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The Frontier and The Frontier and Midland Literary Magazines, 1920-1939 University of Montana Publications

11-1929

The Frontier, November 1929

Harold G. Merriam

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Recommended Citation Merriam, Harold G., "The Frontier, November 1929" (1929). The Frontier and The Frontier and Midland Literary Magazines, 1920-1939. 29. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/frontier/29

This Journal is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Montana Publications at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Frontier and The Frontier and Midland Literary Magazines, 1920-1939 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HE FRONTIER ^ MAGAZINE Of TH€ NORTHWfST

NOVEMBER 4igh Tension, a story by Harry Huse. A Forest Fire Explosion on the Half Moon Burn, 1929, by Harry T , Gisborne. The Six-Horse Limited Mail, poem, by Ethel Romig Fuller, Drawing by Will James. The Ncz Perce War— Battle of the Big Hole— Letters to Gover nor B. F. Potts, 1877, now for the first time printed. Historic and Romantic Map of Montana.

Other Stories by Roland English Hartley, Harry Hartwick, Grace Stone Coates, Qneene B. Lister. ' Other Essays and Articles by Albert Richard Wetjen, James Stevens, John Upton Terrell, Cora E. Van Deusen, W . S. Lewis, V . L. O. Chittick. Other Poems by Homer Parsons, Sallie Maclay, John Frohlicher, J. Cowon Miller, Edna Gearhart, Verne Bright, H. Raynesford M nldet, Ruth Clay Price, Lucy V M. C. Robinson, G, Edward Pendray, James Marshall, Maty Brennan Clapp. H Jason Bplles. ______

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CONTENTS

F rontispiece ...... W ill Jam es______1 The Six-Horse Limited Mail, poem...... <...... Ethel Bomig Fuller...... 2 Other Gods, Montana, poem...... H om er P arson s------2 Petals, poem ______,______Sallie Sinclair Maclay...... 2 High Tension, story ...... Harry G. Huse...... 3 M iners, ttoo poems ...... John C. Frohlicher...... 12 A F orest F ire E xp losion ...... H. T . G isborne...... 13 The Moose in the Moonlight, poem..... <...... »...J. Corson Miller...... 16 Hills and Wind, poems 6y Ethel Fuller, Edna Gearhart, Verne Bright, H. Raynesford M ulder, R uth P rice ...... 17 The Last Work of Norman Kane, story...... Roland English Hartley...... 19 “There Is Something,” poem...... Sallie S inclair M aclay...... 22 H eresy, essay ...... _...... Albert Richard Wetjen ...... 23 Queer Buffoon, poem...... R uth C lay P rice...... 28 Happiness Up the River, story...... Harry Hartwick 29 Meek of Oregon, poem ...... Verne B rig h t...... 37 Fifteen Hundred Miles, poem...... Lucy M. C. Robinson ...... 38 New Soil Rises Against a Man, poem...... G. Edward Pendray . 39 The Desert Trail: 1847, poem...... James Marshall______41 Historic and Romantic Map of Montana...... Eileen Barrows and Irving Shope...... 42 The Way of the Transgressor, story...... Grace Stone Coates...... 44 Unwilling Alchemist, poem...... * ...... Mary Brennan Clapp...... 48 On Bridger Hill, poem...... Jason B olles...... 49 Four Months on a Freighter...... James Stevens______60 W ind, sketch______John U pton T errell...... 53 The Dun Horse, story...... Queene B. L ister...... 56 O PEN R A N G E T h e Canoe W om an o f M ontana...... C ora E. V an D eusen...... 60 Andy Gitchell Borrows a Horse...... W. S. Lewis...... 62 HISTORICAL SECTION The Battle of the Big Hole...... Letters to Gov. B. F. Potts, 1877...... 63 BOOKSHELF Books by Archer B. Hulbert, E. Douglas Branch, W. J. Ghent, Will James, A. D. Howden Smith, Edith Mirick, Benjamin Musser, Jewell Miller, Isobel Stone, Norman Macleod, R. P. T. Coffin, J. W. Krutch, Walter Lippmann. ABOARD THE COVERED WAGON—Contributors Front Advertising Section

BOARD OF EDITORS E d itor...... H arold G. Merriam f Grace R aymond H ebard i „ c. _ ...... University of Wyoming Assistant Editors...... 3 Grace Stone Coates Advisory Editors Paul C. P hillips l B rassil F itzgerald for the Histor- I University of Montana i p b . vo- -d ieal Section | A rcher B. H ulbert Contributing Editors. \ " Tamps Stevens Colorado College } J ames Stevens P hilip A shton R ollins Lew Sarett Princeton Manuscripts should be sent to the Editor; business communications to Blanche Coppo or Keith Beilbronner, Business Managers; subscriptions to Walter Taylor, Circulation Man­ ager—all at the State University of Montana, Missoula. Contributions are welcome at any time of the year. Verse, sketch, essay, article, drama, story, written with sincerity and interest, are acceptable. Copyright, 1929, by H. G. Merriam. Published in November, January, March, and May. Act ofnMarcha! sJ g ^ d' class matter May 4, 1928, at the postoffice at Missoula, Montana, under

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The new cover design is by Evan Reynolds dena), Roland English Hartley (San Fran­ (New York City), formerly a student at The cisco) are well known California writers. State University of Montana, now engaged Mr. Parsons has won several contests in the in art work. wit’s section of The Saturday Review of Attention is called to the distinguished Literature. This is the third story by Mr. board of editors for the Historical Section. Hartley published in The Frontier; two oth­ Dr. Hebard (University of Wyoming) is the ers will appear in the January and March author of several books on western history, issues. Sacajawea, Pilot for Lewis and Clark, and, Engaged in newspaper work are John C. with E. A. Brininstool, The Bozeman Trail, Frohlicher (Missoulian), James Marshall are the most widely read. Mr. Rollins (Seattle Star), both known to Frontier read­ (Princeton) wrote The Cowboy, explaining ers, Lucy M. C. Robinson (Spokane Chron­ his equipment, his work, and his part in icle) and G. Edward Pendray (N. Y. Herald- western development; he is collecting west­ Tribune), both new to our readers. ern documents for Princeton University. Dr. Phillips (University of Montana) has edited, Harry T. Gisborne is in the Fire Research with W . S. Lewis, The Journal of John Work, branch of Silviculture in the U. S. Forest with S. Dunbar, the Fort Owen Journals, Service, located at Missoula. Forty Years on the Frontier, and many other Northwest documents. Dr. Hulbert Eastern writers are J. Corson Miller (Buf­ (Colorado College), Fellow of the Royal falo), author of several volumes of poetry, Geographic Society of Great Britain, head H. Ray tics ford Mulder (Cleveland), formerly of the Stewart Commission on Western His­ o f St. Helens, Oregon, and Harry G. Huse tory, is the author of many books—Historic (West Redding, Conn.), whose story Pioneer Highways of America, The Making of the appears in The World's Best Short Stories American Republic, Frontiers and several for 1929. Mr. Huse has spent some winters others, and the editor of the Crown Collec­ in Fort Benton, Montana. tion of American Maps, accurately mapping Middle Western writers for the first time the western trails, and of are John Upton (Chicago), many books. Such a board of editors should Terrell Sallie Sinclair Maclay (Indianapolis), formerly of Lolo, Montana, assure readers of the worth of the historical and (Iowa City), documents published in The Frontier. Dr. Harry Hartwick who helps Phillips for this issue edits letters never be­ the editors of The Midland. fore published which were written to a gov­ Pacific Coast writers are Verne Bright ernor during a most exciting month, that of (Beaverton, Ore.), whose poetry has the the Big Hole Battle. The letters are from sea-coast in it, Albert Richard Wetjen (Os­ the files of the Montana Historical Society wego, Ore.), author of W ay for a Sailor, and are made available thru the courtesy of and contributor to The Saturday Evening that Society and of Mr. David Hilger, its Post and other magazines, Janies Stevens librarian. (Seattle), mouthpiece for Paul Bunyan, au­ In this connection attention is called tc thor o f Homer in the Sagebrush and other the Historic and Romantic Map of Montana, books, contributor to The American Mercury, constructed by Eileen W. Barrows while a and Queene B. Lister (Portland), author of student at the State University of Montana, widely quoted poems. and illustrated by Irving Shope (Missoula), Grace Stone Coates (Martinsdale, Mont.) an artist in western subjects. Copies, 18x25 is an associate editor of The Frontier. inches, will be mailed for one dollar by the Mary Brennan Clapp and Cora Van Deusen circulation manager of The Frontier, or for live in Missoula; H. J. Bolles lives in Butte, two dollars a map and a year’s subscription formerly Chimney Rock, Mont. W . S. Lewis, to The Frontier. It makes an interesting attorney for several Indian tribes, and or­ gift, especially for an eastern friend. ganizer of the first Indian congress, is Will Janies, the widely known and appre­ known also as an editor of western historical ciated cowboy artist and writer, author of documents. V. L. 0. Chittick is a professor Smoky, Sand and other books, has admirably in Reed College, Portland. illustrated the action and spirit of Ethel Romig Fuller’s poem. Mrs. Fuller (Port­ The Editor is making an anthology o f land) is the author of White Peaks and Northwest verse. Poets desirous of repre­ Oreen. sentation who live in Montana, Idaho, Wash­ ington, or Oregon are asked to send to him Homer Parsons (San Bernardino), Edna at once copies of not more than six o f their Gearhart (Pasadena), Ruth Price (Pasa­ best poems for his consideration. ORIGINATIONS

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T H E FRONTIER A MAGAZINE OF THE NORTHWEST

“The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.” —T horeau.

THE SIX-HORSE LIMITED MAIL

B y E t h e l R omig F u lle r

We always ran out when we heard it come— The chuck-a-luck of the coach and the thrum Of hooves—barnboys, drummers, chambermaid— For it was a sight as it swooped down the grade At the end of the old Calapooia trail: The yellow-wheeled stage of the Limited Mail, Harness and buckles and doubletrees spun Of silver and jet in the setting sun; The three pairs of horses as galloping-white As foam on a mountain torrent at night. We could soon see the driver— he was belted to place On the high rocking seat of the thoroughbrace— Rising to give them the silk; heard him shout As the length of his thirty-foot lash cracked out Over withers and haunches! How the pebbles sprayed From the pounding feet at the fusilade! As if they were shod, not with iron, but with wings, The leads skimmed the road, the lather-flecked swings Pressing them close, and riding their hocks The lumbering wheels striking fire from the rocks. And always we cheered when they whirled through the gate To the steps of the station with never a wait Nor lessening of speed—the sudden stop peeling Half moons in the sod, the brakeshoe squealing, Barnboys already unhooking the traces Before thefpassengers stepped from their places, While the guard leapt off the boot with his gun Packing the mailsacks and “ dust” on the run, The driver lighting a big black cigar, Mustaches a-twirl, strode in to the bar And the keeper with many a jovial sally Boomed out a welcome to Umpqua valley. Then the station door slammed to on the din— The Six-Horse Limited Mail was in! 2 The Frontier

OTHER GODS, MONTANA!

By H omer M. P arsons

Never did Olympians dwell In your woods of spruce and fir ; Moloch yawn, or great Thor hurl His thunder; Never did the sirens call, Never did the harpies sway In your houghs, or banshees wail Thereunder. No, but with the melting snow, Bunyan has appeared, Breaking off a pine tree to brush his shaggy beard!

Bitter Root and Yellowstone Never saw a bassarid; Never dreamed of glades wherein The fairies Danced and capered on the green; Never once the goat-foot god Blew his merry pipes upon Your prairies. No, but when the soft chinook April’s green unlocks, Here comes Bunyan with his big blue ox!

PETALS

B y Sallee S in c la ir M a c la y

Petals of old dead years Will drift and cover The things that now I love— Warm hands, Eyes full of dreaming, Small whispered secrets, Voices that thrill and sing— All these shall be forgotten. But oh, let my heart always cling To fragments of spent blossoms Drifting, drifting, In purple shadowed orchards. 3 The Frontier HIGH TENSION B y H a r r y G. H usk

-y OW that this feller Taber has boodle, and the country, I say, is well gone back East there to Ohio shut of the most of them. ^ and has had a chanct to study “ I told Old Dave Hilger, in to the the thing over I guess he’ll begin to see Stockmen’s National, how it would be, the joke too. when they first started coming. ‘Listen * ‘ Maybe after while he ’ll understand here,’ says I, ‘ They’ll ruin the country me laughing, and’ll set down and drop and won’t do theirselves no good me a post card. A pitcher post card neither!’ That’s what I told him clean showing the grounds of that Normal back there at the beginning. School, and saying he found the Missus “ Old Dave just leaned back in his and younguns doing first rate and glad old cowhide chair and give me the to see him. haw-haw. “ But maybe he won’t neither. You “ ‘Ed,’ says he, ‘you’re a damn old can’t never tell about them dry-landers. back number. You been living out on They wasn’t well-balanced, I never that ranch of yours for the last twenty- thought, take them as a general class. five years— you and that Injun woman Didn’t hardly none of them have what — just raising sheep and letting pro­ you would really call a sense of humor. gress pass you by. Wake up, Ed I ’ says Take ‘Limpy’ Adams for instance. he, ‘ Something to this dry-farming! ’ Laid into his wife and kids with an axe “ ‘Dave,’ says I, ‘this railroad and and then blowed off the top of his government and land agent hot air’s own head with a shotgun. All that got you going. Sure they can dry- ruction ’cause he couldn’t raise wheat farm some parts of Montana, but not on land where the government had fig- here! They’re slopping over when gered he ought to. Or that old maid they think they can farm here. Thirty dressmaker, Miss Lucas, from Indiana. Mile Bench is the same as i t ’s always The one they still got up there to Warm been, and that’s sub-semi-arid. It’s Springs. Laying out on the rim-rock going to stay that way regardless of in Bird Coulee all one afternoon— hop­ these big-mouthed claim locators and ing for a rattlesnake to bite her! All highfaluting experiment stations. May­ tired out, she claimed, ’cause the wind be they can dust-mulch and summer- wouldn’t never stop blowing! fallow, ’ I says, ‘ and raise a measly crop “ Or you take Taber hisself, for that of wheat some places. But not out on matter. I guess he was the worst of old Thirty Mile! The Lord made that the lot. Like when I used to see him, bench to grow grass for sheep, and evening after evening, standing over that’s all it’s fit fori’ there on his place with his hat off and “ ‘ Hell, E d ,’ he come back at me, his head up in the air, talking to them ‘you’re sore, that’s what ails you. poles as if they was human beings or These new pioneers of ours are taking God Almighty or something. your range, and there won’t be any “ A funny flock, the whole kit and more free grass for your woolies. You 4 The Frontier better bring in some poor relatives and “ There was sharp-faced women sten­ a lot of dumb herders and grab a home­ ographers from Illinois, coming out stead for each of them. Climb on the in pairs maybe, and filing side by side, band wagon,’ he says, ‘ The pastoral with their shacks just across the line, days are over. From now on it’s so’s they could stick their heads out wheat!’ their windows and call good morning. “ ‘ Maybe I am sore,’ says I, ‘ but That is before they got to heaving stove not sore enough to try to raise wheat on lids at each other. And dirt farmers, one good rain, a couple of blizzards, with manure on their shoes, and round, and three dew-falls a year. You never fat wives and a half-dozen children, yet see people tackle a new proposi­ trying to make theirselves believe this tion without slopping over. Half the was going to be another Nebrasky or homesteads that’ll be took ain’t fit for Kansas. And grocery storekeepers farming. Let them keep away from with notches wore in their fingers from Thirty Mile Bench and stick to the sec­ breaking off the string after they’d tions that gits fourteen inches rain­ wrapped up a quarter’s worth of sugar fall a year. Far as my sheep are con­ and asked what else today. cerned,’ I says, ‘ I ’ve leased the Reserve “ And then there was this feller for three years. I ’ll give these new Taber. pioneers of yours that long to git their “ I ’d guess him at about thirty-two bellies full. I ’ll stay on my own band­ when he first come here. Nothing wagon, and watch this other one wab­ special about him you’d pay much at­ ble along and break down! ’ tention to. Just a common looking fel­ “ And I was right, except that it’s ler, quiet-like, with glasses and soft taken five years stead of three. The hands and a partly bald forehead. trouble with these scizzorbills was they After he’d been here a while he got didn’t know when they was licked. kind of stooped, ’cept when he’d think “ Like this feller Taber. about it and straighten up. He got into ‘ ‘ He was a good sample of old Dave’s a habit of setting his jaw and throwing new class of pioneers. We got all his head back, like he was one of my kinds and mostly queer ones. They put old bucks and his skimpy forelock was me in mind of converts at a good rous­ a pair of horns. He got to doing that ing ‘ Come to Jesus’ meeting. They’d more and more as things went along. I been a lot of strong preaching and hal­ blamed it on his looking up so much lelujahs in all the magazines and news­ at them poles. papers. ‘ Three hundred and twenty “ He’d been a teacher in a Normal acres free,’ and ‘ Strike your roots in School back East, and he was engaged the soil,’ and ‘ Build your Little Gray to be married when he come out here. Home in the West. ’ That kind of stuff. That was why he come. She was only “ It stirred up all the unsuccessful about twenty. One of his pupils back and dissatisfied folks in the country. at the school. You can guess what kind of sinners “ It’s hard to explain what’d hap­ come to the Mourners ’ Bench and wal- pened to him. Looking at it one way lered in the straw. it don’t hardly seem to make sense. 5 The Frontier

He’d been one of these kind of timid miracle, he says, was that being so lit­ young fellers that gits along better in tle of a man she had come to love him. school than any place else. Hadn’t Now that he’d woke up and had her by never played much with other fellers his side nothing could stop him. I or had nothing to do with girls. Didn’t could have told him something about have much stomach for things that was having a woman on your hands if I ’d give and take and rough and tumble. of been a mind to. “ H e’d just kind of drifted into “ H e’d give up his job and come out teaching at the same school where he’d in June, soon as school was over. I studied, and’d never stopped to size guess there in the beginning she hisself up until he met her. She’d sat thought it was real romantic too. She in his classes for some time before he’d was to follow and join him when he noticed her. Then something come got his place picked out and his shack over him all to once, and from then on built. he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. First “ He must of got a shock when he thing he knew she was staying after first got off the train and seen the class to talk to him, and after while country. None of the homesteaders had ■ he was walking with her evenings in really understood what was meant by the moonlight, under the big old trees. boundless prairies. Nary a tree for She was a pretty little thing with light forty miles in any direction. The only hair and round blue eyes and a pink thing that sticks up out of the bench- complexion, when she first come here. land higher’n a sheep’s back is old “ He told me a lot about her and Chimney Butte, and it’s plumb barren. him, there in the beginning, before she “ I guess he wished he’d stayed back come, when he was living by hisself home school teaching. But maybe not. and was hard up for someone to talk The town was full of other folks like to. him that hadn’t never seen a thousand “ When he found out, he says, that acres all together in one piece, let alone [ she had give him her love, a great wak- a hundred thousand. They was all ing-up come over him, ’most like he’d spouting about the new agricultural felt for the first time what it took to era and this foxy principle of summer be a man. I wasn’t listening very close fallow. The notion seemed to have got the night he opened up and told me out that all a person had to do out the most about it. That kind of talk here to be a rancher was live a wild, [ always did make me tired. Telling me free life and ride around on horseback. about the first time she kissed him! “ Things was pretty well picked over There’s a lot I don’t remember. But time he got here. But that didn’t stop you could tell she’d set him loonier the land agents. They was still able to than a sheepherder. He said something show him plenty of places. Some of about finding he had unworthy offer­ them was only six, seven miles from ings to lay at her altar. He meant he town. But he come clean over here was ashamed of so far having made his and took this piece that joins me. life work training a bunch of young “ I wasn’t able to figger out why girls how to be school teachers. The until he told me. The old ’lectric 6 The Frontier transmission line from the Palls come I guess, that he got into the habit of along his south boundary, and swung what you might call hobnobbing with off across the corner of my place to the them poles. He was gitting some idea, foothills. He thought things would be I guess, of what him and her was going less lonesome account of it running to be up against. It probably was lone­ along his boundary. some when a man wasn’t used to it. “ It wasn’t so much the poles because Sometimes after the wind’s been blow­ God knows they’re lonesomer looking ing a couple of weeks even a sheep- than nothing would be. They’re set in herder will git kind of mooney. And threes, fastened together at the top then after having somebody to tell with a long cross-arm, and the wires him what to do all his life it must of hanging off big crockery insulators at scared Taber a little to find he was the end and drooping along to the next his own boss. set of poles. Whenever 1 look at them “ Anyway he got to talking to them they put me in mind of a gallows. But poles. maybe I got myself kind of soured on “ I was coming by one night ’bout them worrying the wire might break sundown, and stopped in to visit with and drop down into a bunch of my him. H e ’d been painting his house, and sheep. was standing by the corner with the “ It wasn’t the poles so much, Taber brush in his hand, looking off to the says, but the thing they stood for. west. There was spots all over his ‘High tension!’ he says to me, ’Twenty- clothes and his shoes, and a big smear five thousand volts up there in those of paint almost covering his chin. slender wires! Energy— power— and “ ‘Millen,’ he says to me, motioning life! ’ says he. It always made me kind off over the prairie, ‘ just look at that! ’ of tired when he’d talk like that. ‘Lone­ “ I looked but all I could see was the some poles,’ I ’member he said, ’stand­ sun going down and that line of poles. ing there year after year on a lonesome “ ‘You’ve been living here too long,’ prairie! Standing through wind and he says, ‘You’ve lost the feel of this rain and snow with their arms ’round country and the beauty of it. each other’s shoulders to help carry the “ ‘Just look at it!’ he says, ‘The load! Like a m an,’ says he, most like prairie deep purple, and the sky dull, he was talking to hisself, ‘ and his flaming red, and striding straight at woman, and later his children— living u s,’ he says, as if he was telling it to here on these bleak acres— raising someone that had weak eyes and wheat to feed the world! ’ couldn’t see, ‘ striding straight at us the “ If I’d of knowed him better then triple poles of the transmission line. I ’d of come right out and told him that Gaunt silooettes,’ or something like a woman that wasn’t used to this coun­ that he called them, ‘against a glowing try was more likely to be like one of the sky! drooping wires. “ ‘It’s lonesome,’ he goes on like “ It was while he was building his he was talking to hisself, ‘ God! But it’s house and digging his well and putting lonesome! But it’s fine too! ’ he says, up fence and waiting for her to come, ‘ She ’ll understand! ’ 7 The Frontier

“ ‘ If I was you,’ I says, ‘ I ’d of built a half-broke broncho. Taber’d bought my house a little further to one side. hisself four mismatched horses. H e’d If one of them wires was to break in a got one mare that wanted to trot all the sleet storm or blow down in a hard time, and a roan gelding whose natural wind there’d be trouble. ’ gait was a mile a hour. What with hanging onto the whip and the lines “ Well, she come out in the fall, and and the handles of the plow and trying he met her in town and they was mar­ to keep his feet on the ground, he’d git ried. And then he brought her out to hisself into a heavy perspiration. the place that he’d got ready. He’d fixed it up right tidy, with the house “ H e’d scarce be able to drag one foot and stable painted, and a dinky little past the other when he come up from picket fence with a swinging gate. the stable at night after doing the “ H e’d gone and give it a name. He milking. But he’d stand there by the got that idea, I guess from some of the house for a minute and straighten out other fool dry-landers. There was a all his troubles by looking at the trans­ feller on the way in to town that’d set mission line. He didn’t git much help out a couple dozen sick looking cot- that way from his wife whose first ' tonwoods ’round his house and called name, I forgot to say, was Bessie. Bes­ ‘ the place ‘ Prairie Grove.’ And an­ sie was running into her own troubles other’d put up a big, hopeful sign on inside the house what with alkali water his bam, ‘ Golden Acres.’ Taber’d kept and no conveniences like she’d been right up with the procession. He’d used to and nobody ’round all day to I stuck three two-by-fours in the ground, talk to. She didn’t seem able to pick i like the posts of the transmission line, up courage from looking at the poles | with a board nailed flat ag’in them at her own self, so he had to git enough | the top like it was the cross arm, and on for the both of them. it he had printed in big black letters the “ I guess she minded the inconven­ [ words ‘ High Tension.’ I wanted to iences and the lonesomeness more’n ever ask him why he didn’t put on the rest before they got through that first win­ —‘Danger! Keep Away! 25,000 Volts!’ ter. It was a stinger. Snow there for “ Now that Taber’d got his wife and a while ’most up to the tops of the win­ his house and his stable and his sign dows. up by the gate, he set to breaking. “ Her and him had a good chanct to There was funny sights out on the git real well acquainted them long days bench them days. Lady school teach­ inside the house. He hadn’t nothing ers wearing overalls and digging post to do but the chores out to the barn. holes. Dry-goods clerks in yeller khaki H e’d dug a path to go along from the pants trying to milk these wild-eyed back door out to the hen-house and range cows. And Missouri farmers the stable. H e’d stop sometimes when with long whiskers snapping in the it was twenty below zero and a strong wind. wind blowing, and stand there, gawk­ “ But the best of all was Taber plow­ ing off along them singing wires. When ing. The sod was tough and a little he got so cold he couldn’t stand it he’d rocky. The breaking plow bucked like go back inside the house. 8 The Frontier

“ While we was near neighbors I ’cause we had more rain than usual the never really did git acquainted with third year. Things grew pretty well, Bessie. My own woman is a full-blood and it set everyone crazy. ’Bout that Blackfoot, and now that she’s got old time Bessie had another baby. and heavy she ain’t sociable. So we “ Next year the wheat got just about didn’t visit them and they never come high enough to make good pasture when to see us. But I ’d see Mrs. Taber some­ the dry weather hit it. A lot of folks times at the kitchen door, throwing out starved out and quit the following win­ dishwater or out in the yard hanging ter. Bessie wanted to go and Taber out clothes, and to look at her, kind of had a hard time staying. Her folks’d bewildered and droopy, it didn’t seem started writing her letters ’bout com­ like she belonged in this country. ing back. She’d read the letters to him. “ Well, starting early spring every­ After that he’d have to stand out there body went back to breaking. It made in the yard a long time feeding his­ me mad to see them turning under all self the full strength of the current. that good grass. They sure spoiled the ‘ ‘ By spring half the homesteads looks of the country. was empty and it looked like there was “ Taber’d got a little handier at his going to be a future for sheep. But plowing, and didn’t wear hisself out the tougher ones like Taber still hung so. He needed his strength for cheer­ on. Things started out fine for them. ing up Bessie after he got in from the We had a wet spring for this country field nights. She was fixing to cele­ and the wheat was green and growing. brate their anniversary by having a Taber had a grin from ear to ear. H e’d baby. I guess it didn’t make her any got to be a reg’lar farmer now. His handier with the housework or more hands was all tough and hard and cheerful ’bout dry-land life. I ’d have horny. He was a devil at working. to kind of grin every time I ’d think “ But that wet spring was just about that sign of Taber’s. I won­ Thirty Mile’s way of fooling the suck­ dered if maybe they wouldn’t call the ers. Pretty soon the wind commenced youngun ‘ 25,000 Volts.’ to blow. Once it started it kept at it “ Well, things traveled along ’bout steady. My old woman put a wash out the way I ’d figgered. Only not quite on the line one morning and the first so fast. This dry-farming here turned clothes she took out of the basket was out to be a pretty come-on game for dry time she got the last ones hung suckers. It was the summer-fallow out. By June the wheat had all curled that done it. Half your land’s in wheat up and died. Polks picked up then and while the other half’s idle. Two years’ got out in earnest. moisture, they figgered, would raise one “ Things must of got pretty rasping year’s crop. After a man’s grain then over to the Tabers’ ’cause she up burned out and good sense told him to one day and left him. She’d got a let­ quit he’d keep right on plugging. He’d ter from home with a check in it and spent so much time cultivating next she just packed up her things and took year’s ground he hated to give up. The the kids and went on back to her folks weather took a hand at fooling folks in Ohio. 9 The Frontier

