IVA 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 moresabethan 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.”
“Andmaybeyou 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 meanyoudon’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 guessso,” 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.”
VSMITH 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.Sabewhat 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, Ihavewondered 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?WillI? 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 troubleme. 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 itmaybe—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 tohangsomebody!”
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 thinkyoudid it, than him!”
There was not so much as the flicker of an eyelid from Smith.
“I know you’dsoonerthink I did it than him,” he said, playing upon the word. “You’d like to seemeget 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.
VITHE 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 becamecompadres, 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;youare 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. Wealwayshangsourhides.”
“Ineverhangsmyhides. 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 Gazettecomes 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 ahorse!”
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.