Chapter IV: Part 4

ONE can thresh the straw of history until he is well worn out, and also is running some risk of wearing others out who may have to listen, so I will waive the telling of who the first cowboy was, even if I knew; but the last one who has come under my observation lives down in Florida, and the way it happened was this: I was sitting in a “sto' do',” as the “Crackers” say, waiting for the clerk to load some “number eights,” when my friend said, “Look at the cowboys!” This immediately caught my interest. With me cowboys are what gems and porcelains are to some others. Two very emaciated Texas ponies pattered down the street, bearing wild-looking individuals, whose hanging hair and drooping hats and generally bedraggled appearance would remind you at once of the Spanish-moss which hangs so quietly and helplessly to the limbs of the oaks out in the swamps. There was none of the bilious fierceness and rearing plunge which I had associated with my friends out West, but as a fox-terrier is to a yellow cur, so were these last. They had on about four dollars' worth of clothes between them, and rode McClellan saddles, with saddle-bags, and guns tied on before. The only things they did which were conventional were to tie their ponies up by the head in brutal disregard, and then get drunk in about fifteen minutes. I could see that in this case, while some of the tail feathers were the same, they would easily classify as new birds.

“And so you have cowboys down here?” I said to the man who ran the meat-market.

He picked a tiny piece of raw liver out of the meshes of his long black beard, tilted his big black hat, shoved his arms into his white apron front, and said:

“Gawd! yes, stranger; I was one myself.”

The plot thickened so fast that I was losing much, so I became more deliberate. “Do the boys come into town often?” I inquired further.

“Oh yes, 'mos' every little spell,” replied the butcher, as he reached behind his weighing-scales and picked up a double-barrelled shot-gun, sawed off. “We-uns are expectin' of they-uns to-day.”

And he broke the barrels and took out the shells to examine them.

“Do they come shooting?” I interposed.

He shut the gun with a snap. “We split even, stranger.”

Seeing that the butcher was a fragile piece of bric-a-brac, and that I might need him for future study, I bethought me of the banker down the street. Bankers are bound to be broad-gauged, intelligent, and conservative, so I would go to him and get at the ancient history of this neck of woods. I introduced myself, and was invited behind the counter. The look of things reminded me of one of those great green terraces which conceal fortifications and ugly cannon. It was boards and wire screen in front, but behind it were shot-guns and six-shooters hung in the handiest way, on a sort of disappearing gun-carriage arrangement. Shortly one of the cowboys of the street scene floundered in. He was two-thirds drunk, with brutal, shifty eyes and a flabby lower lip.

“I want twenty dollars on the old man. Ken I have it?”

I rather expected that the bank would go into “action front,” but the clerk said, “Certainly,” and completed this rather odd financial transaction, whereat the bull-hunter stumbled out.

“Who is the old man in this case?” I ventured.

“Oh, it's his boss, old Colonel Zuigg, of Crow City. I gave some money to some of his boys some weeks ago, and when the colonel was down here I asked him if he wanted the boys to draw against him in that way, and he said, 'Yes--for a small amount; they will steal a cow or two, and pay me that way.'”

Here was something tangible.

“What happens when a man steals another man's brand in this country?”

“He mustn't get caught; that's all. They all do it, but they never bring their troubles into court. They just shoot it out there in the bresh. The last time old Colonel Zuigg brought Zorn Zuidden in here and had him indicted for stealing cattle, said Zorn: 'Now see here, old man Zuigg, what do you want for to go and git me arrested fer? I have stole thousands of cattle and put your mark and brand on 'em, and jes because I have stole a couple of hundred from you, you go and have me indicted. You jes better go and get that whole deal nol pressed;' and it was done.”

The argument was perfect.

“From that I should imagine that the cow-people have no more idea of law than the 'gray apes,'” I commented.

“Yes, that's about it. Old Colonel Zuigg was a judge fer a spell, till some feller filled him with buckshot, and he had to resign; and I remember he decided a case aginst me once. I was hot about it, and the old colonel he saw I was. Says he, 'Now yer mad, ain't you?' And I allowed I was. 'Well,' says he, 'you hain't got no call to get mad. I have decided the last eight cases in yer favor, and you kain't have it go yer way all the time; it wouldn't look right;' and I had to be satisfied.”

