We
passed
Fort
Laramie
in
the
night,
and
on
the
seventh
morning
out
we
found ourselves
in
the
Black
Hills,
with
Laramie Peak
at
our
elbow (apparently)
looming
vast
and
solitary—a deep, dark,
rich
indigo
blue
in
hue,
so
portentously
did
the
old
colossus
frown
under
his
beetling
brows
of
storm-cloud.
He
was
thirty
or
forty
miles
away,
in
reality,
but
he
only
seemed
removed a
little
beyond
the
low
ridge
at
our
right.
We
breakfasted
at
Horse-Shoe Station,
six
hundred
and
seventy-six
miles
out
from
St. Joseph.
We
had
now
reached a
hostile
Indian country,
and
during
the
afternoon
we
passed
Laparelle Station,
and
enjoyed
great
discomfort
all
the
time
we
were
in
the
neighborhood, being
aware
that
many
of
the
trees
we
dashed
by
at
arm's
length
concealed
a
lurking
Indian
or
two.
During
the
preceding
night
an
ambushed
savage had sent a
bullet
through
the
pony-rider's jacket,
but
he
had ridden on,
just
the
same,
because
pony-riders
were
not
allowed
to
stop
and
inquire
into
such
things
except
when
killed.
As
long
as
they
had
life
enough
left
in
them
they
had
to
stick
to
the
horse
and
ride,
even
if
the
Indians had been
waiting
for
them
a week,
and
were
entirely
out
of
patience.
About
two
hours
and
a
half
before
we
arrived
at
Laparelle Station,
the
keeper
in
charge
of
it
had
fired
four
times
at
an
Indian,
but
he
said
with
an
injured
air
that
the
Indian had "skipped
around
so's
to
spile
everything—and ammunition's blamed skurse, too."
The
most
natural
inference
conveyed
by
his
manner
of
speaking
was,
that
in
"skipping around,"
the
Indian had taken
an
unfair
advantage.
The
coach
we
were
in
had a
neat
hole
through
its
front—a
reminiscence
of
its
last
trip
through
this
region.
The
bullet
that
made
it
wounded
the
driver slightly,
but
he
did
not
mind
it
much.
He
said
the
place
to
keep
a
man
"huffy"
was
down
on
the
Southern
Overland,
among
the
Apaches,
before
the
company
moved
the
stage
line
up
on
the
northern
route.
He
said
the
Apaches
used
to
annoy
him
all
the
time
down
there,
and
that
he
came
as
near
as
anything
to
starving
to
death
in
the
midst
of
abundance,
because
they
kept
him
so
leaky
with
bullet
holes
that
he
"couldn't
hold
his
vittles."
This
person's statement
were
not
generally believed.
We
shut
the
blinds
down
very
tightly
that
first
night
in
the
hostile
Indian country,
and
lay
on
our
arms.
We
slept
on
them
some,
but
most
of
the
time
we
only
lay
on
them.
We
did
not
talk much,
but
kept
quiet
and
listened.
It
was
an
inky-black night,
and
occasionally rainy.
We
were
among
woods
and
rocks,
hills
and
gorges—so
shut
in,
in
fact,
that
when
we
peeped
through
a chink
in
a curtain,
we
could
discern
nothing.
The
driver
and
conductor
on
top
were
still, too,
or
only
spoke
at
long
intervals,
in
low
tones,
as
is
the
way
of
men
in
the
midst
of
invisible
dangers.
We
listened
to
rain-drops pattering
on
the
roof;
and
the
grinding
of
the
wheels
through
the
muddy gravel;
and
the
low
wailing
of
the
wind;
and
all
the
time
we
had
that
absurd
sense
upon
us,
inseparable
from
travel
at
night
in
a close-curtained vehicle,
the
sense
of
remaining
perfectly
still
in
one
place,
notwithstanding
the
jolting
and
swaying
of
the
vehicle,
the
trampling
of
the
horses,
and
the
grinding
of
the
wheels.
We
listened
a
long
time,
with
intent
faculties
and
bated breath;
every
time
one
of
us
would
relax,
and
draw
a
long
sigh
of
relief
and
start
to
say
something, a
comrade
would
be
sure
to
utter
a
sudden
"Hark!"
and
instantly
the
experimenter
was
rigid
and
listening
again.
So
the
tiresome
minutes
and
decades
of
minutes
dragged
away,
until
at
last
our
tense
forms
filmed
over
with
a dulled consciousness,
and
we
slept,
if
one
might
call
such
a condition
by
so
strong
a name—for
it
was
a
sleep
set
with
a hair-trigger.
It
was
a
sleep
seething
and
teeming
with
a
weird
and
distressful
confusion
of
shreds
and
fag-ends
of
dreams—a
sleep
that
was
a chaos. Presently,
dreams
and
sleep
and
the
sullen
hush
of
the
night
were
startled
by
a ringing report,
and
cloven
by
such
a long, wild,
agonizing
shriek!
Then
we
heard—ten
steps
from
the
stage— "Help! help! help!" [It
was
our
driver's voice.] "Kill him! Kill
him
like
a dog!" "I'm being murdered!
Will
no
man
lend
me
a pistol?" "Look out!
head
him
off!
head
him
off!" [Two
pistol
shots; a
confusion
of
voices
and
the
trampling
of
many
feet,
as
if
a crowd
were
closing
and
surging
together
around
some
object;
several
heavy,
dull
blows,
as
with
a club; a voice
that
said appealingly, "Don't, gentlemen,
please
don't—I'm a
dead
man!"
