The Sunset Trail

And the worst feature of the case was that the Lone Wolf could not make a new “medicine.” Since the Great Spirit invented the institution of “medicine” and placed it upon earth, all men have known that one may create his “medicine” but once. Any second attempt serves only to introduce one to a covey of malevolent spirits, whose power will be exercised to wet one’s bowstring, blunt one’s arrow, lame one’s pony, and break one’s lance. No, the Lone Wolf could not make another “medicine.”

Was there no hope for the Lone Wolf?

About an even century before the Lone Wolf slumped into that quicksand crossing of the Beaver, and was robbed by the waters of his otter-skin “medicine,” Mr. Goldsmith wrote a three act oratorio, called it “The Captivity” and sold it to Dodsley for ten guineas. Among other tuneful commodities in said oratorio contained, Mr. Goldsmith penned the following:

The wretch condemned with life to part,Still, still on hope relies;And every pang that rends the heartBids expectation rise.Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light,Adorns and cheers our way;And still as darker grows the night,Emits a brighter ray.

Since he knew neither the one nor the other, it is fair to assume that when Mr. Goldsmith wrote the above he was thinking as deeply on the Lone Wolf as on you. Certainly the habit of hope therein set forth is as prevalently sweeping among savages as among civilised folk. The Indian does not hope for the same things, but to what extent and in what direction his anticipations stray he hopes as industriously as ever hoped any white man of you all. And so it was with the unhappy Lone Wolf. In this, his darkest hour, there remained the glimmer of a hope.

When the Great Spirit fixed his commands against making a second “medicine,” a fiat necessary lest a “medicine” easily replaced degenerate to be a trivial gewgaw creature of small moment, he left open, should one lose one’s “medicine,” a single gateway of relief. One might conquer, in such pinch, an enemy, strip him of his personal “medicine,” and thus redeem one’s self. The “medicine” of that dead foe would take the place of the lost “medicine,” and by its virtues rehabilitate the victor and restore him unto what tribal place was his before his own original “medicine” had disappeared.

In this black hour of his fortunes, the Lone Wolf upheld his heart with this. He might go north, and knock over some casual Pawnee or inadvertent Sioux. Hundreds of these at this season would be met with among the buffaloes. True, it would be a long, hard trail; but not so long nor so hard as the life-trail of the Lone Wolf when now he was without caste or tribal countenance.

Stripping himself of feathers and hawk-bells and bearclaw necklace and every form of ornament, wrapped in his raggedest blanket, with a daub of mud in his hair as one who mourns, without word or sign to any concerning his purpose, the Lone Wolf turned his back on the Cimarron and wended northward. His face paints were black, for his heart was sad. The only matters about him that did not tell of woe and bankruptcy, and warn one of an Indian without fortune or future, were his pony and his arms. These showed of the best, and this weapon-care was not without a reason. More than ever would the Lone Wolf require a pony tireless as the storm and as swift, and lance and bow and knife without flaw or fault; for now when he had lost his “medicine,” he was singularly undefended and weak. No one knew better these latter helpless truths than did the Lone Wolf. It was by no means sure that a child might not overcome him – he who, but a fortnight before with his otter-skin “medicine,” had been a thunderbolt of war. Wherefore, with his heart little, his courage water, his bow an arc of weakness, his arrows no better than windle-straws, and his lance as forceless as a cornstalk – for losing one’s “medicine” means all these grievous conditions of undefence and inability to smite – it behooved the Lone Wolf to provide as much as he might, with prudence and farsighted care, in favour of a possible success.

The Lone Wolf would have no help from the good ghosts, for these had left him with the lost “medicine.” What ghosts might still be riding in his disgraceful company, were bad ghosts. So far as they did anything they would do harm, not good, and the best he might look for at their hands was a sort of ghostly non-interference.

There was a least slant ray to encourage the latter hope. If the Lone Wolf had the luck to cross up with a Pawnee or a Sioux as contemptible as himself, the ghosts would not choose between them. In such miserable coil of coyote-snap-coyote, the disgusted ghosts would stand afar off. They would be content with the outcome, whatever it was, and refuse to contaminate their vapourish hands by mixing in the business.

