The Watchers of the Plains: A Tale of the Western Prairies

CHAPTER VIII
SETH WASHES A HANDKERCHIEF

Seth was not in the habit of making very frequent visits to Beacon Crossing. For one thing there was always plenty to do at the farm. For another the attractions of the fledgling city were peculiarly suited to idle folk, or folk who had money to spend. And this man was neither the one nor the other.

White River Farm was a prosperous farm, but it was still in that condition when its possibilities were not fully developed, and, like the thrifty, foresighted farmers Rube and his adopted son were, they were content to invest every available cent of profit in improvements. Consequently, when the latter did find his way to Roiheim’s hotel it was always with a definite purpose; a purpose as necessary as any of his duties in his day’s labor.

Riding into the township one evening he made straight for the hotel, and, refusing the stablehand’s offer of care for his horse, sat down quietly on the verandah and lit his pipe. Beyond the loungers in the saloon and old Louis Roiheim no one worth any remark approached him. He sat watching the passers-by, but went on smoking idly. There were some children playing a sort of “King-of-the-Castle” game on a heap of ballast lying beside the track, and these seemed to interest him most. The sheriff stopped and spoke to him, but beyond a monosyllabic reply and a nod Seth gave him no encouragement to stop. An Indian on a big, raw-boned broncho came leisurely down the road and passed the hotel, leaving the township by the southern trail.

Seth waited until the sun had set. Then he stepped off the verandah and tightened the cinches of his saddle, and readjusted the neatly rolled blanket tied at the cantle. The proprietor of the hotel was lounging against one of the posts which supported the verandah.

“Goin’?” he asked indifferently. Seth was not a profitable customer.

“Yes.”

“Home?”

“No. So long.”

Seth swung into the saddle and rode off. And he, too, passed out of the town over the southern trail.

Later he overhauled the Indian. It was Jim Crow, the chief of the Indian police.

“Where do we sleep to-night?” he asked, after greeting the man.

Jim Crow, like all his race who worked for the government, never spoke his own language except when necessary. But he still retained his inclination to signs. Now he made a movement suggestive of three rises of land, and finished up with the word “Tepee.”

“I must get back the day after to-morrow,” Seth said. “Guess I’ll hit back through the Reservations. I want to see Parker.”

“Good,” said the Indian, and relapsed into that companionable silence which all prairie men, whether Indian or white, so well understand.

That night the two men sheltered in the tepee belonging to Jim Crow. It was well off the Reservation, and was never pitched in the same place two nights running. Jim Crow’s squaw looked after that. She moved about, acting under her man’s orders, while the scout went about his business.

After supper a long talk proceeded. Seth became expansive, but it was the Indian who gave information.

“Yes,” he said, in answer to a question the white man had put. “I find it after much time. Sa-sa-mai, my squaw. She find it from old brave. See you. Big Wolf and all the braves who come out this way, you make much shoot. So. They all kill. ’Cep’ this one ol’ brave. He live quiet an’ say nothing. Why? I not say. Some one tell him say nothing. See? This Big Wolf. Before you kill him maybe. So he not say. Bimeby Sa-sa-mai, she much ’cute. She talk ol’ brave. Him very ol’. So she learn, an’ I go. I show you. You give me fi’ dollar, then I, too, say nothing.”

“Ah.” Seth pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the scout, and went on smoking. Presently he asked, “Have you been there?”

“No.” Jim Crow smiled blandly. He had the truly Indian ambiguity of expression.

“Then you don’t know if there’s any traces, I guess.”

“See. I go dis place. Little Black Fox hear. He hear all. So. There are devils on the Reservation. Jim Crow much watched. So. They know. These red devils.”

Seth noted the man’s air of pride. He was keenly alive to his own importance and exaggerated it, which is the way of his class. Jim Crow was a treacherous rascal, but it paid him to work for the white folk. He would work for the other side just as readily if it paid him better.