“ He told me something ’bout it a as she was able. Anyway not like he couple nights later when I dropped had thought she was going to there at over to visit with him. He’d been first. Things hadn’t worked out right weed-skinning all day on that cussed between them. He’d got it into his summer- fallow. I come on him sitting head that it was because he was a fail­ in his little kitchen in the half-dark, ure. ‘ I couldn’t go back with her,’ I looking out through the window. H e’d ’member he says, ‘ defeated. And I et his supper and the dishes was still couldn’t bear to have her go back on the table along with some more left alone. ' over from breakfast and dinner. When “ ‘ You see,’ he says after while, ‘ I ’m I hollered and he turned and saw me still in love with Bessie. ’ he got up and come outside. “ Yeah?,’ says I, and I ’member “ ‘ Well,’ he says, trying to act cheer­ thinking to myself there was worse ful, ‘ I ’m a bachelor for a while. Bes­ things than being hitched to a Black- sie and the children have gone home foot that got fat and satisfied to sit in for a visit.’ a corner, grunting. “ ‘Hmmm,’ I says. “ ‘ Yes,’ says he. “ ‘ Gone back,’ he says, ‘ to see her “ Well, she’d been dead set on going, folks. I guess it’s been pretty lone- and he had to make up his mind. She • some out here for her.’ went to bed crying, and he come out in “ ‘ They coming back soon?’ I asks the yard. him. “ ‘ You know,’ he says to me, ‘ how “ ‘ I guess not,’ he says. some evenings the color stays for a long “ ‘ You aiming to stay a spell longer time in the west. Well, it was that way your own self?’ I asks him. this night,’ he says, ‘ There was still “ ‘ I got to stay,’ he says, ‘ I ’ve got a light along the horizon. I wanted to sign!’ go worse’n I wanted to stay. I stood “ ‘ A sign?’ says I, ‘ You mean the there wrestling with myself,' he says, one out there by the gate ? ’ ‘ looking at those three poles that stand “ ‘ No,’ he says, ‘ You don’t under­ over by the fence corner. They were stand. A real sign. A symbol!’ black against that band of light. And “ Then he goes on to tell me what he as I looked what do you think, all of means. a sudden, they became ? ’ “ Seems like the night Bessie got her “ ‘ When I squint at them,’ I says, letter telling her to come home he was ‘ all I can see is a gallows.’ all upset about it and didn’t know “ ‘ No, n o !’ he says, ‘ Not a gallows! what to do. There was a chanct, her Three crosses, Millen! Three crosses! folks said, for him to git back his old Calvary! ’ job. He wanted to go and yet he “ So that’s why he’d stayed while didn’t. He figgered there was still a Bessie’d gone on back home. future for the country. I could of told “ Well, now she was gone, Taber kept him that there was but it was sheep. right on tending his summer-fallow. “ Somehow it seemed to him, he says, We had a lot of wind that summer. I ’d like she hadn’t cared for him as much look over there to his place sometime 3, 10 The Frontier and wouldn’t hardly be able to see him went in town and brought hisself out a for the dust blowing. load of twine. “ When planting time come in the “ ’Bout that time he got a jolt from fall he put in another crop of winter Bessie. Maybe her folks had put her wheat. He spent all the money he had up to it. She throwed things square left for seed. It looked like maybe he up to him. She still cared for him, she would starve to death over the winter. said, but couldn’t much longer with He’d already got pretty well gaunted- him so far away. H e’d have to do up from eating his own cooking. There something or she had a right to be wasn’t any work he could do on his free. own place during the cold weather. So “ When he told me ’bout it he was when one of my men left I offered laughing. ‘ Look, Millen!’ he says, Taber a job winter-herding. reaching over the fence, and pulling off “ He turned his horses out and come a half-dozen heads of grain. He rubs over here and lived in the bunkhouse them in his hands and blows away the with the other herders. He had his liv­ chaff. ‘Look!’ says he, holding out that ing and I paid him thirty-five dollars little handful of wrinkled kernels, a month beside. He might just as well ‘ W heat!’ says he, ‘ Stored-up energy! stayed on during the spring and let Power! Life! ’ his wheat grow. But soon’s the frost “ ‘ Sure,’ I says, ‘ and how about your was out of the ground he quit and went missus ? ’ back to gitting ready next year’s sum­ “ ‘ This solves things,’ he says. mer-fallow. ‘ Don’t you see? This is success. After “ Then one day I see a little piece I’ve harvested my crop I’ll go back in the Falls’ paper that made me there and spend the winter. We’ll chuckle. It was such a good one it come back in the Spring, and start new seemed like I ’d ought to show it to again!’ Taber. He didn’t take no paper now “ But Thirty Mile had a trick up her and wasn’t likely to see it. It was too sleeve he hadn’t seen yet. good a joke to keep to myself. But “ Taber got his binder tinkered up somehow I didn’t git around to tell and started cutting. The wheat was him. I guess I didn’t exactly know dead ripe now, and he couldn’t stop to how he’d take it. shock it. He just let the bundles lay. “ Well, we had rain, and Taber’s “ H e’d been cutting three, four days, wheat started growing. It come along and was about a third finished. Then nice through May and June until it late one hot afternoon there come up a was almost in the milk. Dry weather bunch of clouds. They kept gitting set in in July, but only partly hurt it. thicker and thicker in the west until There was enough sap left in the stalks they was a nasty purple. Then they got to make it fill. Some of the kernels all curly on top, and down underneath was small and shrivelled, but there’d they turned kind of pasty white. be a crop all right. “ I watched them from my yard until “ Taber quit weed-skinning, and I knowed what was coming. Then I started patching up an old binder. He struck out for Taber who was driving 11 The Frontier

down the side of the field toward the “ It was just about dark then, and house. I didn’t go far before he heard there was still a chilly wind blowing. me yelling. He got his horses unhooked There was a ragged strip of black from the binder all right and just about cloud laying a couple hands high off to the barn when the hail struck him. the prairie in the west. Below that was He was battered up a little before he some sick-looking light where the sun’d got to shelter with the horses, and I got gone down. peppered good and proper running “ I come quiet ’round the corner of back to my house. the house, and then I see Taber. He “ Well, those clouds just opened up was standing underneath the wires and let us have it. There was a lot of with his back half turned. He was wind back of that hail. I thought it twisting something ’round his left would pound the shingles right off the wrist. roof. “ He stoops down and picks up some­ “ The storm only lasted ’bout ten thing from the ground. He kind of minutes. But when it quit the stones braced hisself. Then he threw back his was laying a couple of inches deep all head with that funny way he had. Be­ over the ground, and things was scat­ fore I knew what he was up to he tered ’round every which way from pulled back his right arm and let fly. the wind. I see a rock go flying up into the air, dragging a long tail of wire behind it. “ I went out in my yard and poked It arched up over that transmission ’round there, cold and shivery. I see line, and fell ’bout halfway back to Taber come out of his barn, and walk the ground. It brought up short, dan­ over to his wheat. The standing grain gling there. I see Taber’s left arm was beat down like a couple thousand jerk up over his head. sheep had tromped it. The bundles too was all tore up and pounded flat in the “ He just stood there ’thout moving. mud. Then, slow-like, he put his other hand “ I was busy setting things to rights up to his head. I made some noise, and ’round my place until evening. Then he seen me. He just stood there. I thought I ’d mosey over and see how “ I says ‘Good Evening,’ and moves Taber was gitting along. I ’d seen him over toward him. He just stood there walking back and forth across his field with his arm still up over his head. with his head down for ’bout an hour. H e ’d had to use barb wire, and where Then he’d quit and gone into the house. it went round his wrist i t ’d tore “ When I come along to his place I through the hide and cut him. Some see where the wind had played some blood was running down his wrist. devilment there too. The dinky little “ I reached up to git the wire un­ picket fence was tore up and laying fastened. flat on the ground. The gate was tore “ ‘Look out!’ he says, ‘Don’t touch off its hinges, and up-ended with the i t ! ’ points sticking in the mud. All that “ ‘Hmmm,’ I says, ‘You ain’t kept was left of his sign, far as I could see. up with the news. This line’s dead was one of the two-by-four uprights. since they put through the new one. I 12 The Frontier see it in the Falls’ paper. There ain’t “ ‘ There it is, Taber,’ I says, still been no current ’long here since back laughing, ‘There it is.’ in May. They’ll be ’long here ’most “ He read the words out loud, slow- any day now, taking down the poles.’ like— ‘ High Tension. ’ Then he laughed too but awful hollow and funny. “ I untwisted the wire from his “ ‘ Yes, there it is !’ he says, and wrist, and the rock dropped to the turns and walks away. ground. “ Well, Taber pulled out next day for “ Well, we just stood there, looking Ohio, and left me here raising sheep. at each other. It kind of made me The grass ain’t been so much hurt as fidget. you might think by all the breaking. “ Then I looked down, and had to I t ’ll come back time the fences blow laugh right out loud. ‘ Haw-haw,’ says down. I, ‘ Haw-haw! That’s a good one, “ And maybe after Taber’s been back Taber 1’ there a while longer and’s had a chanct “ He looked at me sharp, then down to think things over he’ll see the joke where I was pointing. It was that sign and drop a line to his old neighbor. of his with the letters all smeared up “ Anyways I just had to laugh right with mud. out.”

MINERS B y J o h n C. F ro h lic h e r I. ALONE IN A STOPE I t ’s worse than death, that hush, And the black beyond my lamplight, I can hear the hanging pushing— Forcing at the mine-props— Even that is silent— sure As ever-ready death. And when I work There is no echo of my shovel’s scrape— Nothing but the dry-bone sound O f ghastly grey-green ore Rattling in the chute.

II. G H O S T S Hear them knocking— listen— there! Ghosts of miners— fighting for air. Faint— far away— down the stope— Picking the cave in— and no hope. You hear them knocking in the Elm Orlu, In the Leadville mines, and at Granite, too— In the Coeur d ’Alenes, and the Comstock lodes, And in soft coal mines, where gas explodes— Hear them! Listen— quiet— there! Ghosts of miners— wanting air. 13 The Frontier A FOREST FIRE EXPLOSION

B y H . T. G isborne

e w s p a p e r accounts of large head of this fire came roaring toward forest fires in the northern his mountain. But the natural wind N Rocky Mountain region fre­ channel, formed by the gorge of the quently refer to “ runs,” “ blow-ups,” Middle Fork of the Flathead river, drew and occasionally to “ explosions” of the the center of devastation past him tem­ fire. Many Federal, State, and private porarily. Two days later, on August timber protective organization officers, 23, 1929, we went back to the top of and some unfortunate homesteaders, Dessert to obtain measurements of at­ have seen these fires ‘ ‘ blow-up ’ ’ and mospheric temperature, humidity, and “ explode,” but either because the inci­ wind, and to note for comparison the dent was attended by so much grief and behavior of the fire in different timber worry, or because the spectacular fea­ types on different slopes and exposures tures were obscured by the necessity of according to the prevailing weather. being somewhere else, few of these men Forest protective organizations ought to have attempted to describe the event. know at all times for all parts of their • When Montana’s largest man-caused properties what fire behavior to expect according to their current weather meas­ fire, the 90,000 acre Half-Moon confla­ urements. With such knowledge it gration, ran this summer from Teakettle Mountain to Belton and Glacier Park should be possible to give the utmost Headquarters in one afternoon it left a protection when the danger is greatest, trail of desolation which will ruin that and to spend the least money when the twelve-mile auto drive for thousands of danger is least. autoists for many, many years. No vis­ W e arrived at the lookout station itor to Glacier Park can escape that blot about noon and after making a first on one of Montana’s beauty spots. series of weather measurements I went Homesteads, ranches, and small sawmills north the half mile along the ridge top were reduced, not to heaps of ashes, but to Belton Point, a secondary observation j to mere traces of light and dark ashes, station. From this point the north face t small patches of fused china and glass­ of the mountain drops two thousand feet ware, twisted metal bedsteads, bent drive in one mile, the contours running east shafts, and cracked engines and saws. and west, to the gently rolling and flat Several families lost all that they had topography meandered four miles away struggled throughout life to acquire. by the Middle fork of the Flathead I The region lost the soft green forest that river. made it beautiful, and that supplied the At that time the southern flank of materials and the chance for labor which the fire was still over a mile from the made life possible. base of the steep north end of the moun­ A t the Dessert Mountain forest-fire tain. Perhaps six miles of front were lookout station, four miles south of Bel­ visible, the rest hidden by soft swirls ton and 3,000 feet above it, the man on of big columns of smoke. I knew no duty made fast time down the nine-mile attack was being made along this line at trail to Coram Ranger Station when the that time, all available men and equip­ 14 The Frontier ment being concentrated around the mile wide whirling “ explosion” devel­ town of Belton and around Park head­ oped and swept in under us. It was quarters, with fire on all sides of them, obvious, nevertheless, that the fire front trying first to save these most valuable which had been over a mile from the properties. Altho the front below me base of the mountain an hour ago was was beginning to boil actively in the now going to reach Belton point before green timber, as a result of the rising we could, or at least before we would. temperature and wind and decreasing Like all truly massive movements the afternoon humidity, it was not yet great pillar of smoke belching from the crowning extensively. And with the north face of the mountain seemed to light wind coming from the southwest, move slowly. Black bodies of unbumed diagonally opposing the advance toward gases would push their fungoid heads to the south, I thought it was safe to go the surface of the column, change to the down to the spring, some 800 feet in ele­ orange of flame as they reached oxygen, vation and thirteen switchbacks by trail, and then to the dusty gray of smoke. below Belton Point and on its eastern Huge bulges would grow slowly on the slope. sides of the column obliterating other The trip to the spring and back to the protuberances and being in turn en­ lookout station, with a five gallon back­ gulfed. We could see beautifully, as the pack, was completed just in time for the atmosphere between the fire and us was four o ’clock weather measurements. It kept clear by the light southwesterly seemed preferable, however, to make wind. There seemed to be no danger these on Belton Point, closer to the fire as the mountain of smoke leaned ap­ and where the front, which was now very preciably with this breeze, and leaned active, could be seen more extensively away from us. We went forward about than from the main station. This was two hundred yards. a sad decision, because it resulted in no Such a spectacle, even as it enlarged measurements whatever. one’s heart enough to interfere with The lookout, Mr. Tunnell, who had normal breathing, made us wish for the been cleaning up the cabin while I went presence of others to enjoy the thrill. for water, decided to go with me to We stopped to take two pictures, one of Belton Point. As we walked toward it the soft and apparently slowly boiling smoke was boiling up from the north smoke column to the north, and one to end of the mountain in a tremendous the northeast out across the two-mile­ pillar towering thousands of feet above wide canyon that slashes north and our 7,400-foot station. Just as when south between Dessert Mountain and one looks up from the sidewalk at the the range tipped by Pyramid Peak. base of a sky-scraper the top is out of Down there lay the valley in the shadow view, so the top of this column of smoke of death, but altho even the poor photo­ was hidden by its sides even tho we were graph portrays it, we did not realize over half a mile from its base. For some what was to happen in the next few unknown reason the customary roar of minutes. such rapidly rising masses of smoke, Drifting across the north and opening gas, and flame was not present in this end of this canyon dark, dirty, sinister case, nor did I notice it later when the curtains of smoke kept out the clean 15 The Frontier sunlight and reduced all objects to a and the center of great heat. The map dull gray-brown color. Prom the north­ shows that this revolving mass was more west shoulder of the mountain across than a mile in diameter. the trough belches of flame would rip Most of this we saw over our shoulders thru the smoke surface with a light of a as we sprinted south along the open hideous color never used by Maxfield ridge-top trail to the lookout cabin. As Parrish. The high cirque forming the we dashed in the door to snatch our head of Kootenai Creek on the eastern packsacks with what clothes we had not slope, across the divide from us, was unpacked from them, we saw a second burning out in one brief instant. All whirl developing. As we came out the the colorful beauty of the Alpine flora door, hurriedly adjusting our shoulder surrounding two lovely little lakes straps, the new revolution swept ma­ nestled high up in the home of the jestically up the creek, up the slope ptarmigan was being turned to deathly under the lookout cabin—but a full ashes. For perhaps half a minute the quarter of a mile below us, turned west, flames leaped hundreds of feet above northwest, and north, and obliterated the rocky ridge top, followed by billows the spot from which we had taken our of dull, funereal smoke as a mountain­ pictures. eer’s paradise became a Hell’s Half Sec­ Then came the finale, the explosion, tion. the display that should terminate any Even as I snapped these two photo­ really spectacular show. The suction of graphs we noticed that the wind velocity this rising mass of heat drew the air was increasing. One glance at the boil­ across our ridge with a velocity that ing inferno north of us and we saw the bounced me up against the lookout house reason. The southwest wind, sweeping as I stood there gaping. This clean, gently as it was around the northwesl cold, and therefore heavy air literally shoulder of Dessert Mountain, was strik­ tore across the ridge and down the east­ ing the periphery of a rising mass of ern slope to remedy the vacuum and to hot gas and smoke. The result was the ignite the waiting torches. Like a mile beginning of a whirling, clockwise mo­ wide and crystal clear wedge it drove tion, with the deep canyon east of us in under the solid whirl of superlatively acting to draw the center of suction hot smoke and lifted it fifty or sixty into it. feet, so that we could again see the entire slope from ridge top to creek bottom. Suddenly, yet it seemed slowly—the As the oxygen in this fresh air reached movement was so massive, the curtain the trees, brush, windfalls, and grass of smoke across the mouth of the canyon which had been super-heated by the big bulged at about our level, perhaps two thousand feet above the creek bottom. whirls everything burst into flame at once. According to the map about two The bulge moved south, up the canyon, square miles of surface area, over 1,300 and as it moved it dipped deeper and acres, were devastated by these two deeper until it touched the creek, turned whirls in a period of possibly one or two toward the southwest and up the slope toward us, turned west, then northwest, minutes. and then north away from us and to­ Ordinarily the front of a forest fire ward the northern tip of our mountain advances like troops in skirmish forma­ 16 The Frontier tion, pushing ahead faster here, slower Two days later, entering the canyon there, according to the timber type and east of Dessert Mountain from its north­ fuels, but maintaining a practically un­ ern end, to blaze a trail in to the now broken front. Even when topography, slowly burning front and to select a safe fuels, and weather result in a crown fire site for a fire camp, I found the body of the sheet of flames leaps from one tree a young grouse. Sitting erect where it crown to the next, changing green forest had been actually scared stiff by the to black ruins at a relatively slow rate, terrifying whirl of death sweeping into from one-half to one mile an hour, ac­ its canyon home, it was facing toward cording to two measured runs on the the direction from which the great heat Sullivan creek fire. “ Blow-ups” begin had come. Undoubtedly too frightened when such “ runs” commence to throw to fly, the little bird’s muscles had hard­ spots of fire ahead of the advancing ened in paralysis. Even the neck and front, the spots burning back to swell head were still alertly erect in fear and the main front and thereby adding ap­ wonder. The beak, feathers, and feet preciably to the momentum of the rising were seared away. The perfectly bal­ mass of heat. Men have been able to anced body still sits there; one of thou­ race out to safety from in front of many sands of such monuments to m an’s care­ ordinary runs and crown fires. Some lessness. men have escaped and some have been About eight feet farther up the black­ trapped by blow-ups. But when square ened slope a pine squirrel, sometimes miles of forest are, in the course of a called “ Happy Jack,” lay stretched out few seconds, blanketed by a smothering, at full length. The burned off stubs of blistering whirl of heat so great that the his two little hands were reaching out temperature of all animal and vegetable as far ahead as possible, the back legs material is raised far above the ignition were extended to the full in one final, point yet cannot burn for lack of suffi­ hopeless push, trying, like any human, cient oxygen, then, when the oxygen to crawl just one painful inch farther comes, a true explosion results. to escape this unnecessary death.

THE MOOSE IN THE MOONLIGHT By J. C orson M iller From out of the maw of the forest he sprang, then stood W ith his massive head held tense, and kingly high | A scion of the wild— one sired in the line of the blood, The sumptuous spread of antlers etched on the sky. W e held our breath as we hid in the shade of the cabin, While the river gurgled a song, as it ambled by.

W ith forefeet rigidly poised in the turf on the shore, And ears superbly cocked on his sleek-brown head, His nostrils quivered, as he sniffed for the night-wind’s lore, But the off-breeze gave him no sign of doubt or of dread. He bent and drank a cooling draught from the river, Then, rising to his antlered height, he dropped down— dead. 17 The Frontier

HILLS AND WIND

L AT TIMBERLINE

B y E t h e l R om ig F u lle r

On these foothills forests stage An unending pilgrimage.

Black-frocked cedars, plume-casqued firs, Knighted pines in mail and spurs.

Marching upward, cheek by jowl, Sword brushing staff; helmet, cowl.

Till stumbling, spent, at timberline The sainted few attain the shrine,

Where they kneel in wide-armed bliss Before the great white God to kiss

His sandaled feet— absolved in death By the four winds of his breath.

II. NIGHT WIND

B y E d n a G ea rh ar t

I drop my pack and make my camp Beneath a treeless hill, Huge segment cut in calm deliberation From iey-glinted sky. I feel clean rising wind against my face, That dries the sweat With taste of tarweed, sting of cold. My bruised worn body Accepts the refuge of the earth, Contented with its hard stability. And there I follow new star-trails That end in deep cool dreams, Pervaded with white honey-sage— Waking, I drowse and hear the night-wind Whispering to the sparse dry grass. 18 The Frontier

III. SEA WIND B y V e r n e B r ig h t

It calls me in the night of my despair Beckoning down the old familiar ways Of beaches bright with foamy chrysoprase, Of wide seas caught in the typhoon’s deadly snare. Beauty has spread the net of her golden hair To mesh my heart . . . over the misty bays Deep in the magic midnight white stars blaze, And the aureate moon climbs slowly her curving stair.

The laughter of the wind calls and the sea; Dreams burn like living torches in my heart . . . Oh, I was born for this, to always be A wanderer, driven ever by the smart Of Beauty’s whip . . . Oh, I shall journey far Out from this town where prisoning houses are.

IV. WIND-BENT CEDARS B y H. R ay n esfo rd M u lder

We came upon the wind-bent cedars crouched Against the dusk; they seemed to sense what sky Would warp them to eventually, yet slouched Beneath their hollowed cliff, came up the high Forged music of a night incoming tide .... Where snow white surf with unrelenting lust Makes feast of leaning rock; each wave a stride Denying compromise with suppliant dust.

Yet ache of tautened roots, impassioned ways Up hills, resistant strength in stone, an hour With blossom, sanguine shout of thunder, haze Imaged across a jeweled dawn, is dower Enough to make disaster miniature Where only miracle of death is sure.

V. CINQUAIN B y R u t h C l a y P rice Dried Loco pods: Indian calabashes Fog-muffled, rattling in the wild, Coast wind. 19 The Frontier THE LAST WORK OF NORMAN KANE

By R oland E n g lish H ar tley

HEN Norman Kane died, early hasn’t a very wide appeal. There are last summer, some of the very few people either so invulnerably W smaller reviews spoke of the happy or so contentedly miserable that great loss to American literature; but they can hear the truth constantly with in general his passing brought forth any relish. little comment. He wasn’t on friendly To his own and to similar maga­ terms with the established critics who zines, Kane was also a contributor of might have given him the flourish of fiction. Some of his early short stories trumpets. One of these gentlemen, had a rare simplicity and vigor. They whom Kane had written of as a collector made the ugliness of life almost beau­ of refuse thrown out from Parnassus, tiful to contemplate. But they came remarked to a group of friends that back to one like a chill hand laid over Kane’s dying just then was the best the bounding heart of joy. thing he could have done to preserve the Kane’s friends believed his genius legend of his talent; for as he was going showed itself most fully in his con­ into the years when revolt loses its versation. That has been said of many youthful picturesqueness and showed as artists. And perhaps it is not hard to yet no signs of mellowing into tolerance understand why. For when I remem­ or hardening into the prophetic note, ber Kane’s flashing blue eyes, and there seemed to be nothing ahead of him those vivid gestures, and the rich tones but the undignified blustering of mid­ his voice took on when he was moved, dle age. I can see that any trivial thing he This estimate doesn’t take into ac­ might have said would seem to have count Norman Kane’s last work. It the force of wit and wisdom. couldn’t have, for neither friend nor Kane’s separation from his friends enemy had seen the work. And it will came with all suddenness. Not one of be long before any one of them is at them was told the reason for his step­ all likely to see it. ping aside. He hid his weakness like Kane was editor of “ Today” when a personal shame. Strength had always his decree of banishment fell upon him. been the only thing he reverenced . . Before that, he had founded and man­ and here he was with the promise of a aged and edited two other short-lived year of pain and impotence that would [ periodicals of the same type. Perhaps end in death. He wanted no spectators [ it isn’t quite accurate to call them pe­ of this inglorious ending. He left the riodicals. The uncertainty of finances city and came back to the country of kept them from attaining any regular­ his boyhood. He found a home among ity. This dearth of funds was referred strangers, in the remote hills. to editorially as a token of the per­ After the early weeks, when he had petual feud between Mammon and the grown out of the first dull sense of Muses. But the fact of the matter is utter defeat, he began to question the that the sort of thing Kane was doing findings that had been pronounced 20 The Frontier against his life. It was notorious that Still, he didn’t pray. He only knelt physicians often made mistakes; three there and felt the sturdiness of the eminent specialists might even have earth beneath him, and the exulting made the same mistake. This was a tremors of life that ran along the tree- thing more easily conceivable than that trunk; and he loved the life he had Norman Kane, in the height of his men­ despised. Life, just the living, was su­ tal vigor, should be tossed like a worn- preme over all its ugliness. out utensil onto the scrapheap. But the At the farm-house where his simple slow pain in his heart, that for so long wants were cared for, he saw the only he had been able to forget in the ab­ three persons of his new world. Some sorption of work, came week after week days he thought of this new world as with a sharper insistence; and because a transition stage between his brilliant he had trained himself to the accept­ crowded past and the utter blankness ance of the inevitable, he threw off be­ that lay ahead. Again, he thought of fore long this weak comfort of an im­ it as a step upward toward unimagined, possible hope. He was going to die, possible things. before his time. From his little cabin in the orchard The farmer and his wife and his behind the farmhouse, a path went daughter were simple, quiet, unimagi­ down to the stream-side. It was a short native folk. Two months before, Kane walk, and Kane strolled there a dozen would have sneered at the cheap maga­ times a day, to breathe the cool moist zines that came to their metal mail­ air in the shade of the alders and hear box, and the radio that whined imbecil­ the creek hurrying among the rounded ities into their eager ears. But now he stones. This was what life should be, knew their wants as an expression of this life of the stream—something to the same hunger that was in himself: go on and on. He allowed himself the a craving for a fulness of life that was sentimentality of thinking of the creek denied. gliding by with exactly the same music The girl had been out of high school when he was hidden away somewhere. only a year or two. Her body was One day he found himself kneeling large and strong and her eyes were in the soft earth with his forehead full of the urgency of living. Kane pressed to the rough trunk of an alder. never tired of watching her at her Prayer, he had always scorned; prayer tasks. He liked to see the sturdy swing was the expression of the defeated. The of her shoulders as she pitched hay into strong knew that the source of strength the feed-rack for the cow ; and he liked was within them. But he had come to watch her sure strong fingers when now to the end of this vaunted strength, the milk jetted from under them into and to defeat. And he felt the pitiful­ the pail. ness of the plight of a man who was Life was in this girl like a swelling waiting here to die among these trees flood. She was very sorry for the man that waved their arms warmly in the who had come here to die. Often her sunshine, beside the stream that ran eyes filled with tears as she watched on forever in the shade. him in the evening go slowly back to his 21 The Frontier cabin. It would be several minutes be­ tle hand of love upon him. But those fore she began her singing again. parts of the story where he wrote of Yet these people with their fulness of his vision of one who was beside him vigor were far from his own closeness in the dark cabin in hours of pain, to the miracles of every day. They pleased the girl especially; and it didn’t see the tragic glory of a sunset, moved her deeply to think that any nor the poignant mystery of the dawn. woman might be so blessed a gift to One had to near death to know the any man. beauty of life. Yet it wasn’t a romance that Kane When he began writing again, it was was writing; it held too close to the this he put into his work. He wrote inescapable facts of life to be that. of all the things he had missed before. Only, where he had written before of He imagined for himself the life he defeat, he wrote now of triumph; be­ would choose if life were given back to cause he had learned that in writing him, and he wrote of it with the skill of defeat he was writing of the obvious, and the power and the poetry that had and that there was no vision worthy come to him through the years of writ­ of the artist which could not pierce ing only of sorrow and pain. through this to the essence of life, that was triumphant. Sometimes, while the girl pushed her iron slowly back and forth over white Often in the evening, when Kane had things fragrant of soap and sunshine, stopped his reading and taken up his Kane read to her what he had written. lantern and gone out through the or­ It was so strangely beautiful that her chard to his cabin, the girl would sit eyes grew dim. Although there was for an hour alone in the dark of the not so much of high adventure in this porch, looking out across the black tale as in those that came in magazines trees to the sky and wondering why to the mail-box, still she liked to listen. life was so full of unaccountable She told Kane one day, looking shyly things. around to him from the ironing-board, When the story was fully written, that she thought his story was almost and read to the end, Kane gave it to as good as those she saw in print. He the girl, a tight-pressed sheaf of writ­ smiled so gaily that she knew she had ten pages. He put it into her hands, pleased him. her firm wide hands, that turned it In the story there was a man who slowly over and over, this strange had found a new life on the threshold keepsake of the man so unlike other of death. The girl knew that it was men she had known. this man himself, who was distilling She was to read these pages once in his longing into words like music. a while, he said, just to remember him There was a woman in the story too. when he was no longer there. Her eyes The girl could not know, of course, that filled with heavy tears. She would Kane had always in times past written always read it, she told him, more than of women as the foes of men, and that anything else. And she was thinking it was only since he lay here vanquished that perhaps, if she read many times that he had come to yearn for the gen­ the words he had written, she would 22 The Frontier

come at last to know what he had been then, since his name was a call to bat­ trying to teach her, to know what tle, friends and enemies would have things were beautiful things. taken sides in judgment and the work But now, when he left her, she hid become the playground of criticism. the sheaf of pages at once away out of He was very weary of all that sort of sight. She would be ashamed to have thing. One reader who should slowly anyone see it. It might be, she thought, learn to love his tale meant more to only her ignorance that made her find him than a thousand drawn by curi­ beauty in this story. Other people osity. might laugh at her for keeping it. She After each reading, the girl carefully laid it carefully away. lays the manuscript away again, in the Norman Kane did not write any lower drawer, beside a bundle of sweet- more. For a few months he had held grass. It will probably lie there for off the pain by the incantation of happy many years. But some day, when the work. But now the work was done; fulness of life within her becomes more and soon everything else was done. On conscious of itself, she will know how the day when he was borne away to much of this she has drawn from the be laid beneath the tree he had chosen, yellowing pages. Perhaps this under­ the girl took out the packet of written standing will come just on the eve of pages and read many of them again. her marrying. Then she will feel no The man himself was here. It was fool­ more shame of having kept the story; ish to cry, when he was still here. then she will proudly show it abroad; Often she reads the long story and sooner or later among those who through. Norman Kane’s last work is see it there will he some one who will complete now, for it has become the know it for the thing it is. Then plot of ground where another spirit Norman Kane’s last work will come lives and grows and comes to flower. into its own. Having lived on, as he He might have given the story to the wanted it to, in one human heart, it world in the direct and usual way. But will reach out to others.

