Tree of Life

I

ONE tree remained. To be descried from any section, it crested the highest slope, cone-shaped and darkly green. Search the entire blue-violet rim of the world and you would see no other.

The ridges, now scarred with scooped-out sandy hollows by the ceaseless battering of prairie winds, had been stripped of cedar and pine. For roof beams of sod houses, for the construction of log cabins, also to provide fuel, the natural forestry had long ago been riven down and hauled away.

Standing there in its pride of place, the surviving pine was protected not by law but by tradition. Old Indians of the Dakota tribe used to hang beads and shells upon it, venerating the tree for its beauty and its strength. It rose tall, straight, pointed, a thing truly majestical. And as a coast bleakly sinister with jagged rocks may need a lighthouse, so did this country need that tree.

It had saved lives.

People speak of the Indian scout, Jeff Maynard, who fought off the wolves and climbed to safety after his horse had been downed, hamstrung by slashing fangs. People likewise tell of the peril that came to the teacher, Emma Wainwright, in the time of the great winter storm. She had been shepherding homeward all the pupils from the sod-built schoolhouse when they floundered off the road and were likely to be overwhelmed by the same deadly smother of snow that entombed many thousands of cattle. Eventually the landmark put her right. Hopeless confusion was dispelled by fleeting glimpses of the pine tree. Thereafter she knew which way to go. She reached a meadow, she found a haystack, she helped the children burrow into it. There were fourteen of them. All night long they lay tucked in, snuggled together, keeping each other warm. And not one perished.

Of this same tree Lancaster was thinking, Buck Lancaster from the line camp of the Circle Dot out fit, when he reined in his horse to listen. It was snowing. Indian summer had held until late in December, but now the country lay in a white hush. For a space, while the rider hearkened, there was neither clink of spur nor creak of saddle leather. Could there be anything portentous in this ghostly animation of large moist flakes continuously flowing down ?

He had come no less than fifteen miles, and still greater distance remained to be covered before he could reach the holiday entertainment, a night of fun, frolic, shrill music, and dancing at the Bar W ranch.

As yet the snow was no more than fetlock deep, and the wind slept. But the prairie, like the man himself, appeared to be listening. Transformed by the silent fairy foam daintily heaping itself over everything, the bushy bristle of soap weed had been hidden. Each clump was like a strange white blossom. Tussocks of long grass drooped in downy curving webs; there was bridal array of the loveliest kind for every coarse stalk of resin weed, for every scraggy cluster of wild sage.

The rider said to his horse, ‘Air’s awful still.’

There is a certain kind of silence which makes the plainsman hearken with the most acute attention, and at such a time every sound is suspicious. Listen! What was that husky rasp as of a coiled serpent about to strike? It could be nothing else, as Lancaster knew, than the wild plant known as loco or rattleweed. The seed pods shook. A mysterious air current, which he himself could not feel, had set them shuddering.

The cow pony understood it. Sharing his rider’s uneasiness, he sniffed and shivered. Already white spurts were being torn off the surface of the ground, to run in shredding wisps and whorls. Then began the race to get out of the way of what was sure to come.

It came. The gale burst upon man and horse, pouncing out of the north. But even after the wind had struck, enormously slashing across the Great Plains, the snow was still too heavy with moisture to choke the air with powdering drift.

The pony ran; he kept running until light failed, until blind air matched a blind sky. Now you could no longer tell that day was day, for all had come to be one vast scud of hissing snow.

During such a storm don’t ever suppose the wind is going to hold steady and blow always from the same direction. Beware of confusing shifts. Watch out for a treacherous whipping round of the gale from north to northeast, or capriciously back again to the northwest.

Lancaster realized that something to go by would be needed. Believing, as from time to time he peered into the billowing velocity, that he would presently ‘raise the tree,’ as Westerners say, he still felt in some measure a comforting sense of security. At intervals the bandana handkerchief drawn over his head, with ends knotted together under his chin, had to be readjusted to keep the wide felt brim of his hat folded down over his ears.

All at once he had the distracted notion that someone was hooting through the wind, calling him.

