'Me--Smith'
by Caroline Lockhart · English · Gutenberg #27438 · 406,522 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: 'Me--Smith'
Author: Caroline Lockhart
Illustrator: Gayle Porter Hoskins
Release date: December 8, 2008 [eBook #27438]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27438
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Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'ME--SMITH' ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: "THAT LOOK IN YOUR EYES--THAT LOOK AS IF YOU HADN'T
NOTHIN' TO HIDE--IS IT TRUE?" Page 59]
"ME-SMITH"
BY
CAROLINE LOCKHART
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GAYLE HOSKINS
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1911
By J. B. Lippincott Company
Published February 15, 1911
Second printing, February 25, 1911
Third printing, March 5, 1911
Fourth printing, March 20, 1911
Fifth Printing, June 5, 1911
Sixth Printing, July 1, 1911
Seventh Printing, August 17, 1911
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "Me--Smith" 11
II. On the Alkali Hill 18
III. The Empty Chair 29
IV. A Swap in Saddle Blankets 48
V. Smith Makes Medicine with the Schoolmarm 58
VI. The Great Secret 79
VII. Cupid "Wings" a Deputy Sheriff 95
VIII. The Bug-hunter Elucidates 110
IX. Speaking Of Grasshoppers---- 123
X. Mother Love and Savage Passion Conflict 130
XI. The Best Horse 142
XII. Smith Gets "Hunks" 156
XIII. Susie's Indian Blood 162
XIV. The Slayer of Mastodons 169
XV. Where a Man Gets a Thirst 190
XVI. Tinhorn Frank Smells Money 205
XVII. Susie Humbles Herself to Smith 213
XVIII. A Bad "Hombre" 228
XIX. When The Clouds Played Wolf 240
XX. The Love Medicine of the Sioux 248
XXI. The Murderer of White Antelope 272
XXII. A Mongolian Cupid 293
XXIII. In Their Own Way 303
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"That Look in Your Eyes--That Look as if You
Hadn't Nothin' to Hide--is it True?" Frontispiece
"She's a Game Kid, All Right," Said Smith
to Himself at the Top of the Hill. 22
It Meant Death--but it was Wet!--it was Water! 196
Smith Reached for the Trailing Rope and They
Were Gone! 284
They Quirted Their Horses at Breakneck Speed
In the Direction of the Bad Lands. 308
"ME--SMITH"
I
"ME--SMITH"
A man on a tired gray horse reined in where a dim cattle-trail dropped
into a gulch, and looked behind him. Nothing was in sight. He half closed
his eyes and searched the horizon. No, there was nothing--just the same
old sand and sage-brush, hills, more sand and sage-brush, and then to the
west and north the spur of the Rockies, whose jagged peaks were white with
a fresh fall of snow. The wind was chill. He shivered, and looked to the
eastward. For the last few hours he had felt snow in the air, and now he
could see it in the dim, gray mist--still far off, but creeping toward
him.
For the thousandth time, he wondered where he was. He knew vaguely that he
was "over the line"--that Montana was behind him--but he was riding an
unfamiliar range, and the peaks and hills which are the guide-boards of
the West meant nothing to him. So far as he knew, he was the only human
being within a hundred miles. His lips drew back in a half-grin and
exposed a row of upper teeth unusually white and slightly protruding. He
was thinking of the meeting with the last person to whom he had spoken
within twenty-four hours. He closed one eye and looked up at the sun. Yes,
it was just about the same time yesterday that a dude from the English
ranch, a dude in knee breeches and shiny-topped riding boots, had galloped
confidently toward him. He had dismounted and pretended to be cinching his
saddle. When the dude was close enough Smith had thrown down on him with
his gun.
"Feller," he had said, "I guess I'll have to trade horses with you. And
fall off quick, for I'm in kind of a hurry."
The grin widened as he thought of the dude's surprised eyes and the dude's
face as he dropped out of the saddle without a word. Smith had stood his
victim with his hands above his head while he pulled the saddle from his
horse and threw it upon his own. The dude rode a saddle with a double
cinch, and the fact had awakened in the Westerner a kind of interest. He
had even felt a certain friendliness for the man he was robbing.
"Feller," he had asked, "do you come from the Mañana country?"
"From Chepstow, Monmouth County, Wales," the dude had replied, in a
shaking voice.
"Where did you get that double-rigged saddle, then?"
"Texas."
The answer had pleased Smith.
"You ain't losin' none on this deal," he had then volunteered. "This horse
that you just traded for is a looker when he is rested, and he can run
like hell. You can go your pile on him. Just burn out that lazy S brand
and run on your own. You can hold him easy, then. I like a feller that
rides a double-rigged saddle in a single-rigged country. S'long, and keep
your hands up till I'm out of range."
"Thank you," the dude had replied feebly.
When Smith had ridden for a half a mile he had turned to look behind him.
The dude was still standing with his hands high above his head.
"I wonder if he's there yet?" The man on horseback grinned.
He reached in the pocket of his mackinaw coat and took out a handful of
sugar.
"You can travel longer on it nor anything," he muttered.
He congratulated himself that he had filled his pocket from the
booze-clerk's sugar-bowl before the mix came. The act was characteristic
of him, as was the forethought which had sent him to the door to pick the
best saddle-horse at the hitching-post, before the lead began to fly.
The man suddenly realized that the mist in the east was denser, and
spreading. He jabbed the spurs into his horse and sent the jaded animal
sliding on its fetlocks down the steep and rocky trail that led into the
dry bed of a creek which in the spring flowed bank high. In the bottom he
pulled his horse to its haunches and leaned from his saddle to look at a
foot-print in a little patch of smooth sand no larger than his two hands.
The print had been made by a moccasined foot, and recently; otherwise the
wind would have wiped it out.
He threw his leg over the cantle of the saddle and stepped softly to the
ground. Dropping the reins, he looked up and down the gulch. Then he drew
his rifle from the scabbard and began to hunt for more tracks. As he
searched, his movements were no longer those of a white man. His
pantomime, stealthy, cautious, was the pantomime of the Indian. He crept
up the gulch to a point where it turned sharply. His stealth became the
stealth of the coyote. In spite of the leather soles and exaggerated high
heels of the boots he wore his movements were absolutely noiseless.
An Indian of middle age, in blue overalls, moccasins, a limp felt hat
coming far down over his braided hair, a gaily striped blanket drawn about
his shoulders, stood in an attitude of listening, carelessly holding a
cheap, single-barrelled shotgun. He had heard the horse sliding down the
trail and was waiting for it to appear on the bench above.
The stranger took in the details of the Indian's costume, but his eye
rested longest upon the gay blanket. He might need a blanket with that
snow in the air. It looked like a good blanket. It seemed to be thick and
was undoubtedly warm.
The Indian saw him the instant he rose from his hiding-place behind a huge
sage-brush. Startled, the red man instinctively half raised his gun. The
stranger gave the sign of attention, then, touching his breast and lifting
his hand slightly, told him in the sign language used by all tribes that
"his heart was right"--he was a friend.
The Indian hesitated and lowered his gun, but did not advance. The
stranger then asked him where he would find the nearest house, and whether
it was that of a white or a red man. In swift pantomime, the Indian told
him that the nearest house was the home of a "full-blood," a woman, a fat
woman, who lived five miles to the southeast, in a log cabin, on running
water.
Before he turned to go, the stranger again touched his breast and raised
his hand above his heart to reiterate his friendship. He took a half-dozen
steps, then whirled on his heel. As he did so, he brought his rifle on a
line with the Indian's back, which was toward him. Simultaneously with the
report, the Indian fell on his back on the side of the gulch. He drew up
his leg, and the stranger, thinking he had raised it for a gun-rest,
riddled him with bullets.
The white man's bright blue eyes gleamed; the pupils were like pin-points.
The grin which disclosed his protruding teeth was like the snarl of a dog
before it snaps. The expression of the man's face was that of animal
ferocity, pure and simple. He edged up cautiously, but there was no
further movement from the Indian. He had been dead when he fell. The white
man gave a short laugh when he realized that the raising of the leg had
been only a muscular contraction. To save the blanket from the blood which
was soiling it, he tore it from the limp, unresisting shoulders, and
rubbed it in the dirt to obliterate the stain. He cursed when he saw that
a bullet had torn in it two jagged, tell-tale holes.
He glanced at the Indian's moccasins, then, stooping, ripped one off. He
examined it with interest. It was a Cree moccasin. The Indian was far from
home. He examined the centre seam: yes, it was sewed with deer-sinew.
"The Crees can tan to beat the world," he muttered, "but I hates the shape
of the Cree moccasin. The Piegans make better." He tossed it from him
contemptuously and picked up the shotgun.
"No good." He threw it down and straightened the Indian's head with the
toe of his boot. "I despises to lie cramped up, myself."
Returning to his horse, he removed his saddle, and folded the Indian's
blanket inside of his own. Then he recinched his saddle, and turned his
horse's head to the southeast, where "the full-blood--the woman, the fat
woman--lived in a log cabin by running water."
He glanced over his shoulder as he spurred his horse to a gallop.
"I'm a killer, me--Smith," he said, and grinned.
II
ON THE ALKALI HILL
There was at least an hour and a half of daylight left when Smith struck a
wagon-road. He looked each way doubtfully. The woman's house was quite as
likely to be to the right as to the left; there was no way of telling.
While he hesitated, his horse lifted its ears. Smith also thought he heard
voices. Swinging his horse to the right, he rode to the edge of the bench
where the road made a steep and sudden drop.
At the bottom of the hill he saw a driver on the spring-seat of a round-up
wagon urging two lean-necked and narrow-chested horses up the hill. They
were smooth-shod, and, the weight of the wagon being out of all proportion
to their strength, they fell often in their futile struggles. At the side
of the road near the top of the hill the water oozed from an alkali
spring, which kept the road perpetually muddy. The horses were straining
every nerve and muscle, their eyes bulging and nostrils distended, and
still the driver, loudmouthed and vacuously profane, lashed them
mercilessly with the stinging thongs of his leather whip. Smith, from the
top of the hill, watched him with a sneer on his face.
"He drives like a Missourian," he muttered.
He could have helped the troubled driver, knowing perfectly well what to
do, but it would have entailed an effort which he did not care to make. It
was nothing to him whether the round-up wagon got up the hill that
night--or never.
Smith thought the driver was alone until he began to back the team to rush
the hill once more. Then he heard angry exclamations coming from the rear
of the wagon--exclamations which sounded not unlike the buzzing of an
enraged bumble-bee. He stretched his neck and saw that which suggested an
overgrown hoop-snake rolling down the hill. At the bottom a little
mud-coated man stood up. The part of his face that was visible above his
beard was pale with anger. His brown eyes gleamed behind mud-splashed
spectacles.
"Oscar Tubbs," he demanded, "why did you not tell me that you were about
to back the wagon?"
"I would have did it if I had knowed myself that the team were goin' to
back," replied Tubbs, in the conciliatory tone of one who addresses the
man who pays him his wages.
The man in spectacles groaned. "Three inexcusable errors in one sentence.
Oscar Tubbs, you are hopeless!"
"Yep," replied that person resignedly; "nobody never could learn me
nothin'. Onct I knowed----"
"Stop! We have no time for a reminiscence. Have you any reason to believe
that we can get up this hill to-night?"
"No chanst of it. These buzzard-heads has drawed every poun' they kin
pull. But I has some reason to believe that if you don't hist your hoofs
out'n that mud-hole, you'll bog down. You're up to your pant-leg now. Onct
I knowed----"
The little man threw out his hand in a restraining gesture, and Tubbs,
foiled again, closed his lips and watched his employer stand back on one
leg while he pulled the other out of the mud with a long, sucking sound.
"What for an outfit is that, anyhow?" mused Smith, watching the
proceedings with some interest. "He looks like one of them bug-hunters.
He's got a pair of shoulders on him like a drink of water, and his legs
look like the runnin'-gears of a katydid."
So intently were they all engaged in watching the man's struggles that no
one observed a girl on a galloping horse until she was almost upon them.
She sat her sturdy, spirited pony like a cowboy. She was about sixteen,
with a suggestion of boyishness in her appearance. Her brown hair, worn in
a single braid, was bleached to a lighter shade on top, as if she rode
always with bared head. Her eyes were gray, in curious contrast to a tawny
skin. She was slight to scrawniness, and, one might have thought,
insufficiently clad for the time of year.
"Bogged down, pardner?" she inquired in a friendly voice, as she rode up
behind and drew rein. "I've been in that soap-hole myself. Here, ketch to
my pommel, and I'll snake you out."
Smiling dubiously he gripped the pommel. The pony had sunk to its knees,
and as it leaped to free itself the little man's legs fairly snapped in
the air.
"I thank you, Miss," he said, removing his plaid travelling cap as he
dropped on solid ground. "That was really quite an adventure."
"This mud is like grease," said the girl.
"Onct I knowed some mud----" began the driver, but the little man,
ignoring him, said:
"We are in a dilemma, Miss. Our horses seem unable to pull our wagon up
the hill. Night is almost upon us, and our next camping spot is several
miles beyond."
"This is the worst grade in the country," replied the girl. "A team that
can haul a load up here can go anywhere. What's the matter with that
fellow up there? Why don't he help?"--pointing to Smith.
"He has made no offer of assistance."
"He must be some Scissor-Bill from Missouri. They all act like that when
they first come out."
"Onct some Missourians I knowed----"
"Oscar Tubbs, if you attempt to relate another reminiscence while in my
employ, I shall make a deduction from your wages. I warn you--I warn you
in the presence of this witness. My overwrought nerves can endure no more.
Between your inexpiable English and your inopportune reminiscences, I am a
nervous wreck!" The little man's voice ended on high C.
"All right, Doc, suit yourself," replied Tubbs, temporarily subdued.
"And in Heaven's name, I entreat, I implore, do not call me 'Doc'!"
"Sorry I spoke, Cap."
The little man threw up both hands in exasperation.
"Say, Mister," said the girl curtly to Tubbs, "if you'll take that hundred
and seventy pounds of yourn off the wagon and get some rocks and block the
wheels, I guess my cayuse can help some." As she spoke, she began
uncoiling the rawhide riata which was tied to her saddle.
"I appreciate the kindness of your intentions, Miss, but I cannot permit
you to put yourself in peril." The little man was watching her
preparations with troubled eyes.
"No peril at all. It's easy. Croppy can pull like the devil. Wait till you
see him lay down on the rope. That yap up there at the top of the hill
could have done this for you long ago. Here, Windy"--addressing
Tubbs--"tie this rope to the X, and make a knot that will hold."
[Illustration: "SHE'S A GAME KID, ALL RIGHT," SAID SMITH TO HIMSELF AT
THE TOP OF THE HILL.]
The girl's words and manner inspired confidence. Interest and relief were
in the face of the little man standing at the side of the road.
"Now, Windy, hand me the rope. I'll take three turns around my
saddle-horn, and when I say 'go' you see that your team get down in their
collars."
"She's a game kid, all right," said Smith to himself at the top of the
hill.
When the sorrel pony at the head of the team felt the rope grow taut on
the saddle-horn, it lay down to its work. The grit and muscle of a dozen
horses seemed concentrated in the little cayuse. It pulled until every
vein and cord in its body appeared to stand out beneath its skin. It lay
down on the rope until its chest almost touched the ground. There was a
look of determination that was almost human in its bright, excited eyes as
it strained and struggled on the slippery hillside with no word of urging
from the girl. She was standing in one stirrup, one hand on the cantle,
the other on the pommel, watching everything with keen eyes. She issued
orders to Tubbs like a general, telling him when to block the wheels, when
to urge the exhausted team to greater efforts, when to relax. Nothing
escaped her. She and the little sorrel knew their work. As the man at the
roadside watched the gallant little brute struggle, literally inch by
inch, up the terrible grade he felt himself choking with excitement and
making inarticulate sounds. At last the rear wheels of the wagon lurched
over the hill and stood on level ground, while the horses, with spreading
legs and heaving sides, gasped for breath.
"Awful tired, ain't you, Mister?" the girl asked dryly, of the stranger on
horseback, as she recoiled her rope with supple wrist and tied it again to
the saddle by the buckskin thongs.
"Plumb worn to a frazzle," Smith replied with cool impudence, as he looked
her over in much the same manner as he would have eyed a heifer on the
range. "I was whipped for working when I was a boy, and I've always
remembered."
"It must be quite a ride--from the brush back there in Missouri where you
was drug up."
"I ranges on the Sundown slope," he replied shortly.
"They have sheep-camps over there, then?"
Again the slurring insinuation pricked him.
"Oh, I can twist a rope and ride a horse fast enough to keep warm."
"So?"--the inflection was tantalizing. "Was that horse gentled for your
grandmother?"
He eyed her angrily, but checked the reply on his tongue.
"Say, girl, can you tell me where I can find that fat Injun woman's tepee
who lives around here?"
"You mean my mother?"
He looked at her with new interest.
"Does she live in a log cabin on a crick?"
"She did about an hour ago."
"Is your mother a widder?"
"Lookin' for widders?"
"I likes widders. It happens frequent that widders are sociable
inclined--especially if they are hard up," he added insolently.
"Oh, you're ridin' the grub-line?" Her insolence equalled his own.
"Not yet;" and he took from his pocket a thick roll of banknotes.
"Blood money? Some sheep-herder's month's pay, I guess."
"You're a good guesser."
"Not very--you're easy."
The girl's dislike for Smith was as unreasoning and violent as was her
liking for the excitable little man whom she had helped up the hill, and
whose wagon was now rumbling close at her horse's heels.
They all travelled together in silence until, after a mile and a half on
the flat, the road sloped gradually toward a creek shadowed by willows. On
the opposite side of the creek were a ranch-house, stables, and corrals,
the extent of which brought a glint of surprise to Smith's eyes.
"That's where the widder lives who might be sociable inclined if she was
hard up," said the girl, with a sneer which made Smith's fingers itch to
choke her. "Couldn't coax you to stop, could I?"
"I aims to stay," Smith replied coolly.
"Sure--it won't cost you nothin'."
The girl waited for the wagon, and, with a change of manner in marked
contrast to her impudent attitude toward Smith, invited the little man to
spend the night at the ranch.
"We should not be intruders?" he asked doubtfully.
"You won't feel lonesome," she answered with a laugh. "We keep a kind of
free hotel."
"Colonel, I cakalate we better lay over here," broke in Tubbs.
His employer winced at this new title, but nodded assent; so they all
forded the shallow stream and entered the dooryard together.
"Mother!" called the girl.
One of the heavy plank doors of the long log-house opened, and a short
woman, large-hipped, full-busted--in appearance a typical blanket
squaw--stood in the doorway. Her thick hair was braided Indian fashion,
her fingers adorned with many rings. The wide girdle about her waist was
studded with brass nail-heads, while gaily-beaded moccasins covered her
short, broad feet. Her eyes were soft and luminous, like an animal's when
it is content; but there was savage passion too in their dark depths.
"This is my mother," said the girl briefly. "I am Susie MacDonald."
"My name is Peter McArthur, madam."
The little man concealed his surprise as best he could, and bowed.
The girl, quick to note his puzzled expression, explained laconically:
"I'm a breed. My father was a white man. You're on the reservation when
you cross the crick."
Recovering himself, the stranger said politely:
"Ah, MacDonald--that good Scotch name is a very familiar one to me. I had
an uncle----"
"I go show dem where to turn de horses," interrupted the Indian woman, to
whom the conversation was uninteresting. So, without ceremony, she padded
away in her moccasins, drawing her blanket squaw-fashion across her face
as she waddled down the path.
At the mission the woman had obtained the rudiments of an education.
There, too, she had learned to cut and make a dress, after a crude,
laborious fashion, and had acquired the ways of the white people's
housekeeping. She was noted for the acumen which she displayed in
disposing of the crop from her extensive hay-ranch to the neighboring
white cattlemen; and MacDonald, the big, silent Scotch MacDonald who had
come down from the north country and married her before the reservation
priest, was given the credit for having instilled into her some of his own
shrewdness and thrift.
In the corral the Indian woman came upon Smith. He turned his head slowly
and looked at her. For a second, two, three seconds, or more, they looked
into each other's eyes. His gaze was confident, masterful, compelling;
hers was wondering, until finally she dropped her eyes in the submissive,
modest, half-shy way of Indian women.
Smith moistened his short upper lip with the tip of his tongue, while the
shadow of a smile lurked at the corner of his mouth. He turned to his
saddle, again, and without speaking, she watched him until he had gone
into the barn. His saddle lay on the ground, half covering his blankets.
Something in this heap caught the woman's eyes and held them. Swooping
forward, she caught a protruding corner between her thumb and finger and
pulled a gay, striped blanket from the rest. Lifting it to her nose, she
smelled it. Smith saw the act as he came out of the door, but there was
neither consternation nor fear in his face. Smith knew Indian women.
III
THE EMPTY CHAIR
Peter McArthur came into the big living-room of the ranch-house bearing
tenderly in his arms a long brown sack. He set it upon a chair, and, as he
patted it affectionately, he said to the Indian woman in explanation:
"These are some specimens which I have been fortunate enough to find in a
limestone formation in the country through which we have just passed. No
doubt you will be amused, madam, but the wealth of Croesus could not buy
from me the contents of this canvas sack."
"I broke a horse for that son-of-a-gun onct. He owes me a dollar and six
bits for the job yet," remarked Tubbs.
The fire of enthusiasm died in McArthur's eyes as they rested upon his
man.
"What for a prospect do you aim to open up in a limestone formation?"
