Book: The Freebooters of the Wilderness

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"Have you filed for a homestead for each of them?"

"Yaw!" The man smiled more pleased than ever, indicating the numerous
olive branches by a wave of his hand. "Gott gutt pig varm! Pat, Pat
Prydges . . . he sae he pay mae voman, one-huntred; mae, two huntred;
mae chil'en . . ." he smiled again, bigly and blandly, "mabbee, five,
ten. Yaw--?"

"One hundred and sixty acres each: twelve hundred acres for the kids,
not one of age, a quarter section to the man!" Then turning back from
Matthews to the foreign settler.

"You've got a thundering big farm?"

"Yaw! Ae mak' a pig yob of itt!"

"By George, I should think you do make a big job of it! This is the
way those two-thousand acres of coal lands were swiped! Are you the
fellow I gave a permit to cut timber up on the Ridge? What did you
change your homestead for?"

The Swede stood smiling showing all his white teeth and wrinkling his
nose and absorbing the meaning of the Ranger's questions into his skull.

"Pat did utt," he said.

"Who? Oh, Bat!" He looked at Matthews. "Do you mind riding back over
the Pass trail; so we can go to the Ridge by the Gully, the way the
outlaws escaped? I want to see where this fellow's upper lines run."


They rode back in silence almost all the way, coming up to the top
shoulder of the precipice where the outlaws had come tumbling down on
Matthews' hiding place a few weeks before. Wayland followed the lines
of the newly planted posts, where the wire had not yet been strung.

"There is not the slightest doubt," he burst out, "this has been done
to force a test case! Well, they'll get it."

"Wayland, is there no way of letting the public know what is going on?
A bet the people of this State don't know!"

"It's against the rule to give out information any more," answered
Wayland.

"Man alive--is this Russia? Y' mind me of Indians in the conjurors'
tent: they tie the medicine man hand and foot and throw him into a
tent; and he's t' make the tent shake. Only the devil-Indians can do
it. They tie y' hand an' foot, then they expect y' to serve the
Nation."

"No," corrected Wayland, "they tie us hand and foot to keep us _from_
serving the Nation."


And the Swede's tent was not the only one they saw, as the reader well
knows. Coming along the Gully on the Ridge crest, Wayland looked for
the pile of illegally-taken saw logs. They were gone. There was
nothing left but a timber skid, and the dry slash and a pile of saw
dust emitting the odor of imprisoned fragrance in the afternoon heat;
but a few yards back from the pile of saw dust stood a tepee tent with
the flap hooked up; and in the opening, a wide-eyed diminutive child
with a very old face and a very small frame, that looked for all the
world to Wayland like a clothes rack in a pawn shop covered with
colored rags.

"Waz ye wantin' me faather?"

As the reader is aware this little person never lacked speech.

"H's away! H's gone t' th' citie for th' throuble that's comin' on
about th' mine, y' onderstand? He's wan o' th' men t' be on hand if
there's throuble."

"Are you one of the new settlers'?"

"Yes, sor! M' name's Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan! We're come upp t'
live three years, mebba four, m' faather says we may fool 'em on less
than five; an' we're goin' to be wal-thy, an' we won't hev' a thing t'
do but sit toight an' whuttle an' sput an'," it was the same story, she
had told Eleanor.

"What trouble in the mines?" asked Wayland.

"In the coal mines, sor! There's a gen'leman come from Waashington,
an' soon as the Ranger's been found, there's been goin's on, sor, bad
goin's ons, soon as th' Ranger's back, their expectin' throuble; un' m'
faather's gone down for to be there, he saz."


"Well?" said Wayland, as they rode on towards the Cabin.

"They've been busy, Wayland! They've been busy, man! You're in the
thick of it! More power t' y'r elbow! We've got the first licks in on
th' sheriff's carcass."

"And six dead men to the good," added Wayland dryly, "only I guess they
don't go into the reports, they are missing!"

As they approached the Cabin, a young man in gray flannels and sailor
hat sat up in the hammock, looked twice at Wayland, got up and came
forward.

"Are you Wayland?" he asked, with a contemptuous glance at the Ranger's
disguised suit.

"That's my name."

The young fellow handed him a letter stamped from the head department
at Washington. It stated that the bearer was a Federal attorney sent
out to investigate the Smelter City Coal Claims and any other matters
bearing on the contests of the Holy Cross. The letter was
couched--Wayland thought--with peculiar frigidity, as though he and not
the coal claimants were the guilty party to an undecided contest. Then
he glanced back at the bearer: an incredibly young and inexperienced
youth--not more than twenty-two or three, barely out of a law school.

