After the vociferating group had made Houston comfortable with the bandages and rough surgery of the frontier, it again took up the discussion of ways and means. It was a tired crowd, haggard from dissipation and want of sleep. And then, too, it was a cross crowd.
A majority were savage. Their passions were aroused to an unreasoning pitch, as is the manner of mobs. To them it was not a question of discussion, but of destruction. They wanted to burn the Company's buildings, and they were so set on it, and so impatient of even a word of opposition, that Lafond began to be a little frightened for his new property. His attempts at dissuasion were everywhere met with rebuff. Finally, on a sudden inspiration, he sprang to his own window ledge and signed his desire to speak.
Such men as Moroney, Kelly, Graham, and Williams, cooler heads, whose stake in the camp's fate was still heavy, succeeded in obtaining a momentary silence.
"Boys," shouted Mike, "I'll pay you myself!"
They paused in good earnest now, to see what these astounding words might signify.
"I'll pay you myself!" repeated Lafond. Then—for he was too shrewd to promise a thing of such moment without giving a plausible reason for it—he went on, "I can't afford to let this camp bust; I got too much in it. I can afford better that I spend a little to help it along. I don't know what it is that the Company intends; but I will find out; and this I promise to you, if the Company does not pay you, I will make some arrangement for the mine and I will pay you myself!"
Even Graham and Moroney were a little deceived. Both perceived dimly an ulterior motive, but on the surface the offer was generous and there could be no doubt that Lafond's word was perfectly good in such a matter. As for the men, they were more than satisfied.
"But of course," Lafond was saying, "you must not do any injury to the property."
Which went without saying, as every one could see.
Michaïl Lafond ate his breakfast with many long pauses. He had little appetite. His plans had gone well, and yet in their outcome rested a little remnant of the indecisive that annoyed him out of all proportion. Billy had been discharged from his position as superintendent and driven from camp, yet his exit had been melodramatically brilliant and had somehow done much to leave his memory in good odor. He, Lafond, had the promise of the property; but even yet the deeds were in escrow at Rapid. It was forty-five miles to Rapid—ten hours! Much might happen in ten hours. At the thought, which Lafond instinctively paused to note was not in his usual confident manner, he started up and commanded Frosty to harness his team of bays to the buckboard. He would complete the contract before sunset. While the animals were being harnessed, he tried to smoke a pipe. It went out. He attempted to read a paper. He could not. Finally he went out of doors and strode rapidly up and down. He felt chilled, for the air of the early morning was sharp. He thrust his arm through the open window and took down his old canvas coat from behind the door, and put it on. In spite of its protection he shivered again.
"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!" he growled at Frosty. He snapped the lash of his black-snake whip, making the bays dance to the hindrance of Frosty's task. His eye caught the new dance hall.
"She's been worth while, if she never does another thing," he commented to himself, and then realized that he had said it, not because he believed it, but because he wanted to keep his courage up. What was this dread of the intangible? He could not understand it. "Getting too old to sit up all night," he explained it to himself.
His thoughts went back to the night. It had left with him an impression of being unsatisfactory. Why should it? There was something about the girl, he did not recall exactly what. Oh yes, Cheyenne Harry! That affair had balked. Well, it did not much matter: that was a detail. Now that the dance hall was up, the girl could be forced to take her place. Lafond told himself that he was a little tired of finesse and delicate planning—too tired to undertake another long campaign of the kind merely for the satisfaction to be found in the process. Besides, in this case it was not necessary. He would settle the affair now, get it off his mind.
He strode over to the girl's shack and pushed open the door. She was lying flat on her face, fully dressed as in her first transport of shame, but she had now fallen into a light sleep. At the creak of the door, however, she looked up, her eyes red with crying.
"That was a hell of a performance last night," said Lafond brutally, "and it don't go again."
He had never spoken to her so before.
She sat upright on the bed and stared at him, clasping one hand near her throat.
"That ain't what you're here for," continued Mike. "There'll be another dance Saturday night, and you be on hand and stay on hand. That's your job now—understand?"
A slow comprehension of his meaning crept into her eyes, and she covered them with her hands. The halfbreed stood in the doorway coiling and uncoiling the lash of his whip. He wanted some indication of how she was going to take it.
"Understand?" he repeated.
She merely shuddered.
"Damn it! can't you answer?" he cried impatiently. "What do you think I've raised you for anyway? You're none of my breed. Answer, you——," and he spat out an epithet.
She lowered her hands and looked at him again with wide-open eyes from which all expression had faded. This stony silence irritated Lafond.