That was the one favouring chance that lay before the Lone Wolf. To have full advantage of it, he wore his best weapons and rode his best war pony. If he happened upon a Pawnee or Sioux, disreputable in the eyes of gods and men, he might yet be saved from out those fires of disgrace that were consuming him. He would kill that Pawnee or Sioux, and wash himself free of stain with his victim’s “medicine.”

On the other and more likely hand – since good is more rife than evil – were he to encounter an Indian, tribally eminent and high, one who stood well with his people and of whose company therefore the most exactingly exclusive ghost need not feel ashamed, the Lone Wolf knew the upcome. His fate was written; he was no better than a dead Cheyenne. To these poor conditions the Lone Wolf tacitly agreed. And wherefore no? What death was not preferable to a life of endless ignominy – the life of one who has lost his “medicine?” Such indeed were the thoughts to skulk in the mind of the Lone Wolf like quails in corn, as he rode forward on his quest.

The Lone Wolf could not expect to find that required Pawnee or needed Sioux short of the Platte or perhaps the Yellowstone. He resolved to go thither by way of Dodge. The Lone Wolf was not wanting in a kind of sapiency. Now that his own weapons were undeniably weak – he could only know how weak when he had tried them, and the news might come too late – he decided to purchase a rifle of the palefaces. Such a weapon would not have been sapped of its powers by any former possession of his own, and he might possibly corral that “medicine” he sought before it had been long enough in his hands to have degenerated. With this wisdom in mind, the Lone Wolf drove before him two pack ponies, laden to the ears of robes and furs. This sumpter stuff would buy that rifle, with its accompanying belts and cartridges.

The Lone Wolf knew Mr. Masterson, and liked him. They had both fought at the ’Dobe Walls and gained a deal of respect for one another. Also they had met since at sundry agencies; and in good truth it was the Lone Wolf who told Mr. Masterson how many of those charging savages went under in that hot fortnight of fight.

“How many of you did we blink out?” asked Mr. Masterson, who had his statistical side.

The Lone Wolf’s mathematics were wholly aboriginal, for all he had been to Carlisle. He opened and closed his ten fingers eight times – eighty. Then he held up one finger.

“Buffalo soldier,” said the Lone Wolf.

The one finger stood for that traitorous black bugler, who fought for the side of the Indians and sounded rally and charge on his stolen bugle, the property of the state. The Indians style such “buffalo soldiers” because of their woolly heads like unto the curled frontlet of a buffalo bull.

Having decided upon that rifle and its acquirement, the Lone Wolf would go seeking his new “medicine” by way of Dodge. He would inquire out Mr. Masterson and crave his aid in the rifle’s selection. This was highly important. Some bad paleface might otherwise sell him a gun that was bewitched. Mr. Masterson would protect him from that fearful risk. Mr. Masterson was an honest man. No one could fight as Mr. Masterson had fought, unless his heart were very pure and strong.

The only drawback to a visit to Dodge lurked in this that it would compel the Lone Wolf to speak English. Surely, he had learned English at Carlisle; but knowing, as know all Indians, that to speak the white man’s language brings misfortune and sickness and death, he had had the wit to discontinue the practice. Likewise and at the same time he laid aside his paleface clothes as being extremely “bad medicine.” Of course, there was also a commonsense side to the latter move, since anyone who sticks to coat and trousers when, without shaking his position, he may be freely comfortable in breech-clout and blanket, is an unimaginable ass. Yes; in Dodge the Lone Wolf would be driven to speak English. However, it would not last for long, and in the desolate pitch of his fortune, what mattered it what he spoke? It would mean companionship, and therefore a kind of comfort; for your Indian is as gregarious as a prairie dog, and the Lone Wolf – who had not spoken to buck or squaw or pappoose since he lost his “medicine” – was beginning to feel as solitary and as lonesome as a good man in Chicago.

Six months before the Lone Wolf lost his “medicine” in the Beaver, there had come to the Dodge Opera House that dramatic organization known as the Red Stocking Blondes. The advent of this talented combination was hailed with local delight, for it had ever been a favourite in Dodge.

The first violin of the Red Stocking Blondes, on this particular occasion, was not the individual whom Mr. Wagner roped on a former memorable evening. This first violin was thoroughly the artist. What he couldn’t coax from a fiddle in the way of melody would have to be developed by an Ole Bull.

Once, Cimarron Bill, after listening to several of the first violin’s most unstudied performances, had asked:

“Can you play the Bootiful Bloo Danyoob? I hears it ’leven years ago in St. Looey, an’ have been honin’ for it ever since.”

