A Rustlers Conscience.
The Living Age, December 11, 1897; The Living Age
Company, Boston
by Charles M. Skinner
Skinner published collections of myths, legends and
folklore found inside the United States and across the
world. -
Wikipedia
People who go through the
Yellowstone country nowaday know little of what that trip meant
before the time of the railroad. Four of us made the journey:
the Parson, Old Silurian, the Unsalted, and the Tramp; in other
words, a city clergyman, a professor of geology, a young
collegian, and myself. There was but an apology for a road, and
we had to get down and pull logs out of the way to get through.
At one point we had no road but a river-bed, and followed it
through a cañon. At night we camped wherever there was tent
room, and the frost nipped our toes through our blankets.
"Toot," our factotum, and "Al," his brother, keeper, also, of
the Coyote saloon in Bozeman, were famous hunters, fishermen,
and cooks, steady drivers, astonishing drinkers, and they liked
to use bad language and relate unseemly narratives in order to
see the clergyman and the professor wince. They claimed to have
committed many sins, but they never worried over them. It was
different with a "rustler" we met out there.
After some days of heat and
freezing nights, some jolting and climbing and struggling, such
marvelling at hot springs and geysers, some swimming to erase
from our backs the dents of rocks that had been our beds, and
daily tussles with mosquitoes, it was like entering the land of
Beulah to descend to Yellowstone Lake, one of the loveliest
sheets of water in the world, and to pitch our tent on the soft
sward near its shore. Dinner eaten, we trudged off to Natural
Bridge, near the lake's western edge,—a dike of travertine that
had been pierced and worn in long. past centuries by a stream,
and that is wide enough for a person to walk upon, from one side
of the ravine to the other. The passage is only ten yards long,
or thereabout, but there is a drop of nearly a hundred feet to
the bottom, if one makes a misstep, which he need not do. We
were lounging near the arch on the northern side, when a tap of
hoofs and creak of leather made us look up. A horseman had
arrived on the southern brink of the chasm, and evidently wanted
to cross. The meeting of men in a wilderness is always excuse
for a display of interest and confidence. "Hi there!" shouted
the new arrival. "Is there any way to get over to your side?”
"Yes, that bridge is safe, if
you look out for the hole in the middle of it." So he came
trotting on, driving a herd of about twenty ponies before him,
and having drawn rein as he reached us, we had a bit of talk
together. Like many of the frontiersmen he was restrained and
quiet: browned and furrowed so by sun and wind, that he looked,
at first glance, older than he was, for he was at the verge of
forty; an easy rider, rough in dress, bearded, long-haired,
unkempt; and he had a doubtful, questioning look in his eyes.
The usual revolver flapped in its case on his thigh, a knife was
in its sheath, a rifle lay across his saddle, and from his belt
hung a stick marked with eighteen or twenty notches, "one notch
for each day he had been out," he said. The ponies of his herd
were small, rough-coated, not blooded stock by any means, and
were led by a red horse with a bell. There were a couple of
colts. I noticed with surprise that two of the horses were
loaded with Indian camp equipage, such as does not often form a
white man's outfit. A tent of dressed buckskin decorated with
Indian pictures was strapped to the back of one of the ponies.
The man told us that he had just come from Colorado, was going
to Montana to sell his horses, and wanted to know where he could
find pasturage and water. We directed him to the grassy opening
two or three miles distant, where we had pitched our own camp,
and on returning, afoot, we found that he had picketed his
horses a few hundred yards from us, and was preparing to spend
the night there.
When our supper was ready we
halloed to him an invitation to come over and help eat it, for a
man who went long distances in the West usually enjoyed little
variety in his bill of fare, and we fancied that our fresh trout
and our flapjacks with maple syrup would give an agreeable
surprise to his stomach. He accepted (what traveller would not?)
and fell to his work with a good appetite. After the meal he lit
his pipe, dropped wearily on the earth before the fire, and
smoked for some minutes, seeming to take comfort in our cheery
talk, but offering few remarks of his own, and replying with
hardly more than monosyllables to our inquiries. When his pipe
was out he arose and left us abruptly, striding across the
meadow in the direction of his horses.
Toot, who had watched him as he
disappeared in the twilight, said in a low voice, "There's
something wrong with that rustler. What's he doing with the
Injun outfit? And did you notice them ponies? That's pretty
healthy talk to give a man about driving such stock as that all
the way from Colorado to sell in Montana. Ain't it? Them's Injun
ponies, and you bet he's played it low on an Injun somewhere to
get 'em. That's liable to make trouble in this park."
