CHAPTER VI
"SOMETHING ABOUT THESE GUYS"
West glared at Morse, his heavy chin outthrust, his bowed legs wideapart. "You've done run on the rope long enough with me, young feller.Here's where you take a fall hard."
The younger man said nothing. He watched, warily. Was it to be agun-play? Or did the big bully mean to manhandle him? Probably thelatter. West was vain of his reputation as a two-fisted fighter.
"I'm gonna beat you up, then turn you over to the Crees," theinfuriated man announced.
"You can't do that, West. He's a white man same as you," protestedStearns.
"This yore put-in, Brad?" West, beside himself with rage, swung on thelittle man and straddled forward a step or two threateningly.
"You done said it," answered the old-timer, falling back. "An' don'tyou come closter. I'm liable to get scared, an' you'd ought not toforget I'm as big as you behind a six-shooter."
"Here they come--like a swarm o' bees!" yelled Barney.
The traders forgot, for the moment, their quarrel in the need ofcommon action. West snatched up a rifle and dropped a bullet in frontof the nearest Indian. The warning brought the Crees up short. Theyheld a long consultation and one of them came forward making the peacesign.
In pigeon English he expressed their demands.
"He's gone--lit right out--stole one of our broncs. You can search thecamp if you've a mind to," West replied.
The envoy reported. There was another long pow-wow.
Brad, chewing tobacco complacently behind a wagon wheel, commentedaloud. "Can't make up their minds whether to come on an' massacree usor not. They got a right healthy fear of our guns. Don't blame 'em abit."
Some of the Crees were armed with bows and arrows, others with rifles.But the trade guns sold the Indians of the Northern tribes were of thepoorest quality.[4]
[Footnote 4: These flintlock muskets were inaccurate. They would notcarry far. Their owners were in constant danger of having fingers or ahand blown off in explosions. The price paid for these cheap firearmswas based on the length of them. The butt was put on the floor andthe gun held upright. Skins laid flat were piled beside it till theyreached the muzzle. The trader exchanged the rifle for the furs.(W.M.R.)]
The whites, to the contrary, were armed with the latest repeatingWinchesters. In a fight with them the natives were at a terribledisadvantage.
The Crees realized this. A delegation of two came forward to searchthe camp. West pointed out the tracks of the horse upon which theirtribal enemy had ridden away.
They grunted, "Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!"
Overbearing though he was, West was an embryonic diplomat. He filleda water-bucket with whiskey and handed it, with a tin cup, to thewrinkled old brave nearest him.
"For our friends the Crees," he said. "Tell your chief my youngman didn't understand. He thought he was rescuing a Cree from theBlackfeet."
"Ugh! Ugh!" The Indians shuffled away with their booty.
There was more talk, but the guttural protests died away before thetemptation of the liquor. The braves drank, flung a few shots inbravado toward the wagons, and presently took themselves off.
The traders did not renew their quarrel. West's reasons for notantagonizing the Morse family were still powerful as ever. He subduedhis desire to punish the young man and sullenly gave orders to hitchup the teams.
It was mid-afternoon when the oxen jogged into Whoop-Up. The post wasa stockade fort, built in a square about two hundred yards long, ofcottonwood logs dovetailed together. The buildings on each side ofthe plaza faced inward. Loopholes had been cut in the bastions as aprotection against Indians.
In the big stores was a large supply of blankets, beads, provisions,rifles, and clothing. The adjacent rooms were half-empty now, but inthe spring they would be packed to the eaves with thousands of buffalorobes and furs brought in from outlying settlements by hunters. Laterthese would be hauled to Fort Benton and from there sent down theMissouri to St. Louis and other points.
Morse, looking round, missed a familiar feature.
"Where's the liquor?" he asked.
"S-sh!" warned the clerk with whom he was talking. "Haven't you heard?There's a bunch of police come into the country from Winnipeg. Thelid's on tight." His far eye drooped to the cheek in a wise wink. "Ifyou've brought in whiskey, you'd better get it out of the fort andbury it."
"That's up to West. I wouldn't advise any police to monkey with acargo of his."
"You don't say." The clerk's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Well, I'lljust make a li'l' bet with you. If the North-West Mounted start toarrest Bully West or to empty his liquor-kegs, they'll go rightthrough with the job. They're go-getters, these red-coats are."
"Red-coats? Not soldiers, are they?"
"Well, they are and they ain't. They're drilled an' in companies. Butthey can arrest any one they've a mind to, and their officers can tryand sentence folks. They don't play no favorites either. Soon as theyhear of this mix-up between the Crees and the Blackfeet they'll beright over askin' whyfors, and if they find who gave 'em the boozesome one will be up to the neck in trouble and squawkin' for help."
West had been talking in whispers with Reddy Madden, the owner of theplace. He stepped to the door.
"Don't onhook, Brad. We're travelin' some more first," he called toStearns.
