravans is little enough, and those whose transport power will let them carry more supplies ought to start full loaded, for no man can tell the actual duration of this journey, or what food may be needed before we get across. One may have to help another." Even Wingate joined in the outspoken approval of this, and Banion, encouraged, went on: "Some other things, men, since you have asked each man to speak freely. We're not hunters, but home makers. Each family, I suppose, has a plow and seed for the first crop. We ought, too, to find out all our blacksmiths, for I promise you we'll need them. We ought to have a half dozen forges and as many anvils, and a lot of irons for the wagons. "I suppose, too, you've located all your doctors ; also a8 THE RENDEZVOUS all your preachers — ^you needn't camp them all to- gether. Personally I believe in Sunday rest and Sun- day services. We're taking church and state and home and law along with us, day by day, men, and we're not just trappers and adventurers. The fur trade's gone. "I even think we ought to find out our musicians — it's good to have a bugler, if you can. And at night, when the people are tired and disheartened, music is good to help them pull together." The bearded men who listened nodded yet again. "About schools, now — ^the other trains that went out, the Applegates in 1843, the Donners of 1846, each train, I believe, had regular schools along, with hours each day. "Do you think I'm right about all this? I'm sure I don't want Captain Wingate to be offended. I'm not dividing his power. I'm only trying to stiffen it." WoodhuU arose, a sneer on his face, but a hand pushed him down. A tall Missourian stood before him. "Right ye air, Will !" said he. "Ye've an old head, an' we kin trust hit. Ef hit wasn't Cap'n Wingate is more older than you, an' already done elected, I'd be for choosin' ye fer cap'n o' this here hull train right now. Seein' hit's the way hit is, I move we vote to do what Will Banion has said is fitten. An' I move we-uns throw in with the big train, with Jess Wingate for cap'n. An' I move we allow one more day to git 29 THE COVERED WAGON in supplies an' fixin's, an' trade bosses an' mules an' oxens, an' then we start day atter to-morrow mornin' when the bugle blows. Then hooray fer Oregon I" There were cheers and a general rising, as though after finished business, which greeted this. Jesse Win- gate, somewhat crestfallen and chagrined over the for- ward ways of this young man, of whom he never had heard till that very morning, put a perfimctory motion or so, asked loyalty and allegiance, and so forth. But what they remembered was that he appointed as his wagon-coltmin captains Sam WoodhuU, of Mis- souri; Caleb Price, an Ohio man of substance; Simon Hall, an Indiana merchant, and a farmer by name of Kelsey, from Kentucky. To Will Banion the train- master assigned the most difficult and thankless task of the train, the captaincy of the cow column; that is to say, the leadership of the boys and men whose families were obliged to drive the loose stock of the train. There were sullen mutterings over this in the Lib- erty column. Men whispered they would not follow WoodhuU. As for Banion, he made no complaint, but smiled and shook hands with Wingate and all his lieutenants and declared his own loyalty and that of his men; then left for his own little adventure of a half dozen wagons which he was freighting out to Laramie — ^bacon, flour and sugar, for the most part; each wagon driven by a neighbor or a neighbor's son. Among these already arose open murmurs of discon- 30 THE RENDEZVOUS tent over the way their own contingent had been treated. Banion had to mend a potential split before the first wheel had rolled westward up the Kaw. The men of the meeting passed back among their neighbors and families, and spoke with more serious- ness than hitherto. The rifle firing ended, the hilarity lessened that afternoon. In the old times the keel- boatmen bound west started out singing. The pack- train men of the fur trade went shouting and shooting, and the confident hilarity of the Santa Fe wagon cara- vans was a proverb. But now, here in the great Ore- gon train, matters were quite otherwise. There were women and children along. An unsmiling gravity marked them all. When the dusky velvet of the prairie night settled on almost the last day of the ren- dezvous it brought a general feeling of anxiety, dread, 'ineasiness, fear. Now, indeed, and at last, all these realized what was the thing that they had undertaken. To add yet more to the natural apprehensions of men and women embarking on so stupendous an adven- ture, all manner of rumors now continually passed from one company to another. It was said that five thousand Mormons, armed to the teeth, had crossed the river at St. Joseph and were lying in wait on the Platte, determined to take revenge for the persecutions they had suffered in Missouri and Illinois. Another story said that the Kaw Indians, hitherto friendly, had banded together for robbery and were only waiting for the train to appear. A still more popular stoiy 31 THE COVERED WAGON fa&d it that a party of several Englishmen had liuraed ahead on the trail to excite all the savages to Kaylay and destroy the caravans, thus to wreak the vengeance of England upon the Yankees for the loss of Oregon. Much unrest arose over reports, hard to trace, to the effect that it was all a mistake about Oregon ; that in reality it was a truly horrible country, unfit for human occupancy, and sure to prove the grave of any lucky enough to survive the horrors of the trail, which never yet had been truthfully reported. Some returned trav- , elers from the West beyond the Rockies, who were hanging about the landing at the river, made it all worse by relating what purported to be actual experi- ences. ( "If you ever get through to Oregon," they said, "you'll be ten years older than you are now. Yotu: hair will be white, but not by age."^ The Great Dipper showed clear and close that night, as if one might almost pick off by hand the familiar stars of the traveler's constellation. Overhead coimt- less brilliant points of lesser light enameled the night mantle, matching the many camp fires of the great gathering. The wind blew soft and low. Night on the prairie is always solemn, and to-night the tense anxiety, the strained anticipation of more than two thousand souls invoked a brooding melancholy which it seemed even the stars must feel. A dog, ominous, lifted his voice in a long, mournful Howl which made mothers put out their hands to their > 33 THE RENDEZVOUS babes. In answer a coyote in the grass raised a high, quavering cry^ wild and desolate, the voice of the Far West CHAPTER IV FEVER OF NEW FORTUNES THE notes of a bugle, high and clear, sang reveille at dawn. Now came hurried activi- ties of those who had delayed. The streets of the two frontier settlements were packed with ox teams, horses, wagons, cattle driven through. The frontier stores were stripped of their last supplies. One more day, and then on to Oregon! Wingate broke his own camp early in the morning and moved out to the open country west of the land- ing, making a last bivouac at what would be the head of the train. He had asked his four lieutenants to join him there. Hall, Price, and Kelsey headed in with straggling wagons to form the nucleuses of their columns; but the morning wore on and the Missouri- ans, now under Woodhull, had not yet broken park, [^ingate waited moodily. Now at the edge of affairs human apprehensions began to assert themselves, especially among the wom- enfolk. Even stout Molly Wingate gave way to doubt and fears. Her husband caught her, apron to eyes, sitting on the wagon tongue at ten in the morning, with her pots and pans unpacked. 34 FEVER OF NEW FORTUNES "What?" he exclaimed. "You're not weakening? Haven't you as much courage as those Mormon women on ahead? Some of them pushing carts, I've heard." "They've done it for religion, Jess. Oregon ain't no religion for me." "Yet it has music for a man's ears, Molly." "Hush! I've heard it all for the last two years. What happened to the Donners two years back ? And four years ago it was the Applegates left home in old Missouri to move to Oregon. Who will ever know where their bones are laid? Look at our land we left — rich — ^black and rich as any in the world. What corn, what wheat — why, everything grew; well in Illinois!" "Yes, and cholera below us wiping out the people, and the trouble over slave-holding working up the river more and more, and the sun blazing in the sum- mer, while in the wintertime we froze!" "Well, as for food, we never saw any part of Ken- tucky with half so much grass. We had no turkeys at all there, and where we left you could kill one any gobbling time. The pigeons roosted not four miles from us. In the woods along the river even a woman could kill coons and squirrels, all we'd need — ^no need for us to eat rabbits like the Mormons. Our chicken yard was fifty miles across. The young ones'd be flying by roasting-ear time — ^and in fall the sloughs was black with ducks and geese. Enough and to spare 35 THE COVERED WAGON we had; and our land opening; and Molly teaching the school, with twelve dollars a month cash for it, and Ted learning his blacksmith trade before he was eighteen. How could we ask more ? ^hat better jvill we do in Oregon?" "You always throw the wet blanket on Oregon, Molly." "It is so far!" "How do we know it is far? We know men and women have crossed, and we know the land is rich. Wheat grows fifty bushels to the acre, the trees are big as the spires on meeting houses, the fish run by millions in the streams. Yet the winters have little snow. A man can live there and not slave out a life. "Besides" — ^and the frontier now spoke in him — "this country is too old, too long settled. My father killed his elk and his buffalo, too, in Kentucky; but that was before my day. I want the buffalo. I crave to see the Plains, Molly. What real American does not?" Mrs. Wingate threw her apron over her face. "The Oregon fever has witched you, Jesse!" she exclaimed between dry sobs. Wingate was silent for a time. "Corn ought to grow in Oregon," he said at last. "Yes, but does it?" "I never heard it didn't. The soil is rich, and you can file on six hundred and forty acres. There's youi; donation claim, four times bigger than any land you 36 FEVER OF NEW FORTUNES can file on here. We sold out at ten dollars an acre— more'n our land really was worth, or ever is going to be worth. It's just the speculators says any different. Let 'em have it, and us move on. That's the way money's made, and always has been made, all across the United States." "Huh! You talk like a land speculator your own self!" "Well, if it ain't the movers make a country, what does ? If we don't settle Oregon, how long'Il we hold it? The preachers went through to Oregon with horses. Like as not even the Applegates got their wagons across. Like enough they got through. I want to see the country before it gets too late for a good chance, Molly. First thing you know buffalo'U be getting scarce out West, too, like deer was getting scarcer on the Sangamon. We ought to give our chil- dren as good a chance as we had ourselves." "As good a chance! Haven't they had as good a chance as we ever had? Didn't our land more'n thrib- ble, from a dollar and a quarter? It may thribble again, time they're old as we are now." "That's a long time to wait." "It's a long time to live a life-time, but everybody's got to live it." She stood, looking at him. "Look at all the good land right in here ! Here we got walnut and hickory and oak — ^worlds of it. We got sassafras and pawpaw and hazel brush. We get 37 THE COVERED WAGON all the hickory nuts and pecans we like any fall. The wild plums is better'n any in Kentucky; and as for grapes, they're big as your thumb, and thousands, on the river. Wait till you see the plum and grape jell I could make this fall !" "Women — ^always thinking of jell!" "But we got every herb here we need — ^boneset and sassafras and Injun physic and bark for the fever. There ain't nothing you can name we ain't got right here, or on the Sangamon, yet you talk of taking care of our children. Huh! We've moved five times since we was married. Now just as we got into a^ good country, where a woman could dry corn and put up jell, and where a man could raise some hogs, why, you wanted to move again — plumb out to Oregon I I tell you, Jesse Wingate, hogs is a blame sight better to tie to than buffalo ! You talk like you had to settle Oregon!" "Well, haven't I got to? Somehow it seems a man ain't making up his own mind when he moves West Pap moved twice in Kentucky, once in Tennessee, and then over to Missouri, after you and me was mar- ried and moved up into Indiana, before we moved over into Illinois. He said to me — ^and I know it for the truth — he couldn't hardly tell who it was or what it was hitched up the team. But first thing he knew, there the old wagon stood, front of the house, cover all on. plow hanging on behind, tar bucket under the 38 FEVEH OF NEW FORTUNES wagon, and dog and all. All he had to do, pap said, was just to climb up on the front seat and speak to the team. My maw, she climb up on the seat with him. Then they moved — on West. You know, Molly. My maw, she climb up on the front seat " His wife suddenly turned to him, the tears still in her eyes. "Yes, and Jesse Wingate, and you know it, your fife's as good a woman as your maw! When the wagon was a-standing, cover on, and you on tiie front seat, I climb up by you, Jess, same as I always have and always will. Haven't I always ? You know that. But it's harder on women, moving is. They care more for a house that's rain tight in a storm." "I know you did, Molly," said her husband soberly. "I suppose I can pack my jells in a box and put in the wagon, anyways." She was drying her eyes. "Why, yes, I reckon so. And then a few sacks of dried corn will go mighty well on the road." "One thing" — she turned on him in wifely fury — "you shan't keep me from taking my bureau and my six chairs all the way across! No, nor my garden seeds, all I saved. No, nor yet my rose roots that I'm taking along. We got to have a home, Jess — we got to have a home ! There's Jed and Molly coming on." "Where's Molly now?" suddenly asked her husband. "She'd ought to be helping you right now." "Oh, back at the camp, I s'pose — ^her and Jed, too. 39 iTHE COVERED WAGON I told her to pick a mess of dandelion greens and bring over. Larking around with them young fellows, like enough. Huh! She'll have less time. If Jed has to ride herd, Molly's got to take care of that team of big mules, and drive 'em all day in the light wagon too. I reckon if she does that, and teaches night school right along, she won't be feeling so gay." "They tell me folks has got married going across," she added, "not to mention buried. One book we had said, up on the Platte, two years back, there was a wedding and a birth and a burying in one train, all inside of one hour, and all inside of one mile. That's Oregon!" "Well, I reckon it's life, ain't it?" rejoined her hus^ band. "One thing, I'm not keen to have Molly pay too much notice to that young fellow Banion — ^him they said was a leader of the Liberty wagons. Huh, he ain't leader now!" "You like Sam Woodhull better for Molly, Jess?" "Some ways. He falls in along with my ideas. He ain't so apt to make trouble on the road. He sided in with me right along at the last meeting." "He done that? Well, his father was a sheriff once, and his uncle, Judge Henry D. Showalter, he got into Congress. Politics I But some folks said the Banions was the best family. Kentucky, they was. Well, comes to siding in, Jess, I reckon it's Molly herself'll count more in that than either o' them or either o' us. 40 FEVER OF NEW FORTUNES She's eighteen past. Another year and she'll be an old maid. If there's a wedding going across " "There won't be," said her husband shortly. "If there is it won't be her and no William Banion, I'm saying that." CHAPTER V THE BLACK SPANIARD MEANTIME the younger persons referred to in the frank discussion of Wingate and his wife were ocupying themselves in their own fashion their last day in camp. Molly, her basket full of dzmdelion leaves, was reluctant to leave the shade of the grove by the stream, and Jed had busi- ness with the team of great mules that Molly was te drive on the trail. As for the Liberty train, its oval remained un- broken, the men and women sitting in the shade of the wagons. Their outfitting had been done so carefully that little now remained for attention on the last day, but the substantial men of the contingent seemed far from eager to be on their way. Groups here and there spoke in monosyllables, sullenly. They wanted to join the great train, had voted to do so; but the cavalier deposing of their chosen man Banion — who before them all at the meeting had shown himself fit to lead — and the cool appointment of WoodhuU in his place had on reflection seemed to tibem quite too high-handed a proposition. They said so now. "Where's Woodhull now?" demanded the bearded 42 THE BLACK SPANIARD man who had championed Banion. "I see Will out rounding up his cows, but Sam Woodhull ain't turned a hand to hooking up to pull in west o' town with the others." "That's easy," smiled another. "Sam [Woodhull is where he's always going to be — hanging around the Wingate girl. He's over at their camp now." "Well, I dunno's I blame him so much for that, neither. And he kin stay there fer all o' me. Fer one, I won't foller no Woodhull, least o' all Sam Woodhull, soldier or no soldier. I'll pull out when I git ready, and to-morrow mornin' is soon enough fer me. We kin jine on then, if so's we like." Someone turned on his elbow, nodded over shoulder. They heard hoof beats. Banion came up, fresh from his new work on the herd. He asked for Woodhull, and learning his whereabouts trotted across the inter- vening glade. "That's shore a boss he rides," said one man. "An' a shore man a-ridin' of him," nodded another. "He may ride front o' the train an' not back o' hit, even yet." Molly Wingate sat on the grass in the little grove, curling a chain of dandelion stems. Near by Sam Woodhull, in his best, lay on the sward regarding her avidly, a dull fire in his dark eyes. He was so en- amored of the girl as to be almost unfit for aught else. For weeks he had kept close to her. Not that Molly seemed over-much to notice or encourage him. Only, 43 THE COVERED WAGON woman fashion, she ill liked to send away any attentive male. Just now she was uneasy. She guessed that if it were not for the presence of her brother Jed near by this man would declare himself unmistakably. If the safety of numbers made her main concern, perhaps that was what made Molly Wingate's eye light up when she heard the hoofs of Will Banion's horse splashing in the little stream. She sprang to her feet, waving a hand gayly. "Oh, so there you are!" she exclaimed. "I was wondering if you'd be over before Jed and I left for the prairie. Father and mother have moved on out west of town. We're all ready for the jump-off. Are you?" "Yes, to-morrow by sun," said Banion, swinging out of saddle and forgetting any errand he might have had. "Then it's on to Oregon !" He nodded to Woodhull, who little more than noticed him. Molly advanced to where Banion's horse stood, nodding and pawing restively as was his wont. She stroked his nose, patted his sweat-soaked neck. "What a pretty horse you have, major," she said. "What's his name?" "I call him Pronto," smiled Banion. "That means sudden." "He fits the name. May I ride him?" "What? You ride him?" "Yes. surely. I'd love to. I can ride anything. 