Chapter XVI: A New Land of Canaan 125 (3)

No conquered general in the history of the world ever met the conqueror with haughtier mien than did Two Strikes, the untutored savage, chief of the hostile band, when he made his formal surrender to General Miles. Followed by half a dozen lesser chiefs, he strode majestically toward the agency school building in front of which stood General Miles and aides waiting to receive him. His magnificent form was erect, his head, proudly decked with the eagle feather, was thrown slightly back, while every muscle of his face was as tense as steel. His warrior robes were draped about his shoulders, while his arms were folded across a carbine upon his breast. With measured tread he approached and halted in front of General Miles and met the mild blue eye of that warrior with black, piercing eyes that fairly blazed fire. Steadily the two men gazed at each other for more than a minute. The muscles of the Indian’s face twitched and the proud lips essayed to speak--as though he would hurl a torrent of defiance and hatred into the conqueror’s face. With one swift movement he laid the carbine at the general’s feet, stood erect another instant gazing with defiant eyes--and strode away to join his people.

XIII.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE LOST MINE.

In 1879, Capt. Charles Watt and Irwin Baker built a cabin in a gulch some miles distant from where Cripple Creek now stands. Baker had in his possession samples of very rich gold-bearing ore which he claimed to have brought from Arizona, where he and a Mexican had been driven out by Indians, as their reservation at that time extended over that region of country. The Mexican afterwards died of wounds received in the fight, and Baker was the sole possessor of the secret of the mine. He would sit for hours and tell how they had dug the white quartz which was threaded and beaded with strings of gold, and hoarded vast quantities of it under a great shelving rock which bore evidence of having at one time been the home of the Cliff Dwellers. And how he had carefully made a map of the country and intended when the Indian troubles were over to hire a sufficient force of men and burros to go there and bring away enough of the treasure to fix him in comfortable circumstances for the rest of his life. He often spoke of the map which he kept carefully concealed among his effects, which consisted of a valise and some mining tools.

In the fall of 1879 Baker concluded to make a trip to Leadville, which was then in the height of prosperity, and taking his rifle, blankets, and a few days’ rations, set out on foot. He reached Leadville safely, and a few days later died of pneumonia. As no one claimed the few chattels, including the valise, which Baker left behind, Captain Watt as a matter of course took them. He searched everywhere for the map by which Baker set so much store, and not finding it, concluded it was concealed about his clothing and had been doubtless buried with him. And so years passed on, but the straight story the man had so often told around the cabin fire in the silence of night, was never forgotten by Watt, who, in the lonely hours among the towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains, had thought of it a thousand times.

But one day, the hand of Fate and Chance took a part.

Captain Watt needed a strip of leather. There was none to be found. Finally, his eye rested upon the old valise which had once been the property of Irwin Baker, which had tumbled about prospectors’ cabins for the last ten years. It was worn out, but the sides would make the strip of leather the captain wanted. The first slash of his knife revealed between the outside and the lining a folded sheet of paper, yellowed with age, and a closer examination proved it to be the carefully prepared map which Irwin Baker had concealed ten years before. The lines were drawn with the skill of a civil engineer, and the places so plainly marked that a party instantly formed, believed they would have no difficulty in going straight to the lost mine.

Three others, myself and Captain Baker staked our time and money on the venture, and another month found us in the country called Coconino in Arizona through which the Colorado River crosses with many a curve and twist. It lies in the northern part of the great Colorado plateau and west of the Moqui country.

John Bowden, a young civil engineer, was one of our party. He had studied at Ann Arbor and also at the University of Minnesota. His field work covered about five years prior to joining us. He was not familiar with the Southwest, its climate and peculiar topography, but others of the party were, and in view of his knowledge of civil engineering he was considered a valuable man to us.

The sun shines in Coconino. It hangs day after day above Lava Butte, the Painted Desert, Shinumo Altar, and the Black Falls, as if it were a destroying angel, not the kindly orb that flashes in the northern belt, but a consuming, terrifying demon of the desert wastes from which there is no escape. Those who toil in the city’s ways think the sun is hot, that the humidity is deadly, that pain such as theirs is unknown. They have never looked up to the solar star from the buttes of Coconino. There, blazing through the century-dried air all that is inhuman in stellar heat feeds upon the brain, the senses of man, until he staggers over the sands and falls to death.

Our party had made its way north of Mesa Butte, carrying provisions and water, making slow progress, enduring extraordinary discomforts. It was after we had camped at the Little Colorado on the south bank, that Bowden and I, acting upon the advice of Captain Watt, made some advance explorations to determine how best we should approach Lava Butte, which, according to Baker’s map, was the key to the route to the lost mine.

We left one morning before sunrise and headed due north for the Painted Desert. We carried with our horses a two days’ supply of water and provisions. It was impossible after ten o’clock in the morning to advance farther in the heat. We camped in the swale of a dry arroya, making such shade as we could, and waited for the coming of the late afternoon, when we might press on a little more. Bowden attempted some observations, but found that his sight was affected and that he must rest. In the evening and before we halted for the night, Lava Butte was in sight. After supper, Bowden said he would walk a distance under the stars; and that he would return to the camp within an hour.

