Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 17

He carried the papers to the depot to put them on the afternoon train bound for the west, for the _Cowboy_ was popular with the pa.s.sengers and he disposed of an edition of seven or eight hundred weekly with them in excess of his regular edition. As he was about to step on the train, two men stepped down. They were the horse-thieves whose death he had too confidently announced.

He stared at them, shocked to the marrow, feeling as though he had seen ghosts. Would they stay in Medora, or would they go on to where frontier justice was awaiting them? Would they see the announcement in the _Cowboy_? He remembered that they could not read.

Fascinated, he watched them. The train started. The two men jumped aboard.

That night they were hanged.

Exactly what relation the vigilance committee which was seeking to drive the "nesters" out of western Montana bore to Granville Stuart's organization, is difficult to determine. They had probably originally been one of the subordinate bands, who were "feeling their oats," and, under the pretense of "cleaning up the country," were cleaning up personal scores. The captain of the band was a man called "Flopping Bill," a distinctly shady character, and the band itself was made up of irresponsible creatures who welcomed the opportunity to do, in the cause of righteousness, a number of things for which under ordinary circ.u.mstances they would have been promptly hanged. Their first act as a body was to engage a French Canadian named Louis La Pache as guide.

La Pache was himself awaiting trial at Miles City for horse-stealing, but there is no indication in the records that he was chosen because he was ready to turn State's evidence. He was merely the type that Flopping Bill's guardians of law and order would naturally choose.

The raiders began their activities near the mouth of Beaver Creek, not ten miles from the spot where Sewall and Dow (with their rifles at hand) were hewing timber for the new house. Two cowpunchers had recently started a ranch there. They were generally considered honest, but the vigilantes had marked them for destruction, and descended upon the ranch ready to hang any one in sight. They found only a hired man, an Englishman, for the ranchmen had got wind of the raid and fled; and spent their enthusiasm for order in "allowing the Englishman to feel the sensation of a lariat round his neck," as the record runs, releasing him on his promise to leave the country forever. Thereupon they nailed a paper, signed with skull and cross-bones, on the door of the cabin ordering the ranchmen "to vacate"; and proceeded to other pastures.

They stopped at a half dozen ranches, terrorizing and burning, but catching no horse-thieves. It is impossible through the obscurity that shrouds the grim events of that autumn to determine to what extent they were honestly in pursuit of lawbreakers or were merely endeavoring, at the behest of some of the great cattle-owners, to drive the small stockmen out of the country. Their motives were possibly mixed. The small ranchers were notoriously not always what they seemed. Most of the horse-thieves posed as "nesters," hiding in underground stables by day the horses they stole by night. Each registered his own brand and sometimes more than one; but the brands were carefully contrived. If you intended, for instance, to prey on the great herds of the "Long X outfit," thus [X brand], you called your brand "Four Diamonds," marking it thus [diamond brand]. A quick fire and a running iron did the trick. It was all very simple and very profitable and if you were caught there was always a Certain Person (to whom you were accustomed to give an accounting), and beyond him a vague but powerful Somebody Else to stand between you and the law. There would be no trial, or, if there were a trial, there would be no witnesses, or, if there were witnesses, there would be a lenient judge and a skeptical jury. The methods of Flopping Bill's party were no doubt reprehensible, but in attacking some of the little "nesters"

the raiders came close to the heart of many troubles.

But indiscriminate terrorizing by any one in any cause was not to the taste of the ranchmen up and down the Little Missouri who happened to be law-abiding. The raiders were starting prairie fires, moreover, with the purpose evidently of destroying the pasture of the small stockmen, and were in consequence vitally affecting the interests of every man who owned cattle anywhere in the valley. That these acts of vandalism were the work of a body from another Territory, invading the Bad Lands for purposes of reform, did not add greatly to their popularity. The ranchmen set about to organize a vigilance committee of their own to repel the invaders, if necessary, by force.

Whether the raiders got wind of this purpose is not known, but they evidently decided that they had overplayed their hand, for they suddenly veered in their course and troubled the Bad Lands no more.