44 THE BLACK SPANIAKD That funny saddle would do — see how big and high the horn is, good as the fork of a lady's saddle." "Yes, but the stirrup!" "I'd put my foot in between the flaps above the stirrup. Help me up, sir?" "I'd rather not." Molly pouted. "Stingy!" "But no woman ever rode that horse — ^not many men but me. I don't know what he'd do." "Only one way to find out." Jed, approaching, joined the conversation. "I rid him," said he. "He's a goer all right, but lie ain't mean." "I don't know whether he would be bad or not with a lady," Banion still argued. "These Spanish horses are always wild. They never do get over it. You've got to be a rider." "You think I'm not a rider? I'll ride him now to show you! I'm not afraid of horses." "That's right," broke in Sam Woodhull. "But, Miss Molly, I wouldn't tackle that horse if I w-as you. Take mine." "But I will! I've not been horseback for a month. We've all got to ride or drive or walk a thousand miles. I can ride him, man saddle and all. Help me up, sir?" Banion walked to the horse, which flung a head against him, rubbing a soft muzzle up and down. 45 THE COVERED WAGON "He seems gentle," said he. "I've pretty well topped him oflf this morning. I£ you're sure " "Help me up, one of you?" It was WoodhuU who sprang to her, caught her up under the arms and lifted her fully gracious weight to the saddle. Her left foot by fortune found the cleft in the stirrup fender, her right leg swung around the tall horn, hastily concealed by a clutch at her skirt even as she grasped the heavy knotted reins. It was then too late. She must ride. Banion caught at a cheek strap as he saw Wood- hull's act, and the horse was the safer for an instant. But in terror or anger at his unusual burden, with flapping skirt and no grip on his flanks, the animal reared and broke away from them all. An instant and he was plunging across the stream for the open glade, his head low. He did not yet essay the short, stiff-legged action of the typical bucker, but made long, reaching, low- headed plunges, seeking his own freedom in that way, perhaps half in some equine wonder of his own. None the less the wrenching of the girl's back, the leverage on her flexed knee, unprotected, were unmistakable. The horse reared again and yet again, high, strik- ing out as she checked him. He was getting in a fury now, for his rider still was in place. Then with one savage sidewise shake of his head after another he plunged this way and that, rail-fencing it for the open prairie. It looked like a bolt, which with a 46 THE BLACK SPANIARD horse of his spirit and stamina meant but one thing, no matter how long delayed. It all happened in a flash. Banion caught at the rein too late, ran after — ^too slow, of course. The girl was silent, shaken, but still riding. No footman could aid her now. With a leap, Banion was in the saddle of Wood- hull's horse, which had been left at hand, its bridle down. He drove in the spurs and headed across the flat at the top speed of the fast and racy chestnut — ^no match, perhaps, for the black Spaniard, were the latter once extended, but favored now by the angle of the two. Molly had not uttered a word or cry, either to her mount or in appeal for aid. In sooth she was too frightened to do so. But she heard the rush of hoofs end the high call of Banion's voice back of her : "Ho, Pronto ! Pronto ! Vien' aqui!" Something of a marvel it was, and showing com- panionship of man and horse on the trail ; but suddenly the mad black ceased his plunging. Turning, he trotted whinnying as though for aid, obedient to his master's command, "Come here!" An instant and Banion had the cheek strap. Another and he was off, with Molly Wingate, in a white dead faint, in his arms. By now others had seen the affair from their places in the wagon park. Men and women came hurrying. Banion laid the girl down, sought to raise her head, drove back the two horses, ran with his hat to the 47 THE COVERED WAGON istream for water. By that time Woodhull had joined him, in advance of the people from the park. "What do you mean, you damned fool, you, by riding my horse off without my consent!" he broke out. "If she ain't dead — ^that damned wild horse — you had the gall " iWill Banion's self-restraint at last was gone. He made one answer, voicing all his acquaintance with Sam Woodhull, all his opinion of him, all his future attitude in regard to him. He dropped his hat to the ground, caught off one wet glove, and with a long back-handed sweep struck the cuff of it full and hard across Sam Woodhull's face. CHAPTER VI ISSUE JOINED THERE were dragoon revolvers in the holsters at Woodhull's saddle. He made a rush for a weapon — indeed, the crack of the blow had been so sharp that the nearest men thought a shot had been fired — ^but swift as was his leap, it was not swift enough. The long, lean hand of the bearded Mis- sourian gripped his wrist even as he caught at a pistol grip. He turned a livid face to gaze into a cold and small blue eye. "No, ye don't, Sam!" said the other, who was first of those who came up running. Even as a lank woman stooped to raise the head of Molly Wingate the sinewy arm back of the hand whirled WoodhuU around so that he faced Banion, who had not made a move. "Will ain't got no weepon, an' ye know it," went on the same cool voice. "What ye mean — a. murder, be- sides that?" He nodded toward the girl. By now the crowd surged between the two men, voices rose. "He struck me!" broke out WoodhuU, "Let me go! He struck me I" 49 THE COVERED WAGON "I know he did," said the intervener. "I heard it. I don't know why. But whether it was over the girl or not, we ain't goin' to see this other feller shot down jtill we know more about hit. Ye can meet " "Of course, any time." Banion was drawing on his glove. The woman had lifted Molly, straightened her clothing. "All blood!" said one. "That saddle horn! What made her ride that critter?" The Spanish horse stood facing them now, ears forward, his eyes showing through his forelock not so much in anger as in curiosity. The men hustled the two antagonists apart. "Listen, Sam," went on the tall Missourian, still with his grip on WoodhuU's wrist. "We'll see ye both fair. Ye've got to fight now, in course— that's the law, an' I ain't learned it in the fur trade o' the Rockies fer nothin', ner have you people here in the settlem^w^.y. But I'll tell ye one thing, Sam Woodhull, ef ye make one move afore we-uns tell ye how an' when to make hit, I'll drop ye, shore's my name's Bill Jackson. Ye got to wait, both on ye. We're startin' out, an' we kain't start out like a mob. Take yer time." "Any time, any way," said Banion simply. "No man can abuse me." "How'd you gentlemen prefer fer to fight?" in- quired the man who had described himself as Bill Jackson, one of the fur brigad ers of the Rocky 50 ISSUE JOINED Mountain Company; a man with a reputation of his own in Plains and mountain adventures of hunting, trading and scouting. "Hit's yore ch'ice o' weapons, I reckon, Will. I reckon he challenged you-all." "I don't care. He'd have no chance on an even break with me, with any sort of weapon, and he knows that." Jackson cast free his man and ruminated over a chew of plug. "Hit's over a gal," said he at length, judicially. "Hit ain't usual ; but seein' as a gal don't pick atween men because one's a quicker shot than another, but because he's maybe stronger, or something like that, why, how'd knuckle and skull suit you two roosters, best man win and us to see hit fair? Hit's one of ye fer the gal, ^ike enough. But not right now. Wait till we're on the trail and clean o' the law. I heern there's a sheriff round yere some'rs." "I'll fight him any way he likes, or any way you say," said Banion. "It's not my seeking. I only slapped him because he abused me for doing what he ought to have done. Yes, I rode his horse. If I hadn't that girl would have been killed. It's not his fault she wasn't. I didn't want her to ride that horse." "I don't reckon hit's so much a matter about a boss as hit is about a gal," remarked Bill Jackson sagely. "Ye'U hatter fight. Well then, seein' as hit's about a gal, knuckle an' skull, is that right?" 51 THE COVERED WAGON He cast a glance around this group of other fighting nien of a border day. They nodded gravely, but with glittering eyes. "Well then, gentlemen" — ^and now he stood free of Woodhull — "ye both give word ye'll make no break till we tell ye ? I'll say, two-three days out ?" "Suits me," said Woodhull savagely. "I'll break his neck for him." "Any time that suits the gentleman to break my neck will please me," said Will Banion indifferently. "Say when, friends. Just now I've got to look after my cows. It seems to me our wagon master might very well look after his wagons." "That sounds !" commented Jackson. "That sounds ! Sam, git on about yer business, er ye kain't travel in the Liberty train nohow ! An' don't ye make no break, in the dark especial, fer we kin track ye an3rwhere's. Ye'll fight fair fer once— an' ye'll fight!" By now the group massed about these scenes had begun to relax, to spread. Women had Molly in hand as her eyes opened. Jed came up at a run with the mule team and the light wagon from the grove, and they got the girl into the seat with him, neither of them fully cognizant of what had gone on in the group of tight-mouthed men who now broke apart and sauntered silently back, each to his own wagon. CHAPTER Vn ;the jump-off WITH the first thin line of pink the coyotes hanging on the flanks of the great encamp- ment raised their immemorial salutation to the dawn. Their clamorings were stilled by a new and sterner voice — ^the notes of the bugle summoning sleepers of the last night to the duties of the first day. Down the line from watch to watch passed the Plains command, "Catch up! Catch up!" It was morning of the jump-off. Little fires began at the wagon messes or family bivouacs. Men, boys, barefooted girls went out into the dew-wet grass to round up the transport stock. A vast confusion, a medley of unskilled endeavor marked fhe hour. But after an hour's wait, adjusted to the situation, the next order passed down the line : "Roll out! Roll out!" And now the march to Oregon was at last begun! The first dust cut by an ox hoof was set in motion by the whip crack of a barefooted boy in jeans who had no dream that he one day would rank high in the councils of his state, at the edge of an ocean whichi no prairie boy ever had envisioned. S3 THE COVERED WAGON The compass finger of the trail, leading out from the timber groves, pointed into a sea of green along the valley of the Kaw. The grass, not yet tall enough fully to ripple as it would a half month later, stood waving over the black-burned ground which the semi- civilized Indians had left the fall before. Flowers dotted it, sometimes white like bits of old ivory on the vast rug of spindrift — ^the pink verbena, the wild indigo, the larkspur and the wild geranium — ^all woven into a wondrous spangled carpet. At times also ap- peared the shy buds of the sweet wild rose, loveliest flower of the prairie. Tall rosin weeds began to thrust up rankly, banks of sunflowers prepared to fling their yellow banners miles wide. The opulent, inviting land lay in a ceaseless succession of easy undulations, stretching away inimitably to far horizons, "in such exchanging pictures of grace and charm as raised the admiration of even these simple folk to a pitch border- ing upon exaltation." Here lay the West, barbaric, abounding, beautiful. Surely it could mean no harm to any man. The men lacked experience in column travel, the animals were unruly. The train formation — clumsily trying to conform to the orders of Wingate to travel in four parallel coltmins — soon lost order. At times the wagons halted to re-form. The leaders galloped back and forth, exhorting, adjuring and restoring little by little a certam system. But they dealt with in- dependent men. On ahead the landscape seemed so 54 THE JUMP-OFF wholly free of danger that to most of these the road to the Far West offered no more than a pleasure jaunt. Wingate and his immediate aids were well worn when at mid afternoon they halted, fifteen miles out from Westport. "What in hell you pulling up so soon for ?" demanded Sam WoodhuU surlily, riding up from his own column, far at the rear, and accosting the train leader. "We can go five miles further, anyhow, and maybe ten. We'll never get across in this way." "This is the very way we will get across," rejoined Wingate. "While I'm captain I'll say when to start and stop. But I've been counting on you, WoodhuU, to throw in with me and help me get things shook down." "Well, hit looks to me ye're purty brash as usual," commented another voice. Bill Jackson came and stood at the captain's side. He had not been far from Wood- hull all day long. "Ye're a nacherl damned fool, Sam WoodhuU," said he. "Who 'lected ye fer train captain, an' when was it did? If ye don't like the way thia train's run go on ahead an' make a train o' yer own^! ef that's way ye feel. PuU on out to-night. What ye say. Cap?" "I can't really keep any man from going back ori going ahead," replied Wingate. "But I've counted on WoodhuU to hold those Liberty wagons together. Any plainsman knows that a little party takes big risks." "Since when did you come a plainsman?" scoffe4 55 THE COVERED WAGON the gjaleeiit^it, for once forgetting his policy of favor- currying with Wingate in his own surly discontent. He had not been able to speak to Molly all day. "Well, if he ain't a plainsman yit he will be, and I'm one right now, Sam WoodhuU." Jackson stood squarely in front of his superior. "I say he's talkin' sense to a man that ain't got no sense. I was with Doniphan too. We found ways, huh?" His straight gaze outfronted the other, who turned and rode back. But that very night eight men, covertly instigated or encouraged by Woodhull, their leader, came to the headquarters fire with a joint complaint. They demanded places at the head of the column, else would mutiny and go on ahead together. They said good mule teams ought not to take the dust of ox wagons. "What do you say, men?" asked the train captain of his aids helplessly. "I'm in favor of letting them go front." The others nodded silently, looking at one another significantly. Already cliques and factions were beginning. Woodhull, however, had too much at stake to risk any open friction with the captain of the train. His own seat at the officers' fire was dear to him, for it brought him close to the Wingate wagons, and in sight — if nothing else — of Molly Wingate. That young lady did not spejik to him all day, but drew close the 56 THE JUMP-OFE tilt o£ her own wagon early after the evening meal and denied herself to all. As for Banion, he was miles back, in camp with his own wagons, which WoodhuU had abandoned, and on duty that night with the cattle guard — a. herdsman and not a leader of men now. He himself was moody enough when he tied his cape behind his saddle and rode his black horse out into the shadows. He had no knowledge of the fact that the old mountain man, Jackson, wrapped in his blanket, that night instituted a solitary watch all his own. The hundreds of camp fires of the scattered train, stretched out over five miles of grove and glade at the end of the first undisciplined day, lowered, glowed and faded. They were one day out to Oregon, and weary withal. Soon the individual encampments were silent save for the champ or cough of tethered animals, or the whining howl of coyotes, prowling in. At the Missouri encampment, last of the train, and that head- ing the great cattle drove, the hardy frontier settlers, as was their wont, soon followed the sun to rest. The night wore on, incredibly slow to the novice yratch for the first time now drafted under the prairie law. The sky was faint pink and the shadows lighter when suddenly the dark was streaked by a flash of fire and the silence broken by the crack of a border rifle. Then again and again came the heavier bark of a dra- goon revolver, of the sort just the« becoming known along the Western marches. 