Buch lesen: «The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas», Seite 25

"It wasn't all that was accomplished, by Heaven! There's a lawsuit coming; there's a will that's to be broken that can't stand when I get at it. You are mighty good and fine about money when other folks are getting it; but when it's coming to you, you're another man." Tell's voice was pitched high now.

"Father Le Claire, let me tell you a story. Baronet's a smooth rascal and nobody can find him out easily. But I know him. He has called me a thief. It takes that kind to catch a thief, maybe. Anyhow, back at Rockport the Baronets were friends of the Melrose family. One of them, Ferdinand, was drowned at sea. He had some foolish delusion or other in his head, for he left a will bequeathing all his property to his brother James Melrose during his lifetime. At his death all Ferdinand's money was to go to John Baronet in trust for his son Phil. Baronet, here, sent his boy back East to school in hopes that Phil would marry Rachel Melrose, James's daughter, and so get the fortune of both Ferdinand and James Melrose. He went crazy over the girl; and, to be honest, for Phil's a likable young fellow, the girl was awfully in love with him. Baronet's had her come clear out here to visit them. But, you'll excuse me for saying it, Judge, Phil is a little fast. He got tangled up with a girl of shady reputation here, and Rachel broke off the match. Now, last October the Judge goes East. You see, he's well fixed, but that nice little sum looks big to him, and he's bound Phil shall have it, wife or no wife. But there's a good many turns in law. While Baronet was at Rockport before I could get there, being detained at Washington" (my father smiled a faint little gleam of a smile in his eyes more than on his lip) – "before I could get to Rockport, Mr. Melrose dies, leaving his wife and Rachel alone in the world. Now, I'm retained here as their attorney. Tillhurst is going on to see to things for me. It's only a few thousand that Baronet is after, but it's all Rachel and her mother have. The Melroses weren't near as rich as the people thought. That will of Ferdinand's won't hold water, not even salt water. It'll go to pieces in court, but it'll show this pious Judge, who calls his neighbors to account, what kind of a man he is. The money's been tied up in some investments and it will soon be released."

Le Claire looked anxiously toward my father, whose face for the first time that day was pale. Rising he opened his cabinet of private papers and selected a legal document.

"This seems to be the day for digging up records," he said in a low voice. "Here is one that may interest you and save time and money. What Mapleson says about Ferdinand Melrose is true. We'll pass by the motives I had in sending Phil East, and some other statements. When I became convinced that love played no part in Phil's mind toward Rachel Melrose, I met him in Topeka in October and gave him the opportunity of signing a relinquishment to all claims on the estate of Ferdinand Melrose. Phil didn't care for the girl; and as to the money gotten in that way" (my father drew himself up to his full height), "the oxygen of Kansas breeds a class of men out here who can make an honest fortune in spite of any inheritance, or the lack of it. I put my boy in that class."

I was his only child, and a father may be pardoned for being proud of his own.

"When I reached Rockport," he continued, "Mr. Melrose was ill. I hurried to him with my message, and it may be his last hours were more peaceful because of my going. Rachel will come into her full possessions in a short time, as you say. Mapleson, will you renounce your retainer's fees in your interest in the orphaned?"

It was Tell's bad day, and he swore sulphureously in a low tone.

"Now I'll take up this matter where I left off," John Baronet said. "While O'mie was taking a vacation in the heated days of August, he slept up in the stone cabin. Jean Pahusca, thief, highwayman, robber, and assassin, kept his stolen goods there. Mapleson and his mercantile partner divided the spoils. O'mie's sense of humor is strong, and one night he played ghost for Jean. You know the redskin's inherent fear of ghosts. It put Jean out of the commission goods business. No persuasion of Mapleson's or his partner's could induce Jean to go back after night to the cabin after this reappearance of the long quiet ghost of the drowned woman."

Le Claire could not repress a smile.

"I think I unconsciously played the same role in September out there, frightening a little man away one night. I was innocent of any harm intended."

"It did the work," my father replied. "Jean cut for the West at once, and joined the Cheyennes for a time – and with a purpose." Then as he looked straight at Tell, his voice grew stern, and that mastery of men that his presence carried made itself felt.