"Glad to see you, sir," said Wayland, "Been waiting long?"

The young fellow gave him a side wise look.

"About a week."

"I'm sorry to have delayed you; but one of the most important cases we
have ever had called me away. I had intended to go down to Washington
and explain the whole situation."

The young man smiled very faintly, and was it, contemptuously? "A good
deal needs explaining," he remarked.

"I hope you made yourself at home in the Cabin?"

"On the contrary, I'm with Moyese! I have arranged to have the coal
cases examined this week. The claimants declare the coal is not worth
a farthing, and this case is seriously disturbing the title to the land
where the Smelter stands."

"You're a geologist, of course?" asked Wayland innocently.

"No, I'm from the law department. We considered this more a case of
legality of title than coal values. The Company has kindly consented
to let us examine the mine this week."

"Kindly consented? By George, I like that condescending kindness from
pirates and thieves!"

"But there are two sides to this question, Mr. Ranger: what good does
coal do locked up in the earth? The country wants coal developed."

"Exactly," answered Wayland, "and not stolen and locked up in a great
trust and rings that jack the prices sky-high! The law was passed to
keep these pirates from stealing coal with dummies, to let the
individual who hadn't money to hire dummies go in and develop. If
you'll walk along the Ridge here, you'll see another of the contested
cases. The forests are open to homesteading wherever the land is
agricultural; but you can hardly call land agricultural that's a sheer
drop of 1,000 feet, though the big trees growing on it would each build
a house of six rooms. If you'll walk along, you'll see where the
'dummy' business has begun the same game as in the Bitter Boot."

The young bureaucrat turned short on his heel and strolled down the
Ridge Trail, with an air that only a bureaucrat, a very young
bureaucrat, and a very cheap one could possibly wear.

"Well, A 'm--A 'm d--danged."

Wayland burst out laughing.

"Do you suppose that little kindergarten ass thought he had come and
caught me off duty?"

The old man stood dumfounded. It was such a happy and triumphant
home-coming for a Man on the Job, who had risked his life for seven
successive weeks solely in the cause of Right. Matthews slammed his
hat on the ground, and stamped upon it, and clenched his teeth to keep
in the words that seemed to want to hiss out.


"Man alive. A'd like t' spank him!"

Wayland laughed.

"I guess he's staying with our white-vested friend," he said, as he
pulled the saddles off the animals and gave them a slap heading down to
the drinking trough; but when he turned, Calamity stood in the door of
the Cabin holding out a letter. He forgot to greet her; for the
handwriting was Eleanor's. He tore the envelope open devouring the
words in his eagerness; then his face clouded.

"What in thunder does it all mean? Listen.


'Dear Dick: I don't know when you will come home, but as soon as you
do, you will learn of something abominable that has been published.
I'm going to send Calamity up with this every day so she will be sure
to catch you first thing.' ("It's dated three weeks ago," interjected
Wayland.) 'They have struck at you through me. Don't mind, Dick.
They did it to make you stop. You will not stop, will you? It didn't
hurt me.' (Oh, brave beautiful liar! Does the Angel Gabriel take note
of such lies by women; and which side of the account does he put them
on?) 'Father says a fact is a hard nut to crack. You're not to take
any notice of this attack on me. You're not to flinch from the fight
for my sake or deflect a hair's breadth on my account. You know what
you said. Things have gone so far that crime is invading decent lives.
Well, it has invaded yours and mine; and you're not to slack one jot.
Dick, I command it. I command it in the name of that seal I gave you.'

'E. MacD.'"


"What in thunder does it all mean?" reiterated Wayland.

"What seal is that she speaks of? A'm thinkin' if you'll read that
pile of mail in there on the table, you'll find out."

"Any ansher?" asked Calamity softly, by which, you may guess, dear
reader, that an Indian woman has a heart under her ribs as well as you.

"Wait," said Wayland.

He tore a sheet from his field book. This is what he wrote:


I shall obey you implicitly, my Alder Liefest. I don't know what it is
yet; but I'll not let it make any difference in the fight no matter
what it is. I have thought of that seal every day and night since I
left you, and all day and all night; and I couldn't have pulled through
this trip if I hadn't had that well of memory to drink from. You saved
my life, tho' you don't know it. Matthews will tell you: and you saved
his too.

Dick. (nth.)

P. S. There's a funny little kid up here, been left by her father in
one of the settlers' tents. She's the most pitiable little object I
ever saw. I think her father is a drunken tough from Shanty Town. She
oughtn't to be left up here alone near such a baby-eater as I am. I
wish you'd come up and see about her. If you don't come alone, get
Mrs. Williams, or my friend, Matthews.


