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

11-1932

The Frontier, November 1932

Harold G. Merriam

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Recommended Citation Merriam, Harold G., "The Frontier, November 1932" (1932). The Frontier and The Frontier and Midland Literary Magazines, 1920-1939. 41. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/frontier/41

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]. V'«l o P i THE1$III! NOVEMBER, 1932 FRONTIER A MAGAZINt Of THf NORTHWfST

THE WEST—A LOST CHAPTER c a r e y McW il l ia m s

THE SIXES RUNS TO THE SEA Story by HOWARD McKINLEY CORNING

SCOUTING WITH THE U. S. ARMY, 1876-77 J. W. REDINGTON

THE RESERVATION JOHN M. KLINE

Poems by Jason Bolles, Mary B. Clapp, A . E. Clements, Ethel R. Fuller, G. Frank Goodpasture, Raymond Kresensky, Queene B. Lister, Lydia Littell, Catherine Macleod, Charles Olsen, Lawrence Pratt, Lucy Robinson, Claite A . Thom son, Harold Vinal, Elizabeth Waters, W . A. Ward, Gale Wilhelm, Anne Zuker.

O T H E R STO R IE S by Brassil Fitzgerald and Harry Huse.

O T H E R A R T IC L E S by June Clark and J. F. Overholser.

Volume XIII NOVEMBER, 1932 Number 1 PUBLISHED IN NOVEMBER, JANUARY, MARCH, AND MAY AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA, MI8SOULA. FORTY CENTS A COPY—ONE DOLLAR AND A HALF A YEAR WESTERN MONTANA

The Scenic Empire

Situated approximately midway between the two great National Parks, Yellowstone and Glaeier, Missoula literally may be said to be in the heart of the Scenic Empire of the Northwest. In all directions out of the Garden City of Montana are places of marveloim beauty. Entering Missoula from the East, the pas­ senger on either of the two great transcontinental lines, Milwaukee and Northern Pacific, or the automobile tourist winds for miles through Hellgate Canyon. Westward the way is through the Rockies which provide never-ending delights for the eye of the traveler seeking Nature's beauty spots. Should the vacationist's urge be in the direction of Glacier, his route will take him through the Flathead Valley fringed by the beautiful Mission Range of the Rockies. Snow-capped, glacier- fringed, the Missions are incomparable in their beauty. As might be expected, this Western Montana country is a place for sportsmen. There are 700 miles of Trout fishing streams within a radius of 25 miles of the City of Missoula. During the big game season, hunters of Missoula know where to go. Come to the West you’ve heard about all your life. Do the things you’ve never done before and always wanted to. The dude ranches and recreation resorts of Western Montana within a few hours drive from the University City offers every kind of recreation such as bathing, riding, hiking, climbing mountains, fishing, and hunting in the heart of the Rocky Mountains or on dude ranches thousands of acres in extent. Indian life within twenty-five miles of the city and buffalos and other wild life in their native land. A inn historical places connected with the first settlement of Montana. All these things and more can be enjoyed in Western Montana’s Scenic Empire. For Further Information Inquire of

T h e M is s o u l a C h a m b e r o f C o m m e r c e MISSOULA, MONTANA The Virginia Quarterly Review

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i T H E FRONTIER Reg. U. S. Pat. Off.______Muse and Mirror, Seattle, merged with The Frontier, April, 1932. Volume Thirteen NOVEMBER, 1932 Number 1 CONTENTS The Sixes Runs to the Sea, a story...... Howard McKinley Corning...... 1 Drums of the Wind, a poem...... Anne Zuker...... 11 Five Poems of the Sea.------...... G. Frank Goodpasture...... 12 Thad, a poem...... Queene B. Lister...... 14 The Blind, the Sleeper, and the Dumb, a poem ...... Charles Oluf Olsen...... 14 The West—A Lost Chapter...... Carey McWilliams...... 15 Winter Sabbath, a poem...... Harold Vinal...... 24 Two Against the Sky, « story...... ______Harry G. Huse...... 25 By the Sea, a poem...... Lydia B. Littell...... 33 Threshing, a poem------— ...... Lucy M. C. Robinson...... 34 Fraternity, a story...... Brassil Fitzgerald...... 38 Poems— Season ...... Elizabeth Waters...... 44 Two Poems ...... Claire Aven Thomson...... 45 Montana Mountain...... L. Lawrence Pratt...... 46 Glacial Stream...... Ethel Romig Fuller...... 46 Quaking Aspen ...... - ...... —■ ...... Catherine Macleod...... 46 Coahuila ...... -...... W. Allen Ward...... 47 Good Year ...... H. Jason Bolles...... 47 Quest ______— ...... Gale Wilhelm...... 48 Lost in Air ...... Albert E. Clements...... 48 Paralytic ...... Mary Brennan Clapp...... 48 OPEN RANGE The Reservation ...... John M. Kline------49 HISTORICAL SECTION , Scouting in Montana, 1876-77...... J- W. Redington...... 55 Livestock Growers Theatened by Indians...... J. F. Overholser...... 68 Prairie Dweller, a poem...... —...... Raymond Kresensky------• NORTHWEST FOLKLORE—Old Blue...... June Clark...... 71 BOOKSHELF...... - ...... 72 Pretty-Shield, Crow Indian Medicine Woman...... 78 LITERARY NEWS—ABOARD THE COVERED WAGON ...... Front and Back Advertising Sections

BOARD OF EDITORS Editor...... H arold G. Merriam Grace R aymond H ebard (G race Stone Coates Advisory Editors University of Wyoming Assistant Editors...... (B rassil Fitzgerald for the Histori- Paul C. P hillips ical Section...... University of Montana Frank B. Linderman A rcher B. H ulbert James Stevens Colorado College L ew Sarett P hilip A shton R ollins Princeton H. L. D avis H elen Marino . { ,, _ . . . ___„ ,. (V. L. O. Chittick, Reed College Advisory Editors for the Folklore “ ec''lon| g ARBY T urney-High, University of Montana Editor of Book Section Pat V. Morrissette, University of Oregon Manuscripts should he sent to the Editor; business communications to Frank Gal­ lagher, Business Manager; subscriptions to Harvey Thirloway, Circulation Manager—all at the State University of Montana, Missoula, Montana* 1 copyright 1932, by H. G. Merriam. Published in November. January, March and May. Entered as second-class matter May 4, 1928, at the postoffice at Missoula, Montana, under the Act of March 3, 1879. ______THE FRONTIER is a member of the Missoula Chamber of Commerce. ii The new book by

FRANK B. LINDERMAN

Author of American, Old Man Coyote, Morning Light, etc. RED M OTH ER

The Life Story of Pretty-Shield, a Medicine Woman of the Crows

In American Mr. Linderman told the story of an Indian chief. Now in Red Mother he gives us perhaps the first record in history of the feminine side of the old days on the plains and in the hills.

Pretty-Shield told it to him herself, through an interpreter and the sign language. She was a “ Wise-one,” a medicine-woman of the Crows, and with Plenty-Coups, who was the subject of American, she is one of the few still living who can remember what it was like before the white man came and the buffalo went away.

The tale is told in her own words, set down with the skill and sympathy which Mr. Linderman has learned in forty years of friendship with the Crows. We learn about the simple games and dolls of an Indian childhood and the duties of the girls and women—setting up the lodges, dressing the skins, picking ber­ ries, digging roots, cooking. We learn about courtship, marriage, childbirth and the care of the babies, about medicine-dreams, the care of the sick, the dangers and joys of womanhood among men whose lives were spent in hunting and fighting.

Red Mother is biography, history and drama— an achievement in Americana.

$3.00

THE JOHN DAY COMPANY 386 Fourth Ave. NEW YORK, N. Y.

iii ABOARD THE COVERED WAGON

Howard M. Corning (Portland, Oregon,) has written a number of stories of the Sizes country, in southwest coastal Oregon. His story, Candle Glow (Frontier, Nov., 1931), was placed on E. J. O’Brien’s Honor Roll for 1932. Harry G. Huse is in the advertis­ ing game in S t Paul. Brassil Fitzgerald, professor of English at the University of Montana, is an assistant editor of The Fron­ tier. Commercial editors wished this story of the Jewish boy could be left out! Of the poets newcomers to The Frontier are Anne Zuker (Los Angeles), Gale W il­ helm (Berkeley), Lydia Littell (Portland), and W. A. Ward (Dallas). California also is the residence of Claire Thomson, who has KITTENDORFFS recently returned from a trip into the South Seas. From Iowa comes the writing of Ray­ Fine Diamonds mond Kresensky, and from Alabama that of Catherine Macleod. Montana, Washington and and New York are represented by several poets—Elizabeth Waters (Helena), Jason Watches Bolles (Bozeman), and Mary B. Clapp (Mis­ soula) ; G. Frank Goodpasture (South Bend, on Wilapa Harbor), and Lucy Robinson (Spokane) ; Harold Vinal (New York City) and A. E. Clements (New York) ; while Ore­ Near the W ilm a gon is represented by four, all living in Port­ land—Queene B. Lister, L. L. Pratt, Ethel R. Fuller, Charles Oluf Olsen. Carey McWilliams (Los Angeles), author of Ambrose Bierce and The New Regionalism FOR in Literature, calls attention to a period of development in western life that has been neglected by historians. John M. Kline (Glasgow, Montana) was PORTRAITS in the Indian Service in Montana in 1905 and 1906, in Nebraska in 1907, in Washington, D. C., until the autumn of 1911. He writes, WITH QUALITY “The material is perfectly authentic; sim­ ply the way a reservation looked to a certain boy of twenty, as nearly correct as the man TRY o f middle age can remember.” J. F. Over- holser is a newspaper man of Fort Benton, Montana. June Clark sends her material from Carthage, Illinois. Col. J. W . Redington writes from the Na­ jJUIelcmher tional Military Home, California. He wrote this account of a scouting experience some 612 South Higgins Ave. years ago and the article has been in the archives of the Montana Historical Society, through the kind permission of whose direc­ Quality Developing and tor, David Hilger, it is now published. Col. Redington had much Indian experience in Printing Montana and with the Modocs in Oregon. With this issue Pat V. Morrissette, profes­ sor of English at the University of Oregon and poet, takes over the editing of The Fron­ For Appointments tier’s book review section. We hope that this department, which will receive more empha­ PH O N E 3729 sis than heretofore, will develop into recog­ nized and authoritative criticism on western books. iv Be sure to try— MIGNON CLEANSING CREAM A Liquefying Cleanser

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Martha Edgerton Piassman, daughter of Montana’s first governor, has released a book-length historical manuscript for serial publication in The Tribune, Great Falls. Mrs. Plassman’s father, Sidney Edgerton (1818- 1900), was born in New York; went to Akron, Ohio, in 1844; became county prose­ cutor on the Free-soiler ticket; in 1856, sat in the convention where the Republican party was born; became its representative from the 18th Ohio district; in 1863, was appointed by President Lincoln chief justice of the newly created Territory of Idaho; and soon after became governor of Montana. Mrs. Plassman’s historical material seems inex­ haustible, and her knowledge is intimate. Glendolin Damon Wagner, whose Blankets and Moccasins has been accepted for publica­ tion by Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Ida­ ho, is a born regionalist. She lives in Bil­ lings, Montana. Mrs. Wagner found her spiritual home on a Montana homestead, which at first thought had seemed to her North Coast a no-man’s-land of isolation. She says: “The prairie taught me much. It taught me that people have drifted too far from the earth, and have builded their lives on false Limited values. The Indians—my Crows—under­ stand that, also. America’s newest transconti­ “This is the sort of thing I have tried to nental train with the modern bring out in Blankets and Moccasins. Have conveniences and courteous we, who in our racial arrogance look down on them as savages, really advanced one step service that make travel a beyond them? Or have they clung to some­ pleasure. Northern Pacific thing of value, something spiritual, which we materialists in our greed have lost? It is "famously good" meals. an old theme, I know, and much written; but it came to me as something new . . . and in my title I have epitomized their splendid racial aloofness. Down-trodden, cheated, de­ Low Excursion Fares pendent on white man’s capricious generosity, they have remained through the centuries an for Home Visitors and H o li­ unconquered people, too proud to mimic, in day Travel are effective to dress or manner or tribal habits, the civiliza­ many points. A sk about them. tion that has uprooted them and flung them to its farthest edge. There is something fine and strong about a people who can so hold out, cling to their racial identity, and refuse For travel information any­ to be absorbed. They walk our streets, where— see your nearest calmly indifferent to curious stares, in their Northern Pacific Agent or blankets and moccasins . . . To understand address them is to see something of beauty which we, in the rush and clatter of our busy lives, are likely to pass unheeded.” Mrs. Wagner, a magazine writer, was the winner of the first ($500) prize in a mystery story contest broadcast over the radio last winter by the General Electric company. The concluding chapter was left open to competition. The Metropolitan Press, Portland, reports: “We confidently publish Before the Covered Wagon as the most interesting and readable vi SERVING

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We also carry a complete stock of Dictionaries, Textbooks and a number o f trade books. If you are in the market for a book let us have your order and we will see that you receive your book within a few days. ASSOCIATED STUDENTS’ STORE on the campus— back of Main Hall MISSOULA, MONTANA book so far written in unified presentation of the period from 1543 to 1830 in Pacific Northwest history.” Mr. Parrish is a Port­ HOUSEHOLD land newspaper man, formerly on the news staff of the Oregon Journal, and now news and editorial writer for the Oregonian. This HARDWARE is his first book. He spent hundreds of hours in the Albert Hawkins Library of Northwest and Americana and in the Oregon Historical so­ ciety gathering material for this narrative, to which he has given what no library can MINING give a historian—a rare charm of style, a mastery in the telling. Recently they have MACHINERY issued Minerva Teichert's A Romance of Old Fort Hall.

Trade with Russia as one of the best ways to end our industrial depression is advo­ cated by Thomas D. Campbell, mass produc­ tion farmer. Mr. Campbell’s 95,000-acre pow- erized wheat farm in Montana has been ex­ Montana Hardware ploited internationally. It has lain idle for three years, but this season yielded a volun­ DEPT. OF ANACONDA teer wheat crop worth cutting. Mr. Campbell is no exception to the rule that prophets are COPPER MINING CO. most subject to criticism in their own coun­ try.

W est Park Esther Kaldk gives spirited advice to ama­ teur writers in The Editor Council, Septem­ BUTTE ber 30, and cites the advantages of appearing in the non-commercial literary magazines. She concludes: “You who read Harper's ------must have seen the name of Roland English Hartley (that name alone is worth the price) and enjoyed stories so perfect in execution, so sensitive and artistic, and yet so realistic, that your breath was suspended in a deep breath of satisfaction at its finish. Mr. Hartley had almost no success until The John R. Daily, Inc. Frontier discovered his genius . . . There­ after he began to appear in the best maga­ 115-119 West Front St. zines of the country. And he should. His stories enrich these magazines forever. In­ PHONES: cidentally his stories draw big checks now, where, commercially speaking, they were ; Retail 2181-2182. Wholesale 3416 worth nothing before. Does it pay? You tell m e!” \ Wholesale and Retail Dealers in New poetry magazines soliciting contribu­ Fresh and Salt Meats, Fish, tions are The Poet, University Press, Maple Poultry and Oysters at Arcade, St. Louis, M o.; Better Verse, 2169 Selby Ave., St. Paul, Minn.; Trail, a literary magazine of the outdoors, Esperance, N. Y .; Packers of The Versemaker, Laurenceville, 111. A. 6. Kingsland, 2200 Locust street, St. Louis, and Da-Co Hams Joseph B. Thoburn, 1527 West 23d street, Oklahoma City, Okla., are compiling antholo­ BACON and LARD gies, the latter being interested in Plains verse. “Montana Payroll Products” Non-political, non-militant, non-sectarian, BRANCHES and non-profit-making, a Press Clipping Bu­ Model Market, 309 No. Higgins reau, the Action Membership Corporation, 26 Cortland street, N. Y. C., was formed in Phone 2835 1827 for the rehabilitation of competent un­ Missoula Market, 126 No. Higgins employed middle-aged men and women. Ed­ itor and Publisher commends them as giving Phone 2181 the most intelligent service they have yet ------~ ------— — » — ■> received. viii FRATERNITIES WE PROVE IT SORORITIES

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ix J. E. Erickson of Low-man & Hanford Co., Seattle, book dealers and publishers, desires to print and publish only literature of his­ torical importance to the Northwest, in par­ FRATERNITIES ticular, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. and The firm issues a monthly book bulletin. SORORITIES Edmond Du Perrier is outmanaging present- day editorial reluctance with a series of prizefighting yarns for the pulps. Have your parties and dances at Competent critics say Verne Bright’s long narrative poem, Jefferson Boone, is the finest The Old Country Club work he has so far done.

PHONE 5462 The New York Association for the Blind has asked Mrs. Gertrude Smith Coynne of Whitefish, Montana, to permit the republica­ tion in Braile (The Searchlight) of one of her stories from the St. Nicholas magazine. ANDERSON Mrs. Florence Alshey Beeler, Tacoma, TRANSFER CO. Wash., was awarded the $100 cash prize presented by Expression, a poetry weekly, 76 Heights Road, Ridgewood, N. J., for her Furniture for sale and rent. poem, “ Dregs.” Margaret E. Bruner, New­ castle, Ind., won the $25 award. The awards Furniture and piano moving. and many smaller prizes were made by Jo­ seph Auslander for the best poems appearing TRUNKS MOVED— 50c in the magazine during 1931.

PHONE 5462 James Rorty, 673 Broadway, New York City, is interested in unhackneyed verse suit­ able for radio programs. WEVD aims to be “a station with originality and personality and some sense of the responsibility inherent in the privilege of broadcasting.” Mrs. Ada Hastings Hedges has done much toward making known the work of Oregon YOU poets by her series of radio programs over KOAC, Corvallis, every Monday evening. OW E IT T O Poets included between October 24 and De­ cember 19 are: Queene B. Lister, Borghild Lee, Charles Oluf Olsen, Eleanor Allen, YOURSELVES Courtland Matthews, Eleanor Hammond Davis, Francis Gill, Ben Hur Lampman, Ed­ win T. Reed. to come in and let us show you The Seattle Branch of the League of why so many students buy American Penwomen will sponsor a Book Fair of Northwest books from October 29 to their clothes at November 10, inclusive. The work is a labor of love, and all services are donated, as is the use of the Frederick and Nelson auditor­ PENNEY'S ium, where the fair is to be held. Nard Jones is writing consistently for the D o come in soon— we will be glad pulp magazines, bringing a regional setting to his stories, while waiting publishers’ con­ to greet old friends and to venience for the appearance of his more sig­ nificant novels of the wheat country of East­ meet new ones. ern Oregon. Two book-length manuscripts are now in the hands of publishers. Even the birds have gone regional in the bird-list supplement to Frances Staver Twining’s Bird Watching in the West, pub­ J. C. PENNEY CO. lished by the Metropolitan Press. The book has been a best seller on Portland non-fiction lists.

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XI The Horn, a short story originally pub­ lished in The Frontier, and included in the collection, Black Cherries, (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), will be reprinted in Sylvia Chat field Bates Twentieth Century Short Stories to be Dr♦ V . R. Jones issued by Houghton, Mifflin Co. Mrs. Bates says, “This collection of short stories has a DENTIST distinguished list of American, British, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Rus­ LEHSOU BLOCK sian stories.” (Page Dick Wetjen.) Significant among Caxton Printers’ forth­ coming books is a third novel by Vardis Fisher of Ririe, Idaho, titled In Tragic Life. It will appear December 1. His earlier V . novels, Toilers of the Hills and Dark Brid- toell, are outstanding in vigor of treatment and tragic intensity. PH O N E 54 5 4 Amy Martin, who conducts a department in the Montana Farmer, Great Falls, is pre­ Open Evenings paring to conduct a state-wide poetry contest. The second annual Conference of Writers was held at the State University of Montana, Missoula, July 18, 19, 20. The keynote sub­ ject of discussion at the Conference was Regionalism. Mary Austin of Santa Fe, New Mexico, long a worker in regionalism; Ben Botkin of Norman, Oklahoma, editor of Appointments made to eliminate Folk-Say; Frank B. Linderman, Flathead conflict with classes. Lake, Montana, author of American and, just recently of Red Mother (John Day Co.) ; Vardis Fisher of Idaho, author of that as- toundingly beautiful and tragic book, Dark Bridwell; H. B. Chadbourne, formerly an editor of the Youth’s Companion; Grace Stone Coates, author of Mead and Mangel- Wurzel; Esther Shephard of Seattle, poet and playwright; Rufus Coleman, editor of Western Prose and Poetry (Harpers) ; and H. G. Merriam, editor of Northwest Verse (Caxton Printers), spoke on this subject. James Ashe of the Ashe Literary Service, Seattle, discussed the marketing of manu­ scripts, a topic also discussed by several INTERSTATE others. Struthers Burt was victim of an accident which prevented him and Katherine LUMBER COMPANY Newlin Burt from being present. The American Fiction Guild, New York City) has been busily organizing itself for several months. Its “aids and aims” are given as “1. a nation-wide campaign to ex­ Q U A LITY ploit the sale of magazines. . . .; 2. a very definite ‘tip’ service originating with the publishers . . .; 3. a publicity service . . ; Building Material 4. publication of The Author and Journalist as the guild’s “official organ.” “ Save the and Pulps” was the rallying cry for organization. A. R. Wetjen (Portland) is president of the Fuel Oregon chapter. The guild’s services, of course, are for its members. If interested, write Mr. Wetjen.

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XIV THE HOUND & HORN Announces Its Fall Issue

AMERICAN ANARCHY AND RUSSIAN COMMUNISM BY M. R. WERNER

THE CAPTIVE, a story...... BY CAROLINE GORDON

TOM B OF L E N IN ...... B Y E. E . CUM M INGS

RENE CLAIR, Movie Chronicle...... BY HARRY ALAN POTAMKIN

JEFFERSON AND DU PONT' DE NEMOURS, a review BY FRANK L. OWSLEY

POETRY..BY T. S. ELIOT, MARIANNE MOORE, J. V. CUNNINGHAM

CHRONICLES PHOTOGRAPHS SHORT STORIES

BOOK REVIEWS: Challenge to Defeat, Goodbye Wisconsin, Trotsky’s Russian Revolution, Volume I, Emma Goldman’s Autobiography, Rebels and Renegades, American Heresy, Growth of Political Thought in the West, etc., “ Objectionist” Anthology, reviewed by Yvor Win­ ters.

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xv High Hat? The Idea!

IV/E hope this little rumor was greatly exaggerated. But ” we heard that a certain young thing whispered to an­ other— in strictest confidence of course— that she was afraid our store was a little “ high hat” for her modest income.

Shocking, if true! Maybe its partly our own fault. Per­ haps we have been so centered in spreading the endless story of our intriguing fashions and fine qualities that we haven’t made it perfectly clear to a few people that this is an inclusive store rather than an exclusive store.

Our individual fashions may be really priceless in the esteem of their wearers, but they are priced within easy reach of every woman.

“ No, little lady, we are neither ‘high hat’ nor high-priced.”

MissooiaMercanthe COMPANY 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 SIXES RUNS TO THE SEA

H oward M cK in l e y C orning

O THE sturdy lad plunging down reason less turbulent and rocky, was through the tracery of cedar likewise narrowed from its usual width T branches, with their weird fes­ to little more than seven rods across. toons of moss, the song of the river Here it made an angle in its down­ came up like a multitude of faint voices. stream course, throwing a fortress of Soon now the dark flow of the waters rock above it for a sentinel-like shadow. would wash about his restless body, as Now, in this shadow, swam the light its sonorous tones already pressed about form of a girl. his senses. The day that spilled through After tramping down-stream for a the centuries of trees was as old as and mile more than was his usual custom, larger than the sun. Gary Dole raced Gary had happened upon another of to spend it in the river. his kind, one who like him had come to Years after he remembered this day give over to the river and its fearless and saw, he thought, very clearly the tides the energy of youth. Even as he wild nearly-grown man he was, yet a looked the brown stroking arms urged boy still, with a boy’s eager awkward­ the swimmer forward, the nebulous ness, running . . . running. The very body cleared the rock’s gloom, and dark unruly hair above the immature, tossing her loose half-length hair back weather-browned features, the bared from her face, the girl flashed through legs and arms wind-milling the air, the glittering waters toward him. knitting the sun-shafts and shadow- But once the swimmer had reached voids into instants of unapprehendable mid-stream she veered, applying her motion. And, years after, he fancied strokes against the current. A fter stren­ he heard still what as a racing boy he uous exertion, during which little prog­ had heard . . . and had never found. ress was made— a game she must have Pushing his way through the intri­ attempted many times— the girl gave cate growth of alders and laurel brush herself nimbly over to the natural flow that was the green hem of the Oregon of the stream. She drifted now away wilderness, Gary Dole leaned to look at from the shadow into which she had the quenchless Sixes, struck to a twink­ plunged, carried down current . . . away ling glitter. Holding to a willowy alder . . . leaving the arrested lad in a la­ like a wild tree-thing he was about to bored breathing of wonder. drop over the precipitous bank and To the beholder, this, that to the vul­ risk a twelve-foot gravelly glide to the garly uncouth of his mountain kind water’s edge, when a splashing occurred might have been a bawdy instant, be­ in the shadows near the opposite bank. came an occurrence that amounted to The river, less shallow here and for that a revaluation of the river. Hardly had 2 The Frontier the slim figure, its golden hair drenched little privacy. The secrets of life, birth, and bright in the sun, emerged on the and death are open stories in every far lower bank to pass dryad-like into cabin. Children are grown in knowledge the forest’s hands, than Gary Dole re­ long before the maturity of their capa­ alized that a new and necessary con­ bilities. Marial Newlin, with a girl’s sciousness had awakened in his being, miniature wrath, seated herself upon the that in some way the river must always gravelly beach, deep in shadow, to mean more to him now. He realized watch the disporting swimmer. She this . . . and was puzzled. . . took care to keep concealed, scarcely Less vigorously he clambered back knowing whether or not she should be through the heavy brush and along the frightened at her boldness. Twenty length of mile he had come. A new minutes . . . The weather-bronzed youth strange perception was in the sun flash­ plied through the sun-sprayed waters, ing at him through the branches. His now up stream, now down. He was way back to the home clearing led across joyously given over to a friendly strug­ Boulder Creek, a turbulent rivulet eas­ gle with the sweeping current. ily crossed on a spanning log. Up this When eventually he clambered out on stream a short distance a beaver had the opposite shore, it seemed a mere erected a log estuary. To this Gary had moment until he was dressed in his beaten a frequented trail. He went to homespun and stood again on the bank it now. Its top surface, well out of the of the stream. water and dry, lay open to the sun. Here he stood, briefly paused. “ Hel­ Mounting to it, he flung himself down, lo !” he called across to the crouching free of all leering of sun-and-shadow girl. | ‘ Hello! I ’m comin ’ over. ’ ’ play, giving himself over to the large At once he plunged into the stream, cleanness of a clear sky. Here he could this time with his clothes on. Marial think. Newlin knew he had seen her. Marial Newlin, bare-legged as Gary The girl’s first impulse was to rush Dole had come from the opposite side back up the trail she had come, but of the Sixes on an earlier day, came fleet as she was she knew the other pushing her way through the dewy would overtake her. Besides, she was freshness of morning. This fore-cool of puzzled by a strangeness of feeling the the promised hot day refreshed her, the man had awakened within her, some­ low branches catching at her blue gown, thing that was expanding out of her in­ the bodice half open over the already- stant of wrath, like the sun mounting mature breasts. out of the first fever-flush of dawn. She But arrived at the foot of the trail in knew she wanted to wait. . . the fortunate shadow she beheld the Gary Dole emerged from the shadowy river greeting her with an earlier arrival margin of water, garments clinging to who was swimming leisurely about in its the clean lines of his sturdy body. Cha­ flow. The discovery brought a clouding grined, he nonetheless managed a faint to the girl’s blue eyes, the sting of wrath smile through his deadly earnestness. to her throat. How dare another usurp “ Reckon yuh know me,” he ventured her favorite pool? as he came toward the seated girl, who Pioneer wilderness existence offers now picked nervously at her blouse, 3 The Frontier finding it difficult to look full at the too sure, as though he dared not be too large youth. “ We seen each other a- sure. fore.” Marial nodded. “ Yes . . . down below . . . once,” she “ Yeah, live down a piece ...” He commenced, nervously. indicated with a gesture. Marial looked away. “ Your Pa and He completed the words for her. my Pa is s’posed to be at outs, ain’t “ Yeah, Emmett Dole’s boy . . . up the they?” she ventured, uncomfortably river a piece.” And he dropped his moving about on the tree trunk to whose awkward body on a nearby rock surface, leaning base she had half hoisted her­ clumsily adjusting his still-dripping self. garments. And then because the over­ taken girl remained speechless he con­ With this question Gary Dole sprang tinued, by way of question: “ You swim to his feet. “ Now say, we ain’t a-goin’ here, don’t yuh?” to bring that up, air we. Haven’t I She nodded her unkempt head. crossed this stream ’cause I ain’t “ Thought I ’d get my swim out a-fore feared?” you come. Guess you must of caught Under this startling upheaval, the me at it.” His eyes rested on her in girl at first cowered. In panic she rose question. as if to run from him, but seeing that The girl tried uncomfortably to avert the boy’s momentary anger was by way her face. Again she was on the instant of delivery into her hands, she hesitated. of fleeing. Again she controlled her He came up closer. impulse with that strange weakness that “ I ain’t feared. I was . . . when I had so newly overcome her. At last fust saw you a-swimmin’ . .. t ’other day. her blue eyes faced squarely into Gary’s I was almost scared, fact. But I ain’t steady hazel ones. Their vision held: now. I ain’t feared o’ nothin’. Our a dreamy mountain girl gazing upon the Pas can do their own fightin’ and swear- stubborn hair and rugged features of a in ’ . . . Oh, I didn’t mean to scare yuh strapping youth. none . . . ” He stepped back. “ Mostly come here— swimmin’—ev­ But the storm was over. Gary bit ery day, but I ain’t ever seed you here his lip and sank back on the rock. Very a-fore.” gently the mountain girl reseated her­ “ Nope,” the other shook his dark self. In the pause that followed, the head, more at ease now. “ Been swim­ river flowed back into the conscious­ min’ up the river a stretch.” ness of the two listeners. A pair of A hazy look came over his eyes, as water ouzels descended a sun slant to though he held knowledge in restraint. flit from ripple to ripple. He clutched a handful of pebbles and “ D ’jah hear it? ” the boy questioned. commenced shunting them into the “ Hear what?” stream. From time to time, between “ That.” the tossing of the stones, their eyes met “ What?— the river?” nervously, whereupon she would resort “ Yeah. Them voices in the water— to the plucking of her coarse blue gown. like. They’re talkin’. Hear ’em ?” “ You’re Garce Newlin’s girl, ain’t The girl assumed a manner of intent yuh?” Gary asked presently, as if not listening, as to something fancied and 4 The Frontier not real. “ I t ’s the river,” she respond­ earnestness of wonder. “ How yuh fig- ed presently. But there was an amused ger on makin’ it out? Us hill folks . . . twinkle in her disturbing eyes. we don’t have such a heap.” Her clear The youth flashed back. “ O ’ course tones were not unlike the water song of it’s the river; can’t I hear! But you the river before them. ain’t meanin’ that’s all, air you?” An The youth knit his brows. Here was expression of injury began to show on a problem. But not too great a problem. his face, so apparent that the girl soft­ “ I can walk it out, can’t I? Git a job ened her own dubious attitude. Then at the Port . . . on the rocks, maybe.” he began to gesticulate. “ Yuh ain’t His fists were clenched in resolution, meanin’ to say all yuh hear’s the river! while the girl, scrutinizing the ample Can’t yuh hear them voices, like? Plain muscular development of his body, fi­ as punishment, they is. Listen!” nally admitted such a plan possible. However, with all her attentive silence But Gary Dole had more in his mind Marial seemed still unable to catch the than was apparent in these brief state­ scope of his ear’s pride. She sat word­ ments. He rose and commenced squeez­ less. ing the moisture out of his trousers, by “ Can’t fig ’ger a woman to, I guess. rubbing tightly down first one leg then Can’t somehow— ” He halted. “ Say! the other. He rose erect. ever been to Port Orford? Sure!” “ Well— ” he commenced. And then To this she nodded, her bright hair more successfully: “ I ben thinkin’ may­ tossed and ruffled. be I wouldn’t go by m ’self. I ain’t just “ . . . cause if yuh hadn’t yuh wild, like, ’bout goin’ by m ’self.” He wouldn’t know what the voices sound looked suddenly, clearly, into her face like, ever. But I guess yuh wasn’t where she shrank against the tree. If down to the wharves like I was, an’ all the river sound was still in his ears, over . . . or yuh’d know. ” His sturdy his eyes, for the moment, gained su­ voice, more reconciled in tone, trailed off premacy over them. But stronger than into his listening mind. his eyes, his body urged, his lips spoke Quickly he roused himself, moving his on. “ Yuh know yuh wouldn’t care to still wet limbs. “ I ben thinkin’ this go alone . . . not by yoreself, now here river’s talkin’ to me . . . sort of would yuh?” And as the girl’s yellow beggin’ me away, like. Ever feel’s how head shook negation: “ No. Well, I yuh want to git out . . . away?” His don’t nuther,” he laconically concluded. listener nodded. He continued. “ Nope, “ A n ’ I ain’t, see.” I hadn’t ought a stay here, an’ the river Weeks passed. Returning Marial keeps remindin ’ of it. Port O rford! . .. Newlin to the edge of her home clear­ there’s a place. A n ’ the ships!—there’s ing, less darkened than the forest in the places an’ places to go to. Up to Coos powdering twilight, Gary Dole reswam Bay, an’ Portlan’. Maybe that big the Sixes, running all the long distance town o’ Frisco. Don’t seem as how I to his own cabin-lighted clearing. A ought a stay here . . .now.” He broke cougar that had sniffed along his trail, off vaguely. halted, slunk back in the darkness. It was the girl who spoke next, out “ Y o’re plumb useless cornin’ home at of her growing concern over Gary’s this hour, hell blame yuh!” his father The Frontier 5