57 THE COVERED WAGON The camp went into confusion. Will Banion, just riding in to take his own belated turn in his blankets, almost ran over the tall form of Bill Jackson, rifle in hand. "What was it, man?" demanded Banion. "You shooting at a mule?" "No, a man," whispered the other. "He ran this way. Reckon I must have missed. It's hard to draw down inter a hindsight in the dark, an' I jest chanced hit with the pistol. He was runnin' hard." "Who was he — some thief?" "Like enough. He was crawlin' up towards yore 5iragon. I halted him an' he run." "You don't know who he was?" "No. I'll see his tracks, come day. Go on to bed. I'll set out a whiles, boy." When dawn came, before he had broken his long vigil, Jackson was bending over footmarks in the moister portions of the soil. "Tall man, young an' tracked clean," he muttered to himself. "Fancy boots, with rather little heels. Shame I done missed him!" J3ut he said nothing to Banion or anyone else. It was the twentieth time Bill Jackson, one of Sublette's men and a nephew of one of his partners, had crossed the Plains, and the lone hand pleased him best. He instituted his own government for the most part, and had thrown in with this train because that best suited his book, since the old pack trains of the fur trade 58 THE JUMP-OFF Were now no more. For himself, he planned settle- ment in Eastern Oregon, a country* he once had glimpsed in long-gone beaver days, a dozen years ago. The Eastern settlements had held him long enough, the Army life had been too dull, even with Doniphan. "I must be gittin' old," he muttered to himself as he turned to a breakfast fire. "Missed — ^at seventy yard!" CHAPTER VIII MAN AGAINST MAN THERE were more than two thousand souls in the great caravan which reached over miles of springy turf and fat creek lands. There were more than a thousand children, more than a hundred babes in arm, more than fifty marriageable maids pursued by ayid swains. There were bold souls and weak, strong teams and weak, heavy loads and light loads, neighbor groups and coteries of kindred blood or kindred spirits. The rank and file had reasons enough for shifting. There were a score of Helens driving wagons — reasons in plenty for the futility of all attempts to enforce an arbitrary rule of march. Human equations, human elements would shake themselves down into place, willy-nilly. The great caravan therefore was scantily less than a rabble for the first three or four days out. The four columns were abandoned the first half day. The loosely knit organization rolled on in a broken- crested wave, ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day, the horse- and-mule men now at the front. Far to the rear, heading only the cow column, came the lank men of Liberty, trudging alongside their swaying ox teams, 60 MAN AGAINST MAN, ;with many a monotonous "Gee-whoa-haw ! Git along thar, ye Buck an' Star!" So soon they passed the fork where the road to Oregon left the trail to Santa Fe; topped the divide that held them back from the greater valley of the Kaw. Noon of the fifth day brought them to the swollen flood of the latter stream, at the crossing known as Papin's Ferry. Here the semicivilized Indians and traders had a single rude ferryboat, a scow operated in part by setting poles, in part by the power of the stream against a cable. The, uenaMHiiuttal Indians would give no counsel as to fording. They had ferry hire to gain. Word passed that there were other fords a few miles higher up. A general indecision existed, and now the train began to pile up on the south bank of the river. Late in the afternoon the scout, Jackson, came rid- ing back to the herd where Banion was at work, jerk- ing up his horse in no pleased frame of mind. "Will," said he, "leave the boys ride now an' come on up ahead. We need ye." "What's up?" demanded Banion. "Anything worse?" "Yes. The old fool's had a row over the ferryboat. Hit'd take two weeks to git us all over that way, any- how. He's declared fer fordin' the hull outfit, lock, stock an' barrel. To save a few dollars, he's a goin' to lose a lot o' loads an' drownd a lot o' womern an' babies — that's what he's goin' to do. Some o' us 6i THE COVERED WAGON called a halt an' stood out fer a council. We want you to come on up. "Woodhull's there," he added. "He sides with the old man, o' course. He rid on the same seat with that gal all day till now. Lord knows what he done or said. Ain't hit nigh about time now. Major?" "It's nigh about time," said Will Banion quietly. They rode side by side, past more than a mile of the covered wagons, now almost end to end, the columns continually closing up. At the bank of the river, at the ferry head, they found a group of fifty men. The ranks opened as Banion and Jackson approached,- -but Banion made no attempt to join a council to which he had not been bidden. A half dozen civilized Indians of the Kaws, owners or operators of the ferry, sat in a stolid line across the head of the scow at its landing stage, looking neither to the right nor the left and awaiting the white men's pleasure. Banion rode down to them. "How deep?" he asked. They understood but would not answer. "Out of the way!" he cried, and rode straight at them. They scattered. He spurred his horse, the blade Spaniard, over the stage and on the deck of the scow, drove him its full length, snorting; set the spurs hard at the farther end and plunged deliberately off into the swift, muddy stream. The horse sank out of sight below the roily surface. They saw the rider go down to his armpits; saw him 6a MAN AGAINST MAN swing off saddle, upstream. The gallant horse headed for the center of the heavy current, but his master soon turned him downstream and inshore. A hundred yards down they landed on a bar and scrambled up the bank. Banion rode to the circle and sat dripping. He had brought not speech but action, not theory but facts, and he had not spoken a word. His eyes covered the council rapidly, resting on the figure of Sam WoodhuU, squatting on his heels. As though to answer the challenge of his gaze, the latter rose. "Gentlemen," said he, "I'm not, myself, governed by any mere spirit of bravado. It's swimming water, yes — ^any fool knows that, outside of yon one. What I do say is that we can't afford to waste time here fool- ing with that boat. We've got to swim it. I agree with you, Wingate. This river's been forded by the trains for years, and I don't see as we need be any more chicken-hearted than those others that went through last year and earlier. This is the old fur-trader cross- ing, the Mormons crossed here, and so can we." Silence met his words. 'The older men looked at the swollen stream, turned to the horseman who had proved it. "What does Major Banion say?" spoke up a voice. "Nothing!" was Banion's reply. "I'm not in your council, am I?" "You are, as much as any man here," spoke up 63 THE COVERED WAGON Caleb Price, and Hall and Kelsey added yea to that. "Get down. Come in." Banion threw his rein to Jackson and stepped into the ring, bowing to Jesse Wingate, who sat as presid- ing officer. "Of course we want to hear what Mr. Banion has to say," said he. "He's proved part of the question right now. I've always heard it's fording, part way, at Papin's Ferry. It don't look it now." "The river's high, Mr. Wingate," said Banion. "If you ask me, I'd rather ferry than ford. I'd send the women and children over by this boat. We can make some more out of the wagon boxes. If they leak we can cover them with hides. The sawmill at the mission has some Itmiber. Let's knock together another boat or two. I'd rather be safe than sorry, gentlemen; and believe me, she's heavy water yonder." "I've never seed the Kaw so full," asserted Jackson, "an' I've crossed her twenty times in spring flood. Do what ye like, you-all — ole Missoury's goin' to take her slow an' keerful." "Half of you Liberty men are a bunch of damned cowards !" sneered WoodhuU. There was silence. An icy voice broke it. "I take it, that means me?" said Will Banion. "It does mean you, if you want to take it that way," rejoined his enemy. "I don't believe in one or two timid men holding up a whole train." "Never mind about holding up the ttain — ^we're 6.4 MAN AGAINST MAN not stopping any man from crossing right now. What I have in mind now is to ask you, do you classify me as a coward just because I counsel prudence here?" "You're the one is holding back." "Answer me! Do you call that to me?" "I do answer you, and I do call it to you then!" flared Woodhull. "I tell you, you're a liar, and you know it, Sam Woodhull! And if it pleases your friends and mine, I'd like to have the order now made on unfinished busi- ness." Not all present knew what this meant, for only a few knew of the affair at the rendezvous, the Mis- sourians having held their coiv»^ in the broken and extended train> where men mi^t travel for days and not meet. But Woodha'l knew, and sprang to his feet, hand on revolver. Banion's hand was likewise em- ployed at his wet saddle holster, to which he sprang, and perhaps then one man would have been killed but for Bill Jackson, who spurred between. "Make one move an' I drop ye !" he called to Wood- hull. "Ye've give yer promise." "All right then, I'll keep it," jrowled Woodhull. "Ye'd better! Now listen t Do ye see that tali cottingwood tree a half mile down — ^the one with the flat umbreller top, like a cypress? Ye kin? Well, in half a hour be thar with three o' yore friends, no more. I'll be thar with my man an' three o' his, no more, an' I'll be one o' them three. I allow our meanin' is Jo 6S THE COVERED WAGON see hit fa'r. An' I allow that what has been unfinished business ain't goin' to be unfinished come sundown. "Does this suit ye, Will?" "It's our promise. Officers didn't usually fight that way, but you said it must be so, and we both agreed. I agree now." "You other folks all stay back," said Bill Jackson grimly. "This here is a little matter that us Mis- sourians is goin' to settle in our own way an' in our own camp. Hit ain't none o' you-uns' business. Hit's plenty o' ourn." Men started to their feet over all the river front The Indians rose, walked down the bank covertly. "Fight!" The word passed quickly. It was a day of personal encounters. This was an assemblage in large part of fighting men. But some sense of decency led the partisans to hurry away, out of sight and hearing of the womenfolk. The bell-top cottonwood stood in a little space which had been a dueling ground for thirty years. The grass was firm and even for a distance of fifty yards in any direction, and the light at that hour favored neither man. For Banion, who was prompt, Jackson brought with him two men. One of them was a planter by name of Dillon, the other none less than stout Caleb Price, one of Wingate's chosen captains. "I'll not see this made a thing of politics," said he. 66 MAN AGAINST MAN "I'm Northern, but I like the way that young man has acted. He hasn't had a fair deal from the officers of this train. He's going to have a fair deal now." "We allow he will," said Dillon grimly. He was fully armed, and so were all the seconds. For Woodhull showed the Kentuckian, Kelsey, young Jed Wingate — ^the latter by Woodhull' s own urgent re- quest — ^and the other train captain. Hall. So in its way the personal quarrel of these two hotheads did in a way involve the entire train. "Strip yore man," commanded the tall mountaineer. "We're ready. It's go till one hollers enough; fa'r stand up, heel an' toe, no buttin' er gougin'. Fust man ter break them rules gits shot. Is that yore under- standin', gentlemen. "How we get it, yes," assented Kelsey. "See you enforce it then, fer we're a-goin' to," concluded Jackson. He stepped back. From the opposite sides the two antagonists stepped forward. There was no ring, there was no timekeeper, no single umpire. There were no rounds, no duration set. It was man to man, for cause the most ancient and most bitter of all causes — sex. CHAPTER IX THE BRUTE BETWEEN the two stalwart men who fronted one another, stripped to trousers and shoes, there was not so much to choose. Woodhull perhaps had the better of it by a few pounds in weight, and forsooth looked less slouchy out of his clothes than in them. His was the long and sinewy t3rpe of muscle. He was in hard condition. Banion, two years younger than his rival, himself was round and slender, thin of flank, a trace squarer and fuller of shoulder. His arms showed easily rippl- ing bands of muscles, his body was hard in the natural' vigor of youth and life in the open air. His eye was fixed all the time on his man. He did not speak or turn aside, but walked on in. There were no preliminaries, there was no delay. In a flash the Saxon ordeal of combat was joined. The two fighters met in a rush. At the center of the fighting space they hung, body to body, in a whirling meUe. Neither had much skill in real boxing, and such fashion of fight was imknown in that region, the offensive being the main thing and defense remaining incidental. The thud of fist en face, the discoloration that rose under the savage blows, 68 THE BRUTE the blood that oozed and scattered, proved that the fighting blood of both these mad creatures was up, so that they felt no pain, even as they knew no fear. In their first fly, as witnesses would have termed it, there was no advantage to either, and both came out well marked. In the combat of the time and place there were no rules, no periods, no resting times. Once they were dispatched to it, the fight was the affair of the fighters, with no more than a very limited number of restrictions as to fouls. They met and broke, bloody, gasping, once, twice, a dozen times. Banion was fighting slowly, carefully. "I'll make it free, if you dare!" panted WoodhuU at length. They broke apart once more by mutual need of breath. He meant he would bar nothing ; he would go back to the days of Boone and Kenton and Girty, when hair, eye, any part of the body was fair aim. "You can't dare me!" rejoined Will Banion. "It's as my seconds say." Young Jed Wingate, suddenly pale, stood by and raised no protest. Kelsey's face was stony calm. The small eye of Hall narrowed, but he too held to the etiquette of non-interference in this matter of man and man, though what had passed here was a deadly thing. Mutilation, death might now ensue, and not mere defeat. But they all waited for the other side. "Air ye game to hit. Will?" demanded Jackson at length. 