Those were troublesome times, indeed. All wool justice in the courts was impossible. The vigilance committee, or Salvation Army as it called itself, didn"t make much fuss about it, but we all knew that the best citizens belonged to it and were in good standing.
It was in those days when young Stewart was short-handed for a sheep herder, and had to take up with a sullen, hairy vagrant, called by the other boys "Esau." Esau hadn"t been on the ranch a week before he made trouble with the proprietor and got the red-hot blessing from Stewart he deserved.
Then Esau got madder and sulked away down the valley among the little sage brush hummocks and white alkali waste land to nurse his wrath. When Stewart drove into the corral at night, from town, Esau raised up from behind an old sheep dip tank, and without a word except what may have growled around in his black heart, he raised a leveled Spencer and shot his young employer dead.
That was the tragedy of the week only. Others had occurred before and others would probably occur again. It was getting too prevalent for comfort. So, as soon as a quick cayuse and a boy could get down into town, the news spread and the authorities began in the routine manner to set the old legal mill to running. Someone had to go down to "The Tivoli" and find the prosecuting attorney, then a messenger had to go to "The Alhambra" for the justice of the peace. The prosecuting attorney was "full" and the judge had just drawn one card to complete a straight flush, and had succeeded.
In the meantime the Salvation Army was fully half way to Clugston"s ranch.
They had started out, as they said, "to see that Esau didn"t get away."
They were going out there to see that Esau was brought into town.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SALVATION ARMY.]
What happened after they got there I only know from hearsay, for I was not a member of the Salvation Army at that time. But I got it from one of those present, that they found Esau down in the sage brush on the bottoms that lie between the abrupt corner of Sheep Mountain and the Little Laramie River. They captured him, but he died soon after, as it was told me, from the effects of opium taken with suicidal intent. I remember seeing Esau the next morning and I thought there were signs of ropium, as there was a purple streak around the neck of deceased, together with other external phenomena not peculiar to opium.
But the great difficulty with the Salvation Army was that it didn"t want to bring Esau into town. A long, cold night ride with a person in Esau"s condition was disagreeable. Twenty miles of lonely road with a deceased murderer in the bottom of the wagon is depressing. Those of my readers who have tried it will agree with me that it is not calculated to promote hilarity. So the Salvation Army stopped at Whatley"s ranch to get warm, hoping that someone would steal the remains and elope with them. They stayed some time and managed to "give away" the fact that there was a reward of $5,000 out for Esau, dead or alive. The Salvation Army even went so far as to betray a great deal of hilarity over the easy way it had nailed the reward, or would as soon as said remains were delivered up and identified.
Mr. Whatley thought that the Salvation Army was having a kind of walkaway, so he slipped out at the back door of the ranch, put Esau into his own wagon and drove away to town. Remember, this is the way it was told to me.
Mr. Whatley hadn"t gone more than half a mile when he heard the wild and disappointed yells of the Salvation Army. He put the buckskin on the backs of his horses without mercy, driven on by the enraged shouts and yells of his infuriated pursuers. He reached town about midnight, and his pursuers disappeared. But what was he to do with Esau?
He drove around all over town, trying to find the official who signed for the deceased. Mr. Whatley went from house to house like a vegetable man, seeking sadly for the party who would give him a $5,000 check for Esau. Nothing could be more depressing than to wake up one man after another out of a sound sleep and invite him to come out to the buggy and identify the remains. One man went out and looked at him. He said he didn"t know how others felt about it, but he allowed that anybody who would pay $5,000 for such a remains as Esau"s could not have very good taste.
Gradually it crept through Mr. Whatley"s wool that the Salvation Army had been working him, so he left Esau at the engine house and went home. On his ranch he nailed up a large board on which had been painted in antique characters with a paddle and tar the following stanzas:
Vigilance Committees, Salvation Armies, Morgues, or young physicians who may have deceased people on their hands, are requested to refrain from conferring them on to the undersigned.
People who contemplate shuffling off their own or other people"s mortal coils, will please not do so on these grounds.
The Salvation Army of the Rocky Mountains is especially hereby warned to keep off the gra.s.s!
James Whatley.
The Indian Orator.
I like to read of the Indian orator in the old school books. Most everyone does. It is generally remarkable that the American Demosthenes, so far, has dwelt in the tepee, and lived on the debris of the deer and the buffalo. I mean to say that the school readers have impressed us with the great magnetism of the crude warrior who dwelt in the wilderness and ate his game, feathers and all, while he studied the art of swaying the audience by his oratorical powers.
I am inclined to think that Black Hawk and Logan must have been fortunate in securing mighty able private secretaries, or that they stood in with the stenographers of their day. At least, the Blue Juniata warriors of our time, from Little Crow, Red Iron, Standing Buffalo, Hole-in-the-Day and Sitting Bull, to Victoria, Colorow, Douglas, Persume, Captain Jack and Shavano, seem to do better as lobbyists than they do as orators. They may be keen, logical and shrewd, but they are not eloquent. In some minds, Black Hawk will ever appear as the Patrick Henry of his people; but I prefer to honor his unknown, unhonored and unsung amanuensis. Think what a G.o.dsend such a man would have been to Senator Tabor.