Calamity went on down the Ridge and Wayland plunged at his mail. On
the very top of the pile lay a newspaper in a folder marked with red
"Important." Before the pole cat begins operations, he chooses his
target. For myself, I think discretion is better than valor in such a
case, and you would do well to retreat and let the little genus
Mephitis Mephitica infect the air for his own benefit; but Wayland did
not know what was coming and tore the paper open and read. Then he
flung it from him and stood looking with blazing eyes at the thing on
the floor.

"Read it," he said.

The old frontiersman got his glasses laboriously out of the case and
began to read. The sun was behind the Holy Cross, and he stood in the
door to get the light on the paper. When he had finished and looked
round, he saw Wayland sitting crunched forward with his face in his
hands.

"Wayland, man," he slapped him twice on the shoulder, "look up, look up
at that picture on the wall above y'r bed."

Wayland took his hands from his eyes. The Alpine glow struck through
the doorway against the picture on the wall, the picture she had had
Calamity bring down surreptitiously and had sent back framed, the
picture of the face above the Warrior.

"Man alive, why w'd y' care for the devil's dirt and skunk stench and
snake venom, when y' have, when y' have That? She's a--a trump! She's
a thoroughbred! Man, y'd know she had th' blood o' Scottish kings and
queens in her veins. Y'll no go down to-night, Wayland, when y'r all
undone! 'Twould hurt her. A intended tellin' her to-night why A came;
but A'll not now! A'll not now! She must not run from this scandal.
She must face it down before she goes, but A'll go an' see her father
an' come back an' tell y'. Cheer up man! 'Tis part o'the fight."

And for the only time in the struggle, Wayland let go; or rather--his
manhood got from under leash. You can be stoical all right when _you_
get the blow. It's another thing to be stoical when the blow hits what
you love. When the curtain-drop fell on Moyese, it fell on a man
pounding the desk, kicking furniture, eating up the telephone, turning
the air blue. It fell on the Ranger sitting crunched in his chair
gazing through misty eyes at a picture painted by an artist, who was an
idealist. Was he down and out? Was Right the sport of fools?




CHAPTER XXII

A DOWNY-LIPPED YOUTH IN GRAY FLANNELS

I suppose it was owing to the fact that she was woman and he was man
that she spent that first night of the home-coming in dumb hurt wonder
that he had not come immediately to her; and that he passed the night
in restless fevered fury, knowing well that you cannot both control
fire and fan it, fuse metals molten and expect them not to forge, keep
a resolution and break it. She had listened eagerly to the old
frontiersman's account of the adventures on the trail, up the Pass
precipice, crossing the snow slide and in the desert, where the Ranger
had refused to save his own life by abandoning his companion; and the
narrative lost nothing in Matthews' recital with his Scottish-Canadian
R's rolling out sonorous and strong, where he was moved to admiration
or anger. The sheep rancher sat silent through the stirring story with
only an occasional glint of fire from his black eyes gazing aimlessly
at the floor.

"'Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it shall return
to you again.' 'Minds me of what A saw you do for this woman you call
Calamity, in our old Rebellion Days."

Eleanor was sitting on the arm of her father's leather chair. The
sheepman glanced up warningly, but Matthews was going ahead full steam.

"We're both older than we were in those days, MacDonald, older an'
wiser, an' for m'self, A should add, a good bit steadier! You, y' were
always a sober-faced secret lad, MacDonald; an' till yon day in front
o' th' Agency house, A don't think, A hardly think, we men knew what a
devil was in y'! A can see y' yet as y' kicked th' gun out o' yon
blackguard's hand an' let him take the load o' buckshot square between
th' shoulders! 'Twas a handsome thing o' you to take th' poor buddy in
an' give her a shelter! How does she come to call herself Calamity?"

MacDonald's foot came down on the floor with a clamp, and he rose.
"She didn't. 'Twas the miners in the Black Hills. She used to bring
in so many hard-luck chaps, shot up by the Sioux, bring 'em in on her
shoulders from the hills to the camp, that the boys got to calling her
Calamity. She had lost her good looks, and--" MacDonald shot a glance
of warning in the direction of his daughter--"and the same old story, I
guess; she was off the market! One of my trips to the mining camps up
state, I found her in a mess of rags picking crusts out of the garbage
barrels along a back lane! I brought her back with me. Gave her a
week's soak in the bath house--" he paused as if reflecting, "and that
it seems was foundation enough for the hog-wash that appeared in one of
the papers here. Suppose we take a walk as we discuss old days; they
were pretty wild days for discussion before a girl, who didn't know her
dad before she was born."

