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In Our Town

<h2>XIII</h2> <h3>A Pilgrim in the Wilderness</h3> A few years ago we were getting out a special edition of our paper, printed on book-paper, and filled with pictures of the old settlers, and we called it "the historical edition." In preparing the historical edition we had to confer with "Aunt" Martha Merrifield so often that George Kirwin, the foreman, who was kept trotting to her with proof-slips and copy for her to revise, remarked, as he was making up the last form of the troublesome edition, that, if the recording angel ever had a fire in his office, he could make up the record for our town from "Aunt" Martha's scrapbook. In that big, fat, crinkly-leafed book, she has pasted so many wedding notices and birth notices and death notices that one who reads the book wonders how so many people could have been born, married and died in a town of only ten thousand inhabitants. One evening, while the historical edition was growing, a reporter spent the evening with "Aunt" Martha. The talk drifted back to the early days, and "Aunt" Martha mentioned Balderson. To identify him she went to her scrapbook, and as she was turning the pages she said: "In those days of the early seventies, before the railroad came, when the town awoke in the morning and found a newly arrived covered waggon near a neighbour's house, it always meant that kin had come. If at school that day the children from the house of visitation bragged about their relatives, expatiating upon the power and riches that they left back East, the town knew that the visitors were ordinary kin; but if the children from the afflicted household said little about the visitors and evidently tried to avoid telling just who they were, then the town knew that the strangers were poor kin—probably some of "his folks"; for it was well understood that the women in this town all came from high connections 'back East' in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. Newcomers sometimes wondered how such a galaxy of princesses and duchesses and ladyships happened to marry so far beneath their station. "But the Dixons had no children, so when a covered waggon drove up to their place in the night, and a fussy, pussy little man with a dingy, stringy beard, appeared in the Dixons' back yard in the morning, looking after the horses hitched to the strange waggon; the town had to wait until the next week's issue of the Statesman to get reliable news about their prospective fellow-citizen." With that "Aunt" Martha opened her scrapbook and read a clipping from the Statesman, under the head, "A Valuable Acquisition to Our City." It ran: "It has been many months since we have been favoured with a call from so cultured and learned a gentleman as the Hon. Andoneran P. Balderson, late of Quito, Hancock County, Iowa, who has finally determined to settle in our midst. Cramped by the irritating conventionalities of an effete civilisation, Colonel Balderson comes among us for that larger freedom and wider horizon which his growing powers demand. He comes with the ripened experience of a jurist, a soldier, and a publicist, and, when transportation facilities have been completed between this and the Missouri River, Judge Balderson will bring to our little city his magnificent law library; but until then he will be found over the Elite Oyster Bay, where he will be glad to welcome clients and others. "Having participated in the late War of the Rebellion, as captain in Company G of Colonel Jennison's famous and invincible army of the border, Colonel Balderson will give special attention to pension matters. He also will set to work to obtain a complete set of abstracts, and will be glad to give advice on real-estate law and the practice of eminent domain, to which subject he has given deep study. All business done with neatness and despatch. "Before leaving Iowa, and after considerable pressure, Judge Balderson consented to act as agent for a number of powerful Eastern fire insurance companies, and has in contemplation the establishment of the Southwestern distributing point for the Multum in Parvo Farm Gate Company, of which corporation Colonel Balderson owns the patent right for Kansas. This business, however, he would be willing to dispose of to proper parties. Terms on application. "The colonel desires us to announce that there will be a meeting of the veterans of the late war at the schoolhouse next Saturday night, for the purpose of organising a society to refresh and perpetuate the sacred memories of that gigantic struggle, and to rally around the old flag, touch shoulders again, and come into a closer fellowship for benevolent, social, and other purposes. The judge, on that occasion, will deliver his famous address on the 'Battle of Look Out