"You've had your head long enough. Now you're going to show what you're made for. Understand? Great God!" he cried, "you've got a tongue, haven't you? Why don't you answer when I ask you a question?" In one of the sudden Latin gusts of passion, which generally he held so well in control, Lafond lashed her across the breast with his black-snake whip. Almost before the impulse had quitted his brain he regretted it, for her scream would bring out the camp, and Lafond could see the awkwardness of an explanation. It was better to break her in gradually. To his relief, she did not cry out, but merely shivered pitifully and closed her eyes.
"That's what you'll get if you don't toe the mark," threatened Lafond, only too glad to avoid a scene. He slouched out of the door, climbed into his light wagon shaking his heavy head sullenly, and drove away in the direction of Rapid.
After he had gone and the sound of his wheels had died away, the girl arose staggeringly from her bed. The bright world had crumbled. For the first time in her young existence her thoughts turned to the vague conception of a higher Being which she had built, Heaven knows how, from materials gathered, Heaven knows where.
"God, God, God!" she cried, "I thought this was a happy world where people laughed. I did not know there was so much sorrow in the world. You did not make the world to be sorrowful, did you, God?"
She was almost blind. She knew that she must kill herself: that alone was clear. It was that or the dance hall. She was to be like Bismarck Anne. And she realized in a moment that she knew Black Mike, his iron will and his cruel heart; and she was afraid of him, deadly afraid. She began to grope about the room. There was a dim square: that must be the window. Her hands passed fumblingly over the table, just missing the long sewing scissors. Nothing there. Quick, quick, he might come back! She almost fell over the cloak, which had fallen to the floor, and was now entangled about her feet. There was another square of light: it must be the door. She stumbled out into a glare of merciless sunshine that filled her brain and beat on the walls of her understanding until she covered her eyes, and still stumbled on. She thought she heard men shouting. She was not sure.
From his work of sweeping out the stale saloon, Frosty had seen her. She was a strange sight, her hair half down, her face white and drawn, her step so uncertain. Frosty was very fond of her in his stupid silent way. He yelled and ran toward her.
In this day of excitement, a cry brought a dozen heads to a dozen windows and doors. In a moment the girl was surrounded. The men were puzzled. "Plain case of bug-juice," said one, a little sorrowfully.
She felt someone trying gently to lead her somewhere, but she resisted, crying "Let me go, let me go. I want to get to the big rock."
Graham pushed his way anxiously into the group. He had not been able to bring himself to attend the dance the evening before, but he had been told the details, and up to now had felt rather relieved than otherwise at the turn affairs had taken.
"Why do you want to go to the big rock, Molly?" he asked gently.
At the sound of his voice she began to cry a little. "It is so high up there, so high," she said over and over.
"Of course it's high, Molly, very high; but don't you think you'd better wait until to-morrow?"
The men stood about with awe-stricken faces. They saw now that there was more in this than they had at first supposed. "Nutty," they whispered to each other in undertones.
"Such a long way down, a long way down," went on the girl. "I could jump from there very easily; such a long way down!"
Graham took her quietly by the shoulders.
"Listen, Molly, it's I, Jack Graham."
"Yes, Jack."
"And I want you to do just as I say. Will you do it?"
"Yes, Jack."
"I want you to go with me. Do you trust me, Molly?"
She began to sob violently, almost convulsively, dabbing uncertainly at her eyes.
"What is it, Jack? What am I doing here?"
"Nothing; it's all right. Will you come with me? Ah, that's better."
She looked about her with intelligence.
"What is it, boys? How did I come here?" Her glance wandered past them to the dance hall, and she turned away suddenly. "Ah! I remember!" The strained look began to come back into her face.
"Here, here, Molly!" cried Graham in alarm, "that won't do! Here, you must do just exactly as I say. You must come with me now, and get something to eat and some sleep. Don't you trust me, Molly?"
He looked steadily into her eyes, his brow contorted with anxiety.
"Oh, Jack, Jack," she cried suddenly, "whom else could I trust but you? You have been the only man whom I could have trusted from the very first, the only man I should have trusted. I see that now. I have known it all the while, but I would not acknowledge it."
"Will you go with me then, Molly?" asked Graham again.
This time it was she who raised her hands to his shoulders. "Jack," said she solemnly, "a few minutes ago I was on the point of killing myself because I saw nothing but death or that dance hall before me. I had forgotten. I will never do so again. I will go with you now, Jack, wherever you want me to; and I will go with you, Jack, forever, to the end of the world."
She leaned suddenly forward and kissed him, and then as suddenly fell to weeping again, with great sobs that shook her slender body cruelly.
