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The band major was a poet. His name is lost to history, but it deserves a place among the titles of the great. Only in the soul of a poet, a great man, could there have been conceived that thought by which the music of triumph should pass the little pinnacle of human exultation, and reach the higher plane of human sympathy.
Forty black horses, keeping step; forty trumpeters, keeping unison; this procession, headed by a mere musician, who none the less was a poet, a great man, crossed the field of Louisburg as it lay dotted with the heaps of slain, and dotted also with the groups of those who sought their slain; crossed that field of woe, meeting only hatred and despair, yet leaving behind only tears and grief. Tears and grief, it is true, yet grief that knew of sympathy, and tears that recked of other tears.
For a long time the lines of invasion had tightened about the old city of Louisburg, and Louisburg grew weaker in the coil. When the clank of the Southern cavalry advancing to the front rang in the streets, many were the men swept away with the troops asked to go forward to silence the eternally throbbing guns. Only the very old and the very young were left to care for the homes of Louisburg, and the number of these grew steadily less as the need increased for more material at the front. Then came the Southern infantry, lean, soft-stepping men from Georgia and the Carolinas, their long black hair low on their necks, their shoes but tattered bits of leather bound upon their feet, their blankets made of cotton, but their rifles shining and their drill perfection. The wheat lay green upon the fields and the odours of the blossoms of the peach trees hung heavy on the air; but there was none who thought of fruitage or of harvest. Out there in front, where the guns were pulsing, there went on that grimmer harvest with which the souls of all were intimately concerned. The boys who threw up their hats to greet the infantry were fewer than they had been before the blossoming of the peach. The war had grown less particular of its food. A boy could speed a bullet, or could stop one. There were yet the boys.
Of all the old-time families of this ancient little city none held position more secure or more willingly accorded than the Fairfaxes and the Beauchamps. There had always been a Colonel Fairfax, the leader at the local bar, perhaps the representative in the Legislature, or in some position of yet higher trust. The Beauchamps had always had men in the ranks of the professions or in stations of responsibility. They held large lands, and in the almost feudal creed of the times they gave large services in return. The curse of politics had not yet reached this land of born politicians. Quietly, smoothly, yet withal keyed to a high standard of living, the ways of this old community, as of these two representative families, went on with little change from generation to generation.
It was not unknown that these two families should intermarry, a Fairfax finding a wife among the Beauchamps, or perchance a Beauchamp coming to the Fairfax home to find a mistress for his own household. It was considered a matter of course that young Henry Fairfax, son of Colonel Fairfax, should, after completing his studies at the ancient institution of William and Mary College, step into his father's law office, eventually to be admitted to the bar and to become his father's partner; after which he should marry Miss Ellen Beauchamp, loveliest daughter of a family noted for its beautiful women. So much was this taken for granted, and so fully did it meet the approval of both families, that the tide of the young people's plans ran on with little to disturb its current. With the gallantry of their class the young men of the plantations round about, the young men of the fastidiously best, rode in to ask permission of Mary Ellen's father to pay court to his daughter. One by one they came, and one by one they rode away again, but of them all not one remained other than Mary Ellen's loyal slave. Her refusal seemed to have so much reason that each disappointed suitor felt his own defeat quite stingless. Young Fairfax seemed so perfectly to represent the traditions of his family, and his future seemed so secure; and Mary Ellen herself, tall and slender, bound to be stately and of noble grace, seemed so eminently fit to be a Beauchamp beauty and a Fairfax bride.
For the young people themselves it may be doubted if there had yet awakened the passion of genuine, personal love. They met, but, under the strict code of that land and time, they never met alone. They rode together under the trees along the winding country roads, but never without the presence of some older relative whose supervision was conventional if careless. They met under the honeysuckles on the gallery of the Beauchamp home, where the air was sweet with the fragrance of the near-by orchards, but with correct gallantry Henry Fairfax paid his court rather to the mother than to the daughter. The hands of the lovers had touched, their eyes had momentarily encountered, but their lips had never met. Over the young girl's soul there sat still the unbroken mystery of life; nor had the reverent devotion of the boy yet learned love's iconoclasm.
For two years Colonel Fairfax had been with his regiment, fighting for what he considered the welfare of his country and for the institutions in whose justice he had been taught to believe. There remained at the old Fairfax home in Louisburg only the wife of Colonel Fairfax and the son Henry, the latter chafing at a part which seemed to him so obviously ignoble. One by one his comrades, even younger than himself, departed and joined the army hastening forward toward the throbbing guns. Spirited and proud, restive under comparisons which he had never heard but always dreaded to hear. Henry Fairfax begged his mother to let him go, though still she said, "Not yet."
But the lines of the enemy tightened ever about Louisburg. Then came a day — a fatal day — fraught with the tidings of what seemed a double death. The wife of Colonel Henry Fairfax was grande dame that day, when she buried her husband and sent away her son. There were yet traditions to support.