bellowed at him as he reached the sheds. had wandered alone amidst the clamor “ Yore brothers work. Yuh ain’t worth and shout of the riotous waterfront. the hidin’ I ought a give yuh.” The Vessels from San Francisco unloading man’s swarthy, stocky person lunged their false ballast of rocks, for cargoes toward a fork as though to hurl it at of rough cedar lumber; miners loung­ the tardy arrival. “ Now grab a-holt ing before smelly rooming houses dis­ an’ fetch some hay in ter them critters.” cussing gold in crude terms emphatic In gusty fury the elder Dole stamped with gusto; saloons with their doors off to the rear of the sheds, leaving his opening and closing to slouching pa­ son in a mood of primitive vengeful­ trons; gulls on graceful wings wheel­ ness. ing out into the pride of the sky— all Then out of a moment of pause, that these he saw. gathered the stars over his head, came the persistent and remote song of the And all this vital, primitive beauty Sixes. The youth leaned on his fork, had captured the heart of the dreamy listening. With an irate and conclu­ lad out from the secluding forests. So sive moment he lifted the implement in that when his father at last overtook his hands and hurled it with all his his delinquency, now hours prolonged, force into the gloom of the forest be­ he measured upon Gary a burst of wrath hind him . . . that the boy could not justify. The el­ der Dole concluded his business in a The ranch of the Doles stood five whirlwind of sullen silence, and drove miles up the Sixes from its mouth. It back into his valley fastness. crouched in an open space on the north It was three years before the lanky bank. Seven miles down beach from growing boy was again permitted a jour­ the river’s gates— and the beach sands ney to Port Orford. In that interval of served as road— was Port Orford, gate­ waiting the blue bay and the ships way to the world. • with their cloud-like sails were an eter­ Once when Gary— there were six nal experience in Gary’s mind. The children— was a lanky, inquisitive lad water washing in to whisper among the of twelve, his stolid and taciturn father wharf piles repeated perpetually in his had taken the lad with him on one of memory; a sound like voices . . . that his infrequent journeys to the great became many voices . . . that became all blue-water port. Here he had glimpsed the voices in the world. his first vision of those slim-sparred So that in lacking frequent and ac­ wanderers of the deep; a vision to match tual visit upon the Port, it was to the the stories so often related by his hard- river that he turned, to the Sixes with handed parent, who had “ seen the its low sound. A voice certainly of less world.” Here the boy, in his belated knowing than the sea’s . . . yet a voice. wonderment, had wandered down to the More and more he came for companion­ docks with their white-washed buildings ship to the turgid stream, meanwhile jutting out into the calm bay, situated sorting less and less with his brothers between great fortresses of rock wall and sisters. This . . . until the river be­ that arched away to north and south be­ came his consciousness . . . the Sixes that yond the frontier town. For hours he ran to the sea. . . 6 The Frontier

The streets of Port Orford, on that spilled through the dirty westward win­ late afternoon of August, 1889, teemed dows. with uncouth frontier life. Men in ill- At once, an obstacle. Gary coughed in fitting homespun swayed singly and in the smoke-reekingroom; Marial clutched groups along the plank sidewalks. Over­ at his elbow, half-fearful of the staring head a hot sun beat. Spans of unruly eyes of lounging occupants. Both now mules and odd-matched horses labored stood puzzled. Delay might mean de­ forward by cursing or indolent drivers, tention. crossed and recrossed the dusty streets. The agent was speaking again. “ I ’ll In and out of business houses, impor­ tell yuh—thar’s the Blue Seal agoin’ up tant with false fronts, pedestrians passed t’ Empire—-t’ Coos Bay in a couple a in jaunty leisure. By far the greater hours. Yuh might take that; it’s a all- number were men, but sprinkled among night boat. But day after termorrer them here and there was a woman. yuh can git the Beaver from thar to One of these couples, less sure of their Portlan’. Course, I dunno bout the movements than most and evidently Missus— she might not— Still, if yuh scarcely familiar with the town, was a wantta git the Beaver— Good ship, the sturdy youth and the slighter figure of Beaver. Yuh can do that, you two.” a grown girl. He arched his brows expectantly over his The two walked in the general direc­ ruddy, knob-like nose. “ Want ter do tion of the docks, the girl clinging to that t ” he urged. ‘ ‘ Or yuh can stay up the youth’s arm with the agitated peace t ’ the Knapp Hotel and wait fer the of a wild thing whose manner was Bear from Frisco.” hardly more apparent than the desper­ With this news, Marial’s expression ately executed determination on the face of pleasure quickly erased the heavy of her companion and marked in his res­ doubt from Gary’s face. He acceeded, olute stride, which he found difficult without further hesitation, drawing a to adjust to her shorter steps. Avarice­ small gold pouch from secrecy under his eyed roustabouts, lounging before store woolsey shirt. fronts, indulged coarse remarks and Methodically the nervous, wiry agent vulgar laughter. All stared. scaled out the necessary expenditure for But once the two had reached the the dual passage, and returned the bag. waterfront and stated their inquiry to “ Yuh’ll h ave’t set up back o ’ the stow­ a passerby, they were directed to the age, I cal’late. They’s runnin’ a full dusty, ill-smelling wharf office, near at crew an’ it ain’t ’xactly a passenger hand. Untidy men crowded them as boat. Still, I guess yuh can git along; they entered— Gary Dole and Marial others has. ’ ’ Newlin, out from the hills. Gary Dole clutched the certified pa­ “ Naw, thar ain’t no ship t ’ Portland pers handed him and grabbing hold of —not fer nigh on t ’ a week,” the spec­ the girl struggled out to clear air and tacled watery-eyed agent informed them. self-removal. So many eyes, so many ‘ ‘ Yuh can hang about, tho; sometimes voices, so much giving of directions . . . a tramp brig comes wallern’ by,” he en­ explantions . . . his head was whirling. couraged, blinking in the strong sun that But if he were fuddled within doors The Frontier 7 the blue leagues of the bay with its trek that had carried them through noon crescent of harbor buildings, white in up to this prospect. the sun that mounted behind the riding The two stood on the wharf and looked ships, soundly restored him. Before him at the sun, still well up. It would not the burnished swell of waters gulped in set before they were at sea, after eight. with the tide that in turn sucked and “ Guess we better find the parson whispered among the wharf-piles. The now,” Gary commenced. “ Better, I awkward youth, with his girl compan­ guess.” ion on his arm, leveled his rapt'gaze Then, as they sauntered uncertainly now at the sea, now at the gold head at on their errand of locating the justice of his shoulder. the peace, they idled past an unpainted “ Can yuh beat it!” he exclaimed, structure of shakes that posed for a home with that lack of words common to the beside the plank street. Three grimy wisest under severe emotion. children rolled in the yard, exchanging “ It’s—it’s lovely,” she managed, a a varied jargon. Presently one of them child’s fright still evident in her pleas­ began to cry and ran indoors, leaving ure and over his delight. the remaining two in sheepish silence. They located the Blue Sea. She was Gary felt a quickened pressure on his a slight, coastwise craft wallowing heav­ arm where Marial’s small tanned fingers ily under a maximum cargo of lumber clung about it. Her beseaching blue that sprawled along her decks, giving eyes were turned upon his. “ A ir we go- her the appearance of a glorified sea in ’ to find the parson ? ” she ventured. creature, inert and bulging toward the After some wandering indirection the sky. She lay docked at the far end of office of the Justice of the Peace was the white town, at a mill site that boast­ found, and through question and hast­ ed the name of Hub City Lumber Mill. ily secured but vaguely known witnesses, The raucous crew were belaying the last and by purchase of the further dwind­ of the creaking cordage that bound the ling gold dust from the leather pouch, stowed lumber aboard decks. a license was secured. The craft, however, was not to weigh “ Might as well let me do the hull job out before eight that night, the two were —the two of you,” the sodden but hu­ informed by a stout grinning seaman. morously - eyed dignitary suggested. Yes, they would, weather permitting, ar­ “ That’s my business— according to rive at Empire at five the following law.” morning. The two passengers turned But Marial drew back from sight of away, assured, breathing the first clear his tobacco-stained lips. atmosphere of escape. Now that the “ Well, no. W e’ll find the parson. world was assuredly about to open its There is a parson, ain’t th ey !” Gary arms to them, they had a complete three admonished, almost willing to halt here hours in which to accomplish the act and have the whole undertaking com­ they had come intent upon performing. pleted before their plans should go Furthermore, they were hungry. They amiss. were indulgently weary with their long “ Right down the street— three doors. jaunt out of the hills that morning, a Yes, sir, right through that white gate.” 8 The Frontier

He lifted his thick arm as he showed the gawking, reiterative roustabouts dis­ them to the door. “ That’s where you’ll comfited them less. find him . . . and no different from At last, fearful lest in their self-pre­ what I could do.” And he ejected a occupation they be late in reaching the stream of tobacco juice to fall like a vessel, they hurried, arm in arm in its knife between two planks of the walk direction. They were, however, too behind them. early even to board, so they idled the Standing in awkward silence in the time, seated on a tarnished copper drum lowering six-o’clock sun that poured that had been hauled out of some dis­ through the open door of the small par­ mantled derelict. The girl, leaning with sonage, Gary Dole and Marial Newlin desperate resignation into her husband’s heard their vows read, exchanged the arms, was wordless as the two sat watch­ sealing kiss. They were united in mar­ ing the bay sweep out to its line with riage under the seal of Oregon and in the sky. Here the noise of the town the name of a God that allows frontier that had greeted and so disturbed their towns where a man might be a preacher afternoon arrival was quieted in the on one day and on the next a stampeder beating of their hearts. The world, an after gold. enchanting fearful reality, waited enor­ mously before them. With the noise of the village charg­ ing in upon them, the swart, bearded The Blue Seal, her sails colored like patriarch affixed his harsh lips on the unearthly crimson clouds in the wallow­ very pink soft ones of the bride, while ing sun, hove out to sea at that hour the sleek, subdued matron of the plain just before twilight divides the real household admonished happiness upon from the ephemeral. Wedged among the groom, who did not know how to re­ the excess of stowage above decks the ceive his good fortune with other than two coast-mountain youths beheld the speechlessness. sprawled town, like nothing so much as Finally, and once again, the two, not a handful of white blocks some giant different from many another couple at had hurled in disorder at the earth, one time, issued to the peopled Port Or­ merge into the shore line, that became ford streets . . . and to the world. in turn the ominous immensity of forest­ However, if previously they had ap­ ed mountains behind it. To the two, peared self-conscious, now they were watching, it seemed as if the world were doubly so. Instead of clinging to his receding instead of their moving toward arms as before, Marial fastened her the luminous prospect of their dream. small shy fingers in his large rough Then suddenly the sun had submerged ones, occasionally joining the two with and was drunk away by the sea, its col­ her other moist palm. or draining out of the sky. Husband and wife ate their wedding After a time the stars came out, im­ supper in the back room of a water­ minent, radiant orbs that tingled in the front bar. Their primitively shy sensi­ gathering, infinite darkness. With these tivity gradually abated, but they scarce­ came a soft healing for the agitation ly touched their grease-laden meal, so the couple felt, now less and less. So filled were they with one another and that the waters that gulped out and with the immediacy of departure. Even raced away astern became a restless mon­ The Frontier 9 otony of peace beating in their pulses. youth. Fugitives from a dream toward They would rise and look back at the a dream. Into the night . . . smoky cream of their wake, only to sink They drew the harsh folds of canvas again into each other’s arms. And the about them, kissing and trembling again stars always . . . They were being into slumber. swept into the elaborate night of the It was nearer seven than five when north. the Blue Seal put into the docks at Em ­ pire the following morning. Already They sat, crouched behind a huge stock men in the garb of laborers came lum­ of raw lumber that afforded a wind­ bering along the strange plank street. break against the ship’s driving, the The awakening confusions of day rose fresh pine smell heavy and constant in over the town and its dark buildings. their nostrils.' From this position they For if the structures of Port Orford watched the ogling beacon that was Cape had blossomed whitely in the sun of that Blanco lighthouse, that blazed abroad blue water bay, here the narrower into the clear August night, a revolving streets were lined with drab imperti­ funnel of light and safety. Over-awed, nence of,stoicism, its false-front build­ they surveyed it, each wanting very ings were unpainted and weather-worn much to speak but each fearful lest any and the street planking wound away into word betray the pang of isolation en­ the dank reaches of swampy cut-over countered in all this immensity that behind the town. lacked the friendliness of mountains— Alighting from their cramped pas­ fearful, even in each other’s arms, lest sage, chilly for all of the summer night, their puniness of spirit stand naked by the wilderness couple, first walking the a word or a gesture. length of town to restore life to limb, Meanwhile, in the roar of passage, entered a cheap eating-house. Here the they presented to the busied crew an two attracted little attention, the room outward placidity, an apparent con­ being emptied somewhat of its quota of tentment. Hirelings of the sea who could breakfasters. The meal eaten, bride and not know what the land could mean to groom issued to the sidewalks. two whose journey was bearing them Puzzled as to what to do they wan­ past the mouth of the Sixes, the river of dered along the wharves and by loading their youth, the river they had loved as vessels— brigs, come in chiefly for lum­ they loved each other, as they still clung ber. The noisy mills distracted them. desperately to something enchanting Empire, the foremost town on the and lovely in the waning significance of crooked arms of Coos Bay, was three youth, something that was passing back miles in from breakwater, so that there in the magic of the night. was no more than the tide swell and the Several times as the hours advanced, constant patient wash of untroubled wa­ drifting into half-sleep the two wakened ters among the piles. No sea voice, no with panic in their throats. North! incessant song. North! . . . Always something was be­ Gary and Marial turned and walked ing borne backward in the lapping, dis­ to the out-reaches of town where the tancing waters. Youth, the jest of irre­ swampy cut-over began. The forest had sponsibility— the sweet melancholy of drawn back, its voice of winds too re­ 10 The Frontier mote even to be heard deceptively. Only took refuge in surrender. The moun­ the raucous purring of the town was tain girl, on the verge of womanhood, about them, its mill smoke lifting in the clung tearfully to her groping, trem­ wide air. bling husband. Rapture of youth! . . . Turning, the two dragged back to the Gary Dole awakened sometime in the drab austerity of buildings. Here was hush of the late August night. Beside him, in the timid abandon of the lover, life, at least. Here were voices. her curls disordered over one bare arm, "A w fu l big place, ain’t it?” Gary re­ Marial lay sleeping. An expression of marked. "D id n ’t know places could be peace rested on her lips and her closed so big, like. Maybe Portlan’— ” But eyes; her cheek lay softly tanned. Peace the speculation died on his dry lips and was in the room; a great hush on the the wonder of his eyes met the wonder night. in his w ife’s, and in the union of the Without disturbing the sleeper, Gary two the spirit of isolation approached Dole— a man now— crept out of the tragedy. They clung to one another and tufty bed and over to the low window. kept walking. There he leaned out into the cool flow Since the Portland-bound brigantine, of air, feeling it press against his tem­ the Bewver, would not arrive until the ples. The sky and the darkness were next day, Gary and Marial found them­ vast in their hush. Imperceptibly the selves under necessity of taking a room flood moved in the bay. Along the si­ at the Empire House, a transient quar­ lent streets, on little stems of blackness, ters not far from the waterfront, a erect lit lamps thrust a puny defiance damp, inhospitable place, given over toward the remote stars. A far bird largely to drifters, many of them "old passed overhead, trailing a piercing hopefuls” from the abandoned mines. song. A dog barked. Silence. The two accepted it because of its con­ The listener at the windowsill trem­ venience for departure. In this struc­ bled. No sound— no river sound, no for­ ture they spent their first actual wed­ est sound. Only an all-imminent silence, ding night. an infinite isolation. Where there had With a delicate and awkward timidity been clatter and noise and smoke by day they entered the shadowy room accord­ was hush and mockery of lights bjy ed them, leaving the kerosene lamp on night,- the air heavy with the smell of the box-like dresser unlighted. But now the mills. Youth, the enchantment, the within doors they seemed unable to talk. song in the dream, the far elaborate Once in the bright warm sun of the aft­ prospect of the world—where were they ? ernoon, on a remote stack of lumber What was life? — a stifled music in the with the timbery smell suffusing their pulse, a roar and clamor without, a giv­ senses, the young husband and wife had ing up of youth, the crushing of the recaptured a brief period of carefree dream. Love . . . Love only was real and conversation. But with the twilight the remained . . . and life, life that persist­ heavy mood of nostalgia had overcome ed. Life, conflict and leave-taking. them. In this room a strange terror was Gone youth! the sweet and furious ig­ borne in upon them. They clung to­ norance. Gone the romance of the for­ gether with startled joy and in the end est and the river . . . the Sixes of their The Frontier 11 youth; the river that coursed desperate­ as he had left her. He would be strong! ly to the ocean, bearing their youth and He was a man! Youth was gone. Life their dream with it . . . themselves, into was before him. Portland. The world. life, beautiful, demanding, exorbitant. Before them both. The river of youth! “ It’s gotta be,” he whispered; “ it’s With abrupt assertion he stiffened gotta be.” himself against over-sweeping nostalgia. Very gently he kissed Marial on her He felt his way back in the gloom to closed eyes, now on one, now on the the side of his sleeping bride, unstirred other. Her lashes were wet.

DRUMS OF THE WIND

A n n e Z u ker

It is better that you never come Through colored, waving grass on the hill; Better that the turning grass Has overrun and covered the path, The clear path that led over the hill. This is a high, a windy place, Where wind makes a long and drumming sound; Nowhere else in the hills about Will you hear, will you find, Drums of the wind.

Better that you never come On the path the grasses have overgrown, Grasses that grew The swift summer through From scattered seed the wind has sown. Better to listen alone, Listen alone to drums of the wind.

In long undulations of color, of line, Red and yellow grasses bend before wind Before the wind’s drone They bend, they yield: I do not bend . . . I stand here alone, While wind beats the drum, The slow drum of courage, The long drum of courage That now is my own. 12 The Frontier

THE SEA— FIVE POEMS G. F ran k G oodpasture

I. D U A L Times come when I grow tired of breathing The tainted atmosphere that drifts at night From seaweed flats; grow tired of hearing The croak of spawning frogs along the marsh. Moods come wherein I watch, half-envious, Yon blue crane fishing on his bar of mud— He stands effaced within the river shadows And dreams, calm-eyed, or shakes a doubtful head. That old gray whale I met but yesterday Spouting among the tide-rips leagues from shore Seemed happier than I, from having found Something of nature’s peace that I have missed, A self-sufficiency of soul that makes Years pass unregretted, content to grow Old in the stormy seas. For I am twin, Seeking my truant self among the throngs.

II. NECESSITY I stood beneath the North Head light and gazed, In silent wonder, do^n upon the sea. The long, slow waves were dark with sea-pigeons Whirling in maelstroms, or madly plunging Into the tide-rips where milling fishes Fled from the gleam of their prying eyes. A million wings, all of a common color; One raucous shriek, as from one common throat; Helpless beneath the sway of a. group-spirit— A world without volition—their ordered fate To glut and doze upon an ocean waste!

III. THE SHIPWRECK A quavering moan from the fog-banked sea, Weird as the cry of a beast in dread! The fisherman’s boy asleep in the cove Roused at the sound, then covered his head. He dreamed again of primordial nights When, deep in his lair, he heard the roar Of saurian shapes that fought in the mist And left their blood on the lagoon shore. The Frontier 13

Out on the shoals of the bar at dawn, Where the gray, ghost-breakers wave their hands, A sea lion stared with wondering eyes At a vast, steam hulk trapped by the sands!

IV. SALMON EGGS Bail them out and scatter them wide Over the gunwale’s slippery sidel

Bail out visions of waterfalls, Lonely canyons and eagle-calls; Bail out trystings on gravel bars With hook-nosed males covered with scars; Bail out cruisings to unknown shores, Shadowy glimpses of ocean floors, Chasing of herring from wave to sky, Wrecks to explore with curious eye, Killer-whales with scimitar jaws, Seabirds flapping with swollen maws—

Bail them out and scatter them wide Over the gunwale’s slippery sidel

V. NIGHT CLOUDS

That huge, gray cloud out in the west The summer trades so near have flung It seems the tern might build her nest Among its crags and rear her young.

Behind the drift of that broad dome A grove might wave, a brook might wind Where men, care free, might build a home Cliff-locked from storms; might even find—

No, see, they change to totem poles, Rain-seared and vast, that shade the sky Where Titans carved the growth of souls On mammoth tusks and raised them high!

So shift the sunset lights at sea To men who fish their nets; their gaze, Tired of the glare, turns restfully Into the depths of ocean haze. 14 The Frontier

THAD

Q ueene B. L ister

For twenty years “ He looks like Jesus Thad’s land stood waiting Honestly might . . . To sell . . . or rent . . . If he’d a lived His mind debating. Till his hair turned white.”

Too old to work it, The timid child Yet all of his dreams Was the only one Saw cribs and barns, Who used to stop Machines— and teams. When school was done. • # # In later years The shades were drawn, He took a bride The latch was tight— To share his mind, High winds whispered The lass called “ Pride.” Thoughts to the night.

Thad’s eyes grew soft, Cupboard and gourde What matter now . . .? Had long been bare . . . If barn lacked But a toy lay Cow, and sow, and plow . . .? On a broken chair— : Whittled soldier Neighbors whispered With corn-silk hair. About his hoarde, Laughed because And a scribbled note, He ate from a gourde . . . Beside the toy— : But a timid child “ For the child who looks Thought he looked like the Lord. Like Christ—when a boy.”

THE BLIND, THE SLEEPER, AND THE DUMB

C harles O lu f Olsen

Along the Street there seeps a dim unrest, As if a creed had come to naught at last, And the new emptiness within its breast Had doors against the gospels of the past—

As if the blind, the sleeper, and the dumb Had borne a thought apiece and wearily Awaited the interpreter to come And lay on hands— perhaps to set them free . . . The Frontier 15

