SLOWFOOT GEORGE

I retain some vivid impressions of that night ride. A mile or two from the Circle tents I crossed the Teton River, then just receding from the June rise, and near swimming deep. After that I came out upon a great spread of bench-land, dotted with silent prairie-dog towns. Here and there a lone butte rose pinnacle-like out of the flatness. In all my short life I had never known what it was to be beyond sound of a human voice, to be utterly alone. That night was my first taste of it, and to my unaccustomed ears the patter of my horse’s hoofs seemed to be echoing up from a sounding-board, and the jingle of the bit chains rang like a bell, so profound was the quiet. I know of nothing that compares with the plains for pure loneliness, unless it be the deserted streets of a city at four in the morning or the hushed, ghostly woods of the North, which I was yet to know. Each hollow into which I dipped reeked of mysterious possibilities. Every moon-bathed rise of land gave me a vague feeling that something sinister, some incomprehensible evil, lay in wait upon the farther side. Whatever of superstition lay dormant in my make-up was all agog that night; my environment was having its will of me. I know now that my nerves were all a-jangle. But what would you? The dark brings its subtle, threatening atmosphere to bear on braver men than I. For aught I knew there might be a price on my head. Certainly I was a fugitive, and flight breeds groundless, unreasoning fears.

Bearing a little west of the North Star, I kept the red horse at a steady jog, and when the night was far spent and my bones aching from the ride I came to another river the Marias which Wall had told me I must cross. Following his directions, a half-hour’s journey upstream brought me upon a trail; a few wagon-tracks that I near overlooked. This led to a ford, or what may once have been a ford. It no longer merited the term, for I got well soaked in the deep, swift stream. Red carried me through, however, and when I gained the farther bank of the Marias Valley a faint reddish glow was creeping up in the east. In a little while it was broad day.

Then I halted for the first time. My mettlesome steed I picketed carefully, ate a little of the biscuits and boiled beef, and lay down to sleep in a grassy hollow, too tired to care whether Bax was hard on my trail or not. The sunlight had given me a fresh access of courage, I think that and the heady air of those crisp morning hours. My difficulties began to take on some of the aspects of an adventure. Once in the Territories, with none to hound me, I could apprise Bolton and he would forward money to get me home. That was all I needed. And if I could not manage to eke out a living in the meantime I was not the son of my father. I fell asleep with a wistful eye on three blue spires that broke the smooth sweep of the skyline to the northward the Sweet Grass Hills, touching on the Canadian boundary, if I remembered rightly what Wall had said.

The hot noon sun beating on my unprotected face roused me at last. It was near midday. I had no liking for further moonlight travel, so I saddled up and rode on, thinking to get somewhere near the Hills by dusk, and camp there for the night. I was now over my first fear of being followed; but, oh, my hearers, I was stiff and sore! A forty or fifty mile jaunt is not much to a seasoned rider but I lacked seasoning; however, I was due to get it.

A little before sundown I rode into the long shadow of West Butte, in rare good humor with myself despite the ache in my legs, for by grace of my good red horse I had covered a wonderful stretch that afternoon, and my nag was yet stepping out lightly. On either hand loomed the rugged pyramids of the Sweet Grass which in truth are not hills at all, but three boulder-strewn, pine-clad mountains rising abruptly out of a rolling plain. The breaks of Milk River, in its over-the-border curve, showed plainly in the distance. I was nearing the City of Refuge.

There in that shadow-darkened notch between the lofty pinnacles I came to a new fork in the Trouble Trail. I did not know it then, but later I could not gainsay the fact. And the mile-post that directed my uncertain steps was merely a strain of the devil in the blaze-faced sorrel I bestrode. Had he been of a less turbulent spirit I doubt much if I should ever have fallen in with Slowfoot George.

It happened very simply. Ambling along with eyes for little but the wild land that surrounded, with reins held carelessly in lax fingers, I was an easy victim. As before remarked, I can put forward no better explanation than a streak of “cussedness” in my red mount. Suffice it to relate, that all at once I found my steed performing a series of diabolic evolutions, and in some mysterious manner he and I parted company in a final burst of rapid-fire contortions. I have since heard and read much of the Western horse and his unique method of unseating a rider, but never yet have I seen justice done the subject. Nor shall I descant long on such an unpleasant theme. Let me simply record the fact that I came to earth ungracefully, with a jarring shock, much as an importunate suitor might be presumed to descend the front steps of his inamorata’s home, when assisted therefrom by the paternal toe. And when I sat up, a freshly-bruised and crestfallen youth, it was to behold Red clattering over a little hillock, head up, stirrups swinging wide. He seemed in hot haste. Like a fool I had knotted the reins together for easier holding; with them looped upon his neck he felt as much at liberty as though stripped clean of riding-gear.

It looked like a dubious prospect. Upon second thought I decided that it could easily have been worse. A broken leg, say, would have been a choice complication. My bones, however, remained intact. So I sought about in the grass for the pistol that had been jolted from its place during the upheaval, and when I found it betook myself upon the way my erratic nag had gone.

