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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Stampede," Stewart Edward White immerses readers in the tumultuous world of cattle drives and the rugged American frontier at the turn of the 20th century. This vivid tale intertwines adventure, romance, and the harsh realities of life in the West, exploring the intricate dynamics between man and nature, as well as the evolving relationships among cowboys, settlers, and Native Americans. White's prose, marked by its evocative descriptions and a keen understanding of the landscape, captures the rugged beauty and perilous challenges faced by his characters, painting a rich picture of a vanishing way of life. Stewart Edward White, a prominent American author and outdoor enthusiast, drew extensively from his own experiences traversing the West, which informed the authentic portrayal of the characters and settings in "Stampede." Known for his deep appreciation of nature and the human spirit, White'Äôs literary career reflects a commitment to conveying the American experience through the lens of adventure and resilience, marking him as a significant figure in early 20th-century American literature. "Stampede" is a must-read for fans of historical fiction and anyone intrigued by the mythos of the American West. With its compelling narrative and rich characterizations, it serves not only as an entertaining romp through rough terrains but also as a meditation on the human condition, making it a timeless classic that resonates with readers across generations.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Stampede
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
In the spring of 1817 an observant Englishman, one Morris Birkbeck, came to visit the young United States. One aspect of the new, raw country struck him so forcibly that it became the theme of the American journal he published as soon as he got back to London. “Old America,” he wrote, “seems to be breaking up and moving westward.”
Now that they look back upon it from a sufficient distance, Americans themselves are increasingly conscious of this movement which was so significant a phase of their growth; and, as they have begun to see it freshly interpreted, their perspective has changed. More and more, in recent years, the emphasis has shifted subtly from the American Revolution, which was a kind of birth, to the age of Manifest Destiny, which was the youth of the country, its time of conditioning. It is not the fact of birth which determines the nature of a man or of a nation, but the years of growing, of adolescence, of development to maturity. And our novelists and poets, no less than our historians, have seen this truth. It would be possible today to assemble a large library built around the relatively new realization that the Kentucky Trace, the wheel tracks across the plains, the Oregon and Santa Fé Trails, are as great a part of our past as the Boston Tea Party, Valley Forge, or the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
In any such library Stewart Edward White’s saga of Andy Burnett would occupy an honored place. In the person of Andy, which is to say within the space of one American’s lifetime, Mr. White has crystallized the whole westward movement, something he was able to do effectively because the current, once it set to the West, ran so broad and so fast. “One people, one flag, a mighty civilization that shall extend from coast to coast!” Andy was one of thousands whose lives spanned the fulfillment of that beckoning dream.
Thousands of readers already know the story of Andy Burnett in its chief outlines—the story of the boy whose urge to seek out the new country led him into the wilderness, carrying old Dan’l Boone’s own long rifle, to make his way with the fur trappers, the tall mountain men, across the plains and the Great Divide, eventually to the far side of the Sierra with Jedediah Smith and down to the western shore itself, there to become a California ranchero, a part of the last frontier. These thousands have followed Mr. White’s vivid and romantic narrative of Andy’s and America’s growing up, first in The Long Rifle, then in Ranchero and Folded Hills, when Andy became Don Largo, the well-loved “Mr. Big” and a figure in the colorful period of California’s Spanish and Mexican periods, finally in Stampede, fourth and final volume of the Burnett annals, in which Andy sees his son come to manhood, a connecting link between the old California and the new.
All such readers, aware of the sweep of our history, will welcome this gathering of the four novels into a single volume, where they become, as they should, a bright, flowing panorama of America’s vigorous youth.
But there is more to it than this; the historical approach is not the whole story.
In his four decades as a practicing novelist, Stewart Edward White demonstrated forty times, more or less, that he knew how to tell a tale, especially one that has to do with the outdoors, with the woods, the mountains, the plains, the rivers, all that goes to make the life of action in the places where action is life. When White describes a prairie pool of melting snow water ruffled by the wind, blue from the reflected sky and so clear that it is also colored a little by the first yellow-green shoots of spring grass wavering at the bottom, you know beyond doubt that he has seen such a pool. The fact is that White was always as good a woodsman, a mountaineer, a horseman, a rifle shot, as any of his characters. A man like that can and does write with the kind of conviction that carries over into his books, making them clearly and essentially true.