THE WEST: A LOST CHAPTER

C arey M cW illiam s

I. a dangerous undertaking, if only for the ROM 1893, when an address by reason that one must necessarily rely to Professor Frederick T u rn er a large extent upon personal experience F opened new paths of enquiry, and recollection. A t this late date, then, until the present time, historians, dili­ about all that can be expected from gently re-examining the sources long such an enquiry is a rough outline of neglected, have been constructing a a cultural pattern. magnificent record of the westward Historians have been confused by the movement in America. It would seem absorbing character of the drama of ex­ incredible, at least to those familiar with ploration. It is indeed difficult to this literary and historical re-discovery write soberly of this gorgeous epoch. It of the frontier, that a single crevise had is a story that has been retold countless been overlooked in the process of elab­ times and from the recitation of which orate exhumation. But there are, will ultimately come an epic. But there strangely enough, phases of the settle­ was another west coming into being side ment of the west that remain unchron­ by side with this literary west of legend icled. This situation is partially ex­ and myth. Historians have assumed a plained by the fact that the foremost frontier and a post-frontier period and historians of the frontier have been east­ have arbitrarily conducted the reader ern and middle-western academicians from one to the other with scarcely a having only a slight familiarity with word for the intervening decades. Doc­ the west and no personal recollection of umentary evidence pertaining to the the frontier. period of exploration is much more com­ One chapter in the history of the west plete and exhaustive than the slight rec­ that has been lost beyond hope of re­ ord that exists of the middle period. construction, since time has obliterated This transitional period was one of ad­ so many sources and dimmed so many justment to a new environment, an ad­ memories, is the story of the society that justment that was imaginative and spir­ existed during the decades following itual as well as physical. It was a more the period of exploration and discovery. difficult task for the settler to become Historians have over-emphasized the pe­ habituated to this rather terrifying west­ riod of exploration, since their chief ern world than it was to explore it— concern, following Professor Turner, has and then leave. Settlers from the east­ been to trace the influence of the fron­ ern seaboard were prepared for the Ohio tier on American institutions rather Valley by their native landscape, and, than to discover what the west was like knowing the Ohio Valley, they felt at or what possibilities of growth it pos­ home in the plains that stretched from sessed. It remains for the critic and the Mississippi to the Rockies. But of historian to go back over these decades the Rockies, and its innumerable hidden and to pick up those threads of the valleys, and of the great Intermountain story that retain some vitality. To evoke West, reaching from the Rockies to the this era and to reconstruct its society is Sierras, for this region they had no prep­ 16 The Frontier

aration. It is not, therefore, surprising in fact. Revolvers were carried decades to discover in the period of its settlement after the necessity for their use had van­ interesting variations in the cultural pat­ ished. It took years to make a farm­ tern of the times. hand of the cowboy. There is an ele­ ment of play-acting in most of the man­ II. nerisms, of speech and otherwise, that During this middle period, Indians still masquerade under the caption of occasionally cavorted in the west, trains “ western.” were unquestionably robbed, and men In the typically western region in in saloons were frequently, and by hab­ which I was born, formed of the corner it, ungracious to the deity. Most of these of Northwestern Colorado, Utah, and celebrated historical obscenities, so care­ Wyoming, the only Indian disturbance fully preserved and boastfully exhibited recorded was the so-called Meeker Mas­ in a later age, did exist. It is possible sacre of 1879. Two youngsters once ter­ to obtain nowadays a first-rate account rorized the entire community by light­ of Leadville, Deadwood, or Tombstone, ing signal fires on adjacent hilltops. The merely because these gems of western region could not boast of a single “ bad- naivete, being news in their day, were man,” in the western manner, and its carefully reported. But the very hilari­ one “ killer” was a visitor from the State ousness of such focal points should have of Washington. The expression “ In­ warned historians that life elsewhere in dian scare” has become proverbial. The the west was not so boisterous. An erup­ only sheriff of stock company variety tion implies some accumulation. The that it ever deputized was Tom Horn, life of Leadville and Tombstone was the selected by an association of cattle men leaven that the west fermented; a frothy to drive out a nest of rustlers. After excitement that soon evaporated. It was breaking up this mildly notorious gang, really somewhat extraneous and foreign Horn went to Wyoming, and there, as to the real processes at work in the west. was his wont and profession, killed a Certainly it would be a mistake to rustler. But times had changed and ignore the picturesque, for it did have Horn, being without warrant or author­ a formative influence. The gaudier ele­ ity, was tried for murder, convicted, and ments of western life entered into the hanged. His memoirs, written in jail, common mold, coloring its expression, are the memoirs of a pious and righteous in much the same way that Hollywood man. Adventure in the west was not tinctures the flat surfaces of Los Ange­ of the variety, needless to say, that has les. Legend reacts on its subject. And been celebrated in a thousand dime-nov­ so the west did not forget its riotous els and visualized for eternity by Wil­ past; in fact this tradition was carefully liam S. Hart, Bronco Billy, and the les­ embalmed and was exhibited long after ser heroes of the “ westerns.” it had ceased to be animated by a gen­ It becomes, however, increasingly dif­ uine impulse. Easterners and other vis­ ficult to dissipate this legend of ex­ itors, coming into the west at a later travagant adventure and high daring. I date, were insensibly tricked into think­ know that many westerners will de­ ing that the west was much more “ ro­ nounce any repudiation of the legend as mantic” and “ picturesque” than it was downright heresy. Yet it remains a fact 17 The Frontier that, aside from the difficulties inher­ events until about 1910. It never had ent in a more rigorous climate and en­ a chance to become provincial. Some vironment, western life was no more consequences of this situation are re­ adventuresome than life elsewhere in flected in the west today, for the new America at the same time; in fact, dis­ generation is almost as restless and vol­ tinctly less so. Kansas, for instance, has atile as the old. a well-merited distinction for blood and Another factor that contributed to bravado. The western attitude is aptly this same end was the circumstance that illustrated by the history of the rodeo. people did not come to a final location This type of celebration, whether called in the west for several generations. “ rodeo,” “ fiesta,” or “ celebration,” There was scarcely a western family of was unquestionably born on the ranch any consequence that did not make its itself Neighbors were invited to wit­ annual, or less frequent, pilgrimage to ness a show staged by the ranch itself; the east. Christmas holidays usually they in turn extended similar invita­ saw the trains crowded with expatriate tions, and soon an institution had been easterners “ returning home.” They established and a profession founded. had not learned to regard the west as Today the business is monopolized by “ home.” Western men had to make the Bronco Busters Association. There frequent visits east; their mining and is evidence, however, that of late years, other occupational interests kept them the legend has suffered in popularity. in transit between the east and the west. The proprietors of news-stands inform Mr. Thomas Beer pictures the profes­ me that the demand for “ western” mag­ sional westerners, “ men in big hats, azines has abated, in fact has almost standing on comers of Wall Street or subsided, since the advent of the ‘ ‘ gang­ Broadway, amused and defiant.” The ster” journals. picture was, in fact, quite common. III. Families when they first settled in the As the outlines of a society began to west, if they could possibly find the emerge in the west, strange variations means to do so, would send their chil­ became apparent. The west was, for dren east to school. This oscillation be­ instance, never provincial. It was too tween the old and the new, which alone new to become provincial. It requires illustrates the difficulties inherent in a background, some long habituated the process of adjustment, continued for mode of existence, to produce a really several generations. It should be noted provincial society. And this the west once again, however, that I refer to never acquired. It was without tradi­ the period following that of explora­ tions and it manufactured its own folk­ tion, when the west was invaded by ways spontaneously. Towns were be­ the second wave of emigration made up ing constructed and torn down, new of professional men, merchants, pro­ peoples were infiltrating, society was moters, clerks, and those engaged in kept in a turmoil by the eruptions secondary industrial occupations. caused by the discovery of new mines However, much the same observation and the commencement of new land can be made of the earlier western so­ booms, to such an extent that the west ciety. In fact, Clarence King thought did not settle down to an even round of that the unsettled condition of western 18 The Frontier life had exerted a degenerative influ­ ment developed and not, as was more ence on its settlers. “ That brave spir­ commonly the case, the outgrowth of it of Westward H o! often degenerates settlement. into mere weak-minded restlessness, kill­ The significance of this growth of ing the power of growth, the ideal of western cities is that contemporaneously home, the faculty of repose. It results with the settlement of certain regions, in that race of perpetual emigrants who centers of urban life arose. To be sure, roam as dreary waifs over the west, these cities were rude and inelegant im­ losing possessions, love of life, love of itations of eastern models, but they God, slowly dragging from valley to evinced surprising aptitude for growth valley, till they fall by the wayside, and soon became fair specimens of happy if some chance stranger performs American urban life. Toward these for them the last rites, often less fortu­ cities of mushroom growth, western life nate, as blanched bones and fluttering gravitated. No great period of time rags upon too many hillsides plainly passed before westerners of the mildly tell. ’ ’ King’s slightly too-morose obser­ prosperous variety took up residence “ in vation has been confirmed by others. the city.” Many western families soon Mr. Bernard De Voto in “ The Crooked came to spend their winter months in Mile” (1924) states the theory that the city and their summers on the “ There was no frontier. There was no ranch, or at the mine. The rapid growth marginal province of freedom, opportu­ of these cities was, of course, largely nity, and virtue, but only an advanc­ caused by the sudden acquisition of vast ing fringe of dubious civilization where fortunes. men repeated the unchanging cycle of But the character of the camp sur­ their race. They were inheritors of vived in the city. When the great for­ fear and frustration.” tunes were acquired in Leadville and Cripple Creek, the gold came first to IV. Denver. The town boomed. Several Western cities sprang into existence fortunes were lured east and soon dis­ with a rapidity the consequences of sipated, as witness the career of Horace which are not generally appreciated. Tabor. For the most part, however, The settlement of the middle west was the miner turned capitalist and, after distinctly an agricultural settlement: a year'or so in New York, and pos­ the frontier advanced from farm to sibly Europe, returned to Denver and farm. But in the west new elements made it his home. He had discovered changed the pattern. A “ strike” would to his sorrow and almost mortal em­ be made and forthwith a camp sprang barrassment that being a millionaire was into being; this camp soon became a no particular distinction in the east. town; and, if the strike was substantial, Moreover, the east tended to curb his the town blossomed forth as a city. This eccentricities and to inhibit his grandi­ process of transformation would often ose ambitions. Instinctively he returned occur before there had been any substan­ to Denver, a young city that had no tial settlement of the land itself. So traditional inhibitions and that imposed that many western cities, such as Den­ no restrictions or criticisms upon the ver, were centers around which settle­ most wayward taste if it were local born, 19 The Frontier or, as they said, “ had come from the elegance, were the common stuff of west­ mines.” The capitalist built a horrible ern humanity. mansion on Capitol Hill, patronized the Even in the rural western community Brown Palace Hotel, and purchased a the same spirit was abroad. Most of seat in the United States Senate, an these communities were tributary to a honor that was commonly sold at auc­ neighboring city. For this reason the tion to the highest bidder in the state city, being at a distance, never lost its legislature. Something of this crude ex­ fascination. I f the visit was only a mat­ travagance, this naive grandeur, was re­ ter of annual occurrence, it gained in flected in the early architectural mar­ intensity by this very fact. It was sa­ vels of Denver. vored all the more keenly because of its The same forces were apparent in the infrequency. Housewives vied with one society that sprang into being in these another in their ambition to mimic city western cities. There is no pride so im­ manners and fashions. Long and spe­ perial as that which has been severely cific lists of purchases were made in snubbed, nor is there an exclusiveness the intervals between visits to the city, so rigid as that which has once known and the color of the city was reflected exclusion. Consequently, when Mr. and in the dusty roads of western towns. Mrs. Miner found that they were mere­ Fashionable dress was not uncommon. I ly curiosities in the urban centers of the have seen ladies and gentlemen alight east, they returned to the new-born city from sleighs, the bottoms of which were from which they had departed when it packed with straw and warmed by heat­ was hardly more than a camp and there, ed bricks wrapped in blankets, attired with former camp mates, formed their in modish costumes beneath sheepskin own society. And it was indeed amus­ coats, to attend parties at which ing. In Denver such a society, recruited “ punch” was served, card games played, from the mines and the timberlands and poems read, and prizes awarded. the cattle ranches, was headed for many V. years by a very remarkable woman, Mrs. Crawford Hill, who gave at least the It has been accepted as a common­ glitter of magnificence to the assemblies place for years that social distinctions of her Four Hundred. I have known were lost or hopelessly obscured in the elderly ladies in Denver, occupying high west. Here, again, the facts make a new and unassailable social positions, who pattern. There was social pretense in could curse like pirates and who had Leadville, the most celebrated mining been, in the not too distant past, all camp in America. In “ The Last As­ manner of things to all men. What sembly Ball,” Mrs. Mary Hallock Foote made this society so amusing, just as tells a story that today would be dis­ the homes of its grandees were so out­ missed as absurd and incredible. To landish, was this strange combination of support herself in Leadville, an emi­ the uncouth masquerading as the gen­ nently respectable widow starts a board­ teel. Not that its leaders were all illit­ ing-house. She boards only the minor­ erate; some of them were very intelli­ ity of well mannered bachelors. Im­ gent ; but the rank and file, despite their peccable order is maintained at her ta­ diamonds, fur coats, and unmatchable ble, and all the conventions are scrupu­ 20 The Frontier lously observed. Bad table maimers or Add to these elements the fact that the uncouth utterances bring a frown of settlers were recurited from the ends of discouragement from the lady. Her es­ the earth, representing every imagin­ tablishment prospers and she employs able breed and type, and one has suffi­ a hired girl. Complications immediately cient explanation for the ludicrous so­ arise. One of the boarders begins to cial situations that, at the hands of Mark look with favor upon the hired girl. The Twain and Bret Harte, became the sub­ proprietress is horrified at the spectacle ject of broad burlesque. I even ven­ of a “ gentleman” falling in love with ture the somewhat extravagant state­ a “ servant.” And this occurred in ment that social distinctions were actu­ Leadville in the seventies! The climax ally intensified in being transplanted to to the affair occurs when the servant the west, at least during the initial pe­ girl appears at the Assembly Ball, that riod after their arrival. famous Leadville soiree. I am told on The history of religion in the west is good authority that Mrs. Foote did not similarly paradoxical. One would im­ imagine this sentimental yarn. I might agine that, in the process of moving add that, in a western town scarcely a westward, settlers would discard their decade after it had ceased to be a fron­ more pious practices. But it would tier outpost, I have witnessed social seem that the further the devout trav­ quarrels as full of intrigue, as involved eled from the familiar church and par­ and complex, as any that Mrs. Wharton son, the more they hungered for religion. ever delineated. They did not forget to pray while en Several easily discernible elements route to their new homes. In fact, they contributed to this strange spectacle of prayed all the more fervently for being gentility flourishing in the wild west. exposed to new hazards. In the early There was, for instance, the “ tender­ settlements, it was some time before foot” element, an element that, as Mrs. enough settlers congregated in one place Foote observed, “ was always self-con­ to sponsor a church, and, during this scious, new to surrounding standards, unregenerate period, only one church warped by disappointment or excited by was maintained. But in such commu­ success, torn, femininely speaking, be­ nities it was not long before the religious tween a past not yet abandoned and a battles of the Reformation were being present reluctantly accepted.” This waged anew. In western towns of but tenderfoot element cherished former a few thousand population it is not sur­ habits and conventions with a vigor that prising to find most of the protestant did not abate even in the shadow of Mt. denominations represented by chapels Massive. Settlers who had become habit­ badly in need of a coat of paint, but lift­ uated to the new life resented the tender­ ing their steeples in proud defiance of foot’s squeamishness; they looked with amiability. scorn on any person who did not aban­ Several of the diaries kept by western don the manners, social practices, and emigrants report “ trials” that were held conventions of a lifetime in a fortnight. while the caravans moved westward. At The newness of the society was respon­ these trials offenders against the moral sible for conditions that elsewhere might code were reprimanded for their sins have been regarded as quite complex. even as wolves snarled beyond the camp­ The Frontier 21

fire and Indians hovered in the distance. doctor had to smuggle her body across One journal records an instance of a the river at night and bribe a negress woman who. having given birth to an (who did the washing for the village) infant out of wedlock, was expelled from to accept it so that he might announce, the party. In the community in which as he did, that the sister of the negress, I was born, a prodigal son was who had been visiting her, had died. In “ churched” by the community for the this way he was able to secure a decent offense of having an affair with a mar­ burial in the cemetery, the usual church ried woman. The trial was held much ceremoney with a minister officiating, in the Athenian manner: the entire for a girl who although a white was adult population acting as judge and charitably buried as a black. jury. Evangelism was not slow to get a foot­ YL hold in the west. My father told me A generation of critics has dismissed of numerous occasions when he had wit­ the fiction of Bret Harte, Mark Hallock nessed revival meetings being conduct­ Foote, and other writers of the early ed in the saloons of newly established west, with a curt reference to its “ senti­ western towns. Signs on the rocks, call­ mentality.” Both Harte and Mrs. Foote ing the sinners to Jesus, were painted were often sentimental, but in any sharp on the conspicuous monuments along clash between the old and the new sen­ the emigrant trail, in some cases appear­ timentality is likely to appear as a by­ ing side by side with Indian inscrip­ product of the transition. Settlers in tions. One of the men who came west the west were lonely; they were full of with my father was converted in an nostalgic longings for the places from evangelical meeting held in a saloon. He which they had come. It was quite fit­ later won fame as a cowboy evangelist, ting that Mr. Lynn Riggs should have his methods adumbrating those of the called one of his early plays “ The Lone­ Rev. Sunday by several decades. In­ some W est.” deed, the spectacle of the “ converted Sentimentality such as Harte depicted cowboy” was quite common and forms is not necessarily inconsistent with harsh the subject of many a risque ballad. qualities, as, in fact, he often demon­ A stern moral code prevailed and was strated. I knew a pioneer cattleman in enforced in most western communities Colorado who had married an eastern during the period that I have indicated. woman. They had three daughters, all When my father arrived in the frontier bom while that portion of the west was settlement of Steamboat Springs, Colo­ still “ frontier.” These girls lived in rado, there were four saloons impar­ one of the wildest regions of the far tially distributed along the trail that west, punched cows with the hard-rid­ later became Main Street. But within ing cowboys of their father’s “ outfit,” a year the townspeople had driven the and were excellent shots with revolvers. saloons across the river that flowed Yet one of these girls, when deserted by along one side of the village, and there a lover, composed a novel to commem­ the pariahs set up a colony of their own, orate her broken heart. She induced called “ Brooklyn.” When a prostitute her father to finance its publication and died in one of these brothels, the village it appeared between paper covers. It 22 The Frontier was an honest document and revealed etrated the land, had erected a huge mawkish sentimentality. Yet this girl hotel which, for that day, would have would have sent a bullet through the done credit to any fashionable resort heart of her unfaithful lover if she could in the east. And today a school for aes­ have found him! thetic dancing and a fashionable dude No one ever visited the west with ranch adorn a region through which I more preconceived ideas about the re­ have helped drive thousands of cattle gion or its inhabitants than Walt Whit­ to the railroad. There is nothing un­ man. Had he not written glowing trib­ usual about the dude ranch to the west­ utes to the “ masculinity” of the land? erner; it has merely made a profession Yet he wrote in his journal: of what was formerly a matter of hos­ I am not so well satisfied with pitality. The west was always full of what I see of the women of the “ dudes.” prairie cities. I am writing this When James Fullarton Muirhead where I sit leisurely in a store in Main Street, Kansas City, a stream­ gave the title “ The Land of Contrasts” ing crowd on the sidewalks flow­ to his volume of impressions of Amer­ ing by. The ladies (and the same ica, formed during a visit in 1898, he in Denver) are all fashionably must have been thinking of the west. drest, and have the look of “ gen­ His picture of Colorado Springs, while tility” in fact, manner and action. They are “ intellectual” and fash­ probably somewhat exaggerated, is not ionable, but dyspeptic-looking and an inaccurate summarization of the gen­ generally doll-like; their ambition tility of life in western summer re­ evidently is to copy their eastern sorts : sisters. Colorado Springs may he It would require no great searching in summed up as an oasis of East­ the archives to produce similar testi­ ern civilization and finish in an environment of Western rawness mony. and enterprise. It has been de­ I fancy that one factor which con­ scribed as a “ charming big vil­ tributed to the non-provincial character lage, like the well-laid-out suburb of western settlements was the presence of some large Eastern city.” Its wide, tree-shaded streets are kept of the tourist element. Kansas and Ne­ in' excellent order. There is a re­ braska attracted few parties of sight­ freshing absence of those “ loose seers, but Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Ne­ ends” of a new civilization which vada, Idaho, and Colorado were invaded even the largest of western cities by tourists from the opening of the fron­ are apt to show. No manufac­ tures are carried on, and no “ sa­ tier. The invasion continues into the loons” are permitted. The inhab­ present, with elaborate provisions being itants consist very largely of edu­ made for the sightseers. It was not un­ cated and refined people from the usual to find in the west, even during Eastern States and England, the period of its early settlement, splen­ whose health does not allow them did hunting lodges maintained by east­ to live in their damper native climes. The tone of the place is ern families. In the community in a refreshing blend of the civiliza­ which I lived, a wealthy Chicago fam­ tion of the East and the uncon­ ily, shortly after the railroad had pen­ ventionalism of the West. The Frontier 23

The “ scenic wonders” and “ miracle it marched toward the Pacific. Turner climate” of the west attracted thou­ should have known the gentlemen who sands of extraordinary “ settlers.” Eng­ invented barbed wire, the colt revolver, lish gentlemen, well educated eastern­ and the Vigilante committees. ers, people of refinement and culture, Many of the sharp contrasts and par­ were often lured west on one pretext or another and remained, either from ne­ adoxical qualities of western life may cessity or choice. This genteel element be traced to the influence of a conscious was not assimilated without traces of mimicry. Early settlers knew only the its influence becoming apparent. While land and culture from which they came, the experience was still new and before and this they gallantly endeavored to he had come to feel at home in the west, reproduce in the west. I am familiar the easterner of refinement was only with a small town on the eastern slope too apt to feel his gentility the more of the Rockies in Colorado that is built acutely for its isolation in the sun­ on the same principle as the towns of burnt west. New England. The village common is VII. faithfully reproduced and, were it not Turner, a masterly phrase-maker, con­ for the towering mountains in the dis­ vinced a generation of American his­ tance, one would take it for a Massa­ torians that “ democracy came out of chusetts village. The west can boast of the American forest.” I f he had quali­ innumerable villages each having a fied his statement by describing the house as grand as that owned by Dick democracy he had in mind as social Spindler in Bret Harte’s story with “ a democracy, democracy of manner, he large wooden structure in the pseudo­ would have been nearer the truth. For, classic style affected by Westerners, in a political sense, the west was never with an incongruous cupola, a still more democratic. Surely the homesteader, incongruous veranda extending around when he first came west, was not im­ its four sides, upheld by wooden Doric pressed with the “ democracy” of the columns.” One does not expect to find cattle barons. The cattle ranch itself a New England village in the Rockies was a feudal institution, from the nor such a house as Dick Spindler’s in “ boss” down to the “ foreman.” For Rough and Ready. But they exist a generation these cattlemen ruled their Such incongruities were taken as a mat­ thousands of acres with an autocracy ter of course in a land where, by hard only the more remarkable since it was usage, the faculty of surprise was ex­ seldom questioned and rarely described. hausted at an early date. Westerners The so-called “ boss-ridden east” could have seen too many contrasts; they have never hope to equal the west in the mat­ come to take contrast as a matter of ter of political corruption and the con­ course. trol of the agencies of government by It requires an active imagination to private interests. And it was out of visualize the west that existed during this far forest of the west that Mr. Tur­ this moment of arrested development, ner’s democracy was to come! For, ac­ when it had ceased to be frontier and cording to his theory, the quality of had not become the mediocrity of today. democracy would increase in purity as The curtain was lifted on this strange 24 The Frontier scene when the last map was drawn and London in the ’seventies, was bom of the highest peak scaled. The west was this ludicrous society where nothing was thinly populated, dotted with sprawling quite as it should be. It was a land towns, broken up into magnificent that defied easy classification or criti­ ranches, and enlivened by preposterous cism. You might feel that you were in cities. Its people had been thrown the west, but you were powerless to de­ broadly across the land and had taken fine its boundaries or characterize its root in the less formidable recesses of its inhabitants. Possibly it had no bound­ arid wastes and inaccessible mountains. aries and its inhabitants were charac­ During this moment in its development terless. It represented a handful of it existed in a nondescript and fortui­ America, horribly mixed and jumbled, tous informality, in a state of undress. in exile. So abounding was the confu­ It had not become reconciled to the new sion that it came to seem a natural ele­ nor had it abandoned the old. The ment and all sense of formality was quaint impinged on the crude and sen­ dissolved by scenes of unparalleled com­ timentality was inseparable from coarse­ icality. “ Our continent drained pris- ness. Western humor, celebrated in matically through Omaha once.”

WINTER SABBATH

H arold V inal

Chilly the aspen and the birch In everlasting cold, And such a chill was on the church, We all felt old.

A psalm it was the preacher read About the flowing waters; I think he prayed unto the dead And not to sons and daughters.

The wine we drank was frozen wine, The bread we broke was snow, The cold that ate us was a sign Of how our sleep would go.

A row of corpses there we sat Our meek arms bent across Our chilly breasts, and wondered at The Lord upon the cross. The Frontier 25

TWO AGAINST THE SKY

H arry 6 . H use

HEN together they first faced teamster. Heads down! Driving back Lonesome Prairie John Far- and forth in the dirty city streets, a no­ W rel and Ed Lenker had known body! each other twenty-four hours. ‘‘That’s right, all right,” said Ed They had met the day before, coming Lenker. He never could have thought out in the chair car from Saint Paul. of it by himself. They sat side by side on the dusty green They looked out the windows at the plush, two young fellows in rumpled Dakota wheat fields, the Dakota grain blue suits. They looked, now at their elevators, the little Dakota towns. fellow passengers, now out the window ‘ ‘ E d! That’s what w e’re going to do at the interminable monotony of North out there in Montana— what those fel­ Dakota. Ed Lenker was big and red, lows have done here. E d! That’s the solid and slow-spoken. He hadn’t found kind of a country we’re going to make much to say, getting acquainted. Born out there with this new dry farming. and raised on a farm in Wisconsin, he Going to make the desert blossom like said. Hard work as far back as he the rose!” could remember. Left when he was Ed Lenker nodded. twenty-one for a city teaming job where ‘ ‘ It ain’t really a desert, Ed. Not he never really felt at home. John Far- where you and I are going. I talked rel, lean, quick, enthusiastic, mentioned with fellows in the Immigration De­ his drudging clerkship in a railway gen­ partment. Big, empty country, and eral office. But about the adventure windy. But grows good grass. It’s just ahead of them he talked and talked while dry and you have to save all the mois­ Ed Lenker listened and nodded and list­ ture with this new summer fallow. Break ened. it out and break it up and keep it pul­ “ I tell you it means something to verized.” young fellows like you and me to have ‘‘That’s right,” said Ed Lenker. this come alon g!" The train stopped just after sundown John Farrel was full of the lore of the to take on water. The two of them got colonization pamphlets. out to walk up and down a tiny station ‘‘You and me. Just nobodies work­ platform. The country was changing. ing with our heads down in cities. Then The big wheat fields and the little along comes this last call for pioneers. houses and towns were gone. Here was Pioneers, Ed! Think of what that a region of desolate flats and barren, means! The last frontier!” fantastic hills, gashed and gullied with He brought his hand down on his dry watercourses. Crimson flamed in companion’s sturdy knee. The friend­ the west. Against its glory a distant liness of the blow, of being called ‘ ‘ Ed ’ ’ butte loomed black and strange, far off by this educated fellow who was headed and lonely. John Farrell straightened west like himself to take up a dry-land his shoulders and faced it. He shivered homestead, warmed the big, lonely in the chill evening breeze. 26 The Frontier

“ Going to be a man-sized job, Ed,” When they emerged at last from the he said. valley he waved his whip widely over Ed Lenker nodded. the backs of the livery team, and his They awoke next morning before dawn talk peopled the empty expanse of First to stretch cramped necks and brush off Bench with a hundred families. the night’s dust and cinders. Outside ‘ ‘ She ’ll be settled right into the river the windows lay a new country, born breaks!” he boasted, “ with folks that overnight, a country of impossible dis­ come later and have to take what’s left. tances—grey prairie rimmed at its ut­ Best soil’s way out on Lonesome Prai­ ter, incredible horizon by snow-capped rie.” mountains pink with the sun. Pres­ They stood at last on their own free ently that vast desolation came alive acres. The locator had driven on to look with mellow, warming light. They had up surveyed corners. They stood there, to be content with that one glimpse of a little spent with the day’s emotions, their new kingdom. The train slipped facing the emptiness and desolation of into a hidden coulee and thence into a the great high plain. Lonesome Prairie! valley where ash-grey bluffs stood up “ Have to dig a well first,” said Ed narrowly above the banks of a grey riv­ Lenker. er. The sudden, stifling darkness of a It helped, Ed found, to hang onto the tunnel, and then an old town, asleep thought of the slow, steady steps by under scraggly cottonwoods at one end which a job was to be accomplished. of a gaunt red bridge. “ Get water first. One well for the Culbertson! The end of the trail and two places. Build a couple of shacks. the beginning! Buy horses and set to breaking, if it Here was the Montana of the past, ain’t too dry already. Too dry, we this lazy, dusty, sundrenched little vil­ build fence.” lage sprawling on a flat between the John Farrel wasn’t listening. The bluffs of a barren valley. Dashboard immensity of all that grass and all that fronted saloons and stores, Chinese res­ sky pressed upon him. taurants, windows of chaps and wide- “ She’s a big country,” he said, grop­ brimmed hats, vivid shirts and boots and ing for something. saddles. It was all interesting. But off Then Ed Lenker felt it. there beyond the bluffs, grassy mile “ Pig all right,” he said, “ Bigger’n upon grassy mile, lay the Montana of Wisconsin. Bigger’n I thought.” the future—their joint future they had “ B ig!” said John Farrel, “ And already decided, with the sudden deci­ empty—and kind of awful, Ed------sion of lonely men. John Farrel want­ Ed! We ain’t anybody! She’s got ed to set off on foot for another sight along all these years without us------of their kingdom as they waited for the She don’t even know we’re here— don’t claim locator. Ed Lenker said it was give a whoop about us!” farther than you’d think. He guessed Ed Lenker nodded. She didn’t give they’d see enough of the benchland be­ a whoop. That was it. fore they were through. “ But we’ll make her sit up and take The locator proved to be more elo­ notice, Ed! You and m e!” quent than the colonization pamphlets. Again Ed Lenker nodded. The Frontier TJ

