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Lahoma

by J. Breckenridge Ellis · English · Gutenberg #2029 · 427,156 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lahoma

Author: J. Breckenridge Ellis


        
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2029]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2029

Credits: Produced by Pat Pflieger.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAHOMA ***




Produced by Pat Pflieger.  HTML version by Al Haines.








LAHOMA


by

John Breckenridge Ellis




CONTENTS

       I  THE TOUCH OF A CHILD
      II  BRICK MAKES A MOVE
     III  FLIGHT
      IV  AN UNWONTED PRAYER
       V  A NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE
      VI  A MYSTERIOUS GUEST
     VII  RED FEATHER
    VIII  GETTING CIVILIZED
      IX  A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY
       X  THE FLAG OF TRUCE
      XI  THE HALF-OPENED BUD
     XII  THE BIG WORLD
    XIII  A SURE-ENOUGH MAN
     XIV  WRITING HOME
      XV  THE DAY OF FENCES
     XVI  THE ONYX PIN
    XVII  BRICK MAKES A STAND
   XVIII  LIFE ON ONE CONDITION
     XIX  LIKE LOVERS
      XX  TOGETHER
     XXI  THE NORTHER
    XXII  JOURNEY'S END
   XXIII  FACING THE MOB
    XXIV  MINE ENEMY
     XXV  GLEDWARE'S POSSESSIONS
    XXVI  JUST A HABIT




CHAPTER I

THE TOUCH OF A CHILD

"I have given my word of honor--my sacred oath--not to betray what I
have discovered here."

At these words from the prisoner, a shout arose in which oaths and
mocking laughter mingled like the growling and snapping of
hunger-maddened wolves.

"Then if I must die," Gledware cried, his voice, in its shrill
excitement, dominating the ferocious insults of the ruffians, "don't
kill the child--you see she is asleep--and she's so young--only five.
Even if she were awake, she wouldn't know how to tell about this cabin.
For God's sake, don't kill the little girl!"

Since the seizure of Gledware, the child had been lying on the rude
table in the midst of a greasy pack of cards--cards that had been
thrown down at the sound of his galloping horse.  The table supported,
also, much of the booty captured from the wagon-train, while on the
dirt floor beside it were prizes of the freebooting expedition, too
large to find resting-place on the boards.  Nor was this all.  Mingled
with stolen garments, cans and boxes of provisions, purses and bags of
gold, were the Indian disguises in which the highwaymen from No-Man's
Land had descended on the prairie-schooners on their tedious journey
from Abilene, Kansas, toward the Southwest.

In the midst of this confusion of disguises, booty and playing-cards,
surrounded by cruel and sensual faces, the child slept soundly, her
lips slightly parted, her cheeks delicately flushed, her face eloquent
in its appeal of helplessness, innocence and beauty.  One of the band,
a tall broad-shouldered man of middle-age, with an immense quantity of
whiskers perhaps worn as a visible sign of inward wildness, was,
despite his hardened nature, moved to remonstrance.  Under cover of
lurid oaths and outrageous obscenity, he advanced his opinion that "the
kid" needn't be shot just because her father was a sneak-jug spy.

"Shut up!" roared a tremendous voice, not directly to the intercessor,
or to the prisoner, but to all present.  Evidently it was a voice of
authority, for comparative silence followed the command.  The speaker
stepped forward, thrust his fingers through his intensely red shock of
hair, and continued, with one leg thrust forward:

"You know I am something of an orator, or I guess you wouldn't of made
me your leader.  Now, as long as I'm your leader, I'm going to lead;
but, I ain't never unreasonable, and when talk is needed, I'm copious
enough.  I am called 'Red Kimball,' and my brother yonder, he is knowed
as 'Kansas Kimball.'  What else is knowed of us is this:  that we
wasn't never wont to turn loose a spy when once ketched.  Here is a man
who says he is Henry Gledware--though God knows if that's so; he comes
galloping up to the door just as we are in the midst of a game.  I
stakes all my share of the spoils on the game, and Brick Willock is in
a fair way to win it, that I admit, but in comes this here spy--"

The prisoner in a frenzied voice disclaimed any purpose of spying. That
morning, he had driven the last wagon of the train, containing his
invalid wife and his stepdaughter--for the child lying on the table was
his wife's daughter.  At the alarm that the first wagon had been
attacked by Indians, he had turned about his horses and driven
furiously over the prairie, he knew not whither.  All that day he had
fled, seeing no one, hearing no pursuing horse-beat.  At night his
wife, unable, in her weak condition, to sustain the terrible jolting,
had expired.  Taking nothing from the wagon but his saddle, he had
mounted one of the horses with the child before him, and had continued
his flight, the terrific wind at his back. Unaware that the wind had
changed, he had traversed horseback much of the distance traveled
during the day, and at about two in the morning--that is to say, about
all hour ago--seeing a light, he had ridden straight toward it, to find
shelter from the storm.

The prisoner narrated all this in nervous haste, though he had already
given every particular, time and again.  His form as well as his voice
trembled with undisguised terror, and indeed, the red and cruel eyes
fastened contemptuously on him might have caused a much braver man than
Gledware to shudder visibly.

"Well, pard," said the leader of the band, waiting until he had
finished, "you can't never claim that you ain't been given your say,
for I do admire free speech.  I want to address you reasonable, and
make this plain and simple, as only a man that has been alleged to be
something of an orator can accomplish.  My men and me has had our
conference, and it's decided that both of you has got to be shot, and
immediate.  The reasons is none but what a sensible man must admit, and
such I take you to be.  I am sorry this has happened, and so is my men,
and we wish you well.  It's a hard saying, pard, but whatever your
intentions, a spy you have proved.  For what do you find on busting
open our door?  Here we sit playing with our booty for stakes, and our
Indian togs lying all about.  You couldn't help knowing that we was the
'Indians' that gutted them wagons and put up the fight that left every
man and woman dead on the field except that there last wagon you are
telling us about.  You might wish you didn't know the same, but once
knowed, we ain't going to let you loose.  As to that wagon you claim to
have stole away from under our very noses--"

A skeptical laugh burst from the listeners.

Gledware eagerly declared that if he had the remotest idea in what
direction it had been left, he would be glad to lead them to the spot.
He could describe it and its contents--

"You see, pard," Red Kimball interposed, "you are everlasting losing
sight of the point.  This here is 1880, which I may say is a recent
date.  Time was when a fellow could live in Cimarron, and come and go
free and no questions asked--and none answered.  But civilization is
a-pressing us hard, and these days is not our fathers' days.  We are
pretty independent even yet in old Cimarron, but busybodies has got
together trying to make it a regular United States territory, and they
ain't going to stand for a real out-and-out band of highwaymen such as
used to levy on stage-coaches and wagon-trains without exciting no more
remarks than the buffaloes.  You may be sorry times is changed; so am
I; but if times IS fresh, we might as well look 'em in the face.  Us
fellows has been operating for some years, but whatever we do is blamed
on the Indians.  That there is a secret that would ruin our business,
if it got out.  Tomorrow, a gang of white men will be depredating in
the Washita country to get revenge for today's massacre, and me and my
men couldn't join in the fun with easy consciences if we knowed you was
somewheres loose, to tell your story."

Again Gledware protested that he would never betray the band.

"Oh, cut this short," interposed Kansas Kimball, with an oath.
"Daylight will catch us and nothing done, if we listen to that
white-livered spy.  We don't believe in that wagon he talks about, and
as for this kid, he brought her along just to save his bacon."

"No, as God lives!" cried Gledware.  "Can't you see she is dead for
sleep?  She was terrified out of her wits all day, and I've ridden with
her all night.  Don't kill her, men--"  He turned impassioned eyes on
the leader.  "Look at her--so young--so unsuspecting--you can't have
the heart to murder a child like that in cold blood."

"Right you are!" exclaimed the man with the ferocious whiskers--he who
had been spoken of as Brick Willock.  "You'll have to go, pard, but I'm
against killing infants."

The leader darted an angry glance at the man who, but for the untoward
arrival of Gledware, would have won from him his share of the booty.
But his voice was smooth and pleasant as he resumed: "Yes, pard, the
kid must die.  We couldn't do nothing with her, and if we left her on
some door-step, she's sure old enough, and she looks full sharp enough,
to tell sufficient to trammel us good and plenty.  If we sets her loose
in the prairie, she'd starve to death if not found--and if found, it
would settle our case.  And as Kansas says, this debate must close, or
daylight will catch us."

Brick Willock, with terrible oaths, again expressed himself as strongly
opposed to this decision.

"Well, Brick," said Red, with a sneer, "do YOU want to take the kid and
raise her, yourself?  We've either got to do away with her, or keep her
hid.  Do YOU want to be her nurse, and keep with her in some cave or
other while we go foraging?"

Willock muttered deep in his throat, while his companions laughed
disdainfully.

"We've had enough of this!" Red declared, his voice suddenly grown hard
and cold.  "Kansas, take the prisoner; Brick Willock, as you're so fond
of the kid, you can carry HER."  He opened the door and a rush of wind
extinguished the candle.  There was silence while it was being
relighted. The flickering light, reddening to a steady glow, revealed
no mercy on the scowling countenances about the table, and no shadow of
presentiment on that of the still unconscious child.

Red went outside and waited till his brother had drawn forth the
quivering man, and Brick Willock had carried out the girl.  Then he
looked back into the room.  "You fellows can stay in here," he said
authoritatively.  "What we've got to do ain't any easier with a lot of
men standing about, looking on."

The man who had relighted the candle, and who crouched to shield it
with a hairy hand from the gust, nodded approval.  His friends were
already gathering together the cards to lose in the excitement of
gambling consciousness of what was about to be done.  Red closed the
door on the scene, and turned to face the light.

The wind came in furious gusts, with brief intervals of calm.  There
were no clouds, however, and the moon, which had risen not long before,
made the prairie almost as light as if morning had dawned. As far as
the eye could reach in any direction, nothing was to be seen but the
level ground, the unflecked sky, the cabin and the little group near
the tethered ponies.

Gledware had already been stationed with his face toward the moon, and
Kansas Kimball was calmly examining his pistol.  Between them and the
horses, Brick Willock had come to a halt, the little girl still
sleeping in his powerful arms.  Red's eagle eye noted that she had
unconsciously slipped an arm about the highwayman's neck, as if by some
instinct she would cling the closer to the only one in the band of ten
who had spoken for her life.

Red scowled heavily.  He had not forgiven Willock for beating him at
cards, still less for his persistent opposition to his wishes; and he
now resolved that it should be Willock's hand to deal the fatal blow.
He had been troubled before tonight by insubordination on the part of
this man of bristling whiskers, this knave whose voice was ever for
mercy, if mercy were possible.  Why should Willock have joined men who
were without scruple and without shame? As the leader stared at him
sullenly, he reflected that it was just such natures that fail at the
last extremity of hardihood, that desert comrades in crime, that turn
state's evidence.  Yes--Willock would deal the blow, even if Red found
it necessary to call all his men from the cabin to enforce the order.

The captain's fears were not groundless.  He would have been much more
alarmed, could he have known the wonderful thoughts that surged through
Willock's brain, and the wonderful emotions that thrilled his heart, at
the warm confiding pressure of the arm about his neck.



CHAPTER II

BRICK MAKES A MOVE

As Kansas Kimball raised his weapon to fire, the man before him uttered
a cry of terror and began to entreat for his life.  In the full light
of the dazzling moon, his face showed all the pallor, all the
contortions of a coward who, though believing himself lost, has not the
resolution to mask his fear.  He poured forth incoherent promises of
secrecy, ejaculations of despair and frenzied assurances of innocence.

"Hold on, Kansas!" interposed Red.  "There's not a one of the bunch
believes that story about the last wagon getting away, and the dying
wife.  We know this Gledware is a spy, whatever he says, and that he
brought the kid along for protection.  He knew if we got back to
No-Man's Land we couldn't be touched, not being under no jurisdiction,
and he wanted to find us with our paint and feathers off.  He's a
sneaking dog, and a bullet's too good for him.  But--with an
oath--blessed if he don't hate to die worse than any man ever I saw!  I
don't mind to spare him a few minutes if he's agreeable.  I put it to
him--would he rather the kid be put out of the way first, and him
afterwards, or does he want the first call?"

"For God's sake, put it off as long as you will!" quavered the
prisoner.  "I swear I'm no spy.  I swear--"

"This is unpleasant," the captain of the highwaymen interposed. "Just
you say another word, and I'll put daylight into you with my own hand.
Stand there and keep mum, and I'll give you a little breathing space."

Kansas, not without a sigh of relief, lowered his weapon and looked
questioningly at his brother.  The shadow of the log cabin was upon
him, making more sinister his uncouth attire, and his lean vindictive
face under the huge Mexican hat.  Gledware, not daring to move, kept
his eyes fixed on that deep gloom out of which at any moment might
spurt forth the red flash of death.  From within the cabin came loud
oaths inspired by cards or drink, as if the inmates would drown any
calls for mercy or sounds of execution that might be abroad in the
night.

"Now, Brick Willock," the leader spoke grimly, "take your turn first.
That kid's got to die, and you are to do the trick, and do it without
any foolishness."

"I can't," Willock declared doggedly.

"Oh, yes; yes, you can, Brick.  You see, we can't 'tend to no infant
class, and I ain't hard-hearted enough to leave a five-year-old girl to
die of hunger on the prairie; nor do I mean to take her to no town or
stage-station as a card for to be tracked by.  Oh, yes, you can, Brick,
and now's the time."

"Red," exclaimed Willock desperately, "I tell you fair, and I tell you
foul, that this little one lives as long as I do."

"And what do you aim to do with her, eh, Brick?"

Willock made no reply.  He had formed no plans for his future, or for
that of the child; but his left arm closed more tightly about her.

"Now, Brick," said Red slowly, "this ain't the first time you have
proved yourself no man for our business, and I call Kansas to witness
you've brought this on yourself--"

Without finishing his sentence, Red swiftly raised his arm and fired
pointblank at Willock's head as it was defined above the sleeping form.
Though famed as an orator, Red understood very well that, at times,
action is everything, and there is death in long speaking. He was noted
as a man who never missed his mark; and in the Cimarron country, which
belonged to no state and therefore to no court, extensive and deadly
had been his practise, without fear of retribution.

Now, however, his bullet had gone astray.  The few words to which he
had treated himself as an introduction to the intended deed had proved
his undoing.  They had been enough to warn Willock of what was coming;
and just before Kansas had been called on "to witness," that is an
instant before Red fired, Willock had sent a bullet through the
threatening wrist.  The two detonations were almost simultaneous, and
Red's roar of pain, as he dropped his weapon, rang out as an
accompaniment to the crash of firearms.

The next instant, Willock, with a second shot from his six-shooter,
stretched Kansas on the ground; then, rushing forward with reversed
weapon, he brought the butt down on Red's head with such force as to
deprive him of consciousness.  So swift and deadly were his movements,
so wild his appearance as, with long locks streaming in the wind and
huge black whiskers hiding all but glittering eyes, aquiline nose and a
brief space of tough red skin--so much more like a demon than a man, it
was no wonder that the child, awakened by the firing, screamed with
terror at finding her head pressed to his bosom.

"Come!" Willock called breathlessly to the prisoner who still stood
with his back to the moon, as if horror at what he had just witnessed
rendered him as helpless as he had been from sheer terror. Still
holding the screaming child, he darted to the ponies that were tied to
the projecting logs of the cabin and hastily unfastened two of the
fleetest.

Henry Gledware, awakened as from a trance, bounded to his side. Willock
helped him to mount, then placed the child the saddle in front of him.

"Ride!" he urged hoarsely, "ride for your life!  They ain't no other
chance for you and the kid and they ain't no other chance for me."

He leaped upon the second pony.

"Which way?" faltered Gledware, settling in the saddle and grasping the
bridle, but without the other's practised ease.

"Follow the moon--I'll ride against the wind--more chance for one of us
if we ain't together.  Start when I do, for when they hear the horses
they'll be out of that door like so many devils turned loose on us.
Ride, pardner, ride, and save the kid for God's sake! Now--off we go!"

He gave Gledware's pony a vicious cut with his lariat, and drove the
spurs into his own broncho.  The thunder of hoofs as they plunged in
different directions, caused a sudden commotion within the isolated
cabin.  The door was flung open, and in the light that streamed forth,
Willock, looking back, saw dark forms rush out, gather about the
prostrate forms of the two brothers, move here and there in indecision,
then, by a common impulse, burst into a swinging run for the horses.

As for Gledware, he never once turned his face.  Urging on his horse at
utmost speed, and clasping the child to his breast, he raced toward the
light.  The shadow of horse, man and child, at first long and black,
lessened to a mere speck, then vanished with the rider beyond the
circle of the level world.



CHAPTER III

FLIGHT

Brick Willock, galloping toward the Southeast, frequently looked back.
He saw the desperadoes leap upon their horses, wheel about in short
circles that brought the animals upright, then spring forward in
pursuit.  He heard the shouting which, though far away, sounded the
unmistakable accent of ungovernable fury.  In the glaring moonlight, he
distinguished plainly the cloud of dust and sand raised by the horses,
which the wind lifted in white shapes against the deep blue of the sky.
And looking beyond his pursuers toward the rude cabin where the
highwaymen had so long held their rendezvous, he knew, because no
animate forms appeared against the horizon, that the Kimball brothers
lay where he had stretched them--one, senseless from the crashing blow
on his head, the other, lifeless from the bullet in his breast.

The little girl and her stepfather had vanished from the smooth open
page of the Texas Panhandle--and Brick Willock rejoiced, with a joy new
to him, that these escaped prisoners had not been pursued.  It was
himself that the band meant to subject to their savage vengeance, and
himself alone.  The murder of the child was abhorrent to their hearts
which had not attained the hardened insensibility of their leader's
conscience, and they were willing for the supposed spy to escape, since
it spared them the embarrassment of disposing of the little girl.

But Brick Willock had been one of them and he had killed their leader,
and their leader's brother, or at least had brought them to the verge
of death.  If Red Kimball revived, he would doubtless right his own
wrongs, should Willock live to be punished.  In the meantime, it was
for them to treat with the traitor--this giant of a Texan,
huge-whiskered, slow of speech, who had ever been first to throw
himself into the thick of danger but who had always hung back from
deeds of cruelty.  He had plundered coaches and wagon-trains with them,
he had fought with them against strong bodies of emigrants, he had
killed and burned--in the eyes of the world his deeds made him one of
them, and his aspect marked him as the most dangerous of the band.  But
they had always felt the difference--and now they meant to kill him not
only because he had overpowered their leader but because of this
difference.

As their bullets pursued him, Willock lay along the body of the
broncho, feeling his steed very small, and himself very large--and yet,
despite the rain of lead, his pleasure over the escape of the child
warmed his heart.  The sand was plowed up by his side from the
peppering of bullets--but he seemed to feel that innocent unconscious
arm about his great neck; the yells of rage were in his ears, but he
heard the soft breathing of the little one fast asleep in the midst of
her dangers.

He had selected for himself, and for Gledware, ponies that had often
been run against each other, and which no others of all Red Kimball's
corral could surpass in speed.  Gledware and the child were on the pony
that Kimball had once staked against the swiftest animal the Indians
could produce--and Willock rode the pride of the Indian band, which had
almost won the prize.  The ponies had been staked on the issue of that
encounter--and the highwaymen had retained, by right of craft and
force, what the government would not permit its wards to barter or sell.

The race was long but always unequal.  The ruffians who had dashed from
the scene of the cabin almost in an even line, scattered and straggled
unevenly; now only two were able to send bullets whistling about
Willock's head; now only one found it possible to cover the distance.
At last even he fell out of range.  The Indian pony, apparently
tireless, shot on like an arrow driven into the teeth of the wind,
sending up behind a cloud of dust that stretched backward toward the
baffled pursuers, a long wavering ribbon like a clew left to guide the
band into the mysterious depths of the Great American Desert.

When the last of the pursuers found further effort useless, he checked
his horse.  Willock now sat erect on the broncho's bare back, lightly
clasping the halter.  Looking behind, he saw seven horsemen in varying
degrees of remoteness, motionless, doubtless fixing their wolfish eyes
on his fleeing form.  As long as he could distinguish these specks
against the sky, they remained stationary. To his excited imagination
they represented a living wall drawn up between him and the abode of
men.  Should he ever venture back to that world, he fancied those seven
avengers would be waiting to receive him with taunts and drawn weapons.

And his conscience told him that the taunts would be merited, for he
had turned traitor, he had failed in the only virtue on which his
fellow criminals prided themselves.  Yes, he was a traitor; and by the
only justice he acknowledged, he deserved to die.  But the child who
had lain so trustingly upon his wild bosom, who had clung to him as to
a father--she was safe!  An unwonted smile crept under the bristling
beard of the fugitive, as he urged the pony forward in unrelaxing
speed.  Should he seek refuge among civilized communities, his crimes
would hang over his head--if not discovered, the fear of discovery
would be his, day and night.  To venture into his old haunts in
No-Man's Land would be to expose his back to the assassin's knife, or
his breast to ambushed murderers.  He dared not seek asylum among the
Indians, for while bands of white men were safe enough in the
Territory, single white men were at the mercy of the moment's
caprice--and certainly, if found astride that Indian pony which the
agent had ordered restored to its owner, his life would not be worth a
thought.

