Claim Number One Part 7

SKULKERS

There remained but one day until chance should settle the aspirations of the dusty thousands who waited in Comanche; one day more would see Claim Number One allotted for selection to some more or less worthy American citizen.

The young man, Walker, had been received on a footing of fellows.h.i.+p into the commune of the circus-tent. He said that he had concluded happily the arrangements for the purchase of the sheep-ranch, and that he intended to go and take possession of it in a few days. Meantime, he appeared to be considerably shot up over June. In spite of Mrs. Reed's frowns, he hung around her like a hornet after a soft pear.

There was considerable excitement in the camp of the communists that morning, owing to preparations which were going forward for an excursion over the land where somebody's Number One lay shrouded in green greasewood and gray sage. For this important occasion Walker had engaged the most notable stage-driver in that part of the country, whose turn it was that day to lie over from the run between Comanche and Meander.

The party was to use his stage also, and carry lunch along, and make a grand day of it along the river, trying for trout if conditions held favorable. Smith was the name of the driver.

Smith was smiling like a baker as he drove up, for Smith could not behold ladies without blus.h.i.+ng and smiling. Smith had the reputation of being a terror to holdup men. Also, the story was current in Comanche that he had, in a bare-handed, single encounter with a bear, choked the animal to death. There was some variance over the particulars as to the breed of bear, its color, age, size, and weight. Some--and they were the unromantic, such as habitually lived in Wyoming and kept saloons--held that it was a black cub with a broken back; others that it was a cinnamon bear with claws seven inches long; while the extremists would be satisfied with nothing short of a grizzly which stood five feet four at the shoulders and weighed eighteen hundred pounds!

But, no matter what romance had done for Smith, it could not overdo his ancient, green vehicle, with the lettering,

BIG HORN VALLEY

along its side near the roof. It was a Concord stage, its body swinging on creaking straps. It had many a wound of arrowhead in its tough oak, and many a bullet-hole, all of which had been plugged with putty and painted over long years ago for the a.s.surance and comfort of nervous pa.s.sengers, to whom the evidence of conflict might have been disturbing.

Now that there was no longer any reason for concealment, the owners had allowed the paint to crumble and the putty to fall away, baring the veteran's scars. These were so thick that it seemed a marvel that anybody who took pa.s.sage in it in those perilous days escaped. In a sun-cracked and time-curled leather holster tacked to the seat at Smith's right hand, a large revolver with a prodigious black handle hung ready for the disciplining of bandits or bears, as they might come across Smith's way.

Smith rounded up before the tent with a curve like a skater, bringing his four horses to a stop in fine style. No matter how Smith's parts might be exaggerated by rumor or humor in other ways, as a teamster he stood without a peer between Cody and Green River. He leaped to the ground with surprising agility and set himself about arranging the interior of the coach for the accommodation of his pa.s.sengers. He was chewing on something which might have been bear-meat or buckskin, from its apparent tenacious and unyielding nature.

Agnes Horton was to ride on the box with Smith, for she had a camera and wanted to catch some views. Smith grew so red over handing her up that Dr. Slavens began to fear lest he might take fire from internal heat and leave them with only the ashes of a driver on their hands. But they all got placed without any such melancholy tragedy, with a great many cries of "Oh, Mr. Smith!" here, and "Oh, Mr. Smith!" there, and many head-puttings-out on the part of the ladies inside, and gallantries from Mr. Walker and Mr. Horace Bentley, the lawyer.

William Bentley, the toolmaker, with the basket of lunch upon his knees, showered the blessing of his kindly smile upon them all, as if he held them to be only children. Mrs. Mann, her black bag on her arm, squeaked a little when the coach lurched on the start, knocking her head and throwing her hat awry.

Smith, proud of his load, and perhaps a little vain on account of so much unusual loveliness at his side, swung down the main street with its early morning crowds. People waved at them the friendly signals of the highroad of adventure, and June, in defiance of terrible eyebrows and admonis.h.i.+ng pokes, waved back at them, her wild hair running over her cheeks. So they set out in the bright morning to view the promised land.

They struck off down the Meander stage-road, which ran for the greater part of its way through the lands awaiting the disposition of chance.

Mainly it followed the survey of the railroad, which was to be extended to Meander, and along which men and teams were busy even then, throwing up the roadbed.