The artist, thus appealed to, played that swelling piece of waltz music, and when he finished, the emotional Cimarron, eyes a-swim with tears of ecstasy, grasped his hand.

“Pard!” exclaimed the worthy Cimarron, in a gush of hyperbole, “you could play a fiddle with your feet!” However, this is in advance of the story.

The first violin of the Red Stocking Blondes was named Algernon Pepin, albeit this may have been a nom de theâtre. Mr. Pepin was small, lean, shy, silent, timid, with a long, sad, defeated face. His back was humped, as were the backs of Aesop, Richard of Gloster, the poet Pope, and many another gentleman of genius. He had rakehandle arms, and skinny fingers like the claws of a great bird.

Of all who marched with the banners of the Red Stocking Blondes, Mr. Pepin, when they came into Dodge, was the only one troubled of spirit. The rest showed as gay as larks; for the troupe was on the road to Broadway, and six weeks more would find its members in Rector’s, Shanley’s, Brown’s and Lüchow’s, relating their adventures to guileless ones who had never crossed the Hudson. It was that thought of Broadway to pale the sallow, anxious cheek of Mr. Pepin. And the reason of the terror which tugged at his soul was this:

Two years rearward Mr. Pepin, by several fortunate strokes and the aid of a legacy, had made himself master of an opera company. It was one of those terrible opera companies that sing Wagner and are both fashionable and awful to hear.

The contralto of the opera company was a large, powerful woman whose name ended in “ski.” Her upper lip was distinctly mustached, and her voice sounded like a man in a cistern. There are, in divers parts of Europe, just such beings as this contralto who, yoked with cattle, assist in agriculture by pulling plows. This happy condition, however, is confined to Europe; here they sing in Wagner.

Any lady of the theaters will tell you there is advantage in being the wife of the owner of the show. It means spotlights, music, three-sheets, puffs; in short the center of the stage. The contralto in question was wholly aware of these advantages. Acting on that knowledge, this formidable woman arose one New York morning, conveyed Mr. Pepin to the Little Church Around the Corner, almost with force and arms, and married him to her for better or for worse. It turned out to be the latter alternative in the dismal case of Mr. Pepin.

There came a time when the opera company fell upon poor days. Then the days went from poor to bad and bad to worse. Lastly, came the crash. At the close of a losing week the treasurer fled with the receipts, and a host of creditors, the sheriff at their hungry head, tore Mr. Pepin into insolvent bits. When the dust of that last fierce struggle had subsided, Mr. Pepin crawled from the wreck with two fiddles and the necessity of beginning life anew.

Mr. Pepin, at that time, would have said that he had nothing further to fear from fate. Ill-fortune, he would have argued, had shot its bolt and done its worst. Most folk, after an unbiased review, would have coincided with Mr. Pepin. Also, most folk, like Mr. Pepin, would be wrong, since they would have overlooked that fell contralto.

When the opera company went to grief, and with it her position, the contralto scrupled not to revile Mr. Pepin. She even taunted him with his misshapen back. Then she beat him. When he ran from her and concealed himself, she charged him with abandonment and cruelty, and the police dragged Mr. Pepin from his place of hiding.

One day by some masterly sleight, Mr. Pepin escaped, and went fiddling forth into the land. He was not after position; salary was no object; the one purpose of Mr. Pepin was to keep out of New York and thereby out of the clutches of his contralto, for whom – since she never left that metropolis – New York had become the dread synonym. You who read may now consider how far Mr. Pepin was justified of his shudders at the mention of Broadway.

Two days prior to the coming of those Red Stocking Blondes, Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall had suffered an orchestral setback. In the midst of the evening’s gayety five couples presented themselves in the formation of one quadrille – a manifest solecism!

Mr. Peacock, alive to the dangerous impropriety described, warned the musicians, by a repressive gesture of his hand, not to strike up. Had Mr. Peacock’s signals been heeded there would have been no trouble in the Dance Hall, for the gentlemen concerned would have either adjusted their differences by tossing a copper or gone outside to shoot.

But the signals of Mr. Peacock were not obeyed. The violinist of the Dance Hall was one of your ill-conditioned natures that dislike a quiet life. Observing those five couple where only four should be, and careless of the pantomime of Mr. Peacock, with a brief exultant remark to the pianist that he thought he saw in the snarl the rudiments of trouble, the violinist went ranting off into the “Arkansas Traveler” and dragged the pianist along.