And Eleanor went out on the Ranch House piazza off her room, while the
two frontiersmen strolled down the river. How different her outlook on
life was from two months before when reference to Calamity had called
up mingled fury and horror. Now that she understood, anything in this
Western Country might be possible, and understandable, and explainable.
She had his hurried pencil note where she could feel it, under her
locket; only the locket was outside above; and the fly leaf of that
field book was inside next. "Dick (nth)," he had signed himself; and
he had not come down. She could see the dark shadowy Ridge from her
piazza chair, and hear the subdued laughter and lipping of the waters,
and he was there--not a half hour's walk away--and he had not come.
There was a full moon. She could see its silver sheen on the River, on
the tremulous poplar leaves, sifting through the pine needles and in
opal wings round the far luminous cross of snow on the mountain. The
night hawks and the swallows dipped and darted and cut the air with
humming wings; and once the wire gate squeaked to some one entering.
Eleanor sprang up with her heart beating so that she could not speak;
but it was only a white hatted youth in light gray flannels asking
Calamity at the basement door "when MacDonald would be back." Did
Eleanor imagine it; or did the citified young person in the gray
flannels with the red necktie look up towards her hesitatingly, with
the suggestion of an ingratiating smile in the pale blue eyes, a
suggestion which she could not define but which somehow infuriated her?
Poor pale anaemic youth! He was not used to having his waiting smiles
met by the blaze of red fury that flashed to her eyes.

"Calamity, if that person wants anything, tell him to go out to the
bunkhouse and see the foreman."

Then, she sank back in her chair both glad and sorry in one breath that
Wayland had not been there. She shut her eyes to drink again of the
memories that had sustained her all these weeks; and felt the lift and
fall of the note his hand had written, pulsing to the rhythm of her
breathing; but the memories failed her. Memories were for absence; and
he was here; and he had _not_ come. If only he would come now, how she
would greet him, holding him unflinchingly to his resolution, of
course, and of course; but as a kind of second thought in the back of
her head, the under motive beneath all the clamor of light upper notes,
she knew to the inmost core of her being that she was wishing he would
come now because her father was out and she was alone and could greet
him as flesh and spirit, heart and mind, cried out to greet him; to
touch him; to spend themselves upon him in a fierce proud abandon of
love and gladness; to give and take, and give and take again, till,
till--what? Was this the way to keep him standing strong to his
resolutions?

And shall we blame her? Does the beautiful thing we call life spring
from postulates and rules and mathematics; or from the spirit's altar
fires? And I confess I never see the thing we call vice but I wonder
did it not spring from the burning of the refuse heap, which poor
humans have mistaken for altar fires?

She heard her father come in late, slamming the mosquito door behind
him, and pass across the dark living room to his own chamber without
saying good night. Once, she thought she saw a white sailor hat
through the cottonwood hovering along the road. Then, as she looked,
the white sailor seemed accompanied by a panama; and she crept into her
room with fevered hands and heavy heart, snacking the mosquito door
behind her. There was the companion bang of a door being hooked below,
old Calamity keeping watch as usual and only turning in, when she heard
Eleanor going to bed. Eleanor waited till all was quiet. Then, she
drew the burlap portiere across the mosquito door, and lighted her
candle, and began writing,--writing what? Was it some dildo of
oriental song she had read in Europe; was it the burden of some Indian
chant stirring vaguely in her unconscious blood; or was it but the
simple love cry of primitive Woman, of that woman who wandered round
about the streets of Jerusalem calling her lover? "My flesh cries out
to touch you, my beloved," she wrote; "my hands are hungry to touch
you, and my spirit is hungrier than my hands. When you were absent, I
drank of memories; but now, you are back, the shadow waters have gone;
I must have the living. If I could see you but once, I know this wild
longing would lie down and be quiet." She stopped writing. Would it?
Would it lie down and be quiet with just a look? A look would be a
deep drink of living waters, she knew that; but would it, would it lie
down and be quiet? She didn't intend ever to stop loving him. As long
as she loved him, and stayed where love could grow by what it fed on,
would it lie quiet? Was this keeping him strong to his resolution?

She tore the paper to tiny atoms and burned the scraps bit by bit on
her metal paper knife above the candle. Then, she blew out the candle
and drew his soiled field-book leaf from her breast. She fell asleep
with her head on her arm, and her lips pressed to that fool-thing he
had signed at the bottom of his note, "Dick (the nth)," whatever that
meant.