Here, then, you have a superb storyteller who knew his chosen backgrounds as few novelists take pains to do; who wrote responsibly, under a sense of obligation to reflect in good faith and frankly the scene to which he applies himself; who possessed a unique ability to interpret the general in terms of the particular; to mirror history in the persons of credible, rounded characters of his own invention walking side by side with actual men and women from our yesterday. When you put these things together, infusing them with the plain, transparent honesty of purpose that has always marked White’s work, then you have historical novels of a high order. The Saga of Andy Burnett—do not let its apparent simplicity deceive you—is this sort of fiction.
Joseph Henry Jackson
Berkeley
California
THE SAGA OF ANDY BURNETT
STAMPEDE
I
A fat and rather untidy man sat in a boxlike office in the second story of a building near Portsmouth Square. In those days that was not far from the water front, and the man could look directly out to the Bay where lay, rotting at their chains, scores of wooden vessels, deserted by their crews for the gold rush of ’49, and since superseded by the faster clippers made necessary by the shifts of trade. He sprawled back in his chair, his booted feet on the flat desk, his black wide hat over his eyes. In his mouth was an unlighted cigar which he revolved methodically with his teeth and tongue. The end of the cigar had become frayed in the process. Every so often the man removed it momentarily to blow forth at random small wet pieces of tobacco that had become detached.
He was alone in the room, which was small and ostentatiously plain both in ornament and furnishing: a pine box, carpeted with coco matting; a few shelves of lawbooks; another, less comfortable, chair; and a spittoon. This crudeness was unnecessary, a pose; for San Francisco was some years out of its swaddling clothes, and Jake Conger’s fortune by now was tidily on toward the seven figures.
Jake continued to stare at the abandoned ships. After a time, absent-mindedly, he struck a match and applied the flame to the end of the cigar. Only with some difficulty, and considerable mechanical ingenuity, did he manage to get the poor demoralized thing going. He persisted patiently, though a half-dozen fresh cheroots peeped from his vest pocket.
Behind him the door opened and closed.
“Hullo?” said Jake Conger inquiringly, but without bothering to turn his head.
“Jake!” cried an amused voice on a note of false alarm, “your chewing tobacco’s on fire!”
The fat man withdrew his booted feet from the desk top, swiveled about to face his visitor. The latter was as slender as the other was fat; as spick and span as the other was untidy; a man perhaps rising fifty, but with the fresh skin and snapping live eyes of youth. He was dressed in the height of one of the half-score of fashions affected by the San Francisco of that day: a high flaring collar above a wide bow stock; a low-cut waistcoat; an ample blue coat with a wide rolled collar and tails behind; tight-fitting striped pantaloons strapped beneath the insteps of varnished boots. In one hand he skillfully carried a polished cane, a pair of gloves, and a tall hat. A roach of upstanding white hair alone gave him his proper age.
Jake Conger’s shrewd eyes half closed, but he showed no other indication of surprise. With one foot he dextrously spun the vacant chair toward his visitor, and at the same time, as though with the same motion, he produced more cigars, but from an inside pocket.
“Set! Smoke!” he invited curtly.
The newcomer spread his tails, seated himself, laid aside his hat and stick.
“Yours, or political?” he inquired, examining the cigars.
“Mine,” said Conger. He touched his outside pocket. “Political,” he added, “next my heart, always, Braidwood.”
“In that case——” accepted the visitor. He puffed for a moment until the cheroot was well alight. “You seemed busy when I came in.”
“I was looking at them ships,” said the fat man with sudden and surprising animation, as though he had just awakened, “and figgering. Seems like they ought to be good for something. A man could get ’em cheap: for nothing, practically.”
“You might pass a law,” suggested the visitor blandly, “turn ’em into prison ships, like the old Euphemia. You’ll have enough jailbirds to fill ’em all if things go on as they are. But look here, Jake, I didn’t come in to waste your time. I want you to do me a favor.”
“I thought likely,” grunted Conger, but not unamiably. “Let’s hear it.”
“I want a job.”
“A job!” repeated Jake, after an instant of blank incredulity. “F’r you? A job? What are you talking about?”