The courts in that locality were but the faint and sickly flame of a taper offered at the shrine of a justice which was traditional only, it seemed. Moral forces having ceased to operate, the large owners began to brand everything in sight, never realizing that they were sowing the wind. This action naturally demoralized the cowboys, who shortly began to brand a little on their own account--and then the deluge. The rights of property having been destroyed, the large owners put strong outfits in the field, composed of desperate men armed to the teeth, and what happens in the lonely pine woods no one knows but the desperadoes themselves, albeit some of them never come back to the little fringe of settlements. The winter visitor from the North kicks up the jack-snipe along the beach or tarponizes in the estuaries of the Gulf, and when he comes to the hotel for dinner he eats Chicago dressed beef, but out in the wilderness low-browed cow-folks shoot and stab each other for the possession of scrawny creatures not fit for a pointer-dog to mess on. One cannot but feel the force of Buckle's law of “the physical aspects of nature” in this sad country. Flat and sandy, with miles on miles of straight pine timber, each tree an exact duplicate of its neighbor tree, and underneath the scrub palmettoes, the twisted brakes and hammocks, and the gnarled water-oaks festooned with the sad gray Spanish-moss--truly not a country for a high-spirited race or moral giants.

The land gives only a tough wiregrass, and the poor little cattle, no bigger than a donkey, wander half starved and horribly emaciated in search of it. There used to be a trade with Cuba, but now that has gone; and beyond the supplying of Key West and the small fringe of settlements they have no market. How well the cowboys serve their masters I can only guess, since the big owners do not dare go into the woods, or even to their own doors at night, and they do not keep a light burning in the houses. One, indeed, attempted to assert his rights, but some one pumped sixteen buckshot into him as he bent over a spring to drink, and he left the country. They do tell of a late encounter between two rival foremen, who rode on to each other in the woods, and drawing, fired, and both were found stretched dying under the palmettoes, one calling deliriously the name of his boss. The unknown reaches of the Everglades lie just below, and with a half-hour's start a man who knew the country would be safe from pursuit, even if it were attempted; and, as one man cheerfully confided to me, “A boat don't leave no trail, stranger.”

That might makes right, and that they steal by wholesale, any cattle-hunter will admit; and why they brand at all I cannot see, since one boy tried to make it plain to me, as he shifted his body in drunken abandon and grabbed my pencil and a sheet of wrapping paper: “See yer; ye see that?” And he drew a circle O, and then another ring around it, thus: (O). “That brand ain't no good. Well, then--” And again his knotted and dirty fingers essayed the brand I O. He laboriously drew upon it and made E-O which of course destroyed the former brand.

“Then here,” he continued, as he drew 13, “all ye've got ter do is this--313.” I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as a brand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operatic laugh, such as is painted in “The Cossack's Answer,” he again laboriously drew (+) (the circle cross), and then added some marks which made it look like this: S(+)S. And again breaking into his devil's “ha, ha!” said, “Make the damned thing whirl.”

I did not protest. He would have shot me for that. But I did wish he was living in the northwest quarter of New Mexico, where Mr. Cooper and Dan could throw their eyes over the trail of his pony. Of course each man has adjusted himself to this lawless rustling, and only calculates that he can steal as much as his opponent. It is rarely that their affairs are brought to court, but when they are, the men come _en masse_ to the room, armed with knives and rifles, so that any decision is bound to be a compromise, or it will bring on a general engagement.

There is also a noticeable absence of negroes among them, as they still retain some _ante bellum_ theories, and it is only very lately that they have “reconstructed.” Their general ignorance is “miraculous,” and quite mystifying to an outside man. Some whom I met did not even know where the Texas was which furnishes them their ponies. The railroads of Florida have had their ups and downs with them in a petty way on account of the running over of their cattle by the trains; and then some long-haired old Cracker drops into the nearest station with his gun and pistol, and wants the telegraph operator to settle immediately on the basis of the Cracker's claim for damages, which is always absurdly high. At first the railroads demurred, but the cowboys lined up in the “bresh” on some dark night and pumped Winchesters into the train in a highly picturesque way. The trainmen at once recognized the force of the Cracker's views on cattle-killing, but it took some considerable “potting” at the more conservative superintendents before the latter could bestir themselves and invent a “cow-attorney,” as the company adjuster is called, who now settles with the bushmen as best he can. Certainly no worse people ever lived since the big killing up Muscleshell way, and the romance is taken out of it by the cowardly assassination which is the practice. They are well paid for their desperate work, and always eat fresh beef or “razor-backs,” and deer which they kill in the woods. The heat, the poor grass, their brutality, and the pest of the flies kill their ponies, and, as a rule, they lack dash and are indifferent riders, but they are picturesque in their unkempt, almost unearthly wildness. A strange effect is added by their use of large, fierce cur-dogs, one of which accompanies each cattle-hunter, and is taught to pursue cattle, and to even take them by the nose, which is another instance of their brutality. Still, as they only have a couple of horses apiece, it saves them much extra running. These men do not use the rope, unless to noose a pony in a corral, but work their cattle in strong log corrals, which are made at about a day's march apart all through the woods. Indeed, ropes are hardly necessary, since the cattle are so small and thin that two men can successfully “wrestle” a three-year-old. A man goes into the corral, grabs a cow by one horn, and throwing his other arm over her back, waits until some other man takes her hind leg, whereat ensues some very entertaining Graeco-Roman style.