“That’s so,” observed Seth, seriously; but it was his pipe that absorbed his attention. “Wal, to-morrow, I guess,” he added after a while. And, knocking his pipe out, he rolled over on his blanket and slept.

On the morrow the journey was continued, and at sundown they neared the great valley of the Missouri. Their route lay over a trail which headed southeast, in the direction of Sioux City. The sun had just dropped below the horizon when Jim Crow suddenly drew rein. Whatever character he might bear as a man he was a master scout. He had a knowledge and instinct far greater than that of a bloodhound on a hot scent. He glanced around him, taking in the lay of the land at every point of the compass. Then he finally pointed at a brush growing a few hundred yards from the trail.

“The bluff,” he said. “It may be what we look for. Sa-sa-mai, she tell me. Ow.”

The last was a grunt which expressed assurance.

The horses left the trail for the prairie. The eyes of both men were turned upon the ground, which is the habit of such men when out on the trail. It is the soil over which the prairie man passes which is the book. The general scene is only the illustration.

At the bluff the men dismounted. Seth now took the lead. He did not plunge haphazard into his search. He still studied the brush and the ground. But it was the scout whose trained instincts were the first to discover the signs they sought. And he found it in the dead, broken twigs which marked the course of a wagon.

The two followed the lead; followed it unerringly. With every foot of the way the task became easier. Once they had turned the cover the book had become the simplest reading. In a few minutes they came to a clearing well screened from the road. Now they parted company. The scout went on toward the water further on, but the white man turned to the clearing. Herein was displayed the difference in the men. Seth had come to the point where imagination served him. The other was only a craftsman.

The grass was tall in the clearing. There was a low scrub too, but it was a scrub that might be trodden under foot. In two minutes Seth was stooping examining a tent-peg, discolored by weather, but intact, and still holding in the earth where it had been driven. It was but four yards from this to a place where two distinct piles of human bones were lying hidden in the rank grass.

Seth was on his knees pulling the grass aside, but he did not touch the bones. The skeletons were far from complete. Fortunately the skulls were there, and he saw that they were those of a man and a woman. While he contemplated the ghastly remains his thoughts conjured up many scenes. He saw the bullet hole through the woman’s skull, and the horrid rift in the man’s. The absence of many of the bones of the extremities made him think of the coyotes, those prairie scavengers who are never far off when death stalks the plains.

After a few moments he was searching the long grass in every direction. He looked for remnants of clothing; for anything to give him a sign. In his search he was joined by the scout who had returned from the water, where he had discovered further traces of an encampment.

At last the examination was completed. There was nothing left to indicate the identity of the bones.

The two men now stood by the bones of the unfortunate man and woman. Seth was staring out at the surrounding brush.

“I guess the Injuns cleaned things up pretty well,” he said, while his eyes settled on one little bush apart from the rest.

The scout shook his head.

“That’s not Injuns’ work,” he said.

“No?” Seth queried casually.

“No. Everything gone. So. That not like Injun.”

Seth made no response, but walked over to the bush he had been looking at. The scout saw him thrust a hand in amongst the branches and withdraw it holding something.

“What you find?” he asked, when Seth came back.

“Only a rag.”

Then, a moment later, Seth asked suddenly: “How far from here to – Jason’s old place?”

“Six – eight – nine hour,” Jim Crow said, with his broad smile that meant nothing.

Seth looked long and thoughtfully at the split skull on the ground. Then his eyes sought the bullet hole in the woman’s skull. But he said nothing.

A little later the two men went back to the horses and mounted.

“Guess I’ll git on to see the Agent,” Seth observed, while the horses moved away from the bluff.

“You go by Reservation?”

“Yes.”

Jim Crow surveyed the prospect in silence. They reached the trail, and their horses stood preparatory to parting company.

“S’long,” said Seth.

The Indian turned and looked away to the north. It was the direction in which lay the great Reservations. Then he turned back, and his black, slit-like eyes shot a sidelong glance at his companion.

“You go – alone?” he asked.

The other nodded indifferently.