“ Have to dig a well first,” he said. ground froze they had two narrow They dug their well in a low spot at strips of breaking. The row of trees the edge of Ed Lenker’s three hundred had to wait. and twenty. After that they built their They meant to plant them the second shacks, twin shacks side by side with summer. But the sod stayed moist and only the surveyed boundary of their mellow under incredible rains. No time two claims between them. Lonesome to spare from the breaking! At the Prairie, busy with her immemorial rou­ end of that gracious year they planned tine of drying up under blistering winds upon more than a row of tree. Noth­ and sun did not sit up and take notice. ing less than a grove! All Lonesome Folks did. Prairie planned big things that win­ The zealous locator waved his whip ter. Neighbors visited from shack to like a scepter of empire toward a raw shack and gathered to dance ’til morn­ ring of yellow earth, two knotty little ing in a gaunt new schoolhouse. The buildings and a lengthening row of post women chattered of the inconveniences holes where two men straightened from of dry-land housekeeping. The men, their labors to answer his hail. gathered about the stove, matched each “ Two young fellows that come in to­ other’s stories of unbelievable wheat gether early,” he said to claim seekers yields from the little soddy patches they from Nebraska, from Iowa, from Wash­ had managed to get in. ington or Kansas or Idaho or Missouri, John and Ed had their trees the next “ Hit it o ff together. Done all that in summer, and managed somehow to keep just a month, M ister!” the row of spindling box elder saplings Watching the buggy disappear with­ alive during that ruinous year and the in its dust, John Farrel wiped his fore­ drier ones that followed. They stood in head. He was digging hole for hole with their lee, facing a Lonesome Prairie Ed now, but it kept him sweating. grown emptier somehow than on that “ More dry-landers, E d,” he said, other day clear back at the beginning. “ Going to have plenty of neighbors.” That day there had been no skimpy, sag­ Ed Lenker spat on his hands. ging fences to divide immensity into “ Coming fast now they got started,” desolate rectangles, no scabby grey he said. shacks to stare with vacant doors and “ Going to change the looks of things windows out over abandoned fields. a lot, Ed, somebody on every half sec­ There had been no thought of neighbors, tion.” weaker than themselves, or wiser, gone He gazed at the twin shacks, tiny in back down the road to Culbertson. that vast desolation. Somehow they “ Here five years, Ed. Poorer than hadn’t changed the look of things as when we came!” much as he had expected. Lonesome Ed Lenker, heavier with the work that still— a little. But get some other build­ had made John Farrel leaner and more ing around them— maybe a row of trees intense, nodded. —some of that grass turned under— They got a stable. It helped, for all They faced their withered wheat. it stood so low and squatty against the “ Burnt up again, E d !” sky. The fall rains came, and before the Ed Lenker nodded. He turned his 28 The Frontier

back on ruin to study a barren, cloddy done where they came from. Got some­ field. John Farrel turned too. thing they haven’t, Ed, you and me.” “ This cussed summer fallow, E d !” John Farrel turned back toward the he said, “ A perfect come-on game for twin shacks. Had they something? dry-land suckers!” Those two little warped and weathered He kicked at the stubborn clods about houses. The flimsy stable racked by his feet. Licked all right! He might as vicious winds. A chicken house, a shed, well admit it. Ed Lenker was different. this row of half-dead saplings. John couldn’t think of Ed Lenker’s Had they anything? He hadn’t, but ever being licked. He thought of him Ed had, John told himself. Had to face as he had been that first fall when they it somehow and tell Ed he was licked. had set to breaking—a heavy, tireless fig­ He turned to his companion, standing ure behind heavy, plodding horses, lay­ so solidly there in the blasted wheat, ing over the mile-long brown ribbons of facing the challenge of Lonesome Prai­ sod. Twelve hours a day, seven days rie. a week—“ Nice steady work,” he’d say as they sat at their late supper, “ break­ Ed Lenker struggled to meet John’s ing sod.” eyes. He couldn’t make it. He saw Ed as he was in the chill “ Time to quit, I guess,” Ed said. early mornings, moving from horse to John Farrel stared. This wasn’t horse in the gloom of their common sta­ right. This wasn’t at all the thing he ble, throwing on harness and fastening had expected. buckles, ignoring the great grey desola- He straightened. ion that pressed in on John Farrel “ Nonsense, Ed. Quit your kidding. through the open windows. He saw This country’ll raise wheat!” him hunched on the seat of a weed-skin­ Ed Lenker failed to nod. ner in the heat haze of mid-afternoon, a “ Got something they haven’t, Ed, you silent driving force enthroned in a cloud and m e!” of dust. He saw him luminous evenings, “ Right, all right,” said Ed Lenker. serene against the purple emptiness of Heartening, that catechism! the east or the crimson fury of the west They didn’t quit. They went that —“ Going to start breaking that last winter into the coal mines at Belt. There forty tomorrow.” in the chilly murk of the stopes, awk­ Evening after evening, sprawled on ward and alien among the Finn miners, the parched grass, tallying departed they worked out a new faith against the neighbors, the two of them had worked impassivity of Lonesome Prairie. out a catechism— “ Law of averages is bound to work, “ This country’ll raise wheat, Ed.” Ed. Fifteen inches of moistui*e a year “ That’s right.” will raise a crop.” “ Got to learn by experience the right Ed Lenker’s silent nod as he swung way to handle the soil, Ed.” his pick. “ That’s it, the way you say.” * ‘ Got to keep on putting her in every “ Half these folks weren’t farmers, year now, regardless. Be ready for the Ed. Fellows like me. The ones that good ones, Ed. Get in every acre we were farmers wanted to do like they’d can manage and fallow every acre we The Frontier 29 can plow. Work out for wages again if —well, lively. Different from the girls we have to, the hard winters.” out here we used to meet at dances.” That was it, agreed Ed Lenker. “ What folks are saying, Ed.” ‘ * Get all the land we want now on our “ All the single fellows on the bench own terms. Big teams, Ed. Twelve hanging ’round her up there at the horses ain’t any harder to drive than schoolhouse ’cept you and—you and six. Big fields. A ll the horses we want me.” in the spring for the catching.” “ That’s what I hear folks telling, “ Right, all right,” said Ed. E d .” Now there was no longer any talk of “ Guess you’ll be hanging around up quitting on a Lonesome Prairie where there too after the work slacks up a lit­ Ed Lenker and John Farrell urged their tle? Seems like you’re more her kind lumbering teams over the cheap acres, than any other of the fellows on Lone­ fighting the weeds of a wet spring. No some Prairie. Smart and—well, lively. ” evening catechism now on the parched ‘ ‘ Not me! Anybody from here hangs grass in the lee of the box elders. In­ around the new teacher it’ll have to be stead they prowled about the edges of you, eh Ed?” two lusty wheat fields. They pulled off It had to be Ed, awkward and con­ heads and gloated over the weight and strained in his blue suit. It had to be plumpness of the milky kernels. Ed, patient in the face of Bernadine’s “ Thirty bushels, Ed, or I ’m a lia r!” indecision. “ That’s what she’ll make all right,” “ But he ain’t stuck-up,” he rallied to said Ed, “ W ork out a hitch for sixteen John Farrel’s defense against Berna­ horses. ’ ’ dine’s sudden, disquieting attacks. That harvest changed things. The “ You’d like him. No ma’am! He ain’t tide of flinty, high protein wheat pour­ unfriendly. He’s the warmest hearted ing down the road past empty shacks fellow you ever knew. And quick and and thistle choked fields to Culbertson lively! Lots of ways he’s just like you. brought back a straggling second wave Just wait ’til you get to know him!” of the seeking and hopeful. Not so many Bernadine waited almost the whole this time, not so blindly hopeful. year without getting to know John Far­ It brought Bernadine Foster to teach rel. But it wasn’t her fault, said Lone­ in a Lonesome Prairie schoolhouse. She some Prairie women folks, the way she’d came fresh from Normal School in Min­ tried. At the end of the spring term nesota, with her easy city ways, her gay she married Ed Lenker. John Farrel city clothes, her clever, quick way of stood up with them in the Culbertson talking. minister’s front parlor. Already Ed’s It changed things. There before the shack had been moved a hundred yards twin shacks Ed Lenker blushed to the south of the boundary and with two ear tips. rooms added was a twin no longer. “ Good looking, kind of, John, the new They stood together, John and Ed, school teacher,” he said. by the newly painted house that last un­ “ Think so, E d ? ” easy evening before the wedding trip to “ Kind of lively like, and smart and town. 30 The Frontier

“ Guess we’ve got over the hardest Bernadine went in town with Edna and bumps already, Ed,” said John Farrel. John when it came time for the second “ That’s right,” said Ed, “ that’s what marriage. In her shiny kitchen Berna­ I was thinking.” dine cooked and served the wedding supper. They stood there, silent. “ Things,” said Ed Lenker, “ Things’ll “ Four of us here together now on be just the same as ever.” Lonesome Prairie! ” Ed Lenker beamed “ You bet, E d !” on the other three from his place at the “ You’ll always be at home here, festive table, “ Good crops ahead, looks like. Good times too, I guess, the four John.” “ You bet, Ed.” of us here together.” But they hadn’t been quite the same. “ That’s right,” said John Farrel. He didn’t feel quite at home in that Bernadine bit her lip. other house with its curious tension. His The four of them there together? Ed own shack now was grey and lonely. and John harnessed their horses morn­ He did feel at home somehow at a ings in the common stable on John’s dance at the schoolhouse, talking to Otto side of the line. They watered them at Schultz’s pretty daughter, Edna. He the common well on E d’s side. From felt at home lounging in Otto’s kitch­ their backyards Bernadine and Edna en watching Edna Schultz move so si­ took care to wave to one another. lently and surely about her work. Ed­ Bernadine’s house was larger, better na’s cheeks were flushed and her steady furnished. Edna’s was tidier. Berna­ grey eyes came alive when John Farrel dine had a little plot of flowers strug­ talked of the new tractors and com­ gling to grow in the lee of the box eld­ bines. ers. Edna had a kitchen garden. Ber­ Bernadine Lenker watched from her nadine’s clothes and linens were pret­ window. tier and smarter than Edna’s. Edna’s “ H e’s going over there almost every were two hours earlier on the drying other night now,” she told Ed. line. Ed Lenker moved over and put an “ Seems like it’s hard to be friendly,” awkward arm about his wife. Together Edna told John Farrel, “ I can’t find they stood looking out into the dusk at anything to say. Seems like I try to be a figure moving eagerly down a grey neighbors, take something I ’ve baked road. over and she doesn’t hardly like it.” “ He was oyer there all day Sunday,” Lonesome Prairie yielded a grudging said Bernadine Lenker. twenty bushel crop. Ed Lenker and “ That’s fine!” said Ed, “ Kind of John Farrel harvested it together. But lonesome, him over there by himself. ’ ’ Bernadine and Edna, each in her own “ Curious,” said Bernadine, “ what he kitchen, took turns feeding the heading sees in her.” and threshing crews. Ed Lenker looked down at his wife. John Farrel hauled his wheat to town “ It ain’t everyone,” he said, “ can and sold it. He needed the money to get a girl like you.” make a payment on another half-sec­ John Farrel’s shack took on extra tion. Ed Lenker was buying more land rooms and a coat of paint. Ed and too. He and John had talked over the The Frontier 31

wheat market. But talking it over lat­ the stable. He tried to miss John at the er with Bernadine who kept up with well. things in the papers, Ed decided to hold “ You’re right, I guess,” John told his wheat. his wife bleakly, “ Hard now to be The four of them there together!! friendly.” They faced a long winter. Day after There at her window, while the first day, week after week, shut up in houses chinook gnawed the snow, Bernadine so close together, so far apart on a bliz­ Lenker watched with eyes suddenly ap­ zard-lashed Lonesome Prairie. prehensive and guilty. Ed Lenker and John Farrel met Ed Lenker and John Farrel, faced mornings and evenings in the stable. each other in the dirty slush by the well “ Toughest winter yet, Ed.” they had dug together. “ That’s right.” “ You should have sold your wheat “ Wheat’s down another two cents. after we’d talked it over, Ed.” Kind of glad I sold.” “ I guess you think you’re the brains “ Guess maybe you are all right,” said Ed. of this combination,” said Ed Lenker, “ Me, I ’m just the dumb muscle.” They stood by their common well, hunting for things to say. Ed’s face was red with something “ Wheat’s still on the toboggan, Ed. more than the sting of the chinook, Down four cents by day before yester­ John Farrel’s grey-white like the snow. day’s papers.” “ Why E d !” “ Not worrying about the price now,” “ W e’ll manage,” said Ed Lenker, “ to said Ed Lenker, “ Thing that counts is get along all right without any help the price in the spring when I ’m ready from y o u !” to sell.” Loyalty! Bernadine had taught him! They failed to meet each other’s eyes John Farrel bit his lip. as they turned away. “ All right, Ed.” It lasted a long time, that winter. “ I ’ll thank you from now on to stay “ I won’t have her smiling to herself off my place!” at me!” Bernadine had it out finally “ W hat?” with Ed Lenker, “ Of course she’s smil­ “ Stay off my place!” ing. Coming over here with things to “ The well’s on your side, Ed. I ’ve criticize my cooking and housekeeping. got to come here for water.” Oh, I can see it all right in her eyes. ‘ ‘ Dig your own well! I ’ll thank you Now she’s got him smiling to himself at to stay o f f ! ” you about the wheat. Laughing up his John Farrel’s face was red now too sleeve! Laughed up his sleeve probably without the bite of the chinook. all the time you were living there to­ “ Then stay off my place. Get your gether. You so dumb and good na- cows and hay out of the stable!” tured! Taught him everything he’s ever “ Nothing’ll suit me better,” said Ed. learned about farming, and him laugh­ John Farrel didn’t dig a new well. ing at you all the tim e! ’ ’ He didn’t need to. Ther'e was a well on Ed waited now in the house until his new half-section a mile to the north. John should have finished his chores in There was a house there too that would 32 The Frontier serve with a little fixing. There was a The telephone bell beside her set up barn. a steady ringing, calling the Culbertson The Farrel household goods, piled operator. She hesitated, then took down high on a hayrack, moved down the the party line receiver and listened, un­ road. Ed Lenker tried to keep away ashamed now, to Ed Lenker’s worried from the window, tried not to meet Ber­ voice. nadine ’s sobered, self-reproachful eyes. She heard the doctor’s answer. Twen­ Within a week the Farrel house, broken ty miles through the drifts? No sir! He again into the three shacks that com­ couldn’t make it. Not even half way posed it, went off across the snow- with a team of horses. What could Ed splotched field on skids. do? Why, get some neighbor woman. Lonesome Prairie! High and wide Have her call him up if she didn’t know and windy. Big and empty still, so what to do. He’d tell her. little changed by what men did under Edna reddened, and spoke into the that vast, vacant sky. Here and there transmitter. the vivid green rectangles of struggling “ I ’ve been listening. This is Edna wheat, the dusty brown fields of fallow. Farrel. I live nearest. You tell me.” A gracious yield this year. A crop John broke the trail for Edna south barely worth the cutting the next. The across the fields. At the fence he big teams were going, the new light stopped and held down the wire. Edna tractors coming in. Lone men, dwarfed went on, hurrying into the house. John by the machines they drove and the ma­ stood there, then turned back along his chines they drew, crept round their broken trail. mile-long fields, solitary save for the roar Inside the house Ed Lenker was al­ of an exhaust, the drone of gears, the ready shaken and useless with the first wind-tattered dust clouds of their own whimperings of Bernadine’s struggle. raising. Giving over responsibility into Edna’s The houses pulled more widely apart quiet hands he fled outdoors to prowl with each tractor’s need of a thousand up and down in the last of the storm acres. A mile apart, two miles, three between his huddled buildings. He sometimes, sprawled the low buildings, moved to the fence and stood there, seeking vainly to loom important and studying the tracks that came and halt­ dominating. A single telephone wire ed and waited and then turned back strung from house to house and into town along the fence posts. across the snow. The bite of the dying wind drove him Winter again, and a sudden, untimely to the lee of the barn. He stood there, blizzard choked the roads. Edna Far­ thankful for the gusts that muffled rel, for all the distance between those the sounds from inside the house. Edna houses, stood at her window, gazing had said if she needed him she’d call south through the thinning snow. Ber­ him. Women’s business inside there, he nadine over there, she knew, with her time coming, if it wasn’t here already. comforted himself. Bernadine alone with Ed when by now He thrust his hands into the pockets she should have been in the hospital in of his sheepskin coat, stamping his feet town. against the creeping cold. Lonesome The Frontier 33

Prairie stretched before him, ■white and the sun was almost down. He ventured empty, bleak and cruel. into the kitchen, warm and clean and steamy. He shied away from the Women’s business! The words ran in his head. He stamped the snow with a swaddled bundle on the table, and tip­ curious, slow resentment. The two of toed to the bedroom. Bernadine’s face them there together inside the house— was ravaged, but the eyes that greeted Bernadine and Edna. Bringing forth his were quiet and happy. Her hand new life on Lonesome Prairie. Himself was in Edna’s. There was a bond be­ alone out here and useless. John Farrel tween them. Ed tried to say something alone over there, useless too. Well, he and couldn’t. and John had brought forth new life He went back to the kitchen and stood together—wheat, and the scraggly row looking down at the wrinkled red face of box elders. of his son. Edna followed him. She pushed him gently to one side. He and John Farrel there together. A “ H e’s got to go in now, to his moth­ couple of young fellows that met on the er.” train. Had something the others hadn’t, W omen’s business. Well, time enough John and him. Something you needed later for the pride and wonderment of [ here. They’d lost it. Lost it on a Lone- the little fellow’s coming. Something j some Prairie suddenly gone more empty else now needing to be done. Something and lonesome than on that day clear to be got back. Something he’d thought back at the beginning. he could get along without, but couldn’t. Women’s business! The words kept He quitted the house and moved to running in his head. W omen’s business. the fence where the trail was already Well, no need now to blame them. broken, waiting. He set out along it, He roused at Edna’s hail. The snow an eager figure tiny against the snow about his feet, he saw, was widely tramp­ beneath that vast arch of sky. led. The western sky had cleared and Lonesome Prairie?

BY THE SEA L ydia B. L ittell

The advancing sun upon the sea Breaks mighty lances; the low-toned thunder Of that great heart forever stirred Fills and subdues the soul with wonder;

And thought like a baffled bird turns back, And speculation’s pride is rended; Language seems but a foolish thing; Here there alone are apprehended

Immortal music that grandly speaks, Yet leaves the final Word unspoken; Light that cleaves veil after veil, Yet leaves the ultimate veil unbroken. 34 The Frontier

THRESHING

L u c y M. C. R obinson

I. THE CREW ARRIVES

It’s cool on our back porch. I swing my feet While wagons creek on the Vandycken hill And through the barbed wire gate. My mother comes out from the kitchen heat And makes a stiff salute to husky appetite Coming up from the wheat, Hand over eyes to guard against the sun. Twenty-six big Dutch threshers riding there . . . (To eat us out of house and home, she said.) The room behind us smelled of fresh-baked bread, Baked ham, and pumpkin pies. My mother’s eyes look tired. At supper time It’s been a good long while since daylight came. She only fed ten men For breakfast, but we children take A little time. And Wilbur found A button off his coat. She baked ten loaves Of white and graham bread; some big dark eake; Had dinner ready promptly. Wilbur always said It made men mad to wait for meals. The dishes washed, She sent the younger kids to take a nap, and then Filled all the lamps, and lanterns for the men; Went out and busted up a setting hen; Hunted the eggs; opened the oven door Sometimes, and turned the ham a little more. She cleaned the chickens for tomorrow noon, Then set the tables just a mite too soon And dressed the kids. They cry an awful lot. I buttoned shoes for them and I just thought When I get big I ’ll put a stop to that! I am too small to help much yet; I ’m ten. But I run errands, and I scrub Stacks of potatoes; and today you bet When I shelled peas they flew into the pan! My mother lets me bake, some days, a little frosty cake For my own self. If I could reach the shelf I ’d look at what I baked today. It’s fun to bake, but it’s a lot more fun To steal through thickets with my dog and gun! The Frontier 35

The wagons sound so cranky in the lane; They grumble like a tired old man in pain. I think they’re tired, too. The yellow wheat Is gold, and gold is heavy, Wilbur says. Vandycken’s crop was good; they say it ran Sixty-three bushels to the acre. Ours will be As good as theirs, I guess. I swing my feet A minute more. My mother turns away. The men are here! Let’s eat!

II. TWELVE O’CLOCK

The horses stamp beside the water trough And harness jingles. That big shiny bay Is Rose, and Rose is mine. It makes me cough When she shakes wheat-dust as she turns away Toward the barn. W e’re late today, And all the men are ready by the door. It’8 time to pound the gong in just a minute more. That gong is cracked. I ’ll get another disk Prom the old plow, tonight when they are home And have a little time to tinker round. A larger disk will make a bigger sound When I reach up a wagon bolt and pound Three ringing strokes. That’s “ come and eat,” you know; When I hit twice it means that company’s come, And one is quitting time. I pound a noisy tune In early morning, ding dong, ding ding ding; And then if they don’t start I go right out and sing A sassy song outside the bunk-house door! It makes my father just so awful sore When they are slow. (Wilbur’s my step-dad now; My mother married him. She says he’d like it more If I would speak to him respectfully. Oh, well, I will.) Wilbur’s all right, but I Remember my own daddy who is dead. Wilbur gets mad sometimes, and makes my mother cry. Just yesterday that big Jim Norman said When Wilbur got a nickle in his eye He couldn’t see a dollar on the fence. These Dutchmen haven’t got a bit of sense About the way they eat. Old Prank sits there And grabs a plate of meat, And gobbles half of it. I carry in 36 The Frontier

Three platters loaded down with chicken pie, Platters of ham, cold beef and slabs of cheese. I mashed those spuds until they look like snow And put in gobs of butter. Don’t tell Wilbur, please! He always catches me at that and says, “ Go slow !” My mother made the pickles out of rinds Of watermelon, and of orange peel. I giggled when I saw that Black Swede steal Pour helpings. Watch him gnaw a chicken bone! Our kitchen range is old. Once on a time It was the army range at old Port Yellowstone. It has twelve holes, and we sure need them all My mother says, at this time in the Pall. The coffee boiler takes a lot of space. The warming oven’s full of hot mince pie. The loaves of bread are rising in proud rows Along the oven top. I cast a cheerful eye along the table. Men can hardly say a word Until they’re full; there is no time to waste When this crew eats. They don’t take time to taste! That table looks just like the breaking up Of a hard winter. Here’s another cup Of coffee, piping hot. Just help yourself To anything you see. Oh, no you d on ’t ! You big sheep-herder! No. You can’t eat me! There are a million dishes in the sink, And maybe more. I ’ll wipe them carefully, Put them away, and then, perhaps, I think Wilbur will let me ride to town To get the mail. Down in the small corral My pony’s waiting with his saddle on Since I took out the lunch at ten o’clock. I couldn’t turn him loose with other stock Because he’s hard to catch. He is so ornery, Sometimes, and tries to buck Me higher than a kite. Another piece of pie ? The first men out are hooking up their teams. The lazy sunshine could be full of dreams But there’s no time for dreams today. They’ll thresh the lower eighty next, the silver oats . . . The prettiest field of all. My gosh! They threw their coats Right down here in the way! The Frontier 37

III. OVER SUNDAY

Down by the ditch there is a clump of trees That whisper quietly all afternoon. This morning it was cold, with a strong breeze Out of the north. Winter will be here soon, But we were lucky and the threshers came Lots earlier than usual. I sneaked away To read a book. If Wilbur caught me now He’d say that it was wicked on the Sabbath Day To read my tattered old “ White Company!” I got in trouble just this morning, too; The men were shooting at a bright tin can Behind the log corral • they yelled to me To bring my Savage out, so they could see I f Jim could beat me. Our new hired man Thinks he can shoot. He said no little girl Or big one either could beat him. They stood me up beside The snubbing post. And then old Andy tried To bet Jim money that the gal could shoot The pipe out of his mouth. It made me laugh inside Because Jim was afraid they’d think him scared. He looked at me a minute, then he stared At my big gun. The whole crew stood around And grinned at him. He didn’t know right then What I can do with that old gun! It’s funny when They kid a stranger. Just then Wilbur came. “ Go in the house;” he said. “ I t ’s just a shame For little girls to hang around the men.” We had the crew for dinner. Most of them Could just as well go home, but then they want to play At horseshoe pitching in the branding pen. I know a bunch plays poker in the hay Above the stable. Wilbur’d have a fit! He takes it hard When men do that. His moral principles Sure do work overtime, as Andy said. My mother’s having just a little nap Before it’s supper time. The tiny lap Of water in the ditch makes lazy tunes And makes me drowsy, too. I mustn’t go to sleep Here on the bank; that big old ditch is deep! 38 The Frontier

FRATERNITY

B rassil F itzgerald

HE johnapples who don’t get into Jay liked it. He was grateful to Yard- fraternities do a lot of crying ley. Vic took him around a lot, but T about snobbishness. Nobody list­ sometimes he’d freeze him. Vic is like ens to them. I f fellers are going to be that. I guess it comes natural for a brothers, wear the same pin and every­ Yardley, bossing around a lot of serv­ thing, they’ve got to have the right ants and all that. If you go to a dance background and that sort of thing. You with him and he doesn’t like his girl, got to draw the line. pretty soon she’s your girl. He’s a Us Sigmas learned our lesson. Before smooth worker. we pledge a lad now we look him up. Don’t get me wrong. I ’m not pan- I Athlete or not, or no matter what prep ning Vic Yardley. H e’s got his points. he comes from, we investigate. His sister is married to an English Take Jay Levon. He wore his clothes johnny with a title, but he don’t talk right, knew his forks and all that. A family. A lot of guys would, but Vic handsome johnny, sort of dark and ro­ just takes it for granted. And if he mantic looking. He came down from likes you, nothin’s too good for you. Groby with the blue ribbon for studies Anyhow he’s a brother Sig. and a couple of football letters. So we Vic was out for the boxing cup that rushed him. winter. He used Jay for a sparring Of course the Sigmas are a bit choosy. partner. Jay could step, himself. But Most of the lads belong because their he wasn’t in V ic’s class. The two of Dads did and that sore of thing. But them looked good in the ring just the the Dekes were after Jay, so we grabbed same. Jay, dark and black, and Vic, him. Vic Yardley proposed him. Vic just the opposite, regular Nordic, blonde j had known him at Groby Academy. He and tall and slim. They’d box pretty said the Sigmas could use Levon. So for three or four rounds and then Vic we took him in. would warm up. Vic would sock pretty Vic usually gets what he wants. H e’s hard, but Jay never got sore. H e’d just one of the Yardleys. The Yardley Mills, cover up and take it.. you know. H e’s got personality and a That summer Vic took Jay and me up Caddy roadster. Good feller, too. The to the Yardley place on the north shore. best boxer in college and a good spender. His people were abroad, all but an uncle The girls fall for him. who played the piano and raised peonies. Well— getting back to Jay. We made All by himself with a couple of gard- him a brother Sig and he was o. k. He ners. Vic and Jay had a session in the made the freshman eleven and the Lit library every morning reviewing math. Society that first year. No swelled head Vic had a condition to get off in the either. He was always pretty quiet fall. Outside of that we just played around the house, sort of anxious to around. Tennis and riding and that sort please. And very handy for Yardley. of thing. Jay loved it. I had a kind Vic never had time to do his math prob­ of narrow escape that summer. I fell lems and he’d turn them over to Jay. hard for a little jane I met at a castle The Frontier 39 down the road. I got so I ’d take one up a couple of times and she happened of the Yardley cars and just drive to be dated with Jay. It seemed to around her estate, thinking about her. irritate him. The lads started to kid But it turned out she was there to teach him, but he didn’t like it. He thought the kids French or something. And any­ Jay would ease out of the picture. But how I had to go home. Jay was scared Jay didn’t; he was nuts about Alison. of girls. I didn’t pay any attention to this at That fall Jay made the Varsity and the time, but I remembered it later. They the freshmen started following him put on the gloves one night up at the around. He was getting to be a big house, just fooling. And Vic was rough. shot himself. He slammed into Jay like nobody’s busi­ The Sigs all liked Jay, although, look­ ness. Jay took one on the chin and ing back on it now, I can see things. dropped his hands. He said, “ Wait a Somehow or other he never quite be­ minute. Are we boxing or fighting?” longed. He was a little too polite. Kind Vic came back quick, “ Just boxing, old of uneasy. When the brothers had a man. You wouldn’t fight. It isn’t in beer bust or a New York week-end, Jay your blood. Is it?” Jay got red. would be missing. He wasn’t hard up “ Maybe not,” he said and started pull­ either. He was always getting clothes, ing o ff his gloves. Vic gave him the good English tweeds. He had them laugh. That started it. made in New York and sent up to him. Jay sort of avoided Vic after that, From Smith’s on Fifth Avenue—and but he didn’t avoid Alison. The broth­ tweeds from Smith’s run into money. ers stopped jollying Vic. Sometimes Jay made his mistake when he fell in Vic would take kidding and sometimes love. I t ’s always a mistake. The trou­ he wouldn’t. ble with Jay was he took it serious. It was getting along in October and Prof. Douglas took a shine to him and there was the usual ballyhoo about foot­ asked him over to his house three or ball. And the Hamilton game. The four times. I guess the prof talked Lat­ loyal sons of old Carlton were getting in to him. I don’t know. He’s never all worked up. Pep rallies and red fire asked me over. Friendly but not fa­ and that sort of thing—and two dollar miliar, that’s my motto. bets. Hamilton had a good team. The So Jay met the prof’s daughter, Ali­ newspaper johnnies picked them to lick son, a little blonde. He showed up with us. They were calling Jay our stellar her at the Kappa formal. Vic hadn’t threat. They meant he played full­ bothered to bring a jane and he was back. playing the stag line, cutting in where Jay went around stepping high. Chin he saw a good dancer. Up till that night up and a big foolish smile. Love is won­ Alison hadn’t been in the picture. But derful. He had a picture of Alison seeing her with Jay, Vic got interested. looking dreamy on his bureau. H e’d He gave her a lot of attention that night. sit on the edge of the bed, like a sap, Jay didn’t get peeved and neither did and stare at it. And Vic was no bet­ Alison, but she stuck to Jay. That sort ter. Spending good jack on flowers and of puzzled Vic and he started slipping. borrowing books from the prof. Love I guess that next week Vic called her is a disease. The two of them didn’t 40 The Frontier

box any more. They said hello and let I woke up Friday about noon, feel­ it go at that. ing melancholy and depressed. We were And then Alison helped out. It breaks at the St. Regis. I didn’t care. Vic a girl’s heart to have the boys scrap­ was talking about something and I went ping about her. D on’t laugh. back to sleep. About four he rang up from somewhere and told me to pack I was with Vic when it happened. the bags and wait for him in the lobby. W e’d picked Alison up, breezing o ff the He said he had a friend with him— a campus, and ran her home. When he quaint old boy who wanted to see the stopped the bus, Vic said, “ Busy to­ game Saturday. Well—why not? night, swetheart?” She took a min­ ute to think it over, working on him I was in the lobby brooding about the with the big brown Douglas eyes. A li­ classes I had missed, when Vie came son does that— a kind of sideways look. along. Just a big smile and a raccoon No she wasn’t busy. ‘ ‘ Good, ’ ’ says Vic. coat. The quaint old lad was out in “ Wash up and wait for me. ’Bout eight. the car. “ Charlie,” said Vic, “ shake We’ll run out to the Blue Moon.” “ I ’d hands with Mr. Levon.” I did. Mr. love it,” says Alison. And then— Levon had a derby and an umbrella and “ L et’s make it a foursome. I ’ll bring a paper parcel. “ Mr. Levon,” says along a sister and you get Jay.” Vic, giving me the wink, “ is the head Vic just stared at her. “ Y ou ’re not cutter at Smith’s on Fifth avenue. I taking Jay serious, are y ou ?” he says. was telling him how the boys rave about The girl smiled. “ You ’d be surprised, ’ ’ Jay’s clothes. I had a hard time con­ she told him. “ Not I ,” says Vic, “ but vincing Mr. Levon Jay sent us down you might be. Some other night.” And for him. We had orders from Jay not with that we rolled along. Vic didn’t to come back without his Dad. Right, say a word. He was wild. We went up Charlie?” the avenue about sixty. A cop flagged I said something. “ Get in front, us and gave Vic a ticket. Then we went Charlie,” said Vic. “ There’s plenty of sixty-five. It was allright with me. room.” “ I prefer the rumble,” I said. Pun is fun. “ I need air.” I didn’t see him until Thursday and When we got over the state line we then he came around with an idea. stopped for nourishment. The old man We’d run down to New York and go wouldn’t come in with us. He had places and come back Friday night for sandwiches in the parcel and coffee in the Hamilton game Saturday. It didn’t a thermos bottle. When we .got in a sound good to me. I couldn’t afford to booth I talked to Vic. I told him he cut any more classes, and anyhow I was had a bum sense of humor. A thing broke. In a moment of weakness I had like this would probably ruin Jay’s put up my last ten spot on the game. game. There was a lot of money on Vic overruled my better judgment. He that game. said it was his party. That was dif­ “ Don’t worry,” says Vic. “ Jay will ferent. be safe in training quarters until after They hadn’t moved Broadway. We the game. W e’ll entertain Hiram and saw a show and then went over to Har­ Jay won’t see him till afterwards.” He lem. The Cotton Club. had it all planned. Alison was going The Frontier 41

