Waybill

“ Wild Bill, as a frontier character of the daring, cunning and honorable class, stands alone, without a prototype; his originality is as conspicuous as his remarkable escapades. He was desperate without being a desperado; a fighter without that disposition which invites danger or craves the excitement of an encounter. He killed many men, but in every instance it was either in self-defense or in the prosecution of a duty which he deemed justifiable. Wild Bill was a necessary character in the Far West during the period which marked his career. ”

“ Wayland came alive out of his strange trance.
"It isn't to us they are signalling. Move back quick, out of sight, sir; see! there's a man half way across, the fellow in the yellow slicker! There's some one on foot holding him in his saddle! What ever are they waving so frantically for?"
Involuntarily, both men had wheeled the ponies back in the screen of trees, when the old man cried out: "What in blazes ails your mule?"
The little animal had jumped sideways.
"Get back, quick! for God's sake, Wayland! A know the signs from the Canadian Rockies. It isn't us they are signalling. It's the snow ”

“ The mule stood munching near. The old frontiersman slept heavily, his face troubled and upturned to the sky. Wayland noticed the livid tinge of the lips, the shadows round the eye sockets, the protuberance of veins on the backs of the old man's hands. The sky seemed to come down lower as the red twilight darkened; and he could hear not a sound but the crunch of the grazing mule and the slow drop, drop, drop of the water seeping from the terra cotta ledge. The stars were beginning to prick through the indigo darkness. In another hour, it would be bright enough to travel by starlight ”

“ Wayland laid the old head on the pillowed pack trees, fitting rest for frontiersman of the wilderness; then he stood up to think! A terrible passion of tenderness, of question, of defiance to God, rushed through his thoughts. The animals take their tragedies dumb and uncomplaining. Man alone has not learned the futility of shouting impotent reproaches at a brazen sky.
The Ranger unsaddled the pony. Then he tethered the mule and broncho by separate ropes to the boulders. ”

“ Wayland stopped pacing. He almost stopped thinking. The consciousness, the realizing sense of her presence, of her touch, of a something more than her touch, of her being enveloping his in some ethereal fire, went over the Ranger in fiercely tender flood tides; this time, not in tumultuous confused desire, but in waves of strength, in visions from which the mists had vanished, daring that laughed with gladness over life. There were no longer two Waylands in conflict, with one sneering and looking on. "A house divided against itself shall fall." ”

“ The large expanses of almost virgin bush one would almost imagine to teem with wild birds, but this is far from being the case. In the forest-country the hornbill is very common. These birds are generally seen in large flocks, and assimilate well with the solitude of their surroundings as they hover from one tree to another with their peculiar flight, uttering their weird, mournful cry. Their flight reminds one forcibly of a switchback working very slowly, as they flutter first up and then downwards, in the motion towards their goal. ”

“ Bill's eyes searched the outfit for some sign of craft, but there was none. Even with his local regalia, it was clear that the young man was of a far, black northern city. He had discarded the enormous stirrups of his Mexican saddle; he used the small English stirrup, and his feet were thrust forward until the steel tightly gripped his ankles. As Bill's eyes travelled over the stranger, they lighted suddenly upon the stirrups and the thrust feet, and immediately he smiled in a friendly way. No dark purpose could dwell in the innocent heart of a man who rode thus on the plains. ”

“ So likewise has the Gray Wagtail oft been our sole bird companion on many a Highland water, both on the mainland and in Skye. We never tire of watching its sylph-like actions, the dainty way it poises on the stones or flits along before us stage after stage in undulating flight uttering its cheery chiz zit as it goes, or of admiring the exquisite blending of its showy yet delicately coloured plumage. ”

“ A guessed that much when y'r Indian woman sent me the wrong road from the Ridge trail, that night! She doesn't even know who that Indian woman is."
"You came—for her?" repeated Wayland slowly. The night on the Ridge came back to him! Calamity's fear when the old frontiersman arrived; Bat's threat to expose something; Eleanor's perturbed letter; the father's half furtive defiant existence. He was too proud to ask more than the other cared to tell, too loyal to pry into any part of her life that she could not willingly share with him. ”

