DOGGETT'S LAST MIGRATION. WITH PICTURES BY E. W. KEMBLE. HE funeral was over, and the Old Man looked somewhat disconsolate. I refer to Old Man Doggett of Broken Bow. Mr. Doggett's baptismal name is in my possession, but few knew it in Broken Bow; fewer still cared anything about it. It was, in fact, a name which the elderly Mr. Doggett used in his dealings with the United States government, and for no other purpose, and it looked odd even to him when he saw it on land-office papers. The Old Man, as I have intimated, did not look particularly cheerful, but his actions were far from denoting despondency. It was Mrs. Doggett, sharer of his joys and sorrowsmostly sorrows-for something over forty years in a zigzag course from the Eastern States to his present location in the Territory of Dakota -it was Mrs. Doggett, I say, who had departed this life. Mrs. Doggett had been a faithful, patient wife, and had gone to the reward of this kind of wives. Her funeral had been numerously attended by the people from the eleven houses which made up the city of Broken Bow, and from the score or so of settlers' "shacks" scattered about on the prairie in the neighborhood. Hers was the first death to come upon Broken Bow. She had been laid at rest in the Prairie View Cemetery,-"thus," in the well-chosen words of the Broken Bow "Van-Guard," "inaugurating this sacred spot so thoughtfully set aside in the Third Ward by the founders of our city." The ancient Mr. Doggett sat in front of the Settler's Home hotel as the hazy October sun sank toward the west. A few fellow-citizens surrounded him in easy attitudes. Nobody said much. Each was engaged in the laborious work of watching the down of the ripened milkweeds, which, ignoring the metropolitan claims of the city, was floating lazily about. Justice of the Peace Barlow came up and sat down near the Old Man. After moving about uneasily for a minute or two, this worthy ornament of the bench offered a few words of condolence to the bereaved old gentleman. "Yes," replied the latter; "it is a little hard on me at my time of life. I'm gettin' old, Jedge." Pretty well along for this country, that 's so," assented the ingenuous Barlow; "but back in the States, now, you would n't be so very vener'ble, Old Man." "No; you 're right," answered Doggett. "But I'm goin' to miss her, I reckon, specially when I move West. She was very handy at movin'. Prob'bly she had to be," he added thoughtfully; "we h'isted West sev'ral times." This produced a faint smile on the faces of his hearers, not because there seemed to be anything incongruous in the idea of going West on the banks of the Missouri River, but because the Old Man had been talking of it ever since he arrived a year ago, and the public had lost faith. "The Old Man will never go West no more than me," Bill Dows had once announced sententiously; but since Bill had gone to that region inside of a week after being thus moved to prophecy, not much was thought of his view. "Miranda," continued the Old Man after a pause, " was most remarkably handy at cookin' outdoors. I al'ays liked to set on the wagontongue when we camped, an' take care o' the children an' the dogs, an' watch her toss up the skillet an' flip a flap-jack. Never knowed her to fail but once, an' that was thirty year ago in Injeana. I'm goin' to miss her on the road, an' that 's a fact. But I can't help it. I reckon I'll start to-morrow. Boys," he added, with a fairly cheerful if not wholly necessary oath,-"boys, come in an' have a drink." I scarcely need to say, I suppose, that the old gentleman's call to the thirsty was unanimously heeded by the group around the open door of the Settler's Home. Nor need I say, probably, that his apparent callousness to the loss of his wife met with unfavorable comment on the part of the few women of Broken Bow. Woman will stand abuse, but not neglect; her husband may be a tyrant so long as he is miserable during her absence. The women of Broken Bow were holding an informal meeting at the house of Justice Barlow, opposite the Settler's Home. "I tell you, it is scandalous the way the Old Man acts," announced Mrs. Barlow, who made a specialty of "speaking her mind." "Such a man don't deserve a wife; for my part, I can't see why the Lord let him have one as long as he did. And after she 'd moved West with him twenty times if she had once, too. It ain't any light thing to sleep in a wagon and get meals over a fire on the ground-I 've tried it." The excellent Mrs. Barlow seemed to believe that the late Mrs. Doggett's outdoor perambulating housekeeping should cause her bereaved spouse to melt into tears if nothing else would, and this view of the case was gen "I'M GETTIN' OLD, JEDGE." erally shared by the other women present. But the Old Man found one champion even among them, though I am bound to say that she was an unmarried woman, knowing but little about the undeserving creature, man. This was Miss Holley, the schoolmistress. "I think," said Miss Holley, the schoolmistress, "that the Old Man feels worse than we know; I was talking with him yesterday. He does n't know any better than to act the way he does; he thinks it would be unmanly to show any grief. But he means well, I am sure." Miss Holley was regarded with a mingled expression of pity and contempt by the experienced married women present, so she said no more in defense of the unpopular Mr. Doggett. But