He had not returned by midnight, and I dared not leave the horses and search for him, but I fired my rifle as a signal at short intervals throughout the night. The next day I tried to find him, firing my rifle now and then, until I had burned the last cartridge, and then I made a fire of dried cactus stalks, in hopes that the smoke would attract his attention, but all this failed. The water supply began to run short, the horses were suffering, and Bowden did not appear. I then headed back for camp on the Little Colorado, intending to follow our trail in the sands, but the hot winds had swept over the desert and obliterated most of them. I had depended upon Bowden’s qualities as an engineer and had not taken as close an observation as I would otherwise. However, I remembered my experience in the Palm Desert of years before, and so urged my horse along through the torrid heat, always heading for a jutting butte where I thought our camp to be. At noon my horse died, and I lay in the shade of some rocks, giving myself up for lost, when, as the sun was going down and the shadows were creeping over the desert, I descried the relief party from our camp that was searching for us.

Bowden’s body was found five miles from the camp he and I had made. He had walked in the night through the dead land, where, in starlight or sunlight, all things look alike. But there is so much white and so much grey, that to distinguish one object from another, to remember it, to say, “I will come back to this,” is not possible. So when Bowden started to retrace his steps, he did not know where he was. The plain was all north, south, east and west.

He quite evidently had sat down and tried to collect his thoughts, for there were marks in the waste indicating the various positions he had taken. He had a small bottle of water with him, but no food.

No sound swept the plain. Bowden may have thought he was entombed in some vast charnel-house of the ages to which Time had brought Nature’s remains and left them without burial. He was on the crest of one-time vast lava beds, a spot where fearful fires once raged beneath his feet. Here the last great battle of the peaks of the continent had probably been fought with thunderbolt and flame hurled from the bowels of the earth. And he was alone. Not even the wretched lizards of the lava region were moving. He called. No voice answered. He walked, but it was in a circle, and he came back time and time again to his starting point. He waited for the dawn--one hope that the sun’s light might give him a trace of the camp. He saw the shade of the night grow deeper and deeper, and then the driving of this blackness back from the east and the coming there of a cold line of grey and then an insolent one of red and a savage yellow with that, and then, with one leap, the sun.

He must have scanned the plain, but there was no sight of camp. He called, he laughed, he cried. He drank his water to the last drop in the little bottle. He walked and ran. He returned to the spot where he had first become bewildered. He was hot and then cold, and the sun rose higher and higher; grew more pitiless with every advance. The white heat beat down on him; it rose in sheets before him. Now the lizards and the mean, creeping things came out, but they passed him by. They could wait. Others had preceded him. After a long time, Bowden threw his hands high in the air, far up to the sun god that was calling to him, although beating him down. He fell flat on his face, and there he slept his last sleep in the land where the sun shines forever and forever.

A week later and Captain Watt died of gastritis, and our party returned to Flagstaff and abandoned the search for the lost mine.

XIV.

THE LAND OF THE FAIR GOD.

Captain David L. Payne was a born frontiersman. He left his home in Grant County, Indiana, in 1856, at the age of 20 years. He started west to fight the Mormons, and got as far as Doniphan County, Kansas. Here he found plenty of excitement and joined the Free Soil party. Five years later, when the border was aflame with fire and steel, he was among the first to enlist in the Union army. He served with distinction throughout the war. In 1865 he was honorably discharged at Ft. Leavenworth, with the rank of major. After this he went to Pueblo de Taos, New Mexico, and joined a party under Kit Carson, in an expedition against the Apaches. And after this he was known as the “Cimarron Scout.”

I first met him in the Black Hills in 1876. He was then talking of Oklahoma, called by the Indians The Land of the Fair God. He claimed that the government had no title to the land. The next I noticed of him was in 1880, when he organized a band of raiders to invade Oklahoma and open it for settlement. His first company was thirteen strong. They went as far south as Fort Russell, on the Cimarron, leaving Arkansas City, April 30. They were captured and taken out by United States soldiers. But the brave pioneer was not to be daunted. His followers increased and they hovered upon the banks of the Arkansas River, awaiting the action of a dilatory congress at Washington until the country was thrown open to settlement, April 22, 1889.

Payne was like many other pioneers. He saw the land of promise, but dared not enter therein and live. Fate reserved this boon for others, while death decreed the brave soul should explore another bourne than this. While sitting at a breakfast table in Wellington, Kansas, December, 1884, he suddenly expired. Others may have felt as much interest in the opening of Oklahoma as Payne, but certainly none others devoted so much time and energy to the accomplishment of this work as he. He began the movement at a time when it was very unpopular, hence was the object of much unfavorable criticism and abuse, but he did not allow this to daunt him, and continued to surround himself with a class of followers who had the nerve to stand for the right.