Henry Fairfax said good-bye to Mary Ellen upon the gallery of the old home, beneath a solemn, white-faced moon, amid the odours of the drooping honeysuckle. Had Mary Ellen's eyes not been hid beneath the lids they might have seen a face pale and sad as her own. They sat silent, for it was no time for human speech. The hour came for parting, and he rose. His lips just lightly touched her cheek. It seemed to him he heard a faint "good-bye." He stepped slowly down the long walk in the moonlight, and his hand was at his face. Turning at the gate for the last wrench of separation, he gazed back at a drooping form upon the gallery. Then Mrs. Beauchamp came and took Ellen's head upon her bosom, seeing that now she was a woman, and that her sufferings had begun.
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When the band major was twenty miles away in front of Louisburg his trumpets sounded always the advance. The general played the game calmly. The line of the march was to be along the main road leading into the town. With this course determined, the general massed his reserves, sent on the column of assault, halted at the edge of the wood, deployed his skirmishers, advanced them, withdrew them, retreated but advanced again, ever irresistibly sweeping the board in toward the base of Louisburg, knight meeting knight, pawn meeting pawn, each side giving and taking pieces on the red board of war.
The main intrenchments erected in the defences of Louisburg lay at right angles to the road along which came the Northern advance, and upon the side of the wood nearest to the town. Back of the trenches lay broken fields, cut up by many fences and dotted with occasional trees. In the fields both the wheat and the flowers were now trampled down, and a thousand industrious and complaining bees buzzed protest at the losing of their commerce. The defences themselves were but earthworks, though skilfully laid out. Along their front, well hidden by the forest growth, ran a line of entangling abattis of stakes and sharpened interwoven boughs.
In the centre of the line of defence lay the reserves, the boys of Louisburg, flanked on either side by regiments of veterans, the lean and black-haired Georgians and Carolinians, whose steadiness and unconcern gave comfort to more than one bursting boyish heart. The veterans had long played the game of war. They had long since said good-bye to their women. They had seen how small a thing is life, how easily and swiftly to be ended. Yellow-pale, their knees standing high in front of them as they squatted about on the ground, their long black hair hanging down uncared for, they chewed, smoked, swore, and cooked as though there was no jarring in the earth, no wide foreboding on the air. One man, sitting over his little fire, alternately removed and touched his lips to the sooty rim of his tin cup, swearing because it was too hot. He swore still more loudly and in tones more aggrieved when a bullet, finding that line, cut off a limb from a tree above and dropped it into his fire, upsetting the frying pan in which he had other store of things desirable. Repairing all this damage as he might, he lit his pipe and leaned against the tree, sitting with his knees high in front of him. There came other bullets, singing, sighing. Another bullet found that same line as the man sat there smoking.
Overhead were small birds, chirping, singing, twittering. A long black line of crows passed, tumbling in the air, with much confusion of chatter and clangour of complaint that their harvest, too, had been disturbed. They had been busy. Why should men play this game when there were serious things of life?
The general played calmly, and ever the points and edges and fronts of his advance came on, pressing in toward the last row of the board, toward the line where lay the boys of Louisburg. Many a boy was pale and sick that day, in spite of the encouraging calm or the biting jests of the veterans. The strange sighings in the air became more numerous and more urgent. Now and then bits of twigs and boughs and leaves came sifting down, cut by invisible shears, and now and then a sapling jarred with the thud of an unseen blow. The long line in the trenches moved and twisted restlessly.
In front of the trenches were other regiments, out ahead in the woods, unseen, somewhere toward that place whence came the steadiest jarring of artillery and the loudest rattling of the lesser arms. It was very hard to lie and listen, to imagine, to suspect, to dread. For hours the game went on, the reserves at the trenches hearing now distinctly and now faintly the tumult of the lines, now receding, now coming on. But the volume of the tumult, and its separation into a thousand distinct and terrifying sounds, became in the average ever an increasing and not a lessening thing. The cracker-popping of the musketry became less and less a thing of sport, of reminiscences. The whinings that passed overhead bore more and more a personal message. These young men, who but lately had said good-bye to the women of their kin, began to learn what war might mean. It had been heretofore a distant, unmeasured, undreaded thing, conquerable, not to be feared. It seemed so sweet and fit to go forth, even though it had been hard to say good-bye!
Now there began to appear in the woods before the trenches the figures of men, at first scattered, then becoming steadily more numerous. There came men bearing other men whose arms lopped loosely. Some men walked with a hand gripped tightly to an arm; others hobbled painfully. Two men sometimes supported a third, whose head, heavy and a-droop, would now and then be kept erect with difficulty, the eyes staring with a ghastly, sheepish gaze, the face set in a look of horrified surprise. This awful rabble, the parings of the defeated line in front, dropped back through the woods, dropped back upon the young reserves, who lay there in the line. Some of them could go no farther, but fell there and lay silent. Others passed back into the fields where droned the protesting bees, or where here and there a wide tree offered shelter. Suddenly all the summer air was filled with anguish and horror. Was this, then, the War?
