Thirty Years on the Frontier

XIX

UNDER THE BLACK FLAG

As the sun went down below the rolling glassy waters of the gulf of Mexico, I sat on the hatchway steps of the little steamer Dauntless, fully realizing for the first time that perhaps before morning I would be swinging to the yard-arm of a Spanish man-of-war.

I was sick, anyway, and the abominable mixture of whiskey and garlic which Mark Witherspoon had given me as a preventive against yellow fever, had made the contemplation worse.

The Dauntless was loaded with arms and munitions of war for the Cuban Insurgents and if the Spaniards caught us we would doubtless share the fate of the crew of the Virginius at Santiago de Cuba in 1873.

I had credentials as a newspaper correspondent, but Mark Witherspoon and I had duly enlisted at Tampa, Florida, in the cause of Cuban liberty, and we were assigned to the third division of Garcia’s army under command of General Ruloff.

Our little vessel hugged the Florida Keys for more than a week. Meantime we were reinforced by small parties of twos and threes, who came in open boats by night. The stores of rifles, ammunition and dynamite came by small sailing craft. We now numbered thirty-seven men. Eight of us were Americans, two were Germans and the others were Cubans from Tampa and Key West.

On the night we were ready to start the distinguishing lights of a revenue cutter were seen, so we lay close in a little cove and banked the fires in our furnace until four o’clock the next afternoon, when we slipped out and put for the high seas, headed straight for the coast of Cuba. When night fairly set in, there came small squalls and a drizzling rain. We had no signal lights out and every sound was muffled, even the funnel was so protected that not a spark could escape. All night long everybody was most keenly alert, and it was towards daylight that the irregular mountain lines of Cuba could be discerned, standing in shadowy relief against a darkened sky. On entering a little landlocked harbor we signaled with flash lanterns and were soon answered from the shore. Nearly a hundred insurgents met us, and the work of unloading quickly began. During the morning we were reinforced by nearly a hundred more Cubans who brought ponies and pack mules. As soon as we were unloaded our vessel hoisted the Danish flag and with all possible speed put out for the high seas. Her hull was well down on the horizon when we took up our march inland. Our route lay over tortuous mountain trails over which our ponies climbed with the agility of goats. The trail was often dangerous in the extreme, for the slip of a pony’s hoof would have sent both horse and rider hundreds of feet below. We had taken trails unknown to the Spanish soldiery.

When about fifty miles in the interior, we reached a plateau and here found encamped some eight hundred men under General Ruloff. From the very first I had but little confidence in him. He was a Polish Jew, well educated in military tactics, but unfitted to conduct a guerrilla warfare with men like us who were virtually fighting under the black flag.

Subsequent events proved this, for at the fight of Santo Esperitu we left our improvised hospital unguarded, and Captain Sandoval cut to our rear and captured it and after destroying much of our valuable stores, put every sick man to death.

Our rendezvous lay in the province of Puerto Principe and our line of action westward. After the fight at Santo Esperitu we never massed in action, but divided into companies of about one hundred, free to run or fight as our commander ordered.

Our detachment captured Captain Sandoval and a party of his men, and in view of his inhuman treatment of our prisoners, he was promptly shot. Sandoval went to his death as all other cowardly butchers do, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

We were ordered by Ruloff to burn all azucaderos (sugar mills) and to blow up with dynamite all railroad culverts and bridges and to destroy all telegraph lines. Our division frequently made rapid raids, always gaining ground westward. The division to which we were attached raided the town of San Lazaro which was defended by a small body of Spaniards. We routed them and captured some two hundred Mauser rifles and a large quantity of ammunition and other military stores. Our commander then ordered the execution of the alcalde (mayor) for having betrayed a number of insurgent sympathizers, causing them to be shot, and their families to be driven through the streets, beaten with sticks.

Early in November we were encamped near Nuevitas where we had lain inactive for several days. One afternoon scouts had reported an advancing column and we had chosen for our ambuscade the ruins of a stone building, now overgrown with vines and nearly hidden from view by a cactus thicket.