On the opening day the people came. They represented every part of the Union--from the granite hills of Maine to the flowery borders of California, and from the northern lakes to the gulf. They formed one of the most cosmopolitan communities ever assembled in the United States, and as if by common consent all sectional prejudices were laid aside in one common interest of beginning life anew. When the shadows of night fell around and about them on that memorable day, Guthrie, the territorial capital, was a tented city. The rush for lands and lots was over; and men sat quietly about their bivouac fires discussing the exciting events of the day. It was a triumph for American manhood and education; that the day passed off peaceably, and a triumph for which Oklahomans may well feel proud when the turbulence of the times are considered. Practically there was no law save that administered by the United States military, until the organic act was effected, May 2, 1890, when Geo. W. Steele was appointed governor.

At the first session of the Territorial Legislature, a bill was introduced to remove the capital to Oklahoma City. When it was about to be placed upon its passage Arthur Daniels, the Speaker of the House, seized the bill and started on a run for the Santa Fe depot, where a special engine was waiting. Nearly all the members of the legislature started in pursuit, firing their revolvers at the fleeing speaker. He safely eluded them; and as the term of the legislature expired by law that night, the capital was saved to Guthrie.

Hammers and saws could be heard night and day. Men were building a city. In an incredible short space of time, palatial residences, business blocks and church spires rose upon what, a short time since, had been a barren plain. They had added another dot on the map.

The administration of Governor Steele was soon followed by the appointment of Governor A. J. Seay, an heroic figure on the federal side during the war of the rebellion, an able and kindly man whom history will revere. He was just the man for the times, for he always had a pleasant word or sound advice when occasion offered. He had the happy faculty of always looking at the bright side of life, and when speaking invariably put his audience in a good humor, as at the close of his term of office, in an address he said he always took an interest in the scriptural saying, “If a man die, shall he live again?” The crowd saw the point and gave a cheer for the retiring old hero so beloved by all.

About this time E. D. Nix was appointed United States marshal of the Territory. To Marshal Nix and his faithful deputies belong the credit of the suppression of outlawry in Oklahoma. At the time he was appointed in May, 1903, the country was overrun by a banditti that rivaled the noted James and Younger brothers, in Missouri. There was no safety for life or property outside the larger towns. Trains were held up, banks were looted, stores robbed, and travelers were murdered upon the highway.

To the young marshal, then only thirty years of age, it meant a long and bitter fight ahead, costing the lives of ninety-one deputy marshals, and over one and one-half million dollars to the government.

It was a fight to the death, but the young marshal was equal to the emergency, and the emergency confronted him. One by one the desperate bands were either captured or went down beneath the unerring aim of the faithful deputies; who were all skilled frontiersmen.

These men were inured to hardships, many had been on the cattle trails, and had burned cartridges in more than one Indian fight, some had been marshals of Abilene, Dodge City and other frontier towns in their days of lawlessness.

The time will come when men will paint them, write verses about them, as they deserve to be written about. These men who bared their breasts to outlaw’s bullets, as did deputies Bill Tighlman, W. W. Painter, John Hixon, Heck Thomas, Ed Kelley, Chris Madson, Wm. Banks, Frank Canton, John Hale, Frank Rhinehart and many others and to the heroic dead, such as Tom Houston, Lafe Shadley, Dick Speed, Jim Masterson and nearly a hundred others who fell as nobly as any soldier upon the battlefield in country’s cause, for it was in country’s cause in which they fell. The graves of these dead heroes should be decorated, as they will be in time when Oklahomans stop long enough in their monied pursuits to give thought to services rendered by these noble lives.

A bushwhacking war was waged by the outlaws for more than three years. As soon as one leader bit the dust there was another to take his place. They were in bands of from ten to twenty and had their rendezvous in the dark forests of the Chickasaw Indian nation, the Grand River hills of the Osage Indian country or the Glass Mountains in the extreme west of Oklahoma. Often they would meet at a given point, do some daring act of train robbery, then scatter like quails with an agreed place of meeting; perhaps a hundred and fifty miles away. They were like the Insurgents of Cuba. No organized force could reach them. They knew every bridle path in the woods, or trail on the plains. Nothing prevailed but an Indian mode of warfare; but by long perseverance Marshal Nix’s force conquered.

Bill Dalton was killed, Bill Doolin, Arkansan Tom, Tulsa Jack, George Newcomb, and Buck Weightman, alias, “Red Rock,” all noted outlaw leaders in time bit the dust, while Bill Raidler fell “bleeding at every pore” from a shotgun in the hands of Marshal Heck Thomas.

Tearing open his shirt and looking at his bleeding breast as full of small holes as the lid of a pepper box, Raidler exclaimed, “Heck you damned scoundrel, haven’t you any more respect for me; than to shoot me with bird shot,” “Only used them for packing, my dear boy, only packing, you will find plenty of buck shot among them,” said Heck, as he slipped the cold steel cuffs on Raidler’s wrists.

XV.

OUTLAWRY IN OKLAHOMA.

