Chapter XIII: Captain Bill as a Tree-man

THE LOST DROVE OF LAZARUS. A PILGRIM ON A "PAINT HOSS". A NEW WAY OF GETTING INFORMATION IN THE "STRIP"

Meanwhile, the ranch on Wanderer's Creek had suffered. Compelled to be absent most of the time, McDonald was unable to give his herd personal protection, and now and again bunches of his cattle were driven off by outlaws from across the border. His brave wife, facing the problem of the wilderness with only a few hired helpers, did her best, but was not always able to prevent these raids. The thieves would seem to have taken especial delight in watching for the times when Deputy Bill was absent and then descending on his herds, mainly for the booty, no doubt, but also by way of retaliation. It was a dangerous thing for them to do, and though they were certain to pay for it in the end; the double temptation of profit and revenge was not to be resisted.

But while the ranch did not prosper, its owner was in no immediate danger of bankruptcy. With his success in breaking up the gangs in Hardeman and adjoining counties, and in No-man's Land, McDonald's fame had grown amazingly. As a thief-taker he was regarded as a past-master. That an outlaw could neither intimidate nor elude him, and that when he was feeling well he could whip any number of them single-handed, before breakfast, was the current belief. The Cattle-men's Association--a combination of law abiding ranchmen, one of the strongest organizations ever known--invited his special attention to their herds and contributed a monthly acknowledgement of one hundred and fifty dollars, which with his numerous fees made his income an ample one--often as large as five hundred dollars a month--sometimes double this amount.

Among the members of the association was Sam Lazarus, who was with Bull Turner when he was shot by the Brookens, and who came into town on the whiffletrees, undamaged, but a good deal shaken up as to nerves. Soon after McDonald's arrangement with the cattlemen, Lazarus was sending a herd of perhaps a thousand head into Kansas, driving them across the Territory. Pat Wolforth, whose name may also be recalled in connection with the Brookens, was in charge of this herd, and when just beyond the Territory line, in a very lonely district, met with misfortune. One evening near nightfall the cattle suddenly became frightened, doubtless through some device of the outlaws, and Wolforth and his men found it impossible to control them. A general stampede followed and Lazarus's cattle were scattered over the prairies and through the fastnesses of the Strip--a prey to the spoilers lying in wait on every hand. It was a heavy disaster and there seemed little hope of much in the way of recovery. The spring round-up might gather in a few stragglers, but for the most part the herds of Lazarus were believed to be beyond all hope of restoration.

Bill McDonald took no such view of the situation. With Pat Wolforth he immediately visited the scene of the stampede, and began looking for cattle with the "Diamond-tail" brand, such being the symbol of the Lazarus herd. It was a ticklish undertaking. Some of the cattle had been butchered, and these of course were lost. Others had been absorbed by the herds of men who though not regularly engaged in cow stealing were in nowise particular as to whose cows they got and welcomed anything that browsed unguarded on the range. Still others had been collected in "pockets"--small gullies or canyons--where they were retired from general circulation, guarded, as a rule, by one or two ostensible cowboys.

McDonald began by prevailing upon the honest ranchmen in that section to join at once in a general round-up by which means a great number of cattle could be collected and distributed to their rightful owners. The result was fairly satisfactory and a good many of Lazarus's cattle were recovered, though not always without disputes and a display of fire-arms, especially where the brands had been grown over by the long winter-coat of hair. Such cases were settled first and tried afterward. In other words, McDonald and Wolforth possessed themselves of the cattle and then at their leisure "picked the brand," which is the range idiom for picking the hair from around the brand with a pocket-knife, so the brand may be seen. If the brand proved to be other than that of the Lazarus herd, the cattle were turned over to their true owners. When the round-up was over the cow-hunters took up the search in other directions.