When the cow is successful, she finds her audience of Cracker cowboys sitting on the fence awaiting another opening, and gasping for breath. The best bull will not go over three hundred pounds, while I have seen a yearling at a hundred and fifty--if you, O knights of the riata, can imagine it! Still, it is desperate work. Some of the men are so reckless and active that they do not hesitate to encounter a wild bull in the open. The cattle are as wild as deer, they race off at scent; and when “rounded up” many will not drive, whereupon these are promptly shot. It frequently happens that when the herd is being driven quietly along a bull will turn on the drivers, charging at once. Then there is a scamper and great shooting. The bulls often become so maddened in these forays that they drop and die in their tracks, for which strange fact no one can account, but as a rule they are too scrawny and mean to make their handling difficult.

So this is the Cracker cowboy, whose chief interest would be found in the tales of some bushwhacking enterprise, which I very much fear would be a one-sided story, and not worth the telling. At best they must be revolting, having no note of the savage encounters which used to characterize the easy days in West Texas and New Mexico, when every man tossed his life away to the crackle of his own revolver. The moon shows pale through the leafy canopy on their evening fires, and the mists, the miasma, and the mosquitoes settle over their dreary camp talk. In place of the wild stampede, there is only the bellowing in the pens, and instead of the plains shaking under the dusty air as the bedizened vaqueros plough their fiery broncos through the milling herds, the cattle-hunter wends his lonely way through the ooze and rank grass, while the dreary pine trunks line up and shut the view.

THE STRANGE DAYS THAT CAME TO JIMMIE FRIDAY

THE “Abwee-chemun” [Algonquin for “paddle and canoe.”] Club was organized with six charter members at a heavy lunch in the Savarin restaurant--one of those lunches which make through connections to dinner without change. One member basely deserted, while two more lost all their enthusiasm on the following morning, but three of us stuck. We vaguely knew that somewhere north of the Canadian Pacific and south of Hudson Bay were big lakes and rapid rivers--lakes whose names we did not know; lakes bigger than Champlain, with unnamed rivers between them. We did not propose to be boated around in a big birch-bark by two voyagers among blankets and crackers and ham, but each provided himself a little thirteen-foot cedar canoe, twenty-nine inches in the beam, and weighing less than forty pounds. I cannot tell you precisely how our party was sorted, but one was a lawyer with eyeglasses and settled habits, loving nature, though detesting canoes; the other was nominally a merchant, but in reality an atavie Norseman of the wolf and raven kind; while I am not new. Together we started.

Presently the Abwees sat about the board of a lumbermen's hotel, filled with house-flies and slatternly waiter-girls, who talked familiarly while they served greasy food. The Abwees were yet sore in their minds at the thoughts of the smelly beds up-stairs, and discouragement sat deeply on their souls. But their time was not yet.

After breakfast they marched to the Hudson Bay Company's store, knowing as they did that in Canada there are only two places for a traveller to go who wants anything--the great company or the parish priest; and then, having explained to the factor their dream, they were told “that beyond, beyond some days' journey”--oh! that awful beyond, which for centuries has stood across the path of the pioneer, and in these latter days confronts the sportsman and wilderness-lover--“that beyond some days' journey to the north was a country such as they had dreamed--up Temis-camingue and beyond.”

The subject of a guide was considered.

Jimmie Friday always brought a big toboggan-load of furs into Fort Tiemogamie every spring, and was accounted good in his business. He and his big brother trapped together, and in turn followed the ten days' swing through the snow-laden forest which they had covered with their dead-falls and steel-jawed traps; but when the ice went out in the rivers, and the great pines dripped with the melting snows, they had nothing more to do but cut a few cords of wood for their widowed mother's cabin near the post. Then the brother and he paddled down to Bais des Pierres, where the brother engaged as a deck hand on a steamboat, and Jimmie hired himself as a guide for some bush-rangers, as the men are called who explore for pine lands for the great lumber firms. Having worked all summer and got through with that business, Jimmie bethought him to dissipate for a few days in the bustling lumber town down on the Ottawa River. He had been there before to feel the exhilaration of civilization, but beyond that clearing he had never known anything more inspiring than a Hudson Bay post, which is generally a log store, a house where the agent lives, and a few tiny Indian cabins set higgledy-piggledy in a sunburnt gash of stumps and bowlders, lost in the middle of the solemn, unresponsive forest. On this morning in question he had stepped from his friend's cabin up in the Indian village, and after lighting a perfectly round and rather yellow cigar, he had instinctively wandered down to the Hudson Bay store, there to find himself amused by a strange sight.