We were inclined to jest at the
suspicions of our guide, though he had lived on the frontier
from childhood, and had a quick opinion that was often
surprisingly right,—a result of trained observation or instinct.
As we sat an the earth, gazing into the blaze, listening to the
voice of the wind in the pines and the chiming and patting of
big and little waves on the beach, another fire, flickered at a
distance; two prospectors, travelling southward, had stopped
there for the night. While getting their supper this happened:
The rustler, who should have been asleep in his blanket,
suddenly appeared before the younger of the men with a knife
pointed at his breast, and in a menacing tone demanded, "What
did you tell those people" (indicating us) "that I killed that
Indian down at the lake for?"
The one addressed looked
quietly along the knife-blade, then, with a quick movement,
whipped his pistol from its sheath and levelled it between the
man's eyes.
"Put that thing back," he said.
And I the rustler put it back.
"Now," continued the
prospector, "what do you mean by coming here and talking in that
style? We've just come in and haven't seen the people yonder."
"I mean," retorted the rustler,
"that you've been over there, you've seen them, and you told
them it was me that killed the Indian they found by the lake."
"Never knew they had found an
Indian by the lake."
"Well, they did, and I'd like
to know why they can't let me alone about it. Why are people
always pointing at me and talking about me, and saying I did
it?"
The prospector stared in
surprise. "I don't know," said he, "unless you did."
The rustler stamped his foot,
tossed his arms, then walked away, while the prospectors, with
surprise still on their faces, came over to us to inquire what
manner of man he was with whom they had held this interview. We
did not know.
On the second morning after
this incident three of us set off afoot on the trail that leads
by way of Mount Washburn and Tower Falls to Mammoth Hot Springs,
leaving our guides to take the wagon by the alleged road to this
latter point, through the geyser district. We had not been two
hours on the march before the sound of horses was heard behind
us, and we stood aside to let them .pass. A herd of Indian
ponies emerged from the shrubbery, and behind them rode the
rustler. A noble forest lifting around us, the cañon of the
Yellowstone yawning at our right, its terrors half veiled in
wondrous color, sweet air, pure sky, and cheery sun made a
joyous harmony, and with it the glum, suspicious figure of the
rider was out of key. At sight of us he pulled up sharply. "I
want to go to Gardiner," he said.
"That's where we are going,"
one of us replied.
"Will this trail take me
there?"
"Yes; but if you will turn back
and go the other way, taking the first turn to the right, you'll
find a road. This is nothing but a trail."
He was silent for a moment,
then said, as one who was half in sorrow, half in bitterness,
"You're all against me, and you're trying to get me wrong on
this, but I can find the trail in spite of you,—I can find it."
And without further word he struck his horse and bounded on, the
ponies scampering before him. A wearisome yet magnificent walk
of two days and a half, through wilderness and over
mountain-top, brought us back to Mammoth Hot Springs just as
Toot drove in with our team, and, clambering into the
wagon-seats, we resumed our ride. How and where we passed him I
do not know, but during a halt soon after the rustler came up
from behind, and clattered by with his ponies for the third
time.
"Bozeman?" he cried, pointing
northward.
"Yes," we answered.
The old doubt came into his
face. "I'll find it in spite of you," he repeated. And he
galloped away, each horse marking his course by puffs of dust
that drifted up from the sage brush like a volley smoke. Our
guide watched the retreating figure curiously. Then he remarked,
with nonchalance, "That fellow's still got the Injun on his
mind. He's doing his best to get his neck stretched by the time
he gets back among folks."
The man's deed was
self-proclaimed. In quarrel, possibly, but as likely with
intent, he had killed an Indian, taken his effects and hurried
from the scene of his crime, perhaps to avoid pursuit, perhaps
to avoid himself. Alone in the wilderness day after day, he had
brooded on his act until it was named to him in the whisper of
leaves and gurgle of waters, written on mountain snows, painted
in the sunset, re-enacted in moving shadows of the forest; when
he met his fellowmen again nature had told them of it; so, man
and nature he suspected. The brand of Cain was stamped upon his
heart; with his own unwitting hand he bared his breast and
showed it to us. I never saw him after. Was our guide's prophecy
fulfilled, I wonder?
From " With Feet
to the Earth." By Charles M. Skinner. J. B. Lippincott Company,
Publishers. Price $1.25. |