And now there appeared yet other figures among the trees, a straggling, broken line, which fell back, halted, stood and fired always calmly, coolly, at some unseen thing in front of them. But this line resolved itself into individuals, who came back to the edge of the wood, methodically picking their way through the abattis, climbing the intervening fences, and finally clambering into the earthworks to take their places for the final stand. They spoke with grinning respect of that which was out there ahead, coming on. They threw off their coats and tightened their belts, making themselves comfortable for what time there yet remained. One man saw a soldier sitting under a tree, leaning against the trunk, his knees high in front of him, his pipe between his lips. Getting no answer to his request for the loan of the pipe, he snatched it without leave, and then, discovering the truth, went on none the less to enjoy the luxury of a smoke, it seeming to him desirable to compass this while it yet remained among the possibilities of life.
At last there came a continued, hoarse, deep cheering, a roaring wave of menace made up of little sounds. An officer sprang up to the top of the breastworks and waved his sword, shouting out something which no one heard or cared to hear. The line in the trenches, boys and veterans, reserves and remnants of the columns of defence, rose and poured volley after volley, as they could, into the thick and concealing woods that lay before them. None the less, there appeared soon a long, dusty, faded line, trotting, running, walking, falling, stumbling, but coming on. It swept like a long serpent parallel to the works, writhing, smitten but surviving. It came on through the wood, writhing, tearing at the cruel abattis laid to entrap it. It writhed, roared, but it broke through. It swept over the rail fences that lay between the lines and the abattis, and still came on! This was not war, but Fate!
There came a cloud of smoke, hiding the face of the intrenchments. Then the boys of Louisburg saw bursting through this suffocating curtain a few faces, many faces, long rows of faces, some pale, some red, some laughing, some horrified, some shouting, some swearing — a long row of faces that swept through the smoke, following a line of steel — a line of steel that flickered, waved, and dipped.
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The bandmaster marshalled his music at the head of the column of occupation which was to march into Louisburg. The game had been admirably played. The victory was complete. There was no need to occupy the trenches, for those who lay in them or near them would never rally for another battle. The troops fell back behind the wood through which they had advanced on the preceding day. They were to form upon the road which had been the key of the advance, and then to march, horse and foot in column, into Louisburg, the place of honour at the head being given to those who had made the final charge to the last trench and through the abattis. Gorged with what it had eaten, the dusty serpent was now slothful and full of sleep. There was no longer need for hurry. Before the middle of the morning the lines would start on the march of the few short miles.
During the delay a young officer of engineers, Captain Edward Franklin by name, asked permission of his colonel to advance along the line of march until he came to the earthworks, to which he wished to give some examination, joining his regiment as it passed beyond the fortifications on its march. The colonel gave his consent, not altogether willingly. "You may see more over there than you want to see, young man," said he.
Franklin went on, following as nearly as he could the line of the assault of the previous day, a track all too boldly marked by the horrid debris of the fight. As he reached the first edge of the wood, where the victorious column had made its entrance, it seemed to him that there could have been no such thing as war. A gray rabbit hopped comfortably across the field. Merry squirrels scampered and scolded in the trees overhead. The jays jangled and bickered, it is true, but a score of sweet-voiced, peaceful-throated birds sang bravely and contentedly as though there had never been a sound more discordant than their own speech. The air was soft and sweet, just cold enough to stir the leaves upon the trees and set them whispering intimately. The sky, new washed by the rain which had fallen in the night, was clean and bright and sweet to look upon, and the sun shone temperately warm. All about was the suggestion of calm and rest and happiness. Surely it had been a dream! There could have been no battle here.
This that had been a dream was changed into a horrid nightmare as the young officer advanced into the wood. About him lay the awful evidences. Coats, caps, weapons, bits of gear, all marked and emphasized with many, many shapeless, ghastly things. Here they lay, these integers of the line, huddled, jumbled. They had all the contortions, all the frozen ultimate agonies left for survivors to see and remember, so that they should no more go to war. Again, they lay so peacefully calm that all the lesson was acclaim for happy, painless war. One rested upon his side, his arm beneath his head as though he slept. Another sat against a tree, his head fallen slightly forward, his lax arms allowing his hands to droop plaintively, palms upward and half spread, as though he sat in utter weariness. Some lay upon their backs where they had turned, thrusting up a knee in the last struggle. Some lay face downward as the slaughtered fall. Many had died with hands open, suddenly. Others sat huddled, the closed hand with its thumb turned under and covered by the fingers, betokening a gradual passing of the vital spark, and a slow submission to the conqueror. It was all a hideous and cruel dream. Surely it could be nothing more. It could not be reality. The birds gurgled and twittered. The squirrels barked and played. The sky was innocent. It must be a dream.
In this part of the wood the dead were mingled from both sides of the contest, the faded blue and the faded gray sometimes scarce distinguishable. Then there came a thickening of the gray, and in turn, as the traveller advanced toward the fences and abattis, the Northern dead predominated, though still there were many faces yellow-pale, dark-framed. At the abattis the dead lay in a horrid commingling mass, some hanging forward half through the entanglement, some still in the attitude of effort, still tearing at the spiked boughs, some standing upright as though to signal the advance. The long row of dead lay here as where the prairie wind drives rolling weeds, heaping them up against some fence that holds them back from farther travel.
