Somehow Agnes felt grateful toward Smith, whose charitable purpose doubtless was to prevent her being taken in. But she was sorry for the fine tradition and hated to give it up.
“But didn’t one ever jump off a cliff or–anything?” she asked.
Smith struck out with a free-arm swing and cracked his whip so loudly that three female heads were at once protruded from the windows below.
“What I want to know,” said he argumentatively, “is, who seen ’em jump?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted; “but I suppose they found their bodies.”
“Don’t you believe it!” depreciated Smith. “Indian maidens ain’t the jumpin’ kind. I never seen one of ’em in my day that wouldn’t throw down the best feller she ever had for a red umbreller and a dime’s worth of stick candy.”
“I’m sorry for the nice stories your knowledge of the Indian character spoils,” she laughed.
“The thing of it in this country is, miss, not to let ’em take you in,” Smith continued. “That’s what they’re out for–to take in suckers. No matter how wise you may be in some other place, right here in this spot you may be a sucker. Do you git my words?”
“I think so,” she responded, “and thank you. I’ll try to keep my eyes open.”
“They’s places in this country,” Smith went on, for he liked to talk as well as the next one, once he got under way, “where you could put your pocketbook down at the fork of the road with your card on top of it and go back there next week and find it O. K. But they’s other places where if you had your money inside of three safes they’d git at it somehow. This is one of that kind of places.”
They had been dropping down a slope scattered with gray lava chunks and set with spiked soapweed, which let them to the river level. Ahead of them, twisted cottonwoods and red willows marked the brink of the stream.
“This is the first bench,” said Smith, “and it’s mainly good land. Before the books was opened for registration the gover’ment give the Indians choice of a homestead apiece, and they picked off all this land down here. Oh, well, on up the river they’s a little left, and if I draw a low number I know where to put my hand on a piece.”
“It looks nice and green here,” said she, admiring the feathery vegetation, which grew as tall as the stage along the roadway.
“Yes, but you want to watch out for greasewood,” advised Smith, “when you come to pick land in this country. It’s a sign of alkali. Pick that gray, dusty-lookin’ stuff. That’s sage, and where it grows big, anything’ll grow when you git the water on it.”
“But how do you get the water on this hilly land?” she asked.
The question had been troubling her ever since she had taken her first look at the country, and nobody had come forward with a satisfactory explanation.
“You got to go up the river till you strike your level,” explained Smith, “and then you tap it and take the water to your land.”
“But if you’re on the ‘third bench’ that I hear them talking about so much–then what do you do up there, a thousand or two feet above the river?”
“You go back where you come from if you’re wise,” said Smith.
When they reached the section which, according to Smith, had not all been taken up by the Indians already, the party got out occasionally for closer inspection of the land. The men gravely trickled the soil through their fingers, while the women grabbed at the sweet-smelling herbs which grew in abundance everywhere, and tore their sleeves reaching for the clusters of bullberries, then turning red.
Dr. Slavens and William Bentley tried for fish, with a total catch between them of one small trout, which was carried in triumph to the place picked upon by Smith for the noonday camp. Smith would not trust the coffee to any hand but his own, and he blackened up the pot shamefully, Mrs. Reed declared.
But what did Smith care for the criticism of Mrs. Reed when he was making coffee for Agnes? What did he care, indeed, for the judgment of the whole world when he was laying out his best efforts to please the finest woman who ever sat beside him on the box, and one for whom he was ready to go any distance, and do any endeavors, to save her from being made a sucker of and taken in and skinned?
It was pleasant there by the river; so pleasant that there was not one of them but voted Wyoming the finest and most congenial spot in the world, with the kindest skies, the softest summer winds, and the one place of all places for a home.
“Yes,” Smith remarked, tossing pebbles into the river from the place where he sat cross-legged on the ground with his pipe, “it takes a hold of you that way. It goes to twenty below in the winter, sometimes, and the wind blows like the plug had popped out of the North Pole, and the snow covers up the sheep on the range and smothers ’em, and you lose all you got down to the last chaw of t’backer. But you stick, some way, and you forgit you ever had a home back in Indiana, where strawberries grow.”
“Why, don’t they grow here?” asked the miller’s wife, holding a bunch of red bullberries caressingly against her cheek.
“I ain’t seen a natural strawberry in fourteen years,” said Smith, more proud than regretful, as if such a long abstinence were a virtue.
“Natural?” repeated Mrs. Reed. “Surely you don’t mean that they manufacture them here?”
“They send ’em here in cans,” explained Smith, “pale, with sour water on ’em no more like real, ma’am, than a cigarette’s like a smoke.”
The men with pipes chuckled their appreciation of the comparison. Horace Bentley, with a fresh cigarette–which he had taken out of a silver case–in his fingers, turned it, quizzically smiling as he struck a match.
“It’s an imitation,” said he; “but it’s good enough for me.”
The sun was slanting near the rough hills beyond the river when they started back to Comanche.
“You’ve seen the best of the reservation,” explained Smith, “and they ain’t no earthly use in seein’ the worst of it.”