Bill Doolin, noted outlaw, was in the United States jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma. A chill, drizzling rain was falling and the night was dark. The half breed Indians and white border ruffians who had been his companions in the jail for the last two months, had grown tired of their card playing and had sullenly slunk off to their dirty bunks. Doolin had a cell of his own, but it had not yet been locked for the night and he had the freedom of the “bull pen.” Near the front of the large room was a partition of steel bars. Outside this partition was a stove, near which a deputy marshal sat reading a novel. Another deputy was pacing the floor. Doolin was thinking of a night like this when he and his men lay in waiting at Red Rock for the Santa Fe express. How the chill rain dripped from their broad hats as they held a final whispered conversation just before the glaring eye of the headlight of the express flashed on them for an instant as the train rounded a curve, then the shrill whistle. How he blessed the dark night, and how he cursed the mud, for it would leave a trail, easy for the deputy marshals to follow.

It was action now, the panting engine had stopped at the water tank, the fireman had drawn down the great nozzle of the water pipe and was filling his tender. He struck the signal match across the butt of his revolver. Another instant and his men was swarming over the tender with revolvers at the heads of engineer and fireman. No time to lose. Uncouple the express car. All aboard, and the frightened engineer is compelled to run his engine five miles farther on and slow up at a creek crossing, where there are other men and horses. A demand is made of the express messenger to open his car, his answer is a bullet through the door. Then Raidler crawls under the car and begins sending Winchester bullets through the bottom of the car at random. One of the bullets strikes the brave messenger in the head. They hear him fall with a groan. Quick, the dynamite, an explosion and the door of the express car is blown open. The pockets of the dead messenger are rifled, the key to the Wells-Fargo express box is found and next the iron chest is open. No time to count the big packages of currency and sealed bags of gold now. To the horses, and then to the Glass Mountains. For this and other crimes, death or imprisonment for life now awaited him. Oh, why did he let Bill Tighlman take him single handed at Eureka Springs where he thought he was safe in masquerading as an honest farmer from Texas.

A sudden pause in his thoughts, an idea struck Doolin, people knew they had gotten over $100,000 from the express company, and that money ought to be somewhere.

Doolin took a card from his pocket and a pencil and drew a map. Walking over to the iron grating he motioned to the guard.

“My heart hurts me tonight,” he said, “and I am afraid I am going to die. I wouldn’t mind all this so much if it wasn’t for my boy with his mother over in the Osage nation, but I hate to see that boy go the way I have. If I could find a good man I’d make him my boys’ guardian and fix him for life.”

The guard stopped and came over to the iron grating.

“It is like this,” continued Doolin. “I have got $30,000 in gold for some good man who will bring that boy up in the way he should go and be a father to him, get him interested in some profession, and make a man of him. I am done for sure and I believe I am going to die tonight, oh, how my heart hurts, why not you get my money and be a father to my boy, I believe you would do the honest thing by him, then I could die easier.”

The guard looked over at his companion to see if he had heard. No, he was still reading the novel. He looked at Doolin and nodded. Then he drew close to the iron bars.

Doolin whispered, “I will trust you,” and drew from his pocket the card on which he had drawn a map.

“Now stand close,” he said, “and see if you can understand this,--here is the Bear Creek road in Pawnee county, here the ford, here a rock, ten feet to the south of this rock dig three feet and there is $30,000.”

The guard did not quite understand and drew closer to the bars and took the card.

While he was waiting, a long thin hand reached through the grating to the handle of his six shooter and in a second he was peering down the muzzle of his own revolver in the hands of Bill Doolin.

“Keep perfectly quiet,” said the outlaw, “you know me, open that bull pen door very quietly.”

The guard silently obeyed. “Step in,” said Doolin, the guard stepped inside. The next thing and he with the novel was staring into the quick blue eye of Doolin and the ugly thing he held cocked in his hand.

“This way boys,” said Doolin, and the two guards followed him to his cell. When they were inside he locked the door, then he called for their cartridge belts and the revolver, which he with the novel still had about him.

In five minutes he was inside a heavy rain coat, had the guards’ midnight lunches stored in its pockets, a heavy Winchester in his hands and a hundred rounds of ammunition belted about him. Out into the night, and on to the street where some belated revelers’ horses were tied. He gathered up the reins of a fleet mustang and mounting into the saddle--“Richard was himself again.”

* * * * *

For two years, I had been in the government secret service. I had no visible means of support except that of a newspaper correspondent. My reports for Marshal Nix’s office always went by a circuitous route, lest I be discovered, to have had my business known would have meant death. Even Marshal Nix never knew the real source of much information which reached his office.

I thought the outlaws were making a rendezvous at the little town of Ingrim, and I determined to see for myself. Going to the office of the Daily Leader, I secured a job at very poor pay to write up some towns in Oklahoma. Suddenly, under pretext of an affection in the head I became quite deaf. I knew better than go to the town of Ingrim first, lest I might excite suspicion. So I began at Tecumseh some thirty miles from Ingrim. I stayed in the town a week, solicited subscriptions and wrote up the prospects of the place, said many flattering things of the business men in my write-up, and when the papers came, I distributed them. The people were pleased with my work, but some complained at having to talk so loud to make me understand.