Smith, tipped on the rear legs of his chair, with his head resting
comfortably against the unbleached muslin sheeting which lined the walls,
winked at Tubbs as he asked the question.
"'What for a prospect'?" repeated McArthur.
"Yes, 'prospect'--that's what I said. You say you've got your war-bag full
of spec'mens."
McArthur laughed heartily.
"Ah, my dear sir, I understand. You are referring to mines--to mineral
specimens. These are the specimens of which I am speaking."
Opening the sack, McArthur held up for inspection what looked to be a lump
of dried mud.
"This is a magnificent specimen of the crustacean period," he declared.
The Indian woman looked from the prized object to his animated face; then,
with puzzled eyes, she looked at Smith, who touched his forehead with his
finger, making a spiral, upward gesture which in the sign language says
"crazy."
The woman promptly gathered up the rag rug she was braiding and moved to a
bench in the farthermost corner of the room.
"I can get you a wagon-load of chunks like that."
"Oh, my dear sir----"
"Smith's my name."
"But, Mr. Smith----"
"I trusts no man that 'Misters' me," Smith scowled. "Every time I've ever
been beat in a deal, it's been by some feller that's called me 'Mister.'
Jest Smith suits me better."
"Certainly, if you prefer," amicably replied McArthur, although
unenlightened by the explanation.
He replaced his specimen and tied the sack, convinced that it would be
useless to explain to this person that fossils like this were not found
by the wagon-load; that perhaps in the entire world there was not one in
which the branchiocardiac grooves were so clearly defined, in which the
emostigite and the ambulatory legs were so perfectly preserved.
He seemed a singular person, this Smith. McArthur was not sure that he
fancied him.
"Say, Guv'ner, what business do you follow, anyhow?" Tubbs asked the
question in the tone of one who really wanted to get at the bottom of a
matter which had troubled him. "Air you a bug-hunter by trade, or what?
I've hauled you around fer more'n a month now, and ain't figgered it out
what you're after. We've dug up ant-hills and busted open most of the
rocks between here and the North Fork of Powder River, but I've never seen
you git anything yet that anybuddy'd want."
In the beginning of their tour, Tubbs's questions and caustic comment
would have given McArthur offense, but a longer acquaintance had taught
him that none was intended; that his words were merely those of a man
entirely without knowledge upon any subject save those which had come
under his direct observation. While Tubbs frequently exasperated him
beyond expression, he found at the same time a certain fascination in the
man's incredible ignorance. In many respects his mind was like that of a
child, and his horizon as narrow as McArthur's own, though his companion
did not suspect it. The little scientist saw life from the viewpoint of a
small college and a New England village; Tubbs knew only the sage-brush
plains.
McArthur now replied dryly, but without irritation:
"My real trade--'job,' if you prefer--is anthropology. Strictly speaking,
I might, I think, be called an anthropologist."
"Gawd, feller!" ejaculated Smith in mock dismay. "Don't tip your hand like
that. I'm a killer myself, but I plays a lone game. I opens up to no man
or woman livin'."
Tubbs looked slightly ashamed of his employer.
"Pardon me?"
"I say, never give nobody the cinch on you. Many a good man's tongue has
hung him."
McArthur studied Smith's unsmiling face in perplexity, not at all sure
that he was not in earnest.
They sat in silence after this, even Tubbs being too hungry to indulge in
reminiscence.
The odor of frying steak filled the room, and the warmth from the round
sheet-iron stove gave Smith, in particular, a delicious sense of comfort.
He felt as a cat on a comfortable cushion must feel after days and nights
of prowling for food and shelter. The other two men, occupied with their
own thoughts, closed their eyes; but not so Smith. Nothing, to the
smallest detail, escaped him. He appraised everything with as perfect an
appreciation of its value as an auctioneer.
Through the dining-room door which opened into the kitchen, he could see
the kitchen range--a big one--the largest made for private houses. Smith
liked that. He liked things on a big scale. Besides, it denoted
generosity, and he had come to regard a woman's kitchen as an index to her
character. He distinctly approved of the big meat-platter upon which the
Chinese cook was piling steak. He eyed the mongrel dog lying at the Indian
woman's feet, and noted that its sides were distended with food. He was
prejudiced against, suspicious of, a woman who kept lean dogs.
In the same impersonal way in which he eyed her belongings, he looked at
the woman who owned it all. She was far too stout to please his taste, but
he liked her square shoulders and the thickness of them; also her hair,
which was long for an Indian woman's. She was too short in the body. He
wondered if she rode. He had a peculiar aversion for women short in the
body who rode on horseback. This woman could love--all Indian women can do
that, as Smith well knew--love to the end, faithfully, like dogs.
In the general analysis of his surroundings, Smith looked at Tubbs, openly
sneering as he eyed him. He was like a sheep-dog that never had been
trained. And McArthur? Innocent as a yearling calf, and honest as some
sky-pilots.
"Glub's piled!" yelled the cook from the kitchen door. "Come an' git it."
Tubbs all but fell off his chair.
At the back door the cook hammered on a huge iron triangle with a poker,
in response to which sound a motley half-dozen men filed from a nearby
bunk-house at a gait very nearly resembling a trot.
The long dining-table was covered with a red table-cloth, and at each end
piles of bread and fried steak rose like monuments. At each place there
was a platter, and beside it a steel knife, a fork, and a tin spoon.
The bunk-house crowd wasted no time in ceremony. Poising their forks above
the meat-platter in a candid search for the most desirable piece, they
alternately stabbed chunks of steak and bread.
Their platters once loaded with a generous sample of all the food in
sight, they fell upon it with unconcealed relish. Eating, McArthur
observed, was a business; there was no time for the amenities of social
intercourse until the first pangs of hunger were appeased. The Chinese
cook, too, interested him as he watched him shuffling over the hewn plank
floor in his straw sandals. A very different type, this swaggering
Celestial, from the furtive-eyed Chinamen of the east. His tightly coiled
cue was as smooth and shining as a king-snake, his loose blouse was
immaculate, and the flippant voice in which he demanded in each person's
ear, "Coffee? Milk?" was like a challenge. Whatever the individual's
choice might be, he got it in a torrent in his stone-china cup.
There was no attempt at conversation, and only the clatter and rattle of
knives, forks, and dishes was heard until a laugh from an adjoining room
broke the silence--a laugh that was mirthless, shrill, and horrible.
McArthur sent a startled glance of inquiry about the table. The laugh was
repeated, and the sound was even more wild and maniacal. The little man
was shocked at the grin which he noted upon each face.
"She ought to take a feather and ile her voice," observed a guest known as
"Meeteetse Ed."
McArthur could not resist saying indignantly:
"The unfortunate are to be pitied, my dear sir."
"This is jest a mild spasm she's havin' now. You ought to hear her when
she's warmed up."
McArthur was about to administer a sharper rebuke when the door opened and
Susie came out.
"How's that for a screech?" she demanded triumphantly.
"You'd sure make a bunch of coyotes take fer home," Meeteetse Ed replied
flatteringly.
"You have come in my way not once or twice, but thrice; and now you die!
Ha! Ha!" Reaching for a spoon, Susie stabbed Meeteetse Ed on the second
china button of his flannel shirt.
"I'd rather die than have you laff in my ear like that," declared
Meeteetse.
"Next time I'm goin' to learn a comical piece."
"Any of 'em's comical enough," replied a husky voice from the far end of
the table. "I broke somethin' inside of me laffin' at that one about your
dyin' child."
"I don't care," Susie answered, unabashed by criticism. "Teacher says I've
got quite a strain of pathos in me."
"You ought to do somethin' for it," suggested a new voice. "Why don't you
bile up some Oregon grape-root? That'll take most anything out of your
blood."
"Or go to Warm Springs and get your head examined." This voice was
Smith's.
"Could they help _you_ any?" The girl's eyes narrowed and there was
nothing of the previous good-natured banter in her shrill tones.
Smith flushed under the shout of mocking laughter which followed. He tried
to join in it, but the glitter of his blue eyes betrayed his anger.
The incident sobered the table-full, and silence fell once more, until
McArthur, feeling that an effort toward conversation was a duty he owed
his hostess, cleared his throat and inquired pleasantly:
"Have any fragments ever been found in that red formation which I observed
to the left of us, which would indicate that this vicinity was once the
home of the mammoth dinosaur?"
Too late he realized that the question was ill-advised. As might be
expected, it was Tubbs who broke the awkward silence.
"Didn't look to me, as I rid along, that it ever were the home of
anybuddy. A homestid's no good if you can't git water on it."
McArthur hesitated, then explained: "The dinosaur was a prehistoric
reptile," adding modestly, "I once had the pleasure of helping to restore
an armored dinosaur."
"If ever I gits a rope on one of them things, I'll box him up and ship him
on to you," said Tubbs generously. Then he inquired as an afterthought:
"Would he snap or chaw me up a-tall?"
"What's a prehysteric reptile?" interrupted Susie.
"This particular reptile was a big snake, with feet, that lived here when
this country was a marsh," McArthur explained simply, for Susie's
benefit.
The guests exchanged incredulous glances, but it was Meeteetse Ed who
laughed explosively and said:
"Why, Mister, they ain't been a sixteenth of an inch of standin' water on
this hull reserve in twenty year."
"Better haul in your horns, feller, when you're talkin' to a real prairie
man." Smith's contemptuous tone nettled McArthur, but Susie retorted for
him.
"Feller," mocked Susie, "looks like you're mixed. You mean when he's
talkin' to a Yellow-back. No real prairie man packs a chip on his shoulder
all the time. That buttermilk you was raised on back there in Missoury has
soured you some."
Again an angry flush betrayed Smith's feeling.
"A Yellow-back," Susie explained with gusto in response to McArthur's
puzzled look, "is one of these ducks that reads books with
buckskin-colored covers, until he gets to thinkin' that he's a Bad Man
himself. This here country is all tunnelled over with the graves of
Yellow-backs what couldn't make their bluffs stick; fellers that just knew
enough to start rows and couldn't see 'em through."
"Generally," said Smith evenly, as he stared unblinkingly into Susie's
eyes, "when I starts rows, I sees 'em through."
"And any time," Susie answered, staring back at him, "that you start a row
on _this_ ranch, you've _got_ to see it through."
The grub-liners raised their eyes in surprise, for there was unmistakable
ill-feeling in her voice. It was unlike her, this antagonistic attitude
toward a stranger, for, as they all knew, her hospitality was unlimited,
and every passer-by whose horse fed at the big hayrack was regarded and
treated as a welcome friend.
There was rarely malice behind the sharp personalities which she flung at
random about the table. Knowing no social distinctions, Susie was no
respecter of persons. She chaffed and flouted the man who wintered a
thousand head of cattle with the same impartiality with which she gibed
his blushing cowpuncher. Her good-nature was a byword, as were her
generosity and boyish daring. Susie MacDonald was a local celebrity in her
way, and on the big hay-ranch her lightest word was law.
But the mere presence of this new-comer seemed to fill her with
resentment, making of her an irrepressible young shrew who gloated openly
in his angry confusion.
"Speakin' of Yellow-backs," said Meeteetse, with the candid intent of
being tactful, "reminds me of a song a pardner of mine wrote up about 'em
once. Comical? _T'--t'--t'--!_" He wagged his head as if he had no words
in which to describe its incomparable humor. "He had another song that was
a reg'lar tear-starter: 'Whar the Silver Colorady Wends Its Way.' Ever
hear it? It's about a feller that buried his wife by the silver Colorady,
and turned outlaw. This pardner of mine used to beller every time he sung
it. He cried like he was a Mormon, and he hadn't no more wife than a jack
rabbit."
"Some songs is touchin'," agreed Arkansaw Red.
"This was," declared Meeteetse. "How she faded day by day, till a pale,
white corp' she lay! If I hadn't got this cold on me----"
"I hate to see you sufferin', Meeteetse, but if it keeps you from
warblin'----"
He ignored Susie's implication, and went on serenely:
"Looks like it's settled on me for life, and it all comes of tryin' not to
be a hog."
"I hope it'll be a lesson to you," said Susie soberly.
"That there Bar C cowpuncher, Babe, comes over the other night, and, the
bunk-house bein' full, I offers him half my blankets. I never put in such
a night since I froze to death on South Pass. For fair, I'd ruther sleep
with a two-year-ole steer--couldn't kick no worse than that Babe. Why them
blankets was in the air more'n half the time, with him pullin' his way,
and me snatchin' of 'em back. Finally I gits a corner of a soogan in my
teeth, and that way I manages a little sleep. I vows I'd ruther be a hog
and git a night's rest than take in such a turrible bed-feller as him."
Apropos of the restless Babe, one James Padden observed: "They say he's
licked more'n half the Bar C outfit."
"Lick 'em!" exclaimed Meeteetse, with enthusiasm. "Why, he could eat 'em!
He jest tapped me an easy one and nigh busted my jaw. If he ever reely
hit you with that fist of his'n, it ud sink in up to the elbow. I ast him
once: 'Babe,' I says, 'how big are you anyhow?' 'Big?' he says surprised.
'I ain't big. I'm the runt of the family. Pa was thirty-two inches between
the eyes, and they fed him with a shovel.'"
Susie giggled at some thought, and then inquired:
"Did anybody ever see that horse he's huntin'? He says it's a two-year-old
filly that he thinks the world of. It's brown, with a star in its
forehead, and one hip is knocked down. He never hunts anywhere except on
that road past the school-house, and he stops at the pump each way--goin'
and comin'. I never saw anybody with such a thirst. He looks in the window
while he's drinkin', and swallows a gallon of water at a time, and don't
know it."
"Love is a turrible disease." Tubbs spoke with the emphasis of conviction.
"It's worse'n lump-jaw er blackleg. It's dum nigh as bad as glanders. It's
ketchin', too, and I holds that anybody that's got it bad ought to be
dipped and quarantined. I knowed a feller over in Judith Basin what
suffered agonies with it for two months, then shot hisself. There was
seven of 'em tyin' their horses to the same Schoolmarm's hitchin'-post."
"Take a long-geared Schoolmarm in a woolly Tam-o'-shanter, and she's a
reg'lar storm-centre," vouchsafed the husky voice of "Banjo" Johnson.
"They is! They is!" declared Meeteetse, with more feeling than the
occasion seemed to warrant.
The knob of a door adjoining the dining-room turned, and the grub-liners
straightened in their chairs. Susie's eyes danced with mischief as she
leaned toward Meeteetse and asked innocently:
"They is _what_?"
But with the opening of the door the voluble Meeteetse seemed to be
stricken dumb.
As a young woman came out, Smith stared, and instinctively McArthur half
rose from his chair. Believing his employer contemplated flight, Tubbs
laid a restraining hand upon his coat-tail, while inadvertently he turned
his knife in his mouth with painful results.
The young woman who seated herself in one of the two unoccupied chairs was
not of the far West. Her complexion alone testified to this fact, for the
fineness and whiteness of it were conspicuous in a country where the
winter's wind and burning suns of summer tan the skins of men and women
alike until they resemble leather in color and in texture. Had this young
woman possessed no other good feature, her markedly fine complexion alone
would have saved her from plainness. But her thick brown hair, glossy, and
growing prettily about her temples, was equally attractive to the men who
had been used to seeing only the straight, black hair of the Indian women,
and Susie's sun-bleached pigtail, which, as Meeteetse took frequent
occasion to remind her, looked like a hair-cinch. Her eyes, set rather too
far apart for beauty, were round, with pupils which dilated until they all
but covered the blue iris; the eyes of an emotional nature, an imaginative
mind. Her other features, though delicate, were not exceptional, but the
_tout ensemble_ was such that her looks would have been considered above
the average even in a country where pretty girls were plentiful. In her
present surroundings, and by contrast with the womenfolk about her, she
was regarded as the most beautiful of her sex. Her manner, reserved to the
point of stiffness, and paralyzing, as it did, the glibbest masculine
tongue among them, was also looked upon as the acme of perfection and all
that was desirable in young ladyhood; each individual humbly admitting
that while he never before had met a real lady, he knew one when he saw
her.
The young woman returned McArthur's bow with a friendly smile, his action
having at once placed him as being "different." Noting the fact, the
grub-liners resolved not to be outdone in future in a mere matter of
bows.
While nearly every arm was outstretched with an offer of food, Susie
leaned forward and whispered ostentatiously behind her hand to Smith:
"Don't you make any cracks. That's the Schoolmarm."
"I've been around the world some," Smith replied curtly.
"The south side of Billings ain't the world."
It was only a random shot, as she did not know Billings or any other town
save by hearsay, but it made a bull's-eye. Susie knew it by the startled
look which she surprised from him, and Smith could have throttled her as
she snickered.
"Mister McArthur and Mister Tubbs, I'll make you acquainted with Miss
Marshall."
With elaborate formality of tone and manner, Susie pointed at each
individual with her fork while mentioning them by name.
"Miss Marshall," McArthur murmured, again half rising.
"Much obliged to meet you," said Tubbs heartily as, bowing in imitation of
his employer, he caught the edge of his plate on the band of his trousers
and upset it.
Everybody stopped eating during this important ceremony, and now all
looked at Smith to see what form his acknowledgment of the coveted
introduction to the Schoolmarm would take.
Smith in turn looked expectantly at Susie, who met his eyes with a mocking
grin.
"Anything I can reach for you, Mister Smith?" she inquired. "Looks like
you're waitin' for something."
Smith's face and the red table-cloth were much the same shade as he
looked annihilation at the little half-breed imp.
Each time that Dora Marshall raised her eyes, they met those of Smith.
There was nothing of impertinence in his stare; it was more of awe--a kind
of fascinated wonder--and she found herself speculating as to who and what
he was. He was not a regular "grub-liner," she was sure of that, for he
was as different in his way as McArthur. He had a personality, not exactly
pleasant, but unique. Though he was not uncommonly tall, his shoulders
were thick and broad, giving the impression of great strength. His jaw was
square, but it evidenced brutality rather than determination. His nose, in
contrast to the intelligence denoted by his high, broad forehead, was
mediocre, inconsequential, the kind of a nose seldom seen on the person
who achieves. The two features were those of the man who conceives big
things, yet lacks the force to execute them.
His eyes were unpleasantly bloodshot, but whether from drink or the alkali
dust of the desert, it was impossible to determine; and when Susie prodded
him they had in them all the vicious meanness of an outlaw bronco. His
expression then held nothing but sullen vindictiveness, while every trait
of a surly nature was suggested by his voice and manner.
During the Schoolmarm's covert study of him, he laughed unexpectedly at
one of Meeteetse Ed's sallies. The effect was little short of marvellous;
it completely transformed him. An unlooked-for dimple deepened in one
cheek, his eyes sparkled, his entire countenance radiated for a moment a
kind of boyish good-nature which was indescribably winning. In the brief
space, whatever virtues he possessed were as vividly depicted upon his
face as were his unpleasant characteristics when he was displeased. So
marked, indeed, was his changed expression, that Susie burst out with her
usual candor as she eyed him:
"Mister, you ought to laugh all the time."
Contributing but little toward the conversation, and that little chiefly
in the nature of flings at Susie, Smith was yet the dominant figure at the
table. While he antagonized, he interested, and although his insolence was
no match for Susie's self-assured impudence, he still impressed his
individuality upon every person present.
He was studied by other eyes than Dora's and Susie's. Not one of the looks
which he had given the former had escaped the Indian woman. With the
Schoolmarm's coming, she had seen herself ignored, and her face had grown
as sullen as Smith's own, while the smouldering glow in her dark eyes
betrayed jealous resentment.
"Have a cookie?" urged Susie hospitably, thrusting a plate toward Tubbs.
"Ling makes these 'specially for White Antelope."
"No, thanks, I've et hearty," declared Tubbs, while McArthur shuddered.
"I've had thousands."
"Why, where is White Antelope?" Susie looked in surprise at the vacant
chair, and asked the question of her mother.
Involuntarily Smith's eyes and those of the Indian woman met. He read
correctly all that they contained, but he did not remove his own until her
eyelids slowly dropped, and with a peculiar doggedness she drawled:
"He go way for l'il visit; 'bout two, t'ree sleeps maybe."
IV
A SWAP IN SADDLE BLANKETS
"Madam," said McArthur, intercepting the Indian woman the next morning
while she was on her way from the spring with a heavy pail, "I cannot
permit you to carry water when I am here to do it for you."
In spite of her surprised protest, he gently took the bucket from her
hand.
"Look at that dude," said Smith contemptuously, viewing the incident
through the living-room window. "Queerin' hisself right along. No more
_sabe_ than a cotton-tail rabbit. That's the worse thing he could do.
Feller"--turning to Tubbs--"if you want to make a winnin' with a woman,
you never want to fetch and carry for her."
"I knows it," acquiesced Tubbs. "Onct I was a reg'lar doormat fer one, and
I only got stomped on fer it."
"I can wrangle Injuns to a fare-ye-well," Smith continued. "Over on the
Blackfoot I was the most notorious Injun wrangler that ever jumped up;
and, feller, on the square, I never run an errant for one in my life."
"It's wrong," agreed Tubbs.
"There's that dude tryin' to make a stand-in, and spilin' his own game
all the time by talkin'. You can't say he talks, neither; he just opens
his mouth and lets it say what it damn pleases. Is them real words he gets
off, or does he make 'em up as he goes along?"
"Search me."
"I'll tip you off, feller: if ever you want to make a strong play at an
Injun woman, you don't want to shoot off your mouth none. Keep still and
move around just so, and pretty soon she'll throw you the sign. Did you
ever notice a dog trottin' down the street, passin' everybody up till all
to once it takes a sniff, turns around, and follers some feller off?
That's an Injun woman."
