Fighting westward

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

L The Henry Family . i

11 . Dick and Dave .i8

Chapter I

T he long wagon-train had halted on the prairie.

Far as the eye could reach, the grassy, undu¬ lating levels swept toward the blue horizon. Near by, the cattle cropped the long rank grass, and the horses and mules, their front legs loosely hobbled together for the noonday rest, wandered hungrily through the rich pasture land. At the camp’s out¬ skirts a watchful rider on a little piebald mare, a boy about eighteen, alert and graceful in his easy motions, warned back the animals inclined to stray too far. The hot summer sun drenched the prairie with golden light, and through the coarse grass sprang or flew crickets, grasshoppers, lizards and dragonflies.

Ruth Henry stood leaning against one heavy wheel of her father’s great canvas-covered prairie-

I wagon, her blue eyes sometimes fixed on the hazy distance, sometimes returning to the four big fawn-colored oxen standing immovable, their coats dim with dust and caked with mud, their clear, soft, patient eyes seeming to wait the never-failing signal to start on—ever westward.

The calico sunbonnet had slipped from Ruth’s head to her shoulders, and her hair shone molas¬ ses-colored in the sunlight. Her calico dress was so faded and grass-stained that it added little to her disorder when she laid one arm across the nearest ox’s broad, dusty neck, and with a friendly, familiar hand scratched his head between the ears. Her arm was tanned and burned almost the color of the hide she leaned on, but her cheeks, though not full, were rosy, and her eyes bright. A grasshopper perched on the bare ankle above her moccasined foot. She flipped it off, with a quick laugh. The ox heaved a sleepy sigh. Ruth spoke to him, hardly doubting that he would hear and understand. The four oxen were more than beasts of burden, to be yoked and unyoked, fed and watered. They were trusted help¬ ers, the very mainstay and dependence of the Henry family on their wilderness road.

“You mustn’t be tired yet, Jess,” Ruth told the big beast reproachfully. “Why, we’re not half-way to Oregon!”

Then, reflecting, half in fun, half in earnest, that Jess probably did not feel as Ruth and her father felt about the great journey, she forbore to insist and fell silent, thinking. She was remembering a day long ago—seven years gone, for she had been but seven years old—when her mother had taken her in her arms on the doorstep of their pleasant Ken¬ tucky homestead and had told her, with quietly fall¬ ing tears, that her father had decided to move on again further west.

“Just as he wanted to move from Virginia, Ruth, before you were born,” her mother had said, trying to speak steadily. “Now he isn’t satisfied to stay here and wants to push on out to Missouri.”

And even then, while little Ruth had shrunk back a moment with fear of the unknown, and had pitied her mother and cried with her, she had guessed and even shared the longing that drove her father from each peaceful home to new fields of exploration. Now, seven years later, she had com¬ forted her mother once again, undismayed, when Adam Henry, a month before, had left Missouri for the far west, to follow the Oregon trail.

Ruth was too like her father not to share his long¬ ings; not to understand why, in spite of every hard¬ ship, he must press forward across the threshold of the wilderness. She shared with him that free, adventurous spirit which had driven him out of Virginia and across the vast untravelled continent. Something thrilled in Ruth now as she looked around her at the wagon-train—at the colonists for Oregon resting here on the soil of what would some day be called Kansas—still more than twelve hundred miles from Oregon. And her father was in all but name leader of these four hundred colonists—the very first to venture clear across the plains and take their families with them, their plowshares and household goods, everything staked on the great adventure. In spite of threatening perils, in spite of every kind of doubt and discouragement, Adam Henry was lead¬ ing these people on, not by word or argument, but by the steadfast purpose in his heart. To win across to Oregon! To have got clear across the continent, to have led the way for others! That was what he thought of when he put his thoughts together. He did not think or know that he was making the year 1848 great in the history of America.

