Feb. 29, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
329 
Such was the song of lament sung by the 
mermaids under Oman’s green sea when the 
beautiful Ninda lay dead in the pearl beds 
among the rosy-lipped shells. The same sad 
music has been heard in the wail of the Ocean- 
ides who, with tossing arms and heaving breast 
bemoaned the fate of Prometheus chained to 
the rock where the vultures dipped their gory 
beaks into his quivering vitals. It is the song 
of the Lorelei as she twines her snowy arms 
around the form of the fated mariner who sinks 
to death clinging to the kisses of her lips. It 
is the music the Syrens sung, when Ulysses, to 
escape their wiles, filled his ears with wax. 
There is nothing new on earth, and even the 
fabulous story of Ulysses is proved to be not 
all a myth, for the mysterious music of our gulf 
shore can still be heard, and its source is still 
unaccounted for, except by an Indian legend 
which runs thus: 
Long ago, before the fleets of Bienville had 
whitened the bay with their sails, Altama, a 
roung chief of the Pascagoulas, with his beau¬ 
tiful bride Anola, together with a large num¬ 
ber of braves and maidens of the tribe, had 
assembled under the large oaks in the spring 
rime shortly after nightfall. The crescent moon 
rung high above them; the bright stars sparkled 
ike gems in the blue vault of heaven and glinted 
iown through the branches of the immense oaks 
which served as a shelter from the damp night 
lir. A light wind blew from off the gulf and 
raised the whitecaps on the bay to chase each 
Dther onward to the shore. Breaker after 
weaker dashed upon the beach or in subdued 
rhunder met with harder shock the bluff almost 
beneath the feet of those who had gathered to 
relebrate the nuptials of their chief. The 
torches had been lit, a grand feast prepared, 
md while in the midst of the festivities of the 
occasion, the appalling warwhoop of their 
dreaded foes, the powerful Biloxis, came down 
ike a tornado upon the happy and unsuspecting 
issemblage. 
The brave Pascagoulas sprang up with a 
vhoop of desperation. They fought like demons, 
hough the conflict was of short duration, and a 
housand braves lay dead upon the field. Only 
ibout fifty of the’ heroic Pascagoulas remained 
dive, but they were masters of the situation. 
The few remaining Biloxis, unable to prolong 
he contest, had retired a short distance, and a 
;hout of victory rang- through the forest from 
he remaining Pascagoulas. Altama endeavored 
o rally his men for the pursuit and extermina- 
, :ion of the remnant of their retreating foes. 
3ut hark! What sound is that which now 
neets their ears? It is a shout of de- 
iance, and comes from a large force. The. 
3iloxis had received reinforcements and were 
ibout to renew the fight. Altama knew his star 
lad set forever. Calling his few remaining 
iraves around him he said: 
“My braves, you have fought nobly, but our 
oes are too strong for us. Three hundred of 
he flower of our tribe who but an hour ago 
vere full of joy and mirth now lie cold in death. 
The wails of their squaws and mothers can be 
leard on the other side of the bay. The bodies 
>f our foes outnumber us nearly two to one. 
<Tet as numerous as shells on yonder shore they 
:ome fresh from the wigwams of their tribe 
is our exterminators. We are too weak to give 
hem battle. Our time is short. Shall we 
patiently await their coming and be made cap¬ 
tives? Shall our eyes witness the wives and 
maidens of our tribe grace the wigwams of our 
enemies? Altama will never see it. You came 
to celebrate my nuptials with the beautiful 
Anola. The celebration is ended. Who will 
follow me? Altama has spoken.” 
Grasping a burning torch the young chief 
commenced his death chant and started for the 
edge of the bluff. Anola, with torch in hand, 
BILL SYKES’ 
In early days, when the first stage line ran 
through the now rich Judith Basin, Bill Sykes, 
after spending his last dollar in Chicago Joe’s 
Hurdy Gurdy, took a job as stock tender at 
a lone stage statioh in the Basin. 
In his’ young days Bill had left old Mexico 
with a large band of horses that he had rounded 
up while their Mexican owners were celebrat¬ 
ing one of their numerous saint days. Bill’s 
herd was big. It was hard work to make them 
take to the swollen muddy waters of the ‘Rio 
Grande, and by the time Bill was a hundred 
yards or so out in the river a band of enraged 
Mexicans appeared on shore, behind the swim¬ 
ming, snorting, bobbing herd, and warm lead 
and bad language followed Bill like a Kansas 
hail storm and cyclone combined. 