“ Daylight came and they still held off. Eagerly we looked to the westward, but no wagon-train appeared. We began to fear that something had happened to our friends, when, suddenly one of the Indians jumped up, and with every evidence of excitement signaled to the others. In an instant they were all mounted.
"They hear the crack of the bull-whip," said Woods.
He was right. Without another glance in our direction the Sioux galloped away toward the foot-hills, and as they disappeared we heard the welcome snap of the long bull-whip, and saw the first of our wagons coming up the trail. ”

“ The Ranger stooped and pressed his lips to the blood-blotched back of the faithful shrivelled old hand. He did not shed a tear. We weep only when we are half hurt.
Wayland seized the Service axe and uncased his own rifle. Then in words that were not worshipful, not bending his knees, but standing with his hat off, he uttered what may have been a prayer, or may have been blasphemy. I leave you to judge: "By God, if there is a God, why doesn't He waken up? If there is a God, does He stand for right? Is there such a thing as Right; or is Right the dream of fools? I want to know! ”

“ The mule and the broncho stood pointing their ears forward. Wayland's mare, which he had bought at one of the irrigation farms, lifted up her neck and whinnied. It was at that irrigation farm operated by a retired newspaper man from Chicago—they had got a reading of the first newspaper seen since leaving the Valley and learned that the bodies of the two remaining fugitive outlaws had been found by the railway navvies. Wayland thoughtfully removed his Forest Service medallion. Men do not question each other over much in the West. ”

“ Back and forth across a long, down-sweeping ridge they wove their toilsome way toward the clouds, which grew each hour more formidable, awesome with their weight, ponderous as continents in their majesty of movement. The horses began to labor with roaring breath, and Wayland, dismounting to lighten his pony’s burden, was dismayed to discover how thin the air had become. Even to walk unburdened gave him a smothering pain in his breast.
“Better stay on,” called the girl. “My rule 90 is to ride the hill going up and walk it going down. Down hill is harder on a horse than going up.” ”

“ Where the cut-way widened and lost itself in an alkali sink, the hoof prints of the fugitives' horses led out again to the open country of gray torrid earth dotted by sage brush and greasewood. The yellow sky met the ochre panting earth in a tremulous heat mist of wavering purple; and against that sky line, a swirl of dust marked the receding figures of the riders.
"There they go, Wayland! It's a case of who lasts out now! If we can only keep pushing them ahead, this heat wull do the rest." ”

“ One can scarcely walk along the banks of a British stream in spring or summer without noticing a pretty and graceful bird, sometimes running along near the edge of the water, and stopping every now and then to pick off an insect from the herbage, and sometimes rising into the air to catch a fly or gnat. And one can easily understand why the name wagtail has been given to it, for no matter whether it is flying or running, its tail is never still. ”

“ Only the cheesy-hearted, the warriors with maggots and grubs manufacturing punk out of heart-wood, for all the world like humans infected by evil thoughts, only the hollow hearted came down to earth with a crash in the fray.
Another turn, you were among the lodge-pole pines and englemann spruce—pure park, Wayland always thought, the delight of a Forester's heart; warm human open park places where you kept looking for deer though you knew there weren't any. In riding down the backbone of the Ridge, Wayland always planned to camp under the lodge pole pines ”

“ Every mile was a mile deeper into the eternity of her love . . . he knew that; but he also knew that the fulfilment of duty meant renunciation. Was it the cry of the flesh? Wayland scoffed the thought. Flesh in the frontier West doesn't take the trouble to wear fig-leaf signs. It is blazoning, bold, unashamed, known for what it is; but there is no confusion of values. He who wills takes what he wills and wears the mark. Wayland had been long enough away from the confused values of more civilized lands to know belladonna eyes from starlight; and he knew what his being craved was not carrion. ”