“THERE IS SOMETHING— ”

B y Sa llie S in c la ir M a c la y

There is something About this day’s stillness That is like a tired heart . . Something that says “ hush” , Trying to forget The sound of last night’s storm In the remoteness And dreaming silence Of today. 23 The Frontier HERESY B y A lbert R ichard W e t je n

OME twelve hundred years before He was a wiry, dark-complexioned this era of prohibition, Li Po, the man of middle height, about thirty or S Chinese poet, supported by two thirty-two years old when I first met courtiers and somewhat stewed, was able him. He was dark-haired, dark-browed, to stand groggily before his Emperor and although smooth-shaven always had and upon command dash off several a dark blueness about his lean jowls. masterpieces which remain readable to To the best of my recollections he in­ this very day. The same gentleman, in variably wore tweed suits, gray felt hats much the same state of grogginess, died with the brim pulled low over his fore­ rather romantically by falling off a head, and his eyes were glittering brown barge while trying to embrace the re­ orbs behind shell-rimmed glasses. He flection of the moon. He believed, as belonged to the country club, played you might say, in combining business golf, exercised in the local Y. M. C. A. with pleasure and he remains a model gymnasium, lunched with the Kiwanians for all aspiring poets and philosophers and, being a firm prohibitionist, only got who still happen to reside within the fried on Christmas, New Years, July borders of the Celestial Empire. the Fourth and his wedding anniver­ sary. He was a graduate of a Western I cannot claim, of course, to have university and had served overseas as a reached any of the heights, bibulous or lieutenant of artillery. When I became poetic, to which Li Po so gloriously acquainted with him he held a commis­ ascended; but I do consider that I have sion in the National Guard and relig­ imbibed sufficient disillusionment to iously gave up every Monday evening to enable me to regard life as a very un­ drill a platoon or so of seedy-looking reasonable and always humorous propo­ youths in the local armory. He was, all sition. I have, for instance, after some in all, a very admirable citizen. years and considerable expense, discov­ We were introduced by a mutual ered that it is almost impossible to fill friend, soon after my first success as a an inside straight and that one should writer and my subsequent marriage and never write letters to women. I have settling down in a small and thriving become resigned to the fact that all men western city. Neville sold insurance, are not honest by instinct and that the wicked do frequently prosper and live bonds, real estate, travel tickets and to noble and ripe old ages. Having also other such stuff. He was widely known been tinkered with by priests, policemen as a hustler, a restless, quick, shrewd and almost terrier-like man with a fierce and politicians I have, in short, come to agree with a very famous critic that life determination to get along. is a circus; with a very famous poet that He had a very beautiful wife, a blond life is a shame; and with a remarkable girl, and they were both of them of good sexual athlete that it is extremely inter­ pioneer stock. She was slender, well- esting. All this has nothing to do with developed, clear-complexioned, and su­ the story, but I always think of such perficially bright in the way college- things when I think of Neville. trained young matrons are likely to be. 24 The Frontier

She also had social ambitions, which you of a terrier hanging on to a bigger Neville himself encouraged and appar­ dog. He seemed to regard life as a big, ently cherished too. Starting with very strong but rather stupid fellow who had little when they were first married he to be constantly worried and dug in to. worked like a horse to set himself on his He ate, talked and slept business, and feet, and when he had accomplished all, as far as I could see, to enable his that, to a modest degree, he worked even wife to buy a better fur coat, a better harder to push further forward. car, a better diamond bracelet and a He would be in his office by eight, better house, which in turn meant her would have covered half the countryside elevation to still more exalted social by noon, and would take work home strata. with him in the evening, excepting Mon­ Business ordered everything he did, days when he drilled in the armory, and from joining the Masons to wasting an Wednesdays when he exercised in the evening round a bridge table, a fact Y. M. C. A. which I discovered after he had drawn As time passed he built a substantial me into a clever business deal which six-roomed house in a good neighbor­ netted him several hundred of my dol­ hood and then mortgaged it to buy a lars. That transaction completed, his better car to go with it. His wife pro­ visits to my home ceased with the cured a fur coat, gave bridge teas and abruptness of a definite break. It was endorsed Art and Drama. She began some time before it dawned upon me to be invited to all the big functions that he had lost interest, and by then his (she was really very beautiful) and wife had ceased to invite mine to her Neville bought a tuxedo and went with dinners and teas. It was a really re­ her when he had time. He was not liked markable phenomenon and my first an­ particularly, he was too much of a work­ noyance past I grew even more inter­ er and too grimly in earnest for that, ested in Neville. Everything he did had but his wife made up for him and they its definite object. Of such stuff, I con­ climbed steadily together. sidered, were giants and millionaires It was his grim earnestness that struck made. Concentration, that was it ! A me from the first. He brought his wife ruthless striding forward towards a def­ round several evenings to play cards or inite goal. talk, so often in fact that we became Neville’s home life, what there was of quite intimate. At least I thought we it, was ideal. On Sundays, and some­ did, for I was then extremely innocent times on Saturday afternoons, unless he and unacquainted with the charming had a golf engagement that might help custom of cultivating people for busi­ business, he was to be seen in his shirt ness reasons. And business was about sleeves digging the weeds out of his lawn all that Neville talked of, when he wasn’t or planting flowers around his house. talking of his wife or the late war. It He landscaped the place himself (this was seriously debatable as to whether he was before he could afford to hire a did not think more of business than he gardener and before the new car was did of his wife, but it is certain that he paid for) and he built an elaborate rock loved them both with the same grim garden near the back porch. He was earnestness and sincerity. He reminded always tinkering with a hammer or a 25 The Frontier

| screw-driver, fixing the house interior, ation, coupled with the almost uxurious , and once he went without cigarettes for feeling for his wife. He became gener­ a whole month to make the first pay­ ally regarded as a man with a future, ment on a fine oil painting some travel­ someone who would bear watching, and ing artist was exhibiting in town. many of the town moguls he met socially Towards his wife he was extremely and with his wife’s aid, began to drop ; gentle and considerate. She grew ac­ scraps of profitable business his way. customed to him bringing her breakfast He did not slacken the furious pace i in bed, before he started for the office. when this happened, but rather in­ ! He would draw her bath water and buy creased it. He could be seen almost any the groceries, and when he came home day down in the shopping district, strid­ ( at night he would often as not wipe the ing hurriedly along, with compressed dishes. She spent her time bridging, lips, frowning brows, and his eyes gleam­ | golfing and dancing, reclining between ing like purposeful pebbles behind his whiles on the davenport in their front glasses. room, wrapped in a gorgeous silk dress­ Two years after I first met him, and ing gown, languidly smoking a cigarette nearly a year after the abrupt cessation in a long holder, sipping an occasional of intimacies between us, he was stand­ f cocktail and complaining of exhaustion ing at the peak, on the threshold of [ or the need of some new clothes. And really big things. He had a thriving | he seemed to love it. His whole life was and growing business of his own, enough [ wrapped up in her and in his work, or to employ two stenographers and a book­ I perhaps they were both so intermingled keeper. He had his debts paid. And [ he could scarcely distinguish any differ- he was included in every social gather­ I ences in them. She had only to mention ing of importance which occurred. And I something she wanted and he would then my wife informed me that Mrs. I grimly increase speed and almost bludg­ Neville was to have a baby, a matter eon people into buying more insurance which had apparently reached her by or bonds or something. the strange and devious routes used to That she was fond of him there can convey such information. be no doubt, and she might have devel- Tom Neville, I understood, was hav­ I oped into a reasonably useful cook and ing plans drawn for a newer and bigger housekeeper if he had let her. But he house, to be built in the most exclusive I spoiled her, made her selfish almost suburb. He was to buy a bigger and I against her will, a common habit of better car. His wife was to have a maid, I American men, but not always carried so that the baby would not interfere to the extremes that Neville carried it. with her social duties, and he was to [ The couple became the subject of light move into a fine large office in the new and good-humored comment about town, bank building then going up. He was and wives frequently pointed out to at the peak, without doubt, with higher their husbands how nice it would be if peaks before him. He had made good. they were only like Tom Neville. He was a living, breathing example of It is hard, in a short sketch, to make what energy and determination could do clear the man’s furious and dogged en­ for a man, a concrete proof that I was ergy, his grim earnestness and determin­ wrong in holding, as I did, that nothing 26 The Frontier

in the world was worth pouring all blond woman who was soon to have a youth and pleasure away for; though child. indeed it might be said that he gained It was too perfect and too reasonable his pleasure in what he did, in the very to last. Everything fitted in ; brick was complete absorbtion he had in his wife neatly piled upon brick. It was against and in business. all experience and against all the rules At any rate I was disturbed. It is not the gods have laid down. The fulfil­ pleasant to have one’s own pleasant and ment of desire does not come so logically amiable theories disrupted. Man was and mechanically. If it did, millions not meant to be a machine. He had to would be walking the heights by virtue have at least one or two comfortable of determination and toil. It was all too vices. He had to hold true friendships, reasonable and there must be a flaw relax occasionally, act the fool at times. somewhere. Life is never reasonable. Life had to be enjoyed as you went Something had to break, if it was only along. Success was not a mechanical Neville’s health. Something did break, proposition. The gods had to smile and but nothing that I expected. Right in luck had to favor you quite largely. the midst of a small gathering at my One should work a bit, play a bit, dream home, where several friends were point­ a bit, and trust to his destiny. Yet here ing out to me how much money I might Neville had eliminated everything that make if I would only give up this thing interfered with business and he had and that thing and really work (I am proved successful. His seeming pleas­ astonishingly lazy), someone dropped in ures were all carefully planned to that to say that Mrs. Neville was dead. one end, even his golfing and his exer­ She had been taken ill, I gathered, cising in the gymnasium, the one bring­ and hurried to the hospital for a Caesar­ ing him desirable contacts, the other sup­ ian operation. Both she and the baby posed to keep him fit, so that he could had died. It was very sudden, like a keep up his furious pace. I thought that snap of the fingers. She had given a perhaps his gardening and his tinkering dinner to a few intimates that very eve­ about his house were symptoms of a ning (the child was not expected for a genuine joy, but I later heard him admit month or so) and she had played cards he liked to “ keep the place up,” so that up to- a reasonably late hour, in perfect he could get a good price for it when health. The guests left at ten. At he sold. twelve-thirty she was dead. Just like It resolved, then, down to the fact that! The gods had poked a curious that the only real pleasure he gained probing finger into the whole structure was in doing all this for his wife, and and it had collapsed. even that, I still suspect, was an illusion For the first time since I had been concealing the desirability of having his acquainted with him Neville missed wife rise up through the social strata three succeeding days at the office. He and thus bringing him into communi­ went about like a man stunned but who cation with men more powerful and suc­ still retained the use of his limbs. His cessful than himself. But at any rate, face was ashen beneath his blueness of to give him the benefit of the doubt, his beard. His mouth was slack. His eyes world was wrapped up in the slender were dull, dazed circles without compre- 27 The Frontier hension of what went on before them. At first, however, it looked as if Tom I really don’t think he realized for al­ Neville was really going to qualify. He most a week that she was dead. His sold his house, sold his car, sold his mem­ friends gathered his clothes and stuff bership in the country club. For some from the house and took them to the months he went about with but little of hotel where he was staying. He never his old energy left, still dazed as it were, untidy, very often unshaven, sometimes entered the house again. now a little stewed, the latter, I suspect, H e didn’t know what to do. That was more because he did not know what to really the tragic part of it. He was a do with himself than because he really church member, but only for business felt the need for liquor and forgetful­ reasons, and there was no comfort be­ ness. But this phase gradually passed. fore the altar. He had no wholly intim­ He straightened up, began to take an ate friends to turn to, outside of his interest in life once more, and actually relations, and he had never bothered became human. much with them. He had no philosophy of life to support him. He had been too He spent but little time in his office busy to think about or formulate one. and was off to play golf nearly every He had not even the impulse to get afternoon with men he could not pos­ drunk. Drinking, except on rare occa­ sibly hope to make a deal with. He sions, had interfered with business and bought a new car, a snappy sports mod­ he had grown out of the habit. I know el, and he took up fishing. He even de­ most of this to be true, because on the cided it was a waste of time to exercise one occasion he came to me after it hap­ in the Y. M. C. A. gymnasium, and he pened, and I managed to get half a bottle took to reading detective novels instead. inside him, he cried on my shoulder and He brewed passably good beer in the talked about it all. He had not lost his apartment he had rented and had eve­ interest, but he went about his affairs nings of poker with brown-bread-and- like an automaton, because the habit was dill-pickle lunches. His business re­ fixed in him and the only place he knew mained stationary, or perhaps even went to go was the office. His plans were back a little, until the big banker of the all ruined, he told me. His wife was town one day offered him the job of dead. His grief was deep and sincere. renting the offices in the new bank He believed it and so did I, at the time. building, the commissions from which Something had gone from his life and were in themselves a substantial sum. he felt it keenly. This deal placed Neville at the top of I assured him that he would get over those who followed his profession in that town, and it was surprising really that it and that some day he would marry again. He assured me in turn that such he had been chosen, for there were at a thing was unthinkable. He would least three other men who were better never love any other woman. There was friends of the banker and who had been nothing to say to that, of course, but one expecting recognition. could doubt. The gods do not rule en­ It was luck, nothing else, joined to the tirely without aim and the perfect life­ fact that the banker was sorry for long loves are so rare they are written Neville and that his daughter admired into the history of nations. him. 28 The Frontier

It was not long before he was to be Possibly he was happy then. He had no seen at the shows with this daughter, a time, certainly, to think about whether tall, grave, dark girl with very red lips he was or not. Yet the gods are very and dreamy dark eyes. She had met unreasonable, and life is very unreason­ him at the Governor’s ball once, when able. Here is Neville making six times he had been arrayed in his National what he used to make in the days when Guard uniform, and had danced with he worked so hard, and now he does him several times. After the death of scarcely any work at all. It might be j his wife she had been the first to invite said that those years of hard work gave him to tea, and it may be said with a him his present position, but how can reasonable amount of certainty that he that be ? His wife is worth half a mil­ had never suspected her feelings for him lion and his uncle died soon after K Luck again, you see. Neville, on the marriage and left him sixty thousand of banker’s advice, took a whole floor of his own. And then if the banker ha offices in the new bank building, hired not been sorry for him, and his daughter field men and increased his staff of not interested, one of the others would stenographers. He also married the have been given the job of renting the banker’s daughter. He also ceased to offices in the big new building. pay much attention to business and There is no moral to be drawn from 1 hired a manager. He began to enjoy all this, or, if there is, it is one which himself. would meet the disapproval of all right The story ends there, and I suppose thinking men. But I don’t mean it that I there’s really nothing to it. I find it way. I am merely trying to justify my­ interesting myself only when my friends self when I prefer to doze in the ham­ are annoying me with remarks about my mock under the cherry blossoms instead indolence; and then I think of those of rising and going forth to make some wasted years of Neville’s, and of all the more money. And I am merely trying things he might have done. to justify Li Po with his maidens and I think then of the hours he might his rice wine; and Shakespeare with his have spent in the orchards under the long-drawn revels at the Mermaid; and | stars, lying in a soft hammock beneath the cheerful but ragged beachcomber I the white-bloomed cherry trees. And met at Para. The gods alone can give the lazy summer afternoons when he success but life is ours already. And might have stood in the cool shadows by life, as I insist, is a very unreasonable 1 the edges of a trout stream. And the and always humorous proposition. winter nights when the frost crackled on the pavements and he might have sprawled before a good fire with a QUEER BUFFOON whiskey-and-soda in one hand and Casa­ nova or Conrad in the other. And the B y R u th Cla y P rice long talks he might have had, talks last­ I shall understand you soon: ing until the dawn, with men who were When I foretell the swift typhoon, not interested in business at all. Explain the butterfly’s cocoon, But then, it is too late now. The years Read the hieroglyphic moon: are gone. And he is happy after all. I shall understand you soon. 29 The Frontier HAPPINESS UP THE RIVER

By H arry H art w ic k

T WAS just getting daylight as they rent a canoe in the morning. I said came down to the river. Mist was about four o ’clock.” I lifting from the water. The sky was “ What did he say to that?” dark, but over in the east, light was “ He said all right.” flickering across the damp fields. Eve­ “ That all?” rything was cold and sleepy. The “ Sure, that’s all.” Bert began to lights on the bridge down the river frown. “ Say, listen. What’s the big were still burning. idea?” The boathouse was dark and empty. Alec shrugged his shoulders. They rattled the door, but it was “ You talked to the guy, didn’t you? locked. Nobody else knows anything about it.” “ W e’re just out of luck,” said Alec. “ Well, anyway, you don’t need to “ That’s all there is to it.” jump all over me,” said Bert. “ You He went around the boathouse and can do your own running around after peered through all the windows. When this.” He was mad. He turned and he came back, Bert and Peewee were walked away. Alec and Peewee stood still standing there by the door, shiver­ there and looked at each other. It ing. The dampness from the river didn’t look very good for the trip. seemed to he soaking into their clothes. In a moment, they heard Bert calling The air was cold. them. He was down on the landing of “ Well, what the devil are we going the boathouse. They found the stairs to do now?” said Bert. and went down. Nobody answered. Bert was standing in the darkness at Peewee shook his head. the bottom. He just pointed. There “ I can’t figure it out at all.” was the canoe, sitting out on the dark They put down the stuff they were landing with a piece of canvas draped carrying, some bacon and potatoes and over it. It was pretty dark, but they things rolled up in their blankets. Pee­ could see the handles of the two paddles wee went over and rattled the door of sticking out from under the canvas. the boathouse again. “ Well, what do you know about “ It’s locked all right,” he said. that ? ’ ’ said Peewee. He went over and Nobody paid any attention to him. looked at the canoe. They stood there a few minutes, think­ ing it over. Peewee watched the door Bert looked scornful. out of the corner of his eye. “ Maybe after this you won’t get in Finally Alec looked around at Bert. such a big hurry,” he said. “ What’d you ask the fellow last “ Listen here. I didn’t say it was night, anyway?” y o u r fault, did I ? ” said Alec. He was Bert looked surprised. getting mad, too. “ Why, I just told him we wanted to “ Well, it’s all right,” said Peewee, 30 The Frontier

in a hurry. “ Let’s don’t fight before “ Sure. We all have our troubles,” we get started.” said Peewee, looking at Alec. Bert didn’t say anything. He went There was a silence. upstairs and got the bundles. When “ I guess I don’t feel good today, is he came back down, they took out the all,” said Alec, at last. He bent down paddles and spread the canvas over to get into the canoe. the bottom of the canoe. The bundles Bert didn’t say anything. He held they squeezed under the thwarts. Then the canoe carefully while Alec got in they dragged the canoe down the wet and balanced his way up to the seat slippery landing to the water. in the bow. Then Peewee climbed in Mist was all over the river. Mist was and sat down on the bottom of the clinging to the willows along the bank. canoe between the middle thwarts. It rolled and unrolled over the dark “ Pretty soft for me,” said Peewee. water. Everything was quiet. The “ Don’t worry,” said Alec, laughing. water gurgled sleepily around the sup­ “ You 11 get to paddle before it’s all ports of the landing. over.” “ Where I ought to be right now is Bert got in last and shoved off from home working on my English,” said the landing. The water made a noise Alec. around the prow. There was a silence. Peewee held “ W e’re on our way,” laughed Pee­ his breath and looked at Bert. Bert wee. He held onto the gunwales a lit­ looked unconcerned. He was watching tle nervously. the river. Bert and Alec paddled without say­ Peewee got uneasy. He tried to ing anything. The mist was rolling laugh. swiftly over the water. It was as if “ All right, come on, boys. Let’s drop the light growing in the east were roll­ the old scow in the river. ’ ’ ing the mist before it. The canoe It was getting more daylight. The rocked unsteadily. The water splashed river with the light glimmering on it up onto the handles of the paddles. looked grey and silent. It looked thick “ Let’s get going,” said Bert. “ It’s and even warm. But as they slid the cold.” He began to paddle faster. canoe into the river, some of the water splashed on their hands. It was icy “ Boy, you’re sure a hot paddler!” cold. said Peewee. “ All I have to say,” said Alec, “ is Bert grinned. that if it stays this cold, we ’ll all “ Now what’s the matter?” freeze to death.” “ What’s the matter? You’re splash­ “ Oh, it’ll warm up in a little while,” ing water all over me, that’s all!” said Peewee, quickly. “ Oh, don’t let a little thing like that Bert was silent for a few moments. worry you.” Peewee waited helplessly. Finally Bert Alec, up in front, laughed. Bert sighed. He moved his feet. laughed, too. “ Well, I guess we all have our little “ A little water’ll do you good,” said troubles.” He laughed nervously. Bert. 31 The Frontier

They were getting out into the coun­ tom of the canoe. Bert laughed. He try. The paved highway that ran north tried to sound consoling. out of the city followed along the right “ Why, what the devil, that’s noth­ bank for a while. Then it turned into ing! I ’m back about two weeks in the trees and left them alone. English myself.” “ This is great,” said Peewee. He “ Well, I don’t care. It’s no joke,” stretched lazily and tried to wrap him­ said Alec. self up in the canvas. “ I could go to “ Who said it was! I tell you, I sleep just as easy as pie.” think sophomore year is even harder “ I guess you might just as well,” than freshman year.” laughed Bert. It was fun to tease Pee­ “ It sure is.” wee. They were silent for a while. Peewee sat up and turned around. “ Say, what’s in these blankets of “ How about it, Bertt Want to yours T” said Peewee, raising himself change off a while t ’ ’ up and dragging one of the bundles out “ I should say not.” from under the thwart behind him. “ I just as soon. If you want me “ Get out of that stuff,” said Alec, to.” twisting around. Bert laughed. “ Well, when are we going to eat?” “ This is a man’s job. It’d get you said Peewee, putting the bundle back. down in no time.” “ Not for a long time yet,” said Bert. Peewee looked disgusted. “ I brought some bacon,” said Alec. “ Well, any time you say.” “ But we ought to save that for din­ They were silent again. Bert and ner.” Alec paddled steadily. Finally Alec “ Did you bring that cake you said lifted his paddle and rested. Bert you were going to?” asked Peewee, stopped, too, and let the canoe drift turning round to Bert. along smoothly on the water. “ That’s for dinner,” said Bert. “ After you get onto the hang of it, “ You don’t get none till dinner.” you can go for hours without getting “ Well, we can have cheese and tired,” said Bert. bread for breakfast, anyway,” said “ I'll bet,” said Alec, without turn­ Peewee. “ I got about six pounds of ing around. cheese.” Bert started paddling again. He Bert laughed. looked thoughtful. “ Boy, you better watch out. You “ You sure got the dumps today,” he know what cheese’ll do to you.” said. “ Did anybody bring apples?” asked Alec took up his paddle with a sigh. Alec. “ Well, it’s a cinch you never had a “ I did. A couple of dozen or so,” five thousand word theme to get in said Peewee. with only a week to do it. Y ou’d have “ I bet I could make a meal off ap­ worse than the dumps, all right.” ples alone,” Alec mused. “ Hope you didn’t come to college to “ I brought a knife, too,” added Pee­ study,” mumbled Peewee from the bot­ wee. “ And a fork to cook bacon on.” 32 The Frontier

