[to be continued.]
[ELK AND BLUEBIRD.]
BY FRANCES McELRATH.
"Now, look, Bluebird. See how wise the little rough-coat is. Up! Big chief! March!"
Elk accompanied his commands with expressive actions. He waved his hands upwards, threw out his chest, and strutted off along the river-bank. The young bear he was training stood up on his hind legs and comically repeated his movements.
Bluebird clapped her slender brown hands in delighted applause.
Elk gave a short, pleased laugh. He regarded his accomplished pet affectionately. "That's enough for to-night," he said, patting the brown head. "Bluebird," he added, glancing over towards the Cheyenne village among the straggly trees a few rods back from the river, "let's go see what Yellow Stripe's boy is saying to Much Tongue."
A white lad, whom Elk and his sister recognized as the son of a cavalry officer stationed at the adjacent fort, had just ridden up to the Indian camp, and was leaning across a rifle on his knees, talking to Harlow, the interpreter, called by the Cheyennes Much Tongue.
Elk and Bluebird had attended school on the reservation since their people had surrendered to the military authorities, and they understood the white man's language.
The sun was just setting. Its long last rays cast reflections across the prairie like gigantic finger-marks. It was late August, and some good-sized rabbits were abroad amongst the sage-brush at that hour. Alan stopped to fire at them now and then.
Elk and Bluebird, watching his receding figure, saw him dismount and creep cautiously along the ground for some distance once before firing. Afterwards he spent several minutes apparently searching amongst the bushes. Then he remounted his horse and rode on home.
"He's lost whatever he shot at," remarked Elk.
He and Bluebird were hunting the bear, whom they had forgotten for a moment, and who, it seemed, had run away. He was not very large; his body might easily be concealed in the high sage. They whistled and called for him.
"Here he comes," Bluebird said at length.
The bushes rustled in a line towards them, and presently they saw the little fellow. He seemed to be struggling with difficulty to reach them. They could hear him pant.
Elk sprang quickly to him. He fell on his knees beside the bear, uttering a cry.
"Oh, Bluebird, he is hurt!"
The cub's breast was covered with blood. His pink tongue lolled out of his month. He ceased his efforts to walk when Elk reached him. He sank down in a helpless heap, and looked imploringly up into his master's face.
Elk hastily parted the thick fur to discover the wound. He gave another sharp cry.
"Oh, Bluebird, my little dear one is dying! He is shot! He is shot!"
A moment later the bear fell over lifeless.
Elk flung himself upon his face in a passion of tears.
Bluebird took the bear's head between her hands and blew into his face. But he was past any aid in her power.
"Poor little thing!" she murmured, patting it gently down; "the white boy did not know who you were!"
Elk suddenly sprang to his feet. He looked across the dusky prairie to Fort Strong, where lights were beginning to twinkle, and shook his fist.
"Mean coward!" he shouted, menacingly. "I'll pay you back for this! You think because you belong to the strong white tribe that you can do whatever you choose! But I'll tell you that when a Cheyenne's heart gets bad he can find a way to revenge himself!"
"Oh, Elk, don't!" Bluebird laid her hand on her brother's arm. She looked entreatingly into his face, distorted with grief and anger. "I'm sure Yellow Stripe's boy didn't know he was your pet," she said.
"Didn't know? Didn't care!" retorted Elk.
He dropped upon his knees, and drawing the knife from the leather sheath hanging from his belt, began to dig at the darkening earth.
"I'm going to bury him," he said, in a short, hard voice.
Bluebird took out her knife and proceeded to help him.
They dug away without talking. Elk's anger grew as he worked, as if the dark silence about him was filled with a host of malicious whispering spirits.
"Lone Dog is right," he broke out, bitterly, after a few minutes. "These white people are never really our friends. They conquer us because they are rich and powerful. Then they keep us down like dogs. I'd rather we'd all been captured by the Sioux and killed outright."
"Oh, Elk, think what you're saying!" Bluebird remonstrated. "You know the soldier chiefs treat us kindly. Remember how often we used to be cold and starved in the old life, and how we lived in fear day and night of enemies, and think of the food and blankets and quiet homes we have here! And, Elk," she added, somewhat shyly, "it is good to have learned the things they have taught us. The white people's way of acting towards each other is wiser for happiness and peace of the heart than ours. We have learned that it is better not to seek revenge, haven't we, Elk?"
Elk's fierce cut at the ground expressed his mental determination to sever himself from all such opinions.