Never was a stranger love scene; never was one more in keeping with the wayward, capricious, yet intrinsically sterling character of Molly Lafond. She did not understand it; but she felt to her inmost soul that it was real; and that if she did not love Jack Graham now, at least she respected him above all men and above herself, and that her affection for him would never diminish, but rather increase as the time went on. And this the event proved to be true. Nor did Graham understand, but he too felt the sincerity of it. As for the men before whose audience the curious drama had been enacted, they understood still less.
But it was very simple after all.
In her nature, as in all other natures, two forces had struggled for the mastery. With her they happened to be called heredity, or the East; and education, or the West. Her training, her environment, her mental atmosphere had powerfully affected her general conduct of life; but in the great crisis her deeper nature had spoken, and she had obeyed.
Michaïl Lafond drove on slowly down the valley of Copper Creek, although, if he intended to reach Rapid before dark, there would seem to be every reason for haste.
He usually conducted his affairs so carefully, so shrewdly, so calculatingly. How had he happened to give way so to an impulse? He regretted lashing the girl with his whip, because he felt that it was unnecessary. Doing unnecessary evil had always been against Lafond's principles. He considered it bad luck, and somehow that spectre of bad luck seemed to be coming very close. He had lost confidence. Therefore he made mistakes.
Just outside of town he encountered Blair's stage crawling along on a mended axle. Naturally both vehicles pulled up. After explanations of the accident, Blair remarked casually—
"Struck Billy down the road a piece."
"Yes," said Mike, "he left this morning."
"Almighty lucky happen-so for him, 'cause I had an old codger aboard that was just on his way to visit Billy. Nice old cuss, too. Name Buckley, or Bulkley, or something like that. Come from out Wyoming way."
Lafond clamped on his brake again.
"Yes," said he, "I used to know him. He went off with Billy, you say?"
"Yes, bagan'baggage."
"Goin' to Rapid?"
"Near as I could make out," said Blair. "They reversed the proposition on the spot. Place of him a visitin' of Billy, Billy he aims to visit him. Things movin' at camp?"
"They'll tell you up there," replied Lafond and drove on.
What a fiendish stroke of luck! This one man in all the West who knew of the affair at Spanish Gulch in the seventies, who would remember the doctor's wife, who would recognize the strong resemblance of her daughter to her, who might stir up that dust of the past which Lafond had so carefully laid—that he should come just at this time! To be sure, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to implicate him—Lafond. But Buckley was a tenacious sort of individual; he would insist on investigating. That would mean explanations by Lafond, a detailed account. The details would have to be invented. And then a chill struck his heart as he realized that he could not recall all the story he had told the Indian agent when he had left the little girl in his charge!
He pulled his horses down to a walk and set himself to thinking earnestly. He went over in sequence, as nearly as he could remember them, every word and action, from his meeting with Durand to his departure from the agency. It was no use. Even at the time, he had invented the story lightly, without much thought of its importance except as a temporary expedient. Now the matter had quite escaped him. Jim Buckley's return West, which had before seemed merely fortunate, he saw now had been providential. It was a narrow escape. He must visit the agent as soon as possible, for the purpose of refreshing his memory.
He came to Durand's cabin. The old man stood near the doorway examining something which he held flat in the palm of his hand. At his feet, Jacques, the little raccoon, was curled up in a bright-eyed ball of fur, enjoying the early sun. Out behind the cabin, Isabeau, the tasselled lynx, stepped lightly to and fro along the length of his chain; and the great Pantalon sat drolly on his shaggy haunches sniffing the air. Lafond stopped. He felt he must talk to some one or give way to this incomprehensible impulse to shriek aloud.
They exchanged greetings. At once Lafond saw something suspicious in the old man's attitude. He was preternaturally grave. He seemed to be thinking of something behind his actual speech.
"I've something to show you, Lafond," he remarked after a little. "It's very queer," and with what Lafond saw at once to be an accusing motion he held before the latter's eyes the little ivory miniature of Prue Welch.
He had found it under amesquitebush. Ever since he had been struggling vainly to place the familiarity of the features. He had not seen enough of the girl at the camp to be able to do so definitely, but he had succeeded in bringing his mind almost to the point of a recognition which was continually just escaping him.
Lafond started violently, and stared at the portrait.
"Why, what's the matter?" cried Durand. "You look as though you'd seen a ghost!"
On the instant Lafond recovered his self-possession. He glanced with side-long evil look at the old man.
"Nothing," said he briefly.
It was evident that the naturalist was trying to trap him.
"Where have you seen her before?" asked the latter, returning to the portrait. "She is old-fashioned—must have had that painted fifteen or twenty years ago—and yet I've seen her recently."