when, as it began to grow dusk, she went out to go to her "claim," which she was "holding" a half-mile from town, and where she was obliged to stay a night or two each week to appease an exacting government, she met the Old Man on the corner. There was a touch of unsteadiness in the old gentleman's legs, and truth compels me to confirm the penetrating reader's worst suspicions, and to admit that it came from the too industrious absorption of Broken Bow liquor, a fiery fluid utterly unfit for either man or beast. But the Doggett mind was clear and active. "Good evenin', Miss Holley," he said. "Goin' out to comply with the law, eh? He, he!' The superfluous laugh came from the same cause as the undesirable unsteadiness. "Yes, Mr. Doggett," answered Miss Holley, as she turned toward him, and the rich, soft light of the sunset lighted up her face. "Are you going home now?" "I dunno. Reckon I 'd better?" "Yes; I think so. You 've been drinking, Mr. Doggett." The Old Man's first impulse was to say, "S'posin' I have?" but he thought better of it. Her tone showed that she was sorry. This surprised him,- he was not accustomed to anything of the kind, and it also touched him. But he decided that it was safer to remain facetious. So he said: "That's so, Miss Holley; but the Gover'ment ain't made no law that a man on a claim can't drink, has it? Ain't we got no rights left, nohow?" and the old humorist laughed querulously. He noticed as the light still flooded her face how handsome she was. "Your wife would not have liked to know that you were going to get drunk to-day." The girl looked at him steadily. The Old Man bowed his head. His stooped form was outlined against the golden sky, which burned far off across the level prairie. "I ain't so very drunk, am I?" asked the Old Man in an apologetic tone. "No, you are not very drunk; but why did you get drunk at all?" The Old Man's head sank still lower, and he was silent for a full minute. Finally he answered: 66 "I dunno. I had n't oughter. I did n't know what else to do. I was lonesome. It's lonesome ev'rywhere now. I ain't goin' home; it's lonesomer there than anywhere else." "Yes; you would better go home. It is the best place for you, even if it is lonesome. Come, I will go part way with you." The Old Man looked at her doubtfully, and then started off along the mark across the prairie which, by a stretch of courtesy prompted by intense local patriotism, was called a road. They went in silence some distance, the girl slightly in advance, the Old Man with his head bowed. Then she paused and turned, this time with her back to the dying west, while the fading light, now gray and almost gloomy, fell on the face of the Old Man. "There," she said, "it is only a quarter of a mile farther. You will go, will you not?" "Yes, Miss Holley; I will. It's the best place for me. But it is lonesome there without her- mighty lonesome. I reckon I never knowed how much company she was till now." "Yes, yes; but you must try and be as cheerful as you can. You know you are going West some day." "You believe it, do you?" answered the Old Man, eagerly. "Of course you do; you're sens'ble. You know when a man says that he's goin' West that he means it. The rest MRS. BARLOW. of 'em don't believe it, but I knowed you did all the while. Of course I 'm goin' West; of course. You've got some sense." "Yes, you are going West again some day," replied the girl; "but not now-not this fall. You must stay here this winter, and go in the spring." "No, can't do that; I must go now. I don't like this country; it's gettin' too much settled up. They 're talkin' of a railroad comin' through here, an' somehow I don't like 'em. This land don't suit me, anyhow. They say there's the best land in the world in the Hills. I'm goin' across the reservation into the Hills. I'm goin' alone; there's nobody to go with me now, except Tige an' the hosses. They 're better 'n nothin', but they can't talk, though Tige barks in sev'ral diff'rent ways. It'll be lonesome travelin' without her-an' her heart was set on the trip. She did n't like it here no more than me. She was of the 'pinion that the s'ciety wa'n't what it oughter be. She never liked the way that town crowd tries to put on airs, an' act stuck up. But she al'ays said you was a nice girl; I reckon she knowed you believed we was goin' West." "Perhaps," assented the other, with a faint smile. "She was a good woman, and I am sure it will be very hard for you to move West without her. But I must go now. Good night; you will go home now, won't you?" and she put out her hand for his. Shaking hands was a form of social dissipation which the Old Man had largely risen above, but after some hesitation he extended his hand. She took it, pressed it slightly, gathered up a white shawl about her shoulders, and walked away through the dry grass toward her little eight-by-ten house now faded out of sight across the prairie in the fast-gathering darkness. The Old Man gazed after her in considerable bewilderment. He looked at the hand she had taken in hers, and was somewhat reassured on finding that it appeared to be in its normal condition. Then he looked back toward the town, and saw the lights in the Settler's Home. He took a step in that direction, then turned and started for home with a fairly resolute tread. "I'll go home, as she told me to," he said. "She's the smartest girl in the Territory; she