These were desperate reflections, and the future seemed framed in
solitude, yet Brick Willock rode on with that odd smile about the grim
lips.  The smile was unlike him--but, the whole affair was such an
experience as had never entered his most daring fancy.  Never before in
his life had he held a child in his arms, still less had he felt the
sweet embrace of peaceful slumber.  To another man it might have meant
nothing; but to this great rough fellow, the very sight of whom had
often struck terror to the heart, that experience seemed worth all the
privations he foresaw.

The sun had risen when the pony, after a few tottering steps, suddenly
sank to earth.  Willock unfastened the halter from its neck, tied it
with the lariat about his waist, and without pause, set out afoot.  If
the pony died from the terrible strain of that unremitting flight,
doubtless the roving Indians of the plains would find it and try to
follow his trail; if it survived he would be safer if not found near
it.  In either case, swift flight was still imperative, and the
shifting sand, beaten out of shape by the constant wind, promised not
to retain his footprints.

Though stiff from long riding, the change of motion soon brought
renewed vigor.  Willock had grown thirsty, and as the sun rose higher
and beat down on him from an unclouded sky, his eyes searched the
plains eagerly for some shelter that promised water.  He did not look
in vain.  Against the horizon rose the low blue shapes of the Wichita
Mountains, looking at first like flat sheets of cardboard, cut out by a
careless hand and set upright in the sand.

As he toiled toward this refuge, not a living form appeared to dispute
his sovereignty of the desert world.  His feet sank deep in the sand,
then trod lightly over vast stretches of short sun-burned mesquit, then
again traversed hot shifting reaches of naked sand. The mountains
seemed to recede as he advanced, and at times stifling dust and
relentless heat threatened to overpower him.  With dogged determination
he told himself that he might be forced to drop from utter exhaustion,
but it would not be yet--not yet--one more mile, or, at least, another
half-mile.  So he advanced, growing weaker, breathing with more
difficulty, but still muttering, "Not yet--not just yet!"

The mountains had begun to spread apart.  There were long ranges and
short.  Here and there, a form that had seemed an integral part of some
range, defined itself as distinct from all others, lying like an island
of rock in a sea of unbroken desert.  Willock was approaching the
Wichita Mountains from their southwestern extremity. As far as he could
see in one direction, the grotesque forms stretched in isolated chains
or single groups; but in the other, the end was reached, and beyond lay
the unbroken waste of the Panhandle.

Swaying on his great legs as with the weakness of an infant, he was now
very near the end of the system.  A wall of granite, sparsely dotted
with green, rose above him to a height of about three hundred and fifty
feet.  The length of this range was perhaps six miles, its thickness a
mile.  Concealed among these ridges, he might be safe, but it was no
longer possible for him to stand erect; to climb the difficult ledges
would be impossible.

He sank to the ground, his eyes red and dimmed.  For some time he
remained there inert, staring, his brain refusing to work.  If yonder
stood a white object, between him and the mountain, a curious white
something with wheels, might it not be a covered wagon?  No, it was a
mirage.  But was it possible for a mirage to deceive him into the fancy
that a wagon stood only a few hundred feet away? Perhaps it was really
a wagon.  He stared stupidly, not moving. There were no dream-horses to
this ghost-wagon.  There was no sign of life.  If captured by the
Indians, it would not have been left intact.  But how came a wagon into
this barren world?

He stared up at the sun as if to assure himself that he was awake, then
laughed hoarsely, foolishly.  The wagon did not melt away.  He could
crawl that far, though in stretching forth his arm he might grasp but
empty air.  He began to crawl forward, but the wagon did not move.  As
it grew plainer in all its details, a new strength came to him.  He
strove to rise, and after several efforts, succeeded.  He staggered
forward till his hands grasped one of the wheels.  The contact cleared
his brain as by a magic touch.  It was no dream.

Supporting himself by the sideboard, he drew himself around to the
front, the only opening of the canvas room.  He looked within.  A first
look told him that the wagon was fitted up for a long journey, and that
its contents had not been disturbed by bandits or Indians. The second
look distinguished two objects that excluded from attention all others.
Upon a mattress at the rear of the wagon lay a woman, her face covered
by a cloth; and near the front seat stood a keg of water.  It was
impossible to note the rigid form of the woman and the position of the
arms and hands without perceiving that she was dead.

The man recognized this truth but it made only a dim impression; that
keg of water meant life--and life was a thousandfold more to him than
death.  He drew himself upon the seat, snatched at the tin cup beside
the keg, and drew out the cloth-covered corn-cob that stopped the flow.
Having slaked his thirst, there was mingled with his sense of ineffable
content, an overwhelming desire for sleep. He dropped on the second
mattress, on which bedclothes were carelessly strewn; his head found
the empty pillow that lay indented as it had been left by some vanished
sleeper.  As his eyelids closed, he fell sound asleep.  But for the
rising and falling of his powerful breast, he was as motionless as the
body of the woman.

Without, the afternoon sun slowly sank behind the mountains casting
long shadows over the plains; the wind swirled the sand in tireless
eddies, sometimes lifting it high in great sheets, forming sudden
dunes; coyotes prowled among the foot-hills and out on the open levels,
squatting with eyes fixed on the wagon, uttering sharp quick barks of
interrogation.  A herd of deer lifted their horns against the horizon,
then suddenly bounded away, racing like shadows toward the lowlands of
Red River.  On the domelike summit of Mount Welsh, a mile away, a
mountain-lion showed his sinuous form against the sky seven hundred
feet in air.  And from the mountainside near at hand stared from among
the thick greenery of a cedar, the face of an Indian whose black hair
was adorned by a single red feather.

Within the wagon, unconscious of all, in strange fellowship, lay the
living and the dead.



CHAPTER IV

AN UNWONTED PRAYER

When Willock started up from the mattress in the covered wagon, the sun
had set.  Every object, however, was clearly defined in the first glow
of the long August twilight, and it needed but a glance to recall the
events that had brought him to seek shelter and slumber beside the dead
woman.  He sat up suddenly, staring from under his long black hair as
it fell about his eyes. Accustomed as he was to deeds of violence, even
to the sight of men weltering in their life's blood, he was strangely
moved by that rigid form with the thin arms folded over the breast, by
that white cloth concealing face and hair.  A long keen examination of
the prairie assured him that no human being was between him and the
horizon.  He turned again toward the woman.  He felt an overpowering
desire to look on her face.

For years there had been no women in his world but the abandoned
creatures who sought shelter in the resorts of Beer City in No-Man's
Land--these, and the squaws of the reservations, and occasionally a
white terrified face among the wagon-trains.  As a boy, before running
away from home in the Middle West, he had known a different order of
beings, and some instinct told him that this woman belonged to the
class of his childhood's association.  There was imperative need of his
hurrying to the mountain, lest, at any moment, a roving band of Indians
discover the abandoned wagon; besides this, he was very hungry since
his rest, and the wagon was stocked with provisions; nevertheless, to
look on the face of the dead was his absorbing desire.

But it was not easy for him to yield to his curiosity, despite his life
of crime.  Something about the majestic repose of that form seemed to
add awe to the mystery of sex; and he crouched staring at the cloth
which no breath stirred save the breath of evening.

He believed, now, the story that Henry Gledware had reiterated in
accents of abject terror.  Surely this was the "last wagon" in that
train which Red Kimball had attacked the morning before.  Impossible as
it had seemed to the highwaymen, Gledware must have been warned of the
attack in time to turn about and lash his horses out of danger of
discovery. At this spot, Gledware had cut loose the horses, mounted one
with his stepdaughter, leaving the other to go at will.  This, then,
was the mother of that child whose arm had lain in warm confidence
about his neck. On hands and knees, Willock crept to the other mattress
and lifted the margin of the large white cloth.

His hand moved stealthily, slowly.  Catching sight of something that
faintly gleamed at the collar of the dress, he hesitated; his
determination to examine the countenance was as firm as ever, but his
impulse to put it off as long as possible was even stronger. He bent
down to look closer at the ornament; it was a round breastpin of onyx
and pearl set in a heavy rim of gold.  The warm wind, tempered by
approaching night to a grateful balminess, stirred the cloth between
his fingers.  He stared as if lost in profound meditation.  That pin
resembled one his mother used to wear; and, somehow, the soothing touch
of the wind reminded him of her hand on his forehead.  He might have
gone back home, if she had not died long ago.  Now, in spite of the
many years that had passed over her grave, the memory of her came as
strong, as sweet, as instinct with the fullness of life, as, if he were
suddenly wafted back into boyhood.

He did not lift the cloth, after all, but having replaced it gently, he
searched the wagon for a spade. It was found in the box fastened to the
end of the wagon, and with the spade, in the gathering darkness, he dug
a grave near the mountainside. Between the strokes of the blade he sent
searching glances over the prairie and along the sloping ridges of the
overlooking range, but there were no witnesses of his work save the
coyotes that prowled like gray shadows across the sands.  When the
grave was ready he carried thither in his giant's arms the body of the
woman on the mattress, and laid it thus to rest.  When the sand was
smoothed over the place, he carried thither quantities of heavy stones,
and broken blocks of granite, to preserve the body from wild beasts.

It was dark when the heap of stones had been arranged in the form of a
low pyramid, but though he had not tasted food for twenty-four hours,
he lingered beside the grave, his head bent as if still struggling with
those unwonted memories of the long ago. At last, as if forced by a
mysterious power against which he could no longer resist, he sank upon
his knees.

"O God," he prayed aloud, "take care of the little girl."

He waited, but no more words would come--no other thought.  He rose,
feeling strangely elated, as if some great good fortune had suddenly
come into his possession.  It had been like this when the sleeping
child lay in his arms; he could almost feel her little cheek against
his bosom, and hear the soft music of her breathing.

He went back to the wagon and sat on the tongue, still oblivious to any
possible danger of surprise.  He spoke aloud, for company:

"She wouldn't have wanted me to look at her--she couldn't have looked
natural.  Glad I didn't.  Great Scott! but that was a first-rate
prayer!  Wouldn't have thought after thirty years I could have done so
well.  And it was all there, everything was in them words!  If she knew
what I was doing, she couldn't have asked nothing more, for I reckon
she wouldn't expect a man like ME to ask no favors for that
white-livered cowardly second-husband of hers. I put in all my plea for
the little girl.  Dinged if I understand how I come to be so
intelligent and handy at what's all new business to me!  I just says,
'O God, take care of the little girl,'--just them words."  He rose with
an air of great content and went around to the front in search of
provisions.  Presently he spoke aloud:

"And as I ain't asked nothing for myself since I run off from home I
guess God won't mind putting the little girl on my expense-account."



CHAPTER V

A NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE

It came over him with disconcerting suddenness that he had lost a great
deal of time, and that every moment spent in the covered wagon was
fraught with imminent danger.  It was not in his mind that the hand of
highwaymen might discover his hiding-place.  Knowing them as he did, he
was sure they would not come so far from their haunts or from the Sante
Fe train in pursuit of him.  But the Indians roamed the Panhandle, as
much at home there as in their reservations--and here they were much
more dangerous.  Had no savage eye discerned that wagon during the
brilliant August day?  Might it be that even while he slept at the feet
of the dead woman, a feathered head had slipped under the canvas side,
a red face had bent over him?

It was a disquieting fancy.  Willock told himself that, had such been
the case, his scalp-lock would not still adorn his own person; for all
that, he was eager to be gone.  Instead of eating in the wagon, he
wrapped up some food in a bread-cloth, placed this with a few other
articles in a tarpaulin--among them, powder and shot--and, having
lifted the keg of water to one shoulder, and the rope-bound tarpaulin
to the other, he left the wagon with a loaded gun in his hand.

Twilight had faded to starlight and the mountain range stood blackly
defined against the glittering stars.  It was easy to find his way, for
on the level sands there were no impediments, and when the mountain was
reached, a low divide offered him easy passage up the ascent.  For the
most part the slopes were gradual and in steeper places, ledges of
granite, somewhat like giant stairs, assisted him to the highest ridge.
From this vantage-point he could see the level plain stretching away on
the farther side; he could count the ridges running parallel to the one
on which he had paused, and note the troughs between, which never
descended to the level ground to deserve the name of valleys.  Looking
down upon this tortured mass of granite, he seemed gazing over a
petrified sea that, in the fury of a storm, had been caught at the
highest dashing of its waves, and fixed in threatening motion which
throughout the ages would remain as calm and secure as the level waste
that stretched from the abrupt walls in every direction.

On that first ridge he paused but a moment, lest his figure be outlined
against the night for the keen gaze of some hidden foe. Steadying the
keg with one hand and holding his gun alert, he descended into the
first trough and climbed to the next ridge, meaning to traverse the
mile of broken surface, thus setting a granite wall between him and the
telltale wagon.  The second ridge was not so high as the outer wall,
and he paused here, feeling more secure.  The ground was fairly level
for perhaps fifty yards before its descent to the next rolling
depression where the shadows lay in unrelieved gloom.  On the crest,
about him, the dim light defined broken boulders and great blocks of
granite in grotesque forms, some suggesting fantastic monsters, others,
in sharp-cut or rounded forms seemingly dressed by Cyclopean chisels.

The fugitive was not interested in the dimly defined shapes about him;
his attention had been attracted by a crevice in the smooth rock ledge
at his feet.  This ledge, barren of vegetation, and as level as a slab
of rough marble, showed a long black line like a crack in a stone
pavement.  At the man's feet the crevice was perhaps two feet wide, but
as it stretched toward the west it narrowed gradually, and disappeared
under a mass of disorganized stones, as a mere slit in the surface.

Presently he set the keg and the tarpaulin-ball on the ground, not to
rest his shoulders, but in order to sink on his knees beside the
crevice.  He put his face down over it, listening, peering, but making
no discovery.  Then he unwound the lariat from about his waist, tied it
to the rope that had been a halter, and having fastened a stone to one
end, lowered it into the black space.  The length of the lariat slipped
through his fingers and the rope was following when suddenly the rock
found lodgment at the bottom.  On making this discovery he drew up the
lariat, opened the cloth containing the food, and began to eat rapidly
and with evident excitement.  He did not fail to watch on all sides as
he enjoyed his long delayed meal, and while he ate and thus watched, he
thought rapidly.  When the first cravings of appetite were partly
satisfied, he left his baker's bread and bacon on a stone, tied up the
rest of the food in its cloth, rolled this in the tarpaulin, and
lowered it by means of the lariat into the crevice.  Then, having tied
the end of the rope to the gun-barrel, he placed the gun across the
crevice and swung himself down into the gloom.

The walls of the crevice were so close together that he was able to
steady his knees against them, but as he neared the bottom they widened
perceptibly.  His first act on setting foot to the stone flooring was
to open the tarpaulin, draw forth a candle and a box of matches, and
strike a light.  The chamber of granite in which he stood was indeed
narrow, but full of interest and romance.  The floor was about the same
width in all its length, wide enough for Willock, tall as he was, to
stretch across the passage.  It extended perhaps a hundred feet into
the heart of the rock, showing the same smooth walls on either side.
The ceiling, however, was varied, as the outward examination had
promised.  Overhead the stars were seen at ease through the two feet of
space at the top; but as he carried his candle forward, this opening
decreased, to be succeeded presently by a roof, at first of jumbled
stones crushed together by outward weight, then of a smooth red surface
extending to the end.

The floor was the same everywhere save at its extremities.  At the
point of Willock's descent, it dipped away in a narrow line that would
not have admitted a man's body.  At the other end, where he now stood,
it suddenly gave way to empty space.  It came to an end so abruptly
that there was no means of discovering how deep was the narrow abyss
beyond.  Possibly it descended a sheer three hundred feet, the depth of
the ridge at that place.  On the smooth floor which melted to
nothingness with such sinister and startling suddenness, the
candlelight revealed the skeleton of a man lying at the margin of the
unknown depths.  Mingled with the bones that had fallen apart with the
passing of centuries, was a drawn sword of blackened hilt and rusted
blade--a sword of old Spanish make--and in the dust of a rotted purse
lay a small heap of gold coins of strange design.

"Well, pard," said Brick Willock grimly, "you come here first and much
obliged to you.  You've told me two things:  that once in here, no
getting out--unless you bring along your ladder; and what's better
still, nobody has been here since you come, or that wouldn't be my
money!  And now having told me all you got to say, my cavalier, I guess
we'd better part."  He raked the bones into a heap, and dashed them
into the black gulf.  He did not hear them when they struck bottom, and
the sinister silence gave him an odd thrill.  He shook his head.  "If I
ever roll out of bed here," he said, "me and you will spend the rest of
the time together, pardner."

He did not linger for idle speculation, but drew himself up his
dangling rope, and in a short time was once more outside the place of
refuge.  Always on the lookout for possible watchers, he snatched up
his bread and meat, and ate as he hastened over the outer ridge and
down the rugged side toward the wagon.  Here he filled a box with
canned provisions and a side of bacon, and on top of this he secured a
sack of flour.  It made a heavy burden, but his long sleep had restored
him to his wonted strength, and he could not be sure but this trip to
the wagon would be his last.  With some difficulty he hoisted the box
to his herculean shoulder, and grasping a spade and an ax in his
disengaged hand, toiled upward to his asylum.

When the crevice in the mountain-top was reached, he threw the contents
of the box down into the tarpaulin which he had spread out to receive
it, and having broken up the box with the ax, cast the boards down that
they might fall to one side of the provisions. This done, he returned
to the wagon, from above invisible, but which, when he stood on the
plain, loomed dim and shapeless against the night.

There were great stores of comforts and even some luxuries in the
wagon, and it was hard for him to decide what to take next; evidently
Henry Gledware and his wife had expected to live in their wagon after
reaching their destination, for there was a stove under the seat, and a
stovepipe fastened to one side of the wagon.

"If the Indians don't catch me at this business," said Willock, looking
at the stove, "I'll get you too!"  He believed it could be lowered
between the stone lips of his cave-mouth, for it was the smallest stove
he had ever seen, surely less than two feet in width. "I'll get you
in," said the plunderer decidedly, "or something will be broke!"

For the present, however, he took objects more appropriate to summer:
the mattress upon which he had passed the afternoon, a bucket in which
he packed boxes of matches, a quantity of candles, soap, and the like.
This bucket he put in the middle of the mattress and flanked it with
towels and pillows, between which were inserted plates, cups and
saucers.  "I'll just take 'em all," he muttered, groping for more
dishes, "I might have company!"

The mattress once doubled over its ill-assorted contents, he was
obliged to rope both ends before he could carry it in safety.  This
load, heavier than the last, he succeeded in getting to the crevice,
and as he poised it over the brink a few yards from where the tarpaulin
lay, he apostrophized it with--"Break if you want to; pieces is good
enough for your Uncle Brick!"

When he left the wagon with his next burden, he was obliged to bend low
under buckets, tools, cans and larger objects.  As he moved slowly to
preserve equilibrium, he began to chuckle.  "Reckon if the Injuns saw
me now," he said aloud, "they'd take me for an elephant with the
circus-lady riding my back!"  At the crevice, he flung in all that
would pass the narrow opening intact, and smashed up what was too
large, that their fragments might also be hidden.

"Pshaw!" grunted Willock, as he started back toward the wagon, mopping
his brow on his shirt-sleeve, "Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it!  Wonder
why he done all that complaining when he had a nice easy sea to wash
him and his plunder ashore?"

He was beginning to feel the weariness of the morning return, and the
load that cleaned out the wagon-bed left him so exhausted that he fell
down on the ground beside the crevice, having thrown in his booty.
Here, with his gull at his side and a pistol in his hand, he fell fast
asleep.

He lay there like a man of stone until some inner consciousness began
beating at the door of his senses, warning him that in no great time
the moon would rise.  He started up in a state of dazed bewilderment,
staring at the solemn stars, the vague outlines of giant rocks about
him and the limitless sea of darkness that flowed away from the
mountain-top indicating, but not defining, the surrounding prairie.

"Get up from here!" Willock commanded himself.  He obeyed rather
stiffly, but when he was on his feet, ax in hand, he made the trip to
the wagon nimbly enough.  As he drew near, he saw gray shadows slipping
away--they were wolves.  He shouted at them disdainfully, and without
pause began removing the canvas from over the wagon. When that was
done, his terrific blows resolved the wagon-bed to separated boards,
somewhat splintered but practically intact.  By means of the wrench he
removed the wheels and separated the parts of the wagon-frame.  Always,
when he had obtained enough for a load, he made that toilsome journey
to his retreat.  He took the four wheels at one time, rolling them one
by one, lifting them singly from ledge to ledge.

The last of his work was made easier because the darkness had begun to
lift.  Suddenly a glow appeared at the rim of the world, to be
followed, as it seemed, almost immediately by the dazzling edge of an
immense silver shield.  The moon rolled over the desert waste and
rested like a solid wheel of fire on the sand.  Instantly for miles and
miles there was not a shadow on the earth.  The level shafts of light
bathed with grotesque luminous distinction the countless prairie-dogs
which, squatting before the mouths of their retreats, barked at the
quick betrayal.  Coyotes, as if taken by surprise, swung swiftly toward
remote mountain fastnesses, their backs to the light.