The Abwees had hired two French-Indian voyagers of sinister mien, and a Scotch-Canadian boy bred to the bush. They were out on the grass, engaged in taking burlaps off three highly polished canoes, while the clerk from the store ran out and asked questions about “how much bacon,” and, “will fifty pounds of pork be enough, sir?”

The round yellow cigar was getting stubby, while Jimmie's modest eyes sought out the points of interest in the new-comers, when he was suddenly and sharply addressed:

“Can you cook?”

Jimmie couldn't do anything in a hurry, except chop a log in two, paddle very fast, and shoot quickly, so he said, as was his wont:

“I think--I dun'no'--”

“Well, how much?” came the query.

“Two daul--ars--” said Jimmie.

The transaction was complete. The yellow butt went over the fence, and Jimmie shed his coat. He was directed to lend a hand by the bustling sportsmen, and requested to run and find things of which he had never before in his life heard the name.

After two days' travel the Abwees were put ashore--boxes, bags, rolls of blankets, canoes, Indians, and plunder of many sorts--on a pebbly beach, and the steamer backed off and steamed away. They had reached the “beyond” at last, and the odoriferous little bedrooms, the bustle of the preparation, the cares of their lives, were behind. Then there was a girding up of the loins, a getting out of tump-lines and canvas packs, and the long portage was begun.

The voyagers carried each two hundred pounds as they stalked away into the wilderness, while the attorney-at-law “hefted” his pack, wiped his eyeglasses with his pocket-handkerchief, and tried cheerfully to assume the responsibilities of “a dead game sport.”

“I cannot lift the thing, and how I am going to carry it is more than I know; but I'm a dead game sport, and I am going to try. I do not want to be dead game, but it looks as though I couldn't help it. Will some gentleman help me to adjust this cargo?”

The night overtook the outfit in an old beaver meadow half-way through the trail. Like all first camps, it was tough. The lean-to tents went up awkwardly. No one could find anything. Late at night the Abwees lay on their backs under the blankets, while the fog settled over the meadow and blotted out the stars.

On the following day the stuff was all gotten through, and by this time the lawyer had become a voyager, willing to carry anything he could stagger under. It is strange how one can accustom himself to “pack.” He may never use the tump-line, since it goes across the head, and will unseat his intellect if he does, but with shoulder-straps and a tump-line a man who thinks he is not strong will simply amaze himself inside of a week by what he can do. As for our little canoes, we could trot with them. Each Abwee carried his own belongings and his boat, which entitled him to the distinction of “a dead game sport,” whatever that may mean, while the Indians portaged their larger canoes and our mass of supplies, making many trips backward and forward in the process.

At the river everything was parcelled out and arranged. The birch-barks were repitched, and every man found out what he was expected to portage and do about camp. After breaking and making camp three times, the outfit could pack up, load the canoes, and move inside of fifteen minutes. At the first camp the lawyer essayed his canoe, and was cautioned that the delicate thing might flirt with him. He stepped in and sat gracefully down in about two feet of water, while the “delicate thing” shook herself saucily at his side. After he had crawled dripping ashore and wiped his eye-glasses, he engaged to sell the “delicate thing” to an Indian for one dollar and a half on a promissory note. The trade was suppressed, and he was urged to try again. A man who has held down a cane-bottom chair conscientiously for fifteen years looks askance at so fickle a thing as a canoe twenty-nine inches in the beam. They are nearly as hard to sit on in the water as a cork; but once one is in the bottom they are stable enough, though they do not submit to liberties or palsied movements. The staid lawyer was filled with horror at the prospect of another go at his polished beauty; but remembering his resolve to be dead game, he abandoned his life to the chances, and got in this time safely.

So the Abwees went down the river on a golden morning, their double-blade paddles flashing the sun and sending the drip in a shower on the glassy water. The smoke from the lawyer's pipe hung behind him in the quiet air, while the note of the reveille clangored from the little buglette of the Norseman. Jimmie and the big Scotch backwoodsman swayed their bodies in one boat, while the two sinister voyagers dipped their paddles in the big canoe.

The Norseman's gorge came up, and he yelled back: “Say! this suits me. I am never going back to New York.”