‘Hey, Buck! That you?’

Astonishing voice; astonishing shape smirching up beside him. He had been overtaken by a rider, who leaned toward him and shouted to be heard above the vociferant tumult. And in pleased surprise — for it’s something to have companionship at such a time as this — Lancaster cried out, ‘Hello, Hughie! How’s things?’

‘Weel eneuch,’ answered Scotch Hugh from the Box Four, a ranch owned by English stockmen. ‘Ou, but Maister Mon,’ he added, ‘it’s a Wee taste o’ weather this time, and na mistake!’

Heading for the dance, was he?

‘Ay.’

Presently he yelled the assertion, ‘I tak my whusky straight; but sal, it will be nae so bad if they hae something hot.’

Buck whooped forth the hopeful anticipation, ‘Might be eggnog they’ll have, or Tom and Jerry.’

He gave himself a rub over the stomach, thinking how good it is, how it warms you up, a big hot dram of that steaming holiday beverage.

What with the wind making such a row, it was hard to talk; and the two riders, both hunching forward with heads sunk low and faces averted from the buffetings of the gale, stopped trying to be sociable.

Having reached a district of rough broken land, the men believed the tree should now appear; but still they could n’t see it.

‘She’ll be farther on, farther east,’ Buck announced.

Hughie shouted: ‘Havers! If we hae passed it, noo!’

‘Keep a-goin’,’ the other insisted. ‘That’s all we got to do. Jest keep on, and we’ll sure spy out the landmark.’

None too much encouraged, the Scotchman said, ’Ay, weel — maybe.’ Then he doggedly affirmed, ‘Ay, we maun come to it presently.’

They rode on, and after a time once more began to talk a little, yelling to be heard, each one anxiously trying to make the other believe that he did n’t feel the least bit anxious. Hughie even made playful reference to the seethings and siftings that came pricking right in through their clothes like needle points of ice.

‘I’m partial,’ he said, ‘to cauld baths the year round; but tod, this is mair than I choose.’

Lancaster shouted back, ‘Same here.’

Yet it could n’t truthfully be said that he was partial to baths of any kind, at any time. This day, however, he felt virtuously clean. He boasted of the clean flannels he had on, and even bawled out the information, ‘Scoured up good before I left. Rio Red, he soaped my back for me. A hot tub.’

They rode on and on. Now and again, when shoved by a heavier broadside of wind than common, the horses staggered, nearly flung off their feet. And they kept wanting to turn and drift with the storm. Take care. That must n’t be allowed.

The thoughts of Lancaster were n’t quite happy about something else. ‘Too bad,’ he roared. ‘Be a pity if our feet swell on us when we start a-dancin’.’

’Ou, ay! But we’ll off wi’ our boots, an’ stand in the snow. That’ll be best — afore we gang in.’

II

To reach the dance the men must go east, always east. But how be sure that they were headed right?

Once again a strident voice penetrated the screaming sibilance of storm.

‘Ought to show up, had n’t it — the pine tree?’

‘It will, it will,’ Hughie stoutly affirmed. ‘Most michty queer if it dinna show itself.’

That he preferred not to think about the possibility of such a painful queerness was revealed by the way he clutched at something else, something trivial to consider.

‘Am thinkin’ ye’ve put it on for this day, your beaded waistcoat. Hev ye noo?’

Buck’s fancy vest was something to see, the front of it being all covered with Indian beadwork. And for buttons, what else than five-dollar gold pieces? A whole row of them! To have the garment admired would usually warm its owner’s heart. But now he only shouted, ‘Lookee! Look there!’

Amid the racing bursts of snow-surf a shadowy object had cut in ahead of the riders. The obscure gray phantom must be a horse with someone on its back, and at once the men set up a clamor, yelling and spurring after the vague figure that went with the wind, aimlessly drifting.

Try as they would, it was impossible to get any response from that individual. Asleep? But his eyes were open. In a rime of ice they were staring straight ahead.