When Willock made his last and slowest trip to the ridge, his feet
dragging like lead, there was nothing to show that a covered wagon had
stood at the edge of the prairie; the splinters of the final demolition
had already mingled indistinguishably with the wind-driven sand.
Arrived at the second ridge, which was still in darkness, he took pains
that no telltale sign should be left on the smooth expanse of granite
to indicate the near presence of a man. Swinging to the lariat that was
now tied to a short plank, he lowered himself into the midst of the
debris with which that part of his floor was strewn.  Poised on top of
the heap of boards that had formed the sides of the wagon, he pushed
upward with a longer plank and dislodged the one from which the rope
dangled.  It fell at his feet.

Provided with nails, a hammer and plenty of lumber, it would not be
difficult to construct a ladder for egress.  At present, he was too
tired to provide for the future.  He left the spoils just as they had
fallen, except for the old wagon-tongue and a board or two with which
he built a barricade against the unknown depths at the farthest margin
of the floor.  Then drawing the mattress to one side, and clearing it
of its contents, he fell upon it with a sigh of comfort, and was again
plunged into slumber--slumber prolonged far into the following day.



CHAPTER VI

A MYSTERIOUS GUEST

When he awoke, a bar of sunshine which at first he mistook for an
outcropping of Spanish gold, glowed against the granite wall of his
mountain-top retreat.  He rose in leisurely fashion--henceforth there
would be plenty of time, years of it, running to waste with useless
days.  After eating and partaking sparingly of the brackish water of
the keg, he nailed together two long sideboards of the dismembered
wagon; and having secured these end to end, he fastened in parallel
strips to the surface short sticks as steps to his ladder. This
finished, he made a rope-ladder.  The ladder of boards was for use in
leaving the cave; the rope-ladder, which he meant to hide under some
boulder near the crevice, could be used in making the descent.

The formless mass of inchoate debris, the result of his toilsome
journeys of the night before, was left as it had fallen--there would be
time enough to sort all that, a hundred times.  At present, he would
venture forth with the sole object of examining his surroundings.
"This suits me exactly," he muttered, with a good-humored chuckle;
"just doing one thing at a time, and being everlasting slow about doing
that."

Fastening the rope-ladder about his waist, he scaled the boards, and on
reaching the top, cast them down.  First, he looked all about, but no
living creature was in sight.  "This is just to my hand," he said
aloud, seeking a suitable hiding-place for the rope-ladder; "I always
did despise company."

Stowing away the rope-ladder in a secure fissure between two giant
blocks of granite, each the size of a large two-story house, he crossed
to the first ridge, and looked out over the prairie, to triumph over
the vacant spot where the covered wagon had stood fifteen hours before.
"No telling what a man can do," he exclaimed admiringly, "that is to
say, if his name is Brick Willock."

His eyes wandered to the mound of stones built over the woman's grave.
His prayer recurred to his mind.  "Well, God," he said, looking up at
the cloudless sky, "I guess you're doing it!"  After this expression of
faith, he turned about and set forth to traverse the mountain range.
Passing the ridge which he already looked upon as home, he crossed
other ridges of varying height, and at the end of a mile reached the
southern limit of the mountain.  Like the northern side the southern
elevation was nearly four hundred feet, as if the granite sea had
dashed upward in fiercest waves, in a last futile attempt to inundate
the plain.  The southern wall was precipitous, and Willock, looking
down the cedar-studded declivity, could gaze directly on the verdant
levels that came to the very foot.

He stood at the center of an enormous horseshoe formed on the southwest
by the range curving farther toward the south, and on his left hand, by
the same range sweeping in a quarter-circle toward the southeast.  The
mouth of this granite half-circle was opened to the south, at least a
quarter-mile in width; but on his left, a jutting spur almost at right
angles to the main range, and some hundreds of yards closer to his
position, shot across the space within the horseshoe bend, in such
fashion that an observer, standing on the plain, would have half his
view of the inner concave expanse shut off, except that part of the
high north wall that towered above the spur.

Nor was this all.  Behind the perpendicular arm, or spur, that ran out
into the sea of mesquit, rose a low hill that was itself in the nature
of an inner spur although, since it failed to reach the mountain, it
might be regarded as a long flat island, surrounded by the calm green
tide.  This innermost arm, or island, was so near the mountain, that
the entrance to it opened into a curved inner world of green, was
narrow and strongly protected.  The cove thus formed presented a level
floor of ten or twelve acres, and it was directly down into this cove
that Willock gazed.  It looked so peaceful and secure, and its openness
to the sunshine was so alluring, that Willock resolved to descend the
steep wall.  To do so at that point was impractical, but the ridge was
unequal and not far to the right, sank to a low divide, while to the
left, a deep gully thickly set with cedars, elms, scrub-oaks and thorn
trees invited him with its steep but not difficult channel, to the
ground.

"Here's a choice," observed Willock, as he turned toward the divide;
"guess I'll go by the front, and save the back stairs for an
emergency."  The gully was his back stairs.  He was beginning to feel
himself rich in architectural possibilities.  When he reached the plain
he was outside of a line of hummocks that effectually hid the cove from
sight, more effectually because of a dense grove of pecans that stood
on either side of the grass-grown dunes.  Instead of crossing the
barrier, he started due south for the outer prairie, and when at last
he stood midway between the wide jaws of the mountain horseshoe, he
turned and looked intently toward the cove.

It was invisible, and his highest hopes were realized.  From this
extended mouth he could clearly see where the first spur shot out into
the sand, and beyond that, he could see how, at a distance, the sheer
wall of granite rose to the sky; but there was nothing to suggest that
behind that scarred arm another projection parallel to it might be
discovered.  He walked toward the spur, always watching for a possible
glimpse of the cove.  When he stood on the inner side, his spirits rose
higher.  The long flat island that he had discerned from the
mountain-top was here not to be defined because, on account of its
lowness and of the abrupt wall beyond, it was mingled indistinguishably
with the perspective of the range. Concealment was made easier from the
fact that the ground of the cove was lower than all the surrounding
land.

Willock now advanced on the cove and found himself presently in a snug
retreat that would have filled with delight the heart of the most
desperate highwayman, or the most timid settler.  On the north was, of
course, the towering mountain-wall, broken by the gully in the
protection of whose trees one might creep up or down without detection.
On the east, the same mountain-wall curved in high protection.  In
front was the wide irregular island, low, indeed, but happily high
enough to shut out a view of the outside world. At the end of this
barricade there was a gap, no wider than a wagon-road, along the side
of which ran the dry channel of a mountain stream--the continuation of
the gully that cut the mountain-wall from top to base--but even this
gap was high enough to prevent observation from the plain.

No horsemen could enter the cove save by means of that low trench, cut
as by the hand of man in the granite hill, and as Indian horsemen were
the only enemies to be dreaded, his watchfulness need be concentrated
only on that one point.  "Nothing like variety," observed Willock
cheerfully.

"This will do capital for my summer home!  I'm going to live like a
lord--while I'm living."

He examined the ground and found that it was rich and could be
penetrated easily, even to the very foot of the mountain.  "I'll just
get my spade," he remarked, "as I ain't got nothing else to do."  In
deliberate slowness he returned up the divide, and got the spade from
his retreat, then brought it to the cove.  Selecting a spot near the
channel of the dried-up torrent, he began to dig, relieved to find that
he did not strike rock.

"I guess," he said, stopping to lean on his spade as he stared at the
mountain, "the earth just got too full of granite and biled over, but
was keerful to spew it upwards, so's to save as much ground as it
could, while relieving its feelings."

Presently the earth on his blade began to cling from dampness. "When I
digs a well," he remarked boastingly, "what I want is water, and that's
what I gets.  As soon as it's deep enough I'll wall her up with rocks
and take the longest drink that man ever pulled off, that is to say,
when it was nothing but common water.  They ain't nothing about water
to incite you to keep swallowing when you have enough.  Of a sudden you
just naturally leggo and could drown in it without wanting another
drop.  That's because it's nature.  Art is different.  I reckon a nice
clean drinking-joint and a full-stocked bar is about the highest art
that can stimulate a man.  But in nature, you know when you've got
enough."

After further digging he added, "And I got about enough of THIS! I mean
the mountains and the plains and the sand and the wind and the cave and
the cove--" he wiped away the dripping sweat and looked at the sun.
"Yes, and of you, too!"  He dropped the spade, and sat down on the heap
of dirt.  "Oh, Lord, but I'm lonesome!  I got plenty to say, but nobody
to listen at me."

He clasped his great hands about his knee, and stared sullenly at the
surrounding ramparts of red and brown granite, dully noting the
fantastic layers, the huge round stones that for ages had been about to
roll down into the valley but had never started, and others cut in odd
shapes placed one upon another in columns along the perpendicular wall.
The sun beat on the long matted hair of his bared head, but the
ceaseless wind brought relief from its pelting rays.  He, however, was
conscious neither of the heat nor of the refreshing touch.

At last he rose slowly to his towering legs and picked up the spade.
"You're a fool, Brick Willock," he said harshly.  "Ain't you got that
well to dig?  And then can't you go for your kaig and bring it here,
and carry it back full of fresh water?  Dinged if there ain't enough
doings in your world to furnish out a daily newspaper!"  He began to
dig, adding in an altered tone:  "And Brick, HE says--'Nothing ain't
come to the worst, as long as you're living,' says Brick!"

He was proud of the well when it was completed; the water was cold and
soft as it oozed up through clean sand, and the walls of mud-mortised
rocks promised permanency.  One did not have to penetrate far into the
bottom-lands of that cove to find water which for unnumbered years had
rushed down the mountainside in time of rain-storms to lie, a vast
underground reservoir, for the coming of man.  Willock could reach the
surface of the well by lying on his stomach and scooping with his long
arm. He duly carried out his program, and when the keg was filled with
fresh water, it was time for dinner.

After a cold luncheon of sliced boiled ham and baker's bread, he
returned to the cove, where he idled away the afternoon under the shade
of tall cedar trees whose branches came down to the ground, forming
impenetrable pyramids of green.

Stretched out on the short buffalo-grass he watched the white flecks
follow one another across the sky; he observed the shadows lengthening
from the base of the western arm of the horseshoe till they threatened
to swallow up him and his bright speck of world; he looked languidly
after the flights of birds, and grinned as he saw the hawks dart into
round holes in the granite wall not much larger than their
bodies--those mysterious holes perforating the precipice, seemingly
bored there by a giant auger.

"Go to bed, pards," he called to the hawks.  "I reckon it's time for
me, too!"  He got up--the sun had disappeared behind the mountain.  He
stretched himself, lifting his arms high above his head and slowly
drawing his fists to his shoulder, his elbows luxuriously crooked.
"One thing I got," he observed, "is room, plenty!  Well--" he started
toward the divide for his upward climb, "I've lived a reasonable long
life; I am forty-five; but I do think that since I laid down under that
tree, I have thought of everything I ever done or said since I was a
kid.  Guess I'll save the future for another afternoon--and after that,
the Lord knows what I'm going to do with my brain, it's that busy."

The next day he began assorting the contents of his granite home,
moving to the task with conscientious slowness, stopping a dozen times
to make excursions into the outside world.  By diligent economy of his
working moments, he succeeded in covering almost two weeks in the labor
of putting his house into order.  His bedroom was next to the barricade
that separated the long stone excavation from the bottomless abyss.
Divided from the bedroom by an imaginary line, was the store-room of
provisions.  The cans and boxes were arranged along the floor with
methodical exactitude.  Different varieties of fruit and preserves were
interspersed in such fashion that none was repeated until every variety
had been passed.

"I begins with this can of peaches," said Willock, laying his finger
upon the beginning of the row--"then comes apples, pears, plums; then
peaches, apples, pears, plums; then peaches, apples, pears, plums; then
peaches--blest if I don't feel myself getting sick of 'em already....
And now my meats:  bacon, ham.  My breadstuffs: loaves, crackers.  My
fillers:  sardines, more sardines, more sardines, likewise canned
tomatoes.  Let me see--is it too much to say that I eats a can of
preserves in two days?  Maybe three.  That is, till I sickens.  I
begins with peach-day.  This is Monday.  Say Thursday begins my
apple-days.  I judge I can worm myself down through the list by this
time next month.  One thing I am sot on: not to save nothing if I can
bring my stomach to carry the burden with a willing hand.  I'll eat
mild and calm, but steadfast.  Brick Willock he says, 'Better starve
all at once, when there's nothing left, than starve a little every
day,' says Brick.  'When it's a matter of agony,' says he, 'take the
short cut.'"

In arranging his retreat, he had left undisturbed the wagon-tongue,
since removing it from the end of the floor for a more secure
barricade; it had stood with several of the sideboards against the
wall, as if Brick meditated using them for a special purpose.  Such was
indeed his plan, and it added some zest to his present employment to
think of what he meant to do next; this was nothing less than to make a
dugout in the cove.

To this enterprise he was prompted not only by a desire to vary his
monotonous days, but to insure safety from possible foes.  Should a
skulking savage, or, what would be worse, a stray member of the robber
band catch sight of him among the hills, the spy would spread the news
among his fellows.  A relentless search would be instituted, and even
if Willock succeeded in escaping, the band would not rest till it had
discovered his hiding-place.  If they came on the dugout, their search
would terminate, and his home in the crevice would escape
investigation; but if there was no dugout to satisfy curiosity, the
crevice would most probably be explored.

"Two homes ain't too many for a character like me, nohow," remarked
Brick, as he set the wagon-tongue and long boards on end to be drawn up
through the crevice.  "Cold weather will be coming on in due time--say
three or four months--and what's that to me? a mere handful of time!
Well, I don't never expect to make a fire in my cave, I'll set my smoke
out in the open where it can be traced without danger to my pantry
shelves."

He was even slower about building the dugout than he had been in
arranging the miscellaneous objects in the cavern on top of the
mountain.  Transporting the timbers across a mile of ridges and granite
troughs was no light work; and when his tools and material were in the
cove, the digging of the dugout was protracted because of the closeness
of water to the surface.  At last he succeeded in excavating the cellar
at a spot within a few yards of the mountain, without penetrating
moistened sand.  He leveled down the walls till he had a chamber about
twelve feet square.  Over this he placed the wagon-tongue, converting
it into the ridge-pole, which he set upon forks cut from the near-by
cedars.  Having trimmed branches of the trees in the grove, he laid
them as close together as possible, slanting from the ridge-pole to the
ground, and over these laid the bushy cedar branches.  This substantial
roof he next covered with dirt, heaping it up till no glimpse of wood
was visible tinder the hard-packed dome.  The end of the dugout was
closed up in the same way except for a hole near the top fitted closely
to the stovepipe and packed with mud.

Of the sideboards he fashioned a rude frame, then a door to stand in
it, fitted into grooves that it might be pushed and held into place
without hinges.  "Of course I got to take down my door every time I
comes in or out," remarked Willock, regarding his structure with much
complacency, "but they's nothing else to do, and I got to be occupied."

When he had transported the stove to the cove, he set it up with a
tingle of expectant pleasure.  It was to be his day of housewarming,
not because the weather had grown cold, but that he might celebrate.

"This here," he said, "is to be a red-letter day, a day plumb up in X,
Y and Z.  I got to take my gun and forage for some game; then I'll
dress my fresh meat and have a cooking.  I'll bring over some grub to
keep it company.  Let's see--this is plum-day, ain't it?" He stood
meditating, stroking his wild whiskers with a grimy hand. "Oh, Lord,
yes, I believe it IS plum-day!  'Well, they ain't nothing the way you
would have made it yourself,' says Brick, 'not even though it's you as
made it.'  This here is plum-day, and that there can of plums will
shore be opened.  And having my first fire gives me a chance to open up
my sack of flour; won't I hold carnival! What I feels sorry about
myself is knowing how I'm going to feel after I've et all them
victuals.  I believe I'll take a bath, too, in that pool over yonder in
the grove.  Ain't I ever going to use that there soap?...  But I don't
say as I will.  Don't seem wuth while.  They ain't nobody to see me,
and I feels clean insides.  As I takes it, you do your washing for them
as neighbors with you.  If I had a neighbor!--just a dog, a little
yaller dog--or some chickens to crow and cackle--"

He broke off, to lean despondently on his gun.  He remained thus
motionless for a long time, his earth-stained garments, unkempt hair,
hard dark hands and gloomy eye marking him as the only object in the
bright sunshine standing forth unresponsive to nature's smile.

He started into life with a shrug of his powerful shoulders.  "It's
just like you, Brick, to spoil a festibul-day with your low idees! Why
don't you keep them idees for a rainy day?  Just lay up them regrets
and hankerings for the first rainy day, and then be of a piece with the
heavens and earth.  'If you can't stay cheerful while the sun's
shining,' says Brick, 'God's wasting a mighty nice big sun on YOU!'"

Thus admonishing himself, and striving desperately for contentment, he
strode forth from the only exit of the cove, and skirted the southern
wall of the range, looking for game.  It was late in the afternoon when
he returned with the best portions of a deer swung over his shoulder.
By this time he was desperately hungry, and the prospect of the first
venison since his exile stirred his pulses, and gave to the bright
scene a cheerful beauty it had not before worn to his homesick heart.
He trudged up to the narrow door of the dugout which was closed, just
as he had left it, and having carried a noble haunch of venison to the
pool to be washed, he descended the dirt steps and set the door to one
side.  Without at first understanding why, he became instantly aware
that some one had been there during his absence.

Of course, as soon as his eyes could penetrate the semi-gloom
sufficiently to distinguish small objects, he saw the proof; but even
before that, the air seemed tingling with some strange personality.  He
stood like a statue, gazing fixedly.  His alert eyes, always on guard,
had assured him that the cove was deserted--there was no use to look
behind him.  Whoever had been there must have scaled the mountain, and
had either crossed to the plain on the north, or was hiding behind the
rocks.  What held his eyes to the stove was a heap of tobacco, and a
clay pipe beside it.  Among the stores removed from the wagon, tobacco
had been found in generous quantity, but during the month now elapsed,
bad been sadly reduced. Willock, however, was not pleased to find the
new supply; on the contrary his emotions were confused and alarmed.
Had the tobacco been ten times as much, it could not have solaced him
for the knowledge that the dugout had been visited.

After a few minutes of immobility, he entered, placed the meat on a
box, and departed softly, closing the door behind him.  Casting
apprehensive glances along the mountainside, he stole toward it, and
made his way up the gully, completely hidden by the straggling line of
trees and underbrush, till he stood on the summit.  He approached each
ridge with extreme caution, as if about to storm the barricade of an
enemy; thus he traveled over the range without coming on the traces of
his mysterious visitor.  Not pausing at the crevice, he went on to the
outer northern ridge of the range, and lying flat among some high
rocks, looked down.

He counted seventeen men near the spot from which he had removed the
wagon.  Fifteen were on horseback and two riderless horses explained
the presence of the two on foot.  All of them had drawn up in a circle
about the heap of stones that covered the woman's burial-place.  Of the
seventeen, sixteen were Indians, painted and adorned for the war-path.
The remaining man, he who stood at the heap of stones beside the chief,
was a white man, and at the first glance, Willock recognized him; he
was the dead woman's husband, Henry Gledware.

Brick's mind was perplexed with vain questionings:  Was it Gledware who
had visited his dugout, or the Indians?  Did the pipe and tobacco
indicate a peace-offering?  What was the relationship between Gledware
and these Indians?  Was he their prisoner, and were they about to burn
him upon the heap of stones?  He did not seem alarmed.  Had he made
friends with the chief by promising to conduct him to the deserted
wagon?  If so, what would they think in regard to the wagon's
disappearance?  Had the dugout persuaded them that there was no other
retreat in the mountains?

While Brick watched in agitated suspense, several Indians leaped to the
ground at a signal from the chief and advanced toward the white man.
The chief turned his back upon the company, and started toward the
mountain, his face turned toward Brick's place of observation. He began
climbing upward, the red feather in his hair gleaming against the green
of the cedars.  Brick had but to remain where he was, to reach forth
his hand presently and seize the warrior--but in that case, those on
the plain would come swarming up the ascent for vengeance.

Brick darted from his post, swept like a dipping swallow across the
ravine, and snatching up the rope-ladder from its nook under the
boulder, scurried down into the granite chamber.  Having removed the
ladder, he crept to the extremity of the excavation, and with his back
against the wall and his gun held in readiness, awaited the coming of
the chief.  After the lapse of many minutes he grew reassured; the
Indian, thinking the dugout his only home, had passed the crevice
without the slightest suspicion.

However, lest in thrusting forth his head, he call attention to his
home in the rock, he kept in retreat the rest of that day, nor did he
venture forth that night.  After all, the housewarming did not take
place.  The stove remained cold, the tobacco and pipe upon it were
undisturbed, and the evening meal consisted notably of plums.



CHAPTER VII

RED FEATHER

One bright warm afternoon in October two years later, Brick Willock sat
smoking his pipe before the open door of his dugout, taking advantage
of the mountain-shadow that had just reached that spot. In repose, he
always sat, when in the cove, with his face toward the natural roadway
leading over the flat hill-island into the farther reach of the
horseshoe.  It was thus he hoped to prevent surprise from inimical
horsemen, and it was thus that, on this particular afternoon, he
detected a shadow creeping over the reddish-brown stone passage before
its producing cause rode suddenly against the background of the blue
sky.

