Peter Skene Ogden

“ The book itself says it is "By a fur trader. "
It is accredited to Peter Skene Ogden, and evidence in the case has been the subject of some interesting essays by historians. Jesse Applegate read this book or some book by Ogden in manuscript: "...it comprised his own early experiences; ... we had no reading and Mr. Ogden gave it to me as a Winter's amusement. It was full of interesting episodes.... Mr. Ogden brought it to Washington Irving who undertook to edit it, but died before its completion." George T. Allen, at one time a clerk at Fort Vancouver, said "Mr. Ogden ... ”

“ Judge Isaac Ogden was, very soon after 1794, by the recom- mendation of Lord Dorchester (then Governor General of Canada) , appointed to be one of the Puisne Judges of the District of Montreal, and at once removed his family to that city, and it was there, persumably, that the boyhood and youth of his son Peter Skene were spent. There is no record as to those years, although the record as to a brother, Charles Richard, three years his senior, is that he, Charles, "was 334 T. C. Elliott. educated by Rev. Mr. Doty of Three Rivers and Mr. Shakel of Montreal, where he studied law. ”

“ Greening let his hand fall. He stepped back a pace, Joe’s subdued, calm warning penetrating his senses like the sound of a blow on an anvil. Last week this gangling strip of a youngster was nothing but a boy, fetching and carrying in Isom Chase’s barn-yard. Tonight, big and bony and broad-shouldered, he was a man, with the same outward gentleness over the iron inside of him as old Peter Newbolt before him; the same soft word in his mouth as his Kentucky father, who had, without oath or malediction, shot dead a Kansas Redleg, in the old days of border strife, for spitting on his boot. ”

“ Brethren came to it from Salt Lake City. Gentiles came from everywhere. The settlement grew and prospered.
In 1849, people began to talk of locating a city right there at the junction of the two rivers.
In 1850, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and others, laid out the settlement and called it Ogden, after Peter Skeen Ogden, the explorer, long since dead, but whose dashing, daring, brilliant adventures were still charming to the men of that wild land. Every time the city's name is mentioned it is another proof that although,
"The man might die, his memory lives." ”

“ Among other prominent U. E, Loyalists then residing in Quebec were the Skenes, formerly of Skenesboro (now Whitehall) on the shores of Lake Champlain in New York state. These two families, the Ogdens and the Skenes, had been possessed of large properties and accustomed to the luxuries of life and were living in Quebec in circumstances limited for people of their social station, and a common bond of sympathy existed between them. Andrew Skene was also a jurist, and became god-father to this, the youngest son of Judge Ogden. ”

“ The old prophecy that a little child shall lead them is more often fulfilled, even in this world, I think, than most of us have any idea of.”
Meantime the current of the river had carried the boats close into shore, and Aunt Frances, with the charm of manner that was always natural to her, asked the Captain to come up to the house, and he came up, and accepted the Van Vleets' cordial invitation to stay to supper, and not until the moon was high over the river did he call to Peter to row him back to New York ”

“ He only pondered me, dumfoundered, fingering his lips.
“The man is an infernal scoundrel, sir,” I said with emphasis. “I intimated as much to you once before. What I did not, could not, touch upon at the time, was the strange coincidence of his double connection with your family. He was not only your son’s travelling tutor, sir; but he is also, by his own assertion, and in Lady Skene’s belief, my father.”
For a moment his mind, grasping desperately at the significance of my words, slipped and went under.
“Dalston!” he muttered amazed. “Delane was Charlie’s tutor.” ”

“ Slavens looked at him severely from the shadow of his battered hat. The man lacked the bearing of one who inspires confidence; Slavens frowned his disapproval of the approach.
“It means money to you,” pressed the man, stretching out his hand and showing a card with numbers penciled on it.
Axel Peterson had stood gaping, his card with numbers on it also in his hand, held up at a convenient angle for his eyes. Dr. Slavens had read them as he pushed Peterson aside, and the first two figures on the other man’s card–all that Slavens could hastily glimpse–were the same. ”