When I finished with Tecumseh, I rode with the mail carrier over to Ingrim. Sure enough here were my outlaws. They loafed about the only hotel and saloon, but were always on the alert. I appeared to take no notice of anything, but kept boreing people to subscribe for my paper, interviewing merchants and writing up the town. The merchants, I discovered were glad to have the outlaws there, for they spent money like water, they paid big prices for their cartridges and bought heavy supplies of canned goods, which they sent away to be cached in the woods and hills for a time of need.

One day I was sitting alone on the hotel veranda reading, when I heard a man say to another, “I am going to see if that dam cuss is deaf or not.” I heard his cat like step approaching, and then, click, click, he cocked his revolver at the back of my head.

It was a trying moment, but I did not move, I did not dare to, for had I quickly turned my head, I would have betrayed myself and lost my life.

When he was satisfied that I was deaf as a door nail, he invited me to drink. I excused myself, and I heard him tell the other man that I did not have the sense of a muskrat.

When I left town I owed the hotel man for my last days board, which I promised to send to him, I did this for effect, and went in an opposite direction from Guthrie.

Three days later and two emigrant wagons with farmer like men driving the teams came down the long red road that leads from the north into Ingrim.

An outlaw outrider saw them and rode casually down the road. He engaged the driver of the first wagon in conversation a moment, and riding to the side of the wagon he lifted the edge of the cover with his rifle, and there saw six armed deputy marshals on the hay inside. The outlaw wheeled his horse and rode furiously back to the village, waving his broad white hat as a signal.

The marshals hurried from the wagons and the battle was on.

Twenty minutes of sharp fighting and the outlaws were fleeing from the town on swift horses leaving one of their wounded behind, while the wagons that brought the marshals, carried four of their number back to Guthrie dead.

Almost at the same hour that afternoon, another tragedy was being enacted in the dark forests of the Osage Indian Nation. Deputy Heck Thomas had tracked Bill Doolin to his lair. He was sleeping under a rude shelter of branches in the forest, when the breaking of a twig awoke him. He saw Heck Thomas alone; not fifty feet away, and knew it was a duel to the death.

Leaping behind a barricade of logs he opened fire on Thomas who had sought the shelter of a tree. The duel lasted an hour, each jeering the other. Thomas held his hat to one side of the tree and when Doolin sent a bullet through it, he sank apparently helpless to the ground. A long silence followed. Doolin again jeered the marshal. There was no answer. He came from behind his barricade to see the effect of his shot, and received a bullet through the brain.

It is worthy of mention here that when a company of Rough Riders for the Spanish war was organized in Oklahoma, a son of Marshal Tighlman and a son of Heck Thomas were among the first to enlist, and afterwards stormed the heights of San Juan hill with Colonel Roosevelt.

XVI.

A NEW LAND OF CANAAN.

It was September of 1893. The Cherokee Strip, a large area of country in the Indian Territory, was about to be offered for settlement.

Guthrie, Oklahoma, was at this time filled with homeseekers who were camped about on vacant lots, in their wagons. They were men of good intentions. There was also a horde of gamblers and petty thieves who swarmed like ravening wolves scenting their prey. Saloons and gambling houses were open day and night, and many a poor fellow fell into the hands of these legalized bandits--to awaken from the effects of drugged liquor and find themselves robbed of every dollar they possessed, and their families without a day’s provisions ahead.

Never was there an American town where morals were at a lower ebb than Guthrie was at that time. Street quarrels were frequent, and men shot each other down in cold blood for trivial offenses. There were contests over claims in Oklahoma proper, and it was no uncommon thing for a witness to be shot down after he had finished testifying in the land office. Or perhaps he was called to his door at midnight to stop a bullet, or was shot through a window while sitting at home with his family.

Highway robbery, burglary, thieving, perjury, gambling and whisky-drinking ran riot. Courtesans and harlots, with painted faces and tinseled dresses, plied their arts of conquest in open day; while city officials, not to be outdone in the practices of the hour, took all manner of bribes from all manner of men. This state of immorality generated a stench over the town that all the perfume of Arabia the Blest could not sweeten.

The Dalton gang of bandits was robbing Santa Fe trains in the Cherokee Strip, while more than one hundred and fifty United States marshals were searching for outlaws. When one was found, however, he was usually shot first and the warrant for his arrest read to the corpse.

The men assembled at Guthrie at this time were from all quarters of the United States, and represented almost every nationality. As one rider dashed up the street on a very fine horse, a gust of wind lifted his sombrero and landed it near where I stood. I picked it up and was in the act of handing it to him when he exclaimed: “Hello, Bob, you here!”

“Yes,” I replied, scanning his face for an instant before recognizing him. Then the face came back to me with pleasant memories. He was my old friend--Mark Witherspoon. The reunion was, indeed, pleasant to both of us, and it was late that night before we retired to our respective abodes.

Mark had jostled about from pillar to post, in all parts of the world; he had been in the mining camps of Australia and on the Rand in South Africa; he had grown rich several times and lost all again and again, and now he wanted an Oklahoma farm where, he concluded, he would settle down and live quietly. Just as though wild and impulsive natures like his could ever be content with a simple farming life. We agreed to make the run together and, if possible locate our farms beside each other.