At first glimpse of that shadow of a feathered head, Willock flung
himself down the dirt steps leading to the open door; now, lying flat,
he directed the barrel of his gun over the edge of the level ground,
covering an approaching horseman.  As only one Indian came into view,
and as this Indian was armed in a manner as astounding as it was
irresistible, Willock rose to his height of six-foot-three, lowered his
weapon, and advanced to meet him.

When he was near, the Indian--the same chief from whom Willock had fled
on the day of his intended housewarming--this Indian sprang lightly to
the ground, and lifted from the horse that defense which he had borne
in front of him on penetrating the cove; it was the child for whose
sake Willock had separated himself from his kind.

At first, Willock thought he was dreaming one of those dreams that had
solaced his half-waking hours, for he had often imagined how it would
be if that child were in the mountains to bear him company. But however
doubtful he might he regarding her, he took no chances about the
Indian, but kept his alert gaze fixed on him to forestall any design of
treachery.

The Indian made a sign to the little girl to remain with the horse;
then he glided forward, holding somewhat ostentatiously, a filled pipe
in his extended hand.  He had evidently come to knit his soul to that
of his white brother while the smoke from their pipes mingled on the
quiet air, forming a frail and uncertain monument to the spirit of
peace.

"Was it you that left a pipe and tobacco on my stove two years ago?"
Willock asked abruptly.

"Yes.  You got it?  We will smoke."  He seated himself gravely on the
ground.

Willock went into the cabin, and brought out the clay pipe.  They
smoked.  Willock cast covert glances toward the girl.  She stood slim
and straight, her face rigid, her eyes fixed on the horse whose halter
she held.  Her limbs were bare and a blanket that descended to her
knees seemed her only garment.  The face of the sleeping child of five
was the same, however, as this of the seven-year-old maid, except that
it had grown more beautiful; the wealth of glowing brown hair made
amends for all poverty of attire.

Willock was wonderfully moved; so much so that his manner was harsh,
his voice gruff in the extreme.  "What are you going to do with that
girl?" he demanded.

"You take her?" inquired the chief passively.

"Yes--I take her."

"Good!"  The Indian smoked serenely.

"Where'd you find her?"

"Not been lost.  Her safe all time.  Sometime in one village--here,
then there, two, three--move her about.  Safe all time.  I never
forget.  There she is.  You take her?"

"I said so, didn't I?  Where's her daddy?"

The Indian said nothing, only smoked, his eyes fixed on space.

Willock raised his voice.  "Must I ask HER where he is?"

"Her not know.  Her not seen him one, two year.  She say him dead."

"Oh, he's dead, is he?"

"Him safe, too."  He looked at the sun.  "Long trail before me. Then I
leave her.  I go, now."

"Not much you don't go!  Not THIS minute.  Where is that girl's daddy?"

No answer.

"If he's safe, why hasn't she been with him all this time?"

"Me big chief."

"Oh, yes, I judge you are.  But that's nothing to me.  I'm big chief,
too.  I own this corner of the universe--and I want to know about that
girl's daddy."

"Him great man."

"Well--go ahead; tell the rest of it."

"Him settle among my tribe; him never leave our country.  'Big country,
fat country, very rich.  Him change name--everything; him one of us.
Marry my daughter.  THAT girl not his daughter--daughter of dead woman.
Keep her away from him all time, so him never see white man, white
woman, white child, forget white people, be good Indian.  The girl make
him think of dead woman.  When a man marry again, not good to remember
dead woman.  Him think girl dead, but no care, no worry, no sad.  SHE
never his daughter--dead woman's daughter.  All his path is white, no
more blue.  Him very glad, every day--my daughter his wife.  She keep
scalp-knife from his head.  My braves capture--they dance about fire,
she say 'No.'  She marry him.  Their path is white; the sky over them
is white."

He rose, straight as an arrow, and turned his grim face toward the
horse.

"I see.  And you don't want to tell me where he is, because you want
him to forget he is a white man?"

"Him always live with my people; him marry my daughter."

"Tell me this; is he far away?"

"Very far.  Many days.  You never find him.  You stay here, keep girl,
and me and my people your friends.  You come after him--not your
friends!"

"Why, bless your heart, I never want to see that man again; your
daughter is welcome to him, but I'm afraid she's got a bad bargain.
This girl's just as I'd have her--unencumbered.  I'm AWFUL glad you
come, pardner!  Whenever you happen to be down in this part of Texas,
drop in and make us a visit!"

With every passing moment, Willock was realizing more keenly what this
amazing sequel to the past meant to him.  He would not only have
company in his dreary solitude, but, of all company, the very one he
yearned for to comfort his heart.  "Give us your paw, old man--shake.
You bet I'll take her!"

He strode forward and addressed the girl:  "Are you willing to stay
with me, little one?"

She shrank back from the wild figure.  During his two years of hiding
in the mountains, Willock had cared nothing for his personal
appearance.  His garments, on disintegrating had been replaced by
skins, thus giving an aspect of assorted colors and materials rather
remarkable.  Only when driven by necessity had he ventured on long
journeys to the nearest food-station, carrying the skins obtained by
trapping, and bringing back fresh stores of provisions and tobacco on
the pony purchased by the Spanish gold.

Willock was greatly disconcerted by her attitude.  He said regretfully,
"I guess I've been so much with myself that I ain't noticed my outside
as a man ought.  Won't you make your home with me, child?"  He held out
his rough hand appealingly.

She retreated farther, saying with disapproval, "Much hair!"

Willock laid his hand on his breast, returning, "Much heart!"

"Him white," said the Indian, swinging himself upon his horse.  "Him
save your life.  Sometime me come visit, come eat, come stay with you."

As he wheeled about, she held out her arms toward him, crying wildly,
"Don't go!  Don't leave me!  Him much hair!"

The Indian dashed away without turning his head.

"Good lord, honey," exclaimed Willock, at his wits' ends, "don't cry!
I can't do nothing if you CRY.  Won't you come look at your new home?"
He waved eagerly toward the dugout.

"Hole in the ground!" cried the girl desperately.  "I want my tepee. Am
I a prairie-dog?"

"No, honey, you ain't.  You and me is both white, and we ought to live
together; it ain't right for you to live with red people that kills and
burns your own kith and kin."

She looked at him repellently through her streaming tears.  "Big hair!"
she cried.  "Big hair!"

"And must I cut it off?  I'll make my head as smooth as yonder
bald-headed mountain-peak if it'll keep you from crying.  Course you
ain't seen nobody with whiskers amongst them Indians, but THEY ain't
your people.  Your people is white, they are like me, they grows hair.
But I'll shave and paint myself red, and hunt for feathers, if that's
what you want."

Her sobbing grew less violent.  Despite his ferocious aspect, no fear
could remain in her heart at sight of that distressed countenance, at
sound of those conciliatory tones.  Willock, observing that the tempest
was abating, continued in his most appealing manner:

"I'm going to do whatever you say, honey, and you're going to be the
queen of the cove.  Ain't you never been lonesome amongst all them red
devils? Ain't you missed your poor mammy as died crossing the plains?
It was me that buried her.  Ain't you never knowed how it felt to want
to lay your head on somebody's shoulder and slip your little arms about
his neck, and go to sleep like an angel whatever was happening around?
I guess SO!  Well, that's me, too. Here I've been for two long year,
never seeing nothing but wild animals or prowling savages till the last
few months when a settler comes to them mountains seven mile to the
southwest.  Looked like I'd die, sometimes, just having myself to
entertain."

"You lonesome, too?" said the girl, looking up incredulously.  She drew
a step nearer, a wistful light in her dark eyes.

The man stretched out his arms and dropped them to his side, heavily.
"Like that," he cried--"just emptiness!"

"I stay," she said simply.  "All time, want my own people; all time,
Red Feather say some day take me to white people--want to go, all time.
But Red Feather never tell me 'BIG HAIR.'  Didn't know what it was I
was looking for--never thought it would be something like you."

"But you ain't afraid now, are you, little one?"

She shook her head, and drawing nearer, seated herself on the ground
before the dugout.  "You LOOK Big Hair," she explained sedately, "but
your speech is talk of weak squaw."

Somewhat disconcerted by these words, Willock sat down opposite her,
and resumed his pipe as if to assert his sex.  "I seem weak to you," he
explained, "because I love you, child, and want to make friends with
you.  But let me meet a big man--well, you'd see, then!"  He looked so
ferocious as he uttered these words, that she started up like a
frightened quail, grasping her blanket about her.

"No, no, honey," he cooed abjectly, "I wouldn't hurt a fly.  Me, I was
always a byword amongst my pards.  They'd say, 'There goes Brick
Willock, what never harmed nobody.'  When they kept me in at school I
never clumb out the window, and it was me got all the prize cards at
Sunday-school.  How comes it, honey, that you ain't forgot to talk like
civilized beings?"

"Red Feather, him always put me with squaw that know English--that been
to school on the reservation.  Never let me learn talk like the
Indians.  Him always say some day take me to my own people. But never
said 'BIG HAIR.'"

"Did he tell you your mother died two years ago?"

"Yes--father, him dead, too.  Both died in the plains.  Father was shot
by robbers.  Mother was left in big wagon--you bury her near this
mountain."

"Oh, ho! So your father was killed at the same time your mother was,
eh?"

"Yes."

"Well--all right.  And now you got nobody but me to look after you--but
you don't need no more; as long as I'm able to be up and about, nothing
is going to hurt you.  Just you tell me what you want, and it'll be
did."

"Want to be ALL like white people; want to be just like mother."

"Well, I'll teach you as fur up as I've been myself.  Your style of
talk ain't correct, but it was the best Red Feather could do by you.
Him and you lay down your words like stepping-stones for your thoughts
to step over; but just listen at me, how smooth and fine-textured my
language is, with no breaks or crevices from the beginning of my
periods to where my voice steps down to start on a lower ledge.  That's
the way white people talks, not that they got more to say than Injuns,
but they fills in, and embodies everything, like filling up cabin-walls
with mud.  I'll take you by the hand right from where Red Feather left
you, and carry you up the heights."

She examined him dubiously:  "You know how?"

"I ain't no bell-wether in the paths of learning, honey, but Red
Feather is some miles behind me.  What's your name?"

"Lahoma."

"Born that way, or Injunized?"

"Father before he died, him all time want to go settle in the Oklahoma
country--settle on a claim with mother.  They go there two
times--three--but soldiers all time make them go back to Kansas. So me,
I was born and they named me Oklahoma--but all time they call me
Lahoma.  That I must be called, Lahoma because that father and mother
all time call me.  Lahoma, that my name."  She inquired anxiously, "You
call me Lahoma?"  She leaned forward, hands upon knees, in breathless
anxiety.

"You bet your life I will, Lahoma!"

"Then me stay all time with you--all time.  And you teach me talk
right, and dress right, and be like mother and my white people? You
teach me all that?"

"That's the program.  I'm going to civilize you--that means to make you
like white folks.  It's going to take time, but the mountains is full
of time."

"You 'civilize' me right now?--  You begin today?"  She started up and
stood erect with arms folded, evidently waiting for treatment.

"The process will be going on all the while you're associating with me,
honey.  That chief, Red Feather--he has a daughter, hasn't he?"

"No; him say no girl, no boy."  She spoke with confidence.

"I see.  And your father's dead too, eh?"  Evidently Red Feather had
thoroughly convinced her of the truth of these pretenses.

"Both--mother, father.  Nobody but me."  She knelt down at his side,
her face troubled.  "If I had just one!"

"Can you remember either of them?"

"Oh, yes, yes--and Red Feather, him talk about them, talk, talk, always
say me be white with the white people some day.  This is the day.  You
make me like mother was.  You civilize me--begin!"  She regarded him
with dignified attention, her little hands locked about her blanket
where it lay folded below her knees.  The cloud had vanished from her
face and her eyes sparkled with expectancy.

"I ain't got the tools yet, honey.  They's no breaking up and enriching
land that ain't never bore nothing but buffalo-grass, without I have
picks and spades and plows and harrers.  I got to get my tools, to
begin."

She stiffened herself.  "You needn't be afraid I'll cry.  I WANT you to
hurt me, if that the way."

"It ain't like a pain in the stomach, Lahoma.  All I gets for you will
be some books.  Them is the tools I'm going to operate with."

"Books?  What are books?"

"Books?"  Willock rubbed his bushy head in desperation.  "Books? Why,
they is just thoughts that somebody has ketched and put in a cage where
they can't get away.  You go and look at them thoughts somebody capable
has give rise to, and when you finds them as has never ranged in your
own brain, you captures 'em, puts your brand on 'em, and serves 'em out
in your own herd.  You see, Lahoma, what you think in your own brain
ain't of no service, for YOU don't know nothing.  If you want to be
civilized, you got to lasso other people's thoughts--people as has went
to and fro and has learned life--and you got to dehorn them ideas, and
tame 'em."

Lahoma examined him with new interest.  "Are YOU civilized?"  Her
countenance fell.

"Not to no wide extent, but I can ford toler'ble deep streams that
would drown you, honey.  Just put confidence in me, and when I get over
my head, I'll holler for help.  I judge I can put five good years' work
on you without exhausting my stores.  I can read amongst the small
words pretty peart--the young calves, so to say--and lots of them big
steers in three or four syllables,--I can sort o' guess at their
road-brands from the company I've saw 'em traveling with, in times
past.  And I can write my own name, and yours too, I reckon.--Lahoma
Gledware--yes, I'm toler'ble well versed on a capital 'G'--you just
make a gap with a flying tail to it."

"My name NOT Lahoma Gledware," she interposed in some severity. "My
name, Lahoma Willock.  Beautiful name--lovely, like flower--Willock;
call me Lahoma Willock--like song of little stream. Gledware,
hard--rough."

Brick Willock stared at her in amazement.  "Where'd you get that from?"

"My name Lahoma Willock--Red Feather tell me."

He smoked in silence, puffing rapidly.  Then--"My name is Brick
Willock.  How came you to be named Lahoma Willock?"

Lahoma suggested thoughtfully--"All white people named Willock?"

"There's a few," Willock shook his head, "with less agreeable names.
But after all, I'm glad you have my name.  Yes--the more I think on it,
the more pleased I get.  I reckon we're sort of kinfolks, anyhow. Well,
honey, this is enough talk about being civilized; now let's make the
first move on the way.  You want to see your mother's grave, and lay
some of these wild flowers on it.  That's a part of being civilized,
caring for graves is.  It's just savages as forgets the past and
consequently never learns nothing.  Come along.  Them moccasins will do
famous until I can get you shoes from the settlements.  It's seventy
mile to Vernon, Texas, and none too easy miles.  But I got a pony the
first time I ventured to Doan's store, and it'll carry you, if I have
to walk at your side.  We'll make a festibul march of that journey, and
lay in clothes as a girl should wear, and books to last through the
winter."

Willock rose and explained that they must cross the mountain.  As they
traversed it, he reminded her that she had not gathered any of the
flowers that were scattered under sheltering boulders.

"Why?" asked Lahoma, showing that her neglect to do so was intentional.

"Well, honey, don't you love and honor that mother that bore so much
pain and trouble for you, traveling with you in her arms to the
Oklahoma country, trying to make a home for you up there in the
wilderness, and at last dying from the hardships of the plains. Ain't
she worth a few flowers."

"She dead.  She not see flowers, not smell flowers, not know."

Willock said nothing, but the next time they came to a clump of
blossoms he made a nosegay.  Lahoma watched him with a face as calm and
unemotional as that of Red Feather, himself.  She held her back with
the erect grace and moved her limbs with the swift ease of those among
whom she had passed the last two years.  In delightful harmony with
this air of wildness was the rich and delicate beauty of her
sun-browned face, and the golden glow of her silken brown hair.
Willock's heart yearned toward her as only the heart of one destined to
profound loneliness can yearn toward the exquisite grace and
unconscious charm of a child; but to the degree that he felt this
attraction, he held himself firmly aloof, knowing that wild animals are
frightened when kindness beams without its veil.

"What you do with that?"  She pointed at the flowers in his rough hand.

"I'm going to put 'em on your mother's grave."

"She not know.  Not see, not smell.  She dead, mother dead."

"Lahoma, do you know anything about God?"

"Yes--Great Spirit.  God make my path white."

"Well, I want God to know that somebody remembers your mother.  It's
God that smells the flowers on the graves of the dead."

They walked on.  Pretty soon Lahoma began looking about for flowers,
but they had reached the last barren ledge, and no more came in sight.

"Take these, Lahoma."

"No.  Couldn't fool God."  They began the last descent.  Willock
suddenly discovered that tears were slipping down the girl's face. He
said nothing; he did not fear, now, for he thought the tears promised a
brighter dawning.

Suddenly Lahoma cried joyfully, "Oh, look, Brick, look!"  And she
darted toward the spot at the foot of a tall cedar, where purple and
white blossoms showed in profusion.  She gathered an armful, and they
went down to the plain.

"Her head's toward the west," he said, as they stood beside the pile of
stones.  Lahoma placed the flowers at the Western margin of the
pyramid.  Willock laid his at the foot of the grave.  The sun had set
and the warmth of the heated sand was tempered by a fragrant breeze.
Though late in October, he felt as if spring were just dawning.  He
took Lahoma's hand, and his heart throbbed to find that she showed no
disposition to draw away.

He looked up with a great sigh of thanksgiving.  "Well, God," he said
softly, "here she is--You sure done it!"



CHAPTER VIII

GETTING CIVILIZED

During the two years passed by Brick Willock in dreary solitude,
conditions about him had changed.  The hardships of pioneer life which,
fifty years ago, had obtained in the Middle States yet prevailed, in
1882, in the tract of land claimed by Texas under the name of Greer
County; but the dangers of pioneer life were greatly lessened.  As
Lahoma made the acquaintance of the mountain-range, and explored the
plain extending beyond the natural horseshoe, Willock believed she ran
little danger from Indians.  He, himself, had ceased to preserve his
unrelaxing watchfulness; after all, it had been the highwaymen rather
than the red men whom he had most feared--and after two years it did
not seem likely that such volatile men would pre serve the feeling of
vengeance.

With the wisdom derived from his experience with wild natures, he
carefully abstained from any attempt to force Lahoma's friendship,
hence it was not long before he obtained it without reserve.  As she
walked beside him, grave and alert, she no longer thought of his bushy
beard and prodigious mop of harsh hair; and the daily exhibition of his
strength caused him to grow handsome in her eyes because most of those
feats were performed for her comfort or pleasure.  In the meantime he
talked incessantly, and to his admiration, he presently found her
manner of speech wonderfully like his own, both fluent and
ungrammatical.

He knew nothing of grammar, to be sure, but there were times when his
mistakes, echoed from her lips, struck upon his ear, and though he
might not always know how to correct them, he was prompt to suggest
changes, testing each, as a natural musician judges music, by ear.
Dissatisfied with his own standards, he was all the more impatient to
depart on the expedition after mental tools, despite the dangers that
might beset the journey.

His first task prompted by the coming of Lahoma, had been to partition
off the half of the dugout containing the stove for the child's private
chamber.  Cedar posts set in the ground and plastered with mud higher
than his head, left a space between the top and the apex of the ceiling
that the temperature might be equalized in both rooms.  Thus far,
however, they did not stay in the dugout except long enough to eat and
sleep, for the autumn had continued delightful, and the cove seemed to
the child her home, of which the dugout was a sort of cellar.
Concerning the stone retreat in the crevice she knew nothing.  Willock
did not know why he kept the secret, since he trusted Lahoma with all
his treasures, but the unreasoning reticence of the man of great
loneliness still rested on him.  Some day, he would tell--but not just
yet.

"Lahoma," he said one day, "there's a settler over yonder in the
mountains across the south plain.  How'd you like to pay him a visit?"

"I don't want anybody but you," said Lahoma promptly.

Willock stood on one leg, rubbing the other meditatively with his
delighted foot.  Not the quiver of a muscle, however, revealed the fact
that her words had flooded his heart with sunshine.  "Well, honey,
that's in reason.  But I've got to take you with me after books and
winter supplies, and I don't like the idea of traveling alone.  It come
to me that I might get Mr. Settler to go, too.  Time was not so long
ago when Injun bands was coming and going, and although old Greer is
beginning to be sprinkled up with settlers, here and there, I can't get
over the feel of the old times.  They ain't no sensation as sticks by a
man when he's come to be wedged in between forty-five and fifty, as the
feel of the old times."

"Well," said Lahoma earnestly, "I wish you'd leave me here when you go
after them books.  I don't want to be with no strangers, I want to just
squat right here and bear myself company."

"That's in reason.  But, honey, while you might be safe enough whilst
bearing the same, I would be plumb crazy worrying about you. I might
not have good cause for worrying, but worrying--it ain't no bird that
spreads its wings and goes north when cold weather comes;
worrying--it's independent of causes and seasons."

"If you have got to be stayed with to keep you from worrying, they
ain't nothing more to be said."

"Just so.  That there old settler, I have crossed a few words with him,
and I believe he would do noble to travel with.  He's as gruff and
growly as a grizzly bear if you say a word to him, and if he'll just
turn all that temper he's vented on me on to any strangers we may run
up against on the trail, he'll do invaluable."

"I'll go catch up the pony," said Lahoma briefly, "for I see the thing
is to be did.  This will be the first visit I ever made in my life when
I wasn't drug by the Injuns."

