Yellowstone Nights

Good night, indeed! There was no thunder and lightning like that on the heath when Lear went mad; but, to a boy whose world had suddenly tumbled into pieces, the snow which drove softly against his cheek and slithered hissingly along the asphalt was a natural feature to dwell in his memory for ever. He wandered out through the area of high buildings, past the residences, to where the snow rattled on the corn-husks that reminded him of the Slattery person's silks. He had confused visions of Mrs. Brunson, dressed in Judge Thornton's decent high hat, flaunting gaudy garments and painting her face for indescribable drinking-bouts. He came back past the Thornton home, where he paused in the gray dawn and looked at one lace-curtained window to murmur "Good-by." At the door of the office-building where his days had been spent since his coming to town, he went in from force of habit and pushed the button for the elevator. No sound rewarded the effort, and he pushed again impatiently. Then he laughed as he noted the elevator-cages about him, all shut down, all empty, like cells from which the lunatic occupants had escaped. A woman who had begun scrubbing the marble steps looked at him curiously as his mirthless laugh sounded through the empty building.

John Smith climbed flight after flight, opened the door which would never have "Thornton & Smith" on it, sat down at his desk and wrote:

"DEAR FATHER: I am quite well. Everything looks favorable for my studies. Judge Thornton says he wants to do all he can for me, and I think he does; but I guess I am not cut out for a lawyer. It isn't quite what I thought it was. If you are still willing to send me to the state college and give me that agricultural course, I believe I'll go. There's something about the farm that's always there; and you know it's there. I'll be home as soon as I can pack up.

"Your loving son,"JOHN SMITH."

The party sat for a few moments motionless, as the Artist's voice became silent. Then the Colonel arose, bade them good night, and took the Artist's hand.

"As a legal Slattery person," said he, "I thank you for the tale of the young fool. Good night!"

CHAPTER XI

The traveler who is wise, going from Grand Cañon Hotel to Tower Falls, will pass over Mount Washburn – and he starts early. He starts early that he may take with him the memory of the Upper and Lower Falls wrapped in the mist which they and night have wrought together, and which the nocturnal calm has perhaps left hanging wraith-like over the tremendous slot so filled with the roar of many waters. And he starts early, too, that he may make the ten-mile climb to Washburn's summit before the day-wind rises and sweeps the mountain's head with that gale which so tears the trees and twists them into a permanent declination, like vegetable dipping needles.

The Seven Wonderers pursued the way of wisdom, and so they startled deer and elk from their night beds along the road to Cascade Creek; and began the climb of Washburn before sunrise. The tops of Dunraven and Hedges Peaks were rosy with morning when the rested cayuses pulled over the first rugged spurs of these peaks, and it was morning with the perfect trees, that stood like spires about them, morning with the columbine and the larkspur, the forget-me-nots and the asters, the flea-bane and the paint-brush – and all the wild flowers that enameled the wayside. For many days they had been in the heart of the Rockies, and yet the scenery had not seemed like real mountain scenery. Here for the first time, it became alpine. They threaded Dunraven Pass in the early forenoon, and took the high road straight over the summit. The team leaned hard into the squeaking collars, and frequent stops that the horses might breathe made the tourists glad. Every stop and every turn brought the eye new delights. The great lake came into view again, like a distant splash of silver; and as if for another good-by, away off to the south stood Mount Sheridan, with the three Tetons to the right of it, solemnly overlooking the Park of which they are a part to the eye only.

"Oh! Oh!" said the Bride, gasping. "There's the Grand Cañon, like a crack in the floor!"

"And," said the Poet, "there's the ghost of wasted power, mistily brooding over the falls, just as when we left."

"Ghost of wasted power!" repeated the Groom. "That's not half bad, Poet."

Another turn, and the Absarakas notched the eastern horizon; and the whole huge valley, with titanic slopes as its farther wall, and the zigzag trench of the cañon as its central drain, lay at their feet. The air was cooler, now, and the breath came short, as lungs labored for more of the rare atmosphere. At their feet lay green meadows and open parks, on which they might have expected to see grazing herds of shaggy black Highland cattle.

Again a few starts and stops, and as if turned into view by machinery, came the northwest quarter of the Park, with all the country they had traversed – Electric Peak, in whose shadow they had entered upon their journey, Sepulcher Mountain, with its grave and the monuments at head and foot no longer to be made out, the valley of Carnelian Creek at their feet, and beyond it the jagged range, of which Prospect, Folsom and Storm Peaks are the culminations.