to the game with him. So was I and all himself. He had been surprised, he our house guest. Vic is a bright boy. said, but only because he hadn’t expect­ H e’ll be helping Mr. Hoover when he ed his dad until the morning. grows up. A commission all by him­ “ It’s mighty decent of you, Vic, and self. I appreciate it,” he said. “ You’ll make trouble,” I said. Vic “ Not at all,” Vic told him. “ Toddle laughed at me. “ Jay will take it and along and don’t worry about your fa­ like it, ’ ’ he promised. ‘ ‘ H e’s got it com­ ther. W e’re taking him to the game. ing to him.” Charlie and I—and Alison.” Well, what could I dot Taxi back to Jay didn’t bat an eye. ‘ ‘ That’s fine, ’ ’ New York with the old boy on my lap? he said. “ Dad, the boys will show you When in doubt, do nothing. I always my room any time. I ’ve got to beat it. ’ ’ do. The old man didn’t get wise. He was It was after nine when we drew up having the time of his life. “ You at the Sig house. The lads were down should be proud, Jay— the fine friends in the village looking for excitement and you have.” Hamilton money, or selling their paste- Jay patted his shoulder. “ I sure ) boards to visiting gentry. But they am, D ad,” he said. “ Good night, fel­ | kept drifting in and Vic entertained lers.” them. Whiskers was a bit nervous at first. But Vic got him thawed out, tell­ He was smiling, but his eyes were ing him what a nice son he had and how ashamed. He was taking a licking all we all loved him and looked up to him. right. The old gentleman ate it up. And then I went to bed feeling low. I had a he added a little. The life story of a feeling tomorrow would be one of those young hero with anecdotes of his pantie days. The old boy would probably want days. First signs of genius noted by an a stick with a pennant on the end. I aunt named Rachel; wondering com­ was picked for the innocent bystander. ments by awestruck teachers. I thought I could see that. the boys would choke, taking it in with Well, we went to the game. Just a a straight face. Fat Dillon had to go happy family group on the twenty-yard out. I heard him braying on the porch. line. It was a bum day, windy and By all the laws of decency, Jay should trying to rain. There are things in a have been over in training quarters with man’s life he’d like to forget. Jay’s old the coach smoothing his pillow, but he man had his umbrella. He talked with had to take a walk. I looked up and his hands and he had the umbrella in saw him standing in the doorway, tak­ one hand. When the teams trotted out ing it all in, his face pretty white and and he saw our hero, he got so excited queer. I eased out quietly. Things he put one end of it in a chap’s ribs were going to happen. But not to me. in back of us. And when he turned I might have known better. When I around to apologize for that, he knocked ; drifted in again Jay was putting up a a laddie’s hat o ff with the other end. front, standing with his hand on the old I thought he’d kill somebody. Alison man’s shoulder, pretending he was de­ was on the other side of him, having a lighted to see him and had planned it swell time, being polite to the old man 42 The Frontier

and pouting at Vic. It was a good they nailed him. A groan went up all game—what I saw of it. around us. Ten minutes later the ball Hamilton had a big team and the boys was Hamilton’s under our goal post. were rough. They sat Jay down hard The teams lined up. Our cheering sec­ three or four times, but he seemed to tion stood up and roared, “ Hold ’em, like it. Carlton, hold ’em!” I was praying for In the second quarter he took the ball the whistle. A moment later it was all on a fake kick and nipped around end. over. A guard dumped Jay. Hamil­ Gregg of Carlton spilled the Hamilton ton jammed it across. Ten dollars gone guard and Jay went right along. Ten forever! I knew it. The old man didn’t yards before he was tackled. He twist­ say a thing. We sat listening to the ed free. Everybody was up. And the Hamilton stands. The whistle blew. old man, too. I yelled like a good one We stuck around for Jay outside the but he was louder. “ Run, Jake, run!” lockerhouse. After a while he came out he shouted. They spilled the boy on with his hat over his eyes and a strip the twenty yard line. The band of court plaster on his jaw. We made thumped and the cheer leaders did cal- the usual remarks. “ Tough luck, old esthenics. Mr. Levon was telling the man,” and all that. He stood looking neighbors his son, Jake, did that, and kind of humble at Alison. he’d be running yet if that feller hadn’t “ I ’m going to take Dad to supper,” tripped him. We were attracting a good he said. “ How about you, Alison?” deal of attention. A couple of stiffs, The old man cheered up at that. “ The two seats back, had an argument about boys, too, Jake,” he said. “ The best us. One of them claimed we were an in town. I pay for everything.” initiation. Alison was a lovely red. Alison wasn’t looking at Jay. Her The game was so and so. The Ham­ voice was awfully sweet. “ I ’m sorry, ilton lads would buck up the field and Jay,” she said. “ Not tonight. I can’t, then they’d get discouraged and Carl­ really.” ton would buck down the field. And Vic said, “ Thanks. Some other time. then they’d swap kicks. Our cheer Coming Charlie ? Give you a lift, Jay ? ” leaders won the high jumps but the The old man was puzzled. Jay put Hamilton band was the loudest. I be­ his arm around him and laughed. ‘ ‘ Come gan to feel better about my ten dollars. on, Poppa, we’ll walk.” It was the third quarter and no one had Vic said, “ See you later then.” scored and my feet were getting cold. Jay gave him a funny look. “ Yes,” Then in the last three minutes it hap­ he said, “ you will.” pened. The Hamilton quarter fell back I got out up town. I was feeling low. to kick from his own forty yard line. Alison was telling Vic how mean he was He lifted a sweet one. A swell punt— and he could take her straight home. I high over the line with the wind be­ said to myself—Yeah! You’ll be wear­ hind it. It settled down the field and ing his pin in a week. And she was. Jay went back and back, waiting for That night when the boys got in, the it. A Hamilton end was through and Sigmas had a session. Jay was up in racing down on him. Jay had the ball his room. You know what a frat meet­ and leaped into his stride. And then ing is. A lot of bellyaching same as The Frontier 43

usual. Ham Turner pounding the gav­ has a deeper feeling than I for the time- el and Fat Dillon bobbing up and down hallowed traditions of Sigma, but this with points of order and things. And is a question that calls for serious de­ the gang booing him. Finally we heard liberation, and—and—high ideals . . . from Vic, every inch a Yardley in his What I want to know is where does Vic soup and fish, like an ad in the New Yardley get off? The big egg! He Yorker. knew about Jay’s people. As long as ‘ ‘ This thing had to happen, ’ ’ he said. Jay did his math for him and didn’t “ You can fool all of the people some talk back it was o. k. Until they both of the time, but not your fraternity wanted the same jane. Now he’s made brothers. The question is what are we a sap out of all of us and we’ve lost going to do? He isn’t our kind.” the Hamilton game. If we don’t want When he sat down the boys gave him the Dekes giving us the razz we’d bet­ | a hand. Just to be different I made a ter shut up. But if you want action, vulgar noise myself. I ’ll amend your motion. I move we Ham Turner kept banging the gavel. jerk Vic Yardley’s pin, too. How do “ You’ve got to do this parliamentary,” you like that? I lost ten bucks on that he says. “ W ill somebody make a mo­ game myself.” tion?” When I sat down the boys gave me Fat Dillon hops up and moves that the anvil chorus. Jay Levon be asked for his pin. A Vic Yardley got up smiling and said couple of fellers seconded it. he’d like to answer the brother. He Ham bangs the gavel. “ You heard never did. the motion,” he said. “ All those in Jay walked in. When they stopped favor will signify in the usual man­ booing, he said, “ I want to apologize ner.” to you fellows. I got what was coming I made an ass of myself. “ Wait a to me.” minute,” I said, getting up. Vic was still standing. “ Where’s “ Sit down,” yells Ham. “ You’re papa?” he said. out of order.” Jay took a good look at him. “ H e’s “ That’s too bad,” I said. “ I ’m go­ gone home, thinking yourre a gentle­ ing to speak a piece just the same.” man,” he said. Everybody was quiet. “ It ain’t parliamentary,” declared “ That apology doesn’t include you, Ham, banging the gavel. A couple of Yardley. Y ou’re a so and so.” I ’ll bet loyal supporters were yelling, “ You tell it was the first time a Yardley was ’em, Charlie.” And the rest of the boys called that. were shouting, “ Put him ou t!” “ Meeting’s adjourned,” I yelled. When they got out of breath I said, “ It ain’t parliamentary,” Ham yelled. I“ You’ll break that gavel, Ham. I ’m Hack Wilson gave him a shove and he I moving an amendment. That’s parlia- went over the sofa. [ mentary ain’t it?” I don’t like fights myself. Not with­ I The chair stopped hammering and out gloves— they’re too messy. Vic I while he was trying to figure whether it cracked Jay’s mouth open in the first I was or not, I spoke my piece. “ Broth- round and Jay landed on his nose. A I ers,” I said, “ men of Carlton! No one moment later Vic dropped him. He 44 The Frontier spat a mouthful of blood and came up mouth open, listening to the birds sing. for more. It was fun in a madhouse. Fat Dillon went running for water. The Everybody yelling. The brothers for rest of us just looked. Yic— and me, just to be different, yell­ Jay stood there, his knees weaving. ing, “ Sock him, Jakey, sock him !” Vic “ That’s that!” he said, panting. He was having all the best of it, but he was drew a deep breath. “ Ever since I was beginning to breathe hard and step flat- a kid,” he said, “ on Bleeker street— I footed and Jake was asking for more. wanted to be like you guys. Like Yard- Hack Wilson was leaping up and ley—a gentleman.” He was fumbling down and begging Vic to finish him off. at his vest. Trying to grin, but he “ Ten bucks he don’t,” I told him. couldn’t the way his lips were. He “ B et!” he roared. They were standing tossed something on the table. It was up now, just slugging. It couldn’t last. his pin. The seed pearls caught the light Jay took a beaut in the mouth and came and glittered. “ My mistake,” he said, in under Vic’s guard. Smack! Right and walked out. under the ear. And his left to the stom­ When the door shut, I said, “ Hack— ach. Vic closed up like a jackknife. He give me that ten. And w e ll put the went down and stayed down, with his brother to bed.”

SEASON

E lizabeth W aters

October’s gold lies scattered on the grass, Susurrant carpet, splashed with rust and wine. The tender haze of noon succeeds the fine Sharp clearness of the morn. The birch-tree’s mass Burns with a flame no chance wind may harrass; And where the dreaming, smoke-blue hills define < Against skies’ end their shouldering slopes of pine, Clouds cast a tenuous shadow as they pass. Within the muted brightness of this hour The earth lies tranced in sunny quietude, Too rich in ripening harvests, grain and flower, To fear the threat of autumn’s harsher mood. Bleak winds to come, dark weeping skies that lour, Cannot destroy this day’s beatitude. The Frontier 45

T W O POEMS

Claire A ven T homson

VIGIL

Wind is a fool tonight . . . fierce . . . unfed . Better you boys take to your bed; (A stormy night and a stormy day) Egan and Lars . . . be off, I say!

Wind is a fool tonight. What goes there Beyond the lantern’s fretting care? For one long moment I thought a boat Bewitched on the rocks of Dead Man’s Throat!

Wind is a fool tonight. Egan and Lars, To bed, I say! Nor moon . . . nor stars To mark the eve of your father’s going . . . A lonely heart and a fool wind blowing!

I shall keep watch the night and through; No telling what a fool will do!

TO ONE STRICKEN AT THE ROOTS

Tear at sun. Shred it to golden bits. S ay: 0 never sun the metal Of elderberry or the ravishing arrogance Of foxglove petal, The shy and intricate curving of dogwood, Maple flame on the breeze, O never sun the lover, Lover of these.

Say any number of things. Let the marrow Of your back run a thin white chill. Lean on the sickly pallor of moon To your ultimate fill . . . Sun will be waiting . . . mellow mad to keep Tryst. Wild plum or mignonette, A flower once cupped to the sunlight Does not forget. 46 The Frontier

MONTANA MOUNTAIN

L aw kence P ratt

In the star-gray darkness Of a Montana night I saw Hellroaring Mountain Scrape its rocks Sharply against the tall, proud metal Of black heaven. God frowned And closed the curtains of his windows.

GLACIAL STREAM

E th e l R o m ig P uller

Milky-jade from lava silt, Ripples, feather-edged with gilt. Suavely-smooth, save where it shoulders From its path logs and boulders.

Save where suddenly it churns Itself to froth on tortuous turns.

(To its green pools comes a fawn; Comes a silverside to spawn—

Pools the greener for the blurs Of cedar shadows and of firs.)

Born by chance where sun-rays dice With the wind for Alpine ice, It pours seaward, an insurgent, Yoked to forces wild and urgent, Without hesitance or halt Till snow water meets with salt.

QUAKING ASPEN

Catherin e M acleod

A tinge of autumn Has sifted through frail aspens And left A memory for the sun In yellow leaves. The Frontier 47

COAHUILA

W illiam A llen W ard

Sunburnt Land of eagles . . . panthers and rattlesnakes . . . Coahuila . . . Mexican giant . . . Dreamer . . .

A w ake! Cast aside your Bed Indian blanket, Throw away your bloody dagger And live

Beside The clear river Near the big nude mountain . . . Listen to the puma and the E agle!

Forget The little things . . . Remember the silent buttes with strong shoulders . . . and strongly be Like them.

G O O D Y E A R

J ason B olles

He stooped beside a stone and struck a match And lit his pipe in the wind with heedless skill, And walked across his greening garden patch. He said, “ The spuds all came up, every hill.” High overhead an eagle swung and wheeled. He plodded onward, stopping once or twice To scan the pasturage. Up at his field He spat and said, “ The barley’s looking nice.” And then, “ The winter wheat is all stooled out.” Thereafter, “ The alfalfa sprouted good.”

He lit his pipe again and turned about Where long shadows slanted from a wood. Beside a tiny spring that chirruped clear He said, “ The violets are fine this year.” 48 The Frontier

QUEST

Gale W ilhelm

Night passes over, with only a thin sound of grief. a brushing silence deepens, You lie sleeping here and all that happened in the afternoon, and yet not sleeping the swift waking, against my heart the swift unbelievable dream, that is heavy and still that too whispers away with answered questions.

LOST IN AIR A lbert E dward Clements

I climbed the last fence and I stood at ease And watched the wind explore the hills ahead. Against the sky I saw the lonely trees, Gloomy and cold as stones above their dead. Why was the wind so set, so curious To tap its fingers on some unknown door? W hy were the trees so dark, so ominous, So lost in pain I had not felt before?

Ahead lay many things that I must see Before day dropped its banners. Yet standing there I trembled lest I wake Infinity And find myself a lover lost in air. I trembled lest the sky descend on me And make me, not my own, but her affair!

PARALYTIC

Mary B rennan Clapp

Her slender, dancing feet are forever stilled. There is no cure for this, the doctors say. And now her heart, self-burdened and self-willed, Must find for its restlessness another way.

Soon her lovely hands will grow heavy and numb, No more to make music on wind or fretted strings; Ebon and ivory for them will be dumb, Paper and pen will be waste, unfruitful things.

Only her heart will storm as in the past. There is no cure for this, the doctors say. Her heart will storm till storm be spent at last. Desperate and brave! There is no other way. The Frontier 49

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

THE RESERVATION J o h n M. K lin e

Note: In the following narrative I have avoided mentioning the names of men and places. The narrative is true.

N August, 1905, a train stopped at a little Headquarters innumerable ganglions reached station in Montana. The platform of the out over the empire. I sleeper was opened to permit a descent, . Let us describe this second seat of empire, and I emerged. Before me lay a station; be­ as it existed seven and twenty years ago. hind the station a bluff, and at the top of Before it was a flagpole; on the flagpole, the bluff a few wooden houses. For two flying bravely, a flag; about the flagpole and years I lived in one of those houses. the building a wooden fence, painted white. The entire village was shaped like a capi­ The building itself was squat, wide and low- tal T with a crazy foot. The crazy foot ceilinged, and contained four rooms, three overlooked the station. In the regular end with stoves and office furniture, the fourth of the foot were the buildings of a few bare. The empty room was the Indian court; Indian traders; in the depressed heel a ware­ before it was the room occupied by the issue house, a water tank, and some squawmen’s clerk and the stenographer; a wing contained homes: on the right o f the stem, the agency the office of the chief clerk; the main apart­ headquarters, the church and the doctor’s ment was devoted to the Agent. office; on the left living quarters for em­ To find the heart from which all these ployes, terminating in the sumptuous resi­ arteries branched we must enter the main dence of the agent: in the head of the T apartment. It had no carpet, no pictures, were the school buildings, including class­ no ornaments. There was a solid roll-top rooms, dining halls, dormitories, hospital, desk near the front window; a great swing­ work-shops and stables. ing-back chair behind it; and two or three Three hundred miles from a daily paper, hard, straight-backed chairs scattered about seven hundred from an electric light or a the room. street ca r; population, with school children, The Agent himself was a ponderous man two hundred, perhaps; the capital of a do­ of forty, once an athlete, and even now stand­ main of three thousand square miles and ing erect, six feet and more, on great square- two thousand two hundred inhabitants. toed shoes. He was fat, slow, methodical Along the south line of the domain ran the and tid y ; his voice half-querulous and a railroad; within a few miles of the railroad little weak for his frame. He smoked thick dwelt the inhabitants. For the rest, there black cigars, and when he spoke spluttered stretched a prairie empire, treeless and house­ forth in barroom oaths and vulgar indecen­ less, swelling and receding like the waves of cies. the ocean. Observe him at work. He had the awk­ This empire was ruled by a despot. That wardness of a man who had not been raised despot was the United States of America. Its in an office, and a childish pride in what head office was in the city of Washington. he was able to accomplish. Sometimes he From that city there ran two ganglions, the would put a typewriter on his desk and railway and the telegraph. These ganglions write slowly, using only the first finger of connected with the second seat of empire, the his right hand. Look in his waste-basket. Agency Headquarters. From the Agency It is half-filled with sheets of scratch paper, 50 The Frontier

on which appear over and over the same un­ The chief clerk’s features were small, his readable words. This is his signature. Hour laugh buttoned in, and his name, among the after hour he practiced writing, to make it Indians, the Duck. His i’s were dotted, his undecipherable. At other times he poured t’s were crossed, his columns added, and his over a pocket dictionary, looking up long and beliefs unalterable. In a loose and changing unusual words. These he would embody, with world he preserved the dress, the manners, Rabelaisian gusto, in long proclamations to the soul of the Perfect Clerk. his subjects. He wrote his letters in long- hand, address and all, and read them labor- The issue clerk was never to be found when wanted, and was always present, in lousy to his stenographer, whom he eyed all full bloom, upon all unnecessary occasions. the time, half-afraid. With the Indians he In the item of work, he varied a habit of was judicial, paternal, royal, emitting clouds never finishing anything by never beginning of black smoke to mingle with the thin, pale it In the item of person, he was short, emanations of native “kinnikinnick.” middle-aged, gray, hard-faced, wiry, quick- This is what is known of his history. A moving, disheveled, disjointed, energetic at boy in the Middle West, he had run away doing nothing, and immune to weather, in from school and enlisted in the army. For shirt sleeves and suspenders whistling gaily five years a private, for two a corporal, down the village street, white with snow, and for three a sergeant, his first campaign had the thermometer forty degrees below zero. been against Geronimo, his last ended with The stenographer I know, I admire, but I may the battle of Wounded Knee and the death not speak of. I was the stenographer. The of Sitting Bull. The veteran kept a gate at cabinet actually worked about two weeks out 1 the World’s Fair, in Chicago in 1893. From of every nine; for the rest, one-third pre­ warfare and glitter he was summoned to served its immaculateness, one-third read, and keep the keys of a warehouse. His captain one-third kept running here and there. was appointed Indian agent; who but the first sergeant should guard his property? A permanent attache was the Interpreter, The sergeant became issue clerk; the warrior at ten or fifteen dollars a month. Indian made figures in a ledger. At night he re­ agents came and went; this ugly, wizened mained the personal servant of the captain. little man ran on forever. He was the envy The captain’s failing was whiskey; his ex­ of underclerks; he had been to Washington travagance drinking-glasses. He would never and called great men, like the Commis­ drink twice out of the same glass. Often sioner of Indian Affairs and the Secre­ the clerk counted as many as twenty empty tary of the Interior, by their first names, and glasses on his sideboard at dawn. By and by gone unrebuked. His method of interpreta­ the captain was transferred, to blow his tion may be recommended as concise and brains out in the Philippines. The clerk re­ business-like. A delegation called. The dele­ mained through the time of his successor, a gates squatted on their hams. Amid dark, devotee of gin and cattle-raising. Upon his impassive faces and long black queus, or pig­ business and his pleasures descended an in­ tails, amid the smell of unwashed bodies and vestigator ; the investigator peered into the the odor of bad tobacco, the spokesman issue clerk’s room, and there beheld the old stepped forward. With gesture, with modu­ soldier, honest, punctilious and experienced. lation, with fervor, to the approving grunts By a ukase of the secretary, office-holding of his fellows, he spoke for an hour. When no longer embarrassed the gin-drinker, and he concluded, the Agent woke up, and in­ quired : the horny-handed son of the West, the demon pursuer of Red Cloud and Spotted Hawk, “ What the hell does he say?” reigned in his stead. Interpreter: “He say you good man. He J Having met the despot, we must now meet say he like you. He say you give him J the despot’s cabinet, his chief clerk, his is­ beans, quick.” sue clerk, and his stenographer. The chief This teaches us that things may be said clerk kept the books, in the neatest of school in much fewer words in English than in hands, in the most unimaginative of systems. Sioux. The Frontier 51

Of the Indian judges I remember two; the merchandise; and a great community stove, police must have been six, at least. Medi­ around which Indian braves and squaws cine Hat was a judge, venerable, sagacious soaked up heat in silence, squawmen loafed of countenance, slow in speech, mild, cour­ moodily, and carefree government employes teous and considerate. His colleague, Charg­ smoked and gossiped. The little red-haired ing Bull, a gigantic old man, had a most clerk was the village cut-up, calling all the fearsome and savage aspect. To behold him, ladies by their first names, kissing the mar­ as I did once, at an Indian dance, nearly ried women, and chucking the little girls naked, in paint and feathers, hideous and under the chin. He played poker, drank his fantastic, was to call to mind, with a shud­ Scotch without water, was the local political der, all the old tales of Indian atrocity. agent, supported a family o f step-children, Whether he had ever actually been on the took the tenderest care of his old mother warpath I do not know. The meetings of and his wife’s, and in church circles was the judges were infrequent, the causes trivial, mentioned with a shudder. The trader him­ their sentences subject to the veto of the self had poise. Cool, genteel, low-voiced, Agent. It was the merest shadow of self- who would suspect him of a bottle and a government. The police, I believe, performed lady friend? His greatest vice was, he could some actual duties. Beyond running errands refuse credit to no one. Like most o f his I am not certain what they were. Ordinarily kind, the reservation being thrown open to the force lounged about the office, in uni­ white settlement, he went bankrupt in the form and six-shooter, smoking cigarettes, si­ depression of ’20. lent, immovable, inert. Opposite T’s, and at the crest of the bluff, We will leave the governors for the gov­ where the road led down to the depot, was erned. And first, the Indian traders. Here the hotel, two little buildings, close together, a storekeeper was not a storekeeper, but a and connected by a board walk. The build­ trader. He existed only by special license ings were originally log; over the logs, how­ from the Agent. There were half-a-dozen or ever, there had been nailed a tin or sheet- more posts, as the stores were called, on the iron exterior, lined and painted to represent reservation. The largest was in a long, squat, brick. There, too, were the inevitable proc­ old log building, in the regular foot of the lamation, the inevitable price list. The one T. Grass grew on the ro o f; the walls bulged building was the office; the other the sleep­ and had to be propped up. On the wall ing rooms. In the office the front room con­ outside, by the door, were posted a procla­ tained a rickety pool table, two or three mation and a price list, the work of the dilapidated chairs, and a home-made counter. Agent. Under the law, he prescribed the On the counter were a register and a bell for prices at which goods should be sold. The summoning the clerk. These latter were for proclamation began: “To All Traders, Ped­ show only; no one ever signed the register; dlers, Merchants, Vendors, Storekeepers, the bell would not ring; and there was no Drummers, and all others who sell, barter or clerk. The sole attendant and chambermaid trade in goods, wares and merchandise, vag­ was the landlord himself, to-wit: the Inter­ rant or sedentary, by whatsoever name preter aforesaid. That a Cree breed should called, and wherever situate,” and so on, in be a business man, however poor, was a pompous and windy declamation. As to what gaudy distinction. It raised him far above would happen to the luckless trader who that succession of fat old shapeless squaws violated this proclamation there were two whom he married, one after the other, it is opinions: that of the non-traders who be­ to be feared without tarrying for either death lieved in the inevitability of condign punish­ or divorce. They lived far out of town; ment, and that of the traders themselves, there, unseen, he might relax and lie who never bothered to read the proclama­ stretched out in humble overalls, there in­ tion, but went about their business and sold dulge his fondness for a family dish of boiled their goods for all they could get. dog; here he wore a white collar, a pressed Within, in perpetual dusk, were walls shirt, gold-rimmed eyeglasses (he could not packed high; solid counters groaning with read), and a hard, shiny old hat, and ate 52 The Frontier at the white man’s table. How happy was been, there was no one to plow with it. he, presiding at that table, the agency sten­ There were forty or fifty milk pails and not ographer at his right, a drummer at his a milch cow. There were even a few wigs left, opposite a deputy sheriff from the and a gross or two of false mustaches. It county seat, a deputy sheriff who had actu­ sometimes looked as though the government ally killed three men! They were served by had bought at sales of old rubbish, and an unctuous old slave darky; greasy smells then palmed off its purchases on the Indians. came from the kitchen; flies settled every­ It must not be suspected that any Indian where. What the bedrooms were I can only farmed. None did. None worked in any judge by a common phenomenon, i. e., the sense that a white man would recognize. sight, on fine mornings, of a traveling man, None steadily followed any gainful occupa­ in his underclothes, sleeping in the haystack tion. Kace, heritage, the being thrust into behind, to avoid the bedbugs. an alien and advanced civilization, had their The water tank served as the only water part in this. May not the issue clerk and system in all that country. Beneath, and the warehouse have had theirs, also? In­ a little to one side, was the pumping-plant. deed, the system of rationing was baneful One day the weak, loose-mouthed engineer to every one—it pauperized the Indian; it brought home a wife—an Indian with the tempted the employes to steal; it gave birth face of an Asiatic, a dainty little study in to the “reservation lawyer,” the smart, vi­ Chinese porcelain. I shall never forget the cious, tonguey, “coffee-cooler” or plain loaf­ last time I saw her—murdered, a gaping hole er, who made lying accusations against the in her forehead, that face, almost spiritual, agent, collected money for useless trips to a clotted mass of blood and hair. The en­ Washington, and agitated for increased gineer killed himself, too. treaty payments. Here I touch upon the outcasts of the These “doles”—we had not learned the reservation, the squawmen and the breeds, word then—were not all property; every upon degradation, drunkenness, poverty and three months, in addition, if I remember vice. I must wander no further, or this rightly, there was a distribution of money. sketch will expand into a volume. The agent sat at his desk, great piles of Instead of continuing, considering each silver dollars before him—it was not the day house on the T, I will try to set forth, briefly or the country of many checks—while a and clearly, the purpose and the agencies of long line of Indians filed through the room. the despotism. The purpose was to civilize Besides the agent sat the issue clerk, reading the Indians; the agencies were rations of the names of the Indians, with the amounts, food, clothing and tools, and teaching, agri­ and to the right and left the Indian traders. cultural, mechanical, and out of books. When a name was called the agent asked The rations were purchased in great lots, of the traders, “Does he owe you anything?” in the East, or Middle West, and distribut­ Then he slowly counted out the money in ed among the Indians in fulfillment, I think, separate piles, one for the Indian, the others of some old treaty. This distribution was for his creditors. the job of the issue clerk; from it he took I have heard many tales of graft in con­ his title. So much beef, bacon, flour, beans, nection with these payments. Some may be every fortnight, to every man, woman and true. I never knew of any. It was easy, child. A picturesque scene of lumbering old if any one wanted to graft. No receipt was wagons, mongrel dogs, large, fat, shapeless taken. It is true, there was a line for a women, dirty children, and harsh, wild faces, receipt, and if you would look at one of those cracked and dry as leather. Axes were old payrolls, or property accounts, you would given, picks, harnesses, sometimes even see a crossmark and an Indian’s name after threshing machines and binders. Far up in every payment. These were not made by the the dark, dirty old warehouse were several Indians, however, but by the clerks, after­ hundred ox-bows, shipped here nobody knew wards. This had been going along for years when or why. There was not an ox in the when somebody in Washington had a bright country trained to the plow, and, had there idea. He said a crossmark could be made 1 The Frontier 53