They were well along on the way, passing through a rough and outcast stretch of country, where upheaved ledges stood on edge, and great blocks of stone poised menacingly on the brows of shattered cliffs, when Smith, who had been looking sharply ahead, pulled in suddenly and turned to Agnes with apologetic questioning in his eyes. It seemed to her that he had something on his mind which he was afraid to put into words.
“What is it, Mr. Smith?” she asked.
“I was just goin’ to say, would you mind goin’ inside and lettin’ that doctor man take your place for a while?”
Smith doubtless had his reason, she thought, although it hurt her pride that he should withhold his confidence. But she yielded her place without further questioning, with a great amount of blushing over the stocking which a protruding screwhead was responsible for her showing to Dr. Slavens as he assisted her to the ground.
The sudden stop, the excitement incident to changing places, threw the women within the coach into a cackle.
“Is it robbers?” demanded Mrs. Reed, getting hold of June’s hand and clinging to it protectingly as she put her head out and peered up at Smith, who was sitting there stolidly, his eyes on the winding trail ahead, his foot on the brake.
“No, ma’am,” answered Smith, not looking in her direction at all.
“What is it, then?” quavered Mrs. Mann from the other side of the stage.
She could not see Smith, and the desolation of their surroundings set her fancy at work stationing dusty cowboy bandits behind each riven, lowering stone.
“Oh, I hope it’s robbers!” said June, bouncing up and down in her seat. “That would be just fine!”
“Hush, hush!” commanded her mother, shaking her correctively. “Such a wicked wish!”
Milo Strong, the teacher from Iowa, had grown very pale. He buttoned his coat and kept one hand in the region of his belt. One second he peered wildly out of the windows on his side, the next he strained to see if devastation and ruin were approaching from the other.
; “Smith doubtless had some very commonplace reason for making the change,” said William Bentley, making room for Agnes beside him. “I expect Miss Horton talked too much.”
With that the stage started and their fears subsided somewhat. On the box Smith was looking sharply at the doctor. Then he asked:
“Can you drive better than you can shoot, or shoot better than you can drive?”
“I guess it’s about a stand-off,” replied the doctor without a ripple of excitement; “but I was brought up with four mules.”
Without another word Smith stood on the footboard, and Dr. Slavens slid along to his place. Smith handed the physician the lines and took the big revolver from its pocket by the seat.
“Two fellers on horseback,” said he, keeping his eyes sharply on the boulder-hedged road, “has been dodgin’ along the top of that ridge kind of suspicious. No reason why any honest man would want to ride along up there among the rocks when he could ride down here where it’s smooth. They may be straight or they may be crooked. I don’t know. But you meet all kinds along this road.”
The doctor nodded. Smith said no more, but stood, one knee on the seat, with his pistol held in readiness for instant action. When they reached the top of the ridge nobody was in sight, but there were boulders enough, and big enough, on every hand to conceal an army. Smith nodded; the doctor pulled up.
The stage had no sooner stopped than Walker was out, his pistol in hand, ready to show June and all her female relatives so dear that he was there to stand between them and danger as long as their peril might last.
Smith looked around carefully.
“Funny about them two fellers!” he muttered.
From the inside of the stage came June’s voice, raised in admiration of Mr. Walker’s intrepidity, and her mother’s voice, commanding her to be silent, and not draw down upon them the fury of the bandits, who even then might be taking aim at them from behind a rock.
Nobody appearing, between whom and June he might precipitate himself, Walker mounted a rock for a look around. He had no more than reached the top when the two horsemen who had caused the flurry rode from behind the house-size boulder which had hidden them, turned their backs, crouching in their saddles as if to hide their identity, and galloped off.
“Huh! Old Hun Shanklin’s one of ’em,” sniffed Smith, plainly disgusted that the affair had turned out so poorly.
He put his weapon back in its place and took the lines.
“And that feller, he don’t have to go around holdin’ people up with a gun in his hand,” he added. “He’s got a safer and surer game of it than that.”
“And that’s no cross-eyed view of it, either,” Dr. Slavens agreed.
Walker came over and stood beside the near wheel.
“One of them was Hun Shanklin!” said he, whispering up loudly for the doctor’s ear, a look of deep concern on his youthful face.
Slavens nodded with what show of unconcern he could assume. For, knowing what he knew, he wondered what the gambler was there for, and why he seemed so anxious to keep the matter of his identity to himself.
When they arrived at Comanche the sun was down. Mrs. Reed hurried June indoors, all exclamations and shudders over what she believed to have been a very narrow escape. Vowing that she never would go exploring around in that wild land again, she whisked off without a word for Smith.
The others shook hands with the driver, Agnes coming last. He took off his hat when it came her turn.
“Keep your eyes skinned,” he advised her, “and don’t let ’em play you for a sucker. Any time you need advice, or any help that I can give you, if I’m not here I’m on the road between here and Meander. You can git me over there by telephone.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smith,” said she warmly and genuinely, wondering why he should take such an unaccountable interest in her.
The others had gone about their business, thinking strongly of supper, leaving Smith and her alone beside the old green stage.
“But don’t ask for Smith if you call me up,” said he, “for that’s only my first name, and they’s a horse-wrangler over there with that for his last. They might think you wanted him.”
