"He"s th" plumb best scout on th" southern trail," replied Black Hank.
The year following, Billy Knapp, Alfred, and another man named Jim Buckley took across to the Hills the only wagon-train that dared set out that summer.
III
THE TWO CARTRIDGES
This happened at the time Billy Knapp drove stage between Pierre and Deadwood. I think you can still see the stage in Buffalo Bill"s show.
Lest confusion arise and the reader be inclined to credit Billy with more years than are his due, it might be well also to mention that the period was some time after the summer he and Alfred and Jim Buckley had made their famous march with the only wagon-train that dared set out, and some time before Billy took to mining. Jim had already moved to Montana.
The journey from Pierre to Deadwood amounted to something. All day long the trail led up and down long gra.s.sy slopes, and across sweeping, intervening flats. While climbing the slopes, you could never get your experience to convince you that you were not, on topping the hill, about to overlook the entire country for miles around. This never happened; you saw no farther than the next roll of the prairie. While hurtling down the slopes, you saw the intervening flat as interminably broad and hot and breathless, or interminably broad and icy and full of arctic winds, according to the season of the year. Once in a dog"s age you came to a straggling fringe of cottonwood-trees, indicating a creek bottom.
The latter was either quite dry or in raging flood. Close under the hill huddled two buildings, half logs, half mud. There the horses were changed by strange men with steel glints in their eyes, like those you see under the brows of a north-country tug-boat captain. Pa.s.sengers could there eat flap-jacks architecturally warranted to hold together against the most vigorous attack of the gastric juices, and drink green tea that tasted of tannin and really demanded for its proper accommodation porcelain-lined insides. It was not an inspiring trip.
Of course, Billy did not accompany the stage all of the way; only the last hundred miles; but the pa.s.sengers did, and by the time they reached Billy they were usually heartily sick of their undertaking. Once a tenderfoot came through in the fall of the year, simply for the love of adventure. He got it.
"Driver," said he to Billy, as the brakes set for another plunge, "were you ever held up?"
Billy had been deluged with questions like this for the last two hours.
Usually he looked straight in front of him, spat accurately between the tail of the wheel-horse and the whiffle-tree, and answered in monosyllables. The tenderfoot did not know that asking questions was not the way to induce Billy to talk.
"Held up?" replied Billy, with scorn. "Young feller, I is held up thirty-seven times in th" last year."
"Thunderation!" exclaimed the tenderfoot. "What do you do? Do you have much trouble getting away? Have you had much fighting?"
"Fight nothin". I ain"t hired to fight. I"m hired to drive stage."
"And you just let them go through you?" cried the tenderfoot.
Billy was stung by the contempt in the stranger"s tone.
"Go through nothin"," he explained. "They isn"t touchin" _me_ none whatever. Put her down fer argument that I"m d.a.m.n fool enough to sprinkle lead "round some, and that I gets away. What happens? Nex" time I drives stage some of these yere agents ma.s.sacrees me from behind a bush. Whar do I come in? Nary bit!"
The tenderfoot, struck by the logic of this reasoning, fell silent.
After an interval the sun set in a film of yellow light; then the afterglow followed; and finally the stars p.r.i.c.ked out the true immensity of the prairies.
"_He"s_ the feller hired to fight," observed the shadowy Billy, jerking his thumb backward.
The tenderfoot now understood the silent, grim man who, unapproachable and solitary, had alone occupied the seat on top of the stage. Looking with more curiosity, the tenderfoot observed a shot-gun with abnormally short barrels, slung in two bra.s.s clips along the back of the seat in front of the messenger. The usual revolvers, too, were secured, instead of by the regulation holsters, in bra.s.s clips riveted to the belt, so that in case of necessity they could be s.n.a.t.c.hed free with one forward sweep of the arm. The man met his gaze keenly.
"Them Hills ain"t fur now," vouchsafed Billy, as a cold breeze from the west lifted the limp brim of his hat, and a film of cloud drew with uncanny and silent rapidity across the stars.
The tenderfoot had turned again to look at the messenger, who interested him exceedingly, when the stage came to a stop so violent as almost to throw him from his seat. He recovered his balance with difficulty.
Billy, his foot braced against the brake, was engaged in leisurely winding the reins around it.
"_Hands up, I say!_" cried a sharp voice from the darkness ahead.