The oxen plodded out of the stockade and swung to the left. A guiderode beside West and Morse. He was Harvey Gosse, a whiskey-runnerknown to both of them. The man was a long, loose-limbed fellow with ashrewd eye and the full, drooping lower lip of irresolution. It hadbeen a year since either of the Fort Benton men had been in thecountry. Gosse told them of the change that was taking place in it.
"Business ain't what it was, an' that ain't but half of it," the lankrider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. Thesehere red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed,whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle o' yoreneck right away."
"How many of these--what is it you call 'em, Mounted Police?--well,how many of 'em are there in the country?" asked West.
"Not so many. I reckon a hundred or so, far as I've heard tell."
West snorted scornfully. "And you're lettin' this handful oftenderfeet buffalo you! Hell's hinges! Ain't none of you got anyguts?"
Gosse dragged slowly a brown hand across an unshaven chin. "I reckonyou wouldn't call 'em tenderfeet if you met up with 'em, Bully.There's something about these guys--I dunno what it is exactly--butthere's sure something that tells a fellow not to prod 'em overlymuch."
"Quick on the shoot?" the big trader wanted to know.
"No, it ain't that. They don't hardly ever draw a gun. They jest walkin kinda quiet an' easy, an' tell you it'll be thisaway. And tha's theway it is every crack outa the box."
"Hmp!" West exuded boastful incredulity. "I reckon they haven't bumpedinto any one man-size yet."
The lank whiskey-runner guided the train, by winding draws, into thehills back of the post. Above a small gulch, at the head of it, theteams were stopped and unloaded. The barrels were rolled downhill intothe underbrush where they lay cached out of sight. From here theywould be distributed as needed.
"You boys'll take turn an' turn about watching till I've sold thecargo," West announced. "Arrange that among yoreselves. Tom, I'll letyou fix up how you'll spell each other. Only thing is, one of you hasto be here all the time, y' understand."
Morse took the first watch and was followed by Stearns, who in turngave place to Barney. The days grew to a week. Sometimes West appearedwith a buyer in a cart or leading a pack-horse. Then the cachedfire-water would be diminished by a keg or two.
It was a lazy, sleepy life. There was no need for a close guard.Nobody knew where the whiskey was except themselves and a fewtight-mouthed traders. Morse discovered in himself an inordinatecapacity for sleep. He would throw himself down on the warm, sundriedgrass and fall into a doze almost instantly. When the rays of the sungrew too hot, it was easy to roll over into th
e shade of the draw.He could lie for hours on his back after he wakened and watchcloud-skeins elongate and float away, thinking of nothing or lettingthoughts happen in sheer idle content.
He had never had a girl, to use the word current among his fellows.His scheme of life would, he supposed, include women by and by, buthitherto he had dwelt in a man's world, in a universe of space andsunshine and blowing wind, under primitive conditions that made fortough muscles and a clean mind trained to meet frontier emergencies.But now, to his disgust, he found slipping into his reveries picturesof a slim, dark girl, arrow-straight, with eyes that held for him onlyscorn and loathing. The odd thing about it was that when his brain wasbusy with her a strange exultant excitement tingled through his veins.
One day a queer thing happened. He had never heard of psychicphenomena or telepathy, but he opened his eyes from a day-dream of herto see Jessie McRae looking down at him.
She was on an Indian cayuse, round-bellied and rough. Very erect shesat, and on her face was the exact expression of scornful hatred hehad seen in his vision of her.
He jumped to his feet. "You--here!"
A hot color flooded her face with anger to the roots of the hair.Without a word, without another glance at him, she laid the bridlerein to the pony's neck and swung away.
Unprotesting, he let her go. The situation had jumped at him toounexpectedly for him to know how to meet it. He stood, motionless, thered light in his eyes burning like distant camp-fires in the night.For the first time in his life he had been given the cut direct by awoman.
Yet she wasn't a woman after all. She was a maid, with that passionatesense of tragedy which comes only to the very young.
It was in his mind to slap a saddle on his bronco and ride after her.But why? Could he by sheer dominance of will change her opinion ofhim? She had grounded it on good and sufficient reasons. He wasassociated in her mind with the greatest humiliation of her life, withthe stinging lash that had cut into her young pride and her buoyantcourage as cruelly as it had into her smooth, satiny flesh. Was itlikely she would listen to any regrets, any explanations? Her hatredof him was not a matter for argument. It was burnt into her soul aswith a red-hot brand. He could not talk away what he had done or thething that he was.
She had come upon him by chance while he was asleep. He guessed thatAngus McRae's party had reached Whoop-Up and had stopped to buysupplies and perhaps to sell hides and pemmican. The girl had probablyridden out from the stockade to the open prairie because she loved toride. The rest needed no conjecture. In that lone land of vast spacestravelers always exchanged greetings. She had discovered him lyingin the grass. He might be sick or wounded or dead. The custom of thecountry would bring her straight across the swales toward him to findout whether he needed help.
Then she had seen who he was--and had ridden away.
A sardonic smile of self-mockery stamped for a moment on his brownboyish face the weariness of the years.
Man-Size Page 6