Part 27 (1/2)

Slade took to his bed. But he was made of the stuff which absorbs much lead without any great amount of permanent harm. He was up again in a few weeks. He hunted down Jules, who had taken refuge in the Indian country to the north on hearing of his recovery. He brought the prisoner back to Julesburg, and bound him to the snubbing-post in the middle of the stage company's corral.

Accounts of what followed differ. Some authorities maintain that Slade killed Jules. Others, who base their a.s.sertions on the statement of men who said they were eye-witnesses, tell how Slade enjoyed himself for some time filling the prisoner's clothing with bullet holes and then exclaimed,

”h.e.l.l! You ain't worth the lead to kill you.” And turned the victim loose.

But all narrators agree on this; before Slade unbound the living Jules--or the dead one, whichever it may have been--he cut off the prisoner's ears and put them in his pocket.

It may be noted in pa.s.sing that this truculent efficiency expert went wrong in after years and wound up his days at the end of a rope in Virginia City, Montana.

Ben Holliday carried the mails overland throughout the early sixties.

But during the summer of 1864 the Indians of the plains, for the first time in their history, made a coalition. They united in one grand war-party against the outposts along the line, and for a distance of four hundred miles they destroyed stations, murdered employees, and made off with live stock. The loss to the company was half a million dollars.

It crippled Holliday. And the government so delayed consideration of his claims for reimbursment that he was glad to sell the property. The firm of Wells Fargo, who had been increasing their express business until they virtually monopolized that feature of common carrying throughout the West at the close of the Civil War, took the line over.

Wells Fargo! It was the old Wells b.u.t.terfield Co. again. The first winners in the struggle were the last.

The railroad came. Men said that the day of adventure was over. But this adventure has not ended yet.

While this story was being written another pioneer died on that overland mail route. And when his aero-plane came fluttering down out of a driving snowstorm to crash, in a ma.s.s of tangled wreckage, on the side of Elk Mountain, Wyoming, Lieutenant E. V. Wales went to his death within a rifle-shot of the road where so many of his predecessors gave up their lives trying--even as he was then striving--to quicken communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

BOOT-HILL

Boot-Hill! Back in the wild old days you found one on the new town's outskirts and one where the cattle trail came down to the ford, and one was at the summit of the pa.s.s. There was another on the mesa overlooking the water-hole where the wagon outfits halted after the long dry drive. The cow-boys read the faded writing on the wooden headboards and from the stories made long ballads which they sang to the herds on the bedding grounds. The herds have long since vanished, the cow-boys have ridden away over the sky-line, the plaintive songs are slipping from the memories of a few old men, and we go riding by the places where those headboards stood, oblivious.

Of the frontier cemeteries whose dead came to their ends, shod in accordance with the grim phrase of their times, there remains one just outside the town of Tombstone to the north. Here straggling mesquite bushes grow on the summit of the ridge; cacti and ocatilla sprawl over the sun-baked earth hiding between their th.o.r.n.y stems the headboards and the long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mistake. Some of these headboards still bear traces of black-lettered epitaphs which tell how death came to strong men in the full flush of youth. But the vast majority of the boulder heaps are marked by cedar slabs whose penciled legends the elements have long since washed away.

The sun s.h.i.+nes hot here on the summit of the ridge. Across the wide mesquite flat the granite ramparts of the Dragoons frown all the long day, and the bleak hill graveyard frowns back at them. Thus the men who came to this last resting-place frowned back at Death.

There was a day when every mining camp and cow-town from the Rio Grande to the Yellowstone owned its boot-hill; a day when lone graves marked the trails and solitary headboards rotted slowly in the unpeopled wilderness. Many of these isolated wooden monuments fell before the long a.s.saults of the elements; the low mounds vanished and the gra.s.s billowed in the wind hiding the last vestiges of the leveled sepulchers. Sometimes the spot was favorable; outfits rested there; new headboards rose about the first one; for the road was long and weary, the fords were perilous from quicksands; thirst lurked in the desert, and the Indians were always waiting. The camp became a settlement, and in the days of its infancy, when there was no law save that of might, the graveyard spread over a larger area.