"Meanin" you," observed Billy to the tenderfoot, at the same time thrusting his own over his head and settling down comfortably on the small of his back. "Time!" he called, facetiously, to the darkness.
As though at the signal the night split with the roar of buckshot, and splintered with the answering crackle of a six-shooter three times repeated. The screech of the brake had deceived the messenger as to the whereabouts of the voice. He had jumped to the ground on the wrong side of the stage, thus finding himself without protection against his opponent, who, firing at the flash of the shot-gun, had brought him to the ground.
The road-agent stepped confidently forward. "Billy," said he, pleasantly, "jest pitch me that box."
Billy climbed over the seat and dropped a heavy, iron-bound case to the ground. "Danged if I thinks anybody _kin_ git Buck, thar," he remarked, in thoughtful reference to the messenger.
"Now, drive on," commanded the road-agent.
Three hours later Billy and the sobered tenderfoot pulled into Deadwood.
Ten minutes taught the camp what had occurred.
Now, it must be premised that Deadwood had recently chosen a sheriff. He did not look much like a sheriff, for he was small and weak and bald, and most childlike as to expression of countenance. But when I tell you that his name was Alfred, you will know that it was all right. To him the community looked for initiative. It expected him to organise a posse, which would, of course, consist of every man in the place not otherwise urgently employed, and to enter upon instant pursuit. He did not.
"How many is they?" he asked of Billy.
"One lonesome one," replied the stage-driver.
"I plays her a lone hand," announced Alfred.
You see, Alfred knew well enough his own defects. He never could make plans when anybody else was near, but always instinctively took the second place. Then, when the other"s scheme had fallen into ruins, he would construct a most excellent expedient from the wreck of it. In the case under consideration he preferred to arrange his own campaign, and therefore to work alone.
By that time men knew Alfred. They made no objection.
"Snowin"," observed one of the chronic visitors of the saloon door.
There are always two or three of such in every Western gathering.
"One of you boys saddle my bronc," suddenly requested Alfred, and began to examine his firearms by the light of the saloon lamp.
"Yo" ain"t aimin" to set out to-night?" they asked, incredulously.
"I am. Th" snow will make a good trail, but she"ll be covered come mornin"."
So Alfred set out alone, at night, in a snowstorm, without the guidance of a solitary star, to find a single point in the vastness of the prairie.
He made the three hours of Billy and the tenderfoot in a little over an hour, because it was mostly down hill. So the agent had apparently four hours the start of him, which discrepancy was cut down, however, by the time consumed in breaking open the strong-box after Billy and the stage had surely departed beyond gunshot. The exact spot was easily marked by the body of Buck, the express messenger. Alfred convinced himself that the man was dead, but did not waste further time on him: the boys would take care of the remains next day. He remounted and struck out sharp for the east, though, according to Billy"s statement, the agent had turned north.
"He is alone," said Alfred to himself, "so he ain"t in that Black Hank outfit. Ain"t nothin" to take him north, an" if he goes south he has to hit way down through the South Fork trail, which same takes him two weeks. Th" greenbacks in that plunder is numbered, and old Wells-Fargo has th" numbers. He sure has to pike in an" change them bills afore he is spotted. So he goes to Pierre."
Alfred staked his all on this reasoning and rode blindly eastward.
Fortunately the roll of the country was sufficiently definite to enable him to keep his general direction well enough until about three o"clock, when the snow ceased and the stars came out, together with the waning moon. Twenty minutes later he came to the bed of a stream.
"Up or down?" queried Alfred, thoughtfully. The state of the weather decided him. It had been blowing all night strongly from the northwest.
Left without guidance a pony tends to edge more or less away from the wind, in order to turn tail to the weather. Alfred had diligently counteracted this tendency all night, but he doubted whether, in the hurry of flight, the fugitive had thought of it. Instead of keeping directly east toward Pierre, he had probably fallen away more or less toward the south. "Down," Alfred decided.
He dismounted from his horse and began to lead the animal parallel to the stream, but about two hundred yards from it, first taking care to ascertain that a little water flowed in the channel. On discovering that there did, he nodded his head in a satisfied manner.
"He doesn"t leave no trail till she begins to snow," he argued, "an" he nat"rally doesn"t expect no mud-turkles like me a followin" of him eastward. _Consequently_ he feeds when he strikes water. This yere is water."