There was a hushed stillness in the dark forest that lay beyond the long yellow road, and in the cane fields that stretched away for leagues to our right. To the left the San de Cubitas mountains, with their covering of dense tropical vegetation, rose dark and silent. A lookout had climbed a tall cebra tree and was watching with a field glass. He suddenly gave the signal. Then the men were told in whispers each to select a man and to fire at a given order. The Cuban sun blazed hotly down that day. The air was close and stifling in our position behind the cactus thicket and our hearts beat quick and fast in those moments of waiting. There was the low rumble of horses hoofs, a cloud of yellow dust arose from down the road, and soon the Spanish column was almost abreast the 150 rifles that pointed from behind the stone wall. I peered over the sights of my Winchester and drew a bead on the breast of a young officer. He was chatting gaily with a companion and as he turned his face revealed a handsome countenance. It was a boyish face with the dawn of manhood just settling upon the brow. Thoughts crowded each other in my mind just then: Perhaps the young man was a conscript, not here by his own choice to imperil his young life, and I, whom he had never wronged, an unsuspected foe, safely hid in the cactus thicket behind the stone wall, about to send his soul into eternity. I lowered my aim from his breast to his horse just behind the shoulder. The order came to fire. The trigger that would have pulled like a ton weight a second before pulled easily now. And so all through those dreadful volleys that we poured into the struggling ranks. For firing into a mass of men is a different thing from that of firing upon one man singly. When the smoke of battle cleared away more than forty of the routed Spanish column lay dead or wounded in the road. I went to the place where the young trooper’s horse had fallen and there lay the young officer pinioned underneath with a broken leg. I felt that I wanted to help him. I knew from the look on his manly face that in private life he would have been my friend, but to show a kindly feeling at that time would have made me a suspect among my comrades in arms. Their machetes flashed in the sunlight and their strokes falling swift and fast reddened the soil of Puerto Principe. Mark and I stood silent, helpless spectators of the horrors of war and revenge, wreaked by men, who in the remembrance of wrongs and outrage, were lost to any feeling of common humanity. There was only one act of kindness which I dared perform. In the pocket of his blood-stained blouse I found a letter. It was from his mother in Seville, and bore a mother’s love and sister’s prayer for his safe return. When I afterwards landed at Galveston, I sent it to his home, with an account of how he died upon the battlefield.

The blazing sun was yet high when we were in our saddles and moving away. I saw a vulture circling above the battlefield, one, two, then a dozen, then a score. These black-winged scavengers had scented death, and there let contemplation end. Night comes suddenly in the tropics, when the sun dips beyond the sea, but here and there in the valley were lights, lantern like at first, spreading soon like a long prairie fire. They were in the cane fields which our men were firing, and as the flames swept on, the bursting stalks sounded like a battle with light revolvers. It lit the night, and its glare and gloom added mystery to the dark forest beyond the road. Morning came and we were safely encamped amid the hills. The birds sang merrily and the sun dried the dew upon the tall, rank grass, and when it came roll call, two names were stricken off. They had reported the day before to the Great Commander of the great beyond.

XX

IN CUBAN JUNGLES

Spies brought news of an encampment of Spanish infantry a day’s march ahead. All was hustle in the Cuban insurgent camp. Twenty-eight Texans who had recently joined our command were allowed the privilege of leading our column to the attack. That day we followed circuitous mountain trails and encamped at night in the heart of a dense forest through whose trailing vines we made our way along the bridle paths. By 4 o’clock in the morning we were again in the saddle. There was no blare of trumpet or beat of drums to announce our coming as our column of horsemen stole from out the silent forest and wound along the road like a great creeping serpent to strike death.

The Spanish camp was beyond a small stream through which we were to charge. Halting a mile beyond their picket lines, saddle girths were tightened, weapons were looked to, and we formed in a column of fours. Americans to the front, and ready for the charge. Ten stalwart Cubans were selected to form the skirmish line two hundred yards in advance and engage the enemy when they reached the banks of the stream. The column was then to charge at a gallop and use the revolver and machete.

The first rays of the sun were gilding the mountain crests and awakening the flamingoes around the lagoons when a Spanish sentry’s rifle told the moment of action had come.