Lafond stiffly descended from the vehicle, both hands thrust deep into the pockets of his canvas coat, and peered over the old man's shoulder.
"Here, Lafond," the latter was saying, "you know more about this than I do——" He meant that the half-breed possessed a wider circle of acquaintances. At his words Lafond drew an ivory-handled clasp-knife from the pocket of his canvas coat, opened it in two lightning motions and stabbed the old man deeply in the back. The latter stumbled forward, half turning as he fell. Lafond plunged his blade wickedly into Durand's throat, where it stuck, twisting out of the murderer's hands. The victim writhed twice, gasped, and died.
Black Mike stood over the body for a moment, panting. He stooped to recover the knife. On its ivory handle he read the words "William Knapp," on which he remembered, and left it where it was. Then he climbed into his wagon and insanely lashed his horses into a frantic run.
The little furry 'coon approached its master bristling. It dabbled its black paws, almost human, in the blood that stood on the threshold, and then, frothing at the muzzle, it scrambled into the house and up a high bookshelf, where it crouched, its eyes like coals of green fire.
On the hillside opposite a white-faced little boy rose from behind a mesquite clasping the neck of a homely dog. He ran at once to town, where he burst in on Moroney, crying, "Pop, pop, Black Mike's gone and killed old Bugchaser with a knife," after which he began to cry hysterically. It took time for the camp to arouse, to dress, to hear the tale, to believe, to visit the scene of the deed, to believe again after finding Billy's knife, to discuss, to decide, and finally to saddle horses and depart, puzzled, on the trail of Lafond. It had a rope. But it also wanted to hear more about it. Therefore its speed was not as rapid as it might have been, had a horse thief, for instance, been the object of pursuit.
So Lafond, after his first impulse to get away from the scene of his deed had spent itself, jogged along unmolested toward Rapid. His brain was working like lightning, but always on one line. He saw himself alone, standing opposed to this huge black Bad-luck. Everything was against him. But they couldn't get him down. He was Man-who-speaks-Medicine, the Sioux; he was Lafond, the half-breed; he was Black Mike, the pioneer. Let them come on! They thought they could corner him. He would show them. One was gone. There remained the other two. Lafond's mind saw red; he was set on murder. No consideration of reason, probability, or common sense obtruded itself athwart his plan. He could perceive one fact—that three men knew his secret, of whom one was dead and the other two were living. Why Knapp and Buckley should have told Durand; what they expected to gain by going to Rapid; or what benefit the naturalist imagined could accrue to him from his insinuating the state of affairs to the half-breed, the latter did not inquire. He only knew that he wanted to catch Knapp's buckboard before it had left the pine belt. Ambush would then be easier. He lashed his horses unmercifully.
Rockerville told him the two men had passed through not half an hour before, and wondered at the wildness of his eye.
That was well. They could not escape him now, for their wagon was heavily loaded, and they were travelling leisurely, having no reason for haste. Remembering appearances, he told Rockerville that it did not much matter, he would not try to catch up; and then drove back toward Copper Creek, only to make a detour by a wood road into the Rapid trail again. As he approached the foothills, he could hear occasionally the creak of a brake below him, by which he knew that he was drawing near. He slowed up at once, for he knew of a short cut a mile or so ahead, which the prospectors would not attempt because of their heavy load, but by which he could come out ahead of his victims. Then he would lie in wait. The short cut in question dipped steeply down into the bed of a creek, and as steeply up on the other side; while the main stage-road made a long horseshoe curve around the head of the cañon. Lafond decided to drive rapidly down, to leave his team in the creek bottom, and to climb on foot to the level of the main road on the other side. In the meantime he drew as near to the other wagon as he could without being seen. The minutes seemed to drag.
At last he discerned the dimly blazed trail, rocky and dangerous enough, which dropped sheer away into the underbrush below. He locked the brakes and turned sharply down to the right. The descent was hazardous, bumpy, exceedingly noisy. For this reason, it was not until he had reached the level ground at the bottom of the cañon and the clash of iron tire against stone had ceased, that he became aware the ravine was already occupied. A sound of voices and laughter floated up through the thin screen of leaves. As the half-breed's vehicle pushed out toward the creek itself, he saw that he had unwittingly stumbled on a camp of Indians up in the Hills on one of their annual jaunts after teepee poles.
Once a year they make these excursions. The whole band—men, women, children, ponies, dogs, and household goods—goes along. It is an outing. The women fell and strip the long slender saplings. The men loaf lazily in front of their temporary shelters or ride about the Hills to the various camps, giving war dances for nickels and silver pieces. The occasion is eminently peaceful.
