Prairie Folks

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Between his ranch and the settlements in Eastern Dakota there was the
wedge-shaped reservation known as the Sisseton Indian Reserve, on which
were stationed the customary agency and company of soldiers. But, of
course, at that time the Indians were not restricted closely to the
bounds of the reserve, but ranged freely over the vast and beautiful
prairie lying between the coteaux or ranges of low hills which mark out
"the Jim Valley." The valley was unsurveyed for the most part, and the
Indians naturally felt a sort of proprietorship in it, and when Wilson
drove his cattle down into the valley and squatted, the chief, Drifting
Crane, welcomed him, as a host might, to an abundant feast whose
hospitality was presumed upon, but who felt the need of sustaining his
reputation as a host, and submitted graciously.

The Indians during the first summer got to know Wilson, and liked him
for his silence, his courage, his generosity; but the older men pondered
upon the matter a great deal and watched with grave faces to see him
ploughing up the sod for his garden. There was something strange in this
solitary man thus deserting his kindred, coming here to live alone with
his cattle; they could not understand it. What they said in those
pathetic, dimly lighted lodges will never be known; but when winter
came, and the new-comer did not drive his cattle back over the hills as
they thought he would, then the old chieftains took long counsel upon
it. Night after night they smoked upon it, and at last Drifting Crane
said to two of his young men: "Go ask this cattleman why he remains in
the cold and snow with his cattle. Ask him why he does not drive his
cattle home."

This was in March, and one evening a couple of days later, as Wilson was
about re-entering his shanty at the close of his day's work, he was
confronted by two stalwart Indians, who greeted him pleasantly.

"How d'e do? How d'e do?" he said in reply. "Come in. Come in and take a
snack."

The Indians entered and sat silently while he put some food on the
table. They hardly spoke till after they had eaten. The Indian is always
hungry, for the reason that his food supply is insufficient and his
clothing poor. When they sat on the cracker-boxes and soap-boxes which
served as seats, they spoke. They told him of the chieftain's message.
They said they had come to assist him in driving his cattle back across
the hills; that he must go.

To all this talk in the Indian's epigrammatic way, and in the dialect
which has never been written, the rancher replied almost as briefly:
"You go back and tell Drifting Crane that I like this place; that I'm
here to stay; that I don't want any help to drive my cattle. I'm on the
lands of the Great Father at Washington, and Drifting Crane ain't got
any say about it. Now that sizes the whole thing up. I ain't got
anything against you nor against him, but I'm a settler; that's my
constitution; and now I'm settled I'm going to stay."

While the Indians discussed his words between themselves he made a bed
of blankets on the floor and said: "I never turn anybody out. A white
man is just as good as an Indian as long as he behaves himself as well.
You can bunk here."

The Indians didn't understand his words fully, but they did understand
his gesture, and they smiled and accepted the courtesy, so like their
own rude hospitality. Then they all smoked a pipe of tobacco in silence,
and at last Wilson turned in and went serenely off to sleep, hearing the
mutter of the Indians lying before the fire.

In the morning he gave them as good a breakfast as he had--bacon and
potatoes, with coffee and crackers. Then he shook hands, saying: "Come
again. I ain't got anything against you. You've done y'r duty. Now go
back and tell your chief what I've said. I'm at home every day. Good
day."

The Indians smiled kindly, and drawing their blankets over their arms,
went away toward the east.

During April and May two or three reconnoitering parties of land-hunters
drifted over the hills and found him out. He was glad to see them, for,
to tell the truth, the solitude of his life was telling on him. The
winter had been severe, and he had hardly caught a glimpse of a white
face during the three midwinter months, and his provisions were scanty.

These parties brought great news. One of them was the advance surveying
party for a great Northern railroad, and they said a line of road was to
be surveyed during the summer if their report was favorable.

"Well, what d'ye think of it?" Wilson asked, with a smile.

"Think! It's immense!" said a small man in the party, whom the rest
called Judge Balser. "Why, they'll be a town of four thousand
inhabitants in this valley before snow flies. We'll send the surveyors
right over the divide next month."

They sent some papers to Wilson a few weeks later, which he devoured as
a hungry dog might devour a plate of bacon. The papers were full of the
wonderful resources of the Jim Valley. It spoke of the nutritious
grasses for stock. It spoke of the successful venture of the lonely
settler Wilson, how his stock fattened upon the winter grasses without
shelter, etc., what vegetables he grew, etc., etc.