“Not for me,” laughed Braidwood, “for someone else. And it has to be an especial sort of job. That’s why I came to you. There’s nothing in it—for anybody,” he added at Conger’s expression, then laughed. “I’ll tell you about it,” he suggested.
“So do,” grumbled Conger. The cigar began again its methodical revolution, the movement imperiling the integrity of the ash, which had grown to an inch or more in length. “Permit me,” said Braidwood. He whisked an ash tray from the desk, held it beneath the end of the cheroot which he delicately flicked with the nail of his little finger. Conger grunted. “Do not mention it,” said the visitor.
2
“It is for my nephew,” Braidwood began his explanation.
“Didn’t know you had one,” growled Conger.
“He has been here but a little over a week. He arrived on the clipper Thunder Bird. I wish to find him suitable occupation.”
“Why don’t you give him a job yourself?” growled Conger. “You ought to have any amount of them.”
“I could; here. But he is pretty young—just twenty—and——”
“No good, eh?” interrupted Conger. “So it’s to be a government job! Well,” he admitted cynically, “don’t know but you’re right.”
“He’s a fine boy,” Braidwood denied heatedly, “and he’s going to make a fine and able man, but——”
“But what?” Jake Conger grinned.
“But he’s young; that’s all: he’s just young, and this town is bad for him, at least till he gets his feet under him.”
“Twenty’s not so young,” said Conger. “Why, I mind me when I——”
“It isn’t years; it’s age—or rather it’s youth, just sheer youth. Some grow up quicker than others.”
“Say”—Jake leaned forward so suddenly that even his heavy chair protested—“that wasn’t your nephew by any chance that I heerd ’em tellin’ of that got into a row with Yankee Sullivan at the El Dorado a night or so ago?”
Braidwood nodded. Conger removed the wreck of the cigar from his mouth in order to whistle. “Suicidal tendencies, eh?” he remarked dryly.
“Claimed he saw Sullivan slip a card on a Chileño,” said Braidwood.
“So he had to horn in! How did he figger in it, even if ’twas so? And what if it was? Who cares about a Chileño, anyways?”
“I know, I know!” agreed Braidwood with a slight show of impatience. “But that’s just the point. He’s young and he’s green and he’s enthusiastic and he’s come out West just honing for what he calls adventure. You know yourself, Jake, that that is a bad combination the way this town is put together right now. If it hadn’t been for Danny Randall and Diamond Jack, Yankee Sullivan would have killed him the other night.”
“Sure! I heard about that!” Conger contemplated the debris of the cigar with regret, finally cast it accurately into the spittoon. “Well, what is it you want of me?”
“I told you. A job for him. Something away from the city, with some responsibility to it—or at least something that looks responsible. Leslie is nobody’s fool.”
“Ain’t many jobs with dry nurses to ’em,” said Conger dryly.
Braidwood frowned.
“Now don’t get me wrong, Conger,” he said sharply. “The lad is nobody’s fool, and he can take care of himself and he’ll learn fast. But he’s very young and he’s idealistic——”
“Oh, I see your p’int,” the fat man interrupted. He thoughtfully produced another cheroot and stuck it in his mouth. Braidwood watched him.
“He is the son of my youngest sister,” said Braidwood after a little. “I have not seen her since she was a baby, five or six years old. That’s a long time. But I was very fond of her, and she must have been very fond of me and talked of me. At any rate, when she died the boy came straight out here to me. Of course it may have been merely a spirit of adventure—the West, the gold fields. I don’t know.” He was talking more to himself than to Conger.
“Well, I tell you: I got a kind of idea,” said the latter thickly over the obstruction of the cheroot.
“You know the gov’ment is tackling the land business lately, examining titles and adjusting boundaries and the like.” He waved his hand toward the papers that strewed the top of the desk. “Big job. All mixed up.” He chuckled fatly. “Good pickings. Well, I think I could get this boy of yours an appointment as Field Inspector. How’d that be?”
“I don’t know. What is it? What does it amount to?”
“Nothing much. Just takes the grants and plots and checks up on landmarks and boundaries, and so on, and makes a report as to whether everything gees or not.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Well, then mebbe the land is declared public and open for entry, or maybe suit is entered in Federal Courts. It all depends.” Conger grinned reminiscently. “I should say it did depend! You’d better send your boy into a den of grizzly b’ars as up the Valley where the squatters are strong. They make their own land laws and they don’t want no interference—unless it interferes their way. But I was thinking we could send him up past Soledad. There’s a lot of ranchos up there, so far back that nobody even knows they’re there. How’s it strike you?”