He had to be plucked from the saddle; he had to be shoved and shaken and roughly pummeled before he could be roused. Groggily wrathful at last, he fumbled for his six-gun, ready to hammer somebody. Not until then could the others succeed in making him understand what was what.

‘If it ain’t Ranger Ed!’ shouted Lancaster. ‘Is that who you are.?’

‘Was when I started.’

Although he walked with toilful effort, badly limping, it would n’t do for him to get back on his horse. The others kept with him, all three on foot, all three flapping their arms against their bodies, thrashing in rigorous exercise, stamping and knocking their benumbed feet together.

Ed had once been an expert ‘top rider.’ But in the breaking corral a broncho had pinwheeled, giving him a nasty fall, and leaving him with a right hip that would always be troublesome.

Why should a cripple of that kind want to go to a dance? Well, of course waltzing would be quite out of the question; but he could still, as he said, ‘rassle through a quadrille in good style.’ The very thought of it brought from him the jubilant shout, ‘Enough womenfolks are goin’ to be there to run three sets!’

Then, too, there is so much more to a dance than mere dancing. Annie Lewis would be present, and in a saddle pocket he had something for Annie — a velvet case, satin-lined, that held a cut-glass bottle full of perfume. None of your cheap kind. Oh, no! But the kind to be got at eight dollars an ounce, the kind suitable for a Christmas present.

‘We’ll get there,’ Buck avowed. ‘Sure will.’

‘Ou, ay!’ Hughie agreed.

Did they believe it? They must at least try to believe it. So they went on. They struggled up a ridge and down again.

No pine tree.

Across other ridges they fought their way.

No pine tree.

Finally a dispute arose, a fierce disagreement as to what direction ought to be taken. The men wrangled, accusing each other of ignorance. Stupid to persist in this blunder of moving southeast. Ed could tell by the lay of the land just where he was. Scotch Hugh, who had kicked up a lump of dirt, could tell by the color and quality of the soil that Ed did n’t know at all what he was talking about.

‘There’s nae doot aboot it: we noo gang straight west instead o’ due east.'

‘Stick with me,’ Buck declared, ‘and you’ll wear diamonds. My bump of locality don’t, never play me no tricks. I go by instinct.'

Ranger Ed disdainfully howled, ‘ Holy snakes, but we ’re a smart outfit! Three wise men in this year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and freeze to death! If you want to croak, I’ll stay by you. We’ll all croak together.’

The others were ashamed of him. One should n’t blather like that. Fight on, keep going, never for a moment admit the grim probabilities of such a situation. Being a lame man did n’t save Ed from a cuff and a kick for those words of dismal half surrender.

Even though powdering welters from above, from below, from the side, went on swishing over the men and their led mounts, had not the worst of the gale blown itself out? The horses had moaned in labored gasps; but now, plodding on with muzzles gray from their frozen breath, they appeared to breathe more easily.

III

When the men decided to take another turn at riding, the one in the lead knocked his foot against something and stumbled. What could it be his boot had struck? A stump? At first he could n’t be sure. All looked, bending down to study the ground. They began staring at broken bits of evergreen, at chips half under the snow, also at the track still obscurely showing where something heavy had been dragged down the slope.

Incredible thing! Doubting and unwilling to believe this ugly fact, everybody glanced upward — in remembrance, if not in hope, thinking of the stately presence which had so long towered here, a point of aspiring beauty to glorify these harshly naked hills.

One man said, ‘Gone!’ Another likewise said it, ‘Gone!’ ‘Ay,’ said a third. ‘A needful thing. And now gone!’

Temples no longer ached with the pain of frost. Lips blue with cold had lost their pallor, going suddenly bright.

All of a sudden Ranger Ed gruffly blurted out, ‘Come on.’

Did he mean to the dance? Not at all. As he flung into the saddle it was to follow where the tree had been dragged through the snow. Against the bare flesh of his body, having thrust his fingers under the breast of his clothes, beneath shirt and undershirts, he was warming his pistol hand.

Scotch Hugh’s rifle had come out of the saddle holster, and was now carried with naked barrel resting across his left arm. Lancaster fumbled at a stiff thong to get his ‘las-rope’ undone.