Wilson was reading this paper for the sixth time one evening in May. He
had laid off his boots, his pipe was freshly filled, and he sat in the
doorway in vast content, unmindful of the glory of color that filled the
western sky, and the superb evening chorus of the prairie-chickens,
holding conventions on every hillock. He felt something touch him on the
shoulder, and looked up to see a tall Indian gazing down upon him with a
look of strange pride and gravity. Wilson sprang to his feet and held
out his hand.

"Drifting Crane, how d'e do?"

The Indian bowed, but did not take the settler's hand. Drifting Crane
would have been called old if he had been a white man, and there was a
look of age in the fixed lines of his powerful, strongly modeled face,
but no suspicion of weakness in the splendid poise of his broad,
muscular body. There was a smileless gravity about his lips and eyes
which was very impressive.

"I'm glad to see you. Come in and get something to eat," said Wilson,
after a moment's pause.

The chief entered the cabin and took a seat near the door. He took a cup
of milk and some meat and bread silently, and ate while listening to the
talk of the settler.

"I don't brag on my biscuits, chief, but they _eat_, if a man is hungry
enough. An' the milk's all right. I suppose you've come to see why I
ain't moseying back over the divide?"

The chief, after a long pause, began to speak in a low, slow voice, as
if choosing his words. He spoke in broken English, of course, but his
speech was very direct and plain, and had none of those absurd figures
of rhetoric which romancers invariably put into the mouths of Indians.
His voice was almost lion-like in its depth, and yet was not unpleasant.
It was easy to see that he was a chief by virtue of his own personality.

"Cattleman, my young men brought me bad message from you. They brought
your words to me, saying he will not go away."

"That's about the way the thing stands," replied Wilson, in response to
the question that was in the old chief's steady eyes. "I'm here to stay.
This ain't your land. This is Uncle Sam's land, and part of it'll be
mine as soon as the surveyors come to measure it off."

"Who gave it away?" asked the chief. "My people were cheated out of it.
They didn't know what they were doing."

"I can't help that. That's for Congress to say. That's the business of
the Great Father at Washington." Wilson's voice changed. He knew and
liked the chief; he didn't want to offend him. "They ain't no use making
a fuss, chief. You won't gain anything."

There was a look of deep sorrow in the old man's face. At last he spoke
again: "The cattleman is welcome; but he must go, because whenever one
white man goes and calls it good, the others come. Drifting Crane has
seen it far in the east, twice. The white men come thick as the grass.
They tear up the sod. They build houses. They scare the buffalo away.
They spoil my young men with whisky. Already they begin to climb the
eastern hills. Soon they will fill the valley, and Drifting Crane and
his people will be surrounded. The sod will all be black."

"I hope you're right," was the rancher's grim reply.

"But they will not come if the cattleman go back to say the water is not
good. There is no grass, and the Indians own the land."

Wilson smiled at the childish faith of the chief. "Won't do,
chief--won't do. That won't do any good. I might as well stay."

The chief rose. He was touched by the settler's laugh; his eyes flashed;
his voice took on a sterner note. "The white man _must_ go!"

Wilson rose also. He was not a large man, but he was a very resolute
one. "I shan't go!" he said, through his clinched teeth. Each man
understood the tones of the other perfectly.

It was a thrilling, a significant scene. It was in absolute truth the
meeting of the modern vidette of civilization with one of the rear-guard
of retreating barbarism. Each man was a type; each was wrong, and each
was right. The Indian as true and noble from the barbaric point of view
as the white man. He was a warrior and hunter--made so by circumstances
over which he had no control. Guiltless as the panther, because war to
a savage is the necessity of life.

The settler represented the unflagging energy and fearless heart of the
American pioneer. Narrow-minded, partly brutalized by hard labor and a
lonely life, yet an admirable figure for all that. As he looked into the
Indian's face he seemed to grow in height. He felt behind him all the
weight of the millions of westward-moving settlers; he stood the
representative of an unborn State. He took down a rifle from the
wall--the magazine rifle, most modern of guns; he patted the stock,
pulled the crank, throwing a shell into view.

"You know this thing, chief?"

The Indian nodded slightly.

"Well, I'll go when--this--is--empty."

"But my young men are many."

"So are the white men--my brothers."

The chief's head dropped forward. Wilson, ashamed of his boasting, put
the rifle back on the wall.

"I'm not here to fight. You can kill me any time. You could 'a' killed
me to-night, but it wouldn't do any good. It 'ud only make it worse for
you. Why, they'll be a town in here bigger'n all your tribe before two
grass from now. It ain't no use, Drifting Crane; it's _got_ to be. You
an' I can't help n'r hinder it. I know just how you feel about it, but
I tell yeh it ain't no use to fight."