"That's something you don't always see," said Aconite, pointing to something away off to the northwest. "That thing is the Devil's Slide."

"And we saw his Inkstand yesterday," said the Hired Man. "He seems to've preëmpted a lot of this here region."

"Well," remarked the Colonel sardonically, "isn't the Park dedicated to the enjoyment, as well as the benefit of the people?"

"It started as 'Colter's Hell,'" suggested the Groom.

"In Old Jim Bridger's time," said Aconite, "it rained fire up here in these hills one year."

"I don't doubt it," assented the Artist. "And we've either seen or are promised a view of Hell Roaring Creek, Hell Broth Springs, Hell's Half Acre, Satan's Arbor, and a lot of other infernal real estate."

"It's heavenly up here!" said the Bride.

Once at the summit the Park lay under their eyes like a map – all these and a thousand other features to be taken in by merely turning about. The land was sown with every variety of all that is wild and beautiful and strange; the sky was filled with peaks. Here they had mountains to spare. They looked, and looked, and grew tired of looking – and then gazed again. The wind blew up and whipped their faces; and the sun was far past the meridian, passing south through the silvery splotch of Yellowstone Lake, when Aconite literally loaded them into the surrey, and drove down the mighty flanks of Washburn, northwardly, until he found a place where a fire could be builded and luncheon prepared.

"You folks mustn't fergit," said he, "that scenery ain't so fillin' f'r them as looks it every little while, as it is f'r the tenderfoot."

The Professor was evidently pleased when his name came from the Stetson for the second time. He seemed to have something on his mind. Fully a mile short of Tower Falls, which they planned to visit in the early morning, they camped in dense forest, with a party of sight-seers just so far away as to seem neighborly without intrenching on privacy.

"This is the best camp we've had," said the Bride, hooking her hands over her knee, and gazing into the fire.

"Sure," said Billy. "Every camp is the best in life, for me, honey! Listen to the Professor, now – nobody heard!"

THE FEDERAL IMP COMPANY

THE PROFESSOR'S SECOND TALE

I can not bring myself to think lightly of devils and imps. Neither can I believe that the consensus of the opinions of so many millions of mankind associating eternal punishment with fire can be neglected by the student of ethnology or theology. These are filled with haunts of devils – if the opinions of those who named them are worth anything. In addition to those localities which have been mentioned, I have in my notes the following:

The Devil's Frying Pan,

The Devil's Slide,

The Devil's Kitchen,

The Devil's Punch Bowl,

The Devil's Broiler,

The Devil's Bath Tub,

The Devil's Den,

The Devil's Workshop,

The Devil's Stairway,

The Devil's Caldron,

The Devil's Well,

The Devil's Elbow,

The Devil's Thumb,

and I know not how many of the members of His Satanic Majesty – all in this Park! And yet we say there is no devil, no brood of imps set upon the capture of human souls?

I shall tell you a story that seems worth considering as evidence on the other side. It is the story of something that occurred when I was journeying by a branch railway to take the main line to Washington, after a visit to the Boggses' ancestral farm in Pennsylvania. I had been at Boston as an attendant upon the sessions of the National Teachers' Association; with what recognition of my own small ability as an educator I have already mentioned. I boarded an old-fashioned, branch-line sleeping-car, and there met the being whose utterances and actions have so impressed me that I shall never forget them, never. I feel that this creature, so casually met, may be one of the actors in a series of events of the most appalling character, and cosmic scope.

When the porter came snooping about as if desiring to make up my berth, I went into the smoking compartment. I do not smoke; but it was the only place to go. I found there a person of striking appearance who told me the most remarkable story I ever heard in my life, and one which I feel it my duty to make public.

He had before him a bottle of ready-mixed cocktails, a glass, and a newspaper. With his bags and the little card table on which he rested his elbows, he was occupying most of the compartment. I sidled in hesitatingly, in that unobtrusive way which I believe to be the unfailing mark of the retiring and scholastic mind, and for want of a place to sit down, I leaned upon the lavatory. He was gazing fixedly at the half-empty bottle, his sweeping black mustaches curling back past his ears, his huge grizzled eyebrows shot through with the gleam of his eyes. He looked so formidable that I confess I was daunted, and should have escaped to the vestibule; but he saw me, rose, and with extreme politeness began tossing aside baggage to make room.