“ Slavens than any other friend. If you want his claim, why don’t you go down there and buy it, as you were ready to buy it from Peterson if you could have filed him on it?”
“Because I can get it cheaper,” said Boyle. “I’ll not give him ten cents for it. It’s your job to go and tell him that I want him to go over to Meander and pay up on that land, and I’ll furnish the money for it, but before he pays he must sign a relinquishment to me.”
“I’ll not do it!” she declared.
“If you won’t lead, I’ll have to try spurs, and I don’t like to do that, Agnes, for the sake of old days.” ”

“ On the evening of that day of blasted hopes the two of them walked away in the gloaming toward the river, with few words between them until they left the lights of Comanche behind.
“Mr. Strong is considerably elated over his luck,” said Agnes at last, after many sidling glances at his gloomy profile.
“That’s the way it goes,” Dr. Slavens sighed. “I don’t believe that chance is blind; I think it’s just perverse. I should say, not counting myself, that Strong is the least deserving of any man in the crowd of us. Look at old Horace Bentley, the lawyer. ”

“ Ogden was amazed at the daring of this handful.
"Go back with us, go back," he urged. "You can do nothing. All the tribes will unite against you. The idea of sending a party up there this winter is the wildest notion I ever heard of. You had better burn the mission buildings here and go back to the valley."
But the Americans firmly answered, "No," and proceeded to fortify the mission at the Dalles.
Worried, troubled, nervous from loss of sleep, Peter Skeen Ogden went on to Fort Vancouver. Douglas immediately despatched a letter to the anxious settlement at the Falls. ”

“ Thank Heaven, I need not scruple to come to you, were you in sickness or in sorrow: suffering casts down all barriers for the servant of Him who in all our afflictions was afflicted. Meantime, do not think to change my resolution in any way; there is but one path opened for me in this, as in all other earthly trials--the path of duty--and that alone will I follow."
Agnes turned away, weeping bitterly. Richard flung himself into a chair, and hid his face on his arm. There was a painful silence for a few minutes, till Mr. Clayton spoke again. ”

“ My name is Slavens, and I am Number One.”
The people in the crowd pressed closer, closing around the tired horse, which stood with its head drooping, its flaccid sides heaving. Jerry Boyle said nothing, but he put into his pocket the paper which he had been holding ready in his hand for Axel Peterson’s signature the minute the entry should be made, and turned his back. A black-visaged man with shifting, greasy eyes shouldered, panting, through the press of people and put his hand on Slaven’s arm. ”

“ But I have ceased to be a boy—there’s the devil of it, Mr Pugsley. If you don’t know who my father was, does Lord Skene know?”
He shook his head, with an odd little gasp. I saw him making for the pill-box again.
“What!” cried I. “Did he, too, accept me as a pledge?”
Something in his face enlightened me. The man was too shallow to hide a guilty self-consciousness. ”

“ I took that, not for myself, but—damn it! don’t you know that Lord Skene disapproves of your coming here? I told him you came by your own will, not mine; and if your will isn’t his, he can just look after his own. But you take the risk of any consequences if you come. I warn you, I’m master here, and I kiss or ill treat whom I choose. Do you understand? You’re a ‘unique young party’ according to him, and you’ve been kissed by the grandson of that old pottle-pot yonder. How do you like the thought? You’ve bound yourself slave to something worse than you expected, haven’t you! ”

“ I’ve seen proof of that right here in Comanche, and I want to tell you people that doctor wasn’t any man’s coward.”
“Thank you for saying that,” blurted Agnes, wholly unintentionally, a glow of pride on her cheeks. 128
Mrs. Reed and June looked at her, the widow with a severe opening of her mouth, out of which no sound came; June with a smile behind her hand.
Walker shook his head.
“He had the courage,” said he, “but he had too much sense to try to go through that cañon. No white man ever went in there and came out alive. ”

“ It’s never done; it’s never heard of. A man’s got to prove himself, like David of old. There’s a lot of Goliaths here on the range he’s got to meet and show he’s able to handle before any man would trust him full shares on the increase of two thousand sheep.”
“You didn’t talk that way at first,” Mackenzie charged, rather sulkily.
“I took to you when I heard how you laid Swan out in that fight you had with him, John. That was a recommendation. But it wasn’t enough, for it was nothing but a chance lucky blow you got in on him that give you the decision. ”