"You mustn't say 'drug,' honey, unless specifying medicines and herbs.
I ain't saying you didn't get it from me, and knowing you do get from
me all I got, is what makes me hone for them books. You must say
'dragged.'  The Injuns DRAGGED you from one village to another."  He
paused meditatively, muttering the word to himself, while Lahoma ran
away to catch the pony.  When she came back, leading it by the mane, he
said, "I've been a-weighing that word, Lahoma, and it don't seem to me
that 'dragged' sounds proper.  It don't seem no sort of word to use in
a parlor.  What do you think? DRAGGED!  How does that strike you?"

"I don't like the sound of it, neither," said Lahoma, shaking her head.
"I think DRUG is softer.  It kinder melts in the ear, and DRAGGED
sticks."

"Well, don't use neither one till I can find out."  Presently he was
swinging along across the plain toward the southwestern range while the
girl kept close beside him on the pony.  Their talk was incessant,
voicing the soul of good comradeship, and but for the difference
between heavy bass and fluty soprano, a listener might have supposed
himself overhearing a conversation between two Brick Willocks.

There was nothing about the second range of the Wichita Mountains to
distinguish it from the one farthest toward the northeast except a
precipice at its extremity, rising a sheer three or four hundred feet
above the level plain.  Beyond this lofty termination, the mountain
curved inward, leaving a wide grassy cove open toward the south; and
within this half-circle was the settler's dugout.

The unprotected aspect of that little home was in itself an eloquent
commentary on the wonderful changes that had come about during the last
seventeen years.  The oval tract of one million five hundred thousand
acres lying between Red River and its fork, named Greer County, and
claimed by Texas, was in miniature a reproduction of the early history
of America.  Until 1860 it had not even borne a name, and since then it
had possessed no settled abodes.  Here bands of Indians of various
tribes had come and gone at will, and here the Indians of the Plains,
after horrible deeds of depredation, massacre and reprisal, had found
shelter among its mountains.  The country lay at the southwest corner
of Indian Territory for which the Indians had exchanged their lands in
other parts of the United States on the guarantee that the government
would "forever secure to them and their heirs the country so exchanged
with them."

At the close of the Civil War the unhappy Indians long continued in a
state of smoldering animosity, or warlike activity, tribe against
tribe, band against band; they had inherited the rancor and bitterness
of the White Man's war with neither the fruits of victory nor the
dignity that attends honorable defeat.  The reservations that belonged
originally to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Creek
tribes, were reduced in area to make room for new tribes from Kansas,
Colorado and other states, and the Indian wars resulted.  For a time
the scalp-knife was crimsoned, the stake was charred, bands stole in
single file over mountains and among half-dried streams; troups of the
regular army were assaulted by invisible foes, and forts were
threatened.  Youths who read romances of a hundred years ago dealing
with the sudden war-cry, the flaming cabin, the stealthy approach of
swarming savages, need have traveled only a few hundred miles to
witness on the open page of life what seemed to them, in their
long-settled states, fables of a dead past.

But though the Indian wars in the Territory had been bloody and
vindictive, they had not been protracted as in the old days.  Around
the country of the red man was drawn closer and more securely, day by
day, the girdle of civilization.  Within its constricting grasp the
spirit of savagery, if not crushed, was at least subdued. Tribes naked
but for their blankets, unadorned save by the tattoo, found themselves
pressed close to other tribes which, already civilized, had
relinquished the chase for agricultural pursuits. Primeval men,
breathing this quickened atmosphere of modernity, either grew more
sophisticated, or perished like wild flowers brought too near the heat.
It is true the plains were still unoccupied, but they had been
captured--for the railroad had come, and the buffalo had vanished.

Brick Willock and the man he had come to see were very good types of
the first settlers of the new country--one a highwayman, hiding from
his kind, the other a trapper by occupation, trying to keep ahead of
the pursuing waves of immigration.  It was the first time Lahoma had
seen Bill Atkins, and as she caught sight of him before his dugout, her
eyes brightened with interest.  He was a tall lank man of about
sixty-five, with a huge gray mustache and bushy hair of iron-gray, but
without a beard.  The mustache gave him an effect of exceeding
fierceness, and the deeply wrinkled forehead and square chin added
their testimony to his ungracious disposition.

But Lahoma was not afraid of coyotes, catamounts or mountain-lions, and
she was not afraid of Bill Atkins.  Her eyes brightened at the
discovery that he held in his hand that which Willock had described to
her as a book.

"Does he read?", she asked Willock, breathlessly.  "Does he read,
Brick?"

Willock surveyed the seated figure gravely.  "He reads!" he responded.

The man looked up, saw Willock and bent over his book--discovered
Lahoma on the pony, and looked up again, unwillingly but definitely.
"You never told me you had a little girl," he remarked gruffly.

"You never asked me," said Willock.  "Get down, Lahoma, and make
yourself at home."

The man shut his book.  "What are you going to do?"

"Going to visit you.  Turn the pony loose, Lahoma; he won't go far."

"Haven't you got all that north range to yourself?" Bill Atkins asked
begrudgingly.

"Yap.  How're you making it, Atkins?"

"Why, as long as I'm let alone, I'm making it all right.  It's being
let alone that I can't ever accomplish.  When I was a boy I began my
travels to keep out where I could breathe, and I've been crowded out of
Missouri and Kansas and Colorado and Wyoming and California, and now
I've come to the American Desert thinking I could die in peace, but oh,
no, not ME!  I no sooner get settled and made my turf dugout, than here
comes a stranger--"

"Name of Brick Willock, if you've forgot," interpolated Willock
genially.  "I'll just light my pipe, as I reckon there's no objections.
Lahoma don't care, and you can breathe all right if you keep with the
wind from you."

The man turned his back upon Willock, opened his book and read.

Lahoma approached the block of wood that supported him, while Willock
calmly stretched himself out on the grass.  "Is that a book?" she
asked, by way of opening up the conversation.

The man gripped it tighter and moved his lips busily.  As she remained
at his knee, he presently said, "Oh, no, it's a hand-organ!"

Lahoma smiled pityingly.  "Are you afraid of me, Atkins?"

The man looked up with open mouth.  "Not exactly, kid!"  There was
something in her face that made him lose interest in his book.  He kept
looking at her.

"Then why don't you tell the truth?  WE won't hurt you."

The man opened his mouth and closed it.  Then he said, "It's a book."

"Did you ever read it before?"

"This is the third time I've read it."

"Seems as it hasn't accomplished no good on you, as you still tell
lies."

The man rose abruptly, and laid the book on the seat.  His manner was
quite as discouraging as it had been from the start.

"Honey," interposed Willock, "that ain't to say a lie, not a real lie."

"IS it a hand-organ?" Lahoma demanded sternly.

"In a manner of speaking, honey, it is a hand-organ in the sense of
shutting you off from asking questions.  You learn to distinguish the
sauces of speech as you gets older.  Out in the big world, people don't
say this or that according as it is, they steeps their words in a sauce
as suits the digestion.  Don't be so quick to call 'LIES!' till you
learns the flavor of a fellow's meaning, not by his words but by the
sauce he steeps 'em in."

"Don't get mad at me," said Lahoma to the trapper.  "I don't know
nothing, never having captured and branded the thoughts that is caged
up in books.  But I want to be civilized and I am investigating
according."

The trapper, somewhat conciliated, reseated himself.  He regarded the
girl with greater interest, not without a certain approval. "How comes
it that you aren't civilized, living with such a knowing specimen as
your own father?"

"My father's dead.  Brick is my cousin, but I not knowing nothing of
him till he saved my life two years ago and after that, me with the
Indians and him all alone.  Would you like to hear about it?"

"I wouldn't bother him, honey, with all that long story," interposed
Willock, suddenly grown restive.

"Yes, tell me," said the trapper, moving over that she might find room
on the block of wood beside him.

Lahoma seated herself eagerly and looking up into the other's face,
which softened more and more under her fearless gaze, she said:

"We was crossing the plains--father, mother and me, in a big wagon. And
men dressed up like Indians, they come whooping and shooting, and
father turns around and drives with all his might--drives clear to
yonder mountain.  And mother dies, being that sick before, and the
jolting too much for her.  So father takes me on his horse and rides
all night, and I all asleep.  Well, those same men dressed like
Indians, they was in a cabin 'way up north, and had put their wigs and
feathers off and was gambling over what they stole from the other
wagons.  So father, he sees the light from the window and rides up with
me.  And they takes him for a spy and says they, in a voice awful
fierce, just this way--'KILL 'EM BOTH!'"

The trapper gave a start at the explosiveness of her tone.

Lahoma shouted again, as harshly as she could, "'Kill 'em both,' says
they."  Then she turned to Willock.  "Did I put them words in the
correct sauce, Brick?"

"You done noble, honey."

Lahoma resumed:  "Now it was in a manner of happening that Brick, he
was riding around to have a look at the country, and when he rides up
to the cabin, why, right outside there was me and father, and two of
the robbers about to kill us.  'What are you devils up to?' says Brick.
'You go to hell,' says the leading man, 'that's where we're going to
send this spy and his little girl,' says he; 'you go to hell and maybe
you'll meet 'em there,' he says.  And with that he ups and shoots at
Brick, the bullet lifting his hat right off his head and scaring the
horse out from under him, so he falls right there at the feet of them
two robber-men, on his back.  Brick, he never harmed nobody before in
his life, but what was he to do? He might of let them kill him, but
that would of left father and me in their grip, so he just grabs the
gun out of the leading man's hand, as he hadn't ever carried a gun in
his life his own self, and he shot both them robbers, him still laying
there on his back--"

"No, honey, I got up about that time."

"Brick, you told me you was still laying there on your back just as you
fell."

"Did I, honey, well, I reckon I was, then, for when I told you about
it, it was more recent."

"It's awful interesting," the trapper remarked dryly.

"Yes, ain't it!"  Lahoma glowed.  "Then father jumped on one horse with
me, and Brick put out on another, and when I woke up, the Indians were
all everywhere, but Brick come here and lived all alone and nearly died
because he didn't have me to comfort him.  So the Indians took me and
they killed father, and for two years I was moved from village to
village till Red Feather brought me to Brick. And then we found out we
are cousins and he is going to civilize me. Brick, he remembers about a
cousin of his, Cousin Martha Willock, her sister went driving out to
the Oklahoma country with her husband and little girl and wasn't never
heard of.  I am the little girl, all right, and Brick he's my second
cousin.  And wasn't it lucky Brick was riding around that night,
looking at the country, when they was about to put daylight into me?"

"I'd think," remarked the trapper, "that he'd take you back to your
Cousin Martha, for men-folks like him and me aren't placed to take care
of women-folks."

"Yes, but he got a letter saying my Cousin Martha and all her family is
done been swept away by a flood of the Mississippi River, and him and
me is all they is left of the Willockses, so we got to stick together.
Besides, you see, he killed them two robbers, and the rest of the gang
is laying for him; Brick, he feels so dreadful, he never having so much
as put a scratch to a man's face before, for he wouldn't never fight as
a boy, his conscience wouldn't rest if he was in civilization.  He'd go
right up to the first policeman he met and say, 'I done the deed.
Carry me to the pen!' he'd say, and then what would become of me?"

"He might get another letter from your Cousin Martha to help him out of
the scrape."

Lahoma stared at him, unable to grasp the significance of these foolish
words, and Brick, seeking a diversion, explained his purpose of taking
Lahoma to the settlements after supplies, and proffered his petition
that Bill Atkins accompany them.

Lahoma has never forgotten that expedition to the settlements. Along
the Chisholm Trail marched Brick Willock and Bill Atkins, one full of
genial philosophy, responsive to every sight and sound along the way,
the other taciturn and uncompanionable, a being present in the flesh,
but seemingly absent in the spirit.  Behind them rode the girl, with
unceasing interest in the broad hard-beaten trail--the only mark in
that wilderness to tell them that others had passed that way.  The men
walked with deliberate but well-measured step, preserving a pace that
carried them mile after mile seemingly with little weariness.  Three
times on the journey great herds of cattle were encountered on their
way toward Kansas, and many were the looks of curiosity cast on the
little girl sitting as straight as an Indian on her pony.

She was glad when a swinging cloud of dust announced the coming of
thousands of steers, attended by cowboys, for it meant a glimpse into
an unknown world, and the bellowing of cattle, the shouting of men and
the cracking of whips stirred her blood.  But she was glad, too, when
the stream of life had flowed past, and she was left alone with Brick
and Bill, for then the never-ending conversation with the former was
resumed, picked up at the point where it had been dropped, or drawn
forward from raveled bits of unfinished discourse of the day before,
and though Bill Atkins said almost nothing and always looked straight
ahead, he was, in a way, spice in the feast of her enjoyment.

When they stopped for their meals, they drew aside from the trail, if
possible near some spring or river-bed in which pools of water
lingered, but such stopping-places were far apart in the desert
country.  At night there was a cheerful bonfire, followed by zestful
talk as they lay on the ground, before falling asleep in their
tarpaulins--talk eagerly monopolized by Brick and Lahoma, and to which
Atkins seemed in a manner to listen, perhaps warming his heart at the
light of their comradeship even as they warmed their hands in the early
morning at the breakfast fire.  Atkins had brought with him one of his
books, and at the noon hour's rest, and at evening beside the bonfire,
he kept his nose buried in its pages.

Lahoma did not think life would have been too long to devote to such
pilgrimages.  In the settlements, she was bewildered, but never
satiated, with novelties, and on the way back, everything she had seen
was discussed, expounded and classified between her and her "cousin."
Sometimes her questions drove Brick up against a stone wall and then
Bill Atkins would raise his voice and in three or four words put the
matter in its true light.

"Bill, he's saw more of life than me," Brick conceded admiringly. "He
has come and went amongst all sorts of people, but my specialty has in
the main been low."

"Yes, I've seen more of life," Atkins agreed; "that's why I try so hard
to keep away from it."

"The more I see, the more I want to see!" cried Lahoma eagerly.

"Yes, honey," Brick explained, "that's because you're a WOMAN."

Once more back in the cove, Lahoma dreamed new dreams, peopling the
grassy solitude with the figures she had encountered on her travels,
likening the rocks to various houses that had caught her fancy.  She
turned with absorbed interest to the primer and elementary arithmetic
with which Brick had supplied himself as the first tools for his mental
kit.

The journey hack home had been far easier than the descent into Texas
because both Willock and Atkins had supplied themselves with
ponies,--animals that sold ridiculously cheap at the outlying posts of
the settlements.  Brick Willock brought back with him something else to
add cheerfulness and usefulness to approaching winter.  This was a
square window-sash, set with four small panes of good glass. It was
hard work to place this window in Lahoma's side of the dugout, but it
was work thoroughly enjoyed.  Lahoma's room was on the west, and from
noon to sundown, the advantage of the window was a source of
never-ending delight.

"Good thing we've got our window," Brick would say as they sat on the
low rude bench before the little stove, and the furious wind of January
howled overhead.  Or, when the wintry sky was leaden and all Brick's
side of the partition was as dark as the hole of a prairie-dog, he
would visit Lahoma, and gloat over the dim gray light stealing through
the small panes.  "That window's no bad idea!" he would chuckle,
stooping his great bulk cautiously as he seated himself, as if to
lighten his weight by doubling in upon himself.

"Good thing I've got my window," Lahoma would say as the snow lay thick
on the plains and in broken lines all over the mountain, and the
cutting blast made the fire jump with sudden fright.  She would hold
her book close to the dirt square in which the frame was planted, and
spell out words she had never heard used, such as "lad," "lass,"
"sport," and the like mysteries.  "This window is going to civilize me,
Brick."

It did not lessen their relish in the subject that they had discussed
it already a hundred times.  It was the same way with the hand-made
bench, with the trench that carried water from their door during sudden
downpours, and with the self-congratulation over owning two ponies to
keep each other company.

"They's one thing about us, Lahoma, which it ain't according to the big
outside world, and yet I hope it won't never be changed.  We are mighty
glad we've got what we've got.  And to be glad of what you've got is a
sure way to multiply your property.  Every time you brag on that
window, it shines like two windows to me."

Spring came late that year, and in the early days of March, Brick rode
over to the cove behind the precipice after Bill Atkins.  "I want you
to come over to my place," he begged, "and answer some of Lahoma's
questions.  Being closeted with her in that there dugout all winter,
she has pumped me as dry as a bone."

Perhaps Bill Atkins had had his fill of solitude during that cold
winter--or perhaps he was hungry for another hour of the little girl's
company.  Nothing, however, showed his satisfaction as he entered her
chamber.  "Here I am," he announced, seating himself on the bench.
This was his only greeting.

"Is it drug or dragged?" demanded Lahoma.

"Dragged."

"Why don't God send me a little girl to play with, after me asking for
one every night, all winter?"

"Don't understand God's business," replied Atkins briefly.

"I puts it this way," Brick spoke up; "God's done sent one little girl,
and it ain't right to crowd Him too far."

"Will I be all they is of me, as long as I live?"

"Nobody won't never come to live in these plains," Brick declared,
"unless its trappers and characters like us.  But we'll stay by you,
won't we, Bill Atkins?"

Atkins looked exceedingly gruff and shook his head as if he had his
doubts about it.  "You'll have to be taken to the States," he declared.

"But what would become of Brick?"

"Well, honey," said Brick, "you want to take your place with people in
the big world, don't you?"

"Oh, YES!" cried Lahoma, starting up and stretching her arm toward the
window.  "In the big world--yes!  That's the place for me--that's where
I want to live.  But what will become of you?"

"Well," Brick answered slowly, "the rock pile, t'other side the
mountain is good enough for me.  Your mother sleeps under it."

"Oh, Brick!"  She caught his arm.  "You wouldn't die if I went away,
would you?"

"Why, you see, honey, they wouldn't be nothing left to go on.  I'd just
sort of stop, you know--but it wouldn't matter--out there in the big
world, people don't remember very long, and when you're grown you
wouldn't know there'd ever been a cove with a dugout in it, and a
window in the wall, and a Brick Willock to carry in the wood for the
fire."

"I'll always remember--and I won't go without you.  He COULD go with
me, couldn't he, Bill?"

"I suspicion he has his reasons for not," Atkins observed gravely.

"I has, and I shall never go back to the States."

"Then what's the use civilizing me?" demanded Lahoma mournfully.

"I want you to enjoy yourself.  And when I'm old and no-'count, you'd
need somebody to take care of you--and you'd go full-equipped and ready
to stand up to any civilized person that tried to run a bluff on you."

"But, oh, I want to GO--I want to go out THERE--where there ain't no
plains and alkali and buffalo-grass--where they's pavements and
policemen and people in beautiful clothes.  I don't mean NOW, I mean
when I have got civilized."  She drew herself up proudly.  "I wouldn't
go till I was civilized, till I was like them."  She turned impulsively
to Brick:  "But you've got to go with me when I go!  I'm going to stay
with you till I'm fit to go, and then you're going to stay with me the
rest of my life."

"Am I fit to go with her?" Brick appealed to Bill Atkins.

"You ain't," Bill replied.

"I ain't fit," Brick declared firmly.  "I'm a-going to fitten you; but
it's too late to work on me; and besides, if they WAS time enough, it
ain't to the grain of my nature.  I knows all I wants to know, which if
little or much is enough for me.  And I wouldn't be fit to go with you
out into the big world and cut a figger in it, which couldn't be no
figger but a figger naught.  And Atkins who knows more than me, he says
the same."

The tears were in Lahoma's eyes.  She looked from one to the other, her
little face deeply troubled.  Suddenly she grabbed up her books and
started toward the stove.  "Then this here civilizing is going to
stop," she declared.

"Lahoma!" Brick cried in dismay.

"Yes, it is--unless you promise to stay with me when I go to live in
the big world."

"Honey, I'll promise you this:  When you are ready to live out there,
I'll sure go with you and stay with you--if you want me, when the time
comes."

Lahoma seized his hand, and jumped up and down in delight.

"It's a safe promise," remarked Bill Atkins dryly.



CHAPTER IX

A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY

One evening in May, a tall lithe figure crept the southern base of the
mountain range, following its curves with cautious feet as if fearful
of discovery.  It was a young man of twenty-one or two, bronzed, free
of movement, agile of step.  His face was firm, handsome and open,
although at present a wish to escape observation caused the hazel eyes
to dart here and there restlessly, while the mouth tightened in an
aspect of sternness.  This air of wild resolution was heightened by the
cowboy's ordinary garments, and the cowboy's indispensable belt
well-stocked with weapons.

On reaching the spur that formed the western jaw of the horseshoe, he
crept on hands and knees, but satisfied by searching glances that the
inner expanse was deserted, he half rose and stole shadow-like along
the granite wall, until he had reached the hill-island that concealed
the cove.  Again falling on hands and knees, he drew himself slowly up
among the huge flat rocks that covered the hill in all directions.  In
a brief time he had traversed it, and a view of the cove was suddenly
unrolled below.  A few yards from Brick Willock's dugout, now stood a
neat log cabin, and not far from the door of this cabin was a girl of
about fifteen, seated on the grass.

She had been reading, but her book had slipped to her feet.  With hands
clasped about her knee, and head tilted back, she was watching the lazy
white clouds that stretched like wisps of scattered cotton across the
blue field of the sky.  At first the young man was startled by the
impression that she had discovered his presence and was scrutinizing
his position, but a second glance reassured him, and he stretched
himself where a block of granite and, below it, a cedar tree,
effectually protected him from discovery.  Thus hidden, he stared at
the girl unblinkingly.

