The Savannah morning news., 1903-05-03
THE HALF-BREED.

A tourist of to-day, peering from
the window of his vesubule train at
the electric-lit vision of Three Rivers,
as it stars the banks of the Missouri
like a constellation against the black
ness of the night, would never recog-
nize in the trim little modern town,
the old Three Rivers of the early sew
entities.
To restore the latter, he should first
of all sweep the ground bare of the
buildings which now adorn it, leaving,
perhaps, here and there an isolated old
shanty of boards far advanced toward
dissolution He would be called upon
to substitute. pIplace of, the brick
stores and dwellings of to-day, mot
ley collection of lean-tos dug-outs.
tents and shacks, scattered, broadcast
over the virgin prairie without the
slightest sembiance of order. Where
the Oriole furniture factory now stands
he must be prepared to see--and hear
"a great drove of horses and oxen
feeding on bottomland grass. And for
the latter-day citizens, whose police
record is so discouraging to the am
bilious chief, and so creditable to them
selves, he must imagine a multitude
more heterogeneous, perhaps, than
could be gathered anywhere else in
the world-tenderfeet from the East;
mountaineers from Tennessee and
Kentucky, bearing their historic long
pea rifles; soft-voiced Virginians; keen,
alert woodsmen from the North; wiry,
silent trappers and scouts from the
West; and here and there a straight
Indian, stalking solemnly toward some
one of the numerous "whlskey joints
The court house site he would find
crowded with canvas wagons, noisy
with the shrill calling of women and
children. Where Judge Oglethorpe has
recently erected his stone mansion,
Frank Byers would be running a we'll
patronized saloon. Were he to COM
plete the picture by placing himself
mentally at the exact period of our
story's opening, he would find the
whole town, if such it might be called,
seething, turbulent, eager, and-it must
be confessed-ready for trouble.
For all these varied swarms had
gathered from three points of the COM
pass for the purpose of pushing on TO
the gold discoveries of the Black Hills.
They had rushed eagerly to this ex-
tremest point-and stopped. AS far as
the border of the great wilderness it
was possible TO journey individually;
beyond that mysterious, boundary
nothing could be accomplished alone.
Trained scouts and plainsmen there be-
came necessary, and these skilled men
declined TO attempt the journey.
Their reasons were simple and CO.
gent. Throughout all of the previous
winter unusual SHOWS had covered the
pasturage TO such a depth that much
of the range stock, on which the plains
man relied to draw his heavy "schoon-
ers," had died of cold and exhaustion
while fof the survivors but an insig-
nifcant remnant was fit to travel. Aft
er causing this damage, the snow had
melted in four days. leaving the
streams swollen, and the trails in an
awful state. especially in the Bad
Lands. where, in the deeper gullies,
they must have been quite washed
out. AS an incidental climax, piled on
top to make good measure, the Ogal-
lalas were on the warpath: and Of all
the Sioux the Ogallalas are the worst
Nobody gave a thought to the Ogal-
lalas- That was part of the game
But a blind man could see that those
emaciated cattle couldn't stand the
racket. And so Three Rivers steadily
congested, and the conditions of life
daily became more eXacting.
One of the many who had reached
the frontier town, only to find him
self checked in his desire to push
ahead, was a young man of twenty
two or three. He had made a long
journey, and he was correspondiugly
disappointed when he foresaw, as mis-
immediate prospect a summers So
journ in sun-baked, turbulent, un-
profitable region. Not that he was
content with a superficial proof of its
necessity. He sought the preventing
causes at the very sources of them;
he examined the cattle carefully; he
questioned closely the men who knew
the trails, the fords, the Indians. When
he had quite finished his patient inves-
LEGATIONS, he swore briefly and gustily,
and then went on a three-days' spree,
from which he sobered into a quiet
Understanding lounger, waiting for
what might turn up. Nothing did.
The days followed one another until
a month had passed. which seemed as
long as a year Men gambled away
one another's small store of wealth.
drank away their own disappointments
shot each others lives out unmolest-
ed. Three spasmodic vigilance COM
mittees hanged six men by the neck
until they were dead, but speedily al
lowed themselves to dissolve and the
town to relapse, because of a happy
combination of sheer laziness and SYM
pathy with the offenders.
RumorS OF an advance flew thick.
They were always brought heavily to
earth by a charge of common-sense
or investigation. Nevertheless. others
were speedily on the wing; and men
looked at them. Ensuing disappoint-
ment came in time to possess a cumu-
lative force that amounted to a dull,
sullen anger against nothing in par
ticular.
The young man ofswhom mention
has already been made took his
month with an outward seeming of
imperturbability, but with an increas-
ing inner tension. He was tall, dark,
straight young man. broad shouldered
and clean built; strong, but with fine
hands and feet. His hair was straight
and black; his features clean-cut and
swarthy., By his restless eye and
certain indefnable cast of expression
you knew him for a half-breed. He
gave out his name as Michail Lafond,
and he lived much in himself. To-
ward the close of the troublous thir-
ty days, a practised observer might
have noticed that his slender fingersl
were rarely still Otherwise the half
breed appeared the most Indifferent
member of the community.
His apparent idleness did not pre-
vent him from investigating in his
painstaking manner each rumor as it