69 THE COVERED WAGON "I don't fear him, anyway he comes," replied Will Banion. "I don't like it, but all of this was forced on me." "The hell it was !" exclaimed Kelsey. "I heard ye call my man a liar." "An' he called my man a coward !" cut in Jackson. "He is a coward," sneered Woodhull, panting, "or he'd not flicker now. He's afraid I'll take his eye out, damn him!" Will Banion turned to his friends. "Are we gentlemen at all?" said he. "Shall we go back a hundred years:" "If your man's afraid, we claim the fight!" ex- claimed Kelsey. "Breast yore bird 1" "So be it then !" said Will Banion. "Don't mind me, Jackson ! I don't fear him and I think I can beat him. It's free ! I bar nothing, nor can he ! Get back !" Woodhull rushed first in the next assault, confident of his skill in rough-and-tumble. He felt at his throat the horizontal arm of his enemy. He caught away the wrist in his own hand, but sustained a heavy blow at the side of his head. The defense of his adversary angered him to blind rage. He forgot ever3i;hing but contact, rushed, closed and caught his antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms. The battle at once resolved itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier. And it was free! Each might kill or maim if so he could. The wrestling grips of the frontiersmen were few; 70 THE BRUTE and primitive, efficient when applied by masters; and no schoolboy but studied all the holds as matter of religion, in a time when physical prowess was the most admirable quality a man might have. Each fighter tried the forward jerk and trip which sometimes would do with an opponent not much skilled; but this primer work got results for neither. Banion evaded and swung into a hip lock, so swift that Woodhull left the ground. But his instinct gave him hold with one hand at his enemy's collar. He spread wide his feet and cast his weight aside, so that he came standing, after all. He well knew that a man must keep his feet. Woe to him who fell when it all was free ! His own riposte was a snakelike glide close into his antagonist's arms, a swift thrust of his leg between the other's — the grapevine, which sometimes served if done swiftly. It was done swiftly, but it did not serve. The other spread his legs, leaned against him, and in a flash came back in the dreaded crotch lock of the frontier, which some men boasted no one could escape at their hands. Woodhull was flung fair, but he broke wide and rose and rushed back and joined again, grappling; so that they stood once more body to body, panting, red, savage as any animals that fight, and more cruel. The seconds all were on their feet, scarce breathing. They pushed in sheer test, and each found the other's stark strength. Yet Banion's breath still came even, his eye betokened no anxiety of the issue. Both 71 THE COVERED WAGON were bloody now, clothing and all. Then in a flash the scales turned against the challenger a I'outrance. Banion caught his antagonist by the wrist, and swift as a flash stooped, turning his own back and drawing the arm of his enemy over his own shoulder, slightly turned, so that the elbow joint was in peril and so that the pain must be intense. It was one of the jiu jitsu holds, discovered independently perhaps at that instant ; certainly a new hold for the wrestling school of the frontier. WoodhuU's seconds saw the look of pain come on his face, saw him wince, saw him writhe, saw him rise on his toes. Then, with a sudden squatting heave, Banion cast him full length in front of him, upon his back! Before he had time to move he was upon him, pinning him down. A growl came from six observers. In an ordinary fall a man might have turned, might have escaped. But Woodhull had planned his own undoing when he had called it free. Eyeless men, usually old men, in this day brought up talk of the ancient and horrible warfare of a past generation, when destruction of the adversary was the one purpose and any means called fair when it was free. But the seconds of both men raised no hand when they saw the balls of Will Banion's thumbs pressed against the upper orbit edge of his enemy's eyes. "Do you say enough?" panted the victor. A groan from the helpless man beneath. 72 THE BRUTE "Am I the best man? Can I whip you?" demanded the voice above him, in the formula prescribed. "Go on — do it! Pull out his eye!" commanded Bill Jackson savagely. "He called it free to you! But don't wait!" But the victor sprang free, stood, dashed the blood from his own eyes, wavered on his feet. The hands of his fallen foe were across his eyes. But even as his men ran in, stooped and drew them away the conqueror exclaimed: "I'll not! I tell you I won't maim you, free or no free! Get up!" So Woodhull knew his eyes were spared, whatever might be the pain of the sore nerves along the socket bone. He rose to his knees, to his feet, his face ghastly in his own sudden sense of defeat, the worse for his victor's magnanimity, if such it might be called. Humiliation was worse than pain. He staggered, sobbing. "I won't take nothing for a gift from you!" But now the men stood between them, like and like. Young Jed Wingate pushed back his man. "It's done!" said he. "You shan't fight no more with the man that let you up. You're whipped, and by your own word it'd have been worse !" He himself Aanded Will Banion his coat, 73 THE COVERED WAGON "Go get a pail of water," he said to Kelsey, and th^ latter departed. Banion stepped apart, battered and pale beneath his own wounds. "I didn't want to fight him this way," said he. "I left him his eyes so he can see me again. If so he wants, I'll meet him any way. I hope he won't rue back." "You fool!" said old Bill Jackson, drawing Banion to one side. "Do ye know what ye're a-sayin' ? Whiles he was a-layin' thar I seen the bottoms o' his boots. Right fancy they was, with smallish heels! That skunk'll kill ye in the dark. Will. Ye'd orto hev put out'n both his two eyes!" A sudden sound made them all turn. Came crackling of down brush, the scream of a woman's voice. At the side of the great tree stood a figure that had no right there. They turned mute. It v/as Molly Wingate who faced them all now, turning from one bloody, naked figure to the other. She saw Sam Woodhull standing, his hands stiH at his face; caught some sense out of Jackson's words, overheard as she came into the clearing. "You!" she blazed at Will Banion. "You'd put out a man's eyes ! You brute I" CHAPTER X OLE MISSOURY MOLLY WINGATE looked from one to the other of the group of silent, shamefaced men. Puzzled, she turned again to the victor in the savage combat. "You!" Will Banion caught up his clothing, turned away. "You are right!" said he. "I have been a brute! Good-by!" An instant later Molly found herself alone with the exception of her brother. "You, Jed, what was this?" she demanded. Jed took a deep and heartfelt chew of plug. "Well, it was a little argument between them two," he said finally. "Like enough a little jealousy, like, you know — over place in the train, or something. This here was for men. You'd no business here." "But it was a shame!" "I reckon so." "Who started this?" "Both of them. All we was here for was to see fair. Men got to fight sometimes." "But not like animals, not worse than savages!" "Well, it was right savage, some of the time, sis,"' "They said — ^about eyes — oh !" 75 THE COVERED WAGON The girl shivered, her hands at her own eyes. "Yes, they called it free. Anybody else, Sam Wood- hull'd be sorry enough right now. T'other man throwed him clean and had him down, but he let him up. He didn't never hurt Sam's eyes, only pinched his head a little. He had a right, but didn't. It had to be settled and it was settled, fair and more'n fair, by him." "But, Jed" — ^the eternal female now — "then, which one really whipped?" "Will Banion did, ain't I told you? You insulted him, and he's gone. Having come in here where you wasn't no ways wanted, I reckon the best thing you can do is to go back to your own wagon and stay there. What with riding horses you hadn't ought, and seeing fights when you don't know a damned thing about nothing, I reckon you've made trouble about enough. Come on !" "Price," said Bill Jackon to the grave and silent mats who walked with him toward the wagon train beyond the duelling ground, "this settles hit. Us Missoury wagons won't go on under no sech man as Sam Wood- hull. We didn't no ways eleck him — ^he was app'inted. Mostly, elected is better'n app'inted. An' I seen afore now, no man can hold his place on the trail imless'n he's fitten. We'll eleck Will Banion our cap'n, an' you fellers kin go to hell. What us fellers started out to do was to go to Oregon." "But that'll mean the train's split!" 76 OLE MISSOURY "Shore hit will ! Hit is split right now. But thar's enough o' the Liberty wagons to go through without no help. We kin whup all the rest o' this train, give we need ter, let alone a few Injuns now an' then. "To-night," he concluded, "we'll head up the river, an' leave you fellers the boat an' all o' Papin's Ferry to git acrost the way you want. Thar hain't no man- ner o' man, outfit, river er redskin that Ole Missoury kain't lick, take 'em as they come, them to name the holts an' the rules. We done showed you-all that. We're goin' to show you some more. So good-by." He held out his hand. "Ye helped see far, an' ye're a far man, an' we'll miss ye. Ef ye git in need o' help come to us. Ole Missoury won't need no help." "Well, Woodhull's one of you Missourians," re- marked Price. "Yes, but he'ain't bred true. Major Banion is. Hit was me that made him fight knuckle an' skull an' not with weepons. He didn't want to, but I had a reason. I'm content an' soothe jest the way she lies. Ef Will never sees the gal agin she ain't wuth the seein'. "Ye'll find Col. William Banion at the head o' his own train. He's ntten. an' he's fout an' proved hit." CHAPTER XI WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG MOLLY WINGATE kneeled by her cooking fire the following morning, her husband meantime awaiting the morning meal impa- tiently. All along the medley of crowded wagons rose confused sounds of activity at a hundred similar fire- sides. "Where's Little Molly?" demanded Wingate. "We got to be up and coming." "Her and Jed is oif after the cattle. Well, you heard the news last night. You've got to get some- one else to run the herd. If each family drives its own loose stock everything'll be all mixed up. The Lib- erty outfit pulled on by at dawn. Well, anyways they left us the sawmill and the boat. "Sam Woodhull, he's anxious to get on ahead of the Missourians," she added. "He says he'll take the boat anyhow, and not pay them Kaws any such hold-up price like they ask." "All I got to say is, I wish we were across," grum- bled Wingate, stooping to the bacon spider. "Huh ! So do I — me and my bureau and my hens. Yes, after you've fussed around a while you men'U maybe come to the same conclusion your head cow 78 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG guard had ; you'll be making more boats and doing les3 swimming. I'm sorry he quit us." "It's the girl," said her husband sententiously. "Yes. But" — smiling grimly — "one furse don't make a parting." "She's same as promised Sam ^oodhull, Mollys and you know that." "Before he got whipped by Colonel Banion." "Colonel ! Fine business for an officer 1 Woodhull I told me he tripped and this other man was on top of him and nigh gouged out his two eyes. And he told me other things too. Banion's a traitor, to split the train. We can spare all such." "Can we?" rejoined his wife. "I sort of thought "Never mind what you thought. He's one of the unruly, servigerous sort ; can't take orders, and a trou- ble maker always. We'll show that outfit. I've ordered three more scows built and the seams calked in the jwagon boxes." Surely enough, the Banion plan of crossing, after; all, was carried out, and although the river dropped a foot meantime, the attempt to ford en masse was aban- doned. Little by little the wagon parks gathered on the north bank, each family assorting its own goods and joining in the general sauve qui pent. Nothing was seen of the Missouri column, but ru- mor said they were ferrying slowly, with one boat and their doubled wagon boxes, over which they had nailed 79 THE COVERED WAGON hides. WoodhuU was keen to get on north ahead of this body. He had personal reasons for that. None too well pleased at the smiles with which his explana- tions of his bruised face were received, he made a sudden resolution to take a band of his own immediate neighbors and adherents and get on ahead of the Mis- sourians. He based his decision, as he announced it, on the necessity of a scouting party to locate grass and water. Most of the men who joined him were single men, of the more restlesj^ sort. There were no family wag- ons with them. They declared their intention of trav- eling fast and light until they got among the buifalo. This party left in advance of the main caravan, which had not yet completed the crossing of the Kaw. "Roll out ! Ro-o-o-11 out !" came the mournful com- mand at last, once more down the line. It fell on the ears of some who were unwilling to obey. The caravan was disintegrating at the start. The gloom cast by the long delay at the ford had now resolved itself in certain instances into fear amounting half to panic. Some companies of neighbors said the entire train should wait for the military escort ; others declared they would not go further west, but would turn back and settle here, where the soil was so good. Still others said they all should lie here, with good grass and water, until further word came from the Platte Valley train and until they had more fully de- cided what to do. In spite of all the officers could do, 80 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG the general advance was strung out over two or three miles. The rapid loss in order, these premature divi- sions of the train, augured ill enough. The natural discomforts of the trail now also began to have their effect. A plague of green-headed flies and flying ants assailed them by day, and at night the mosquitoes made an affliction well-nigh insufferable. The women and children could not sleep, the horses groaned all night under the clouds of tormentors which gathered on them. Early as it was, the sun at times blazed with intolerable fervor, or again the heat broke in savage storms of thunder, hail and rain. All the elements, all the circumstances seemed in league to warn them back before it was too late, for indeed they were not yet more than on the threshold of the Plains. The spring rains left the ground soft in places, so that in creek valleys stretches of corduroy sometimes had to be laid down. The high waters made even the lesser fords difficult and dangerous, and all knew that between them and the Platte ran several strong and capricious rivers, making in general to the southeast and necessarily transected by the great road to Oregon. They still were in the eastern part of what is now the state of Kansas, one of the most beautiful and exuberantly rich portions of the country, as ail early travelers declared. The land lay in a succession of timber-lined valleys and open prairie ridges. Groves of walnut, oak, hickory, elm, ash at first were fre- 8i THE COVERED WAGON quent, slowly changing, farther west, to larger pro- portions of poplar, willow and cottonwood. The white dogwood passed to make room for scattering thickets of wild plum. Wild tulips, yellow or of broken colors; the campanula, the wild honeysuckle, lupines — ^not yet quite in bloom — the sweetbrier and increasing quanti- ties of the wild rose gave life to the always changing scene. Wild game of every sort was unspeakably abundant— deer and turkey in every bottom, thou- sands of grouse on the hills, vast flocks of snipe and plover, even numbers of the green parrakeets then so numerous along that latitude. The streams abounded in game fish. All Nature was easy and generous. Men and women grumbled at leaving so rich and beautiful a land lying waste. None had seen a coun- try more supremely attractive. Emotions of tender- ness, of sadness, also came to many. Nostalgia was not yet shaken off. This strained condition of nerves, combined with the trail hardships, produced the physi- cal irritation which is inevitable in all amateur pioneer work. Confusions, discordances, arising over the most trifling circumstances, grew into petulance, incivility, wrangling and intrigue, as happened in so many other earlier caravans. In the Babel-like excitement of the Cioming catch-up, amid the bellowing and running of the cattle evading the yoke, more selfishness, less friendly accommodation now appeared, and men met without speaking, even this early on the road. The idea of four parallel columns had long since 82 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG been discarded. They broke formation, and at times the long caravan, covering the depressions and emi- nences of the prairie, wound along in mile-long detach- ments, each of which hourly grew more surly and more independent. Overdriven oxen now began to drop. By the time the prairies proper were reached more than a score of oxen had died. They were repeating trail history as recorded by the travelers of that day. Personal and family problems also made divisions more natural. Many suffered from ague ; fevers were very common. An old woman past seventy died one night and was buried by the wayside the next day. Ten days after the start twins were born to parents moving out to Oregon. There were numbers of young children, many of them in arms, who became ill. For one or other cause, wagons continually were dropping out. It was difficult for some wagons to keep up, the unseasoned oxen showing distress under loads too heavy for their draft. It was by no means a solid and compact army, after all, this west-bound wave of the first men with plows. All these things sat heavily on the soul of Jesse Wingate, who daily grew more morose and grim. As the train advanced bands of antelope began to appear. The striped prairie gophers gave place to the villages of countless barking prairie dogs, curious^to the eyes of the newcomers. At night the howling and snarling of gray wolves now made regular additions to the coyote chorus and the voices of the owls and whip- 83 THE COVERED WAGON poorwills. Little by little, day by day, civilization was passing, the need for organization daily became more urgent. Yet the original caravan had split practically into three divisions within a hundred and fifty miles from the jump-off, although the bulk of the train hung to Wingate's company and began to shake down, at least into a sort of tolerance. Granted good weather, as other travelers had writ- ten, it was indeed impossible to evade the sense of exhilaration in the bold, free life. At evening encamp- ment the scene was one worthy of any artist of all the world. The oblong of the wagon park, the white tents, the many fires, made a spectacle of marvelous charm and power. Perhaps within sight, at one time, under guard for the evening feed on the fresh young grass, there would be two thousand head of cattle. In the wagon village men, women and children would be en- gaged as though at home. There was little idleness in the train, and indeed there was much gravity and devoutness in the personnel. At one fireside the young men might be roaring "Old Grimes is dead, that good old man," or "Oh, then, Susannah" ; but quite as likely close at hand some family group would be heard in sacred hymns. A strange envisagement it all made, in a strange environment, a new atmosphere, here on the threshold of the wilderness.