Part 8
In 1907 he told me that he was going off among the Ute Indians, and I asked him to get me some of their pipes. He answered: “The Utes are not pipe-makers; they spend all their time rustling and eating government grub. We had six horse-thieves for the pen after the past term of court, and should get four more at the June term in Pierre. This will keep them quiet for a while. I am now giving my attention to higher finance, and have one of the Napoleons--a bank president--in jail here. He only got away with $106,000--he did not have time to become eligible for the Wall Street class.”
It was when the Captain was sheriff of the Black Hills that father first met him. A horse-thief that was “wanted” in the Deadwood district managed to slip out of the Captain’s clutches and was captured by father, who was deputy sheriff in a country three or four hundred miles north. A little while later father had to go to Deadwood on business. Fording a river some miles out of town he ran into the Captain. Father had often heard of Seth Bullock, for his record and character were known far and wide, and he had no difficulty in identifying the tall, slim, hawk-featured Westerner sitting his horse like a centaur. Seth Bullock, however, did not know so much about father, and was very suspicious of the rough, unkempt group just in from two weeks’ sleeping out in the gumbo and sage-brush. He made up his mind that it was a tin-horn gambling outfit and would bear close watching. He was not sure but what it would be best to turn them right back, and let them walk around his district “like it was a swamp.” After settling father’s identity the Captain’s suspicions vanished. That was the beginning of their lifelong friendship.
After father had returned to the East to live, Seth Bullock would come on to see him every so often, and whenever my father’s campaigning took him West the Captain would join the train and stay with him until the trip was finished. These tours were rarely without incident, and in his autobiography father has told of the part Seth Bullock played on one of them.
When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, I was sent by the National Committee on a trip into the States of the high plains and the Rocky Mountains. These had all gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Bryan on the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was thought that I, because of my knowledge of and acquaintanceship with the people, might accomplish something toward bringing them back into line. It was an interesting trip, and the monotony usually attendant upon such a campaign of political speaking was diversified in vivid fashion by occasional hostile audiences. One or two of the meetings ended in riots. One meeting was finally broken up by a mob; everybody fought so that the speaking had to stop. Soon after this we reached another town where we were told there might be trouble. Here the local committee included an old and valued friend, a “two-gun” man of repute, who was not in the least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word. We marched round to the local opera-house, which was packed with a mass of men, many of them rather rough-looking. My friend the two-gun man sat immediately behind me, a gun on each hip, his arms folded, looking at the audience; fixing his gaze with instant intentness on any section of the house from which there came so much as a whisper. The audience listened to me with rapt attention. At the end, with a pride in my rhetorical powers which proceeded from a misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the chairman: “I held that audience well; there wasn’t an interruption.” To which the chairman replied: “Interruption? Well, I guess not! Seth had sent round word that if any son of a gun peeped he’d kill him.” (_Autobiography_, p. 141.)
Father had the greatest admiration and affection for the Captain. It was to him that he was referring in his autobiography when he wrote:
I have sometimes been asked if Wister’s _Virginian_ is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the “Virginian” in real life, not only in his force but in his charm.
When we were hunting in Africa father decided that he would try to get Seth Bullock to meet us in Europe at the end of the trip. I remember father describing him to some of our English friends in Khartoum, and saying: “Seth Bullock is a true Westerner, the finest type of frontiersman. He could handle himself in any situation, and if I felt that I did not wish him to meet any particular person, the reflection would be entirely on the latter.”
The Captain wrote me that he was afraid he could not meet us in London because of the illness of one of his daughters, but matters eventually worked out in such a way that he was able to go over to England, and when he met father there he said he felt like hanging his Stetson on the dome of Saint Paul’s and shooting it off, to show his exhilaration at the reunion. He thoroughly enjoyed himself in England, and while at bottom he was genuinely appreciative of the Britisher, he could not help poking sly fun at him. I remember riding on a bus with him and hearing him ask the conductor where this famous Picalilly Street was. The conductor said: “You must mean Piccadilly, sir.” The Captain entered into a lengthy conversation with him, and with an unmoved stolidity of facial expression that no Red Indian could have bettered, referred each time to “Picalilly,” and each time the little bus conductor would interpose a “You mean Piccadilly, sir,” with the dogged persistency of his race.
The major-domos and lackeys at the Guildhall and other receptions and the “beefeaters” at the Tower were a never-failing source of delight; he would try to picture them on a bad pony in the cow country, and explain that their costume would “make them the envy of every Sioux brave at an Indian dog-dance.”