Somewhere it has been put forth – and the assertion has had solemn acceptance to this day – that the man was a public benefactor who made two blades of grass grow where but one had grown before. However much this may be of value as a statement concerning grass, it fails when one attempts its application to quadrilles. Instead of benefiting the public, he who sought to make two couples dance where but one had danced before, would simply be laying the foundations of civil war. And this in particular were the scene of his operations Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall in the hour borne in mind.

And so the sequel showed. That malignant violinist, when he plowed off into the “Arkansas Traveler” – to which music, be it known, more men have perished than to the “British Grenadier” – he gave the fatal call:

“First four forward and back!”

The “First Four” on this overloaded occasion, carrying as it did that extra couple and being not four but six, fell at once into a general knot. Upon the knot growing worse instead of better, those therein involved attempted to untie it with their guns.

It was over in a moment, with a gratifying count of one killed and none wounded. The word “gratifying” is used, because the one killed was that troublemongering violinist who, with his “Arkansas Traveler,” had shoved the row from shore. Justice is blind, and now and then an accident may be counted upon to do an equity.

While every right-thinking soul in Dodge felt glad that the malignant violinist was killed, his blotting out none the less became a common injury. There was no one to put in his place; which, it may be said in passing, furnished the precise reason why he had not been shot before.

Now a violinist was a highly important personage in Dodge. Your cowboy, after the sixth drink, is a being of mood and romance – a dreamy sentimentalist! He requires the violin, as the Jewish king required the harp, and nothing else will soothe him. Wherefore, while Mr. Peacock’s pianist – he had lived through that overstocked quadrille untouched – might hammer out a dance tune, the atmosphere was sorely lacking in those calmative elements which only a violin could give. It offered a state of affairs especially hectic and explosive, one which the cooler spirits must watch in order to preserve a peace.

The dead violinist was buried on the day when the Red Stocking Blondes came to town, and it is safe to assume that those funeral doings taught Mr. Pepin, by the gossip they provoked, of the refuge for himself and fortunes which those obsequies inferred. Whether that be so or no, at the end of the week when the Red Stocking Blondes closed their brilliant engagement and on the breath of Dodge’s plaudits were wafted to the next stand, Mr. Pepin remained behind. He lapsed into that bullet-constructed vacancy in Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, while his light companions of the theater set their faces eastward, singing:

“The sun is always shining on Broadway.”

One can imagine a war that would have obliterated, but not one that would have conquered Dodge. Mere force could never have brought it to its knees; and yet within a week it had unconditionally surrendered to the melodious genius of Mr. Pepin. He enraptured Dodge. It took him to its heart; it would have defended him to the latest gasp. Mr. Pepin repayed this local worship. Never had he drawn sweeter strains from his instrument; for never, of late at least, had his heart been more protected and at perfect ease.

Also, the musical taste of Dodge was elevated by Mr. Pepin. In this taste improvement, Mr. Pepin showed himself equipped of tact, and a wary wit. He played selections from “Trovatore” and “Martha,” and rendered Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” and “Old Madrid.” But he renamed them – in favour of local colour, probably – “Midnight Along the Arkansas,” “Two Black Bears,” “The Fieste at Santa Fé,” and “Daybreak On the Plains.” This was a sagacious nomenclature; it plowed ’round suspicion, and avoided prejudices that otherwise might have been invoked.

When the Red Stocking Blondes departed for the East, Mr. Pepin severally swore every member of that organisation to say nothing of his whereabouts to the contralto, and it is creditable to the dramatic profession that every member kept the oath. Mr. Pepin, released from bondage and doubly safe with distance and an address that was now suppressed, might have scraped an unscared fiddle to the ending of his days, had it not been for his own loquacity – a loquacity that was brought about in this wise.

Mr. Pepin had dwelt in Dodge, and been the soul of those revels that found nightly place in Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, for divers months, when the town dedicated its first church. The event was epoch-making, and Dodge, impressed as to what onward and upward strides were suggested of that day, gave way to vast rejoicing. A deal of Old Jordan was destroyed, and Mr. Pepin, contrary to a usual habit, was among those overcome. Most of Mr. Pepin’s liquor was consumed in the Alhambra; for he and Mr. Kelly – who owned a musical ear – had become as brothers.

