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Slingerland saw Allie Lee married to Neale by that minister of God whoseprayer had followed the joining of the rails.
And to the old trapper had fallen the joy and the honor of giving thebride away and of receiving her kiss, as though he had been her father.Then the happy congratulations from General Lodge and his staff; themerry dinner given the couple, and its toasts warm with praise of thebride's beauty and the groom's luck and success; Neale's strange, rapthappiness and Allie's soul shining through her dark-blue eyes--this hourwas to become memorable for Slingerland's future dreams.
Slingerland's sight was not clear when, as the train pulled away, hewaved a last good-bye to his young friends. Now he had no hope, noprayer left unanswered, except to be again in his beloved hills.
Abruptly he hurried away to the corrals where his pack-train was allin readiness to start. He did not speak to a man. He had packed a dozenburros--the largest and completest pack-train he had ever driven. Theabundance of carefully selected supplies, tools, and traps should lasthim many years--surely all the years that he would live.
Slingerland did not intend to return to civilization, and he nevereven looked back at that blotch on the face of the bluff--that hideousRoaring City.
He drove the burros at a good trot, his mind at once busy and absent,happy with the pictures of that last hour, gloomy with the undefined,unsatisfied cravings of his heart. Friendship with Neale, affectionfor Allie, acquainted him with the fact that he had missed something inlife--not friendship, for he had had hunter friends, but love, perhapsof a sweetheart, surely love of a daughter.
For the rest the old trapper was glad to see the last of habitations,and of men, and of the railroad. Slingerland hated that great,shining steel band of progress connecting East and West. Every ringingsledge-hammer blow had sung out the death-knell of the trapper'scalling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one groupof greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass ofthe plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains driedup in the valleys, and the wild creatures of the mountains driven andhunted and exterminated. The end of the buffalo had come--the end of theIndian was in sight--and that of the fur-bearing animal and his huntermust follow soon with the hurrying years.
Slingerland hated the railroad, and he could not see as Neale did, orany of the engineers or builders. This old trapper had the vision ofthe Indian--that far-seeing eye cleared by distance and silence, andthe force of the great, lonely hills. Progress was great, but natureundespoiled was greater. If a race could not breed all stronger men,through its great movements, it might better not breed any, for thebad over-multiplied the good, and so their needs magnified into greed.Slingerland saw many shining bands of steel across the plains andmountains, many stations and hamlets and cities, a growing and marvelousprosperity from timber, mines, farms, and in the distant end--a guttedWest.
He made his first camp on a stream watering a valley twenty miles fromthe railroad. There were Indian tracks on the trails. But he had nothingto fear from Indians. That night, though all was starry and silentaround him as he lay, he still held the insupportable feeling.
Next day he penetrated deeper into the foothills, and soon he had gainedthe fastnesses of the mountains. No longer did he meet trails exceptthose of deer and wildcat and bear. And so day after day he drove hisburros, climbing and descending the rocky ways, until he had penetratedto the very heart of the great wild range.
In all his roaming over untrodden lands he had never come into such awild place. No foot, not--even an Indian's, had ever desecrated thisgreen valley with its clear, singing stream, its herds of tame deer, itscurious beaver, its pine-covered slopes, its looming, gray, protectivepeaks. And at last he was satisfied to halt there--to build his cabinand his corral.
Discontent and longing, and then hate, passed into oblivion. Theseuseless passions could not long survive in such an environment. By andby the old trapper's only link with the past was memory of a stalwartyouth, and of a girl with violet eyes, and of their sad and wonderfulromance, in which he had played a happy part.
The rosy dawn, the days of sun and cloud, the still, windy nights,the solemn stars, the moon-blanched valley with its grazing herds, thebeautiful wild mourn of the hunting wolf and the whistle of the stag,and always and ever the murmur of the stream--in these, and in thesolitude and loneliness of their haunts, he found his goal, hisserenity, the truth and best of remaining life for him.
37
A band of Sioux warriors rode out upon a promontory of the hills,high above the great expanse of plain. Long, lean arms were raised andpointed.
A chief dismounted and strode to the front of his band. His war-bonnettrailed behind him; there were unhealed scars upon his bronze body; hisface was old, full of fine, wavy lines, stern, craggy, and inscrutable;his eyes were dark, arrowy lightnings.
They beheld, far out and down upon the plain, a long, low, moving objectleaving a trail of smoke. It was a train on the railroad. It came fromthe east and crept toward the west. The chief watched it, and so did hiswarriors. No word was spoken, no sign made, no face changed.
But what was in the mind and the heart and the soul of that great chief?
This beast that puffed smoke and spat fire and shrieked like a devil ofan alien tribe; that split the silence as hideously as the long tracksplit the once smooth plain; that was made of iron and wood; this thingof the white man's, coming from out of the distance where the GreatSpirit lifted the dawn, meant the end of the hunting-grounds and thedoom of the Indian. Blood had flowed; many warriors lay in their lastsleep under the trees; but the iron monster that belched fire had goneonly to return again. Those white men were many as the needles of thepines. They fought and died, but always others came.
The chief was old and wise, taught by sage and star and mountain andwind and the loneliness of the prairie-land. He recognized a superiorrace, but not a nobler one. White men would glut the treasures of waterand earth. The Indian had been born to hunt his meat, to repel his redfoes, to watch the clouds and serve his gods. But these white men wouldcome like a great flight of grasshoppers to cover the length and breadthof the prairie-land. The buffalo would roll away, like a dust-cloud, inthe distance, and never return. No meat for the Indian--no grass for hismustang--no place for his home. The Sioux must fight till he died or bedriven back into waste places where grief and hardship would end him.
Red and dusky, the sun was setting beyond the desert. The old chiefswept aloft his arm, and then in his acceptance of the inevitablebitterness he stood in magnificent austerity, somber as death, seeing inthis railroad train creeping, fading into the ruddy sunset, a symbol ofthe destiny of the Indian--vanishing--vanishing--vanishing--
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