On pressed our column at double quick, while the increased firing ahead warned us that the Spanish camp was aroused. There was the heavy rattle of Mauser rifles, followed by the sharper report of Winchesters as our advance guard reached the stream and drew aside to let our column pass.

The little river flowed from the mountains and plunged over rock and cliff in wild tumult. Below the ford which we were crossing there were falls and as the Spaniards fired a volley that struck our column midway in the stream, they emptied many saddles, while wounded men were carried down to watery graves.

The Spaniards threw a double cordon of infantry at bayonet charge against our cavalry, but the Texans’ revolvers opened a gap and the column rode through the demoralized camp, doing its fearful work. On the column plunged, fire leaping from the deadly revolvers on either side. When beyond the Spanish camp, the bugle sounded wheel, and back we rode among the panic stricken soldiers, dealing death until they broke in confusion, and gained the cover of the forest. We halted long enough to gather up our wounded and burn the supply train. An hour later and we were in full retreat to our rendezvous in the San de Cubitas mountains. One evening Mark and I started for the vicinity of an azucadero, where we knew there was a patch of sweet potatoes. The night was dark, damp and chilly, and the road lay through a clearing of tall palms whose white trunks stood like ghostly sentinels. The silence was unbroken save by the sound of horses’ hoofs, the croaking of frogs and the distant baying of dogs about some negro casa. We did not suppose there was a Spaniard within fifty miles of us, and as we rode our ponies silently along a horseman suddenly appeared in front of us, and in clear Castilian tones shouted: “Quien vive!” “Cuba Libre!” cried Mark, drawing his machete and spurring his horse forward. At the same instant I discharged my revolver full in the sentinel’s face. We wheeled our horses and rode quickly into the clearing, knowing better than to retreat by the road we came. It was well we did not, for soon a body of Spanish cavalry came tearing down the road, firing a volley ahead at random. We rode on through the clearing, being now cut off from our command. At length we came to a creek whose banks were steep and fringed on either side by trees, from whose branches hung a network of tangled vines and creepers. The water flowed sluggishly, as most streams in Cuba do. We determined to cross the creek at once, knowing that with the first streak of dawn we would be tracked, for we had left an easy trail in the soft soil. We used our machetes with great difficulty to cut a path through the vines, and when we reached the water’s edge swam our ponies across and cut our way through on the opposite bank where we lay down to await developments of the morning. Both of us must have fallen asleep, for we were startled by a loud grito alto from the other side of the creek. Peering through the bushes we saw a Spanish trooper gesticulating to a party of cavalry in the rear. In another second there was the simultaneous report of our two Winchesters and the trooper rolled from his horse. We hurriedly mounted our ponies amid the fusillade of bullets from the approaching squad of cavalry, and spurring our horses toward a cane field, we were soon hidden. A little later we abandoned our horses and started them off in another direction with a lashing, thinking thereby to gain time and elude our pursuers. Then we started for the azucadero. It was our first intention to fire it, thinking its flames would attract the attention of our command and bring us relief. But as we came out of the cane field we saw a body of troopers crossing a bridge which spanned the creek. We did not think they saw us, and in our haste to find a hiding place we ran around the building to a well which supplied the boilers. Leaping on a platform we found a lot of empty sugar hogsheads standing on end near a lot of filled ones. We quickly rolled an empty beside them and turned the open end down, getting under it. The troopers had seen us and tracked us straight to the well. They supposed we had descended by means of the pump pipe and hidden our bodies in the water, for they began hurling stones in the water and with a mixture of Spanish oaths called us “Perro Americano” (dog American). Satisfied with their work of exterminating us in the well, they rode away.

Meanwhile we were couched in close quarters, with our revolvers tightly clenched, determined to sell out as dearly as possible. When they had gone, Mark whispered, “I am badly shot,” indicating the spot by placing his hand upon his abdomen. The morning wore away and our situation was becoming unbearable. We were cramped and almost suffocated. Mark had swooned away twice in the agony of pain. Fortunately we had filled our canteens from the brackish waters of the creek, which alleviated our sufferings some. Yet it was past noon before we ventured out. I helped Mark inside the azucadero, where he laid down upon a pile of cane refuse, while I examined his wound. One look was enough. The contents of the abdomen were oozing out through the wound, and I knew that was a fatal sign. I carried a pocket case containing a few medicines for an emergency, among which was some morphine. I gave him an eighth grain tablet which relieved him some, but at times his pain grew so great that he begged me to shoot him.