"I never had no luck with squaws, and the likes o' that," Tubbs confessed.
"They're turrible hands to git off together and poke fun at you."
As McArthur and the Indian woman came in from the kitchen, he was saying
earnestly to her:
"I feel sure that here, madam, I should entirely recover my health.
Besides, this locality seems to me such a fertile field for research that
if you could possibly accommodate my man and me with board, you may not be
conferring a favor only upon me, but indirectly, perhaps, upon the world
of science. I have with me my own bath-tub and pneumatic mattress."
Tubbs, seeing the Indian woman's puzzled expression, explained:
"He means we'll sleep ourselves if you will eat us."
The woman nodded.
"Oh, you can stay. I no care."
Smith frowned; but McArthur, much pleased by her assent, told Tubbs to
saddle a horse at once, that he might lose no time in beginning his
investigations.
"If it were my good fortune to unearth a cranium of the Homo primogenus, I
should be the happiest man in the world," declared McArthur, clasping his
fingers in ecstasy at the thought of such unparalleled bliss.
"What did I tell you?" said Smith, accompanying Tubbs to the corral. "He's
tryin' to win himself a home."
"Looks that way," Tubbs agreed. "These here bug-hunters is deep."
The saddle blanket which Tubbs pulled from their wagon and threw upon the
ground, with McArthur's saddle, caught Smith's eye instantly, because of
the similarity in color and markings to that which he had folded so
carefully inside his own. This was newer, it had no disfiguring holes, or
black stain in the corner.
"What's the use of takin' chances?" he asked himself as he looked it
over.
While Tubbs was catching the horse in the corral, Smith deftly exchanged
blankets, and Tubbs, to whom most saddle blankets looked alike, did not
detect the difference.
Upon returning to the house, Smith found the Indian woman wiping breakfast
dishes for the cook. She came into the living-room when he beckoned to
her, with the towel in her hand. Taking it from her, he wadded it up and
threw it back into the kitchen.
"Don't you know any better not to spoil a cook like that, woman?" he
asked, smiling down upon her. "You never want to touch a dish for a cook.
Row with 'em, work 'em over, keep 'em down--but don't humor 'em. You can't
treat a cook like a real man. Ev'ry reg'lar cook has a screw loose or he
wouldn't be a cook. Cookin' ain't no man's job. I never had no use for
reg'lar cooks--me, Smith.
"All you women need ribbing up once in awhile," he added, as, laying his
hand lightly on her arm, he let it slide its length until it touched her
fingers. He gave them a gentle pressure and resumed his seat against the
wall.
The woman's eyes glowed as she looked at him. His authoritative attitude
appealed to her whose ancestors had dressed game, tanned hides, and
dragged wood for their masters for countless generations. The growing
passion in her eyes did not escape Smith.
In the long silence which followed he looked at her steadily; finally he
said:
"Well, I guess I'll saddle up. You look 'just so' to me, woman--but I got
to go."
She laid down the rags of her mat and "threw him the sign" for which he
had waited. It said:
"My heart is high; it is good toward you. Talk to me--talk straight."
He shook his head sadly.
"No, no, Singing Bird; I am headed for the Mexican border--many, many
sleeps from here."
She arose and walked to his side.
He felt a sudden and violent dislike for her flabby, swaying hips, her
heavy step, as she moved toward him. He knew that the game was won, and
won so easily it was a school-boy's play.
"Why you go?" she demanded, and the disappointment in her eyes was so
intense as to resemble fear. "What you do dere?"
He looked at her through half-closed eyes.
"Did you ever hear of wet horses?"
She shook her head.
"I deals in wet horses--me, Smith."
The woman stared at him uncomprehendingly.
"Down there on the border," he explained, "you buy the horses on the
Mexico side. You buy 'em when the Mexican boss is asleep in his 'dobe, so
there's no kick about the price. You swim 'em across the Rio Grande and
sell 'em to the Americano waitin' on the other side."
"You buy de wet horse?"
"No, by Gawd,--I wet 'em!"
"Why you steal?"
He looked at her contemptuously.
"Why does anybody steal? I need the dinero--me, Smith."
"You want money?"
He laughed.
"I always want money. I never had enough but once in my life, and then I
had too much. Gold is hell to pack," he added reminiscently.
"I have de fine hay-ranch, white man, de best on de reservation. Two, four
t'ousand dollars I have when de hay is sold. De ranch is big"--her arms
swept the horizon to show its extent. "You stay here and make de bargain
with de cattlemen, and I give you so much"--she measured a third of her
hand with her forefinger. "If dat is not enough, I give you so much"--she
measured the half of her hand with her forefinger. "If dat not enough, I
give you all." She swept the palm of one hand with the other.
Smith dropped his eyelids, that she might not see the triumph shining
beneath them.
"I must think, Prairie Flower."
"No, white man, you no think. You stay!"
Smith, who had arisen, slipped his arm about her ample waist. She pulled
aside his Mackinaw coat and laid her head upon his breast.
"The white man's heart is strong," she said softly.
"It beats for you, Little Fawn;" and he ran out his tongue in derision.
All the morning she sat on the floor at his feet, braiding the rags for
her mat, content to hear him speak occasionally, and to look often into
his face with dog-like devotion. It was there Susie saw her when she
returned from school earlier in the afternoon than usual, and was beckoned
into the kitchen by Ling.
"He's makin' a mash," said Ling laconically, as he jerked his thumb toward
the open door of the living-room.
All the girlish vivacity seemed to go out of Susie's face in her first
swift glance. It hardened in mingled shame and anger.
"Mother," she said sharply, "you promised me that you wouldn't sit on the
floor like an Injun."
"We're gettin' sociable," said Smith mockingly.
The woman glanced at Smith, and hesitated, but finally got up and seated
herself on the bench.
"Why don't you try bein' 'sociable' with the Schoolmarm?" Susie sneered.
"Maybe I will."
"And _maybe_ you won't get passed up like a white chip!"
"Oh, I dunno. I've made some winnings."
"I can tell that by your eyes. You got 'em bloodshot, I reckon, hangin'
over the fire in squaw camps. White men can't stand smoke like Injuns."
This needle-tongued girl jabbed the truth into him in a way which
maddened him, but he said conciliatingly:
"We don't want to quarrel, kid."
"You mean _you_ don't." Susie slammed the door behind her.
The child's taunt reawakened his interest in the Schoolmarm. He thought of
her riding home alone, and grew restless. Besides, the dulness began to
bore him.
"I'll saddle up, Prairie Flower, and look over the ranch. When I come back
I'll let you know if it's worth my while to stay."
Tubbs was sitting on the wagon-tongue, mending harness, when Smith went
out,
"Aimin' to quit the flat?" inquired Tubbs.
"Feller, didn't that habit of askin' questions ever git you in trouble?"
"Well I guess _so_," Tubbs replied candidly. "See that scar under my
eye?"
"I'd invite you along to tell me about it," said Smith sardonically,
"only, the fact is, feller, I'm goin' down the road to make medicine with
the Schoolmarm."
Tubbs's eyes widened.
"Gosh!" he ejaculated enviously. "I wisht I had your gall."
Before Smith swung into the saddle he pulled out a heavy silver watch
attached to a hair watch-chain.
"Just the right time," he nodded.
"Huh?"
"I say, if it was only two o'clock, or three, I wouldn't go."
"You wouldn't? I'll tell you about me: I'd go if it was twelve o'clock at
night and twenty below zero to ride home with that lady."
"Feller," said Smith, in a paternal tone, "you never want to make a break
at a woman before four o'clock in the afternoon. You might just as well go
and lay down under a bush in the shade from a little after daylight until
about this time. You wouldn't hunt deer or elk in the middle of the day,
would you? No, nor women--all same kind of huntin'. They'll turn you down
sure; white or red--no difference."
"Is that so?" said Tubbs, in the awed voice of one who sits at the feet of
a master.
"When the moon's out and the lamps are lit, they'll empty their sack and
tell you the story of their lives. I don't want to toot my horn none, but
I've wrangled around some. I've hunted big game and humans. Their habits,
feller, is much the same."
While Smith was galloping down the road toward the school-house, Susie was
returning from a survey of the surrounding country, which was to be had
from a knoll near the house.
"Mother," she said abruptly, "I feel queer here." She laid both hands on
her flat, childish breast and hunched her shoulders. "I feel like
something is goin' to happen."
"What happen, you think?" her mother asked listlessly.
"It's something about White Antelope, I know."
The woman looked up quickly.
"He go visit Bear Chief, maybe." There was an odd note in her voice.
"He wouldn't go away and stay like this without telling you or me. He
never did before. He knows I would worry; besides, he didn't take a horse,
and he never would walk ten miles when there are horses to ride. His gun
isn't here, so he must have gone hunting, but he wouldn't stay all night
hunting rabbits; and he couldn't be lost, when he knows the country as
well as you or me."
"He go to visit," the Indian woman insisted doggedly.
"If he isn't home to-morrow, I'm goin' to hunt him, but I know something's
wrong."
V
SMITH MAKES MEDICINE WITH THE SCHOOLMARM
Once out of sight of the house, Smith let his horse take its own gait,
while he viewed the surrounding country with the thoughtful consideration
of a prospective purchaser. As he gazed, its possibilities grew upon him.
If water was to be found somewhere in the Bad Lands the location of the
ranch was ideal for--certain purposes.
The Bar C cattle-range bounded the reservation on the west; the MacDonald
ranch, as it was still called, after the astute Scotch squawman who had
built it, was close to the reservation line; and beyond the sheltering Bad
Lands to the northeast was a ranch where lived certain friendly persons
with whom he had had most satisfactory business relations in the past.
A plan began to take definite shape in his active brain, but the head of a
sleepy white pony appearing above the next rise temporarily changed the
course of his thoughts, and with his recognition of its rider life took on
an added zest.
Dora Marshall, engrossed in thought, did not see Smith until he pulled his
hat-brim in salutation and said:
"You're a thinker, I take it."
"I find my work here absorbing," she replied, coloring under his steady
look.
He turned his horse and swung it into the road beside her.
"I was just millin' around and thought I'd ride down the road and meet
you." Further than this brief explanation, he did not seem to feel it
incumbent upon him to make conversation. Apparently entirely at his ease
in the silence which followed, he turned his head often and stared at her
with a frank interest which he made no effort to conceal. Finally he
shifted his weight to one stirrup and, turning in his saddle so that he
faced her, he asked bluntly:
"That look in your eyes--that look as if you hadn't nothin' to hide--is it
true? Is it natural, as you might say, or do you just put it on?"
Her astonished expression led him to explain.
"It's like lookin' down deep into water that's so clear you can see the
sand shinin' in the bottom; one of these places where there's no mud or
black spots; nothin' you can't see or understand. _Sabe_ what I mean?"
Since she did not answer, he continued:
"I've met up with women before now that had that same look, but only at
first. It didn't last; they could put it on and take it off like they did
their hats."
"I don't know that I am quite sure what you mean," the girl replied,
embarrassed by the personal nature of his questions and comments; "but if
you mean to imply that I affect this or that expression, for a purpose,
you misjudge me."
"I was just askin'," said Smith.
"I think I am always honest of purpose," the girl went on slowly, "and
when one is that, I think it shows in one's eyes. To be sure, I often fall
short of my intentions. I mean to do right, and almost as frequently do
wrong."
"You do?" He eyed her with quick intentness.
"Yes, don't you? Don't all of us?"
"I does what I aims to do," he replied ambiguously.
So she--this girl with eyes like two deep springs--did wrong--frequently.
He pondered the admission for a long time. Smith's exact ideas of right
and wrong would have been difficult to define; the dividing line, if there
were any, was so vague that it had never served as the slightest
restraint. "To do what you aim to do, and make a clean get-away"--that was
the successful life.
He had seen things, it is true; there had been incidents and situations
which had repelled him, but why, he had never asked himself. There was one
situation in particular to which his mind frequently reverted, as it did
now. He had known worse women than the one who had figured in it, but for
some reason this single scene was impressed upon his mind with a vividness
which seemed never to grow less.
He saw a woman seated at an old-fashioned organ in a country parlor. There
was a rag-carpet on the floor--he remembered how springy it was with the
freshly laid straw underneath it. Her husband held a lamp that she might
see the notes, while his other hand was upon her shoulder, his adoring
eyes upon her silly face. He, Smith, was rocking in the blue plush chair
for which the fool with the calloused hands had done extra work that he
might give it to the woman upon her birthday. Each time that she screeched
the refrain, "Love, I will love you always," she lifted her chin to sing
it to the man beaming down upon her, while upstairs her trunk was packed
to desert him.
Smith always remembered with satisfaction that he had left her in Red
Lodge with only the price of a telegram to her husband, in her shabby
purse.
"I like your style, girl." His eyes swept Dora Marshall's figure as he
spoke.
There was a difference in his tone, a familiarity in his glance, which
sent the color flying to the Schoolmarm's cheeks.
"I think we could hit it off--you and me--if we got sociable."
He leaned toward her and laid his gloved hand upon hers as it rested on
the saddle-horn.
The pupils of her eyes dilated until they all but covered the iris as she
turned them, blazing, upon Smith.
"Just what do you mean by that?"
There was no mistaking the genuineness nor the nature of the emotion which
made her voice vibrate. But Smith considered. Was she deeper--"slicker,"
as he phrased it to himself--than he had thought, or had he really
misunderstood her? Surprising as was the feeling, he hoped some way, that
it was the latter. He looked at her again before he answered gently:
"I didn't mean to make you hot none, Miss. I'm ignorant in handlin' words.
I only meant to say that I hoped you and me would be good friends."
His explanation cleared her face instantly.
"I am sorry if I misunderstood you; but one or two unpleasant experiences
in this country have made me quick--too quick, perhaps--to take offense."
"There's lots just lookin' for game like you. No better nor brutes," said
Smith virtuously, entirely sincere in his sudden indignation against these
licentious characters.
Yes, the Schoolmarm had rebuffed him, as Susie had prophesied, but the
effect of it upon him was such as neither he nor she had reckoned. As they
rode along a swift, overpowering infatuation for Dora Marshall grew upon
him. He felt something like a flame rising within him, burning him,
bewildering him with its intensity. She seemed all at once to possess
every attribute of the angels, from mere prettiness her face took on a
radiant beauty which dazzled him, and when she spoke her lightest word
held him breathless. As the mountain towers above the foothills, so, of a
sudden, she towered above all other women. He had known sensations--all,
he had believed, that it was possible to experience; but this one,
strange, overwhelming, dazed him with its violence.
Love frequently comes like this to people in the wilds, to those who have
few interests and much time to think. The emotional side of their natures
has been held in check until a trifle is sometimes sufficient to loose a
torrent which nothing can then divert or check.
She asked him to loop her latigo, which was trailing, and his hand shook
as he fumbled with the leather strap.
"Gawd!" he swore in bewilderment as he returned to his own horse, wiping
his forehead with the back of his gauntlet, "what feelin' is this workin'
on me? Am I gettin' locoed, me--Smith?"
"I'm glad I've found a friend like you," said the Schoolmarm impulsively.
"One needs friends in a country like this."
"A friend!" It sounded like a jest to Smith. "A friend!" he repeated with
an odd laugh. Then he raised his hand, as one takes an oath, and whatever
of whiteness was left in Smith's soul illumined his face as he added:
"Yes, to a killin' finish."
If Smith had met Dora among many, the result might have been the same in
the end, but here, in the isolation, she seemed from the first the centre
of everything, the alpha and omega of the universe, and his passion for
her was as great as though it were the growth of many months instead of
less than twenty-four hours. The depth, the breadth, of it could not
quickly be determined, nor the lengths to which it would take him. It was
something new to be reckoned with. To what extent it would control him,
neither Smith nor any one else could have told. He knew only that it now
seemed the most real, the most sincere, the best thing which had ever come
into his life.
Dora Marshall knew nothing of men like Smith, or of natures like those of
the men of the mountains and ranges, who paid her homage. Her knowledge of
life and people was drawn from the limited experiences of a small, Middle
West town, together with a year at a Middle West co-ed college, and as a
result of the latter the Schoolmarm cherished a fine belief in her worldly
wisdom, whereas, in a measure, her lack of it was one of her charms.
Susie, in her way, was wiser.
The Schoolmarm's attitude toward her daily life was the natural outcome of
a romantic nature and an imaginative mind. She saw herself as the heroine
of an absorbing story, the living of which story she enjoyed to the
utmost, while every incident and every person contributed to its interest.
Quite unconsciously, with unintentional egotism, the Schoolmarm had a way
of standing off and viewing herself, as it were, through the rosy glow of
romance. Yet she was not a complex character--this Schoolmarm. She had no
soaring ambitions, though her ideals for herself and for others were of
the best. To do her duty, to help those about her, to win and retain the
liking of her half-savage little pupils, were her chief desires.
She had her share of the vanity of her sex, and of its natural liking for
admiration and attention, yet in the freedom of her unique environment she
never overstepped the bounds of the proprieties as she knew them, or
violated in the slightest degree the conventionalities to which she had
been accustomed in her rather narrow home life. It was this reserve which
inspired awe in the men with whom she came in contact, used as they were
to the greater camaraderie of Western women.
In her unsophistication, her provincial innocence, Dora Marshall was
exactly the sort to misunderstand and to be misunderstood, a combination
sometimes quite as dangerous in its results, and as provocative of
trouble, as the intrigues of a designing woman.
"I reckon you think I'm kind of a mounted bum, a grub-liner, or something
like that," said Smith after a time.
"To be frank, I _have_ wondered who you are."
"Have you? Have you, honest?" asked Smith delightedly.
"Well--you're different, you know. I can't explain just how, but you are
not like the others who come and go at the ranch."
"No," Smith replied with some irony; "I'm not like that there Tubbs." He
added laconically, "I'm no angel, me--Smith."
The Schoolmarm laughed. Smith's denial was so obviously superfluous.
"There was a time when I'd do 'most any old thing," he went on, unmindful
of her amusement. "It was only a few years ago that there was no law north
of Cheyenne, and a feller got what he wanted with his gun. I got my share.
I come from a country where they sleep between sheets, but I got a lickin'
that wasn't comin' to me, and I quit the flat when I was thirteen. I've
been out amongst 'em since."
The desire to reform somebody, which lies dormant in every woman's bosom,
began to stir in the Schoolmarm's.
"But you--you wouldn't 'do any old thing' now, would you?"
Smith hesitated, and a variety of expressions succeeded one another upon
his face. It was an awkward moment, for, under the uplifting influence of
the feeling which possessed him, he had an odd desire to tell this girl
only the truth.
"I wouldn't do some of the things I used to do," he replied evasively.
The Schoolmarm beamed encouragement.
"I'm glad of that."
"I used to kill Injuns for fifty dollars a head, but I wouldn't do it
now," he said virtuously, adding: "I'd get my neck stretched."
"You've killed people--Indians--for money!" The Schoolmarm looked at him,
wide-eyed with horror.
"They was clutterin' up the range," Smith explained patiently, "and the
cattlemen needed it for their stock. I'd 'a' killed 'em for nothin', but
when 'twas offered, I might as well get the bounty."
The Schoolmarm scarcely knew what to say; his explanation seemed so
entirely satisfactory to himself.
"I'm glad those dreadful days have gone."
"They're gone all right," Smith answered sourly. "They make dum near as
much fuss over an Injun as a white man now, and what with jumpin' up
deputies at every turn in the road, 'tain't safe. Why, I heard a judge say
a while back that killin' an Injun was pure murder."
"I appreciate your confidence--your telling me of your life," said the
Schoolmarm, in lieu of something better.
She found him a difficult person with whom to converse. They seemed to
have no common meeting-ground, yet, while he constantly startled and
shocked, he also fascinated her. In one of those illuminating flashes to
which the Schoolmarm was subject, she saw herself as Smith's guiding-star,
leading him to the triumphant finish of the career which she believed his
unique but strong personality made possible.
It was Smith's turn to look at her. Did she think he had told her of his
life? The unexpected dimple deepened in Smith's cheek, and as he laughed
the Schoolmarm, again noting the effect of it, could not in her heart
believe that he was as black as he had painted himself.
"I wisht our trails had crossed sooner, but, anyhow, I'm on the square
with you, girl. And if ever you ketch me 'talkin' crooked,' as the Injuns
say, I'll give you my whole outfit--horse, saddle, blankets, guns, even my
dog-gone shirt. Excuse me."
The Schoolmarm glowed. Her woman's influence for good was having its
effect! This was a step in the right direction--a long step. He would be
"on the square" with her--she liked the way he phrased it. Already her
mind was busy with air-castles for Smith, which would have made that
person stare, had he known of them. An inkling of their nature may be had
from her question:
"Would you like to study, to learn from books, if you had the
opportunity?"
"I learned my letters spellin' out the brands on cattle," he said frankly,
"and that, with bein' able to write my name on the business end of a
check, and common, everyday words, has always been enough to see me
through."
"But when one has naturally a good mind, like yours, don't you think it is
almost wicked not to use it?"
"I got a mind all right," Smith replied complacently. "I'm kind of a
head-worker in my way, but steady thinkin' makes me sicker nor a pup. I
got a headache for two days spellin' out a description of myself that the
sheriff of Choteau County spread around the country on handbills. It was
plumb insultin', as I figgered it out, callin' attention to my eyes and
ears and busted thumb. I sent word to him that I felt hos-tile over it.
Sheriffs'll go too far if you don't tell 'em where to get off at once in
awhile."
The Schoolmarm ignored the handbill episode and went on:
"Besides, a lack of education is such a handicap in business."
