THE STORY OF A DAKOTA STORM
The population of Dakota in the early days was miscellaneous, to say the least of it. Men from every part of the world, from every station in life, and for many reasons, hobnobbed together in terms of free and equal intercourse. All social rules were turned topsy-turvy—or rather, ceased to exist. You could get a German baron to plow your garden for you, if you wanted style, and were not particular about the aim and scope of the furrows, and perhaps while the baron was plugging away, desperately struggling to keep the plow from emulating the exasperated worm of the old story, Jimmy O’Brien would come sailing by behind his team of 2:30 trotters on his way to deposit the money obtained166 by wise government contracts, and sing out a jovial greeting of “Stick to ’um, Bar’n, old man rocks! Thot’s th’ road t’ wealth—but ye’ll be a toird man when you land there!” And the baron would wave his hand in acknowledgment of the greeting, and smile grimly to himself in acknowledgment of the statement.
All manner of younger sons inhabited the country, making nonsense of the occupations they took up under the disguise of earning an honest living, and for which, as a rule, they showed a superb incapacity.
One of these scions of a noble house was James Cecil R. DeG. Cunningham—often known as Slim Jim or Pelican Cunningham—sometimes as just plain Cunny. He had a tent on a homestead on the banks of the Chantay Seeche River. It was a very clean, white tent. All the empty tin cans were piled up outside, like cannon-balls in a fort, and167 every morning the estate was carefully “policed.” No scraps and odds and ends littered the courtyard of Camp Cunningham.
“Like master, like man,” says the saw, and in this case truly, for the man Cunningham was exactly like the master Cunningham-sur-le-Chantay Seeche. No matter what his work was, he always managed to look as if he had just come from the wash—not that he was beautiful, but he was so chalky clean. His hair was clean, a peculiar no-color-at-all-cleanliness; his teeth were clean, and almost the size of piano-keys, when disclosed by his wide, good-natured smile; his eyes were pure white and pale blue. They showed behind the powerful lenses that corrected their myopia, like specimens of old china in a cabinet. They also had something of the trustfulness and instant claim for sympathy in their short-sighted stare that one often sees in children’s eyes.
168 Cunningham was full six feet two in stature, bony and loosely put together. His legs were of such length that Billy Wykam’s remark, that, “if it wasn’t for his necktie, Cunny would be twins,” had more foundation in fact than most hyperbole. But his walking gait was the most remarkable thing about him physically. He took immense strides, swinging his arms to their full extent, in unison, while his head had a continuous pecking motion. Paul Falk, our intellectual giant, said that Cunningham in action looked like a demonstration of a transverse vibration, and at rest like Cunningham, and nothing else on this or any other planet. He was one mortally homely man, if ever there lived one, yet there was something high and striking in his long, big-nosed face, and a genial quality in his perfect manner that would win you to liking him at the first meeting and for ever after. His was the style of the true nobleman, and gained169 for him the respect of the hilarious crew among whom he lived, despite his oddities.
Many a quiet kindly turn, so carefully contrived that he never guessed it was a kindness, he received from his neighbors; and for his part no man could have been more willing or useless. With an ax in his hand he was the most dangerous companion imaginable. He nearly brained two of the boys before they could think of an excuse to part him and his weapon without hurting his feelings, and when he started to help in an undertaking, not the least of the troubles of the others was to render him harmless. On one occasion Billy Wykam had a matter of twenty or thirty calves he wished to brand. Cunningham was in the corral, armed with a rope, intensely serious and businesslike. He tripped up almost everybody with the ropes; he “shooed” the wrong “critters” out of the corral, so that somebody had to take horses and chase them170 for miles over the prairie until they could be secured again; he roped Antelope Pete by mistake when the latter was flying down the corral towed by a powerful yearling, and gave Pete a fall that it would take years to blot out of the spectator’s memory; then in his zeal he hauled away on the rope, dragging his victim quite a distance before he could be stopped.
It was as much as the rest of us could do, so weak were we from laughing, to prevent the angry plainsman from laying violent hands on Cunningham, who, of course, was ignorant of having given offense. In short, Cunningham was so persistently where he ought not to be, and so entirely in everybody’s way, that some of the boys were like to die of suppressed profanity. Billy asked Paul for mercy’s sake to set the man at something where he wouldn’t be playing the old Harry with things all the time. Paul elected him to the position of171 branding-iron tender, whose duties are to heat the irons, and hand them out when needed. Even here the Englishman distinguished himself, for, peering near-sightedly around with a hot iron in his hand, he touched Billy’s buckskin bronco on the flank with it. The ugly little beast promptly kicked Cunningham into the fire, and then tore around the corral, spreading disaster and confusion. Poor Cunny got several bad burns, for which the rest of us were not as sorry as we should be, inasmuch as they forced him to knock off for the day.
