by Noel Loomis
“Now,” said Ferguson, “about the trespass on my property this afternoon. I have claimed—and I will so record with this association, 320 acres, which has the required improvement and somewhat more. This afternoon the man named Simmons drove two hundred head of hogs onto my south quarter, and claimed it was open for pre-emption because of the federal law. I told him to get them off, and got this.”
“Not by one man,” said Osterman in an awed voice. “Four men.”
“You know who they were?”
“I know them.”
“I move the president appoint a sheriff,” said Hans Osterman, “and we bring him in for trial. We can draw six jurymen by lot, and the president can appoint all the men he needs to enforce the sentence.”
It carried. Then somebody said, “When do we hang George Keller?”
“I will call a meeting for tomorrow night, at which both these men will be tried.”
“How about the fellers that massacred you?”
“It was a personal matter, and I do not think it concerns this association yet. If it does, I will say so. What we have to do right now is keep lawlessness down and stop indiscriminate jumping of claims. Simmons also jumped one of Mr. Benson’s quarters a few days ago, and I think we can try him on that charge at the same time.”
“That right, Benson?” asked Ackerman.
“It sure is. I pulled up his stakes, but he put some more in, and threatened to shoot me if I moved them.”
Ackerman nodded. “I reckon we can kill two birds with one stone, all right.”
“What’ll we do with Keller until tomorrow night?” asked Ernest.
“Leave him where he is,” said Job Sye. “He’s safe, in there.”
“He might get hungry,” said Ackerman.
“He’ll get a lot hungrier where he’s goin’,” said Ernest. “I say let’s don’t waste food on a man who’s goin’ to hang anyway.”
Ferguson agreed. “I see no reason why we should worry about a couple of meals for a man who worried so little about another human being’s right to dignity and pride.”
“Move we adjourn,” said Art Grimes.
“If there is no more business, I declare the meeting adjourned until tomorrow night at the same time, when the sheriff appointed by this association will bring the two prisoners to the bar of justice.”
Ferguson went down to the ferry to get the sorrel. Benson went with him, and made a fire of buffalo chips and put on coffee.
“Hello, Ferguson,” said a voice from the darkness, and Walking Bird came to the fire, followed by two other Indians, all dressed in woolen pants and checked shirts, wearing moccasins but no hats.
Ferguson filled a tin cup with coffee and handed it to the Indian, who tried it, drank it, and handed it back. Ferguson refilled it and handed it to the next one, and then the next one. Finally Ferguson said, “What brings you here, my friend?”
“No Horse has told me about Logan’s threats,” said the Indian, “and I am worried. It is true my people—or some of them—are getting money from the whites. I do not encourage it, Ferguson, but what can they do? The whites are pushing them out across the river, moving in on the land, and my people come over here to land that is supposed to belong to them—but over here they have no land, no teepees, no game to hunt. You can’t expect my people to starve.”
“By no means.”
Benson got up and left the fire. Walking Bird and his men sat down.
“But it is going to make trouble, Ferguson. The whites are talking against us, and one of them may start a fight, and then my warriors will throw caution aside.”
“I wouldn’t like to see it,” said Ferguson.
“Nor I. But it may happen. And if you know any way to hold back your people, it would save trouble.”
“I am in sympathy with you, but we do not have the same control over our people as you have over yours.”
“The Indian doesn’t have a chance,” said Walking Bird. Benson returned with a pan of cornbread, and gravely handed it to Walking Bird, who took a piece and handed the pan to his companions. Ferguson watched them eat it, and knew they were hungry. He said to Benson, “You could take the sorrel and go to Turner’s for some buffalo meat.”
“Chai!” said one of the Otos. “Peeaiy!”
“That’s Rain in July,” Walking Bird explained. “He says buffalo is good—but we did not come here to beg.”
“You didn’t beg. You’re hungry, and I have food.” Walking Bird shook his head.
“If I were hungry and you had food,” said Ferguson, “would you let me go hungry?”
Walking Bird looked stonily at the fire.
“I am sending Benson to the tavern to get what he can. I want you to take it to your people.”
“I will pay,” said Walking Bird finally.
“You will not pay me anything until you get settled.”
“I do not know when that will be.”
“I am not worried,” said Ferguson. “I will take your word.” Benson galloped off in the darkness.
Ferguson looked across the river. “Do your people know anything about sheep?”
Walking Bird nodded. “Some of my people have had sheep in the past. Some still have them.”
Rain in July touched Walking Bird’s arm. Walking Bird motioned across the river and said: “Shongtung, natoo. Coyotes with long hair.”
Rain in July nodded. “Neesh-noungai? River? he asked. Walking Bird nodded.
“Do you know how to get sheep across a river?” asked Ferguson.
Walking Bird smiled. “Sheep have strong notions about crossing water—but we could help.”
“Then get your people here. I will pay them.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Walking Bird shook his head. “They are scattered all over, and it will take longer than that to find them and to convince them it is not a trap.”
“There is no time to be lost. I have three days—but there are twelve thousand sheep.”