"The worst handicap I has to complain of," said Smith grimly, "is the
habit people has got into of sending money-orders through the mail,
instead of the cash. It keeps money out of circulation, besides bein'
discouragin' and puttin' many a hard-workin' hold-up on the bum."
"But," she persisted, the real meaning of Smith's observations entirely
escaping her, "even the rudiments of an education would be such a help to
you, opening up many avenues that now are closed to you. What I want to
say is this: that if you intend to stop for a time at the ranch, I will be
glad to teach you. Susie and I have an extra session in the evening, and I
will be delighted to have you join us."
It had not dawned upon Smith that she had questioned him with this end in
view. He looked at her fixedly, then, from the depths of his experience,
he said:
"Girl, you must like me some."
Dora flushed hotly.
"I am interested," she replied.
"That'll do for now;" and Smith wondered if the lump in his throat was
going to choke him. "Will I join that night-school of yours? _Will_ I?
Watch me! Say," he burst out with a kind of boyish impulsiveness, "if ever
you see me doin' anything I oughtn't, like settin' down when I ought to
stand up, or standin' up when I ought to set down, will you just rope me
and take a turn around a snubbin'-post and jerk me off my feet?"
"We'll get along famously if you really want to improve yourself!"
exclaimed the Schoolmarm, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. "If you really
and truly want to learn."
"Really and truly I do," Smith echoed, feeling at the moment that he
would have done dressmaking or taken in washing, had she bid him.
Once more the world looked big, alluring, and as full of untried
possibilities as when he had "quit the flat" at thirteen.
"Have you noticed me doin' anything that isn't manners?" he asked in
humble anxiety. "Don't be afraid of hurtin' my feelin's," he urged, "for I
ain't none."
"If you honestly want me to tell you things, I will; but it seems so--so
queer upon such a very short acquaintance."
"Shucks! What's the use of wastin' time pretendin' to get acquainted, when
you're acquainted as soon as you look at each other? What's the use of
sashayin' around the bush when you meet up with somebody you like? You
just cut loose on me, girl."
"It's only a little thing, in a way, and not in itself important perhaps;
yet it would be, too, if circumstances should take you into the world. It
might make a bad impression upon strangers."
Smith looked slightly alarmed. He wondered if she suspected anything about
White Antelope. At the moment, he could think of nothing else he had done
within the last twenty-four hours, which might prejudice strangers.
"I noticed at the table," the Schoolmarm went on in some embarrassment,
"that you held your fork as though you were afraid it would get away from
you. Like this"--she illustrated with her fist.
"Like a ranch-hand holdin' onto a pitch-fork," Smith suggested, relieved.
"Something," she laughed. "It should be like this. Anyway," she declared
encouragingly, "you don't eat with your knife."
Smith beamed.
"Did you notice that?"
"Naturally, in a land of sword-swallowers, I would;" the Schoolmarm made a
wry face.
"Once I run with a high-stepper from Bowlin' Green, Kentucky, and she told
me better nor that," he explained. "She said nothin' give a feller away
like his habit of handlin' tools at the table. She was a lady all right,
but she got the dope habit and threw the lamp at me. The way I quit her
didn't trouble _me_. None of 'em ever had any holt on me when it come to a
show-down; but you, girl, _you_----"
"Look!"
Her sharp exclamation interrupted him, and, following her gesture, he saw
a flying horseman in the distance, riding as for his life, while behind
him two other riders quirted their horses in hot pursuit.
"Is it a race--for fun?"
"I don't think it," Smith replied dryly, noting the direction from which
they came. "It looks like business."
He knew that the two behind were Indians. He could tell by the way they
used their quirts and sat their horses. Neither was there any mistaking
the bug-hunter on his ewe-necked sorrel, which, displaying unexpected
bursts of speed, was keeping in the lead and heading straight for the
ranch-house. With one hand McArthur was clinging to the saddle-horn, and
with the other was clinging quite as tightly to what at a distance
appeared to be a carbine.
"He's pulled his gun--why don't he use it?" Smith quickened his horse's
gait.
He knew that the Indians had learned White Antelope's fate. That was a
lucky swap Smith had made that morning. He congratulated himself that he
had not "taken chances." He wondered how effective McArthur's denial would
prove in the face of the evidence furnished by the saddle-blanket.
Personally, Smith regarded the bug-hunter's chances as slim.
"They'll get him in the corral," he observed.
"Oh, it's Mr. McArthur!" Dora cried in distress.
Smith looked at her in quick jealousy.
"Well, what of it?" In her excitement, the gruffness of his tone passed
unobserved.
"Come," she urged. "The Indians are angry, and he may need us."
Hatless, breathless, pale, McArthur rolled out of his saddle and thrust a
long, bleached bone into Tubbs's hand.
"Keep it!" he gasped. "Protect it! It may be--I don't say it is, but it
_may_ be--a portion of the paroccipital bone of an Ichthyopterygian!" Then
he turned and faced his pursuers.
Infuriated, they rode straight at him, but he did not flinch, and the
horses swerved of their own accord.
Susie had run from the house, and her mother had followed, expectancy upon
her stolid face, for, like Smith, she had guessed the situation.
The Indians circled, and, returning, pointed accusing fingers at
McArthur.
"He kill White Antelope!"
By this time, the grub-liners had reached the corral, among them four
Indians, all friends of the dead man. Their faces darkened.
"White Antelope is dead in a gulch!" cried his accusers. "He is shot to
pieces--here, there, everywhere!"
A murmur of angry amazement arose. White Antelope, the kindly, peaceable
Cree, who had not an enemy on the reservation!
"This is dreadful!" declared McArthur. "Believe me"--he turned to them
all--"I had but found the corpse myself when these men rode up. The Indian
was cold; he certainly had been dead for hours. Besides," he demanded,
"what possible motive could I have?"
"Them as likes lettin' blood don't need a motive." The sneering voice was
Smith's.
"But you, sir, met us on the hill. You know the direction from which we
came."
"It's easy enough to circle."
"But why should I go back?" cried McArthur.
"They say there's that that draws folks back for another look."
Smith's insinuations, the stand he took, had its effect upon the Indians,
who, hot for revenge, needed only this to confirm their suspicions. One of
the Indians on horseback began to uncoil his rawhide saddle-rope. All save
McArthur understood the significance of the action. They meant to tie him
hand and foot and take him to the Agency, with blows and insults plentiful
en route.
They edged closer to him, every savage instinct uppermost, their faces
dark and menacing. McArthur, his eyes sweeping the circle, felt that he
had not one friend, not one, in the motley, threatening crowd fast closing
in upon him; for Tubbs, hearing himself indirectly included in the
accusation, had discreetly, and with perceptible haste, withdrawn.
The Indian swung from his saddle, rope in hand, and advanced upon McArthur
with unmistakable purpose; but he did not reach the little scientist, for
Susie darted from the circle, her flashing gray eyes looking more
curiously at variance than ever with her tawny skin.
"No, no, Running Rabbit!" She pushed him gently backward with her
finger-tips upon his chest.
There was a murmur of protest from the crowd, and it seemed to sting her
like a spur. Susie was not accustomed to disapproval. She turned to where
the murmurs came loudest--from the white grub-liners, who were eager for
excitement.
"Who are you," she cried, "that you should be so quick to accuse this
stranger? You, Arkansaw Red, that skipped from Kansas for killin' a
nigger! You, Jim Padden, that shot a sheep-herder in cold blood! You,
Banjo Johnson, that's hidin' out this minute! Don't you all be so darned
anxious to hang another man, when there's a rope waitin' somewhere for
your own necks!
"And lemme tell you"--she took a step toward them. "The man that lifts a
finger to take this bug-hunter to the Agency can take his blankets along
at the same time, for there'll never be a bunk or a seat at the table for
him on this ranch as long as he lives. Where's your proof against this
bug-hunter? You can't drag a man off without something against him--just
because you want to _hang_ somebody!"
Some sound from Smith attracted her attention; she wheeled upon him, and,
with her thin arm outstretched as she pointed at him in scorn, she cried
shrilly:
"Why, I'd sooner think _you_ did it, than him!"
There was not so much as the flicker of an eyelid from Smith.
"I know you'd _sooner_ think I did it than him," he said, playing upon the
word. "You'd like to see _me_ get my neck stretched."
His bravado, his very insolence, was his protection.
"And maybe I'll have the chanst!" she retorted furiously.
Turning from him to the Indians, her voice dropped, the harsh language
taking on the soft accent of the squaws as she spoke to them in their own
tongue. Like many half-breeds, Susie seldom admitted that she either
understood or could speak the Indian language. She had an amusing fashion
of referring even to her relatives as "those Injuns"; but now, with hands
outstretched, she pleaded:
"We are all Indians together in this--friends of White Antelope! Our
hearts are down; they are heavy--so. You all know that he came from the
great Cree country with my father, and he has told us many times stories
of the big north woods, where they hunted and trapped. You know how he
watched me when I was little, and sat with his hand upon my head when I
had the big fever. He was like no one else to me except my father. He was
wise and good.
"I could kill with my own hand the man who killed White Antelope. I want
his blood as much as you. I'd like to see a stake driven through his
black heart on White Antelope's grave. But let us not be too quick because
the hate is hot in us. My heart tells me that the white man talks
straight. Let us wait--wait until we find the right one, and when we do we
will punish in our own way. You hear? _In our own way!_"
Smith understood something of her plea, and for the second time he paid
her courage tribute.
"She's a game kid all right," he said to himself, and a half-formed plan
for utilizing her gameness began to take definite shape.
That she had won, he knew before Running Rabbit recoiled his rope. After a
moment's talk among themselves, the Indians went to hitch the horses to
the wagon, to bring White Antelope's body home.
Smith was well aware that he had only to point to the saddle blanket, the
barest edge of which showed beneath the leather skirts of McArthur's
saddle, to make Susie's impassioned defense in vain. Why he did not, he
was not himself sure. Perhaps it was because he liked the feeling of
power, of knowing that he held the life of the despised bug-hunter in the
hollow of his hand; or perhaps it was because it would serve his purpose
better to make the accusation later. One thing was certain, however, and
that was that he had not held his tongue through any consideration for
McArthur.
VI
THE GREAT SECRET
It was the day they buried White Antelope that Smith approached Yellow
Bird, a Piegan, who was among the Indians paying visits of indefinite
length to the MacDonald ranch. "Eddie" Yellow Bird, he was called at the
Blackfoot mission where he had learned to read and write--though he would
never have been suspected of these accomplishments, since to all
appearances he was a "blanket Indian."
Smith spoke the Piegan tongue almost as fluently as his own, so he and
Yellow Bird quickly became _compadres_, relating to each other stories of
their prowess, of horses they had run off, of cattle they had stolen, and
hinting, Indian fashion, with significant intonations and pauses, at
crimes of greater magnitude.
"How is your heart to-day, friend? Is it strong?"
"Weak," replied Yellow Bird jestingly, touching his breast with a
fluttering hand.
"It would be stronger if you had red meat in your stomach," Smith
suggested significantly.
"The bacon is not for Indians," agreed Yellow Bird.
"But the woman would have no cattle left if she killed only her own
beef."
"Many people stop here--strangers and friends," Yellow Bird admitted.
"There is plenty on the range." Smith looked toward the Bar C ranch.
"He is a dog on the trail, that white man, when his cattle are stolen,"
Yellow Bird replied doubtfully.
"I've killed dogs--me, Smith--when they got in my way. Yellow Bird, are
you a woman, that you are afraid?"
"Wolf Robe, who stole only a calf, sits like this"--Yellow Bird looked at
Smith sullenly through his spread fingers.
"You have talked with the forked tongue, Yellow Bird. You are not a Piegan
buck of the great Blackfoot nation; you are a woman. Your fathers killed
men; _you_ are afraid to kill cattle." Smith turned from him
contemptuously.
"My heart is as strong as yours. I am ready."
It was dusk when Smith returned and held out a blood-stained flour sack to
the squaw.
"Liver. A two-year ole."
The squaw's eyes sparkled. Ah, this was as it should be! Her man provided
for her; he brought her meat to eat. He was clever and brave, for it was
other men's meat he brought her to eat. MacDonald had killed only his own
cattle, and secretly it had shamed her, for she mistook his honesty for
lack of courage. To steal was legitimate; it was brave; something to be
told among friends at night, and laughed over. Susie, she had observed
with regret, was honest, like her father. She patted the back of Smith's
hand, and looked at him with dog-like, adoring eyes as they stood in the
log meat-house, where fresh quarters hung.
"I'd do more nor this for you, Prairie Flower;" and, laying his hand upon
her shoulder, he pressed it with his finger-tips.
"Say, but that's great liver!" Tubbs reached half the length of the table
and helped himself a third time. "That'd make a man fight his grandmother.
Who butchered it?"
"Me," Smith answered.
"It tastes like slow elk," said Susie.
"Maybe you oughtn't to eat it till you're showed the hide," Smith
suggested.
"Maybe I oughtn't," Susie retorted. "I didn't see any fresh hide a-hangin'
on the fence. We _always_ hangs _our_ hides."
"I _never_ hangs _my_ hides. I cuts 'em up in strips and braids 'em into
throw-ropes. It's safer."
The grub-liners laughed at the inference which Smith so coolly implied.
The finding of White Antelope's body, and its subsequent burial, had
delayed the opening of Dora's night-school, so Smith, for reasons of his
own, had spent much of his time in the bunk-house, covertly studying the
grub-liners, who passed the hours exchanging harrowing experiences of
their varied careers.
A strong friendship had sprung up between Susie and McArthur. While Susie
liked and greatly admired the Schoolmarm, she never yet had opened her
heart to her. Beyond their actual school-work, they seemed to have little
in common; and it was a real disappointment and regret to the Schoolmarm
that, for some reason which she could not reach, she had never been able
to break through the curious reserve of the little half-breed, who,
superficially, seemed so transparently frank. Each time that she made the
attempt, she found herself repulsed--gently, even tactfully, but
repulsed.
Dora Marshall did not suspect that these rebuffs were due to an error of
her own. In the beginning, when Susie had questioned her naïvely of the
outside world, she had permitted amusement to show in her face and manner.
She never fully recognized the fact that while Susie to all appearances,
intents, and purposes was Anglo-Saxon, an equal quantity of Indian blood
flowed in her veins, and that this blood, with its accompanying traits and
characteristics, must be reckoned with.
As a matter of fact, Susie was suspicious, unforgiving, with all the
Indians' sensitiveness to and fear of ridicule. She meant never again to
entertain the Schoolmarm by her ignorant questions, although she yearned
with all a young girl's yearning for some one in whom to confide--some one
with whom she could discuss the future which she often questioned and
secretly dreaded.
With real adroitness Susie had tested McArthur, searching his face for the
glimmer of amusement which would have destroyed irredeemably any chance of
real comradeship between them. But invariably McArthur had answered her
questions gravely; and when her tears had fallen fast and hot at White
Antelope's grave, she had known, with an intuition both savage and
childish, that his sympathy was sincere. She had felt, too, the
genuineness of his interest when, later, she had repeated to him many of
the stories White Antelope had told her of the days when he and her father
had trapped and hunted together in the big woods to the north.
So to-night, when the living-room was deserted by all save her mother, at
work on her rugs in the corner, Susie confided to him her Great Secret,
and McArthur, some way, felt strangely flattered by the confidence. He had
no desire to laugh; indeed, there were times when the tears were
perilously close to the surface. He had been a shy, lonely student, and
quite as lonely as a man, yet through the promptings of a heart
sympathetic and kind and with the fine instinct of gentle birth, he
understood the bizarre little half-breed in a way which surprised himself.
There was a settee on one side of the room, made of elk-horns and
interwoven buckskin thongs, and it was there, in the whisper which makes a
secret doubly alluring, that Susie told him of her plans; but first she
brought from some hiding-place outside a long pasteboard box, carefully
wrapped and tied.
McArthur, puffing on the briar-wood pipe which he was seldom without,
waited with interest, but without showing curiosity, for he felt that, in
a way, this was a critical moment in their friendship.
"If you didn't see me here on the reservation, would you know I was
Injun?" Susie demanded, facing him.
McArthur regarded her critically.
"You have certain characteristics--your rather high cheek-bones, for
instance--and your skin has a peculiar tint."
"I got an awful complexion on me," Susie agreed, "but I'm goin' to fix
that."
"Then, your movements and gestures----"
"That's from talkin' signs, maybe. I can talk signs so fast that the
full-bloods themselves have to ask me to slow up. But, now, if you saw me
with my hair frizzled--all curled up, like, and pegged down on top of my
head--and a red silk dress on me with a long skirt, and shiny shoes coming
to a point, and a white hat with birds and flowers staked out on it, and
maybe kid gloves on my hands--would you know right off it was me? Would
you say, 'Why, there's that Susie MacDonald--that breed young un from the
reservation'?"
"No," declared McArthur firmly; "I certainly never should say, 'Why,
there's that Susie MacDonald--that breed young un from the reservation.'
As a matter of fact," he went on gravely, "I should probably say, 'What a
pity that a young lady so intelligent and high-spirited should frizz her
hair'!"
"Would you?" insisted Susie delightedly.
"Undoubtedly," McArthur replied, with satisfying emphasis.
"And how long do you think it would take me to stop slingin' the buckskin
and learn to talk like you?--to say big words without bitin' my tongue and
gettin' red in the face?"
"Do I use large words frequently?" McArthur asked in real surprise.
"Whoppers!" said Susie.
"I do it unconsciously." McArthur's tone was apologetic.
"Sure, I know it."
"I shrink from appearing pedantic," said McArthur, half to himself.
"So do I," Susie declared mischievously. "I don't know what it is, but I
shrink from it. Do you think I could learn big words?"
"Of course." McArthur wondered where all these questions led.
"Did you ever notice that I'm kind of polite sometimes?"
"Frequently."
"That I say 'If you please' and 'Thank you,' and did you notice the other
morning when I asked Old Man Rulison how his ribs was getting along that
Arkansaw Red kicked in, and said I was sorry the accident happened?"
McArthur nodded.
"Well, I didn't mean it." She giggled. "That was just my manners that I
was practisin' on him. He was onery, and only got what was comin' to him;
but if you're goin' to be polite, seems like you dassn't tell the truth.
But Miss Marshall says that 'Thank you,' 'If you please,' and 'Good
morning, how's your ribs?' are kind of pass-words out in the world that
help you along."
"Yes, Susie; that's true."
"So I'm tryin' to catch onto all I can, because"--her eyes dilated, and
she lowered her voice--"I'm goin' out in the world pretty soon."
"To school?"
She shook her head.
"I'm goin' to hunt up Dad's relations; and when I find 'em, I don't want
'em to be ashamed of me, and of him for marryin' into the Injuns."
"They need never be ashamed of you, Susie."
"Honest? Honest, don't you think so?" She looked at him wistfully. "I'd
try awful hard not to make breaks," she went on, "and make 'em feel like
cachin' me in the cellar when they saw company comin'. It's just plumb
awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for
something or somebody--for other kind of folks besides Injuns and
grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer
kind of bug, and laugh at you with their eyes.
"Dad's got kin, I know; for lots of times when I would go with him to hunt
horses, he would say, 'I'll take you back to see them some time, Susie,
girl.' But he never said where 'back' was, so I've got to find out myself.
Wouldn't it be awful, though"--and her chin quivered--"if after I'd been
on the trail for days and days, and my ponies were foot-sore, they wasn't
glad to see me when I rode up to the house, but hinted around that
horse-feed was short and grub was scarce, and they couldn't well winter
me?"
"They wouldn't do that," said McArthur reassuringly. "Nobody named
MacDonald would do that."
Susie began to untie the pasteboard box which contained her treasures.
"Nearly ever since Dad died, I've been getting ready to go. I don't mean
that I would leave Mother for keeps--of course not; but after I've found
'em, maybe I can coax 'em to come and live with us. I used to ask White
Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after
they'd sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a
lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named
MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends
there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I'll
have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first I'll go to
Selkirk.
"I'll take a good pack-outfit, and Running Rabbit to find trails and
wrangle horses. See--I've got my trail all marked out on the map."
She unfolded a worn leaf from a school geography.
"It looks as if it was only a sleep or two away, but White Antelope said
it was the big ride--maybe a hundred sleeps. And lookee"--she unfolded
fashion plates of several periods. "I've even picked out the clothes I'll
buy to put on when I get nearly to the ranch where they live. I can make
camp, you know, and change my clothes, and then go walkin' down the road
carryin' this here parasol and wearin' this here white hat and holdin' up
this here long skirt like Teacher on Sunday.
"Won't they be surprised when they open the door and see me standin' on
the door-step? I'll say, 'How do you do? I'm Susie MacDonald, your
relation what's come to visit you.' I think this would be better than
showin' up with Running Rabbit and the pack-outfit, until I'd kind of
broke the news to 'em. I'd keep Running Rabbit cached in the brush till I
sent for him.
"You see, I've thought about it so much that it seems like it was as good
as done; but maybe when I start I won't find it so easy. I might have to
ride clear to this Minnesota country, or beyond the big waters to the New
York or Connecticut country, mightn't I?"
"You might," McArthur replied soberly.
"But I'd take a lot of jerked elk, and everybody says grub's easy to get
if you have money, I'd start with about nine ponies in my string, so it
looks like I ought to get through?"
She waited anxiously for McArthur to express his opinion.
He wondered how he could disillusionize her, shatter the dream which he
could see had become a part of her life. Should he explain to her that
when she had crossed the mountains and left behind her the deserts which
constituted the only world she knew, and by which, with its people, she
judged the country she meant to penetrate, she would find herself a
bewildered little savage in a callous, complex civilization where she had
no place--wondered at, gibed at, defeated of her purpose?