If anything could have added to the absurdity of Cunningham’s performance, it would be that he was the “perfect gentleman” all the while; explaining, apologizing, or hazarding an opinion, it was always with the little graces of the drawing-room. How ludicrous this manner is in a rushing, dusty, hot, swearing cattle-corral is a thing that has172 to be seen to be appreciated. We always tried to secure Cunningham’s services elsewhere when we had something on hand which we really wished to put through. The man had a modest pride in his tent that it would have been wicked to disturb, yet for his safety’s sake it became a friendly duty to drop him a word of warning. He had landed in the country in the spring, and hitherto the weather had been delightful, without an omen of the furious storms that were sure to come during the summer. It seemed to us that his tent wouldn’t amount to much in the grass of Dakota, but we didn’t like to tell him so. At last we appointed Neighbor Case our commissioner to acquaint Cunningham with some facts we thought he had overlooked. After praising the tent and its surroundings, Neighbor came to the heart of his message.
“It’s mighty nice—mighty nice, Lengthy, he said. “Yet, if you want my advice, I’ll tell173 you what I’d do; I’d take a half hitch around a boulder with them guy-ropes, if I was you. Even then, you wouldn’t have no sure thing. Wait till you see one of our little breezes come cantering over the prairies, son; you’ll wish you had a cast-iron tent, fastened to the bowels of the earth with bridge-bolts.”
“I’m sure I thank you awfully, old man, for your interest, you know,” replied Cunningham, “but,” inspecting his moorings carefully through his glasses, “I think she’ll stand it. The pressure of the wind on a normal surface is only two pounds to the square foot, for a velocity of twenty miles an hour, and, of course, on oblique surfaces—like the tent-walls—much less, much less. Why, even in the cases of exceptional storms, the pressure does not rise above eighty or ninety pounds, and as I was careful to get only the best of canvas and cordage, she should stand that, don’t you think?”
174 Neighbor Case was impressed, if not converted. “That’s a great head you have on you, Lengthy,” he said admiringly. “You seem to know old Mr. Wind’s ways as well as if you and he had played in the back yard together when you was boys; but I want to tell you something. He may act like that in books, and only press you for so many pounds as you tell me about when you’re normal and he’s hitting a certain gait, but you can’t tell what he’ll do when he gets you out here all alone on the prairies. He may forget the rules and press you just as hard as he darn pleases; or he may shift the cut and knock you into a cocked hat before you can get the books out to show what he ought to do. No, Lengthy, book-learning is good, and you won’t catch me saying nothing agin it; but if I was you, I’d let it slide on this occasion, and tie her up to a boulder.”
175 Cunningham, however, had a trait in common with many gentle-natured people—that of mild obstinacy—and he stuck to his tent just as it was.
We could not urge him further, so there the matter dropped—until the day of the storm, then several other things came to earth.
We woke one morning to find the country wrapped in a fury of red light—not the cheery glow of daybreak, but a baleful crimson, as though it were raining blood on a world of fire. In the west a massive heap of storm was rolling, against whose murky blackness the small buttes stood out ruddily. It was a boiling storm; the vapors curled and twisted in a way that meant wind and hail, and plenty of both.
“By the great Hohokus! We’re going to catch it this trip,” said Billy, and the three who composed the household of his ranch began176 scrambling about in nervous haste, gathering up the things that might be blown away by wind.
In the middle of it he called out to me, “Say, Hank, don’t you think we ought to give old Cunny a lift? Here’s where his shanty comes down, sure!”
This was more than kind of Billy, for about the only thing in the world he feared was thunder and lightning, and this filled him with a dread that neither his strong will nor good sense could in the least abate or control.
Of course, I could not refuse. We started on a run for Camp Cunningham, a mile or so down the river. Yet, though the distance was so small, we had reason to doubt that we could cover it. Half-way, a hailstone the size of a child’s fist went whistling over our heads, ricocheted along the sod in great bounds; then came another and another—the skirmish fire of the storm.
177 The suggestive “thwuck” of these missiles as they took the ground made me draw in my head as far as possible—like a turtle.
I was just wondering what effect one of them would have on the human body, when a big fellow smashed fairly against the side of Billy’s head—a sounding blow which knocked the sturdy little man staggering.
“We’ve got to get out of this,” he said, grinding his teeth in pain, “or we’ll be slaughtered!”
A trickle of blood from a cut in his head bore witness that this was not a figure of speech. Let any one who doubts the Lethal quality of a Dakota hail-storm stand out in the open while a dozen or so expert ball-pitchers open fire on him with pieces of ice, weighing up to half a pound (the actual conditions of the st............