VIICUPID “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 budmuy 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 badhombrewho 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, butdarnme 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 letteramarked 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 aa, 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 theain ‘aig,’” elucidated Tubbs.
“Like theain ‘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 achief,” 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 saygoes!”
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.
VIIITHE 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 neverhearda 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, therewereno 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.
IXSPEAKING 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.