Famous scouts

Front matter

FAMOUS LEADERS SERIES

BY

CHARLES H. L. JOHNSTON

Introduction

These are the stories of men who, impelled by love of adventure and fascinated by wild nature, deserted the places where those of their kind clustered together in towns, cities, and small settlements, to plunge into a country peopled by men of a hostile race. These adventurers had music in their souls. They possessed temperaments of a poetic nature, and loved the great, wide vistas of the plains; the scream of the eagle; the bark of the coyote; the splash and gurgle of crystal rivers which plunged in a reckless course between the shelving sides of narrow canons. Their eyes reveled in the skies of the golden West, and in the sight of plateaus decked with those flowers of a million colors which clothe the mountain valleys in the hot months of summer. Their senses were keen; their love of the unrestrained life in camp and log cabin was resistless; their ready rifles supplied them with the wherewithal to sustain their strength and spirits; and in their veins ran warm, red blood.

Urged onward by the romantic, these hardy individuals made history. Emerson speaks with truth when he says, ^'Romance is never present, but always remote. Things which are cruel and abominable when they occur, become romantic in memory. Unprincipled bandits are Red Cross Knights, and Templars and Martyrs even, in the thoughts of those of

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this century. In individual history, disagreeable occurrences are remembered long after with complacency. A romantic age, properly speaking, cannot exist. Nevertheless, romance is the mother of knowledge; and it is in searching for wonders that the truth is discovered. If the unknown were not magnified, no one would explore. Had it not been for the belief that an El Dorado lay in America, European navigators would have lacked the stimulus for adventurous voyages. The history of all sciences is alike: men guess, and, to verify their guesses, they go and see, — and are disappointed; but bring back truth."

So with these heroes of the plains. Irresistibly drawn on by that strange, magnetic call of the wild, they searched for their El Dorados, and brought back truth. They returned with tales of a glorious, unpeopled country; of herds of game; strange tribes of red-skinned people; of clear rivers, and sage-covered wastes of alkali. And these tales — stirring the imaginations of their fellows — led to that great, sweeping emigration of the white pioneers to the land of the setting sun. These men were, perhaps, of uncouth manners and untutored brains; but they made history.

In the far West it is no unconmion sight to meet the pioneer with his wife, his herds and his family, as they push into the unsettled wastes, always in search of ^'something better than they left behind.'' This visionary reaching for what always lies beyond is what has appealed to men of a certain temperament. Some wander — always wander — discontented with what they find; searching with uncertain longings for their

INTRODUCTION ix

Utopia. Others, satisfied with that which has come to them, have remained in one place, to build a factory; till a farm, raise a family, and be a stationary unit in world progression. These men of whom I write were often restless, roving blades. They continually looked into the beyond; if they did not do so, they were not satisfied with the quiet life, but had to be in the maelstrom of action. The perpetual boy was in them.

For this reason I wiite of their active lives for young men, for is it not young men for action, old men for counsel? To the young man the philosopher does not appeal: Franklin is superseded by Light Horse Harry Lee. The red blood of youth sees heroes in the individuals of dash and courage; while, to him, the man of the diplomatic circle, the scientific dreamer, the scholar and poet, have little place in the affections of one in whose veins is the hot impulse to do, and not to meditate.

Hark, then, to the stories of the men who were of the forest, the mountain, the plain and the camp; men who, in living their wild lives, made records upon the pages of history, and were the scouts of that surging mass of white adventurers which has taken possession of a great and fruitful continent. Under the sledge-hammer blows of the toilers of the white race, this silent land has produced a wealth which is unsurpassed, and which has meant little to the men of the pack, the saddle and the rifte; who lived, scouted and toiled, in the enjoyment of a full-blooded existence.