John Ermine of the Yellowstone Read Free

Days” shebang, had gone for a horseback ride through the hills to brighten his eyes and loosen his
nerves. Reining up before this place, he tied his pony where a horse-boy from the livery corral could find it. Striding into that unhallowed hall of Sheol, he sang out, “Say, fellers,
I’ve just seen a thing out in the hills which near knocked me off’en my horse. You couldn’t guess what it was nohow. I don’t believe half what I see and nothin’ what I
read, but it’s out thar in the hills, and you can go throw your eyes over it yourselves.”
    “What? A new thing, Dan? No! No! Dan, you wouldn’t come here with anything good and blurt it out,” said the rude patrons of the “Happy Days” mahogany, vulturing
about Rocky Dan, keen for anything new in the way of gravel.
    “I gamble it wa’n’t a murder—that wouldn’t knock you off’en your horse, jus’ to see one—hey, Dan?” ventured another.
    “No, no,” vouched Dan, laboring under an excitement ill becoming a faro-dealer. Recovering himself, he told the bartender to “perform his function.” The “valley
tan” having been disposed of, Dan added:
    “It was a boy!”
    “Boy—boy—a boy?” sighed the crowd, setting back their “empties.” “A boy ain’t exactly new, Dan,” added one.
    “No, that’s so,” he continued, in his unprofessional perplexity, “but this was a white boy.”
    “Well, that don’t make him any newer,” vociferated the crowd.
    “No, d——it, but this was a white boy out in that Crow Injun camp, with yeller hair braided down the sides of his head, all the same Injun, and he had a bow and arrer, all the
same Injun; and I said, ‘Hello, little feller,’ and he pulled his little bow on me, all the same Injun. D——the little cuss, he was about to let go on me. I was too near them
Injuns, anyhow, but I was on the best quarter horse in the country, as you know, and willin’ to take my chance. Boys, he was white as Sandy McCalmont there, only he didn’t have so many
freckles.” The company regarded the designated one, who promptly blushed, and they gathered the idea that the boy was a decided blonde.
    “Well, what do you make of it, anyhow, Dan?”
    “What do I make of it? Why, I make of it that them Injuns has lifted that kid from some outfit, and that we ought to go out and bring him in. He don’t belong there, nohow, and
that’s sure.”
    “That’s so,” sang the crowd as it surged into the street; “let’s saddle up and go and get him. Saddle up! Saddle up!”
    The story blew down the gulch on the seven winds. It appealed to the sympathies of all white men, and with double force to their hatred of the Indians. There was no man at Alder Gulch, even the
owners of squaws—and they were many—who had not been given cause for this resentment. Business was suspended. Wagoners cut out and mounted team-horses; desperadoes, hardened roughs,
trooped in with honest merchants and hardy miners as the strung-out cavalcade poured up the road to the plateau, where the band of Crows had pitched their tepees.
    “Klat-a-way! Klat-a-way!” shouted the men as they whipped and spurred up the steeps. The road narrowed near the top, and here the surging horsemen were stopped by a few men who stood
in the middle waving and howling “Halt!” The crowd had no definite scheme of procedure at any time—it was simply impelled forward by the ancient war-shout of A rescue! A
rescue! The blood of the mob had mounted high, but it drew restive rein before a big man who had forced his pony up on the steep hillside and was speaking in a loud, measured, and authoritative
voice.
    The riders felt the desire for council; the ancient spirit of the witenagemote came over them. The American town meeting, bred in their bones and burned into their brains, made them listen to
the big temporary chairman with the yellow lion’s mane blowing about his head in the breeze. His horse did not want to stand still on the perilous