"Are you sure you have no other clues--no old letters, no photographs?"
She was about to answer when a tapping like the pecking of a snowbird on
a window-sill was heard on the door.
Susie opened it.
In ludicrous contrast to the timid rap, a huge figure that all but filled
it was framed in the doorway.
It was "Babe" from the Bar C ranch; "Baby" Britt, curly-haired,
pink-cheeked, with one innocent blue eye dark from recent impact with a
fist, which gave its owner the appearance of a dissipated cherub.
"Evenin'," he said tremulously, his eyes roving as though in search of
some one.
"I lost a horse----" he began.
"Brown?" interrupted Susie, with suspicious interest. "With a star in the
forehead?"
"Yes."
"One white stockin'?"
"Uh-huh."
"Roached mane?"
"Ye-ah."
"Kind of a rat-tail?"
"Yep."
"Left hip knocked down?"
"Babe" nodded.
"Saddle-sore?"
"That's it. Where did you see him?"
"I didn't see him."
"Aw-w-w," rumbled "Babe" in disgust.
"Teacher!"
Dora Marshall's door opened in response to Susie's lusty call.
"Have you seen a brown horse with a star in its forehead, roached
mane----"
"Aw, g'wan, Susie!" In confusion, "Babe" began to remove his spurs,
thereby serving notice upon the Schoolmarm that he had "come to set a
spell."
So the Schoolmarm brought her needlework, and while she explained to Mr.
Britt the exact shadings which she intended to give to each leaf and
flower, that person sat with his entranced eyes upon her white hands, with
their slender, tapering fingers--the smallest, the most beautiful hands,
he firmly believed, in the whole world.
It was not easy to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At
best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he
was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with
the high heels of his cowboy boots--from which a faint odor of the stable
emanated--hung over the rung of his chair, and to watch the Schoolmarm's
hand plying the needle on that almost sacred sofa-pillow.
"Your work must be very interesting, Mr. Britt," suggested Dora.
"I dunno as 'tis," replied Mr. Britt.
"It's so--so picturesque."
Mr. Britt considered.
"I shouldn't say it was."
"But you like it?"
"Not by a high-kick!"
If there was one thing upon which Mr. Britt prided himself more than
another, it was upon knowing how to temper his language to his company.
"Why do you stick to it, then?"
"Don't know how to do anything else."
"You don't get much time to read, do you?"
"Oh, yes; _P'lice Gazette_ comes reg'lar."
"But you have no church or social privileges?"
"What's that?"
"I say, you have no entertainment, no time or opportunity for amusement,
have you?"
"Oh, my, yes," Mr. Britt declared heartily. "We has a game of stud poker
nearly every Sunday mornin', and races in the afternoon."
"Ain't he sparklin'?" whispered Susie across the room to Dora, who
pretended not to hear.
"You are fond of horses?" inquired the Schoolmarm, desperately.
"Oh, I has nothin' agin 'em." He qualified his statement by adding:
"Leastways, unless they come from the Buffalo Basin country. Then I shore
hates 'em." At last Mr. Britt was upon a subject upon which he could talk
fluently and for an indefinite length of time. "You take that there
Buffalo Basin stock," he went on earnestly, "and they're nothin' but
inbred cayuse outlaws. They're treach'rous. Oneriest horses that ever
wore hair. Can't gentle 'em--simply can't be done. They've piled me up
more times than any horses that run. Sunfishers--the hull of 'em; rare up
and fall over backwards. 'Tain't pleasant ridin' a horse like that. Wheel
on you quicker'n a weasel; shy clean acrost the road at nothin';
kick--stand up and strike at you in the corral. It's irritatin'. Hard
keepers, too. Maybe you've noticed that blue roan I'm ridin'. Well, sir,
the way I've throwed feed into that horse is a scandal, and the more he
eats the worse he looks. Besides, it spoils them Buffalo Basin
buzzard-heads to eat. Give 'em three square meals, and you can't hardly
ride 'em. They ain't stayers, neither; no bottom, seems-like. Forty miles,
and that horse of mine is played out. What for a horse is that? Is that a
horse? Not by a high-kick! Gimme a buckskin with a black line down his
back, and zebra stripes on his legs--high back, square chest--say, then
you got a _horse!_"
It was apparent enough that Mr. Britt had not commenced to exhaust the
subject of the Buffalo Basin stock. As a matter of fact, he had barely
started; but the sound of horses coming up the path, and a whoop outside,
caused a suspension of his conversation.
Something heavy was thrown against the door, and when Susie opened it a
roll of roped canvas rolled inside, while the lamplight fell upon the
grinning faces of two Bar C cowpunchers.
"What's that?" The Schoolmarm looked wonderingly at the bundle.
"Aw-w-w!" Mr. Britt replied, in angry confusion. "It's my bed. I'll put a
crimp in them two for this." He shouldered his blankets sheepishly and
went out.
VII
CUPID "WINGS" A DEPUTY SHERIFF
Riding home next morning with his bed on a borrowed pack-horse, morose,
his mind occupied with divers plans for punishing the cowpunchers who had
spoiled his evening and made him ridiculous before the Schoolmarm, "Babe"
came upon something in a gulch which caused him to rein his horse sharply
and swing from the saddle.
With an ejaculation of surprise, he pulled a fresh hide from under a pile
of rock, it having been partially uncovered by coyotes. The brand had been
cut out, and with the sight of this significant find, the two cowpunchers,
their obnoxious joke, even the Schoolmarm, were forgotten; for there was a
new thief on the range, and a new thief meant excitement and adventure.
Colonel Tolman's deep-set eyes glittered when he heard the news. As
Running Rabbit had said, on the trail of a cattle-thief he was as
relentless as a bloodhound. He could not eat or sleep in peace until the
man who had robbed him was behind the bars. The Colonel was an old-time
Texas cattleman, and his herds had ranged from the Mexican border to the
Alberta line. He had made and lost fortunes. Disease, droughts, and
blizzards had cleaned him out at various times, and always he had taken
his medicine without a whimper; but the loss of so much as a yearling calf
by theft threw him into a rage that was like hysteria.
His hand shook as he sat down at his desk and wrote a note to the
Stockmen's Association, asking for the services of their best detective.
It meant four days of hard riding to deliver the note, but the Colonel put
it into "Babe's" hand as if he were asking him to drop it in the mail-box
around the corner.
"Go, and git back," were his laconic instructions, and he turned to pace
the floor.
When "Babe" returned some eight days later, with the deputy sheriff, he
found the Colonel striding to and fro, his wrath having in no wise abated.
The cowboy wondered if his employer had been walking the floor all that
time.
"My name is Ralston," said the tall young deputy, as he stood before the
old cattleman.
"Ralston?" The Colonel rose on his toes a trifle to peer into his face.
"Not Dick Ralston's boy?"
The six-foot deputy smiled.
"The same, sir."
The Colonel's hand shot out in greeting.
"Anybody of that name is pretty near like kin to me. Many's the time your
dad and I have eaten out of the same frying-pan."
"So I've heard him say."
"Does he know you're down here on this job?"
The young man shook his head soberly.
"No."
The Colonel looked at him keenly.
"Had a falling out?"
"No; scarcely that; but we couldn't agree exactly upon some things, so I
struck out for myself when I came home from college."
"No future for you in this sleuthing business," commented the old man
tersely. "Why didn't you go into cattle with your dad?"
"That's where we disagreed, sir. I wanted to buy sheep, and he goes
straight into the air at the very word."
The Colonel laughed.
"I can believe that."
"Over there the range is going fast, and it's fight and scrap and quarrel
all the time to keep the sheep off what little there is left; and then you
ship and bottom drops out of the market as soon as your cattle are loaded.
There's nothing in it; and while I don't like sheep any better than the
Governor, there's no use in hanging on and going broke in cattle because
of a prejudice."
"Dick's stubborn,"--the Colonel nodded knowingly--"and I don't believe
he'll ever give in."
"No; I don't think he will, and I'm sorry for his sake, because he's
getting too old to worry."
"Worry? Cattle's nothing but worry!--which reminds me of what you are here
for."
"Have you any suspicions?"
"No. I don't believe I can help you any. The Injuns been good as pie since
we sent Wolf Robe over the road. Don't hardly think it's Injuns. Don't
know what to think. Might be some of these Mormon outfits going north.
Might be some of these nesters off in the hills. Might be anybody!"
"Is he an old hand?"
"Looks like it. Cuts the brand out and buries the hide." The Colonel began
pacing the floor. "Cattle-thieves are people that's got to be nipped in
the bud _muy pronto_. There ought to be a lynching on every cattle-range
once in seven years. It's the only way to hold 'em level. Down there on
the Rio Grande we rode away and left fourteen of 'em swinging over the
bluff. It's got to be done in all cattle countries, and since they've
started in here--well, a hanging is overdue by two years." The Colonel
ejected his words with the decisive click of a riot-gun.
So Dick Ralston, Jr., rode the range for the purpose of getting the lay of
the country, and, on one pretext or another, visited the squalid homes of
the nesters, but nowhere found anybody or anything in the least
suspicious. He learned of the murder of White Antelope, and of the
"queer-actin'" bug-hunter and his pal, who had been accused of it. It was
rather generally believed that McArthur was a desperado of a new and
original kind. While it was conceded that he seemed to have no way of
disposing of the meat, and certainly could not kill a cow and eat it
himself, it was nevertheless declared that he was "worth watching."
While the hangers-on at the MacDonald ranch were all known to have
records, no particular suspicion had attached to them in this instance,
because the squaw was known to kill her own beef, and no shadow of doubt
had ever fallen upon the good name of the ranch.
The trapping of cattle-thieves is not the work of a day or a week, but
sometimes of months; and when evidence of another stolen beef was found
upon the range, Ralston realized that his efforts lay in that vicinity for
some time to come. He decided to ride over to the MacDonald ranch that
evening and have a look at the bad _hombre_ who masqueraded as a
bug-hunter--bug-hunter, it should be explained, being a Western term for
any stranger engaged in scientific pursuits.
While Ralston was riding over the lonely road in the moonlight, Dora was
arranging the dining-room table for her night-school, which had been in
session several evenings. Smith was studying grammar, of which branch of
learning Dora had decided he stood most in need, while Susie groaned over
compound fractions.
Tubbs, with his chair tilted against the wall, looked on with a tolerant
smile. In the kitchen, paring a huge pan of potatoes for breakfast, Ling
listened with such an intensity of interest to what was being said that
his ears seemed fairly to quiver. From her bench in the living-room, the
Indian woman braided rags and darted jealous glances at teacher and pupil.
Smith, his hair looking like a bunch of tumble-weed in a high wind, hung
over a book with a look of genuine misery upon his face.
"I didn't have any notion there was so much in the world I didn't know,"
he burst out. "I thought when I'd learnt that if you sprinkle your
saddle-blanket you can hold the biggest steer that runs, without your
saddle slippin', I'd learnt about all they was worth knowin'."
"It's tedious," Dora admitted.
"Tedious?" echoed Smith in loud pathos. "It's hell! Say, I can tie a fancy
knot in a bridle-rein that can't be beat by any puncher in the country,
but _darn_ me if I can see the difference between a adjective and one of
these here adverbs! Once I thought I knowed something--me, Smith--but say,
I don't know enough to make a mark in the road!"
Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he repeated:
"'I have had, you have had, he has had.'"
"If you would have had about six drinks, I think you could git that,"
observed Tubbs judicially, watching Smith's mental suffering with keen
interest.
"Don't be discouraged," said Dora cheerfully, seating herself beside him.
"Let's take a little review. Do you remember what I told you about this?"
She pointed to the letter _a_ marked with the long sound.
Smith ran both hands through his hair, while a wild, panic-stricken look
came upon his face.
"Dog-gone me! I know it's a _a_, but I plumb forget how you called it."
Tubbs unhooked his toes from the chair-legs and walked around to look over
Smith's shoulder.
"Smith, you got a great forgitter," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you
use your head a little? That there is a Bar A. You ought to have knowed
that. The Bar A stock run all over the Judith Basin."
"Don't you remember I told you that whenever you saw that mark over a
letter you should give it the long sound?" explained Dora patiently.
"Like the _a_ in 'aig,'" elucidated Tubbs.
"Like the _a_ in 'snake,'" corrected the Schoolmarm.
"Or 'wake,' or 'skate,' or 'break,'" said Smith hopefully.
"Fine!" declared the Schoolmarm.
"I knowed that much myself," said Tubbs enviously.
"If you'll pardon me, Mr. Tubbs," said Dora, in some irritation, "there
is no such word as 'knowed.'"
"Why don't you talk grammatical, Tubbs?" Smith demanded, with alacrity.
"I talks what I knows," said Tubbs, going back to his chair.
"Have you forgotten all I told you about adjectives?"
"Adjectives is words describin' things. They's two kinds, comparative and
superlative," Smith replied promptly. He added. "Adjectives kind of stuck
in my craw."
"Can you give me examples?" Dora felt encouraged.
"You got a horrible pretty hand," Smith replied, without hesitation.
"'Horrible pretty' is a adjective describin' your hand."
Dora burst out laughing, and Tubbs, without knowing why, joined in
heartily.
"Tubbs," continued Smith, glaring at that person, "has got the horriblest
mug I ever seen, and if he opens it and laffs like that at me again, I
aims to break his head. 'Horriblest' is a superlative adjective describin'
Tubbs's mug."
To Smith's chagrin and Tubbs's delight, Dora explained that "horrible" was
a word which could not be used in conjunction with "pretty," and that its
superlative was not "horriblest."
Smith buried his head in his hands despondently.
"If I was where I could, I'd get drunk!"
"It's nothing to feel so badly about," said Dora comfortingly. "Let's go
back to prepositions. Can you define a preposition?"
Smith screwed up his face and groped for words, but before he found them
Tubbs broke in:
"A preposition is what a feller has to sell that nobody wants," he
explained glibly. "They's copper prepositions, silver-lead prepositions,
and onct I had a oil preposition up in the Swift Current country."
Smith reached inside his coat and pulled out the carved, ivory-handled
six-shooter which he wore in a holster under his arm. He laid it on the
table beside his grammar, and looked at Tubbs.
"Feller," he said, "I hates to make a gun-play before the Schoolmarm, but
if you jump into this here game again, I aims to try a chunk of lead on
you."
"If book-learnin' ud ever make me as peevish as it does you," declared
Tubbs, rising hastily, "I hopes I never knows nothin'."
Tubbs slammed the door behind him as he went to seek more amiable company
in the bunk-house.
Save for the Indian woman, Smith and Dora were now practically alone; for
Ling had gone to bed, and Susie was oblivious to everything except
fractions. Smith continued to struggle with prepositions, adjectives, and
adverbs, but he found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on them
with Dora so close beside him. He knew that his slightest glance, every
expression which crossed his face, was observed by the Indian woman; and
although he did his utmost not to betray his feelings, he saw the sullen,
jealous resentment rising within her.
She read aright the light in his eyes; besides, her intuitions were
greater than his powers of concealment. When she could no longer endure
the sight of Smith and the Schoolmarm sitting side by side, she laid down
her work and slipped out into the star-lit night, closing the door softly
behind her.
Smith's judgment told him that he should end the lesson and go after her,
but the spell of love was upon him, overwhelming him, holding him fast in
delicious thraldom. He had not the strength of will just then to break
it.
Dora had been reading "Hiawatha" aloud each evening to Susie, Tubbs, and
Smith, so when she finally closed the grammar, she asked if he would like
to hear more of the Indian story, as he called it, to which he nodded
assent.
Dora read well, with intelligence and sympathy; her trained voice was
flexible. Then, too, she loved this greatest of American legends. It
appealed to her audience as perhaps no other poem would have done. It was
real to them, it was "life," their life in a little different environment
and told in a musical rhythm which held them breathless, enchanted.
Dora had reached the story of "The Famine." She knew the refrain by heart,
and the wail of old Nokomis was in her voice as she repeated from memory:
"Wahonowin! Wahonowin!
Would that I had perished for you!
Would that I were dead as you are!
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!
"Then they buried Minnehaha;
In the snow a grave they made her,
In the forest deep and darksome,
Underneath the moaning hemlocks;
Clothed her in her richest garments,
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine,
Covered her with snow, like ermine;
So they buried Minnehaha."
The pathos of the lines never failed to touch Dora anew. Her voice broke,
and, pausing to recover herself, she glanced at Smith. There were tears in
his eyes. The brutal chin was quivering like that of a tender-hearted
child.
"The man that wrote that was a _chief_," he said huskily. "It hurts me
here--in my neck." He rubbed the contracted muscles of his throat. "I'd
feel like that, girl, if you should die."
He repeated softly, and choked:
"All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!"
The impression which the poem made upon Smith was deep. It was a constant
surprise to him also. The thoughts it expressed, the sensations it
described, he had believed were entirely original with himself. He had not
conceived it possible that any one else could feel toward a woman as he
felt toward Dora. Therefore, when the poet put many of his heart-throbs
into words, they startled him, as though, somehow, his own heart were
photographed and held up to view.
Susie had finished her lesson, and, cramped from sitting, was walking
about the living-room to rest herself, while this conversation was taking
place. Her glance fell upon a gaudy vase on a shelf, and some thought came
to her which made her laugh mischievously. She emptied the contents of the
vase into the palm of her hand and, closing the other over it, tiptoed
into the dining-room and stood behind Smith.
Dora and he, engrossed in conversation, paid no attention to her. She put
her cupped palms close to Smith's ear and, shaking them vigorously,
shouted:
"Snakes!"
The result was such as Susie had not anticipated.
With a shriek which was womanish in its shrillness, Smith sprang to his
feet, all but upsetting the lamp in his violence. Unmixed horror was
written upon his face.
The girl herself shrank back at what she had done; then, holding out
several rattles for inspection, she said:
"Looks like you don't care for snakes."
"You--you little----"
Only Susie guessed the unspeakable epithet he meant to use. Her eyes
warned him, and, too, he remembered Dora in time. He said instead, with a
slight laugh of confusion:
"Snakes scares me, and rat-traps goin' off."
The color had not yet returned to his face when a knock came upon the
door.
In response to Susie's call, a tall stranger stepped inside--a stranger
wide of shoulder, and with a kind of grim strength in his young face.
From the unnatural brightness of the eyes of Susie and of Smith, and their
still tense attitudes, Ralston sensed the fact that something had
happened. He returned Smith's unpleasant look with a gaze as steady as his
own. Then his eyes fell upon Dora and lingered there.
She had sprung to her feet and was still standing. Her cheeks were
flushed, her eyes luminous, and the soft lamplight burnishing her brown
hair made the moment one of her best. Smith saw the frank admiration in
the stranger's look.
"May I stop here to-night?" He addressed Dora.
He had the characteristic Western gravity of manner and expression, the
distinguishing definiteness of purpose. Though the quality of his voice,
its modulation, bespoke the man of poise and education, the accent was
unmistakably of the West.
"There's a bunk-house." It was Smith who answered.
His unuttered epithet still rankled; Susie turned upon him with insulting
emphasis:
"And you'd better get out to it!"
"Are you the boss here?" The stranger put the question to Smith with cool
politeness.
"What I say _goes!_"
Smith looked marvellously ugly.
Susie leaned toward him, and her childish face was distorted with anger as
she shrieked:
"_Not yet, Mister Smith!_"
Involuntarily, Dora and the stranger exchanged glances in the awkward
silence which followed. Then, more to relieve her embarrassment than for
any other reason, Ralston said quietly, "Very well, I will do as
this--gentleman suggests," and withdrew.
"Good-night," said Dora, gathering up her books; but neither Smith nor
Susie answered.
With both hands deep in his trousers' pockets, Smith was smiling at Susie,
with a smile which was little short of devilish; and the girl, throwing a
last look of defiance at him, also left the room, violently slamming
behind her the door of the bed-chamber occupied by her mother and
herself.
For a full minute Smith stood as they had left him--motionless, his
eyelids drooping. Rousing himself, he went to the window and looked into
the moonlight-flooded world outside. Huddled in a blanket, a squat figure
sat on a fallen cottonwood tree.
Smith eyed it, then asked himself contemptuously:
"Ain't that pure Injun?"
Taking his hat, he too stepped into the moonlight.
The woman did not look up at his approach, so he stooped until his cheek
touched hers.
"What's the matter, Prairie Flower?"
"My heart is under my feet." Her voice was harsh.
In the tone one uses to a sulky child, he said:
"Come into the house."
"You no like me, white man. You like de white woman."
Smith reached under the blanket and took her hand.
"Why don't you marry de white woman?"
He pressed her hand tightly against his heart.
"Come into the house, Prairie Flower."
Her face relaxed like that of a child when it smiles through its tears.
And Smith, in the hour when the first real love of his life was at its
zenith, when his heart was so full of it that it seemed well nigh
bursting, walked back to the house with the squaw clinging tightly to his
fingers.
VIII
THE BUG-HUNTER ELUCIDATES
The same instinct which made Ralston recognize Susie as his friend told
him that Smith was his enemy; though, verily, that person who would have
construed as evidences of esteem and budding friendship Smith's black
looks when Ralston presumed to talk with Dora, even upon the most ordinary
topics, would have been dull of comprehension indeed.
While no reason for remaining appeared to be necessary at the MacDonald
ranch, Ralston hinted at hunting stray horses; and casually expressed a
hope that he might be able to pick up a bunch of good ponies at a
reasonable figure--which explanation was entirely satisfactory to all save
Smith. The latter frequently voiced the opinion that Ralston lingered
solely for the purpose of courting the Schoolmarm, an opinion which the
grub-liners agreed was logical, since they too, along with the majority of
unmarried males for fifty miles around, cherished a similar ambition.