Of such a nature was the gathering which Michaïl Lafond came upon in the level of the little cañon. The wigwams had been pitched either side of the old overgrown road. Children had cut away the slight underbrush to clear a round smooth park of perhaps thirty yards diameter, in the circumference of which were crowded the persons and household belongings of four score people. Near the centre stood the chief's lodge distinguished by a shield and spear. The whole was a facsimile of a plains camp, except that here the whole affair was in miniature—little wigwams, little kettle-tripods, little space—for the camp was but temporary. Perhaps a score of men were idling about, dressed in blue overalls and old flannel shirts. Moccasins and no hats left still a slight flavor of savagery. The women were clothed for the most part in dirty calico prints. The children had on just nothing at all.
Lafond cursed a little excitedly as he became aware of this not unpicturesque gathering. It was plainly out of the question to leave his horses and wagon in the creek bottom as he had intended; and it was now equally impossible to waylay the prospectors at the top of the grade. A shot would bring out the entire band. The situation was much complicated, for just beyond lay the rolling treeless foothills. More bad luck!
Still the half-breed remembered it was yet many miles to Rapid; and an ambush would not be impossible in some one of the numerous gullies that seamed the foothills. He must hurry his tired horses up the steep slope in order to emerge on the main road ahead of Knapp and Buckley.
"How!" said the nearest warrior, raising his hand palm outward.
"How!" replied Lafond gravely.
He drove on through the half-obliterated road, responding to the conventional salutations of those on the right and on the left. Near the further side of the little clearing, a tiny copper-colored boy rose from the grass and scurried across in front of the horses, so near that Lafond had to pull up sharply to keep from running over him. An old woman, evidently its nurse, hurried to catch him. When she came to the road, however, she stopped short, and stared at Black Mike wildly, and began to scream out in the language of the Brulé Sioux.
"'Tis he, the Defiler! 'Tis he!"
She was an unkempt, wild old hag, and Lafond thought her mad. Her face was lined deeply, as only an Indian's face ever is; a few ragged wisps of gray hair fell over her eyes; and her skinny arm showed that she was thin almost to emaciation.
At her scream a warrior arose before the chief's lodge and approached. From all directions the other warriors gathered. Two of the younger men had already taken the horses by the bits. Lafond did not understand it, and was about to expostulate vigorously against what he thought was intended robbery until he saw the face of the chieftain, who now drew near. Then he turned cold to the marrow.
The chief looked him in the face for almost a minute.
"It is not so," he said quietly.
The hag had ceased her cries when the two young men had grasped the horses' bits.
"It is so, O Lone Wolf," she replied with respect. "The form is changed by the hand of Manitou, but the spirit is the same, and I know it in his eyes. It is the Defiler."
"Let Rippling Water be sought," responded the savage, still without excitement.
About him the old-time dignity clung as a mantle. To any one in a less desperate situation than Michaïl Lafond there would have been something strangely incongruous and a little pathetic in this contrast between the manner of the old wild plains savage and the habit of the modern ward of the government. Even he was cool enough to see that the once powerful tribe had sadly shrunk in numbers and in wealth.
After a moment the woman called by the name of Rippling Water appeared from a distance, where she had been cutting birch bark. In the syllables of the beautiful name Lafond had recognized that of the second of his Indian wives; in the prematurely aged withered squaw who now approached he recognized nothing.
"My daughter," said Lone Wolf, "look upon this man. Have you seen him ever?"
She peered at him a moment through short-sighted eyes.
"I have lain on his bosom," she answered simply.
"It is——?"
"It is the Defiler," she replied.
After the massacre at the battle of the Little Big Horn, a vast number of Indian refugees fled over the borders into Canada. There they dwelt, drawing three pounds of beef a day from arbitrary uniformed individuals, who were strangely lacking in sympathy, and very observant of the few rules and regulations which a mysterious White Mother over the sea had seen fit to impose. Three pounds of meat a day is not much. Still it is enough to get along on, and with the necessity, and indeed, the opportunity of the chase gone, the bucks were able to wax lazy, drunken, and generally shiftless to their hearts' content. All this was frowned on by the uniformed individuals, but opportunities were not far to seek.