“ You’ll make somebody a nice wife ter. Nobody was in sight. The town all right,” said Bert. seemed to be still asleep. Alec laughed. They could see the dam up by the After that, they paddled along talk­ powerhouse. It lay in a shining flash ing. The sun began to warm the river. across the river. There was something The mist had all rolled away, and the exciting about the way the spray spar­ air was chill and shining. The bright kled in the sunlight, and the noise. sky had a blue, washed look. It was They had to shout to each other as the going to be a nice day. Along the shore, noise got louder. birds twittered in the trees. “ Sit tight,” shouted Bert at the top “ It’s going to be a peach of a day,” of his voice. “ I ’ll swing her into the said Peewee. portage.” “ I ’ll say!” Bert agreed. “ If it They were just below the dam, and doesn’t get too hot.” the water was rushing and fizzing “ You mean ‘ if it doesn’t rain,’ ” said around the canoe. Bert turned the ca­ Alec, laughing. noe into the narrow inlet that led off Bert stopped paddling. to the portage. The roar of the dam “ I ’ll say this much. Y ou’ve sure got seemed to set the surface of the still a swell sense of humor today. ’ ’ He was backwaters to quivering. getting tired of the way Alec was act­ In a moment, they glided up onto the ing. mud at the end of the inlet. They “ Look here,” said Peewee, sitting climbed out and dragged the canoe up. “ If you two are going to fight across the short neck of land. As soon this way all the time, we might just as they had pushed it into the water on as well turn around and go back.” the other side, they all climbed in again. “ All right, all right,” said Alec, still Peewee tried to hang back and get in laughing. Bert started paddling again. last. But Bert shoved him on in. They began to hear a rumbling noise “ Well, that’s good enough for me.” ahead. It got louder as they went on. laughed Peewee, getting in. A brick smokestack swam out above the Bert picked up his paddle. trees over there. “ Maybe Alec’d like to change off “ Listen,” said Peewee, holding up for a while.” his hand. “ I can hear the dam.” “ Oh, don’t worry about me,” said Alec with a sigh, “ I ’ll get along some­ Alec listened. way.” “ We must be nearly to Coralville,” Bert stopped paddling. He looked he said. mad. “ For God’s sake, now what’s the “ About another mile is all,” said matter!” he exclaimed. Bert. “ That’s all. Just another mile.” “ Nothing’s the matter, if you want Pretty soon the river curved to the to know.” right. Just ahead, on the far bank, “ You don’t know, yourself. You some houses mixed with the green trees. must be nuts!” Farther on was a long brick power­ Alec was silent. house with a tall smokestack in its cen­ “ Well, I didn’t want to paddle any­ 33 The Frontier way,” said Peewee. ‘ ‘ Don’t get that Peewee said nothing. idea into your head!” “ That’s why,” added Bert. He was There was a silence, and then Bert still flushed. and Alec laughed a little. It began to get warmer. Bert took “ I ’m not that crazy,” laughed Pee­ off his shirt and paddled that way. wee. He felt relieved. “ I bet it wouldn’t take a fellow long to get good and sunburned,” he said. They started out from the portage. The water was quiet and deep above the “ Oh, I don’t know,” said Peewee. dam. Gradually the noise faded away, He let his hands drag to the wrists in and Coralville shifted around behind the cool water. Up in front, Alec pad- a curve in the river. died steadily away. The sun beating The air got warmer. The sunlight down upon them made their backs and began to have a hot smell. Paddling shoulders throb. It wasn’t bad at all. near the banks, they could smell the Only it made them feel sleepy. The air warm mud and willows. It was pretty smelled good. nice. Ahead of them, the river stretched Alec stopped to rest a moment. Bert out brown and glittering. Now and grinned. then, it narrowed till the canoe slid ‘ ‘ What’s the matter up there ? I hope beneath the willows drooping along the you’re not tired already?” hanks. Mosquitoes danced around their “ Oh no. Nothing like that.” heads as they paddled in the shade. Bert laughed and paddled harder They ate breakfast in the canoe. Pee for a moment. wee opened up the blankets and handed “ H ey!” said Alec. out the stuff. It was cheese and apples After that, nobody said anything for and some bread. a long time. Peewee began to study “ Is that all we got? asked Bert. the banks slipping by on each side. “ What do you want for nothing?” They passed a clump of cottonwood Peewee laughed. trees. In some places, cornfields ran Bert went on eating. right down to the river. Farther on, a “ Well, of course if you’re not pad­ brown cow grazed along the bank. dling, you don’t get very hungry, I Across the fields, a white farmhouse suppose.” peeked above the pasture grass. Be­ Peewee sounded mad. ‘ ‘ I told you yond, were a lot of rolling hills, washed about a hundred times that I ’d pad­ in sunshine and smoky blue air. They dle!” he said. passed several wooden landings built Bert looked surprised and a little out into the water. Some waterstained sheepish. “ Oh, I don’t mind it. I ’m rowboats rocked clumsily on the ends doing fine. I like to paddle.” of frayed ropes. Now and then, a man He got red in the face and began to fishing on the bank waved at them. scowl. About one o’clock, they stopped for “ There’s a certain trick to it. Be­ dinner. Bert headed the canoe up a sides, you couldn’t stick it out more bayou, and they looked about for a than about five minutes. You don’t good place. The water in the bayou know your stuff.” looked green and stagnant. The thick 34 The Frontier water bunched up in a little smooth gave a long sigh. Then he started to roll under the prow of the canoe. On gather wood, too. both sides, the willows were as dense They picked up all the dry wood as bushes. The banks were nothing they could find. Most of it was damp. but slippery mud. While Bert was trying to break off Finally they found a spot that didn’t some dead limbs from a small tree, he look so bad. They turned in. Bert heard Alec start swearing. paddled hard and rammed the nose “ What’s the matter, Alec?” said of the canoe into the mud bank. The Bert, starting over. prow slipped up onto the soft mud and Alec stumbled out of the willows. He then slipped down again with a suck­ was all covered with mud. He was ing sound. It left a notch in the mud. mud from head to foot. Bert jammed the canoe up again, and “ It’s awful,” moaned Alec. Alec grabbed a willow branch till he “ I ’ll say it’s awful,” grinned Pee­ could climb out and tie the canoe. Pee- wee, walking over to them. wee and Bert got up and walked along “ I ’ve had a terrible time all day. the bottom of the canoe until they One thing after another, ’ ’ said Alec bit­ could step out upon the bank. As they terly. moved around, the canoe rocked and “ It’s tough all right,” agreed Bert. tapped the water with its stern. They He was beginning to feel sorry for Alec. got pretty muddy getting out. “ I don’t feel good anyway.” “ Just wait. The mosquitoes’ll eat “ Well, never mind,” said Bert. us alive in about five minutes,” said “ W e’ll fix you up someway.” He Alec. helped Alec scrape off the mud. Bert whirled around. His face was “ After we get the fire going, you red and angry. can dry your stuff, and the mud’ll “ Listen!” he said, “ I ’m getting sick come right off.” and tired of hearing you bawl around. They built a fire and fried the bacon If you don’t like this place, you know that Alec had in his blanket. Then what you can d o ! ” they spread out the blankets and began “ Now look here,” said Peewee, to eat. Everything tasted good. “ there’s no use in getting mad.” “ I think I ’d feel better if we had a “ I can’t help it. He gets on my little coffee, ’ ’ said Alec, rubbing at the nerves! ’ ’ exclaimed Bert. dried mud on his pants. Alec didn’t say anything. His face “ We haven’t got anything to make kept getting whiter. it in,” said Bert. “ Well, let’s get some wood,” said “ I know it.” Peewee. “ We can’t stand here all They ate until everything was gone, day.” even the cake. He walked away. Bert and Alec kept “ It kind of looks like we should’ve on standing there. Finally Bert turned brought more,” laughed Peewee. and started to pick up wood that was They felt good. It was quiet and lying around. A few minutes later, nice there on the bank. A cool breeze Alec dropped his hands to his sides and had sprung up, and now and then the 35 The Frontier sun went behind a cloud. Everything slowly. Finally he passed out of sight was comfortable. The breeze rustled down the river. the willow thicket behind them. “ I don’t like that fellow’s looks at “ I know something we forgot to all,” said Alec. bring,” said Alec. ‘ ‘ What’s the matter with him ? ’ ’ asked “ What’s that?” said Peewee. Bert. “ The most important thing of all, “ Nothing. Only he looks too hard- too.” boiled to suit me. That’s all.” “ Well, what do we care how hard- “ Well, what is it?” boiled he looks?” “ Water.” “ I know. But I just don’t like the Peewee looked shocked. way he kept looking over this way.” “ That’s right. What do you know “ He was kind of tough looking, all about that!” right.” Bert laughed. “ There’s a lot of bootleggers live up ‘ 1 Water ? What more do you want ? ’ ’ here,” said Peewee. He waved a hand towards the river. Bert winked at Alec. “ There’s plenty of it. You got a “ How do you know?” he said to whole river full of it.” Peewee. “ You can’t drink river water,” said “ I read in the paper about the po­ lice coming up here after them in a Peewee. “ Why not?” motorboat,” said Peewee. “ Do you want to die?” Bert laughed. ‘ ‘ Why ? What’s wrong with it ? ” “ All right, you drunkard.” “ It’s dirty and full of germs. That s They all laughed. Gradually they lapsed into silence. all.” “ You’re crazy. I ’d just as soon Bert leaned against a tree and closed drink it as any other water.” his eyes. Peewee watched the fire. “ Well, maybe you would. But I Alec kept looking down towards the wouldn’t.” bank where the canoe was. He began The sound of oars clacking in oar­ to act nervous. He stood up and sat locks echoed from up the river. It down a couple of times. Finally Bert sounded like someone chopping wood noticed him. off in the timber someplace. From “ What’s wrong with you?” he said. where they were sitting, they could see “ Do you suppose that canoe’s all stretches of the river through the trees. right down there?” They watched. Presently a wide flat- “ All right? What would be wrong bottomed rowboat came down the river. with it?” A rough looking fellow was in it. He “ Well, we can’t see it from here. looked like a river rat. Their fire must Somebody might come up and steal have attracted his attention, for he it, and we wouldn’t know anything looked over his shoulder towards them about it.” as he passed. He watched them, row­ “ Nobody’s going to steal the boat. ing with his eyes on the shore, rowing Quit worrying.” 36 The Frontier

“ If somebody did steal it, where They looked. would we be then?” To the south, above the thickets, a “ W e’d be right here, I guess,” said mass of green thunderheads had piled Peewee. up in the sky. Even as they watched, Bert laughed. Alec didn’t look con­ the breeze seemed to carry them the vinced. sound of thunder. “ Do you know how much a canoe “ Did you see it lightning over like that costs?” there?” said Peewee. “ How much?” said Bert. “ It sure is going to storm,” said “ Seventy dollars.” Bert. “ Yes, but this old wreck isn’t any good, though.” Alec started rolling up the blankets. “ That wouldn’t make any differ­ They hurried and put out the fire. As ence. W e’d have to pay it anyhow.” quickly as they could, they packed the Bert shook his head. blankets in the canoe. “ Not me.” When they finally got ready to go, “ You’d have to.” the storm looked worse than ever. The “ Why would I?” big clouds were piling up nearer and “ They’d take your credits or some­ nearer, and the wind was stronger. thing.” “ It didn’t take us long to get start­ “ They have a way all right,” added ed, did it?” said Bert. Peewee. “ That old storm isn’t wasting any “ What way?” said Bert, turning to time either,” said Alec. Peewee. Peewee held out his hand, palm-up­ “ Never mind. They have, just the ward. “ It’s starting to rain now.” same.” It was sprinkling already, the rain “ Well, if they have, why don’t you falling in the river with a whispering spit it out?” sound. “ That’s all right.” They paddled fast. It was getting darker every minute. But the rain was Bert looked at him for a moment. letting up. By four o ’clock, it was “ You don’t know what you’re talk­ pretty dark, and a cold wind was wrink­ ing about. That’s all that’s the mat­ ling the river. Their clothes were wet. ter.” They had to paddle fast to warm up. They all looked gloomily at the fire. Peewee wrapped up in the blankets. The wind was turning cooler, and the By six o ’clock, it was dark. But they sun was slipping beneath clouds more went along as rapidly as possible. They frequently. The breeze had a funny had to paddle close to the shore and smell. trust to memory to know where the “ I wouldn’t be surprised if it rained bends in the river were. before we got back,” said Alec. “ It Presently they passed a lighted win­ smells like rain.” dow on the shore. Alec peered into “ I hope not,” said Peewee. the darkness. “ Just take a look over there,” said “ I know where we are now,” he Bert. said. 37 The Frontier

“ Where ?” said Bert. Nobody answered. They were listen­ ing. But everything was quiet. “ W e’re about a mile this side of “ What was it, do you suppose?” Coralville. That light’s the old shack Peewee whispered again. by the quarry.” “ Well, I could make a guess,” said “ I guess you’re right at that,” Bert Bert, laughing. agreed. “ It probably wasn’t that at all,” They could hear the sound of voices said Alec. coming from the shore. Suddenly the Bert laughed. “ Don’t kid yourself. sound stopped, the door of the shack You sure got a lot to learn.” opened, and somebody came out. They There was a silence while they pad- could hear a woman shout something died. It was still thundering, but most and a man answer her from down the of the storm had passed over. It would river a ways. Then there was the sound rain for a few minutes, and then stop. of somebody running along the bank. Then it would begin again. And then silence. It was all pretty About seven-thirty they came to the creepy. portage. By the time they reached the “ What do you suppose they were boathouse, it was nine. It began to doing?” said Peewee. rain again, just as they got there.

MEEK OF OREGON

B y V ern e B right

Meek marched out from old St. Louis; Fought the Sioux, and the grizzly bear At Stinking Water. Said: “ That time This child mought’ near lost his hair!” Meek of the mountains trapped the beaver; Fought for a maid of dusky hue; Came to Oregon and settled down, Drew his steaming furrows true. Meek of the mountains at Champoeg Fought for a nation: his chivalry, Iron and stone on time’s high headland, Stands like a crag that fronts the sea. 38 The Frontier FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES

B y L u c y M. C. R obinson

Trains slide across South Dakota; Heavy trains, yellow under hot suns, Dull orange when frost hardens rough brown hills. Bored travelers yawn in blue plush Pullmans, Gaze at unrolling emptiness, Groan because one mile looks like the last and the next mile, Because South Dakota is not Chicago. Trains slide across brown prairies and weathered rocks, Their yellow the shifting color of rattle-snake yellow and bronze . . . Protective coloration for travelers slow, sluggish and cold. Trains slide like fat snakes on the steel And hiss at the flying fence-posts. The miles slide over the insolent hills Reaching elusive horizons.

Escaped from an alien town, with a lifting heart One traveler watched South Dakota; Watched the procession of brown buttes and plains March into Montana . . . Invade Montana, where afternoons sometimes are hot And sometimes cold as the hell of the hot-blooded Vikings; Watched for familiar cow-punchers in wide hair-pants and bandanas Galloping hard across unfenced lands. What she saw was a Ford of insouciant manner Snooted into the ditch by a passing uproarious Packard.

Montana is like that . . . Bigger than all out-doors, staring untamed at blue heavens, Loneliness bare to indifferent suns, Loveliness sweet with the untouched beauty of freedom. Infested on lonely roads with tourists who crawl home Scared and shaken, unknowing and blind, To the safeties of State Street.

Like some Gargantuan toy, The traveler’s idle fancy planted the Wrigley towers High on the hump of hills East of Round-up, Montana. Why east of Round-up? . . . There was plenty of room there. Plenty of space to surround forty stories and lose them. 39 The Frontier Tenants swarmed out to seek the smooth sidewalks of Michigan Avenue, Where nothing molests or annoys the pedestrian On days when machine-gun squads picnic elsewhere. Tenants stared aghast at the blue expanse of Montana . . . Too much cosmos for little excuse-it-please egos. They scuttled hurriedly sidewise Into familiar shelter of stone and steel and Chicago. A small contemptuous wind pursed scornful lips in the shadows, To blow the whole blasphemous picture forever away from Montana; Laughter filled the home-coming heart in the Pullman As the long train rushed with triumphant speed Across fifteen hundred miles.

NEW SOIL RISES AGAINST A MAN

B y G. E dward P endray

There is a strange thing about new soil; it rises against a man; refuses taming; it is a law above laws— New soil, lying heavy or light, rises against a man; whether soil in valleys or soil in hills; There is a thing about such soil, the strength of it: passive yet refusing; it is resentful, it is indifferent. (Oh, I myself have known new soil, tasted it, smelt it, passed fingers through the fresh cloddiness of it, testing rebellion; I have known how it is to lay out crops in such soil: I have known crops sickening with death; Oh for fertility, Oh for productiveness! Oh for a weapon against the malice of new-turned soil!)

Many are they who have passed up into these hills; the creaking of wheels, the weariness of backs! Slowly, slowly passed the wheels, the cattle with cloven hoofs, the men and mules, sheep; women even, and the young. All these have passed up into the hills, where there was new soil, new and free, and of a great indifference! The clanking of stay-chains, the spatter of guns, yes, and the high clear dust at noon, over a field. 40 The Frontier

And the whispering of wind among dry stalks, the cry at dusk, the breaking of whips at great distances, Passages cleft in the rocks, violence and death; stones crumbling and falling, pain and the dry earth underfoot, The slowly conquering yoke, the hammer of iron upon iron, dust rising slowly like a pillar of smoke above ancient fire— (These have I known, and the malice of soil which broke but would not hear, and the cry of wild things afar.)

Here passed the wheels, slowly, slowly, moving into the limitless hills; Here passed the wheels of Hans the Dutchman, of Eli who placed his faith in God, of many such— The wheels of men from east and south, from Texas, Iowa, Pennsylvania; from sea and over sea; Swedes and Englishmen, these came and the Russian, and the French; Germans settled here; many men of many bloods: There was a thin, gray stream, rattle and clash; there was a movement in the air, and a hushing of the wild birds on the plain. Oh the plows in spring! Plows growling dry or wet—the shameless blade, the sensuous, shameless blade, writhing in soil!

Here passed the wheels, and many came passing away again; some stayed: There was a strong wind of desire— Desire moving in clouds by day, in rivers and excellent sounds and breathing by night; desire which was matchless desire. (Oh there is a force more moving strong than resisting soil: it is the high dust at noon, cleft passages in rocks, the call from hill to hill— Desire of desire is this, rising and rising, it will prevail!) 41 The Frontier

THE DESERT TR A IL: 1847

B y J am es M ar sh a ll

Out in the valley, in the heat-swept valley, Oolden in the sun-haze, hot sand sifted, Silence in the canyons, silence in the valley, Silence on the high peaks, white cloud-drifted; Out where the valley sloped down to the salt lake Shining in the sunflood, crystal white, Close to the sand clung the one lone cedar, One black shadow in the hot, bright light— One lonely tree in the great salt valley— # • • Then thru the hills came the wheels’ quick shrilling, Down thru the canyons came the tramp of hard men, Prodding the bull-teams, tired, unwilling— Wagons lurched thru the bouldered canyons, Rock walls echoed as the Mormons trod, Fighting the heat that the rocks reflected, Weary and trail-worn, praising God, Quoting texts from the Book of Mormon, Hoarse-voiced help for a stumbling boy, Whispered aid for a gaunt-faced woman: “ Man is, Sister, that he might have jo y !” • • # Down thru the canyon wound the creaking wagons, There in the first one wet hands clung Fevered to the blankets. There lay the leader, White-faced, weary-eyed Brigham Young; Ahead thru the heat waves, there lay the desert, Yellow sand, white salt and one lone tree— “ God help the Saints,” cried the marching Mormons Gazing at the hills past the dead salt sea— But Brigham Young raised his fevered frame And wiped the sweat from his pain-white face, He looked at the hills and he shouted: ‘ ‘ Glory! Drive on, Brothers, for this is the place! ’ ’ * # * Drive on, Brothers, in the creaking wagons, Outspan the teams in the desert’s heart, Fight down the desert and bring down the water, Each hard shoulder to its toil-tough part— * * # Now in the desert grow the trees by the million, Now in the desert spreads the cool green sod, A man-made garden in a mountain Eden— But they give their thanks to the Mormon God: * ‘ Build on, Brother! Death does not destroy! Man is, Brother, that he might have jo y ! ’ ’ 42 The Frontier

The map shown above in two~ sections may be had closed up m one section, wall size, 17x25 inches, printed on buff ledger. This interesting map will be mailed by the Circula- 43 T? rr\-n ti o r

tion Manager of THE FRONTIER to any address for one dollar or with it year's sub- scription to THE FRONTIER for two dollars. The small size will be mailed for fifty cents. 44 The Frontier THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR

B y Grace Stone Coates

NE THING I did was just like One cup of rice looked too little for another, and I forgot it, except four people when I measured it. I O when mother and father talked thought it might have been three cups about it and made me remember.. Once of rice instead of three cups of water, mother left me alone to get dinner for so I used three. It made a good deal. father and the hired men, and once It took more water than I had hot, so everybody left me alone. Both times I put in cold. I put in more salt, but mother and father talked about what not enough. happened until it stayed in my mind. After the rice began cooking I went The first time mother left me, she into the front room to look at books had to take Teressa to the dentist. She again until father came to dinner. He thought it would be hard for me to get came in ahead of the hired men to see dinner, so she told me just what to do. if I was getting along all right. I heard I was to put one cup of rice in three him coming, and went out before he cups of boiling water, with salt, and could call me and said I was. He said, begin to cook it at half-past eleven. ‘ ‘ Gee Whiliker, it’s hot! ’ ’ Mother showed me how the hands of I said, “ Yes, isn’t it? I stay in the the clock would look when I should be­ other room.” gin to get dinner, and put a paper on Father laughed. He laughed all the the wall with a picture of the clock- time he was eating dinner. He told me hands that way. I kept telling her I to get a large plate and set it under the knew, but she made the picture anyway. butter dish, so the butter wouldn’t run I did know, except that I thought five onto the table cloth. He got up twice, minutes on the clock was one minute. once to get sugar and once to get water. When I sat still five spaces on the clock It was fun to sit at the table and ask it was twenty-five minutes instead of people to pass me things. five minutes. I found that out after­ Dinner was so easy to get I would not ward. have thought about it again, except that The rice was all I had to cook. Father father told mother about it when she liked rice, and the hired men could eat came home. He said, “ The kitchen was cold meat. like an inferno, and the butter swim­ I set the table almost as soon as ming; but the cook sat cool and uncon­ mother and Teressa left in the morning. cerned while the dinner cooked itself. I built a good fire. We burned cobs. It She is of the earth, earthy.” was summer time, and mother and Teressa heard him, too, and pinched Teressa always talked about keeping the me. She said, “ Oh, it is sweet and kitchen cool and keeping the flies out. wonderful when you let the butter melt, When the fire was burning hard I went but when I do it is a different story.” into the front room to look at books. I She pinched me more, on places she had went every few minutes to look at the pinched the day before so it hurt worse. clock. The fire went out twice before While she pinched she said, ‘ ‘ How won­ it was time to cook the rice. derful to be such a wonderful child, you 45 The Frontier little simpleton!” Then she made me you,” she said, “ she loved you and took say I loved her, and held me on her lap care of you. If you do not love her you and rocked me. She told me the poem: are the one to be ashamed. Never let See by the moonlight ’tis past mid­ me hear you say that again as long as night you live.” If I was to love Augusta Time kid and I were home an hour she couldn’t have been bad, so I stopped and a half ago! thinking about it. I liked that poem, because the way Augusta hacked knives. She washed she said it made my chest shake. dishes standing on a little stool at the The day every one left me alone pantry sink, and father scolded her for mother and father talked about it a long wasting soap and for dawdling. When time before they left. I did not under­ he scolded her she would draw her eye­ stand why they hated to leave me. Peo­ brows together and watch him out of ple were on the outside of me anyway, the corners of her eyes. When he and it didn’t make much difference wasn’t looking she would hack the edges whether they were outside close, or out­ of two knives together. She did worse side farther off. When I told mother things. I didn’t know what. When this she told me not to be silly trying father was angry at Augusta, mother to act wise. would take Teressa and me and go walk­ Something happened while they were ing thru the fields. When we came back away that they talked so long about I Augusta would be studying arithmetic, cried. and crying. Before they left mother said, ‘ ‘ Be a If the knives were hacked father good girl. When it is dinner time put would take them out to the blacksmith the small table cloth on the table, and shop. I asked mother why, but she said, sit down and eat just as we always do. ‘ ‘ Hush! ” so sharply I didn’t ask again. And be a good girl.” Father made Augusta go with him, and Father told me things, too, but they mother would not let me go along. were things not to do— funny things After father said, “ Nothing is ever that I couldn’t have done anyway, like past,” and drove away, I was entirely hiding the end of the road so he couldn’t alone. I went out to the pig corral. finish coming home. Mother didn’t There was a tall corn crib beside it think they were funny. As father got where I liked to climb. I would sit on into the buggy he said, ‘ ‘ And don’t top of the com pile and make fun of hack the knives.” the pig when he squealed. He would Mother said, ‘ ‘ Don’t be bitter, Henry. sometimes put his feet on top of the Those things are past.” fence below me, and slant his nose up Father said, ‘ ‘ Nothing is ever past.” at me, and I would pretend the com I knew what father meant about the rolled under me and slid me down into knives. When Augusta lived at home, his pen. I would pretend I ran for before father sent her away to her the fence, and the pig caught a piece grandmother, she hacked knives. Au­ of my dress just as I climbed over it. gusta was a very bad girl. At least, I If I pretended hard my heart would supposed she was bad, but when I said, beat and frighten me. Then I would “ I hate Augusta,” mother was angry. throw ears of com to the pig to make ‘ ‘ Augusta was always a good sister to him stop looking at me. When father 46 The Frontier cleaned out the corral he was annoyed stood up. It was easiest to dry them about the pig’s eating so much. the long way, so I dried them cross- While I was sitting on the corn I ways. I thought the hardest way would began remembering about the knives. I be most right. thought about them, and then I won­ When mother and father and Teressa dered about them. I wondered why came home they brought me a present. Augusta hacked them. There was some­ It was a bag of figs. I had never seen thing exciting and dark about her doing figs before. After supper, mother acted it. The pig had gone to sleep. I climbed queer. She put me to bed early and down and went to the house, and into she and father talked. They talked the the pantry to look at the knife box. It next day, and kept sending me away was on the lowest pantry shelf, above from them. Teressa wanted to scold my head, so I had to have a chair to me for scrubbing the floor, but mother see into it. I took a chair from the wouldn’t let her. Teressa said it would kitchen, not a cane-seated one, so my take three scrubbings to get it into shape feet wouldn’t break it. again. It wasn’t out of shape. The When I tapped knives together it next day father didn’t go to plow. made little pains run up and down my Mother sent Teressa outdoors and called legs. I wondered if the knives hurt. me in where she and father were. They The edges caught together and it made asked me why I had hacked the knives. a rough feeling in my wrists when I I had forgotten all about it because it pulled them apart. The first two knives hadn’t been in my mind. Not under­ were not any fun. I laid one of them standing about it made it as if I hadn’t down and tried another and another. I done it, and I said quick, “ I didn’t.” changed both knives, but they were all alike; none of them were any fun. I Mother said, ‘ ‘ You hacked the knives, and that was wrong. But it is a great decided to wait until sometime when deal worse to deny it. You must tell father and I were talking together, and the truth about why you did it.” promise not to do it but ask him to show me how to hack knives the way it was I said I did try to hack them but wrong to. didn’t know how, and father said, ‘ ‘ You I put the knives away, and the chair, knew how all too well.” and went back to the pig. He was I tried to explain about it, and they awake. After I fed him all he would asked me more and more questions. eat it was time for my own dinner. I They asked things that had not been in set the table and ate, and cleared it and my mind before, whether Augusta had washed the dishes. When I dried my taught me to do it. Father’s face looked knife it caught a thread on the tea white and thin. He had never paid so towel and puckered it. much attention to anything I did, be­ After dinner there was nothing to do, fore. He said, “ If I knew she did it to so I decided to scrub the kitchen. It flout me, if I knew she did it in scorn wasn’t dirty, but Teressa always of me, to fling back into my face the scrubbed it when mother was away. I villainy of that infernal— ” scrubbed the first part hard, and the Mother said, “ Stop! There is no last part not so hard. Each board was mystery about it, except that you should worn most in the middle, so the edges have been so short-sighted as to suggest 47 The Frontier it to her. It would never have occurred to mother. I went. I explained about to her otherwise.” my arms, and she said I must learn that They asked me more questions, and the way of the transgressor was hard, mother began to talk about the other and that I should be ashamed to let time I had been alone and cooked too Teressa do my work. I smiled because much rice. She asked if I didn’t sup­ I knew a secret about Teressa that I pose she knew how much rice to cook. didn’t tell. She liked to do things after I said I was afraid I had made a mis­ she was tired, to see whether she could. take listening. They talked to me until Mother asked me if I thought it was I cried. I cried so hard that when I fair to make extra work for father, looked at their faces their cheeks when he should be out plowing. I asked, stretched out in wavery lines, and if I “ What work?” She said, “ Grinding half-shut my eyes, streaks of light came the knives you hacked. ’ ’ from their faces toward me. I was so I sat without moving. When I found interested I forgot to feel bad, and they out things I had wondered about it were discouraged with me. made me excited inside so I forgot to Father went to the pantry and got be sorry for things I had done. I said, the box of knives. H e said,‘‘For your “ It wasn’t wrong to hack the knives.” punishment you must turn the grind­ I meant it wasn’t wrong in a way I stone while I grind out the nicks.” I couldn’t understand. Mother picked me thought he was making a joke, because up by the arms and set me down hard Teressa and I always wanted to see who on my feet. She shook me until my could turn the grindstone. Usually he head jerked back and forth. She said, let Teressa, because she was less erratic. “ I can not understand your being so I looked at him and laughed, but his naughty.” I couldn’t either, so I didn’t. eyes looked down at me, small and blue. She said again that the way of the I turned the grindstone until my arms transgressor was hard, and I must sit were tired. When they were tired the in a chair while she thought how to wheel went slower and slower until it punish me. I picked a hard chair to stopped. Father said, ‘ ‘ Keep on turn­ sit in, not a cane-seated one. ing.” I explained about my arms. He said, Mother said she would take my own “ Indeed!” He looked at me, whistling, little white-handled knife away from and said, “ Indeed!” again, “ Tell your me, and I must eat with a big one like sister to come here. ’ ’ those I hacked. I said, “ You can have Before I could start he turned and my little knife for a butter-knife.” I called her. He called her Dick. He had heard her tell Teressa we would said, “ My son, Richard, will you turn have to use it for a butter-knife, because the grindstone for your father 1 ’ ’ He Mrs. Clarington had borrowed ours and called her Richard because she was not brought it back. Richard the Lion Hearted. Teressa said, Sometimes when mother was an­ “ Yes .... baby.” She meant noyed I didn’t know why. She was me. Before she began to turn the grind­ annoyed now. She took my hand and stone she reached back with her heel said, “ We will go to the bedroom, and and stepped on my foot. you must kneel down and ask God to Father sent me to the house to talk make you a good girl.” 48 The Frontier

I didn’t want to go. I wanted not what I was thinking out loud. I wanted to so much that my legs moved in sep­ to hear how it sounded in the bedroom arate parts. I could feel my knees, and where everything was still except us. noticed where my feet were. I never He didn’t. prayed out loud, in the daytime. I While I said after mother the words knew quite a good deal about God. she told me to, I thought of a way I Usually I prayed when I was swinging, could say what I was thinking without because I liked to swing. I always being naughty. I whispered, ‘ ‘ God said thought of God as having a good dis­ something to me.” position. It seemed unnecessary to Mother had her hands on the side of bother him about the knives, especially the bed, ready to stand up, but she since it was all over and understood stopped and put her arms around me. about, and he hadn’t in the first place “ My little girl,” she said, “ my little, had anything to do with it. little girl!” While mother prayed I was so un­ I was afraid she wouldn’t ask, comfortable that if it had been any one “ What?” but she did, and I said, but God I would have hated him. I “ Silly.” almost did not like mother. I thought It was a very uncomfortable morning. of a word so naughty that I did not I sat in my high chair without speaking dare say it to myself. Usually when I until dinner-time. I thought a long time was naughty it was an accident, but this about grown people. I thought of them time I was so tired about the knives I as if they were wrapped in thick quilts, wanted to be bad. I made a real prayer only not quilts, that kept them from inside me, praying that God would say understanding how things really were.