Dora had long since ceased to consider as extraordinary the extended
visits which strangers paid to the ranch; therefore, she saw nothing
unusual in the fact that Ralston stayed on.
If furtive-eyed and restless passers-by arrived after dark, slept in the
hay near their unsaddled horses, and departed at dawn, assuredly no person
at the MacDonald ranch was rude enough to ask reasons for their haste. Its
hospitality was as boundless, as free, as the range itself; and if upon
leaving any guest had happened to express gratitude for food and shelter,
it is doubtful if any incident could more have surprised Susie and her
mother, unless, mayhap, it might have been an offer of payment for the
same.
Ralston told himself that, since he could remain without comment, the
ranch was much better situated for his purpose than Colonel Tolman's home;
but the really convincing point in its favor, though one which he refused
to recognize as influencing him in the least, was that he was nearer Dora
by something like eight miles than he would have been at the Bar C. Then,
too, though there was nothing tangible to justify his suspicions, Ralston
believed that his work lay close at hand.
Like Colonel Tolman, he had come to think that it was not the Indians who
were killing; and the nesters, though a spiritless, shiftless lot, had
always been honest enough. But the bunk-house on the MacDonald ranch was
often filled with the material of which horse and cattle thieves are made,
and Ralston hoped that he might get a clue from some word inadvertently
dropped there.
He often thought that he never had seen a more heterogeneous gathering
than that which assembled at times around the table. And with Longfellow
in the dining-room, ethnological dissertations in one end of the
bunk-house, and personal reminiscences and experiences in gun-fights and
affairs of the heart in the other end, there was afforded a sufficient
variety of mental diversion to suit nearly any taste.
McArthur in the rôle of desperado seemed preposterous to Ralston; yet he
remembered that Ben Reed, a graduate of a theological seminary, who could
talk tears into the eyes of an Apache, was the slickest stock thief west
of the Mississippi. He was well aware that a pair of mild eyes and gentle,
ingenuous manners are many a rogue's most valuable asset, and though the
bug-hunter talked frankly of his pilgrimages into the hills, there was
always a chance that his pursuit was a pose, his zeal counterfeit.
One evening which was typical of others, Ralston sat on the edge of his
bunk, rolling an occasional cigarette and listening with huge enjoyment to
the conversation of a group around the sheet-iron stove, of which McArthur
was the central figure.
McArthur, riding his hobby enthusiastically, quite forgot the character of
his listeners, and laid his theories regarding the interchange of
mammalian life between America and Asia during the early Pleistocene
period, before Meeteetse Ed, Old Man Rulison, Tubbs, and others, in the
same language in which he would have argued moot questions with
colleagues engaged in similar research. The language of learning was as
natural to McArthur as the vernacular of the West was to Tubbs, and in
moments of excitement he lapsed into it as a foreigner does into his
native tongue under stress of feeling.
"I maintain," asserted McArthur, with a gesture of emphasis, "that the
Paleolithic man of Europe followed the mastodon to North America and here
remained."
Meeteetse Ed, whose cheeks were flushed, laid his hot hand upon his
forehead and declared plaintively as he blinked at McArthur:
"Pardner, I'm gittin' a headache from tryin' to see what you're talkin'
about."
"Air you sayin' anything a-tall," demanded Old Man Rulison, suspiciously,
"or air you joshin'?"
"Them's words all right," said Tubbs. "Onct I worked under a section boss
over on the Great Northern what talked words like them. He believed we
sprung up from tuds and lizards--and the likes o' that. Yes, he did--on
the square."
"There are many believers in the theory of evolution," observed McArthur.
"That's it--that's the word. That's what he was." Then, in the tone of one
who hands out a clincher, Tubbs demanded: "Look here, Doc, if that's so
why ain't all these ponds and cricks around here a-hatchin' out children?"
"Guess that'll hold him for a minute," Meeteetse Ed whispered to his
neighbor.
But instead of being covered with confusion by this seemingly unanswerable
argument, McArthur gazed at Tubbs in genuine pity.
"Let me consider how I can make it quite clear to you. Perhaps," he said
thoughtfully, "I cannot do better than to give you Herbert Spencer's
definition. Spencer defines evolution, as nearly as I can remember his
exact words, as an integration of matter and concomita, dissipation of
motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite heterogeneity to
a definite, incoherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation. Materialistic, agnostic, and theistic
evolution----"
Meeteetse Ed fell off his chair in a mock faint and crashed to the floor.
Susie, who had entered, saw McArthur's embarrassment, and refused to join
in the shout of laughter, though her eyes danced.
"Don't mind him," she said comfortingly, as she eyed Meeteetse, sprawled
on his back with his eyes closed. "He's afraid he'll learn something. He
used to be a sheep-herder, and I don't reckon he's got more'n two hundred
and fifty words in his whole vocabulary. Why, I'll bet he never _heard_ a
word of more'n three syllables before. Get up, Meeteetse. Go out in the
fresh air and build yourself a couple of them sheep-herder's monuments.
It'll make you feel better."
The prostrate humorist revived. Susie's jeers had the effect of a bucket
of ice-water, for he had not been aware that this blot upon his
escutcheon--the disgraceful epoch in his life when he had earned honest
money herding sheep--was known.
"My enthusiasm runs away with me when I get upon this subject," said
McArthur, in blushing apology to the group. "I am sorry that I have bored
you."
"No bore a-tall," declared Old Man Rulison magnanimously. "You cut loose
whenever you feel like it: we kin stand it as long as you kin."
After McArthur had gone to his pneumatic mattress in the patent tent
pitched near the bunk-house, Ralston said to Susie:
"You and the bug-hunter are great friends, aren't you?"
"You bet! We're pardners. Anybody that gets funny with him has got me to
fight."
"Oh, it's like that, is it?" Ralston laughed.
"We've got secrets--the bug-hunter and me."
"You're rather young for secrets, Susie."
"Nobody's too young for secrets," she declared. "Haven't you any?"
"Sure," Ralston nodded.
"I like you," Susie whispered impulsively. "Let's swap secrets."
He looked at her and wished he dared. He would have liked to tell her of
his mission, to ask her help; for he realized that, if she chose, no one
could help him more. Like Smith, he recognized that quality in her they
each called "gameness," and even more than Smith he appreciated the
commingling of Scotch shrewdness and Indian craft. He believed Susie to be
honest; but he had believed many things in the past which time had not
demonstrated to be facts. No, the chance was too great to take; for should
she prove untrustworthy or indiscreet, his mission would be a failure. So
he answered jestingly:
"My secrets are not for little girls to know."
Susie gave him a quick glance.
"Oh, you don't look as though you had that kind," and turned away.
Ralston felt somehow that he had lost an opportunity. He could not rid
himself of the feeling the entire evening; and he made up his mind to
cultivate Susie's friendship. But it was too late; he had made a mistake
not unlike Dora's. Susie had felt herself rebuffed, and, like the
Schoolmarm, Ralston had laughed at her with his eyes. It was a great
thing--a really sacred thing to Susie--this secret that she had offered
him. The telling of it to McArthur had been so delightful an experience
that she yearned to repeat it, but now she meant never to tell any one
else. Any way, McArthur was her "pardner," and it was enough that he
should know. So it came about that afterwards, when Ralston sought her
company and endeavored to learn something of the workings of her mind, he
found the same barrier of childish reserve which had balked Dora, and no
amount of tact or patience seemed able to break it down.
The young deputy sheriff's interest in Dora increased in leaps and bounds.
He experienced an odd but delightful agitation when he saw the sleepy
white pony plodding down the hill, and the sensation became one easily
defined each time that he observed Smith's horse ambling in the road
beside hers. The feeling which inspired Tubbs's disgruntled comment,
"Smith rides herd on the Schoolmarm like a cow outfit in a bad wolf
country," found an echo in Ralston's own breast. Truly, Smith guarded the
Schoolmarm with the vigilance of a sheep-dog.
He saw a possible rival in every new-comer, but most of all he feared
Ralston; for Smith was not too blinded by prejudice to appreciate the fact
that Ralston was handsome in a strong, man's way, younger than himself,
and possessed of the advantages of education which enabled him to talk
with Dora upon subjects that left him, Smith, dumb. Such times were
wormwood and gall to Smith; yet in his heart he never doubted but that he
would have Dora and her love in the end. Smith's faith in himself and his
ability to get what he really desired was sublime. The chasm between
himself and Dora--the difference of birth and education--meant nothing to
him. It is doubtful if he recognized it. He would have considered himself
a king's equal; indeed, it would have gone hard with royalty, had royalty
by any chance ordered Smith to saddle his horse. He judged by the
standards of the plains: namely, gameness, skill, resourcefulness; to him,
there _were_ no other standards. After all, Dora Marshall was only a
woman--the superior of other women, to be sure, but a woman; and if he
wanted her--why not?
He would have been amazed, enraged through wounded vanity, if it had been
possible for him to see himself from Dora's point of view: a subject for
reformation; a test for many trite theories; an erring human to be
reclaimed by a woman's benign influence. Naturally, these thoughts had not
suggested themselves to Smith.
Ralston looked forward eagerly to the evening meal, since it was almost
the only time at which he could exchange a word with Dora. Breakfast was a
hurried affair, while both she and Susie were absent from the midday
dinner. The shy, fluttering glances which he occasionally surprised from
her, the look of mutual appreciation which sometimes passed between them
at a quaint bit of philosophy or naïve remark, started his pulses dancing
and set the whole world singing a wordless song of joy.
Somehow, eating seemed a vulgar function in the Schoolmarm's presence,
and he wished with all his heart that the abominable grammar lessons which
filled her evenings might some time end; in which case he would be able to
converse with her when not engaged in rushing bread and meat to and fro.
His most carefully laid plans to obtain a few minutes alone with her were
invariably thwarted by Smith. And from the heights to which he had been
transported by some more than passing friendly glance at the table, he was
dragged each evening to the depths by the sight of Dora and Smith with
their heads together over that accursed grammar.
He commenced to feel a distaste for his bunk-house associates, and took
to wandering out of doors, pausing most frequently in his meanderings
just outside the circle of light thrown through the window by the
dining-room lamp. Dora's guilelessness in believing that Smith's interest
in his lessons was due to a desire for knowledge did not make the
tableau less tantalizing to Ralston, but it would have been against every
tenet in his code to suggest to Dora that Smith was not the misguided
diamond-in-the-rough which she believed him.
Smith, on the contrary, had no such scruples. He lost no opportunity to
sneer at Ralston. When he discovered Dora wearing one of the first flowers
of spring, which Ralston had brought her, Smith said darkly:
"That fresh guy is a dead ringer for a feller that quit his wife and five
kids in Livingston and run off with a biscuit-shooter."
Dora laughed aloud. The clean-cut and youthful Ralston deserting a wife
and five children for a "biscuit-shooter" was not a convincing picture.
That she did not receive his insinuation seriously but added fuel to the
unreasoning jealousy beginning to flame in Smith's breast.
Yet Smith treated Ralston with a consideration which was surprising in
view of the wanton insults he frequently inflicted upon those whom he
disliked. Susie guessed the reason for his superficial courtesy, and
Ralston, perhaps, suspected it also. In his heart, Smith was afraid. First
and always, he was a judge of men--rather, of certain qualities in men. He
knew that should he give intentional offense to Ralston, he would be
obliged either to retract or to back up his insult with a gun. Ralston
would be the last man to accept an affront with meekness.
Smith did not wish affairs to reach this crisis. He did not want to force
an issue until he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that he was the
better man of the two with words or fists or weapons. But once he found
the flaw in Ralston's armor, he would speedily become the aggressor. Such
were Smith's tactics. He was reckless with caution; daring when it was
safe.
The rôle he was playing gave him no concern. Though the Indian woman's
spells of sullenness irritated him, he conciliated her with endearing
words, caresses, and the promise of a speedy marriage. He appeased her
jealousy of Dora by telling her that he studied the foolish book-words
only that he might the better work for her interests; that he was fitting
himself to cope with the shrewd cattlemen with whom there were constant
dealings, and that when they were married, the Schoolmarm should live
elsewhere. Like others of her sex, regardless of race or color, the Indian
woman believed because she wanted to believe.
Just where his actions were leading him, Smith did not stop to consider.
He had no fear of results. With an overweening confidence arising from
past successes, he believed that matters would adjust themselves as they
always had. Smith wanted a home, and the MacDonald cattle, horses, and
hay; but more than any of them he wanted Dora Marshall. How he was going
to obtain them all was not then clear to him, but that when the time came
he could make a way, he never for a moment doubted.
Smith's confidence in himself was supreme. If he could have expressed his
belief in words, he might have said that he could control Destiny, shape
events and his own life as he liked. He had been shot at, pursued by
posses, all but lynched upon an occasion, and always he had escaped in
some unlooked-for manner little short of miraculous. As a result, he had
come to cherish a superstitious belief that he bore a charmed life, that
no real harm could come to him. So he courted each woman according to her
nature as he read it, and waited blindly for success.
IX
SPEAKING OF GRASSHOPPERS----
It was Saturday, and, there being no school, both Susie and Dora were at
home. Ralston was considering in which direction he should ride that day
when Susie came to him and after saying to Smith with elaborate
politeness, "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, for whispering, but I have something
very private and confidential to say to Mr. Ralston," she shielded her
mouth with her hand and said:
"Teacher and I are going fishing. We are going up on the side-hill now to
catch grasshoppers for bait, and I thought maybe you'd like to help, and
to fish with us this afternoon." She tittered in his ear.
Susie's action conveyed two things to Ralston's mind: first, that he had
not been so clever as he had supposed in dissembling his feelings; and
second, that Susie, recognizing them, was disposed to render him friendly
aid.
Smith noted Ralston's brightening eye with suspicion, jumping to the very
natural conclusion that only some pleasing information concerning the
Schoolmarm would account for it. When, a few minutes later, he saw the
three starting away together, each with a tin or pasteboard box, he
realized that his surmise was correct.
Glowering, Smith walked restlessly about the house, ignoring the Indian
woman's inquiring, wistful eyes, cursing to himself as he wandered through
the corrals and stables, hating with a personal hatred everything which
belonged to Ralston: his gentle-eyed brown mare; his expensive Navajo
saddle-blanket; his single-rigged saddle; his bridle with the wide cheek
pieces and the hand-forged bit. It would have been a satisfaction to
destroy them all. He hated particularly the little brown mare which
Ralston brushed with such care each morning. Smith's mood was black
indeed.
But Ralston, as he walked between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where
the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all
the world--even Smith--and it was in his heart to hug the elfish
half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling
laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given
an unexpected holiday.
Each time that his eyes sought Dora's, shadowed by the wide brim of her
hat, her eyelids drooped, slowly, reluctantly, as though they fell against
her will, while the color came and went under her clear skin in a fashion
which filled him with delighted wonder.
It may be said that there are few things in life so absorbing as catching
grasshoppers. While Ralston previously had recognized this fact, he never
had supposed that it contained any element of pleasure akin to the
delights of Paradise. To chase grasshoppers by oneself is one thing; to
pursue them in the company of a fascinating schoolmarm is another; and
when one has in his mind the thought that ultimately he and the schoolmarm
may chance to fall upon the same grasshopper, the chase becomes a sport
for the gods to envy.
Anent grasshoppers. While the first grasshopper of early spring has not
the devilish agility of his August descendant, he is sufficiently alert to
make his capture no mean feat. It must be borne in mind that the
grasshopper is not a fool, and that he appears to see best from the rear.
Though he remains motionless while the enemy is slipping stealthily upon
him, it by no means follows that he is not aware of said enemy's approach.
The grasshopper has a more highly developed sense of humor than any other
known insect. It is an established fact that after a person has fallen
upon his face and clawed at the earth where the grasshopper was but is
not, the grasshopper will be seen distinctly to laugh from his coign of
vantage beyond reach.
Furthermore, it is quite impossible to fathom the mind of the grasshopper,
his intentions or habits; particularly those of the small, gray-pink
variety. He is as erratic in his flight as a clay pigeon, though it is
tolerably safe to assume that he will not jump backward. He may not jump
at all, but, with a deceptive movement, merely sidle under a sage-leaf.
Where questions concerning his personal safety are concerned, he shows
rare judgment, appearing to recognize exactly the psychological moment in
which to fly, jump, or sit still.
No sluggard, be it known, can hope to catch grasshoppers with any degree
of success. It requires an individual nimble of mind and body, whose
nerves are keyed to a tension, who is dominated by a mood which refuses to
recognize the perils of snakes, cactus, and prairie-dog holes; forgetful
of self and dignity, inured to ridicule. Such a one is justified in making
the attempt.
The large, brownish-black, grandfatherly-looking grasshopper is the most
easily captured, though not so satisfactory for bait as the pea-green or
the gray-pink. It was to the first variety that Dora and Ralston devoted
themselves, while Susie followed the smaller and more sprightly around the
hill till she was out of sight.
Ralston became aware that no matter in which direction the grasshopper he
had marked for his own took him, singularly enough he always ended in
pursuit of Dora's. As a matter of fact, her grasshopper looked so much
more desirable than his, that he could not well do otherwise than abandon
the pursuit of his own for hers.
Her low "Oh, thank you so much!" was so heartfelt and sincere when he
pushed the insect through the slit in her pasteboard box that he truly
believed he would have run one all the way to the Middle Fork of Powder
River only to hear her say it again. And then her womanly aversion to
inflicting pain, her appealing femininity when she brought a bulky-bodied,
tobacco-chewing grasshopper for him to pinch its head into insensibility!
He liked this best of all, for, of necessity, their fingers touched in the
exchange, and he wondered a little at his strength of will in refraining
from catching her hand in his and refusing to let go.
Finally a grasshopper of abnormal size went up with a whir. Big he was, in
comparison with his kind, as the monster steer in the side-show, the
Cardiff giant, or Jumbo the mammoth.
"Oh!" cried Dora; "we must have him!" and they ran side by side in wild,
determined pursuit.
The insect sailed far and fast, but they could not lose sight of him, for
he was like an aeroplane in flight, and when in an ill-advised moment he
lit to gather himself, they fell upon him tooth and nail--to use a phrase.
Dora's hand closed over the grasshopper, and Ralston's closed over Dora's,
holding it tight in one confused moment of delicious, tongue-tied
silence.
Her shoulder touched his, her hair brushed his cheek. He wished that they
might go on holding down that grasshopper until the end of time. She was
panting with the exertion, her nose was moist like a baby's when it
sleeps, and he noticed in a swift, sidelong glance that the pupils of her
eyes all but covered the iris.
"He--he's wiggling!" she said tremulously.
"Is he?" Ralston asked fatuously, at a loss for words, but making no move
to lift his hand.
"And there's a cactus in my finger."
"Let me see it." Immediately his face was full of deep concern.
He held her fingers, turning the small pink palm upward.
"We must get it out," he declared firmly. "They poison some people."
He wondered if it was imagination, or did her hand tremble a little in
his? His relief was not unmixed with disappointment when the cactus spine
came out easily.
"They hurt--those needles." He continued to regard the tiny puncture with
unabated interest.
"Tra! la! la!" sang Susie from the brow of the hill. "Old Smith is
comin'."
Ralston dropped Dora's hand, and they both reddened, each wondering how
long Susie had been doing picket duty.
"Out for your failin' health, Mister Smith?" inquired Susie, with
solicitude.
"I'm huntin' horses, and hopin' to pick up a bunch of ponies cheap," he
replied with ugly significance as he rode by.
And while the soft light faded from Ralston's eyes, the color leaped to
his face; unconsciously his fists clenched as he looked after Smith's
vanishing back. It was the latter's first overt act of hostility; Ralston
knew, and perhaps Smith intended it so, that the clash between them must
now come soon.
X
MOTHER LOVE AND SAVAGE PASSION CONFLICT
It was Sunday, a day later, when Susie came into the living-room and
noticed her mother sewing muskrat around the top of a moccasin. It was a
man's moccasin. The woman had made no men's moccasins since her husband's
death. The sight chilled the girl.
"Mother," she asked abruptly, "what do you let that hold-up hang around
here for?"
"Who you mean?" the woman asked quickly.
"That Smith!" Susie spat out the word like something offensive.
The Indian woman avoided the girl's eyes.
"I like him," she answered.
"Mother!"
"Maybe he stay all time." Her tone was stubborn, as though she expected
and was prepared to resist an attack.
"You don't--you _can't_--mean it!". Susie's thin face flushed scarlet with
shame.
"Sa-ah," the woman nodded, "I mean it;" and Susie, staring at her in a
kind of terror, saw that she did.
"Oh, Mother! Mother!" she cried passionately, dropping on the floor at the
woman's feet and clasping her arms convulsively about the Indian woman's
knees. "Don't--don't say that! We've always been a little different from
the rest. We've always held our heads up. People like us and respect
us--both Injuns and white. We've never been talked about--you and me--and
now you are going to spoil it all!"
"I get tied up to him right," defended the woman sullenly.
"Oh, Mother!" wailed the child.
"We need good white man to run de ranch."
"But _Smith_--do you think _he's_ good? Good! Is a rattlesnake good? Can't
you see what he is, Mother?--you who are smarter than me in seeing through
people? He's mean--onery to the marrow--and some day sure--_sure_--he'll
turn, and strike his fangs into you."
"He no onery," the woman replied, in something like anger.
"It's his nature," Susie went on, without heeding her. "He can't help it.