"You always talk that way, Bluebird!" he cried, irately. "But no one except a mean coward will overlook an injury, Lone Dog says."
"Oh, Elk, don't listen to the hard sour things Lone Dog says!" Bluebird beseeched.
The boy made no reply. The grave being large enough, he quietly laid the bear in it, refilled the hole, and led the way home.
"Ride away from the angry tongue which meddles in a stranger's quarrel, for the fawn with the bit ear shall recover, but if by evil counsel he is made to turn furiously on the wolf he shall surely be torn in pieces."
"Yes, mother, that is why I say I wish Elk would not talk with Lone Dog. He is the angry tongue that is always trying to stir up the boys to do mischief."
Bluebird's voice was seriously troubled. She scraped away thoughtfully at the fresh hide of a buffalo that she and her mother, Ready Proverb, were getting ready to tan.
"Lone Dog is like the lame coyote since he was put in the guard-house for stealing," observed Ready Proverb. "He will not rest until his whole band has felt the snare which caught him."
"Elk's heart is so bad over the bear's death, and he has been in Lone Dog's tepee all morning," said Bluebird.
"Elk is the grandson of my father Wise Eye," the mother responded, placidly; "he will detect the hidden iron that scorched the hide of the branded bull! He will not suffer to be led by Lone Dog, who is the dirt of the tribe! Elk shall avenge his wrongs himself in due season! He shall be the powerful warrior of the Cheyennes! He shall count his coups, and they shall be as many as the hairs on his head! He shall lie in peace at night on a bed made of scalps of his enemies!"
"Mother doesn't understand," Bluebird thought, sadly.
She suffered the intense pain the children of a people in a state of transition from savagery to Christianity must suffer in the realization that their parents have failed to grasp the new truths already embraced by their more teachable minds.
Ready Proverb, however, according to her light, was a good mother. She was proud and fond of her children.
"Elk," she presently remarked, "ate very little breakfast, and when a boy's stomach is empty his heart trails on the ground. You better go dig some turnips for his dinner. Ho always likes turnips."
Bluebird cleaned her knife in the earth and slipped it into its beaded sheath, and started at once after the wild turnips. They grew profusely among the cottonwoods half a mile below the camp.
Bluebird had nearly reached the spot when a strange noise attracted her attention. Looking around she found that it came from a large old tin kerosene can standing a short ways off. She walked towards it curiously.
All of a sudden Elk flew out from behind a tree.
"Don't touch that!" he cried, warningly.
Bluebird started in surprise at finding him so near. She glanced cautiously into the open can. She recoiled from it with a horrified look.
"What are you going to do with those rattlesnakes, Elk?" she exclaimed.
"Something." A dark flush spread over the boy's face. He looked sullen and jaded.
Bluebird forgot her consternation in a flood of compassion for her unhappy-looking brother.
"I've come to dig turnips. You'll like them for dinner, won't you?" she said, pleasantly.
"I don't want any dinner," he answered.
"But you ate hardly a mouthful of breakfast."
"I ate enough," returned Elk. "I'm not going to eat so much hereafter. We reservation Cheyennes overfeed with three meals a day. The braves grow fat and flabby. They cry like children when they're hurt." He colored shamedly, remembering how he had wept for the bear. He gave the can a shake. The snakes hissed, and his eye flashed sharply. "I'm through living the soft life of a white man," he added. "I'm a Cheyenne!"
In moving, the light sleeve of his calico shirt slipped up and revealed to Bluebird his arm covered with horrible gashes. Elk had been torturing himself to test his endurance, after the dreadful old tribal custom. Bluebird was convinced that he was acting under Lone Dog's advice. A dread of what her brother might be led to do next by the bad man formed like a layer of ice on her heart.
"Elk," she begged, tremulously, "please come home to dinner. I'm sure you've courage enough. I don't think it's weak for a brave to cry when he loses a thing he loves. If you'll eat something perhaps you'll feel differently."
Elk shook his head resolutely.
He did not return until evening. During the afternoon Bluebird's anxious eyes spied him riding along the trail skirting the Bad Lands, making for the town across the river beyond the fort. She felt certain that he had made the long circuit to avoid attention. She wondered why he was leading his second pony.
When Elk returned home he did not have the second pony. He had bartered it for an old rifle and some cartridges. He supposed the weapon was concealed beneath his blanket, but Bluebird, beading a moccasin beside the tepee door, observed it as he passed in. She said nothing about it, but the circumstances added to the weight of her anxiety over Elk's strange actions.