“Then I say sleep little and watch much – I, Jim Crow.”

The two men parted. The scout moved off and his hand went to the pocket of his trousers where his fingers crumpled the crisp five-dollar bill he had received for his services. Nothing else really mattered to him. Seth rode away humming a tune without melody.

All the way to the Agent’s house he carried out the scout’s advice of watchfulness; but for a different reason. Seth had no personal fear of these stormy Indians. His watchfulness was the observation of a man who learns from all he sees. He slept some hours on the prairie while his horse rested, and arrived at the Agency the next day at noon.

Jimmy Parker, as he was familiarly called, greeted him cordially in his abrupt fashion.

“Ah, howdy,” he said. “Prowling, Seth?” His words were accompanied by a quick look that asked a dozen questions, all of which he knew would remain unanswered. Seth and he were old friends and understood one another.

“Takin’ a spell off,” replied the farmer.

“Ah. And putting it in on the Reservation.”

The Agent smiled briefly. His face seemed to have worn itself into a serious caste which required effort to change.

“Many huntin’ ’passes’ these times?” Seth inquired presently.

“None. Only Little Black Fox says he’s going hunting soon.” The Agent’s eyes were fixed on the other’s face.

“See you’ve got Jim Crow workin’ around – south.” Seth waved an arm in the direction whence he had come.

“Yes.” Again came the Agent’s swiftly passing smile. “We’re a good distance from the southern boundary. Jim Crow’s smart enough. How did you know?”

“Saw his tepee.”

“Ah. You’ve been south?”

“Yes. There’s a fine open country that aways.”

They passed into the Agency, and Parker’s sister and housekeeper brought the visitor coffee. The house was very plain, roomy, and comfortable. The two men were sitting in the office.

“Seen anything of Steyne around?” asked Seth, after a noisy sip of his hot coffee.

“Too much. And he’s very shy.”

Seth nodded. He quite understood.

“Guess suthin’s movin’,” he said, while he poured his coffee into his saucer and blew it.

“I’ve thought so, too, and written to the colonel at the fort. What makes you think so?”

“Can’t say. Guess it’s jest a notion.” Seth paused. Then he went on before the other could put in a word. “Won’t be just yet. Guess I’ll git on.”

The two men passed out of the house, and Seth remounted.

“Guess you might let me know if Black Fox gits his ‘pass,’” he said, as he turned his horse away.

“I will.”

Parker watched the horseman till he disappeared amongst the bushes. A moment later he was talking to his sister.

“Wish I’d telegraphed to the fort now,” he said regretfully. “I can’t do it after writing, they’d think – I believe Seth came especially to convey warning, and to hear about Black Fox’s pass. It’s a remarkable thing, but he seems to smell what these Indians are doing.”

“Yes,” said his sister. But she felt that when two such capable men discussed the Indians there was no need for her to worry, so she took out Seth’s cup and retired to her kitchen.

In the meantime Seth had reached the river. Here he again dismounted, but this time for no more significant reason than to wash out the rag he had rescued from the bush south of the Reservations. He washed and rewashed the cotton, till it began to regain something of its original color. Then he examined it carefully round the hem.

It was a small, woman’s handkerchief, and, in one corner, a name was neatly written in marking ink. The name was “Raynor.”

CHAPTER IX
THE ADVENTURES OF RED RIDING HOOD

It is Sunday. The plaintive tinkle of the schoolroom bell at the Mission has rung the Christianized Indians to the short service which is held there.

“Indian Mission.” The name conveys a sense of peace. Yet the mission histories of the Indian Reservations would make bloody reading. From the first the Christian teacher has been the pitiable prey of the warlike savage. He bears the brunt of every rising. It is only in recent years that his work has attained the smallest semblance of safety. The soldier fights an open foe. The man in charge of an Indian mission does not fight at all. He stands ever in the slaughter-yard, living only at the pleasure of the reigning chief. He is a brave man.

The service is over. It is perforce brief. The grown men and women come out of the building. The spacious interior is cleared of all but the children and a few grown-up folk who remain to hold a sort of Sunday-school.