"Jean has bought the right to the life of my son. His pay for the hundreds of dollars he has turned into the hands of this man was that Mapleson should defame my son's good name and drive him from Springvale, and that Jean in his own time was to follow and assassinate him. Mapleson here was in league to protect Jean from the law if the deed should ever be traced to his door. With these conditions in addition, Mapleson was to receive the undivided one-half of section 29, range 14.

"Tell Mapleson, I pass by the crime of forging lies against the name of Irving Whately; I pass by the plotted crimes against this town in '63; I ignore the systematic thievery of your dealings with the half-breed Jean Pahusca; but, by the God in heaven, my boy is my own. For the crime of seeking to lay stain upon his name, the crime of trying to entangle him hopelessly in a scandal and a legal prosecution with a sinful erring girl, the crime of lending your hand to hold the coat of the man who should stone him to death, – for these things, I, the father of Philip Baronet, give you now twenty-four hours to leave Springvale and the State. If at the end of that time you are within the limits of Kansas, you must answer to me in the court-room over there; and, Tell Mapleson, you know what's before you. I came to the West to help build it up. I cannot render my State a greater service than by driving you from its borders; and so long as I live I shall bar your entrance to a land that, in spite of all it has to bear, grows a larger crop of honest men with the conquest of each acre of the prairie soil."

CHAPTER XXVII
SUNSET BY THE SWEETWATER

 
And we count men brave who on land and wave fear not to die; but still,
Still first on the rolls of the world's great souls are the men who have feared to kill.
 

– EDMUND VANCE COOKE.

Jean Pahusca turned at the sound of O'mie's step on the stone. The red sun had blinded his eyes and he could not see clearly at first. When he did see, O'mie's presence and the captive unbound and staggering to his feet, surprised the Indian and held him a moment longer. The confusion at the change in war's grim front passed quickly, however, – he was only half Indian, – and he was himself again. He darted toward us, swift as a serpent. Clutching O'mie by the throat and lifting him clear of the rock shelf the Indian threw him headlong down the side of the bluff, crashing the bushes as he fell. The knife that had cut the cords that bound me, the same knife that would have scalped Marjie and taken the boy's life in the Hermit's Cave, was flung from O'mie's hand. It rang on the stone and slid down in the darkness below. Then the half-breed hurled himself upon me and we clinched there by the cliff's edge for our last conflict.

I was in Jean's land now. I had come to my final hour with him. The Baronets were never cowardly. Was it inherited courage, or was it the spirit of power in that letter, Marjie's message of love to me, that gave me grace there? Followed then a battle royal, brute strength against brute strength. All the long score of defeated effort, all the jealousy and hate of years, all the fury of final conflict, all the mad frenzy of the instinct of self-preservation, all the savage lust for blood (most terrible in the human tiger), were united in Jean. He combined a giant's strength and an Indian's skill with the dominant courage and coolness of a son of France. Against these things I put my strength in that strange struggle on the rocky ledge in the gathering twilight of that February day. The little cove on the bluff-side, was not more than fifteen feet across at its widest place. The shelf of sloping stone made a fairly even floor. In this little retreat I had been bound and unable to move for an hour. My muscles were tense at first. I was dazed, too, by a sudden deliverance from the slow torture that had seemed inevitable for me. The issue, however, was no less awful than swift. I had just cause for wreaking vengeance on my foeman. Twice he had attempted to take O'mie's life. The boy might be dead from the headlong fall at this very minute, for all I knew. The clods were only two days old on Bud Anderson's grave. Nothing but the skill and sacrifice of O'mie had saved Marjie from this brute's lust six years before. While he lived, my own life was never for one moment safe. And more than everything else was the possibility of a fate for Marjie too horrible for me to dwell upon. All these things swept through my mind like a lightning flash.

If ever the Lord in the moment of supreme peril gave courage and self-control, these good and perfect gifts were mine in that evening's strife. With the first plunge he had thrown me, and he was struggling to free his hand from my grasp to get at my throat; his knee was on my chest.

"You're in my land now," he hissed in my ear.