The Indian orator of to-day is not scholarly and grand. He is soiled, ignorant and sedentary in his habits. An orator ought to take care of his health. He cannot overload his stomach and make a bronze Daniel Webster of himself. He cannot eat a raw buffalo for breakfast and at once attack the question of tariff for revenue only. His brain is not clear enough. He cannot digest the mammalia of North America and seek out the delicate intricacies of the financial problem at the same time. All scientists and physiologists will readily see why this is true.
It is quite popular to say that the modern Indian has seen too much of civilization. This may be true. Anyhow, civilization has seen too much of him. I hope the day will never come when the pale face and the White Father will have to stay on their reservation, whether the red man does or not.
Indian eloquence, toned down by the mellow haze of a hundred years, sounds very well, but the clarion voice of the red orator has died away. The stony figure, the eagle eye, the matchless presence, have all ceased to palpitate.
He does not say: "I am an aged hemlock. I am dead at the top. The forest is filled with the ghosts of my people. I hear their moans on the night winds and in the sighing pines." He does not talk in the blank verse of a century ago. He uses a good many blanks, but it is not blank verse. Even the Indian"s friend would admit that it was not blank verse. Perhaps it might be called blankety verse.
Once he pleaded for the land of his fathers. Now he howls for grub, guns and fixed ammunition.
I tried to interview a big Crow chief once. I had heard some Sioux, and learned a few irrelevant and disconnected Ute phrases. I connected these with some Spanish terms and hoped to get a reply, and keep up a kind of running conversation that might mislead a friend who was with me, into the belief that I was as familiar with the Indian tongue as with my own. I began conversing with him in my polyglot manner. I did not get a reply. I conversed with him some more in a desultory way, for I had heard that he was a great orator in his tribe, and I wanted to get his views on national affairs. Still he was silent. He would not even answer me. I got hostile and used some badly damaged Spanish on him. Then I used some sprained and dislocated German on him, but he didn"t seem to wot whereof I spoke.
Then my friend, with all the a.s.surance of a fresh young manhood, began to talk with the great warrior in the English language, and incidentally asked him about a new Indian agent, who had the name of being a bogus Christian with an eye to the main chance.
My friend talked very loud, with the idea that the chieftain could understand any language if spoken so that you could hear it in the next Territory. At the mention of the Indian agent"s name, the Crow statesman brightened up and made a remark. He simply said: "Ugh! too much G.o.d and no flour."
You Heah Me, Sah!
Col. Visscher, of Denver, who is delivering his lecture, "Sixty Minutes in the War," tells a good story on himself of an episode, or something of that nature, that occurred to him in the days when he was the amanuensis of George D. Prentice.
Visscher, in those days, was a fair-haired young man, with pale blue eyes, and dest.i.tute of that wealth of brow and superficial area of polished dome which he now exhibits on the rostrum. He was learning the lesson of life then, and every now and then he would b.u.mp up against an octagonal ma.s.s of cold-pressed truth of the never-dying variety that seemed to kind of stun and concuss him.
One day Mr. Visscher wandered into a prominent hotel in Louisville, and, observing with surprise and pleasure that "boiled lobster" was one of the delicacies on the bill of fare, he ordered one.
He never had seen lobster, and a rare treat seemed to be in store for him. He breathed in what atmosphere there was in the dining-room, and waited for his bird. At last it was brought in. Mr. Visscher took one hasty look at the great scarlet ma.s.s of voluptuous limbs and oceanic nippers, and sighed. The lobster was as large as a door mat, and had a very angry and inflamed appearance. Visscher ordered in a powerful c.o.c.ktail to give him courage, and then he tried to carve off some of the breast.
The lobster is honery even in death. He is eccentric and trifling. Those who know him best are the first to evade him and shun him. Visscher had failed to straddle the wish bone with his fork properly, and the talented bird of the deep rolling sea slipped out of the platter, waved itself across the horizon twice, and buried itself in the bosom of the eminent and talented young man. The eminent and talented young man took it in his napkin, put it carefully on the table, and went away.
As he pa.s.sed out, the head waiter said:
"Mr. Visscher, was there anything the matter with your lobster?"
Visscher is a full-blooded Kentuckian, and answered in the courteous dialect of the blue-gra.s.s country.
"Anything the matter with my lobster, sah? No, sah. The lobster is very vigorous, sah. If you had asked me how I was, sah, I should have answered you very differently, sah. I am not well at all, sah. If I were as well, and as ruddy, and as active as that lobster, sah, I would live forever, sah. You heah me, sah?