It was no difficult matter for me to arrive at the conclusion that I was in a fair way to go into the Northwest afoot should I be lucky enough to arrive at all. Red seemed to have gone into hiding. At least, he remained unseen, though I ascended divers little éminences and stared my hardest, realizing something of the hopelessness of my quest even while I stared. That Sweet Grass country is monstrously deceptive to the unsophisticated. Overlooking it from a little height one thinks he sees immense areas of gently undulating plain; and he sees truly. But when he comes to traverse this smooth sea of land that ripples away to a far skyline, it is a horse of another color, I assure you. He has not taken thought of what tricks the clear air and the great spaces have played with his perspective. The difference between looking over fifty miles of grassland and crossing the same is the difference between viewing a stretch of salt water from a convenient point ashore and being out in a two-oared skiff bucking the sway-backed rollers that heave up from the sea.

So with the plains: that portion of which I speak. Distance smoothed its native ruggedness, glossed over its facial wrinkles, so to say. The illusion became at once apparent when one moved toward any given point. The negligible creases developed into deep coulees, the gentle undulations proved long sharp-pitched divides. Creeks, flood-worn serpentine water-courses, surprised one in unexpected places.

I had not noticed these things particularly while I rode. Now, as I tramped across country, persuading myself that over each succeeding hill I should find my light-footed sorrel horse meekly awaiting me, it seemed that I was always either climbing up or sliding down. I found myself deep in an abstract problem as I plodded trying to strike a balance between the illusory level effect and stern topographical realities. Presently I gave that up, and came back to concrete facts. Whereupon, being very tired and stiff from a longer ride than I had ever taken before, and correspondingly ill-tempered, I damned the red horse for bucking me off and myself for permitting any beast of the field to serve me so, and then sat down upon the peak of a low hill to reflect where and how I should come by my supper.

A smart breeze frolicked up from that quarter where the disappearing sun cast a bloodshot haze over a few tumbled clouds. This, I daresay, muffled sounds behind me to some extent. At any rate, I was startled out of my cogitations by a voice close by a drawly utterance which evoked a sudden vision of a girl with wind-raveled hair, and a lean, dark-faced man leaning over a deck railing on the Moon.

“Magnificent outlook, isn’t it?”

Notwithstanding the surprise of finding him at my elbow in such unexpected fashion, I faced about with tolerable calmness. That intuitive flash had been no false harbinger, for it was Barreau sure enough. The angular visage of him was not to be confounded with that of any casual stranger, even though his habiliments were no longer broadcloth and its concomitants of linen and polished shoes. Instead, a gray Stetson topped his head, and he was gloved and booted like a cowboy. Lest it be thought that his plight was twin to my own, I will say that he looked down upon me from the back of a horse as black as midnight, a long-geared brute with a curved neck and a rolling eye. Best of all, at the end of a lariat Barreau held my own red horse.

“That,” said I, “depends on how you look at it. I’ll admit that the outlook is fine since you have brought me back my runaway horse.”

“I meant that,” he nodded to the glowing horizon. “But I daresay a man gets little pleasure out of a red sky when he is set afoot in a horseless land. It will pay you, my friend, to keep your horse between your legs hereafter.”

“He threw me,” I confessed. “Where did you catch him? And how did you find me?”

“I thought he had slipped his pack, by the tied-up reins,” said Barreau. “As for catching him and finding you, that was an easy matter. He ran fairly into me, and I had only to look about for a man walking.”

“Well,” I returned, taking my sorrel by the rope, “I’m properly grateful for your help. And I have another matter to thank you for, if I am not badly mistaken.”

He made a slight gesture of deprecation. “Never mind that,” said he. His attitude was no encouragement to profuse thanks, if I had contemplated such.

I turned then to inspect my saddle, and found fresh cause for perplexity. By some means my supply of bread and beef had been shaken from its fastening. The bit of sack hung slack in the strings, but the food was gone. He looked down inquiringly, at my exclamation.

“More of my luck,” said I, and explained.

“Might I ask,” said he, after a moment of thoughtful scrutiny, “where you are bound for?”

“It’s no secret,” I replied. “I’m for the MacLeod country; over the line.”

“Then you may as well ride with me this evening,” he invited. “It is only a few miles to the Sanders ranch; you will be that much farther on your way. I can vouch for their hospitality.”

I hesitated, for obvious reasons. He smiled, as if he read my mind. And all in a breath I yielded to some subtle confidence-compelling quality of the man, and blurted out my story; the killing of Tupper, that is, and how the Circle men had aided me.

“I guessed at something of the sort,” he remarked. “You are new at the game, and you bear the ear-marks of a man on the dodge. We are a rowdy lot out here sometimes, and we can’t always settle our disputes by word of mouth; so that I think you will find most of us inclined to look lightly on what seems to you a serious affair indeed. Tupper had it in store for him; Speer too, for all of that, and many another brute on those river craft. You haven’t much to worry about. Very likely Benton has forgotten the thing by now unless Bax and Matt Dunn’s men locked horns over it. Of course there is the chance that the Benton and St. Louis Company may hound you for killing one of their officers. But there’s no fear of their coming to Sanders’ after you not to-night; and to-morrow, and all the other to-morrows, you can take things as they come. That’s the best philosophy for the plains.”