There are Wanaha and Seth. Rosebud, too, helps, and Charlie Rankin and his young wife, who have a farm some two miles east of White River Farm. Then there is the missionary, Mr. Hargreaves, a large man with gray hair and rugged, bearded face, whose blue eyes look straight at those he is addressing with a mild, invincible bravery. And the Agent, James Parker, a short, abrupt man, with a bulldog chest and neck, and a sharp, alert manner.

These are the workers in this most important branch of the civilizing process. They are striking at the root of their object. The children can be molded where the parents prove impossible. Once these black-eyed little ones have mastered the English language the rest is not so difficult. They have to be weaned from their own tongue if their Christian teachers would make headway. A small, harmless bribery works wonders in this direction. And all these children have learned to speak and understand the English language.

Seth attempts no Bible instruction, and his is a class much in favor. His pockets always contain the most home-made taffy. He has a method purely his own; and it is a secular method. Only to the brightest and most advanced children is the honor of promotion to his class awarded.

He is holding his class outside the building. His children sit round him in a semicircle. He is sitting on an upturned box with his back against the lateral logs of the building. There is a pleasant shade here, also the pungent odor from the bright green bluff which faces him. The Indian children are very quiet, but they are agog with interest. They have noted the bulging pockets of Seth’s Sunday jacket, and are more than ready to give him their best attention in consequence. Besides they like his teaching.

Seth’s method is quite simple. Last Sunday he told them a little, old-fashioned children’s fairy story with a moral. Now he takes each child in turn, and questions him or her on the teaching he then conveyed. But in this direction they are not very apt, these little heathens.

The singing inside the Mission had died out, and the last chords on the small organ had wheezed themselves into silence. Seth, having finished his preliminaries, began serious business.

He deposited a large packet of treacle taffy upon the ground at his feet, cut the string of it with his sheath-knife, opened it, and examined the contents with a finely critical air. Having satisfied himself he set it down again and smiled on his twelve pupils, all ranging from ten to twelve years of age, sitting round him. He produced a well-thumbed volume from his pocket, and, opening it, laid it upon his knee. It was there in case he should stumble, for Seth was not a natural born teacher. He did it for the sake of the little ones themselves.

Next he handed each child a piece of taffy, and waited while it was adjusted in the cheek.

“Guess you’ve all located your dollops o’ candy?” he said, after a while. “I allow you ken get right at it and fix it in. This camp ain’t goin’ to be struck till the sweet food’s done. Guess you’ll mostly need physic ’fore you’re through, sure. Howsum, your mam’s ’ll see to it.”

The last remarks were said more to himself than to the children, who sat staring up into his dark, earnest face with eyes as solemn as those of the moose calf, and their little cheeks bulging dangerously. Seth cleared his throat.

“Guess you ain’t heard tell o’ that Injun gal that used to go around in a red blanket same as any of you might. I’m jest going to tell you about her. Ah, more candy?” as a small hand was held out appealingly toward him. “Guess we’ll have another round before I get going right.” He doled out more of the sticky stuff, and then propped his face upon his hands and proceeded.

“Wal, as I was goin’ to say, that little squaw lived away there by the hills in a snug tepee with her gran’ma. They were jest two squaws by themselves, an old one, and a young one. And they hadn’t no brave to help ’em, nor nothin’. The young squaw was jest like any of you. Jest a neat, spry little gal, pretty as a picture and real good.

“She kind o’ looked after her gran’ma who was sick. Sick as a mule with the botts. Did the chores around that tepee, bucked a lot of cord-wood, fixed up moccasins, an’ did the cookin’, same as you gals ’ll mebbe do later on. She was a slick young squaw, she was. Knew a caribou from a jack-rabbit, an’ could sit a bucking broncho to beat the band. Guess it was doin’ all these things so easy she kind o’ got feelin’ independent – sort o’ wanted to do everything herself. And she just used to go right down to the store for food an’ things by herself.

