Man-Size. William MacLeod Raine
Table of Contents
THE WOLFERS
When Tom Morse reached camp he found Bully West stamping about in a heady rage. The fellow was a giant of a man, almost muscle-bound in his huge solidity. His shoulders were rounded with the heavy pack of knotted sinews they carried. His legs were bowed from much riding. It was his boast that he could bend a silver dollar double in the palm of his hand. Men had seen him twist the tail rod of a wagon into a knot. Sober, he was a sulky, domineering brute with the instincts of a bully. In liquor, the least difference of opinion became for him a cause of quarrel.
Most men gave him a wide berth, and for the sake of peace accepted sneers and insults that made the blood boil.
"Where you been all this time?" he growled.
"Ploughin' around over the plains."
"Didn't you hear me callin'?"
"D'you call? I've been quite a ways from camp. Bumped into Angus
McRae's buffalo-hunting outfit. He wants to see us to-morrow."
"What for?"
"Something about to-night's business. Seems he knows who did it.
Offers to settle for what we lost."
Bully West stopped in his stride, feet straddled, head thrust forward.
"What's that?"
"Like I say. We're to call on him to-morrow for a settlement, you 'n' me."
"Did McRae bust our barrels?"
"He knows something about it. Didn't have time to talk long with him.
I hustled right back to tell you."
"He can come here if he wants to see me," West announced.
This called for no answer and Tom gave it none. He moved across to the spot where the oxen were picketed and made sure the pins were still fast. Presently he rolled his blanket round him and looked up into a sky all stars. Usually he dropped asleep as soon as his head touched the seat of the saddle he used as a pillow. But to-night he lay awake for hours. He could not get out of his mind the girl he had met and taken to punishment. A dozen pictures of her rose before him, all of them mental snapshots snatched from his experience of the night. Now he was struggling to hold her down, his knees clamped to her writhing, muscular torso. Again he held her by the strong, velvet-smooth arms while her eyes blazed fury and defiance at him. Or her stinging words pelted him as she breasted the hill slopes with supple ease. Most vivid of all were the ones at her father's camp, especially those when she was under the torture of the whip.
No wonder she hated him for what he had done to her.
He shook himself into a more comfortable position and began to count stars. … Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven. … What was the use of stressing the affair, anyhow? She was only a half-breed. In ten years she would be fat, shapeless, dirty, and repellent. Her conversation would be reduced to grunts. The glance he had had at her mother was illuminating.
Where was he? … One hundred eleven, twelve, thirteen. … Women had not obtruded much into his life. He had lived in the wind and the sun of the outdoors, much of the time in the saddle. Lawless he was, but there was a clean strain in his blood. He had always felt an indifferent contempt for a squaw-man. An American declassed himself when he went in for that sort of thing, even if he legalized the union by some form of marriage. In spite of her magnificent physical inheritance of health and vitality, in spite of the quick and passionate spirit that informed her, she would be the product of her environment and ancestry, held close to barbarism all her life. The man who mated with her would be dragged down to her level.
Two hundred three, four, five. … How game she had been! She had played it out like a thoroughbred, even to telling her father that he was to use the horsewhip in punishing her. He had never before seen a creature so splendid or so spirited. Squaw or no squaw, he took off his hat to her.
The sun had climbed the hilltop when Morse wakened.
"Come an' get it!" Barney the cook was yelling at him.
Bully West had changed his mind about not going to the buffalo-hunter's camp.
"You 'n' Brad'll stay here, Barney, while me 'n' Tom are gone," he gave orders. "And you'll keep a sharp lookout for raiders. If any one shows up that you're dubious of, plug him and ask questions afterward. Un'erstand?"
"I hear ye," replied Barney, a small cock-eyed man with a malevolent grin. "An' we'll do just that, boss."
Long before the traders reached it, the camp of the buffalo-hunters advertised its presence by the stench of decaying animal matter. Hundreds of hides were pegged to the ground. Men and women, squatting on their heels, scraped bits of fat from the drying skins. Already a train of fifty Red River carts[3] stood ready for the homeward start, loaded with robes tied down by means of rawhide strips to stand the jolting across the plains. Not far away other women were making pemmican of fried buffalo meat and fat, pounded together and packed with hot grease in skin bags. This food was a staple winter diet and had too a market value for trade to the Hudson's Bay Company, which shipped thousands of sacks yearly to its northern posts on the Peace and the Mackenzie Rivers.
[Footnote 3: The Red River cart was a primitive two-wheeled affair, made entirely of wood, without nails or metal tires. It was usually drawn by an ox. (W.M.R.)]
The children and the sound of their laughter gave the camp a domestic touch. Some of the brown, half-naked youngsters, their skins glistening in the warm sun, were at work doing odd jobs. Others, too young to fetch and carry, played with a litter of puppies or with a wolf cub that had been caught and tamed.
The whole bustling scene was characteristic of time and place. A score of such outfits, each with its Red River carts and its oxen, its dogs, its women and children, traveled to the plains each spring to hunt the bison. They killed thousands upon thousands of them, for it took several animals to make a sack of pemmican weighing one hundred fifty pounds. The waste was enormous, since only the choicest cuts of meat were used.
Already the buffalo were diminishing in numbers. Vast hordes still roamed the plains. They could be killed by scores and hundreds. But the end was near. It had been several years since Colonel Dodge reported that he had halted his party of railroad builders two days to let a herd of over half a million bison pass. Such a sight was no longer possible. The pressure of the hunters had divided the game into the northern and the southern herds. Within four or five years the slaughter was to be so great that only a few groups of buffalo would be left.
The significance of this extermination lay largely in its application to the Indians. The plains tribes were fed and clothed and armed and housed by means of the buffalo. Even the canoes of the lake Indians were made from buffalo skins. The failure of the supply reduced the natives from warriors to beggars.
McRae came forward to meet the traders, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows of his muscular brown arms. He stroked a great red beard and nodded gruffly. It was not in his dour honest nature to pretend that he was glad to see them when he was not.
"Well, I'm here," growled West, interlarding a few oaths as a necessary corollary of his speech. "What's it all about, McRae? What do you know about the smashing of our barrels?"
"I'll settle any reasonable damage," the hunter said.
Bully West frowned. He spread his legs deliberately, folded his arms, and spat tobacco juice upon a clean hide drying in the sun. "Hold yore hawsses a minute. The damage'll be enough. Don't you worry about that. But first off, I aim to know who raided our camp. Then I reckon I'll whop him till he's wore to a frazzle."
Under heavy, grizzled brows McRae looked long at him. Both were outstanding figures by reason of personality and physique. One was a constructive force, the other destructive. There was a suggestion of the gorilla in West's long arms matted with hair, in the