by anybody; there was no way of checking Across the creek there was an irrigated up on it; so an order came out that here­ garden, the working ground of the individual after the Indian’s thumb print should be known to the agent as “that damned farm­ taken. Our issue clerk simply impressed his e r;” a figure, a pathetic figure, of comedy. own thumb on every receipt, and the Indian This entire business of educating the Indian office never knew the difference. If he to be a farmer was comic, and pathetic, too. omitted the thumb print the Indian office A stooping walk, a rusty black suit, a rubi­ would send the receipt back; but It never oc­ cund nose, a derby hat worn far back on a curred to anybody in Washington that all head almost destitute of hair, an odor of the thumb prints were the same. In my the stables, announced the farmer. Regu­ experience this is typical of the intelligence larly every morning, at eight o’clock, he re­ 1 of a government department ceived his orders from the office. The agent A11 the school people I know nowadays revelled in these orders; he rolled, roared speak of “ industrial” or “ vocational” educa­ and thundered at the humble figure before tion. I am told it is much better that a him ; he envisioned himself as an agricultural child should be taught to drive a nail straight missionary, destined to uplift the Indian into than to write; that a teacher of any trade work, peace, and plenty. Dismissed, as long which is primarily of the hands should have as he could be seen from the office the a larger salary than a teacher of English; farmer went busily down the street; once and that all the great scholars of the future out of sight he sneaked down an alley and are to be turned out by our bright young into his house by the back way, and, with professors o f carpentry. Devotees of this a sigh of relief, sank into a chair, to spell latest and most golden discovery of educa­ through the weekly edition of the New York tion will be happy to learn that the indus­ World, to doze over the kitchen fire, and, at trial education of our Indians was not neg­ noon, to fry a bit of steak on the stove. This lected. It was placed in the competent hands warfare between words and habits was never of a bachelor, an old river cook, and a mur­ ending. The more vociferous the despot, the derer. more meek and the more unyielding the The murderer was an Indian. Long ago, farmer. Pulling a few weeds in the summer, I in the old wild days, he had treacherously putting up a few blocks of ice in the winter I killed a poor, harmless, young depot agent. were the extent of his work. All the majesty I At the penitentiary he learned a little of of the agent and all the authority o f the I carpentry and blacksmithing. He was now United States were helpless before this little the industrial teacher at the school. He was man with the broad Pennsylvania drawl. Un­ I very silent. He was intimate with no one. like the Indians, employes in the Civil Serv­ I Looking at his lonely figure, his poor, half- ice were paid by checks on a distant bank. I blind eyes, his deeply cut, repressed face, The farmer did not cash his check. The I his face that patently kept something back, agent insisted. The farmer let the checks I and kept it with difficulty, one pitied while accumulate about his room, on the floor, in I one avoided him, and suspected wild depths the closet. He would not even take money I of passion. upon command. In the twilight of the blacksmith shop Yet he had a kind and sentimental heart. | there flashed the light of the furnace. A We lived together. He yearned over me, as I lean Indian apprentice, his face wan with he would have yearned over his own child. I an incurable consumption, heated the irons. He avoided women, but I must have a sweet­ I The blacksmith bent over; his thin body heart. I invented one for him ; her name I trembled; his hand shook; a very old and was Bonnibell, and she lived in the sunny I wicked face, but with a fierce fire of anger forests of Louisiana. He pronounced the I in the eyes more terrbile than the fire in name “ Boney,” as though it were a part I the furnace. Old Porcupine was his wife; of her anatomy. Often we sat late of a I old sin his handmaid; a relict of the stews, winter’s night over her imaginary letters, I the gambUng dives, the boozing kens, cast while he relished my imaginary love and I up by the river. grieved over my imaginary worries. Years 54 The Frontier afterwards be visited me. Boney and I bad cards, first at one house and then at an­ never married; and I bad another sweet­ other. I knew a reservation once where the heart. How ludicrous he looked and how agent and the doctor and their wives played sad, so gaunt and old, stretched out in my whist every night, an interminable game that bed, his legs wide apart, his great feet hang­ had already lasted for five years. Our ing over the footboard, a tear on his weather­ game was five hundred, then newly imported beaten cheek, as he heard the last of poor by a retired army captain on a tour of in­ Boney! He never forgave me for jilting her. spection, a very old man who barely stopped What shall I say of the school itself, that playing to eat his meals. When there was heap of yellow brick buildings, those scat­ no one to play with he studied the cards tered groups of decaying log houses, facing a alone. Did he play so persistently to escape military square, those marching lines of si­ thinking about death, or about life? I can lent, sober-faced children, those quiet nun­ see our card party now, in the big unfash­ like old women, that placid atmosphere, ionable room, in the agent’s house, all those equally remote from the Indian of the camp unfashionable people, mostly stout and mid­ and the raw men of the agency? The agent dle-aged, relaxed, joyous, and happy. The was in a perpetual surprise at being the wife of the Perfect Clerk is speaking. She head of a school. He was perpetually afraid, is not Perfect herself; a plump, merry-heart­ too, that people would doubt his qualifica­ ed Irish girl, raised in the cow camps, and tions; that they were laughing at him up with all the cow camp heartiness and social < their sleeves. It was a part of his defense imperfections. As she rattles on there slips to deprecate what he did not possess; to out of her unconsciously a good, round cow J harp loudly upon the virtues of practical camp oath, and the ladies try to hold back men (who, it seems, need only common sense their smiles and the gentlemen burst into to administer systems of education, that vir­ great guffaws. We laugh all the more be­ tue being notoriously lacking in all school cause the Perfect Clerk is annoyed. I do teachers whatsoever) ; to sneer at people not know that we would ever stop, if per­ who went to college; to call teachers “old fection were extinguished altogether. hens” and school buildings “old maids’ fac­ Today all these people are dead, or very tories,” and to visit upon them all the felici­ old. There is another scene that I suppose ties of a vocabularly not untrained in the is not enacted anywhere today, but which slang and the expletive of the barroom and was a common thing within a mile o f that the barracks. I am sorry to say that the gentle card party, the butchering of the cabinet and the farmer, the blacksmith and agency beef. This was done in a long empty the Indian traders, felt far superior to mere barn, with a gutter in the middle for the teachers. I have since found this spirit not blood to run off. On butchering day the entirely absent in a much larger world. Indians gathered early. The cattle were In short, work was the lot of the teacher, driven into the barn and the doors closed. poor pay and good-natured contempt her re­ In the twilight, the killers, with their guns, ward. May not wiser eyes discern in the stood above the floor on ladders nailed ‘to school the one useful institution, in the the wall. Their eyes were like cats’. They teacher the one useful, self-sacrificing ser­ never missed. A shot, and a cow falls. An- I vant of the old reservation? If some of the other. Another. A hum rises outside. The prejudices of that old time did not yet cling men descend from their ladders and with to me, would I simply ask the question? drawn knives run to cut the throats of their The reservation had its society, too. It was victims. The doors are thrown open. The an exclusive, aristocratic society. Not a Indians rush in. They cut up the beasts; teacher, not a squawman, not a person with they fight over the stomachs; they drink the 1 a taint of Indian blood, belonged to it. It gall; they devour the raw entrails. A wild 1 was composed of the agent, the chief clerk, and haggard figure, stretched on the ground, 1 the stenographer, the Indian traders, the at the mouth of the gutter, laps up the warm 1 depot agent, and their wives. We played and flowing blood. The Frontier 55

HISTORICAL SECTION Each ™sue toin carrV some authentic account, diary or journal or reminiscence, preferably of early days in this region of the country.

SCOUTING IN MONTANA IN THE 1870's J. W . Redington

= s « S ! reachedsr&£Si.uff a deserted i k cabin vs^sr which he described found°fi>m S ]}or8e tor an abandoned Indian pony, left a letter for the Editor o f"h is D a n ilin the / loAur sc? tHri d » round which he ate, where he should go to next The letter was mafloS August 16th—lost and not knowing become of Redington? mailed to us from Bannack August 23rd. What hai

HE time to get thrills, real frontier and the present generation has much to T thrills, was in the Territorial days of thank them for. Major Clark had made a Montana, along through the 1870’s. record ride on his wiry warborse from Deer Of course the Indians saw it first, but in Lodge to Butte to recruit a company there. the many times 99 years they had had the When I left the Montana Volunteers on vast domain they had never raised a grain Big Hole River Sergt. Wilson told me he crop to help carry out the country’s supply thought I could strike the trail of the reg­ of flapjax, had never built a skyscraper or ular army in about 15 miles, but they turned taken out a ton of gold to swell the wealth out to be the longest miles I ever measured. of the world, bought an auto, or a share of I was supposed to be alone, and it was a oil stock. So of course it was decreed that vast and lonely country to be alone in, but the white race should come along and take every hour or so a hostile Indian scout would it away from the red race and set it to work show up on some sightly butte, and we would producing. warily watch each other just out of range. My awakening to the real size of Montana Winning the West was when I covered 800 miles getting to the The Big Hole battlefield was a sight to front during the Nez Perce Indian war in see, and was the scene o f one o f the fiercest 1877, and I made it in ten days by swap­ little battles in all frontier history. The ping saddle horses three times. burning horseflesh still smouldering in the Patriotic People Indian campfires where the animals had And my first scouting thrills were received fallen when shot, gave out such an awful when I met Billie Woodward, advanced scout odor that it is easy to imagine that I can of the Montana Volunteers, near Silver Bow, scent it yet. in 1877, while the brilliant northern stars The pretty pines along the mountainside were scintillating, and together we scouted were sadly singing their requiems for the 21 ahead of the command through Deer Lodge regulars and six volunteers whose lives had Valley and its vast surroundings the rest of just been snuffed out in their prime, 31 had the night. been wounded in the early-morning battle, The battalion was under command of Ma­ and 80 dead Indians told the tale of the win­ jor W. A. Clark, with Gen. C. 8. Warren, ning of the west and its great cost in hu­ adjutant, and was composed of men who man toll. had dropped the tools of their industries and There was no stuttering about picking up patriotically volunteered to take the field in trails along there, for the main big trail of defense of the country against the foes of the hostiles, Chief Joseph and his band of civilization. They were a fine body of men, Nez Perces, led right o ff to the south—horse 56 The Frontier tracks and mule tracks, and the tracks of that saved my scalp. They must have known 200 troopers and doughboys following them I was coming. up. Late in the day I got out of the swamp and Mountain Magnificence again struck the trail and followed it on It was a magnificent mountain country through the night. Next morning my horse along there on the backbone of the Bitter petered out just as I reached the last camp­ Roots with the soaring summits that mark ing-ground of the hostiles. I abandoned my the dividing line between Montana and Ida­ horse and captured another among a small ho, with lush grass on the mountain mead­ bunch that had escaped from the Indians. I ows up to your horse’s knees, and the best saddled and mounted him, but he balked and water in the world. It was all I had to would not budge an inch. I caught another, fill up on for a few days, and it was cer­ and he was perfectly willing to co-operate tainly nourishing and satisfying. and carry me on. The still-smoky droppings in the trails, Old Indian made by Indian ponies who had not been At the next Indian camp I came to, the house-broke, showed that the hostiles had still-warm ashes showed that the Indians their scouts out watching for any approach­ were not far ahead. I was pretty hungry, ing army. and was lucky enough to find a piece of My sticking to the trail and admiration Indian bread about as big as your hand that of the country were rudely broken in upon had been overlooked in the ashes. It was by a bunch of about seven Indians dashing made of straight flour and water, but just at me across a meadow. As an act of cour­ then it was a sweeter morsel than any angel- tesy I also dashed off, into a wooded swamp, cake that ever happened. and their bullets hit high on the trees close The saddest sight at this camp was an old, by. They might have been soft-nosed bul­ helpless Indian lying on a few old buffalo lets, but they sounded like hot tamales or robes, with only a bottle of water alongside. scalded snowballs the way they spattered He looked as though the snows of a hundred out when they struck and mussed up the winters had fallen on his head, but still there woodland. was not a trace of baldness. He volunteered By changing my course and coming to an­ a wan smile at the sight of a human being, other edge of the swamp I could look out and made a feeble motion with one arm, and see the Indians sitting on their horses pointing to his forehead, making a mumble and firing a few shots into the swamp at with his poor toothless mouth. My compul­ the point where I entered it It was rather sory schooling had not embraced his lan­ tough traveling through the swamp, but after guage, but I could understand that he was a horse had sunk halfway to his knees he inviting me to shoot him in the forehead and found firm bottom, so I took a southerly end his misery. Instead of accommodating course, aiming to again strike the trail him I fed him half of the piece of bread I further on. had found, which he ate ravenously. He As a Swamp Angel semed quite disappointed when I made a Being a swamp-angel in a miry morass was motion of flapping my wings to indicate that a strange and sloppy stunt, but if the swamp I must skiddoo and be on my way. cover had not been there the hostiles would This old Indian had doubtless carried sons soon have made some other kind of an angel and daughters through mumps and measles, of me and sent me climbing the golden stair, cramps, colic, pains in the stomach and all which might have its compensations. The the ailments that kids are heir to, and two hours’ delay was a lucky strike for me, brought them up to the scalping and voting and kept me from rushing up on the hostile age, and now they had abandoned him in the camp without a letter of introduction. lone mountains because he could no longer It was very kind of the beavers who had ride a horse and was an incumbrance. dammed a creek and flooded that piece of Such inhumanity gave me a new angle on timber, for it certainly gave me the cover Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking noble red The Frontier 57

men, and made me think of them as fiends But hard riding had brought the sounder of the forest. kind of sleep, so there were several streaks My new horse had evidently not had much of daylight chasing each other around when of a rest from hard riding by some other I woke up next morning. And down on the Indian, but I pushed him along while the bottom a bunch of Indians were dashing away pushing was good, and neither of us retarded to the south, driving a bunch of horses, our gait by filling up on food, for there was among which was mine. They even took none to fill up on. my picket-pin. I thought that the small advance force of This was the war-party of the hostiles the regular army was on the trail ahead of which had raided the Horse Prairie country me, but found out afterwards that it had and murdered several men, including Wil­ turned o ff so as to take a shortcut via Rat­ liam Farnsworth, whose body, covered with tlesnake Creek and Bannack City, and that a quilt, lay on the meadow where the hos­ during the night I had missed the turning- tiles had shot him. A few more days and off point. he was to have been on his way back to the New York home, where a bride awaited Bloody Dick's Quick him. History may prove that I never crossed the Alps with Napoleon as I thought I had, As I hiked on down Horse Prairie the first ranch I struck was John Clark’s, and but it can never deny that I was the first that pioneer was waiting and watching for white person who went through the Bloody Dick Gulch country after the hostile Nez any more hostiles that might be coming along, although he had no more horses for Perces. Some pioneer afterwards told me them to steal. When I saw the size o f his that the only blood ever spilled there was rifle I was glad that he had not mistaken from the mouth o f an old English miner me for a hostile, for one of his bullets was who was eternally talking about “blasting ’is bloody heyes,” and “ bloody” this and enough to muss up an elephant. “bloody” that, so that the title of Bloody The Which of the Why Dick stuck to him and his gulch. The next ranch I came to looked like a to­ But how I ever got through that region tal wreck, as the hostiles had played tag swarming with hostiles in those wild days, with most everything they could smash, al­ without an armored car, and live to sit at though they did not burn the buidings. They a hammerless typewriter and tell about it, must have known that I was coming and is one of those great mysteries of fools rid­ would need it, for they overlooked a keg of ing in where angels fear to fly. The log­ old-fashioned soggy brown sugar, and the ical thing would have been for me to be way I filled up on it made up for lost time taken In at that stage of the game. So I and missing meals. must have been born under a 13th lucky star or a 23rd skiddoo moon. The heel-blisters I raised as big as four- year-old watermelons were the result of the Saved Ity Played-Out Horse long hike I had to make before I consoli­ Lucky for me my horse began to peter, for dated with the army, but very soon Colonel if he hadn’t, I would have rode right on Rube Robbins made me a Christmas pres­ into the hostile camp, a few miles ahead. I ent o f a horse captured from the hostiles, had been reading in “Our Dumb Animals” and I was no longer afoot. that a merciful man is merciful to his horse, so in the interest of humanity I picketed Tragic Touring him on good grass below the Farnsworth Scouting into the Yellowstone Park we mine, at the head of Horse Prairie, and were welcomed by several members of the staked myself out on the brushy benchland Cowan party as they straggled out after be­ above, intending to resume the stern chase ing shot up by the hostiles. They had scat­ at the first streak of daylight, with no delay tered, each for himself, and each thought about cooking breakfast, as there was noth­ that all the others were dead, and they were ing to cook, and no dishes to wash. mighty glad to again see a white face. 58 The Frontier

Mr. Cowan had shown wonderful vitality were putting up log fortifications to give the by crawling along down the river for quite soldiers another battle. a way after being left for dead. He had Captain Fisher made a rough sketch of the been badly wounded in head and hip, and surrounding landmarks, and with this and his ghastly paleness made a strong contrast a brief report of his movements, started back with his ink-black hair. The fine carriage for the command, taking along one of the that his party had taken into the park was Bannacks. But he went under protest, not badly wrecked by the hostiles, and they had having any desire to be again put under taken most of the brightly-varnished spokes guard. to make handles for their riding-whips. Returning through the down timber, my In camp on the Yellowstone at the mud horse gave out, and we captured a mule, on geysers General Howard had a bunch of which I made another ten miles, and then Bannacks under guard for stealing govern­ he gave out, and we captured another horse, ment horses. They had been advance scouts and when we had reforded the Yellowstone under Captain S. G. Fisher, and told myste­ and reached the old camp, the soldiers were rious stories about his outfit being wiped out gone and ashes were cold and darkness was by the hostiles, etc. again with us. Finding Fisher Hunting Houyard Captain Fisher had not been definitely We followed the soldiers’ trail down the heard from for a week, so I volunteered to river, crossing the treacherous crust of the go out and try to find him. Captain R. H. sulphur basin between the Sulphur Buttes, Fletcher, in charge of scouts, called for two with big bunches of sulphurous steam belch­ volunteers among the Bannacks to go with ing out of the darkness and puncturing the me, and they all wanted to go, so as to get night air. It was a ticklish place to ride out from under guard. They finally selected over in the night, and when your horse sank two lucky ones, and we started off. But in several inches it seemed as though you before going several soldiers warned me that would not have very far to fall before entering the Bannacks would shoot me before we had the infernal regions. All night we rode, gone a mile from camp. passing within earshot of the roar of Yel­ We forded the Yellowstone and rode up lowstone Falls, on over Mt. Washburn, over­ the river to the lake, and then took the trail taking the command the next afternoon. On of the hostiles up Pelican creek, and were the information furnished by a veteran sol­ soon traveling through a steady rain and the dier named Irving, who had been a pris­ deep darkness of night. The Bannacks were oner of the hostiles and had escaped, the certainly good trailers, or else we never would command was taking this shortcut, which have gotten through the awful stretch of certainly saved it many a weary mile. down timber that we encountered. Twice The soldiers fixed up the Baronet bridge, the Bannacks tried to get behind me, but burned by a war-party, and marched on up Colonel C. E. S. Wood, chief of staff, had Soda Butte creek and passed Cooke City, warned me against such possible treachery, where several pioneer miners volunteered to and as one of the Bannacks rode a white serve against the Indians. Along here Cap­ horse which was visible In the dark, I in­ tain Fisher and his little bunch of Bannacks sisted that they keep in the front. rejoined the command and again rode out We kept plugging away all night, and just far in the advance, on the heels of the ene­ before daylight found Captain Fisher and my. I went with them, and we rode through his little outfit of seven scouts. The rest of the lofty region of Clark’s Fork of the Yel­ his fifty Bannacks had gone back on him lowstone, following down that stream after when he started to charge the hostile camp, dropping through one of the steepest canyons but he stayed with the job with only seven. on earth. Captain Fisher took me up to the top of Custer’s Old Regiment a ridge, from which we could look across a Up there the Seventh Cavalry joined the deep canyon and see the Nez Perce camp on command, and with fresher horses made a the next ridge, and it looked as though they forced march down Clark’s Fork. The rain The Frontier 59

came down in torrents, and we had to ford gone. Every move from camp was a com­ the river many times where the bluffs would plete one, and not a single mirror, dresser, come down to the water’s edge and make Morris chair, music box or electric chande­ travel impossible without crossing over, lier was overlooked or left behind. which had to be repeated a few miles fur­ The Boss Horse-Thieves ther on. Fifty well-mounted Mountain Crow In­ Scouting three to five miles ahead of the dians joined us along Clark’s Fork when we soldiers, we had a chance to see it first when were five miles ahead of the command, and there was anything to be seen. One thing they were proud of the Spanish brands on we saw was where the hostiles had cleaned their prancing horses, which they said had out a prospector’s camp, and one of the dead been stolen away down in Mexico and men there had a miner’s pick driven through brought back by their war-parties. They his neck into the ground. We rescued one said it was no trick to swipe horses from of this party from the brush, wounded fur­ the Mexicans, but they often had a tough ther down stream, and he told us all about it time getting them through the tribes be­ We were a pretty hungry outfit when we tween Mexico and Montana. found the carcass of a fine, fat, dressed We forded the Yellowstone just above the antelope lying right in the trail, but it looked mouth of Clark’s Fork, and it was such a too suspicious of poison, so no one dared to swift stream that my horse was washed off, think of eating the meat but Captain Fisher skillfully threw his lari­ Planned Next War at over the horn of my saddle, and his muscular mule pulled us out. Buffalo Horn was one of our Bannack Although the main hostile trail led down scouts, and he was a wonder to get more out the Yellowstone, we saw Indian scouts of a horse than a white man could out of watching us from the bluffs to the north; half a dozen. He had an eye like an eagle, they charged down, but our outfit sent them and nothing escaped it He noted how the charging backward. When we had driven hostiles’ horses could out-travel the cavalry them over the bluffs we caught a sight of horses, and mapped out in his head a war what was on the other side, and there was that would sweep over Idaho and Eastern the whole hostile outfit right under us, Oregon and capture heap of horses. He told strung along the benches and bottoms of me all about it as we rode along. The fol­ Canyon Creek. lowing March I made a pretty readable column-and-a-half story of it in the San Battle of Canyon Creek Francisco Sunday Chronicle. A few months At the sight o f 2500 head o f hostile horses later Buffalo Horn started his war just as the Crows went wild, charged one corner outlined, and with warriors from the Ban­ of the rear of the herd, and cut out 300 nacks and Malheurs raided Idaho and Ore­ horses, which they stampeded over the hill gon, and had horses to burn. After the bat­ and rushed back to their reservation. Horses tle on the Bear Fork of Birch Creek that year were all they were after, so they did not of 1878 our scouting outfit captured a Snake stop to help the whites in the impending hostile who told me that in the battle with battle. Harper’s Volunteers near South Mountain, It was quite a joke to see our little scout­ Buffalo Horn was badly wounded, and three ing outfit make a charge against another days after was abandoned along the Owyhee flank of the hostiles. The charge was river. Having become an incumbrance un­ promptly repulsed. When the cavalry fin­ able to travel, and of no further use to ally appeared above us on the bluffs we all the other hostiles, he was cached in the thought there would be a charge of the 600 brush and left for the wolves. Such was right there that would wind up the Nez the philosophy of the noble red man. Perce war. That seemed the proper pro­ The Nez Perces made a hurry-up march cedure. But there was no charge. General down Clark’s Fork, but left nothing behind Sturgis dismounted and deployed the troop­ in the camps we came to just after they had ers, and they followed up the Indians in 60 The Frontier skirmish line. The impression was that the It took a great deal of the forceful energy commander was too cautious on account of of troopers and troop-horses to overhaul losing a son by Custer’s intrepidity the year those hostiles at Canyon Creek, but at the before. So the battle of Canyon creek lasted last it was all a forceful failure because the rest of the day, the hostiles contesting of the lack of old-time dash and charge in every foot of the ground while gradually the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s old regiment. drawing off up a box canyon. A Fine Frontiersman Scouts Were All Over Some of us scouted back to the Yellowstone The scouts bushwhacked around all over to see if anyone had been killed where we the battlefield, getting in many cross-fires had seen a big smoke ascending. on the enemy. One Indian behind a point of We rescued from the willows a bold fron­ rocks held them back for ten minutes, and tiersman named Ed Forrest, who had that when the point was taken I counted forty year started a ranch and stage station on empty shells on the ground where he had the river, and had been attacked by the been crouching. hostiles. They had also attacked the Mc- At one spot we rode up on a knoll, and Adoo sawmill further down. The stage had had just reached the top when a shower of just arrived at Forrest’s when the attack bullets came right at us. They spattered was made, but the passengers all escaped all around us, before and behind, but not to the thick willows on the river. Among a man or horse was hit. Strange how such them was a lady named Fannie Clark, who things happen. insisted on cooking a square meal for us Captain Fisher led the scouts up a coulee scouts, soon filling us up with fried ham and into a connecting pocket, where we got and flapjax. The hostiles had captured in a fine flank fire on the enemy, but the everything Forrest had in his new cabin, bullets soon began buzzing so briskly there but as he had been jumped before, he wisely that we had to get out, and consider it a kept an extra outfit of food cached in the sort of miracle that we ever did get out. brush. The smoke we saw was from For­ Some one o f those cruel hostiles took a rest’s two haystacks, which the Indians pot shot at me, but aimed too low, so that burned up. the bullet went through my horse and lodged Hr. Forrest was certainly a booster, and in my knee. One of my fellow Boy Scouts told us that right there was the best grow­ took his mouthful of tobacco and slapped it ing-country in all Montana. He invited us onto the wound, making it stay put with a to help ourselves to a small patch of string strip of his shirt. It smarted some, but beans he was raising, and they were so caused hurry-up healing, and the few days’ good, and we were so hungry for the vege­ stiffness did not hinder horse-riding. tables, that we ate up the whole business After the battle was over and darkness raw, stems and all. Some day when my had come on we had to cut steaks from the prairie-schooner comes in without minding horses and mules shot during the day. The the moaning o f the bar, and I again have meat was tough and stringy, for the poor a home garden, I shall plant a whole acre animals had been ridden and packed for of baked beans and invite Ed Forrest to months, with only what grass they could come and help himself to them all. pick up at night. But it was all the food we had. Martyred Dogs By charging the Indian scouts over the Forrest had a hound dog and Miss Clark bluffs we had saved twelve miles, for the had a little black-and-tan and they kept main hostile outfit had gone down the Yel­ barking at the Indians and defying them lowstone six miles and back up Canyon to come and get them in the brush, but in­ creek six miles to where the battle occurred. stead of doing so they shot in the direction They had captured a Concord stage coach, of the barking. So as the barking had to and were hauling it up Canyon creek, but be stopped, Forrest had to sever the wind­ dropped it when they saw us coming over pipe of the small dog; but when he started the bluffs. to do the same with his own bigger dog The Frontier 61 he only got the hide cut through when he ries, for they made the pucker that kept broke away. But nursing the cut kept the puckering for 43 years. dog too busy to bark any more. The other No Pay That Year stage passengers had started up river afoot There was no appropriation for the army during the night, and finally reached a in 1877, so when the Nez Perce war was settlement. The kit o f dentists’ tools and over and the scouts were discharged they false teeth left by one of them in the stage received yellow vouchers showing that they was scattered all along the ground by the In­ had certain amounts coming to them, pay­ dians, who then drove the stage In great style ment being subject to future appropriations down the river to the mouth of Canyon creek, by congress. These vouchers only brought turning up that stream, with half a dozen 30 cents on the dollar at frontier trading- hostile war-horses tolling along behind the posts where scouts had to buy things they coach. This we saw from the bluffs over badly needed. They were all pretty ragged which we made the short-cut. from hard service, and were nicely nick­ The water of Canyon creek was villainous named Sternouts. stuff. When we gave it to wounded men the painful expression on their faces in­ Night Scouting creased a thousandfold. At that time of The surviving warriors of Chief Joseph's year there was no running water there; army will be surprised when they read here it stood stagnant in pools. of how the darkness of night helped our There was rough country up Canyon creek scouts to ride up so close to their camp that and beyond, and the cavalry horses were we could count their fires, hear the yelping out very fast. There was scout-skirmishing of their dogs and the squabbling of squaws. and a running battle, but the hostiles out­ We would go into camp in early evening ran the troop horses and skipped along on many miles ahead of the army, make big their way to Sitting Bull’s camp. fires with wood if there was any, otherwise with buffalo chips, cook supper if there was Buffalo Berrien of the Musselshell anything to cook, and stick around in the The Musselshell where we struck it was open until after dark. Then, leaving our certainly a lovely stream, with grassy mea­ fires burning, and our horses having partly dows, shady trees and good running water. filled up on good grass such as Montana And there were millions of buffalo berries, was plentifully supplied with, we saddled up which we broke off in great clusters as we and rode a few miles and made another camp rode under the trees that bore them. The without fires. acid taste was very welcome after a long Then about half our force would scatter fast on fruit, and not a codling moth was out in ones and twos and scout the country in sight. most of the night. Sometimes we had forty- And those berries are certainly the best five scouts in the bunch, sometimes only puckerers on earth. They put on a pucker ten, and it seems now the greatest luck in that never comes off. It is a long time be­ the world that our little outfit was not tween drinks of the Nez Perce war and wiped out. We kept close track of the hos­ World War, but this kind of pucker lasted tiles, and every night one of us as a lone all the way through. While being recently courier would make his way by the stars rebuilt by Major Harden, skillful surgeon back to the army to report on how the at an army hospital, he turned me over to enemy was heading and any indications of the Letterman dentist for finishing. That his being reinforced by other hostiles. gentleman had great trouble stretching my Seeing Stars mouth enough to get in his diamond drills, It was wonderful how those scouts could and had to stand on the outside during the tell you how to find your way by the Milky entire operation. He pronounced it the most W ay and big and little dipper and the old complete puckering that ever came within stand-by the north star. Most o f them had his practice. And right there I put in a never studied Latin or Greek, or much of good boost for the Musselshell buffalo ber­ anything else, but they certainly studied 62 The Frontier stars. And in regions swarming with hostile remains of a wrecked Indian camp, and Indians most small parties did their travel­ wondered how it happened. From the way ing at night and hid as well as possible dur­ things were torn up around there, there had ing daytime. certainly been quite a little battle. George The genial George Huston figured out Huston figured out that the camp had been that the Nez Perce hostiles were heading occupied by Dumb Bull’s outfit of Biver for the Judith Basin, and thought we could Crow Indians, who were drying buffalo meat locate them there and arrange for a battle and were attacked by the Nez Perces. There and wind-up. Knowing that the enemy were tons of dried and partly dried meat would be looking backward for us to come lying around, and a flock of Poe’s ravens up on his main trail, we waited until after rose gracefully from where they had been dark, made a detour to get under cover of holding inquests on the rigid remains of the timbered mountains, and rode all night. several Indians who no more minded people At the first streak of daylight we had knocking on their chamber doors, nevermore. reached a point on the mountain where we We found by moccasin tracks that several could look right into Judith Basin where Indians had skipped out afoot, and when we we saw a stirring movement that seemed passed Reed’s Fort later in the day we like the hostiles getting their big band of found that the scout’s conclusions were cor­ horses in motion for another day’s march. rect. Dumb Bull was there, and was feeling pretty sore about the way the hostiles had Black With Buffalo cleaned him out of all his horses. But still But as daylight increased we saw that he declined the invitation to come along with what we saw was a little bunch o f 3000 the scouts and get some sweet revenge. buffalo grazing around, and the smoke from A Successful Plan a few fires curled up into the ambient air. When we reported back to the army that We zigzagged down from the mountains, and the Nez Perces had not made a stand in in one canyon Horn Miller showed us the Judith Basin, General Howard concluded charred ruins of a cabin where he and two that a stern chase with worn-out cavalry others used to trap two years before. The horses and footsore infantry after well- Sioux besieged them there for three days, mounted Indians could not be made a suc­ and then they escaped in the night, but one cess. So he really planned the plan that re­ of the partners was killed, and the Indians sulted in the final capture of the hostiles. burned up the cabin. No insurance. He sent an all-day-and-all-night courier to We found the Judith Basin the best grass General N. A. Miles, away down the Yellow­ country on earth and our hungry horses soon stone, asking him to take every man he filled up when we halted at the smouldering could muster and angle in ahead of the hos­ fires where the Indian camp had been the tiles, cutting them o ff from Sitting Bull, night before. It was easy to figure out that while he would change his course, quit the the Indians had cooked supper there and direct pursuit, strike the Missouri at Carroll, then gone on during the night. They had and give the enemy the idea that they were an abundance of buffalo meat, and on part no longer pursued, so that they would let of the big pile they had left lying around we up on their forced marches and give the cooked a big breakfast. two little armies a chance to bottle them up between them. Dumb Bull’s Outfit The plan worked out all right. Orders There were fully 3000 buffalo grazing in came out to our scouting outfit to continue the Judith Basin, and they were only just on the direct trail of the hostiles, and play wild enough to move out of our way as we tag with them, and make them assure them­ rode alongside o f them. Among themselves selves that we had no supports, and that the scouts agreed that some day white people the army had turned back and gone home. would make a productive proposition out of They knew that when we were only a few that rich region. miles ahead of the army the scouts were In one part o f the Judith we found the pretty saucy. The Frontier 63