“Now I don’t know how it rightly come about, but somewheres around that tepee a wolf got busy. A timber wolf, most as big as – as – the Mission house. An’ he was savage. Gee, but he was real savage! Guess he was one o’ them fellers always ready to scare squaws an’ papooses an’ things. Ther’s lots o’ that sort around.”

Wanaha, quite unobserved by Seth, had come round the corner of the building, and stood watching the earnest face of the man who was so deliberately propounding his somewhat garbled version of Little Red Riding Hood. While she listened to his words she smiled pensively.

“Yes, they git themselves up fancy an’ come sneakin’ around, an’ they’re jest that fierce there ain’t no chance for you. Say, them things would eat you right up, same as you’ve eaten that taffy. Wal, this young squaw was goin’ off on her broncho when this timber wolf comes up smilin’, an’ he says, ’Good-day.’ An’ he shakes hands with her same as grown folks do. All them timber wolves are like that, ’cause they think you won’t see they’re going to eat you then. You see he was hungry. He’d been out on the war-path – which is real bad – an’ he’d been fightin’, and the folks had beaten him off, and he couldn’t get food, ’cause he’d left the Reservation where there’s always plenty to eat an’ drink, and there was none anywhere else.

“Wal, he sizes up that squaw, and sees her blanket’s good an’ thick, and her moccasins is made of moose hide, and her beads is pretty, and he thinks she’ll make a good meal, but he thinks, thinks he, he’ll eat the squaw’s sick gran’ma first. So he says ’Good-bye,’ an’ waits till she’s well away on the trail, and then hurries back to the tepee an’ eats up the old squaw. Say wolves is ter’ble – ’specially timber wolves.

“Now, when that squaw gits home – ” Seth paused and doled out more taffy. The children were wonderfully intent on the story, but the sweets helped their attention. For there was much of what he said that was hard on their understandings. The drama of the story was plain enough, but the moral appealed to them less.

“When that squaw gits home she lifts the flap of the tepee, and she sees what she thinks is her gran’ma lying covered up on the skins on the ground. The fire is still burnin’, and everything is jest as she left it. She feels good an’ chirpy, and sits right down by her gran’ma’s side. And then she sees what she thinks looks kind o’ queer. Says she, ‘Gee, gran’ma, what a pesky long nose you’ve got!’ You see that wolf had come along an’ eaten her gran’ma, and fixed himself up in her clothes an’ things, and was lying right there ready to eat her, too, when she come along. So master timber wolf, he says, ‘That’s so I ken smell out things when I’m hunting.’ Then that squaw, bein’ curious-like, which is the way with wimminfolk, says, ‘Shucks, gran’ma, but your tongue’s that long you ain’t room for it in your mouth.’ That wolf gits riled then. Says he, ‘That’s so I ken taste the good things I eat.’ Guess the squaw was plumb scared at that. She’d never heard her gran’ma say things like that. But she goes on, says she, ‘Your teeth’s fine an’ long an’ white, maybe you’ve cleaned ’em some.’ Then says the wolf, ‘That’s so I ken eat folks like you right up.’ With that he springs out of the blankets an’ pounces sheer on that poor little squaw and swallows her up at one gulp, same as you ken swaller this taffy.”

Seth suddenly sprang from his seat, held the bag of candy out at arm’s length, and finally dropped it on the ground in the midst of the children. There was a rush; a chorus of childish glee, and the whole twelve fell into a struggling heap upon the ground, wildly fighting for the feast.

With a gentle smile Seth looked on at the fierce scramble. To judge from his manner it would have been hard to assert which was the happier, the children or their teacher. Though Seth found them a tax on his imaginative powers, and though he was a man unused to many words, he loved these Sunday afternoons with his young charges.

His thoughtful contemplation was broken by Wanaha. Her moccasins gave out no sound as she stepped up to him from behind and touched him on the shoulder. Her grave smile had passed; and when he turned he found himself looking into a pair of steady, serious, inscrutable eyes. No white woman can hide her thoughts behind such an impenetrable mask as the squaw. Surely the Indian face might well have served as a model for the Sphinx.