There was no mistaking it next morning at breakfast. She felt strung
and upset; and her father looked at her strangely; and Matthews was so
keen on covering the general embarrassment that he aimed too far in the
other direction, rattling off such a fusilade of Western stories that
they sounded hollow. She forgot her own confusion studying the two
men. How stooped her father looked! He looked, what was it? Like a
man who has waited a long time for something to come, and when it has
come, found himself too sad to seize it. His eyes looked as if he had
not slept; and Eleanor now observed that the frontiersman's sun-burned
nose had a suspicious shine at the end. If she had not been undone
from her own bad night, she would have helped their efforts to cover
embarrassment; but now a horrible thought came; a thought born of the
low innuendo in the scandal story; and the thought finished her. She
felt her self-control going and rose and fled round the end of the
table to her room. The old frontiersman stopped mid-way in his story
of the brats of Blackfoot boys stealing every stitch of his clothing
one day he was bathing in Lower Saskatchewan. Her father jumped to his
feet and threw out one arm to stop her. That finished Eleanor. He had
never done such a thing before. The only time he had ever shown
affection was that night when she had read the scandal in the paper and
he had reached up his hand and taken hers. Now, he held her in his
arms, bowed, broken, unspeaking. The tears came in a rain. She did
not hide her face after the manner of tenderly nurtured shrinking
women. She faced him with wide open lashes and brimming eyes and
burning defiance.

"Father, you don't doubt me, too, do you?"

"Doubt you? My God no, child! It's only I never knew how much I loved
you till I realized I might have to part with you."

How strange and non-understanding and non-understandable these men
creatures were! Eleanor looked at him; and looked at him. Then she
threw her arms round his neck and kissed the dark sad silent face with
a frightened tender fervor; and do not laugh, dear reader; for it is
only on the stage that the graceful altogether elegant curtain-drop
comes; but the old frontiersman had somehow got himself outside the
screen door, and immediately on that kiss came through the mosquito
wire such a thunder clap of pulpit artillery as is the peculiar
prerogative of some large gentlemen when they blow their nose.
MacDonald and Eleanor both burst out laughing; and Eleanor noticed it
was a large red cotton one, two for ten they sold in Smelter City.


And all the while, Wayland sat crunched in the chair of the Cabin,
gazing and gazing at the face in the picture above "the Happy Warrior,"
till the light faded from the Holy Cross and the moon beams struck
aslant the timbered floor, and Calamity's shadow stood in the doorway
with a basket on her arm.

"Meesis Villiam send up y' supper," she said.

Wayland ate mechanically. He did not know that he was bursting out
with angry words all through the meal.

"To think, they'd stoop, they'd dare to splash their filth and hog-wash
on her skirts, to hurt me? Well, they've got me, Calamity? They've
got me, old girl! But they've got me in a way they don't expect! You
Indians knew the courts were a fraud and lie. They'd have cleared this
kind of blackguardism up with a knife. Well--so will I; but it will be
another kind of knife. You can't out-Herod a skunk; but you can bury
it, Calamity, eh, old girl? We'll bury 'em so deep next election,
they'll never see daylight: then we'll pile this pack of exposure on
'em so high they'll never get up again. We're out for scalps,
Calamity! No more fighting in the open, eh? We'll spring it on 'em
the way you Indians put a knife in a man's back."

"Iss it Moy-eese, heem keel little boy?" asked Calamity softly.

Something in the soft hiss of the words made the Ranger turn. There
was a mad look in the glint of the black eyes, and the hands were
kneading nervously in and out of the palms.

"Yes, damn him, it is Moyese, who is at the bottom of all this
deviltry; but don't you worry, Calamity! We're going to get his scalp!"

He paced the Ridge half the night planning his campaign. He would go
first thing in the morning and get that child's story of the mine and
the "dummy" entryman. Then, he would get that Swede's affidavit before
the thick-tow-head realized what he was after. Then, he would get a
trained geologist for the examination of the mine, not that flannelled
kindergartner, stuck full of bureaucratic self importance as he was of
ignorance. Then, he would surprise them by doing absolutely nothing
till election time, then "plunk" it all on them through the opposition
paper, and stand back, and take his dismissal! Oh, his midnight
thoughts raced, as yours and mine have raced, when we have been struck
by sorrow, or blackmail, or motiveless malice! He could not make sure
of it; but once as he paced near the Ridge trail he thought he
saw . . . was it a form in flannels accompanied by a figure resembling
Bat's sauntering slowly down to the Valley?

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