Jimmie grinned at the noise; it made him happy. Such a morning, such a water, such a lack of anything to disturb one's peace! Let man's better nature revel in the beauties of existence; they inflate his soul. The colors play upon the senses--the reddish-yellow of the birch-barks, the blue of the water, and the silver sheen as it parts at the bows of the canoes; the dark evergreens, the steely rocks with their lichens, the white trunks of the birches, their fluffy tops so greeny green, and over all the gold of a sunny day. It is my religion, this thing, and I do not know how to tell all I feel concerning it.

The rods were taken out, a gang of flies put on and trolled behind--but we have all seen a man fight a five-pound bass for twenty minutes. The waters fairly swarmed with them, and we could always get enough for the “pot” in a half-hour's fishing at any time during the trip. The Abwees were canoeing, not hunting or fishing; though, in truth, they did not need to hunt spruce-partridge or fish for bass in any sporting sense; they simply went out after them, and never stayed over half an hour. On a point we stopped for lunch: the Scotchman always struck the beach a-cooking. He had a “kit,” which was a big camp-pail, and inside of it were more dishes than are to be found in some hotels. He broiled the bacon, instead of frying it, and thus we were saved the terrors of indigestion. He had many luxuries in his commissary, among them dried apples, with which he filled a camp-pail one day and put them on to boil. They subsequently got to be about a foot deep all over the camp, while Furguson stood around and regarded the black-magic of the thing with overpowering emotions and Homeric tongue. Furguson was a good genius, big and gentle, and a woodsman root and branch. The Abwees had intended their days in the wilderness to be happy singing flights of time, but with grease and paste in one's stomach what may not befall the mind when it is bent on nature's doings?

And thus it was that the gloomy Indian Jimmie Friday, despite his tuberculosis begotten of insufficient nourishment, was happy in these strange days--even to the extent of looking with wondrous eyes on the nooks which we loved--nooks which previously for him had only sheltered possible “dead-falls” or not, as the discerning eye of the trapper decided the prospects for pelf.

Going ashore on a sandy beach, Jimmie wandered down its length, his hunter mind seeking out the footprints of his prey. He stooped down, and then beckoned me to come, which I did.

Pointing at the sand, he said, “You know him?”

“Wolves,” I answered.

“Yes--first time I see 'em up here--they be follerin' the deers--bad--bad. No can trap 'em--verrie smart.”

A half-dozen wolves had chased a deer into the water; but wolves do not take to the water, so they had stopped and drank, and then gone rollicking-together up the beach. There were cubs, and one great track as big as a mastiff might make.

“See that--moose track--he go by yesterday;” and Jimmie pointed to enormous footprints in the muck of a marshy place. “Verrie big moose--we make call at next camp--think it is early for call.”

At the next camp Jimmie made the usual birch-bark moose-call, and at evening blew it, as he also did on the following morning. This camp was a divine spot on a rise back of a long sandy beach, and we concluded to stop for a day. The Norseman and I each took a man in our canoes and started out to explore. I wanted to observe some musk-rat hotels down in a big marsh, and the Norseman was fishing. The attorney was content to sit on a log by the shores of the lake, smoke lazily, and watch the sun shimmer through the lifting fog. He saw a canoe approaching from across the lake. He gazed vacantly at it, when it grew strange and more unlike a canoe. The paddles did not move, but the phantom craft drew quickly on.

“Say, Furguson--come here--look at that canoe.”

The Scotchman came down, with a pail in one hand, and looked. “Canoe--hell--it's a moose--and there ain't a pocket-pistol in this camp,” and he fairly jumped up and down.

“You don't say--you really don't say!” gasped the lawyer, who now began to exhibit signs of insanity.

“Yes--he's going to be d----d sociable with us--he's coming right bang into this camp.”

The Indian too came down, but he was long past talking English, and the gutturals came up in lumps, as though he was trying to keep them down.

The moose finally struck a long point of sand and rushes about two hundred yards away, and drew majestically out of the water, his hide dripping, and the sun glistening on his antlers and back.

The three men gazed in spellbound admiration at the picture until the moose was gone. When they had recovered their senses they slowly went up to the camp on the ridge--disgusted and dum-founded.

“I could almost put a cartridge in that old gun-case and kill him,” sighed the backwoodsman.

“I have never hunted in my life,” mused the attorney, “but few men have seen such a sight,” and he filled his pipe.

“Hark--listen!” said the Indian. There was a faint cracking, which presently became louder. “He's coming into camp;” and the Indian nearly died from excitement as he grabbed a hatchet. The three unfortunate men stepped to the back of the tents, and as big a bull moose as walks the lonely woods came up to within one hundred and fifty feet of the camp, and stopped, returning their gaze.

Thus they stood for what they say was a minute, but which seemed like hours. The attorney composedly admired the unusual sight. The Indian and Furguson swore softly but most viciously until the moose moved away. The Indian hurled the hatchet at the retreating figure, with a final curse, and the thing was over.