All his thoughts and talk and schemes are about something crooked. Can't
you tell by the things he lets drop that he ought to be in the 'pen'? He's
treacherous, ungrateful, a born thief. I saw him take Tubbs's halter, and
there was the regular thief look in his eyes when he cut his own name on
it. I saw him kick a dog, and he kicked it like a brute. He kicked it in
the ribs with his toe. Men--decent men--kick a dog with the side of their
foot. I saw his horse fall with him, and he held it down and beat it on
the neck with a chain, where it wouldn't show. He'd hold up a bank or rob
a woman; he'd kill a man or a prairie-dog, and think no more of the one
than the other.
"I tell you, Mother, as sure as I sit here on the floor at your feet,
begging you, he's going to bring us trouble; he's going to deal us misery!
I feel it! I _know_ it!"
"You no like de white man."
"That's right; I don't like the white man. He wants a good place to stay;
he wants your horses and cattle and hay; and--he wants the Schoolmarm.
He's making a fool of you, Mother."
"He no make fool of me," she answered complacently. "He make fool of de
white woman, maybe."
"Look out of the window and see for yourself."
They arose together, and the girl pointed to Smith and Dora, seated side
by side on the cottonwood log.
"Did he ever look at you like that, Mother?"
"He make fool of de white woman," she reiterated stubbornly, but her face
clouded.
"He makes a fool of himself, but not of her," declared Susie. "He's crazy
about her--locoed. Everybody sees it except her. Believe me, Mother,
listen to Susie just this once."
"He like me. I stick to him;" but she went back to her bench. The
unfamiliar softness of Smith's face hurt her.
The tears filled Susie's eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her mother's
passion for this hateful stranger was stronger than her mother-love, that
silent, undemonstrative love in which Susie had believed as she believed
that the sun would rise each morning over there in the Bad Lands, to warm
her when she was cold. She buried her face in her mother's lap and sobbed
aloud.
The woman had not seen Susie cry since she was a tiny child, save when her
father and White Antelope died, and the numbed maternal instinct stirred
in her breast. She laid her dark, ringed fingers upon Susie's hair and
stroked it gently.
"Don't cry," she said slowly. "If he make fool of me, if he lie when he
say he tie up to me right, if he like de white woman better den me, I kill
him. I kill him, Susie." She pointed to a bunch of roots and short dried
stalks which hung from the rafters in one corner of the room. "See--that
is the love-charm of the Sioux. It was gifted to me by Little Coyote's
woman--a Mandan. It bring de love, and too much--it kill. If he make fool
of me, if he not like me better den de white woman, I give him de
love-charm of de Sioux. I fix him! _I fix him right!_"
Out on the cottonwood log Smith and the Schoolmarm had been speaking of
many things; for the man could talk fluently in his peculiar vernacular,
upon any subject which interested him or with which he was familiar.
The best of his nature, whatever of good there was in him, was uppermost
when with Dora. He really believed at such times that he was what she
thought him, and he condemned the shortcomings of others like one speaking
from the lofty pinnacle of unimpeachable virtue.
In her presence, new ambitions, new desires, awakened, and sentiments
which he never had suspected he possessed revealed themselves. He was
happy in being near her; content when he felt the touch of her loose cape
on his arm.
It never before had occurred to Smith that the world through which he had
gone his tumultuous way was a beautiful place, or that there was joy in
the simple fact of being strongly alive. When the sage-brush commenced to
turn green and the many brilliant flowers of the desert bloomed, when the
air was stimulating like wine and fragrant with the scents of spring, it
had meant little to Smith beyond the facts that horse-feed would soon be
plentiful and that he could lay aside his Mackinaw coat. The mountains
suggested nothing but that they held big game and were awkward places to
get through on horseback, while the deserts brought no thoughts save of
thirst and loneliness and choking alkali dust. Upon a time a stranger had
mentioned the scenery, and Smith had replied ironically that there was
plenty of it and for him to help himself!
But this spring was different--so different that he asked himself
wonderingly if other springs had been like it; and to-day, as he sat in
the sunshine and looked about him, he saw for the first time grandeur in
the saw-toothed, snow-covered peaks outlined against the dazzling blue of
the western sky. For the first time he saw the awing vastness of the
desert, and the soft pastel shades which made their desolation beautiful.
He breathed deep of the odorous air and stared about him like a blind man
who suddenly sees.
During a silence, Smith looked at Dora with his curiously intent gaze; his
characteristic stare which held nothing of impertinence--only interest,
intense, absorbing interest--and as he looked a thought came to him, a
thought so unexpected, so startling, that he blinked as if some one had
struck him in the face. It sent a bright red rushing over him, coloring
his neck, his ears, his white, broad forehead.
He thought of her as the mother of children--his children--bearing his
name, miniatures of himself and of her. He never had thought of this
before. He never had met a woman who inspired in him any such desire. He
followed the thought further. What if he should have a permanent home--a
ranch that belonged to him exclusively--"Smith's Ranch"--where there were
white curtains at the windows, and little ones who came tumbling through
the door to greet him when he rode into the yard? A place where people
came to visit, people who reckoned him a person of consequence because he
stood for something. He must have seen a place like it somewhere, the
picture was so vivid in his mind.
The thought of living like others never before had entered into the scheme
of his calculations. Since the time when he had "quit the flat" back in
the country where they slept between sheets, the world had been lined up
against him in its own defense. Life had been a constant game of hare and
hounds, with the pack frequently close at his heels. He had been ever on
the move, both for reasons of safety and as a matter of taste. His point
of view was the abnormal one of the professional law-breaker: the world
was his legitimate prey; the business of his life was to do as he pleased
and keep his liberty; to outwit sheriffs and make a clean get-away. To be
known among his kind as "game" and "slick," was the only distinction he
craved. His chiefest ambition had been to live up to his title of "Bad
Man." In this he had found glory which satisfied him.
"Well," Dora asked at last, smiling up at him, "what is it?"
Smith hesitated; then he burst out:
"Girl, do I stack up different to you nor anybody else? Have you any
feelin' for me at all?"
"Why, I think I've shown my interest in trying to teach you," she replied,
a little abashed by his vehemence.
"What do you want to teach me for?" he demanded.
"Because," Dora declared, "you have possibilities."
"Why don't you teach Meeteetse Ed and Tubbs?"
Dora laughed aloud.
"Candidly, I think it would be a waste of time. They could never hope to
be much more than we see them here. And they are content as they are."
"So was I, girl, until our trails crossed. I could ride without grub all
day, and sing. I could sleep on a saddle-blanket like a tired pup, with
only a rock for a wind-break and my saddle for a pillow. Now I can't sleep
in a bed. It's horrible--this mixed up feelin'--half the time wantin' to
holler and laugh and the other half wantin' to cry."
"I don't see why you should feel like that," said Dora gravely. "You are
getting along. It's slow, but you're learning."
"Oh, yes, I'm learnin'," Smith answered grimly--"fast."
He saw her wondering look and went on fiercely.
"Girl, don't you see what I mean? Don't you _sabe_? My feelin' for you is
more nor friendship. I can't tell you how I feel. It's nothin' I ever had
before, but I've heard of it a-plenty. It's love--that's what it is! I've
seen it, too, a-plenty.
"There's two things in the world a feller'll go through hell for--just
two: love and gold. I don't mean money, but gold--the pure stuff. They'll
waller through snow-drifts, they'll swim rivers with the ice runnin',
they'll crawl through canyons and over trails on their hands and knees,
they'll starve and they'll freeze, they'll work till the blood runs from
their blistered hands, they'll kill their horses and their pardners, for
gold! And they'll do it for love. Yes, I've seen it a-plenty, me--Smith.
"Things I've done, I've done, and they don't worry me none," he went on,
"but lately I've thought of Dutch Joe. I worked him over for singin' a
love-song, and I wisht I hadn't. He'd held up a stage, and was cached in
my camp till things simmered down. It was lonesome, and I'd want to talk;
but he'd sit back in the dark, away from the camp-fire, and sing to
himself about 'ridin' to Annie.' How the miles wasn't long or the trail
rough if only he was 'ridin' to Annie.' Sittin' back there in the brush,
he sounded like a sick coyote a-hollerin'. It hadn't no tune, and I
thought it was the damnedest fool song I ever heard. After he'd sung it
more'n five hundred times, I hit him on the head with a six-shooter, and
we mixed. He quit singin', but he held that gretch against me as long as
he lived.
"I thought it was because he was Dutch, but it wasn't. 'Twas love. Why,
girl, I'd ride as long as my horse could stand up under me, and then I'd
hoof it, just to hear you say, 'Smith, do you think it will rain?'"
"Oh, I never thought of this!" cried Dora, as Smith paused.
Her face was full of distress, and her hands lay tightly clenched in her
lap.
"Do you mean I haven't any show--no show at all?" The color fading from
Smith's face left it a peculiar yellow.
"It never occurred to me that you would misunderstand, or think anything
but that I wanted to help you. I thought that you wanted to learn so that
you would have a better chance in life."
"Did you--honest? Are you as innocent as that, girl?" he asked in savage
scepticism. "Did you believe that I'd set and study them damned verbs just
so I'd have a better chanct in life?"
"You said so."
"Oh, yes, maybe I _said_ so."
"Surely, _surely_, you don't think I would intentionally mislead you?"
"When a woman wants a man to dress or act or talk different, she generally
cares some."
"And I do 'care some'!" Dora cried impulsively. "I believe that you are
not making the best of yourself, of your life; that you are better than
your surroundings; and because I do believe in you, I want to help you.
Don't you understand?"
Her explanation was not convincing to Smith.
"Is it because I don't talk grammar, and you think you'd have to live in a
log-house and hang out your own wash?"
Dora considered.
"Even if I cared for you, those things would have weight," she answered
truthfully. "I am content out here now, and like it because it is novel
and I know it is temporary; but if I were asked to live here always, as
you suggest, in a log-house and hang out my own wash, I should have to
care a great deal."
"It's because I haven't a stake, then," he said bitterly.
"No, not because you haven't a stake. I merely say that extreme poverty
would be an objection."
"But if I should get the _dinero_--me, Smith--plenty of it? Tell me," he
demanded fiercely--"it's the time to talk now--is there any one else? It's
me for the devil straight if you throw me! You'd better take this gun
here, plant it on my heart, and pull the trigger. Because if I live--I'm
talkin' straight--what I have done will be just a kid's play to what I'll
do, if I ever cut loose for fair. Don't throw me, girl! Give me a show--if
there ain't any one else! If there is, I'm quittin' the flat to-day."
Dora was silent, panic-stricken with the responsibility which he seemed
to have thrust upon her, almost terrified by the thought that he was
leaving his future in her hands--a malleable object, to be shaped
according to her will for good or evil.
A certain self-contained, spectacled youth, whose weekly letters arrived
with regularity, rose before her mental vision, and as quickly vanished,
leaving in his stead a man of a different type, a man at once unyielding
and gentle, both shy and bold; a man who seemed to typify in himself the
faults and virtues of the raw but vigorous West. Though she hesitated, she
replied:
"No, there is no one."
And Ralston, fording the stream, lifted his eyes midway and saw Smith
raise Dora's hand to his lips.
XI
THE BEST HORSE
There was a subtle change in Ralston, which Dora was quick to feel. He was
deferential, as always, and as eager to please; but he no longer sought
her company, and she missed the quick exchange of sympathetic glances at
the table. It seemed to her, also, that the grimness in his face was
accentuated of late. She found herself crying one night, and called it
homesickness, yet the small items of news contained in the latest letter
from the spectacled youth had irritated her, and she had realized that she
no longer regarded church fairs, choir practice, and oyster suppers as
"events."
She wondered how she had offended Ralston, if at all; or was it that he
thought her bold, a brazen creature, because she had let him keep her hand
so long upon the memorable occasion of the grasshopper hunt? She blushed
in the darkness at the thought, and the tears slipped down her cheeks
again as she decided that this must be so, since there could be no other
explanation. Before she finally slept, she had fully made up her mind that
she would show him by added reserve and dignity of manner that she was not
the forward hoyden he undoubtedly believed her. And as a result of this
midnight decision, the Schoolmarm's "Good-morning, Mr. Ralston," chilled
that person like a draught from cold storage.
Susie noticed the absence of their former cordiality toward each other;
and the obvious lack of warmth filled Smith with keen satisfaction. He had
no notion of its cause; it was sufficient that it was so.
As their conversation daily became more forced, the estrangement more
marked, Ralston's wretchedness increased in proportion. He brooded
miserably over the scene he had witnessed; troubled, aside from his own
interest in Dora, that she should be misled by a man of Smith's moral
calibre. While he had delighted in her unworldly, childlike belief in
people and things, in this instance he deeply regretted it.
Ralston understood perfectly the part which Smith desired to play in her
eyes. He had heard through Dora the stories Smith had told her of wild
adventures in which he figured to advantage, of reckless deeds which he
hinted would be impossible since falling under her influence. He posed as
a brand snatched from the burning, and conveyed the impression that his
salvation was a duty which had fallen in her path for her to perform. That
she applied herself to the task of elevating Smith with such combined
patience and ardor, was the grievance of which Ralston had most to
complain.
In his darker moments he told himself that she must have a liking for the
man far stronger than he had believed, to have permitted the liberty which
he had witnessed, one which, coming from Smith, seemed little short of
sacrilege. His unhappiness was not lessened by the instances he recalled
where women had married beneath them through this mistaken sense of duty,
pity, or less commendable emotions.
Upon one thing he was determined, and that was never again to force his
attentions upon her, to take advantage of her helplessness as he had when
he had held her hand so tightly and, as he now believed, against her
wishes. Although she did not show it, she must have thought him a bumpkin,
an oaf, an underbred cur. He groaned as he ransacked his vocabulary for
fitting words.
If only something would arise to reveal Smith's character to her in its
true light! But this was too much to hope. In his depression, it seemed to
Ralston that the sun would never shine for him again, that failure was
written on him like an I. D. brand, that sorrow everlasting would eat and
sleep with him. In this mood, after a brief exchange of breakfast
civilities, far worse than none, he walked slowly to the corral to saddle,
cursing Smith for the braggart he knew he was and for the scoundrel he
believed him to be.
Smith, it seemed, was riding that morning also, for when Ralston led his
brown mare saddled and bridled from the stable, Smith was tightening the
cinch on his long-legged gray--the horse he had taken from the Englishman.
The Schoolmarm, in her riding clothes, ran down the trail, calling
impartially:
"Will one of you please get my horse for me? He broke loose last night and
is over there in the pasture."
For reply, both Ralston and Smith swung into their saddles.
"I aims to get that horse. There's no call for you to go, feller."
Above all else, it was odious to Ralston to be addressed by Smith
"feller."
"If you happen to get to him first," he answered curtly. "And I'd like to
suggest that my name is Ralston."
By way of answer, Smith dug the spurs cruelly into the thin-skinned
blooded gray. Ralston loosened the reins on his brown mare, and it was a
run from the jump.
Each realized that the inevitable clash had come, that no pretense of
friendliness would longer be possible between them, that from now on they
would be avowed enemies. As for Ralston, he was glad that the crisis had
arrived; glad of anything which would divert him for ever so short a time
from his own bitter thoughts; glad of the test which he could meet in the
open, like a man.
The corral gate was open, and this led into a lane something like
three-quarters of a mile in length, at the end of which was another gate,
opening into the pasture where the runaway pony had crawled through the
loose wire fence.
The brown mare had responded to Ralston's signal like the loyal, honest
little brute she was. The gravel flew behind them, and the rat-a-tat-tat
of the horses' hoofs on the hard road was like the roll of a drum. They
were running neck and neck, but Ralston had little fear of the result,
unless the gray had phenomenal speed.
Ralston knew that whoever reached the gate first must open it. If he could
get far enough in the lead, he could afford to do so; if not, he meant to
"pull" his horse and leave it to Smith. The real race would be from the
gate to the pony.
The gray horse could run--his build showed that, and his stride bore out
his appearance. Yet Ralston felt no uneasiness, for the mare had still
several links of speed to let out--"and then some," as he phrased it. The
pace was furious even to the gate; they ran neck and neck, like a team,
and the face of each rider was set in lines of determination. Ralston
quickly saw that in the short stretch he would be unable to get
sufficiently in the lead to open the gate in safety. So he pulled his
horse a little, wondering if Smith would do the same. But he did not.
Instead, he spurred viciously, and, to Ralston's amazement, he went at the
gate hard. Lifting the gray horse's head, he went over and on without a
break!
It was a chance, but Smith had taken it! He never had tried the horse, but
it was from the English ranch, where he knew they were bred and trained to
jump. His mocking laugh floated back to Ralston while he tore at the
fastenings of the gate and hurled it from him.
Ralston measured the gap between them and his heart sank. It looked
hopeless. The only thing in his favor was that it was a long run, and the
gray might not have the wind or the endurance. The little mare stood
still, her nose out, her soft eyes shining. As he lifted the reins, he
patted her neck and cried, breathing hard:
"Molly, old girl, if you win, it's oats and a rest all your life!"
He could have sworn the mare shared his humiliation.
The saddle-leathers creaked beneath him at the leap she gave. She lay down
to her work like a hound, running low, her neck outstretched, her tail
lying out on the breeze. Game, graceful, reaching out with her slim legs
and tiny hoofs, she ate up the distance between herself and the gray in a
way that made even Ralston gasp. And still she gained--and gained! Her
muscles seemed like steel springs, and the unfaltering courage in her
brave heart made Ralston choke with pride and tenderness and gratitude.
Even if she lost, the race she was making was something to remember
always. But she was gaining inch by inch. The sage-brush and cactus swam
under her feet. When Ralston thought she had done her best, given all
that was in her, she did a little more.
Smith knew, too, that she was gaining, though he would not turn his head
to look. When her nose was at his horse's rump, he had it in his heart to
turn and shoot her as she ran. She crept up and up, and both Smith and
Ralston knew that the straining, pounding gray had done its best. The work
was too rough for its feet. There was too much thoroughbred in it for
lava-rock and sage-brush hummocks. Blind rage consumed Smith as he felt
the increasing effort of each stride and knew that it was going "dead"
under him. He used his spurs with savage brutality, but the brown mare's
breath was coming hot on his leg. The gray horse stumbled; its breath came
and went in sobs. Now they were neck and neck again. Then it was over, the
little brown mare swept by, and Ralston's rope, cutting the air, dropped
about the neck of the insignificant, white "digger" that had caused it
all.
"I guess you're ridin' the best horse to-day," said Smith, as he dropped
from the saddle to retie his latigo.
He gave the words a peculiar emphasis and inflection which made the other
man look at him.
"Molly and I have a prejudice against taking dust," Ralston answered
quietly.
"It happens frequent that a feller has to get over his prejudices out in
this country."
"That depends a little upon the fellow;" and he turned Molly's head toward
the ranch, with the pony in tow.
Smith said nothing more, but rode off across the hills with all the evil
in his nature showing in his lowering countenance.
Dora's eyes were brilliant as they always were under excitement; and when
Ralston dismounted she stroked Molly's nose, saying in a voice which was
more natural than it had been for days when addressing him, "It was
splendid! _She_ is splendid!" and he glowed, feeling that perhaps he was
included a little in her praise.
"You want to watch out now," said Susie soberly. "Smith'll never rest till
he's 'hunks.'"
Ralston thought the Schoolmarm hesitated, as if she were waiting for him
to join them, or were going to ask him to do so; but she did not, and,
although it was some satisfaction to feel that he had drawn first blood,
he felt his despondency returning as soon as Dora and Susie had ridden
away.
He walked aimlessly about, waiting for Molly to cool a bit before he let
her drink preparatory to starting on his tiresome ride over the range.
Both he and the Colonel believed that the thieves would soon grow bolder,
and his strongest hope lay in coming upon them at work. He had noted that
there were no fresh hides among those which hung on the fence, and he
sauntered down to have another look at the old ones. With his foot he
turned over something which lay close against a fence-post, half concealed
in a sage-brush. Stooping, he unrolled it and shook it out; then he
whistled softly. It was a fresh hide with the brand cut out!
Ralston nodded his head in mingled satisfaction and regret. So the thief
was working from the MacDonald ranch! Did the Indian woman know, he
wondered. Was it possible that Susie was in ignorance? With all his heart,
he hoped she was. He walked leisurely to the house and leaned against the
jamb of the kitchen door.
"Have the makings, Ling?" He passed his tobacco-sack and paper to the
cook.
"Sure!" said Ling jauntily. "I like 'em cigilette."
And as they smoked fraternally together, they talked of food and its
preparation--subjects from which Ling's thoughts seldom wandered far. When
the advantages of soda and sour milk over baking powder were thoroughly
exhausted as a topic, Ralston asked casually:
"Who killed your last beef, Ling? It's hard to beat."
"Yellow Bird," he replied. "Him good butcher."
"Yes," Ralston agreed; "I should say that Yellow Bird was an uncommonly
good butcher."
So, after all, it was the Indians who were killing. Ralston sauntered on
to the bunk-house to think it over.
"Tubbs," McArthur was saying, as he eyed that person with an interest
which he seldom bestowed upon his hireling, "you really have a most
remarkable skull."
Tubbs, visibly flattered, smirked.
"It's claimed that it's double by people what have tried to work me over.
Onct I crawled in a winder and et up a batch of 'son-of-a-gun-in-a-sack'
that the feller who lived there had jest made. He come in upon me suddent,
and the way he hammered me over the head with the stove-lifter didn't
trouble _him_, but," declared Tubbs proudly, "he never even knocked me to
my knees."
"It is of the type of dolichocephalic," mused McArthur.