Braidwood nodded.
“I knew I could depend on you, Jake. I won’t forget it.”
“I don’t intend you shall,” returned Conger dryly. “That’s all right. Send him around to see me.”
II
Leslie Dayton said good-by to his uncle and clambered aboard the stage for San Jose. He had no regrets at leaving the excitements of San Francisco, for he was of the forward-looking type that peers always over the horizon. There true adventure ever dwells, though to the impartial observer it would seem that enough of that commodity could be picked up in any street or alley of the young city. Indeed Leslie had thought such to be the case and had plunged into the excitements of the place with an eager and reckless zest that completely submerged his first slight disappointment that he was not at once to go gold hunting in the placers. Braidwood laughed indulgently at this idea.
“You’re three years too late,” said he. “That’s all over—I mean the romance. Oh, there’s gold yet, but it’s down mostly to plain hard work. The fortunes are being made right here.”
The boy had snapped eagerly at the position offered him by the lawyer-politician as soon as he learned that it was to take him into what, to him, was also a dwelling place of romance—the ranch country of the old regime. To Conger’s surprise, and somewhat to his amusement, young Dayton proved to be not only quick of mental grasp, but deadly earnest in his efforts to prepare himself.
“You’re right,” he told Braidwood, “he’s quite a youngster. And he’s going to make quite a man—if he lives that long. I told him I wanted him to pull out right away, and he talked an arm off me, insisting he couldn’t possibly get ready inside a week. I gave in to save my ears.” Conger chuckled. “He’s going to let me know when he’s ready to go,” he added dryly.
“A week!” echoed Braidwood, aghast. “But that won’t do.”
“If you’re thinking of Yankee Sullivan,” said Jake Conger comfortably, “rest yore mind. I’ve spoke my word, and he’ll behave, and so will all that gang as long as they know the kid is gittin’ out soon. I wouldn’t answer if he was staying on. And I don’t reckon you need worry about his getting into no more trouble, either.”
“I wish I had your confidence.” Braidwood shook his head.
“He’s going to be too busy.”
“Busy! At what?”
“Gitting him a good ready.” The fat man dropped his chair to its four legs and leaned his elbows on the desk. “You know where he is now?”
“I’m getting afraid to guess where he is at any time.”
“Well, he’s at Judge McCain’s law library. That kid’s going to know more land law than I know myself before he gets through. I tried to tell him ’twa’n’t necessary, that all he had to do was report back what he saw and we’d tend to the law part of it, but he said, if it was all the same to me, he’d ruther know what he was doing.”
“Well!” ejaculated Braidwood, impressed. He ran his hand through his upstanding white hair, shook his head. “You surprise me! I never would have suspected him of anything like thoroughness—or interest, for that matter.”
“I’ll let you know when he gives me my orders.” And Jake chuckled again with vast relish.
Nevertheless the week had still two days to go when Jake was recalled from his favorite occupation of staring across the Bay by a knock at his door. So unusual a phenomenon was this that he removed his feet and slewed his chair about before answering.
“Come in!” he shouted.
The door opened and closed.
“Oh, it’s you!” said Jake Conger. He surveyed the visitor for some moments speculatively, with an approval that was completely cynical, somewhat reluctant, but still was approval. This was a compact, medium-sized young man, wiry rather than muscular. He was as dark of complexion as some Spaniards, with good-looking regular features of no peculiar distinction; characteristics he probably shared in general with a half hundred other youngsters in this community of young men. But even in Jake Conger’s eyes he stood out as both individual and arresting. This was due to two things, or rather to two different manifestations of the same thing. His eyes, and to a lesser degree the set of his mouth, expressed an outgoing eagerness: from his whole being emanated a vibrant vitality which reminded Jake Conger of nothing so much as his setter dog, Shot, awaiting his command to move forward. The young man had stopped just inside the door. He held his hat in his two hands and fixed his brilliant eyes on the lawyer, waiting for him to speak.
“Well?” said the latter after a moment.