Franklin passed over the abattis, over the remaining fences, and into the intrenchments where the final stand had been. The dead lay thick, among them many who were young. Out across the broken and trodden fields there lay some scattered, sodden lumps upon the ground. Franklin stood looking out over the fields, in the direction of the town. And there he saw a sight fitly to be called the ultimate horror of all these things horrible that he had seen.
Over the fields of Louisburg there came a fearful sound, growing, rising, falling, stopping the singing and the twitter of the birds. Across the land there came a horrible procession, advancing with short, uncertain, broken pauses — a procession which advanced, paused, halted, broke into groups; advanced, paused, stopped, and stooped; a procession which came with wailings and bitter cries, with wringing of hands, with heads now and then laid upon the shoulders of others for support; a procession which stooped uncertainly, horribly. It was the women of Louisburg coming to seek their slain — a sight most monstrous, most terrible, unknown upon any field of civilized war, and unfit to be tolerated even in the thought! It is for men, who sow the fields of battle, to attend also to the reaping.
Franklin stood at the inner edge of the earthworks, half hidden by a little clump of trees. It seemed to him that he could not well escape without being seen, and he hesitated at this thought, Yet as he stood it appeared that he must be an intruder even thus against his will. He saw approaching him, slowly but almost in direct line, two figures, an older lady and a girl. They came on, as did the others, always with that slow, searching attitude, the walk broken with pauses and stoopings. The quest was but too obvious. And even as Franklin gazed, uncertain and unable to escape, it seemed apparent that the two had found that which they had sought. The girl, slightly in advance, ran forward a few paces, paused, and then ran back. "Oh, there! there!" she cried. And then the older woman took the girl's head upon her bosom. With bared head and his own hand at his eyes, Franklin hurried away, hoping himself unseen, but bearing indelibly pictured on his brain the scene of which he had been witness. He wanted to cry out, to halt the advancing columns which would soon be here, to tell them that they must not come upon this field, made sacred by such woe.
The column of occupation had begun its movement. Far as the eye could see, the way was filled with the Northern troops now swinging forward in the march. Their course would be along this road, across these earthworks, and over the fields between the wood and the town. The rattle and rumble of the advance began. Upon the morning air there rose the gallant and forgetful music which bade the soldier think not of what had been or would be, but only of the present. The bugles and the cymbals sounded high and strong in the notes of triumph. The game was over. The army was coming to take possession of that which it had won.
It had won — what? Could the answer be told by this chorus of woe which arose upon the field of Louisburg? Could the value of this winning be summed by the estimate of these heaps of sodden, shapeless forms? Here were the fields, and here lay the harvest, the old and the young, the wheat and the flower alike cut down. Was this, then, what the conqueror had won?
Near the intrenchment where the bitter close had been, and where there was need alike for note of triumph, and forgetfulness, the band major marshalled his music, four deep and forty strong, and swung out into the anthem of the flag. The march was now generally and steadily begun. The head of the column broke from the last cover of the wood and came into full sight at the edge of the open country. Thus there came into view the whole panorama of the field, dotted with the slain and with those who sought the slain. The music of triumph was encountered by the concerted voice of grief and woe. There appeared for the feet of this army not a mere road, a mere battlefield, but a ground sacred, hedged high about, not rudely to be violated.
But the band major was a poet, a great man. There came to him no order telling him what he should do, but the thing was in his soul that should be done. There came to him, wafted from the field of sorrow, a note which was command, a voice which sounded to him above the voices of his own brasses, above the tapping of the kettledrums. A gesture of command, and the music ceased absolutely. A moment, and it had resumed.
The forty black horses which made up this regimental band were the pride of the division. Four deep, forty strong, with arching necks, with fore feet reaching far and drooping softly, each horse of the famous cavalry band passed on out upon the field of Louisburg with such carriage as showed it sensible of its mission. The reins lay loose upon their necks, but they kept step to the music which they felt. Forty horses paced slowly forward, keeping step. Forty trumpeters, each man with his right hand aloft, holding his instrument, his left hand at his side, bearing the cap which he had removed, rode on across the field of Louisburg. The music was no longer the hymn of triumph.
Softly and sadly, sweetly and soothingly, the trumpets sang a melody of other days, an air long loved in the old-time South. And Annie Laurie, weeping, heard and listened, and wept the more, and blessed God for her tears!