It mattered little to McDonald and Wolforth where they found the Diamond-tail brand--they took the cattle, peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary. They conducted the campaign with an enthusiasm and vigor which did not invite argument. Large herds they searched without ceremony and if any cattle of their brand were found, they were "cut out" with few formalities and with scant courtesy. When they came upon bunches of the Diamond-tail brand in secluded places, they did not pause to present any credentials except their Winchesters which they carried always ready for instant action, and set out at once with the cattle; also, sometimes, with the astonished cowboys as well. It was a sudden and energetic procedure and resulted in the recovery of the greater number of the lost drove of Lazarus.

It resulted further in a definite plan by Bill McDonald for the discouragement of cattle stealing in the Territory, and for the capture of the most actively engaged in that industry. As set down in a foregoing chapter, the outlaws in the Cherokee Strip were not likely to be congregated in a single rendezvous, as had been the case in No-man's Land, but were scattered as individual squatters through neighborhoods more or less friendly to their business, or at least not bold enough openly to oppose it. Indeed, the back country was very sparsely settled, and the Indians and half-breed whites and negroes were not especially interested in law and order, even where they were not directly concerned in opposing these things. Along the rivers--the Cimmaron, the Canadian, the Washita and the North Fork of the Red River, the country was rugged, and the hiding places for plunder were good. The prairies were nice and level with fine land and plentiful grass. White men had no legal right of residence there, except where they were intermarried with the Indians, and those who acquired citizenship in this manner were not likely to be any more desirable than those others whose occupation was itself an infringement on the law.

"Did they raise anything there, Bill?" McDonald was asked in discussing the conditions, long afterward.

"Just raised hell!" the old Ranger answered drily.

Nearly all, however, made a pretense of agricultural employments; for after all, the country, unlike No-man's Land, was really under a regular form of government; legitimate settlement was considerable, and there was a semblance, at least, of law and order. Also, there were towns of considerable size, and railroads--the latter affording liberal returns now and then when some train was waited upon in a lonely place and the express messengers, mail agents and passengers were invited at the point of six-shooters to contribute to a highway development fund. The writer of these chapters was himself a resident of Kansas during this earlier period, and he recalls now what an uninteresting month it was when an M.K. & T. or Santa Fe or Rock Island train did not come up out of the Territory with passengers telegraphing home for money and the express and mail cars full of bullet holes.

Bill McDonald decided to break up this sort of thing, and set about it in a way suggested by his own peculiar genius. It was necessary first to identify the men who were really concerned in these various employments, for in a country where all were "settlers," even if unofficial ones, it was not worth while working at hap-hazard and bothering men whose only offense might be that of squatting. Investigation must be conducted openly and yet in a way to avoid suspicion. His gentle manner and seemingly inoffensive personality suited him for just such an undertaking, and he prepared and "made up" carefully for the part.

Returning to Quanah and Wanderer's Creek, he bought a "paint horse" (a spotted pony); an old tenderfoot saddle, such as a plainsman would never use, and a book with pretty pictures of fruit in it--a regular nurseryman's plate-book--the kind of a book fruit-tree salesmen always carry. Then dressed as unlike an officer, or a cow-man, or a Texan as possible, with these properties he set out--to all appearances a genial, garrulous, easy-going tree-man, inviting orders and confidences--willing to sit around all day and whittle and swap knives and yarns, and to express any kind of interest or sympathy necessary to encourage a man to tell his business ventures and those of his neighbors.

It was a pleasant excursion, enough. No fruit-tree man had been through that section before--none ever had dared, or perhaps thought it worth while, to go. McDonald's excursion proved that profit awaited the seller of trees who should first make that wilderness his territory. He had expected not much in the way of sales, for he did not imagine that men engaged in driving off and slaughtering other men's cattle, and in waylaying trains and robbing banks would have any special taste for horticulture. This was an error of judgment. Most of these bad men had been fairly good boys at home at some time in the past, and the sight of those luminous plates presenting fruit of extravagant size and coloring, made their mouths fairly water at the thought of its cultivation by the doorway of their own dug-outs or sod houses or log cabins. They turned the pages lovingly, and lingered over the wonderful plums and pears and peaches, and as they turned they talked and somehow almost without realizing it they told a great many things about themselves and neighbors which no well-trained and properly constructed outlaw should tell, even to a sympathetic and simple-hearted fruit-tree man who wrote down the orders and listened and chuckled at some of the yarns, while he encouraged further confidences.