To the north there was a rise of land, running up in benched gradations to white and barren distant heights; behind them were brown hills. Far away in the blue southwest--Smith said it was more than eighty miles--there stood the mountains with their clean robes of snow, while scattered here and there about the vast plain through which they drove, were b.u.t.tes of blue shale and red ledges, as symmetrical of side and smooth of top as if they had been raised by the architects of Tenocht.i.tlan for sacrifice to their ugly G.o.ds.

"Old as Adam," said Smith, pointing to one gray monument whose summit had been pared smooth by the slow knife of some old glacier. The sides of the b.u.t.te looked almost gay in the morning light in their soft tones of blue and red.

"From appearances it might very well be," agreed Agnes.

She looked at Smith and smiled. There was the glory of untrammeled s.p.a.ce in her clear eyes, a yearning as of the desert-born on the far bounds of home. Smith drove on, his back very straight.

"Older," said he with laconic finality after holding his peace for a quarter of a mile.

Smith spoke as if he had known both Adam and the b.u.t.te for a long time, and so was an unquestionable authority. Agnes was not disposed to dispute him, so they lurched on in silence along the dust-cus.h.i.+oned road.

"That ain't the one the Indian girl jumped off of, though," said Smith, meditatively.

"Isn't it?"

She turned to him quickly, ready for a story from the picturesque strangler of bears. Smith was looking between the ears of the off-leader. He volunteered no more.

"Well, where is the one she jumped from?" she pressed.

"Nowhere," said Smith.

"Oh!" she said, a bit disappointed.

"Everywhere I've went," said he, "they've got some high place where the Indian girl jumped off of. In Mezoury they've got one, and even in Kansas. They've got one in Minnesota and Illinoy and Idaho, and bend my eyebrows if I know all the places they ain't got 'em! But don't you never let 'em take you in on no such yarns. Them yarns is for suckers."

Somehow Agnes felt grateful toward Smith, whose charitable purpose doubtless was to prevent her being taken in. But she was sorry for the fine tradition and hated to give it up.

"But _didn't_ one ever jump off a cliff or--anything?" she asked.

Smith struck out with a free-arm swing and cracked his whip so loudly that three female heads were at once protruded from the windows below.

"What I want to know," said he argumentatively, "is, who seen 'em jump?"

"I don't know," she admitted; "but I suppose they found their bodies."

"Don't you believe it!" depreciated Smith. "Indian maidens ain't the jumpin' kind. I never seen one of 'em in my day that wouldn't throw down the best feller she ever had for a red umbreller and a dime's worth of stick candy."

"I'm sorry for the nice stories your knowledge of the Indian character spoils," she laughed.

"The thing of it in this country is, miss, not to let 'em take you in,"

Smith continued. "That's what they're out for--to take in suckers. No matter how wise you may be in some other place, right here in this spot you may be a sucker. Do you git my words?"

"I think so," she responded, "and thank you. I'll try to keep my eyes open."

"They's places in this country," Smith went on, for he liked to talk as well as the next one, once he got under way, "where you could put your pocketbook down at the fork of the road with your card on top of it and go back there next week and find it O. K. But they's other places where if you had your money inside of three safes they'd git at it somehow.

This is one of that kind of places."

They had been dropping down a slope scattered with gray lava chunks and set with spiked soapweed, which let them to the river level. Ahead of them, twisted cottonwoods and red willows marked the brink of the stream.

"This is the first bench," said Smith, "and it's mainly good land.

Before the books was opened for registration the gover'ment give the Indians choice of a homestead apiece, and they picked off all this land down here. Oh, well, on up the river they's a little left, and if I draw a low number I know where to put my hand on a piece."

"It looks nice and green here," said she, admiring the feathery vegetation, which grew as tall as the stage along the roadway.

"Yes, but you want to watch out for greasewood," advised Smith, "when you come to pick land in this country. It's a sign of alkali. Pick that gray, dusty-lookin' stuff. That's sage, and where it grows big, anything'll grow when you git the water on it."

"But how _do_ you get the water on this hilly land?" she asked.

The question had been troubling her ever since she had taken her first look at the country, and n.o.body had come forward with a satisfactory explanation.

"You got to go up the river till you strike your level," explained Smith, "and then you tap it and take the water to your land."

"But if you're on the 'third bench' that I hear them talking about so much--then what do you do up there, a thousand or two feet above the river?"

"You go back where you come from if you're wise," said Smith.