*^ ^To get the local descriptions, the color, atmosphere, "feel" of a day and a country so long gone by, any writer of to-day must go to writers of another day. The Author would acknowledge free use of the works of Palmer, Bryant, Kelly and others who give us journals of the great transcontinental traiL 84 CHAPTER XII THE DEAD MEN's TAI-E THE wilderness, dose at hand, soon was to make itself felt. Wingate's outriders moved out before noon of one day, intending to locate camp at the ford of the Big Vermilion. Four miles in advance they unexpectedly met the scout of the Missouri column, Bill Jackson, who had passed the Wingate train by a cut-off of his own on a solitary ride ahead for sake of information. He was at a gal- lop now, and what he said sent them all back at full speed to the head of the Wingate column. Jackson riding ahead, came up with his hand raised for a halt. "My God, Cap'n, stop the train!" he called. "Hit won't do for the womern and children to see what's on ahead yan!" "What's up — ^where?" demanded Wingate, "On three mile, on the water where they camped night afore last. Thar they air ten men, an' the rest's gone. WoodhuU's wagons, but he ain't thar. Wagons burned, mules standing with arrers in them, rest all dead but a few. Hit's the Pawnees !" 85 THE COVERED WAGON The column leaders all galloped forward, seeing first what later most of the entire train saw — ^the abom- inable phenomena of Indian warfare on the Plains. Scattered over a quarter of a mile, where the wag- ons had stood not grouped and perhaps not guarded, lay heaps of wreckage beside heaps of ashes. One by one the corpses were picked out, here, there, over more than a mile of ground. They had fought, yes, but fought each his own losing individual battle after what had been a night surprise. The swollen and blackened features of the dead men stared up, mutilated as savages alone mark the fallen. Two were staked out, hand and foot, and ashes lay near them, upon them. Arrows stood up between the ribs of the dead men, driven through and down into the ground. A dozen mules, as Jackson had said, drooped with low heads and hanging ears, arrow shafts standing out of their paunches, waiting for death to end their agony. "Finish them, Jackson." Wingate handed the hunter his own revolver, sig- naling for Kelsey and Hall to do the same. The methodical cracking of the hand arms began to end the suffering of the animals. They searched for scraps of clothing to cover the faces of the dead, the bodies of some dead. They motioned the women and children back when the head of the train came up. Jackson beckoned the leaders to the side of one wagon, partially burned, 86 THE DEAD MEN'S TALE "Look," said he, pointing. A long stick, once a whipstock, rose from the front of the wagon bed. It had been sharpened and thrust under the wrist skin of a human hand — a dried hand, not of a white man, but a red. A half-corroded brace- let of copper still clung to the wrist. "If I read signs right, that's why!" commented Bill Jackson. . "But how do you explain it ?" queried Hall. "Why should they do that ? And how could they, in so close a fight?" "They couldn't," said Jackson. "That hand's a day an' a half older than these killings. Hit's Sam Wood- hull's wagon. Well, the Pawnees like enough counted coup on the man that swung that hand up for a sign, even if hit wasn't one o' their own people." "Listen, men," he concluded, "hit was WoodhuU's fault. We met some friendlies — Kaws — from the mission, an' they was mournin'. A half dozen o' them f oUered WoodhuU out above the ferry when he pulled out. They told him he hadn't paid them for their boat, asked him for more presents. He got mad, so they say, an' shot down one o' them an' stuck up his hand ^fer a warnin', so he said. "The Kaws didn't do this killin'. This band of Pawnees was away down below their range. The Kaws said they was comin' fer a peace council, to git the Kaws an' Otoes to raise against us whites, comin' put so many, with plows and womernfolks — ^they savvy. 87 THE COVERED WAGON Well, the Kaws has showed the Pawnees. The Paw- nees has showed us." "Yes," said the deep voice of Caleb Price, property owner and head of a family; "they've showed us that Sam WoodhuU was not fit to trust. There's one man that is." "Do you want him along with your wagons?" de- manded Jackson. He turned to Wingate. "Well," said the train captain after a time, "we are striking the Indian country now." "Shall I bring up our wagons an' jine ye all here at the ford this evenin' ?" "I can't keep you from coming on up the road if you want to. I'll not ask you." "All right ! We'll not park with ye then. But we'll be on the same water. Hit's my own fault we split. We wouldn't take orders from Sam Woodhull, an' we never will." He nodded to the blackened ruins, to the grim dead hand pointing to the sky, left where it was by the super- stitious blood avengers. Wingate turned away and led the wagon train a half mile up the stream, pitching camp above the ford where the massacre had occurred. The duties of the clergy and the appointed sextons were completed. Silence and sadness fell on the encampment. Jackson, the scout of the Missouri column, still lingered for some sort of word with Molly Wingate. Some odds and ends of brush lay about Of the latter 88 THE DEAD MEN'S TALE Molly began casting a handful on the fire and covering it against the wind with her shawl, which at times she quickly removed. As a result the confined smoke arose at more or less well defined intervals, in separate puffs or clouds. "Ef ye want to know how to give the smoke signal right an' proper, Miss Molly," said he at length, quietly, "I'll larn ye how." The girl looked up at him. "Well, I don't know much about it." "This way : Hit takes two to do hit best. You catch holt two corners o' the shawl now. Hist it on a stick in the middle. Draw it down all over the fire. Let her simmer under some green stuff. Now ! Lift her clean off, sideways, so's not ter break the smoke ball. See 'em go up ? That's how." He looked at the girl keenly under his bushy gray brows. "That's the Injun signal fer 'Enemy in the country.' S'pose you ever wanted to signal, say to white folks, 'Friend in the country,' you might remember — ^three short puffs an' one long one. That might bring up a friend. Sech a signal can be seed a long ways." Molly flushed to the eyes. "What do you mean?" "Nothin' at all, any more'n you do." Jackson rose and left her. CHAPTER XIII WILD FIRE THE afternoon wore on, much occupied with duties connected with the sad scenes of the tragedy. No word came of Woodhull, or of two others who could not be identified as among the victims at the death camp. No word, either, came from the Missourians, and so cowed or dulled were inost of the men of the caravan that they did not venture far, even to undertake trailing out after the survivors of the inassacre. In sheer indecision the great aggregation of wagons, piled up along the stream, lay apathetic, and no order came for the advance. Jed and his cow guards were obliged to drive the cattle back into the ridges for better grazing, for the valley and adjacent country, which had not been burned over by the Indians the preceding fall, held a lower matting of heavy dry grass through which the green grass of springtime appeared only in sparser and more smothered growth. As many of the cattle and horses even now showed evil results from injudicious driving on the trail, it was at length decided to make a full day's stop so that they might feed up. Molly Wingate, now assured that the Pawnees no longer were in the vicinity, ventured out for pasturage 90 WILD FIRE with her team of mules, which she had kept tethered close to her own wagon. She now rapidly was becom- ing a good frontierswoman and thoughtful of her loco- motive power. Taking the direction of the cattle herd, she drove from camp a mile or two, resolving to hobble and watch her mules while they grazed close to the cattle guards. She was alone. Around her, untouched by any civ- ilization, lay a wild, free world. The ceaseless wind of the prairie swept old and new grass into a continuous undulating surface, silver crested, a wave always pass- ing, never past. The sky was unspeakably fresh and blue, with its light clouds, darker edged toward the far horizon of the unbounded, unbroken expanse of alternating levels and low hills. Across the broken ridges passed the teeming bird life of the land. The Eskimo plover in vast bands circled and sought their nesting places. Came also the sweep of cinnamon wings as the giant sickle-billed curlews wheeled in vast aerial phalanx, with their eager cries, "Curlee! Curlee! Curlee !" — the wildest cry of the old prairies. Again, from some unknown, undiscoverable place, came the liquid, baffling, mysterious note of the nesting upland plover, sweet and clean as pure white honey. Now and again a band of antelope swept ghostlike across a ridge. A great gray wolf stood contemptu- ously near on a hillock, gazing speculatively at the strange new creature, the white woman, new come in his lands. It was the wilderness, rude, bold, yet sweet 91 THE COVERED WAGON Who shall say what thoughts the flowered wilder- ness of spring carried to the soul of a young woman beautiful and ripe for love, her heart as sweet and melting as that of the hidden plover telling her mate of happiness? Surely a strange spell, born of youth and all this free world of things beginning, fell on the soul of Molly Wingate. She sat and dreamed, her hands idle, her arms empty, her beating pulses full, her heart full of a maid's imaginings. How long she sat alone, miles apart, an unnoticed figure, she herself could not have said — surely the sun was past zenith — when, moved by some vague feeling of her own, she noticed the imeasiness of her feeding charges. The mules, hobbled and side-lined as Jed had shown her, turned face to the wind, down the valley, standing for a time studious and uncertain rather than alarmed Then, their great ears pointed, they became uneasy; stirred, stamped, came back again to their position, gazing steadily in the one direction. The ancient desert instinct of the wild ass, brought down through thwarted generations, never had been lost to them. They had foreknowledge of danger long before horses or human beings could suspect it. ■ Danger ? What was it ? Something, surely. Molly sprang to her feet. A band of antelope, running, had paused a hundred yards away, gazing back. Danger — yes; but what? The girl ran to the crest of the nearest hillock and 92 WILD FIRE looked back. Even as she did so, it seemed that s caught touch of the great wave of apprehension sprea ing swiftly over the land. Far off, low lying like a pale blue cloud, was a fai line of something that seemed to alter in look, to moA to rise and fall, to advance— down the wind. S never had seen it, but knew what it must be — ^t prairie fire ! The lack of fall burning had left it ft even now. Vast numbers of prairie grouse came by, hurtlii through the silence, alighting, strutting with hij heads, fearlessly close. Gray creatures came hoppin halting or running fully extended — ^the prairie han fleeing far ahead. Band after band of antelope car on, running easily, but looking back. A heavy line < large birds, black to the eye, beat on laborious! alighted, and ran onward with incredible speed — t wild turkeys, fleeing the terror. Came also brok bands of white-tailed deer, easy, elastic, boundii irregularly, looking back at the miles-wide cloud, whi now and then spun up, black as ink toward the sk but always flattened and came onward with the win Danger? Yes! Worse than Indians, for yond were the cattle ; there lay the parked train, two hundr wagons, with the household goods that meant their li savings and their future hope in far-off Oregc Women were there, and children — women with bab that could not walk. True, the water lay close, b it was narrow and deep and offered no salvation agair 93 THE COVERED WAGON the terror now coming on the wings of the wind. That the prairie fire would find in this strip fuel to carry it even at this green season of the grass the wily Pawnees had known. This was cheaper than assault by arms. They would wither and scatter the white nation here! Worse than plumed warriors was yon- der broken undulating line of the prairie fire. Instinct told the white girl, gave her the same terror as that which inspired all these fleeing creatures. But what could she do? This was an elemental, gigantic wrath, and she but a frightened girl. She guessed rather than reasoned what it would mean when yonder line came closer, when it would sweep down, roaring, over the wagon train. The mules began to bray, to plunge, too wise to undertake flight. She would at least save them. She would mount one and ride with the alarm for the camp. The wise animals let her come close, did not plunge, knew that she meant help, allowed her trembling hands to loose one end of the hobble straps, but no more. As soon as each mule got its feet it whirled and was away. No chance to hold one of them now, and if she had mounted a hobbled animal it had meant nothing. But she saw them go toward the stream, toward the camp. She must run that way herself. It was so far! There was a faint smell of smoke and a mysterious low humming in the air. Was it too late? A swift, absurd> wholly useless memory came tci 94 WILD FIRE her from the preceding day. Yes, it would be no more than a prayer, but she would send it out blindly into the air. . . . Some instinct — ^yes, quite likely. Molly ran to her abandoned wagonette, pushed in under the white tilt where her pallet bed lay rolled, her little personal plunder stored about. Fumbling, she found her sulphur matches. She would build her sig- nal fire. It was, at least, all that she could do. It might at least alarm the camp. Trembling, she looked about her, tore her hands breaking off little faggots of tall dry weed stems, a very few bits of wild thorn and fragments of a plum thicket in the nearest shallow coulee. She ran to her hillock, stooped and broke a dozen matches, knowing too little of fire-making in the wind. But at last she caught a wisp of dry grass, a few dry stems — others, the bits of wild plum branches. She shielded her tiny blaze with her frock, looking back over her shoulder, where the black curtain was rising taller. Now and then, even in the blaze of full day, a red, dull gleam rose and passed swiftly. The entire country was afire- Fuel ? Yes ; and a wind. The humming in the air grew, the scent of fire came plainly. The plover rose around their nests and circled, crying piteously. The scattered hares became a great body of moving gray, like camouflage blots on the still undulating waves of green and silver, passing but not yet past — soon now to pass. The girl, her hands arrested, her arms out, in Hefl 95 THE COVERED WAGON terror, stood trying to remember. Yes, it was three short puffs and a long pillar. She caught her shawl from her shoulder, stooped, spread it with both hands, drove in her stiffest bough for a partial support, cast in under the edge, timidly, green grass enough to make smoke, she hoped. An instant and she sprang up, drawing the shawl swiftly aside, the next moment jealously cutting through the smoke with a side sweep of the covering. It worked! The cut-off column rose, bent over in a little detached cloud. Again, with a quick flirt, eager eyed, and again the detached irregular ball! A third time — Molly rose, and now cast on dry grass and green grass till a tall and moving pillar of cloud by day arose. At least she had made her prayer. She could do no more. With vague craving for any manner of refuge, she crawled to her wagon seat and covered her eyes. She knew that the wagon train was warned — ^they now would need but little warning, for the menace was written all across the world. She sat she knew not how long, but until she became conscious of a roaring in the air. The line of fire had come astonishingly soon, she reasoned. But she forgot that. All the vanguard and the full army of wild creatures had passed by now. She alone, the white woman, most helpless of the great creatures, stood be- fore the terror. She sprang out of the wagon and looked about her. The smoke crest, black, red-shot, was coming close. 