The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories

by Vaughan Kester

Now the grazing lands of Le Boyen's reservation were particularly fine and the neighborhood ranchmen rented the range from the Indians for their cattle. All went well until the stockmen sent in a petition to Congress praying that virtuous body to remove the Indians, as they interfered materially with the cattle business. Congress despatched a commission to inquire into the matter.

The tribe had been given their land just fifteen years previous, with the solemn assurance that they should not be molested. They had before that been moved exactly three times. These moves had each involved a little war, and the government had shot a few of the rebellious tribesmen at a cost of several thousand dollars apiece, which was expensive, but had proved profitable in the long run, for, once dead, they cost nothing to maintain. This was indeed the cheapest mode of procedure.

The commissioners came upon the scene and they found the Indian very much in the way. He was dirty, wasteful and not to be tolerated. When they had seen these things, they returned to Washington to deliberate. This last consisted mainly in discussing the next election—the true essence of statesmanship. A month or so later the Indians were informed that the great white father, who had his home toward the rising sun and who was chiefly notable because of his insatiate appetite for land, desired their reservation. The tribe voiced a feeble protest, but the pressure brought to bear upon the white father was rather more than he had the moral backbone to withstand. Troops were massed in the vicinity preparatory to a summary dumping of the Indians farther west.

The threatened calamity had brought the savages together in one corner of the reservation. They buzzed like a swarm of angry bees. The young men danced strange dances, and chanted songs their fathers had chanted when there were buffaloes on the plains; but the old men, the men who had gone out in seventy-three with Captain Jack, shook their heads. They had known the white father to devour whole tribes, simply that he might call a few rods of sage brush and buffalo grass his own.

When night settled down the chiefs gathered around the council fire. After the weak and ineffectual manner of savages, they wished to test the forbearance of the dominant race; they might make a harmless little dash into the cow country and then, before the troops were fairly on their trail, slip back to the agency. Under similar circumstances the white father had been known to display a prodigal generosity in the matter of lean contract steers, which were turned out to be slaughtered and gorged on.

In the midst of these deliberations, a man strode into the circle of light. It was Le Boyen, who silently raised his arm high above his head. The reeking trophies his hand held brought the shadowy figures pressing close about him, while a sullen murmur grew up out of the tense stillness that had fallen on the tribe. The half-breed had precipitated an unexpected crisis. Already mounted men were spurring over the range spreading the news of another Indian outrage. As this sure knowledge took hold of the savages, the murmur swelled into a roar.

All in a second the group resolved itself into a sea of tossing arms and waving hands, and a portion of the straining mob became detached, wrenching and tearing itself away from the rest. In the center of the detached band was Le Boyen. About him were twenty or thirty men who were ready to put their fortunes to the hazard of war, and following them came their wives and children. These fell back unhindered upon the tents, struck camp, got together their horses and rode away. To state the case exactly, Le Boyen, with perhaps thirty men and an equal number of women and children, had taken preliminary steps to declaring war against the United States of America.

During the next ten days he and his followers were a fruitful source of newspaper interest. His experience had taught him, among other things worth remembering, that if you kill a man he is done for. Had his education taught him proportion he would have known it was wasted labor on his part to begin the extermination of sixty odd millions of human beings with the means and men he had at hand. Not appreciating this, he began his ambitious undertaking at once, moving across the plains with no fixed plan or destination, gathering in the settlers along his line of march; and the gathering in was attended by horrors not to be told. Then he took himself off toward the mountains with the most complete and extensive collection of scalps made in many years.

Through all these days of success his interest in the total destruction of the white race never flagged; but certain of his followers were not so constituted that they cherished a lofty ideal purely for the ideal's sake. These, after the first flush of war had paled its glow for them, began to think sadly of consequences. The hard life, the thirst and starvation of the foray, grew stale and tedious; they longed for the ease and sloth of the reservation, where water was plenty and rations had the noble quality of regularity.

Two Indians in particular wished to be taken back into the fold; and as the days came full of effort and hunger, this wish thrived apace, and they agreed that the white father would doubtless pay well for a little information as to Le Boyen's whereabouts. To furnish him with the coveted knowledge it would be necessary for one to remain with the band, while the other deserted. Their plan was no sooner perfected than it was acted upon, and Le Boyen, suspecting the meaning though not the extent of the disaffection, put his people on forced marches. For four days they toiled into the mountains, while the traitor in their midst left his fatal marks on every rod of land they crossed. On the fourth day the band went into camp, that Le Boyen might have time in which to mature plans for the future.