The next day was Wednesday. Elk had not relaxed his gloomy silence since the bear's death. He scarcely spoke to any one; he sulked off by himself.
Bluebird had an errand at the trader's this morning. She was crossing the prairie to the fort when, glancing over to the west where the hills lay, she saw Elk disappearing into the cañon beside Flat Butte. She looked after the lonely figure with a sigh.
She was kept waiting at the post trader's for quite a long time before the clerk could wait upon her. At length, while she was selecting her beads, Alan Jervis and an officer came sauntering down the long store past where she stood.
Alan carried a quirt, and he had the cruel little steel wheels which the white chiefs used to make their horses go fast attached to his boot heels. Bluebird understood that he was dressed for riding. She heard him say to the officer:
"Father said I might come out to the camp for a few days, and I'm going now in about an hour. I know the way, and Harlow has told me of a short-cut the Indians take through a cañon in the hills."
"Past Flat Butte, isn't it?" inquired the officer. "That route is considerably shorter than around the hills, but it's a bad bit of travelling through the cañon. You must look out for the fissures in the ground: the sage completely covers some of them, and you're liable to fall into one and break your neck."
"Harlow warned me," replied Alan.
The two passed on, leaving Bluebird in a strange tumult of troubled thoughts. She began all at once to connect Elk's trip to the Bad Lands that morning with Alan's intended journey through the desolate, rarely travelled cañon.
Elk's sworn purpose to revenge the bear's death, his conversations with Lone Dog, his self-torture to prove his hardiness, the grewsome can of rattlesnakes, the rifle—all these things came before her mind in an ominous jumble.
What did they all mean? What was Elk about to do?
Bluebird forgot her beads. She hurried out of the store through the rear exit, which opened onto the prairie. She started at a rapid pace across the stretch to the hills. She had no idea what she was going to do other than that she must find Elk, and in some way, even at the risk of her life, prevent an attempt on the white boy. Oh, Elk must not hurt him! Elk, when he was his right-minded self, saw, as she did, that revenge was low and cowardly, and did not mean manliness, as they had been led to believe in the old days.
Moreover, she knew that Elk would be summarily dealt with by the fort authorities if he should molest Alan. If he could not escape them by running away he would be put in prison. The white people hanged men for killing others. It was by such stern laws against wrongdoers that they kept their state of peace.
Bluebird's heart quaked and her steps went faster. It was a sunny morning. She grew very hot. The perspiration poured off her face. She flung away her blanket without stopping. Now and then she glanced hurriedly back to see if Alan was coming. She had just reached the mouth of the cañon when she saw him. She was very tired by now, but she summoned what remained of her strength, and started up the narrow pass with fresh vigor.
Alan was not many minutes behind her.
Elk stopped his pony just outside the Cheyenne village to watch Alan's horse going across the open space from the fort to the hills. He had returned from the cañon by a roundabout way, and had escaped Bluebird's observation.
"He'll soon be there," he thought. An irrepressible shudder went through him. He could not see the rider at that distance, but the sun shone on the white horse, and he knew it was Alan's.
As he watched it the memory of a game of marbles he once had played with Alan came involuntarily to his mind. Yellow Stripe's boy had played generously. After the game he had presented Elk with a large bag of marbles. He was a brave white boy. Elk always had liked him until he had killed the bear.
Elk looked after the white speck irresolutely.
"Windfoot might get there even now before his slow horse," he was thinking. His heart beat hard; his body leaned unconsciously forward towards Alan.
Impelled by a sweep of changed feelings, he suddenly raised his quirt to start up his pony, when a dark hand fell with deaden force upon his arm.
Lone Dog's evil face looked up at him. "I've put the paint sticks and a looking-glass in the twisted tree," he whispered.
Elk looked at him undecidedly a moment. Then he heavily replied, "Very good," and turned his horse slowly in among the tepees under the cotton woods.
Lone Dog smiled satisfiedly as he limped home.
Elk dismounted at his home and went in. Presently he came out with the rifle he had got the day before. He carried it cautiously concealed. The young Cheyennes were not allowed to have fire-arms.
He glanced about a moment for his mother. Then he told himself he was glad she was away from home. Reservation life certainly had the effect of making a brave weak-hearted in an enterprise. He felt a moisture about his eyes as he remounted his pony and rode on among the trees down the river to a desolate spot some distance below the camp.