knows what's the thing for me to do, and she knows I am goin' West." His pace slackened a little, and he was silent. "There 's Tige and the hosses, anyhow. They'll be some company, but not much. Oh, it's lonesome without her! It's-" The Old Man's voice choked, but he walked on. Soon he came to a little depression in the prairie through which the road ran, and he stopped, and by the last faint light from the west, and the fainter light from the stars, he gathered a bunch of the wild sunflowers which grew there, and which had all day been tossed about on their long, graceful stems by the south wind. Then the Old Man, with the flowers in his hand, went on through the darkness to the place he called home. At the time of which this history treats the American locomotive had been in full cry after the fleeing Mr. Doggett for over half a century. It had not come up with him for any length of time. There are sailors who never go down to the sea in ships,-born wanderers of the land, latter-day gipsies,-who look upon a covered wagon and a team of horses as a true-born sailor looks upon his ship. Mr. Doggett first saw the light of day near the Atlantic "YOU'VE BEEN DRINKING." which is devoted to words of two syllables, he turned his attention to newspaper reports of the West, and especially of the farms which a paternal government was disposing of at a nominal price. So one night he went away from home, leaving parents behind who consoled themselves with ten other little Doggetts. He tarried in Ohio a few years, where he was married, and accumulated property to the extent of a wagon with a white cover, a team consisting of one mule and one horse, a gloomy cow, and four dogs. Then he began his great retreat from the locomotive in good earnest, which, at the time I write of, had consisted of twenty or thirty distinct removals, and had marked out an uncertain line from the Buckeye State to the Missouri River, reaching at one time as far south as Arkansas, and on another occasion as far north as Manitoba. His weakness for Government land had increased rather than diminished, and the number of "claims" which he had owned in different States and Territories was something startling, especially when we remember, as inexorable fact forces us to do, that after the first one or two, he had had no right to them. But the old gentleman's conscience in regard to dealings with the Government was elastic, as I regret to say the consciences of men occupying higher positions in the social scale sometimes are. During all of this time, in which he never lived longer than five years in one place, Mrs. Doggett had been his uncomplaining companion. She was not a born wanderer, and sometimes she looked at old and wellkept homes, with their great shade-trees, and ample barns, and moss-roofed houses, and sighed; but she said nothing, and wandering finally became a second nature to her. Children had come to cheer the Doggetts. At one time in Illinois six of them had gathered about the blazing fire beside the wagon, and watched their father industriously cleaning his rifle, and listened to his optimistic remarks on the amount of game he proposed to bag the next day. Two of the offspring had been born in the wagon, which always gave them a slightly warmer place in their father's heart. But the life had not seemed to agree with the little ones, and they had gone away to a land of fewer hardships, one in Kentucky, two in Missouri, one in Iowa, another in far-off Manitoba, as they camped by the lonely Red River of the North; and the last, a promising boy of fifteen, who could shoot with great accuracy, and get the better of the other fellow in swapping horses three times out of four, in western Minnesota, where the Doggett home had temporarily been before it was moved to Broken Bow for another transitory pause. Through all his troubles the Old Man had preserved a considerable degree of cheerfulness. He usually drowned his sorrows by moving West. He had determined to pursue this course on the present occasion. But he trudged along through the darkness with a heavy heart, and when he pushed open the door of his one-room house and went in, the place seemed very solemn and very lonely. He lighted a smoky lantern, and laid the sunflowers on the table. Then he sat down, and for a long time gazed at the dim and flickering light. Tige, a battle-scarred dog which had fought everything that two States and three Territories could furnish, claimed his attention, but did not get it. At last he arose, and looked about the room through the semi-darkness. He took down his rifle from the wall, examined it, and put it back in its place. "Yes," he said, half aloud; "I must start in the morning. It's too lonesome to stay here. I'll show 'em that I can go. Miss Holley knows I'm goin' now." Then his eye rested on the sunflowers, and he took them up. "I'll go an' put 'em on her grave," he said. "There can't nobody see me now." He went out, and started back along the path. There was no moon, but the stars were shining, though the sky was hazy. The fresh, steady south wind swept unhindered across the level plain with a sharp, almost hissing sound in the long, dry prairie-grass,-" grass," as had been aptly remarked by the Broken Bow "Van-Guard," "so rich in albuminous and nitrogenous matter as to actually fatten stock to the point of ridiculous obesity." It was a strong, sweeping |