“Those fellows who are out in their canoes will be sick abed when we tell them what's been going on in the camp this morning,” sighed Mr. Furguson, as he scoured a cooking-pot.

I fear we would have had that moose on our consciences if we had been there: the game law was not up at the time, but I should have asked for strength from a higher source than my respect for law.

The golden days passed and the lake grew great.

The wind blew at our backs. The waves rolled in restless surges, piling the little canoes on their crests and swallowing them in the troughs. The canoes thrashed the water as they flew along, half in, half out, but they rode like ducks. The Abwees took off their hats, gripped their double blades, made the water swirl behind them, howled in glee to each other through the rushing storm. To be five miles from shore in a seaway in kayaks like ours was a sensation. We found they stood it well, and grew contented. It was the complement to the golden lazy days when the water was glass, and the canoes rode upsidedown over its mirror surface. The Norseman grinned and shook his head in token of his pleasure, much as an epicure might after a sip of superior Burgundy.

“How do you fancy this?” we asked the attorney-at-law.

“I am not going to deliver an opinion until I get ashore. I would never have believed that I would be here at my time of life, but one never knows what a ---- fool one can make of one's self. My glasses are covered with water, and I can hardly see, but I can't let go of this paddle to wipe them,” shrieked the man of the office chair, in the howl of the weather.

But we made a long journey by the aid of the wind, and grew a contempt for it. How could one imagine the stability of those little boats until one had tried it?

That night we put into a natural harbor and camped on a gravel beach. The tents were up and the supper cooking, when the wind hauled and blew furiously into our haven. The fires were scattered and the rain came in blinding sheets. The tent-pegs pulled from the sand. We sprang to our feet and held on to the poles, wet to the skin. It was useless; the rain blew right under the canvas. We laid the tents on the “grub” and stepped out into the dark. We could not be any wetter, and we did not care. To stand in the dark in the wilderness, with nothing to eat, and a fire-engine playing a hose on you for a couple of hours--if you have imagination enough, you can fill in the situation. But the gods were propitious. The wind died down. The stars came out by myriads. The fires were relighted, and the ordinary life begun. It was late in the night before our clothes, blankets, and tents were dry, but, like boys, we forgot it all.

Then came a river--blue and flat like the sky above--running through rushy banks, backed by the masses of the forest; anon the waters rushed upon us over the rocks, and we fought, plunk-plunk-plunk, with the paddles, until our strength gave out. We stepped out into the water, and getting our lines, and using our long double blades as fenders, “tracked” the canoes up through the boil. The Indians in their heavier boats used “setting-poles” with marvellous dexterity, and by furious exertion were able to draw steadily up the grade--though at times they too “tracked,” and even portaged. Our largest canoe weighed two hundred pounds, but a little voyager managed to lug it, though how I couldn't comprehend, since his pipe-stem legs fairly bent and wobbled under the enormous ark. None of us by this time were able to lift the loads which we carried, but, like a Western pack-mule, we stood about and had things piled on to us, until nothing more would stick. Some of the backwoodsmen carry incredible masses of stuff, and their lore is full of tales which no one could be expected to believe. Our men did not hesitate to take two hundred and fifty pounds over short portages, which were very rough and stony, though they all said if they slipped they expected to break a leg. This is largely due to the tump-line, which is laid over the head, while persons unused to it must have shoulder-straps in addition, which are not as good, because the “breastbone,” so called, is not strong enough.

We were getting day by day farther into “the beyond.” There were no traces here of the hand of man. Only Jimmie knew the way--it was his trapping-ground. Only once did we encounter people. We were blown into a little board dock, on a gray day, with the waves piling up behind us, and made a difficult landing. Here were a few tiny log houses--an outpost of the Hudson Bay Company. We renewed our stock of provisions, after laborious trading with the stagnated people who live in the lonely place. There was nothing to sell us but a few of the most common necessities; however, we needed only potatoes and sugar. This was Jimmie's home. Here we saw his poor old mother, who was being tossed about in the smallest of canoes as she drew her nets. Jimmie's father had gone on a hunting expedition and had never come back. Some day Jimmie's old mother will go out on the wild lake to tend her nets, and she will not come back. Some time Jimmie too will not return--for this Indian struggle with nature is appalling in its fierceness.

There was a dance at the post, which the boys attended, going by canoe at night, and they came back early in the morning, with much giggling at their gallantries.