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Colonel Henry Battersleigh sat in his tent engaged in the composition of a document which occasioned him concern. That Colonel Battersleigh should be using his tent as office and residence — for that such was the fact even the most casual glance must have determined — was for him a circumstance offering no special or extraordinary features. His life had been spent under canvas. Brought up in the profession of arms, so long as fighting and forage were good it had mattered little to him in what clime he found his home. He had fought with the English in India, carried sabre in the Austrian horse, and on his private account drilled regiments for the Grand Sultan, deep within the interior of a country which knew how to keep its secrets. When the American civil war began he drifted to the newest scene of activity as metal to a magnet. Chance sent him with the Union army, and there he found opportunity for a cavalry command. "A gintleman like Battersleigh of the Rile Irish always rides," he said, and natural horseman as well as trained cavalryman was Battersleigh, tall, lean, flat-backed, and martial even under his sixty admitted years. It was his claim that no Sudanese spearsman or waddling assegai-thrower could harm him so long as he was mounted and armed, and he boasted that no horse on earth could unseat him. Perhaps none ever had — until he came to the Plains.
For this was on the Plains. When the bitter tide of war had ebbed, Battersleigh had found himself again without a home. He drifted with the disintegrating bodies of troops which scattered over the country, and in course of time found himself in the only portion of America which seemed to him congenial. Indeed, all the population was adrift, all the anchors of established things torn loose. In the distracted South whole families, detesting the new ways of life now thrust upon them, and seeing no way of retrieving their fortunes in the country which had borne them, broke away entirely from old associations and started on in the strange, vague American fashion of that day, in a hope of finding a newer and perhaps a better country. They moved by rail, by boat, by wagon, in such way as they could. The old Mountain Road from Virginia was trodden by many a disheartened family who found Kentucky also smitten, Missouri and Arkansas no better. The West, the then unknown and fascinating West, still remained beyond, a land of hope, perhaps a land of refuge. The men of the lower South, also stirred and unsettled, moved in long columns to the West and Southwest, following the ancient immigration into Texas. The men of Texas, citizens of a crude empire of unproved resources, likewise cast about them restlessly. Their cattle must some day find a market. To the north of them, still unknown and alluring, lay the new upper country known as the West.
In the North the story was the same. The young men, taken from the fields and marts to the camps and marches of the war, could not easily return to the staid ways of their earlier life. From New England to Michigan, from Michigan to Minnesota, many Northern families began to move also toward that West which offered at least opportunity for change. Thus there poured into the West from many different directions, but chiefly from two right-angling directions which intersected on the Plains, a diverse population whose integers were later with phenomenal swiftness to merge and blend. As in the war the boldest fought, so in emigration the boldest travelled, and the West had the pick of the land. In Illinois and Iowa, after the war had ended, you might have seen a man in flapping blue army overcoat hewing timber for fences on the forgotten farms, or guiding the plough across the black reeking sod; but presently you must have also seen the streams of white-topped wagons, sequel to the white tented fields, moving on, pushing toward the West, the land of action and adventure, the land of hope and promise.
As all America was under canvas, it was not strange that Colonel Battersleigh should find his home in a tent, and that this tent should be pitched upon the Western Plains. Not that he had gone directly to the West after the mustering out of his regiment. To the contrary, his first abode had been in the city of New York, where during his brief stay he acquired a certain acquaintance. Colonel Battersleigh was always a striking figure, the more so by reason of his costume, which was invariably the same. His broad cavalry hat, his shapely varnished boots, his gauntlets, his sweeping cloak, made him fairly historic about the clubs. His air, lofty, assured, yet ever suave, showed that he classified himself cheerfully as being of the natural aristocracy of the earth. When Colonel Battersleigh had occasion to sign his name it was worth a dinner to see the process, so seriously did he himself regard it. "Battersleigh" — so stood the name alone, unsupported and self-sufficient. Seeing which inscription in heavy black lines, many a man wondered, considering that he had discovered an Old-World custom, and joining in the belief of the owner of the name that all the world must know the identity of Battersleigh.
What were the financial resources of Battersleigh after the cessation of his pay as a cavalry officer not even his best friends could accurately have told. It was rumoured that he was the commissioner in America of the London Times. He was credited with being a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. That he had a history no one could doubt who saw him come down the street with his broad hat, his sweeping cloak, his gauntlets, his neatly varnished boots.
In reality Colonel Henry Battersleigh lived, during his city life, in a small, a very small room, up more than one night of stairs. This room, no larger than a tent, was military in its neatness. Battersleigh, bachelor and soldier, was in nowise forgetful of the truth that personal neatness and personal valour go well hand in hand. The bed, a very narrow one, had but meagre covering, and during the winter months its single blanket rattled to the touch. "There's nothing in the world so warm as newspapers, me boy," said Battersleigh. Upon the table, which was a box, there was displayed always an invariable arrangement. Colonel Battersleigh's riding whip (without which he was rarely seen in public) was placed upon the table first. Above the whip were laid the gauntlets, crossed at sixty degrees. On top of whip and gloves rested the hat, indented never more nor less. Beyond these, the personal belongings of Battersleigh of the Rile Irish were at best few and humble. In the big city, busy with reviving commerce, there were few who cared how Battersleigh lived. It was a vagrant wind of March that one day blew aside the cloak of Battersleigh as he raised his hat in salutation to a friend — a vagrant wind, cynical and merciless, which showed somewhat of the poverty with which Battersleigh had struggled like a soldier and a gentleman. Battersleigh, poor and proud, then went out into the West.