Skirmishing and Skipping Out said he was just sort of pi-uting around, Our outfit carried out the program to per­ and he certainly had room to do so, for there fection. We always had a few extra horses, was not another soul in sight, and it was a which we hastily abandoned when the hos­ notoriously bad region, where everybody got tiles’ rear-guard turned on us and chased whooped up, both red men and white. us out of the country after we had exchanged One o f our scouts told me that Johnson a few shots with them. After this had oc­ was safe anywhere, for the Indians were curred several times the Nez Perces became superstitious about him, and let him alone, assured that the army had turned back, and and kept out of range of the big telescope that they had won a great victory by out- rifle he carried. It was also said that he traveling the soldiers. So they quit pressing really did not eat the Indian’s liver, but had the accelerator, slowed down, and finally merely drawn it across his mouth, so that went into camp and began drying buffalo the other Sioux could see and think he had meat for the coming winter. And they must eaten it after shooting the Indian and jump­ have thought that winter was going to last ing over the breastworks at Fort Pease and about 99 years, judging by the amount of cutting out the liver. meat they had piled up at their last camp near the Bear Paw mountains. The Colored Courier Was Dead Everybody knows how General Miles’ gal­ In one section we wound among many lant little army headed off the hostiles and small lakes, on the edge of one of which we wound up their war, but most people do found the stiffening body of a colored couri­ not know that it never would have been er who had been carrying dispatches from possible but for General Howard’s plan, and one command to the other. He had been they way our scouts fooled the hostiles. shot through the head, perhaps about two hours before, and his .50-calibre needle-gun A Rich Haul lay alongside him, with an empty shell in When we crossed the Missouri, Cow Island the chamber. His buffalo moccasins lay certainly looked sick. Tons and tons of close by, and his dispatches had been torn winter supplies had been landed there by up into little bits and scattered around. A steamboats, as it was head o f navigation box of cigars had also been broken into in the fall. The larger part o f these supplies short bits, but not too short to use for filling belonged to the Canadian police, and were in the scouts’ pipes. His horse was gone, to be hauled by bull-trains to Fort Walsh, and it was a great mystery why his mur­ across the border. derers did not also take his gun and belt After defeating the small guard at Cow of ammunition. Island, the Nez Perces had a picnic helping Scouting Other Frontiers Now themselves to all the stores. They loaded every pack-horse they had with the best of It is difficult to recall the names of the groceries and canned goods, and for many reckless rough-riders who made up our miles up Cow Creek and Bull Creek we scouting outfit in Montana, but Captain S. could trail them by the packages of finecut G. Fisher was one of the best, and so was tobacco, beans and coffee that had trickled George Huston. Horn Miller was one of and dropped off their packs. But they re­ the best old souls that ever lived, and his fused to take this big stack of long barrack- partner Pike Moore was a close second. stoves that were going to steam-heat Fort There was Potter and Nutting, and John T. Walsh, so they set fire to the big pile they Lilly, and Stoner, and Gird, and the always could not take along, and the stoves were genial Hank Flannagan, and Captain Wilbur, warped and twisted most artistically. a civil war veteran, and there was a good- natured youth whose name I have forgotten, The Whoop-up Country but I have not forgotten how he swiped my While scouting through the Whoop-up horse, even taking the picket-pin, the dark country north of the Missouri we bumped night he was discharged. St. Peter will into the old pioneer Liver-Eating Johnson, never let him in and show him where to who jogged along with us for awhile. He find wood, water and grass, or even buffalo 64 The Frontier chips that are dry enough to cook with. had charge of the packers and men in Colonel Rube Robbins was chief o f the the rear, but not of the scouts, and the Idaho scouts, and had with him Cal Morton, only excuse for classifying the scouts as Jack Campbell, Colonel Frank Parker and non-combatants is that while there were others, and they were relieved from further no paymasters out with the army in the duty and started home from Judith Basin field, the quartermaster did the paying when with the First Cavalry. there was any done. The paying with yellow vouchers at the close of the Nez Perce war Fierce Forays was a joke on the scouts when they came Charley Rainey and Baptiste were the to raising any cash on them. main daredevils of Fisher’s Scouts, and how they ever came out alive they or nobody else Rank Injustice will ever know. They certainly tempted And merely because the quartermasters kept track of the list of scouts and the pay death on many fierce forays. they got and didn’t get, the war department The life of a scout was surely an odd turned the whole scouting outfit over to the one, and he was in a class by himself. One quartermaster general’s department, thus reason why he preferred to go alone, espe­ robbing the scouts of their hard-earned cially on long courier trips, was that when standing as soldiers, although there is no two scouts separated to reconnoiter their act of congress or law to justify such in­ horses nickered at each other, and sent vi­ justice. brations through the air to enemy’s ears. In 1917 Congress granted a pension to all When there was only one horse there was no survivors of Indian wars, and Congressman nickering. Being out alone in the great Keating of Colorado, author of the bill, says solitudes gave a scout a chance to practice that of course he intended it to include men the closed mouth, and his horse learned the who had served as scouts and couriers in noiseless, rubber-tired tread. Indian wars. But with rank injustice the Imagine A Scout A Non-Combatant pension department has refused to pay pen­ Although the scouts rendered the most sions to such scouts and couriers, and claims valuable kind of military duty in the field that they were civilian employees o f the during actual war, and their job was to be quartermaster department and not entitled in advance preventing the soldiers from run­ to pensions. ning into murderous ambuscades, through Well, as most o f the old scouts are dead, some war department red tape they have it will make no difference to them. As Her­ been given no standing as soldiers, and are bert Bashford or some other poet wrote, classed as mere civilian employees o f the their guns are rust, their bones are dust, quarter-master department. This puts them their souls are with the Lord, we trust. But in the non-combatant class, as though they it is pretty tough to have official high- were clerks back at department headquarters salaried swivel-chair-warmers smirch their a thousand miles from the front, while really war-records and make non-combatants of they were notoriously combat units. They them at this stage of the game. were subject to army regulations and the An Awful Waste articles of war the same as soldiers, and if Scouts traveled light, and providing for the formality of mustering them in was tomorrow was not near so important as mak­ overlooked through no fault of theirs, they ing it easier for your horse. Along late in rendered just as good military service as the afternoon the scouts would spot a little though they had been mustered in a dozen bunch of buffalo and two scouts would scout times over. up a coulee and get as near the game as Our scouts never took orders from quarter­ possible without being seen. Then they masters, for they volunteered their services would come up the bank and make a dash to the General in command, and took orders for the buffalo and shoot half-a-dozen. Two only from him or his staff officer, Lieut. long strips from each hump would be cut S. C. E. S. Wood and R. H. Fletcher, and tied on behind the saddles, and the rest in charge o f scouts. The quartermaster would be left for the wolves watching around The Frontier 65 to come to the feast. These humps would One trooper rolled out of his saddle blan­ furnish enough meat for the outfit for supper ket and into the river, and when he swam and for breakfast next morning. The prac­ out he said he had dreamed that big plugs tice had daily repetition. It was most ex­ of army tobacco were hanging from the trees cellent meat, and that cut from yearlings over his head, and as he was reaching up of young dry cow buffalo was tender enough for them he rolled into the river. He said to absorb through a straw if there had been that as soon as he felt the chill of the any straws there, which there were not. mountain water he realized that it was all a pipe-dream. A sad feature about it was Women In War when a courier would come to the command Some misguided humanitarian wrote up and have a dozen soldiers flock around him Chief Joseph’s account of his war, in which and beg him for a morsel of tobacco, and he denounced the soldiers for shooting wo­ when he told them he had none they showed men during the Big Hole battle, forgetting every symptom of wanting to tell him he to mention that the lady Indians there fought was lying about it, although he was sticking as fiercely as did the gentleman Indians, to the frozen truth. and that just as one officer yelled out, “Don’t There was a very big rifle among the hos­ shoot the squaws, boys!” a squaw raised tiles that had been taken from a murdered the flap of a wicke-up and took a pot shot cattleman in Idaho. The Indian carrying at him, sending a bullet through his hat. it generally selected a safe spot at long dis­ Joe also forgot to mention how his noble tance, and almost always hit somebody when red men murdered poor Mrs. Manuel at her he fired, and the report sounded like hit­ little home on White Bird, beat out on the ting the air with a pile-driver. This gun cookstove the brains of her little baby and cnt off the tongue of her little girl, after was looked for after the surrender, but was never found. leaving Jack Manuel for dead on the out­ side, and then burned up the house. He also Service of Scouts omitted to mention how his kindly Indians In General Howard’s account of the Nez shot Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Chamberlin on Perce war he wrote, “A thrill of joy ran Camas Pairie. through our weary and almost discouraged Halo Tobacco, Bi-Yu Fish command when we were reinforced by a On the Yellowstone the army ran out of bunch of scouts under Captain S. G. Fisher. tobacco and most everything else, and filled Night and day, with force and without, up on trout without salt. These fat fish Fisher fearlessly bung upon the skirts of were lazily lolling around in the river, and the enemy. The accuracy and fullness of luckily it was no trick to catch them. Most his reports were a delight to those engaged of them were wormy, but in those hungry in chasing hostile Indians across a vast days everything went. After Colonel Parker wilderness.” and I had filled up on them and were scout­ In her thrilling book, “Boots and Saddles,” ing around an outpost he said to the o f­ Mrs. Custer wrote, “After the Senventh Cav­ ficer commanding it, who was just then alry reached Dakota frontier, General Custer eating a stand-up lunch, “ Say, Lieutenant, accepted the volunteer services of a scout don’t you know that those trout are full named Charlie Reynolds, who remained with of worms?” The lieutenant finished swal­ him until they both fell in the Battle of the lowing a big mouthful and replied, “Well, Little Big Horn. Year after year Scout if the worms can stand it, I can,” and started Reynolds braved the awful winters of Da­ in on another fish. kota alone. I have known him to start out The soldiers seemed to miss their tobacco from Fort Lincoln when our officers, accus­ more than they did their hardtack. They tomed to hardships as they were, were for­ cut out the pockets where they had been bidden to go. carrying tobacco, and chewed the rag, and “When I watched the scouts starting away burned out their pipes trying to get smokes on their lonely trips I invariably thanked from dead leaves and grass. heaven that I was born a woman, and con­ 66 The Frontier sequently no deed of valor would ever be pink peony, helpless on a bunch of brush, expected of me. But I felt, though, were and she began telling us in broken English I compelled to be brave, I would far rather that there were bad Indians near by, and go into battle with the inspiration of the that white people had better Kalatawa, skid- trumpet-call and the clash of arms, than go doo, get out. Then she told us that her away alone and take my life in my hands, Nez Perce people had abandoned her, and as did the scouts. that we were welcome to shoot her, and be­ “When I think of how gloriously Scout gan singing the Indian death-song. She Reynolds fell, fighting for his country, with could sing about as well as I could, but all the valor and fidelity of one of her her poor old cracked voice could carry the soldiers, my eyes fill with tears. For he chant, wild and weird. Dick proposed to lies there on that battlefield unwept, unhon­ shake dice to see whether or not we would ored and unsung. Had he worn all the in­ put her out of her misery, as requested, but signia of the high rank and the decorations I sidestepped and showed him that the of an adoring country, he could not have led ethics of civilization frowned on such mur­ a braver life or died a more heroic death. der. And yet he is chronicled as ‘only a scout’.” The old squaw was wasted to parchment, Winter Warpaths and when the poor old umbra saw her chant was bringing her no nearer to the golden Describing some of the incidents of a hard stair, she made a pathetic effort to sing winter campaign made by the gallant Sev­ Nearer My God to Thee. This pretty nearly enth Cavalry against hostiles who were out brought Dick to tears, and he said something on the warpath raiding ranches and murder­ about once having a poor old mother him­ ing settlers, General Custer w rote: “ We self, which all the other scouts had doubted, hurried along since four o’clock in the morn­ he was such an awful, although artistic, ing, and now it was nearly night, and still swearer. the snow seemed unbroken as far as the eye But he brushed away the tears and said could reach. Our scouts kept far out in the “A-w-e-e, that old son-of-a-gun! If she had front, and when one of them gave the signal you helpless on the battlefield she would that the trail of the hostiles had been dis­ cut off and make you chew your own ears. covered, the command moved along with less Don’t I know? Haven't I seen it done? Come anxious hearts. on, let’s g o !” “At ten o’clock at night the regiment Dick also said that this Jersey Lily’s In­ stretched out its long length, with the troop­ dian name meant “ the graceful gazelle,” al­ ers four abreast. First came two scouts though she looked as much like a gazelle as who were to pick out in the darkness the I did. trail of the hostiles, and to keep 400 yards Game and No Game in advance of all others, to prevent the com­ From the Musselshell on north it was al­ mand coming precipitately on the enemy. most impossible to look anywhere without Then came the rest of the scouts, with whom seeing bunches of buffalo, and along the I rode, that I might be as near the advance bottoms of the upper Missouri there were as possible. The cavalry followed in the lots o f bear, deer and elk. Near the mouth rear half-a-mlle.” of Rock Creek we passed a herd of at least Wasted Tears 3000 antelope, so fearless that they would Dick Shovelhead was an Indian or sort hardly move out of the scouts’ way. But of a near-Indian, a mixture of Shoshone and through the Yellowstone Park, where meat something else, but he had a smattering of was most needed, the Indians had scattered civilization, and as he and I were making the game ahead of us, after shooting what a sort of side-scout near the Yellowstone we they themselves needed. came to another one of the camps that the While we were scouting through the mag­ hostiles had left a few hours before. Fol­ nificent Montana mountains, up to and over lowing up a sort of human sound we heard, 10,000 feet, we took off our hats to Senator we found a very old squaw, a real pale- Ashley of Ohio, who first applied the terri- The Frontier 67

torial name meaning mountainous, for noth­ twisted, those screws would wiggle up into ing could be more appropriate and distinc­ the feet and cause all kinds of agony. Many tive. There were mountains to burn. a miry meadow these soldiers had to march across, many a creek they had to wade. And Abandoned Horses and Mules when their shoes were thus thoroughly The Nez Perce war was tough on horses soaked they often marched across a keen and pack-mules, and many had to be aban­ edged lava-bed for a few miles, so that their doned along the trail, completely played out. shoes soon became total wrecks, with no Those that were left in the high mountains, chance to get any more. So they had to after resting up a couple of weeks, always make moccasins from the coarse burlap that worked their way down to some settlement, came on army bacon. But this was not as the horse’s instinct told him to follow lasting, and sometimes there was blood from down some stream and get to lower levels bleeding feet along the trail. They were before deep snows came. allowed ten minute’s rest every hour while When the scouts had a skirmish with the on the march, and certainly needed it. These hostiles they would sometimes capture men marched anywhere from 1400 to 2000 enough horses to get a remount all around. miles on that campaign, and if the crooked A courier generally got out every inch of zigzags had been ironed out the figures speed there was in a horse, taking chances might be double that. Such hard, patriotic on getting another after he had delivered work was not well rewarded in those days, his dispatches. as soldiers received only $13 a month, and had an assessment of two bits stopped every Very often we would find at an Indian pay day for the support of the Soldiers' camp a little bunch of tired horses that had Home at Washington. And there were no been left by the hostiles when they moved, pay days for eight months in 1877. And if only a few hours before, and they would be one of those hard-worked soldiers should all dead lame. The Indians had abandoned go to the Washington Soldiers’ Home he them because they could not keep up with would be barred out unless he had served their big herd, but had cut one foot on each 20 years in the regular army. The Indian so that the scouts or soldiers could get no used to call these soldiers the “ heap-o’-walks,” work out o f them. and the title was certainly appropriate. But Raided Ranches that 20 year feature has now been abolished. By having war-parties out ahead on both Left to Die, and Died flanks, the Indians raided ranches and cap­ Right in the center of an Indian camp I tured many horses, so that they could ride rode up to a poor helpless squaw who when a near-fresh one every hour. But the troop­ 80 years younger might have done the Poca­ ers had to get along with the horses they hontas act for some of the Captain John started out with on the long chase, and many Smiths. She laid on a few ragged robes, of them were horses too heavy for mountain and suddenly closed her eyes as if expecting work and all of them had to live on what a bullet but not wanting to see it come. She [ grass they would pick up at night, after be­ seemed rather disappointed when instead of ing ridden all day. This is where the hos­ shooting her I refilled her water bottle. She tiles had a big advantage in a stern chase. made signs that she had been forsaken by They picked out the roughest regions they her people, and wanted to die, and judging could, so as to wear out the cavalry horses from a couple o f shots I heard ten minutes that had to follow them. later as I followed the trail down the creek, one of our wild Bannack scouts acceded to Suffering Soldiers her wishes and put her out of her misery. The infantry soldiers in the Nez Perce war Her grown offsprings knew what would hap­ [ certainly went through trials that tried men’s pen to her when the Bannacks discovered her. soles. The soles o f the government shoes Such barbarism was surprising among the they wore were fastened on with brass Nez Perces, who made loud claims of human­ screws, and when the soles warped and ity. 68 The Frontier

End of the War Portland. It took 25 days to go down the When the last battle had been battled at river, the soldiers camping on shore every the Bear Paw mountains by Miles’ men, the night. The boat did not dare to run down infantry marched back to the Missouri river, stream at night on account of snags and but could not march back home to the Pa­ changing channels. A few times every day cific coast because early snows had already the boat would run onto sandbars and be filled up the mountain passes. So they took walked over them on stout stilts. In those the steamer Benton and went down the river days those upper Missouri boats were shot 2500 miles to Omaha, thence by rail to San full of holes by the playful Sioux as they Francisco, and up north by steamship to went on their way up river or down.

LIVESTOCK GROWERS THREATENED BY INDIANS J. F. 0VERHOLSER

chief threat to the livestock industry tle by September 1st. and we don’t want of northern Montana came from rov­ any more of that if we can avoid it. A Those damned Blackfeet and Crees are ing bands of Canadian Indians, driven now back somewhere between Box Elder from their country by shortage of game, who and Musselshell and don’t intend to go came down to kill cattle for meat, and, when north at all, but we will see that they possible, steal horses. do, by some means. Respectfully yours, Settlers in northern Montana were expect­ Granville Stuart. ing and preparing for a general shifting of The petition that Granville Stuart was so Indian hunting grounds in 1881. Game was eager to send to Washington was as follow s: exceedingly scarce, buffalo and deer were practically extinct on the prairies, and PETITION everyone was dreading Indian depredations To Hon. Samuel J. Kirkwood, in the autumn. Sec. of the Interior, Washington, D. C .: Protests to the Secretary of the Interior We, the undersigned citizens, who are residents, and engaged in the business of at Washington, Samuel J. Kirkwood, went stock-growing, in the counties of Meagher in by means of a general petition in the Milk and Choteau, in Montana Territory, River valley, Sun River and Fort Benton would respectfully represent, that since districts, from the stockmen. The following last August these two counties have been overrun with .hordes of alien (British) letters were made public in the River Press Indians, principally Blackfeet, Bloods, of May, 1881: Piegans and Crees, to the number of Fort Maginnis, Mont., April 18, 1881. about 350 lodges. That these Indians, ostensibly here for the purpose of hunt­ J. D. Waxweather, Esq., ing buffalo, have killed and eaten many Fort Benton, Montana. of our cattle, and this, too, in instances Dear S ir: where there was an abundance of buf­ Herewith enclosed find petition to falo within ten miles of their camps. Secretai’y of Interior which please have They keep dogs without number, which signed as soon as possible by all the are of a wild, half-wolf breed, uncon­ stockmen of your vicinity and send to trollable by the Indians or others, and Sun River with request for all there to these dogs chase our cattle incessantly, sign it as soon as possible, by sending killing many calves, reducing the cattle a messenger around with it if necessary, in flesh, and rendering them wild and and then have them send it to First uncontrollable, to our great loss and National Bank of Helena, and I will in damage. the meantime instruct them to obtain This state of affairs being rendered the signatures of stockmen there and more unsupportable by the fact that this then forward it to Hon. Kirkwood at is not a reservation, but land that has once, for we have no time to lose; for been, to a great extent, surveyed by the if something is not done, these cursed government and Is now open for settle­ Indians will all be back among our cat­ ment. And none of these Indians have The Frontier 69

a shadow of a right to be camping at corted across the boundary line without all upon it. to the great injury of peace­ delay, and that they, as well as those able, law-abiding citizens. And as if already gone, be officially notified to this were not enough, upon the approach remain there under penalty of being of spring, they have raided all the re­ treated as hostiles. gion between the Yellowstone and the And in this connection we remonstrate British line, stealing horses indiscrim­ most strongly against the Crow tribe inately from the whites and the Ameri­ being allowed to leave their immense can Indians, and running the same reservation and roam at will the settle­ across the boundary. ments and over the stock ranges, for Their presence here compels us to keep they, too, kill our cattle wherever they an armed guard with our horses while go, and are besides the most insolent grazing in day time, and to keep them and overbearing of all the tribes. By the in Indian-proof corrals at night, to the terms of the treaty with them in 1868 great injury of the horses and at great they were allowed to hunt off their res­ expense to ourselves. ervation until the country was occupied Our experience during the last nine by the whites. It is now so occupied, and months has demonstrated that stock rais­ to the extent, that their rambling about ing can not be successfully carried on among us is an evil too great to be if Indians are allowed to roam over the quietly borne; as is also the semi-an­ ranges, and our ruin must speedily fol­ nual irruption of the Flatheads, and low. Pend d’Oreilles, and allied tribes, from They have been known in numerous their reservations in the western part cases to kill large beef steers and only of the territory, across and through the take the tongue, and at other times take settlements of the eastern portion, where also a few of the choicest parts, leaving they, too, kill cattle, obtain whiskey, and the remainder lying upon the range. sometimes steal horses. The rapid extinction of all the large All these Indians have large reserva­ game renders it, as a general thing, dif­ tions set apart for their sole use and ficult for the Indians to live by the benefit, and it is a rank injustice to the chase, and the inevitable result will be whites, and a positive injury to the In­ that they will prey upon our herds in a dians, to allow them to roam uncon­ constantly increasing ratio, although our trolled over this territory. losses are now too great to be borne. At about the time this petition was being There is also a crying evil which passes unnoticed by the U. S. Marshals: prepared, the United States troops at Fort it is that all this region swarms with Benton were ordered moved to Fort Shaw. whiskey traders, who follow the Indians A wild outburst of rage and disgust imme­ from place to place, trading to them vast quantities of the worst liquor that is to diately came from the citizens of Fort Ben­ be found on earth, the quantity traded ton. The River Press, in expressing this being only limited by the ability of the Indians to purchase, and as it is a well feeling, said that this removal would lay known fact that they will give away all the whole of Choteau county open to the they possess for whiskey, they are being marauders. The situation of the Indians rapidiy reduced to a condition of poverty and demoralization that is painful to themselves was stated as being deplorable. witness, and which Is liable to light the Whole tribes were next door to starvation, flames of war at any moment. even then, and with the coming o f winter it Some weeks ago these Indians began moving north, and we thought we would was expected that war would break out have at least a temporary respite from because of their need for food. The supply their depredations, but we now hear of large game was nearly extinct, the In­ that Crow Foot’s band of 140 lodges of dians were eating horses and dogs, and Blackfeet, and some forty or fifty lodges of Crees have turned back from Carroll cracking the bones and chewing the hides on the Missouri river, saying that they of the animals they killed. will not return to their own country Stock growers were waiting the approach but will remain here. As the buffalo have mostly gone S. E. of winter with dread, and the citizens of to the Porcupine Creeks, and north Fort Benton were seriously considering the across the Missouri, these Indians, if formation of a force of militia for their own suffered to remain, will subsist largely protection. The River Press stated: “ If the upon our cattle as heretofore; we there­ fore earnestly petition that you will take troops be removed, it is necessary that our the proper steps to have them all es­ citizens organize a militia force for defense 70 The Frontier or attack upon the marauding Indians. We ter of protection was arranged without seri­ are strongly in favor of severe offensive ous trouble. The troops at Fort Assinniboine measures. If the government has forgotten were ordered to look into the matter. The us, let us ‘wake the government with an British Indians were gradually sent back Indian war which will be justified by every across the line. No blood was spilled, al­ instinct of the preservation of our lives and though threatening affairs came up every property.” little while to keep the northern part of the Enough complaints were heard in the Ter­ territory in constant apprehension as to what ritory of Montana to make the Secretary of might happen. United States troops were War and the Secretary of the Interior realize kept busy, however, heading off parties try­ that the condition was serious, and the mat­ ing to cross the boundary.

PRAIRIE DWELLER

R aym on d K resen sky

One wrapped his arms around the trees And lay his hot body in water. One cupped his hands with cool waters. He feared no wind nor drought. I dug my furrow in virgin prairie. I built my house of the prairie.

One slept where beaches whispered, Where elk and deer wandered. I heard the lonesome cottonwood, The sound of dry brush crackling, And the coyotes’ cry.

I am not afraid of glaring day. I am not self-conscious before horizons And humble before sky.

I fear the forests Where dark things creep But love The prairie, open and free.

Death is a deep valley Where a soul is hid. Death is a soul stretched to the prairie.

I shall sleep comfortably beneath sod. The Frontier 71

NORTHWEST FOLKLORE

O LD BLUE A “ T a l l T a l e ” C o n tribu ted b y J u n e C la r k

LD BLUE, the fish that made the needed a little patch before he was ready Little Missouri famous, was hooked to go out after that fish. O on a line, four miles below Iona long Next day as he floated down the Missouri ago; but his fame lingers in the mind of he saw a dejected looking farmer out ex­ tale tellers of the northwest. Originally he amining his corn field. was a Missouri river fish, but in his later “Wat’s the matter, have the grasshoppers days he drifted into the Poncar river. et up your crop?” asked Bill. The first that was heard of him, the cat­ “Naw,” he answered. “I had a good show fish was sleeping in the mud o f Oak creek, for corn, but the cat-fish came up last night near where some cowboys o f Bar B were and didn’t leave me an ear. It ’pears like having a roundup. Old Bill Stallins and we can’t catch Old Blue. Last summer he t another cowboy were digging a water-logged and his tribe cleaned up a melon patch for timber from the bluff as a backlog to heat me.” their branding irons, when they found a “That's good,” says Bill, “ I’ve got a water­ slippery customer. Old Blue lay still till melon in this boat that will get him sure. they carried him to the fire and tried a Where is he now?” branding iron on him. Then the fun began. The log squirmed and wriggled, throwing The farmer sorter scratched his head afore mud all over the cowboys till it flopped he answered. “Listen, stranger, I’ve lived on over the edge of the bluff back into the creek. this river for nigh onto 70 years, and I know Bill ’lowed he was going to try to catch that every fish by its maiden name. They can’t cat-fish sure. hide secrets from me. Every fisherman from “What are you going to use as bait?” here to Greenwoods has left a hook in that asked the range boss. “ Old Blue is the critter. Most generally he lies in dead water largest fish I ever saw. He’s too big to below the reef. Blue jingles like Santa Claus haul in a boat; why I bet he weighs 100 when be gits mad. If I didn’t have the pounds.” misery, I’d help you ketch him.” “I 'low to bring some watermelons from Bill thanked the farmer and hid his boat town, as soon as I can get off. Cat-fish along the shore. Then he carried his rope, have notions about eating. I’ve tried all log and melon down to the reef and set up bis kinds of bait, but they’re too smart. Just line afore stretching out in his blanket for I put a little watermelon rind in front of their sleep. Near morning there was an almighty snout and they’ll purr,” said Old Bill. threshing in the water. Old Bill caught hold “Good luck to you, can we have a steak of his log just in time and held on for dear when you catch him?” asked the boys. life. Under his breath he sung: “ Sure, we’ll have a big time,” said Old Cat-fish, cat-fish going up stream Bill. Cat-fish, cat-fish what do you meant So the boys went back to their branding Catch that cat-fish by the snout while Bill caught a bronc and rode for town. And turn that cat-fish tcrong side out. After noon he came back with a melon as Down the river swam Old Blue, hooks I big as a barrel, and a rope as thick as your jingling, with poor Bill trailing along be­ arm for a line. Bill was six feet tall, and he hind. The fish didn't get tired till near intended to catch that fish. Next he cut Iona. Then he gave his tail a flop and was down a cotton wood for a pole. The old boat done. The farmer helped Bill pull the fish 72 The Frontier to shore and skin him. Bill cut off a couple Blue, and he tipped the scale at 140 pounds. o f steaks for pay and put the rest in his Bill Stallins was quite a hero after that boat to take back home to the ranch. The and never tired of telling how he caught the range boss weighed what was left of Old blue-tailed fish.

