The Last Protest | Page 4

and vigorous down the river-trail, when Young Moon
came with a gallop and a whoop over the ridge.
Collins was greatly surprised and very little pleased. Threescore fat
steers bearing the 2 O & E brand were directly in the path of the
redskins, and in the traditions of the range it is told that this is not good
for steers. The tough little cow-pony came around on his hind legs to
face the Indians.
One man sat quietly in the middle of the trail with his right hand raised
and empty, but the score that came over the ridge swerved to one side
and stopped before they came to the one. Collins wondered curiously
where the Indians had procured the whisky, for to him it was very
evident that they were happily drunk. Young Moon he recognized

easily; he had won a lame pony from him at the big poker game after
the round-up last fall. But at the poker game Young Moon was attired
in a cheap black suit of store clothes instead of a bonnet of feathers and
a gaudy apron.
Young Moon rode up to within easy-speaking distance and dismounted.
Collins gathered himself up firmly in the saddle.
"How," greeted the Indian.
"How," returned the cow-boy.
"You better go 'way," said Young Moon, with a decisive sweep of the
arm.
"Go 'way h -- -," replied Collins, laconically. "What yuh driving at,
anyhow?"
"We going down the creek," said Young Moon. "You and your people
go away -- back to where you come from."
"Oh, so that's the game, eh?" said Collins, cheerily. "Well, yuh'd better
not do anything rough, ol' pigeon-toe, or they'll have a slue of those
stiff-necks from Fort Custer down here an' shoot yuh good an' plenty."
Young Moon laughed. The poor mortal "stiff-necks" attempting to
contend with the Great Spirit -- truly it was amusing. Eloquently and
with many gestures he hastened to inform Collins that before long the
Indian would pitch his tepee on the parade-ground at the fort. The
regime of the white man was at an end in the land; Young Moon, he
whom the spirits had rendered invulnerable, said it.
Collins would have laughed gleefully if Young Moon attired in the
ordinary raiment of civilization had given utterance to such fanciful
language. But here was Young Moon, more than half naked, entirely
sober, and with a score of bucks at his back, calmly saying that the
white man was to be driven out of the valley. It was evident that Young
Moon and his bucks were not on a drunk, but on the war-path. This sort

of thing, Collins felt, was distinctly out of place now. Such things had
passed into the school-history stage.
"Old man, lemme tell yuh something," he said confidingly, leaning
over the saddle pommel. "Yuh're trying to run your bluff away too late.
Don't yuh go for to buck the brass-buttons now; they're too strong for
yuh. Yuh jest mosey 'long back to yer reserve an' act decent. Sabe? I'm
only a-telling yuh for yer own good."
Again Young Moon laughed scornfully.
"We go down there. Sabe?" he said positively, pointing down the trail
behind Collins. Then the flash of savage rage, the wild, blinding desire
to slay, came to him, and he whipped the well-worn short-barreled
Winchester from beneath his blanket and fired from the hip point-blank
into the herd. Collins's six-shooter came out and up with a jerk. He was
no longer the suave diplomat and benevolent Indian adviser; this Indian
was killing the cattle under his charge.
"Hol' on there, yuh -- -- -- -- -- low-lived -- -- -, yuh!" he called fiercely.
"Don't yuh try any more o' that funny work, or I'll let -- -- -into yuh so
quick yuh'll never know what hit yuh. Yuh can go to Fort Custer, or
yuh can go to -- -- , if yuh want to; but I tell yuh right here, if yuh ever
get past here, it'll be after yuh an' me an' a whole lot of yer friends have
cashed in. Sabe?"
Young Moon understood fully. The cow-puncher was mad. Mad
cow-punchers with big blue six-shooters in their hands are not objects
to fuss lightly with. Young Moon hesitated.
For a moment the two faced each other silently, the Indian and the
cow-puncher, the gaudy, picturesque savage and the commonplace
utilitarian, the old and the new. Both had much to think of in that
moment. Young Moon tried hard to conceive some manner in which he
could get a good shot at Collins without danger to himself.
Collins was thinking of the property under his charge, the herd running
wildly back and forth in the trail below, and the new home of Peterson

the "newcomer," which lay farther down the