"A barber told me that same thing the last time I had a hair-cut,"
observed Tubbs blandly. "'Tubbs,' says he, 'you ought to have a massaj
every week, and lay the b'ar-ile on a-plenty.'"
"It is remarkably suggestive of the skulls found in the ancient paraderos
of Patagonia. Very similar in contour--very similar."
"There's no Irish in me," Tubbs declared with a touch of resentment. "I'm
pure mungrel--English and Dutch."
"It is an extremely curious skull--most peculiar." He felt of Tubbs's head
with growing interest. "This bump behind the ear, if the system of
phrenology has any value, would indicate unusual pugnacity."
"That's where a mule kicked me and put his laig out of joint," said Tubbs
humorously.
"Ah, that renders the skull pathological; but, even so, it is an
interesting skull to an anthropologist--a really valuable skull, it would
be to me, illustrating as it does certain features in dispute, for which I
have stubbornly contended in controversies with the Preparator of
Anthropology at the École des Haute Études in Paris."
"Why don't you sell it to him, Tubbs?" suggested Ralston, who had listened
in unfeigned amusement.
Tubbs, startled, clasped both hands over the top of his head and backed
off.
"Why, I need it myself."
"Certainly--we understand that; but supposing you were to die--supposing
something happened to you, as is liable to happen out here--you wouldn't
care what became of your skull, once you were good and dead. If it were
sold, you'd be just that much in, besides making an invaluable
contribution to science," Ralston urged persuasively.
"It not infrequently happens that paupers, and prisoners sentenced to
suffer capital punishment, dispose of their bodies for anatomical
purposes, for which they are paid in advance. As a matter of fact,
Tubbs," declared McArthur earnestly, "my superficial examination of your
head has so impressed me that upon the chance of some day adding it to my
collection I am willing to offer you a reasonable sum for it."
"It's on bi-products that the money is made," declared Ralston soberly,
"and I advise you not to let this chance pass. You can raise money on the
rest of your anatomy any time; but selling your head separately like
this--don't miss it, Tubbs!"
"Don't I git the money till you git my head?" Tubbs demanded
suspiciously.
"I could make a first payment to you, and the remainder could be paid to
your heirs."
"My heirs! Say, all that I'll ever git for my head wouldn't be a smell
amongst my heirs. A round-up of my heirs would take in the hull of North
Dakoty. Not aimin' to brag, I got mavericks runnin' on that range what
must be twelve-year-old."
McArthur looked the disgust he felt at Tubbs's ribald humor.
"Your jests are exceedingly distasteful to me, Tubbs."
"That ain't no jest. Onct I----"
"Let's get down to business," interrupted Ralston. "What do you consider
your skull worth?"
"It's wuth considerable to me. I don't know as I'm so turrible anxious to
sell. I can eat with it, and it gits me around." Tubbs's tone took on the
assumed indifference of an astute horse trader. "I've always held my head
high, as you might say, and it looks to me like it ought to bring a
hunderd dollars in the open market. No, I couldn't think of lettin' it go
for less than a hundred--cash."
McArthur considered.
"If you will agree to my conditions, I will give you my check for one
hundred dollars," he said at last.
"That sounds reasonable," Tubbs assented.
"I should want you to carry constantly upon your person my name, address,
and written instructions as to the care of and disposal of your skull, in
the event of your demise. I shall also insist that you do not voluntarily
place your head where your skull may be injured; because, as you can
readily see, if it were badly crushed, it would be worthless for my
purpose, or that of the scientific body to whom I intend to bequeath my
interest in it, should I die before yourself."
"I wasn't aimin' to lay it in a vise," remarked Tubbs.
While McArthur was drawing up the agreement between them, Tubbs's face
brightened with a unique thought.
"Say," he suggested, "why don't you leave word in them instructions for me
to be mounted? I know a taxidermist over there near the Yellowstone Park
what can put up a b'ar or a timber wolf so natural you wouldn't know 'twas
dead. Wouldn't it be kinda nice to see me settin' around the house with my
teeth showin' and an ear of corn in my mouth? I'll tell you what I'll do:
I'll sell you my hull hide for a hundred more. It might cost two dollars
to have me tanned, and with a nice felt linin' you could have a good rug
out of me for a very little money."
McArthur replied ironically:
"I never have regarded you as an ornament, Tubbs."
Tubbs looked at the check McArthur handed him, with satisfaction.
"That's what I call clear velvet!" he declared, and went off chuckling to
show it to his friends.
"When you think of it, this is a very singular transaction," observed
McArthur, wiping his fountain-pen carefully.
"Yes," and Ralston, no longer able to contain himself, shouted with
laughter; "it is."
XII
SMITH GETS "HUNKS"
Smith's ugly mood was still upon him when he picked up his grammar that
evening. Jealous, humiliated by the loss of the morning's race, full
of revengeful thoughts and evil feelings, he wanted to hurt
somebody--something--even Dora. He had a vague, sullen notion that she
was to blame because Ralston was in love with her. She could have
discouraged him in the beginning, he told himself; she could have
stopped it.
Unaccustomed as Smith was to self-restraint, he quickly showed his frame
of mind to Dora. He had no _savoir faire_ with which to conceal his mood;
besides, he entertained a feeling of proprietorship over her which
justified his resentment to himself. Was she not to be his? Would he not
eventually control her, her actions, choose her friends?
Dora found him a dense and disagreeable pupil, and one who seemingly had
forgotten everything he had learned during previous lessons. His replies
at times were so curt as to be uncivil, and a feeling of indignation
gradually rose within her. She was at a loss to understand his mood,
unless it was due to the result of the morning's race; yet she could
scarcely believe that his disappointment, perhaps chagrin, could account
for his rudeness to her.
When the useless lesson was finished, she closed the book and asked:
"You are not yourself to-night. What is wrong?"
With an expression upon his face which both startled and shocked her he
snarled:
"I'm sick of seein' that lady-killer hangin' around here!"
"You mean----?"
"Ralston!"
Dora had never looked at Smith as she looked at him now.
"I beg to be excused from your criticisms of Mr. Ralston."
Smith had not dreamed that the gentle, girlish voice could take on such a
quality. It cut him, stung him, until he felt hot and cold by turns.
"Oh, I didn't know he was such a friend," he sneered.
"Yes"--her eyes did not quail before the look that flamed in his--"he is
_just_ such a friend!"
They had risen; and Smith, looking at her as she stood erect, her head
high in defiance, could have choked her in his jealous rage.
He stumbled rather than walked toward the door.
"Good-night," he said in a strained, throaty voice.
"Good-night."
She stared at the door as it closed behind him. She had something of the
feeling of one who, making a pet of a tiger, feels its claws for the first
time, sees the first indication of its ferocious nature. This new phase of
Smith's character, while it angered, also filled her with uneasiness.
It was later than usual when Smith came in to say a word to the Indian
woman, after Dora and Susie had retired. He did not bring with him the
fumes of tobacco, the smoke of which rose in clouds in the bunk-house,
making it all but impossible to see the length of the building; he
brought, rather, an odor of freshness, a feeling of coolness, as though he
had been long in the night air.
The Indian woman sniffed imperceptibly.
"Where you been?"
His look was evil as he answered:
"Me? I've been payin' my debts, me--Smith."
He took her impassive hand in both of his and pressed it against his
heart.
"Prairie Flower," he said, "I want you to tell Ralston to go. _I hate
him_."
The woman looked at him, but did not answer.
"Will you?"
"Yes, I tell him."
"When?"
She raised her narrowing eyes to his.
"_When you tell de white woman to go_."
* * * * *
Ralston had felt that the old Colonel was growing impatient with his
seeming inactivity, so he decided, the next morning, to ride to the Bar C
and tell him that he believed he had a clue. It would not be necessary to
keep Running Rabbit under close surveillance until the beef in the
meat-house was getting low. Then the deputy sheriff meant not to let him
out of his sight.
Smith had not spoken to the man whom he had come to regard as his rival
since he had ridden away from him the morning before. He had ignored
Ralston's conversation at the table and avoided him in the bunk-house.
Now, engaged in trimming his horse's fetlocks, Smith did not look up as
the other man passed, but his eyes followed him with a triumphant gleam as
he went into the stable to saddle Molly.
Ralston backed the mare to turn her in the stall, and she all but fell
down. He felt a little surprise at her clumsiness, but did not grasp its
meaning until he led her to the door, where she stepped painfully over the
low door-sill and all but fell again. He led her a step or two further,
and she went almost to her knees. The mare was lame in every leg--she
could barely stand; yet there was not a mark on her--not ever so slight a
bruise! Her slender legs were as free from swellings as when they had
carried her past Smith's gray; her feet looked to be in perfect condition;
yet, save for the fact that she could stand up, she was as crippled as if
the bones of every leg were shattered.
It is doubtful if any but steel-colored eyes can take on the look which
Ralston's contained as they met Smith's. His skin was gray as he
straightened himself and drew a hand which shook noticeably the length of
his cheek and across his mouth.
In great anger, anger which precedes some quick and desperate act, almost
every person has some gesture peculiar to himself, and this was
Ralston's.
A less guilty man than Smith might have flinched at that moment. The
half-grin on his face faded, and he waited for a torrent of accusations
and oaths. But Ralston, in a voice so low that it barely reached him, a
voice so ominous, so fraught with meaning, that the dullest could not have
misunderstood, said:
"I'll borrow your horse, Smith."
Smith, like one hypnotized, heard himself saying:
"Sure! Take him."
Ralston knew as well as though he had witnessed the act that Smith had
hammered the frogs of Molly's feet until they were bruised and sore as
boils. Her lameness would not be permanent--she would recover in a week or
two; but the abuse of, the cruelty to, the little mare he loved filled
Ralston with a hatred for Smith as relentless and deep as Smith's own.
"A man who could do a thing like that," said Ralston through his set
teeth, "is no common cur! He's wolf--all wolf! He isn't staying here for
love, alone. There's something else. And I swear before the God that made
me, I'll find out what it is, and land him, before I quit!"
XIII
SUSIE'S INDIAN BLOOD
Coming leisurely up the path from the corrals, Smith saw Susie sitting on
the cottonwood log, wrapped in her mother's blanket. She was huddled in a
squaw's attitude. He eyed her; he never had seen her like that before.
But, knowing Indians better, possibly, than he knew his own race, Smith
understood. He recognized the mood. Her Indian blood was uppermost. It
rose in most half-breeds upon occasion. Sometimes under the influence of
liquor it cropped out, sometimes anger brought it to the surface. He had
seen it often--this heavy, smouldering sullenness.
Smith stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at her. He felt more at
ease with her than ever before.
"What are you sullin' about, Susie?"
She did not answer. Her pertness, her Anglo-Saxon vivacity, were gone; her
face was wooden, expressionless; her restless eyes slow-moving and dull;
her cheek-bones, always noticeably high, looked higher, and her skin was
murky and dark.
"You look like a squaw with that sull on," he ventured again, and there
was satisfaction in his face.
It was something to know that, after all, Susie was "Injun"--"pure
Injun." The scheme which had lain dormant in his brain now took active
shape. He had wanted Susie's help, but each time that he had tried to
conciliate her, his overtures had ended in a fresh rupture. Now her
stinging tongue was dumb, and there was no aggressiveness in her manner.
Smith, laying his hand heavily upon her shoulder, sat down beside her, and
a flash, a transitory gleam, shone for an instant in her dull eyes; but
she did not move or change expression.
He said in a low voice:
"What you need is stirrin' up, Susie."
He watched her narrowly, and continued:
"You ought to get into a game that has some ginger in it. This here life
is too tame for a girl like you."
Without looking at him she asked:
"What kind of a game?" Her voice was lifeless, guttural.
"It's agin my principles to empty my sack to a woman; but you're
diff'rent--you're game--you are, Susie." His voice dropped to a whisper,
and the weight of his hand made her shoulder sag. "Let's you and me rustle
a bunch of horses."
Susie did not betray surprise at the startling proposition by so much as
the twitching of an eyelid.
"What for?"
Smith replied:
"Just for the hell of it!"
She grunted, but neither in assent nor dissent; so Smith went on in an
eager, persuasive whisper:
"There's Injun enough in you, girl, to make horse-stealin' all the same as
breathin'. You jump in with me on this deal and see how easy you lose that
sull. Don't you ever have a feelin' take holt of you that you want to do
something onery--steal something, mix with somebody? I do. I've had that
notorious feelin' workin' on me strong for days now, and I've got to get
rid of it. If you'll come in on this, we'll have the excitement and make a
stake, too. Talk up, girl--show your sand! Be game!"
"What horses do you aim to steal?"
"Reservation horses. Say, the way I can burn their brands and fan 'em over
the line won't trouble _me_. I'll come back with a wad--me, Smith--and
I'll whack up even. What do you say?"
"What for a hand do I take in it?"
A smile of triumph lifted the corners of Smith's mouth.
"You gather 'em up and run 'em into a coulee, that's all. I'll do the
rest."
"What do you want _me_ to do it for?"
"Nobody'd think anything of it if they saw you runnin' horses, because
you're always doin' it; but they'd notice me."
"Where's the coulee?"
"I've picked it. I located my plant long ago. I've found the best spot in
the State to make a plant."
"Where are you goin' to sell?"
Smith eyed her inscrutable face suspiciously.
"You're askin' lots of questions, girl. I tips my hand too far to no
petticoat. You trusts me or you don't. Will you come in?"
"All right," said Susie after a silence; "I'll come in--'just for the hell
of it.'"
"Shake!"
She looked at his extended hand and wrapped her own in her blanket.
"There's no call to shake."
"Is your heart mixed, Susie?" he demanded. "Ain't it right toward me?"
"It'll be right enough when the time comes," she answered.
The reply did not satisfy Smith, but he told himself that, once she was
committed, he could manage her, for, after all, Susie was little more than
a child. Smith felt uncommonly pleased with himself for his bold stroke.
The new intimacy between Smith and Susie, the sudden cessation of
hostilities, caused surprise on the ranch, but the Indian woman was the
only one to whom it gave pleasure. She viewed the altered relations with
satisfaction, since it removed the only obstacle, as she believed, to a
speedy marriage with Smith.
"Didn't I tell you he smart white man?" she asked complacently of Susie.
"Oh, yes, he's awful smart," Susie answered with sarcasm.
Ralston, more than any one else, was puzzled by their apparent friendship.
He had believed that Susie's antipathy for Smith was as deep as his own,
and he wondered what could have happened to bring about such a sudden and
complete revulsion of feeling. He was disappointed in her. He felt that
she had weakly gone over to the enemy; and it shook his confidence in her
sturdy honesty more than anything she could have done. He believed that no
person who understood Smith, as Susie undoubtedly did, could make a friend
and confidant of him and be "right." But sometimes he caught Susie's eyes
fixed upon him in a kind of wistful, inquiring scrutiny, which left the
impression that something was troubling her, something that she longed to
confide in some one upon whom she could rely; but his past experience had
taught him the futility of attempting to force her confidence, of trying
to learn more than she volunteered.
Smith and Susie rode the surrounding country and selected horses from the
various bands. Three or four bore Bear Chief's brand, there were a pinto
and a black buckskin in Running Rabbit's herd, and a sorrel or two that
belonged to Yellow Bird. A couple of bays here were singled out, a brown
and black there, until they had the pick of the range.
"We don't want to get more nor you can cut out alone and handle," warned
Smith. "We don't want no slip-up on the start."
"I don't aim to make no slip-up."
"We've got lookers, we have," declared Smith. "And them chunky ones go off
quickest at a forced sale. I know a horse when I meet up with it,
me--Smith."
"But where you goin' to cache 'em?" insisted Susie.
"Girl, I ain't been ridin' this range for my health. I'll show you a blind
canyon where a regiment of soldiers couldn't find a hundred head of horses
in a year; and over there in the Bad Lands there's a spring breakin' out
where a man dyin' of thirst would never think of lookin' for it. We're all
right. You're a head-worker, and so am I." Smith chuckled. "We'll set some
of these Injuns afoot, and make a clean-get-away."
Smith was more than satisfied with the zest with which Susie now entered
into the plot, and the shrewdness which she showed in planning details
that he himself had overlooked.
"You work along with me, kid, and I'll make a dead-game one out of you!"
he declared with enthusiasm. "When we make a stake, we'll go to Billings
and rip up the sod!"
"I'll like that," said Susie dryly.
"When the right time comes, I'll know it," Smith went on. "When I wakes up
some mornin' with a feelin' that it's the day to get action on, I always
follows that feelin'--if it takes holt of me anyways strong. I has to do
certain things on certain days. I hates a chilly day worse nor anything. I
wants to hole up, and I feels mean enough to bite myself. But when the sun
shines, it thaws me; it draws the frost out of my heart, like. I hates to
let anybody's blood when the sun shines. I likes to lie out on a rock like
a lizard, and I feels kind. I'm cur'ous that way, about sun, me--Smith."
XIV
THE SLAYER OF MASTODONS
Dora and Susie had planned to botanize one fine Saturday morning, and
Susie, dressed for a tramp in the hills, was playing with a pup in the
dooryard, waiting for Dora, when she saw Smith coming toward her with the
short, quick step which, she had learned, with him denoted mental
activity.
"This is the day for it," he said decisively. "I had that notorious
feelin' take holt of me when I got awake. How's your heart, girl?"
It had given a thump at Smith's approach, and Susie's tawny skin had paled
under its tan, but by way of reply she gave the suggestive Indian sign of
strength.
"Good!" he nodded. "You'll need a strong heart for the ridin' you've got
to do to-day; but I'm not a worryin' that you can't do it, kid, for I've
watched you close."
"Guess I could ride a flyin' squirrel if I had to," Susie replied shortly,
"but Teacher wanted me to go with her to get flowers. She doesn't like to
go alone."
"There's no call for her to go alone. I'll go with her. It's no use for me
to get to the plant before afternoon. I'll go on this flower-pickin'
spree, and be at the mouth of the canyon in time to hold the first bunch
of horses you bring in. They're pretty much scattered, you know. What for
an outfit you goin' to wear? You don't want no flappin' skirts to
advertise you."
Susie answered curtly:
"I got some sense."
"You're a sassy side-kicker," he observed good-humoredly.
She pouted.
"I don't care, I wanted to pick flowers."
Smith said mockingly, "So do I, angel child. I jest worships flowers!"
"From pickin' flowers to stealin' horses is some of a jump."
"I holds a record for long jumps." As a final warning Smith said: "Now,
don't make no mistake in cuttin' out, for we've picked the top horses of
the range. And remember, once you get 'em strung out, haze 'em along--for
there'll be hell a-poppin' on the reservation when they're missed."
Susie had disappeared when the Schoolmarm came out with her basket and
knife, prepared to start, and Smith gave some plausible excuse for her
change of plan.
"She told me to go in her place," said Smith eagerly, "and I know a gulch
where there's a barrel of them Mormon lilies, and rock-roses, and a
reg'lar carpet of these here durn little blue flowers that look so nice
and smell like a Chinese laundry. I can dig like a badger, too."
Dora laughed, and, looking at him, noticed, as she often had before, the
wonderful vividness with which his varying moods were reflected in his
face, completely altering his expression.
He looked boyish, brimming with the buoyant spirits of youth. His skin had
unwonted clearness, his eyes were bright, his face was animated; he seemed
to radiate exuberant good-humor. Even his voice was different and his
laugh was less hard. As he walked away with the Schoolmarm's basket
swinging on his arm, he was for the time what he should have been always.
He had long since made ample apology to Dora for his offense and there had
been no further outbreak from him of which to complain.
The day's work was cut out for Ralston also, when he saw Yellow Bird and
another Indian ride away, each leading a pack-horse, and learned from Ling
that they had gone to butcher. They started off over the reservation, in
the direction in which the MacDonald cattle ranged; with the intention,
Ralston supposed, of circling and coming out on the Bar C range. He
thought that by keeping well to the draws and gulches he could remain
fairly well hidden and yet keep them in sight.
He heard voices, and turned a hill just in time to see Smith take a flower
gently from Dora's hand and, with some significant word, lay it with care
between the leaves of a pocket note-book.
Though it looked more to Ralston, all that Smith had said was, "It might
bring me luck." And Dora had smiled at his superstition.
Ralston would have turned back had it not been too late: his horse's feet
among the rocks had caused them to look up. As he passed Dora replied to
some commonplace, with heightened color, and Smith stared in silent
triumph.
Ralston cursed himself and the mischance which had taken him to that
spot.
"She'll think I was spying upon her, like some ignorant, jealous fool!" he
told himself savagely. "Why, why, is it that I must always blunder upon
such scenes, to make me miserable for days! Can it be--can it possibly
be," he asked himself--"that she cares for the man; that she encourages
him; that she has a foolish, Quixotic notion that she can raise him to her
own level?"
Was there really good in the man which he, Ralston, was unable to see? Was
he too much in love with Dora himself to be just to Smith, he wondered.
"No, no!" he reiterated vehemently. "No man who would abuse a horse is fit
for a good woman to marry. I'm right about him--I know I am. But can I
prove it in time to save her?--not for myself, for I guess I've no show;
but from him?"
With a heartache which seemed to have become chronic of late, Ralston
followed the Indians' lead up hill and down, through sand coulees and
between cut-banks, at a leisurely pace. They seemed in no hurry, nor did
they make any apparent effort to conceal themselves. They rode through
several herds of cattle, and passed on, drifting gradually toward the
creek bottom close to the reservation line, where both Bar C and I. D.
cattle came to drink.
Ralston wondered if they would attempt to stand him off; but his heart was
too heavy for the possibility of a coming fight t
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