We could hear distant firing during the afternoon, but the sounds were growing fainter and we knew our command was retreating. When night came on I gave Mark another tablet of morphine and lay down for some rest. The dreadful chill that always follows a gunshot wound had set in, but I had no blankets or other coverings with which to lessen his sufferings. Thoroughly exhausted myself, I soon fell asleep, and when I awoke late in the night, I was alone with the dead. For me to bury him was impossible, and I could not think of leaving him there a prey to the vultures. So I did what I should have wanted him to do for me had our places been reversed. Sorrowfully I left him alone in the now burning azucadero and while the flames of his funeral pyre were lighting the night, I started for the sea.

That day I fell in with a party of insurgents who were on their way to the coast to meet another filibustering vessel. As malaria and the effects of climate were telling heavily upon me, they kindly gave me aid in boarding the craft, by which I afterwards landed at the docks at New Orleans, feeling that I had done my share in the cause of Cuban liberty.

XXI

EMULOUS OF WASHINGTON

“I don’t know that I can tell you fellows about the first dollar I ever earned,” said W. P. Epperson, the pioneer editor of the Colorado City – , “but I do know the first and last lie I ever told.”

“You ought to remember, seeing that it has not been over twenty minutes,” said George Geiger.

“Twenty minutes be smashed!” yelled Epperson, reaching for his gun, “it’s been twenty years this summer. My first lie was a trivial one about fishing, and the last happened in this way.”

“Twenty years, did you say?” interrupted the hired man with an incredulous look.

“That’s what I mean,” and the veteran editor took another chew of Battle Ax, while a halo of white settled down about his head.

“In the autumn of 1885,” he continued, “I stepped off a Union Pacific train at Silver Creek, Nebraska, and after a good supper I determined to drive across the country to Osceola, a distance of thirty miles. The driver of the livery rig was about the most handsomely attired imitation of a cow boy I had ever seen. He wore a new suit of corduroy with a broad sombrero and high-heeled boots with ornamented red tops, also a bright blue shirt and a rattlesnake skin necktie. I had him sized up for a green country boy from Indiana or Illinois who had seen but little of frontier life, and he confirmed my suspicions a little later as we were crossing the Platte River bridge by saying, ‘I suppose if you knew what my business had been you would hesitate to ride with me alone on the plains at night.’

“It was getting dark and we were crossing a wide stretch of the then desolate plain that lay between the Platte River and Osceola. I was enjoying a cigar and felt at peace with all the world, when a devilish thought struck me, and I asked, ‘What has been your business?’

“‘Well, sir,’ he replied, ‘I have been a cow boy.’

“‘The deuce you have,’ said I, ‘Shake, old man, you are a fellow after my own heart, and since you have been so kind to tell me your business, I will let you know who I am. I, sir, am Doc Middleton.’

“The fellow almost fell from his seat in surprise. Doc Middleton was the notorious outlaw whose depredations had become so terrorizing to the settlers of Nebraska that the State had offered a reward of $5,000 for his capture, dead or alive. I enjoyed the joke I was playing all the more when I saw the effect of my speech.

“‘Just now,’ I continued, ‘I am trying to get away from a sheriff’s posse; that is why I am making the cut across the country. They may overtake us, and if they do, there will be some heavy shooting.’

“‘With this I drew a big Colt revolver from my overcoat pocket and I said I had two more like it in my valise. I also told him if they overtook us he must get down by the dashboard and drive for dear life, that he might get shot in the back, but that would be cow boy’s luck.

By this time he was nervous and began looking backwards as he whipped the ponies up at a lively gait. I did not pretend to notice it and so kept up my lying.

“‘The first man I ever killed,’ I told him, ‘was a one-eyed man in Utah, who called me a liar, and I threw his body over a cliff, and my conscience hurt me for full half an hour afterwards. After that I soon got so I loved to blow a man’s head off just to see his brains fly.’