No great distance had been covered when he observed, peering ahead, ‘See that. Looks yellow, like a star does when dust is blowing.’

The golden mote, low down, winked, vanished, came back, and once more disappeared.

Being less keen of vision than the others, Hugh said, ‘I dinna see it. Oh, yes; now I do!’

Not so remote and brighter, the iridescent fleck was truly like a star fallen to the ground and intermittently twinkling amid the blurs of snow. Needless for the men longer to follow the trail of the tree. They fastened their gaze upon the trembling fire drop and steadily approached, watching it get clearer and larger.

They could descry near it a bulky smirch which turned out to be a wagon, a prairie wagon with canvas running into swells, now collapsing and now ballooning up from the inflation of the wind. At the rear of the ponderous vehicle a man appeared and bent down to lower a tin coffee pot upon the flames.

He wore no gun belt. The object leaning against a rear wheel must be not a rifle but an axe. So, then, unarmed. He would have no chance to resist.

The horsemen separated and rushed, charging in upon him from three sides. A successful foray. Before he knew it they had him between them, surprised, without a weapon, and near his feet an incriminating pile of split wood.

Buck Lancaster did the talking.

‘The landmark’s gone — drug away. And we’ve fetched up at the place where it was drug to. This committee, stranger, has come to do business with the man who chopped down the pine tree. You’re him, I guess. Ain’t you?’

Startled, yet hardly frightened, the accused looked from one to the other of the three horsemen; and they, staring at him with a gaze as bleakly cold as the ice upon their eyelashes, could see he was nearly ready to drop with fatigue. What human being anywhere was ever more fagged, beaten, used up, more utterly worn out than this man? Yet there was something strange about his exhaustion. Especially his eyes showed it; — as if a sense of well-being were unaccountably mixed up with his extreme weariness.

Could n’t he see his time had nearly come? Apparently he could n’t see that. What ailed the fellow? To behave as if these strangers did n’t matter, as if he need not be concerned about a loaded revolver, a loaded rifle, or even about the noose that had been grimly opened at a rope end.

Lancaster said, ‘No tree or telegraph pole bein’ handy, I reckon we’ll just have to hist up the wagon tongue and make that do.’

Almost as if this sinister trio of riders had been invited guests, the man genially said to them, ‘This one on the fire is a small pot. But get down, and I’ll have out the iron kettle for a big bilin’ of coffee.’

Lancaster spoke once again.

‘If there’s any word you want to send your folks, I guess one of the boys will write it out. So now’s your chance. If you got anything to say, speak up.’

He told who he was — a well-digger by trade. Lived in a sod house on the north fork of the creek. ‘Yes,’ he said, a little boastfully, ‘and it’s a right snug soddie I’ve put up.’

Pause. Then he spoke again, spoke in disconnected fashion, haltingly.

‘This mornin’ — pullin’ out for town — a right early start. Thought there was goin’ to be plenty of time. Was n’t, though.’

At this point he seemed to forget the men on horseback. He had cocked his head on one side, and with strained attention stood listening for any stir or sound within the wagon.

Perhaps his air of troubled detachment was only put on. Ranger Ed roughly shouted, ‘Better speak up, if you got anything to say.’

‘Hush!’ the man cautioned. ‘Hush! She’s asleep now. I got some bricks het for her, and I think she’s going to pull through all right.’

His head at this instant gave a quick, spirited lift. He heard something. It was heard also by the men. But what could it be? What bird had cried in the storm? What snow wraith had faintly whimpered? Even the rowdy wind seemed trying to listen, to behave better, to be no longer quite such a ruffian.

For a voice was calling, a wee voice, very thin and little and helpless — and altogether new to the world!

The riders heard and gave a start. They heard. They glanced at each other; they nudged each other. Sudden understanding had come to them of the look in the man’s face, a look frightened and ’ glad. He smiled. They heard him announcing with a hushed, proud voice, ‘It’s a boy.’