He was like a thirsty traveler drinking at a cool well unexpectedly
discovered in a desert country.  For two years he had led the life of
the cowboy, exiled from his kind, going with the boys from lower Texas
to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail, overseeing great herds of cattle,
caring for them day and night, scarcely ever under a roof, even that of
a dugout.  Through rain and storm, the ground had been his bed, and
many a blistering summer day a pony captured wild from the plains, and
broken to stand like a dog, had been his only shade. During these two
years of hard life, reckless companions and exacting duties, he had
easily slipped into the grooves of speech and thought common to his
fellows.  Only his face, his unconscious movements and accents,
distinguished him from the other boys of "Old Man Walker"--the boss of
the "G-Bar Outfit."  On no other condition but that of apparent
assimilation could he have retained his place with Walker's ranchmen;
and in his efforts to remove as quickly as possible the reproach of
tender-foot it was not his fault that he had retained the features of a
different world, or that a certain air, not of the desert, was always
breaking through the crust under which he would have kept his real self
out of sight.  He himself was the least conscious that this was so.

For two years he had seen no one like the girl of the cove,
none--though he had seen women and girls of the settlements, often
enough--who even suggested her kind.  Her dress, indeed, was plain
enough, and obviously chosen in cheerful ignorance of forms and
conventions, though the color, a delicate pink, was all he could have
wished.  After all, the clothes revealed nothing except absence from
city shops and city standards.

That was wonderful hair, its brown tresses gleaming though untouched by
the sun, as if in it were enmeshed innumerable particles of light.  It
seemed to glow from its very fineness, its silkiness--the kind of hair
one is prompted to touch, to feel if it is really that way!  The face
was more wonderful, because it told many things that can not be
expressed in mere hair-language.  There was the seal of innocence on
the lips, the proof of fearlessness in the eyes, the touch of thought
on the brow, the sign of purpose about the resolute little chin.  The
slender brown hands spoke of life in the open air, and the glow of the
cheeks told of burning suns.  Her form, her attitude, spoke not only of
instinctive grace, but of a certain wildness in admirable harmony with
the surrounding scene.  Somehow, the ruggedness of the mountains and
the desolate solitudes of the plains were reflected from her face.

The young man gazed as if his thirst would never be appeased.  The
flavor of nights about the camp-fire and other nights spent in driving
sleet, also days when the first flowers come and the wide beds of the
desert rivers are swollen with overbrimming floods; the cruel exposure
of winter, the thrilling balminess of early spring--all spoke to him
again from that motionless figure.  He recalled companions of his
boyhood and youth, but they were not akin to this child of the desert
mountains.  Still more alien were those of the saloon stations, the
haunts at the outskirts of civilization. It seemed to him that in this
young girl, who bad the look and poise of a woman, he had found what
hitherto he had vainly sought in the wilderness--the beauty and the
charm of it, refined and separated from its sordidness and its
uncouthness--in a word, from all that was base and ugly.  It was for
this that he had left his home in the East.  Here was typified that
loveliness of the unbroken wilderness without its profanity, its
drunkenness, its obscenity, its terrible hardships.

At last he tore himself away, retraced his steps as cautiously as he
had conic, and flung himself upon the pony left waiting at a sheltered
nook far from the cove.  As he sped over the plains toward the distant
herd, it came to him suddenly in a way not before experienced, that it
was May, that the air was balmy and fragrant, and that the land, softly
lighted in the clear twilight, was singularly beautiful.  He seemed
breathing the roses back home--which recalled another face, but not for
long.  The last time he had seen that eastern face, the dew had lain on
the early morning roses--how could a face so different make him think
of them?  But imagination is sometimes a bold robber, and now it did
not hesitate to steal those memories of sweet scents to encloud the
picture of the mountain-girl.

The G-Bar headquarters was on the western bank of what was then known
as Red River, but was really the North Fork of Red River. "Old Man
Walker," who was scarcely past middle age, had built his corral on the
margin of the plain which extended to that point in an unbroken level
from a great distance, and which, having reached that point, dropped
without warning, a sheer precipice, to an extensive lake.  The lake was
fed by springs issuing from the bluffs; not far beyond it and not much
lower, was the bed of the river, wide, very red and almost dry.  Beyond
the river rose the bold hills of the Kiowa country, a white line
chiseled across the face of each, as if Time had entertained some
thought of their destruction, but finding each a huge block of living
rock, had passed on to torture and shift and alter the bed of the river.

The young man reached the corral after a ride of twelve or thirteen
miles, most of the distance through a country of difficult sand. He
galloped up to the rude enclosure, surrounded by a cloud of dust
through which his keen gray eyes discovered Mizzoo on the eve of
leaving camp.  Mizzoo was one of the men whose duty it was to ride the
line all night--the line that the young man had guarded all day--to
keep Walker's cattle from drifting.

"Come on, Mizz," called the young man, as the other swung upon his
broncho, "I'm going back with you."

The lean, leather-skinned, sandy-mustached cattleman uttered words not
meet for print, but expressive of hearty pleasure.  "Ain't you had
enough of it, Bill?" he added.  "I'd think you'd want to lay up for
tomorrow's work."

"Oh, I ain't sleepy," the young man declared, as they rode away side by
side.  "I couldn't close an eye tonight--and I want to talk."

The cattleman chuckled enjoyingly.  It was lonely and monotonous work,
riding back and forth through the darkness, keeping a sharp lookout for
wolves or Indians, driving straggling cattle back to the herd, in
brief, doing the picket duty of the plains.

Mizzoo was so called from his habit of attributing his most emphatic
aphorisms to "his aunt, Miss Sue of Missouri"--a lady held by his
companions to be a purely fictitious character, a convenient "Mrs.
Harris" to give weight to sayings worn smooth from centuries of use.

Of all the boys of the ranch, Mizzoo found Wilfred Compton most
companionable.  When off duty, they were usually to be found near each
other, whether awake or asleep; and when Mizzoo, on entering some
village at the edge of the desert, sought relaxation from a life of
routine by shooting through the windows and spurring his pony into the
saloons, it was the young man, commonly known as Bill, who lingered
behind to advance money for damages to the windows, or who kept close
to the drunken ranger in order to repair the damages Mizzoo had done to
his own soul and body.

"I'll talk my head off," Mizzoo declared, "if that'll keep you on the
move with me, for it's one thing meeting a ghost in the desert all
alone, and quite another when there's a pair of us.  Yes, I know you
don't believe nothing I say about that spirit, and I only hope we'll
come on it tonight!  It ain't been a week since I see something
creeping along behind me whilst I was riding the line, a little thing
as swift as a jack-rabbit and as sly as a coyote--something with long
arms and short legs and the face of an Injun--"

"Of course it WAS an Indian," returned the young man carelessly. "He is
hanging about here to steal some of our horses.  I don't want you to
talk about your ghost, I've heard of him a thousand times."

"Bill, the more you talk about a ghost, the more impressive he gets. I
tell you that wasn't no live Injun!  Didn't I blaze away at him with my
six-shooter and empty all my barrels for nothing?  No, sir, it's the
same spirit that haunts the trail from Vernon, Texas, to Coffeyville.
I've shot at that red devil this side of Fort Sill, and at Skeleton
Spring, and at Bull Foot Spring, and a mile from Doan's store--always
at night, for it never rises except at night, as befits a good ghost.
I reckon I'll waste cartridges on that spook as long as I hit the
trail, but I don't never expect to draw blood.  Others has saw him,
too, but me more especial.  I reckon I'm the biggest sinner of the
G-Bar and has to be plagued most frequent with visitations to make me a
better man when I get to be old."

"He's a knowing old ghost if he's found you out, Mizzoo, but if you
want my company, tonight, you'll drop the Indian.  What I want you to
talk about is that little girl you met on the trail down in Texas,
seven years ago."

Mizzoo burst out in a hearty laugh.  "I reckon it suits you better to
take her as a little kid," he cried, his tall form shaking
convulsively.  "I'll never forget how you looked, Bill, when we tried
to run a bluff on her daddy last month!"

The other did not answer with a smile.  Apparently the reminiscence
pleased him less than it did the older man.  He spurred his horse
impatiently, and it plunged forward through the drifted banks of white
sand.

Mizzoo hastened to overtake him, still chuckling.  "Old Man Walker
never knowed what a proposition he was handing us when he ordered us to
drive the old mountain-lion out of his lair!  Looks like the six of us
ought to have done the trick.  Them other fellows looked as wild as
bears, and you was just like a United States soldier marching on a
Mexican strongholt, not stopping at nothing, and it ain't for me to say
how brave _I_ done.  Pity you and me was at the tail-end of the
attacking party.  Fust thing we knowed, them other four galoots was
falling backwards a-getting out of that trap of a cove, and the bullets
was whizzing about our ears--"

He broke off to shout with laughter.  "And it was all done by one old
settler and his gal, them standing out open and free with their
breech-loaders, and us hiking out for camp like whipped curs!"

The young man was impatient, but he compelled himself to speak calmly.
"As I never got around the spur of the mountain before you fellows were
in full retreat, I object to being classed with the whipped curs, and
you'll bear that in mind, Mizzoo.  You saw the girl all right, didn't
you?"

"You bet I did, and as soon as I see her, I knowed it was the same I'd
came across on the trail, seven year ago.  I'd have knowed it from her
daddy, of course, but there wasn't no mistaking HER.  Her daddy give it
to us plain that if he ever catched one of us inside his cove he'd kill
us like so many coyotes, and I reckon he would. Well, he's got as much
right to his claim as anybody else--this land don't belong to nobody,
and there he's been a-squatting considerable longer than we've laid out
this ranch.  He was in the right of it, but what I admire was his being
able to hold his rights.  Lots of folks has rights but they ain't man
enough to hold 'em.  And if von could have seen that gal, her eyes like
two big burning suns, and her mouth closed like a steel-trap, and her
hand as steady on that trigger as the mountain rock behind her! Lord,
Bill! what a trembly, knock-kneed, meaching sort of a husband she's
a-going to fashion to her hand, one of these days!  But PRETTY?  None
more so.  And a-going all to waste out here in the desert!"

They rode on for some time in silence, save for the intermittent
chuckling of the cattleman as visions of his companions' pale faces and
scurrying forms rose before his mind.

"And now about that child, seven years ago," the young man said, when
the last hoarse sound of mirth had died away.

"Why, yes, me and the boys was bringing about two thousand head up to
Abiline when we come on to this same pardner and another man walking
the trail, with a little gal coming behind 'em on her pony. And it was
this same gal.  I reckon she was seven or eight year old, then.  Well,
sir, I just thought as I looked at her, that I never seen a prettier
sight in this world and I reckon I ain't, for when I looked at the same
gal the other day, the gun she was holding up to her eye sort of
dazzled me so I couldn't take stock of all her good points.  But seeing
that little gal out there in the plains it was like hearing an
old-fashioned hymn at the country meeting-house and knowing a big
basket dinner was to follow.  I can't express it more deep than that.
We went into camp that evening, and all of us got pretty soft and
mellow, what from the unusualness of the meeting, and we asked the old
codger if we could all come over to his camp and shake hands with the
gal--he'd drawed back from us about a mile, he was that skeered to be
sociable.  So after considerable haggling and jawing, he said we could,
and here we come, just about sundown, all of us looking sheepish enough
to be carved for mutton, but everlasting determined to take that gal by
the paw."

"Well?" said the young man who had often heard this story, but had
never been treated to the sequel, "what happened then, Mizzoo? You
always stop at the same place.  Didn't you shake hands with her?"

The other ruminated in deep silence for some time, then rejoined, "I
don't know how it is--a fellow can talk about the worst devilment in
creation with a free rein, and no words hot enough to blister his
tongue, but let him run up against something simple like that, and the
bottom of his lungs seems to fall out.  I guess they ain't no more to
be told.  That was all there was to it, though I might add that the
next day we come along by old Whisky Simeon's joint that sets out on
the sand-hills, you know, and we put spurs to our bronks and went
whooping by, with old Whisky Sim a-staring and a-hollering after us
like he thought we was crazy.  I don't know as I had missed a drunk
before for five year, when the materials was ready-found for its
making.  And I ain't never forgot the little kid with the brown hair
and the eyes that seen to your bottom layer, like a water-witch
a-penetrating the ground with a glance, seeing through dirt and clay
and rocks to what water they is."

Mizzoo relapsed into meditative silence, and the young man, in sympathy
with his mood, kept at his side, no longer asking questions.  Darkness
came on and the hour grew late but few words were exchanged as they
rode the weary miles that marked the limit of the range.  There were
the usual incidents of such work, each bringing its customary comments.
The midnight luncheon beside a small fire, over which the coffee
steamed, roused something like cheerful conversation which, however,
flickered and flared uncertainly like the bonfire.  On the whole the
young man was unwontedly reserved, and the other, perceiving it, fell
back contentedly on his own resources--pleasant memories and rank
tobacco.

"Guess I'll leave you now," remarked the young man, when the fire had
died away.

"Yes, better turn in, for you're most uncommon dull you know," Mizzoo
replied frankly.  "'Twould be just about as much company for me if
you'd hike out and leave me your picture to carry along."

Instead of taking the direction toward the river, the young man set out
at a gallop for the distant mountain range which, in the gloom, seemed
not far away.  After an hour's hard riding, he reached it. His
impatience bad made that hour seem almost interminable, yet it had not
been long enough to furnish him with any clear reason for having come.
If, as Mizzoo had declared, he needed sleep, he would surely not think
of finding it near the cove from which his companions had been warned
under penalty of death.  If drawn by longing for another glimpse of the
girl of the cove he could not expect to see her an hour or two after
midnight.  Yet here he was, attracted, and still urged on, by impulses
he did not attempt to resist.



CHAPTER X

THE FLAG OF TRUCE

Earliest dawn found the young man seated composedly upon one of the
flattened outcroppings of the bill of stone that lay like an island
between the outer plain and the sheltered cove.  As yet, there was no
sign of life within the cove--both the dugout and the cabin of cedar
logs were as silent and as void of movement as the rocks behind them.
The young man watched first one, then the other, as tireless and
vigilant as if he had not been awake for twenty-four hours.

It was the dugout that first started from its night's repose. Before
the sun showed itself over the rim of the prairie, long before its rays
darted over the distant mountain-crest, the door was thrown away from
the casing, and a great uncouth man, strong as a giant, and wild of
aspect as a savage, strode forth, gun in hand, his eyes sweeping the
landscape in quick flashing glances.  Almost instantly he discovered
the figure perched on the granite block overlooking his retreat.  He
raised his gun to his shoulder.

The young man fell sidewise behind the rocks and a bullet clipped the
edge of his barricade.  Remaining supine, he fastened his handkerchief
to the end of his whip and waved it above the rampart. Having thus
manifested his peaceful intent, he rose, still holding the flag of
truce above his head, and remained motionless.  Brick Willock stared at
him for a moment in hostile indecision, then strode forward.  At the
same time, an old man, thin, tall and white-haired, issued from the
dugout evidently attracted by the gunshot; and soon after, the cabin
door opened, and the girl of the cove looked out inquiringly.

In the meantime the young man slowly descended the hill to the oval
valley, while Willock hurried forward to meet him.

"Don't you come no futher!" Willock commanded, threatening with his
gun.  "Keep your hands above your head until I can ship your cargo."

Obediently he stood while the great whiskered fellow took the weapons
from his belt, and dived into his hip pockets.

"That'll do.  Now--what do you want?"

"It's hard to put it into a few words," the other complained.  "I'd
like to have a little talk with you."

"You are one of them fellows that come here to run us out of the
country, ain't you?  I don't remember seeing you, but I guess you
belong to the bunch over on Red River.  Well, you see we're still here,
meaning to stay.  Are your pards outside there, waiting for a message?"

"Nobody knows I'm here, or thought of coming.  Let me put that affair
in its true light.  The boys are all under our boss, and when he lays
down the law it isn't for us to argue with him--we carry out orders--"

"Unless there's a Brick Willock involved in them orders," returned the
man, with a grim smile.

"But it's our duty to TRY to carry out the orders, whether we like 'em
or not.  So you won't hold that against me--that little scrimmage of
last month, especially as you came out best man."

"I used to have a boss, myself," Willock spoke uncompromisingly. "But
when he give me certain orders, one particular night that I recollect,
I knocked him on the head and put out for other parts. You must of
thought yourself in PRETTY business coming over here to take away the
land and all on it, that's belonged to me for nine years, and nobody
never having tried to prize me out of it except some trifling Injuns
and horse-thieves.  Ain't they NO honesty in the world?  Hasn't no man
his property rights?  I guess your boss knowed this wasn't HIS land,
didn't he?  What's going to become of this country when man isn't
satisfied with what is his'n?  Well, now you've had a little talk with
me, and hoping you've enjoyed it, you can just mosey along.  I'll send
your weapons after you by a messenger."

The young man cast a despairing glance toward the girl who stood like a
statue in her doorway, gravely listening.  The man with the bushy white
hair had drawn near, but evidently with no thought of interfering.

"Willock," the voice came so eager, so impetuous, that the words were
somewhat incoherent, "I've GOT to talk to your daughter--hold on, don't
shoot, LISTEN!--that's what I've come for, to see her and--and meet her
and hear her voice.  I can't help it, can I? It's been two long years
since I left home, back East, and in all these two years I've never
seen anything like your little girl and--and what harm can it do? I
say!  Have pity on a fellow, and do him the biggest favor he could
enjoy on this earth when it won't cost you a penny, or a turn of your
hand.  Look here--hold on, don't turn away!  I'm just so lonesome, so
homesick, so dead KILLED by all these sand-hills and alkali beds and
nothing to talk to from one year's end to the next but men and
cattle...."

Willock glared at him in silence, fingering the trigger thoughtfully.

"There I've sat, on that hill," he continued, "since two o'clock last
night, waiting for daylight so I could ask you to help a miserable
wretch that's just starving to death for the sound of a girl's voice,
and the sight of a girl's smile.  Isn't this square, waiting for you,
and telling you the whole truth?  I never saw her but once, and that
was from this same hill.  She didn't know I was watching; it was
yesterday.  Maybe all I'm saying sounds just crazy to you, and I reckon
I am out of my senses, but until I saw her I didn't know how heart-sick
I was of the whole business."

"It IS kinder lonesome," remarked the other gruffly.  He lowered his
gun and leaned on it, irresolutely.  "You've sure touched me in the
right spot, son, for I knows all you mean and more that you ain't even
ever dreampt of.  But you see, we don't know nothing about your name,
your character, if you've got one, nor what you really intends.  I like
your looks and the way you talk, fine, just fine, but I've saw bobcats
that was mighty sleek and handsome when they didn't know I was nigh."

"My name in Wilfred Compton.  I--I have a letter or two in my pocket
that I got a long time ago; they'd tell something about me but I'd
rather not show 'em, as they're private--"

"From your gal, I reckon?" asked Willock more mildly.

"Yes," he answered gloomily.

"Carried 'em as long as a year?"

"Nearly two years."

"Mean to still lug 'em around?"

"Of course I'm going to keep 'em."

"Well, I don't deny THAT'S pretty favorable.  Now look here, son, I've
been half-crazy from lonesomeness, and I don't believe I've got the
heart to send you away.  That gal of ours--she's just a kid, you
understand....  Now you wouldn't be taking up no idea that she was what
you'd classify as a young lady, or anything like that, eh?"

"Of course not--she's fifteen or sixteen, I should think.  Upon my
honor, Willock, any thought of sentiment or romance is a thousand miles
from my mind."

"Yes, just so.  But such thoughts travels powerful fast; don't take 'em
long to lap over a thousand mile."

"But it's because she IS a young girl, fresh and unartificial as the
mountain breezes, that I want to be with her for a little while--yes,
get to know her, if I may."

Willock turned to the taciturn old man standing a little behind him.
"Bill Atkins, what do you say?"

"I say, fire him and do it quick!" was the instant rejoinder,
accompanied by threatening twitchings of the huge white mustache.

Willock was not convinced.  "Son, if you sets here till we have had our
breakfast, and has held a caucus over you, I'll bring you the verdict
in about an hour.  If you don't like that, they's nothing to do but put
out for your ranch."

"I go on duty at seven," replied the young man composedly, "but I have
a friend riding the line that'll stay with it till I come.  So I'll
wait for your caucus."

"That friend--one of them devils I shot at the other day?"

Wilfred Compton smiled with sudden sunniness.  "Yes."

Somewhere beneath the immense whiskers, an answering smile slipped like
a breeze, stirring the iron-gray hair.  "I kinder believe in you, son!
Nobody can't gainsay that you've played the man in this matter.  Now,
just one thing more.  You must swear here before me, with Bill Atkins
for an unwilling witness, that should we let you make the acquaintance
of our little gal, and should you get to be friends, you two, that the
very fust minute it comes to you that she ain't no little gal, but is
in the way of being food for love--Bill Atkins, air I making myself
plain?"

"You ain't," returned the old man sourly.  "You're too complicated for
ordinary use."

"Then YOU tell him what I mean."

The old man glared at Wilfred fiercely.  "If we decide to grant your
request, young man, swear on your honor that the second you find
yourself thinking of our little girl as a WOMAN, to be wooed and won,
you'll put out, and never stop till you're so far away, you'll be clear
out of her world.  And not one word to her, not so much as one hint,
mind you, as to the reason of your going; it'll just be good-by and
farewell!"