“ She approached me again, curiously.
“Eh!” she wondered. “So this is my Georgie’s child, is it, the deuce? And how does your mammy treat you, my pretty?”
“Lady Skene has got another son now,” I said. “Didn’t you know it?”
“I hear nothing, and I know nothing in these days, dovey the devil,” she answered. “So long as I’m given my little provision as her mother, Georgie’s welcome to make out her own life as she pleases for me. We usen’t to get on very well together, not always, her and me. She’d come to me in her troubles, she would, like her father’s own gal; but most times we lived apart.” ”

“ Boyle seemed to wilt. He turned his back to the winner of Number One, but from that moment he stuck pretty close to Axel Peterson until something passed between them again, this time from Peterson’s hand to Boyle’s. Peterson sighed as he gave it up, for hope went with it.
Meantime a wave of information was running through the crowd.
“It’s Number One,” men repeated to each other, passing the word along. “Number One got here!”
Hurrying to the hotel, Agnes was skirting through the thinner edges of the gathering at the very moment when Dr. Slavens turned from the window, his papers in his hand. ”

“ It was the instinctive act of a moment, and regretted, I think, as soon as done; but it hurt me so cruelly, that my devil, for an instant, returned uppermost. “Very well,” I thought, “if you will have me your Nemesis!”
Lord Skene greeted me kindly but abstractedly. He made no comment on my late absence, except to ask me where I had been gone these three or four days.
“To Clapham, sir,” I said, perfectly self-possessed. “It occurred to me to explore the field of Mr Pugsley’s early ministrations. I am thinking of writing his life.” ”

“ Agnes trembled with terror at his violence. She almost forgot her grief in her anxiety. She rose up, and clinging to his arm, implored of him to be more composed.
"Dear Richard," she said, "it can do no good to use these terrible words against them; let us think rather what we are to do. I cannot go, I feel that I cannot; it would kill me!"
"You shall not," said Richard, turning to her almost fiercely. "I tell you, you shall not leave me; no power on earth will induce me to part from you."
"But how? how?" said Agnes. "I cannot stay when such terms have been used towards me." ”

“ And yet it was a coincidence, as strange as any that the annals of villainy can record. But then Coincidence is the father of Luck.
This strange, strange letter! this old young voice from the clouds, dropping upon me all in an unexpected moment like a ghostly message from Thibet. It must have its meaning in the sequences of Fate—must have been meant to have. That the fellow should have been young Skene’s tutor—his monitor, great God! a vulgar intrigant, with a past, hardly past indeed, and caught, in despite of it, making eyes at “you-know-who”! You-know-who? ”

“ Mackenzie declared, hot to the bone in his burning resentment of this barbarity. “How long has he kept you tied up this way?”
“Three years now,” said she, with a weary sigh.
“It’s going to stop, right here. What did you let him treat you this way for? Why didn’t some of your neighbors take a hand in it?”
“Nobody comes,” she sighed, shaking her head sadly. “The name of Swan Carlson is a curse on the wind. Nobody passes; we are far from any road that men travel; your face is the first I have seen since Swan put the chain on me like a wolf.” ”

“ Nobody will offer you any money for that place; it isn’t worth anything to a soul on earth but me. You couldn’t sell out in a century. You’ll get that through your nut if you hang around here long enough.”
For a little while Slavens thought it over, walking away a few paces and appraising the situation studiously. Suddenly he wheeled and confronted Boyle, leveling his finger at his face.
“Your bluff don’t go, Boyle!” said he. “You’d just as well get on your horse and light out; and if you want to bring it to a fight, then let it be a fight. We’ll meet you on any ground you pick.” ”

“ Peter Ogden, an enterprising and intrepid leader of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who first explored it. The wild and half-desert region through which the travellers were passing, is wandered over by hordes of Shoshokoes, or Root Diggers, the forlorn branch of the Snake tribe. They are a shy people, prone to keep aloof from the stranger. The travellers frequently met with their trails, and saw the smoke of their fires rising in various parts of the vast landscape, so that they knew there were great numbers in the neighborhood, but scarcely ever were any of them to be met with. ”