Three-quarters of an hour later he emerged from the trees quite changed in appearance. He had painted yellow lines like sunrays from the corners of his eyes and mouth; on each cheek he had painted a grotesque red spot. He had braided a defiant scalp-lock on the top of his head. He was, in fact, preparing to join a band of hostiles in the north that Lone Dog had directed him to.
It would not be safe, Lone Dog had told him, to remain any longer in the vicinity of Fort Strong. Besides, it was time that he was going on the war-path and making a name for himself.
He tried to grunt "Huh!" in the savage, manly manner he had heard the warriors do. Somehow it sounded rather weak. He did not dare look round towards home as he rode rapidly off for the Bad Lands. Reservation life certainly turned men into children!
Elk had almost reached the hills when, far down to the south of him, he saw something emerge from the hills close beside Flat Butte.
His keen-sighted eyes peered sharply. It was a boy leading a horse—a white horse. And something was on the horse's back.
Elk stopped his pony and looked excitedly. Could it be possible that Alan had escaped, after all? What would Lone Dog think if he knew how relievedly Elk's heart was beating?
Why was Yellow Stripe's boy walking? The pack on the white horse was a brilliant blue. It looked familiar.
Elk, with a strange presentiment of what had happened, whipped up his pony and started wildly towards the party. He rode like a wild man to reach them. Alan stopped the horse and waited when he saw him coming.
Bluebird, her head and right arm swathed in bandages torn from Alan's shirt, sat upon the horse. She looked towards Elk. The cruel scratches on her face protruded beyond the cloths. Her eyes showed intense suffering.
Alan began explaining how, riding up the cañon, he had found Bluebird in a cut in the ground, clinging to a root of sage-brush to keep herself from falling to the bottom.
Elk scarcely heard him. He sprang off at Bluebird's side; his face had grown suddenly sharp and thin with terror.
"DID ANYTHING BITE YOU, BLUEBIRD?" HE SAID, HOARSELY.
"Did anything bite you, Bluebird?" he said, hoarsely. "Do you feel yourself swelling anywhere?" His sister's soft eyes poured a flood of sorrow into his upturned face.
"No, Elk; I caught hold of a root and held on, and the snakes could not get at me," she said, in Cheyenne. A shudder went over her. "I could hear them rattling beneath me, but the brush was between us."
"I'm certain Bluebird's fall saved my life," Alan was saying, earnestly. "The bottom of that pit was fairly alive with rattlers, and my horse would have crushed right down into them, and then we'd both have been done for. Somebody had covered the hole with dry brush and rubbish and put loose earth over it. Nobody would have guessed it was a hole. Bluebird says she was running right across it. I think it must have been intended for a bear trap. Do you know there are bears about? I saw one Monday evening, and fired at it, but missed it."
Bluebird shot a swift, meaning glance into Elk's eyes. "The white boy saved my life, Elk," she said. "I couldn't have held on with one hand a moment longer. My right arm broke when I fell, I think, and I couldn't use it. But, dear Elk"—she tried to lean towards him as she added rapidly, in Cheyenne—"it's all right that only I am hurt. I went to the cañon to save Yellow Stripe's boy—and you."
Elk had a sudden conviction that the teachings of reservation life had not made his sister weak-hearted, at all events. There was an appeal in her tones that he did not attempt to resist. She was offering her own sufferings in atonement for Alan's fault. Elk did not let her sacrifice go for nothing. He took a step towards Alan, and extended his hand.
"Hough!" he cried, in a firm hearty voice, which begged forgiveness and pledged his own friendship.
Elk gave Alan his pony to carry him home. He took charge of Bluebird on the horse.
Lone Dog came limping a way out to meet them as they neared the village. His sinister eyes inquired of Elk how his villanously counselled scheme happened to miscarry.
Elk feigned not to see him. He passed him by with a high countenance. His momentary apostleship to the disturbers of the youths of the village was over, never to return. Bluebird saw that Ready Proverb was right. Now that the black veil of revengeful passion had swept by and his right vision was restored to him, the grandson of Wise Eye was not indeed to be led by the dirt of the tribe!
[THE EAST-SIDE GIRL AT PLAY AND AT WORK.]
BY DR. JANE E. ROBBINS,
HEAD WORKER OF THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENT.
A "LITTLE MOTHER."