"Yes, but this is Phil Baronet still," I answered with a calmness so dominant, it stayed the struggle for a moment. I was playing on him the same trick by which he had so often deceived us, – the pretended relaxation of all effort, and indifference to further strife. In that moment's pause I gained my lost vantage. Quick as thought I freed my other hand, and, holding still his murderous grip from my throat, I caught him by the neck, and pushing his head upward, I gave him such a thrust that his hold on me loosened a bit. A bit only, but that was enough, for when he tightened it again, I was on my feet and the strife was renewed – renewed with the fierceness of maddened brutes, lashed into fury. Life for one of us meant death for the other, and I lost every humane instinct in that terrible struggle except the instinct to save Marjie first, and my own life after hers. Civilization slips away in such a battle, and the fighter is only a jungle beast, knowing no law but the unquenchable thirst for blood. The hand that holds this pen is clean to-day, clean and strong and gentle. It was a tiger's claw that night, and Jean's hot blood following my terrific blow full in his face only thrilled me with savage courage. I hurled him full length on the stone, my heavy cavalry boot was on his neck, and I would have stamped the life out of him in an instant. But with the motion of a serpent he wriggled himself upward; then, catching me by the leg, he had me on one knee, and his long arms, like the tentacles of a devil-fish, tightened about me. Then we rolled together over and under, under and over. His hard white teeth were sunk in my shoulder to cut my life artery. I had him by the long soft hair, my fingers tangled in the handfuls I had torn from his head. And every minute I was possessed with a burning frenzy to strangle him. Every desire had left my being now, save the eagerness to conquer, and the consciousness of my power to fight until that end should come.

We were at the cliff's edge now, my head hanging over; the blood was rushing toward my clogging brain; the sharp rock's rim, like a stone knife, was cutting my neck. Jean loosened his teeth from my shoulder, and his murderous hand was on my throat. In that supreme crisis I summoned the very last atom of energy, the very limit of physical prowess, the quickness and cunning which can be called forth only by the conflict with the swift approach of death.

Nature had given me a muscular strength far beyond that of most men. And all my powers had been trained to swift obedience and almost unlimited endurance. With this was a nervous system that matched the years of a young man's greatest vigor. Strong drink and tobacco had never had the chance to play havoc with my steady hand or to sap the vitality of my reserve forces. Even as Jean lifted me by the throat to crush my head backward over that sharp stone ledge, I put forth this burst of power in a fierceness so irresistible that it hurled him from me, and the struggle was still unended. We were on our feet again in a rage to reach the finish. I had almost ceased to care to live. I wanted only to choke the breath from the creature before me. I wanted only to save from his hellish power the victims who would become his prey if he were allowed to live.

Instinct led me to wrestle with my assailant across the ledge toward the wall that shut in about the sanctuary, just as, a half-year before, on our "Rockport" fighting ground, I strove to drag him through the bushes toward Cliff Street, while he tried to fling me off the projecting rock. And so we locked limb and limb in the horrible contortion of this savage strife. Every muscle had been so wrenched, no pain or wound reported itself fairly to the congested brain. I had nearly reached the wall, and I was making a frantic effort to fling the Indian against it. I had his shoulder almost upon the rocky side, and my grip was tight about him, when he turned on me the same trick I had played in the early part of this awful game. A sudden relaxation threw me off my guard. The blood was streaming from a wound on my forehead, and I loosed my hold to throw back my long hair from my face and wipe the trickling drops from my eyes. In that fatal moment my mind went blank, whether from loss of blood or a sudden blow from Jean, I do not know. When I did know myself, I seemed to have fallen through leagues of space, to be falling still, until a pain, so sharp that it was a blessing, brought me to my senses. The light was very dim, but my right hand was free. I aimed one blow at Jean's shoulder, and he fell by the cliff's edge, dragging me with him, my weight on his body. His left hand hung over the cliff-side. I should have finished with him then, but that the fallen hand, down in the black shadows, had closed over a knife sticking in the crevice just below the edge of the bluff – Jean Le Claire's knife, that had been flung from O'mie's grip as he fell.

I caught its gleam as the half-breed flashed it upward in a swift stab at my heart and my breath hung back. I leaped from him in time to save my life, but not quickly enough to keep the villainous thing from cutting a long jagged track across my thigh, from which spurted a crimson flood. There could be only one thing evermore for us two. A redoubled fury seized me, and then there swept up in me a power for which I cannot account, unless it may be that the Angel of Life, who guards all the passes of the valley of the shadow, sometimes turns back the tide for us. A sudden calmness filled me, a cool courage contrasting with Jean's frenzy, and I set my teeth together with the grip of a bulldog. Jean had leaped to his feet as I sprang back from his knife-thrust, and for the first time since the fight began we stood apart for half a minute.