There came an era when a member of that stern straight-shooting breed who blazed the trails for the coming of the statutes wielded the powers of high justice, the middle, and the low. Outlaw and rustler opposed the dominion of this peace officer. Then the cemetery boomed like the young town. Finally things settled down to jury trials and men let lawyers do most of the fighting with forensics instead of forty-fives. Churches were built and school-houses; a new graveyard was established; brush and weeds hid the old one's leaning headboards. Time pa.s.sed; a city grew; the boot-hill was forgotten.

This is a chronicle of men whose bones lie in those vanished boot-hills. If one could stand aside on the day of judgment and watch them pa.s.s when the brazen notes of the last trump are growing fainter, he would witness a brave procession. But we at least can marshal the shadowy host from fast waning memories and, looking upon some of their number, recall the deeds they did, the manner of their dying.

Here then they come through the curtain of time's mists, Indian fighter, town marshal, faro-dealer, and cow-boy. There are a few among them upon whom it is not worth while to gaze, those whose lives and deaths were unfit for recording; there are a vast mult.i.tude whose heroic stories were never told and never will be; and there are some whose deeds as they have come down from the lips of the old-timers should never die.

Thus in the forefront pa.s.s lean forms clad for the most part in garments fringed with buckskin. You can see where some have torn off portions of the fringes to clean their rifles.

Old-fas.h.i.+oned long-barreled muzzle-loaders, these rifles; and powder-horns hang by the sides of the bearers. They are long-haired men; and their faces are deeply burned by sun and wind, one hundred and eighty-three of them; and where they died, fighting to the last against four thousand of Santa Ana's soldiers, rose the first boot-hill. That was in San Antonio, Texas, at the building called the Alamo; and in this day, when schoolboys who can describe Thermopylae in detail know nothing of that far finer stand, it will do no harm to dwell on a proud episode ignored by most text-book histories.

On the fifth day of March, 1836, San Antonio's streets were resonant with the heavy tread of marching troops, the clank of arms and the rumble of moving artillery. Four thousand Mexican soldiers were being concentrated on one point, a little mission chapel and two long adobe buildings which formed a portion of a walled enclosure, the Alamo.

For nearly two weeks General Santa Ana had been tightening the cordon of cavalry, infantry, and artillery about the place. It housed one hundred and eighty-three lank-haired frontiersmen, a portion of General Sam Houston's band who had declared for Texan independence.

The Mexicans had cut them off from water; their food was running low.

On this day the dark-skinned commander planned to take the square. His men had managed to plant a cannon two hundred yards away. When they blew down the walls the infantry would charge. It only remained for them to load the field-piece. Bugles sounded; officers galloped through the sheltered streets where the foot soldiers were held in waiting. There came from the direction of the Alamo the steady rat-tat-tat of rifles. The hours went by but the cannon remained silent.

A little group of lean-faced men were crouching on the flat roof of the large out-building. The most of them were clad in fringed garments of buckskin; here and there was one in a hickory s.h.i.+rt and home-spun jeans. Six of them, some bareheaded and some with hats whose wide rims dropped low over their foreheads, were cl.u.s.tered about old Davy Crockett, frontiersman and in his day a member of Congress. Always the six were busy, with ramrods, powder-horns, and bullets, loading the long-barreled eight-square Kentucky rifles. The grizzled marksman took the c.o.c.ked weapons from their hands; one after another, he pressed each walnut stock to his shoulder, lined the sights, pulled the trigger, and laid the discharged piece down, to pick up its successor.

He crouched there on the flat roof facing the Mexican cannon. As fast as men came to load it, he fired. Sometimes a dozen soldiers rushed upon the muzzle of the field-piece surrounding it. At such moments Davy Crockett's arms swept back and forth with smooth unhurried swiftness and his sinewy fingers relaxed from one walnut stock only to clutch another; his hands were never empty. Always a little red flame licked the smoke fog before him like the tongue of an angered snake.