The first thing most of the New York children learn is how to mind the baby. Even a small boy soon learns how to "hush" a child in his arms, and almost all the small girls are good little mothers. The babies on our block are the most beloved little people you ever saw. There are a great many of them, and they tumble around on the sidewalks so that we have to walk very carefully; but somewhere near there is generally to be found a little girl who loves that baby with all her heart, and the more trouble the baby is the more she seems to love it. The little girl in a rich man's family may love her little sister very dearly, but the baby can't be quite so dear to her as it is to the little girl who must save every penny for car fares, so that on the hot days she can take the baby to the dock, where the air is cooler.
"My knee hurts awfully," said one little girl to me. "I just have to hop around on one foot when I am carrying the baby"; and she looked very much surprised when I said, "But you must not carry the baby while you are sick."
All through the summer months the children are kept down on the street so that they can have the fresh air. The baby is generally in his carriage, but the two-year-old child runs about, and he must be carefully watched, for there is danger of his falling under the horses' feet. Sometimes the little mother is careless and one of the youngsters is lost. Then there is a great excitement till the lost child is found at the station-house, usually busy making friends with the policemen.
By the time a girl is eight years old she has not only learned how to take good care of the baby, but she has generally learned also to run on errands, and to buy groceries, and even meat, and she can be trusted with the keys. One often sees a little girl five or six years old playing on the street while her mother is out, and holding in her hand a big bunch of keys, so that, if necessary, any of the family can get into the house. The children in all parts of the city, whether they are Italian or German or American, learn these same things.
Many of the children bring with them from Europe ways that seem very odd to us, but they soon learn from the other children the New York customs. The most marked differences are connected with the differences in the religion of their parents. Some of the children say very funny things. One little Polish Hebrew child named Rachel, while she was in the country, helped to chase an old hen and her brood until several of the chickens were killed. After they had been buried, Rachel said, "I dassent go over there; that's a Christian burying-ground." No one could find out how she knew that the chicken was a Christian and not a Jew.
JUST THE SAME KIND OF CHILDREN WE FIND EVERYWHERE.
The children play a great many ring-around games in the evenings. The German children sing "Liebe Mary, dreh dich herum," and other German songs; and all over the city they sing, "Lazy Mary, will you get up?" and "All around the mulberry bush," and "I came to see Miss Jinny Ann Jones, and how is she to-day?" They play tag and hide-and-seek, and, sitting on the door-steps, they play a buttermilk game, where no one may laugh, and a great many other games. In some parts of the city the boys and girls play with one another, as they do in the country, but in other neighborhoods the girls play alone. They are fond of dancing, and the Italian man with his piano is often surrounded by fifty or a hundred little girls in the middle of the street, waltzing gracefully, and making for the passers-by a very pretty picture. In the evenings they are generally allowed to stay down on the street until nine o'clock; but that is the hour when careful mothers see that their younger girls are all at home, though the older girls are often allowed to stay out until ten o'clock. The girls go to school until they are thirteen or fourteen, and they study with eagerness, and worry over their lessons. In New York it seems to be an especially great calamity to be kept at home for even one day, and the little girls give the doctors much trouble by not telling when they have sore throats or feel sick, for fear that they will be told that they must not go to school. At half past three they come home carrying great bundles of books, and you wonder how they have time to play or to do any house-work. But Saturdays are very busy days, and they learn to scrub and to clean the house, and somehow they learn to wash, so that little girls of twelve years of age often show me dresses that they have washed and ironed themselves. They don't know so much about sewing, but most of them learn to crochet lace, and they have little crocheting schools in the summer, where they teach one another. They sit in "the yard" or in front of the house, and sometimes each girl brings a penny and they have a party. They have more pennies than country children, I am sorry to say, for they buy too many candies and cakes. They teach one another all the songs that they know, and sometimes one girl tells a story or reads to the others. When the mother knows how to sew well she generally teaches her daughters, but many of the mothers do not know much about sewing. There are sewing-classes in the public schools, but these classes are so large that the children generally seem to learn only how to sew badly.
They want to know how to sew, and nothing makes a lady so popular with school-girls as to tell them that they can have a sewing-class at her house. Then if after the sewing there can be stories and singing and games, the girls are sure to have a fine time. They save their pennies to buy the cloth on which they work. I have seen many a mother much pleased with the tiny stitches her daughter has learned to make. A blue cheese-cloth duster, neatly hemmed, makes a nice present from the youngest ones to their mothers, while the older girls make clothes for themselves or for the children at home.