“ A RIDE FOR LIFE.
“There’s Injun signs about, Billy, so keep your eyes open.”
So said the station boss of the Pony Express trail, addressing Buffalo Bill, who had dashed up to the cabin, his horse panting like a hound, and the rider ready for the fifteen-mile flight to the next relay. “I’ll be on the watch, Boss, you bet,” said Billy Cody, the pony rider, and with a yell to his fresh pony he was off like an arrow from a bow. ”

“ The Gray Wagtail visits these upland streams for the purpose of rearing its young. Not every wanderer by the water-side is fortunate enough to get a peep at this bird’s domestic arrangements. It has, fortunately perhaps, a happy way of concealing its nest under some large stone or overhanging rock, or in a quiet nook, not necessarily in a secluded spot, but often close by the wayside, where the very audacity of the selection proves a source of safety. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII—THE NEW LIFE Perched on the make-shift saddle of a baggage-camel at an apparently break-neck height above the ground, Muriel still had the feeling that she was playing an elaborate game as she jogged along beside Daniel’s taller and more magnificent beast, with its gaily coloured tassels and trappings, and its rich white sheepskin upon which its rider was seated. Behind them rode a black-bearded son of the desert, with a white bernous over his head, silver-mounted pistols stuck into his sash, and a rifle slung over his shoulders. ”

“ A've headed them off from the South trail. We've got them, Wayland, the low dastard scoundrels! We've got them trapped like rats in a trap! They're in the Pass if you've a man in the Valley with spirit enough to get out with a gun!" He stopped for breath as the two horses floundered together.
"We haven't," answered Wayland.
"They jumped the gully! Man alive, y' ought t' seen them jump the gully! A slammed them right down into the bottom of it. A would to God 't had been to the bottomless pit. The same gentry A saw that night under your Ridge, saving his High Mightiness. ”

“ She came back to her sycamore while I was watching the wrens, and flew right up to the mouth of the nest. She was a little nervous. She poked in her bill, drew it back; put in her head, drew that back; then swung her body partly in; but finally the tip of her tail disappeared down the hole.
[68]
The next morning, in riding by, I heard weak voices from the woodpecker mansion. If young were to be fed, I must be on hand. Such luxurious observing! Riding Mountain Billy out into the meadow, I dismounted, and settled myself comfortably against a haycock with the bridle over my arm. ”

“ Wayland punched both fists in the jacket pockets of his sage-green Service suit, and kicked a log back to the camp fire that smouldered in front of his cabin. If she had been his wife he would have explained what a fool-thing it was to argue that all a man had to do was fight. ”

“ After Billy came the pack-mule, driven by the man from Turner’s, a square-jawed, bronzed young fellow, mounted also on a mule and conversing amicably with John Brown. The lunch-bag had been passed down the line, but there was no halt, except for water at the crossing of a little gulch. The trail wound in and out among the spurs of the hills and up and down the rock-faced heights. ”

“ The pied wagtail is probably not more abundant in this country than the yellow wagtail, but is far better known, being a more generally diffused species, often seen in the neighbourhood of houses where the yellow wagtail never comes. And if there be a pied wagtail anywhere within range of sight, it is sure to be seen and recognised, for in its black-and-white plumage it is the most conspicuous small bird in this country, not excepting the kingfisher, snow-bunting and blackbird. ”

“ The mule no longer ambled ahead with ears pointed. He shuffled through the ash with dragging steps; and the sage brush crackled brittle where the trail led out from the silt across the baked earth. The heat waves writhed and throbbed through the atmosphere, a flame through a sieve, with a scorch of burning from the ground and clouds of dust like smoke.
"I think I'll get off and walk," said Wayland, suiting the action to the word. "I hope those blackguards are counting on camping at a spring to-night." ”

“ One of the reasons for my desire to make the acquaintance of Wild Bill was to obtain from his own lips a true account of some of the adventures related of him. It was not an easy matter. It was hard to overcome the reticence which marks men who have lived the wild mountain life, and which was one of his valuable qualifications as a scout. ”