Ruth did not put any of this into words, either, as she stood there. She felt no more than a dim pride in her father, a resolve to keep a good heart, and an eagerness to push on. Now that Missouri was hundreds of miles behind, she no longer looked back toward her old frontier home—the farm at the edge of the prairie. Westward her eyes were turned, and the slow progress of the train_its sel¬

dom varying twelve or fifteen miles a day—seemed as slow as the hands of a clock to her restless spirit. She was brave enough, if dangers were to be faced, but as yet she hardly believed in the dangers. All the fourteen and a half years of her life Ruth’s hopes and dreams had been bright ones, her affec¬ tions quick and ardent, her loyalty untroubled. She had to see black clouds very close at hand and very threatening not to believe that they would part harm¬ lessly after all, or at worst in a passing storm. Not all the laborious, active life of the pioneer’s daugh¬ ter had cured her love of happy day-dreams. Now, as she still leaned against the wagon-wheel, she faintly heard her mother’s voice, where on the far side of the wagon she was heating coffee over a little brushwood fire. Kate Allardyce’s voice too, she caught fragments of, answering Mrs. Henry with that docile, patient tone Kate never quite lost even when most at ease.

With sudden decision Ruth turned to join them, when a rider on a big black mule trotted up close beside her and flung himself off the blanketed back with scarcely a glance in Ruth’s direction. The tall, big-limbed young man began picking stray wisps of grass from the fringes of his worn buckskin frock and breeches. His action had the air of being me¬ chanical; it suggested that he half wanted to say something but was making time because he was un¬ willing to begin. His breath came fast, too, almost fast enough to impede his speech, though the mule was fresh and seemed not to have been ridden hard.

Ruth had paused at sight of her brother, and silently she studied him, her eyes growing grave and troubled. He looked up at last and met her gaze, the rawhide rope that made the mule’s bridle twisted between his lean, supple hands. The yellow hair showing beneath his coon-skin cap was burned flaxen and his fair skin, except above the brow, was tanned brown. His deep, bright hazel eyes smouldered with anger.

“What is if, Dave?” asked Ruth fearfully.

“Shan’t tell you,” muttered the bcry, dropping his eyes once more. “Get along, there!” He made as if to lead on the mule, but Ruth quickly inter¬ posed.

“Oh, Dave, tell me 1 It’ll help some to tell me 1 I won’t say a word!” She touched his arm, caught his hand in hers, drawing him towards her. Sul¬ lenly he yielded, but the angry light did not fade from his eyes.

“It’s no use!” he burst out, speaking the more in¬ tently for his smothered tone and the breathlessness of his own fury. “Doesn’t he know I’m almost nineteen years old? Can’t he understand I’m a man grown? He wants his own way. I want mine!”

Ruth held his big, restless hand with all the strength of her small fingers, but, torn between two loyalties, for a moment she could find no words to answer. At last she said, speaking half-breathlessly, “What did he want, Dave? What wouldn’t you do?”

The boy pulled away from her, turned to go, head bent, striking at the tall grass with his rawhide whip. But after a step he faced about and spoke hotly once more.

“The same old thing! What’s the use in telling it 1 He wants to know where I am every hour. He wants to give me orders—when to watch, where to hunt, when to come in, who to work with. It’s-”

“He knows best about it all, Dave. He has years behind him. He’s trying to help you.”

Dave did not listen. While she was speaking he plunged on: “I won’t stand being treated so 1 Don’t I know something, too? Haven’t I come with him all the way west from Kentucky? Do I need to be told everything as if I were a tenderfoot like Dick Ernshaw? Listen! I went out an hour ago with the cattle. Father said north was the best pasture land, because it was open—no chance of any Pawn¬ ees surprising us. I took Bob Danvers and Dick with me. But when we’d ridden a bit we found the grass poorer and poorer. I wheeled and drove the herd west—ahead of the wagon-train. They had a good feed and were saved a tramp. Not a Pawnee in sight. We’re hardly in Indian country yet, at any rate—Allardyce says. Do you think father was satisfied? Because I’d disobeyed him he browbeat me before Dick—wouldn’t listen to reason or admit I’d done well. Dick was ready to follow me any¬ where before! And let me tell you, he could do worse than follow me! I’m the best friend that youngster’s got.”

Dave broke off, panting, then rushed on again. “I chose to mount guard with Westcott’s lot to-night —he did me a good turn yesterday. Father or¬ dered me back here without a chance to explain. I saw Westcott and the rest smiling as I followed like a scared little boy. For so as not to blaze out on father then and there I had to hang my head and clench my teeth. I’ll get even! I won’t bear it! I can ride, shoot, hunt, mount guard, follow the trail like any man! Ruth, I’m a man, and not just my father’s son!”