The tent in which Colonel Battersleigh was now writing was an old one, yellow and patched in places. In size it was similar to that of the bedroom in New York, and its furnishings were much the same. A narrow bunk held a bed over which there was spread a single blanket. It was silent in the tent, save for the scratching of the writer's pen; so that now and then there might easily have been heard a faint rustling as of paper. Indeed, this rustling was caused by the small feet of the prairie mice, which now and then ran over the newspaper which lay beneath the blanket. Battersleigh's table was again a rude one, manufactured from a box. The visible seats were also boxes, two or three in number. Upon one of these sat Battersleigh, busy at his writing. Upon the table lay his whip, gloves, and hat, in exactly the same order as that which had been followed in the little chamber in the city. A strip of canvas made a carpet upon the hard earthen floor. A hanging cloth concealed a portion of the rear end of the tent. Such had been Battersleigh's quarters in many climes, under different flags, sometimes perhaps more luxurious, but nevertheless punctiliously neat, even when Fortune had left him servantless, as had happened now. Colonel Battersleigh as he wrote now and then looked out of the open door. His vision reached out, not across a wilderness of dirty roads, nor along a line of similar tents. There came to his ear no neighing of horses nor shouting of the captains, neither did there arise the din of the busy, barren city. He gazed out upon a sweet blue sky, unfretted by any cloud. His eye crossed a sea of faintly waving grasses. The liquid call of a mile-high mysterious plover came to him. In the line of vision from the tent door there could be seen no token of a human neighbourhood, nor could there be heard any sound of human life. The canvas house stood alone and apart. Battersleigh gazed out of the door as he folded his letter. "It's grand, just grand," he said. And so he turned comfortably to the feeding of his mice, which nibbled at his fingers intimately, as had many mice of many lands with Battersleigh.
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Far away, across the wide gray plain, appeared a tiny dot, apparently an unimportant fixture of the landscape. An hour earlier it might not have been observed at all by even the keenest eye, and it would have needed yet more time to assure an observer even now that the dot was a moving object. Under the shifting play of the prairie sun the little object appeared now dark, now light in colour, but became gradually more distinct. It came always crawling steadily on. Presently an occasional side-blown puff of dust added a certain heraldry, and thus finally the white-topped wagon and its plodding team came fully into view, crawling ever persistently from the East into the West.
Meantime, from the direction of the north, there came travelling across the prairie another cloud of dust more rapid than that stirred up by the slow-moving emigrant wagon. Sam, the stage driver, was crossing on his regular buckboard trip from Ellisville to Plum Centre, and was now nearly half-way on his journey. Obviously the courses of these two vehicles must intersect, and at the natural point of this intersection the driver of the faster pulled up and waited for the other. "Movers" were not yet so common in that region that the stage driver, natural news agent, must not pause for investigation.
The driver of the wagon, a tall, dark man, drew rein with a grave salutation, his tired horses standing with drooping heads while there took place one of the pregnant conversations of the Plains.
"Mornin', friend," said Sam.
"Mornin', sir," said the other.
"Which way you headin', friend?" asked Sam.
"Well, sir," came the answer, slowly, "I rather reckon you've got me. I've just been movin' on out. I want to locate, but I reckon my team could travel a little further if they had to." This with a certain grimness in his smile, as though he realized the whimsicality of the average motive which governed in that day in quests like his. "Is there much travel comin' through here this season?" he resumed, turning in his seat and resting one foot on the wheel as he sat still perched on the high wagon seat.
"Well," replied Sam, "they ain't so much just yet, but they will be pretty soon. You see, the Land Office is about sixty mile east of here yet, and folks is mostly stoppin' in there. Land around here is pretty much all open yet. If they move the Land Office to the track-end, of course all this land will be taken up a good deal faster."
"Is it good farmin' land around here?"
"Sure. Better'n it is farther west, and just as good as it is farther east. Wheat'll do well here, and it ain't too cold for corn. Best cow country on earth."
"How is Ellisville doing now?"
"Bloomin'."
"Yes, sir, so I heard farther back. Is it goin' to be a real town?"
"That's whatever! How can it help it? It's goin' to be a division point on the road. It's goin' to have all the cattle-shippin' trade. After a while it'll have all the farmin' trade. It's goin' to be the town, all right, don't you neglect that. They's fifteen thousand head of cattle in around here now. Town's got two hotels, good livery stable — that's mine — half a dozen stores, nigh on to a dozen saloons, an' two barber-shops. Yes, sir, Ellisville is the place!"
"Which way are you bound, sir?" asked the stranger, still sitting, apparently in thought, with his chin resting on his hand.
"Well, you see, they's another town goin' up below here about twenty mile — old man Plum's town, Plum Centre. I run the mail an' carry folk acrost from Ellisville to that place. This here is just about halfway acrost. Ellisville's about twenty or twenty-five mile north of here."