96 WILD FIRE The grass here would carry it. Perhaps yonder on the flint ridge where the cover was short — why had she not thought of that long ago? It was half a mile, and no sure haven then. She ran, her shawl drawn about her head — ran with long, free stride, her limbs envigored by fear, her full- bosomed body heaving chokingly. The smoke was now in the air, and up the unshorn valley came the fire remorselessly, licking up the under lying layer of sun-cured grass which a winter's snow had matted down. She could never reach the ridge now. Her over- burdened lungs functioned but little. The world went black, with many points of red. Everywhere was the odor and feel of smoke. She fell and gasped, and knew little, cared little what might come. The elemental terror at last had caught its prey — soft, young, beau- tiful prey, thisi huddled form, a bit of brown and gray, edged with white of wind-blown skirt. It would be a sweet morsel for the flames. Along the knife-edge flint ridge which Molly had tried to reach there came the pounding of hoofs, heavier than any of these that had passed. The cattle were stampeding directly down wind and before the fire. Dully, Molly heard the lowing, heard the far shouts of human voices. Then, it seemed to her, she heard the rush of other hoofs coming toward her. Yes, something was pounding down the slope toward her 97 THE COVERED WAGON wagon, toward her. Buffalo, she thought, not know;- ing the buffalo were gone from that region. But it was not the buffalo, nor yet the frightened herd, nor yet her mules. Out of the smoke curtain broke a rider, his horse flat; a black horse with flying frontlet — she knew what horse. She knew what man rode him, too, black with smoke as he was now. He swept close to the wagon and was off. Something flickered there, with smoke above it, beyond the wagon by some yards. Then he was in saddle and racing again, his eyes and teeth white in the black mask of his face. She heard no call and no command. But an arm reached down to hers, swept up — and she was going onward, the horn of a saddle under her, her body held to that of the rider, swung sidewise. The horse was guided not down but across the wind. Twice and three times, silent, he flung her off and was down, kindling his little back fires — ^the only de- fense against a wildfire. He breathed thickly, making sounds of rage. "Will they never start?" he broke out at last. "The fools — ^the fools!" But by now it was too late. A sudden accession in the force of the wind increased the speed of the fire. The little line near Molly's wagon spared it, but caught strength. Could she have seen through the veils of smoke she would have seen a half dozen fires this side the line of the great fire. But fire is fire. 98 WILD FIRE Again he was in saddle and had her against hi« thigh, his body, flung any way so she came with the horse. And now the horse swerved, till he drove in the steel again and again, heading him not away from the fire but straight into it! Molly felt a rush of hot air; surging, actual flame singed the ends of her hair. She felt his hand again and again sweep over her skirts, wiping out the fire as it caught. It was blackly hot, stifling — ^and then it was past! Before her lay a wide black world. Her wagon stood, even its white top spared by miracle of the back fire. But beyond came one more line of smoke and flame. The black horse ndghed now in the agony of his hot hoofs. His rider swung him to a lower level, where under the tough cover had lain moist ground, on which uncovered water now glistened. He flung her into the mire of it, pulled up his horse there and himself lay down, full length, his blackened face in the moist mud above which still smoked stubbles of the flame-shorn grass. He had not spoken to her, nor she to him. His eyes rested on the singed ends of her blown hair, her charred garments, in a frowning sym- pathy which found no speech. At length he brought the reins of his horse to her, flirting up the singed ends of the long mane, further proof of their narrow escape. "I must try once more," he said. "The main fire might catch the wagon." 99 ^THE COVERED WAGON" He made oflf afoot. She saw him start a dozen nucleuses of fires; saw them advance till they halted at the edge of the burned ground, beyond the wagon, so that it stood safe in a vast black island. He came to her, drove his scorched boots deep as he could into the mud and sat looking up the valley toward the emi- grant train. An additional curtain of smoke showed that the men there now were setting out back fires of their own. He heard her voice at last : "It is the second time you have saved me — saved my life, I think. Why did you come?" He turned to her as she sat in the edge of the ivrallow, her face streaked with smoke, her garments Aalf burned off her limbs. She now saw his hands, which he was thrusting out on the mud to cool them, and sympathy was in her gaze also. "I don't know why I came," said he. "Didn't you signal for me? Jackson told me you could." "No, I had no hope. I meant no one. It was only a prayer." "It carried ten miles. We were all back-firing. It caught in the sloughs — ^all the strips of old grass. I thought of your camp, of you. At least your signal told me where to ride." At length he waved his hand. "They're safe over there," said he. "Think of the children!" "Yes, and you gave me my one chance. Why?" "I don't know. I suppose it was because I am a lOO WILD FIRE brute !" 1 he bitterness of his voice was plain. "Come, we must go to the wagons," said Molly at length, and would have risen. "No, not yet. The burned ground must cool before we can walk on it. I would not even take my horse out on it again." He lifted a foot of the black Span- iard, whose muzzle quivered whimperingly. "All right, old boy!" he said, and stroked the head thrust down to him. "It might have been worse." His voice was so gentle that Molly Wingate felt a vague sort of jealousy. He might have taken her scorched hand in his, might at least have had some thought for her jvelfare. He did speak at last as to that. "What's in your wagon ?" he asked. "We had better go there to wait. Have you anything along — oil, flour, anjrthing to use on burns? You're burned. It hurts me to see a woman suffer." "Are not you burned too?" "Yes." "It pains you?" "Oh, yes, of course." He rose and led the way over the damper ground to the wagon, which stood smoke-stained but not charred, thanks to his own resourcefulness. Molly climbed up to the seat, and rummaging about found a jar of butter, a handful of flour. "Come up on the seat," said she. "This is bettei; medicine than nothing." lOI THE COVERED WAGON He climbed up and sat beside her. She frowned again as she now saw how badly scorched his hands were, his neck, his face. His eyebrows, caught by one wisp of flame, were rolled up at the ends, whitened. One cheek was a dull red. Gently, without asking his consent, she began to coat his burned skin as best she might with her makeshift of alleviation. His hand trembled under hers. "Now," she said, "hold still. I must fix your hand some more." She still bent over, gently, delicately touching his flesh with hers. And then all in one mad, unpremedi- tated instant it was done! His hand caught hers, regardless of the pain to either. His arm went about her, his lips would have sought hers. It was done! Now he might repent. A mad way of wooing, inopportune, fatal as any method he possibly could have f oimd, moreover a cruel, unseemly thing to do, here and with her situated thus. But it was done. Till now he had never given her groimds for more than guessing. Yet now here was this! He came to his senses as she thrust him away; saw her cheeks whiten, her eyes grow wide. "Oh!" she said. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" "Oh!" whispered Will Banion to himself, hoarsely. He held his two scorched hands each side her face 1 02 WILD FIRE as she drew back, sought to look into her eyes, so that she might believe either his hope, his despair or his con- trition. But she turned her eyes away. Only he could hear her outraged protest— "Dh! Oh! Oh!'" CHAPTER XIV THE KISS "•TTT WAS the wind!" Will Banion exclaimed. "P I was the sky, the earth ! It was the fire ! I don't -*- know what it was ! I swear it was not I who did it! Don't forgive me, but don't blame me. Molly f Molly! "It had to be sometime," he went on, since she still drew away from him. "What chance have I had to ask you before now ? It's little I have to oifer but my love." "What do you mean ? It will never be at any time !" said Molly Wingate slowly, her hand touching his no more. "What do you yourself mean?" He turned to her in agony of soul. "You will not let me repent? jYou will not give me some sort of chance?" "No," she said coldly. "You have had chance enougK to be a gentleman — as much as you had when you were in Mexico with other women. But Major Wil- liam Banion falsified the regimental accounts. I know that too. I didn't — I couldn't believe it — ^till now." He remained dumb under this. She went on mer- (cilessly. "Oh, jres, Captain Woodhull told us. Yes, he showe'* 104 THE KISS , us the very vouchers. My father believed it of you, but I didn't. Now I do. Oh, fine! And you an officer of our Army!" She blazed out at him now, her temper rising. "Chance? What more chance did you need? No wonder you couldn't love a girl — ^any other way than this. It would have to be sometime, you say. What do you mean? That I'd ever marry a thief?" Still he could not speak. The fire marks showed livid against a paling cheek. "Yes, I know you saved me — ^twice, this time at much risk," resumed the girl. "Did you want pay so soon? You'd — ^you'd " "Oh! Oh! Oh!" It was his voice that now broke in. He could not speak at all beyond the exclamation under torture. *I didn't believe that story about you," she added after a long time. "But you are not what you looked, not what I thought you were. So what you say must be sometime is never going to be at all." "Did he tell you that about me?" demanded Will Banion savagely. "Woodhull — did he say that?" "I have told you, yes. My father knew. No won- der he didn't trust you. How could he?" She moved now as though to leave the wagon, but he raised a hand. "Wait !" said he. "Look yonder ! You'd not have time now to reach camp." In the high country a great prairie fire usually or 105 THE COVERED WAGON iquite often was followed by a heavy rainstorm. What Banion now indicated was the approach of yet another of the epic phenomena of the prairies, as rapid, as colossal and as merciless as the fire itself. On the western horizon a low dark bank of clouds lay for miles, piled, serrated, steadily rising opposite tc the course of the wind that had driven the fire. Along it more and more visibly played almost incessant sheet lightning, broken with ripping zigzag flames. A hush had fallen close at hand, for now even the frightened breeze of evening had fled. Now and then, at first doubtful, then immistakable and continuous, came the mutter and rumble and at length the steady roll of thunder. They lay full in the course of one of the tremendous storms of the high country, and as the cloud bank rose and came on swiftly, spreading its flanking wings so that nothing might escape, the spectacle was terrifying almost as much as that of the fire, for, unprotected, as they were, they could make no counter battle against the storm. The air grew supercharged with electricity. It dripped, literally, from the barrel of Banion's pistol when he took it from its holster to carry it to the wagon. He fastened the reins of his horse to a wheel and hastened with other work. A pair of trail ropes lay in the wagon. He netted them over the wagon top and lashed the ends to the wheels to make the top securer, working rapidly, eyes on the advancing storm. io6 THE KISS There came a puff, then a gust of wind. The sky blackened. The storm caught the wagon train first. There was no interval at all between the rip of the lightning and the crash of thunder as it rolled down on the clustered wagons. The electricity at times came not in a sheet or a ragged bolt, but in a ball of fire, low down, close to the ground, exploding with giant detonations. Then came the rain, with a blanketing rush of level wind, sweeping away the last vestige of the wastrel fires of the emigrant encampment. An instant and every human being in the train, most of them ill de- fended by their clothing, was drenched by the icy flood. One moment and the battering of hail made cHmax of it all. The groaning animals plunged and fell at their picket ropes, or broke and fled into the open. The remaining cattle caught terror, and since there was no corral, most of the cows and oxen stam- peded down the wind. The canvas of the covered wagons made ill defense. Many of them were stripped off, others leaked like sieves. Mothers sat huddled in their calicoes, bending over their tow-shirted young, some of them babes in arms. The single jeans garments of the boys gave them no comfort. Under the wagons and carts, wrapped in blankets or patched quilts whose colors dripped, they crawled and sat as the air grew strangely chill. Only wreckage remained when they saw the storm muttering its way across the prairies, having 107 THE COVERED WAGON done what it could in its elemental wrath to bar the road to the white man. As for Banion and Molly, they sat it out in the light wagon, the girl wrapped in blankets, Banion much of the time out in the storm, swinging on the ropes to keep the wagon from overturning. He had no appar- ent fear. His calm assuaged her own new terrors. In spite of her bitter arraignment, she was glad that he was here, though he hardly spoke to her at all. "Look !" he exclaimed at last, drawing back the flap of the wagon cover. "Look at the rainbow !" Over the cloud banks of the rain-wet sky there indeed now was flung the bow of promise. But this titanic land did all things gigantically. This was no mere pris- matic arch bridging the clouds. The colors all were there, yes, and of an unspeakable brilliance and indi- vidual distinctness in the scale ; but they lay like a vast painted mist, a mural of some celestial artist flung en masse against the curtain of the night. The entire clouded sky, miles on untold miles, was afire. All the opals of the universe were melted and cast into a tre- mendous picture painted by the Great Spirit of the Plains. "Oh, wonderful!" exclaimed the girl. "It might be the celestial city in the desert, promised by the Mor- mon prophet !" "It may be so to them. May it be so to us. Blessed be the name of the Lord God of Hosts!" said Will Banion. io8 THE KISS She looked at him suddenly, strangely. What sort of man was he, after all, so full of strange contradic- tions — a. savage, a criminal, yet reverent and devout? "Come," he said, "we can get back now, and you must go. They will think you are lost." He stepped to the saddle of his shivering horse and drew off the poncho, which he had spread above the animal instead of using it himself. He was wet to the bone. With apology he cast the waterproof over Molly's shoulders, since she now had discarded her blankets. He led the way, his horse following them. They walked in silence in the deep twilight which began to creep across the blackened land. All through the storm he had scarcely spoken to her, and he spoke but rarely now. He was no more than guide. But as she approached safety Molly Wingate began to reflect how much she really owed this man. He had been a pillar of strength, elementally fit to combat all the ele- ments, else she had perished. "Wait!" She had halted at the point of the last hill which lay between them and the wagons. They could hear the wailing of the children close at hand. He turned inquiringly. She handed back the poncho. "I am all right now. You're wet, you're tired, you're burned to pieces. Won't you come on in?" "Not to-night!" But still she hesitated. In her mind there were going 109 THE COVERED WAGON on certain processes she could not have predicted an hour earlier. "I ought to thank you," she said. "I do thank you." His utter silence made it hard for her. He could see her hesitation, which made it hard for him, covet- ing sight of her always, loath to leave her. Now a sudden wave of something, a directness and frankness born in some way in this new world apart from civilization, like a wind-blown flame, irrespon- sible and irresistible, swept over Molly Wingate's soul as swiftly, as unpremeditatedly as it had over his. She was a young woman fit for love, disposed for love, at the age for love. Now, to her horror, the clasp of this man's arm, even, when repelled in memory, returned, remained in memory ! She