But before they went they dropped a bomb which did more than many conflagrations to carry out their ostensible mission as discouragers of evil-doing.

It happened that not far from Elkhorn Bottom the vigilantes came upon Pierce Bolan, who, it will be remembered, had some time previous discoursed to Fisher on the merits of the "considerate treatment" in relations with horse-thieves. He was himself as honest as daylight, but, as ill-luck would have it, the raiders found him afoot, and, a.s.suming that he was about to steal a horse, called on him to confess.

He declared that he had nothing to confess. The raiders thereupon threw a rope around his neck and drew him up in such a way that his feet just touched the ground. The victim continued to proclaim his innocence and the vigilantes finally released him, but not until he was unconscious. When he came to, the raiders were gone, but nearby he found a paper possibly dropped not altogether inadvertently. It bore the names of fifteen men along the Little Missouri whom Granville Stuart's committee had marked for punishment.

What Bolan did with the list, to whom he showed the list, in what way he reached the men whose names were on the list--all that is lost to history. All that we know is that there was a great scattering during the succeeding days, and certain men who were thought most reputable discovered suddenly that they had pressing business in California or New York.

"I never saw a full list of the names on that paper," said Fisher years afterward, "and knew nothing of what was going on until two of them came to me about the matter. They found that I was really ignorant and then asked what I would do if in their place. I advised hiding out for a while until matters had cooled off, which they did."

Who the men were whose names were on that list is a secret which those who held it never revealed and inquisitive minds along the Little Missouri could never definitely solve. Rumor suggested this man and that whose ways had been devious, but only one name was ever mentioned with certainty. That name was Maunders. No one seemed to question that if any one was going to be hanged, Maunders was the most likely candidate.

That gentleman, meanwhile, was fully aware that he had been marked for slaughter, but he kept his head, and, trusting no doubt to the protection of the Marquis, calmly remained in Medora, refusing by flight to present his enemies with evidence of an uneasy conscience.

To his friends he declared that Fisher alone was responsible for having his name placed on the list, and breathed dire threats against the manager of the Marquis's Refrigerator Company.

Fisher was not greatly disturbed by the rumors that reached him of Maunders's determination to kill him at the first opportunity. He even went hunting alone with the outwardly affable "bad man."

Some of the "boys" thought he was taking unnecessary risks, and told him so. "You're taking a big chance in going out alone with Maunders.

He's got it in for you."

Fisher smiled. "Perhaps you haven't noticed," he said, "that I always make certain that one or the other of you fellows sees us leave.

Maunders would break his neck to see me get back safely."

Unquestionably, Maunders had an almost over-developed b.u.mp of caution.

He left Fisher unharmed and turned his attention to the two backwoodsmen from Maine who were holding down the most desirable claim north of Medora for an Eastern tenderfoot.

One Sunday morning late in September Sewall was alone in the dugout at the river-bank. Dow was off on a stroll and Sewall was writing his weekly letter home, when he suddenly heard hoof-beats punctuated with shots. He went to the door. Six rough-looking characters on horseback were outside with smoking rifles in their hands. He knew only one of them, but he was evidently the leader. It was Maunders. Sewall took in the situation and invited them all inside.

The men had been drinking, and, suspecting that they would be hungry, Sewall offered them food. Dow was an excellent cook and in the ashes of the hearth was a pot of baked beans, intended for their own midday meal. Sewall, keeping carefully within reach of one or the other of his weapons which hung on the wall, set the pot before the evil-faced gunmen.

Maunders, who was slightly drunk, ate ravenously and directly began to sing the praises of the beans. Sewall filled his plate, and filled it again.

"I thought I would do everything I could to make them comfortable," he remarked, telling about it later, "and then if they cooked up any racket we should have to see what the end would be. I knew that if they were well filled, it would have a tendency to make them good-natured, and besides that it puts a man in rather an awkward position, when he's got well treated, to start a rumpus."

Sewall watched the men unostentatiously, but with an eagle eye. He had made up his mind that if there were to be any dead men thereabouts Maunders was to be the first. "He being the leader I thought I would make sure of him whatever happened to me."