“The white teacher makes much happy,” she said in her labored English.

Seth promptly answered her in her own tongue.

“The papooses of the Indian make the white man happy,” he said simply.

There was a long pause. Suddenly one dusky urchin rose with a whoop of delight, bearing aloft the torn paper with several lumps of sweet stuff, discolored with dirt, sticking to it. With one accord the little mob broke. The triumphant child fled away to the bluff pursued by the rest of her howling companions. The man and the squaw were left alone.

“The white man tells a story of a wolf and a squaw,” Wanaha said, returning to her own language. The children were still shrieking in the distance.

Seth nodded assent. He had nothing to add to her statement.

“And the wolf eats the squaw,” the woman went on, quite seriously. It sounded strange, her literal manner of discussing this children’s story.

A look of interest came into the man’s thoughtful eyes. But he turned away, not wishing to display any curiosity. He understood the Indian nature as few men do.

“There was no one by to warn the squaw?” she went on in a tone of simple inquiry. “No brave to help her?”

“No one to help,” answered the man.

There was another pause. The children still inside the Mission house were helping to chant the Doxology, and the woman appeared to listen to it with interest. When it was finished she went on —

“Where the wolf is there is much danger for the squaw. Indian squaw – or white. I, too, learn these things. I learn from much that I hear – and see.”

“I know,” Seth nodded.

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“Wanaha is glad. The white brave will watch over the young squaw.” The woman smiled again. Seth thought he detected a sigh of relief. He understood this woman as well as it is given to man to understand any woman – even an Indian woman.

“This wolf won’t bother about the gran’ma,” said Seth, looking straight into Wanaha’s eyes. “He’s after the young squaw.”

“And he will have the young squaw soon.”

Wanaha abruptly turned away and hurried round to the entrance of the Mission. The sound of people moving within the building told her that the Sunday-school was over. Her silent going suggested that she had no wish to be seen talking in private to Seth.

Seth remained where he was. His delay may have been intentional, yet he had the appearance of deep preoccupation. He quite understood that Wanaha’s presence during his story had been deliberate. She had left her own class on some trifling excuse and come out to warn him, knowing that he would be alone with his children. There was no smile on his face while he stood thinking, only a pucker between his dark brows, and an odd biting of his under-lip.

At last he shook himself as though he found the shade chilly, and, a moment later, sauntered round to the front of the building in time to meet the others coming out.

He joined the group which included Wanaha, and they talked a few minutes with the Agent and Mr. Hargreaves. Then Mrs. Rankin and Rosebud moved off to the two waiting buckboards, and Wanaha disappeared down a by-path through the trees. Seth and Charlie Rankin followed their womenfolk.

Seth was the only silent member of the party, but this was hardly noticeable, for he rarely had much to say for himself.

On the way home Rosebud at last found reason to grumble at his silence. She had chattered away the whole time in her light-hearted, inconsequent fashion, and at last asked him a question to which she required more than a nod of the head in reply. And she had to ask it three times, a matter which ruffled her patience.

“Why are you so grumpy with me, Seth?” she asked, with a little frown. She always accused Seth of being “grumpy” when he was more than usually silent.

“Eh?” The man turned from the contemplation of the horses’ tails.

“I asked you three times if you saw the Agent talking to two of his scouts – Jim Crow and Rainmaker – before service.”

Seth flicked his whip over the backs of the horses.

“Sure,” he said indifferently.

“Jim Crow is the head of his Indian police.”

The girl spoke significantly, and Seth glanced round at her in surprise.

“I know,” he observed.

“Do you think there is anything – moving? Oh, look, Seth, there’s a lovely jack-rabbit.” Rosebud pointed ahead. A large jack-rabbit was loping slowly out of the way of the buckboard. Seth leant forward with unnecessary interest, and so was saved a direct answer to the girl’s question.