He swung a half-mile to the east, and picked up a pack-horse he had left when he took after my mount. Thereafter we loped north in the falling dusk, Barreau riding mute after his long speech, and I, perforce, following his example. At length we drew up at the ranch, a vague huddle of low buildings set in the bend of a creek. Barreau appeared to be quite familiar with the place. Even in the gloom he went straight to the bars of a small, round corral. In this we tied our horses, throwing them hay from a new-made stack close by. Then he led the way to a lighted cabin.

Barreau pushed open the door and walked in without ceremony. Two men were in the room; one lying upon a bunk, the other sitting with his spurred heels on the corner of a table. Each of them looked up at my companion, and both in one breath declared:

“I’ll be damned if it ain’t Slowfoot!”

After that there was more or less desultory talk, mostly impersonal no questions pertinent to myself troubled the tongues of either man. One built a fire and cooked us a hot supper. The other made down a bed in one corner of the cabin, and upon this, at the close of the meal Barreau and I lay down to rest.

A jolt in the ribs and the flash of a light in my eyes brought me to a sitting posture later in the night. Sleep-heavy, what of the strenuous events that had gone before, it took me a full half-minute to get my bearings. And then I saw that three men in scarlet jackets held the two Sanders under their guns, while Barreau stood backed against the cabin wall with his hands held above his head. Even so it seemed to me that he was regarding the whole proceeding with a distinct curl to his lip.

“Come alive now, old chap, and don’t cut up rusty it won’t do a bit o’ good,” one of these oddly dressed strangers was admonishing; and it dawned upon me that I, too, was included in the threatening sweep of their firearms. “Get into your clothes, old chap.”

It is astonishing afterward how much and how quickly one can reflect in a few fleeting seconds. A multitude of ideas swarmed in my brain. Plans to resist, to escape, half formed and were as instantaneously discarded. Among the jumble it occurred to me that I could scarcely be wanted for that Benton affair my capture could scarcely be the cause of such a display. No, thought I, there must be more to it than that. Otherwise, Barreau and the two Sanders would not have been meddled with. Of course, I did not come to this conclusion of deliberate thought; it was more of an impression, perhaps I should say intuition, and yet I seemed to have viewed the odd circumstance from every angle in the brief time it took me to lay hold of my clothes. The queer sardonic expression lingered about Barreau’s lips all the while I dressed.

Presently I was clothed. Then the red-coated men mustered the four of us outside, by the light of a lantern. And two of them stood by the doorway and snapped a pair of handcuffs about the wrists of each of us as we passed out.

“Now,” said one of them, “you Sanders chaps know what horses you’d care to ride, and what stock Slowfoot George has here. So one of you can come to the stable wi’ me and saddle up.”

He took the youngest man, and went trailing him up in the uncertain light till both of them were utterly gone. After something of a wait they appeared, leading Barreau’s horse and mine and two others. In the interim I had had time to count noses. There was a man apiece for the four of us, and one off behind the cabin holding the raiders’ saddlestock. We stood there like so many pieces of uncouth statuary, no one seeming to have any inclination for talk, until the saddled horses came up. Then both the Sanders found their tongues in behalf of me.

“Look a-here, sergeant,” said the one, “yuh ain’t got any business over here, and yuh know it. Even if yuh did, this kid don’t belong in the crowd. You’re after us and yuh got us, but you’ve no call to meddle with him.”

“That’s right,” his brother put in. “I don’t know him from Adam. He just drifted in and camped overnight at the ranch.”

“I say y’know, that’s a bit strong,” the sergeant returned. “’Birds of a feather,’ y’know. I shan’t take any chances. You’re too hard a lot, Sanders; you and your friend Slowfoot George.”

Thus he left no room for argument; and in a few minutes the four of us were in the saddle and on the move, a Mounted Policeman jogging at the elbow of each man.

At the end of half an hour’s progress, as we crossed a fairly level stretch of plain, we came to a little cairn of rocks; and when we had passed it the sergeant pulled up his horse and faced about. The moon was up, and the earth and the cairn and even our features stood out clear in the silvery glow.

“John Sanders, Walter Sanders, George Brown alias Slowfoot George, and one John Doe, in the Queen’s name I arrest you,” he addressed us perfunctorily.

A trooper snickered, and Barreau laughed out loud.

“Routine routine and red tape, even in this rotten deal,” I heard Slowfoot murmur, when his laugh hushed. And on the other side of me Walt Sanders raised in his stirrups and cried hotly:

“You dirty dogs! Some day I’ll make yuh damned sorry yuh didn’t keep your own side of the line to-night.”

Of this the sergeant took no notice. He shook his horse into a trot, and prisoners and guard elbow to elbow, we moved on.