“I’m all ready,” announced the boy. Beneath the studied evenness of his voice was a lilt of eagerness.
“Know what you’re to do, eh? And how to do it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“More’n I do,” said Conger dryly, but he said it to himself. “You got your maps of that country, and you copied out those records like I told you?”
“Yes, sir; all finished.”
“Well then, come here.” The fat man opened a drawer of his desk from which he drew a document ornamented with a red seal. He contemplated it a moment, then thrust it negligently across the desk. “Thar’s your commission,” said he. “Hold up your right hand. You do solemnly swear that you will”—he gabbled rapidly through a form of oath, the words tumbling and slurring—“s’ help you God?” he ended and looked up. Something in the boy’s eyes dragged him to his feet.
“So help me God,” repeated Leslie Dayton under his breath. “I do,” he said aloud. He took the paper almost reverently, looked at it a moment.
“That’s all,” said Jake, recovering himself and flopping down again into his chair. “When do you start?”
“Tomorrow.” The boy hesitated. “Don’t I wear a shield, or a star, or something like that?”
Conger suppressed a grin.
“No, son,” said he. “Them things go with sheriffs and marshals. That dockyment is your authority. Take care of it. Remember now,” he added with faint irony, “you’re a responsible officer of the United States gov’ment. Good-by and good luck.”
“Good-by, sir.” The young man shifted uneasily, finally blurted out: “I want to tell you, sir, how deeply I appreciate this chance and how grateful I am to you. I haven’t much experience, but I’m going to do the best I can to keep you from regretting your trust in me.”
Jake Conger, to his profound surprise and somewhat to his anger, felt his face flush.
“All right! All right!” he growled. “Good-by. Let me hear from you.”
2
It had been decided, as most expedient, that Leslie should go by the regular stagecoaches to San Jose, then to San Juan Bautista. At the latter place he must buy a suitable horse through the offices of a man to whom he would be accredited; after which he would proceed in due course over the mountains to the valley of the Salinas, and so to the scene of his proposed investigations. For this purpose Braidwood supplied him with a small sum of money, which he carried next to his skin in a soft leather belt with pockets, but more liberally with letters of recommendation to various people, like the man at San Juan, with whom Braidwood’s wide business interests had relation. These letters, together with the commission with the red seal and maps and papers, Leslie carried wrapped in oiled silk in a pair of aggressively new saddlebags along with a change of clothing. This made rather a clumsy and heavy parcel. Braidwood tentatively suggested so and pointed out that a pack horse would make possible a less meager equipment, but desisted instantly he perceived that the boy saw this expedition as a kind of lone sortie, on his own resources, into a wilderness. That was part of the excitement and went with the little two-barreled derringer and the huge Colt’s revolving pistol that Leslie brought home from his first shopping. Braidwood looked on these more than doubtfully.
“Those things are just likely to make trouble for you,” he objected. “I’ve never carried a pistol, and I’ve never had difficulty, even when things were pretty rough; before we squelched the Hounds. If you’re known to be unarmed, they’re likely to leave you alone.” However, he did not press the point. He refrained carefully from issuing too much advice or warning. Leslie must cut his teeth on life in his own way. So he clambered aboard the stage with the two-barreled derringer up his sleeve, the way Danny Randall carried it, the Colt’s revolving pistol strapped about his waist, the overstuffed saddlebags at his feet.
The stage was a high, open affair with five seats, each capable of accommodating three. That occupied by the driver, of course, faced forward. The remaining four faced one the other, in pairs. This day there were, including Leslie, only a half-dozen passengers. One, on invitation, sat with the driver. This was a young man, tall and well knit, who climbed to his place with a swing of grace that attested great power in control. He wore a long linen duster, well buttoned, and a flat, low-crowned Spanish hat. The darkness of his complexion and hair and the handsome regularity of his features might, indeed, have indicated a Spanish origin, but his eyes were of the uncompromising steel gray found in none but the northern races. The expression of his countenance was grave and self-contained. His glance crossed Leslie’s briefly, without expression. Nevertheless Leslie felt somehow appraised and young, though he realized resentfully that this youth’s years were no more than his own. He flushed and climbed to his own place. For the moment he rather regretted having buckled on the Colt’s revolving pistol quite so prominently. But the next passenger was similarly armed, so he felt better.