He noted, not without satisfaction, that the men were looking around the cabin, regarding the weapons with attention. He showed Maunders about. The gunman agreed without enthusiasm that they had "got things fixed up in very fine shape," and departed. He treated Sewall most affably thereafter, but the backwoodsmen were made aware in one way and another that the old mischief-maker had not yet given up the idea of driving Theodore Roosevelt and his "outfit" off the claim at Elkhorn Bottom.

XII

It was underneath the stars, the little peeking stars, That we lay and dreamed of Eden in the hills: We were neither sad nor gay, but just wondering, while we lay, What a mighty lot of s.p.a.ce creation fills.

Our fire was just a spark; dot of red against the dark, And around the fire an awful lot of night.

The purple, changing air was as quiet as a prayer, And the moon came up and froze the mountains white.

Henry Herbert KNIBBS

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fantastic formation at Medicine b.u.t.tes.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Medicine b.u.t.tes.]

The "boss" of Elkhorn Ranch, meanwhile, oblivious of the heat which he was generating in the Marquis's Prime Minister, was taking his slow course northeastward across Wyoming to the Bad Lands. It was long and weary traveling across the desolate reaches of burnt prairie. The horses began to droop. At last, in some heavy sand-hills east of the Little Beaver, one of the team pulling the heavily laden wagon played out completely, and they had to put the toughest of the saddle ponies in his place. Night was coming on fast as they crossed the final ridge and came in sight of as singular a bit of country as any of them had ever seen. Scattered over a s.p.a.ce not more than three quarters of a mile square were countless isolated b.u.t.tes of sandstone, varying in height from fifteen to fifty feet. Some of them rose as sharp peaks or ridges or as connected chains, but the greater number by far were topped with diminutive table-lands, some thirty feet across, some seventy, some two hundred. The sides were perpendicular, and were cut and channeled by the weather into most curious caves and columns and battlements and spires. Here and there ledges ran along the faces of the cliffs and eerie protrusions jutted out from the corners. Grave pine-trees rose loftily among the strange creations of water and wind set in a desert of snow-white sand. It was a beautiful and fantastic place and they made their camp there.

The moon was full and the night clear. In an angle of a cliff they built a roaring pine-log fire whose flames, leaping up the gray wall, made wild sport of the bold corners and strange-looking escarpments of the rock. Beyond the circle that the firelight brought luridly to life, the b.u.t.tes in the moonlight had their own still magic. Against the s.h.i.+ning silver of the cliffs the pines showed dark and somber, and when the branches stirred, the bright light danced on the ground making it appear like a sheet of molten metal.

It was like a country seen in a dream.

The next morning all was changed. A wild gale was blowing and rain beat about them in level sheets. A wet fog came and went and gave place at last to a steady rain, as the gale gave place to a hurricane.

They spent a miserable day and night s.h.i.+fting from shelter to shelter with the s.h.i.+fting wind; another day and another night. Their provisions were almost gone, the fire refused to burn in the fierce downpour, the horses drifted far off before the storm....

"Fortunately," remarked Roosevelt later, "we had all learned that, no matter how bad things were, grumbling and bad temper can always be depended upon to make them worse, and so bore our ill-fortune, if not with stoical indifference, at least in perfect quiet."

The third day dawned crisp and clear, and once more the wagon lumbered on. They made camp that night some forty miles southwest of Lang's.

They were still three days from home, three days of crawling voyaging beside the f.a.gged team. The country was monotonous, moreover, without much game.

"I think I'd like to ride in and wake the boys up for breakfast,"

remarked Merrifield.

"Good!" exclaimed Roosevelt. "I'll do it with you."

Merrifield argued the matter. Roosevelt had been in the saddle all day and it was eighty miles to the Maltese Cross.

"I'm going with you. I want to wind up this trip myself," said Roosevelt, and there the argument ended.

At nine o'clock they saddled their tough little ponies, and rode off out of the circle of firelight. The October air was cool in their faces as they loped steadily mile after mile over the moonlit prairie.

Roosevelt later described that memorable ride.