Mountain,' in which battle Colonel Balderson participated as a member of an Iowa regiment. Admission free. Silver collection to defray necessary expenses." Accompanying this article was a slightly worn woodcut of the colonel in his soldier garb, a cap with the top drawn forward, the visor low over his eyes, and a military overcoat thrown gaily back, exposing his shoulder. The picture showed the soldier in profile, with a fierce military moustache and a stubby, runty goatee, meant to strike terror to the civilian heart. From "Aunt" Martha we learned that before Judge Balderson had been in town a week he had dyed his whiskers and had taken command of our forces in the county-seat war then brewing. During the judge's first month in the county the campaign for the county-seat election was opened, and he canvassed the north end of the county for our town, denouncing, with elaborate eloquence, as horse thieves, mendicants, and renegades from justice, the settlers in the south end of the county who favoured the rival town. The judge organised a military company and picketed the hills about our town day and night against a raid from the Southenders; and, having stirred public passion deeply, he turned his pickets loose on the morning of election day to set prairie fires all over the south end of the county to harass the settlers who might vote for the rival town and keep them away from the polls fighting fire. Our people won; "the hell-hounds of disorder and anarchy"—as Judge Balderson called the rival townspeople—were "rebuked by the stern hand of a just and terrible Providence." Balderson was a hero, and our people sent him to the legislature. "Aunt" Martha added: "He went to Topeka in his blue soldier clothes, his campaign hat, and brass buttons; but he came back, at the first recess, in diamonds and fine linen, and the town sniffed a little." Having learned this much of Balderson our office became interested in him, and a reporter was set to work to look up Balderson. The reporter found that according to Wilder's "Annals," Balderson hustled himself into the chairmanship of the railroad committee and became a power in the State. The next time Colonel "Alphabetical" Morrison came to the office he was asked for further details about Balderson. The Colonel told us that when the legislature finally adjourned, very proud and very drunk, in the bedlam of the closing hours, Judge Balderson mounted a desk, waved the Stars and Stripes, and told of the Battle of Look Out Mountain. Colonel Morrison chuckled as he added: "The next day the State Journal printed his picture—the one with the slouching cap, the military moustache, the fierce goatee, and the devil-may-care cape—and referred to the judge as 'the silver-tongued orator of the Cottonwood,' a title which began to amuse the fellows around town." Naturally he was a candidate for Congress. Colonel Morrison says that Balderson became familiarly known in State politics as Little Baldy, and was in demand at soldiers' meetings and posed as the soldier's friend. Wilder's "Annals" records the fact that Balderson failed to go to Congress, but went to the State Senate. He waxed fat. We learned that he bought a private bank and all the books recording abstracts of title to land in his county, and that he affected a high silk hat when he went to Chicago, while his townsmen were inclined to eye him askance. The lack of three votes from his home precinct kept him from being nominated lieutenant-governor by his party, but Colonel Morrison says that Balderson soon took on the title of governor, and was unruffled by his defeat. The Colonel describes Balderson as assuming the air of a kind of sacred white cow, and putting much hair-oil and ointment and frankincense upon his carcass. Other old settlers say that in those days his dyed whiskers fairly glistened. And when, at State conventions, in the fervour of his passion he unbent, unbuttoned his frock-coat, grabbed the old flag, and charged up and down the platform in an oratorical frensy, it seemed that another being had emerged from the greasy little roll of adipose in which "Governor" Balderson enshrined himself. His climax was invariably the wavering battle-line upon the mountain, the flag tottering and about to fall, "when suddenly it rises and goes forward, up—up—up the hill, through the smoke of hell, and full and fair into the teeth of death, with ten thousand cheering, maddened soldiers behind it. And who carried that flag—who carried that flag?" he would scream, in a tremulous voice, repeating his question over and over, and then answer himself in tragic bass: "The little corporal of Company B!" And, "Who fell into the arms of victory that great day, with four wounds upon his body? The little corporal of Company B!" It is hardly necessary to add that Governor Balderson was the little corporal. After the failure of his bank, when rumour accused him of burning the court-house that he might sell his abstracts to the county at a fabulous price, he called a public meeting to hear his defence, and repeated to his townsmen that query, "Who carried the flag?" adding in a hoarse whisper: "And yet—great God!