Ruth’s face had clouded with distress as she listened. Powerless to change Dave’s thoughts or stop his angry tongue, she stood waiting helplessly, shrinking before his criticism of the father she loved, yet understanding all the irk of petty tyranny to the boy who knew himself already an able plainsman, welcomed in any adventure, strong, keen and re¬ sourceful. For she had heard the men of the wagon-train praise her brother, and was proud of him.

But she could not help him now. Instead of his outburst quieting him, it seemed only to have fed his anger. His face was sullen; his eyes gleamed, but they would not meet his sister’s glance. The black mule peaceably pulled off mouthfuls of coarse grass and twitched her tail against the thronging flies and gnats. Dave turned to Ruth and spoke a last threat through tightened lips.

“You’ll see: I won’t stand it! Not for any of you 1”

As he spoke, from under the wagon-wheels crawled out a boy and a girl about four years old, their yellow heads bare, their faces radiant with smiles, their brown little bodies clothed in ragged homespun.

“Dave! Dave!” they shouted almost in one voice. “Pick us up, Dave! We haven’t seen you all day!”

“Give me a ride on Blackie, Dave!” cried the boy, pushing his twin-sister back with a determined hand. “No, ’Wina, you can’t go!”

Dave drew the mule away from his little brother’s and sister’s careless feet, and Ruth, half-fearful of Dave’s mood, spoke cautiously.

“No, Edwin, don’t bother Dave now. Give me your hand, Edwina.”

But as she spoke her eyes were on Dave’s face, and at the change she saw there her heart beat more freely and a sigh of relief parted her lips. Me¬ chanically Dave had drawn the mule away from the children, the frown still on his face. But as he watched them, as their beaming smiles sought a re¬ turn, as their agile little hands caught at the fringes of his buckskin breeches, the dark, sullen hardness gradually left his face, and his look became frank, gay, boyish. He sat down in the long grass among the wild tulips and honeysuckle and pulled the twins upon his knees, and like puppies they climbed over him with shouts and laughter. Dave let go the black mule’s halter, but she did not wander far and kept an intelligent eye on her young master as her strong teeth tugged at the grass-stems.

Ruth’s troubled heart almost was at ease. For the moment she fancied that Dave had but half meant what he said; that his words had spent his anger. But in a minute a shout made all four glance up again.

The boy who had been guarding the spare horses and mules on the little piebald mare was walking toward the Henrys’ wagon, and on the way he gave a slap to the black mule to keep her within bounds.

“I couldn’t let my mare go loose like that, Dave,” he said as he came nearer. “I’d never see her again. Still, I wouldn’t give her up for your Blackie.” He spoke with a strong Southern accent, his voice warm and soft. His wide grey eyes were alert and friendly, an open smile curved his sensitive lips. He looked more than his eighteen years, as though recent hardship had brought him courage and resolution beyond his nature and his age. There was something graceful and deliberate in his move¬ ments—a touch of courtliness in his manner which set him down as a newcomer into this rough frontier life. He looked far fresher from the civilization of the Southern states than did the weather-worn young pioneer before him.

“ ’Lo, Dick,” said Dave. Again he spoke sulkily. Dick Ernshaw’s appearance reminded him too keenly of his own recent humiliation. But Dick showed no signs of recollection.

“We’re catching up and rolling out again in a quarter of an hour,” he said. “We ought to make eight miles more this afternoon, old Westcott told me. We’ve had good luck this week. They say we’ll strike the bend of the North Platte River before many days.”

Ruth sprang to her feet, unwilling that Dave should speak again, and caught Edwina’s hand.

“Come, Dick,” she said. “There’s coffee being made beyond our wagon. You’ll want some, too, after working all noon. Bring Edwin, Dave.”

“I’d like some coffee, sure enough, Ruth, if your mother can spare me a little,” Dick responded, smil¬ ing at the young girl with gentle friendliness. He pushed the thick brown hair back from his fore¬ head. Ruth, glancing up at him, said impulsively:

“Dick, I can’t seem to make you belong out here with us, somehow. I don’t see why you came.”