The loneliness of this forest life is positively discouraging to think about. What the long winters must be in the little cabins I cannot imagine, and I fear the traders must be all avarice, or have none at all; for there can certainly be absolutely no intellectual life. There is undoubtedly work, but not one single problem concerning it. The Indian hunters do fairly well in a financial way, though their lives are beset with weakening hardships and constant danger. Their meagre diet wears out their constitutions, and they are subject to disease. The simplicity of their minds makes it very difficult to see into their life as they try to narrate it to one who may be interested.

From here on was through beautiful little lakes, and the voyagers rigged blanket sails on the big canoes, while we towed behind. Then came the river and the rapids, which we ran, darting between rocks, bumping on sunken stones--shooting fairly out into the air, all but turning over hundreds of times. One day the Abwees glided out in the big lake Tesmiaquemang, and saw the steamer going to Bais des Pierres. We hailed her, and she stopped, while the little canoes danced about in the swell as we were loaded one by one. On the deck above us the passengers admired a kind of boat the like of which had not before appeared in these parts.

At Bais des Pierres we handed over the residue of the commissaries of the Abwee-Chemun to Jimmie Friday, including personally many pairs of well-worn golf-breeches, sweaters, rubber coats, knives which would be proscribed by law in New York. If Jimmie ever parades his solemn wilderness in these garbs, the owls will laugh from the trees. Our simple forest friend laid in his winter stock--traps, flour, salt, tobacco, and pork, a new axe--and accompanied us back down the lake again on the steamer. She stopped in mid-stream, while Jimmie got his bundles into his “bark” and shoved off, amid a hail of “good-byes.”

The engine palpitated, the big wheel churned the water astern, and we drew away. Jimmie bent on his paddle with the quick body-swing habitual to the Indian, and after a time grew a speck on the reflection of the red sunset in Temiscamingue.

The Abwees sat sadly leaning on the after-rail, and agreed that Jimmie was “a lovely Injun.” Jimmie had gone into the shade of the overhang of the cliffs, when the Norseman started violently up, put his hands in his pockets, stamped his foot, said, “By George, fellows, any D. F. would call this a sporting trip!”

THE SOLEDAD GIRLS

“TO-NIGHT I am going down to my ranch--the Soledad--in my private car,” said the manager of the Mexican International Railroad, “and I would like the Captain and you to accompany me.”

The Captain and I were only too glad; so in process of time we awoke to find our car sidetracked on the Soledad, which is in the state of Coahuila, Mexico. The chaparral spread around, rising and falling in the swell of the land, until it beat against the blue ridge of the Sierra Santa Rosa, miles to the north. Here and there the bright sun spotted on a cow as she threaded the gray stretches; a little coyote-wolf sat on his haunches on a near-by hill-side, and howled protests at his new-found companions; while dimly through the gray meshes of the leaf-denuded chaparral we could see the main ranch-house of the Soledad. We were informed at breakfast by the railroad manager that there was to be that day a “round-up,” which is to say, a regular Buffalo Bill Show, with real cowboys, ponies, and cattle, all three of them wild, full of thorns, and just out of the brush.

The negro porters got out the saddles of the young women, thus disclosing their intention to ride ponies instead of in traps. We already knew that they were fearless horseback-riders, but when the string of ponies which were to be our mounts was led up by a few Mexicans, the Captain and I had our well-concealed doubts about their being proper sort of ponies for young girls to ride. We confided in an imperturbable cowboy--one of those dry Texans. He said: “Them are what we would call broke ponies, and you fellers needn't get to worryin' 'bout them little girls--you're jest a-foolin' away good time.” Nevertheless, the broncos had the lurking devil in the tails of their eyes as they stood there tied to the wire fencing; they were humble and dejected as only a bronco or a mule can simulate. When that ilk look most cast down, be not deceived, gay brother; they are not like this. Their humility is only humorous, and intended to lure you on to their backs, where, unless you have a perfect understanding of the game, the joke will be on you. Instantly one is mounted, the humility departs; he plunges and starts about, or sets off like the wind, regardless of thorny bushes, tricky ground underfoot, or the seat of the rider.

The manager's wife came out of the car with her little brood of three, and then two visiting friends. These Soledad girls, as I call them, each had a sunburst of yellow hair, were well bronzed by the Mexican sun, and were sturdy little bodies. They were dressed in short skirts, with leggings, topped with Tam o' Shanters, while about their waists were cartridge-belts, with delicate knives and revolvers attached, and with spurs and _quirts_ as accessories. They took up their men's saddles, for they rode astride, except the two visitors, who were older and more lately from Chicago. They swung their saddles on to the ponies, showing familiarity with the _ladigo_ straps of the Texas saddles, and proudly escaping the humiliation which alights on the head of one who in the cow-camps cannot saddle his own “bronc.” Being ready, we mounted, and followed a cowboy off down the road to the _rodeo-ground._ The manager and Madam Mamma rode in a buckboard, proudly following with their gaze the galloping ponies which bore their jewels. I thought they should be fearful for their safety, but after more intimate inspection, I could see how groundless was such solicitude.