UNWILLING ALCHEMIST

B y M ary B e e n n a n C la pp

When you have hurt me, dear, Every time I swear I shall seal up the pain In my heart, and hoard it there,

To unlock stealthily In solitude, and weep To feel its bitterness Through pulse and spirit seep.

But always, unaware, You catch me with your woe, And I have made balm for you Out of the pain I know. The Frontier 49 ON BRIDGER HILL B y J ason B olles

Stars twinkle in the valley, And lamps burn in the sky, As you may see from Bridger Hill Just the same as I. But you will better stay at home And slumber if you can And not dream of a gray-eyed girl Who loves another man. There is no thing so beautiful As a green balsam tree Unless it is my love for one Who has no love for me. The forest glooms on Bridger Hill With lights beneath and over, And I would rather be a tree Than an unkissed lover. If power to feel were stilled in me, As all my hope is dead, I would hurst forth in greenery, Body and limb and head. And if my marching blood were mild And humble as my pride I would root, shadowy and wild, Upon the mountain side. For when the gray-eyed wind of dawn Comes dancing up and wheedles, All the long pathways for her feet Are soft with dropping needles; And when the gray-eyed wind of dusk Goes delicately by, Surely a thousand troubled boughs Revere her with a sigh. Now you may yawn and close the page, And never leave a mark. You have not heard a little word Low-spoken in the dark. Better to pull the blankets down, And fasten bolts and bars, Than see the lamps of heaven lit, The valley full of stars. 50 The Frontier FOUR MONTHS ON A FREIGHTER A Story-Writer’s Day Book

B y J am es S tevens HE lumber port of Gray’s Harbor, miles of deep water. Thirty-five days Washington, in the winter rain. of voyaging. . . . T Black sawmill stacks and drifting Loafing down the South Pacific. The balloons of white wood-smoke against a cool breath of the Trade on us night and lowering gray sky. Acres of stacked day. Clear sunlight by day until eve­ green lumber on five miles of docks. ning, when clouds crawled up the hori­ Black hulls towering alongside, yellow zon to make gorgeous sunsets. Yarning booms swinging, sling-loads rising, de­ on the captain’s bridge till midnight. scending, swallowed down the gaping Magellan’s Straits. Drenched in hatches .... Night, and fine lines of wind-blown fog through all its desolate rain slanting across masthead lights. and dangerous Western reaches. One The headlights of a lumber-carrier clear sight of the shores of Desolation flashing over the white letters WEST Island. The rock ridges like the skele­ MAHWAH on the towering black bow tons of titanic prehistoric animals. The of our freighter. The drag up the williwaw charging down from the An­ gangway, bundles and bags following. dean glaciers, covering the decks with The first sight of the first mate, a blue­ hail in fifteen minutes, making naviga­ eyed Dane. Cap cocked back on a tion perilous guess work. Cape Fro­ tangle of yellow hair. A hard stare. ward towering black in the morning “ You the passengers, hey?” A crush­ fog. Then, miraculously sudden, the ing handshake and a tobacco-stained clear light of the Atlantic side. Savages grin. . . . Highballs with the captain, dragging in fish on a far beach. A a white-thatched Norwegian. His first whaling station, and a whale kicking story, beginning, ‘ ‘ Seventy-five years his flukes at it. Not a stir in the morn­ ago when I was a boy. . . . ” Two hours ing air. Penguins, porpoises and thou­ of yarning, the fierce days of the clipper sands of waterfowl escorting us past living again. . . . Going to sleep to the Punta Arenas, the most southerly town rattle of winches and with rosy imagin­ in the world. Tierra del Fuego a streak ings about the voyage ahead. . . . on the horizon. The glassy swells from The perilous two-mile drive over the the Atlantic. . . . Gray’s Harbor bar. A twisting chan­ The spires and domes of Buenos Aires nel. The lumber-burdened ship drawing glowing in a morning mist. The West twenty-six feet. Thirty feet of water Mahwah driving over the muddy waters in the channel. The captain on the of the Plate until a green shore was bridge, meeting each swell with a ring close on the port bow. A huge brick of the telegraph for ‘ ‘ Stop ’ ’ so that the factory building our first clear sight. ship would not dip her keel into the A brewery. The smells imagined bottom. “ All clear” at last, with eight then! . . . other ships left behind, their skippers Up the South channel. Forests of less daring. A clear run ahead to the masts. Schooners and barks rotting and Straits of Magellan. Seven thousand rusting at anchor. Docked ships crowd- 51 The Frontier ing the narrow channel. Flags of all entes, where the fowls are roasted on a nations, sailors of all colors. The Boca, spit behind a wall of plate glass, in the once as notorious as the Barbary Coast. view of all. A delectable Sauterne from Its pavement jammed with drays and the Mendoza vineyards. An hour at the fat horses now. Black mustached driv­ Sarmiento Theatre. Ziegfeld in the ers swaggering on high seats and bawl­ Argentine. A tango singer of beauty ing in the best teamster style. The tug and charm. Dancers in the Casino, a swinging us in. Stevedores lined along sight of the tango at home. The Buenos the dock, waiting for work. Swarthy, Aires Bar, a sailors’ rendevouz. The medium-sized men, many unmistakably sight of Baptist boys from American ships drinking champagne, with French Italian. Most of them wearing pajama coats over singlets. Wide black sashes and Spanish girls sitting on their laps, around their waists. Floppy overalls and bliss glowing in their misty eyes. and black pants. Many purple socks. Midnight beer at the park along the Straw slippers. No leather aprons, no municipal baths, and a Chilean girl gloves. “ How can they work?” the singing “ Ai, Ai, A i!” . . . Buenos mate was asked. “ They don’t,” he Aires nights. Happy times. . . . said. “ They just help one another.” . . Voyaging up the Parana. Grounding The first taxi ride up the Avenida de in a mud-bank. A Pampero suddenly Mayo. Beautiful Parisian buildings. roaring over the plains, driving the Trees along the curbs, tables on the side­ waters of the Plate before it, heaving walks. Swarthy, soberly-clad men read­ spray over the ship to a height of thirty ing the evening newspaper over the eve­ feet, and at last rolling her off the mud. ning demi-tasse. The taxi a dream. A Ten days in an Argentine village. At six-cylinder Buick, the driver polite, the home with English railway men, estan- fare thirty per cent less than the usual cieros, cafe-keepers, grocerymen, agri­ charge for tin-can rides at home. . . . cultural machinery salesmen and the The evening promenade on the Calle movie crowds. Movie nights, with Ar­ Peru. Women and girls in quartets, gentine boys squealing over Tom Mix trios, and pairs. Gay dark beauty un­ in “ Broadway or Bust,” and Argentine conscious-seeming under the most di­ girls sighing over John Gilbert in “ Twelve Miles Out,” just as American rect male stares. The promenade a boys squeal and American girls sigh. stroll. No rush and bustle. Cares put Mustachioed truck-drivers fetching tall aside. A dish of tea in a gorgeous con- loads of wheat to market. Hitching fiterid overlooking Peru. Later, the racks and cow ponies. The stamp of first San Martin cocktail in the Rich­ U. S. on even the old Spanish buildings. mond Bar. Silver lights on mahogany columns and tables. Base in a leather Rosario. A boom city. The Chicago chair. The accordions and strings of an of the Argentine. The roaring life in Argentine orchestra tickling my feet Pinchincha, the roughhouse district of with the tango melody, “ Adios, Mu- the city. Gilded Sappho and her gaudy chachos.” The taste of the free lunch gals. A restaurant with a sawdust floor between cocktail sips—potato chips, and newspaper-covered tables. The cook roasted peanuts, scallops and olives. slicing off the steaks before your eyes. Dinner in the Chicken House on Corri- A bubbling tenderloin topped by two 52 The Frontier

fried eggs. The sharp, true tang of short, dry words. His name was Victor Munchener. The music of accordions. Vincent. He was a native of San Fran­ The flash of knives. A police whistle. cisco. For twenty-five years he had A ripped blue coatsleeve, with spread­ prospected for diamonds in the Brazil­ ing splotches of blood fringing the gash. ian jungle. Long ago he had found a The bored calm of the other diners. small stream that was a river of dia­ “ No importa. ...” monds. Savages and the fever had Bahia. Waterfront streets exuding driven him out. Ever since his main devastating smells. Black longshoremen purpose in life was to rediscover that clumping in wooden shoes. Happy all jungle stream. A grubstake. Then a the day though the pants are patched. prospecting journey alone. He had left Black gals and ladies walking with a Montevideo a year ago. Hoboed through superb lazy, gliding carriage, with bas­ the Argentine to the Bolivian border. kets, boxes, tubs or bales balanced on Ran rum—cana—there for awhile. Then their heads. The roaring market. A a disastrous, a fruitless search. Fever- city block all covered, packed with stalls smitten at one of the sources of the where all the small products and the Amazon. A hellish journey alone down foods of the Brazilian tropics are for the whole length of the great stream. sale. Restaurant corners, where black He wore a belt of jaguar skin. He had workingmen eat fish and beans heavily other skins, and the skins of anacondas, dusted with farina and drink black wine. and the oil of crocodiles, and Indian The bluff towering above the water­ trinkets. The consul quizzed him and front streets, an elevator running to its learned that at least the story of his heights. A cathedral—two cathedrals— Amazonian journey was true. The cap­ a dozen—glittering cabarets and casinos tain signed Victor Vincent on. Two and stores in dark holes. Terrific tales hours aboard and he was the boss of the about the recent outbreak of bubonic fo ’c ’s’le. A college lad in the crew plague. Smells, laughter, wooden shoes, dubbed him the “ Tiger Man.” Cer­ patches, hot mists, smells—Bahia. . . . tainly he was half-savage. If some lady- Para. Cool Amazonian weather. writer meets him, we’ll have another Rain-washed streets. A plaza in half­ Trader Horn. darkness. Working men and working Out of Para with Brazil nuts. A girls waiting for the trams. Gay talk day’s steaming through muddy waters, and laughter. Clean clothes and bright as the Amazon floods the sea with fresh eyes. Leather shoes. Prosperity. “ Henry water for a hundred miles from shore. Ford’s bought twenty million acres for Then to Puerto Columbia. The harbor rubber-growing.” Two hundred and an open roadstead. The town a group forty thousand hearts beating with hope of thatched hovels continuously wind­ in a jungle clearing. Black stevedores blown. Thirty-six hours to the Canal. again, this time dumping gigantic scoops The Stars and Stripes flying over a of Brazil nuts into the holds. . . . The Y. M. C. A. building. A purchase of office of the American consul. A huge chewing gum from a secretary who barefooted, tattooed sun-blackened man talked through his nose and made never facing the consul and the captain. A a gesture. Two weeks from San Pedro, story of tremendous adventures told in but this was already Home. 53 The Frontier WIND

B y J ohn U pton T errell HE rain fell steadily. Two men on withstand the pressure of the great in­ the seat of a freighting wagon were visible force. Thuddled under a heavy tarpaulin. “ God knows what this will blow up,” It was early afternoon; but the curtains the driver hissed between his teeth. of water and the low gray sky made it “ M-m-uh,” the other answered. His difficult to see from one prairie hillock beard had dried and whipped about to another. The man who was driving frivolously. held the lines loosely, and the four Presently they drove down into a horses splashed through the pools in the sheltered hollow. The horses stopped of soggy bottoms and slipped on the harder their own accord and stood with droop­ bare sides of the slopes, half-blinded by ing heads. the water running from the bridle straps “ W e’d better camp here,” said the into their eyes. They followed no trail driver. He turned his head as if listen­ or track, drifting with heads down ing. Above them the wind whined in across the immense grassy plain. the tall grass. ‘ ‘ ’Tain’t no use afightin ’ Then the wind came. It drove the a wind like that. Like to blow us plumb rain against the tarpaulin in thudding off the earth.” ^ salvos. At first it came in puffs like “ It’ll quiet down towards sundown,” the panting of a giant, and became grad­ advised the bearded man. “ We can ually steadier until it blew with unhesi­ feed; and eat some ourselves. Reckon tating fierceness. there’s plenty of water along the bot­ “ It ’ll break it up. Thank God, ’ ’ said tom hereabouts. I ’ll . . . • what s the man holding the lines. The other that?” man nodded. Water ran from his beard. “ Somethin’ hurt.” Suddenly the rain stopped, and the “ Listen.” men could see sunshine on the distant “ There, over in that sage.” He held prairie, gold and emerald. The dark his rifle half-way to his shoulder. “ Lis­ blanket began to lift as the wind in­ ten.” creased in force. Clouds were shat­ |‘ Right behind that high sage. We ’re tered, standing up in immense, ragged down wind.” blue-gray columns with the sun strik­ “ Good God, it’s a man.” ing their faces. Temple ruins, moun­ The bearded man jumped to the tains, forests, canyons, smoking fires . . . ground, and the driver stood up on the all these the clouds resembled; and the wagon, his red face grave. He watched sky between them was a clear, brilliant his partner move cautiously toward the blue. The prairie was a green sea filled sage with rifle in readiness; heard him with diamonds. call out; then he jumped to the ground, The horses bent their heads lower. dropped the tugs of the wheelers, tied The men, having discarded the tarpaul­ the lines around a hub and followed. in, clung to the wagon seat. Even the The man in the sage was moving in wagon seemed to crouch in its effort to circles, screaming loudly; but when the 54 The Frontier two freighters had approached to with­ point from the north. The sun was in a few yards, he stopped and his falling into the prairie sea, an immense screaming fell to a low moan. He was orange ball floating on shimmering opal a ragged thing in human shape, a red waves, blinding them when they looked growth on his face, eyes sunken and into it. rolling, arms swinging ape-like, shaggy “ Nary hide nor hair.” head shaking. In the evening the driver sat by the “ Where are you headed?” called out campfire. The wind had died and the the man with the beard. smoke from the fire rose straight toward “ Who are you?” asked his partner. the darkening sky. The day had ended The moans grew louder. The head like a song wildly sung and growing shook faster. The arms swung in wider softer with each note until the last was circles. struck, sweet and low. Dusk was sweep­ ing into the fiery west. Stars were be­ The two freighters moved closer. ginning to wheel overhead. “ W e’re travelin’ to the Yellowstone,” Presently the bearded man stepped announced the bearded man. “ We don’t into the red circle and said: “ We ain’t mean no harm. If you are lost or hungry passed wheel track or trail for two days or sick, come over to the wagon and we that I can recollect. He must have been will fix you up.” travelin’ straight east.” “ Crazy as a loon,” said his partner. “ Like as not,” said the other man. They heard unintelligible sing-song “ Mostly the wind alius blows from the words, and they saw the man in the sage west to the east in this country. He’d begin to sway as if keeping time to the likely go with the wind.” music of some strange dance. He moved “ The wind is crazy, ” said the bearded toward the side of the hollow. Sudden­ man. “ I wish we’d a found him.” ly he stood very still, a hand to an ear, “ I wish I ’d a shot him when he was as if listening. Above them the wind astandin’ there in the sage. I ’d feel moaned in the tall grass. Then with a . . . . well, I ’m going to bed.” scream he leaped into the air, ran swift­ “ I ’m agoin’ to play a while,” the ly up the slope and disappeared. bearded man said slowly. The two freighters pursued him. He reached into a nearby box and When they reached the top of the hol­ brought forth a fiddle wrapped in deer low the wind bent them. They stood skin, uncovered it carefully, wiped the looking out on the prairie reaching into bow in the crook of his arm and began infinity before them, green and gold, to draw it back and forth across the red and yellow. Presently they sep­ strings. arated, setting out to circle the hollow. “ My God,” said his partner from his They met again on the opposite side. bed under the wagon, “ that there hymn “ See anything?” sounds like the wind in the slough back “ Nary hide nor hair.” home in Illinois. Ye’ll drive me crazy, They struck off south together, walk­ too, if you play any more music like ing rapidly. They turned west and that. ’ ’ circled back to the brink. They set out “ I wonder what he’s adoin’ now?” east and came back to their starting- said the bearded man. 55 The Frontier THE DUN HORSE By Q u e en e B. L ister

[Because the writer believes that a prim Hive-Indian English lends itself suitably to the atmosphere and simplicity of such a story as the following, and because she has heard this and many others related in a similar manner by Indians of various tribes, she has employed a patois characteristically impressionistic of many uneducated American Indians. The diction is net typical of the civilized or well-educated American Indian. This story has been whispered and re-whispered by members of several tribes but it originated among the early Pawnees.] NCE on a long time, there is a down like a bent bow, it is one great boy who live with his grand­ sore also. His ears hang very low O mother. The grandmother, she down over his eyes. His mane, it is is very poor old woman. The boy, he is full of ashes and sticks, and scabs sixteen, and he is very poor also. That from his back. He make so bad a boy and his grandmother, they have not look with his one eye that the boy one relative in all the tribe. And they and his grandmother, they feel very are a great much despised by all the sorry. other people, because they are so poor. The grandmother, she say, “ No In­ They not own one thing. They dian ever want such a horse’s looks never have no food sometimes. And as this. No one bother and feed him. they stay off by themself in their sor­ He be so worthless.” row. When the village start to move But the boy, he see him stand there, from one place to another, the poor with his nose on the ground where he boy and his grandmother always stay try to eat dead burr-grass, and he back a while and hunt greatly for say, “ Why not we take him? If he things what other Indians throw get more better, maybe he pretty soon away. carry our pack of scraps.” What the others throw in the ashes So they decide after they wait a or in the pile of old buffalo-bones, while, that they lead him very slow, they be very glad for. Sometime a and that they let him carry part of little meat scrap. Sometime a piece their pack to try...... They have a of worn-out robe, or any old moccasin long trail in front of their faces. But with great holes in it, they always the horse, he limp and stop. Limp and keep with gladness for theirs. They stop— on his swell-up legs. And he be so poor. keep coming and stop, but always fol­ One day when the tribe move from low. a camp, the boy and that old woman When they reach the new village stay behind and find a old worn-out where the rest of their tribe make dun horse. The horse, he is the kind camp, they stop and camp also...... no other Indian ever keep. His teeth, Here the other Indians point at the they are very broke up. He is very horse, and the boy, and the old woman sick. And he is of much more bone with much laughter. But the boy and than meat. His legs, they are swell up the grandmother, they decide they with great pus. His one eye, it is very keep the dun horse very much any­ blind. And his thin back that hang way. 56 The Frontier

One day while the grandmother of my bad blind eye, is a little river. shell corn from empty cobs what other Take me down there and make on me women throw away—all the young a thick blanket of mud-plaster. Make men of the village hurry quick from me all cover up that way with entire where the buffalo feed. And these mud.” hunters, they tell how a herd of buf­ The boy, he is very afraid with sur­ falo now come near the feed-grounds prise, but he obey. And then when the five mile toward the sun. And they horse tell him to mount and sit very have a great excitement because they still, he obey also. The horse, he say see a beautiful spotted calf with this thru his mud-blanket again, “ Mount herd. A buffalo calf with fine cloud- on my back—but do not return back spots all over his body! with the other braves. Do not go back Now the oldest Chief of the tribe, with the ones who say you have such a he have a beautiful daughter. And he poor horse. The buffalo, they will like her very great, but he also prize a come this way. Make me stand here spotted robe. A spotted robe, it is with stillness until some one come ti-wae’uks-ti, Big medicine. So the close and say, ‘ Charge’.” chief, he send out his crier thru the Soon all the fast horses get in line. village. And the crier call, “ Listen! Here come the buffalo! The horses, The brave who bring that spotted robe they jump up and down and shake their to the chief can marry the chief’s beau­ heads, and keep this way so eager to tiful daughter!” charge until at last the old crier of Every brave all know that the fast­ the tribe, he speak and say, “ Loo-ah,” est horse always get his rider there which mean “ Go.” first. So every brave start with Now the warriors, they hold out quickness on his fastest horse and ride their chins. They lean forward and ahead of the other. And while they yell to their horses to make a big leap. make hurry-plans of big talk for that And their horses, they run as fast as spotted calf, the poor boy with the old they know. But in one suddenness, horse, listen and believe he follow also. they all see the old dun horse with a At this, the other warriors turn and big difference. The dun horse, he go make great laughs. They make him faster than any bird when the wind very ashame. They joke. They point pick it up and make it go more fast to the horse and say, “ See what a fine than when it fly. The old dun horse, horse he have! Watch how big he he do not run. He fly like the arrow. catch a spotted calf! ’ ’ He swoop past those braves’ horses so And the poor boy, he is so ashame, quick that he get to the buffalo herd he ride out to one side by a more far right away. trail than the others. Here he not know The boy, he have much big surprise, what to do. He look ahead with much but he draw up his bow as the horse sadness. And then as quick as a fish make this first charge up near the can turn in the water, that old dun spotted calf. The arrow, it now sing horse, he turn his head and speak a in the air. And the spotted calf, he plan. The horse, he say, “ To the side rare up and then fall in a suddenness 57 The Frontier from this. And the boy, with another so he try to walk fast. quickness, he next time kill a very fine But before he reach home, most rid­ fat cow. ers without no pack on their horse ride Before the other riders reach this by and get to the village first. One place, he skin the calf and the fat cow, rider, he hurry to the boy’s grandmoth­ and already he make a careful pack on er and he tell her that her boy already the old dun horse. He fix the meat kill the fine spotted buffalo calf. And and the skins with the spotted calf-skin old woman, she is very sad. She think pack on the top, where it show—just as they make a joke of her boy. The the other braves come up. And those grandmother, she say, “ You ought not others, they look at the old dun horse, to tell this. The boy, he so very poor. now, and they almost not know him. You ought not make such fun for me to He is so change. He jump. He throw be ashame of.” up his head high. His eyes, they both After while another rider, he hurry good. His sore back is as smooth with up. And he tell old woman the same wellness as the fine elk tooth. The thing. This time the grandmother, she heavy load he now carry, not bother is so sad because they make a joke of him. He act just big-scared-like at her poor boy, she begin to mourn. most things he see. He so very full of While she still wail, the boy, he lead great life. the old horse up to the lodge where he As the boy lead that proud dun and his grandmother and his old dun horse near the village, a rich young} horse all live. The old woman, she chief ride up and look at the spotted look up at this. And she see the meat, robe. The brave, he say, “ I give you and the robes, and she wonder. ten horses for that spotted robe! ’ ’ The “ Here,” say the boy, “ I have much reason he do that, he want to marry meat for you. And here I have even the big chief’s beautiful daughter. But a whole buffalo robe for your own self! the boy, he say, “ No.” Come take this meat down! ” he say Then another rider, he prance up proudly with command. quick. And he also see the robe with Old woman, she laugh at this, and wishes in his eyes. He call down with she start for meat. But right quick much kindness-like, “ I give you twelve she step back with a great astonish. finest horses in the tribe for the spotted The old dun horse, he stamp. He snort. robe!” But the boy, he say no again. He rare-up and act like a very wild This time the boy, he laugh. And when buffalo. The woman, she wonder but other riders pass ahead and offer she not dare come close by the horse! horses, and wampum, and eagle feath­ For only the boy, he can step near. ers, and wives, and robes, and many That night the boy go put some buf­ things, the boy, he only say, “ This falo fat on the dun horse to make him robe, it is not for trade.” shine beautiful. And now the old horse, The boy and his old grandmother, he talk again. He tell of a great war they live in the smallest, and most party. He say, “ To-morrow the enemy patched-up lodge in the camp. And tribe all come to this village and they the boy, he is very anxious to get there, make a big great battle. But when 58 The Frontier this happen, you obey what I say like The boy, he say, “ Why we stay this: here?” And he jump with the horse “ You jump on me and ride right and make the fifth charge. (At the thru their very most thick line. You fifth chief). He do this with the same ride first, up to their leader-chief and bravery as before, but just when he touch him and count coup on him. draw his bow the enemy also send a Then you kill him. You do this, then bad arrow. And this arrow, it fly you next ride back. You do this three through the dun horse so straight that times more. Until you kill the four the horse drop dead. most brave enemy. Then after those Now when the enemy-tribe see this four die, you must ride a little away, dun horse fall, they forget about the and not make no more fight. If you boy. They run to that horse while the go into charge the fifth time you get boy, he run back to his own tribe. The kill or I get take from you. You prom­ enemy, they say, 1 ‘ This horse, he act so ise with me, this?” That horse, he is brave in the fight, he seem like a man very serious. And the boy, he promise. or a great spirit. He not seem much Next day there come the great bat­ like a horse.” tle. A many number of warriors on They think they kill him better and horses. They come down a hill and for more certain. So they take their form the battle-line like the old dun knives, and their hatchets, and their horse already tell. And when the boy spears, and they cut the dun horse to see them come, he swing on his horse many small bits. Because they have and he charge at the greatest chief. too much great fear to leave him in one The enemy warriors, they rush at this piece. boy with all their bows and arrows. So When night come and the boy get many arrows fly now, they make the back to his village, he feel very sad. sky like a black cloud. But no arrow He sorry he break the horse’s word. hit the boy. The boy, he touch the He miss the old dun horse so great he chief and kill him like the horse ad­ think he go back to the battle ground vise. Next he do this again. And he where he see all the dead cut-up pieces. keep on until four of the most great So he return back and he stand on the chiefs are dead. Then he ride back to ground where the scraps lay. Here he watch the warriors of his tribe. mourn and here he think of the good These warriors, they keep on fight­ horse-friend that he disobey. ing the enemy-tribe until they have “ This too bad,” he say again and much weariness. They keep also on, over. Then he walk around and pick until their horses pull back. They kick up all the little pieces of meat, and their horses so hard, that the boy at bone. And he pick up the broken bits last think he can not stand it no longer. of hoof and the hair. He put these in He is not hurt. He is not tired. His a pile what make him very sorry. At dun horse, he is not damage and not last he go to the top of a hill where he tired neither. His horse, he jump and think of this sad pile. snort to rush out as great as the boy N!ow he think maybe Ti-ra-’wa can want also. see his sorrow. On this hill he sit with 59 The Frontier