The boy laughed, but his smile did not linger. “I’ll tell you sometime why I came,” he said. “But don’t say where they can hear you that I’m out of place, Ruth. Haven’t I just about managed to make them believe I’m of some use? Haven’t they just left off laughing at me? I reckon I could shoot and ride when I joined this outfit in Missouri—I learned that long ago—but it didn’t help much. You-all poked fun at my ignorance.”

“Dave and I didn’t-”

“No. You were good to me. Don’t think I’ll forget it!” Dick’s grey eyes shone as he spoke. “But all the rest—young Taylor, Dave—how he tormented me when I chased the antelope last week, and when I lighted a big fire at the edge of the Pawnees’ country!”

“Pshaw!” Dave interposed. “Jim Taylor can laugh at anything. I never can see the joke in a fellow’s not knowing how to do what he’s never done. You’ve learned fast enough. What made most of the men laugh at you was your manners— too civilized for the plains, they thought—but they’re forgetting that, too.”

“I’d like to hear why you left home, Dick,” said Ruth softly. “Don’t forget you’re going to tell me.”

On the other side of the wagon Mrs. Henry and Kate Allardyce were sitting beside the dying fire. Two stalwart elderly men lay on the grass near by, shouting fragments of talk. Another similar group was gathered about all the wagons in sight. The followers of the long Oregon trail were enjoying the last precious minutes of the nooning.

“Good-day, Mrs. Henry,” said Dick, bowing to

Ruth’s mother with the natural grace that Taylor had laughed at. “Good-day to you, Kate.”

Mrs. Henry answered him with a smile, and the offer of a tin cup full of hot coffee. Her face, half shaded by her sunbonnet, was tanned so deeply that her dark auburn hair looked almost as fair as Ruth’s, but her eyes were soft and brown—lovely eyes whose expression revealed the impetuousness of her Vir¬ ginia blood tamed and taught reason by good sense and steadfast affection. There was something deli¬ cate and line about her slight figure and quick-moving hands. She did not look like the wife of a pioneer leader. Yet her face was happy, her smile cheerful enough to draw a circle of friends about her, and she seemed willingly to ignore the hardships that had browned her skin, had scarred her arms with cuts and burns, and had clothed her in worn homespun and in deerskin moccasins. Whatever secret troubles were hidden behind those dark eyes, Mrs. Henry’s happy temper kept them from the light of every day.

Her hand now and then touched little Kate Allardyce’s thin shoulder with a kind gesture. Kate sat silent and pensive as usual, her black hair loose about her face, her sad, serious eyes raised some¬ times in thoughtful gaze. Her glance was bright and her lips now and then curved in a half-smile, but responsibility had come too heavily at thirteen years on this motherless girl, never meant for such hard tasks and such early Independence. Mrs. Henry did all she could to lighten Kate’s load on the long, hard journey. But, grateful as that help was. It could not make again of Kate a happy-hearted girl like Ruth. Friends though the two were, Ruth never could overcome Kate’s serious, doubtful out¬ look on the life before her; could never make the little half-orphan share her own dreams and enthu¬ siasms. In those two bitter, hard years since her mother died, poor Kate had lost her childhood.

Dave, at sight of his father lying on the grass beside Kate’s father, Jonathan Allardyce, had stolen away without a word to anyone. Ruth, with the tail of her eye, saw him go, and breathed a sigh of relief mixed with anxiety. It was but postponed, she knew too well—the next clash between father and son.

The two older men got up now and stretched their limbs, studying the encampment and the blue, hazy sky piled with cottony clouds with the critical, keen glance of long experience. The wagons of the train, numbering about one hundred and fifty, were corailed Into a giant oblong formation, as for de¬ fence, but loosely, since as yet the pioneers were only on the borders of dangerous country. There were wide gaps between the wagons, and the spare horses, mules, cows and oxen grazed at will outside the camp.

Adam Henry looked slowly about him, then reached for the halter-rope of the bay horse tied to his wagon-wheel and swung himself into the saddle.

“Time to roll out, Sally,” he told his wife. “Pass along the word, Allardyce.”