“Oh, I didn’t know!” she stammered, all confusion over the familiarity that she had been taking all day. “I didn’t know your other name–nobody ever told me.”
“No; not many of ’em down here knows it,” he responded. “But up at Meander, at the barn, they know it. It’s Phogenphole.”
“Oh!”
“But if you don’t like it,” added Smith, speaking with great fervor, and leaning toward her a little eagerly and earnestly, “I’ll have a bill put through the Legislature down at Cheyenne and change it!”
They ate supper that evening by lantern-light, with the night noise of Comanche beginning to rise around them earlier than usual. Those who were there for the reaping realized that it would be their last big night, for on the morrow the drawing would fall. After the first day’s numbers had been taken from the wheel at Meander, which would run up into the thousands, the waiting crowds would melt away from Comanche as fast as trains could carry them. So those who were on the make had both hands out in Comanche that night.
They all wondered how it would turn out for them, the lumberman and the insurance agent–who had not been of the party that day in Smith’s coach–offering to lay bets that nobody in the mess would draw a number below five hundred. There were no takers. Then they offered to bet that all in the mess would draw under five hundred. Mrs. Reed rebuked them for their gambling spirit, which, she said, was rampant in Comanche, like a plague.
* * *
CHAPTER VI
THE DRAWING
As has been previously said, one must go fast and far to come to a place where there is neither a Hotel Metropole nor a newspaper. Doubtless there are communities of civilized men on the North American continent where there is neither, but Comanche was not one of them.
In Comanche the paper was a daily. Its editor was a single-barreled grafter who wore a green mohair coat and dyed whiskers. His office and establishment occupied an entire twelve-by-sixteen tent; the name of the paper was The Chieftain.
The Chieftain had been one of the first enterprises of Comanche. It got there ahead of the first train, arriving in a wagon, fully equipped. The editor had an old zinc cut of a two-storied brick business house on a corner, which he had run with a grocery-store advertisement when he was getting out a paper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This he now made use of with impressive effect and inspiring display of his cheerful confidence in his own future and that of the town where, like a blowing seed of cottonwood, he had found lodgment.
He ran this cut in every issue at the top of what would have been his editorial column if there had been time for him to write one, with these words:
FUTURE HOME OF The Chieftain ON THE
CORNER THIS PAPER NOW OCCUPIES,
AS DESIGNED BY THE EDITOR AND
OWNER, J. WALTER MONG
From the start that Editor Mong was making in Comanche his dream did not appear at all unreasonable. Everybody in the place advertised, owing to some subtle influence of which Mr. Mong was master, and which is known to editors of his brand wherever they are to be found. If a business man had the shield of respectability to present to all questioners, he advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents; and so he advertised out of expediency.
That being the way matters stood, The Chieftain carried very little but advertisements. They paid better than news, and news could wait its turn, said the editor, until he settled down steadily into a weekly and had room for it.
But Mr. Mong laid himself out to give the returns from the drawing for homesteads, it being one of those rare chances in which an editor could combine business and news without putting on an extra form. The headquarters of the United States land-office for that territory being at Meander, the drawing was to take place there. Meande
r was sixty miles farther along, connected with the railroad and Comanche by stage and telephone. So, every hour of the eventful day, Editor Mong was going to issue an extra on telephonic information from the seat of the drawing.
On the day of the drawing, which came as clear and bright as the painted dreams of those who trooped Comanche’s streets, there remained in the town, after the flitting entrants had come and gone, fully thirty thousand expectant people. They were those in whom the hope of low numbers was strong. For one drawing a low number must make his selection of land and file on it at Meander within a few days.
In the case of the first number, the lucky drawer would have but three days to make his selection and file on it. If he lapsed, then Number Two became Number One, and all down the line the numbers advanced one.
So, in case that the winner of Number One had registered and gone home to the far East or the middle states, he couldn’t get back in time to save his valuable chance. That gave big hope to those who expected nothing better than seven or nine or something under twenty. Three or four lapses ahead of them would move them along, each peg adding thousands to their winnings, each day running out for them in golden sands.
By dawn the streets were filled by early skirmishers for breakfast, and sunrise met thousands more who, luggage in hand, talked and gesticulated and blocked the dusty passages between the unstable walls of that city of chance, which soon would come down and disappear like smoke from a wayside fire. The thousands with their bags in hand would not sleep another night beneath its wind-restless roofs. All those who expected to draw Claim Number One were ready to take the stage or hire a special conveyance to Meander, or, failing of their expectations in the lottery, to board the special trains which the railroad had made ready, and leave for home.
By nine o’clock it seemed to the waiting throngs that several ordinary days had passed since they left their sagging canvas cots at daybreak to stand attendant upon the whim of chance. They gathered in the blazing sun in front of the office of the paper, looking in at Editor Mong, who seemed more like a quack doctor that morning than ever before, with his wrinkled coat-sleeves pushed above his elbows and his cuffs tucked back over them, his black-dyed whiskers gleaming in shades of green when the sun hit them, like the plumage of a crow.
Claim Number One Page 6