"I trust, Sir," said he with a capital S, "that you will pardon my occupancy of so much of a room in which your right is equal to mine! Be seated, I beg of you, Sir!"

I sat down; partly because, when not aroused, I am of a submissive temperament; and partly because he had thrown the table and grips across the door.

"Don't mention it," said I. "Thank you."

"Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a drink."

"I hope you will excuse me," I replied, now slightly roused, for I abhor alcohol and its use. "I never drink!"

"It is creditable to any man, Sir," said he, "to carry around with him a correct estimate of his weaknesses."

This really aroused in me that indignation which sometimes renders me almost terrible; but his fixed and glittering gaze seemed to hold me back from making the protest which rose to my lips.

"Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a cigar."

It was a strong-looking weed; but although I am not a smoker, I took and lighted it. He resumed his attention to his bottle and paper.

"Will you be so kind," said he, breaking silence, "as to read that item as it appears to you?"

"'Federal Improvement Company,'" I read. "'Organized under the laws of New Jersey, on January 4th, with a capital of $1,000,000. Charter powers very broad, taking in almost every field of business. The incorporators are understood to be New York men.'"

"'Imp,'" said he, "isn't it? not 'Improvement.'"

"I take it, sir," said I, "that the omission of the period is a printer's error, and that i-m-p means Improvement.'"

He leaned forward, grasped my wrist and peered like a hypnotist into my face.

"Just as badly mistaken," said he, "as if you had lost – as could be! It means 'Imp' just as it says 'Imp.' Have another drink!"

This time I really did not feel free to refuse him. He seemed greatly pleased at my tasting.

"Sit still," said he, "and I'll tell you the condemdest story you ever heard. That corporation means that we are now entering a governmental and sociological area of low pressure that will make the French Revolution look like a cipher with the rim rubbed out. In the end you'll be apt to have clearer views as to whether or not 'i-m-p' spells improvement'!"

This he seemed to consider a very clever play upon words, and he sat for some time, laughing in the manner adopted by the stage villain in his moments of solitude. His Mephistophelean behavior, or something, made me giddy. His manner was quite calm, however, and after a while we lapsed back into the commonplace.

"Ever read a story," said he, "named The Bottle Imp?"

"Stevenson's Bottle Imp?" I exclaimed, glad to find a topic of common interest, and feeling that it could not be a dangerous thing to be shut into the same smoking compartment with any man who loved such things, no matter how Captain-Kiddish he might appear. "Why, yes, I have often read it. I am a teacher of literature and an admirer of Stevenson. He possesses – "

"Who? Adlai?" he said. "Did he ever have it?"

"I mean Robert Louis," said I. "He wrote it, you know."

"Oh!" said my companion meditatively, "he did, did he? Wrote it, eh? It's as likely as not he did – I know Adlai. Met him once, when I was putting a bill through down at Springfield: nice man! Well about this Bottle Imp. You know the story tells how he was shut up in a bottle – the Imp was – and whoever owned it could have anything he ordered, just like the fellow with the lamp – "

"Except long life!" said I, venturing to interrupt.

"Of course, not that!" replied my strange traveling companion. "If the thing had been used to prolong life, where would the Imp come in? His side of the deal was to get a soul to torture. He couldn't be asked to give 'em length of days, you understand. It couldn't be expected."

I had to admit that, from the Imp's standpoint, there was much force in this remark.

"And that other clause in the contract that the owner could sell it," he went on. "That had to be in, or the Imp never could have found a man sucker enough to take the Bottle in the first place."

The cases of Faust, and the man who had the Wild Ass's Skin seemed to me authorities against this statement; but I allowed the error to pass uncorrected.

"On the other hand," he went on, "it was nothing more than fair to have that other clause in, providing that every seller must take less for it than he gave. Otherwise they'd have kept transferring it just before the owner croaked, and the Imp would never have got his victim. But with that rule in force the price just had to get down so low sometime that it couldn't get any lower, and the Imp would get his quid pro quo."

"You speak," said I indignantly, for it horrified me to hear the loss of a soul spoken of in this light manner; "you speak like a veritable devil's advocate!"