"I may die, but I'll never be cut to death. It must be an equal fight, and when I go, Jean Pahusca, you are going with me. I'll have that knife first and then I'll kill you with my own hands, if my breath goes out at that same instant."

There must have been something terrible in my voice for it was the voice of a strong man going down to death, firm of purpose, and unafraid.

The feel of the weapon gave the Indian renewed energy. He sprang at me with a maniac's might. He was a maniac henceforth. Three times we raged across the narrow fighting ground. Three times I struck that murderous blade aside, but not without a loss of my own blood for each thrust, until at last by sheer virtue of muscle against muscle, I wrenched it from Jean's hand, dripping with my red life-tide. And even as I seized it, it slipped from me and fell, this time to the ledges far below. Then hell broke all bounds for us, and what followed there in that shadowy twilight, I care not to recall much less to set it down here.

I do not know how long we battled there, nor whose blood most stained the stone of that sanctuary, nor how many times I was underneath, nor how often on top of my assailant. Not all the struggles of my sixty years combined, and I have known many, could equal that fight for life.

There came a night in later time when for what seemed an age to me, I matched my physical power and endurance against the terrible weight of broken timbers of a burning bridge that was crushing out human lives, in a railroad wreck. And every second of that eternity-long time, I faced the awful menace of death by fire. The memory of that hour is a pleasure to me when contrasted with this hand to hand battle with a murderer.

It ended at last – such strife is too costly to endure long – ended with a form stretched prone and helpless and whining for mercy before a conqueror, whose life had been well-nigh threshed out of him; but the fallen fighter was Jean Pahusca, and the man who towered over him was Phil Baronet.

The half-breed deserved to die. Life for him meant torturing death to whatever lay in his path. It meant untold agony for whomsoever his hand fell upon. And greater to me than these then was the murderous conflict just ended, in which I had by very miracle escaped death again and again. Men do not fight such battles to weep forgiving tears on one another's necks when the end comes. When the spirit of mortal strife possesses a man's soul, the demons of hell control it. The moment for a long overdue retribution was come. As we had clinched and torn one another there Jean's fury had driven him to a maniac's madness. The blessed heritage of self-control, my endowment from my father, had not deserted me. But now my hand was on his throat, my knee was planted on his chest, and by one twist I could end a record whose further writing would be in the blood of his victims.

I lifted my eyes an instant to the western sky, out of which a clear, sweet air was softly fanning my hot blood-smeared face. The sun had set as O'mie cut my bonds. And now the long purple twilight of the Southwest held the land in its soft hues. Only one ray of iridescent light pointed the arch above me – the sun's good-night greeting to the Plains. Its glory held me by a strange power. God's mercy was in that radiant shaft of beauty reaching far up the sky, keeping me back from wilful murder.

And then, because all pure, true human love is typical of God's eternal love for his children, then, all suddenly, the twilight scene slipped from me. I was in my father's office on an August day, and Marjie was beside me. The love light in her dear brown eyes, as they looked steadily into mine, was thrilling my soul with joy. I felt again the touch of her hand as I felt it that day when I presented her to Rachel Melrose. Her eyes were looking deep into my soul, her hand was in my hand, the hand that in a moment more would take the life of a human being no longer able to give me blow for blow. I loosed my clutch as from a leprous wound, and the Indian gasped again for mercy. Standing upright, I spurned the form grovelling now at my feet.

Lifting my bloody right hand high above me, I thanked God I had conquered in a greater battle. I had won the victory over my worser self.

But I was too wise to think that Jean should have his freedom. Stepping to where the cut thongs that had bound me lay, I took the longest pieces and tied the half-breed securely.

All this time I had fogotten O'mie. Now it dawned upon me that he must be found. He might be alive still. The fall must have been broken somehow by the bushes. I peered over the edge of the bluff into the darkness of the valley below.

"O'mie!" I called, "O'mie!"

