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 storms are sometimes a worse matter than this comes to), and i fancy he will soon be changed from a skeptic to a fanatic.

178 if i had any doubts they were instantly removed by a rap on the arm which numbed it to the finger-tips. for a moment we hesitated, but it was too far back to the ranch, so we broke for the scant cover of some bullberry bushes on the hitherside of cunningham’s coulée.

as we flattened ourselves behind these the real storm was on us in a breath. we were stunned by the uproar; the all-pervading heavy drumming of rain and hail, and the hiss of their passage; the yelling and booming of the wind, and the thunder that smote the earth, crash upon crash, like the blows of a hammer. we did not think—we held on tight and waited. one could not see ten feet into the gray of falling ice and water, and the rush of it nearly took one’s senses away. it all but turned the level prairie into a seething lake, and the slopes into rapids. suddenly the179 downpour ceased almost as abruptly as it began, and nothing remained but the wind. i say “nothing,” because that is our idiom. i do not use the word in a depreciatory sense, for we had full realization of what force there is in mere air in motion that morning. it swept across the prairie in one great tide of power. there was not a flutter nor break in it. it jammed us down in the mud, and then held us there. at first it seemed as if our heads would be whipped off our shoulders if we dared lift them up into the full swing of it. but this acme of energy passed at last, and we turned our eyes down the coulée to see how our friend had fared.

tent cunningham had so far fulfilled its architect’s expectations. a swollen yellow river from the coulée washed its edge and it was plastered with mud by the hailstones, but otherwise uninjured.

180 “he’s—weathered—it!” roared billy in my ear. “yes,” i answered, “coulée—bank—protected—him. he’s—all—right—if—”

i was going to say “if the wind doesn’t shift.” but before the words were out the wind had shifted.

rrrr-oooo-oof! it shrieked down the coulée and with a snapping and a cracking, like a small fourth of july celebration, away went tent cunningham. the canvas rose in the air, flapping tragically; and beneath it, galloping in frantic haste, were the longest and thinnest legs in the world, as poor cunningham, caught in the folds, was hustled onward. we could see nothing of him but legs, and as the flying tent bore a rude semblance to the human figure, the combination looked like a gigantic ghost, with slender black legs, hurrying off to haunt somebody.

such leaps and bounds as cunningham made were never equaled by the winner of181 any olympia, ancient or modern; and such another vision never was beheld outside the course of a nightmare. there was a fever of madness in its curvetings, its gesticulations, its wild plunges.

down into the chantay seeche, all a-suds from the recent bombardment, the specter swooped, and then came a mighty struggling and floundering.

surely no more ignominious death could be furnished the offspring of a noble house than to be held down by a tent and drowned in two feet of water!

we sprang, nay, we flew to his assistance, for once on our feet the wind scurried us ahead whether we would or no. we spaudered and slid over the slippery mud, like novices on skates, and we should have over-shot our quarry but that we grabbed at the tent in passing.

now, it turned out to be in nowise so easy182 to get the man out as you might think, for the moment we lifted a fold of the canvas it caught the air like a kite, and down we went, under it, or over it, as the case appeared. in the former instance, it was no small job for us to get ourselves out again, let alone helping cunningham. the very devil was in the tent, and it began to look as if the man would be drowned right under our hands, when it occurred to me to cut the knot of our complications.

i passed my knife over a bulging place which i judged held some part of the victim, and instantly the head of james cecil r. deg. cunningham popped through the opening—a head from whose mouse-colored whiskers and long nose the water dripped pathetically, and which regarded us with injured but vacant near-sighted eyes.

poor cunny! his mind must have been thoroughly addled by the events of the morning,183 for the first words he spoke—in the tone of one declining an ice—were: “i don’t like this kind of thing at all, y’ know!”

“you don’t, eh?” said billy. “well, if it’s the last act, i’m going to laugh.”

he surely did laugh, and i with him. we howled, and splashed, and slapped our legs until we were too weak to stand up, and then we sat right down in the water. cunny set up a stentorian “haw-haw” out of pure good nature, and the sight of him, with his tent around him like a toga, full of dignity, but willing to oblige, as usual, went near to finish us.

“don’t look at me, cunny, don’t!” begged billy. “if you look at me again like that, i’ll die right here!”

“very good! very good, indeed! haw, haw, haw!” replied cunningham.

in the middle of the hilarity there came a hail from the river bank in a voice of wonder.184 it was antelope pete, mounted, on his way to billy’s to compare notes on the morning’s flood.

now, antelope is a very serious-minded man for the country, and it wouldn’t be well to repeat all the different things he said might happen him if he ever saw the like of this before.