—they say that the little corporal is an in-cen-di-ary. Was this great war fought in vain, that tr-e-e-sin should lift her hydra head to hiss out such blasphemy upon the boys who wore the blue?" However, the evidence was against him, and as our people had long since lost interest in the flag-bearer, the committee gave him five minutes to leave. He returned three minutes in change and struck out over the hill towards the west, afoot, and the town knew him no more forever. Where Balderson went after leaving town no one seems to know. The earth might have swallowed him up. But in 1882 someone sent a marked copy of the Denver Tribune to the Statesman office, the Statesman reprinted it, and "Aunt" Martha filed it away in her book. Here is it: "Big Burro Springs, Colorado, September 7th (Special).—Three men were killed yesterday in a fight between the men at Jingle-bob ranch and a surveying party under A. P. Balderson. The Balderson party consisted of four men, among whom was 'Rowdy' Joe Nevison, the famous marshal of Leoti, Kansas. They were locating a reservoir site which Balderson has taken up on Burro Creek for the Balderson Irrigation Company and for supplying the Look Out Townsite Company with water. These are Balderson's schemes, and, if established, will put the Jingle-bob ranch people out of business, as they have no title to the land on which they are operating. The remarkable part of the fight is that which Balderson took in it. After two of his men had been killed and the owner of the Jingle-bob ranch had fallen, Balderson and his two remaining men came forward with hands up, waving handkerchiefs. The Jingle-bob people recognised the flag of truce, and Balderson led his men across the creek to the cow-camp. Just as he approached close enough to the man who had the party covered, Balderson yelled, 'Watch out—back of you!' and, as all the captors turned their heads, Balderson knocked the pistol from the hand of the only man whose weapon was pointed at the Balderson party, and the next moment the cow-men looked into the barrels of the surveyors' three revolvers, and were told that if they budged a hair they would be killed. Balderson then disarmed the cow-men, and, after passing around the drinks, hired the outfit as policemen for the town of Look Out. It is said that he has given them two thousand dollars apiece in Irrigation Company stock, has promised to defend them if they are charged with the murder of the two surveyors, and has given each cow-man a deed to a corner lot on the public square of the prospective Balderson town. Deputy Sheriff Crosby from this place went over to arrest Balderson, charged with killing D. V. Sherman of the Jingle-bob property, and, after asking for his warrant, Balderson took it, put it in his pocket, advised the deputy to hurry home, and, if he found any coyotes or jack-rabbits that couldn't get out of his way fast enough, not to stop to kill them, but shoo them off the trail and save time." They say in Colorado that Balderson became an irrigation king. It is certain that he raised half a million dollars in New York for his dam and ditches. He built the "Look Out Opera House," and decorated it in gilded stucco and with red plush two inches deep. Morrison contributed this anecdote to the office Legend of Balderson: "He was in Florida in his private car when they finished the opera house. When he came back and saw a plaster bust of Shakespeare over the proscenium arch, he waved his cane pompously and exclaimed: 'Take her down! Bill Shakespeare is all right for the effete East, but out here he ain't deuce high with the little corporal of Company B.'" So in Shakespeare's niche is a plaster-cast of a soldier's face with the slouch-cap, the military moustache, and the goatee of great pride, after the picture that once adorned the columns of the Statesman. For a time they talked of Balderson for United States Senator, and, at the laying of the corner-stone of the capitol, the Denver papers spoke of the masterly oration of former Governor Balderson of Kansas, whose marvellous word-painting of the Battle of Look Out Mountain held the vast audience spellbound for an hour. A few months later a cloudburst carried away the Big Burro dam, and times went bad, and the stockholders in Balderson's company, who would have rebuilt the dam, could not find Balderson when they needed him, and certain creditors of the company, hitherto unknown, appeared, and Balderson faded away like a morning