"You see," Willock interpolated, "she is nothing a little gal, and we
don't want no foolish ideas to the contrary.  You takes her for what
she is, nothing took from nor added to.  In course, she'll be growed up
some day, I reckon, though may the good Lord take a good long time
finishing up the work He's begun so noble.  When she's growed up, when
she's a woman, it ain't for us to say how you come and how you go, take
from or add to.  But while she's a kid, it is different, according."

"You have my word of honor to all these conditions," Wilfred cried
lightly.  "As a child of the mountains I ask for her acquaintance. If I
should ever feel differently about her, I'll go away and stay away
until she's a woman.  Surely that's enough to promise!"

"There ain't too much to promise, when it comes to the peace and
happiness of our little girl," retorted the old man, "but I can't think
of any more for you to take oath to."

"Me nuther, Bill," agreed Willock.  "Seems to me the young man is bound
as firm as humans can do the binding.  Now you sit right here, son,
don't come a step nigher the house, and we'll go to breakfast; and
later you'll know whether or not all this promising has been idle waste
of time."

"But I can see how it'll turn out," growled Atkins, "for she is always
a-looking for something new, something out of the big world that she
don't know nothing about."

"Never mind, Bill, don't give up so quick," Willock reproached him, as
they turned away.  "She's been having a good look at him all this time,
and it may be she have took a distaste to him already."



CHAPTER XI

THE HALF-OPENED BUD

The two men went into the cabin.  An hour later they reappeared,
accompanied by the girl.  Wilfred was still seated obediently on the
rock, but at sight of them he rose with a gay laugh and advanced.

"Come over here in the shade," Willock called, as he strode toward a
grassy bank that sloped up to a line of three cedar trees of
interlocked branches.  "Come over here and know her.  This is our gal."

Lahoma looked at the young man with grave interest, taking note of his
garments and movements as she might have examined the skin and actions
of some unknown animal.  Bill Atkins also watched him, but with
suspicious eye, as if anticipating a sudden spring on his ward.

"Set down," said Willock, sinking on the grass.  "The last man up is
the biggest fool in Texas!"

Lahoma and Wilfred instantly dropped as if shot, at the same time
breaking into unexpected laughter that caused Willock's beard to quiver
sympathetically.  Bill Atkins, sour and unresponsive, stood as stiffly
erect as possible, aided no little in this obstinate attitude by the
natural unelasticity of age.

The young man exclaimed boyishly, still smiling at the girl, "We're
friends already, because we've laughed together."

"Yes," cried Lahoma, "and Brick is in it, too.  That's best of all."

"_I_ ain't in it," cried Bill Atkins so fiercely that the young man was
somewhat discomposed.

"Now, Bill," exclaimed the girl reprovingly, "you sit right down by my
side and do this thing right."  She explained to the young man, "Bill
Atkins has been higher up than Brick, and he knows forms and
ceremonies, but he despises to act up to what he knows.  Sit right
down, Bill, and make the move."  There was something so unusual in the
attitude of the blooming young girl toward the weather-beaten,
forbidding-looking man, something so authoritative and at the same time
so protecting, at once the air of a superior who commands and who
shelters from the tyranny of others--that Wilfred was both amused and
touched.

"Yes, Bill," said Willock, "make the move.  Make 'em know each other."

"This is Miss Lahoma Willock," growled Bill; "and this"--waving at the
young man disparagingly--"SAYS he is Wilfred Compton.  Know each other!"

"I'm glad to know you," Lahoma declared frankly.  "It's mighty lucky
you came this way, for, you see, I just live here in the cove and never
touch the big world.  I believe you know a thousand things about the
world that we ain't never dreamed of--"

"That we have never dreamed of," corrected Bill Atkins.

"--That we have never dreamed of," resumed Lahoma meekly; "and that's
what I would like to hear about.  I expect to go out in the big world
and be a part of it, when I am older, when I know how to protect
myself, Brick says.  I'm just a little girl now, if I do look so big;
I'm only fifteen, but when I am of age I'm going out into the big
world; so that's why I'm glad to know you, to use you like a kind of
dictionary.  Are you coming back here again?"

"I hope so!" he exclaimed fervently.

"And so do I.  In my cabin I have a long list of things written down in
my tablet that I'd like to know about; questions that come to me as I
sit looking over the hill into the sky, things Brick doesn't know, and
not even Bill Atkins.  You going to tell me them there things?"

Bill interposed:  "Will you kindly tell me those things?"

"Will you kindly tell me those things?"  Lahoma put the revised
question as calmly as if she had not suffered correction.

"You see how it is, son," Willock remarked regretfully; "Lahoma keeps
pretty close to me, and I'm always a-leading her along the wrong
trails, not having laid out an extensive education when I was planning
the grounds I calculated to live in.  When I got anything to say, I
just follows the easiest way, knowing I'll get to the end of it if I
talk constant.  People in the big world ain't no more natural in
talking than in anything else.  They builds up fences and arbitrary
walls, and is careful to stay right in the middle of the beaten path,
and I'm all time keeping Bill busy at putting up the bars after me, so
Lahoma will go straight."

"So that's why I'm glad to know you," Lahoma said gravely.  "But why
did you want to know ME?"  She fastened on him her luminous brown eyes,
with red lips parted, awaiting the clearing up of this mystery.

Wilfred preserved a solemn countenance, "I've been awfully lonesome,
Lahoma, the last two years because, up to that time, I'd lived in a
city with friends all about town and no end of gay times--and these
last two years, I've been in the terrible desert.  You are the first
girl I've seen that reminded me of home; when I saw you and knew you
were my kind, the way you held yourself and the smile in your eyes--"

Bill interposed:  "Don't you forget that binding, young man!"

"Of course not.  But I don't know how to tell just what it means to me
to be with her--with all of you, I mean--but her especially,
because--well, I had so many friends among the girls, back home
and--and--  It's no use trying to explain; if you've known the horrible
lonesomeness of the plains you already  understand, and if you don't..."

"I know what you mean," Willock remarked, with a reminiscent sigh.

"Let it not be put in words," Bill persisted.  "If a thing can't be
expressed, words only mislead.  I never knew any good to come of
talking about smiles in eyes.  There's nothing to it but misleading
words."

"Go on, Lahoma," said Willock encouragingly, "we're both staying with
you, to see that you come out of this with flying colors.  Just go
ahead."

"I want to ask you all about yourself," remarked Lahoma thoughtfully,
"because I can see from your face, and the way you talk, that you're a
real sample of the big world.  If I tell you all about myself, will you
do the same?"

Wilfred promised, and Lahoma entered on the history of her childhood.
Wilfred looked and listened joyously, conscious of the unusual scene,
alive to the subtle charm of her fearless eyes, her unreserved
confidences, the melting harmony of her musical tones. To be sure, she
was only a child, but he saw already the promise of the woman.  The
petals as yet were closed, but the faint sweet fragrance was already
astir.  He found, too, that in her nature was already developed
something not akin to youth, something impersonal, having nothing to do
with one's number of years--like the breath of experience, or the
ancient freshness of a new day.  It was born of the mountains and
nourished in the solitude of the plains.

How different the girls of fifteen or sixteen such as he had known in
the city or in sophisticated villages in the East!  Lahoma had not been
so engrossed by trivial activities of exacting days that she had lacked
time for thought.  Her housekeeping cares were few and devoid of
routine, leaving most of the hours of each day for reading, for
day-dreaming, for absorbed meditation.  Somehow the dreams seemed to
linger in, her voice, to hover upon her brow, to form a part of her;
and the longings of those dreams were half-veiled in her eyes, looking
out shyly as if afraid of wounding her guardians by full revelation.
She wanted to meet life, to take a place in the world--but what would
then become of Willock and Bill?

"Bill used to live seven miles away at the mountain with the
precipice," she went on, after she had told about the wonderful window.
"But it was too far off.  When he got to know me, it tired him, walking
this far twice a day, morning and night,--didn't it, Bill!  So at last
Brick and Bill decided to cut some cedars from the mountain and make me
a cabin,--they took the dugout to sleep in. There are two rooms in the
cabin, one, the kitchen where we eat--and the other, my parlor where I
sleep.  Some time you shall visit me in the cabin, if Brick and Bill
are willing.  They made it for me, so I couldn't ask anybody in, unless
they said so."

"We aren't far enough along," observed Bill, "to be shut up together
under a roof."

"I'd like to have you visit my parlor," Lahoma said somewhat wistfully.
"I'd like to show you all my books--they were Bill's when we first met
him, but since then he's given me everything he's got, haven't you, old
Bill!"  Lahoma leaned over and patted the unyielding shoulder.

Bill stared moodily at the top of the mountain as if in a gloomy
trance, but Wilfred fancied he moved that honored shoulder a trifle
nearer the girl.

She resumed, her face glowing with sudden rapture:  "There are six
books--half a dozen!  Maybe you've heard of some of them.  Bill's read
'em over lots of times.  He begins with the first on the shelf and when
he's through the row, he just takes 'em up, all over again. I like to
read parts of them--the interesting parts.  This is the way they stand
on the shelf:  The Children of the Abbey--that's Bill's favorite; The
Scottish Chiefs, David Copperfield, The Talisman, The Prairie, The Last
of the Mohicans."

"I like The Children of the Abbey best, too," observed Brick Willock
thoughtfully.  "Lahoma, she's read 'em all to me; that's the way we get
through the winter months.  They's something softening and enriching
about that there Children of the Abbey; and Scottish Chiefs has got
some mighty high work in it, too.  I tells Lahoma that I guess them two
books is just about as near the real thing out in the big world as you
can get.  David Copperfield is sort of slow; I've went with people that
knowed a powerful sight more than them characters in David.  I used to
drift about with a bunch of fellows that Uriah Heep couldn't have stood
up against for five minutes. The Talisman is noble doings, too, but not
up-to-date.  As for The Prairie and The Last of the Mohicans, them is
dissatisfying books,--they make you think, being as you lives in just
such quarters, interesting things might happen most any minute--and
they never does."

"Why, Brick!" Lahoma reproached him.  "THIS has happened--" she nodded
at Wilfred Compton.  "Don't you call that interesting?"

"That's the way _I_ discusses them books," returned Willock with
manifest satisfaction.  "I wasn't never no man to be overawed by no
book, which, however high and by whoever wrote, ain't no more like life
than a shadow in a pool.  Try to grab that shadow, and where is it?
Just to go out after game and climb the mountains all day and come home
of an evening to sit down to a plate of bacon and eggs, and another of
the same, with coffee smoking on the little stove, and Lahoma urging on
the feast--that's more of real living than you'd get out of a big
library.  Ain't it, Bill?"

"Now WE want to talk, Brick," interposed Lahoma--"don't we, Wilfred?"

"So your cabin was built," Wilfred prompted her, "and the men took the
dugout."

"Yes--and then, oh! the most wonderful thing happened:  a family
settled in the arm of the mountain at the west end--a family that had a
woman and a baby in it--a sure-enough woman with a sweet face and of a
high grade though worked down pretty level what from hardships--and a
baby that laughed, just laughed whenever he saw me coming in the
dugout--and I was over there every day.  And that's how I got to be
like a woman, and know how to dress, and how to meet strangers without
being scared, and preside at table, and use language like this.  Other
settlers began coming into Greer, but they were far away, and Brick and
Bill don't like folks, so they stayed shut up pretty close.  But for
three years I had the mother and her baby to show me how to be a woman.
Then came the soldiers. Brick thinks a big cattle-king stood in with
Congress, and he got the soldiers sent here to drive out all the
settlers because they were beginning to farm the land instead of
letting it grow wild for the cattle.  Anyway, all the settlers were
driven out of the country--and it's been four years since I lost my
only friends in the world--except Brick and Bill.  What makes me and
Brick and Bill mad is, that the soldiers didn't have any right to drive
out the settlers, because Texas claims this country, and so does the
United States, but it's never been settled."

"But they didn't drive YOU out," Wilfred remarked inquiringly.

"You see," Brick explained simply, "we didn't want to go."

"It nearly broke Mrs. Featherby's heart to have to leave," Lahoma
added, "for they'd got a good stand of wheat and I think she liked me
'most as well as I liked her.  But Mr. Featherby came from Ohio, and he
had respect to the government, so when the soldiers said 'Go,' he
pulled up stakes."

"We ain't got no respect to nothing," Brick explained, "that stands in
the way of doing what we're a mind to.  The soldiers come to force us
out, but they changed their minds.  I reckon they knew they hadn't no
morality on their side.  Sure thing, they knowed they had but very
little safety, whilst occupying their position.  None was left but us
in this country till you cattlemen come monopolizing Heaven and earth.
Knowing we got just as much right to this cove as Uncle Sam himself, we
expect to stay here at anchor till Lahoma steams out into the big world
with sails spread.  She expects to tug us along behind her--but I don't
know, I'm afraid we'd draw heavy. Until that time comes, however, we
'lows to lay to, in this harbor. We feels sheltered.  Nothing ain't
more sheltering than knowing you have a moral right and a dependable
gun."

"So that's about all," Lahoma went on.  "These past four years, we've
just been to ourselves, with a long journey once a year to the
settlements; and all the time I had those sweet thoughts to dream over,
about the little family that used to live in the west mountain.  And
I've tried to do like Mrs. Featherby used to do, and be like she was,
and if I can make as fine a woman I needn't ask any more.  She'd been
to Europe, too, and she'd taught school in New England.  Bill Atkins is
higher up than Brick--Bill used to know Kit Carson and all those famous
pioneers, and he's been most everywhere--except in settled places.
When a boy he saw Sam Houston and ate with him, and he has heard David
Crockett with his own ears--has heard him say 'Be sure you're right,
then go ahead,' that's how far BILL has been.  But it sort of hurt
Brick's neck, and even Bill's, to look up high enough to see where Mrs.
Featherby had risen.  She was like you--right out of the big world.
She came out here because the family was awful poor.  Is that why you
left the big world?"

Wilfred shook his head.  "I'm poor enough," he said, "but it wasn't
that.  It was a girl."

Brick Willock explained, "He's got a sweetheart; he's been carrying her
letters for about two years.  He's done spoke for, Lahoma, staked out,
as a fellow might say, and squatted on."

Lahoma looked at him in breathless interest.  "A girl out in the big
world?  Completely civilized, I reckon!  Was she as old as I am?"

"Why, honey!" Brick exclaimed uneasily, "YOU ain't got no age at all,
to speak of!  What are you but a mere child?  This young man is talking
about them as has got up to be old enough to think of
sweethearting--something respectable in YEARS."

"And how old does a sweetheart have to be?" demanded Lahoma with some
displeasure.  "I feel old enough for anything, and Wilfred doesn't look
any older than the knight standing guard in THE TALISMAN.  Besides,
look at David Copperfield and Little Em'ly."

"That was child's work," retorted Brick.

"I was afraid of this," growled Bill Atkins restlessly.

Wilfred laughed out.  "Don't worry.  My eastern girl is at least
nineteen years old, and so thoroughly civilized that she thinks this
part of the world is still overrun with Indians and buffaloes.  She
wouldn't live out here for a fortune, and she wouldn't marry a man back
East without one--that's why I'm here.  I didn't have the fortune."

"Does she LOVE you, Wilfred?"  Her voice was so soft, her eyes were so
big, that Bill uttered a smothered groan, and even Brick sat up.

"She did the last time I saw her--can't say how she feels now; that's
been about two years ago."  He spoke lightly; but gazing into the
wonderful depths of Lahoma's eyes, he felt a queer sensation like a
lost heart-beat.

"Did she send you here as a kind of test?"

"Oh, no, she told me good-by and we parted forever.  Both of us were
poor,--you can't live in the city if you're poor; you can BE poor
there, but not LIVE.  By this time she's found some one with property,
I dare say--she's tremendously handsome and accomplished, and has a
very distinguished-looking mother and they have friends in
society--she'll make it all right, no doubt."  His voice was
matter-of-fact even to indifference; but for all that, he seemed to be
deeply inhaling Lahoma's freshness of morning-rose sparkling with dew.

"Does it pierce your heart to think of her marrying somebody else?" Her
voice was sweet with the dream-passion of a young girl.

"When I left home, I flung myself into the life of a cow-puncher and
did all I could to keep from thinking.  So my heart's rather callous by
this time.  I don't seem to mind like I thought I would if I should sit
down to think about it.  That's what I've avoided like the
plague--sitting down to think about it.  But I believe I could sit down
and think about it now, pretty calmly."

"Then that's what I'd do," Lahoma cried.  "I'd just face it.  She isn't
worthy of you if she'd rather have a fortune than the man she loves.
I'd just sit down and face it."

"I will!"  He had never before thought it could be easy.  It seemed
very easy, now.

"Maybe I could help you," Lahoma suggested earnestly.  "When Mrs.
Featherby lived near, I asked her all about such cases and got her
advice and experience.  Change of scene and time are the greatest
remedies.  You've had both.  Then you must tell yourself that she isn't
worthy.  And then you'll remind yourself that there are OTHER girls in
the world.  Then you keep your mind occupied,--that is a great thing.
If you come to the cove to visit us, we will try to occupy your
mind--won't we Brick?--and Bill?"

Bill looked at Wilfred glumly.  "It's too occupied now, I'm afraid."

"Bill, this is a-growing on you," Brick expostulated.  "I like the
young chap first rate.  He's open and free.  Bill, you are hampering,
at times.  I would go to my dugout if I was you, and cool my head."

"Your head'll be hot enough," growled Bill, "when this has gone too
far."

Lahoma opened her eyes wide.  "What do you mean?" she demanded,
sincerely perplexed.

"Bill," cried Brick warningly, "you're a-going to start up a fire where
they ain't even been no kindling laid."

Wilfred rose hastily.  "I should like dearly to come, and come often,"
he exclaimed, "but I couldn't force myself where I'm not wanted."

"In that case," remarked Bill inflexibly, "you're seeing me for the
last time, and may look your fill!"

Wilfred smiled at him tolerantly and turned to Willock.  "I ought to go
to my work, Brick.  I won't try to explain what this hour has meant to
me for I believe you understand.  I'm like a man crossing the desert
who finds a spring and gets enough water to last him till the next
oasis."

He held out his hand to Lahoma who had risen swiftly at these signs of
departure.  "God bless you, little girl!" he said cheerily.  "A man's
fortunate who finds such oases along his desert-trail!"

It was not Bill's gruffness, but Lahoma's charm that warned him to flee
lest he break his promise to her guardians.

"But you can't go, yet," cried Lahoma, not taking his hand, "there are
a thousand things I want to do with you that I've never had a chance to
do with anybody else--strolling, for instance.  Come and stroll--I'll
show you about the cove.  Brick and Bill don't know anything about
strolling as they do in pictures.  Hold out your arm with a crook in it
and I'll slip my hand just inside where you'll hold it soft and warm
like a bird in its nest....  Isn't his noble? And I holds back--excuse
me--I HOLD back my skirts with my other hand, and this is the way we
stroll, like an engraving out of the history of Louis the Fourteenth's
court.  Do, oh, do!"  Her bright eyes glowed into his like beckoning
stars.

"We stroll," he gravely announced, responding to the pressure of her
fingers, but at the same time feeling somewhat guilty as Bill rolled
his eyes fearfully at Brick.

When they were a few yards from the trees Lahoma whispered, "Make for
the other side of Turtle Hill.  I want to feel grown up when I do my
strolling, but I'm nothing but a little barefooted kid when Brick and
Bill are looking at me!"

Hidden by the shoulder of the granite hill island she stopped, withdrew
her hand, and stood very straight as she said, with breathless
eagerness, "Answer me quick! Wilfred:  ain't I old enough to be a
sweetheart?"

"Oh, Lahoma," he protested warmly, "please don't think of it.  Don't be
anybody's until--until I say the word.  You couldn't understand such
matters, dear, you wouldn't know the--the proper time.  I'll tell you
when the time comes."

She looked at him keenly.  "Am I to wait for a time, or for a person?
I wish you'd never met that girl back East I think you'd have filled
the bill for me, because, having always lived here in the mountains,
I've not learned to be particular.  Not but what I've seen lots of
trappers and squatters in my day, but I never wanted to stroll with
them.  I don't see why that eastern girl ever turned you loose from her
trap.  I think a man's a very wonderful thing; especially a young
man--don't you, Wilfred?"

"Not half so wonderful as you, Lahoma."  His voice vibrated with sudden
intensity.  "There's your wonderful hair, like light shining through a
brown veil ... and your eyes where your soul keeps her lights flashing
when all the rest of you is in twilight ... and your hands and feet,
four faithful little guides to the wonderful treasures that belong only
to maidenhood ... and your mouth, changing with your thoughts--an
adorable little thermometer, showing how high the smiles have risen in
your heart; a mouth so pure and sweet--"

"Hey!" shouted Bill Atkins, as he and Brick came around the angle of
the hill.  "Hi, there!  You may call that strolling, but if so, it's
because you don't know its true name, if you ask ME!"

Wilfred came to himself with a sharp indrawing of his breath. "Yes," he
stammered, somewhat dizzily, "Yes, I--I must be going, now."

She held his hand beseechingly.  "But you'll come again, won't you?
When I hold your hand, it's like grabbing at a bit of the big world."

