The golden west boys, Injun and Whitey to the rescue

by William S. Hart

It was a beautiful day, with the haze of fall shrouding the distance, a hint of brown tingeing the prairie grass, the sun a bit milder with its rays and paler in its face than in midsummer. And the old sun seemed a trifle lazy, as if lying back awaiting the frost that would nip the rolling mesa, to be followed by the gales that would sweep across it, then by the whirling blizzards that would hold the plains in their frigid grasp. Yes, it was a beautiful day—a day on which it was very hard to stay mad.

Creeping across the northern distance the boys saw two wagons. Evidently they had come from Jimtown. Wagons are as interesting sights on a prairie as they are uninteresting in a city, so the boys shifted their course slightly that they might investigate. And these were the rarest wagons that crawled across the plains, for they carried a show!

During the many months that Whitey had been in the West only one show had come to the Junction, and that at a time when Injun and Whitey had been hunting in the mountains. Lives there a boy with soul so dead that he does not hunger for a show? I leave you to answer that, and to guess how hungry Whitey was for one.

But if you have in your mind any big, gilded wagons, with pictures of beautiful women on their sides, and drawn by many prancing white horses with red plumes on their heads, get that vision right out of your mind. These were "prairie schooners," covered with old, weather-beaten canvas, creaking along on wheels on which mud had long taken the place of paint, and drawn by mules!

And the only things to indicate their character were letters painted on the old canvas sides, where they drooped between the wooden arches that supported them; letters which read: "The Mildini Troupe. Pride of the West." And that was enough. For everybody in that part of Montana knew the Mildinis. They came once a year—if nothing happened to prevent.

There were three in the company—Mr. Mildini, who was short and fat, and had a twinkle in his eye, and had been born Murphy; Mrs. Mildini, who was slim and sharp-featured, and whose eyes were bright, without any twinkle in them; and Signor Antolini, who was of medium height and rather thin, and had a nose like a hawk, and had been born on Mulberry Street, in New York City. Two thirds of this troupe remained the same, year after year, but sometimes Signor Antolini was Signor Somebody Else.

This doesn't seem to offer much chance for entertainment, does it? To Injun it was a wonderful troupe. To Whitey, who had been to all sorts of entertainments in the East, it was a novelty. Perhaps it would be bad enough to be good. Anyway, it was a show. Thoughts of revenge against Bill Jordan could be abandoned for the time being. They would have to wait. Meanwhile, Injun and Whitey would follow the show.

Mr. Mildini, who drove the first wagon, was very friendly, and smoked a pipe. Signor Antolini, who drove the second wagon, was also friendly, and smoked cigarettes. Mrs. Mildini, who slept in the first wagon, expressed no feelings at all. That wagon contained the trunks and chattels of Mildini and wife, and in it they made their home. The other wagon held the instruments and properties of the show, the cooking utensils, and the bed of Signor Antolini. It was all very simple, and very fascinating, when you thought of it, to be traveling around the country in the sunshine, pausing at different places to entertain admiring audiences.

Where were they from? From Jimtown, where they had showed the night before. And where bound? To the Hanley Ranch, a big wheat ranch, about twenty miles east. It was threshing-time there, and there would be plenty of men to make an audience. Mr. Mildini meant plenty from his point of view. A settlement of five houses looked good to him.