When the opening day came, a blazing southern sun beat down upon the heads of more than one hundred thousand men drawn upon the line that marked the border of the new El Dorado. Most of the country on the southern border lay in high ridges, or in valleys and deep ravines, which, in some places, were 100 feet in depth, with precipitous ledges of rock on either side. The country was but sparsely covered with timber and nearly void of water at this season of the year. The few streams were impregnated with a mineral poison which had an evil effect for a long time on the systems of those who drank the water. Yet these men--many of whom had pioneered the plains of Nebraska and Kansas--were forced, by the conditions of the times, to seek new homes in this wild waste. For more than a year, more than 20,000 families had lived like rats in dugouts along the banks of the Arkansas River, to the north. To say they lived is a mistake--they only existed. Parched corn and potatoes comprised the daily diet of hundreds. The winter of 1892 had been unusually severe for that section, and scant clothing and a lack of fuel added to the bitter suffering, while innumerable mounds of yellow earth stood silent monuments to those who braved the vicissitudes of the frontier in the hope of gaining homes.

In this new promised land there were some seventy Indian allotments to be made. These were located by government officials near townsites, for personal selfish purposes.

Then came an order from the Secretary of the Interior that all who would file on lands must register. That caused men to form in ranks miles long, to await their turn to register. It caused delay, and filled the pockets of government officials who, for pay, gave preference to the men of money. For days these men stood in line--a blazing sun above, and treeless, waterless plains about. Many sickened and were carried away to die, and, when the merciful night came, the others lay down on the bare, hard ground, to dream of happy homes--and shiver in the chill autumn darkness. The towns were platted by government employees. These plats contained false reservations for parks, and were sold to the men in line at a dollar each.

When we reached the line, a mighty caravan was there waiting, stretching as far as the eye could see, east and west, to the dim horizon on either side. Men were there with their families; in white covered wagons, in light running rigs and on horseback. Among them were the broad-hatted, swarthy fellows from the pampas and chaparalls of Texas. They were there from the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. Old soldiers in the tattered blue of the Grand Army of the Republic were among the strugglers for homes. Just in front of all was another line, composed of the troops who were there to see that all kept back of the starting mark until the signal should be given. The gleam of the rifle could be seen in both lines. It was a thrilling scene; one upon which no man could look without mingled feelings of admiration and pity.

The signal for many to start to the eternal promised land came as the weary hours wore along. Worn with fatigue and exposure, and fainting from sunstroke and thirst, many fell from frantic horses that went dashing riderless over the plains. An officer rode down the line and halted near the railroad tracks. It was near noon, and an eager man took the action as a signal. There was a flash, a report. The man lay still in the sun-baked dust; a drunken soldier had taken a life and desolated a home. Some revolvers gleamed in the hands of angry Texans and in another moment the soldier lay writhing in the dust.

Just then an officer waved his sabre and the signal guns boomed down the line. Like a mighty tidal wave the dense mass of men, horses and wagons swayed for an instant and then went on with a rush. There were cries and shouts--and oaths and blasphemy from the drunken soldiers. The noise of rumbling wagons and the clatter of horses’ hoofs sounded like the distant roar of cannonading. On surged the swaying line, horsemen dashing out in front here and there. Every little distance was to be found the wreck of a wagon that had been crushed in the rush. Other wagons were stalled in ravines, horses dropped from exhaustion, throwing their riders, who lay in gullies or on the rocky sides of the mountain ridges, with mangled limbs, begging for a drop of water. But the mad fever of the rush was on all and little heed was paid to suffering.

Our horses were in fine condition and were fleet of foot and ere long we were in the lead, in a wild race with the wind. We sighted a stream of clear running water, whose banks were fringed with trees, and a valley which stretched out for miles to the north. We reached a grove and found the cornerstone that marked the dividing line of two sections. We fired our Winchesters as a signal to the others that those claims were taken, and immediately commenced throwing up earth to show that improvements were under way. Then, tired out with the excitement of the day, we sat down under the trees to rest and talk it all over, and, in the late afternoon, fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

It was dark when Mark suddenly awoke and aroused me with the shout: “Get up, for your life, get up! The plains are on fire!”

I was on my feet in an instant. The southern sky was aglow. Great tongues of flame were leaping through the inky blackness of the night, with a hiss and roar that sounded like the coming of a storm. We hurriedly mounted our frantic horses and rode swiftly into the northern darkness--whither, we knew not; our only thought was to distance the fire far enough to give us a chance to burn a space about us and thus find safety.

Suddenly I felt a falling sensation. Then there were pains in my head and mysterious, dreadful aches in my legs. Visions flitted before apparently unseeing eyes and at last I came to realize that I was lying on a cot in a tent. Mark came in and I asked him where I was.