“It had grown quite dark, and having nothing better to do, I told him all the bloody stories I could think of and claimed them as my own experience until I became tired of the foolishness and lapsed into silence. We had made about half our journey and were passing a farm house set in a dense grove of trees. There were lights in the house and the young man broke the silence by asking, ‘Please, dear Mister Doc Middleton, may I go in and get a drink of water? I think I have got a fever in my throat.’

“‘Certainly, my boy, certainly,’ I replied taking the lines. He slid off the rig and ran to the house, while I sat there like a fool holding the horses. About twenty minutes passed and he did not return. Then I noticed the lights in the house had been extinguished. I called loudly for the young man to return, and when it flashed over my mind that to him I was the outlaw Doc Middleton, and he might warn the farmer of my presence, who might even then be waiting to get a shot at me, I yelled again for him in fear, louder than before, but there was no response. The more I thought of my predicament, the more nervous I became, until the cold sweat stood out like beads on my face.

“I could stand it no longer, and seizing the whip, I cut the horses a lash and crouched down by the dashboard just as I had been instructing the young man to do. In the sudden dash, the horses broke one of the buggy springs, and I wandered on the plains until morning, for I had missed the Osceola road. It cost me $2 to have the spring mended and $5 to send a man back to Silver Creek with the rig, to say nothing of being scared within an inch of my life.”

XXII

ON THE ROUND UP

The round-up of today differs in no essential particular from that of former years, excepting in the number of cattle rounded up and the number of men and horses required in its working.

In 1900 I spent some months on a ranch in northern Colorado, where there are still large bunches of cattle.

For some days prior to the start the foreman had been busy preparing the wagon, rounding up saddle horses, hiring men and making final arrangements for the start.

When the day arrived everything was in a state of activity and as evening approached the corral was filled with horses. Each “waddie” was tolled off his string of mounts. Ten to each man, and after the summer on rich buffalo grass every horse was in a state that boded no good for the unaccustomed rider.

That night we ate our suppers at the chuck wagon at the round-up camp, after which the boys sat around a chip fire, telling stories and smoking.

The cowboy story differs from any I have ever heard, both in extravagance of statement and manner of telling. They relate to anything and everything that has ever come under his acute observation.

“I always had an especial desire to make governors my associates,” said “Beaut” Bowers, “so with a view to a pleasant acquaintance I once called upon Governor Waite, presenting the compliments of Governor Rentfrow of Oklahoma and several other governors, none of whom had sent any compliments, but then they are so cheap I thought I could give him a few without their missing them.

“I had heard that he wanted to ride to his bridle bits in blood and I wanted to get into the swim, although I would rather it was beer.

“It was the governor’s day to be out of sorts, and he did not seem inclined to talk. I wanted to talk and resolved to break the ice of his reserve in some manner. So when he asked how the people of Oklahoma stood the panic, I told him we had not felt it in the least. He seemed surprised at this and asked, “Why not!” I replied we were all too poor to own anything and had got beyond expecting it. “Well, poor people have to live; how do they manage for some money?” I told him when silver was demonetized we took to catching Keeley graduates and scraping the chloride of gold off them with a case-knife and had done fairly well.

“The old man stared at me and asked me if I had wheels in my head too. Everybody had been saying the old governor had wheels in his head until I believe he was afraid to pick his ears lest a cog clip the end of his finger off.

“I had recently been on Zack Mulhall’s ranch in Oklahoma, where the Reverend Buchanan used to come and talk Populism to the boys until I got tired of it one night and stole his false teeth where he put them to soak in a tin cup. There was a lot of socialism too, in his talk that didn’t go down, for on that ranch the first fellow up of a morning got the best socks, and that made me fall out with the idea of community of interests. But to humor the governor I spoke of the widespreading revolutionary sentiment in Texas and Oklahoma and hinted that they had their eyes turned eagerly on his movements, as it was their hope he might devise some way to lead the country out of the silver difficulty. He then showed me a letter from President Diaz, of Mexico. It suggested another pan-American congress in the interests of silver. “It’s no use, though,” he said, “the last assembly of the kind amounted to nothing. Eastern influences would soon retard any movement of the sort.’