When my sister and I were in Edinburgh, the local guide who took us through the Castle showed us an ancient gun, which instead of being merely double-barrelled, possessed a cluster of five or six barrels. With great amusement he told us how an American to whom he had been showing the piece a few days previously had remarked that to be shot at with that gun must be like taking a shower-bath. A few questions served to justify the conclusion we had immediately formed as to identity of our predecessor.
The summer that I was fourteen father shipped me off to the Black Hills for a camping trip with Seth Bullock. I had often seen him in the East, so the tall, spare figure and the black Stetson were familiar to me when the Captain boarded the train a few stations before reaching Deadwood. Never shall I forget the romance of that first trip in the West. It was all new to me. Unfortunately I had to leave for the East for the start of school before the opening of the deer season; but we caught a lot of trout, and had some unsuccessful bear-hunts--hunts which were doomed to unsuccess before they started, but which supplied the requisite thrill notwithstanding. All we ever found of the bear was their tracks, but we had a fleeting glimpse of a bobcat, and that was felt amply to repay any amount of tramping. Our bag consisted of one jack-rabbit. The Captain told us that we were qualified to join a French trapper whom he had known. The Frenchman was caught by an unusually early winter and snowed in away off in the hills. In the spring, a good deal to every one’s surprise, he turned up, looking somewhat thin, but apparently totally unconcerned over his forced hibernation. When asked what he had lived on, he replied: “Some day I keel two jack-rabeet, one day one, one day none!”
The Captain and I took turns at writing my diary. I find his entry for August 26:
Broke camp at Jack Boyden’s on Sand Creek at 6.30 A. M., and rode via Redwater Valley and Hay Creek to Belle Fourche, arriving at the S. B. ranch at two o’clock; had lunch of cold cabbage; visited the town; returned to camp at five P. M.; had supper at the wagon and fought mosquitoes until ten o’clock.
Broke camp and rode via Owl Creek divide and Indian Creek through several very large towns inhabited chiefly by prairie dogs, to our camp on Porcupine Creek. Fought mosquitoes from 3 A. M. to breakfast time.
I had long been an admirer of Bret Harte, and many of the people I met might have stepped from the pages of his stories. There was the old miner with twenty-two children, who couldn’t remember all their names. His first wife had presented him with ten of them, but when he married again he had told his second wife that it was his initial venture in matrimony. He gave a vivid description of the scene when some of the progeny of his first marriage unexpectedly put in an appearance. Time had smoothed things over, and the knowledge of her predecessor had evidently only acted as a spur to greater deeds, as exemplified in the twelve additions to the family.
Then there was the old lady with the vinegar jug. She was the postmistress of Buckhorn. We had some difficulty in finding the post-office, but at length we learned that the postmistress had moved it fifteen miles away, to cross the State border, in order that she might live in Wyoming and have a vote. We reached the shack to find it deserted, but we had not long to wait before she rode in, purple in the face and nearly rolling off her pony from laughter. She told us that she had got some vinegar from a friend, and while she was riding along the motion exploded the jug, and the cork hit her in the head; what with the noise and the blow she made sure the Indians were after her, and rode for her life a couple of miles before she realized what had happened.
What could have surpassed the names of the trails along which we rode and the canyons in which we camped? There was Hidden Treasure Gulch and Calamity Hollow, and a score more equally satisfying. That first trip was an immense success, and all during the winter that followed whenever school life became particularly irksome I would turn to plans for the expedition that we had scheduled for the next summer.
When the time to leave for the West arrived I felt like an old stager, and indulged for the first time in the delight of getting out my hunting outfit, deciding what I needed, and supplementing my last summer’s rig with other things that I had found would be useful. Like all beginners I imagined that I required a lot for which I had in reality no possible use. Some men always set off festooned like Christmas-trees, and lose half the pleasure of the trip through trying to keep track of their belongings. They have special candles, patented lanterns, enormous jack-knives with a blade to fulfil every conceivable purpose, rifles and revolvers and shotguns galore; almost anything that comes under the classification of “it might come in handy.” The more affluent hunter varies only in the quality and not the quantity of his “gadjets.” He usually has each one neatly tucked away in a pigskin case. The wise man, however, soon learns that although anything may “come in handy” once on a trip, you could even on that occasion either get along without it or find a substitute that would do almost as well. It is surprising with what a very little one can make out perfectly comfortably. This was a lesson which I very quickly learned from the Captain.
The second trip that we took was from Deadwood, South Dakota, to Medora, North Dakota. I had never seen the country in which father ranched, and Seth Bullock decided to take me up along the trail that father had been travelling when they met for the first time.
We set off on Friday the 13th, and naturally everything that happened was charged up to that inauspicious day. We lost all our horses the first night, and only succeeded in retrieving a part of them. Thereafter it started in raining, and the gumbo mud became all but impassable for the “chuck-wagon.” The mosquitoes added to our misery, and I find in my diary in the Captain’s handwriting a note to the effect that “Paul shot three mosquitoes with a six-shooter. Stanley missed with a shotgun.”