There has never been a nation more warlike, brave, and hardy than the Sioux in its native environment of war and hunting. These two furnished every point of leverage—physical, moral, intellectual—which the savage required to lift him to the level of his greatest efficiency. From the buffalo itself the Sioux family obtained its supply of wigwams, robes, food, fuel, light, harness, bow-strings, instruments of industry—in fact almost every article of necessity or luxury appertaining to its everyday life. From the chase of the animal the young Dacotah learned to ride, to shoot, to risk his life. And then in his constant strife with his neighbors, the Blackfeet or the Crows or the Pawnees, he was forced, if he would survive, to develop to the last degree his cunning, his observation, his strategy, his resourcefulness, his patience, his power to endure, his personal courage. Habituated to these two, the chase and war, from his early youth, he came at last to be the coolest, most dangerous warrior of the plains. He could ride anything, bareback, in any position. With his short, powerful bow he could launch a half-dozen arrows into the air before the first reached the ground, or could drive one of his shafts quite through the body of a buffalo. When necessity required, he was brave to the point of recklessness; but again, when expediency advised, he could worm his way for miles through the scantiest cover, flat on his face, by the laborious use alone of his elbows and toes. He could read a whole history in a trail which another might not even distinguish. He could sit absolutely motionless for hours in the hottest sun or the bitterest cold. And he could bear, as he was often called upon to do, the severest physical pain without a quiver of the eyelid.
But when the buffalo vanished, the Sioux passed the meridian of his powers. No other means of subsistence offered. He was forced to plunder, or go to the reservation for Government beef. Thence came much whisky and much loafing. The new young man had not the training of his father. So, in a little, the Teton nation was subdued and brought to reservations, and herded in an overall-plug-hat-blanket-wearing multitude, even now but half-tamed, and fiercely instinct with hereditary ferocity and resourcefulness. Other Indians go to Carlisle, learn to plough, and become at least partially civilized. The Sioux, fierce, hawk-eyed, wide-nostrilled, sits in solitary dignity before his lodge, brooding. Occasionally he has to be rounded up with a Gatling, as witness Wounded Knee. I have never been able to envy the agents of Dakota reservations.
When the statute of limitations ran out, or whatever mysterious time-limit the Government puts on its displeasure against Indian murderers, Sitting Bull and a horde of his fellow-warriors came back. Sitting Bull joined Buffalo Bill's show, where he had a good time until he began ghost-dancing and was killed in the Wounded Knee campaign. But some, Lone Wolf's band among them, remained in Canada. They had various reasons for doing so.
Lone Wolf stayed because he was in hard luck. He had barely settled down in his new home before the great Manitou had seen fit to strike his children with the Spotted Sickness. When finally the last case had been buried hastily, and its clothes and belongings burned under the distant eye of the uniformed man, the formerly powerful band found itself reduced by almost half. By dint of sitting innumerable days naked in a circle on the prairie and beating a tom-tom until the agent prayed for rain, the survivors managed to secure for themselves immunity from the Spotted Sickness at least. Then some of the ponies were stolen. Then a schism occurred in the community; and Three Knives took with him a dozen families and established a new clan within plain sight of the old. Lone Wolf was powerless because of the uniformed individual, who frowned on the Indian idea of patriarchal chastisement. A very young man of the band killed the agent, hoping thus to earn praise, but almost before the embers were cold and before the scalp of Three Knives had clotted dry, there appeared an astounding number of uniforms, who promptly decimated Lone Wolf's warriors and took away all their arms. Lone Wolf discovered that these uniformed men were in reality nothing but soldiers—a disgusting fact which he had not before suspected. They hung six of his young men, and that night a number of things happened, such as the unprovoked fall of Lone Wolf's standard from over his lodge, which showed plainly that Gitche Manitou was still angry.
Lone Wolf gathered his remnants about him and journeyed south to Spotted Tail.
There he enjoyed the discontented tranquillity of a United States reservation, with occasional privileges if he was good.
Lone Wolf had gone into the north country at the head of three hundred efficient fighting men, well armed with rifles, rich in ammunition, ponies, and the luxuries of daily existence. He came back as the nominal chief of thirty-five warriors, with few firearms, and less wealth. Counting in the women, children, and old men, his original band had numbered nearly a thousand souls—a large camp even for the old days. Now there remained barely a tenth of that number.
Misfortunes such as these must have a reason. Gitche Manitou is stern, but he is not unjust. Everybody knows that. And the reason Lone Wolf's band was so afflicted, Big Thunder, the medicine man, had discovered, lay in the fact that the defiling of the tribe's token, after the Little Big Horn, had been done by a member of the tribe itself. Until the culprit should be brought to justice the wrath of Gitche Manitou would continue to be visited impartially on the entire band.