I must have it understood that these little vaquero girls were not the ordinary Texas product, fed on corn-meal and bred in the chaparral, but the much looked after darlings of a fond mother. They are taken South every winter, that their bodies may be made lithe and healthy, but at the same time two or more governesses crowd their minds with French, German, and other things with which proper young girls should be acquainted. But their infant minds did not carry back to the days when they had not felt a horse under them. To be sure, in the beginning it was only a humble donkey, but even before they knew they had graduated to ponies, and while yet ten years old, it was only by a constant watch that they were kept off unbroken broncos--horses that made the toughest vaqueros throw down their hats, tighten their belts, and grin with fear.

From over the hills came the half-wild cattle, stringing along at a trot, all bearing for the open space in the waste of the chaparral where the _rodeo_ occurred, while behind them followed the cowboys--gay desert figures with brown, pinched faces, long hair, and shouting wild cries. The exhilaration of the fine morning, the tramp of the thousands, got into the curls of the three little Misses Golden-hairs, and they scurried away, while I followed to feast on this fresh vision, where absolutely ideal little maids shouted Spanish at murderous-looking Mexican cow-punchers done up in bright scrapes and costumed out of all reason. As the vaqueros dashed about hither and thither to keep their herds moving in the appointed direction, the infants screamed in their childish treble and spurred madly too. A bull stands at bay, but a child dashes at him, while he turns and flees. It is not their first _rodeo,_ one can see, but I should wish they were with mamma and the buckboard, instead of out here in the brush, charging wild bulls, though in truth this never were written. These bulls frequently charge men, and a cow-pony turns like a ball off a bat, and a slippery seat in the saddle may put you under the feet of the outraged monarch of the range.

Driving down to the _rodeo-ground,_ we all stood about on our ponies and held the herd, as it is called, the young girls doing vaquero duty, as imperturbable of mien as Mr. Flannagan, the foreman. So many women in the world are afraid of a dairy cow, even gathering up their skirts and preparing to shriek at the sight of one eating daisies. But these young women will grow up and they will be afraid of no cow. So much for a Soledad education.

The top-ropers rode slowly into the dust of the milling herd, scampered madly, cast their ropes, and came jumping to us with a blatting calf trailing at their ropes' end. Two men seized the little victim, threw him on his back, cut a piece out of his ear with a knife, and still held him in relentless grip while another pressed a red-hot branding-iron on his side, which sizzled and sent up blue smoke, together with an odor of burned flesh. The calves bawled piteously. There was no more emotion on the faces of the Soledad girls than was shown by the brown cowboys. They had often, very often, seen this before, and their nerves were strong. Some day I can picture in my mind's eye these young girl vaqueros grown to womanhood, and being such good-looking creatures, very naturally some young man will want very badly to marry one of them--for it cannot be otherwise. I only hope he will not be a thin-chested, cigarette-smoking dude, because it will be a sacrilege of nature. He must undoubtedly have played forward at Princeton or Yale, or be unworthy.

As we stood, a massive bull emerged from the body of the herd, his head thrown high, tail stiff with anger, eye rolling, and breath coming quick. He trotted quickly forward, and, lowering his head, charged through the “punchers.” Instantly a small Soledad girl was after him, the vaqueros reining back to enjoy the strange ride with their eyes. Her hat flew off, and the long curls flapped in the rushing air as her pony fairly sailed over the difficult ground. The bull tore furiously, but behind him swept the pony and the child. As we watched, the chase had gone a mile away, but little Miss Yellowcurls drew gradually to the far side of the bull, quartering him on the far side, and whirling on, headed her quarry back to her audience and the herd. The rough-and-ready American range boss sat sidewise in his saddle and thought--for he never talked unnecessarily, though appreciation was chalked all over his pose. The manager and madam felt as though they were responsible for this wonderful thing. The Mexican cowboys snapped their fingers and eyes at one another, shouting quick Spanish, while the American part of the beholders agreed that it was the “limit”; “that as a picture,” etc.; “that the American girl, properly environed “; “that this girl in particular,” etc., was a dream. Then the bull and the girl came home; the bull to his fellows, and the girl to us. But she didn't have an idea of our admiration, because we didn't tell her; that would have been wrong, as you can imagine. Ten years will complicate little Miss Yellowcurls. Then she could be vain about such a thing; but, alas! she will not be--she will have forgotten.

THE END