The Captain was as stolid and unconcerned as a Red Indian through every change of weather. He had nicknamed me “Kim” from Kipling’s tale, and after me he had named a large black horse which he always rode. It was an excellent animal with a very rapid walk which proved the bane of my existence. My pony, “Pickpocket,” had no pace that corresponded, and to adapt himself was forced to travel at a most infernal jiggle that was not only exceedingly wearing but shook me round so that the rain permeated in all sorts of crevices which might reasonably have been expected to prove water-tight. With the pride of a boy on his second trip, I could not bring myself to own up to my discomfort. If I had, the Captain would have instantly changed his pace; but it seemed a soft and un-Western admission to make, so I suffered in external silence, while inwardly heaping every insult I could think of upon the Captain’s mount. We were travelling long distances, so the gait was rarely changed unless I made some excuse to loiter behind, and then walked my pony in slow and solitary comfort until the Captain was almost out of sight, and it was time to press into a lope which comfortably and far too rapidly once more put me even with him.
The Captain was a silent companion; he would ride along hour after hour, chewing a long black cigar, in a silence broken only by verses he would hum to himself. There was one that went on interminably, beginning:
“I wonder if ever a cowboy Will be seen in those days long to come; I wonder if ever an Indian Will be seen in that far bye-and-bye.”
Every now and then some butte would suggest a reminiscence of the early days, and a few skilfully directed questions would lure him into a chain of anecdotes of the already vanished border-life. He was continually coming out with a quotation from some author with whose writings I had never thought him acquainted. Fishing in a Black Hills stream, I heard him mutter:
“So you heard the left fork of the Yuba As you stood on the banks of the Po.”
He had read much of Kipling’s prose and poetry, but what he most often quoted were the lines to Fighting Bob Evans.
In his house in Deadwood he had a good library, the sort of one which made you feel that the books had been selected to read and enjoy, and not bought by the yard like window-curtains, or any other furnishings thought necessary for a house. Mrs. Bullock was president of the “Women’s Literary Club,” and I remember father being much impressed with the work that she was doing.
As I have said before, the Captain was a man whom changing conditions could not throw to one side. He would anticipate the changes, and himself take the lead in them, adapting himself to the new conditions; you could count upon finding him on top. He was very proud of the fact that he had brought the first alfalfa to the State, and showed me his land near Belle Fourche, where he had planted the original crop. Its success was immediate. He said that he could not claim the credit of having introduced potatoes, but an old friend of his was entitled to the honor, and he delighted in telling the circumstances. The Captain’s friend, whom we can call Judge Jones, for I’ve forgotten his name, had opened a trading-post in what was at that time the wild territory of Dakota. The Indians were distinctly hostile, and at any good opportunity were ready to raid the posts, murdering the factors and looting the trading goods. In the judge’s territory there was one particularly ugly customer, half Indian and half negro, known as Nigger Bill. The judge was much interested in the success of his adventure in potatoes, and the following was one of the letters he received from his factor, as Seth Bullock used to quote it to me:
DEAR JUDGE,
This is to tell you all is well here and I hope is same with you. Nigger Bill came to the door of the stockade to-day and said “I am going to get in.” I said “Nigger Bill you will not get in.” Nigger Bill said “I will get in.” I shot Nigger Bill. He is dead. The potatoes is doing fine.
Although realizing to the full that the change was inevitable and, of course, to the best interests of the country, and naturally taking much pride in the progress his State was making, the Captain could not help at times feeling a little melancholy over the departed days when there was no wire in the country, and one could ride where one listed. He wrote me in 1911: “The part of South Dakota which you knew has all been covered with the shacks of homesteaders, from Belle Fourche to Medora, and from the Cheyenne agency to the Creek Where the Old Woman Died.” The old times had gone, never to return, and although the change was an advance, it closed an existence that could never be forgotten or relived by those who had taken part in it.
The Captain gave me very sound advice when I was trying to make up my mind whether or not to go to college. I was at the time going through the period of impatience that comes to so many boys when they feel that they are losing valuable time, during which they should be starting in to make their way in the world. I had talked it over with the Captain during one of the summer trips, and soon afterward he wrote me:
Ride the old studies with spurs. I don’t like the idea of your going out to engage in business until you have gone through Harvard. You will have plenty of time after you have accomplished this to tackle the world. Take my advice, my boy, and don’t think of it. A man without a college education nowadays is badly handicapped. If he has had the opportunity to go through college and does not take advantage of it, he goes through life with a regret that becomes more intensified as he gets older. Life is a very serious proposition if we would live it well.