his robe over his head till many hours return. But from this time you must . . . . His mind, it is very poor with only do what I always tell.” Then the grief as he think of the dun horse’s horse, he say, ‘'‘ Take me to a great kindness. He sit very still and mourn. distance from the village. Leave me While the boy make himself into a behind the highest distant hill-top what silence here, a big storm now come over you see. And leave me all night. Do his head. And this storm, it scold not return back for me till morning.” him. The boy’s mind it grow more The boy, he is very glad to obey. So poor all the time. Then the wind, it he do this, and when he return for the throw a rain at him. The rain, it spit horse in the morning, he is more glad. at him so hard he at last lift his face. For he find the horse there with a When he do this he look down where beautiful black gelding whose hair is the pieces of his horse are pile up. like the most black night. And whose He see that there is only a heap of eyes are like the biggest lightening. flesh and bone. And he grieve again. That night the old dun horse, he Now another wind, it rush at him say, “ Take me to the far hill and leave and bring a different rain. This rain, me again till morning.” The boy, he it not spit at him. This rain, it is many always ready now to obey. He do this griefs from many eyes. It is tears for and return back next morning. And pity this time. And the boy, he begin this time the horse bring back a geld­ to look down at the pile, and he think ing whose hair is like the whitest snow. those horse-pieces begin to take a And whose eyes are like the hottest shape. sun. When more time go by, a third storm The old dun horse ask this promise come. The rain this time, it not seem for ten nights. And the boy, he make like tears. It seem like cool water that it by taking him to the highest hill wash the tears away. And as the boy where the horse return each morning look now, he see the horse’s tail move with a beautiful very different horse. from north to south, back and back. Each horse, he is finer than the other The boy he have much fear. He one. The dun horse, he bring the boy think he run, but he want to stay also. a white horse, a red horse, a blue When he start away a fourth storm horse, a black horse, a horse with rush down and lift the horse-shape up. beautiful spotted clouds on its body, The boy, he see the horse’s legs move. and many mores. And the boy, he Those front legs, they get up first. have finer horses than any horses in all Next he see the old dun horse look his tribe. with his head around, and then he see Later, when the boy grow many him stand up with his life. moons older, he marry with the old When the boy run from the hill-top chief’s beautiful daughter. And by the to the horse, the old horse, he begin to time this happen he have so great a speak again. He say, “ You see what richness his people make him Chief of happen before this. And you know their tribe. But this greatness never how obedience must be from this time. make him forget his grandmother. Ti-ra’wa, the mystery-spirit now let me That grandmother, she always live in 60 The Frontier the lodge with him and his beautiful times he lead him thru the village often. wife. And she is very proud of his So the people they see and call back his many children. greatness. Once when the oldest boy-child die, When the old horse die at last, the the old grandmother and the boy and people whisper kindness about him. the beautiful wife, they wrap him in They sit in their lodges when a great the spotted robe and bury him with wind and rain come, or before they plan the robe’s wishes for good luck when a big battle. And they believe he asks he reach Ti-ra’wa. Ti-ra ’wa to keep care of them and their And the dun horse, he live long with village. The people think the old dim much honor also. For the boy, he horse still bring much good luck. They keep the old horse with great care. think he come back always to help any Only when he go to a feast or to a people who have a faithful kindness medicine dance he ride him. At other in their mind for him.

THE OPEN RANGE Each issue will carry accounts of men’s personal outdoor experiences. Only accounts of actual experiences are solicited.

THE CANOE WOMAN OF MONTANA

B y C o r a E . V a n D e u s e n Editor’s Note: This Shoshone story is so different from the historical record that it is interesting as a suggestion of what word-of-mouth preservation means. Footnotes indicate di­ vergence from the historical account. For these notes I am indebted to Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard. Note by Cora Van Deusen: Among the stories that the Shoshone or Snake Indians hand down to their children is that of the brave Indian girl, Sacajawea. This is one of the stories Mrs. Mlneslnger told her children when on long winter evenings they sat in their little cabin on the Hellgate in the bright glow of the firelight, her nimble fingers busy with her bead work. It came to me thru Mrs. Emma Magee, her daughter, a Shoshone now living in Montana. Mrs. Minesinger was the first cousin of old Chief Tendoy of the Shoshones. The Shoshone or Snake Indians were after reaching their place on the mountain camped in a beautiful Wyoming valley. It side where there was plenty of garlic, the was not their home, but they often roved mother spread a blanket for it to sit on. about, camping wherever they liked and The sun was shining. The day was bright hunting and fishing as they pleased. It was and warm and time passed pleasantly. Soon early spring. Life was beginning to stir. they would have garlic enough. Sacajawea’s Pretty birds were flitting about and looking mother heard a soft stealthy step. Turning for a place to build a nest. Two young quickly she encountered several Sioux Indian women, lured by the beautiful day, Indians with hideous painted faces and took their papooses1 and went up on the gleaming tomahawks. She glanced at the mountain side where the snow had melted camp below . The Sioux had surprised them: early, to look for the garlic or wild onions a battle was in progress. Sacajawea and which would add taste to their evening meal. her mother were taken prisoners. The other One of the papooses that went with her Indian woman was killed when she attempt­ mother that day swinging in the cradle on ed to run to her baby on the blanket. her back was Sacajawa. The other little pa­ Sacajawea and her mother were taken as poose had no cradle board to ride in, so that, captives to the Sioux country in Dakota. ‘Historically, Sacajawea when stolen was al ut twelve years of age. Lewis said in 1805 when Sacajawea's child was born that it was her first child. 61 The Frontier

Here the child grew under her mother’s care with some, but not with Sacajawea. They until she was twelve years old, when her smiled at her and welcomed her, a lonely mother, finding a chance, escaped from them beautiful girl. She lifted her head and read and returned to her own people. She had, their secrets and smiled back at them and however, told Sacajawea to what tribe she found the way over their mighty peaks. belonged and where their country lay across It was a great triumph for her. A dream the mountains. As the years passed, life of years come true. It had been a long cruel grew more and more irksome among the journey,7 but it mattered not now that she enemies and Sacajawea longed for her own had found her people. Her heart rejoiced people.2 as she approached their camp eager for their So one bright summer day when all life welcome greeting. She had so longed for was singing she slipped away from the Sioux them, so wanted to be with those of her own camp . She was a bright girl then about six­ blood and to live in her own country. teen years of age and she had learned a It had never occurred to Sacajawea that great deal about the country that she had her people might not be glad to see her. But wandered over in company with and as a they were not They had forgotten her; to captive of the Sioux. She knew the trails them she did not exist They stared coldly and where they led. After days of hard a t her. traveling, during which she managed in some “You belong to the Sioux,” they said. unknown manner to cross the Missouri river, “The Sioux raised you. You are one of her moccasins worn out, her buckskin dress them. We do not want you. Go back to in tatters, the little food that she had car­ the Sioux.”® ried with her gone, she came upon a hut of It was a bitter time for Sacajawea, after a Mexican fur trader8 and his wife near her perilous journey. She lingered for a where Fort Benton now stands. Sacajawea while with them, but they were not kind to was cautious. She did not rush up to the her and she was very unhappy. So again cabin but hovered about for three days and she started out over mountains and valleys nights watching the trader and his wife go back to the people® who had given her a in and out about their duties, then she home. She again stopped at the friendly fur approached them seeking food and shelter. trader’s home, which was a haven to her. They were friendly and kind and gave When spring came again she continued her her food and also clothing, to replace her journey to the Sioux camp. Once more she tattered buckskin garments.4 They gave her was coldly received. a home. She stayed with them until a year “Why did you come back?” they asked had passed, learning while there to speak her. “You ran away from us after we had the English language.5 She was still lonely given you a home. You cannot stay here. for her people with a heartache that she We do not want you. You can go back to could not endure, so when summer came the Snakes, if you like them so well, and again with its bright sunny days she set out stay with them. We will not have you here.” on the second lap of her journey. It was at this time that she became known The Rocky mountains were treacherous, as Sacajawea. The word means “An Out­ for they were high and covered with snow cast” and not “Bird Woman,” as many peo­ for many months of the year and few if any ple think.10 She had become an outcast Indians would venture to cross the range from both her own tribe and the tribe that alone.6 It was an unusual and difficult had raised her. thing for a girl to do. But she was very Heartsick and weary from her long jour­ brave and very bright and not afraid of the neys, with no home to go to, she then turned mountains. They were grim and treacherous to the only friendly people that she knew, •This whole paragraph and the next one differ from the historical account. "This Mexican fur trader does not appear in the historical account. ‘There is no record of any fur trader at this time having a cabin and a wife so far up tne Missouri river. . . . , . , "Sacajawea could not speak English until after she had been with Lewis and Clark. •She did not return to her own people until 1806 when with Lewis and Clark. •There is no record of her crossing the mountains. See note 6. •There is, of course, no record of such treatment. •No record of this in the Lewis and Clark Journal. “ It is a pure Shoshone word meaning "boat pusher” or "boat puller. 62 The Frontier the Mexican fur trader and his wife.11 Their When Lewis and Clark asked the Indians welcome was warm and friendly. They bade for a guide they searched in vain among her stay, and gave her food and clothing. their number for a warrior who knew both Here she lived for several years. the country and the English language. The Charbonneau, the arrow packer, came one warriors knew neither. Among them all day with a load of furs. He dallied long in there was only one who had crossed the dealing with the fur trader, made much treacherous mountains and who also knew small talk, and looked often at Sacajawea. the English language.12 This one was Saca­ She was slender and pretty and had soft jawea, wife of Charbonneau, the arrow bewitching dark eyes and Charbonneau fell packer. Sacajawea gladly consented to go. in love with her. He came often after that, She had by her marriage become a member and by and by married her and took her to of the Bannack tribe13; and it was only h is lodge. after a long Indian council that they gave Not long after that two great explorers, their consent. Lewis and Clark, came, who were sent out Accompanied by her husband and little by the President of the United States to papoose, which rode in a cradle board on her explore the western country and find their back, she led the expedition across the moun­ way to the Pacific coast. tains and into the Columbia river valley. With their company of men, they had come When she reached her people this time14 she many many miles up the Missouri river and came not as an outcast but as a conqueror, into Montana.12 and as such they welcomed her. ANDY GITCHEL BORROWS A HORSE B y W i l l i a m S . L e w i s

OLKS didn’t bother much with the law as he got it. One day he told us that he in early days; it was a long ways to was going to leave us and go on to Missoula. F the nearest county seat. Certain gen­ We asked him how he was going to go. eral rules of conduct were established, a “Oh,” he said, “there’s lots of good horses violation of which meant banishment, some­ around here. I’ll just borrow one and ride times a rope around the neck thrown over it into Missoula and then turn it loose. the cross-arm of a corral post or the limb “That won’t do, Andy. They are hanging of a nearby tree and, in such cases, the cattle and horse thieves around here now.” offender, often riddled with bullets, was left “Oh,” he replies, “that’s all right. I don’t as a demonstration to those who newly aim to keep the horse. I just want to ride entered the community that they must like­ him .” wise conform or suffer a like judgment. That night Andy Gitchel took a horse that One thing that always made a frontiers­ was handy and started off for Missoula. man unusually peevish was to steal his sad­ The next morning some men came into our dle horse. Horse thieves were becoming a camp and said, “If you want to see your nuisance in western Montana in the summer friend, Gitchel, you’ll find him hanging of 1881. The Weekly Missoulian began to beside the road about six miles from town.” recommend “hemp stretching” on a consider­ able scale, and numerous necktie parties were held during the fall. A crowd of us NEWSPAPER REPORT— 1881 young fellows were working at that time at Prom The Missoulian, Missoula, Montana Vicksville on the construction of the North­ Territory, July 22, 1881, under the column ern Pacific railroad. We had an acquaint­ headed “Territorial Brevities” : The Mad­ ance, a good-natured, easy-going cuss named isonian fears there is an organized gang of Andy Gitchel. Like most of the crowd he horse-thieves operating in that country, and gambled or threw away his money as fast suggests hemp-stretching as a remedy. “ No such record in Lewis and Clark. “ Historically, wanting an interpreter, they took Charbonneau, near Bismark, North Dakota. Sacajawea, as his wife, accompanied him. She did not then know English. “ Charbonneau was, of course, a white man. “ Sacajawea met her people near the state line between Montana and Idaho. 63 The Frontier

HISTORICAL SECTION Each issue will carry some authentic account, diary or journal or reminiscence, preferably of early days in this region of the country.

“THE BATTLE OF THE BIG HOLE” As described by local contemporaries from hitherto unpublished letters and other docu­ ments in the Montana State Historical Library. Edited by Paul C. PhiUips, University of Montana. FOREWORD The letters and other documents describing the Battle of the Big Hole now in the Montana State Historical Library at Helena are here used through the courtesy of David Hilger, librarian. These papers throw a light on the battle quite different from that shown in the military reports which have been the chief source of information. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians started General Sherman characterized the flight of with his band from the Clearwater In Idaho in Chief Joseph as "one of the most extraordinary July, 1877, on a flight across Montana to Can­ Indian wars of which there is any record. The ada. United States troops were trying to force Indians throughout displayed a courage and him onto a reservation and It was to escape skill that elicited universal praise.” them that he undertook this long retreat. The skill and daring with which he conducted his 1. Gen. Nelson A. Miles1 to Gov. B. F. followers and thwarted the efforts of some of the best generals of the United States Army Potts of Montana. have long held the interest of students of Indian W&rf&r6 Cantonment at Tongue River The Nez Perce Indians roamed at will over the country between the Bitter Root mountains March 16th, 1877 and the Cascades until 1855, when General T o u r very Isaac I. Stevens induced them to agree to go on a reservation of large area. A few years w elcom e l e t ter later gold was discovered on this reservation and miners crowded in. The United States gov­ of J an ; 17th ernment sought to remove the Nez Perces from 1877 was duly the mining region and many agreed to a new treaty. Chiefs Joseph, White Bird, Looking received and I Glass and others refused to accept the new proposals and continued to roam at will thank you for over Idaho. General O. O. Howard was the appointment instructed to round up the Indians and in May, 1877, held some conferences with them. enclosed, also His pacific efforts were futile and soon there was war. Chief Joseph defeated the white for your kind soldiers at White Bird canyon and in the Clear­ water offered desperate resistance to a large expressions o f force under General Howard and escaped. He interest in the then began his march eastward along the Lolo trail, described by General Sherman as ‘one enter prize in of the worst trails for man and beast on this which we are continent.” He planned to cross the Bitter engaged. A t Root mountains into Montana and then go on Gov. B. F. Potts to Canada. General Howard was slow in fol­ present I think lowing and troops in Montana were hurriedly despatched to stop the invaders. Captain C. C. the prospects are quite favorable, and the Rawn of Fort Missoula went up Lolo canyon complete subjugation of all the hostile In­ and built a fort in a narrow place to resist the Nez Perces. Chief Joseph led his band along dians in this region is only a question of the ridge above and Rawn’s fort has since been known as Fort Fizzle. Colonel Gibbon arrived time, and one of the best means of making with a small force and with citizen volunteers such a peace permanent is just treatment started in pursuit of Chief Joseph, who was going up the Bitter Root valley. He overtook toward the Indians and the opening of the him in the Big Hole valley across the divide, where after a serious engagement the Nez country to white settlement. Perces again escaped. They dodged back and forth across Montana and stole the pack train I trust that we may have the pleasure of of General Howard, who was pursuing them. They crossed the newly created Yellowstone a visit from you this Summer; you will find Park and traveled north towards Canada. Near much of interest in this part of Montana, and the Bear Paw mountains they thought they were across the line and stopped. Here Gen­ although a large percentage of the land eral„ , Nelson i- , A. Miles . surprised them and com- seems rough and unsuitable for cultivation pelled their surrender. Kleneral Miles was commander of the Telowstone district He was at that time engaged In war with the Sioux. 64 The Frontier yet there are resources here adequate to the upon them for our defense. We rely on you support of a numerous population. to stand our friend as you have in times past, and do as you are able to ward off 2. Chauncey Barbour, editor of the any threatened danger. Walla Walla, the Weekly Missoulian, to Gov. Potts. nearest telegraphic Station, is 140 miles from Missoula, M. T., June 29, 1877 the scene of the recent massacre, and the I left Deer Lodge in company with Captain Indians might be upon us before we could Mills2 and reached here today noon. I ascer­ be advised that they were moving eastward. tained upon undoubted evidence that at least Capt. Rawn7 would station pickets upon the three Nez Perces Indians had come from trails leading from the Nez Perces country; Camas Prairie into Bitter Root valley since but he has no horses or any of the require­ the fight2 and that two had been upon the ments for such service. While we are not reservation coming by way of the Mullan assured of the disposition of our resident road; that Michelle, chief of the Pen Indians we have ever present in our minds d'Oreilles and Arlee, chief of the fragmen­ the terrors of an unseen danger from an in­ tary band of Flatheads upon the reservation, vasion of the Nez Perces. Our exposed sit­ had expressed their belief that the young uation and proximity to the recent massacre, men of both tribes would join in the hostil­ and our not knowing what hour we may be ities as soon as the Nez Perces should reach exposed to a similar visitation are of them­ the Bitter Root valley. It was the intention selves sufficient to strike terror to the entire of Capt. Higgins* and myself to visit Charlos2 population. I have not yet heard from Gen. tomorrow in Bitter Root valley and learn Gibbon8. He may have better information his intentions in this emergency; but upon which may preclude the necessity of guard­ information that we deemed authentic ing passes and preventing the passing of Charlos had not been seen in that valley for emissaries or hostile bands to this region. some time and his whereabouts was not Capt. Mills will undoubtedly furnish you known. There are a great many rumors with fuller details of the exact situation floating in the air, many of which are born here. I will endeavor to give you accurate of terrified imaginations; but it is certain information of the state of things from time that our Indians are fully advised of all that to time. We have much that is purely sen­ is transpiring across the Coeur d’Alene sational. The position of jeopardy in which mountains, and we are completely in the we find ourselves is itself sensational. We dark about their intentions. It is reported cannot lull people into security of staying that the entire population of Bitter Root at home to be massacred, and it is not an valley is fortified at Fort Owen2, and many agreeable task to unnecessarily excite the of the families round about Missoula have fears of men, women and children. removed to town. The noble fellows who live in the mines in the lower end of Deer P. S. A military organization was effect­ Lodge county have notified us of their readi- ed here to-day. Will send up papers next ness to respond to any call we may make mail. B. ’ Captain J. H. Mills, editor of the New Northwest of Deer Lodge, Montana, Governor Potts appointed him Adjutant General of the Montana Militia to resist the Nez Perces. ’ The fight was the batttle of White Bird Canyon of June 17. ‘Captain C. P. Higgins had come west with General Stevens’s surveying expedition in 1853. He served in the army until 1860 when he resigned to become a merchant of Walla Walla. He soon went to Hell Gate west of the present Missoula and entered into a partnership with Francis P. Worden. In 1865 he located the townsite of Missoula. He was one of the founders and president of the Missoula National Bank. He lived here until his death in 1889. ‘Charlos or Chariot was the principal chief of the Flatheads or Selish Indians. In 1872 James A. Garfield had urged the chiefs of this tribe to move onto the reservation south of Flathead Lake, Chariot had refused and remained with his followers in the Bitter Root Valley. Arlee agreed to go and his band received all the government annuities. •Fort Owen was an old trading post established on the site of the first St. Mary’s Mission by “Major” John Owen in 1860. 'Captain Rawn of the United States Army was then building Fort Missoula, near the town of the same name. ‘Colonel John Gibbon was at Fort Shaw on the Sun River north of Helena. 65 The Frontier

3. Joaquin AbascaP to an unidentified Will try and find out movements of Flat- friend. heads from French Gulch—Am satisfied Beartown, July the 2 though that they dont mean harm—Their Friend Willy leaving the Bitter Root however is evidence On my return from Flint Creek I found that they believe the Nez Perces are coming your two letters Send the watch to me here over— This is a matttr I did not care to refer and the price with it Nothing in the office to in paper— belonging to the U S Will be up the 8th of 5. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. this month Deer Lodge, July 8th 1877 [P. S.] Indians playing Hell on the Yours of Friday received. Enclosed extra Blackfoot—allso the are Cleaning of the is sent to night all over West Side. Arranged Trayl from Nevada Creek to Sun River it with Mr Andrews11 to let 40 of the guns go looks suspicious, in Ireka the [illegible] held to Missoula tomorrow—and have sent re­ a meeting yesterday to organize a self pro­ ceipts to Drouillard through Higgins for the tection it looks gloomy same—A letter from Higgins 6th says the 4. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. following is the issue of arms in that Co Deer Lodge, Montana, July 5, 1877 Men Guns Your favor to hand—Have written Logan Location at enrolled Issued to hold all guns in case until receipts are Co A M issoula 64 50 officially signed, and have written both Co B Stevensville 38 30 Higgins and Drouillard10 in relation to am­ Co C West Side BR 32 20 munition. I think it would be well to have Co D C orvallis 35 20 full instructions to Sheriffs., also blanks, Co E Skalkaho 37 20 printed to cover these issues. I don’t think Co F Frenchtow n 34 20 the Sheriffs are anxious to tackle the arms on their official bonds, and if they dont it 240 160 will relieve you of much importunity— I pub­ Capt H. has taken receipts from Co Com­ lished law that all might understand when manders and says Drouillard Sheriff will application should be made. I get numer­ sign receipts in due time. Co E. Skalkaho, ous letters every day in relation to the mat­ is building a stockade of logs, at a good place ter and It is breaking me for Stationery and and will be supported—Pickets will be kept Stamps to answer everybody, which, being at the upper pass—which De Lacy“ says is a “servant” now I have to do with best grace impracticable. It is practicable in season— possible—Wrote Drouillard, no arms had He has instructed Co officers about drill and been sent here except for them, and that care of ammunitiion; they are buying their there was no transportation now to be had own ammunition for practice— from Helena—Have heard nothing more I think we should issue 120 guns here about Flatheads—Think they are in same anyhow and hold at least 80 to serve vol­ place—Am glad Sherman is coming out. I unteers at once in case they are called—I eliminated largely on that letter, so as not regret Butte cannot have about 50 guns— to trench on any personal matters or private not that they need them for defense, but expressions— there are some good fighting men there who I notice by Capt. Higgins letter the excite­ would mount and follow and they need cul­ ment still continues at Frenchtown— From tivating—But half the Co will come here half thos people down there being half-breeds if there is danger, and this will be the first and running with Indians all the time they and only point appealed to for aid. I think ought to know whether the Indians referred 50 good men would volunteer from here and to mean devilment or not—It will take some immediate vicinity to support any assailed time for them to arrange a programme if point. Many think 100, but that is too high. they are going to ally with Joseph— However all volunteers could and would •Joaquin Abascal was the leading merchant of Beartown, at that time, an important mining camp. __ . _ *>M M Drouillard was sheriff of Missoula County. “ James McAndrews was sheriff of Deer Lodge County. ix\Y. w . DeLacy, an engineer who built a considerable part of the Mullan road. 66 The Frontier rally here for an outfit and so I trust we Send Weston down to pick out that ranch. can hold at least 80 guns here. I would not I think we will have our hands full yet this favor an organization here until an outbreak month. Lets get things in as good shape as occurred and then issue to those who would possible and, if they come for Montana in go fighting. numbers we can handle, whip hell out of Some dozen or 15 Indians were at Warm the red-skins. Will keep you posted. Springs store yesterday trading or trying to [P. S.] What do you think of the Crows trade. They wanted provisions and ammu­ I believe they are bad eggs and are not to be nition although their belts were full— I think relied on— you should re-issue by authority that order 6. Extracts from Letters received Thurs­ prohibiting sale of ammunition to any In­ day evening [July 13] [presumably by Gov. dian or half breed—These Indians say they Potts]. were Nez Perces, but I am satisfied they [a] From W. B. Harlan, Stevensville— are Flatheads. They came off Big Hole via G ood man— French Gulch and drove a band of 75 or 80 July 10. “Poker Joe changed horses at head of horses up Warm Spring Creek in the Nez Perces Camp near Corvallis and lit direction of Cable—Warm Springs settlers out for the camp on the Big Hole. Did not organized and sent for guns. McAndrews tell his mission. He was seen 20 miles above let them have 20. They will picket the Corvallis, horse on the run. Since the French Gulch and Cable trails to protect settlers have been supplied with arms they their horses. Bitter Root and Flint Creek have confidence they can defend themselves are pretty well over the scare part of it, but and their homes if given a little notice of I think will remain vigilant while matters invasion. The families with one or two ex­ are critical in Idaho— Your views about issue ceptions are at their homes. There was not of arms to Indians and half breeds are the panic that was reported. Four or five correct— families went to Missoula, and 19 or 20 to My bond is returned to me here today with Fort Owen, while fully 50 staid at their following “Memo” by Solicitor of Treasury homes somewhat uneasy but not apprehend­ “A Scroll is not sufficient seal for Gov’t ing immediate trouble. Charlos is at his official: they should be of wax or wafer— All the Territorial Secretarys are not not ranch, has been there all the time, and says charged by law with the disbursement of he will not fight the whites, but it will be appropriations—the Secretary of Montana, hard to restrain some of his young men if amongst others, is—and by Sec 1940 R. S. there is any more shooting into lodges as must account to. the Secretary of the Treas­ ury and be governed solely by his instruc­ there was recently done at Missoula by tions as to disbursements—This bond is only parties overloaded with ammunition and security for the faithful performance of the whiskey. (Don’t believe that is true; think usual and ordinary duties of a Secretary of the Treasury— In cases where a Secretary is it was some rowdys firing off the howitzer also disbursing officer there ought to be spoken of in Missoulian.) The Flatheads added to the Condition of the bond that he have not driven their horses out of the val­ will faithfully disburse &c according to law ley but are herding them back close to the and the Instructions of the Secretary of the T reasu ry.” mountains, probably as a precaution against The Assistant Secretary in returned bond a raid of the Nez Perces.” says “Please cause the Correction, as indi­ [b] From James Thompson, Under Sher­ cated in the Memo furnished by solicitor, to iff Missoula 10th. be made at your earliest Convenience etc.” “Two cases of guns came tonight. Will So that lets me out for another month, I send them to Frenchtown. As soon as they presume—The bond was made in strict ac­ are opened and examined will receipt for cordance with the form sent by you. I will them. There is a manifest feeling of un­ attend to it tomorrow. easiness among our citizens not before ex­ I do not believe, as things, look, it would hibited. A general opinion seems to prevail be wise for you to get away from the tele­ that will have more or less trouble before graph line, more than a few hours travel. it ends.” 67 The Frontier