“Never mind now,” he said gently. Tomorrow came, and the next day, and still another, but Mark remained silent. Gradually my mind became normal and I distinctly recalled the last moments of consciousness; the prairie fire, the wild ride to safety. Mark then added the closing chapter. My horse had plunged into a rocky canon, fully 20 feet in depth. His horse had scented the danger and had reared, saving him from my fate. He back-fired the grass, and, in its light, saw me lying at the bottom of the canon. Tenderly he cared for me during the night and in the morning got a doctor, who set the broken limb, and here I was convalescing.

XVII.

TOLD AROUND THE CAMPFIRE.

“You knew Cora Belle Fellows, that white girl at Cheyenne Agency, South Dakota, who married a buck Indian, eh, Bill?”

“Yep,” Bill Hawkins answered, “and I know what the results were, too.

“About a year after she had left a fashionable seminary in New York state and came among the redskins to teach them manners and the like, she surprised and shocked everybody by announcing her marriage to Chaska, a full blood Sioux, twenty-one years of age. Then her troubles began. She was frowned upon by both whites and Indians. She went with Chaska to his tepee and lived upon the coarse chuck furnished by Uncle Sam.

“Her escapade was commented upon by all the newspapers of the country at the time, and a museum man of Chicago induced her and Chaska to place themselves upon exhibition. For two years she was inspected by the public, which in the meantime had made her presents until she had a carload of furniture.

“Then she concluded to go back to the Agency and make a farmer out of Chaska, and so with the money earned in the museum, she and her Indian lord returned. She purchased land some miles from the Agency and built a house.

“The agent and myself rode out there about six months after they had gone to housekeeping. We were both curious to know how they were getting along.

“It was a sight for your whiskers. Outside sat nearly all her furniture. The covers of plush had been ripped off for Indian horse trappings, the wood was stained and weather cracked.

“The house was without doors, worn blankets being hung instead. The floors were cold and bare. In a corner upon an old mattress lay Cora Belle Fellows or Mrs. Chaska. An old squaw sat by her side, crooning some lingo over her new born kid. She did not want to talk and we went away. Chaska soon after left her and took a wife from his own tribe, leaving her to live in a tepee about the Agency like any other squaw, feeding on Uncle Sam’s grub.

“You might as well have tried to shove butter down a wildcat’s neck with a hot awl as to have tried to talk that gal out of marrying the buck.”

“Marrying is bad business, anyway, unless they are both hooked up right,” observed the cook. “There is old Ben Berkley living over on the Cottonwood. He was pretty well fixed before he married that widder. She was a spiritualist or something of the sort, and used to go off in trances and have white lights coming around until she scared old Ben nearly to death. She was always running over the country telling people’s future and leaving Ben at home to cook. He took to drinking and one day got the D. T.’s and thought a freight engine was chasing him up and down the alleys of the town, and he finally crawled under a barn to keep out of its way, when the boys rescued him. After that he would not drink any more, but poured the licker in his boots and would get as full as a tick by absorption.

“His wife had brought to the ranch a measley water Spaniel, which Ben used to amuse himself with by throwing cobs and sticks into the river and teaching the dog to swim in and get them and bring them back to him, not thinking of the great blessing it was finally to be to him.

“Ben had been blasting out a hole for a cyclone cellar with sticks of gun-cotton, when his wife took it into her head that she wanted a mess of fish.

“‘No time to fish,’ said Ben. ‘Take a stick of that dynamite and go down to the creek where the water is still and blow out a mess for yourself.’

“His wife took the cartridge and lit the fuse, then gave the thing a toss into the creek. The dog was there and thinking she was playing with him, swam in and got the cartridge and came running up the bank to give it to her. Then she started to run over the plowed ground, yelling at the top of her voice, ‘Drap it, Tige! Drap it!’ There was an explosion and a hole in the ground big enough to bury a horse. The dog had gone up higher than Elijah, while Mrs. Berkley was laying in a furrow with one leg injured by the cartridge. In a day or two the leg swelled up and old Ben sent for the cross-roads doctor, who decided that the injured leg would have to come off.

“The doctor went to town the next day to get some tools, and was so glad over getting a job that he filled up on cactus whiskey and came back and cut off the wrong leg. The sore leg got well afterwards, but, Gee-whiz! It tickled old Ben nearly to death, for she has to stay at home now.”

“Story sounds fishy to me,” remarked Ned Antler.

“Billy Bolton nearly lost his life for using that word,” said Hank Pool. “You all know Billy runs a paper over at Woodward, on the Panhandle trail.

“There had been a hold-up in town, and Jim Belden was accused of it. After the trial before a justice of the peace, Belden was acquitted. In commenting on the affair in his paper the next day, Billy said Belden’s story which secured his release sounded fishy. Belden was a bad man. He saddled his broncho, filled his saddle pockets with grub, and his skin full of whiskey and went over to Billy’s printing office. He hitched the broncho in front, and with the paper in one hand and his Winchester in the other he went in and asked Billy what he meant by saying his story was fishy. Billy was taken by surprise, for he saw that Belden meant to kill him, as he was all ready to hit the trail.

