“There is a large prairie fire to the west of us and the wind is blowing strong in our direction. I am sure the camp is in danger. Only the women and two or three old men are at home. Please send help at once.“Respectfully,“Stella Waring.”
“There is a large prairie fire to the west of us and the wind is blowing strong in our direction. I am sure the camp is in danger. Only the women and two or three old men are at home. Please send help at once.
“Respectfully,
“Stella Waring.”
“Umph!” he grunted, rousing himself a trifle, however. “That all so, Lone Bull? Well, tell Pepper to step here a minute. Hello, Jack! here’s a windfall for you. The little field matron out at Cherry Creek wants to be saved from a prairie fire. That’s a Number One allotment she’s picked out—better get a move on at once. I’m looking for a tenderfoot from the East to-day; team’s just gone to the landing after him; may take a drive out that way later on. Good luck to you!”
When Jack Pepper pulled up his steaming span in front of Stella’s home, the girl was out with “Old Soup” and a rusty plow, trying, with the help of Blue Earth and one or two others, to drive a furrow around the threatened camp. But it was evident that their unaccustomed hands were making hard work of it. Theadvancing line of smoke and flame had drawn perceptibly nearer; a hot blast was blowing directly in their faces, and the red sun swam in an angry haze. The situation looked fairly serious.
“Hey, Stella! so you had to send for me, at last!” was the young man’s familiar greeting.
The girl looked past him with unseeing eyes. “I wrote to theagent,” she replied, shortly.
“Scared out of your wits, I’ll bet! Well, if I help you out of this scrape, what am I going to get for it, eh?” he persisted, coming closer.
Stella flashed one glance at the coarse face unpleasantly near her own, then at the winking red line of fire driven straight toward them on the wings of a strong wind. The fire was preferable, so far as she was concerned; but there were Blue Earth and her terrified babies andpoor, helpless old Grandmother! There were many others in the same plight. Doubtless they could escape by hasty flight; but these poor huts held their little all on earth, and must they be abandoned? What was to be done?
“Will you take this plow? or shall I?” she blazed out. “You can see for yourself there’s no time to lose.”
“Well, of all the high-an’-mighty airs!—and her nothin’ more than a squaw, when all’s said an’ done,” muttered the man. “Say, Stella, you wait till the Major hears of your goin’s-on; ’tendin’ Injun dances late at night and all that sort of thing! I know more about you than you think I do, and maybe you’ll be sorry yet you tried to turn me down.”
Stella, choking with wrath, caught up the plow-handles again without a word and chirruped to the patient pony. As her eyes mechanically swept the horizon,though without hope of aid, they descried a rapidly driven team approaching from the direction of the agency. Jack saw her face lighten suddenly, and saw, too, what had done it. In hot haste he jerked a plow from the back of his wagon, hitched his waiting team, and started a furrow both wide and deep a few rods from the cabins, whose owners were running hither and thither in helpless terror.
Half-blinded with smoke, and quivering with outraged pride, Stella dropped her plow to confront the agent and another—a tall, well-knit youth who was hurrying forward with both hands outstretched.
“Ethan—why, Ethan!”
“I seem to be just in time, again, Stella,” was all he said, and the plow started with a running jerk as the gray pony felt a man’s hand on the bit.
Two hours later, when the danger was over, and the smoking prairie lay black in the path of the setting sun, two young people stood side by side on a bluff overlooking the Indian camp.
“What was that fellow saying to you just before we came up, anyway? I thought I noticed a spark in somebody’s eye that was considerably hotter than the prairie fire,” Ethan slyly observed.
“He … he doesn’t know any better, I suppose,” Stella murmured.
“Looked to me as though he needed kicking, all right,” the young man cheerfully assented, and something in the set of his jaw and the swing of his athletic shoulders hinted that Jack Pepper would do well to avoid his immediate neighborhood.
“Well, never mind him now. He isn’t worth it,” pursued her old friend. “Don’t you want to hear all the news from home?About the girls—and dear old Uncle Si? And your little ‘wild orphan?’ You know, I’m an orphan myself, Stella.”
“But you’re grown up,” she returned, not looking at him.
“So has the fawn grown up—and taken to the woods,” laughed the young man. “Come, Stella, I’ve brought you a message. Guess who it’s from. No, not Cynthia this time; not even the old Doctor. I’ve brought you a message from—Miss Sophia!”
He paused to observe the effect of his words, in the soft, black eyes that seemed to widen and deepen gloriously under his steady gaze.
“Yes, Miss Sophia isn’t so young as she was—and there’s something in her, after all, that’s stronger than prejudice and pride. It must have been there always, buried so deep down that nobody ever found it out. She simply can’t holdout any longer, all alone so. She wouldn’t write, dear, because she couldn’t; she sent me all this long way to find you, and tell you that she wants you to come home. Stella, will you come?”
“Miss Sophia wants me,” breathed Yellow Star. It seemed impossible—unbelievable. In these few, short years, many people had wanted her, or seemed to want her; butMiss Sophia!
For a full minute neither spoke. In the silence, the magical Dakota sunset blossomed rosy-red above the pair, who stood, as it were, cut off from all human companionship, a burned-out world under their feet, their heads in a paradise of color and ecstasy.
“And all that’s best of dark and brightMeets in her aspect and her eyes!”
“And all that’s best of dark and brightMeets in her aspect and her eyes!”
“And all that’s best of dark and brightMeets in her aspect and her eyes!”
“And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes!”
Ethan hummed the old song under his breath.
“Oh!” the Indian girl burst out at last, with something of the old frank impetuosity. “Do you know, Ethan, I seem to be two people again, just as in those first months in Laurel, when you teased me about having so many names”—(Ethan gently shook his head). “I’m pulled two ways at once; I so want to really belong, and I can’t tell where I belong! I know, now, that I can’t do for my people what I once thought I could, here on the reservation; and yet, isn’t it my place? I wonder what the Bishop would say.”
“Well, whatdidhe say?” sturdily responded Ethan.
“He did—yes, hedidtell me once I had better go back for more training—to learn to be a nurse.”
“Well, isn’t taking care of Miss Sophia pretty good training? I believe that just now, at any rate, you belong with her,”he answered promptly, with a masculine finality that steadied her swimming thoughts. “A lonely, loveless old woman needs you; you are all she has. Come home, dear; come home!”
“Blue Earth told me yesterday that she’s going to be married again—to Moses Blackstone.Shewon’t need me any more,” half laughed, half sobbed the girl, recalling the dumb pleading that had so irritated her in those eyes of Moses’. She was all woman—our little Stella, and the personal note would not be denied. “It can’t be just yet, of course; I must take a month or two to wind up everything; but—yes—I’ll come!”
They had turned their backs upon the tiny, primitive village, and were facing the eastern horizon, remote and lovely in the transforming after-glow.
“And you graduate from the medicalcollege when, Ethan? Isn’t it next year? Are you really going to settle down in Laurel?”
“Doctor Brown is anxious to divide his practice, but I haven’t given him my answer yet,” responded Ethan, his serious eyes upon the soft, averted cheek that had at last begun to burn with a delicate consciousness.
“You see, Stella, theplacedoesn’t matter much,” he went on, with tender confidence. “Any place holds duties to fill a lifetime; it’s thespiritthat really counts. A doctor’s heart ought to be as large as all humanity, don’t you think so? I may go east; I may go west. I only know one thing surely … I must follow my Star!”
“I allers sort o’ mistrusted that Injuns was folks.” This was Grandma Brown’s comment, when she heard that Stellahad been sent for at last. “Seems like there’s a sight of human nater in most all of us,—even in that Sophi’ Spellman!”