"When I've finished telling you of this Federal Imp Company that's just been chartered," said he, "you'll have to admit that there's at least one devil that's in need of the best advocate that money'll hire!"

Here he gave one of his sardonic chuckles, long-continued and rumbling, and peered into the bottle of cocktails, as if the prospective client of the advocate referred to had been confined there.

"When it doesn't cost anything," he added, "there's no harm in being fair, even with an Imp."

I failed to come to the defense of my position, and he went on.

"Well," said he, "do you remember the Bottle Imp's history that this man Stevenson gives us? Cæsar had it once, and wished himself clear up to the head of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne, Napoleon, and a good many of the fellows who had everything coming their way, owed their successes to the Bottle Imp, and their failures to selling out too soon: got scared when they got a headache, or on the eve of battle, or something like that. It was owned in South Africa, and Barney Barnato and Cecil Rhodes both had it. That accounts for the way they got up in the world. Then the Bottle and Imp went to the Nob Hill millionaire who bought it for eighty dollars and sold it to Keawe the Kanaka for fifty. The price was getting dangerously low, now, and Keawe was mighty glad when he had wished himself into a fortune and got rid of the thing. Then, just as he was about to get married, he discovered that he had leprosy, hunted up the Bottle, which he found in the possession of a fellow who had all colors of money and insomnia, both of which he had acquired by purchasing the Bottle Imp for two cents, you remember, and was out looking for a transferee, and about on the verge of nervous prostration because he couldn't find one, – not at that price! Keawe became so desperate from the danger of going to the leper colony and the loss of his sweetheart, that he bought the Bottle for a cent, in the face of the fact that, so far as he knew, a cent was the smallest coin in the world, and the bargain, accordingly, cinched him as the Imp's peculiar property, for all eternity. I'll be – hanged – if I know whether to despise him for his foolishness or to admire him for his sand!"

"You recall," said I, "that his wife directed his attention to the centime– "

"Yes," said he, "she put him on. And they threw away one transfer by placing it on the market at four centimes. They might just as well have started it at five."

"I don't see that," said I.

"Because you haven't figured on it," said he. "You haven't been circulating in Imp circles lately, as I have, where these things are discussed. Listen! A centime is the hundredth part of a franc, and a franc is about nineteen cents. A cent, therefore, is a fraction more than five centimes. But they started it at four, the chocolate-colored idiots, after getting rid of their leprosy! When I think how that Bottle Imp has been mismanaged, I am driven – "

He illustrated that to which he was driven, by a gesture with the bottle on the table. He coughed, and took up his résumé of the story.

"Let that pass. They put it up at four centimes, and without Keawe's knowledge that she had anything to do with it, Keawe's wife got an old man to buy it, and she took it off his hands at three. The Kanaka soon found out that he was now carrying his eternal damnation in his wife's name, and he procured an old skipper or mate, or some such fellow in a state of intoxication, to buy it of her for two, on the agreement that he would take it again for one. Here they were, frittering away untold fortunes, each trying to go to perdition to save the other – it makes me tired! But the old bos'n or whatever he was, said he was going, you know where, anyhow, and figured that the Bottle was a good thing to take with him, and kept it. And there's where the Kanakas got out of a mighty tight place – "

"And the Bottle disappeared and passed into history!" I broke in. I was really absorbed in the conversation, in spite of a slight vertigo, now that we had got into the field of literature where I felt at home.

"Passed into – nothing!" he snorted. "Passed into the state of being the Whole Thing! Became It! Went on the road to the possession of the Federal Imp Company as the sole asset of the corporation. Folks'll see now pretty quick, whether it passed into history or not! Yes, I should say so!"

"Who's got it now?" I whispered. I was so excited that I found myself sitting across the table, and us mingling our breaths like true conspirators. He had a good working majority in the breaths, however.

"Who's the Charlemagne, the J. Cæsar, the Napoleon of the present day?" he whispered in reply, after looking furtively over his shoulder. "It don't need a Sherlock Holmes to tell that, does it?"

"Not," said I, "not J. P. – "

"No," said he, "It's John D. – "

But before he finished the name he crept to the door and peered down the aisle, and then whispered it in my ear so sibilantly that I felt for a minute as I used to do when I got water in my ear when swimming. But I noticed it very little in my astonishment at the fact he had imparted to me. I felt that I was pale. He rose again and prowled about as if for eavesdroppers. I felt myself a Guy Fawkes, an Aaron Burr, an – well, anything covert and dangerous.