In the house where I live there are a good many young women who are fond of teaching, and they have friends who come and help with the sewing-classes, so that we have seven sets of school-girls every week. They give themselves names like the Rosebuds, the Sunshine Club, the Butterflies, the Rainbow Club, and the Bluebells. There are many other girls that we know who are waiting anxiously for their chance to come, and the mothers beg us to let their daughters join the sewing-clubs. We have cooking-classes a few times a week when our cook can let us have the kitchen, and these are liked the best of all. The girls have the fun of eating what they have cooked, and they have a jolly time even while they are washing dishes. The older girls who go to work like the cooking-classes, too, and some of them, when they get home early on Saturday afternoons, make biscuit and cookies and apple-sauce for supper. One girl made cookies for the callers who came to her house on New-Year's day, and they liked them better than cake.
The girls enjoy the cooking more than sewing, because they are tired after their day's work. The younger working-girls want mostly to talk together and laugh and sing and dance. Sometimes we are very sorry for the fifteen-year-old girls, they look so young, and they work very hard, but most of them are quite light-hearted, after all. The little cash-girls often tell us what fun they have, and even the flower and feather girls and the girls in the box-factories and in the candy-factories enjoy so much being with one another that they forget all about their troubles. At the noon hour they sing and tell one another stories. They bring their lunches from home or they send a girl out to buy the lunch, and some of these are the girls who make their noonday meal of cream-cakes and pickles. They like to read the same books that girls read everywhere, but sometimes they do not understand how other lives can be so different from theirs, how other girls can have their own rooms all to themselves, and can have all the nice things that come to girls who have never lived in small rooms, with nineteen other families in the same house.
The most wonderful thing that comes into the lives of city girls who have grown up on the crowded East Side is their first trip to the country. They don't know the most ordinary things. One of my friends, who had tried every word she could think of, finally told some children to run up on the fire-escape, and they all scrambled for the piazza, as she thought they would. The country seems very lonely at first, and the dark rather terrifying. They have never known what dark is, for lamps are burning all night in most of the tenements. The stillness, too, is impressive. One little girl said, "There is not any noise here except the noise we make." When they get over their first sense of loneliness, they begin to see all kinds of wonderful things, and some of the girls I know are so much interested in the leaves and trees that they soon know more about the trees in midsummer than many a country girl. Their only knowledge of the spring is gained from the popular songs. They have heard in that way of the flowers that "bloom in the spring." They sometimes expect these songs to be literally fulfilled. "There's the farmer," said one child, "and there's the corn, but where is Johnny?" One child I found on the roof of the house where she lived playing going to the country, and she said she played it every day. We wish sometimes that we could pick up all the children, and carry them off where fresh air and green grass belong to all.
The girls in the country are sometimes surprised to see what good manners our little girls have. One girl I knew said to her father, "I never saw such polite girls; they say 'thank you,' and 'you're welcome,' and 'excuse me,' when they are just playing with one another." One reason for this is that they see so many people all the time that they are not self-conscious and shy, and when they think that it would be nice to say, "Excuse me," they are not afraid to do so. Then, too, they grow up where there are so many people that each one must learn to be considerate of his neighbor, or there would be continual trouble. We find some spoiled children here as elsewhere, but generally they have learned to give up their own way because of the younger ones, and there is really very little quarrelling. We are often surprised when we think how seldom we hear a child cry. They take care of one another and bring one another up, and though the result is that they are not so well taught as they ought to be—and I am sorry to say they don't learn obedience as they should—yet each one finds out that she must not expect too much for her own share.
A stranger in New York, seeing the crowds of people and the sidewalks swarming with children, might go away with a feeling about a tenement-house neighborhood quite different from the feeling of one who knew the people well. The houses, indeed, are often as bad as they can be, for without light and air a house is, of course, totally unfit for human habitation; and there are also some very unhappy homes; but as a rule up through the tenements at six o'clock you will find the father reading his paper or holding the baby while the mother cooks the supper, and the children come climbing up the stairs—just the same kind of children that we find everywhere.
[THE VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLETRAP."]
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH.
V.
Next morning we were awakened by Old Blacky kicking the side of the wagon-box with both hind feet.
"If that man with the ever-blooming cow comes down," said Jack, "I'll swap him Old Blacky."
Just then we heard a loud "Hello!" and looking out, we found the man leading a small yellow pony.
"I just 'lowed I'd come down and let you fellers make something out of me on a hoss trade," said the man.
"Well," answered Jack, "we're willing to swap that black horse over there. He's a splendid animal."
"Isn't he rather much on the kick?" the man asked.