“do you fellows always go out in the middle of the river to crack jokes in thunder-storms?” he demanded. “what in blazes is the matter with you, anyhow?”

we tried to explain, but we couldn’t get three words out before we were in roars again, and pete was perfectly disgusted.

“well, i’m going to leave,” said he. “i’ve got something else better to do besides sitting here watching the most all-fired, copper-riveted, three-ply, double-backed-action damn fools that it was ever my luck to come acrost.”

we prevailed upon him, however, to throw185 us his rope, and as cunningham was so fearfully and wonderfully entangled in the tent that it would have been next to impossible to extricate him, we tied the line to a corner of the tent. antelope then laid the quirt on his cayuse, and man and mansion were hauled up the bank together.

when we reached a state of mind where we could discuss the matter calmly, we asked cunningham if he still intended to live in the tent. oh, yes, yes, indeed! the tent was all right; it was the wind that was wrong. then followed a learned disquisition on vacuums, and worlds, and other meteorological phenomena which stumped us completely. indeed, it came to my mind that cunningham almost proved that he and the tent never went into the chantay seeche.

part of his theory which i can remember is that the wind, in passing over the coulée, partially exhausted the air beneath it, like the186 action of an atomizer, he explained to our unscientific minds. and thus tent cunningham was drawn up and on to disaster most unlawfully. the idea of cunningham and the tent being “atomized” into the creek strikes me as being particularly good. i feel still more entertained when i think of the tin cans, the ham, the bacon, the lantern, the little sheet-iron cooking-stove, various articles of clothing, et cetera, which were included in the spray.

it is perhaps needless to add that the gathering of all these was the work of most of a morning. i don’t believe i ever saw anything more pathetic than the little stove stranded on a bar some distance down the river, its tiny legs lifted in appeal to the now speckless heavens. perhaps it was thinking of the untimely fate of the frying pan and kettle that had warmed themselves at its fires so often.

when cunningham gazed upon this jettisoned187 cargo his face betrayed his feelings. his soul, which loved cleanliness, order, and system with a blind worship, revolted. one could see that it was in his mind for the moment to “jump the country,” but it passed. the determination and courage which were at the bottom of the man’s nature rose in force, and he busied himself in restoring the former status, singing a loud air without any tune to it, the while. the territory of dakota was a large country—some of the belongings never appeared again. it is pleasant to think that cunningham’s card-case may have fallen into the hands of a wandering indian, and thus spread the refinements of civilization.

it seemed that our friend was going to buck the elements on first principles—put up the tent in the same old way, and have it blown to halifax in the same old way to a dead certainty. there was no more use in trying to argue with him on the subject than if it were188 a question of politics; but billy, who used more tact in one minute than i could understand in ten, turned the point without the least friction.

he asked cunningham to expound the theory of the levitation of the tent again. it was done, at length, and breadth, and thickness.

“now, as i understand it,” said billy, “a vacuum’s a place where there ain’t anything, and when things try to get in it makes trouble—are my sights at the right elevation?”

i assured him he was correct so far.

“well, then, see here, cunny, why don’t you kind of fill in around the tent with sods? you can’t make much of a vacuum out of good deep-cut sods, i’ll bet my wardrobe. you see the place where the vacuum would have to be, to do you dirt, will be occupied and it can vacuumize all it wants to around the prairie after that, and you needn’t care.”

189 “an ex-cellent idea! “cried cunningham. “i thank you very much, mr. wykam.”

so it came to pass that tent cunningham was surrounded by a wall of sod eight feet high and four feet thick. the only criticism i heard was from a stranger who put up at billy’s for a while.

one morning he came in and took me by the shoulder, “come with me,” he said. we went on until tent cunningham hove in sight.

“i’ve seen lots of what strikes me as strange things in this country,” the stranger said, “but that place knocks the spots off the cards. would you be kind enough to tell me what that wild-injun-peaceful-settler contraption is?”

“that?” i asked with a sober face. “why, that’s camp cunningham.”

“i dare say it is,” he returned. “but that ain’t the point i was looking for. what i190 want to know is, why did the population go to all the trouble of building a sod house, and then put up a tent inside of it?”

“merely a question of taste—it’s his hundred and sixty; why shouldn’t he build what he likes on it?”

“that’s so, too,” replied the stranger. “excuse me for meddling; it’s a free country, if ever there was one.”

so the matter dropped right there.