The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

  VII

  THE REINS OF POWER

  For two weeks after, Michail Lafond, cut loose from the crippledwagon-train returning to Three Rivers, travelled westward by the sun,sleeping under the stars, living on bacon, coffee, and an occasionalbit of small game, drinking muddy water from buffalo wallows whichprovidential rains had filled. At the end of that time he was raidedby the Sioux. When they approached him, he led forward his two ponies,placed his rifle on the ground in front of their noses, unslung hispowder-horn and laid it beside the weapon, and stepped back, throwinghis arms wide apart. The Indians rode forward silently, a strange,naked band, whose fancy ran to chrome yellow, and took possession ofLafond and his equipment.

  The half-breed became a squaw man, and lived with these Indians forsome time. At first he was given drudgery to do. He did it, but kepthis eyes open, and learned the language. After a little his chancecame.

  The band captured a wagon-train, and massacred its men and women. Itfound itself in possession of fifty or sixty horses, half a score ofwagons, some provisions, and a goodly quantity of blankets, axes,utensils, and the rude necessities of life on the frontier. An Indiancannot possess too many ponies, he is always ready to eat, and blanketscome handy in winter; but he has absolutely no use for the rest of theplunder. So he usually puts a torch to the lot, and has a bonfire byway of celebration.

  On this occasion, Michail Lafond succeeded in getting Lone Wolf topostpone the bonfire, to lend him twenty ponies, and to detail to hisservice half as many squaws. The feat in itself was a mark of genius,as anyone who knows the Indian character will admit, and cost Michailmany of his newly learned words, put together with all of his nativeeloquence.

  The twenty ponies, driven by the ten squaws, drew the schooners andtheir contents to the Bad Lands, where Michail concealed them in aprecipitous gully of the deeply eroded sort so common in that strange,rainless district. Then he returned fifteen of the ponies to LoneWolf. Lone Wolf's band took up quarters within striking distance ofthe cached schooners.

  All this was done by Michail Lafond, and when it was completed he drewa long breath. He felt that the foundations of his influence werelaid. It was no light thing thus to have drawn self-willed savagesfrom their accustomed ways of life. He had done it only by vaguepromises of great benefits to accrue in the immediate future, saidbenefits to be "big medicine" in the extreme. Lone Wolf had ponderedmuch; had seen an opportune shooting star; had consented.

  A month later, a half-breed returned alone across the plains from thehill country. At Pierre he announced open trail. He had himself comethrough without the least trouble, he claimed, although he had seenmany Indians. This was strictly true. He went on to say that he wouldsell his outfit cheap, as he was anxious to go on east. The goldprospects were good. He had a partner squatting on several claims, towhom he would return the following year. He hinted mysteriously ofcapital to be invested and exhibited a small nugget of placer gold.Most of this was untrue, and the nugget he had found, not in the placerbeds, but in a small pasteboard box in one of the schooners.

  The outfit brought three hundred and fifty dollars, for the half-breedsold cheap. With this money and the horses he departed the dayfollowing.

  Michail was now richer by three hundred and fifty dollars and fivehorses than he had been before his capture by the Indians. Were it notfor two considerations, he might have decamped with the proceeds.Conscience was not one of them. In the first place, his Caucasianinstincts taught him to look ahead to larger things. In the secondplace, his Indian blood would not let him lose sight of certain bits ofsavagery he had in contemplation. So, instead of decamping, hepurchased with the money, in a town where he was unknown, five of thenew breech-loading rifles and nearly five thousand rounds ofammunition. His tale here was simple. The trail was _not_ open, and awagon-train was soon to attempt the task of opening it. He loaded themunitions on his five broncos, and joined Lone Wolf, who was outlyingnear at hand.

  In the course of the next six months a certain half-breed, with variousstores and outfits, was observed in several small towns on the borderof the frontier. In half of them he was headed east and sold hisoutfit; in the other half he was headed west and bought rifles. At theend of the year there remained no more schooners in the _cache_ of theBad Lands, but Lone Wolfs band was the best armed in all the West.Michail Lafond had let slip the chance of embezzling some thousands ofdollars, but he had gained what was much mere valuable to him--powerover an efficient band of fighting men, and the implicit confidence ofa tribe of Sioux Indians. He was respected and feared. His unseeninfluence was felt throughout the whole plains country.

  Lafond was too shrewd either to repeat his venture or to becomeidentified with the tribe. His influence, as has been said, was unseenand unsuspected. Lone Wolf's band was successful from the Indianstandpoint, pernicious from the white man's. That was all thatappeared on the outside. Lafond himself became a savage. He slept outwith little cover, and often rode with none at all. He ate dog andrattlesnake, when dog and rattlesnake happened to be on the bill offare. He carried a knife deep in the recess of a long, loose buckskinsheath; and from the ridge of his tepee hung five clotted horrors, tornfrom the heads of the victims of his personal prowess. The number ofthese might easily have been augmented, but Michail struck seldom inhis own person. When he did, not one of the victims escaped, for noman must have seen Michail, the savage. Michail, the civilized, wouldneed a clear field before him when once again he appeared in the towns.