Sam spoke lucidly enough, but really he was much consumed with curiosity, for he had seen, behind the driver of the wagon, a face outlined in the shade. He wondered how many "women-folk" the new mover had along, this being ever a vital question at that day. The tall man on the wagon seat turned his face slowly back toward the interior of the wagon.
"What do you think, Lizzie?" he asked.
"Dear me, William," came reply from the darkness in a somewhat complaining voice, "how can I tell? It all seems alike to me. You can judge better than I."
"What do you say, niece?"
The person last addressed rested a hand upon the questioner's shoulder and lightly climbed out upon the seat by his side, stooping as she passed under the low bow of the cover frame. She stood upright, a tall and gracious figure, upon the wagon floor in front of the seat, and shaded her eyes as she looked about her. Her presence caused Sam to instinctively straighten up and tug at his open coat. He took off his hat with a memory of other days, and said his "Good-mornin'" as the schoolboy does to his teacher — superior, revered, and awesome.
Yet this new character upon this bare little scene was not of a sort to terrify. Tall she was and shapely, comely with all the grace of youth and health, not yet tanned too brown by the searing prairie winds, and showing still the faint purity of the complexion of the South. There was no slouch in her erect and self-respecting carriage, no shiftiness in her eye, no awkwardness in her speech. To Sam it was instantaneously evident that here was a new species of being, one of which he had but the vaguest notions through any experiences of his own. His chief impression was that he was at once grown small, dusty, and much unshaven. He flushed as he shifted and twisted on the buckboard seat.
The girl looked about her for a moment in silence, shading her eyes still with her curved hand.
"It is much alike, all this country that we have seen since we left the last farms. Uncle William," she said, "but it doesn't seem dreary to me. I should think — "
But what she would have thought was broken into by a sudden exclamation from farther back in the wagon. A large black face appeared at the aperture under the front wagon bow, and the owner of it spoke with a certain oracular vigour.
"Fo' Gawd, Mass' William, less jess stop right yer! I 'clare, I'se jess wore to a plum frazzle, a-travelin' an' a-travelin'! Ef we gwine settle, why, less settle, thass all I say!"
The driver of the wagon sat silent for a moment, his leg still hanging over the end of the seat, his chin in the hand of the arm which rested upon his other leg, propped up on the dashboard of the wagon. At length, quietly, and with no comment, he unbuckled the reins and threw them out and down upon the ground on either side of the wagon.
"Whoa, boys," he called to the horses, which were too weary to note that they were no longer asked to go farther on. Then the driver got deliberately down. He was a tall man, of good bearing, in his shoulders but little of the stoop of the farmer, and on his hands not any convincing proof that he was personally acquainted with continuous bodily toil. His face was thin, aquiline, proud; his hair dark, his eyes gray. He might have been a planter, a rancher, a man of leisure or a man of affairs, as it might happen that one met him at the one locality or the other. One might have called him a gentleman, another only a "pilgrim." To Sam he was a "mover," and that was all. His own duty as proselyter was obvious. Each new settlement was at war with all others, population being the first need.
"We'll turn out here," said the man, striking his heel upon the ground with significant gesture, as was an unconscious custom among the men who chose out land for themselves in a new region. "We'll stop here for a bite to eat, and I reckon we won't go any farther west. How is this country around here for water?"
"Sure," said Sam, "excuse me. I've got a jug along with me. I nearly always carry some water along, because they ain't but one creek, and they ain't no wells. — Have a drink, miss?" And he politely pulled out the wooden stopper of a jug and offered it with a hand which jumped in spite of himself.
"Thank you, sir," said the girl, and her uncle added his courteous thanks also. "What I meant to ask, sir, however," he continued, "is what is the prospect of getting water in this part of the country in case we should like to settle in here?"
"Oh, that?" said Sam. "Why, say, you couldn't very well hit it much better. Less'n a mile farther down this trail to the south you come to the Sinks of the White Woman Creek. They's most always some water in that creek, and you can git it there any place by diggin' ten or twenty feet.
"That's good," said the stranger. "That's mighty good." He turned to the wagon side and called out to his wife. "Come, Lizzie," he said, "get out, dear, and take a rest. We'll have a bite to eat, and then we'll talk this all over."
The woman to whom he spoke next appeared at the wagon front and was aided to the ground. Tall, slender, black clad, with thin, pale face, she seemed even more unsuited than her husband to the prospect which lay before them. She stood for a moment alone, looking about her at the land which had long been shut off from view by the wagon tent, then turned and went close to the man, upon whom she evidently relied for the solution of life's problems. Immediately behind her there clambered down from the wagon, with many groanings and complaints, the goodly bulk of the black woman who had earlier given her advice. "Set down yer, Mis' Lizzie, in the shade," she said, spreading a rug upon the ground upon the side of the wagon farthest from the sun. "Set down an' git a ress. Gawd knows we all needs it — this yer fo'saken kentry. 'Tain' good as Mizzoury, let 'lone Kaintucky er Ole Vehginny — no, mam!"