"He does kick a little," admitted Jack, "but only for exercise. He wouldn't hurt a fly. But he is so high-lifed that he has to kick to ease his nerves once in a while."
"Thought I seen him whaling away at your wagon," returned the man. "Couldn't have him round my place, 'cause my house ain't very steady."
"VIGILANTEES."
We had not gone far this morning when we met two men on horseback riding side by side. They looked like farmers, only we noticed that each carried a big gun in a belt. They simply said "Good-morning," and passed on. In about half an hour we met another pair similarly mounted and armed, and in another half-hour still two more.
"Must be a wedding somewhere, or a Sunday-school picnic," said Jack.
"But why do they all have the guns?" asked Ollie, innocently.
"Oh, I don't know," answered Jack. "Varmints about, I suppose."
In a few minutes we came to a man working beside the road, and asked him what it all meant. He looked around in a very mysterious manner, and then half whispered the one word "Vigilantees!" with a strong accent on the last syllable.
"Oh!" said Jack, "vigilance committee."
"Correct," returned the man.
"Horse-thieves, I suppose?" went on Jack.
"Exactly," replied the man. "Stole two horses at Black Bird last night at ten o'clock. Holt County Anti-Horse-thief Association after 'em this morning at four. That's the way we do business in this country!"
We drove on, and Jack said:
"What the Association wants to do is to buy Old Blacky and put him in a pasture for bait. In the morning the members can go out and gather up a wagon-load of disabled horse-thieves that have tried to steal him in the night and got kicked over the fence."
We either met or saw a dozen other men on horseback, always in pairs; but whether or not they caught the thief we never heard.
JACK SHOT A GROUSE.
So far we had had very poor luck in finding game; but in the afternoon of this day Jack shot a grouse, and we camped rather earlier than usual so that he might have ample time to cook it. There were also the plums and grapes to stew. We made our camp not far from a house, and, after a vast amount of extremely serious labor on the part of the cook, had a very good supper.
The next day passed with but one incident worth recalling. In the afternoon we crossed the Niobrara at Grand Rapids on a tumble-down wooden bridge, and turned due west through the Keya Paha country. This was so called from the Keya Paha River (pronounced Key-a-paw), a branch of the Niobrara which comes down out of Dakota and joins it a few miles below Grand Rapids. The country seemed to be much the same as that through which we had travelled, perhaps a little flatter and sandier. Just across the river we saw the first large herd of stock, some five or six hundred head being driven east by half a dozen cowboys.
A short distance beyond the river we came to a little blacksmith shop beside the road. As soon as Jack saw it he said:
"We ought to stop and get the horses shod. I was looking at the holes the calks of Old Blacky's shoes made in the wagon-box last night, and they are shallow and irregular. He needs new shoes to do himself justice. If this blacksmith seems like a man of force of character, we'll see what he can do."
Jack looked at the blacksmith quizzically when we drove up and whispered to us, "He'll do," and we unhitched. The pony had never been shod, and did not seem to need any artificial aids, so we left her to graze about while the others were being attended to.
"Just shoe the brown one first, if it doesn't make any difference," said Jack.
"All right," answered the blacksmith, and he went to work on the decent old nag, who slept peacefully throughout the whole operation.
He then began on Old Blacky. He soon had shoes nailed on the old reprobate's forward feet, and approached his rear ones. Old Blacky had made no resistance so far, and had contented himself with gnawing at the side of the shop and switching his tail. He even allowed the blacksmith to take one of his hind feet between his knees and start to pull off the old shoe. Then he began to struggle to free his leg. The blacksmith held on. Old Blacky saw that the time for action had arrived, so he drew his leg, with the foolish blacksmith still clinging to it, well up forward, and then threw it back, with all his strength. The leg did not fly off, but the blacksmith did, and half-way across the shop. He picked himself up, and, after looking at the horse, said:
"'PEARS 'S IF THAT AIN'T A COLT ANY MORE."
"'Pears 's if that ain't a colt any more."
"No," answered Jack; "he's fifteen or sixteen."
"Old enough to know better," observed the blacksmith. "I'll try him again."
He again got the leg up, and again Old Blacky tried to throw him off. But this time the man hung on. After the third effort Blacky looked around at him with a good deal of surprise. Then he put down the leg to which the man was still clinging, and with the other gave him a blow which was half a kick and half a push which sent the man sprawling over by his anvil.
"The critter don't seem to take to it nohow, does he?" said the blacksmith, cheerfully, as he again got up.