[c] From Capt J. W. Reilly (My Cousin) ity of issuing those arms and being held on his bond for them—that is what is the mat­ Chief of Ordnance Mil. Div. of the Mo. Chi­ ter__There are five times as many guns cago 3d) asked for as he can supply and if he gives “General Sheridan is now in from section, one locality and refuses another it might crossing the Big Horn Mountains from Green interfere with a re-election—So he looks at River to the Yellowstone. He told me he the law with a view to having you designate did not anticipate trouble in your Territory the camps to be supplied, and that thus fur­ or in this Division. Miles would stir up all nishing them under your order, if the Com­ the Indians in the North West if he were let pany bondsmen should fail and the guns not alone, but Sheridan ordered him to give up be forthcoming he would not be held on his roaming and go to the Post and build it. bond for the losst—This accounts for his 7. C. P. Higgins, president of the Mis­ reluctance. I think you had better order 40 soula National Bank, to J. H. Mills. stand to Phillipsburg, 40 to New Chicago Missoula, July 12th 1877 Company, and 20 to Bear Mouth, send the Yours of the 8th inst reed. 2 cases guns form of bond required from Companies, if & 1 Box ammunition reached here same eve­ it is your duty to go into these details and ning (10th) Can’t get the sheriff to sign order that the secretary shall determine their the receipts, he seems to shirk the responsi­ acceptance and I will see they are good bility. I hold the officers receipts for guns bonds— I think however this matter devolves &c issued to Cos requiring them to take a wholly upon the Sheriff, and if such is the bond with security from each member of the case make him procure the proper bonds. C. in the name of the sheriff of Missoula The County will pay for the 100 by Express County or his successor in office. I enclose The 40 sent to Missoula was deducted from form of bond had them printed at my own our bill here and charged right through from expense, was anxious that everything should Helena. I hope you will find transportation be done according to law as required by the for the 100 reserve guns for this place— Gov and yourself. Thanks for Telegrams, There is just a possibility that they will be nothing new here. needed and we dare not trust against that 8 J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. possibility—We have had good time to pre­ Deer Lodge, Montana July 12 1877 pare and time is slipping around without Your favor of the 11th covering order our taking advantage of it. How many guns appointing me Adjutant General of the M M have you and where are they? Would you is to hand. Thank you. It would be a trifle order the sale of any to isolated families of a joke if it were published now but oc­ down the Canyon and other places, and at casion may arise when there will be neces­ what price and where delivered? I can’t sity for it and work to do— I had to scold think what the mission of Poker Joe is! He a bit today about the shape in which the is not running away from the fight—I am {Territories are in cases of the kind now inclined to think he is drumming up disaf­ threatening us. If you were given discre­ fected Indians. He travels too fast to be tionary authority it might save trouble with on a pleasure trip. A lot of squaws arrived telegraph lines down and no authority to here today but no bucks—not one— act and incur a dollar of expense in fight­ ing for the United States—If you call for 9. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. Militia you will have to feed them, and help Deer Lodge, Montana, July 13 1877 them a good deal in outfitting and who the I wish you would inform me on following deuce is going to pay for it? And then with­ points: Should the militia be sworn in out such authority you would not feel like subject to your call for service anywhere in handling the number of men necessary for the Territory—If so send form of oath and good work—It seems to me your standing muster roll, and designate who shall be must­ with the President and Sherman would pro­ ering officers! cure your request favorable consideration. McAndrews dont like to take the responsibil­ What amount shall the bonds be placed at 68 The Frontier

—the value of the guns .double value, or armed men. We have Indian reports to the w hat— effect that the Hostiles are in force on this Is the Sheriff to determine the sufficiency side of Clearwater and on the spokane. Have of bonds? I would like to have full instruc­ advised the Cos above to scout the passes tion on these points—Have submitted my leading into the valley, a picket guard will authority to Sheriff and he wishes to issue be sent up the Lo Lo by Co “A” Militia, and on your order, or mine, to avoid the respon­ Capt Raun we will furnish him 4 horses to sibility attached to giving preferences when mount his men for that duty tomorrow. The so many more guns are needed or asked for Frenchtown Co “E” will scout the passes than can be supplied. If it is now possible below, will advise you promptly of the ap­ I wish to see good guns issued as follows, proach of any Hostile force Hope the Gov. subject to demand of Sheriff or governor will get authority to Rais the force asked. when the exigency is deemed to be past, viz. I paid Cumminger the price charged $40.00 Bear, Bear Mouth and Ireka, 1 C o ...... 30 for bringing down the message. New Chicago and Emmetsburg, 1 C o ...... 30 11. Chauncey Barbour to Gov. Potts. Phillipsburg and Cable, 1 C o ...... *...... 40 M issoula, M. T ., J u ly 15, 1877 Helmville, Jefferson and Nevada Creek, Your letter to Capt Mills and the news to 1 Co ...... 30 which it called attention was dispatched Upper D [eer] L [odge] Valley (new is­ from Deer Lodge after the mail arrived last su e) ...... 20 night; arriving here at 11 a. m. today. I Reserves for Deer Lodge ...... 100 got out an Extra, counseling the people to the course that seemed to me best. Capt T ota l ...... - ...... 250 Raws has promised to post scouts on the French and German [gulches] want guns, but Lo Lo trail, and we held a meeting tonight if trouble occurs these people will have to get and arranged to furnish him with horses out—The other localities ask about twice as and accouterments. There will be no leav­ many as allotted to them, but can reconcile ing homes or unnecessary scares if we can them to this apportionment — Blackfoot avoid it. The mass of our people have a should be content with muzzle loaders or settled conviction that we cannot pass the rely upon guns from Helena—the 100 here summer without a collision with the Indians. would allow 50 to Butte in case they would The story of Poker Joe is confirmed by later send that many men to. the field if circum­ reports (especially to us who have a better stances required, or they might have 25 for knowledge of the country and these Indians) drill as you think best—If this number of all except the number of whites killed, about arms are available it would put a good line which Indians always seem to take a license of fire along an entire exposed border and in exaggerating. This statement about the under the bonds they can be reclaimed at number of Indians who are taking part in any time. With this disposition we can this conflict is being confirmed daily. Of make a good showing in any quarter and course they do not engage as tribes; but support any place imperilled—New Chicago there are restless young men from all tribes, has had a man here four days waiting for lured by the prospect of plunder, who are guns— Have 40 guns here for issue when you operating with the Nez Perces. I have re­ approve the allotment and they give satis­ liable information that some Flatheads factory bonds and muster roll. Nothing passed over into the Nez Perces country this new — spring. I see in late dispatches that the 10. C. P. Higgins to J. H. Mills. Calispells are among the hostiles on the Special Messenger Cumminger arrived Spokane. Calispell is the Indian name for here today noon. Immediately notified the Pen d’Oreille. There are some of our people people of the valley, generally, and the offi­ who are trying to persuade themselves that cers of the militia companies in particular. the Flatheads and Pen d’Oreilles will not Splendid chance to strike the Hostiles by war on the whites—that the Catholic re­ way of the Lo Lo pass with 4 or 500 well ligion has the effect of making an Indian 69 The Frontier mention o f the interest you have taken In lamb like. There are some who affect to our affairs. Through long and weary years believe that Charlos will not lie. The great we have sought recognition from the gov­ and good Geo Washington did lie, he did his ernment of our exposed situation. You have best to deceive the enemy, and It Is too stood our friend, and the present crisis is a violent an assumption to think that Charlos testimonial to your sagacity and the correct­ is better than he. It is a fact one that ness o f your judgment in long ago recom­ commends Itself as reasonable to the dullest mending the protection that all now concede comprehension—that an Indian rejoices at to be necessary. The reflection must be another Indian’s success. It is alleged that gratifying to you; the assistance you have our Indians were jubilant over Custer’s de­ rendered imposes on us a debt of gratitude feat last summer. It is a part of human we cannot repay with mere words. nature that this should be so. The white 12. Chauncey Barbour to J. H. Mills. race is not without a similar feeling, and we Missoula, M. T., July 15, 1877 are wanting in discernment that belongs to Dear Sir. Your courier got here about 11 intelligent beings if we do not recognize the a. m. today. I was at the synagogue, but we fact that all Indians sympathise with the managed to get o ff this Extra by one. Capt Nez Perces, and especially those Indians that Rawn was seen and promised to send a have fraternized with them for generations, sergeant and four men to scout the Lo Lo and are connected with them by ties of mar­ trail. We held a meeting tonight and made riage. We ought to have a sufficient force provision to mount the Scout. We think here here to prevent all communication between that Poker Joe’s story has been confirmed in the hostiles and our Indians. We cannot many important particulars. To be sure the too fully express to you our gratitude for number of white killed was exaggerated, the interest you are taking and have ever but that is a universal Indian failing. There taken in our welfare. For some reason was fighting on the 3d, 4th, and 5th. Jo was Gen Gibbon has not brought to our knowl­ in it 2 days. The Indians were set afoot edge any efforts that he has made for the and their camp destroyed. Jo got here on security of this people. He may be per­ the 6th, 2 days from the fight—he must have suaded that we are in no danger; but we do left the morning of the 5th. And besides in not know that he has taken pains to inform confirmation of Joe’s story we are finding himself of the facts. We do believe that the that more Indians are on the war path than Government has instituted the military arm was at first supposed. We have news from that our lives may not be in jeopardy and Indian sources today that the Nez Perces that the accumulations of years may not be are in force on Clearwater; also, that the liable to be swept away in a moment, and Indians are on the war path on Spokane that if we volunteer in defense of our neigh­ river. The evidence accumulates that this bors’ homes that our time shall not be wholly is no holiday foray by an insignificant band lost to us. This war is growing daily, and It of Indians. We believe this so firmly that is becoming manifest that the whole Nez we intend to relax no vigilance to preserve Perces tribe, except perhaps those bands con­ human life. The Indians may destroy crops trolled by Lawyer’s sons, and very many and drive off stocks. The panic has disap­ renegades from surrounding tribes are In for peared, and there is naught here but a settled the war. And I am prepared to say that the purpose to make it as warm as possible for men who declare that no part of the Flat- any Indians who are wanting a game heads or Pen d’Oreilles will join in the war with us. offer an insult to common intelligence. Your 13. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. recommendations for increased protection at Deer Lodge, Montana, July 17, 1877 this juncture are prompted by sagacity, an intelligent estimate of Indian character, and McLean got back without you, much to my by a knowledge of the situation here which regret as I was in hopes you would come you have taken the pains to study as the over. The parties here after guns are recon­ basis of your action. You thank me for kind ciled to the method of issue—public senti- 70 The Frontier

ment here strongly endorsing your ideas and 14. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. moulding the crude ideas of those who on Deer Lodge, M. T., July 22, 1877 coming in are rather more vigorous than well Philipsburg today filed Muster Roll as matured in their ideas—That statement in required by General Order No. 2, and I the Independent of 1200 breechloaders and ordered the 40 guns and 1000 rounds of am­ 1200 muzzle loaders, which you were sup­ munition in your name— posed to be anxious to get rid of is what I hand you herewith receipts from Sheriff raised the muss. I have furnished Phil- of the Co for 100 stand of arms and 2000 ipsburg and Bear with muster rolls and will rounds of ammunition—I had to issue him send the former 40 and the latter 40 guns 40 guns of the 180 sent to make up his com­ on compliance with requirements. I think plement of 100, you having transferred 40 of I had better hold and store in your name the his first 100 to Missoula County, together guns not issued. There is a little error as with 1000 rounds of amunition. I still hold to the number issued by the county. You 140 guns and 6000 rounds of amunition, sent Missoula forty of the guns marked which I will turn over to sheriff only as he against us—The Receipts from this Co will needs them, taking receipts therefor. Mc- be all right—Logan is under obligation to Masters wrote from Bear last night to send get receipts from Sheriff of Beaverhead or them guns but as they did not send required return the arms. The enclosed letters from credentials I cannot forward them—I kept Missoula will show the cause of delays there a team hooked up Friday afternoon and had — Sheriff Drouillard is like Sh. McAndrews 100 guns ready to send down the road but —would like to avoid the responsibility. I would not let them go without orders from will get a copy of bond from Sheriff here you—If they would once get the guns down and send to Capt Higgins and tell him his there I dont believe they would organize as sheriff must sign receipt to you—When I required and I dont propose to go up for was there it was not known who had to is­ $2000—Although they made me promise in sue these under the law and I exacted from Missoula to keep them promptly advised and Higgins his word of honor that whatever re­ agreed to bear the expenses. My second ceipts were required by you he would see cousin came back this morning with a bill and hold himself responsible should be made against me of $44.25 which I have to pay— —This he freely promised. They have evi­ unless this time makes it up to me—That dently covered the issue with bonds but have lets me out—If Howards dispatch wasn’t misunderstood the method—I dont want to worth $40 to them, I dont know what would issue any more of the guns than I can avoid, be—Anyhow I dont propose to pay expenses as I believe prudence suggests a strong re­ any longer, being out more now than any serve. other person in Montana. Our folks here would pay transportation on It is a monstrous outrage that the Nez 100 guns, muzzle loaders, from Virginia, and Perces shall be allowed to pass through our would like to have an order for that many territory—They should be fought from their and the conditions upon which they can be first appearance until they are wiped out. had and distributed. The Ch man of Co. No matter if they do “only want to be let Comis asks me to write you for an order for alone”—The people of Idaho are our people that amount—Upon what conditions does and their butchers would be ours if circum­ Butte get the 100 for which Warren“ had stances were favorable—I think anyhow, order—If you order any muzzle loaders for these advance squads are only playing “good this side please include a couple boxes of Indian until the fighting force gets in— They ammunition for Fisks Howitzer—He has are dammed “good” when they have the only a dozen charges— canister— worst of it. If Missoula County was un­ [P. S.] I omitted a requirement about prepared for them they would have been muster rolls in the slips I sent you. Have in it from the word go— incorporated it in enclosed which I furnish If it were dettermined to strike them we to those desiring to organize. could whip them out of their skins as they "Charles Warren had been appointed Adjuta by Governor Potta 71 The Frontier

go through Montana—If they take the Big direct trail and report fact—I am hampered Blackfoot and Cadottas pass wild(?) we can for lack o f means to mount men, but in the strike through Bear and Yreka or on Oh- absence of formal proclamation am doing vanda Creek, while Gibbon comes through the best I can—I believe there will be one Cadottes pass and thus get them front and hundred men from this County en route to­ flank— If they try Big Hole we have equally night—perhaps more— Will request Bear to good chances to strike them—They are en­ furnish men. Guns will reach there this cumbered with camp and families, are strung evening—Am not sure I did right in buying out and travel slow. I have marked Philips- amunition but will trust it—Will telegraph burg Co B, because Warren said you prom­ McDowell. ised Butte the “A” Co— I have record of 16. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. Muster Boll here: have this one filed for Deer Lodge, July 29, 7 a. m. reference—Thompson signed agreement but Messenger arrived at 4 a. m. to day with says he will see you to have it modified dispatch dated 4 p. m. 28th. I telegraphed Isn’t it hot? immediately to Dittes to send courier to [P. S.] D<»'-.t you think Capt Raun should Gibbon as he had requested : also telegraphed have ordered these Nez Perces disarmed as to MlcDowell'* the situation— Over 150 men fast as they come in? have arrived here from Butte, regularly Fish kept pardon to copy and has not yet organized—They have a good many private brought it down. guns. I issued Co A (Capt W A Clark1*) 35 15. J. H. Mills to Gov. Potts. breech loaders, and to Co B (Butte Volun­ Deer Lodge, M. T „ July 26, 1877 10:20 a. m. teers, Capt Owen) eight breech loaders Governor. Messenger arrived at 10.30 last __the last one. This includes 16 received night and one at 10 this morning. Tele­ from Helena in the night and eleven returned graphed Gibbons in full, but line is down by Capt Evans of Warm Springs Co— It is between Helena and Fort Shaw and have the last breech loaders obtainable in Mon­ just had Dittes forward it by Courier with tana— Butte brought down the 100 gund there, Rauns dispatch. Will send you an Extra for which I have substituted 100 guns from Coach with 40 guns and 3000 rounds of amu- Virginia. They should arrive there to day— nition as soon as it can be hooked up. Have W ill now endeavor to arm and send men to telegraphed Dittes to buy ten thousand Col the front with muzzle loaders— Many men 50 centre fire Cartridges and forward them are here anxious to go who will not go for­ here with all the guns he can obtain, in­ ward with muzzle loaders but I think many stantly. Capt Brinner [ ?] with 30 men from others will—Could send 300 more men if I somewhere reached Helena this morning had arms—Both Companies are now muster­ Have had all dispatches shown him—Have ing on the street and will be o ff in an hour. sent two different messengers to Butte, and Every private gun I know of has been given notified them of guns here— Sent 40 guns up and gone forward—I never saw anything and 1200 Cartridges to Bear, Elk and Yreka like it—this county is fairly frenzied in the by fast wagon this a. m. Knowles, Neplin desire to get to Missoula with guns— If you and Robinson are organizing a company here have held the hostiles till this time they can now. I designated Larabie and Kelley to never get through with a man left alive—I procure them transportation— I think 20 or will send 20 muzzle loaders to Philipsburg 25 men will leave here this afternoon, and first team I can press— I was terribly that Butte will respond by midnight. crippled yesterday by failing to get proclam­ Ordered Capt. McLean with his Philips- ation and everything was done on public burg Company to move to Bitter Root im­ spirit—Cannot find out yet just how many mediately either by direct route or Bear men will leave in the two Butte Companies Mouth and report to you for duty. If they They are splendid men—Think Helena will move by Bear Mouth they are picked the respond now—They have been disposed to “ Probably Major-General McDowell, Commander of the division of the Pacific, United States “ Captamy W. A. Clark, later millionaire senator from Montana. 72 The Frontier look at this all as a joke—but this mornings Deer Lodge men I have only to say that they news will change the feeling—The only were unorganized except the Deer Lodge Co trouble is to get guns. Browning was at New and they as soon as they moved were fur­ Chicago at 12 last night but called his Com­ nished with subsistence the wagon accom­ pany up when Courier arrived and will press panying them with every thing they asked on—He had passed too far for me to get for— I am personally out of pocket over 200$ horses to him— Half of Deer Lodge is locked since this excitement— up and all gone to Missoula—Connie Miller [P. S.] The Indians are taking ammu­ is anxious to be o ff and get to Missoula— nition from citizens whom they meet and Best assured that every man is going who although so far as we know have done no can get a gun and will be with you as fast damage are very independent and are mov­ as horses can g o - ing very slowly in fact have not moved at 17. J. H. Mills to (?) Gov. Potts. all since reaching their present camping Deer Lodge, July 28 ground— The Inspector General on McDowells staff 19. Chauncey Barbour to Gov. Potts. acknowledges receipt of my dispatch o f 27th Missoula, M. T., 31st, 1877 advising him of the situation and urging that Since writing to you Governor I have Howard follow hostiles on Lo Lo. Says talked with our people and they are con­ McDowell has transmitted information to fident that your demand was based on the Howard and requested him to do all he pos­ presumption that all the Indians had left sibly could under the circumstances— Have us that you would never have made the mislaid dispatch— request if you had known how we were sit­ 18. C. P. Higgins to Gov. Potts. uated. The Indians are not only at Ste­ Missoula, M. T., July 31st, 1877 vensville but there is strong probability that Your courier arrived here at 7 ^ pm—In they will return this way as soon as they the absence of the Sheriff I handed your learn that they are to be headed off on Big letter to Mr. Thompson under sheriff for Hole. Joseph’s move is probably a feint. I action in the matter o f collecting and for­ beg of you to consider this matter favorably warding guns and ammunition to Deer Lodge for our people. I know they will surrender as you direct—The Hostiles are encamped guns without a whimper as soon as all dan­ 28 miles south of Missoula on the west side ger is removed. of Bitter Boot Biver near Stevensville— I 20. Chouncey Barbour to Gov. Potts. am not advised as to which route they pro­ Missoula, M. T., July 3l, 1877 pose to take out of the valley—if you want The Bitter Boot mail carrier brings word mounted men from Missoula you authorize that about 75 bucks were raiding Stevens­ their organization before they leave here— ville to-day. They have gone through some I am authorized to say to you that you can houses and helped themselves to what they have 200 men mounted and equipped for wanted. They are probably lawless strag­ service (but save us from mobs)—Missoula glers, as there were no squaws with them or Co put 150 men in the field to assist the head men which is an evidence that the U S troops stationed here under Capt C C main force is on the move. I hear from Bawn to punish hostile Indians from Idaho Indian sources that they intend to go down —If the Indians were not punished who is to the Big Hole by Twin Bridges. I am glad blame? you are going to give them a game. There You were here and should know—The people is the best place to strike them. You don’t of this county did not have the direction of want any military, or any one to hold your affairs in the field—The Territory should men chafing and tell them to “wait,” “wait” do something to punish these Indians and until the hostiles are gone. Take command we are willing and ready to do our part— yourself, and don’t let good men be humil­ We will cheerfully pay your courier’s ex­ iated by imbeciles or cowards. These Nez penses while here. Perces wanted to make their peace with the As to the failure of Missoula to subsist the government, but they now have a big brave 73 The Frontier on. They camped on an open place with 22. Copy of letter from CoL Gibbon to their women and children, exposed them­ J. H. Mills. Ft. Shaw, July 27, 1877 selves to slaughter, and they either thought we were cowards or else they wanted us to I start tomorrow via Cadotte’s Pass. Send oppose them with force so that they might word to Gov. Potts to give all the aid he can surrender. If you find them hiding away to help Captain Rawn, to hold the pass till their women and children in some secure I get there— If the Indians succeed In get­ place and meeting you defiantly you will ting through, they should be followed as know that they are earnestly on the war closely as possible. I will come rapidly. I path. Wipe out the disgrace that has been shall be without news after leaving here. put upon us, and never let any regular offi­ If you get any, send me a special courier cer again command Montana Militia. through to Lincoln. If the Indians get past Missoula and start up the Blackfoot trail, [P. S.] Will do what I can toward gath­ any force you can bring from Deer Lodge ering up guns. I know it will be hard work across to Lincoln may be of material assist­ especially in Bitter Root. Those from Mis­ soula and Frenchtown ought to be had read­ ance to us. ily. The sheriff has power over the French­ 23. Copy of letter from Captain Rawn to town guns, and if you make a requisition on J. H. Mills. him he will attend to it. He is a conceited “August 1st, 1877 ass, and if he considers his mightiness ig­ “ Please Inform Gov. Potts that Indians nored is a mule. I don't think you can de­ will be some six days, may be less, in get­ pend on any volunteers from here. Joseph ting to Big Hole Prairie, at present rate of is fully informed of all movements. He is moving. Both Gen’ls Howard and Gibbon the best general living. He is liable to come desire them delayed, Gen. Gibbon instructing this way in less than a week. If we get me today to temporize with them for that any news of importance we will notify you purpose. I will start tomorrow up the valley by courier. with my 50 or 60 men, and endeavor to fol­ 21. Col. John Gibbon to Gov. Potts. low out his wishes until Gens. Howard and Gibbon can get in. In the meanwhile, the Headqrs. Dist. of Montana. Fort Shaw, M. T. bearer, who is well acquainted with the July 27, 1877 country, states that if the Gov. sends from I leave here tomorrow with troops for Deer Lodge, by way of French Gulch, several Missoula, via, Cadotts Pass, with the expec­ days will be gained and Indians headed be­ tation of meeting any of the hostile Nez- fore reaching Big Hole Prairie, and also meet Perces who may attempt to make their way volunteers from Bannack. Gen. Gibbon in­ eastward through the mountains. structs me to take such volunteers as will My force will not be large and should the go with me—will take 12 days rations with main body of the hostiles attempt to come me.’’ up the Cadotts Pass trail, I might be unable 24. Col. Gibbon to Gov. Potts. to do more than check them ; In such an Post near Missoula, M. T., Aug. 2d, 1877 event early intelligence of their movements As soon as I can get my command here, would be of great importance, I therefore re­ probably day after tomorrow, I propose to quest if any important information reaches move up the Bitterroot after the Nez Perces you, You will send it to me if possible by & fight them if they will stand. It is all special courier to Lincoln Gulch to be sent important that the passes behind them lead­ after me in case I have passed there. ing into the Big Hole basin be occupied at I have written Captain Rawn that in case once, and as I learn from Capt. Rawn that the hostiles should come up the Blackfoot he you are moving some companies of militia will follow them with all the force he can in that direction I have to request that you gather, and the services of any of the armed will give instructions to have such passes militia he might be able to get to accompany occupied as soon as possible. Please give him would be valuable. instructions also to have no negotiations 74 The Frontier

whatever with the Indians, and the men wished to visit Missoula, where there seemed should have no hesitancy in shooting down to be a need o f military protection. For any armed Indian they meet not known to years we have been anticipating the troubles belong to one of the peaceful tribes. that are now upon us, and yourself and Maj I shall be glad to receive any information Maginnis have been the only officials who of importance which you can send me. have foreseen these troubles. We wish, if possible, that Gen. Sherman, yourself and 25. Chauncey Barbour to Gov. Potts. Maj Maginnes will visit us. We wish to Missoula, M. T., August 3d, 1877 show him that there are 52,000 Indians be­ tween the Rocky Mountains and the Cas­ Dear Sir, Was glad to receive your kind cades ; that all routes in that region lead and friendly letter. I felt myself in the through Missoula; that there is no military most trying position in the last issue of my force in that region between Shaw and Walla paper, I ever was in in my life. There was Walla; and that a respectable force of cav­ so much of unreason and of reckless state­ alry here can be rapidly thrown into any ment and vituperation that I felt it my duty part of that region. We can show him that to stand against the current if it swamped there is as much cause to apprehend an up­ me. And it is gratifying to me today to rising of our own Indians as there was of say that I have compelled a sober, second the Nez Perces two months ago. All we ask thought, and that scores of good men have of him is to come by all means and satisfy taken me by the hand and thanked me for himself. what they are pleased to term the able man­ I have given you no Indian news. A half ner in which I have performed an intelligent breed who arrived last night reports the duty. You, who have ever stood our fast hostiles 50 miles above here on the east side friend, did not escape in the general de­ of Bitter Root. They propose to go to Camas traction, and I thought it best justice to you prairie some 10 miles above to stay a few to call attention to the important service days, recruit their horses and dig camas. Charlos is anxious to fight them. His dis­ you had rendered us in the crisis through interested friendship for the whites is simply which we passed. If you had taken com­ a desire to steal Nez Perces horses, o f which mand of the militia and precipitated hostil­ they have some good ones. He might do us ities you would have merited our unmixed a good service if he could set them afoot. condemnation. It is best as it was, and our Gen Gibbon arrived Thursday 4 p. m. The people now with one accord congratulate infantry are expected today. The whole themselves that our welfare was in the hands force, nearly 150 men, will move on them of discreet men. There were some reckless Saturday, and try and hold them until How­ spirits among us and from Deer Lodge ard gets up. The Indians will mock them. county, who had nothing to lose, who would If anything further transpires before the have precipitated a fight even at the ex­ mail closes I will insert it. pense of seeing this county ravaged. They [P. S.] Aug. 5. Gen Gibbon who arrived could conveniently place themselves in a Thursday afternoon started after the hos­ place of safety if required; but those with tiles Saturday at 1 p. m. He had nearly 200 their wives and little ones and all they had men of whom nearly 20 were cavalry. The in the world would have to stay and suffer. Indians are reported at Rosse’s Hole, 90 I am thankful that my publication day was miles from here, at head of Bitter Root. not last Sunday: I was then prepared to Gibbon won’t catch them. It is believed by call Capt Rawn a coward and incompetent those who know the country that they will to command a force of men, but careful in­ go up Red Rock and thence by Henry’s Lake. quiry of all men who were at the front con­ No news from Howard, although a courier vinced me that such charges were unjust. started to meet him Friday morning. I In regard to the future, I wish to say this: kept open my letter for late news until I Gen Sherman in his letter to you said he missed the mail of the 4th. 75 The Frontier