was frightened that it still remained — frightened at her own great curiousness. "About — ^that" — ^he knew what she meant — "I don't want you to think anything but the truth of me. If you have deceived people, I don't want to deceive you." "What do you mean ?" He was a man of not very many words. "About— that!" "You said it could never be." "No. If it could, I would not be stopping here now to say so much." He stepped closer, frowning. "What is it you are saying then — thai a man's a worse brute when he goes mad, as I did ?" no THE KISS "I expect not," said Molly Wingate queerly. "It is very far, out here. It's some other world, I believe. And I suppose men have kissed girls. I suppose no girl ever was married who was not ever kissed." "What are you saying?" "I said I wanted you to know the truth about a woman — ^about me. That's just because it's not ever going to be between us. It can't be, because of that other matter in Mexico. If it had not been for that, I suppose after a time I wouldn't have minded what you did back there. I might have kissed you. It must be terrible to feel as you feel now, so ashamed. But after all " "It was criminal!" he broke out. "But even crim- inals are loved by women. They follow them to jail, to the gallows. They don't mind what the man is — they love him, they forgive him. They stand by him Co the very end !" "Yes, I suppose many a girl loves a man she knows she never can marry. Usually she marries someone else. But kissing ! That's terrible !" "Yes. But you will not let me make it splendid and not terrible. You say it never can be — that means we've got to part. Well, how can I forget?" "I don't suppose you can. I don't suppose that — ■ that I can !" "What are you going to say? Don't! Oh, please ion't!" Ill THE COVERED WAGON But she still went on, strangely, not in the least understanding her own swift change of mood, her own intent with him, vis-a-vis, here in the wilderness. "While we were walking down here just now," said she, "somehow it all began to seem not so wrong. It only seemed to stay wrong for you to have deceived me about yourself — ^what you really were — when you were in the Army. I could maybe forgive you up to that far, for you did — for men are — well, men. But about that other — you knew all the time we couldn't — couldn't ever — I'd never marry a thief." The great and wistful regret of her voice was a thing not to be escaped. She stood, a very splendid figure, clean and marvelous of heart as she was be- grimed and bedraggled of body now, her great vital force not abated by what she had gone through. She spread her hands just apart and looked at him in what she herself felt was to be the last meeting of their lives; in which she could afford to reveal all her soul for once to a man, and then go about a woman's busi- ness of living a life fed on the husks of love given her by some other man. He knew that he had seen one more miracle. But, chastened now, he could, he must, keep down his own eager arms. He heard her speak once more, her voice like some melancholy bell of vespers of a golden evening. "Oh, Will Banion, how could you take away a girl's heart and leave her miserable all her life ?" \\2 THE KISS The cry literally broke from her. It seemed in her own ears the sudden voice of some other woman speak- ing — some tinaccovintable, strange woman whom she never had seen or known in all her life. "Your — ^heart?" he whispered, now close to her in the dusk. "You were not — ^you did not — ^you " But he choked. She nodded, not brazenly or crudely or coarsely, not even bravely, but in utter simplicity. For the time she was wholly free of woman coquetry. It was as though the elements had left her also ele- mental. Her words now were of the earth, the air, the fire, the floods of life. "Yes," she said, "I will tell you now, because of what you have done for me. If you gave me life, ^hy shouldn't I give you love — if so I could?" "Love? Give me love?" "Yes ! I believe I was going to love you, until now, although I had promised him — ^you know — Captain Woodhull. Oh, you see, I understand a little of what it was to you — ^what made you " She spoke discon- nectedly. "I believe — I believe I'd not have cared. I believe I could follow a man to the gallows. Now I will not, because you didn't tell me yoii were a thief. I can't trust you. But I'll kiss you once for good-by. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Being a man, he never fathomed her mind at all But being a man, slowly, gently, he took her in his arms, drew her tight. Long, long it was till their lips met — and long then. But he heard her whisper "Good-by,*^ 113 THE COVERED WAGON saw her frank tears, felt her slowly, a little by a little, draw away from him. "Good-by," she said. "Good-by. I would not dare, any more, ever again. Oh, Will Banion, why did you take away my heart? I had but one!" "It is mine !" he cried savagely. "No other man in all the world shall ever have it ! Molly !" But she now was gone. He did not know how long he stood alone, his head bowed on his saddle. The raucous howl of a great gray wolf near by spelled out the lonesome tragedy of his future life for him. Quaint and sweet philosopher, and bold as she but now had been in one great and final imparting of her real self, Molly Wingate was only a wet, weary and bedraggled maid when at length she entered the deso- late encampment which stood for home. She found her mother sitting on a box under a crude awning, and cast herself on her knees, her head on that ample bosom that she had known as haven in her childhood. She wept now like a little child. "It's bad!" said stout Mrs. Wingate, not knowing, "But you're back and alive. It looks like we're wrecked and everything lost, and we come nigh about getting all burned up, but you're back alive to your ma ! Now, now !" That night Molly turned on a sodden pallet which she had made down beside her mother in the great 114 THE KISS wagon. But she slept ill. Over and over to her lips rose the same question : "Oh, Will Banion, Will Bianion, why did you take away my heart?" CHAPTER XV THE DIVISION THE great wagon train of 1848 lay banked along the Vermilion in utter and abject con- fusion. Organization there now was none. But for Banion's work with the back fires the entire train would have been wiped out. The effects of the storm were not so capable of evasion. Sodden, wretched, miserable, chilled, their goods impaired, their cattle stampeded, all sense of gregarious self-reliance gone, two hundred wagons were no more than two hundred individual units of discontent and despair. So far as could be prophesied on facts apparent, the journey out to Oregon had ended in disaster almost before it was well begun. Bearded men at smoking fires looked at one another in silence, or would not look at all. Elan, morale, esprit de corps were gone utterly. Stout Caleb Price walked down the wagon lines, passing fourscore men shaking in their native agues, not yet conquered. Women, pale, gaunt, grim, looked at him from limp sunbonnets whose stays had been half dissolved. Children whimpered. Even the dogs, curled nose to tail under the wagons, growled surlily. 1 16 THE DIVISION But Caleb Price found at last the wagon of the bugler who had been at the wars and shook him out. "Sound, man!" said Caleb Price. "Play up Oh, Susannah ! Then sound the Assembly. We've got to have a meeting." They did have a meeting. Jesse Wingate scented mutiny and remained away. "There's no use talking, men," said Caleb Price, "no use trying to fool ourselves. We're almost done, the way things are. I like Jess Wingate as well as any man I ever knew, but Jess Wingate's not the man. What shall we do?" He turned to Hall, but Hall shook his head; to Kelsey, but Kelsey only laughed. "I could get a dozen wagons through, maybe," said he. "Here's two hundred. WoodhuU's the man, but Woodhull's gone — lost, I reckon, or maybe killed and lying out somewhere on these prairies. You take it, Cale." Price considered for a time. "No," said he at length. "It's no time for one of us to take on what may be done better by someone else, because our women and children are at stake. The very best man's none too good for this job, and the more experience he has the better. The man who thinks fastest and clearest at the right time is the man we want, and the man we'd follow — ^the only man. Who'll he be?" "Oh, I'll admit Banion had the best idea of crossing 117 THE COVERED WAGON the Kaw," said Kelsey. "He got his own people over, too, somehow." "Yes, and they're together now ten miles" below us. And Molly Wingate — she was caught out with her team by the fire — says it was Banion who started the back-fire. That saved his train and ours. Ideas that come too late are no good. We need some man with the right ideas at the right time." "You think it's Banion?" Hall spoke. "I do think it's Banion. I don't see how it can be anyone else." "Woodhull'd never stand for it." "He isn't here." "Wingate won't." "He'll have to." The chief of mutineers, a grave and bearded man, waited for a time. "This is a meeting of the train," said he. "In our government the majority rules. Is there any motion on this?" Silence. Then rose Hall of Ohio, slowly, a solid man, with three wagons of his own. "I've been against the Missouri outfit," said he. "They're a wild bunch, with no order or discipline to them. They're not all free-soilers, even if they're go- ing out to Oregon. But if one man can handle them, he can handle us. An Army man with a Western ex- perience — ^who'll it be unless it is their man? So. Mister Chairman, I move for a committee of three, Ii8 THE DIVISION yourself to He one, to ride down and ask the Mis- sourians to join on again, all under Major Banion." "I'll have to second that," said a voice. Price saw a dozen nods, "You've heard it, men," said he. "All in favor rise up." They stood, with not many exceptions — rough-clad, hard-headed, hard-handed men of the nation's van- guard. Price looked them over soberly. "You see the vote, men," said he. "I wish Jess had come, but he didn't. Who'll be the man to ride down? Wingate?" "He wouldn't go," said Kelsey. "He's got some- thing against Banion; says he's not right on his war record — something ' ' "He's right on his train record this far," commented Price. "We're not electing a Sabbath-school superin- tendent now, but a train captain who'll make these wagons cover twelve miles a day, average. "Hall, you and Kelsey saddle up and ride down with me. We'll see what we can do. One thing sure, something has got to be done, or we might as well turn back. For one, I'm not used to that." They did saddle and ride — ^to find the Missouri column coming up with intention of pitching below, at the very scene of the massacre, which was on the usual Big Vermilion ford, steep-banked on either side, but with hard bottom. Ahead of the train rode two men at a walk, the ecout Jackson, and the man they sought. They spied 119 THE COVERED WAGON him as the man on the black Spanish horse, found him a pale and tired young man, who apparently had slept as ill as they themselves. But in straight and manful fashion they told him their errand. The pale face of Will Banion flushed, even with the livid scorch marks got in the prairie fire the day before. He considered. "Gentlemen," he said after a time, "you don't know what you are asking of me. It would be painful foi me to take that work on now." "It's painful for us to see our property lost and our families set afoot," rejoined Caleb Price. "It's not pleasant for me to do this. But it's no question, Major Banion, what you or I find painful or pleasant. The question is on the yromen and children. You know tiiat very well." "I do know it — ^yes. But you have other men. Where's Woodhull?" "We don't know. JVe think the Pawnees got him among the others." "Jackson" — Banion turned to his companion — "we've got to make a look-around for him. He's probably across the river somewhere." "Like enough," rejoined the scout. "But the first thing is for all us folks to git acrost the river too. Let him go to hell." "We want you, Major," said Hall quietly, and even Kelsey nodded. "What shall I do, Jackson?" demanded Banion. 1 20 THE DIVISION ■"'Fly inter hit, Will," replied that worthy. "Least- Ways, take hit on long enough so's to git them acrost an' help git their cattle together. Ye couldn't git Win- gate to work under ye no ways. But mebbe-so we can show 'em fer a day er so how Old Missoury gits acrost a country. Uh-huh?" Again Banion considered, pondering many things of which none of these knew anything at all. At Tength he drew aside with the men of the main train. "Park our wagons here. Bill," he said. "See that they are well parked, too. Get out your guards. I'll go up and see what we can do. We'll all cross here, Have your men get all the trail ropes out and lay in a lot of dry cottonwood logs. We'll have to raft some of the stuff over. See if there's any wild grapevines along the bottoms. They'll help hold the logs. So long." He turned, and with the mstinct of authority rode just a half length ahead of the others on the return. Jesse Wingate, a sullen and discredited Achilles, held to his tent, and Molly did as much, her stout- hearted and just-minded mother being the main source of Wingate news. Banion kept as far away from them as possible, but had Jed sent for. "Jed," said he, "first thing, you get your boys to- gether and go after the cattle. Most of them went downstream with the wind. The hobbled stuff didn't come back down the trail and must be below there too. The cows wouldn't swim the big river on a run. If 121 THE COVERED WAGOIST there's rough country, with any shelter, they'd Uke enough begin to mill — it might be five miles, ten — I can't guess. You go find out. "Now, you others, first thing, get your families all out in the sun. Spread out the bedclothes and get them dried. Build fires and cook your best right away — have the people eat. Get that bugle going and play something fast — Sweet Hour of Prayer Is for evening, not now. Give 'em Reveille, and then the cavalry charge. Play Susannah. "I'm going to ride the edge of the burning to look for loose stock. You others get a meal into these people — coffee, quinine, more coffee. Then hook up all the teams you can and move down to the ford. We'll be on the Platte and among the buffalo in a week or ten days. Nothing can stop us. All you need is just a little more coffee and a little more system, and then a good deal more of both. "Now's a fine time for this train to shake into place," he added. "You, Price, take your men and go down the lines. Tell your kinfolk and families and friends and neighbors to make bands and hang together. Let 'em draw cuts for place if they like, but stick where they go. We can't tell how the grass will be on ahead, and we may have to break the train into sections on the Platte; but we'll break it ourselves, and not see it fall apart or fight apart. So ?" He wheeled and went away at a trot. All he had given them was the one thing they lacked. 1.22 THE DIVISION The Wingate wagons came in groups and halted at the river bank, where the work of rafting and wagon boating went methodically forward. Scores of in- dividual craft, tipsy and risky, two or three logs lashed together, angled across and landed far below. Horse- men swam across with lines and larger rafts were steadied fore and aft with ropes snubbed around tree trunks on either bank. Once started, the resourceful pioneer found a dozen ways to skin his cat, as one man phrased it, and presently the falling waters per- mitted swimming and fording the stock. It all seemed ridiculously simple and ridiculously cheerful. Toward evening a great jangling of bells and shout- ing of yoimg captains announced the coming of a great band of the stampeded livestock — cattle, mules and horses mixed. Afar came the voice of Jed Wingate singing, "Oh, then Susannah," and urging Susannah to have no concern. But Banion, aloof and morose, made his bed that night apart even from his own train. He had not seen Wingate — did not see him till the next day, noon, when he rode up and saluted the former leader, who sat on his own wagon seat and not in saddle. "My people are all across, Mr. Wingate," he said, "and the last of your wagons will be over by dark and straightened out. I'm parked a mile ahead." "You are parked? I thought you were elected — by my late friends — ^to lead this whole train." 