He rode slowly into the great grassy space inside the wagons, a fine, upright figure, his bare head covered with thick, grizzled hair still partly yellow, his clear blue eyes wide and far-seeing as a sailor’s. Dick Ernshaw watched him with a thrill of boyish admiration. That peerless simplicity, the young Southerner thought, that look of single-minded pur¬ pose, belonged to the born adventurer and colon¬ ist. He did not wonder that these hundreds of headstrong, quarrelsome, half-ignorant men followed the short-spoken, dogged, unyielding old pioneer blindly.

Allardyce shouted down the line, between his thin, gnarled hands: “Catch u—up, now! Ro—oil out!”

The words were picked up and passed on by men’s and women’s voices. Allardyce stood watching the sudden stir of movement, his shrewd face bent into wrinkles as the brilliant sunlight fell on him, his lips doubtfully compressed as he watched a sleepy wagonowner struggling with his team. At last he hurried toward his own outfit, and as he passed his daughter the first gleam of softness lighted his face, weather¬ beaten by a long life on the plains. He touched the motionless child’s head.

“Come, Katie,” he said, his voice sounding like i6 quite another from that which had shouted such harsh persuasion to the train. The child rose docilely and followed him.

Now the whole camp was moving. The cry of voices urging the oxen on, the crack of whips, the creak of wheels, the race of horses’ hoofs, the sound of Adam Henry’s orders shouted from among the moving train, broke the warm silence of the prairie noonday.

The wagons slowly formed into four crooked parallel columns facing west, slowly straightened out, took on steady motion. Dick Ernshaw was off among the horse and cow train on his little piebald mare. Dave was driving the four oxen of his father’s wagon. The twins were crawling about inside the great wagon itself, where their mother sat with sew¬ ing on her knees. Ruth sat beside her brother, whose black mule trotted alongside. Dave was silent, but Ruth could not keep from crying out at the new sights and sounds that with the last few days’ march had begun to crowd upon her. A herd of antelope fled lightly before the train. A village of barking prairie-dogs came to light beside the trail, each dog at the mouth of its burrow, holding its paws up in a pleading way and yelping. Solemn little grey owls were perched beside them, and butterflies flew every¬ where, blue, yellow and purple, and fell upon Ruth’s knees, fluttering.

“Oh, Dave, how strange it is! Where are we now? Tell me again!”

“We’re almost in the valley of the Platte. Fine, fertile land. I’ve heard.” Dave still spoke moodily, hardly raising his eyes, but seemed to be making an effort to shake off his bad temper. “It’s Indian country now—sure enough,” he continued. “Paw¬ nees. But don’t you be afraid. You’ll hear more than prairie dogs now, though, Ruthie. The wolves are afoot. We’re gettin’ to the wilderness.”

CHAPTER II WELVE miles was what Adam Henry had set

1 as an average day’s journey on the road be¬ tween Missouri and Oregon. Now, through the open, fertile country, they often made eighteen miles, or even more; but the old pioneer knew that hard times lay ahead; perils, delays, obstacles of every kind, and that if the train reached Oregon on that twelve-mile average, they would have made a glorious record for those who followed them on that all but unknown trail. It was Adam Henry who was in reality leader of the train, and it was his brief words which were heeded and believed. But in name his authority was equally shared by Allardyce, a veteran plainsman, Westcott and Old Tay¬ lor, and he preferred to have it so, for he was gifted with no talent for putting himself forward, in per¬ suasion or speech-making. His leadership was that of the man determined to fight on to his goal, who will give to his companions in the effort all he has to give, but who does not covet responsibility nor even gratitude. Indeed, responsibility fell on him heavily, almost against his will. And his loyal, con¬ scientious devotion showed itself most often in dogged stubbornness, in fits of temper which were really no more than anger at those who, to his way of thinking, risked success and life itself by their careless or weak-hearted conduct. His way with his eldest son was the same. He loved Dave so much and feared so constantly for his good name and safety that he made the high-spirited boy miserable by his nagging severity.

The people of the train, well content with Adam Henry’s skillful, tireless leadership, put up with his vagaries or laughed at them tolerantly. They knew there was one man in a thousand who could so hold that crowd of headstrong men together in common accord against threatening danger. Not Allardyce, with years of experience on the plains; not Westcott, rugged old trader on the Santa Fe trail, had Adam Henry’s power of inspiring confidence, of leading men where he himself had resolved to go.