Walking Bird shook his head. “I don’t think I can get them before day after tomorrow.”
“Do it no later than that—as soon as you can. Meantime, tell your people not to tell what we plan, for fear the whites will organize to stop them. Meantime, I will keep pretending to try to get the sheep across on the ferry.”
Walking Bird looked across the river. “You want to move all those sheep?” he asked.
Ferguson poured a last cup of coffee and drank it himself, careful of his cut lips.
“I have to move them by two days from tomorrow night or I lose the ferry,” he said quietly.
Walking Bird looked interested for the first time. “Not on the ferry,” he said. “The only way you can move so many is to swim them across—and that will take many hands.”
“Your people have many hands.”
Walking Bird nodded. “Yes, if you give me time.”
Ferguson tried the coffee again. “It is the only possibility,” he admitted. “I have known that from the beginning.”
“Then why did you gamble the ferry?”
Ferguson shrugged. “He was pushing me too far, and he was pushing the emigrants too—and I thought I could beat him and get rid of him.”
“He sounds like a bad man.”
Ferguson snorted.
“I hope my people stay away from him.”
“I hope so too—but don’t count on it.”
One of the Indians spoke in Oto, and Ferguson nodded. The Indian got up and left silently.
“He has gone to pass the word about the sheep,” said Walking Bird. “How much will you pay?”
“A dollar a day.”
“It’s not much, but a lot better than going hungry. We will work for that.”
Ferguson got up, poured out the grounds in the coffeepot, went down to the river and rinsed it out and then filled it. He came back to the fire and set it in a bed of ashes, and got the coffee grinder and a small sackful of beans, and began to turn the handle
. When he had the little drawer full of coffee, he poured it into the coffeepot, wrapped up the beans and put them back.
“I think,” Walking Bird said with a smile, “that my squaw makes better coffee than you do, but I have never tasted coffee as good as yours tonight.”
Ferguson handed him the small quantity of remaining coffee beans. “Give these to her with my compliments,” he said.
“No,” said Walking Bird. “We are not looking for charity.”
“I will take it out of your wages when you move the sheep.”
Walking Bird eyed the bag of coffee beans hungrily. “All right,” he said with dignity. “It is an advance against my wages.”
They sat without talking for a while. The coffee began to boil, and Ferguson poured another round. Then Benson returned with ten pounds of meat slung in a tow sack. He unwrapped it and cut off two big slices and gave them to the Indians, who ate them greedily.
Ferguson said, “Take the rest to your families. They can pay me after we get the sheep across the river.”
Walking Bird arose. “I thank you for your thoughtfulness,” he said.
“Do me just one favor,” said Ferguson. “If any of your people have to go on a massacre, tell them to put it off until we get the sheep into Nebraska.”
Walking Bird thought about it for a moment. “If anything like that happens,” he said, “whites will hunt us down like animals.” He stepped into the darkness and was gone.
Benson looked after him. “Sure speaks good English,” he said.
“He ought to,” said Ferguson. “He spent twelve years in a mission school.”
CHAPTER XIV
On the way home, he stopped by the tavern and asked about Sally. She was mixing a batch of light-bread dough, and he was relieved to see that she looked unmarked from what must have been a terrifying experience. She said, “When he raised my dress, I didn’t know what to think, but—” She shuddered. “There’s something wrong with him. What will I do if he comes back?”
“He won’t come back,” said Ferguson. “Not tonight, anyway. And not tomorrow night or any night after that unless I miss my guess.” She smiled gratefully.
“I wonder if you would put some butter on my face,” he said.
She was all concern, wiping her hands on her apron. “It must ache terribly.”
“It doesn’t bother as long as I am moving around, but it might get troublesome during the night.”
She went out to the well to pull up the bucket that had the butter in it, and took out a tablespoonful. She lowered the bucket while he held the lantern with a candle in it. Then they went back inside and she spread the butter over his cut and the bruised face with gentle, strong, and skillful fingers. He thanked her for it, and thought of kissing her, but Tom Turner looked in about that time to see how it was going, and Ferguson smiled at her. “You have nice hands,” he said. She blushed and went back to her kneading.
“I looked at the prisoner a couple of times already,” said Turner on the way out. “You reckon he’ll be safe?”
“He sure can’t get out without help.”
“You know anybody who would help him?”
“For certain things, yes—but I don’t think they will want to get mixed up in an affair like this.”
“If I thought they might try to rescue him, I’d go out there now and shoot him myself.”
Ferguson put an arm around Turner’s shoulders. “It would be worse than it is already. This man is in our custody, and it is our duty to bring him to trial—not to kill him.”
“He better hang!” said Turner, his under jaw working.
“He will hang, all right, but by a group—not by an individual, and not as an act of vengeance, but to keep him from doing it again and to warn others who might be tempted to some such crime.”
Ferguson stepped out into the still, dark night. “So long,” he said.
* * * *
He was up early and went to the ferry. “What’s it look like across the river?” he asked Benson.
“Too dark to see, but there ain’t no fires over there yet, so I reckon ev’rybody’s still asleep.”