Then
a fainter groan,
and
another
blow,
and
away
sped
the
stage
into
the
darkness,
and
left
the
grisly
mystery
behind
us.]
What
a startle
it
was!
Eight
seconds
would
amply cover
the
time
it
occupied—maybe
even
five
would
do
it.
We
only
had time
to
plunge
at
a
curtain
and
unbuckle
and
unbutton
part
of
it
in
an
awkward
and
hindering
flurry,
when
our
whip
cracked
sharply
overhead,
and
we
went rumbling
and
thundering
away,
down
a
mountain
"grade."
We
fed
on
that
mystery
the
rest
of
the
night—what
was
left
of
it,
for
it
was
waning
fast.
It
had
to
remain
a
present
mystery,
for
all
we
could
get
from
the
conductor
in
answer
to
our
hails
was
something
that
sounded,
through
the
clatter
of
the
wheels,
like
"Tell
you
in
the
morning!"
So
we
lit
our
pipes
and
opened
the
corner
of
a
curtain
for
a chimney,
and
lay
there
in
the
dark,
listening
to
each
other's
story
of
how
he
first
felt
and
how
many
thousand
Indians
he
first
thought
had
hurled
themselves
upon
us,
and
what
his
remembrance
of
the
subsequent
sounds
was,
and
the
order
of
their
occurrence.
And
we
theorized, too,
but
there
was
never
a
theory
that
would
account
for
our
driver's voice being
out
there,
nor
yet
account
for
his
Indian
murderers
talking
such
good
English,
if
they
were
Indians.
So
we
chatted
and
smoked
the
rest
of
the
night
comfortably away,
our
boding
anxiety
being somehow
marvelously
dissipated
by
the
real
presence
of
something
to
be
anxious
about.
We
never
did
get
much
satisfaction
about
that
dark occurrence.
All
that
we
could
make
out
of
the
odds
and
ends
of
the
information
we
gathered
in
the
morning,
was
that
the
disturbance
occurred
at
a station;
that
we
changed
drivers there,
and
that
the
driver
that
got
off
there
had been talking roughly
about
some
of
the
outlaws
that
infested
the
region
("for
there
wasn't a
man
around
there
but
had a
price
on
his
head
and
didn't
dare
show
himself
in
the
settlements,"
the
conductor
said);
he
had talked roughly
about
these
characters,
and
ought
to
have
"drove
up
there
with
his
pistol
cocked
and
ready
on
the
seat
alongside
of
him,
and
begun
business
himself,
because
any
softy
would
know
they
would
be
laying
for
him."
That
was
all
we
could
gather,
and
we
could
see
that
neither
the
conductor
nor
the
new
driver
were
much
concerned
about
the
matter.
They
plainly had
little
respect
for
a
man
who
would
deliver
offensive
opinions
of
people
and
then
be
so
simple
as
to
come
into
their
presence
unprepared
to
"back
his
judgment,"
as
they
pleasantly
phrased
the
killing
of
any
fellow-being
who
did
not
like
said opinions.
And
likewise
they
plainly had a
contempt
for
the
man's
poor
discretion
in
venturing
to
rouse
the
wrath
of
such
utterly
reckless
wild
beasts
as
those
outlaws—and
the
conductor
added: "I
tell
you
it's
as
much
as
Slade
himself
want
to
do!"
This
remark
created
an
entire
revolution
in
my curiosity. I
cared
nothing
now
about
the
Indians,
and
even
lost
interest
in
the
murdered
driver.
There
was
such
magic
in
that
name, SLADE!
Day
or
night, now, I stood
always
ready
to
drop
any
subject
in
hand,
to
listen
to
something
new
about
Slade
and
his
ghastly
exploits.
Even
before
we
got
to
Overland City,
we
had begun
to
hear
about
Slade
and
his
"division" (for
he
was
a "division-agent")
on
the
Overland;
and
from
the
hour
we
had left Overland
City
we
had
heard
drivers
and
conductors
talk
about
only
three
things—"Californy,"
the
Nevada
silver
mines,
and
this
desperado
Slade.
And
a
deal
the
most
of
the
talk
was
about
Slade.
We
had gradually
come
to
have
a
realizing
sense
of
the
fact
that
Slade
was
a
man
whose
heart
and
hands
and
soul
were
steeped
in
the
blood
of
offenders
against
his
dignity; a
man
who
awfully
avenged
all
injuries, affront,
insults
or
slights,
of
whatever kind—on
the
spot
if
he
could,
years
afterward
if
lack
of
earlier
opportunity
compelled
it; a
man
whose
hate
tortured
him
day
and
night
till
vengeance
appeased
it—and
not
an
ordinary
vengeance
either,
but
his
enemy's
absolute
death—nothing less; a
man
whose
face
would
light
up
with
a
terrible
joy
when
he
surprised a
foe
and
had
him
at
a disadvantage. A high
and
efficient
servant
of
the
Overland,
an
outlaw
among
outlaws
and
yet
their
relentless scourge, Slade
was
at
once
the
most
bloody,
the
most
dangerous
and
the
most
valuable
citizen
that
inhabited
the
savage
fastnesses
of
the
mountains.