"He's a very peculiar horse," answered Jack. "Has violent likes and dislikes. His likes are for food, and his dislikes for everything else."
"I'll tackle him again, though," said the man.
But Blacky saw that he could no longer afford to temporize with the fellow, and now began kicking fiercely with both feet in all directions, swinging about like a war-ship to get the proper range on everything in sight, and finally ending up by putting one foot through the bellows.
"Reckon I've got to call in assistance," said the man, as he started off. He came back with another man, who laid hold of one of Blacky's forward legs and held it up off the floor. The blacksmith then seized one of his hind ones and got it up. This left the old sinner so that if he would kick he would have to stand on one foot while he did it, and this was hardly enough for even as bad a horse as he was. He did not wholly give up, however, but after a great amount of struggling they got him shod at last.
"We'll call him the Blacksmith's Pet," said Jack.
Good camping-places did not seem to be numerous, and just after the sun had gone down we turned out beside the road near a half-completed sod house. There was no other house in sight, and this had apparently been abandoned early in the season, as weeds and grass were growing on top of the walls, which were three or four feet high. There was also a peculiar sort of well, a few of which we had seen during the day. It consisted of four one-inch boards nailed together and sunk into the ground. The boards were a foot wide, thus making the inside of the shaft ten inches square. This one was forty or fifty feet deep, but there was a long rope and slender tin bucket beside it. The water was not good, but there was nothing else to drink. Near the house Ollie found the first cactus we had seen, which showed, if nothing else did, that we were getting into a dry country. He took it up carefully and stowed it away in the cabin to take back home as an evidence of his extensive travels.
For several days we had not been able to have a camp-fire, owing to the wind and dryness of the prairie, for had we started a prairie fire it might have done great damage.
"We don't want the Holt County Anti-Prairie Fire Society after us," Jack had said; so we had been using our oil-stove.
But this evening was very still, and there seemed to be no danger in building a camp-fire within the walls of the house, and we soon had one going with wood which we had gathered along the river, since to have found wood enough for a camp-fire in that neighborhood would have been as impossible as to have found a stone or a spring of water.
We were sitting about on the sods after supper when a man rode up on horseback, who said he was looking for some lost stock. We asked him to have something to eat, and he accepted the invitation, and afterward talked a long time, and gave us much information which we wished about the country. Somebody mentioned the little well, and the man turned to Ollie, and said.
"How would you like to slip down such a well?"
"I'm afraid I'm too big," answered Ollie.
"Well, perhaps you are; but there was a child last summer over near where I live who wasn't too big. He was a little fellow not much over two years old. The well was a new one, and the curb was almost even with the top of the ground. He slipped down feet first. It was a hundred and twenty feet deep, with fifteen feet of water at the bottom, but he fitted pretty snug, and only went down about fifty feet at first. His mother missed him, saw that the cover was gone from the well, and listened. She heard his voice, faint and smothered. There was no one else at home. She called to him not to stir, and went to the barn, where there was a two-year-old colt. It had never been ridden before, but he was ridden that afternoon, and I guess he hasn't forgotten the lesson. She came to my place first, told me, and rode away to another neighbor's. In half an hour there were twenty men there, and soon fifty, and before morning two hundred.
"There was no way to fish the child out—the only thing was to dig down beside the small shaft. We could hear him faintly, and we began to dig. We started a shaft about four feet square. The sandy soil caved badly, but men with horses running all the way brought out lumber from Grand Rapids for curbing. The child's father came too. He listened a second at the small shaft, and then went down the other. Two men could work at the bottom of it. One of the men was relieved every few minutes by a fresh worker, but the father worked on, and did more than the others notwithstanding the changes. All of the time the mother sat on the ground beside the small shaft with her arms about its top. At four o'clock in the morning we were down opposite the prisoner. He was still crying faintly. We saw that to avoid the danger of causing him to slip farther down we must dig below him, bore a hole in the board, and slip through a bar. But a few shovelfuls more were needed. The work jarred the shaft, and the child slipped twenty-five feet deeper. At seven o'clock we were down to where he was again, though we could no longer hear him. We dug a little below, bored a hole, and the father slipped through a pickaxe handle, and fainted away as he felt the little one slip down again but rest on the handle. We tore off the boards, took the baby out, and drew him and his father to the surface. There were two doctors waiting for them, and the next day neither was much the worse for it."
The man got on his horse and rode away. We agreed that he had told us a good story, but the next day others assured us that it had all happened a year before.