Part 19 (1/2)

END OF PART II

PART III

The Mountains

CHAPTER I

Fort Laramie stood where the eastern roots of the mountains start in toothed reef and low, premonitory sweep from the level of the plains.

Broken chains and spurs edged up toward it. Far beyond, in a faint aerial distance, the soaring solidity of vast ranges hung on the horizon, cloudy crests painted on the sky. Laramie Peak loomed closer, a bold, bare point, gold in the morning, purple at twilight. And the Black Hills, rock-ribbed and somber, dwarf pines clutching their lodges, rose in frowning ramparts to the North and West.

It was a naked country, bleak and bitter. In winter it slept under a snow blanket, the lights of the fort encircled by the binding, breathless cold. Then the wandering men that trapped and traded with the Indians came seeking shelter behind the white walls, where the furs were stacked in storerooms, and the bourgeois' table was hospitable with jerked meat and meal cakes. When the streams began to stir under the ice, and a thin green showed along the bottoms, it opened its gates and the men of the mountains went forth with their traps rattling at the saddle horn. Later, when the spring was in waking bloom, and each evening the light stayed longer on Laramie Peak, the Indians came in migrating villages moving to the summer hunting grounds, and in painted war parties, for there was a season when the red man, like the Hebrew kings, went forth to battle.

It was midsummer now, the chalk-white walls of the fort were bathed in a scorching suns.h.i.+ne, and the nomads of the wilderness met and picked up dropped threads in its courtyard. It stood up warlike on a rise of ground with the brown swiftness of a stream hurrying below it. Once the factors had tried to cultivate the land, but had given it up, as the Indians carried off the maize and corn as it ripened. So the short-haired gra.s.s grew to the stockade. At this season the surrounding plain was thick with grazing animals, the fort's own supply, the ponies of the Indians, and the cattle of the emigrants.

Encampments were on every side, cl.u.s.tering close under the walls, whence a cannon poked its nose protectingly from the bastion above the gate. There was no need to make the ring of wagons here. White man and red camped together, the canvas peaks of the tents showing beside the frames of lodge poles, covered with dried skins. The pale face treated his red brother to coffee and rice cakes, and the red brother offered in return a feast of boiled dog.

Just now the fort was a scene of ceaseless animation. Its courtyard was a kaleidoscopic whirl of color, s.h.i.+fting as the sun s.h.i.+fted and the shadow of the walls offered shade. Indians with bodies bare above the dropped blankets, moved stately or squatted on their heels watching the emigrants as they bartered for supplies. Trappers in fringed and beaded leather played cards with the plainsmen in shady corners or lounged in the cool arch of the gateway looking aslant at the emigrant girls. Their squaws, patches of color against the walls, sat docile, with the swarthy, half-breed children playing about their feet. There were French Canadians, bearded like pirates, full of good humor, filling the air with their patois, and a few Mexicans, who pa.s.sed the days sprawled on serapes and smoking sleepily. Over all the bourgeois ruled, kindly or crabbedly, according to his make, but always absolutely the monarch of a little princ.i.p.ality.

The doctor's train had reached the fort by slow stages, and now lay camped outside the walls. Bella's condition had been serious, and they had crawled up the valley of the North Platte at a snail's pace. The gradual change in the country told them of their advance--the intrusion of giant bluffs along the river's edge, the disappearance of the many lovely flower forms, the first glimpses of parched areas dotted with sage. From the top of Scotts Bluffs they saw the mountains, and stood, a way-worn company, looking at those faint and formidable shapes that blocked their path to the Promised Land. It was a sight to daunt the most high-hearted, and they stared, dropping e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns that told of the first decline of spirit. Only the sick woman said nothing. Her languid eye swept the prospect indifferently, her spark of life burning too feebly to permit of any useless expenditure. It was the strange man who encouraged them. They would pa.s.s the mountains without effort, the ascent was gradual, South Pa.s.s a plain.

The strange man had stayed with them, and all being well, would go on to Fort Bridger, probably to California, in their company. It was good news. He was what they needed, versed in the lore of the wilderness, conversant with an environment of which they were ignorant. The train had not pa.s.sed Ash Hollow when he fell into command, chose the camping grounds, went ahead in search of springs, and hunted with Daddy John, bringing back enough game to keep them supplied with fresh meat. They began to rely upon him, to defer to him, to feel a new security when they saw his light, lean-flanked figure at the head of the caravan.

One morning, as the doctor rode silently beside him, he broke into a low-toned singing. His voice was a mellow baritone, and the words he sung, each verse ending with a plaintive burden, were French:

”Il y a longtemps que je t'ai aime jamais je ne t'oublierai.”

Long ago the doctor had heard his wife sing the same words, and he turned with a start:

”Where did you learn that song?”

”From some voyageur over yonder,” nodding toward the mountains. ”It's one of their songs.”

”You have an excellent accent, better than the Canadians.”

The stranger laughed and addressed his companion in pure and fluent French.

”Then you're a Frenchman?” said the elder man, surprised.

”Not I, but my people were. They came from New Orleans and went up the river and settled in St. Louis. My grandfather couldn't speak a sentence in English when he first went there.”

When the doctor told his daughter this he was a little triumphant.

They had talked over Courant and his antecedents, and had some argument about them, the doctor maintaining that the strange man was a gentleman, Susan quite sure that he was not. Dr. Gillespie used the word in its old-fas.h.i.+oned sense, as a term having reference as much to birth and breeding as to manners and certain, ineradicable instincts.

The gentleman adventurer was not unknown on the plains. Sometimes he had fled from a dark past, sometimes taken to the wild because the restraints of civilization pressed too hard upon the elbows of his liberty.

”He's evidently of French Creole blood,” said the doctor. ”Many of those people who came up from New Orleans and settled in St. Louis were of high family and station.”

”Then why should he be out here, dressed like an Indian and wandering round with all sorts of waifs and strays? I believe he's just the same kind of person as old Joe, only younger. Or, if he does come from educated people, there's something wrong about him, and he's had to come out here and hide.”

”Oh, what a suspicious little Missy! Nothing would make me believe that. He may be rough, but he's not crooked. Those steady, straight-looking eyes never belonged to any but an honest man. No, my dear, there's no discreditable past behind him, and he's a gentleman.”