Bill and his treasure reached the Texas shore 
with nothing more than a good bath, and as 
he reached the bank he swung his old hat and 
bade good-bye forever to the cursing citizens 
and rich pastures of old Mexico. He was too 
well known ever to return. Dealing in wet 
horses was a gentlemen’s occupation in those 
days. Bill pointed north with his herd in front, 
and some of the wild oats of youth behind him. 
Being too quick, and a trifle previous with 
a gun, Bill was later obliged to emigrate still 
further north, until he struck the band of steel 
then pushing west from Omaha. Here he took 
to buffalo hunting to supply food to the work¬ 
ing, drinking, fighting mob which follows a rail¬ 
road in the course of construction. 
He followed the buffalo as they slowly but 
surely receded north, and was in at the last 
stand near the Missouri, as the last of the herds 
that once darkened the plains fell before the 
shots of a Sharps . 45 - 120 - 500 . Bill knew the 
whole country from the Canadian boundary 
down into old Mexico, but he took his first 
job and did his first work for another than him¬ 
self at the stage station in the Judith Basin. 
He hung the old Sharps on two pegs over his 
bunk, and in the long waits for the daily stage 
he fell to wondering where, and- for what, all 
the money had gone that the old Sharps had 
earned for him, but the only thing that Bill 
could make out of the riddle was that about 
nine-tenths of all his hard earned coin had gone 
for whiskey. 
Bill climbed on top of the stage barn and 
gazed out over the rich grazing land and fine 
streams that stretched away for miles on every 
side. Many times had he camped near there 
and seen the game moving in every direction. 
Now the game was gone forever. As his eye 
was at his side instantly; the rest followed. 
Hand in hand, with torches held aloft and chant¬ 
ing that solemn dirge, this little band marched 
to their death. Altama and his bride were the 
first to disappear over the bluff, and when the 
last torch went out of sight and the waters of 
their native bay closed over them, the wild 
waves caught up the mournful anthem, and from 
the spirit land it still is borne and wafted by 
the night winds to their once happy homes. 
POST OFFICE 
swept the deserted plain he saw a little cloud 
of dust rising away off on the brow of a hill, 
and soon he made out a band of sheep, followed 
by a wreck of humanity and a sheep dog. Bill 
turned his eyes away in contempt, for your old- 
timer hates sheep, and some few miles off he 
saw a cowpuncher coming toward the station. 
The country was surely settling up when you 
could see people in two directions at the same 
time, and Bill’s mind was soon made up. Here 
he would plant his stakes and start a saloon. 
A ten-mule freight team, emigrating to old 
Fort Benton or the Canadian Northwest, came 
along and Bill hired the driver to haul a set 
of house logs from the mountains, a day’s travel 
away. Bill built his saloon log upon log and 
covered it with poles and a sod roof. He wrote 
to some of the old traders who used to stake 
him to a winter’s supply in the buffalo days, 
and they were only too glad to furnish him all 
the whiskey and saloon jewelry he wanted. He 
prospered from the start, and Bill Sykes’ saloon 
became a place where roving trappers, stage 
people, cowboys, sheep herders and horse 
thieves congregated to wash the alkali dust out 
of their throats and talk about the new cattle 
and sheep companies coming into the new coun¬ 
try—the old buffalo range. 
They asked Bill to establish a post office, and 
he, being willing to make his place as popular 
as possible, consented. He shoved a beer box 
on the counter against the wall and it made a 
box office to suit the times. 
One day as Bill took the mail sack from the 
coach, slapped it on the counter and commenced 
to sort and store the mail in the holes of the 
beer box, a big pompous man, with a white 
shirt and stand-up collar, crawled out of the 
Concord coach and came oyer to the saloon 
and stood looking at Bill sorling the mail. 
Bill was behind the counter with a red Cali¬ 
fornia overshirt on, and his sleeves rolled up to 
the elbows, while artistically arranged on the 
shelves behind stood bottles of. whiskey, brandy, 
gin and beer. 
The great United States mail was scattered 
over the counter, and Bill, with wrinkled brow 
and serious mien, was trying to cipher the hiero¬ 
glyphics that disfigured the envelopes in the 
ordinary mail sack. Bill could read game sign 
at a watering hole or brands on a cayuse more 
readily than he could the scrawl of an Eastern 
school marm to an infatuated cowpuncher. The 
great man in the door advanced, and in polite, 
icy, condescending tone inquired if this was a 
saloon. 