"Present!" a voice behind me responded.

I turned quickly. Standing there in the dim light, with torn clothing, and tumbled red hair, and scratched face was the Irish boy, bruised, but not seriously hurt.

"I climbed down and round and up and got back as soon as I come too," he said, with that happy-go-lucky smile of his. "Bedad! but you've been makin' some history, I see. Git up, you miserable cur, and we'll march ye down to General Custer. You take entirely too many liberties wid a Springvale boy what's knowed you too darned long already."

We lifted Jean, and keeping him before us we hurried him into the presence of the fair-haired commander to whom we told our story, failing not to report on the incident witnessed by O'mie on the river bank two nights before, when Jean sent his murdered father's body into the waters below him.

"And so that French renegade is dead, is he," Custer mused, never lifting his eyes from the ground. He had heard us through without query or comment, until now. "I knew him well. First as a Missionary priest to the Osages. He was a fine man then, but the Plains made a devil of him; and he deserved what he got, no doubt.

"Now, as to this half-breed, why the devil didn't you kill him when you had the chance? Dead Indians tell no tales; but the holy Church and the United States Government listen to what the live ones tell. You could have saved me any amount of trouble, you infernal fool."

I stood up before the General. There was as great a contrast in our appearance as in our rank. The slight, dapper little commander in full official dress and perfect military bearing looked sternly up at the huge, rough private with his torn, bloody clothing and lacerated hands. Custer's yellow locks had just been neatly brushed. My own dark hair, uncut for months, hung in a curly mass thrown back from my scarred face.

I gave him a courteous, military salute. Then standing up to my full height, and looking steadily down at the slender, graceful man before me, I said:

"I may be a fool, General, but I am a soldier, not a murderer."

Custer made no reply for a time.

He sat down and, turning toward Jean Pahusca, he studied the young half-breed carefully. Then he said briefly,

"You may go now."

We saluted and passed from his tent. Outside we had gone only a few steps, when the General overtook us.

"Baronet," he said, "you did right. You are a soldier, the kind that will yet save the Plains."

He turned and entered his tent again.

"Golly!" O'mie whistled softly. "It's me that thinks Jean Pahusca, son av whoever his father may be, 's got to the last and worst piece av his journey. I'm glad you didn't kill him, Phil. You're claner 'n ever in my eyes."

We strolled away together in the soft evening shadows, silent for a time.

"Tell me, O'mie," I said at last, "how you happened to find me up there two hours ago?"

"I was trailin' you to your hidin'-place. Bud, Heaven bless him, told me where your little sanctuary was, the night before he – went away." There were tears in O'mie's voice, but soldiers do not weep. "I had hard work to find the path. But it was better so maybe."

"You were just in time, you red-headed angel. Life is sweet." I breathed deeply of the pleasant air. "Oh, why did Bud have to give it up, I wonder."

We sat down behind the big bowlder round which Bud, wounded unto death, had staggered toward me only a few days before.

"Talk, O'mie; I can't," I said, stretching myself out at full length.

"I was just in time to see Jean spring his trap on you. I waited and swore, and swore and waited, for him to give me the chance to get betwane you and the pollutin' pup! It didn't come until the sun took his face full and square, and I see my chance to make two steps. He's so doggoned quick he'd have caught me, if it hadn't been for that blessed gleam in his eyes. He wa'n't takin' no chances. By the way," he added as an afterthought, "the General says we break camp soon. Didn't say it to me, av course. Good-night now. Sleep sweet, and don't get too far from your chest protector, – that's me." He smiled good-bye with as light a heart as though the hours just past had been full of innocent play instead of grim tragedy.