"Why, of course, I am not familiar with the habits of the lobster, sah, and do not know how to kearve the bosom of the bloomin" peri of the summer sea, but that"s no reason why the inflamed reptile should get up on his hind feet and nestle up to me, sah, in that earnest and forthwith manner, sah.
"I love dumb beasts, sah, and they love me, sah; but when they are dead, sah, and I undertake to kearve them, sah, I desiah, sah, that they should remain as the undertakah left them, sah. You doubtless heah me, sah!"
Plato.
Plato was a Greek philosopher who flourished about 426 B.C., and kept on flourishing for eighty-one years after that, when he suddenly ceased do so. He early took to poetry, but when he found that his poems were rejected by the Greek papers, he ceased writing poetry and went into the philosophy business. At that time Greece had no regular philosopher, and so Plato soon got all he could do.
Plato was a pupil of Socrates, who was himself no slouch of a philosopher. Many and many a day did Socrates take his little cla.s.s of kindergarten philosophers up the shady banks of the Ilissus, and sit all day discoursing to his pupils on deep and difficult doctrines, while his unsandaled feet were bathed in the genial tide. Many happy hours were thus spent. Socrates would take his dinner or tell some wonderful tale to his cla.s.s, whereby he would win their dinner himself. Then in the deep Athenian shade, with his bare, Gothic feet in the clear, calm waters of the Ilissus, he would eat the Grecian doughnut of his pupils, and while he spoke in poetic terms of his belief, he would dig his heel in the mud and heave a heart-broken sigh.
Such was Socrates, the great teacher. He got a small salary, and went barefoot till after Thanksgiving. He was a great tutor, and boarded around, teaching in the open air while the mosquitos bit his bare feet. No tutor ever tuted with a more unselfish purpose or a smaller salary.
Plato maintained, among other things, that evil is connected with matter, and aside from matter we do not find evil existing. That is true. At least, such evil as we might find apart from matter would be outside the jurisdiction of a police court. I think Plato was correct. Evil and matter are inseparable. That"s what"s the matter.
It is quite common for us to say that virtue is its own reward. Plato held that, while it was better to be virtuous as a matter of economy and ultimate peace than not to be virtuous at all, he believed in being virtuous for a higher reason. Probably it was notoriety. He would rather be right than be president. He believed in being good just for the excitement of it, and the notice it would attract, and not because it paid. Plato was a great virtuoso.
Socrates would have been called a crank if he had lived in our day and age, and if Plato were to go into London or New York and talk of organizing a society for the encouragement of virtue among adult male taxpayers he would have a lonesome time of it. Be virtuous and you will be happy was a favorite motto with Plato. The legend is still quoted by those who love to ransack the dead past.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NEPTUNE TAKING A RIDE.]
Pluto was quite another party, and some get him mixed up with Plato. They were not related in any way, Pluto being a son of Saturn and Rhea, who flourished at about the same time as Plato. Pluto was a brother of Jupiter and Neptune, and when the estate of Saturn was wound up, Jupiter wanted the earth, and he got it. Neptune wanted the codfish conservatory and the mermaid"s home, so he took the deep, deep sea, and even yet he rides around in a gold spangled stone boat on the pale green billows of the summer sea, jabbing a pickerel ever and anon with a three p.r.o.nged fork. He leads a gay life, going to picnics with the mermaids in their coral caves, or attending their full evening dress parties, clad in a trident and a fall beard. He loves the sea, the lone, blue sea, and those who have seen him turning handsprings on a sponge lawn, or riding in his water-tight chariot with his feet over the dash-board, beside a slim young mermaid with Paris green hair, and dressed in a tight-fitting, low-neck dorsal fin, say he is a lively old party.
But Pluto was different. He stood around till the estate was all closed up, and it looked as though he had got left. Just then the administrator says: "Why, here"s Pluto. He is going to come out of the little end of the horn. He will have to hustle for himself," Pluto resented this and clinched with the administrator. They fought till each had a watch pocket on the brow and an Irish sunset symphony in green under the eye, while Jupiter and Neptune stood by and encouraged the fight. Jupiter rather took sides with his brother, and Neptune stood in with the administrator. In the midst of the confusion Jupiter speaks up and says: "Swat him under the ear, Pluto." Whereupon Neptune says to the administrator. "Give him-hail." The administrator paused and said that was a good suggestion. He would do so. And so he forgave Pluto and gave him-sheol.
The Expensive Word.
Much that is annoying in this life is occasioned by the use of a high priced word where a cheaper one would do. In these days of failure, shortage at both ends and financial stringency generally, I often wonder that some people should go on, day after day, using just as extravagant language as they did during the flush times. When I get hard up the first thing I do is to economize in my expressions in every day conversation. If there is a marked stringency in business, I lay aside first, my French, then my Latin, and finally my German. Should the times become greatly depressed and failures and a.s.signments become frequent, I begin to lop off the large words in my own language, beginning with "incomprehensibility," "unconst.i.tutionally," etc., etc.