The recognition of Rippling Water made a profound impression on those standing about. There flashed into Lone Wolf's eagle face a gleam of satisfaction so intense that Black Mike started. He had not the remotest notion that he was in any actual danger, for his dealings with the tribe in those old times when he had been a member of it had always been rather to its advantage than to his own. That it was unfriendly to him because of his unceremonious desertion of it, he did not doubt. Nor did he hope to escape a typical Indian tirade from the two old hags who, so short a time ago, had been his not unattractive young wives. But beyond this, and perhaps—as he glanced over the motley indications of their poverty—the promise of gifts, he anticipated nothing more serious in the end than a delay. A delay, however, was what he could not at present afford.
"Ah, well," he acknowledged in the Indian tongue, "I am he, Man-who-speaks-Medicine. You have known me. It is I. It is many moons that I have not seen my brothers, but I have accomplished many things, and I have gathered gifts for my brothers which will rejoice their hearts. I go to the lodges of the white men near Swift-water now, and I haste; so I cannot linger to clasp my brothers' hands; but to-morrow I return bearing the gifts."
"MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED."MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED.
"MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED."MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED.
He took up his reins with all confidence, for in those days no one was afraid of Indians—at least when they were accompanied by their women and children. The two bucks at the horses' heads did not move, however; and at a signal from Lone Wolf three others leaped lightly into the wagon-body behind the half-breed and pinned his arms to his sides. So suddenly was it done that Lafond could not even struggle.
His captors tied his elbows together at the back and lifted him to the ground, where a number of others hustled him into a wigwam, and after tying his feet left him lying on the ground. In a moment he heard the faint sound of wheels somewhere above him, by which he knew that Billy Knapp and Buckley were passing the point of his intended ambush. He drew a deep breath and shouted. Instantly two young Sioux ran in and threw a blanket over his head, nearly smothering him. The sound of the wheels died into distance.
After perhaps two hours he heard the hoof-beats of a large party of horsemen. They, too, died away. The men composing the party were looking for him, Michaïl Lafond, but this he did not know. He tried to distinguish from the noises just outside what was taking place in the little camp, but he could not.
At the end of another half-hour the two young men who had been appointed as his guards led him out to a horse, on which, after his feet had been untied, he was compelled to mount. He asked them questions, to which they vouchsafed no reply. Looking about him curiously, he saw that the camp had been struck. The long teepee poles, bound on each side of the ponies, trailed their ends on the ground, and on the litters thus formed, the skins of the lodges, all the household utensils, and many of the younger children had been placed. Squaws bestrode the little animals. The warriors, ridiculously incongruous in their overalls and flannel shirts, sat motionless on their mounts. Lafond recognized his own team, but could not discover either his wagon or the harness. These had been dragged away into the bushes and left, for very good reasons.
The cavalcade took its way directly down the narrow, overgrown little cañon, riding in single file. Lafond could not understand this. The road above would have been much easier.
After an hour's hard work in dodging obstructions, getting around fallen trees or between standing timber, the party emerged on the broad, rolling foothills, grass-covered and bare of trees. Here Lone Wolf led the way south-east for several miles, and finally came to a halt on the brow of a round hill of gentle descent. The band at once dismounted. A number of the squaws deftly relieved the ponies of their burdens, and the younger boys led them away to the bottom-lands for pasture. The women then began without delay to erect the lodges in a wide circle surrounding the brow of the hill, so arranging them that the flaps or doorways opened into the common centre. After this had been done, they built in the middle of the circle a huge fire of wood brought from the Hills, but did not light it as yet. Then all silently disappeared to the bottom-lands, where they made little fires and set about supper.
Before each lodge a warrior established himself, crosslegged, and began to smoke. When the sun dipped behind the Hills and threw their long shadows silently out across to the Bad Lands, the chill of twilight struck in, and so the Indians wrapped themselves closely in their blankets. As by a stroke of enchantment, with the concealment of the shirts and overalls, the Past returned. Against the sky of evening, the silhouettes of the pointed wigwams and the suggestion of the shrouded warriors smoking solemnly, silently, their pipes, all belonged to the nomadic age before such men as Michaïl Lafond had "civilized" the country.
After a time they rose and departed silently to the bottom-land for a while, leaving Lafond in charge of the two young men. They had gone to eat their suppers. The half-breed had not tasted food since the early morning, nor slept for thirty odd hours.
The stars came out one by one, and the stillness of that great inland sea men call the prairies fell on the world. Such occasional sounds as rose from the creek bottom seemed but to emphasize the peace. And then suddenly, from the shadows somewhere, without disturbance, the blanketed figures appeared and took their places again. A squaw came bearing a torch, and lit the fire in the centre of the circle, and there sprang up a broad shaft of light which drew about the little scene a great canopy of imminent blackness. From hand to hand passed a great red-stone calumet or pipe. Each warrior puffed at it twice and passed it to his neighbor. It was not offered to Michaïl Lafond, whose bonds had now been loosened.