“‘Fishy,’ says Billy. ‘Aha, fishy, fishy. Why that’s a compliment, my dear boy. Saint Peter used to fish and said so many good things that people used to call his sayings fishy. It was a favorite expression with Aristotle and Socrates, when they addressed Napoleon the Great, to say, ‘I hope your royal majesty will speak some imperial fishy things today.’ It is--ah, ahah, sort of an international e pluribus unum expression, a general sort of a non compos mentis, as it were, you understand.’

“‘Oh, well, if that’s all,’ said Belden, ‘it’s all right, but I wouldn’t use the word often if I were you, for some of the boys might not be as well posted as I am. Much obliged, Billy. I was just passing and thought I would subscribe for the paper for a year. Here is $2.00. Mail it to me at Lampassas.”

“Bolton got off light,” said Tom Tyler. “Over at Las Vegas two years ago a sheep man called ‘Doc’ Kinnie a liar and before the fellow could think twice Doc had his ear sliced off, and he went around afterwards using it for a beer check. He would call up the house and pay for the drinks with the sheepman’s ear; he always redeemed it, though, for fear the owner would buy it back.” “Cut it out, boys, cut it out, get to roost in your blankets,” said the boss. “We hit the trail at 5 o’clock in the morning and make the drive to Cimarron by noon.”

An hour later, the fire had smouldered to embers, the stars twinkled in the great dark blue dome of the sky, a soft south breeze fanned the Oklahoma plains and all was silent, save the tramp of horses’ hoofs as the outriders circled the herd of bedded cattle.

XVIII.

THE LONE GRAVE ON THE MESA.

High upon the mesa northwest of Colorado City, Colo., and near the old cemetery used by the pioneers of the early sixties, there is a lonely grave, around which clings a romance of the early days, which is recalled by the phenomena which many persons say they have witnessed when passing at night.

As the story goes, Marie Tinville, the beautiful daughter of Victor Tinville lived with her parents in a cabin near Colorado City, in 1863. About that time Leon Murat, a dashing young fellow of about 20 years came out from St. Louis and found employment on her father’s ranch. It was a case of love at first sight, intensified by isolated conditions and an almost constant companionship.

The cabin stood near the now famous Garden of the Gods, and many were the evenings the young people wandered among the towering rocks in the wondrous bright moonlight of that region, and talked of love, while the shadows of Pike’s Peak shrouded the dreamy valley.

Love’s young dream was rudely awakened one day in the autumn of 1864, by the call to arms to join Colonel Chivington in his campaign against the hostile Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians, who were then murdering the settlers of Colorado.

Men were needed, and Leon was brave. He kissed his sweetheart good-bye and rode away with that avenging column of horsemen who fought the battle of Sand Creek in Colorado, November 29, 1864.

Murat’s command did nearly three months’ campaigning over the dry, heated plains before any effective work was accomplished.

Early in November a mounted column of 650 Colorado volunteers of Colonel Shoup’s Third Regiment, 175 of the First Regiment and a few mounted Mexicans, formed the fighting force under Colonel Chivington. A large band of Indians was located on the banks of Sand Creek, about forty miles north of where Ft. Lyons now stands and near the village of Kit Carson.

Bent’s Fort, a rude frontier structure of palisades, stood some miles below Ft. Lyons. It was to this point that Colonel Chivington led his men when he learned that Black Kettle and White Antelope with some three thousand braves, were encamped upon the banks of Sand Creek.

The column made prisoners of all whom they met, lest word should reach the Indians that they were pushing forward to the attack. At Bent’s Fort a halt was made to rest riders and horses. On the night of the 28th the column headed for the encampment on Sand Creek, taking as a guide, a half breed son of Colonel Bent, and carrying in their rear a small brass cannon and ammunition wagon.

The night was cold and a bleak wind blew from the north. With jingle of spur and clank of sabre the column rode fours abreast through the darkness. The Indian guide led them through a shallow lake in the hope that the ammunition might become wet. When about half way through the lake Murat’s horse floundered and wet him completely in the icy waters. The column rode on while Anthony Bott remained to assist him. After dividing his own dry clothing with Murat the two started to find the trail of the flying column in the darkness. They were favored both by their knowledge of the plains and the instinct of their horses, but for five hours they were alone in the darkness of a hostile country.

They came up with their command in the grey dawn of the morning as they were forming for battle behind a ridge that overlooked the Indian camp. Here Colonel Chivington divided his men, sending a column of twos in opposite directions so as to surround the camp. The Indians were in their tepees when the cannon sent a crash of iron into their midst. The battle was on. Chief White Antelope came rushing from his tepee brandishing a rifle, urging on his followers. The encircling horsemen closing in on them emptied their rifles and revolvers into the confused mass of Indians.

Indian depredations had been so numerous in Colorado and the atrocities so cruel, that the men, many of whom had been victims of Indian raids and had lost their all, their families or friends being butchered, gave no quarter, and when the battle ended they felt even more justified when there was found within the tepees a number of scalps recently torn from the heads of white women and children. Nearly 1,000 Indians were killed when the firing ceased, and a crimson tide ebbed into the creek and reddened its waters with blood.