There is a proverb which says In vino veritas, and talks of truth in wine. This is manifest mistake. Intoxication is the very seed of mendacity, and a drunken man is always and everywhere a liar. After the tenth drink, Mr. Pepin and Mr. Kelly communed together affectionately, and Mr. Pepin told Mr. Kelly of the contralto. He spoke of the domestic affections; said it was the one sorrow of his life that the contralto wasn’t with him in Dodge, and bewept a poverty which separated them. He explained that if Mr. Kelly could but see his heart he might then gain some glimmer of the grief that fed upon it. Mr. Pepin cried profoundly, and Mr. Kelly, who loved him, united his sobs to Mr. Pepin’s. Controlling his grief, Mr. Pepin averred that he lived only for a day when, having accumulated what treasure was necessary for the enterprise, he could bring his contralto to Dodge, and show that aggregation of bumpkins what a real lady was like. Then Mr. Pepin went to sleep with his head on a poker table, and forgot every word he had spoken to Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly had a better memory; he was capable of more liquor than was Mr. Pepin. And he was Mr. Pepin’s friend. Mr. Kelly resolved upon a sentimental surprise. He would restore that contralto to the arms and heart of Mr. Pepin. The latter should not wait upon the painful, slow achievement of what funds were called for. Mr. Kelly had money; and to what better purpose, pray, can one’s money be put than a promotion of the happiness of a friend? Mr. Kelly had jotted down the lady’s address – being that of a dramatic agency – as furnished drunkenly by Mr. Pepin, and he now wired her to come at once. Mr. Kelly benevolently closed his message with:

“If you’re broke, draw on me for five hundred.”

Having accomplished so much, Mr. Kelly as a reward of merit bestowed upon himself a huge drink. Then he gave himself up to those feelings of self-approval that come blandly to souls engaged upon virtuous works.

The day next but one after sending his message, Mr. Kelly received the following from the contralto:

“Have drawn for five hundred. Will start for Dodge in a week.”

In the beginning, Mr. Kelly had planned to keep the joy in store for Mr. Pepin a secret from that virtuoso. Mr. Pepin was to know nothing of the bliss that was being arranged for him. His earliest information should come when Mr. Kelly led him to the Wright House, where his contralto was awaiting him with parted lips and outstretched, loving hands.

“Which I’ll nacherally bring down heaven on him like a pan of milk from a top shelf!” quoth the excellent Mr. Kelly.

As stated, this was the plan; but after receiving the contralto’s message, Mr. Kelly decided upon amendments. It would be safer, when all was said, to let Mr. Pepin hear of the contralto and her coming. Mr. Pepin was a frail man; a sudden joy might strike him dead. Mr. Kelly had heard of such cases. Not to invite any similar catastrophe in the fragile instance of Mr. Pepin, Mr. Kelly took him aside and told him of the happiness ahead. He was ten minutes in the telling, rolling the blessed secret beneath his tongue, until the last possible moment, like a sweet morsel.

Mr. Pepin, rendered mute by his peril, said never a word. He read the contralto’s message and then fell into a chair – glazed of eye and pale of cheek. Mr. Kelly poured whiskey down Mr. Pepin, laying his faintness to bliss. Mr. Pepin was at last so far recovered that he could walk. But his eyes roved wildly, like the eyes of a trapped animal, and how he fiddled through the night he never knew.

Nature preserves herself by equilibriums. He who will stop and think must see that this is so. Wherever there is danger there is defence, a poison means an antidote and the distillery and the rattlesnake go hand in hand. The day of Mr. Kelly’s headlong breaking into the domestic affairs of Mr. Pepin, was the day upon which the Lone Wolf came into Dodge. The Lone Wolf lost no time, but sought out Mr. Masterson. His ragged blanket and blackened face must be explained, and the Lone Wolf told Mr. Masterson of his lost “medicine.” Moreover, he set forth his design of presently potting that Pawnee or Sioux, and sequestering, de bene esse, the dead person’s “medicine.”

Mr. Masterson spoke against this latter scheme; to carry it out would betray the Lone Wolf into all sorts and fashions of trouble. The Lone Wolf’s Great Father in Washington objected to these unauthorized homicides, and would send the walkaheaps or the pony-soldiers from the Fort upon the trail of the Lone Wolf.