Drifting Crane turned his head and gazed out on the western sky, still
red with the light of the fallen sun. His face was rigid as bronze, but
there was a dreaming, prophetic look in his eyes. A lump came into the
settler's throat; for the first time in his life he got a glimpse of the
infinite despair of the Indian. He forgot that Drifting Crane was the
representative of a "vagabond race;" he saw in him, or rather _felt_ in
him, something almost magnetic. He was a _man_, and a man of sorrows.
The settler's voice was husky when he spoke again, and his lips
trembled.

"Chief, I'd go to-morrow if it 'ud do any good, but it won't--not a
particle. You know that, when you stop to think a minute. What good did
it do to massa_cree_ all them settlers at New Ulm? What good will it do
to murder me and a hundred others? Not a bit. A thousand others would
take our places. So I might just as well stay, and we might just as well
keep good friends. Killin' is out o' fashion; don't do any good."

There was a twitching about the stern mouth of the Indian chief. He
understood all too well the irresistible logic of the pioneer. He kept
his martial attitude, but his broad chest heaved painfully, and his eyes
grew dim. At last he said: "Good-by. Cattleman right; Drifting Crane
wrong. Shake hands. Good-by." He turned and strode away.

The rancher watched him till he mounted his pony, picketed down by the
river; watched him as, with drooping head and rein flung loose upon the
neck of his horse, he rode away into the dusk, hungry, weary and
despairing, to face his problem alone. Again, for the thousandth time,
the impotence of the Indian's arm and the hopelessness of his fate were
shown as perfectly as if two armies had met and soaked the beautiful
prairie sod with blood.

"This is all wrong," muttered the settler. "There's land enough for us
all, or ought to be. I don't understand---- Well, I'll leave it to Uncle
Sam anyway." He ended with a sigh.

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PART VIII.

OLD DADDY DEERING: THE COUNTRY FIDDLER

Like Scotland's harper,
Or Irish piper, with his droning lays,
Before the spread of modern life and light
The country fiddler slowly disappears.

DADDY DEERING.

I.

They were threshing on Farmer Jennings' place when Daddy made his very
characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily
holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was
dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and
chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the
dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his
cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of
the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands
in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.

The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which
became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was
nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances
toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping
with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round
and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.

The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into
Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his
eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships,
a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in
this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and
sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?

Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black
as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry
eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,
behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.
He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had
always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that
came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.

A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely
setting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shrouded
with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of
the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the
machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this
are quite different things.

They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was
crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and
apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half-buried in the
loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a
stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled
from the terrible dust beside the measuring-spout, and was shaking the
chaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice
call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked
in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:

"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's
poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."

"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I
told you it wasn't the place for an old man."

"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can
daown you, sir--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"

"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.

The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
clinched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
at last flat on his back.

"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether--yessir!--I could do it,
too!".

"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.

The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.

"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."

His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
toil had bent and stiffened him.

"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
"And by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the State; no, sir; no,
sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
pay--that's all, sir!"

Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
there this afternoon."

The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
places, and his endurance was marvelous. He could stand all day at the
tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
air, as if it were all mere play.

He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with that
most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old boy
it seems to be the worst job in the world.

All day while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the trees
glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are tumbling
about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks, like a
convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent shoulders and
ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust, necessarily
came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.

And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to bear
the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of the
cylinder.

"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
when Milton was unable to laugh the old man tweaked his ear with his
leathery thumb and finger.

Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
with age, with the cotton-batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.

One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.

He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
of the third day, he said:

"Now, sir; if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
m' hand over f'r any man in the State; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
gum!"

"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."

II.

Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and
Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with
another disagreeable job, that of building the fire, and carrying water.

It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came
driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half
his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was
delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.

"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got
that fire blazin'? What the devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is
broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a
thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come!
hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots--Ha! ha! ha!"

It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.

"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age,
I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds!
Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"

The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and
then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot--mince pie or
sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat
down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the
fire under the big kettle.

The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into
position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at
the proper slant while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning the
grindstone--another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not
alleviate.

Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a
horse-trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking
of cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of
some heavy snow-storms he had known. Each parenthesis outgrew its
proper limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His
stories had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect
where he was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.

At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was
the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with
laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the
ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly
swine.

"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir, _grab 'im_! Why don't
ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell
out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"

With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator
toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected
victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out,
caught him by the ear and flung him upon his side, squealing with
deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort,
Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he
boasted:

"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth--a dozen o' you--spindle-legged
chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"

His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine
as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into
another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was
swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested,
while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.

There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys.
The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam
rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped
steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity,
while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long
stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.

At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the
other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct
honor in this selection.

"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No,
sir, wouldn't thank 'im."

"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two
iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.

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