26. Washington McCormick" to Gov. They told the merchants at Stevensvllle on Wednesday that they had money to pay for Potts. Missoula, Aug. 3, 1877 what supplies they wanted and if they did not sell to them they would take them by Your note of the 1st inst is at hand but force. So far as I am advised they have came too late to reply by return mail. Genl killed no stock and molested no one except Gibbon accompanied by Lieut Jacobs with a to disarm two or three citizens, returning detachment of Mounted Infantry reached their guns however but keeping their amu­ here at 4 p. m. last evening. The ballance nition. The people of the Bitter Root with of his command reached here about 6 o’clock their families are still in their fortifications this evening. Courriers have been sent up and propose to remain there until the dan­ the Lo Lo to Howard to ascertain his where­ ger is past. The situation is a most deplor­ abouts. I do not think he will be able to able one their wheat crops are ready for the reach the Bitter before the 8th inst. On machine, and no one to harvest them while account of the difficulty to be encountered in many instances stock have broken into in passing over the trail with his ordnance, their fields and ruined their crops. Unless stores trains etc etc. But whenever he gets the crises is reached within the next ten here be that late or early he will not be in days and the Indians driven out of the coun­ time to accomplish anything unless the In­ try, there will not only be immense losses in dians finding themselves closely pressed by grain but absolute suffering for the want of Gibbon and forces, should repeat the tactics the necessaries of life. It is most oppor­ so successfully practised by them upon Capt tune thnt Genl Sherman is enroute, and that Rawn and the volunteers, cross the Bitter Root River near Camas Prairie where they he will be on the ground to take in the situ­ ation as it presents itself at this moment. are now encamped get in his rear and pass The people are thoroughly convinced that down the valley on the east side of the Bitter Capt Rawn acted wisely in not attacking Root. Cross the Hell Gate at or near Mis­ soula and go up the Big Blackfoot River. the Indians. 27. From an extra edition of The New Should this be their programme then How­ ard might be here in time to give them Northwest, Aug. 3, 1877. THE SITUATION ON THURSDAY battle. It is Genl Gibbons intention I be­ Deer Lodge, M. T., Aug. 2, 1877 lieve to move early in the morning and en­ The circumstances of the past week have deavor by hard marching to overtake them in two days. He proposes to load the In­ prevented a regular issue of the New North- fantry into mule wagons and reach their West this day. camp if possible before they leave the Bitter The situation of Indian affairs as known Root and give them battle whenever he over­ todate is this: The Idaho Indians who ar­ takes them. I doubt the expediency of at rived under Looking Glass and (it is stated,) tacking them with the force under his com­ White Bird, are not exceeding 200 warriors mand, as the Indians undoubtedly have a strong. They were camped about Stevens- fighting force of at least two hundred men ville and Corvallis until Tuesday evening, and in all the essentials that go to make up and had so far not molested the Bitter Root a good fighting force they are equal to them settlers, protesting friendship for them. except in the one item of amunition. Their Under the call for 300 volunteers by the men are disciplined their horses are trained, Governor’s Proclamation, three Butte com­ and they are commanded by a man who thor­ panies, 150 or 100 strong, remained in camp oughly understands his business. There is until Thursday morning. A company of 30 no longer any doubt but that Joseph with or 40 men were in readiness to move in an his entire fighting force is here. The Indians hour from Deer Lodge. Philipsburg, Cable, have plenty of Gold dust Coin and green­ New Chicago, Bear, Bear Mouth, Yreka, backs and have been paying exhorbitant Pioneer and Yamhill had fully 75 men ready prices for flour Coffee sugar and tobacco. for instant service, and tenders of companies “ Washington J. McCormick came to Montana in 1863 and to Missoula in 1868. He was promt- nent as a lawyer and business man. 76 The Frontier

of 50 men each were telegraphed from Hel­ centrated almost anywhere in this county in ena and Pony on condition of being armed. 24 hours. The request of Governor Potts, Delegate Ma- ginnis and Judge Knowles to the War De­ Governor Potts and Major Clark therefore partment for authority to organize and move visited the command on Thursday morning this force to co-operate with the U. S. troops and a council of officers was held, when r was, however, answered adversely, as per was agreed upon that the Butte Battalion the following: return to Butte and reorganize, every man in the command having a horse and a breech- “Washington, D. C., Aug. 1, 1877. loading gun offering to respond to any call “Governor Potts:—Your dispatch to the of the Governor instantly, and he assuring Secretary of War has been received by him them their services would be needed and rec­ and submitted to the President. He directs ognized if any hostile demonstrations were me to say as Lieut.-Gen. Sheridan is in made after the exit of the Indians from the charge of all military matters in Montana Bitter Root or the United States should call his opinion has been asked on your call for for volunteers. Other circumstances also volunteers. He may have other troops in seemed to require this. The command was his division to answer the purpose. thereupon marched to Butte. We have no E. D. Townsend, Adjutant-General.” opportunity here and now to enter into de­ “ W ash ington , Aug. 2. tails or award the credit due to the hundreds “Hon. B. F. Potts, Governor of Montana: of noble men who have been under arms “Receipt of your dispatch of July 31st was and rode day and night during the past week acknowledged by the Adjutant-General. I to meet these public enemies, but this Butte have new reports from Gen. Sheridan which Battalion, which was in the field since last indicate that it will not be necessary for the Saturday night, and ready for any service Governor to call out 300 volunteers to inter­ at any instant, demands recognition even cept the Indians, as Generals Sheridan and here. And we will say this now, proposing to Terry will make proper disposition of troops more fully recognize their patriotism here­ under their command for the purpose. after, that with some opportunity to observe “Geo. W. McCrary, Secretary of War.” and know the response to the Missouia call The Governor had no authority to bind for “Help”, we never saw half the enthus­ the Territory for expenses, even of subsist­ iastic patriotism and selfsacrifice evidenced, ence, for every man almost had his own even during the most exciting war times, as horse, or a borrowed one. Supplies could was shown in Deer Lodge county when that not be obtained except by cash. In hearty call came. We believe 400 Deer Lodge coun­ sympathy with Governor Potts to head off ty men were on the road to Missoula in two and suppress these Indians, the citizens of hours after they received that grand hailing Deer Lodge on Wednesday afternoon raised sign of distress. It is unfortunate in many $1750 in cash for the purchase of supplies, respects, as it turned out, that it was made, and at a meeting that evening committees and in others it is well. Deer Lodge may were appointed to communicate with other need to rally yet, and its people have shown towns to secure additional money, to get or­ how nobly they will respond. On Thursday ganizations perfected, and to have them after the Butte Battalion was marching either rendezvous with the Butte Battalion homeward, a courier arrived from Missoula, or respond instantly to a call. It was known, bearing letters from Howard saying he was however, the Bitter Root people were op­ en route on the Lo Lo. The courier was posed to having a war precipitated in that five days on the trail and saw no Indians. Valley with these Indians, and their exit Howard is supposed to be not far behind, therefrom or the opening of hostilities must and Wheaton is crossing the Coeur d’Alene be awaited. The fighting force of the In­ with another force. Capt. Browning has dians had also contracted from four hundred reached Missoula with 30 men from Fort to less than two hundred, and it is known Ellis. General Gibbon with 100 men will an ample force to destroy them can be con­ reach Missoula to-day. Capt. Rawn proposed 77 The Frontier to march his command up Bitter Root valley out of his reach. Tour plan of putting a force of say 300 volunteers in the field to after the Indians. There were 150 Indians, supposed to be oppose the Indians was the best in the ab- Bannacks, with 200 head of American horses scence of a regular force. No late news of on the overland stage road near Red Rock Genl Howard. yesterday. All the people had left except 29. From The New Northwest, Friday, the stage employes. Aug. 17, 1877. Thos. Watson, of Bannack, writes the In­ Fight on the Big Hole. The First Accounts of dependent, July 29th of a confirmed report th e Battle that the Indians, supposed to be Bannacks, Deer Lodge, 9 a. m., August 11. had killed six men on Wood river. Scouts from Bannack who met the Deer Lodge W. H. Edwards has just arrived from Big scouts at the head of Big Hole yesterday Hole bringing accounts of a terrible battle between Gibbon’s command and the Nez also told them the same story. It is uncertain yet which route the Nez Perces on the Big Hole River, August 9th. Gibbon’s command consisting of 182 men Perces will pass out of the Bitter Root. They may go out and strike down the Big __1 7 officers, 133 infantry, and 32 cavalry— Hole, or toward Bannack or Salmon City. crossed over from Ross’ Hole to near Big Hole on Wednesday. Starting at U o’clock They may come across the Burnt Fork to Rock creek or Flint creek, or even just above the same night they moved down the troops Missoula, and go out via the Big Blackfoot. —except a few left with the gun and trans­ They may commit depredations or pass portation six miles above—close to the In­ through peaceably, or they may turn and dian camp which was made on the Big Hole attack the soldiers against whom they avow about three miles below where the Bitter war. The concentration of U. S. forces near Root and Bannack trail crosses. At day­ Missoula indicates they will move soon. light in the morning the fight opened, by the Their numbers indicate they can be met and volunteers firing on and killing an Indian whipped on any route they undertake to pass going after horses. The charge was then made on the camp and hard fighting occurred through this country, but there seems an Indisposition in exposed localities to first for the next two hours, during which time large numbers of men and Indians were open the fight on them. It is therefore the desire of the Governor killed. that every man mounted and armed and all The soldiers then charged on the lodges organizations of militia on the West Side, but were repulsed in the attempt. The In­ hold themselves in constant readiness to go dians then attempted to cut then off from a to any point where they may make hostile high wooded point but the soldiers charged demonstrations, or to the support of the U. S. and driving the Indian advance from it held troops in case they require it, and that or­ it, and at once fortified. The fighting con­ ganizations be perfected as rapidly as pos­ tinued here all day, and was still progressing sible. fitfully when the courier left at 11 p. m. Again prepared to furnish promptly the The fighting was desperate on both sides, news by extras, we will keep our people ad­ the full force of Indians being in the fight. vised of any important movement at the Captain Logan and Lt. Bradley were killed. earliest moment. It is well to be vigilant. Gen. Gibbon, Capt. Williams, and Lieuts. Instant service may be required. Coolidge, English, and Woodruff wounded 28. C. P. Higgins to Gov. Potts. —Gen. Gibbon only slightly. Bradley was Missoula, M. T., Aug. 4, 1877 the first man killed. Messenger says after Hostlles moved out of the valley Thursday they failed to capture the lodges the Indians and will probably reach Ross’s Hole this moved their camp off in the direction of evening. Genl Gibbon started at 1 p. m. with Bannack. All horses being captured, the his command about 200 men in wagons, and messenger had to come to French Gulch mounted. Of course the Indians can keep nearly 60 miles on foot. Another messenger 78 The Frontier

was also sent to Howard who should reach teens, under cover of a firing party, and got them today. water in the evening. The howitzer had been left six miles back General Gibbon was the only one who went and ordered to move up at daylight. During in mounted. His horse was killed early, but the fight they heard it discharged twice and he received a flesh wound in the leg after then it was silent. A band of Indians soon reaching the hill. Capt. Williams was after appeared with a large band of horses, slightly wounded on the temple early in the and it is believed all the horses of the com­ fight, but he was still on duty. mand, the gun, their supplies, reserve am­ When the troops reached the bar overlook­ munition, etc., were captured. Gibbon ing the Indian camp their fires were still thought when the courier left there he still burning, but they had no picket out. The had 100 effective men and believed the In­ command was formed and every second man dians had nearly all withdrawn from his was sent down into the bottom where they front. The messenger says he thinks 100 formed along a piece of brush with Ruby Indians were killed, that nearly half the Creek between them and the hostiles. When command, Including citizens, were killed or the first Indian was shot he was not over w ounded. fifty yards away. The command then General Gibbon has sent for medicines, charged through the brush, for the camp, surgeons, supplies, etc. Dr. Mitchell will but found the copse full of Indians. Here leave today with escort. at the crossing of the creek, the most desper­ ate fighting was done, the fighting being General Gibbon particularly asks for muzzle to breast. Lieut. Bradley, despite ambulance wagons, to come under escort, and entreaties, was leading his men, an Indian every available wagon will go forward from shot him from a bunch of willows, and he here and Butte. fell, the first man, dead. A dozen balls went It is one of the hardest Indian fights on through the Indian in an instant, and the record and Gibbon’s command made a most two lay dead within reach of each other. gallant and desperate fight against over­ The fighting at the stream was desperate whelming numbers. and dead bodies of Indians and whites fell The messenger only recollects certainly of and floated down together. Mr. Edwards personal notice the following casualties says men or officers never fought better in among the citizens and officers: the world and that Gibbon is as brave as a A1 Lockwood, Corvallis, killed. lion. Myram Lockwood, Corvallis, mortally 12 m.— Surgeons, ambulances, light wag­ wounded. ons, medical aid, supplies, and escort are David Morrill, Corvallis, killed. going forward from Deer Lodge, Butte, and — I-Iarts, Corvallis, killed. Helena. Drs. Reese and Steele are enroute Lin Elliott, Corvallis, killed. from Helena. Helena has raised $2,000 to — Mitchell, Corvallis, killed. pay expenses. The ambulance train will Otto Leifer, Corvallis, shot in foot. organize under escort and leave French Thirteen of the volunteers, and probably Gulch tomorrow morning. eight or ten regulars, were left back with the Deer Lodge, August 12, 4 p. m. wagons and gun. It is feared they were Sergeant Wilson, Co. I, 7th Infantry, has surrounded and killed. General Gibbon had just arrived with despatches from General given up hopes of them. With them were Gibbon. He left the camp on the North Fork Joseph Blodgett and Anthony Chaffin. New­ of Big Hole at 5 p. m. on the 11th and his ton Chaffin and the two Sherills were in the statements agree in the main with those of fight and unhurt. Wm. Ryan of Skalkaho Mr. Edwards. was wounded slightly in groin. The fight opened at daylight on the 9th, There was no water on the wooded point the Indians having a force of over 300 war­ where the command had fortified, but Gib­ riors. The camp consisted of 89 lodges. bon had sent down a fatigue party with can­ The number of soldiers and citizens killed 79 The Frontier is 2; wounded 32; missing 2. The Indians the hostile Nez-Perces. My objective point captured the gun before it reached the com­ was then the Judith Gap, as it was believed mand, dismounting it and carrying every that the Nez-Perces would endeavor to reach the Judith Basin, where they had been in piece o ff of it they could. The supplies were not captured as report­ the habit of hunting Buffalo. On reaching ed, but the Indians succeeded in getting the Mussel-Shell-River (about sixty miles between 2500 and 3000 rounds o f ammuni­ north of this place) a courier reached me from Lieut. Fuller, with accounts of Genl. tion. The Indians have about 300 head of horses. Gibbon’s fight and information to the effect They broke camp on the morning of the 11th that the Nez-Perces were retreating either and were about 15 miles from Gibbon’s com­ in the direction of Snake-River or of Wind- mand at that time. Sergeant Wilson says River—it being uncertain which. In either there were at least 75 Indians killed. case I was, of course, too far out o f the way Howard’s cavalry was to arrive at Gib­ to join in their pursuit; but believing that, bon’s camp on the evening of the 12th, 300 in case they should enter the Wind-River strong, and the command would start at country, they might yet try to make their way into the Judith-Basin, and knowing that once in pursuit o f the hostiles. Capt. Sherwood’s (Sherman’s escort) com­ the only practicable route for this purpose pany will be near French Gulch tonight, and would be by Clarks Fort E or by the Still- the Butte Battalion will be on Big Hole. Water, I determined at once to march my Sergeant Wilson reports meeting the Deer command (six companies of my Regt. and Lodge Company near French Gulch this one pice of Artillery) to this point; where we arrived today, and from which I can observe morning. both rivers and intercept the hostiles in case The two missing soldiers are reported at they come by either. Should you have in­ Wunderlichs’. formation of the movements of the hostile Big Hole, August 11, 1877 Indians which you might consider of im­ Terry, Comm’dg Dept: St. Paul, Minnesota portance to my command, under these cir­ My loss in the battle of the 9th was 7 cumstances, I would respectfully request that officers and 53 men killed and wounded. I you forward it to me as early as practicable. am satisfied the Indians suffered much more, 31. Peter Ronan, Indian agent, to Gov. for the surprise was complete and many were killed in their tepees or running out. Forty Potts. Indians were counted in about half the battle Flathead Agency, M. T „ July 14th 1878 field. Howard has just arrived and I be­ I have to report the following council held lieve he can catch them again. As soon as with Michel, head-chief of the Pend d’Oreille, he arrives and I can get the services of a Sunday, July 14th, for your information and doctor, I propose to move to Deer Lodge and any action you may suggest; take most of our wounded to Shaw. They Having narrated to, Chief Michel the par­ are all doing well, but I fear Lieut. English ticulars of the murders committed by a band is mortally wounded. of Nez Perces who came from the North, by (Signed) Gibbon, General Com. way of the North fork of Sun river, murder­ 30. Col. S. D. Sturgis to Gov. Potts. ing as they came along two men at the Head Qrs. 7th Cavalry Dearborn in Lewis and Clarke C o.; two men Camp on Yellow Stone River at Deep Creek, Bear Gulch Deer Lodge Co, (Near Mouth of the Still-Water) and four or five miners at the head of Rock Augt. 23d, 1877 Creek in Missoula County, all of which mur­ On marching from Tongue-River, I sent ders were committed in the direct Nez Perce Lieut. Fuller of my Regt. rapidly forward traU from the North to Idaho Territory, to Fort-Ellis, with instructions to put him­ known as the Elk City trail, the chief said, self in telegraphic communication with you “A few days ago a messenger came to me for the purpose of gaining all the informa­ from Sitting Bull’s camp with word from tion possible in regard to the movements of that chief that if I valued the lives and 80 The Frontier

welfare of my people, to gather them togeth­ my opinion. Perhaps this band of murderers er and leave the reservation. If I did not has broken away from White Bird without feel like joining him and making war upon his consent.” the whites—that, after he had done his work Agent— “Do you not think it best, in order among the settlers, myself and people could to be prepared, to send scouts on the two come back again and occupy our lands with­ trails leading from the North through this out fear of obtrusion.” reservation?” Agent—“What reply did you send back?” Michel—“It is the only way to protect Michel—“I told the runner to tell his Chief the country. Indians can scout the trails that the Pen d’Oreills were friends of the north of here and can give you and me in­ whites—that years ago, when I was young, formation in time to head them off.” the Pend d’Oreills and the Sioux had met in Agent— “Will you send out scouts?” battle and were enemies. We are now quietly Michel—“Yes if they can have arms, am­ settled down, supporting our families by munition, Blankets and provisions and some raising stock and planting crops; our homes hope of reward.” we love; our lands are bountiful, the crops Agent— “Providing I can get these things are ripening and we will soon be gathering will you be willing to have whitemen go them in. We are not well armed and have with them?” nearly forgotten the modes of war—but a Michel—“Yes, provided you choose the mouse, though small, if trodden upon, will white men and half-breeds, and that the turn and bite. Tell your chief if he comes scouts will be under your and my own con­ we will give him battle and die by our homes. trol and report to you, when you can easily This is my answer.” report to the soldiers when signs are seen Agent— “What do you think of the murders Three lodges of my people are camped on just committed?” the trail leading in by the Jocko; I will send Michel— “I think that perhaps White Bird, them word to lookout for Nez Perces- and the Nez Perce chief, whose voice is for war, bring in news of what route they take— these has arranged with Sitting Bull, and has sent people are fishing at the lakes and are not out small murdering parties to come thr< i well armed; they cannot fight but can give Montana to the Lapwai reserve in Idaho to us news. If regular scouts go they should be murder as they go through this country and armed because they cannot otherwise protect commit all sorts of crimes in Idaho and in­ themselves if they get into a fight, which cite the reservation Nez Perces to war, with they would be apt to do as the Nez Perces a promise that Sitting Bull, with his war­ do not feel friendly because we would not riors, will come and help them. This is only join their cause last summer.”

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Frontiers: The Genius of American Na­ TYPEWRITERS tionality. Archer Butler Hulbert. Little, Both new and used machines Brown & Co. 1929. $3.00. of all makes sold on convenient terms. One of the pleasant features of this book, which states and restates belief in the motive power of faith and in the leavening power of sentiment, is Dr. Hulbert’s recognition of the fact that history is not only record Lister of great doings but also recognition of the significance of a people’s dally living. His­ tory is national, concerning the humdrum Typewriter motivation of a people’s life. Hence the author’s belief in the necessity for preserv­ ing, and cultivating, individuality in persons Service and provincialism in sections of our country. The writer’s mood is partly expressed in his Only Agents for ’ conviction that in looking critically at life one does at least as well to give the best UNDERWOOD interpretation as to give the worst— G od s in Standard and PORTABLE his heaven, something’s right in the world, hi Missoula and in America, much. He therefore carries 112 B. Broadway Phone 2457 more than an apology for “business effi­ ciency”, rotarianism, the churches, “flaming youth”, and all that our most fiery critics reduce to ashes in the heat of their invective. The most valuable features of the book are to me portrayals of those unremembered acts in our past which historians have either omitted or forgotten, and which we today are forgetting: the national, almost vital significance of the building or the B. and O. Fashion Club railroad, for example, and of the Erie Canal: the determination of the men of the Bavolu- I tionary war when peace had been established to win the west; and, even more, the faith, the idealism, the patriotism in the daily life Cleaners of the pioneers, all the way from the At­ lantic seaboard In 1620 to the Pacific In 1 1840 and back to the Rocky mountains in Phone 2661 the 1860’s. Since the writer believes whole­ heartedly in the necessity of frontiers to MISSOULA, MONTANA | progressive living, he insists on recognizing today’s frontiers in scientific investigation, X X 3t X I in aerial navigation, for example, and in social thot and practice. THE BEST OF SERVICE T h e book is exactly what its “jacket” as­ serts, one man’s, an exceptionally able histor­ ian’s, “description of American temper and st x st x ideals” and iteration and reiteration of his belief in their sanity and virtue. Dr. Hulbert has made great contributions You will always find our service to American history, especially western his- modern and up-to-date. [I tory, in recognition of which he has been made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, and this last sum­ Y ou deserve the best. mer he was awarded the L. H. D. degree by his alma mater, Middlebury College, Ver- ■ mont. 81 John R. Daily Co.

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82 T(i6 Hunting o f tbc Buffalo. E. Douglas Branch. Appleton. 1929. $3.00. Mr. Branch has a greater gift for discov­ ering facts than he has for narrating them ; Tndm Hal nevertheless, this book carries any renders interest along who wants to know something about the buffalo, where they roamed, bow CLOTHES they were hunted, by white man and red, and how they came to be exterminated as wild animals on the ranges and became the THE COLLEGE TYPE showpieces of parks and bison reservations for young men on and o ff the There is a background of western history and of Indian life; and the book is Plenti­ campus, fully, and often amusingly, illustrated. The narration is more interesting and graphic in the later pages. $29 to $44 The Road to Oregon. W. J. Ghent. Long­ mans, Green & Co. $5.00. Mr. Ghent has written a reliable and read­ able book, finely illustrated and well printed and furnished, as all historical books should be, with a map. The author has not only consulted the known documents but has talked with librarians, historians, and old- timers. He does not tell a new story, but he does tell with needed emendations, an old story so freshly that the general reading public will obtain from the book not only 131 N. Higgins Ave. real information but entertainment. The narration is not dramatic, much less melo­ dramatic, but it is straightforward and in­ telligent. The book deserves wide reading.

Sand. Will James. Scribners. 1929. $2.50. This is not so good a book as Smoky, large­ ly because Mr. James knows the mind and Students spirit of horses better than he knows the mind and spirit of men, and this book, unlike Smoky, has a man for its hero. But it is, Arrange to have like all of Mr. James’ books, reliable account of western life, in this instance of how a your wealthy social wastrel, stranded on the great cattle plains, becomes interested in the wide Dinners, Dances and open life—wholesomely wide open as his earlier life had been unwholesomely—and Short Orders determines to make a man of himself by learning the cowboy technic and spirit, cap­ — a t — turing a black stallion, the object of many an old cowboy’s futile chase, and “Miss Rita,” likewise the object, etc. The book will interest old, middleaged and young—I read The it aloud to a nine-year-old, and that child is now demanding more James books from the city librarian. And of course it has the well known James illustrations. Nobody knows Chimney the horse and the open country better. And nobody can be more relied on for accuracy. John Jacob Astor. Arthur D. Howden Corner Smith. Lippincott. 1929. $3.50. This is a life of a significant American figure by an expert biographer. Astor rose PHONE 5473 540 Daly Ave. from peddling in New York to be that city s “landlord” ; his early career was romantic, and his later life miserly and pathetic. Astor 83 Schramm-Hebard Missoula’s Only Meat Co. Exclusive Laundry

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84 figured in the history of the West and the Pacific Coast, as the town of Astoria testi­ fies. Mr. Smith, without burdening his reader with the mass of details that must have made up Astor’s life from day to day, The Palace Hotel with a knowing hand garners the romance so that the first two of the six sections read ROGER FLEMING, Prop. like fiction and yet retain the tang of reality; in the next section he has revealed the shrewd, unsympathetic merchant and closer of mortgages; in the fourth he has almost forgotten his subject, the man Astor, in trac­ ing with appreciation of the telling details Missoula’s Finest the struggles of the fur companies in the West, and yet portrays Astor dominating the background; and in the last two books he shows the methods of the real estator be­ @ coming New York’s landlord, and then, wife­ less and with his children gone, the old, feeble Astor, still grasping, but now pathetic, T h e rates are moderate. accompanied everywhere by his attendant. Here are three hundred pages of entertaining Banquet Rooms and enlightening reading. Cafe and Dining Rooms 5 Poets. Edith Mirick, Benjamin Musser, Jewell Miller, Isobel Stone, Norman Macleod. Harrison. 1929. $2.25. This is a book of poems for poets; its popu­ lar appeal will be slight. But all who wish to keep abreast of contemporary experiment in poetic idea should own and read the book The gathering of five so diverse spirits or similar tendency into one volume results in high entertainment. The palm for fj4dess MISSOULA of accompanishment goes to Miss Miller, whose idea and emotion are sure of them­ selves, and whose rhythm is finely adequate. Mr. Musser is the most successful rebel , LAUNDRY CO. because of his outspokenness, his irony, his satire, his wit, and because of his unchecked facility. His writing is the most uneven, “DRY CLEANERS” perhaps. Miss Stone is not too successfully engaged in endeavoring to exploit passion in the contemporary fashion; her rhythms are ragged, altho an occasional poem, like Night Mood”, succeeds finely. Miss Mirick has University People originality of idea and quick emotion; her verse has promise, but is in need of pruning will continue as and a vigorous author-criticism. Her future seems to me very hopeful. Mr. Macleod has the most real daring; his poetry is most our friends and uncompromisingly experimental; his outlook is consistently forward. There is a sort of patrons. tortured ruggedness, as in volcanic rock structure, in his verse. With much writing and unsparing self-criticism he too will have a rich harvest of poetry. The volume has much experimental verse, considerable that Phones 3118 and 3119 is w orthless, and very m uch m ore that^ is alive and interesting and full of promise. We should welcome more volumes like it. 85 DISTRIBUTORS HEAR OUR Shell 400 Gasoline New Orthophonic Shell Motor Oils Victor Records Quaker State Motor Oil Victor Radio and Auto Accessories & Parts Victrolas — AT — 0 DICKINSON McKenzie-W allace PIANO CO. Service Co. Orthophonic Dealers of Missonla 218 Higgins Ave.

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