After each of the seated warriors had taken his part in this ceremony, and the pipe had completed the circle to Lone Wolf, that chief arose, throwing back his blanket from his shoulders.
With a sudden chill of fear, Michaïl Lafond saw that he was to assist at a state council of the sort held only when the tribe is to sit in judgment on one of its own number.
The savage was naked to the waist. In his hair, worn loose and unbraided after the Sioux fashion, three eagle feathers with white tips were thrust slantwise across the back of his head; and under its heavy mass his fierce bright eyes and hawk face gleamed impressively. About his neck hung a fringe of bears' claws, from which depended a round silver medal. Now as he stood there—the lithe strength of his bronze torso revealed one arm clasping the blanket about his waist, the other holding loosely at his side the feather-bedecked calumet of sandstone—the stigma of sordidness and drunkenness and squalor seemed to fall away, so that the spectator would have seen in this group of silent men under the silent western heavens only the pomp and pride of a great and savage people in the zenith of its power.
Lone Wolf stood for the space of several minutes without a sign. Then with a magnificently sweeping gesture he held the calumet aloft and began to speak.
At first his voice was low and monotonous, but as his speech continued it took on more color, until at the close it responded in modulation to every flash of his eye. He began with a recital of the tribe's ancient glory, dwelling rather on concrete examples than on broader generalities. He numbered its warriors, its ponies, its arms, and lodges. He told of the beauty of its women and the greatness of its men, whom he ran over by name. He told of its deeds in war, enumerating the enemies it had struck, the ponies it had stolen, the stratagems it had conceived and carried out. And then he swept his arm and the feather-fluttering calumet abroad as he described the boundless extent of the hunting grounds over which it had used to roam. As he continued, the warriors' expressive eyes brightened and flashed with pride, though they moved not one muscle of their faces or bodies. Beyond the circle could be dimly descried another not less interested audience of women and older children.
"These and more were ours!" cried Lone Wolf, "these and many more. The favor of Gitche Manitou was ours and the riches of the world. Where are they now?" With an indescribably graceful gesture the orator stooped to the ground and grasped a handful of the loose dry earth. "Gone!" he said solemnly, letting the sand fall from his outstretched suddenly opened palm.
Then, without pause or transition, he began, in equally vivid objective language, to detail the tribe's misery and poverty of to-day. He recounted its disasters, just as a moment before he had recounted its victories. He told of the Spotted Sickness, the dividing of forces, the battle with the red coats, all the long series of oppressions great and little which had brought them to their present condition. He counted over by name the present members, to show how their numbers had shrunken, and to each name he added others of those who had gone before. So real was the picture that the orator himself faltered, while from outside the circle rose for a single instant a long trembling wail. The warriors had half covered their faces with the folds of their blankets.
"Thus our glory went and our young men are seen no longer on the war path, but only in the white men's towns. And yet our fathers were brave before us and we have struck well in our time. Why is this so? Why has Gitche Manitou veiled his face from his children?"
Leaving the question unanswered, Lone Wolf unexpectedly took up Lafond's connection with the tribe. In the recounting of this, too, he held to the greatest minuteness of detail, showing plainly the half-breed's rise from despised squaw man to a person of influence in the councils. He gave the half-breed full credit for all he did. He even went out of his way to show that to Lafond was due much of the power that had so distinguished the Brulé Sioux among the other tribes. He described again briefly that power, and told of the battle of the Little Big Horn. He dwelt on that as to some extent the culmination of the tribe's glory. It was the last and greatest of its exploits. After it misfortune commenced. Gitche Manitou that day veiled his face.
"And he turned his hand against the totem of the Turtle," said Lone Wolf impressively, "because one of its children had committed a sacrilege. The very night of that great victory, a brave from among us arose and took the sacred totem, the great Turtle, from the lodge of his chief, and slew Buffalo Voice, the medicine man favored of Gitche Manitou, and defiled the totem.
"From that time Gitche Manitou has frowned upon his children. From that time misfortune has visited the tribe of Lone Wolf. From that time the man who did these things has lost his old warrior name and has been known as the Defiler."
He paused and looked about the circle until his eye rested on Lafond. With a sudden fierce enmity he stretched his arm toward the captive.
"That is he," he concluded impressively; "and it has been revealed by Big Thunder that never will Gitche Manitou smile on his children until the Defiler dies!"