But Dave was too close to his father to see plainly. He smarted under the hourly tyranny. He grew blind to the great qualities which outshone Adam Henry’s harshness. Hardly a word passed between them, unless in fault-finding on the elder’s side, as the boy steadily drew away from his father’s influence, demanding his freedom with all the insis¬ tence of his dawning manhood.

And it would have been so easy to hold him, to make him willing to obey, in the few things that really counted, Ruth thought with sad misgiving as, in the jolting wagon, she sat cross-legged by her mother’s side through part of the long, hot after¬ noon, helping her cut out and piece together calico frocks and aprons. The twins played with a collec¬ tion of flowers, seeds and pebbles on the wagon floor. The brilliant sun beat down upon the canvas wagon-top, and in front Dave shouted to the oxen and the long prairie grass swished against the heavy wheels as they rolled on across the plain.

Ruth hesitated about speaking to her mother of what was upmost in her thoughts. Mrs. Henry showed her feelings little, except in times of real emotion, and Ruth often wondered what thoughts really hid themselves beyond her soft dark eyes and her brave, cheerful smile. To Ruth, open and outspoken as her father, this reticence was not natural and she sometimes sought to make her mother open her heart and share with her their common anxieties. Yet in the few times she had succeeded, as when Adam Henry had resolved to leave Kentucky, and again to leave Missouri, Ruth had found in Mrs. Henry’s changed look and voice, in her trem¬ bling hands and throbbing heart, such a depth of feeling and power to suffer that she dimly felt her mother’s wisdom in checking her ardent tongue and conquering those doubts and fears that would have played havoc with her calm sweetness and cheerful courage of every day.

But just now Ruth’s words came out almost un¬ consciously, so long had they lain close to her lips. “Mother! I’m worried about Dave,” she said. “He and father have quarrelled again.”

Mrs. Henry gave a quick glance toward Dave’s back. She spoke low and earnestly. “What was it about?”

“Oh, the same things! Dave wanted to go on duty with Mr. Westcott’s watch. They often change about, you know. Father refused to let him. Then they quarrelled about the pasturage at the nooning. I can’t see why they must do it! They don’t under¬ stand each other.”

“No.” Mrs. Henry fell silent, her deft fingers not ceasing to cut and sew, though Ruth could see how intent her thoughts were. At last she said, “I’ll talk to your father, Ruthie. Don’t say any more now. Only, be very good to Dave, and patient with him. Promise me?”

“Yes, mother,” Ruth nodded.

From the front of the wagon Dave turned and called to her. “Come out here a few minutes, Ruth. I’ve an errand to do. Dick’s here if you need help.”

Mrs. Henry thrust a worn little volume into her daughter’s hand. “Here’s your speller, Ruth—you’ll have time to study your lesson.”

Ruth scrambled out on to the seat and took the long rawhide whip in her hands. Dave had already sprung to the ground and was mounting the black mule, which had obediently halted alongside. Dick Ernshaw got down from his little mare and glanced after the mule as Dave rode away.

“That’s the kind of beast I should have bought, they tell me,” he said. “I’m still laughed at about Mandy, but I like her and she sure can run.”

“Where did you get her?” asked Ruth. “And who’s she named for?”

“I bought her off a trader back on the Missouri line,” Dick answered, rubbing one lean brown hand over his favorite’s neck, at which she reared and pawed with a kind of rebellious pleasure. Dick laughed. “She doesn’t want to admit she likes me, but I almost think she does—if she likes anyone. I named her Mandy after a pony I had back home in Tennessee. Thought it would make me seem nearer there, somehow. It didn’t, though. They jeered at me, I was telling you, for buying her. But I know a thing or two about a horse, and I told ’em so. They said she was a scooter. That she’d run away the second you loosed hold of her. True, too. Up to now I daren’t let her loose, nor even slacken hold on her halter. She’d be off for the horizon yonder, silly thing! She’d lose herself or be picked up by Indians.”

Ruth smiled. “What makes you so proud of her,

Dick? She’s tricky and bad and runs away from you.”

“Yes, but I can’t blame her for that. Poor beast, she’s been treated hard and it’s spoiled her temper. I reckon she ran off from home young, like myself. It’s no use being mean with her; that makes her stubborn.”