He would drift around presently to his customer's former place of residence, and to the reason for his leaving. It was easy enough for an alert tree-man to detect a lack of complete frankness in the replies, especially if the reason had "something about a cow or horse" in it, that being the usual first admission that the isolation of the Strip had been found congenial for other reasons than those connected with its soil and climate. The tree-man did not hesitate to give a generous return for any such confidences, inventing on the spot some of his own for the purpose. The number and character of crimes he confessed to having been accused of in the States would be worth recording in this history if they could be remembered now. But, alas, like other gay bubbles, they were blown only to charm for the moment, and once vanished cannot be recalled. The tree-man would then fall to abusing laws in general and the men who enforced them, and end by declaring that he was mightily in love with that particular section and would stay where there was little or no chance of meeting any of those obnoxious officials, if the boys would consider him one of them and all stand together in time of trouble. Talk like this would open the door for anything. The rest of the interview was likely to run something as follows:

Picture: Two men seated on a log, or down on the grass cowboy style, in front of a dug-out; one the slim, mild-looking tree-man; the other a burly person, very dirty, hairy and unkempt, bent over a large book of gay pictures which the tree-man leans forward to explain. Nearby, two horses are grazing, the "paint-hoss" with the old tenderfoot saddle and saddle-bags; the other a very good looking animal, often saddled and bridled for prompt use.

"By gum," nods the big burly individual, staring at a picture of such peaches as grow only in paradise, "eating peaches like them would be like holdin' up the Santa Fe express."

"That's what," assents the salesman gayly, "regular picnic all the time. I s'pose you fellers in here have money to throw at the birds after that kind of a job."

"Well, not so much after all. Too many have to have a piece out of it. Everybody wants to help. It has to be a pretty big basket of money to cut in two more'n twice and leave enough to pay."

The salesman shows a sympathetic interest.

"Of course," he agrees, "it's too bad to spoil a good bunch of money by making little piles of it. I guess you have to have a good many though for a job like that."

"No, two _can_ do it, an' there ain't no need of more'n three. One to take care of the engineer, another to pull down on the passengers and the other man to go through 'em. It's plum easy. They give up like sinners at a camp-meetin', and the messengers and mail fellers come down pretty easy, too. If they don't we put a few shots through their cars and that fetches 'em."

"But you had to kill the messenger in that Rock Island job, last fall."

"Well, I wasn't in that mess--that was another outfit. Them boys are huntin' trouble and 'll find it some day, good an' plenty. When I put a job through, the' ain't nobody going to get killed unless they commit reg'lar suicide. You ought to come down here an' go in with _me_. You've got a persuadin' way about you that would make a man give up anything he had and thank you for takin' it. It 'ud pay yeh better, I reckon, than ridin' a paint-hoss over the country, peddlin' trees. That reminds me--you c'n give me six o' them peaches, an' a few o' them pears an' plums an' a couple o' cherry-trees and some grape-vines--the big yaller ones--Niagaries, I think you said they was."

And this was the drift of more than one conversation between the Cherokee agriculturists and the genial tree-man who certainly did have a "persuadin' way" in making a man give up anything he had, in the way of information. No one could dream that this inoffensive mild-eyed pilgrim on a paint-hoss could ever make trouble in that wilderness of lawless living and of desperate men.

So for several weeks the tree-man on his paint-horse with his old tenderfoot saddle and his picture-book loitered up through the Strip and on over into the Territory, on the surface taking orders for spring delivery, and beneath it all locating the different communities of offenders; the individuals of the same; stolen cattle and horses, and securing data of particular crimes. He ended his canvass at Guthrie, a busy frontier point on the Santa Fe, with twenty-five hundred dollars worth of orders for trees--trees which might be bearing to this day if the spring deliveries had been made as planned.