Charlie says that he is a mason and reads every evening in a book that is of his own printing. It is really wonderful. Every evening after dinner he sits out in front of his tent with a large silk handkerchief over his head, and perhaps another with which to fight the ever-present mosquitoes, and reads until dark. He is the only literary person in the command and we are quite proud of him. He is a great comfort to Faye and me, for his cooking is delicious. The doctor has a camp appetite now and is not as finicky as when we started on the trip.
FORT MAGINNIS, MONTANA TERRITORY, September, 1880.
IT is almost one week since we got here, but I have not written before as no mail has been sent out. I hope that the letter left with Junot has been received, also the two or three notes that were given to horsemen we met on their way to Fort Benton.
At first, Faye did not tell me all that he knew about those horse thieves in the Judith Basin, but it finally came out that the trader, Junot, had told him a most blood-curdling tale of events to come. He had declared most positively that the desperadoes were planning to attack the command, the very next morning while crossing the Judith Mountains, with a hope, of course, of getting the animals. He also told Faye that one of them would be in camp that evening to ask permission to go with him to Maginnis. Faye said the whole story was absurd, particularly the attack, as those horse thieves would never dare attack government troops. Besides, he had over fifty good men with him, and probably there were only ten or twelve horse thieves. So not much attention was paid to what the old Frenchman had said.
But after dinner, when we were sitting outside and Faye and the doctor were smoking, a man came around the corner of the tent with long, swinging strides, and was in our midst before we had dreamed of anyone being near. He spoke to Faye courteously, and declining a chair, dropped down full length on the ground, with elbows in the grass and chin on the palms of his hands. His feet were near the tent and his face out, which placed him in a fine position to observe everything in the camp without anyone seeing that he was doing so, especially as his eyes were screened by a soft, broad-brimmed hat. It was impossible to see their color, of course.
He was young—not over twenty-eight or thirty—and handsome, with a face that was almost girlish in its fairness. His hair was neatly cut, and so was his light mustache, and his smooth face showed that he had recently shaved. He was tall and lithe, and from his chin to his toes was dressed in fine buckskin—shirt, trousers, leggings, and moccasins—and around his neck was tied a blue cotton handkerchief, new and clean. That the man could be a horse thief, an outlaw, seemed most incredible.
He talked very well, too, of the country and the game, and we were enjoying the change in our usual after-dinner camp conversation, when suddenly up he jumped, and turning around looked straight at Faye, and then like a bomb came the request to be allowed to go with him to Fort Maginnis! He raised the brim of his hat, and there seemed to be a look of defiance in his steel-blue eyes. But Faye had been expecting this, and knowing that he was more than a match for the villain, he got up from his camp stool leisurely, and with great composure told the man: "Certainly, I will be very glad to have some one along who knows the trail so well." To be told that he knew the trail must have been disconcerting to the man, but not one word did he say in reference to it.
After he had gone, Faye went over to the company, where he remained some time, and I learned later that he had been giving the first sergeant careful instructions for the next day. I could not sleep that night because of horrible dreams—dreams of long, yellow snakes with fiery eyes crawling through green grass. I have thought so many times since of how perfectly maddening it must have been to those horse thieves to have twenty-two nice fat mules and three horses brought almost within the shadow of their very own stockade, and yet have it so impossible to gather them in!
At the appointed time the buckskin-man appeared the following morning on a beautiful chestnut horse with fancy bridle and Mexican saddle, and with him came a friend, his "pal" he told Faye, who was much older and was a sullen, villainous-looking man. Both were armed with rifles and pistols, but there was nothing remarkable in that; in this country it is a necessity. We started off very much as usual, except that Faye kept rather close to the "pal," which left Bettie and me alone most of the time, just a little at one side. I noticed that directly back of the horse thieves walked a soldier, armed with rifle and pistol, and Faye told me that night that he was one of the best sharpshooters in the Army, and that he was back of those men with orders to shoot them down like dogs if they made one treacherous move. The buckskin man was one of the most graceful riders I ever saw, and evidently loved his fine mount, as I saw him stroke his neck several times—and the man himself was certainly handsome.
Faye had told me that I must not question anything he might tell me to do, so after we had crossed the valley and gone up the mountains a little distance he called to me in a voice unnecessarily loud, that I must be tired riding so far, and had better get in the ambulance for a while. I immediately dismounted, and giving the bridle rein to a soldier, I waited for the ambulance to come up. As I got in, I felt that perhaps I was doing the first act in an awful tragedy. The horsemen and wagons had stopped during the minute or two I was getting in, but I saw soldiers moving about, and just as soon as I was seated I looked out to see what was going on.