"No, Lahoma, I'm not coming again."  His look was long and steady,
showing sudden purpose which concealed regret beneath a frank smile of
liking.

She still held his hand, her brown eyes large with entreaty.  "You WILL
come again, Wilfred!  You must come again!  Don't mind Bill. I'll have
a talk with him after you're gone.  I'll send him over to the ranch
after you.  Just say you'll come again if I send for you."

"Of course he'll come, honey," said Brick, melted by the tears that
sounded in her voice.  "He won't get huffy over a foolish old codger
like Bill Atkins.  Of course he'll come again and tell you about
street-cars and lamp-posts.  Let him go to his work now, he's been up
all night, just to get a word with you.  Let him go--he'll come back
tomorrow, I know."

Wilfred turned to Brick and looked into his eyes as he slowly released
Lahoma's hand.

"Oh!" said Brick, considerably disconcerted.  "No, I reckon he won't
come back, honey--yes, I guess he'll be busy the rest of the summer.
Well, son, put 'er there--shake!  I like you fine, just fine, and as
you can't come here to see us no more, being so busy and--and otherwise
elsewhere bound--I'm kinder sorry to see you go."

"Partings," said Bill, somewhat mollified, "are painful but necessary,
else there wouldn't be any occasion for dentists' chairs."

"That's so," Brick agreed.  "You called Lahoma an oasis.  And what is
an oasis?  Something you come up to, and go away from, and that's the
end of the story.  You don't settle down and live at a spring just
because it give you a drink when you was thirsty.  A man goes on his
way rejoicing, and Wilfred according."

Lahoma walked up to Wilfred with steady eyes.  "Are you coming back to
see me?" she asked gravely.

"No, Lahoma.  At least not for a long, long time.  I don't believe it's
good for me to forget the life I've chosen, even for a happy hour.
When I left the city, it was to drop out of the world--nobody knows
what became of me, not even my brother.  You've brought everything
back, and that isn't good for my peace of mind and so--good-bye!"

Tall and straight he stood, like a soldier whose duty it is to face
defeat; and standing thus, he fastened his eyes upon her face as if to
stamp those features in a last long look upon his heart.

"Good-by," said Lahoma; this time she did not hold out her hand. Her
face was composed, her voice quiet.  If in her eyes there was the look
of one who has been rebuffed; her pride was too great to permit a show
of pain.

Wilfred hesitated.  But what was to be done?  Solitude and homesickness
had perhaps distorted his vision; at any rate he had succumbed to the
folly against which he had been warned.  He could not accept Lahoma as
a mere child; and though, during the scene, he had repeatedly reminded
himself that she was only fifteen, her face, her voice, her form, her
manner of thought, refused the limits of childhood.  Therefore he went
away, outwardly well-content with his morning, but inwardly full of
wrath that his heart had refused the guidance of his mind.

And she had been so simple, so eager to meet him on an equal plane,
even clinging to him as to the only hope in her narrow world that might
draw her out into deeper currents of knowledge.

"I've always been a fool," he muttered savagely, as he sought his
horse.  "I was a fool about Annabel--and now I'm too big a fool to
enjoy what fortune has fairly flung in my path."  Presently he began to
laugh--it was all so ridiculous, beating a retreat because he could not
regard a fifteen-year-old girl as a little child!  He drew several
time-worn letters from his pocket and tore them into small bits that
fluttered away like snowflakes on the wind.  He had no longer a
sentimental interest in them, at all events.



CHAPTER XII

THE BIG WORLD

He did not come again.  Lahoma used to go to the hill-island, which she
called Turtle Hill because the big flattened rocks looked like turtles
that had crawled up out of the cove to sun themselves; among these
turtles she would lie, watching the open mouth of the mountain
horseshoe in the vain hope that Wilfred would appear from around the
granite wall.  Occasionally she descended to the plain and scanned the
level world, but it was pleasanter to watch from the cove because one
never knew, while in that retreat, who might be coming along the range.
On the plain, there were no illusions.

Lahoma courted illusions.  And when she knew that Wilfred Compton had
severed connections with Old Man Walker she merely exchanged one hope,
one dream, for another.  The opportunity to learn about the big world
was withdrawn; but the anticipation of one day meeting Wilfred again
was as strong as ever.  She made no secret of this expectation.

Bill Atkins sought to dismiss it effectually.  "You don't know about
the big world, Lahoma," he declared, "if you think people meet up with
each other after they've once lost touch.  If all this part of America
was blotted out of existence, people in the East wouldn't miss any ink
out of the ink-bottle."

Lahoma tossed her head.  "Maybe the world IS big," she conceded. "But
if Wilfred isn't big enough to make himself seen in it when I go
a-looking, I don't care whether I meet him again or not.  When I'm in
the big world, I expect to deal only with big people."

"I saw no bigness about HIM," Bill cried slightingly.

"If he isn't big enough to make himself seen," Lahoma serenely
returned, "I won't never--"

"You won't ever--" Bill corrected.

"I won't ever have to wear specs for strained eyes," Lahoma concluded,
smiling at Bill as if she knew why he was as he was, and willingly took
him so because he couldn't help himself.

It was Brick who heard about Wilfred's adventures on leaving the Red
River ranch, and as all three sat outside the cabin in the dusk of
evening, he retailed them as gathered from a recent trip to the corral.
That was a strange story unfolded to Lahoma's ears, a story rich with
the romance of the great West, wild in its primitive strivings and
thrilling in its realizations of countless hopes.  The narrative lost
nothing in the telling, for Brick Willock understood the people and the
instincts that moved them, and though Wilfred Compton might differ from
all in his motives and plans, he shared with all the same hardships,
the same spur to ambition.

It was now ten years since the discovery had been made that in the
western part of Indian Territory were fourteen million acres that had
never been assigned to the red man and which, therefore, were public
land, subject to homestead settlement.  As long as the western
immigrants could choose among the rich prairie-lands of Iowa, Nebraska,
Minnesota, Dakota and Kansas--and the choice was open to all, following
the agreement of the plains tribes to retire to reservations,--it was
not strange that the unassigned lands of Indian Territory should have
escaped notice, surrounded as they were by the Cherokee Strip, the
Osage and Creek countries, the Chickasaw Nation, the Wichita, Cado,
Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

But other public lands were now scarce, or less inviting, and as far
back as 1879, when Lahoma was five years old, colonies had formed in
Kansas City, in Topeka and in Texas, to move upon the Oklahoma country.
The United States troops had dispersed the "boomers," but in the
following year the indefatigable Payne succeeded in leading a colony
into the very heart of the coveted land.  It was in order to escape
arrest--for again the United States cavalry had descended on
settlers--that several wagons, among them that of Gledware's, had
driven hastily toward the Panhandle, to come to grief at the hands of
ruffians from No-Man's Land.

As Brick Willock told of Payne's other attempts to colonize the
Oklahoma country, of his arrests, of his attempts to bring his various
cases to the trial, she felt that Willock was, in a way, dealing with
her personal history, for had she not been named Lahoma in honor of
that country which her step-father had seen only to loose?  Time and
again the colonists swarmed over the border, finding their way through
Indian villages and along desolate trails to the land that belonged to
the public, but was enjoyed only by the great cattlemen; as many times,
they were driven from their newly-claimed homes by federal troops, not
without severity, and their leaders were imprisoned.

But, at last, April the twenty-second, 1889, had been appointed as the
day on which the Oklahoma country was to be opened up to settlement,
and it was to meet this event that Wilfred Compton had left Greer
County.  He was a unit in that immense throng that waited impatiently
for the hour of noon--a countless host, stretching along the north on
the boundary of the Cherokee Strip, on the south, at the edge of the
Cherokee Nation; on the east, along the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie
reservations; and on the west, blackening the extremity of the Cheyenne
and Arapaho countries.  He was one of those who, at the discharge of
the carbines of the patrolling cavalrymen, joined in the deafening
shout raised by men of all conditions and from almost every state in
the Union--a shout as of triumph over the fulfillment of a ten-years'
dream.  And, leaning forward on his pony, he was one of the army of
conquest that burst upon the desert, on foot, on horseback, and in
vehicles of every description, in the mad rush for homes in a land that
had never known the incense of the hearth or the civilizing touch of
the plow.

At noon, a wilderness, at night, a land of tents, and on the morrow, a
settled country of furrowed fields.  "Pioneer work is awful quick,
nowadays!" grumbled Bill Atkins, as Brick concluded.  "It wasn't so in
my time.  Up there in the Oklahoma country, fifty years have been
squeezed into a week's time--it's like a magician making a seed grow
and sprout and blossom right before the audience.  Lucky I came to
Greer County, Texas--I don't guess IT'LL ever be anything but sand and
a blow."

"It's a great story," Brick declared with enthusiasm.  "I reckon it's
the greatest story that America can put out, in the pioneering line.
There they had everything in twenty-four hours that used to wear out
our ancestors:  Injuns, unbroken land, no sign of life for hundreds of
miles--and just a turn of the hand and cities is a-coming up out of the
ground, and saloons and churches is rubbing shoulders, and there's talk
of getting out newspapers.  What do you think of it, honey?"

Lahoma was sitting in grave silence, her hands clasped in her lap. She
turned slowly and looked at Willock.  "Brick, I'm disappointed."

"Which?" asked Willock, somewhat taken aback.  "Where?"

"In him--in Wilfred."

"As how so?"

"Going into that wilderness-life, instead of taking his place in the
world!"

"Well, honey if he hadn't come to THIS wilderness, you'd never of saw
him."

"Yes--but he wasn't settled, and now he's settled in it.  Is that the
way to be a man?  There's all those other people to do the thing he's
doing. Then what's the use of him?"

"Ain't we in the same box?"

"Yes, and that's why I mean to get out of it, some day.  But it's
different with him.  He's chosen his box, and gone in, and shut the lid
on himself!  I'm disappointed in him.  I've been thinking him a real
man.  I guess I'm still to see what I'm looking for," added Lahoma,
shaking her head.

"We'll let it go at that," muttered Bill who was anxious to turn
Lahoma's mind from thoughts of Wilfred.  "We'll just go ahead and look
for new prospects."

"Not till I make a remark," said Willock, laying aside his pipe.
"Honey, do yon know what I mean by a vision?  It calls for a big vision
to take in a big person, and you ain't got it.  Maybe it wasn't meant
for women, or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own
foot-tracks, so no blame laid and nobody judged, according.  If you
don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and
falling to work to make it bloom like the rose, a-setting out to live
in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a
great territory, why, you ain't got a big vision.  I've got it, for I
was born in the West, and I've lived all my life, peaceable and calm,
right out here or hereabouts.  You've got to breathe western air to get
the big vision.  You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over
night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe, to know
what can be did when men is free, not hampered by set-and-bound rules
as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers.  Back East, folks is
straining themselves to make over, and improve, and polish up what they
found ready-to-hand--but here out West, we creates.  It takes a big
vision to see the bigness of the West, and you can't get no true idee
by squinting at the subject."

Lahoma did not reply, and Bill feared that under the conviction of her
friend's eloquence, she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred
Compton.  He need not have been afraid.  To her imagination, "big
people" were not living in dugouts, or tents, far from civilization;
"big people" were going to the opera every night, and riding in
splendid carriages along imposing boulevards every day. Brick and Bill
had contrived to live as well as they desired from profits on skins
obtained in the mountains and the small tract of ground they had
cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying
themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed.  She
had no great opinion of agriculture; and though she had taken part in
planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest, she had never entertained
herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work.  As to
dugouts, they had no place in her dreams of the future.  Since Wilfred
had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations that bound
her, even the thought of him was to be banished from her world,
banished absolutely.

Her day-dreams did not cease, but became more dreamy, more unreal,
since the hero of her fancies, for whom she now had no flesh-and-blood
prototype, was suggested only by her moods and her books.  As the
sun-clear days of maidenhood melted imperceptibly into summer glow and
winter spaces, the memory of Wilfred's face and voice sometimes
surprised her at unexpected turns of solitary musings.  But the face
grew less defined, the voice lost its distinctive tone, as the years
passed uninterruptedly by.

"I reckon it ain't right," said Brick Willock to Bill Atkins as they
went one morning to examine their traps before Lahoma was astir, "to
keep our little gal to ourselves as we're doing.  You're getting old,
Bill, awful old--"

"Well, damn it," growled Bill, "I guess I don't have to be told!"

"You ain't very long for this world, Bill, not in the ordinary course
of nature.  And when I've laid you to rest under the rock-pile, Lahoma
ain't going to find the variety in me that she now has in the two of
us.  Besides which, I'm in the fifties myself, and them is halves of
hundreds."

"Yes," Bill growled, "and give Lahoma time, she'll die, too. Nothing
but the mountain'll be left to look out on the plains. Lord, Brick, who
do you reckon'll be living in that cove, when we three are dead and
gone?"

"Guess I'll be worrying about something else, then."

"Do you reckon," pursued Bill, in an unwonted tone of mellowness, "that
those who come to live in our dugout will ever imagine what happy hours
we've passed there, just sitting around quiet and enjoying ourselves
and one another?"

"They wouldn't imagine YOU was enjoying of yourself, not if they was
feeding their eyes on you every day.  But I'm awful bothered about
Lahoma.  I tell you, it ain't right to keep her shut up as in a cage.
Can't you see she's pining for high society such as I ain't got it in
me to supply, and you are too cussed obstinate to display?"

"I guess that's so."  Bill drew himself stiffly up by the tree
above--they were ascending the wooded gully that extended from base to
mountain-top.

"Well, what's the hurry?  She's only seventeen years old."

"Yes, she was only seventeen years old, two years ago; but she's
nineteen, now."

Bill Atkins sank upon a rock at the foot of a bristling cedar.
"Nineteen!  Who, LAHOMA?  Then where've I been all the time?"

"You've been a-traveling along at a pretty fast clip toward your last
days, that's where you've been.  Just look at yourself!  Ain't you
always careful in making your steps as if scared of breaking something?
And now, you're out of breath!"

"It was knocked out by the thought of her being so old--but I guess
you're right.  Well, I wouldn't call her life caged-up.  The settlers
have been moving in pretty steadily, and she has friends amongst all
the families where there's women-folks.  She has her own pony, and is
gone more than suits me; and although there's no young man disposable,
we ain't fretting about that, nor her neither."

"I used to think she might be foolish about Wilfred Compton--but
Lahoma, she ain't foolish about nothing.  Nevertheless, Bill, it ain't
right.  Settlers is settlers, and what she yearns for is the big world.
I would long since of took her out to see it, but dassn't from a
liability to be catched up for divers deeds that was unlawfully charged
to me in times past.  You could have guided her along the city trails,
but was too cussed obstinate."

"She's your cousin," retorted Bill, "and it wasn't for me to act her
guardian.  Besides, did you want to lose her?  You couldn't take Lahoma
where she'd be seen and known, and expect to get her back again.  Maybe
it isn't exactly fair to keep her boarded up--but the times are
changing all that, and sorry am I to see it.  Do you know, Brick, I
once thought you and me and Lahoma could just live here in the cove
till time was no more, reading our books, and smoking our pipes, and
taking peaceful morning trips like this--to see whether we'd caught a
coyote in our traps, or a bobcat, or a skunk."

"Yes, that's all right for us; but Lahoma ain't smoking no pipe, nor is
her interest in skunks such as ours."

"Just so--but see how Greer County is getting settled up--that's what's
going to save us, Brick--civilization is coming to Lahoma, she won't
have to go out gunning after it."

"Of course I've thought of that.  I ain't got your grammar, but my mind
don't have to wait to let in an idea after it's put its clothes on.
Maybe they comes in nothing but a nightshirt, but I ain't ever knowed
YOU to think of nothing yet, that I hadn't entertained in some fashion.
Of course, civilization is a-creeping up to the mountain, and I reckon
by the time Lahoma is my age it'll be playing an organ in church.  But
she's at the age that calls for quick work--she's got the rest of her
life to settle down in.  Most all of a person's life is spent in
settling and it's befitting to lay in the foundation aforetime.  Look
at that dear girl in The Children of the Abbey, all them love-passages
and the tears she sheds--she was being a young woman!  What would that
noble book of been had that lovely creature been shut up in a cove till
nineteen year of age?  Is Lahoma going to have a chance like that
amongst these settlers?  Will she ever hear that high talk, that makes
your flesh sort of creep with pride in your race when you read it
aloud?"

"Do you want Lahoma to have a lover, Brick Willock?"

"Bill, if he is fit, I say she ought to have a chance."

"And where are you going to find the man?"

"I'm going to help Lahoma find him.  I'm like you, Bill, I hates that
lover like a snake this minute, though I ain't no idea who, where, or
what he is, or may be.  I hates him--but I ain't going to stand in
Lahoma's way.  No, sir, I 'low to meet civilization half-way.  There it
is--look!"

Willock stood erect and pointed toward the plain, where perhaps twenty
tents had been pitched within the last two weeks.  Bill gave an
unwilling glance, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and resumed
progress up the difficult defile.

Willock continued:  "Two weeks ago, there wasn't nothing there but
naked sand.  Now there's three saloons, a hardware store, a grocery, a
bank--all of 'em under canvas--and the makings of a regular town. Right
out there in the broiling sun!  Carloads of lumber and machinery is on
its way, and the stage-coach will be putting off mail there before
long.  That's how civilization is a-seeking out our little gal.  But I
means to meet it halfway."

"Oh, come on, don't say anything more about it--when I look at those
tents I can't breathe freely.  What do you gamble on--a skunk, or a
coyote, in the traps?"

"'Tain't them tents that's seeping your breath, it's pure unalloyed
age.  Yes, sir, I means to meet civilization half-way.  I've already
been prospecting.  There's a party over there in Tent City that's come
on from Chicago just from the lust of seeing pioneer-life at first
hand, people that haven't no idee of buying or settling--it's a picnic
to them.  They're camping out, watching life develop--and what's
life-and-death earnestness to others is just amusement to them.  That
there's a test of people high-up.  Real folks in the big world don't do
nothing, it takes all their time just being folks. You and me could bag
a dozen polecats whilst a fine lady was making her finger-nails ready
for the day.  And these Chicago people is that kind."

"Do you think they'll make friends with Lahoma just to suit you? The
kind of people you're talking about are more afraid of getting to know
strangers than they are of being set on by wildcats."

"They'll make friends with Lahoma, all right, and invite her home with
'em.  That's the way I 'low to set her out in the big world. Lahoma
don't know my plans and neither do they, but I was never a man to make
my plans knowed when I was going to hold up people.  Of course I'M
speaking in a figger, but in a figger I may say I've held up several,
in my day."

"THEY won't invite Lahoma to Chicago, not if they are the right sort."

"They will invite Lahoma to Chicago," retorted Willock firmly, "and
they are the right sort.  Wait and see; and when you have saw, render
due honor to your Uncle Brick."



CHAPTER XIII

A SURE-ENOUGH MAN

"Pardner, I sure am glad to see you--put 'er there again!  How are you
feeling, anyhow?  Look mighty tough and wiry, I do say; Here, Bill!"
Willock raised his voice to a powerful shout, "Bill! come and see
what's blowed in with the tumbleweed and tickle-grass.  A sure-enough
man, that's what I call him, and me to fight if any dispute's made to
the title, according."

The tall bronzed man who was leading his horse along the road entering
the mountain horseshoe, smiled with a touch of gravity in the light of
his gray eyes.  Willock found his chin more resolute, his glance more
assured and penetrating, while his step, firm and alert, told of
dauntless purpose.  He was no longer the wandering cowboy content with
a bed on the ground wherever chance might find him at night, but a
mature man who had taken root in the soil of his own acres.  Only
twenty-five or six, his features were still touched  with  the last
lingering mobility of youth; but the set of his mouth and the gleam of
his eyes hinted at years of battle against storms, droughts and
loneliness.  He was already a veteran of the prairie, despite his youth.

"Everything looks very natural!" murmured Wilfred Compton, gazing about
on the seamed walls of granite in whose crevices the bright cedars
mocked at winter's threatening hand.

"Yes, mountains is lots more natural than humans.  They just sets there
serene and indifferent not caring whether you likes their looks or not,
and they let 'er blow and let 'er snow, it's all one to them.  I reckon
when we've been dead so long that nobody could raise a dispute as to
whether we'd ever lived or not, that there same boulder what they calls
Rocking Stone will still be a-making up its mind whether to roll down
into the valley or stay where it was born.  Wilfred, if you knowed how
glad I am to see you again, you'd be sort of scared, I reckon, thinking
you'd fell amongst cannibals.  Wonder where that aged trapper is?"  He
shouted more lustily, and a bristling white head suddenly appeared on
the summit of Turtle Hill.

"Great Scott!" yelled Bill Atkins, glaring down upon the approaching
figure, "if it ain't Wilfred Compton again!  Come on, come on, I was
never as glad to see anybody in all my life!"

The young man looked at Willock somewhat dubiously.  "He's very much
altered, then, since I met him last.  I'm afraid he has a gun hidden up
there among the rocks."

"Oh, nux, nux," retorted  Willock.  "He's a-speaking fair.  Come along!"

As they ascended the winding road, Wilfred vividly recalled the day
when, from the same elevation, he had watched Lahoma buried in her
day-dreams.  A sudden turn brought the cove into view.  Lahoma was not
to be seen, but there was th

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