123 THE COVERED WAGON He spoke bitterly and with a certain contempt that made Banion color. "No. We can travel apart, though close. Do you want to go ahead, or shall I?" "As you like. The country's free." "It's not free for some things, Mr. Wingate," re- joined the younger man hotly. "You can lead or not, as you like ; but I'll not train up with a man who thinks of me as you do. After this think what you like, but don't speak any more." "What do you mean by that?" "You know very well. You've believed another man's word about my personal character. It's gone far enough and too far." "The other man is not here. He can't face you." "No, not now. But if he's on earth he'll face me sometime." Unable to control himself further, Banion wheeled and galloped away to his own train. "You ask if we're to join in with the Yankees," he flared out to Jackson. "No! We'll camp apart and train apart. I won't go on with them." "Well," said the scout, "I didn't never think we would, er believe ye could; not till they git in trouble agin — er till a certain light wagon an' mules throws in with us, huh?" "You'll say no more of that, Jackson! But one 124 THE DIVISION thing: you and I have got to ride and see if we can get any trace of Woodhull." "Like looking for a needle in a haystack, an' a damn bad needle at that," was the old man's comment o CHAPTER XVI THE PLAINS *« >^^ N to the Platte ! The buflfalo !" New cheer seemed to come to the hearts of the emi- grants now, and they forgot bickering. The main train ground grimly ahead, getting back, if not all its egotism, at least more and more of its self- reliance. By courtesy, Wingate still rode ahead, though orders came now from a joint council of his leaders, since Banion would not take charge. The great road to Oregon was even now not a trail but a road, deep cut into the soil, though no wheeled traffic had marked it tmtil within the past five years. A score of paralled paths it might be at times, of tentative location along a hillside or a marshy level; but it was for the most part a deep-cut, unmistakable road from which it had been impossible to wander. At times it lay worn into the sod a half foot, a foot in depth. Some- times it followed the ancient buffalo trails to water — the first roads of the Far West, quickly seized on by hunters and engineers— or again it transected these, hanging to the ridges after frontier road fashion, heading out for the proved fords of the greater streams. Always the wheel marks of those who had gone ahead in previous years, the continuing thread of the trail 126 THE PLAINS itself, worn in by trader and trapper and Mormon and Oregon or California man, gave hope and cheer to these who followed with the plow. Stretching out, closing up, almost inch by inch, like some giant measuring worm in its slow progress, the train held on through a vast and. stately landscape, which some travelers had called the Eden of America, such effect was given by the series of altering scenes. Small imagination, indeed, was needed to picture here a long-established civilization, although there was not a habitation. They were beyond organized society and beyond the law. Game became more abundant, wild turkeys still ap- peared in the timbered creek bottoms. Many elk were seen, more deer and very many antelope, packed in northward by the fires. A number of panthers and giant gray wolves beyond counting kept the hunters always excited. The wild abundance of an unexhausted Nature offered at every hand. The sufficiency of life brought daily growth in the self-reliance which had left them for a time. The wide timberlands, the broken low hills of the green prairie at length began to give place to a steadily rising inclined plane. The soil became less black and heavy, with more sandy ridges. The oak and hickory, stout trees of their forefathers, passed, and the cot- tonwoods appeared. After they had crossed the ford of the Big Blue — a. hundred yards of racing water — they passed what is now the line between Kansas and 127 THE COVERED WAGON Nebraska, and followed up the Little Blue, beyond whose ford the trail left these quieter river valleys and headed out over a high table-land in a keen straight flight over the great valley of the Platte, the highway to the Rockies. Now the soil was sandier; the grass changed yet again. They had rolled under wheel by now more than one hundred different varieties of wild grasses. The vegetation began to show the growing altitude. The cactus was seen now and then. On the far horizon the wavering mysteries of the mirage appeared, mar- velous in deceptiveness, mystical, alluring, the very spirits of the Far West, appearing to move before their eyes in giant pantomime. They were passing from the Prairies to the Plains. Shouts and cheers arose as the word passed back that the sand hills known as the Coasts of the Platte were in sight. Some mothers told their children they were now almost to Oregon. The whips cracked more loudly, the tired teams, tongues lolling, quickened their pace as they struck the down-grade gap leading through the sand ridges. Two thouand Americans, some of them illiterate and ignorant, all of them strong, taking with them law, order, society, the church, the school, anew were stag- ing the great drama of human life, act and scene and episode, as though upon some great moving platform drawn by invisible cables beyond the vast proscenium of the hills. CHAPTER XVn THE GREAT ENCAMPMENT AS the long columns of the great wagon train broke through the screening sand hills there was disclosed a vast and splendid panorama. The valley of the Platte lay miles wide, green in the full covering of spring. A crooked and broken thread of timber growth appeared, marking the moister soil and outlining the general course of the shallow stream, whose giant cottonwoods were dwarfed now by the distances. In between, and for miles up and down the flat expanse, there rose the blue smokes of countless camp fires, each showing the location of some white- topped ship of the Plains. Black specks, grouped here and there, proved the presence of the livestock under herd. Over all shone a pleasant sun. Now and again the dark shadow of a moving cloud passed over the flat valley, softening its high lights for the time. At times, as the sun shone full and strong, the faint loom of the mirage added the last touch of mysticism, the figures of the wagons rising high, multiplied many- fold, with giant creatures passing between, so that the whole seemed, indeed, some wild phantasmagoria of the desert. 129 THE COVERED WAGON "Look!" exclaimed Wingate, pulling up his horse. "Look, Caleb, the Northern train is in and waiting for us! A hundred wagons! They're camped over the whole bend." The sight of this vast re-enforcement brought heart to every man, woman and child in all the advancing train. Now, indeed, Oregon was sure. There would be, all told, four hundred — five hundred — ^above six hundred wagons. Nothing could withstand them. They were the same as arrived ! As the great trains blended before the final empark- ment men and women who had never met before shook hands, talked excitedly, embraced, even wept, such was their joy in meeting their own kind. Soon the vast valley at the foot of the Grand Island of the Platte — ■ ninety miles in length it then was — ^became one vast bivouac whose parallel had not been seen in all the world. Even so, the Missouri column held back, an hour or two later on the trail. Banion, silent and morose, still rode ahead, but all the flavor of his adventure out to Oregon had left him — indeed, the very savor of life itself. He looked at his arms, empty ; touched his lips, where once her kiss had been, so infinitely and in- eradicably sweet. Why should he go on to Oregon now? As they came down through the gap in the Coasts, looking out over the Grand Island and the great en- ampment, Jackson pulled up his horse. 130 THE GREAT ENCAMPMENT "Look ! Someone comin' out !" Banion sat his horse awaiting the arrival of the rider, who soon cut down the intervening distance until he could well be noted. A tall, spare man he was, middle- aged, of long lank hair and gray stubbled beard, and eyes overhung by bushy brows. He rode an Indian pad saddle, without stirrups, and was clad in the old costume of the hunter of the Far West — fringed shirt and leggings of buckskin. Moccasins made his foot- covering, though he wore a low, wide hat. As he came on at speed, guiding his wiry mount with a braided rope looped around the lower jaw, he easily might have been mistaken for a savage himself had he not come alone and from such company as that ahead. He jerked up his horse close at hand and sat looking at the newcomers, with no salutation beyond a short "How!" Banion met him. "We're the Westport train. Do you come from the Bluffs? Are you for Oregon?" "Yes. I seen ye comin'. Thought I'd projeck some. Who's that back of ye?" He extended an imperative skinny finger toward Jackson. "If it hain't Bill Jack- son hit's his ghost 1" "The same to you, Jim. How 1" The two shook hands without dismoimting. Jack- son turned grinning to Banion. "Major," said he, "this is Jim Bridger, the oldest scout in the Rockies, an' that knows more West than 131 THE COVERED WAGON ary man this side the Missoury. I never thought to see him agin, sartain not this far east." "Ner me," retorted the other, shaking hands with one man after another. "Jim Bridger? That's a name we know," said Ban- ion. "I've heard of you back in Kentucky." "Whar I come from, gentlemen — whar I come frcMn more'n forty year ago, near's I can figger. Leastways I was horned in Virginny an' must of crossed Kentucky sometime. I kain't tell right how old I am, but I rek'lect perfect when they turned the water inter the Missoury River." He looked at them solemnly. "I come back East to the new place, Kansas City. It didn't cut no mustard, an' I drifted to the Bluffs. This train was pullin' west, an' I hired on for guide. I've got a few wagons o' my own — iron, flour an' bacon for my post beyant the Rockies— ef we don't all git our ha'r lifted afore then ! "We're in between the Sioux and the Pawnees now," he went on. "They're huntin' the bufiflers not ten mile ahead. But when I tell these pilgrims, they laugh at me. The hull Sioux nation is on the spring hunt right now. I'll not have it said Jim Bridger led a wagon train into a massacree. If ye'll let me, I'm for leavin' 'em an' trainin' with you-all, especial since you got any- how one good man along. I've knowed Bill Jackson many a year at the Rendyvous afore the fur trade petered. Damn the pilgrims ! The hull world's broke loose this spring. There's five thousand Mormons on 132 THE GREAT ENCAMPMENT fthead, praisin' God every jump an' eatin' the grass below the roots. Womern an' children — so many of 'em, so many! I kain't talk about hit! Women don't belong out here! An' now here you come bringin' a thousand more! "There's a woman an' a baby layin' dead in our camp now," he concluded. "Died last night. The pilgrims is tryin' to make coffins fer 'em out'n Cot- tonwood logs." "Lucky for all!" Jackson interrupted the garrulity of the other. "We buried men in blankets on the Ver- milion a few days back. The Pawnees got a small camp o' our own folks." "Yes, I know all about that." "What's that?" cut in Banion. "How do you know?" "Well, we've got the survivors — ^three o' them, countin' Woodhull, their captain." "How did they get here?" "They came in with a small outfit o' Mormons that was north o' the Vermilion. They'd come out on the St Jo road. They told me " "Is Woodhull here— can you find him?" "Shore! Ye want to see him?" "Yes." "He told me all about hit " "We know all about it, perhaps better than you do^ after he's told you all about it." Bridger looked at him, curious. 133 THE COVERED WAGON "Well, anyhow, hit's over," said he. "One of the men had a Pawnee arrer in his laig. Reckon hit hurt. I know, fer I carried a Blackfoot arrerhead under my shoulder blade fer sever'l years. "But come on down and help me make these pilgrims set guards. Do-ee mind, now, the hull Sioux nation's just in ahead o' us, other side the river! Yet these people didn't want to ford to the south side the Platte ; they wanted to stick north o' the river. Ef we had, we'd have our ha'r dryin' by now. I tell ye, the tribes is out to stop the wagon trains this spring. They say too many womern and children is comin', an' that shows we want to take their land away fer keeps. "From now on to Oregon — look out ! The Cayuses cleaned out the Whitman mission last spring in Oregon. Even the Shoshones is dancin'. The Crows is out- the Cheyennes is marchin', the Bannocks is east o' the Pass, an' ye kain't tell when ter expeck the Blackfoots an' Grow Vaws. Never was gladder to see a man than I am to see Bill Jackson." "Stretch out!" Banion gave the order. The Missouri wagons came on, filed through the gap in order and with military ex- actness wheeled into a perfect park at one side the main caravan. As the outer columns swung in, the inner spread out till the lapped wagons made a great oblong, Bridget; Snatching them. Quickly the animals were outspanned, 134 THE GREAT ENCAMPMENT the picket ropes put down and the loose horses driven off to feed while -the cattle were close herded. He nodded his approval. "Who's yer train boss, Bill?" he demanded. "That's good work." "Major Banion, of Doniphan's column in the war." "Will he fight?" "Try him!" News travels fast along a wagon train. Word passed now that there was a big Sioux village not far ahead, on the other side of the river, and that the caravan should be ready for a night attack. Men and women from the earlier train came into the Westport camp and the leaders formulated plans. More than four hundred families ate in sight of one another fires that evening. Again on the still air of the Plains that night rose the bugle summons, by now become familiar. In groups the wagon folk began to assemble at the council fire. They got instructions which left them serious. The camp fell into semi-silence. Each family returned to its own wagon. Out in the dark, flung around in a wide circle, a double watch stood guard. Wingate and his aids, Banion, Jackson, Bridger, the pick of the hardier men, went out for all the night. It was to Banion, Bridger and Jackson that most attention now was paid. Banion could not yet locate WoodhuU in the train. The scouts crept out ahead of the last picket line, 135 THE COVERED WAGON for though an attack in mass probably would not come before dawn, if the Sioux really should cross the river, some horse stealing or an attempted stampede might be expected before midnight or soon after. The night wore on. The fires of willow twigs and bois des vaches fell into pale coals, into ashes. The chin of the Plains came, so that the sleepers in the great wagon corral drew; their blankets closer about them as they lay. It was approaching midnight when the silence was ripped apart by the keen crack of a rifle — ^another and yet another. Then, in a ripple of red detonation, the rifle fire ran along the upper front of the entire encampment. "Turn out! Turn out, men!" called the high, clear voice of Banion, riding back. "Barricade! Fill in the wheels!" CHAPTER XVIII ARROW AND PLOW THE night attack on the great emigrant encan^- ment was a thing which had been preparing for years. The increasing number of the white men, the lessening numbers of the buffalo, meant inevitable combat with all the tribes sooner or later. Now the spring hunt of the northern Plains tribes was on. Five hundred lodges of the Sioux stood in one village on the north side of the Platte. The scaffolds were red with meat, everywhere the women were dressing hides and the camp was full of happiness. For a month the great Sioux nation had prospered, ac- cording to its lights. Two hundred stolen horses were under the wild herdsmen, and any who liked the meat of the spotted buffalo might kill it close to camp from the scores taken out of the first caravans up the Platte that year — ^the Mormons and other early trailers whom the Sioux despised because their horses were so few. But the Sioux, fat with boudins and depouille and marrowbones, had waited long for the great Western train which should have appeared on the north side of the Platte, the emigrant road from the Council Bluffs. For some days now they had known the reason, as Jim 137 THE COVERED WAGON Bridger had explained — the wagons had forded the river below the Big Island. The white men's medicine was strong. The Sioux did not know of the great rendezvous at the forks of the Great Medicine Road. Their watch- men, stationed daily at the eminences along the river bluffs of the north shore, brought back scoffing word of the carelessness of the whites. When they got ready they, too, would ford the river and take them in. They had not heeded the warning sent down the trail that no more whites should come into this country of the tribes. It was to be war. And now the smoke signals said yet more whites were coming in from the south! The head men rode out to meet their watchmen. News came back that the entire white nation now had come into the valley from the south and joined the first train. Here then was the chance to kill off the entire white nation, their women and their children, so there would be none left to come from toward the rising sun ! Yes, this would end the race of the whites without doubt or question, because they all were here. After killing these it would be easy to send word west to the Arapahoes and Gros Ventres and Cheyennes, the Crows, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones, the Utes, to fol- low west on the Medicine Road and wipe out all who had gone on West that year and the year before. Then the Plains and the mountains would all belong to the red men again. 138 ARROW AND PLOW The chiefs knew that the hour just before dawn is .