"He bought this Bottle Imp," my companion went on, resuming his seat, "of the old sailing-master, or whatever he was – the man with the downward tendency and the jag. What J. D. wanted was power, just as Cæsar and Napoleon wanted it in their times. But the same kind of power wouldn't do. Armies were the tools of nations then; now they are the playthings. Now nations are the tools of money, and wealth runs the machine. This emperor of ours chose between having the colors dip as he went by, and owning the fellows that made 'em dip. He gave the grand-stand the go-by, and took the job of being the one to pull the string that turned on the current that moved the ruling force that controlled the power back of the power behind the throne. D'ye understand?"

"It's a little complex," said I, "the way you state it, but – "

"It'll all be clear in the morning," he said. "Anyway, that's what he chose. And what is he? The Emperor of Coin. He was a modest business man a few years ago. Suddenly the wealth of a continent began flowing into his control. It rolled in and rolled in, every coin making him stronger and stronger, until now the business of the world takes out insurance policies on his life and scans the reports of his health as if the very basis of society were John D. You-Know-Who. Emperors court his favor, and the financial world shakes when he walks. You don't think for a minute that this could be done by any natural means, do you?"

"But the price of the bottle was one centime!" said I, my altruism coming uppermost once more. "One centime: and he is no longer young!"

"Exactly," he answered, "and he's got to sell it, or go to – Well, he's just about got to sell it!"

"But how?" I queried. "What coin is there smaller than a centime– what he paid?"

"All been figured out," said he airily. "Who solved the puzzle I don't know; but I guess it was Senator Depew. Know what a mill is?"

"A mill? Yes," said I. "A factory? A pugilistic encounter? A money of account?"

"Yes," said he, "a 'money of account.' Never coined. One-tenth of a cent. One-half a centime! Have you heard of Senator Aldrich's currency bill, S. F. 41144? It's got a clause in it providing for the coinage of the mill. And there's where I come in. I'm an unelected legislator – third house, you know. Let the constructive statesman bring in their little bills. I'm satisfied to put 'em through! S. F. 41144 is going to be put through, and old J. D.'ll sell his Bottle, Imp and all. Price, one mill. When this grip epidemic started in, he got a touch of it, and I'll state that a sick man feels a little nervous with that Imp in stock. So they wired for me. It's going to be a fight all right!"

"Why, who will oppose the bill?" said I. "No one will know its object."

"Lots of folks will oppose it," said he. "Every association of clergymen in the country is liable to turn up fighting it tooth and nail. There are too many small coins now for the interests of the people who depend on contribution boxes. The Sunday-schools will all be against it. And the street-car companies won't want the cent subdivided. Then it'll be hard to convince Joe Cannon; he's always looking for a nigger in the fence, and there is one here, you understand. But the mill's going to be coined, all the same!"

"But," said I, "who will buy the diabolical thing for a mill? If Keawe and his wife had such trouble selling it for a centime, it will be impossible to dispose of it for a mill, absolutely impossible! It's the irreducible minimum!"

"I take it, Sir," said he, with a recurrence of the capital S, "that you are not engaged in what Senator Lodge in our conference last night called 'hot finance'?"

"No," I admitted, for in spite of the orthoëpic error, I understood him. "No, I am not – exactly."

"I inferred as much from your remark," said he. "When there's anything to be done, too large for individual power, or dangerous in its nature, or, let us say, repugnant to some back-number criminal law, or, as in this case, dangerous to the individual's soul's salvation, what do you do? Why you organize a corporation, if you know your business, and turn the whole thing over to it – and there you are. The Federal Imp Company will take over the Bottle Imp at the price of one mill. Mr. R. won't own it any more. His stock will be non-assessable, and all paid up by the transfer of the Imp, and there can't be any liability on it. He can retain control of it if he wants to – and you notice he generally wants to, and can laugh in the Imp's face. We've got all kinds of legal opinions on that. And whoever controls that company will rule the world. That Imp is the greatest corporate asset that ever existed. All that's needed is for the president of the corporation to wish for anything, or the board of directors to pass a resolution, and the thing asked for comes a-running. The railways, steamships, banks, factories, lands – everything worth having – are just as good as taken over.