star. Here is a part of the narrative that George Kirwin got from Joe Nevison: Joe began with the coal strike at Castle Rock, Wyoming, in 1893, when the strikers massed on Flat Top Mountain and day after day went through their drill. He told a highly dramatic story of the stoutish little man of fifty-five, with a fat, smooth-shaven face, who pounded that horde of angry men into some semblance of military order. All day the little man, in his shrunken seersucker coat and greasy white hat, would bark orders at the men, march and counter-march them, and go through the manual of arms, backward and forward and seven hands round. When the battle with the militia came, the strikers charged down Flat Top and fought bravely. The little man in the seersucker coat stayed with them, snapping orders at them, damning them, coaxing them. And when the deputies gathered up the strikers for the trial in court two months later, the little man was still there. He was prospecting on a gopher-hole somewhere up in the hills, and was trying to get his wildcat mine listed on the Salt Lake Mining Exchange. No one gave bond for the little man in the seersucker coat, and he went to jail. He was Balderson. He seemed to give little heed to the trial, and sat with the strikers rather stolidly. Venire after venire of jurymen was gone through. At last an old man wearing a Loyal Legion button went into the jury-box. Balderson saw him; they exchanged recognising glances, and Balderson turned scarlet and looked away quickly. He nudged an attorney for the strikers and said: "Keep him, whatever you do." After the evidence was all in and the attorneys were about to make their arguments, Balderson and one of the lawyers for the strikers were alone. "They told me to take the part about you, Balderson; you were in the Union Army, weren't you?" Balderson looked at the floor and said: "Yes; but don't say anything about it." The lawyer, who knew Balderson's record, was astonished. He had made his whole speech up on the line that Balderson as an old soldier would appeal to the sympathies of the jury. Over and over the lawyer pressed Balderson to know why nothing should be said of his soldier record, and finally in exasperation the lawyer broke out: "Lookee here, Baldy; you're too old to get coy. I'm going to make my speech as I've mapped it out, soldier racket and all. I guess you've taken enough trips up Look Out Mountain to get used to the altitude by this time." The lawyer started away, but Balderson grabbed him and pulled him back. "Don't do it; for God's sake, don't do it! There's a fellow on that jury that's a G. A. R. man; we were soldiers together; he knows me from away back. Talk of Iowy; talk of Kansas; talk of anything on God's green earth, but don't talk soldier. That man would wade through hell for me neck deep on any other basis than that." Balderson's voice was quivering. He added: "But don't talk soldier." Balderson slumped, with his head in his hands. The attorney snapped at him: "Weren't you a soldier?" "Yes; oh, yes," Balderson sighed. "Didn't you go up Look Out Mountain?" "Oh, yes—that, too." There was a silence between the men. The lawyer rasped it with, "Well, what then?" "Well—well," and the tousled little man sighed so deeply his sigh was almost a sob, and lifted up the eyes of a whipped dog to the lawyer's—"after that I got in the commissary department—and—and—was dishonourably discharged." He rubbed his eyes with his fingers a moment and then grinned foxily: "Ain't that enough?" Roosevelt is a mining-camp in Idaho. It is five days from a morning paper, and the camp is new. It is a log town with one street and no society, except such as may gather around the big box-stove at Johnnie Conyer's saloon. A number of ladies and two women lived in the camp, a few tin-horn "gents," and about two hundred men. It is a seven months' snow-camp, where men take their drama canned in the phonograph, their food canned, their medicine all out of one bottle, and their morals "without benefit of clergy." Across the front of one of the canvas-covered log store-rooms that fringe the single street a cloth sign is stretched. It reads, "Department Store," and inside a dance hall, a saloon, and a gambling-place are operating. A few years ago, when Colonel Alphabetical Morrison was travelling through the West on a land deal for John Markley, business took him to Roosevelt, and he found Balderson, grey of beard, shiny of pate, with unkempt, ratty back hair; he was watery-eyed, and his red-veined skin had slipped down from his once fat face into draperies over his lean neck and jowls. He was in the dealer's chair, running the game. The statute of limitations had covered all his Kansas misdeeds, and he nodded affably as his old acquaintance came in. Later in the day the two men went to