BOOK SHELF Under the Editorship of Pat V. Morrissette

Jason Lee: Prophet of the New Oregon. that the all Important aspect of the work By Cornelius J. Brosnan. Macmillan, New was the formation of the “new Oregon.” York. 1932. x-348 pp. The author has undertaken to weave into Jason Lee has long awaited a biographer. the book (altogether too frequently) quota­ Few missionaries exercised the influence that tions from the sources, and the book as a Lee did and it is some what surprising that consequence very often suffers for want of the work was not long ago undertaken. The continuity. Professor Brosnan has uncov­ general theme o f the book is the conflict ered abundant new material for which the between the missionary ideals of the board historical craft will truly be thankful. One of missions o f the Methodist church and the cannot help wishing, however, that he had ideals of Jason Lee as apostle of the “new taken the material, had woven it into his Oregon.” own narrative, and then had given an his­ Starting with the story of the deputation torical interpretation. The new material of the Flathead Indians to St. Louis, the will no doubt lead to the writing of a def­ author describes briefly Lee’s early life and inite account of Lee's life and work, some­ the events leading to Lee’s selection as su­ time in the future. perintendent of the Oregon mission. In the John T. Ganoe description o f Lee’s trip to Oregon and the founding of the Willamette valley mission, Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux, Stan­ the reader is continually asking the question ley Vestal. Houghton, Mifflin. 1932. $3.5. as to why Lee went to the Willamette valley Asking in his preface what great man born and established the mission where there were on American soil has been most misrepre­ few Indians and passed up the Flatheads sented, the writer o f this biography makes and many tribes more numerous than those out a verj good case for the colorful person­ in the Willamette Valley. age he chooses as his candidate. Not that Although little is given on the growth of the book is dominantly controversial. It is the mission, the author indicates the diffi­ too filled with rapid movement, with the culties entailed in its early operation. Lee’s rich pigments of early frontier life in Ameri­ efforts in raising funds in 1838-1839 are ca, to be polemic. It is at the same time given especial attention as influencing in­ too authentic, too sincere to flatten itself terest in Oregon. The author attaches great into that vast undistinguished mass of vapid importance to the reinforcements taken to “westerns” now so freely ground out to Oregon in 1839. represent that stirring period. The writer, The most valuable feature o f the book is deeply rooted in his backround, attacks his the discussion of Lee’s attempt to justify problem with critical persistence, and, not himself before the mission board. Here the content with easy generalities, unearths some climax is reached, the board insisting upon truths, albeit some hard ones. But even his converts and Lee upon the “new Oregon.” problem is a human one. Like a craftsman Two chapters are given upon expansion restoring an historic portrait, with a care and progress. One can scarcely see why the warmly partisan (and quite evidently justi­ chapters should be so labeled in view o f the fiable) Stanley Vestal removes from the fact the book itself reveals that as a mis­ image o f “the most famous of American sionary undertaking the work was negligible Indians” the smudges left by hands careless but as influencing westward migration Lee’s or greedy. And this by the scientist’s method activities were of considerable significance. of carefully proved statement; often by mere Certainly one feels, from the narrative, the inclusion of facts somehow suppressed or utter futility of Lee’s missionary activities neglected till this moment. It is by the light and although the author does not so state, shed in his sub-title, Champion of the Sioux, one cannot help but feel the insincerity of as advocate of a proud and completely-worst­ Lee pleading for funds for mission activities ed people, that the author sees the character when by that time he was firmly convinced of his subject, about whom controversy has The Frontier 73 raged as fiercely as his own plains battles. character”—since it is foes, not friends, who And, following the really amazing career of do us this hard service. this border monarch through the designated . . . As it was, thank God, we had stages, Warrior, Chief, and Captive, it is a Frontier, and, as historians are forever not difficult to see how so single-minded a reminding us, that Frontier shaped person, incapable o f the evasions and com­ America, moulded a nation unlike any promises demanded by our “civilization,” other. That Frontier formed these would become enmeshed in the web of events states, made us what we are— and the which crushed him with his people, and Indian made the Frontier. which distorted even his memory, after his Sitting Bull, leader of the largest In­ mistreated body had found a final quiet dian nation on the continent, the strong­ grave. est, boldest, most stubborn opponent of The imaginative reader, able to remove European influence, was the very heart himself from his white skin for a space, as and soul of that Frontier. When the the writer has throughout his book, may see, true history of the New World is writ­ instead of the sorry chromo of “borsethief, ten, he will receive his chapter. For fraud and schemer” once current, a cleaner Sitting Bull was one of the Makers of and clearer drawing of a patriot and proph­ America. et, even if not the “saint” some of his own Alice Henson Ernst people esteem him. The experience will do him no harm. Just as it is probably good Joaquin Miller, Frontier Poet. Merrit for us to gaze unbllnklngly at the verified Parmelee Allen. Harper. 1932. $1.00. record of our treatment of these native Amer­ icans, even though, in the words of the In­ In this latest of the Long Rifle Series, dian commission, “our cheeks blush with Mr. Allen presents in simple language the shame” at uncomfortable contrasts from early adventures of the boy Cincinnatus Mil­ widely-different human results by neighbor­ ler. The work is more a picture of frontier ing countries with these same childish life than of Joaquin Miller, the poet. It is “primitives.” Cincinnatus, not Joaquin, that comes to life in the pages. But controversy quite aside, there is good scouting for the dispassionate reader in the The poet’s Autobiography and his Life stirring narrative of this greatest of early- Among the Modocs are here retold for ju­ American border chiefs, fraud or martyr venile readers. Fully five-eighths of the book is concerned with Joaquin’s life up to though he may be, or only gentleman and horsethief—the latter possibly only from our his eighteenth year. It makes adventurous reading, which should attract any boy, and own one-sided slant at a devoted monarch Life Among the Modocs being out of print responsible for the existence of a nomad Mr. Allen has done Milleroiogy a real serv­ people; the former in full appraisal of re­ ice. corded chivalry and valor. Here is not only Warrior, but Maker of Songs, eloquent seer Perhaps because it is a retelling of the poet’s own story, there is lacking the en­ and wise man—not always seconded by wis­ thusiasm and vim o f Life Among the Mo- dom from his followers. And through study of this key-figure, deeper knowledge and un­ docs. But there is adventure on every page, derstanding of the tribal customs and psy­ sufficient conversation to lend reality to the chology of a now-submerged primitive cul­ characters of the narrative, and adequate ture, well worth the time o f a Guggenheim story element to entertain any young person. survey to gather, more especially since im­ Mr. Allen’s book might well be used in the portant periods of our own national history schools to picture frontier life and to serve are bound up in the record. as an intimate introduction to the man who made the West famous throughout the world. Fortunate for the reader it is set down Beatrice B. Beebe by one who has mastered his material, with fine dramatic insight, with humor, in vigor­ ous prose that marches. And if the swift Fighting Men of the West. Dane Coolidge. narrative becomes pedestrian in its later Dutton. 1932. $3.75. stretches, it is so with the subject: The These portraits are part of the notes of Indian must lay aside swift horse and fly­ Dane Coolidge, who collected them to write ing arrow. Panoply of smoking tipis is by­ forty western novels. The notes include gone ; the undertone of laughter becomes accurate and authentic portraits of “Cattle ironic. Kings, and Cattle Thieves, Mexican Bandits, Now that the white man’s hatred has Border Outlaws, Man Killers, Longhaired fallen from the impassive chief who so Sheriffs, Desert Prospectors and Mining Mil­ staunchly fought the American, whether or lionaires.” Coolidge, apparently, has reacted not we value him for himself we may at from the school of western thrillers which least, with the writer (whimsically perhaps) is perverting western history into a series acclaim him as a “moulder of our national of bloody fights for romantic purposes, but 74 The Frontier has no use, on the other hand, for the modern familiar exposition. The style of the book skeptic who has already forgotten that men is individual, and in many places it reflects “once wore two guns and let their hair grow the dignity and picturesqueness of Indian long.” Too many people, he finds, look speech. His sharpness and minuteness of upon the common incidents o f range wars in observation, and his clear, accurate studies the West as incredulous. He blames this of wild life emphasize the kinship of man lack of faith on the “Say Pardner” school of to the web of nature. His keen awareness “westerns.” In his own book he has avoid­ of life, and his competent education allow ed the creation o f western sagas, and tried him to translate the alert and athletic en­ to present the common, unvarnished charac­ thusiasms o f the hunters, Indians, and the ters. He succeeds in illustrating that no men o f the trail. His sympathy for the matter how truthfully the Old West is pre­ Indian has led him to relate with clarity sented, the presentation is always romantic, and sincerity many of the Indian tales, and for romance lies in that period of American to describe with adequacy the Indian villages history. His trailmaker is Colonel Good­ of the north. night who blazed the Goodnight trail across the Staked Plains for the first outlet for Trails Through the Golden West. Robert Texas cattle; his cattle king is John Chis­ M. McBride. 1932. $2.50. holm, who was so good-natured that no one Robert Frothingham of the Explorers Club could shoot him although he stole cattle by has moved forward pioneer scenes into our the herd. “He was the law west of the own day, and made the understanding of Pecos.” His man killer is Clay Allison, the West easier both for the traveler to the whose specialty was killing sheriffs and town western parks, and for those who may never marshals around Cimarron; his man hunter see any of the natural beauties of this sec­ is Tom Horn, who killed rustlers for $600 a tion. The trails of Mr. Frothingham lead head. His outlaw is Burt Alvord, who wrote to old Tuscon, The Cactus Forests of New his name with a little “b” but turned Cochise Mexico, Rainbow bridge, the Grand Canyon county upside down for twenty years. His of Colorado, the petrified forests of Arizona, gambler is Colonel Bill Green, who, with his Death valley, Yosemite valley, Crater lake, pockets full of ten thousand dollar bills, was Glacier National park, the Painted Desert— the biggest man in Arizona as long as he and all points of interest along the trail. lasted. These plain narratives are as full The book is an excellent guide to the “great­ of fighting, intrigues and dastardly deeds est natural wonders of the world” and is as a movie thriller, and the more authentic enlivened by anecdotes and narratives. The the pictures become the more heightened are style is marked by the concreteness of the the romantic features of the old frontier. practical guide. “ Ubehebe,” he writes, “ is The book adds dignity to the usual vulgarity 800 feet deep by 800 feet in diameter at the o f the western thriller. bottom, over a mile in diameter at the top, and exceeding three miles in circumberence.” Men o f the Last Frontiers. Grey Owl. Yet confronted by Glacier National park he Scribners. 1932. $3.50. says, “The beauty spots of this gem of the Grey Owl is a halfbreed Indian, and in his wilderness are so numerous and varied as book he pictures the Indian still “ fleeing in to render a detailed description out of the the face of doom that has threatened them question.” He is, therefore, not entirely for the past three hundred years.” The last given to detail. The book is excellently cal­ frontiers are of Northern Canada, where now culated, however, to open the eyes of many the tide of civilization is creeping “as a to the beauties o f the Far West, and to in­ rising flood eats into the walls o f sand.” struct those who want to know “what to There is a spirit of melancholy and defeat see.” which pervades the book, dominated by the Westward to the Pacific. Marian G. Clark. thought that “We, today, of this generation Charles Scribners. 1932. are seeing the last of the free trappers.” This is a child’s history of the expansion And the last frontierman “ will leave behind of the United States westward to the Pa­ him only his deserted, empty trails, and the cific. The topical divisions have the charm ashes of his dead camp fires.” There is a and naivete fascinating to the child mind brooding hatred of civilization, and a By- that still has the power to view history as ronic conception of the terrible power and fabulous. “The Old West and what hap­ beauty of nature. “ In the fastness of this pened there.” “Westward to the Rockies,” rapidly fading frontier, the last of this con­ “How old Spanish lands became a part of tinent, reigns the Spirit of the Northland the United States, and what happened . . . brooding over the length and breadth there,” “ How the Oregon lands became a of this land, seeking whom he may destroy.” part of the United States.” In a short in­ When the author is not overcome by the troductory prologue the children wonder at idea of the passing of the frontier, his de­ this vast movement of peoples westward. scription of game, of forests, of trails, as­ “Three thousand miles, and no railroad!” sume the clarity and charm of personal and exclaimed Sarah. “ Why did they do it?” The Frontier 75

Whispering Range. Ernest Haycox. A. L. very brief. Arthur Wallace Peach of Nor­ Burt. 1932. $.75. wich University is the general editor of the This is another story of the cattlemen's series. fight against the rustlers in which hard American Outposts. Upton Sinclair. Di­ fighting, hard riding, and the romance of the vision A., Pasadena, California. $2.50. Old West are united to make what the pop­ The title is a bit deceiving, as the book ular audience calls “the Six Gun Tale.” In resembles an apologia. Sinclair undertakes its fresh imagery, in its careful characteriza­ to relate the experiences of his first thirty tion, however, Haycox has surpassed the years, but pieces the narrative together with limited artistic range of the usual “western.” self-criticism and self-defence. He crams the Some of the rural scenes and minor charac­ pages full of spicy literary gossip, much of ters, such as Mrs. Jim Clodfoot, give an it as revealing of his friends as of himself. authentic touch often lacking in the western He talks in an anecdotal fashion of his romantic fiction. In Whispering Range the youth, his education, his literary career, his glamour of gun fighting does not keep the marriages and divorce, his socialistic cru­ author from giving a dramatic and interest­ sades, his travel. Through all, the personal­ ing portrait of the life of the early settlers. ities paraded in each chapter remain the Haycox is another western writer writing point of interest. Typical of his acerbity of the west. He makes his home in Port­ is his opinion of his own youth; “Any land, Oregon. psychiatrist would have diagnosed me as Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads. Helen an advanced case of delusion of grandeur, Holmes Flanders, George Brown. $1.50. messianic complex, paranoia, narcissism, and Vermonters. Walter H. Crockett. $1.50. so to the end of the list.” The book reveals more of his personality than may have been Vermont Prose. Arthur Wallace Peach, intended. Harold G. Rugg. $1.50. Vermont Verse. Walter John Coates, The Growth of Political Thought in the Frederick Tupper. Stephen Day Press. West. Charles H. Mcllwain. The Macmillan Brattleboro, Vt. 1932. $1.50. Company. 1932. These books are the first four titles in Mcllwain is Eaton professor of the science the Green Mountain Series undertaken as of government at Harvard University, and the first major project of the Committee on in his book he has concerned himself “with Traditions and Ideals, organized in 1929 the development of our ideas about the state under the Vermont Commission on Country and about government, beginning about the Life. This committee hopes to define “those fifth century B. C. in Greece and extending traditional characteristics so generally asso­ as far as the end of the middle ages.” He ciated with the state and its peoples” by keeps his history of political ideas in close throwing definite light, “as reflected from touch with the actual political development. verse and prose, and the lives of notable In regard to the period he considers, he con­ Vermont men and women, on the attitudes cludes with an aphorism from Seneca: “To of mind and heart, faiths, beliefs, and loy­ kings belongs authority over all; to private alties that woven together” have formed tra­ persons, property.” The book is heavily doc­ ditions. Here is a definite project in what umented and has an excellent index. It is is coming to be known as the “new region­ not, however, concerned with the growth of alism.” The selections, the editing, the modern political thought. various forewords, notes and careful intro­ The Ranch and the Ring. Florence Cran- ductions unite to give the series a unique nel Means. Houghton-Mifflin. 1932. $2.00. flavor and personality that amply illustrate Janey Grant goes west to teach school, and describe that feeling for the locale of while Haakon Haakonson goes west to build Vermont which is the spiritual value of up a cattle herd through the importation of regionalism. It would be hard to find in blooded stock. He borrows money for this the contemporary effort to inject real values venture with the understanding that he will into contemporary literature a more well be able to pay it back when he inherits an planned sally. This series, although its pop­ estate from the old country. He is forced, ularity may be only local, should enrich the however, to establish his identity before he lives of all Vermonters and promote that comes into his fortune. The only legal evi­ contentment in home which is the basis of dence of his identity rests in a ring which deep-rooted living. The folk songs gathered he has given Janey Grant, and which has are those that have been sung by Vermont disappeared. The fate of the ranch lies in people for years; many o f these songs, of the recovery o f the ring, and the mystery and course, are not original to Vermont. The suspense of the narrative develops from this prose selections are short, representative and quest. The description o f the life on the various. The anthology o f verse succeeds in range with stampeding cattle, storms, In­ representing the local poets as well as the dians, bad men and frontier towns, supplies locality. The biographies have been written the background of the story. While Florence with point, although they are necessarily Means has used all the western material, 76 The Frontier her method of treatment and the character Squawberry Canyon. A. Rutherford. Cax­ of her style remove the novel from the field ton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho. 1932. o f the “western.” It is a wholesome, enter­ $2. taining book advertised as being attractive This is a boys’ adventure story concerning to boys and girls eleven to sixteen. The the vigorous doings of stockily built Tom story illustrates plainly the richness and Benson, sandy-haired Bill Thurston and sun­ attractiveness of pioneer days as a source tanned Cliff Wiley, who start out with fresh for romantic juvenile fiction. This volume boyish enthusiasm to explore the country for is the second o f two dealing with the same cliff houses and Indian relics with Professor characters. Quigley, and who find gold mines and ruf­ The Fantastic City. Amelia Ransome Ne­ fians as well. They run the gamut of boyish ville. Houghton-Mifflin. 1932. $5. escapes and display all the heroism and cour­ age youth is supposed to have. The sim­ Mrs. Neville, who died in Helena, Montana, plicity of the story and the direction of the in 1927, left behind her these memoirs of action are garnished with enough mystery her experiences of San Francisco, and they and suspense to keep the restless attention have been ably edited by Virginia Brastow. of youth. The book, which is well printed On a visit to England in 1851 Amelia Ran­ and neatly bound, is another “book o f the some was presented to Queen Victoria, mar­ west by a western writer.” Rutherford is ried Captain Thomas J. Neville of the Brit­ from Hailey, Idaho. ish army, and emigrated with the Ransome family to San Francisco in 1856. Most o f Notawkah, Friend of the Miamis. Arthur the pictures of the West have been left by Homer Hays. Caxton Printers, Ltd., Cald­ men, by curious travelers and explorers; Mrs. well, Idaho. $2. Neville saw San Francisco with the vivid Virginia Carson and Elizabeth Manning impressions of a young bride who made it are taken captives by the Shawanees through her home. She set down her memoirs of the villainy of a French agent and spy, St. Long Wharf built up with derelict ships as Aivre. John Corrington, a friend of the hotels and restaurants, of Barbary Coast, Miamis (Notawkah) believes St. Aivre has “mild enough as slums go in seaport cities,” killed Major Carson, Virginia’s father, and of Chinese peddlers in “blue cotton blouse undertakes the role o f messenger, rescuer, and trousers, padded slippers, and a hat like and avenger. In attempting to rescue Miss an inverted tray of woven bamboo,” of Mam­ Manning, Notawkah rescues Miss Carson, my Pleasaunce “who sold love charms to with whom he falls in love. His exploits beautiful young women,” of Spanish Dons and adventures carry him through a series who “lived like feudal barons in the South.” of Indian fights, narrow escapes, and finally She met the many literary figures o f her into matrimony. The mystery of the plot day. Bret Harte was a good-looking man, is heightened by the fact that Major Carson “who would have been handsome except for has not been killed but has been disguised the scars of smallpox.” Mrs. Robert Louis as a Pottowattomie Indian who assists Not­ Stevenson was a “stocky little person in­ awkah in his many conflicts and difficulties. differently dressed” who wore bobbed hair, The events of the story take place “on the smoked cigarettes and kept open house on River Wabash of our Old Northwest, within Russian Hill. Fond of the theater and so­ the present sovereign state o f Indiana, in ciety, Mrs. Neville has much gossip to re­ 1761 and 1762, when that fertile land was late about the best o f both. These are dis­ on the fringe of the trans-Allegheny fron­ tinctly the memoirs of a woman and add a tier.” This is the first novel of Mr. Hays, new flavor to the fascinating pictures of who is in the history department of Boise old San Francisco. The organization of the high school. He is attempting to vivify and book is entirely casual and anecdotal; there make more clear the hardships of the pio­ is no strong central narrative, no eloquent neers who had to brave scalping knives and descriptions, but it illustrates well the power tomahawks to raise their lone cabins and memories have to enrich the history of a clear their lands of forests. He has append­ city. The book has an index and contains ed some excellent notes to the volume, which many pictures of the personalities of the is printed and bound in a neat format. times. Pat V. Morrissette From Hunters to Herdsmen. Elizabeth Forbes O’Hara. Macmillan. 1932. $.60. Black Elk Speaks. John G. Neihardt. This is the story of primitive life adapted William Morrow & Co. 1932. $3.00. for the use of elementary schools. Mij, “who This “Life story of a holy man of the did not know he was nine years old,” is the Ogalala Sioux,” although not very holy and hero of the exposition, which deals largely fairly well Americanized, is an appealing with the development of the use of animals and pathetic tale. A great dream came to for food. The illustrations in red and black Black Elk at the age of nine. It became by Kate Seredy are well done, and the book the inward passion o f his life, although he is attractively printed. made little of its endowment. In young manhood be joined Buffalo Bill’s show and toured with it two years and more, even to London and Paris. Upon his return he was for years a clerk. These details of activity, however, have not interested Nei- hardt; the spiritual quality active in Indian life has. He finds himself awed by the seemingly inexplicable cures that medicine men effect and puzzled by Indian prophecy. He recognizes belief in supernaturalism op­ erative in the Indian and he implies contrast with it inoperative in the white man. He admires, and rightly, such customs as that of the young men killing buffalo to feed the feeble and the helpless—“This was a great honor for young men.” The symbolism, animism, and mysticism of the old-time Indian always appeals to the poetic and the religious minded. “ It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many shadows. Among those shadows men get lost.” It is good to dig out and preserve all of the Indian’s spiritual belief that can be found, for it is Usually printing reveals the fast being lost. Even so old a man as Black real man with remarkable ac­ Elk cannot reveal it in its purity, having curacy. Whatever a merchant experienced too much the white man’s in­ fluence. It is stirring to recognize spiritual possesses in wealth or in poverty greatness anywhere and in any person. Mr. o f expressive power will mani­ Neihardt has found it in this life experience fest itself in the interest he evi­ and this person. dences in the appearance o f his Fort Hall on the Oregon Trail. Jennie B. printing. If he has an acute Brown. Caxton Printers. 1932. $2.50. sense o f the fitness o f things, he This book recounts, in general outline, the w ill not be satisfied until his explorations of the West before Fort Hall printing appears as though it was founded, the founding and operation of the Fort, and the establishing of what seems were made for him individually to be a model Indian school; and for good and not just bargained for in measure it includes an account o f Ferry the ready-made market. Print­ Butte and a dull chapter on “Local and na­ ing must first be fit for the pur­ tional interest.” The history and life of pose it is designed to accomplish. Fort Hall are in the book if the reader cares to dig them out; but when he does excavate Its physical appearance must them he finds neither imaginative recreation gain the respect it deserves from of the life of the Fort nor penetrative evalu­ the class to which its attention ation of its history. The writing of the is directed. W hether it is made book is as waveringly handled as the ma­ terial : at times it seems to be directed at so or not is a question o f the children, at times at historians, again at the printer’s skill as well as genuine popular reader, and still again at patriotic appreciation on the part o f the Idahoans. The style is also uncertain and customer. undistinguished. Silver Strike. As told by William T. Stoll to H. W. Whicker. Little, Brown & Co. 1932. $2.50. THE Stoll was no hero and no story-teller, but he experienced miners’ troubles in the Coeur d’Alene country, acting as counsel for the MISSOULIAN mine owners in the famous Bunker Hill and PUBLISHING COMPANY r Sullivan trails. The exciting and courageous I pages of the book concern the activity of COMMERCIAL PRINTING DEPT. Charles A. Siringo, Pinkerton detective, act- L ing for the mine owners and serving as secretary of the miners’ union—until dis- PHONE 2162 I covered. The reader o f the book learns some­ thing of the mining history of this rich dis­ trict and something of the personalities of the men who lived, mined and fought there. Mr. Whicker in a journalistic effort to pop­ ularize the book has submerged the real values o f the material. The Robin Hood of Eldorado. Walter N. Burns. Coward-McCann. 1932. $2.50. For three years, 1850-53, Joaquin Mur­ rieta terrorized California. Mr. Burns, with admirable industry and care, details his career from a simple, quiet youth, whose “ interest centered in his wife and his home,” to a cruel, picturesque bandit—who never forgot a kindness or an affront. The ter­ rible deeds of Murrieta, of Three-Fingered Jack, Valenzuela, and other members of the band are realistically and excitingly por­ trayed ; as is each effort on the part of law and order to stop the thefts and killings. Incidentally, anecdotal history of the Cali­ fornia of those days entertainingly creeps into the story. Murrieta was killed in Ar- roya Cantova in May, 1853, by Harry Love and some of his California rangers. The tale is a series o f very similar brutal and PRETTY-SHIELD, often courageous outlaw acts. a Crow Indian medicine woman, Bobolinks. Lewis Flint. Poetry Publish­ from whom Frank B. Linderman ob­ ers. 1932. $2.00. tained his material on the life of an Riders from the West. George Charles Indian woman for his book, Red Kastner. Metropolitan Press. 1932. $1.50. Mother, published on October 6 by All My Youth. Fredericks Blankner. the John Day Co., New York City. Brentano’s. 1932. $2.00. Mr. Flint reveals in Bobolinks homely and simple and human virtues in whimsical, con­ ventional, delightful verse. The poems are “about birds and flowers and other folk of the woods and waters.” Since the author is by profession a naturalist he writes with knowledge and understanding. He also pos­ sesses a chuckling sense of humor. The poems HAINES GROCERIES are good to read and many of them good to memorize. Buy the Mr. Kastner in his “epic o f the four In­ dians who in 1831 went from the Nez Perce country to St. Louis” in search of instruc­ tion about the White Man’s God has under­ HAINES W A Y taken a task beyond his powers. He himself states that he is one who “holds it duty to sing of things of beautythe reader is more aware o f the duty than of the beauty. The author does not see his material freshly nor does he express it freshly or with stimula­ tion. Miss Blankner’s All My Youth harbors STYLE SH OP much lyric loveliness, many poignant expres­ sions of ideas. She has a genuine singing gift; also, a mind that thrusts sharply, CORRECT APPAREL though momentarily, into its material, exper­ ience of life. The longer poems are not so for successful, the power of sustaining thought and emotion not being a strength o f the author’s. Two brief poems reveal a success­ WOMEN ful vein: FIAT There is no travail when Ood makes a sun: He simply thinks, and thought and star is one. 78 CYPRESS kotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, California, Washington, and Oregon. The cypress is a silent cry H. O. Merriam Of earth that wants to bo the sky. In the lyric that follows, as in several in Red Mother. Frank B. Linderman. John the volume, is magic of sound and rhythm Day Company. 1932. $3.00. and, save possibly for the two last lines, How did he do it, we wonder? How did lovely wedding of idea and poignant emotion : he write a story so clear and real that it holds the interest of a child, and yet so PRAYER rich with implication and significance that O my Beloved! the wisest elder will find himself moved Once more to be at Domodossola to wonder and meditate on the strange an­ In sunshnie— swers humanity makes to the great question. Life? Once more to let my feet caress Red Mother’s name was Pretty-Shield. She Your stones lived in Montana. She knew its hills and Your light my vision— mountains and loved its land. She was a gay-high-spirited, alert-minded girl. She went through troublous times, and saw her Once more to wait for sunset behind Venice, race sink before the poison gas of a civiliza­ Ecstatic as a rose, and delicate tion that it had not had time to accommodate as glass— its life to. She tells her story simply, yet with great impressiveness. She is an old Once more to stand woman now, a grandmother. There is much In Rome, or in Assisi— for all readers in her words. Once more, ah. The book is beautifully illustrated by Once m ore! Herbert M. Stoops, who illustrated Mr. Lin- derman's other great Indian book, American. The Pathbreakers from River to Ocean. One cannot help wishing that he will some Grace R. Hebard. Arthur H. Clark Co. 1932. day draw Pretty-Shield’s picture of Custer’s This is the sixth edition, revised and en­ last fight. She is very certain that her larged, with four maps and ninety-three il­ version o f it is the true one. lustrations, of a book that has proved very Generations hence Red Mother will still useful. It is the work of a careful and in­ be vital and stimulating. It is made out of defatigable historian of the West, the story real life, touched to glory by the faithful of the Great West from the time of Coronado artistry of one whose love for this people to the present. New material concerns Ver- is not an imagined thing but an honest, endryes, Bridger and Whitman, the ride of actual, spontaneous emotion growing out of John Phillips, the Wagon-box Fight, Sho­ his study and thorough understanding of shone Indians, the Pony Express, and many their lives. Read it. There will never be other persons and events. The book is suit­ another book like it, for the time it tells able for historical and supplementary read­ o f is vanishing. ing in the schools of Montana, the two Da­ Mary Brennan Clapp

State of Montana, Countv of Missoula—ss. Before me, a notary public In and for the state and county aforesaid, personally appeared Harold O. Merriam, who, bavins been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that he Is the editor, pub­ lisher and owner of The Frontier, and that the foUowlnc is, to the best of his knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management (and If a dally paper, the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown In the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied In section 411, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to-wlt: 1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are: Publisher, H. G. Merriam, State University, Missoula, Mont.; Editor, H. G. Merriam, State University, Mis­ soula, Mont.; Managing Editor, none; Business Manager, Frank Gallagher, State University, Missoula, Montana. 2. That the owner Is: Harold G. Merriam, State University, Missoula, Mont. 3. That the known bondholders, mortgagee, and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: None. 4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders, and security holders, If any, contain not only the list of stockholders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company but also, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or In any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee Is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustees, hold stock and securities In a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association, or corporation has any Interest direct or Indirect In the said stock, bonds, or other securities than as so stated by him. H. O. MERRIAM, Editor and Publisher. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 26th day of September, 1932. R. L. JOHNSTON, Notary Public for the State of Montana. Residing at Missoula, Montana. My commission expires May 12, 1933.

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