I went through college and I have often realized since how excellent this advice was, and marvelled not a little at the many-sidedness of a frontiersman who could see that particular situation so clearly.
The year before I went with my father to Africa, R. H. Munro Ferguson and myself joined the Captain in South Dakota for a prairie-chicken hunt. We were to shoot in the vicinity of the Cheyenne Indian reservation, and the Captain took us through the reservation to show us how the Indian question was being handled. The court was excellently run, but what impressed us most was the judge’s name, for he was called Judge No Heart. Some of our hunting companions rejoiced in equally unusual names. There were Spotted Rabbit, No Flesh, Yellow Owl, and High Hawk, not to forget Spotted Horses, whose prolific wife was known as Mrs. Drops-Two-at-a-Time. We had with us another man named Dave Snowball, who looked and talked just like a Southern darky. As a matter of fact, he was half negro and half Indian. In the old days negro slaves not infrequently escaped and joined the Indians. I went to see Dave’s father. There was no mistaking him for what he was, but when I spoke to him he would answer me in Sioux and the only English words I could extract from him were “No speak English.” He may have had some hazy idea that if he talked English some one would arrest him and send him back to his old masters, although they had probably been dead for thirty or forty years. Possibly living so long among the Sioux, he had genuinely forgotten the language of his childhood.
High Hawk and Oliver Black Hawk were old “hostiles.” So was Red Bear. We came upon him moving house. The tepee had just been dismantled, and the support poles were being secured to a violently objecting pony. A few weeks later when we were on the train going East, Frederic Remington joined us. He was returning from Montana, and upon hearing that we had been on the Cheyenne reservation he asked if we had run into old Red Bear, who had once saved his life. He told us that many years before he had been picked up by a party of hostiles, and they had determined to give him short shrift, when Red Bear, with whom he had previously struck a friendship, turned up, and successfully interceded with his captors. One reminiscence led to another, and we were soon almost as grateful to Red Bear for having opened such a store as Remington had been for having his life spared. Frederic Remington was a born raconteur, and pointed his stories with a bluff, homely philosophy, redolent of the plains and the sage-brush.
The night before we left the Indians the Captain called a council. All the old “hostiles” and many of the younger generation gathered. The peace-pipes circulated. We had brought with us from New York a quantity of German porcelain pipes to trade with the Indians. Among them was one monster with a bowl that must have held from an eighth to a quarter of a pound of tobacco. The Indians ordinarily smoke “kinnikinick,” which is chopped-up willow bark. It is mild and gives a pleasant, aromatic smoke. The tobacco which we had was a coarse, strong shag. We filled the huge pipe with it, and, lighting it, passed it round among the silent, solemn figures grouped about the fire. The change was as instantaneous as it was unpremeditated. The first “brave” drew deeply and inhaled a few strong puffs; with a choking splutter he handed the pipe to his nearest companion. The scene was repeated, and as each Indian, heedless of the fate of his comrades, inhaled the smoke of the strong shag, he would break out coughing, until the pipe had completed the circuit and the entire group was coughing in unison. Order was restored and willow bark substituted for tobacco, with satisfactory results. Then we each tried our hand at speaking. One by one the Indians took up the thread, grunting out their words between puffs. The firelight rose and fell, lighting up the shrouded shapes. When my turn came I spoke through an interpreter. Coached by the Captain as to what were their most lamentable failings--those that most frequently were the means of his making their acquaintance--I gave a learned discourse upon the evils of rustling ponies, and the pleasant life that lay before those who abstained from doing so. Grunts of approval, how sincere I know not, were the gratifying reply to my efforts. The powwow broke up with a substantial feast of barbecued sheep, and next morning we left our nomadic hosts to continue their losing fight to maintain their hereditary form of existence, hemmed in by an ever-encroaching white man’s civilization.
Near the reservation we came upon two old outlaw buffaloes, last survivors of the great herds that not so many years previously had roamed these plains, providing food and clothing for the Indians until wiped out by the ruthless white man. These two bulls, living on because they were too old and tough for any one to bother about, were the last survivors left in freedom. A few days later we were shown by Scottie Phillips over his herd. He had many pure breeds but more hybrids, and the latter looked the healthier. Scottie had done a valuable work in preserving these buffalo. He was a squaw-man, and his pleasant Indian wife gave us excellent buffalo-berry preserves that she had put up.
Scottie’s ranch typified the end of both buffalo and Indian. Before a generation is past the buffalo will survive only in the traces of it left by crossing with cattle; and the same fate eventually awaits the Indian. No matter how wise be the course followed in governing the remnants of the Indian race, it can only be a question of time before their individuality sinks and they are absorbed.