There was thus now established, by the chance of small things, the location of a home. This wagon, with its occupants, had come far and journeyed vaguely, having no given point in view. The meeting of this other vehicle, here in the middle of the untracked prairie, perhaps aided by the chance words of a tired negress, made the determining circumstances. It was done. It was decided. There was a relief at once upon every countenance. Now these persons were become citizens of this land. Unwittingly, or at least tacitly, this was admitted when the leader of this little party advanced to the side of the buckboard and offered his hand.
"My name is Buford," he said slowly and with grave courtesy. "This is my wife; my niece, Miss Beauchamp. Your name, sir, I don't know, but we are very glad to meet you."
"My name's Poston," said Sam, as he also now climbed down from his seat, seeing that the matter was clinched and that he had gained a family for his county — "Sam Poston. I run the livery barn. I sure hope you'll stop in here, for you won't find no better country. Do you allow you'll move up to Ellisville and live there?"
"Well, I've started out to get some land," said Buford, "and I presume that the first thing is to find that and get the entry made. Then we'll have to live on it till we can commute it. I don't know that it would suit us at Ellisville just yet. It must be a rather hard town, from all I can learn, and hardly fit for ladies."
"That's so," said Sam, "it ain't just the quietest place in the world for women-folks. Only five or six women in the place yet, outside the section boss's wife and the help at the depot hotel. Still," he added apologetically, "folks soon gets used to the noise. I don't mind it no more at all."
Buford smiled as he glanced quizzically at the faces of his "women-folks." At this moment Sam broke out with a loud exclamation.
"Say!" he cried.
"Yes, sir," said Buford.
"I'll tell you what!"
"Yes?"
"Now, you listen to me. I'll tell you what! You see, this here place where we are now is just about a mile from the White Woman Sinks, and that is, as I was sayin', just about halfway between Ellisville and Plum Centre. Now, look here. This country's goin' to boom. They's goin' to be a plenty of people come in here right along. There'll be a regular travel from Ellis down to Plum Centre, and it's too long a trip to make between meals. My passengers all has to carry meals along with 'em, and they kick on that a-plenty. Now, you look here. Listen to me. You just go down to the White Woman, and drive your stake there. Take up a quarter for each one of you. Put you up a sod house quick as you can — I'll git you help for that. Now, if you can git anything to cook, and can give meals to my stage outfit when I carry passengers through here, why, I can promise you, you'll git business, and you'll git it a-plenty, too. Why, say, this'd be the best sort of a lay-out, all around. You can start just as good a business here as you could at Ellisville, and it's a heap quieter here. Now, I want some one to start just such a eatin' place somewheres along here, and if you'll do that, you'll make a stake here in less'n two years, sure's you're born."
Sam's conviction gave him eloquence. He was talking of business now, of the direct, practical things which were of immediate concern in the life of the region about. The force of what he said would not have been apparent to the unpracticed observer, who might have seen no indication in the wide solitude about that there would ever be here a human population or a human industry. Buford was schooled enough to be more just in his estimate, and he saw the reasonableness of what his new acquaintance had said. Unconsciously his eye wandered over to the portly form of the negress, who sat fanning herself, a little apart from the others. He smiled again with the quizzical look on his face. "How about that, Aunt Lucy?" he said.
"Do hit, Mass' William," replied the coloured woman at once with conviction, and extending an energetic forefinger. "You jess do whut this yer man says. Ef they's any money to be made a-cookin', I kin do all the cookin' ever you wants, ef you-all kin git anything to cook. Yas, suh!"
"You ain't makin' no mistake," resumed Sam. "You go in and git your land filed on, and put you up a sod house or dugout for the first season, because lumber's awful high out here. It's pretty late to do anything with a crop this year, even if you had any breakin' done, but you can take your team and gether bones this fall and winter, and that'll make you a good livin', too. You can git some young stock out of the trail cattle fer a'most anything you want to give, and you can hold your bunch in here on the White Woman when you git started. You can cut a little hay a little lower down on the White Woman for your team, or they can range out in here all winter and do well, just like your cows can. You can git a lot of stock about you before long, and what with keepin' a sort of eatin' station and ranchin' it a bit, you ought to git along mighty well, I should say. But — 'scuse me, have you ever farmed it much?"
"Well, sir," said Buford, slowly, "I used to plant corn and cotton, back in Kentucky, befo' the war."
"And you come from Kentucky out here?"
"Not precisely that; no, sir. I moved to Missouri from Kentucky after the war, and came from Missouri here."
Sam looked at him, puzzled. "I allowed you'd never ranched it much," he said, vaguely. "How'd you happen to come out here?"
The quizzical smile again crossed Buford's face. "I think I shall have to give that up, on my honour," he said. "We just seem to have started on West, and to have kept going until we got here. It seemed to be the fashion — especially if you'd lost about everything in the world and seen everything go to pieces all about you." He added this with a slow and deliberate bitterness which removed the light trace of humour for the time.