  The life was fascinating to such as he. He loved it, but he did notforget his purposes. When at last he had gathered firmly the reins ofhis power, he shook them, and the twin steeds of Murder and Rapineswept destroyingly through the land.

  For the present there was peace on the plains. Wagon-trains cameacross the Pierre trail, or further down along South Fork. Custerexplored. White men settled in the Black Hills, in spite of thetreaty. The Indians hunted buffalo, and their wives made robes, andcut tepee poles from the valley of Iron Creek.

  But in spite of all the seeming tranquillity, the seeds of discord hadbeen sown broadcast, and Lafond, with his devilish cleverness ofinsight, could see that the struggle was not long to wait. Both sidesfelt aggrieved, and both sides had more than a show of reason forfeeling so. Perhaps, in the long run, this was an inevitable result ofthe advance of civilization; but it is a little unfortunate that theprovisional races must be set aside so summarily. That fact servesoccasionally to cast a doubt in reflective minds on the ultimatebenefit of the civilization.

  We who look upon our tamed country, or those plainsmen who haveperforce to struggle in the thick of the avenging troubles which followinjustice as surely as symptoms follow the disease, may not be able tosee the Indian's side of the question. We, the peaceful citizens,enjoy the security of policed cities and fenced prairies; and we areconvinced that it is worth the price. They, the pioneers, fight, andare maimed; they lose their worldly possessions, and theirheart-strings are twanged to the tuning of grief; and so they becomepartisans, to whom the old scriptural saying that "he who is not for meis against me" comes home with a sternness brewed of tears.

  But to those others who looked on from the height, to the men who satsafe, but moved the pawns on the board--to them there was a realjustice, and they infringed it; a real duty, and they failed it. Theyheld the whip hand and spared not the lash, and it shall be visitedunto them.

  Nearly fifty years ago, a Lieutenant Warren, at the head of a smallexploring party, approached the Black Hills. He was met near the SouthFork by a friendly but firm deputation of Sioux chiefs. Pah-sap-pahwas sacred. Pah-sap-pah must not be entered. All the rest of thecountry was open, by the courtesy of the red men, to their whitebrothers, but sacred land must not be profaned. Warren acquiesced, andcontented himself with ascertaining the general extent andconfiguration of the forbidden district. When, in the fulness of time,the government entered into treaty with these Indians, Warren's policywas continued,
and the Black Hills were, by a special clause, exemptedfrom white invasion forever. According to the Indians, the place wasthe abode of spirits, and each tree, each rock, each dell, had its ownespecial _manitou_ whom it were sacrilege to offend by the touch ofprofane hands.

  For many years the treaty was respected. Then a Pawnee brought intoone of the reservations a small quantity of gold dust, which heconfessed to have found in the Hills.

  The following spring, Custer, at the head of an expedition of onethousand two hundred men, entered into a long scout with the avowedpurpose of exploring the Black Hills for indications of gold. In thishe acted directly under his governmental orders. Thus was the treatyfirst broken.

  Next year the Hills were overrun with miners, illegal miners, just asthe troops had been with illegal explorers. They scattered through thewilderness in vast numbers, and about a hundred of them staked out,near the centre of the Southern Hills, a town which they named CusterCity. The irony was unconscious. What followed was farcical, and wasrelished as such by the participants. Bodies of troops were sent toenforce the treaty. Legally they did so. Although inferior in numbersto the miners, and no better armed, they succeeded several times insweeping all the trespassers together into one band. The lattersubmitted good-naturedly. The culprits were then turned over to civilauthority. Civil authority waited only for the disappearance of thetroops to set the miners at liberty; whereupon they scurried, as fastas their animals could carry them, back to the prospect-holes of theirchoice. It was all a huge joke, and everybody knew it.

  In the meantime the Indians were becoming restive. It may not be knownto the general reader, but it is a fact, that one of the strongestvirtues of the red man's character is his fidelity to his given word.A liar is, in his moral code, the most despised of men. He cannotconceive the possibility of broken faith, and there are recordedinstances wherein an Indian condemned to capital punishment has beenset free on his oral promise to return for his hanging; and he hasreturned. Therefore the Sioux could not understand the infraction ofthe treaty.

  They had viewed with alarm the scouting expedition by Custer. On theinvasion by the horde of miners, the following spring, an outbreak wasonly avoided by the prompt action of the troops in evicting thetrespassers; but now, this winter of 1875, the more sagacious of theIndian leaders were beginning to suspect the truth, namely, that theeviction had been nothing but a form, and that Pah-sap-pah, in spite ofthe treaty, was lost to them forever. Affairs were ripe for a greatIndian war; and, realizing this, the department set on foot Crook's andReynolds' unfortunate expedition toward the Big Horn.

  The savages at once began to gather under a famous chief, Sitting Bull.The storm rumbled, and Custer was despatched to effect a junction withhis brother officers somewhere north of the Hills.