Mrs. Smith's boarding-house to take a social bite. They sat in front of the log-house in the evening, Balderson mellow and reminiscent. "Seems to me this way: I ain't cut out for society as it is organised. I do all right in a town until the piano begins to get respectable and the rules of order are tucked snugly inside the decalogue, then I slip my belt, and my running gear doesn't track. I get a few grand and noble thoughts, freeze to 'em, and later find that the hereditary appurtenances thereunto appertaining are private property of someone else, and there is nothing for me to do but to stand a lawsuit or vanish. I have had bad luck, lost my money, lost my friends, lost my conscience, lost everything, pretty near"—and here he turned his watery eyes on his friend with a saw-toothed smile and shook his depleted abdomen, that had been worn off climbing many hills—"I've lost everything, pretty near, but my vermiform appendix and my table of contents, and as like as not I'll find some feller's got them copyrighted." He heaved a great sigh and resumed, "I suppose I could 'a' stood it all well enough if I had just had some sort of faith, some religious consolation, some creed, or god, or something." He sighed again, and then leered up: "But, you know—I'm so damned skeptic!" Last spring, according to the Boisé, Idaho, papers, "Governor" Balderson and two other old soldiers celebrated Memorial Day in Roosevelt. They got a muslin flag as big as the flap of a shirt, from heaven knows where, and in the streets of Roosevelt they hoisted this flag on the highest pine pole in all the Salmon River Mountains. There were elaborate ceremonies, and to the miners and gamblers and keepers of wildcat mines in the mountains assembled, "Governor" Balderson told eloquently of the Battle of Look Out Mountain. And Colonel Morrison who read the account smiled appreciatively and pointed out to us the exact stage in the proceedings where Balderson demanded to know who carried the flag. There was long and tumultuous applause at the climax. We also read in the Boisé papers that at the fall election in Roosevelt they made Balderson justice of the peace, which, as Colonel Morrison explained, was a purely honorary office in a community where every man is his own court and constable and jury and judge; but the Colonel said that Balderson was proud of official distinction, and probably levied mild tribute from the people who indulged in riotous living, by compelling them to buy drink-checks redeemable only at his department store. It was from the Boisé papers that we had the final word from Balderson. A message came to Roosevelt this spring that an outfit, thirty miles away at the head of Profile Creek, was sick and starving. It was a dangerous trip to the rescue, for snowslides were booming on every southern hillside. Death would literally play tag with the man who dared to hit the trail for Profile. Balderson did not hesitate a moment, but filled his pack with provisions, put a marked deck and some loaded dice in his pocket, and waved Roosevelt a cheery good-by as he struck out over the three logs that bridge Mule Creek. He was bundled to the chin in warm coats, and on his way met Hot Foot Higgins coming in from Profile. Balderson seems to have given Higgins his warmest coat before the snow-slide hit them. It killed them both. Hot Foot died instantly, but Balderson must have lived many hours, for the snow about his body was melted and in his pocket they found Hot Foot's watch. They buried him near the trail where they found him, and, stuck in a candle-box, over the heap of stones above him, flutters lonesomely in the desolation of the mountain-side the little muslin rag that was once a flag. They call the hill on which he sleeps "Look Out Mountain." Late this spring the mail brought to the office of the Boisé Capital-News a battered woodcut half a century old. When the News came to our office we saw the familiar soldier's face in profile, with a cap drawn over the eyes, with a waving moustache and a fierce goatee, and across the shoulders of the figure a military cape thrown back jauntily. With the old cut in the Boisé paper was an article which the editor says in a note was written in a young woman's angular handwriting, done in pencil on wrapping-paper. The article told, in spelling unspeakable, of the greatness and goodness of "Ex-Governor Balderson of Kansas." It related that he was ever the "friend to the friendless"; that, "with all his worldly honours, he was modest and unassuming"; that "he had his faults, as who of us have not," but that he was "honest, tried and true"; and the memorial closed with the words: "Heaven's angel gained is Roosevelt's hero lost." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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