Buck Lancaster, after first giving his icy moustache a swipe with his hand, gulpingly declared, ‘Looks like — near as we can figure it — looks like that there li’l nester has come it on us pretty cute. Looks like he’s dropped his loop on us, and got us clean roped and throwed.’

The three men dismounted; they went off to the fire to warm themselves; they put on fresh sticks of fuel, using the wood prodigally.

‘Burns good,’ said Buck.

‘Ay,’ Hughie agreed.

‘On account of the pitch in it,’ Ranger explained.

They were trying to be easy and nonchalant; but how uncomfortable they looked, and shamefaced, and foolish, and awed, and really scared! Presently they put their heads together, earnestly conferring. Two insisted that Hughie, being a widower who knew what it was to be a family man, ought not to be bashful. He had to be prodded with elbows before he cleared his voice and solemnly affirmed, ‘They — if it’s nae askin’ ower much — they’d lak it fine to hae a wee look at the bairn.’

Hearing this request, the father uneasily fidgeted; then he questioned whether it might not be, maybe, just a trifle too cold for unwrapping the baby.

Of course it would be too cold. Of course! Buck and Ranger Ed said so at once. And looking reproachfully at their mate they declared that the idea had n’t been theirs. No, it was his — altogether his. Just a silly Scotch idea! They did n’t want to have a look at the baby.

‘No, and never even thought of it,’ Ed avowed.

‘Would be foolishness,’ said Buck, ‘ to unwrap him. Would be rotten reckless.’

They did n’t know how anybody could be so senseless as to propose such a peril. Their scorn of Hughie was to let him see that they considered him abysmally ignorant.

With cowhide overcoat undone and coat opened, Buck Lancaster had got at his beaded vest. A knife blade nipped off two gold buttons; not the top one, but the one next to it, and after that the fourth from the top. He dropped these five-do liar coins into the father’s hand.

‘Them,’ he said, ‘are for the boy. For at a time like this it’s right to sweeten a little.’

‘Sweeten? I got something more suitable for that,’ announced Ranger Ed, and brought out a parcel from a saddle pocket. ‘Here you are. This — it’s perfumery. It’s guaranteed strictly high-class verbena flavor. Give that to the boy.’

Now came Scotch Hugh’s turn to step forward. Near the fire he stood, holding a white poker chip, and saying while he shook his head over it, ‘ I dinna ken if it’s suitable.’

Was that the best he had? No — something else. From under his overcoat he produced a small oval object darkly glossed with lacquer — an oldworld snuffbox, with a dancing girl on the cover, a tiny figure whose dress was like the petal of a peach blossom.

‘I doot noo,’ said Hughie, ‘if it’s suitable.’

‘Hell, yes!’ Buck exclaimed. ‘Will do first-rate.’

Taking the gifts with him, the father stepped from hub to tire, clambering in the front of the wagon. Meanwhile the visitors went around to the lee side of the vehicle, standing there pressed close to the rear wheel and waiting as they had been asked to do. They could hear meanwhile not merely the deep voice of the man but now and again the thin frail tones of a woman’s utterance. By and by, as he drew up the canvas, he said to them, ‘The wife, she’d like to thank you.’

Awkwardly, being thus bidden, they put their heads inside the wagon sheet, and by the yellow beams of a lantern they could dimly see a prone figure bedded on hay and snugly wrapped with blankets. When a corner of the covers had been drawn down and the mother’s young face clearly revealed, she turned upon them her luminous dark eyes; but, after all, spoke not a word. She did no more than press her face the least bit nearer to the warmly swathed bundle held in the hollow of her arm.

The men saw her do that. They saw her smile. Then, embarrassed and awed, their heads were hastily withdrawn. They bashfully laughed a little. And it was like a carol, a merry Christmas carol, to hear those three men laughing in the winter storm.

Buck was the first to speak.

‘Us and our saddle ropes will come in handy to pull this wagon through the drifts. The thing to do is to give these folks a boost. Get ’em home.’

‘That’s the ticket,’ Ranger Ed agreed.

‘Ou, ay!’ said Hughie.