“Did they ever bring that second band of sheep down to the dock?”
“Part-way.”
“How about the two boys with the sheep over here?”
“They moved ’em up across the slope yesterday, and I reckon they are waitin’ for the rest of ’em.
“I’m going across the river,” said Ferguson.
Benson looked troubled. “Mr. Ferguson, it ain’t none of my business, but it don’t look so good for you to get them twelve thousand sheep across the river, does it?”
“Maybe it isn’t as bad as it looks.”
“It better not be. If you ain’t got somethin’ up your sleeve, you’re gonna lose the ferry.”
Ferguson eased the sorrel into the water, and noted that it seemed to be a little lower than the day before. He came out on the Iowa side, and Teddy Root was up and waiting for him.
“Mr. Ferguson, them fellers come back about midnight, and went up there somewheres.” He pointed.
Ferguson said, “Apparently they aren’t getting up early. I don’t see any fires.”
“We sure aren’t loadin’ any sheep.”
“You will be.”
He rode up to a cleared space before the sheep; a covered cook-wagon stood blackly silhouetted against the early morning sky, and Ferguson rode up to it and called out: “Anybody home?”
There was no answer. He picked up a stick from the dead fire and beat against the side of the wagon. “Anybody home?” he asked.
A step sounded behind him, and he turned to face Zachariah Mawson, who carried a rifle.
“Who’s wakin’ people up this time of night?”
“I am,” Ferguson said evenly. “Didn’t you expect to see me again?
Mawson said, “Didn’t you get enough? You want me to finish grindin’ up your face?”
“Not until you have a couple of your boys to hold me. Or a rifle to even up the odds.”
Mawson said, “You’re pushin’ me too far, Ferguson.”
“After yesterday,” Ferguson said slowly, “I must confess your threats don’t scare me.”
Mawson glared at him.
“That’s the trouble with a threat,” said Ferguson. “As soon as you carry it out, the threat no longer has any value.”
“The next time,” said Mawson, “I’ll let some daylight through you.”
Ferguson said, “I haven’t the slightest doubt you would do that, whether I should happen to be armed or not, but I must be honest and say that it doesn’t scare me very much.”
“You ain’t got sense enough to be scared.”
“When a man has so little confidence in his own power that he has two other men hold the man he is fighting—I wonder what your boys think of their brave pa for that.”
“Shut up!”
“He botherin’ you, pa?” asked a voice from the darkness, and Abner Mawson came alongside his father.
“I can handle him,” Mawson said. “Ferguson, what are you comin’ here for in the middle of the night?”
“I have come to find out if you called off the bet.”
“You tryin’ to welsh out?”
“I’m trying to get you to hold up your end of the bet.”
“Meanin’?”
“Meaning that the bet was to move your sheep—not to herd them. You are supposed to deliver them to the dock.”
“I figgered you’d give up.”
“I don’t know why you should think that,” Ferguson said. “If you don’t get those sheep to the dock, there is no bet at all.”
“I heard you say that,” said the voice of Charlie Logan.
Ferguson waited until Logan and Yeakel came out of the darkness. “I won’t say I counted on finding you here,” he said, “but I am not surprised.”
“Meaning what?” Yeakel demanded.
“I knew that you and Logan and Mawson were in it
together.”
“In what?” asked Logan.
“In a partnership to lure the emigrants out here and fleece them out of everything they have.”
“You can’t prove it,” said Yeakel.
“Wait a minute,” said Mawson, and stepped forward. “Ferguson, you’re a hard man to deal with. Maybe it would be better to have you on our side.”
“It would be better for you,” said Ferguson, “but not for me. I want to maintain my self-respect.”
“You could charge twice as much for ferry passage as you’re gettin’ now,” said Mawson.
“I’m charging enough to suit me. The settlers and emigrants have got all they can do to keep from losing everything they’ve got to you two.”
“Are you including me?” asked Yeakel.
“You make loans on property without justification, because you get a commission whether the loan is good or bad. You charge exorbitant interest because there is no law against it—and half the people who borrow money through you go broke so you can get your commission. You will see a man lose everything he has so you can make fifty dollars.”
“It’s hard to prove,” said Yeakel.
“Hard—but maybe not impossible.” The sky was getting lighter, and Ferguson could see them clearly. “And you, Logan, are behind that fake townsite.”
“What fake—”
“The Logan City Townsite Company.” Ferguson faced them squarely. “Every man who was in on that deal stands to go to the penitentiary, because there is no Logan City Townsite Company, and it is a violation of territorial law to claim a townsite company that has no charter.”
Yeakel did not seem to be moved. “Ferguson,” he said slowly, “Now that you’re throwing accusations around, is your own nose clean?”
Ferguson stared at him. “You’d better have a good reason for saying that.”
“You’re supposed to operate that ferry under a territorial license.”
“Yes.”
“But the fact is, Ferguson, that you do not have a territorial license. You are operating that ferry solely by virtue of the fact that you got here first.”
Ferguson said tightly, “I applied for a license when I first came here, and it was promised—but it has not come through.”