February on the Plains was slipping into March when the garrison at Fort Sill broke up for the final movement. This winter campaign, as war records run, had been marked by only one engagement, Custer's attack on the Cheyenne village on the Washita River. But the hurling of so large a force as the Fort Sill garrison into the Indian stronghold in the depth of winter carried to the savage mind and spirit a deeper conviction of our power than could have been carried by a score of victories on the green prairies of summer. For the Indian stronghold, be it understood, consisted not in mountain fastnesses, cunning hiding-places, caves in the earth, and narrow passes guarded by impregnable cliffs. This was no repetition of the warfare of the Celts among the rugged rocks of Wales, nor of the Greeks at Thermopylæ, nor of the Swiss on Alpine footpaths. This savage stronghold was an open, desolate, boundless plain, fortified by distances and equipped with the slow sure weapons of starvation. That Government was a terror to the Indian mind whose soldiers dared to risk its perils and occupy the land at this season of the year. The withered grasses; the lack of fuel; the absence of game; the salty creeks, which mock at thirst; the dreary waves of wilderness sand; the barren earth under a wide bleak sky; the never-ending stretch of unbroken plain swept by the fierce winter blizzard, whose furious blast was followed by a bitter perishing weight of cold, – these were the foes we had had to fight in that winter campaign. Our cavalry horses had fallen before them, dying on the way. Only a few of those that reached Fort Sill had had the strength to survive even with food and care. John Mac prophesied truly when he declared to us that our homesick horses would never cross the Arkansas River again. Not one of them ever came back, and we who had gone out mounted now found ourselves a helpless intantry.

Slowly the tribes had come to Custer's terms. When delay and cunning device were no longer of any avail they submitted – all except the Cheyennes, who had escaped to the Southwest.

Spring was coming, and the Indians and their ponies could live in comfort then. It was only in the winter that United States rations and tents were vital. With the summer they could scorn the white man's help, and more: they could raid again the white man's land, seize his property, burn his home, and brain him with their cruel tomahawks; while as to his wife and children, oh, the very fiends of hell could not devise an equal to their scheme of life for them. The escape of the Cheyennes from Custer's grasp was but an earnest of what Kiowa, Arapahoe and Comanche could do later. These Cheyennes were setting an example worthy of their emulation. Not quite, to the Cheyenne's lordly spirit, not quite had the cavalry conquered the Plains. And now the Cheyenne could well gloat over the failure of the army after all it had endured; for spring was not very far away, the barren Staked Plains, in which the soldier could but perish, were between them and the arm of the Government, and our cavalrymen were now mere undisciplined foot-soldiers. It was to subdue this very spirit, to strike the one most effectual blow, the conquest of the Cheyennes, that the last act of that winter campaign was undertaken. This, and one other purpose. I had been taught in childhood under Christian culture that it is for the welfare of the home the Government exists. Bred in me through many generations of ancestry was the high ideal of a man's divine right to protect his roof-tree and to foster under it those virtues that are built into the nation's power and honor. I had had thrust upon me in the day of my young untried strength a heavy sense of responsibility. I had known the crushing anguish of feeling that one I loved had fallen a prey to a savage foe before whose mastery death is a joy. I was now to learn the truth of all the teaching along the way. I was to see in the days of that late winter the finest element of power the American flag can symbolize – the value set upon the American home, over which it is a token of protection. This, then, was that other purpose of this campaign – the rescue of two captive women, seized and dragged away on that afternoon when Bud and O'mie and I leaned against the south wall of old Fort Hays in the October sunshine and talked of the hazard of Plains warfare. But of this other purpose the privates knew nothing at all. The Indian tribes, now full of fair promises, were allowed to take up their abode on their reservations without further guarding. General Custer, with the Seventh United States Regiment, and Colonel Horace L. Moore, in full command of the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, were directed to reach the Cheyenne tribe and reduce it to submission.

A thousand men followed the twenty-one buglers on their handsome horses, in military order, down Kansas Avenue in Topeka, on that November day in 1868, when the Kansas volunteers began this campaign. Four months later, on a day in early March, Custer's regiment with the Nineteenth, now dismounted cavalry, filed out of Fort Sill and set their faces resolutely to the westward. Infantry marching was new business for the Kansas men, but they bent to their work like true soldiers. After four days a division came, and volunteers from both regiments were chosen to continue the movement. The remainder, for lack of marching strength, was sent up on the Washita River to await our return in a camp established up there under Colonel Henry Inman.

Reed, one of my Topeka comrades, was of those who could not go farther. O'mie was not considered equal to the task. I fell into Reed's place with Hadley and John Mac and Pete, when we started out at last to conquer the Cheyennes, who were slipping ever away from us somewhere beyond the horizon's rim. The days that followed, finishing up that winter campaign, bear a record of endurance unsurpassed in the annals of American warfare.